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6lpg6l
|
why do we sometimes get the urge to do violent things to cute things?
|
Edit: Something along the lines of [Key and Peele's comedy sketch](_URL_0_)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lpg6l/eli5_why_do_we_sometimes_get_the_urge_to_do/
|
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"I think it's probably along the same lines of why we think about jumping off a cliff when we get too close to the edge. We are analyzing outcomes and consequences. It's a totally normal thing to do, it likely keeps us from actually doing these things because we examine the situation and outcomes instead of acting them out in real life and seeing what happens. ",
"Look up the term cute aggression.\n\nA popsci article talks a little about it [here](_URL_0_), but it is mostly speculative as to \"why.\" \n\n\"The study's researchers, led by Rebecca Dyer, a graduate student in psychology at Yale University, dubs the phenomenon \"cute aggression.\"\n\n\"We think it's about high positive-affect, an approach orientation and almost a sense of lost control,\" she said. It's so adorable, it drives you crazy.\"",
"I read an article about this once, basically the first reaction to something cute is extremely positive and the secondary response (violence) is a way of counteracting the super positive reaction.",
"It's called \"The Imp of the Perverse.\" Essentially, it's the urge to do something wrong simply because you can. It's similar to \"Call of the Void,\" but involves outwardly destructive behavior rather than self-destructive. \n\nAs for why it happens, we don't really know for sure. Like /u/phlegming11 said, it could be your brain playing through a scenario to assess possible outcomes. However, it doesn't explain why we actually have the urge rather than just imagining it in our minds."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://youtu.be/z6iC0Vi1yEg"
] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/science-says-adorable-animals-turn-us-aggressive"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
75jpwf
|
Most of the wild west shows that aired in the '50's and '60's always shows everyone drinking whiskey all the time. How accurate is that portrayal?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/75jpwf/most_of_the_wild_west_shows_that_aired_in_the_50s/
|
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"This is a difficult question to answer because there were so many different people coming to and living in the West in the nineteenth century - and it was in itself an enormous place with \"many Wests\" as historians of the period and place like to say. Even the clichéd \"Wild West\" with a frontier town surrounded by open expanse tended to have more foreign-born and diversity than many Eastern cities. Since tastes varied radically, different saloons would open, often catering to a segment of the population. Because of this, one saloon might sell more whiskey while the one next door might specialize in fine wines, and other with imported and/or domestic beers. Most saloons would sell an assortment of everything, but preferences of clientele is hinted at when one compares the archaeological evidence of different establishments, which shows that they weren't consuming the same proportions of wines, beers, and hard liquor in each place.\n\nOn top of this complexity is the fact that you can't trust the facts! Western communities often boasted that theirs was the hardest drinking town around with more saloons than anywhere else and an annual consumption that was unmatched. The only thing that you can count on was that they all tended to boast the same thing, and none of them were in fact the 'Hardest Drinking Town in the West\" - they were all contenders! But the boast survived and influenced the popular perception of the Old West, giving it some of its \"Wild\" veneer.\n\nBut then ... there is at least one fact that does affect all of this, namely the demography of the nineteenth-century West. Although there were more women (and most were not prostitutes - another bit of \"Wild West\" hype) and more children than the cliché, there was in fact a preponderance of young single men, and young single men being who they are, they did drink a lot. One of the first businesses that would set up in a new Western mining town was a saloon, and there were always ample customers. \n\nAll this adds up to an answer with equivocations: everyone drinking something (often but not always it was whiskey) is sort of accurate, but it is based on exaggeration, and it doesn't capture the complexity of reality: not everyone drank; there were at least some families where drinking habits were different from those of single men; there was a lot of whiskey, but there were also many other types of drinks; and consumption was not as dramatic as the cliché would have it.\n\nI hope this helps!"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3dvim2
|
why does it sometimes look like the numbers on my alarm clock are jumping up and down?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dvim2/eli5_why_does_it_sometimes_look_like_the_numbers/
|
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"I'm not familiar with the phenomenon you are describing, but I might have an explanation. \n\nWhen you look at an object within a space, your eyes don't look at one point. You see one point, and when you move your eyes to another point it seems your eyes move in one smooth action. What your eyes are really doing, is actually 'vibrating'. They don't go in one direct line towards the next point, but they zigzag to that location. Your brain stitches these images together as a solid movement.\n\nWhen you're falling asleep, your eyes and brain are going into a resting mode. Thus: they will not perform these actions reliably because they don't need to. Perhaps that's why the 'vibration' and or stitching don't work (together or effectively) and you'll see the numbers jump up and down.\n\nHowever, this is merely an educational guess and I hope someone else is capable of providing solid proof.",
"The numbers on a digital clock look like they're constant, but they're actually turning on and off very fast. In actuality, most digital clocks only display one \"segment\" of the number at a time. In a number like 8, which consists of 7 segments, the display rotates through lighting up each segment individually. If your eyes aren't moving, and you're looking at the display, it looks like it's constant. If your eyes are moving, everything gets jumbled around a bit, because the light from each segment is hitting your eye at a different position than it \"should'. You can replicate this phenomenon by looking at a display and clicking your teeth together (or by eating something really crunchy) which causes your eyes to vibrate a bit."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
ab52du
|
splitting infinitives???
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ab52du/eli5_splitting_infinitives/
|
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"An infinitive is just the phrase \"to *verb*\". A split infinitive is when you put an adverb in between the parts of an infinitive. So in your example, the word \"never\" is in the middle of the infinitive \"to grow up\", so it's a split infinitive. Having a split infinitive doesn't mean the sentence doesn't change meaning if you take out the adverb, it's just a description of the order of words in the sentence.",
"The sentence with the infinitive un-split would be \"I was wise enough to grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.\" - the *never* was removed. This looks different from the previous example because the split infinitive is part of a sub-structure of the sentence - \"to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had\" - which has other verbs (\"was\") before it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
4w8cgx
|
Brazil is widely known to be the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Why did it last so long in Brazil and what pressures caused it to finally end?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4w8cgx/brazil_is_widely_known_to_be_the_last_country_in/
|
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"I'm Brazilian so I think I might help, though I'm a lawyer, not a historian. This is a topic that is really common knowledge in Brazil so I hope it's alright by the mods.\n\nOne of the reasons Brazil took very long to abolish slavery was because its economy was heavily reliant on the production of sugar, coffee, tobacco and cotton, which exclusively used slave labor up until the mid 19th century. \n\nAlso, since Brazil had such vast lands, the monetary value of slaves was actually higher than the lands themselves, making them a very expensive and important asset. This would also create a resistance to change the elite's stance on slavery.\n\nFinally, Portugal made a lot of money on taxes charged from slave merchants. This means that there probably was no institutional interest in changing the situation.\n\nIt all started to change with England's pressures, especially the Aberdeen Act in 1845. In 1850, the Eusébio de Queiroz Law finally prohibited the transatlantic trafficking of slaves. This intensified the internal slave market and actually made their prices go up, which kept slavery going.\n\nIntellectuals started to voice their opinion against slavery and by the 1870s, a growing part of society was against slavery. In 1871 the Ventre Livre Law was created (Free Womb Law) which made it so that any child born from a slave would be free. By then, slaves were allowed to have private property and could eventually buy their freedom (alforria).\n\nIn 1885, the Sexagenários Law (Sexagenarian Law) was approved, which granted freedom to anyone over the age of 65. In 1889, princess Isabel, acting as a regent for Emperor Dom Pedro II, approved the Áurea Law (Golden Law), which unequivocally ended slavery in Brazil.\n\nBy then, though, most of the workforce was already composed by immigrants (most notably, Italians), who were cheaper to maintain, representing a better cost-effectiveness. \n\n\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
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||
2894sm
|
why does a body pillow feel between my legs make sleeping more comfortable?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2894sm/eli5_why_does_a_body_pillow_feel_between_my_legs/
|
{
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"text": [
"My guess would be that it raises your leg which aligns your spine and reduces lower back tension.",
"Without it, your hips are in a stress position when you sleep on your side. With it, your knees are separated, putting your legs and hips in a more natural alignment."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
53e1sg
|
what is happening at a biological level when someone mentions tequila and you can instantly taste it?
|
I am interested in how synesthesia of someone verbally articulating something translates into a reflex which in turn translates into a taste, which in itself is a memory.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53e1sg/eli5_what_is_happening_at_a_biological_level_when/
|
{
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"text": [
"Not an expert, just a guy who reads a lot of science-y stuff. But it's been four hours and you don't seem to have any other responses. I've read that memory recall in our brains doesn't work like a computer. A computer creates some kind of physical structure to store information, then comes back and examines that structure in order to recall the information. Our brains actually have to reconstruct the memories, so recall is a complicated mixture of reading and writing simultaneously. I think the taste sensation is being recreated in your brain."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
23c9kl
|
Were the United States of America set up for such power and success before the revolution or was their ascent to the top of the global hierarchy only possible because of what happened after the Revolution or the Revolution itself?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23c9kl/were_the_united_states_of_america_set_up_for_such/
|
{
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"I work on the history of Anglo-American relations and this question (or at least a variation on it) interests me greatly. At what point was the United States' rise to power perceived to be inevitable?\n\nFirstly, it all depends on what you mean by \"set up\". On the one hand, you could argue that America's ability to compete economically against its European rivals owed a lot to its natural resources and capacity for growth. In this respect, the country started life with a number of geographic advantages. If the United States had been founded in a smaller area, with no room for Westward expansion, then it probably wouldn't have been able to challenge other world powers in the same way. That said, this kind of geographical determinism only goes so far - after all, the key is how a country *uses* its resources.\n\nIn the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, some Americans were already beginning to make wildly optimistic predictions about their country's future. There was lots of talk of sweeping away the crumbling, decadent 'old world' of Europe and replacing it with a pure, vibrant, republican model of society nurtured in the new world. However, for much of the next century these comments were laughed off in Britain as the exaggerated boasts of loud-mouthed Yankees.\n\nFrom a British perspective, the 'inevitability' of America's rise only started to become apparent from around the 1870s. At least, that's what I argue in my own work. Before that, the country was generally viewed as an underdeveloped frontier territory and an unstable experiment in republican democracy. British observers watched the country with great interest - and many, of course, went to live there - but it's hard to detect any sense of anxiety about its future power. With hindsight its easy to laugh at their confidence, but we shouldn't forget that post-Revolutionary America *was* an extremely unstable country and that it came close to tearing itself apart during the Civil War.\n\nHowever, after the Civil War things began to change. By the 1870s people in Britain (including Gladstone, the Prime Minister) were already starting to talk in terms of a coming 'American Future' in which the United States would inevitably usurp Britain's position on the World Stage. These anxieties manifested themselves across a range of contexts (economic, political, cultural) until, by 1902, the 'Americanization of the world' was casually described by one British observer as 'the trend of the twentieth century'.\n\nAmerica surpassed Britain in terms of industrial production in the 1870s and started to eat into its overseas markets. Hundreds of rich Americans were marrying off their daughters to bankrupt families of the British aristocracy. In cultural terms, British audiences were beginning to demonstrate a preference for American pop culture (particularly its humour and its journalism). By the 1880s, performing cowboys like Buffalo Bill and Mexican Joe had captured the imaginations of millions of Victorian girls and boys who now started to dream about life on the American frontier. Visitors to the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1893 returned with stories of an electrifying modern metropolis whose streetcars, elevators, and skyscrapers made it seem like the landscape of the future. American sportsmen were also starting to get the better of their British competitors in yacht races and boxing matches.\n\nAnother indicator of America's growing influence in this period was the spread of American English. It might be hard to imagine, but hundreds of American phrases and slang terms entered British culture during this time (including my username). For more on this, check out [an article I wrote for The Guardian](_URL_0_) a while back.\n\nAll of these manifestations of modern American vigour fed into growing concerns about the degeneration of 'old world' society and culture. Whilst many people in Britain resisted the idea of an American future - it would be wrong to suggest that the whole country was resigned to defeat - by the 1880s it was in wide circulation. The obvious analogy would be the recent emergence of China - America is still the world's top super power, but people are starting to talk openly about a power shift towards Beijing.\n\nSo, to answer your question: while *some* of the raw ingredients of America's future power were in place before the revolution, it wasn't until the final quarter of the nineteenth century that its rise to global domination began to be regarded as inevitable by the international community. Events such as the First World War helped to accelerate this process, but it was already well under way by the end of the century.\n\nIf you'd like to know more about any of this, take a look at:\n\n1) [My PhD thesis on transatlantic journalism - free to download!](_URL_4_)\n\n2) [This article tracking the transatlantic circulation of American jokes](_URL_1_) - free to download for a short time.\n\n3) Various other bits and bobs on my [research blog.](_URL_5_)\n\n4) Some previous /r/AskHistorians threads on these topics (I've copied some of my responses into this post already):\n\n* [When did it become clear to the world that America would become a superpower? Was it only after WWII?](_URL_3_)\n* [When did the relationship between Britain and the USA go from sour to friendly?](_URL_2_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/oct/08/chillax-emma-thompson-slang-english-language",
"http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13555502.2012.702664#.UcRrDPlwpcw",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gsi4n/when_did_the_relationship_between_britain_and_the/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cbprm/when_did_it_become_clear_to_the_world_that/",
"http://www.digitalvictorianist.com/2013/04/looming-large-america-and-the-victorian-press-1865-1902/",
"http://www.digitalvictorianist.com/"
]
] |
||
1yyfqm
|
Can someone explain "Bleeding Kansas"?
|
All I know is that it was between pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups and it helped start the civil war.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1yyfqm/can_someone_explain_bleeding_kansas/
|
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"In 1820, Congress passed the [Missouri Compromise] (_URL_2_), which basically said that any territory in the once Louisiana Purchase north of the parallel 36°30' north was prohibited to have slavery. However, in 1854, the Missouri Compromise was repealed with the [Kansas-Nebraska Act] (_URL_1_) which created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska for white settlement. The Missouri COmpromise was repealed because Kansas and Nebraska could rule on allowing slavery in the territory by rule of popular sovereignty (allowing the population decide the laws within the territory). \n\n[\"Bleeding Kansas\"] (_URL_0_) comes into the picture in 1854 when neighboring emigrants from Missouri came to secure Kansas for the expansion of slavery. Looking to secure \"slave-statehood\" and delegation in Congress, the slavery-endorsing Kansans fraudulently elected pro-slavery territorial leaders and wrote up laws favoring the expansion of slavery in 1855. Heads started to but in August when abolitionists gathered to formally reject the slave laws. In October, staunch abolitionist John Brown came to the Kansas territory to oppose the spread of slavery and influenced the immigration of more abolitionists. Violence commenced off and on until the break out the American Civil War in 1861. ",
"My only qualifications to explain this is I'm from Kansas and had to study this in history classes. Also, I brushed up using the wikipedia page _URL_0_\n\nThe Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 gave Kansans \"popular sovereignty\" which basically put up the issue of whether a state would be a \"free-state\" (no slaves) or a \"slave-state\" to a vote. If the vote was truly left to Kansans the vote was most likely going to end up creating a free-state, but pro-slavery men from Missouri and nearby would come in droves over to Kansas and vote in order to sway it in their favor. \n\nAnti-slavery people mostly settled in lawrence and other nearby towns while pro-slavery forces settled further east and north in towns such as Atchison and Leavenworth creating a sort of border war between the forces (even though both these towns are in Kansas.) In that time period every vote really did count as there were only a total of 6000 votes (only 1500 \"legit\" Kansas registered voters) so conflict began to arose between the groups ending in \"border ruffians\" (pro-slavery missourians mostly) riding over to Lawrence and burning down the Free State hotel and doing some other damage. \n\nBy this time some anti-slavery Northerners including John Brown who supplied anti-slavery forces with guns hidden in Bibles otherwise known as Beecher's bibles. Although only 56 people died in the whole \"war\" the conflict climaxed during the Battle of Osawatomie where John Brown's forces engaged around 400 pro-slavery forces. \n\nThere was also conflict over which state constitution would become the real one with 4 total ones written and 2 supporting slavery and 2 against slavery. The Wyandotte Constitution supporting a free state was approved 1859 officially making Kansas a Free-state and swaying the control Anti-slavery supporters had over the direction of the United States.\n\n",
"The answers already here are great, but I just wanted to add some additional context. The slavery issue in the United States had always been a sort of a sore issue. From the founding of the United States up until the Civil War, slavery had been boiling quietly under everything -- but up until then it had been held in check by a series of compromises: the [3/5ths compromise](_URL_0_) and [Missouri compromise](_URL_1_) are notable examples (the Missouri Compromise is a better example of this). \n\nSee, the thing was, the U.S. was becoming increasingly divided into two parts: the North and South. So much so that the South eventually decided that it would be alright to become *it's own country.* Because of this there was a constant political power play between the North and South. The North had a larger population because of urbanization and heavy industry, while the South maintained the sprawling \"plantation\" layout. Because of this, the House of Representatives, which is based on population, had the implied nature of legislating in favor of the North over the South, if it ever came down to that. \n\nThus, the only way the South could hope to keep the political playing field level was to balance out the Senate, where each State gets 2 senators regardless of population. And as the South became more and more defined by its \"peculiar institution\" and the North became more and more opposed to it, the admission of States became a major issue: the political balance of the Senate hinged on whether or not a state would be admitted as a Free or Slave state. \n\nIn the years leading up to the Civil War, each new state that was admitted would have to be balanced out for each side. Ideally, the South would gain one Slave State for each Free State that the North acquired, keeping the sway of the senators equal. However, because of politics listed above, it was rarely this simple. Because of the Kansas-Nebraska act, the North had the possibility of gaining two states and the South none. \n\nIn the end, the issue hinged on Kansas, and people on both sides would flood the state just to vote on it. \n\nBut by far the most fantastical thing to come out of all of this was a certain man named John Brown. A character that belongs in fiction and not of history, John Brown proclaimed himself as \"God's chosen instrument\" to tear down the abominable institution that was slavery. He made his entrance into United States politics during Bleeding Kansas, when he and a band of followers killed five men in front of their families, with *broadswords.* As stated above, John Brown was one of the leading figures of Bleeding Kansas, who would become a hero, and eventually a martyr, of folkloric proportions for the abolitionist cause."
]
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[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas%E2%80%93Nebraska_Act",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise"
]
] |
|
5m301z
|
how did humans create perfectly flat objects prior to the invention of advanced tools/machinery?
|
If they used necessary contemporary tools, how did they create those tools to be flat?
EDIT: How were these primitive methods of getting a flat surface applied to large-scale constructions and objects? (i.e. furniture, construction materials, etc.)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m301z/eli5_how_did_humans_create_perfectly_flat_objects/
|
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"If you just take two moderately flat stones and rub them against each other in random circles, they will wear away the highest points until they get quite flat.\n\n",
"There are no *perfectly* flat objects being made today.\n\nEven the mirrors on giant telescopes have fluctuations on the surface.\n\nIf one wanted to make a fairly flat stone surface with only stone tools available one could use water in a bucket and grind a disk (or whatever) so that the edges and surface are even with the still water.\n\nMetals can be pounded flat pretty easily. Polish them to see how flat they are and work at it some more if necessary."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
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|
3isnsb
|
Are there valuable or highly useful resources which could potentially be harvested from mars?
|
Lately there has been a lot of talk about future settlement missions to mars. What specific resources exist there, and how would they be useful, either to earth, or the settlers themselves?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3isnsb/are_there_valuable_or_highly_useful_resources/
|
{
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"text": [
"Mars has the same elements Earth does. You could build a gold mine or a titanium mine or whatever. Actually moving it from Mars to Earth would be absurdly expensive and isn't going to happen without something making space travel much, much cheaper. But settlers would use it, since getting it from Earth would be even more stupidly expensive."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2uawn1
|
american tv shows compared to the rest of the world.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uawn1/eli5_american_tv_shows_compared_to_the_rest_of/
|
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"text": [
"They make it into a drama type show to get more people interested. Most Americans wouldn't watch it if it was like the British version because it's not \"interesting\" enough for them. ",
"The amount of American hate / bashing on Reddit is amazing.\n",
"Don't act like we Americans don't notice this shit, too.",
"Most American TV shows aren't like that though. Just silly reality shows are. I mean really, America has produced by far the most good TV of any country.",
"Oh sorry, I thought this was r/ELI5, not /r/thinlyveiledwhiningmasqueradingasaquestion.",
"American living in Switzerland here and I noticed many of the German/Swiss/Austrian/French/Italian channels have American TV Shows, trashy reality shows aside I think most Europeans are fans of popular TV shows. Most of what I watch here is dubbed with the respective countries language. ",
"This issue here is money. \n\nIn America, there is a big difference between Network television and Cable television:\n\n*Network television is broadcast over the airwaves, and can be picked up for free by any television with an antenna. Therefore, the only way that the large television networks (ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS) make money is through commercials. \n \n*Cable television is only available by subscription and people have to pay to view the channel's content.\n\nSince Networks are entirely dependent on commercials for revenue and they can charge more for commercials based on their ratings, Networks are obsessed with attracting the largest possible audience. There is a certain amount of moron viewers who want (need?) to be told what to think/feel. It's not necessarily that they are not able to do it on their own, but it is more enjoyable for them if they do not have to think or analyze what is happening. Even if this is 1% of the audience, the network cannot afford to leave them behind. Therefore, Network show strive to be as attractive and easily digested as possible to appeal to the least common denominator. \n\n\nThere are plenty of American tv shows that do not use cheezy dramatic cues/devices (Breaking Bad, the Sopranos, The Walking Dead, etc.) These shows are wildly popular in America, but are almost always on premium cable channels. Much like cable television in America, the BBC receives some (most?) of its funding independent from commercials. Since these content providers do not have to play down to the idiots of the population and are able to retain more artistic integrity as their revenue stream is more stable.\n\ntl;dr - Networks in America have to make content as easy to understand as possible to attract as many viewers as possible, including morons. "
]
}
|
[] |
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[],
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||
1mwxhk
|
why are some sports teams historically more successful (ny yankees) than others (cleveland browns)?
|
The yankees have 27 world series wins, the next team only has 11. On the other hand the Cleveland Browns have never even appeared at a super bowl and haven't been to the playoffs since the mid 90s.
