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Many American football players have brain diseases in their old age because they have so many concussions during their career. Why don’t rugby players, who don’t wear helmets, have this problem?
American Football players wear helmets and protective armor, they regularly crash into each other way more violently than rugby players would, leading to the apparently paradoxical effect that football players’ “protection” actually make the sport more dangerous.
In a similar case, the introduction of soft, cushy gloves in boxing has lead to significantly more deaths in boxing matches, since boxers were now able to hit their opponent’s head with great force without breaking their own hands.
This was an episode on the Freakonomics Podcast: The Dangers of Safety
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What has changed in the last 40 years so that it now takes two incomes to maintain a household?
The cost of living has not paced with the average income. Basically, things cost more than they used to (which is expected due to inflation) but wages have not increased by the same amount.
http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/inflation-and-actual-prices.png
On that chart, the middle column is what things would cost if it paced evenly with wages, and the right column is what they actually cost.
We can see that a long time ago, a house was a bit more than 2 years average salary. Now a house is almost 10 times the average salary.
So basically, the rise of cost has outpaced the rise of wages.
– Tennesseej
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Why do we have to have a very varied diet in order to live a healthy lifestyle when all other animals tend to eat the same thing all the time and get all the nutrients they need?
You don’t actually HAVE to eat a varied and healthy diet. As a species, humans will do just fine if we all eat a very unhealthy diet, reproduce six times between 15 and 20, have three babies die, and drop dead ourselves at 27. This is a valid survival strategy for many species.
The problem crops up when you actually want to live till you’re 80. Then you’ll have to take much better care of yourself.
Car analogy: You don’t have to maintain your car, clean it or buy quality oil and gas if you plan on scrapping it when its three years old. But if you still want to drive it in 30 years, you have to take good care of it.
– Tar_alcaran
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Listerine kills bacteria in my mouth, but I know it’s not killing 100%. Aren’t I genetically engineering superbug bad breath bacteria by using it?
Imagine a cell is like a car. The goal of antibacterials, antibiotics, alcohol, etc. is to disable that car. There are two basic ways to do it, delicate and brute force. You could, for example, cut the ignition wire so the car wont start, but a manufacturer can move the wire someplace so you cant see it. This is how antibiotics work, they target specific parts of a cell, and sometimes cells can hide these parts.
The other way to disable a car, however, is to just blow it the fuck up. Sure the manufacturer can put armor on it, but at the end of the day a big enough explosion is gonna get the job done, however, you’re going to have collateral damage. This is how alcohol and fire work, they obliterate everything, there is no way for a cell to adapt to them any more than you can adapt to surviving an explosion. For this same reason, however, we can’t use these methods internally because they cause too much collateral damage. Would injecting ethanol into your blood stream kill bacteria? Probably, but it will kill a whole lot of other important cells first.
The 1% of bacteria that survive such treatments do so because they hide in little cracks and crevices in your mouth so they aren’t exposed to the Listerine rather than they have evolved some resistance to it. I would, however, like to point out some bacteria have evolved resistances to low levels of ethanol (yeast for example) and other antibiotics, but none can tolerate higher levels just like an armored vehicle can survive a small explosion but not a large one.
To stick with our car metaphor alcohol kills cells partially by denaturing proteins, which is equivalent to taking apart the engine, and by solvating the cell membrane, which is the same as removing the fame of the car (although technically that is a cytoskeleton in a cell, maybe doors and windows is a better parallel, but you could still drive your car then). Good luck getting anywhere without those.
The reason the other cells in your mouth aren’t killed (and many actually are) is your cells are part of an organism as opposed to an individual bacterium. This has the benefit of reducing the exposure/surface area cells have to the environment (the listerine) as well as cells not exposed can help out cells that are maintain their internal chemistry.
– Christmas_Pirate
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Why did Chairman Mao kill so many people including teachers? What could he have been trying to accomplish?
