Datasets:

Pavithree

/

eli5_39422_59134

like 0

{ "a_id": [ "cgyyrca" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "What you're experiencing is something a lot of people try to do but can't. It's called a lucid dream. Once you realize you're in a dream, you usually have control over whatever happens. There are different levels of a lucid dream depending on how deep asleep you are. No one is quite sure as to how we reach this type of dreaming, but a lot of people think they need to be completely relaxed and have some sort of meditation just before they fall asleep. Many people experience them without even trying. Nothing will happen to you so don't be scared if it happens. However, in my experience, it may be more difficult to wake up from the dream, especially if it turns into a nightmare. Enjoy the dream but be prepared for anything." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eiw5r8q" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Teams make money from TV deals, selling merch, some game day tickets, and sometimes money from the local government.\n\nTeams such as the Red Sox and Yankees are huge money makers because they're huge world wide brands." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f25xa03", "f25xiq7" ], "score": [ 8, 17 ], "text": [ "Spine alignment and prevention of loss of circulation on your arms. \n\nMany people sleep on their sides so you can imagine how having your neck fall sideways to your spine can start to cause problems.", "Without a pillow your head will in most positions be slightly lower than your spine. Which leads to tension in your neck muscles which can feel uncomfortable. It can lead to a stiff neck and backpain." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ed6ffvc", "ed6figr" ], "score": [ 9, 7 ], "text": [ "Almost certainly not. All of our units of time are universally arbitrary. The search for universal units is a non-trivial task that we have been working on since the late 1600’s. ", "We are no longer defining a second based on the Earths rotation. Currently it is defined as \"9 192 631 770 oscillations of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two levels of the caesium atom\", which would be the same no matter where in the universe you are. Would it be useful for an alien race from another galaxy? Almost certainly not, but they would be able to find out how long a second on Earth was.\n\nI think the only base unit that isn't defined \"universally\" is the kilogram, although we are currently in the process of changing it to be a universal definition. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dcz2uli" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "OP if you read the thread on the announcement that was posted on Reddit there's a great explanation for this from /u/lagerbaer\n\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5qef56/scientists_discover_metal_that_conducts/?utm_content=comments&utm_medium=hot&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=all" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c2x83t7", "c2x855y", "c2x9utk", "c2xa11r", "c2x83t7", "c2x855y", "c2x9utk", "c2xa11r" ], "score": [ 11, 3, 7, 3, 11, 3, 7, 3 ], "text": [ "Pure pragmatism. It simply is not possible to have a trial immediately. So you have two options: let them go and hope they show up for the trial, or imprison them until the trial happens. If you think they actually would show up, you let them put down some collateral and then go free until the trial- this is bail. If you don't think they will show up, you keep them in jail. Sure, maybe keeping people in jail who have not received a trial isn't the way we would want it in an ideal world. But what are you going to do? Not throw them in jail, and then miss out on prosecuting many people? ", "For the more serious crimes, murder, rape, child molestation, etc., the police need a certain amount of evidence pointing to the suspect before they can make the arrest. In light of this evidence--which doesn't *prove* the perp is guilty but raises the likelihood--the police need a way to protect the public. ", "In addition to the other good answers you've already gotten, it's worth noting the difference between being arrested and being convicted.\n\nThe determination of whether somebody is guilty of a crime or not is made at trial; being found guilty is called being convicted, and not being found guilty is being called acquitted. (It's always worth remembering that it's \"guilty\" or \"not guilty\", not \"guilty\" or \"innocent\", but that's just an aside.)\n\nA person who has not yet been found guilty of a crime is not guilty of that crime. That's what the shorthand \"innocent until proven guilty\" means.\n\nHowever, this is only *vaguely* related to being arrested and put in jail. The Constitution says, in summary, that people cannot be deprived of their liberty without due process of law. That does not just mean a conviction; it means there are rules that must apply equally to everyone and that must be followed before somebody can be deprived of liberty. This includes, for example, being found to be *sufficiently implicated* in a crime to justify the issuance of an arrest warrant by a judge. That's not a conviction, but it is due process of law. Of course, if you're actually *caught in the act* of committing a crime, you can also be arrested by a peace officer who witnesses your act; in that case there's no warrant, nor is there a conviction, but there's still due process of law, so it's okay.\n\nSo the basic principle is that if you're suspected of committing a crime, or if you're seen committing something that looks to a peace officer like a crime, you can be arrested and held for trial. But there's a check in the law to make sure you can't be arrested and held for trial *indefinitely.* All persons in the United States (except in extreme situations) have the right to petition the court for a writ of *habeas corpus*, which is vaguely doggy Latin for \"produce the body.\" It's slang, in other words, for requiring the state to demonstrate, before a judge, that they have good reason to keep you detained pending a trial. Habeas corpus is not a get-out-of-jail-free card, however. It just requires that the state go to a judge and say \"Here's why this person needs to stay behind bars for the time being\" in such a way that the judge agrees.\n\nNow, where does \"innocent until proven guilty\" come in? In lots of different subtle and gross ways, really, but here's just one example. Say you are arrested in connection with a robbery, but you are never convicted. Maybe the state drops the case against you before it goes to trial, maybe you do go to trial and are acquitted, whatever. Doesn't matter. The point is, you are arrested for the crime, but that arrest does not lead to a conviction.\n\nA year later, you're arrested for *another* robbery, a different one. When you go to trial this time, the prosecution may try to introduce the fact that you were arrested for a similar crime the previous year … but they will be stopped from doing so by the judge, because the fact that you were arrested does not mean or imply that you were guilty of the crime. So it cannot be used as evidence of your guilt in *this* crime, and in fact can't even be brought up, because it's prejudicial — if the jury hears it, they may be more inclined to think you're guilty even in the absence of evidence. (In reality, the prosecution wouldn't even bother trying to bring it up, because the prosecuting attorney is not a complete idiot. But this is just an example.)\n\nSo long story short, being arrested and put in jail does not cast doubt — as far as the system goes; the public's opinion is another matter — on your innocence of the crime of which you've been accused. The only thing that the system cares about is whether you were convicted. If you weren't convicted, nothing matters. That's innocent-until-proven-guilty in a nutshell.", "The prosecution usually has a case ready soon after the arrest. That's how they decided to make an arrest.\n\nBut what happens often is the defendant will keep asking for more time to prepare his case because the more time that goes by the harder it is for the prosecution - witnesses move away or die or forget, evidence is lost, etc. I know someone who has been waiting in san francisco jail for over 2 years because if he is found guilty he will get 12 years anyway, and his (relatively safe and comfortable) city jail time will get deducted from his state prison sentence. And if he waits long enough his ex-girlfriend (the only witness) might move away or get hit by a bus or anything else might happen. So there's very little to lose, and a lot to gain by postponing his trial. Apparently it's a very common tactic - most of the guys in city jail haven't gone to trial yet and have been there for months or years.", "Pure pragmatism. It simply is not possible to have a trial immediately. So you have two options: let them go and hope they show up for the trial, or imprison them until the trial happens. If you think they actually would show up, you let them put down some collateral and then go free until the trial- this is bail. If you don't think they will show up, you keep them in jail. Sure, maybe keeping people in jail who have not received a trial isn't the way we would want it in an ideal world. But what are you going to do? Not throw them in jail, and then miss out on prosecuting many people? ", "For the more serious crimes, murder, rape, child molestation, etc., the police need a certain amount of evidence pointing to the suspect before they can make the arrest. In light of this evidence--which doesn't *prove* the perp is guilty but raises the likelihood--the police need a way to protect the public. ", "In addition to the other good answers you've already gotten, it's worth noting the difference between being arrested and being convicted.\n\nThe determination of whether somebody is guilty of a crime or not is made at trial; being found guilty is called being convicted, and not being found guilty is being called acquitted. (It's always worth remembering that it's \"guilty\" or \"not guilty\", not \"guilty\" or \"innocent\", but that's just an aside.)\n\nA person who has not yet been found guilty of a crime is not guilty of that crime. That's what the shorthand \"innocent until proven guilty\" means.\n\nHowever, this is only *vaguely* related to being arrested and put in jail. The Constitution says, in summary, that people cannot be deprived of their liberty without due process of law. That does not just mean a conviction; it means there are rules that must apply equally to everyone and that must be followed before somebody can be deprived of liberty. This includes, for example, being found to be *sufficiently implicated* in a crime to justify the issuance of an arrest warrant by a judge. That's not a conviction, but it is due process of law. Of course, if you're actually *caught in the act* of committing a crime, you can also be arrested by a peace officer who witnesses your act; in that case there's no warrant, nor is there a conviction, but there's still due process of law, so it's okay.\n\nSo the basic principle is that if you're suspected of committing a crime, or if you're seen committing something that looks to a peace officer like a crime, you can be arrested and held for trial. But there's a check in the law to make sure you can't be arrested and held for trial *indefinitely.* All persons in the United States (except in extreme situations) have the right to petition the court for a writ of *habeas corpus*, which is vaguely doggy Latin for \"produce the body.\" It's slang, in other words, for requiring the state to demonstrate, before a judge, that they have good reason to keep you detained pending a trial. Habeas corpus is not a get-out-of-jail-free card, however. It just requires that the state go to a judge and say \"Here's why this person needs to stay behind bars for the time being\" in such a way that the judge agrees.\n\nNow, where does \"innocent until proven guilty\" come in? In lots of different subtle and gross ways, really, but here's just one example. Say you are arrested in connection with a robbery, but you are never convicted. Maybe the state drops the case against you before it goes to trial, maybe you do go to trial and are acquitted, whatever. Doesn't matter. The point is, you are arrested for the crime, but that arrest does not lead to a conviction.\n\nA year later, you're arrested for *another* robbery, a different one. When you go to trial this time, the prosecution may try to introduce the fact that you were arrested for a similar crime the previous year … but they will be stopped from doing so by the judge, because the fact that you were arrested does not mean or imply that you were guilty of the crime. So it cannot be used as evidence of your guilt in *this* crime, and in fact can't even be brought up, because it's prejudicial — if the jury hears it, they may be more inclined to think you're guilty even in the absence of evidence. (In reality, the prosecution wouldn't even bother trying to bring it up, because the prosecuting attorney is not a complete idiot. But this is just an example.)\n\nSo long story short, being arrested and put in jail does not cast doubt — as far as the system goes; the public's opinion is another matter — on your innocence of the crime of which you've been accused. The only thing that the system cares about is whether you were convicted. If you weren't convicted, nothing matters. That's innocent-until-proven-guilty in a nutshell.", "The prosecution usually has a case ready soon after the arrest. That's how they decided to make an arrest.\n\nBut what happens often is the defendant will keep asking for more time to prepare his case because the more time that goes by the harder it is for the prosecution - witnesses move away or die or forget, evidence is lost, etc. I know someone who has been waiting in san francisco jail for over 2 years because if he is found guilty he will get 12 years anyway, and his (relatively safe and comfortable) city jail time will get deducted from his state prison sentence. And if he waits long enough his ex-girlfriend (the only witness) might move away or get hit by a bus or anything else might happen. So there's very little to lose, and a lot to gain by postponing his trial. Apparently it's a very common tactic - most of the guys in city jail haven't gone to trial yet and have been there for months or years." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwx1ztq" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Because spoilage is caused by the growth of microorganisms in the food. Cooking the food at high temperatures kills microorganisms and makes it easier for us to digest. Leaving them out at room temperature provides microorganisms with a yummy meal at the temperature they like to grow at." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cc7mwoo" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ " > Why do we say \"turn up the volume\" instead of \"increase amplitude\"?\n\nBecause, until very recently, all audio equipment increased volume by physically turning a knob. It's the same reason that you \"roll down\" the window in a car.\n\n > And why when turning up the volume in audio players doesn't seem to do so linearly?\n\nHuman hearing perceives logarithmic increases in volume as sounding \"linear\". If the volume is *actually* linear, it won't sound like it to our ears." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cd98cd8" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Bad design bad programing bad hardware " ] }

[ "healthcare.gov" ]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "etc38uk", "etc3pbq", "etcrekg" ], "score": [ 18, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "You're going faster on re-entry. Much much faster. In order to get into orbit, you have to go really really fast so the arc of your fall goes beyond the Earth's curve. When getting into orbit, the majority of this acceleration happens once you're outside the atmosphere. \n\nWhen re-entering the atmosphere, there is no way to decelerate first. Carrying extra fuel to do so would be too cost prohibitive. It's much better to just use the drag from atmosphere to slow down instead, and using heat shielding to protect the vehicle.", "A space ship has to be traveling at really insanely fast speeds in order to achieve and maintain orbit. As the ship ascends, there is less air to provide resistance. This means it can accelerate with less drag. In space there is no air at all, so there is nothing to prevent it from achieving crazy fast speeds.\n\nWhen it is time to return to Earth, there is a problem. As it drops back into the atmosphere, it encounters more and more air. The ship is moving so fast that the air can’t get out of the way. It compresses and heats up. \n\nThe crucial point is this: On the way up, the ship was moving slowly in the atmosphere and then got faster as the atmosphere thinned. On the way down, the ship is moving extremely fast and it must slow down as it pushes its way back into the atmosphere.\n\nThe air actually creates enough drag that it slows the space ship down. This is dangerous, but it’s actually a good thing. The only other way to slow the ship would be to use retrograde thrust, which means it would require twice as much fuel and would be too big to get off the ground.", "Re-entry is by itself not very dangerous.\n\nThere is always the point where you hit the ground after falling through the atmosphere but that is a different problem.\n\nOne thing that makes reentry of spacecraft problematic is speed.\n\nBeing in orbit means that you are going very fast compared to the ground. The ISS orbits at what would be 22 time the speed of sound at ground level.\n\nWhen you are going up into orbit most of the work is not getting up there but getting fast enough. Speeding up to insane speeds is what those powerful rockets are used for.\n\nThose rockets burn a lot of fuel to get that fast, and they would need to carry much, much more fuel if they wanted to slow down again when going down.\n\nTo simplify matter spacecraft usually slow down by letting the friction of the atmosphere slow them down.\n\nThis is where re-entry gets tricks. You go very fast and the vacuum around you gets thicker and thicker and the friction with the little air that is around heats you up more and more and it crates all sorts of issues with heat and shaking and mechanical stress.\n\nThe trick is to slow down gradual enough not to be torn apart by the thicker and thicker atmosphere as you drop down.\n\nOn the way up rockets wait until they are out of the worst of the the atmosphere before they start speeding up for real, so there isn't really as much of an issue. You wait with the speed until there isn't much atmosphere to slow you down.\n\nOn the way down you want to be slowed down so you go much faster inside the atmosphere than you were going when you went up.\n\nIf you could magically slow down your spacecraft before re-entry it would all be much less risky and you could just drop down to earth like Baumgartner did in his Red Bull jump." