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November 21

I want to open a beer in a really alpha masculine way

How can I open bottles with my knuckle? lots of issues | leave me a message 04:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Knucle? thats wimpy. The real alpha masculin way is to quickly pull out a knife, stab the top then down the beer. Thats ALPHA masculine. Knucle is like more Alpha middle school drinker masculine. Esskater11 04:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Even more alpha masculine would be to break off or smash the neck of the bottle, then down the beer. Clearly being too alpha masculine can cause injury. As to how to remove a bottle cap with a knuckle, I’m afraid someone else will have to help you, as I’m not of the legal age to imbibe alcohol in the US. --S.dedalus (talk) 05:56, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget to crush the bottle against your forehead when you are finished. (Does not constitute real advice). Lanfear's Bane | t 11:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I once saw a guy at a train station wack the top of a wine bottle and the cap just popped off. Guess he'd had a lot of practice. Think outside the box 11:49, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Something along the lines of sabrage perhaps. Lanfear's Bane | t 13:10, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The cap? Pah! I'd be impressed if he just smashed the whole neck of the bottle off, spilling it all over the place and bloodying his hand from the broken glass, then tilted his head back and drank all the rest of it at once. --ffroth —Preceding comment was added at 06:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I can do the whacking it onto the edge of something hard thing - it's not that different from sabrage. Find something with a nice, hard (preferably metal) edge - (The top of my refrigerator works pretty well) lay the side of the bottle against the edge and either jerk it downwards really hard (or less impressively, whack it on top with the palm of your hand) so that the edge of the crown cap hits the edge of the surface (the top of my fridge in this case). If you do it right, the top will pop right off. However, it's not particularly masculine - an ex-girlfriend showed me how to do it - so it's a positively girly way to open a bottle. I agree that stabbing through the cap with a knife and twisting it to make a triangular hole is the only completely macho way. And we aren't talking about your wussy boy-scout knife here - we're talking 8" blade, serrated back edge with blood grooves. Ask yourself honestly: WWCND? (Oh - sorry - that's "What Would Chuck Norris Do?" for the less masculine amongst us). SteveBaker (talk) 14:14, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, how very tough you lads are. This is almost an alpha male convention. Excuse me while I put up some trees for you to pi** on.

Dude I went to high school with used to open beer bottles with his teeth. Think he wedged the cap against a back molar and just popped it off. We thought it was cool... Probably absolutely terrible for his teeth though, so, not advice, do not attempt, consult a dentist or whatever. Azi Like a Fox (talk) 16:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

My sister used to do that (thus rendering the 'alpha male' thing questionable...) until she chipped a tooth. Painful. I advise against it. Skittle (talk) 17:53, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Yep - there you go. Biting it off - also officially girly, sorry OP - you're going to have to order that Bowie Knife and just stab away at those bottles (although...a North Korean bayonet circa 1938 would be MUCH more macho...you know...just sayin...not that there's anything too effeminate about a Bowie knife). SteveBaker (talk) 20:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Yea its either a Bowie knife, or you could do the next best thing though you would get arrested. You could take the bottom find the closest guy and break the top of his head Esskater11 20:22, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Lay a bottle down on a hay bale with a bottle opener wedged in the cap, put a glass under the bottle. Go back 50 yards and shoot the bottle opener with a arrow. The cap will pop off and the beer will fill the glass. I saw a guy do it on TV once.--ChesterMarcol (talk) 20:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Bow and arrow? No, no, no - that won't do at all. A crossbow maybe? A .44 Magnum would be playing more on the safe side. "Did I shoot the caps off the entire six pack or only five? Do you feel lucky punk?" SteveBaker (talk) 05:54, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

You're all missing the point. A true alpha male wouldn't have to open their own beer. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Pretty much. On a slightly different note, there was a woman on TV who had enormous breasts with which she could crush empty beer cans. Not in between, but via gravity. It was pretty amazing. --Masamage ♫ 04:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Basketball

Please explain what "high-low game" and "low-high game" are. 81.89.88.106 (talk) 07:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet "high-low game" means the offense runs through the bigger players (so the Power Forward and/or the Center), whereas "low-high game" means the offense runs through the smaller players (the point guard and shooting guard, and maybe the small forward).

Teams with dominant big men who have good hands would run a high-low game, where when offense gets set they pass the ball to the big man who tries to get position on his defender. Since he is so good there would be defensive help from another defender which would leave another person open, or at least partially open. The offense runs through him since he can either score directly or move the ball around to an open player who would score.

Teams with good guard play would run a low-high game. So when the offense gets set the small guys would use their quickness to beat their defender which would require another defensive player come help out. Then there is an open or partially open player that the small guy can pass to. This sort of play would use a quick guard or small forward. The offense would run through them since they could take the ball to the basket, pull up and take a shot over an off-balance defender, or pass the ball off to the player left open by the help defense.--droptone (talk) 13:46, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

VHS vs Betacam

I'm thinking of ordering some archival footage for my own use (potentially to digitize and use in my own film editing). On VHS it is only $10 a film, while on Betacam it is $100. Is the quality of the Betacam going to be superior enough to justify the extra expense? (Note that I am not asking why the expense should be 10X more; archives have ridiculous policies relating to price that usually have no correlation with work performed; at some they charge you much more to scan something at 600 DPI than they do at 300 DPI even though its exactly the same amount of work!!) --24.147.86.187 (talk) 19:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - Betacam is much better quality than VHS, it's THE standard professional format used throughout the TV industry before digital TV hit the world. Are you sure this is a version of BetaCam you can read? There are many different flavors of BetaCam - some of the most recent ones are digital - the older ones analog. VHS is 330x250, BetaCam is 400x300 - but that doesn't really express the difference properly. The colour quality of BetaCam is vastly better. Some of that $90 difference in price is just the cost of the tape - the rest reflects the cost of the hardware to record it. Whether you NEED that extra quality given the price difference is something only you can answer. But I'm a little puzzled...if you have the ability to play BetaCam tapes, surely you're a video professional and are therefore already aware of the difference in quality. Those machines are hideously expensive compared to VHS machines. SteveBaker (talk) 19:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a professional at all in video editing (this would be for my own practice/fun), but I have access to the vast technological resources of a well-endowed university and so reading and converting between different formats is a snap (they have a number of centralized tech facilities with machines set up for this sort of thing). Thanks for the reply—I think in this case the color will be quite important, given that these are really old archival tapes and the color is already going to be somewhat dodgy; I can take whatever I can get. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 21:43, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The other thing to consider isn't so much VHS vs BetaCam, but analogue vs digital regardless of the format used. If you go the analogue VHS route then any subsequent dubs will deteriorate in quality. Personally I'd see if you could use some of that uni gear to do your own conversion direct to computer using a minimally compressed digital format such as DV-AVI. Once you have it in that digital form you can do what you like with it. You didn't mention what format the original footage is in so it's hard to give advice on the actual conversion. --WebHamster 12:55, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Right, well that's what I'd be doing after I received the BetaCam or VHS. I don't have any choice in the original format other than those two (both of which are recorded from some sort of old movie reels), but I would be converting it to digital ASAP. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 18:29, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

In that case the BetaCam (especially DigiBeta if possible) is the way to go is quality is on your priority list. It does seem to be a strangely limited option. Any decent conversion house will give you a much wider range of options. The last time it was done for me I had the option of VHS, S-VHS, Video8, Hi8, Digital8 (the one I chose as I use that format) and DigiBeta. To be honest I wouldn't trust a place that can only offer two options, especially at such disparate prices. YMMV of course :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by WebHamster (talk • contribs) 01:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

USA Picture Postcards

I am British and consider myself lucky to have travelled fairly widely around Europe and the USA and I take it kindly that quite a few of the people we have met over the years have visited us in our Scottish home, and I include those from France, Germany, Spain, England, Wales, New England USA, California USA and Hawaii USA. Over the years we have also collected picture postcards from all those places and have kept those sent to us from them too. But as much as we love America and like visiting there, I just have to say the quality and photographic standards of the USA postcards compare extremely poorly with those from Europe. Today for instance, we got 3 cards from Hawaii, and the colour quality, the views selected and the general forgettability factor were all dire, I mean really DIRE. But the people who sent them are people who I consider to have otherwise good taste so I can only imagine they are choosing from a very poor range to start with. So, if anyone here can explain why that might be, I would love to know why that is. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.145.242.21 (talk) 20:38, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a fluke. There are postcards to be had here of as fine a quality as one could hope for. But I think that we generally see the postcard more as kitsch than as high art. --Milkbreath (talk) 21:52, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

American postcards are pretty poor today; very little money or thought seems to go into them, most of them have horrible designs, atrocious pictures, and gaudy text all over them. I don't know what the rest of the world is doing with their postcards, but US ones are nothing to write home about (ironically, no?). They have historically been this way—there is a book under the title of Boring Postcards USA for sale if you are interested—though I tend to find the postcards of the last decade or two phenomenally bad. If you browse through postcard holdings in antique shops you'll often find far more interesting ones, with better subjects, better photography, etc., in my opinion. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:32, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Gold Nuggets Worth

On average how much are gold nuggets worth today or in today's market? Haven't they hit a high price for this year? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.127.98.85 (talk) 23:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Gold is sold by the ounce. The weight of a nugget and its percentage of gold would determine how much it is worth. Corvus cornix_talk 23:16, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Gold hit $800 an ounce briefly today - that's some kind of a record I believe. However, it's more to do with the US dollar being weak than gold being suddenly worth a lot more. The 'normal' price over the past few years has been in the $600 range - but the dollar has fallen about as fast as gold has risen. I bet the Euro price for gold has hardly budged at all. Today's AP press release said: "The dollar slid to its lowest point against the euro, which fetched a peak $1.4855. A barrel of oil hit a record $99.29 in electronic trading overnight, while heating oil peaked at $2.7154 a gallon. Those moves helped hoist gold prices temporarily over $800 an ounce, as investors shifted assets to the traditional safe-haven metal." - remember that the Euro was equal to the Dollar just a couple of years ago. SteveBaker (talk) 05:30, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Obviously, particularly large or unusual nuggets will sell at a much far higher value than their mass would suggest. 130.88.79.77 (talk) 12:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume 21 editor

Help! I forgot to write down the editor for Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume 201; I need the editor for my essay! Anyone know who it is?--24.109.218.172 (talk) 23:36, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Jeffrey W. Hunter. Xn4 00:40, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.109.218.172 (talk) 01:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

November 22

Slapbands

I can to your site on how to find info on a certain 80's trend that was called a "slapband" (one of those bands that is "U" shaped straight but you can smack it and it will form a circle then unravel it and make it straight again) there seems that there was some sort of contriversy with it in the 80's that it was banned from schools. I searched all over the internet for other names to this "fashion statement" with no luck so I turned to you, but seems that there is no info.

But I certainly thank you for all the awesome info you guys do have and your doing a great job. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.133.34.201 (talk) 01:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Yup, I remember them. When we had them in the late 80s they were banned in our school due to a rumour (confirmation?) that the sliver of metal could slide out of the synthetic material outside and slit the wrists of the wearer. That having been said, I still had mine up until a year or two ago. I don't know what happened to it. I'll have to search... Steewi (talk) 01:33, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

See Slap bracelet. These are still made all over the world (google) and were originally trademarked under the name 'Slap Wrap'. The technique has been expanded to also include 'Slap on watches' and other items. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 01:56, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Always amazed at the plethera of knowledge to be had.

Thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.133.34.201 (talk) 13:04, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Modern filmaking

Do modern large Hollywood studios such as Universal and DreamWorks use digital film-capturing devices? Or are they still using the traditional film? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 01:18, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

They use both, but what is becoming increasingly popular is the use of a digital internegative for use in editing, digital colour timing and effects etc, so yes, these days most film is digitally scanned at some point even if the end product is based on traditional film stock. --WebHamster 12:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

writing

hello, im a writerbut im on writers block is there any websites that give you plots but i can create my characters and setting? thanxs

If you find one, come back and tell us. I'd love to know about it. Bielle (talk) 02:32, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

You may be interested to read The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations. At the bottom of the article are links to other plot lists.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

need help please

I know you dont help on homework but i am helping my younger sister on a project and i have looked every where from the regular dictionary to every site online and i can not seem to find what we need. she has been given four symptoms, mouth and gum soreness, wounds and cuts will not heal, loss of appetite, and sore joints. i have looked at all the diseases she was given and none of them seem to fit all the way.the diseases are...cholera, dihtheria, leprosy, dengue fever, scurvy, malaria, and yellow fever. They all seem to have one or two of the symptoms. can you help or at least point me in the right direction? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.141.20.156 (talk) 02:05, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like scurvy.

