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February 13

Vykhino effect

If you're familiar with the Moscow Metro, you've probably heard of (or even personally experienced) the "Vykhino effect": at Vykhino station, because everyone transfers from the commuter train to the subway in order to save money on fares, during the morning rush hour the trains fill up so much that passengers often have to wait to board, and at all intermediate stations between Vykhino and Taganskaya, passengers can't board at all because the trains are so full (and because hardly anyone gets off at those stations during the morning rush hour, these being in working-class residential neighborhoods). My question is, is there a similar "Jamaica effect" in the New York subway at the Sutphin Boulevard-Archer Avenue-JFK Airport station, where the subway connects with both LIRR and the AirTrain JFK? And if so, what other well-known examples of this effect are there in other rapid transit systems? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 02:02, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm unfamiliar with the Moscow fare structure, but in London, which has a zone system, we have similar problems. At Stratford, which is served by long and short distance commuter trains and also the terminal of the Jubilee underground line, commuters fill the Jubilee line trains to capacity, so that as they pass through "working-class residential neighbourhoods" (e.g.East Ham) nobody can board. The trains empty at Canary Wharf, which is the financial district. 86.151.49.189 (talk) 06:38, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually, we get this in our local bus system here in our Florida city. There's a commuter bus for students and employees that runs between the main campus and some residential complexes. There are also several intermediate bus stops between the complexes where commuters on the main drag can get on board. However, the bus almost always drives by those stops because they've been filled up from the beginning stops. This is a common logistical nightmare in commuter mass transit systems, and one that engineers don't really have an answer for, save to deploy additional buses on these routes at more frequent rates to accommodate the overflow in these circumstances.--WaltCip (talk) 13:33, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Also see crush load.--WaltCip (talk) 13:35, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, all, but I was asking specifically about overloading of rapid transit systems at points where they connect with commuter rail (such as Vykhino, Sutphin-Archer, or Stratford), due to passengers transferring from the latter to the former -- not about general overloading of public transit during rush hour. 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:9076:92A3:E19C:2F76 (talk) 11:01, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

One option, which some subway systems use, is scheduled Skip-stop service: Usually this involves running express trains and local trains on the same line: express trains pick up at the terminal stations and then skip the middle-range stations, dropping off at the city center. Local trains pick up at the stops skipped by the express, and also drop off at the city center. For the evening rush, the system is reversed. An example of this is the Purple Line and Red Line on Chicago's north side. The Purple acts as an express for the northern suburbs, while the Red acts as a local for the city neighborhoods; both then let off at The Loop. --Jayron32 14:01, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Excuse me, but skip-stop service does not involve express trains: see the article. There are only two ways an express train can gain time over local trains: either (A) it uses a separate track to pass them, or (B) the local trains are scheduled so far apart that the expresses merely catch up on them and don't have to pass them. Method A is used on many lines in New York, and on a few places in other cities, including Chicago's Purple Line (see Jayron's link), Philadelphia's Broad Street Line, and London's Metropolitan Line (where the Jubilee Line is the local service). Method B is not used on any rapid transit system today that I know about, but it was used in the past in London (where the term "non-stop" was used for express trains). Skip-stop service involves different trains skipping different stops so that they all take about the same time and don't need to pass each other; this was also used in London at one time, as well as Chicago, but was abandoned. It still remains on some lines in New York. --76.71.6.254 (talk) 20:23, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Incidentally, I happen to have another question about express/skip-stop subway trains, but I think I'll ask it later. 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:9076:92A3:E19C:2F76 (talk) 11:01, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

There are "all stations services" on the Metropolitan Line as well as the fast ones. The Jubilee line serves stations which were formerly part of the Bakerloo line. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 14:43, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

And it's a 4-track line, just like the ones in New York -- except the track layout is backwards, with the local trains on the inside tracks and the expresses on the outside (whereas in New York the expresses almost always run on the inside tracks). 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:64B4:64AD:FCBF:2883 (talk) 09:24, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think the Jamaica effect would be strong because it's a fairly long subway trip from that station to Manhattan (it would make many commutes well over an hour), they wouldn't save much compared to their income, JFK flyers usually have luggage and many would avoid taking luggage on the train in rush hour. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 09:37, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Just checked the timetables (happened to have them open because I was looking at routes and times for the Subway Challenge -- 42 minutes from Jamaica to Times Square on the E train, 47 minutes from Jamaica to Broad Street on the J/Z train. Whereas staying on the LIRR would get you from Jamaica to Penn Station in 20 minutes or so. 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:64B4:64AD:FCBF:2883 (talk) 12:25, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Ships on the horizon [header added]