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dlejxzh" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Why should they?\n\nScam calls make them money, and people have no choice about who their local phone company is. There is no financial incentive for them to improve caller ID." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d9xb23r", "d9xegn4" ], "score": [ 12, 10 ], "text": [ "The big one is that they was the jeans in an industrial washing machine with a bunch of cinder blocks. This beats the shit out of the jeans making them appear distressed, worn, and softer. They also can use UV torches that fade the dye, sandpaper, etc.\n", "Back in the late 80's early 90's they were called \"stone washed \" and they tumbled them with light weight stones that felt like pumice but we're really light weight. Sometimes you would find a stone or two in the front pocket.\n\nSource: I used to work at County Seat the Jean Store years ago" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "daas4da", "daasxbw", "dab1tzr" ], "score": [ 12, 12, 3 ], "text": [ "The figure doesn't really mean anything on its own, it's an index to measure change over time. When the index started, they decided that the value would be 100. If all the included stocks had risen in value by 10% a month later, the index would have been 110. If they'd all dropped by 10%, the index would have been 90.", "For NASDAQ and the [DOW](_URL_2_) Jones, there's a certain [set of companies](_URL_0_) that are chosen to make up the collection of companies that make up that figure that you see next to the DOW Jones and [NASDAQ](_URL_1_) [numbers](_URL_6_). They're [stock indexes](_URL_4_), like the [CPI](_URL_5_), are more or less, end up being lead indicators of economic growth and inflation ([CPI](_URL_3_)) respectively, while not being the actual numbers.\n\nI assume that this wasn't asking how stocks are speculated, but rather how is that number that is reported with the stock indices calculated.\n\nTo answer the last question, though it should be implied by now, the number increases or decreases depending on how the stocks rise or fall that day.", "This is a minor point, but the NASDAQ isn't a stock, like OP suggests, it's a market or an index. The confusion comes from people using it as shorthand.\n\nLike a few other people said, the NASDAQ is a market. [Wikipedia article.](_URL_3_) Stocks are listed on the NASDAQ market in a bunch of different countries. It's where & how the actual buying and selling of stock takes place. This is different than other stock markets, like the New York Stock Exchange, which you've probably heard of, or foreign markets like the London Stock Exchange, or the Japan Exchange Group--[there's a bunch here](_URL_4_).\n\nBut when people say something like \"oh, the NASDAQ is up 50 points,\" they're referring to the **[NASDAQ Composite Index](_URL_1_)**. Different thing, same name. A stock index is essentially the same as an election poll. It's just a formula created by financial experts to gauge how a given group of stocks is doing. Just like a poll, it has a specific set of things it tries to judge & is only as good as the person interpreting the data.\n\nSome other stock indices (aka, not stock markets) you may have heard of are: the [Dow Jones Industrial Average](_URL_0_), the [S & P 500](_URL_2_), and the [Nikkei 225](_URL_5_). Those indices all point to different things, and just like a poll of California voters wouldn't tell you what was happening in Michigan, the knowledge you gain from the index is limited to the tool, the method, & the interpretation." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [ "http://money.cnn.com/data/dow30/", "http://www.cnbc.com/nasdaq-100/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average", "http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpifaq.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market_index", "https://data.oecd.org/price/inflation-cpi.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASDAQ-100" ], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasdaq_Composite", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500_Index", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASDAQ", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_exchanges#Major_stock_exchanges", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikkei_225" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "can24hg", "can825l", "can8uya", "canai8u" ], "score": [ 6, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Hello 007d, i am brazilian and i'll try to explain to you why brazilian ppl is so angry with gov't. First of all, its not because World Cup, brazil has so much other problems, the corruption is stealing our money for other causes. We dont have health service, education or nothing. We pay 36% per product with taxes. It must to end. We cant stay quite anymore, we deserve a good country to live not that shit. ", "It's not *really* about the World Cup. It all started when São Paulo government said they would be raising the bus fare and people thought it was the last straw since we pay so much and receive nothing back. Our schools, hospitals, transportation is all trash even thought we pay so many taxes (just so you understand: if we have the earnings of a year, 4 months of it go to pay taxes) and honestly, we just couldn't take it anymore. The World Cup represents everything that is wrong with our country. It's a great event, really, but it's absurd how much the government spent building the stadiums and it seems like such a waste, because they won't serve any purposes once the games are over. ", "This is in English, and answered A LOT of my questions. \n\n_URL_0_", " > I'm under the impression that such an event brings in tons of revenue(more than they spend in the end) and creates tons of jobs (not just in terms of the World Cup but in respect to revenue and jobs created by a boost in tourism, as I'm sure people end up exploring Brazil outside of the World Cup).\n\n[Well your impression is false.](_URL_0_)" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [ "http://tvuol.uol.com.br/assistir.htm?video=brasileira-lanca-video-anti-copa-e-chama-atencao-no-exterior-04028D9B3062D8A94326#&video=brasileira-lanca-video-anti-copa-e-chama-atencao-no-exterior-04028D9B3062D8A94326" ], [ "http://eprints.ru.ac.za/1843/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dt6hadt", "dt6hrrd" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "Thread concurrency is when multiple threads are running at the same time. Idk if the same principles apply for software and hardware, but at least in software, concurrency introduces problems that normally wouldn't exist.\n\nLet's take the example of ATMs that digitally records how much money my bank account has. Now let's say I access my bank account from two different ATM's at the same time, and make a withdrawal from both.\n\nI have 3000 dollars in my bank account initially, and I make two withdrawals of 300 dollars simultaneously. Let's take a look at what happens normally (if I had made two withdrawals consecutively instead of simultaneously) and what happens when concurrency happens.\n\nNormally:\n\n1: ATM queries my account, and sees I have 3000 dollars\n\n2: ATM sees I make withdrawal of 300, subtracts 300 from my total\n\n3: It stores my new value as 2700\n\n4: ATM queries my account again, and sees I want to withdraw another 300\n\n5: It subtracts another 300\n\n6: It now stores my account as 2400 dollars\n\n\nWith concurrency, now two ATM's are simultaneously accessing my banking information. Based on the OS implementation, we do not know when the threads switch, which means we do not know when ATM1 queries, when ATM2 queries, when ATM1 does the withdrawal, etc etc relative to each other. What could happen is:\n\n1: ATM1 completes everything, \n\n2: ATM2 completes everything.\n\nWhich gives the correct outcome anyways. But that is rare. What could happen is:\n\n1: ATM1 could query that I have 3000 dollars, and does the subtraction\n\n2: ATM2 queries my bank account, and sees I still have 3000 dollars, because ATM1 hasn't had a chance to update my balance yet\n\n3: ATM1 updates my balance to be 2700\n\n4: ATM2, given that it read 3000 as my balance, also reaches 2700 as my final balance, and writes it to my bank balance\n\n5: My bank balance is now 2700, even though I withdrew 600 dollars\n\nThese kind of errors are thread-concurrency errors", "Do you have more details? Threads are how computers package tasks from a single process to run concurrently, on multiple cores/processors. Since threads are the method to enable concurrency, the phrase \"thread-concurrency\" is redundant.\n\nAs for problems, threads, and concurrency in general, are frequently a source of failures. The high level answer (that works for both hardware and software, because I don't know what you're talking about) is the resources need to be managed so only one thread accesses each resource at a time (unless it's capable of concurrent access, for example a synchronized resource). If this isn't done you're frequently get errors. The right fix is to properly manage resources. The work around is to disable all types of concurrency, like threads, to guarantee that two threads can't attempt to use the same resource at the same time." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dd83rn2", "dd84goy", "dd84v2w", "dd85oez", "dd8avqm" ], "score": [ 4, 13, 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Probably not much since they're built to crawl through rotting flesh. Other than maybe scaring it, if that's possible for a tiny fly brain. ", "Well obviously the fly would be eaten by the spider that is swallowed immediately afterwards. ", "Why, oh why, would you swallow a fly?", "Almost assuredly it will be blocked before getting too far down any airways. If it doesn't come back out, then it presumably has gotten punted to the esophagus to live its last in your digestive tract. Or it's taken up affordable housing in your nose.", "It probably wouldn't get into your lungs, because your reflexes are usually quick enough to block that passage. I don't see how it could end up anywhere than in your stomach, where the digestive juices would make short process of it." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdke4rt", "cdkgmbc", "cdkht6o" ], "score": [ 10, 2, 4 ], "text": [ "As I understand it, there is a bit of scrap code on the discs that requires special countercode in the console firmware to read. Normal computer drives don't know how to read the scrap code (\"invisible to Muggles\") and therefore can't copy it. The firmware knows what to look for and if it doesn't find it, it pulls a Vreenak (\"It's a fake!\") and refuses to run the game.\n\nModchips, btw, simply reroute the checking command to \"fake\" scrap code, which allows you to run backups.\n\nI could be wrong tho.", "They do something to the disk that is outside of the standard for the disk format so that a properly coded disk copy program will not copy the \"bad\" sections. The console then verifies that the bad sectors are bad in the right way.\n\nThey used to do something similar in the 1980s with 5.25\" floppy disks. Main difference is that the console is requiring the bad sectors whereas computers in the 80s weren't expecting the bad sectors but the bad sectors would often cause disk copy programs to simply fail. We solved it with programs that could skip bad sectors. ", "They contain stuff that a standard CD burner can't write (either because it's outside normal CD specification, or CD burners are legally constrained not to be able to write them).\n\nPeople who have CD-stamping presses can mass-produce pirate copies, AFAIK.\n" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cx390pe" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "It's about mental as well as physical. There isn't a.. er.. \"hard and fast\" rule (sorry) about how long a man will last. The emotional attachment, the physical attraction, the sexiness of the moment can all contribute. How compatable the woman is in bed with the man can also factor, and how tight she is (which has *nothing* to do with the number of previous partners unless she's very inexperienced).\n\nNerves can also play a factor. If the man thinks it's important to last a long time, he may not manage to do so.\n\nThere's no one single factor which says why a man lasts longer or shorter. Best to ask about it, and talk it through." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvr3z5o", "cvr417c" ], "score": [ 4, 5 ], "text": [ "Let's assume you got it 2 rabbits. They get along very well and you now proudly own 4 rabbit. Now those two also get good along like the older ones and now you're not so proudly own 8 rabbits. And before you can think of a solution to stop them you got 16 of them and so on", "Pick a number. Now add 2. Continue adding 2 to the previous result. that's linear growth. \n\nNow pick the same number and multiply it by two. Keep multiplying the result by two and you can see the jumps keep getting bigger. That's exponential growth. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3dnaov", "c3dp89k", "c3dp8uv", "c3dpfbh" ], "score": [ 10, 5, 2, 6 ], "text": [ "They mostly refer to how many bits the processor on the system can work with in a single clock cycle.\n\nWith 8-bit games, the CPU on the system (i.e. a Nintendo console or GameBoy) can only operate on 8 bits of information in a single clock cycle. This brings limitations with it, i.e. you can only represent 256 numbers using 8 bits (2^8 ), so 8-bit games would be limited to 256 colors, 256 levels (think of the Pac-Man or Donkey Kong [kill screens](_URL_0_)), etc.\n\nUsually 8-bit games use 8-bit values for almost everything. I'm not sure how they're able to work with larger numbers, but for example most in-game values have a maximum limit of 255 (on the Pokemon GameBoy games for example, leveling a pokemon past 255 would have it roll over to 0).\n\nSimilarly a 16-bit game can operate on 16 bits per clock cycle. With 16 bits you can have 65,535 values. This means more colors and more levels and increased processing power for more special effects.\n\nNinja edit: 8-bit games generally would have access to 256 colors, but it doesn't necessarily mean the video driver would support it. Old video cards can only have 16 unique colors, but some would allow those 16 colors to be changed by software so you could use any of the 256 possible colors, but only have 16 colors on-screen at one time.\n\nEdit: 8-bits is 2^8 and not 8^2 , got my numbers backwards. :]", "For the most part, it's just marketing hype.\n\nEarly gaming systems used 8-bit processors. The next generation had a lot of improvements : better graphics, sound, faster processors, more memory, better controllers, cartridges that could hold bigger games and 16-bit processors. Some of these things were related to being a 16-bit system, some were just part of being newer/faster. The thing is, emphasizing \"16 bits\", even when people don't know what it means, is a really easy way to say \"it's better\".\n\nThey tried to carry on the hype to later generations but, once you hit 32 bits, simply giving the machine \"more bits\" didn't really make *everything else* better. The Playstation was a 32-bit machine, just as the next generation Xbox like the *previous* generation's N64. People started making things up, like when they said that the PS2 was a \"128-bit\" machine, even though it was mostly 64-bit, there was a small 128-bit segment.\n\nThese days, nobody really talks about how many \"bits\" a machine is capable of. Technically, it never really mattered - it was just an easy number to talk about, even though it never meant anything. Marketing people like to do that - they want to make you think the new shiny thing is somehow better so you go buy one, but they don't want to have actually *commit* to anything that could be argued against.", "\"Bits\" refers to the width of a \"data bus\" in a circuit, and like how pipes in your plumbing carry water, circuits carry data - numbers that represent every detail of the game at any given moment, including details that you never even get to see. Marketers use the highest number of bits of all the important components in a console to advertise it. Usually the component they use is the central processor. More \"bits\" can make the game console go faster. Imagine it's like replacing pipes in your plumbing with wider pipes, so more water can flow through - in the game, it means more data, and therefore more robots, more princesses, more polygons, more animation, and higher frame rates.", "Computers count in binary. I won't ELI5 the binary number system for you, but basically 8-bits mean you can have 8 zeroes or ones (example: a number like 10001110). The maximum number is 11111111 which corresponds to 255 in our everyday counting system (called base 10). So, an 8-bit computer can only count up to 11111111, or 255.\n\nA 16-bit computer can count up to twice as many digits. They can have 16 zeroes or ones. That means the max a 16-bit computer can count to is 1111111111111111 or 65,535.\n\n16-bit computers, while they can count a lot higher (and thus keep track of more data at once) are more complex and the technology wasn't cheap back in the days of the NES. Eventually, we progressed to 32-bit computers controlling modern consoles. Desktop PCs have advanced one further to 64-bit because the amount of RAM they use requires a computer to count higher than 4,294,967,296 (the highest a 32-bit computer can count to).\n\nThe amount of bits in a computer is loosely related to the power, but since about 1990 this hasn't been the case at all. Bits have increased as processing power increased as a matter of necessity. Bits increasing don't cause the processing power to increase. Intel or AMD (they manufacture processors) could create a 256-bit chip that is no more powerful than the processor in the NES if they really wanted to." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_screen" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "catqhvn", "catsqcx", "catyvns" ], "score": [ 3, 24, 2 ], "text": [ "In the UK we must pay a TV license fee to be legally able to watch TV. This license fee goes directly to the BBC. This is where they get a lot of their funding. The BBC also has a commercial branch which sells the rights of the TV programs they make to other TV broadcasters overseas so they can be shown in those countries. That would be how most of their shows are shown internationally I presume (without having checked or knowing too much about it) I'm sure there will be someone else who can explain it better but this is the essence of it I believe.", "Anybody who watches broadcast television (or \"almost as-broadcast\", e.g. internet via streaming) in the UK has to pay for a television licence (currently £145.50 -- about US $220 -- per year). This applies *regardless of which TV stations they choose to watch*, so even if you never consume anything produced by the BBC you're still required to pay if you own a television. However, approximately 92% of the British public use *some* BBC services each month (that might be TV, radio, and/or online).