Datasets:

vblagoje

/

lfqa

like 16

{ "a_id": [ "dnd8qeo" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "It depends a lot on the drug as to what's happening in the body, but two general reactions is that the drug either induces a standard process in the body, or replaces a hormone in the body. In either case, the body learns to stop inducing or producing whatever process the drug supplements because it saves the body energy (which is the body's ultimate goal).\n\nWhen someone stops taking the drug, the body freaks out because it's suddenly missing a critical process. The withdrawal symptoms are the body reacting to this missing process and attempting to get things started again.\n\nPeople can die because some processes are necessary for life and the body dies without it or without proper care when it stops." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c1v8nin" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Unless this is *very* recent news (i.e., the last day or so), then I don't think it's true. There hasn't been a supernova in the Milky Way for some time -- [they average at just a couple per century](_URL_0_) -- which is an interesting problem in itself. \n\nYou should be fine using the HST image. " ] }

[]

[ "http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070110-pillars-creation.html" ]

[ [ "http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Integral/SEMACK0VRHE_0.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ch3mujd", "ch3n0vp", "ch3o860", "ch3pem0", "ch3rr8k" ], "score": [ 2, 3, 16, 8, 2 ], "text": [ "The geography, I imagine. The Sahara is the top of a huge, vast expanse of Equator-straddling continent with a far less complex coastline, while Southern Europe is full of bays penetrating northwards into a smaller (which generally means a less stable climate), cooler \"continent\" (Eurasian peninsula). Also yeah, Southern Europe is quite dry and rocky as well. Unsure, but I think it also becomes immediately mountainous once you get to the edge of the Mediterranean, where Africa's Atlas range starts and then whatever created that continues on into Europe.\n\nThose mountains are certainly a key component; the Mediterranean is just one influence of many.", "Anything closer to the equatorial line of Earth more likely tend to have hotter climates. You have to remember that the Earth tilts on it's axis, so even though they're directly East and West of each other, the position where they face the sun is dramatically different. Northern Africa falls in the Tropic of Cancer, the circle of latitude on the Earth that marks the most northerly position at which the Sun may appear directly overhead. The Tropic of Cancer is generally hot and dry except for easterly coastal areas where orographic rainfall can be very heavy, in some places reaching 4 metres (160 in). Most regions on the Tropic of Cancer experience two distinct season: an extremely hot summer with temperatures often reaching 45 °C (113 °F) and a warm winter with maxima around 22 °C (72 °F). Most land on or near the Tropic of Cancer is part of the Sahara Desert, whilst to the east the climate is torrid monsoonal with a short wet season from June to September and very little rainfall for the rest of the year.", "Okay, so the comments so far only are only partially correct but the main reason is persistent high pressure which results in subsidence. There is a concept referred to as a [Hadley cell](_URL_0_) which is a basic description of how the atmosphere circulates. Essentially, the equator is hot and the poles are cold. Hot air rises and cold air sinks because cold air is more dense. To generalize, air from the equator moves toward the poles and air at the poles moves toward the equator. But it's not that simple since we are dealing with three dimensions as well as the Coriolis effect (sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Coriolis force) not to mention a variation in topography and surface cover (water vs bare land vs heavy vegetation). In any case, as you can see in the image, the Hadley cells near the equator depict air rising at the equator, moving poleward, and then decending at around 30ish degrees latitude. This descending air is key because as air descends, it heats up due to compression (more air pressure at the surface than aloft). The warmer air gets, the more water vapor it can carry. Now, there is such a thing called relative humidity...which is basically how much water vapor a body of air is holding vs. how much it could hold before producing precipitation. Since the water vapor content of the descending air does not change (because air of different temperatures and humidity tends not to mix very easily), the relative humidity goes down. To put it another way, say the air is 50 degrees F and has 100 units of water vapor, and it can hold 1000 units of water vapor at that temperature. In this case, there would be 10% relative humidity. Now, when that air sinks, it might heat up to say, 100 degrees F and since it is warmer, it can hold more water vapor (say, 10,000 units) so the RH would be 1%. Of course those numbers are completely fictional, but it illustrates the concept. \n\nTL;DR...air is generally descending over the sahara due to persistent high pressure. Descending air heats up adiabatically and causes RH to drop. Therefore, there is a major deficit of precipitation year round. ", "To explain it like to a 5 years old:\n\n1. Most of the coast of North Africa isn't a desert, it's actually just as lush as Southern Europe. Morocco through Algeria to Tunisia is all green, while Libya is much drier and Egypt is completely dry.\n\n2. The cause are prevailing winds, in Europe they can either blow from the north or the south and they will always bring moisture, because Europe is surrounded by oceans. North Africa is less lucky, the coast where the winds bring moisture from the Mediterranean is OK, but the coast were the winds bring only dry and hot wind from Sahara are also desert.", "In order to fully understand this we must first remember the general rule that **hot air rises**. This is how hot air balloons work. The air inside the balloon is heated, becomes less dense, and floats upwards, just as a canoe might float on water. \n\nThe difference in climate that you are talking about is the result of a hot air cycle. At the equator warm, moist air that the intense rays of the sun have heated rises into the sky. When that air is high enough, the water in that air liquefies and rains down above the equator. This is where rain forests occur. However, the air that carried that water into the sky doesn't become liquid air. It remains a gas and has to find somewhere to go. So now we have this warm, dry (all the water has rained down) air just floating there above the equator. \n\nNow we must remember that this is a continuous process. After a \"batch\" of air has dumped its water, another batch is close behind, and this \"trailing air\" forces the now-dry air away from the equator, north and south. This warm, dry air lands at around 30 degrees north and south of the equator, right where the world's major deserts are located. That is how the Sahara desert of northernish Africa develops. This cycle repeats itself as far as the poles, resulting in a wet-climate, dry-climate stripped pattern along the crust of the Earth. \n\nA couple drawings _URL_1_\n_URL_0_\n\nedit: forgot to add an adjective. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earth_Global_Circulation.jpg" ], [], [ "http://clasfaculty.ucdenver.edu/callen/1202/Climate/GenCirculation/HadleyDiag.gif", "http://www.ucar.edu/learn/images/fastcirc.gif" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ch2l1wh" ], "score": [ 14 ], "text": [ "In general, the surviving sculptures, vases, and writings describing male beauty in the Greco-Roman world depict the ideal of beauty for men (especially young men) as being hairless, thin, athletic, and with a small penis with a tapering foreskin. Large penises are most often found on satyrs, ugly old men, and barbarians, which suggests that they were viewed as grotesque, comical, and outlandish. In his study *Greek Homosexuality*, Kenneth Dover writes:\n\n > In caricature and in the representation of satyrs a penis of great \nsize, even of preposterous size, is very common, and it is a reasonable \nconclusion (though not, I admit, an inescapable conclusion) that if a \nbig penis goes with a hideous face, and a small penis with a handsome \nface, it is the small penis which was admired.\n\nAs for why this would be the case, we can only speculate, but *Greek Homosexuality* does a good job of arguing why and how Greco-Roman conceptions of sexuality were not the same as modern conceptions of sexual orientation. Sexuality was considered more fluid, especially in the case of sexual relationships between older men and adolescent boys, which were not seen to make either of the participants exclusively homosexual. Therefore a standard of male beauty evolved around what these older men desired in younger men, which tended to be a slim, hairless, somewhat feminine physique with a small penis, rather than a more virile or well-endowed standard based around, for example, female sexual pleasure or desire. It was the older men who largely ran Greek and Roman society, and who created and patronized most of the art and literature, so it is their concept of male beauty which we know about.\n\nA PDF of *Greek Homosexuality* is [here](_URL_0_). I pulled that quote from page 126.\n\nEDIT: I realize this answer is mostly about the Greeks when OP asked about the Romans, but from what I've heard the Romans had similar views on penis size as the Greeks, and *Greek Homosexuality* was the best academic source I could find about ancient Mediterranean dick size preferences." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://tajakramberger.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/k-_j-_dover_greek_homosexuality_updated_and_witbookfi-org.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cos0dgl" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The air oxidizes the oils in his fur, changing the way it smells to us. It happens to people too. Try smelling yourself before and after you spend some time in a windy area." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ddok27b" ], "score": [ 22 ], "text": [ "The *intuitive* reason is that angular momentum has an associated rotational energy. This energy increases the mass of the black hole (through E = Mc^(2)).\n\nNow, if you fix the total mass M, increasing the spin J then increases the fraction of M that is due to this rotational energy, and decreases the fraction of \"normal\", or \"bare\" mass (mass it would have if not rotating).\n\nAt a certain point, the bare mass becomes zero and M is entirely due to the rotation. This is an extremal Kerr hole. If you continue increasing J then the bare mass must become negative, which means the BH has become superextremal. Superextremal BHs are unstable and are impossible to create. Intuitively because negative mass is impossible.\n\nThus, for any given total mass, there is an upper bound on the spin which is given by the extremal black hole. Normal black holes satisfying the bound are called subextremal." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cnh9z3w" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The actual cultural dress? No idea. But they were definitely not dressed like belly dancers. The average Muslim woman would have covered the majority of her body other than her face, hands, and feet. Muslim males would have covered the same area except for manual laborers who might have taken their shirt off while working. The actual outfits might have varied from place to place within the Abbassid caliphate but that is what would have been covered by free women in the major cities. \n\nOf course, in distant lands controlled by the Abbassids, you could have any range of dress. I think ibn Battuta mentions in his travels to Africa that he was shocked by how much skin women showed. However, the fact that he was shocked by it shows how rare it would have been in central Abbassid lands." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fc4nnbb", "fc4nsh3", "fc4sthx" ], "score": [ 6, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "If that spinal cord isn’t cut, you won’t die instantly. Granted, you won’t live long with a severed carotid without immediate medical attention (even then it’s a crap shoot).", "Some nerve endings may still be attached and still allow the brain to transmit to the body but once the connection is severed than your body while pretty much stop. Some automated responses may still allow the body to move but not for long.", "Brain still connected to rest of body? Body alive." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ca1o20s" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "Both are types of what are known as *melanocytic lesions* - basically areas with a greater amount of production of melanin than the rest of the skin. Melanin is the pigment that is responsible for difference in skin tone and also the colour of moles and freckles.\n\nMelanin is produced by cells called *melanocytes*. The difference between freckles and moles is as follows:\n\n**In freckles** - no increased number of melanocytes, just an increased amount of melanin\n\n**In moles** - increased number of melanocytes AND an increased amount of melanin\n\nMoles (AKA melanocytic naevi) can arise as either a hamartoma (birth mark) or as a neoplasm (an acquired mole, usually benign [non-cancerous]).\n\nMoles can also be one of three types, depending on their location in the skin:\n\n**Junctional** - flat and brown/black in colour\n\n**Intradermal** - raised. Most are flesh-coloured (i.e. no pigmentation)\n\n**Compound** - slightly raised, brown/black in colour. Think of them as a combination of junctional and intradermal\n\nHope that helps!" ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dlvlc4w", "dlwtq35" ], "score": [ 5, 3 ], "text": [ "There are functional relationships where one species invests itself in raising the young of another, although the examples I'm familiar with are completely one-sided, which makes them parasitic and not symbiotic. Consider for instance the cuckoo, which will lay its eggs in another birds nest and just ... leave. The other bird cannot tell the difference between its eggs/chicks and the cuckoos, and will raise the cuckoo chick as its own. In return, [the cuckoo chick grows quite fast, is robust, and will kick the hosts chicks out of the nest until it alone remains. Definitely not symbiotic](_URL_5_), but you've got the \"species A raising the offspring of species B\" side of things.\n\nYou suggest the existence of hollow plant nurseries that want fertilizer. Those sort-of exist. There are actually quite a few of those in different unrelated plant lineages such as the south/central american orchid [*Myrmecophila tibicinis*](_URL_2_), southeast asian plants of the genera [*Myrmecodia*](_URL_4_) (these might as well be called pre-fabbed ant nests) and [*Squamellaria*](_URL_3_) as well as [*Acacia cornigera*](_URL_0_) in Africa. Those that I know of are ant-hosting specialists aka [\"myrmekophytes\"](_URL_1_), and the relationship varies from full grown symbiosis to mutualism. The ants nest inside the plant and patrol the surface, providing protection from parasitic insects and (to some extent) from grazing. Their dejections may also provide nutrients, although the extent to which that matters may vary from one species-couple to the next. The plant provides shelter, and in some cases food through extrafloral nectaries. However, the plant's relationship is with the ant colony as a whole, and not just the young, so it's not quite what you asked for in that respect.\n\nI've also heard of (but have no direct knowledge of) a so-called \"babysitting symbiosis\" between two species of brittle stars (see: [Fourgon, D., Jangoux, M., & Eeckhaut, I. (2007). Biology of a “babysitting” symbiosis in brittle stars: analysis of the interactions between Ophiomastix venosa and Ophiocoma scolopendrina. Invertebrate Biology, 126(4), 385-395.](_URL_6_)) It doesn't sound as involved as the term \"babysitting\" would suggest.", "Some species of ants effectively \"farm\" aphids. The ants protect the aphids and their young from predators, often dying in the process, and in return the ants \"milk\" the aphids for honeydew that they excrete. The \"milking\" does the aphids no harm, nor does it negatively impact their offspring and the ants get nutrients from the dew." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomyrmex_ferruginea#Mutualistic_symbiosis", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrmecophyte", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrmecophila", "http://content.invisioncic.com/r247451/monthly_2017_06/DSCN9915.thumb.JPG.fbafabb2debc9e36cdd4897fe37ebc1d.JPG", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrmecodia", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo#Brood_parasitism", "https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230096180_Biology_of_a_babysitting_symbiosis_in_brittle_stars_Analysis_of_the_interactions_between_Ophiomastix_venosa_and_Ophiocoma_scolopendrina" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9jza1r" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "No one knows the answer to this question.\n\nThe Planck length just represents the scale at which our current models break down, the scale at which a theory that combines gravity and quantum mechanics will be needed. What the new models that work at that scale will tell us about physics at that scale or smaller is an open question." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cslzi0u", "cslzjl8", "csm4h8q", "csm8lvp", "csm9fql" ], "score": [ 79, 17, 9, 5, 3 ], "text": [ "They aren't in serious competition, for one; those are entirely different price points.\n\nAlso, China.", "Most of the phones that area straight up copies are usually officially commercialized in countries where either U. S. patent laws don't apply or where they know they won't be prosecuted for them. For example Xiaomi in China.\n\nGoing after the minorists who import them and sell them on eBay would be a waste of time and money. Specially since they don't really pose a big threat to the genuine device sales.", "Because there are hundreds of these 'fake' companies, ranging from pure scams to fakes that are almost impossible to tell from the legitimates. Many of them are either untraceable or based in countries where copyright laws do not apply. If Apple did somehow take one company down 10 more would spring up in it's place and the cost/profit ratio is just not worth it. Not only that but if they start going after the smaller guys they will be seen as bullies by many who would then boycott them", "International patent law is nuts. You have to file a patent in each place, which is costly and time consuming to do. Some places can't or don't enforce things anyways. It's not worth it to fight in many cases.", "International patent law is a tricky bitch. If your government isn't willing to threaten/go to war over your patent, tough shit son. Forgein companies can do whatever they want. \n\nSo american products get patented, then the patent is generally respected in a lot of places. Then there are a lot of places it isn't respected, mostly second and third world areas. Most noteably China. \n\nEDIT: China is a second world country, by the goddamn definition of a second world country (Allies or Sattelites of the USSR) Felt the need to clarify because I can already hear the \"China isn't a third world country\" stuff in my inbox." ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "csdwe98" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Not a silly question. There were two types of calls that could be made during this time: person-to-person and station-to-station. If you had a specific person you wanted to talk to you would request a person-to-person call. You wouldn't be billed for the long distance charges until that person came to the phone. This was metered by having the operator on the line with you until the person you wanted came to the phone. Station-to-station calls were made when you didn't really care about who you talked to and one could leave a message with the person who answered if it was intended for a specific person.\n\nInterestingly, person-to-person calls are still available though I don't think anyone uses them anymore. If you look at AT & T's [rates for operator assisted calls](_URL_0_) it shows why one might have hesitated to use this service. The prices were much higher for person-to-person. The upside was you'd likely get billed for fewer minutes.\n\nAn interesting note about billing.. the way that billing worked back in the early days of cross country calling was that it was billed in three-minute increments. I have an advertisement from 1927 from a magazine (unfortunately I don't know what magazine as it was just the single page when it was given to me) that says that a call from San Francisco to New York was $9 per billing segment. If you take inflation into account that would be around $120 or $40 per minute today! Clearly you had to be very well to makes calls of this type for personal reasons.\n\nNow regarding privacy, when working with the telegraph and telephone companies at the time there were often a number of people involved in the loop. With telegraphs there was someone on the sending and receiving end who were privy to your communications. With phone calls it was very easy for the operators along the route to listen in, though it wasn't really standard operating practice to do so. The employees of whatever company was employed were of course supposed to keep everything in confidence but you can imagine this wasn't always the case.\n\nThat's not to say that privacy wasn't a concern. There's a documented case of a tenant trying to break a lease when they discovered their calls were being listened to. A judge in the 10th District Municipal Court of New York City ruled that it was legal for the lease to be broken. (New York Times, Dec. 1, 1907, p. C12) Relatively early on there were concerns from the financial industry about telephone privacy as well. (See a letter published in the New York Times, Apr. 22, 1916, p. 10) It wasn't really until the advent of Direct Distance Dialing in the 1950s and 1960s that one could feel relatively secure in an operator not listening in on their calls." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=13695" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cmt4vzw" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "/u/RobusEtCeleritas has a good explanation. It is also important to know that the masses of atoms are measured in amu (atmic mass units), where 1 amu is 1/12 the mass of a carbon 12 atom. This takes into account some of the binding energy that was brought up, but not every atom has the same binding energy per nucleon (protons and neutrons) so essentially no atoms besides carbon 12 will have an integer number mass in amu." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvxsvlz" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Do you mean what race *would* be Attila today? Race as we know it today is an early modern construct that wouldn't have played the same role in his life, akin to saying was he a Christian or a Muslim. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbivejs" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Hands, feet, the face, the mouth and the external genitals have a very large number of nerve endings that give a high level of the sense of touch in those parts. Other parts of the body are a lot less sensitive. Some internal organs sense no physical pain at all. It's pretty easy to see why the body has evolved this way: a good sense of touch in the hands and feet is required for climbing trees, peeling fruit, working with tools etc., and being able to accurately feel and taste what you're chewing on can also be the difference between life and death. That the pain caused by a splinter is disproportionate to the problem may be just an evolutionary side-effect." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cpcog56", "cpcv5ui", "cpe23ef" ], "score": [ 17, 97, 4 ], "text": [ "Can you provide a link to the article and a source for the \"unqualified assurance\"?", "Under the theory of nuclear deterrence, most nuclear weapons states have little reason to build beyond that quantity of warheads. It's enough to effectively destroy any country. That's one reason why most nuclear weapons states stop near the 300 mark. The US and Russia are the exception because of their massive arms race during the Cold War.\n\nSource:\nThe Spread of Nuclear Weapons by Kenneth Waltz and Scott Sagan has a lot on this topic", "First of all, I would like to note that the capability of available delivery systems matters almost as much, and perhaps more, than the total number of warheads. I can't really comment more on this topic in regards to the PLA 2nd Artillery Corps without violating the 20 year rule of this subreddit.\n\nMore importantly though, the PRC simply didn't have the military resources or technology to devote to a large scale nuclear weapons production program or large numbers of advanced delivery systems. \n\nLastly, the PRC didn't have a nuclear policy that relied upon being able to fight what could be a long, large scale nuclear conflict with the USSR or USA. Instead, the PRC appears to have adopted a nuclear policy similar to India or Pakistan: [minimum credible deterrance](_URL_0_) Their nuclear arsenal is meant to make the potential costs of nuclear escalation with the PRC greater than the potential benefits of such a confrontation. The USA may be able to flatten every military base and major city in the PRC. How much are Americans really going to care though if the Chinese are able to hit say: Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago with high yield warheads?" ] }

[]

[ "http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21645729-quarter-century-after-end-cold-war-world-faces-growing-threat-nuclear" ]

