(Part 2) Best products from r/explainlikeimfive

I agree with all the comments made so far, but I think we're missing one element:

We want our friends to like us for introducing them to it. We want recognition of being cool / cultured / having good taste - whatever.

My favorite author* on child psychology says that the deepest desire, the deepest motivator, for all people is a need to be seen. We want to be seen as valuable and something special, be accepted for who we really are. Sharing what we like is a form of openness and vulnerability, and that makes us even more focused on getting the right feedback, so we get nervous about whether this movie, or show, or music actually made the mark.

That's why I value it greatly when friends share their interests with me, and I make sure they are seen when they share.

Wow! Thanks for the Gold!

• *Pursuant to feedback: Jesper Juul is the author I was referring to, and two great books are "Your Competent Child" and "Here I Am! Who are You?"

Here's a comment that I gave as an answer to essentially the same question about 8 months ago; It's long and complicated, but hopefully it goes slowly enough to be reasonably easy to follow. You can see the original comment here

****

Sorry, this isn't going to be quite ELI5 level, but the concept of flatness of space is pretty hard to explain at that level.

The idea of a piece of paper being flat is an easy one for us to conceptualize since we perceive the world as having 3 spatial dimensions (i.e. a box can have length, width, and height). A piece of paper is roughly a 2-dimensional object (you seldom care about its thickness) but you can bend or fold it to take up more space in 3 dimensions--you could, for example, fold a piece of paper into a box.

From here it is necessary to develop an idea of curvature. The first thing necessary for this explanation is the notion of a straight line. This seems like a fairly obvious concept, but where we're going we need a formal and rigid definition, which will be "the shortest distance between two points." Next, let us look at what a triangle is; once again it seems like an obvious thing but we have to be very formal here: a triangle is "three points joined by straight lines where the points don't lie on the same line." The final tool I will be using is a little piece of Euclidean (i.e. "normal") geometry: the sum of the angles on the inside of a triangle is 180 degrees. Euclidean geometry holds true for flat surfaces--any triangle you draw on a piece of paper will have that property.

Now let's look at some curved surfaces and see what happens. For the sake of helping to wrap your mind around it we'll stick with 2D surfaces in 3D space. One surface like this would be the surface of a sphere. Note that this is still a 2D surface because I can specify any point with only two numbers (say, latitude and longitude). For fun, let's assume our sphere is the Earth.

What happens when we make a triangle on this surface? For simplicity I will choose my three points as the North Pole, the intersection of the Equator and the Prime Meridian (i.e. 0N, 0E), and a point on the equator 1/4 of the way around the planet (i.e. 0N, 90E). We make the "straight" lines connecting these points and find that they are the Equator, the Prime Meridian, and the line of longitude at 90E--other lines are not able to connect these three points by shorter distances. The real magic happens when you measure the angle at each of these points: it's 90 degrees in each case (e.g. if you are standing at 0N 0E then you have to go north to get to one point or east to get to the other; that's a 90 degree difference). The result is that if you sum the angles you get 270 degrees--you can see that the surface is not flat because Euclidean geometry is not maintained. You don't have to use a triangle this big to show that the surface is curved, it's just nice as an illustration.

So, you could imagine a society of people living on the surface of the earth and believing that the surface is flat. A flat surface provokes many questions--what's under it, what's at the edge, etc. They could come up with Euclidean geometry and then go out and start measuring large triangles and ultimately arrive at an inescapable conclusion: that the surface they're living on is, in fact, curved (and, as it turns out, spherical). Note that they could measure the curvature of small regions, like a hill or a valley, and come up with a different result from the amount of curvature that the whole planet has. This poses the concept of local versus global/universal curvature.

That is not too far off from what we have done. Just as a 2D object like a piece of paper can be curved through 3D space, a 3-D object can be curved through 4-D space (don't hurt your brain trying to visualize this). The curvature of a 3D object can be dealt with using the same mathematics as a curved 2D object. So we go out and we look at the universe and we take very precise measurements. We can see that locally space really is curved, which turns out to be a result of gravity. If you were to take three points around the sun and use them to construct a triangle then you would measure that the angles add up to slightly more than 180 degrees (note that light travels "in a straight line" according to our definition of straight. Light is affected by gravity, so if you tried to shine a laser from one point to another you have to aim slightly off of where the object is so that when the "gravity pulls"* the light it winds up hitting the target. *: gravity doesn't actually pull--it's literally just the light taking a straight path, but it looks like it was pulled).