These teams were just used as examples.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mwxhk/eli5_why_are_some_sports_teams_historically_more/
|
{
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"It's a vicious circle. Teams that do well earn more money (because they have more fans, have higher attendance, sell more merchandise) and have higher prestige, so they can attract better talent."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4o65yy
|
how can ebay sellers send something like 1$ phone cases with free delivery to the other side of the planet, when if i send a small letter to my neighbor it will cost 3$? do they still make profit?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4o65yy/eli5_how_can_ebay_sellers_send_something_like_1/
|
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"Postal systems in other countries can pay a LOT less than what us westerners pay, ditto manufacturers. The companies that are selling those phone cases pay postage out of the price they receive for their merchandise, and just include it in their markup. So that three dollar phone case consists of 30 cents for postage (which is crazy cheap because it's largely container-shipped so all they have to do is deliver it to the local dock) plus $2.70 that they receive.\n\nThen our regional postal systems receive it once it's unloaded from its container, and have to deliver it as part of their service and receive a small amount of revenue from a central finance-handling organization for international mail for doing so. (Edit: error was corrected)",
"also, a lot of long distance shipping is discounted, because it's put on a ship that was going that way anyway...\n\n\nthink of it like getting a last minute airline seat. \n\nthe plane was going to leave anyway, so they can discount the seat, because at this point ANY money they make on the seat is more profit than they were going to get if it was empty.\n\n\nso it may cost them $100 to send a pallet sized shipment.. but as that pallet sized shipment contains 100,000 cases.. the actual cost of shipping per unit is basically nothing. \n\n\n\n",
"\nPosting in bulk would be the main one. Traders wont just be sending out your phone case, they will bending out hundreds of random bit of tat, and will get a bulk rate for that. \nThe Chinese government also subsidise international postage in order to keep products flying out of china.\n\nI have to admit, I was a little annoyed when It came to selling some old games and DVDs on Amazon or Ebay (One of those). I wanted to list them for the minimum (99p) and add on £1 for postage. Thats about 60 or 70p for the postage and 30p for the envelope - Seems fair to me. \nI was not allowed to post it - Apparently there is a policy in place that DVDs and Games should always have free shipping in order to be competitive. \nNow, If I sold it for 99p and spent all that on postage and an envelope, it ends up being a lot of effort to give something away for free - Or even cost me money, as I'll lose out on ebay or Amazons fees. \nSo Now I have a second hand game that I need to list for at least £1.20 just to break even. I may aswell just throw it out/charity shop it as that would be less effort for the same result. < /rant > ",
"All the previous answers are wrong. The actual reason in that China has incentives for small/medium businesses where they basically pay all shipping of goods. It's part of China's greater strategy to \"shorten\" and expand the logistic between China and the west.\n\nSources:\n\n* _URL_1_\n* _URL_0_",
"Can also be due to postage theft or \"creative accounting\"\n\nAn example is the biggest ebay seller in the world, babz media, destroyed by The royal mail and its lawsuits",
"I'm an Amazon and eBay seller from the U.K. And I can tell you it's largely just the bulk that you're sending. Also, the price of shipping is almost always in the main price for \"free shipping\"."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Infrastructure_Investment_Bank",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Belt,_One_Road"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
7ctnp7
|
why does basically no one speak latin anymore even though it is used in many popular countries?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ctnp7/eli5why_does_basically_no_one_speak_latin_anymore/
|
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"It is a very slow language with very complex grammar that isn't very intuitive. The sheer amount of declensions, verb tenses, gender words, and verb forms are staggering, and makes for a very cumbersome, formal language. \n\nThe trend for languages is to become less formal over time, which is probably one of the major reasons that people find English so easy to learn the basics of (although the mastery/fluency of English is a little more difficult than some other languages). ",
"Once the Roman Empire fell, there was nobody forcing people to speak proper Latin anymore. The common people, who weren't terribly educated, probably illiterate & didn't have anything like TVs and movies to keep them following the same things, so the language slowly diverged. Over a few hundred years, the language that people in different regions spoke became different enough to be considered separate languages rather than just dialects.",
"As the Roman Empire declined the Latin language fractured in its various regions and evolved into the Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian). Proper Latin stopped being used in common speech as they started to use these languages and became a language only used by Scholars and the Clergy. While it is still taught in many countries as a secondary or tertiary language, and a number of degrees in college still require it, it is not actually popular as that would require it being a vernacular language and it is not. ",
"All languages change and evolve over time. Latin was no exception: during its existence it went through many changes, evolving from Old Latin to Classical Latin to Vulgar Latin and then Mediaeval Latin, Renaissance Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin. Ecclesiastical Latin is still spoken, but only by the clergy of the Catholic Church and in certain situations (usually in the context of liturgy).\n\nBut also, as the Roman Empire expanded, the Latin language spread out and came into contact with other languages, resulting in the Romance languages of today: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and so on.\n\nIn some areas, the Latin language was much more isolated and so continue to survive in more or less \"pure\" form -- but since these were small pockets cut off from each other, they evolved in different ways. In the Alps, for example, Latin survives as a collection of related languages known as the Rhaeto-Romance languages: one of them, Romansch, is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, while another one spoken in South Tyrol, Trentino and Belluno still calls itself \"Ladin\". Further to the east, the Latin spoken by Roman soldiers posted to Dacia evolved into modern Romanian -- one reason we know this is that many words in Romanian are derived from Roman military slang.\n\nSo in fact, a lot of people do still speak Latin. It's just that in the last 2,000 years or so, it has changed so much it's barely recognizable.",
"By \"used in many popular countries\", which are you thinking of? In any case, with the fall of the Roman Empire, its territories splintered and had no reason to learn latin, as it no longer served any use as a lingua franca. Regions developed their own languages, be it proto French, German, slavic languages, etc. The standardization of a language requires either one nation/empire to enforce its language through control of other regions(seen to some extent with the Russian empire), or one nation being economically and diplomatically dominant so that learning that language, while nominally optional, is necessary to succeed(English being a good example).",
"Lots of people speak Latin. The world has perhaps a billion Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian speakers.\n\nPeople didn't stop speaking Latin, their Latin slowly evolved to the point it became a distinct language. Academics and clergy preserved forms of Classical Latin as a convenient, ostensibly unchanging neutral language they could share knowledge with. It too, would change over time, diverging from Vulgar Latin, that last form natively spoken that went on to become the Romance languages of today.\n\n "
]
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7rreex
|
What is the story behind Australia’s government shutdown in 1975 and subsequent elections?
|
I’ve heard this story passed around during the previous government shutdown that basically went “Australia had a shutdown in 1975. The Queen subsequently fired all of parliament after they did that.” However, today I saw some comments from Australians on reddit saying that that narrative is terrible, and the event was more equivalent to something like watergate. I looked into it more, and it seemed very interesting (some people even described the crisis as an actual coup). So, I was wondering if someone here could give a rundown on the events surrounding the shutdown to a complete outsider, and how it affected Australia in general?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7rreex/what_is_the_story_behind_australias_government/
|
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"Australia has two Houses of Parliament: the House of Representatives, with members elected by locality, which originates legislation. The other is the Senate, with each state having an equal quota of Senators, which 'reviews' legislation and has to approve it. This includes approving the Budget to ensure 'supply' (of money). Government is formed by winning a majority of Reps members. \n\nIn practice, the Senate is rarely controlled thanks to independents and it's slower rate of change (only half is elected at one time). Additionally, while if a Reps members leaves there is an election in that area, a departing Senator is replaced by the government of that state.\n\nOkay, that's the structure, which was important in what unfolded.\n\nIn 1972 Australia ended decades of conservative government and elected a Labor Government with a fairly radical policy agenda (universal health care, public libraries, withdrawing from Vietnam, ending conscription, building regional cities). The government pursued this agenda with enthusiasm, but it was very expensive, at a time when oil prices were slowing Western economies. Union dominance saw massive wage rises, and consequent inflation of serious proportions.\n\nBut there was an ideological rift: after years in government, the conservatives were greatly threatened by all this, and having finally secured government, the Labor Party was determined to push its agenda through. The government was also threatening to the US-Australia alliance, as Labor was opposed to militarism and Cold War paranoia (The Prime Minister went to China before Nixon), and ambivalent about nuclear weapons and the alliance generally, Vietnam being a fresh and ongoing issue and many Labor members sympathising with the communists.\n\nSo, a few years in and Labor lost two Senators. By convention before and since, the relevant state government would appoint the next in line from that party. But the Queensland government, which had the characteristics of a corrupt deep-south US regime and ultimately was brought down by scandals, was not amenable to convention and replaced the departing Labor men with conservatives (or 'Liberals' as they're called here from their free trade background). Labor lost its slim majority and, given the strength of political feeling prevailing, soon found itself in the position of being unable to finance its program by conventional methods. Indeed, it was dubious fundraising that was behind the loss of Senators.\n\nAdding to the throwing aside of convention to take Senate control, the Liberal Party blocked the passage of Labor's Budget, and thus blocked supply and 'shut down the government'. This has not happened before or since despite ruling parties seldom having Senate control. The Labor government did not call an election, which it was likely to lose, considering they had the right, by convention, to govern for their term and be judged at the end of it.\n\nThe impasse brought into effect a clause in the Australian Constitution whereby the Governor-General, as the representative of the Crown, can dismiss the government. The GG is historically a nice, revered figure that opens buildings, attends ceremonies and makes speeches.... much like the Queen herself. It is very unlikely that authorities in England had much to do with it, but the GG, John Kerr, a former friend of the Prime Minister, sacked the government and ordered elections, appointing the Liberal leader as caretaker Prime Minister. The Liberals easily won the subsequent election, due to inflation, strikes and the chaos and division of the Labor Party between its more mainstream and radical sections.\n\nFor a generation there was enduring hatred of the Liberal Party by dedicated Labor supporters and in particular of its leader, Malcolm Fraser, who was seen as an engineer of The Dismissal (as the affair is known). The abuse of precedent and take-power-at-all-costs mentality implied by the method of the government's removal epitomised, to Labor supporters, the born-to-rule attitude of the conservative side. A minority saw the Dismissal as the result of CIA-Liberal party collusion.\n\nSubsequently, Fraser proved unequal to the economic challenges of the time and Labor won easily in 1983, holding power for over ten years. But Labor had learnt its lesson, and the government was characterised by political/economic reforms that coincided with neoliberal ideas (ending trade barriers, selling off government assets, curbing union power). These changes underpinned Australia's subsequent prosperity and success.\n\nFraser, hated by many in the 1980s, is today seen as a humanitarian. He accepted many refugees from Vietnam and he is a vocal critic of the Liberal Party's proudly-held policies of refugee detention on remote Pacific Islands, and general exploitation of racist sympathies.",
"u/PantsTime has posted a reasonable background summary of what happened. The issue was complicated but what happened was nothing like a coup in that there were Australian Constitutional rules to be followed and they were followed. It is also nothing like Watergate, although there were both sexual and financial scandals dogging the government at the time. For a contentious discussion of what happened you might want to read this earlier thread from 3 years ago.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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|
[] |
[] |
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[],
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2kflf4/why_was_the_prime_minister_of_australia_dismissed/"
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|
ztf6c
|
If the ISS was left abandoned now, will it still circle the planet in say a thousand years?
|
How about even longer? And not just the ISS, how about other satellites?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ztf6c/if_the_iss_was_left_abandoned_now_will_it_still/
|
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"No, without monitoring and adjustment its orbit would decay and it would eventually re-enter the atmosphere. \n\n > Even though the space station orbits in what most people on Earth would consider to be the “vacuum of space,” there still are enough atmospheric molecules that contact the surfaces of its large solar array panels, truss structure backbone and pressurized modules to change its speed, or velocity, which is about 17,500 miles, or 28,000 kiliometers an hour. The station is so large (as big as a football field with the end zones included) that the cumulative effect of these tiny particles contacting its surfaces reduces its speed and causes a minute but continuous lowering of its altitude, or height above the Earth. \n\n > To fight this tendency, thrusters on the space station or visiting vehicles such as the space shuttle, Progress resupply vehicles or ATVs are fired periodically to “reboost” the station. These reboosts, however, come at the cost of fuel, or propellant, that must be launched from Earth at significant cost. \n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition26/iss_altitude.html"
]
] |
|
7kza9a
|
How does a car lose horsepower from the engine to the wheels?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7kza9a/how_does_a_car_lose_horsepower_from_the_engine_to/
|
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"Mechanical drag, and inefficiency with the driveline. Translating the rotational force produced by the engine and both gearing it down, and changing the direction of that force all consumes some of the engine's original power output.",
"Irreversibilties mainly. Conservation of energy, we know that it is nearly impossible to convert 100% of fuel and air to mechanical energy. For example, An engine not hooked up to the transmission or exhaust puts out 200hp, once you hook up the exhause and transmission, some energy is lost in forcing the exhaust gases down the pipe through the muffler and catalytic converter and a plethora of other blockages to lessen the auditory impact which takes away useful power. It also takes energy to spin the gears in the transmission and it meets a little bit of resistance in the transmission fluid, all the little mechanical irreversibilities within the transmission as well as how that energy is moved down the driveshaft and into the differential. More gear irreversibilities and transfer of energy to the wheels where you lose power in friction as well as converting the power to turn the wheels. All those little irreversibilities correlate to a net increase in entropy due to entropy generation if you look at the second law of thermodynamics. That's why you see two different horsepowers such as SHP (shaft horsepower) and BHP (brake horsepower) where the two correspond to the location at where the horsepowers are measured or calculated. In a perfect system, SHP=BHP but in the actual system, SHP > BHP but BHP can never be greater than SHP as that means that entropy decreases within the system which I would pay alot of money to see.",
"Metal bends, and so everything is slightly bent when moving, like a string. They typically account for this and attempt to dull it, via a harmonic oscillator or dampener. Unfortunately unless we learn to take advantage of this aspect of metal, then 100% effiency or more(replicating the expansion of the universe here; quantum tunneling) then we will never have that complete effiency which we all seek."
]
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|
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[] |
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[],
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||
3cps66
|
where does the earth (or any other planet) find the energy to continue spinning on itself forever?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cps66/eli5_where_does_the_earth_or_any_other_planet/
|
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"Energy isn't required to continue spinning, or continue any sort of motion in fact. One of the laws of physics is that objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by something else.\n\nSince nothing is really stopping the earth from spinning, it spins.",
"You know how a figure skater is spinning and they have their arm/leg stretch out and they're kinda going slow.... but then they bring their leg and arm in and they speed up?\n\nWhen the earth was being formed all those millions of years ago out of the debris and dust and gas that was floating around our sun, a clump of this junk (which had a rotation around the sun) started to come togehter, bits of junk mutually attracted to each other. As not all of this junk had the same velocity around the sun, or even in the same direction, you had rotation begin.\n\nAs this jink got closer and closer it of course heated up - dust became plasma, became super heated molten rock.... and as it compacted it spun faster and faster, giving the planets rotation as it is.\n\nEventually things reached a steady state - the matter of the Earth, all mutually attracted - could not compress any further and so the earths rotation stopped accelerating. And the laws of motion say an body at motion will stay at motion unless some other force acts on it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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||
4hbugs
|
if animals can distinguish us from our smells, how do they not get confused by the smells of our soaps/colognes/deodorants/etc?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hbugs/eli5_if_animals_can_distinguish_us_from_our/
|
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"You kind of answered your own question here. They can smell really well, so they're able to distinguish the difference between you and the Cologne/whatever.",
"To an extent, they do. They could identify you from further away by smell if you didn't wash. ",
"I have read that when cats smell food, they smell every single ingredient. So, where a human would smell warm chocolate chip cookie, the cat would smell the individual ingredients: butter, chocolate, walnuts, sugar, etc. This may also be true of dogs and other animals, idk. When an animal smells a human, it would be the same, sweat, food breath, ingredients in soap, etc. ",
"Suppose I showed you an apple. It's red, it's shiny, it has an easily recognizable shape, and I've even taken the time to write \"APPLE\" across it in permanent marker.\n\nNow, further suppose that after showing you the apple, I went into another room and dipped it in wood varnish. This coating wouldn't be enough to obscure any details, but the color would be a bit darker, the shine would be a bit more pronounced, and the word \"APPLE\" would be slightly blurred.\n\nWould you still be able to recognize it?\n\nScent works in much the same manner for animals. We can mask it or alter it in ways that are pretty profound from a human perspective... but for a creature whose nose is literally 10,000 times better *at minimum*, perfumes, soaps, and deodorants do very, very little to mute our natural aromas.\n\n**TL;DR: Animals can recognize your scent in much the same way that you can recognize a friend wearing subtle makeup.**",
"They smell like we see. We don't get confused by someone changing their clothes, or a road covered with snow overnight. Their sense of smell is so good, cologne is like someone putting on a scarve.",
"To avoid threats, a deer listens and smells for unfamiliar smells/sounds. They can distinguish the difference between orchid lotion and actual orchids. When a deer senses something out of the ordinary, it gets suspicious and leaves (unless it's a buck in rut, looking for a mate). Deer don't recognize our smell, interpret it as a human, and get suspicious. They simply smell something unfamiliar and take off. A cologne would also count as unnatural/unfamiliar. It would spook a deer for sure. ",
"I'd have to ask the animals. I can't tell you what they think or feel but I can tell you what they do. \n\nI wear cologne and there are certain scents I wear every day. My cats do not care about my cologne and if I spray something with it, they will ignore it. \n\nBut my dirty bath towel in the laundry basket, which has my body scent all over it will draw them in and they want to lay on it. \n\nThey also lay on my clothes if they are on the floor but not dish towels. And they like to sniff my shoes, usually with an open mouth like they are savoring it. ",
"The best explanation I heard from a handler of an excellerant detection K9 was that animals have \"higher definition\" noses than us. Where as we will recognize a collection of scents as one thing, animals such as dogs can pick out each of the individual scents. So whereas we might say \"I smell pizza\" a dog would individually smell the cheese, the sauce, the herbs etc. So they can smell you're scent, even with 100 gallons of your favorite Cologne/Perfume masking it to other humans.",
"That's like saying, \"I know you recognize people by sight, so how do you not get confused by different clothes and haircuts?\"\n\nPerfume seems overpowering to us, because we don't rely on our sense of smell, but to an animal with a keen nose, it's just another part of the smell.",
"A dog's dominant sense is smell.\n\nIn contrast, a humans dominant sense is sight.\n\nWhen I was at USARPAC Basic Sentry Dog School, they told us that when a dog thinks of a place, he thinks of the way that it smells. In contrast, when a human thinks of a place, they think of the way that it looks.\n\n > [Dogs' sense of smell](_URL_1_) overpowers our own by orders of magnitude—it's 10,000 to 100,000 times as acute, scientists say. \"Let's suppose they're just 10,000 times better,\" says James Walker, former director of the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University, who, with several colleagues, came up with that jaw-dropping estimate during a rigorously designed, oft-cited study. \"If you make the analogy to vision, what you and I can see at a third of a mile, a dog could see more than 3,000 miles away and still see as well.\"\n\nUno\n\n[Sentry Dog Handler](_URL_0_) \n\nUS Army, 69-71\n\n",
"Also, if I stick my nose in a butt hole and take a big whiff I would gag. They seem to be just fine despite having 1,000 times better scent receptors. Someone eli5 what that's about.",
"Some animals, like dogs, smell like we see colours. When we smell something, all the smells blend into one. When they smell something, they recognize all individual smells separately, just like the way your eyes work when you look at a bowl of fruit and see lemons, limes, apples, and oranges.",
"Sometimes if I put on a hat in a different room my dog will bark at me when she sees me because she no longer recognizes me",
"My dog does, actually, she's dog aggressive and will go from happily playing with the puppy one day to growling at him every morning for a few days if he pees on himself and needs a bath.\n\nShe also is totally messed up in the head and we're pretty sure her eyesight is messed up, so grain of salt.\n\nIn general terms, though, you still smell the same in the inside (when you talk and breathe) and you still sound the same and walk the same.",
"animals can sense the little details in smell as well as we can immediately recognize visual/audio things (especially when it comes to recognizing faces and voices). think of how easily you identify your best friend's face. what if they smeared a crazy amount of make up or paint all over? you'd still know without a second glance *whose* face it is. And just also see that it looks abnormal. a dog knows a scent as well as you know a face; and the recognition is in the minute detail. perfumes are really blunt and uncomplicated smells that may distract from the subtle details from the scent, but can't make them disappear. just like paint on facial features. ",
"I've been told that animals (like dogs specifically in this scenario) smell individual components to an overall scent. \n\nAnalogy \nLike we smell cookies baking. A dog smells the sugar, eggs, chocolate chips, butter, etc. \n\nSo even with a cologne on, especially if worn enough by a singular human, they may recognize the specific human scent along with the cologne they wear. \n\nFun scent side fact! The reason why we find some people's body odor repulsive or appealing is a biological response to keep us from mating with a relative. The closer related you are to someone, you will more likely find their odor unappealing. Someone you are not related to, you have a higher chance of finding the odor appealing. And other things like pheromones come into play, but just body odor scent is what I'm talking about. ",
"Your room mate has pooped in the bathroom. \n \nYou spray fabreeze. \n \nIs the poop smell gone? I think not.",
"I would think that animals would also get used to the smell of our soaps? I visited a friend recently who was petsitting a blind and deaf dog, and that dog gave 0 shits about me when I first came to the house. I went to the bathroom and used some of the lotion that the dog's normal owner uses after washing my hands, and when I came back in the living room the dog came straight to me and put its head on my lap. I assumed it was because it could smell the lotion of its owner.",
"There's a smell that is unique to you , which you can't even begin to know. A dogs sense of smell is so acute it can pick it through sweat, cologne, soap etc. As someone else pointed out also, a dog doesn't smell the overall pleasant smell of a cookie the way we do - it can smell the butter, sugar, batter etc individually. So basically if you happened to walk through a vat of feces, your dog would still be able to smell you. ",
"Not an answer but on the topic, big cats are attracted to Calvin Klein Obsession for men and wildlife photographers use this scent to lure them. ",
"/u/RamsesThePigeon hit the nail right on the head. Excellent analogy. The smell of your cologne, etc. is just one part of a whole, it's a scent but your own body scent is still there as well. One of the researchers in the behavioural neuroscience department at my university does a lot of work with trauma and fear conditioning, and so she actually wears a different perfume on days that she does this kind of stuff than on regular days so that the rats she works with don't learn to always associate her with something negative. They will recognize a familiar person by HER smell, and the context of the research that day by the smell of her perfume. Their behaviour will actually change in response to the perfume. I think it's pretty neat.",
"Can you identify people in a different shirt by sight? I'd think of it like that.",
"The same way you dont get confused by the taste of carrots in stew - you recognize them even though they're now surrounded by a dozen or more other flavors. ",
"I heard it explained this way: if I put a bowl of chili in front of you, what you smell is chili. If I put it in front of a dog he smells beef, paprika, tomatoes, garlic, etc. That's because his nose is exponentially more sensitive *and* his brain has evolved to be able to discern scents. So while your friend Kevin smells like AXE body spray to you, to a dog he smells like Kevin and AXE. ",
"Animals don't just recognize us by smell. Your dog will see you from down the street and come running up to you. Not one has cited a source for their explanations either.",
"Would you not recognize someone if they wore different clothes?",
"The same reason you don't get confused when Superman puts on his glasses to disguise himself as Clark Kent.",
"Well, perfumes/soaps/colognes usually combine with your own skin scent to create a new scent... so they will recognize you from the unique combination of \"scent+perfume\" instead of just plain natural scent :)",
"ELI5: If I can distinguish people by how they look, how do I not get confused when they change their clothes?",
"We have like 5 million smell sensors. Dogs have 300 million. They also have a gland in their throat to help smell. Their capacity to smell magnitudes more than humans. So it's like looking at different two paintings with several of the same colors. You can tell them apart, right? Even though they share the same colors.",
"Dogs can smell cocaine in someone's colon so they can definitely smell your natural odour....\n\n",
"If humans could smell as well as other animals, that probably wouldn't be too good for our relationships. We could totally smell when another human being lays on top of our mate and we wouldn't be too happy with that. ",
"Wearing glasses or messing with their hair doesn't keep people from recognizing each other. Well, I mean unless you're Clark Kent. It's probably much the same with animals and scent.",
"I don't have serious science to explain this in detail, but I can smell things really well. I can therefore extrapolate and infer how other animals may work.\n\nI can tell you many features about the types of shampoo/conditioner and soaps that people use. Heavy fragrances drive my nose nuts, but I can tell you if your soap has tallowate, glycerin, et cetera. If I am close enough and your soap/fragrance odors are not overwhelming, I can still smell you, but the smell of you is not super unique. I think I can put people smells into maybe 6-8 categories. A thought has occurred to me to actually do a study where I compare the smell of people's nose breath with what comes out the backend. It seems like I might be able to smell some things about people's digestive health from their nose breath... I digress.\n\nIf I can smell what you smell like over the smells of your soaps/fragrances, I would imagine that animals can do the same. The first thing that I usually notice about someone, especially if they are upwind, wearing a fragrance, or have an especially soapy odor, is their laundry detergent mixed with their perfume/cologne (although sometimes the 38 ounces of perfume/cologne is way first) and then followed by their soap smells. It's a terrible bouquet that makes me hold my breath quite often. At many meters I can usually not smell their body unless they haven't bathed within the past 24 hours or so, but, if they haven't bathed recently or have been sweating recently, I can smell them from quite a distance and can tell you their general ethnicity and diet.\n\nHow's that for weird?\n\nTL;DR Your smell is usually not super unique to my hyper sensitive nose. If I can still smell you over the white noise that is soaps, detergents, fragrances, et cetera, then animals with better senses can sure tell better.",
"My guess (and it is a guess) is that it'd be the smell equivalent of putting on a hat. I can still make out your face. You've just got a hat on as well. Animals with such a strong sense of smell would be able to \"see\" both the hat and the face / your smell and the soap smell\nEdit: clarification",
"Ever gone into a washroom after someone had a massive poop but also sprayed lemon air spray?\nIt may have a lemon scent but there is for certain poop lingering heavily about your nostrils. We are the poop and the lemon spray is our body wash/cologne ",
"Imagine a bowl of soup. We're only able to smell the combination of all ingredients but dogs are able to smell all individually ",
"The best ELI5 explanation I know is from a show I watched on tracking dogs.\n\nSometimes an escaped prisoner would find a farm and roll around in cow manure to hide his scent. That would work if they were being tracked by a human. To a human, a person covered in cow manure smells like cow manure. To a dog, he smells, not just like a person, but like THAT PARTICULAR PERSON covered in cow manure.\n\nSo, your dog does smell whatever soap, deodorant, cologne, or whatever you use, but he still smells you under it all, just like you still recognize your friend if he's wearing different clothes.",
"Have you ever walked into a bathroom where someone has used air freshener after a major dump? It smells like a dog shit in a flower garden. You can still smell the shit.",
"Actually, I somehow made it to the pet squirrel forums side of the internet last year and there was much discussion of how bad pet squirrels are at dealing with scent changes. Like, claw your eyes out, bouncung off the walls bad if you use a different body wash or shampoo. Can't verify any of that, but I trust those pet squirrel loving nut jobs. ",
"Someone once explained how a drug sniffing dog can smell Marianas inside a PVC pipe, inside a gas tank full of gas. \n\n\nWhen we smell beef stew we smell beef stew, but when we see it we see beef, carrots, potatoes and gravy. When a dog sees beef stew he sees beef stew but he smells beef, carrots, potatoes and gravy.\n\n\nI've also heard that if you take all our scent receptors and laid them out, they would take up an area the size of a postage stamp, but a dogs is the size of a sheet of paper."