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

{ "a_id": [ "csz6vzi" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ " > BUT if you have a - day, theres a i dunno + 10% bonus that it will be a - day tomorrow too. \n\nThen it isn't a Markov chain. A Markov chain's defining property is that the future evolution of the system depends *only* on its current state - it is \"memoryless\". You could still do a Monte Carlo simulation, since those are much more general." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d7hj1ih" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "The components of the electric and magnetic fields are different in different inertial reference frames.\n\nBut they can be written in terms of an object called the [electromagnetic field tensor](_URL_0_), which is relatively straightforward to transform between frames.\n\nFrom this tensor you can construct two invariant quantities, which are the same in **all** inertial frames.\n\nIn Gaussian units, they are (**B**^(2) - **E**^(2)) and **E∙B**.\n\nFor an electromagnetic wave, it turns out that *both* of these quantities are zero. And since they're invariants, they're zero **in all inertial frames**.\n\nThe second one specifically is relevant to your question. If the dot product of two nonzero vectors is zero, they are perpendicular to each other. This means that the electric and magnetic fields in an EM wave are perpendicular **in all inertial frames**. The fact that they're perpendicular in one frame implies that they're perpendicular in all frames.\n\nI'm not sure if this is what you're looking for when you say \"significance\", but it's an interesting fact nonetheless." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_tensor" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3q6s8o", "c3q6zt4", "c3q74qr", "c3q8q0g", "c3q9hcl", "c3qafgi" ], "score": [ 110, 9, 11, 4, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "**Edit, Source:** [I am on a course to acquire one of these in Physical Education.](_URL_0_) ~~There's no way to compare it to American qualifications, so I wouldn't bother trying if I were you.~~\n\n > If there's a corresponding track, it would have to be closer to [Advanced Placement](_URL_2_) level courses offered in high school. These courses are not offered to every high school student, and generally only the top students even attempt to take these classes. The coursework is more rigorous and standardized than ordinary high school classes. At the end of AP classes, a standardized test is given, and if you score high enough you receive credit that is transferable to colleges and universities.)\n\n~[the_longest_troll](_URL_1_)\n\n***\n\nYes and yes.\n\nYou know how \"riding a bike\" is built up of different things that come together to create the act itself, as a whole? These are \"sub-routines\", they make up the Executive Motor Programme, or skill, which is what riding a bike is.\n\nNovices will begin at the cognitive stage of learning, it won't be \"muscle memory\", you're just figuring this out. \n\nThen you get better and you kinda get it, you know when you still fuck up in sport but you also manage some pretty decent stuff? That's associative. Regarding riding a bike you're still not in the \"muscle memory\" sort of league, you'll want to keep both hands on the handlebars, etc, but you're not useless. To be honest, this stage isn't as evident with riding a bike. You don't go straight from Cognitive to Autonomous, but the lines between the stages (Cognitive --- > Associative --- > Autonomous) are more blurry.\n\nThen you have the mastery of the skill which occurs through constant practice of it. Here you can just *do*, you don't even need to think about it (ever get in your car and then just arrive at your destination with no memory of getting there? That's because you're so good at it, you don't need to give it your full attention, so to speak). This is what you're talking about about, this is when you've \"grooved\" the skill so it means instinctive. I've not ridden a bike in years (my old one broke, can't afford a new one), I'll still be able to get on one and ride as if I'd been riding this whole time. It's a EMP that has been committed to my Long-Term Memory, it isn't going anywhere because LTM is, theoretically, unlimited.\n\nKinesthesis. It's one of the senses that most people forget and plays a big part in balance. For instance, stand on one leg. Now close your eyes. You can feel yourself making sure you don't lose your balance, right? It's involuntary but it is something you also have control over.", "Above a certain speed, the rotational energy stored in the wheels (energy due to angular momentum) is great enough that it will keep you from falling over. You'd need to actually try to tip the bike for it to fall. Think of a sideways gyroscope -- you need to apply a force to the system to change its position.\n\nIn practice, mountain bikers will often go *faster* down a tricky slope to take advantage of the added stability at higher speeds.\n\nThere's lots of smaller muscle memory skills cyclists use:\n\n1. Track standing allows a cyclist to stand in one place, by turning the wheel in one direction (to control side-side roll) and using micro motion forwards and backwards to maintain balance. There is no way to do this cognitively. Very helpful on technical terrain and in track racing.\n\n2. When braking, cyclists feel the vibration and resistance of the brake levers to prevent the wheels from locking up. When the wheel is close to lock up, the levers become still and their resistance goes down -- this is when you reduce braking pressure. Instinctively they move their center of mass backwards to get more braking force from the rear wheel (more normal force, more grip from the tire).\n\n3. When biking up a rocky hill, there is a characteristic \"jerking\" of the handlebars when the front wheel slips. Beginners will often lose control because they don't know which way to jerk the wheel to regain traction.\n\n4. When descending, mountain bikers will stand up from their seats with knees bent and decouple themselves from the shaking of the bike. By lowering the impulse against the bike when it hits rocks and roots, they maintain a higher speed and are less likely to lose control.\n\n5. My favorite -- clipless pedals (the ones you twist your heel to release) require lots of practice. In case of a crash, you should very well have the heel twist committed to muscle memory or you can be seriously injured.", "Technically, aergardfgs answer is mostly correct, but the long term memory aspect is not quite there. There are MANY types of memory, and this skill learning is a specific type of memory called implicit or procedural memory. Long term memory generally refers to declarative memories - like what you were doing for your 12th birthday party or where you parked your car this morning. When you're first learning a skill - any skill, be it riding a bike or mirror-drawing or anything else - you have to train your brain's motor system to perform complex actions with very little variability. Think about tennis - when you first start playing tennis, you can hit the ball, usually over the net, but where it lands is more or less incredibly variable. You cannot really \"aim\" with great precision or accuracy. However, if you play for a long time, you can hit the ball to the same spot repeatedly with great precision and accuracy. You don't have to \"think\"about how to swing; you just do it. \n\nThe way this works in the brain is there is a whole network devoted to the more-or-less automatic skill learning that we do. It's called the striatum, or more specifically, the cortico-thalamic-basal ganglia (or striatal) loop. This system learns actions, and is capable of generating actions with great consistency. However, it takes a VERY long time to learn these actions. Once it has learned it, though, it takes a VERY, VERY long time to forget them. So, for riding a bike, a long time ago you rode a bike long enough to train your striatum to react to the various things that occur during a ride - how you need to shift your weight to maintain balance, how to pedal consistently, how to coordinate your leg muscles so you're applying downward force with the right leg when you need to be, how to steer, etc. It took a long time for this to become \"second nature\" - think about all the times you fell. However, once you were proficient, your striatum really did not forget it too much. \n\nAs per the basketball question (why is it that it appears if you don't play a sport for a long time, you aren't able to just pick it back up again like riding a bike) - that question was very nicely answered by the physics of riding a bike by aridese and also again by aergardfgs (whose name is very hard to spell correctly). Basically, once you get a bike going fast enough, it is very stable. Hence, most of what you need to learn is how to get it going and how to not lean over and fall. For basketball, you need to coordinate lots of muscle movements with visuospatial input in order to be accurate - just like tennis. If you take two players - one who has played a lot, but not in a long time, and another who has played very little but recently - the old pro will be better than the novice. Also, consider that when you played lots of basketball, you were probably young and in better shape. Your brain learned to play basketball with your old brain's body - a young, less-potbellied, and more coordinated body, perhaps (if you're like me, that is). It has to adjust to the new way your body moves - it's old muscle coordinations now have some error in them. This is like learning to play squash (on a small court) and then going to play tennis. Much of the racket movements are the same, but the court itself is now different, and your skill with a racket needs to adjust to both the changes in the court and the changes in the ball. \n\n*edit: gave credit where credit was due.", "Motor control in the body is a little weird because the high level cognitive parts of your brain who's information you're aware of are many layers of nerves away from your muscles which do the actual flexing. If I think, \"Move left hand!\" That signal has to go from frontal cortex to premotor cortex, to motor cortex, to thalamus, to midbrain, to cerebellum, to spinal ganglia, and only then to the muscles. Each step of processing makes the original signal more concrete. My frontal cortex just said \"move left hand,\" my cerebellum (for instance), translated that into the complex pattern of neural firing I needed to coordinate the movement of my hand (there are a lot of muscles which need to work together to move a hand, something has to tell them how to do so). \n\nProcedural memories (aka, \"skills\" such as riding a bike), are distributed across all of those regions, each little component has learned a little about how to coordinate the general motor program. As your skill improves, all of the systems get better at their particular job. So in some sense you could call them \"muscle\" memories, because the muscle fibers are one of the things that changes, but it would be equally correct (and misleading) to call them \"spinal ganglia memories,\" which nobody does.\n\nA good analogy for these systems that learn procedural memories might be like a plane's autopilot. Unlike in a plane, we don't fly our bodies manually, we just tell the autopilot what we want to happen. Procedural memories are special commands that the autopilot has learned to do very well, so we can just give it a quick order like \"ride that bike,\" and it does so very well. ", "First off, one must consider that cycling is an unnatural act. In the long history of our evolution, pedalling a bicycle is a very new thing. Therefore it is something that must be learned.\n\nDriving a bicycle is a coordination of a wide variety of muscles for balance, breathing, steering and actually propelling the machine. The majority of the activities are unnatural and require both gross and fine motor skills.\n\nOnce you get past the basic balance and forward momentum, you've only begun to learn the techniques that make one an efficient cyclist. Pedalling 360 degrees at high revolution requires incredible coordination of fine motor skills. To master these skills requires years of training.\n\nIf there is muscle memory, it's stored in the neurons. I have no scientific evidence of this, but I believe memory is distributed throughout the body in both muscle and nerves. I find exercise helps me learn inspired by a study which showed that students learning French while riding exercise bikes in class out performed students in desks.", "I'm not a memory expert, but well versed enough to say that any answer that does not include the terms or descriptions of implicit memory and procedural memory should be taken with caution.\n\nRemembering to or the act of riding a bike after years of not riding one would fall under something called [procedural memory](_URL_2_), which is a form of [implicit memory](_URL_0_).\n\nImplicit memory is all the memory-type junk that isn't explicit, that is, you can't declare in any way an awareness of how things are happening. Procedural memory is the form of memory which allows you to do things in an automatic way (and even learn things after repeated attempts). An awesome example of procedural memory (which demonstrates the implicit part) is when HM (the amnesiac) was able to learn how to draw a star while looking at it in a mirror. He was awful at it on his first try. After lots and lots of attempts day after day, he was really good at it. He had anterograde amnesia (with some retrograde) which means he can't form new _explicit memories_. He was never aware of doing the star task. And one day, from his perspective, he was just awesome at it out of the blue. But it's because he practiced over and over and over (i.e., procedurally). Repetitive motor tasks fall under the term \"[motor memory](_URL_1_)\", but motor memory is not exclusively procedural memory, or the example of never forgetting how to ride a bike.\n\n\nThe act of learning how to ride a bike would fall under muscle memory, but the act of getting on one and riding into the sunset 12 years later would be procedural memory." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCE_Advanced_Level", "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pkvnl/is_riding_a_bike_muscle_memory/c3qa2u0?context=3", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Placement" ], [], [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_memory", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_memory" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "clykz35", "clyxpvb", "clyzmqy", "clz10dj" ], "score": [ 435, 6, 13, 4 ], "text": [ "\nThe main reason why water burns when it goes up your nose is because the salinity of the water does not match the salinity of the cells in your body. The salinity of freshwater is much lower than your body, so when water gets into your nose and into your sinuses, some of the cells that line the sinus and nasal cavities burst open and die because they rapidly suck in water - like overfilling a water balloon. Your body responds by rapidly secreting mucus to coat the remaining cells and protect them from the water. \n\nThis whole thing involves three steps: (1) osmosis of water into the nasal cells; (2) many cells burst (cell lysis), and (3) the responds by releasing mucus.\n\n[Link](_URL_0_)", "I've never been able to jump into a pool without plugging my nose because of this problem! Never successfully learned to dive because of it. I always thought that I was just weird. ", "Maybe there is a technique I never learned, but I just cant swim underwater without wearing nose-plugs. I see people diving, doing flips, seemingly all fine. Whenever I go underwater, if I don't breath out of my nose I always get water in it, and it burns immensely. ", "I don't know about the first two situations, but the last one is most definitely my cellmate Steve. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080518184129AAHC04b" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c25sbkd" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Hi there. \n\n\nAfter digestion, your lipids are packed into droplets known as chylomicrons. From there, they are transported to the liver and re-packaged as lipoproteins (containing cholesterol, triglycerides, fatty acid etc). \n\n\nSo as these lipoproteins, fresh from the liver, transport fatty acids, cholesterol and triglycerides around the body via the circulatory system. They start off as VLDL (Very low-density lipoproteins) and as they move around the body, depositing and distributing fatty acids and cholesterol, they come into contact with HDL which in turn removes part of their core (triglycerides) via breakdown of lipids. Also, the high triglycerides content in VLDL is exchanged for cholesterol with HDL. \n\n\nSo after the exchange of triglycerides and cholesterol with HDL, VLDL is changed into LDL. LDL has a high cholesterol content due to this process. As it moves around the body, distributing cholesterol and triglycerides, some of the cholesterol are distributed onto the walls of the blood vessels. As time passes, this cholesterol deposition will increase in size due to more cholesterol being deposited. Another term for this mass of cholesterol is plaque. Inflammatory responses from the body will cause this plaque to be formed and eventually break off. This often resets in heart attack if the plaque is large enough to enter and clog up the coronary artery.\n\n\nPros of LDL: \n\n- distribute triglycerides, cholesterol, lipids etc around the body for functioning\n\n- helps to regulate the body's lipid balance (homeostasis)\n\n\nCons of LDL:\n\n- may result in cardiovascular diseases when in excess\n\n- too much of LDL can also bring by obesity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus (II) etc\n\n\n\nHDL are deployed by the liver to collect back cholesterol, and also to exchange these cholesterol for triglycerides with VLDL as mentioned earlier on. Basically, HDL acts as a cleaning agent in the system, clearing some of the cholesterol that may result in cardiovascular disease in the body and in particular, the circulatory system.\n\n\nPros of HDL:\n\n- Cleans up the circulatory system of cholesterol\n\n- Helps regulate the balance of lipids\n\n\nCons of HDL:\n\n- Not too sure" ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e2gul32", "e2gv2ui" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "The same reason the inside of an oven doesn't return to room temperature the instant you turn it off. Both the atmosphere and the ground absorb heat during the daytime. It takes time for this heat to dissipate after the sun sets. Furthermore, and this answers some of the second part of your question as well, air doesn't stay in one place. There are both local and global weather phenomenon that move air around, so warm air can be coming from elsewhere on the planet. As for your claim that it's only 5-10 degrees (I assume you mean Fahrenheit) cooler at night, that's your personal observation in your specific location for a short period of time, not fact. There are tons of historical weather records from all over the world at different times of year and different points in history that show the actual daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal highs and lows, and I think you'll find there's a ton of variation. ", "Thermal systems are very slow. By system understand stuff that heats up or cools down. Like fridge, boiler or Earth's immediate surface and atmosphere. It takes relatively long time for these systems to change temperature.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nMake yourself a cup of cofee and examine how does it lose heat. How does heat move from one place to other? There are 3 ways. Convection, conduction and radiation. \n\n**Convection** is symply moving hot stuff from one place to another. Pour cold water into the coffee, that would be convection. This doesn't happen with Earth, Earth doesn't lose hot mass nor cold mass is added.\n\n**Conduction** is by contact. Two things with different temperatures are in contact then the hot thing will lose heat and the cold thing will gain it. When you pour the coffee the coffee starts hot and the cup is cold. The coffee heats the cup and by doing so loses heat. This doesn't happen with Earth because Earth is surrounded by vacuum. There is no stuff around it to absorb the heat.\n\n**Radiation**. This is harder to explain but you can imagine that (any) stuff \"glows\" heat out into surrounding space. The amount of heat radiated out is relatively low compared to other methods but this is the only method how Earth can lose heat.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nSo the reason why Earth stays warm during night is because it is relatively well insulated by the vacuum of space and the 12 hour night is not enough for it to radiate significant portion of heat into space." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6laaxz", "c6lb35f" ], "score": [ 2, 4 ], "text": [ "I can't answer all of this without doing more research, but the velocity is derived from its momentum - there is no new force or thrust being applied, the zero-resistance conditions in space simply allow it to go for a very, very long time on momentum. Where that momentum comes from isn't clear; science isn't sure of the origins of comets.\n\nIf it literally passes *through* a star or planet, the complete destruction will slow it down much more than the planet's gravitational field.", "You can think of a comet entering our solar system as a ball rolling down a hill. As it gets closer and closer to the sun, it'll speed up more and more. When it heads away from the sun, it'll be slowing down, like a ball going uphill. This is because of the effect of the sun's gravity. It won't otherwise come to a stop, per se. It'll be in some sort of orbit.\n\nIt is, however, possible for something else to change that orbit. For example, Jupiter has redirected comets into new orbits when comets have passed too close to it." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cc7ew0v", "cc7f26i", "cc7ffgu", "cc7g1qw" ], "score": [ 10, 5, 9, 2 ], "text": [ "If you are a white American, it is because that is the same race. Brits and Australians speak the same language as you, just with different accents. An Asian has learned your language even though it is not their native tongue, and you would be mocking them.", "Its not the accent that's offensive, its the execution. Some people overdo it and then things just get really uncomfortable.. I'm asian and i grew up in a diverse neighborhood and I would laugh at any accent, asian included, no matter who says it as long as its not blatantly insulting the culture. If you're just being a dick and you're ignorant of the culture or just socially inept, you're gonna come across as racist. Just a general thing.", "Also historical context. You may be young and have not participated in it, but offensive Asian accents have been around longer than you and often part of a larger current of racism. Look at the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's as an example. Watch that and tell me there isn't a difference between that and the same actor doing a British accent. You may not mean anything...but your actions don't exist in a vacuum but rather in a dialogue with the past. It's not fair, it's not always logical, but it's that way for a reason...", "Context is everything. If you're from New York and imitate the accent of someone from Appalachia in order to mock them it is just as offensive as any other contrived accent. In the context of the given examples the person affecting the \"Asian\" accent is in fact imitating a perceived deficiency or irregularity; which is at best insensitive and at worst racist. When considering these kinds of questions in the future try to step beyond your confusion and analyze precisely what the intent of an action is and you can often see where the negativity comes in." ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "dlzv0m8", "dlzzn9h" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Two reasons.\n\n1. The Beatles. They were HUGE, and seemingly came from nowhere. They became the most popular band in history, and inspired many small time bands and musicians in England to try and go big as well.\n\n2. Empire. GB used to basically rule the world, and a lot of the world took up parts of British culture because of it. This probably allowed a band like the Beatles to have success a lot faster, as most of the world was already attuned to the British taste in music and art.", "Well, it might have to do with the fact that England makes some of the best amps in the world." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cem37fe" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I assume when you say \"approach the CoM\", you mean drilling a borehole.\n\nThe [Shell Theorem](_URL_0_) states that it decreases. Assuming the body in question is radially uniform, the gravity at a point inside the body is equal to the gravity pull as if the mass above you (i.e. the \"shell\" of earth above you) didn't exist.\n\nFor instance, if you were 10km inside earth, the surface gravity there would be equal as if the first 10km of earth was \"shaved\" off, and you were standing on said shaved earth. Hope that made sense. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ecef8db", "ecefh9z", "ecekyhw", "ecevq6g", "ecewmbj", "ecexali", "eceztvl", "ecf1xe2", "ecf21ai", "ecf22ln" ], "score": [ 67, 87, 540, 114, 32, 12, 3, 5, 5, 9 ], "text": [ "Blaming a generation is simplistic thinking. Blaming boomers for ruining housing is as silly as blaming millennials for killing Blockbuster Video. The world changes, people adapt no matter their age.\n\nThere are several factors that have made the cost of housing go up. The main one is the amount of land is fixed and the population is increasing. There is still lots of cheap rural housing, but nobody wants to live rural anymore. In 1950's America, 12% of the labour force worked on farms. Now it's under 2%. \n\n20% of the population lives in 97% of the land. The other 80% of the population is trying to squeeze into 3% of the land. That's why prices are going crazy.\n\nOther issues include the stock market hasn't been doing great, so people are investing into real estate. This includes foreign investors, 7% of American property buyers are now foreign. \n\nIn response to increasing property values, governments responded by changing laws to make it easier to get mortgages. This actually makes things worse by inflating prices even more.\n\n ", "In a nutshell, they have used the housing market as a safe investment and turned it into a giant self sustaining bubble. There is no significant shortage of houses, but it does not matter how many you build if the wealthy buy up starter homes and develop them for maximum profit. It's outright exploitation of the young & less wealthy, but it is socially acceptable exploitation.\n\nThe end result is that those joining the ladder for the first time are paying a massive premium for no other reason than they got on the ladder later, paid to those who have created the artificial scarcety. Renting used to be a way to save money, now the average rental cost in the UK exceeds the mortgage cost, so those not born to money are effectivly punished with higher living costs.\n\nThe worst part of all of this is even if we change borrowing rules to prevent property being as insanely attractive as it is right now, those hit the hardest by a bubble collapse will be the ones who just got on the ladder.\n\nMany of the generation before them considered the practice abhorrent. The seller of my parents first property refused to allow them to pay what the house was worth then, because the idea of a young family having to work *a decade* to pay off a house repulsed him. I can only imagine that banding together and living on a shoestring during the world war was antithetical to the currently worshipped attitude of \"fuck everyone else, I'm getting mine\". A number of the elderly in my town used to rent homes out at significantly below market value to young people (particulally young families), but over time most of these have been inherited and bumped up to full price.", "The short answer, we don’t make as much money as they did.\nSlightly longer answer: US household median income in 1970 was $9,780 which has a buying power of $64,700 in today’s money. The current median US wage is 61,800, about $3,000 less or effectively 5% less money available per year than they did.\nNext, median home sale price in 1970 was $23,600 or $155k in today’s dollars. The median sale price in Jan 2018 was $330k; double what they were paying ‘back in the day.’\nSo, you have to spend on average 25-50% more money to get a home with 5-10% less money.\nThis is all due to wage stagnation relative to productivity and inflation. Or otherwise said, wages did not keep up with the cost of goods and your dollar just doesn’t go as far.", "In California there are 2 specific things they have done, Prop 13 and refusing to allow houses to be built. \n\nProp 13 froze their property taxes (with incredibly small yearly increases), so their taxes are subsidized by charging new buyers many multiples more in taxes than what they pay. \n\nThey also don't allow new houses to be built. So while they sponge off young people and don't pay their fair share of property taxes, non-rich young people can't buy houses at all. Because they've limited supply, housing prices have skyrocketed. \n\nThey don't pay their fair share now, and will sell for great profits when they decide to leave. All the while, squeezing the life blood out of young people in both taxes, and rent, and preventing them from having a permanent stake in the community. \n\nThe greatest generation gave birth to the greediest generation. \n\nEdit: Put wrong prop number, like an idiot. ", "Millennials were sold a bill of goods that they could never succeed without a college degree. Now they are drowning in debt, but the out of touch politicians blame avocado toast!\n\nI’m a near the end boomer (born early 60’s), but my husband and I put our three millennials through college. They have loans but not too much, but we ended up using a lot of home equity to get them through. So I guess that make us worse off now, nearing retirement age, than our own greatest generation parents \n\nPS why do we need labels? It seems so adversarial", "Boomers are retirement age. They're investing in housing with their savings while collecting government benefits. Those government benefits saddle Gen-X and Millennials with nearly 18% of their salaries going towards those benefits. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nLow interest rates make housing an enticing investment. Since rural housing is not as useful to the working generation and they can't afford to purchase the urban housing, it basically means that investors are sucking up properties at low rates and increasing rents to meet demand. \n\nSince interest rates are so low, there's no incentive to let housing go. It's makes more sense to let a house go unrented and unsold instead of renting at lower prices or selling a house not making money currently\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAll of this is pretty reasonable economics except for:\n\n\\- the \"investors\" taking 18% off the salaries of the workers. \n\n\\- the \"investors\" are also responsible for the insane amount of debt forcing interest rates to stay low. \n\nFixing either of those would help level out the bubbles and allow market forces to balance it out again. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nBut good luck getting FICA reform or paying off debt. \n\n & #x200B;", "I doubt it was the baby boomers alone, although they could be a contributing cause.\n\nWhenever you have extreme income inequalities, you're going to run into problems like this. It doesn't matter how those inequalities happen (high wages, people with a whole lot of money moving in, etc.), it creates an environment which puts upward pressure on prices, since any capitalist economy involves some degree of implicit (or explicit) bidding.", "Boomers are also the champion of NIMBY laws that prevent affordable housing from being possible or profitable. ", "Wages haven’t risen as quickly as housing prices, largely due to executives from that generation. Bankers/finance people from also were overly-eager to give mortgages, regardless of credit, and then invested that in shady ways, which is what caused the 2008 crash. It’s a lot more complex than that and we can’t put the entire thing on a generation, but their lack sending trickles down and the predatory lending practices definitely made things a lot worse. ", "Oh right this is ELI5. Okay.\n\nYou're in preschool. You like to build with blocks. Or maybe you like to put things in boxes. Every time you do that, we're going to give you a nice shiny quarter. Don't eat it or spend it on candy! When you get to elementary school, you'll be able to turn in a certain portion of those shiny quarters in to the teacher for a playhouse. You get to be in charge of that playhouse and decide which friends you let in and what you put in it and what it looks like. It's YOUR playhouse. You can scribble on the wall with crayons all day and can choose which color crayon. Isn't that nice?\n\n\nUh oh. All the elementary schoolers already bought those playhouses before you got there. Because the teachers are grossly underpaid they didn't have the energy to prevent it! Now those middle schoolers want you to give them twice as many shiny quarters! You don't have that many quarters! Instead, you can give them the normal amount of shiny quarters, but now it's not YOUR playhouse. It's THEIR playhouse. You keep giving those shiny quarters every month, but you can't decide what it looks like. You can't do everything you want to it. You have to listen to what they say.\n\n\nAre you gonna take that Timmy? Or are you gonna gather up your friends and push some middle schoolers off the top of the slide? Okay Timmy, I'm going to teach you some French. It's a fancy language. Repeat after me: Viva. La. Revolucion. " ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "fbizsea", "fbjegcl" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "Essentially, \"building credit\" is just showing that if you borrow someone else's money, they can trust you to pay it back. If I'm a random stranger, you probably wouldn't want to lend me a bunch of money, but if a bunch of people you trust all vouch for me that they loaned me money and I paid them back in full and on time, you might be more willing to consider it.\n\nAs to why it's important, if you want to finance a large purchase like a car or a house (or even if you just want to raise the maximum on your credit card), your bank is going to want to know they can trust you to pay them back before they'll put the money down for you.", "Showing that you have borrowed money before and paid it back in time is a good way to prove that you are reliable enough to be trusted with a bigger loan. Having enough income to make the payments is obviously important, but it does not prove that you have the discipline not to blow all your money on something else. It's sort of like a recommendation from a previous employer. An employee who was reliable and on time in his previous job is likely to act the same in his next job, because people don't change.\n\nThe benefit to you is that you will get lower interest rates on your loan (they will lend you the money cheaper). The interest rate is essentialy composed of two parts. The first one covers their profit they would get from whatever else they would do with the money had they not given it to you. The second part is a risk premium which makes it worth it to them to give their money to someone who may not pay it back. The more reliable you are on paper, the lower will be their risk premium which means lower interest rate for you." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3zgs1o" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ " > How does it get built up?\n\nEverything is made of charges of positive electricity and negative. The two kinds of electricity are carried by the protons and electrons of atoms. But usually an object is electrically \"neutral,\" because its own pos and neg charges are equal in number and cancelled out.\n\n\"Static electricity\" happens when the positives and negatives aren't in perfect balance. To create an imbalance, just pull some positives out of one object and put them on a second object. The first object ends up with excess negatives, and the second object will have excess positive charge.\n\nThe usual way to create the imbalance is to push two different surfaces together, then peel them apart. When different surfaces touch, they unequally share atoms and charges. When the surface are pulled away from each other, usually one surface ends up with too many negatives, and the other has too many positives.