\n\nThe total of all those TV licences comes to about £3.4 billion per year (around US $5 billion), and out of that the BBC funds for UK consumption 8 national television stations (and one regional one), 11 national radio stations (and nearly 30 regional ones), and one of the largest and most respected websites in the world. In return for the British public paying for the BBC in such a way, it is illegal for the BBC to carry advertisements on its domestic output, or to charge the British public in any other way for live TV/radio (although it *can* charge for DVD boxsets etc).\n\nOutside of the UK these rules don't apply -- what's more the British public would feel somewhat upset if their money (which they have no choice but to pay) was being used to provide subsidised or free television to people in other countries. So the BBC also owns a for-profit company which sells BBC content (both entire programmes and intellectual property rights, e.g. for remakes) to other countries around the world. This company, BBC Worldwide Ltd, has global revenues of around £1.2 billion a year (about US $1.8 billion).\n\nSo to (finally!) answer your question, the BBC in total has around £4.6 billion income per year, equivalent to nearly US $7 billion. It's restricted in that some of that money *must* be spent in the UK, and some of it *must not*, but as you can imagine a media company with that sort of income is more than capable of supporting a \"massive international presence\".", "If BBC were smart, they'd offer to sell BBC programming (including iPlayer) internationally for .... $220!" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ctecgf2", "ctech41" ], "score": [ 3, 5 ], "text": [ "because people place more value (which means more money) on their life and the lives of the people they care about than they do on buildings or other things\n", "In the USA, at least, the supply of doctors is seriously limited by much higher educational requirements than engineers have. This limited supply drives prices up." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dv7ybjm", "dv80xa0", "dv85nwp" ], "score": [ 4, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "It's more expensive to install these new things than to just keep reusing the existing infrastructure that uses fossil fuels. \n\nAdditionally since electric companies are regulated by the state (usually), there'd be political back lash if people that kept using fossil fuels were believing they were subsidizing green energy, so this may be a contributing factor.", "Short answer: because it costs more to produce.\n\nThe price you pay for electricity, not including taxes, usually consists of metered charges for generation, transmission, and distribution plus flat rates for servicing your account. Renewable energy generally costs more to generated than fossil fuels, and may also cost more for T & D depending on factors like where the generating facility is, who owns the utility poles, etc.\n\n", "You are not choosing between \"renewable\" and \"fossil fuels\". You are choosing between \"renewable\" and \"whatever happens to be the cheapest thing at the moment\". Since renewable are one of the things that can be included in the cheapest thing at the moment, obviously they can't be cheaper than themselves." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cr05g75" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This will, in fact, happen. Even without our medicines, infectious microbes will evolve because those with a mutation helping them to survive your immune system will pass their genetics on to offspring.\n\nEvolution is driven by natural selection (and a few other mechanisms), which occurs when a 'selection pressure' is present: some condition that makes survival more difficult with or without some particular trait or resistance. Your immune system is one such selection pressure." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8xni9t", "c8xohk9" ], "score": [ 5, 11 ], "text": [ "One of the more remarkable results of psychological testing is that nearly all tests of things that could plausibly be related to intelligence correlate with each other. Now, it's not surprising that, for example, your ability to learn French vocabulary correlates with your ability to learn Spanish vocabulary, or that if you know a lot about physics you're likely to also know a lot about chemistry. But it turns out that *everything* related to mental aptitude - memory, mathematical ability, artistic creativity, formal logic, vocabulary - correlates. This doesn't mean that one person who's a brilliant mathematician is going to be a great poet. But it does mean that if you choose a thousand people at random, the ones who are good at one will tend to be good at the other.\n\nThe most plausible reason for this correlation is that there is a single underlying factor, which we call *g* or general intelligence, that is responsible for all or most of this correlation. Using a type of math called principal factor analysis, we can identify *g*, which we measure with IQ. By convention, we represent IQ as a normal distribution (a bell curve), with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. 68% of people have an IQ within one standard deviation of the mean (from 85 to 115), 95% are within two (70 to 130) and 99.7% are within three (55 to 145). \n\nWhile it might seem like *g* is just a mathematical artifact, it has major implications in the real world. *G* is one the best, or the best, predictor for things like how well you'll do in school, how well you'll perform in your job, and how likely you are to stay out of jail. And the predictive power of *g* remains even when we control for the effect of things like how rich and well-educated your parents were. \n\nIQ's not perfect, of course. While it explains a lot about how successful people are, it doesn't explain everything - things like how hard you work, how good your social skills are, and plain dumb luck are also very important. Some psychologists think there's a hierarchy of factors of intelligence, with both a single general factor *g* and many sub-intelligences in more specific fields like artistic ability or spatial reasoning. ", "IQ tests were **originally** developed to assess mental retardation in French schools. They would give the test to schoolchildren, and use the test to determine which children were \"behind\" their peers. For example if a student was 11 years old but was scoring on the level of a 6 year old, that child was determined to be \"retarded\" and was put into a remedial class.\n\nIQ tests were then adopted by the US (specifically by Stanford University), and their purpose was expanded. [That's where you get the classic \"Stanford-Binet\" IQ test.](_URL_2_)\n\nIQ works by testing everyone and comparing everyone to everyone else. \n\nThat means that if you are smarter than 50% of people, and dumber than 50% of people, you will have an IQ of 100. If you are smarter than 75% of people, and dumber than the other 25%, then you will have an IQ of about 110. The tests are re-written and re-calculated to make this statistically true.\n\n[Look at this statistical \"bell\" curve.](_URL_1_) This is the IQ curve. 68% of all people have an IQ between 85 and 115. 95% of people have an IQ between 70 and 130.\n\n2.5% of people have an IQ lower than 70. These people range from mildly mentally challenged to **severely** mentally disabled. \n\n2.5% of people have an IQ of over 130. These people are smart. They are very good at the things you do on IQ tests (math, vocabulary, grammar, spatial logic, etc.)\n\nBut smart is a fuzzy term. Is a great musician smart? A great musician might suck at math and be dyslexic but create complicated and moving compositions. Likewise a great mathematician might have horrible grammar. A great writer may suck at trigonometry. \n\n\"Smart\" is relative, and IQ tests only measure a few specific things. \n\n1. If you are completely incapable of doing the things on an IQ test, you are probably mentally handicapped (the entire original purpose of the test was to identify and help those people).\n\n2. If you are really, really good at the tasks on the test, that **doesn't necessarily** mean you are a genius, it just means you are very good at the tasks on the test. It takes more than that to be a genius.\n\n[Further reading.](_URL_0_)" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_\\(psychometrics\\)", "http://expressiveepicurean.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/iq_bell_curve.gif", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford%E2%80%93Binet_Intelligence_Scales" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dj61x5a", "dj62rop" ], "score": [ 2, 13 ], "text": [ "Lunch breaks need to be in the middle of a shift. Shifts without lunch breaks are easier to schedule around for the company.", "Because in the US, if an employee works 30 or more hours per week, they are classified as a \"full-time\" employee. A company has to provide healthcare benefits to full-time employees.\n\nThus, for a company, they set the shifts to be five 5.5 hour shifts = 27.5 hours per week rather than five 6 hour shifts = 30 hours per week. This means the company doesn't need to pay for the healthcare for the employee!\n\nThus the employee has to pay out-of-pocket for healthcare! If they don't make enough money (due to being a part-time employee making close to minimum wage), they can get some healthcare and financial support from the government. Companies get to save money and the employees and the people (government) lose money. Capitalism at work!" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "czhhbbu", "czhhehr" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "We don't need lots of salt. In fact the level of salt intake for most western consumers is several times more than the recommended daily requirement, which then is a significant cause of raised blood pressure and higher risk of heart attacks and stroke.\n\nSo there's a certain irony in the fact that we're told not to give food to birds and animals because its salt content is bad for them, yet the same food's salt content is also bad for us, yet we generally eat it because our palates have become accustomed to the taste of over-salted food.", "We don't \"need\" so much salt per se. We like salt, it puts us in better moods and we get cravings without it In other words salt is a drug." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgnf3de" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "No, your cousin's child is your \"first cousin once removed.\" Your children would be second cousins to your cousin's children. \n\nThis whole thing works based on your most recent shared ancestor. For a handy little chart, see _URL_0_" ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin#Cousin_chart" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c5gttly", "c5gtvnf", "c5guvwv", "c5gva6g" ], "score": [ 10, 3, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "It attracts the type of people who feel they don't get any respect in any other corner of society. If you live in the hood, have shit role models everywhere you turn, and you feel that you're marginalized by society, you can get a sense of self-satisfaction by acquiring some measure of power for yourself, and by associating with other people you consider to be powerful.\n\nOnce you're in it, though, it quickly escalates to a life of violence to make sure you can stay on top of the pack. You can sell some weed to some kid in the street and feel like you just stuck it to the man by making money even without their help, but then the other big shit drug dealer in the neighborhood gets word of this, and you have to fight because you're on his turf, so you dig deeper into your gang identity to protect yourself, and the cycle perpetuates itself.", "A lot of people aren't in a situation where they can avoid those things. If you're a poor minority youth in the inner city... well, you're going to have experience with drugs, you're going to have a life of violence, and the police are going to treat you like a thug. In that situation, a lot of people decide it's better to be a source of the drugs and violence instead of just a victim.", "I think it gives members a sense of significance and belonging in a society that they would otherwise feel disenfranchised from. Maybe it also gives them excitement and opportunities to make money and get ahead. ", "If you can't beat them, join them. You instantly get a group of friends who will stand up for you and protect you. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "chsudiu" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "In the NY area, the major airports - JFK, EWR, LGA, even Atlantic City, Stewart (former AFB), Teterboro.. \n\nall owned by a totally independent bi-state (NJ-NY) agency called \n[The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey](_URL_0_)\n\nThe \"PA\" has their own police force, with all police rights/powers around their facilities. \nAirlines pay fees for gate rentals, takeoff/landing \"windows\", and even extra fees if they are late for booked times. \n\nThe TSA still controls the security checkpoints, but PA police patrol inside and outside the secure 'perimeter'.\n\nThe PA also controls the World Trade Center, the interstate commuter rail - PATH, and many shipping ports and many toll bridges/tunnels (not all) . " ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://www.panynj.gov/airports/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dc1g78w", "dc1gh1w" ], "score": [ 2, 6 ], "text": [ "A lot of people drink regularly and its fairly common to not know you're pregnant for the first month or more. \n\nCan damage happen? Absolutely. Ignorance of the pregnancy doesn't negate the damaging effects of it. \n\nSince this is ELI5, think of it this way; If you were an artist drawing a picture and someone spiked your juice with vodka, your drawing skills would get sloppier as you worked. Excessive drinking can have similar damaging effects on the DNA trying to build a baby. This is what Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is. \n\nLuckily, if you're a moderate drinker, you likely wont do any severe or lasting damage to a fetus. some doctors even say that a 1/2 glass of red wine each day can have positive effects during pregnancy. ", "Different amounts of alcohol will affect different pregnancies in different ways. Light drinking probably won't affect most pregnancies but it could be harmful for some. Due to that variability and since some people have different definitions of \"light drinking\", the medical recommendation is to avoid all alcohol. That doesn't mean a bit of accidental drinking will result in terrible symptoms for the baby, though.\n\nSo what happens if you drink before you know you're pregnant? The same thing that happens if you drink after you know you're pregnant. Probably nothing if you only drink a small amount occasionally and there's a large risk of fetal alcohol syndrome or other problems if it's a large amount and you drink often. There are a ton of unplanned pregnancies in the US and most adult women in the US drink occasionally, so this happens quite frequently and it's almost always not a big deal. If you're planning to get pregnant it's better to avoid alcohol altogether because you don't want any risks, but if you accidentally drink some it's not likely to harm much." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e9do1kv", "e9dpcex", "e9ds05f" ], "score": [ 8, 4, 3 ], "text": [ "At least in my experience, they don't. The sock acts as an absorbent material to wick away the moisture of sweat on your feet.", "If you wear shoes without socks, when your feet sweat some of that sweat stays on your skin (there's not a lot of evaporation going on) and a lot of it transfers to the shoes. That's bad for your feet and bad for your shoes (stinky).\n\nSocks absorb the sweat and are easy to change and wash. Certain materials are a lot better at this that others, especially materials that are moisture wicking and odor resistant.", "socks don't prevent the feet from getting sweaty, but prevents feet from *feeling* sweaty since the fabric absorbs the sweat away from the skin. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dcbroip", "dcbrtsf" ], "score": [ 2, 5 ], "text": [ "If you stood at the waters edge at a beach the horizon would be approx 6 miles away, I'm not sure of the exact ratio but the higher you go the further the horizon is from you. Weather affects how far you can see.", "The method for working this out (assuming the horizon is perfectly flat) is to calculate the distance from your eye to sea level in meters, and multiply it by 13. Then you square root this to get the distance in KM." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqt5afh" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "You generally want to have the volume setting on the earlier parts of the signal chain as high as they go without distortion. It reduces how much noise you hear. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cyrc41c", "cysj6yj" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Because when its cold out you wanna get your ass back inside and when its nice out you chill for a little bit before coming back in.", "Our body emits less heat through the skin because we need that for our own temperature regulation because it's cold. This causes there to be a weakened force that pushes odours off our body. On top of that when it's cold we tend to wear thick clothing that traps heat in air pockets between the clothing and body, cigarette smoke doesn't disperse as well in cold weather and therefore the cigarette smoke gets trapped onto you when you are standing in your own smoke. \nWhen it's cold try walking and smoking and/or smoking with the wind, and don't immediately go inside after you finish your cigarette." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e6cgypj", "e6ch5lg" ], "score": [ 4, 5 ], "text": [ "They are all the same wheel just which way they are bolted on changes back wheels are dually so the are actually two wheels bolted next to each other the inside wheel it faces just like the steer axle wheel then the flip the out side wheel around so the two wheel faces touch when. The run the lug nut tight ", "This is so that such trucks won't have to carry extra spare tires. The dual wheel pairs in the rear are all composed of identical wheels. Each metal wheel is offset further than the edge of the tire, so that you can just put a pair back to back to create a dual set with a slight gap between tires, with the concave sides of the wheels facing out. The front (steering) tires generally have a different tread pattern than the rears, but the wheels are identical, so you can install the spare anywhere. On the front though, they're installed concave side in." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "erew6z8" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Imprinting. You associate getting up with that noise, and the sound of that is then associated with having to do stuff you don’t want to do. Which essentially makes you hear that noise and remind you off stress/ whatever that task entails.\n\n\nIt’s why you shouldn’t set a song as your alarm as you will end up hating it." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d51wuv6", "d51x8du", "d521asa" ], "score": [ 3, 2, 4 ], "text": [ "Androgens are a naturally occurring hormone derived from testosterone. Androgens can block or disrupt the hair growth cycle causing the hair to grow shorter and shorter before it falls out. Eventually, the follicle will stop growing. \n\nRogaine, or minoxidil, blocks the androgen receptors at the follicle and allows the hair cycle to resume at a more normal rate.", "Minoxidil is a topical vasodilator. Although we are not sure how this works one of the leading theories is that the increased blood flow to the hair follicle causes a greater number of hormone-receptor interacions causing the hair to switch its production from thin invisible hair to coarse hair.\n\nAsking about facial hair growth? Ive been using it for 2 months with visible results already. Do not take this if you use viagra or other blood pressure medications ", "Minodoxil is an antihypertensive vasodilator. When applied to the skin it causes the underlying blood vessels to dilate, thus allowing more blood to reach the affected area. This extra blood and nutrients causes the dormant hair follicles to resume their function and produce hair.\n\nNote: because most hair loss is due to a hormonal condition known as androgenic alopecia (male-pattern baldness) continual application of Minodoxil is required to maintain the results, as the body is no longer producing the hormones necessary to naturally maintain hair growth." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cncns74" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "My rational is, that it's kind of like skimming when reading. You don't need to hear every word to know what the song is about, after hearing it before. So you sort of gloss over parts and tune in to certain parts/ the end of the song. \n\nOther theory is that it's like when you are driving somewhere new for the first time. It seems longer, then on the way back does. Since you know how long it is going to take. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f1a29c6" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "A lot of power outages happen because a branch falls and hits the power lines and short circuits it. It's enough to trip the fault protection circuits and turn off the power lines, but all that power through a branch is usually enough to burn it to pieces and it stops being a problem.\n\nSo they're programmed to put power back on a few times to see if it's just a branch that needs a little more juice to burn off or if it's a problem that will actually need people to go fix." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cjomz8r", "cjomzb9", "cjon0xa" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Writing, rewriting, and editing a quality book is still a very labor intensive process. \n\nAdditionally, people are willing to pay that much for the books, so that is what they will cost. The production cost only really sets the minimum practical price.", "The material cost was never the driver. \n\nThey charge more because people will pay it. ", "Inflation and because they can. I think apple was charged with something to do with artificially raising prices on ebooks. Maybe amazon? They're a bunch of greedy bastards. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dn0rnm2", "dn0rnm2" ], "score": [ 4, 4 ], "text": [ "Hydrostatic equilibrium means the force of gravity caused by the object itself is strong enough to make it change shape on its own, so that pointy parts (hills and mountains) fill in the shallow parts (valleys and holes).\n\nThis takes place very slowly. Think about how often landslides occur, and how long it would take for Mount Everest to be flattened out by weather and earthquakes.\n\nEventually it takes on a shape that's \"lazy\", where all the mountains and valleys are roughly the same sort of size. When talking about objects that are dozens or hundreds of kilometers across or larger, this forms a sphere, so that basically every part of the surface is equally far from the very middle of the gravity field.\n\nHydrostatic equilibrium doesn't exactly work the same way for small natural satellites like asteroids, or artificial satellites like spaceships or people, for a couple reasons. First, most asteroids are like blobby clouds of gravel, not singular rocks. Because their gravity is very weak, they don't really want to smush into a round shape: they just stay as they are. For spaceships and people, the forces that hold us together (material tensile strength) is far stronger than our own gravity, so we never form into balls.", "Hydrostatic equilibrium means the force of gravity caused by the object itself is strong enough to make it change shape on its own, so that pointy parts (hills and mountains) fill in the shallow parts (valleys and holes).\n\nThis takes place very slowly. Think about how often landslides occur, and how long it would take for Mount Everest to be flattened out by weather and earthquakes.\n\nEventually it takes on a shape that's \"lazy\", where all the mountains and valleys are roughly the same sort of size. When talking about objects that are dozens or hundreds of kilometers across or larger, this forms a sphere, so that basically every part of the surface is equally far from the very middle of the gravity field.\n\nHydrostatic equilibrium doesn't exactly work the same way for small natural satellites like asteroids, or artificial satellites like spaceships or people, for a couple reasons. First, most asteroids are like blobby clouds of gravel, not singular rocks. Because their gravity is very weak, they don't really want to smush into a round shape: they just stay as they are. For spaceships and people, the forces that hold us together (material tensile strength) is far stronger than our own gravity, so we never form into balls." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ebkgi9r" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The Amazon S3 service have three different ways it secures your data. Firstly you can define your own Access Control Lists to define who have access to the data and how much access they have. Assuming you have defined these correctly only those who need access to the data have this access. But Amazon can not be held responsible if you define your ACL wrong. Secondly all connections to S3 is secured using TLS encryption. You can easily inspect the certificate given by the server to make sure that you are indeed uploading data to Amazon and not someone else. And thirdly you can enable Server Side Encryption where Amazon will encrypt the data you upload with a key stored separately from the data. Most of the employees at Amazon which have access to the storage mediums that holds your data does not have access to the encryption keys. So this can protect against some attacks either by Amazon employees or outside attacks to part of Amazons infrastructure. A lot of legislation also require the data to be encrypted but does not specify where they key should be kept and allow third parties to hold both the encrypted data and the key.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThis is as much security as Amazon can theoretically implement. If you want extra security then you need to implement them outside of the relm of Amazon. For example Amazon can not audit your ACLs or the access logs as they do not have intimate knowledge about your business to know who should have access or not. And Amazon is not able to encrypt and decrypt the data for you unless they have the encryption key. However you are free to encrypt the data using your own key before you upload it to S3 which would add an extra layer of security." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cflxi4c", "cflxva6", "cflxx04", "cflyn1t", "cflyqs0", "cfm0f1j", "cfm17re", "cfm1lw9" ], "score": [ 4, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Because 99% of that aid never reaches the people who need it. When large donations of money and food are made to countries, it is left to the government to decide who gets the food or money, which means it won't get to the people who need it. Its basically a corrupt government that holds the country back.", "Because poor people's lack of money and food is a symptom, not a cause of their unenviable situation. What the world's poorest people need is to be able to earn more money themselves. This is much harder than just feeding them. Because corruption, poor infrastructure, lack of rule of law etc.", "The 'dirty little secret' is that the resources to provide the standard \nof living to which you are accustomed, or even that which you regard as decent, to even half of the people of the world simply do not exist.", " > How can rich countries send billions of dollars to poor countries around the world, but still have so many people live on less than $1 per day and die of malnutrition or preventable diseases? \n\nMost of that money never really reaches them, or is redirected to personal bank accounts. Read this [article](_URL_0_)\n\n\"Much of the cash had been allocated to schools that did not exist. A proportion went to buy private cars for officials.\"\n\n > I feel like we have the medical technology and the supply of food to vastly improve these areas, but how come it doesn't happen? What prevents this from ever improving?\n\nMassive corruption. No one is accountable, and no one can be punished. \n", "Because you can only be rich is others have less money than you", "Your premise is actually false. One of the most fascinating and underreported stories of my lifetime is the massive and unprecedented *decrease* in global abject poverty. Things are, on a worldwide scale, astonishingly improved compared to what was commonly expected looking forward from the 1960s or 1970s. Yes, there are significant pockets of terrible poverty, for many of the reasons pointed out by others in this thread, but saying that it doesn't ever improve is not just wrong, but very, very wrong. ", "For one thing I doubt most people in needy countries have a dollar a day to spend on food. In many countries a dollar could easily feed these people. The fact is government aid goes to other governments instead of the people. There are a number of legit aid charities which can feed the needy. ", "A \"billion dollars\" sounds like a lot of money. For example, we give about a billion dollars a year to Kenya. \n\nThat actually comes to $25 per Kenyan per year. Giving a poor person $25 is not going to lift them out of poverty.\n" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [ "http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255838/How-money-squandered-foreign-aid.html" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fi1b7b2" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "When people talk about the overall \"health\" of the economy, they're talking about growth in economic output. Usually, this is described as the year over year growth in overall spending/overall production in the country (or whatever your unit of analysis is). If it is growing rapidly, that's good. If it's growing very slowly or declining, that's bad." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6z3435", "c6z38jo", "c6z5gsy" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "It wasn't known that Obama would do so well a couple weeks ago, so the conventional wisdom was that Ohio was likely to be one that decided the election. Florida, Virginia, and Colorado were considered more likely to go to Romney than Ohio, which meant Ohio was the probably going to be the \"tipping point\".", "The thing is, we didn't know that at the time. Obama was looking UNlikely to get Florida and Romney was making a late play for Pennsylvania. To put it more simply, while Obama didn't need Ohio, Romney definitely DID. So that was where the shootout was.", "Everyone likes a good story, and for an election to be a good story, it has to be *competitive*. Otherwise anchors and pundits would have to sit around without anything to talk about. The horror.\n\nSo this story starts with Romney taking his three most winnable swing states, NC, FL, and VA, otherwise its a pretty thin book. After that, he would either have to duke it out in OH and pick up one of the smaller swing states, or score a surprise upset somewhere like PA or WI.\n\nSo you have conflict, suspense, unexpected twists, all elements of a good story. And most of them come down to a showdown in OH deciding the election.\n\nAs it is wont to do, reality did not live up to the drama...Colorado wound up being the decisive state.\n" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dek7gez" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "The point of fruit is to entice animals to eat the seeds, which are indigestible if they stay whole, and then poop them out far from the parent plant.\n\nKnowing this we can surmise that the seeds in green fruit are not mature and would not sprout if eaten and pooped out, so the fruit is sour or bitter until the seed inside is mature." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cg5kg71", "cg5kgp0" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "So pain has evolutionary origins that far far predate humans, and the nervous system setup in that area is also pre-human, part of the reason human childbirth is so painful is the abnormal size of our head, which is a very recent development, we have not had time to fix it using evolutionary processes and even if we did, modern medicine and other pressures are working against us. Human babies are born in a fetal state, much earlier developmentally than many other primates, because their heads would be too big to get out later in development. ", "Some positive evolutionary traits outweigh others. For humans, it was large heads for large brains, and narrow hips for bipedal movement. The pain evolution hasn't caught up - maybe it never will, since having large brains and walking on two feet is pretty much our defining thing.\n\nI'm told (I'm male) that the pain of childbirth sucks, but I've read that women quickly forget it. If it really was an evolutionary disadvantage, it would have gone away. Evolutionary inconveniences are different than disadvantages." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d9i2b05", "d9i2ljh", "d9i7c2k", "d9i7v5l" ], "score": [ 8, 2, 2, 5 ], "text": [ "It depends on the parents. Many parents use services that let them purchase materials to teach. Others do it themselves.\n\nAs for getting into a four-year college, it's doable. It does require that the student be able to get sufficient scores on standardized tests like the SATs.", "I listened to a great podcast about it - fun, easy, informative listen! \n\n_URL_0_", "All of this is from my personal experience; I cannot speak to national or global trends.\n\nThere are lots of resource for home-school curricula, both from faith-based and secular outlets. Generally (in my experience as a HS student) parents are part of a co-op or other support org. that shares curriculum. Mostly its standard textbooks and homework is the suggested problems for each chapter. Many students take courses at local universities and community colleges as well.\n\nHumanities courses are a little harder as they cannot be objectively graded and judged. In my case, a professional language teacher was hired to teach a foreign language to a group of us, and my grandmother, a retired university English teacher, taught English.\n\nI was far more prepared in the sciences than the arts both because that is where my talent lies, but also because it was easier to teach. My grammar and spelling were top-notch but I couldn't form an argument or analyze a text to save my life.\n\nMost HS parents are doing so to fix what they see as a deficiency in the public school system, so there is a tendency to focus on those aspects at the expense of others. My physical education was going to a park once a week, and my science education lacked any lab equipment or experiments.\n\nUniversity acceptance is still primarily based on test scores, and high-school students generally do well in scorable areas, so the acceptance rate is high. I went to a public HS, so I don't know about diplomas, but GEDs are available, and SATs/ACTs can be taken by anyone.", "Different states in the US have varying standards for homeschool curriculum. Some states require meetings with the teacher, state testing, some require record keeping, and some don't require anything at all.\n\nI wrote the curriculum for our three kids. Our eldest had pervasive developmental delay and severe ADHD. Homeschooling allowed me to tailor her studies to her needs. Our middle daughter is currently a senior in college, doing her student teaching. She's an elementary bilingual education major. This came about because of volunteer tutoring she did with Hispanic kids through our homeschooling. Our youngest took a few college courses, decided it wasn't for him and is working in retail. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [ "http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/homeschooling-not-just-for-hippies-and-religious-people-anymore.htm" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cr2ifae", "cr2ijyf", "cr2in4z", "cr2irur", "cr2lmgq", "cr2sbpm" ], "score": [ 7, 5, 3, 3, 46, 2 ], "text": [ "I'd be surprised if people started over from year 1, but it certainly could happen, such things would be open for debate. And nothing says you can only observe one calendar after all.\n\nI'd expect for shorter durations (like a day), they'd adopt a more local clock, since as you note, the day is longer than Earth's, and using the same clock would get you out of sync. It'd be a pain trying to figure out ahead of time if a 1:30 PM party for your kid's birthday next month is going to be during the day or at night.", "Smaller units of time (seconds, minutes, hours) would probably stay the same, and for local timekeeping they would function pretty well. A day on Mars is only 40 minutes longer than that on Earth. Using military time, the clocks would shift from 23:59 to 24:00, and then from 24:39 to 0:00 (whereas on Earth they obviously shift from 23:59 to 0:00).\n\nYears would probably still be based on the Terran Year, as a functional means to measure the human lifetime and synchronize events with those of the homeworld. However, local timekeeping for Martian years and months would also probably be utilized. The current concept is that each planet would have a \"Sol\" period, which would be that particular planet's year. At the same time, however, everyone would still track time based on the Sol of Earth.