]
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"http://cybersd.com/sd/",
"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-sense-of-smell.html"
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||
55iwja
|
Is it possible to find an effective infinity for all intents and purposes?
|
I was in the shower the other day and wondered if you could find a number (an astronomically big number) that for all intents and purposes might as well be infinity in our universe. I understand infinity as a concept but if we assume the expanding universe will eventually stop expanding and shrink (due to gravity overcoming), then aren't there a maximum number of "things" that could possibly happen in our universe from time 0 to the end of the universe? Wouldn't the maximum number of things possible be an actual defined infinity as as it would be impossible to do anything more than that? Therefore calculating past it would be purely abstract or theoretical since nothing could happen more than that effective infinity amount of times? I hope I'm making sense. This is a [WARNING] personal theory that I have worked on a bit and wrote it all down in a pseudo-proof/explanation you can find [here](_URL_0_). I'd like to see if what I'm saying is correct and/or if it has been explained before. I'm not a mathematician or physicist or anything, just a college freshman with an interest in these kinds of questions. Thanks.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/55iwja/is_it_possible_to_find_an_effective_infinity_for/
|
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"Assuming humanity ends at some point, then we can look at the collection of all numbers practically used and this will be a finite set, so there is some number bigger than all of these. Paradoxically, though, if we were to *use* this number as an \"essential infinity\", then it would have a practical use and therefore be in this set of all practically used numbers, which would mean it is bigger than itself. \n\nSo, yes, such a number exists but we can't use it. You might be able to fix this by just choosing your \"essential infinity\" to be the largest number in this set, but there's no way for us to know what it is before humanity ends.\n\nPractical numbers, however, can get much larger than I assume you expect, and definitely larger than any of us can comprehend. In fact, [Graham's Number](_URL_0_) is a number that has practically been used that is so big that it is impossible to write down or even comprehend. Your \"essential infinity\" would have to be larger than this, which means that an \"essential infinity\" is highly useless. There's also no problem using infinity practically in math,it is a fairly concrete, robust thing and it is used practically in math quite often. I wrote a [short thing](_URL_1_) a little bit ago about a couple different notions of infinity and how they are used in Calculus (there are other, unrelated notions of infinity not mentioned).",
"Weighing in as a physicist:\n\n > if we assume the expanding universe will eventually stop expanding and shrink (due to gravity overcoming)\n\nThis is most likely a bad assumption. While we aren't sure, at present, what the ultimate fate of the universe will be, our best guess is that the geometry of the universe is flat and that it will continue expanding forever.\n\nIt is possible that we'd experience a \"big crunch\", but most people currently agree that it is unlikely.\n\nRegardless, there is almost universal agreement, no pun intended, that our universe will come to some sort of end, and that humanity will have been dead and gone for so long before that happens that we won't even be remembered.",
"As far as I know, the space-time \"continuum\" is considered as a \"continuum\". That means that positions of particles can vary in a continuous way.\n\nSo, to take a simple example, the set of possible distances between two particles in the universe is infinite (and uncountably infinite).\n\nSo I would guess that there no maximum number of \"things\" that could possibly happen in our universe. ",
"No, it is not possible to find any finite number that's effectively infinity. The defining feature of infinity is that any finite number, no matter how large, is effectively 0 when compared to it.\n\nNo matter how large a number you choose, it won't even come close to ininfity. It will always be close to 0 than infinity. That is what makes infinity infinity.\n\nAny number you divide by this super large number will be really REALLY small, but it won't even come close to touching 0. The result will always be some finite measurable value. If we're talking about probabilities it would be incredibly rare, but in an infinite universe the chances that it would happen somewhere would be 1, because an infinite universe still dwarfs this ultra large finite number in size."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://www.docdroid.net/LkNbytW/an-effective-infinity.pdf.html"
] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/51mlrx/hi_ask_science_is_divining_by_zero_the_same_as/d7d4f5n?st=itt5p3u1&sh=d33c1c8c"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
axb964
|
Is it true that concussions and even subconcussive impacts kill neurons?
|
I’ve gotten a lot of mixed info on this. I heard you don’t even need to get a concussion for an impact to damage your brain and kill neurons, is this true?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/axb964/is_it_true_that_concussions_and_even/
|
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"ei3as8u"
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"You've probably gotten a lot of mixed info because there is a *lot* of mixed info out there. [This paper](_URL_0_) would be a good read if you want a detailed and relatively recent description of what we currently understand about concussions.\n\nBut, in brief, after a (mild) concussion, the changes in brain function are less a result of structural damage to the brain, and more a result of widespread short-term neuron malfunctioning. [The initial impact throws off the balance of potassium in the brain](_URL_0_), which causes a bunch of excititory neurotransmitters to get released, which causes a whole cascade of problems that looks a lot like when the brain runs out of oxygen. During this \"energy crisis\", blood supply is actually *reduced* to the brain, and neurons have to slow down and take their time to pull themselves back together. Nearly all neurons recover, but [a few stragglers might actually die](_URL_2_). But the neurons that die weren't necessarily killed during the impact, just pushed too hard during the neurochemical aftermath.\n\nOther neurons may end up permanently injured (this time as a direct result of the impact) [like when an axon gets overstreched](_URL_0_) (or snaps completely). The neurons don't *die*, but the damaged axons don't work right, and may never actually heal.\n\nHowever, during the \"energy crisis\", [the recovering neurons are especially vulnerable](_URL_1_). A second trauma (like, say, a second concussion) before neurons are completely healed could kill a whole lot of neurons that would have otherwise made a full recovery."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4479139/",
"http://rethinkconcussions.upmc.com/2014/10/energy-crisis-during-concussion/",
"https://insights.ovid.com/crossref?an=00001504-200505000-00013"
]
] |
|
c7fofv
|
why do overweight people have higher basal metabolic rates than lean people?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c7fofv/eli5_why_do_overweight_people_have_higher_basal/
|
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" > Most BMR calculators, even on reliable websites, make no distinction between muscle and fat\n\nYes, this is why the calculation is an estimate and not 100% accurate. A bodybuilder is in a very different place metabolically than an obese person, and a simple calculation isn't going to reveal all. It can however be useful in determining when the average person is getting a bit too tubby."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
pnn7g
|
Why is a fast reentry from space back to earth a better option than a slow decent?
|
I've always wondered why the SOP for reentry into Earth is a fast decent when it requires a incredibly important heat shield on the shuttle, and if said heat shield is damages then the astronauts lives are is danger. I'm guessing that the reason the heat shield is needed is because of the friction with the atmosphere at high speeds during reentry is causing it, so I wonder why a slow decent isn't better than a fast one.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pnn7g/why_is_a_fast_reentry_from_space_back_to_earth_a/
|
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"Well, two issues, spacecraft in orbit are already moving at orbital speed, which is 7.8 KPS for LEO, and varies depending on the orbit. So, that speed has to be scrubbed in order for the spacecraft to intersect the surface at nearly zero velocity, otherwise, its a crash. The most efficient way to scrub that speed is by friction with the air. A powered descent (Like the Apollo LEM) is possible, but that would require lifting massive amounts of fuel into orbit to make it happen, which means much larger rockets for launch, etc...",
"The re-entry is fast because the shuttle isn't hovering above the earth, it's in low earth orbit going 28000 km/h.",
"They would need lots of fuel, which they don't have, to slow down.\n\nSlow decent is a better option, it just isn't feasible right now.",
"Simple answer: the rocket equation!\n\nThe amount of rocket fuel you need to carry scales exponentially with the total amount of velocity change you need to apply. In contrast, using aerodynamic braking has a fixed mass cost in the form of a heatshield.\n\nConsider a Falcon 9 rocket with a dragon capsule carrying a crew. It takes that whole rocket to get the capsule into orbit. Now let's say you wanted to do a completely propulsive \"slow descent\" from orbit, without incurring such high relative speeds with the atmosphere as a normal reentry. Logically this will require applying nearly the same amount of velocity change as it does to get to orbit. This means you need to have a fully fueled Falcon 9 *in orbit* to re-enter in this way. Now consider the size of rocket you'd need to put a fully fueled Falcon 9 in orbit! It would need to be three times larger than the Saturn V moon rocket.\n\nIn comparison to just taking up a few hundred kilos of thermal shielding, it's not a practical method of re-entry.",
"there are some inaccuraties concerning what happends if you descend with the wrong angle towards the earth. if the angle is too steep, they will gain too much speed and incinerate. if the angle is too shallow however, they will not \"ricochet off\", but they wont be close enough for the earths gravity to pull them down, and they will continue out in the universe. \n\nheres a drawing of the different trajectories _URL_0_",
"Aerobraking is cheaper and lighter. The costs and waste involved with a slow descent would be prohibitive for a space agency. ",
"Honest question here so I'm sorry if it's ultimately retarded: Why can't they implement a huge-ass parachute type contraption? My only guess would be lack of controllability. Shit, did I just answer my own question?"
]
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[],
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|
44ni6i
|
Zika virus has been known about for 70 years, why is it only now a big issues? Has it always caused microcephaly, or is this new?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/44ni6i/zika_virus_has_been_known_about_for_70_years_why/
|
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"We don't know.\n\nCould be a recent mutation in ZV.\n\nCould be that there's always been a link to microcephaly, but that ZV didn't infect enough people for anyone to notice — there is some debate as to whether the sheer number of people infected with ZV is increased in the last few years.\n\n(Which could be due to ZV mutating to spread more easily, or it could be due to changes in human-to-human contact patterns (for example, World Cup), or it could be due to changes in human-to-mosquito contact patters (for example, due to global climate change), to name just a few possibilities.)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
28jnjg
|
why is it so hard to get into medical school when there is so obviously a scarcity of doctors?
|
So here's what I'm thinking. Doctors are paid very highly, which by simple economics means there is a low supply of them. In addition many doctors have to be on call 24 hours a day, and residents have to work incredibly long shifts. However, at the same time medical schools are very hard to get into, meaning there is a very high supply of people who want to be doctors. Why has an equilibrium not yet been found that would result in more, but lower paid, doctors? What is stopping more medical schools opening (or any other solution to this problem) that would help find a more natural equilibrium? Thanks.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28jnjg/eli5why_is_it_so_hard_to_get_into_medical_school/
|
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"doctors get paid a lot because medical school is retarded expensive and so is malpractice insurance. Not everyone is qualified to be a doctor and they are in charge of making life and death decisions regularly; the person you put through med school as to be the type of people that are entrusted with making these decisions",
"Being a doctor is hard. They don't want a bunch of sub par doctors",
"Dumbing down the course requirement does not result in quality graduates. It makes it far worse when we can't trust doctors due to the number of less-able ones. It happened here in Australia with teachers a few years ago - you could fail your exams and still get in. Ruined the name and reputation of the profession.",
"Medical school is highly selective and difficult to get through. The required residency is also incredibly tough. Getting certified to practice medicine after its all over is hard.\n\nThe problem isn't that we can't train enough doctors, it's that few people that want to be doctors are actually capable of getting through programs.\n\nWe've also greatly increased the number of not-quite-doctors (e.g. nurse practitioners) that we train and changed regulations to let the practice more freely. It doesnt take 12 years of school to recognize a sinus infection or stitch up a kitchen accident, so we've been able to staff lots of front line clinics with people who can handle common problems.\n\nNurses, OTOH, we have a problem getting enough of. College nursing programs frequently have waiting lists full of qualified applicants and hospitals have trouble finding enough to stay fully staffed.",
"Here in Canada, the College of Physicians and Surgeons accredits medical schools. Without their blessing, graduates can not call themselves doctors. The College is run exclusively by doctors. It is in the College's financial interest to limit the *supply* of new doctors so that doctors can maintain their \"special\" status that allows them to demand $500,000/year. They limit the supply of doctors by limiting the number of graduates (and by adding ridiculous barriers for foreign trained doctors). They limit the number of graduates by placing academic standards to enter medicine (which *many* qualify for) then mandating that qualified candidates pass a so called *interview*. The interview is key. It filters out 9/10 perfectly smart, qualified candidates based on who will not rock the boat and disturb the gravy train. They explain all of this by telling us it is in *our* interest to limit the number of doctors to maintain quality standards.\nTL;DR: Doctors control the number of spots in medical schools. They severely restrict the number of seats purely out of vested self interest that they sell as \"public safety\".",
"Health Care in the United States does not follow some of the basic rules of capitalism.\n\nIn our current system, it's virtually impossible to shop around for a procedure. Most of the time the cost is paid via insurances and is variable behind the scenes, and people can't decline life-saving treatment. \n\nWe also implicitly refuse to accept risk from doctors. It's natural that better doctors make fewer mistakes, but we have no mechanism for accepting higher risk for lower cost. We just sue whenever anything goes wrong ever.\n\nThe basic premise of shopping around, declining to purchase, and weighing cost vs. quality - the things that make basic economics work for so many other things - are totally out the window.\n\nGiven a system where doctors must be infallible, there's an extraordinarily high bar for licensing / legal compliance / etc. Opening more schools to produce more candidates doesn't do anything if they don't pass the licensing / residency / etc. Those that either don't pass the rigors of med school or discover the lifestyle/demands of being or becoming a doctor are to high tend to pivot to be senior nursing staff or physicians assistants.\n\nThe model of taking sharp med students and putting them through the rigors of knowing everything there is to know about biology, then forcing them to be sleep deprived broke 20-30 somethings, then placing them on a pedestal as a god with a bunch of support staff below them after does feel *really* archaic to me in an era of increased specialization and better diagnostic tools... but I digress. I'm just a software nerd, what do I know.\n\nEurope tends to have a hybrid system of socialized emergency care, and optional privatized care for more preventative / elective procedures. That tends to address both ends of the problem a little bit better, and they do have more doctors per capita than the US. Being a bit less of a lawsuit-crazed culture helps too.\n",
"The AMA deliberately restricts the number of accredited medical schools in the US. This, in turn, creates an artificial shortage of doctors that ensures that the doctors that do exist can demand top wages for their services."
]
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[] |
[] |
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[],
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|
2w3mae
|
losing color perception when going from dark to light areas
|
I get that my pupils need to adjust for brightness' sake. What confuses me is that everything goes greyscale for awhile after going from a bright to dark area. Why can't I see colors?
I put ELI5 there this time.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w3mae/eli5_losing_color_perception_when_going_from_dark/
|
{
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"At a basic level, your eyes use two different types of cells to see: cones and rods.\n\nYou use cones primarily when you are in well lit areas. You use rods primarily when you are in poorly lit areas. Think of rods as what you use for 'night-vision'. However, only cones really see color (they're 3 types of cones, a red, blue and green. Your brain combines the input from each cone and bam you got color). Cones also less their response to light when exposed for long amounts of time. This basically means that it sends out less signal for the same amount of light.\n\nNow, when you step in a bright room to a dark one, the cones need time to adjust because they've adapted to receive more light input and they aren't working very well at lower light inputs. You're now using only rods, and they don't gather color information. That's why you see grayscale initially, and that's why you gradually get more color input as more cones adjust to the change in light input."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
en6d9u
|
Did the Romans practice Syncretism with Judaism and Christianity?
|
The Romans were famous for adapting various gods and folklore into their own pantheon by drawing parallels between them, i.e. sea gods all became Neptune, war gods became Mars, etc.
Did they attempt this same thing with Judaism and later Christianity? If so, why did it fail when it seemed to have worked almost everywhere else?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/en6d9u/did_the_romans_practice_syncretism_with_judaism/
|
{
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"text": [
"There's quite a lot of Jewish and Christian influence in the so-called 'Greek Magical Papyri' - a modern collection of pagan magical spellbooks from Roman Egypt (mostly later than the 3rd century AD). These texts take inspiration from lots of different religious cultures - mostly Greek and Egyptian, but also Mesopotamian and, as I said, Jewish. The angels, prophets, holy men, alongside the Jewish God appear as sources of magical power or knowledge. Take this spell for example:\n\nPGM LXXXIII. 1-20 \r\n*For [fever with shivering fits]: ' \"GOBA . . . s . . . MO . . . NOUSBA . . . EIEGE \r\n. . . OSARK. . . AUSE fever with shivering fits, I conjure you, MICHAEL, archangel \r\nof the earth; [whether] it is daily or nightly or quartan fever; I conjure you, the \r\nAlmighty SABAOTH, that it no longer touch the soul of the one who carries [this], \r\nnor [touch] his whole body; also the dead, deliver, . . . the disrress IDOT . . . \r\nYGRSBONOE. . . . \" \r\n\"He who dwells in the help of the Most High shall abide in the shadow of the \r\nGod of heaven. He will say of God, 'thou art my refuge and my help; I will put my \r\ntrust in him.\"\r\n\"Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy will; our daily bread.\"' \r\n\"Holy, holy is the Lord SABAOTH, heaven is full of justice, holy is the one of \r\nglory.\"' \r\n''ANIAADA . . . IA, MIG~L' of lords, Abraham Isaac Jacob ELOEI EL~E Solo- \r\nmon(?) I ~ABAOTH OBL. . . .\n\nThere are obvious names invoked here that would be familiar to any Jew or Christian, and also some quotes from scripture. However, their random nature and the fact that the lines from the Lord's Prayer are garbled suggests this wasn't written by someone particularly familiar with the Bible. There's no connection to any specific part of Jewish or Christian theology - God, his angels and prophets are merely being invoked as sources of supernatural power that can be harnessed to produce the desired effect, which in this case is the curing of a fever.\n\nElsewhere, Christ's reputation as an exorcist is combined with more pagan elements in a spell for driving out demons:\n\nPGM N. 1227-64 \r\n*Excellent rite for driving out daimons: Formula to be spoken over his head: \r\nPlace olive branches before him, I and stand behind him and say: \r\n\"Hail, God of Abraham; hail, God of Isaac; hail, God of Jacob; Jesus Chrestos,\" \r\n the Holy Spirit, the Son of the Father, who is above the Seven, who is within \r\nthe Seven. Bring Iao Sabaoth; may your power issue forth from him, NN, - until \r\nyou drive away this unclean daimon Satan, who is in him. I conjure you, daimon, whoever you are, by this god, SABARBARBATHI~TH SABARBARBATHIOUTH SABAR- \r\nBARBATHI~NETH SABARBARBAPHAI. Come out, daimon, whoever you are, and stay away from him, NN, now, now; immediately, immediately. Come out, daimon, \r\nsince I bind you with unbreakable adamantine fetters, and I deliver you into the \r\nblack chaos in perdition.\" \r\nPreparation: take 7 olive branches; for six of them tie together the two ends of \r\neach one, but for the remaining one use it like a whip as you utter thc conjuration. \r\nKeep it secret; it is proven. \r\nAfter driving out the daimon, hang around him, NN, a phylactery, which the \r\npatient puts on after the expulsion of the daimon-a phylactery with these things [written] on 1 a tin metal leaf: \"B~R PHOR PHORBA PHOR PHORBA BES CIIARIN \r\nBAUBO TE PHOR BdRPHORBA PHORBABOR BAPHORBA PHABRAIE PHdRBA PHARBA PH~RPHOR PHORBA / BOPHOR PHORBA PHORPHOR PHORBA BOBOR- \r\nBORBA PAMPHORBA PHORPHOR PH~RBA, protect him.",
"A good example of a syncretism including a mixture of Christianity and Judaism is Manichaeism, which also includes many elements of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. The religion was founded by the prophet Mani, who declared himself one in a line of prophets including Zarathushtra, Gautama Buddha and Jesus. One of the most famous practitioners was Augustine of Hippo prior to his conversion to Christianity.\n\nThis is the most relevant writeup of mine: [Mani & Manichaeism](_URL_0_)\n\nUnfortunately I'm not that read up on how exactly Manichaeism manifested in the Roman Empire, but it certainly existed and was a syncretism including Judaism and Christianity."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9ouy3f/manichaeism_is_the_only_major_world_religion_i/e7xqd95?utm_source=reddit-android"
]
] |
|
267fn3
|
What is the evolutionary advantage of stress?
|
Stress is detrimental to health, it leads to a variety of problems which affect longevity and quality of life. This however seems counter productive because an organism is stressed and is flooded with stress hormones due to difficult environmental situations, its survivability is tested, therefore stress should strengthen the organism in those difficult times instead of ravaging it. Why is this not the case?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/267fn3/what_is_the_evolutionary_advantage_of_stress/
|
{
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"chodqyh",
"chorrb1"
],
"score": [
28,
3
],
"text": [
"I'm a stress physiologist. We (stress researchers) take it as a given that *in the short term, the stress response is helpful*. (The stress response = sharp elevation of stress hormones - epinephrine, cortisol, and a few others - during a stressful event.) Those hormones redirect energy toward dealing with a short-term emergency - raising glucose, raising BP and heart rate, often switching behaviors toward \"escape\" type behaviors (and away from reproductive behaviors, e.g. a bird will abandon its nest and fly away), refocusing attention, and increasing immune response (in the short term). Simultaneously almost all investment in \"long term\" projects is halted - growth, tissue repair, digestion, and reproduction are all strongly inhibited, presumably so as to redirect all available energy toward running away or fighting.\n\nThis definitely helps you deal with that 1 stressful event. It's like an \"emergency mode.\"\n\nThe problem develops if there are repeated or chronic stressful events so that the animal sort of gets \"stuck\" in that emergency mode. Keep glucose elevated forever and you can slip into pre-diabetes; keep attention keyed up forever and there seem to be significant problems with long-term memory; the immune system actually is inhibited if cortisol is elevated chronically; the long-term elevations in BP and heart rate are associated with cardiac problems; and the inhibition of \"nonessential\" systems can lead to digestive problems, loss of libido, infertility, slow wound healing, etc. Ultimately there's increased mortality and decreased reproduction with long-term chronic stress.\n\nSo the stress response is great for dealing with short-term, one-off stressful events, but becomes maladaptive in chronic long-term stress.\n\nI usually recommend Sapoksky's book \"Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers\" for an introduction to all this. It's a great entertaining book written for lay readers, but is also well enough researched that I actually use it as a textbook in my endocrinology courses. ",
"What the Other commenter said has value. A second perspective comes from studying stress in individual cells, and that is that moderate low levels of stress actually help organisms by up regulating responses and genes that improve overall health because of their protective effects. Antioxidant proteins are an example. However prolonged or chronic stress kills. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
21koqf
|
What do I have here?
|
_URL_2_
_URL_3_
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
Ford Emblem
_URL_4_
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21koqf/what_do_i_have_here/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cge5o1x"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Not a car battery, it's an ignition coil from a Ford model T (missing the wooden cover panel). Every model T has four of these - one per spark plug. They take the low-voltage electricity generated by the flywheel magneto and convert it into the high voltage needed to jump the gap in the spark plug and achieve combustion. Inside that tar casing, there are two wire coils: a primary coil, which carries the low-voltage current, and a secondary coil which generates the high-voltage current. Unlike a modern ignition coil, which generates one spark per combustion stroke, the model T's vibrator coils create a series of sparks - the springy brass plate vibrates, breaking and making contact multiple times in a row. This helps ensure that ignition takes place. \n\nThe four coils on a model T sit in the [coil box](_URL_0_), located on the dashboard (for the 1926-27 model years, it was moved to a mount above the engine). In early cars, the coil box was made of wood; later, it was switched to steel. \n\nThe coils were originally made by both Ford and the K-W Ignition Company, but in 1923 Ford assumed production of all coils. That year they began stamping the Ford logo on the top of the vibrator assembly, which means yours was made after that date. "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://i.imgur.com/nsSQf0E.jpg",
"http://i.imgur.com/iPoykop.jpg",
"http://i.imgur.com/Z0eJpBn.jpg",
"http://i.imgur.com/JLXVXax.jpg",
"http://i.imgur.com/74r31Ik.jpg"
] |
[
[
"http://www.modelt-coils.com/Coil%20Box.jpg"
]
] |
|
1x6nkl
|
What happens to liquids in a horizontal centrifuge?
|
(Sorry if my terminology is wrong -- definitely not a scientist.)
If you have a liquid made up of two substances that is homogenized (I guess like an emulsification?) and put it in a horizontal centrifuge, will the liquids separate like they would in a vertical centrifuge or does something different occur because of the change in axis?