\n\nIf you walk across a carpet, you will leave positive footprints behind, and your shoes will become negatively charged. The charge on your shoes leaks to your body. Don't reach for a doorknob or you'll get a big zap!\n\nIf you sit on a chair for awhile, then get up again, there will be a highly charged butt-print on the chair. And your clothes end up with excess charge of the opposite polarity. (Now don't dare to touch the car door!)\n\n.\n\n > Why does it hurt to be moved from one object to another\n\nThe little spark is hotter than the surface of the sun. It's plasma, and gives you a tiny burn. Also the high voltage in your skin at the spark location can trigger the nerves in your skin to signal hot, cold, pressure, pain, etc.\n\n\n > but not by just having the electricity in my body?\n\nWhen you're charged, you might feel slight prickles as your body hair stands on end. But you won't feel pain without the 10,000 degree spark plasma drilling through the dead skin layers and into the live tissues below!" ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ffbkx79" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "You will destroy your joints, your body is not Designed to have weight on the ends of your limbs and why we gain weight on our butts and bellies. Also the weights tend to flap around a bit when you move pulling in directions you don't want. \n\nPretty sure there is a 'because science' YouTube video on this topic if your interested." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dkn9o53", "dkn9p0c", "dkn9rtw", "dknarx2", "dknb3s0", "dknba1x", "dknbel5", "dknbmiv", "dknboy1", "dkncbmv", "dknce2j", "dknco2b", "dkncuw5", "dkncv0t", "dknd6uz", "dknd807", "dkndmzo", "dkndwhr", "dkndxoc", "dkne2qm", "dkne6pu", "dkne6zs", "dknepyw", "dknezo3", "dknf1y6", "dknfaev", "dknfh7u", "dkngp84", "dkngsmo", "dknh2vd", "dknh37j", "dknhjtb", "dknhsqq", "dkni1b0", "dknilos", "dknji4u", "dknjj86", "dknjjxp", "dknjo9a", "dknjuv8", "dknk330", "dknk91j", "dknl2qy", "dknl3nf", "dknl9f3", "dknmd23", "dknmw0h", "dknn4cc", "dknn5s2", "dknnnaa", "dkno03t", "dknoc1v", "dkns3el", "dknsp1g", "dknt4wd", "dknt5vx", "dknthpr", "dknu3kz", "dknub6d", "dknul9o", "dknvm92", "dknwo8c", "dknxekr", "dknyqht", "dknz402", "dknzzi9", "dko1ixx", "dko1m2e", "dko1q5x", "dko213l", "dko2q6i", "dko4h27", "dko4rmw", "dko4uhb", "dko7i4p", "dko7yab", "dkoab2b", "dkofn27", "dkogf6r", "dkognbu", "dkogqui", "dkoo113", "dkoo2n9", "dks0xb3", "dkun7ms" ], "score": [ 315, 14, 430, 13233, 4804, 650, 22, 27, 266, 2598, 6, 382, 2, 6, 44, 73, 39, 41, 30, 6, 45, 8, 4, 3, 20, 9, 2, 4, 8, 6, 6, 2, 3, 5, 3, 4, 24, 61, 2, 2, 24, 2, 2, 4, 2, 1588, 2, 3, 3, 6, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 6525, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "They don't produce it themselves, they just pay some other company to make it and allow them to put their logo on the packages.\n\nOften times the store brand version of something is made in the same factory as the real brand stuff.", "They aren't made by the same company, they're just sold under the same brand. Target and Wal-Mart don't make most of the things sold under their store brands (they license a manufacturer to make the products that will be sold under the brand).", "The company making Generics is often times the one making the named brand too. Lots of companies have multiple brands for product that comes off the same time. Sometimes it made with the same stuff and sometimes their will use a lesser ingredient.\n\nAlso there is a whole industry out there call contract\nManufacturers that make everything. You can hire one to make any product. They make named brand stuff and their own stuff. \n\nIt's the reason a lot of generics are as good as the name brand products. It's marketing and such that makes you feel better about buying tided than the target version.\n\nThere are also companies out there that make \"white label\" products that you can just brand how ever you want just send the graphics and you are on your way. Same goes for clothing too\n\nTo be fair there are things that aren't as good so there are examples where generics aren't as good. Tons of ask reddits on that subject.\n\n", "Because they don't actually make it.\n\nCostco doesn't make \"Coscto Whisky\" Costco has a contract with (it's not but for ease of names) Jack Daniels. And again for ease I will use \"Bottles\" not \"Barrels\"\n\nIf Jack Daniels sells their whisky for $20 a bottle, say it costs them $10 to produce. Costco says \"We want to buy your whisky at $15 per bottle, but we will order 10,000 bottles. We're going to resell it as Costco Whisky\"\n\nJack Daniels says \"Sure thing, but here's an Non-Disclosure Agreement. You cannot tell anyone Costco Whisky is made by Jack Daniels.\"\n\nJack Daniels may only make $5 per bottle instead of 10 but they just sold 10,000 bottles. Costco paid $15/bottle, cost the $1/bottle to re-label it and they sell it at $18/bottle.\n\nSo it's cheaper to buy costco & they still make money. They then do this with many other products.", "Most manufacturers are actually contracted by multiple companies to produce similar goods - they maintain a single assembly line for something like shoes, dresses, furniture, washing machines etc.. The workers in the factories receive specifications for each of the stations, and do the same simple task - applying a half dozen screws in 30 seconds, nailing a heel to shoe, attaching a plastic face plate - regardless of the product in question. Much of the customized work is from either automation that presses steel and plastic into pre-fabricated molds, or from templates that show exactly where someone cuts a piece of fabric, leather, leg for a chair, etc.. \n\nMuch of the \"fashionable\" work of goods, such as a name tag, designer face plate, or novel engineering feature such as more settings on a washer-dryer, will fit the same templates or molds, and when the same line of goods is sold to Target or Walmart, they'll simply skip the steps in the manufacturing line that adds those features. In the case of outer shape or color differences, the manufacturer will use left over stocks of last year's fabrics and prints, or less complex molds that can cast more copies of a plastic shell without losing the details that are on the higher end models.\n\nIn fashion in particular its not uncommon for Target or Walmart to contract with a middle tier design house (i.e. Martha Stewart brand, etc.) to copy particular features of last season fashion styles, which avoids paying licensing costs or royalties to expensive Parisan or New York fashion designers. The features might be the length of a dress, features of asymmetry, types of prints or patterns on fabric, etc.. After the top end design houses have finished production runs with factories, Target or Walmart will contract the same factories to run their knock off designs with cheaper fabrics using nearly identical templates, or less sophisticated prints that use fewer dyes. They'll also skip a lot of the quality control checks, or accept more defects per individual item to squeeze as much volume from a contracted order as possible.", "I can recall watching a TV show, or a segment of a show or something shot in a facility that canned vegetables. They would literally have two different lines going. One where the vegetables were canned and then sent to a holding area. The second was where the bare cans were pulled from the holding area and sent to be labeled. Maybe Walmart brand now, then that order was filled and they moved on to Green Giant, then Target brand, then Del Monte, then whatever order was next in line. The exact same vegetables, only difference was the label that went on the outside of the can.", "I work for Asda (Wal-Mart uk)\nI know most of our own branded products are produced by the major suppliers but are lower quality. Also we usually make a 10-50% loss. \nWeetabix make our own brand weetabix.\nNestle make our cheerios and most other children's cereal.\nYoung's make most of our fresh fish.\nThere are dozens of other examples.\nWhen I scan a product with a Telxon gun, it gives me all the information including the manufacturer and profit margin which are usually in the negative with our smart price range.\n", "My mother worked in the office of a major chemical producer. Johnson & something else like that. They labeled 10 different product lines, sometimes the packaging is different (bottle/box/size) but the actual mixture was the exact same.", "I work for a food manufacturer that sells shrimp and frozen items. We co-pack (industry term for making product under another label) for a few of the biggest grocery retailers. \nThe shrimp we co-pack is the same as the shrimp we pick under our own brand. It's just raw shrimp so there isn't much we could do to differentiate anyway. The frozen items that we co-pack are always a slightly different take on something we make. They'll send their recipe for us to use, or we'll make some adjustments to give them a unique item.\nWe prefer to sell our own brand so hat we can build brand equity, but co-packing is a good way to build the relationship with the retailer. And they probably already have built-in brand equity in their label so the volume can be immediately high.", "When I worked at burtons foods ltd in Moreton, Wirral. We used to make most of Cadburys biscuits. *Fun fact, every single Cadbury chocolate finger that you ever ate came from there, up until the factory closed a few years back (6-7 years ago I think). Anyhow, after we did a full run of say Cadbury wafer bars then after the required amount was reached production was paused whilst they changed the packaging and labelling rolls over for say Aldi or Sainsbury's etc and then just carry on. Note; sometimes though not always the recipe was tweaked very slightly (more or less sugar, fat or whatever). \nAlso if the shipment was going to a different country other than UK say the US or the Middle East the recipe was changed a little for the same product from the same company due to that country having its own preference in tastes. So yes, the same product from two different countries CAN taste different even though they have came from the same factory and made, packaged and sold by the same company. Some may find this interesting, I did. ", "I see a lot of people saying they buy from the manufacturers but some of the bigger chains stores will produce items for the manufacturers. \n\nExample. HEB in Texas makes Mrs Baird's bread", "Procurement and supply chain professional here.\n\nArcher Farms, Great Value, Kirkland's Best, and Private Selection, for example, are what's known as \"[private labels](_URL_1_)\" for retailers Target, Walmart, Costco, and Kroger, respectively. For the most part, I believe, these examples are specific to food products; retailers can have several labels, each for different categories of products. Check out [Walmart's list of private labels](_URL_1_) ; it's quite an array. \n\nPrivate labels are the result of an arrangement between a company and its supplier called [contract manufacturing](_URL_0_). Your question appears to focus on consumer brands found in retailer or foodservice; however, this is a common practice in many industries. Often, due to economies of scale or specialized competencies, its beneficial for companies to outsource, while choosing to leverage the strength of their brand (e.g. quality, cheap, etc.) by utilizing a private label. \n\nStopping because make breakfast for wife. \n\nEdit: breakfast was had. Thank you, kind Redditors, for your care and interest. Two fried eggs, if you're wondering. She's a simple gal. \n\nEdit #2: wrote Kirkland instead of Kroger by mistake. ", "In short most name brand products are overpriced. A few have higher quality or a newer design or a certain mixture of ingredients but for the most part, things are equal.", "I have some experience with this through a commercial bakery. Most of the time the 'generic' product is created by the same manufacturer. The vendor usually has the goal of creating a perfect product with a different value proposition. So it could be just cheaper but it might also be a product at the same price: a pizza that has more toppings or a thicker crust. The vendor and the manufacturer come to a mutual agreement where generally both products will be carried or if only the discount product is carried customers in other stores don't feel gyped. ", "What's cheaper, 50 ketchup factories or 50 label printers?", "As some have said, stores do not actually make the products under their own branding, they contract them out for manufacture. As an example, in the UK, I work in the food industry. I have visited a very famous factory that makes \"own brand\" fruit pies for other companies, as well as their own very famous brand. So there are a couple things I can say :\n\n1. Own label supermarket products are made on a contracted out basis by other companies.\n\n2. Contrary to common belief, just because \"well known brand\" makes stuff for others, doesnt mean its the same product. When I was there, they were making individual apple pies. There were several specifications, from the manufacturer's own label, to ones for an upscale famous supermarket and clothing brand - which were higher quality, down to \"value\" brands which were basically sugar flavoured with apples and virtually no fruit pieces in them at all!", "The Tums plant here in St Louis also makes Walmart brand antacids. Same stuff, different packaging. Why? In order to keep the plant going and it's workers working. \n\nIn college, my sister worked for a frozen doughnut company. The brand name and Kroger brand were exactly the same, they just changed out the boxes. ", "At least in the UK, it's very noticeable that a lot of store brand items (shampoo, mayonnaise, stuff like that) are pretty much exactly the same product in the same packaging, just with different labels. They are made by the same contract manufacturers and sold to each retailer which then brands it as their own.\n\nAs others have pointed out, these might be made in the same factories as \"name brand\" items with the supermarket specifying cheaper ingredients or fewer processes. \n\nTesco sell chocolate ice cream cones for 1/3 the price of a Cornetto which have the exact same foil around them- they might not taste as good because they use more palm oil and less dairy or whatever but they are manufactured in the same way, if not necessarily in the exact same factory.", "If you scan an own brand product on MyFitnessPal you'll often get a match for the real manufacturer's product. If the manufacturer's product isn't normally for sale with that chain then there's no issue with duplication of barcodes, so they reuse their own codes. \n\nThe store owners won't always tell you who they use but the manufacturing companies will often announce the signing of a new contract when they expand a plant or hire more staff. \n\nHere's an interview with a whiskey distiller where he mentions some of his clients: _URL_1_ \n\nHere's Aldi's Irish webpage where they actually boast about who supplies their tea. _URL_0_", "Oh dude, I know this one! So it's actually very simple, unlike the answers here might suggest. There are a tonne of different manufacturers who produce products under 'private' or 'white' label. This basically means you pay to order a product under your own brand in your own packaging designs without leaving the office. A crazy number of products are produced via this method, so it's likely a bunch of brands you discriminate between are the exact same product from the exact same factory that are just branded and marketed differently.\n\n\nEDIT: also I should point out that the companies that produce white label are not usually companies you've heard of. Jack Daniels or Heinz wouldn't produce white label as it's more profitable to sell under their own brand. It would also add extra competition to the market.", "Lot of good answers here. Only thing I will add is what seems to be missed by the top comments:\n\nThere are two types of companies that sell dry good in grocery stores. One type is the company that sells their product to the grocery store. The grocery store buys it at a reduced rate and then puts it on their shelf. The other type of company is called a \"vendor\" and they don't sell a product to the store so much as they rent shelf space and then pay their own people to put the products on the shelf. \n\nThe vendors have a lot more control over their products, how it is presented, what goes where, and when do things get pulled. So let's say \"Choco-Creme Cookies\" has a vendor item and that vendor's company says to them, \"We need you to pull \"Choco-Creme Cookies\" from the shelves and rotate in the newer product\". Often times the vendor will pull the \"Choco-Creme Cookies\" off the shelves and then send them back to the \"Choco-Creme Cookies\" factory. The factory will rebrand their product as \"Big Grocery Mart's Chocolate Cream Cookies\" and then sell that product to the grocery store for them to put on their own shelves.\n\nUsually companies that do this sell products that don't go bad so much as their quality decreases. Ever notice that Oreos can be very crisp and dry or almost like they have been sitting open on a counter on a very humid day? Well that's because a lot of these baked products that can sit on a shelf for years and years are slowly picking up water from the air. The company decides how long until they no longer wish to put their name on a product and then they pull them. Once they pull them off they can either trash them, sell them for cheap, or repackage them. \n\nA really good example of this is Fig Newtons. Ever notice how a Fig Newton is moist but the off brand is usually dry? That's because Fig Newton repackages their old cookies with Big Mart's logo. Only a vendor can do this because they own the product on the shelf until a consumer buys it. The non vendor items stay on the shelf until they expire and then they are sent back and recycled (usually given to animals) or thrown out.", "Love me some 'Modern Marvels' or 'How Do They Do It'. Basically the manufacturer will make different varieties based on the consumer needs. Sometimes they make chips for the name brand with recipe A. Sometimes they make chips for the generic with recipe B.", "They reach out to multiple manufacturers, give their specs for whatever they want in their store (batteries, cookies, towels, t shirts) and then put their logo on them.", "Because manufacturers are willing to make a custom version for Walmart, if it means Walmart will sell it to their millions of customers.\n\nIt is a practice called \"white label\", where manufacturer makes their own brand (with their own logo and packaging) and a Walmart brand (with a Walmart brand and maybe even special packaging), but it's really the same machinery inside. The different packaging (outside) costs very little, and both versions can use the same assembly line. So volume of sales increases, and the manufacturer makes a larger profit.\n\nSometimes you will have the same manufacturer produce three or more versions of the same machine at three different price points with three different brands so that they capture more of the market. If one of those bands is Walmart or Target they don't really care. ", "Back in the 90's, there was a Wonder/Hostess plant in Dallas. They made not only their own bread and snack cakes, but bread for many \"store brand\" labels as well. Like others have said here, there was sometimes no difference in the recipe, but some of the \"value\" brands had much lower quality requirements and lower-quality ingredients. \n\nSame thing for refrigerated dough (pop biscuits, pizza crusts, cinnamon rolls, etc)", "I used to work at an automotive hardware warehouse that would sell their own brand hardware and chemicals and what not. The top comment is correct that they are bought in large quantities at a discounted price.\n\nI just wanted to offer my view in that with regards to many of the chemicals we sold, they legally could not be shipped by the manufacturer without labels. So one of my jobs was to legitimately rip off the brand name labels from cans of solvents and thinners and things like that and put our own brand labels on. Very tedious.", "Years ago, I owned a clothing company that had a contract to provide the \"store brand\" clothes for a large chain. \n\nOur name brand and the store brand clothing came off the same line, with zero difference in any part of the manufacturing process. Literally the only difference was the seamstresses at the end of the line. Some were assigned to sew tags on with our name brand, and some with the store brand. \n\nThe only determining factor was which seamstress happened to grab that particular blouse off the line.", "Just because everything is branded as a store brand item i.e. Great Value does not mean that it's from one \"Wal Mart\" manufacturer. These items will have multiple suppliers across the country and will be contracted to be sold under the brand name Great Value in Wal Mart stores ", "\nYes, as everyone else has correctly pointed out, the products are produced under contract by established manufacturers. \n\nI will just add on a related note, often manufacturers themselves will produce off brands of their product. I used to work summers in a canning factory. We canned peas. In order for the peas to get the main brand label they had to be just the right size, hardness, ripeness, color. Any peas that didn't meet that rigid criteria went to a line that got the off brand label put on it. Still fine peas, just not 'perfect' peas.", "A lot of those manufacturing brands are subsidies of ENORMOUS companies. Nestle, for example, has around 8000 brands, other MegaCorprations like Coca Cola, Pepsi, Unilever etc etc are similar.\n\nSo you might have something like Cheerios Cereal, with a few variants, but that's just one tiny part of a much larger company, who does a portion of their Cereal products under the Cheerios label. They likely have separate labels that produce their soft dronks, meat products, pastas, etc etc. So it's not that Cheerios couldn't branch out into Pasta Sauce, but that their parent company already has one or more companies producing pasta sauce, with their own branding and advertising campaigns in place, so don't need or want Cheerios to start squashing tomatoes, in no small part because it would dilute a very carefully crafted brand image and marketing campaign already in place for them. \n\n[This is a tiny tiny snapshot of these GIANT corporations](_URL_0_)\n", "Hi! \n\nThis is an interesting question and it boils down to different types of firms within an economy. \n\n\nA firm as big as Walmart and Target are called Economies of Scale. This means that they are a price setter for the things that they buy. Ie. They contract a small time cola factory or a garment factory to sell them those goods at a price that these huge firms determine. Sounds unfair right? Well we see price setting behaviour in all types of big firms like Walmart and Target. For example, Coca Cola. Now Walmart can't call up coca cola and tell them to sell coke to Walmart at a price Walmart wants. Coke is too big for that so they have to negotiate a price and Walmart will have to upsell coke to make profit or at least break even. \n\nCoke is also an economy of scale but it is a different kind of one. But why doesn't it go out of business if Walmart undercuts coke by selling it's own cola brand? Because coke can set it's own price. Even though it's a cola brand it has something called monopolistic competetion within the cola industry. \n\nAdditionally it also exhibits similar behaviour as Walmart in that it has its own suppliers and is a price setter for it's suppliers. So coke makes coke drinks but they don't make the plastic bottles. So they call up a bottling plant and give them a price. The bottling plant would obviously accept because it can't negotiate a price with Coca Cola. \n\nThis doesn't work with another cola maker who also needs a bottling plant and that plant had a better position to negotiate bottling services. In this way coke can sell it's drink at higher prices but still make a profit while Walmart cola has to be sold at a conpetetive price to attract sales. This is how though both coke and Walmart exhibit economies of scale. \n\nHope that helps!", " The industry manufacturers can't produce their own stuff 24/7 , but it would be more beneficial (financially) to keep the production machines running 24/7. So \"we\" large chains make deals with them so they produce the cheap kind of products you see in the stores. its effectively 100% the same thing and at least here in germany where you see the machine production code on the yoghurt etc you can actually see which cheap product comes from what brand (if you know where to look, i'd have examples).\n\nwe pay them a bit, they keep their machines running and we can offer the cheap- offbrand yoghurt. ", "Like what a lot of people are pointing out, the big manufacturers make nearly identical products under different brands, for different stores.\n\nLet's take Macaroni and Cheese for instance. You have your staple, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. They dominate the market. They have Classic, Spirals, shells, and some variety of \"character\" shapes. The \"Store Brand\" and \"Discount brand\" Mac'n Cheese has similar shapes, but as you go cheaper, the pasta quality becomes noticeably worse. One thing I noticed many years ago is that the product code on the cheese powder for some store/cheap brands were Marked \"KMC\" along with some production code. I think it's a safe bet that KMC stood for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, meaning KMC licenses it cheese. \n\nNot sure if this means the other Mac n Cheese producers make their own pasta or contracts with Kraft to just make a lower quality version.\n\nWhat I do know is that Spiral pasta, hands down, makes the greatest boxed Mac n Cheese. So much surface area for those sweet sweet cheese chems to chill on.", "You should remember that many single item manufacturers aren't really manufacturing themselves, but design and make all the marketing, selling, etc, and out-source their manufacturing to a larger company with the required manufacturing process (for example even AMD, a huge chip making company, doesn't actually make their own chips, just like apple etc). \n \nManufacturers who have worked with small companies, have the tooling and process to make products, and offer them to large chains under the stores brand at a discount price as they can order products, and make them as an OEM manufacturer. \n \nAlso some companies with a single product, will accept making that same product under a different name because they get a larger order. They produce the item a bit cheaper and simpler, which allows their own branded item to become a premium and sell for a higher price.", "They don't. It's called \"private labeling\". They pay manufacturers to make things and slap a Great Value, Hill Country Fair, etc. label on them.", "Its called Private Label and my family does it. \n\nBasically these large chains say 'Wow, we're selling a lot of THAT and THAT COMPANY is making a good margin(profit) on it. We should buy THAT from THAT COMPANY and put our label on it so we get a better margin on it. \n\nSo then instead of selling Heinz Ketchup they sell their own ketchup - maybe not from Heinz but from a competitor. Then they start branching out to mustard, peppers, salt, baking soda. Then they make the jump to cereals. \n\nSauce: My fams produces a product that is sold private label to grocery stores, delis, restaurant franchises. \n\nFun Fact Edit: Kinda like how there are recruiters that companies use to find employees or contractors, there are brokers that look for producers of ingredients. So now you have your own ketchup brand, but you want better margins or a different taste - hire a broker to find you producers.", "Probably not relevant now, but I worked at an EXXON gas station 72-73. It was one of those intersections with one gas station on each corner. I believe there was a Texaco, a Mobil and a Shell. \nI was a bit surprised the first time a tanker truck filled our tanks, then proceeded to visit the other three stations and fill their tanks. \nThis was at the corner of Clairmont Mesa Blvd & Genesee ave in San Diego. ", "I would just add one thing to all of the replies so far: \n\nWhen a manufacturer \"makes\" a store-brand for a retailer, \nor a brand specific to that retailer (which was called an SMU, or Special Make Up, at the company I worked at) \nit's not necessarily even their own goods that they are selling!\n\nA very high-end coffee-maker company, for instance, might contract with Target for a cheap-o version of their coffee-makers to sell in Target, under a different model-name. \n\nBut all of THEIR manufacturing equipment (in Germany or wherever) is geared to produce the high-quality stuff, \n\nso THEY then contract with a Chinese or Indonesian manufacture to make a cheap imitation of their own coffee-maker (!) \nwhich they will then re-sell to Target under their brand name. \n\nAnd when the Chinese-knock-off-sold-by-the-actual-Brand doesn't have the same quality for features as the regular model (i.e. it breaks in 4 months), \n\neveryone shrugs, \"well, that's what you expect when you get it at Target.\"\n\nIn the long run, I think this undermines the brand's reputation. \n\nBut business leaders are geared towards short-term (i.e. next quarter) profits, which is one of the reasons why so, so many companies go through this rise-and-fall arc. ", "Some brands literally 'white label' their products because they come up with great ideas/new flavors, but don't have the shelf space to put it under their own brand.\n\nIt may be easier to rebadge/rebrand it with a known restaurant that they may already supply for, license agreements are struck up, and now they have an opportunity to sell more units/gain more shelf space than they otherwise would have access to.\n\nAlso, it helps protect and streamline a brand.", "I can't really speak to every product, but I worked for a while in a food processing plant that made things like organic milks, soup stocks and broths, and pudding. The same stuff that was marked as a \"name brand\" came from the same exact machine and was made with the same exact ingredients as the Walmart stuff. I would imagine the rest of the \"store brand\" stuff is manufactured the same way. ", "I'm sure someone has said this already but I'll add a little shopping pro-tip. Many retailer's private label brands are the name brand merchandise repackaged as store brand. Look for the name brand that has the most shelf space and, more than likely, the store brand will be exactly the same. The manufacturer paid less for that space with an agreement to produce and distribute the store brand at a lower cost. It's a win for both. \n\nSource - I'm an accountant for \"Big Blue and Yellow Brand Box Store International\". \n\nEdit: fixed some of the grammar ", "I can't speak for everyone but i worked in recieving and know a lot of people in the industry. Lots of them have special contracts with brand name suppliers to make their product. So in reality the chips you buy from walmart could be made by Frito Lay. But usually its not the same.", "Most of the Big companies are just marketing companies. Like Pepsi co, Coca Cola, Unilever, etc. They don't produce items but they sell them by creating brands. Production is done on local scale by manufacturers who are licensed. Especially in food and beverage industry as the raw ingredients need to be sourced and you have an expiry date for the finished product so it has to reach the market on time. These small manufacturers can produce stuff for other brands or marketing companies too since they have access to the raw material and production tech plus labor hence marketing companies don't need to worry much. Companies like Target, Walmart etc can do this too. They can contact the same manufacturer and get products which they can rebrand as theirs. \n\nA good example of understanding how manufacturing can be outsourced is the iPhone. Although the research and development is done in USA by apple the phone itself is manufactured/ assembled by Foxconn. Now Foxconn also manufactures/aswembles phones for Xiaomi and other companies. It would be much harder to tackle finding each and every part that goes into making a phone then to just tell foxconn to build your phone as per specification and let foxconn handle everything else. \n\nAlso since you sell only a limited no. of products it means your machinery will be sitting idle and so would be your labor. Hence no company wants to buy expensive machinery. They also avoid dealing with labor and labor unions. \n\nMy dad built a building for manufacturing unit that made plastic parts. These plastic parts were used both in Volkswagon and in TATA Motors. ", "It's interesting how much capitalism has given people a false sense of choice. There are relatively few OEMs of most mass-produced products, and all you're really seeing a difference in is the label and a few minor changes made by tweaking moulds or whatever. A cheap brand is often the same as an expensive brand with a different label, perhaps with less stringent QA.", "the difference is mainly in the name. \ndepending on the product the quality can also differ. \nbut for food for excample its often so that something like normal cornflakes are produced in an industry and the only difference is maybe a slight change in the recipe but the main difference is only the wrapping around the product. \ni for excample could tell that some product store brands from a different country(not usa) are produced the exact same way and the only difference is the wrapping around it. \nalso some manufactures are produced in the exact same location and as said only the wrapping is the difference and maybe slight changes in the recipe. \nlike instead 50kg sugar for 100kg its 45kg sugar for 100kg.", "They buy it from the brands. Every brand also sells under other names to make more money. It's basic yield management.\n\nBasically I want to sell to as many people as possible but the economic price / demand curve teaches me that for price x, y amount of people will buy.\n\nSo if I want to sell more I got to have more than 1 price. I need to have as many prices as possible for the SAME PRODUCT without people getting wise to my little game. :D\n\nSo if my brand is \"Chocoly\" and that's my top price, I advertise under that name it's my eye level high margin product.\n\nI sell 10 Chocoly cookies for 5$ \n\nBut my price of producing the Chocoly cookie is 5 cent per cookie and packaging is 20 cent so the box of Chocoly costs me 10 x 5 + 20 = 70 cents.\n\nI got a lot of margin left even if I sell at 3$ per box right ? But I can't do that under the brand name \"Chocoly\" without canibalizing my sales to the people willing to pay 5$ per box. \n\nSo I make a deal with a grocery store to sell it under their own name, with a slightly different box design and cookie shape (maybe I just change the brand that's printed on top of the cookie, simple switch-out of the stamp. \n\nNow I'm selling 1000 boxes at 5$ and 2000 boxes at 3$ each. I got to split my income on the 3$ boxes with the store but it's still more money in my pocket. And the people buying the 3$ box would never buy the 5$ box (too expensive) so I don't lose out my total sales are higher. Likewise the people buying the 5$ box don't want the 3$ box they want the good stuff... I've just doubled my money from the same cookie. \n\nThe whole REASON behind it is this: we have a fixed production capacity. \n\nAnytime the production capacity is fixed or slow to change we get yield management. \n\nAirplanes - > fixed number of seats : we change the prices over time to make sure it's full (last minute deals)\nHotels - > same as airplanes, fixed number of rooms\nRestaurants - > daily specials, gotta use that sea bass\n\nSo in what sense do the cookies have a fixed production capacity ? Well any factory owner will tell you, if you can manufacture 5000 a day you must manufacture 5000 a day and figure out a way to sell it all for a profit. It's the only way factories can really make money. Because some costs are not going to go down, machines still age, employees still stay 8 hours a day and and the lights are still on and the rent is still due... etc. ", "For most food items, alot of those products that are similar to name-brand items are actually the exact same product, just in different packaging. Why would manufacturers let retailers sell cheaper, generic versions of their products, undercutting their own products? A sale is a sale. Even if they're losing money, sometimes it's better to lose money on some sales than it is to lose a customer to a competitor's product. \n\nIn a way, those generic products provide a sort of subliminal advertising by their very existence. Typically those products will have some sort of flashy violator/bug on the front that reads \"Compare to Product X!