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ELI5: What exactly is "blue balls"? NSFW | 136 | blue balls, properly termed Epididymal Hypertension, is a swelling of the epidydimus due to a congestion of blood. During arousal there is an increase in the amount of blood that flows into the scrotum testicles and prostate region. The muscles in these regions shrink reducing bloodflow OUT of the area. If sexual release is delayed excessively this surplus of blood can become hypoxic causing a visibly blush tinge to the area. The testicles swell, and become tender...though the pain tends to be more acute in the epidydimus. The prostate then causes abdominal cramping.
All of this will, given time self alleviate. However ejaculation will trigger the sympathetic nervous system causing the musculature to expand rapidly clearing the congestion, and alleviating the pressure that is causing the discomfort.
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ELI5: Why do simple-looking websites like Google's homepage sometimes have enormous amounts of seemingly incomprehensible code? | See for yourself by going to Google and clicking 'view source' | 45 | Because to the right person, it's not incomprehensible. All that code does something whether provide analytics, predictive text, sizing for your browser, etc... a lot of stuff happens behind the scenes to make things appear smooth, fast and easy. | 20 |
If cancer and psoriasis are both overactive cell growth, what is it that makes them different? | If you were to compare skin cancer vs. psoriasis they are both described as overactive cell growth, though with different results and degrees of danger. A) how are they different, and B) what is it that makes cancer more dangerous than psoriasis? | 19 | oncology doc - Interesting question!
The short answer is that you're right, psoriasis and cancer are both due to overgrowth of cells - but different kinds of cells, and for very different reasons.
Try to visualize this a pyramid. At the apex is a single cell type. On the next level, there are two cells. Then 4 cells on the level below that. That's sort of how cellular differentiation works in the body; a non-specific cell gives rise to slightly more differentiated cells, which gives rise to slightly more differentiated cells, etc, until you have mature cells of X,Y,or Z function.
There are a multitude of different kinds of cancer, all of which are due to an uncontrolled proliferation of a certain cell type. Leukemia, for instance, is due to clonal overgrowth/expansion of an immature blood cell precursor. Something like, say, breast cancer, is due to an uncontrolled overgrowth of the cells that comprise certain types of breast tissue. Cancer cells have typically undergone/acquired some mutation that allows them to either proliferate without the need for external stimulus, or ignore external stimuli telling them to stop dividing, or shuts off a cellular 'self-destruct' mechanism that should make them stop once DNA damage occurs.
In psoriasis, there is an overgrowth of a well differentiated type of cell - the keratinocyte. HOWEVER, and this is the key, the overgrowth is not due to a driver mutation as in cancer, but rather, the result of an inflammatory stimulus. In psoriasis, there is hyper activation of the pro-inflammatory/immune cells within the skin. That activation causes them to release cellular signals (cytokines) that encourage the keratinocytes to proliferate and divide far faster than they usually would, because those signals are meant to be released when local destruction occurs and extra cells are needed to fill in the damage. That proliferation isn't due to some mutation in the keratinocyte, but rather, overactivation of immune cells, which are telling them to do so. To take it a step further, the keratinocytes are then attacked by the immune system, release signals that cause the recruitment of immune cells (because there is localized inflammation), which continues the process.
TL;DR: Cancer is an uncontrolled proliferation of cells. Psoriasis is an immune deregulation where inflammatory cytokines are causing local inflammation, which causes cells to proliferate secondarily.
I hope that helps! | 38 |
[General] Can someone be both a werewolf and a vampire at the same time? | If so, what would their life be like? | 31 | In the vast majority of settings no. In some, attempting to turn a werewolf into a vampire will kill them, and werewolf bites / scratches can harm vampires. In Underworld, there is someone who is a vampire/werewolf combo, but he was a special case and that setting in general falls squarely into the two races being lethal to each other if combined, even at a cellular level when mixing their blood. | 44 |
ELI5 : How does flowing electricity in a closed circuit lead to an LED lighting up? | An LED (bulb) lights up when it is in a closed circuit with a battery. 'Because electrons flow in the circuit'. But what is the mechanism that transforms this kinetic energy of electrons into light energy? Should I be asking a different question? | 29 | Older incandescent lights worked by making part of the circuit a special kind of wire that electrons really don't like to flow through. They scrape and bang and batter as they flow through that part of wire, which creates a kind of electrical friction. That friction heats up the wire so much that it glows, like a campfire cinder. That's why those kinds of bulbs are really hot to the touch, they're less light-making machines as they are heat-making machines that happen to glow as a side effect.
LEDs are trickier to explain correctly. You can imagine an LED like a huge cliff, with a high end and a low end. The power source stuffs electrons onto the high side and pulls them out of the low side, creating a situation where you have a ton of electrons crowded together at the top of the cliff and almost no electrons at the base of the cliff. The electrons don't like being crowded, they'd prefer to be down at the bottom where they can get out of the crowd. Luckily, there's a set of playground slides that will let them slide all the way down. But to ride the slide, they have to pay a toll. The price is 1 photon of light of a certain color. So electrons "pay up", release a photon of light, and go down the slide. Those released photons make the LED glow in a specific color. | 62 |
ELI5: Why is it that when I'm very thirsty I'm able to chug water very quickly but when I'm less thirsty it feels like there is some resistance? | 65 | Hunger and thirst share some pathways. Leads to the pro dieting tip - if you are on a diet and think you are hungry drink a glass of water first. If you still feel hungry then you are actually hungry. The reverse applies here - if you have a full stomach and try to drink, your body will be more resistant than if you have an empty stomach. | 23 |
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Can the Standard Quantum Limit for the repeated measurement of a free mass be broken in theory? | Maybe I am cheating here, given that my not knowing the answer may come from my incomplete literature review. But I am getting confused by the claims of the contractive states breaking the limit, and yet a reinterpretation of definitions of precision and resolution seems to validate that *repetitive* measurements can *never be broken* due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation between the Standard Deviations of the positions of the free mass at the first and the second measurements, which equals to the SQL. But the review paper I read itself said, after pointing the the HUP=SQL, that the SQL is not a fundamental limit. How?
Does the Uncertainty relation mean that the SQL can never be broken? Shouldn't it? Does it mean no one's working on breaking it? All the above paragraph was from papers from before 2000s, so what's the consensus now? | 308 | It's hard to answer without more context or without knowing the papers you're actually reading, but maybe it's *squeezing*?
The Heisenberg inequality is typically the product of the variances of two conjugated variables or quadratures, e.g. ΔX²ΔY²≥ħ²/4. Naively, one would assume that ΔX²≥ħ/2 and ΔY²≥ħ/2 in this case.
However, it's possible that one of the variance is smaller than that *naive* limit, as long as the other is greater, e.g. ΔX²=ħ/4 and ΔY²=ħ. In this case, we say that X is *squeezed* (because ΔX²<ħ/2); i.e. that it *appears* to beat the quantum limit. In reality, no real limit is violated because ΔX²ΔY²≥ħ²/4 holds.
| 25 |
I'm 15 years old, and I believe that I should be able to (legally) consent to having sex with someone who is older than 18. CMV | I believe that I should be allowed to consent to have sex with someone who is older than 18, if I so desired. I know the dangers of unprotected sex, I know how to be safe, and I know the emotional consequences that can follow.
I don't believe that because I'm 15, I somehow don't have the capacity to know, comprehend, and consent to having sex. I'm not some incompetent, mindless baby that can't think for himself.I think it's really stupid to say that someone my age can't consent. What makes me any less able to consent than someone who's, say, 18?
So, CMV.
I'm a Bisexual guy too, if that matters.
| 15 | Age of consent laws are about making crude, wide brush effort to protect young people from relationships with huge power imbalances that could easily become manipulative or abusive. While many people probably as young as 14 or 15 are fully capable of making informed decisions of this nature, it's thought that most are not so the line is drawn at 16 or 17 or 18. Of course, plenty over that age are still not really capable of making wise choices, but again it's a crude wide brush effort. There can never be a perfect age of consent or age of majority since every individual matures at a different rate. There simply has to be a balance between protecting people incapable of protecting themselves and limiting the freedom of people capable of making their own choices. | 27 |
ELI5: Why does time seemingly pass so fast when I'm lying in bed and can't sleep? | 47 | There's a good chance you are sleeping some of the time, but don't realize it. Probably not a deep, restful sleep if you are repeatedly flitting in and out of consciousness. But it will make time seem to go by quickly. | 39 |
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ELI5 Why, in an airplane that cost millions of $, the mic of the pilot sounds like a 5$ mic ? | 222 | The mic is fine. If you've ever been on a plane with a built-in entertainment system and heard an announcement over your headphones, it was probably perfectly audible.
The issue is projecting the sound that mic captures into the cabin. It's not trivial to equip a large space for sound, especially when you're fighting all the vibrations and white noise produced by the engines. | 212 |
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ELI5 why does compressing video or audio sacrifice quality? | I'm not sure how I could elaborate | 23 | Because it uses a technique called lossy compression.
Imagine you had a book, and took out all the vowels. It would wind up shorter, bt y cld prbbl stll rd t. It would be harder to read, and there might be places where it is ambiguous, but you could probably still puzzle out the meaning.
Lossy video and audio compression work the same way, only more complex. They are designed to leave out details that humans usually won't hear, but if you turn the compression up too high, eventually you are going to notice. | 33 |
I am an existential nihilist. CMV | To avoid confusion I'd like to define the term existential nihilism as the belief that life has no intrinsic meaning or purpose, and nothing that anybody does (or that the human race does as a whole) will matter at all in the long run.
Note that, based on this definition, changing my view on only one of the two qualifiers would change my opinion on the matter, as existential nihilism requires both to be true.
At the same time, though, when I say "nothing will matter at all in the long run" I'm not talking about the differences that humanity will cause in terms of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or something of similar vein. I mean that humanity will never accomplish a worthwhile goal, one that will result in life having reached its predetermined objective or have truly 'succeeded' in any way.
Edit: I just checked the thread after waking up, at 8:00 a.m EST, and it's jumped from 4 comments to 20. I've gotta leave for school right now, but I'll reply to the comments once I get home (around 3:30 EST) | 20 | The "long run" doesn't exist. It's an expanse of time in which nothing will be around to experience anything, and "mattering" is a function of the capacity of beings to value conscious experience. You might imagine a bleak universe experiencing heat death and feel that everything you've ever done has never mattered, but that's an experience that will only ever be had by you, right now, as you imagine it.
Nothing is going to be around to see everything "cease to matter," which effectively means that there's a significant problem with the notion that "mattering" is dependent on the infinitely continuing experience of conscious creatures.
That said, what matters only occurs in the span of individual consciousnesses and personal preferences. The sort of mattering you're talking about is really your subjective feeling about the worth of the whole of human experience. In that sense, maybe it's true that you'll never feel that anything has mattered. But maybe you're depressed and this is just your subjective feeling.
Maybe lots of things are mattering all the time, presently, for a lot of people, and that's the only way mattering can occur. Maybe civilization, plumbing, electricity, and civil rights are all worthwhile goals and successes of humanity. Maybe it's entirely a function of your perspective. | 16 |
Married couples should not get more favorable tax benefits than singles simply for being married CMV | Why should a married couples get advantages when it comes to IRA's, deductions, etc. over people who choose not to get married?
I believe that this is practically a punishment for not getting married, and that people should not have tax disadvantages just for being single. It does not make any sense for marriage to be that integral to getting IRS points, especially in a society that isn't as focused on getting married and having kids in a traditional sense anymore.
The current tax code heavily supports married couples over singles and partners who aren’t married.
I think we should live in a country that treats everyone on equal terms, not giving advantages to those who are married
| 56 | Providing benefits for married people promotes the growth of families. It takes a lot of effort to raise a child. Also, providing a tax benefit allow one parent to work and the other to stay home and be a homemaker or raise children.
This is good, because a strong, supportive family structure raises healthier, less dysfunctional members of society and take a lot of burden off of the government in many areas (crime, education, jobs, productivity).
Since the stay at home parent is essentially doing work that helps society but they are not being paid, a tax benefit helps out for the sole earner who is providing for the entire family. | 28 |
ELI5: Why do birds fly south for the winter instead of just staying where its warmer all the time? | 134 | Two reasons: summer days are longer near the poles compared to the tropics, meaning more time for activity; and springtime sees an absolute explosion of food resources (insect and plant population growth) so the birds that fly back north get access to it, whereas the birds that would stay down south continue having to compete for a standard amount of resources.
