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The difference between Gold and Mercury on the Periodic Table is one Proton. If I add one proton, solid Gold turns into a silvery liquid metal that's extremely toxic to humans. How can the addition of a single proton have such a profound effect on an element's properties? | 431 | if you add one protons, an electron will be added too (captured from the environment) and also the organisation of energy levels of electrons will be different. From this, it will change the properties of the atom. | 182 |
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[Toy Story 2] In the final episode of Woody's Roundup, Woody has just jumped the ravine when the episode ends. Would he have made it to the other side? | 70 | It’s the ultimate unknown because the show was cancelled before that episode aired.
At least it was until 2013, when a group of nostalgic sixty-somethings and a bunch of hipsters who admired the retro-kitsch of the original series, backed a Kickstarter campaign for something called “Woody’s Roundup Returns”. Having successfully secured the rights to the show and obtained a broadcasting partnership with Netflix, the show’s producers started a heavy publicity campaign. The first episode of the new series aired in early 2014. Aside from a few minor changes – Bullseye was now a talking character voiced by Dave Chapelle and Stinky Pete the Prospector was now just called Pete the Prospector to avoid alienating the stinky demographic – the premise of the show was exactly the same, picking up exactly where the last episode had left off. And yes, Woody successfully jumped the ravine.
The show was universally reviled by both fans and critics alike. In order to make it relevant to today’s youth, certain new story elements had been introduced. Woody would routinely bust meth dealers and in the second episode a new character was introduced, a chronic crack addict and police informant called Whizz, evidently inspired by the Bubbles character from *The Wire*. This didn’t gel well with the old-timey Wild West theme of the show. Additionally, the writers introduced a will-they-won’t-they love story between Jesse and Woody, as she struggled to overcome the demons of her past and learn to love again. The writers also had a quota of at least one large-scale explosion per episode. The actors performances were leaden and tired and the humour often laboured, so much so that a laugh track was introduced in episode 8 “Woody in the Rootin’ Tootin’ Projects”. Amid declining viewing figures and a lawsuit from Netflix, Woody’s Roundup Returns was quietly canned in May 2014.
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[Star Wars] Why didn’t Obi Wan take a Padawan during the Clone Wars? | He though Ahsoka was going to be his Padawan at first, but she was assigned to Anakin. But he was still more than prepared to take another Padawan of his own, so why didn’t he? | 54 | Obi Wan was one of the High Jedi Generals. He was too busy dealing with the war to have a Padawan. Neither Mace Windu nor Shaak Ti the other High Jedi Generals listed on Wookieepedia had Padawan during the clone wars either. | 86 |
If friction causes particles to heat up, why do we use fans to blow air against ourselves to cool down, and how does that work? | 21 | When you sweat in still air you form a layer of saturated vapor above the skin, which eventually reaches a vapor-liquid equilibrium, meaning you can not evaporate more sweat because the air around you can no longer absorb any more vapor. The fan blows this layer away replacing it with air that more sweat can evaporate into. The heat needed for the evaporation (turning liquid into a gas requires energy, which is provided by your body) then cools the body.
Of course friction takes place, but the amount of energy exchanged via friction is neglegible against this mechanism. | 56 |
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[DC] I've heard it mentioned that Superman's weaknesses are kryptonite and magic. Is he any more vulnerable to magic than humans are? The way he's more vulnerable to kryptonite? | 16 | It's not that he's more vulnerable to magic, but that it even works on it. So the right spell can turn Superman into a frog, just like it'd turn any other human into a frog. Magic can do things to Superman that his superpowers can't do anything about. | 41 |
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why are you responsible for you decision to drive drunk, but not your decision to have sex drunk? | I know this is somewhat of a legal question, and law doesn't have to be philosophically consistent. but ignoring the law, how would you make a consistent rule about intoxicated consent and drunk driving? | 48 | Actually, just a little caveat to your question, under certain laws, like Ontario Law, you aren't always *fully* culpable for damage caused by drunk driving. Anyone who's ever done bartender training, for example, will be thoroughly made aware that establishments that serve alcohol can be held in part responsible for the damaged caused by a drunk driver that became drunk on their premises. Bars, taverns, whatever have been deemed obliged to ensure their patrons are not served too much and if they are served too much that they do not operate a vehicle. To the extent that a drunk driver can even sue a bar for the damage he/she caused. | 27 |
[Infinity War] What would happen if you used the Infinity Gauntlet twice? | Spoilers ahead I guess.
If Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet twice, would everyone die or just three quarters?
As in, would it kill half the population first, and then the other half, OR would it kill half the population, and then half of the remaining population? | 19 | Funny answer is \- the other half dies.
Real answer \- happens whatever the Gauntlet wielder wishes to happen, since Infinity Gauntlet bestows nigh\-omnipotence, and it's not locked into "Kill Half of the Universe" mode on snap. It did precisely what Thanos wanted it to do, and if he were to use it again, it would do whatever he wished for again. Or it might melt off his arm, depending on how exactly it works in MCU. | 36 |
I fucked up a conference talk. I love what I'm doing at the lab but I hate presenting my work. Can I avoid it? | Title.
This isn't the first talk I've messed up, even my bachelor's thesis defense presentation was pretty awful. I have my master's thesis coming up soon.
My boss (ScD, about 12 years older than me) says to think of it like theater, with only one actor - me. And, well, rehearse a lot.
I know I can't avoid stuff like the defenses, but can I avoid everything else? If not, what can I do?
Preferably not involving mind-altering substances. But I'm open to any suggestions. | 15 | I think that the first thing to remember is that there are many (beginning and well-renowned) academics who quite literary read their paper as a way of presenting it. So while conferences are great for getting feedback on your work and networking, it's definitely not necessary that you must be a great public speaker in order to get these things out of them. So while it may not be the best thing for your career to avoid conferences completely, simply try not to be so hard on yourself or to take the actual presentation too seriously. In the end it's about the content.
However, if you want to be better at presenting, there are public speaking courses available at many universities, and acting lessons indeed can't hurt. It's better to try and not hate the thing you hate (by being less hard on yourself or becoming better at it) than to just avoid what many perceive as a crucial aspect of academia. | 18 |
[Batman] What does the Joker really want exactly? | We are pretty aware that the Joker is the opposite of Batman in every way.
Batman is dark and broody and black. The Joker is colourful and jolly and loves to laugh.
The Batman is dangerous and intimidating but holds back and vows to never kill and has some other rules. The Joker is menacing, cruel and terrifying and has basically no limits on how cruel his actions can be *(he once became the Emperor of the Universe with supernatural powers and he killed Batman repeatedly on a loop)*
Batman is the embodiment of justice, control and order. The Joker is the embodiment of anarchy and chaos.
There are arch-enemies for a reason after all and the Joker is one the most mysterious characters.
Not only he is only human, meaning he has no superpowers but he is able to fool or even scare superbeings **WAY** powerful than him *(which makes him even more terrifying)* but he don't know his origin story, we are not sure how he thinks becuase he is very random and unpredicatable *(unless there are things involving clowns, jokers and so on)* and we cannot be sure how he strikes or when which makes his psyche and motivations more mysterious.
Of course, why and how he acts differs from character to character.
In the Killing Joke, we get to see a more human side of the Joker. He wants to prove to Batman that one day can make a person insane *(like Batman did when he was going but he chose to avenge his parents instead of succumbing into an even darker life than he already is)* but in the final few panels of the comic, when Batman offers him help, the Joker says that it's too late. It gives us the impression that there must be something that motivates him, like a trauma.
But in many occassions like the Injustice story or the Dark Knight Returns or even in the Nolan trilogy, he just wants chaos becuase he thinks that it is the only way. He wants Batman to kill him or he wants to the world in flames becuase he sees it that way.
But we never see why he continues to do these horrible things or wants his acts to carry on even when he is dead *(like in the Arkham storyline, he is dead but donated his blood to make the people of Gotham, including Batman, into Jokers)* or he wants Superman to get pissed off in Injustice and he became a dictator who is fanatic about order.
Is there any motivation behind Joker's actions or is he just like that becuase like Alfred once said "Some men just want to watch the world burn"
*(Note: I cannot say that he is insane becuase the legal definition of insanity says that the person was not sane or consciously in control of their actions during the moment of the crime but it seems that the Joker is pretty self-aware of his actions and intentionally so)* | 41 | The joker only has one goal, expose hypocrisy. Specifically the hypocrisy of humanity's treatment of... *everything*.
We claim we value life, yet we don't act like it. Batman claims he values life, yet *all he has to do is kill the joker to preserve it*, and he can't.
Batman isn't *better* than Joker, he just wants something different. They're the same, they're equal.
Batman doesn't want to save lives, he wants to be *the batman*. If he wanted to save lives, he would kill the joker.
Joker doesn't want to do that bullshit, he wants to be the joker. Batman wants to pretend to do bullshit, but still the batman.
That's not how it works. You are what you are, and you're a hypocrite for pretending otherwise. | 49 |
[MCU] It's been 8 years since the Invasion of New York. Why doesn't the Earth have a proper early warning and interception Space Force in case of future invasions? | It's clear that we have the technology to set one up, why hasn't that been a priority? Even a few satellites in orbit around Pluto or further. | 17 | How would an array of satellites help? The invasion came through a portal a few thousand feet above Manhattan.
Some around Earth could certainly help to detect energy anomalies and are likely in place, but when dealing with ships capable of traveling intergalactic distances within hours or days, an early warning system out by Saturn or by Earth makes no difference | 39 |
[Star Trek] Is the policy of allowing families to serve with Starfleet personnel on board starships seen as a general success? or do you think the policy will be abandoned? | 22 | Allowing for a family life aboard a research starship is important for boosting morale and allows for some of our brightest minds to research and explore for years at a time. After all, these are not warships. | 19 |
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ELI5:How does alcohol disinfect a wound or a given object? | I'm intrested in the actual process that microorganisms suffer. | 159 | Great question actually! Alchohol has a denaturalising effect on cell proteins. Bacterial cells are made differerent from ours, so with the right concentration in water (70% is considered ideal), the alcohol penetrates into the bacteria and only attacks our outer layers which turn hard and prevent further damage. | 68 |
Why do most Mandarins have 11 segments? | I've been counting them for a while, and some have twelve, some have 10, but the majority have 11. Why such a strange number? | 131 | The segments of the fruit are derived from carpels which are a part of the flower, so they will usually come in multiples of 3, 4, or 5. The carpel is part of the female reproductive organs and contains the ovules. So each segment will have seeds and the number of different segments will help with seed dispersal, etc.