\". It's the same stuff, so of course everything matches up (apart from price), but if somebody goes through the trouble to actually compare, they're still looking at your product and it's become the \"gold standard\" to compare the generic against. And the generic will still be seen as the cheaper, inferior product, while your product comes out looking premium in comparison.", "Really short answer is something called a co-packer.\n\nA co-packer is a company that produces the same good for different store brands under different labels. Lets say you are Walmart and need to fill a void for National Brand Cookies. You call a co-packer who makes cookies and ask them to make a match. This process undergoes consumer testing to make sure the match is close enough then the sale from the co-packer to Walmart is made and they sell it to you.\n\nI work on these types of things a lot and work quite a bit with co-packers. The amount of effort to match these things can be impressive. ", "I work for a large food manufacturer that manufactures both branded and private brand items. The private label business is very interesting to look at right now. It’s a booming segment for retailers because consumers are more accepting of non-branded items (thanks in part to Aldi, Trader Joes’ and Costco). With that said, this has caused numerous small players to emerge which focus on manufacturing private label goods. These companies focus on replicating the formulations of branded items and have expanded their business by creating unique offerings specifically for private label. This explains why private label options have multiple flavors rather than just copying the national brand. \n\nIt's important to note that many people assume that private label items are manufactured by “branded companies”, while this may be the case for some items, many large scale manufacturers have moved away from this business. Without getting into specifics, private label items generate very low profit margins (roughly < 10%) whereas the “branded” items generate higher margins (typically 30% or greater). The only real benefit for large scale manufacture to produce these items is to offset any fixed overhead & to fill capacity at a manufacturing plant. As stated, many small players have moved into this segment and as a result and they are willing to accept lower margins for the cash generated. I also find that many private label items manufactured by these smaller firms suffer in terms of quality. That is because they usually cut corners on ingredients or design the product to a specific price point. That doesn’t mean they aren’t safe to eat, rather the taste and texture may suffer as a result of their cost cutting decisions. Most branded items are made to exacting standards from both a safety and quality standpoint (taste, texture, consistency). \n\n", "Slightly different - I worked for a furniture company, mostly selling outdoor furniture. What I have some to understand is that manufacturers in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc, would send out catalogues of furniture products. If I'm Dragonball furniture, for example, I then could order a stock of their furniture and get them to stamp \"Dragonball Furniture\" on a metal plate and attach it to every peice to make it look like a fancy brand name furniture, then ask that our cushions come in red, grey, and white. Another company can buy the same furniture, but maybe they want their cushions in beige, teal, and blue; so our product looks somewhat different, but the base is still similar. \nI can also pay a very high price to get \"country exclusivity\", as in, only Dragonball furniture can sell this particular product line in Canada. This comes with risks though, if Dragonball Furniture is not a large enough company to monitor and defend exclusivity rights, there is a chance it won't be honoured. \nI assume it's the same way with a lot of things: a manufacturer makes something, then switches labels. ", "In some instances, retailers demand supply chain transparency from some of their top selling brands and will partner with them in a way that essentially undercuts those brands by having them create a generic store brand version of their own product in exchange for a smaller share of profits from customers who may not necessarily be their target market. If, for example, Advil wants to sell their Ibuprofen through Target, Target may partner with them to create the generic Target brand of ibuprofen and just tap in to Advil's supply chain effortlessly. A company like Target or CVS may also take note of top-selling products and if they don't have that kind of relationship where they get their retail partners to undercut themselves, they'll go to another less popular brand who will (and in some cases just buy them out and slap their logo on the product).\n\nThere's a weird competing/partnering dynamic because of this, which is actually why a lot of the more disruptive brands in consumer-facing industries have been jumping on to the direct to consumer (DTC) train. It helps undercut on cost without compromising on quality. The biggest barrier to this right now is customer convenience, which is why retailers like Target are still around. However Amazon has begun to crack this by infiltrating the home with Amazon tech selling Amazon products, which is why their buyout of the brick and mortar Whole Foods is a huge deal. Also Walmart doing the opposite with Bonobos (Brick & mortar store buying out an online DTC brand). \n\nIt's an interesting time for retailers.", "So many correct answers already here, but I sell private label goods for a living. We think of it as selling excess production capacity. If we only made enough product to supply our own brand, we would only need to run the factory for 2 shifts. Which would mean that 1/3 of the time our factories aren't doing anything, which means not making money. This maximizes the investment we have in our production equipment and facilities. Also, the more we sell, the more raw materials we buy, which means we get better prices on those because we can buy in larger volumes. This brings down the cost for all of our finished goods, whether branded or private label. It's a win-win. ", "Well I can chime in a bit here when it comes to \"health and beauty products\" (soaps, shampoos, pain relievers, etc.). \n\nFirst things first. These \"brands\" (i.e. Equate for Walmart, Up and Up for Target) are not brands per se... they are \"private labels\" and are mostly manufactured by the same manufacturing company, they are just packaged differently for each private label. \n\nThese items are also typically \"name brand equivalents\" or NBE's and you will see these products say \"compare to the active ingredients in so and so\". \n\nAdditionally, you will find that these products are less expensive despite them achieving the same effects. This is because name brands, such as Advil (which have the same active ingredients as any other ibuprofen you will find at a store like Walmart or Target), spend a lot of money on marketing which, in turn, is reflected on the price to the consumer. \n\nLong story short, don't waste your money on name brands as opposed to NBE's. They do the exact same thing. \n\nSource: I work at a company who manufactures both NBE's and name brands. ", "A lot of people talk about slightly modifying the assembly line, but in food processing, they don't even have to do that. For something like frozen french fries, the big brands have pretty strict criteria (95% of fries within a certain size range, max one fry with a big black spot, etc). The system kicks the out-of-spec product off the belts and sends them to the off-brand customers instead. Of course, the processor doesn't want to lose the bigger contract by violating the requirements, so the rejection system is overly aggressive and kicks a decent amount of in-spec product, which is why the off-brand steak fries aren't just nubs and palm-sized pieces.", "When you say 'industry manufacturer' I assume you're talking about a major brand like how you can buy \"Dole\" canned tomatoes and also \"Great Value\" (Walmart) canned tomatoes.\n\nThe ELI5 answer is: They don't. \n\nBoth Walmart and Dole (don't quote me on brand specifics, this is just general concept) canned tomatoes are really manufactured and canned at a 3rd party manufacturer that does something called 'white labeling.' White labeling is where a manufacturer sells a generic product and allows the customers to brand/market/sell the product as their own. The manufacturer often allows minor tweaks in production if the customer is big enough to customize the product. This is how Go-Pro got started, white-labeling cameras from China, if I'm not mistaken.", "It's called a white label item. Many industries and businesses sell generic versions of their products that they let certain large volume desirable business partners rebrand as they are fit.", "The hardest part of developing a product is getting right what the final costumer wants. All this companies have years and years developing products and specializing like you said into that single product. Walmart and Costco have literally the numbers of how good a product sales. They are very big capable companies, (with a lot of money) and they select the best sellers, and also products that they know another company that manufactures it. They simply copy the best sellers and make their own version. Notice this happens in every industry, the iphone was unique 10 years ago but right now you have thousands of phones from different brands that are very similar. But the ones that got the first one right, was apple. And they have earned houndreds of billions from that.\n\n\n", "Because they don't make them--the companies just put them in different boxes. \n\nI used to work at Remington Arms. We had two types of pistol/rifle/revolver brands. The main brand is Remington (usually in a green box). The off brand (cheaper -- almost so cheap it's at cost) is UMC (yellow box). \n\nPacking is the last step before shipping -- and the people making it have zero clue which box it will end up in. They make all .223 ammo using the same machines and processes. It's way too expensive to make changeovers to different equipment and store them waiting on orders. \n\nInstead we made them all the same through the loading process. Then it went into Packing department and we used whatever box our order book told us to (based on demand from WalMart Dicks etc). \n\nBut the stuff in it is identical. \n\nEver since I buy off brand for everything. I know how expensive it is to build a factories and how hard it is to run them and I guarantee that 90% of off brands come off the exact same assembly lines as the name brands. You're only paying extra for the pretty package. ", "This is the defining moment in my Reddit career - the opportunity to set the record straight and give the definitive answer. Why did I get here so late? Private brand merchandising is a significant portion of my day to day job so I hope I can be helpful. Please excuse any errors, I'm on mobile.\n\nFirst I think it's important to break things down into four distinct categories: Food/consumables private branding, general merchandise private branding, co-branding, and special make ups (SMUs).\n\nFood and consumables (think OTC, health and wellness, cosmetics, and cleaning supplies) are in their own category since they typically follow a recipe. Cookies are the common example here. I could use Coke but I'd prefer to say cola and keep it generic. In the case of major national brands, the recipe has been standardized and reduced to a science. A retailer's private brand seeks to offer that standardized, reliable product at a discount. That discount is achieved by eliminating marketing expense. Store brand dish soap is 99.8% or more identical to Dawn or another national brand, but the retailer gets a deal because marketing costs are not rolled into the cost of the item. It is even possible that the packaging itself (materials, amount/number of ink pantones used) represents a chance for cost savings. In most cases the store brand seeks to meet or beat the national brand quality while providing better value to the customer and better margins to the retailer. In other cases, the retailer could have multiple private brands where there are quality concessions. This cadence allows for the retailer to capture multiple demographics. \n\nFor general merchandise, it's less likely that the national brand has complete control over manufacturing. Not always, but for the most part you can assume that an imported item comes from an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). Very few American brands actually own their factories overseas. Some do, some might rent space and staff the factories, but most brands will simply contract with a factory to build an item to their specifications. The end result here is that multiple national brands are often made in the same building. There are entire multi-billion dollar industries that are supported by a network of 3-4 massive factories in China. In the case of private brands, a retailer here can cut out the national brand entirely and go straight to the Chinese factory. Whereas private brands are often a partnership with the national brand in food, general merchandise is an area where a retailer's private brand is in direct competition with the national brand. Example: The $50 name brand HDMI cable you bought from Best Buy was probably built in the same factory as the $10 Dynex cable. I've spent my entire career in hard goods. It's to the point where I can look at an item, regardless of the brand, and know which factory it came from. The overall goal stays the same as with food and consumables, but the road map here is different.\n\nCo-branding is when a retailer has \"their private brand\" by \"national brand.\" Someone mentioned Kirkland Signature Dish Detergent by Cascade. Obviously you aren't saving much on marketing here since the retailer still gets the advantage of using the national brand's name. The goal here is to add legitimacy to the private brand by roping in the national brand. Maybe Costco was having a hard time convincing members to switch to Kirkland brand detergent, so they needed to associate themselves with Cascade in order to boost confidence.\n\nSpecial make ups are like private versions of a national brand. The best example of SMUs are TVs. Walmart and Best Buy are shown an entirely different lineup of TVs by Samsung. Both retailers might have an item with identical features except for the number of HDMI inputs. This allows them to promote and discount their items independently without having a price war. SMUs are also one of the few areas where a retailer might lower the product spec or quantity in order to differentiate itself. This can be done simply by changing the pack size, concentration of an ingredient (marshmallows in Rocky Road ice cream, for example), substituting a material (lower quality steel in a kitchen knife), anything that allows the big box retailer to show a value over the typical item.\n\nFeel free to PM if you have any questions.\n\n\n\nEdit: Hijacking my own post just to say this. The next time you have a bad experience at a big box store, please remember that some of the people at corporate are Redditors just like you, with student loans, a mortgage, and two golden retrievers at home, who are just trying to do their best and get by. Nothing makes me happier than knowing I made a customer happy with a cool item that I found and brought to them.", "Big box stores do not actually manufacture their own goods. They contract (probably to the same factory) that's makes goods for name brands", "Most store brands are made by name brand companies \nSource: a decade in the grocery business ", "I worked at a factory that would buy 1 tonne bags of nuts and repack the same nuts for retail as a supermarket brand and two different name brands.\n\nIn this situation it was about scale, supermarkets would pay marginally less because they would simply buy more, which means production was simpler (no line changes) and you'd get better rates on packaging (and they'd also use cheaper, lower quality packing).\n\nIn this case they charge less because they make less money per bag of nuts sold. But because they control placement on shelves (and own all the sales data) they could move a lot more stock than the name brands.\n\nIn summary, it's usually some combination of:\n- comes from the same factory as name brands\n- cheaper, lower quality inputs\n- no/low marketing costs\n- control over distribution/resale\n- more sales", "Large chain stores are not in the business of manufacturing, but they are in the business of buying through wholesale and selling through retail. Their employees are specialized in logistic and brick and mortar sales force.", "People have such misunderstandings for this. I work for a decently large enough retailer. Our \"store brand\" products are made by small producers. It's not Jack Daniels or any similar A-brand supplier like the top post suggests. \n\nUsually, we get our products from smaller suppliers. It still has to be cheaper than A-brand like Unilever products. They're not going to compete theirselves out of the market by making \"the exact same product\" for a lower price, though. Ridiculous notion. They make a different product supported by heavy marketing (making it seem better than it is).\n\nIt does happen, though. Some store brands are pretty much the same as the A-brand and sometimes that A-brand has a cheap alternative that isn't much different. \n\nStill, to answer the question, they literally don't. Walmart is big enough to get their own contract at different suppliers. \n\nWhat will really blow your mind, though, is Superunie in the Netherlands. Not legal for me to say everything, but I'll gladly answer whatever is asked of me. Basically they do the buying for loads of smaller retailers. They fixed a specific house brand, so that most of these retailers have the same house brand product. Some retailers even have their own house brand, but it's literally the same product despite it looking different. \n\nSo even small chains can have those products with a store brand! It's ridiculous, but that's capitalism.", "I can give my perspective since I work for a very large private label and contracting manufacturing company. Often times, we get hired by major brands to make their products, and retailers to make the knock offs of those products. From a packaging perspective, almost all of it comes from the same group of shared vendors with a few brands that will buy one of two machines for their specific molds (i.e. for example Sriracha owns their own bottle molding machines). From the formulation point of view, it's the same, almost all vendors are shared. The only difference comes from whether it's made in USA, or overseas. If it's a USA made product, usually liquid, it's made by industry specific companies that have a specialty, but if it's overseas than usually it's the same company making both the brand and the store brand.\n\nThere is a new trend where store brands are trying to invest more heavily in their own offering versus the national brand. For example, Costco does this the best with their Kirkland offering. It is usually better quality, more quantity, and same or lower price, which is why they end up eating quite a lot of share from the brand equivalents.\n\nSupply chain plays a big part in this as well. Brands can't afford to fight other brands, new brands, and also invest in becoming mass merchandisers, so they have to play ball with retailers that offer knock off products since the retailers own the shelves. If a brand picks a fight with a retailer over a trademark or lost sales, the retailer has a lot of bargaining power and can just remove that brand from the shelf. This happened to Tylenol at Walgreens when the FDA shut down the Tylenol plant over violations in cleanliness. \n\nFrom the manufacturer, it doesn't matter if a brand or retailer buys from us because it's usually the same volume, and profit, but with a retailer the contracts are shorter and they have much more knee jerk reaction to things. If a store brand product has an issue, they will usually reject the entire product and may never replace it. When brands have the same issue, they will often just deal with it on a store by store basis or partial rejection.\n\nFrom the product perspective, a company that makes a shampoo for example, will be able to make a conditioner and lotion, and many other products using the same machines. This also applies to companies that make paper products, print products, napkin products, and food products. If two items are similar, there is a good chance it could be made by the same company.\n\nIn terms of scale, this is where it changes. Brands like P & G, Johnson and Johnson usually have what's called deep distribution which means they sell at nearly all stores whether it's mass retailers, specialty stores, local stores, gas stations, or others. This also means they might have one factory setup for one product since it's running 24/7 producing around a million per day or more of an item. Whereas, a private label manufacturer may run a product one week and another another week.", "Generic products are usually the same as name-brand, only with a different package. Target and Wal Mart will have these manufacturers produce store brand versions once their quota for the name-brand is met, and then ship them all on the same truck. The name brands have to pay for marketing and licenses and such, so their cost is higher, where the generics will just hitch a ride with them and don't advertise or anything so they're far cheaper.\n\nBasically, the price difference in Name Brand vs Generic comes down to the extra advertising and rental of store shelf-space.", "Store brands don't invest much in advertising. The name brands do all of the advertising work to convince the customer that they need a an item. The store then places their store brand item next to the name brand, but at a reduced price.\n\nFor example, Arm and Hammer does a lot of work to convince you that you need baking soda in your fridge. If it works and you go to buy baking soda from CVS, you have to choose between Arm and Hammer baking soda for $5 or the CVS brand for $3. Arm and Hammer did all the advertising work and CVS benefits.", "So, as a lot of people have pointed out, a lot of store-brand products are made from the name brand manufacturers.\n\nBut obviously, not every O-shaped cereal is Cherrio's in disguise.\n\nIs there any place on the Internet dedicated to sharing details on which store brands map to which name brands? I've been able to 100% identify some in the past (some packages give away more details than others!), but I wonder if there's somewhere where people swap those kinds of details.", "So it varies from industry to industry: I'll break it down into 3 different variations, though there are more, these 3 are the most common in the states .\n\n1. Same plant;different formulations. Kelloggs does this with alot of their cereal. The plant will follow a formula that Kelloggs' specifically formulated for their brand one certain days, on other days the plant will use the exact same ingredients, though in different quantities and with different QA (quality assurance) guidelines, and this will be sold as a generic or offbrand to Spartan Nash, Kroger, Meijer, etc. \n\n2. Selling the excess. Sometimes it's cheaper for the producer to make Y amount of product even though the buyer only asked for X, and Y > X. Producers that do this have usually found buyers for the excess and will sometimes even package the excess for the alternate buyer. There are usually different QA standards for the original buyer, so the product that doesn't make the cut is sold at a reduced rate to the alternate buyer. This practice is very common with produce (fruits & veggies). \n\n3. It's the same damn thing. Aunt Millies does this. The producer will do a run of product for 30 thousand units and they have a bunch of buyers lined up, various grocery chains either buy it out right or will do SBT (scan based) type transactions that will have a buyback program built in. Basically if any product doesn't sell the rep buys it back and in the case of Aunt Millies the product goes to a discount location. The additional product that is not packaged as whatever, let's say it is Aunt Millies again, will either be packaged in house as another brand or will be shipped to another site for packaging but the bottom line is the Product is the same with only packaging differing. \n\nNow, there are some other variations but these 3 are the most common in the states. \n\nHope this helps. ", "There are entire manufacturing ficilities dedicated to making a single off brand product. I used to work for one that made maxi pads. They have a dozen machines that produce off brand products for Walmart, Target, and Walgreens. They are all primarily the same, they are just shipped in different packaging configurations in different quantities. ", "Tescos does not have a Tescos factory that makes Tescos branded food. They commission other companies and factories to make food for them under their own brand.\nThe factory where they make Kellogs corn flakes could make many similar products all under different brands sometimes it is exactly the same line.\nBonus fact, because of this some of the brand products are just as good or better than the on brand stuff (key word some) It might be worth doing a little experimenting next time you buy beans pick up a branded and none branded and see if you can tell the difference. ", "ITT some great answers but also people jerking themselves off so hard with their private label branding knowledge to give a real ELI5 answer.\n\nTL;DR they don't actually make the stuff. They find a factory that can already make it, and just put their name on it.", "Like everyone says, they are rebranded goods. For example, Panasonic sells this [AC unit](_URL_1_), and so does [Sanyo](_URL_0_). But realistically, neither company made the product. The company that made the product is probably somewhere in China and you never heard of it.\n\nBut did you ask this question because you seriously thought these stores actually made these products? Like Vons actually make the Vons brand stuffs? That Vons owns a factory somewhere that makes Vons goods? Seriously?\n", "I work for a company that MANY retailers contract to produce frozen breakfast products. We do Great Value, Market Pantry, ShurFine, IGA, HEB, etc. They're all the same product, all made by us. ", "Friend is USDA inspector. Inspects a pizza line that puts the same pizza in 5 different boxes. ", "Sometimes manufacturers literally put different labels on the same product, and sell it to different stores. Mayfield milk and Fieldale farms both do this. The Wal-Mart brand milk in the southeast US is literally just Mayfield milk in a clear jug. Fieldale just prints whatever label the chain they're selling to wants to put on the chicken.\n\n", "TLDR: They are mass produced \"generic brands\" that each chain can slap their own packaging/labeling on. They're all the same.\n\nSource: Managed a CVS, got Walgreens labeled products inside a CVS cardboard box.", "I have a buddy that works at a meat company that produces chili and a famous meat brick in a can. He says they make generic product and their own name brand under the same roof. They produce the name brand stuff and then use shittier ingredients for the generic brand. ", "I work for one of the largest retailers in the country majority of our private label products come off the exact same production line as the \"name brand\". For example our cold medicine is 100% exactly the same as leading brand at a fraction of the cost. Large amount of the cost of \"name brand\" is in fact the marketing and labeling of the said name ", "Everyone is giving good explanations for cheapo knockoffs of brand name goods, which is satisfactory, but I see one glaring omission:\n\nExplain Trader Joes! Trader Joe's is an example of private labeling where the product isn't just high quality like kirkland brand. Trader Joes makes private label goods that are just different and unique with often no brand name equivalence. So what's up with quirky private label item's like Trader Joes? ", "Just so you don't thinks that all manufacturing is done by the big brands, many product are produced by very small companies servicing a small region. For example, grocery store bread. Given the short shelf life there can't be a secret bread factory in Utah that services the whole country. Instead small producers produce a variety of brands under contract for local grocery stores what have you. So it's very likely that the same company made the store brand and name brand hot dogs but it's also likely that you'll never hear or see the name of that small company. ", "Chemically identical and the manufacturers will sell these items is there were recipe changes on a daily basis.", "Costco sells a Kirkland-brand line of enameled cast iron cookware made in France. Supposedly, they are made in the same factory as Staub, a high end brand. So a cast iron French oven that would sell for $300+ is $100 or less for the Kirkland brand. I am not sure if it is the exact same manufacturing process, however.", "They have a theory that Kirkland vodka is made by the same product, and then using facilities of someone else's tag on the Girl Scout lemon cookie.", "They make deals with other companies who want to have a bit probably helps keep prices lower for consumers." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_manufacturer", "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walmart_brands" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://www.aldi.ie/love-ireland/tea", "https://www.starchefs.com/wine/features/html/cooley_distillery_interview.shtml" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/Behind-the-brands-illusion-of-choice-graphic-2048x1351.jpg" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.tecos-italia.com/files/Condizionatori-come-ripararli-reggio-emilia.jpg", "https://resource.comfortup.com/is/image/Watscocom/panasonic_cu-ks36nkua_article_1397686809234_en_normal?hei=2000&amp;wid=2000&amp;fit=constrain" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdxqb2z" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Your ass is round." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dkii7j3" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Did a little search and found this, might interest you\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSeems that a major factor is the spread of Western Christianity and the roman empire." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_of_the_Latin_script" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccvjn9z" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "It was built to go that fast. The market isn't really willing to deal with the costs and complications of a plane like as compared to 747s and other craft we'd now call conventional though, so the concorde failed.\n\nIt's just like how someone can build ships that go far faster than your average freighter, but the average freighter is more profitable even taking into account the potential for a faster ship to run cargo faster.\n\nBigger and better engines are usually going to cost more to travel the same distance between fuel and maintenance costs. Often the time savings isn't worth that extra cost." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cthumxb", "cthxah0", "cthy90j", "cti42jl" ], "score": [ 10, 2, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "One thing to consider is the definition of purity, and the fact that it's essentially impossible for any macroscopic sample of a substance to be 100% pure at room temperature. \n\nI can confidently say that nobody has ever made a bottle of ethanol that contains no other molecule. We probably haven't even made a bottle of ethanol that contains no detectable impurities, partly because chemists are very, very, very good at detecting infinitesimal quantities of substances using instruments like accelerated mass spectrometers.\n\nLet's say, for the sake of argument, that you had a magic wand that could fill a glass or plastic bottle with ethanol and absolutely nothing else. Within a few milliseconds, it would no longer be pure. The bottle material would start to dissolve into the ethanol. What's more, the ethanol would undergo a process called auto-ionization, in which one ethanol hydroxyl group will transfer a proton to a neighboring molecule. Suddenly, you have some units of ethanolium ethoxide dissolved in your previously pure bottle of ethanol. \n\nMore exotic chemical reactions can also begin to occur to a small extent, making any number of pyrolysis, addition, and condensation products. On a macroscopic scale it's never considered, but it does not bode well for a sample that is supposed to be absolutely pure.", "Adding a bit more to the question\n\n- It depends on the size of your sample. If you have in a very bizarre controlled environment 5 molecules of ethanol in a large container, then - yes - it's 100% ethanol. Once you have more molecules in the same confined space they will start to collide with each other and with their surroundings, causing reactions and phase exchanges/solubility.\n\n- In a chemical process that is trying to produce the purest ethanol possible from an initial mixture, the energy requirement and/or equipment size generally diverges with increasing purity. That means that getting to 100% purity would require impossible - infinitely big - machinery to produce.", "These are the absolute technically correct answer not knowing how many significant digits you were looking for. And I'm assuming you are talking about ethanol here (the one you drink to get drunk), not the 100's of other acohols in the world.\n\nIf you wanted to make... say... 95-96% alcohol, if you distilled it enough times, you could get there for certain. This is sold as 'Ever clear'. At that point it becomes an azeotrope. Then you have to use one of two methods to get it above that point.\n\nAzeotropic distillation can get you to 96.5%, but that probably makes it unsafe to drink, and then only capable of used as an industrial solvent or fuel. A molecular sieve can also be used to get you over 96%.\n\nAt which point you could go back to distillation and keep trying to get those last few molecules out.\n\nEvery distillation step beyond that becomes more and more costly and less and less effective.\n\nSome chemist (or moonshiner) could probably run numbers for you and tell you how many distillations you'd have to do to go from 96% to 99.9%, 99.99%... etc. \n\n\n", "Above a certain purity, ethanol needs to be kept away from air or water molecules in the air will spontaneously dissolve into it. \"Wet ethanol\", collected by simple distillation, can only reach 93-96% purity. The rest is mostly water. This is why Everclear, etc., are 186-192 proof and you don't find 200 proof alcohol in the liquor store. \"Anhydrous ethanol\", which must be kept sealed from the atmosphere, can reach 99% purity. [Source.](_URL_0_)" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [ "https://fieldtopump.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/anhydrous-ethanol-vs-hydrous-ethanol-in-gasoline-blending/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d44f5lk", "d44ff70" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "You could do this using a series of pulses from an electromagnetic beam.\n\nLet's say you send out a group of 5 pulses. After a pause, you send out 7 more. After another pause, you send out 12.\n\nIt doesn't matter what language the aliens speak and it doesn't matter what base their number system is expressed in or what symbols they use (if any) to record mathematical expressions. That 5 + 7 = 12 is a universal mathematical truth, and aliens on the lookout for intelligent life who have the capability to receive the signal could interpret this message.\n\nThe purpose isn't to communicate just any message. It's to communicate the specific message that there is intelligent life present.", "Mathematics is just a way to show each other we're intelligent. We'd have to figure out a common language after that. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8sri2o" ], "score": [ 103 ], "text": [ "These mosaics were painted over but not removed when the city was taken by Mehmed II. Minarets, minbar, and mihrab were added and it became a functional mosque. After the fall of the empire and the transformation of the Hagia Sophia from mosque into museum in the 1920s, restorationists removed some of the plaster and whitewash to reveal the mosaics underneath." ] }