Basically, seasonal variation makes for some months with an overabundance of food (ie spring) and some months with a dearth of food (ie winter). They fly south to avoid the lack of food. | 106 |
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I'm not sure whether I am an existentialist or absurdist | Could someone help me here?
I've been digging a bit into both existentialism and absurdism and I think I am still a bit confused about them.
From what I understood, the core difference between the two is that absurdism finds that actually finding a meaning is impossible, and that we should kind of revel in this fact holding our flawed attempts at it as flags of pride. Meanwhile existentialism does not care if finding meaning is impossible or not, since it says meaning is a deeply personal experience, and it doesn't matter whether the beliefs we make for ourselves or not are incredibly flawed as long as we are being authentic.
I myself have had a core sense of belief for some years now, and as part of it I too admit that life is fully devoid of meaning other than that which we ourselves give to it, so that clearly puts me into either one of those fields. Now when it comes to technicalities, I find that finding the meaning itself is incredibly important to all human beings(which resonates with authenticity), and that it is ok to live by flawed beliefs, as long as we accept that our views are never absolute(which related to the acceptance of the absurd).
So... which of the two am I?
Edit: Is there such a thing as being half and half? Philosopher around here seem pretty adamant in a separation between the two philosophies, and that they absolutely MUSTN'T be clumped into one. | 17 | I would say you're more of an existentialist. You're statement that "finding the meaning itself is incredibly important to all human beings" is more in line with Kierkegaard's hope that we would discover our authentic meaningful self, rather than Camus' insistence that we may not find meaning at all. Rather than hoping that meaning will be found, the absurd man ought to carry on with a meaningless life in a meaningless world, and do so defiantly:
> Kierkegaard may shout in warning: "If man had no eternal consciousness, if, at the bottom of everything, there were merely a wild, seething force producing everything, both large and trifling, in the storm of dark passions, if the bottomless void that nothing can fill underlay all things, what would life be but despair?" This cry is not likely to stop the absurd man. Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. If in order to elude the anxious question: "What would life be?" one must, like the donkey, feed on the roses of illusion, then the absurd mind, rather than resigning itself to falsehood, prefers to adopt fearlessly Kierkegaard's reply: "despair." Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.
- The Myth of Sisyphus
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[DC comics] How does Waller ever expect her suicide teams to succeed or complete the mission when she makes them as difficult as possible to the point of becoming antagonistic to the mission itself? like not giving them enough information or straight up lying to them. | Or instead of letting them regroup and try a different strategy just forces them to go into completely unwinnable situations where everyone just dies and she gets nothing. and the tons of other crap she pulls ? How is she expecting them to accomplish anything? or is this just her sick enjoyment in killing prisoners? | 593 | There are two main points to consider:
First, they're super-villains. They can't be trusted with knowledge, because they'd find a way to use it to fuck her.
Second, she can just keep throwing bodies at the problem. She willingly sacrificed an entire strike team in order to make it slightly easier for another strike team to infiltrate an island.
She doesn't care is a whole team is wiped out, as long as one of her other contingencies works. She's playing the odds, and spending lives like a degenerate gambler. | 556 |
[Star Wars Episode IV] „That‘s no moon, that‘s a space station“ there‘s absolutely nothing nearby to give you a size relation of how big it really is. How did they know it from that distance then? | 34 | It looked like Han was looking at readouts from the Falcon when he mentioned it looked like a small moon. I’m guessing the Falcon had something onboard to give relative size of incoming objects (a necessity for a starship.). However, Obi-Wan could feel the millions of lives and weight of the dark side inside of the “moon” and correctly interpreted it to instead be a massive space station. | 59 |
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CMV: The decline of religion in the West has nothing to do with science or philosophy, and everything to do with liberal individualism and consumer capitalism | [Warning: This is purely from an American POV. Please note the hyperlinks throughout this as my evidence. **Also, this is long a post!**]
Often times I see atheists/secularists making the claim that advancements in science, philosophy, history, or other similar fields have lead to the decline of religion in the West. One needs only to search "modern religion" in this subreddit to find atheists spouting the idea that society is "too modern" for religion, and that young people are shedding the "antiquated" ideas found in the Bible, Torah, and Quran. However, research suggests that the decline of religion in the West is instead cultural. Liberal individualism, consumer anxiety, and general social trends have instead been the cause of the decline of faith. I want my view challenged with it being shown that advancements in science, philosophy or similar fields is the main factor causing the decline of religion in the West. I am also open to other explanations for why religion is declining in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and so on, and alternative suggestions can get a delta.
I'll touch on four points.
1) For starters, many [“Nones”](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/14/the-factors-driving-the-growth-of-religious-nones-in-the-u-s/) (those who aren't part of an organized faith, yet are still not atheists) [develop into such](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-changing-culture/201505/the-real-reason-religion-is-declining-in-america) starting in their teenage years. They begin the process of shedding organized religion before they leave high school. Teenagers, in general, do not have a strong grasp on either philosophy or science, so it seems highly unlikely that the works of people like Sam Harris, Stephen Hawking, or similar are swaying them because those are authors they probably haven’t read very much, if at all, since they’re fairly high-level thinkers. Further more, their parents aren't raising them with religion, so they're already starting out very ignorant of religion, making it easy for them to adopt nothing at all. Millennials are pretty much predisposed to become a "None" largely thanks to their parents lack of action. Why become religious when they know absolutely nothing about religion in the first place?
This theological ignorance of Millennials is further evidenced by research. Sociology Professor Christian Smith of Notre Dame University [conducted research](https://www.christianpost.com/news/moralistic-therapeutic-deism-the-new-american-religion-6266/) on Millennials and their attitudes towards religion. Here's some of what he and his team found:
>As a matter of fact, the researchers, whose report is summarized in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Eyes of American Teenagers by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton, found that American teenagers are incredibly inarticulate about their religious beliefs, and most are virtually unable to offer any serious theological understanding. As Smith reports, "To the extent that the teens we interviewed did manage to articulate what they understood and believed religiously, it became clear that most religious teenagers either do not really comprehend what their own religious traditions say they are supposed to believe, or they do understand it and simply do not care to believe it. Either way, it is apparent that most religiously affiliated U.S. teens are not particularly interested in espousing and upholding the beliefs of their faith traditions, or that their communities of faith are failing in attempts to educate their youth, or both."
>The researchers, who conducted thousands of hours of interviews with a carefully identified spectrum of teenagers, discovered that for many of these teens, the interview itself was the first time they had ever discussed a theological question with an adult.
2) One of the main factors of the decline of faith is liberal individualism. [Research suggests](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0121454) that the more liberally individualistic a society is, the less religious it will be. To quote from one of those who preformed said research:
>Why did [the decline of religion in America] happen? It’s important to consider trends in religion in the context of broader cultural changes, and this context is often missing in polls on religion. We found that religious involvement was low when individualism was high in the society. Individualism -- a cultural system focusing more on the self and less on social rules -- has been on the increase in the U.S., with increased self-focus (more positive self-views, more use of “I” and “me” in books and song lyrics), more tolerance and equality (around race, gender, and sexual orientation), less adherence to social rules (with acceptance of premarital sex at an all-time high), less social support (lower empathy), and less interest in large groups and social rules (declines in political and civic participation). Things are not all better, and they are not all worse. But American society is more focused on individual freedom, and less focused on social rules, than it used to be.
>It makes sense that a more individualistic culture would be a less religious one. Religious orientation implies some commitment to a larger group or organization. Belonging to a religious group means following its beliefs and practices, which can be difficult in a cultural environment favoring personal choice and individual freedom. Religion often involves respect for authority, and Americans are now less likely to respect authorities such as the government, schools, or even the medical establishment. These are the forces acting on our teens, and parents have a tough job trying to get them to fit with religion.
When Millennials desire something that is odds with what religion offers, such as sex outside marriage or gay rights, they often times decide to [choose their own beliefs](https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2017/1010/Amid-Evangelical-decline-growing-split-between-young-Christians-and-church-elders) rather than conform to what religious leaders are offering. So, because Western society has become so focused on the the needs of the individual, rather than the needs of the collective, Millennials are simply choosing not to conform to religions that they politically or culturally disagree with. So here again the shedding of religion has nothing to do with science or philosophy, or even theology, but rather Western society's emphasis that whatever the individual wants is just, and that individuals should seek their own path as they so choose, free from the pressure of others. In simpler words: In years past, Westerners were willing to submit themselves to religion because they were able to accept something as greater and more authoritative than themselves, whereas today the individual and their needs are greater than everything else, so they rebuke authoritative figures and bodies more easily than Westerns of the past. The rapid introduction and ingraining of social media (which hyper-focuses on the individual) has only helped propel this cultural shift. (I would also assume that this new hyper-individualistic culture is why parents don't teach their kids religion, because to do such would be to interfere with their child's ability to design their own life/spiritual path).
3) Consumer capitalism is playing a role in the decline of faith as well. When we consumers are presented with multiple choices for a similar product, we get anxious about which to choose, and sometimes don’t even make a choice at all. When one walks down the pasta aisle at their local grocery store, they’re faced with over a dozen different options for a simple box of spaghetti, and this makes us fearful and anxious about making the right choice. What's a GMO? How do I know this is organic? What does organic even mean? What's the main difference between this brand of spaghetti and this other brand of spaghetti? Etc. In instances like this, we usually fall prey to the tricks of marketers, picking whatever box “looks the nicest” instead of whatever one is the actual best option.
This problem spreads over to religion. An increase in religious pluralism makes it hard for Millennials to even begin to start the process of choosing which faith to belong to (and they have to make that choice on their own since their parents aren’t raising them with faith in the first place). [Assoc. Professor Matthew Hedstrom](https://news.virginia.edu/content/qa-why-millennials-are-leaving-religion-embracing-spirituality) of the University of Virginia sums this up nicely:
>Q. What is the relationship between millennial spirituality and consumer capitalism?
>A. Spirituality is what consumer capitalism does to religion. Consumer capitalism is driven by choice. You choose the things that you consume – the bands you like, the books you read, the clothes you wear – and these become part of your identity construction. Huge parts of our social interactions center on these things and advertising has told millennials, from birth, that these are things that matter, that will give you fulfillment and satisfaction. This is quite different from agricultural or industrial capitalism, where someone’s primary identity was as a producer.
>The millennial approach to spirituality seems to be about choosing and consuming different “religious products” – meditation, or prayer, or yoga, or a belief in heaven – rather than belonging to an organized congregation. I believe this decline in religious affiliation is directly related to the influence of consumer capitalism.
>Q. The abundance of choice available to many Americans today has led to what psychologists call “analysis paralysis” – being afraid to make a choice because there are so many options. How has this impacted millennial spirituality?
>A. Millennials, especially middle- and upper-class millennials, have so many options, as it has become easier to move around and interact with the rest of the world. A peasant living in 14th-century France would not have faced the same conundrum about whether or how to be a Catholic. A millennial today can access information about Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and various pagan beliefs with just a few clicks, or just by talking to people they encounter.
>This is both liberating and paralyzing. Having so many options creates a lot of anxiety about which religious beliefs, careers or relationships millennials should choose. Spirituality allows millennials to avoid choosing one religion and instead combine elements from many.
To circle back to Christin Smith's research:
>In the end, this study indicates that American teenagers are heavily influenced by the ideology of individualism that has so profoundly shaped the larger culture. This bleeds over into a reflexive non-judgmentalism and a reluctance to suggest that anyone might actually be wrong in matters of faith and belief. Yet, these teenagers are unable to live with a full-blown relativism.
>The "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" that these researchers identify as the most fundamental faith posture and belief system of American teenagers appears, in a larger sense, to reflect the culture as a whole.
>Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is also "about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents." As the researchers explained, "This is not a religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of sovereign divinity, of steadfastly saying one's prayers, of faithfully observing high holy days, of building character through suffering, of basking in God's love and grace, of spending oneself in gratitude and love for the cause of social justice, et cetera. Rather, what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people."
In other words, Millennials are picking and choosing "vague, spiritual nostrums" because the abundance of religious options are too confusing and exhausting - just as with anything else in a consumer-capitalist society.
4) And finally, no major advancements either within the realm of science or philosophy have been made within the past 50 years that would cause a decline of faith in the West. While science continues to improve our knowledge of the known world, no discoveries in the past 50 years have invalidated the idea of God or the divine (because that’s not what science does). The same goes for philosophy. Bishop Robert Barron [has a nice summary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGQ-nWOZrok) of this [please note I had to personally clean up the audio transcription of this video, so any mistakes in grammar or presentation are mine and not his]:
>There's a prejudice in our society, born of our scientism, which as I've explained is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge, a prejudice that says, “Newer is better, newer is truer.” Well is it the case in the sciences? Yeah, I think that you could argue the sciences tend to move upward in a sort of steady, predictable way where contemporary science is better and truer than what came before. So, nobody's going to read Descartes physics or Ptolemies astronomy except out of historical interest. No one's going to go back and read them for the latest insights into science (by the way, my very language there betrayed the problem as though the latest is always better). It does tend to be true in the sciences - however it is not true in other areas of knowledge.