What NASA scientists have done is they have looked at all of the data they can get their hands on to try to figure out whether the universe is flat or not, and if not they want to see whether it's curved "up" or "down" (which is an additional discussion that I don't have time to go into). The result of their observations is that the universe appears to be mostly flat--to within 0.4% margin. If the universe is indeed flat then that means we have a different set of questions that need answers than if they universe is curved. If it's flat then you have to start asking "what's outside of it, or why does 'outside of it' not make sense?" whereas if it's curved you have to ask how big it is and why it is curved. Note that a curved universe acts very different from a flat universe in many cases--if you travel in one direction continuously in a flat universe then you always get farther and farther from your starting point, but if you do the same in a curved universe you wind up back where you started (think of it like traveling west on the earth or on a flat earth).

When you look at the results from the NASA scientists it turns out that the universe is very flat (although not necessarily perfectly flat), which means that if the universe is to be curved in on itself it is larger than the observable portion.

If you want a more in-depth discussion of this topic I would recommend reading a synopsis of the book Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbot, which deals with thinking in four dimensions (although it spends a lot of the time just discussing misogynistic societal constructs in his imagined world, hence suggesting the synopsis instead of the full book), then Sphereland by Dionys Burger, which deals with the same characters (with a less-offensive view of women--it was written about 60 years after Flatland) learning that their 2-dimensional world is, in fact, curved through a third dimension. The two books are available bound as one off of Amazon here. It's not necessarily the most modern take on the subject--Sphereland was written in the 1960s and Flatland in the 1890s--but it offers a nice mindset for thinking about curvature of N-dimensional spaces in N+1 dimensions.

Download a piano app, we're going all in.

While it's downloading, think of all the songs you heard or sang as a child.

Happy Birthday or Mary Had a Little Lamb are great examples (and you should look up how to play them when we're done here!)

These songs are in a "major" key, which basically is what we associate with happy in music.

To understand, check out this diagram I made.
http://imgur.com/3CUdEsu

Play the "major" notes, all white keys, in order. Notice the note labeled B next to the top note, C? This is what gives major keys the sound we love so much: the leading tone. Between most notes, you will see a black piano key. But between E and F, along with B and C, we have nothing.

Alone, no two piano keys next to each other have this effect, but because we started on C, the B is leading us into C again.

So basically, major keys make us feel happy and complete.


But within a major key, there is a lot more going on. For example, there are major and minor "chords"

>Minor chords in a major key? What's going on?

Yes that's right! In fact, within the white keys is another key signature which we call "A minor." Test it out now and play it through!

You'll notice, unlike in C major, we do not have a leading tone in this sequence of notes (which we call a scale).
You may also notice that these are technically the same notes as before, don't get too hung up on this!

What you need to know is that in these two scales there is one big difference, the leading tone. In minor keys we don't experience the completeness that major keys have to offer, so they sound a lot more ambiguous and we don't know where they're going.

Both key signatures though, use both types of chords (in fact, there are many other types of chords). If you want to play around with this, play alternating notes together (C-E-G, D-F-A, etc) and you'll notice that some sound very different than others. But they're all white keys!

In short, the difference between A minor and C major is where we start. In C major, we want B to move into C. But there's nothing inherently happy about C or sad about A, it's just where we start, and what notes are played accompanying these notes.

Part of our association with these sets of notes is because of sound-waves and how our ears interpret them, and part of it is because we are raised listening to a lot of major sounding music.

We listen to this music because its a lot easier to sing, not because it's inherently happy. So it's kinda confusing.

I'm sorry if this didn't make sense, I spent a lot of time on it but I have to acknowledge that I'm only just getting into music education and still have a lot to learn.
I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Please check out these resources. Do not shy away from music theory, it will only make you enjoy listening to music more!

Videos by Adam Neely

Why is major "happy"?

Which key is the saddest?

Books:

How music works

The Everything Music Theory Book


edit: formatting

I recommend reading: The User Illusion by Tor Norretranders, Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter, and I Am a Strange Loop also by Douglas R. Hofstadter for some interesting reading on the subject (Warning: Gödel, Escher, Bach isn't for everyone- it's a bit strange, but I love it). I read a lot of books on science in general and, based on that, it seems like many believe consciousness and also free will is just an illusion. In fact, just a few days ago, physicist Brian Greene sorta-kinda said as much in his AMA - granted, he's talking specifically about free will and not consciousness per se, but I think the two must be very related.

I, too, believe in God and also have a very strong belief in and enthusiasm for science, so this is an especially fascinating question for me.

BTW: if you're interested in the way the brain works in general, I highly recommend How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker.

I've been exploring this recently. I'm not an expert, but I'll do my best to explain it.


The shape or object represented in the gif you posted is called a tesseract or a hypercube. You can search for these terms for more information.