EDIT: To give this more specificity, I'm talking about goat milk. Cream separators for goat milk (which is naturally homogenized) spin on a vertical axis. The lighter cream settles at the bottom and is drained out. They are very cost ineffective for a small farm, so I'm considering some methods of a DIY-nature to separate cream. I've sketched up a jig to secure a container in my lathe (which spins on a horizontal axis) and am curious if the liquid would behave the same as it does in a centrifuge on a vertical axis.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1x6nkl/what_happens_to_liquids_in_a_horizontal_centrifuge/
|
{
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"cf8pp4i",
"cf8qt7j",
"cf8s0a9"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"I don't really know how milk centrifuges work or what your construction looks like, so I have no idea if it will work. I could however imagine a whole lot of things that could go wrong when it comes to a self built device that combines a fast spinning lathe, a somewhat large container and liquid. No offense, but do you know what you're doing?",
"The problem with the horizontal axis centrifuge is going to be that the weight distribution of the liquid will not be uniform around the axis due to the effect of gravity. This non-uniform weight distribution will put significant strain on the axle, and will increase with faster rotation rate. \n",
"Your setup sounds more like a concrete mixer than a centrifuge. The liquid will just get mixed together because the outward force is not being applied in a single direction, it's being applied in every direction. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
2nuuk5
|
Some of the diseases humans catch from animals have very serious symptoms. Do these symptoms present themselves in the animals too?
|
For example, Hepatitis E, which can come from pigs, causes jaundice, nausea and vomiting. Does it cause similar symptoms in infected pigs?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2nuuk5/some_of_the_diseases_humans_catch_from_animals/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmheryy"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Pathogens are actually not very interested in giving their host a hard time. Why? The more dangerous it acts, the stronger and quicker the host's (or its immune system's) reaction is, or worst when killing the host the pathogen can't benefit in the long term. Evolutionarily speaking it is a more favorable trait for a pathogen to act decent, maybe even nearly invisible, in order to not startle or kill the host. In fact, killing an entire species may limit the survivability of the pathogen itself. Maybe the \"pathogen\" could even develop beneficial traits for the host in order to increase its own chances, which would lead to symbiotic relationships.\n\nThe thing is that this is a development very specific for the primary host, which could be whichever animal. Those things when infecting a host that is not designated fall apart: either the pathogen is unable to inhabit the foreign host at all, or causes a very severe pathological reaction because limiting interactions are just not available in this new kind of habitat. Consequently the host, for example the human body, will react very violently and very symptomatically when encountering pathogens that would naturally inhabit rodents or pigs or other kinds of animals."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4yci5u
|
why does chewing (gum) increase concentration/productivity?
|
A teacher of mine told us to chew gum (or something like the back of your pen) when studying as it releases a chemical in your jaw? He also said the reason why you get tired after you eat is because you stop chewing.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yci5u/eli5why_does_chewing_gum_increase/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d6mqgdf"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"The action of chewing involves the Temporalis muscle and the Masseter muscle. These cause blood to flow to your brain as you chew, bringing in more oxygen, which causes increased concentration."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
9bi5ol
|
The CIA is widely known to have used LSD and other drugs in experimental and research programmes on its own citizens (MK Ultra, Midnight Climax etc). Is there any evidence of them using these techniques in the field or on citizens of other countries?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9bi5ol/the_cia_is_widely_known_to_have_used_lsd_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e54kmud"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"To get this out of the way - unfortunately nearly all of the documentation concerning the US Government's research into the weaponization of pharmaceuticals was destroyed in 1973 when the various programs were officially shut down. What we now know about these programs comes from the report and declassified documents generated by the Senate's 1977 Joint Hearing into MK Ultra, which relied on what little documentation escaped destruction as well as interviews that the Senate conducted with the personnel that were involved. \n\nIn 1955 the US Army launched \"Material Testing Program EA 1729\" which was designed to test the military potential of LSD. Initially these tests were confined to its use as a chemical weapon, with the goal being to create a munition carrying a non-lethal incapacitating agent. This was conducted parallel to the CIA's research, which the Army appears to have initially been unaware of.\n\nAlthough these tests didn't show any military potential for LSD, they did show a potential for its use in interrogation. This resulted in the Army launching a second phase of the program in 1958 to evaluate LSD's use as an interrogation enhancer. \n\nThis second phase involved experimenting on consenting subjects who had been conditioned to resist torture. Essentially, the subjects were told that they were going to be evaluating the potential of polygraphs and sensory deprivation for use in interrogation. The subjects were then secretly administered LSD and then subjected to one of those two methods of interrogation. We don't know much else about this but presumably it showed some positive findings because, unlike the LSD munition, this branch of research was approved for field testing.\n\nThat field testing consisted of Projects Third Chance and Dirby Hat. Project Third Chance was carried out in Europe in 1960. Project Dirby Hat was carried out in \"East Asia\" in 1962. These projects involved using LSD in the interrogation of 17 foreign nationals and 1 US soldier, all of whom were suspected of carrying out intelligence operations on behalf of a foreign power and whom had shown resistance to conventional interrogation.\n\nThe results of the interrogations were viewed generally positively, with the Army believing that it got useful information out of the subjects in most cases. However, this information generally came about because of a severely negative reaction to the drugs, which in at least one case required medical intervention to prevent the subject from dying. Essentially, the subjects all followed the same pattern: \n\n1) Immediately after LSD was administered the subject would enter a state of extreme psychosis for several hours during which no useful information could be gathered.\n\n2) The subject would then enter a comatose state for another few hours.\n\n3) The subject would begin to return to normal. As they became more lucid, they would volunteer more and more meaningful information - though this appears to be out of fear of what the Army was doing to them rather than any effect of the drug. (The subjects were unaware that they had been administered LSD, or any drug - so we can only imagine what they thought was happening).\n\nIn 1963 the Army's Assistent Chief of Staff for Intelligence was briefed on these results. He appears to have felt that the use of LSD was no different or effective than torture, and ended the Army's program.\n\nBy the time that Third Chance and Dirby Hat were carried out the Army appears to have been aware of the CIA's own research into LSD. In fact, the impetus behind Third Chance and Dirby Hat appears to have been that the CIA had not, at that point, conducted any field tests and it was hoped that the Army's field tests would provide a justification for an expanded joint CIA/Army field testing program.\n\nAlthough the CIA had severely curtailed its research into LSD after the 1953 death of Dr. Frank Olson - a doctor working on MK Ultra who had secretly been administered LSD by other doctors working on the project - it too completely abandoned research into LSD following the Army's 1963 evaluation.\n\nWhat we know about the CIA's laboratory experiments with other drugs shows that they were generally useless for interrogations. The most success that they had was a method involving barbiturates. \n\nEssentially, the subject would be repeatedly knocked unconscious with a barbiturate. As the subject woke up, they would enter a minimally conscious state during which they would babble. It was possible for interrogators to direct the babbling, and while this would sometimes lead to the subject speaking truthfully it sometimes would not. Most importantly, whether the subject told the truth or not was random enough to be of little use. \n\nSo while we know that the Army did use LSD in the field 18 times, due to the destruction of most of the relevant documents in 1973 we will never know for sure whether that was the only time such a pharmaceutical was used. However, it does seem very likely that the Army's use of LSD 18 times was the only use for the following reasons:\n\n1) The main justification for the Army's field use of LSD was the fact that the CIA had, as of that time, not field tested any pharmaceutical to the Army's knowledge; and\n\n2) The only pharmaceutical that the CIA ever identified as having real interrogation potential was LSD, but both the Army and CIA formally abandoned the use of LSD in 1963 when the Army concluded that its use was no different or more effective than conventional torture.\n\nGiven the above, it seems unlikely that after 1963 the CIA would have gone back and field tested something other than LSD when they had already determined that every other pharmaceutical was useless in interrogations."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
4k4wlp
|
Were Australian Aborigines in contact with the rest of the world before the arrival of European explorers?
|
For example, did they have contact with other Indian Ocean regions through the Indian Ocean trade network, or contact with pacific island peoples such as the Maori?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4k4wlp/were_australian_aborigines_in_contact_with_the/
|
{
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],
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"text": [
"Yes, to a limited extent. Traders from Macassar in Sulawesi are known to have visited the north west coast in praus (small sailing boats) in search of trepang (sea cucumbers, an Asian delicacy which was in demand in China). The northernmost parts of the Australian coast are only about 90 miles south of the southernmost islands of what's now Indonesia, and as such there's no obvious reason why this trade should not have been of considerable antiquity. However, the records that survive go back only to 1751. Historians have estimated the actual start date of the Macassan voyages south at between 1640 and 1720.\n\nThe Cambridge Economic History of Australia notes that this was not simply a matter of Macassans taking what they wanted from Australian waters; it was a genuine trade, up to 3,000 Macassans lived on the Australian coast during the monsoon season, when the weather made a return voyage impossible, and \"many Aboriginal people went to Macassar on praus, and amicable trading relations were established.\" It helped that Australians did not eat sea cucumber, so there was no competition for resources.\n\nIn exchange for the sea cucumbers, Macassans handed over alcohol, pipes, rifles and tomahawks to their Australian trading partners.\n\nThe best source for this trade is C.C. Macknight's The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia (1976).\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
6112xg
|
Is a bird's singing learned, is it genetically determined or a mix?
|
I am interested in how birds learn to sing. I was walking through the forest and noticed that a certain type of bird (I'm terrible at bird species, sorry) was making intervals at a perfect fourth interval in a steady rhythm/beat. I was wondering if this is learned behaviour (from mimicking their parents) or if birds simply have these capabilities in their DNA.
It is quite astonishing to me that birds apparently somehow gain so much musical insight, as for humans I've always seen music as a complex skill involving multiple parts of our brain. Any explanations on how birds do this are also more than welcome.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6112xg/is_a_birds_singing_learned_is_it_genetically/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dfbhj5v"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"of course it's a mixture, birds learn their songs from their parents and other conspecifics - if you isolate chicks and start a new bird culture, their songs will start off very different from the wild type song; but after a few generations, the songs will have evolved back towards the wild type. so they aren't born with the songs \"programmed in\", but they are born with some strong constraints that shape what they learn (and how they perform).\n\ni'm not an expert in this, but i do keep up with the ongoing study by Partha Mitra and colleagues, studying the phenomenon in zebra finches, they are super interesting papers!\n\ne.g.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://web.mit.edu/fee/Public/Papers_pdf/tchernikovski/Tchernichovski_etal2001.pdf",
"http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.776.601&rep=rep1&type=pdf"
]
] |
|
4g803e
|
if water is always returned via the water cycle back to the earth, why are people getting concerned with "running out" of water?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4g803e/eli5_if_water_is_always_returned_via_the_water/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d2faejk"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because that water is mixed up with gross stuff- the totality of H2O on the planet is unchanged, but the amount of fresh water is rapidly diminishing from pollution, irrigation, and divertment. The natural processes that scrub and clean water have been disrupted, leading to less and less usable water."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
286ef9
|
why does sleeping regenerate/refresh/recharge is, while laying in bed awake without moving us does not?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/286ef9/eli5_why_does_sleeping_regeneraterefreshrecharge/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ci7ug9d",
"ci7uou3"
],
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5,
3
],
"text": [
"Because laying in bed awake is generally exactly the same as standing next to the bed awake, or sitting on the bus awake, or watching tv awake. Your brain needs you to actually be unconscious so it can have a moment of low activity to get its housecleaning done. It just can't do what it needs to do while you're still conscious.",
"While asleep, your brain goes through several different cycles, and while we don't really understand *precisely* what they do, we do know that they involve various maintenance healing and mental sorting that is vital to survival. These are only done while you are asleep. Laying in bed awake without moving does rest your body, but it does not rest your mind.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
iivu6
|
Is there anything hindering the development of super long-lasting batteries?
|
Laptops, video cameras, mobile phones. They've all been out for quite some time now, yet battery life hasn't really increased by any huge percentage. I thought by now a lot of devices would be able to run for a few days on a single charge. Is there any scientific reason why they haven't improved significantly? Or have they actually improved significantly but the devices just need to use more power to run? Will there ever be a time where I can charge my phone once a month?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iivu6/is_there_anything_hindering_the_development_of/
|
{
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"c24499k",
"c2449d7",
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],
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3,
2
],
"text": [
"Battery life *has* improved quite a lot. Ten years ago, you'd be happy if your laptop lasted two hours, now the best easily last six hours on a battery of similar volume.\n\nWhen it comes to phones, it seems there hasn't been much improvement, but that's because mobile phones have gone from relatively simple devices to multimedia smartphones, with big screens and much more powerful processors and larger memory.\n\nBattery research is seeing heavy investment at the moment, so it's quite likely that the performance will continue to improve significantly the coming decades.",
"It's a game of cat and mouse. Batteries improve, processing power improves and drains batteries faster. My old clamshell phone had a battery life of about a week in standby plus occasional texting. My smartphone has a much larger battery but I also use it to do a lot more things that drain battery much faster.\n\nUnfortunately, battery technology is down to fundamental chemistry and electronics, and tends to advance much slower than processing or display technology so it always tends to end up being the long pole.",
"Yes, there is something hindering the development of super long-lasting batteries, and that is the maximum theoretical energy density you can physically store in the medium. \n\nCapacity is important, but arguably more relevant is energy density. Modern Li-Ion batteries work by *intercalation*, which is basically like moving lithium ions between two different sponges. When they're in one sponge, they have higher energy than the other sponge, and move to the 'low energy sponge', they lose energy (and perform electrical work). \n\nThere's only so much lithium you can fit in a sponge, once it's saturated, you can't fit anymore, and so your capacity is done. \n\nCapacity is kind of a luck thing - your material can hold so much lithium, you'd have to find a new material for better capacity. Energy density can also be increased by increasing the energy difference (the voltage) between the two sponges, that way, for each lithium ion that switches sponges, the energy output is greater, but that's also a material dependent property. There haven't been many discoveries of new battery materials in the last 20 years - it's the same few, LiCoO2, LiFePO4, LiMnO2, etc. Luckily, our group here at MIT is working to predict new battery materials from pure theory, check it out!\n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://alum.mit.edu/sites/default/files/IC_assets/news/images/alumninews/Ceder.pdf"
]
] |
|
c8cx19
|
May sound stupid but here goes , when we are in the womb and are slowly growing where do those atoms come from that make us or do we make those atoms in the womb ?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c8cx19/may_sound_stupid_but_here_goes_when_we_are_in_the/
|
{
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"esojnfv",
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],
"score": [
11,
3
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"text": [
"They come from the food your mother eats while you're developing, as well as your mother herself. No new atoms are created, just rearranged cleverly from food and air and water.",
"I would add that you can't make atoms without an enormous amount of energy. E=mc^2 where mass is m, c is the speed of light and E is energy. Energy in the universe can not be created or destroyed. All elements bigger than hydrogen were created in stars or explosions of stars (except for a few heavy elements like plutonium that as far as we know only humans have made). Hydrogen was made in the first few seconds after the big bang. So you need at least the energy of a star or a supernova if not the birth of a universe to make your own atoms."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2npcd2
|
When horses were the main form of transportation, how did cities deal with all the waste?
|
To narrow down the frame, if necessary, in large American and Western European cities from the mid-eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, how did municipalities deal with all the piss and shit created from horses riding around the city?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2npcd2/when_horses_were_the_main_form_of_transportation/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmfzt44"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"hi! you may be interested in these earlier posts\n\n* [why did medieval people put up with so much filth in their city streets? IF they didn't have the resources for modern plumbing, couldn't they at least hire armies of people to cart away waste?](_URL_3_)\n\n* [If I were to wake up in 1880 New York City, how bad would it smell compared to the modern version?](_URL_2_)\n\n* [It is 1890 in New York City, cars are not yet widespread. How do horses fit into the life of the city?](_URL_0_)\n\n* [Looking for primary sources on The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894, or other historical horse-related events](_URL_1_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/202rzr/it_is_1890_in_new_york_city_cars_are_not_yet/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xluj9/looking_for_primary_sources_on_the_great/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ve5vc/if_i_were_to_wake_up_in_1880_new_york_city_how/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1p44gi/why_did_medieval_people_put_up_with_so_much_filth/"
]
] |
|
q0o6q
|
the atomic bomb
|
can someone explain the atomic bomb, how it works. I have the most basic understanding of chemistry, i'm a biology major.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q0o6q/eli5_the_atomic_bomb/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c3tqu3g",
"c3tr2lu"
],
"score": [
6,
2
],
"text": [
"In chemistry, you about endo/exothermic reactions to make molecules. Normal explosives rely on chemical reactions that release large amounts of energy. All of this energy involves moving a few electrons around leaving your nuclei intact.\n\nWhen you get into atomic physics you're looking at *far stronger* forces involved in holding the nucleus of an atom together. An atomic bomb actually forces atoms to split into smaller atoms. The extra energy/protons/neutrons that were involved in making a larger atom is released - flying off to trigger other atoms to split apart. The energy released is *far* greater than any chemical reaction could be.\n\nPoint of reference - the first atomic bomb used in warfare, [Little Boy](_URL_0_) contained 64kg of uranium but created an explosion equivalent to 15,000,000 kg of TNT.",
"This Disney film, \"Our Friend the Atom,\" is great. Here is one of 5 parts from youtube:\n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy"
],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESpRFkXon7g&feature=related"
]
] |
|
2rj2th
|
Why do rockets use fuel with oxidises when taking off in the atmosphere instead of just using the oxygen in the air?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2rj2th/why_do_rockets_use_fuel_with_oxidises_when_taking/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cnggn04",
"cngikaq"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"As you increase in altitude the oxygen density in the atmosphere drops dramatically. Over 10000 feet, people need supplemental oxygen to fight off hypoxia.\n\nAt the rate a rocket burns fuel, there is nowhere near enough oxygen to maintain the burn. Basically the fire would fizzle and the rocket would fall. ",
"There exist some ideas and designs for air-breathing first stages, and even engines that start as air-breathing and switch to onboard oxidizer at some altitude. [SABRE](_URL_0_) is one such engine design. The idea itself is not new, see for instance [this (perhaps somewhat biased) article](_URL_1_). For the most part, the reason we haven't done it before is that it's difficult."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABRE_%28rocket_engine%29",
"http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1894/1"
]
] |
||
48dic4
|
why is english so broken?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48dic4/eli5_why_is_english_so_broken/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d0ir39n",
"d0ir4gd"
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text": [
"English is a bit of a Frankenstein language, stitched together from bits of a couple Germanic languages, French, Celtic, Latin, and Greek. This leads to a hodgepodge of rules, spellings, and pronunciations borrowed from those languages.",
"Speakers of what became the language we love today tried to ingest every other language they came into contact with. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
1lealp
|
what is preventing toronto from acquiring an nfl franchise?
|
Toronto is the 4th or 5th largest city in all of North America. It's a major metropolitan area. It has a sport team in all other North American major pro sports. What is keeping Toronto from getting an NFL team?!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lealp/eli5_what_is_preventing_toronto_from_acquiring_an/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cbyd0jg",
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"cbyeru1",
"cbyi0bg",
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"score": [
19,
3,
5,
3,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Football is the only major pro sport that has a viable and independent league in Canada. Toronto already has a CFL team. \n\nIn order for Toronto to have an NFL franchise, they'd have to figure out how to convince the NFL that they could have two viable pro football teams. Toronto is big but it's not that big. They could, of course, shut down the CFL team, but this would likely anger fans so badly that the new NFL team would be doomed from the start.",
"Too many cities wanting a team, too few franchises to fill them.\n\nSomewhere between 30-32 seems to be the perfect number of teams in a major sports league. For leagues such as the NFL the demand for teams and cities that want them exceed these numbers. inevitably some cities get left out, see Los Angeles who hasn't had a team in the Raiders left in '95.",
"The proximity of the Buffalo Bills",
"Because we already have five crappy sports teams here, and we don't need a sixth. ",
"It's because the Buffalo Bills would need to agree to allow another team to impede on their television market. They already have one of the smallest markets in the league, and they would never agree to doing that.",
"There are 2 reasons:\n\n1. Greed. The Buffalo Bills object because they don't want any closer competition. They also try to convince the other owners that they can capture more of the Toronto-area market and make the team (and thus league) more profitable\n\n2. Greed. Companies (even with with Canadian divisions) often won't have those profits count towards their US revenues and profits, and so they don't really get to see the benefit of generating tv numbers and revenues in Canada. The NFL gets huge, national ad revenues, and those advertisers and the broadcast networks paying billions for TV rights don't care as much about the Canadian market since their bonuses are typically for their US performance."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3d8lao
|
why don't we build a 'sturdy' camera and throw it into saturn, or jupiter, and transmit what it records back to a space station?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d8lao/eli5_why_dont_we_build_a_sturdy_camera_and_throw/
|
{
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"score": [
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"text": [
"It costs way too much to make and launch something here and there really isn't that much to record.",
"It's been done with Jupiter, but any camera built would be destroyed by the immense heat, pressure, and gravity that the planets have.",
"The Galileo mission sent a [small probe](_URL_0_) into Jupiter's atmosphere. I don't think it had a camera though, it was mainly focused on gathering information about what the atmosphere was made of. A camera wouldn't do much either; you would see the same color you can see from the surface.",
"I think what OP is asking, is something similar to a tethered camera that we can place in orbit and have it sort of hang down into the atmospheres for observations.\n\nOne interesting aspect of this approach, would be the atmospheric drag that would be slowing the camera end down while the upper portion of the tether continues to orbit at the same speed. This would result in a net loss of altitude for the whole camera craft, and you would quickly lose your satellite.\n\nAnother interesting aspect for this type of craft in orbit, would be the mechanical forces involved, of craft flying thousands of miles per hour, while being slowed by drag at extremely high speeds. The tension in this tether would be immense. (This would be similar to the whole space elevator problem)\n\nYet another odd but interesting outcome of this type of craft, would be the electrostatic forces being generated. Thanks in part to Jupiter's immense magnetic field, you will undoubtedly create electrical build up along this tether that could become problematic.\n\nAlthough, if this is not what you were referring to in regard to a \"sturdy\" camera, then we have sent probes down into the atmospheres of these gas giants in the past. There is not much to gain out of using visible light photographic cameras to observe the atmosphere as the clouds are so thick that you wouldn't be able to see anything that you couldn't see from orbit.",
"Didn't we do something similar with Titan?\n\n[Here it is](_URL_0_)",
"All space probes are destined to be junk sooner or later and they are very expensive. So when they are being sent out they better deliver some worthwhile information! The opinion in the community seems to be that we know too much to justify dropping a few million dollars into Jubiter and besides, there seem to be more pressing missions to undertake. ",
"There have been a few probes dropped into gas giants to explore their atmospheres. They generally don't carry cameras though because there's only a limited amount of time and bandwidth available for the probe to transmit data back out before it gets destroyed by the heat/pressure/etc. Photos and video footage use up a relatively high amount of data compared to their scientific value, so the probes tend to transmit other types of data that the people who designed the probe felt would be more useful. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Probe"
],
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/CNiO1b0ewy0"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
2kuc8y
|
It is often thought that the "self", the individual, did not exist in pre-modern time. Religious officials who act as the spiritual intermediaries to the common person is one cited example. To me it sounds more like "middle age" than "pre-modern" though. How about in the antiquity?
|
I was re-reading a text on Foucault, and came across this passage,
> Foucault’s genealogies question such sociological categories as ‘society’ and the ‘individual’ by emphasizing their historical development. Even more, they reconceptualize the relationship between the ‘individual’ and ‘society’, as it has traditionally been understood. Since it emerged in the nineteenth century sociology has treated ‘society’ as a modern phenomenon, while ‘individuals’ were thought to have existed since the beginning of human history, organizing themselves in ‘natural’, face-to-face relationships. Foucault’s genealogical histories show that the formation of ‘individuals’ has been contemporaneous with the formation of the ‘social’ or ‘society’.
I thought that, by "pre-modern time", much of what addressed by Foucault (and I suppose by other philosophers and sociologists) is actually "middle age". They don't seem to address what happened in "ancient time". Religious officials who act as the spiritual intermediaries to the common person sounds really middle age to me. But of course this is an uneducated guess.
Today we understand individuals as autonomous agents, men who decide their own fate, not dependent on another person-in-authority (like the religious officials who act as spiritual intermediaries), the "creator" of their own self.
Do we know how common people in antiquity see themselves?
I'm most curious especially in early and late antique era Christianity (somewhere along 1 AD - 600 AD). But other eras/areas are also really welcomed. Thank you!
