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[ " > What are electrons?\n\nElectrons are elementary particles (which means they're not made out of anything else) with one unit of negative electric charge. What is electric charge? It's just a property that some things have that can be either negative or positive. Things with the same kind of electric charge push each other away, and things with different type of electric charge pull on one another.\n\nIf you want to know more about them, you'll need to ask a more specific question.\n\n > How can they be both particles and waves at the same time?\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is my standard response to the wave-particle duality question. It's given in the context of light, but it applies equally well to an electron.\n\n > And how can something have mass but not size?\n\nBecause that's how our universe works. Seriously. \"Mass\" is just a measure of how much an object resists being accelerated. An electron, despite having no apparent dimensions (that is, as far as we can tell, electrons are nothing but points), does resist being accelerated, and as such has a mass that can be determined by experiment.\n", "I read this as \"What is an erection?\"", " > **The dual nature of electrons has always confused me to no end.**\n\nWhat is really cool about this, is that the duality of an electron extends far beyond it. You can do the same double slit type experiments with up to carbon-60 atoms and you still the see same duality. It's not just tiny bits of energy like the photon or electron that are subject to this, it's *everything*. The only reason we can't do it above carbon-60 is that the atoms get too heavy so it makes it harder to set up. This extension of the duality to all energy was described by Louis deBroglie.\n\n > **What are electrons?**\n\nElectrons are a negatively charged fundamental particle. There are no known components of an electron, it is what it is. When I say that it is negatively charged know that negative doesn't really have a meaning. We could easily say that a proton is left charged and an electron is right charged. They have the exact same value of charge, they are merely opposite. Positive and negative were just names used by Franklin.\n\nThe electron is used to generate electricity because it weighs much, much less than a proton. Positive charge can give the same results but it is a lot harder to move the heavier protons around, so we use the electron.\n\nI sort of stopped here because I'm not sure what specifically about the electron you want to know.\n\n > **How can they be both particles and waves at the same time?**\n\nThe problem here isn't with the electron or the photon or any form of matter, it is with our minds. We're just using two models to describe one thing.\n\nThe initial confusion came because everyone had accepted the wave theory. Newton thought it could be in particles but nothing much was done to advance the theory, while equations for waves were popping up everywhere. Fast forward to the early 20th century to a man named Max Planck. He was working on a problem that he had been unable to solve using waves. As a last ditch effort he tried to explain the problem by describing the waves as being filled with individual packets of energy, which he called quanta. \n\nThis is why we call it quantum mechanics. It is the mechanics of particles as opposed to the previous wave theories. Planck didn't believe they actually were particles, just that it was a mathematical trick. Later men like Einstein, Compton, and deBroglie would advance the particle theories. \n\nFor a short time people thought the wave equations might be wrong. Maxwell's unification of electricity and magnetism was brought into question but found to be correct. It appears that they had not fully understood matter and energy when they described it as only a wave. \n\nIt's not that energy is two things, it is one thing, but our limited knowledge and perspective make it appear to be two. Remember, when we develop a mathematical model, even one that agrees with experiment, we're creating just that, a model. It's our best guess at describing how it works. It turns out, that for energy, sometimes it's easier to explain through waves and other times through particles because energy is capable of behaving like both. Whatever energy is, it can take both forms dependent on the circumstances.\n\n > **What is the medium for these waves?**\n\nThe medium for an electron or any massive particle is spacetime. Initially I grouped it in with electromagnetic radiation below (thank you Avedomni for pointing this out), I'll leave the information below as an aside. Matter is not traveling *on* the EM field. Photons are the force mediators (bosons) of the EM field. An electron is a fermion. Below I describe how the waves can overlap each other in the field, allowing us to pick out which parts we need. A fermion can not be in the same position as another fermion, you can not push an electron into another electron. The reason photons can do this and electrons can not has to do with a property known as spin, but that's an entirely different discussion.\n\nThe medium *for light* is the electromagnetic field. All electromagnetic radiation (light) is contained within this field. From the radio waves to the gamma rays (which are just photons with varying energy levels), they all reside in the field. It is everywhere around you right now. Your eyes are picking up the fluctuations in the field. If a particle is a moving insect on top of a pond, the field is the water and the particle is the insect. Except in this case, the insect would have to also be the water, just an area that is very excited or energetic within the field. \n\nThink about turning a radio on. The radio didn't draw the waves near it, they were there the entire time. You just weren't actively observing those waves until you tuned the station to a particular energy level of photons which corresponded to a radio station. \n\nNow realize that the light you see is the same stuff as the radio waves, just at different wavelengths (energy levels). Your eyes are adjusted to a particular part of the field, so you don't actually see the radio waves. Heat is the same thing, it's photons of an energy below visible light. Instead of seeing them with your eyes, you feel them hit your body. All of these waves/particles are traveling through the same field. A whole jumble of waves, akin to throwing 100 rocks into various parts of a pool at the same time. We are able to pick up the movements caused by say 10 of those rocks, while filtering out the rest. Meanwhile the radio sitting next to you is filtering the waves caused by 10 other rocks to process it's information. The electromagnetic field is where all of this information is stored and available for observation.\n\nWe could also talk about charge but I'll refrain from doing so unless you'd like to.\n\n > **And how can something have mass but not size?**\n\nAvedomni explains it well.\n\nIf you have more questions or need clarification feel free to ask.", " > What are electrons?\n\nElectrons are elementary particles (which means they're not made out of anything else) with one unit of negative electric charge. What is electric charge? It's just a property that some things have that can be either negative or positive. Things with the same kind of electric charge push each other away, and things with different type of electric charge pull on one another.\n\nIf you want to know more about them, you'll need to ask a more specific question.\n\n > How can they be both particles and waves at the same time?\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is my standard response to the wave-particle duality question. It's given in the context of light, but it applies equally well to an electron.\n\n > And how can something have mass but not size?\n\nBecause that's how our universe works. Seriously. \"Mass\" is just a measure of how much an object resists being accelerated. An electron, despite having no apparent dimensions (that is, as far as we can tell, electrons are nothing but points), does resist being accelerated, and as such has a mass that can be determined by experiment.\n", "I read this as \"What is an erection?\"" ]

[ "What babies do interests us. It is a survival trait. An interactive child who enjoys us will literally be cared for more than if it were just like a wooden object.\n\nThe subjective impression of what is funny and what is not is not really the criteria. A familiar face talking to the baby is enough to be interesting. We find something to do to make them laugh.", "Laughter is the sound of surprise. Since babies are learning object permanence, those jangling keys you are holding, that appeared out of fucking nowhere, even though they just tried to put it in there mouths two seconds ago, are fucking hilarious. That's my take on it...", "real recognize real, right?", "My little brother seems to take cues from me and my brother/parents as to when to laugh (unless we tickle him). He looks at us and then starts laughing like a second later.", "Baby's often laugh simply because you laugh. I don't really know what age you are talking about and I am by no means an expert, but toddlers learn by imitation. Also laughing doesn't have to mean the baby finds something funny, merely that they are surprised." ]

[ "there are cleaners with this affect on animal tissue, and if you use them long enough to soak through the dead layer of your skin without protection it is unpleasant, so those cleaners are not generally sold for household use. I recall there being some commercial cleaners recalled in the mid-90's over being a little too good at this for example.", "They actually do; if you manage to take soap internally, your body's insides aren't nearly as well protected against this kind of chemistry as your body's outsides. This is why it's fatal to eat Tide Pods, for example - the detergent in them rips open the cells lining the esophagus and, well, it's all downhill from there.", "Lipid bi-layers have a lot of protein in them sometimes over 50% by mass. Some of those proteins do help hold it together but most are for transport or signaling.\n\nReally it's entropy that holds the layers together so they can be disrupted by soaps as others have stated. There is usually a mix of those that function on different sized lipid \"tails\" but there are also chemicals to breakdown proteins and react with the acid \"heads.\" Strong cleaners are designed to remove organic matter and it's stuff we are made of.", "The pH level matters. Hand soap is a base but not a strong one. There are bases available that will de-fat your skin and cause it to more or less resolve. If you were using lye instead of hand soap, your hands would be raw because you would be removing all of the dead skin cells and then the healthy cells underneath. Of course there are stronger bases than lye but you aren't likely to be using them on your hands on purpose.", "If you would like to feel the (phospho!) lipids in your keratinocytes breaking down, use an ammonia-based cleaning solution.\n\n\nHealth warning: don't wash your hands in ammonia cleaning solution.", "When I was in medical school and we learned about cells have phospholipid bilayers, I asked my physiology teacher, \"So why don't our faces melt when we wash them with soap?\"\nShe just laughed and I never got my answer. \n\nBut I think the answer is that our skin has a layer of keratin (in the form of stratified old dead cells) on top, so the soap is not coming directly into contact with our living cells.\n\nThe places in our body that do not have a layer of keratin on top (eyeballs and mucousal membranes like the vagina) will sting when soap is applied, indicating that some level of cell damage and/or death is occurring.", "First, the membrane of your cells are not made of lipids, they are made of phospholipids, in fact the center of the membrane is not soluble like lipides :) then soap does not simply \"interacts\" with stuff, it needs rubbing and rinsing to actually remove lipids from a surface :) finally, there is the actual organisation of your body :skin is not soluble , and cells are organised in tissues held together by different membranes that are are definitly not lipidic", "As others have noted the skin is an impenetrable barrier of dead cells and other connective tissue. However you are right that detergend and probably to a lesser extent soap can dissolve cells. In fact call lysis solutions used in Molecular Biology do almost always contain detergents." ]

[ "Because they don't. A hacker doesn't care about a single account. They care about all of the accounts. They would break into the database using vulnerabilities and exploits, not just brute force. Brute force would be used if you had a password hash and needed to crack it, but not for actually logging in. It just isn't practical due to the lockout that you said.", "What you are asking is specifically related to brute force attacks. Often a dictionary file is used to repeatedly substitute passwords against your user name. A more comprehensive technique is to iterate all permutations of a given character set against a user name. More often than not, accounts are compromised through exploiting weaknesses in software used to store account credentials. Read up on SQL injection.", "Often, when a someone cracks a weak password, it's after they have access to the website's password database\\*. This fact allows them to completely circumvent the query rate limit. If they don't have the database for the site, if they did succeed in breaking into the account, it's usually due to password reuse (someone, in some other database, used the same password with the same or a similar user name) or due to security questions.\n\n[This](_URL_1_) article provides a nice description of the process.\n\n\\* as an aside, password databases are often badly managed. In the worst case, they're stored in plain text (if that's the case, never trust those devs to with anything more valuable than a nickel) or unsalted md5 or sha1 (don't give them more than a quarter); if they use salted md5 or sha1, it's still pretty bad (trust them with a dollar if you're feeling generous), and if they use a proper [KDF](_URL_0_) like PBKDF2 or scrypt, you can start trusting them.", "Your assumptions are mostly correct. With an extremely simple two-character password, you could easily have (26 + 26 + 10)^2 = 3844 possible passwords (using alphanumeric symbols only). Trying each of those would be difficult, assuming your account gets blocked after a few wrong attempts.\n\nHowever, using this mechanism on a large website, I can guarantee you there are going to be hacked accounts. First of all, on average you need to try only half of all possible passwords. For every 1922 passwords you try, on average you'll get access to one account. Which brings us to the next point, an attacker usually doesn't care about a single account. There are going to be many interesting accounts. Say there are 1922 accounts, each using a 2-character password and the attacker can try logging in 4 times for each account. On average, this should give him access to 4 accounts! In real life, passwords aren't very random either. Some passwords are going to be used *many* times more than others. If the attacker is smart, he'll try the 4 most popular passwords for each of those accounts, which would probably give him many more accounts.\n\nTrying this technique on a larger scale, perhaps using multiple computers (e.g. a botnet) is a decent idea. As operator of the website it would be fairly easy to determine the such an attacks is being executed though, but small websites are not generally known for their operators and would often not even have such an account suspension as you describe.\n\nThough what I've said above can play a part in those annoying password-rules, they generally aim to protect you from another type of brute force attacks. As /u/rpglover64 has already posted here, an attacker will often not bother with finding your password until after he obtains access to the database. For a authentication feature to function, it should have a list of all users and their associated passwords. Clearly it is an enormously stupid idea to simply keep a list of all usernames and the corresponding passwords. People often re-use their passwords so if one of such databases were to be stolen, all of your accounts may be in jeopardy.\n\nInstead passwords are usually [hashed](_URL_0_) and the hash value stored in the database. Essentially, the goal of a hash function is to create a number based on any input (here, a password) where it is very difficult to obtain the original input from this generated value. At the same time, different input values should result in different hash values. This scheme allows the authentication service to verify your password without needing to store the actual password! Great, right?\n\nWell, there are some problems with that, as /u/rpglover64 also already mentioned (without explaining though), a hash should be used correctly to provide proper protection. Though irrelevant to your original question, I'd be happy to explain if you're interested.\n\nBack to the original question, why do you need a difficult (and probably annoying to remember) password? Well, if an attacker has obtained the user database, he can simply try hashing a large number of passwords and see if any of the generated hash values happen to match the value stored with your username. This, again, can be done much smarter by using a list of commonly used passwords instead of \"dumb\" brute-forcing. Any protection enforced by the website (such as locking your account after X attempts of logging in or only allowing you to try logging in X times per minute) will be rendered useless in this scenario." ]

[ "Most of the \"dumb laws\" you hear about are fake. As in, they never existed, but were just made up for comedy purposes. This is especially true of the ones you see in lists and the like.\n\nThere are certainly strange old laws in the statute books of some places, but they're usually a little more grounded in reality. For example, in Pennsylvania it used to be illegal *not* to have an American flag at a public assembly. (The law has been declared unconstitutional.) That's odd, but not exactly \"don't ride a horse on Sunday going backwards\" stupid.\n\nAsk yourself this: have you ever seen one of those \"dumb laws\" with a citation to a codified statute or an act of the state legislature/city council? The law I mentioned above can be found at 18 Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes Section 2101.", "In some cases, the law is being reported with a phony specificity. So, a law which prohibits the keeping of wild animals in your back yard is reported as \"prohibits the keeping of Bengal tigers in your back yard.\" It's true that that **is** prohibited, but that's not quite what the law says.", "For the ones that are actually real, it means there was a need for them at some point in time, but aren't relevant anymore, and it's expensive to change the law to remove them.\n\nFor example, in Kentucky it is illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your back pocket. This is because another law basically stated that if s horse followed you home it was legally yours, and people would steal horses by coaxing them with ice cream carried in their back pockets. " ]

[ "Certain chemicals are physically and logistically more likely to support life. For instance, water is effective as a solvent, but liquid methane has similar properties, which is why scientist speculate that life might exist on Saturn's moon Titan. Carbon is exceptionally convenient for life because it bonds in versatile ways, and thus can create complex, elaborate, diverse, and large compounds.", "Essentially we know the most common building blocks of life exist everywhere in the universe..Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon and Nitrogen.. It's sensible to assume alien life would develop in a similar manner to how ours did." ]

[ "Piano keys are arranged so they are separated from each other by a semi-tone (half-tone). \n\nSo the interval from, say, A to B is a whole tone, and the black key on the piano between them is B♭ (a half-step between them) or A# (depending on your key signature). \n\nThe keyboard is arranged so that the distance between any note and the same note one octave higher is 12 semi-tones, with one key per tone. \n\nThe reasons why, others have already mentioned. It has a lot to do with the cultures these instruments were developed in, and the music those cultures wished to recreate. \n\nBut other tones certainly exist. The easiest to consider would be quarter-tones, which would be in between the keys on the piano, and depending on the interval may be half-flats, quarter-flats, three-quarter-flats, and so on (and of course since you would name the accidentals based on your key, it may be sharps instead of flats, but the concept is the same). \n\nCulturally, instruments like the piano are used in Western music that doesn't make use of tones smaller than a half-tone, so the piano has no keys to reproduce it. But if you consider an electronic keyboard with a pitch wheel, there are as many notes between our A and B as the synthesizer's pitch wheel is discretely able to account for. \n\nOther cultures make more use of quarter tones in their music, and I would expect their instruments would reflect this. \n\nYou can also reproduce smaller intervals like quarter tones on instruments that don't have unique stops - for instance, a slide trombone.", "People have posted most of it already, but I would like to add that the 12 note system isn't something that had been arbitrarily chosen by our culture. The diatonic scales, the white keys, are built from a relationship of fifths, the fifth is the first harmonic except for the fundament and an important basis for building chords. If you look at the F key and go up a fifth, you get C, from there to a G, then D, A, E and B. If you continue, you get F#, C#, G#, D#, and finally A# before we're back at F again. If you do this procedure five times you get a traditional pentatonic scale, what is used to portray stereotypical oriental music in western culture (Asian music is much more complex). In the keyboard layout proposed by OP, not only would it be nigh impossible to see where the octaves repeat without some colour markings or counting (88 keys compared to a guitar's 18 frets of which most aren't used primarily), but if you would play a common fifth together with the prime you will always end up with one black key and one white key, but on a standard layout you always get two blacks or two whites, much more ergonomic. ", "I know that I'm late to the party, but there are some actual mathematics involved here and I do not see them in the answers so far, so let's-a-go!\n\n# Harmonics\n\nFirst, the basic physics/physiology: sound waves are associated with a frequency, which is how many times a thing (vocal cords, violin string etc.) moves each second. When a thing produces a frequency *f*, it is also possible to have it produce frequencies 2*f*, 3*f* etc. Also, when we hear a frequency *f*, we feel that frequencies 2*f*, 3*f* etc. sound good together with the base frequency.\n\nActually those frequencies sound so good that we even feel that frequencies *f* and 2*f* are \"the same note\": that's what we call an octave. Then 4*f* is two octaves, 8*f* is three octaves etc. I think that so far, this is true across all cultures. So if we call \"do\"/\"C\" the note with frequency *f*, then the notes with frequencies 2*f*, 4*f*, but also *f*/2, *f*/4 will be the other \"do\" notes. For simplification we will concentrate on notes within one octave, which is the octave between *f* and 2*f*.\n\n# Building the scale\n\nThe remainder of this post is concerned with European music: since the next smallest integer is 3, we also feel that 3*f* is a nice-sounding ratio. So starting from our \"do\" at *f*, we make another note, which I provisionnally call \"tu\", at 3*f*. And of course, there are other \"tu\" at 6*f*, 12*f*, but also 3*f*/2, 3*f*/4 etc. Actually, the \"tu\" at 3*f* is not the nicest one, since we have a \"tu\" at 3*f*/2 which falls between *f* and 2*f*, so in our starting octave. The interval between \"do\" and this \"tu\" corresponds to the factor 3/2, which is the \"pythagorician quint\".\n\nBut we can do this again, and build a whole sequence of notes by pythagorician quints: \"tu0\" = \"do\" with frequency *f*, \"tu1\" = \"tu\" with frequency 3*f*/2, \"tu2\" with frequency 9*f*/4 (but since 9/4 > 2, we use 9/8 instead, to fall back to our starting octave), \"tu3\" with frequency 27*f*/8,...\nand also in the other direction: \"tu-1\" with frequency 2*f*/3 (but since this is below *f*, we pull back to the basic octave by using 4*f*/3 instead), \"tu-2\" with frequency 4*f*/9, ...\n\nThe problem with this is that it gives an infinite series of notes, all within our starting octave: namely, all notes of the form 3^*a* 2^*b*, where *a* is *any* integer, and *b* is what is needed to make this fall in the right interval. And we would very much like to hear only a finite number of notes, to be able to remember and write easily our music! So the solution is to *approximate*. This means that we need to consider two different, but very close, notes, as being equal. We can find two such \"very close\" notes in the following way:\n\n - 3^(a) 2^(b) ≈ 3^(a') 2^(b'), or, by taking quotients,\n\n - 3^(a-a') 2^(b-b') ≈ 1, or, by taking logarithms,\n\n - (b-b')/(a'-a) ≈ (log 3)/(log 2).\n\nNow the left-hand side is a *rational* number. Moreover, since we would like a small number of notes, it is a *rational number with a small denominator*. The right-hand side is of course irrational and has approximate value 1.58496 (as any practicioner of Karatsuba multiplication knows! :-). To find a good rational approximation of that value, the usual method is [continued fractions](_URL_0_), which gives the convergents:\n\n - 2, 3/2, 8/5, 19/12, 65/41...\n\n# The equal temperament\n\nI will stop now at that \"19/12\" ≈ 1.583 value; this is close enough that we mostly do not hear the difference. This means that we roughly have 3^12 ≈ 2^19, or (since we use Pythagorician quints) (3/2)^12 ≈ 2^7: namely, there are about 7 quints for 12 octaves. So the usual way out is to declare this approximation to be the new, exact value of the quint, by setting *q* = 2^(7/12) so that *q*^12 = 2^7. This is what is called the \"perfect\" quint.\n\nNow we notice that our usual scale is built out of this quint: namely, going by quints up, we find \n\n - A♭ → E♭ → B♭ → F → C → G → D → A → E → B → F♯ → C♯→ G♯,\n\nand the \"tempered quint\" we used means exactly that G♯ = A♭ on our\nkeyboard. As we can see, our mathematical way of building the scale left\n\"tempered tone\" (with frequency ratio 2^(1/6)) intervals C-D, D-E, F-G,\nG-A, A-B, and \"tempered semitone\" (with ratio 2^(1/12)) intervals B-C and E-F. This is called\nthe \"equal temperament\" since all semitones are equal.\n\n# Other scales\n\nBut this is not the only way to build a scale! We could also, for\nexample, have used that \"65/41\" approximation I wrote above. This means\nthat we split the octave in 41 intervals (called \"commas\") and that a\nquint is exactly 24 commas, for a frequency ratio of 2^(24/41). This is\ncalled a \"musical quint\". If we now build our scale by way of musical\nquints as above, we find that the relation between G♯ and A♭ is\n\n - +12 musical quints -7 octaves, which is also\n\n - +12\\*24 commas -7\\*41 commas\n\nfor a total of +1 comma. So G♯ is very slightly higher up than A♭. This\nscale is actually taught on \"exact\" instruments, such as the\nviolin, the trombone, or for very good singers.\n\nBut wait wait, this is not even the end of it. We built our scale out of\nonly the numbers 2 and 3. What about 5? Since 5/4 = 1.25 and 2^(4/12) ≈\n1.2599, the frequency ratio 5/4 is very close to 4 semi-tones, or a C-E\ninterval. In the tempered scale, we call such an interval a \"major\nthird\", use it as the basis for virtually all European music, and are\ncontent with it. But we could also have built our scale such that the C-E\ninterval is (mostly) exact. There are tens of ways of doing so, but an\nimportant one was the \"quarter-tone mesotonic temperament\": this \ntemperament makes most major thirds almost perfect, at the cost of\nsacrificing some quints. In particular, the note falling between G and A,\nwhich in equal temperament is G♯ = A♭, is decided as an A♭, which makes\nthe quint D♯-A♭ extremely false; it has been called the \"wolf's quint\"\nbecause it sounds as a wolf's howling. This means that, say, a D scale\nwould sound quite differently from a C scale, and some further scales\nsuch as C♯ would have completely alien sounds!\n\nThese \"inequal\" temperaments were used a lot in Baroque music; the equal\ntemperament is essentially a 17th century invention, since it needs\nlogarithms. It was popularised by one J.-S. Bach, who wrote a set of\npieces called \"the well-tempered clavier\", because that temperament made\nit possible to play in all tonalities without those \"alien sounds\".\n\n\nWe could also forgo completely the \"2\" factor and use only 3 and 5. (This\nis adapted to the physics of the simple-reed woodwinds such as the\nclarinet and saxophone, which produce only odd harmonics). This builds\nthe [Bohlen-Pierce\nscale](_URL_1_).\n" ]

[ "Even if it magically separated to oxygen, the lining of the GI tract is not designed for gas exchange so it’d be impossible to get into the blood ", "You are somewhat describing photosynthesis in which plants take water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight to produce oxygen (amongst other things) via complex biological systems. While human bodies do have biological systems capable of breaking down molecules we do not have anything capable of breaking down water AFAIK", "Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen requires energy. Since there is oxygen in the atmosphere it is a lot easier to get the oxygen from the atmosphere.", "The oxygen in water has already been used up, like a log already burned. There is no energy left to extract. \n\n\nSide note: fish don't breath H2O, they use oxygen gas disolved in the water.", "The problem is one of energy. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nWe use oxygen to metabolise the food and in may way the reaction is the same as burning sugar in oxygen and the output is water and carbon dioxide. There is a lot more energy stored in the water per mol of oxygen the there is in carbon dioxide per mole. So you would loos energy if you did that. Oxygen is used to extract energy from food so you can't produce in in a way that result in a net energy loss in the body.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nHear are some calculations. A mole is just a large number of molecules and for carbon it is by definition the number of atoms in 12g so you use it to know the amount of each mule you need ad to get a nice unit for the energies.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIf you burn one mole of hydrogen gas you get H2 + 1/2 O2 =H2O+286kJ and you need half a mole of oxygen gas\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIf you burn one mole Coal C+O2=Co2+394kJ and you need one mole of oxygen gas\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe minimum energy that is need to break a molecule apart it the energy you get from burning it . The result is that you need 572kJ to produce one mole of oxygen gas. So if you split water apart to the combine it with carbon you looses 572kJ-394kJ=178kJ\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWhen you metabolise one mole sugar you have C6H12O6+6 O2 =6 CO2+ 6 H20 +720k+3 014kJ but you need as you can see 6 moles of oxygen and it require 572\\*6= 3432kJ\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo the result is if you got the oxygen need to metabolise sugar from splitting water apart you would loose 418kJ \n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;", "Every organ of the body has a specific purpose, and the tissues are highly specialized. In the lungs, blood flows through tiny capillaries around tiny air sacs (alveoli). The tissues between the two are designed to exchange gasses between the lungs and the blood stream. Carbon dioxide is removed from the blood and transferred to the lungs to be exhaled as waste. Oxygen is transferred to the blood where it can be delivered to the rest of the body. \n\nThe heart is heavily involved in how/why this works, and the fact that the lungs/heart are neighbors is really important. After blood has circulated through the body and is low on oxygen, it dumps into the heart. The heart pumps it directly to the lungs for a refill on o2. The oxygenated blood pumps straight back to the heart, where it is pumped out in two directions: up to the brain, and down to the body. The heart is powerful, and it gets the blood where it needs to go very efficiently. \n\nIf we absorbed oxygen from the GI tract, it would have traveled to the heart only after making the rest of the trip around the body. By the time it got to the heart, it would already need to be oxygenated again. Not great news for the brain! \n\nThe tissues in the GI tract all have special function, just like the lungs do. The stomach releases gastric juices to break food down into a form from which nutrients can be extracted. Other cells in the stomach secrete mucous to protect the lining from the acid. The intestines absorb water and nutrients from the food as it slowly makes its way though the tract. Similarly, the kidneys filter waste products and water from the blood and then reabsorb or excrete based on what the body needs at the moment. Every organ and system exists to serve a specific purpose, so the gut/rest of the body doesn't have the physiologic ability to manipulate oxygen in the systematic way that the lungs can. " ]

[ "\"A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict\" by Mark Tessler is pretty good and used frequently in college classes. ", "\"A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East\" by David Fromkin", "Just read a great book on the architecture of occupation written by an Israeli Architect (doesn't really answer your question directly) but-- Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation. I would also recomend Edward Said's work.", "*The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East*, by Sandy Tolan, might be a good place to start. Like most efforts to use specific narratives or metaphors to encapsulate much broader situations, the book has some serious flaws, but it is well written, and Tolan makes a serious effort to tell the story with fairness and empathy. ", "Righteous Victims by Benny Morris is pretty good.\n\nPro Palestine = The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Illan Pappe\nPro Israel = The Case For Israel by Alan Dershowitz\n\nRead all 3 and you'll have a good basic understanding. It's complex. Both sides have done some bad things. Anyone who says it's clear cut and that one side is at fault doesn't understand the history. " ]

[ "There are too many variables at play here. So I can't give a solid \"This is why\" answer.\n\nIt can depend on what kind of game it is, what the server situation is like, and your internet connection.\n\nSome game companies host their own servers, which are usually well maintained and are on high quality connections. Others allow players to host their servers, which can have questionable quality. Some games are P2P (Peer-to-peer), in which your console/PC connects directly to the other players console/PC, this usually works well, but can lag if one of the players has a poor connection.\n\nIn all instances, peek hours, when the most people are in-game, can usually result in lag due to high traffic.", "It depends on what needs to be done. Some MMOs might only need to update client information at a rate of once every second or so, while first-person shooters generally need to update dozens of times a second, causing much heavier server load per player.\n\nDifferent game engines also have an effect, as does the competence of the programmers. There are a pile of other variables in addition to these." ]

[ "This is probably caused by excessively dry air. The moisture in the air will usually assist in keeping the charges relatively equal between two surfaces, but when the humidity gets extremely low, you're able to build up a charge faster than your earphones can equalize. In this sense, waterproof earphones would not be very helpful. \n\nIt's nothing to worry about, but probably pretty annoying. A humidifier would easily fix the issue.", "Your clothes generally build up static over the course of the day. In normal situations you're slowly discharging this buildup into the air, doorknobs, water faucets, things like that.\n\nBut when you're wearing your earbuds there's a direct, electrically friendly, path to a great receptor of that static build up, the battery.\n\nSo you take off a coat, get out of a car, or some other static generating event. Normally you would just hang on to the built up charge, but if your wearing your earbuds, zap, your body lets go of the charge all at once.\n\nAs for being worried, about your health - nothing. the more likely event is that the static shocks could cause damage to your device.", "Are you certain it is a static shock you are receiving?" ]

[ "Big question under debate. There's evidence, though, that we do have the capability (ish). [Couple](_URL_1_) of [refs](_URL_0_), but there are lots out there with some googling.\n\n The genetic switches are just turned off, or we're missing a couple genes. Probably because at some point during a time of limited resources if there was a serious injury to the individual it made more sense (in terms of natural selection) to let the individual die rather than waste a bunch of resources on something as expensive as regrowing a limb. Better for the population to save local resources for individuals not missing a leg.\n\nIf we don't go as extreme as dying and instead assume that the regeneration is for smaller body parts, it would still be incredibly taxing and energetically expensive (need lots of food, minerals, etc.) to regrow that body part. If it was something non-essential like a finger, again at a time of limited resources, then it might be an advantage to dedicate what little food you have on more essential body functions then regeneration of a ring finger.\n\nThe 'why' is of course just speculation.", "The DNA contains instructions as to how to create a baby from a single cell, by telling what cells to specialise in. However those instructions don't work once the assembly has been completed. To reassemble a whole limb say it would take a lot of energy and time as it would have to be slowly assembled from the remaining stump. During this time the limb would not help you survive and due to the drain on resources would actually reduced your survival chances. Therefore in an evolutionary sense it isn't worth it, if you survived the injury that caused it you can survive without it.", "Building the human body like an automated car production line. We just haven’t worked out how to force our DNA blue print to “repeat that one part” again. \nEven though every cell carries the blue print for our whole body we haven’t worked out how to activate certain strings of information to generate specific proteins or body parts. \n\n", "Simple answer: DNA knows how to *build* a body and does not know how to *repair* a body. Building consists of complicated steps involved in making organs/limbs etc. Most likely, if you need to repair an arm, you need to grow it and attach it. But it will not have the same biometric Identifications like fingerprints or vein locations (_URL_0_).", "at each time during development the body is at an unique configuration it won't ever see again. the DNA instruction produces the configuration and depends on it to progress. there are no instructions to recreate these configurations once the development is completed. ", "The body knows how to build a body because when the zygote is formed it is known to be a totipotency cell (has the potential of becoming different things (liver cells, muscle cells, forming the baby)) \nThis is what are known as stem cells, they are various kinds of them (totipotent, pluripotent, multipotent, oligopotent, multipotent) \nThey have the potential of differentiate into other cells to build what is needed in the place is needed. There is a lot of research to investigating stem cells and how to undifferentiate already defined cells and to bring them to a state of stem cell and redirecting them to a damaged area of the body. \nThe famous dolly sheep (cloning experiment) actually was not only to prove you can clone something (technically is not even a clone) but it showed that one single cell has all the genetic material necessary to form a complete organisms when conditions given. \nThis genetic material is turned on/off depending on to where the cell has differentiate. \nIf you have a cut in your finger, your body does fix it, but it doesnt form a liver or a kidney it rebuilds skin cells, due to the environment around it. \nIt really is a very long topic, with a lot of information and can discuss a lot of it but basically because it might take a whole deal of energy to do so and the body doesn’t have the resources to do so. ", "The simple answer is, we can, but a wound would have to be left open for months to let this happen, and thus we would die of infection.\n\nLong ago, our wounds evolved to close quickly to avoid blood loss and infection.\n\nIf you are being eaten by a tiger, it's better to close a wound and run away than sit with the tiger for three months and wait for your fingers to regrow.\n\nDoctors are currently working with a substance (our bodies produce naturally) called extracellular matrix which acts as a scaffold for exactly this type of regeneration. Currently, the technology is used to help racehorses and prize animals regenerate severely damaged ligaments. Fingertips in humans have been regenerated, but the technology is just newly discovered. I will post more...", "DNA contains all the instructions, and every cell has the full set of these instructions. However, only small sections of this large instruction book are \"expressed\" in each cell type - and turned into proteins and cellular machinery - the rest of it is inactive. This is part of the reason why certain cell types cannot just turn into other cell types. \n\nNow, this isn't the only reason why we can't regenerate body parts - much of that we are still trying to figure out. Some animals can, and by studying them we hope to learn more about how that happens. \n\nSource: Scientist", "Edit: my answer is more advanced than ELI5, but is necessary due to the complexity of the topic!\n\nI think I can chime in here. \n\nThe short answer: We don't know.\nThe long answer (ELI10): Ongoing research has studied the effects of the immune system on the ability to regenerate limbs. Interestingly enough, there is an inverse relationship between degree of complexity of the immune system and the ability to regenerate. Lizards, for example, have primitive immune systems and are able to regrow tails. Ours are quite advanced which results in the formation of scar tissue instead.\n\nTo answer in a more academic way, the immune system constitutes something called macrophages, which help with many many aspects of immunity. As they relate to this topic, M1 (macrophage type 1) are initially present in wounds and help cause the typical inflammation and pain associated with an injury. As the healing continues, there is a shift called 'macrophage polarization' that causes M2 (macrophage type 2) to be present. These release anti-inflammatory cytokines like IL-10 and help promote wound healing and repair. \n\nUltimately, research has been shown that the macrophage polarization step has been hugely important in understanding the ability to regenerate. Neonatal mice are able to regenerate heart tissue, whereas adult mice produce scar tissue. There is a period of time where growing mice undergo significant changes in their immune system and researchers believe this transition is what causes the loss of regeneration. Current research is trying to figure out if we, humans, can regenerate if we can figure out a way to take advantage of the benefits of M1 and M2 phases without suffering from the loss of regenerative abilities.\n\nGraduate student in the biological sciences." ]

[ "[There is an extremely detailed and interesting article on Wikipedia on the history of special relativity.](_URL_0_)", "I'm pretty late on this, but there's actually a bit of a difference. \n\nYou see, Lorentz transformations were firstly developed by Lorentz in order to make some electromagnetic phenomena respect the principle of relativity: the physics is the same in any inertial system. The transformation law between inertial systems in classical physic are known as Galileian transformations, and they pretty much say that if you have a body with vector velocity v and you look at it from a system with vector velocity V, the velocity you'll see the body moving will be v+V (law of composition of velocities). \n\nThe problem is that electomagnetic phenomena don't respect this rule, there are many examples of this but the most important one, that actually lead einstein to develop SP, is the fact that electromagnetic waves (light) moves with velocity c=3×10^8 km/s in every frame, so they don't respect law of composition of velocities. This was experimentally tested by Michaelson and Moorley and lead Einstein to realize that Lorentz transformations were not only ad hoc transformations that electronagnetic penomena respected for some reasons, but they were actually the right space-time transformations from a inertial system to another, they just were very well approximated by Galileian transf. at very low velocities. From here Einstein developed the whole SP theory, with kinematic and dynamic laws, and also put a point on many of the troubles scientist at the time were having concerning this field, renewing completely the way we considered time in particular.\n\nSo Einstein didn't develop Lorentz transf. out of nowhere, but they had heavy implications on the structure of space-time and later led to the broader General relativity formulation by Einstein himself. " ]

[ "Many internet companies don't turn a profit for years - they simply own a good idea and gather a large following in order to become worth something. Investments keep the gears turning while the company stays in the red. The site you're posting on now (Reddit) [wasn't profitable though to 2013](_URL_1_), and likely still isn't. [Snapchat](_URL_0_), which turned down a $3 billion takeover offer, just recently monetized (in a fairly inefficient way) with SnapCash, but probably still won't see profit for some time.\n\nMozilla makes over 97% of their money from royalties in the form of the default search engine in Firefox. No doubt it cost Yahoo ([who make most of their money from their ad service & ads on their pages](_URL_3_)) a pretty penny for the [\"strategic partnership\"](_URL_2_) that changes the browser's default search engine to Yahoo, [even for people who will just update the browser](_URL_4_).", "As someone else mentioned Google received venture capital financing in their early days, Yahoo! did as well. If you ask that question of 95% of tech companies the answer will be VC funding.\n\nMozilla was originally spun out of Netscape/AOL and received funding from them and donations (Mozilla is not-for-profit). Today the vast majority of their revenue comes from affiliate deals to refer traffic from people using their browser to a search engine. By default if you start typing stuff into the address bar that isn't a URL Firefox will perform a search. Until recently that search went to Google, and Mozilla received 85% of their revenue from that deal with Google. A few months ago Mozilla switched to Yahoo! (presumably because Yahoo! is paying them more).", "In 2000 at nasdaq 5000, practically none of them were making money (Google, yahoo, eBay, amazon). Many of them made money from the sells of stock and many, many, many of them are no longer around because they never made another dime. ", "Most of tech companies get Venture Capital money. Usually, the founders(s) build the product (i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc.) on their own time and once they show some promise, they go to Venture Capital firms such as Sequoia or Khosla Ventures and raise money. In very early stages, the founders might raise small amounts (generally < $1M) from friends and family (rich ones!) or high net worth individuals. \n\nUsually getting a product of the ground, takes either time or money or some combo of the two. That's why many founders come from families that are well-off. Examples include, founders of Facebook, Snapchat, etc. Others, like Bezos of Amazon and the Whatsapp founders made some money in previous jobs. Most of these founders built the early stages of their products in small teams on lean budgets. \n\nOnce you start getting Angel money then you try to hit your goals (number of users, or page views etc.) and so you can raise more money. Each time you raise money, it's called a round. The first major round is Series A, then B, and so on. \n\nIn the case of many of the big successful companies, each subsequent round is considerably larger than the previous one. For example, Airbnb's Series A was $7.2M. It's Series B was $112M, Series C was $200M, and Series D was $475M. (Source: Crunchbase). \n\nUsually the money raised in the round comes from multiple investors. In the case of Airbnb's Series C, those investors were Crunchfund, Sequoia, Founders Fund, and Ashton Kutcher. \n\nThe venture capital money helps pay salaries. Some companies are monetized very early, such as Airbnb which takes a transaction fee. Hence, they have another source of money. Others, like Pinterest are not. They depend mostly on Venture Capital. \n\nAnyway, essentially, the answer to your question is that there are rich people/institutions that are looking for places to park their money and get a good financial return. Hence, they give it to companies, which use that money for operations, salaries, etc. If all goes right, in a few years, the investors' money will be returned at many multiples (i.e. value will have been created). " ]

[ "Many machine learning algorithms, like neural nets, can be represented by what is known in computer science as a [graph](_URL_0_). A graph is a series of connected nodes, and each connection is assigned a weight, representing some sort of cost or effort associated with moving between those nodes. \n\nInternally, a graph with N nodes can be represented as an N x N matrix. Each row and column represents a node, and the values in the matrix show whether the nodes are connected and what the weight of the connection is. If M is that matrix, if node 1 and node 5 are connected with a weight of 20, then M[1,5] = 20.\n\nRepresenting a graph in this way means that performing operations on that graph is equivalent to matrix arithmetic. Computers are very good an linear algebra, and there are many very efficient, time test algorithms you can use to peform these sorts of calcuations quickly.", "__How (as in for what) do we use it?__ \n\nAs a tool to make it easier to communicate with each other. \n\nHow does that make it any easier? Because it makes communication shorter, more specific and less error prone. Example: 2 * 2 + 3 * 3 + 4 * 4 + 5 * 5 vs [2,3,4,5]^2 . Nobody wants to read (or write) a 30 page document if you can do the same in 3 pages.\n\n__How (as in where) do we use it?__\n\nWhenever we can make something more concise by using it. Basic linear algebra is concerned with vector spaces and their properties, so every time you have a countable number of \"features\" (dimensions) that can be used to describe an object, linear algebra is your guy to help you say more with less (space, words, characters, ...) . \n\nIn Machine learning we tend to describe a single record in a dataset as \"It has this property and this property and this property and ...\", so as a countable number of features. \n\nSo with our basic building block perfectly made for linear algebra, it should be easy to conclude that it is used almost everywhere." ]

[ "Your eyes are one of the parts of your body where blinking is voluntary and involuntary at the same time. You can control how you blink but no matter how hard you try to keep your eyes open, your body will force you to blink. This may be why keeping your eyes open when sleepy is difficult sometimes because your body itself is forcing them closed and your consciously trying to keep them open. Your brain also releases sleep chemicals which makes you feel more lethargic until you succumb to sleep. ", "When you’re moving around your body is sending signals to parts of your brain (the cerebellum) so you don’t fall over. Those signals stimulate key areas in your brain stem (the reticular formation) which trigger other key parts of your forbrain (thalamus) which tells your brain brain (cerebral cortex): “hey jackass, we can’t sleep right now or we’ll fall over and get hurt!”\n\nSometimes when you stand up too fast or have serious problems going on there’s not enough blood keeping all those parts working and your brain says:”nah we’re going to sleep now” ... otherwise you stay awake and upright.\n\nIf you’re not moving there’s no stimulation telling your brain it *has* to stay awake and all the signals change and your eyes close and you’re out.", "Vision processing takes a considerable amount of mental resources, way more than muscle coordination. Your muscles do most of the work when walking, your brain just tells them what to do. Your eyes on the other hand require a lot of mental processing so if you're tired it's much harder to focus your vision than it is to walk.\n\nTension headaches from eye strain are quite common too, where you have a headache but it feels better if you close your eyes.\n\nImagine working on a computer all day. Eventually your eyes get tired, but your muscles are not as you've not used them much. \n\nOn the other hand if you go out hiking all day, your legs will tire while your eyes might be fine.\n\nIt's a matter of whether your tired is muscle fatigue, or mental fatigue. Mental fatigue makes it hard to keep your eyes open and is what makes you want to sleep. Muscle fatigue just makes you want to lie down and rest while watching TV or something.", "Gross motor skills vs fine motor skills maybe?", "Depends how youre tired physically or mentally.\n\nIf you do workout 15 hours you wont be able to walk but can see.\n\nIf you browse reddit 15 hours you wont be able to see but can walk. \n", "The task of walking can be assigned to the Central Pattern General (CPG) located in the spine. It can take over the task of walking so the brain doesn't have to.", "A lot of time that tired feeling that you experience isn't so much actual exhaustion, but eye strain. Next time try taking something cold (but not too cold) and placing it against your cold eye. Let it sit like that for a while. You'll feel refreshed.", "Your muscles do actual physical activity and you do it subconsciously. If your brain is tored your eyes will start closing on their own. Very difficult fighting a civil war with your brain.", "I've fallen asleep while walking/standing numerous times. \n\nOnce, while walking along the sidewalk and awoke as I stepped off the curb. \n\nI fell asleep while I was working as an usher at a movie theater..took a ticket, looked down and fell asleep for a couple seconds before they said something to jar me awake.\n\nPlenty of times doing repetitive, monotonous work, either pacing back and forth or standing, I'd nod off for a second or two.\n\nAnd a many other times. It actually happens more than I had realized until I started listing them just now... " ]