Well, I don't know. There is no indication of joint pain or loss of appetite in our article on scurvy. It says that there is an inability to make new collagen - and I could imagine that causing joint problems - but it's not listed in the symptoms. But I agree that none of the other diseases cover the whole set of symptoms either. Could this be one of those things where the patient has two diseases and you have to find the two that cover all of the symptoms without predicting symptoms that the patient doesn't have? SteveBaker (talk) 05:16, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The British Medical Association "Complete Family Health Encyclopedia" says that scurvy causes bleeding into muscles and joints thus causing pain. DuncanHill (talk) 05:19, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

And in the same vein (ouch, unintended, but I will leave it), mouth and gum soreness (along with the joint pain) could well result in a loss of appetite. A toothache alone will do that for me. Bielle (talk) 05:57, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

It does appear to be scurvy. The giveaways are the lack of healing and the tooth and gum soreness. The lack of vitamin C causes loose teeth and gum decay, also giving extremely foul breath. You also get lethargy, and your body doesn't have the strength and resources to heal sores easily, so they linger. Leprosy's giveaway would be numbness and blackened extremeties, malaria's and dengue fever's are fever and delirium (recurring). Cholera causes sores to appear (among other things) and I don't know much about yellow fever. I'm off to read the article. Steewi (talk) 00:45, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

It's not in our article about yellow fever, nor in our article about coffee ground vomiting, but one of the diagnostic symptoms of late stage yellow fever is the vomiting up of dried up blood (which looks like coffee grounds). See here. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it's probably pretty unpleasant. Matt Deres (talk) 02:04, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

spelling help

When you say a person is full of knowledge, you can say "he is a "plefferer of knowledge". How do you spell that? Thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.112.82.135 (talk)

plethora ? Hmm, bad redirect! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.76.162.232 (talk)

See plethora on wiktionary. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 02:52, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd say "He has a plethora of knowledge" rather than "he is a plethora of knowledge".hotclaws 04:56, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

You could also say "He is the fount of all knowledge" - but I'm sure the OP wanted 'plethora'. SteveBaker (talk) 05:03, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Is pleffering legal in your state? —Tamfang (talk) 20:07, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I've always understood the pronunciation to be PLE-thɘra, not plɘ-THAW-ra, but I hear people using the latter from time to time. Which is correct? -- JackofOz (talk) 20:56, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Emphasis is on the first syllable --WebHamster 01:20, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:24, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Salvia divinorum and the law

Hi, I live in Illinois where salvia divinorum, a hallucinogenic/dissociative drug, is becoming illegal on January 1st, 2008. I understand that Wikipedia does not offer legal advice and does not take the place of a lawyer, but I thought I'd ask a question. Once salvia becomes illegal, does a bong with salvia residue become illegal as well? As some of you might know, it's incredibly hard to clean something like a bong enough to get rid of any leftover smells from smoking something like salvia. I ask this because the act of smoking took place while the substance was legal (though I can see this being called into question as there is no proof), it is present in essentially near-trace amounts (as in, it would be impossible to get high from what's left over in the bong), and there are legitimate uses for bongs (such as hookah). Thanks for the help, guys! --pie4all88 (talk) 07:21, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Would it not be possible to contact your local police force for advice? I am sure plenty of other people must have been in similar situations in the past, so they must have some kind of policy on this. 130.88.79.77 (talk) 12:27, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Lol, I am sure you noticed this, but in Salvia divinorum it says people have suggested that the wording of the law banning the drug in Illinois will make possession of water extracted from the plant illegal. However, if you could extract the active ingredient from a different plant, or synthesise it, this would be perfectly legal! 130.88.79.77 (talk) 12:34, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I may end up contacting the police with the question. Just thought I'd ask here since it's more convenient. And as for the wording on the bill, I'm pretty sure there aren't any other plants that make Salvinorin A, but it definitely is possible to synthesize it. Honestly, I'm not surprised in the least that the law is badly written. I can hardly make it through the "Controversy" section on the Salvia divinorum page what with all the biased, misinformed senators and sensationalist media coverage. Anyways, thanks for the help with the question, man. :) --pie4all88 (talk) 13:15, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

]p[-

220.233.83.26 (talk) 08:05, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. FiggyBee (talk) 08:26, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

He will be back, just gone for a pee perhaps.--88.110.17.80 (talk) 08:39, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I say the answer he's after is ;P Steewi (talk) 00:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

something to do with trr?[1]Cryo921 (talk) 01:09, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

intel

Whenever an advert about a computer with an intel pentium 4 processor inside it or whatever, why do they always have to have the little intel tune? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.42.215.64 (talk) 14:11, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Possibly thanks to some deal between the seller and Intel, designed to make the customers think there's something remarkable about Intel processors. If so, the aural equivalent of the rather ridiculous "Intel Inside" visual thing. -- Hoary (talk) 14:18, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

They don't have to, but if they do put the Intel Inside thing in their adverts, Intel will pay for half the cost of the advert (as a result, Intel gets extra advertising and the computer company gets a cheaper advertising campaign - everybody wins). See Intel Corporation#Advertising and brand management. In case you're interested, the exact tune goes "D♭ D♭ G♭ D♭ A♭". Laïka 14:22, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

They have the "little tune" because the more senses one can engage, the more likely it is that the message will be noticed. Also, at any later time the hearing of the tune (or just a snatch) will tend to recall the ad, and therefore the product. Basic promotional technique.86.197.150.176 (talk) 15:06, 22 November 2007 (UTC)petitmichel

It's like a jingle. --antilived^{T | C | G} 21:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a source for this but I've heard that Intel will pay the seller something like 70% of the cost of the Ad if they include the jingle. And of course at that price, they all accept Doh! Didn't read Smurrayinchester's coment above. -- DatRoot 01:04, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I also understand that they pay computer manufacturers if they put that 'intel inside' sticker on the computer/laptop. I heard that Apple refused because they think they would spoil the computer's design. Here's an article on it (http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/58900.html) ny156uk (talk) 10:04, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Very interesting. I've been wondering on and off how come Apple had avoided the sticker - I had assumed that it was compulsory. The financial explanation makes much more sense.

Incidentally, I also think that IBM may be missing a trick by not doing something similar (though hopefully more tasteful). How many people realise that the chips in every current games console are made by IBM? 81.187.153.189 (talk) 19:19, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

The Wii has a little ATI logo frosted on the upper-left corner of the side panel due to the ATI Hollywood graphics chip inside (you can see it in this image). I can only imagine that IBM decided that it wouldn't generate enough extra trade. Laïka 12:19, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Effects of lethal radiation

Suppose if a human was blasted by an intense amount of gamma radiation, equivalent to power of those from a thermonuclear weapon, how would the body physical look as it dies? Would the person just drop dead or would a more dramatic death ensue, ie. body melts, bubbles, etc...? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 16:19, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

You could have a look at radiation poisoning. Gamma burns from highly penetrating radiation. This would likely cause deep gamma penetration within the body, which would result in uniform whole body irradiation rather than only a surface burn. Lanfear's Bane | t 16:33, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The same article in the dosage section Radiation poisoning#10–50 Sv (1,000–5,000 REM) may also be useful. I would hazard a guess that as the particular type of event in the question has never been reported, that we just don't know what the effects would be (I doubt they'd be fun to experience tho). 86.21.74.40 (talk) 16:40, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh and also, see Gamma radiation#Health effect. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 16:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I understand that exposure to gamma radiation causes the body to swell up, turn green, and become incredibly strong. 64.236.80.62 (talk) 12:00, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I would look at it as a kind of "sunburn turned up to 11". Sunburn is due to an overdose of electromagnetic radiation just as irradiation with gamma would be (though admittedly the UV in sunlight isn't normally described as "ionising radiation"). Really serious sunburn, blistering, etc. 81.187.153.189 (talk) 19:22, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

You might want to look for a copy of Eric Hall's Radiobiology for the Radiologist or a similar work in your local university or teaching hospital's library. There are only a handful of cases of human exposures to high doses of ionizing radiation that weren't accompanied by other insults. (People at Hiroshima and Nagasaki who received large doses of gamma radiation, for instance, suffered serious injuries due to heat and blast as well—there was also little controlled clinical monitoring of their early symptoms.) The few cases that are available are generally isolated military and industrial accident cases where doses are estimated after the fact.

Very high doses of ionizing radiation (roughly 5000 rad/50 Gy and up) delivered to the whole body are characterized by rapid nervous system and cardiovascular effects: the so-called central nervous system syndrome. Animal experiments have found that death occurs in hours (or less, with higher doses). There is a rapid onset (within minutes) of nausea and vomiting, followed by disorientation, loss of coordination, seizures, coma, and death. While you might see some skin reddening or blistering (if the patient lived long enough), you're not going to see charring or bubbling. Even extremely high doses of gamma irradiation will deposit very little heat into the body. (100 rad/1 Gy of absorbed dose is 1 joule of energy per kilogram of body weight; raising a person's temperature by 1 degree Celsius would take an absurdly high dose of about 4000 Gy. For comparison, a 10 Gy whole-body dose is almost uniformly fatal, even with aggressive medical intervention.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

How much radiation would exist at ground-zero of a modern thermonuclear warhead? Acceptable (talk) 23:28, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

When? Immediately? Two hours later? etc. Time matters a lot in this because the highly radioactive bits are also the ones that die out quickly; the amount of radiation decreases greatly within the first few hours. It's also the difference between prompt radiation (caused by reactions in the bomb) and delayed radiation (caused by the remains of the bomb and its effect on the landscape) See 5.2.1 Radioactive Contamination and 5.3.2.1 Sources of Radiation here for a great overview. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 08:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

mba

what are your career goals?why do you want to do an mba?221.134.49.128 (talk) 16:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC)akanksha

That's not an appropriate question for this desk; each of us would have a different opinion. sorry. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Clearly it's a question asked by an educational institution to a person applying to do an MBA there. If the best he/she can do is parrot the question word for word in a place like the ref desk, I don't see them having much of a chance of getting their MBA should they be accepted. I hope that doesn't seem uncharitable, just realistic. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:15, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe I am qualified to be the MBA because... well.. actually, I'm not. However I'd take that over being in the MBA any day. In short, I'd like to be the MBA because I don't want to be in the MBA. Thank you. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 08:10, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Google home page banner - incorporated event image

What do you call the incorporation of an event overlay or modification image which utilizes aspects or parts of a base image, in this case the two "o"s in the word "Google" displayed on the Google home page? (For today's event of Thanksgiving the tail feathers of two turkeys sitting at a dinner table are fanned out in the shape of the two "o"s.)

Also do the images of the turkeys at the table suggest it is okay for turkeys to practice cannibalism or in a reverse twist, okay to eat human? 71.100.8.2 (talk) 19:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, the turkeys seem to be eating a vegetarian diet, so I'm not sure it endorses either of those conclusions. As for the modification, I'm not sure it has—or needs—a specialized term. --140.247.11.24 (talk) 19:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Google calls them "Google Doodles". There's probably no official name, but depending on the context, it could be a mash up or image manipulation. Laïka 23:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Google just calls them holiday logos. The term Google Doodle refers to the special multi-day logos that tell a story. --Bavi H (talk) 02:55, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Adobe/Acrobat reader

Why is Acrobat reader free? Not complaining or anything, it just seems a bit of a silly descision--Phoenix-wiki ^{(talk · contribs)} 21:54, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Why should they charge for it? There are plenty of free PDF readers out here, and it will lose all of their market if the reader is free. They mainly make their revenue through the software that make PDF, Adobe Acrobat. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:02, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The reader is free, but the creator is not. So it's partially because by creating a standard document format, then companies need to buy the program to make files into that format if they want to distribute in it. Then again, with programs like CuteFTP that will convert a Word document to PDF for free, that is a free alternative to Adobe's encoder. Guroadrunner (talk) 22:03, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

It's programmatically much easier to write a PDF than it is to read it, oddly enough. There are really not that many PDF readers out there—most are based off of a single codebase (xpdf's)—because the format is damned tough and full of all sorts of exceptions and special cases. It's one of those formats that's simple to write to in a given way, but since there are so many different ways to write to it it makes it quite hard to read. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:27, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

This is not so odd. Most file formats are much easier to write than to read. And not just file formats -- printing is much easier than OCR, and 3D rendering is much easier than computer vision. -- BenRG (talk) 13:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

~My question is: Why is that silly format so damn popular? Keria (talk) 22:15, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Because there's no agreed-upon standard for distributing documents that won't change the formatting on each computer, and it allows me to send you files that you can read/print without having the software I used to make it (e.g. I could send you a Word file even if you don't have Word; I could send you an InDesign file even if you don't know what InDesign is) or the fonts I used for it. A quick real-time example: I want to a make a DVD label that prints on a specific brand of DVD sticker stock. I make the label in the lousy software that comes with the labels, but I want to print it off of a computer that doesn't come with said lousy software. What do I do? The easiest option by far is to just print it off to a PDF and then print that from the other computer; it's near guaranteed to work and to look the same as it would if I used the specialized software, and it's totally portable.

(Document security, perhaps Adobe's most touted feature of the PDF, is notoriously poor—in almost all cases there is no encryption whatsoever, just a flag that the reader software either abides or doesn't. It usually takes me a whole 5 seconds to disable things like passwords and "no copying" restrictions. One of OS X's core distributed utilities—ColorSync Utility—does not (or at least doesn't in 10.4.10) respect the security flags at all, so you can open just about any PDF up with that and then save it again to strip the document of all security features. Frankly I don't like the idea of using DRM to restrict people from doing things like copying-and-pasting—it interferes with the work of scholars and the "fair use" rights of the user, for one thing, and doesn't do anything to prevent wholesale copying of the document itself.)

Is it the best of such formats? Not really, but its ubiquity and relative ease of use at this point makes it the obvious one to pick for daily work. It also handles lots of little things that other formats don't do well—like bundling fonts and keeping color encodings correct and keeping OCR information along with the images, etc. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:27, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Even if you and I both have Word, the odds are vanishingly small that you and I could view or print the document exactly the same. WYSAWIG (What You See Ain't What I Get)! PDFs have the advantage that we'll probably see the same thing.

