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[DC] How come Superman doesn't have a blue lantern ring?
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There have been more than a few occasions where he's been personified as hope incarnate. So why doesn't the man who believes that everyone could be the best version of their self have the lantern ring that reflects what he embodies?
| 69 |
It is shown in the Blackest Night that Superman actually represents the entire emotional Spectrum equally. With hope, you have to both inspire and feel a great amount of it which is why Flash becomes a Blue Lantern. Flash inspires so much hope that it is mentioned that Batman actually looks up to Barry.
| 88 |
[Vampires] What if I invite a vampire into my house and then get evicted?
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The bank forecloses and repossesses my house. What happens to any vampires? When, exactly, does it happen?
| 65 |
If you are evicted *and* you move out, then the place is no longer your home and the vampire is free to move in and out as (s)he please. If the landlord rents it out to somebody else *and* the new tenants see it as their homes, the vampire will be forced out and unable to come back in unless invited.
| 51 |
[Harry Potter] Why can't dead people be brought back to life, while transfigurating into an inanimate object and back was?
|
We saw in the movies, that you can turn animals and other living creatures into inanimate objects, like trinkets, and turn them back into the animals they were before. Yet, in this inanimate object form, they are basically dead, since a trinket isn't a living creature, but you can still turn them back into their former self, which means you basically take a living creature, kill it with the transfiguration spell and then bring it back to live.
And if you can do that, why can't you bring back people and animals that died in other ways, like from the Kedavra spell. Or asked differently, when Dumbledore dies, what stops Harry from turning his corpse into a rock and then back into a living Dumbledore?
| 16 |
Dumbledore's soul would move onto the afterlife, so if you did manage to make a technically alive Dumbledore, it would be a soulless husk without any of the personality of Dumbledore.
You could turn Dumbledore's corpse into some sort of magically animated object like an Inferi, but it wouldn't return his magic or personality in a meaningful way.
We have seen that some very rare magics can return spirits of the dead from the afterlife, so if you can do that you might be able to bind their souls back into their bodies somehow. This necromancy was not expanded on in the Harry Potter books, as they were not written from the perspective of Voldemort.
| 22 |
Why is it common for humans and other animals to freeze when panicking?
|
When a person ends up in a situation where he panics, the body's reaction is to release adrenaline and react quickly, run away or fight etc. Your response time is shorter and your reflexes are better.
But when facing a speeding train that will definitely kill you you freeze, unable to move. Other animals does this too, stopping in front of a speeding car for example.
Why is this? Does it always happen?
| 45 |
There is also the watchful waiting theory. You hear a noise. Do you run, investigate, or stay put? Often you are waiting for more information, so you stay put. Calorically, you should not expend energy with curiosity or flight unless absolutely required. Any single person who hears a strange noise late at night has probably experienced this. You pause, sometimes even pause breathing, straining to hear something more. You are not in flight or fight, yet, but you are very alert.
| 35 |
Is ironoxide soluble in water?
|
If so, what is it that makes it soluble? If not, what is the that makes it nonsoluble?
I looked at the difference in electronegativity between iron and oxide and figured it was polar. Since water also is polar I thought it would be soluble in water, but when I later on was looking at ironoxide on wikipedia it said it was nonsouble in water. I'm pretty bad at chemistry, would be great if someone could explain.
| 380 |
When a material dissolves in water, three main things must happen. First, the material must be broken up into its consitutent ions or molecules. Second, water has to spread apart to make room for the individual pieces in solution. Third, the individual pieces must be surrounded by water (solvated).
It always is unfavorable to break a solid up into pieces because those interactions were doing a good job holding the solid together. It is also always unfavorable to spread water apart because water molecules are strongly attracted to other water molecules. The solvation process that occurs after this is always favorable because new attractive solvent-solute interactions are forming. Whether or not something is soluble is dependent mainly on how unfavorable the first step is compared to how favorable the third step is (the second step is pretty much the same all the time).
For iron oxide, the bonds holding together the solid are very strong. In solution, iron oxide exists as hydrated iron hydroxide, a neutral species that is capable of forming extremely favorable bonds with water. Unfortunately, those interactions are not as strong as those that iron hydroxide can form with itself, and it does not dissolve in water to any significant extent.
| 114 |
ELI5: What happens to your fart when you hold it in and it 'passes'?
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Yeah so does it just stay in there or what? How come I don't need to fart after it passes? I know it has to come out again, but where does it go?
| 22 |
Your colon is an air tight tube. The ONLY way a fart is getting out is through the anus. When you hold a fart in, you pushing it back up above the internal anal sphincter. Pressure below the internal anal sphincter and around the external anal sphincter is that "i have to fart" or "i gotta poop" sensation. More pressure around the external sphincter leads to greater stretching of the sphincter. Greater stretching = greater urge. The fart will eventually come back down, you've just temporarily forced it further up "inside", beyond the physical point in the colon where you can feel the urge to let it out.
| 11 |
MacOS No Longer Supports 32-Bit Programs
|
I know this is not news, but whatever.
Since MacOS no longer supports 32-bit programs, I cannot play certain games on Steam on it (ik, Macs are not for gaming, but BL2 runs fine). My question is, why is it not as simple as adding 32 0s to the beginning of everything in order to convert it into 64-bit? If it *is* that simple, why doesn't the computer just do that automatically whenever a 32-bit program is opened?
| 24 |
You are correct. If it was as simple as adding the extra zeroes for padding then you could do just that. The issue is that what we call 32 bit and 64 bit are actually not really the same instruction set. 32 bit is Intel x86 and 64 bit is AMD64 (which can also be considered an extension of x86). AMD64 has different calling conventions as well as different memory modes from x86 which means that they aren’t 100% compatible and running 32 bit apps on a 64 bit processor was always going through a translation layer even if you didn’t realize (look up WOW64)
| 18 |
ELI5: Why do we pay ISPs for internet speed, but mobile network operators for the amount of transferred data?
| 674 |
there are more bottlenecks in a mobile (radio) network, due both to technology and cost and available radio spectrum (a lot of it is used for other stuff already, a lot of it just isn't suitable for high data rates)
There are physical limits on how much data (to and from all users at once) can be handled on the set of frequencies the networks are allowed to use.
Those bottle necks do improve over time, as smaller cells, or better ways to squash and encode data are developed but it's a much more lumpy or punctuated process of evolution than say just sticking a fatter internet pipe, or more pipes in the ground.
If you want to introduce a new way of squashing data onto a radio signal, as well as updating the backbone you need to get every phone or device manufacturer on board and ready for a new standard as well as continue to run older networks alongside newer ones for everyone's existing devices, still using the same set of frequencies and capacities... gradually phasing from one standard to another over time... If you want to use different frequencies, you need to get multiple nation states and goverments to agree which is a massive pain in the bum to do and takes time.
basically mobile networks have a different priority because they have harder limits on resources (bandwidth).
in reality both networks are constantly improving speed and capacity and both have caps, the caps are just more visible for mobile networks because of the physics of radio.
| 252 |
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[Watchmen] Why didn't Doctor Manhattan "see" any of this coming.
|
From my understand, DR Manhattan perceives time all at once, not so much as "hey can you look in the future for me" but more of he experiences the past present and future all happening at once around him. Now they explain that Ozymandias uses some sciencey stuff to blocks Manhattan from seeing what exactly he was doing. But this begs the question, wouldn't he have always been unable to see that period of time, wouldn't that be kinda sus? Better yet, would he be able to see after that period of time?
| 272 |
Dr. Manhattan didn't see it coming because he saw himself that he never saw it coming. He might have actually known how the whole thing would play out, but can't do anything to stop it. To him the future is set in stone.
| 291 |
Integral of (x+1) can be solved in 2 ways and gets 2 solutions, why?
|
When solving the integral of (x+1) i get to solutions.
When i solve it by just splitting up x and 1, I get x²/2 + x + c.
When i solve it with substitution i get x²/2 + x + 1/2 + c.
So why do i get 2 differnt solutions and are they the same cause of the c?
edit: Thanks alot guys!!!
| 30 |
They're still the same. The two constants you've given the same name aren't really the same. If you call the second *c* for *d*, then you should find that *d* = *c* – ½.
The *c* just means that integrals are defined uniquely only up to constants. Two different antideravatives may differ by a constant.
| 73 |
mass-energy equivalence or E=mc2...why the speed of light squared?
| 26 |
This is a frequently asked question.
Here's one part of the answer: "c" is not really just the speed of light. "c" is the fastest speed anything can achieve in the universe. It's the universal speed limit. Light moves really fast. At the speed limit (in a vacuum). It isn't the only thing that moves that fast, but it's the most famous thing.
But for example changes in gravity also propagate at that speed. So you could also call "c" "the speed of changes of gravity."
| 14 |
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ELI5: I'm black. Why are my palms and the bottoms of my feet white?
| 626 |
Essentially it is a different type of skin (glabrous) which doesn't normally have the cells (melanocytes) which produce the dark pigment (melanin) and is hence much lighter than the rest of your skin.
| 517 |
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[Star Trek] If replicators turn matter into energy, do you get any energy back when you de-replicate something? (like all those extra dishes and silverware that come with replicated food)
| 20 |
When replicators are being used, we see frequent references to matter reserves. This implies that there isn't a *pure* energy -> matter conversion going on, and there is some dematerialised matter held in the replicator system, used during the replication process.
It makes sense. It'd be far more energy efficient to dematerialise a bunch of base elements, hold them in storage, then rearrange them into set patterns. Doing it pure energy -> matter would use up orders of magnitude more energy.
| 16 |
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ELI5 why Mayor Bloomberg banned food donations to the poor
| 18 |
Aid organizations prefer donations of money to donations of goods in general, since they have a much better idea of what they need to do to serve the people they're trying to help than the general public does. Individual contributors, in contrast, sometimes prefer to buy goods than simply donate money, as this makes them feel like they're doing something more substantial. Banning donations of specific goods like food can make sense in this context, as it forces people who want to help to do the more useful thing and donate cash, rather than do a less useful but often better feeling thing.
| 14 |
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ELI5: How do we know that smaller Hominid species like Homo Floriensis aren’t just misidentified juvenile members of other Hominid species?
| 19 |
You can tell people are still growing by if their bones are fused or not. For example if the femur is still growing the caps wont be attached, if they are attached you know they've reached their adult height for that bone.
| 31 |
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How are sutures dissolved if they are made of chitin and if chitin has beta-glycosidic bonds like cellulose?
| 51 |
Humans have two functional chitinases (enzymes that break down chitin molecules) that can break down the chitin in the sutures your describe. They may take longer to dissolve than other types of dissolvable sutures, however.
| 28 |
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Which math class will help me the most in a CS Career?
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Which ONE of the following math classes do you think would be the most useful for me to take (I want to pursue a career in CS and I can/need to take 1 of the following (I've satisfied the pre-requisites for them all)):
**1.** **Stochastic Processes** (Properties of stochastic processes, Markov chains, Poisson processes, Markov processes, queueing theory. Applications of stochastic modeling to other disciplines)
**2. Fourier Series** (Fourier series, orthogonal series, boundary value problems, applications)
**3. Math for Optimization** (Discrete, deterministic models of interest to the social sciences. Linear programming, duality, simplex method, sensitivity analysis, convex sets. Selections from: assignment, transportation, network flow, nonlinear programming problems)
**4. Computational Mathematics** (Numerical analysis as implemented on computers. Polynomial and rational approximations, numerical differentiation and integration, systems of linear equations, matrix inversion, eigenvalues, first order differential equations)
**5. Mathematical Models** (An introduction to the art of creating and analyzing deterministic mathematical models. Models of physical, biological, and social phenomena. Topics vary with instructor; examples are predator-prey interactions, spread of epidemics, arms races and changes in global temperature. Mathematical techniques include phase-plane analysis of systems of differential equations, and function iteration)
\*Edit: Some background: I’m doing a Math/CS dual degree program, which means I’m getting a math degree from one school (in 3 yrs), and then getting a CS degree from a partnered school (in 2 yrs), for my math degree I have to take one of these “modeling” classes, but I know nothing about any of them, and have no idea what specifically I want to do in CS, so I'm just looking for what has the most applications I guess
Thanks so much for any feedback!!
| 17 |
Stochastic if you're going to do CS stuff that uses stochastic.
Likewise for all the others.
It depends on what you're going to do in CS. These are fairly specialized courses and will have specialized applications.
| 13 |
ELI5: How were movies edited before the invention of the computer?