[ "I've never seen 'exactly 8'. And it would not be secure.\nLength is vital. Complexity is important. Not using the same password on different sites is vital.", "It doesn't make the password more secure. Here's what I found in a search:\n\n_URL_0_", "Bad programmers are implementing bad security practices causing bad leaks. There's no excuse for password length limits anymore. It's really that simple.", "It doesn't.\n\n > why do websites still do it?\n\nBecause it costs a lot of time and money to update some of those larger systems to make them support more.", "I haven't seen a satisfying answer, so...\n\nThe general rule of thumb with passwords is that random is better and longer is stronger.\n\nAn 8 character password has only about 42 bits of entropy. ASCII only uses 7 bits (127 different options) and 35 of those are non-printable characters and can't reasonably be used. 42 bits is actually slightly stronger, but we're splitting hairs now. In any event, modern password crackers can brute force an 8 character password very quickly.\n\nThere are only three reasons I can reasonably think of that 8 character limits would be enforced.\n\n1. Ignorance. Someone just plain doesn't know any better. This one is the scariest because by now everyone should know better.\n\n2. Hashing function limitation. Believe it or not there are some hashing functions (e.g., ancient crypt()) that only recognizes the first 8 characters. You can enter more, but only the first 8 are checked. So if your password were \"password1\", that's 9 characters so simply entering \"password\" will let you in. In this case it's better to enforce an 8 character input limit so that you don't get a false sense of security with your 40 character password when 32 of those are ignored.\n\n3. Rigid database. Many (especially older) databases use fixed sizes for fields and once the table is created it's difficult, time consuming or impractical to resize them. If you have millions or billions of rows it could take hours or days to resize a column, during which you can't make changes to the table (effectively halting your business). Basically it requires every byte in the entire table to be read and written to a new location to make room. Modern databases have ways of avoiding that but many financial institutions or telecos still use the mainframe as their primary data store.\n\nIn either 2) or 3) there's a technical reason that I find understandable, but in any case it is inexcusable. Even when working with such a obsolete system these limitations can be avoided. It necessarily adds complexity and takes time. But it isn't that it can't done correctly, it's that nobody with the right authority is making it a priority.", "I can't believe people are passing off wild guesses as answers.\n\nThe most common reason for these kinds of restrictions is compatibility with legacy systems. For example, restricting the character space to the letters, numbers, and symbols on a keypad so the password can be used with an automated phone system.\n\nAnd you're absolutely correct. Such restrictions are a major hit to password security. Some programmers know better but don't have the influence to make the system better (businesses are loathe to spend money and create disruption on systems that work). Others programmers don't have knowledge or have bad knowledge on how modern password attacks occur and subsequently make botched attempts at security.", "Some sites are using A LOT of old code and changing it is often prohibitively expensive. Sometimes they will try to make changes within their limitations to try to increase protection. \n \nBesides, limiting passwords to eight characters is still not a problem IF people use randomly generated passwords (a password vault like LastPass and KeePass will help) AND the website locks down the account if too many wrong attempts are made. If say a website locks an account after 10 attempts, a randomly generated password is incredibly unlikely to be hacked in 10 attempts. ", "There are a few things you might be talking about here. Broadly, you want to imagine that in order to crack a password, we're having your kid brother type in every possible combination of characters until he hits on the right one. Your kid brother is probably going to take a shortcut and try all the words in the dictionary first, but ultimately he'll fall back on trying \"aaa\", \"aab\", \"aac\" etc. Keep that in mind. So here are the kinds of requirements we see:\n\n* must include at least 1 symbol, number, capital letter, etc. These are good things, because they expand the total number of characters your kid brother has to try. If he knows that the password system only takes numbers for example, he's only got 10 possible choices to iterate through for each character of the password. But if it's caps, lowercase, and numbers, he's got way more work to do.\n\n* must be at least X characters long. This is also a good thing, because with each extra character in the password, the number of possible combinations that your kid brother has to type grows significantly. So we make sure that the password has a certain minimum number of possible combinations required.\n\n* cannot be more than X characters long. This is bad because it limits the number of possible combinations you might have. Your kid brother is happy to see that number, because it tells him the worst case scenario of how hard this password will be to crack. But it belies a much worse problem in the way the password information is being stored.\n\nSee, when you're storing information in a database - as most every contemporary web application does - you write the information into tables, which you might imagine like excel sheets. You structure each table (sheet) in advance to be ready for the kind of information that will go into each column. For example, you'll have a \"username\" column that will store up to 32 characters of text, and you'll have a \"last logged in\" column that will store a date/time. The same applies for the password column; in the case of the sites with a character limit, someone defined the password field as being X characters of text, so they make sure you can't make a longer password than that. The problem is, this is only an issue at all if you're storing the password in plaintext. \n\nIn grown-up password implementations, you never store the password. Rather, you use a (more or less) one-way mathematical function called a _hashing algorithm_ to create a seemingly random combination of characters BASED on the password. We call that output set of characters a \"hash\". Hashing algorithms are consistent, so you if you put in the password \"correcthorsebatterystaple\" one hundred times, you will get the same hash back every time (for example, cbe6beb26479b568e5f15b50217c6c83c0ee051dc4e522b9840d8e291d6aaf46). That means that you don't have to store the actual password, you can just store the hash. When the user enters their password, you run it through the same hashing algorithm, and if the hash matches, the password must have matched, too. We do this so that if someone steals a copy of the database, they don't get a list of all our passwords... they just get the hashes. And as I mentioned above, the hashing algorithm is one-way - ie it's effectively impossible to go from cbe6beb26479b568e5f15b50217c6c83c0ee051dc4e522b9840d8e291d6aaf46 to \"correcthorsebatterystaple\".\n\nOne of the cool things about hashing algorithms is that they can return a fixed number of characters. For example, the hash I did above for \"correcthorsebatterystaple\" produces a 32 characters long hash. You'll get 32 characters no matter what the input is. This means that in your database, you can store the password as \"32 characters long text\", no matter what length your users choose.\n\nTL;DR: a grown-up password implementation is characterized by a minimum number of characters, sometimes a minimum number of symbols/numbers/capital letters, and no limit on password length. Any time you are given a limit on the number of characters, you know that it is being stored in plaintext and is therefore extremely vulnerable to being stolen. ", "It doesn't make it more secure, but it might make it more compatible with legacy systems. \n\nAll you need to know (as a layman) about password security is [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_0_). This is in a nice and easy comic-format, but it is very much valid. Just don't use correcthorsebatterystaple as a password everywhere...", "Dan Goodin at Ars Technica has several excellent introductory articles focused on passwords and cracking that I think everyone should read:\n\n* _URL_0_\n* _URL_1_\n* _URL_2_", "Another common reason for 'only 8 characters' is interoperability with ancient systems. Some old mainframe it is using for a datasource somewhere in the process limited passwords to 8 characters, so they can't go beyond that until they get rid of that system... so everyone gets a password that is insecure, yay", "Requirements can sometimes increase the strength of your password and sometimes decrease it depending on whether or not those requirements result in a password that is, on average, stronger or weaker than what the user would have came up with already.\n\n* Exactly 8 characters long\n\nThis would inherently weaken any password it is given because attackers would know only to search strings that are 8 characters long (no more or less). With lowercase+numbers, that's a search space of 2.8 trillion, which sounds like a lot but it could realistically be cracked in a matter of a few seconds with any decent offline attack. \n\nUnfortunately even including upper, lower, numerics, and punctuation doesn't help you a whole lot against a pure brute force. At 8 characters, even the strongest password would fall in minutes. \n\n* Include upper case and punctuation\n\nThis is an example of a rule that, on average, increases the strength of the password. When creating passwords most people simply don't tend to include these characters. By enforcing this rule, attackers would know that every password they crack has these characters in it, which does decrease the complexity of the search a bit. But the tradeoff is substantial.\n\nUsing only lower case letters at 12 characters, a decent offline attack could take a week. Add numbers, and that number goes up to a year. Add upper case, it goes up to 10 centuries. Punctuation: a hundred thousand years. Welcome to exponential space.\n\n* No common words\n\nThis substantially increases the security of your password because it protects against dictionary attacks. \n\nA typical english dictionary might have around 50,000 words in it. You can imagine how quick it would be to even try 2 or 3 length permutations of each word considering an offline attack can be in the billions of guesses per second. \n\n* Password must be between 8 and 16 characters long\n\nThis is one you want to watch out for, not because it makes your password less secure, but because its indicative of an insecure method of how they store your password on their servers.\n\nThe most insecure systems in the world would simply store your password in their database exactly as you type it in. If a hacker got a copy of their database, your password is gone instantly.\n\nMore secure systems hash the password using a deterministic hashing algorithm. Like encryption, a hash algorithm takes some text and turns it into something crazy looking. Unlike encryption, hash algorithms are 1-way; there's no way besides brute force to go backward. So a SHA-256 hash of \"password123\" is `ef92b778bafe771e89245b89ecbc08a44a4e166c06659911881f383d4473e94f` but \"password124\" is `33631376724e5d5480fa397dfcf03b66ad47b934ab495174d7058c38f2bb0087`. Completely different despite the originals being kind of similar.\n\nThe most secure systems use hashing, but they don't *just* hash your password. They also throw in some other (deterministic) characters, like your email. So maybe they store the hash of \"password123+email@gmail.com\", which produces a hash totally different than password123. \n\nThis is secure because (in the case of #2) if a couple people have the same password they produce the same hash. Attackers might first search the compromised database for anyone with the same stored hash, then focus the attack on those people because (A) they clearly have a weak password given they're using the same one, and (B) he gets multiple accounts for the price of one attack. Throwing in the email throws off the hash and adds protection. \n\nIf the website clearly specifies they don't accept passwords longer than something reasonable, like 16 characters, it might be because they are storing the password in plaintext in their database and their database is set up only to store things that are that long. But it doesn't guarantee this. Websites like google max out at like 128 characters not because its insecure, but because its just practical. \n\n* But all of this only matters\n\nin offline attack scenarios. Brute forcing someone's password on a live website, *even* if the website doesn't lock you out after fifty attempts, can only be done at a rate of like 1-20 attempts per second. All of the figures I listed above assume a rate of like 100 billion guesses per second. Even an insanely weak password like \"mittens01\" would take centuries to brute force online.\n\nThe end result of this is thus: Using strong (unique per website) passwords wherever you can has no downside. That being said, your security might be out of your control. Even the strongest password means nothing if they have access to a plaintext database. \n\n* That being said\n\nSecurity is such an interesting field because while it might seem like requiring users to use punctuation always increases security, it doesn't. Maybe the user has one password they use for all websites (\"Mittens99\") but requiring punctuation means they have to create a new password, which means they write it on a post-it note and stick it to their computer. Not so secure anymore.\n\nOr lets look at biometrics. Great. Your account is secured with your fingerprint. Whoops, your email provider's database was just compromised and they weren't storing your fingerprint properly. Now your bank, which *was* storing your fingerprint properly is *permanently* insecure, because... you can't change your fingerprint like you can change your password.\n\nOr you use 1Password to store your passwords so you can create super strong ones that are unique for every website. This is a good idea. But, its not foolproof. Are you using a decent master password? Remember that, if compromised, your 1Password database isn't inherently a *tenth* as strong as an enterprise account database. [Make sure your password is good enough](_URL_0_) to withstand even trillions of guesses per second. Are you syncing the database with Dropbox or iCloud? Do you trust [iCloud](_URL_3_)? How strong is your Dropbox/Apple password, because that's an attack vector. Do you sync to your phone? Is your phone encrypted?\n\nAlso, [use 2 factor authentication wherever possible](_URL_2_). \n\nAnd even if you do everything right: [Your security is not in your own hands](_URL_1_), because even huge companies like Amazon and Twitter simply don't fully comprehend the possibility behind high profile or targeted social engineering attacks. ", "'Exactly' 8 characters sounds like it is talking to some ancient backend system that has a 8 character fixed-length field that can't deal with anything shorter , and has other ancient systems talking to it such that it can't be changed to deal with anything more complicated such that longer passwords could be hashed down to something that fits.\n\nIn some cases it'll say it has to be a X digit number to deal with old bank-by-phone systems.", "I never understood why some sites forbid the use of spaces in passwords. ", "If a website tells you to make a password exactly 8 characters don't use that website. That's a complete disgrace to Security..." ]

[ "The New Testament names were written in the then lingua franca Koine Greek, so John was Ioannes and Paul was Paulus But Gabriel was from Hebrew, and Peter was Petros, which in turn was the translation from the original Aramaic name that Jesus gave him, Kephas, meaning 'rock'.", "Jesus was Yeshua, Moses was Moishe. Isaac was Yitzak, Jacob was Yacov. " ]

[ "For real if I ever need to go under the knife for something I'd love to talk to the surgeon beforehand and be like \"Hey could you do me a solid? While you're in there feel free to pull out some fat. Like anywhere it looks all yellow and gnarly just like, pull that out and throw it away for me would ya? Thanks in advance you're a real pal.\"", "Because surgery is delicate enough as it is. Pulling out tissue they don't need to just complicates matters. Moreover, general surgeons generally don't have the equipment used for liposuction and similar procedures on hand. They're generally focused on saving lives, not throwing in some free plastic surgery while they're at it. It isn't their realm of expertise nor concern.", "Using their hand requires a hole in your skin big enough to fit their hand. This large incision would lead to scarring when it is stitched up.\n\nLiposuction uses essentially a modified vacuum that has a cutter to suck up fat tissue and snip it. Its nozzle is small enough so that it goes under the skin without a large incision, reducing the chance of scars.\n\nThe downside is that fat cells don't regenerate. If the person continues to build up fat after surgery because their lifestyle does not change, the remaining fat cells will get larger. With fewer cells, that fat region will appear lumpy.\n\nSurgical methods to reduce people's appetite tend to work better than removing fat directly for weight loss.", "There are two main reasons. \n\nFirst you have to cut the fat away. People saying it's mostly around organs are wrong, most of our fat is stored around our edges like fat sea animals. Some is stored near organs though, especially if you're really fat or have genetic predispositions to heart disease. Regular animals would die if they got anywhere near as fat as us.\n\n Second is you only have a certain amount of fat cells. you don't make more when you get fat, they just get bigger. Since they'll leak into your organs causing a bunch of fat people disorders if they get to big it's not smart to cut them out, especially on someone who has no self control when it comes to food. \n\nAlso no surgeon would take on the liability for free.", "For the same reason why you should never put a vacuum hose inside of a desktop PC. The body is an intricate & complex system, not a messy ice cooler after a day at the lake.", "In addition to all the great answers here, there’s also the issue of homeostasis. Your body is used to having the extra mass (and support systems for that mass) when you have a bunch of fat. If you ripped out a bunch at once, your body would go into shock and possibly shut down from the sudden loss of mass. Modern liposuction techniques often replace removed fat with some form of saline mass so your body can take time to adjust.", "When you buy meat at the store, does the fat just fall off?" ]

[ "I think this question could be better phrased as:\n\n\"If I am standing at the US/Mexico border, on US soil, holding a gun, and I shoot it at someone standing on Mexican soil and kill them, who would have jurisdiction?\"\n\nIf that is the case, I suspect the crime was committed in the US and therefore they'd have jurisdiction.", "Great, dude. You just started a war.", "They literally teach entire courses on this, although the bulk of the subject is concerned with state vs other state crimes/torts. It's super interesting and complicated, but the most general answer is \"the locus of the crime.\" The short answer to your question would be Mexico. Things get real sticky from there.", "Thanks guys for the answers. Both me and my teacher were wondering the answer to this question.\n", "This already [has] (_URL_0_) happened. Just the other way around. The outcome was that the US wanted to prosecute the ones who shot them but they were never discovered. The Mexican government also refused US help in locating them. ", "the murder would be investigated by where ever the body lies. so if you were on the boarder and shot across into mexico and killed them the mexican police would investigate it since the us police have no say there. if they were able to track you down you would most likely be tried in mexico due to the us extradition. ", "So if I launch my drone from the US and bomb a town in Pakistan - how long can I hold my Nobel Peace prize for without any sense of irony?" ]

[ "Think about it like this, a ball rolling down a driveway will spin. The same ball down the same icy driveway, will spin at a much slower rate due to reduced friction. The ball down the same slope with no friction will not spin. ", "Depends on what you mean by \"no friction\".\n\nA gear rolling against another gear has very low friction when oiled properly. One could imagine a \"zero friction\" case, it's almost there already. But the scenario requires the two surfaces have exactly matched circumferential velocities. \n\nIf the second gear was locked, the first gear cannot turn, but that's still a \"zero friction\" case. The static gear presents a force, but not loss.", "Not unless a differential in air resistance caused an imbalance. The air resistance will strangely be lower near the frictionless surface so the ball might rotate backwards from what you might expect.\n\nWithout air resistance, no rotation. If it was irregularly shaped instead of a ball it would rotate relative to the normal force that is perpendicular to the frictionless surface. (try to lay flat against the frictionless surface)", "You already have your answer, but I can still give you an example of this in real life. I'm a bowler, and when bowling, there will be many times where the ball will go through a thick patch of oil, and will not spin. It will just glide. And then when it gets out of the oil, it will start to spin. ", "Assuming the slope is attached to a planet, so that 'down' is meaningful.\nThe force of gravity generated by the planet pulling down on the ball has a net effect at the centre of mass, assumed to be in the middle of the ball (and an opposite effect at the centre of the planet).\nAt the point where the ball touches the slope, the normals to the two surfaces are opposite. Since the ball and the slope are assumed solid and unyielding, the EM force generates a net effect in the normal direction that prevents the ball and slope penetrating (equal and opposite on the ball and the planet). The frictional component, which is here assumed to be negligible, would act in the tangent plane and would oppose motion.\nBecause your ball is a perfect sphere, the normal force passes straight through the middle of the ball and so generates no torque. Therefore, the ball's spin will not change.\nHowever. The opposite normal force misses the centre of the planet. As a result, a torque will be generated on the planet and its spin will change.", "You're getting a lot of answers regarding the \"friction\" aspect, so here's one regarding the \"ball\" aspect, as this is also important. If you think about it, all surfaces on the ball are orthogonal (perpendicular) to the center of mass, so when any surface (without friction) hits the ball, it is pushing down a line through the center of mass, which wouldn't rotate it.\n\nLets just say, theoretically, you had a perfectly round sphere. I mean, PERFECTLY round, down to a subatomic level. Assuming everything else in the world was normal, there'd be no conceivable way to rotate the ball at all. The reason for this is there is no way to exert a force on the ball in a direction other than through the center mass.\n\nFor most other objects, because there is a surface that is not perpendicular to center mass (cubes, prisms, etc), even without friction they can be rotated.", "I drew out the 2 situations of a ball moving down a slope with and without friction. \n_URL_1_\n\nI also included a free-body diagram. \n_URL_0_\n", "Not an answer, but slightly related: In billiards (pool, snooker etc) you very often do or do not put some spin on the cue ball, by hitting the cue ball off center (low, high, left, right and combinations of that) and/or by elevating the queue. This spin has a given and intended axis. Now after the ball has slipped for some distance over the cloth and/or has hit other balls or cushions, there will be some addition or substraction of spin energy with different axes. You use these effects to let the cue ball or object balls curve on the cloth or change the angle the balls come back. \n\nWhen I was young (before the advent of the internet) I've asked many physicians, how one ball can \"rotate around multiple axes at the same time\". \n\nThe simple answer that blew my mind back then: There aren't multiple axes (of course), but the axis of rotation *tilts*. When the ball stops slipping, i.e. rolls over the cloth, but still has some \"[english](_URL_0_)\", there is a [small circle](_URL_1_) on which the ball rolls on the cloth. \n\nThis effect might be observable at bowling, but at billards it is very hard to see how a ball rotates exactly. (edit: cue balls didn't have the television dots back in the day.) I realized how this works while I had a terrestrial globe in my hands. ", "The ball would still rotate... but for complex fluid dynamic reasons. If we assume truly no friction (including air resistance) but that we are not in a vacuum) what we are going to see is this. As the ball moves down the hill a vortex forms behind it from the motion of the air around the laterally moving ball. This vortex would ordinarily be symetrical (if we through the ball through the air for example). However the ground is going to interfere with the pattern. Air going over the top of the ball will have freer movement than the flow going over the bottom of the ball which is blocked by the ground. All things being equal this means that the top of the ball is going to experience a slightly smaller vortex than the bottom of the ball. That means there will be a vacuum force applied to the bottom of the ball in the back, which will start it spinning (slowly).", "Let's float a ball in space. What happens to it? If it lacks kinetic energy, it will just sit there.\n\nWhat happens if you poke it? You will give it kinetic energy, but only in the direction opposite of where it was poked. In addition, the component of the force that you used that was not pointing directly toward the center of the ball, will impart a torque proportional to the magnitude of force and the constant of friction. \n\nIf you let the constant of friction be zero, then only the component of force pointing directly toward the center of the ball \"counts\". Since this causes a translation, you can translate the ball. However, it will never spin without a torque. \n\nA sphere might be the only shape with this constraint. Ovals have normals that don't point toward the center. Same with squares, N-gons, arbitrary shapes, etc. ", "A ball that is not perfectly rigid would slightly flatten as gravity pressed it into the slide. If the slide curved up or down, one edge of the flattened part would have more off-center force on it and make the ball spin a little.", "Yes, the ball would still spin, if it were already spinning. But it would not spin faster. A frictionless world would have a hard time applying a torque to anything spherical, as the only normal force can be applied directly pointing at the center of mass." ]

[ "Because construction has changed to be a lot less labor intensive in 80 years. In the '30s, there were lots of jobs for unskilled laborers, now it's a few trained guys running machines.", "We did. It was called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, it was way too small, and even so it was a huge success in jumpstaring the economy after the 2008 crash. ", "Something else to consider is that the WPA jobs were not in any way meeting the safety standards of today. Numerous workers died participating in the program, it paid almost no money (certainly not a \"living wage\") and relied on the need to build massive quantities of infrastructure with unskilled labor, which is no longer really possible.\n\n People were desperate during the depression because if they didn't work, they would die of starvation, that just isn't the case any more. Your life might suck in comparison to the average American, but the government will keep you alive.", "No politician wants to be the one to say they'll increase taxes to pay for it.\n\nExcept...\n\nI know Bernie Sanders already appears on almost every political thread but he has in fact made a huge infrastructure repair program a part of his campaign. It is costly, which I think is the reason it's politically unfavourable right now, but it would provide millions of well-paid jobs. I can't think of any other candidate running for president who has called for such a thing. \n\n_URL_0_", "(1) Very expensive. Already have $13T in debt.\n(2) There really aren't a lot of \"Shovel-Ready\" projects out there. If you said today \"We want to spend $20B on WPA-type projects,\" you would put a few people to work immediately figuring out what those projects should be, then a few more people (largely engineers and architects) figuring out how they should be designed and, finally, a year or two later, people working to build those projects.\n\n(3) But, the skills needed to build those projects probably don't really match up well with the skills available in the job markets.\n\nIn the '30s, there were LOTS more people unemployed (and skills were not as specialized as today), so (3) wasn't really an issue. Nobody cared about (1). And, on (2), the depression lasted long enough that it wasn't an issue.", "You mean...America Works?", "I am a little late to the show but I think it is important to realize that most people would not be willing to do the kind of work or live in the kind of conditions that WPA workers did in the 1930's. Another problem would be pay. Sources I kind find say the average salary was around 40 dollars a month. This would translate to around 600 dollars a month in current dollars. Even considering the value of the housing and basic medical care provided these would be extremely substandard wages. TLDR from an idiots perspective it doesn't seems likely that we could reproduce the exploits of the WPA", "I think it's funny when people want the government to supply jobs for everyone. Don't they realize that the government sucks at doing anything efficiently? How many departments of paper pushers would they need to create to manage all this shit? It's like the federal government is staffed by Vogons.", "Because shitbag Republicans want to keep all the money for their super rich campaign donors, and don't care if poor folks lives suck and our roads and bridges fall apart.", "In addition to what's been said already, imagine a politician trying to call for this in the modern day. How many milliseconds would it take for them to be drowned in a sea of \"SOCIALIST! SOCIALIST!\"?" ]

[ "Also, the President only eats high quality airport food, not those crappy little airport venders. ", "The President flies in a B747 and also a C-17 which carries his motorcade. He flies into airfields that have 6,000'+ runways to accommodate aircraft of this scale, and have locations on the tarmac where these aircraft can be stored during his visit. \n\nIt is also important that the President fly into the closest practical airport as traveling on the ground is far more of a security problem than flying." ]

[ "Have you read any of our economic history stuff, or are you otherwise generally interested in economics? Economics/economic history can be a highly political field, swinging both ways. I'm curious if you have noticed bias or slant in that coverage here? (I've kinda got my own opinion already on that but I'm curious about yours.) It might be a \"purer\" example for looking at the politics here than our history coverage involving religious and ethnic/racial history. ", "It is said that all history is biased by the perspective of the historian.\n\nYou assert that there seems to be a consistent ‘left wing’ bias in responses on this sub-reddit from flared users.\n\nYou may be right (though I don’t think I see a very strong such bias), and I appreciate your example of the evil Tories who would drown immigrants in the Channel, however, one example does not make a trend.\n\nIt would be very interesting if you were able to survey (in some ‘objective’ scoring system) a sizable sample of flared responses and see if evidence of consistent bias could be detected, and how strong it was.\n\nIt may be that there is such a bias. The Academy is generally felt to be dominated by ‘left wing’ views, and a large number of flares are ‘in the Academy’ in one way or another.\n\nI think that the biases I suspect I detect in flared user responses are more biases towards iconoclasm (with a small i) and ‘recentism’.\n\nIconoclasm with a large I, attacking or rejecting cherished beliefs and institutions or the established values of a culture, is a very prevalent disposition these days (and seems ‘left wing’ to ‘conservatives’, who value tradition and the established beliefs and values). Overt Iconoclasm is easier to detect in the questions, and non-flared responses on r/AskHistorians, than in the flared responses (I believe). However, historians have a sort of built-in tendency towards small i iconoclasm. One is less likely to get published (or to attract readers) if one writes a history which says “I pretty much agree totally with the last historian who wrote on this topic”. One generally has to disagree on something, or re-interpret something. (Of course there are other types of ‘doing history’ where this does not apply – where one is writing the first history on a topic, for example.)\n\nThis natural need (in the Academy in particular) to be a ‘critic’, or have a ‘new interpretation’, can lead to the bias of ‘recentism’, where, to the historian, the most recent interpretation is the one most referenced. It is the most ‘exciting’, so the biases of more recent historians (which also might well most closely address the issues and cultural concerns of today), become preferenced over the biases of the older histories.\n\nAnyway, that’s my take on it.\n\nIf you have the interest and time to try to do some analysis of flared responses for bias, I think it would be fascinating.\n", " > an echo chamber of only one view is unhealthy. Now, not all views are valid but there are more debatable opinions around than the kind of one-sided pro left wing narrative pushed here.\n\nI don't believe any of the mods want to discourage a broader selection of ideas and views. **Be the change you want to see**. \n\n*****\n\n\n > Assuming for the sake of discussion that the group is biased in a certain direction, can they self regulate? Who will regulate who?\n\nHow do we identify 'successful' self-regulation in the first place? It's meaningless to poke at a problem when it's so unclear how we might even begin to recognize what the solution looks like at all, let alone how we might possibly derive it. \n\n > A very important question is, do you even care about the issue of left wing bias? Because simply, whenever that issue is explored, you always find some enthusiastic supporters in favor of the bias with some weak pretension that it's simply being factual.\n\nIn the interests of disclosure, my background is in engineering and archaeology, not history. However the term 'left-wing bias' always scares me because it's so often followed by a profound ignorance of the subject being criticized. That is not to say this is the case here by any means, but it is to say that accusations of leftist bias cannot always be treated properly. \n\nWe must also define what a 'left-wing bias' entails in the context of history, because this is not at all a clear accusation. \n\n > By being overtly concerned about how your history will be used by enemy political tribes, you are reinforcing your own tribalism, and even on the issue of political narratives, you are discounting the potential for harm that could be used by people who are in your political tribe, or agree with it on this subject, using the historical narrative you constructed.\n\nIt's here that I feel you may be misunderstanding the nature of academia. Everyone in the ivory tower has seen their share of tribalism and of course many of those divisions are insulated from broader public awareness. But I have found that academic tribalism towards individual narratives is in general vastly overstated. An academic who dogmatically holds to one narrative for their entire career becomes no more than a relic very soon. Good academics almost always shift their positions at least slightly as the field changes and matures.\n\nIt would also be a mistaken argument that academics do not try to account for the usage of their narratives. The language of proposals and their social ramifications are very important criteria in academic works. One of the most common criticisms of new works is that authors have failed to properly uphold their social duties with released works on that basis. The social sciences failed in that duty for many years and millions of people suffered as a result. It would be nothing short of negligent to forget our duty to ensure the narrative does not do the harm our fields have done in the past. This is a large component of the \"PC\" culture so many lament on reddit.\n\nAs you say, an extremist can take a well-constructed narrative and stretch it beyond its extreme. That is entirely true, but the point of regulated narratives are to prevent the historical abuses our subjects suffered as a result of narratives. Many groups in the 19th and 20th centuries languished for years under the burdens of scientific racism and eugenics. They were considered literally subhuman and segregated and genuinely oppressed by people who used the sciences to justify their hideous beliefs. Today, studies of indigenous drug abuse run the risk of justifying the 'theft' of indigenous children by child protection agencies. \n\n > Askhistorians add big warning signs about any remotely politically related issue (Guns Germs and Steel for example more than qualifies) that the answers might come with strong bias and be motivated by bias.\n\nI'm much more a fan of Guns, Germs, and Steel than many people here and freely admit there is bias against it. Regardless, much of the 'academic bias' people claim against it is simply that anyone educated in the areas can easily see tremendous and fundamental flaws in his books. ", "Lower in the thread you quoted from the [point is made](_URL_0_) that objectivity, accuracy, and neutrality are separate dimensions. After that observation, it is argued that historians try to be objective and accurate, but don't have to be neutral. \n\nI think your essay would have benefited from making a similar distinction. It seems to me you conflating these issues into the single word \"bias\" makes your argument a bit muddied. ", "Would you mind linking to a couple of comments that you find especially egregious? These posts are awfully wordy, but it's difficult to zero in on exactly what you're taking issue with here.", " > Politics are full of biases and inaccuracies, you should try to reduce your political biases, not reinforce them.\n\nYou bring up a lot of issues, but it's somewhat difficult to parse which comments are your own and which belong to /u/alriclofgar. If you took his/her comments to mean that flairs and moderators are using their historical knowledge to further specific political agendas, and especially leftwing political agendas, I think you've misread the point.\n\nAs an early medievalist, I'm familiar with the work of Ward-Perkins, as well as the general tenor of alric's comments on this sub. Alric's point is that we *can't* reduce our political biases, or perhaps more accurately stated, historical narratives *always* have political implications. Ward-Perkins wants to approach his work on an atheoretical, apolitical basis ... but as such, he ends up reinforcing the status quo. In particular, he argues that uncontrolled immigration into the Roman Empire destroyed antique civilization. This argument implicitly encourages its readers to support imperial, colonizing government and to obstruct immigration—if possible, even to expel the immigrants who threaten the state, reckoned as dangerous for the sole crime of being immigrants.\n\nAlric's point wasn't that we should dismiss WP's conclusions because good historians should be anti-imperialist, pro-immigration rightwingers. Uncontrolled immigration really may have felled the Roman state and led to a collapse of civilization. (But contrast the arguments of Chris Wickham, who argues that the collapse of the super elite actually benefitted the lower classes whom had previously been exploited—obviously an argument based on its own set of biases.) WP is a serious scholar, not a political pundit, and his conclusions deserve to be assessed for the evidence he selects and how he uses it—i.e. the method and theory behind his selection and use of evidence (and if you don't think the selection of evidence has a theoretical basis, [count how many times the ball gets passed](_URL_0_)).\n\nBeing aware of the political implications of our work is how we stay honest as historians. WP made an argument that had strong political implications at the time when it was written, and continues to have strong implications today. Many historians in such a situation would opt to remind their readers about the historical particulars that they're dealing with—why the depredations of Germanic immigrants were historically unique and should not be extrapolated to suggest that all immigrants are equally as dangerous. I think that's honest historical work, *especially* in a context where a public unfamiliar with historical theory and method is likely to see it (such as on AskHistorians, but also in popularly-oriented books like WP's *Fall of Rome*). Two fine examples that come immediately to mind are Guy Halsall and Richard Bulliet. Both have been unwavering in their engagements with potentially political narratives, but both have been very up front about these implications with their public audiences. Ideally, this helps the public better understand the past, and perhaps even to make better informed comparisons with the present.\n\nSo can we add big warning signs about any remotely politically issue? Not at all. Every post on AskHistorians is potentially political—based on the reader. (I would, for example, never have anticipated alric's comments to lead to such a general critique of this sub.) All we can do is try to reduce some of the more insiduous implications before someone takes them for granted. And with regard to the one-view echo chamber, I'd chime in with /u/AlotOfReading, who recommends being the change you want to see. Certainly I wouldn't expect someone who hasn't read WP to critique alric's arguments, but they could nevertheless raise further questions, push for alternative sources and interpretations. WP's *Fall of Rome* is in some ways a very mundane book, grist for the mill. Where it gets exciting is when you see it as part of a larger conversation among historians debating the meaning of civilization, the measures we should use to discuss its rise and fall, the potential for individuals to affect change in their societies, and even the limits of historical knowledge. Pretty exciting stuff, overall, and in the end politics is only a very small and superficial part of it.", "Removing thread for soapboxing. There is in fact nothing wrong with asking a question about bias and how historians deal with it. However you're active responses to questions that clearly and overtly state that you want to push a perspective on the subject violates our rules on such posts.", "I slept through something here - my apologies for coming to this late. But I saw my posts about politics were being referenced, and thought I should clarify what I mean in them.\n\n/u/textandtrowel summed up much of what I meant to say in last month's post about politics, but he stopped a bit short of my full intent. If I may clarify (and forgive me if, not being able to see the original comments, this doesn't quite address the OP's concerns):\n\nConversations about bias usually deal with questions of accuracy. The question is usually: should we strip politics out of our history in order to be more objective, accurate, and true?\n\nI think that's the wrong question, for two reasons.\n\nThe first is that, as /u/textandtrowel ably summed up, we can't strip out biases. When we do, we often end up just hiding our politics behind a mask of objectivity, as you can see in Wickham's not so subtle Marxism (to use textandtrowel's counter example). I want to stop short of saying that my example, WP, is hiding a right-wing agenda in his work, because I don't know him. But I *will* say that, intent aside, his work does package immense support for a right-wing politicized distortion of known historical facts behind a guise of (self-styled) disinterested objectivity. Regardless of WP's good faith and integrity as a scholar (and he is a good scholar, and a good man by all accounts), his work could hardly be more politically slanted if it tried - it's *not* objective, even though it claims to be.\n\nThat's reason #1: when we claim to be *not* political, we fail. Because history can't escape the contemporary political context and debates of the era in which it was written; history is always correct to *someone's* politics.\n\n**But that was not my principle point.** My principle point was that we have a moral imperative when we write, and this moral imperative is more important than our equally real responsibility to be truthful. When we try to not be political, we - at best - end up making it hard for people to read our political biases. At worst, we create a story about the past that *appears* to be objective but isn't. That appearance of objectivity is powerful, because it makes political bias look like fact. And when political bias looks like fact, you can use that 'truth' to convince unwary readers to swallow your politics without realizing they're being had.\n\nI think this is precisely your fear, OP.\n\nSo how do I get from that point to saying that history *should* be political, and why do I say this is a moral issue?\n\nWhen we write, people *will* use what we write to convince themselves and others about how the world works. If I write that 6th and 7th century Anglo-Saxon society believed that men and women were fundamentally different, that there were no overlaps between their gendered roles in society, that male political identity was set up in contrast to female domesticity and that only men carried weapons and participated in warrior society, MRAs will find in my papers proof that feminism is a modern agenda that goes against the original /traditional values of English-speaking people. Similarly, if I write that Anglo-Saxon society was racially pure and Germanic, and not a mixture of many different peoples and cultures, white supremacists will read my work as a confirmation of their racism. If instead I write that the culture I study was multicultural, that women also bore arms and could be the social equivalents of men, modern feminists will use my work to argue *against* MRAs and white supremacists. You might say that I should just write the *true* story, but each of these examples I just gave is a real argument made in each case by an excellent scholar who carefully read and cited his and her sources. Yet each of these true accounts says more than just the facts about the early middle ages - each also encodes a message that contemporary readers will appreciate and *use* for their political ends. **So I need to be convinced, when I write and publish history, that the uses to which my writing will be put - and not just the nitpicky details of my narrative - are true.**\n\nThat's the moral responsibility I see in historical writing. If I write good history, it will be used to further a political agenda - right-wing, left-wing, x-wing - something. So I need to be damned sure that I believe that the historical facts *do* support whatever agenda my writing furthers, that the big-picture politics and larger message fit the facts on the ground - because I will be morally culpable for the uses to which the stories I write are put. If children drown because of a book I wrote about the fall of the Roman empire, I'd better be certain that book was right.\n\nI'm not saying historians should rewrite the 'facts' to suit our politics, though. Sometimes - often, *always* - the past challenges our modern political categories. We have to be honest about what we find, and present it honestly in our writing. But we also have to be honest about the fact that, once that book hits the shelf, it will be put to use, and we'd better be ok with the agendas of the people who will be our books' biggest fans.\n\n**History is political, whether we like it or not, and we need to be conscious of this fact, and be sure that we're not supporting causes we find morally repugnant accidentally, or intentionally, in the work we do.**\n\nThis is in addition to, not at odds with, our responsibility to carefully and thoughtfully evaluate evidence, to support our claims with citations and evidence, to be fair minded and open minded, to promote transparency in our arguments to allow others to understand how we came to our conclusions and critique our assumptions and interpretations, and to consider all the evidence as a whole instead of selectively cherry-picking the bits and pieces that support our spin. But we have to go one better than just being accurate. We also have to be socially conscious because, whether we like it or not, people will read political implications into our work (as you, OP, have into my own writing here).\n\nOf course, this is just my take. I don't represent all, or probably even most, of the other flaired users. My (known) biases include my Christian faith, general social conservatism and political progressivism (no, that's not a contradiction), reliance on poststructuralist, posthuman, and phenomenological theoretical models, and firm belief that we can only access the past by digging deeply into the present (since all our sources exist now, not in the past). And ultimately, my conviction that, as a moral human being, I have a responsibility to tell the truth and to consider the implications of my actions on the lives of people around me - which includes the effects of my history on the world.\n\nIf that boils down to 'history that supports immigration controls is badhistory,' I apologize - that's so much less than what I'm trying to say." ]

[ "As said by others, the answer to your title is yes, but 'hot enough to immediately turn water into a gas state can it get enough oxygen to survive' is a big no. \n\nIf you're interesting in seeing a fire underwater, check out [magnesium burning under water](_URL_0_). \n\n", "Flames can exist underwater. Turning the water to gas isn't going to help, but some reactions can supply their own oxygen. A couple examples would be thermite reactions (2Al + Fe2O3 -- > 2Fe + Al2O3) or ignition of gunpowder where the oxygen is carried by something like KNO3 (I can't for the life of me remember all the parts of that reaction though)" ]

[ "It's just like wind chill in reverse. Still air can form a layer near a solid object that slows the transfer of heat but moving air reduces that effect.", "You'll have to understand conduction vs. convection to understand this.\n\nConduction is just the transfer of energy through a stable, still medium. Like a metal pot on a hot stove heating up. The same thing happens in air and water.\n\nConvection is the transfer of energy by a *circulating medium*. I really like water with floating ice as an example. Water near the surface is cooled by the ice and sinks (more dense), and warmer water moves up to replace it. Because of this circulation (convection), warmer water is always in contact with the ice and it melts faster. Without circulation the water around the ice would be \"ice-cold\", as you can imagine, and the ice melts more slowly. In water, this difference is around 5-10x longer when there's no convection.\n\nYour oven works the same way, and the food is the \"ice\". Where the example differs is the energy is coming from outside the system (in the oven case), so convection ovens are even better because you can put more energy into the food with faster air flow (more air at the same temp inherently carries more energy to your food).", "It is often assumed that moving air only cools an object. This is untrue. Moving air transfers heat more efficiently. This effect can help with either cooling or heating an object. It mostly depends on the temperature difference between the air and said object." ]

[ "This probably isn't exactly how they do it computationally, but intuitively you could do this:\n\nEvery number can be uniquely factored into primes, i.e. 10 = 2*5, 28 = 2^2*7, etc. \n\nIf a number is prime it only has one factor, itself. If a number is composite, it is made of of 2 or more prime factors. \n\nIt's not too difficult to see that a composite number, call it n, has some factor less than sqrt(n). So all you have to do is divide n by all the primes less than sqrt(n). \n\nIf you don't get a whole number for any of those divisions n is prime.", "For very large prime numbers we use probabilistic tests like Fermat's test or Miller-Rabin and others.\n\nThe largest known primes are at the moment Mersenne Primes and they are found primarily by using the Lucas–Lehmer primality test.\n(And other algorithms in a certain context.)\n\nEDIT: A Miller-Rabin test e.g. will not give us a 100% accurate answer, but we can \"tweak\" the algorithm to give us a very good accuracy.\n\nEDIT2: If we really want to be 100% sure we can do an expensive trial division, but that takes some time.", "Wrote an honors thesis on this.\n\nFirst, start with Fermat's Little Theorem: (x^(p-1) - 1)/x is a whole number if (but not only if) p is prime.\n\nThe contrapositive statement: \"p is not prime if (x^(p-1)-1)/x is not an integer\" identifies most composite numbers in one test. But there are numbers - called Carmichael numbers - that fool this test. 1729 = 7 * 13 * 19 is one such number - (4^1728 - 1) is a multiple of 1729, and this is true if you replace 4 with any whole number that isn't a multiple of 7, 13 or 19.\n\nSecondly, you hunt for Carmichael numbers by the following method: You hunt for a square root of 1, modulo p, that is not equal to -1 or +1. (That means you look for x such that x^2-1 is a multiple of p, but neither x-1 nor x+1 is a multiple of p). For 1729, an example of such a square root would be 246. 246^2 - 1 = 35 * 1729.\n\nThe existence of such a square root enables you to find a proper factor of p.\n\nThe way to do this is to consider each of x^1728, x^(1728/2), x^(1728/4), x^(1728/8)... until you are raising x to an odd power for each of dozens of values of x. There is a theorem that if p is prime, no more than 1 in 4 possible values of x will fail to have a proper square root of x in this series.\n\n\nThis provides a practical test that allows you to probabalistically test if a number is prime. PROVING it is prime beyond a sliver of doubt then requires elliptic curve primality proving - where you construct a mathematical group (the abstract algebra concept of group) of points with certain properties on a curve of the form y^2 = x^3 + ax + b and define an operation on those points. This allows you to reduce the problem of 'is p prime' to be equivalent to 'is p1 prime' for a number p1 with p1 < p^0.5. Repeated iteration of this allows you to then get to a number small enough to check it against a table of known primes (in practice, usually once you get under 100 billion you just do this)." ]

[ "Primarily, the umpires make decisions based on their observations and only refer to technology either at critical moments (e.g. a score) or when they are uncertain and want a review. This keeps the game moving and so keeps the crowd engaged (less of an issue in something like American Football but an you imagine if every decision in a basketball game was only made as a result of referring to footage of each incident? \n\nAlso you need someone on the field to administer/enforce the laws of the game in question - even if they are made via technology. How else would the decisions be passed down? If, for example, a player was sent off - how do you make sure they leave the playing area? \nTL:DR - Basically they are needed to control the game and enforce the rules.", "\"why does baseball do this\" can largely be answered by \"tradition\" in 90% of cases.\n\nIt's always been that way so that's how it needs to be. It would also change the game dramatically compared to lower levels of play where the cameras aren't around." ]

[ "Because Armalite Arms did not get the contract to supply the US military", "The difference between an AR-15 and an M-16 is due to legal requirements. Basically in order to be allowed to sell semi-automatic rifles on the American market it can not be trivial to convert it into an automatic rifle. Usually this means that you need to redesign the trigger group, receiver and bolt carrier in order to convert it which is usually harder then building a gun from scratch. The AR-15 is built with these requirements. However the army wanted a fully automatic rifle. So the M-16 were designed which were fully automatic. However in order to still make the AR-15 legal Armalite did some minor changes to the dimensions so that the major components of an M-16 would not fit into an AR-15. Thus the legal requirements for selling the AR-15 in America as a semi-automatic rifle were still met. At least as far as the federal authorities are concerned it is hard to convert the AR-15 into a fully automatic rifle even if components for M-16 are available." ]

[ "Google uses a combination of techniques. As /u/sergloromandia mentioned, some of the buildings (especially landmarks) are hand modeled by both professional modelers employed by Google and users who want to add a particular model to the map.\n\nHowever, the vast majority of models are automatically generated using data from aerial images taken at a 45 degree angle as well as data from their street view cars. These images are fed into a computer algorithm that is able to automatically figure out the shape of a building and create a 3D model. They actually created a short [blogpost](_URL_1_) and [video](_URL_0_) about the process in 2012.", "They used to allow user submissions using SketchUp, they even held contests, but they have since ended that. Now, it's all done by software, you fly around cities taking hundreds of high-resolution photos, plug then into a stitching software, and voila. \n \n[Here is C3 technologies (which Apple bought and uses for their 3D Maps) talking about it.](_URL_0_). \n \nAlso, I don't know what's up with some of Google's 3D modeled cities, by a lot have a purple tint to them, for example NYC: [Apple](_URL_1_) vs [Google](_URL_2_).", "Google gets the public to do it.\n\nUsers can either create a accurate model in Sketchup (this is done for many famous or land mark buildings) and place it on Google Earth.\n\nOr they can use a streamlined tool, which allows them to create a rough model with the dimensions of the building (most buildings are close enough to simple boxes) and then project aerial & satellite imagery onto each face (with enough angles you can end up with a rough version of the building, although it often appears warped and skewed). " ]

[ "A simple explanation \n\n_URL_0_", "To simplify it a little more, like cos said, the first thing it does is POST. The POST test is basically a head count of necessary parts, or a roll call. \n\n\"CPU, you here?\" \n\n\"Yep.\"\n\n\"Do we have a video output?\" \n\n\"Over here!\" \n\n\"What about RAM, we got RAM?\" \n\n\"2Gigs reporting in.\" \"\n\n\"Where's keyboard? Do we have input?\"\n\n....\n\n\"Keyboard?\"\n\n.... \n\n\"Crap. We've got a problem. Stop everything! Where the hell is the keyboard? Monitor, put an error up.\"\n\nIf everything's ready and can talk back and forth, it moves to the boot loader." ]

[ "Light travels at over 670 million miles per hour. It's fair to say that the glow would disappear instantly, just as it does when you turn off a lightbulb in a room.", "\"light pollution\" does not mean light trapped in the atmosphere like smog. ", "Your eyes take a few minutes to adjust to the darkness, but otherwise yes.", "An interesting anecdote, during a major power outage in southern california, many people were able to see the milky way for the first time ever.", "If it helps, you can ordinarily see the Milky Way fine in a clear night sky away from cities. \n\n > When observing the night sky, the term \"Milky Way\" is limited to the hazy band of white light some 30 degrees wide arcing across the sky\n\n > It is readily visible when the limiting magnitude is +5.1 or better, while showing a great deal of detail at +6.1.\n\n > This makes the Milky Way difficult to see from any brightly lit urban or suburban location but very prominent when viewed from a rural area when the moon is below the horizon.\n\n_URL_0_ " ]