He was trying to purge China of The Four Olds as these were seen to only further the exploitation of the classes. The Four Olds are old customs, old habits, old culture, and old ideas.
A lot of teachers were executed publicly, monks were humiliated in the streets, a great number of Kung Fu masters took to the hills or left China altogether. These were all seen as part of the Old China that the Cultural Revolution was meant to be burning off.
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Why are most/all sniper rifles bolt action? Why can’t they use a semi-automatic mechanism like most other weapons?
The bolt action rifle would minimize extraneous movement that might alter the trajectory of the bullet. Remember that even small fractions of a degree might be the difference between a hit and a miss, so it’s important to keep everything as still as possible. In a semi-automatic mechanism, the movement of the gun as it works to reload a bullet may very well knock your shot off far enough that it would cause a problem. Nothing moves in a bolt action mechanism until you’re reloading.
– admiralkit
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Before Hitler and the Nazi’s, was there another go-to historical “worst person ever”?
Judas Iscariot, Atilla, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Mongols were probably the most hated people.
I apologize in advance if using Biblical figures does not count as ‘historical.’ However, prior to the 19th Century, European culture was especially steeped in Judeo-Christian and Hellenistic theology. All of the characters from the Bible were well known to the intellectual elite (and likely the lower classes as well). In fact, allusions to the Machabees and Israelites were very common, so much so that kings such as Karl XII, Richard the Lionheart, or Oliver Cromwell preferred to see themselves compared to such figures instead of ‘lesser’ known figures from their own national histories. It is interesting to note that while figures such as Darius, Xerxes, Pilate and Atilla were remembered throughout Europe, none were particularly hated, with the arguable exception of Atilla, who was considered both barbarous and cruel.
The Bible, as is well known, is populated by many notorious figures, but the blackest of all were traditionally Pharaoh and Judas Iscariot. Both of these figures, especially the latter, were featured in allegories such as the Divine Comedy. Genocide was not particularly the blackest sin of that era; instead, treachery was. Judas’ crime against his Lord and God were seen as particularly heinous.
Because of the costs of their conquest, the Mongols were hated and despised by most of the intelligentsia of Imperial China. Even the Qing elite, foreign conquerors themselves, considered the Mongol Yuan to have been a cruel dynasty (edit, Source: Chinese Revolutions, Fairbank). I do not know about the Muslim world, but it is very likely the Mongols were as much hated as they were in early Muscovite Russia. Due to the characteristics of the era however, Genghis Khan was not particularly well-known by name in places such as Iran or China. The Mongols were hated as a race demonic in the Islamic-Christian theology; their individual leaders were not accurately remembered.
After the Treaty of Vienna in the early 19th CE, I think that in most of the British and European world, Napoleon Bonaparte was remembered harshly as a tyrant. Many of the characteristics of Hitler, such as vanity, selfishness, despotism, callousness, cruelty, were subscribed to Napoleon, albeit with far less merit. However, memories of Napoleon as the archetypal villain were erased in both the Soviet and English Commonwealth by Hitler’s actions.
The great difference between Hitler, Tojo Hideki, or Mussolini and other historical figures is that while the former are hated almost universally, memories of former rulers in their own native lands were almost always more nuanced (quite like a more recent dictator, Stalin’s own ambiguous reputation). Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, Atilla the Hun, Napoleon, and Genghis Khan were in hindsight remembered by their own nations as rulers who brought power and strength to their nations. Of course some reputations varied; France in particular held ambivalent feelings towards the Bonapartist political strain. It must be remembered also, that cross-national opinions varied far more in the past than at present. America and Latin America did not view Napoleon half as harshly as did England or Russia. He was often remembered instead for his progressive political position and military talents, instead of the various crimes of his wars. Therefore, there was no true universal villain prior to 1945 (and as others have mentioned, Hitler is less well known in Eastern Asia, although I would challenge the assumption that he is completely forgotten, especially in Japan).