[]

[ "http://i.imgur.com/tKXm55i.jpg" ]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d97jqgc", "d97o8yh" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Ooh, I was just looking into this! So basically, they are a guerrilla group of (mostly agricultural and ethnically Mayan) farmers that seek to limit government and foreign incursions into Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. Their ideology is \"Neozapatism\", a blend of Marxism, anarchism and Mayan culture.", "The movement began on Jan 1, 1994 after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Most of the Zapatistas (also called the EZLN) are rural indigenous farmers in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, which still has a large Mayan influence. NAFTA allowed mass manufacturers of US crops (especially corn) to flood the Mexican market with these products for a much cheaper price than these rural farmers could produce them, so overnight there were many Mexicans who lost their livelihoods as a result. The Zapatistas began their insurrection after the passage of NAFTA to protest the Mexican government's favoring of cheaper products over the wellbeing of many of its own citizens. That said, the issue of globalization and free trade is a very complex one that benefits and hurts many people everywhere, so to say the Mexican government was \"wrong\" to agree to NAFTA would probably be an oversimplification.\n\nAlso worth noting that among Marxist guerrilla groups, the Zapatistas pride themselves on avoiding violence at all costs. Beyond the first day of their campaign there has been minimal armed conflict between the group and the Mexican state, because the EZLN has large support in Chiapas and mainly wishes to remain autonomous in that region, rather than spreading their ideology throughout." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dk6w3ww" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "one is sexualized, one isnt. Some people will be aroused by feet anyway, its just how it goes. our society has decided baby butts are ok as long as they arent used in a sexual theme. If the watcher wants to find it sexual, thats their business.\n\nwith that said, you can find plenty of adult butts on tv, I recall NYPD Blue made headlines some 20 years ago with the first butt on network television." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cc7y8ym", "cc85b69" ], "score": [ 46, 7 ], "text": [ "Are you referring to the fat Chinese Buddha? He's just a folklore deity named [Budai](_URL_2_), not a depiction of Siddhartha Gautama. \n\n[This is one of the largest Buddha statue in Sichuan, China](_URL_1_), [here's a Buddha statue in Shaolin Temple](_URL_0_), and [here's a generic mass-produced Buddha statue](_URL_3_) from China, they are not that different from Indian ones. ", "There are multiple reasons for this. One is that- in general- how a particular Buddha is depicted depends highly on which form of Buddhism is doing the depicting. A Theravada temple in Tibet uses different artistic cues from a Zendo in Japan. It is a lot like images of Christ in the west. They differ depending on their time period, aesthetic choice of the artist, and the creator's beliefs. One thing you will find is that the ethnic appearance of the Buddhas changes as you go east. That is, he looks more East Asian than South Asian. Much like Warner Sallman's famous depiction of Jesus as a blue eyed Caucasian. \n\nBeyond simple aesthetics and evolving styles, some materials are more often used in particular cultures. Statues made out of wood are far different than those that are chryselephantine or cast in bronze. Another question that you have to consider when judging a particular depiction is the intended use of the object. Not all Buddhas are intended for veneration. A huge bronze statue in a temple is as different in use as Hong Kong's Big Buddha is from a small desk statue. Use determines style, and detail as well as providing context. Japan is great for physical artifacts because, unlike China, they didn't purge most of their historical temple sites. That combined with a great literary record means that their religious objects are more easily dateable and more reliably sourced.\n\nGetting back to why the depictions are so different, it is entirely possible that the statues are different Buddhas or from different traditions. In Vajrayāna you will even see abstract depictions through mandala. The efforts of Buddhist popularizers often identified local deities with important Buddhist figures, thus tying the folk beliefs in to Buddhism. This means that depictions can often be highly local, with Taoist or folk figures depicted with changed roles. Each depiction is also charged with a particular intentional connotations, and what those connotations are shift with time, place, and creator. In that sense, every small difference in statuary (like, for instance, making Gautama look more Chinese) results in huge shifts of connotative and denotative meaning. We can't say that they are \"not that different\" because they are charged with wildly different meaning. In short, people take them differently. \n\nFurther reading on Buddhism:\n\n[Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism by Christian Wedemeyer](_URL_4_)\n\n[Indo-Tibetan Buddhism by David Snellgrove](_URL_0_)\n\nIf you're interested in the intersections of Buddhism and modernity and what that does to beliefs, you can do no better than [The Making of Buddhist Modernism](_URL_5_)\n\nIn terms of semiotics and creating meaning out of symbols you pretty much have to read [Saussure](_URL_2_), [Barthes](_URL_3_), and [Wittgenstein](_URL_1_) as a primer. \n\n\n\n\n" ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://www.kailv.com/uploads/allimg/110125/1-110125125953.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Leshan_Buddha_Statue_View.JPG", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budai", "http://www.baoguangsi.org/uploads/allimg/c130126/13591C24N0320-35J8.jpg" ], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Indo-Tibetan-Buddhism-Buddhists-Tibetan-Successors/dp/9745240133/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1379163613&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=indo+tibetan+buddhism", "http://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Investigations-Ludwig-Wittgenstein/dp/1405159286/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1379163939&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=philosophical+investigations", "http://www.amazon.com/Course-General-Linguistics-Court-Classics/dp/0812690230/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1379163860&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=saussure", "http://www.amazon.com/Mythologies-Roland-Barthes/dp/0374521506/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1379163903&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=mythologies", "http://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-Tantric-Buddhism-Transgression/dp/0231162405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1379163537&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=making+sense+of+tantric+buddhism", "http://www.amazon.com/Making-Buddhist-Modernism-David-McMahan/dp/0195183274/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1379163742&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+making+of+buddhist+modernism" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fb8uvf1" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Basically, all the footage and sound effects are kept as separate files. These days there’s software that you can load these files into and then arrange and edit, and then the software will compile it all into the video that’s actually distributed to tv networks, streaming sites, or movie theaters. Different audio is typically recorded separately, so voice acting and sound effects are stored in different files - even different lines likely are stored as separate files. This makes dubbing largely just a matter loading a different set of voice files into the software. If it’s animated, they might also edit the facial animations. \n\nThe exact process can vary depending on techniques used, but that’s the basic idea" ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dac9mja" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The banana contains a protein which is very similar in chemical structure to latex. So if you're sensitive to one, there's about a 50% chance that you're sensitive to the other as well.\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://allergicliving.com/2013/04/10/16845/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccxdpm8", "ccxe146", "ccxn9qw" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "A powdered sample is still crystalline, and will still diffract x-rays to specific angles based on the lattice spacing. The size of the powder particles are still huge compared to the wavelength of x-rays. What powdering does is randomize your sample, so that all the different possible crystal faces of the material are all oriented along the surface of the sample. Then what you do is rotate the x-ray detector around the sample and measure the intensity of x-rays as a function of the rotation angle. You can then correlate that to the lattice spacing and piece together what crystal structure you have (or look it up in a table).\n\nYou can learn more about it in most solid state physics books, like Ashcroft and Mermin or Blakemore, or more rigorously in a proper XRD material science book. I would check out Dover editions because they are considerably cheaper and just as good with the theory.\n\nEdit: You rotate the x-ray detector, not the x-ray source. This is just one method for powder diffraction.", "Powdering your sample makes a bunch of small crystallites that are (assumed to be) randomly oriented. Because they are randomly oriented all reflections are measured in a single experiment (as opposed to a single crystal where the orientation of the crystal dictates which reflections you will see) and the 2-D pattern will have rings instead of spots.\n\n", "suppose a crystal is held aligned to the XY plane. you can find the bragg angles for the crystalline lattice. if you rotate the crystal arround the same axis where the x-rays comes from, you will just rotate the diffracted x-ray angle on the n (eta) angle. you are just copying and pasting the single crystal diffraction pattern in a circular shape. if you crystals are randomly dispersed thru the sample, you will see a ring formed in your 2D detector instead of a single dot on a intensity-2theta device.\n\npowder diffraction is preety useful to find out crystal orientation density in a sample, btw.\ni have some stuff here on powder diffraction. I did it for a few years on a synchrotron-light laboratory. i will try to find them.\n\nEDIT:\ni found some stuff on powder diffraction but it is in my native language, which is portuguese. think will not be useful for you.\n\nbut i have some idea on how you can apply to mineralogy.\n\nIf you have a simple Ix2tth x-ray device, you may be able to find out the composition of the mineral, crystalline lattice parameters and so on.\nPowder diffraction allows you to calculate average crystal size on the sample (look for [Scherrer's equation](_URL_0_)). If you sample has lot of crystalline domains in a single crystal, you can find out the orientation dirstibution on these crystals. The crystal orientation may interfere with the strenght of the material and other macroscopic features." ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "d2fguwk" ], "score": [ 393 ], "text": [ "I'm going to give two very short, simple answers and then one somewhat more complex (but still pretty short) answer. First short answer is that we say \"Kingdom of Lombardy\" and \"Ducky or Normandy\" because that is what they called themselves. Nine times out of ten the best term to use for a particular state or social group is the one they use to refer to themselves. If we use a term like \"Germanic tribe\" it is because we don't actually know that term.\n\nSecond short and simple answer isn't actually short and simple for you but is for me because it is just a [link to some discussion about the term \"tribe\"](_URL_1_) which has a pretty fraught history of usage.\n\nThe third answer relates to an old but still somewhat useful concept in anthropology of sociopolitical typology, which essentially posits that political configurations can, broadly speaking, be categorized into four types: bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states. I was trying to think of an easy way to explain the difference but to be honest I am a bit at a loss, so I will just link [this handy chart](_URL_0_) (in my defense, this is generally how intro anthro textbooks do it also)[EDIT: changed to an imgur link. The original citation was \"based on the typology in Elman R. Service's (1962) Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective\" but to be perfectly honest I like most people learned the typology from introductory materials,specifically the excellent lecture series \"Peoples and Cultures of the World\" by Edward Fischer]. This typology is somewhat out of favor, for reasons that I think motivated your question: how on earth do you classify the Holy Roman Empire? It also implicitly promotes a linear view of human society in which people progress through different \"stages\" ending in the modern nation-state--actual history is rather more complex. Furthermore, actual political affiliation is often much more complex and multiple, for example one of my favorite groups n history are the Isuarians, who firmly existed within the Roman Empire but also maintained an internal political configuration that can best be described as somewhere between \"tribe\" and \"chiefdom\" on that chart. All the terms have a bit of difficulty coming down to the level of the individual." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://i.imgur.com/MoF0xYc.jpg", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31o2nt/monday_methods_definitions_of_tribe/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cjcb6bx", "cjce0aq" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "I dont have an answer, but everytime i get a high fever (102 F+) the way I perceive colors gets screwed up. I.E. I see the red digital numbers on my alarm clock as green. ", "_URL_0_\nGood link describing types of color blindness and causes." ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "ceay6jm" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Is such a thing possible? No, not really. On a smaller scale, such a question has the problem of assuming defined states where there were none or where other arrangements would be more appropriate. On a larger scale, such a map would necessarily impose synchronous borders on areas that experienced consistent flux. Borders in the past were much more porous and flexible than today's nation-states.\n\nStill, there's a guy named [Thomas Lessman](_URL_0_) who is internet-famous for making rough maps of historical boundaries. They should not be taken as absolute truths, however, but as approximations. They're like Wikipedia (which Lessman draws on heavily): a good place to start, but a terrible place to finish." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://www.worldhistorymaps.info/maps.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c40t9u8" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "First off, I highly, highly, highly recommend you read Şukru Hanioğlu's new book Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography if you haven't already. I think that the principles you've outlined as characteristic of Atatürk deserve some modification. Semi-official Kemalist doctrine has six \"arrows\": Republicanism, Popularism, Secularism (or laicite), Revolution(ism), Nationalism, Statism (etatism). While I think there is a good deal of wiggle room in those principles, I think they hew closer to what you might call Atatürk's philosophy than what you have inferred. I'll try and walk through your points one by one, then briefly reflect on Atatürk's legacy.\n1. Secularism - This is perhaps the most potent aspect of Kemalist policy. It is the 'arrow' that often appears as sacred above all others to hardline Kemalists -- to the point that today religious suggestions in state affairs can be criminally punished as an 'insult to Atatürk' and his memory. But this legacy of Kemalism elides his viewpoints in earlier parts of his career. For sure, Mustafa Kemal saw secularist government as a fundamental aspect of modern society. Equally so, he believed that religion, and religious authority should be an expression of popular will -- something he felt the sultan-caliph was ill-suited for. During the war for independence, he welcomed the support of religious groups -- particularly the Indian Khalifat movement and the Libyan Sanusi sheikhs. He recognized an accord between himself and religious groups in a shared sense of anti-imperialism. He even supported the continuance of the caliphate, so long as it rested outside of Turkey. So you are right to say that he sought to erase religious influence on politics -- but his primary concern was not really the influence of symbols, headscarves for instance, but the influence of religious institutions who he saw as oppressive and illiberal anachronisms.\n2. Nationalism -- Turkish nationalism is a much older idea than Atatürk, but he did run with the idea to some pretty inventive extremes. Theories like the Sun Language Theory and the Turkish History thesis represent an almost obsessive level of belief in Turkish greatness. Perhaps this was an attempt to rescue a populace who had been beaten down by the decay of the Ottoman Empire or nearly a quarter century of warfare, but ultimately, these theories were widely discredited and it is hard to say whether Turks really adopted Atatürk's nationalism beyond allegiance to his own cult of personality and shared sentimentalities (like the saying \"How happy to call oneself a Turk\").\n3. Liberalism - Yes, in the terms you set out about women's rights, Atatürk was forward thinking, but one must remember that this was a very paternalistic process. In Atatürk's eyes women didn't win their rights, he granted them. To credit women's liberation and enhanced role in the public sphere solely to Atatürk is a mistake, and in truth he himself was at times very hostile to the leaders of Turkish feminist movements who disagreed with him on other matters (e.g. Halide Edib Adivar, Sabiha Sertel).\n4. Politicized military -- I think that you're close on this one, but the true development of the \"Deep State\" is really a post-WWII construct. It is hard to separate the role of the military, political party and government when they are basically run by the same people. I think he saw the army as a tool of the people, and stayed mostly true to that. That the army later developed into a force that guided the state, in Atatürk's name no less, would probably have disappointed him.\n5. Single Party Rule -- I think the insistance on single-party rule was more of a practical matter than anything else. The early republic saw a few experimentations with multiparty democracy, but ultimately I think Mustafa Kemal saw that the economic modernization project took precedent had to be unified and driven by the state before multiparty democracy could thrive.\n6. Education and Westernization -- Education, sure, but you have to be careful when talking about Mustafa Kemal and \"Westernization\". Mustafa Kemal was an explicitly anti-imperial figure, and this often coded as anti-western. He also was loathe to appear to explicitly \"import\" western culture or ideas, he would much rather cook up a rational that explained the inherent \"Turkishness\" of a thing like, say, opera than simply tell people to go see Carmen. This also fueled a somewhat friendly relationship with the Soviet Union in the early years. \n7. Economic liberalization -- this isn't correct. Turkey's economy has only been reliably liberalized in the last 10 or 15 years. Kemal as a strict statist in terms of the economy, encouraging domestic production and industry guided by the state. In almost every sense, this was less liberal than the Ottoman economic model.\n\nYou are very right to point out that Atatürk's influence was widespread. Most clearly with the Iranian Shah in terms of cultural reforms. I would say that yes, later dictators drew some lessons from Atatürk, but they failed on other fronts. For instance Kemal's anti-imperialism manifested in an obsessive focus on homegrown economic production and a wariness of foreign debt (and likewise a staunch non-aligned status in foreign policy). This lesson was lost on Iran, where the Shah fell prey to the wiles of the British re: oil nationalization. Mussolini mimicked Mustafa Kemal's deference to religious tradition, but of course was an imperialist. In most of the cases you mention, the influence is definitely there but for the most part if those dictators were 'practicing Kemalism' it wasn't more than salad-bar Kemalism. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dosd73s" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "What is really being asked is how the thermoelectric effect works, so I'll try and explain that. Imagine you had a metal wire that has either end held at a different temperature. The electrons in the metal act similar to a gas, where the electrons at the hotter end are moving faster and spreading out more. This causes a higher concentration of electrons at the cold end, which causes a voltage difference between the two ends of the wire. Note that different materials will generate different voltages, even under identical thermal conditions.\n\nA thermocouple or thermoelectric generator uses two dissimilar materials, with the hot ends attached together. This guarantees that there is a voltage difference between the two cold ends, which can either be used in power production or as a measurement signal." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4sb47t", "c4scpqv", "c4scvn5" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "The 'urge' is not evolutionary. It's a biological reaction to the wound. \n\nThe scab on the wound could be dry and cause an itch. Or the chemicals secreted by the body during the healing (histamines) could be the reason behind it.\n\n", "The body is quite nifty in it's reuse of already existing systems. As it developed as a result of evolution, things aren't always optimal. In this instance, the same chemical which makes you feel itchy is present during the skin-self-stitching process.\n \nThe non-histamine induced parts, we're not sure about at the moment.", "There is an evolutionary reason for it. Evolutionarily, we only recently discovered soap and other antibacterial substances. Before that every wound was inherently filthy and stayed that way. Scratching as it heals provides a cycle of letting the wound close and rebuild with the need to have the wound seep to expel foreign objects and organisms." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cy7f4nf", "cy7fnle", "cy7hgw8" ], "score": [ 17, 5, 4 ], "text": [ "It comes from the air. The tree absorbs carbon dioxide from the air, uses the carbon to build the majority of its mass, and expels oxygen.", "Elementally tress are mostly hydrogen, oxygen and carbon.\n\nChemicals components are mostly water 50% by weight, cellulose fibers and sugars.\n\nTrees are plants and their cells have tough walls surrounding them (animal cells only have membranes) these cell walls are are a major component of wood, the hard tough material we build with.", "[Feynman explains where the substance of trees comes from.](_URL_0_)" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITpDrdtGAmo#t=2m10s" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4mnyde" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "First read [this other ELI5-type post](_URL_0_) I wrote about how the brain works a few weeks ago, then come back here...\n\nEEG is basically just a way of detecting which parts of the brain are active, moment-to-moment. They place these little \"electricity detectors\" all over your head. Now imagine that you have a particular neural pathway activated that pulses from your left ear to your right ear inside your brain. Well, those electricity detectors on your scalp that are near the middle-top of your head are going to sense the tiny electrical current that's flowing in that pathway, while the sensors that are far away (like the ones near your eyebrows, or at the back of your neck) are not. Then a computer puts all that information together and generates either a giant set of numbers, or an image for the doctors to look at.\n\nFrom this information they can tell if you're having a seizure, if you're brain-dead, if you're in a coma, if you're under sufficient anesthesia, if you have brain damage etc....\n\nERP is like EEG, but instead of just sitting there doing nothing with this thing on your head, you are asked to perform a particular task, like remember a specific set of numbers, or watch a tv screen with a flashing light. Then they observe to see which pathways are being used and if they're \"normal\" or not. Many diseases like multiple sclerosis and some kinds of dementia show abnormal, or weird neural pathways being used in the brain." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/ExplainLikeAPro/comments/r5998/elap_what_happens_to_your_brain_when_you_day_dream/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0z0kqk" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "They actually save money by doing so, they don't make money. So when a guest comes in and uses a card, other than a RedCard, the provider (Visa for example) will charge them a fee. By signing up for a card, they can avoid the fee altogether (debit), or reduce it drastically because they made a deal with MasterCard (credit)." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dlb1dzc" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The punch of a Mantis shrimp really is incredible. There is no way that a mantis shrimp can punch that powerfully by muscle strength. Another mechanism is needed.\n\nThis is an ELI5 over-simplification, but the shrimp \"cocks\" it's specially designed exoskeleton, elastic tissues, and linkage systems and stores energy. It's a lot like how a bow stores energy. You would never be able to throw the arrow as fast as you need to, but you can add energy to a bow over time and save that energy for when you want to release the arrow. \n\nAnother example: Do you know how you can curl your finger down and hold it with your thumb and then flick your finger really fast? That's kind of what a Mantis shrimp is doing.\n\nHere is an article that goes into way more detail than I just did:\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://pateklab.biology.duke.edu/mechanics-movement-mantis-shrimp" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqqepke" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "The brown (and the yellow in your pee, for that matter) are derived from byproducts of the breakdown of red blood cells in your body. \n\nAs far as corn, the outer shell of corn is cellulose, which our body is not good at breaking down. If you don't tear them apart with your teeth, then they can pass relatively unmolested out the back end. I expect you could find more if you sifted your poo, but at that point you're definitely verging on concerning weirdness. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e0r5g98" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "There's always more to be said on the topic, but while you're waiting check a look at these previous threads:\n\n[*What did Roman music sound like and what form did the written notation take?*](_URL_3_) by u/racecar_ray\n\n[*What do we know about Roman music?*](_URL_2_) by u/casestudyhouse22\n\n[*What is the oldest form of musical notation?*](_URL_0_) and [*How did the modern system of musical notation come into being?*](_URL_1_) by u/erus" ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ogi2n/what_is_the_oldest_form_of_musical_notation/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29yalb/how_did_the_modern_system_of_musical_notation/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5mnkc7/what_do_we_know_about_roman_music/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/64e3ar/what_did_roman_music_sound_like_and_what_form_did/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d8013k3", "d801n0p", "d802gl4", "d804sio" ], "score": [ 3, 2, 3, 6 ], "text": [ "I have only a basic knowledge of engines but I'll be the first to chip in. Whereas standard turbofans (commonly found on airliners) use a fan to draw air into the combustion chamber, a ramjet relies purely on the force of air entering it, which is why they're extremely inefficient at low speeds. ", "Lets see. Basic jet engine design works like this :\n\nA turbo fed multi fan system sucks air in to a engine, that air is cold when it goes in (relativly) and then fuel is burned in a combustion chamber where the air heats up, as the air heats up it expands, at it expands the pressure rises and the air is pushed out the back of the engine which produces thurst, This works great at subsonic speeds and even at lower supersonic speeds. \n\nNow at higher supersonic speeds the air around the plane is moving so quickly that the fans which suck in air in to the engine are actually a physical impediment to the flow of air, basicaly the air is moving so fast in to the engine naturaly due to the speed of the airplane that the fan is unnecesary and is just an obstacle, theres a limit to how much it can accelerate the air, so getting rid of it produces a better airflow with less obstacles, thats a ramjet.\n\nBut unforntunatly you need normal jets to get you to a speed where a ramjet could operate correctly. ", "Every jet engine relies on burning fuel, which expands, producing thrust. What makes them powerful is that they do more than this. In the front part of the engine the incoming air is *compressed* by a series of bladed fans. Compressed air + fuel = a lot of energy! Now, a portion of that thrust must run though another series of fans...and this set of fans is connected by a shaft to the front set. In a ramjet, things are much simpler, but the basics still apply. A ramjet still must compress the air in the front of the engine...and it does this by a specially shaped intake, where the incoming air is funnelled down from a big hole to a much smaller one. This compressed air is burned and expanded...but there is no fans in the back (not needed, as there are no fans in the front to spin!) \n\nAll very simple. But a ramjet won't work standing still. You must get a ramjet engine moving through the air somehow first, in order to build up pressure before it will operate. ", "Combustion engines need to compress the incoming air before it is burned. This does two things - it fits more air into the combustion chamber so that fuel can be burned at a higher rate, and it raises the temperature at which the combustion takes place, giving higher thermal efficiency.\n\nA turbojet engine has a compressor on the front to compress the incoming air before it passes through the combustion chamber. The compressor is driven by a turbine that extracts power from the exhaust gases as they leave the engine.\n\nA ramjet engine does not have a compressor or a turbine. Instead, it relies on the speed of the aircraft to compress the air. When air coming in at high speed is brought to rest inside the engine, it's pressure increases according to Bernoulli's principle. At sufficiently high speeds, this is sufficient to run the engine without the complexity of a compressor and turbine. \n\nRamjets can be designed to operate at much higher speeds than a turbine engine - experimental ramjet powered aircraft have achieved speeds as high as five times the speed of sound. \n\nHowever, you need to get the aircraft up to a very high speed before you can start the ramjet - because it relies on the speed of the incoming air to compress the air, it cannot run if it isn't moving. Therefore, you need a rocket or a conventional turbojet to get the aircraft to the necessary speed before the ramjet can take over.\n" ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "dqtn2oc", "dqtnx5m", "dqtsw8k" ], "score": [ 2, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "The RAM in PS3 is non-system RAM, meaning that it is only for the game. There is a system only RAM. The 'mean' experience on console is lower than PC. The PC release has more variations in NPC generation and other big calculations that the console release. You can choke down the PC release to run within PS3 limits. The PC has a lot of other programs running as well. Cranking the game up as far as I can it's only using 2.2 GB. They say you need 4GB because you need at max, 2GB, and you would still need room for normal PC operations too.", "PC run Windows OS that multipurpose generic OS that will consume 2+ GB of RAM on it's own plus there is other software running at the same time so with 4GB of there is not even 2GB left for the game.\n\nThe game on console can be fine tuned to specific configuration of the console. On PC it must be prepared to work with different configurations.\n\nPS3 has lower details. The thing about computational complexity (how it is hard to compute something) doesn't have to be linear. \n\n\n\n", "The PC version of GTA V was a lot more graphically advanced than the console versions, and was in development still while the console versions had been out for a while, in addition to consoles being more optimized for games than PCs, so they can do relatively more with weaker hardware." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cafz63f" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Let's go with the typical (or not so typical) 70 kg man.\n\n\n- Blood volume = ~5 liters\n- Stroke volume (amount pumped with each beat) = ~70 mL\n- Heart rate = ~ 75 bpm\n- Cardiac output = ~5 liters/minute\n- Height = 1.75 m (5'9\")\n\nThe entire blood volume is circulated once a minute or so. I'd surmise that blood circulated very near the heart will make it back sooner than blood going to your great toe. Let's say the blood needs to travel half the height of the body and back, or rather, one body height.\n\n- Distance traveled = 1.75 m\n- Time = 60 seconds\n- Rate = 1.75m/60s = ~3 cm/second\n- Heart beat frequency = 1 every 0.8 seconds\n\n\n**Distance traveled per beat = 2.4 cm**\n\nThis is just an estimate but something on this order of magnitude seems reasonable.