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Especially movies like King Kong. My mind is boggled at people able to edit king holding a person in his hand without a computer.
| 17 |
Movies used to be shot on 35mm film. Directors & editors would view everything that was shot. They would cut the films apart and splice together what they wanted. The rest was discarded, or saved for later. This is where the expression ''Left on the cutting room floor'' came from.
| 16 |
Are humans instinctually inclined to forming dominance hierarchies?
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I know human societies can have tiers, but hunter-gatherers are generally egalitarian. My interest is on the smaller-scale, whether humans have alpha, betas, gammas, etc like chimps or wolves.
| 81 |
If you look at primates, you have a range between species which exhibit very strong hierarchical systems and species which exhibit very weak ones. The very general rule is that the greater the sexual dimorphism (the physical differences between sexes, particularly size and strength in this case) the more likely the species has a strong hierarchy. As with most of the claims in this post, these are going to be generalities, there will always be exceptional circumstances and examples which make the whole thing both complicated and interesting.
Human behavior is more plastic (changeable) than in other species, but our range generally falls in the middle of primates with greater degrees of diversity. Take courtship practices as an example; hierarchical primates exhibit strong polygamous tendancies, with a few dominant males mating with many females and relationships not doing much to withstand changes in social status while egalitarian primates exhibit monogomous long-term relationships. Humans exhibit all of these behaviours with high degrees of frequency, but looking across time and cultures, we tend to see serial monogomy being the predominant mating strategy with dedicated relationships which are broken after a few child-bearing cycles.
Similarly, low-density tribal societies tend to be somewhere in the middle with a defined hierarchy which intermittently becomes important in settling disputes within the group. We tend to not see many populations of this sort with anything like the agressive dominance we see in hierarchical primates, but we do see hierarchy as a resolution to issues in a much higher degree than in egalitarian species.
The deeper issue is that there is no behavior without genetics and environment working together and human behavior is exceptional in its responsiveness to environmental context (learning). To say that something is an 'instinct' is far too simple. Our 'instincts' are always a reaction to the environmental stimulus we are and have previously received and the diversity of social hierarchical systems and the conviction which the people support them is tremendous. The capacity for either hierarchy or egalitarianism given different contexts is very large and making a claim that any of them is 'unnatural' would be very difficult.
| 12 |
[LOTR]Do The Ringwraiths remember who they were before?
| 77 |
Well, it appears they retained their original names. And they certainly possess independent thought and will, so it stands to reason that they remember their past lives, in as much as Sauron allows and is convenient for them to remember to carry out his will.
| 53 |
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[Game of Thrones] Tormund has two daughters. Are they and their mother alive? Where are they?
| 46 |
Tormund strikes me as a loyal kind of guy - if his wife were still alive, he probably wouldn't be pursuing Brienne.
The daughters are probably with the other Wildlings of his tribe, staying out of trouble.
| 51 |
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ELI5: How does cancer actually kill someone.
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Now I totally understand how cells in your brain mutating and forming a clump and growing uncontrollably can kill someone because that's the brain, and I understand that if my lungs start getting clumps I die because I run out of air. But for bone and skin and breast cancer, it doesn't seem like there is anything amazingly crucial.
Does cancer affect the body a lot worse than I understand or is it that non critical cancers spread to crucial organs?
| 45 |
Well, you sort of answered you own question. You don't technically die from cancer. You die from organ failures. Though, yes, the cancer does cause the organ failures. The way they do this is the basically hi-jiack the blood stream to feed themselves, making the healthy organs suffocate.
| 16 |
Why does air conditioning start to smell when the compressor turns off but the fan keeps running?
| 360 |
Sudden increase in humidity. The coil gets wet from condensation but when the compressor is running the air is cold so it's ability to absorb water is very low. When the compressor turns off the air heats back up, absorbs the water from the coil and blows the humid air out of the vents.
| 145 |
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[Dragon Ball Super] Can Majin Buu turn immortal Zamasu into candy and eat him?
| 25 |
It wouldn't work, even if Buu did eat him then Zamasu would just burst right out of Buu's head and Buu would deflate like a balloon then turn into a puddle and reform with a big frown then charge at Zamasu for a fight.
| 17 |
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(1984) What does the rest of the world look like?
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Do Eurasia and Eastasia even exist? and if so, what are they like? What are all other nations like? The only source of information we have is party propaganda.
| 51 |
Eurasia looks doublegood, but Oceania look doubleplusgood. Big Brother and Party doubleplushelp Eurasia be doubleplusgood. But doubleplusungood Eurasia looks doubleplusungood. The Party doubleplusunhelp Eurasia.
(Long story short, there is no answer, because reality is so confused by the obfuscations of The Party, that their existence is irrelevant.)
| 57 |
Sodium chloride tastes salty to us. What would other sodium compounds taste like?
| 19 |
As a corollary, if you ever taste other types of common salts, such as Epsom salts (MgSO4), KCl, etc, they are still very "salty" in their flavor, but the character of it is different. Go to the supermarket and pick up some low-sodium salt (usually a mix of NaCl and KCl) and try out--you'll notice a pretty different saltiness to it than you're used to. Same with a good sea salt, etc.
| 20 |
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Why do physics break down above the Planck Temperature?
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I just saw [this](http://i.imgur.com/iHW7Dwh.png) image and cant stop wondering what would happen and why
| 3,081 |
It's not so much that physics breaks down or that it's the hottest possible temperature, but rather that we can't really understand things that hot without knowledge of quantum gravity (because particles could be colliding with such great energy that they form black holes), which we don't understand well enough.
| 2,054 |
In what order to read Nietzsche?
|
I just picked up a volume collecting Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, Genealogy of Morals, Ecce Homo, and the Birth of Tragedy. I'm looking to read what's most accessible first, then work towards the more obscure. What order do you think would be most beneficial?
| 29 |
Well for accessibility, leave Ecce Homo and Zarathustra for last. Both Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil give an overview of Nietzsche's thought, though BGE is presented more traditionally (well as close as you'll get Nietzsche to go). In some ways Genealogy of Morals and Birth of Tragedy might be more accessible because of their narrower scope.
So it depends on what works best for you. If you'd rather start with the broad view, start with Beyond Good and Evil. If you'd prefer a book that spends a little more time on and explores a topic more deeply, go with Genealogy of Morals.
| 14 |
ELI5: Why is it beneficial for some countries to keep their currency devalued?
|
Of what I've heard, it seems like some countries keep their currency devalued on purpose because it helps them in trade in some way. Notably for America, this is China, but India has done this previously too. I also know it may have to do something with a country having surplus exports, but can't be sure.
| 20 |
When you import goods from another country, usually you have to pay them in whatever currency they use. Let’s say Germany wants to import American steel. The German company will need to pay The US steel company in US dollars.
When the US dollar is devalued, each German euro is worth more US dollars. The company can now afford to buy more steel. Averaged over the entire economy, more US steel will be bought. The quantity of sales goes up, while the price of steel in Euros goes down.
The thing is, the US steel companies still charge the same price in US dollars. So more purchases means more profits in US dollars for them. The quantity of sales rises while price in USD is the same. So USA benefits from more exports.
Over the entire economy, the impact of a devalued exchange rate can boost exports by a significant amount. The GDP of the country rises. That’s why export-focused economies would benefit if the value of their currency decreases.
| 14 |
[Power Rangers] How is Angel Grove able to sustain 9/11-scale destruction every week?
|
Angel Grove appears to be a relatively well-off city near Los Angeles. About once a week, a giant robot and Godzilla-sized monster show up and smash at least one skyscraper, sometimes more, probably killing thousands and causing millions in economic damage. But no one ever seems to even notice or care. Shouldn't people be fleeing the city in droves by now, and the local economy be in a shambles?
| 48 |
The loss of manufacturing jobs hit Angel Cove hard and large areas of the once bustling city are pretty much empty. The battles have actually helped the economy as cleaning up the debris from the destroyed empty buildings has added jobs
| 57 |
CMV: The CIA is an overbloated and borderline illegal organisation, and should be abolished.
|
There's a number of reasons for why I think this.
First of all, the CIA has been subject to one massive long term fuck up to another, from founding the beginning of the Muhajadeen, which formed the basis for al-Queda and later ISIL, to intentionally fueling the drug crisis leading to the catastrophic mess that is the War on Drugs (helped, of course, by the massive instability in Central America, caused by, you guessed it, the CIA), to toppling Iran's democratically elected leader, leading to the government we have now. And those are just the things we know of.
Secondly, for all their talk of protecting America overseas, they've done a terrible fucking job at actually protecting anyone other than far-right dictators and military juntas. They weren't able to prevent 9/11 (or any other high profile terrorist attack for that matter), they were wrong about Saddam Hussein's WMD, they were helpless to stop India, Pakistan, and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, and despite all their hard work Fidel Castro still died peacefully of old age in his home in Havana. What they have been able to do, however, is install and maintain dozens of brutal military dictators, who've taken god knows how many lives and caused enormous damage to the countries which they ruled over. We don't even know precisely how much damage they've caused, something which I'll quickly go over in the next point.
The thing is, in a free, democratic nation like the US all government agencies, from the military to the postal service, from the justice department to the educational department need a good level of transparency and accountability. This includes it's intelligence agencies. The fact that we don't even know how much money is pumped into the CIA, let alone where it's going or why, is, in my mind, beyond ridiculous. We now have a situation where American taxpayers are unwittingly lining the pockets of third world dictators, paramilitaries and corrupt politicians. Who are these people, and how much do they get? We don't know.
The pathetically poor amount of transparency and public oversight that is given to the CIA is beyond ridiculous, and quite frankly fairly dangerous. Government agencies, or any organizations for that matter, which believe (in this case, not unjustly) that they have no real checks or oversight, will attempt to abuse it. For an example just within the US government, just look at the NSA, which saw virtually no governmental or public oversight and subsequently conducted a massive and borderline illegal global online surveillance operation, which only became truly known to the world after a whistleblower from within showed the details to the world. President Harry S. Truman even famously called it the "American Gestapo", and to be honest, the metaphor isn't misplaced.
An organization with so little oversight and transparency that it is practically above the law is at best a liability, and at worst dangerous to a country, it's allies, and it's people.
Finally, it's important to remember how much of what the CIA does and has done in the past is illegal and unconstitutional. Examples of these include arresting and possibly murdering journalists and whistleblowers, aiding open enemies of the American government like Iran and countless foreign armed groups, to brazenly lying before Congress, to intentionally planting drugs in poorer communities in order to disrupt those communities and fuel the drug crisis, as mentioned earlier. And that's not even getting started on international law, or the law of the countries they've operated in. It's easy to overlook those clear breaches of law, with much of it happening oversea's and being committed by a government agency, but that doesn't change the fact that what they've done, and possibly still do is still illegal, and far too often overlooked.
In conclusion, for the above-mentioned reasons, I believe that the CIA as a government agency should be abolished, with its duties and responsibilities going to the Pentagon and FBI, among others. It's constant habit of making stupid, foreseeable and catastrophic mistakes, it's inability to actually do the job it was created, it's dangerous lack of any real oversight or transparency, and its brazen ignorance of domestic and foreign law in order to achieve it's classified goals would be all the reason anyone would need to abolish any government agency. Especially one that demands diverts such a large amount of money away from agencies and departments that more need it and into the hands of god-knows-who in god-knows-where.
I'm not a tinfoil conspiracist, and I trust the US government on many, if not most things, but in my mind nowhere is this trust less deserved than in the CIA. I'm interested in hearing what you all have to say about this, and I actually really hope that I find out that the CIA is worth more than I thought it was.
| 1,825 |
> They weren't able to prevent ... any other high profile terrorist attack
How do you know this? Isn’t the very nature of a clandestine organization like the CIA that only their screwups make the news? What if they’re actually stopping most of the attacks and that information is kept classified?
Which is not to say that you’re wrong, just that if you’re posting this here without breaking the law, neither you, nor I, nor anyone else who can legally respond to you here has the security clearance necessary to have an informed opinion on this matter.
| 799 |
ELI5: You see in movies/TV often where someone has a clear cut lawsuit against a company, but find out “they have million dollar lawyers that will tie you up in court and bankrupt you in fees” How much of that is reality versus Hollywood?
| 147 |
A little true, a little false. Thing thing about large companies is that they don't want to pay those million dollar lawyers either. They will always take the cheaper option. If a lawsuit is totally false, but they have to pay those million dollar lawyers to prove it, most big companies will settle and pay someone who does not deserve it because it's the cheaper option. Conversely, if the lawsuit is a huge one and paying those million dollar lawyars is cheaper, they will do that. It's all about the dollar signs.