But it's important to note some things. First is that developmental errors happen and can produce carpels in strange numbers. The second is that citrus fruit is almost never grown from seed. It's propagated by cutting a stem from a tree and grafting it onto a new plant. And they decide which stems to use based on the fruit.
So with your mandarins, what would have happened is that there was some mistake that caused a strange number of segments, and there was also some change that made a more desirable fruit. That could be thinner skin, more sugars, any number of things really. The important thing is that for some reason it co-occurred with the strange number of segments.
So when that fruit was propagated it was propagated for the positive changes, but it brought along the weird number of segments. And every mandarin has been propagated from that fruit, so the mandarins have the strange segment configuration. | 55 |
CMV: The STEM acronym should not change to STEAM to include the arts. Change my view. | Recently I have begun seeing a trend of people saying “STEAM” major or “STEAM” field, meaning Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math.
Art fundamentally does not belong in this group. I am not saying that art majors are not important and that they should be discounted by any means, however these are just opposing fields.
The individual STEM fields are all different from each other in their own ways, however they incorporate similar basic principles (scientific method, problem solving, quantitative reasoning, mathematics, etc) that allow them to be grouped together that the arts simply do not have. This allows STEM to give a clear and concise idea of the types of disciplines being discussed. This re-branding devalues and convolutes what it means when we are telling kids to go into STEM fields. I find it hard to see a justification for how an art background qualifies someone to be in a group with the rest of the STEM disciplines. Change my view.
Edit: I don’t believe that saying “creativity is important in STEM” is a justification for adding the art to STEM. Of course creativity is important, as it is in almost every field, but I do not believe that art is the only place that creativity can be derived.
Edit 2: Really surprised and excited by all of the good feedback I got on this one! Here's what I have learned so far from reading your comments:
- It seems that the fundamental question that needs to answered is what is the definition of "Art" in this context? Throughout the comments it seems like there was a lack of a consensus on what is truly meant by "Art" in this scenario. Clearly a tough question to answer, but is it more specific to humanities like history, literature, languages, and philosophy...or literally all forms of Art?
- The movement to add the "A" to STEM seems to primarily be a push from educators who feel that STEM is being much higher valued at schools and that the Arts are being left behind in this movement. STEAM is not necessarily saying that Art is the same as the rest of STEM but it is saying that it deserves an equal place in education at the rest of the STEM disciplines do, a point which I would agree with.
- Art and the traits that it enhances through learning it are vital to the STEM fields and people in general to have a well-rounded education. Without the Arts many of the great innovations in STEM would not be possible.
With all of that being said, I have learned a lot today but still hold to my original opinion that the change from "STEM" to "STEAM" is unnecessary. Until there is a clear definition of what courses, disciplines, and careers are being referred to with "Art", I feel as though the addition of the very broad term "Art" waters down the original intent of the STEM movement. If we are unable to define what is considered "in" and "out" for STEAM, then how can we expect the young students to understand it?
I still fully understand the necessity and the power that the arts have in society, and by no means do I think that should be negated. However if the main reasoning behind the creation of "STEAM" is to help Arts not get left behind in schools, then that is not a valid justification for adding it to a group of disciplines where it just does not have much in common. Overall, the addition of the "A" simply does not make sense in this context, and it draws away from the original intent behind the STEM acronym. | 1,079 | I think you're missing out on the history of the use of these terms. First of all, STEM and STEM are terms in *education*. They're not "fields."
STEM was prioritized in education because students (especially marginalized ones) find them intimidating... it's very easy to feel frozen out and isolated in them. People weren't choosing to major in them despite their benefit to society. So it makes sense educators might focus on them in a particular way, encouraging students to go into them.
But then, the pendulum swung too far the other way: people encoded the message "STEM is all that matters." This is a problem, because arts education facilitates creative and problem-solving thinking in ways STEM courses can't: we were churning out people who smugly thought their majors were all that was important in the world, but their critical and creative thinking was, in some ways, weak and undeveloped.
This is a practical education issue. | 493 |
[Addams Family] what accounts for the Addams' enhanced durability? | In the 1960s series you see members of the Addams family use torture devices recreationally, and very cavalierly do rather dangerous things like use crossbows aimed at one another.
In the 1990s films they survive various things which would kill a normal human such as drops from great height, electrocution, being exploded, or drinking poison.
Is there an explanation for their increased durability? | 79 | Selective breeding with abnormal and unusual partners. The branches of the family tree have at various points been linked to sasquatch, the loch ness monster, the elephant man, and count Dracula. While most will dismiss it aa flights of fancy the family's long history of enjoying less than traditional forms of beauty and regular exposure to dangerous and toxic environments has led to several abnormal adaptations. The family has by design or by chance created themselves as physical superior albeit aesthetically unattractive specimens. They are like our ancient neanderthals ancestors that had blood more resistant to infection and bodies built for colder climates and rougher living. They're still human just with adaptation and genetic predispositions that allow for faster recovery from and greater resistance to harm and toxins than your average person. | 72 |
ELI5:What is the current state of Afghanistan? What has the U.S accomplished/not accomplished? | 47 | That's a really complex question, but I'll try and answer it for you.
The US has removed the Taliban from power, although they're still a very dangerous threat for the nation, with an estimated 20000+ members. Since 2001, over 5 million Afghanis who fled the country due to the dangers of living under the Taliban have returned. In 2011, over 8 million Afghani children were attending school (including over 3 million girls) when in 2000, there was barely 1 million attending school (with less than 500k being girls). Health care in the country has improved drastically, with the amounts of lives saved by improved healthcare estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. US is currently training the Afghani Army to be able to handle it's own domestic and foreign security, so that US/ISAF forces aren't responsible for their protection.
**However**, the Taliban are still a very real threat for the Afghani people, and that's evident by the Taliban being responsible for 75% of the 3000 civilian deaths in 2013. There's still over 2 million refugees in various parts of the world, majority being within Pakistan. Because opium grows so well in Afghanistan, a large number of farmers grow it. US hasn't found a way to convert these farmers to other crops, and doesn't want to just destroy the crops, out of fear the farmers will turn to the Taliban to protect their fields. So as a result, opium production in Afghanistan has increased to the point it now produces some 90% of the world's opium.
So the people's daily lives have been improved greatly, but there's still **a lot** to be done, and plenty of dangers for the people. | 23 |
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If all foetuses start as female before being changed by male sex hormones, what purpose do female sex hormones serve? [biology] | 52 | The fallacy that all foetuses are female has been around for quite a while. Every foetus is genetically either male or female while being anatomically bi-potential. Bi-potential genetalia, nervous, and endocrine systems await hormonal influence in order to differentiate towards the target sex. Without hormonal influence at the right times in foetal physical development the result is incomplete sexual development and differentiation. | 90 |
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ELI5: How do the different types of anesthesia work? How can you be knocked out through intense pain and woken back up at the anaesthesiologist's will? | 76 | General anesthesia uses a variety of drugs to cause unconscious. They all take advantage of receptors already in your brain (primarily GABA receptor) to achieve this. When GABA is activated it inhibits and slows brain transmission eventually resulting in unconciousness. Even with unconscious your body will still have a response to pain( increased hr, bp and reflex movement) so to controller these we give opioids such as fentanyl to block pain transmission, and muscle relaxants to prevent movement.
Spinal anesthesia uses the injection of local anesthetic ( think novacaine for your teeth) near the spine to block transmission of pain signals. So even though your body is reporting pain the brain never receives it.
Local anesthesia is the same type of numbing medicine as the spinal, but is injected directly into the area that they are working on. | 20 |
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ELI5: Nutritional Value | How do companies and chefs determine the fat, carbs, fiber, ect. of their products and dishes? | 89 | You can burn things to determine calorie content, and you can also separate things by weight with a centrifuge (after blending) which can separate, for example, protein from fat.
After this has been done once (or a few times) however, you can use already-known information about your ingredients to calculate how much of each nutrient ends up in the finished product. For example, 1/4 pound of ground beef (from a certain part of the cow, or certain combination of different parts) cooked a certain way would have a known nutritional value. McDonalds wouldn't need to test each product individually, and could instead use that known value to figure out nutritional content of a double burger, for example. | 40 |
[Marvel]Did NASA, or any space program, know that Titan had life on it? | 23 | Thanos' homeworld of Titan is not the moon of Saturn with the same name, but rather a planet orbiting another star. As such it is almost certainly far too far away for any space agency to have even detected the fact that it exists, let alone whether it has an atmosphere indicative of life. | 26 |
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ELI5: Why is ibogaine, a substance known to aid fantastically in treating/curing drug addiction, illegal for medical use in the USA? | 39 | From Wikipedia:
>Ibogaine is classified as a Schedule I-controlled substance in the United States, and is not approved there for addiction treatment (or any other therapeutic use) because of its hallucinogenic, neurotoxic, and cardiovascular side effects, as well as the scarcity of safety and efficacy data in human subjects.
So basically, it has some pretty serious side effects, and there ~~are~~ aren't enough human studies to demonstrate that it's safe, or actually useful at treating specific illnesses/symptoms. | 39 |
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Can temperature decrease in a closed system while entropy increases? | For example if I have a bowl of water at room temperature, it will slowly evaporate, will that increase entropy while decreasing temperature, or will the pressure increase keep the temperature the same? Is there some other way to do it? | 207 | A sufficiently interesting example: if you have an isolated vessel, with a wall separating it into two chambers, and you have a real (ideal doesn't work) gas in one of them and vacuum in the other, when you remove the wall the gas expands to fill all the chamber. This is called free or Joule expansion.