\n\nEdit: formatting and clarification" ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c82vkxw", "c82vxtp" ], "score": [ 10, 7 ], "text": [ "Let's go back a bit. \n\nThe Western Confederacy was beaten in the 1794 Northwest Indian War, and broken during the War of 1812. The Creeks collapsed into a brutal civil war in 1813, and Andrew Jackson razed the strongholds of the Creek and Seminole diehards during his 1816 invasion of Florida. The destruction of Negro Fort during this incursion shattered the black hope of building a refuge outside the United States. \n\nThese victories and the relentless growth of the American population led to a flood of settlers. The Indian nations gave up their claims, and the U.S. government, starved of specie and dependent on a trickle of tariffs to fund itself, found itself in undisputed possession of millions of acres of land. \n\nThe rich and well-connected grabbed this land at bargain prices and built fortunes parceling it out. The capital this land represented was entered in ledgers and grew into banks. Land was wealth. Land was opportunity. Squatters dragged their families just out of the law's reach, eking out a living on the frontier. Behind them came surveyors, whose chains and stakes laid out new towns. From these raw-timbered towns came a slow, steady stream of mortgage payments, which swelled the coffers of a few satisfied families in New York and Charleston. \n\nThis process had a hard, keen edge in the South. The plantation lords were dependent on the land, but just as they understood how fragile their control over their slaves was, they understood how brittle their fortunes were. Cotton, tobacco, indigo; these crops created fortunes but they depleted the ground. Plantations ran down and produced less every year. \n\nLand was, for the slave-owners, more than a desire. It was a matter of life or death. More important than either: a matter of honor. \n\nThe Creek Confederacy was consumed quickly. The rich bottomlands of the Delta, where spring floods replenished the soil's nutrients as quickly as cotton drained them, were snapped up. To survive, the slave-owners had to move west. \n\nThe grand strategy of the United States in its earliest days involved the constant erosion of European power - and Europe's strategic partners in the Indian confederacies. \n\nThe victories of the War of 1812 - and don't let the draw against Britain distract you, the death of Tecumseh and the fall of the Creek diehards made this war one of the greatest victories in American history - incidentally opened the door to unimaginable wealth. \n\nAnd just as these new lands promised wealth to the slave-owners, they also promised a different kind of security. The Industrial Revolution brought wealth to the North, and a flood of immigrants. The Southerners watched helplessly as the Midwest filled with free states. The writing was on the wall. Only expansion could restore the balance and keep the peace. ", "Hey there your answer I am afraid is long and complicated but I will do my best. Any good answer I feel must begin with President John Tyler's political background. John Tyler had originally been a member of Andrew Jackson's faction, having been opposed to the economic measures of the Adams-Clay National Republican faction. Andrew Jackson however was a powerful President, probably the most powerful in early American history until Lincoln assumed wartime powers. To a states-righter like John Tyler that power threatened his his own belief system in a more states oriented government. Thus in the mid 1830's John Tyler joined the opposition, what would become the Whig party. The States Rights Whigs were a minority in the party, and although Tyler didn't agree with their economic proposals opposition to Jackson was more important in his mind, and besides Tyler would probably never be in a position to be conflicted about his party's ideology. The election of 1840 loomed, Andrew Jackson's Flunkies were ripe for defeat, the country was in the middle of its' worse economic depression until the great one in the 1920's, William Henry Harrison had done well in the 36' election and was chosen to be the Whig's sole running candidate ( having run multiple candidates in 36). Who to pick for VP? Henry Clay and Daniel Webster had both been offered the position initially this would have united the two most powerful wings of the party behind Harrison, but both declined. The choice then fell to former Virginia governor John Tyler who's state rights' platform and unquestionable \"Southerness\" would help in the deep South where democrats tended to be stronger. The rest they say is history Harrison died soon after taking office and the Presidency fell to \"his accidentcy\". As I have previously discussed Tyler largely opposed many of the economic measures of the Whigs, and thus vetoed many of those passed by the Whig dominated Congress. In fury the Whigs cast him from the party and considered impeaching him. Tyler was now a man without a party, his cabinet had also left him and he was forced to nominate fellow Southern Whig State Righter's. How then could Tyler possibly be reelected? He couldn't get any of his own agenda through congress? Ahhh but the Constitution provides the President a very powerful tool, foreign policy.\n\nJohn Tyler hit upon the idea of Texas annexation ( heavily encouraged by the States Rights'- Slave power defender, secretary of State Abel Upsher) as a way that he could win reelection. Of course this wasn't a new problem, Texas had been pushing to be annexed through the Jackson and Van Buren Presidencies, Tyler could furthermore count only on a few senators if it came to annexation. Sam Houston in fact was reluctant to even push for annexation by the 1840's support for it being so weak in congress. At this moment, America's ancient foe played into the Tyler regime hands'. In the 1830's Britain had freed its slaves and had been aggressively trying to stop the Slave trade in the Atlantic. The British minister de affairs in Texas hit off on the idea of Britain freeing Texas's slaves, a local Texan by the name of Pearl Andrews backed this scheme and there seemed to be some support from the Texas people themselves. Andrews hurried off to London, to converse with Lord Palmerston's government. While there the British foreign minister showed some interest in Andrews' scheme, various proposals were discussed about how to free Texas's slaves. When the foreign minister realized that Andrews was not in fact an official representative of the Texas government he ended talks, but left the door open for official negotiations. Word of this meeting reached Washington, and provided Tyler with the great reason to finally achieve annexation. For if one thing was true of Americans in 1844, it is that most hated Britain being American was as much as being Anti-British as being American. Too late did the British foreign ministry realize that its' direct involvement had dangerously threatened any chance of abolition in Texas. Tyler nearly had his majority, and when the issue of slave abolition was thrown in he was able to pull a few Southern Whig senators into his camp along with some vague promises that the next President would pursue annexation not Tyler. One important thing to understand about Jacksonian politics is that slavery, was the abortion of its time. If you wanted to defeat an opponent in a heavily pro-slavery region of the country call him soft on slavery. When the Texas issue came to involve slavery, it forced several whig southern senators in the position that they had to embrace an expansionist pro-slavery model to protect their own political career (a trend that we see throughout Southern Whig political history, and indeed this trend would eventually break the party). Tyler sent off a rider offering annexation in his last days of office, and when Polk was sworn in he decided not to recall the rider. \n\nIt is more complicated then that, you also have Andrew Jackson's embracing of Texas annexation in the 1840's which helped nudge reluctant democrats into the annexation camp and ensured Polk ( a strong annexation backer) would win the nomination over Van Buren (luke warm on annexation). As others have noted there was also support from a less top down perspective for American expansion, but in this case I really do feel that the best explanation is one that is heavy on the political history that finally convinced many to get on board the expansion express. As far as the war against Mexico, another complicated question that has less to do with Texas annexation and more to do with Polk's expansionist drive. I'll come back later and address that point if someone else doesn't cover it.\n\nEdit: and for less of a Political answer /u/Prufrock451 does a good job answering why some Southerners felt that they had to expand into new lands. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dksmcu5", "dkstses" ], "score": [ 49, 20 ], "text": [ "Different products contain different chemicals, but the active ingredient in normal Raid interferes with sodium channels. It prevents nerve cells from building up electrical charge by \"breaking\" the mechanism they use to transport electrically-charged particles, therefore causing paralysis and potentially \"brain\" damage as well... though the distinction between a bug's \"brain\" from the rest of the \"nervous system\" is not as obvious or well-defined as it is in humans. \n\nThe immobile/\"brain-dead\" bug can either be considered dead already (because it won't do anything), or will have other biological functions shut down as it does not eat, drink, etc anymore. ", "So we're basically turning bugs into vegetables?" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c2a2emq", "c2a2f9r", "c2a2gmd", "c2a2ihx", "c2a2emq", "c2a2f9r", "c2a2gmd", "c2a2ihx" ], "score": [ 37, 18, 16, 3, 37, 18, 16, 3 ], "text": [ "It comes from when they used statues to represent gods in plays a long time ago. The machine part is because they were often lowered onto the stage with ropes and pulleys. They would often bring these onto the stage when the plot got stuck. The god would do something magic that solved a problem or moved the plot on. \nIt's generally considered bad to use it in fiction these days, as it means the writer hasn't thought of a better way to move the plot along. \nIt isn't really used much in everyday situations, but people might mention it when something very unlikely happens that solves a problem someone has.", "Essentially, it's used to describe a literary device where some outside power comes in and resolves a situation that was otherwise hopeless. \n\n**Example:** The heroes are backed into a corner, surrounded by an overwhelming number of enemies when suddenly (and inexplicably) an earthquake occurs and decimates the enemy ranks. \n\nI'm not aware of the phrase having any real application to real life situations, except perhaps as an accusation against those who would rather wait for a miracle/divine intervention than deal with their problems themselves. \n\n", "It is the name of a way to resolve a plot.\n\nThe name comes from Greek tragedy where a god would enter the stage from a crane (a machina in Latin, mekhane in Greek).\n\nThe plot in a book or movie reaches some sort of outcome which seems impossible to get out of, and then the author introduces a *deus ex machina*, which is a person or thing or magic that suddenly solves the problem without an explanation, or a very unsatisfying one.\n\nHere's a few: aliens invade Earth, the odds are grim, then all of a sudden Jeff Goldblum knows how to use a Mac to infect the aliens' computers with a virus. Independence Day.\n\nBizarre circumstances are afoot on an interstellar spacecraft. People are dying and going violently insane, then all of a sudden it's revealed that the ship went \"to Hell\", which doesn't require the screenwriter to actually solve the problem in an interesting way. Event Horizon.\n\nBad stuff happens to Superman all the time. But when Lois Lane actually dies along with a lot of other people, suddenly Superman knows how to spin the Earth around to reverse time, an ability he has never used before to prevent other truly bad things from happening. Superman the Movie.\n\nWeird happenings are afoot in an underwater deep sea base. People are dying, and mysterious eggs are falling from the upper reaches. Turns out the thing that's making this happen preys on your fears, and you can just ... wish the entire sequence away! Sphere. For what it's worth, I tried to wish away the time I spent watching that turkey.\n\nAliens invade earth, with powerful technology that such a feat would require, but are foiled by the presence of water ... on a planet that is mostly covered with water. They also have loads of technology, but they resort to writing Post-It Notes in the wheat fields. And at the end, it turns out it was all just to test the faith of one wayward priest. Deus ex machina combo: Signs!\n\nAnd the classic deus ex machina is Dorothy waking up and realizing it was all a dream. After realizing the way home was an unknown power of something she had the entire time. After realizing that everyone's inner strength was what they already had inside them. After they realize the Wizard was actually ... a god from the machine. Deus ex machina mega combo: Wizard of Oz.\n\nHaving a deus ex machina doesn't necessarily make a movie bad, but if you're telling a coming of age story about a young girl, for the love of all that is good, don't end it in a dream sequence. I'm looking at you, Mirrormask. Only Dorothy gets that ending.\n\nToday, such clumsy plot devices are often called \"cop-outs\".", "It doesn't apply to real life situations; it applies to fiction. A classic example is Knowing, with Nicolas Cage.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe movie focuses on a couple of young children and has the viewer trying to figure out how they can possibly survive the coming disaster. Then, at the end, they are miraculously saved in a way that wasn't even hinted at earlier in the story. In fact, in this case they were almost literally saved by a \"god from the machine.\"\n\nIt makes you feel betrayed when you try to figure out how a plot situation will be resolved and then find that something new is introduced at the end that you didn't know about.", "It comes from when they used statues to represent gods in plays a long time ago. The machine part is because they were often lowered onto the stage with ropes and pulleys. They would often bring these onto the stage when the plot got stuck. The god would do something magic that solved a problem or moved the plot on. \nIt's generally considered bad to use it in fiction these days, as it means the writer hasn't thought of a better way to move the plot along. \nIt isn't really used much in everyday situations, but people might mention it when something very unlikely happens that solves a problem someone has.", "Essentially, it's used to describe a literary device where some outside power comes in and resolves a situation that was otherwise hopeless. \n\n**Example:** The heroes are backed into a corner, surrounded by an overwhelming number of enemies when suddenly (and inexplicably) an earthquake occurs and decimates the enemy ranks. \n\nI'm not aware of the phrase having any real application to real life situations, except perhaps as an accusation against those who would rather wait for a miracle/divine intervention than deal with their problems themselves. \n\n", "It is the name of a way to resolve a plot.\n\nThe name comes from Greek tragedy where a god would enter the stage from a crane (a machina in Latin, mekhane in Greek).\n\nThe plot in a book or movie reaches some sort of outcome which seems impossible to get out of, and then the author introduces a *deus ex machina*, which is a person or thing or magic that suddenly solves the problem without an explanation, or a very unsatisfying one.\n\nHere's a few: aliens invade Earth, the odds are grim, then all of a sudden Jeff Goldblum knows how to use a Mac to infect the aliens' computers with a virus. Independence Day.\n\nBizarre circumstances are afoot on an interstellar spacecraft. People are dying and going violently insane, then all of a sudden it's revealed that the ship went \"to Hell\", which doesn't require the screenwriter to actually solve the problem in an interesting way. Event Horizon.\n\nBad stuff happens to Superman all the time. But when Lois Lane actually dies along with a lot of other people, suddenly Superman knows how to spin the Earth around to reverse time, an ability he has never used before to prevent other truly bad things from happening. Superman the Movie.\n\nWeird happenings are afoot in an underwater deep sea base. People are dying, and mysterious eggs are falling from the upper reaches. Turns out the thing that's making this happen preys on your fears, and you can just ... wish the entire sequence away! Sphere. For what it's worth, I tried to wish away the time I spent watching that turkey.\n\nAliens invade earth, with powerful technology that such a feat would require, but are foiled by the presence of water ... on a planet that is mostly covered with water. They also have loads of technology, but they resort to writing Post-It Notes in the wheat fields. And at the end, it turns out it was all just to test the faith of one wayward priest. Deus ex machina combo: Signs!\n\nAnd the classic deus ex machina is Dorothy waking up and realizing it was all a dream. After realizing the way home was an unknown power of something she had the entire time. After realizing that everyone's inner strength was what they already had inside them. After they realize the Wizard was actually ... a god from the machine. Deus ex machina mega combo: Wizard of Oz.\n\nHaving a deus ex machina doesn't necessarily make a movie bad, but if you're telling a coming of age story about a young girl, for the love of all that is good, don't end it in a dream sequence. I'm looking at you, Mirrormask. Only Dorothy gets that ending.\n\nToday, such clumsy plot devices are often called \"cop-outs\".", "It doesn't apply to real life situations; it applies to fiction. A classic example is Knowing, with Nicolas Cage.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe movie focuses on a couple of young children and has the viewer trying to figure out how they can possibly survive the coming disaster. Then, at the end, they are miraculously saved in a way that wasn't even hinted at earlier in the story. In fact, in this case they were almost literally saved by a \"god from the machine.\"\n\nIt makes you feel betrayed when you try to figure out how a plot situation will be resolved and then find that something new is introduced at the end that you didn't know about." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [ "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448011/" ], [], [], [], [ "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448011/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "drogoci", "drogq6q" ], "score": [ 2, 4 ], "text": [ "Men's body temperature is higher because they are hairier?", "Women don't actually have a lower body temperature than men - the heat is just distributed differently. Women's bodies are better at maintaining core body temperature at the expense of body temperature in the extremities.\n\nTemperature also doesn't have much to do with hair. Human hair simply isn't effective insulation. Consider how hair patterns break down by geography. East Asians tend not to have much body hair - despite the fact that places like Korea and Japan are actually quite cold. In contrast, Indian men tend to have glorious amounts of hair, despite the fact that much of India has an equatorial climate.\n\nNo one knows for sure why men are hairier, but it's likely for the same reason that male lions have manes: as a secondary sex characteristic that indicates virility." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0pkng3", "d0qcf1l" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "Congratulations on making it onto a watch list! Without saying anything too classified, density. Density of materials is almost like a finger print. ", "The new full-body scanners use millimeter-wave radiation to detect items based on their density. Anything that is more dense than the surrounding matter will show up on the image. \n\nThere is some controversy about the health impacts of these machines, especially for frequent flyers. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e2fmzk3" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "I will quote a [post](_URL_0_) I wrote where I touched on Kurlansky's work:\n > \n > Mark Kurlansky in his pop-history (non-academic with no citations or references) works Cod and Basque History of the World for some reason strongly proposes the theories of Basque knowledge of North America, himself confesses the following in Basque History of the World:\n > \n > > The two leading arguments for placing the Basques in pre- Columbian America are both based on deductive reasoning.\n > \n > and\n > \n > > But no physical evidence has been found of the Basques in North America before Cabot. Historians and archeologists who have searched for it and failed insist that the rumors are false. But the search for pre-Columbian Basques in America has yielded ample evidence of a surprisingly large-scale Basque presence in Newfoundland and Labrador soon after Cabot. The remains of extensive Basque whaling stations dating to 1530 have been found.\n > \n > As we see, he admits that there is no physical evidence and proceedes to demonstrate his case on deductive reasoning, and honestly, it rests on some really eager jumps to conclusions and some really bad historical premises. For example he says:\n > \n > > But the Basques chased whales that traveled to subarctic waters and then dropped down along both the European and American coastlines.\n > \n > But to quote an academic work about the Newfoundland fisheries \"The Basque Whaling Establishments in Labrador 1536-1632 —A Summary\" by Selma Huxley Barkham:\n > \n > > Contrary to the spurious claims of writers on the history of whaling who have based their findings on secondary evidence, the Basques never, at any point, chased whales further and further out into the Atlantic until they collided with North America. This ridiculous legend must be laid to rest once and for all.\n > \n > Kurlansky book has some other mistakes and misleading statements in that chapter that would warrant a good badhistory post for itself\n\nSo in short, Kurlansky's argument rest on no evidence whatsoever, but mainly \"deducing\" from various other information, and even that is based on some faulty premises and reasoning" ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8qsa6c/is_there_evidence_for_the_portuguese_having/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ceyvgoy", "ceywecd", "ceyxb18", "ceyy8pr", "cez1gw4", "cez1hls", "cez4sfm", "cezeaf6" ], "score": [ 5, 10, 20, 10, 3, 32, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Mostly because there are enough countries out there who respect sovereign borders that they wouldn't allow it to happen. \n\nIt's not not happening, though. Ask Israel of South Korea if they feel like their borders are threatened by other countries. The first Gulf War was also a direct response to Iraq invading Kuwait.", "After WWII the U.N was designed to keep the world peace, invasions use to be profitable and could aid a nation, but with the UN and especially the U.S enforcing Trade sanctions and possibly blockades it would do nothing but hurt your nation. So Invasions result in 3 things \n1. Being kicked out of the U.N and losing support of many nations in the UN\n2. Having trade sanctions and blockades enforced, effectively destroying your economy\n3. Possible attack of taken over land and it being returned to its original nation by the UN and in Particular the U.S and it's allies (Ex. Iraqi invasion of Kuwait)", "Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. That's fairly recent history to some of us.", "We do it with money and subtlety now and just let them call themselves a separate country. ", "The answer to your question is the con's of taking over outweigh the pro's of expanding with force. Why wake the rest of the world to your intentions when you can buy political influence in the country of your choice and exploit only the segments of the country you want to? If you want oil, find a way to exploit the oil resource with as little people noticing as possible. If you want religious influence fund specific organizations in the country you want to \"take over\". Think of muslim influence within France, UK, Germany.... the list goes on and on. Citizens of those countries don't feel they are being invaded, but most would argue muslim influence is growing. ", "What do you mean by 'anymore'?\n\nThe USSR was a little grabby and Russia continues to be.\n\nIraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Iran-Iraq war prior that was a pretty fucking big war.\n\nIndia and Pakistan skirmish for land presently. \n\nIsrael continues to fight the Palestinians as well as an entire region, although not in an all out-war.\n\nNorth and South Korea just have an armistice.\n\nEritrea v. Ethiopia in the late 90s. \n\nRecently Cambodia and Thailand. South Sudan and Sudan. \n\n\nIt's not that countries don't fight over land it's that the big countries haven't fought over land for a couple decades. Mainly that's due to the expense of war and new paradigm of controlling the world around you. They work through proxies and posturing. Instead of adding a country to your empire you add it to your sphere of influence. Instead of having a direct war you agitate and cajole and force treaties. \n\n", "Essentially, colonization and invasion is usually done to procure resources. You only need to look at Africa and the European colonization for a good example. \n\nWith a global marketplace now, there just is no reason to secure land for resources anymore. Anyone that wants a resource pays or invests to secure it from the person that owns the land right now. In the Congo, Coltan is a mineral that is abundant there, and very important to the computer industry for the manufacture of capacitors. There is currently several businessmen, including some senators invested in operations to extract the mineral there. \n\nSimply put, its just easier to pay to get whatever resource you need than pump money into occupying an area and pushing out or oppressing the natives for a resource the native people would be happy to give you for some form of payment. ", "We don't \"steal\" countries anymore, we stage coups and tie in the country's new debt slavery through the IMF and world bank. The puppet rulers hopefully do what they are told by their new masters. \n\nSource: I'm a US citizen. " ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "c3hsf7v", "c3hsntz" ], "score": [ 6, 3 ], "text": [ "Episcopalian, barring from the basic beliefs (Belief in Jesus as God, Jesus will save you, Heaven and Hell) in general are very liberal.\n\nThings such as: The Bible was written \"under influence of God\" rather than direct words, leaving room for context and interpretation. \n\nGays and women are allowed to be ordained, as they are seen as equal, and being made by God. \n\nSlavery is bad, and that everyone should receive equal compensation within the church, and pushes toward higher minimum wages and better working conditions.\n\nOpen in it's support for anti-racism, gay rights, gender equality, and rich/poor disparity.\n\nAs someone put it: \"I used to be Episcopalian, and now I am atheist. Not much has changed.\" In regards to daily life, and morality, and general views. \n", "Episcopalian is the American version of the Anglican church. It split off after the American Revolution because the Anglicans were too closely tied to England.\n\nHow Episcopalians worship vary greatly from church to church...some practice High Church, very formal, similar to Catholic mass, some Low Church, which is more similar to generic Protestant service. Some practices both, or something in between.\n\nThe main difference from Catholicism is authority is much less centralized. There is no pope who makes proclamations from on high, and members are more free to make moral decision based on conscience rather than dogma.\n\nMany of the more reactionary aspects of Catholicism are gone...priests can marry, women can be ordained, homosexuality is accepted, divorce is allowed, and there is no iron clad dogma concerning abortion, birth control or capital punishment.\n\nTheologically, they still believe in praying to saints for intercession, which sets them apart from most other Protestants. They retain infant baptism, and teen confirmation, but do not consider confession to be a mandatory sacrament.\n\nTL;DR - Varies from church to church, closer to Catholic than others, but now is a pretty generic liberal Protestant sect. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d2o2oq1" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "It's because of our pupils. Your eyes, even if they were closed while you were asleep, got used to the dark, so the pupils got big to allow more light in the event that you woke up in the dark, you could see better. \n\nWell if you wake up to bright lights, that's a TON of light coming in and you can see ALL of it. So it's super overwhelming and painful to absorb all that light before your eyes can properly adjust. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cseckfu", "csect7s" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "largely uncreative (not a large variety of topics), over produced, and i think most people hate the fans more than the music - similar to the emo hate. ", "Because there's not any type of music that people don't hate with a passion? " ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "crom7jz" ], "score": [ 37 ], "text": [ "This is a very interesting question. I'm not sure how helpful we can be, as the only people who'd be able to give you a decent answer don't exist yet. If you anticipate finding the secret to eternal life or passing your consciousness to a robot, and Reddit is still around several hundred years from now, set yourself a [Remind Me](_URL_0_) to come back to /r/AskHistorians and ask the question again.\n\nHowever, it does kinda feel unsatisfying to leave it at that.\n\n**Short answer:** Maybe. Define \"Cold War\" and \"end.\" Shit, define \"ever\" and \"the\" and \"Did,\" because the whole concept is complicated.\n\n**Long answer:** If you'll excuse me for a moment, I really need to get a monocle and a glass of port before attempting to answer this with the degree of pomposity required.\n\nBack.\n\n\nOkay. \n\n\nIf you're very, very lucky as a student, you'll eventually run across a teacher who explains A Very Important Truth about history to you. Namely: We make a lot of stuff up.\n\nWe don't make up names or dates or battles or events or whatever. We're not that dishonest. But we *do* make up a lot of the terms we use to describe things, and then we sort of tacitly lie about how absolute they really are. \n\n**Why?** Because that's how the human brain organizes, understands, and uses information. We slot things into categories and then we give the categories names. Whenever your brain accesses a particular event, it remembers the category and then has some context for why, when, and how something occurred.\n\nLet's try an example:\n\n**The Middle Ages started in 493 with the fall of the western Roman Empire and ended in 1492 with Columbus' voyage to the Americas.** \n\nThis is useful. When we say, \"There's going to be a conference on medieval literature at Kalamazoo this weekend,\" everyone has a rough idea of the time period this conference will cover. We know when it happened. Medieval literature overwhelmingly existed in a time before the printing press, when books were copied and distributed at an agonizingly slow rate, and influential styles or storytelling techniques took a long time to spread. \n\nThe Middle Ages encompasses a discrete, readily-identifiable period in human history.\n\n**Except *most of that is actually bullshit*.**\n\nIt's helpful bullshit that provides context for people who are learning about Europe at a particular point in time when historical events shared a certain consistency, but that's really all it does. Historians disagree on which dates and events are the most relevant as \"start\" and \"end\" markers for the Middle Ages, whether historical eras can be said to \"start\" or \"end\" at all, or even if the \"Middle Ages\" is relevant as a concept. Here's why, taking the statement example from earlier:\n\n - The people, political institutions, roads, cultures, and languages of the western Roman Empire didn't suddenly cease to exist in 493. \n - The \"fall\" of the western Roman Empire was a very lengthy process that happened over several centuries and was certainly not a single event.\n - 493 was not the first year in which the government construct known as the western Roman Empire changed radically.\n - Columbus did indeed sail for the Americas in 1492, but was that really the \"end\" of the Middle Ages? If the economic and cultural resources necessary to support naval expeditions were what most distinguished the Age of Exploration from the Middle Ages, why don't we use the Portuguese naval explorations that started 80 years earlier as an \"end\" marker? \n - If we're determined to keep the \"end\" of the Middle Ages in 1492, was Columbus' voyage really the era-defining event? Or was it the fall of Granada and the end of nearly eight centuries of Muslim control in Spain? But wouldn't the fall of Constantinople (1453) have been more influential than that?\n\nSo you see the problem. The \"Middle Ages,\" and of course, all \"ages\" and \"eras\" described by historians, are artificial constructs. They're useful categories that contextualize information, but they're not absolute, ironclad realities. Humans are not so well-organized as to arrange their affairs in neatly-described periods of time with clear start and end dates around major sociopolitical movements. \n\nThe \"Cold War\" as a concept is no different, and so its start and end points are problematic. And that's not just about current tensions either -- although, yes, that has something to do with it. (We'll get to that in a moment.) We're very close to the events in question, and what looks like a discrete period to us may not actually be all that remarkable when all's said and done.\n\n**The Cold War *as we know it in 2015* is a period that stretches between the end of World War II in 1945 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.** These are pretty commonly-accepted dates among historians. However, if it's really Russian and Western antagonism more generally that we're concerned about, then that's by no means confined to 1945-1991. You could bump the \"start date\" to the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 (or much earlier for intra-European squabbling), and then extend it to ?????????, because we don't know enough about the future to place today's events in a reasonable context.\n\nAnd if you want to be really thorough, de Tocqueville saw imperial Russia and the United States on an ideological collision course back when *Democracy in America* was first written and published in the 1830s, even though the two countries had pretty good relations at the time (Russia was about 25 years away from selling Alaska to the U.S.):\n\n - \"There are now two great nations in the world which, starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans. Both have grown in obscurity, and while the world’s attention was occupied elsewhere, they have suddenly taken their place among the leading nations, making the world take note of their birth and of their greatness almost at the same instant. All other peoples seem to have nearly reached their natural limits and to need nothing but to preserve them; but these two are growing…. The American fights against natural obstacles; the Russian is at grips with men. The former combats the wilderness and barbarism; the latter, civilization with all its arms. America’s conquests are made with the plowshare, Russia’s with the sword. To attain their aims, the former relies on personal interest and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of individuals. The latter in a sense concentrates the whole power of society in one man. One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude. Their point of departure is different and their paths diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret desire of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.\"\n\nCreepy, isn't it?\n\n**So imagine you're an historian who's writing a general political history of our \"era\" several hundred years from now.** WE think of the Cold War as being a dangerous and uncertain period of antagonism and proxy conflicts between the Western world and the U.S.S.R. over a period spanning roughly 50 years. We know that there was a brief period of rapprochement during the 1990s and early 2000s. We know that relations deteriorated afterwards. Nevertheless, this isn't the Cold War from our perspective. It's just a period of bad relations.\n\nBut ... what if it isn't? That historian isn't us. **He/she will know whatever happens beyond 2015.** This person will know whether 1992-2003 was a preview of even better relations later, or whether it was a blip that didn't fix the underlying conditions creating and incentivizing a distrustful relationship between Russia and the West. He/she will also know if we're heading for a war, or a massive financial crash, or a Yellowstone caldera eruption, or a San Francisco earthquake, or a major terrorist attack, or any one of a billion things that could alter the trajectory of current events and the incentive structure that guides nations' behavior. What we think of now as the \"Cold War\" might look to someone in 3015 like a period of somewhat heightened tensions during a much longer era of hostility. If that turns out to be the case, the whole concept of the \"Cold War\" loses much of its descriptive power because it won't have been all that unique in the history of Western/Russian relations.