Atlant (talk) 17:09, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a brilliant decision. Make the reader free. Make your format ubiquitous. Make it a standard. Then profit both off of the supplementary software and the name recognition. Charge for a reader and nobody will want to use your format—you'll lose the possibility of it becoming an industry standard and being widely accepted . -24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:27, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it brilliant (since it's pretty obvious) but it's certainly the most profitable model for a format like this. Lots of other companies do the same thing, like Macromedia and Real. The company that creates the format gets to be first to market with authoring software, which is a huge advantage even after competing products appear (which might not happen for years). If you have patent or trade secret protection on the format then you may even be able to prevent competitors from entering the market, which is even better for you (though not so great for your customers). -- BenRG (talk) 13:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I was only contrasting "brilliant" with "silly". --24.147.86.187 (talk) 16:37, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

So how do they make so much money? One would only expect them to make modest profits this way--Phoenix-wiki ^{(talk · contribs)} 22:23, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know exactly, but Adobe has a lot of various programs and made its money 25 years ago with the PostScript stuff for early printers. Guroadrunner (talk) 00:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Practically every office that does any sort of e-business needs to have Adobe Acrobat installed on a good number of its computers, because PDF is one of the most standard formats on the internet these days and the ability to edit them or create complicated forms is pretty much restricted to Adobe's software. So they sell the software. It ain't cheap—the "standard" version costs $300, the "professional" costs $450. Obviously there are better deals one can get if you are buying a bunch, but the point is the editing software brings in a lot on its own. Factor into it the value of the brand name as the "industry standard" (Adobe is one of the best-known software brands out there, second maybe to Microsoft and Apple) and the fact that they sell a whole suite of expensive software (Photoshop: $640; Flash: $700; InDesign: $700; Illustrator: $600; DreamWeaver: $400) and it quickly becomes clear that they stand make quite a bit of money on software sales alone. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 08:08, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

What's this font?

Look at this image of the box for the video game Rock Band: http://www.engadget.com/photos/rock-band-crashes-at-our-pad/501769/. What is that awesome '80s font for the words "Start a band, rock the world" and the other font for the words underneath that, "Live Out Your Rock-and-Roll Fantasies (...)"

Let me know, I'm really interested because those fonts look classic, like I've seen them before. Guroadrunner (talk) 22:03, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

It reminds me of 1980s advertisements in comic books. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 23:09, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

It looks like ITC Avant Garde, with ITC Avant Garde Alternate for the slanted A and very tight kerning and tracking. Laïka 23:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

That looks correct! I will see if I have the alternate on my computer, or if I can buy it cheap. Thank you. Guroadrunner (talk) 23:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

ITC Avant Garde is older than 1980, but (like Palatino) became more visible when it was included in the second LaserWriter. —Tamfang (talk) 20:05, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Try Identifont. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:11, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Or WhatTheFont; if that fails, WhatTheFont Forum is like a Ref Desk for fonts. —Tamfang (talk) 22:19, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

November 23

essay

question removed, we dont mark essays.

It would be appropriate to sign your removal. —Nricardo (talk) 16:08, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

And politer and more helpful by far to userfy the question than delete it. And as it happens the question got two answers, so it would appear we do mark essays. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Tiger Stadium Blue paint

What was the color of Blue the Tiger Stadium was painted in 1977? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spoon57 (talk • contribs) 02:13, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean Tiger Stadium (Detroit)? This is the only Tiger Stadium whose article mentions being painted blue in the "late 1970s". 130.88.79.39 (talk) 14:21, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Hypothetical -- Child Pornography on Wikipedia?

I have a hypothetical for everyone. Let's say that an adolescent boy or girl is browsing around the penis or vagina articles, and discovers to their dismay that there are no good pictures! Let's suppose that said (underage) teen decides to take a picture of their own genitals and upload it to the commons, so they can include it in the respective article. Would this be considered child pornography? What might be some potential consequences for Wikipedia, the uploader, and the people who view the image? I understand and realize that Wikipedia does not offer legal advice, so instead of telling me that please just answer the question =] (its a hypothetical anyways!). Thanks for supposing with me. --71.117.41.232 (talk) 17:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Point 1: If it was obviously a minor's genitalia (stated to be so, or visibly prepubescent, or something), then we would delete it immediately. If there was absoltely no way to tell, then we wouldn't be able to tell, so we wouldn't be able to do anything. Point 2: In fact, images of naked children or their body parts do exist in a legal context; they are necessary for purposes of medical study. Pornography is intended to sexually arouse. A simple penis shot in an encyclopedia article is clearly meant to be academic, and thus not pornography. Point 3: We get tons and tons and tons and people taking pictures of their genitals (or household pets) to try and replace the ones we have. It's a weird sort of vanity, and it almost always gets immediately deleted. So unless some of the pictures we already have are secretly from minors (in which case points 1 and 2 apply), this is unlikely to come up. --Masamage ♫ 18:53, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

As long as they're not taking photos of their pets' genitals. 'Cause that would be weird... FiggyBee (talk) 20:16, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

We do have pictures of naked kids on Wikipedia already. The article is titled something like Children and nudity or something like that. I'd go find it for you but I'm on my mother-in-law's computer and would rather not have that in her history to be found later.  :-) Dismas|^(talk) 21:00, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Nudity and children is the proper title, and none of those are sexually explicit (just cute kid tushies). Kuronue | Talk 21:22, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

The posters above are correct that nonsexual child nudity is by no means illegal in the U.S. If it was, a lot of people's bathtub photos would get them arrested! But that said, in the hypothetical situation that a young person -- say, a 15-year-old -- uploaded a nude picture of himself or herself to Wikipedia, I would think that it would and should be deleted to avoid even the slightest hint of impropriety. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:44, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Humans Dancing - Why?

Seriously, why do humans of all races, ages, nationalities, genders, cultures, sects etc., dance, and appear to have done so through the ages? It might be another way of exercising, or socialising, or showing off even, but although I like dancing in a variety of styles from Jive, to Salsa to Scottish Country Dance (I am over 60), when I stand and look at others dancing, I find it a bit, well, ridiculous. And there are so many other ways to exercise, socialise, and compete - aren't there? 81.145.242.25 (talk) 21:11, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

because they all invented rhythmic music, which makes a lot of people feel like moving to the beat, which is dancing. Kuronue | Talk 21:24, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I have read a theory that dancing is a form of courtship display. According to this theory, coordinated movement is a sign of physical prowess and probably correlates with a reliable genome. Marco polo (talk) 22:05, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it was best stated in Shall We Dance? (2004 film): "The rumba is the vertical expression of a horizontal wish. You have to hold her, like the skin on her thigh is your reason for living. Let her go, like your heart's being ripped from your chest. Throw her back, like you're going to have your way with her right here on the dance floor. And then finish, like she's ruined you for life." --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 03:12, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

When encouraged to "shake it, shake it, shake it" I have at times obliged and shook it. Inexplicably, it can be a fabulous experience. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.239.246.106 (talk) 08:55, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I like Gadget's response - forget the dancing - the description is a real turn on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.145.242.86 (talk) 11:16, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Same names

Hi, is there a word for 'people with identical names'? as we'd like to set up a global social network group —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.20.27 (talk) 22:53, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Namesakes. --Anonymous, 01:42 UTC, November 24, 2007.

That's almost always used for people who are named after each other, but the wiktionary article has a list of words in other languages that always, unambiguously mean 'having the same name'. I'd say borrow from one of those. :) --Masamage ♫ 01:57, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I thought two persons sharing the same name were homonyms but the article doesn't mention people~. I guess following the definition it could still apply, only it would be applying to the name and not the person (?)(that doesn't make sense). Keria (talk) 11:51, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Interesting point. Homonyms are words, not groups of words. In "Bill Smith" and "Bill Smith", the names of 2 different people, the "Bill"s are homonyms and the "Smith"s are homonyms, but the "Bill Smith"s are not. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:30, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Curiously, the literal translation of "homonym" is "same name". --Masamage ♫ 02:55, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

A guy called Dave Gorman searched for all the people with that name and wrote a book about it.He might have a name for it...hotclaws 13:33, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Call it the "Doppel Gang". --Milkbreath (talk) 15:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Nice one! --Masamage ♫ 02:55, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

November 24

Proper method for stopping at stop sign

What is the proper method of stopping at a stop sign in a car with a manual transmission? Does one:

• Break gently while approaching the stop sign.
• Step in the clutch to dis-engage the transmission once the car begins to stall.
• Shift to neutral.
• Glide to the stop sign and stop completely.
• Shift to 1st gear to get ready to go.

Are these steps correct (for a driving exam)? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 01:07, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

You don't say which country you are in, but here's a rule of thumb. It all depends on how long you need to actually stop for. If it's less than 10 seconds then remain in gear with your foot on the brake. 10-30 seconds - go into neutral with foot on brake. Longer than 30 secs - go into neutral and apply hand brake (emergency/parking brake). Pulling off as you would normally do from a standing start. --WebHamster 01:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

In Canada for a quick stop, less than 10 seconds I guess. But would the procedure I listed above be incorrect in the eyes of a driving examiner? Acceptable (talk) 01:22, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm in the UK, but an Advanced Driver and the problems I can see (unless it's just the way you describe it) is the "glide" bit. You shouldn't freewheel a car ever, even over short distances. It should either be under power or under braking. Free-wheeling is considered to be a car that isn't under control. The usual way is to synchronise clutch and brake so that you smoothly come off one whilst engaging the other, timing it so that the clutch is fully disengaged at the same time the wheels stop rolling. Once you have fully stopped you can then go into neutral. When getting ready to start again is when you go into first --WebHamster 01:29, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Suppose I'm approaching the stop in 3rd gear and will do what you have described. When I'm braking and synchronizing the clutch like you said, can I keep my car in 3rd gear? Then shift into 1st gear when I have fully stopped. Or do I have to progressively downshift? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 02:16, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

You can do either, but again it depends on the circumstances and environment that you are in. Going down through the gears is a safe method of gentle braking, especially in icy weather so it's doubtful an examiner would criticise you for doing so. The thing to remember is that putting the car in neutral whilst you are moving will at best get you marked down, at worst get you failed. Currently I drive an auto, but for years I drove manual and I did my Roadcraft training in a manual and I have to say I always used the going down through the gears method, but even then I didn't necessarily go from 3 ->2 ->1. It's quite acceptable to go directly from 3 to 1 whilst braking. --WebHamster 02:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd also mention that there are distinct difference between locales. I have been told that UK drivers education programs suggest something very similar to what you describe -- that is, putting the car in neutral and using the parking brake at stoplights. Stop lights there also have a RED+YELLOW phase (between RED and GREEN) that informs drivers that they should engage the clutch and put the car into gear. In the US, not only are the stoplights not configured this way, but automatic transmissions are MUCH more prevalent. I'm in the US, have a manual transmission and personally will often just keep the transmission in gear, but hold in the clutch. This is bad for the thrust bearing (I think), and if I'm going to be waiting for a longer time, I'll toss it into neutral. I almost never use the parking brake (ebrake?) at stop lights. --Mdwyer (talk) 06:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I would add "check for pedestrians and other vehicles", which is the whole purpose of stopping. —Nricardo (talk) 16:05, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm talking UK here. My instructor, many years ago, taught me to progressively brake and disengage the clutch until stationary. Then disengage gears to neutral and pull on handbrake if the stop is likely to be for more than, say, 20 seconds. If it's a short stop, like entering another road, then it is not necessary to pull on the handbrake unless you are on an incline and likely to roll forward or back. Richard Avery (talk) 16:37, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

this is a uncommon but normal thing, or a thing that you just have getting a disease or making plastic surgery ??

This thing on this video [[2]] (WARNING: adult content) is a uncommon but normal thing, or a thing that you just have getting a disease or making plastic surgery ?? 201.8.163.51 (talk) 02:08, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

You'd be better describing it than expecting people to download an 8Mb mpeg (presumably porno) video. --WebHamster 02:28, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

This is fake. it is not plastic sergury. they are just holding a piece of rubber, well moldered rubber. she is clearly faking as there is no or very little penetration. special efects. further more, you are going to need sergury on your eyes, as you might soon go blind. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.3.151.98 (talk) 03:24, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

career prospects

hi, i am presently studying bsc aeronautical science at an anna university approved college. what are the scope of job in this field and furthere educational possibilities????? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.41.70 (talk) 05:07, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The sky's the limit! Sorry. Someone had to say it. And I got here first! Matt Deres (talk) 02:16, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

barking dogs

I have not been able to find any natural cause why dogs bark at or chase people, bicycles and cars. For instance, such behavior might have developed from a reaction to herds of animals trampling dog dens and killing their young thus eliciting this natural reaction to anything that might potentially be a moving threat.

Forgetting natural causes as the reason it occurred to me that such behavior might be the result of breeding for the purpose of our ancestors using dogs to protect campsites similar to the way Dobermans are bred as personal body guards for their owners. In other words, that the reason some dogs bark and chase people, bicycles and cars is because most were used by our human ancestors for protection and hunting and were bred to have this type of behavior regardless of their original breed for the purpose of protecting or wining food for their human companions to the point of this behavior now being genetically ingrained and randomly dominant or passive but spanning many current breeds.