To explain this, some basics about 2D and 3D must first be established to understand how to continue the explanation to 4D.


A super-brief explanation of the gif above as the four dimension object (spatially) is that it is a representation or projection of viewing a 4D object/shape in a 2D view. (That gif as displayed on our computer screens is 2D because our screens are 2D and it's not encoded as 3D to be viewed with 3D glasses) and a 4-D object or shape actually appears to us to be 3D objects inside of 3D objects, just as if we look at a 2D object - say a square drawn on a piece of paper - we are able to see inside of the 2D object and see additional objects drawn inside of it and just as we are only able to draw a 3D object on a piece of paper if it is drawn as a transparent outline, this gif shows the 4D object drawn as a transparent outline in which we only see the many sides folding in and outside of itself. A being that is capable of seeing four spatial dimensions would be able to look at you and see inside of you. The following demonstrates this concept pretty well:


Fourth Spatial Dimension 101 (video, 6:27)



To better understand the concept of the fourth dimension, read on. I also included more videos below, including an excellent one by Carl Sagan.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------


First, some facts / definitions:

• 0D (zero spatial dimension) is simply a point. It either exists or does not exist. There is no concept of a point moving in 0 dimensions because there is no space for it to move.
  
  
• 1D (one spatial dimension) is simply a line. It has length. A point can move along the line from side to side, left or right.
  
  
• 2D (two spatial dimensions) is a plane. It has length and width. A point can exist and/or move from side to side lengthwise and side to side width-wise, left or right, and (if we imagine the plane as a flat surface that's level to the ground,) then we can call the width direction either forward and back, if we imagine looking at the plane on a wall, we might call it up or down. Either is fine. Two dimensions.
  
  
• 3D (three spatial dimensions) is technically called "3-dimensional Euclidean space" but since it's what we commonly perceive, we often just refer to it as "space." It has length and width and height. Other words can be used for these directions, as long as it's three separate directions not in the same plane, such as left-right, up-down, and forward-back.
  
  
• 4D (four spatial dimensions) is known simply as four-dimensional space, probably because we don't use it in conversation enough to have a nifty, shorter term for it. There is also a non-spatial version of four dimensions commonly referred to as "spacetime" which is a combination of 3D space and time.
  
  
  
• A special note about the fourth dimension... Space vs time as a fourth dimension are differentiated as such: time as the fourth dimension is referred to as the Minkowski continuum, known as spacetime, and the spatial-only dimensions are referred to as Euclidean space or dimensions. Spacetime is not Euclidean space; it is not only spatial. (The gif you linked above is a representation of the spatial fourth dimension. ..yes, it includes time to show it rotating. If you were to consider it as a spacetime dimension then it would be 5 dimensions: 4 spatial plus time, but it is commonly referred to simply as spatial in my understanding.)
  
  
  --------------------------------------------------------------
  
  
  Conceptualizing the limitations and advantages of dimensional perception:
  
  
  
• Beings that can perceive in 2D can see inside of objects that are 1D.
  
  
• Beings that can perceive in 3D can see inside of objects that are 2D.
  
  
• Beings that can perceive in 4D can see inside of objects that are 3D.
  
  
• Beings that can perceive in 1D can only see representations or projections of 2D objects.
  
  
• Beings that can perceive in 2D can only see representations or projections of 3D objects.
  
  
• Beings that can perceive in 3D can only see representations or projections of 4D objects.
  
  
  
  
  
  We are able to perceive objects spatially in 3 dimensions (3D). By spatially, we mean that we're interpreting the environment or world's space, and not considering the fourth dimension as something other than space, such as time. (The gif linked above is of a four-dimensional object of which the fourth dimension is also space.) When we look at a drawing of a square on a piece of paper, we are able to see not only its length and width, but also inside of it because we are viewing it from above - from height. If we look down at it and draw a triangle inside of it, we can see both at the same time. We are able to see inside of 2D objects. A 3D object is comprised of several layers of 2D objects stacked upon one another. So imagine the 2D drawing, and stacking many papers on top of each other until it's several inches or centimeters tall. That's a 3D object now. Then, shape it into a square at each sheet of paper (so cut through all sheets) and you will end up with a cube of paper. Shape it into a triangle and it will be a triangular, pie-like shape. Angle it more narrow on the way up and it will be a pyramid-like shape. With any of these shapes, we cannot see inside of it. But now imagine this: just as we in the 3rd dimension looking at a shape in the 2nd dimension can see inside of it, a being in the 4th dimension looking at a shape in the 3rd dimension can see inside of the 3D object. That is because just like there is only length and width in the 2nd dimension, but no height; in the third dimension we have length width and height, but no __. I'm unaware of whether there is a name for the additional direction that would exist in the fourth dimension.
  