[ "Production of the sex hormones testosterone/estrogen/progesterone contribute to secondary sex characteristics; in males one of those is the deepening of the voice. In a sense a deeper voice could signal a mate capable of reproduction. \n\nBabies have also been proven in studies to better recognize high pitched voices (Moms, females) than lower ones. ", "[Yes, at least women](_URL_0_)\n\nIn the study referenced above, women whose faces were judged more attractive also tended to have voices that were judged to be more attractive. \n\nEDIT: Changed 'aces' to 'faces'", "Yes, to the extent that voices are indicative of at least one dimension of attractiveness. \n\nMen rate female voices indicative of smaller body frame as more attractive. Women rate male voices indicative of larger body frame as more attractive.\n\nIt is well documented that men find women with smaller frame sizes more attractive and that women find men with larger frame sizes more attractive.\n\nXu Y, Lee A, Wu W-L, Liu X, Birkholz P (2013) Human Vocal Attractiveness as Signaled by Body Size Projection. PLoS ONE 8(4): e62397. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062397\n\nVarious other studies point to more mating options for women with high voices and men with low voices, higher degrees of mate guarding toward these groups, and more offspring for these groups.\n\n_URL_0_", "Is there any evidence to suggest confirmation bias towards those we see as attractive? i.e. something along the lines of, 'that person looks attractive, I therefore think that person's voice is also attractive.'", "There was a study a few years ago that showed that the upper body strength of males was evident in their voices.\n\nArticle:\n_URL_0_\n\nStudy:\n_URL_1_", "I watched a documentary called The Science of Sex Appeal. They did a brief part where they talked about the importance of voice in sex appeal. They said that the attractiveness of a man's voice to a woman seems to depend on where she is in her menstrual cycle. For example, when a woman is ovulating, I believe she tends to prefer men with deeper voices because it indicates fertility (testosterone levels), and whenever a woman is not ovulating, she tends to prefer men with higher, more feminine voices. Apparently men can also detect when a woman is ovulating based on her voice, and that is when they find women the most attractive.\n\n\nI'm just speaking from memory here, so some of the information might be swapped around.", "Ovulation cycle also plays a role in the perception of attractiveness in a voice. women's voices at peak fertility were rated as more attractive then the voices of women during menstruation.\n\nSource: Back in college I took a course on Biology of Sex and Evolution and our professor did a study on this." ]

[ "Probably a variety of sources, [but isotope testing points to asteroid impacts for at least part of it.](_URL_0_)\n\nAlso, that video is silly. ", "Most likely asteroids and meteors that hit earth when it was just starting to form. It was probably received in the form of ice and eventually began to melt. This is the most accepted theory but we cant know for sure.", "Planets coalesce from a disc of material surrounding a star. That disc contains a lot more than rocky dust - more hydrogen than anything, as well as other gasses. The inner planets are rockier because \"volatile\" materials like water and methane cannot condense (become liquid) at the low pressures and high temperatures found near the star. As these planets gather all of the rocky material together through gravity, they are still orbiting in the soup of gasses. The rocky planets with enough gravity start gathering an atmosphere from the soup, including water.\n\nAnd yes, water that froze in the outer solar system did impact the young Earth's rocky surface. There's still a lot of icy asteroids in the Kuiper belt (beyond Neptune) and the Oort cloud (way beyond that)." ]

[ "One horse leg on average holds up 300 pounds of horse and is used to surviving a fuckload of punishment, because running is what horses *do*. So while you see stories of some dog using a prosthetic or getting a cast, that's because they lay down most of the time, are relatively light for their size, and have enough shit to do without running. A horse would break a prosthetic in a week, and it would be absolute torture to many to keep them from running for 3 months. ", "When the horse is propped up by a sling to take pressure off the leg, they will slowly suffocate because of the lack of expansion in their ribcage.", "A good combination of the previous answers, the weight bearing, the infection, and then just the behavior of the horse. We're talking a creature anywhere from 700-1800 pounds that's a prey animal. Confining them for long periods of time isn't the same as putting your 50 pound dog in a crate. They will randomly freak out and potentially hurt themselves worse. In addition, they're not an animal you can just take to any vet. They need specialized equipment and space, usually found at agricultural centered universities, and it's expensive with no guarantee of success. ", "When a horse breaks a leg, it's not clean. Imagine breaking a twig, it breaks in two.\n\nNow, imagine breaking glass. It shatters. What is easier to repair?\n\nNow put that on a horse, factor in its size, then factor in the cost. I've heard it can be a long endeavor.\n\nHere is an article\n\n_URL_0_", "Horses are very heavy and need to be on their feet 23 hours a day, moving for most of it, for both their mental and physical health. Trying to heal a broken leg means using slings to hold the horse upright, fighting poor circulation from not enough movement, and trying to prevent hundreds of secondary issues from offloading roughly 300 pounds of weight onto bands/the other legs/a cast. Plus, a running horse will put thousands of pounds through a leg bone... You need it to heal very strong. It is possible to do in this day and age, but extremely expensive and time consuming, and not very pleasant for the horse. It's definitely not an option for an average horse owner, and is generally only tried for very valuable stallions, where you can recover some of that money through breeding. ", "I'm sorry but most of the explanations on here or partially or completely wrong. I am a vet student focused on equine medicine and was just recently discussing this with one of my professors who is a renowned equine surgeon and has cut open more horses than most people have ever seen.\n\nThere are several reasons:\n\n1. Horses are pretty weird anatomically - they have no muscles below the knee. Part of their ability to run super fast is this really incredible tendon/ligament system - muscles higher on the body load the tendons and ligaments with huge amounts of power (picture a spring). Because of this, the bones in their lower leg (which is almost always where they break) are relatively very thin but also generating massive power. This ratio is much more extreme in the horse than other animals, so it means that solving it with a few pins like you might in other animals won't do the trick. In addition, this massive power makes it more likely that the horse will basically shatter the bone rather than just a simple break or fracture . Also, they're just really big.\n\n2. u/cantcountnoaccount described foundering well - if the horse can't move his legs around, he can't circulate blood through properly and it somewhat pools in the hoof and the attachments of the hoof to the bottom of the leg weaken. Compare this to a human or dog, where we can wiggle our toes and whatnot to help move circulation through - remember, horses have no muscles below the knee.\n\n3. Trying to keep a horse from moving around for any extended period of time is a nightmare. There's a saying I heard that all horses have two goals in life: homicide and suicide. They will colic and die if a bird looks at them wrong. In addition to the possibility of foundering, a horse is pretty likely to just lose his marbles if you try to keep them sedentary for too long - they may try to climb out of their stall, break whatever apparatus they're in, colic (severe and sometimes fatal stomach ache), get ulcers and whatever else. You can't force them to lay on their side for very long at all - they're too heavy and will have difficulty breathing and damage nerves.\n\nWhen deciding whether or not to save an animal, quality of life must always be considered. A dog may do perfectly well and have a wonderful life in a cast for a while and then with a moderate limp - this is not true for horses. Further, cost can be very prohibitive; it's worth it for very very expensive horses (think Barbaro) but for your average pleasure horse, the cost and pain is just not worth it or generally feasible.", "Horses with fractures usually heal ok with a lot of slow, careful rehab (6mos to a a year of stall rest, a couple years of confinement in small spaces, limited free time outside, lots of wrapping - basically pony jail). Even a complete break can be pinned and usually healed with the above treatment, plus being suspended in a sling. Unfortunately, a shattered leg bone is not feasible to repair. It cannot be glued back together strongly (at least not with out current medical technology). Lots of horse leg fractures are treated and healed, some complete breaks are healed, but shattered legs are a death sentence.\n\nThe ability to heal depends on how badly the bone is broken, but moreso the attitude of the horse itself. Few horses can withstand pony jail without breaking down mentally (they get depressed, ulcers, lowered immune systems and sometimes lose their patience and freak out). They don't generally understand the reasoning behind their confinement, but some will stoically accept that pain and confinement is the new norm.\n\nBone is strong in compression but really weak in torsion. Horses don't run in straight lines in free play - they spin, buck, rear and kick. When a horse is allowed to be a horse after coming off confinement, there is always a risk they will rebreak it, and worse than than before. You can put them through physio to keep them safely active, but ultimately when they run loose they will play. ", "Oh, a question I can answer!\n\nIt's a combination of issues with treatment, and with the expense of treatment. /u/cdb03b got it right when they mentioned that it's incredibly difficult to get a broken bone to heal correctly in a horse, and that the horse would never have the full use of its leg afterward. Part of it is the density of the bone, and part of it is, as /u/cantcountnoaccount pointed out, the circulatory system of a horse is dependent on pressure and release from the hooves in order to keep blood circulating properly throughout all of their limbs (which is part of what makes them so prone to infection when they lose use of one of those limbs).\n\nThe physical difficulty of getting an isolated horse bone to heal well is what leads to the difficulty in treating it. It's incredibly physiologically stressful on the horse. Healthy horses spend like 18-22 hours of a given day standing on all four legs and meandering. If a horse breaks its leg, it must be literally immobilized for weeks in order to not put *any* weight on the leg, until the healing process is stable. But horses who cannot stand, who are kept laying down, develop a multitude of other problems - laminitis, difficult breathing, sores, lameness in other ligaments/tendons/muscles/etc. You'd be extinguishing a grease fire in the kitchen, only to turn around and realize the wildfire from the forest had consumed the rest of your house.\n\nAlso, as /u/cantcountnoaccount pointed out, horses are resistant to anything containing their leg. When you put support wraps on a horse who's about to take a long trailer ride or be stabled for a while (to help with circulation when they can't walk around), a horse who has never had wraps on will spend some time kicking their legs out and high-stepping, until they figure out the wraps aren't going to hurt them. That doesn't even bring the hoof into the equation - horses with items on their feet (even if it's a boot with medicinal stuff like poultice or antibacterial soak that's making them feel better) will go to *extreme* lengths to get That Thing off their foot - kicking, stamping, flinging, chewing at their own leg. If you were going to effectively cast a horse with a broken leg, it may need its foot casted, which it would *not* like, and it'd probably need to spend the whole time sedated.\n\nAnd, lastly, you may have seen other animals with broken legs that have healed, right? Dogs, cats, etc. However, those animals don't *need* to put weight on their leg, and don't *need* it for their gait in the same way that a horse does. Cats and dogs frequently find a way to walk on three legs, but due to a horse's skeletal structure and the way they're gaited, they simply can't walk or support themselves long-term on only three legs, let alone trot/canter/pace/etc. If you were going to go to extremes and consider amputation, you'd have to look into expensive and sophisticated prosthetics. Which brings me to my last point.\n\nBut BadBalloons, you might say, haven't race horses been effectively treated for broken legs before? And this, my friend, is where it gets sad. *Yes*, you can immobilize a horse in a sling and cast its leg and treat it for the broken leg, *if* the horse has a personality type that's amenable to the treatment. However, it would require round-the-clock care, high-tech vet facilities, and lots and lots of surgeries, as well as months of recovery, only to be able to *maybe* function as a basic-level horse. The simple, sad fact of the matter is that most horse owners don't have extra hundreds of thousands of dollars lying around to treat their horse, only for it to never return to its former utility. Horses already cost high-hundreds to thousands of dollars a month. And at the end of the healing process, a showjumper is never going to be able to show at the same level, a reining horse is never going to be able to slide the same. Even if your horse is just a backyard pet, you're already spending hundreds a month on feed or waste removal. There's no reason to spend that much extra money, and probably go into debt, on a horse who can't do his job anymore. The only horses this isn't true of are racehorses, but it's hugely conditional. Racehorses are a prospecting sport - you're paying for potential, either in the horse or in their future babies. *If* your horse who broke its leg had enough potential as a stud, or to a lesser extent as a broodmare (not sure if it's worth it to breed a mare who's had a broken leg), then it's worth treating their leg because they can make up the hundreds of thousands of dollars of vet bills in stud fees or future baby sales. But there's only a few top-performing racehorses who have that much potential, at any given time.", "First of all, not all broken/fractured limbs have a poor prognosis, but a broken limb for a horse is certainly much more serious. Horses are on their legs much more than dogs/cats. Veterinarians always say dogs and cats are born with a spare leg and it's quite true.\n\nAs for horses, they only require 1-2 hours of REM sleep lying down, and they are standing the rest of the day, every day. They even get a couple more hours of \"naps\" while standing up. The importance of their legs cannot be understated. Horses can starve to death if they have sufficient joint problems preventing them from walking around to graze. A seriously broken limb is just a shortcut to that.\n\nCoupled with the fact that they are incredibly massive animals that are prone to silliness, it makes it very complicated and risky throughout the medical process - of performing surgery to align and immobilise the joint until it is healed, and finally rehabilitating the animal. To make things worse, the cost of going through that for a horse would be incredibly huge.\n\nSo, depending on the fracture, a broken limb is inherently more life-threatening to a horse than a dog/cat. Medically, it has a worse success rate and greater costs of fixing it. It means that, more often than dogs/cats, a veterinarian would simply not have a medically or economically feasible option of helping the horse other than euthanasia.\n", "My family dealt with this for one of our horses. She hadn't even broken her leg. She had gotten spoked and something ripped up her upper right leg. We spent about $2000 on med and stabling at the vet and gave her a month to heal. Unfortunately not only could they not keep the stitches in but she got an infection. \nHorses are extremely fragile for being such a large animal. Add that they are prone to mental health issues when locked inside and infection when hurt and outside, it makes putting them down when they get severely injured merciful. ", "Watched a good documentary about the 2006 Ky. derby winner Barbaro that broke his leg,and the owners tried to save his life.\"Barbaro;A nation's horse.", "Horses can't breath if they have to lie down for any significant amount of time. We raise horses and had a mare who cracked a front leg, and we managed to rig a sling in a stall and save her, but we have lost two with broken hips. Heartbreaking..one was a baby.", "because they can't stay on the other three legs long enough correctly for the 4th one to heal properly.\n\nThis also applies to elephants.", "A lot of good answers on here. The only thing I'll add is that a broken leg does not automatically require that the horse be put down. Depending on which leg and how severe the break is, they can sometimes pin it and give the horse enough function in the leg to live relatively comfortably. It will never get back to 100% again, but fairly good. These days you only see on the spot euthanasia for the most severe breaks and/or the most problematic bones. ", "My horse broke it's leg and a vet healed it, but can't ride it anymore. Like someone said, the legs don't heal well.", "Here is a handy field guide for equine medical procedures.\n\n_URL_0_", "I don't know why I browse this site for information. We've got people here telling others that their answers are wrong, and putting in their own info and claim to be experts but I have no way to verify. This place is filled with laymen trying to explain concepts probably with little to no thought put into how they acquired their information. Sure I could research and try to develop a well developed opinion of what the hell is going on but fuck that, I do plenty of that in school.\n\nI place too much trust on this site. I guess there's quora but sometimes it's no better. Sigh. ", "I've had horses for the first 20ish years of my life. (my mom was an avid horse trainer, as was I in later years. I also did horse shows for 10 or so years).\n\nHorses can't lay down easily. They can, and they do, but they weigh so much that they start crushing their internal organs. If they can't get up (due to pain in the broken leg), they will lay on those same organs for days or weeks or however long until the organs are crushed and the organ stops functioning, slowly killing the horse. \n\nThey have tiny little stick legs and weigh around 2000 pounds (907 kg) which makes it difficult to get up.\n\nSo its just a mercy killing. Be crushed by your own body weight for any number of days/weeks/months or die mercifully.\n\nSomeone said you should ctrl + f Because they, so I'm adding that in to make it easier to find.\n\nLike I said, I only know stuff from the first 20 years (I'm 33) and I don't know much from the past 10 years. I see below someone said they can put pins in and hope for the best. That's still a lot of weight to carry around on a broken leg. There are a few ways to prevent broken/chipped bones. Most people will wrap their horses legs (vet wrap, sticky, stretchy tape) or use some adjustable soft cast (like after your own cast comes off). You also make sure your field is full of rock and holes (perfect way to break legs).", "I see most people are posting giant paragraph explanations. Like you were really 5: Horses basically can't survive a broken leg and even if they did they'd be severely messed up for the rest of their lives. Even if they just get a fracture they are very likely to die from it anyway even if treated.", "As someone who's family is very involved in racing, I'm glad this thread isn't full of ill informed \"animal cruelty\" nonsense", "I had a horse who recovered from a broken leg. It was a very long, very difficult recovery, and was down to the incredible commitment of the vet and the amazing nature and will of the horse.\n\nBertie was an Irish Draught X Thoroughbred, and was about 25 when it happened, pretty old for any horse. I was on holiday, and someone had taken him for a ride without my permission, or that of the person looking after him (my sister) for me. I was told that he stumbled while cantering across a field. The vet took one look at him and decided he needed to be destroyed. My sister requested another vet. Geoff agreed to try, but admitted that saving him was incredibly remote. If nothing else the general anaesthetic that would be needed to operate, would be likely to kill a horse of his age. She told them to try. He was in theatre for hours, but he made it through. At this stage I came home and discovered what had happened. His leg was held together with more metal than bone, and the whole thing had been somewhat experimental, and we really were only at the beginning. \n\nOnce back home, we made some adaptations to his stable. He needed to stay still, for a weeks, and his big roomy stable wasn't going to work. We put a temporary wall in to cut the size in half, stopping him from being able to move about. We raised his water and feed bowls and so they, with his haynet, were at nose height. \n\nAfter almost 3 months he was allowed to start moving about. The wall was removed, though he was still tied to prevent him laying down (the strain on his leg while getting down and up again could be enough to destroy his progress) Next we moved on to walking, starting with about 20 feet, gently increasing as he became stronger. It was over a year before he was able to be turned out in the field with his friends, and another before I rode him again. Throughout it all Bertie stayed the same gentle, trusting, beautiful natured giant he had always been.\n\nGeoff (the vet) was incredible. He had fought to get Bertie treated and operated on at the amazing Animal Health Trust in Newmarket (they took him on with no charge), and Geoff never charged a penny for his time either. Geoff is a man of very few words, and most people find him a tad stand offish. After witnessing him 'dropping in on his way home' (which was nowhere near his way home) every night for over a year, I can tell you Geoff is a vet who doesn't give a toss about the owners opinions, he is only concerned about the animal, and in my books that makes him a very good vet.\n\nBertie eventually passed away 12 years later. He lived to a ridiculous age. He had been unusually quiet and laying down more than normal. I sat in his stable with him and we both knew it was the end, and shortly before Geoff arrived, Bertie had a massive heart attack. Both Geoff and I sobbed as he finally put him to sleep. I still tear up remembering him today. He was a very, very special horse.", "In grad school, I worked in a materials testing lab that just broke shit to find out how strong it was. One semester we teamed up with the vetmed school to test one of their new procedures. Full disclosure, I am not a vet so I don't know the terminology or ins and outs of the procedure, but... They were working on stabilizing the ankle? joint in older horses. The joint right above the hoof. Procedure A was the old method that worked but took longer to perform and required a longer healing time. Procedure B was the new procedure that took less time to perform and had a shorter healing time. They wanted to find out if the stabilizing in Procedure B was as strong as Procedure A. So when a horse would die (I guess) they would perform each procedure on different legs and then these twelve inch-ish sections of horse leg would show up at our lab (they stunk). We built and special fixture to cradle the legs properly and then would use our machines to apply pressure to the joint. The whole point of the story was to say that horse bones are hella-strong and super loud when they break. The bones would usually break before the stabilized joint would give out. It has been too many years ago to remember the specifics of the test (numbers, terminology, etc.) but it was a pretty neat experience.", "Horse feet are essentially them standing on one toe or finger compared to humans and other animals having the weight spread evenly. They are huge animals putting enormous weight on such a small area. When they break their legs in any place they have to put their weight onto the other three legs which puts enormous stress on them. This usually causes them to get disease in the other legs, namely founders/laminitis which is inflammation of the hoof. This is extremely painful and can cause lameness itself. So it's a never ending cycle of leg/foot pain and once the broken leg does heal the muscles have wasted to a large degree. They don't eat, they're prone to developing colic, etc. Horses are just not well put together animals", "my mother is dressage trainer and qualified for the equestrian Olympics. People are saying it's because the money. this is false! my mother has had beloved horses that had broken a leg and had to be put down. one of these horses had a $200,000 stud fee. but any way a horses can not manage to remain standing on 3 legs. their feet act as a heart extender keeping the blood flowing through their whole body with each step. to recover they have to be on all feet which is impossible for such a large animal to do. \n", "Raised horses and showed my whole life, so a self proclaimed expert here. ( with herds usually larger than 30) A horse unlike allot of other livestock is incredibly dependant upon their ability to stand, they sleep standing, they produce heat during the cold by walking around to stay warm and many other things. To a horse, a broken leg is the equivalent of a human having all 4 limbs amputated, (maybe an exageration). To most farmers, it isn't financially feasible to put a horse through the necessary rehab that only has a slim chance of them recovering, even if they do recover, they'll never walk the same. Time horses quality of life at that point is greatly diminished and offers the owner no service. It also puts on incredible amount of stress on the horse which commonly leads to fatal conditions such all foundering or colloque. So usually the most humane solution id's to put the horse down.", "The Guardian has a good article on this exact topic.\n[Broken Horse Leg](_URL_0_)\n", "Let's just be clear there are certain bones in horses legs, that if they break can be mended. Not all horses will be surely put down if a leg is broken. Not to mention the size and work and medication needed is extremely high in comparison to say a dog.", "An example of this is the racehorse Barbaro. There's a documentary of him on HBO, I think, and it was the saddest thing to watch. That family tried [EVERYTHING](_URL_0_) to save him. ", "I am so late to this conversation and this will probably be buried, but whatever.\n\nIt ENTIRELY depends on the break and how much money you want to spend. Shattered sesamoids in both front legs? The horse gets put down. Same with compound fractures of any sort or bones that are badly broken.\n\nBut some fractures DO heal, and heal quite well. Take racehorses, for example. Wise dan had multiple fractures and came back from them. Shared belief had a hip fracture and was rehabbing and back in race training when he died of colic. I have tons of friends with horses that had spiral fractures to their cannonbones or even higher up the leg that healed just fine.\n\nI even know of a standardbred that shattered the bones in his front ankle. They were put together by pins and screws, he healed and had a wonderful race career before he retired to be a carriage horse.\n\n'Broken leg = dead horse' is a myth, and an inaccurate one, at that. ", "Thought it was just racing horses because their broken bones would now be too weak to race competitively again. Surprised to say Reddit has taught me something ... ", "If he break occurs in a hind leg, it's pretty much an automatic death sentence. The way a horse's body works, they can't pick up a hind leg and move around like a dog or a cat. A front leg fracture may or may not be fixable for reasons others have already stated. A big reason l, unfortunately, is economics. A horse has a finite monetary value. Most people aren't blessed with unlimited funds, so they have to decide just how much they can spend before the return outweighs the cost of a new horse.\n\n Unless the AQHA rules have changed, horse semen cannot be extended and frozen for AI service. One collection can be used for one breeding. Jockey Club, the Thorobred registry does, I think, allow their stallion semen to be extended, frozen and shipped for insemination.", "In addition to the medical reasons being listed, the cost is atrocious. In some cases, the break CAN be healed, but you'd typically only see it attempted with extremely valuable stallions, who have an outrageously high stud fee.", "Horses cannot exist as a non-weight bearing animal. Unlike a paw, on a dog for example, horses support an enormous amount of weight on hooves that require upkeep (in a domesticated animal, obviously). Their hooves are complicated structures that must remain in good condition for the animal to survive. Breaking a leg, thus creating a situation where the horse must exist as three legged, puts added pressure/stress on their other hooves which can cause a downward spiral pretty quickly.", "I don't think they have be \"put down\". It is just that the owners feel that they can no more benefit from owning the horse. It is easier and cheaper to kill them then to heal them.", "What about like a big wheel? I've seen dogs and cats with wheels for legs. Couldn't it be made so that the horse can stand level?", "Can't find the comment now, but someone said they had a horse who broke a leg it happened when he was 25. Anyway the horse lived until 37! \n\nIs 37 normal or old for a horse? Compared to dogs that's really old. Really old compared to like a deer or elk. Also are horses intelligent? Compared to say a dog or pig? (Pigs are pretty intelligent.) ", "Horses' bones do have a hard time healing, and there is an extra chance of hind leg injuries during recover. However, the biggest part is the difficulty of keeping them immobilized in a sling. They don't do well in casts and they become very agitated and likely to have stomach problems (which are potentially deadly). It's nearly impossible for them to heal properly, and if they do its a very miserable process for the horse.", "I've always just assumed it was some lazy medieval practice. \"My horse appears to have broken it's leg. Might as well kill it and steal another from those peasants over there...\"", "Most of this reputation for putting horses down after a broken leg comes from before modern Veterinarian Medicine, when most everyone in society used horses as transportation. If a horse broke a leg 100 years ago the most humane thing to do would be to shoot it. in modern times there are options but the prognosis for an adult horse who has broken a front leg is grim, very grim. ", "I grew up on a ranch where my mom runs a therapeutic riding center for disabled children. She just recently put a horse down. The horse suffered a minor fracture a while back, but its hard to mend such injuries (you can't really tell a horse not to run around). Eventually, she became increasing agitated--obviously in pain--and wouldn't even let my mom touch her anymore as the injury became worse. I remember the night she was born, watching her emerge into the world with my mom, and grow into a loving and happy mare. It was heartbreaking to see how she acted towards my mom and the other horses after the injury. \n\nMy mom said the night that she finally had to decide to put her down, my mom couldn't stop crying while feeding the horses, and kept apologizing to the horse she was going to put down in a couple hours. At this point, the horse had a hard time standing, but whenever someone would enter her stall she would usually throw a fit and act distressed. This time, though, my mom said she hadn't seen her act so calm in months, like she knew her fate and had excepted it. She even let my mom lay against her as she said goodbye. \n\nI know this doesn't answer your question, but sometimes the pain a seemingly minor injury for another animal causes serious distress in horses. It's not easy to let them go, but sometimes its for the best.", "So much misinformation here...\n\nA horse carries a ton of weight over 4 tiny hooves. When the horse breaks a leg, that weight is shifted to the three remaining. Those three become sore and weak from bearing so much extra weight, and then their \"good legs\" might go bad during the time it would take the \"bad leg\" to heal.\n\nAdditionally, the lower parts of horse legs have very little meat to them. They are almost literally skin, bones, ligaments, veins, etc. Therefore a break is usually catastrophic; there's no \"meat\" to protect the bone from shattering horribly.\n\nThirdly, if you wanted to put the horse in a sling to support its weight and allow the leg to heal, you'd be putting a ton of pressure on the horse's tummy (where its major organs are.) This is why horses \"stand up\" when they sleep and don't spend 8-12 hours at a time laying on their sides/tummies like humans and dogs and cats do.\n\nAlso, a champion super-racer would be worth more as a live stud... there are plenty of champs that would have been worth more alive that surely the owners would have saved if they could have. It's not a matter of \"oh that's too expensive\" it's \"we literally can't save this animal.\"", "They don't ALWAYS have to be but down. It really depends on the type of break in the bone. I have seen slighter breaks with very good turn around. A favorite lesson horse at one of the barns I rode at slightly cracked a bone in the lower part of one of his front legs. That healed, they rehabbed him and he went on being a lesson horse.\n\nOne of my friends horses got cast (leg got stuck while he was rolling in his stall) broke a bone in the top part of his hind leg. He was 12 at the time, and he was put on stall rest and healed up quite nicely. My friend still rides and shows him to this day. She keeps up with his joint injections and he's a beautiful jumper.", "Horses would need to be pretty much stationary whilst their leg healed, which is not practical for either owner or horse. how does one support an animal as big as a horse to take the weight off one leg? the cost and stress to the animal is deemed too much and hence the animal is put to sleep (have owned several horses, one of whom broke his leg :( )", "All above depends as well on the type of fracture.\nWhen the bone shatters into multiple pieces it's harder to cure.", "So, horses have what is basically a pumping system in their feet so every time they step, it helps pump blood up from the legs back towards the torso. When they break their leg, they have very poor circulation through that leg, causing it to atrophy (become very weak). To compensate the horse will only stand on its other leg causing an extreme imbalance in terms of muscle size. Reconditioning the horses legs to balance back out is almost impossible. So at best, if the horse doesnt have the limb amputated it will just end up with one bum leg, and one very strong leg causing it to be extremely slow. Source: Friends dad is a rancher who raised horses for years and told me this.", "I've seen how horses will stand watch over a fallen horse. That just doesn't sound like a creature that would pick on another for being injured.", "Literally how it was explained to me as a child: \n\nWhen we break our leg, it's like a piece of blackboard chalk being snapped in half. \n\nWhen a horse breaks it's leg, it's like the piece of chalk was put in a vice end-to-end and crushed until it shatters. ", "I was driving to school one morning and came upon a car wreck that involved an Amish buggy and horse. The horse was laying in the road. I drove by at the exact moment the deputy pulled out his gun and shot the horse at point black range. Not a fun way to start off your morning, let me tell ya. ", "Because they will not remain immobile long enough for a break to heal. They will continually reinjure themselves indefinitely." ]

[ "The destroyed models are manufactured replicas or existing models modified to include destructible parts rather than authentic pieces. As for locating models, nowadays it's as easy as googling \"[model] entusiasts\" and touching base to broker a rental agreement. I'd be very interested to learn how they did it back in the day.", "Also, easy with mods to substitute Satellite for Roadrunner, Malibu for SS Chevelle, six cylinder Mustang for Shelby, etc etc. " ]

[ "The power sources required for high-powered lasers are extremely unpractical at the moment. Energy storage is a bottleneck for many technologies and in many fields of industry. Military research on laser weapons and on weapons that use magnetic fields to accelerate projectiles is typically limited to stationary installations or vehicles that can carry large generators.\n\nIf you manage to develop a practical high-energy-density supercapacitor you'd not only make railguns and portable lasers possible, you'd revolutionise mobile electronics, electric vehicles, logistics of solar and wind power and probably countless other technologies I didn't even come to think of. Energy storage is such a dramatic bottleneck for so many things.", "Laser weapons are not beyond our grasp, but they are grossly impractical when compared to kinetic energy weapons. See [this page](_URL_0_) for a *lot more* information, but the gist of it is that lasers are hugely inefficient (15% tops today, which means 80+% of the energy is wasted as heat), and, depending on the technology and wavelength being used, bulky and possibly dangerous. They also require fairly big lenses, possibly multiple ones to focus the beam optimally over different distances.", "Like this:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThis is the only thing I know of that's been put into actual practice. Nothing just yet that would be as effective vs a tank as conventional methods, but that's partly due to the nature of what a tank is (heavily armoured on the sides). It's unlikely a directed energy weapon will ever be created that can get through the side armour of a tank. \n\nHand-held laser weapons would, if created, need to be tethered to a power supply that would be either stationary, or if mobile, very large, like on a truck. There is this: _URL_2_, which, while not a laser (uses microwave), is a mobile directed energy weapon. \n\nThere's also stuff like this: _URL_0_, but that was cancelled. \n\n" ]

[ "The actual education at Ivies (undergrad) is at best marginally better than at more generic state schools. The principal appeal is the network you build at these schools - people at Harvard have connections, will carry those connections through life, and by going to Harvard you become one of those connections and have access to the original network. \n\nThis helps you land jobs and positions you otherwise would not have access to, because the Ivies have a self perpetuating system where their graduates become successful and help each other and their successor alumni also become successful. This is also true of many other schools (UCs, certain very selective liberal arts schools), but a Harvard degree is an easy way to open a lot of doors.", "Ivy league schools have several factors helping them. \n\n1) They are extremely expensive and can therefore afford to hire the best faculty and staff. They do not have to settle for good, decent, or satisfactory staff. \n\n2) They have a large enough pool of applicants applying that they can reject all but the absolutely best students. \n\nYou also have the reputation these facts build, and the large network of alumni due to the ages of these universities that allow for newly graduated students to quickly get high paying jobs. ", "Just to tag along to answers already supplied...\n\nI think we should take as a given that all schools are trying to provide their students with the very best education. Imagine starting with, say, 100 schools. In their first year they end up with results in a normal distribution - a bell curve. A few schools didn't do well at all, most did fine, and a few did really exceptionally well.\n\nIn the second year of school, parents of incoming students want their students to go to the schools that were at the high end of the bell curve and want to avoid the schools at the low end. The schools at the high end can raise their prices and be selective about the students they admit. They use their wealth to hire the best teachers - including some from the schools that were just below them in the bell curve. At the end of the school year, the bell curve repeats itself and given their advantages, the ones who started high on the bell curve are more likely to stay there. The ones in the middle are more likely to stay there - though they'll shift around a lot in their rankings. The ones at the bottom are more likely to stay there.\n\nYear by year it becomes more and more likely that the schools at the top of the bell curve - the Ivy League schools in your question - not only remain at the top, but become better and better resourced with a student body carefully selected for their potential.\n\nKeep in mind that the 100 schools we started with all had equal *desire* to provide students with the best education. But they didn't start equally resourced or drawing randomly from the available pool of students.\n\nHarvard, for example, got an early start (1636). It was named for an early benefactor who left the school well funded and with a fine library (for the time). The founders were mainly Cambridge educated and focused on a specific group of serious-minded, puritanical students - future clergymen. It even had a tech advantage with the first printing press in the colonies." ]

[ "Floppy ears are some selective breeding, not natural selection. Also there appears to be correlation between floppy ears and the docile nature of dogs which was discovered when trying to domestic foxes the foxes get floppy eared. ", "What the other commentors said. Also, floppy ears help catch scents on the ground. That's why you see them on hounds (dogs used to track) but not so much on shepherds (dogs used to watch). ", "Doesn't reduce hearing by a meaningful amount, if anything. The cartilage \"cup\" structure of the ear is still present in a dog with floppy ears, and that is the part that does the relevant work of deflecting incoming sound waves into the ear canal. The floppy skin flap is just the top part of their ear, and is not dense enough to obstruct the sound waves. They'll pass right through it. " ]