Entropy increases because this process is obviously irreversible. Temperature changes; for almost all gases in most conditions this is a decrease (though there are a few exceptions), in that case here's your example.
Note this cannot work with an ideal gas, as these have U = 3/2 NkT, so that since U is constant (as the vessel is thermally isolated and no work is ever performed on the gas) then also T must remain constant. | 59 |
ELI5:If things like Google Now and Siri are so good at voice recognition, how come youtube automatic annotations are so terrible? | 68 | Siri and Google only have to understand a few things, but if you want to translate general speech like in a youtube video you must understand everything. If Siri doesn't quite understand what you've said, she can assume that what you were saying was a question, as that was the purpose of Siri. The youtube annotation translator can't make nearly as many assumptions, which means it has to rely much more on its actually translation ability, which is not great. | 31 |
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CMV: The government should have no role in conducting primary elections on behalf of political parties in US states. | Election day in November is simple enough - the government specifies a day on and method by which to elect its officials and vote on its laws. But what exactly is going on during primaries? Apparently the government sets up these elections too, but we are only voting to nominate designees of large, nonprofit organizations. Why is it proper for any level of government to play a role in this process? It seems like the political parties should conduct these elections all by themselves, and then when they meet election registration requirements the candidates can be recognized in a public framework. How should I understand this?
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> *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!* | 22 | The government provides polling stations that give people a place to vote. They provide a level of monitoring of these elections. They enforce electioneering laws.
Voting is one of the fundamental rights that the state grants to its citizens. It is in the state's best interest to ensure that its citizens have the ability to express their rights to vote. | 13 |
Why aren't corporations subject to a "means" test while the general public is? | A $1200 a month check is limited to people making under a certain amount( congress is still voting on the deal so details could change). Why arent corporations that make much more than the average person subject to limitations? Arent corporations people too or not? | 22 | I assume you're talking about the "bailout" part of the bill. There isn't a specific "means test" because the candidate companies are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. The Amazon's and Apple's of the country will not be receiving aid because they don't need it.
Furthermore, the goal of the business aid is very different than the aid provided to citizens. The business aid is intended to help otherwise good, profitable businesses survive this temporary shock without resorting to drastic measures such as laying off employees. It is not intended to prop up failing businesses that will lose a lot of money no matter what. The citizen aid is intended to help out anyone struggling to get through these times and allowing them to afford their very basic needs. | 29 |
[Horror] Could a tar pit stop Michael Myers for good? | 125 | Current canon: yes.
Michael is just a man. An extremely evil man, but he still requires oxygen to breath and food to eat and falling into a large tar pit is a death sentence if no one tries to rescue him.
The problem is people underestimate Michael and that gives him a chance to keep going. He is not a supernatural force, just an extremely evil person who keeps getting lucky when avoiding capture or escaping. | 111 |
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[Harry Potter] Why do wizards even have house elves? From what we've seen magic can easily be used to do most household chores, so why bother with an elf? Is there anything wizards actually need or want that only house elves can do? | 852 | There's really not a lot a elf can do that a wizard can't do themselves. But that could be said for most domestic servants. The family of the house *could* cook their own meals, change their own sheets, drive their own car, or restock their own pantry, but they'd rather have someone else do it for them. It's the same with elves.
Also, a big one is food prep. Hogwarts for instance has a small army of elves preparing the food for the meals, which is then teleported up to the Great Hall. Certain parts of the process can be automated, but you still need someone at or near the stove to keep things in order; there's no going "poof, it's a ham". If a wizard wants a quality meal at home and doesn't have the time to cook it themselves, an elf or elves need to get involved. | 728 |
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Do the pupils of heterochromic people contract and retract at different rates? Does eye color affect the speed at which your pupils contract/retract? | 2,838 | Not at all. Eye color is just basically the pigment present in the iris.
Also some clarification on ophthalmologic terminology, pupils don’t “contract” - they “constrict”. They don’t “retract” either. You probably mean “constrict” and “dilate” as you’re referring to the pupils.
“Contract” is a generic term for a muscle’s action, while “retract” is term used for the eyelid (e.g. Lid retraction, or pulling up your eyelids - the action of your levator palpebrae superioris muscle).
Now going back to your question, do the pigments in the iris change pupillary dilatation/constriction? Nope. Not at all. Dilatation/constriction are regulated by reflex arcs, controlled by the ANS (autonomic nervous system). Your oculomotor nerve is responsible for constriction, while sympathetic nerves control dilation. The iris’ pigment has absolutely no relevance with the reflex arcs/nerves.
Hope this helped! | 1,191 |
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Eli5: Why does a head cold slow you down so much both mentally and physically? | 134 | Am not a doctor and have no physiological or medical background but at a guess I'd say the body is directing as much energy and resources to the core site of viral or bacterial infection. This can leave the rest of the body a little...logey. | 17 |
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ELI5: Since we are supposed to be consumers, what would happen to the economy if everyone drastically reduced the amount of money they spend on a regular basis? | 31 | Less consumerism means fewer sales. Fewer sales mean fewer profits. Fewer profits mean downsizing, lost efficiency, lost jobs, businesses closing down, markets shrinking.
It's really quite problematic because from an environmental perspective we should be massively downsizing our consumerism. But it also results in significant socio-economic problems if we did. | 42 |
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[ELI5] When women are ovulating, how does their body decide which egg goes next? Is there a specific order or do they just randomly fall out? | 17 | There is an element of randomness.
The group of cells that produce a single "egg" is called a follicle. They respond to a hormone known as Follicle Stimulating Hormone (or FSH for short), released by a part of the brain. When more FSH is released in the early part of the menstrual cycle several follicles, around 15 to 20, will start to respond by becoming more mature.
As the follicles mature they start to produce other hormones of their own. These hormones do two things (well, more than two, but two that matter for this topic) at the same time - they start to reduce the amount of FSH that is released, and they start to make that particular follicle more sensitive to whatever FSH does still get released.
It might then be easiest to think of this as a competitive process. The follicle that has the quickest and strongest response both matures faster and prevents the other follicles from responding to the signal. Eventually this dominant follicle matures to the point of ovulation which results in another set of hormone changes that allow the rest of the cycle to proceed. Some of the follicles that matured to a certain point but didn't become the dominant follicle will "die" at this point, and a new set will start to mature in the next cycle. | 18 |
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ELI5: Canada is raising interest again to prevent a recession. How does this work? | 78 | First you have to realize it’s all related to inflation. Inflation simply means that goods and services cost more now than they used to. Next you have to understand the law of supply and demand and how they relate to pricing. If supply is high and demand is low, prices go down. If demand is high and supply is low, prices go up. Combining these two, we can understand that prices are going up, because demand for those good and services is going up.
So how does changing interest rates affect this? Well when interest rates are low, companies and people tend to take on more loans, since they are able to get that money cheaply. With more money to spend, they want to make use of that money, so they buy goods and services. But as already discussed, that means more demand, which means prices go up even more. But we don’t want prices to go up now, we want prices to go down. The only way to make prices go down is to either increase the supply more than the demand (something that a government can’t do in a capitalist society) or decrease demand. How can they decrease demand? Raise interest rates. With higher interest rates, companies and individuals do not borrow as much. As interest rates get higher, not only are they not borrowing as much, they are instead saving more and more of the money they do have.
So raising interest rates lowers the amount of money being spent on goods and services, which lowers demand, which lowers prices. | 160 |
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ELI5: Shadow banning | 23 | A shadow ban is a type of ban such that you can still read posts, and you can still write posts, but only you can see your posts. To everyone else, they don't exist. It's considered worse than a 'real' ban, since you continue posting for days, weeks, months, whatever, and all you see is everyone completely ignoring everything you have to say. | 32 |
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[Star Wars] Starkiller Base insanity. | Ok, questions I searched but couldn't find good answers:
1) They say it's an FTL weapon, why does the beam visibly crawl through space?
2) Since planets are like millionth the size of a star, how does it eat a star? And just gets 1 shot per star?
3) Shouldn't striking multiple planets require multiple beams, rather than 1 beam that splits for no apparent reason halfway there?
4) What are the odds of all 5 target planets being so close they can all be seen form a 6th planet? How small is that galaxy anyway? | 24 | The official explanation for the oddities surrounding the actual blast from Starkiller base is that it creates a rip in hyperspace, hence why a planet that's halfway across the galaxy from the target system can see the shot.
As for how it eats a star, it seems it doesn't eat the whole thing - only enough to destabilize the star to the point where it falls apart - not into a nova, but simply dissipates the rest of the starstuff. | 41 |
ELI5: if a lightyear is the distance light travels in one year, how do we know something is 1000 light years away? Would we not have to wait 1000 years before we know, or do we use something other than light to measure objects in space? | I know VERY little on the subject so would appreciate a basic explanation please! | 717 | For distant stars and galaxies, there's some highly educated guesswork based on apparent speed and brightness, but for closer ones, there's actually a really intuitive method called **parallax**!
It works like this: suppose there's some distant object like a mountain that you want to know the distance to. Notice that as you walk sideways, closer objects like trees appear to pass you much faster than the mountain. This is the parallax effect.
To use it mathematically, simply measure how far you walked, and how far you had to rotate your head to keep the mountain in view. Now the start point, end point, and the mountain itself form a triangle, of which you know the measure of one side and two angles. Using trigonometry, this is enough information to determine the remaining sides, which are the distance between you and the mountain!
It would be difficult to walk far enough on earth to see a measurable change in the location of a star, but we can "walk" the entire earth just by waiting 6 months for it to be on the opposite side of its orbit. This enables us to calculate the position of nearby stars, without actually going to them. | 692 |
[Highlander] An Immortal in Afghanistan is decapitated by shrapnel in a drone strike piloted remotely from Nevada. Who gets the Quickening? | As far as I'm aware, the Quickening goes to the one who kills the Immortal. Would that still happen here, despite it not being a duel, and the killer not being present? Would it go to the nearest survivor? Dissipate back to the Source? | 31 | In the tv show, if an immortal is beheaded outside the presence of another immortal the quickening is lost and just disappears.