Down by the sea, I was watching ships through my 12 power binoculars. One thing I noticed is ships right on the edge of the horizon looked lower. I could only see the tops of the ship's (and we're talking huge mega tankers here) it's as if the sea was higher closer to me. Was the fact the ship's dipped on the far edge of the horizon due to the curvature of the earth? Or am I just imagining things here... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.71.228.239 (talk) 08:58, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this is a real effect caused by the curvature of the Earth - for example, see this Youtube video of a ship sailing over the horizon. You can calculate roughly how much of the ship is hidden by the Earth, but mirages mean that it won't be exact - the light will probably be bent a little bit, and you might see some fata morgana. Smurrayinchester 11:30, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

See also Horizon#Objects above the horizon. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:23, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Athough I don't see it in Wikipedia articles, I've heard it said that one reason the ancients suspected the earth was round was because a distant ship would disappear below the horizon while its mast was still visible. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:28, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Spherical Earth#Hellenistic astronomy (subsection Strabo) mentions that elevated lights or areas of land were visible to sailors at greater distances than those less elevated, and stated that the curvature of the sea was obviously responsible for this. Loraof (talk) 15:07, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Another way to see this effect is to look a suitable distance across water toward the skyline of a city. If you're familiar with the city's appearance from a nearer position, you can see how the bottoms of the tall buildings are missing. I remember observing this by looking at Toronto as seen across part of Lake Ontario from the Garden City Skyway. --76.71.6.254 (talk) 20:27, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't want to start a huge debate, but this effect could also be explained if the Earth was flat and accelerating upwards at the rate of gravity. At some distance from an observer standing on shore, the light coming from what we call the horizon would not reach him because the upward movement of the sea would block it. My comprehension of calculus is not good enough. What I'd like is for some math genius to calculate with differential equations, what that distance would be, given the speed of light and upward acceleration of the Earth at 9.81 metres/sec/sec.

About 50 years ago, my father demonstrated an interesting optical illusion to me. Taking a long straight pole, he asked me to grasp it at its centre with one hand and hold out my arm at full length in front of my face so that the pole was horizontal. To my astonishment, the pole appeared to droop towards the ends, yet it was rigid and absolutely straight! How could this be? Akld guy (talk) 20:36, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to do the whole general relativity stuff right now, but a quick back of the envelope calculation: A yacht's mast is something around 10 metres. It would take about 1.5 seconds for lightthe sea to travel this distance. In this time, light will have travelled 450,000,000 miles, roughly the distance from Earth to the moon. While I don't know how much relativity would change this, it's not looking good. To recreate the curvature of the Earth on a flat disk would need the force of gravity/acceleration to be somewhere in the vicinity of a billion times stronger. (An alternative, easy way to see where this goes wrong - according to Einstein, gravity in an inertial frame of reference is indistinguishable from fictitious forces in an accelerating frame of reference. We live in a gravitational field of 9.81 N/kg which feels like standing on an accelerating disk at 9.81 m/s/s - if this was enough to bend light noticeably at the surface of the earth, we would see it every time we used a laser pointer - the laser beam would droop hugely towards the ground) Smurrayinchester 23:08, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

1.5 seconds? Akld guy (talk) 23:34, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, not sure where he got that. As famously used by Grace Hopper in her lectures on data transfer, light travels about 30 centimeters in a nanosecond. In 1.5 seconds it goes much farther than 10 meters! --Jayron32 03:43, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

He means that in 1.5 seconds, the sea will move up 10 meters, from a standing start. As to general relativity, I don't think it would change anything, since we are in the Newtonian (low gravity) limit. However, if we are talking a society so ancient they weren't sure if the Earth was round, they probably also don't know about the speed of light or the equivalence principle. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:53, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Oops, yes, silly mistake. Smurrayinchester 08:56, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

This light-bending effect does exist, but it's extremely small (as Smurrayinchester said), and also you have the sign backwards: it makes the ship appear higher, not lower. You can see why in this image (which is not at all to scale) from the article Atmospheric refraction. S' (the apparent location of the Sun) is above S (its actual location). -- BenRG (talk) 08:56, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Photo check