\n\nOr not. Maybe it was, is, and remains just the Cold War. We really don't know.\n\nThe indelible lesson I took from spending a few weeks holed up with copies of American and Canadian news magazines from the 1960s-1980s is that humans are really, really, *really* bad at prediction, so I won't venture a guess here.\n\n**TL:DR: The answer is a solid \"Maybe.\"**" ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/24duzp/remindmebot_info/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cr4ljg3", "cr4lk70", "cr4m2lo", "cr4mq3f" ], "score": [ 12, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Several things to consider.\n\n1) The easy and obvious questions have been asked to death. Simple questions are greeted by answers to just Google it.\n\n2) The expanding user base has brought in experts in many fields. These people are able to provide much more accurate answers, at a reading comprehension level that fits better with the rules of the sub. These experts don't write answers for literal 5 year olds.\n\n3) The automod is a little overzealous sometimes when it comes to deleting short posts.\n\n4) A good question shouldn't have a very simple answer, as there are always matters of opinion buried within the OP's question.", "Some issues are resistant to dumbed down answers. All the old answers are still out there, use the search function, rather than typing in a new question, to find them.", "Easy to explain really. \n\nDon't expect advanced 15th semester PhD stuff to be able to be explained to someone that hasn't started primary school yet. ", "The social construct of this medium of inter webbed connection allows for the sum of reddits most neurologically advanced minds to explore and digest some of our planets most obscure and thought provoking questions.\n\nYou see, based on a study from Harvards 1981 experiment entitled \"Personal theological conquests and self projection,\" we find it in our 3rd hippocampus section that it is a relatively infantile method to relay our neurological brain patterns in such a way that we sound both exhilarating yet feasible to the under developed premature brain. \n\nNot until a hormonal release of the saturated chromosome based viscous fluid in our post development years can one fathom the inquires stated in said subreddit.\n\nOur territotorial limbic system of our post natal brain make it critical that judgement from ones peers within the same genus is not just supplemental, but superior. Until the day Darwinism falls to the secondary motive, homo sapians will continue their mental version of primitive chest pounding." ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "c36i8ot", "c36im4u", "c36jfkt", "c36i8ot", "c36im4u", "c36jfkt" ], "score": [ 3, 18, 9, 3, 18, 9 ], "text": [ "I'm not sure this is true, but if it is, it is because they can afford more research on tech.\n\nYou can tell how long a battery will last by it's \"mAh\"(milliamp-hour) rating. A 2500 mAh battery will last for 2500 hours, if you only take 1mA (milliamp) from it. (In real life, it won't actual last that long, because after a long time, batteries lose their charge.)", "Nice try, Duracell and Energizer joint venture salesman.", "According to my friend's dad who works for Proctor and Gamble and just knows a lot about manufacturing in America:\n\nThere are two battery manufacturers in the US. One sells their batteries to Energizer and the other sells to Duracell. Each company takes the best batteries produced and brands them as their own. If the battery doesn't meet the standards for either company, then they are sold off to other companies (e.g. Panasonic, Kirkland/Costco, Sony, etc.).", "I'm not sure this is true, but if it is, it is because they can afford more research on tech.\n\nYou can tell how long a battery will last by it's \"mAh\"(milliamp-hour) rating. A 2500 mAh battery will last for 2500 hours, if you only take 1mA (milliamp) from it. (In real life, it won't actual last that long, because after a long time, batteries lose their charge.)", "Nice try, Duracell and Energizer joint venture salesman.", "According to my friend's dad who works for Proctor and Gamble and just knows a lot about manufacturing in America:\n\nThere are two battery manufacturers in the US. One sells their batteries to Energizer and the other sells to Duracell. Each company takes the best batteries produced and brands them as their own. If the battery doesn't meet the standards for either company, then they are sold off to other companies (e.g. Panasonic, Kirkland/Costco, Sony, etc.)." ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "ccb2oja", "ccb5izy" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "What do you mean \"so late\"? Englands first colonies were only about 100 years after Colombus. When you consider initial voyages took a year to get here and back, that the value of what was here was in doubt(indeed what was here period was unclear), that who owned it was unclear etc. its understandable the English would delay when it appeared the Spanish had gotten the best stuff. ", "Spanish military power was a big factor in keeping the British from settling the Americas. It's important to remember that before the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), Spain was the principal maritime power in the world, thanks to a combination of its location, its support from the Vatican, its ties to the Habsburgs, etc.\n\nDuring the reign of Elizabeth, the English superseded Spain as the main naval power. However, the Spanish were well ensconced in what is now Latin America by then. The English moved into North America as well as the Caribbean." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8j25s2", "c8j6h6e" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "It's just a very minor cold shock response from your body.", "At first I was going to suggest that it is an example of the [mammalian diving reflex](_URL_0_), but after reviewing it I'm not so sure anymore. The effect you're referring to might be just a mild cold shock. " ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "cpi3g7s", "cpi5v0w", "cpi6266" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Or better yet, is there a way to fix it? ", "Because the video has been shared, transfered, compressed so on so fourth. Chances are you aren't watching the original file", "What is this \"porn\" you speak of?\n\n*whistles*" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c96korf", "c96qyzu", "c96s4wb", "c96uerh" ], "score": [ 7, 11, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "If his story is true about the bombers being involved in the atomic bombings, then he would have been based around Tinian airfield, which was huge.\n\nWhat your grandfather is descirbing is \"bumping\" which is practising take-offs, landings and aborted landings... I find it extremely unlikely that B-29s, which were renowned for their engines overheating and catching fire, practising take-off runs with the extra weight. (in addition to increased risk of an aircraft losing an engine on take-off, I am not aware of \"bumping\" being a standard procedure in an active theatre.\n", " > That always preceded his feelings about the atomic bomb. He felt it was quite likely that he'd have been a part of and died in an invasion of mainland Japan, had it not been used. The implication being, none of us, his children and grandchildren, would have existed had the bomb not been dropped, since he didn't have kids until after the war.\n\nI can't say anything about the former part, but this is an incredibly common sentiment among men of that generation. I've heard it repeated a lot. My maternal grandfather's unit in Europe had received orders to transfer to the Pacific right before the war ended. According to him, he had an overwhelming feeling that those orders would result in his death. He credits the atomic bombs with saving him from that. ", "Regarding your grandfather's sentiments about being killed in a land invasion:\nHere is a link to Truman's presidential documents regarding the A-bomb. It's some of the most fascinating stuff I've read. It's pretty scary how much the top levels of government didn't know about regarding the power of the bomb itself. Just in case you wanted to read some primary sources yourself:\n\n_URL_0_\n", "In short? No, probably not. Little Boy was only 4,400 kg, and Fat Man a little more at 4,633. [The B-29 could easily carry that kind of payload](_URL_0_) without any alterations necessary for weight, and regularly did." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [ "http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/index.php" ], [ "http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/B/-/B-29_Superfortress.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "crl95x0", "crl983n", "crlaadq", "crlag8t", "crlam53", "crlawom", "crlbjun", "crlc4m4", "crlcimj", "crldyin", "crle702", "crlel8d", "crlgwpr", "crliamt", "crlkc0r", "crllef2", "crlp78u", "crlppgk", "crlqelv", "crlr4ws", "crm2s5p" ], "score": [ 40, 169, 25, 4, 9, 5, 64, 7, 5, 2, 2, 2, 12, 5, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 6, 2 ], "text": [ "Im not a college graduate but if I may, I think it has to do with the reputation. Ideally a degree is a degree, but I think most would assume a harvard degree is way better than a local college degree. Also I think most people would assume that harvard can afford \"world class\" teachers, therefore a better education. But I could be wrong. ", "For starters, many of these places have good reputations because they have cutting edge research and the best academics who are at the forefront of their respective fields. It should be noted that this doesn't always translate to the best *teaching*, but that might well be beside the point.\n\nSome economic theories of the value of education are that it is a signalling mechanism - that by getting a degree you can prove your competency/commitment to a potential employer (as opposed to actually making you a more valuable employee). With that in mind, a degree from a prestigious university indicates that you achieved their stringent entry requirements and put in the required work. \n\nEDIT: people pointing out the importance of making good connections - definitely should not be underestimated. But the fact is that this is both a cause and an effect of the University's prestigious status. They feed into each other.", "A degree proves you can do it. The benefit of an ivy league degree versus one from you local community college or state university is that it's harder to get in. It's not as much you have a degree from an ivy league school as much as you must have been good enough to get into and complete an ivy league education. All credited universities and colleges have to go through regular tests to make sure they're teaching the proper stuff and getting it right. It's them only taking the best of the best that makes the degree so prestigious.", "Many employers like to hire from colleges they attended because it is sort of the devil you know in a world filling with crap degrees from second rate schools. It is also about the network you build and top students go to the Ivy league. Power attracts power which attracts more power.", "It really depends on your career path.\n\nIf you're going into academia, you'll find it incredibly difficult to secure a decent professorship without a track record through elite institutions. While you might be able to get away with a generic 'state' degree for undergraduate, you absolutely need an elite degree for your doctoral work (and it should go without saying that it's a lot easier to get into an elite program from an elite university).\n\nOther than that, the main value of an elite institution is if you don't plan on having a career path in your degree field and want the social prestige and connections of an elite field. A large number of jobs don't really require any sort of narrow expertise but are looking for people who have demonstrated they are amongst the 'elite' to hold them.\n\nConsider the difference between the Supreme Court and the best trial lawyers in the nation. Every member of the Supreme Court went to an Ivy League (or equivalent) school. *No* top trial lawyer (by earnings) went to the Ivy League. Why? Because to get on the Supreme Court, you need the social cachet of the Ivy League but to be an effective trial lawyer you don't.", "It's a combination of factors which all complement each other\n\n*Prestige*: They're the oldest universities in their respective countries. This means that they have had lots of famous alumni, bore witness to some incredibly important discoveries and have a lot of history besides.\n\n*Wealth*: The prestige of these universities then helps them to attract funding. Whether it's from alumni who went on to make lots of money or funding for corporations, the amount of money that these universities get is incredible. This allows them to invest in better resources/facilities, as well as hiring administrators who will in turn look to maximise the funding the university receives.\n\n*Academic clout*: Since these universities have wealth and prestige, they're naturally going to attract academics who are leading their field, drawn by the resources on offer. This in turn makes the university more attractive to investors/potential students since they can point at specific figures and say 'We've got a person at the top of their field, invest here/come to this university'.\n\nYou've also got the situation at Oxbridge where tutorials (or 'supervisions') consist of two students and an academic discussing an essay/set questions in a very rigorous atmosphere. Other UK universities generally don't have the resources for such small tutorials; the implication being that you can get away with doing less work. \n\nOstensibly the degree is the same qualification, but with the background of all of these factors (plus the networking that comes with a good university), certain universities are viewed as superior. The playing field (in the UK at least) is starting to become slightly less uneven, but Oxbridge still has pride of place in the collective psyche.\n", "If you have ever read Freakanomics it talks about this very question. What happens more frequently then people believe is students that get accepted into these schools sometimes get over whelmed with talent. Usually you enter the school from your high school as the best! Then you are placed with a bunch of bests' and all of a sudden your just like everyone else. This can be a tough physiological battle that often leads students to drop out of their chosen major or dropout of school completely.\n\nA degree from these schools is not about school. My wife works with Harvard/Yale graduates through her work and the biggest gain is the peer group. The people you meet at these schools become CEO's, entrepreneurs, political leaders etc etc. More often than not these people are free thinkers and able to put into action ideas and projects that otherwise couldn't be possible at other schools. Knowing them at such early time in their life gives you trustworthiness and potential future dealings with them. I do know that Harvard in particular has a special job board that you can only access if you attended the school. ", "The quality of education from school to school is not the same. You are not going to get the same level of education at a community college then you would at Harvard. The main theory behind our society is the better the school you get your degree from, the more knowledgable you probably are. Seeing as you couldn't get into Harvard and could only get into a community college your degree doesn't mean much seeing as anyone that graduates high school can go to a community college", "Networking top universities can get you internships/research with top employers probably because they can cons timely do so.", "It's not about *what* you know, it's about *who* you know. You can find programs to push you academically at any university, but you probably won't meet the children of world leaders and those of the future.", "because getting a degree from the ivy would make your degree look way better. plus those schools are real hard to get into compared to your state colleges.", "Definitely reputation, age of the institution, history of publications.\n\nThis question also comes up often here in California: Is my degree from UC Riverside any different than my degree from Cal?", "A degree from Oxford or Cambridge in the UK is just quite often better than one from elsewhere. This is because the students are brighter and more diligent (due to the high entry standards) and so they they can be taught more and examined more harshly, therefore leading to a deeper understanding and a better education. \n \nAlongside this there are many things gained outside of the academic. The college life, rich culture, and supervisions/tutorials all make for a more rounded and confident graduate than would be expected from elsewhere. Of course this isn't always the case, but it is the stereotype employers use.\n \nIn a way, having a degree from a top university is like already being employed in a top role in a major firm: it means other people have tested you for quality and found you to be good. In other words, managing to get into that university is seen as a feat of accomplishment and so employers then think you must be clever etc.", "It's like the difference between my shitty cookies and Grandma's awesome cookies. We're both using the same ingredients, and no one would argue that both aren't cookies. But Grandma is much better with the details so her cookies end up tasting a lot better.", "It's worth noting the different programs have their own very schools that they would rank above or with the Ivy Leagues but they don't necessarily stay as consistent. In theology Notre Dame really improved it's reputation in the 70s and 80s by making attempts to be less strictly Catholic, Protestant professors were brought and they were sometimes pretty radical (Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder), their reputation has regressed a little as their theology program tries to reassert it's catholicness a bit more. Duke is a big name and it's because there's a lot of good Biblical criticism being done from all angles, but you also have a theology department that is in conversation with the other faculties, so there's a sense it's not an insular program.\n\nIn contrast Yale Divinity was, traditionally, quite easily the most prestigious theology school in North America. It attracted some real ahead-of-their-time thinkers and was rightly recognized for it, even as their scholars leave for other schools they're still relevant to their field. Having a degree from Yale Divinity is still a boon, but having degrees from Notre Dame or Duke are just as big a deal, even if this was not always the case.", "Networking:\n\nA good lawyer knows the law.\n\nA great lawyer knows the judge.\n\nA fantastic lawyer knows the senator who can change the law or change the judge.\n\n(Not limited to lawyers, that's just the best example.)", "*In theory,* prestigious universities offer a much better education. They frequently employ top experts and Nobel laureates as professors.\n\nThe reality is frequently a little different. A lot of those fancy Nobel Prize winners rarely teach the class themselves, they fob it off on grad students, while they work on their next Nobel. And bear in mind that a person being the very best in their field does not *automatically* make them a good teacher.\n\nAnd there's the money issue. Prestigious universities are also a way of keeping the poors out. The notion is that an Ivy League diploma means you're among the best, but it omits the fact that a lot of people who couldn't afford the place never got the chance to prove they were good.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, a prestigious degree *can* simply mean that Daddy bought it for you. No professor, even with tenure, is going to flunk out some inbred nitwit whose family name is chiseled into the marble lintel of one or more buildings on campus. Never forget that Dubya Bush holds degrees from Harvard *and* Yale, and the man can't pour water out of a boot if the instructions are printed on the sole.\n\n\n", "I did my undergrad at a very middle-of-the-road, run of the mill university, and am now finishing up a PhD at an Ivy League university, where I have taught undergrads biology. Here are my thoughts:\n\n* Students learn the same material at both places. What I learned as an undergrad and taught as a grad student was pretty much the same. So in the sense of \"here's the wad of information I have to learn to get the degree\", there's really no difference.\n\n* The Ivy League undergrad students are very different from my own peers. Over 90% of undergrads here were their high school valedictorians. Remember the most nerdy, driven academic in your school? That's EVERYONE here. They're not used to not being the top, and they tend to find it really hard to adjust to that. I've seen people drop classes well into the semester because they're getting an A minus. In one lab I taught, a girl screwed up a quiz, which was worth nearly nothing in the overall grade. When I handed back her graded paper, her first words were, \"Can I still get an A in the class??\"\n\n* The quality of professors? Eh, maybe it's just my field, but I wouldn't say that the ones I've worked with here are all that much better than the ones at my undergrad institution. There are a few Big Names scattered around, but for the most part, both places are mostly populated by scientists just trying to survive by doing science.\n\n* I will say that undergrads here are hooked up with MUCH better connections than anything I had or saw as an undergrad myself. There's a network of very powerful, connected alumni that are willing to help out upcoming students. Sadly, this doesn't appear to extend to grad students very much.\n\n* Grad school is a very different beast. Post-undergrad life is much more about who you know and getting good connections. Post-grad life is much more dependent upon your own contributions and accomplishments, and so the Ivy League thing is much less valuable to me. And also, if you promise not to tell, it wasn't terribly difficult to get in...", "I look lower on top schools these days. They have talent and great curriculum, but it mostly establishes some sort of elite caste system due to their admissions.\n\nAt least half of the kids at Harvard came from a private school (aka feeder schools), most are rich, etc. You bet your ass there's a lot of kids simply there because of their last name, old wealth, and school name recognition (Exeter, Groton).\n\nI'd still attend Harvard or Yale in a heartbeat, but I'd just be aware of the amount of bullshit that takes place.", "Because having a degree from one of those universities is an accepted sign that you either A: Come from money and are therefore well connected, or B: Are smart and savvy enough to fit in around people who come from money and are well connected. Being able to easily prove that you possess either one of those traits by having that diploma is good enough to get most people in the door at any job. It's a \"good ol' boys club\" membership card for the wealthy.", "Having experienced science education, either directly or indirectly, from a community college, a state university, and an ivy, there are a few significant differences. \n\n1) The ivies (at least Columbia) expect more from you, period. The work load is significantly higher.\n\n2) The exams are different. They expect you to be able to interpret and work through problems you have never seen before. The other schools seem to give you stuff thats the same nature as the practice problems, however top schools expect you to be able to think on your feet. \n\n3) Everything is curved and no that isn't grade inflation. Roughly 25-40% of every class gets A range grades (-/A /+). However with most of the incoming class graduating high school with perfect GPA's and fighting through 7% acceptance rates, this would be expected. Curving allows the professors to push the students to work at a higher level. It is the same with medical school. Everyone is accomplished, so lets see who is the good and who is the great. \n\n4) You can guarantee that almost all of your professors are doing or have done cutting edge research in the field they teach. This definitely propagates into the classroom. \n\n5) There are weekly guest lecturers from all over the world sharing their research. As a student, I go because i want to. However, professors go because they are expected to. This means your professors don't just know what they are doing, they know what others are doing as well. \n\n6) The students push you. There are tons of pre-professional, get those A's to get into medical school types, but there are also really great young scientists that keep you interested and excited to be learning. \n\nDo you need to go to a top school to get a good education? No, but to say their are no differences would be a lie. \n\nIs their grade inflation? Sort of. Much of it in the liberal arts. However, the liberal arts are graded on your ability to make a well reasoned argument, so I would expect everyone at Stanford or Princeton to be able to pull that one off. \n\nAt the end of the day though, the degree is just a piece of paper, but coming through a super competitive school either makes you or breaks you. I have seen tons of people burn out and I have seen people go on to do great things. For the right type of person, the experience will mean a lot more than the degree and it will show. Having the Penn or Harvard stamp on your resume might get you a second look, but its your experience and skills that will get you places in life. \n" ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "ed84xfl" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "This is a complex question. Here's an answer to it, as far back as I could go in order to explain the shared heritage between the states and the rivalry that followed. For reference - Habesha is a term used to describe some, not all, of the peoples who inhabit Ethiopia and Eritrea. They speak Afroasiatic languages, write (mostly) in the Ge'ez script, and are unique to the Horn region. The main groups of note in this case are the Amhara and Tigray of Ethiopia, and the Tigre and Tigrinya of Eritrea. \n\n**Aksum to Medri Bahri**\n\nThe Kingdom of Aksum was the first verifiable Habesha state and occupied North Ethiopia and Eritrea, as well as Yemen. This was during the Classical period, with Kingdom a contemporary to Rome. It was during this time that the region, in particular the Highlands, became Christianised. While there aren't many primary sources, we know that Aksumite Kings like Kaleb and Ezana were in contact with the Byzantine Empire, and warred in pre-Islamic Arabia. \n\nThings get especially murky following the rise of Islam. We know that Aksum lost it's holdings in Yemen to the Sassanids and the Sabaeans, but not much else is known apart from that. It fell around 940CE. After this, the Zagwe ruled in Ethiopia, and were succeeded by the Solomonids, while in Eritrea the state of Medri Bahri formed.\n\nMedri Bahri was at times a vassal to Ethiopia but was almost always a distinct political entity. It was ruled by the Bahri Negus, the \"Sea-King,\" and this is where what can be perceived as tensions start. Negusa Nagast (Emperor, lit. King of Kings) Zera Yakob stated in his chronicle that he appointed the Bahri Negus to his office, through his right as the Suzerain of the area. Of course, this was done through coercion in order to make the Imperial ally the strongest of the local polities in the area. Zera Yakob then instituted a military colony in the state, effectively trying to start a military occupation of Medri Bahri. Following this, some 40 years later in the 1520s, Portuguese explorers note that the current Bahri Negus was the uncle of Emperor Lebne Dengel and paid him tribute. However, Medri Bahri also joined with the Ottomans against the Ethiopian Empire in 1572\n\nYou can see the attitude Medieval Ethiopia took to Medri Bahri from this. Ethiopia viewed Medri Bahri as a vassal that was more or less part of their Empire, whereas Medri Bahri was a distinct entity. This continues for several centuries - James Bruce visited Ethiopia in 1770, noting that the state (undergoing a period of civil strife known as the Zemene Mesafint) was frequently at war with it's northern neighbour.\n\n**The Imperial Period**\n\nModern Ethiopia began with Menelik II. His predecessor, Tewodros II, had united country but had died facing off with the British in Magdala during the Abyssinian Expedition of 1868. After Tewodros came a brief resumption of conflict after a man named Tekle Giyorgis proclaimed himself the Negusa Nagast of the restored Zagwe Dynasty, but was overthrown and replaced with Yohannes IV. Yohannes was a complex man but undoubtedly started Ethiopian foreign outreach, cooperating with the British in Sudan against the Mahdi. [He is also pictured here in this montage of world Heads of State, the first from the left.](_URL_0_)\n\nWhen Yohannes died, Menelik succeeded him. While the Empire that Yohannes ruled was a small, but unified, state, Menelik expanded to the borders of Modern Ethiopia. One of the states he sought in his expansion was Medri Bahri. He succeeded in incorporating it by force, but it was taken from him by the Italians after the Congress of Berlin. Ethiopia remained independent, but Eritrea (as the Italians named Medri Bahri) was part of the colonial machine. But the Italians wanted more.\n\nThe first Italian-Ethiopian War ended with the spectacular defeat of the Italians at Adwa and cemented Menelik's already incredible reputation as a leader. Ethiopia did not press on to Eritrea, however. This resulted in Italian cultural influence (though, it must be said, extremely minor influence) beginning in Eritrea. The Italians built a railway and some buildings, but that was about it. **BUT** Eritrea was it's own distinct entity once again, even more distinct now that it wasn't even independent.\n\n**Haile Selassie**\n\nEmperor Haile Selassie is perhaps the most famous of Ethiopia's Emperors. After WW2, he was triumphant, his country liberated, and, eventually, he was the face of Africa's decolonisation movement (next to Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana). Eritrea, meanwhile, was now a possession of Britain. In time, decolonisation came to Eritrea. This was seen as a chance for the people of Eritrea to finally have their own independence - a good thing for all involved. \n\nBritain then gave Eritrea to Ethiopia.\n\nThis, arguably, is the immediate cause. The state had been, in the eyes of the now-large Eritrean Independence Movement, denied it's freedom too many times. Haile Selassie, the great liberator and face of Africa's future, was an Autocrat at heart. Saudi Arabia is, undoubtedly, an absolute monarchy - but not of the sort that Ethiopia was at this time. Ethiopia was more like a feudal kingdom, completely out of time, and the Emperor appointed Viceroy's to Eritrea rather than represent the people there.\n\nAs well as this, local officials would often try to misrepresent how well their region was doing. When the Emperor would visit provinces, Governors would only take him to the best parts, show him how well some parts were doing. The Army was used to crush revolts.\n\nCenturies old tradition meant that the people had to prostrate themselves before the Emperor. Power was measured by how close you were to the Emperor's ear. One powerful figure was the Minister of the Pen, the man in charge of writing down the decrees of the quiet, soft-spoken Emperor.\n\nThen, in 1960, there was a coup attempt by some of the Emperor's circle while he was in Brazil. The Royal Guard proclaimed his son, Amha Selassie, the new Emperor. The coup was crushed, but the writing appeared on the wall. With this in mind, the Eritrean Liberation Front began it's 30 year campaign.\n\nWithin 14 years, the rest of the Empire would devolve into civil war between the Marxist Derg and the coalition of opposition groups that would become the EPRDF.\n\n**Independence and War**\n\nAfter the end of the Civil War, Eritrea was granted independence under Isaias Afeworki. Eritrea and Ethiopia disputed the demarcation of the border from 1991, until May 1998 - when Eritrean officers were killed in the disputed Badme region. Eritrea sent a mechanised force into the region, beginning a brutal war that lasted 2 years.\n\nSince then, the tensions have long been apparent. Luckily, PM Abiy Ahmed has seen a thaw in relations with Eritrea - the border is open again, and a peace treaty has been signed. Things are starting to look up for both the countries relations, though both are still plagued with problems. In Ethiopia, previous Governments since 1991 have largely used force to resolve Ethnic problems, which very well could spiral into another conflict. Eritrea is a one party state, and even with this rapprochement from Ethiopia is still very isolationist.\n\nI hope this answers your question." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/World_heads_of_state_in_1889.jpg/1920px-World_heads_of_state_in_1889.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgt8cuj" ], "score": [ 29 ], "text": [ "Not much darker than a \"dark sky\" spot on Earth.\n\nThe Earth's atmosphere mostly reflects back urban light. But go out in the desert, or out at sea, at least 100 km away from any city and town - it's a pretty dark place. Luna wouldn't be very different - a bit darker maybe, but not much.\n\nMost people have lived in cities their entire lives and have no idea how dark a moonless (and Venus-less) night can be at a dark sky site.\n\nDark adaptation is very important. When at a very dark site, it takes something like 20 or 30 minutes for the eyes to fully adapt to darkness. Even a short glance at a light annihilates this adaptation.\n\n > could once expect a level of light to at least, say, see enough to not walk into a boulder?\n\nYou could avoid big boulders, but there will be plenty of rocks that will twist your ankle - as many astronomers fumbling in the dark around telescopes will attest.\n\nHuman eyes in low light have very, very poor resolution. But boulders should be big enough to distinguish, for a dark-adapted pair of eyes. Fist-sized rocks, not so much." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cxm9hek", "cxm9xtd", "cxmadn9", "cxmbi3n" ], "score": [ 4, 5, 4, 5 ], "text": [ "If I was a news outlet I'd be plastering pictures of this guy all over the network. The shooters were of middle eastern ethnicity, thats fucking ratings right there. White and black people are not interesting shooters ... but a potential muslim terrorist! Jack-fucking-pot.\n\nbecause money", "I think its partly due to the perpetrators. The main reason they don't like to publicizes school shooters is that the shooters often do it for the personal notoriety. Its looking more and more like the SB attack was an act of terror or something similar so you can argue that the identify of the specific shooter is less likely to incite future attacks. ", "People on Reddit posted about not showing the shooter's face, but the news media did show the person's face and give their identifying details, as is normal when it comes to news coverage. I think you're getting the criticisms of the coverage and the coverage itself confused. ", "The school shooters often do it for notoriety and attention. Not mentioning them by name shows to future would-be shooters that this is not a good way to get attention and infamy. Terrorists commit these same types of crimes as a way of trying to force their political ideology by means of fear, so bringing attention to the individuals isn't as problematic." ] }