  
  I also don't know whether a 4th spatial dimension actually exists or is just an abstract concept, nor do I know whether it is possible or known to be possible to detect. As far as I am aware, the fourth spacial dimension is only known of abstractly, meaning that there is no evidence for it actually existing.
  
  
  ------------------------------------
  
  
  These videos explain how to understand what the 4th dimension would look like:
  
  
  Dr. Quantum explains the 4th dimension (video, 5:09)
  
  An oversimplified explanation from the movie "What the bleep do we know: down the rabbit hole" in which the character, Dr.Quantum, first explains what an (imagined) 2D world (flatland) would look like to us - who are able to see the 3D world, as a way of understanding (or extrapolating) how a being that could see in the 4D world would be able to see through and inside of 3D objects. (note: I've been warned that this is part of a video that goes on to some cult-like recruiting, so please be forewarned about the video's conclusion and entirety.)
  
  
  Cosmos - Carl Sagan - 4th Dimension (video, 7:24)
  
  Carl Sagan explains how to imagine what the 4th dimension looks if we were able to see it and how it would allow us to see inside 3D objects. An important part of this video is explaining and showing exactly how and why we can only see a distorted version of 4D objects since we only see in 3D
  
  
  4th Dimension Explained By A High-School Student (video, 9:05)
  
  An excellent description of the first through fourth dimension and how we can perceive them.
  
  
  Unwrapping a tesseract (4d cube aka hypercube) (video, 1:39)
  
  
  Hypercube (video, 3:18)
  
  Watch the above two videos to see how we can conceptualize a 4D object in 3D space.
  
  
  Videos mentioned elsewhere in this comment:
  
  
  Fourth Spatial Dimension 101 (video, 6:27)
  
  
  Flatland (video, 1:39:56)
  
  
  --------------------------------------
  
  
  Videos, Books and Links mentioned by other redditors:
  
  
  Flatland: a romance of many dimensions (Illustrated) by Edwin Abbott Abbott (book, free, ~230kb)
  
  Amazon description & reviews
  
  hat-tip to /u/X3TIT
  
  
  "Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions" by Lisa Randall (Amazon book page)"
  
  Looks interesting.
  
  hat-tip to /u/karoyamaro
  
  
  
  -----------------------------------
  
  (Edited: 1- to add video lengths; 2- added book links, 3 - readability more videos, 4 - a warning about the Dr. Quantum video.)
  

A little more than ELI5 but worth the effort, Kip Thorne, the physicist who consulted on the film, wrote a fantastic book that covers this question in depth.

You can read it here.

I recommend reading the entire Prologue since it's relatively short and pretty fascinating, and will give you the background to why it must be a very large black hole, but the part directly relevant to your question is the section entitled Gargantua on page 41. (Also relevant is the establishing of the problem on pp. 34-35)

If you like his writing, buy his book Black Holes and Time Warps. The link above is just some random PDF I found on a search.

To sum him up though, a super-massive black hole will have negligible tidal forces at its "surface" (event horizon). You therefore could hover just above it and not be spaghettified. Once you cross the horizon, you'd still be okay for a while, but now no amount of force could keep you from falling ever closer to the center. As you approached the center, tidal forces would increase exponentially until eventually you would be pulled apart. So yes, it would be gentle. At first. But once you go inside, spaghettification is inevitable, though not necessarily immediate.


TL:DR A big size to make it more gentle? Yes. Possible to enter without spaghettification? Temporarily yes, ultimately no.

The best & most accessible book I've found on the subject is How Music Works. It's a little more in-depth than ELI5, but very easy to follow, and it's a great foundation. You can sum up music theory as "The study of which sounds play nice together & why", so...kinda ? Hope that helps!

The Clean Wehrmacht myth is a blatant lie. The Wehrmacht were repeatedly involved in war crimes, including the extermination of undesirables, and at the very least most, if not all, members were aware that their government was pursuing a campaign of violence against civilians and had purged undesirables (such as cripples and mentally ill) from society back home. The Wehrmacht may have been normal men, but that does not mean they are free of the blame for what occurred during World War 2.