– DavidlikesPeace
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How does information become classified (secret, top secret, etc.), who determines access to the information, and how many levels exist?
I work for the DoD, hopefully I can shed some light on this.
Information is classified based on how much damage the material would do to National Security. There are technically only 4 levels of classification: Unclassified, Classified, Secret, and Top Secret, but there are other descriptions that can be attached to those classifications to further instruct how to handle those materials. As an example SBU refers to something that is Sensitive but Unclassified. There are also things called “Read Ons” where you may have the correct clearance to handle a particular level of classified material but you need to be “read on” to some special instructions that are specific to that document, building, room, etc.
There is a classification authority that provides guidance and determines what is and is not classified and what level of classification is proper however 1) it really isn’t clear what the difference is between the varying degrees of damage information may do and 2) individual agencies in the government are responsible for labeling material the proper classification.
As far as who gets access, everything is needs to know. So even if you have a Top Secret clearance you are only given access to information that is necessary for you to do your job regardless of the classification of the material that you want. Typically the highest ranking person in the chain of whoever has that information and whoever wants that information makes that determination.
Other important notes:
Things that can hold a classification: Documents, CDs, Thumbdrives, Computers, Phones, LAN lines, Networks, Rooms, Buildings, Etc. *All of these things have a level of classification and you have to ensure that you are not handling high level classified material on things that have lower levels of classification. IE You can’t have a conversation about Top Secret information on an unclassified phone.
Material is classified “at birth”. As soon as you have a piece of information whether it is in writing, verbal, or digitized, that material is classified. If I am discussing via phone, activities that I am conducting with my job, that discussion is classified at one of those levels regardless of whether or not anyone formally puts a stamp on the conversation or announces that the conversation is classified. At some point I would need to put that information into a report and label it correctly but not labeling it doesn’t mean it’s unclassified. If anything me not labeling that information in the correct manner or not having the conversation over a properly secured channel is grounds for punishment and potentially losing my clearance.
There is also a procedure for “declassifying” things but typically, at least at my level, once something has a certain level of classification we only make it more classified, not less. We don’t declassify things because it’s timely and there really isn’t a reason to have to do it. The whole point of classification is to compartmentalize information, not make it so that more people can see it.
An entire conversation, report, etc also all holds the level of classification for the highest classified material of any piece of that thing regardless of how much information is present. So if you have a 500 page document that is all unclassified but one line is Top Secret, the entire document is labelled Top Secret. There is a “proper” way of doing this that prevents the entire document from having to be labelled Top Secret but it’s extremely time consuming so it’s just easier for us to label entire documents by the classification of the most sensitive piece of material.
– UrbanSpartan85
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What exactly is a hedge fund?
A hedge fund is a privately managed fund consisting of a typically small group of large investors whose money is managed by a manager and (usually) a team of analysts/investors. edit they can use a variety of strategies and generally are marked by a diverse series of investments. They generally are designed to provide an absolute return, meaning a positive return regardless of the direction of the market. Some Hedge Funds can be very aggressive in order to ensure absolute return.
The hedge fund is designed to take the money provided by the investors and through professional management provide a good-to-high rate of return. This comes with risk, but a good hedge fund manager knows how to deal with this. The funds are typically diverse, along with the strategies used which can include short selling (a tactic that can be very risky when done wrong, but very lucrative when done right.)
They are not available to the general public. They have a more limited audience, and less regulation historically. The audience is limited, as I understand it, to Accredited Investors , which as the criteria shows is not going to be everyone. A lot of the regulation levels are based on the wealth of the fund.
Khan Academy does a great job explaining this via video in under 4 minutes
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Why do taxpayers front the bill for sports stadiums?
That’s the bargaining chip that team owners use to keep them from moving to another city: build/improve our stadium or we walk. While the math is pretty fuzzy on what kind of economic benefit a sports team can provide, few mayors want to be the person who lost the local sports team.
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