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December 19

Creation of New Article Approval

Would it be in best interest of the community for me (Evershiner) to write an article on the existence and non-existence of the time spectrum? Thank you all for your time and good luck to the future of Wikipedia.

Evershiner (talk) 01:01, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

It would, so long as it is verifiable. If it is not, it would get the chop. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Be Bold :) If it isn't exactly verifiable, it doesn't mean it's not interesting. If it gets the chop, post your original version somewhere else. It certainly sounds interesting. Steewi (talk) 02:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The usual rules are that the subject of an article should be:

• Verifiable - that is to say, you must be able to list some books, scientific papers, or web pages produced by reputable people to show that what you say is true.
• Notable - it can't be a really obscure thing.

• While the guideline itself is fine, I'd argue your wording on this summary. I personally consider it a shame that we don't have articles on "really obscure" topics like Hydroxynaphthol Blue, the Piper of Peebles, or Gay bowel syndrome (I was going to put Roland the Farter here, but it seem's someone's actually written an article since I last checked). GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 00:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Hydroxynaphthol blue exists - you just had the wrong capitalisation. SteveBaker (talk) 04:02, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Switch it for the Camel Mobile Library then :) GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 13:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Suitable - it must be a subject suitable for an encyclopedia
• It can't be spam or Copyright infringement or a Hoax, Patent nonsense or gibberish.
• It must not be Original research.
• It must not be about newly-coined words or terms (i.e. neologisms).

Note especially that you can't write about ideas you've come up with by yourself - you MUST be able to point to reputable external resources to back up everything you say in the article. A quick google search for "Time Spectrum" doesn't turn up any web pages that look relevent - so I suspect this subject is going to fail the notability test - and possibly the verifiable and no-original-research rules too.

SteveBaker (talk) 02:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

What is the geneology of the "Modern" faucet?

Arne Jacobsen designed the Vola series in close collaboration with Teit Weylandt in 1969. Did someone from maybe the Bauhaus or elsewhere design a self-consciously "Modern" faucet (stylistically speaking)prior to that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.127.191.146 (talk) 01:32, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

What are you defining as a modern faucet? The ones in my house, for example, look not too different from ones that might have been there 100 years ago, from a strictly design point of view. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 00:08, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Well Richard Manoogian allegedly perfected the single-lever hot and cold faucet in the 1950s ... our article doesn't record whether he thought he was being self-consciously "Modern" or merely creative. As 24.147.86.187 noted, we need a better definition of "modern" as applied to faucets ... I'm going to presume that definition is "primarily the simplification of form and the elimination of ornament" and suspect that it is most unlikely, but not out of the question, that Vola could be considered the first "modern" faucet. You know, there isn't enough faucet history on the web :( -Tagishsimon (talk) 00:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Toronto's pacific mall.

This question is for people that know toronto!! You know pacific mall, the chinese mall with all the pirated movies that are like 5 dollars eash? I wanted to get the first season of robot chicken and the new futurama movie on dvd. BUT I couldnt find it any of the stores. Is their a store that sells "robot chicken" or "futurama". If so where is the store? (Superawesomgoat (talk) 01:56, 19 December 2007 (UTC))

Dear Wikipedia: I'm planning to do something illegal - could you help me to plan it? Nevermind that your and my words will be recorded on a public web server for posterity with no means to ever erase them. Yeah...right...smart. SteveBaker (talk) 02:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

And I am going to do it in a shopping mall that gets raided about twice a year for selling pirated DVDs, and where the police maintain cameras of who is selling what, and to whom, on a regular basis. The last raid was late August, of this year, I think. Bielle (talk) 04:14, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm starting to believe that the original poster's time here at Wikipedia is limited, seeing as how the only edits they've made were to post wind-up questions on the various reference desks.

Atlant (talk) 14:32, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Big holes near recently built homes

Sorry for the horrible title but anyway. When i see like planed homes in the suburbs they always have like a huge ditch thing next to them fenced off. What are these things for.

P.S Ill try to get a picture if you have no idea what im talking about BonesBrigade 03:30, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

If the big hole is not for the foundation of the house then it may be for conduits of various sorts: telephone, electricity, gas, sewer, water, all of which tend to be placed underground, in my part of North America, at any rate. The fencing will be to keep people and animals from falling in and to keep thieves out once there is something in the hole. Bielle (talk) 03:53, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

If you are talking about a whole development of a bunch of new homes it could be a swale purposefully made for several possible reasons. In many places new development is required to mitigate any wetlands filled by creating new places for water to drain into and serve somewhat the same purpose as the former wetland. It could also be the result of digging up soil from one place in order to level out and raise the surface of the land for the houses, especially in areas prone to flooding. Relatedly, it could have something to do with drainage -- a new housing development typically alters the natural drainage pattern. Drainage ditches are one result. Such swales might be fenced off because they are subject to flooding, or because new housing developments seem to love fences. I'm not exactly sure if I'm thinking of the same kind of thing you are describing, so this could all be missing the point. Pfly (talk) 09:06, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I live near Washington, DC. In my area, a new development usually replaces either grassland or woodland. The problem is that the development paves over and/or disrupts a pre-existing viable ecosystem that is capable of absorbing almost all of the rainfall and then releasing it slowly. The new development cannot absorb the rainfall, so it runs off into the Potomic river, taking excess fertilizer and dirt with it. Therefore, developers are required to create catchment basins. These are dry "ponds" with embankments that are engineered to be able to hold all of the runoff from a major storm. These catchments will fill to about a foot deep several times a year, and will fill much deeper once every few years. In an extreme "once a century" storm, a catchment will overflow, and it is designed to overflow without failing. The catchment is fenced to prevent children from drowning on the rare occasions when water is present. After a development has aged for a few years, the lawns and trees begin to take on the job of sequestering some of the runoff, and the catchment becomes less important. However, I know of no system for acknowledging this and "decomissioning" a catchment, and after all, the "hundred-year storm" becomes ore likely with global warming. -Arch dude (talk) 01:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Digital Switch-Off Date