[ "Geography and diplomacy, with a hint of the good kind of totalitarianism.\n\nEven before colonial times Singapore was a local trading hub and friend of China. They even sent ships to defend Singapore from the Majapahit Empire.\n\nWe were extremely lucky to have had a great team of people at the nation's birth who weren't corrupt and actually knew what they were doing. Our location alone would have brought us far no matter who was leading the country, but it was Lee that prevented Singapore from becoming just another run down South-east Asian country.\n\nFurthermore, we don't have the kind of political circus like Washington D.C. blocking progress. A lot can be done when politicians are not distracted with fighting elections. Lee's (and his team's) heavy-handedness and incorruptibility was a large part in making so much progress in such a short time, where other countries get stuck.", "Here's a slightly biased Singaporean reply :\n\nCause, you know, we don't suckle off the petrodollar teat but instead build a strong trade-focused economy.\n\nSo this includes \n\n-our strong ports\n\n-regional air hub\n\n-regional financial hub\n\n-value-add to manufactured goods for resale\n\n-safe place with great regional accessibility and IP laws for MNCs\n\n-High work/product standards maintained through meritocracy (as opposed to say,China)\n\nAll this is linked to our favorable geography in sea routes between China and Europe, and or unique position as a recognized bastion of stability in ASEAN \n\nAs for democracy, the commonly used definition of democracy is a western construct\n\nDemocracy =/= how efficient or even how incorruptible a government is\n\nSure, the system is weighted in favor of the ruling party so decisions can be made for the long term without risking the pitfalls of populism, but there are checks and balances to safeguard against abuse of power \n\nThe political system in Singapore basically functions as a beneficial monarchy/autocracy/has a benevelont dictatorship. \n\nWhere the rulers have the freedom to make really drastic actions/impose on our human rights/make extremely unpopular decisions(conscription) but ultimately,wants whats best for the country and actively tries to do what benefits the most number of people. \n\nThis system is more effective than a democracy where the government is tied down by squabbling like the American congress is at the moment.\n\nHowever it risks all the power falling into incompetent or selfish individuals in the future, we've been lucky so far to have had generally competent and well meaning Prime Ministers starting from the founding father Lee Kuan Yew to his son Lee Hsien Loong now.\n\n\nFinally,Social cohesion (at least the appearance of it) is maintained through longstanding, deliberate policies.\nAlso,really strict laws and the idea that anyone at all can be charged and jailed for disturbing the peace. \nGenerally the laws aren't enforced for first time offenders or minor cases though,more slap on the wrist measures are taken like fines.\n\nThis is why (I feel) we've made it so far\nBut from here on our government really has to be far more consultative\n... At the same time retain its relative efficiency and decisiveness \nNot easy.", "-Benevolent dictator\n-Total control over the press\n-Political and financial destruction of dissidents\n-Tough stance against corruption (absolute necessity)\n-Tough against crime. caning / hanging.\n-Pro business & foreign direct investment\n-Permanent one party rule via gerrymandering\n-Very politically stable as a result\n-Focus on education including policies similar to no child left behind as well as state standardised testing\n-Science+math technocratic principles in education\n-Focus on english as the working language resulted in the most educated english speaking working population in SE Asia, attracting even more MNCs to setup asia HQ there\n-Swiss style neutrality vis a vis international diplomacy (money money money)\n\nTLDR Everything to make the place good for business was put in place by a benevolent dictator and everything else contrary to this principle was/is banned with threat of heavy penalty.", "Singaporean here! Personally, I feel it's a mixture of authoritarian capitalism and geography. Our location helps immensely as a trade-oriented nation which means that a lot of physical and financial trade comes through our state. The Singapore port is one of the busiest in the world and in fact, while oil and gas accounts for only about 5% of GDP, Singapore is one of the top 3 oil refining centres in the world. \nWhich brings us to the authoritarian capitalism aspect. The government, which has been in power since independence (1965), has been quite heavy-handed in its management of the country. Fortunately, they weren't idiots. They promoted the use of English (not everyone's is the best but conversationally it's acceptable), adopted Mandarin as the mother tongue for all Chinese, invested in infrastructure (manufacturing, ports, semicon, etc), kept a consistent budget surplus, enforced strict laws (some call it draconian), weeded out corruption (partially by paying Ministers a million-dollar salary), developed the financial sector (2nd highest FX trade volume in APAC behind Japan), adopted business-friendly regulations, keeps a low tax regime, strongly promoted higher education and implemented forced-savings (called CPF, similar to a 401k or superannuation). \n \nIt's BIG government, but it worked and admittedly is a unique solution for a very very small country. What worked in the past may not and probably won't completely work for Singapore's future and already there are some cracks beginning to show. But to answer your question as an ELI5: \n \nA kid called Singapore got kicked out of the cool club at school cos he was timid, scrawny and frankly useless. But he happened to live in a really nice neighborhood. So he started working out, set up some comfy lawn chairs in the front garden for fine bitchez to laze on, ran garage sales but only the cool shit that everyone wanted, let other people sell their stuff as well for a small fee, saved up all his money and also bought lemonades and sold lemon juice. Even though the lemon juice only makes up 5% of his piggy bank he's still selling more lemon juice than a lot of other kids in the city. Every now and then his timid side wonders if he should just chill out a bit and enjoy a simple life. But fuck that, timid-Singapore doesn't know shit - and now all the fine bitchez on the street are sitting on his lawn chairs. ", "It's mostly due to them being the most economically-free country in the world. Their lax business rules and regulations make it easy for corporations to make money there. \n\nTheir democracy index doesn't really mean anything as far as economic success goes. Hell, the gulf states are some of the richest countries on Earth yet are all classified as authoritarian regimes. On the other hand, you got countries like Jamaica and Ghana that have higher democracy index scores but are still developing.", "4 principles for a booming country:\n\n1. Control the media.\n2. Control the schools.\n3. Ensure populace have a stake in society. \n4. Be open for trade. ", "The title though. A bit presumptuous no?\n\nWhy is Singapore successful despite its lack of natural resources, why is it successful despite its size.\n\nAll better than a question pushing political agenda. Besides, the American democracy hasn't exactly worked out well for them has it now?", "To respond to the 2nd part, and trying to do an ELI5:\n\nTommy and John live on two separate plots of land, and both have some money. Tommy's land happens to have a ton of gold on it, so he's happy and uses his money to buy diggers and shovels to get the gold and sell it, thus earning him money. John's land is very poor, so instead he uses his money to buy books, studies hard, and gets into a good school.\n\nFast forward 20 years, and all of Tommy's gold has run out, and sadly he hasn't saved much of it. On the other hand, John got a good stable job for the rest of his life. \n\n\n\nThe point is, when you are a very resource poor country like Singapore, you have very little choice but to invest in your citizens, since they are the greatest resource you have. This holds true for a lot of Asian places, Japan, HK, South Korea, Macau, Singapore, etc. Having a strong oil indusry (or any natural resource to be honest) is never a good indicator of a successful economy, American/Auz+NZ are some nice exceptions. ", "Thought I'd try to answer the question directly.\n\nYour economic success is a direct function of your ability to create value. Imagine if a super-villain created an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He has no oil, and no democracy– it's just a pure dictatorship. And he happens to also produce a serum that reverses aging, which he sells to the global marketplace for a profit.\n\nHe's bound to be very successful, regardless of his lack of oil and democracy.\n\nSingapore doesn't have anti-aging serum, but it has a whole bunch of things that are valuable to people: \n\n* It's safe, reliable and clean in many, many senses of the word. If you're a business leader in the APAC region, you'd probably want to make SG your home base.\n* It's easy to do business with. It's got a well-educated workforce. \n* It's a great jumping-off point if you need to travel to anywhere in Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, etc) or even Japan, Australia, India, etc. \n* It's got great relationships with practically every other country in the world. It even has a North Korean embassy.\n\nIf you needed a short TLDR:\n\n**Singapore is successful despite of perceived shortcomings because it's *valuable*, period.** If we stopped being valuable, we'd stop being successful. And we're pretty paranoid about not dropping the ball on that, so our partners and clients continue to trust us and do business with us in every sense.\n\nUpdate: If you wanna be realpolitik about it, the things that make us unpopular also make us va", "Politically, it's an autocracy.\n\nCivil society is very social democratic. Police crush low-level corruption, violent crime, and drugs but are fair and lenient with non-violent crime.\n\nEconomically it's very liberal. Free-trade keeps the $ flowing and people can move up in the world. Singapore's location in the world is very lucky for trade.\n\nSocially it's focused on diversity but they don't simply tolerate minorities. They put huge money into giving *everyone* a pretty swanky middle-class life.\n\nEdit: It's a pretty good example of how an autocratic state can work really well. Problem is Singapore has yet to have a real succession of power. Who knows if the next rulers will be so pragmatic. 'Hiccups' in succession can be devastating when so much power & $ is on the line.\n\n**TL;DR 80% of people live very good lives. 10% are ultra-rich. 10% get screwed. 90-10 is a pretty good ratio.**", "In a democracy, change happens very, very slowly because you have bickering political parties fighting each other all the time.\n\nIn a dictatorship, as in Singapore, change can happen much more quickly. \n\nFast change can be very good (e.g. China's economic growth the past 20 years) or can be very very bad (e.g. China's Great Leap Forward that unintentionally killed 50m people).\n\nWith a democracy, you can't fuck up too bad, but on the other hand you can't fix things easily (e.g. poverty in India).", "Pretty much every former British colony that didn't completely fuck themselves over (see The shithole that used to be the prosperous colony of Rhodesia) have done very well for themselves. \n\nThe British system was very efficient. Every man has a job. Every woman has a man. Every person is accountable and if they fail to maintain utility they will be flogged or discarded. \n\nOrder, prosperity, opportunity, delegation of labor. The ingredients for a successful civilization. ", "Check out their tax rates. They actually let people keep money they make. It's a crazy concept but it seems to be working. ", "Pretext: I'm someone who was born in Malaysia (\"democratic\" but corrupt), moved to Singapore at age 12 (authoritarian but successful), and finally moved to the USA at age 18 (highly democratic, powerful, successful).\n\nWhat I've seen:\n\nDemocracy is not correlated with how successful a nation is. It in fact hinders success, since you have a system where the approval of millions of people is somewhat necessary to getting things done. Imagine trying to get your idea approved by your bosses. The odds are tough, and the process takes a very long time. Now imagine that you have millions of bosses to go through. You can see how this slows things down.\n\nWhat ultimately matters to the success of a nation isn't the system of government. It is what the government does for the people, regardless of whether said government was elected or not. Singapore, for example, has an extremely high quality education system, a friendly business landscape, and officials who do genuinely care about the people. Any HINT of corruption is instantly stamped out without hesitation.\n\nMalaysia, while more democratic in comparison, has spent the last 50+ years or so squandering all of its resources through inept management and corrupt officials. Education is a joke, more like a propaganda tool to ensure the current party stays in power. There are elections, but they keep a good chunk of the population stupid and uneducated to control where the votes go. They even have oil money, but that money goes towards failures of projects because they do \"direct negotiations\" with government cronies, i.e., no competition for the best to come forth.\n\nNow, in the US, they are highly democratic, have a world-class education system (despite all the grumbling, US colleges are the best in the world), and a friendly business landscape. Note the two common threads between the US and Singapore: Education and business landscape. Democracy did not do anything for Malaysia.\n\nTherefore, it isn't how the government is formed, it's what the government does.", "- heavy trade. It's a big trade port, similar to Shanghai or other regions with ocean access. The revenue brought in from trade gives a nice baseline of wealth from tourism, travel, goods and services.\n- Singapore Airlines, public transportation and Changi Airport. This seems like a small thing, but it truly is pleasant using their services, and it makes travel to Singapore much more desirable. It helps with their tourism big time. While I love America, our services are downright embarrassing compared to Singapore.\n- it's small. The most successful countries like Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, all have tiny populations that can be manipulated, controlled, and forced to \"do the right thing.\" Also makes change and implementing programs easier.\n- a benevolent dictator. You can't really call Singapore a democracy. Lee Kuan Yew could have easily been a piece of shit and terrorized Singapore a la Hussein's Iraq, but thankfully he seemed to have high minded goals and did right by the city state. Plus people followed his charisma and influence, which is more palatable than military rule.\n- it's a capitalist paradise. There historically wasn't much to speak of when it comes to labor law. So no minimum wage, union protections, and people weren't paid overtime. There have been recent reforms to help give more worker rights, but historically (and arguably today) it was a ripe place for worker exploitation. This makes companies want to invest there, especially foreign companies who are sick of their own domestic policies forcing them to spend more to accommodate their work force. Singapore has historically welcomed foreign investment. By the way, I've heard that Singapore is a fun place to visit, and also to live if you're rich, but it can be quite grueling working there.\n- friendly tax region. The poor aren't taxed, while the rich pay up to twenty percent. It's much more straight forward and cheaper than the US system of tax havens, shelters, keeping earnings overseas, etc. Companies and rich people love the cheap taxes.\n- it's a misnomer that democracies are the only successful form of government. The definitions and standards can be hotly debated, but there were certainly periods where the USSR and China saw heavy GDP growth and were considered \"successful,\" while democracies can be seen as unsuccessful during certain periods. Consider both stock market crashes in the US, or the Civil Rights period. Don't forget there was a propaganda-friendly thought process in Russia, Germany, and China that the American blacks would overthrow the White privileged class due to ill treatment. It's only with 20/20 hindsight that we can say the race riots were/are contained.\n- strict immigration policies. You can work there, but good luck becoming a citizen. You better have some money, educated, and know the right wheels to grease. AKA Jet Li. Having tight controls helps keep criminals and riff raff out (see Sweden, Finland, Switzerland). You can point to exceptions such as prostitution, pimping, and loan sharking. But Singapore has been known to crack down hard whenever these elements act up by producing a murder.\n- very tough laws. There is heavy handed treatment towards criminality, especially drugs. So don't litter or break any laws, like not even a little. You can get screwed real easily if you don't behave yourself.\n\nTL;DR: Don't put too much weight on democracy index; trade; strict policies and lax labor and tax laws led to success. \n", "Free market capitalism. Consistently ranks as one of the freest economies. As does Hong Kong. This of course says nothing about human rights and doesn't imply that it's anything more than an *economically* successful place. ", "Democracy isn't an economic principle; why would you tie it to economic success? Does it surprise you that China is well off? Technically speaking, slavery is a very profitable business, but horribly undemocratic. In many ways democracy hurts business.", "It has very low taxes and excellently low administrative load of forming and running a business.", "It is one of the most important and strategically located cities in the world for trade. Its government and oil industry are irrelevant, I'm not sure why you even mention those things, as if those things are required for a country to be successful.", "Lol why do you assume that you need a good oil industry to be a profitable country?", "I've thought about this, lived in Singapore but from a nearby country. In perspective, when Singapore left Malaysia in 1965, it was written off by most people as a country that could not survive and will eventually be forced to rejoin Malaysia. It was a poor fishing village, the bulk of its population were unskilled and untrained. There was no major industries or deep sea port so to speak that were developed yet. As investors back in the 70s would think, Singapore is still pretty backwater and doesn't hold much of a promise. When it gained independence, RM0.60 was SGD1.00. Today it is RM3.10 to SGD1.00. \n\nWhile there is a fancy story of how Singapore grew because of fantastic education, good infrastructure and strong governance, I think what most people fail to see is that these things didn't just happen overnight and costs money. A lot of money. \n\nSo where did the money to develop and improve Singapore come from? Remember that this is a country which emerged from independence without natural resources, unskilled workforce and no major infrastructure. \n\nSo the government went out there to court investors to set up factories and gave a lot of concessions including tax free benefits. As a small country with no local industries to protect, this was as easy thing to provide. \n\nBut I would like to suggest something a bit more insidious as Singapore's growth model has been copied to far lesser degrees of success. One of the reasons why investors were willing to put money in Singapore is because of its laws, it is a tax haven, ask-no-questions offshore financial model and early Cayman Islands. The amount of financial assets in the country is staggering and largely because it is perceived to be Asia's Switzerland. It is also no coincidence that in a corrupt region like south east Asia, most of the known despots like Marcos, Suharto and the Myanmar military junta have assets in Singapore. During the Asian Financial Crisis and the fall of Suharto, a lot of rich Indonesians fled to Singapore along with their families, a telling sign of where their money is at. \n\nSo yes, they had the right policies, respected rule of law, and relatively good governance. But all those things don't necessarily spell success without money, and Singapore had lots of it from their corrupt neighbors who are more than willing to invest in Singapore to protect their ill gotten gains. I'm not saying that this is the only reason, but somehow the Singapore version of their growth doesn't seem to resonate with me in contrast with other countries. Especially their financial centre. Maybe that's why they have the unspoken reputation of being the money laundering centre of south east Asia. But I think it has a bigger part to play in the country's success than the officials would like to admit. ", "Governments of the past made a push to diversify Singapore's economy (e.g professional services, investments, manufacturing, trade). As a result of those pushes, Singapore has one of the worlds most diverse economies, which allows it to constantly expand into different markets. Previous governments also invested heavily in physical capital / infrastructure, which really allowed quality manufacturing to triumph over cheap foreign labor. \n\nSimply having the government push for a balanced economy + channel lots of physical capital might not sound that great, but the alternative of \"letting the market decide\" can be really problematic. IF a single industry becomes too profitable, many members of the \"free market\" will switch over to that industry. Why would you become a Lawyer if you could make 10x as much money selling Coal or Iron? In the short-term this is okay, but long term, any nation that puts too much emphasis on a single industry is at great economic risk if that single industry declines (we can see this happening to an extent in countries like Canada or Australia, which were a bit overzealous with mining commodities). \n\nSo to come back to the original point, Oil (single resource, commonly leads to dutch disease) + highly open democracy (lack of strong economic direction) can sometimes be detrimental to long-term economic growth. The two things you have flagged as being important to growth often have the opposite effect on GDP. In Singapore's case, avoiding both has lead to much of the nations economic success. ", "The other users have pointed out the reasons for Singapore's success, but the biggest factor is the ability to micromanage the country.\n\nThe city-state is essentially an island by itself, which means it's easy to micromanage everything physical. Criminals want to escape? Not so easy since there's no where else to go. Want to implement nationwide change? Sure, everything is concentrated on this small landmass.\n\nImagine playing a game of Sid Meier's Civilization®, where every choice has its consequences in the long run. \n\nImagine having a group of people play on one account, with the player changing every 20 turns. \n > \n > \"I want a cultural victory! Let's focus on Piety and build temples.\" \n > \n > [20 turns later, another user takes over] \"Nope, we're going for Freedom and focus on building Wonders instead.\" \n > \n > [20 turns later] \"Nope, no Cristo Redentor. It's better to build an Opera House for a cultural victory.\"\n\nThat is basically what's happening in many big democratic countries - the general direction is the same, but you'll see a lot of squabbles over policies via the senate or when there is a change in ruling parties (USA, Australia, Canada, UK).\n\nNow, imagine if it's a single player making all the decisions. That was what happened when Singapore gained independence - all the opposition parties withdrew, leaving one party in charge of the Parliament.\n\nAlso, Singapore has a comparatively small governance system with only a Parliament (no Upper House or Senate). This makes decision-making streamlined, and the Prime Minister can administer change easily.\n\nObviously the draw back is if the player is a noob or corrupt, the country probably struggle.\n\nBut Singapore have been lucky in the sense that their leaders have been brilliant players who clamped down on corruption. And they have set up a system where only the top players can succeed them. In a way, Singapore is a technocracy - most of the Ministers are scholars of some sort.\n\nIn this aspect, Singapore's brand of autocratic democracy has done them well; having one capable player clicking all the buttons along the same strategy.\n\nThe drawback has been their perceived lack of democracy, but the key is that the citizens have the ability to overthrow the ruling party if they fail them (which came close to happening in 2006). \n\nThe perceived lack of free speech is also somewhat misrepresented. A lot of it has to do with slander - the people in charge there clamp down on people who make unsubstantiated claims about them. If someone says that you are a paedophile just because you take your dog to walk in the park every day, would you not defend yourself?\n\nOn the same token, these lawsuits prevents all the yellow journalism perpetrated by tabloids and shitty news outlets like Daily Mail/ The Sun in the UK, Fox in the USA.\n\n\n", "\"democracy\" is not necessary in economic prosperity, good management is. Otherwise, corporation would adopt \"democracy\" as its governing style or India would be cutting edge of prosperity.\n\nSingapore is fairly small. Only 2 million people, packed in very small place. It's easy to keep it tidy.\n\nThink of Singapore more like a well run office combined with large institution.\n\nOn the other hand, Punk rock, dark humor and noir movie would never exist in Singaporean universe. ", "Also tax. Singapore is making money as the headquarters of Asia pacific companies collecting less tax than if that tax was paid in the countries it was earned. Just like the Bahamas for the US or Ireland for Europe. This is done through transfer pricing. With online economies, multinational taxation is going to be the big issue of this century. ", "Democracy is just a correlation, not necessarily the actual cause of success. Metrics should always be looked at in context. \n\nIt is how like conventional economics tell you to pursue higher GDP growth for better standard of living, but in recent years Singapore's government have dropped GDP growth targets and are deploying more resources and policies on social satisfaction than economic satisfaction. This was because we had lots of social unrest and dissatisfaction when we were pursuing our GDP targets ", "singapore had a very enlightened ruler. it was billed as a democracy but is really a dictatorship by lee kuan kew and his crew. he had the power to make any changes and he made very good ones. he made many reforms to control the populace and turned it from a backwards and divided culture into a first world and united one. for example, he imposed strict punishment on country bumpkin habits like peeing on street and littering. housing apartments can not have only one group of people on the same floor. it had to be a mix of indian, malaysian and chinese people. so no ghettos develop and people are forced to live together and there wont be any us vs them mentality amongst them. \n\nhe made the \"interface\" of the country into a western one where everyone can speak english do business in a western manner. this means that if you are a western business, you don't have to deal in a foreign method. you can just stop by singapore and do business with them, you'll make a little less because of a middle man but it is much easier for you to do business. this is the same case with hong kong and that's why hk is also very wealthy. too bad hk didnt have a draconian ruler like lee and so it is a dirty and debauched city. so basically, if you are selling or buying shit in asia, you could bring it all the way to the other side of the world then drop it off at a place very familiar to your way of thinking. why wouldn't you?\n\nanother one is he had strict banking rules set in place and so even while the entire world fell to the credit crisis, singapore didn't bear the blunt of it. \n\nthere are many others which i don't remember and are too lazy to list anyway.", "Because dictatorship. Benevolent dictators can make a country very rich and prosperous. Bad one do the opposite.", "There was once a very, very smart man named Lee Kuan Yew who fought for Singapore's independence. He \"liberated\" this \"country\" then became the president for like twice as long as ive been alive. When he stepped down, he still kinda stayed in a position of control. So yeah, he had more than enough time to set up and then execute his game plan. He set up a very efficient meritocracy and didn't take no shit from no one. The govt was kept on a tight leash basically, which curbed if not eliminated corruption, unlike the criminal fucks we have here in america. His first concern was always economic stability and growth, even if it meant supressing some of what we would consider basic civil liberties in the west. \n\nSo yeah, he knew his shit. \n\n\nYou can throw education in there too. Those kids do nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe school. ", "Who says you need democracy to be a successful country?", "Who told you democracy is the way to success?", "colonialism and occupation notwithstanding, singapore, taiwain, hong kong, macau, and fairly soon shanghai and shenzhen are all examples of how Chinese culture can/will look when it attains western notions of \"success\" with eastern traditions and policies. that's to say, western (direct/representative) democracy is not the only kind of democracy in the world. ", "Also, expats.\n\nI did a search of this thread for the word expat. Not once was it mentioned. \n\nSingapore makes itself very conducive for foreigners to come in and do business. So people do. They come from China, India, UK, USA, Australia. Singapore has a lot of different kind of people all roaming around with a lot of money, usually in the process of trying to make more money. The mechanism is fueled by a lot of money being brought in. So they get to have nice things in the meantime. And probably will continue to for the foreseeable future. \n\nThey make it really attractive to conduct business there.", "The citizens believe and practice ,that the world owes them nothing,and the harder they work the luckier they get.", "Much to admire about Singapore though very few nations have as low a level of corruption. The US certainly doesn't.\n\nHowever its not all good for Singapore, a banner year for fertility is 1.25 per couple. This is far far below replacement and in the long term means real economic troubles for the nation ", "Democracy has some connection to material prosperity, but it's a noisy indicator. Oil on the other hand has little to no bearing. Many poor countries have tons of oil, and many rich countries have no oil at all. \n\nSingapore is successful because it sits on one of the busiest sea lanes in the world. It's an international trade hub. Also, it has been fairly successful in managing its institutions so as not to muck things up. Many societies, despite ideal economic conditions, can fail to become wealthy because of ill-behaved institutions (corrupt and/or ineffective governments being a leading cause here). ", "Most of the answers have focused on Singapore itself, but an important thing to remember is how well Singapore has positioned itself internationally.\n\nIn terms of the economy, Singapore embraced foreign direct investment early on and made sure that the infrastructure and quality of life would support and attract these businesses, at a time (mid 20th-century) when others often were more wary about opening up their economy to foreigners.\n\nBeyond that, though, Singapore has had an extremely effective foreign affairs policy and personnel. The first foreign minister, Rajaratnam, made it a point to travel as many countries as possible to gain support for the newly-independent country, and this ability to make friends has continued throughout the decades. This shows itself in how Singapore is effectively on friendly terms with almost every other country, most obviously shown in how Singapore manages to maintain close ties with both US and China despite their rivalry, or acts as the default venue for China-Taiwan attempts at diplomacy.", "Singapore is what happens when you have very intelligent, very good, and very powerful people in charge of your country, even though it's not democratic. There have been many good kings and emperors throughout history. The problem is that their successors are rarely as good. It inevitably produces a bad leader at some point, if the country doesn't reform. edit: And democracies produce bad leaders too, but they're held accountable by elections and term-limits." ]

[ "Another question might be, since so many gas stations seem very insistent about it despite my not quite understanding the concern: how dangerous is using a cell phone / other electronic device at a gas station from non-risk-from-distraction viewpoint?\n\nEven from a \"cell phone might create a spark\" standpoint, I don't see how this is any more likely than, say, a stray bit of metal on a shoe creating a spark.", "Having worked in a gas station (we call the service stations in australia), it's treated as if the chance of somthing like this is very low, but because of the actual result (chance of fire, explosion, etc), we would like to remove all forms of risk. having worked for a couple of years, and working with people in the industry over 35 years, nobody i know has seen/had any bad experiences in regards to fires at all stemming from anything out on the forecourt (from static electricity, cars, mobile phones, cigarettes, etc). \n\nthere are other risks such as pilot lights on caravans, diesel cars, etc, still hot engine parts (such as the exhaust pipe, which is why it is generally on the opposite side of the car to the exhaust), and gas reacting with any pool chlorine (some gas stations sell these outside on pallets on the forecourt)", "While doing some stuff for a gas station operator, I took part in a training that dealt with this problem. With cigarettes, unless you put them right into the liquid stream, you're unlikely to blow anything up, unlikely being the operative word. Let me explain how that works.\n\nThe most common reason for setting yourself alight during fueling is static discharge, from rubbing your clothes or hair against the metarials inside the car, then touching metal elements on the chassis, resulting in a spark. Mind though that the spark is not enough to do much - the other element are gasoline vaopurs. When filmed through a special camera, you can see a cloud of vapors collecting around your hand holding the fuel nozzle. The short ignition burst may result in hair/clothes catching fire.\n\nTo minimize this risk, there are several technologies used in modern pumps. The most basic one is a vapour vacum in the fuel nozzle itself. Another problem is vapour collecting in the fuel tanks. Due to temperature shifts, humidity and other factors, some of the fuel in the main gas station tanks will become a gas. There are technological solutions to this problem (_URL_0_, for example).\n\nThis can lead to dangerous situations, mostly resulting in the gas leaking onto the area around the pumps. Fuel vapours tend to hang low, near the ground, and in an extreme situation, where there was a significant ammount of leaking vapours throughout a couple of hours, a ciggarete or a motorbike backfire (two cases I saw) might result in an explosive combustion. The resulting explosion is very brief and not that large - just a flash of fire, no fireball or anything. To have the whole thing blow up, you'd need to have extremely large quantities of fuel/vapour and fire possible directly at the fuel source.\n\nKeep in mind this does not take into account situations with mobile fuel tankers, large fuel depots, LPG installations or directly damaged fuel tanks - each one of these situations is unique and poses it's own danger.\n\nDepending on where in the world you are, most stations should have an extinguisher and fire blanket next to the gas pump. Keep that in mind. Water will not help if you get burning gasoline on you - only oxygen starvation through covering or powdering (the fire extinguisher should be the powder kind). ", "Gasoline vapors will ignite at concentrations between 1.4 and 7.6% in air. This concentration is guaranteed to exist *somewhere* near fueling operations, if you light your cigarette in the same location, you are going to have a very bad day. The odds of this are probably very slim, but if you're unlucky you'll probably be on fire for the rest of your life.", "Another question might be, since so many gas stations seem very insistent about it despite my not quite understanding the concern: how dangerous is using a cell phone / other electronic device at a gas station from non-risk-from-distraction viewpoint?\n\nEven from a \"cell phone might create a spark\" standpoint, I don't see how this is any more likely than, say, a stray bit of metal on a shoe creating a spark.", "Having worked in a gas station (we call the service stations in australia), it's treated as if the chance of somthing like this is very low, but because of the actual result (chance of fire, explosion, etc), we would like to remove all forms of risk. having worked for a couple of years, and working with people in the industry over 35 years, nobody i know has seen/had any bad experiences in regards to fires at all stemming from anything out on the forecourt (from static electricity, cars, mobile phones, cigarettes, etc). \n\nthere are other risks such as pilot lights on caravans, diesel cars, etc, still hot engine parts (such as the exhaust pipe, which is why it is generally on the opposite side of the car to the exhaust), and gas reacting with any pool chlorine (some gas stations sell these outside on pallets on the forecourt)", "While doing some stuff for a gas station operator, I took part in a training that dealt with this problem. With cigarettes, unless you put them right into the liquid stream, you're unlikely to blow anything up, unlikely being the operative word. Let me explain how that works.\n\nThe most common reason for setting yourself alight during fueling is static discharge, from rubbing your clothes or hair against the metarials inside the car, then touching metal elements on the chassis, resulting in a spark. Mind though that the spark is not enough to do much - the other element are gasoline vaopurs. When filmed through a special camera, you can see a cloud of vapors collecting around your hand holding the fuel nozzle. The short ignition burst may result in hair/clothes catching fire.\n\nTo minimize this risk, there are several technologies used in modern pumps. The most basic one is a vapour vacum in the fuel nozzle itself. Another problem is vapour collecting in the fuel tanks. Due to temperature shifts, humidity and other factors, some of the fuel in the main gas station tanks will become a gas. There are technological solutions to this problem (_URL_0_, for example).\n\nThis can lead to dangerous situations, mostly resulting in the gas leaking onto the area around the pumps. Fuel vapours tend to hang low, near the ground, and in an extreme situation, where there was a significant ammount of leaking vapours throughout a couple of hours, a ciggarete or a motorbike backfire (two cases I saw) might result in an explosive combustion. The resulting explosion is very brief and not that large - just a flash of fire, no fireball or anything. To have the whole thing blow up, you'd need to have extremely large quantities of fuel/vapour and fire possible directly at the fuel source.\n\nKeep in mind this does not take into account situations with mobile fuel tankers, large fuel depots, LPG installations or directly damaged fuel tanks - each one of these situations is unique and poses it's own danger.\n\nDepending on where in the world you are, most stations should have an extinguisher and fire blanket next to the gas pump. Keep that in mind. Water will not help if you get burning gasoline on you - only oxygen starvation through covering or powdering (the fire extinguisher should be the powder kind). " ]

[ "I study math and physics as an undergraduate, so i'm by no means an expert. My understanding of large prime numbers is not that they are practical but rather an exercise of human achievement.\n\nEDIT: I just remembered this TED talk about large primes that I think you'll enjoy. [Here it is](_URL_0_)", "It's not about any new advances in mathematics, but of engineering. We've got better computers, [maybe] running faster algorithms, or maybe [distributed computing projects](_URL_0_) that are making 'impossible' calculations more possible. \n\nFrom the view out my window, the most important 'discovery' in the search for large prime numbers is another measure of the power of computers, and how that power also creates insecurity. A powerful computer can process all this information (finding a big prime number), but it can also break a password *that* much faster.", "There are a lot of different types of primes. For instance we can look at primes that can be written as 4n+1, a few examples are 5,13,17,29 and there are some that cannot be written in this way, 3,7,11,19. A question that we like to ask is \"How many primes have such and such a form?\" In particular, are there infinitely many primes that look like this and if so, how common are they? \n\nFor the above example, we have proven that there are infinitely many primes that look like 4n+1 and there are also infinitely many that look like 4n+3. Additionally, on average, half of all primes look like 4n+1 and half look like 4n+3 (2 is the only one that doesn't fall into this categorization). In general, if a and b don't share any prime factors, there are infinitely many primes of the form an+b and we can compute how often the show up (on average).\n\n\nAs others have mentioned, the largest primes found today are usually types of primes called Mersenne Primes. These are primes that look like 2^(n)-1. We can then ask \"How many of these primes are there?\" and the answer is \"We don't know.\" It is still open as to whether or not there are infinitely many primes of the form 2^(n)-1. So the greatest theoretical value of finding a larger prime is finding out that Mersenne Primes go at least this far. But this is not why people do it. They generally do it for fun." ]

[ "It's not true that either of them only works at a certain scale. We fully experience the effects of quantum mechanics and relativity while walking around in our daily lives. Its just that their effects only diverge from our expectations at small scales and high velocities respectively.", "Well, in my opinion the question is phrased a little unfortunately. You see, quantum mechanics in principle work fine in large systems, but the effects are not observable on that scale and the calculations would take forever to carry out.\n\nIn the same spirit the effects of general relativity are not observable on the length scales we usually encounter in every day live and on the atomic scale the gravitational force is laughably small compared to the other 3 and does not matter at all.\n\nBetween the nanoscale and the astronomical scale there is the macroscale which we all experience daily. There neither relativity nor quantum mechanics are needed to describe stuff even if they could be used in theory. Here classical theories work very well; Newtonian mechanics, Maxwells electromagnetism, classical optics and so on.", "Electromagnetism is pretty strong. However, since a positive charge (e.g. a proton) undoes what a negative charge (e.g. an electron) does, overall, it doesn't do much at higher scales: most objects are neutral.\n\nOTOH, gravity is both very weak and cumulative. At small scales (think atoms), you can ignore it, because its effects are so small. At bigger scales (think planets), it does have an important effect, but at those scales, quantum effects are negligible.\n\nThere exist, however, objects so dense that gravity can have an effect at a small scale: black holes. To really understand them (e.g. compute their volume, if any), you'd need to take both general relativity and quantum mechanics into account, i.e. have a \"theory of quantum gravity.\" Since we don't have that, we don't know much about black holes. (We do know what happens around them though.)\n\nLikewise, the universe used to be very dense, instants after its creation. We'd need the same theory to model those first instants.", "The problem is not necessarily that those effects aren't present, but rather our models for those respective theories are disconnected as of right now. " ]

[ " > minimalist design is reserved for business models?\n\nGaming laptops aren't minimalist. That's the point. You have to cram a dedicated powerful GPU in there, *plus* a powerful CPU *plus* RAM *plus* a cooling system to make sure it doesn't catch fire.\n\nA business notebook might be pretty decent for performance itself, but it has completely different priorities.", "The (potentially skewed, but potentially correct when you look at case modding and such) notion that all \"true\" gamers like cool lights and \"futuristic\" designs by those who build/design/sell them", "I have a safer np8298\nIt is a pretty professionally looking laptop, I even had the option to leave it unbranded to give it a cleaner look.\nI feel if you saw this laptop sitting on a table you'd know it's a gaming laptop only because it is so large.", "It's the demographic. The majority of people lusting for gaming laptops are children. Children like bright lights and chassis that were rejected by Transformers. ", "You also have to understand that appearance and impressions matter in business. In your white-collar business world, people typically err on the side of conservative aesthetics-- thin, flat, and dark colored. Typically, laptop users travel, and the customer might be a little apprehensive about doing business with someone using a bulky machine with neon colored stripes.\n\nIt's not as much as a factor as the reasons mentioned before, but it is worth mentioning IMO", "When a company labels a model \"for gaming\" they have a specific demographic in mind. They try to look futuristic, have neon lights, transparent panels, have odd sharp forms.\n\nThe pricier it is, the more it will try to have this look to excuse the price. The whole gimmick is to make the computer stand out, seem powerful, give the user the illusion he knows his shit and that everyone else has a small dick compared to him.\n\nIts a lot like buying a sport car really. The engine and parts are more powerful for sure, but not as much as they are charging you, you really are paying more for the looks.", "I definitely understand where you're coming from, but you've never seen the Razer Blade have you?\n\n_URL_0_", "I use an Alienware 15 at work and just put dell stickers on the skull logo and Alienware text, turned off all the lights. nobody guessed it was anything other than a \"developer's huge computer\"", "Because gaming laptops are made by non gamers who think all gamers are young kids who like pretty lights and bright colors. ", "Acer Nitro.\n_URL_0_\nI have the v17 and find it fantastic. It's my complete business labtop that replaced my desktop, goes to meetings and blends in there. Then when I am at home or on lunch I can switch from my business tabs to fallout or cities skylines.", "You can game on workstation laptops if you want the business look. The dell precision series often has upgradeable CPUs and GPUs , can be had for cheaper than a gaming laptop, and sometimes the workstation cards that come in them can either be flashed to to their enthusiast counterpart or taken out and replaced directly with an enthusiast graphics card. Really it comes down to how much power you need. Even rocketleague plays well on a Nvidia gt 550m. The top of the 2nd generation of Intel i7 for mobile is plenty of fast for most uses. As others have stated, good cooling is a must and most powerful laptops including workstations are large.", "Think of it like cars. Normal priced cars are fairly plain and while they can look good, nothing about them really jumps out at you. As the price of the car goes up, the designs get wilder and crazier. Some people love the design while other think the car looks childish and ugly. But the car's are designed that way because they want it to stand out. No way anyone is gonna confuse a Lamborghini with a Toyota. ", "Its due to the perceived audience of each product. For business products you dont want something looking crazy and standing out. For game products they believe people want strange designs and lots of LEDs.", "Simply put, the target demographic largely like that shit. Gaming laptops are a very niche market. Nerds in every hobby have weird preferences that casual people would find weird and ugly. I'm a watch guy and many watch enthusiasts love watches such as [G-Shocks](_URL_1_) and other [\"monstrosities\"](_URL_0_). To many (including me), you would go \"why?\", but there's strange attractions and followings once you become an \"enthusiast\" or \"nerd/geek\" in an area.", "Gaming pcs and laptops are for young boys and young men primarily. This demographic tends to be fascinated by tacky chrome bits and accessories. Business persons see the machine as a tool, anything extra is waste.", "Sager produces some pretty low-key VERY high performance laptops. They will also remove all branding and stickers upon request. \n\nYou can easily get a machine (for a third of the price) that will make a Macbook Pro shake in its boots, and looks like it cost 400USD down at the local Bestbuy.\n\nTotal Sleeper.", "Actually, half the gaming laptop owners I know are kind of ashamed of its looks, given we are all entering the thirties now.\n\nThe other half either have a gray/black asus laptop with no colors (but the discreet backlit keyboard), or just don't care at all.\n\nBut haven't seen any of them actually saying they like the common gamer laptop looks...\n\nCan't say for myself though, all I have is a good enough desktop and a generic-looking notebook that I use sparsely.", "FWIW, not all gaming rigs looks like a raver on X threw up all over a laptop. I have an MSI gaming laptop which look like a very normal black laptop and externally the only thing which gives it away as a gaming rig is a tiny little sticker in the corner which says its a gaming series rig. I also have a 2015 macbook pro with good enough specs to be a gaming rig too (and probably better then my main rig)\n\nGuess my point is there are gaming laptops out there which look perfectly normal, you just gotta pay attention to the specs.", "Because gaming computers are to computers as sports cars are to cars. They're for showing off.", "I have a clevo laptop with i7-4720/860m and has the same grey colour as a business laptop, along with no brand name printed on the cover and non-backlit keyboard. The only awful aesthetics I find is it whirls like a jet engine compared to the macbooks, especially when Im in a library.", "Replied to it elsewhere in this thread, but will post again in its own comment: \n\nI am in marketing/design and just finished rebranding a major gaming laptop brand for release at the end of this year. The hope is that a cleaner, more \"minimalistic\" visual identity will help influence a more practical, less gaudy ID. \n\nOne of the conversations that I had with my team was that there seems to be this pervasive look and feel across the category that, to my mind, really discounts gamers as a less mature audience than they really are. Additionally, it saturates the market with products that all look and sound the same. \n\nThe angle I approached the rebrand from was: Why shouldn't gaming laptops look every bit as good as a MacBook or XPS 15 (with the added weight for performance), and be marketed in a way that is less like all of the audience is sitting at home in their parent's basement masturbating while drinking Mountain Dew, and more like the psycho/demographics the product actually appeals to?", "The answer to this question is just that your opinion differs on aesthetics. Most people that want a gaming laptop want it to look different than a plain laptop.\n\nDo you also think gaming desktops are ugly and wish they could be plain beige boxes? No offense meant, but that is the same thing.\n\nLaptops with crazy aesthetics are the portable version of a side window with blue LEDs lighting all the components and a crazy sculpted front end. People buy these laptops and want them to look this way, most people think they look cool.\n\nMost gamers would say just the opposite, that people only put effort into making gaming laptops look cool, while all other laptops look like boring dvd players with keyboards.\n\nYour question just stems from the fact that you generally dislike these aesthetics. Implying that plain laptops look better and someone spent a ton of time designing them while gaming laptops are hideous because companies assign little to no effort on design is completely opposite and wrong.\n\nIt is one thing to say you dislike the way they look, but to believe your opinion on aesthetics is true, and not just an opinion, to the point in genuinely asking this question is kind of crazy.", "wtf is a gaming laptop mate?", "It's because of the desktop gaming market. You look at the high end of the desktop market and you see case mods people did to boring business models. Neon lights colored cables fans etc. Marketers see that and think it must be what all gamers want and carry it over into the gaming of market on the oem side. Plus it is an easy way of product differentiation where almost all the differences are only visible on the spec sheet. They want people to look at it on a shelf and know why it cost twice as much. ", "The manufacturers did research and concluded that business people prefer minimalist design, while gamers prefer edgy design.\n\nThis is mostly related to gamers being much younger than business people.", "Same reason a lot of gaming PC cases and other gaming accessories are garish and ugly I guess.\n\nProbably because they are targeting a younger audience with the gaming stuff, and they assume young people like flashing lights, neon colours, and other bullshit.\n\nPlus just look at the [custom machines](_URL_0_) \"hardcore\" gamers build. Corporate employees have been seeing pictures like that for 20 years, and assume that everyone who wants to spend a lot of money on a PC wants it to be flashy.", "Speaking from extremely limited exposure and halfway up my own anus, it's because laptops by definition are inferior across the board to desktops when it comes to the kind of performance demanded from any game worth its software. A \"gamer's\" laptop is like an early model SUV: a car-like body on a truck-like frame. Once you begin to make size adjustments to fit in the laptop frame, you start sacrificing performance.\n\nThat being said, at my business user agreement prohibits high performance graphics cards from being installed on our enterprise 3 (engineering-level) laptops because we know the geeks would be writing and playing their games all day given half a minute with that kind of power *and* high performance graphics! Also $$$.", "Well not all gaming laptops are this way. My MSI Stealth Pro is very thin [with a simple and sleek design.](_URL_0_)\n\n\n\n", "I think a good percentage of the target demographic actually like the design. Everytime I've had this discussion with a \"real gamer\" it always boils down to them saying something like \"but I don't want a macbook, I want a gaaaaming laptop.\" Minimalist isn't classy or elegant to them, it's boring. They want something edgy and aggressive, that'll stand out at a LAN party and make them look the part. The hardware also becomes part of the experience, having a mouse that looks like a tacticool future weapon from a bad sci-fi movie, adds to the experience of similarly themed games. I'm sure theres a sizable group of gamers out there who don't like it, hell, If I was in the market for a seven pound laptop that filled the room with fan noise and heat, I'd be bitching about the tackiness, but I think the target demographic of 12 to 25 year olds think it's great.", "The way I see it it's the same difference as buying an Audi for 40k vs buying a Civic for 20k and adding 40k worth of turbo, high performance breaks, tires, neon and rims. For whatever reason the real hardcore frequently have really tacky taste. ", "Because Mountain Dew and Bawls Guarana are radical.\n\nThe same reason a $500 IBuyPower with integrated graphics looks like a Fast and Furious Mitsubishi Eclipse vomited on a clear Rubbermaid box.\n\nBecause most \"gamers\" have really bad taste imo. A lot of people equate a machine's performance with it looking like an F-117 Nighthawk crash landed in the middle of a drag queen show on the Vegas strip.\n\nBut srsly: It's harder for a giant ass laptop to look \"minimal\" when it has a massive heat sink or two poking out the back, and it's 3 times as thick as a mainstream notebook.\n\nMinimalism is a trend with towers now, but has yet to catch on to laptops.", "What kind of fucking gaming laptops are you looking at?", "[What, do gamers not like absurd angles and weird pointless gaps all over everything with no accounting for ergonomics?](_URL_0_) [literally the first result on google for \"gaming mouse\"]", "As someone who owns a gaming laptop, I think I can answer this question:\n\n1) Gamers prefer *performance*, not aesthetics. This makes the manufacturers spend their money packing in as much performance as they can into the PC, and putting design second.\n\n2) Cooling is also a big problem in thinner/compact laptops. Cards like the 980M and 970M have been known to become extremely hot in thinner form factor laptops. This is what makes these laptops \"thicker\", which I assume is most of the problem.\n\n3) Lights. It's easy to put RGB lighting into a full size keyboard, but not so easy to put into a 15\" laptop.\n\n4) Gaming has design trends like any other industry. Existing hardware already has some popular design trends, so they try to incorporate that into the laptops. An example of this is RGB lighting", "o.o\"\n\nI think you're thinking of those super high-end notebooks with full desktop graphics cards in them. It should also be noted that aesthetics are subjective, and there are plenty of minimalistic gaming note books out there. You could also consider content creation business style notebooks in your search for a laptop which can play games.\n\nGTX980M \nAORUS _URL_2_\n\nEVGA _URL_0_\n\nGTX970M \nMSI _URL_1_\n\nRazer _URL_5_\n\nGTX960M \nHP OMEN _URL_3_\n\nDell \n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_6_\n\nAll these laptops follow the general Macbook Pro unibody, aluminum finish, with back lit keyboards, and the occasional glowing logo on the back. They are all super slim, around 0.7\", the size of the Ethernet cable port. They all have similar sizes from 15\" to 17\", they have decent prices for as low as $1200 up to whatever you want.\n\nThese are the current contenders for that premium all in one laptop solution. I believe the XPS15 is the best balanced laptop with 8 hour battery life and a solid GTX960M. ", "I personally don't think gaming laptops look odd (I have an ASUS ROG) and while the design is unique, it's certainly not \"awful\", but I'm assuming manufactors just figure gamers want their laptop to say \"YO, IM A GAMING LAPTOP\" when we don't really care TBH.\n\n\nFor me this is terrible :_URL_1_\n\nFor me this is nice : _URL_0_", "Well, they're not always loud and obnoxious. In fact, probably the best gaming laptop currently available is the [Blade, by Razer](_URL_0_) which is quite minimalist. ", "The average gamer is an idiot who doesn't even know what the fuck is inside that laptop. These idiots tend to throw money in the direction of blue lights and pew pew sounds. \n\nA laptop as a gaming device is basically pointless since you will NEVER get the performance needed for high end competitive gaming out of them simply due to the entire approach when building a laptop. The things you optimize for in mobile tech tend to be the exact opposite of what you want for high end gaming. This is why you can buy a 2000W PSU for gaming PCs, and literally use electricity as a heat pump on a heat pump to pump heat away from your ridiculously overclocked triple xeon CPU powerhouse to be able to play quake 3 with all the textures turned off better than the next dude. \n\nThe above leaves the market open to hopeful stupidity(in both directions). The kind of stupidities who throw cash at you when you tell them that the shiniest laptop is obviously the fastest. \n\nYou can probably by some ultra books that will have decent performance, but you'll be stuck cutting out crapware and fighting with drivers and the poor quality rubbish aimed at business people who literally don't care about anything that gamers would want. And you'll also probably be stuck getting a quattro or a firegl to run games that they don't have drivers to run. \n\nIts basically 2 very different demographics, and the overlap on them is small, so its unlikely that you'll find many people willing to make anything to fit one or the other with any kind of reasonable price tag except maybe falcon northwest, but like i said, pricetag. Falcon northwest will charge you all the money in the fucking universe for something no faster than the shiny ass alienware, without any performance improvement. \n\nThey will give you a nice aluminium case, but it just doesn't end up justifying itself in an industry that is based on planned obsolescence. So until NVidia and AMD hit the end of their version of moore's law, its not going to be worth investing in anything that isn't disposable. And since we just got 4k, we're going to need to wait for like 3 generations or maybe more for them to start hitting many limits, but since they've already got tech like SLI their focus appears to be one that isn't going to hit a performance wall any time soon. So until the graphics card manufacturers finally get stopped by the laws of physics or accidentally go too fast and trick themselves into ruining their own marketplace, you're not going to get much that makes it worth shelling out the amount of cash you'd need to to get someone to make the kind of thing you want to buy worth buying, or even make it at all. ", "Product designer here. The business models are simple because you don't want them to say anything about the person, company, etc. Companies buy them in bulk and you give the same computer to people of all types. Also, most people don't want to go into a meeting with a green alien face on their laptop.\nThe reason for the design of gaming machines is less obvious. It often has nothing to do with what companies think customers want. Sometimes trends like this persist because someone started them to differentiate themselves and then everyone makes extreme looking machines so customers will know what type of product it is on first sight. \nWhen you walk into a best buy and see two aisles of computers, you immediately know which ones may suit your needs from the appearance, so you give those a closer look. A gamer would often walk right past a competent gaming computer without even checking the specs if it looked like an IBM.\n\nTLDR: it's about merchandising; making sure people know what machine is for what at first sight.", "Because no one cares what your laptop looks like when you're living in your parents' basement. " ]

[ "Candy Floss is made by melting sugar in a machine with tiny extrusion holes. The machine spins, forcing the melted sugar out into the air where it hardens into tasty goodness. [Here](_URL_0_ ) are more details.", "Funny enough the same process is used for glass insulation... Melt glass, shoot the glass at high pressure thru tiny holes making lots of small fibers.\n\nAwesome use in my opinion.", "Would salt work in a cotton candy machine? I've been meaning to try this.", "_URL_0_\n\n^ slow motion cotton candy and explanation " ]

[ "Think of the fabric like different types of hair, say your friend has really oily hair and you don't.\n You wash your hair about every other day, if not 2 days, while your friend has to wash her hair every day. If you guys switched routines, your hair would become dry and brittle from over washing, because you've stripped the oils out of your hair that keep it soft and elastic. Same thing applies to richly colored fabrics/dyed hair. Hope this helps! ", "TL;DR: Different materials behave differently when washed and dried. Even things made from the same thing (cotton fabric and denim) will behave differently because of how they are made. In that case, it's caused by the threads being pulled taut by wear, and then relaxing from having water introduced.\n\nFabrics cone I'm all shapes and sizes and can be made from things 'simple' as cotton, intense as silk, or complicated as plastics. Each have their own uses, but are also going to get tired in different ways. Some don't do well when they get really hot, some don't do well when they get wet, some really like to stay wet and not dry. It all depends on what they are meant to do and how their materials interact. \n\nFor some things that like to shrink, it's basically caused by the fibres being able to absorb a ton of water and being able to relax. This causes them to contract/curl up back into their resting position.. Shorter fibres, means shorter threads, and a shrunk shirt. This is much more a problem with organic materials that are pulled/stretched very tight during processesing into a usable thread.\n\nSimilar processes can cause materials to be really uncomfortable after a wash, or just when wet, while it can make others really soft. There are a ton of different ways materials interact, even things made from the same thread (cotton fabric and denim) can behave very, very differently just from how they are woven.", "This is one of those extrinsic/intrinsic things. Extrinsic to cloth fibres as fibres, is how they are spun, and woven or knitted. Intrinsic to most fibres is the 'staple' or length and strength of the individual strands which makes up the thread. How hairy it is under a microscope. Along with staple, how much innate strength it has, how hydroscopic or oleophilic it is. Natural fibres tend to be somewhat shorter, and have innate oil or water or other content. Except silk which is much more like unnatural fibre and is strictly speaking a filament. But still has intrinsic water and other things in it.\n\nWhen you wash something, you alter this balance. Dry cleaning before perchlorate used to mean rolling clothes in fullers earth (diatomaceous .. well.. basically soil. Special soil.) to absorb oily dirt, and judicious brushing. Why did people do that? Because dyes were not colour fast, but also because mechanically agitating natural fibres in water does exactly what you describe: makes some stiff stuff loose (mechanically alters it's weave tension, it's fibre rigidity, it's intrinsic balance of water or oil) and makes other loose stuff stiff (for the same reason, but in reverse. Absorb water? You swell up.)\n\nThose balls of fluff which you clean out of your lint filter? Where do you think they came from? They broke off the fibres of the fabric. It's one definition of microplastics, most people obsess about the gritty stuff in facial scrub. Apparently the fibre trash is really heinously bad too. All that artificial fibre we live in is adding to the mess.", "Some of it is the type of fabric as others have said, but a lot of processed cloths are pre-distressed to achieve softness. This can have the effect of being soft when you get it, because the broken fibers are on the outside and make for a fuzzy feel when you buy it, but the broken fibers wear away quickly if the cloth isn't super thick and high quality before it is distressed. As the broken fibers wear away, all that's left is a rough fabric underneath.\n\nThat's why cheap wools and cashmeres will feel softer than expensive stuff when you start, but the cheap stuff will never achieve the thick luxurious feel of the nicer, thicker stuff. As the distressed fibers on your $10 mall scarf wear away, what's left underneath is thin and somewhat rough. Whereas the thick, rough nap of a shetland wool will break down with wear until it is soft and thick.", "Depends on the fabric, some materials, some weaves etc, get softer because the threads of that material fray and loosen, other threads are prone to becoming threadbare, just losing all the fluff and flexibility out of them. ", "I presume you are talking about wear over multiple washes and not why air drying clothes are stiff, scratchy initially but soften up.\n\nThat's caused by mineral deposits left behind causing the fibers to be stiff.\n\nTumbler dried clothes remain softer as they as always in motion.", "Doesn't using the dryer help clothes, get back there original shape? " ]

[ "There are protests happening, when there are protests some people take advantage of the situation and loot/vandalize. The looting doesn't have anything to do with the actual issue, it's just opportunistic terrible people, just like with every other large grouping of people.", "Rioters and protesters aren't the same thing. In any large protest situation (or really any situation where there are huge crowds that the police can't control, such as celebrations after a big sports win), there will always be people who are drawn to this simply because they want the opportunity to vandalize/loot/burn. \n\nThe problem is that American police now use the actions of these few individuals as a pretext to violently attack the entire crowd of protesters, most of whom are peaceful. This has the effect of stifling all protest and eliminating one of the most basic rights in the First Amendment. ", "People take advantage of the fact that large groups of people diminish their chances of getting caught. It's the same reason there's rioting and looting after sports games." ]