>Take, for example, poetry. Would you say automatically Robert Frost is a better poet than Dante? Or that Robert Frost is the better poet than Homer? Of course not. Poetry doesn't progress that way but rather goes through all sorts of ups and downs. “Playwrights today, they're necessarily better than Shakespeare.” Who would hold that? They don't move upward the same way the sciences do. Philosophy, I would suggest, is much more akin to literature, and poetry than it is to the sciences. Would you say, for example, necessarily Michel Foucault is a better philosopher than Kant? Than Hegel? Than Aristotle? Or Plato? Well of course not, no one would think that because philosophy doesn't move in this steadily upward direction.
>Now lets it press it even a little bit further. The denizens of philosophy department faculty lounges today who are responding to this survey [where academic philosophers [were asked how they religiously identified](https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl)] saying that, you know, most of us are atheists; what does that show? I would say next to nothing comparing the denizens of philosophy lounges today (2015) to John Luke Mariana, to Ludwig Wittgenstein, to Edmund Husserl, to Alfred North Whitehead to Jacques Maritain. There's a whole slew of very prominent contemporary philosophers thoroughly trained in philosophy and completely cognizant of all the developments in modern sciences who are fierce affirmers of the existence of God. To claim somehow that the responders to this survey in faculty lounges today in philosophy departments have better arguments, they've seen something that these great figures in contemporary philosophy didn't see; come on give me a break.
In other words, nothing in the realm of philosophy is so new that it would cause Western society to massively shift towards "None." [Barron's lecture](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF8mgwgIKGE) on "scientism" touches on the scientific aspect of this.
So, CMV: Liberal individualism and consumer capitalism (combined with a general ignorance of theology across the US, Europe, Canada, etc.), not advancements in science or philosophy, are causing the decline of religion in the West.
**EDIT**: Murphy's Law has happened, and my internet connection keeps going in and out so I can't respond to everyone. I'm so sorry :(
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> And finally, no major advancements either within the realm of science or philosophy have been made within the past 50 years that would cause a decline of faith in the West
As time goes on, science is able to explain the world more and more. When much of the world was unexplainable scientifically, theological answers were much more appealing. When everything can be explained by science, theological answers become superfluous.
The fact that there have been no religious advancements in the last 50 years while there have been many scientific and philosophical advancements makes religion seem more and more outmoded.
| 27 |
ELI5: How does clicking the "I'm not a robot" reCAPTCHA box confirm that I'm human? | Couldn't a spam program automatically click the box to bypass this? | 273 | reCAPTCHA takes account of a whole lot of information about how your cursor moves before you ever click that box. If it looks like something a spam program might do, it throws up an extra challenge, like identifying features in images, that humans are still much better at than bots. Things that can set it off include "teleporting" the cursor to the right location, moving it in perfectly straight lines, and similar. | 136 |
ELI5: Why do the United States and a few other nations still fluoridate water, where as in some countries like The Netherlands it is banned and considered a neurotoxin? | Why not just leave it up to people to fluoridate their own water (buying fluoride tablets to add to your own water) if they want it. It's claim is that fluoride helps strengthen teeth and helps with cavities, but I guess I just don't know enough about the substance.
Edit: I feel like some of you pulled your answers straight from /r/shittyaskscience. | 519 | This is a mash-up of a severe misunderstanding.
Flouridated water DOES help strengthen teeth, and is not a neurotoxin.
The substance used is either sodium flouride, flurosilicic acid, or sodium flourisilicate, none of which are neurotoxins.
Flourine is toxic. But that's when it's by itself, not as part of a compound. In the same way that chlorine is extremely toxic, and sodium has the tendency to explode on contact with water, yet sodium chloride, salt, is necessary for us to live.
The flourine compounds in water bond with tooth enamel and strengthen it.
It's not left up to the individual because it's a vital public health service which should be taken care of using public funds to ensure everybody has flouridated water. | 759 |
[Avatar:TLA] Why was Long Feng so dismissive of Team Avatar's war information? | Long Feng was the power behind the Earth King's throne, running all day-to-day matters including military. He must have been coordinating the Earth Kingdom-wide war effort, even if he didn't allow such things to be spoken aloud in the city. So when Team Avatar appeared with information about an upcoming solar eclipse, why did he not jump at the chance to end the war? It seems like it would've been easier to keep hold on his power without an invader knocking on his walls. | 19 | If memory serves, the Earth King was under the impression that the conflict with the Fire Nation was limited to small skirmishes far from Ba Sing Se. Mobilizing an Earth Kingdom force would have almost certainly alerted the Earth King to the fact that the War was much grander in scope than Long Feng and the Dai Li had allowed him to know.
With the King informed -- or at least suspicious -- of his advisors' deception, he likely would not have allowed them to maintain their influence and authority over day-to-day ruling. | 14 |
[Action films general] If the protagonist actually throws a knife at someone, isn't there inherently only like a 20% change that the blade/tip is going to impact first? Getting hit in the chest with a knife handle would hurt, but it's not going to put someone out of commission | 41 | With a known distance, it's possible to get a lot more than 20%, closer to 80%. The range of possible distances is pretty small, so it's not inconceivable that Mr. Badass here has practiced across all of them. *I hear* it's all about the spin.
Furthermore, a trained thrower is not particularly attached to knives. People have thrown axes, hammers, shovels and IIRC even nails, with nearly the same efficacy. Throwing knives are just more convenient and don't fall apart after three throws - a throw is a lot stronger than a simple stab. Throwing knives are typically made of a monolithic piece of steel. | 64 |
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ELI5:The rationale and the end game for terrorists | Omitting the Boston bombings because it's probably too soon to really grasp a full understanding of the situation. I'm not sympathizing with terrorists by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't understand what blowing up or killing a bunch of innocents accomplishes. It happens in the US few and far in between but it seems to happen pretty frequently in other parts of the world. What do these terrorist groups hope to gain? What's their end game? Why specifically do they seem to target innocents?
| 23 | Pretty sure you're just wanting a basic simplification, but to start here is the ELI5 Version:
A terrorist wants to scare people. He's mad enough or crazy enough that he just doesn't care if anyone gets hurt, and he tries to find some way to hurt people so everyone else gets scared.
As for why they want to do it, well that's hard to answer and it's different for different people. It can be that someone else who was mad tricked them into it (brainwashed), or it could be that they're just really angry about something they think is not fair.
The important thing is this, don't let them have what they want. They want you to be afraid... afraid to go to school, or afraid to go do things with friends. Don't let them get away with that, and don't make them famous by talking about them.
---
The laymen friendly simple version is this;
Look at 9/11... look at what happened in the US after that. We're at each others throats over everything, the TSA checks your ass before you can travel, and we've spent ourselves into debt blowing up mud huts in a war that has made the region hate us even more than before we started.
That is the terrorists end game. Make them scared, and make others hate them. Break down their position.
Think of it from a swapped position... it's easier if you think about it being aliens instead of humans (because these fucks don't tend to value lives). Alien occupation of earth, and you're fighting a losing battle. Many humans have become complacent slaves and you're trying to shake it up and bring them down. Now, with that view in mind, imagine different acts of terrorism that have been done.
| 15 |
ELI5: The moon is bright enough to be seen from 240,000 miles away even in daytime, how could astronauts look directly at it during the lunar space landing? | 23 | The moon is just acting as a mirror. It is not producing it's own light.
Take a regular mirror. Turn on a bright light. Set up the mirror about ten feet from the light. Now stand about ten feet from the mirror and look at the light in the mirror. Not too bright to look at. Now get right next to the mirror, less than a foot. The light should still be about the same brightness.
Now consider that the moon is quite a bit less reflective than a mirror. It's gray dust. An interesting thing to note is that there is video from a moon landing in which an astronaut is in the shadow of the lander, and yet is fully visible. Conspiracy theorists say that this is proof of a secondary light source, a stage light. It's actually light being reflected from the surface *up* onto the astronaut. | 26 |
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cmv: we do not accept lower than average intelligence. | Ok so firstly yes WE accept the Idea, lower than 90 in IQ score is lower than average, yes everyone is ok with that as far as I know.
But in reality we aren't ok with it... Have you ever tried telling anyone that you had lower than average intelligence ? Well even just as an experiment try doing it on a subredit or youtube comments, see how people react.
Quickly you'll see they'll tell you "no it must be something else..." "I don't think it's thé case..." "Maybe you're just Asperger and maybe even hight IQ hight potential !" Basically telling you you're lying and you might even be the opposit of what you're claiming to be. They do not have any proof of that but they're still going to make assumptions about it.
Why ? Well because out society does accept lower than average people. Because out entire economic system us based on being always above average and so it's awfull and unfair for people who did literaly nothing bad and yet are doomed to poverty just because they're who they are.
Same with academic success, a teacher will never let you say that you're just under average in intelligence. It's not allowed, otherwise they'd have to revonsider learning rythm or amount of homework, that or send the under average kid to a spécialisés slower pace school but then that kid spending more time at school means less saving and investing so less if any retirement or housing and that's unfair.
Basically we can't accept under average people to exist because it questions the entirety of our economical system, thoo in reality under averages people are numerous, even more soo today and in some countries as lead poisoning from car fuel wasn't that long ago and is more or less in the past depending on countries. How can we accept a competitive system to still exist in this case ?
We simply can't, so we do not accept people with under average intelligence, we hide that to ourselves, just like a big city try to hide the homeless people living in it. | 16 | You talk about intelligence as if it is a single dimensional scale.
That's a pretty naive perspective on intelligence.
People are smart about some things and stupid about others. That's true of knowledge, but that's also true in how easily people learn new information on a topic or inuit a topic.
saying that one is "below average intelligence" is a claim hinged on reducing intelligence to a single dimensional scale. In most contexts, this sort of projection isn't particularly useful | 16 |
[Doctor who] Why is the master evil? | 30 | It's implied that the Master was driven insane by a constant drumbeat playing inside their head, which was put there by the Time Lords as part of a gambit to escape the Time War, and that this is why they're evil. | 45 |
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[DC] why did Krypton explode? | 26 | There have been numerous accounts
* A natural supernova
* Damage done to the planet’s core by a terrorist group using an ancient super weapon from an ancient conflict called (get this) the Clone Wars
* Over-mining of the planet
* Brainiac (or at least he gave them bad advice to ensure they wouldn’t escape) | 63 |
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[Star Wars] So is this what I get when I hire a bounty hunter? | I hire Jango Fett to kill Senetor Amidala. Jango then out-sources the job to a Changeling. This Changeling then employs a droid who in turn delivers two venemous bugs. What the hell am I paying for here? I could have thrown bugs at her myself! | 228 | That's not how bounties work. You put a generic price on her head, then you pay the first one who brings it to you. The bounty hunters can then decide to work together and share the bounty should they so choose. You are thinking of an assassin, which neither Zam nor Jango are. | 187 |
[Star Trek] Why is the Federation so bad at fighting the Borg? | The entire premise of the series seems to revolve around out-thinking more powerful opponents and yet the Federation seems to repeatedly use the same ineffective tactics encounter after encounter when facing the Borg.
For example, when dealing with drones they continue to use phasers in every encounter when from the very beginning it's been shown that after a couple shots the Borg adapt and render these weapons useless until they are manually "re-modulated". Why has no one in the Federation created an "Anti-Borg" rifle? Just off the top of my head it could include:
* Phaser with auto-remodulation
* Disrupter Ray
* Old fashioned Laser
* Kinetic rounds (conventional bullets or railgun)
* Holographic/forcefield rounds (such as Picard's Tommy gun on the holodeck to kill two drones)
* Flame Thrower
* Bayonet
If the Borg could just be immune to everything all the time then they already would be so clearly they have to be selective about their defenses. Putting together a multi-purpose weapon like this should render their defenses futile. | 28 | Part of it really is that the Federation does not want to consider itself a military. Oh, it has the function of one, the structure of one, it is a military in most senses of the word. But 23rd Century Federation citizens want to believe that they are above such things. They hold to their ideals that Starfleet is a peacekeeping and exploratory agency primarily.