Since many dogs do not display this sort of behavior can anyone confirm of refute this explanation as to why some dogs bark and chase people, bicycles and cars? 71.100.164.177 (talk) 05:27, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

You might find some books by Temple Grandin to be interesting -- especially "Animals in Translation". In her book, she explains that older wolves don't bark. Barking is something that wolf puppies do. It is something they grow out of, and if they didn't they wouldn't be able to sneak up on food. On the other hand, humans are good at making food, but useless when it comes to things like not becoming food themselves. So, humans needed noisy animals to protect them. So, in return for easy food (stalking kibble isn't all that hard), wolves traded in their ability to grow up. Humans then were able to settle down and start agriculture. That's her take on it, at least, and I'm probably mangling it horribly. It is a fascinating book. --Mdwyer (talk) 06:12, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

By the way, she suggests wolfiness is directly related to ... uh... barkiness. Dogs that are VERY divorced from wolves are yappy. However, the larger, more wolf-like breeds are by comparison much quieter. I had a siberian husky growing up. She didn't bark much, but she howled quite a bit. By comparison, our cockapoo became unhinged at the sound of a doorbell. A third datapoint would have to be the Basenji, which is generally a 'barkless' breed, although it isn't particularly wolfish. --Mdwyer (talk) 06:17, 24 November 2007 (UTC) (Edit: --Mdwyer (talk) 07:47, 24 November 2007 (UTC))

Behaviors may indeed be subject to "upsettedness" or "calmedness" as I would expect Temple Grandin's assessment to relate and therefore subject to pack mentality. For instance, I pass a fenced in yard every couple of days wherein two dogs bark and give chase. Sometimes when there is only the larger dog of mixed breed (hound and maybe pit bull) he may bark and chase unenthusiastically unless sunning himself in which case he may avoid even a glance and not bark or give chase at all. 71.100.164.177 (talk) 07:52, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Certainly there are a lot of features of modern dogs that are shared with Wolf puppies and not adult Wolves. Barking is certainly one, floppy ears is another, the desire to play is a third. Since these characteristics are common to most kinds of domesticated dog, we can assume that they were (and perhaps still are) being purposefully bred for those puppy-like characteristics. Being a good guard dog entails being willing to bark at intruders - so you could imagine how (in times of trouble) the good guard dogs would survive into the next generation while the terrible (non-barking) guard dogs would not. So between an evolutionary pressure to be able to work with humans and actual selective breeding - we have puppy-like, barking, floppy-eared dogs. SteveBaker (talk) 19:24, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Full Protection Articles

Can anyone tell me if there are any fully protected articles on wiki at the moment, i was interested to see which ones are they.Roadrunnerz45 (talk) 08:16, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

These articles should be in Category:Protected. Hope that helps! --Lox (t,c) 08:55, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Number of police officers by country

Does the EU/UN or some other International Organization keep statistical information about the number of law enforcement officers in countries on a national level? I wish to compare crime rate against the number of people employed to enforce them as well as a general expression of "harshness" of laws - ie. how much time you must generally serve for 1. degree murder, rape, robbery etc. Does anybody have an idea for where I can obtain information of this type? I have relatively good data on crime rate and national laws but lack the required information about law enforcement... Thanks.

The Irish police, An Garda Síochána , have 13,821 officers. Someone else might be able to find a link to some website that shows info on other countries--Phoenix-wiki ^{(talk · contribs)} 15:22, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

American police, 738,000 law enforcement officers in the United States in 2002. Others are listed here. 71.100.164.177 (talk) 16:22, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Bundled typefaces

Inspired by Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous#What's this font?, and particularly one of the answers, I've had a quick look at the typefaces that came bundled with my computer, either with Windows or with other programs such as Microsoft Office. There must be close to 200 typefaces, and yet many, if not most, of them would cost me about £20 to buy. Taking oblique and bold face into account (with have to be bought seperately), there is probably several hundred pounds worth of typefaces on my computer - probably more than the associated software cost in the first place. How can the software companies can afford to buy the rights to all these typefaces, only to give them away for next to nothing. Or, alternatively, how can the typeface companies afford to give all these typefaces to Microsoft for so little per user? Laïka 12:09, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Most of the fonts included with Windows are "knock-offs"; i.e. copies or near copies of other fonts. Under U.S. laws, font styles are hard to protect, while font names are easy to trademark. I think Microsoft got most of their fonts from Monotype. Let's take the ubiquitous Arial font: it is a knock-off of the venerable Helvetica font from Linotype; both are actually based on earlier fonts. Both share the same proportions and weight, but have slightly different glyphs; one can be easily substituted for another. I do not know if Microsoft purchased their font set outright or if they pay royalties, but everybody gets their money in sales of Windows. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 13:01, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The price of fonts is like the price of software. The more you sell, the cheaper it gets. The cost of designing a font is a fixed amount - the cost of 'manufacturing' a font is almost zero - the cost of putting it on a disk or distributing it over the Ethernet. So, if your font cost $10,000 to develop - then if (like Microsoft) you sell a hundred million copies - the price per copy is one tenth of a cent. If you sell only 1000 copies to specialist printing companies or whatever then the price per copy is $10 plus profit. SteveBaker (talk) 19:11, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

What's the point in prolonging the inevitable?

What's the point in prolonging the inevitable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.153.74 (talk) 17:02, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Your partner's pleasure? Azi Like a Fox (talk) 17:59, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

It depends what the inevitable is. If it's unpleasant, inconvenient, undesirable, etc, then it's natural to avoid it as long as you can. That's not to say it's wise to avoid it, but it's understandable. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:27, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

You seem to have conflated two expressions: "delay the inevitable" and "prolong the suffering". There is not only no point in "prolonging the inevitable", there is no sense to it. --Milkbreath (talk) 00:27, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about that. Take politics, for example. Parties contest elections, hoping to win power. No matter how popular a government is, no matter how many positive world-changing things they may do, eventually, sooner or later, they'll be voted out. They could say, it's all going to end badly one day, so why bother getting into it at all for the (relatively) short-term? But humans are not like that, particularly where the prospect of power is concerned. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:37, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I've got a touch of turkey poisoning affecting my brain, but I don't follow. There is no expression "prolong the inevitable" and rightly so, because it doesn't make any sense. --Milkbreath (talk) 01:01, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I think everybody is just reading it as if it were "delay the inevitable". Cryo921 (talk) 01:37, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I answer to the real question, there is none since that is a nonsensical phrase. Cryo921 (talk) 01:44, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Just because the phrase is nonsensical doesn't mean it doesn't exist in idiomatic English. When I read the title, I 'heard' it in the voice of Weezy, the broken penguin toy in Toy Story 2. I don't have the DVD in front of me, but I'm almost positive that was the wording used. I guess it could be read as 'prolonging the wait for the inevitable.' Matt Deres (talk) 15:32, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes i also thought it was from Toy Story 2! "We're all just one stitch away from here, to there".! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.42.215.165 (talk) 20:01, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

So let me get this straight; the usage of a fictional toy penguin counts. Next thing you know, we'll have to include the newscasters. --Milkbreath (talk) 21:08, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Eh, I don't think I'd ever get so desperate as to use newscasters to tell me anything. Nonsensical though it is, a quick Google search with the phrase in quotes gives us 22,300 hits, though many seem to be for an album by that name. Removing an idiomatic phrase from usage is like trying to take pee out of a pool, so you may want to get used to it. :P Matt Deres (talk) 22:10, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Military service question

How many countries in the world have:

• voluntary military service for men, no military service for women,
• voluntary military service for both men and women,
• mandatory military service for men, no military service for women,
• mandatory military service for men, voluntary military service for women,
• mandatory military service for both men and women?

JIP | Talk 17:51, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Some of this is in military service, but it is not broken down by gender. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:55, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Conscription has more. Rmhermen (talk) 18:33, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Also consider History of women in the military. --Mdwyer (talk) 04:53, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

cotton sheet by weight

I have been searching the net and wikipedia for cottonsheets by weigt messured in in squaremeter or feet, without any results. I know there are differnt qualities so some average messure will do just fine. It might bee a strange queastin, but I realy have to know for artikel I,m writing about cottonconsumpion in the world. Thank`s Gunnar Sweden —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.94.65.50 (talk) 19:36, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

FWIW I thought cotton sheets were differentiated mainly by threads per inch, not by weight. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes it is, but anyway, is there anybody that perhaps have maeesure the spuareweigt of a cottonsheet? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.94.65.50 (talk) 12:09, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Would Canvas suffice? It is sold in ounces-per-yard, instead of a threadcount. "They are available in a variety of weights: light-weight is about 4 oz. or 5 oz.; medium-weight is about 7 oz. or 8 oz.; heavy-weight is about 10 oz. or 12 oz." However, it also mentioned that canvas might be linen and not cotton. --Mdwyer (talk) 04:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

"Please feel free to take advantage of the chambermaid"

Are there any hotels in which, as a special service, you really are free to take advantage of the chambermaid? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.0.193.181 (talk) 21:29, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

You mean any hotels where the hosteller is a pimp? (Also known in some circles as the ho-teller.) 71.100.172.18 (talk) 21:36, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean to act like Spike Lester whenever the hotel's chambermaid enters your hotel room? Ericthebrainiac (talk) 21:58, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes - they are called brothels. They are free in the sense of doing what you want. Not free as without charge.86.209.158.90 (talk) 15:24, 25 November 2007 (UTC)DT

I can't help thinking of the wonderful Gerard Hoffnung, who jokingly took on the persona of a Tyrolean landlord who was writing back to an English person enquiring about his establishment:

• Dear Madam: I am honorable to accept your impossible request. Unhappy it is, I here have not bedroom with bath. A bathroom with bed I have. I can, though, give you a washing, with pleasure, in a most clean spring with no one to see. I insist that you will like this... I am amazing diverted by your entreaty for a room. I can offer you a commodious chamber with balcony imminent to the romantic gorge, and I hope that you want to drop in. A vivacious stream washes my doorsteps, so do not concern yourself that I am not too good in bath, I am superb in bed. Sorrowfully I cannot abide your auto... Having freshly taken over the propriety of this notorious house, I am wishful that you remove to me your esteemed costume. Standing among savage scenery, the hotel offers stupendous revelations. There is a French widow [sic] in every bedroom, affording delightful prospects. I give personal look to the interior wants of each guests. Here, you shall be well fed-up and agreeably drunk. Our charges for weekly visitors are scarcely creditable. We have ample garage accomodations for your char... In the close village you can buy jolly memorials for when you pass away... I am sending you my prices: If I am dear to you and your mistress she might perhaps be reduced... we are also noted for having children... Peculiar arrangements for gross parties, our motto is "ever serve you right!". RIP, Gerard. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:54, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

growing up

The ability to breed a dog with all the qualities of a child's animated and cuddly stuffed toy appear in the cockapoo. Are such dogs bred for people who have an inability to grow out of childhood? 71.100.172.18 (talk) 21:32, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

What? No. Such dogs are bred because they look cute and cuddly and one doesn't have to be a child to appreciate things that are cute and cuddly, as you seem to be supposing. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

November 25

Font

What font is wikipedia in? 86.130.249.161 (talk) 05:14, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

It depends what skin you are using. When you're using the default skin, Monobook, the default font is Arial, when you are using Cologne Blue it is Verdana, I believe. Be aware, however, your browser could be set to over-rule the default font. Rockpocket 08:40, 25 November 2007 (UTC) (striking, because its misleading based on Ilmari Karonen's reply below) Rockpocket 00:33, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The Monobook skin specifies the font as "sans-serif", which simply means your browser chooses whichever sans-serif font happens to be its default. On Windows, this might indeed often be Arial; on a Linux box, it might be, say, FreeSans. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

If you're talking about the logo, I believe it's Hoefler Text — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 01:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Plug-hole water. Silly question possibly?

You know the whole water going one-way down the plug-hole in the northern hemisphere and another in the south? What happens near the equator? Presumably there is an area where things 'switch'. Say if you were to have a 100 gallons of water and could get the (vortex?) going and then could maintain the flow long enough to travel from northern hemisphere to south would the water just continue on its current path or switch? I know you can do the opposite in each hemisphere using your hands, just more interested in what would happen in the above scenario. ny156uk (talk) 00:33, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

You are referring to the coriolis force urban legend? [3] --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 01:06, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

To be fair, the Snopes page neglects to mention that under carefully controlled conditions – allowing the water to settle undisturbed for an extended period of time (several hours or more) and pulling the plug in such a way as to avoid agitating the liquid – the 'correct' rotation induced by the Coriolis force is indeed observed. (This was demonstrated for the Northern hemisphere by Shapiro at MIT in 1962 (A.H. Shapiro, "Bath-Tub Vortex", Nature 196:1080-1) and for the Southern hemisphere by Trefethen et al. in Sydney, Australia in 1965 (L.M. Trefethen et al., "The Bath-Tub Vortex in the Southern Hemisphere" Nature 207:1084-5).) So for an ideal system, the vortex will go the right way, assuming that there are no other forces acting on the system to overwhelm the Coriolis force.

Note that once the vortex starts, reversing it is unlikely, even if your hypothetical experimenter carried his apparatus across the equator. Vortices, once started, tend to build their momentum; the little push from the Coriolis force is almost certainly going to be too weak to reverse the vortex's direction. (The Coriolis force is going to be extremely weak close to the equator anyway—establishing a system that is sufficiently unperturbed to demonstrate the Coriolis effect at all will be very difficult, and moving the apparatus any distance is likely to make matters even worse.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:05, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The Coriolis effect is weak everywhere on the Earth. What's different at different latitudes is its direction. The "force" is caused by the Earth's rotation and therefore is always parallel to the Earth's equatorial plane. Which means it's horizontal at the poles (an object moving horizontally deflects sideways), vertical at the equator, and diagonal everywhere else. The original poster's question reflects the misconception that there is a sudden change in the effect as you cross the equator, but that's not true. Rather, the direction of the force changes gradually all the way from one pole to the other.