I received by email a bunch of photos without exif metadata and with strangely small resolutions (roughly between 300x600 and 600x600 px), but my several checks on whether they could be genuine were inconclusive (i.e. reverse search found nothing and no indication of digital retouching). Their default filenames are like "Image80", "Image243", etc. Imageedited.com only suggested that "based on the pixels, this image could have been created with" GIMP-like software (IrfanView , Photomatix, etc.). Is it more indicative of genuine pics or fake ones? Or the metadata was simply deleted? For good-faith reasons, I don't want to ask the sender directly whether they are genuine. Brandmeister^talk 19:12, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Not all cameras even create EXIF data. Is there some content-based reason you question the photos? Because size alone is kind of a weird thing to be suspicious of, imo. Perhaps the sender used an email program that automatically reduces photo resolution. Recall 600x600 is more pixels than a whole VGA screen, and there was a time when that might have been considered a high resolution photo :) SemanticMantis (talk) 19:38, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Ok. I had mild suspicions of scam, partially because even smartphones now shoot at more than 1,000 px by default. Maybe they were resized indeed. Brandmeister^talk 20:40, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm only offering an opinion, because I have never heard of small size being an indication of deceitful manipulation, and I couldn't find any references suggesting that. On the other hand, it does have a certain sort of logic: artefacts of manipulation may be harder to detect after decreasing resolution... Sorry, I'll come back if I find any actual refs. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:55, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

If you’re that curious, why not ask the sender for a few copies of the RAW or full JPEG's of your favourites? Sent one-at-a-time they should be able to pass through the email-server were as a big download may not. Which is why they may have been reduced before sending. Also, if both you and the sender have a FTP client then use that, as file size does not matter.--Aspro (talk) 00:02, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

This discussion is a bit vague. Perhaps you could upload an example. Also what do you suspect? What exactly do you mean by genuine? Downsizing and stripping exif may be a routine operation, but in itself it doesn't make a picture fake. Also note that all professional photographers and many amateurs edit all of their work in one way or another. In other words, we need a more precise question for a useful discussion. Jahoe (talk) 12:26, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

February 14

Perfect game vs. teen death

I like to cash in your thoughts about which one is more probable: A particular MLB team throwing a perfect game on a particular day or a particular white teenage girl dying in a particular year? PlanetStar 03:42, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm guessing that MLB is Major League Baseball - but who is to say... -- SGBailey (talk · contribs) 23:57, 14 February 2017‎ (UTC)

That would be a given, unless it's Major League Bowling, which is unlikely. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:35, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Nothing "given" about it at all. Wikipedia (even the English Language version) is relevant all over the world. MLB is a USA-centric abbreviation not used in much of the rest of the world. But thanks for confirming my guess. -- SGBailey (talk) 11:08, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I assume you're badgering the OP about failing to link MLB. If all else fails, you could check MLB (disambiguation) and see if any of the other uses of MLB fit scenarios which have teams and perfect games. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:33, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

30 mlb teams. 11 perfect games in the last 27 years. Let's round that out and say one perfect game every 2.5 years. In one year, the chance of a perfect game is therefore 40%. On a given day, it's 1 in a thousand. (Now, half the days are inaccessible to this distribution since there is no game on that day. So you could also say that half the days have a chance of 1 in 500, and the other half have a chance of 0.) Now, if you stipulate it has to be a particular team, and we pretend that every team is equally likely to score a perfect game, then it's 1 in 30,000 per day.

Ok, how about the girl? For simplicity, let's pretend this is the United States, and all races and genders have equal probabilities of dying on a given day. Then we can take the Social Security Administration's actuarial life table [1] to calculate that the cumulative probability of dying in one's teens is about 0.37%, or a bit over 1 in 300. Now, it has to be on a given day. There are 2556 (give or take a leap day) in ones teen years. So the chance of a particular teenager dying on a particular day is about 1 in 700,000.