As such, development into pure weapons and dedicated anti-Borg tactics is stymied by budget restraints. The Federation feels that if they admit that they need such research, that they admitting failure. That they can't protect the galaxy with just defensive and exploratory methods.
There are plenty of things the Federation could do if they took war seriously. They don't. | 33 |
ELI5: How does a dishwasher get water into every piece despite their proximity and angles? | 22 | The nozzles shoot water at an angle, the angles overlap each other and the nozzles are on a rotating arm so every area is more or less covered. Pieces that may be at a weird angle will get less water but over 1h they will eventually be blasted with enough water… and some pieces just don’t get washed if you put enough effort into it. | 28 |
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Take a container.Fill it with birds.Weigh the container.If all the birds took flight within the container, it would still weigh the same.How? | I just saw this on QI, and even though I think it makes sense I can't really figure out why.
*edit
Asked and answered comprehensively in under ten minutes. Thanks! I was thinking the birds flying was analogous to someone jumping up, which it clearly isn't. | 22 | >Take a container.Fill it with birds.Weigh the container.If all the birds took flight within the container, it would still weigh the same.
Yes\*.
>How?
For the birds to stay aloft, they must exert a downward force (via their wings pushing the air) equal to their weight. The air presses down on the box with the same force as the birds' weight (assuming that the box is air tight) , and thus the box weighs the same.
\**The weight of the box will, in reality, fluctuate very slightly around the target weight as the birds accelerate upward on a wing beat, and then fall downward. But then again, that's the same effect you'd see if they were all walking around instead of sitting still.* | 39 |
CMV: Feminism isn't a valid name for the pursuit of equality for everybody on this planet Earth. | I'm of the opinion that the term feminism doesn't describe the pursuit of equal rights for everybody, even though almost every feminist claims this to be true.
My argument is that feminism, by definition, is a movement with the objective to fight for women's rights, and thus, it can't really be helping everybody, thus it can't really be an equality movement.
If it where an equality movement, such as egalitarianism, it would pursuit the equality of everyone with everyone. Sometimes men have more rights than women, sometimes it's the opposite. I'm sure in some cases, black people have it better than white people, or whatever.
I've heard people state that the movement being called feminism is a way to "offend" people in a positive way, and in this way, the problem will be discussed. If so, I could call my equality movement "fuck you in the ass everyone else in the world" and I'd claim that it's a stunt to get people to know my movement by offending them.
TLDR: I can't think of feminism as an equality movement primarily because of its name, and secondarily for some other things I may post about here later on.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 22 | Most strains of feminism are pretty explicit about fighting for equal rights for women.
However, equal rights for women implies they are fighting for the same rights men have, not more. And as women are part of every racial, ethnic, religious and class minority, equal rights for women also implies equal rights for these minorities. | 13 |
Do just liquids have pH? Or do all states of matter? | I only ever see pH being talked about with liquids. Could a solid or gas have pH?
Is it just that we can’t measure the pH of the other states of matter, or does a material simply lose the property of pH when it freezes or boils?
If they still have a pH, how would we measure it? And if the pH is not measurable when in a non-liquid state, can we just liquify it and then measure the pH? Does this measured pH still apply once we then freeze or boil the liquid? | 20 | pH is a way of expressing the volume-based concentration of hydrogen ions, which is what gives a solution the "property" of acidity. In water, hydrogen ions are "carried" on water molecules (the resulting structure is called a hydronium ion).
At its core, pH has to do with solutions. For this reason, it isn't really meaningful to talk about the pH of gases or solids, unless they are dissolved or slurried in a liquid (in which case it's the liquid you're measuring). Even then, the liquid is pretty much always water, as it is very challenging (and again, not as meaningful) to measure pH in non-aqueous solvents. | 23 |
eli5: why do humans form blood clots on 8 hour flights, but not during 8 hours of sleep? | 114 | Lower cabin pressures mean the partial pressure of oxygen you inhale is lower. So your blood is less oxygenated and that increases clotting.
Also you don't move enough on a plane (people move quite a lot while asleep in bed). So your veins are kinked at joints, slowing flow, and you don't use your large muscles very much (muscle contractions aid in the return of blood through the venous system). | 95 |
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Eli5: why when asked for income info. are you asked for gross-income instead of net-income? | Why not net income when you are certainly taking home less than you earned after taxes that are mandatory? Then when you include health insurance it’s much less.
Edit:Typo | 17 | Because mortgage interest and taxes are deductible to a certain extent and some of these can phase out based on the total gross income not the net. Not to mention there are deductions that can increase net income. If the applicant is carrying over losses from a previous year their net income will be misleadingly high.
Gross means the mortgage vendor can work out the normal taxes, where everything should be, and the worse case scenario when considering whether the applicant meets the appropriate loan to value and debt to income ratios. | 13 |
[Spinal Tap] Despite its lack of commercial success, was Smell the Glove ever considered to be a classic album? | 24 | *Smell the Glove* continued Tap's long history of critical failure. In the UK, the music press poured scorn on the album. The NME called it "...dated, posturing, Willy waggling nonsense from a band who should have done the decent thing years ago." This was one of the more polite reviews.
Things were much the same in the USA. One influential DJ notoriously bought every copy he could find and used them as targets at his local shooting range.
Of course, the reaction from Japan was massively different, which saved the album. | 16 |
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ELI5: How are sport drinks supposed to hydrate you more than drinking water? | 254 | They don't. What sports drinks are supposed to do is replace minerals/salts/electrolytes (different words for the same stuff) that you may have lost during intense physical exercise. They also have sugar to replace the calories you burn during the same activity. Unless you are an elite athlete in the middle of an actual competition, you do not need a sports drink (even then, the evidence is pretty sparse that they help). A normal diet has more than enough minerals for even the most work-out obsessed individual. Even if you exclusively drink distilled water, there will be more than enough salt in your diet to keep you going. | 384 |
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ELI5: if humans can detect wave lenths of red green and blue, why are the primary colors red blue and yellow | 145 | RYB (red yellow blue) was invented before we understood how our eyes really work. It turns out that the best combination to use is actually magenta, cyan, and yellow.
A dye or paint works by absorbing most colors, and reflecting only one color. So, yellow paint is absorbing everything but yellow, and we see it as yellow because that's the only thing that bounces off of it.
So, when you mix two paints, what you're actually doing is increasing the amount of light that's getting absorbed. We call this a *subtractive* color mix, because you're increasing the number of colors that are getting removed from white light.
RGB color systems, like what your computer monitor use, are *additive*. They start with darkness, and produce light from a bunch of colors in order to make an image.
For human eyes, RGB is ideal for an additive color system, as you'd expect. However, since a subtractive system is basically the opposite, the ideal colors to use are the "opposite" or "complementary" to the additive ones. If you mix two complementary colors, you get a neutral color, ie white or grey. They cancel each other out.
So, yellow and blue are complements, which is why artists managed to figure out that yellow paint is good to use. Magenta is the complement to green, and cyan is the complement to red. Red and blue are sort of similar to magenta and cyan, which is probably why they ended up being used for so long.
edit: note that RYB still works totally fine for art, it's just that magenta cyan yellow is better from a "scientific" point of view. art is obviously subjective so if using RYB gives the painter an effect that they think looks better, it's the best system to use. | 108 |
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[DC] Could a Green Lantern ring create a person? | Obviously it could create cars, fists, and weapons, but if Hal Jordan tried really hard enough to imagine a person, would it work? | 19 | A living, breathing, fully autonomous being? no, it can't do that. It can create constructs that LOOK like people, Kyle does this a lot, Guy too. But the ring cannot create life, no. Kyle once used the power of ION to reanimate his mother after she passed away, but it didn't last long. | 28 |
[LA Noire] What exactly happened in boot camp with Cole Phelps? | There's a flashback in the game where everyone has to rate each other and then at the end of the flashback Kelso gets rated by Phelps and then he says he didn't join the corp for this school yard bullshit and storms out after having his weekend pass denied. What was that all about? | 32 | They were in OCS (Officer Candidate School), not boot. It's implied that Kelso dropped out, being fed up with "this schoolyard chickenshit" and enlisted instead (where he'd actually go through "boot camp").
Hence Phelps outranks Kelso, as Phelps completed OCS and entered as a Lieutenant, whereas Kelso chose to enlist and entered as a lowly Private. | 22 |
[LoTR] Does Aragorn have a more noble/illustrious lineage than Legolas? | 15 | Possibly a matter of opinion, but I'd say so.
Legolas is of Sindaran lineage, mixed with Silvan Elves (possibly in blood, definitely in culture) which are considered less "noble" and "illustrious" than pure Sindaran.
Aragorn is descended from:
* Numenorians, perhaps as "noble" and "illustrious" as you can get with respect to Men, including one of the men who slew Sauron
* All three major branches of elves, in descending order of nobility/illustriousness: Vanyar (via Indis > Turgon> Idril> Earendil > Elros); Noldor (via Finwe > Turgon > Idril > Earendil > Elros); and Sindar (via Thingol > Luthion > Dior > Elwing> Elros).
* An actual, literal angel: Melian (wife of Thingol)
So he has some more nobler and illustrious names in his pedigree, for sure. | 32 |
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ELI5: is the way we walk genetic? | So i have noticed my cousin walks similarly of not exactly the same as my uncle. I feel like I also kinda walk like my dad. Is this just another genetic thing? | 46 | The way you walk depends on things like genetics, such as leg bone length which impact stride length. Fitness, a fat person might have a waddle like walk, a fit person might not. Health, such as injuries might give a limp or other change in stride length, or how the foot lands.
If you've worn shoes most of your life or walked barefoot/sandals most of your life.
It's not really one factor. | 27 |
Is there a conservation law associated with CPT symmetry? Shouldn't it be conservation of probability? | I've been reading a lot about symmetry lately and I can't articulate why but I feel like for there to be predictable laws that comes from an ultimately statistical (random) microscopic world, that the conservation of probability must come into play. So my ultimate question is, is there a conservation law associated with CPT symmetry? | 48 | Per Noether's theorem, only *continuous* symmetries (e.g. rotations, translations, etc) give rise to conservation laws. CPT is a discrete symmetry, and so doesn't have a corresponding conservation law.
Conservation of probability is associated with the unitarity of quantum mechanics: quantum states stay normalized as a function of time. In some sense this is a 'deeper' fact than any symmetry; it's true in any quantum system regardless of how symmetric the Hamiltonian (or Lagrangian) is. | 17 |
[Community] Do other trades have secret societies attached, or are the air conditioner repairmen the only ones? | 163 | Air conditioner repairmen are likely unique in that regard, since they are much more successfull than the rest of the school, with their trade school having a Job placement rate five times higher than the rest of Greendale combined and the donations by the Alumni of the Greendale Air Conditioning Repair School making up 80% of the Budget of Greendale. | 101 |
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ELI5: What exactly is napalm and what makes it so notorious? | 583 | It's notorious for a couple of reasons. One is that creating a firestorm in a city is more horrible than bombing the same city with explosives: the firestorm pulls in fuel and oxygen and expands, burning many people to death.
The other thing it's notorious for is its use as an anti-personnel weapon dropped from the air. That is, not being used to blow up buildings or tanks or munitions supplies, but specifically to burn people. It is liquid, so it can run under shelters, into tunnels, etc. It burns very hot so you could be burnt to death even if you weren't physicaly hit with it. And it's also sticky, so the person being burned can't scrape off the incredibly hot stuff burning through their skin. During the Vietnam War, the US found that Vietnamese people were jumping into water to stop the burning so it was reformulated to stick to skin and continue burning under water.
^(Edit: fixed a spelling error, changed 'stock' to 'stick') | 864 |
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How was the newly found huge Japanese "rare earths" deposit formed? | [Link to the story](https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/16/asia/japan-rare-earth-metals-find-china-economy-trnd/index.html)
So the higher elements are formed inside Super Novae and then spewed out into the galaxy where they mix with other clouds of matter that eventually became our solar system and planet. So they have been around for billions of years before and billions of years since becoming part of the Earth. But why are they so dense in just this one area and why are they in the form of mud?
Also, how likely is it that there are many more of these yet to be discovered? | 3,634 | Rare earths are really difficult to separate from other elements, they aren't actually particularly rare.
Most of the more concentrated rare earths to come to the surface likely came via volcanos, which in the ocean likely resulted in a lot of dust laced with the stuff that just got carried off by currents (as opposed to the harder-to-process solid rock found on the surface without the constant abrasive effects of the ocean.)
Japan only surveyed their exclusive economic zone and found a lot, so chances are similar deposits coat the ocean floor. | 902 |
CMV: Burqas and Niqabs are one of the biggest oppressors of modern women | Austria, France, Belgium and now Denmark all have laws against the wearing of these garments.