[ "EDIT: I've been informed by some alarmingly angry profanity enthusiasts that the origin of the phrase does in fact refer to the [customer service usage](_URL_0_). \n\nSo instead please refer to the original answer below as the most USEFUL version of the phrase, rather than the original. \n\n---\n\nThe \"customer is always right\" is an often abused and misunderstood sentiment.\r\rThe \"customer is always right\" originally meant that what the customer wants (and thus buys) is more important than what you think.\r\rFor instance, you're a shoe store. You stock green boots, black boots, and pink boots. Green is your favorite color. You always wear green boots.\r\rHowever, your customers only buy black and pink boots. Those green boots sit dead on your shelf, but you keep stocking them. Even when you could be using that money to stock more black and pink boots.\r\rThe customer is always right means it doesn't matter that you like green boots. Buy more black and pink and suck it up.\r\rThe saying got twisted through misunderstanding into some kind of customer service truism that it was never intended as.", "I have no idea where it started. It has been implemented for the most part to assure customer satisfaction. It is rare you get the abusive client. These people know what buttons to push and where. It's almist a career for them. The bigger the company, the more liability it will have. Trying to keep them quiet is a way to control a horrible PR story getting to the real customers. \n\nA woman was wearing a fancy dress and went to push on the door, catching her sleeve on the bar. She was furious at the company and demanded a new dress. We had clear video of what she did, but she was very loud and ready to involve courts. The company paid for a dress. Trying to out out fires are sometimes easier when they're smaller. \n\nI have seen some egregious and litigious behavior over many years. You have to weigh your opinions. It's not about who's right and who's wrong. Our society does not work that way. The headlines and hearsay will read to make the big company the bad guy because it's a better story. \n\nSmall businesses can in some way cushion the blow better because they rely more on word of mouth and it's customer growth can be stable. Plus, not a likely target for the people trying to sue for big sums of money. \n\nEdit: grammar", "A statement my father made on the subject has stuck with me- The customer is NOT always right, but the customer IS always the customer. This idea has helped guide me through discussions with challenging customers, always remembering who ultimately pays the bills.", "One of my business professors used to say, \"the customer is always right, but not everyone has to be your customer\"\n\n", "\"The customer is always right\" is more of a concept rather than literal marching orders. \n\nIt simply means that the onus is on the employees in an establishment to cater to the customer rather than the customer adapting to fit the establishment.\n\nThe reason why this has been kept around is because although it sucks for the employee it is much better for the customer whenever they interact with a customer service employee. And then that employee gets to enjoy that benefit whenever they go anywhere. For example you can walk into Target and the sales people are supposed to bend over backwards to help you. \n\nOther posters have said that this is predominantly a trait of American culture which is certainly true. In Europe there is more concern for employee's wellbeing and as a result usually the standard of customer service in places such as resturaunt or gas station is lower than in North America. The trade off is that the person behind the counter won't want to commit murder as often.\n\nSource- 5 very long years in the service industry on both sides of the Atlantic. ", "This expression isn't referring to individual customers, but instead to all customers. \n\nIt's a statement on capitalism and market forces.", "The customer is always right originally started in Chicago from Marshall Field's store. The actual phrase is \"Assume that the customer is right until it is plain beyond all question he is not\". The Marshall Fields cookbook has an interesting example of this in Mrs. Hering's Chicken Pot Pie where an employee overheard two customer talking about how hungry they were so she served them a chicken pot pie she brought for lunch. ", "Because the second one store starts it, they beat out their competition. if anyone stopped doing it, they simply couldnt compete.\n\nThink about it; If A store today allowed its employees to ignore or deny customers, even if they want something ridiculously stupid, then they would lose a customer. they could just go somewhere else, as more than likely there's a store nearby that does the exact same thing, AND treats all their customers better than their employees.\n\n\nEssentially, get used to being treated like shit at your job :/\n\n\nOn the plus side, private businesses, if you can find them, typically treat their employees pretty damn fair.", "\"Customer is always right\" I believed started with the first modern department store known as Selfridges. It's still open today! Started by an American too! \n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "What you have here is a total misunderstanding. \n\nNothing you've written in the post is particularly accurate or true in business, you just don't understand the phrase you're trying to use. \n\nIf the company you work at is like this, I would look for another job.", "In Texas, where I live, it is common to see a sign in small businesses that says, \"We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.\" This is the prevailing sentiment among the people with who I am acquainted. If a would-be customer causes a problem in a business, *any* sort of problem, he is free to take his ass on down the road.\n\nNobody has any right to be served in any business where I've ever worked. Either you behave yourself, or GTFO.", "The Customer is Always right phrase came around during the 50s when the ad business started to boom. It's a similar sentiment as \"you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink\". You may think your customers want a product done a certain way but they buy what they want, and you can't always predict that. You may be selling a superior product in every way but if the customer is only buying the inferior product, then you are wrong. Cater to what the customer wants, even if you the business think you have a better product for them, they want what they want and since they are paying, they are right.\n\nThis is used as a business model and never intended to be taken literally at a personal level.", "In my line of work \"customer is always right\" will get people killed. (battery and electrical applications). We treat it as \"customer is always right until they aren't\". At that point we correct, educate and reinforce.", "\"The customer is always right\" has mutated in meaning since its origin.\n\nOriginally it meant that you should change your inventory + service based on what the marketplace demands. Best modern example of this is how Netflix's model to not have ads is \"right\" because they dominate the marketplace over other streaming services that kept ads. \n\n\nToday: the idea that it means you shouldn't argue with a customer making demands is a bullshit marketing ploy more than a business model. At McDonalds, the customer is always right is not practically true (they stopped having ketchup + napkins out because the customers (and non-customers) were taking too many) but the idea is that arguing with the customer is less profitable than just getting them out of the way. The thing is, most McDonalds' don't really do that. It's just this marketed impression that you can get away with it.\n\nBut yes, try telling McDonalds that you require UNSALTED FRIES. See what happens with \"how right\" you are. By law they are required to literally make a separate batch of fries due to how they produce the salted fries, but this would disrupt + cause so much problems they'll just tell you they can't do that.\n\n\nBest Buy used to have this model where they'd not even check returns for anything or require a reason. My friend had the top of the line graphics card perpetually for 2 years because of this return policy. \n\nIt wasn't until people started buying items and there'd be slices of pizza in the box because someone returned it with fake shit inside that they had to think \"ok maybe the customer can go fuck themselves.\"\n\n", "I didn't see this answer, but as somebody who worked retail management, in wholesale too, it's just easier in the retail goods industry to get them out of your hair. Markup is so high on almost everything that it's just cheaper to shut them up. Give them a new product and get on with your day.\n\nTake clothing - a pair of jeans retails for 69.99 we'll say. However, since that store buys in bulk, they're probably paying 3.99 PPU (priced per unit) per pair of jeans. So those jeans cost 3.99 to the store. Is 3.99 worth your time trying to work with a bitchy, naggy customer who will go out in to the world and spread shit via word of mouth? Or is it just easier to usually do what they want, which is almost always an exchange, or a refund. \n\nIt's just easier in most industries. ", "I think the point here is to make the customer always feel like they are right, even though they are not.\n\n", "I interpreted it more along the lines of \"Defy logic, make them think they are right.\" \n\nI worked at a dog daycare for $9.25 an hour. I tried to explain to difficult or upset (usually wealthy) customers the situation logically. \n\nAfter that failed I decided to say \"You're right. This and that was wrong. I or the employee made a mistake. Policy will be reevaluated and/or disciplinary action will be taken.\"\n\nThen I did nothing and never heard about it again.\n", " Harry Gordon Selfridge (founder of Selfridge Stores), John Wanamaker, and Marshall Field (founder of Marshall Fields in Chicago). Selfridge worked at Marshall Field's from 1879 to 1901. \n\nTogether, 'they advocated that customer complaints should be treated seriously so that customers do not feel cheated or deceived.'\n\nThe idea was later amended to include the fact that \"customers can be dishonest, have unrealistic expectations, and/or try to misuse a product in ways that void the guarantee.\" \n\n_URL_0_", "The customer is always right refers to trends. Others have provided good examples, but I have one that kind of sticks with me.\n\nLet's say I run a burger shop. Meat is obviously superior. Well, the current trend is towards healthier food. People start asking for veggie/tofu/etc. Burgers. I am vehemently opposed to veggie burgers. If there's no meat, then it's not a burger. \n\nI can maybe tell one or two people off. If I were in a more rural area, I could maybe get away with no vegetarian options. But I'm in California, full of vegetarian hipsters. So while it pains me, I start advertising a veggie burger. And I could also make a lettuce wrap burger. As a gluten free option. I don't believe in gluten free, but it costs me nothing but pride to wrap a burger in lettuce instead of the bread it belongs in. \n\nThat's what the customer is always right means. You have to follow the trends and look at what your customer base wants. That's why, even though Carl's Jr/Hardee's advertise themselves as where you can get a real big manly burger, they have natural and vegetarian options. The demand is there.", "I had a boss who always said, you have to give the illusion that the customer is always right, even if they are a pig headed twat. ", "I worked at an upscale Seattle bar for a year and they had this policy and it was absolutely awful.\n I was serving a breakfast shift one weekend morning, and we had an unexpected group of 35 people walk in and want us to set up a huge table for them. I let them know they would have to wait 10-15 minutes for a couple of other tables to leave as we were very busy, and needed to free up tables in order to combine them into one large table. We sat them, took all their drink and breakfast orders and got to work. We had a decent sized kitchen but not a kitchen that could churn out 35 plates at the exact same time, so we brought out meals 5 at a time, we let them know ahead of time this was how it would be. The first people were done eating before we could refill drinks and before the last 5 people got their meals. The lady who had organized to pay for it all, came up to me and asked if she could speak to my manager. I asked her what it was she needed as I could try and answer her questions (my manager had a newborn baby and was always busy with he baby). She started yelling at me saying I gave them awful service, that I should be fired for not attending them and checking Thier table every 5 minutes for glass refills, serving their food at different intervals, ect... The lady wouldn't calm down, so finally I went and grabbed my manager from her office to speak with this evil woman. \nThe woman demanded that their entire bill be free, and that I should have to pay for it. Mind you we were an upscale Seattle bar, so our food plates were between 16-23$, and drinks were anywhere from 8-15$. These people had a bill of over 1200$!!!! That was my entire months paycheck.\nI didn't get into any trouble as my boss knew it wasn't my fault, she had to explain over and over again to the lady, that her bringing 35 people to a restaurant last minute was very unheard of and pretty unacceptable to expect basically a catering service last minute like that.\nIn the end my boss gave them half off of their entire meal order, and gave them a 100$ gift certificate to come back and try us again.\nI couldn't believe she wanted that lady to come back, or that she gave that lady 600$ off her entire bill. Not to mention they left me no tip. That table took up my entire serving shift, so I made no money, when usually I would walk away with 200$ or more.\nThis is the kind of \"thhe customer is always right\" mentality that is so fucked up with the service industry!!!", "People have widely misconstrued what \"the customer is always right\" axiom actually means. Not surprisingly, the party mostly responsible for this has been... consumers. We live in an entitled culture. (In the West, anyhow. Sometimes the rest of the world isn't so lucky.)\n\nAround the turn of the century and before, shopping for a lot of items was not a self service affair. You were helped by a salesperson or shopkeeper, who was counted on to be more or less knowledgeable about whatever the product in question may be. Even if that item was mundane (a sack of flour, or a pound of nails) it was probably located behind a counter or in a storeroom or otherwise inaccessible. Naturally the customer would tend to turn to this person for advice, particularly with goods like clothing. \"The customer is always right\" really means that despite what the salesperson's opinion or prior experience may be, he should ultimately sell the customer what they ask for. Regardless of how silly or unfashionable it may look on them, or if there is a higher quality version or another product that would earn a fatter commission, whatever -- if the customer wants a specific item, that is what you sell them.\n\nSomewhere between the 1960's and 1980's, possibly due to the rise of chain stores, corporate culture, and the possibility for bad word of mouth to spread fast and far via the telephone, TV, nationally syndicated letters to the editor, etc. this got twisted around to the current \"bend over backwards and do anything to prevent the customer from complaining\" compulsion. That's what everyone thinks it means now, but that's not what it originally meant.", " > Despite evidence of the opposite (including cameras and other employee witnesses), why does HR or management always opt to punish the employee rather than ban the customer? \n\nin today's economy and culture, it is far easier to find a new employee than to get a new customer. however as far as i'm concerned, any company that goes so far as to fire an employee just because a jackass customer demands it is one that isn't going to get my business. happy employees ensure happy customers.\n\n > I feel like it takes more time, energy, and money to hire, train, write tax info for, and fire employees rather than to just ban or refuse to bend over backwards for an unreasonable customer. All you have to say is \"no\" and lose out on that $1000 or so that customer might bring every year rather than spend twice that much on a high turnover rate.\n\nbecause on the business side, the customer brings in money but the employee costs money. from that perspective, it's better to preserve your source of income and eliminate an operating cost, especially if it's not one that you absolutely have to replace right this second.\n\n > Where did the idea of catering to customers no matter what start, and is there a possibility that it might end?\n\nwhen you're dealing with a truly free-market economy, the one where the consumers are the ones who dictate which companies will survive or fail, then if you want your company to profit and grow you need to cater to the customer as much as possible to attract and retain their business... and that meant giving them whatever they wanted, no matter how wrong they might be. even though we're not in a free-market economy (we're in a very litigious, profit-centric economy where the focus is on quarterly balance sheets and shareholder happiness), it's often less costly to give the customer what they're asking or go so far as to draw up a settlement with them than to have them sue you. lawsuits are public, expensive, and drive away customers.\n\nwhen will it end? those mom & pop stores that take the \"no BS\" policy often do so with a good dose of common sense, and likely their reputation within the community is solid enough that whoever goes out and bitches to the world isn't going to be taken seriously. so when the rest of the world employs common sense along with those small stores, then it'll end and we can realize that sometimes the business did the right thing, or what we're asking them to do is out of line.", "\"The customer is always right\" DOES NOT mean \"the customer is always entitled to get/do whatever he or she wants.\" When I was in sales this came up a lot - someone would come in stating that they need x y and z for some project. I could tell them that x y and z won't work and instead they need a b and c. If they objected or wouldn't listen, then I would just sell them what they want, because who am I to talk them out of spending money if they insist upon it.", "\"Several retail concern used this as a slogan from the early 20th century onward. In the USA it is particularly associated with Marshall Field's department store, Chicago .... Several retail concern used this as a slogan from the early 20th century onward. In the USA it is particularly associated with Marshall Field's department store, Chicago\"\n\nThe trading policy and the phrase were well-known by the early 20th century. From the Kansas City Star, January 1911 we have a piece about a local country store that was modelled on Field's/Selfridges:\n\n[George E.] \"Scott has done in the country what Marshall Field did in Chicago, Wannamaker did in New York and Selfridge in London. In his store he follows the Field rule and assumes that the customer is always right.\"\n\nsauce - _URL_0_ ", "This has nothing to do with individual customers, but large groups of them and how their opinion should affect your business model and practices. You make a sharper knife, let's say. Studies show that the sharper the knife, the safer and better it is at doing the job. But the customers disagree with the science. They fear the sharper knife will hurt them. Who is right? Well, the customers have the money. And they're using it to buy the duller knives your competitor is selling...so....", "Gonna let you in on a secret. It's because it allows the higher ups to place more pressure on the lower workers while portraying a kind environment.\n\nLemme break it down. There's a company in my town called Stew Leonard's. They employ a shit ton of people. They follow that rule, and even add another cheeky one: \"If the customer is not right, see rule #1\". Yeah, very funny. Anyway, the people that work there are just happy that they have a job in this terrible town. They're told promotions lie in the their future if they work hard. And that does happen... Sometimes. Really it's just a way to control them. Give them a challenges they have to follow and trick them into competing against each other all while the honchos work far away in a separate building. But hey, put on those jeans and they're just like us! Now kiss your king's boots.", "I am currently mobile and will need to go back and confirm my source, but \"The customer is always right.\" (assuming I'm remembering correctly and my sources aren't bullshit) has come to take on a twisted sort of meaning in that the customer should always get their way. \n\nWhat it actually meant whwn it was first said, was that the customer ultimately knows what they want more than you do, even if what they want will not help them or is bad. That companies need to cater their products and services to their customers needs and wants rather than coming up with a product or service and trying to convince people they need it. ", "With 15 years in retail and 19 years in factory production I can tell you that it is in both fields. If a customer has any issue it is your fault no matter the circumstances. \n\nI think it stems from the focus on profit. we/you have to get their $$ no matter what and we/you want to get more of their $$ down the road. So if they are always right then they keep coming back.\n\nI blame the bigtime share holders... back in the day, say 1990 and earlier people buying stock would evaluate what a business could potentially earn. ROI... return on investment would be calculated on how much profit a business could be reasonably expected to maintain. The buyers would then either buy that stock or not just as they liked. NOW buyers buy stock without this expectation, they then calculate how much their own personal ever increasing lifestyle will cost and they TELL the business how much profit they must make. Regardless of any reasonable expectations. Company officers and upper mgmt start shaking in their boots at the thought of a massive sell off of stock which would ruin a company. So the management tells the people who do the work, ridiculous and unattainable rules and policies to maximize profit. Running understaffed and expecting more production than ever before... running understaffed and expecting better customer service than ever before. Receipt padding with things a customer didn't intend to buy, now must be pushed on a customer with unattainable sales levels. Hours available to schedule people are cut so thin that updates and remodels that must get done have no one to do them. \n\nSigh I am just hoping for a big lottery win ;-)", "I'm not sure if the saying was ever meant to be taken literally. At least I certainly don't. I run a business in the service industry and we try to use that saying as a way to get you in the right frame of mind for dealing with a customer.\n\nThe way I look at it is. \"The customer is always right, until proven otherwise\". If the customer brings up a concern, you immediately assume they're right to be concerned. You DON'T speculate and you DON'T go on the defensive until you investigate the matter. \"I will look into your concern and rectify the issue right away\" A lot of the time they're right to be concerned and because you took the \"customer is always right\" stance to begin with, you defused the situation and pacified the customer. Follow up and fix the concern and more often than not, you'll look like a hero. Now even though your company screwed up, you've still got a happy customer as well as a referral.\n\nSometimes the customer is not right. Willingly allowing your customers the right to take advantage of you is not a good business model. And I'd be surprised if there are any successful companies that actually promote that saying in the literal sense. ", "I've taken huge issue with \"the customer is always right\" and I beleive its outtdated rhetoric from the 90's. I think with the advent of major big box retailers, that have huge profit margins and sales volume, like Wal-Mart and Amazon, customers have gotten used to bossing them around and getting what they wanted. Then said customers take this same arrogant attitude and hold small independent shops to the same standards they would Amazon. \n\nNow, if a plumber has a 3 hour arrival window, they want it to be one hour, and if the plumb is 15 min late, they want a discount. If a product isn't over-nighted the customer wants a refund on shipping. \n\nWhen they don't get their way the customer extorts. They use Yelp, Facebook, Google Reviews, etc to get what they want from the small mom and pop shop. Its absolutely heart breaking to see customers who use the tool \"the customer is always right\". It will be the downfall of some small businesses. \n\n", "It's largely misunderstood as others have pointed out.\n\nI'll just add that keep in mind that businesses exist for customers. That doesn't mean you allow customers to be violent or overly rude, but to paraphrase Iacocca(?), customers are the only ones who put money into the system.\n\nSo if you've got a product or service that's deemed wrong by your target customer, your choice is either to fix what's wrong or find a new customer. It's much, much easier to fix the issues than to find new customers. \n\nOne example as it relates to service are substitutions at a restaurant. Now, at a high end set course restaurant, it's probably expected that you can't make substitutions so it doesn't affect their target customers. But at an Applebee's? That would piss a lot of target customers off. I've been to mom & pop restaurants that are about the equivalent of an Applebee's, and they won't allow substitutions. Their online reviews are usually bad.", "I worked clothing retail and a customer came to the counter asking me the price of an item. I told them what I thought the price was based on what I remembered the promotion being the day before. I did not know the promotion had changed. When I rang the items the price was not as expected.\n\nI told the customer the item was buy one get one free, but the item was now marked at 40% off. The customer wanted to know what 40% of $24 was essentially. I thought she may have found it in an area without clear signing. I just went from memory. \n\n\nI called my boss over to the counter, and the customer became irate because I had misinformed them. My boss backed me because the item was clearly marked on the table and it wasn't necessary to act like she had been robbed of a deal. \n\n\nI can confirm the customer is always right when they don't act poorly towards the associates. Retail workers don't get paid enough to be talked down to for honest mistakes. ", "Sorry but we don't use this analogy any more. We say \"the customer isn't always right. But the customer does come first.\" ", "You misunderstand that statement, \"the customer is always right\". The idea behind this is overall trends, not specific customers. If you have an item in inventory that doesnt sell, take it off your shelf. ", "\"the customer is always right\" refers to making sure the customer is getting what actually want at the time they want it. \nIt does not mean the customer gets what they want at the price they want it. \nIt does not mean the customer gets to be rude/aggressive/violent with employees of the company. \nIt does not mean they get to treat employees of the company with less respect. \nThe phrase means that the customer is right because if the company does not have customers, then the company does not exist any more. \nHR should have very little if anything at all to do with this policy. Employees should treat customers with respect and should do everything in their power to get their customer the best value they can to promote future business. The future business is more than just that customer coming back and making purchases for themselves but also their positive word of mouth which brings friends/family to your business thus growing it.", "A business sets out to find customers who have a need, and fulfill that need for them. If you don't pay attention to the feedback you're getting from customers along the way, all you can do is pray that your original business idea was 100% right, which it rarely is.\n\nThere is also the problem of annoying customers. Sure, they're annoying, and from your point of view, they're wrong about something. But winning arguments with customers doesn't bring in any revenue - satisfying customer needs does.\n\nI mean, yes staff turnover is an issue, which is why you try to inoculate people against difficult customers by pointing out that ultimately those customers pay everyones' salary. But minimizing staff turnover isn't in itself a business model. Job number one is selling something that customers want. \n\nWouldn't it be great if customers just rolled in an politely handed you money for exactly the product/service you offer without ever having problems or wanting to change it in any way? Yeah, that would be great. It's just not realistic. \n\nIf a manager is literally just telling you \"the customer is always right\" then they suck as a manager and should work harder to give you tactics for solving problems and emotional support for getting through difficult interactions.\n\nBut on the other hand if you as a service employee expect the business to ban every customer who annoys you, then you suck as an employee and should find work in a non-service role.", "I think this question confuses 'The Customer is Always Right' with 'Customer abuse of Employees'. Those have always been two separate things. I'm speaking from the experience of working at Customer Service Desks at two different supermarkets: Whole Foods and Wegmans.\n\n'The Customer is Always Right' is the general approach to a customer complaint or concern. There are a couple of things going on. First, if it is a matter of bad product, the cost of the product in question is usually trivial compared to the buying power of any given customer. So if someone comes in with a dozen eggs and says one is cracked, I would tell them to go get another one and mark it paid. I don't know if it cracked in their car going home or it was cracked in the store, but it doesn't matter. I just spent a few dollars to make that customer spend a lot more dollars in the future. \n\nCould that system be abused? Yes. And people do abuse it. It happened on occasion that someone would buy prepared food and eat it in the store, but return to the customer service desk with half a plate and complain the food was bad. Of course you know they're angling for a free meal. But again it is risk/reward. The cost of appeasing an abuser is usually less than the cost of accidentally rejecting a real complaint. It also serves to get that customer out of the store as quickly as possible. If they create a scene, it will make other customers unhappy too.\n\nAnother case is an angry customer. Either they felt like they were treated rudely, or bad product had ruined some plans, or any of a myriad of reasons. 'The Customer is Always Right' in this scenario means deescalation. You need to resolve the anger first before resolving the issue. The quickest way to get this done is appeasement and empathy. Tell them you understand and you apologize and that they're right: it never should have happened. You invite a manager into the mix - which also has the benefit of outnumbering them. People shopping in supermarkets often don't want to be there. Go in with the assumption that someone is having a bad day and you're usually right. If you can make them happy and they leave happy, well then you're the one bright spot in the otherwise crappy day. This brings them back to the store tomorrow.\n\n'Employee Abuse,' however, was NEVER tolerated in any place I worked. Cursing out an employee, yelling and screaming, inappropriate behavior (I had one guy lie down on the service desk as if to take a nap once), or anything physical would get a customer escorted out of the store. At Wegmans, that would have involved a cop and Whole Foods had their own security. Whenever a customer got abusive, the customer was always wrong. It's a health and safety issue at that point. And yes, people do get banned for life. Both stores also have their own 'inventory control' people: essentially undercover shoppers looking for shoplifters or scammers. You didn't want to confront shoplifters yourself, but notify a manager who would notify these folks (we rarely if ever knew who they were). \n\nWhy does this work at big retail chains and not Mom and Pop stores? It's really economy of scale. Large retail stores are making a lot more money per transaction and doing a whole lot more of them, such that they can absorb the cost of a 'Customer is Always Right' policy. And in the end, you encourage people to return and spend more money with the policy.", "Most businesses no longer use that model because we realized it doesn't really work. There are some companies that still use it to an extent, but it was adopted during an era where the emphasis was customer retention. It was abandoned because a lot of people would use it as an excuse to make unreasonable demands.", "Fuck the idea of \"the customer is always right\". That's why people are so goddamn spoiled and rude. Just like parents who spoil their kids. Imo, the company/employees are 1st. The product is 2nd. And the customers are 3rd. If the customers don't like my shit fuck'm they can go somewhere else. I ain't about coddling to everyone's stupid ass preferences and shit. Lol", "I agree. The \"customer is always right\" model has given some customers carte blanche to be tremendous douchebags to employees. I feel like there should be a defined set of circumstances in which HR or an employee should be able to tell a customer to go fuck themselves. Everyone i know has a story of a customer being a jackass. ", "I absolutely ban customers that are abusive or very rude, even if they don't complain. On the flipside, we will happily fix respectful customer's errors out of pocket. \n\nThe reason is simple: If you treat the customer well they come back. If they buy food that earns us $10 in gross profit, but piss off all the employees doing so, the company is going to lose more than $10 in lost productivity and retention programs. Therefore, every time they come back, they cost the store money. It's better to keep them away. If other customers need us to make an order again so we eat a $5 net loss. But this makes them much more likely to 1) come back and 2) order more expensive food. Even though we ate a 1 time $5 loss, it more than pays for itself down the road. \n\nThe \"Customer is always right\" is not a business model and any spinless manager who gives in to abusive customers shouldn't be in charge of anyone.", "As someone with 10+ years of Customer Service experience, I straight up won't work for companies who follow the \"Customer is always right\" policy. In the past, when facing abuse from customers (name-calling or just plain rudeness etc.), my managers have ALWAYS stuck up for me and banned or \"fired\" the customer from doing business with us. And it made me work that much harder.\n\nI think its old-fashioned style of doing business and many new companies don't believe in it any longer.", "MBA, worked in business strategy. People are touching on the customer perception aspect, which is great, but they're missing the point. The Customer is always right comes from the 50's. However, it was a literal business strategy. The most famous legend of the story is [Nordstrom and the tire return.](_URL_0_) During the 50's, people really started to get savvy about corporate strategy and started to build out a lot of the modern frameworks that are still used today. One of the most important marketing frameworks works like this: you can work on differentiating your product or service, making the service or product a higher quality, or you can be a cost leader. If you are tackling all three, you aren't using your resources efficiently, and your company becomes luke warm tea, which is to say not particularly good at anything. No one likes look warm tea. Competitors will come along who do any three of those dimensions better and will take most of your business.\n\nCustomer is always right is the differentiation of service. Customers will go to your store if they trust your company and enjoy the service they receive. The idea is a single customer might cost you money with their BS, but you attract customers who will pay your slightly higher prices for products that they can get elsewhere. You will see this all over the place. Your favorite Italian restaurant might not be the cheapest, and the food might be nearly identical to their competitors, but the environment and service might be better. Or take LL Bean and their no question asked return policy. What a lot of companies focus on is not the day to day costs that they incur, but the long term life time value of customers.", "I've worked Customer Service in one form or another for about 15 years, from home repair to food service to tech support.\n\nThe most successful CS departments strictly refuse to follow the mantra of 'the customer is always right.' \n\nThe most successful CS departments work on a mantra of providing accurate information and as much time as the customer demands of you. \n\nCurrently, I work for a joint car company/telecom project dealing with onboard touch-screen radios similar to Onstar. Average Hold Time is something strictly ignored unless you're going UNDER 5 minutes. Then, they want to know why you're not spending more time with the customers. We can take as much time as needed to satisfy the customer's demands, as long as we're capable of doing so, and when we're not capable of supplying the solution, we tell them in simple terms while expressing our empathy for their situation.\n\nIn short, if a customer wants free service without a qualifying reason such as a documented failing on our end, we'll apologize as often as is required by the customer, but we'll never promise them anything we can't deliver and we'll never break the rules to make them happy. \n\n'the customer is always right' has led to the idea that if the customer complains loud enough and long enough, they'll get what they want. And with some companies, that'll work. Not with all companies, though. ", "I will say, I am proud to work for a boss who believes the customer is not always right. We work in a service based industry, and we see our fair share of complaints. If there isn't a good basis, or we get into it with a customer, he backs us 120%. If we are rude, there is a good basis, or something was our fault, he also backs us with what we need to do to take care of the customer and keep them coming back. He's pretty awesome and doesn't put up with people trying to game free stuff. ", "I think it means the customer is right in the sense \"the customer knows what they want to buy\" and that you need to provide that solution. Not in the common misconception sense of \"customer gets what they want from the business\"", "Story time: Work in a smaller shop, sell some agricultural and electrical equipment. A product we sold to a customer broke down within the 1 year warranty period. They brought it in for servicing or replacement. Husband and wife team, they were belligerent, angry, accusatory, the whole nine yards. They seemed to feed off each others anger, proportionately getting madder when the other speaks. The kind of customers that make you wish for a meteor to come flying in at just that moment. But you just keep going and kill them with kindness and professionalism.\n\nWe take the unit to the back for a quick inspection. Turns out the guy had made massive alterations to it. New welds, changed alignments and everything. And he did not do a good job of it either. When confronted he said he was trying to fix our flawed design and wanted a full refund AND a new unit for his troubles. Escalated to the company president who eventually asked them to take their broken unit and leave the premises. This customer was most definitely not always right.", "i worked for a small business for a while. hobby/used good shop. after a few people screwed us like in this thread we enacted the fuck you policy.\n\n1...\"im sorry i can't help you\"\n2...\"sorry i can't\"\n3...please leave\n4... fuck you here come the cops\n\nafter a while business did suffer. then actually started booming as people were more honest. apparently after word gets around that you will tell customers to fuck off, they stop fucking with you!", "I have been in retail for 18 years. Hopefully getting out after a trade course in May. \n\nI would compare customer service to spoiling a shitty 3 year old. \n\nWhen a customer acts out to get there way and a store yields to them whether they are right or not only enables that behavior and shows others how they should act to get there way. \n\nThe squeeky wheel gets the oil. \n\nWhat I dislike about this the most is the customers that come in every day and do the real \"good customer\" thing don't really get rewarded with anything extra. We just take there money and say come back tomorrow. ", "My boss always told me \"the customer is always right.\" Is not true, the actual phrase should be \"the customer always wins.\"", "I've always loved the quote from Richard Branson: “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” That attitude has taken him and his business far and I've seen first hand what a truly passionate employee that feels appreciated can do. Likewise, I've been the employee that is undervalued, even completely ignored, and the effects of that. \n\nMy one-man side business makes it easy because I feel totally valued!", "what's with all the deleted posts? I WANNA KNOW!!", "Why are there so many [removed] signs?", "\"Clients don't come first. Take care of your employees and they will take care if your customers!\"", "\"The Customer is Always Right\" is not a *business model* (which describes the essence of a business, what it does, and how it makes and uses money), and despite the use of the word \"always,\" it's not a *maxim* or *axiom* or *law*. \n\nWhen a customer has a complaint or dispute, \"the Customer is Always Right\" is a *rule of thumb* that businesses often employ in attempt to achieve the best long-term outcome for the business. The Customer is Always Right is used to describe the behavior of the business when the customer is *actually wrong*! It typically means placating the customer:\n\n* to avoid the time and cost of nuisance,\n* to save a sale or deal,\n* to the increase the chance of continued patronage (and revenue), or \n* to protect the business's reputation\n\nNow, the situation you describe is extreme: an employee is fired to placate a customer (who is not right). I can think of a few situations in which the wrongful-firing approach might be reasonable (from the standpoint of the company):\n\n* the value the customer brings (or is expected to bring) to the business *significantly* outweighs all the costs of firing and re-hiring as you mentioned,\n* the company is extremely large and the employee is low-value, unskilled or minimally-skilled, and replaceable with little effort, or\n* the customer appears to be willing and able to inflict significant harm on the business's reputation.\n\nYet in all these examples, the customer would probably have to *demand* the employee be fired.", "For bigger companies it often works out cheaper to just \"pay\" angry customers off rather than investigate what actually happened. Fines also have a lot to do with it. I used to work for a bank that had just received huge charges for not handling complaints to a satisfactory level. Not only did they receive a large one off fee, but they were being fined every time a decision was disputed, regardless of wether they won the dispute. This meant that it was cheaper to give every customer the benefit of the doubt and a small payout ( < £300) as long as it was their first call. If you call up your bank (in the uk) and tell them something happened in branch, they will almost always comp you without looking in to it. I imagine that similar incentives play a role in other fields, which account for a \"customer is always right\" vibe. It's the same logic as settling lawsuits outside of court because the cost of fighting them is too high.", "I believe that the larger the company, the more likely they are to calculate the cost of \"the customer is always right\" vs a certain amount of P.O.ed customers is the cost business.\n\nA few years back, Nvidia had an issue with some of its GPUs and ended up paying HP, Dell, and other money to replace the product. I had a laptop with this particular GPU and HP wanted to charge me $200 to repair it. After going through multiple layers of people, that was the best they would do for me, even after pointing out that Nvidia had PAID THEM to replace the GPU with a different one. It wasn't until I sent them a letter giving them 30 days to either replace the laptop or refund my money, other wise I would file in small claims court. They called with one day of receiving the letter and gave me gift cards for the full amount of the laptop.\n\nIn the end, HP has permanently lost a customer. And gained someone who lets everyone know this story anytime someone asks him for a recommendation for a computer. ", "I've worked in customer service for about 12 years and all I've learned is that the customer is rarely right. If a customer comes in complaining that the computer they bought 6 months ago had a broken screen when you bought it and its our duty to take it back under the 1 year warranty you got me fucked up. I have started to take a guilty pleasure in denying customers. So long as you act professional and kill them with kindness HR can't do anything and it typically pisses off the customer even more that you can keep composure.", "All I know is 20 years of retail has given me this super power of hating people before they even talk. \n\nSo that's cool", "Not at my business. Lady came in, I was sitting in my employee break room ( I am the owner ). She walks over and taps loudly on the lockbox over the thermostat and asks: \"Hey, can you turn this down, it's hot in here?\"\n\nI told her no, I could not. She asked : \"Well, why not?!\" (already starting to get angry and loud). I told her because I didn't want to. I also said I am not turning the A/C on when it's 50 degrees (F) outside. She lost it. Called me rude, said she couldn't believe I would talk to a woman that way (wtf? I literally said two sentences), etc and so on. Said she wouldn't give our business money and left.\n\nNow the backstory is, we are a hair salon. When the stylists use their tools in their rooms, obviously the room they are in heats up ( the thermostat controls the whole building). The stylist that was working on this client complained about her room being hot earlier (gee, it might have to do with the red hot hair dryers you are using, I'm no expert though). I told her to crack her windows because it's 50 degrees outside. She said okay, then didn't listen to me. \n\nAnyhow, I killed the lady with kindness as she was losing her shit on me. I believe she was just embarrassed for acting like a moron and eventually she left, after I made it clear that customers don't control the thermostat in my building, and they certainly don't just walk in and make demands. Before we had the lockboxes on the thermostats, we had problems with people freezing out the A/C because they would leave them set too low overnight. I guarantee, had I not been sitting right there and had there not been a lockbox on that thermostat, that customer would have adjusted it herself. She certainly looked like she wanted to. I'm a small business owner, not a frickin' tycoon.\n\nAnyways, I never heard from that lady again, and she never left a negative review, probably because she realized how stupid she was acting. I took the amount our stylist would have made from that lady and subtracted it from her rent for that week, because I'm a nice guy, not as an admission of guilt. Screw customers like that.", "The answer is actually pretty simple. A lot of people suggest that is has to do with customer experience and word of mouth: I will argue that this is not true.\n\nThere are industries, such as ISPs, where it really doesn't matter what the customer thinks. They're going to go ahead and do what they want to do regardless of what any subscriber thinks. Look at Comcast, and Charter, and how they've been buying everything up. Both of these companies suck, and everyone knows they suck. But they are operating on the other business paradigm \"The provider is always right.\".\n\nThe market tends to prefer \"The customer is always right.\"; both from a consumer perspective and a business perspective. A business might prefer it because it is a **part** of what keeps large companies from growing too large as to threaten monopolies. Microsoft, for instance, also takes the \"vendor is always right\" approach. The \"customer is right\" paradigm is intended to empower both boycott and word of mouth advertising which are instrumental market mechanisms when it comes to the survival of smaller businesses. Because if the largest business in the industry gets to set the rules: then they will easily shut out the competition. As has been entirely the case with ISPs land-locking their competition out of the market by owning all of the infrastructure in the ground. The only solution to this is if an even bigger company comes along and makes an even bigger investment. Such has been the case with Google Fiber.\n\nWe prefer the \"customer is always right\" model because it is far healthier for a diverse and distributed economy than the \"vendor is always right model\". It has nothing to do with whether or not they're actually right. It has to deal with empowerment of the consumer.", "I was taught a new way of thinking a few years ago, \"The customer is not always right but the customer is always the customer\".", "Super Coupon customers are a special kind evil....they go ballistic over 25 cent coupon on shampoo and you have to stand there and take their crap because they saw tips on the internet .... ", "Speaking from the perspective of the hotel business (I'm a partial investor in one) you have to strike a balance. In the late 80's, Hampton Inn ran a \"satisfaction guaranteed or your stay's on us\" campaign, which caused such enormous chaos with their franchisees (due to very high volume of complaints solely to get the free room) that they had to terminate the campaign and a lot of them actually had to put up very carefully worded signs that they did not honor that promotion due to rampant abuse. The home office tried to spin it 'paid off in the end with repeat business' that they 'tracked' but talk to any franchisee who was around during that era, advertising that was an unmitigated disaster. \n\n\nNow, on the internet, where every idiot is nuclear-capable with other peoples reputations, it makes things even dicier, particularly for a small business when it comes to dealing with predatory customers (since they're going to have a small internet footprint where a complaint could be very overweight), but there is hope... Things are changing for the better. \n\n\nThe internet has been around long enough now that people aren't as widely influenced by a bad review as they once were. Not even 10 years back, a single bad review could cause real trouble in your online bookings, Now, people tend to evaluate the whole picture, meaning that while you do strive to make everyone happy, when you get that psycho who cannot be pleased, a calm response to their unwinnable complaint (online or otherwise) is usually enough for the customers to realize what they're seeing. \n\n\nSo, for us anyway, the formula isn't 'the customer is always right'. \nThe formula for us, in a nutshell, is more like \"Work as hard as possible to make the customer happy but if you encounter a hostile or adversarial customer who won't let you win, then they're not right and fuck them... and if they go whine on the internet, we'll be right there to rebut everything they say\". \n\n\n\n\n", "Small business owner here. The customer is always right because no matter how annoying, rude, or frustrating they become it is still worth your time to appease their every need. One bad review; be it word of mouth, social media, or yelp negates a hundred positive things someone has heard about your business. Making them feel \"right\" is paramount to your existence as a SBO. ", "Fuck the customer always being right. I was told a story from a co worker about a guy that came in to order a pizza. This pizza has a white sauce, chicken, bacon, chives, and parmesan cheese, but the guy only wanted the sauce, chicken, and cheese. My co workers tell him it won't taste very good, and offer to add different toppings to it. He declines and says make it the way he wants. They make the pizza, box it up, and send him on his way. He comes back in a couple minutes later complaining that the pizza doesn't taste good and he wants them to make another one for free. They tell him no and say we told you it wouldn't taste good and that you could have added other toppings. \n\nHe gets upset and leaves. He comes back and asks are they really not going to make him another pizza. They say only if he's paying for another one. He leaves. He then comes back and asks again, which they decline again, and this time he grabs a couple plastic forks and throws them at them and runs out. Well it was slick outside, he slips on a snowbank and almost gets his legs ran over by a car. Jumps up runs across the street and doesn't come back. \n\nAbout 15 minutes later, they get a phone call from the guys girlfriend saying her boyfriend bought a pizza and it was just chicken, sauce, and cheese and it didn't taste good like that. They said we know, we told him that and offered other toppings which he declined. She asked if they'd make another one and they said only if they were paying, she hung up.", "It's a business tactic to kill competition, once you get enough volume you can afford to take a hit for every disgruntled customer, smaller businesses won't be able to.\n\nTreat customers like Gods for a generation or two and you make sure nobody can afford to compete with you.", "Another storytime!:\n\n\nI worked at a large (no longer existant) bookstore chain in a large city while I was in college. We were in the middle of tourist central, and holidays were chaotic with lines wrapping around the store. We would offer free gift wrapping for as long as our supplies lasted as a courtesy, that we all happily obliged. \n\n\nFlash forward to two days after the holiday rush, an elderly woman comes in, and goes to purchase a few children's books. I ring her up in my sing song voice, and she asks me if we will wrap these for her. I look and notice we have zero wrapping paper left, so I let her know that whole we have no more free wrapping paper left, we do sell wrapping paper in our stationary section, and I would even wrap it for her with that if she'd like.\n\n\nWell...She proceeds to expel some heavy cursing from her around 80 year old mouth, and goes towards our stationary section. I shrug it off and wait for her to come back. \n\n\nShe came back alright, and proceeded to hit me over the head with a roll of wrapping paper while cursing at me. All this over a holiday 'courtesy'.... \n\n\nOur loss prevention guys come over, pick her up and remove her....Also find she was trying to steal Harlequin novels in her saddle bag (alot of people would steal these in mass to resell on street tables). \n\n\nTL;DR: Cashier (me) has run out of \"while supplies last\" wrapping paper AFTER the holidays, gets beaten over the head with wrapping g paper roll by 80 year old woman who is also stealing Harlequin novels. \n\n\nI have soooooo many stories from that place, large bookstores in metropolitan areas just breed curiosities.", "It creates lack of respect among true loyal patrons. The screamer has no loyalty to that store. He/she will go where ever it pleases them, not where they get good service & a good product. His/her friends will know they are complainers of everything. When other patrons see the accommodation to assholes they lose respect for the business when they see principles and standards are lowered for a buck. In fact they see it as greedy. As for the employees, a study showed they feel abandoned by administration and look out for themselves where as employees that feel supported put the customer first and satisfaction scores go up.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_3_\n\nA Boston shop owner received complaints from an elderly irate customer because his employee would not open the store on a Sunday for her to return shirts. She flamed his business on Facebook. He welcomed her to return the items, informed her that his employees had responsibilities to their families and loved ones, and banned her from his stores. His business tripled.\n\nDon't be a blind slave to a phrase created in 1909 when human beings were not greedy and were courteous by nature. Customers are now dishonest, have unrealistic expectations and want something for nothing. Progress to the times of now. Can you imagine what life would be like if we kept draining peoples blood when we thought they had a disease? \n\nIn South Florida the electronic stores changed their policy for video camera returns. Why? People were buying them to film their relatives bar mitzvah, birthdays, or other special events instead of paying for the camera or hiring a videographer. How did they find out? The tapes of the events were left in the cameras when they were returned.\n\nProgress. Re-adjust. Be realistic.", "There is no specific source for the whole \"The customer is always right\" mindset when it comes to retail. There's been some arguments as to where it likely started, yes, but nothing you could specifically say \"this is where it began.\" The best arguments I've heard seem to point to it starting sometime in the 1900's with the Woolworth's chain of stores. They were a simple five and dime chain that later grew into something far larger. In any case, Woolworth's had this policy to never argue with the customers, regardless of the reason. Given that the most something in their stores could cost was ten cents (this later changed, of course, as inflation took over), then the store really wasn't out much if a patron wished to argue that something cost five cents; as opposed to ten cents. From there, the idea that the retail salesman (there were few if any sales ladies at this time) was there to serve, and not to argue or haggle over prices, seemed to take hold. \n\nOver time, the idea that \"the customer is always right\" has evolved some. Many companies, such as Wal-Mart once held to this, though in recent years they have opted to change. Back until about 1996, Wal-Mart had a policy that regardless of WHEN you bought something from their store, you could always return that item, whether damaged or not, and get full price or an exchange. No questions asked. Around 96, though, this rule changed, with receipts being required and a whole host of regulations and limitations coming into play. Now, even in situations where a store claims \"the customer is always right\" the saying is more often applied with the addition \"except when he is wrong.\" The latter being very important when it comes to the more technical nature of many products being sold such as computers, or highly technical electronics.\n\nAs to the idea ever ending? Honestly I don't see that happening any time soon. There would have to be a massive shift in attitudes, and let's be honest here; people don't like to be told they're wrong, even when it's painfully obvious that's the fact. Thus, while we can't positively say WHERE the idea started, we can be certain that it will be with us for some time to come.", " > \"The customer is always right\" is a motto or slogan which exhorts service staff to give a high priority to customer satisfaction. It was popularised by pioneering and successful retailers such as Harry Gordon Selfridge, John Wanamaker and Marshall Field. They advocated that customer complaints should be treated seriously so that customers do not feel cheated or deceived. This attitude was novel and influential when misrepresentation was rife and caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) was a common legal maxim.[source](_URL_0_) ", "appeasements are a part of a companys budget. its like settling in court. would you rather have this person taking up company time, not buying anything and causing a scene, or would you rather just give them a Chili's gift card. ", "Capitalism. Its not supposed to be taken verbatim, its just meant to be a mindset or motif for interacting with a customer. \n\n\nIf you act as if the customer is always right, the customer will like you, theyll feel good around you, theyll recommend you. If one thing goes bad and the customer feels shitty about the experience they may damage your image. \n\nSo, sometimes you take a loss on giving them something for free so that they recommend and keep coming back to you giving you a larger net gain.", "I have been told, though take this with a grain of salt, that a lot of people misinterpret the phrase to mean \"the customer always gets what they want\" when it should more correctly understood as \"always take the customer seriously/at face value.\"\n\nEssentially... don't call the customer a liar, treat them and their views with respect. So if they tell you that a gorilla is ransacking produce, then by all means give them a \"yes ma'am I'll go look right into it.\" If they say \"I found all these eggs were broken right as I walked out the door,\" you don't respond with \"are you sure that's what happened, sir?\" even if you saw their toddler smashing them yourself. However, if your store has a no refund policy on dairy, you would still not be out of line to say, \"I completely believe you sir, but as it is our store is unable to offer a refund on those eggs.\" You might offer a straight replacement though.\n\nThis means you don't just let customers use expired coupons, or curse at you, or return obviously damaged goods, it just means you take what they have to say as a legitimate concern that is worth your time.", "It's easier to please an outlandish customer than it is to deal with and fight possible bad PR that customer could bring upon your business.", "When people realized that they make more money dealing with a few outliers, than imposing their own views and opinions on their customers." ]

[ "In the case of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, it was a statement of absolutes. During the planning phase, they had already decided that they wanted to kill as many people as possible (they were hoping for a 3/4 termination rate of students at the school) and to leave the parents without anyone to blame. \n\nThis was more Harris' view of the shooting/bombing (bombing failed its purpose). Dylan Klebold suffered severe depression, and is believed to have gone along with Eric because he [Dylan] had few friends, and often fantasized about dramatic ways to make his exit. Certain drawings found at his home were highly revealing in this regard. \n\nWhile I don't know if that's the norm across the board, I have known of a few other spree killers with similar perspectives. ", "Maybe it's possible that they thought they would get some sort of feeling of accomplishment, then after the fact they realize they were wrong. Maybe they feel like they won't be able to live with what they've done.", "Keep in mind that some of these didn't actually expect to kill the other people: it was a bluff, or they planned it out but somehow believed they would not go through with it even as they planned it out.\n\nThere are more than a few cases where the \"Oh my God, what have I done?\" horror seems to motivate the suicide." ]