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2kuc8y/it_is_often_thought_that_the_self_the_individual/
|
{
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"cloyo16"
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"text": [
"I'm a bit confused by your question regarding \"pre-modern time\" and \"middle age.\" However, Foucault explicitly addresses the self/individual (what he calls 'subjectivity') in ancient thought in his *Lectures on the Will to Know* as well as in *Subjectivity and Truth* (unpublished still in English), *The Hermeneutics of the Subject,* and *The Courage of Truth.* He also discusses aspects of the ancient self in *The History of Sexuality: Volume 2* and *Volume 3.*\n\nFoucault addresses subjectivity in early Christianity in his lectures *On the Government of the Living,* as well as a bit in *The Hermeneutics of the Subject* and *The Courage of Truth.* He also discusses the influence of Christian confessional subjectivity with modern forms of government in *The History of Sexuality: Volume 1.*\n\nFoucault believes one of the biggest difference is that in ancient thought, the individual never has access to the truth by the simple fact that they exist. Foucault argues that the individual in ancient culture had to go through a long process of work, what he calls spiritual exercises (following Pierre Hadot's book titled *Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucualt* in English), in order to access the truth. He contrasts this to the modern conception of the self, in which we are entitled to say and speak the truth by our simple fact of being alive. He attributes this change to the development of scientific rationality and the privileging of self-evidence of perception as opposed to the self-transformation of ancient spiritual exercises. Indeed, your description of the modern self matches some of Foucault's own thoughts on it. One of the biggest noticable differences is that clearly we no longer require direction (in the form of a 'spiritual intermediary') by another in order to access the truth: we are capable of doing it alone now. This is all discussed in *The Hermeneutics of the Subject.*\n\nAnother difference between the ancient and modern self is due to Christian confessional practices. These have generated a picture of the modern self involving a deep connection between desires (such as sexual desires) and truths about the self. Foucault thinks that the modern individual is always interpreting their sexual desires in order to reveal a fundamental personal truth (and is always liable to their sexual desires being interpreted by others). This also involves the idea that the self may be fundamentally deceiving itself about its own nature and its own desires. Furthermore, these confessional practices have engrained in us, according to Foucault, that the confession of our sexual desires will in some way grant us freedom. Foucault thinks that psychoanalysis emerges precisely in the wake of the Christian confessional practices which have generated this form of subjectivity and also argues that the sexual liberation movement has done nothing other than reiterate the basic claims of the form of power which it is attempting to escape from (namely that the demonstration of sexuality will result in a kind of freedom). You can find more of this in *The History of Sexuality: Volume 1,* and a more detailed look at confessional practices in *On the Government of the Living.*"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1rywko
|
when calculating digits of pi, why do we start at the beginning instead of calculating from the last known digit.
|
When calculating n digits of pi we always start at 3.14159 instead from the last know digit. Why is this? Wouldn't it be advantageous to find the next unknown digits? [BBP formula](_URL_0_) is one used to find the nth digit of pi, why don't we just use this?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rywko/eli5_when_calculating_digits_of_pi_why_do_we/
|
{
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"cds9yk7"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"For one thing, calculating digits of pi is, at this point, just an academic exercise. It's not really good for anything, except maybe as a way to benchmark computing speeds. So doing things the efficient way isn't really advantageous."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailey%E2%80%93Borwein%E2%80%93Plouffe_formula"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
26azde
|
When a human breaks their spine, why is it always said that they're paralyzed "below the waist"? Why does it always happen specifically at the waist?
|
Why wouldn't someone lose feeling below the knees, or below the chest, so on and so forth. Why does it always seem that breaking one's spine results in just loss of control of the bottom half of the body?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/26azde/when_a_human_breaks_their_spine_why_is_it_always/
|
{
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"text": [
"The nervous system is severed at whatever spot they broke their spine. Since the nervous system is interconnected with the spine, it relies heavily on the spine's support. The brain sends signals through the nervous system from the top- > down. If the spine is severed, the nervous system is severed in turn, and the brain can't send signals lower than the point at which the nervous system is severed.",
"It occurs at whatever point the spine severs. Motor control from the brain (and sensory information from the body) is sent through the spinal cord, and the inputs to different limbs branch off the spinal cord in areas close to those limbs. So, if you break your spine near your neck, you will be paralyzed from the neck down. If you break your spine at your hips, you might just lose function of your legs.",
" > Why does it always seem that breaking one's spine results in just loss of control of the bottom half of the body?\n\nBecause actually it doesn't always do that.\n\nIt's pretty common to injure the spine in the lower part, which may produce paralysis below the waist. But if you injure it at a higher point, a larger portion of your body will be affected. If you injure it close to the neck, the whole body is affected and this can be life-threatening, depending on the nature of the injury.\n\nSource: I've sustained spine injury, but I'm fine now."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
bqfusb
|
why is there a disconnect between what we're trying to say vs what actually comes out of our mouth. especially when public speaking
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bqfusb/eli5_why_is_there_a_disconnect_between_what_were/
|
{
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"eo42on7",
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],
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],
"text": [
"Only guessing, but i would say that we think about what we want so say and not how we say it. We dthink about the message, not the words...",
"ELI5 answer: Your mouth sometimes moves faster than your brain. \n\nYou’ve heard grownups say “Think before you speak,” this is what they’re talking about. We all at times find that our habits of speech can get ahead of what we intend to say. So much of language and communication is instinctual, rather than intentional. Like chewing loudly or cracking knuckles, oftentimes what we say and how we say it comes out without us even realizing it.\n\nThe best speakers—public or just in a one-on-one conversation—aren’t people with faster brains, they’re just very practiced at thinking before speaking."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
6ktl0f
|
how does uber lose so much money annually?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ktl0f/eli5_how_does_uber_lose_so_much_money_annually/
|
{
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"text": [
"Because Uber is undercharging for rides (charging customers less then the net amount being paid to the drivers) in an attempt to force the competition out of business and gain a monopoly, after which they can charge what they want because they'll be the only choice.",
"Uber heavily subsidizes each trip. ie when you book a trip on Uber it costs Uber more than you're paying. Uber has some costs: the biggest is paying their drivers but there are also costs involved in running and maintaining the app and marketing to consumers and recruiting drivers. They're also investing heavily in expanding their business and in developing driverless cars technology. ",
"Uber loses money because they are investing in scaling their business...\n\nThey are spending a ton of money on litigation and lobbying to be allowed to operate, since most urban areas had strict regulations on taxi services. They are fighting law suits, they are hiring lobbyist to pitch legislation changes to allow them to operate.\n\nUber also needs to build a symbiotic network of drivers and passengers in order for their platform to work. Drivers don't drive if there's no passengers, and customers won't use this service is they can't dependably get a ride when they need one. This means sign-on bonuses to drivers and discounts/artificially low fares to lure in passengers to build up a base of supply and demand.\n\nOnce they've established that they can operate legally, and have a base of drivers and passengers, then those expenses taper off considerably and the make profits.",
"I saw a study not that long ago (end of 2016?) that basically looked at how Uber can lose so much money. They found that if they stopped spending money on expansion, and just operated in their current markets, they would be profitable. They are constantly trying to grow into markets, which is very expensive. The idea is that they are \"investing in the future\" and once they are in all these markets, it gives them more avenues for profit. It's about growth basically."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
52xvqr
|
why are flames pointy?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52xvqr/eli5why_are_flames_pointy/
|
{
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"text": [
"A flame rises because it is warmer than the air around it. The cool air rushes in to push the hot air upwards. However, as the air rises it also cools down. It cools down from the outside inwards. \n\nA flame glows because it is hot enough to generate light. So as the flame cools down, the parts of it that are hot enough to generate light get smaller and smaller. Because it is rising and shrinking at the same time, it forms that pointy shape. \n\nNote that a flame in zero gravity doesn't make a pointy shape, because the cool air doesn't push the hot air upwards (because there is no up). It just spreads out in all directions.",
"Fire glows because it's very hot.\n\nHot air rises, which is why flames move upwards from the candle or log or whatever else is burning. As the air rises, it comes into contact with the cool air of the surroundings. It warms up the cool air around it, and the cool air around it cools it down. So a *gradient* develops, where the temperature is highest at the core of the mass of hot air, and drops as you move outward from that core.\n\nSince the cooler air doesn't glow as much, this appears as a bright glowing core with a dimmer glow to the sides. As the air continues to rise upwards, it loses more and more of its heat, so that bright glowing core gets smaller and smaller. The glowing zone gets dimmer and skinnier as the flame keeps going upwards, eventually dwindling to a point."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
1039o2
|
why can you only use your thumb/ finger on the iphone's screen? as opposed to your nails or a more traditional stylus?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1039o2/why_can_you_only_use_your_thumb_finger_on_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c6a0cxj",
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"text": [
"iPhones and all modern smartphones use Capacitive touch screens. Rather then detect touch by pressure they use electricity, there is an electric field on the screen of your phone and when you touch it the electricity runs up your hand, through your body, and back down.\n\nThe phone can detect this and determine the location of your finger(s). Since your nails and most styluses do not conduct this small charge they are not detected. ",
"A capacitive touch screen relies on the electrical property of capacitance, the ability of some materials to store energy when they have an electric field applied. Materials which have a lot of water in them usually have the ability to display capacitance, because water is a molecule where the electric charges aren't evenly distributed (it is \"[polar](_URL_0_)\"). Since water is polar, it will try to rotate a bit under the influence of an electric field, essentially storing a bit of energy in the process. \n \nThose water molecules will tend to align one of their charge poles with the opposite charge that is inside the smartphone screen. In the smartphone, this capacitance effect results in a little bit of electrical charge flowing, and the electronics detect that. \n \nYour fingernail or a metal stylus don't contain much water, and they don't have any other properties that tend to make them very capacitave. Most of your body parts have a fair amount of water near the surface, so they will work. You could probably use your nose if you wanted to. But your elbow might not work as well, since there's only a bit of skin and tissue over the bone, and the bone doesn't have as much water content. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/biology/bio4fv/page/image15.gif"
]
] |
||
nwbc2
|
Why does adiabatic processes change the temperature of a gas?
|
Why does the temperature of a gas decrease when the gas expands and increase when the gas gets compressed? If temperature is the avarage kinetic energy of the molecules in the gas, and there is no exchange of heat during the expansion/compression of the gas, then why would the temperature change?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/nwbc2/why_does_adiabatic_processes_change_the/
|
{
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"text": [
"Adiabatic processes are those where the entropy doesn't change. Remember that and it makes sense.\n\nThe entropy in that gas can be thought of qualitatively as this: make a list of all of the positions of all the particles in your system (the gas molecules, here). Wait some short time. Recheck your list against a new one. The more similar they are, they less entropy there is in the system. \n\nTake an adiabatically expanding gas. There is now more space in the universe for those molecules to bang around in. With no temperature change this is an *increase* in entropy. That is, with the particles moving at the same speed, your old list/new list would look more dissimilar in the expanded gas than it would in the original gas. How do we counteract this increase in energy? By lowering the temperature. Now even though there are more places that the particles could be, they are moving slower, so our old list/new list stays the same level of dissimilar as before, because there is no net entropy change between the expanded and original gas. \n\nThe converse is why a contracting gas increases in temperature.\n\nTL;DR - Entropy.",
"One intuitive way to think about this is: Imagine a container with one movable wall, e.g. the piston-cylinder in an engine. Now imagine it's full of gas molecules, which bounce around inside like little rubber balls unaffected by gravity. Whenever a ball hits a wall, going at some speed relative to the wall, it bounces back out with the same speed relative to the wall. Now, imagine that the movable wall is moving slowly away from the gas-filled chamber, i.e. the piston is being pulled out and the chamber is expanding. As a ball / gas molecule heads for that wall, it's going at a slower speed relative to that movable wall, since the wall is also moving outwards. So the ball / gas molecule will bounce back into the chamber at a much slower speed, i.e. it will slow down, i.e. its temperature will be lower. So each ball that hits the movable wall (as the wall moves away) will lose speed, and become colder, and then fly back into the chamber and drive down its average temperature. (Imagine each molecule is moving with a horizontal speed of 200m/s. If it hits a stationary wall, it bounces back in at 200m/s. If the piston side moves outwards at 50m/s, then the molecule hits it at 150m/s relative speed, and bounced back in at 150m/s relative speed, which from the chamber's point of view is just 100m/s. So each ball that hits the piston loses twice the speed of the piston). And if the piston is moving INTO the chamber, then each molecule that hits it leaves the collision having GAINED some speed, by the same reasoning, and the gas gets hotter.",
"Adiabatic processes are those where the entropy doesn't change. Remember that and it makes sense.\n\nThe entropy in that gas can be thought of qualitatively as this: make a list of all of the positions of all the particles in your system (the gas molecules, here). Wait some short time. Recheck your list against a new one. The more similar they are, they less entropy there is in the system. \n\nTake an adiabatically expanding gas. There is now more space in the universe for those molecules to bang around in. With no temperature change this is an *increase* in entropy. That is, with the particles moving at the same speed, your old list/new list would look more dissimilar in the expanded gas than it would in the original gas. How do we counteract this increase in energy? By lowering the temperature. Now even though there are more places that the particles could be, they are moving slower, so our old list/new list stays the same level of dissimilar as before, because there is no net entropy change between the expanded and original gas. \n\nThe converse is why a contracting gas increases in temperature.\n\nTL;DR - Entropy.",
"One intuitive way to think about this is: Imagine a container with one movable wall, e.g. the piston-cylinder in an engine. Now imagine it's full of gas molecules, which bounce around inside like little rubber balls unaffected by gravity. Whenever a ball hits a wall, going at some speed relative to the wall, it bounces back out with the same speed relative to the wall. Now, imagine that the movable wall is moving slowly away from the gas-filled chamber, i.e. the piston is being pulled out and the chamber is expanding. As a ball / gas molecule heads for that wall, it's going at a slower speed relative to that movable wall, since the wall is also moving outwards. So the ball / gas molecule will bounce back into the chamber at a much slower speed, i.e. it will slow down, i.e. its temperature will be lower. So each ball that hits the movable wall (as the wall moves away) will lose speed, and become colder, and then fly back into the chamber and drive down its average temperature. (Imagine each molecule is moving with a horizontal speed of 200m/s. If it hits a stationary wall, it bounces back in at 200m/s. If the piston side moves outwards at 50m/s, then the molecule hits it at 150m/s relative speed, and bounced back in at 150m/s relative speed, which from the chamber's point of view is just 100m/s. So each ball that hits the piston loses twice the speed of the piston). And if the piston is moving INTO the chamber, then each molecule that hits it leaves the collision having GAINED some speed, by the same reasoning, and the gas gets hotter."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
go4i4
|
Have there been experiments of keeping [wood frogs](_URL_0_) frozen for longer periods of time? How long can they stay frozen and then successfully thawed?
|
And if so, do these extra frozen frogs live longer than their peers?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/go4i4/have_there_been_experiments_of_keeping_wood/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c1p0xnc"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"**Regarding length of freeze:**\n\nLayne et al investigated this and found that anywhere from 3 to 9 days was generally fine, but that mortality rose to 50% as you approached the 28 day mark (all at -1.5C). They then loaded some of the frogs with additional glucose (the cryoprotectant) and saw \"excellent\" survival rates up to 49 days - but they believe that this has more to do with energy availability and metabolism recovery during thawing than ice content. I don't have access to the full text of this article, so that is from the abstract.\n\n(Source: Layne JR, Costanzo JP, Lee RE. (1998). \nFreeze duration influences postfreeze survival in the frog Rana sylvatica. *JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL ZOOLOGY, 280(2), 197-201.*)\n\nAnother more recent abstract (maybe from 2009 or 2010?) mentioned that under ideal lab conditions and controlled freezing temperatures, survival rates for periods up to 60 days were better than what I expected (like above 50%).\n\n**Regarding longevity/survivability:**\n\nJoanisse & Storey found that increased oxygen intake and blood saturation levels, following thawing and up to a few hours later, did not lead to an increase in oxidative damage in tissues, since the wood frog increases production of antioxidant enzymes (primarily gluthatione) during freezing and thawing. \n\n(Source: Joanisse DR, Storey KB. (1996). Oxidative damage and antioxidants in Rana sylvatica the freeze-tolerant wood frog. *AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY-REGULATORY INTEGRATIVE AND COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY, 271(3), R545-R553.*)\n\nLayne & Rice investigated motor impairment in thawing/thawed wood frogs and foud that with colder temperatured, movement impairment could be observed for extended amounts of time (days to weeks). Impairment would indicate that the frogs would be more susceptible to predation and less able to take advantage of environmental conditions or food sources. They surmised that even with the motor impairment, the recovery rates were more than sufficient for spring breeding and overall recovery of the species following the winter freeze.\n\n(Source: Layne JR, Rice ME. (2003). Postfreeze locomotion performance in wood frogs (Rana sylvatica) and spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer). *CANADIAN JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY, 81(21), 2061-2065.*)\n\nThis would seem to indicate that freeze recovery would put the frogs at a disadvantage for a period of time, but that long-term damage (at least for moderate freezing, both temperature and time) is not a major factor. One other paper did note that reproductive activity in the males suffered, but I can't find the paper at the moment."
]
}
|
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_Frog"
] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5xgc2t
|
what are bonds, and what is the difference between stocks and bonds?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xgc2t/eli5_what_are_bonds_and_what_is_the_difference/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dehumv0",
"dehvn3q"
],
"score": [
11,
21
],
"text": [
"A Bond is a certification of a debt. Where as a stock is a certification of ownership. So when you buy a stock you become a partial owner of that business. But when you buy a bond, you are buying a certificate that says the bond issuer will pay you back both your money and interest. ",
"Bonds : Local bakery has a great idea for muffin tops. They need 500 for the special muffin top slicing machine and non stick pans. The local bank won't give them a loan because the idea is so new and they haven't been in business for long. But everyone in the neighbourhood is super excited. So the bakery prints out 500 bond certificates that cost $1.00 each and the certificates say that in 1 year from now they can be redeemed for $1.10 at the cash register. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2on4oa
|
Is it possible to represent imaginary numbers on a plane?
|
This thought occurred to me the other day while in math, is it possible to graph imaginary numbers on a similar plane to and x/y grid but with a real axis and an imaginary axis?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2on4oa/is_it_possible_to_represent_imaginary_numbers_on/
|
{
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"cmouve6",
"cmow8e1",
"cmox77w",
"cmp4mt2"
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"score": [
24,
7,
10,
11
],
"text": [
"[Yes, it's called the complex plane and it's amazing.](_URL_0_)",
"Yup, half of a senior level complex analysis course goes over the complex plane which is exactly that and it is insanely useful.\n\nFor instance in quantum mechanics we use it for emission and absorption of light. The real axis corresponds to the amount of light absorbed and the complex axis corresponds to the amount of light emitted by a chemical. ",
"Your teacher talked about complex numbers without explaining the complex plane ? That's very strange ... \n\nUsually that's among the first things you say about complex numbers when introducing them. I cannot imagine how you can explain modulus and argument without referring to the complex plane.",
"I think your question has already been answered well but I wanted to mention something else.\n\nWhat you've just experienced is genuine mathematical curiosity. You had an idea that you can actually pursue on your own without any help, just a pencil and paper (or the vastly superior markers and whiteboard). Draw some complex numbers on a plane, see what happens when you add them, see what happens when you multiply them, see if their behavior reminds you of anything else you've learned, see how their representation in the plane matches up with whatever you're learning in class. There's a whole lot to discover if you just play around.\n\nIt might seem a little silly to discover things that have already been discovered but I actually think it's fun because you can check to see if you're right afterwards and even if you're wrong you'll have a better understanding of why. Plus you'll probably beat the crap out of your tests as a result.\n\nYou might already be doing this but I wanted to throw that out there, especially since your curiosity came from complex numbers which are amazingly interesting once you leave the high school math torture chamber."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_plane"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
fxh4am
|
Washing one's hands with soap kills viruses because pulling apart their lipid bi-layer membranes, right? Why doesn't soap dissolve our flesh? Our own cells have membranes are made of lipid bi-layers.
|
[deleted]
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fxh4am/washing_ones_hands_with_soap_kills_viruses/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fmud846"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"It actually does in a very minute way. We grow extra skin all the time and are constantly flaking it off. That's why we wash our hands. And it's why we shower. That skin is most of what the dust in your house is made of."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
agtscd
|
Is it actually possible for an opera singer to shatter a glass with their voice?
|
I want to know if the sound waves powerful enough to break a glass could be produced from a human.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/agtscd/is_it_actually_possible_for_an_opera_singer_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eebqolu"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"Yes. It's not about their \"power\" or more precisely, their amplitude.... It's about the frequency. A lot of solid materials have a sonic frequency at which the atoms no longer hold together. Glass breaks apart when vibrated at this frequency. I don't remember all the fancy words for explaining it but this should be enough for you to do some research. There are plenty of YouTube videos demonstrating this. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
fvris9
|
how do "multiple year" copyrights work?
|
Inspired by [this post](_URL_0_); is it that some features got licensed/registered before others?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fvris9/eli5_how_do_multiple_year_copyrights_work/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fmkcvnq",
"fmkef74"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"However, publishers of frequently-updated works, such as software, apparently desire to convey the idea that different versions of their works appear over time, and each is subject to copyright protection. So they provide a copyright notice with multiple years, the first year being the year of first publication.\n\nSuch a notice is not a problem. Even though multiple years are not expressly permitted, the three required elements are present, albeit with some extraneous information.\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"We say that you own a copyright on a singular thing. For example, we say that JK Rowling owns the copyright on \"Harry Potter\". But that's really an oversimplification of how the system works to make it comprehensible for normal people. The reality is that its not the work itself that is copyrighted, but rather the creative elements of that work. So for example, what is copyrighted in Animal Crossing are the visual designs of the characters and maybe some of the dialogue.\n\nBut the individual elements in a video game change because video games are constantly being patched and updated. So if the game was released in 2001 then the game's base content is copyrighted in that year. But if there is a patch in 2002 that adds new copyrightable elements - say a new character is introduced - then that new content has a copyright date of 2002.\n\nYou also sometimes see this in books that have multiple editions. For example, lets say that you buy the 8th edition of a text book, which came out in 2020. The vast majority of the book's content will have come from previous editions. Only the content that is new to the 8th edition has a copyright date of 2020.\n\nLets say that this is a very old medical textbook where the first edition came out in 1890 - it may be that a substantial amount of the content in the 8th edition has been in the book since that first edition and so has a copyright date of 1890. If that was the case, it may be that a lot of that book is actually in the public domain, and only the small amount of new stuff that has been added in more recent editions is still under copyright."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://old.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/fvp6tm/time_to_try_this_new_animal_crossing_thing/"
] |
[
[
"https://danashultz.com/2013/10/09/copyright-notice-with-multiple-years-legitimate/"
],
[]
] |
|
1qwd5u
|
why don't above-18s (adults) in usa have the right to determine their choice on alcohol consumption?
|
An American is legally an adult at 18, has the right to vote at 18, but can only decide whether or not to drink alcohol at 21.
Why doesn't someone 21 and below sue to government to exercise their right as adult to choose to drink alcohol?
I'm not American, and this has always been one of those things that perplexed me.
**Edit:** So I understand that the federal government commissioned a study (which not everyone agrees is accurate) and then strong-armed the states to agree.
And in the intervening years, people just convinced themselves with other arbitrary points like maturity etc.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qwd5u/eli5_why_dont_above18s_adults_in_usa_have_the/
|
{
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],
"score": [
3,
12,
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4,
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"text": [
"While I don't agree with it, the thought process is this:\n\n18 year old brains are not fully developed. One of the key features missing is risk management. \n\nDrinking creates a lot of risk (Drunk Driving being just one). \n\nTherefore its better to force young Americans to grow/mature more before being allowed to drink.\n\nAgain, I don't agree but that's the argument I've heard. We could try to sue, the problem is that it might easily be thrown out of the Court. The government can make a convincing argument that they have vested interest in protecting the youth of the country and that science supports delaying legal drinking until the person is older.",
"Well, it wasn't always so. I first began legally drinking at age 18, a million years ago (it seems).\n\nAs I recall, there was a law that was passed after a bunch of studies which said that drunk driving age 18-21 auto fatalities were more than all other auto fatalities combined. (I could be totally wrong there, its' just what i rememer) and so they passed a federal law to raise the drinking age. And, the law actually set that certain states who adopted the new age 21 could get additional federal money for road maintenance. So, it tool a little while, but soon all states changed their drinking ages....\n\nSo, suing to get it changed would need to occur in the separate states, since they control the drinking age. ",
"I remember being 18 and thinking that it was such an injustice that I had to wait 3 more years until I could legally drink. Now that I'm 21, I seriously hope they don't lower the age. Don't get me wrong, there are some 18 year olds mature enough to handle themselves while drinking or at a bar. And there are plenty of 21+ people who act like children (especially at bars). But, the influx in 18 fre$h-outta-highschool swag fag shitheads would be more than I could handle. As it usually is, a few dickweeds ruin it for everyone. It's not fair, but that's life. Get used to it, kid. ",
"One other consideration: 18-year-olds are in high school. If they have legal access to alcohol, high schoolers of any age can get it easily.",
"Because we have an over-bearing federal government who will withold federal pork for highway/maintenance if States lower the drinking age. ",
"States had been free to set their own rules regarding alcohol in the wake of the 21st amendment (December of 1933), and most states had a drinking age of 18, while the rest had it set at 21. Drinking ages were falling as the push to lower the federal voting age to 18 finally succeeded with the 26th amendment, but a significant portion of the states still stuck to 21.\n\nNew Jersey was a state with a drinking age of 21, and they border New York, which had it set at 18. This resulted in 18-20 year olds driving over state lines, getting drunk, then driving back into New Jersey, where they caused the havoc and mayhem commonly associated with drunk driving. \n\nTo combat this, New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg introduced the Drinking Age Act of 1984. The Act could not force the states to raise their drinking age as such (the 21st amendment left this power to the states), so instead, the law withheld a portion of the federal highway funds from states that did not raise their drinking age to 21.\n\n\"21\" states that bordered states \"non-21\" states supported the bill, and the newly founded advocacy group \"Mothers Against Drunk Drivers\" helped to push the remaining legislators (and president Ronald Reagan) to pass the bill. \n\nThe bill survived a legal challenge from South Dakota, and by 1988... every state in the union had their official drinking age set at 21. ",
"because alcohol consumption in 18-20 year olds leads to erectile disfunction, adultery, devil worship, shrinkage, illiteracy, turning into a minority, suicide, pooping accidentally in a crowded movie theater (or in some cases while in rush hour traffic), and a personality."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
fjt5tg
|
Why are coronaviruses coronaviruses?
|
To explain my question: I was under the impression that coronaviruses have their name because corona is Latin for crown and their shape looks like a crown. But don't they look identical to the vast majority of viruses? Influenza, HIV, herpes all have a crown-like shape, so why is one group specifically a Coronavirus?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fjt5tg/why_are_coronaviruses_coronaviruses/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fkp3y7p"
],
"score": [
19
],
"text": [
"The organization of their surface envelope proteins forms a ring which looks like a crown. Viruses from different families look wildly different, some have lipid envelopes like corona, some do not like polio. HIV has fewer number of envelope proteins on it’s surface and they are irregularly spaced, as compared to say herpes. Look up cryo-EM studies of viral envelopes. HIV’s capsid (the protein shell directly below the envelope looks totally different than say herpes). Morphology and what types of nucleic acids are used in the replication are two of the major ways viruses are [classified.](_URL_0_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_classification"
]
] |
|
832rt5
|
Does the entropy of a system sometimes randomly decrease if its macrostate deviates from equilibrium?
|
Currently studying physics at uni, and in my statistical mechanics course notes I came across this statement:
> "the number of microstates corresponding to the equilibrium state is overwhelmingly large compared to the total number of microstates of the system – the probability of appreciable deviations from equilibrium is negligible."