Sometimes the big corporations are actually at a disadvantage, because they have to pay their lawyers out of pocket, while lawyers specializing in lawsuits will work for nothing unless they win if they are confident of winning. The plaintiff in that case has nothing to lose.
So--it depends.
| 149 |
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CMV: The American Constitution has little to no relevance to the modern world and while it may have some things right, we should not look to it to dictate how the country is run.
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When the American Constitution was first written it was a masterfully written document and in many ways, was revolutionary. Today, however, I think it is completely ridiculous that it is still being used to run the country. Granted, much of the document does pertain to today's society however I don't see why a document written 240 years ago is still being used. I am also aware of the elastic clause which states that the constitution is to be reinterpreted to fit the current society however a text can only be reinterpreted so much. What is so special about the Constitution that, for example, it is taken as the final word on gun control when a gun in 1787 wasn't even recognizable as a gun by today's standards.
I believe that in order for the country to be able to function and move forward we must look to concrete evidence and data gathered from the current society or at the very least make it much easier to amend and change the constitution to fit a modern world.
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| 312 |
What's so special about the constitution is that it is the document that all of the states have agreed to use to set up our system of government. The Constitution sets up the roles of the President, Congress, and the Federal Courts; their election or appointment, terms, and how they interact with one another.
It's the document that gives Congress the powers to create laws, the President to implement them, and the Supreme Court to interpret them. Without the Constitution they would have no authority to do those things, and each state would be its own de facto country. (I should note that each state also has its own Constitution.) In all those ways it is relevant.
If you're argument is that the constitution should be amended in some way (you hint at changing the second amendment) that is one thing, but we certainly need a Constitution of some sort.
In terms of ease of amendment, the Constitution can already be amended quite easily (the 26th Amendment from proposal to ratification took just over three months), provided that there is wide consensus on the amendment. The reasons it hasn't been changed much is that there isn't much agreement on what (if any) changes need to be made. Considering it protects the rights of the population in many ways it makes sense to have some burden here - you wouldn't want a political group with 50.1% of the decision making authority to throw out the 1st amendment and make opposing groups illegal and silence the press's ability to critique their actions.
| 214 |
[The Cabin in the Woods] What is the use of the gory painting and the two-way mirror hidden beneath?
|
It seems obvious that someone would want to remove the hiddeous painting in the bedroom that Holden initially occupies. Therefore, it can be assumed that the technicians want the occupant to reveal the two-way mirror beneath. What advantage does this give the technicians and how does it help the ritual?
| 106 |
Remember the Harbinger? The creepy dude at the gas station? The ritual doesn't just require killing the people. It requires them to transgress and be punished, and the transgression requires them to be warned.
Lots of the 'furniture', for lack of a better word, is not functional in the sense that it helps the technicians, but important for giving the five warnings that they ignore. The dude at the gas station is one, the creepy furnishings are another. It's all meant to add up to a scenario in which they *should* leave, but don't. Therefore, transgression and punishment.
| 106 |
ELI5: Why do our noses run when it’s cold?
| 19 |
It's your body putting out fluids to keep the air you're breathing at a safe level of humidity and moisture for your lungs. If the air is too dry, your lungs can get damaged and prone to infection. When it's cold, the air gets drier, so your nose may start running to help keep the air moist.
Of course - colds are also more common in cold weather. Your nasal passages get dried out and damaged, which means viruses can get into your body more easily, causing colds. Additionally, you spend more time inside with the windows closed around other people who are more susceptible to colds. So, you may find you just get more colds - causing runny noses - in the winter as well.
| 12 |
|
How do fish/whales/dolphins/any aquatic life drink?
| 16 |
Mostly they don't.
Marine mammals get a lot of their water from their food. They tend to live on meat, because blood and body fluids are a lot less salty than seawater.
Water is also produced as a byproduct of metabolism. When nutrient molecules are broken down to release energy, the largest byproducts are CO2 and water. (For example, if you eat 100 grams of dry sugar, your body will break it down into 60 grams of water and some CO2.)
Marine mammals are also good at conserving the water in their bodies. They have large and efficient kidneys, which create concentrated urine and prevent them from losing too much water. And, because they breathe so slowly, they don't lose as much water in their breath as we do. (An average adult human loses 12 ounces of water per day just by evaporation through the lungs.)
It's hard to be completely sure, but we think that if marine mammals get enough fresh food, they never need to drink at all.
| 17 |
|
ELI5: It’s said that, theoretically, if you fold a paper 42 times, it will reach the Moon, and if you fold it 103 times, it’s width will surpass the observable universe. How does this work?
| 19,431 |
Lets say you have a piece of paper. A standard, off the shelf piece of single-sheet printer paper (those ones that come in reams of 500 or so) is around 0.08mm thick.
If you fold this piece of paper in half, you're doubling its thickness, from 0.08mm to 0.16mm. Do this 42 times, that is 2^(42), or 4,398,046,500,000. Multiply that by 0.08mm (and convert that to km) is 351,843.72 km.
The distance from Earth to the Moon is about 384,400 km.
Not quite there, but perhaps the original theory used paper slightly thicker than 0.08mm. If we had a piece of paper 0.0875mm thick, then that's 384,829.07 km. We've made it!
Now, if we fold this 0.0875mm thick paper a 43rd time, then the distance reached is 769,658.139 km. Notice the large jump in distance? 44 times? 1,539,316.28 km. We're starting to get to some really large numbers.
​
Just for completionists sake; 103 times is 887,355,420,000,000,000,000,000 km. That's a lot of football fields. ;-)
Edit: fixed a few typos. And oh boy, did this little comment blow up! Thanks, and thank you OP for the fun question!
| 18,241 |
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ELI5:Why can it rain for so long? Why can't the rain just fall down all at once?
| 106 |
Clouds are tiny suspended water particles, so small they're light enough to be vapor. In the right conditions enough of those particles accumulate that they become liquid (condensation). At that point they're too heavy to stay suspended in air, so they fall.
There's not really any way clouds would have the opportunity to condense into larger bodies of water than droplets without those droplets falling first. There's no opportunity for them to accumulate. As long as the conditions that allow condensation persist, the clouds will continue to release them in droplets.
| 34 |
|
[Star Wars] Ok, we have perfected spaceflight, some inter-dimensional travel (hyperspace), killed teddy bears and built lightsabers... Why the flip does nobody know what a radiator is?
|
So picture this: You've got this ridiculously hot superlaser for destroying planets that irritate you. You've got a powerful reactor core that generates ridiculous amounts of heat. You vent heat out to space with... vacuum?
You don't need womprat-sized holes that lazurmonks can shoot proton torpedos at, you need a circulating liquid coolant system that passes through the frigid cold of space before zipping back to the core. Rust? Build it out of aluminum and use an OAT liquid. Concerned about leaks? Line it with durasteel. Worried that someone will disable your pump? Install 10,000 pumps, each with its own cooling lines, then monitor pressure and heat mitigation for each one continuously. Price? It's a freaking dreadnought planet destroyer, SPARE NO EXPENSE! Worried that some @$$#01e space-monk will shoot your exposed grill and damage your cooling system? It's better than letting the same @$$#01e space-monk shoot a proton torpedo directly into the reactor.
| 19 |
You underestimate the sheer size and engineering requirements to build a small planet with a hypermatter laser strong enough to vaporize a planet instantly. Typically you build several prototypes and tweak the design. This isn't possible with a Death Star - and the second one had solved the exhaust port issue in any case.
As to your suggestion... piping liquid into space is a bad idea.
| 39 |
[MGS1/4] How did Solid manage to use REX to actually beat RAY?
|
After MGS1, the damn thing couldn't even stand anymore and they even mention that it's been sitting in that hangar the entire time up until Outer Haven went there to collect the Rail Gun. We even see it in the same sorry state as Raiden fights Vamp.
How on Earth did Solid get it to not only work, but beat a brand new MG RAY!?
| 15 |
1. Snake was meant to beat Liquid Ocelot and destroy the Patriots AI.
2. Snake had Otacon on his side who not only knows REX inside and out but also activated a "street-fighting" protocol in REX that used it's bulk to it's advantage against the agile RAY.
3. Liquid Ocelot was either using the modified marine RAY prototype from MGS2 or a modified mass produced version (unmanned and weaker, meant to protect arsenal gear). While Metal Gear RAYs were designed to hunt Metal Gears, there was never another Metal Gear REX. They were all derivatives/ knock offs of the original REX (best version), RAYs were never tested against an actual REX that had nigh impenetrable armor.
| 21 |
If evolution occurs at a faster rate in species with a greater reproductive rate, why haven't things like bacteria, parasites, and insects super-evolved and wiped out everything else on Earth?
|
Or, why haven't other species evolved to have greater reproductive rates?
Scientists often use flies to conduct their evolutionary experiments, *Drosphila sp.* in particular, because they can go through hundreds of generations in a short time.
| 17 |
The optimal move for bacteria, parasites, and insects isn't to kill their hosts; it's to live along side them peacefully and take advantage of them.
As a case study, consider that FIV has been in the cat lineage for 10's of ma, and isn't that dangerous; while HIV within man has been in man for ~100 years and is fairly deadly. From HIV's perspective, it doesn't want to kill its host; this kills the HIV as well.
| 28 |
[Harry Potter] Why are there only 3 unforgivable curses?
|
I feel like there's a bunch of other terrible spells yet they're not made illegal by the ministry.
Like sectumsempra for example. Is it because the Ministry doesn't know this spell exist since Snape created it not that long ago when he was a student?
What about obliviate and whatever spell Voldemort used to create his horcruxes? Those 2 spells can be quite dangerous in the wrong hands.
Also, if a spell like Avada Kedavra is illegal and cause instant death, how do wizards even practice it? Like it's kind of obvious of Voldemort practiced it but what about the good wizards like Moody, how did he practice that spell without killing anyone?
| 135 |
Most spells have some utility. Obliviate is necessary to keeping the wizarding world secret. Sectumsempra is like a knife or a chainsaw-- it can cut many things, including people, but not only people.
The Unforgivable Curses stand apart because their only functions are to hurt, kill, or enslave. They're not useful for anything but violence.
Horcruxes aren't created by a spell, there's normally a whole complicated ritual that involves doing something unspeakably profane to the murder victim. It probably *is* illegal, but since it's not a spell it's not an Unforgivable Curse.
Moody probably doesn't practice it, remember that by the time he got the teaching job he had already been kidnapped and replaced by Barty Crouch Jr., who was a death eater and had probably used it before. That said, the implication seems to be that they are not so much difficult in terms of being complicated as they are in terms of requiring a lot of effort and intent. The way you practice it is by becoming more comfortable with the idea of hating someone to death.
| 175 |
CMV: It's cruel to tell children that the sky's the limit.
|
I very much feel lied to by all the messages of "You can be whatever you want to be" I heard in my childhood.
So much of life is about doing what you have to do to get by, and as far as I can tell it's unusual to end up happy/satisfied with your life. It would be less cruel to children to just teach them mindfulness and gratitude.
For example, consider an arts career. It's very much the exception, not the norm, to end up making a livable income unless you're one of the lucky, lucky few who have the right temperament/talent/X-factor.
In fact, most people inevitably end up in what MJ DeMarco would call a "Slowlane life".
| 90 |
It's true that it's unlikely that you will become a famous actor, even if you try hard and focus on that dream.
But if you don't try hard and focus on that dream, you definitely won't become a famous actor.
| 38 |
CMV: If there’s a cigarette tax there should be a fast food tax.
|
I am not a smoker but in Oregon we recently voted on upping the cigarette tax (I didn’t) and I find the whole thing rather ridiculous. Seems more political than scientific considering salt and sugar cause heart disease most of the time. Why can people over indulge in terrible food without tax repercussions? I understand that food is a necessity to life, but fast food surely isn’t and I also include your Tyson anytizers in this statement as well.
They say smokers cost health care quite a bit of money, but what about dollar menus?
| 75 |
I think you already answered the question yourself. It’s much easier to place an excise tax on something like cigarettes that don’t serve any actual human need. Taxing food is much more complicated. People need food, and putting a tax on the foods that are most easily accessible for poor people becomes a regressive tax.
| 65 |
Do I need a university degree to become a good programmer?
|
Hello!
I do not have a uni degree. However, I enjoy programming and want to become better.
Would it be best to take a 3-5 year education at an university (here in Sweden) or to learn things myself? What are the best resources to learn things that I would learn at a university?
I have looked into a Masters degree on CS but I first have to read 4 classes before I can attend.