So pick a team, pick a teen, pick a day. That day is about 20 times more likely to see the team score a perfect game, than to see that teen die. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:07, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

(The question is asking about "odds of given team throwing perfect game on a given day" vs "odds of given girl dying in a given year". So dividing by 365, the odds of a given teenager dying in a given year is about 1 in 2,000). We can be a bit more specific - although this data is slightly old (1999-2006), it's the best I can find, and gives the mortality rate among (non-Hispanic) white teenage girls as 31 per 100,000 per year, or 1 in 3225. So a random white teenage girl is still substantially more likely to die in a given year than a random team is in a given day. Interestingly, there's very little difference in mortality rate across races for girls (among black girls, it's 34 in 100,000, among Hispanic girls, 27 in 100,000) - the difference is almost entirely due to the extreme divergence in death rates among boys. Smurrayinchester 10:20, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

This question should be on the Maths desk. And it's illustrative of why I always hated probabilities. Two seemingly reasonable approaches, coming up with wildly different answers. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:25, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Someguy1221 and I used essentially the same approach, and got quite similar answers - odds of 1 in ~2,000 per year versus 1 in ~3,000 per year (the only difference is that he used data for all teenagers, rather than for white teenage girls). The reason they look very different is that Someguy1221 calculated the odds of a girl dying on a given day, rather than in a given year as the question asked. Smurrayinchester 10:40, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Not reading the question carefully enough is probably one of many reasons why I wasn't that good at maths, lol. Thanks. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:29, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

War

Is it true that "in the recorded history of mankind, there has never been a single day without a war being waged somewhere on earth"? Or is it another baseless assertion of the same sort as "if you go 7 generations back, all people on earth are related"? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:9076:92A3:E19C:2F76 (talk) 06:49, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this is a very popular claim, see here, but I have not been able to find the genesis of this claim. Maybe in the full book, he gives a citation? Of course you know this depends heavily on what you count as a war. Remember, there are no wars going on right now - just police actions and the rounding up of terrorists. As for people being related, see most recent common ancestor. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:30, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

The claim is most likely bogus. Earlier in the history of mankind, for instance in the Stone Age when the global population was relatively small, there should have been at least a day without an armed conflict. Brandmeister^talk 08:50, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

The claim was specifically about recorded history. If you take that to start say, 5000 years ago, when the world population was estimated to be around four million humans, maybe there's never been a day without some kind of conflict? Of course, again, definitions. Is a long simmering feud a conflict? Someguy1221 (talk) 08:53, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually, the rounding up of terrorists in itself counts as a war (it's even called the War on Terrorism) -- but yes, I have trouble believing that there was always a war somewhere even in fairly peaceful periods like that between 1923 and 1935. As for the definition of war, it's any conflict in which both sides are armed and which involves the regular armed forces (including reserve forces such as the National Guard) of one or more nation. 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:9076:92A3:E19C:2F76 (talk) 10:54, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Wars between 1923-1935 (just running these off from memory, I may miss some): Gran Chaco War (Bolivia/Paraguay), The Chinese Civil War (Nationalist forces vs. Communist forces), the Nicaraguan civil war, the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, etc. --Jayron32 11:54, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

That list is useful but leaves us short of wars 1923 to 1926. I expect there was something somewhere though. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:11, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

How about the Rif War? --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:13, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Also see the various conflicts of the Chinese Warlord era. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 17:23, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Timeline of wars gives a large number of candidates - but uses varying definitions of "war". Rmhermen (talk) 15:33, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

If we take the IP's definition at face value, then considering there were many early insurgencies against European colonial governments at the time with some of the insurgents being armed and the armed forced of the colonial governments sometimes being used I'm sure there would be plenty of examples, e.g. I expect this applies to Communist Party of Indonesia#1926 revolt. Of course these get into complications like how you define the days of the war as that may or may not cover some time period not covered by the Nicaraguan civil war. The Irish Civil War also covers part of 1923. Nil Einne (talk) 06:08, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

It seems highly likely that there would have been a large enough cascade of errors through sheer incompetence to result in one full day without an actual war being waged during the period of recorded history (total peace not being very exciting to "record"). Debouch (talk) 14:47, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

By the way, all people on earth are related, whether you go back seven generations or none. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:50, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

When it comes to the recorded history, it would be safe to say the statement is unprovable and may remain so in the long run. The absence of evidence on war in a particular period neither proves, nor negates the existence of a global peace. But my gut tells that in early recorded history there could have been such a possibility. Brandmeister^talk 15:45, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

While there was probably never a time when no-one was at war (even in ancient times, world population was around 300 million, and only a few thousand of those would have to be fighting to break the peace), there have been various periods of regional peace - most notably, perhaps, the Pax Romana in Roman Europe and Pax Sinica in Han China, which occurred at roughly the same time in the 1st and 2nd centuries. Smurrayinchester 16:42, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