Here are some resources regarding the Clean Wehrmacht Myth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

https://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776

https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319

https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930

I'd also add Ordinary Men to that list, as it's a very interesting study/discussion of how plain people like you and me can become bloodthirsty exterminators of other people in the right circumstances. https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492122897&sr=1-1&keywords=ordinary+men

Edit: Done replying to comments in this thread, it's exhausting. None of the argumentation is new. To quote the Duke of Wellington, "they came on in the same old way...". The materials are there for you to explore and read. You can form your own judgments based on facts and rigorous research, that's the beauty of a free and open society, the kind of society Nazi Germany was actively trying to prevent. The reason the Clean Wehrmacht myth needs to be refuted is because, as I've said in another comment, it presents an ignorant view of history that allows us to avoid the hard truth, learned largely from World War Two, that ordinary men who would otherwise be considered honorable, decent people can take part in atrocious crimes or, at the very least, hear about them and be permissive or even supportive of them. If we deny that, we can't learn to prevent such things happening again.

Edit 2: Honestly last thing, I just want to add a comment by one of the mods of r/askhistorians specifically relating to this subject. It's honestly the best comment on Reddit I've ever seen regarding this subject and it has a list of plenty of resources for those who want to investigate this issue further: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xc03h/just_how_much_of_the_wehrmacht_was_dirty/cy3cxs0/

The beginning of this video has a good explanation of how public/private key cryptography works, using the analogy of paint colors to show how one way functions make encryption like this possible. The math part is a little rushed, but the first half is a great visual aide.

I recommend reading The Code Book by Simon Singh if you're interested in the history of cryptography in general. The sections on the Enigma machine are fascinating.

Everyone's talking about ways to keep the voltage on the volatile memory, but when I was a kid I had one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Mega-Memory-Card/dp/B00002R108


You would just plug in your game, backup the save, change the battery, and restore the save. Worked great.

Musical experience is the sum experience of many different parts of the brain cooperating. Essentially, the sonic characteristics of music activate many different parts of the brain that are involved in rhythm, pitch resolution, as well as speech, pleasure, emotion, motivation, etc., so it's a holistic effect of many parts of your brain.

However, one of the key areas activated is the amygdala, an area that is deeply involved with a lot of "lizard brain" stuff, like emotional reactions and memory. The chills you get from music (when your "hackles rise") originate from there (as well as a number of other related brain systems).

If you're interested in this topic, you may want to read the book Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, a neurologist. Interesting stuff.

For a more in-depth, technical look at it, read the Wikipedia article on the cognitive neuroscience of music.

Counting only works if it's applied to betting. In order to get the best odds you have to play minimums until the count is high enough to justify an increased betting amount.

This pattern is very easy to pick up on so that is why most card counters work in teams. The "counter" just sits and plays for hours on end, never really varying their bet amount. When the count gets high enough they signal to another player who's appearance is that of a high roller so their increased bet amounts don't look strange/stand out.

Most casinos have lowered the number of decks used and shuffle more often. These changes have effectively made counting useless as you can't keep a running count long enough to make it statistically advantageous to make it worthwhile.

I am personally too slow to keep count, but back when they still used eight decks, I could pick up on patterns of lots of smaller cards coming out at the beginning of the deck, enough to realize I should up my bet.

If you are still interested in this topic please read this book , it's a really entertaining read.

It's been vastly superceeded by more scientific based research, (I still loved the book though) instead of Diamond's approach more on "is one society better"-type outlook.

I recommend Why The West Rules--For Now by Ian Morris - basically the best book on the subject of why the west rules ever written, its a bit advanced though, having read Guns first will vastly help.

Next would be 1491 by Charles C. Mann an educated look on the pre-Colombian Americas and why we were so wrong in viewing them and why the myths persist. Highly recommended.

Great response, for those looking Andrew Blum has an interesting book [Tubes](Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061994952/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_LkXMybX93FKGH) which is basically a full book ELI5 if anyone is interested in reading more. It looks like it can be had on amazon used for about $2.

Mega memory plus, saves progress of old gameboy games. Great for those pesky game with no save function.

Note: Make sure it has a working battery :)

http://www.amazon.com/Mega-Memory-Card/dp/B00002R108

To build on doc_daneeka's answer, I'll try to recollect an explanation I read about 4D objects in 3D space.

An object existing in n dimensions may be represented in n-1 dimensions. This representation may be called a shadow.

So, a 2D representation of an object existing in 3 dimensions is called a shadow (and is a shadow as we know it). Looking at a 2D representation alone, one might be able to reconstruct what the original object looks like in 3D.

Say, you see the shadow of a clear glass vase. If you know where the light source is placed, you might be able to ascertain what the vase looks like based solely on its shadow. Spin the vase, and the shadow will show some movement as well.

What we're looking at is a 3D representation of an object that exists in 4 dimensions. For a moving object in 3 dimensions, its shadow would also show movement albeit only in two axis. Similarly, objects in 4 dimensions would show movement along three axis.