If the guy piloting the drone is an immortal then it’s kind of iffy. I’m the show there was a plot line about a guy who would use a crew of guys with machine guns to incapacitate other immortals and then behead them while they were recovering. He still went through the effort of cutting their head off with a sword though so it’s probably a necessary component in getting the quickening. Is guess the quickening would still be lost. | 41 |
ELI5: Why do people sleep with pillows? Is this just social conditioning, or are there physiological reasons to use them? Are there cultures that get by just fine without them? | 44 | People have been sleeping with something to support their heads in almost every culture since at least the ancient Mesopotamians. For a long, long time, the gold standard for everyday people was a carved wooden stand that held your head at a comfortable angle while you slept on your side, or a shorter one that went under the nape of your neck if you liked to sleep on your back. A well made one could last for years or decades if you were careful with it. The wealthy used down pillows that were a lot more expensive and had a tendency to wear out after a couple years, requiring more frequent, costly replacement.
Slightly more recent, Eurocentric history shows pillows stuffed with hay, wool, or rags (or some mix of the three) being used by commoners. Down pillows were still the height of comfort and sophistication for the wealthy though.
Modern polystuff pillows mimic the comfort of down at a fraction of the cost. | 49 |
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[Mythology] What are possible uses for a fragment of adamantine, a mythical metal that cannot be shaped or damaged by mortal means? | 42 | Assuming it's got a sharp point, you could use it to make a scribing tool that will mark anything.
Considering it's supernatural properties, and assuming magic exists too, then it might be able work as a kind of focus or battery for magical power. | 37 |
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ELI5: What makes mirrors reflective? | 17 | For this, it’s important to understand what light is, an electric and magnetic field that changes in strength as it travels as a wave.
When it hits a conductor, like a metal, the electrons in the metal move freely, riding the wave up and down like a beach ball on the ocean. But when those electrons move, that motion causes another electromagnetic field to form. The one from the electron ends up canceling the one that is the light going forward, and you’re left with only the one from the electron going backward. Hence, reflection.
What’s weirder is that the electrons have a limit on how fast they can move, and if the light is too high a frequency, the electrons are getting pushed from both directions rather than riding the wave, so stay still. So they stop reflecting. The properties of the metal in question change their upper limit on how fast they can move, which causes certain metals to stop reflecting certain colors at different parts of the spectrum. Copper stops reflecting in the red, gold in the greenish-yellow, and silver or aluminum in the UV. This is why metals have different colors. | 12 |
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[ELI5] What actually makes security hacking work? | I just don't get it. Is it some glorified way of installing viruses? What really is it, how do people get access to stuff like that? | 19 | The most common form of hacking secure networks is by social engineering ways into legitimate accounts. As long as *someone* has access to the data, it will always be possible to get access to it without permission. Direct hacking is also possible, but often unnecessary, and much more complicated to explain. | 17 |
ELI5: How can casinos tell if you're counting cards playing blackjack? | Unless you were actively illegally cheating aren't they just banning players based on a hunch? | 35 | There are certain red flags that can alert them, including:
- Players watching the cards more intently than others;
- Players sitting at "third base" (the last hand to be dealt to - a preferred spot because you can see more of the cards before making a decision);
- Players watching what other cards come out before putting out a split or double wager;
- Bets varying up and down dramatically (this is the most significant thing); and
- Deviations from basic strategy.
Some pit bosses also have a rudimentary knowledge of card counting, so if they start counting a shoe themselves, and see a player raise and lower their bets at the "right" times, this too will be a red flag (admittedly they won't know what exact system you're using, but all systems generally have you increase your bets when the conditions are to the player's advantage).
Casinos also have cameras pointing at *everything*, so someone, somewhere can be remotely watching even *more* closely to determine if the player is probably counting.
Having said all that, it's not like they have to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt; it's a private company so they can just tell you they don't want your business if they believe you're counting cards.
EDIT: You referred to "cheating" in your post (perhaps inadvertently); for anyone wondering, card counting isn't cheating by any reasonable definition. You're accessing the same information all the other players have, and you're making betting and playing decisions that you're allowed to make. The only thing you're doing differently is mentally keeping track of that publicly available information, and using it to make certain decisions. It all happens inside your head. That's not cheating. It's thinking. | 62 |
What would happen if Elon Musk decided to transfer his net worth to liquid cash, then spend it? | Would it destroy the economy, or would it fix all our problems? | 51 | It wouldn’t do really anything.
He is worth $200 billion. Say he sells it all in a fire sale and nets $150 billion. He just exchanged $150 of assets for cash. If he uses the cash it ripples as that is income for someone else who can spend and so on. If he doesn’t spend the bank will lend it out over time for whatever the needs of the lenders are. If he kept it in physical cash that may make a small dent in the economy but nothing notable (there is $22.3 trillion of cash in the USA. .15 trillion probably won’t change the world) | 10 |
[DC] Why dosent lex Luthor cure cancer or something? | This has legitimately been bugging me. Lex Luthor is the most intelligent man on Earth in the DC Universe. He bulit is Fortune from scratch all by himself. But he waste all of his time and effort fighting Superman and the Justice League. Im being dead serious he is a genius with tech like that he could cure cancer or something solve world hunger or the energy crisis. Why doesn't fix all the worlds problems when he is more than capable? | 89 | He doesn't want to cure cancer. He wants to ~~turn people into dinosaurs~~ beat Superman.
While he hides it a lot better than those guys who dress up like clowns, or wear their furry suits to commit crimes, or dress up like clowns in furry suits, but Lex Luthor is still an irrational person with mental health issues. | 159 |
[DC] do superheroes routinely check up on the suburbs surrounding cities, or have villains learned to move crime out of urban areas? | 24 | It's been seen on occasion. Spider-Man once had a very difficult time tracking down a criminal who commuted into NYC from the suburbs. (ASM 267, "The Commuter Cometh!", which was paid tribute to in Spider-Man Homecoming)
Supervillains are likely easier to spot and track in suburbs and unless they're in particularly wealthy areas then there isn't enough payoff to make it worth the risk. | 15 |
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ELI5 Why do laptops (almost) always get their expectation of remaining battery life wrong? | 57 | if you boot up your laptop and then let it idle for half an hour, the app that calculates battery life assumes that with THIS processor load you'll have hours-and-hours of standby-time
now you start playing a game, processor works 66% capacity, graphics card kicks in, heat rises, fans pop to active...
and therefore, now the app assumes: **29 minutes** (and starts planning to dim your display) | 40 |
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[Edge of Tomorrow/Live Die Repeat] Why did the other soldiers not like Rita? | It seems that the other soldiers aren't fond of Rita, giving her a rather unflattering nickname in 'Full Metal Bitch' and one soldier even going as far as to say that to her face. Why is this the case though? Didn't she basically win the battle of Verdun for them? Seems like she should be venerated as an angel, like the public seems to think. | 21 | Her actions at Verdun, without the context of the time powers, may have looked coldly pragmatic to witnesses (ignoring pleas of soldiers she'd already attempted to save in previous resets, as a possible example.)
Her personality was also fairly callous. This, too, may have been a result of her experience with the time loop. Cruise' character goes through a change of personality to match his perspective. Rita probably had a similar experience that left her jaded. | 30 |
[Star Wars] What do you actually have to do to achieve the Rank of Jedi Master? Why can you be on the council but not a Master? | 26 | Anakin was a special case, normally people are not allowed on the council without being masters.
Because Anakin was so integral to their plan to investigate Palpatine, he was given permission to serve on the council - likely as an advisory position but without actual power to command the Jedi Order (most likely because he was too young an inexperienced, and not emotionally stable enough to trust with that much authority). | 22 |
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ELI5: Why trees grow but leaves stay the same size. | Title | 27 | The size of a full-grown leaf is optimum for a tree to absorb sunlight and perform all the other functions in a leaf like respiration etc.
It is more effective to have many small leaves, and when these fall they will potentially have a larger spread on the ground than fewer larger leaves as there are more leaves and the wind will carry them further because they are lighter, meaning a better spread of nutrients as the leaves decompose and go into the ground to be absorbed by the tree's roots.
The advantage of the tree growing taller and larger is that a larger surface area in the tree canopy is formed as the size increases, meaning more space for more leaves and more absorbing sunlight etc. Other reasons are stability of the tree because of its size and larger root systems allow more nutrients to be absorbed.
In summary, different parts of the tree grow at different rates/sizes because of the different functions they have. | 17 |
ELI5: When you pass out after they give you general anesthesia for surgery, why does it feel like you've only been passed out for a few seconds when it's been way longer? | This has happened to me also when I used to use heroin, didn't even know you OD'd until you wake up with the paramedics, it's like instant. | 25 | Most anethesia doesn't cause "sleep" it causes uncouciousness. This why too much will kill you. It would take more to OD on melatonin (which doesn't even cause sleepiness, just enables sleepiness, if everything else aligns). Anesthesia interrupts concious thought and stops it, interrupting your ability to keep track of time/logic/what-have-you. | 28 |
ELI5- Do nuclear weapons expire? | 19 | Not just do the cores themselves degrade over time, the actual machinery in a nuclear missile will degrade rather quickly over time.
The missiles also use particular types of fuel that is highly corrosive, so they can't be kept fueled all the time.
Basically, the whole process around a single nuclear missile, its silo and all the support equipment is very sensitive to degradation over time. It's extremely expensive to keep these missiles in a ready-to-launch situation. | 24 |
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ELI5:why is cold water so much colder after eating a mint? | 29 | **Menthol is the chemical in peppermint that stimulates the cold-sensitive nerve receptors in the tongue and skin. It does not cause a drop in temperature, just the sensation of that. Other chemicals that trigger temperature sensations are capsaicin (chili peppers) and zingerone (ginger) which both cause a sensation of heat (but don't change the temperature).** | 13 |
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ELI5: Why is it more comforting to have even the thinnest blanket covering when sleeping? | It is just about being covered, really. I asked around a bit and most agreed they would even cover themselves in the hottest nights of the year.
But why? | 658 | It blocks convection cooling (aka. wind draft cooling).