\n\nThis also ignores the issues of space travel and timekeeping, particularly when it comes to the desynchronization of clocks due to relativistic effects.", "Look to history. In the US, at one time, every location had its own time. Two cities that were 200, 300 miles apart might have clock times a few minutes apart. Train schedules were hell to maintain, and errors in time calculations even caused train wrecks on occasion. The train companies standardized on time zones in pure self defense. \nSo I'd look to some \"bridging\" adjustments being invented that would keep everyone on Earth's calendar, while preserving some kind of local year/date info. ", "There would have to be a local time. Which we already use for projects running on Mars. Hours, minutes, and seconds, are each 2.7% longer than their earth counter parts. So there is still 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours a day.\n\nWe can't do anything about the fact that there are 668.5991 Martian days in a Martian year. By convention, we'd probably either decide on 12 months with 55-56 days each, or 22 months with 30-31 days each, depending on which aspect (days per month vs. months per year) we want to be closest to Earth's. I imagine we'd want to keep days per month mostly the same. A scheme of 30-30-31 days for every three months, with 31 days for the last month gives us 668 days. If we add a day to the first month, that gives us 669 days. Adding a \"skip\" year, reducing the first month by two days every 5 years gives us 668.6 on average.", "Seconds, minutes and hours would be the same. Days would need to be adjusted since a sidereal day is 24 hours 37 minutes. This would affect things like months and years, slowly becoming more and more out of sync. I imagine some sort of earth year would be used for certain aspects, while the martian year would be used for other.\n\nInteresting question OP. ", "At least at current and near-future technology all Mars colonies would be isolated from the actual Mars climate. Colonists would live and work in enclosed spaces where everything from lighting to humidity to atmospheric pressure would be managed independently from what was going on \"outside\" on Mars proper. I expect things would pretty much stay exactly the same; similar schedules and the same exact Calendar. Colonists would likely make up their own holidays \"First Human on Mars Day\" (aka /u/faisent day) and those might be tied to a Martian year but they'd still use Earth years in their day to day operations.\n\nOnce the colony became more and more self-sufficient things would slowly diverge from an Earth-centric Calendar. *The Grand /u/bfr0g1 Memorial Greenhouse* would still need to draw sunlight during the Martian day; its workers would start to organize their shifts around this cycle. As they form a large portion of the colonists, the rest of the colony starts to follow suit; at first it is a crazy hodge-podge of conflicting time-zones; some of the colonists follow Martian Standard Time, and others stick with Greenwich Mean Time. The few independent businesses finally decide to switch to MST as most of their customers are using it, leaving GMT a standard only to officers, communication specialists, and the few cross-system pilots that have to deal with Earth on a semi-regular basis. \"Months\" are kept simply because seasonal changes aren't as dramatic in enclosed spaces; though the Martian December (which occurs twice in a Martian year) is only used to track Christmas for the few Martians that keep up with that religion. Already \"/u/faisent Day\" is the holiday most Martians feel attached to, followed closely by \"/u/bfr0g1 Day\" - when Mars officially became self-sufficient for its food intake. /u/faisent day Martians exchange gifts, similar to Earth's \"Christmas\" and on /u/bfr0g1 Day kids hunt for variously colored root vegetables and adults dress in garish clothes to represent their independence from Earth.\n\nEventually the Mars colony decides that Earth isn't really needed, even for resupply and luxury goods. They examine their long history and decide to move completely away from the standard Earth calendars. They decide to start their Calendar on IFE or Independence From Earth day. 200 million Martians rejoice in their new-found Independence, and (since this is fantasy and fiction) the various Earth nations applaud and rejoice that humanity has a new home where it can prosper." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ea8dgl7", "ea8quen" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "It's when companies start to rely too much on being able to get lots of cheap loans. Once that happens, any changes that relate to credit can mess them up quickly.\n\nIt's almost identical to a housing bubble when someone can *just about* afford their (probably too-large) mortgage, right until the interest rate goes up slightly and then *everything goes wrong*, house gets reposessed etc.", "Too many companies have more debt than they can hope to pay back if circumstances change even slightly. They could find themselves rendered worthless and insolvent overnight.\n\nIt wouldn't just destabilise the economy if the bubble popped, it would blow it out the water; there's no money for bail outs this time around.\n\n" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d4veayk", "d4vei3f" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Recall that to replicate, the virus hijacks your DNA or RNA. Some viruses actually insert their own viral DNA code into your DNA, so every time that cell reads it's DNA to create proteins, it makes that virus. The virus doesn't particularly care where its code goes, so it'll throw it in there anywhere. That could interrupt an important regulatory gene that helps prevent your cell from becoming cancerous.\n\nHPV doesn't want your cell to immediately fill up with viruses and die. It's more devious than that. Instead, it wants your cell to multiply a few times, spreading that viral DNA to new cells with no extra work from the virus. Why infect new cells from the outside, when you can just create new cells with the virus already built in? So HPV encourages your cells to divide which is pretty much exactly what cancer is. \n\nIn fact, that's what warts are: mild, probably harmless tumors. But sometimes the body doesn't deal with the infected, reproducing cells well enough and it gets out of control. ", "The mechanism through which the six viruses known to cause cancer do so is very different from one another. HPV is very easy to understand though. The proteins it creates when infecting cells indirectly cause tumors because those proteins disrupt the body's natural tumor suppression pathways. It doesn't mean to do this and its not beneficial to HPV at all, its just an unintended byproduct.\n\nBut like I said, the methods are all pretty different for each virus. If you want an indepth look at all of those methods, [this article](_URL_0_) is pretty accessible." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [ "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994798/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ddwymax" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Because they're smaller, essentially. \n\nNeural impulses are fast, but not *that* fast. It takes time for an impulse to travel from your fingertips, to your brain, for signals to be sent back and forth inside your brain for the purpose of processing them, and then send them back to your fingers. Most animals are much smaller than us, and have smaller brains. Their neural impulses don't have to travel as far as ours do, so they are able to react to things faster.\n\nAnother factor is that they're lighter. A light limb can change directions faster than a heavy limb. If a heavy limb wants to change directions as fast, they would need more muscles, and these extra muscles add even more weight, so there's diminishing returns. \n\nAnimals that are bigger than us don't necessarily have much quicker reflexes. Look at elephants, for example. Most animals we interact with are smaller than us. Even wolves are significantly smaller." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e189gqd" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Erdogan (who's been president for a long time) is trying to take a lot of power. Like the most power ever. He wants to eliminate the prime minister position and take control of all the government sectors. And he's been locking up a lot of his opposition. In fact, the guy running against him is campaigning from prison. So, lots of shit could go down. People in Turkey aren't happy about the power grab, but Erdogan will likely win anyway." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d2zzu4i" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "People are kinda touching on it. The real reason is the magnetic force is far too weak at distance.\n\nWireless charging works by sending an alternating magnetic field through a wire coil which induces a current on the wire. The magnetic field follows the inverse square law. If you double the distance you get 1/4th the strength, etc...\n\nThis is why Qi chargers require the phone to sit directly on the charger. To induce enough current you have to be basically touching." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckk7ezv" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Two things:\n\n1. We're not relying on the Russians to get to the International Space Station- considering recent events, that's kind of important right now.\n\n2. This is the first time that private space exploration has been given \"official\" backing. Up until now, space exploration has largely been a government venture. This announcement validates the work that SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, along with others like Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, have been doing for the last few years." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cudlgyg", "cudmwya" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Because his party received > 50% of the combined primary and preferential votes at the last election, enabling them to choose the PM.\n\nBecause they anticipate that if they run with him next election, they will most likely retain their seats and their party will continue to receive > 50% of the combined primary and preferential votes.\n\nIt doesn't matter how many people hate Tony Abbott, so long as enough people don't hate him, that they will continue to receive enough votes to maintain their seats and to remain in government.\n\nThe end. That's it, as to why he's in power.\n\nAs for uni funding and fees; Abbott supports increased fees and reducing funding because \n\na) he believes in wealth as an indicator of virtue, therefore those who cannot afford it, do not deserve it and \n\nb) he knows public funding of universities leads to more lower class university students who do not buy into the assumptions of his own ideology's wealth-as-virtue ethical premises and are educated enough to contest them in the public arena. ", "So going back, from 1983-1991 we had this one guy as PM, then he retires and we get another guy from his party for another 5 years. That's 2 people from the same party for 13 years.\n\nThen in 1996, we get a new guy who we have all the way through to 2007. That's 11 years from one guy!\n\nThen we decide we need a change, so in 2007 we vote for the other the next new guy. The thing is, he got backstabbed before his first term was up and in 2010 we get a new girl. Shortly after that in 2010 she barely wins an election (meaning such a tight result that the government is really in a tough spot to do anything practical), and SHE then gets backstabbed, so now we have the previous guy who got backstabbed.\n\nWe have an election every 3 years, so we voted for a PM twice (2007 and 2010), and the party changed the PM without us voting twice.\n\nThen we get to 2013, we get a chance to vote and people vote for Tony Abbott, perhaps for his policies, perhaps just to get back to the days of \"hey, how about we get someone who can run a country for 10 years\". Literally all they need to do is not screw up spectacularly and they're set. Essentially I suspect this government got in on the \"we can't possibly be as crazy as the last lot\" topic.\n\nSo, they get in and proceed to be crazier than the last lot, and not wanting to be accused of the same backstabbing PM switching stuff that we had for 6 years prior they stick with Captain Lunatic until they get voted out in 2016.\n\n" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgpmpvx", "cgpmtoo" ], "score": [ 3, 5 ], "text": [ "There seems to be some limit on the number of times DNA splits. The current question in molecular bio-chemistry is finding and isolating exactly which protein is responsible for moving raw material into new DNA as it replicates. At some point, this protein seems to just stop. ", "One of the simplest answers to this is DNA! Every time our DNA replicates some parts near the end get chopped off. Later, this new DNA replicates. If too much has been chopped off then that DNA will no longer be able to replicate (and the original at this time has already been broken down into component proteins and recycled). This reduction in the number of replicable cells in our body reduces healing time and is one reason the scrape on your knee goes away in a few days and the scrape on your grandma's elbow may take weeks to heal. At some point, your body just can't manage basic upkeep. These functions need to be done biologically.\n\nInterestingly, cancer cells sometimes don't have this problem, which leads me to believe that there is an important function in the lack of fully copying genes... But this is just my own speculative after thought. \n\nTl;Dr: your DNA gets fucked up. You need DNA to live. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d5xrdpt" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Confucianism arose during the Spring and Autumn era, a period of brutal warfare and strife between Chinese states after the fall of the Zhou Dynasty.\n\nIn contrast to Western religion which is more concerned with the individual soul, Confucianism is more concerned with social order. Confucian scholars believe that the family is the most basic unit of social harmony, and that by promoting functional family units one would also be promoting the formation of a greater, more peaceful society (which is what everyone wanted in the Spring and Autumn era: the end of these national wars). This is because by extension, the kingdom itself was just one big family, with the King or Emperor as the head of the household.\n\nThis meant that there were rules that needed to be followed that defined the responsibilities and duties of children to their parents (or, in more patriarchal terms, the son to the father), and vice versa.\n\nConfucianism and other philosophies became the defining cultural features of China. Whereas the West focused on military strength and warrior-heroes as their core social/politicial paradigms, China was governed with political and ethical theory in mind." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7ych12", "c7yhx0c" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "It's pretty simple, really. Women will listen to music by both men and women, but men will largely only listen to music by men. Go and ask your female friends for their 20 favourite musicians, see how many are women. Go and ask your male friends the same question, and see if more than one is. Link them to Jean Grae or L7 or The Breeders and see how many men vs how many women like it, even though they all play in genres that are popular with men.\n\nThis means that male musicians get more success, and as a result, boys growing up have more male musician role models and are thus more likely to want to be musicians. Girls, not seeing as many role models in music -- and those that exist only in narrow areas, like pop singing, and seeing barely any lady guitarists or electro producers or metal singers on TV, don't have the musical role models to imitate.", "I've actually heard a lot of people say they don't like female singers. I personally love a great voice male or female. I'm a singer(f) and musician. It's not really answering your question but I have heard from different people that they just like male voices better. Maybe because its deeper and more soothing, no matter the style... Not to mention, male musicians can be ugly.. Not many women can get away with it if they are in the spot lite.. Unless you're Janis." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dc82tf2", "dc849je", "dc8en7j" ], "score": [ 88, 22, 2 ], "text": [ "A semi-automatic weapon uses either some of the recoil from a shot, or gas from the shot to cycle it's action. This means that the action begins moving while the projectile is still inside of the weapon. The motion of the action moves the gun, and can affect the accuracy of the shot. \n\nA bolt action stays in place and remains a solid unit the shooter manually works it. This reduced amount of motion leads to greater accuracy. \n\nGreat strides have been made in making the actions of certain semi-auto weapons more stable and accurate, and there are a lot of solid options available. At the end of the day though, if we're talking the absolute best weapon with each type of action, in the hands of a highly skilled shooter, the bolt action will win out. ", "Semi-auto rifle have several downside over bolt-action. \n\n- The reloading action of the next bullet is done during the firing in a semi-auto and can make the gun move slighty, decreasing accuracy. The bolt action reload the after the shot so it doesn't have that problem.\n\n- Because how a bolt action operate you usually can make a stronger and better firing chamber so the transfer of energy is more efficient and your bullet have a little bit more energy.\n\n- A semi-auto will redirect part of the expanding gas to power the reload cycle. So you lose a small portion of the gas pressure and a little bit less velocity for your bullet.\n\n- Semi-auto rifle tend to weight more than a bolt-action rifle simply because it have more parts. \n\n- Also, but this is not always the case. Bolt-action tend to be easier to maintain and more reliable. But I hesitated to put that point because that's not always the case. You can make a good or simple enough design that it's not an issue. It was usually an exemption that confirm the rule, but it apply to more and more modern so that reliabily less and less true.