Can I just buy math books and CS books and read them, do projects etc? Or would it be better to get a real education? What is the best way to get a really good foundation?
| 24 |
You can become a good enough programmer for many companies. However, it depends on what you want to do. If you just want to program, and basically program whatever a boss tells you to program, that's fine without a CS degree. A degree, though, can help you on a lot of things. Stuff like code optimization, database query optimization, analyzing potential solutions to mathematical problems to see which is best suited, etc. is really hard to achieve without taking a degree in CS. Take that from a guy who is currently doing a PhD in Computer Science, you just get a whole different level of understanding of the underlying mathematical mechanisms when you have a degree.
There is also the added point that many companies would rather hire a guy with a degree than a guy without a degree.
| 33 |
ELI5: How does France maintain more than two political parties despite a winner-take-all system?
| 41 |
Many countries with single-winner, district-based elections have multiple major parties. These systems discourage party fracturing, but do not prevent it--e.g., in the United Kingdom the Liberal Democrats are a respectable third party. The reason the United States has just two main parties has to do with political polarization in its early political history, first over federalism and later over slavery.
| 19 |
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What applications could potentially have better performance if they were written in a functional style?
|
I know that concurrent programs are easier to write in an FP language. The lack of synchronization runtime overhead could improve the performance.
| 17 |
Better performance?
Here is an industry secret: optimizations are dirty and confusing.
Functional programming is often easier to maintain, allowing you to easily write and maintain 90% of your code base, and focus the messy optimization parts on the 10% where the hot loops are.
| 27 |
ELI5: What should I know so cops won't use my ignorance of my rights against me?
|
Especially for searches and *trees*
| 63 |
1. You don't need to talk to them or answer their questions without a lawyer present.
2. They cannot unreasonably detain you unless they intend to arrest you.
3. Police can lie when they talk to you with immunity. And they usually do.
| 39 |
Yesterday when I reached my destination with my car I noticed I was carrying a bee in it the whole time(I had the windows closed).Could this bee survive hundreds of miles away from its nest or is it doomed to die?Any chances it could be "adopted" by another nest?
| 1,231 |
Solitary bees are other species than social bees, such as the honeybee. They make it on their own by definition.
And about being adopted by another nest, I've got no idea how easy it is for a bee to locate an unknown hive. If your "lost bee" would find one, she would most likely be chased away by the guard bees because her smell was different, but if she had the foresight to load up on nectar or pollen first, she might be admitted.
We did an experiment where we marked 100 honeybees with tiny number stickers on their backs. Newborn adult bees are relatively easy to handle, they don't fly yet and their stingers aren't very effective. We put the bees in the hive from which the brood had been removed. We checked the hive for the numbered bees daily. Once they were old enough to leave the hive to forage for nectar and pollen, some would end up in neighboring hives. In the end, about 10% migrated. Since these hives were pretty close together in a bee stand, maybe they just landed at the wrong address by mistake.
| 886 |
|
[Teen Titans] If Beast boy was a old man and turned into a jellyfish, could he restart his own life cycle and turn back into a teen?
| 250 |
Probably. (Though technically he would start as an infant.) He mostly likely wouldn't even need to do that. Beast Boy's powers, when used to their full extent, are really fucking terrifying. The comics vacillate on why he doesn't use them to their fullest, from "he's not smart enough" to "He's scared of them" to "he doesn't want the responsibility being that powerful would bring."
| 175 |
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ELI5: The Science of Reading
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I just watched a webinar explaining the science of reading. One part spoke about how the human brain is hot-wired from birth to develop pathways between sound and meaning, but not visual and meaning. I.e. infants can naturally learn to associate sounds/words with a specific meaning, but not associate a written word with a specific meaning. This needs to be taught and the brain rewires itself to develop new neural pathways in order to do so.
When someone learns to read, the brain develops a new area called the *visual word form area* or "letterbox," which can actually be seen with an MRI.
My question is: once these connections are made, does learning to speak/read a new language, especially one with different letters or characters (like Mandarin) do the same? Does it create new neural pathways in the brain or use the same ones developed for reading your native language?
| 22 |
The 'letterbox' in Broca's area exists in people who can't read, it is just that through training we have purposed it for reading. That is an important distinction because that area evolved for *some reason* other than reading. As a result, while most humans are physically capable of reading, 60% of schoolchildren require direct reading instruction to learn to read fluently. When you are teaching children to read, you aren't forming a new area of the brain, you are training an area that is already there for the task.
It is interesting because, physiologically, the letterbox is limited. It is insanely hard to read even just a little outside of your focus, which is why you can only usually read one or two words ahead and it is nearly impossible to read an entire sentence at once, your eyes have to start at the beginning and move through the sentence. You can train to read in your periphery, but it is unnatural feeling.
Onto the answer to your question, yes, the training you receive learning language A helps in learning language B, to the point that it is normally way easier to read and write a new language as opposed to speaking it. You don't get a new Chinese letterbox, you train your existing letterbox to recognize Chinese characters.
| 18 |
If Death Penalty Opponents were Ideologically Consistent, I Believe They Would Oppose the Idea of All State Use of Lethal Force, Including the Police and Military. CMV
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I have never heard a single argument in favor of totally abolishing the death penalty in all circumstances that couldn't also be used against having armed police or the armed forces in any circumstances, including emergencies or wartime.
"What if they kill an innocent person?"
"Killing another person is wrong, no matter what they've done."
"You can never know for 100% certain if the person you are killing isn't really innocent."
"It costs too much money to kill or put a person to death." (have you seen our defense budget?)
"Vengeance is wrong; we shouldn't seek to kill others, but rather, we should seek to reform them."
"Being killed is a violation of human dignity."
If you think about it, the death penalty is actually fairer than armed police. If the police shoot a suspect and kill him, he could have been innocent. Or, they could accidentally shoot a bystander. And if the suspect dies, remember that he didn't even get a trial! At least the death row inmate has had his day in court.
And the army? I mean, how many civilians are killed in wars every year? Way more than the actual combatants! Even when the army deliberately avoids trying to kill civilians, accidents still happen.
I think that most death penalty opponents aren't actually anti-death, they are just anti-judicial. The government dealing death is okay as long as the executive branch does it, but the second that the judicial branch does, it becomes wrong somehow? Doesn't make one iota of sense.
Yet that's how many South American nations conduct themselves. They haven't had the death penalty for centuries, yet they have shady death squads under control of dictators that force disappearances of political opponents or other undesirables. They're being hypocrites.
So, if you oppose the death penalty but support armed police and the armed forces, CMV that you're a hypocrite. Tell me why you oppose the death penalty, and why that reason shouldn't also cause you to be a total pacifist?
**EDIT: One of the main responses I have been getting is that it's okay for the police or military to kill someone who poses an immediate threat, but an unarmed prisoner poses no immediate threat. So in their minds, it's worse to kill someone who isn't an immediate threat. But I'll respond with a thought experiment.**
Situation A: I walk into my house and discover that a crazed man has stabbed my family to death. Fearing for my own life, and enraged at his actions, I reach for my concealed handgun and shoot him, and he dies.
Situation B: I walk into my house, see the murder scene, draw my gun, and the man runs away before I can shoot him. But I spend the next year tracking him down, and finally find him a year later, where I confront him and shoot him when he's unarmed.
Which situation is morally worse? From the murderer's perspective, he'd prefer situation B, since he gets to live a year longer. From my perspective, it doesn't matter as long as the murderer dies. My motivations for killing him are nearly identical in both situations, too.
**This is also assuming that unarmed prisoners aren't a threat. They could always escape, or hurt other prisoners, or guards. If they are a mob boss, they could run their organization from prison, which might indirectly lead to more deaths.**
| 15 |
This may seem like a glib answer, but what's wrong with the response that while a military and police force that are equipped to kill serve a necessary function (namely, protecting us), the death penalty serves no such function, because everything it accomplishes can also be accomplished by imprisonment?
Note also that we can hold this view while opposing the *actual operations* of the military and police, which we might think *don't* primarily serve the function of defense and security. We can think that but still accept that there is a *necessary* role for the police and military to play, even if they are not playing it right now, or if they are doing other unrelated things as well.
| 14 |
Why are there fresh and salt water varieties of most aquatic life, but no freshwater cephalopods?
|
There seems to be at least somewhat-analogous pairings in fresh and salt water for most types of aquatic life, but there doesn't seem to be a single cephalopod that lives in fresh water. Why are there no freshwater octopuses or squids?
| 469 |
osmosis.
Freshwater dwellers have salty blood relative to the water around them. Without a mechanism in place to control it, osmosis would equalise salt concentrations between the animal and the water surrounding it, pumping salt out of the body and flooding it with freshwater. A sodium pump, like that found in freshwater fish species, uses chloride cells on the gill surface to actively absorb sodium and potassium ions from the environment. Any excess water taken in at the same time is excreted as urine.
Marine dwellers have the opposite problem, and need to conserve fresh water while expelling salt. Cephalopods pump seawater through their gills and use their kidneys to filter out fresh water from the ocean. Salts and waste water are channelled through the funnel.
ie, they never developed a sodium pump that would help them cope with osmotic change in freshwater.
www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/01/16/3670198.htm
| 250 |
I love programming, but suck at calculus.. Any advice?
|
Title says it all. I absolutely suck balls at calculus, but I have a passion for programming. It's fun. I love computers and the tech industry. I'm currently pursuing my bachelors in CS. Doing great in everything except CALCULUS.. Idk if I'll ever be able to pass it, but I want to have a career programming. Any advice?
| 24 |
Work hard, pass the class, get your degree, probably never worry about calculus again. Sorry, but there's not really a more helpful answer than that. You've just gotta get through it one way or another.
| 48 |
[Ender's Game] How did the Buggers not get a clue that humans were some kind of intelligent species?
|
I get it, they never thought intelligence could arise from creatures "that couldn't dream one another's dreams", but ... they could see the humans running around in spaceships, having artificially-lit cities, and launching nukes at the alien invaders. These are clearly the actions of a rational species. I think the Buggers are being disingenuous, or at best in denial.
| 31 |
They knew humans were intelligent, what they didnt get was that each human was essentially a queen.
The buggers thought they were doing something really routine, killing another queens drones, which was more akin to breaking your roombas
They thought our queens were somewhere else
| 47 |
[General Time Travel] Why do the Nazis win so damn much?
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Nearly every time someone makes a tiny little difference in the timeline, the Nazis win. You could kill some street pastor in New York, 1975 and the Nazis would win.
| 144 |
The Second World War wasn't as close as everyone makes it out to be. Don't get me wrong, it was a long and brutal war, fraught by mistakes made by the Axis and Hitler, but the Allies had massive population, GDP, and strategic location advantages.
The reason that it seems that so many timelines result in the Nazis winning has to do with the way time travel actually works and a little project that was conducted in a secret German lab in 1945.
Imagine the time space continuum as a single branch of a nearly infinitely branched tree. When you time travel, you follow that branch backwards to the point you travel to, and your interference is grafted on as a new branch.
In 1945, a subset of German researchers experimenting on the effect of atomic energy on time space fragility discovered rudimentary time travel. They were unable to choose a temporal coordinate, and instead set their destination roughly using atomic decay as a benchmark. Using remarkably imprecise tools (by "modern" temporal scientific standards, insomuch as such a term means anything), the Germans determined that exposing matter to a temporal flux would result in being pushed back along the timestream. Their hope was that they could send information, troops, technology, or covert operatives back to help win the war easier. They tried everything and spent years and massive amounts of capital sending things back, but nothing in their own timestream changed. When the War went bad for Germany and the scientists had nothing to show for their seemingly massive waste of time and budget, they were ordered executed by Hitler himself.
In a fit of desperation, they each sent themselves to a different temporal coordinate. They figured at worst they would just die painlessly and be saved the disgrace of execution.
What they realized was that while what they sent back didn't impact their own timeline, it was sometimes a large enough advantage in OTHER timelines to turn the tide of the war. They began doing everything they could in the timelines they grafted onto the continuum to advance what they now recognized as potential Nazi domination of all of time and space. Each member of the scientific team advanced their own atomic temporal project, with alternative reality versions of their coworkers, contaminated local timestreams as much as possible with information, troops, or technology, and tried to win the war in their own timeline. They figured they owed it to their other selves to avoid the Nazis losing the war in as many timelines as possible.