If your bedroom temperature is above your skin temperature ~35°C (or 95°F), then you will feel more comfortable without the blanket. But anything below that will feel uncomfortable because convection cooling is x10 more efficient than other cooling and is triggered by your body being hotter than the room.
What happen is a part of your body feel slightly too cold, and your body will heat it up a little bit. But that area is now slightly hotter than the air in the room, this causes a tiny draft of air to raise out of that area to be replaced by slightly colder air. This is efficient at cooling and your body need to work extra hard on that area that it didn't want to be that cool in the first place. If you have a blanket (no matter how thin) that gets in the way of that draft, it's much more comfortable.
Hairy people tend to not mind that draft, as the body hair is sufficient to get in the way. | 334 |
[Fallout] Hypothetically, what would Canada be like in the Fallout world with the culture being 50s inspired? | 108 | If Canada survived, they're going to hate America's guts. And Canada may not have survived.
Canada basically got hijacked at gunpoint by the US in the years before the nukes flew. Having twisted Canada's arm into letting them place military units on the Canadian west coast to protect the Anchorage -> Lower 48 oil pipeline, those forces adopted a policy that can be described as "whatever we want, whenever we want, and fuck the locals". And after several years of acting like they owned a place, pissing off the locals and provoking resistance, the Americans stepped it up to actually annexing Canada and brutally smacking down any military or civilian forces. By all indications, the action was brutal. Shit was so rough that when it was time to show film reel to the U.S. public, they chose a *gunshot execution of an unarmed, kneeling Canadian citizen* as the face of the annexation, and narratives by participants (like Randall Clark >!aka the Father in the Cave!< from the Honest Hearts DLC) suggest that it was pretty much a big pile of war crimes against Canada's population.
Handicapped by that invasion taking down their military and civilian command and control structures, and (to our best knowledge) lacking a parallel to Vaultec to build large underground shelters, any Canadians who survived the nukes would have a long row to hoe in terms of rebuilding. Fewer groups would be able to hold out long enough to establish tribal-level communities, and as far as we can tell no NCR-tier nation-states have emerged in the generations following the war and the emergence from the American vaults. There may be nothing left up there worth describing... or there could be some descendants of the old Canadian partisans, who remember the sins of the past, and are waiting for the right moment for revenge. | 103 |
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ELI5: Why can't all pills be chewable and fruit flavored? | I have to take a pill twice a day for my abnormal cholesterol and it tastes awful, I have to drink it very quickly with orange juice, and if it touches my tongue it tastes like rotten lemons, Why can't all pills be like flinstones vitamins?
EDIT: Thanks for all the answers, I understand why they can't all be chewable, but still a little sugar coating wouldn't hurt. | 32 | Probably several reasons, but here's what occurs to me first:
Chewing a tablet releases the medicine much more quickly, and can allow it to be absorbed much quicker, too. For some medicines that's a good thing. But other medicines simply *aren't supposed* to be absorbed quickly, and need a delayed release for maximum effect.
Making it taste like delicious raspberries would just *encourage* people to chew it quickly, defeating the point of the pill in the first place. If it tastes like rotten lemons, you're going to get it down with as little interference as possible. | 27 |
[StarWars] Why did Yoda need to tell Obi-Wan that there is another? | 61 | It was more of a reassuring gesture than a need. Obi-Wan hand delivered Leia and Luke to their new families, and since Anikan was The Chosen One there was little doubt his children would be force sensitive. But as Luke leaves Obi-Wan is worried because he sees Luke as their last hope, Yoda is too old and they don't have much time. Yoda saying there is another is just a gentle reminder that if the worst comes to pass there is still hope in Leia. | 77 |
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ELI5:Why did doctors used to recommend heavy drinkers switch from vodka or gin to whiskey under the guise that whiskey was healthier? | I've read that Ian Fleming's doctor recommended that he switch from a fifth of gin a day to bourbon. Dean Martin's apocryphal last words were "I never should've switched from bourbon to martinis." Why was whiskey regarded as healthier? | 112 | I can't speak for doctors in the early 1900s, but Vodka and Gin go down much too easy and provide far less of a hangover due to their makeup (they are distilled, often, 3-5 times, removing a greater portion of the impurities that cause hangovers). This is why the greater portion of alcoholics are Gin or vodka drinkers.
Bourbon, however, punishes you if you drink it too much, making you realize the damage you've done.
Source: career bartender. | 41 |
CMV: Single-handle faucets/taps are the best type of faucet, and should be used in building projects whenever possible. | For an example of what I'm talking about, see the below image:
http://i.imgur.com/fNvnLmK.jpg
You have every function you could ever require of a tap in one easy motion, and in one handle.
You want to set the water pressure/amount? Lift the handle up or down. Going all the way down stops the water, going all the way up immediately goes to maximum pressure.
You want the temperature? You have an easy scale, with all the way to the blue side being 'no hot water' and all the way to the red side being 'as hot as it will possibly go'.
In-home maintenance is much easier, as you don't need to worry about one of the handles falling off because you turned it wrong, or turned it too many times.
You don't have to risk any wrist strain or effort (important for people with arthritis and other illnesses) by turning a handle multiple times - it's all one single motion.
There's no reason for any other find of sink handle to be used in the vast majority of cases.
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The two faucet kind are simpler mechanically, and thus cheaper to install. Cost is the reason you see the old models still around.
| 14 |
Why do moral realists hold that only one ethical system is true when math seems to accept multiple systems? | For example, mathematicians seem to treat both Euclidean and non Euclidean systems as "true" or equally valid, same for sets like integers, reals, complex etc. Do I misunderstand moral realism in thinking that this is not analogously the case in their ethical systems? A tangential question, does mathematical realism help clarify this? | 25 | > For example, mathematicians seem to treat both Euclidean and non Euclidean systems as "true" or equally valid, same for sets like integers, reals, complex etc.
Actual space is either Euclidean or non-Euclidean, but certainly not both. | 30 |
How do birds mimic human speech without lips? | 17 | Not sure this is what you are looking for, but you know of course that your electronic devices pretty accurately replicate your voice without lips? At its root, sound is varying air pressure. Any thing that can do that within the spectral limitations of human hearing can replicate anything humans can hear, including biological forms of a loudspeaker. Your means of doing that is learned and uses lips and other stuff. A loudspeaker is a membrane, a coil, a magnet. Birds have other stuff to do the same thing. | 12 |
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[Silmarillion]How much of Turin's shitty life was caused by himself? Would Morgoth not cursing his family change it? | 41 | A lot of it was on him. Morgoth caused most of the strife and unfortunate circumstances that followed him, but he made the situation (much) worse through his selfishness and pride.
Usually when people close to him are explicity warning him of the mistake he's making, no less. Leaving Doriath when Mablung suggested he not, ignoring Ulmo of all people and telling Nargothrond to fight out in the open, screwing over the Folk of Haleth. It's not like he didn't know. | 27 |
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What's an obnoxiously difficult to understand paragraph from a philosophy text? | My friends don't study philosophy, but keep hearing from me about how difficult the language used is. I'm giving them a 'one paragraph challenge', where they have to figure out what a single paragraph of extremely precise language means.
Please be as obtuse as possible. Annoyingly hard to understand words would be ideal. It can't be something that makes no sense outside of the context of other surrrounding paragraphs; it has to stand on its own. Has to be from a textbook philosopher, like Kant or Hegel or Locke or whatever. | 31 | From Søren Kierkegaard's Sickness unto Death:
“The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self.” | 48 |
CMV: If you don't believe a person can be racist or sexist unless there is a system which helps to actualize such a prejudiced orientation in life, then to be logically consistent you need to apply the same reasoning to other beliefs and values, as with, e.g., communism or freedom of speech. | In the last 10-15 years a certain belief has become popular among the left, viz., that people of certain races and genders and so forth cannot be racist or sexist if they lack power and privilege in their societies. They can be prejudiced, according to this theory, but they lack the means to actually be racist or sexist because they cannot actualize their prejudice in a systemic way that oppresses others.
Conversely, it is only those in power (as with whites and males) who can be racist and sexist, because their prejudices are systematically reinforced and actualized by institutional and historical forces.
If this reasoning is valid---and I am not sure it is---then it should be applied to other beliefs, biases, prejudices, and values. For example, somebody who believes this line of reasoning should also believe you cannot be a communist if you live in a capitalist society. Why? Because that person lacks the systemic support to implement their beliefs. Hence, they are not actually a communist since they lack the power to implement their ideas.
And this goes for all other values and beliefs. Again, for example, you can't be a Muslim in a Christian nation since you can't actualize your Muslim values in a systemic manner.
I just came up with this line of reasoning in the last few days, so I'm sure there are holes in my logic and I look forward to my view being changed----at least partially! | 15 | >you cannot be a communist if you live in a capitalist society.
I'd agree with this. You can have communist opinions, but without a way to make it reality you can't really be a communist.
>you can't be a Muslim in a Christian nation
But not this, because religion is not dependent on external circumstances. | 30 |
[Star Trek] How is it possible for alien species to cross breed with humans? | 20 | In short: The Galaxy was 'seeded' by an alien race, which resulted in many races having evolutionary paths that lead to near-similar results.
This can work with Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development, which postulates that "similar planets with similar environments and similar populations tend to gravitate toward similar biological developments over time." Somehow, this also spreads sociologically, such as the Kohms and the Yangs, the Yangs even possessing a Declaration of Independence and Constitution nearly identical to 18th Century America's. | 18 |
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In the same way that we "presume innocence" in a court of law, should we "presume false" for any proposition? | 18 | I do think there is an analogue to presumption of innocence in court with what our attitudes towards claims to be, but it actually goes the other way around. That is, when someone makes some claim (asserts some proposition), unless we have some reason to doubt that claim, we generally presume that it is true. If we didn't, communication would be impossible.
Suppose your friend says to you "I saw Black Panther yesterday." An appropriate response might be something like "Cool, how was it?" This presumes that what they say is true. It would be quite odd for you to presume that what they are saying is false, or even to remain agnostic on whether or not what they say is true. So, there's a general attitude of "innocence till proven guilty" at play here; you presume that what your friend is saying is true, unless there's some particular reason to doubt him.