2601's definition of war as "conflict in which both sides are armed and which involves the regular armed forces (including reserve forces such as the National Guard) of one or more nation" makes the statement likely, since there was arguably a time within the last 5000 years when (depending on definitions) there were no "nations" on Earth, and it's even more arguable that there was a time in that period when there were no "regular armed forces". CodeTalker (talk) 21:07, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Conversely, it would also (as written) include any time that the army or militia was called out to deal with riots or raiders. I'm sure this all probably sounds needlessly pedantic to the question asker, but it is a problem that "war", "army", "nation", and "state" are all terms that have varied in meaning for time to time, to the extent that its probably impossible to find a definition of "war" that includes everything everyone agrees is a war and nothing that anybody thinks isn't a war. Iapetus (talk) 12:19, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

1923: The Irish Civil War ended, on May 24. The Russian Civil War ends on June 16. In China, the Warlord Era is reckoned as 1916-28.DOR (HK) (talk) 15:29, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Does frozen conflict count as war? 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:48, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

No it doesn't -- if they're not fighting, then it's not a war. 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 12:32, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

There was a claim made in 1988 that "since the Second World War the globe has only been without a war for a few days, to wit, for 26 days in September 1945" (see LAW AND STATE: A BIANNUAL COLLECTION OF RECENT GERMAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO THESE FIELDS (p. 32), but this is debunked here, since the Indonesian National Revolution was in progress then. Alansplodge (talk) 09:08, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

February 15

How to decide on the ideal linear drain for my personal bath?

I would like to improve my shower room style with a linear shower drain system. I'm not sure what type of linear drain to decide on: linear drain with stainless steel cover or tile insert linear drain system? What exactly is the best? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eliasdivan8 (talk • contribs) 13:42, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Define "best". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:14, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

One suggestion is a removable screen over the drain to catch hair. It should fit snugly into the drain opening so it doesn't get pushed out of position by sloshing water. It should be removable for easy cleaning and replacement, and also to allow larger "objects" to pass, like if you need to spit in the shower. If you can move it aside and back with your foot, then that avoids bending over. StuRat (talk) 18:38, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

A site that offers both linear and linear tile-insert drains says "The shower drains with tile insert system are very loved among designers and clients wanting to produce the impression of water disappearing under the floor". Blooteuth (talk) 22:42, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

February 16

Videos

I want to watch these two videos on this website, however they don't play for me. It says "stream not found". Is this a problem with my computer or the website? Can you find me these two videos on some other website where I can watch them? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.56.221.19 (talk) 00:46, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Do you have Flash? I also could not play the videos, but that could well be due to my use of NoScript to prevent me doing stupid things. However, it is clear that that the Flash plug-in for your browser is required (though it was difficult to make out the actual message on the display screen). Incidentally, the computing desk is usually better informed on these kinds of things. I'm not quite sure what the videos were of, but it sounds like the kind of thing they might have on the Internet Archive; searching that might be fruitful, though of course YouTube is the de facto leader. Matt Deres (talk) 01:43, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm seeing the same problem as you, and I'm reasonably sure my computer is functioning ok. So the problem is on the web server, probably a typo in a link, a missing video file, etc. I'm seeing this on other sites too, sometimes it's fixed quickly, sometimes not at all. An email to the site may help. Jahoe (talk) 15:03, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

What happened to the $ 100 million Wikipedia endowment fund?

In January 2016, the Wikipedia Foundation announced that it is launching a fund-raising program to raise $ 100 million as endowment fund that will enable it to operate its projects without annual fund-raising. [2] What happened to that? How much money have been raised till now? --IEditEncyclopedia (talk) 03:42, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm having a really hard time finding anything about this fundraiser from the WMF itself. There's plenty of information on the 2015-2016 fundraiser, but I haven't seen any mention of a "fundraiser to end all fundraisers". Someguy1221 (talk) 04:01, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