My view on Burqas and Niqabs:
"It's for religious purposes" or "It helps liberate women from the male gaze"The best argument I heard for this was "Why are the burqas made of black polyester? In the middle east no less. Why can't it be a white, light weight, flowing material? Maybe cotton or silk?" Even the richest people use the same black material, so it isn't a question of wealth. The choice of material proves that the burqas exist simply to punish women for being women.
I'm living in France, but over the years I have heard of feminist movements in the U.S. like free the nipple where feminist claim that bras, or high heels are oppressive pieces of clothing even though it's pretty much the woman's choice. but for the most part, feminists won't denounce the forcing of the burqa.
In France, a lot of muslim girls say that "it's their choice to wear it", and then the feminists I know argue that it's feminist clothing because of this "choice". My argument here is that their mother wears the burqa, their grandmothers wear the burqa, every other female in their religious circle wears the burqa. An woman not wearing the burqa would not be well accepted by their community, so yes it's their "choice", but if they choose not to wear it, then they will be punished for it by their community.
How to CMV: Convince me that burqas are not oppressing women.
edit: I shouldn't have said biggest, but I'm not sure how to reword it and still have the same meaning, I'm simply relating the burqas to western "oppressions" such as high heels, bras, and air conditioning. | 26 | The title and what you wrote at the end are completely different. If it’s the view in the title it’s obviously incorrect. Stoning women for adultery, honor killings, barring them from working, going out on their own, driving, voting, holding public office, going to school are much larger problems. | 22 |
ELI5: Why don't Americans say "thrice"? | I mean, if there's a word for "three times", why not use it? | 32 | There's a word for Association Football called "soccer", why doesn't England use it since they invented the word?
Languages change over time and many of those changes are regional. Your country was colonized by the Brits so you speak English the way they taught you, but that doesn't mean it is the only right way. | 47 |
ELI5: If 3D vision is natural to humans, then why does our eyes and brain have a hard time watching extended hours of 3D entertainment? Will Holograms be any better, and more acceptable? | 25 | I imagine holograms will be much better. 3D presentations are still coming from a 2D screen with images projected through the 3D glasses, also affecting where your eyes attempt to focus, whereas a hologram will have a natural 3D presence. The way our eyes process images is quite complex: just think of optical illusions and that stupid black and blue dress (people who saw white and gold were somehow unable to process the over-saturation of reflected light off of the dress) | 15 |
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If viruses keep changing themselves to fight against our immunity, how and why smallpox eradicated from the world? | It is my understanding that if everyone builds an immunity to a virus then it changes itself (a new strain?) so that it can attack humans again. (e.g. Influenza?)
Why did the smallpox virus not do this in response to increased vaccination? | 34 | Smallpox was something of a special case, in that there was no animal reservoir that it could survive in after all human to human transmission was stopped; the virus can only live in human beings. Influenza viruses naturally infect a wide variety of birds and also pigs, animals with which humans are often in close proximity (and eat). There's always the possibility of such an influenza virus jumping from one species to another. This isn't an issue with smallpox; once you've eradicated it from an area, it is gone. | 31 |
[MCU] What happened to Obadiah's stun tech from Iron Man 1? | In IM1, Obadiah has a handheld device that temporarily paralyses someone with some kind of ultrasonic frequency. The tech looks like it would be highly useful in a number of situations, so why did Tony never develop it further? | 25 | Well Tony was busy developing the tech he cared about. He’s a genius, but he’s only one man, and there’s only so many fields he can develop at the same time.
Additionally, it might be the case that the range of the stun weapon couldn’t be amplified, making it fairly useless for someone like Iron Man. | 23 |
ELI5 how IV fluid goes into our veins and ends up as pee | 25 | All of the organs in your body are connected by your blood. It's how the food that you eat can be sent to your muscles for fuel, how hormones released by your brain can cause your heart to race when you are scared, and how waste from your bodily processes ends up in your bladder. Waste products are released into your blood stream by most of the cells in your body and one of the main organs which filter these out are your kidneys. All of your blood will routinely pass through your kidneys and the specialized cells in your kidneys are able to differentiate toxins and waste products from helpful things like glucose and hormones. The helpful molecules remain in your blood while unwanted things are removed and sent to your bladder to be urinated.
When you introduce fluids into your blood, like with an IV, these fluids will also go through your kidneys and will also be subject to filtration. | 10 |
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CMV: I believe that "Free the Nipple" is a largely manufactured issue, and that if you support the movement you should also be supporting nudism. | Let me get this started by saying I do not necessarily oppose the movement per say, I just don't understand the argument.
Why is a male nipple acceptable to show, but not a female one? For the same reason that the female ankle is acceptable to show in western culture but not the vagina - because as a society we decided these features were or were not acceptable to show. Is this not the case? Is there anything inherently wrong with a penis or vagina also? No. It's just the way we decided it was to be.
Therefore, if you support "Free the Nipple" from a logical and not self-interested perspective, you should also support public nudity or nudism in all it's forms, and by extension public masturbation, procreation or defecation provided sufficient sanitary measures are observed. Those are extreme examples, but also logical extensions of that belief.
However, if you think that the reasoning is because you don't personally think that the nipple being shown is bad, or because you personally aren't offended by nipples, you are acting in a self-interested way and not considering older generations of people to whom this would be extremely inappropriate. Yes, it being codified in law perpetuates this belief, but as it is not extremely inconvenient for an individual to cover themselves sufficiently, it is not particularly harmful to perpetuate.
I understand the argument for breastfeeding, and it is semi-valid. But believing that things can be shown situationally is entirely different from believing it should be shown at all times (for example more people would visit the doctors about genital health concerns were revealing genitalia less taboo).
CMV Reddit.
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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!* | 31 | I think the fundamental difference between male nipple/female nipple and, say, ankle/vagina is that the first pair is directly comparable and the second pair isn't. Functionally, there's no difference between a male nipple and a female nipple - the only thing that differentiates them is the organ underneath (pecs vs breasts), neither of which is actually visible when the person in question is topless. It's more equivalent to deciding that, say, the female ankle is OK to show but not the male ankle.
Consider this analogy: It's perfectly valid to say that you can't pay for a $20 meal with Monopoly money, but it's not valid to say you can't pay with two 10 dollar bills. Technically, two $10s and a $20 are different, but functionally they are the same and mean the same things to the naked eye. | 30 |
Why are nuclear bombs activated above their target and not on ground impact? | 713 | They can be detonated at any height, depending on what whoever planned the attack is trying to achieve. Some factors that would be considered:
**Fallout**
When a nuclear device detonates, anything within a vaporization radius of the device will be turned to vapor. The vapor of that matter will mix with the vapor of the device debris. That's how you get what's called fallout - various types of matter get mixed in with the highly radioactive device debris, get irradiated by neutron radiation, and can be transmuted into other radioactive elements. The more matter that's in that vaporization radius, the more and more dangerous fallout you get. So detonating high enough that the vaporization radius doesn't touch the ground will minimize fallout, and detonating on or right above the ground will maximize it though vaporizing all of those cubic meters of earth. In most cases, you would prefer to minimize fallout.
**Thermal Radiation**
This is non-ionizing radiation put out by the bomb, that travels in a straight line, doesn't go through things, and heats up whatever it hits. It can burn people to death, start fires, melt things, etc. If the device detonates too low, buildings and terrain may shield some of the surrounding area from thermal radiation, while a detonation high enough to be above these things will expose more things to it. You detonate low to get the maximum destruction to things very close to the detonation, and detonate higher to spread the destruction out more at the expense of a little less effect right under the bomb. Of course, even the lesser destruction from being under a higher-altitude detonation is more than enough to completely destroy most things.
**Blast wave**
This is a shock wave of outgoing high-pressure air. It tends to knock down buildings and other structures through high winds and pressure and inflict blast injuries to people. It spreads in a kind of similar way to the thermal radiation, but is more complex due to reflections, interference, air pressure at detonation altitude, and other factors. There's charts for what altitude to detonate at for various effects at various ranges.
**Physical Vaporization**
Back to the vaporization mentioned in the fallout section. The other side of that is that, if you are attacking a hardened target, like something deep underground or not very affected by heat and blast, like train tracks, etc, it may be necessary to physically vaporize the target to ensure the intended destruction. So back to a ground or near-ground detonation.
**Summary**
It all depends on exactly what you're trying to attack. Destroying a nuclear missile silo is different from destroying a military base or navy yard, which is different again from going for maximum casualties in a city, and any number of other types of targets one might want to attack. | 1,011 |
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ELI5: How does price gouging work? Couldn't one producer keep its prices low to attract all the consumers, and either profit by itself or force the other producers to lower their prices back to normal market value? | 805 | Usually the advantage is that a good is in such a short supply compared to demand that at least some sellers can ask for nearly any price and people will still pay that price, since there is no competition with a lower price AND still has goods to sell | 763 |
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I think Wikipedia is a very reliable source. CMV | When I go on Wikipedia, most of the stuff is cited and I feel as if every fact stated is backed up by a source. People say that anyone can change it, but usually, it is either blatantly obvious or quickly reverted. When I read something on Wikipedia, I automatically assume it is the truth. I understand that most of the stuff written is by mundane people, but the fact that an overwhelming amount of people have confronted me that the site has little value to knowledge absolutely astounds me. Sure, it's written by everyday people, but it has a sophisticated enough moderation to make it as truthful as possible in which I find a highly reliable source of knowledge. | 63 | Sure, it's GENERALLY reliable, but what if some random guy messed it up five minutes before you look at it?
Go ahead and use it to find the population of Germany, but not for your research paper due next week. | 25 |
[Warhammer 40k] Do ships ever hit warp-entities while traveling through The Immaterium? | 29 | Yep, all the time. The Warp is full of - in some interpretations, *made* of - daemons and other horrible things.
Fortunately, though, those warp entities cannot enter realspace without specific methods of transition, and bad things happen (to them) if they try. Human ships use Gellar fields to create a bubble of realspace around their ships, and that bubble basically splatters daemons like bugs on a windshield as the ship moves through the Warp.
If that bubble fails, though, and you're moving through the Warp unshielded? Well, then, the daemons and other horrible things pass right *through* your spaceship, physicality being subjective in the Warp. And if they feel like it (inertia also being subjective) they will stop inside your spaceship, or your cerebral cortex, and hang out for a while. Bad things happen (to you). Eventually - if you're lucky - your body and soul will be damaged enough by those bad things that they cease to exist. If you're unlucky? Let's not go there. | 25 |
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[Marvel] What does fiction look like on marvel earth? | Stories about superheroes, action heroes or wizards and aliens must lose their interest when you have real life examples.
What does the average marvel earth working man go to see at the cinema? | 22 | While trading cards and comics about Captain America do exist in Marvel's universe, they seem to be the exception rather then the rule.
Comics about detectives, spies, pirates, and fictionalized historical peoples like the Romans and Vikings are all ideas that could have become very popular. | 22 |
[Stephen King's It] What forms would Pennywise take in 2014? | In *Stephen King's It* (both the novel and the miniseries), many of the monster's forms are based on pop culture figures that kids of the 1950s/1980s would be familiar with. The Teenage Werewolf, Creature From The Black Lagoon and the Mummy were familiar 1950s movie monsters. In the 1980s, it took the form of Jaws.
If Pennywise showed up in Derry today (30-something years after the end of the original story), what forms would it take to frighten its victims? | 17 | Pennywise didn't watch TV and go "Ah, alright, that's what the kids are afraid of." Rather, Pennywise can sense what the greatest fears of its victims are and manifests them (rather like a boggart). True, when dealing with children it often manifested in pop-culture horror icons, but not always. So if it was still around today it might take the form of Jigsaw, but it might also take the form of a pitbull or snakes or fireworks or whatever its victim is afraid of. | 18 |
ELI5: why are bank vault doors round and not rectangular like normal doors? | 21 | Traditionally, they work by pushing big rods into holes in the door frame. This is easiest if the rods are all the same length, which is what a circular door gets you. The circle shape also means you can't make use of stress concentrations at the corner, since there isn't one, and you can't really use a jack to force the door frame open like you could with a rectangular door, since it will just squeeze the rest of the door even tighter. | 27 |
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[Warhammer 40k] You are a relatively high up person on X World and you encounter a Purii Genestealer (and get away unscathed). What do you do to alert The Imperium, and what happens as a result of that? | So you encounter a tyranid genestealer in its purii form. It doesn't spot you, but you see it and are able to capture irrefutable proof of a genestealer infesting the planet you inhabit, be it video footage or whatever.