\n\nBasically bolt-action trade firing speed for precision, which suit long distance shooter more. You usually see semi-auto sniper more in a Marksman role.", "The long and short of it is that semi automatics use bullet energy to re-cock and expend the spent casing, they have more moving parts, and this makes it more difficult to have the same tolerances as well as changing consistency from shot to shot. Bolt action is simpler, easier to make with precision, and very consistent. \n\nThe accuracy of a rifle comes down to consistency and precision. \n\nPrecision means that all of the parts fit together with very close tolerances and with a minimum amount of slop or wiggle. The more mechanically complex a rifle is, the harder it is to make each part with precision. It's not impossible to create a semi automatic rifle with accuracy but it is difficult and expensive, and as parts wear it can change. \n\nConsistency means that each time a cartridge is chambered, fired, and ejected, it is done the same way. All rifles must warm up with a few cold shots first but after the initial shot a good rifle will do this predictably. What you don't want is for things to change in an unpredictable way from shot to shot. Part of this is the design of the rifle, how heavy it is, how tight the tolerances, and how it deals with heat. The other part of this is the ammunition, whether the grain count is reliable and each round fires like the other rounds. \n\nBolt action rifles push the range and consistency out to the edge from precision parts, a predictable cold vs hot bore shot, and the bolt mechanism is robust, easy to clean, and simple. You want a minimum amount of factors that can affect the shot so it's more predictable and a simpler mechanism reduces these factors. \n\nSemiautomatic rifles of today can meet or exceed the range of bolt action rifles of yesterday, but they are more finicky and more prone to drift as the different parts wear out, and cleaning is much more important as the gas pressure must re-cock the firing mechanism and expend the spent casing. This takes energy from the bullet and also changes from shot to shot with environment and how clean it is. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ebhhl1o", "ebhhlp0" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Your idea is not new. It's called molecular modelling and it is used extensively in drug design. You basically look at the natural substrates of enzymes or active molecules and derive an abstract pharmacophore model, which means you take specific functional groups and their orientation in the molecule and run the model through huge databases of compounds to find hits. Then you usually have chemists synthesize and test the molecules and fine tune them by further derivatisation. There is also the QSAR model which essentially does exactly what you want to do in trying to find relations between the structure and the activity of a molecule.", "Yes there are, take carbon for instance. arranged one way you get charcoal, arranged another way you get carbon nanotubes and another way and you get diamonds all from basic carbon." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c32jhdh", "c32ji67", "c32njne", "c32jhdh", "c32ji67", "c32njne" ], "score": [ 7, 5, 2, 7, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Cancer is a blanket term for a large number of cellular mutations that happen anywhere in the body. When a cell divides, it goes through a number of checkpoints to ensure that it is healthy enough to divide. When the cell is cancerous, it doesn't go through those checkpoints at all, and just divides like crazy. Unfortunately, there are so many ways a cell can go wrong that it's near to impossible to find a panacea for all those rogue cells.\n\nOur best options insofar have been to target the cancerous cells with chemicals that kill off any organic tissue it comes across. Thankfully, we're at a point where there are different ways to target cancerous cells instead of healthy ones (depending on dosage, concentration in the body, etc).", "[Relevant PHD comic](_URL_0_)", "You're pretty spot on with an extremely superficial description of cancer. This is exactly why we can't have one universal treatment, because each cancer has different mutations, so in order to stop the uncontrolled cell division we have to fix different things. There are some semi-universal treatments, like irradiation, that target cells that are rapidly dividing or lack the ability to repair DNA mutations. The problem is that they have lots of serious side effects. Also, immune cells and red blood cells are highly affected by these treatments since they are frequently dividing (but not quite at the same rate as cancer).", "Cancer is a blanket term for a large number of cellular mutations that happen anywhere in the body. When a cell divides, it goes through a number of checkpoints to ensure that it is healthy enough to divide. When the cell is cancerous, it doesn't go through those checkpoints at all, and just divides like crazy. Unfortunately, there are so many ways a cell can go wrong that it's near to impossible to find a panacea for all those rogue cells.\n\nOur best options insofar have been to target the cancerous cells with chemicals that kill off any organic tissue it comes across. Thankfully, we're at a point where there are different ways to target cancerous cells instead of healthy ones (depending on dosage, concentration in the body, etc).", "[Relevant PHD comic](_URL_0_)", "You're pretty spot on with an extremely superficial description of cancer. This is exactly why we can't have one universal treatment, because each cancer has different mutations, so in order to stop the uncontrolled cell division we have to fix different things. There are some semi-universal treatments, like irradiation, that target cells that are rapidly dividing or lack the ability to repair DNA mutations. The problem is that they have lots of serious side effects. Also, immune cells and red blood cells are highly affected by these treatments since they are frequently dividing (but not quite at the same rate as cancer)." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [ "http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1162" ], [], [], [ "http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1162" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dohjkqi" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "This one is pretty easy. RJ-45 connectors (Ethernet) have 8 wires in 4 pairs. \n\nOriginally only 2 were used for data at 10Mbit, then 4 for 100Mbit connections. That means that a standard Cat5 cable can actually hold two 100Mbit connections. Or you can use the remaining wires to carry power. So a PoE adapter does just that. 2 pairs go to data and give you a 100Mbit connection, another pair gives you DC power. \n\nUnfortunately Gigabit ethernet requires all 4 pairs for data, so there is a choice to be made. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d81r8co", "d81rah6", "d81rdw5", "d81w16v" ], "score": [ 17, 38, 9, 3 ], "text": [ "Well, they aren't. Our senses are developed to adapt to our species environment and needs. Sure, we can't smell things as well as a dog, for instance, but we can see farther. Species have a combination of senses that work best for them.", "This is simply not true. We have senses that are far better than many animals, and many animals have senses better than ours. Animals have evolved to utilize different senses to different degrees. Our vision, for instance, may not be as good as an eagle's, but it's no slouch in the animal kingdom. ", "They arent.\n\nOur sense of sight is far better than most animals. \n\nOur sense of hearing is good \n\nOur sense of smell is underdeveloped because we dont use it for much (mostly to tell if stuff has gone had)", "Every living thing's senses are only as good as they need to be to survive long enough to reproduce. Our senses individually may be crap compared to some other animals, but it's the full package and it's ability to thrive in it's environment that really matters. Some of the most successful lifeforms have total shite senses." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fi0a0fo", "fi0cyej", "fi0xyym", "fi1i08z" ], "score": [ 12, 3, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "In terms of fat loss, it doesn't matter that much what you eat just the calories, a Doctor once lost weight by literally exclusively eating twinkies. \n\nHowever iirc there are studies that suggest that food high in carbs is worse for weight loss or rather, you want as little insulin being released as possible but it's definitely possible to lose weight just eating candy, as long as it is in moderation, the biggest problem you're going to run into is lack of vitamins.", "Like you wrote, you can't violate the laws of thermodynamics. If your body is using more energy than you feed it, you will burn fat and muscle to make up the difference and lose weight. \n\nHowever, not all calories sources are created equal. Your body responds differently for burning sugar vs fat. Even different types of sugar affect your body differently. There are healthy and unhealthy ways to lose weight. The healthy ways usually have you at a smaller calories deficit and include nutritionally dense foods, little to no refined sugar, little simple carbs, lots of veggies, and a good amount of protein. Drink water instead of sugary drinks. This solves for calories in. For calories out, you want to raise your base metabolic rate. Work out to gain lean muscle and increase your heart rate. \n\nAlso realize how many calories are in the food you eat, it might amaze you. A Snickers bar is 225 calories. A 25 minute jog typically burns 218 calories. It is easy to complete undo the the calorie burn from a workout with just a little snack, thus the saying that you can't out work a bad diet. \n\nBack to the types of food. Different people do better on different diets. This might be based on what your ancestors ate. Some people do really well on fat heavy diets (ketogenic diet), and others do better on veggie heavy. Some can eat simple carbs like bread and others absolutely cannot if they want to lose weight. Some can have fruits, for others, fruit seriously hampers fat loss. You will have to pay attention to how your body responds to know how you do. Try an elimination diet and reintroduce foods to understand your body.\n\nSigns that you are unhealthy in your weight loss include losing too much too soon, hair loss, extended brain fog, and more.", "Weight gain or loss is all math. Purely the number of calories in vs out. The source doesn't matter. \n\nThat being said, getting 1500 calories from eating carrots (8 pounds) or spinach (15 pounds) is a real challenge so you are unlikely to eat more calories than needed. \nBaked salmon, hard-boiled eggs, and avocados would require just over 2 pounds for 1500 calories. \nEating 1500 calories of peanuts (9.3 ounces), bacon (9.7 ounces baked), Snickers (7 bars), or Oreos (28 cookies) is easier. \n\n**HEALTH** requires a variety of foods so you have all the nutrients needed.\n\nETA weights of foods for equivalent of 1500 calories", "For my two cents on your question, you can diet on whatever. Everyone has their preference, but it is worth noting that calorie-dense foods like McDonalds (or hell, even almonds) are not relatively filling. \n\n\nIf the subtext of your question is \"can I just have a 1800 calorie diet of junk food and not be miserable?\", you will probably find that the 1800 calories of junk food is not very filling. Despite eating 1800 calories, you likely won't feel as full - and you'll feel miserable because you'll be hungry. \n\n\nEating healthy whole foods is more filling. But if you really hate that idea, you could eat like a 1300 calorie diet and have 500 calories of junk." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cuchi3k", "cuci3ip", "cuci85a" ], "score": [ 2, 12, 2 ], "text": [ "The second question is the more straightforward question, so I will answer that one first. The EU, both directly through its member nations, as well as through European and international institutions, such as the ECB (European Central Bank) and other banks, has lent the banks and the government of Greece large amounts of money. Just as your bank is going to want you to (eventually) pay back your obligations as agreed upon, the EU wants Greece to pay back its loans. Greece currently spends more money than it takes in through taxes and fees, which is to say that it is running a deficit. In order to ensure that they get paid back, the EU and other creditors want Greece to take reforms to increase the amount of revenue that the Greek government brings in, and reduce the amount that it pays out. This is called austerity.\n\nWhy is austerity bad, or at least seen as undesirable by some? Well, a tenet of Keynesian economics (this is pretty mainstream) is that austerity is what's known as a fiscal drag. Taxation, on the whole, tends to slow down the nation's economy, absorbing money out of the economic system, while government spending tends to pour money into the system, serving as fiscal stimulus. You might recognize fiscal stimulus as in the fiscal stimulus packages that the US government passed in 2008-2009 during the heart of the Great Recession. In addition, on a more individual micro level, people don't like it when their taxes increase, or when their government benefits (think Social Security, Medicare, etc.) get cut. So, there's political pushback against austerity packages as well.\n\nUltimately, one thing to note about government debt is that it's fundamentally not like personal debt. As long as a nation's economy is growing at a reasonable pace (and tax receipts increase along with the economy), it is entirely possible for a healthy economy to be partially financed by debt. However, if an economy begins to enter recession, those debts become harder and harder to pay off. So, there's a tradeoff between increased government spending, which will provide fiscal stimulus to make the economy grow and the debt load relatively smaller, and decreased government spending, which may lower the debt value in nominal terms, but at a cost to economic growth.", "Imagine you lived at home with your Mom, Dad, Grandparents, brother, and sister. Your Mom has a great job and, as a result, everyone in your house lives a pretty great life.\n\nSuddenly, things don't go too well. Your Mom's job cuts her hours and the amount of money that your parents make no longer covers all the bills. Your house slowly starts to fall apart. The lawn doesn't get mowed, weeds sprout up, and it becomes an eyesore to your neighbors.\n\nIn fact, your house has started to risk the value of your neighbors' houses so they all pitch in and agree to loan your family money so you can get stuff back in shape... paint the house, fix the roof, clean up the yard, etc.\n\nYour parents take the money but, instead of spending on things that help your home stay together for the long-term, they invest it in programs that allow everyone inside your home to live a pretty comfortable life... some would say a luxurious life. \n\nNow we are back to the point where your family has burned through the money. Once again the neighborhood is faced with your crumbling home risking the value of their homes... and because of that, they are willing to entertain the idea of giving your family more money...but they are scared that if they do that, your family will just blow it on more luxury items and stuff that doesn't fix the actual issue of living within your means.\n\nSo your neighbors offer to give you the money and help bail you out of your situation, but only on the condition that you do not spend the money on things that do not directly fix your home's problems. \n\nThe issue is that there are differences in opinions when it comes to what kind of expenses are both luxuries and investments and which are merely luxuries. There are also issues with taking people off luxuries they have become dependent on... Grandpa may not need the nicest wheelchair on the market, and Dad may only need a 32\" TV instead of a 60\" LED.", "Greece wants to keep the status quo, spending money they don't have. EU partners won't accept that, they want Greece to be self-sufficient, but if Greece defaults then bankers lose money.\n\nUnfortunately, bankers money comes from everyday people's savings accounts. That means if bankers lose money people wake up with no money in their accounts, which is a political disaster and could cause a depression on top of the Great Depression levels of unemployment Southern Europe already has." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "du0plme", "du0tuwo", "du11oro", "du1aqge", "du274yi" ], "score": [ 316, 52, 7, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Plastic is a polymer - at the molecular level, it's a shapeless* blob of very long molecules all clumped together. A decent analogy is a tangled skein of yarn. It's very difficult to untangle it, but if you take some scissors and cut through it, you can't put it back together. This is because the long polymer chains have been physically cut. The two sides don't generally spontaneously reconnect if you put them next to each other - it might require some outside input of energy (like melting them together).\n\n\n*some plastics do have semi-crystalline structures", "Some things do just stick back together. If you rip a piece of metal in half in the vacuum of space, you expose raw, unoxidized metal on the inside. If you stuck the pieces back together, they would be \"cold welded\" back together. This usually doesn't happen on Earth because exposed metal surfaces quickly become oxidized in the oxygen atmosphere. It would be like trying to stick two buckets of water together, yes they're both water but there's an outer layer that simply isn't water.\n\nAlso a big part of things \"sticking\" together is from air pressure (or lack thereof) and friction. If you shuffle the pages of two phone books together like a deck of cards, they become extremely difficult to pull apart because of the friction between the hundreds of pages. Phone books are essentially shredded up, \"broken\" tree, but you can stick them to each other with friction. Air pressure can stick things together as well, like when you push a suction cup onto a flat surface. The suction cup tries to push itself back away from the surface, lowering the air pressure inside the cup. So the air pressure of Earth's atmosphere outside the cup pushes with more force than the low pressure air inside pushes outward, resulting in a net \"towards surface\" push, which increases friction on the surface, keeping it from sliding around. A suction cup hanging from a ceiling stays there because air pressure overcomes gravity, while a suction cup on a wall stays there because friction overcomes gravity. If you can force two objects together and remove a sufficient amount of air from between them, or intertwine them as with the phone books, they will stick from friction and/or air pressure.\n\nSo when you break a piece of plastic, you leave a deformed, jagged edge. You can't stick them back together because there will always be air between them pushing them apart with the same force of the air trying to push them together. Even cold welding would leave a noticeable border on the metal because the pieces wouldn't line up properly, but the partial surfaces that do touch would be cold welded.", "Mostly the atomic bonds. At the molecular level the crystal lattices (or just bonds) have a certain amount of “potential energy”. At some point, you break the bonds by a stress overload and thus the bonds cannot be stuck together unless through a process of heat treatment. Annealing is a common way, especially to make the material more ductile.", "It's like chains in an atomic level.