Does this mean it is possible (however unlikely) that if you waited around long enough a system would randomly appreciably deviate from equilibrium and briefly lower its own entropy?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/832rt5/does_the_entropy_of_a_system_sometimes_randomly/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dveq7gk"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
" > Does this mean it is possible (however unlikely) that if you waited around long enough a system would randomly appreciably deviate from equilibrium and briefly lower its own entropy?\n\nYes.\n\nThe probability is **much** higher that the entropy will increase (or at least stay the same), but it can fluctuate downwards too."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3ep7ig
|
why is it considered moral to put a dog down when it gets rabies or becomes too vicious and endangers others, but immoral when we do the same to a vicious person whose existence endangers others?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ep7ig/eli5_why_is_it_considered_moral_to_put_a_dog_down/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cth2x78"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"the issue for humans is where to draw that line of \"to be killed\". some people would put that line at drug use, some people not even for mass murderers. Along with that, how do you make sure the process is completely unbaised and 100% right? there have been many cases of the death penalty being used on a person that was later found innocent. Its never a question if a dog has rabies or not"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
qyv3s
|
If you looked at the earth from 1000 lightyears away through some kind of ultra magnifying glass, would you see events that happened 1000 years ago?
|
I'm trying to wrap my mind around the concept of a light year. If a light year is the distance light can travel in a year, I'm assuming that means if you see something a light year away, you are seeing what happened to it a year ago - am I right?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qyv3s/if_you_looked_at_the_earth_from_1000_lightyears/
|
{
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20,
8,
3,
3,
2,
4
],
"text": [
"Yes, you are right. The way we see the stars, we see them how and where they existed long ago. If you're observing the sun from the Earth, and witness a coronal mass ejection, that ejection actually occurred about 8 minutes ago, and the light from it is just now reaching us.",
"Fairly certain that yes, in theory, if you can manage to get out that far while moving faster than light.",
"You are seeing light that has been travelling for one year, yes. Example: If I were to travel to a distance of 1 lightyear, and then send you a message, you wouldn't get the message for one year. If we were sending Morse code in light blinks I wouldn't get a reply for two years.",
"If you could instantly transport 1000 light-years away, turned around, looked at Earth with a giant telescope, then yes, you'd be seeing the Earth as it looked 1000 years ago. ",
"Think about this: You somehow get a giant mirror up far enough, you can look into your past happening real-time! Albeit rather pointless but mind blowing.",
"You might want to watch [Voices of a Distant Star](_URL_0_), it's an anime with plot revolving around communication over a lightyear distances and its consequences."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voices_of_a_Distant_Star"
]
] |
|
6j4ruv
|
What role (if any) did the United States play in China's Taiping Rebellion?
|
I can't seem to find any information that would indicate whether they had or not. I know there were some American Christian missionaries encouraging the millenarian, and the United States was largely occupied with its own civil war, but is there anything to be noted?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6j4ruv/what_role_if_any_did_the_united_states_play_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"djc3bae"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"If we set aside the missionaries, the answer is not much of one. Remember that the Taiping Civil War was largely concurrent with the Arrow War in addition to the US Civil War. You had various individual Americans such as Frederick Ward who were there as independent soldiers of fortune (see [this post from earlier today](_URL_0_) for a bit about him), but you didn't have much an active official American presence there otherwise. \n\nThere were Americans stationed in the area leading up to the Arrow War, and there were engagements between China and the US at the time, such as the Battle of the Pearl River Forts in the 1850s, but after the limited conflict between the two sides, they went back to peacemaking. The Treaty of Wanxia was only about a decade old at this point, and after the Battle of the Pearl River Forts America took up an official position of neutrality in the conflict between China and Britain.\n\nMost of the significant people involved on the US side to returned stateside for the Civil War if able, and by the time Hong had moved to Nanjing, there was very little official contact on the US side. America was hedging their bets at the beginning. By the end, missionaries and diplomats alike had become irritated with the Taiping government.\n\nThere's really not that much to be said about American interaction in an official capacity."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6j3sgf/was_the_ever_victorious_army_truly_ever_victorious/"
]
] |
|
2rm3cb
|
why hasn't life been replicated in the lab yet?
|
It seems like we know almost everything of what where the first steps required to create life, why haven't we been successfully at replicating this?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rm3cb/eli5why_hasnt_life_been_replicated_in_the_lab_yet/
|
{
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2,
2
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"text": [
"I got 2 answers;\n\n1) the ethical ramifications. \n\n2) there's always the possibility that someone has done it, and just not come forward because (see 1)",
"You're right, we can replicate life (e.g. cloning) but we can't create life from scratch. That is to say we have yet been able to create an artificial cell, where all parts are made from scratch. \n\nWe can create some individual components of a simple cell (e.g. amino acids, phospholipid bilayer, RNA) but we can't put them together so to speak. In an analogy we can create all the pieces to build a chair (e.g. legs, seat, back) but we can't put them together in a way that functions. We can't create an [artificial cell](_URL_0_) and then make it alive. \"In the area of synthetic biology, a \"living\" artificial cell has been defined as a completely synthetically made cell that can capture energy, maintain ion gradients, contain macromolecules as well as store information and have the ability to mutate. Such a cell is not technically feasible yet, but a variation of an artificial cell has been created in which a completely synthetic genome was introduced to genomically emptied host cells. (e.g. we take the DNA out of a living biological cell, and insert foreign DNA, and it still functions and is able to replicate).\" This is about as close as we have gotten, lots of people are working on this - but this isn't easy science. You can read more about creating artifical cells from scratch [here: the minimal cell](_URL_0_#The_minimal_cell).\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_cell",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_cell#The_minimal_cell"
]
] |
|
2dngwt
|
During the 18th and 19th centuries, most armies had a standardised coat colour - red for Britain, green for Russia, white for Austria. How were the colours determined and was consideration given to not using the same as a likely opponent?
|
I was playing me some Empire: Total War the other day and I noticed that Ancien Regime France and Austria both had white coats. Aside from white seeming more than usually impractical, it got me thinking about how these things were decided.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2dngwt/during_the_18th_and_19th_centuries_most_armies/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cjr7fxl",
"cjrsv9y"
],
"score": [
114,
3
],
"text": [
"So, generally during this time period, the color of the uniform would vary. While Britain became famous for their red coats, up until the Napoleonic era and afterward, the regimental uniforms would be up to the decision of the regimental officer, and the same for foreign regiments in the French service (such as the Swiss Guard, which wore red coats as well).\n\nCoat colors ended up being connected toward a nation's color or to the financial needs of a nation: Prussia, known for creating/finding Prussian blue, Britain had a connection to red from England, while France & Austria had large armies, so they couldn't afford the expensive dyes that smaller armies like Prussia and Britain would field. In fact, the reason why Royalist France and Habsburg Austria used white is due to the ease of making a uniform white again (simply dusting chalk over a stain). However, even then armies would have variation in collars and button colors, all of which are dependent on the commander's choice and the regiments tradition.\n\nFurther, the cost of the uniforms would be paid by both the state (usually the first uniform, a very basic set of uniforms) and the regimental commander (whom would use his regimental funds to either replace or add to the existing uniform given). From here, it would depend on the taste of the commander, if the commander didn't take all the money from the regimental funds or cared at all.\n\nSo, to the main problem about the perceived impracticality of similar uniforms, well that's the thing, the uniforms really didn't matter. While the uniforms do add to the perception of \"us vs. them\", it doesn't really matter when the house/national flag is at the head of the battalion/company. Flags were used to show who's who on the battlefield, which is why the capture of a standard is very important and daring (as the battalion/company would fight as hard as possible to keep it in order to keep their identity). From far away, it is easiest to tell who's who by the flag they're flying, is it the black and yellow of the Habsburgs or the white with gold fleur-de-lis of France?\n\nFurther, Empire Total War doesn't give the full range of a nations uniform variation as the mechanics of representing regiments is simplified for technology's sake. ",
"Russia's green came from the Romanov family. Although, as in other countries, the uniforms were not really standardized until the middle of the 18th century, and even then, it was only really the regular infantry who only wore green. In the case of Russia, the artillery wore red and blue, cuirassiers wore either white or blue, hussars and dragoons wore all manner of colors, and Cossacks wore pretty much what they pleased (depending on host. The Don Cossacks were a bit more organized and had a standard uniform of sorts.)\n\nI'd add that the \"white\" uniforms of France, Spain and Austria were usually not 'proper' white, but plain unbleached wool, as opposed to the bleached white of elite units, which was a major display of wealth, since they required constant maintenance to keep them the right color."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
zvo8d
|
Can anyone recommend any good books on the reign of Henry VIII?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zvo8d/can_anyone_recommend_any_good_books_on_the_reign/
|
{
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"c688nm5",
"c689f66",
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],
"score": [
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3,
3
],
"text": [
"I'm not a historian, but I read The Tudors: The Complete Story of Europe's Most Notorious Dynasty by G. J. Myer, and I really enjoyed it. A large part is about Henry VIII",
"It depends; how academic/dry/scholarly are you willing to go? Geoffrey Elton wrote some excellent stuff about the constitutional, administrative, and political changes of the Tudor period, significant enough in his view to warrant being called a 'revolution.' His work is, however, pretty short on 'juicy' or biographical information about the monarch. The other thing is you have to ignore what he says about Ireland, since it borders on racism and, while being a fair representation of what many British historians thought in the 60s, is discredited today.",
"Very easy to answer question. The Six Wives of King Henry VIII by David Starkey. In my humble opinion, the best book on Henry VIII and his wives and the political unrest of the time.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2j2nsh
|
bush v. gore. why did the supreme court stop the recount?
|
I've read it over and over and just don't understand how a STATEWIDE recount violated the Equal protection clause. If anything I believe Gore's request of the four counties to recount was a violation.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j2nsh/eli5_bush_v_gore_why_did_the_supreme_court_stop/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cl7u27z"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"The Court cited the Equal Protection Clause because each county's methods and standards for determining \"the voter's intent\" could vary. Two identical inconclusive ballots could be counted in two different ways if one was in Miami-Dade County and the other was in Broward County, so they ruled that each person's vote could not be given equal protection in a county-by-county statewide recount.\n\nThey didn't demand a new recount because they also ruled that there was no method for completing a statewide recount by the result certification deadline that *wouldn't* violate the Equal Protection Clause."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4kdsuq
|
how can the 35-year-old hp-12c calculator still be in production and selling for over $50?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kdsuq/eli5_how_can_the_35yearold_hp12c_calculator_still/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d3e4og1"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Basic math hasn't changed much in a few hundred years, so the calculator probably wouldn't either."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3dytx9
|
What are the main differences between Ancient British Cultures (Picts, Celts, Gauls etc)?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3dytx9/what_are_the_main_differences_between_ancient/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ctai1wd"
],
"score": [
12
],
"text": [
"OK, so this is a complicated question because with Britain we have an incredible level of archaeological detail. I'll give a *very* simplified version and am happy to expand on anything you would like.\n\nOK, so broadly speaking \"Celtic\" is a language group which incorporates the modern languages of Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Breton, Manx and Gaelic. Befire the Roman expansion however the Celtic languages spread from more-or-less eastern Spain all the way to Austria. Remember this is a language *family* and not a language, so think \"Romance\" rather than \"French\". In Britain, Celtic languages were spoken at least south of Scotland (will clarify soon) and possibly across the entire island. This language family is more or less correlated to the [La Tene archaeological culture](_URL_0_), so there seems to have been a real cultural complex spread across much of what is now northern and central Europe.\n\n\"Gaul\" was the Roman word for the territory of more-or-less modern France with some expanded borders, and the Gauls were those who lived within. Immediately before Roman conquest, southern Britain was very tightly bound to Gaul, to the point that southeast England was considered \"Belgic\". Because of this, it exhibited an unusually high level of material development that made it really distinctive from the rest of the island. To be absurdly simplistic, we can divide Britain into four major zones: southern England, in the \"Belgic\" zone, the decentralized and less materially rich zone of northern England, the still less materially rich zone going into Scotland, and then the densely populated and materially rich zone of northern Scotland and the islands. So even though much or all of the island was Celtic speaking there was a great deal of diversity in lifeways and culture.\n\nThe Picts emerge near the end of Late Antiquity and in the Early Middle Ages. they are a somewhat \"mysterious\" group in that establishing their cultural geneology and even their language is extremely difficult. They were probably the descendants of the Caledonians of the Roman times, but some have even suggested their language was non-Indo-European. They were certainly considered distinctive by Bede, who divided the peoples of Britain into fives groups of the Latins, Angles, Welsh, Scots and Picts. They are, unfortunately, a bit of a tangle to understand."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_T%C3%A8ne_culture#/media/File:Hallstatt.png"
]
] |
||
3namn5
|
how does formalin preserve dead organs?
|
Is there another chemical that is used for the same purpose?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3namn5/eli5_how_does_formalin_preserve_dead_organs/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cvmclpd"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"It stops decomposition. There are a lot of microbes and bacteria that would love to eat up those organs (destroying them in the process). There are plenty of other chemicals that could do that (like bleach). But bleach would also rip apart the cells and, as you might imagine, bleach the pigment out of the organ. A bleached organ with a lot of ruptured cells wouldn't look very nice, though, eh? So formalin is used because it kills bacteria without damaging the integrity of the cells.\n\nIt's also important to note that formalin works by being *poisonous as shit*. It won't preserve LIVING tissue, it'll kill the cells just as easily as it will any bacteria."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
8ndqgo
|
I have this theory that a lot of "traditional British food" became popular due to rationing in WW2. I am thinking of foods like Baked Beanz and tinned tomatoes. How accurate is this, and how big is the lasting impact of WW2 rationing on British cuisine?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8ndqgo/i_have_this_theory_that_a_lot_of_traditional/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dzvg6ka"
],
"score": [
61
],
"text": [
"Rationing didn't have much of a long-term impact on British cuisine, \"traditional British\" dishes tend to either pre-date the 20th century (fish & chips, various pies, stews, hotpots, roasts, puddings etc.) or post-date rationing (when \"traditional\" becomes more problematic, e.g. chicken tikka masala). Rationing restricted key elements of many dishes - meat, butter, cheese, fats, sugar - so wartime recipes were focused on improvisation and substitution, using unrationed foods (largely fresh fruit and vegetables) as far as possible. Bread, for example, was standardised as the National Loaf, a wholemeal recipe that made the most efficient use of flour but was not particularly appetising. King's College, London have the [Potato Pete recipe book] (_URL_1_) online featuring such delights as \"Pink and Green Purée\" (mashed potato with carrot and watercress and \"a small piece of margarine or dripping if it can be spared\"). [Lord Woolton Pie] (_URL_0_), named after the Minister of Food, was a vegetable pie topped with potato or wheatmeal pastry, \"forced on somewhat reluctant tables\" during the war and hardly a staple of post-rationing dinners; likewise [carrot flan] (_URL_4_). The replacement of ice creams with a [carrot onna stick] (_URL_3_) was another innovation rapidly forgotten post-war.\n\nI'm not sure I'd jump to tinned tomatoes being a traditional British food, except perhaps as part of a \"full English\" breakfast, but tinned foods were more of a luxury than a staple. In 1942 a points system of rationing was introduced to cover \"processed foods such as canned fish, meat, beans, and fruit; biscuits; rice, oats, and other cereal products; cheese and condensed milk; dried fruit and pulses; and certain preserves\". These were items where supply fluctuated, so guaranteed rations by weight were impractical, but a points system meant that the rich were unable to corner the market where they were available, and points values could be adjusted to reflect supply. A person had 20 points to spend in a month; in 1942 tomatoes required 6 points for a medium tin, 9 points for a large tin; tinned beans in tomato sauce were 4 points, tinned beans in brine were 1 point.\n\nA full English breakfast isn't a bad way of demonstrating the restrictions of rationing. Let's say you fry up four rashers of bacon, an egg, sausages, and fried bread, and serve it with tinned tomatoes, baked beans, and toast with plenty of butter. That's used up most of an entire **week's** ration for an adult (as shown in [this photo] (_URL_2_) from the Imperial War Museum).\n\nRationing did have a democratising effect on food consumption, and was in some ways quite healthy with the focus on fresh vegetables, but was hardly conducive to appetising dishes that would outlast the restrictions."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/photos/wooltonpie.jpg",
"http://www.kingscollections.org/exhibitions/archives/food/ww2/pete#Gallery",
"https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205195859",
"https://www.britishpathe.com/gallery/children-of-war/1",
"https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205132636"
]
] |
||
aplm1o
|
why are sperm count in men decreasing?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aplm1o/eli5_why_are_sperm_count_in_men_decreasing/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eg9cz1x"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"From _URL_0_:\n\n > The analysis did not explore reasons for the decline, but researchers said falling sperm counts have previously been linked to various factors such as exposure to certain chemicals and pesticides, smoking, stress and obesity.\n\n > In contrast, no significant decline was seen in South America, Asia and Africa. The researchers noted, however, that far fewer studies have been conducted in these regions.\n\n > Richard Sharpe at Edinburgh University added: \"Given that we still do not know what lifestyle, dietary or chemical exposures might have caused this decrease, research efforts to identify (them) need to be redoubled and to be non-presumptive as to cause.\"\n\nSo, the scientists are not sure about it yet.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sperm-count-dropping-in-western-world/"
]
] |
|
8iza3q
|
why can't the human heart "get used to" having to work harder in an individual with restricted arteries, causing it to get stronger under the increased work load like normal muscles?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8iza3q/eli5_why_cant_the_human_heart_get_used_to_having/
|
{
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18,
2
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"text": [
"well uuuh, it does... If you suffer from high blood pressure or clogged arteries your heart will grow to compensate for it. The issue is that youe heart is a muscle that is constantly active and having high BP or clogged arteries means your heart has to beat stronger which it can do for a while but eventually too much is simply too much",
"Actually it does, by a process called Starling’s Law. \n\nWhen the blood volume in the heart increases (in this case due to the decreased volume of the arteries), the heart expands to compensate and then contracts with greater force to ensure that the same amount of blood continues to flow.\n\nYou see this with short demand increases, like exercise, but when it’s a constant-ish increase over time the heart continues to stretch out but becomes unable to contract back to its original size.\n\nSo in a very basic way, that is how someone ends up left ventricular hypertrophy and/or congestive heart failure.",
"You are really talking about two different things here, without realizing it.\n\nFirst of all, the heart does \"get used to\" having to work harder. If it is pumping against a higher blood pressure (because the patient has hypertension and it isn't being treated), then over time it was develop hypertrophy. This sounds great, right? The heart is stronger! Except the problem is that it will have a harder time relaxing, so it is harder to fill with blood. This leads to congestive heart failure, which is bad. Please note, I'm not going to go into depth with congestive heart failure. Yes, there are two types, and I've only talked about one of them here, but I'm tired and this is ELI5.\n\nSecond, when you talk about restricted arteries, I presume you mean partial blockages in the coronary arteries. The issue here is a lack of blood making it to the heart muscle cells, not lack of strength of the heart itself. The muscle cells can only work so hard with a limited amount of oxygen and other nutrients.",
"It does but it's not a good plan for your heart.\n\nIf you have clogged arteries or anything like that will force your heart to work harder, you'll trigger a morphological change in the heart = > The (generally) left ventricule will get thicker and start to eat the the space for blood. \nSince the space for the blood is reduced, your heart will need to beat faster and faster in order to send a good amount of blood to your organs, you'll also increase the blood pressure to keep a decent blood provision to your organs and therefore will force your heart to work harder and harder and get thicker and eat up more space for the blood and so till the blood pressure gets so high that once the blood arrive to the heart in order to get pumped back into the organism, the left ventricule will get super strecthed and get \"loose\" : Then it will not be able to pump blood and you'll die.\n\nNote that you also have a risk to die of tachycardia because of how quick your heart needs to beat in order to pump blood.\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1c9f7p
|
Are there parts of the brain that can be physically damaged without immediate catastrophic effect?
|
If the brain is roughly separated into areas based on function, can certain areas of the brain be harmed without the person suffering immediate effect, like unconsciousness? I've heard of people walking around with brain injuries, I was wondering if we know the guidelines what when this is possible.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1c9f7p/are_there_parts_of_the_brain_that_can_be/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c9ec0ns",
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],
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6,
2
],
"text": [
"Yes, there are many areas of the brain that can be damaged without causing death/unconsciousness. The bizarre effects that have resulted from some such brain injuries has actually provided a huge amount of information about the brain. The most famous case is [Phineas Gage](_URL_0_)",
"As an important side note, damage to the reticular formation (in the brain stem) results in a coma; damage to the pons results in a persistent vegetative state, and damage to the thalamus results in locked-in syndrome, which means you are paralyzed basically from the neck down (there's no damage to your spine, but you're paralyzed because the thalamus is the brain structure that relays messages from your nervous system to your brain, and if that can't happen, then you won't be able to move). \n\n\n\nDamage to almost any other area, if small enough, will almost never be fatal (or will not result in coma or paralysis). I mean, you'll probably fall unconscious due to other circumstances surrounding the injury, because for you to damage your brain it must have been pretty traumatic in the first place. \n\n\n\nWe know a ton about other areas in the brain, and at the same time, we don't know everything. However, we have pretty good ideas about what other parts of the brain do; too many for me to write here (I actually started trying, and then realized I just couldn't do it justice because there's too much). Damage to some areas will impact the visual field; others will impact language; others will impact emotion; the list goes on and on and on. :)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage"
],
[]
] |
|
td3mj
|
Why does adding water to whiskey open up the flavor?
|
It seems like adding a bit of water or an ice cube makes flavors much more detectable, more so than just cutting down on the alcohol content alone would probably do.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/td3mj/why_does_adding_water_to_whiskey_open_up_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c4ln70n"
],
"score": [
16
],
"text": [
"Adding water to whiskey affects two things.\n\n1. Cuts down on the alcohol content, so you're burned less by the alcohol and can taste more of the other flavors.\n\n2. It releases more of the aromatics in the whiskey that are not water soluble. Smell has a huge impact on taste, so getting a bigger whiff of the aromatics helps the taste.\n\nThere are a lot of other drinks you can do this with, [notably coffee.](_URL_0_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/dining/28curious.html?pagewanted=all"
]
] |
|
eloimr
|
How much variation tends to exist between fingerprints, assuming no two fingerprints are the same?
|
I suppose another way to word this is, can two unrelated people out of approximately 7.6 billion total have the same fingerprint?
I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that absolutely nobody has the same fingerprint.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/eloimr/how_much_variation_tends_to_exist_between/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fdkpl8s"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"So at first level detail you have four basic ‘shapes’ within fingerprints - arches, tented arches, loops and whorls. You can have just a single one of these on each finger or occasionally you will get combinations such as two interlocked loops etc... Each person will have one of these on each finger.\n\nThese shapes are created by the ridges on your fingers (second level detail). Each ridge can be complete and stand alone, or it can have breaks in it, or it can split and join up with adjacent ridges, or bifurcate (split in two) and create two ridges. Combinations of this can form shapes such as islands (very short ridge section) or lakes (a bifurcation that appears for a short distance and then joins back into a single ridge). Each person’s ridges will have breaks and joins and bifurcations in different places.\n\nThen, on each ridge, there are tiny pores where sweat and oil come out. Again, each person’s pores have slightly different spacing and form their own pattern (third level detail).\n\nSo, although it is theoretically possible that each of those three levels of features could exactly line up twice in two separate people, the chance is so astronomically small that it is considered that nobody will have the same.\n\nHowever, small fragments of fingerprints can have very similar features between people. Often, when searching fingerprints on the police databases, multiple ‘hits’ will appear. This is because it is actually far more common to get only a fragment of a fingerprint than a whole one at a crime scene (or at least only a fragment that isn’t smudged from the natural movement when a person touches a surface). In these cases, each fingerprint has to be compared manually to see any tiny details (like fainter second level detail or any visible third level details)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1c048q
|
how are online games (say wow or guild wars, etc) synchronized over all the players' individual games?
|
When I say "all" I don't mean every single player, but all the involved players. As AnteChronos mentioned, this usually has to do with a certain map or view distance.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1c048q/how_are_online_games_say_wow_or_guild_wars_etc/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c9bqesy"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"1. They're not synchronized over *all* players' games. The players are distributed across different \"realms\" or \"worlds\", that are actually different physical servers, and your game is (usually, barring specific cross-server interactions) never updated about players on other server.\n\n2. The server only sends you data about other players that are within your view distance.\n\nSo in short, you only get sent data about nearby players who are on the same server as you, which is a tiny, *tiny* fraction of the total number of players."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
9xe3vo
|
why do humans feel the need to do things that are bad for us?
|
Why sometimes can we not help but hurt ourselves or others? Eat too much, lie, cheat, smoke, have a sedentary life style, drink etc...