[ "They don't realise that they are forgetting things. If you keep pointing it out, they become very upset, stressed, and confused about everything. You have to just repeat yourself when they say they can't remember, without pointing out the condition.", "Alzheimer's is not simply about forgetting things. It's a degenerative brain disease, and it affects the mind as a whole, not just memories. \n\nSo yes, you forget things. You also have a harder time learning new things, paying attention to things for extended periods, making decisions, engaging in abstract thinking and planning, etc. People experience a reduced ability to properly process sensory information in general, and a growing inability to even move their bodies correctly.\n\nIf it was just losing memories, Alzheimer's would be terrible enough. But it's a slow slide into death as you gradually lose the ability to function as a person *at all*.", "It's a very, very gradual downward slope, and it's difficult for the person to notice it. It starts with a few minor things here and there, but if the person falls into a routine, everything else tends to fade away. They aren't dealing with it anymore, so they have no need to recall it, and they don't even know it's gone.\n\nIn the beginning they may notice a few things, but they usually think they're completely fine, because they *feel* fine. If I asked you, \"What is something you don't remember?\" you wouldn't be able to answer, because you don't remember it. It's the same with them, but the things they don't remember eventually outnumber the things they do.\n\nSource: grandmother had it for the last ~15 years of her life, like watching a train wreck in slow motion.", "Years ago I saw a documentary a woman made about her mother having Alzheimers (I'm sorry I don't remember enough details to find it for you). At one point she described how her mother would get upset and depressed looking at the family photos on her dresser, because she knew she was supposed to know who those people were, but did not. They took the photos away, stopped trying to 'make' the mother remember, and she was then happy as can be.\n\nEdit: found it! [Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter, by Deborah Hoffman](_URL_0_).", "My grandmother has been diagnosed and is at a point where she knows something is going on. She said to my aunt (her daughter) \"Why am I like this? What's wrong with me?\" and began to cry. It hurt my heart.", "Have you ever awoken and not remembered a dream? You know you had a dream and you know it made you happy but you can't remember the details or even why you were happy? \n\nHave you ever been somewhere and seen someone you vaguely recognize but don't know why or from where? They approach, so very glad to have run into you and you smile and nod politely but you can't remember a them. \n\nYou're talking to a friend and telling them a funny story but you can't remember someone's name, every detail crystal clear except a name. \n\nThese are similar to what can happen to people with various forms of dementia, and/or Alzheimer's. Sometimes the issues include depression and instead of remembering happy \"dreams\" it's like you have a nightmare and all you can focus on is scary, negative things. Early on, you know things aren't right. But you're old and forgetfulness is ok because people expect it. As it progresses, you are aware you are missing periods of time. It's like you had a daydream but don't remember your thoughts. Sometimes it lasts for a couple of minutes. With my grandmother it would last days. And it terrified her. She'd get mad about it. If you tried to finish a story for her because she clearly was \"stuck\" she'd get pissed. Embarrassed. She knew she was declining. \n\nShe was pissed we put morning checklist in the bathroom. Brush your teeth. Wash your face. Lotion on your skin. If we didn't, she'd forget. Eventually she forgot the list was for her. She'd forget to groom. She knew she was supposed to go to the bathroom but not what to do. She'd shit on the floor next to the toilet. Then she forgot the bathroom was a thing and she'd piss off the side of the bed. By then she was \"gone\" and didn't know she was missing a thing. ", "Toward the end with my Grandma when I would visit she would get very excited because she recognized me and knew I was important to her but, she just didn't know from *where*. Sometimes she would either remember after a while or she would ask and I just told her that I was her granddaughter. \n\nIt always seemed to me it was like a frustration of seeing someone you met at a party but forgetting their name, but my Grandma clearly knew that I was an important person to her and she should know who I am and what my name is but just couldn't do it. Sometimes it would upset her to tears, which sucked fucking dick. \n\nShe was a very nice lady too so other times she would make conversation with me and ask how I was and chat away so I would think \"oh today is a good day she knows who I am\" then she would ask something like \"did you ever meet my husband?\" or tell me stories about my family that I was there for or experienced, so she thought I was just an friendly face over for a visit.\n\nSo in my experience it was different day to day, Alzheimers sucks I wouldn't wish it on any one. ", "I don't think they don't know that they don't know. While running early one morning, we found an elderly woman standing in a drainage ditch. She had been there all night. Once we were able to help her from the ditch and sit her on a bench, we attempted to get contact information from her so we could call someone. She knew she had children, but didn't remember how many. She knew she lived nearby, but didn't know where. She knew that she should know the answers, but didn't. It stressed her that she knew she was supposed to know. Soooo, what I'm saying is that I do believe that they realize they can't remember, at least that was very clear with this lovely woman.", "In short, No. There are stages of progression in the level of dementia and unfortunately, they're permanent. However, this might be a good time to contrast a similar disease presentation. \n\nFor Example, a 65 year old who wishes to see their doctor because their memory has been failing them, they constantly misplace things, and find themselves in rooms of their house without rhyme or reason as to why they went in there. Sounds like Alzheimers right??? Classically though, a patient with Alzheimers is brought to the physician by a family member who says their (mom/dad/grandma/etc.) has been exhibiting these strange behaviors; lacking insight into their neurological disease. \n\nA patient who has insight into their \"Alzheimers\" symptoms more than likely has PSEUDOdementia - typically caused by hypothyroidism in the elderly. Its important to recognize the difference because this condition is totally treatable and reversible.\n\nSorry, that was a bit off topic, but I thought the community might find the contrast interesting.", "Depends on how far along they are. My grandma got diagnosed fairly early. In the beginning she'd joke around and say things like, \"Oh don't worry, you can tell me. I'll forget about it later anyway\" and \"It's not so bad, I get to meet new people every day\".\n\nOver the years, she became less and less aware of her actual condition, and her mental faculties degraded to the point where she was going to the bathroom in the driveway, wandering off at night, forgetting her family members, etc, etc. We eventually had her admitted to a care home where she could be adequately monitored (for her own safety). \n\nIt's now about 10 years later, and we're lucky when she's awake. She sleeps most of the day, and it's a struggle to get her active in any sort of conversation. We've figured out that if we bring her something sweet or a coffee and help feed it to her (she's no longer able to do it herself), that after about 30-45 minutes, she's stimulated enough to interact with people. She has no idea what's going on in her world anymore. We dig deep into our memory banks to pull out things that are near-impossible to forget -- funny family things -- and sometimes we'll get a chuckle out of her. I'm not sure if she laughs because she remembers... or if it's just because she's laughing along with us.\n\nIt's sad to see her like that. She was an active, sharp and incredibly witty woman in her younger years... now it's like she's gone and just left her shell behind. Alzheimers is truly a bitch.", "Nurse here. The brain is literally wasting away which means that those areas that they rely on to process information not only don't work anymore but are no longer there. \n\nA couple of my patients have realized that they are losing their minds. It's heart breaking when this happens. " ]

[ "You'll never get rich if you don't eat your crusts.", "Last time I made bread, and everytime before that, I made a loaf and then baked it. I didn't baste it with magical nutrient juices beforehand. The crust is essentially the same structure and ingredients as the rest of the bread, if not just exposed to more heat over time. Unless this study is implying that this is some kind of sea shells washing up on shore effect I don't understand." ]

[ "The true reason for global warming isn't the energy coming to earth, it's that less energy is *leaving*.\n\nBy burning fossil fuels (and also to a rather large extent agriculture) we release carbon that hasn't been in circulation for eons or convert other materials into greenhouse gas. Green house gases trap more of the energy arriving through sunlight, causing temperature to increase. As mfb- has pointed out, the contribution from this mechanism is very negligible.\n\n", "The total power we use (electricity, oil, ..., in total about 16 TW) is tiny compared to the fraction of power we receive from the sun (170,000 TW). The US uses is about 3.3 TW (~20% with 5% of the world population), replacing perfectly reflective surfaces by cold and absolutely black surfaces would reduce emissions by about 1 part in 50,000, which would (ignoring nonlinear effects) raise the temperature by about 1 part in 12500, or 0.024 K. A tiny effect compared to other factors, and we would not have perfect mirrors and the roads are not cold or perfectly black, so the actual effect is even smaller." ]

[ "For the same reason that you won't suddenly fly sideways if you jump up (imagine that...). \n\nIt doesn't matter if you're still in connection with the earth or not, because as long as you are within earth's atmosphere it's rotation has little to no effect on your relative position to the ground.", "Storytiem!\n\nIt is of course all relative:\nBefore take-off of the airplane is standing firmly on the ground, on the earth. Standing still, from the earth's perspective and everything on the earth. Actually the entire earth's atmosphere is also 'standing' on the earth/rotating together with the earth.\n\nNow from the earth, the ground everything looks like it's standing still, but the earth rotates around its own axis at around 1038Mph. Note that this doesn't influence the above scenario at all. It is just all rotating one direction.\n\nWhat it *does* influence is the perspective from anyone outside of the earth's atmosphere, the perspective from space.\nFrom the space-perspective the earth and everything on it and in its atmosphere *is* rotating.\n\nWhen an airplane takes off from the ground, it will still fly within the earth's atmosphere: in the air it needs to lift itself up.\n\nRelative to space as explained by swakeman75, you are still rotating along with the earth, albeit a bit less (the speed of an airplane less):\n\n > The rotational speed of the Earth at the equator is about 1,038 miles per hour. The average plane speed is 600 miles per hour, If you could observe you're flight from outside of the earths orbit you would still be travelling at 400 mph in the same direction of the earths rotation\n\n", "That's like asking how come when I jump, I don't end up landing a block to the west.", "For the same reason that when you jump your body doesn't immediately start hurtling in the opposite direction of the earth's rotation as if it were moving beneath you.", "Okay, many people are explaining well, and this is what I've always thought. However, I've recently been researching long-range target shooting with rifles, and they do take into account the rotation of the earth on sufficiently long shots (i.e. 1500+ m or so, I think). so how is the bullet separate from the rotating \"earth-atmosphere\" system?", "For the same reason there isn't a hellacious breeze ALL THE TIME. The atmosphere moves with the earth's rotation. If planes traveled outside of the atmosphere, then it would make a difference.", "Inertia. We are relative to the Earth's spin as we are on it spinning. Taking off in one direction or the other is meaningless as we all rotate at the same rate on, off or under the ground.", "because the airspace you are in also rotates with the earth, you would have to be outside the earths atmosphere to take advantage of the earths rotation", "It is. There can be a difference of up to two hours on long flights. This is mainly due to the persistent jet stream, strong winds which uniformly flow from west to east in narrow bands, and which are partly caused by Earth's rotation: _URL_0_\n\nOn a side note, most comments here imply that the atmosphere moves along with Earth's rotation at the same speed independent of altitude. One would assume that that's not the case since the atmosphere thins out at higher altitudes and is thus probably dragged along at increasingly lower speeds." ]

[ "Spent a semester in Copenhagen. While the Danes are generally quite satisfied with their lives, the happiness rating has become such a thing that they always respond very favorably to quality-of-life surveys in order to maintain their reputation. Of course, some of these rankings are done with socioeconomic data so the survey tidbit doesn't apply. ", "Geographical size and/or population size.\n\nSmall countries with small populations don't cause major ripples in global politics. They don't lobby for world power because, well... they don't own/consume huge amounts of resources, they don't require a lot of global support, and other nations aren't looking to them for help either.\n\nIf you're a big strong football player, like 6'5\" 275lbs, and you drive a huge diesel pick-up truck, guess what? All of your friends are going to ask you for help when they move. If you're a tiny lady with slender wrists and you drive a Fiat, no one is asking you to help them move the 500lb marble dining room table. They'll stop by later to have a coffee and a chat.", "As an American who's lived in Sweden and visits Scandinavia annually, I'd say the biggest factor is that their government invests in its people. It's that simple. It invests and funds and supports education, healthcare, people's rights, and anything else you'd expect from a government.\n\nNot only that, but the government is far more transparent. American's don't typically know how their tax dollars are being spent. They don't know that most tax dollars go to subsidies for companies directly or indirectly. People **still** don't understand that Walmart benefits from tax programs more than anyone, and that very, very, very, very few of your tax dollars go to food stamps.\n\nYou can't rule out the small populations or the simple fact that it's their culture, and culture gets passed on. Vikings were the travelers of Old Norse society, but their societies back home were quite progressive. They had child support and an anti-rape culture even then. The modern idea of brutes killing and raping everything is only partly true, mostly myth - and it's not like they were doing anything everyone else wasn't also doing." ]

[ "When you use them wrong, like putting two on (which causes a break), or if you tried to reuse it, or use it with the wrong type of lube.", "besides breaking (tearing) they can still dislodge or just plain fall off.\n\n > A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.\n\n > The issue is serious because about one in every five times a condom is used in India it either falls off or tears, an extremely high failure rate.\n\n_URL_0_" ]

[ "Nobody really knows for sure. There are risk factors but no way to predict 100% that is why OB is so risky", "Labor is induced by uterine stretching. Once the baby reaches a certain size, it begins to stretch the walls of the uterus (or the womb). This also triggers the release a hormone know as oxytocin. While oxytocin has many different effects in the body, one of them is to increase uterine muscle contraction, further inducing labor. This cycle is know as a positive feedback loop, and is one of the only positive feedback loops in the human body. \n\n\nThis answers only part of your question, which is what tells the body to initiate labor. However, as another poster mentioned, we don’t know exactly why some babies are born early or late. We do know, however, some risk factors:\n\n- uncontrolled diabetes\n\n-smoking/drinking/drug use\n\n-poor nutrition\n\n-infections like UTIs or amniotic membrane infections\n\n-many more" ]

[ "Yes, probably, although not by a huge amount.\n\nAs has been pointed out, no, your ears do NOT cool your brain down. The blood that exits your brain goes straight down back to your heart, more or less. \n\nAs has also been pointed out, increased usage of certain brain areas is associated with increased blood flow to those areas. This is because those areas are using more energy. Being active DOES cause neurons to consume more energy. What the commenter who pointed that out gets wrong is that this DOES produce slightly more heat. The process of turning glucose (or other energy sources) into energy and using it gives off heat. So parts of your brain that are more active probably do heat up a tiny bit, although they're most likely very well-cooled, so that doesn't increase your overall brain temperature much.", " > the brain cools itself down through the ears and head\n\n\nNo it doesn't, our homeostatic temperature is regulated by our skin (sweating and stuff) and by our circulatory system (similar to water cooling in computers).\n\n\nThe brain uses small amounts of electric charge to function. There isn't a risk of of overheating from \"thinking hard\". The brain can overheat from environmental reasons, it is called [heat stroke](_URL_0_). Also fevers can cause your brain to heat up but it usually doesn't risk any damage or anything." ]

[ "The Earth is a good reference point for electrical systems. The electrical potential of a system is measured relative to some reference potential. It is convenient for this reference potential to be zero and electrically neutral. The Earth is essentially a neutral electrical system with equal numbers of negative and positive charges distributed evenly. The Earth ~~is not a conductor per se~~ [could be a conductor](_URL_1_), but I would picture it more like an energy sink that serves as the zero potential of an electrical system. \n\nGrounding not only provides a reference point, it protects people and equipment. For safety reasons, equipment which houses electrical components (a stove for example) should not discharge current to a person operating the equipment. (An electrician might need to interact with internal components which are normally current carrying but safety concerning working on electrified equipment (live work) should take precedence over grounding.) If any internal wiring should make contact with the stove housing, the stove could be electrically live and you could get seriously shocked and/or die. Grounding the internal circuitry to the stove body ensures that the stove is the lowest potential. The stove is then grounded to the house ground via the plug's [ground prong](_URL_2_). A house is grounded and tied to 'earth ground' via a [ground rod](_URL_3_). You can still get shocked by grounded objects though and this can occur when there's [leakage current](_URL_5_). The way that you're protected against this is through the use of [GFCI](_URL_4_). There are many other safety concerns with grounding too that you could find via the [NEC](_URL_0_).\n \nAs far as the situation of being shocked between your finger and the gate, you may be generating electric charge from your slippers and then discharging that electricity from your finger to the gate which does not happen (to any noticeable amount) when barefoot.\n\nEdit: Extra information and clarity", "The biggest reason components are earthed is for safety reasons. Let's take a metal kettle as an example. If the live wire somehow broke and came into contact with the metal casing, then when you touch it the full voltage of the mains would be across you (ie you get electrocuted). If the casing is earthed, than there is a direct wired connection from the casing to the ground. Since v=ir and the resistance of the cable is small and the voltage is fairly large (ground is 0v) you get a very large current, much larger than one you would get in normal use which will trip your fuse (or equivalent) meaning that by the time you go to use the kettle the circuit has already been broken so you are safe." ]

[ "If by “*reverse engineer*” successfully you mean lead to devices earlier in the timeline than they occurred in the original timeline, I'm sure it would speed things up, but it's not like you could get stuff overnight. Maybe they'd re-invent the stuff a few years earlier than they would have been, but not by huge margins (IMHO). You'd need massive resources to manufacture any basic electronics we use nowadays. Microprocessors alone are going to be hard to make.\n\nI'd also guess there'd still be serious bottlenecks. You can see all a cell phone's parts under a microscope and see what minerals it's made of. But if a component involves some transient process, like a chemical treatment, that may be something they'd have to discover on their own using their own era's knowledge of chemistry. Any chemistry-related steps are going to probably need to be invented the way it originally would have been. For example, identifying the molecular structure of the phone's plastic casing may not help you figure out how to setup the necessary steps in producing that plastic.\n\nI personally doubt the progress would be anywhere near as good as what movies portray. Something more like inventing cell phones 10-years earlier than they otherwise would have been.", "many, if not all, of the newer chips can only be dissected by destructive methods (sectioning into TEM sample slices, etc) in order to figure out the basic layout and structure. the electron microscopes required for these jobs were in its infancy in the 40s, with resolution well below what's needed to characterize the die. so at least for the chips, they can't really reverse engineer much. especially with just one sample phone. \n\n_URL_0_ blog is a good source on how to reverse engineer chips.", "Figure out how it works, probably. Figure out how to manufacture it using \"retro\" manufacturing processes and tolerances? Nope.", "I don't think they'd have the precursor technology to even start making what you need to make a modern mobile phone. It's not like they could just retool a wireless shop and start churning out computer chips. They'd be lacking the technology to even make the technology needed to retool a wireless shop. Plus the materials modern technology is made out of would have been beyond their manufacturing abilities. Even the materials we use that they had back then would not be of the purity, etc that we have today.\n\nI wonder if it'd in fact slow down technological progression.\n\nImagine that everyone is so busy trying to figure out how it works that not enough people are just doing the type of screwing around in labs that lead to things like accidental discoveries and the like. Everyone is so busy trying to figure it out and failing that we're still using valves and the like today instead.", "So I guess OP watched \"The Misfits\" ", "I may not know a great deal on the matter, but you also have material supply as an issue. Heavy metal mining wouldn't really get into full swing for years.\n\nIn considering this...*even if all major world powers had access to the special technology,* we're talking about serious ripples in the economy from countries rushing to get what they need to manufacture (materials, skilled labor, and facilities).", "For electronics, you would likely be able to analyse the devices and figure out something about how they worked, but modern electrons relies on quite sophisticated production technology, and there is really no way to look at a modern CPU in 1940 and figure out how to make it yourself, you quite simply lack all of the tools to carry out the fabrication. ", "Nope, not even a chance. My dad works for Axcelis Technologies, one of 12 companies producing ion implanters ( I didn't check, there might be more now. . . ) which are required to mass-produce chips. Samsung, Intel, and Texas Instruments are a few of their customers. Ion implanters are multi-million dollar machines that are the size of a couple rooms. Even if someone in the 1940s had access to a chip they would have no idea where to even start to reverse engineer them. I don't know if I am correctly expressing the complexity of the process so here is the wiki: _URL_0_\n" ]

[ "Link to air purifier? It depends, on how yours works.", "Consider the volume of air in your room to the volume of air outside. Imagine how many rooms full of air there are within just one square mile and compare that to all the smog that China has. Now consider how much coal they would need to burn to power just one giant purifier and how that would impact its cleaning effort.", "That sounds like a pretty bad-ass landmark, and similar systems for carbon sequestration have been proposed in design circles for some years now. However, it comes down to cost. It's not profitable to build a giant air filter. Also, given the massive amount of air in our atmosphere, one building would have almost zero impact. Think about it this way, there are thousands of coal stacks smoking up the place. One building trying to take all that crap back out of the atmosphere isn't going to be very effective. It would be more effective to build the filters on the power stations and adopt more clean energy sources. Also, the energy it takes to run it would produce more pollution. Unfortunately it's not such a simple problem. ", "this is why china is going to build 110 new nuclear plants. to power that damn skyscraper sized air filtration system.", "They have tried and planned for purifiers before however the cost of maintenance and number needed made the entire process inefficient.", "They already have something like this in the Netherlands. \n \n > While the prototype is currently in Rotterdam, Roosegaarde aims to eventually roll out other models in Beijing, Mexico City, Paris and Los Angeles. \n\n_URL_0_", "LPT: For any question beginning on \"why don't they...\" lines, the answer is always \"because it's too expensive.\"", "Back in my day, we called those trees. And you didn't have to build them. They just showed up on their own. ", "Other than the technical difficulties, why would china government give a fuck about that? Don't forget it's a country that would mask tragedies but celebrates the \"helpfulness\" of the rescue team, deny all dark deeds(4June FTW), to name just few.\n\nIf the government really want to lower pollution, it can start from emission regulations first. Giant air purifier would just be too costly to maintain", "Because China doesn't give a fuck about the air quality. Why would they build something? \n\nTrade negotiations required China to install air scrubbers in their dirty coal power plants. China installed them. Trade negotiations said nothing about actually turning them on, so they are off. China doesn't care. ", "Because having giant filters is a non-starter, and using charged current to clean the air creates ozone, which would be a problem from a skyscrapper sized filter.", "It would take burning twice as much coal to generate the electricity manufacture it, so they'd be behind the game as soon as started.", "Let's assume your room is 5m x 5m x 3m = 75m cubed\nAlso assuming your filter machine is 0.5m x 0.3m x 1m = 0.15m cubed. So each cubic meter would require 0.002 cubic meters of filtering machine.\nSo lets take Shanghai for example with area of 7 billion m squared and lets say around 500m up into the air. That will require a filter machine that sucks 3.5x10^12 m^3 of air. \nThis machine would be 7 x 10^9 cubic meters in volume. To give you a perspective, the empire state building is only around 1 million cubic meters. This air filter would have to be 7000 times the empire state building which is not a plausible feat even with today's engineering and just be too expensive to build. ", "I think they're working on something like this.\n\nHere are some sources\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_\n", "Can you imagine trying to clean/change the filters...?\n\n > \"Hundreds crushed to death yesterday amid the calamity that was \"weekly filter change day.\" Officials point out that less then half as many died as last week.", "There's a lot of people knocking OP down. Sounds like a good idea (at least the intent) and Studio Roosegaarde also think so! \n\nThey are planning on deploying one in Beijing: _URL_0_", "Because the planetary atmosphere is incomprehensibly huge, and all of it is interconnected. \n\nAccording to the numbers I found online, we have 3998910000000000000 m3 of air in the atmosphere (or at least I think that conversion from 5.1 x 10^18 kg of air is right). \n\nThe largest such air purifier built is 23 feet tall and purifies 30000 m3 per hour.\n\nIt could, if my math is correct (which is always chancy, as math is not my strong suit) take that 23 foot tower 15.2 billion years to run the atmosphere of the entire world through itself once. Assuming you could somehow assure that no part of the atmosphere circled back before it got the end of the queue, which you can't. \n\nThere's a much easier way to clean up the atmosphere. We let mother nature do it, after we stop pumping filth into it. We've been pumping filth up there now for centuries, and cleaning it up will take a long time as well. And will happen never, if we don't stop polluting.\n\nWhich is why it is absolutely crucial we retire all the filthy coal plants, make the factories clean and stop using combustion engines. It's the only way to clean up the atmosphere.\n\nThe global warming will already make over 400 of our largest coast-bound cities uninhabitable in the next 100 years. New Orleans, Miami and a buttload of others are already irretrievable. We won't fix calamities on that level with some air cleaners. ", "Let's say you built an air purifier, or several of them, that was big enough to clean china. \n\nThe only way the purifier is carbon-negative (meaning it removes more carbon than it emits) is if the electricity used to power the machine came from a carbon-free process.\n\nthis image: \n_URL_0_\nshows China's energy sources, taken from an excellent blog on TESLA vehicles and the story of energy at _URL_1_, it shows the majority of China's energy comes from burning coal.\n\nSo building and running a huge air purifier would not take away carbon unless it ran on energy that was 'clean', or non-carbon producing. China would be putting more carbon in the air building and running these huge machines than could be removed by running them.", "first, it will be way more easier and effective to put the air purifier directly at the source of the smog. Directly at the chimney of the coal power plant that power more than 80% of China. It is what is done in most developed countries that still rely on coal power (like Germany).\nBut for that you need to have and enforce environmental laws and regulation, and Chinese government had prioritized business over environment.\n\nSecond, who will paid for the skyscraper sized air purifier ? For the waste it will generate/recover ? Who will build it ? What is the business model ?\nthe only viable model for environment problem is make the polluter paid for the environmental impact.", "So many bullshit answers in this thread it's just ridiculous. The answer is they are working on doing exactly this (though not the same as your small air filter). [These pollution cleaning towers will be the tallest buildings in the world](_URL_0_)", "Because the cost of producing enough energy to run such a huge machine would probably produce just as much smog as the machine filtered\n", "yes, one kind is called 'tree' they are green and the size of a building. \n\nWhen people realize that public good is important and dare to spend money on such things, they could make mechanical filters, it wont probably profit in money therefore it can be a public investment. But doing that shows that people want clean air, and if you are the government you can also do that in other ways. Like building alternative energy power stations and instate stricter pollution ordinances.", "Cleaning up the air is easy compared to figuring out what to do with all the pollutants you collect. If you can somehow grab all the pollutants, including the ones in the upper atmosphere, you need to put them somewhere safe. Bury it in the wrong place and the pollutants escape and pollute the ground or just go back into the air. If you could manufacture the pollutants into solid hard blocks you'll be onto something, but you'll need a shit ton of space to store the blocks.", "Well, they did. There are billboards in China that instead of advertising anything are air filters full of algae. \nThe algae-filters acts like trees but can be places in less convenient places such as on the sides of buildings. \nHow many there actually are, I have no idea, but they are out there.", "How about a giant fan that blows all the smog out of the city?", "You have a skyscraper size air purifier in your room?! I, sir, am green with envy. ", "It is clearly possible. However. It comes down to math. It is 10000x times less costly to pollute less, than clean the air afterwards. In fact it probably would be incredible pricy to clean air in a city enough to make a noticable difference. Where would you put the purifyer if you would build it? close to the biggest contaminant? Or why not \"on\" that contaminant... wait, it would become a filter at the release-level...\n\nThe second argument is that the enteties responsible for pollution should pay for this, not goverment. \n\nIn reality, its about creating laws and control-organs on goverment level. To ensure that filtering is done when releasing gasses. Not making bigger and better purifiers that only would lead to more contamination since there would be more \"room\" for it. Less smog = less complaints. Less complaints, less focus on the \"real\" problem.", "It isn't a matter of ability. If China cared about air quality, they would impose standards to prevent it from getting fucked up in the first place. They don't care.", "They can't because the order of goods from US and the rest of the world are tall. They have to work hard to make them, otherwise Opium War happens.", "Hey I'm a façades engineer so I might have the answer. They do exist. They're called smog fighting façades. They work more like a catalytic converter on your car using precious metals to remove harmful chemicals from the air. \n_URL_0_\n\nAs for why the Chinese don't use them? They don't really care about the safety of people or the environment from what I've seen so I doubt they'll spend the extra money for this. \n", "Why have you got an Air Purifier in your room? What are you doing in there? Having an industrial revolution?", "Can you imagine how much those skyscraper-sized purifier refills would cost?", "You have a skyscraper sized air purifier *inside* your bedroom? That's a lot of room! Think of all the activities!", "Hey! A little late to the party, but I just want to mention one thing about air purification that you may find neat-if you put some titanium dioxide nanoparticles on a skyscraper's windows, the windows actually purify the air around the building. I'm unsure if most of the buildings in China utilize this technology, but it's just a cool trick I learned from a nano class I took.\n\nSource: Learned in a class and right here _URL_0_", "You don't understand how an air purifier works. It doesn't magically purify air. It sucks in air and usually uses electric charge/filters to either remove or convert air pollutants into a kind of solid dust that is captured.\n\nA massive skyscraper sized purifier designed to purify an entire city's air will likely create 50 kmph winds in the city. To prevent this, you will need numerous small inlets all over the city with closed conduits to transfer the ai to the purifier. This makes the system very expensive and inefficient.\n\nAll the waste dust and dirt will likely have to be handled. In general, it is much more cost effective to NOT create the pollution in the first place, rather than clean it up.\n\nIf people are not willing to pay for the much cheaper solution of preventing pollution, it is too much to expect them to pay for the much more expensive solution of cleaning up the mess.\n", "You have a skyscraper sized air purifier in your room?", "Money is the main reason for why they don't.\n\nHuge building size filters are not the right answer, as they are not technically air purifiers, only another money pit that doesn't do enough to actively offset any real quantity of pollution. One big purifier won't work either but if they have a multitude of small purification enhancing changes around the city it would help greatly. \n\nA good thing that should be used more frequently is to paint roofs with a Titanium Dioxide mixed paint which reacts to sunlight to create air purifying molecules, though this would only help greatly in a massive execution from multiple homes and businesses.\n\nAt the end of the day the real answer is cutting down on emissions and letting nature do its thing. Greenery eats up carbon dioxide and creates fresh oxygen while electrical storms create ozone which breaks down most types of pollutants in the air.", "Well beyond the logistical and structural problems its because there primary power source is coal. To power those massive things they'd need to burn a hell of a lot more coal which would generate more pollution rendering the devices moot. This is also why Chinas recent announcement that it's building a large amount of new nuclear reactors is a wonderful thing.", "Best word I can think of is cubic loading. A 2000 cubic foot room might have 2 square feet of filter. If we wished to keep this ratio then a 200 ft high square mile volume would require about 5.6 million square feet of filter. That's 1000 filter sheets each 75 feet by 75 feet. It might be possible but it would be one hell of a facility... every square mile.", "They'll make one and then Dyson will put out a more expensive one they'll say works way better. ", "It's easier to stop it at the source. A giant air scrubber would fill up with bugs, birds, dirt, water, and whatever else is in the air that's supposed to be there.", "Why don't they just put them on the tops of the smoke stacks? Filter the source..", "While we're at it, why can't we just construct a stadium sized freezer to generate iceberg sized ice cubes and solve global warming? I mean, why not?", "Think of it like standing in a big swimming pool and use a bucket to remove the dirty water.", "They would have to care. IF they cared, they would have already put air cleansing equipment on all factories causing the pollution in the first place.", "Well first off all, there's no reason to build something so big that will require heavy-duty construction and tons of wasted effort and material on reinforcing the structure etc. If you want to go the \"use an air purifier\" method, build thousands of refrigerator-sized units and scatter them everywhere, including on top of existing skyscrapers if you want.", "How in the hell does a question like this get over 3800 votes?!\n\nI'm...at a loss for words." ]

[ "It stops the bull from escaping\n\nSame with pigs.\n\nThey use their face to dig under pens and fences. The rings prevent them from doing so by getting tugged on as the animal try's to root under something.", "I grew up on a dairy farm. Some cows are simply more aggressive than others and will continue to nuzzle at other cows' udders out of habit or to provoke the other cow. There were at least one or two cattle we had to give a nose ring with a few little upward-facing spikes (not crazy sharp ones, just mild, rounded \"spikes\"). These spikes would irritate the otherwise docile victim cow and provoke a swift kick to the aggressive cow. She would get the hint pretty quick. \n\nAlso, as far as bulls' rings go: It's a lot easier to control 2,000+ pounds of muscle and testosterone with a nose ring. You become the boss when the nose is controlled. Fingers pinched in the nostrils would work too, but mostly when they're still smaller. \n\n(And don't worry, they're tough animals. Seriously.)", "I actually work on a farm, and we put rings in bulls noses so that we can 'halter train' them. \n\nBasically train them to walk like a dog on a leash so that when we sell them at a mart they can be led round the ring and let other farmers see what they're buying.\n\nThe ring give us a lot more control over them because it hurts them when they resist." ]

[ "They stay at pressurized depths. A lot of fish that come to the surface can only stay at the surface for a few minutes, and if they are taken out of the water sometimes their skeletal system will collapse. Squid and whales are some of the few animals that can get away with diving in heavily pressurized depths and swimming near the surface. \n\nAccording to nat geo’s deep sea documentary. ", "Pressure isn't an issue. Pressure difference is though.\n\nHigh internal pressure and lower external pushes outwards causing explosion (like blowing a balloon up too much).\n\nLower internal pressure and higher external pressure pushes inwards (like if you squeeze a bottle until it bursts).\n\nIf their external and internal pressures are equal. They're okay (like if you pushed on a door with 10kg force and your friend was on the other side pushing with 10kg force, the door wouldn't move).\n\nThat's the basics. It gets complicated when you get onto cells as they are like mini bubbles themselves.", "What I’d like to add to the topic, is that there is also a Cetacean by the name of *Cuvier’s Beaked Whale* who actually descends down to depths of 3000m (9,800ft). This is twice as deep as a goblin shark, and deeper than the huge colossal squids. Why is this so crazy? Since it is a whale, it regularly has to go up for air. Cuvier’s beaked whale has foldable ribs, which means it can reduce air pockets for buoyancy. \n\nI am not sure how the whale just doesn’t explode when it goes up to the surface though. I guess as others suggested the foldable ribs might increase pressure inside the animal when it goes down to hunt squids. ", "It's true that there is enormous pressure pushing on them from the outside, but there is just as enormous pressure inside them pushing back. Absolute pressures aren't really what matters when it comes to things getting squished, what's important is the difference in pressure between the inside and outside of the thing. That's why tires seem to go flat when you go down elevation and chip bags at stores in Colorado are all puffed up.", "Water is almost incompressible, and those translucent fuckers down there are 99% water. No air cavities, like lungs, in their bodies can collapse.", "Think of it like this. If you used a sponge at the surface and then brought it to extreme depths. The high pressure moves in and out of the sponge and there's nothing to really crunch (more or less). Now you take a human. We have lungs full of air, something like 5 liters. 5 liters (in volume at sea level) in volume and be compressed to very small (not sure exactly but I bet smaller then a quarter). So there's a lot of room for the air to be compressed and that's where many vital organs are. Fish dont have lungs full of air (with exception but that's a different topic) and water doesnt compresses very much. This doesnt mean it doesnt affect them at all or anything but it does mean their tolerance is MUCH higher then ours.", "I like to think of it this way:\nImagine you bring an empty jar down to the bottom of the ocean. The jar has its lid off during the travel so pressure is never an issue - water just flows in and out as the pressure changes. When you reach the bottom you close the lid - it is now under very large pressure but of course it doesn't break because the same pressurized water is on the inside. \nA deep sea fish is like a jar that was filled with high pressure water and then sealed in the same environment. ", "Edit: ELI5 tl;dr - As long as animals don't have any air-filled spaces in their bodies, they basically \\*are\\* water. Since water is pretty much incompressible, their tissues won't be compressed by increasing pressure - their tissues will just exist at the same pressure as the water around them, and it won't even matter to the animal, except at the deepest depths.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nLots of partially correct answers here, so I'll clarify something:\n\nPressure is only an issue when you have air-filled spaces in your body, like lungs or air bladders. When you increase the pressure outside of an air-filled organ, the air inside will decrease in volume and the organ will begin to collapse in on itself (which is not always a bad thing - this is normal for lungs of deep-diving whales).\n\n & #x200B;\n\nHowever, deep sea creatures don't have any air-filled spaces in their bodies. Even fishes whose ancestors had a swim bladder (air organ used for buoyancy) have completely lost the structure through evolution - no deep-sea fishes have swim bladders.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe tissues of animals are very similar in properties to water, as long as there are no air-filled spaces. Because water is basically incompressible, the tissues of deep-sea fishes will not be compressed by external increases in pressure, and as many people have said in this thread, their watery tissues internally are at the same pressure as the water externally. Basically, there is nothing to collapse - from a pressure perspective, it's as if the animal is just a part of the fluid environment, and there is no difference between external and internal pressure.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAt very large depths ( > 2000m), pressure can start to change enzyme function, because enzymes tend to only be effective under specific physical conditions. However, as lineages of deep-sea animals moved deeper into the ocean, they have evolved different enzyme functionality in response to this. However, only some lineages have successfully done this, which is why you see the same specific types of animals invading the deepest parts of the ocean all over the world. The best example is the hadal snailfishes, which are commonly found at the deepest depths (e.g., Mariana and Atacama trenches, which are thousands of miles apart). The snailfishes seem to be a group that have the genetic ability to adapt to the deepest depths, whereas many other deep sea fishes are evolutionarily stuck at \\~1800m.", "It's not about the pressure, but about the pressure difference. Think about a balloon. Say you blow up a balloon. By blowing up a balloon you're increasing the pressure inside it and so it becomes bigger. \nThe size of the balloon is determined by the difference in pressure inside the balloon and outside the balloon. If you're standing on the ground, the pressure inside the balloon is for example twice as high as the outside and that stretches the rubber of the balloon. If you were to take that balloon into a plane high up in the sky where the air pressure is lower than on the ground, the pressure inside the balloon is maybe even three times as high as the surrounding air pressure, which causes the balloon to grow even bigger will grow bigger. The amount of air inside the balloon is stil the same, but simply because there's less air pushing in on the balloon makes it easier for the air inside the balloon to push out. That causes the rubber of the balloon to stretch even more than on the ground and might even cause the balloon to pop. \n\nNow say you took the balloon under water. Under water pressure is higher, so the balloon gets pushed in the deeper you go and the balloon will become smaller because the air inside the balloon has to push harder on the water outside. At some point the pressure outside of the balloon will be the same as inside the balloon. At that point the balloon is the same size as before you inflated it. It's not stretched nor is it compressed. There is zero stress on the balloon. The pressure inside and outside are equal (hence the term equalising if you pop your ears under water).\n\nReplace the balloon by a fish and the same principle applies. The air inside the fish is under the same pressure as the water outside it, so it's not stretching the fish nor is it compressing the fish. The fish is just being a fish. \nBring the fish to the surface however and the air will want to expand, stretching and hurting the fish, just like with the balloon. So as long as the fish is at that depth, it's happy.\n\nFun little note: This is why people learning how to scuba dive are constantly told ever to hold their breath under water, because if you hold your breath and then go up, you lungs will overexpand and could literally tear.", "On the more molecular side of things, some dinoflagellates (simple sea-faring multi-celled organisms) replicate their genomes hundreds of times. Then, when they sink deep in the ocean where pressure is immense, their DNA can literally shatter. They then use an array of repair enzymes and the plentiful copies of their DNA to put the pieces back together when they get back to a more manageable pressure. Kind of like buying the same puzzle 10-20 times so when hurricane hits you might be able to finish the puzzle by combining pieces from all the sets. Life finds a way!", "They manage expectations at work, have a supportive girlfriend and get outside/exercise daily when possible", "I understand that deep sea critters die on the way to the surface. But say we put them in a pressurized flask before bringing them up to the surface, here's the question:\n\n\nDo they explode violently the moment we release the flask's pressure?", "A couple hundred million years ago, there was a school of critters swimming around. They were happy living at certain depth, but competition was fierce. Some of them noticed some unexploited food source below them. Not too far, but deeper than they’d be comfortable with if they weren’t hungry. Some dove to get at the food. \n\nSome of those that dove died because they couldn’t take the pressure. Some didn’t. Those that didn’t had an edge - they had a less fiercely contested food source. They had offspring. Sone of those died due to the pressure. Those that didn’t, because of happy genetic coincidence, proliferated, passing on that happy genetic coincidence that allowed them to survive. \n\nEventually, they multiplied, and that food source became more fiercely contested. But there was another, deeper, food source. So the cycle repeated until there was no further down to go. Now they start looking for different food sources, with other critters making the evolutionary trek down. \n\nFast forward a couple million years and you’ve got an ecosystem. " ]

[ "because when the accounts get hacked they are using more of the credit available, not trying to be a nice person and help you out. Another reason is because if the credit company somehow wasn't actually having that money in their account then they would notice alot faster something going on and put up red flags", "If someone were to hack into my credit card account and wipe out my debt, who would the company suspect was behind it? \n \nIf someone were to hack into a credit card company and wipe out the debt on many accounts, the company *should* be able to restore the data from backup, and little harm would be done. ", "If a hacker pretends to be you, they can buy things. Even if a hacker pretends to be you, the bank will not wipe out their debt. Even a regular bank employee cannot wipe out debt. The hacker would have to pretend to be someone like the CEO of a big bank, which is very very hard.\n\n---\n\nGoing slightly more complex: When you buy something online, you don't actually need your credit card, you just need to know some numbers from it (card #, expiration, security code).\n\nThe store has to save these numbers so it can prove to the bank that you knew them. If the store is not secure, a hacker can steal these numbers and use them the same as you. Since you can't reduce your debt without actually paying off the card, neither can the hacker.\n\nTo actually reduce your debt, the hacker would have to hack in to the banks, rather than just stealing your credit card information." ]

[ "Dyslexia does not just affect reading, it is just the easiest way of explaining it. People with dyslexia often have poor awareness of the differences between similar sounding words (hot and hat) or understanding the structure of sentences, and therefore sentences can sound jumbled. These kinds of signs tend to only appear in younger Children as a speech delay that they grow out of and may not show up with mild dyslexia. \n\nDyslexia is part of a group of conditions called specific learning difficulties, which includes ADHD, dyscalculia (dyslexia for numbers) and dyspraxia (also known as developmental coordination disorder, and shows up as clumsiness and difficulty learning motor tasks). If someone has one specific learning difficulty, it is more likely than not that they have another, so a person with dyslexia may have shown up as the inattentive or clumsy one before reading. All of these difficulties also tend to have poor short term memory, disorganisation and difficulty concentrating or following instructions. As someone with dyspraxia I can tell you that for me the most difficult thing is the disorganisation aspect, something commonly seen in dyslexia too. \n\nSources: [NHS]( _URL_0_), [British Dyslexia association]( _URL_1_).", "I'm no expert, but I've had some special interest for dyslexia so maybe I can chip something in:\n\nIt seems quite clear that there are neurological mechanisms behind many cases of dyslexia. Certain types of neurological trauma are positively associated with very similar symptoms as in dyslexia. Lack of oxygen at birth (i.e. not starting to breath right away) is correlated with later learning difficulties even if no immediately apparent damage was done. Genetic factors are also found that relate to unusual brain functionality in certain regions of the brain. I find it somewhat unlikely that these mechanisms would have sprung up by evolution *after* writing came along.\n\nAside of issues in reading and writing, there are often other associated difficulties, including short or disorganized working memory, generalized difficulties in learning, difficulties with numbers, difficulties in processing auditory input and poorer eye-hand coordination. There's also a statistically meaningful rate of comorbidity with ADHD.\n\nHowever, it's worth to note that there are multiple defined types of dyslexia with some evidence of varying background mechanisms. Different kinds of symptoms are noticed in patients with different kinds of apparent neurological abnormalities; And in some patients, there's no apparent neural abnormality at all. In those cases, environmental factors could be dominant.\n\nDyslexia is a description of symptoms, rather than a cause in itself, and it's definitely likely that similar causes existed before writing and reading. Those symptoms are just made readily apparent when learning to read and write.\n\n\n\n***EDIT:*** some sources:\n\n > [The neurological basis of developmental dyslexia\n](_URL_0_) (meta-analysis, 2000)\n\n > [Functional characteristics of developmental dyslexia in left-hemispheric posterior brain regions predate reading onset](_URL_2_) (2012)\n\n > [Influence of Slight to Moderate Risk for Birth Hypoxia on Acquisition\nof Cognitive and Language Function in the Preterm Infant](_URL_1_) (2003)\n\n > [Comorbidity of ADHD and dyslexia](_URL_3_) (2010)\n\n > [Working memory in children with reading disabilities](_URL_4_) (2006)", "_URL_0_\n\nAs it's partially genetic, it would have existed independently of whether there was a written language for it to impact. As to the first question,\n\n > both the acquired and the developmental disorders affecting reading have in common a disruption within the neural systems serving to link the visual representations of the letters to the phonologic (language) structures they represent.\n\nI would imagine it would impact other areas which require linking visual representations to 'structure', but that is conjecture.\n\nDisclaimer: Not a scientist.", "Dyslexia has a number of other symptoms beyond difficulty with written language. It is an error in the way your brain translates a given stimulus. Some people with dyslexia have difficulty telling time, expressing ideas clearly, understanding given directions, saying words in the wrong order, and telling left from right. Because of the number of symptoms that could have easily existed well before written language leads me to surmise that it is a disorder that could have existed before writing. It would have just not caused trouble reading or writing until written language came to fruition. ", "By definition, dyslexia is [difficulty with written language](_URL_0_). Although other symptoms may be concomitant with dyslexia, they are also present in other disorders - such as dyscalculia - and are not the defining feature of dyslexia. Without the presence of the symptom of difficulty with written language, there is no diagnosis of dyslexia. \n\nDyslexia is a specific developmental disorder. Often children with dyslexia will be of normal intelligence, and dyslexia only presents itself in reading and writing language. Although the condition is hereditary and often runs in families, dyslexia simply could not manifest itself before the advent of written language and before an individual attempted to learn written language, even if the genetic predisposition for the disorder were present in the individual. Whether or not it was developed due to the advent of written language is immaterial and will be unknown - without written language to test for the condition, it would be purely guesswork from other symptoms as to which particular specific developmental disorder was the cause. ", "Dyslexia is not simple enough as a difficulty in reading and writing, it is a far more complex condition which involves the ability of certain areas of the brain to function. Dyslexic people will often have poorer time management skills and a worse short term memory than non-dyslexics. They also often show greater ability in visual problem solving tasks. There is a much higher instance of dyscalculia (trouble with arithmetic which includes counting objects and relating numbers to groups of existing objects), and dyspraxia (issues with coordination) within dyslexic groups and so this could potentially be one way to manifest. \n\nWhat would be interesting would be to know how illiterate dyslexics viewed a written text before they had the ability to read them, do they experience the same visual disturbance that is common in literate dyslexia. ", "It can be noted that depending on the written language, dyslexia is different. In China, for example, where you use symbols. Dyslexia is a bit different from a language using alphabet. I am of course speaking of the end result for the person who suffer from it. The same neurological problems can be found in all countries but there is a difference in what affects your reading, and how.\n\nHere is an example of an article about a study.\n\n\n_URL_0_", "First of all...you need to segment the manifestations of Dyslexia from the causes of Dyslexia. The cause of Dyslexia is due to a difference in the physical structure of the brain. Just to hammer this point home: People with Dyslexia have similar brains structures to those that don't have Dyslexia, however, there are certain parts of the brain that are fundamentally different. For example - the dendrites that connect axons tend to be longer and spread out in an individual that has Dyslexia. Dyslexia was not developed due to the development of language.", "Licensed by my state's board of examiners of psychology to practice school psychology here. Dyslexia, as in the specific weakness in basic reading (that is, the mechanics of decoding printed language) wouldn't have existed before written language. I wouldn't be surprised if The cognitive pattern of strengths and weaknesses that an examiner would look for to identify dyslexia existed before printed language, though. Like some others in this thread have mentioned, phonological processing is a main feature of dyslexia-the ability to understand and manipulate the sounds comprising words. Rapid Naming deficits are also common in dyslexia. Rapid naming is a narrow ability which comprises Long-term Storage and Retrieval (Glr). For reading purposes, it can be thought of as the ability to efficiently retrieve the name for a pictographic representation with its appropriate name from your long term memory bank. I'm sure there were prehistoric manifestations for phonological processing and rapid naming deficits, but I'm on mobile and not an evolutionary psychologist so I'm not going to offer examples." ]