From what I gather, we haven't yet developed a sophisticated way to think or even explain (to the layman at least) what an object might look like in 4D. Most of our brains aren't wired to think that way. Kinda like the characters in Flatland - really nice read, BTW.

You know...I may have come across this explanation while attempting (and failing miserably) to read and understand Lisa Randall's Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions.

ITT: A lot of people who would enjoy, and benefit from reading, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.

Granted, it's definitely not intended for 5-year-olds. Although he comes close with the dialogues sometimes!

If you want to know how computer is made, this amazing book explains so clearly from scratch in order so you can understand next chapter to the end.

It explains in scratch from Morse code, to electricity circuit with battery + flashlight, to telegraphy and relays with more advanced electricity circuit, to how numbers are understood in logic sense, to binary digits (0 and 1), to explaining how you can do so much with just binary digits and how barcode works, to logic and switches in algebra and advanced electricity circuits with binary/boolean, to logic gates, more advanced electricity circuits stuff, to bytes and hexes, how memory functions, to automation... ah this is halfway through the book now.

The way how he writes is very clear, understandable, and everything what he wrote has a meaning for you to be capable to understand what he wrote further in the book.

You'll know EVERYTHING about electricity and behind-the-scene how computer works, how RAM works, how hard drive works, how CPU works, how GPU works, everything, after you finish this book.

Wow. Okay. Start here, it's an awesome book about Native American civilization before Europeans.

Then go further back and find literally any source talking about the way modern humans spread from Africa around the globe.

There is a ton of very cool practical and anecdotal information on this in this book: [Musicophilia] (https://www.amazon.com/Musicophilia-Tales-Music-Revised-Expanded/dp/1400033535). This was the text we used in one of my graduate classes "music and the brain," it's a very complex and not fully understood area. Almost miraculous in some instances. I highly recommend giving a look if the subject interests you.

It's a bit too late to reply here, but you should checkout the book NAND2Tetris, The Elements of Computing Systems[1]. It's a really good book to help you understand the basics of computers in a simple manner.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Computing-Systems-Principles/dp/0262640686/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413824881&sr=8-1&keywords=nand2tetris

If this interests you, you might enjoy warped passages by Lisa Randall. It’s a few years old now, so I’d bet the science has evolved, but she does a great job of explaining these kinds of concepts in lay-terms.

What do you think about this?

If you haven't read the book - it's about learning to have non-ejaculatory orgasms, full body orgasms and the ability to maintain an erection instead of feeling spent the way you would after an ejaculatory orgasm, and the positive energies that can be built through this "cultivation of self."

This book is a pretty good beginning on the topic.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Code-Book-Science-Cryptography/dp/0385495323

You can also find it online in pdf.

A quantum computer is able to but the bits of data that make up computer information into a superposition where the 0s and 1s at the same time and rapidly go bit by bit checking the combinations.

A quantum computer could break an RSA, SHA, etc encryption scheme but a quantum computer could also be able to create a cryptography scheme that uses the quantum computer and thus you'd wind up with a quantum computer trying to break quantum encryption.

This is a high level overview and if someone has extra time please add to it.

Hijacking top comment to recommend a book (kinda) about this. A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage, puchasable for $0.99, used, on Amazon.

It's well researched and iirc, it covers history (mostly western) from the Mesopotamian civilizations to the present day. The six drinks it does this through are Beer, Wine, Spirits, Coffee, Tea and Coke. I found it somewhat interesting that the first 3 drinks contained alcohol and the last three contained caffeine (not that this necessarily signifies anything), and I think he mentions that in passing somewhere in his book.

I am reading a book about this right now. If you really want to learn more, I highly recommend it! One of the most enlightening books I've ever read.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262640686/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Funs is my friend. I love that cube.

There's a second school of thought regarding the body's reaction to parasites and its relationship to allergies. IANAB, but it's my understanding that the absence of parasites is a relatively modern phenomenon, and that only in the past hundred years or so, and only in the first world, do people live without a parasite burden. The thinking is that we co-evolved with our parasites; they evolved to thrive inside you, and you evolved assuming they were there. This is an example of what's called a red queen race.

The implication is that to exist in your body, with its various immune reactions and defense systems, certain parasites had to evolve a means to circumvent their destruction. It is possible, then, that such parasites, notably hookworms, are able to temper your immune system in some way. Your immune system, charged with keeping you alive, has evolved under the conditions of having this foreign body reliably present. With modern medicine and hygiene, the counterbalance that parasites would have historically provided have been removed, and therefore our immune systems are "out of tune."

Sources:

• There was an episode of RadioLab about this recently.
  
• If you have the time and interest, try The Red Queen.
  