See this. --IEditEncyclopedia (talk) 04:26, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I can't find any official communication from the foundation that Juliet Barbara ever said anything like that. I also notice that Inverse's article is the only one to use that quote, anywhere on the internet. There is nothing about this at the WMF's blog, which seems odd for such an ambitious proposal. Maybe something like this was said somewhere, but I can't find out anything about it in the obvious places. It would probably be quickest to just ask at the contact page for the Foundation. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:46, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Some basic info behind the endowment at meta:Endowment Essay, [3] and [4] with contact details to find out more. Nanonic (talk) 08:05, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Business Insider has some information about it [5]. Apparently Wikipedia has assets valued at 92M, and it's not run with a deficit. That is, each year it builds up its cash reserves (That was +6M last year). Considering that it needs 66M yearly to keep running, this does not seem like a crazy big amount. NGOs have endowments, and these are obtained through donations. Nothing new under the sun here. Llaanngg (talk) 19:27, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

It does not need $66 million yearly to keep running. The cost to keep all Wikimedia projects operating at current traffic levels is only a few million dollars yearly. (The difference between Wikipedia and other top-10 sites is that the overwhelming majority of traffic comes from static files served by caching proxies.) You can see the latest budget here. Most of the money raised each year is spent on the salaries and other expenses of the Foundation's 277 employees (up from 2 employees in 2005, when they served ~1.4 billion page views per month; they currently serve ~17 billion per month). They spend more on fundraising (~$7M) than they do on their data centers (~$5M). There's a good article/answer here by Andreas Kolbe about the WMF's wasteful spending and deceptive fundraising practices, but the short version is that people donate too much money to them because of their high profile and it's gone to their heads. -- BenRG (talk) 03:48, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Russian roofers

There seems to be regular news reports about Russians sneaking onto, and then taking photos from, the tops of tall buildings, sometimes travelling quite some distance to other countries to do so: e.g. this or this or this. Is this activity in fact more popular amongst Russians than in other countries? If so, is there any analysis of why that is? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:15, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article urban exploration covers the general pastime of people exploring abandoned buildings or the forbidden parts of cities like sewers and rooftops. That article doesn't seem to suggest that it is particularly popular in Russia. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 15:53, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

(EC) Our relevant article is at Urban_exploration. It mentions a few prominent Russians, who may have attracted followers and copycats. But the hobby is also popular to some extent in Japan, USA, France, etc. There may be some influence of Russian buildings tending to be less locked down, or Russian law being less harsh on trespassers, but I don't have any refs to support that. Here [6] is a list of cool places to explore, tagged by country. Here [7] is a list of the best legal places. Here [8] is a stubby article on Wikitravel. Note haikyo as the Japanese term. WP:OR I first heard of this sort of thing at a large state university in the USA, students breaking in to steam tunnels. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:57, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

A possibly associated activity is Buildering "the act of climbing on the outside of buildings and other artificial structures". A fairly recent documentary in the UK called Don't Look Down followed a British "urban free climber" who went to Russia to meet his heroes, whose hobby is to dangle by their fingertips from the highest buildings they can illegally access (here is a still from the programme). Hopefully, Darwin was right :-) Alansplodge (talk) 19:20, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

February 17

Bold

When adding an answer to a Ref Desk question I accidentally hit a semi-colon instead of a colon, and my text appeared in bold. Why does that happen? Wymspen (talk) 08:48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Like this! Wymspen (talk) 08

48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

It's part of WikiMarkup, intended to be the headline of a list: Help:Wiki_markup#H:DL. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:51, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

(ec) See "Description lists" in Help:Wiki markup#Lists for what it's intended for, and why it shouldn't be used by itself. Rojomoke (talk) 08:56, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Permanently removing an image from Google's servers

So I uploaded a photo in a blog post on my (private) blogger account and published the post. I changed my mind after a while, and deleted the image from the post. However, I can still access the image with the old image url. Is there a way to permanently remove the image from Google's servers, or is this image going to be forever accessible to anybody with the url and all the Google folks? La Alquimista 17:30, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Does this help? --Jayron32 17:56, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Cutting hair against the grain or with the grain

Does cutting hair against the grain or with the grain produce visibly different results? --Llaanngg (talk) 19:30, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Hair has a grain? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:57, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I would guess you are talking about shaving, and mean shaving against the direction it grows or in the same direction. OR: In this case, you want to shave against the direction it grows, as going in the same direction just pushes the hair flat and doesn't shave it. (Note that electric razors with rotating discs shave in all directions, the idea being that they will eventually hit each hair in the proper direction to cut it.) StuRat (talk) 22:38, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