[ "Benedict Anderson addresses this in *Imagined Communities*, his (excellent) book on nationalism—it's actually an especially important question for him, since the formation of nation-states in Latin America actually precedes that of their European counterparts to some extent, and is thus vital in understanding the process.\n\nA root cause might be geographical immensity, and the ensuing division of Spanish territory in the Americas into separate administrative units from the 16th century onward. Crucially, because all trade had to go through Spanish ports, these units were economically isolated from one another as well. \n\nThe main political factor that Anderson sees as crucial for the transition from an economic zone to a region with its own cultural identity, though, is the fact that— even in the ostensibly meritocratic system of advancement that constituted the empire's bureaucratic administration—creoles (people of \"pure\" Spanish ancestry but born in the colonies) were almost never chosen to make the crucial journey across the Atlantic to join the ranks of the highest elite. Instead, they invariably found themselves in the capital of their respective administrative unit, unable to move further up the ladder but now, significantly, in the company of a number of like-minded young men who—like the new colonial upper class as a while—are charged with carrying out the Empire's administrative power even as they're being kept in check economically and politically.\n\nThis might have remained limited to a creole upper class, but the advent of newspapers in the 18th century—widespread geographically but limited by the aforementioned distances and technology of the time from overcoming their regional locations—then played a crucial role in cementing these identities across a larger section of the population (the main thesis of Anderson's book is actually how mass media creates this kind of shared identity).", "Easy: All were not part of the same colony.\n\nAlmost since the beginning, and for a more efficient administration, the Spanish empire in the Americas was divided in two [viceroyalties](_URL_0_), each with a different viceroy who was directly appointed by the Crown and governed in its stead: New Spain (Mexico) and Peru. In the 18th century two more viceroyalties were created out of peripheric territory of the Viceroyalty of Peru in South America: New Granada (modern Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela) and La Plata (modern Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay). Each viceroyalty, in turn, had further divisions like general captaincies, audiencias, \"kingdoms\", etc.\n\nSo, when the independence process begins in the early 19th century, people in one viceroyalty are effectively removing the viceroy out of power and cutting ties with the crown. The people in Mexico, however, have no reason to follow the people in Peru, or Argentina, etc, since they had never followed orders from there in the first place." ]

[ "2. The largest allied bomber was the B-29. The largest German plane was the BV 238. This is excluding any experimental/prototype aircraft. The BV 238 was technically in service but was destroyed before any combat missions were flown. The B-29 was a long range bomber used in the Pacific, it dropped both atomic weapons and was very advanced for it's time.\n\n3. Their were no aircraft during WWII designed to be undetectable by radar. Allied bombers attempted to release small aluminium sheets to confuse radar, but it's results were mixed.\n\n", "Limited attempts were also made for \"surprise\" raids by flying treetop level to avoid radar. Operation Tidal Wave was considered a failure and around 1/3 of the bombers were lost outright. Lost planes and planes damages beyond repair was over 50% losses. The operation was refered to as black sunday, as the loses in a single mission exceeded that of the Army Air Corp on any other mission. See below.\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\n" ]

[ "I can't say why blue is the color of choice, but it grew in popularity because it is extremely tough compared to other fabrics. Until extremely recently, the majority of the population in the west was employed in extremely physical occupations, where risk of injury was high. Tough clothing both reduced the risk of injury and needed to be replaced less often\n\nEdit: did not expect my post to get this many upvotes. I kind of got extreme tunnel vision when writing it, so I'm extremely sorry for my overuse of certain adverbs\n\nEdit 2: 69 upvotes. Extremely nice\n\nEdit 3: 100 upvotes? Guys this is getting extremely out of hand.", "Specifically on the color:\n\nThe blue of jeans is [indigo dye](_URL_0_). Indigo is a group of plants found throughout the tropical parts of the world. The indigo plant is a legume; that is, it's related to peas and beans. It is found mostly in the tropics.\n\nThe same blue dye chemical can also be made from the [woad](_URL_1_) plant, which is native to England and northern Europe. Woad is a brassica; that is, it's related to mustard, cabbage, and broccoli.\n\nIndigo and woad have been popular fabric dyes for literally thousands of years, long before Levi Strauss or anyone else was making blue jeans. People mostly prefer to wear dyed fabric rather than uncolored fabric, both for decoration and because uncolored fabric shows stains or wear very easily.", "The indigotin blue dye isn’t soluble in water, and must be changed chemically before the jeans are dyed. The oxidised form (indigo blue) is insoluble in water, which helps the color stick to the jeans despite being washed hundreds of times. Other colors would fade too much.", "Denim became popular in the US during the mining boom of the late 19th century. Until then, pants were mostly made of light-wearing materials like linen which couldn't stand up to the rigours of the industry. A tailor called Jacob Davis made a pair of denim trousers by special request and when other people found out about it, demand skyrocketed pretty quickly. Unable to keep up alone, he made a deal with Levi Strauss & Co. and together they started mass-production in San Francisco. Various mining industries continued to boom for the next hundred years or so and during this time, jeans became the staple for working men all over the States.", "Robert Shiller's book *Narrative Economics* briefly explains how denim jeans became so popular in the 1930s.\n\nOriginally considered only appropriate as work clothes, jeans began to be associated with different cultures over the decades. Following a period of mass consumerism in the 1920s, the Great Depression caused a shift in culture that looked down on consumerism and favoured frugality: Shiller calls this, 'poverty chic culture'. From there, blue jeans were associated with a number of movements and different cultures, e.g. the cowboy story culture, Rosie Riveter during World War II, high school, youthful rebellion, women's liberation, and exploded in the '50s, benefiting from the movie 'Rebel Without a Cause'. By this time, they likely lost all connection to the 'poverty chic culture' and probably stayed a fashion staple due to their cheapness, practicality, long life, ubiquity, and the fashion decisions of others.\n\nI didn't look too far into the comments to see if anyone else had covered this stuff.", "I saw some explanations for color but nothing on the spread of Denim. In the simplest way to explain, I would say Gold. In the mid 1800s, 1850s to be precise, people found gold in Seattle, Washington. This triggered a massive gold rush that drew people from all over the United States. Before this people wore regular cotton pants at all times, these things tore regularly (especially in the pockets) and had to be replaced a lot. This was especially the case for the people who were digging all day and sifting looking for gold in the woodlands and rivers of the Pacific Northwest. Eventually some dudes named Levi Strauss and Jakob Davis rilled around and had an idea. They saw canvas and denim stuff already in existence, but they basically took heavy duty materials (Denim and Dungaree Cloth) and sewed them into heavy pants and figured out if they put rivets in the pockets corners they wouldn't tear as much. They patented the idea and tried selling some. It was a massive success. No longer did miners have to worry about their pockets ripping and having to get new pants or worry about fixing them. They told their friends, who told their friends, and the first Levis factory and store opened in Seattle. Then capitalism happened, and some advertising hapoened. Eventually it naturally spread everywhere as a symbol of the hard working, wage earning, tough as nails man. \n\n\nEdit: I grew up in Seattle which was where I learned this. There was a story that went around about a man who fell off a cliff, and his Levi Denim pants that he had bought the day before caught on a treebranch on the side of the cliff, where they caught and miraculously did not rip. His screaming got people to come over and they were able to save him, his story spread and so now there was a set of pants that could save your life.", "The way I understand it is Levi Strauss created that fabric for the people who flocked to California in the early days of the gold rush. The reason indigo became the chosen dye is because it shows less stains than other colors.", "The reason behind it's widespread popularity can simply be boiled down to Elvis Presley. With him being the first \"pop-star\" in history he transformed a garment that was normally issued and worn by prisoners because of its low manufacturing cost and durability into something that summed up his image - rebellious, outlaw, renegade, \"bad boy\" and when he wore them that trend caught on.\n\nIn regards to the dye, it seems others know more about that than I. So I think their explanations are best about the dye!", "I'll comment on the material, since indigo has been covered. Denim just a 2x1 warp faced twill weave with the white weft threads passing under 2 dyed warp threads. The twill weave has a lower number of interlacings which allow the threads to be closer together to create a more pliable material than the Dungaree 2x2 weave. While Dungaree is more durable than Denim, Denim is preferred because it is less coarse and more pliable which makes it a more comfortable material yet still very durable. The Denim weave also creates an uneven surface and diagonal pattern which hides stains better." ]

[ "Quality, story associated with the work, notoriety of the work and the artist. Hitlers art was worthless, so he killed a couple people and tried taking over the world and boom his art becomes valuable. The Mona Lisa wasn't worth shit. It gets stolen and recovered and boom it is valuable. Also a lot of the value is subjective. I was on a cruise and there was a contest for a Picasso. The huy asked me the price of the painting. If I was right I would win it. I told him $3. He looked at me like I was nuts. He said it was worth over 10K. I said I'd give him $3. I think that piece of shit is still sailing around on that boat.", "While the quality of the art plays a factor in the value of the art itself, The back story of the art also plays a very important role in it's valuation.\n\nLike /u/idamnedit mentioned,\n\n > Hitlers art was worthless, so he killed a couple people and tried taking over the world and boom his art becomes valuable. The Mona Lisa wasn't worth shit. It gets stolen and recovered and boom it is valuable.\n\nHere's a simple thought game. If someone like you or I made \"a blue square\" and tried to sell it, It's quite obvious that we won't get anything meaningful. One the other hand, if someone famous, someone who isn't generally associated with art, someone like Bill Gates paints \"a blue square\" and sells it off for charity, there will be people queued up to buy it.\n\nIt's simple supply and demand. Paintings made by ordinary people like you or I is a dime a dozen whereas paintings that are rare and exclusive perhaps due to it's back story or due to the artist who made is much more valuable.", "For me, art has been always related to freedom. Every art piece is a moment of freedom for its artist. Thats why artists do it. Kandinski called it \"interior needing.\"\n\nSome art pieces have the power to free us as humans, to talk for all of us as evolving animals.\n\nSome grand artists like Picasso, Malevich (White square on white ) had helped the world to be more open-minded. Is like visual phililosophy.\n\n You can't see it if you don't want to. Has nothing to do with beauty. Its about registering our existance and searching for a meaning.\n\nEven the modern art haters, your life is marked by those artist in a collateral way despite your eyes are so small to see it.\n\n(Sorry for the spell!, no time to check it)\n" ]

[ "Nuclear bombs. Russia is powerful.", "I believe it is article 5, which paraphrasing here states: if a member is attack the other members are obligated to respond.", "Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty, requiring member states to come to the aid of any member state subject to an armed attack, was invoked for the first and only time after the 11 September 2001 attacks, after which troops were deployed to Afghanistan under the NATO-led ISAF.\n\nAfghanistan attacked US, an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all. \n\nUkraine is not a NATO member, so NATO has no duty to get involved.", "In the former case, NATO was searching for a new reason to exist; in the latter case, NATO is afraid of its original reason for existing." ]

[ "Bear in mind that a nice house back then was maybe 1,200 sq ft and had no air conditioning, no cable tv or internet and maybe even no phone line. It was not uncommon for siblings to share a room. Healthcare costs were also a lot lower as if you got cancer then essentially the only options were very basic chemo or palliative care. Whereas nowadays you're workplace insurance has to cover the possibility you may need some very costly diagnostic procedures and cutting edge medicines.", "My father was a carpenter, my mom stayed at home to raise seven kids. He owned our home. In fact, he and an uncle built it. We were hardly rich, lived rather low on the hog at times, but always had food on the table and clean clothes for school. It was a different time.", "Wages haven’t kept pace with inflation for all workers middle class and below. The wealthy have taken literally ALL the productivity gains in the economy and then some. \n\nToday two janitor incomes are needed to buy what one in the 60s/70s did despite the fact janitors are probably more efficient today due to technology. ", "This is a direct result of capitalism. \n\nWages have increased much more slowly than inflation and the cost of goods and houses, which means the spending power of each unit of currency is much lower than 50 years ago. \n\nDespite this, productivity of workers has increased exponentially with technological innovations like computers which make complex tasks much easier than before.\n\n\nThis basically means workers are being paid less for more labour.\n\n\nIn addition to this, many capitalists and corporations purchase property to rent out. This decreases the supply of houses for those looking to purchase them to live in and increases the price as the demand is still there and forces people to renting rather than buying. In many large cities where the cost of living is high there is increasing homelessness, despite there being enough houses/apartments to house the entire population, but many of them sitting outside of the price range a salary in the area will provide. \n\n\nTLDR: a combination of increasing exploitation of labour and inflation provides the perfect environment for lower spending power of the dollar and value of the dollar making unaffordable homes. Bourgeoisie purchasing additional homes decreases supply and increases demand causing additional inflation of the price, putting renting and purchasing property out of reach for a majority of the proletariat. ", " in 1976, my parents bought a house for $42k. sold it in 1992 for $188k, so they could buy a house for $250k. now that house is worth $750k. ", "Most jobs were labor jobs, America made almost everything, especially after WWII. The rest of the world caught up and started manufacturing as well. Automation made labor less valued. The supply of labor is high, but the demand for it is low. Also, most of the wealth is accumulating amongst the rich. ", "There are a lot of good points there & mine are basic, however I know for a fact my mom, a teacher & single parent circa 1972 & no child support from our dad: \n\n* Didn't send me out of the house with a $500 phone in my pocket, my sister's & hers which she was paying monthly for an unlimited plan & then upgrade every few years for the new one\n* Didn't pay for cable, hell we didn't get a color TV until I was in junior high (what you young'ens call middle school now) & we got it at K-Mart. I don't think they (she remarried) got cable until she was retired or close to it.\n* She was not paying $5 for a venti 5 pump mocha grande everyday\n* We had one car, it wasn't new & to this day she's never owned a new car\n* I never flew until I was about 20\n* All of our vacations were camping or driving 400 miles to visit relatives or a bit further to stay at the coast\n* We ate a lot of fish, casseroles & used powdered milk\n* I also don't remember eating out until I was in junior high unless I was with my grandpa : )\n\nThe point is, we weren't The Joneses & we were not keeping up with them.\n\nSometimes it's not how much you make, but what you do with what you do make.\n\n & #x200B;", "We bombed all modern productive nations out of existence in WW2 and were virtually the only nation with its infrastructure left. Everyone had to buy from us for a decade while they tried to rebuild their infrastructures.", "People talk about all kinds of nonsense and bullshit.\n\nBeing a janitor in a unionized government job was one thing (and still is). Being a janitor outside of that was quite another. There was a large underclass of janitors, mostly minorities, living in slums. And you don't purchase big families, you get them by grunt-grunt then waiting 9 months, and then repeating.", "There's an economic measure called \"cost of living\" where the price of necessities is compared against average wages (note - theres more to it but Im simplifying so a 5 yr old could understand).\n\nThe amount of things a dollar can buy (aka the \"value\" of a dollar) slowly decreases over time. So after a while, you'd need more dollars to buy the same number of things 1 dollar used to buy in the past. This is called inflation. When we look at wages in the US since the 1970s and take inflation into account, most people are not getting paid any more that they were in the 1970s for the same job. They may make more dollars, but those dollars are worth less than before, so the actual value is roughly the same.\n\nHowever, most other things necessary for survival like food, rent etc have all increased in cost (on average) even when inflation is taken into account. So they're worth more dollars and more value now.\n\nSo TLDR, that janitor is roughly making the same salary value, but everything else has gotten more expensive so his salary doesn't go as far anymore.", "People have already said a lot of great, true things on here. The causes here are multiple, not one single thing. I'll throw another two in: a by product of increased productivity is that there's less work to go around, and a by-product of technological advancement is that certain jobs are worth less than they used to be.\n\nOne of the benefits of technology is increased productivity. Meaning, if it takes less time and less effort to perform tasks at work then less people can get more done. Tech has created massive boosts in productivity over the last 30 years such that individuals in many jobs can do more work than an entire small staff could have done 30 or 40 years ago. This affects almost every industry. You don't need an assistant, office manager, secretary, advertising agent, or any of that support staff if you are a small business. You just need a smart phone and a little savvy. Workers office jobs don't need couriers, secretaries, switchboard operators, calculators (people, not devices), etc, etc. We're all way more productive, meaning there's simply less work to do. New jobs are created of course, I'm a software developer, a job that didn't exist only one lifetime ago. But in most cases the jobs that are created are more highly skilled than the jobs they replaced. The productivity gains I produce for my employer would require dozens of people, and I'm a pretty low level middle of the road developer. So we eliminate jobs that could put lots of people to work with on the job training and average or no skills in favor of creating small amounts of highly skilled jobs most people can't work.\n\nThe other issue that lower skilled jobs become worth less economically due to technological innovation. Someone doing low skilled labor is in a losing war of attrition with technological advancement. Every year that passes is one where more and more of their job can be offset by or replaced by technology. As such their labor, subject to supply and demand, is worth less and less over time. People have pointed out that wages haven't kept up with prices, and part of that is because the work many of us do is simply less valuable then is used to be. We don't get paid based on an exchange rate of labor to goods, we get paid based on the value of our labor economically, and competing with technology means that your labor becomes less valuable to more you can be replaced.\n\n/soapbox It is all very, very complicated and problematic. We are facing an economic situation that is unprecedented and everyone on all sides of economics and politics are talking from a 100-200 year old playbook. We are sleepwalking into a world where large amounts of people will be born and die never having any labor value - that's a situation neither Marx nor Smith have anything to tell us about. We need new ideas, because we are going to be in a world very soon where lots of people simply have nothing to do, but somehow they have to live and have dignity and purpose. ", "It really depends where you live. I live in Iowa and we rent a 3 bedroom 1 bathroom town home for 700$ a month. We moved back to Iowa from KY where we have a 3 bedroom , 2 bathroom townhome for 600$ a month... it’s still possible to find cheap housing... just don’t expect to be in a city center..", "another big factor on top of wage scaling and the scaling of house prices, is location. a city like New York, Sydney, Toronto,San Francisco need more janitors than say a cheaper maybe more rural area. a janitor working in a smaller (cheaper) area at the same pay as one in a larger (more expensive) city, could probably actually afford to live modestly. the problem is, larger more expensive cites need 100 janitors for every 1 janitor in a smaller town and commuting is expensive", "After WWII, all the rich countries around the world were reduced to rubble (e.g., Germany, Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Russia). Plus, all the formerly colonized countries were starting to gain their freedoms, but were broke too (e.g., India, Pakistan, most of South America, most of Africa, etc.) They had a huge demand for goods and services.\n\nMeanwhile, the only country on Earth that was firing on all cylinders was the US. There was a ton of demand for their services, and there was very little supply of labor to fill all the jobs (plus, women weren't allowed to work). So a high school educated man could get a job in a factory or as a janitor and make enough money to buy a house, two cars, college education for their kids, etc. He wasn't particularly skilled, but he was in the right place at the right time to get paid way more than his skills would otherwise cover.\n\nBut then the supply of labor went up. Germany, Japan, Britain, etc. repaired themselves. Formerly broke countries like India and China started producing goods. Women entered the workforce. All of their salaries went way up compared to before. But the people who had high salaries before saw their wages come down (or at least stay the same).\n\nToday, all the wage growth that would have gone to middle class Americans is going to elevate billions of people out of poverty in developing countries like India and China. That's great for them, but people are unhappy in rich countries like the US.", "Wage stagnation.\n\nSince the late 70s, businesses have worked hard to limit the rise in wages from the ground up. This has been aided and encouraged by Republicans in Congress, fighting any kind of increase in the minimum wage.\n\nThere was a time in the 60s where a guy could work a 40 hour a week job, base level, and have enough to pay the bills, and his wife could stay home and raise the kids. That was the NORM. There was even 2 weeks every year for everyone to go on vacation if they wanted, and they generally did. \n\nBut, that's long since gone. The moneyed interests in the US have ensured that we're all poor or the working poor. ", "So there are two things to address here. The first is real wages and the second is home values. \n\nBut first, let's get some simple facts on the board. Quick googling shows that the median janitor makes about $24k (2k/month), and the median house price is about $225k. A mortgage calculator says that house would have a payment of $1,065 per month. That's well in excess of the \"you should pay 1/3 of your income to housing\" rule-of-thumb, but it's not unusual today for people to pay closer to 1/2 (more on that later). So it seems like the average janitor today can maybe afford the average house today. I don't have the historical data at hand to say how true this was 50 years ago. How much do these averages matter? More on that too. \n\nSo, real wages. Real wages are wages after accounting for inflation. Nominal salaries basically always go up, but if they rise slower than inflation, *real* wages are falling. Economists think that for some segments of the labor force, real wages have maybe been falling for the past few decades. The main explanation they have for this is technological change. Computers and machines haven't actually changed the job of a janitor that much, but they have wreaked havoc on the jobs of lots of other people (factory workers, clerks, and others whose jobs can be easily automated). Those people still want to work somewhere, and some of them have become janitors. This increased supply of potential janitors has kept the real wage of janitors low. \n\nHousing. In many parts of the country, the price of housing has risen much faster than inflation, so even workers with flat or slightly rising real wages are being priced out of some housing markets (the most obvious example is San Francisco). There are a couple of reasons for this. Lots of people are falling out of love with suburbs and moving back into dense urban cores where land is expensive. The housing stock continues to become larger, safer, and generally nicer to live in. Productivity increases elsewhere have made other aspects of living cheaper. That is to say, a janitor today may have trouble finding an affordable house near his job, but many of the things he buys day-to-day (food, clothing, consumer electronics, entertainment) are relatively cheaper than they used to be. There's an argument to be made that this is all just about people rationally shifting their spending from consumer goods to housing, buying bigger/nicer/better-located houses in the process. \n\nIt all gets more complicated when you add in the facts that a janitor needs to be physically present to do his work, janitorial services are needed where there are lots of people, and the places where we have lots of people are getting more expensive to live in. This is why the math at the top may not be particularly relevant to a real-world janitor who isn't inclined to commute hours to his job. These are problems that could probably benefit from a targeted policy solution like mixed-income housing developments in urban cores. " ]

[ "Do you have the page number for Goldsworthy? \n\nThat's pretty high, even if you had mounted troops/cavalry that is a 14ish hour march which would be pretty taxing for horses and man. And that's assuming they leave their trains behind. \n\nThe Romans could move very quickly, the men were used to carrying several days worth of supplies that would allow them to move without a baggage train - greatly increasing their mobility. But if you have an average marching speed of 3.5mph then 90 mi is pretty fantastical...", "Ignore this post, just leaving it up for reference. Look instead to XenophonTheAthenian post.\n\n\n\nAlthough Ceasar did move his troops very quickly, 90 miles in a day is false. One of the longest recored marches was around 40 miles I think (Can't find my source). You may be drawing that 90 mile thought from Suetonius \"Ceasar\" P 57 where he says Ceasar marches 100 miles in a day. Ceasar not his army. He was in fact a believer in forced/loaded marches as seen in his campaigns mainly in gaul. He was able to do this because he was so charismatic and loved by his troops. He would often sever his baggage train in order to march faster which is a very risky move that can result in the cutting off of the armies. It almost always worked out for him but more often than not for other commanders it results in disaster.\nEdit: grammar" ]

[ "Depends on how it’s being done. Sometimes there is a press feed box that gets an input from a mixer and everybody just plugs a mic or cable or transmitter into that. For that it would be just one mic. \n\nFor some events it’s easier to just make the news outlets responsible for getting the audio they want. ", "Another reason is advertising: notice the station logos in the pic you linked?", "Others have mentioned that it ensures someone will have good audio, whereas a single source might have issues, and then there would be nothing. A more cynical but still realistic consideration is that multiple recordings eliminates any temptation by a single source to edit what is then distributed to others.", "News photographer here. Can tell you If there’s no audio box provided all mics end up on podium. General consensus with photographers is we prefer the audio box to plug into if it’s working properly.", "That’s a good question I’d never thought about. \n\n\nThat guy looks very upset that he doesn’t get any microphones:", "Why do I have to smile for fourteen different cameras at a family reunion?" ]

[ "In mammals, hair cells do not have the ability to undergo mitosis to regenerate those lost due to damage (infection, trauma, etc). However, with the current advances in gene therapy (adenovirus) and stem cell therapy, it has been possible to grow hair cell lines in vitro in culture as well as regenerating hair cells in animals.\n\nSource: _URL_0_", "Cuts and scrapes heal via a typical wound repair process. That is, they are filled in by fibrous tissue containing fibroblasts and collagen. This is not the same as what was originally there, which is why scar tissue looks and performs differently.\n\nHearing cells are specialized cells with stereocilia. If it healed like a cut/scrape, it would be filled in with fibrous tissue which would not perform like stereocilia and would not be able to transmit the \"audio\" signals to the brain.", "It's also worth pointing out that you have most likely experienced Temporary Threshold Shift (TTS), as opposed to Permanent Threshold Shift (PTS).\n\nTTS is the reduced hearing sensitivity that you get after a concert. As the name suggests, you regain this hearing sensitivity. You will usually be left with some reduced sensitivity (threshold shift), which is known as PTT. This is hearing loss. Most of the reduced sensitivity related to TTS is not due to permanently damaged hair cells.\n\nI highly recommend you get some ear plugs. You can get the tri-flange ones for under $20 at a music shop. They sound way better than the foam plugs. If you're going to a lot of concerts, it might be a good idea to invest in some custom molded plugs. I think you can get them for ~$150. In my opinion they were worth every penny.", "My Neurobiology professor actually studies that exact question. He specifically studies the hair cells in fish (zebrafish, I believe) and tries to figure out a way to transfer their ability to regrow hair cells to humans.\n\n[Here's one of his papers.](_URL_0_)", "After seeing Excision last month I realized I should invest in a set of ear plugs and have probably already done permanent damage. [I think you'll like these.](_URL_0_)", "if this could be done successfully, would individuals that suffer from either hearing loss or Tinnitus (chronic ringing) suffer from similar symptoms in reverse? For example, sensory exhaustion due to increased sensitivity, or a sort of \"phantom limb pain\" effect related to the \"loss\" of the ringing?", "there are muscles in your ears which allow the bones of your ear to vibrate, the reason you cant hear very well right now is because those muscles are tense and stiff from all of the loud music you were listening to. In a few hours the effect will wear off as they loosen back up. The type of hearing loss you are referring to, hair cell damage, takes much longer than a Datsik Concert. But to answer your question, yes we are about 5 years (more like 20 but my proff likes to say 5) from being able to regrow hair cells in human beings. We have already successfully regrown hair cells in chicks (the bird not girls) and hopefully will be able to transfer this knowledge to humans soon. This was a very brief answer to a complex question but i hope it helped somewhat. ", "Upvotes for Datsik! Saw him play once by himself and once with Excision.\n\nAlso, is there any truth to the statement that we (people in their mid 20s and younger) are going to experience an generational epidemic of hearing loss due to our heavier use of mp3 players, movies, games, and headphones than previously?", "My 3 year old son was diagnosed with bilateral sensorineural (moderate-severe) hearing loss shortly after birth. This was discovered during the newborn hearing pre-screen program available in California.\n\nWe went to UCSF for diagnostics and he had his first hearing aid by 3 months, his second hearing aid was in place by 6 months (had to rule out audioneuropathy to the left ear). \n\nMy wife and I banked his cordblood, and about a year ago we received notification through the cellbank that a new stemcell research program was accepting patients for EXACTLY his condition. We signed up but he was beyond the study's threshold age by 3 months, so we missed that opportunity.\n\nWe did not pay for a Connexin-26 test, but did an extensive genetic background with a UCSF geneticist which found no strong family history that would suggest inheritance. My wife did take anti-biotics for bronchitis during pregnancy, but not the type that have a history of causing hearing loss to the fetus. We're expecting another child soon, and have concerns about another child with hearing loss.\n\nMy question is this: Is there anything that you could think of that could cause in-vitro sensorineural hearing loss? Our understanding of his congenital defect is that the nerve cells which connect to the hair cells aren't transmitting signals to the brain. Any idea on the mechanism behind this sort of hearing loss?\n\nTL;DR - 3 yearold was dx w/ SN hearing loss at birth. Any thoughts on potential causes? What are the common pathophysiologies involved in hair and nerve cells not communicating?" ]

[ "Wrapping things in aluminum foil in the hot sun will definitely keep them form heating from the sun. \n\nPotatoes can be wrapped in Aluminum foil to bake, them piled in a bowel to keep them warm. But except for that I do not know of anyone using foil to keep things warm.", "People actually do that all the time. It might not be common where you live, but it's very common in many places. ", "In high school I used to wrap my soda cans in foil for my lunch. Pretty sure that did nothing.", "Aluminum is a good conductor, and so a poor choice for keeping things warm OR cold. Tupperware, a cooler, a glass casserole dish, etc. would all be better for keeping stuff warm (or cold). \n\nUnasked for protip: if you want to keep ice-cream frozen for a picnic or other outdoor event, wrapping it in multiple layers of paper (paper grocery bags are perfect) is damn effective. Way more effective than than putting it into a cooler with ice (whose temp is will be about 33 degrees, which is a pretty melty temp for ice cream).\n\n(Edit: I should say that aluminum foil might protect from some radiant heat (i.e. the sun). But in most situations, when you are trying to keep things cool, the conductive heat from the air around you is a bigger factor than radiant heat from the sun. Aluminum foil won't do much against heat conducted directly from the atmosphere. Therefore aluminum foil not so good at keeping things cool in most practical situations.)", "The three types of energy loss for heat are radiation, conduction, and convection. \n\nSince aluminum is a good conductor, it loses a decent amount through conduction, but it will physically be a barrier to convection. However, the most important reason, as covered in other replies, is radiation. It is proportional to the quartic (t^4 ) of the temperature so it becomes the most important factor for very hot things, and aluminum has a very low absorptivity. That means that the radiated heat goes back into the food." ]

[ "Resolution will give you a good idea of the general picture quality, but you'll also want to pay attention to the lumens (brightness) and color quality.", "Home video projectors do have a resolution, just like an LCD (which a lot of them use). So they'll have the same (example) 1600x900 horizontal/vertical resolution.\n\nSome other important measurements are lumens (brightness), throw distance (to make sure you can project on the screen based on a room size) and sound level (some very small projectors have fans which can be annoyingly loud in a home use).\n\nYou might also consider the refresh rates - if you're watching movies, a good projector can match the 24fps of good blu-rays without any more blurring/smearing than necessary.\n\nAlso look at the inputs (i.e. DVI or HDMI) and the cost of replacing a bulb (can be pretty expensive) and how many hours (1000 is typical) they last for.", "Resolution\n\nColor quality\n\nBrightness\n\nContrast\n" ]

[ "I love Hong Kong and am all for these protests. I'd prefer it be independent or still under British rule rather than go v back to the PRC. \nTo answer your question though, I would guess the west is quiet for the same reasons it's quiet on Tibet and Taiwan...they don't want to upset China. Especially now as Trump continuously threatens, propses and enacts his horribly dumb tariffs.", "As a Hong Kong citizen, I need to agree with the fact that the western countries just want to solve this issue by using diplomatic strategies but not real actions. They can punish China by imposing economic sanctions, but they won’t do so because China will do the same to them.", "Generally speaking they care about things that directly impact them and this is not one of them.\n\nSpecifically, two of the most powerful also have their own shit going on that sucks up a lot of the air for things like this. The US has Trump who is a nonstop story generator who is now looking more and more likely for impeachment and the UK has their whole Brexit fiasco still to deal with. \n\nMost Western countries aren't overly friendly with China but they represent an immense power both militarily and financially and they've proven recently that they're more than willing to throw their economic weight around if they feel slighted so world leaders are hesitant to \"take a stand\" against China.", "ELI5. China gives the West shiny new toys. And the West likes their toys too much to say anything. So China can be a bully and bully whomever they please because they know the West likes their toys too much to truly care about \"human rights.\" And so far, China has been right.", "Britain has a responsibility to stand up for the people of Hong Kong under the Sino-British joint declaration but they are too busy shooting themselves in the foot and squabbling over which clown gets to pull the trigger.", "Imagine if the UK commented and took a side in the Ferguson riots, the US took a side in the Anti-Brexit protests in London, Russia came out against the confirmation of Kavanagh to the Supreme Court, or Canada commented on the Yellow Vest protests. Although this is a major protest, it’s a protest against the government making a law that may deteriorate peoples’ rights. From a liberal democratic perspective, it might seem bad, but there are countless countries around the world where governments are doing far worse. Regardless of who is right and wrong, it’s never a good idea for foreign powers to take a side on the internal affairs of another country. These are sovereign nations and countries try to avoid meddling in each others’ affairs because they don’t want other countries meddling in theirs, unless there is a *blatant* human rights issue going on. Even wrt to China, this protest is small beans compared to Xinjiang and Tibet. If a western power is going to confront China on one issue, why would a protest in Hong Kong be at the top of the list?\n\nNot to say that western powers *won’t* comment on issues like these, but you have to consider the geopolitical implications. For example, NATO countries would have reason to comment on the affairs of other NATO countries if it involves the military, for example.", "Like there is a eli5 answer to a complex political question of bilateral relations of 2 or more countries. This is a fishing expedition." ]

[ "And the Sioux have been suing the U.S. gov for the past 40 years and it went to the supreme court... they were offered 186 million dollars but they didn't take it, because they just want their land back. And the fed won't give it. ", "Why haven't you done some research before asking such a willfully ignorant question? There has been a large-scale Native revolt in Canada *within the last three years*, FFS. [Start here](_URL_0_) and then check out /r/IndianCountry and /r/NativeAmerican for more." ]

[ "Well business overall is a people game. Those who are better at interacting with people who have money tend to do better. In terms of Martin Shkreli if you have been reading the news he ran a partial ponzi scheme. I feel he couldn't produce enough investors at a point to which he turned to price gouging for sufficient funding. Overall I feel anyone can be a CEO you just have to know people and recruit. Most people only seem to focus on the fact that they need to produce the funds to build a business when all you really need to do is prove to a rich person why they should invest with you and boom you can make any company you want. I'm not saying you could sell miracle aids curing chicken to someone but skillful people could make someone wealthy believe that your chicken can cure or significantly reduce your chances of getting aids, it would be a very worthy investment. It's a bad example but it still shows a point. Make people believe.", "Powerful people have the ability to sell themselves as experts. They have big egos that project a presence people trust no matter how much they boast or lie. Which is why they tend to be the ones to get away with making money going bankrupt or with ponzi schemes or the superior natural leaders, culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny because of his perceived instincts over abstract and universal reason.", "Serious question: how much trouble is this guy in? I mean, I know Reddit got excited when he got arrested but is he looking at a slap on the wrist or something more like Madoff got?", "To be fair to him, he wasn't born into it. He's a complete bastard no doubt, but he did manage to get billions of dollars all by himself, which is pretty smart.", "Step 1: layout your plan to the board of directors\n\nStep 2: Buy a ton of stocks in the company, close to 2 million shares.\n\nStep 3: Now that you have a big stake in the company the board will appoint you as CEO so you can execute your strategy.\n\nStep 4: Acquire the rights to a needed drug and raise its price.\n\nStep 5: Profit from the 2 million shares bought prior.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nShkreli made close to 60 million in less than a month with this strategy on KBIO.\n", "Anyone notice that he worked at Jim Cramer's firm; Cramer, Berkowitz and Company?\n\nYou know.. that guy that Jon Stewart outed for his company training videos that showed him explaining to his employees how to pump and dump stock through the press and media to make a profit?\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI wish the media would comment on Cramer's legacy of unethical behavior." ]

[ "The Montreal Protocol banned the use of CFCs in the 80s. CFCs essentially knocked off the third O in O3 off, cutting down the ozone layer. The CFCs still have a decently long residence time, meaning they have not fully degraded out of the Ozone layer a few decades after their emissions were significantly slashed, to being effectively zero. \n\nNow the growth of the Ozone hole is ceased and has started to regrow, although it does change seasonally. It may be completely covered up as soon as the end of the century. ", "The [2010 Montreal Protocol report](_URL_0_) says in short:\n\n* Global ozone and ozone in the Arctic and Antarctic is no longer decreasing, but is not yet increasing.\n\n* The ozone layer outside the Polar Regions is projected to recover to its pre-1980 levels some time before the middle of this century. The recovery might be accelerated by greenhouse gas-induced cooling of the upper stratosphere.\n* The ozone hole over the Antarctic is expected to recover much later.\n* The impact of the Antarctic ozone hole on surface climate is becoming evident in surface temperature and wind patterns.\n* At mid-latitudes, surface ultraviolet radiation has been about constant over the last decade.\n\nSummary from [this article](_URL_1_) (with pictures).", "Montreal protocol passed in 1987, aimed at decreasing the production and use of ozone depleting substances and protecting the stratospheric ozone.\nEarth Summit held at Rio de Janerio in 1992, aimed at reducing the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.\nKyoto Protocol passed in 1997, aimed at reducing the greenhouse gases level and freezing it at the 1990's level.\nBeijing Protocol passed in 1999, aimed at reducing the greenhouse gases levels till 5% below the 1990's level.\nTL;DR: It's much better now.", "Time to shine.\n\nChlorofluorocarbons (CFC) were created by the terribly unfortunate Thomas Midgley Jr to replace dangerous gases used in refrigeration that killed lots of people in accidents. (Midgley also probably killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined by putting lead into gasoline. This has resulted in unprecedented levels of early death and natal malformation around the world).\n\nEventually someone figured out that CFCs were depleting the Ozone layer (that stops cosmic rays from the sun destroying all life on Earth - cf. Venus) at a level that makes Carbon Dioxide look like a schoolkid - 70 000 to 1 by volume) and it was banned in 1973. It took a while for it to get through to the less scrupulous manufacturers in places like China, but it seems to be working.\n\nUnfortunately, CFCs have a productive life of about 100 years, so, until 2073, they'll keep wrecking our atmosphere on a level that dwarfs anything related to carbon. If you want to be famous for doing good works, invent something that can scrub CFCs from the atmosphere.", "I know this post has long since passed, but after researching a little about the ozone, why does there seem to be ozone holes in the southern poles, and also some lesser amounts in the northern poles? Does this have to do with polarity, or magnetic poles at all?\n\nThis is coming from a warehouse worker's perspective. I don't have any knowledge on the subject at all.\n\nEdit: stupidity, and over use of grammar.", "My PhD work is in characterizing the halogen-mediated processes contributing to ozone depletion and the design and operation of instruments for measuring these trace gas species in the lab and stratosphere. I haven't had the opportunity to fly a mission yet, but I want to let everyone here know that they should read \n\nRoan, S.L., 1989. Ozone Crisis: The 15 year evolution of a sudden global emergency.\n\nif they find this topic interesting. There was so much intrigue, backstabbing, industry denial, politicking involved in characterizing the problem and prodding industry/governments to react. The book is old, but the science it covers is still correct to the first order or so. \n\nTo answer the question: the ozone hole is slowly recovering and the threat to ozone is reduced as the chlorine atom reservoirs deplete. Projections of ozone predict complete recovery (and eventually column increases) around 2070.\n\nThat said, ozone continues to be threatened by other processes. Large seasonal storm systems that penetrate the stratosphere can isolate air masses in a similar way to the polar vortex. These storms inject water vapor to the lower stratosphere, clicking on the same ozone processes that occur in the poles, but at higher temperatures. \n\n > Anderson, J.G., Wilmouth, D.M., Smith, J.B. and Sayres, D.S., 2012. UV dosage levels in summer: Increased risk of ozone loss from convectively injected water vapor. Science, 337(6096), pp.835-839. \n\nAdditionally, volcanoes have demonstrated that, in high Cl regimes, surface area can adversely affect global ozone. Increasing demands to begin experimenting with solar radiation management through the injection of particles to reflect sunlight may have an adverse effect on column ozone.\n\nFinally, there is the potential for large volcanic eruptions to directly inject chlorine and bromine into the stratosphere. Events such as Tambora have the potential for widespread ozone depletion events over the course of a decade. \n\n\n\n\n" ]

[ "White light is the combination of all other colors, so when the paint looks white, it's because it's reflecting all the visible colors to you (and hopefully many of the invisible \"colors\"). That means less light is absorbed by the paint and it won't get hot like a black driveway on a summer afternoon. That means the ship doesn't need to work as hard to keep itself cool as it stays parked baking under the sun.", "How ever on the space shuttle they stopped painting the huge external fuel tank. It was an reddish-orange color . I read that not painting it white , saved a lot of weight during launch.", "Others have already answered your question, so I'll just leave a link for this video, which also explains the paint schemes.\n_URL_0_" ]