[]

[]

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

{ "a_id": [ "c4uhevi", "c4uja81" ], "score": [ 9, 3 ], "text": [ "The first stars began to form about [150 million years](_URL_1_) after the Big Bang, during a period known as \"reionization.\" Prior to this period were the \"dark ages\" where the universe was fairly uniformly filled with neutral hydrogen; since there were basically no charged atoms during this period, photons did not scatter off of the hydrogen much, and the universe was pretty much completely transparent.\n\nEventually, gravitational attraction began to pull the hydrogen together into the first stars, known as [Population III](_URL_0_) stars for their extremely low metallicity and extremely large mass. Due to the very high mass, these stars were very short-lived (none are around today) and a great many of them exploded as [pair-instability supernovae](_URL_2_), scattering the few heavy elements (which were still pretty light overall, but heavier than hydrogen and helium) manufactured in their cores throughout the cosmos.\n\nThe radiation released by these stars re-ionized the hydrogen that had not yet collapsed into stars (hence the name of the era, \"reionization\"), and the pressure from these early supernovae explosions helped to compress some of the hydrogen out there, triggering the gravitational formation of new stars with higher metal content, known as Population II stars (only a few of which can still be seen today; we know of about a dozen or so), which are also quite massive, but not as much as the first stars, and which manufactured much heavier elements overall (and much more of them) by comparison. Many of these stars also went supernova and scattered their metals throughout, helping lower-mass higher-metallicity Population I stars (i.e. basically all of the stars we see today) form.\n\nSo to answer your question, the first stars began to form around 150 million years after the Big Bang.\n\nAs for your second question, I don't know the answer so I won't speculate. Perhaps someone more familiar with galaxy formation can shed some light on it.", " > were all of the carbon atoms and above in the Milky Way galaxy formed in the Milky Way galaxy?\n\nNo. The Milky Way has grown over time, using 2 different processes. Basically, during the primordial phase, galaxies were fed by flows of gas (\"cold flows\"). This intergalactic gas wasn't very rich in heavy elements such as carbon. But then galaxies can also merge: the Milky Way has already eaten several smaller galaxies and incorporated some of their matter. So some of the carbon atoms could come from another galaxy." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity#Populations_III.2C_II.2C_and_I", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe#Reionization", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair-instability_supernova" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cg2weql" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "From Jonathan Sperber 'The European Revolutions, 1848-1851'\n\n\n-Revolution was heavily romanticized, revolutionary leaders often portrayed doing heroic deeds for the people. Lajos Kossuth from Hungary riding out and rallying peasantry or Giribaldi leading militias into battle.\n\n-Some revolutionaries were incompetent and monarchs did not always take them seriously. \n\n-Failed to establish lasting regimes. Old rulers took back power later on. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cxo8yfz" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ " In every business there are some companies that focus on price, others that focus on making a better quality, and others that try to compromise. Little Caesars focus is very strongly on price, and they are willing to buy cheaper ingredients if that's what it takes. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccngtoh" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I don't think your question can be answered because it's not clear what data would allow us to answer it.\n\nPrior to modern times, we don't actually have the information to say whether the \"majority of the population\" \"across all economic divides\" approved of a particular government. We have information about whether particular groups within society approved, and we have information from which we can infer whether other groups *tolerated* it, but there's no way to know, for example, whether a majority of sixteenth century peasants approved of their government. The recorders of the history of the time didn't gather and maintain that information.\n\nEven in modern times, the question breaks because \"across all economic divides\" is vague. What level of specificity are you looking for, and which economic divides do you care about?" ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "flcl3zs", "flcoi3e" ], "score": [ 6, 7 ], "text": [ "API stands for application programming interface, basically an API is a service provided by the creator of some program to allow other programmers to communicate with that program. \n\nIn the case of vulkan it makes accessing the graphics card much more efficient in certain areas, it's also available on linux and windows (and mobile devices iirc) which means once you've written a program bringing it to other platforms doesn't require as many changes as before.", "Say you go to a mechanic for an oil change. If the mechanic is any good you don't need to give them step-by-step instructions on how to change the oil. Instead you just tell the mechanic to \"change the oil\" and trust that the mechanic knows what to do.\n\nIn the above example **you are specifying an end result without having to give step-by-step instructions on how to do it.** This is handy because A) it saves time B) they may have handy tools in the garage that make your instructions obsolete. This is a common situation with computer programs. The exact way something gets done changes a bit (usually to make things faster) but the end result is the same. The oil change situation above is an example of an API. An API is just a menu of things that a program can do along with a standard way of asking for that thing.\n\nMoving back to computers, depending on the components (e.g. the processor, display, the operating system, and graphics card) there is a ton of variation on how to get a computer to draw, say, a red 10x20 rectangle in the top left of your screen. This is where Vulkan comes in. **Vulkan is like a standard graphics menu that a bunch of different hardware and software companies have agreed upon.** This means the people making the game don't have to worry about what hardware you are running. Instead they can tell the computer the final result (say a red 10x20 rectangle) and trust everything else involved will do it. Assuming the hardware and software companies stick to the menu, the game makers will not have to make changes for the different hardware and operating systems which makes it easier to release games on a bunch of different platforms." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckoet6j" ], "score": [ 61 ], "text": [ " > Why is it so difficult\n\nI could go into details of examples of current difficulties but that would just lead us astray from the real answer, which is: why should it be easy? \n\n > Can't it all work separately?\n\nOften it can in practice. For example you could have a theory that works well for slow speeds but badly at high speeds, and another theory that works well at high speeds but badly at low speeds. So if you are working with slow speeds you can use theory 1 and if you are working with high speeds you can use theory 2. But the problem is that in neither case is the theory *exactly* true. So while each might work OK in practice, we *know* that neither theory is the \"right\" one. This is partly just a point of intellectual curiosity; there is some correct description of nature out there, and we would like to find it. But it also can have practical consequences. For example maybe the right theory predicts other things besides simply being slightly more accurate. Maybe it presents a totally new perspective on the world." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6oc4hc" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Static shocks have very high voltage (I remember reading somewhere that if you feel a shock, it's at least 10,000 Volts), but it has very little charge. You can think of it like trying to run a fire hose with an 8 oz glass of water; it might be at super high pressure, but it's not going to last very long. So the question is how much charge can humans deliver with a static shock? Human beings have an estimated capacitance of about 100 picofarads and static discharges have an average voltage of 20,000 to 50,000 Volts, which gives us a charge of 2-5 microcoulombs.\n\nElectric flyswatter circuits I found gave voltages variously between 500 and 1500V, and the main capacitor was between 33 nF to 2 uF, depending on supply voltage. Generally speaking, electric devices like this are regulated to 45 uC for safety reasons, and that apparently is only enough to stun flies rather than kill them (though a fly is usually subjected to multiple shocks). So even in the best case, the static shock a human can give is still about an order of magnitude short of being able to harm a fly.\n\nEDIT: Apparently the 45 uC limit applies to laboratory equipment, not fly swatters. I found a better source from someone who actually took apart a swatter, and the main discharge capacitor is 2 uF at 630 V, which gives a charge of 1,260 microcoulombs, so several hundred times more than what you can deliver with a shag carpet and your finger." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cb48f8h", "cb49fcz", "cb49r1z", "cb49y4n", "cb4a0mo", "cb4a1oj", "cb4ac70", "cb4arqb", "cb4bisc", "cb4bjnw" ], "score": [ 19, 383, 32, 8, 174, 6, 5, 3, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "I'd like to piggyback and ask if sweating a lot would work", "Salt (Sodium) makes you retain water.\n\nAdding water to a high salt diet means you'll be retaining lots of water.\n\nThis makes you hypertensive.\n\nHypertension (high blood pressure) is bad for pretty much everything.\n\n\nSorry, this turned out more ELI5 than science.", "This is a really broad question, because there are a bunch of other physiologic processes in play here. The other answers are correct in that salt leads to water retention. However, I understood your question in a different manner. \n\nIf I were to measure your serum sodium levels, technically they would be lower than if I had measured yours before lots of water intake as it would have a dilutional effect. The answer would be yes and no, depending on how you look at the question. ", "the answer to your question is yes in the setting of functioning kidneys. The sodium would cause your body to be able to retain salt, this would increase the intravascular volume and lead to increased filtering in your kidneys.. ie you'd pee the water, and the salt out to maintain euvolemia and eunatremia", "Eating a lot of salt means you have a lot of salt in circulation. Your kidneys will see the high amount of salt per water and you will pee less (retain water) in order to reach normal equilibrium. This will raise your blood pressure (more volume in circulation). Drinking a lot of water will remove this retention step, essentially. However, you will still have a lot of water in circulation from the water you have drunk. \n\nBasically, if you eat a lot of salt with little water you will pee less and your blood pressure will rise. If you eat salt with a lot of water you will pee normally or a lot, but your blood pressure will still rise.\n\nNo, drinking water will not cancel out salt. Perhaps to your kidneys, but systemically, no.", "Related question... I recall hearing some time back that high sodium isn't a problem for everybody -- that the link to hypertension was more complicated than the osmosis experiments everybody does in grade 10 science. Is that true? Or does salt raise *everybody's* blood pressure? If the latter, does the same excess raise everybody's blood pressure to a similar extent?", "on that note, could one undo something like hyponatremia (essentially a water overdose) by eating a lot of salt to cancel it out?", "Wouldn't going outside when it is hot and sweating reduce your salt levels if you keep yourself hydrated?", "It's crucial that your body maintains it's [Osmolarity](_URL_2_). Taking in salt would increase your osmolarity (more dissolved ions in the same amount of water). There are only two conceivable ways for your body to maintain salt balance - excrete more salt and dilute the salt with water. Diluting the salts is a rapid response, whereas salt excretion is a function of the kidneys and takes a little bit longer. Here's what happens after your salt intake doubles:\n\n* Salt intake increased\n* Retain water that would have otherwise been peed out (Hormonal Regulation)\n* Become thirsty (Behavioural Regulation)\n* Blood Volume has increased (most of that water you've taken up is circulating as plasma)\n* Increased [ECF Volume](_URL_1_) Leads to an increase in Salt excretion. (Yes, your body couples changes in osmolarity with changes in volume so tightly that your kidneys excrete salt according to volume, not osmolarity.)\n\nNow Your salt excretion has 'caught up' to your salt intake, but only after a certain amount of time - during which you've gained water and salt - meaning you have an increased body weight.\n\nSo to your question, yes. Although it's less like \"can I just\" and more like \"it'll sort itself out\" (provided you have access to water).\n\n[Sodium Balance Graph](_URL_0_) that I couldn't find anywhere.", "yes, assuming you are not already at risk for hypertension/congestive heart failure or renal disease.\n\nDrinking water is actually part of the bodies natural compensatory mechanism to high sodium intake. The initial response of increased sodium is increased thirst and adh production to normalize sodium concentration. Then the hypervolemia regulatory mechanisms (increased anp, decreased angiotensin/aldos/adh/etc) kick in. And fortunately these mechanisms work simultaneously/independently so there's no drastic hypertension or whatever that other posters suggest.\n\nIts only when you have heart/kidney problems already that these regulatory mechanisms fail. Healthy (non-obese) individuals do not have increased risk of hypertension (or stroke or coronary artery disease/heart attacks or death from any cause) due to sodium intake level.\n_URL_0_" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://i.imgur.com/v4fI5WH.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracellular_fluid", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_osmolality" ], [ "http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=192154" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgv9ji0" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "In 1820 the U.S passed the Missouri compromise that stated that slavery could not extend above the 36' 30\" line. When Kansas and Nebraska were looking to join the union Stephen Douglas proposed a bill that would allow each state to vote on if they were going to be a slave state or a free state. Nebraska was far enough north that there was never really a question over whether or not it was going to be slave or free. However, Kansas was right next to Missouri, which was a slave state. This lead to a massive amount of people entering the state on the side of slavery from the south and anti-slavery from the north. Many of these people were armed leading to a number of conflicts between the two. Bleeding Kansas was not a fight between Union and Confederate troops. Rather it was fighting between pro-slavery individuals and anti-slavery individuals. \n\nAll of this happened in the lead up to the Civil War and not during the war itself. The Confederate States of America were not founded until 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected President and bleeding Kansas took place before them. Whenever I have heard people say that Bleeding Kansas was the first battles of the Civil War they have been referring to this point as the point that Civil War becomes inevitable. This was really the first time the U.S had had large conflicts over the matter of slavery. This was really the point where many in the nation saw that the U.S could not continue to expand and be half free and half slave. I hope this helped answer your question." ] }

[]

[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas" ]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dz7nsjq", "dz7p7uh" ], "score": [ 19, 2 ], "text": [ "You can't.\n\nIf you shine UV on some things, like liquid laundry detergent, it makes the substance glow brightly. This is not you seeing UV, it is a substance absorbing UV photons and re-radiating the energy as visible wavelength photons you can see.", "Ultraviolet is actually within the visible spectrum, but the lenses covering our eyes have a natural yellow colouring which cancels it out. \n\nBut if you get cataract surgery later in life, you can get artificial lenses which are clear, and then you'll be able to see ultraviolet." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f6k9y8m" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "They were identification aids for Allied pilots and gunners. Friendly fire was a persistent risk for aircraft, positive recognition being difficult in the heat of battle; the first Fighter Command losses of the war were in the \"Battle of Barking Creek\" during which two Hurricanes were shot down by Spitfires and the introduction of further combatants and types of aircraft only made the situation more confusing. An early use of black and white stripes was on the wings of Hawker Typhoons in 1942 as they were frequently mistaken for the Focke-Wulf 190. Frank Zeigler, intelligence officer of 609 Squadron, wrote in the RAF Flying Review about the results of the confusion: \"Once a gunnery officer, whom I had just 'blitzed' on the phone, actually called back with the request: 'Could you ask your pilots tactfully - very tactfully - did we get anywhere near them?' Sometimes they did. Roy Payne, wading ashore after being hit and crash-landing in shallow water, really lost his temper when the coastguards addressed him in German.\" See also an [Imperial War Museum photograph](_URL_0_): \"A Hawker Typhoon Mk 1B in fighter pen at North West corner of RAF Duxford (...) The black and white stripes painted on the underside of the wings - sometimes referred to as 'Dieppe stripes'- were actually introduced following the failed Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942. Originally only black stripes were painted on but white stripes were added by December 1942 for greater recognition by other RAF aircraft who had mistaken the Typhoon for the German Focke Wulf 190.\"\n\nDuring the 1943 invasion of Sicily C-47 transports suffered particularly badly from friendly anti-aircraft fire, 23 of 144 being shot down on 11th July. As a result during the planning of Operation Overlord a memorandum on \"Distinctive Marking - Aircraft\" was written:\n\n\"1 OBJECT \nThe object of this memorandum is to prescribe the distinctive markings which will be applied to US and BRITISH aircraft in\norder to make them more easily identified as friendly by ground and naval forces and by other friendly aircraft.\n\n(...)\n\n4 DISTINCTIVE MARKINGS \n(a) Single engine aircraft. (1) Upper and lower wing surfaces of aircraft listed in paragraph 2g above, will be painted with five\nwhite and black stripes, each eighteen inches wide, parallel to the longitudinal axis of the airplane, arranged in order from center\noutward; white, black, white, black, white. Stripes will end six inches inboard of the national markings. (2) Fuselages will be\npainted with five parallel white and black stripes, each eighteen inches wide, completely around the fuselage, with the outside\nedge of the rearmost band eighteen inches from the leading edge of the tailplane.\"\n\n(etc)\n\nThe order was issued on June 4th, leading to rather frantic painting for the squadrons involved, and can be considered a success, there being no large-scale repeat of the Sicily incident. \n\nFurther reading: \n*US Army Air Forces Aircraft Markings and Camouflage 1941-1947*, Robert D. Archer \n\"Fratricide - An Overview of Friendly Fire Incidents in the 20th Century\", *RAF Historical Society Journal No. 34*, Wg Cdr C G 'Jeff' Jefford" ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205266399" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9mgf7s" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "You are thinking of capacitors.\n\nCapacitors are used to regulate the energy flowing through a board. Rarely will you have a 'clean' energy flow. There will be dips and spikes along the way. The capacitors help smooth that out and provide a little extra juice and buffers to prevent jolts on or off from damaging the system." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "chv1c7v" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Our universe operates on two scales: macro and micro. We, as humans, sit in an awkward middle ground where both effects can be demonstrated.\n\nThere is a scaling effect in physics and engineering, in which mass and momentum increases cubically, while resistance increases to the square -- this is the result of volumetric versus surface areas operations. This principle means devices that operate on macro scales generally cannot be scaled down to micro scales, as the forces will swap their dominance.\n\nSimilarly, the world we observe is the result of thousands of quantum events occurring simultaneously. When we begin to observe these effects individually, we see behaviour that doesn't match the large scale -- the macro behaviour is an emergent property of the micro system." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8erjoz", "c8f0pzx" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "They presumably knew a great deal about stars, the movement of ocean currents and wave patterns, the air and sea interference patterns caused by islands and atolls, the flight of birds, the winds, and the weather. However, so did other navigators. It's still unclear how much of their exploration of *new* islands was dependent upon luck.", "If you like Ted talks, wade Davis talks about it in this _URL_0_" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [ "http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_the_worldwide_web_of_belief_and_ritual.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d80127c", "d80ejyj" ], "score": [ 79, 174 ], "text": [ "Questions about Chomsky's politics have been asked several times in both /r/AskHistorians and /r/AskSocialScience\n\nHere's one from /r/AskSocialScience that includes a second link to a post in /r/AskHistorians\n\n_URL_0_", " > I know his views on history can be controversial and don't want to discuss them, I'm just wondering if he uses correct info\n\nPerhaps the biggest problem I have with Chomsky is that he's an unreliable source of historical information (and because of what he says about the self-brainwashing of US intellectuals, the reader isn't highly motivated to go look at other sources).\n\nIn particular, as a reader, I usually assume that if a writer provides a selective quote from someone else, it should provide a reasonably accurate summary of what the other person said. Chomsky doesn't appear to adhere to this rule.\n\nThis means that it's necessary to check his references very carefully. I assume not everyone who reads Chomsky does this.\n\nOrwell describes the phenomenon of extreme partisan writing in his essay [Notes on Nationalism](_URL_1_): \"Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, **quotations removed from their context and doctored so as to change their meaning**. Events which it is felt ought not to have happened are left unmentioned and ultimately denied.\"\n\nThere's a [February 26, 1970 letter](_URL_3_) to the New York Review of Books by Samuel Huntington, with a response by Chomsky, which gives an example. (\"After Pinkville\" is reprinted in The Chomsky Reader.)\n\n > In response to \"After Pinkville\" (January 1, 1970)\n\n > To the Editors:\n\n > In the space of three brief paragraphs in your January 1 issue, Noam Chomsky manages to mutilate the truth in a variety of ways with respect to my views and activities on Vietnam.\n\n > Mr. Chomsky writes as follows:\n\n > \"Writing in Foreign Affairs, he [Huntington] explains that the Viet Cong is 'a powerful force which cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as the constituency continues to exist.' The conclusion is obvious, and he does not shrink from it. We can ensure that the constituency ceases to exist by 'direct application of mechanical and conventional power...on such a massive scale as to produce a massive migration from countryside to city....'\"\n\n > It would be difficult to conceive of a more blatantly dishonest instance of picking words out of context so as to give them a meaning directly opposite to that which the author stated. For the benefit of your readers, here is the \"obvious conclusion\" which I drew from my statement about the Viet Cong:\n\n > \"...the Viet Cong will remain a powerful force which cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as the constituency continues to exist. Peace in the immediate future must hence be based on accommodation.\"\n\n > By omitting my next sentence--'Peace in the immediate future must hence be based on accommodation'--and linking my statement about the Viet Cong to two other phrases which appear earlier in the article, Mr. Chomsky completely reversed my argument.\n\nChomsky's response includes the following remarkable sophistry:\n\n > ... I did not say that he \"favored\" this answer but only that he \"outlined\" it, \"explained\" it, and \"does not shrink from it,\" all of which is **literally** true [emphasis added].\n\nStanley Hoffmann, another critic of the Vietnam War, described Chomsky as having a \"tendency to draw from an author’s statements inferences that correspond neither to the author’s intentions nor to the statements’ meaning.\" [Source](_URL_2_).\n\nI've written up a longer [critical review](_URL_0_) of Chomsky's writings on foreign policy, attempting to be as fair-minded as possible." ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/comments/ya9jm/im_very_interested_by_the_ideas_of_noam_chomsky/" ], [ "http://russilwvong.com/future/chomsky.html", "http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/nationalism.html", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33momo/how_accurate_is_noam_chomskys_assessment_of_the/", "http://www.nybooks.com/articles/11044" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d45jzvh" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Fashion, yes! Queen Catherine of Aragon (the first wife) is believed to have started the trend of wearing a farthingale (hoop skirt). The farthingale or verdugados in Spanish had been a staple of Spanish fashion for at least 20 years before Catherine came to England. When she got to England, it took about another 20 years for the trend to catch on there. However, she is credited with starting it.\n\nAnne Boleyn is believed to have [introduced the French Hood](_URL_1_) to the English court. Anne had been away at the French court before coming back to England with the \"continental style\" of hat.\n\nAs for makeup, [there is a great article](_URL_0_) on the various sometimes dangerous items to achieve the beauty ideals of the day. These included white lead and vinegar to give a pale completion and many other recipes in the article from period sources. Not all are Henrician but they are all 16th C English. " ] }

[]

[]

[ [ "http://www.elizabethancostume.net/makeup.html", "http://www.elizabethancostume.net/headwear/frenchhood.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cr2ie94" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Russia is a union, much like the US is or the Soviet Union was. In fact, the official name of the country is not 'Russia', but the Russian Federation.\n\nRepublics are regions where the majority of the population is (or was, at the time of its creation) not ethnically Russian. They have partial autonomy, and their own constitution and legislature. They are typically created for one of the non-Russian peoples inside the Federation, such as the Sakha Republic where the Yakutic people primarily live. You can compare them to the US Indian Territories.\n\nOblasts are provinces, sub-state divisions. These have a local government with its own governor and can have local laws, but are not considered autonomous. You can compare them to US States.\n\nKrais are the same as Oblasts functionally, but are named such because they used to be territories on the Russian frontier.\n\nFederal Cities are semi-autonomous cities. Functionally they are also Oblasts. \n\nAutonomous Okrugs are minor regions created for a non-Russian ethnicity (like a Republic), but are too small to be given autonomy. They have very limited self-rule. Another type of 'Indian Territory'.\n\nThe Autonomous Oblast is the Jewish region. Technically it is another Okrug (ethnic enclave) but because it was created for religious, not ethnic reasons, it has a special name." ] }

[]

[]

[ [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqbjblm", "cqbkoag", "cqerbcu" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "I'm not quite sure I understand your question. Neuronal firing can be thought of as a digital or binary process - they either fire or they do not. However, the relationship between input and output is non-linear. ", "When a neuron fires an action potential, it is all or nothing black and white and that's what you'll hear often.\n\nHowever, the inputs that determine whether an action potential fires or not are analog meaning there's a gray area. It combines the strong inhibitory, strong exitatory, weak inhibitory, weak excitatory inputs and the sum of those inputs determine if the an action potential fires down the axon like a diverse bunch of officers arguing to the president whether or not he should fire a nuclear missile.\n\nIt is also worth noting that the neuron can express the power by changing the frequency of the action potential even though its an all or nothing process. Imagine blinking a camera flash once every so often means weak output and blinking rapidly means strong output. \n\nStorage of the information can come from the weakening and strengthening of the input/output between neurons. It's believed that protein synthesis changes the structure of the neuron and builds more protein based receptors and channels. \n\nInhibiting synthesis of some proteins will appear to interfere with the expression of their memory or the conversion of short to long term memory in laboratory animals.", "Well, first off you have to understand that you've asked a question that covers a WHOLE LOT OF GROUND.\n\nBut, to try to answer some of it in straightforward terms:\n\nNo, I would say that our brain does NOT really have the equivalent of 'binary code.'\n\nThe brain encodes information in a lot of different ways. With computers, a bit is always a 1 or a zero, even when it's being stored or crunched in different parts of the computer. But in the brain, information is constantly re-encoded in different coding schemes. Take your photoreceptors, for instance: The first cell that picks up light and turns it into an electrical signal does so in a non-binary fashion: It simply sends a stronger signal along to the next neuron if the light is stronger. It is not \"all-or-none.\" But the next cell does NOT encode the information that way: The next cell either 'fires' or does not; it isn't capable of firing more or less strongly, it just fires. It can only encode information by whether or not it fires, and when it fires, etc.\n\nSo only two cells in, you can see (ha ha) that the way the nervous system represents the information has changed once already. It changes again many times before it gets to the point that you're consciously aware of it. Later on, after it's been processed more, your brain isn't really representing images like pixels (i.e. breaking the image down into pieces and separately encoding the brightness/color of each piece), but instead it represents images like vector graphics: One cell says \"over there, there's a line that is slanted at 32 degrees\" and another says \"and up over here, there's the end of the line,\" and so on and so forth to make up an image. There are other cells that detect motion, and other cells that detect patterns, *all semi-independently of each other.* Later on, it gets even more separated: You have different sub-sections of the visual cortex devoted to analyzing different features. One area specializes in analyzing the input to detect faces. Another area analyzes the same input to decide what color an object is (sort of like adjusting white balance on a camera). Another area specializes in figuring out WHERE objects are. One interesting consequence of this is that you can lose one of these abilities but keep the others: A brain injury in just the right place might leave you perfectly capable of knowing what an object is, what color it is, what it's called, etc., but completely incapable of judging where it is relative to you.\n\nAnd at every level of that system, there are many, many different coding schemes that the brain uses. Some things are encoded by *which* neuron fires (i.e. one neuron fires if it detects a corner, another neuron fires if it detects a straight line), others are encoded by how rapidly a neuron fires (e.g. more rapid firing might indicate a more intense stimulus)... In the auditory system, some frequencies (different tones) are encoded by the cochlea by what frequency a neuron fires at, while *in the same system*, other frequencies are encoded by which neurons fires and neural firing frequency has nothing to do with the frequency of the sound stimulus.\n\nIt's complicated." ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d2pvuk4", "d2pvzpi" ], "score": [ 6, 5 ], "text": [ "It's not instinctive at all for humans. Look at babies, they put all sorts of non-edible items in their mouths.\n\nWhat's good for eating is a learned behavior. We learn from our parents/society what is edible and what isn't.\n\n > Give a dog and deer an apple. The deer will probably eat it as soon as he understand you don't want to hurt him. The dog will simply play with the awesome red ball of fun.\n\nDogs are omnivores. If my dog is chasing an apple, it's only because it won't sit still long enough for her to take a bite of it.", "We don't. We shove shit in our mouths until we learn directly, or our parents teach us. Just watch a baby!" ] }

[]

[]

[ [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cyrrf4i" ], "score": [ 43 ], "text": [ "What we think of as the modern discipline of history was born in the western 19th century. Historians always reflect the mores and concerns of their age. Both before and after Leopold von Ranke and his contemporaries, historians did not so much *actively suppress* women's lives so much as ignore them. This was for two reasons: (1) women were not seen as a worthy subject of study in their own right (2) the areas in which women tend to be historically visible were not considered worthy of study. Both of these things start to change in the 1960s in America, but only with the [long, strenuous, and heroic efforts of scholars](_URL_0_) above all Gerda Lerner.\n\nMedieval *historiae* or chronicles are more like records of events than the type of explanatory narrative we're familiar with today. Nevertheless, they already reflect the pattern of what the first modern historians will see as primarily relevant topics for historical inquiry: kings, thrones, city councils, calamities. These proto-historians, primarily monks and clerks, can't necessarily be accused of actively *erasing* women: they mention rulers' marriages, daughters' births, women prophets or saints who saved/false women saints who ruined a city. Orderic Vitalis even praises Adela of Blois, not even a ruler in her own right, for the care and skill with which she administered her county while her infamous husband was on crusade. It's just that *in general*, medieval women are not (...are systemically excluded from) leading armies and maneuvering to win papal elections and feuding aginst competing noble families.\n\nLate medieval/early modern historians actually introduced a genre of \"eminent women\" texts (*De claris mulieribus* being the Latin form), recounting the stories of individual famous women throughout history. Or rather \"history,\" as they tended to draw freely from mythology, legend, and their imaginations as well as the actual past. These texts could serve as a commentary on the state of *men*/male-dominated society of the time, be a salvo in an intellectual sparring match (the querelle des femmes), and/or represent a genuine interest in the subject matter. Nevertheless, it's still an isolation of women from the idea of a major, world history progression.\n\nEnlightenment-era history and then the rise of modern history make leaps and bounds in narrative and historical method (modern history is marked by rigorous scrutiny of primary sources, above all). It remained dominated by political history, which until very very recently was the study of--yup--rulers and nations. Considering the actions of rulers and seeking to understand the course of events is an area of history in which men are, indeed, much more prominent than women.\n\nModern history is also born in universities and academics like to write about ourselves, so intellectual life--philosophy--also become a prominent area of study (Burckhardt, Haskins). While women certainly wrote philosophy, they are very rarely seen as groundbreaking. So Haskins in his *Renaissance of the Twelfth Century* will mention Herrad of Hohensburg's (although he says Landesburg) *Hortus deliciarum* with no qualms about it being the creation of a women's convent, but when it comes to philosophy power couple Heloise and Abelard, he delves extensively into Abelard's work (with good reason) but Heloise only gets a name-drop as Abelard's lover--not even a mention of her brainpower, because it didn't \"shape history\" like Abelard did.\n\nWhere women did tend to be prominent in medieval and early modern history was religion. Religious history in the 19th and early 20th centuries remained compartmentalized, typically the province of confessional (Catholic and Protestant) historians for the purposes of their own churches and congregations--it tends to be a lot more sentimental and devotional, stories of saints' lives meant to inspire prayer and piety. I don't want to undersell the work of especially turn of the 20th century Germans here. I study, among other things, a couple of *really* obscure medieval women, and literally the only published source devoted to one of them is the modern publication of her hagiography, with a scholarly (not devotional) explanatory article, from a German scholar in IIRC 1888! But religious history was not part of Real History, in general (the Germans sort of make an exception for the Reformation, although this is a *really* contentious piece of history at the time due to Catholic versus Protestant polemic).\n\nIn the 1960s, especially in America, two things were changing. First, historians like Gerda Lerner built on the work of some earlier pioneers like medievalists Lina Eckenstein and Eileen Power who made women a worthwhile subject of study in their own right. They argued and proved that understanding women's roles in society is crucial to understanding the past \"as it really was,\" to quote von Ranke. Again, this development--both Lerner's fight and the ability of her and her comrades to carve a lasting foothold--reflects changing attitudes of time, obviously here second-wave feminism. Second, the rise of cultural history on the back of the social history movement especially after World War II brought enormous scholarly attention to areas of history where women indeed tend to be more visible: religion, literature, family life.\n\nThe situation isn't perfect today. On the academic level, the field of history is about 40% female. Go to a conference or pick up a volume on women, and the represented scholars are 95% female. There is still a strong trend in academia of compartmentalizing women's roles in history as *women's history*, although at least in medieval there are some amazing historians--at the top of the field, even--striving to change that, both male and female. And scholars are *quite* skilled at hunting for women in difficult sources, but sometimes the sources themselves are simply uncooperative. \n\nFar more critically, IMHO, as *teaching* history inevitably means having to squeeze in more and more years each time pre-college textbooks are revised (time refuses to stop. I KNOW, right? Sheesh.), it's more and more tempting to just \"hit the important parts\"--which can so, so easily mean a return to narratives of rulers and nations. We want the story that got us here today, not understanding the texture of the past. (i.e. do the roots of 'human rights' as a concept in medieval political philosophy matter more for understanding the contemporary world than Clare of Assisi's struggle to establish a Franciscan Second Order for women? The problem is that the first roots of human rights in the western tradition are planted in and by a world that Chiara's struggle helps us understand, but how important is *understanding* in light of a looming AP Euro test?).\n\nTo make women visible in the historical narrative is an ongoing struggle. The sources are not always generous, and the work that we want the past to do does not always line up with the constraints that patriarchal societies places on women in the past and to a varying extent today. For centuries, historians did not see any real need to fight that battle--in fact, they weren't even aware there was a battle to be fought. Today, at least we're fighting. (ETA) The fact that threads about the absence of women from the telling of history can get double-digit upvotes on Reddit of all places is a hopeful sign." ] }

[]

[ "http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/antiqua/women/", "http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/04/debunking-a-myth/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damsel_in_distress" ]

[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3tpk8j/when_did_historians_first_begin_to_talk_seriously/" ] ]