Robert Brandom calls this sort of innocent till proven guilty principle that is at play in discourse the "default and challenge structure of entitlement." So the default stance is to take people to be entitled to their assertions, and only if we have some grounds to challenge these assertions do we. | 34 |
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ELI5: Shouldnt the sun be orbiting something else? | Okay guys, im pretty ignorant as towards astronomy. If an object with mass, modifies spacetime, and an object with less mass, orbits around it due to gravity, shouldnt the sun orbit something else which orbits something else and so on? is the whole universe orbitting around something?
Edit: Thank you very much everyone, i been educated | 69 | The sun orbits around the Milky Way center (where there is most likely a supermassive black hole of all the other stuff that fell in).
The Milky Way orbits around…something. As it stands right now, it's going towards the Great Attractor, which is…something. Big. (It's really unfortunate that the way we are aligned with the Milky Way disk that it blocks our view of that…something.)
The Great Attractor probably orbits around something else, but it's so far away that we'll never know for sure because it'd take too long to make one orbit. And maybe that orbits around something else. And so on.
The Universe as a whole cannot orbit anything, because orbiting is moving around something *in space*, so by definition it can't orbit. Unless you subscribe to a multiverse model, but that's mostly unproven. | 92 |
[Ant-Man] What do we know about the inner workings of the Ant-Man suit? The Pym Particle? | 20 | The suit is basically a life support system keeping air and temperature stable when Antman is rapidly changing mass.
As for how Pym Particles work...however they are needed. It's like asking how Speed Force works. | 28 |
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CMV:Religion should not be a protected class in anti-discrimination laws | (Talking about America and the west in general) Currently, if an employer is, beyond a reasonable doubt, proven to have fired/not hired someone for their sex, ethnicity or religion, that's deemed illegal.
Let's ignore the fact that sexual orientation isn't on that list and focus on this. All of these traits share a common characteristic : They're innate and cannot be changed. A man cannot become a biological woman, a white person cannot become a black person, and (afaik) a gay person cannot become straight. Except for religion.
I see no reason for religion to be treated similarly. I know a lot of people are born into religious beliefs, but there's no legal barrier preventing you from choosing not to believe in or practise a religion. I think an employer should have the right to fire someone for being Christian, like they would if they just didn't like their attitude.
You wouldn't call someone bigoted for saying they generally are more likely to dislike republicans/democrats because they disagree with them, so why make that distinction for religion, when in the end it's all more or less an opinion?
That being said, my research is shallow, this is mostly just mental gymnastics I thought up randomly. | 30 | >All of these traits share a common characteristic : They're innate and cannot be changed.
Well because of the inclusion of religion, which is one of the first protected classes recognized by the United States government, this is not the common characteristic between them. The common characteristic is that these are all social classes that have been historically used to justify discrimination. Discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, disability, and of course religion is well-rooted in American history and society. To ignore religion on the basis of "you can change it" (which is not always the case since religion isn't simply tied to belief but is often tied to ethnic heritage and cultural traditions i.e. Judaism) is to overlook one of the greatest sources of discrimination in American culture. | 22 |
Are plants biologically immortal? | Unlike most animals, I've never heard of plants actually dying from old age. | 127 | No. Though some of them may be (some animals as well). Annuals (as the name suggest) live only for one year. The leaves on shrubs die every year, but the stem and roots remain alive. Something similar happens in perennial grasses. Plants are structured around tissues, and have few organs so it is hard to define "ageing". To add problems is the fact that no one really dies of "old age"; creatures die of age related stuffs; and for plants that have RELATIVELY simple organs and internal structures i have problem imagining what age-related problems they could have. | 47 |
CMV: social media is ruining political debates/conversations | Social media is an outlet for a lot of people to talk, tell stories, share experiences and news, etc.
The problem I have with social media and politics is the rumoring and free reign for many to twist details and frame stories to fit their viewpoints. I see some examples of this and will link to some when i find more.
I am young (younger teen), so are my friends/people I follow. And for my age there are some really strong views on recent events that lean heavily one way or the other, and therefore i see only what this person feels is the absolute.
The reason I say that debates are ruined by social media is because these stories that I see heavily lean in either direction and people become extremely biased to one side or another and it makes it hard for people to open up to the other side of the debate
The experiences I have on social could be much different than others and I would love to hear some opinions that change my mind on this matter. | 66 | I dont think it's ruined political conversation because political conversations have mostly been trash from before the internet was conceived. It's why spouses have warned eachother not to discuss politics at the dinner table at Thanksgiving. Because it always dissolves into a bunch of ill informed nonsense screaming matches. Social media just makes it more visible. | 19 |
What should someone majoring in math this summer do to enrich themselves? | I'm majoring in mathematics and I'm looking into doing research after I graduate so I'm trying to get mathematical modeling under my belt. Finding a relevant internship is difficult and I'd like to try my hand at doing personal research or something equally helpful... something I could possibly put on my resume... What would be good?
| 18 | Learn to code (if you don't already). It seems like a lot of math research nowadays requires it, and that a lot of the jobs out there for math grads are in data analytics.
Source: SO is a math PhD person. | 11 |
ELI5 What would happen if the USA pulled all troops from around the globe and stopped involvement in foreign affairs? | 69 | Day 1: Taiwan falls to china. Japan announces a plan for a nuclear weapons program in a last ditch effort to deter chinese aggression. North Korea invades South Korea. China denies bankrolling and supplying NK but everyone knows better.
Day 4: Israel announces an easing of restrictions on Palestinian citizens. They offer a legitimate plan for a Palestinian state in an attempt to hold off Arab aggression. It fails.
Day 7: Russia retakes portions of Eastern Europe. Economic sanctions be damned. EU nations begin considering development of nukes and a return to conscription.
Day 10: Republicans take credit for huge budget surplus.
Day 11: unemployment spikes after soldiers become unemployed, democrats announce a return if FDR style make work projects for young men.
Day 30: China continues to expand into SE Asia.
Day 45: Putin is assassinated.
Day 1009: Two hairdressers crawl out of a destroyed subway station. They admire a 6 eyes cat before clubbing it to death and eating it. | 51 |
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ELI5:Why does the human body eat muscle before fat when it's in starvation mode? | I would think (but could be totally wrong) that your body would want to eat the fat first in order to preserve the muscles, which would help with survival odds. What happened biologically/evolutionarily that made it this way instead, and why? | 78 | While your premise isn't entirely correct that protein metabolism and fat metabolism happen sequentially, one right after the other, you are on to something here.
An important issue is that glucose is the preferred form of energy especially for your brain, and your body will attempt to keep the level of glucose in your bloodstream stable. Your reserves of glucose are in the liver. Once those are depleted, protein is essentially carbohydrate with added nitrogen. So, in order to maintain your blood sugar, your body will metabolize amino acids into carbohydrate by stripping the nitrogen (and throwing it away in your urine), and converting into glucose.
Your brain's second most favorite food, after glucose, is ketone bodies, which are created from fat. The metabolism of ketone bodies is the goal of the Atkins diet. | 50 |
The Congressional Black Caucus is a shameful embarrassment and it should be abolished. CMV | Imagine if a House Rep or Senator issued the following statement:
>Quite simply, [person X] will have to accept what the rest of the country will have to accept—there has been an unofficial Congressional Black Caucus for over 200 years, and now it's our turn to say who can join 'the club.' He does not, and cannot, meet the membership criteria, unless he can change his skin color. Primarily, we are concerned with the needs and concerns of the white population, and we will not allow black America to infringe on those objectives.
Sounds pretty horribly racist, like something Robert Byrd would say back in the 70's. It's actually a [direct quote](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Black_Caucus#Non-Black_Membership) from House Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. in 2007 only I flipped the words black and white. It's in regards to a white representative who wanted to join the Black Caucus because 60% of his constituency is black.
The Congressional Black Caucus is a shameful embarrassment because it openly promotes racism. That quote isn't some out of context word grab. It's an *issued statement*. Race relations get talked about a decent amount in America and it looks pretty horrible when our highest tier of government is openly racist.
Yet I never really hear anyone complain about the group's existence, so is there something I'm just not getting? CMV.
EDIT: regarding my use of the word "racism", I having been going on Merriam-Webster definition #2, which states it as:
>[racial prejudice or discrimination](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism)
with "prejudice" meaning
>[preconceived judgement or opinion](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prejudice)
and "discrimination" meaning
>[the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discrimination)
EDIT #2: My view has been changed. I still don't support the CBC's discrimination based on racial lines, but I sympathize with why they do and I now accept their right to do so.
Thanks to DeeEmm1 for [this](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fnkve/the_congressional_black_caucus_is_a_shameful/cac45ku) which is what changed my view. | 102 | I think your word flipped quote would sound perfectly reasonable if there had actually been an unofficial Congressional Black Caucus for over 200 years. But there hasn't been. Congress has historically been very white, and is still very white. | 41 |
ELI5: What happens that makes beer taste terrible after warming up and then re-chilling? What makes beer 'skunky'? | 404 | Skunking occurs when beer is exposed to certain wavelengths of light. This is why beer is typically bottled in brown bottles. Clear and green bottles protect the beer less, which is why popular brands in those color bottles often have the distinctive flavor.
The chemical responsible for the distinctive flavor is called MBT, and is produced when the energy in light causes the riboflavin (produced by yeast during fermentation) in beer to chemically react with the alpha acids from the hops. | 193 |
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ELI5: Why is eating fiber (which goes through my digestive system) good for my heart? | 26 | Your body uses cholesterol to make bile, which is what allows you to break down fats in the small intestines. Fiber binds cholesterol in your food and the bile you secrete. That bile would otherwise be reabsorbed into your body. So the fiber gets the bile out through feces, and your body is forced to make more bile from the cholesterol you have in your body. Without getting into too much detail, high levels of some types of cholesterol can cause blood vessel damage, which is why its bad for your 'heart.' | 17 |
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ELI5: Why is Nvidia buying ARM? Why is ARM so important, and why aren't other companies interested? | Like the title, I've heard a lot about Nvidia's purchase of ARM. Why is ARM so important and what does it do? Why aren't other, larger companies trying to buy ARM? | 21 | ARM licenses the intellectual property for a line of small, low power microprocessor cores. They are used in most cell phones and tablets today. They are also starting to be used in server farms, because heat is a big deal in that application and their processing power/watt is good.