Now don't get me wrong, sufficient meddling in a timeline by a well meaning traveler could result in the traveler being shunted to a reality where that particular meddling made the difference in the war, but most of the time, especially in examples like the one you gave, what you're really working with is a timeline that was contaminated by the original Nazi time travel project, directly or indirectly.
| 288 |
[Looper] I know how this gig goes down, when the John Doe comes through they are bound up anyway, can't I just stun them with a taser and check if it's me? If so, we split the golden payday and go our separate ways and anyone else gets the blunderbuss?
| 98 |
The blunderbuss has an extremely low range, the people that supervise the hitmen (I can't remember their name) have other long range weapons. They basically say in the film if loopers go rogue their blunderbusses won't help. In the film, the old version of one of them gets free, so they capture and torture the young version so he comes back.
| 70 |
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If limb reattachment manages to fix nerves inside the severed limb, why can't the same be done for a severed spinal chord?
|
It seems that limb reattachment can fix nerves inside limbs, so why shouldn't the same be possible with a spinal chord? Maybe not restore full function, but perhaps at least enable the person to stand upright?
| 33 |
The peripheral nervous system consists of the nerves in your arms, legs, abdomen, etc. which can regenerate by use of Schwann cells. It takes a long time and nerves generally don't heal to the same capacity and effectiveness that they used to be.
The spinal cord and brain however are part of the central nervous system which lacks schwann cells and an ability to regenerate.
Some spinal cord injuries can partially heal if the cord is partially instead of full severed by teaching nerve impulses to get rewired through the unsevered section with intense physical therapy. Likewise, if the spinal cord is simply compressed or bruised, almost if not all function can be restored if physicians work quickly to decompress the nerves.
| 29 |
ELI5: Why 'giants' in movies always move super slowly.
| 1,844 |
It's a matter of scale. Let's say that you, as a presumably regular person, can throw a punch at a speed of 1 meter per second, and the punch travels a distance of about one meter.
But what if a giant were to throw a punch? Let's say he can punch twice as fast as you. You'd think it would look like the giant is super fast. But there's a key difference here. His punch needs to travel 10 meters to fully extend. Even though he's throwing his punch at *double* the speed you throw yours, it takes his five times as long to connect. So, if you wanted the giant to *look* like he was doing things at a "normal" speed, he'd really need to be moving ten times faster than you.
Now, since movies aren't real, there's no particular reason they *couldn't* have giants move at super speed. But it would look really unnatural.
| 1,944 |
|
ELI5: How do radio stations know how many people listen to them?
| 109 |
Media ratings services. Companies in a given market make random phone calls to people in a given area and ask them what stations they listen to (and a whole bunch of demographic questions). Based on the answers given by the sample group they are able to extrapolate how many people are listening to what.
With the rise of Cell phone and the decline of land lines these surveys have changed. Simple direct mailing with a cash offer (mail this back and we'll send you $5) are more the norm.
Social media is also used to track a given audience. Ever notice how most radio stations are begging you to like them on face book?
| 43 |
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ELI5: How does one "waste water" when using it in your home. Doesn't it just get added directly back to the water supply?
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Note: NOT in regards to agriculture or outdoor water usage.
I just saw a commercial that said something to the effect of not turning off water while brushing wastes like 4 gallons of water. I don't understand this, because according to my admittedly limited understanding of how our water supply works, the water just goes back into the city water supply after its treated.
| 47 |
"Wasting water" really means "wasting energy". Not every place on the planet has a nearly unlimited water source (like Washington and Idaho). In places like California, New Mexico, or Arizona, where clean water is scarce, using more water than you need to means that they have to ship more water from other areas and spend a great deal of money and energy to ensure everyone has the water they need.
In those places that are totally flush with clean water, like the aforementioned pacific northwest USA, you really couldn't waste enough water to even be a bother. In places like those drought areas, wasting water means higher water costs for everyone, and higher costs for the city.
| 80 |
ELI5:Laser guided missile systems
| 46 |
The missile head has a sensor, looking for a laser. The fighter or ground spotter points a laser at the target, the laser hits the target, then the light (may not be visible) scatters in all directions. The seeker head of the missile sees the light and aims at it, moving the body to follow.
| 23 |
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ELI5: How does a master key open so many unique locks?
| 28 |
In each lock, there are a series of "pins" that are pushed up by the ridges in the key. If all of the pins are pushed up the correct amount, then the key can be turned and the door unlocked.
Doors that are designed to work with master keys have a slightly different design. They have the same pins as a "normal" door, but they also have a pin in between the ones that are accessed by the regular key which the master key fits into. These extra pins are the same in all of the locks that the master key works with, while all the regular pins are different. As a result, individual keys only open there respective locks, while the master key can open any of them.
| 11 |
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ELI5: What happens to dead skin after it falls off? If I rub my hand against each other fast enough, this grey/white material comes off. Are those dead skin cells? Is it true that most dust in the air in homes is dead skin?
| 60 |
It's a mixture of moisture, oils, skin, debries, hair, and anything else you've touched in the last few days. It's broad claim to assert that "most dust in your home is dead skin" that may certainly be true for our grandmother who rarely leaves her home, but not so much the case for active households where windows and doors are opened and closed several times a hour.
When your skin falls off, it does pretty much turn into what you perceive to be dust, and ironically, many people are very sensitive to this dust with regard to allergies. If you're sneezing a lot at home, theres a good chance your own dead skin is irritating you. There are also billions of microscopic life that live in your house and furniture and they eat your dead skin, but they do not even come close to being able to keep up, the overwhelming majority of it just hangs around until it decomposes.
| 46 |
|
[Asoiaf/GoT] They say no army, no matter how big, can march through the bloody gate and take The Eyrie. How strong is it's defense against dragons though?
| 43 |
How do you think the Vale became part of the Seven Kingdoms?
Visenya Targaryen literally flew straight over the assembled forces of House Arryn and landed in the Eyrie.
At the time the King of Mountain and Vale, Ronnel Arryn, was a young boy. His mother - and regent - found him sitting in Visenya’s lap with the dragon Vhagar looming behind.
The Queen Regent Sharra Arryn surrendered without further violence (her forces had previously defeated the Targaryens at sea, and Visenya had burned the Vale fleet in response).
| 76 |
|
If 2 people dislike the same food, are they then more likely to dislike other similar foods?
| 222 |
Probably, since genetics alone can drastically affect how people taste different things. Phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) for example is reaalllly bitter to some people and not for others because of a genetic trait. So when two people hate, say, cilantro because of PTC’s taste, they’ll likely hate other similar foods that have high PTC like Brussels sprouts.
| 70 |
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I think Christianity is ultimately detrimental to society, CMV.
|
Okay, here's my reasons:
**1. There is no distinct Christianity.** There are thousands of *very, very* similar belief systems that all read the same Hebrew and Greek texts (albeit different translations) and profess, at the very least, similar ideas about a prophet/man-God named Jesus Christ. Together they collectively contain "Christianity," but if you look to any specific denomination you'll find lots of different ideas about minor issues like cessationism or transubstatiation, but also very big differences over who Jesus Christ even was (many mainstream Methodists, for example, profess the Nicene Creed and the belief in Jesus as a man-God but don't believe in a literal kind of atonement they way an Assembly of Gods church would.)
**2. The good stuff about Christianity is overhyped.** What has Christianity given the world? If you ask a Christian, it's love, peace, understanding, forgiveness - hardly values that exist alone in the Christian belief system (they are universal human values found throughout all cultures and belief systems).
If anything, the Christian belief system is rather misanthropic in its diagnoses of societal ills - diagnosing symptoms as the cause, encouraging a belief that humans are not capable of charity, grace, and good works without the enabling or encouragement of a God (without whom they'd be "disgraceful sinners"). And that's not even to mention anything about hell (that's number 5).
Or maybe they'd point to history and the overwhelming good Christians have brought to the world - from hospitals to schools to orphanages (why do you think most hospitals are named after saints?). Again, this assumes that hospitals or schools couldn't have been built without Christian charity or grace or initiative - but about the U.S. public education system, which has built *far* more schools in the U.S. than any religious institution? Schools and hospitals are great tools of society and will be built with or without Christian influence.
**3. The bad stuff about Christianity is often ignored (or written off as "not real Christianity".** Ever hear the phrase "This is not what Christianity is about"? It's kind of a subjective statement, often invoked by people who align with Christianity's softer side - but it creates a false dichotomy, it assumes there is a standard people are falling short of (again, a standard that is different for every branch of Christianity.)
But Christianity has a whole host of side effects that, endorsed by Jesus or not, have come to accompany Christian practice around the world. Homophobia, racism, and sexism are all encouraged in the Bible, including bizarre laws that demand death for a young woman's sexuality - in other words, the philosophy that's supposed to unite everyone also has some pretty compelling reasons why you're allowed to condemn and judge those that are different from you. How many Bible verses were able to support slave owners, opponents of the Civil Rights movement, or opponents of marriage equality?
**4. The bad stuff about the rest of the world is overhyped.** A central idea to Christianity is to be "not of this world" (John 18:36). In vague terms, society outside the church is often spiritually bankrupt, or deficient, or guilty of a whole host of sins. This is another misdiagnosis that manages to ignore the huge amount of good - pick any benefit of modern society, from cell phones to the internet to healthcare to entertainment. They do not stem directly from the Christian belief system, is there something morally inferior about them?
In addition, this encourages a black and white view of society that only sees good and evil winning or losing rather than complex issues and events with a whole host of factors feeding in to each other. It is considered evil that there is enough food in the world to feed everyone but there is still starvation - but starvation is a problem that stems from much more than a blanket term like "evil" or a character like "Satan" (if you subscribe that far) and are results of political systems and economics and bureaucratic corruption - perhaps resulting in evil, but correctly diagnosing helps us to fix problems better.
**5. The idea of hell is barbaric and outdated.** One of the most powerful ideas in Christianity is the doctrine of hell. Again, depending on which Christian you talk to, you'll get different ideas about what hell is. For some, like the Catholic church and most protestant denominations, Hell is a real place - maybe not physically, but definitely spiritually - of punishment for "bad deeds" on earth. Maybe it's a lake of fire, or maybe it's just "separation from God's love," it's all the same concept - or actions are being recorded and observed, and universal justice will be eventually applied.
This belief promotes irrational fear - many people suffer from unnecessary anxiety about the threat of hell, and the worst that most of them has done is get a speeding ticket.
**6. It encourages a fear of human knowledge outside of the belief system.** Today, thanks to discoveries in the past 2 centuries, we can tell a newborn child how they got here, what their made of, and how their bodies work. Yet Christians are usually the first to question these answers, and support ignorance rather than the facts that modern biology, anthropology, and archaeology are built on. They can be the first to dismiss climate change because it doesn't fit into their worldview that God would allow something like that to happen, or that man is that powerful, or even because they don't care if the world ends (God's going to build a new one.) Which leads me to...
**7. It's fatalistic and small-minded.** Christianity promises a destroyed world and the birth of a new one. It answers questions so we don't need to keep asking them (where did the world come from? why do we die?). It discourages curiosity. Could we become a space-faring species? Christianity doesn't care, there's not much of a blueprint in the Bible or an appreciation for what humans can become. The world gets destroyed, God fixes everything. Why invest in the future, or work on society's problems if it's all going to fall apart anyways?
**8. It's not true.** This is easily the most contentious of my points, but I guess what I mean by true is "objectively testable." In the past few centuries humanity has drastically changed the world into something better capable at supporting humans (we've managed to create 7 billion of us from a hard-luck species that emigrated out of Africa in an evolutionary blink of an eye) and we're quickly finding fewer and fewer limits when it comes to technology and innovation. We've figured out how to travel from one planetary body to another, and we're the first creatures in the earth's history to know where how we got here and where exactly here is.
This knowledge and level of innovation was encouraged by the scientific method, a rigorous commitment to testing ideas and following patterns, and a belief that if it can't be tested (wether logically, like Einstein's thought-experiments, or practically, like most lab tests) or observed, then it isn't worth considering (why waste time positing theories about invisible creatures playing croquet in space until we see the data that points to such strange ideas?).
The scientific method cuts through our brain's superstitious, pattern-hungry and easily deceived senses to find *universal truths* rather than subjective ones (and, unless Jesus comes back, or Allah opens up the sky, or Vishnu appears in Washington D.C. to hold a press conference, religious views are subjective). It allows us to connect as creatures over the universal laws that govern the world we live in (phsyics, chemistry) as well as the complex functions that keep us running, and allows us to adapt even better to this world (technology). Best of all, the scientific method allows for innovation and adaptation because there are no hallowed truths - only evidence.
Christians can claim faith in spite of evidence, or a lack of beauty and mystery in a science-dogged world, but the commitment to scientific reasoning has put cell phones in their pockets and Modern Family on their television or laptop every week.