For the sake of argument, you are high up enough in your respective planet's government so that somebody would at least look at your evidence and not just dismiss it out of hand.
How would you go about informing the right people about the infestation, and what would happen as a result of you informing them on the following world types?
1. A Hive World
2. A Forge World
3. An Armory World
4. A Shrine World
Extra Note: You only encountered one genestealer, but you don't know how many others are on the planet or whether they have infected anybody or begun a cult yet. | 19 | Citizen,
Your failure to notice a xenos infestation is a massive dereliction of duties and responsibilities as part of the ruling class. Purii Genestealers are only encountered in Space Hulks and last stages of a genestealer infestation. And genestealers are never, ***NEVER ALONE!!!***
The signs of genestealer infestations are appallingly apparent. The first outward signs would be cults growing disappropriately in size and strength, often as deviations of the Imperial Ecclesiarchy. Next would be massive riots across the planet. That your failure to report this in the annual reports reeks of heavy genestealer infiltration within the upper echelons of the planetary government. The final stage would be the sightings of purii genestealers and the jamming of all astropathic communication within the subsector. That signals the imminent arrival of a Tyranid Hive Fleet.
As of this time, an Imperial Exterminatus Fleet is prepped to purge your subsector of all biomass to deny the xenos. You will not survive to receive this message. Your heirs and descendants are stripped of all rights and property on the charges of dereliction of duty and heresy. May the Emperor have mercy on you.
The Emperor protects.
Inquisitor BuddhaFacepalmed,
Ordo Chronos. | 24 |
[Star Wars] Why don't Jedi turn off the lightsabers of non-force users | I've been watching Clone Wars recently and it seems like there's a good few people wielding lightsabers who aren't force users. I know that Jedi can't turn off other force users lightsabers because they have a sort of 'force bubble' but could you not turn off the lightsabers of Grevious, Pre Vizsla or that guy who just happens to pick up your fallen lightsaber to cut the fight short. These people won't have a 'force bubble' so there shouldn't be anything stopping it, no? | 71 | Force bubbles only ever existed in the Legends Darth Bane trilogy - nowhere else, not even in other works by the same author.
Force usage isn't easy. It takes time and effort, which isn't going to happen when you're toe to toe with someone wanting to kill you. We see Yoda deactivate and take the sabers away from Ventress in an early TCW S1 episode, but that was before she actually moved in to attack. | 69 |
ELI5: since AIDS is no longer considered a “homosexual disease” why do blood banks still ask if a man has had sexual contact with another man, on the questionnaire? | 220 | While it's not still considered a "homosexual disease" HIV/AIDS is still very prevalent in the homosexual community. Gay and bisexual men make up 70% of all new cases of HIV, despite them being less than 1.7% of the population (assuming 50% of homosexuals and bisexuals are male).
This is partly because of behavioral tendencies of gay/bisexual men who tend to have more anonymous partners and have unprotected sex. Also, anal sex is more traumatic to tissues than vaginal sex. The rectum is not built to accommodate sexual intercourse like the vagina is, so there is a higher chance of the HIV virus entering the bloodstream via anal sex than vaginal sex.
So the question for blood donation is, "Are you a male who has had anal sex, even once, with another man?" Saying yes may disqualify your donation as this behavior has a significantly higher chance of having HIV than other donor types. Yes, they do test blood for HIV and Hepatitis, but these tests are reliant on antibodies. If you were infected within the previous month, you could still be infected but it wouldn't show up on a test. | 195 |
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ELI5:How can rich people maintain their lifestyle after bankruptcy ? | 158 | There are certain assets that you can't be forced to give up in bankruptcy, so even after you've gone bankrupt, you may still own a lot of valuable things. The exact list varies from state to state, but generally includes your house, if it's your primary residence, one car, and professional tools you may own, etc. In Texas, it includes a fairly substantial herd of livestock.
And, anyway, depending on the reason you went bankrupt, you may still have a well-paying job, or the opportunity of finding one. | 92 |
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[MCU] How did Thanos vs Xandar go? | “Fine, I’ll do it myself”
Thanos’ first stone was Xandar’s power stone. Seems like Xandar was considered a sizeable galactic power, and their Nova Corps had a pretty tight hold over their region of space. They were also powerful enough to be able to fight the Kree Empire to a standstill
We don’t really get to see how Thanos vs Xandar went down though. Apparently, during the “Massacre of the Xandarians”, Thanos defeated the Nova Corps and killed half the Xandarians.
If we go by the depiction of Earth as a tiny backwater, that would mean Thanos defeated armies of billions defended by fleets of millions, and massacred trillions
How could the fight have gone down? Titanic space battles? Planet cracking WMDs? Thanos dumping trillions of Outriders onto the surface? Detonating the star? Relativistic kill missiles? Crashing the moon/moons onto the surface? Igniting the atmosphere? Multiple Age of Ultron style landmass/colony/asteroid drops?
From what we see in Infinity War and Endgame, Thanos’ ground troops seem pretty weak overall, we see them struggling against primitive Wakandan tech and even more primitive American bullets. I’m thinking this means Thanos must have had incredible numbers on his side, or relied on starship based WMDs to do most of the heavy lifting | 71 | A lot of novacorps military was destroyed or damaged by Ronan and his attack. They're still rebuilding and recovering while also protecting their border with the Kree. Thanos had an insane amount of power ready to dump on one single planet not a galaxy spanning empire. He did basically a smash and grab raid to get the power stone then used it to accomplish his goals. | 60 |
With our current capabilities, would we be able to tell that our own system contained a habitable planet if we were a number of light years away? From how far out would be be able to identify this? | What would we be able to tell about our own system and its planets if we were in another system? Would we be able to identify the number of planets or would we only see the effects of the gas giants? | 35 | This has been the subject of multiple spacecraft investigations.
Both the Galileo mission and the EPOXI mission observed Earth to determine if they could detect signatures of life from only spectra of our planet to determine its chemical make up.
A few things stand out strongly among those:
- Free Oxygen in the atmosphere. It's very rare to find this, since oxygen is incredibly reactive with just about everything. One would expect it to quickly decay, but the abundance in our atmosphere suggests some very interesting process must be producing it.
- Free Methane in our atmosphere. Methane on its own isn't all that uncommon (the outer planets all have a good deal) but it simply shouldn't exist in the presence of free oxygen without some process actively producing it to keep the planet in "chemical disequilibrium".
- The Red Edge. Chlorophyll produces a distinct spectral feature in the red part of the spectrum. This isn't the strongest signature of life (other chemicals can produce similar features), but when combined with free oxygen, is a very strong indicator of plant life.
The red edge is probably the easiest feature to detect, but also the weakest evidence of life of the three. Exoplanet spectra are pretty ratty right now, and generally not good enough to pick up anything but the red edge (particularly for Earth-sized planets), but give it 10-15 years. Once the James Webb Space Telescope and the ELT come online, we should be able to pick up more of these definitive spectral features on exoplanets at least a few hundred light-years away. | 11 |
[The Endless Universe] What is Dust, anyways? | We all know that the golden Dust is all important and very, very useful. But what is it? I tried asking but I can't get a straight answer out of anyone.
It doesn't seem to be nanines. I mean, it generates its own power! And if you ingest it, you apparently either die or get super-powers... | 45 | It's a combination of zero point energy matrix, programmable matter and computer. It's basically the pinnacle of technology, a singular creation capable of generating limitless energy, and being shaped into any form for any purpose. | 14 |
(ELI5) Why does honey never spoil? | 172 | It is so high in sugar that organisms don't have enough moisture to live. The sugar is hydrophilic and will suck the water out of bacteria that encounter it. Basically the same idea behind salting meat, except that uses salt of course. | 131 |
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CMV: The MIT should not have removed Walter Lewin's lectures as a result of the sexual harassment scandal | A few months ago, Walter Lewin, a very famous physicist and MIT professor was accused of sexually harassing a female student in an online course. The MIT carried out an investigation and determined that he was guilty, cutting ties with him and revoking his title as an emeritus professor ( http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N60/walterlewin.html ). Now, I think we can safely assume that the accusations were real and I'll even concede that revoking his title is an appropriate measure.
Nevertheless, I'd argue that the removal of his lectures is a nonsencial, knee-jerk reaction from the MIT to prevent *any* blemish on its reputation, perhaps from fear of criticism from certain groups. Maybe they thought that the harsher the measure, the better reaction they would obtain from the society.
Removing Walter Lewin's lectures is a non-sensical approach and can't be really justified. Are the lectures themselves sexual harassment? Of course not! Does this provide justice for the victim(s)? Not at all. This measure only makes it harder for students to access very good lectures that'll allow almost anyone to comprehend basic concepts of Physics. In fact, the lectures can be readily accessed through torrents or other webpages, so it's not like the MIT is "erasing" Walter Mit from the society just to provide some relief to victims or to protect their reputation.
Should we start destroying Wagner's recors just because he was an anti-semitic? Or should we stop referencing Watson's articles just because he made racist statements? I don't think so.
> *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!* | 100 | They cut ties with him. To me, it makes sense that they'd remove his lectures from their libraries.
Firstly, they'd want to discourage students from interacting with him, which they might do. Even if he's not part of the staff they can presumably still find ways to contact him with questions.
Secondly, since they're cutting ties, they don't want his name and their name stuck together on a video that they're putting out.
They don't want to be associated with him, so they're not associating with him. | 31 |
[Futurama] Why does Bender wear clothing while a fembot? | Most fembots and manbots wear nothing at all, yet people object to fembot Bender taking off her shirt? | 59 | According to the censors at the Box Network, regulation 3.74:
It is lewd and lascivious for a female to unclothe her upper torso on television.
But there are no regulations stating that a robot cannot be unclothed on television. The result: robots can be naked on TV, but female robots cannot remove their shirts.
This is technically correct. The best kind of correct.
*Addendum: the executives responsible for this clusterf@#$ have been killed and ground into Torgo's Executive Powder. | 68 |
[Squid Game] Question about a certain game. *Spoilers* | Why did the old man let the protagonist win the marble game?
If the old man had been forced to pick another partner, would the old man have also let the other person win? | 36 | a few reasons. the first is that he actually liked the protagonist and wanted him to win the most so he threw the game. the second is that the next few games would have been far too dangerous for the old man to play and he had to throw the game anyway since those next games would have killed him. | 80 |
ELI5: Why do gif files take so much longer to load than everything else on the internet? | 50 | A gif is a bunch of picture files that it shows in order, like a flip book. So for a gif, imagine all those pictures stacked on top of each other. It's a pretty big stack, right? Your computer needs to download all those pictures - one for each frame of the gif.
A video doesn't take up as much file space. Each frame of a video isn't a whole picture. You start with a whole picture, and instead of having another whole picture for the next frame, the video file only keeps track of what has *changed* about the picture. So moving from frame to frame, the video file only needs to store the information of what has changed from each frame to the next. You don't need a stack of whole pictures, just a bunch of snippets of each one, so the file sizes aren't as big. | 50 |
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Is it better to blast my car A/C and then turn it off, or let it run at a higher temperature continuously? | In terms of energy usage, which is more efficient? Say I turned the temperature on my car A/C all the way to its lowest setting and blasted it until it was chilly, then turned it off, and repeated this. Would that be more or less efficient than leaving it at a higher (but comfortable) temperature and letting it run continuously? | 20 | Car air conditioners have one temperature setting; only the fan speed changes. The most efficient way to cool down your car is to turn the fan up (the difference in energy consumption between speeds is negligible in the short term) and recirculate the air in the cabin. | 12 |
[Fallout] What are East Coast caps backed by? | West Coast caps used to be backed by water, NCR dollars are backed by gold, so what exactly makes caps valuable on the East Coast? Why would people suddenly start using bottle caps rather than normal money? I get why caps are a suitable currency, but what *makes* them currency rather than something else? What got them in circulation in the first place? | 47 | Hard to say as factions come and go. I'll have a guess on what little we know.
We know a Nuka-Cola machine was on every street corner in the Capital before the war, making them widely available to all groups no matter how scattered. This maybe why they adopted them.
Rivet City, Megaton and Underworld were the only real influential groups before the Brotherhood of Steel arrived and it seems they mostly kept to themselves but trading caravans suggest they adopted bottlecaps as their currency.
The Brotherhood arrives in 2255 and become the dominant force in the region, being the only ones capable of pushing the Super Mutants back. Since they come from the West where bottlecaps are the universal currency they may have forced its usage on the locals.