[ "Agree or not with the conclusion, the ELI5 is that they're not parallel. The question for you is whether ignorance of the law excuses criminal behavior, and gets you out of being punished. The question for the cop in the Heien situation is whether ignorance of the law makes a particular search unreasonable.\n\nIt's hard to think of a good parallel, because there's really nothing like the interaction between mistakes of law and 4th amendment searches in private life. But, a semi-analogy: If North Carolina made it a crime for a police officer to stop someone without legal cause, then even though the search in Heien would be usable, the cop could still go to jail. \n\n\nHere's how the majority explained it in the decision:\n\n > Finally, Heien and amici point to the well-known maxim, \"Ignorance of the law is no excuse,\" and contend that it is fundamentally unfair to let police officers get away with mistakes of law when the citizenry is accorded no such leeway. Though this argument has a certain rhetorical appeal, it misconceives the implication of the maxim. The true symmetry is this: Just as an individual generally cannot escape criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law, so too the government cannot impose criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law. If the law required two working brake lights, Heien could not escape a ticket by claiming he reasonably thought he needed only one; if the law required only one, Sergeant Darisse could not issue a valid ticket by claiming he reasonably thought drivers needed two. But just because mistakes of law cannot justify either the imposition or the avoidance of criminal liability, it does not follow that they cannot justify an investigatory stop. And Heien is not appealing a brake-light ticket; he is appealing a cocaine-trafficking conviction as to which there is no asserted mistake of fact or law.", "You've got all sorts of premises (and random capitalization?) but I'll try to answer your question as best that I can.\n\nIf punishing the people who broke the law includes proving that they knew that they broke the law then it would all go to hell. How do you prove that someone saw the sign that said 55 was the speed limit? How do you prove that someone knew that downloading an episode of Friends from a torrent was illegal? How do you prove that someone was willingly breaking section 304(b).5 of the state DMV manual about brightness of brake lights?\n\nTo require that would essentially make many laws unenforceable. We have laws about speed limits, and stealing, and brake light brightness because our society is better off when everyone follows those rules. We can't accomplish that if we require proving that you knew about every law -- in fact, doing so would encourage you to be willfully ignorant which would be precisely the opposite of what we want, because we want people to be following the laws.\n\nCops can obviously be terrible and abusive and all that bag of tricks. But we also need to recognize that they're going to be day in and day out dealing with controversial issues. Freaking Supreme Court justices who do nothing but adjudicate issues will regularly disagree. Your random Joe Cop on the street, or pulling someone over, or whatever, simply cannot realistically be held to the same controversial standard that the Supreme Court itself disagrees upon.\n\nSo the typical standard is one of \"reasonableness\". Would a reasonable officer behave that way? That standard allows law enforcement to happen while also trying to curb abuses. It's not perfect, but it is good and a reasonable (IMO) compromise. ", " > Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the court’s decision “does not discourage officers from learning the law,” because only objectively reasonable mistakes were permitted.\n\n > “An officer can gain no Fourth Amendment advantage,” the chief justice wrote, “through a sloppy study of the laws he is duty-bound to enforce.” \n \nIt is not ignorance of the law, it was a reasonable mistake in how the law was interpreted.", "So in the Heien case the stop was not illegal since the officer misinterpreted the law, I understand the reasoning behind this, but it gives an awful lot of leeway to law enforcement. What standards are in place to ensure that LEO's correctly interpret the law at any other time? I know it is taking this issue to a hyperbolic level, but what is to stop an officer from shooting you for running a stop sign? Technically, by doing so, you ARE endangering the lives of others, can he misinterpret that as cause to use lethal force? I'd like to think this is well outside the realm of possibility, but with some of the recent police shootings to make the news, I wouldn't actually be too surprised. Could the Heien case be cited as precedent?\n\nI think part of what OC was asking, and what concerns me personally, is not just if a LEO misinterprets a law, but arrests you for something that is not even illegal, something where there is not even a law to misinterpret. For instance:\n\n1) There are numerous instances of photographers being arrested for taking pictures in public. There are mountains of case files saying that photography is a protected first amendment right, yet photographers are arrested daily. Granted the cases are almost always dropped, but where is the compensation for the time the photographer has now spent in jail waiting to be released? Where is the compensation for having his equipment confiscated and often damaged in the process? Where is the protection for the photographer's copyrighted work that has often been accessed and/or deleted by LEO's? Where is the compensation for the legal fees to get a lawyer to represent you and get the photographer released? Where is the compensation for the photographer's reputation? Yes, you can sue the police department in a civil action, but that involves lots of time and lawyers which gets even more expensive, and as often as not, is drawn out by the police departments for so long that most cases are dropped or settled for a paltry sum. Very little substantive punitive action is ever taken in these cases even though it is a clearly legal activity that photographers are being regularly arrested for.\n\n2) Deliberate arrest on charges the police know will not stick just to be punitive, coercive, or to carry on with activities that are already extralegal. For instance, most of the Occupy Wall Street protesters who were arrested had their charges dropped after being arrested. They were arrested and transported away from the scene just to get them out of the way and make it inconvenient for them to continue the protest. Or, the Ferguson protestors who were told they would be arrested if they so much as stopped stopped moving on the sidewalk long enough to tie their shoes. Or, the lawyer, [Jami Tillotson](_URL_0_), who was arrested in San Francisco for resiting arrest (you read that correctly, she was arrested for resisting arrest) by attempting to not allow her clients to be interrogated without representation by a large contingent of police officers in the open hallway of a courthouse. She was released soon afterwards, but the tactic worked, she was removed from the scene, prevented from performing her legally and constitutionally protected job, and the police got to continue what was at best a VERY questionably legal interrogation.", "A cop's job is to enforce the law not interpret it, that's for judges and lawyers. That's why police cannot give legal advice on any level.", "Good Faith clause. If a police officer is acting in good faith then the law means precisely dick.", "The fear is you don't want to cow your police force into impotency.\n\nFor example, how do you protect citizens' fourth amendment rights? One way could be to punish any cop who commits an unlawful search. But what would the result of such a policy be? Because case law concerning the fourth amendment is so complicated, cops would be reluctant to even perform lawful searches for the fear of being punished for a simple misunderstanding, greatly reducing the efficacy of the police force. So the way the courts protect citizens from unlawful searches and seizures is by excluding any unlawfully collected evidence from the legal process. That way both the cops can do their jobs without having to be excellent lawyers and citizens' rights are protected.", "There is a sort of implicit assumption that cops and criminals are two opposing teams, and that the law/Constitution is some set of rules to ensure fair play on both sides. But that's not really an accurate analogy. \n\nConstitutional protections are not there to protect criminals from being caught, nor to protect the right to commit crimes (which does not exist). They are there to protect the innocent from oppression and tyranny and so on. Occasionally, these protections also incidentally give cover to the guilty, when the machinery of law-enforcement happens to catch a factually guilty person via some kind of overreach. \n\nBut it's not a situation where the law says, \"the police are not allowed to catch you committing a crime unless they say Simon Says three times and get your consent.\" It's more like, \"the police are not allowed to do certain oppressive/tyrannical-type things, and if they do those things, then they can get in trouble, and the evidence collected thereby cannot be used against you.\" \n\nThis may be a subtle distinction, but it's a critically-important one. The police are allowed to catch criminals. And they are allowed to make reasonable mistakes and errors in the process of catching criminals. ", "You're premise is incorrect.\n\nThe court didn't rule a cop's ignorance of the law is an excuse. The court ruled a reasonable mistake by a cop doesn't invalidate a search which turned up a crime. Basically, that he was wrong to stop the car doesn't give those breaking the law a free pass on their crime. ", "\"Ignorance\" of the law is sometimes a defense, just not for most the things we think about, i.e. murder, you can't claim you didn't know it was against the law.\n\nTo be more specific, many laws require you to \"knowingly\" do something wrong, but these are few and far between. The statute will specifically say that you must be *knowingly* breaking the law. If you didn't know the law existed, no violation.", "Because he didn't break a law. To be charged with a crime you have to break a law. Simple ignorance of the law isn't a punishable offense otherwise this thread would be illegal but it obviously isnt. ", "The supreme court ruled the 4th doesn't apply to police they can mess up and law still applies now. Oh don't forget the ruling that they are not to protect us as well. Help yourselves, do not rely on police it is just a job like yours.", "On mobile so this will be brief. \n\nIgnorance of the law isn't OK for police officers. For example, say you get pulled over because a cop believes you were using the GPS on your phone and he thinks that is illegal (but is actually legal). That's a mistake of law and anything he discovers from that illegal stop wouldn't be admissible in court. The reasoning is that cops SHOULD know the law.\n\nHowever, if he believed you were texting (which is illegal) when you were actually just using GPS then that is a mistake of fact. Mistakes of fact are fine and whatever he finds on you from that stop would be admissible in court.\n\nSpeaking about California jurisdiction anyway.", "Because all you are is a filthy peasant and they are our wonderful, wonderful police. Of course they get a pass. Now shell out some more of your cash to pay their salaries.", "As I understand it it's because the ones charged with executing the law are in charge of executing the law. While yes a DA could file charges and such that would be suicide. The cops could subvert other cases/DA power by collectively deciding not to help in prosecution or trials and thusly make them look bad. Therefore, DA might lose it's position or viability in running for re-election. Also, you have that good ol Blue wall of Silence (Stop Snitchin. Protect your own. Cop Edition) and very strong and influential police unions." ]

[ "Her parents worked the media from day one and struck fear into the hearts of every British parent. \n\nEdit: Also, when news broke that her parents had left her alone the general public starting blaming them, or defending them or simply discussing conspiracy theories about them. This conversation has stayed prevalent in culture for a long time, and that combined with the 'Find Madeleine' campaigns mean that to this day if you went up to someone in the pub and asked \"What do you think happened to Maddie?\" they would know exactly what you were talking about.\n\nThe powers that be took this as a sign that the case could not be closed as people still cared, and in some ways it was still in the public interest to try and figure out what happened on that fateful night!", "Most missing children are around 14-16. We usually assume they run away from home. Madeliene McCann was 4 so that's unlikely.\n\nOthers tend to be taken by a family member. Usually an estranged ex-spouse. But both parents were together so that's not the explanation.\n\nOf course this still matters, but it's not something that will capture the public attention as much. " ]

[ "Iirc sheets actually help keep you from overheating or sweating. If you put the sheet on top, it loses it's purpose. However, with blankets, traditionally you put the comforter on top with other blankets under it. I think it's preference at that point though because some people have to have the comforter but might wanna shed the smaller blankets, which would be easier with smaller blankets on top. Others, like me, prefer shedding the comforter first and just using smaller blankets.", "It's more based on the type of blanket, not weight. Cotton and wool hold their heat differently. A sheet or a comforter or a cheap cotton quilt will hold heat differently. Maybe weight is another factor, beyond preference, who knows." ]

[ "They walked there over land bridges when sea levels were lower during ice ages, or they sailed there. ", "Early sapiens were hunter/gatherers for thousands of years. They wandered & were nomadic searching food. Stationary communal living was abnormal up until the agrarian revolution. ", "At some point, most lands were connected via land.\n\nThe Bering Strait used to be a land bridge connecting what is now Eastern Russia to present-day Alaska. This is how Native Americans crossed.\n\nThere are several theories as to how they got throughout the South Pacific. The most common ones being that they traveled from island to island on rafts and boats when water levels were low." ]

[ "Just for clarity, the Earth's north and south poles do not align with the magnetic north and south poles. If a planet has a magnetic north and south pole then it is easy to determine which is which by just following the magnetic field. \n\nFor the geographic poles they are determined by convention that the pole lying north of the solar system's plane in reference to Earth's north pole will be the north pole. Some planets (looking at you Uranus) are trouble makers here and they may have special rules.\n\nFor bodies that are outside of the larger 8 planets (dwarf planets, comets, etc...) north is determined by using the right hand rule.", "[Here](_URL_0_) is the International Astronomical Union's definition for bodies in the solar system. Perhaps a similar definition could be applied to other bodies not in our solar system, using the galactic plane as a reference (potential problem: I'm not sure if we have accurate measurements of the invariable plane of the galaxy though, so I'm not sure if this could be done)? I really don't know.\n\nI haven't been able to figure out how or if it's done for bodies outside of our solar system, so here's how I would imagine doing it: \n\nPerhaps you could simply define the geographic north pole of a whole star system to be that around which the orbit of the planets is seen to be counter-clockwise (like it is in our solar system), when viewed from \"above\". Then you could simply reapply the IAU's definitions to that star system to identify north and south poles of planetary and smaller bodies." ]

[ "It's like we're speaking to them but don't know their language, so find some other way to communicate. \n\nYou wouldn't speak straight English to someone from Asia that never learned any, because there wouldn't be any point. But you can kind of mime stuff at them in a way that they'll seem like they understand a little bit and they can mine back. \n\n\n\nOr we just go full retard at cute stuff. People meow at cats. We don't just make Chinese noises at Chinese people though. I wonder if cats think we're big dumb racists. ", "From my observation as a Mother of one toddler and as a someone who is not a professional dog trainer or psychologist but cares for 2 of my own dogs . I believe we coo at animals and babies to elicit positive responses and to encourage bonding and growth, in the sense of some sort of responsive reaction. I.e. my toddler squeals, claps, laughs, and talks back in response; My dogs give me play bows, jump on me with their tails going full peacock, and bring me toys.", "I agree with the points about bonding, but there is also an element of instinctual language teaching. Parents naturally use simple words and sounds and repeat them often, which facilitates learning. The more the child understands, the more complex the words and syntax become.", "Baby talk is easier for a baby to understand because it is slow, exaggerated, and uses high tones. Even before the infant can actually understand words, baby talk can teach things like turn-taking in conversation, rhythm and tones in sentences (like how your voice raises in pitch when you're asking a question), and the sounds used in your language. Slightly older babies will also notice that adults don't use baby talk with each other or older children, so they can use those sounds as a cue that you're talking to them.\n\nWe do this to pets because we tend to cognitively interpret pets as babies or small children.\n\nBaby talk exists in the majority of human cultures, but not all of them, so there's a learned component to it. However, because it has many characteristics that appeal to infants, infants respond to it more strongly than normal speech, so it's strongly reinforced." ]

[ "You don't have taste buds in your ass. Capsicum, the chemical in spicy foods, isn't a taste, but a physical reaction to the chemical that burns... so it burns your mouth, burns your eye if you rub it after slicing jalapeños, and it hurts coming out.", "Rub a hot pepper on your eyeball (no, not really) and you'll find it's hot on every kind of mucous membrane tissue. Enough capsaicin and your skin will get hot too, which you will find in some muscle/joint pain relief rubs (ie Icy Hot, the hot is literally capsaicin from hot peppers)\n\nIt tricks your body is to thinking it is hot (so animals don't eat the peppers) by interacting with the temperature sensitive nerve cells that detect heat and tricking them into turning on." ]

[ "These same rules apply to divisibility by any integer. For example, if we call numbers divisible by three \"treven\", then the exact same rules hold. It all has to do with divisibility rules. Multiplication is far from the only operation, division behaves in an opposite way and addition/subtraction are much more symmetric. \n\nThere is nothing special about the number 2 in this case.", "Remember that a number is \"even\" if it has at least one 2 in its prime factorization. Multiplying two integers together just combines their factors and never destroys any, so any product of a multiple of 2 with another integer must be a multiple of 2. In the same way, any product of a multiple of 17 with another integer must be a multiple of 17. It's not that the universe is \"biased\" towards multiples of 17 or of 2 or of anything else; it's just the way multiplication is defined.", "my not be entirely relevant, but your question reminded me of: [Benford's Law](_URL_0_) ", "All you're talking about here is the presence of the factor 2 in your number. That's what makes numbers even (if they have 2 as a factor).\n\nWhen you look at it from that perspective, it becomes clear. An odd number multiplied by an odd number must be odd because neither factors have 2 as a factor, so the product can't either (the 2 has to come from somewhere). En even number multiplied by an even number must be even, because there are 2s in both factors so the product must have a 2. An odd multiplied by an even is even because the even factor has 2 as a factor, so it passes it along to the product.\n\nThe only way to get rid of the 2, ie make an even number odd, through multiplication/division is by dividing out all the factors of 2. This is why an even number divided by an odd/even number may be odd or even, depending on whether all the factors of 2 are gone (ie 16/2=8 (even because 16 has more than one 2 as a factor), 18/6=3 (odd because 18 has only one 2 as a factor).\n\nIf you convert all the numbers to products of prime factors then all of this is very easy to follow. I see no reason to attribute this phenomenon to some vague notion such as \"universal bias\"." ]

[ "TV Money. The championship itself pays rather large amounts of money to all of the teams (though the big teams get a lot more than the small ones).\n\nSee here: _URL_0_\n\nForce India gets about 90 million from F1 a year.", "Also the lesser teams have paying drivers. They will sometimes pick a lesser driver over a better one, because that driver has better sponsorship and will pay for the drive." ]

[ "Content is negotiated as $X dollars for Y weeks. Like Netflix is renting it from the content rights holders and we're just watching their copy. ", "Especially now where studios/producers have come to realize that there is money in WHO you let air your show. Used to really only be Netflix and a smattering of Hulu. But as more companies come about including Amazon Prime now you can make choices. Who gives you the most money for the least amount of committed time? Add in new proprietary content and this game is just heating up. Now its \"Who will give me the most money to produce my show?\"\n\nA bit off topic but you get the idea. Also it can create a bit of a feeling of \"limited supply\". Not sure how well that *actually* works but again... you get the idea." ]

[ "What is your minimum wage?", "Less competition in the gaming market. Or slightly more accurately something called \"Parallel Import Restrictions\". These restrictions stop a supplier from purchasing a game in the US then selling it in Australia for cheaper than what an Australian supplier is selling it for. This means there's less competition and less incentive for the Australian suppliers to lower their prices. The Australian suppliers claim that the increase in price is because of higher operational costs, but that doesn't cover much of the difference. There's also the fact that Australia has a stricter game rating then other countries. Meaning a game that's PG in the US might be MA15+ in Australia and have a smaller market so they increase the price to compensate. \n \nHere's the article I got this from, but in the end the conclusion is that it's likely a combination of these various small factors:\n_URL_0_", "You have to remember that the exchange rate is not a reflection on the real value of money. You will find that the real value of both US and Australian $ is about the same; that is, you have to work for the same amount of time to earn the money to buy the game in either country, called the real value of income. The real value of income represents the purchasing power of respective monies. The US dollar has twice the purchasing power of the AUstralian dollar, but workers only get paid half of what Australians do.", "Same reason shit's really expensive in Hawaii: you live on a fucking island.", "There are also 308 million consumers in the US versus 22 million in Australia. Assuming all else is equal, retailers in the US would buy roughly 10 times more of a given product than retailers in Australia. Those retailers should be able to offer their customers better prices due to this buying power.", "You live on a fucking island.", "You pay double for everything because you keep paying double for everything. Why would anyone charge less if you're willing to pay what they ask?", "Please guys, there's a very easy way to settle this. It's called Purchasing Power Parity.\n\nSo, there is this thing called currency exchange, and that's a market. So currencies become worth more and less and fluctuate regularly in the market. However, this has very little to do with what people actually pay for things in a country. Just because your dollar is worth more one day than the next compared to the USD, it doesn't mean that a big mac is going to fluctuate in cost as well.\n\nThere's a PPP index. Hot damn! PPP indexes look at a basket of goods in a given country that should be about the same in all countries, and determines spending power. In this instance, a big mac gives a pretty good idea of what the cost of living is.\n\nAustralia has a PPP of 1.12, and the US has a PPP of 1. If we compare that, at PPP modern warfare would cost 67.19.\n\nIt doesn't. You guys get to unfairly pay more for the game. Damn.\n\nWith that said, however, it means that the australian dollar is currently being overvalued compared to PPP whereas somewhere like china is being significantly undervalued.\n\nWhat does this mean? That Australia won't be able to export as much stuff, and so long-term overvaluation will lead to trade imbalance and net importing, which is widely regarded as bad. \n\n", "Prices are largely set by how much you'll pay. You used to pay $100 for games, and so the people who sell them to you have no reason to reduce the price unless people stop buying it. \n\nAlso, unless your (average) cost of living has increased or your (average) wage has decreased, then the price of the USD (which is variable) doesn't really affect you.", "What is your minimum wage?", "Less competition in the gaming market. Or slightly more accurately something called \"Parallel Import Restrictions\". These restrictions stop a supplier from purchasing a game in the US then selling it in Australia for cheaper than what an Australian supplier is selling it for. This means there's less competition and less incentive for the Australian suppliers to lower their prices. The Australian suppliers claim that the increase in price is because of higher operational costs, but that doesn't cover much of the difference. There's also the fact that Australia has a stricter game rating then other countries. Meaning a game that's PG in the US might be MA15+ in Australia and have a smaller market so they increase the price to compensate. \n \nHere's the article I got this from, but in the end the conclusion is that it's likely a combination of these various small factors:\n_URL_0_", "You have to remember that the exchange rate is not a reflection on the real value of money. You will find that the real value of both US and Australian $ is about the same; that is, you have to work for the same amount of time to earn the money to buy the game in either country, called the real value of income. The real value of income represents the purchasing power of respective monies. The US dollar has twice the purchasing power of the AUstralian dollar, but workers only get paid half of what Australians do.", "Same reason shit's really expensive in Hawaii: you live on a fucking island.", "There are also 308 million consumers in the US versus 22 million in Australia. Assuming all else is equal, retailers in the US would buy roughly 10 times more of a given product than retailers in Australia. Those retailers should be able to offer their customers better prices due to this buying power.", "You live on a fucking island.", "You pay double for everything because you keep paying double for everything. Why would anyone charge less if you're willing to pay what they ask?", "Please guys, there's a very easy way to settle this. It's called Purchasing Power Parity.\n\nSo, there is this thing called currency exchange, and that's a market. So currencies become worth more and less and fluctuate regularly in the market. However, this has very little to do with what people actually pay for things in a country. Just because your dollar is worth more one day than the next compared to the USD, it doesn't mean that a big mac is going to fluctuate in cost as well.\n\nThere's a PPP index. Hot damn! PPP indexes look at a basket of goods in a given country that should be about the same in all countries, and determines spending power. In this instance, a big mac gives a pretty good idea of what the cost of living is.\n\nAustralia has a PPP of 1.12, and the US has a PPP of 1. If we compare that, at PPP modern warfare would cost 67.19.\n\nIt doesn't. You guys get to unfairly pay more for the game. Damn.\n\nWith that said, however, it means that the australian dollar is currently being overvalued compared to PPP whereas somewhere like china is being significantly undervalued.\n\nWhat does this mean? That Australia won't be able to export as much stuff, and so long-term overvaluation will lead to trade imbalance and net importing, which is widely regarded as bad. \n\n" ]

[ "If I remember correctly, Jonathan Spence's book *God's Chinese Son* describes a battle during the Taiping Rebellion wherein Qing forces surrounded a rebel army marching towards Beijing and then diverted a river to flood their camp, allowing the rebels to easily be overrun and defeated.", "I don't know if it counts but in at least one instance Alexander the Great built a mole out to an island city. At the Siege of Tyre he had his men work to build a bridge of land to the city, making it a peninsula.", "According to Herodotus, Cyrus the Great diverted the Euphrates in 540 BC so that the water level in the river dropped enough to gain his army access to Babylon by just marching in by the riverbed, where the gates were not guarded or well protected. \n\nI think there could be several examples from other sieges, but none come readily to mind just now." ]

[ "I don't see this part of the question having been answered yet, so:\n\n > What \"bit\" do we use in this modern era of HD, near photo-realisitic game graphics?\n\nGenerally, we don't. The PS2 was occasionally claimed to be a 128-bit machine, and indeed, part of it was 128-bit, but the fact is, the 'bit' of a CPU matters a lot less than it used to.\n\nIn the 8/16/32/64 bit days, the system's processor handled a lot more of what the console did, so its power was a lot more important. Nowadays, like PCs, game consoles use separate pieces of hardware to handle processing, graphics, and other such functions.\n\nEach of these might have different bit widths. Which do you use? If the processor is 128 bit, but it only talks to the graphics chip 32 bits at a time, it's not really running at 128 bits.\n\nThe PC I'm typing this on has a 64 bit processor. My phone has a 64 bit processor. The PS4 next to my desk has a 64 bit processor. Any of them are more powerful than a Nintendo 64 or a Dreamcast. It's just not an effective measure of power anymore.", "It's a mixture of a lot of things, and at some point it just became a marketing buzzword.\n\nOriginally, it referred to how big numbers a processor could operate on \"natively\", without having to split it into smaller chunks and processing those independently and then combining the results (similar to how, when you add two numbers, you typically do it one digit at a time, so you compute 538+124 by first adding together 8 and 4, then 3 and 2 (adding the 1 that was carried over from the previous step), and then 5 and 1. \n\nAn 8-bit computer would be able to make computations on 8 bit numbers (numbers made up of 8 binary digits, or 8 zeros and ones, effectively 0-256) as a single operation. For larger numbers, it would have to split up the computation like I did in the example above.\n\nA 16 bit processor can work on 16 bit numbers (up to around 65000) without any intermediary steps, and so on.\n\nObviously, if you can do this computation as a single step, it is *much* faster than if you have to split it up into multiple computations that you then have to combine afterwards, which is one reason why a 16 bit processor is typically faster than an 8 bit one, and that's why it became such a big marketing gimmick.\n\nHowever it also kind of turned into complete nonsense because, for example, the 64 bit console generation could *not* actually operate on 64 bit wide numbers. But it could apply the same computation to two 32-bit numbers simultaneously (without combining the results in any way, just doing two computations in parallel, yielding two separate results). But it sounded good, and it made the console sound far superior to the competition which only had 32-bit processors.\n\nAdditionally, on today's complex processors, it's no longer as simple as that. The processor in your PC is said to be 64 bit, but it can actually do a handful of operations on 128 bit numbers. It also works just fine with 32 bit numbers. And for some systems, the processor might retrieve 64 bit chunks of data at a time from memory, but only be able to work on 32 bit numbers. Some processors can only work on 32 bit integers, but floating point numbers (what's used for fractions) can handle 64 bit. And sometimes, people instead prefer to measure the size of memory addresses. The processor needs to be able to access any data anywhere in memory, which means that each location in memory must have an address. On some systems, that address was a 32 bit number (allowing up to 4GB of memory), but the processor could operate on 64 bit numbers. On other systems, the situation is/was the reverse. There isn't really a single \"bitness\" that is more true than the others. Depending on where you look, your PC might be a 32, 64, 128 og 256 bit machine. It's not really meaningful, and it hasn't been for many years.", "The \"bit\" terminology may be a bit misleading as it can refer to a few different things. It is often in reference to the size of the physical memory address, which is a limiting factor for how much memory a system can utilize. For a 32 bit system, around 4 gigs is the maximum amount of RAM the system can use is:\n\n2^32 = 4,294,967,296 ~= 4GB\n\nThis ceiling is much, much higher for 64 bit systems. In theory, 16.8 million terabytes of RAM is possible, but in practice, the limit is typically much lower depending on your motherboard and operating system. Either way, a 64 bit system can utilize much more RAM than a 32 bit one.\n\nThe address size is not really related to the precision of the CPU, and not all calculations will utilize the full bit width available to the CPU. A \"32 bit machine\" (memory address) can often still make 64 bit or 8 bit calculations. Modern CPU's can handle multiple types of bit widths and number types for performing calculations. Intel or AMD processors have registers up to 256 bits in width, but those are typically split into chunks of 8 - 64 bits which can perform processes in parallel ([on a single CPU](_URL_0_), not the same as multiple processors). They can handle integers of 8, 16, 32 or 64 bits and floating point numbers of either 32 or 64 bits. Some can also support 128 bit calculations, but most compilers don't support it.\n\nNeither is necessarily a good measure of the graphics capabilities of the system. Not all calculations are going to use the full resolution available to the CPU, and the GPU is usually dedicated to most of the graphics processes and may have different limitations or capabilities to the CPU and have their own dedicated memory. The Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis were both marketed as 16 bit systems, but IIRC, the SNES could only display 256 colors (8 bit) while the Genesis could only display 64 (6 bit). \n\nModern graphics benefit from massively paralleled processing available in GPUs. When compared to CPUs, they don't perform as well for serial calculations, but for paralleled calculations like those needed for graphics, they completely smoke CPUs, often performing as much as 100x or more of the amount of calculations per second. This is probably the primary reason why modern graphics have become so much better.\n\nFor modern games, they are often developed to support multiple platforms and CPUs, so to call a game \"64 bit\" etc. is not terribly meaningful. That said, a 64 bit machine will typically have a lot more power than an equivalent 32 bit machine.", "Lots of people have already answered this, so it might be unnecessary, but let me throw in my attempt to explain the concept.\n\nWe are currently still in the 64-bit era and it seems that we won't progress any further on that front any time soon mostly since there is no need to go any further.\n\nThe Bit itself is a Binary-digit. It is a digit that can be either 0 or 1.\n\nThe details of how binary works is probably not really important for your question.\n\nThe main point is that 8-Bit, 16-Bit, 64-Bit etc are about the number of (Binary)digits that the computer uses in its calculations.\n\nYou can for example imagine this with our normal numbers. If you have only use 2-digit math you can work with numbers from 0 to 99. If you work with 3 digit math you work with numbers from 0 to 999.\n\nIf you want to work with bigger numbers you need more digits.\n\nTo calculate with numbers as high as millions you need at least 7-digits.\n\nWith binary you have similar limits. 8-digts lets you use numbers from 00000000 to 11111111 or 0 to 255 in normal decimal math.\n\n64 Bits allows you to work with values as high as 18446744073709551615.\n\nSince everything a computer does involves math. Working with more digits allows you to have do more.\n\nIn gaming terms 'more bits' tends to translate to better sound and graphics." ]

[ "It helps keep money flowing and there have been safeguards put in place to prevent everyone from rushing to the bank and withdrawing all of their money back in case of a crisis.", "Why shouldn't it be?", "Ok so imagine the bank is like a restaurant and they have sold quite a few cool gift cards to people for Christmas. If all the people the got these vouchers as Christmas presents came to the little restaurant on the same day there's no way they cold all get fed; the restaurant would have to have 100 tonnes of food - that's more than they could fit in their fridges!! Having all this food would mean some of the food spoiling; letting your food spoil is a very bad waste and a restraint that wastes food by letting it spoil isn't going to be a very profitable business at all. But luckily people don't all come on the same day, they want to eat at the throughout the year =) \n\nSo you see the bank is just like the restaurant; it would be silly for it to hold all the money because even though it might sound funny, money can spoil just the same as the food can! That's because money has something we like to call a time value. It just means if you have some money now its the same as having more money in the future! (money is very good at becoming more money) But only if you put it in the right places and not just leave it sitting around. The banks keep just enough sitting around so that all the customers they expect to come in will get as much as they need but not do much that it starts going to waste." ]

[ "We have a *much* slower pace of life down here in the South. For those that don't know any better, who are used to a more fast paced way of doing things, it can look like laziness.", "It might be related to being closer to the equator where it's warmer, and people are more relaxed: No need to plan for winter, working hard makes you sweat...\n\nYou might want to know that in Brazil, this is inverted, and Northern people are stereotyped as lazy. We are mostly below the equator, so South colder.\n\nIf you look at a wealth and development map, you'll see a tendency of lower statistics in the tropics, so maybe this helps with the stereotype.\n\nWhen the first Portuguese stepped in Brazil, a letter was sent back to Portugal saying \"In this land, if you plant, anything grows.\". It's too damn easy, why rush then?", "**Regarding the southern U.S.**: historically, hookworm was extremely prevalent and it created a stereotype of the people there being lazy, as that is one of the symptoms.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n**Regarding southern Europe**: part of the explanation is that the south is largely Catholic compared to the Protestant north. Catholicism celebrates numerous feast days (i.e. holidays) and is in some respects more permissive than the more austere Calvinism and Lutheranism of the north." ]

[ "The first thing to happen is the cells continue to excrete carbon dioxide, it has no were to go so it builds up until the pockets in the cells rupture, releasing enzymes that start to break down cells from the inside out, after the cells have been broken down a whole army of different bacteria begin to feed on this..the last of the food chain is the worst, maggots and beetles eat the remains, all that is left is bone and not all the bone, protein in the bone is broken down and after a long time even the bone turns to a fertile dust, ashes to ashes. ", "Loss of circulation (say, from cardiac arrest) leads to three main problems for the tissues: loss of oxygen, loss of supply of fuel molecules like glucose and fatty acids, and buildup of waste products. Some cells are more susceptible to major dysfunction due to these factors than others, primarily as a result of their metabolic needs. \n\nLoss of oxygen and fuel results in a decline of the cellular ability to produce ATP, the small molecule that the cell uses for the majority of its energy needs. Lack of ATP results in decreased function of the sodium-potassium pump that maintains the cellular ion balances resulting in water influx and swelling of the cell. Other active cellular processes that require ATP also begin to decline in function. Additionally, the local changes in the chemical environment including decreased pH from C02 and lactic acid build up can affect the membrane permeability. Other cellular changes include changes to the structure of the chromosomes/nucleus, detachment of ribosomes and mitochondria from the cytoskeleton. \n\nUltimately, either damage to the mitochondria releases a number of molecules that cause the cell to turn itself off (apoptosis), or the damage to the integrity of the cellular membrane(s) is so great that it ruptures, or small packets of digesting enzymes are released that chew up the cell. Either way, energy dependent cellular processes for the most part halt by that point. This can take minutes for brain neurons, which have very high energy requirements, to hours and almost days for say, cartilage cells, which do not require much energy at all. ", "Adding to what others said, there is a myth that fingernails and hair continue to grow after death. What actually happens is that decaying and dehydrating skin actually retracts, leaving the fingernails and hair stubble to become more prominent, giving the illusion of growth.", "No oxygen means the electron transport chain has no terminal acceptor which means ATP synthesis stops. Well there's still a little ATP here and there from things like glycolysis but not enough to sustain anything for long. Once the cells run out of energy, they die. A little TL;DR but pretty straight to the point. ", "Several types of tissue may survive considerably longer after circulatory arrest, and some bodily functions may persist for several hours after clinical death. A timeline:\n\n* 0 min: The heart comes to a rest, the blood does not flow any more, the body's cells start to die due to lack of oxygen and nutrients as well as accumulation of toxic metabolic products. Depending on their demand for energy, tissues perish slowly or rapidly. This stage between individual and complete death of all cells is called the intermediate phase.\n* 6min: Irreparable brain damage due to a lack of oxygen. Neuronal tissue depends heavily on the full amount of energy only the oxygen-dependent metabolisation of glucose in the citric acid cycle and the respiratory chain can supply, while the oxygen-free glycolysis may provide only about a fifth of that energy. If the patient may be resuscitated after this point, severe brain damage is almost certain.\n* 15min: Heart tissue starts to decay. Successful resuscitation after this point is not only becoming more and more unlikely with every minute, but the chance for further life-threatening cardiac arrhythmia due to decay of cardiac tissue (besides from the event that caused cardiac arrest in the first place) is quite high.\n* 15min: In case that no resuscitation was started, by now, blood has followed gravity and pooled in vessels and tissue nearer to the ground, forming postmortem lividity that can realign and reshape for up to 12h, eventually staying in place.\n* 30min: Perspiratory glands may still excrete sweat after injection of adrenalin.\n* 2h: Kidneys survive until this point.\n* 2h: Rigor mortis develops, causing the muscles to become stiff, reaching its full extent until about 6h after cardiac arrest.\n* 8h: Rigor mortis may still develop after it was broken before.\n* 15h: Pupils can still be dilated or contracted with drugs.\n* 20h: Blows to the muscles may still cause electrical discharge, resulting in reactive contractions.\n* 30h: Bone and cartilage tissue dies.\n* 36h: Sperms can still be gathered for following deep-freezing and later artificial fertilisation.\n* 48h: Gut bacteria multiply rapidly, eventually breaching through the intestinal walls. Putrefaction develops in the abdomen, soon spreading throughout the body.\n* 48-72h: Rigor mortis decreases, limbs become limp again.\n* 72h: Corneal tissue can still be gathered for transplantation. Since the cornea has no blood vessels and survives only on the nutrients it receives through diffusion and the oxygen from the air, this tissue survives the longest.\n\n\n*Note that most of these points in time vary heavily depending on many aspects such as ambient temperature, humidity, cause of death, health of the particular tissues before death etc. The given numbers represent ideal or near-to-ideal circumstances in terms of a slow decay without any considerable cooling.*\n\nEDIT: Sperms are viable for up to 36h, not 72h as previously stated.", "Interestingly, this process is slower than you'd think. Some researchers have recovered viable stem cells from cadavers up to 5 days after death:\n_URL_0_", "You might have heard this already but asside from the correct \"lack of oxygen\" answer, with digestion in general it's different. Your digestive system cannot handle everything that is put into it so it depends on your flora of gut bacteria to digest what you eat into substances that your body can actually process and use.\n\nWhen you die, your gut bacteria do not die. They actually start to eat you from the inside out because the body functions that keep them at bay are no longer working.", "Oxygen is the bottleneck. It's the oxidizer that must be present for pretty much all cell energy generation functions. There are some functions which don't require oxygen but they have low yields and toxic byproducts that need to be managed - anaerobic respiration.\n\n\n\nDifferent cells will stop working due to lack of oxygen at different times. Neurons are particularly hungry for oxygen and will start taking damage only minutes after an oxygen shortage.", "Depends on which processes you are referring to but they all ultimately stop when they run out of reactants.\n\nOnce your brain dies the majority of processes stop when the cells in question run out of oxygen. However, not all activity in your body is controlled by your brain, are controlled at all or require oxygen. A large part of human digestion is due to enslaved anaerobic bacteria within your digestive tract. These bacteria, that you need in your gut, go wild after death and are responsible for a large portion of your decomposition. As you cannot live without them their actions are a bodily process. In essence your gut has its own flora, fauna and resulting ecosystem! Ultimately all processes stop when they run out of fuel. How long it takes depends on several factors such as mass of the person in question and of course ambient temperature. \n\nSide note: The temperature factor is why we can harvest organs from the dead and reboot them, to an extent, as the crash in temperature causes them to run out of reactants at a much slower rate. The organ harvest guidelines are a good baseline as after 5 minutes, at body temperature, the organs are too far gone to harvest." ]

[ "Bonus question from an interested European: What is the difference between the \"fiscal cliff\" and the \"sequester\"?\n\nTo me it sounds like the same thing. Didn't they just postpone the \"fiscal cliff\" for a few weeks with a half-assed solution, and isn't it now exactly the same situation as before?", "As bad as all these cuts are supposed to be, they only account for like 2% of our spending. And without a budget, we will spend those savings somewhere else. The sequester does nothing to change our redonculous debt problems. ", "Ok. Here’s my attempt.\n\nAlright Maddie, you wanted to know about the “Sequester” that you are hearing so much about. In order for you to understand it, I need to give you some background. \n\nThe US has two groups that want to run the country. \n\nRepublicans contain a group of people that want the US to take less of people’s money and to do less things. The one thing they generally do want the US to do is to have a large army. \n\nThe other group, the Democrats, want the US to take some money from people to fix people’s problems. They generally want to take more money from those that are rich compared to those that are poor. \n\nIn the past, there was a big disaster that hurt the pocketbooks of almost all of the countries of the world. We don’t need to get into the specifics of that. All you need to know is that almost all of the countries in the world including the US faced a lot of money problems after this happened. \n\nAfter this happened, the Democrats wanted to borrow money from people to help fix lots of the problems that were caused by the big disaster. They thought that this would both help people and help the US budget (this is what people mean when they say “stimulate the economy”). Republicans said we should not do that because that will just make our problems worse since the US can not do anything right and it would make US budget more in debt. In general, the Republicans right now do not believe that you can borrow money to help the US budget (or “stimulate the economy”). \n\nIn order to stop the Democrats from borrowing money to fix problems, Republicans said that they would block the US from paying any of the US’s bills until we started cutting expenses and we were out of debt. Democrats said that this was crazy because if we didn’t pay the bills that we already owed then really bad things would happen (like if Daddy doesn’t pay the electric bills and the lights on the house go out).\n\nIn order to solve this problem (called the debt ceiling crises), the Republicans agreed to allow the US to pay its bills and in return the two groups agreed to create a group called the “Super Committee”. Yes honey, that is actually the real name of the committee and they do not have super powers. \n\nAnyway, the Super Committee was created to fix the budget. Because the Republicans did not trust that the Democrats would actually cut expenses to fix the budget, both parties agreed to state that if the Super Committee did not figure out how to fix the budget then the most horrible budget cuts they could think of would go into effect. These horrible cuts are called the “Sequester”. Republicans, who remember love army, even agreed that if the Super Committee did not succeed then huge cuts would go into effect for the army.\n\nThe Super Committee was suppose to be composed of the best minds of both parties that would work together to come up with a compromise. But both parties still really disagreed on what they wanted to do so the Super Committee did not come to an agreement. Because the Super Committee did not come to an agreement, the Sequester (those horrible cuts) were timed to go into effect today. People thought that they would have come up with an agreement before today, but both parties still do not agree on what should happen. \n\nThe Democrats think that the Sequester will cause lots of problems because the US will not be fixing people’s problems any more. They also think that this will hurt the US budget because we will not be “stimulating the economy” and will be doing the opposite.\n\nThe group of Republicans that like the army are mad because they do not want the cuts to the army to go into effect. But that group has been overtaken by the other group of Republicans that doesn’t want government to take people’s money and do not think that the Sequester will do bad things because they do not believe that the US can borrow money to help the budget. \n\nNo one knows how this will end up but most people think that the Sequester will be so bad that after awhile Republicans and Democrats will actually come up with an agreement to end it. \n\nHope that helps baby. Oh I guess you are asleep. \n", "The thing I never understand is, the sequester is a Congress-made budget cut. Well, why can't they just say, \"Screw the sequester, those cuts are terrible. Let's keep working toward something.\" It's not as if the sequester is this divine, written-in-stone thing. It's a rule they made up!", "Democrat and Republican politicians can't take money away from the people that voted for them, otherwise they won't get re-elected. The spending cuts need to happen because the country keeps going further in debt. So, politicians created rules that would automatically cut spending in such a way that they could blame others when the cuts kick in. \"See, I didn't reduce the money going to the army, it was the Democrats who were being unreasonable.\" \"See, I didn't reduce money going to public welfare, it was the Republicans who were being unreasonable.\"", "not quite like youre 5, but the numbers aint that tough\n\nthis year our $3.6 trillion dollar budget will be cut by $85 billion dollars (2.36% cut). over 10 years our budget will be cut from $46 trillion to $44.8 trillion (2.6% cut)\n\nin the impending doom facing our country, we will have to scrimp and save and get by on 97.7% of current spending, how ever will we manage???\n\nTL;DR: this is hardly the doomsday scenario its being painted to be, it is mostly charading and politicking\n\nEDIT: worth mentioning that federal budgets have increased 17% on average since obama took office. basically the administration is being very transparently dishonest in saying that what was perfectly acceptable 4 years ago spells utter disaster today", "[Ben Swann seems to do good job explaining it for those who still need some clarification.](_URL_0_)\n\n", "The way I understand it is like this:\n\nImagine two people were living in a house (like your uncle Johnny and aunt Jane). Now imagine that they were spending more money than they had, Johnny was buying shiny new guns every day and Jane was trying to feed every homeless person in LA.\n\nNow, one day Johnny and Jane realize they are running out of money and soon the credit card companies will stop giving them credit cards to max out so they got down to talking. Johnny wanted Jane to stop feeding homeless people and Jane wanted Johnny to stop buying so many new guns.\n\nJohnny and Jane could't decide on what to do so they agreed to two things:\n1. They would get one last credit card and spend a little bit less.\n2. They decided that they would both cut off one leg if they couldn't come to a decision by a certain date. (pretty scary huh?)\n\nNow, with the new credit card Johnny kept buying new guns and Jane kept on feeding more people. As the date to make a decision or lose a leg got closer, Johnny and Jane couldn't decide on anything as each wanted only the other to give something up. Sometimes Jane or Johnny would try to compromise but the other would never have it.\n\nThis went on for a few deadlines but each time either Johnny or Jane would give up a little to put off cutting their legs but would still agree to a new deadline.\n\nYesterday, they stopped putting it off. Today, they cut off one of each other's legs.\n\nNote: I hope that was ELI5 enough. [Cikedo did a good write up in grown up talk](_URL_0_)", "Just a little pet peeve of mine, but the correct term is sequestration, not \"the sequester.\"" ]

[ "Sex - They wear stuff to obscure their junk during the shoots. I'm sure the effects team can come in and CGI out any remnants that make it through to the final shots.\n\nKissing - I'm sure some pull off some sort of stage-kiss where they don't actually kiss. However, actors are professionals and understand what their job entails so I suspect they just go ahead and do it.\n\nJealous husband/wife? Well then you shouldn't have married someone in that profession.", "There's a German movie featuring an actual sex scene. Now if this becomes the norm...\n_URL_0_", "Here's a [video](_URL_0_) that Natalie Tran did on this exact topic. Seems legit.", "Sometimes they really do it.\n\n _URL_0_", "Kissing scenes are usually no big deal, both actors just need to be comfortable with it and know what exactly the other is going to do.\n\nSex scenes are actually planned in every minor detail, both for the actors sake so they feel secure as well as to make it as realistic as possible. Some times the actors will wear special underwear that blends with the skin but still covers them up.\n\nThey plan every minor detail of sex scenes - exactly what the action in every shot will be and how they will go about filming it. It's a really mechanical process and there's usually nothing \"sexual\" about it. They usually only film what's needed to make it look real on screen. It really goes to show how talented actors, directors and camera people are to make it look convincing on screen. ", "I forget the interview I watched, but it was a famous actor and they were asking him about the sex scene. They wanted to know what he wore, because it showed him naked from behind. He said the easiest way to describe it is a sock.\n\nJust remembered: _URL_0_\n\nEDIT: It also looks like she's having sex with him with her eyes in the interview. lol", "They no *\"do it\"*. They make-a love. They touch-a the hands, they kiss-a the face, no is [\"bing-a de bang-a de boom!\"](_URL_0_)", "I seem to remember some controversy with the 90's movie The Getaway, starring then husband and wife Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. The scene in question definitely doesn't *look* unsimulated, especially given how much full frontal is shown. Trying to find sources to confirm, I think this us one of the only Hollywood examples of possibly unsimulated sex on film I can think of.", "I never really questioned this until I saw [Shame](_URL_0_) because there are parts when Michael Fassbender literally has his nose in a woman's ass.", "Now we know... oh yeah, we know now.", "Imagine being a male actor in a sex scene with like Mila Kunis or Keira Knightley or something. How well do you think they would have to trust each other for her to be bouncing up and down on what's likely the hardest boner you've ever had? I'd have a hard time looking her in the eye after physically confirming I'd love to slay that dame left and right.", "I went into video production and editing as well as writing in college. I've had to do a kissing scene before, and it can be quite uncomfortable. I didn't know the girl, whether to use tongue or not, but at the end of the day we had to tough it out. \n\nAs far as sex goes, there is actually a bag that is often out over the actors genitals to prevent sexual contact or having it... flop, onto the screen, for lack of a better term. There was actually a funny late night interview with Kevin Bacon in which he explained that, on set, he learned it was called a \"bacon bag.\"\n\nI hope this was helpful, OP.\n\n(I should note there are exceptions to the sexual contact rule.\n\nSee: oral sex scene from Brown Bunny.)", "There is usually a cloth between them. Sets are also closed, meaning it's usually only the actors, any significant others who like to supervise, the director, etc. All other crew people basically set up and then leave the room.\n\nHowever, in shows like *Game of Thrones*, many of the background actresses you see in brothel scenes are actually porn stars. Likewise even for some of the more significant characters, like Tyrion's lover.", "Fun fact: In *The name of the Rose* (1986) you can clearly see Christian Slater's weiner flapping around during a sex scene.", "Actually for 'making out' scenes they have a special technique. Instead of making out like normal people (with a bit of tongue) they switch back and forth from kissing the top lip to the bottom, back and forth, back and forth. This gives it a bit of movement so it seems passionate but it's actually just a hollywood technique, watch some passionate making out scenes and you'll notice.", "In Lars Van Trier's new movie \"Nymphomanic\" Shia Lebouf and other cast members will actually be having sex with each other. Its pretty uncommon in hollywood movies, but apparently its got the greenlight. So if you ever wanted to see actual porn in the movie theater without sitting in a jizz puddle, there you go!", "\n > explain like I'm five\n\nMaybe when you're older son...", "[How I imagine OP](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "Burning it doesn't make it go away. It still leaves stuff behind, often the nastiest parts.", "You've seen pictures of oil slicks washing up on shore, making an environmental disaster, right? \n\nThat scenario would be better if it was on fire as well? ", "Imagine the wildlife that would perish due to a massive fire on the sea\n" ]

[ "For me it's the sensation driving 300kph on an highway.... Car of motorcycle, you just are alive, you feel the engine work. The Alure of how quick stuff is passing by, the forces on your body. \n\n\n\nAnd just the skill of being able to go that quick, the adrenaline is flowing and you feel good ", "Shutter bug is correct. The adrenaline high is what they're knowingly or unknowingly chasing. \n\nTry being a pilot especially a fighter pilot... ", "we were designed to go like 30km/h... running speed. so when you are moving at a high rate of speed, its a lot for your brain to take in. I love speed, acceleration, g-force...love it. I used to race motorcycles at a pro level, its a physical and mental workout, and its arguably more addicting than any drug. huge adrenaline rush when you race all out for XX number of laps. and much danger. " ]