But back to the main point - **"a fool builds his house on sand."** This nugget holds true despite whether or not Jesus was God, and I don't think I have to go very far to explain why idealogies built on false premises, while sometimes benign, can lead to problems (witch trials, faith healing, the mother f-ing Holocaust).
So, CMV! What's so great about Christianity that can't be found elsewhere? How is Christianity misrepresented?
EDIT1 - I've been on a shoot, now I'm reading everybody's responses....will respond soon!
EDIT2 - Okay, done for today, looking forward to continuing discussion tomorrow. Thanks for some great posts and ideas, fellow redditors!
EDIT3 - I've bitten off more than I can chew! I've thought of a better changemyview that's more limited in focus, there's simply too much here - I can give in on a few points, here, but I still don't see how Christianity, *if* built on a false premise, is healthy for society. But I also see that it does a lot of good (with some side effects).
| 35 |
A good man can exercise his Christian faith and help a person in need. A bad man can wear a Christian facade to elevate his own needs. It is the same with anything- people are good and bad. Atheism has as many assholes as Christianity.
| 18 |
[General] Are zombies created by science different from those created by magic?
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In most modern zombie media the apocalypse begins with a disease/virus that was created by science. That disease is link to the brain that’s why there’s a “shoot them in the head” rule.
But does that rule still apply when the zombies are created through something like necromancy? Is their head still the prime weakness or do they need to receive a certain amount of bodily damage before dying (for real) ?
| 22 |
This question is a bit too broad to answer definitely, since there are many different disciplines of "science" and "magic", and consequently there are just as many different varieties of zombies. But since there are differences between these zombie varieties, the short answer is that yes, there can be differences between zombies created by science and zombies created by magic, but there is no neat delineation between the properties of science zombies and the properties of magic zombies.
Let's first note that not all science zombies are killed by shots to the head. Corpses reanimated by telekinesis, for example, will not go down until you destroy the body to the point where there's nothing to move telekinetically. Zombies created through technological implants or nanomachines (eg. husks from the Mass Effect universe) also do not necessarily show particular weaknesses to headshots.
As for zombies animated by magic, as mentioned there are far too many types of such zombies to come up with any unified rules for how to kill them. Some zombies are basically just the same person magically given a second HP bar after death, and if you cause enough damage then the person will fall down dead again. On the other hand, some zombies will continue "living" no matter what you do to them, until their creator is killed or the undeath spell is stopped. Many zombies will likely fall somewhere in between these two extremes, where you can kill them just by doing enough damage to them, or by killing their creator or stopping the spell.
Furthermore, an additional difficulty associated with answering this question is that the definition of a "zombie" is a bit murky. At its most basic, a zombie is a reanimated corpse. So if a skeleton is magically reanimated, is it a zombie? How do you kill a magic skeleton? And if we agree that skeletons can be zombies, then what about other reanimated body parts? The Thing from the Addams Family universe is a reanimated severed hand. Is that a zombie? How do you kill the Thing? And in the Dwarf Fortress universe, *all* body parts can be reanimated by magic; in addition to reanimated bones, you can also have reanimated skin, hair, animal shells, etc. They can only be killed by bashing them into a pulp so that there's nothing left to reanimate. Cutting them in half with an edged weapon won't work, you'll just get two smaller pieces of skin reanimating again and coming after you.
Anyway, all of this is to say that yes, there are differences, but that's because all zombies are different.
| 22 |
ELI5: If the Earth orbits the habitable zone, how come the moon doesn't look like the earth does?
| 41 |
Just because something is in the habitable zone does not mean it's going to be habitable.
There's no water or atmosphere on the moon, so it can't support life as we know it. The 'days' on the moon are 2 weeks of darkness and 2 weeks of light, so even if it had water/atmosphere, the nights would be so long that everything would freeze, and the days would be so long that everything would roast.
| 48 |
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ELI5: Why if I multiply any random number with 9 the sum of that number is always 9?
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Examples:
1x9=9
2x9=18=1+8=9
5x9=45=4+5=9
25x9=225=2+2+5=9
456123789x9=4105114101=4+1+0+5+1+1+4+1+0+1=27=2+7=9
Please explain why the number 9 does this. And for example the number 7 doesn't?
| 105 |
Whatever integer is the base of your number system, the one before it will have this property in that number system. In other words, the largest digit of the number system has this property - in base ten that is 9.
For instance, in base eight:
1* 7 = 7
2 * 7 = 16 → 1 + 6 = 7
5 * 7 = 43 → 4 + 3 = 7
25*7 = 223 → 2 +2 + 3 = 7
4561237 * 7 = 41031131 → 4 + 1 + 3 + 1 +1 + 3 + 1 = 16 → 1 + 6 = 7
| 77 |
ELI5: How does the stomach let fluids through without the stomach acid flowing out with it
| 8,335 |
It doesn’t. The stomach’s digestive secretions pass into the intestines with whatever food / fluids you’ve ingested. This usually takes about 2 hours for fluids and 6 for solid food.
As someone else has already said, the acids are then neutralised by secretions from other organs
| 5,274 |
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ELI5: What happens physically when we get "used" to smells, that we can't detect it anymore.
| 45 |
Kind of the same thing when we get used to pain, and can't feel it anymore. The sensors in your nose are still detecting the smell, and still sending signals to your brain. And, your brain still begins to process the smell. But, the part of your brain that interprets the smells stops processing the same inputs.
So, technically, you are still smelling that smell. But, the subconscious part of your brain isn't telling the conscious part "it smells like mint" any more.
| 15 |
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Why is it ok to keep baked good that contain egg/milk out at room temperature but not fried or scrambled eggs.
| 24 |
Baked goods typically have very little water per unit volume so they are reasonably inhospitable to bacteria. Also for most baked goods you've cooked the eggs and milk all the way through, killing any resident bacteria. So they'll last about a week.
With scrambled or fried eggs you don't always cook the egg all the way through. Especially if you like your eggs a little runny or sunny side up.
| 16 |
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CMV: Fishing tournaments are a test of luck, not skill
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First I must admit that I've never gone fishing. I don't know what is really involved in it, so my mind is pretty open on this.
I don't see how fishing tournaments are a test of skill. You grab your pole, sling out your lure, and wait for a fish to bite. Whether the fish is a big one, small one, or the species you want is just a test of which fish happens to bite first (Obviously species will depend on exactly which body of water you're fishing in).
So to me, fishing tournaments are silly. You might as well have a coin flipping tournament. The winner is nothing more than a lottery.
But again, I've never been fishing, so I could be completely off. So, CMV.
_____
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*
| 19 |
>I've never been fishing
Your view would change in an instant if you did. Fishing successfully requires knowledge of lures, geography, weather, how to "read" water, how to make useful predictions of where fish are going. It requires quickly navigating to the hot spots, an accurate casting arm, patience and attention to detail when waiting for a bite, executive decision making on when to move to a different bait or new spot.
Certainly there is some luck involved--I cannot think of any athletic endeavor that doesn't have some element of random come into play (maybe chess, if you consider that athletic). But fishing at a high level is absolutely a test of skill.
| 14 |
CMV: Bowls are better than plates in most cases.
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I should start this by saying that I am from a country where the staple food is mainly rice. Rice here is often mixed with a lot of other food. Fried food, soups, sauce and other condiments for those add-ons, etc. Often times this makes the texture of the food such that it is easy to either make a mess/spill some food on the table/floor.
I believe that bowls are superior than plates because their shape keeps the food in them contained better. Plates are pretty much flat, or nearly flat, and it increases the chance of one accidentally push their food off the plate's edge and create a mess. I recently eat most of my meals with bowls instead of plates, and safe to say that personally I haven't accidentally spill my food at all.
I understand that for some types of food, plates are preferable, like for those big-ass hamburgers, or steak, or anything that does not have a lot of small bits that can easily be pushed off the plate. So, I am unsure why plates are still more common than bowls even for easily-messed-up food. CMV.
Sorry for some weird phrasing. Not sure how to make it better.
EDIT: Let me just add on that while I understand plates give you the choice to separate different types of food that you don't want to mix together, I see it as there is a risk of still mixing them together (your spoon/fork/knife slipped, someone eating beside you accidentally pushed your arm a bit, etc.). I would rather use separate containers for food that I don't want to be mixed.
Also, the argument that cleaning more plates/bowls would be inconvenient is not very convincing, as I'd rather have just a few more plates/bowls that would take an extra minute or two to clean than risking my food mixed *when I don't want them to*.
| 121 |
Different food types just have different ways to serve them. Anything with liquid, or a bunch of small pieces (soup, rice, peas, etc.) you'll put it in a bowl. Pretty much anything that requires cutting it with a knife, or a food where it's a large thing that you just eat as one piece (steak, sandwiches, etc.) you'll want to use a plate.
It's like saying a fork is better than a spoon. Even if they can have a little bit of overlap in their uses, they're just made for different purposes.
| 18 |
[The Legend of Korra] Why was the Northern Water Tribe army not employed to defend P'Li's prison?
| 23 |
Probably because they were recovering from a Civil War not two weeks before.
Also Unalaq was part of the Red Lotus so there's really no tell who in the Northern Water Tribe he stacked with Red Lotus sympathizers. Zuko took people he knew weren't going to betray him for the Red Lotus. Desna and Eska fought against their father and Tonraq would never betray his daughter.
| 25 |
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ELI5: How come NYC (latitude=40°) gets covered in snow during winter whereas Melbourne (latitude=-38°) never really gets much?
| 67 |
Oceanic currents and wind patterns keep the weather on some coasts milder than on others. That is why the West Coast is much warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer than the East Coast of the US. Melbourne is protected from Antarctic weather systems by the Southern Ocean, while nothing stops polar winds from reaching NYC.
| 46 |
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ELI5: Why do flies fly in small circles right in the centre of the room
| 40 |
The lights in the room are confusing the flies.
​
Basically, flies and many other flying insects use the sun to navigate their way through the world. In a room with artificial lights, this can confuse the insect in question. From the fly's point of view, it's flying in a straight line.
​
For the same reason, moths gather around lights and often bump into them.
| 40 |
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eli5: Why did the life expectancy for people with down syndrome increase from 25 years in 1980 to 60 years today?
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I read that it was largely due to the end of the inhumane practice of institutionalizing people with Down syndrome but i don’t really understand what this means.
| 141 |
A lot of people with Down Syndrome have a number of other health problems besides the cognitive issues that people mainly notice. For example many have a heart problem, atrioventricular septal defect. If untreated or poorly treated, this can lead to a very early death. There are a number of other health problems they can have. With better health care, they will live a lot longer. They’re getting better health care now than they used to. They’ve stopped the institutionalizing so much and now often mainstream them as kids, which has had great results.
| 130 |
ELI5: What are the major components and subsequent advantages that distinguish various household cleaners? (Ex, Soap and water vs 409, glass cleaners, mold/mildew type cleaners, etc?
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I'm sure some of it has to do with some lipophilic solvent or stronger detergents to cut through grease, etc, but what about some specifics?
| 4,881 |
Real soap is good but forms a scum in hard water that is difficult to remove.
Detergents are good for removing oils but can be harsh on your skin.
Glass cleaners are designed to clean glass/mirrors and leave a streak free surface but ammonia based cleaners like windex will remove tint from windows or computer monitors.
Mold/mildew/sanitizers have different properties that make them ideal for some problems but ineffective for others.
For example, bleach is cheap and can be used for sanitizing fruits and vegetables but will rust metal and doesn’t last long.
Phenols like lyesol is good but can leave a residue so you can’t use it on food surfaces.
And quats are good but can be expensive and have to be diluted correctly.
| 2,632 |
[ELI5] How did the auto-pilot in Charles Lingburgh and Amelia Earhart’s transcontinental planes work so they could sleep or use the bathroom?
| 16 |
Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St Louis had no autopilot. In fact, it was designed with intentional instability, to aid in keeping the pilot awake.
Earhart used a Sperry autopilot, which could maintain heading and pressure altitude.
| 30 |
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What would happen if all the micro-organisms on and in your body suddenly disappeared?
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Things like gut flora, helpful (and harmful) bacteria, mites, basically everything that isn't an actual part of your body like cells. What would happen if they all disappeared at once? Would you die?
| 15 |
Well, in truth we are not sure about that.
However, it can be safely said that if you didn't live in a bubble so to speak, the consequences could be terrible, possibly, fatal.
