Talk:Nine Million Bicycles

13.7

Whether or not it warrants inclusion in the article, it should be said that the "good estimate with well-defined error bars" of 13.7 billion years has just been expanded by scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Washington by 15%, to 15.8 billion.[1]

But that's a guess... Eixo 16:00, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, her guess of 12B light years is 12.4% shy of Singh's assertion...which is itself 13.3% shy of Carnegie's 15.8B. So Science Guy is wrongier than Lyric Girl. I guess the pen is mightier than the nerd.

Actually, the universe isn't any bigger, it's just now over budget. --SigPig 06:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

This case with Singh clearly indicates how far can one's stupidity go. I wonder what kind of a scientist is he, after all of his silly and meaningless remarks about the exact distance. And why on earth did Katie have to change her lyrics?????????? By the way, if chinese count their bicycles in Beijing and the number turns out to be different from 9 million, what should Katie do??????????????????? :)) Unlike the universe, stupidity has no edge... David and Lela from Georgia (Katie's mother country)

Is this controversy section really even necessary? It just seems stupid as pointed out above, it was probably just some attention grabbing scientist(ironic, I know) trying to bring some coverage on himself. I vote to delete the section entirely, it just gives the minor event more credibility by having it on there. 71.187.123.200 14:52, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

The universe has certainly expanded quite a bit, since Eric Idle of Monty Python's fame wrote:

The Galaxy Song

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Could somebody please check if today this song can still be played to young people who may not yet be properly educated in astrophysics? Scientists at that time saw no reason or did not dare to be up against M.P. (BTW, I do also think that this controversy may be safely discarded from the article.)

87.187.10.201 13:44, 12 August 2007 (UTC) Steffen Heinrich

It doesn't even sound as if the singer were singing about the age of the universe, since light-years measure distance, not time. It seems to me that she was referring to the 'edge of the universe', which is often described as infinite, and where its edge lies would certainly be a 'guess.' T.W. (talk) 00:10, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I think some of the above comments display an ignorance of science and its importance. Singh (who is a well-known scientist, not some upstart who needs publicity) was not upset by the number as there is such a thing as artistic license, but he was upset by the assertion that it was a guess and there was no way of accurately estimating. The singer is not singing about whether it is time or distance but that her love is more assured than our knowledge of the universe. Besides, it's not really a controversy, he wrote an article about it in a major UK newspaper and Melua decided to make a new version in the spirit of fun - the new lyrics are intentionally more precise and disregarding of how they fit into the bars of the music. Forever Everyday (talk) 03:03, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Ethnic flutes???

What they f*** are ethnic flutes?

GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Note: This article has a small number of in-line citations for an article of its size and currently would not pass criteria 2b.
Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 01:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

"Beishing v Beijing"

In the song Melua pronounces the name of the Chinese capital "Beishing" instead of "Beijing".

I'm going to remove that since: (a) IPA isn't used, and is therefore confusing and sounds amateur-ish, and (b) What she says in the song is the (correct) British pronunciation.

How many bicycles?

So does anyone know how many bicycles there are in Beijing?

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Nine Million Bicycles/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed, listed below. I will check back in seven days. If these issues are addressed, the article will remain listed as a Good article. Otherwise, it may be delisted (such a decision may be challenged through WP:GAR). If improved after it has been delisted, it may be nominated at WP:GAN. Feel free to drop a message on my talk page if you have any questions, and many thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this article thus far.

The article fails on undue weight; when half the readable prose is devoted to some geeky hang-up over one line of the song there's something seriously wrong... This certainly deserves mention since it has received coverage in the media, but within reason. Instead, the article should be devoted to what a song-article should be about: background, composition, production, critical reception and commercial reception. Most of these subjects get far too little attention. Lampman (talk) 18:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Since no significant improvements have been made to the article over the last week, I will now delist it. Lampman (talk) 20:53, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The answer is 42, which is equal to the amount of IQ needed to write such stupid lyrics.

humourously?

the physicist commented humorously? 05:32, 8 November 2009 (UTC)ArielGenesis (talk) 05:32, 8 November 2009 (UTC)```

who wrote the music?

Did Mike Batt write the music? I have a cassette, bought in 1987 or 1988 in Thailand. A Thai popgroup plays the same music, the singer is Noi Pohngam. I cannot understand the text. On a Thai forum I learned the music is from a cantonese song of which also Thai version(s) exists. I don't know which version is the oldest.—Preceding unsigned comment added by BarendM (talk • contribs) 14:27, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I listened to the links and see that Batt's song is quite different from the Chinese version. Of Course Batt might have made his music sound "Chinese" but I think it can't be said to be another "version" of an old Chinese song.Tryst Nguyen (talk) 16:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The song has resemblance with another song by Terence Choi ( 蔡國權 ); the song title is " 不裝飾妳的夢 ( Don't decorate your dream ) See this Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUHCdMVdfNM Music: Terrence Choi Lyrics: Cheng Kwok Kong Arrangement: Tony A. Terrence Choi composed the music of this song and Tony A arranged the song.  This song was released around 1985. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BarendM (talk • contribs) 08:12, 22 March 2010 (UTC)