The cost to repair something on the East Coast is a lot lower than on the West Coast which means it is relatively newly adopted and prices are sketchy at best, that bottlecaps in the East are regulated better or there are just less to go around.
It is really hard to say but difficulty to replicate and enough to go around makes an ideal currency. | 35 |
eli5, what is in our spit that can break oil apart? | If I were cooking and got butter on my finger and then try to wash it off, the butter just spreads around.
But if I were to lick or suck the butter off my finger, it's gone immediately without a trace. Why? Is it something in our spit? Or is the surface of our tongue? Both? Thanks! | 573 | Saliva contains enzymes like amylase and lipase. These enzymes act a lot like soap. One side of the molecule attaches to the oil molecule and the other is attracted to water allowing oil to be broken up in water more easily. Aka as emulsification.
Fun fact: some conservators (painting restorers) use artificial human saliva as a cleaning agent to remove the grime on some paintings. | 686 |
How scientifically legitimate is commercial DNA testing to identify ethnicity? 'biology' | There have been many different sites over the past few years claiming that they can do anything from determining if you are related to this or that famous person (which to me personally seems absurdly improbable) to determining your ancestry more broadly in terms of ethnicity and a general background.
I'd like to hear from a few geneticists, biologists or any related field on how credible sites like 23andme are and their accuracy when it comes to identifying your ancestors' background, their ethnicity and possibly even their nationality.
Thank you in advance. | 263 | Most are actually pretty accurate.
There are a lot of bases in human DNA (around 3 billion), but most of those are invariant. That is to say, in every person whose DNA we've looked at, they have the same base at that position. After decades of examining the human genome, we have a pretty good idea of which bases are invariant, and which ones have variants.
The next part is to figure out if certain variant sites reflect human ancestry. Let's say most humans have a region that reads ' ATCG', but some have 'AACG'. That second base is the variant site we're interested in. If it turns out that all pacific islanders have the 'A', while everyone else has 'T'. Than this site can be associated with heritage from the pacific islands.
We have now examined enough genomes from most ethnic backgrounds (excluding North American first nations) that we have a large number of variant sites associated with each ethnicity.
A company like 23&me will determine what variants you have and then give you a breakdown of ancestry based on those. So being 20% Irish means that of the variant sites that they looked at in your genome, 20% of the variants that are associated with ancestry (instead of say disease) have strong associations with Irish peoples. | 47 |
When I scratch at a pimple on my shoulder, why do I feel pain simultaneously both around the pimple and at a seemingly random spot on my lower back? | 47 | The nerves in your body run in long strands that connect up to the spinal cord at each vertebrae. The manner in which these nerves are connected together is kind of like the branches of a elm tree, they are connected to a central trunk (the spinal cord) and they branch off into various directions to cover your entire body.
When you are scratching your shoulder pimple, you are activating a twig that connects to a main branch. That branch is *mostly* associated with your lower back. Your brain recognizes that there is a signal coming from your lower back branch and does it's best to interpret that signal. So the "pain" you feel is not due to an external stimuli on your lower back, but from you brain making its best guess about the errant signal coming from your shoulder. | 31 |
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[Star Trek] Why is Starfleet so Earthocentric? | Earth was not the first planet to achieve warp speed, nor do they have the best track record, having only been able to achieve planetary unity and peace after a a war (and that's only because Cochrine happened to be spotted by a Vulcan vessel/
And yet, Starfleet th have its own special fleet. or do they consider Starfleet to be their fleet? | 23 | tl:dr - Earth proved it was very good at this whole space thing and Starfleet started as a necessity and then nobody saw the need for a change.
Starfleet is the official fleet of the Federation, but each planet within the Federation is allowed to maintain its own ships. Earth may not have been the first to achieve warp travel, but by God were the fastest. Within 90 years they had achieved warp 5, something other species had taken hundreds of years to develop. Most planets had very similar histories to Earth, especially Vulcan but the difference was the time between events. On Vulcan it was a thousand years since their Wars, not 15 like on Earth. This showed that Earth was very good at sustaining itself and had the initiative and drive to expand quickly, something other nations lacked, they saw this when creating the Federation.
Earth was a unifying planet, and very peaceful nation comparatively. There was much in fighting between the future founding planets of the Federation, including Wars between Vulcan and Andor, and disputes between Andor and Tellar. These would eventually be solved by Earth, settling most major disputes (thanks mainly to the Enterprise, NX-01) and eventually uniting them. This meant that many of these other worlds put their faith and resources into Earth rather than another planet they may have had a falling out with in the past (Earth was the only planet on very good terms with all the other planets, and therefore the best mediator in their eyes). At first this was a necessity, to avoid any long standing bad feelings from bubbling up, but over time it just became the norm. Humans too were one of the few species that liked to settle on other planets a lot and explore, meaning that a large portion of the Federation was human colonies. This gave them a large presence in the Federation. | 22 |
CMV: The US House of Representatives should grow much larger | A key part of the job of any representative is to be able to represent their constituents in front of the legislature. With the current number of representatives capped at 435, congresspeople have - on average - 733k people living in their district. For a few points of comparison, here are other Western democracies and their population per member of parliament:
Country | Count of Seats in Lower House | Population of Country (in millions) | Population per Rep
---|---|---|---
United Kingdom | 650 | 64.1 | 98k
Canada | 338 | 35.16 | 104k
Germany | 630 | 80.62 | 127k
France | 577 | 66.03 | 114k
United States | 435 | 318.9 | 733k
While many other democracies see fit to have approximately 1 representative per 100k people, the US is more than 7 times smaller than that.
A key part of a democratic republic is that the people send someone to the capitol in order to represent their interests. For a congressperson with over 700k constituents, they aren't going to have the time to meet with any but their largest employers, donors, and most politically connected. Much of the day-to-day work is passed off to aides. Redistricting plays a much larger part of the balance of power, and election campaigns are significantly more expensive.
If a congressperson only has < 200k people in his district, then almost every mid-sized town would have at least one or two representatives. Even suburbs of major cities would have their own representatives.
Aside from feasibility concerns (considering Congress would have to vote to dilute their own power), what would be the downsides of a 1500+ person Congress?
_____
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ELI5: How come sometimes when you pop a pimple it hurts SOO bad for like ten seconds and other times it doesn't hurt at all? | 69 | Dependent on a lot of things.
One usual cause is that nerves are not distributed evenly across the skin. So you can literally stick a needle into your skin and not feel it at all while a centimeter away the same needle will be painful. Maybe there are no nerves at the pimple location.
Another is that the nerves in one location may not be exposed in the pus and/or you may avoid pressuring them by random chance. So you can pop a pimple but if there's no exposed nerve it's not going to hurt(as much). | 34 |
|
Terrifying Error: Git merge silently duplicating snippets of code? | After running the following commands:
git checkout development
git merge main
My VSCode looks [like this](https://i.imgur.com/Kuu6iNP.png).
The code on lines 11-17 has been duplicated by git onto lines 19-25. Neither branch has that code twice. No conflict is popped when I merge. Git just silently duplicates the snippet and adds it into the code.
This. Is. Terrifying.
There are so many ways that could go wrong with catastrophic results. I need to understand why this happened and what can be done in the future to avoid it. If anyone could provide any guidance it would be infinitely appreciated. | 19 | If you:
- Added the imports on the dev branch
- Also added the imports, separately, on the main branch
Then git would merge the branches, see two commits that add "some lines of code" (the imports) and simply stick them one after the other.
This *could* cause a conflict but it also could *not* cause a conflict, i.e if the code on dev branch was added on line one but in line two on main branch.
So this could be an issue with a git wrapper like u/bears-repeating said but it could also simply be misuse of git by you or another person contributing to this repository. | 16 |
[Children Of Men] What was it like at the beginning? | There's a photograph of Jasper in 2010 receiving a political cartoonist award, so they were still having awards at the beginning of the infertility crisis.
Were the first five or so years of the crisis fairly normal, then? Were people a little worried, but "Oh, the scientists will fix it"?
At what point did things go from "this is bad, I guess" to what society is like in the movie? | 110 | At first, there was utter panic, possibly even approaching the kind seen in the film. People took it as a clear sign that whatever eschatology they believed in was about to come to pass. But when God did not descend from the heavens to pass final judgement, the first year of chaos came to an end.
By the times they were starting to mass close schools, conditions began a steady degeneration. Like the Great Depression, except without a principally economic source and without any possible cure but the obvious.
After ten or so years, people began to believe that there would never be a solution. This is where the nations of the world began settling their last vendettas while they still could. Societies began collapsing around here. Nukes probably came out. | 72 |
Why do chewing gums that have their main ingredient as sugar/corn syrup still include Aspartame in their recipe? | I've noticed this in a few products, but the one I have in front of me is Big League Chew...
- Sugar
- Gum Base
- Corn Syrup
- Glycerol
- Natural and artificial flavors
- Soy lethicin
- Acesulfame-Potassium
- Aspartame
- BHT
- Corn Starch, Color (Allura Red)
Wouldn't the sugar and corn syrup sweeten it enough? Is there a preservative reason, or some other chemistry issue?
Edit: I wasn't sure if this should be tagged as Biology or Chemistry. I settled on Biology since it involved taste. Hope that's ok. | 28 | Here's a quotation from Wrigley on the subject:
The Wrigley Company utilises the high intensity sweetener, Aspartame,
in a number of its products - as the primary sweetener in some of our
sugarfree brands and as a flavour enhancer in some of our sugar-sweetened brands. As an ingredient, Aspartame has the added benefit of
providing an especially long-lasting flavour. | 11 |
[Harry Potter] In Prisoner of Azkaban, how come the spell "Riddikulus" doesn't effect Harry's fear of Dementors? | Edit: I couldn't think of it correctly but I was talking about the boggart disguised as a dementor | 33 | Do you mean why Harry's Riddikulus spell didn't work very well against the Boggart disguised as a Dementor?
It's because Harry was being affected by the Boggart taking the form of the Dementor, which was causing Harry to relieve his past traumas and affecting his concentration. For the Riddikulus spell to work, the caster needs to have a clear picture of what they want the Boggart to turn into, and that becomes very difficult if you're being distracted or affected by, y'know, *your greatest fear showing up in front of you*.
Harry wasn't the only one who failed to use Riddikulus effectively, by the way. Molly Weasley was so traumatized by the sight of her family dead before her eyes that she also failed to banish a Boggart. | 56 |
[Lilo and Stitch] What exactly is Stitch? | Jumba mentions several things about Stitch that got me thinking about what exactly it is. He mentions how Stitch is a new species but also mentions how he has programming. Is Stitch like an animal, a robot, something in the middle? | 39 | He's a genetically engineered life form, like the other 625 experiments. We don't know Jumba's exact procedure, or if Stitch is analogous to any other kinds of extraterrestrial life, but he was most likely artificially grown somehow and is completely organic. | 73 |
[Marvel] What would happen if Wolverine's skeleton was coated in vibranium instead of adamantiam? | 56 | His healing factor would be significantly stronger.
Comparable to, if not greater than Deadpool's.
In an alt universe where he has no Adamantium, his increased healing factor mutated him into a monstrous animal like creature.
He would be unincappable.
Usually, the way he's defeated is by knocking him out, but with a vibranium skull, that ain't happening.
His skeleton would eventually be completely bone again.
Vibranium is significantly less durable than Adamantium, and bullets, impacts and cuts would tear, shatter and bend the metal. Perhaps in decades, most of the coating would have been torn off.
His claws wouldn't be as sharp.
They'd also deteriorate pretty fast, as he uses them to slash at metal extremely often. | 30 |
|
[Lord of the Rings] From the perspective of Sauron, was he the good guy? | Evil and good is all about morals and perspective. Could Sauron possibly be good? Taking out the fact that in a way he wanted to control the entirety of Middle Earth, but don’t most kings control whatever land they own? To an orc couldn’t he possibly be a savior? I personally don’t recall many times when characters in the story exactly said what made Sauron so evil. He restored their lives, gave them jobs and a purpose. The orcs are a mistreated race in Middle Earth, he technically saved them, giving them promise of their own land and “county.” He was forward thinking and industrialized Middle Earth. Honestly it was just another war for territory and power. They often spoke about fighting for their freedom, but does freedom actually exist? They live in a land full of monarchies. All of them were fighting over the same thing. Land, power and a prosperous future. Granted Sauron had a few shady tactics, but it’s a war. When talking about which age we were in class we established that we might be in the 5th or 6th age. When you think about it Sauron was more or a 5th/6th age man. Trying to gain land, and making weapons. He had a lot of forward thinking going on. So what exactly made Sauron so evil? | 70 | >Taking out the fact that in a way he wanted to control the entirety of Middle Earth, but don’t most kings control whatever land they own?