Excluding the ways our microbiome helps our metabolism and stimulates our immune system, simply by being there, it is preventing other, potentially dangerous microbes from settling in. The sudden loss of this dynamic ecosystem could lead to harmful microbes flooding the body and overwhelming the immune system.
| 14 |
[ELI5] Why do paper-cuts seem to hurt worse than "regular" cuts?
| 98 |
Also- a regular cut will bleed and lubricate the wound. A good straight cut will start to heal almost immediately because of this. A paper cut on the other hand (no pun intended) will stay dry and irritate pain receptors.
| 51 |
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ELI5: How do companies like Coke gauge the effectiveness of their advertising when it’s everywhere and people buy their products anyway?
| 44 |
I can't be arsed to find the link, but Coca Cola apparently chose a small target city in the US and stopped all local advertising as a test, and saw a decline in sales.
It validated the fact that advertising is required to keep the brand in-your-face, lest someone else come along and steal the short attention span of the average consumer.
| 44 |
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ELI5: Why is the coin grading system a scale of 60-70? That seems like a rather odd range.
| 64 |
The scale was originally proposed by William H Sheldon. Since no such scale was widely in use at the time he had a very wide amount of leeway in choosing what the scale would look like. Ideally the scale should have enough different grades that you could have a good idea of how worn a coin is, but few enough grades that there wouldn't be a bunch of disagreement between experts as to what the grade of a coin actually is.
That sweet spot is not necessarily aligned with a nice round number that you might hope for, like 50 or 100. 50 was too coarse of a scale for Sheldon, apparently, and 100 was too fine, so he settled on 70. Since he was the first to propose a scale that gained traction (originally just for large cents, but it can be extended to other coins) it became the industry standard, with a few minor modifications over the years.
Note that the scale doesn't just run from 60-70, as your title may suggest. The scale runs 1-70. It's common to see coins only listed between 60 and 70 as those are the highest grades and are the range where you could describe a coin as being in "mint condition." Also, proof coins (struck more slowly and carefully with polished dies) typically land in this range. Most coins are much worse off, but if you have a poor condition coin like that then it's not as common to go get it graded. A coin from the last decade in MS-68 condition may fetch a premium, but the same coin in AU-50 condition is just worth its face value, so it's silly to pay to have it professionally graded.
| 45 |
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CMV: Trying to change the population's carbon footprint is less efficient than changing industry practices to combat climate change.
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I'd like to preface this by saying that my opinion comes from my gut feeling about the subject. I haven't read a lot about the subject so I think my view could easily be changed.
I think that from the perspective of combatting climate change, it is more efficient (in terms of money and time invested) to change industry practices rather than trying to change the little everyday actions that an individual can do to fight climate change.
I believe that any of the changes that could be promoted to individuals are either too small and won't have a significant impact or the changes are too big and won't get adopted by a significant part of the population. Therefore, money and time invested in promoting "best practices for the environment" to the population is money wasted.
Introducing regulations and laws that target industry practices is the best way to reduce our carbon output because industries use far more resources than individuals. Reducing plastic use in packaging, reducing the number of power plants using dirty fuels and other similar changes will affect the environment a lot more than whatever actions could be reasonably changed in the general population.
I'm not saying that money and time spent towards sensitizing the population towards the environment is a bad thing, just that the focus should be on companies changing their behavior and not the population. I think the focus should shift from "individuals should do more to save the environment" to "companies should do more to change the environment".
_____
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*
| 109 |
I think i could give you a rather simple answer. The first thing to preface is however that, 1. Companies are run by people, 2. People work in companies, 3. People controll the practices of a company
The reason i preface this is, by this qualification i argue that changing the cultural attitudes towards environmental policies is over the long term more likely to create a social and cultural environment where all aspects of social and economic life are expected to change.
Implementing these policies can (and most likely will) change the attitudes towards such issues in the whole population creating an atmosphere where not only the population will demand more regulations in this direction, but companies themselves want to do that.
Tldr: Change the culture first; the rest will follow
| 11 |
ELI5: How do people become allergic to things when they use to not be?
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For example, I use to not be allergic to cats until I was about 17 years old, then one day my eyes started puffing up after about 15 minutes of being around them. Since then I have become allergic to multiple things.
| 21 |
The medical and science communities are still not sure exactly *why*, or what causes our bodies to flag something as an invader that it previously hasn't. When we develop an allergy can be affected by many variables, including genetics. If you have an allergy prone parent, you're 40% more likely to develop allergies. If both of your parents have allergies, you're 70% more likely. However, you may not have the same allergies they do.
Allergies are a response of the immune system to what it sees as an invader. The circumstances have to be just right for the allergen to trigger an allergic reaction, so the first time you're exposed to cats you may be fine. The 17th time, you may be fine. The 70th time, you may be fine...but then the 71st time you have a reaction. It begins with exposure. Even if you've inhaled an allergen many times before with no trouble, at some point, for some reason, the body flags it as an invader. During this particular exposure, the immune system studies the allergen. It readies itself for the next exposure by developing antibodies, special cells designed to detect it. You are now "sensitized" to the allergen.
Then, the next time you're exposed to the allergen, your immune system kicks into action. The antibodies recognize it. That triggers the activation of special cells called mast cells. These cells are responsible for the symptoms in the lungs, skin, mucosal linings of the sinus and intestinal tract. These mast cells burst open, releasing something called histamines. You may have noticed allergy medications called anti-histamines. These are meant to block these histamines, thus alleviating the symptoms they cause.
The amount of exposure matters as well. If you're allergic to, say, strawberries or avocado, you may not have a problem with a spoonful of guac or a berry or two. But then you eat a third berry, or another chip with guac, and you notice your eyes watering and itching, or perhaps hives raising on your arms, or even begin having difficulty taking a deep breath. This is because histamines cause inflammation.
Sometimes you outgrow an allergy. And sometimes people don't react as strongly to the allergens that have given them problems in the past as they age. It's thought this is perhaps because our immune systems weaken as we age and therefore doesn't produce as strong of a response. But they never go away on their own. And some allergies will get worse over time...especially true with things like latex allergies and allergies to bee stings. There are also cross-affective allergies, where certain proteins shared by two separate allergens can cause a more severe reaction (for example, eating a banana during ragweed season).
It's important to treat allergy symptoms, despite the temptation some have to "tough it out", since leaving them unchecked can cause more severe problems to develop (like asthma).
| 15 |
[Resident Evil: The Final Chapter] It seems to me, or was it already clear in the last film that Umbrella won, and it was not worth destroying her?
|
As far as I can remember, the main people in Umbrella decided to almost destroy all of humanity, and start over from scratch. Naturally, Alice did the right thing, which interfered with their plans, but up to the penultimate films! Because before the penultimate film, people still had some chance for the rebirth of humanity, but with their destruction (As I remember, all the strong remnants of humanity gathered in the white house) everything became meaningless, because already in the last part of the film it is said that there are several thousand people left alive (Not counting the people from Umbrella).
Should Alice have already given up, because with the destruction of the remaining Umbrella, she will really doom all of humanity to extinction?
(Sorry if I suddenly wrote clumsily, because English is not my native language)
| 22 |
Alice released the cure for the T-virus into the air. The cure destroys organisms infected with the T-virus. While it will take years for the cure to travel through the air and reach all the T-virus creatures worldwide, the fact that the T-virus will be wiped out is a certainty, it's only a matter of time.
How much of humanity is left? Who knows? It's true that the world's population has been vastly reduced, but there may be isolated enclaves or communities of people still hidden somewhere around the world, sort of like how Claire's group was hiding and surviving in Raccoon City. Once the threat of the zombies and other bioweapons have been eliminated by the airborne cure, the surviving remnants of humanity can attempt to rebuild some semblance of civilization.
Is it certain that humanity will survive? No it is not. But nor is it certain that humanity is doomed, especially now that the cure has been released.
| 23 |
ELI5: How do self-driving cars manage large intersections with multiple traffic signals?
| 105 |
First of all, keep in mind that there are no finished, commercially-available self-driving cars that automatically handle traffic signals...yet.
Tesla's self-driving features only handle highway driving and parking, for example - they don't handle stop lights and stop signs.
Google's is the furthest along based on public information but it's still years away from being ready to fully autonomously drive. So this type of thing probably isn't completely solved yet.
One of the keys to Google's self-driving car is that it uses Google Street View data plus everything else from Google Maps driving directions - so it actually knows how many lanes there are supposed to be at every intersection, and which ones are turn lanes - before it can "see" any of the signs. That helps it know how to interpret the traffic signals.
That makes things much easier - it's not trying to understand every intersection from scratch, every time. It knows what to expect and only has to detect if for some reason the intersection isn't what it expected, like if it was recently changed.
| 43 |
|
[Alien] What were the flame units on the Nostromo supposed to be used for?
|
Melting ice? Clearing vegetation on jungle planets? Anti pirate weapons (bullets and vacuum etc.)? Some sort of bizarre mistake, like the chainsaws on Mars in Doom 3?
Wonder if there’s any supplementary material that explained their original purpose.
| 19 |
They're cutting torches modified into flamethrowers. Used for ship repairs and such. A larger nozzle and more propellant released increases the flame size into a weapon. It's also possible it was intended for deicing procedures on external equipment.
| 25 |
CMV: There is a large number of the population that area easily mislead and cannot think and reason for themselves. This is the reason we need government regulation on things like employment, health, EPA, and SEC oversight.
|
Whether you wish to believe it or not, I sincerely believe that there are a large number of people in the US and the world that are exploitable at their very being. They believe whatever you tell them, if you use the right psychological tricks. Whether this be xenophobia, bandwagoning, or tribalism. Because of this, the government needs to be there so that these individuals aren't exploited to the extent of tear-jerking poverty and maltreatment.
We are already seeing a backlash against this type of protectionism the government is needed for, and people are barely able to afford an education, housing, and healthy food, where once this was the norm for a family with a single earner.
Banks are being allowed to work with criminals for minimal damage when caught. Companies are allowed to pollute with minimal overall responsibility. Large amounts of the economy is funneling to the top, and the overall populace is getting less and less knowledgeable on the whole.
_____
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*
| 136 |
The reason we need regulation is not because people are gullible or ignorant.
It is because people have a tendency of being primarily concerned with their own needs, and they don't always see the value in conservation and moderation.
For example, many unregulated fishing grounds have been depleted of stocks of fish. Individual fishermen will do what they do: catch fish. It's not a question of them "not being able to think for themselves" -- they are thinking for themselves, that the more fish they catch, the better it is for them, and if they don't do it, somebody else will -- that's where government regulation comes in and makes general rules for everybody. Sometimes those activities need to be regulated in order to provide for the common good.
Furthermore, as a society grows larger, more issues appear that require regulation, especially involving shared resources such as fresh water, airspace, transportation, etc. It's critical for "big picture" decisions to be taken into account when allocating resources in order to preserve them and make them functional for all.
On top of this, there is the ongoing development of special interest groups that have their own agenda and the means to influence large groups of people, which may not always be in the best interests of everybody.
Central regulatory agencies whose responsibility is to shepherd public resources are essential in order to preserve those resources.
Is government infallible? No. But government, or any entity that is expressly-established with a mandate to protect the publics interest will always be a better regulator than a private company, whose primarily objective is to profit and create value for shareholders. In each case you have entities that have a "nature" that should not be ignored. Governments' nature is to "help people". Private companies' nature is to "create profit." When things break down they obviously need to be repaired, but a private interest inherently will gravitate away from the public good if it conflicts with its primary mandate of creating profit. Governments that become driven by money will, likewise, gravitate away from their mandate of representing the needs of the people. Neither is perfect, but both have different objectives, that are not based on whether people are smart or lazy.
| 69 |
ELI5: Why do "bugs" or "glitches" happen even when accomplished and successful studios develop a video game?
|
EDIT:
Perhaps I should've asked the question differently.
I totally get that people are imperfect and make mistakes. I'm more interested in understanding *why* a glitch happens, even when professionals do the coding.
Is there something that is just inherent in coding that creates glitches?
Do different parts of the code conflict? Why is it so challenging to identify those glitches, even for professionals?
| 182 |
Imagine code like a set of rules.
Lets say that you run a business, and you decide to upgrade your security/employee-management. You put finger print locks on the doors, so your building is more secure, and also so you can see when employees arrive and leave based on when they used the fingerprint lock on the front door. Now things will be so much easier!
A week later, you notice one of your employees has missed every single day of work. You demand an explanation and he swears he was here, and his co-workers attest to that.
So what happened? Well, it's because there is a ***bug*** in your system. He carpools to work, and walks in with is co-worker. His co-worker had been opening the door with the fingerprint lock, and he walks in behind them.
You failed to take that situation into account when making your rules, and so, your system had more employees in the building than you thought. This is a bug.
___
But no matter, easy solution! Just add a new rule that each employee must open and shut the door individually. Bug fixed!