• This is part of the hygiene hypothesis.
  
  Disclaimer: The hookworm thing is up in the air, and I am in no way
  endorsing it.
  
  
• An update on the guy in the RadioLab episode. Apparently the FDA wasn't too thrilled.

The great Oliver Sacks has dedicated an entire chapter of his latest book to this argument, it's very intriguing.

on amazon

If you're interested in further reading, The Red Queen attempts to answer this very question from a number of viewpoints. It's a fascinating read.

For any of those interested in learning more about ISP's, Interconnects, Peering, and how the internet actually works, I've found Andrew Blum's book, Tubes, to be absolutely amazing. I've re-read it three times now. http://www.amazon.com/Tubes-A-Journey-Center-Internet/dp/0061994952

This idea of sex in private is actually discussed in The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.

Animals that have multiple sexual partners in with monogamous social structure will have sex in private so they won't get caught doing so by a jealous wife or husband. Humans and certain monogamous species fall under this category.
I'd recommend reading this book as it is very interesting. It also discusses the origin of genders.

http://www.amazon.com/A-History-World-6-Glasses/dp/0802715524

This is a great book that explores the questions you're asking and some other cool themes and ideas around the various drinks the world consumes.

I HIGHLY recommend the book ["CODE" by Charles Petzold] (http://www.amazon.com/Code-Developer-Practices-Charles-Petzold-ebook/dp/B00JDMPOK2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412051282&sr=8-1&keywords=code). It explains how computers and programming languages are built starting with the simplest pieces (circuits, telegraph relays, transistors binary, assembly, functional languages) up through almost modern day. He also puts it all into historical context. I'm in the middle of it now and it is thoroughly interesting and elucidating.

Here's a simple hand-wavy version of the proof.

First let's assume that it is possible to write a program that decides the halting problem. That means it's a program that takes another program as input, and tells you if that program will halt or not. This is what we're going to prove doesn't exist, so to prove it we'll assume it DOES exist and then show that results in a contradiction.

Now take that halting program, which we've assumed to exist, and modify it so that if the answer is "no" then it returns "no", but if the answer is "yes" then it runs forever.

Now take that second program, and feed it to the first program - in other words, you're asking it if that second program halts or not.

If it says "yes, it halts", then that's a contradiction, because it just said that it halts - and yet we just passed it the code to itself but modified so that if it halts, it runs forever.

But if it says "no it doesn't halt", then that means it just said that the halting program itself doesn't halt, which means it doesn't work.

So either way it's a contradiction, and therefore there doesn't exist a program which decides whether any other program will halt or not.

This is not a complete or correct proof, I left out important details. But that's the idea behind it.

If you want more, the book Godel, Escher, Bach is a fascinating take on a very related problem. It takes one of the most surprising mathematical theorems of the last 100 years and explains it by way of language, storytelling, analogy, and metaphor. It doesn't quite explain the halting problem proof but it comes so close that once you've read the book, the halting problem will seem easy. :)

Also, Wikipedia's proof is pretty good and concise, and doesn't involve any higher math.

If you want, try to read through that proof and ask any questions about things that are unclear.

The above answers were really good. I recommend a look at the book Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software to get a sense of the history of how computer languages evolved into how we build applications today.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JDMPOK2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I suggest reading Flatland. It really helps to grasp the concept of higher dimensions. It is an easy read and not long at all.

I don't know why you think the fertile crescent is important. If it's because of the start of agriculture, then the Americans cradles are in Mesoamerica, the Andes, and the Eastern Woodlands. Also, agriculture was developed in three more "Old World" regions other than the Fertile Crescent: Western Africa, China, and New Guinea.

If you think its important because of writing, then the American cradle would be in Mesoamerica. However, knowing about the record systems of Ojibwe birchbarks, Mi'kmaq hieroglyphs, Haudenosaunee wampum, Lakota Winter Counts, and Andean/Incan Quipu is also important.

The most important regions are the Yucatan peninsula and the Mexican Valley, the Andean mountains, the Southwest US (e.g. Pueblo Bonito of the Hitsatsinom), and the Eastern Woodlands (e.g. Cahokia of the Mississippians).

You can go to /r/AskHistorians for more, or you can read the book 1491 (and an Amazon link).

There was a really excellent section on exactly this in the code book if you're interested in some reading about it. But the book is more generally about the history of cryptography and codebreaking...

It went over a lot of the history of figuring out Egyptian hieroglyphs and one or two other ancient languages with little to no clues about their meaning and interpretation. Sorry I don't remember the specifics...