These are two different statements. He doesn't own the entirety of Middle Earth, so controlling is done through conquering it.
Sauron doesn't care about the orcs, they're tools to him. I'll use this wonderful passage about the usefulness of Shelob:
"And as for Sauron: he knew where she lurked. It pleased him that she should dwell there hungry but unabated in malice, a more sure watch upon that ancient path into his land than any other that his skill could have devised. And Orcs, they were useful slaves, but he had them in plenty. If now and again Shelob caught them to stay her appetite, she was welcome: he could spare them. And sometimes as a man may cast a dainty to his cat (his cat he calls her, but she owns him not) Sauron would send her prisoners that he had no better uses for: he would have them driven into her hole, and report brought back to him of the play she made."
>Granted Sauron had a few shady tactics
"A few shady tactics" is really underselling it. The guy came to the different races representing the gods, and acting like you give them a gift in an attempt to let every race destroy themselves from the inside until you can control them completely.
The industrialisation you speak of is used for nothing but war. We don't see any technology that houses orcs, feeds them, or improves their quality of life. We see explosives and battering rams.
Sauron had good intentions in the beginning. Above all else, he values order. He values order so much that his ideal world involves no free will with everyone bowing down to him. There's no endgame, no plans for what he will do to improve the world once he's taken it all. The only thing on his mind is conquest.
If you believe not caring about your own people, intentionally letting a giant spider snack on them so you have a pet guardian and to inspire fear among your people, killing mercilessly, conquering for the sake of conquering, and doing your best to erase the very concept of free will in favor of your own definition of order are all perfectly acceptable, then no, Sauron wasn't evil. | 79 |
Which is brighter, a full moon from earth or a full earth from the moon? | 29 | * Moon albedo: 0.12
* Earth albedo: 0.37
.
* Moon angular diameter from Earth: 0.5°
* Earth angular diameter from Moon: 1.8°
So Earth is both bigger in the sky and more reflective. Earth is brighter.
(1.8/0.5)^2 * (.37/.12) = 40
By a factor 40.
Edit: bullet lists. | 68 |
|
Can mosquito sized insects get injured by rain drops? | 677 | Have you ever wondered what happens to mosquitoes in the rain? A raindrop is, like, 50 times heavier than those little suckers. So getting hit by one has gotta hurt, right?
Well, not so much. Because researchers at Georgia Tech have found that the bugs are so light, speeding water drops simply brush them aside, without imparting much force. The results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Andrew K. Dickerson et al., "Mosquitoes survive raindrop collisions by virtue of their low mass"]
Previous studies have shown that precipitation can be a real pain for lots of winged critters. Bats expend twice as much energy flying through a storm as in clear skies. But what about bugs no bigger than the raindrops themselves?
Researchers used high-speed video to watch mosquitoes wingin’ in the rain—well, through a spray of mist in the lab. They saw that when a skeeter and a water droplet meet, the insect basically hitches a ride for a bit before peeling away off unharmed.
So the bugs go with the flow and offer little resistance. And the drop slows only slightly, keeping its kinetic energy rather than blasting the bug. So for storm-trooping skeeters, resistance is not only futile. It’s all wet.
--Karen Hopkin | 463 |
|
[Batman] What happens to Batman when he succeeds? | Assume crime in Gotham is reduced to nominal levels. (Can’t eliminate every crime, but levels *can* be reduced.) Batman’s rogue gallery is entirely incarcerated, dead, or reformed. Justice is the order of the day over corruption in the government.
What happens to Batman? Does he finally get to retire and become Bruce Wayne again? Or does his obsession simply move to a larger and larger scale? | 43 | Several iterations of Batman retire for one reason or the other. Sometimes, like in the Nolan-verse, it's because he's completed his mission and saved Gotham from crime and corruption.
Usually when Bruce is done being Batman he quietly retires and keeps a very private life outside the public eye. That's one of the two constants when Bruce stops being Batman.
The other is that he remains vigilant, and isn't just ready to return to action as Batman, but to pass the cowl on to a new generation of crime fighters.
With the introduction of Batman Inc., it does seem like, having saved Gotham, he's is ready to expand the Batman brand to the rest of the world. However Batman Inc. appears after Final Crisis and the Death of Bruce Wayne, which puts it relatively late into Batman's life. This is a period where not only has Batman succeeded in his goal of saving Gotham, but he's also getting older and his body probably isn't going to keep being able to be Batman much longer. Batman Inc. is really just another way for an aging Batman to pass the cowl on to the next generation. | 60 |
ELI5: What exactly are astronauts doing on the ISS? How does data sent down yesterday differ from data sent down today? | I'm not insinuating the science aboard the ISS is pointless, but I don't understand the meaning. What are some of the massive breakthroughs that happened on the ISS? Are we expecting more breakthroughs? | 43 | during the course of science. 90% of the time, it's monotonus running an experiment, daily or hourly monitoring and collecting data points, rerunning the experiment many times for confirmation. hypothesis. create a new experiment, run a new experiment, repeat and repeat until budget is done and hopefully you've come up with a conclusion that's worthy of getting the next grant.
it's not the just astronauts on the ISS making new things. it's also the hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers on Earth that contribute to the breakthrough's.
astronauts on ISS aren't the ones making the new solar panels. they're just using them and reporting the findings. astronauts on the ISS aren't the ones making fuel cells. | 17 |
What makes elements have more or less density? | How come osmium is the densest known element while other elements have a higher atomic number and mass? Does it have to do with the Higgs boson particle? | 3,010 | No, it has to do with the crystal lattice that the atoms form, which in turn depends on the interatomic attraction. Osmium forms a hexagonally close packed lattice (atoms arranged like stacked oranges), which is mathematically the densest packing of spheres (tied with face-centered cubic). Uranium, a bigger atom than osmium, has an orthorhombic structure (atoms arranged like a rectangular prism, essentially), which allows more empty space between them.
There are other considerations that factor into the distance between the atoms in the lattice. | 2,307 |
[Star Wars] Spoiler Rogue One question. | Why was Grand Moff Tarkin so skeptical of Director Krennic's belief in the power/effectiveness of the Death Star? The Death Star's construction began years before 0 BBY under the eyes of both the Emperor and Darth Vader. If they weren't skeptical, why would Moff be? | 170 | It wasn't so much that Tarkin was skeptical. It had more to do with him *appearing* to be skeptical in order to do political maneuvering in the background for his own benefit. We see the fruition of his machinations when he orders the destruction of the Imperial base on Scarf. | 186 |
ELI5: Could we find pi as a rational number if we had a different number system? | 112 | I think people are missing the point of the question. It's not "can you write pi in such a way that it terminates," it's "can pi be a rational number." Those are two different things.
Irrationality is not defined as "the number doesn't terminate." That's a property that irrational numbers have when you write numbers in an integer base, but it's not what makes a number irrational. There are plenty (an infinite number) of rational numbers that don't terminate. An irrational number is a number that cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers (whole numbers).
Writing pi in base pi makes it "look like" a rational number, but it doesn't have the same properties as one. It's still not a ratio of two integers: the set of integers does not change when you use a different number base. | 96 |
|
Why can't we make a balloon that never loses air or helium? | Inspired by [this post](http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/hxqzx/best_balloon_animal_ever/). Won't it be sad when it droops away into a meaningless pile of rubber? WON'T YOU SAVE THE DINOSAURS, ASKSCIENCE?! | 29 | There's a process called permeation where the gas molecules or atoms actually move through the interatomic spaces of the enclosing material. This puts a limit on ultra-high vacuum systems, but is also relevant for balloons. | 24 |
What is the phenomenon behind the arrangement of the large North American lakes? | I was looking at a map of North America and noticed in addition to the more recognizable Great Lakes, you can draw a sort of line/curve all the way from the great bear lake in the northwest of Canada all the way to Lake Ontario, including all the major lakes in between. Not only can you draw this curve, it also aligns somewhat with the Canadian Shield. Is this coincidence or was there some prehistoric geological process that caused these lakes to align this way? | 16 | You're seeing the geologic boundary between the hard ancient rocks of the Canadian Shield and the soft rocks of the Prairies. Glaciers coming off the Shield had a much easier time cutting through the softer rocks, so they cut deep grooves into it. Later those grooves fill up and become lakes. | 19 |
Why does Titan have a thick atmosphere, but Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, does not? | 58 | we dont know.
the atmosphere of rocky planets are usually the result of both the formation process and most importantly in this case the interaction with the surface. those are extremely notorious -even impossible - to model on long term, specially that we dnt know the initial conditions due to the uncertainties in our jupiter and saturn model
-a planetary scientist | 18 |
|
CMV: Any Relationship Between Any Set of Consenting Adults Ought to Be Legal | **Breakdown:**
* **Any relationship:** I mean any form of relationship, whether that be polygamy, incestuous thrupples, polycules, plural marriages, interfaith swinging, or any other configuration you can think of.
* **Any Set of Adults:** I mean that everyone that is party to the relationship is an adult^[1] at the time they become party to the relationship.
* **Consenting Adults:** I mean that every person that is party to the relationship gives their informed consent and maintains their informed consent for the duration that they are party to the relationship.
* **Ought to Be Legal:** I mean that for any relationship that meets the aforementioned conditions, there should be no law prohibiting dating, marrying, cohabitating, fucking, and so forth. Further, that any relationship that meets the aforementioned conditions should be treated with legal equality to any other relationship to the extent that is possible.^[2]
[1] *Adult or of the relevant legal age for any pertinent activities.*
[2] *Understandably, there will be relationship structures that are too complex to accommodate in a standardized way and should be navigated case by case to achieve the spirit of the idea of legal equality.*
**Why do I want my view changed?:**
As I am tired and can think of no solid arguments against this, I feel that I must be missing something.
Please change my view. :)
Edit: Due to the opacity and inherent power imbalance, I feel that it is reasonable to say a relationship between parent/guardian and child will be highly unlikely to ever meet the demand for informed consent. | 366 | Nations define marriage for the purpose of establishing parental responsibility and inheritance rules. US law arises from English common law. Dual marriage is an ancient common-law right that has existed “since the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.” Plural marriage has never had that status in English common law, so it can be regulated by the states (which have responsibility for handling marriage as a legal relationship).
The factual answer is that many people consider it immoral, so it’s outlawed for that reason. And polygamy is often used as a way of abusing young women, semi-forcibly marrying large numbers of them off to men.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, it complicates inheritance rules considerably, and nobody wants to try to untangle that knot. It would be a nightmare for everyone. And it brings no benefits, since polygamists are an almost insignificant percentage of the population. | 152 |
CMV: Hoda Muthana the teen who joined ISIS should not be allowed back into the United States under any circumstances. | Ill share my main reasons and viewpoints behind the above in bullet point form.
1) She piratically committed treason. She aided and abetted a combative force actively trying to harm and kill Americans. We had every right to deactivate her passport and by attempting to harm the United States she is renouncing her citizenship or any rights she has as an American.
2) She abetted a terrorist organization that killed Americans in the past. By suffering in Syria she is paying the price. She did renounce ISIS and now has to remain in hiding. That is the perfect punishment for her. She played with fire and is now getting burnt.
3) If she were to return to the United States she should be put on trial for the Murder, Espionage and Treason. If she is found guilty of any of these things she should face the death penalty and nothing less. In addition her estate should be seized by the United States. | 43 | A few arguments for allowing former ISIS members and sympathizers to return to their home countries:
* By leaving these people in refugee camps, wealthy nations (Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, etc.) are offloading their own legal burdens onto regions that really can't handle them. Every former ISIS member in those camps is eating food and using shelter that could go to a real refugee. How is that fair?
* These former ISIS members could be dangerous. Are their deconversions sincere? Or are they going to victimize innocent people? Western justice and medical systems are in a good position to figure this out; a refugee camp isn't.
* These individuals provide valuable insight into the psychology of radicalization. As we collectively worry about the mental state of young people pulled into fringe groups, wouldn't it be wise to bring home the most extreme examples of this mindset in order to study them? | 27 |
ELI5: Why do USB chargers have all contacts in their ports? Why not just power and ground and omit data? | 28 | The specs for USB allow devices to pull 100mA prior to device negotiation. Great for small simple things like e-cigs. When you start getting into things like flash drives and smartphones, you're going to need more than that. In that case, your device will negotiate with the USB controller to determine the max current that the device will accept. That negotiation takes place over the data wire, like any other devices. | 26 |
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