Another week goes by, and you notice that for one of the employees the numbers don't add up. He entered the building more times than he left. Well that doesn't make sense at all. What happened?
You look at the security footage and see that on two separate occasions, he opened the door to enter, but before going in he realized he forgot something in his car. He let the door shut, went to his car, and then came into the building. That means the records show that he opened the door from the outside more times than he opened it from the inside, explaining why the numbers don't match.
Your mistake here was assuming that just because an employee opened the door, that they went through it. That oversight caused a bug.
___
As you can imagine, there are a lot more rules in a videogame, and thus the potential for a lot more bugs. A lot of situations that you should have realized would happen, but failed to, creating a bug. And with games the faulty information caused by one bug can cause other bugs, which can cause even more bugs, which can hide where the problem started. And sometimes you get a bug once, can't figure out what you did to cause it, and so you don't know what rules need fixing. You know it's there, you saw it happen, but as hard as you try you can't recreate it.
**TL;DR** Bugs happen when a programmer fails to account for every possibility.
| 258 |
CMV: Shoes should come pre-dipped in a hydrophobic liquid
|
So the main argument against this I am expecting is the argument of monetary incentive.
\- It would cost money for a company to make their shoes longer-lasting (two opposing forces since people would buy fewer shoes)
However, I would be willing to buy more of a company if I knew they were longer-lasting, one of the main reasons I don't buy nice shoes is because I know they will get ruined so quickly, however, I would be willing to pay a higher price for premium shoes if they lasted longer and looked pristine for longer.
Also, the price of hydrophobic material could be greatly reduced since a lot of it is wasted in spray, if you had it in liquid form you could dip shoe after shoe with minimal wastage and also use very little simultaneously.
Also, the longer people can wear your shoes the more they will talk about how long they last and how good they are creating free advertisements.
​
**Edit: I never said all shoes, I said there should be an option of pre dipped hydrophobic shoes, the reason for this is because any attempt with spray or anything else is imperfect and tedious.**
I have officially changed my view, thank you to everyone who contributed.
| 1,099 |
Most shoes breathe well. Leather is already easy to clean and work shoes are already water resistant. Non-work shoes that will be worn casually are meant to breath well, by adding hydrophobic coating you lose the breathability, it costs more and it isn't permanent. It also can damage the shoes faster as parts might lose it earlier than other parts it might pull the fabric off when it is falling off.
So overall it isn't just costs, but functionality and Durability. Shoes that need to be hydrophic are usually already water resistant and easy to clean, all the rest need to breath.
| 467 |
ELI5 Why can't we pipe water to southwest US?
|
We pipeline oil from Canada to Texas, why can't we pipeline water from the Great lakes to the south?
Edit: thank you all who replied, I've gathered that it is technically possible, but would come with a huge amount of legal, environmental, and practical issues due to the amount of water that would actually be needed. It sounds like there are far more practical solutions available if the need became dire enough.
| 54 |
Just the extreme cost.
So, there's costs involved to move things in a pipeline. And it's not hard to recoup those costs with oil. Right now, the market price for a gallon of crude oil is about $2.65.
The market price for a gallon of water is less than a penny. In fact, a penny would get you about six gallons of water at wholesale prices.
On average, it costs about $5/barrel to move oil in a pipeline. Of course this will depend on distance, but it's a convenient number. That's about 12 cents per gallon.
The cost of pipeline transport for oil is about 4% of the cost of the oil. If we had that cost for transporting water, it would raise the cost of the water by 7200%.
| 116 |
Does the spin of the earth have any significant effect on the time it takes to complete a trans-pacific flight vs a trans-atlantic flight?
|
The Earth spins west towards the east. This [GIF](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_rotation#mediaviewer/File:Globespin.gif) helps visualize it.
Assume that its the same model of plane, travelling at the same altitude and speed, with the same mass, same weather conditions, same distance
Its ~7500 km from Toronto to Moscow, and Vancouver to Tokyo (google).
Would the rotation of the Earth make the flight from Vancouver to Tokyo any faster?
On a side note, are flight routes generally flown perpendicular to the axis of the Earth?
| 264 |
Nope, the plane is in the rotating reference frame.
But, it actually does because the coriolis force contributes to atmospheric winds, among them the jet stream which runs in one direction only and aircraft can take advantage of!
| 96 |
ELI5:How would a person born & raised on the moon physically differ from an earthling?
| 106 |
Light gravity would almost ruin the bone structure of the person once they went back to earth. They would have severe spinal problems because of it, and probably couldn't see and couldn't comprehend balance or direction due to fluid in the ears. Vsauce has a great video called "what if we were born in space" you should check out.
| 90 |
|
[Disney] What would Maleficent have given Aurora if the king and queen hadn't neglected to invite her?
| 49 |
She would have offered to personally tutor the young princess in the ways of sorcery and true power.
If the king and queen refused, she could take umbrage and curse the kingdom, as the story goes.
If the king and queen relented, she would gain a new apprentice and bargaining chip with Aurora as her personal ward/hostage.
| 73 |
|
CMV: Being a stay-at-home partner is nearly always a bad idea
|
I'm convinced that being a stay-at-home *unemployed* spouse, regardless of gender, is a terrible choice with only a handful of exceptions. You lose job market skills. You become completely financially dependent on your partner, which could trap you in a bad relationship. If your marriage falls apart or something happens to the other person, you can only trust a life-insurance payout and a will (neither of which many people have) for your financial security. You can easily become alienated from others and develop bad habits.
The vast majority of the time, there are no significant benefits to being a stay-at-home partner. For instance, the idea that you save money on preschool by having a stay-at-home parent stops applying after kindergarten and doesn't apply in countries where preschool is cheap or free. When childcare is a necessity, part-time jobs are more appropriate than unemployment.
The usual work-arounds-- like volunteering, joining a religious community, and so on-- don't actually mitigate most of the financial issues and many of the social ones.
I'll include a few exceptions to the "nearly always" principle, just so we don't waste time debating them:
1) A special needs child/homeschooling the kids/elderly parent requiring care: Self-explanatory. A partner does need to be at home if this is the model of parenting/eldercare you choose.
2) An inability to work due to health complications, whether physical and mental: Also self-explanatory. Work clearly isn't more important than one's wellbeing.
3) Some kind of atypical property that requires round-the-clock maintenance: if there's a sound economical reason why you have to be home, I won't protest. Although caring for a property constantly sounds like a job and probably falls under the category of "self-employed" or "working from home", both of which are exempt from this debate.
All right, reddit. CMV!
_____
> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*
| 56 |
Say you marry someone who makes $500,000/year, but you only make $30,000/year. You are only contributing 6% of the total income to your family, even though both of you are working the same number of hours. Say you cut your hours in half and only make 15,000 a year. That extra time allows you to do more household tasks, which allows your spouse to work more hours and make significantly more money per hour.
No matter how you spin it, childcare, cooking, household repairs, running errands, etc. take a lot of time and energy. In families where both partners make the same small amount of money, both should split the tasks evenly. In families where both partners make a ton of money, it makes sense to hire people to handle these tasks for them (nannies, housekeepers, private chefs/restaurants). But in relationships where one person makes much more than the other, it's far more financially prudent for the higher earning person to focus on the higher earning task.
You talk about risks such as losing job market skills. Again, you don't have that many market skills to begin with, and that only matters if you intend to return to work at some point. But this type of arrangement can last 20 years or so until all your kids go to college or move out. Then you can use your saved income over the years to open a business of your own if you like.
* You also mentioned being trapped in a bad relationship. This is a risk, but dealing with this issue was the original purpose of alimony, and courts are very favorable to the stay at home spouse in this type of situation (especially if they are a woman.)
* You mention needing life insurance and a will, but if you are making this type of arrangement, you can get those things taken care of as well.
* You can develop bad habits or become alienated, but that depends on how you spend your days.
* Finally, you mention work arounds, but in many cultures and subcultures, it is socially preferable for one partner to stay at home. Many social conservatives in the US and abroad promote the idea that women should stay at home and raise a family, and many feminist and liberal cultures like the idea of stay-at-home dads.
Ultimately, it comes down to how you want to divided up tasks in your home. For better or worse, the traditional nuclear family consisted of one working parent, one stay at home parent, and children. Today, there are many different arrangements, especially the with the rise of single, working mothers, but many people still believe this traditional method is best. At that point, it's a question of valuing one's kids, who are priceless, against a small amount of additional money. For people who think this way, which is a large percentage of people, it makes significantly more sense for one partner to stay at home.
| 36 |
CMV : I think Britain should separate Church and State and become secular
|
I think the United Kingdom should separate religion and state. According to several studies, articles and stats, there are more non-Anglican Britons than those who believe in the Church of England.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/religion-uk-atheists-christians_uk_5743fd38e4b0ffced862a51d
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/23/no-religion-outnumber-christians-england-wales-study
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/britain-really-is-ceasing-to-be-a-christian-country/
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/634204/UK-Christian-Religion-Attendance-Church-Islam
There are several other reports throughout the internet proving that irreligion is increasing in the UK, while religion (especially Christianity) is falling flat. I think it's time for Britain to separate the Church of England from it's state, as most Britons are no longer Anglicans.
I know that the British government is already fairly secular in its working and in its policies, but it's time to make it official and put it on paper.
Not only that, but I also believe that keeping Church of England as the official religion is unfair to the Scots (Who follow the Church of Scotland, even tho there are more irreligious people there just like England) and to the Northern Irish (where majority of the population is Catholic)
Moreover, I also think the leadership of the Church of England should be changed. Even though it was King Henry VIII who established and headed the Church of England, it is time that the Queen should be removed from this very position in order to ensure the country truly believes in secularism.
| 60 |
Nitpick:
> Northern Irish (where majority of the population is Catholic)
I believe you mean the plurality - 40% of the population is Catholic, which makes them the largest religious group but that's not the same as a majority
But anyway: What would this actually achieve, in your view? Making the country appear more secular, sure. But to what end?
| 10 |
CMV: I don't understand the subset of feminism that is also transphobic.
|
First off, the point of this post isn't to make me agree with this subset, as I know I never will. It is simply to make me understand the logic, because I can't even wrap my head around it.
Personally, I think the point of feminism is to fight against gender roles. Fighting against these roles happens to help both men and women. IE - women are the main care takers of children. This hurts mothers that are expected to take more time off work and get discriminated against in the work place for fear they will just "have babies and quit". This also hurts men, as paternity leave is much less common than maternity, and the social stigma of a man being alone with a child as "sketchy".
I also think that intersectionality is important in feminism. This basically just means how other factors tie into gender roles. For example, race and religious contexts are going to affect women in different ways, but should also be analyzed/supported through feminism. This one is weirdly controversial in some circles. I've literally read messages along the lines of "well, I don't see why the black women need to keep bringing up hair and the police. We should all band together as women". I think this statement is beyond moronic, but if you want to attempt to CMV around intersectionality as well, by all means.
Tying in with the point of feminism being to fight against gender roles, I think that intersectional feminism logically should support the LGBTQ community. I can not fathom why a feminist would not support the struggles of someone undergoing a transition. They will now be facing the gender expectations of *both* men and women. Why wouldn't you want to support them through that?
Thanks in advance for your time.
EDIT: Thanks for the discussion guys! Definitely still don't agree with TERFs at all, but I think I've gained an understanding into why they hold the views they do. Feel free to leave more comments if you like, but I probably won't be responding to many more. And sorry again to the Mods for fucking up the deltas at one point! Happy holidays everybody!
| 73 |
Trans people claim their identity based on gender - the very concept that feminists oppose because it was utilized to harm females.
You say you dont comprehend how this is possible but lets put it another context:
Say people could demand that we acknowledge they changed their race by embracing and presenting all the stereotypes society makes about a race. IE: a white person becomes trans black by painting their face black, leaving their pants low, having a ton of kids, quitting their job, collecting welfare and eating watermelon with chicken all day by listening to rap music.
Say this trans black person then begins going to black groups and claiming he is the most marginalized of black folk and they should all put HIS issues above their own. Say everytime black folk talk about their hardships all he does is whine saying how they are priviledged because at least they are naturally black and dont have to paint their skin every day. Then he begins screaming how they cant discuss problems related to the biology of blackness because it excludes him.
How long before black folks got pissed at this dude? Would you NOT understand them feeling like they are being mocked, silenced and that this white dude has an alternative agenda? Would you call them jerks for refusing to feel he REALLY knew what it was to be black?
I think you can understand that just fine. So you should be able to understand why women are getting pissed at the trans community.
| 97 |
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