Normally only the horizontal component matters since the vertical component is much less than the object's weight and can simply be ignored. For example, when a vortex forms from a fluid converging horizontally -- whether water in Shapiro's drain experiment or air in a hurricane -- only the horizontal component of the Coriolis "force" contributes to the vortex. The horizontal component is maximum at the poles -- but still very weak! -- and gradually decreases as you get nearer the equator. This is why there is a zone several hundred miles wide near the equator where hurricanes never start.

By the way, this question really belonged on the Science reference desk, where, as it happens, the Coriolis effect came up in the last few days here and then again here (which presumably will soon be here).

--Anonymous, edited 05:40 UTC, November 25, 2007.

It should be noted that the MIT study on bathtub vortices used a very large carefully constructed, precisely cylindrical tank with a very small plug hole in the center. It took a long time for the water to lose all of it's internal 'swirl' so that coriolis would be noticable and the results they came up with were only just better than chance. Even something as simple as pulling the plug out asymmetrically is enough to wipe out the effect. It would be very tough indeed to see that effect in any real situation. Hence one should not deduce from the study that: "Yes, Coriolis forces does affect bathtubs" - the correct deduction is that for any real bathtub, coriolis forces do not in any way affect the direction of the swirl.

What amazes me is that this urban legend ever got started. I mean you only have to watch the water flowing out of your bath or sink half a dozen times to realise that it's utterly bogus. How is it possible that ANYONE was taken in by the legend? Are people really happier to hear some story than to look for themselves?

SteveBaker (talk) 09:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The continued existence of religion seems to suggest that the answer to your final question is a resounding "Yes!".

Atlant (talk) 17:17, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, this very evening on the BBC programme Long Way Down, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman demonstrated what happens at the equator: using a bowl with a small hole in the bottom and a couple of matchsticks they showed that 20 metres north of the equator in Kenya water swirls one way, 20 metres south it swirls the other way, and actually on the equator there tends to be no vortex. Quite interesting, and worth catching the programme if it's on in your area. -- Arwel (talk) 01:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Bull. What you saw demonstrated was a magic trick. --Anonymous, 03:23 UTC, November 26.

Hogwash --ffroth 05:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. I call "bogus". From what I've seen of that show, (although I haven't seen that episode) I very much doubt that was a properly set up experiment. After all, we know that even the slightest amount of initial swirl due to how the bowl was filled is enough to overwhelm the coriolis effect. To see the effect at all, you've got to do statistical tests. I'd bet that this was either rigged or the result of a 1:4 chance of getting that result by luck alone. You can easily do the math on this - the forces involved in the coriolis effect are utterly minute on that scale - it's quite unbelievable that you'd be able to see this other than in an incredibly carefully designed experiment...which I'm certain this was not. SteveBaker (talk) 06:34, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I recall Michael Palin successfully demonstrating this effect on one of his programmes when he crossed the equator in Africa. DuncanHill (talk) 09:44, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I remember that too... but as I remember it, he explained that the men demonstrating it were street performers looking for money from tourists, and the effect wasn't real (which it isn't). FiggyBee (talk) 10:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Yep - it's trivially easy to fake. You just swirl the water around in the desired direction with your hand. Let the water sit for a minute or two so that the obvious visual appearance of motion of the water has smoothed out - then pull the plug to demonstrate the effect. Try it in your bathroom sink if you don't believe me! The MIT study shows that it takes HOURS for that initial motion to settle down to the point where it doesn't overpower the coriolis effect - and even then it's still only noticable as a statistical bias. SteveBaker (talk) 14:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Reference desk, i luv u! y can't i search u?

I'd like to argue for a new wiki that is unique to (and enhances) reference desk questions. I have posted many-a-question to the reference desk, questions not quite entertained in Wikipedia articles, where one elite user or another would reply: look "here" or "here" for another question posted similar to yours. I am not a reference desk pro and cannot recall off the top of my head when other questions like mine were posted. I can't even search for such questions! As far as I know Wikipedia has only one general search that does not posit reference desk questions anywhere on its popularity charts. I looked for keywords of all my old questions (extremely unique words) and nothing popped up.

I love Wikipedia so much: trust knowledge to users of the world, regulated by users of the world and together we will come up with an answer. Tonight I posted the exact same question to answers.yahoo.com as I did to the reference desk on entertainment [4] and within 20 minutes I received 2 answers from yahoo and several hours later 0 answers from Wikipedia. Citizens of Wikipedia: I love you all, and we must alter course to be able to provide the most timely replies to rogue questions that may, not to put too fine a point on it, enhance our species. I can't stomach the fact that all the beautiful, glorious debate of the reference desk, and all those amazing questions are lost to the world. Sappysap (talk) 01:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

There's no question that Wikipedia's internal search leaves something to be desired. However, this is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that Google regularly and consistently indexes Wikipedia. Add the string site:en.wikipedia.org to any search on Google, and it will return only results that come from this site. To narrow your search further, you can add the page name to your search: site:en.wikipedia.org "Wikipedia:Reference desk".

For what it's worth, we're usually pretty good at answering questions. I haven't looked at the Entertainment Desk, but I know that over at the Science Desk we answer two-thirds of questions in the first hour after they're posted. Over all the Desks, we answer about 96% of questions eventually (with nearly all of those answers in the first 24 hours). See Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#So how good are we? for more stats. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:14, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

TenOfAllTrades, that is a wonderful and perfect reply. Isn't is such a reprehinsible shame that no one (without the information in your reply) will ever read it? Something is wrong here. Sappysap (talk) 02:47, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I figured that it's a useful thing worth preserving, so I went to add a link to it in an appropriate place. It turns out that the Ref Desk Archives page already has a link to a Google search—and one that happens to be even more specific. Turns out we're even better than I thought. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:08, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

At the moment Wikipedia is many things but it is not easily traversable (it's better than Wikimedia Commons, where you have to know exactly what sub-category the type of image you are looking for is in if you are going to find it! Woe to him who doesn't know the sub-species of the animal he looks for). "At some point" this will no doubt be improved, either by people developing the project or by some entrepreneurial soul who will realize that it will be a pretty great "killer app" to make it easier to find things on Wikipedia. In the meantime, though, it might be worth posting a note or two on the Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives page about better ways to search the desk. As for speed of reply, we make no guarantees to speed or quality or even breadth. Certain types of questions are often answered within moments of them being posted, while others languish because nobody who reads them happens to have a useful answer (some should languish a bit more than they do, as people who reply do not always have useful answers!). Alas, such is life. For things like Entertainment in particular I bet Yahoo! Answers will give you better answers but I'd be surprised if they could give anywhere near as good Humanities and Science answers as the reference desk, the two areas where it regularly excels above any other site I've seen. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 04:07, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

(P.S. I don't read the Entertainment desk because I'm not good at trivia and find it, well, trivial, but I went over and managed to find the answer to your question in about 15 seconds. I bet others could as well, but my bet—and maybe this is a bit chauvinist—is that there are probably less people who answer the Entertainment Desk and that the better quick-researchers here, among which I count myself, might not frequent it much or as often). --24.147.86.187 (talk) 04:19, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's search engine certainly isn't great - but the idea is that Wikipedia isn't a search engine. The idea is to let search engines do searching and encyclopedias store information. It's hard to build a really good search engine - and it's better that the Wiki developers work on making a better data repository than going off and re-inventing the wheel by developing another search engine. So going outside of Wikipedia and using Google (or whatever takes your fancy) isn't something you should recoil from. It's how the thing is supposed to work.

As for the Entertainment desk, sadly it's one of the less popular ones - as you can see from the chart on the right, it gets fewer questions than any of the other desks except for math - but (worse) has a much larger percentage of questions that go unanswered than on any of the other desks. This is sad - but there are simply fewer people interested in answering questions of that nature. SteveBaker (talk) 09:27, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Steve, I'm not sure that's really the case (or entirely the case, anyway, since I agree there are fewer folks there). I think part of the "problem" is that entertainment questions tend to be very idiosyncratic. If I have a science question, it can be answered by anyone anywhere in the world because science is translatable. If I have a question about a Canadian sitcom, chances are good that nobody outside of Canada will have a clue as to what I'm asking. Worse, the questions are often very specific ("who played this part", "what's the name of this song", etc.) where unless you know the answer it's very hard to approach the question. Contrast that with questions on the science and humanities desks which are answered by folks who might not have the specific answer at hand, but are versed in related topics, making it easy for them to find the answer, provide some context, and help the questioner. Matt Deres (talk) 15:44, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

When I did that analysis, it turned out the the Entertainment desk has more "unanswerable questions" for various reasons, e.g. more questions lacking context or coherence, e.g.

• i am about having my own stage drama academy.pls,give me the names and personnels of stage drama and the instruments.also,give me the personnels and the faculties of stage drama —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sagbastar (talk • contribs) 15:58, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
• I was busy doing other things and I spotted a link for an angel game that needed an article, and I wanted to get my son playing it with a view to writing an article with his help, so if anyone knows the one I am talking about I would be grateful if they could let me know, thank you.--DitsyDaisy 20:54, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

When you look at the questions that it is reasonable to expect an informative answer for, there wasn't much difference between the desks. Rockpocket 19:42, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

That's not very scientific! If you discount questions that YOU can't see how to answer - then how do we know that this isn't a self-fulfilling prophesy? SteveBaker (talk) 06:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

If that is your concern, what is the scientific basis for your assertion that "there are simply fewer people interested in answering questions of that nature"? Obviously there is some element of subjectiveness in my analysis, as I acknowledged. However, I don't think its much of a stretch to distinguish non-specific questions along the lines of "I saw a link for a angel game one time... do you know what I am talking about" from specific questions such as "what actor played Mr Foo in The Foos". It is reasonable to expect one could find a reference for the latter, whereas the former doesn't provide enough information for anything other than a wild guess. If you have a more scientific way of analyzing over 1400 disparate questions manually, then be my guest. I look forward to reading it. Until then I stand by the conclusions I drew. Rockpocket 09:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Just because you can't think of a fair way to analyse some data doesn't somehow permit the use of biassed techniques instead. In the example you gave of an "unanswerable" question is demonstrably bogus. Just because a game with angels in it didn't immediately pop into your mind doesn't make the question unanswerable. We could have answered "Maybe this is one of those games by people like Wisdom Tree who make games with Christian themes. Christian video games might be of some help - it contains a list of such games, perhaps one of them will jog your memory.". Sure, that may not be a great answer (but I've seen worse!) - but you'd certainly have placed it into your "answered questions" pile if someone had given it. That specific answer wasn't given because I don't happen frequent the entertainment desk - so in at least one case, the lack of contributors resulted in one less answer being given. You see - just because YOU found it unanswerable doesn't make it unanswerable - and by putting that question in your "unanswerable" pile, you messed up the statistics because of your own personal bias. SteveBaker (talk) 12:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry you are unimpressed with the good number of hours I spent of my own time, in a good faith effort to provide some sort of analysis in response to a querent. Subjective as it obviously is, perhaps the readers would prefer your vague impression that "there are simply fewer people interested in answering questions of that nature" as a reason. Dare I suggest that just because YOU are uninterested in the Ents desk doesn't mean other people are. I'm not claiming my analysis is perfect, but at least I did some. What exactly have you done to support your explanation, because there is nothing in the analysis that I did, and you cited, that supports your conclusion? Rockpocket 18:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Wooooah. No - I didn't say your entire analysis was wrong (heck - I just quoted a chunk of it in answer to this question!) - and I certainly appreciate the time you took to do it. I'm only objecting to the bit where you started to make judgement calls about what questions were or were not worthy. I've just proved to you that your own example of an "unworthy" question can in fact be answered - that's indisputable PROOF that your method of determining "unworthyness" is flawed. So cross out that bit of analysis and the conclusions that stem from it - and we're good to go. Just because you put a lot of work into it isn't a reason to quietly accept a flawed statistical method! However you're right - I haven't done a study to see how many contributors there are...a quick count of the last three days says 11 respondants on the Ent desk, 18 on the comparably sized math desk...but this is not a valid statistical sample - so I've crossed out my unsubstantiated conclusions above. I trust you'll have the courage to do the same to yours. SteveBaker (talk) 01:00, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, I don't know what "worthiness" has got to done with anything; you introduced that term, not me. Secondly, I am at fault for using the term "unanswerable" incorrectly and without clarification. Clearly no question is "unanswerable", as you adeptly PROVE by answering one of my examples. What I meant was to distinguish between questions that lack coherence or context, or that requests information the is realistically impossible to provide, from those that beg a accurate, reliable and referenced answer. My (clearly ambiguous) shorthand for that was "answerable" and "unanswerable". The example I provided clearly lacks context, as your answer acknowledges. Another example is please find jurnals of training220.247.225.30 08:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC) As I state in the full analysis, thats not to say that these questions will not be answered with "requests for clarification, and will occasionally draw an answer based on what the responder thinks is being asked for". Therefore, if you read the full analysis, its clear that I am not claiming that these are technically unanswerable, just that there are characteristics (lack of context, coherence) that appear common to some unanswered questions, and these are enriched in certain Desks. If you remove these types of questions from the analysis, the Ents Desk does not differ from other, more populous, desks in number of unanswered questions. Hence the conclusion that a preponderance of this type of question is the reason for the Ents statistic. Clearly this still calls for some judgment, I'm not denying that, and indeed noted that "questions are difficult to accurately class" in the analysis. With that clearly stated caveat, the conclusion is flawed only as much as any other attempt at quantifying subjective criteria. Therefore I still stand by my conclusions and see no reason to strike it. I freely admit as a stand alone answer it is potentially misleading, though I had hoped the scare quotes around "unanswerable questions" might have offset that. Obviously not, though, so I have amended it accordingly. Rockpocket 02:50, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I read (and respond on, if I feel able) all of the desks. I quite like the idea of a desk dedicated to large, old, tree-like creatures from the Tolkein universe. I imagine it would take quite some time to get an answer there, however. --LarryMac | Talk 22:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

How would one wear a v-neck tee?