A lot of companies wouldn't want ARM because they are incredibly expensive. Some companies wouldn't want it because if they owned ARM then other ARM users would bail and look for other solutions, making it much less valuable.
Nvidia has great processors for graphics and artificial intelligence, but no general purpose processor. Until now. They can't really get into the x86 market, but unless you want to play in the PC space that isn't necessary. Having ARM gives them a full IP set for a lot of applications that are going to be big. They will also not only get the licensing revenue from other people using ARM, but they can also fuck over potential competitors. | 26 |
How can the sum of infinite rational numbers be an irrational number? | There are convergent series where every term is a rational number, and the sum (the limit of the sequence of partial sums) is an irrational number. An example is the serie formed by the sequence 1/n!, whose sum is e, an irrational number.
On the other hand, the sum of two rational numers is always a rational number.
How is this possible? | 28 | This is actually how the reals are defined: the reals are defined by a collection of values such that for each value v some series of rationals that "Cauchy converges" (roughly, a series where all partial sums sufficiently far into the it are all arbitrarily closer to each other) cannot be separated from v.
For example, let's consider the series 3 + .1 + .04 + .001 + ... = 3.141... If we were to write out more digits, we'd get more digits of π. While for every rational r we can say that this number is some positive distance from r, we construct the reals so that there is now some value π we can associate with this series which we cannot say it is separated from. Of course, any real number (rational or irrational) can be written in as a series using its decimal expansion, so the same works for any other rational/irrational number.
Underlying all of this is the philosophical question of why we need the real numbers. Why aren't the rationals enough? As the Greeks found out long ago, even simple right triangles with length-1 legs cannot have the length of their hypotenuse expressed as a rational. Any rational number you pick is either too small or too big. We thus fill in the gap with real numbers: those values that can only be reached by taking smaller and smaller increments of the rationals infinite times. Now there are no more such holes where some value is somehow either too big or too small compared to all numbers. The reals are, in both a formal and intuitive sense, the completion of the rationals.
TL;DR: It's defined that way, because we want infinite sequences in the rationals that seem to approach a value (in the sense that the terms all bunch up in the end) to actually have a number to converge to. Those values they converge to are called the reals, which includes rationals and irrationals alike. | 19 |
CMV: /r/changemyview hits 200K subscribers | **/r/changemyview metrics:**
Total Subscribers: 200,015
Subreddit Rank: 176
Subreddit Growth & Milestones: http://redditmetrics.com/r/changemyview
_____
> *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!* | 47 | Can't really argue against this one. I'll give it a try though.
Some of those subscriptions must be bots and alt accounts, so we haven't really hit 200k subscribers. Plus, like 190k of those are probably just the same person arguing with themself. | 55 |
Are any species of animals other than humans affected by Down's Syndrome / extra chromosome? | 166 | Trisomy in animals is relatively common but usually fatal. Downs syndrome is notable for being one of the few survivable trisomy disorders that (sometimes) doesn't cause the mother's body to auto-abort.
Botany is a rare exception where extra chromosomes can be desirable (to humans, not to plant survival). People must then care for and propagate the otherwise-sterile plants; plants with three(or more) sets of chromosomes are how we get seedless watermelons, grapes, and bananas.
| 71 |
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Is the phrase "Guns don't kill people, people do" fallacious? | In discussions about guns and gun restriction, the following statement is often made:
"Guns don't kill people, people kill people"
Can you identify any fallacy in this sentence? If so, what is a generalized form of the fallacy? What is it called?
If there is no fallacy, can the usual arguments that are made with this sentence be validated by it? Do good arguments arise from it?
Please don't start a debate about guns, I am interested in the logic of the statement and any argument that can be made with it (or, as I suspect, cannot be made with it). | 22 | "Half Truths" (suppressed evidence): A statement usually intended to deceive that omits some of the facts necessary for an accurate description.
#Guns do not *make conscious decisions to* kill people, people *make conscious decision to* kill people.
"Equivocation": using a word to mean one thing, and then later using it to mean something different.
#Guns do not kill ("decide *consciously* to kill") people, people kill ("partake in the *act* of killing") people. A mental, conscious decision to kill ≠ physical act of killing.
| 38 |
Why do flames stick together? | I understand why water sticks together in droplets (hydrogen bonds, surface tension, etc) but not why two flames conjoin into a single flame. Please explain | 23 | The notion of "a flame" is a little bit of an odd one, since what we perceive as a single entity is in fact continually changing. Particles of the burning material are constantly being vaporised, oxidised, and dispersed; and the flame is our visual perception of that process in action.
So while water droplets coalesce because the molecules mix together at the boundary; flames join together because the regions of unburned/partially oxidised/fully oxidised gases merge between the two.
If you think about the two flames as a flow of particles from the burning material (wick) outwards to the open air. Were it not for gravity this would happen equally in all directions (and indeed in space a flame is spherical). Now when two flames come close together they are both directing a flow of particles towards the other, and just like if you spray two jets of water at each other they will spread our sideways, the flow of burning particles spreads out to the sides, meaning that the fully oxidised layer wraps around both flames and doesn't form a boundary between them. And also because all of the oxygen between them is quickly used up, so it remains partially oxidised until it gets out of the bubble created by both flames.
Hope that all makes sense 😅 | 20 |
CMV: The UN should add Hindi as a 7th official language | 66 | English, French, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian were languages that historically belonged to large, global empires. This is why you find countries that those languages across the world (Russia and China are a bit more localized, but still have a vast spread).
Arabic was added because it is one of the most common official languages (27 countries).
Hindi has a lot of speakers in terms of population, but very limited use at the state level. If Hindi continues to spread out and eventually become the dominate language in countries in other continents, it certainly should be added to the list.
For now, the language has the depth (population) for an official language, but not the breadth (states and institutions). | 76 |
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ELI5: How does upscaling work? | How does it compensate for lack of pixels? | 25 | If you're doubling the number of pixels, for example, you take the adjacent pixels and take a guess at what the one in the middle will look like. You can't necessarily take a simple average, because that might look wrong on edges and stuff, so IIRC there's edge-detection and stuff which copes with that. | 11 |
ELI5: Do foreign languages have different speech impediments? | Since different languages require different sounds do they have different speech impediments? Are there speech impediments that exist in English that don't exist in say Japanese or Icelandic? | 19 | Yes, that is true. For eg. in Hindi the letter t has different sounds. "ट" (retro flex and unaspirated) and "त "like (but dental and unaspirated). Some people cannot pronounce the letter "ट" and end up saying "त ". the difference in their pronunciation is quiet a lot. It would be like calling a toy, "doy" (though the pronunciation is completely different)
| 11 |
ELI5: How do some videos on YouTube trend even when they have close to no views | Been looking for an explanation for a while now.
So when I clicked on this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5toB3nDOFdM), it had [62](https://i.imgur.com/yBkigm8.png) views and it's on the trending page.
The views it's pulling now is probably because it's trending. Does YouTube assign some videos to that section manually?
| 17 | YouTube's counter often gets "stuck" during a sudden influx and takes several hours to update with the correct number of views--so odds are, the video doesn't *really* have 62 views, but many more. YouTube does frequently manipulate all sorts of results based on advertising deals, etc. though. | 15 |
ELI5: If a mirror reflects all light and the color white reflects all wavelengths of light then why is there a difference between a mirror and a white sheet of paper? | Also what is the difference? | 785 | If you drop a bouncy ball on a smooth floor like wood or even most cement, it will bounce straight back up. If you throw it at an angle, you can pretty easily figure out where it's going to bounce based on that.
Now drop or throw the same ball outside on some rocky or uneven ground and the direction the ball will go is much harder to predict. Even a small change in where the ball hits the ground could send it off in a totally different direction.
Now imagine we have a lot of balls and drop them at the same time making sure they aren't touching so they don't interfere with each other. On the smooth floor they will all stay in roughly the same positions relative to each other. On the rocky ground they will scatter everywhere.
A mirror is very smooth while a piece of paper is much more uneven on the small scale that light interacts with it. | 1,497 |
[Star Wars] Why do Padawans pick different styles than their masters? | Obi-Wan uses the most defensive form of lightsaber combat styles. Yet, Anakin takes a different form from him, and Ahsoka uses a different style from him. Why the difference? If you were to be trained since you were a child until adulthood by one person, you would probably be very similar to them, including fighting styles (Anakin is an outlier, of course). Why does it seem that Padawans take different styles from their masters? | 23 | Because of experiences.
Obi-Wan originally studied the Ataru form, but switched his focus to Soresu after Qui-Gon was killed, in Obi-Wan's opinion, due to the lack of defensive focus in Ataru. In actuality, Obi-Wan was one of the most prolific swordsmen of the order in his lifetime, and he studied and utilized components of almost every form at one point or another.
Anakin studied under a variety of masters, not just Obi-Wan, and settled on Shien as his primary form because the style matched his personality and strengths.
| 51 |
Why are Neanderthals considered a different species? | From what I remember in science class, two different species can’t produce fertile offspring.
For example, a horse and a donkey can create a mule, but mules are sterile; therefore, horses and Donkeys can’t have fertile offspring and are separate species.
But Many modern humans have Neanderthal DNA, meaning that Neanderthals must have interbred with our ancestors and produced fertile offspring.
Wouldn’t that make Neanderthals the same species, by definition? | 24 | For this exact reason, many researchers don't consider neanderthals to be a separate species, but count them as the subspecies *Homo sapiens neanderthalis*.
However, the whole "same species if they can produce viable offspring" principle is a good guideline, but often hard to apply in practice. There are several examples of closely related populations that will sometimes produce viable hybrids, but do so rarely enough that it doesn't produce much gene transfer and so they retain major anatomical and behavioral differences. And then there are examples of species that will produce viable offspring if made to in a lab but never do so in nature due to behavioral differences. And then there are really weird examples like sexual parasites.