In "A History of the World in 6 Glasses", Tom Standage credits early inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent's survival with drinking beer which by having alcohol in it made it reasonably safe.

I read a different idea by Kip S Thorne. In theory if we could create and contain a black/worm hole we could send one of them at (close to) the speed of light. That end would experience time slower than the other end. So in theory passing through each end would be a portal to the past/future.

Edit: Source
Black Holes and Time Warps
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Time-Warps-Commonwealth/dp/0393312763

This book explains theory only and ideas on how to use exotic matter to keep a wormhole open. It's very easy access with just the right amount of technicality.

LondonPilot has an excellent explanation.

If you want everything explained in a book, look at Code by Charles Petzold. It's basically an ELI5 Computers through all the layers of abstraction, literally starting with binary.

If you want a hands on approach, check out The Elements of Computing Systems. It will take you through building the gates that LondonPilot is talking about to building Memory, ALUs, and even a CPU. It continues on to assembly language programming, writing a compiler, writing a high level language, etc.

These books combined is really a large chunk of what you should know with a BS in Computer science.

Further down I linked this video which explains some pretty complicated concepts in a manner easy to understand.

The video uses the comparison of 2D and 3D universes as a parallel to 3D and 4D. If a 3D object enters a 2D world then it appears in that world as a 2D object. It is only as the object moves orthogonally (perpendicular but generalised for n dimensions) to the 2D plane that you can see all of the 3D object, but only in 2D "slices" at any time. In the video above the guy uses his finger, and the observers would see 2D slices of the finger.

This is significantly harder to wrap your head around when thinking about 3D and 4D, but the same principles apply.

If you want to read more on the subject then the book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is highly regarded. The video uses the same concepts, but this book was written in 1884 which is just mad in my opinion; it was very forward and abstract thinking at the time, and still is today.

Thank you for providing a real response, rather than what you've over heard or speculation.

Most of what you said lines up with what I read from this book: A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage.

First chapter is solely about the history of beer.

>As has been stated several times in this thread, it's the reason why we became an agricultural society instead of just hunter/gatherers. It's the reason we have society.

The only difference, and I am not saying the book is correct, is that beer came about from humans settling down (traveling less). It wasn't the reason they started to travel less, but was the side effect of that. The assumption is that beer was an accident. Likely rain water getting into a clay storage area, and fermenting with the ingredients. The rest of you what you said though lines up.

It covers how it was used a form of payment, and that the workers on the pyramids were likely paid with beer. Good read if anyone is interested.

Chris Adami, professor of microbiology and astronomy (I know, odd combination) who has done some work related to black holes, had an AMA in /r/science the other day. I'll just carry over this comment

>It is true, we don't know what's behind the event horizon. If the black hole would be sufficiently massive (like, really supermassive) then if you are far enough from the center you would not be able to tell that you are inside of a black hole. After all, galaxies are moving around in the universe, and for all we know they could be orbiting the center of a black hole. However, this is all speculation. A good book for a beginner is perhaps Kip Thorne's book http://www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Time-Warps-Commonwealth/dp/0393312763

More intense? Quicker is not equal to more intense. However, if you do want to know what more intense and through the entire body really is, here's the place to start.

I'm not sure of the commenters sources, but I have read the same thing in two books.

1491 - https://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059

Guns, Germs and Steel - https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552

I'm no history buff, but I thoroughly enjoyed these two books.

Apparantly this thing lets you do so. Haven't tried it myself (and yes, I did catch the Seinfeld reference).

If anyone is interested in learning about this stuff in-depth, I really recommend the book 'Code' by Charles Petzold. You won't feel like a computer moron again.

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Developer-Practices-Charles-Petzold-ebook/dp/B00JDMPOK2/ref=sr_1_1

When you're asleep, your mind is less distracted and you may have many kinds of creative experiences. Different brains respond to music differently. Oliver Sacks, the famous professor of neurology, talks about this kind of thing in [one of his books] (http://www.amazon.com/Musicophilia-Tales-Music-Revised-Expanded/dp/1400033535/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367444787&sr=1-5&keywords=oliver+sacks)

maybe check out these books: http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/0452288525 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400033535/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944579862&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0452288525&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1M279DEH4CSSGMJ08BVZ

The voltage represents a 1 or 0. They're not translated, they just are.

You really ought to read Charles Petzold's Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software. It will answer your questions.

Great book about the actual numbers of death

TL;DR (the book) - It's fucking staggering.

Equiv of 9/10 people dying in your populus

check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Tubes-A-Journey-Center-Internet/dp/0061994952/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=8-1&keywords=the+tubes+internet

it explains the Internet and how it came to be. This will give insight into what it would take to build a 2nd one.