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9xe3vo/eli5_why_do_humans_feel_the_need_to_do_things/
|
{
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"text": [
"The majority of those things \"feel\" good. I don't think humans as a whole feel the need to be self destructive. Its more of a byproduct of the things they enjoy. ",
"Because unfortunately our lifestyles have evolved faster than our genes. If you look at humans as animals that went through natural selection just like any other, a lot of our \"destructive\" behaviors made sense in the context of nature and survival, but things became so much more convenient and we haven't yet evolved to really deal with that. Like, our bodies only ever expected to find sweetness in fruits and the like, which were healthy to eat. It never expected that we'd extract sweeteners and put them into processed foods. So our body doesn't \"know\" that it's bad, it thinks it's good, and it rewards us with the enjoyment of eating something sugary, even though it's actually not at all what evolution intended. This applies to many other things, though perhaps not as easily explainable for some things. ",
" > Eat too much\n\nThe body regulates a lot of things for us automatically, blood pressure, volume, oxygen level, water, pH, CNS. Calories are one thing we have to monitor ourselves, and we did passively for the longest period due to cost. In the last 50 years kcal/$ has risen astronomically as so we need to track it manually since we can afford so much.\n\nEvidently, the education on TDEE and proper portion sizes for this is lacking in some parts(America, UK, Australia) and not others(Asia).\n\n > lie\n\nLying is advantageous in many ways and there are levels to the severity. If you're aware of the others lack of information and that fear of consequences is so great then honesty becomes the worst option.\n\n > cheat\n\nThis can mean several things, cheating a test, a video game, a relationship. If the value of the obtained result is greater than the consequence then a clearer path is made. On the subject of cheating a test, the value achieved in a particular mark(or certificate) is held in higher regard than the actual knowledge, the mark or cert has become treated as the goal.\n\n > have a sedentary life style\n\nRegular exercise is painful, energy and time consuming, without immediately benefits. It was always in the bodies best interest to conserve energy for when absolutely necessary, and it was necessary in our hunter gatherer lifestyle far more often than our current one. The default is still to conserve, its a conscious effort to override that.\n\n > smoke, drink\n\nNicotine and tobacco are well documented addictive substances, and [there is some data](_URL_0_) pointing to alcohol being a fast acting anti-depressant, giving you a buzz. Its also extremely easy to produce. The nature of eventually feeling as if your sober self is not the 'real' you is the transition point for user to abuser.",
"in addition to the evolutionary/biological reasons given by others, there's also the \"lack of immediacy\" to most of the downsides. \n\nEven if, intellectually, we know there are downsides to our actions, unless there is a reasonable chance of them being experienced within a short time frame, we disassociate the \"penalty\" from the \"pleasure\". This decreases the perceived future impact of the downside, meaning we are more likely to repeat the \"bad\" behaviour\n\ni.e. if I can get a short-lived feeling from a huge/salty/fatty/whatevery meal, because there is no immediate downside, I can justify it to myself (e.g. it's ok, I'll just eat lettuce for the next two days). \n\nWhen I next feel like a similar meal, I think \"well, it didn't do me any harm last time\" - and before you know it, habit has formed. \n\nIt generally takes a major wake up call (heart-attack, diabetes etc) to shake someone out of these habits (and even then, doesn't always stick)"
]
}
|
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[] |
[
[],
[],
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"https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12867"
],
[]
] |
|
216003
|
why are so many people struggling with basic grammar - you're/your, it's/its, there/they're, etc.
|
I don't consider myself a grammar nazi. Even my title is probably not grammatically correct but I am curious as to why so many people are having hard time remembering when to use _your_ and when to use _you're_. I rarely correct people on this and mostly it's because I am confused while reading their text until realizing they've made a mistake.
So what's the deal? One theory would be the widespread usage of mobile phones and the way their keyboards are designed but that doesn't explain why I am seeing many people using _you're_ instead of _your_. Is it really that hard to learn those basic rules? I am not a native English speaker so I'm probably missing something. Thanks.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/216003/eli5_why_are_so_many_people_struggling_with_basic/
|
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"Maybe it's because a lot of people now don't read actual books or online stories that are edited and have to have proper grammar. They read text messages, blog posts, and reddit articles that are probably not grammatically correct and either never learn the correct way or just see that other people don't seem to care so they shouldn't have to worry about it either. It's also weird to me when I see people who spend most of their day typing things on a keyboard who still have to look at the keyboard to hit the right letters.",
"Many people simply don't care enough to pay attention to the difference. It really doesn't matter to most people if you use \"it's\" or \"its\" as long as they feel like their point is getting across. For instance, in the sentence that you just read, I could have used \"there\" or \"they're\" instead of \"their\", which are both technically been wrong but turn the sentence into complete nonsense. There is only one \"their/there/they're\" that works in that sentence, so many people don't care which one that they use because they feel like their meaning is unchanged regardless of whether or not they use the correct one.",
" > Is it really that hard to learn those basic rules?\n\nIt's not, but if you don't ever have to write in a formal context, there might not be any incentive to learn.",
"In my experience, English classes didn't really teach grammar theory all that heavily, focusing on \"you do this here\", almost competely ignoring the \"why\". If you're lucky, you'll have it brought up in a foreign langauge course(required in my state), but I've also had teachers there that'll dance the hell away from basic grammatical terminology(like \"umlaut\" in a *German* class). Thus, you learn a number of special cases that are easy to forget instead of a few general rules that'd be far easier to retain.",
"So, before an answer can be attempted, a few misconceptions are going to have to be addressed:\n\n1. What you think of as the things that determine whether a text is grammatically correct aren't actually, linguistically speaking (that is to say, according to the scientific model of language), the things that determine grammatical. That is to say, what you seem to think of as being 'grammatically correct' in English is only correct within a very specific, and very artificial, prestige dialect that, in many ways, has never actually been spoken save by people who are trying way too hard. English, by virtue of its enormous size and many other factors, is a language with very many dialects, and there are some pretty significant grammatical differences between, e.g. Standard Written English (the aforementioned prestige dialect) and African American Vernacular English. The extremely important thing to know is that someone saying something that very ungrammatical in SWE could (and probably is - native speakers of do not make grammatical mistakes very frequently; they have an enormous amount of practice speaking correctly) be perfectly grammatical in AAVE or any number of other very widespread and very well-attested dialects.\n\n2. You're in part confusing orthography with grammar. I say 'in part' because the ubiquity of written language in many parts of the world nowadays has confused the matter. But: the core of language, in many respects, is spoken, and in many (perhaps all) dialects of spoken English, 'you're' & 'your', 'it's' and 'its', 'to, 'two' & 'too' are all homophonous, and there need be no distinction made between them because context can perfectly (or, at least, almost perfectly) disambiguate. This is also the case in written language: notice how you're always able to understand what they meant when someone writes 'you're' in place of 'your', because the alternative - that they are writing is actually what they mean - would result in a grammatically nonsensical sentence. So, because many people who don't spend a great deal of time interacting with written language in a dialect that strictly distinguishes orthographically between those words (e.g. SWE), many people aren't at all used to having to make split-second distinctions between those words, and can often get it 'wrong'.\n\nIn many ways, it *would* be hard for you, as a non-native speaker of English, to understand (at least, directly; the situation is the same, presumably, for non-native speakers of your native language), because you are used to having to be constantly aware of your English, while native speakers have been producing and understanding English since before they have memories of being able to.",
"Spelling is not useful grammar. People are not struggling with it. It is not a pertinent aspect to achieving anything. Developing hyper-accurate yur, yor, you're, and your abilities does not create better grammar. People are pointlessly sensitive to these non-elements of converse. They hang on them expecting the world to stop before they can proceed with understanding something that others smoothly integrate into their consciousness. \n\nCommunication is the transfer of thoughts. If you're having trouble picking up the nuance of other people's messages because they've dropped in a few smoothly negligible grammatical errors that's your problem, not theirs.",
"I can answer the **it vs it's thing**. I always stuff it up, because my mind sees ' as possessive. As such, if I write \"the car lost it's wheel\" that looks correct to me, despite being cognitively aware it's wrong. I have to actually read it as \"it is\" in my mind to get it right."
]
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|
10a8w6
|
How many nukes would it take to end the world?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10a8w6/how_many_nukes_would_it_take_to_end_the_world/
|
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"That could depend entirely on your intent, you could potentially do tremendous damage by targeting something specifically in order to damage the environment instead of humans. There have also been hypothetical \"doomsday devices\" that could kill most life on Earth with a single weapon by polluting the atmosphere with radioactive Cobalt-60. Alternatively you could target something like a nuclear fuel storage facility to scatter fallout all over the place. There were a few tests of nuclear detonations in space during the cold war which also destroyed several satellites with EMP, you could do substantial damage to our infrastructure with a few weapons to knock out most/all of the thousands of satellites in orbit as well as simultaneously destroying the fiber optic cables running under the sea to cut off most global communication. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
37f24e
|
water vapor vs. steam vs. mist vs. fog vs. cloud
|
Are these all different names for the same water in air?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37f24e/eli5_water_vapor_vs_steam_vs_mist_vs_fog_vs_cloud/
|
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"In a sense, they do just describe water in air, but they also provide you an idea of what that water is like. Basically, different connotations\n\nVapor: gaseous and dispersed\n\nSteam: high pressure/temperature, maybe more tightly packed (Vapor you might not see, steam you would see)\n\nMist: ambient (it's from the natural environment; steam doesn't have this conntation, but it definitely can be from natural sources). Doesn't really obstruct view that much or is only in a limited area. \n\nFog: obstructs view, covers a wider area. \n\nCloud: Altitude is high. "
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
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|
333vhg
|
say i have a bad cold with an impossibly stuffed up nose. no way to breathe through my nostrils. now say i get kidnapped, and they put duct tape over my mouth. would my body react to un-stuff my nose so i could breathe to live?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/333vhg/eli5_say_i_have_a_bad_cold_with_an_impossibly/
|
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"Not quickly enough, I don't think. One thing I've found that sometimes helps is to just put a finger on one nostril and collapse it for about 30 seconds. Sometimes that clears it up. Assuming they tied your hands behind your back, you might be able to push your nose against a table leg or something to accomplish this in the ~2 minutes you have before you black out, assuming you got a good breath of air first. You could also try just warning your kidnappers first before they tape you, as if they are going to the trouble of kidnapping they presumably don't want you dead in the immediate term. ",
"I wouldn't worry about it. Next time you have duct tape (and preferably no facial hair) take a strip and put it over your mouth and try to get it off without your hands. It's absolutely trivial. The whole \"I have duct tape over my mouth so now I can't talk\" thing is just for the movies. Honestly it's one of their sillier gags since anyone with a roll of the gray, shiny stuff can show how implausible it is. \n\nAs for your actual question in a non-duct-tape scenario, I can tell you that in my experience adrenaline has a lovely head-clearing effect. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a normal reaction to extreme fear. ",
"You know when you're almost done with your braces and the orthodontist gives you those long rubber bands to wear at night that you're supposed to fasten all over your mouth to tighten up the gaps but you can't really open your mouth while wearing them? I had a bad cold and couldn't breathe through my nose - totally had a panic attack after I put them on and realised I couldn't breathe. Cut them off with scissors. ",
"No. Having experienced this first hand during training I can tell you that your nose does not magically unblock itself. You suffocate and pass out. Hopefully your captors notice and remove the tape or you'll just be another body waiting to be identified. ",
"I do a lot of kinky play, and I don't know if all bodies are the same, but I absolutely CANNOT have my mouth covered, filled or otherwise occupied while I have a bad cold. I can't even perform oral sex with a cold, (should I want to).\n\nI can imagine in an intense enough scenario adrenaline would reduce inflammation at least some for some amount of time. But I find I also need more oxygen *(breathe more heavily etc)* when my adrenaline's pumping. \n\nBut I've definitely had to stop kinky activities because I could not breathe and it was just not getting any better. I also would not top in such a case, due to my own experience.\n\n*(Honestly, I was just as scared of literally choking on my own snot as I was of suffocation.)*\n\nDuct tape only works if you go all the way around the head several-many times. (Can rip a lot of hair out though, depending on hair type and removal process.) Just a short piece over the mouth you can work off in a matter of seconds. If you want to make it so the person can't talk you need to immobilize the tongue, muffling screams mostly just needs adequate gap-free barriers.",
"[\"do not gag me, I have a terrible cold\"](_URL_0_) from Infinite Jest. This exact scenario occurs. The victim tears muscles in his abdomen trying to clear even a little bit of one nostril but he eventually expires. Horrific to read.",
"That depends on why your nasal passage is blocked. If it is swollen turbinates then you will probably sufficate. I say this as someone with horrible allergies who had to have them removed. If I had my mouth duct taped over before the surgery I would have suffocated, after I'm good to go now. So if it's mucus I bet it would be fine, but if it is swollen glands in your nose you're out of luck. So I would say it depends on what is blocking on a given instance. Hopefully explains the conflicting answers.",
"Was racing not long ago and my sinuses were completely blocked. Allergies had done their thing and I was an official member of the mouth breather club. Going through a corner the car got loose unexpectedly and after gathering it up I was still getting the adrenaline rush. Sinuses were immediately clear for the next 15 seconds then closed back up after the rush wore off.\n\nExtremely frustrating that the swollen sinuses can be turned off yet my body just doesn't.\n\n\nI'm not sure what the technical term is. Could have been adreneline or some other system doing it's thing"
]
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"https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1XgPBQAAQBAJ&pg=PP175&lpg=PP175&dq=do+not+gag+me+I+have+a+terrible+cold&source=bl&ots=sPhMhY01xY&sig=Lt5uryPUqdsVAg3ZoObUd2xDW68&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fRo0VY-ODMP0asu0gEA&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=do%20not%20gag%20me%20I%20have%20a%20terrible%20cold&f=false"
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] |
||
d5wqkj
|
would it be possible to divert the nile to irrigate the sahara?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d5wqkj/eli5_would_it_be_possible_to_divert_the_nile_to/
|
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"Yes. But then the rest of lower Egypt would have to go without the Nile which would make it a desert."
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[] |
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||
2vb0b0
|
when countries like north korea spend money on war supplies like missiles, nukes, guns, planes etc. who sells it to them?
|
How do they get it?
Edit: Obligatory woohoo! Front page! And r.i.p. inbox
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vb0b0/eli5_when_countries_like_north_korea_spend_money/
|
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"The North Koreans have purchased weapons largely from the Soviets/Russians and Chinese over the decades as well as having left overs going back as far as WWII from American and Western manufacturers. They have their own arms manufacturing industry which produces two Main Battle Tanks based on Russian/Chinese designs as well as smaller weapons. Some of the tech was purchased from the Russians when the Soviet Union collapsed nominally as scrap metal, but the North Koreans were able to learn from it to produce their own tanks. The have purchased Scuds (Soviet origin missiles) from Egypt, and now produce their own variant. \n\nAs far as nukes they purchased a lot of the know how from Pakistan illegally. The former head of Pakistan's nuclear program is in prison for selling secrets to the North Koreans. \n\nBasically anyone in the world except the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Western Europe will sell to them. And even some of those countries will sell \"non-military\" items that end up being used in the military (the NKs have a number of German trucks). Depending on how public the deal is, how much U.S. pressures the other country not to sell, and the age/design of the weapons anything could be sold to them. Selling off the last generation of weapons to other countries is a time honored tradition, this is a lot of the stuff NK buys from overseas. ",
"[In reality it's all the same people.](_URL_0_) \n\nIran, North Korea at SOFEX in Jordan purchasing the same stuff from the same people. Only they pretend they don't sell them weapons because it's dual purpose. \n\nSo while the official story is some sort of black market that's not [the truth](_URL_1_).\n\nWatch this video you'll be shocked. Actually watch more of the Vice videos and you'll learn so much.",
"Related question: How is North Korea able to have a nuclear weapons program, develop it's own cruise missiles and advanced weaponry, etc. while it's so isolated from the rest of the world? Where do the scientists and engineers working on these programs get their education?",
"Whoever does it, I'd probably not see it as 'evil' thing to do, it's just bussiness - if I don't sell it to them, there're 5 other guys waiting for this opportunity. \n\nI mean if they get these missile heads from Pakistan instead of China, what it's going to help? NK will end up having more or less what they need and I'll stay dry in terms of bussiness.\n\nWe have been shipping some stuf from Czech Republic to North Korea and I don't see anything wrong about it.",
"The five biggest arms dealers in the world, who by astonishing coincidence are also the five permanent members of the United Nations security council.",
"In N.Korea's case, they've got \"co-belligerent\" friends in Russia & the PRC. In Russia's case, our embargo incentivises them to sell elsewhere. In this instance they capture revenue from N.Korea - not that they'd act any differently anyway. \n\nEven w/o their help, there's always someone who's willing to turn a blind eye to further a political agenda or make themselves rich. \n\nDuring WWII, records found after the end of the war showed that Texaco (yes, the Texas Oil Company) was selling gasoline to \"neutral\" Spain, knowing full well that Spain sold it to the Nazis in Germany and kept the war going years longer than it would have been without their help. Texaco helped fuel concentration camps like Auschwitz, the Blitz, Germany's heavy water experiments, et al. Germany had to have external sources of petroleum, so without outside help from Texaco and others, the Nazi war machine would have ground to a halt.\n\nWithout outside help, the current N.Korean regime would cease to be in relatively short order.",
"They deal with third parties and trade in gold.",
"North Korea is like China's idiot cousin. China is successful and has a lot of money while North Korea does dumb things and can't get things on track. China feels bad that their cousin isn't as good as it, so they give them some stuff in hopes they'll get better... and thus begins a vicious cycle. \n\nRussia will sell you anything as long as they can still out arm you. They've sold weapons to pretty much everyone. ",
"Depending on the nation/warlord/dictator...everyone. Russia, China, France, Germany, UK, US, etc...and arms dealers. ",
"North Korea sells a lot of its ballistic missile technology to countries like Syria, Libya, Iran, Egypt, etc. It's a self-perpetuating industry when you don't feel the need to reallocate funds (to, for example, help feed your starving citizens). This is a big fear about Pyongyang's nuclear program. The government manufactures and sells opium abroad, it sells missiles on the black market, and it is fairly likely that once NK can efficiently produce HUE it will also begin to sell it abroad.",
"This may be a different ELI5, but where does NK get the money to buy any of these weapons? They are resource deficient and from my understanding, have little to no exported goods.",
"Watch this brilliant documentary. It will explain everything _URL_0_",
"Black market arms dealers, rogue nations like Libya, ideological supporters like China, politicrats like Russia trying to keep the West occupied.",
"Russia, usually using Belarus as a proxy seller, and China. They have some domestic weapons manufacturing too but all told they don't actually buy a whole lot of new equipment because they are awash in old comblock surplus from the coldwar era when those same countries were giving the stuff away for free to smaller communist nations.",
"Most weapons sold to small countries and military groups come from arms dealers. When there is a war or if new weapon tech is released, arms dealers get a deal on the old, used weapons. They turn around and sell them to buyers that need weapons. They don't care who it is as long as they get a big sale.\n\nA good movie to learn about this is 'Lord of War'. ",
"Im hoping someone see's this with some knowledge, where does NK get money to purchase things?",
"Probably anywhere and I don't think U.S. arms dealers have any scruples about selling to them though they might have to go through intermediaries. The profit margin has no ethics.",
"Russia, iran, china will sell to North Korea. They also their own military research and manufacturing plants.",
"During the 1980s, North Korea emerged as a significant arms exporter of inexpensive, technically unsophisticated, but reliable weapons. Clients are Third World countries that lack the resources and time to develop these systems.\nThe Middle East has been the major market for North Korean arms, with Iran and Libya making most purchases. Sales to Iran peaked in the early 1980s at the height of the Iran-Iraq war. These sales probably constitute about 90 percent of North Korea's arms exports, making this relationship most valuable. Other Middle East clients probably include Egypt and Syria. Through Middle Eastern arms sales, North Korea gains hard currency, alternative oil sources, and access to restricted technology.\n\nPrecise figures on North Korea's arms trade, economy, and foreign trade balance are not available. Rough estimates indicate North Korea earned over $4 billion from 1981 through 1989. Arms sales during the peak year 1982 represented nearly 37 percent of North Korea's total exports.\n\nBargain-basement prices sometimes conceal commercial and political motives. For example, in April 1986, North Korea made a sizable sale of domestically manufactured rifles to Peru. Peru's government justified the purchase because the price was 75 to 80 percent below world market price. North Korean motives for the sale combined the desire to earn foreign exchange with improving relations and, in this case, increased visibility in Latin America.\n\nThe weapons North Korea exports include large quantities of munitions, small arms, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, air defense artillery, SCUD-B short-range ballistic missiles, and some naval craft. North Korea also has served as a conduit for selected arms shipments from China, including those to Iran and possibly Iraq. These arrangements provided China with plausible denials of CSS-N-2/SILKWORM antishipping missile sales in 1987 and 1988. China claimed third parties beyond it's control provided Iran SILKWORMs. Arms from the Soviet Union also may have been channeled in the same manner.\n\nAlthough North Korean efforts to gain support in international forums such as the Nonaligned Nations have had limited success, providing military training and advisers to Third World recipients plays a large role in North Korea's foreign political and economic initiatives. Latin American or Sub-Saharan nations that normally do not support either North or South Korean agendas sometimes temporarily support the North to obtain arms or economic help. To such nations North Korea presents itself as a fellow revolutionary struggling with constraints of relations with the superpowers. Small countries, hesitant to commit to a military relationship with one of the superpowers, sometimes find North Korea small enough and far enough away that it does not pose a threat. North Korean earnings from such ventures --- either in hard currency, offset agreements, or political chits to be redeemed later --- apparently are worth the effort.\n",
"Arms dealing corporations that profit no matter who gets killed. And countries who either need income or have no qualms about supplying wars.",
"all these responses remind me of a world like the one in Metal Gear Solid 4. \"War has changed. It's no longer about nations, ideologies or ethnicity. It's an endless series of proxy battles, fought by mercenaries and machines. War, and its consumption of life, has become a well-oiled machine.\" - at least prematurely",
"NATO. You would be surprised how much of the good guys weapons end up in the bad guys hands. At the end of the day, patriotism is out the window. Its all about the mighty dollar.",
"\"Why are you asking?\"\n\n\"...No reason\"",
"We'd sell to North Korea but So Korea has more $...Boeing sold $7.2 billion in 1 deal to So Korea\n\n_URL_0_",
"Everyone who's got surplus, even the US and Israel (obviously not officially). Due to the sanction regime, North Korea can't denounce them even if it gets cheated. Kinda how thieves don't go to the precint for protection from homeowners when they get caught.\n\nBut generally, their inventory is soviet-era hardware from China and the USSR.",
"Saw a Vice documentary once that showed what was Happening in Afghanistan while the US was in there. \n\n\" The final stop was a nearby scrap yard where piles and piles of new engines, tires, generators have been systematically severed from their original vehicles by US military contractors. They are then sold to local Afghani black market venders. Corrupt US contractors then use the invoices to justify ordering more in an endless supply from the Department of Defense. The corruption in Afghanistan rips off the hardworking American people whose taxes are funding this trillion dollar nightmare of a war.\"\n\nBasically in order to fill the budget and get a new vehicle some of these soldiers where scraping while cars because the engine had a Bullet in it. The Tali ban would buy them replace a part and drive them off. ",
"The top comment refers to North Korea specifically. I don't know exactly which countries OP was referring to when he said \"***like*** *North Korea*\", but the good ol' USS of A is the number one arms dealer in the world, having supported at least 25 murderous dictatorships as they \"fought terrorism\". "
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[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.ibtimes.com/boeing-ba-f-15-silent-eagle-south-korean-air-force-eyeing-us-fighter-jet-enhance-seouls-military"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
2hp03b
|
Are there any animals who stay strictly in the air?
|
I was thinking, there are (obviously) animals who are always on land, and some that are always in the water. Are there some that are always in the air?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2hp03b/are_there_any_animals_who_stay_strictly_in_the_air/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ckur71y"
],
"score": [
21
],
"text": [
"The closest there is to an animal that spends their entire life in the air is probably the Alpine Swift. They have recently been found to spend upwards of 200 days in a row airborne and only land at their breeding ground. They eat, sleep, and drink all while airborne.\n\nNature Paper:\n_URL_0_\n\nBut probably easier to read the Wikipedia article:\n_URL_1_\n\nI suppose that, theoretically, creatures like bacteria could spend longer airborne but I'm not aware of any studies done (they'd be very hard to track individually unless we find some type of bacteria that spends its whole life cycle airborne)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131008/ncomms3554/full/ncomms3554.html",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_swift"
]
] |
|
2jafnu
|
Question about Saladin and King Richard's relationship during the Third Crusade.