No, it's best to shave with the hair's growth to avoid razor burn (per the article you linked to). Hair growth varies in direction (on my face it's generally downwards but turns lateral and back on the sides of my neck) and when I was younger and didn't know better shaving downward on my entire neck caused a very mild abrasion that I hadn't noticed except for the opportunistic staph infections (about 1/3 of the population are staph carriers) that scarred my neck. --Modocc (talk) 23:12, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Razor burn is a sign of a dull blade. Try shaving against the hair growth direction with a new blade, and see if that causes any razor burn. I never get razor burn when using a sharp blade. StuRat (talk) 23:46, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Mmk, but the first article you linked to mentions "grain" twice: "Note the direction of razor travel is the same as the direction of the stubble hairs or 'grain" (caption of the second image) and in the subsection on "Razor burn": "The condition can be caused by shaving too closely, shaving with a blunt blade, dry shaving, applying too much pressure when shaving, shaving too quickly or roughly, or shaving against the grain." ---Sluzzelin talk 23:49, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

It does say that, but I don't see any sources for those statements. I've also labelled my original statement as OR. StuRat (talk) 23:50, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

For me, the laying down of the hair without the razor cutting is one of the the first signs of a dull razor. My razors are and were sharp, but my hair is thick, grows quickly and I could not ever shave upward against the grain without burn. In fact: "Most men’s skin is too sensitive to stand up to an against-the-grain shave without redness, razor burn, and even ingrown hairs, but if you can deal with it, go gently." [9] The issue with the infections on my neck was not obvious, but I've been free of infections there for a decade now since I corrected my strokes to go more with the grain there. --Modocc (talk) 00:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

February 18

Intelligence and orientation in the US of A

I've been watching thump...and it begs the question whether there truly is any correspondence in IQ and political affiliation. Where do things stand between the Republican V Democrats in the faculties between the ears department.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.98.249.243 (talk) 00:06, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

IQ stands for intelligence quotient. Or in other words: the score gained from undergoing certain tests. Nothing to do with social/machiavelli abilities.--Aspro (talk) 00:47, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

One thing you can be sure of: Each side thinks it's smarter than the other side. I don't have to cite that the sky is blue. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:48, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I'll just copy my comment from the last time this came up: High IQ correlates well with self-identification as a liberal, and low-IQ with self identification as a conservative[10]. It's not an enormous difference, with "very conservative"s averaging out at 95 IQ points, and "very liberal"s averaging out at 105 (so a difference between slightly below average and slightly above, rather than a difference between genius and brain damaged as some might suspect). This correlation is consistent in the UK as well. It's interesting to note that intelligence also correlates similarly well with degree of religiosity, so there could be a connection there. Also, now please also consider all of the problems with measuring IQ. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:03, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

If liberals are so smart, how come they keep losing elections? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:23, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

They don't. Obama won twice with wider margins, while Trump only won the electoral college, losing the popular vote by millions. And the difference between the two we can blame our founding fathers deciding that no matter how small a state's population is, it should still get 3 electoral votes, giving rural states disproportionate power in presidential elections. If you want to go back further, the younger Bush also won by narrow margins, while Clinton won by wider margins. See US presidential elections. StuRat (talk) 05:03, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

They do. From state government to Congress, liberals have consistently been losing since 2008. See Democratic losses since 2008--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 05:20, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

One thing that may contribute to this perception is how conservatives often ignore science, facts, etc., such as believing the easily disproven lies Trump and team send out daily. This looks like a lack of intelligence to liberals, but it's more of a "willful ignorance" than a genuine lack of intelligence. StuRat (talk) 05:06, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

on your claim that Trump and team send out "easily disproven lies" daily! 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 10:10, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Have there been any days when Trump and team didn't say anything? If so, that would technically "disprove" StuRat's comment. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I suspect it's more accidental. There are other notable correlations to be found in this sphere, such as a decreased interest in educational attainment among evangelical Christians (possibly because Universities are bastions of liberal heresy), and uneducated whites tending to work in industries harmed by more often by the democratic party than the republican (or at least, that's the perception). I find the argument, "Republicans court voting blocks that happen to correlate (very slightly) with lower IQ", is much more compelling than, "Republicans are stupid and everyone who votes for them is stupid." Someguy1221 (talk) 05:13, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Here are 80 lies, spread over Trump's first 28 days.[11] That's an average of one every 8 hours 24 minutes. 5.150.92.20 (talk) 13:42, 18 February 2017 (UTC)