So in a moment of folly I seem to have landed myself a v-neck tshirt. Now, this is purportedly unisex but I've tried, and v-neck tshirts on men just don't seem to work. Would anyone have any ideas how to integrate one that plunges all the way down to the chest with anything else to make it look remotely presentable? It's black, if that's important.

AlmostCrimes (talk) 04:55, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Wear it over a white turtleneck or a dickie. Corvus cornix_talk 05:09, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Well the deep v-necks are often worn with a shirt underneath, or i've seen people use them to show off their chest-hair. The more fitted v-neck is (I think) much more suited to men and is my preferred choice. The obvious difference for women is that a v-neck provides a point of interest on their chest, but really there is no reason why that cannot be similarly successful for men. I'm sure there are women who like chest-hair, strong chests, the revealing of some more skin, etc. Anyhoo it certainly depends on the depth of the 'v' as to how i'd say you match it out. Easiest choice is a casual shirt worn underneath but then unbuttoned. This would look good in my eyes. Here's some photos of different ideas....http://www.flickr.com/photos/diezelphotography/327757419/ (low v-neck, open shirt), http://www.flickr.com/photos/frankfarm/208277974/ (high v-neck, no shirt), http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhythmzslave/1914004603/ (low v-neck, no shirt). Of course the question of whether any looks good in your own eyes is just personal preference. 11:22, 25 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ny156uk (talk • contribs)

Colour blindness

I have a colour blind friend who has published a web page with white lettering on a very pale yellow background. The lettering is almost unreadable. What colour(s) do you think he thought that he was using. Any ideas please?--88.110.17.80 (talk) 07:16, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Try having a look at the following links.

• Colour Blind: Design implications of color blindness
• http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html (See the drop down in the bottom right corner

Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page | Contribs)} 07:49, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

It's really hard to know without knowing which kind of colour blindness he has. There are about a dozen kinds - most of which are very rare. I doubt it's the commonest weak-red/weak-green problem because if that were the case then the page would look pretty similar to him compared to how you or I would see it. The difference between white and yellow is the amount of blue present in the image. So someone who could only see shades of blue would think that white-on-yellow was a lot like white-on-dark-grey would appear to a normally sighted person - which would be pretty readable. But that would mean that your friend is seeing no red or green at all - and that's an exceedingly rare form of colour blindness. If he can't see any red at all - then white-on-yellow looks roughly like white-on-green and if he can't see any green at all then this looks like white-on-red to him. Either of those is pretty readable, so you can see how that might come about. But without knowing his exact colour deficiency, it's hard to guess what it might be like - and it's always possible that he simply has bad taste! However, his problem is likely to be one of the more severe kinds - my son is colour-blind (one of the milder varieties, thankfully) and he would never make that particular mistake. He needs to learn what set of colours he can use that will look the same to him as they do to us. But in the absence of further information, it would be useful to gently suggest that your friend sticks to using shades of grey from black through white for website design. That monochrome 'look' - done right - can be quite powerful for normally-sighted people and his web pages will look exactly the same to him as they do to us - so it's 'safe'. So I think he can still make an impression on people by powerful use of monochrome. SteveBaker (talk) 09:07, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all this erudition, I forgot to add the irony that my friend is an art dealer!--88.110.17.80 (talk) 11:20, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Advice on "Train your Brain" please.

Help - please. My wife has suggested she would like this for her Christmas present - but I don't know anything about it. Is it a CD, DVD or what? And if I buy it here in the UK, what equipment will I need to play it on? Apologies for being 60+ and still using Video tapes, Audio tapes, and Landline telephones. Thanks. 81.145.241.113 (talk) 13:03, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it is either Brain Age or Big Brain Academy on the Nintendo DS? FiggyBee (talk) 14:34, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Brain Age is sold and advertised as Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training in the UK, and is, I believe, the highest profile of these games in the UK (and the original?), and thus likely to be the one being thought of. Also, this game has targeted advertising at older people who don't play computer games, using the phrase 'train your brain', so I think it really is the mostly likely thing (although you might want to check with her! She could mean the book Saunders linked below, or something else entirely). If so, you would need to buy a Nintendo DS handheld console (as Figgybee linked above) and the game itself. I believe there are a lot of deals where you can get this game with the console, if you visit game shops. Skittle (talk) 21:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be a book too [5] so I hope that she already has the appropriate hardware installed.SaundersW (talk) 14:35, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

If you check this site [6]there are several types available, but I'd be a bit wary about the claims. Perhaps this is obvious but there are people... Richard Avery (talk) 14:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I have been looking for the same thing. Google "Accelerated Learning" and you'll find a wide choice.86.209.158.90 (talk) 15:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)DT

I agree that she's almost certainly talking about one of the Nintendo DS games. As for whether they work...there is no question that if you play one of these games regularly then your game score will get better. That means that you did improve your brain - but perhaps only in the limited area of that specific game. It doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get better at (for example) passing normal IQ tests. However, any brain activity is better than no brain activity - so exercising your mind with one of these games can't hurt. SteveBaker (talk) 06:22, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

There are two of the Brain Age DS games, by the by, and they each contain a bunch of different, self-contained activities -- what I guess you would call mini-games. In the first, the games are mostly writing (or drawing) responses to visual cues; the second game makes you turn the sound up and listen to cues a lot more. I'm a visual learner; I found the first game more agreeable, but my wife is more audio and liked the second game more. Sudoku is in both games, but that's the only game that's in both. I hope this info helps you if you have to make a decision between the games. Faithfully, Deltopia (talk) 16:57, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Freeways in the USA

What is the longest toll road in the USA by miles? The one with the most exits? Why are most exit signs on Interstates green? - Presidentman (talk) Random Picture of the Day 23:05, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The longest toll road in the United States is the New York State Thruway, whose main roadway (excluding the Niagara and New England Thruways and the Berkshire extension) is 496 miles long. Marco polo (talk) 23:25, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Does it have the most exits? - Presidentman (talk) Random Picture of the Day 23:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Tollroads and Interstates are not the same thing. The longest interstate is 3099 miles (I-90). All exits signs on Interstates are green because these federally financed roads are all suject to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Interstates do not have tolls. Rmhermen (talk) 23:50, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Most interstates don't have tolls, but parts of some do. For example, the main highway of the New York State Thruway includes portions of Interstate 87, Interstate 287, and Interstate 90. Another portion of Interstate 90 makes up the Massachusetts Turnpike, another toll road. Other stretches of Interstate 90 are carried by the toll roads the Ohio Turnpike, the Indiana Toll Road, and the Chicago Skyway. Interstate 90 is not the only interstate partly occupied by toll roads. Others include Interstate 95, Interstate 76, Interstate 70, Interstate 93, and Interstate 44. Still other interstates pass over toll bridges.

The New York State Thruway, by the way, also seems to be the toll road with the most exits (about 72). Marco polo (talk) 00:26, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Although at only a third the distance of the NY State Thruway (172 miles / 277 km), the Garden State Parkway comes close with 65 exits (unless I miscounted). — Michael J 01:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

1344 - and who's counting???

That's the number of named people in the Line of Succession to the UK Monarchy as listed in Wikipedia. But who keeps the official list and remains in touch with births, deaths, marriages (and whether those marriages were to Catholics thus disbarring potential candidates), and any conversions to catholicism (again disbarring potential candidates)? Is it a civil service functionary, or a member of the Royal Household, or perhaps an official within Burke's Peerage, or possibly a department of The Church of England? Fascinating stuff.81.145.241.168 (talk) 23:10, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Thats a really interesting question. There doesn't appear to be any specific body charged with that in the various Acts that define the line, so there probably isn't an official list. [7] In some ways its a theoretical exercise, because there is never, realistically, going to any need to concern ourselves who is beyond the first few in line. These are non-controversial and are easily agreed upon by following the wording of the Acts. Indeed they are listed up to 40th by the Royal household itself. [8] Since there is some debate over the exact interpretation of the clause forbidding a Roman Catholic being monarch, things start getting fuzzy the further down the line you get. If there was any succession related controversy close enough to realistically matter (as may be the case with Peter Phillips impending nuptials [9]), then it would probably be debated in parliament and settled with another Act if need be, as happened with His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 and the various Regency Acts, well ahead of time. Indeed, the Regency Act 1937 established by law the first four adults in the line of succession as Counsellors of State, so those are known well ahead of any time they may be required to step up. If there was going to be any controversy about those it would happen at this stage rather then when there is a possibility the person might become monarch imminently.

On the death of a monarch, the law says, succession will have passed automatically to the new monarch under the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701. As with many things in UK legislature, there is a common law aspect to it - because we all understand that will happen, we don't really concern ourselves with who officially decides who is next and next and next. It just... happens, and we deal with any problem if and when it occurs. Ultimately, though, what the 1701 Act ensured was that it is up to Parliament to determine the title to the throne, so its the MPs responsibility to ensure our bases are covered in the event of Windsor-pocalypse. Rockpocket 08:17, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Toy Sale Question

Hello wikipedians, I have several old toys in my basement,which Iam planning to sell

• These include, an rubber dinosaur doll my sister gave to me when I was little.
• An action-figure size toy pig.
• A Teddy Bear
• A Tickle-Me Elmo
• An Arthur The Aardyark Doll
• Several Monsters Inc figurines
• As well as other Disney toys.
• And something, called Turbo Twist Math from LeapFrog.

My Question is, could you guess the indivual or collective worth of each of these toys. Which, ever one you prefer this may not be the best place to ask this question but I have no other place to go. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.161.94.149 (talk) 23:23, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

My suggestion is to look on eBay for similar toys and then average out the prices and starting bids for the other used ones. Cryo921 (talk) 23:34, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

My guess is that they are not worth a whole lot—they are not that old (ten years, max) and were all very popular toys (at least, the brand-name ones) which were mass produced and mass consumed, and these sound quite used on top of everything else (which means they have little collector value). I'm guessing you could get maybe $5 for any of them on eBay. But again, you can easily check how much these sorts of things go for on eBay if you search for things like "Turbo Twist Math" (there are around 50 currently up for sale) and see what other people are getting for them. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 05:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Sadly, I have to agree. I took a quick look on eBay - a new Tickle-Me Elmo is on offer for $60 but a used one is for sale with an opening price of $2 with no reserver - and after being up there for a week, currently has not one bid for it. Turbo-twist math is going for $5 to $7 (used). Various entire sets of Monsters Inc action figures are going for $1. A talking Arthur the Aardvark toy is selling for $10 (new) and $5 (used)...but again, there have been no bids for it. I don't see any of these toys actually selling - almost all have zero bids on them. Parents don't like buying used soft toys for very young kids because there is no way to wash/disinfect most of them and they are (often unreasonably) concerned about what diseased their kids might catch from old toys. Hence, the market is only for toy collectors. Old toys do eventually become collector items - I had cause to need to buy an early 1960's Corgi "James Bond Aston Martin" a couple of years ago (long story) - in good condition, with all of the bits and pieces and in it's original box - it cost me $120! Why? Well, they were popular but they were played with hard and long, small parts would break or get lost and their boxes were generally tossed out within minutes of opening them. Toys more than 20 years old that are in good to perfect condition and still in their original boxes can get very valueable. Many people remember that particular toy from their childhood and want one for their collection - so prices for old/good-condition toys is good. Old/poor-condition toys still sell - but for MUCH less. But a toy that's still being made (such as Tickle-Me Elmo) isn't really worth anything - a toy that's only a year or two old is not likely to create any huge yearning in adult collectors. Teddy bears are a bit different. Some of them - from very specific manufacturers and/or of great age can be worth hundreds of dollars. But you can buy a new 'no-name' bear for $5 in stores - nobody will buy a used one unless it's very special for some reason. Worse still, on eBay you've got to figure the cost of postage - which typically makes the cost of buying a used toy (plus postage) more than buying it new from WalMart. Sadly, I doubt these toys will sell at any price (at least not on eBay). SteveBaker (talk) 14:10, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

November 26

Feint Drift?

In this Top Gear episode comparing the Audi R8 with a 911 GT3, [10], the host, Jeremy Clarkson, is seen conducting some drifting maneuver in the 911 seen at 0:40 and especially at 1:16. (Video is work-safe).

What is the specific name of this kind of drift/slide? Is it a feint drift? As well, what is the exact procedure of executing a turn like this? Does one simply hit the brake and use the car's momentum to slide or is there a more complicated series of actions that must be executed? Please note, I have no intentions of trying this dangerous maneuver. Acceptable (talk) 00:13, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what you'd call it - but it's a pretty standard rear-wheel drive technique. These cars typically have terrible understeer - so steering around a corner at racing speeds will generally result in you sailing off in a more or less straight line into the ditch. So instead, you hit the corner at an alarming speed - as you brake and steer into the turn, the back end of the car loses grip and slithers outwards - the front end still has some grip. So you steer the front wheels in the opposite direction you normally would to go around the corner - and use the engine power to 'steer' the car. This basically allows you to continue to 'aim' the car when it's basically lost the ability to steer. The claimed benefit is that you can keep the throttle nailed to the floor all the way around the turn - so as soon as you straighten the wheel - your turbo is still 'spooled' and you rocket off down the straight without turbo-lag. That's a great technique for a skilled driver on a nice safe racetrack in a car where you don't care how fast you wear the tyres out...but it's totally impractical as a 'real world' driving technique because on a normal road you'll DEFINITELY DIE if you drive that way! This is the main reason I like front-wheel drive supercharged cars - they go where you point them and any tendency to oversteer can be dialled out with simple suspension tweaks - and superchargers don't lag so you can power out of turns easily. (this is the main reason that I drive a MINI Cooper'S). You can take corners much faster on 'real' roads with a front wheel drive car - and live to tell the tale. SteveBaker (talk) 06:16, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

He could just be taking the turn "normally" (although quite hard) and the cars might be set up to oversteer a bit. It could also be trail braking, but I'm not 100% sure and it's difficult to tell if you aren't the one driving. Recury (talk) 18:43, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

ISBN 978-0-9723878-0-4.