|
I know Saladin (Salah ad-Din) and King Richard (the Lionheart) had a mutual respect for each other as enemies, and even corresponded with each other at times. My question is: do any of these letters still exist, and if not, are there any existing primary sources that might give some insight into this relationship?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jafnu/question_about_saladin_and_king_richards/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cla7o0m"
],
"score": [
13
],
"text": [
"To my knowledge, none of the letters supposedly exchanged between Saladin and Richard I survive to this day. However, one of our best sources for the Third Crusade is chronicle evidence, supplied from both the Latin and Arabic traditions. Some of these have been (mercifully) translated into English through the Crusade Texts in Translation series, published by Ashgate. Of particular interest for the Third Crusade is Ibn al-Athir's chronicle الكامل في التاريخ (The Complete History) and the *Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi*. A couple other authors have also compiled other sources related to this crusade.\n\nD.S. Richards, *The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi'l-ta'rikh. Vol. 2*. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.\n\nHelen J. Nicholson, *The Chronicle of the Third Crusade: The Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi*. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997.\n\nPeter W. Edbury, *The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade: Sources in Translation*. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996.\n\nGabrieli's *Arab Historians of the Crusades* probably has some useful sources as well, although I cannot remember which ones off the top of my head.\n\nFinally, I would caution readers to be wary of popular histories with regard to the Third Crusade. The relationship between Richard I and Saladin has been sensationalized in the past as a sort of clash of civilizations, which doesn't necessarily hold up under closer scrutiny. James Reston Jr.'s *Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade* is particularly guilty of this, in my opinion. For narrative overviews of the Crusade, I would recommend sticking to Thomas Madden, Jonathan Riley-Smith, Steven Runciman (a bit dated, but still very useful), and Christopher Tyerman. For narratives focusing on the Islamic side of things, try Carole Hillenbrand and Paul Cobb. Hope that is useful!"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
bpj1st
|
how do printers work so accurately and fast?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bpj1st/eli5_how_do_printers_work_so_accurately_and_fast/
|
{
"a_id": [
"entxog0",
"enuyidl"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"I don’t know what exactly you are looking for as an answer... \n\nThey work accurately because the motor that controls the printing head works in very small increments (typically 96 positions per inch) and the ink injectors can inject extremely small quantities of ink.\n\nThey work fast because the motor is fast.",
"Inventions build upon each other. \n\nIn the early 80's I worked on the first laser printer, the [zerox 9700](_URL_0_), a 120 page per minute, b & w 300x300 dpi laser printer. It was about the size of the car and at the very leading edge of technology.\n\nAs computers got faster, the 600 dpi was possible. Color was added. larger paper. Speed is limited by paper path and need for speed, the 35 year old printer would still be faster than most printers on the market today."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.cartridgesdirect.com.au/br-sca-blog/post/image3-min.png"
]
] |
||
2r3wve
|
all the types of steaks, such as sirloin, prime rib, filet, ribeye etc. what should i consider when choosing which one to order in a restaurant?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2r3wve/eli5_all_the_types_of_steaks_such_as_sirloin/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cnc7fi2",
"cnc7wgj"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Personally, i think ribeye is the best all around for flavor, tenderness, texture and reasonable pricing. Of course, some of that depends on where you buy it, and how you have it cooked.",
"In the US, Beef has 3 unofficial ratings, Select, Choice, and Prime, with prime being the best. This is based primarily on the amount of fat, i.e. 'marbling' within the muscle. \n\nIf ordering a steak at a restaurant, it will either Choice or Prime. (Angus is another variety, similar to choice). Always go for ribeye (bone-in), or porterhouse, (which consists of Strip on one side and Tenderloin on the other, with a bone between). A cut with the bone in provides more flavor in my opinion. \n\nNow if you're really lucky, (and in Japan), Kobe beef is available. This is above prime on the marbling scale and looks delicious."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2ph9rv
|
If there are only 5 white rhinos left is there enough diversity in the gene pool to breed them back to non borderline extinction levels?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ph9rv/if_there_are_only_5_white_rhinos_left_is_there/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmxw4tq"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"It's hard to say, since inbreeding problems are quite specific to each species and context. For example, pretty much all the golden hamsters in captivity are descended from one batch of siblings captured in the 30's, and they seem to be doing ok. But other species don't do so well in similar situations."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2ahzhh
|
how do genders like genderqueer, genderfluid, etc work? do any scientists believe in them or are they just teens online trying to be special?
|
If you aren't a hermaphrodite how can you be two genders?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ahzhh/eli5_how_do_genders_like_genderqueer_genderfluid/
|
{
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"civb6mp",
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"civbk2l",
"civbn22",
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],
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5,
15,
8,
2
],
"text": [
"It is actually recognized as being something that legitimately happens to people, not just something they're making up. Gender Identity Disorder or Gender Dysphoria are the names given to it in medical and psychological terms.",
"Being a hermaphrodite is the physical issue of having parts of 2 sexes. Being genderqueer means your gender, or how you perceive yourself, has elements of both male and female and may not be predominately one or the other. You could be intersex and genderqueer but you can be one without the other. \n\nWhile many teenagers do identify as genderqueer, this is a legitimate belief and completely exists. Also, teenagers in this position may be trying to gain attention or appear unique, but they also may just feel out of place in traditional gender roles, or continue to identify as genderqueer as an adult.",
"Sex is what you have between your legs. True hermaphrodites are so rare that they basically don't exist; a fetus can go down the male track or the female track or split the difference and wind up [intersex](_URL_1_). So, male, female, none or intersex.\n\nGender is what's in your head, and is something you'd ask an anthropologist, a sociologist or possibly your parents about. It is a social and cultural thing that never translates well. Many cultures have [more than two genders](_URL_0_).\n\n\n",
"The first thing you need to understand is that sex and gender are two separate concepts. Sex is biologically motivated: male, female, or intersex (and transsexuals if you don't count those in any of the aforementioned categories). Gender, on the other hand, is a social construct.\n\nGender roles are historically constituted \"scripts\" that get passed down through the generations. Historically, they have been treated as intrinsically entwined with sex. We are typically taught the scripts from a young age, and repeatedly perform our gender throughout our lives much like actors (metaphorically). \n\nGender characteristics can range from color preferences to hair length to (historically) dominated career choices. If you're gendered as a girl, examples would be pink, long, and nurse, respectively. But the interesting part is that these concepts are (indirectly) taught at such a young age, that they become internalized. Pink actually becomes a little girl's favorite color. And with enough generations and people going through this same process, people grow up to see this relationship between gender and sex as intrinsically linked.\n\nWhile there are probably some teenagers identifying as genderfluid or whatever for attention and probably don't really understand what they're talking about, the concept of genderfluidity has been an important growing academic topic in the past 40 years (read: feminism). It's the mark of a society taking the meta stance, looking back on itself, and realizing that these constructs we've built and vehemently tried to follow for generations and instill in the youth are actually artificial. Not only that, they can be harmful. Think of gendering women to concentrate so hard on social standards of beauty or gendering men to suppress emotion (and this is just scratching the surface). \n\nGenderfluidity is just a new concept that says: \"I don't want my desires, preferences, and allowed actions pre-dictated to me by how my sex has historically practiced gender.\" It's a way of deconstructing artificial restrictions on behavior. When you start to make the idea of gender more fluid, you start releasing these boundaries and categories that you're encouraged to fit within and the idea of gender slowly begins to dissolve away. Gender is really a silly concept when you think about it :)",
"Funny thing, but I'm genderfluid.\n\nI really don't think of the word as some kind of claim about an absolute truth about myself. It's just the most accurate description for how I currently relate to myself, my body, and the world around me.\n\nYesterday, I felt male. By which I mean, I woke up and went \"oh god, get these boobs off of me\", and then later that day I had a nice cry about my girly face and skinny shoulders and tiny hands and how even if I took testosterone, it can't fix that my bones have been permanently shaped by my first puberty. On those days, it can literally take me a full second to realize people are referring to me when they say \"she\", or \"daughter\", etc. If I felt this way 100% of the time, I'd call myself a transguy.\n\nSome days, I LIKE the idea of living as a woman. I actually wear bras, instead of binding my breasts down. I wear that one pair of women's jeans they own. I like my face. I find it pretty. I feel proud of being female, and have the overwhelming urge to outrun a guy, or beat him at boxing, or win a nobel prize in science, or something. Note that my fashion sense doesn't really change between my \"girl days\" and \"boy days\". It's just that on girl days, I like looking like a tomboy/lesbian (though I'm bi). These days, where I'm 100% happy living as a girl, aren't that common. They happen once, maybe twice a month.\n\nMost days, I think of myself as androgynous. Those days, what exactly I want or expect of my body is unclear. I just know that it certainly isn't a woman's body, but a man's body would feel absurd.\n\nI can't say for sure that I'll always be genderfluid. Perhaps one day, I'll end up transitioning to live as male. Perhaps the \"male\" days will fade away, and I'll live as a rather androgynous woman. \n\nI can't speak for every genderqueer person's experience. But I'd say that overall, what unites us is that we're fundamentally uncomfortable trying to live by society's normal definitions of \"man\" and \"woman\". Most people who use the words \"genderqueer\" and \"genderfluid\" and \"bigender\" are younger. But if you look back, you can find older populations that show strong similarities. Many crossdressing men spoke of feeling like they had a \"female self\" that they needed to express. While some butch lesbians saw \"butch\" as simply a descriptor of their masculinity, others saw themselves as occupying a third gender, between man and woman. I've seen some of those people now call themselves \"genderqueer butches\". There have been medical reports for a while of men who self-castrate, because they aren't comfortable with male bodies, but don't consider themselves women.\n\nI only really know of one study of genderqueer people. And it was a population survey of bigender people, which was backing a *proposal* to study how that \"works\". _URL_0_\n\nI'd be happy to answer any other questions, if you have any."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex"
],
[],
[
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22364652"
]
] |
|
8tq1hf
|
why does breathing on glasses before wiping them clean off fingerprints so much better than wiping alone?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8tq1hf/eli5_why_does_breathing_on_glasses_before_wiping/
|
{
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"e19ajze",
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],
"score": [
17,
8,
6
],
"text": [
"Breath contains small amounts of water vapour, so when you breathe on the glass you moisturise the glass before whipping it to off. It's like using water to clean glass, but in very small amounts ",
"It’s not the act of breathing, it’s the moisture from condensation that “fogs” up the glass. You’re adding water. Water cleans better than a dry cloth. ",
"Same thing happens when you lick the glasses but make sure you don’t have a peanut butter sandwich in your mouth I did that once and almost veered of the highway "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3tljlg
|
how does [family member] once, twice, (etc) removed worked?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tljlg/eli5how_does_family_member_once_twice_etc_removed/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cx7652y"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"[Here's a good visual.](_URL_0_)\n\nSo your sibling shares the same parents as you. Your first cousins share the same grandparents as you. Your second cousins share the same GREAT grandparents as you.\n\nYour cousin-once-removed is the parent of your second cousins. So their GRANDPARENTS are your GREAT grandparents.\n\nThe GRANDparents of your cousin-TWICE-removed would be your GREAT-GREAT grandparents. See the number of greats and the number of removals line up."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://usercontent2.hubimg.com/6539591.png"
]
] |
||
2sv86k
|
can some explain the differences in handgun ammunition calibers?
|
In particular what is different between the major calibers: 9 mm, .38, .40, and .45. Also what are the pros and con's for the average gun owner with regards to home protection and conceal/carry.
Also, what is the differentiation of grain counts of a given ammo. This part I have never understood.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sv86k/eli5_can_some_explain_the_differences_in_handgun/
|
{
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"text": [
"[This is a decent article on ammo type](_URL_0_). Basically the grain count is referring to the amount in weight of gun powder in each round. A grain being 0.002 ounces (or just under 65 mg). The higher grain count, the bigger the boom (and subsequently more recoil experienced by the user).\n\nAs far as which type of round is better, there are so many variables that come into play with home defense, that I wouldn't feel comfortable saying \"x is better than y\". It sounds like you're new to the world of firearms. I would read up, practice at the range with friends or other people there who can help guide you, and find what you're comfortable with. ",
"Caliber refers to the size of the round, either in a decimal of inches or in metric as millimeters. Of the common ammo used, the smallest is usually the .22, tiny light and cheap but very low stopping power. Unless you hit your target in a very lethal spot they probably aren't going down. Its bigger sibling the .25 packs slightly more punch but really not much more.\n\nThe medium calibers are a bit more efficient at delivering kinetic energy to the target. The 9mm is *very* popular. It's about the smallest round that causes enough hydrostatic shock to have decent stopping power. The .38 isn't much bigger and both have with good penetration compared to the .22 and .25. The 'special' variant of the .38, has a longer cylinder so more propellant, therefor a bit more punch. Both tend to be found more in revolvers, and the .38 Special afaik is ONLY a revolver round.\n\nGoing bigger, the .40 is a very good round combining good range with very good stopping power. You will *know for sure* if you're hit with one. Popular with police. You start, or at least I do, to notice a bit more kick/recoil once you get to this size.\n\nNow we start getting to the big boys. The .45 ACP was used for a long, long time as the standard sidearm round in the US military. Great stopping power; a shot in non lethal spot can sometimes kill just from the hydro shock.\n\nThe .357 and .44 magnums are a bit of a special case that I group together because they are well, magnums. A magnum contains more propellant than standard rounds so pack a lot more punch, which while smaller than the .38 I include the .357 with it's big sister, plus it has more power than even the .38 special. \n\nThe .50 is the biggest I know of and is also a magnum type round. Insanely powerful with a kick to match. The Desert Eagle used by Agent Smith in \"The Matrix\" was a .50 I believe. It's fuck you up.\n\nThere's a lot more to ammunition and I think I already went to long for an eli5 so here we go.\n\nTL;DR - The caliber is the diameter of the round. The bigger the round and the more power used the more dead your target is.\n\n",
"May I ask, what is your interest in guns? Are you looking for this information to help decide on a caliber to get for defense or are you just curious?",
"Typically you will find .38 in revolvers along with .357 magnum. \n9mm, .40 and .45 are the most common semi auto rounds.\n\n9mm pros; cheap ammo, high capacity, low recoil, smaller framed guns\n9mm cons; less powerful than .40 and .45\n\n.40 pros; smaller framed guns, almost as good capacity as 9mm\n.40 cons; snappy recoil, ammo is almost as expensive as .45, power is closer to 9mm than to .45, tends to wear out guns faster\n\n.45 pros; more powerful than 9mm or .40\n.45 cons; lower capacity, higher recoil, more expensive ammo, guns usually have big grips that can be uncomfortable if your hands are small.\n\n.38 pros; low recoil, wide selection of bullets\n.38 cons; limited to revolvers, ammo costs about the same as .40, standard pressure is less powerful than 9mm\n\n.357 pros; most powerful out of all the choices, wide selection of bullets, you can shoot .38 out of any .357 revolver\n.357 cons; limited to revolvers (except for a few very expensive pistols) ammo cost is more expensive, recoil can be painful in smaller guns.\n\nPersonally I recommend 9mm to most shooters. With modern rounds like Federal HST you can give very effective wounds to the bad guys and the difference in power between those five calibers really isn't that big.\n\nAs far as grains, that's just how much the actual bullet (not the case or the powder) weighs. Lighter bullets go faster and heavier bullets are heavier. The design of the hollowpoint matters way more than the weight of the bullet."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://thewellarmedwoman.com/ammunition-demystifier-types-of-hangun-ammo"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1vuic1
|
Why don't I feel a shock when touching both ends of a household battery? Or even a car battery?
|
Since humans are pretty decent conductors of electricity, why aren't we creating a connection when touching both ends of a small battery or even a larger one like a car battery?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1vuic1/why_dont_i_feel_a_shock_when_touching_both_ends/
|
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"Humans are not that good of a conductor. They are better conductors than plastic but not better than for instance metal. When you measure the resistance between your left and right hand you might find something like 1MOhm. With a car battery of 12 volt there will only flow 12 microampere(12x10^-6) between your fingers. You need at least 1 to 5mA(5x10^-3) to feel it. so even if your body has a resistance at 4000 Ohm you might not feel it.\n\nEdit: Grammer",
"Try touching a 9v cell to the tip of your tongue. It is a quick way to test a battery without a multimeter. You might not feel a shock, per se, but you will notice that you've done it and probably get an odd metallic taste in your mouth. Now, can anyone explain what this taste comes from?",
"You might want to use your tongue to connect both terminals of a 9V battery. This is an example of resistance. For any given circuit the current is given by dividing the voltage by the resistance of said circuit. You can imagine this if you think of water going through a pipe system. The voltage corresponds to the pressure of the water. A resistor is a part of the system where the diameter is very small. The smaller it is, the bigger the resistance. If you imagine the current to be the amount of water flowing through the pipe per time.\n\nThis illustrates how current depends on resistance and voltage. How strong a shock is can be calculated if you look at the energy per time that flows through your body. This is calculated by multiplying current and voltage.\n\nIf you want to feel a strong shock you either have to lower the resistance of your skin or use a higher voltage.",
"Related question: why is a 12v car battery so much more dangerous than like a 9v battery? When you short jumper cables connected to a car battery, you get massive sparks. However I can handle a 24v DC source with no fear of feeling anything. ",
"US government has a good article on [how electrical current affects human body](_URL_0_).\n\nShocking sensation is caused typically by electrical current flowing through your body. Good thing that our skin is not a good conductor of electricity; it limits the current flow by electrical resistance (measured in Ohm). The higher the Ohm, the lower the current is allowed to flow through. Resistance of our body is pretty dynamic. Wetness greatly lowers the resistance. Smaller the distance between the positive/negative terminals, lower the resistance. Bigger the surface area of the terminals touching your body, lower the resistance. That being said, touching each battery terminal with one hand, your resistance is from 100,000 Ohm to 1,000,000 Ohm when dry, and can go as low as 1,000 to 500 Ohm when wet. Now, your car battery is right around 12.8V on a full charge. Given your body resistance of 100,000 Ohm, for example, 0.128 mA current (12.8 divided by 100,000) will flow through, and with current that low, you won't feel a thing. Sensitive people will start feeling slight tingling at about 0.5 mA or so. That's right around 50V, given 100,000 Ohm body resistance.\n\nHere's the thing. When you're wet (I mean, soaked wet), 12.8V will deliver about 12.8 mA through your 1,000 Ohm body resistance. It's a painful shock and may kill if you can't let go of the terminals.\n\nNow... everything above is DC voltage, meaning the current always flows in one direction. Household main is AC voltage, alternating its direction 50 to 60 times per second, and this is where it is particularly lethal to humans even with the slightest current flowing through, because our heart rhythm is controlled by electrical pulses from our brain. This 50-60 Hz AC frequency will interfere with the pulses in a way that could make your heart beat in a funky rhythm or even completely stopped.",
"Try touching a 9V battery to your tongue, see if you feel it then!\n\nJoking aside: It's because the resistance of your skin is high enough such that a high enough current for you to feel something cannot flow through the 'circuit'. Your tongue (more specifically, the moisture on it) has a lower resistance and allows more current to flow through it. ",
"To get shocked, a significant amount of current (think number of electrons) must flow through your body. To get enough current to flow, you need sufficient voltage (think pressure, or potential energy of each electron).\n\nFor electricity to flow, a circuit must be formed. In its simplest form, this will consist of a conductor or \"load\" connecting the source of electrons (negative battery terminal) to the drain (positive battery terminal). Typically, in batteries, these consist of electronegative and electropositive chemicals\n\nThe formula for this model is current=voltage / resistance, with current expressed in amps, voltage in volts, and resistance in ohms.\n\nResistance is the measure of the inverse of an electrical circuits \"willingness\" to conduct electricity, or the circuits \"resistance\" to carrying an electrical current. \n\nSo, to measure the current flowing in a circuit, we can start out by knowing the voltage of the \"source\" say, a 12 volt battery, and the resistance of the circuit. The resistance of the circuit consists of the resistance of the source plus the resistance of the load. In this case, let us assume source resistance of 0.01 ohms, like a car battery. \n\nNow, to examine the pssibility of getting shocked, I will measure the resistance, using a calibrated ohmmeter, of my hand, from the index finger to thumb on the same hand. My hands are dry, and the relative humidity at the moment is.....28%. this is important, because moisture will influence the conductivity of my skin.\n\nOK, depending on pressure, angle, and exact location, I get 1.6 - 0.4 million Ohms (n=1, YMMV)\n\nSO then the current that would (initially) flow in a circuit consisting of a car battery and my dry hands would be 12v / (say 1,000,000 for my hand) + .01 (the battery) ohms. This works out to 12/1,000,000.01 = .000012 amps of current. \n\nThis is not enough to be detected by my nerves, and I would not feel a shock. \n\nIf my hands were soaked in salt water for a while, or my skin peeled back, the resuts would be quite different, as the inside of the body is rather conductive, what with all those sodium ions floating around.\n\nHopefully this helps someone to understand."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/construction/electrical_incidents/eleccurrent.html"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
ftg7vc
|
Book recommendation for history of the U.S. 14th Armored Division in the Second World War
|
My great-uncle passed away about 30 years ago, but his younger brother, my grandfather, is still alive. As a nonagenarian widower, the coronavirus has made him even more isolated than usual, but he's become a voracious reader, so I'm trying to put together a package for the next few weeks.
My great uncle was awarded the [Purple Heart](_URL_1_) and two Bronze Stars for his service, but he was also in the part of the archives where [his military records were burned up](_URL_0_), so I wasn't able to get much more than we already had when I sent in a records request last year, no real context or anything. From family tales, he was the only person in his unit to survive a bombing (I don't know if that's squad or platoon), and his transport ship ~~hit a mine~~ was caught in a storm on the way back home and split in half. But it's all murky, and even to my grandfather, my great uncle didn't like to talk about his service much because it wasn't happy times for him.
My great uncle's [discharge records](_URL_2_) are about all I have to go on, but Google has not been super helpful finding me good books that cover that area, time, and division specifically.
Any recommendations y'all have to help fill my grandfather in about his brother while he's stuck inside would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ftg7vc/book_recommendation_for_history_of_the_us_14th/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fmb46cx"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"So, of a fairly minor note- your great-uncle’s discharge papers list him as a member of Able Company, 14th Armored Infantry [Battalion], which is a subordinate unit of the 1st Armored Division- which fought in Africa and Italy. Are you sure that he fought as a member of the 14th AD during his time in Europe? If so, the paperwork discrepancy is a likely result of him being transferred when the 14th AD was inactivated. \n\nWith that out of the way, and provided that he did indeed serve with the 14th Armored Division, the division has an outstanding website at _URL_1_ that has subordinate websites to the various subordinate units. If he served as an armored infantryman with the division he would have been a part of one of the three armored infantry battalions organic to it: the 19th, 62d, or 68th. All three host copies of the battalion histories as well as the divisional history. There’s a tab on the division site that gives a brief overview of the division’s combat history, and under this tab a link to the official US Army history for the Seventh Army’s campaign in France and Germany is included. Several battalion sites include a link to an Armor School paper on the Battle of Hatten-Rittershoffen as well. All of the battalion sites host battalion histories and several documents and photographs pertaining to that particular battalion and the division at large. There is also a contact tab where you can get in touch with the division association as well as the site manager. They may be able to help you learn more about your grandfather, while the materials on the division and battalion websites should be more than enough to inform you on the war as the outfit experienced it. \n\nAs an aside I did some looking in the files hosted by all three battalions on their websites and did find several photographs on the 19th AIB website that include a “Johnson” that resembles your grandfather. You can find them at _URL_0_ scroll down to “19th Armored Infantry Battalion Photos” and there’s about a dozen. I’m not sure that it’s him; but its worth looking at."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Personnel_Records_Center_fire",
"https://imgur.com/pZm83eK",
"https://i.imgur.com/yoy1ykP.jpg"
] |
[
[
"http://14thad.org/19thaib/-",
"14thad.org"
]
] |
|
f9bfxz
|
why do cellphone companies pay x dollars for the trade in of y phones when buying a new phone? marketshare?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f9bfxz/eli5_why_do_cellphone_companies_pay_x_dollars_for/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fiqetfb",
"fiqfa1w"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"A lot of companies probably get loads of phones at various prices, then mass sell them for their gold inside them, Get more bang for ya buck that way",
"The goal is always to get you to re-up your contract. The trade in terms almost always require you to sign up for another 1/2/3 year contract, so a small $50-100 hit they might take on a trade in is nothing compared to the revenue they assure themselves for the next 1-3 years by locking you in again.\n\nThey can mitigate some of those losses by refurbishing and reselling or recycling those trade-ins, but that is just gravy for them."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2uxj7e
|
When did humans first figure out that other planets existed and weren't just stars? What was the reaction to this idea when it was proposed?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2uxj7e/when_did_humans_first_figure_out_that_other/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cocmvp0"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"hi! fyi, one or more of these threads may be relevant\n\n* [What is the earliest record of a person theorizing that stars are suns and planets?](_URL_2_)\n\n* [When did scientists recognize the planets in our solar system as (relatively) nearby planets, and not as other stars. How did they know that these celestial bodies were planets and not stars?](_URL_3_)\n\n* [When did people realize that planets were not just moving stars?](_URL_0_)\n\n* [When did humans become aware that they were on planet Earth, in a solar system, and part of the Universe?](_URL_1_)\n\nIt might also be worth x-posting to /r/AskScience (astronomy) for info on early astronomical theory, and /r/AskAnthropology "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ltd2u/when_did_people_realize_that_planets_were_not/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gz1pd/when_did_humans_become_aware_that_they_were_on/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pbnf8/what_is_the_earliest_record_of_a_person/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19lbh0/when_did_scientists_recognize_the_planets_in_our/"
]
] |
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