\n\nYou may exerce a force that will cause some link to open, but pushing them together won't make the link close again. ", "It depends on the material. Most materials are held together by Van der Waals bonds, which you might have learned about in high school chemistry (non-ELI5: dipole interactions, London dispersion forces). These forces are basically caused by the distance between the proton and electron in an atom or molecule creating small electric fields which attract each other. All materials have these attractions holding them together, and they're very strong at small distances. Think of a Jolly Rancher-- it's basically just sugar, but it would be very, very difficult to pull apart.\n\nHowever, these interactions decrease very strongly with distance (non-ELI5: about 1/r^6, compared to gravity or pure electronic interactions which scale about 1/r^2). When you break something and put it back together, you're not going to put it back exactly how it was atom by atom. The mismatch between the surfaces combined with the roughness of the surfaces caused by the break means the two pieces can't come close together again and stick back together. If you could exactly line them up how they were before atom-by-atom, though, they would stick back together as good as new! You can test this with materials like mica, which breaks perfectly smooth, so it's easy to stick it back together.\n\nSome materials have additional forces holding them together. Metals have metallic bonds, a \"sea of electrons\" where the electrons float between atoms. As another commentor mentions, many plastics are made up of long chains that tangle up with each other to keep the material together (though it depends on how long the chains are and how crystalline the material is). However, Van der Waals forces are universal, so you can always count on them holding a material together.\n\nHere's a good series of lecture on the subject of the forces holding surfaces and molecules together, if you're interested: _URL_0_" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [], [ "https://youtu.be/b5oAJjbWBEA" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cmuiu4o", "cmuj0e5", "cmuj1y0", "cmuji6t", "cmujj64", "cmujlr2", "cmujqgv", "cmujr0q", "cmujw3z", "cmukf5t", "cmum38k" ], "score": [ 3, 6, 3, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Because it's not like anyone loses a substantial amount of money when their video is pirated. A very small portion of people get their movies pirated, so it's almost entirely a victimless crime.", "Some people just don't want to pay for things, or maybe they're in a country where that film/book/music isn't sold, so they pirate.", "For me, I pirate content I wouldn't purchase in the first place. \n \nI know that it is wrong, but, if I torrent a movie that I would never pay to watch, then they company isn't losing money, they're just not gaining any. It is stealing either way though.", "Well all the content i pirateted during my life was conetent i couldn't afford anyway. They would have never gotten a single buck out of me anyway. And in addition to that, now that i'm old and kinda rich i bought most of those games and music just because i can and i remembered the great times i had. \n\nAnd that is what many people say. In addition to that, nowadays i kinda feel stupid for buying some games like prince of persia. Because the copy protection they put on it makes it unplayable on newer windows versions - unlike the hacked version that works just fine. So why, why did i buy it when i get the better product from hackers? It kind of bothers me and i hope the witcher 3 makes tons of money without any kind of copy protection just to show others that copy protection won't sell more copies. ", "It's... complicated.\n\nOn one side, piracy it's pretty much a victim-less crime, since even if I pirate a movie, that's not the same as \"stealing a car\", and the original creator can still sell the movie and earn the same profit from it. Also, not everyone who pirates a movie or a game would have bought them anyways.\n\nThe argument of \"losing sales\" is also shaky, since losing a sale is not the same as being stolen the money. A game might also lose sales from bad reviews, for instance, and no-one could argue that the reviewers somehow \"owe\" the studio that lost money.\n\nOn the other hand, I worked at a game publisher where we were able to measure the rate of piracy of one of our most pirated games. It was 98.5%. \n\nOf course, not all of them would have bought the game, but enough of them would have. Enough of them that even a small reduction on that rate might mean a huge change on whether the game becomes profitable or totally fails.\n\nBut also, when you are talking about cultural products, there are societal benefits from people being allowed access to culture, that are different from most other luxury items. Culture is important, so important than in some cases the rights of society as a whole are considered to take first place, over the rights of the creator. That's why private copying is a thing, for instance, or why copyright and patents have a finite duration. There has to be a balance between the interest of society to have cultural products be accessible to as much people as possible, and the interest of the creator to be rewarded for them.\n\nSo, it's complicated.", "I don't have much money, you see. Media is on the absolute bottom of the list of things I am willing to spend money on, because I'm likely to not even enjoy most of the songs on a $10 album. \n\nSo basically, I'm not a customer to anyone and never really have been, as far as media like CDs and DVDs go. When I pirate, no one is losing my business. I wouldn't have given them my business in the first place. So I don't feel bad about it. \n\nI do donate to bands to purchase albums in band camp. Perhaps if other artists made it that easy and cheap. I think professional artists' pay is higher than it needs to be.", "Piracy is just sharing. Technology has allowed us to share information in a way that we can distribute and store it. If it isn't wrong for a friend to loan you his games then why is it bad to send it to you over the net. \nIf you had a photo-graphic memory, would it be wrong if you read a book and told your friends all about it from beginning to end?", "Not having a credit card makes using online movie, music, book, comic book, and game services kinda hard", "quick answer, things are sold for profit, people want things for the price they're worth, items are nowhere near worth the price theyre sold at.\nso people will try get their hands on it anyway.", "Although pirating is at an all time, so is concert and theater attendance (which ends up being more helpful for the artists and actors anyway). It's a double edged sword for sure.", "It seems to be an economic issue. The price of the material is high enough and the penalty for piracy is low enough (with respect to the odds of getting caught) that many people have determined that with the given risk/reward piracy is a reasonable option. I don't know anyone who engages in piracy that is unaware that it is unethical so the entertainment industry is wasting it's time with trying to educate the public. If they want to combat piracy the only way is to alter the risk/reward. Either lower prices or increase penalties. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cx424u5", "cx426oc", "cx43sje", "cx446in" ], "score": [ 7, 5, 3, 3 ], "text": [ " > To train, do they just memorize a bunch of random facts?\n\nYeah, that's basically it. They don't know what topics will be covered prior to taping so they just try to learn as much as they can. Ken Jennings, the guy who won 71 straight games on Jeopardy, did [an AMA](_URL_0_) a few years back and talks about training for Jeopardy (among other things--it's one of the more fascinating AMAs I've seen).\n\n\nHe's actually done 2 other AMAs, both just as good.", "The tricky part is saying everything as a question? Training is going great guys? ", "Yes, practice is about all there is. The great majority of the most successful Jeopardy contestants have also been great high school and collegiate quiz bowl competitors as well (e.g., Ken Jennings), which isn't surprising, as Jeopardy is really just a nationally televised quiz bowl. Success at those levels means an *incredible* amount of memorization and studying. At one point in high school I knew the entire lineage and dates for the English throne backwards and forwards. I have 0 interest in the British monarchy, but questions about it come up so often it's pretty much required learning. You build up your base of knowledge every year through rabid practice and reading.\n\nThe scoring peculiarities and button timing can be easily learned for most people familiar with quiz bowl. Jeopardy's most unique feature is the category titles. They're often either a pun or some form of misdirection. Identifying the thematic elements of the category is crucial to Jeopardy success.", "Arthur Chu, who had an 11-game streak in 2014, answered this question in an [AV club interview](_URL_0_). If you search around you can probably also find Ken Jennings's answer.\n\n > Literally the first thing I did when I got the call was to ask myself, “Do I feel ready?” And the answer is, “Hell no, I don’t feel ready.” Thankfully, we live in the electronic age. So without having to use too much ingenuity or creativity, I just typed “Jeopardy! strategy” and “Jeopardy! studying” into Google, and lo and behold…\n\n > Jeopardy! has been around for 30 years. All of the advice about how to study for Jeopardy! and how to play Jeopardy! has already been written. There’s a community online, called the J-board, of past Jeopardy! contestants and fans who just talk about this all the time. So I absorbed a lot of strategies from the greats. One of them was Roger Craig, who won a couple years ago and who broke the one-day total winnings record. He’s brilliant. He is a computer scientist, and he actually combed through an archive of past Jeopardy! games using an algorithm that scrapes all the clues out and figured out what the most common categories were, what the most common high-value categories were. Then he compared it to his own performance using flashcards to tell him where his most important weak spots were. \n\n > Jeopardy! feels like it can be anything, but most of the really random clues come in the first round. The higher-value clues in Double Jeopardy are much more limited. They’re much more about traditional academic knowledge, things that a gentleman and a scholar is supposed to know, like history, geography, literature. And Final Jeopardy is often really focused on Americana. They love state capitals, state nicknames, U.S. presidential facts. \n\n > You can’t possibly learn everything you need to know to get a perfect score, but to greatly increase your chance of winning, there are a few finite sets of knowledge that you actually can memorize. You can memorize what all the state capitals and all the world capitals are. You can find a list of all the official state nicknames and memorize those. And once you’ve done that, because those things come up over and over again, you’ve given yourself a big advantage. \n\n > There’s a program that Roger Craig recommended, that I ended up using as well, called Anki. It’s a free program, and it uses what they call space repetition, which is an algorithm that keeps track of how well you do on flashcards and focuses on giving you the flashcards that give you the most trouble at regular intervals. So you boost your knowledge where you need help the most. I’m not a computer scientist, so unlike Roger Craig, I didn’t have a super scientific way of judging what I needed to know. I just looked at his comments. “Oh, you need to know about Nobel Prize-winning literature writers. You need to know about U.S. presidential facts.” And then I just put together a little study guide and committed to it. I started doing that every night instead of going out with friends or acknowledging my wife.\n" ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/comments/fwpzj/iama_74time_jeopardy_champion_ken_jennings_i_will" ], [], [], [ "http://www.avclub.com/article/controversial-jeopardy-champ-arthur-chu-tells-his--201355" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fg4el55", "fg4m8ih", "fg52yh5" ], "score": [ 6, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "A bit is a binary 1 or 0. Data is transferred bit by bit, by having the electrical signal go high or low. The higher the bitrate, the faster the signals can be sent and processed.", "A Bit is just a tiny piece of data, either 0 or 1. The bit rate tells you how many of those bits are used in a second (sometimes minutes,hours,..) of a movie, music, ... . With a higher Bitrate, the quality is higher, but the file also ends up being larger, which is bad for slow internet connections or if you have limited space on your phone/computer. That’s why low Bitrate exists. The quality is lower, but it also uses less storage.\n\nThis is the reason why for example Spotify, YouTube and Netflix offer multiple resolutions like 480p. 720p ,1080p, ... so that every one can watch a video, even if their internet connection is not that great.\n\nSo Bitrate is basically a tradeoff between quality and file size", "Quickly said: bitrate just determines how much data you can transmit per time. If the bitrate is 20kb/s that means you can send 20 kilobytes of data every second.\n\nBandwidth is a bit different. This is also how much data you can max send at once, but not the same as bitrate" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3zqdr9" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "It varies greatly across states and countries, but here are a few pertinent factors:\n\n* length of marriage - often 7 or 10 years is required\n* whether one spouse was a homemaker or primary care giver\n* terms of the divorce - one spouse might get the house in lieu of alimony\n* presence of a prenuptial agreement\n* relative incomes\n* age - younger spouses are less likely to get alimony\n* need - a spouse with a chronic health problem might get higher alimony\n* fault - a spouse might get less alimony if they were found primarily at fault\n* gender - some jurisdictions presume women are less able to support themselves\n* remarriage - alimony typically ends upon remarriage " ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d5se0et", "d5setqv", "d5sew7e" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "I think you have a misunderstanding of the terms. A scientific law isn't something that's \"truer\" than a scientific theory. \n\nA law gives a relationship, a theory gives a reason why. Laws are not always true; they are only necessarily valid under the circumstances that the observations that they arose from existed in.\n\nFor example, Newton's Universal Law of Gravity only applies in weak gravitational fields. In strong gravitational fields, general relativity is a more accurate model.", "It's both actually. Laws and theories are actually completely different and one is not necessarily better than the other. A theory is an explanation of some natural occurrence whereas a law is a mathematical statement of how something occurs within defined limitations. Often times, theories will include laws within them. So a theory of gravity might address that the reason two bodies with mass are attracted to each other is that gravity exists and behaves in such and such way or it could go into what gravity is exactly (the mechanics of it etc). Newton's law of universal gravitation on the other hand, is the statement that the force of gravity between two bodies (in non-relativistic scales) is equal to G * m1 * m2 / r^2", "A “law” is a specific statement, usually an equation describing the relationship between two or more measurable quantities. For instance, Newton's law of universal gravitation:\n\nF = G m_*1*_ m_*2*_ / r^2\n\nA “theory” is a broader model of some set of phenomena. For instance, we might speak of the Newtonian theory of gravity. The centerpiece of that theory is that law of gravitation, but the theory as a whole entails other assumptions: for instance, that there is in the first place an attractive force (which we call gravity) between all objects with mass. Basically, if you were trying to explain gravity to someone who had never thought about it before, what you would tell them would be the Newtonian theory of gravity.\n\nAnother example would be the theory of general relativity. At its heart you have a certain physical law generally referred to as the “Einstein field equations”:\n\nR_*μν*_ - ½R g_*μν*_ + Λ g_*μν*_ = (8πG / c^4) T_*μν*_\n\nThe remainder of the theory of general relativity is the explanation of what those letters represent and what any of it has to do with gravity.\n\n“Gravity” is neither a theory or a law. It is just the word we use for a physical phenomenon. We have two standard well-developed theories of gravity: Newtonian gravitation and general relativity.* The former is substantially easier to work with, but we know that it is not perfectly accurate and in some extreme cases it is not sufficiently accurate. The latter is much more complicated, but it seems to work in all testable cases (although there are some questions remaining about some extreme cases that we can't currently test). Each of those theories consists of both laws and other matter." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dkvtuap", "dkvug5i" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Most plant cells are meristematic. In other words, every cell in a plant can differentiate (turn/grow) into whatever tissue that it needs to at the time - provided the right conditions and signaling. \n\nIn human physiology, we call this cellular ability pluripotency. The only human cells that have this ability to differentiate at large into different tissues, would be stem cells. ", "These are different reproductive strategies. In nature, the more diversity a species has means the more likely they will survive to reproduce. Think of it like not putting all your eggs in one basket.\n\nPlants growing from bulb would be genetic clones of each other. This is useful because you don't need something to pollinate your flower and you don't need a sexual partner. The downside is that as clones, they are more susceptible to disease. Commercially, growing from bulb is also beneficial because it means you can guarantee to the customer that their tulips are going to be the same colors as what is on the box.\n\nFlowers (and all sex organs) require male and female gametes (sperm and egg) to make offspring. The benefit to this system is that this mixes up the genetic material of mom and dad, producing unique combinations. Think about how in big families some kids look more like one parent versus the other and some siblings look more similar to others, despite coming from the same parents. More genetic variation means more trait diversity, means more chances at least some of the offspring will survive to reproduce." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e0sphuk" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "He did quite a few really important things. One of the things he’s most recognized for is that he discovered what’s called Hawking Radiation. \n\nBefore him, black holes seemed like they could only do two things, get bigger by having matter fall into them or stay the same size forever. Then Hawking applied a fun little bit of quantum mechanics to the black hole which implies that black holes can actually, very slowly, radiate energy. This means that black holes aren’t stagnant at all, but can “evaporate.” \n\nAnother quick thing is that he proposed a way of solving the quantum information problem with black holes. For a long time, there has been a problem where it seems like black holes destroy quantum information, which is a huge violation of a lot of fundamental physics. He proposed a solution to this, which I don’t understand nearly well enough to put in simple terms, that involves using something called the holographic principle that allows black holes to behave how we expect but still preserve information. \n\nSixty Symbols on YouTube has a few great videos on Stephen Hawking, which I recommend if you’re interested. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6w2rir", "d6w2stw", "d6w9i5i" ], "score": [ 5, 10, 2 ], "text": [ "It's generally up to the parents or guardians to have the say on whether or not the child is mature enough to handle the scene. \n\nEdit: Ah! You're referring specifically to foreign examples. The easy answer here is that most countries in Europe have a more \"relaxed\" viewpoint towards sexuality. Talking about sex in a public forum, especially France, has been an socially acceptable/tolerated thing for a long time and it is reflected in their pop. culture (TV shows, movies, media in general).", "The second one isn't sexual. France has some fairly lax laws (especially in the 70s-90s) so that wouldn't have even raised an eyebrow. \"PG13\" films had full nudity in them at the time.\n\nThe first example is a little more difficult but I imagine they were never actually touching, other than kissing. There'd have been something inbetween them off camera (that's what the editing is for) or in some cases they're blue-screen in after the fact and using a body double.\n\nThat's how a lot of the \"real\" sex scenes in Nymphomaniac weren't the actual hollywood actors even though you see their gentiles on screen - it's not theirs.\n\nI also presume at some stage parents were asked and there's likely a guardian for insurance purposes to make sure nothing illegal happens or accidentally happens.\n\nYou will need some sort of permission for this, especially in the USA. A normal person can't film themselves like that with a kid in private, that'd be considered (or argued for) sexual assault on a minor.", "'R' ratings, and legal constraints, are different in each country, and on different ends of the issue. The ratings are about what allowed to *viewed* by people of this or that age, and there are huge regional differences. The legal constraints in your question are about what is allowed to be *filmed*, and, again, there are huge regional differences.\n\nThe films you mention were both filmed in countries that don't freak out over nudity, an aspect that doesn't translate across borders very well. (The US release of Malèna had 17 minutes edited out.) The French film contained nudity, not sex, and nudity isn't considered harmful there. The laws protecting child actors still require parental consent and oversight, but this was a non-issue.\n\n(slight spoilers below)\n\nIn Malèna, in the movie, Renato's scenes with Malèna all take place in his imagination. The one time he has an actual encounter, he imagines the prostitute is Malèna. This abstracts the (in-film) issue quite a bit, removing a lot of the otherwise squicky feeling that would have existed had these encounters actually and knowingly involved Malèna. And making the one real encounter take place with a prostitute in a brothel that his father took him to covered the issues of consent reasonably well. (His spying, and one of the things he saw while spying, was more squicky than the sex scenes... and most of the things the character saw, the actor didn't actually see.)\n\nIn real life, the 14-year-old actor really was nude in that one scene, really did touch two different actresses (just touched with his hands, not doing anything 'sexual' by the standards of most countries), and was really quite embarrassed at the time that his parents (who vetted everything) were present the first time he saw a naked woman (according to the actor at age 16, in interviews when the film was released).\n\nThat \"never saw a naked woman before\" tale sounds like BS, likely concocted for the benefit of his parents.\n\n(\"So, do you just not have internet, or ...?\")" ] }

[]

[ "http://xhamster.com/user/septictone/posts/55972.html", "http://www.kidinthefrontrow.com/2010/06/interview-with-giuseppe-sulfaro-star-of.html" ]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cfp6kn5", "cfp8dvw" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "It's called \"cellular\" because the land the network covers is broken into cells (not biological cells). Each tower is responsible for wireless communication in its cell.", "The cells that the term Cell Phone refer to relate to the arrangement of the towers, in that they are a number of relatively small tower sites, rather than one big tower to cover a region, as pre cell phone mobile car-phones used.\n\nThe cell concept allows handsets to use smaller antennas, lower power, higher UHF frequencies, and reusing frequencies in areas on different towers." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d8uiamg", "d8uogzu", "d8ur3x6", "d8uw0o1", "d8v6ohd" ], "score": [ 46, 4, 2, 16, 6 ], "text": [ "Evergreen trees most often have needles instead of leaves. With the needles having a smaller surface area, evergreens can better withstand colder temperatures. Also, the trees will go dormant when water is unavailable for photosynthesis. These adaptations allow the tree to stay green year round.", "They also have a form of antifreeze they produce in the needles and trunk. \n_URL_0_", "The thicker sap also helps with them being taller than other trees so they are better equipped to compete with other species without needing to expel more energy on evolutionary adaptations ", "FYI, plants survive the winter. Perrenials drop their leaves and wait for warmer weather. Other plants can survive underground and regrow during their growing season.", "OH MY GOD! Finally my terrible joke is relevant. \nWhat do you call a tree that works out? \nA *gym*nosperm! \nAnd that, my friend, is exactly what an evergreen is(though not all gymnosperms are evergreens)!Those fruit and flower bearing plants that can't handle the chill? Most likely angiosperms. A totally different phyla! So, to put it in the most simplistic way possible, evergreens stay green because they are in a completely different phyla than the plants that don't. Not so fun fact(for the trees): When a tree drops its leaves, it loses nutrients. Evergreens typically live in cooler climates- and when its not hot, things don't decay very fast. Which means, the soil is not exactly...tasty. Thats a problem. So, how do they cope? Well, if losing leaves means losing your nutrients, and you can't replace what is lost, you probably want to hang on to those leaves! Don't get me wrong- they still lose leaves- just *gradually*, rather than all at once. Kinda edgy of them, eh? And theres, you know, the whole waxy coating thing. But someone else already explained that, so Ill just leave you with this :)" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [ "http://www.wvdnr.gov/wildlife/magazine/archive/04Winter/winter_wonder.shtm" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dc3oxqo", "dc3wizs" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "First, a little background immunology: when your body makes immune cells they are tested against your own cells from various parts of your body. During these tests if the cell reacts to one of your own cells they are allowed to recombine their receptor to change what they recognize, and if they fail and react again they are killed. So all the cells that go into circulation don't start attacking your body. Sometimes this fails and leads to autoimmunity. \nWhen a cell in circulation recognizes something as foreign ie. Not self they are activated and release signals to multiply and have other cells come and join the fight. Depending on the invader the cells that are recruited in the fight vary. Because the cells signal other cells and duplicate cells that recognize this invader the immune cells acting against it increase exponentially until the threat is killed. ", "The white blood cells respond to chemical signals using molecular receptors on their surfaces. I imagine what happened in the gif is that the concentration of the chemical signal(s) triggering the cells to attack the parasite reached a critical threshold. Also, the white blood cells sometimes signal each other to attack, so the attack can snowball quickly once it starts.\n\nCool gif!" ] }

[]

[ "https://giphy.com/gifs/l0MYDnU10G1spIeMU" ]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "erlrlm4", "erlrxq0" ], "score": [ 8, 5 ], "text": [ "Found this article for you from popular science. But in short it is called the bradycardic reflex. It is a mammalian diving reflex, the same one that makes us gasp for air when we fall into cold water. Apparently in babies it help keep them from inhaling milk into their lungs.\n\n_URL_0_", "It's a natural reflex to the sensation of a sudden cool rush to the face. The reflex causes us to hold our breathe when our face is submerged, as water is very good at drawing heat away. Babys have little control over it. That harder to breathe feeling you get when you face into a strong wind or drive with no wind screen is that same reflex." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/kinderlab/born-swim/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ddxr9dw" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Each pore is surrounded by a layer of skin tissue. A pore isn't an open hole deep into your body; it's a very shallow hole." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "coyfvgr", "coyfwbf", "coyfx1b", "coyfxwb", "coygkf9" ], "score": [ 8, 6, 4, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "A chihuahua and a great dane aren't different species, they're different breeds of the same species. A cat and a dog are different species. ", "Mainly because they're different breeds, not different species.", "They're the same species, but different \"breeds\". Think of them like different ethnicities in humans, except mostly on purpose. There is a huge variety of different types of people, but if we employed the same selective breeding practices we use with animals we would have those crazy extremes, too.", "All dogs came (evolved) from wolves so they are very similar genetically. Basically they are the same type of animal, just with different shapes and sizes. This is also how horse breeding and donkey/horse breeding works. Since they are so similar, their genetic material can interact normally. This would not happen with species that are very different, i.e dogs and horses because the genetic material simply would not match or be able to reproduce.", "Dogs may look *very* different, but those differences are the result of a relatively small number of genes. They don't look like it on the outside, but they are similar enough to be considered one species and be able to breed with one another. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ew9o0cq" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Sous vide.\n\nIt's not fast, actually it's crockpot slow, but it's very energy efficient." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cm5gjri", "cm5gp1y", "cm5hjse", "cm5ofw7" ], "score": [ 3, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "You aren't creating a perfect vacuum, but you are reducing the air pressure inside the cup, causing the ambient air pressure outside to hold the cup to your face.", "You're not quite creating a vacuum, but you are decreasing air-pressure within the cup/bottle by sucking air out. Since the air-pressure inside the bottle is less than the pressure outside the bottle, you get the \"suction\" effect.\n\nNote: It's not really \"sucking\" your lip in. It's actually the pressure of the atmosphere around you that's pushing your lip into the bottle.\n\nYour lungs are not strong enough to create a total vacuum. Additionally, a typical glass bottle would break were you able to suck all of the air out. The surrounding atmospheric pressure would be too great and would crush the bottle. This doesn't happen normally because the air inside the bottle is at the same pressure as outside the bottle, so the air inside is pushing back against the air outside with the same amount of force (thus no net force exerted on the glass of the bottle, and no breaking).", "You are reducing the air pressure of the cup by sucking air out; you are not creating a vacuum, human lungs are not that strong.", "Air weighs a massive amount, when you suck all the air out of a beer it \"wants\" something to fill that void. In this case, the closest thing was your lip that gets \"sucked\" into it. Suction is just creating a really low pressure area, and you've done that by sucking all the air out." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c28rumb", "c28ruzz" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "1) No they don't pitch in the same amount. The USA like most nations uses a progressive tax system, where the higher your income, the higher the tax you pay. The richest get away from this system with offshore accounts, tax loopholes, and the like, which is why Obama said \"they pay less taxes than their secretary\", which is often true.\n\nThis system stems from the idea that those with luck and success have a responsibility to care for those under them, and is popular among most people (but not the rich, obviously).\n\n2) Parties only stand for a policy if it is politically expedient for them. Both want to cut spending, because it's the only option at this point, but some Democrats also want to raises taxes to increase revenue. Republicans have made it clear that they only want huge spending cuts, which has held up the process thus far.\n\nDemocrats tend to favor cuts in military spending, \"corporate welfare\" and subsidies, and to let tax cuts expire.\n\nRepublicans are interested in across-the-board cuts, specific in domestic spending like medicare (healthcare for the elderly), medicaid (healthcare for the very poor), and Social Security, while not toning down much (if any) of the military / intelligence / counter-terrorism spending.\n\nSo I think that's it in a nutshell. Questions?", "Republicans in general want to have as few taxes as possible. Many of them have signed a pledge from a man named Grover Norquist that they will not raise taxes at all. Democrats in general want to raise taxes on the rich because they have extra money that they do not need. Even though you would think that the rich already pay a large percentage of taxes (and they do) some people think they should pay more. Often, rich people make their money from stocks that they own increasing in value rather than salary. This is called capital gains and it is taxed at only 15% not 35% like rich incomes. The 15% is smaller than the % that some middle-class people pay in income tax. This is how some rich people pay a lower percentage of tax than people who make less.\n\nOn cuts, Republicans generally want to cut social programs. They do not believe that redistributing wealth is the role of government. They want military, roads and infrastructure, and other safety/efficient roles from government, but not moving money from rich people to poor people. Democrats generally want to keep social programs and reduce spending on the military. They think that we don't need to pay as much for wars or keep an army that is as big as our army is.\n\nEDIT: spelling/grammar" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e7avwa3", "e7aw1s9", "e7aw25a", "e7awpjt", "e7axctv", "e7ay56c" ], "score": [ 3, 6, 10, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "It's not new at all. Society usually wants the most experienced people in charge of making the biggest and most crucial decisions, because they're less likely to make foolish mistakes (or just not know what to do) from inexperience, and also because they have loads of friends and connections developed from a lifetime of activity.", "National-level politics requires a lifetime of making connections with the rich and powerful, who are mostly old themselves. And once you're in, there's really no reason to ever get out. The political power structures in America encourage incumbents to stay for as long as possible, and make unseating them extremely difficult. So you end up with Congress looking like the Alzheimers ward.", "Politicians in their 20s and 30s tend to be at lower levels of government running for offices and taking positions working their way up the ladder. They are mayors, city councils, county seats, State legislators, and the like. It takes years to build up a record and enough public support and awareness to progress to the higher ranks such as Governors and Federal offices. ", "The politicians from the 20s and 30s are still running the place from what I can tell.\n\nWelcome to no-term-limits ", "The avg lifespan is nearly 80. \n\nAmerican elections are biased towards incumbents. Elected at 46 to the Senate? Odds are you will be reelected at 52,58,64,70, until you retire\n\nThere has long been a tendency in history to be ruled by the oldest and supposed wisest. And most devious and crafty.\n\nInnovate when young, slow and steadier as you age.\n\nBusinesses like stability. They back status quo candidates. Investor's like stability. Homeowners like stability. Retirees like stability. Etc.\n\nWho doesn't like stability. Youth. \"Let's tear it down remake it anew.\" Burn it down. Anything is better than now. \n\nThe truth is there are far worse possibilities than now. \n\nSo there is always a back and forth between Burn! and Status quo.\n\nSo you have been reelected the 4th time. You've learned hard lessons from politics. No major health problems. Why not give it another go and keep us on path forward, not backward.", "This is definitely not a new trend. In fact the word \"senate\" is ultimately derived from Latin *senex* meaning \"old\" (via *senatus* \"council of elders) and is related to the words \"senior\" and \"senile\".\n\nAs for why this happens, there are a few reasons. Old age has always been associated with wisdom and older people have far more experience to draw on when making important decisions. It also takes a long time to build a reputation, which is essential to getting yourself elected. And relatedly, when a party is choosing candidates for an election they are much more likely to select people who have been in the party for years and proven themselves, than a newcomer who is more of an unknown quantity." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [], [], [] ]