So defining species barriers is to some extent a matter of interpretation, and in the case of neanderthals it appears that though there was some interbreeding, it was never the norm. | 27 |
[Star Wars] How effective would smoke bombs, flash bangs, and other blinding weapons be against Jedi? | I know that Jedi can sense their surroundings with the force, and some such as Kanan and Chirrut (Yes I know he's not a Jedi shut up) are able to be very competent fighters while being completely blind. But these individuals have been blind for significant periods of time in which they could adjust and train to compensate their disability. How affected would a run of the mill Jedi be by a blinding attack? | 23 | I mean most Jedi in old Order START their training with parrying stings from a remote blindfolded.
While the blinding flash might momentarily startle anyone, including a jedi, a properly trained Jedi will not remain startled or impaired for long, even if his vision doesn't return for some time.
The sensory assault has to be continuous in order to interrupt concentration and prevent the Jedi from using the Force, otherwise they'll be able to adapt relatively quickly. | 37 |
[Vampires/Christianity] Can Vampires be Christian? | Can a vampire be Christian?
Ok first of all, I ask about Christianity specifically because that’s what I am and I don’t know enough about other religions to discuss this question properly.
Cool, great, now, vampires.
In the fiction world, they’re typically seen as undead monsterised humans right? Once a human, “dies” or is “turned” and now they’re undead, but they still have their soul (I think) and are still who they once were.
So say a religious person (in this example, a Christian) gets turned?
Would that be possible? What would that mean for interactions with holy water or crucifixes?
Would they be able to resist such weaknesses of a vampire because they have a real faith? Or is their soul gone and replaced by a consciousness that just REMEMBERS the life of the body’s old soul?
It’s something I’m actually really curious about so I can’t wait to hear what your thoughts are! | 15 | In most fiction works vampires \*are\* christian, in the sense that the know god exists, and that's why crosses repel them.
The thing is that they are damned in the eyes of god, so they won't be able to get to heaven. | 56 |
[Cowboy BeBop] What about bloody eye gives Asimov the ability to dodge bullets? | 36 | Bloody eye gives the user increased strength, speed, and most importantly, reflexes. It's not so much that he was able to dodge bullets, it's that the enhanced reflexes allowed him to read where the shooter was aiming and the enhanced speed allowed him to duck out of the way in time. | 42 |
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ELI5: Say I'm in danger, and due to adrenaline, I am able to lift something. Does adrenaline also help with making sure I don't tear my back in the process? | 31 | No, but adrenaline and other nervous system reactions will make you less susceptible to pain from tearing. For example, your significant other is trapped under the front of a car. You run over, filled with adrenaline, and manage to lift the front of the car far enough for someone to pull your SO out.
If you lift wrong, you are completely liable to tear/damage something in your back. However, the adrenaline response (fight or flight) may keep your brain from "recognizing" the pain and you'll continue to lift. This is why people that are injured when filled with adrenaline (car crashes are a great example) don't notice their injuries until afterwards. People will often step out of a car after a accident and be stunned when they see blood from an injury they had, as they can't really feel it. | 26 |
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ELI5: Why is it that in most cultures around the world men wear pants and women wear dresses/skirts? | I'm referring to older cultures (an those cultures who have traditional clothing) as pants has become a globally accepted piece of clothing for both genders to wear. | 28 | Horse back riding. The horse has had a huge impact on our cultures. There is more protection for the inside of your legs with pants than with a skirt. Before we rode horses people in warm climates wore skirts regardless of gender. In colder climates whole body suits made out of different furs were worn, creating something like pants, because it's essential to have a microclimate around your whole body to keep you warm. A skirt dissipates heat by increasing the surface area and open air in the area around your legs.
Men wore pants because they were the ones hunting and fighting, and using horses to do so. Heals were also invented for men riding horses. Later, women started to dress like men and started to wear heals and pants, and now you have women's fashion having directly evolved from male fashion. | 54 |
ELI5: Why are there so many great Eastern European Boxers, strongmen, and and mixed martial artists? | 16 | Different cultures place different emphasis on different sports. In Eastern Europe, the strongman/strongwoman sports are much more revered than they are in other places. As such, more people take those sports up as their childhood sport of choice, which means that there is a larger talent pool for elite athletes to emerge from.
It's also worth noting that the startup costs for getting into these sports is very low. All you need is some padding, some gloves, and someone with a bit of training to show you the ropes, and you can *get started* at boxing. Compare that to, say, equestrian sports, which require a horse, full time lodging and care for the horse, and a host of other costs. A lot of Eastern Europe is poor compared to Western Europe and North America, so again, that funnels people into these sports. | 12 |
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ELI5: Why are ancient buildings, cities and structures usually found buried underground? | 62 | Survivor bias. The interesting archeological sites are the ones that were protected by a big pile of dirt or sand. The ones that didn't get buried aren't around to look at anymore. They were sacked, demolished, renovated, or eroded. Pompei being buried in a volcanic eruption is an extreme example of this. | 109 |
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ELI5: Quantum Spin | Tried getting my head around the wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(physics)) but no luck :/
Any physicists help? | 35 | What kind of science background do you have? Do you have the prerequisites to read that article?
Anyway... Spin is, plain an simple, a property of subatomic particles. Just like an electron has mass and charge, it also has spin. It may sound weird, but spin is no more exotic than charge or mass. It's just another property of particles.
Any given electron (which is one example of a group of particles called Fermions) can exist as one of two spins: +1/2 and -1/2. An electron cannot have any other spin. Other particles (called bosons) can only have integer spins: 0, 1, 2, etc. Fermions and bosons behave very differently because of their spins. Fermions with the same spin (for example, two electrons with +1/2 spin each) don't like each other, and don't want to get too close. Bosons with the same spin don't mind each other.
That article is just a mathematical formalization of what I've stated above. | 10 |
ELI5: How do translators deal with unavoidable puns? | 157 | This is one of the things that makes translation challenging and exciting. Not only do you need to know two languages, but you need to be a wordsmith with your target language. When encountering puns, we first have to determine if the humor is essential to the meaning of the passage. If not, we can just gloss over the pun and convey the overall meaning of that section in straight-forward language.
&#x200B;
If the humor is essential, than we have a couple of strategies. Is there a similar pun in the target language? If there isn't, then can we switch out some of the words to create a pun in the target language while still maintaining the feel of the original? Failing that, can we just replace it with a completely different pun that can still be humorous in this situation?
&#x200B;
Sometimes, though, the language pair you are working in can make puns easy to translate or neigh impossible. With so many cultural similarities and shared vocabulary, working between, say, French and English would be much easier. Working between Japanese and English, on the other hand, presents serious challenges, as the languages and cultures are drastically different. Ultimately, though, all languages are complex, organic creatures. There is no fail-safe strategy to translating puns, and it is something you really just need to approach creatively on a case-by-case basis.
&#x200B;
Edit: Added a sentence for clarification. | 179 |
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ELI5: How do information leaks happen? | [Not sure if repost, checked but couldn't find anything related] One I'm especially curious about is government information leaks. Who leaks this kind of information, and how do they get it in the first place? | 39 | That all depends on which "flavor" of leak you're talking about.
There's the Edward Snowden type of leak where someone deliberately shares private and confidential information with the public because they felt the public needed to know. Conscious intent and action.
Some leaks aren't intentional at all like the Podesta emails, and are obtained through illicit means like hacking/stealing/espionage. Malicious intent and action.
Then there's the flat incompetent/accidental types of leaks like when the boss left the company's failing budget and list of people to get laid off next month on the printer for a bit too long. Genuine accident.
There are also tactical leaks used by politicians. You can spot these whenever the reporter is citing "a Senior White House Official" in their report. This lets the White House "react" to this new national issue and put public pressure on political opponents without looking like the bad guys.
Wall Street types will also use this to manipulate prices. Day traders are constantly watching company financial reports, and the pros are often looking for insider tips from big companies so they can make their plays ahead of the public. These leaks are often traders calling college buddies that work for Apple's Engineering department looking for key tips like "the next Iphone has a 2hr battery life" so they can sell before it tanks.
In all cases, reporters that get the first leaks are often personal or professional friends that have developed a trusting relationship with the leaker, who is trusting that they leak it appropriately, on their schedule, and for maximum impact. Politicians for example, may give a leak to a story, but ask the reporter to sit on it for a couple of days to avoid suspicion. Should the reporter jump to publish early, it fucks the politician and virtually guarantees the end of secret sources for that reporter. | 27 |
ELI5: Why professional cameras are so big in comparison with a cellphone that also take pictures? What are the advantages of being bigger in size? | 66 | A bigger piece of glass collects more light, giving the camera more information to work with. A bigger sensor collects more data points per frame. A better sensor (because it doesn't have to be tiny) collects data with less noise. Bigger cameras also allow interchangeable lenses, optical filters, moving glass elements for optical zoom, motor controlled glass elements for vibration reduction, optical aperture control to control the amount of light going into the camera, shutter speed control to manage depth of field and motion blur, more space for controls, bigger batteries, higher energy flash, and other features. | 251 |
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How does buying expensive paintings etc. help with money laundering? | I have read about it in a lot of places and saw it in many TV shows and movies. People will buy a painting for millions of dollars. Now, it is much easier for them to move the painting than such a large amount of cash. But the painting is still worthless if no one else agrees to pay that much for it. | 68 | This isn't really an economic question, but in short: art is a potentially convenient way to store value in something that is readily portable and can be hidden away and stored or moved across borders with less effort and often while attracting less regulatory attention than commensurate amounts of cash.
Lines can get blurred sometimes about how art purchases are funded, and even if pieces are only valued at a fraction of their value on illicit markets it still tends much better than nothing.
Many modern above-board marketplaces often tend to be more conscientious about the provenance of pieces offered for sale/auction, but this is far from universally true. Some buyers too might be willing to turn a blind eye, either just to have the pieces for their own enjoyment or else hoping that provenance might still be camouflaged into the future. | 48 |
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