Hi, I'm trying to find a book called Lubyanka Criminal Group. I was able to get many facts about the book from your website, but finding the book is another thing. Do you have any idea of a good place to look and please don't tell me Amazon.com. Been there, done that. Thanks and Happy Holidays to you and yours! Steve Drake <email removed> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.42.102.196 (talk) 00:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Try eBay, Barnes&Nobel.com and bookfinder.com Cryo921 (talk) 01:58, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

If you click on the ISBN link above, you'll find links to just about every book purchasing resource you could want already set up to try and search for that ISBN. Just thought if you wanted to try a bunch and save a lot of time. As I'm sure you've figured out the title is originally in Russian, so searching for it in English probably won't work. Another ISBN for the same book are ISBN 0972387803; it might be worth searching separately. Of course, as you probably saw from our page of the book, the full text of the book is available online in numerous places (in Russian)... --24.147.86.187 (talk) 02:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried Abe-Books here [11] they have never failed me yet.Richard Avery (talk) 09:09, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

From what I can tell it's not for sale anywhere. My bet is that it is not easily available on the English-speaking market (which isn't a surprise—most Russian books aren't). --24.147.86.187 (talk) 16:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Rank of Vronsky

In Leo Tolstoy's famous novel Anna Karenina, what is the rank (in the military) of Anna's lover, Vronsky? Acceptable (talk) 01:50, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

A quick search of the text for military ranks indicates he is lower than a colonel, but other than that, no idea. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 05:37, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

A cavalry captain, according to wikisource:Anna Karenina/Part Three/Chapter 20. Algebraist 12:30, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Moronic Adverts

What is the hell with these commercials ? Why do the advertisers think that we're all 4 years old ? The commercials are very idiotic. Makes intelligent people think the adverstisers are on drugs, plain idiots and retards, worse. 65.163.112.205 (talk) 04:40, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Which commercials? Advertising agencies are paid a lot of money to know how to target advertising campaigns; if you find a particular advertisement moronic, chances are you're not the target demographic... FiggyBee (talk) 05:19, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

It's not clear how to answer this question - if indeed it is a question. So I've decided to do a brief survey for those who have not been treated to the joys of US cable TV advertising. I've been watching a program on the Japanese WWII Atomic bomb program (which in itself was a GROSS misrepresentation of the known facts) on the History channel tonight. Here is my report on just one advertising break that we were treated to:

• Homeopathic pain relief delivered via an oral spray. (Yep - they are selling you tiny bottles of water for $19.99!) - there was an on-screen warning that said something like "This stuff works about as well as you'd expect homeopathic medicines to work". Why do they say that?
• A sticky pad based on ancient Japanese medicinal techniques that 'pulls toxins out of your body' through the soles of your feet. (In which we were told that trees pull toxins in through their leaves and pump them out into the soil through their roots(!!) - so this must work...right?) Apparently it also pumps invigorating ions into your body through your feet. Interestingly they offer a lifetime supply of pads if you only pay postage...which (if you pause your TIVO and carefully read the teeny-tiny print is $12.99 for 4 pads. Well, guys - just how much does it cost to stick four pads into an envelope and post them to you? $1 probably. That makes the 'free' pads more expensive by far than the original offer! There is a cool slide popped up showing the analysis of what gets pulled out - it's a skeptical scientist's dream come true! Bogus, bogus, bogus.
• Homeopathic pain relief for pets(!!) delivered via a spray that you simply spray into their drinking water! I was choked with laughter at the idea of idiotic customers spraying water into their dog's water dishes...so sadly I didn't notice how much it costs - but I'm betting it's $19.99.
• The "Ion keyboard" - this is a cheap PC keyboard with some 'electroluminescent' lighting. It might actually be a decent product - and the big price number on the screen is (of course $19.99) - but look carefully - that's not the price of the keyboard - that's the price of a 30 day 'home trial' of the keyboard!! You're paying $20 (plus whatever it costs to post it back to them) for the privilage of borrowing a keyboard for a month!! They never say how much it costs to actually buy it. But once you have it - and you have to go to all the hassle to post it back to them (which you just know won't be easy) - they're just going to charge your credit card...who knows how much?
• A "FREE" debt consultation/repair service that reduces your debt payments, etc, etc, etc. It's well known that these work by selling vulnerable people yet more credit...they are all pretty much scams - and because they are playing on the desperation of the parts of society that can least afford to be scammed, that's pretty reprehensible.
• A CD of Christmas music for $23.98 (WHAT!? Not $19.99 - what were they thinking?!)..."NOT AVAILABLE IN STORES"...why isn't it available in stores? Well, because it's a non-name group singing out-of-copyright music - probably recorded in someones garage. It's crap and stores have evidently refused to stock it...DUH! Pressing a CD costs $0.25, putting it into a nice box with an inserts and packing that into a mailer pushes the cost to $0.75 in quantities of 1,000 or more. Add $0.50 for postage. They are making EASILY a 1000% profit on these things. Direct sales should be VASTLY cheaper than going through stores to do it. If you saw that CD in WalMart you'd expect to be paying $9.99 for it - not $23.98 - and that includes WalMart's profit margins.

Not ONE - not a single ONE of the adverts in that break was even slightly credible. Every last one of them was a scam of one sort or another. Horrifying - absolutely horrifying. US schools need to teach critical thinking skills - that these advertizers can afford these ad spots says that an ENORMOUS number of people are being taken in by these junk products.

SteveBaker (talk) 05:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I can only speak for terrestrial TV, but we seem to have it better in Britain than in most countries (although at times it doesn't feel like it!) — on the whole, our ads are of higher quality and are focused to a lesser extent on credibility-free hard-sell and bogus claims than, for example, in the USA. We have relatively tight regulation of advertisements of all types (print, radio and TV) through OFCOM, and ads are readily rejected or pulled if they are found to be offensive, misrepresentational (sp?!) or just inappropriate. It's interesting to note that some of the more memorable ads are deliberate, tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top versions of the stupid, hard-sell ads that 65.163.112.205 and SteveBaker (and I) despise so much. Classic example: Safestyle UK. One of innumerable British double glazing companies — how can they distinguish themselves from the competition? By running a never-ending series of deliberately cheaply-produced, hilariously low-quality, not-entirely-serious ads featuring an array of bizarre characters (various eccentric Z-list celebrities, a red-dress-wearing woman with strange lips and glasses, and the crowning glory: "Window Man", a manic, scary-looking middle-aged man with straggly long hair, a bald pate and a scratchy beard, who for some reason wears a wizard's cape! What on earth...?), daft, shouted slogans and tacky graphics, they have become very well known to the TV-watching public. These ads are not bad in the US cable TV sense — they are intentionally "so-bad-they're-good".

I haven't even talked about the ads that are intentionally good and memorable. Put it this way: I watch a maximum of 5 hours of commercial TV (non-BBC) per week, and yet I can remember dozens of classic ads from the last 15-20 years. Guinness, Nationwide Building Society's early-1990s stop-motion, the recent Cadbury's gorilla ad, Honda's epics, Maureen Lipman's British Telecom ads, the Skoda "cake" ad ... I could go on (I won't!). www.tellyads.com has lots of recent British ads and some old classics, which you may be interested in to get a comparison with the USA. Brits moan about ads like everybody else does, but on the whole I think we are lucky! (Final comment: look on YouTube for "Woolworths Christmas ad" to see a genuine epic from 1981. It lasted for a whole commercial break, cost several £million and featured A-list stars and the most memorable jingle ever. Poor quality clip, but worth it.) Hassocks5489 (talk) 09:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The rules behind advertising in the UK are very strict; there's an entire agency, the ASA, devoted solely to regulating advertising. Just about every one of SteveBaker's ads fails at least one part of the The TV Advertising Code and would have been pulled (except for the Christmas songs one, but then who buys that stuff anyway?). In particular, homeopathy ads are almost totally forbidden - they cannot say what the product does or make any medical claims unless the product has been proven to work by the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre medical board. And of course, if you do try to scam people on British TV, expect the sky to fall on you. Laïka 13:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The problem with Homeopathy product ads in the US is that what they are selling isn't harmful - and they don't have to prove efficacy. So they can get away with selling a few teaspoonsful of water for $20. Worse still, homeopathic remedies are placed on store shelves right next to the real thing with fairly poor product labelling. I was trying to get some anti-histamine allergy medicine in WalMart and came VERY close to buying some homeopathic junk by mistake. It was only that I happened to compare ingredient lists to see if the generic store brand had the same ingredients that I discovered it. Superficially, the boxes looked just like actual medicines. It's shocking - but it seems that it'll take legislation to stop it and enough voters are convinced that the stuff works that no politicians have the nerve to fix it. SteveBaker (talk) 16:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

It's worse than just that. Almost all "natural" remedies (technically "supplements") are almost totally unregulated by the FDA and can say whatever they want as long as they have some small "this statement not endorsed by the FDA" label. It's not a lack of legislation that led to the situation, it's legislation itself that established it (blame the Mormons on this one—they are the big-time political allies that these companies work with, because they are prohibited from taking actual drugs). See DSHEA. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 16:29, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

"What's that name again?" "HELLIBEDS!!!!!!" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.230.244 (talk) 10:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Deliberately cheaply produced adverts seem to be the in thing in the UK at the moment, with that Safe Style one being the worst, along with the recent one with a bloke shouting "You Buy One, You Get One FREE!", not to mention the infamous Barry Scott who revels in SHOUTING about how good Cillit Bang is. A lot of these ads are patronising and irritating. The Elephant car insurance and Michael Winner's ESure adverts are also annoying. "Calm down dear, it's only a commercial!". The British equivalent of the scam ads mentioned by the O.P. are the endless adverts for loan sharks, car finance and debt revovery that dominate the non-terrestrial chennels during the day. "Do you have loans, CCJ's or Decrees?". Personal injury claims (aka ambulance chasers) used to be a particular scourge but these seem to have died down a bit lately.

At the end of the day, it seems that the more moronic an advert is, the more people will remember it. These people know what they're doing. Mind you, if you think TV ads are bad commercial radio is even worse! Aaargh!!! GaryReggae (talk) 13:59, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I am unable to lixten to commercial radio without being reminded of Radio Active, Britain's only national local radio station. DuncanHill (talk) 16:40, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, Apple Inc. needs to fire their whole advertising department. Every time one of their commercials comes on, I scramble for the remote. shoy (^words _words) 20:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Your cell phone bill

Who have you been texting fifty times a day? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.161.73.245 (talk) 05:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

IDK, my BFF Jill? --ffroth 05:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Just more moronic adverts. See, Re.: "MORONIC Adverts" QUESTION above. All of those commercials ARE idiotic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.163.112.205 (talk) 06:34, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Seen one about the lizard, and it was stupid, another about "Head On", others commercials are soooo bad that they suck ass, so bad that the makers of Head On will have to make one to advertise "Ass On" so the commercials don't suck ass so much. 65.163.112.205 (talk) 06:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

What country has the world's largest fishing fleet?

What country has the world's largest fishing fleet? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.230.244 (talk) 10:50, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

A quick browse hasn't found what you want, but according to fishery, the People's Republic of China accounts for a third of all fishing, so they seem likely. Algebraist 12:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Largest in terms of volume of fish? Tonnage of boats? Number of boats? People employed in the industry? Neil ☎ 12:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

China produces the most fish, both from fish-farming and from sea fishing, according to the United Nations Common Database, followed by Peru, USA, Indonesia, Chile and Japan. Lloyds of London keeps a partial registery, but these only list large trawler-sized boats registered with the national merchant navy - most of China's are small 2 or 3 person craft, so the top of the list are the USA, Russia and Japan.[12] Laïka 16:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Phone bill

I got a mobile phone contract with an unspecified company, for £30 a month I should get 300 free texts and 500 free minutes. However I have no friends and so rarely use more than 20 of each. Yet my bill has never been less than £35 and is usually £60 or more, why is this? and is it legal? (this is not a legal question) futher more, is this not a breech of contract as I always pay my bill regardless of amount, or how difficult it is for me to do. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.2 (talk) 13:26, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Do you have an itemised bill? £35 sounds believable - perhaps there is VAT on phone bills or something? Here in the USA, there are typically half-a-dozen random-looking taxes and charges added to the base cost of the contract and the bill lists everyone you called. £60 seems ridiculous though. Call the company and demand an explanation. One (remote) possibility is that someone has duplicated the phone's internal code number and is stealing time from your account. SteveBaker (talk) 13:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

It sounds to me as though you have been put onto a different tariff. You might be better off with a "pay as you go" tariff. You should find details of all the different tariffs on the company's website. Also bear in mind it can be difficult to challenge a bill once you've paid it, as that implies you've accepted it as correct, I think.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 13:47, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Are the minutes any time any network? Have you sent any non-standard texts? (ie to those short numbers rather than normal mobile phones, such as 81199) Have you signed up to one of those stupid services such as Jamster where you get sent lots of music downloads? Bear in mind downloading them will also incur a charge on top of the £4.50 a week or whatever it is. Have you called numbers that are not standard mopbile or landline numbers (ie those that start 0845, 0800, 0906, etc) as those will not be covered by your minutes? Have you used WAP or GPRS? Have you sent any MMS texts (picture messages)? As you rarely use your allowance of minutes and texts, you would definitely be better off on a different tariff (I'm going to presume that you took a contract so you could get a good phone for free) - you will not be able to cancel your current contract, however, until it ends - if it's a 12 month contract, you can renegotiate it after 9 months of the contract - if you were suckered into an 18 month contract (never take these!) then you can sign up to a new contract after 15 months. They wouldn't let you renegotiate a Pay-as-you-go, though, which is what I recommend you take based on your usage. A O2 Genie sim card would do you (£10 a month minimum top up with a load of free texts a month); you can get the sim cards for free from the O2 website at the moment.

If you are with Orange or O2 you will find they are usually pretty good about letting you change your tariff any time after the first month, so it might be worth calling them and finding out - you can change to the cheapest one possible and wait out the contract. T-Mobile and Vodafone are less helpful (I know you're not on 3, as they are cheaper then that because their service is crap). I would also call them to find out why the bill is so high (VAT should have been included in the £30 a month if that was the advertised contract price, or you have been mis-sold the deal and can potentially claim the money back via small claims court). Neil ☎ 14:16, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I do not download music. I do not phone 81196 numbers. I have not signed up to any other services. I think I will have to take T mobile to small claims. But for this, do I need a lawyer? and hopw much does one of those cost? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.3 (talk) 15:57, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

You don't need a lawyer for small claims, it's all very easy to do. You can even make the claim online (Google "money claim online"). The cost depends on the amount being claimed, it would be about £30 (you can claim the costs back should you win). --WebHamster 16:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

it may well be worth contacting your local Citizens Advice Bureau as they can give advice on the small-claims courts, contracts, and finding a lawyer. The CAB service is free and confidential. DuncanHill (talk) 16:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

This is TOTALLY ridiculous advice. Why are you even thinking of taking them to court?! You don't even know what the charge is for! Step 1: Look at your bill. How is it broken down? Step 2: If there isn't enough information on your bill to find out why the charge is higher than you expected, phone them and ask for a more detailed explanation of why the bill is so high. Step 3: Figure out who's fault it is. Step 4: If it is their fault, call them again and explain how they screwed up and ask what they are going to do about it. Step 5: Wait for them to reply. Step 6: IF (and only if) it is both their fault - and they refuse to fix it - consider taking them to court. But we aren't even on step 1 yet - you don't even know what the extra charge is for! What does the bill say? There are a LOT of possibilities - Maybe they did screw up. Maybe you didn't read the small print on the contract. Maybe you bought more services than you thought. Maybe you didn't understand the consequences of some kind of usage pattern. Maybe the moment you point out the problem they refund all your money and offer you 3000 free hours to cover your inconvenience. Who knows?! But rushing off to court is just ridiculous until you get to step 6! Jeez - what a litigious society we live in! SteveBaker (talk) 00:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Yup, litigation, The US's no.1 export. :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by WebHamster (talk • contribs) 02:58, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Breast size growth

How much would a female's chest be able to grow realistically over the course of a summer holiday(say 3 months?)I'd be inclined to go with one cup size,maybe 2 if she was right on the turn at the start of the summer Lemon martini (talk) 14:09, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

It depends on how many cakes she eats. Neil ☎ 14:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

From my limited experience as a man, please feel free to correct me, ladies. But breast size varies, due to hormonal cycles, and therefore your question cannot be answered fully and/or accuratly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.3 (talk) 17:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I really want to hear the story behind your question. ›mysid (☎∆) 19:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like you are asking about thelarche, rather the cyclical changes in sexually mature women, from your comment "right on the turn at the start of the summer". If so, its very difficult to say as the rate and extent of development of sexual characteristics varies between individuals, however Puberty#Breast development might be helpful in a general sense. Rockpocket 19:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Sex Desk

How would one go about setting up another ref desk in relation to sexually orrientated questions, as we often seem to get questions about sex, masturbation, porn ect ect ect. I for one find this slightly offensive. If I feel this way I am sure other do to, so could be not file these away in some other section where I dont have to see them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.3 (talk) 17:10, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a bad idea for several reasons. For one thing, Wikipedia is not censored, and the reference desk is no exception. For another thing, having a separate "dirty questions" desk would encourage people to ask humorous questions, and the sincere questions would be drowned out in a sea of bathroom humor. But most importantly, the reference desks are divided according to the kind of people who best answer the questions. A question about the biology of sex belongs at the science desk, one about erotic literature belongs at the humanities desk, and one about sexual slang words belongs at the language desk. To remove these questions from their appropriate categories and lump them together wouldn't make logical sense, and it would make it harder for experts to find questions they know how to answer. —Keenan Pepper 17:58, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Keenan. Fragmenting the Desks further means more questions will go unanswered, questions will take longer to answer, and fewer experts will see or respond to each question. As well, creating a Sex Desk is pretty much equivalent to hanging out a "Troll us here!" sign. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:09, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. I see no problem with having the humanities desk handle questions related to erotica on a more abstract level and the science desk handle health-related questions dealing with actual intercourse. JIP | Talk 18:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Categorization based on what offends a minority of readers is a bad approach. Categorization based on natural divisions of subject matter, on areas that are over-populated, etc., are much better ideas. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 20:45, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

That would just be asking people to not shove beans up their nose. bibliomaniac15 00:36, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

earthworms

matt63.3.18.130 (talk) 17:25, 26 November 2007 (UTC) name/title of person who studies earthworms ?

Oligochaeteologist. Googling on "who studies earthworms" took me here. --Milkbreath (talk) 17:48, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Just Get Along

My friends and I were just wondering about the origin of the quote, "Can't we all just get along?"

If anyone could settle it for us, I'd appreciate it. =)

Thanks in advance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.41.232.144 (talk) 21:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Rodney King said it during the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Recury (talk) 21:43, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I thought the actual quote was "umphh", "urggh", "aaagh". --WebHamster 21:45, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The riots were reacting to the court decision acquitting the cops who beat him, so he didn't say it while he was getting beaten or anything. Recury (talk) 21:49, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I know... but that would have ruined the joke :P --WebHamster 21:50, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Weight training equipment in maximum security prisons

Why?

66.91.225.183 (talk) 22:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Well why not? They are placed in prison to be reformed and to pay their debt to society, not to be prevented from doing anything. Weight equipment can be an excellent way of getting individuals to A) keep fit B) Care about their body, thus perhaps making them less likely to drugs C) develop a hobby/interest that might deflect their attention away from more negative things plus many other benefits if you are a bit creative about what good may come from it. Of course the side-affect is that the violent inmates have the ability to tone their bodies, and I guess you could use the equipment as weapons. ny156uk (talk) 22:59, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Cheap way to give the prisoners something to do? Help them focus on improving themselves? Dismas|^(talk) 23:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Whatever happened to chain gangs? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.127.99.126 (talk) 23:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

have a look at the article on chain gangs, seems they disappeared in the US around the 50s and then returned (at least to Alabama) in the 90s....ny156uk (talk) 01:18, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Gold as a Conductor

Maybe I am mistaken but is gold a good conductor? Would it work better or strengthen a radio signal if the antennea was replaced with gold or gold plated, would the signal be stronger and go further? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.127.99.126 (talk) 23:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

gold has Electrical resistivity at 20 °C of 22.14 n Ω·m. By comparison, copper is 16.78 nΩ·m and aluminium 26.50 nΩ·m. If your antenna was made of copper, or copper plated, and if electrical resistivity correlates with signal strength for a fixed input, then no. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Gold isn't quite as good a conductor as copper and therefore would not be as good as an antenna. We got lucky there. It's pretty good, though, and solid gold would work fine as an antenna with the added benefit of being corrosion-proof. A lot of antennas are aluminum for corrosion-resistance and light weight. Copper is better tahn either, and silver is best of all, but it's not so much better than copper that we need to use it instead. --Milkbreath (talk) 23:34, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

If gold is an inferior (to copper) conductor, then why do high-end audio and video cables often use gold-plated connectors? --ShelfSkewed Talk 23:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Mainly due to it's non-corrosivity as stated above, see also Gold plating#Electronics. 84.65.85.58 (talk) 23:51, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

'cos folks will buy anything. Gold looks nice. More seriously, it does not corrode, and often coats steel plugs; steel does corrode, and oxides are not good conductors. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The ability to resist corrosion is one thing - but gold is also very soft so it can mold itself at the microscopic level to the surface it's mating with - which provides a bigger contact area and hence a lower resistance connection. But I agree that looking at the copper connectors I have, none of them seem too seriously corroded.

Audiophiles have a problem - they've always strived for audio perfection - but now they have it. Even fairly cheap audio equipment is able to produce better quality audio than the human ear can perceive. A $100 600Gbyte hard disk can hold all the music you will ever care about - enough for you to listen continuously for years and never hear the same track twice. A teeny-tiny iPod can hold more music than most people own. So - if you are an audio geek who used to argue with other audio geeks over whether one record player tone arm or another was better - or if you are a manufacturer of 'high end' equipment with a reputation for quality - or if you are a magazine who makes money by telling people what the latest, greatest technology is...then you're in deep trouble because a $100 system is "sufficiently good" and there really isn't a reason to buy $5000 system. 99% of people don't care about the difference and 99.9% can't tell the difference! So they are down to arguing about the impedance of cables, how nice the controls feel - that kind of thing. Read a modern audio magazine - it's just sad! SteveBaker (talk) 00:21, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The ones who can tell the difference don't buy overly expensive cables. The ones who can tell the difference wouldn't be caught dead listening to an MP3, at least not when doing 'serious' listening. Impedance, inductance and capacitance all make far more of a difference than gold conductors. Incidentally the accepted theory in the hifi world is that if the socket is nickel then you use a nickel plug, if the socket is gold you use a gold plug. Metallurgy is not my forte but apparently there's some sort of chemical effect when you mix and match. --WebHamster 01:07, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

A tad unfair. The differences between basic stereo sound output and mid/high-end stereo output is undeniably different. The detail is less, the bass, the ability to handle increased volume, the ability to retain clear treble at higher volumes - all could be better on lower quality speaker/systems. Whether the price difference is worthwhile is questionable, but it is simply incorrect to suggest the difference couldn't be heard by even the most tone-deaf of people if placed side by side. This doesn't mean that 99% of the public aren't happy with the sound quality they are getting, but that's very different to not being able to hear an appreciable difference between $100 equipment and $5000. The difference is knowledge/experience. An untrained/average listener of music might not notice an individual hitting the wrong 'key' in a performance, but a trained/knowledgeable person could spot it a mile off. I doubtlessly wouldn't know if a band mistimed their music (unless it was grossly mistimed) but again a musician might. Now to those who have deep interest in audio the difference between systems is noticeable. That doesn't alter what the general public think, but then the general public are not experts in a field but they could be trained to hear the difference. Does that make most high-end futile? No, to me the high-end satisfies the avid user/lavish and the 'low' (or mass consumer end) satisfies the masses.

Also check out Malcolm gladwell's interpretation of the pepsi-challenge for more on expert vs non-expert ability to differentiate things...http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html (this is on tedtalks as an excellent video too) ny156uk (talk) 01:14, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

November 27

RCN changed billing without telling me

Hi all,

I signed up for broadband internet with RCN for $13.95 a month for 1.5MBPS speed. I've just discovered that for the past three months I've been paying $36.95 for the same service. I hadn't realize because I pay by direct debit. They never informed me. Is this legal? Is there any chance that they will credit me the amount they took from me without telling me if I call up and complain?

I know I should call them, and I will, but I want to know what cards are in my hands when I do.

Thanks! —Mike. 01:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm just going to repeat my answer for "Phone Bill" above: Step 1: Look at your bill. How is it broken down? Step 2: If there isn't enough information on your bill to find out why the charge is higher than you expected, phone them and ask for a more detailed explanation of why the bill is so high. Step 3: Figure out who's fault it is. Step 4: If it is their fault, call them again and explain how they screwed up and ask what they are going to do about it. Step 5: Wait for them to reply. Step 6: IF (and only if) it is both their fault - and they refuse to fix it - consider taking them to court. But we aren't even on step 1 yet - you don't even know what the extra charge is for! Probably there is some total download limit or something like that that you have exceeded. SteveBaker (talk) 02:09, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

World War II Japanese Sword

My father brought home a sword retrieved from a Japanese soldier after being in the Army of the Occupation in Japan at the end of WWII. I'm trying to find out something about the sword. It has a WOODEN handle around the tang with a press/release catch to draw the blade. On the blade itself, there appears what may be a letter/character followed by the numbers 210798. The guard appears to be painted black steel as is the cap of the tang. There does not appear to be any markings on the scabbard and it has a single ring with which to attach it to a persons belt. There is also a single screw in the side of the scabbard toward the opening when holding the blade with the edge upward. There is a piece of copper or brass around the blade just in front of the guard toward the edge of the blade. I would appreciate any help in learning more about this sword. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.39.192.118 (talk) 03:17, 27 November 2007 (UTC)