Why does the Australian government want to switch-off analogue television by 2012? I have a digital set top box and definitely agree that digital television is the much better than analogue television (better picture, EPG, aspect ratio, extra channels), but does it really matter if both forms of television co-exist? Why does it matter if channels want to broadcast in both digital and in analogue? The original channels (ABC, SBS, Seven, Nine, Ten in most metro areas) are simulcast on digital and analogue anyway - why should it stop? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.208.109.169 (talk) 05:11, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

In short...MONEY! If the situation in Australia is anything like here in the USA, the radio/TV part of the electromagnetic spectrum (from 50MHz to around 1000MHz) is pretty full - and the rapidly growing cellular telephone and WiFi Internet sector is pushing the limits of what's available. By moving television from analog to digital, the signal can be compressed so it fits into a smaller 'slot' in the radio spectrum. Then, after a reasonable change-over period the section of the spectrum containing the old analog TV signal can be sold off (probably to cellular providers). Here in the USA, the rights to broadcast in just one section of the 700MHz region of the radio spectrum is about to sell by auction for at least 4.6 billion dollars. That's plenty of reason not to keep the old analog TV system running for very long once the change-over happens! SteveBaker (talk) 05:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Additionally, there is the "if not now, when?" argument. It costs money to broadcast a signal in both digital and analog. So why put the money into it for another five or ten years for the holdout viewers who still haven't upgraded their sets/boxes to digital? The technology is here, it's stable and working, so why wait unnecessarily? Switching now just gets it done with and the then unused spectrum can be used for other things as SteveBaker points out. Dismas|^(talk) 08:09, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so it's mainly so there is more room in the broadcasting spectrum. I knew it cost money to broadcast in both, but why is the government concerned? If the commercial channels wish to broadcast in both, why should they be stopped? The two government channels - ABC and SBS - would affect the government (and tax payer) to broadcast in both, but otherwise, why should the government stop the commercial channels? 203.208.109.169 (talk) 11:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The government is probably only concerned because they have been lobbied by the industry to change the standards, and because governments are often/usually in charge of things like broadcast regulations and allotting bandwidth (to avoid incompatibilities/interference). --24.147.86.187 (talk) 12:37, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Spectrum is an issue but digital actually uses wider spectrum then analog to broadcast more content. So there is an issue with spectrum but not the one presented here. FCC actually decided on going to digital way before the public even heard of DTV much less seen a HDTV on the shelves. If you look at it from the broadcaster's prespective, why waste money broadcasting both standard when one will do. Looking at consumers, why swich when there's no content available in the new format. It's a catch-22. FCC had to step in to mandate a date for the switch to get everyone moving forward. Broadcasters have actually pushed this date back because they couldn't meet the requirement on time. NYCDA (talk) 20:46, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

That's emphatically not true. Digital is way more compact than analog because signal compression is easily employed. (See Digital_television#Advantages_to_conversion: Citing the bandwidth efficiency of digital TV, after the analog switch-off, the FCC will auction off channels 52-69 (the lower half of the 700 MHz band) for other communications traffic,). The USA is taking the analog channels 2 through 69 and squishing them down into 6 though 51 - selling off 52 through 69 for cellular traffic. More than that, each of the new digital channels can carry one super-high-quality HDTV channel - or it can be chopped up to make lower quality channels with as little performance as a current analog TV channel - or it can be dropped right down to still single-frame images for things like weather channels, TV guides and such like. SteveBaker (talk) 03:47, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

VCE Exam Results 2007

Can someone please find a list of all the schools in Victoria ranked according to this years VCE results? Thanks in advance. --Candy-Panda (talk) 11:53, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe this is what you're looking for. There's a link on that website to another website containing the VCE Top Scores of 2007 which may be more concise, but which I found more confusing.--十八 15:09, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for that, but what I was looking for more was a list of all the schools results, not just the top scoring ones. --Candy-Panda (talk) 11:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Looking for a site

Okay, I'm asking this question here, instead of at the math desk. I need to know where there is something online that can divide polynomials online, besides the thing linked to from the polynomial long division, at http://www.webgraphing.com/polydivision.jsp, because that one is not always functional. 75.170.41.88 (talk) 16:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Does this work? Simplifies any expression you put into it. 70.162.25.53 (talk) 22:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Lymphocytes

Are there any other reasons why you would have a very low lymphocytes count in your body, Besides just HIV? If you are considered to be a fairly healthy person.71.205.179.63 (talk) 22:03, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Lymphopenia can be a symptom of many diseases, including (but not limited to): Human granulocytic ehrlichiosis, Adenosine deaminase deficiency, Intestinal lymphangiectasia, Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, lupus erythematosus, Schimke immunoosseous dysplasia, Ataxia telangiectasia, Legionella pneumophila, Reticular dysgenesis and many others. It can also be a side effect of taking various drugs, including but not limited to certain antimetabolites, alkylating agents, phenothiazine, sulfonamides (and their derivatives), antibiotics, and antiarrhythmic drugs. In other words, there are countless reasons one could have a low lymphocyte count other than HIV. If you do, then you should ask a doctor for advice. Rockpocket 23:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Rockpocket for the info I have had a bad infection for at least a month now. They assume now it is spreading throughout my whole body, they did alot of bloodwork even some x-rays and all they came up with was I have a very low lymphocyte count so I had to go back and get more tests done but one was an HIV test which I am not going to lie, scared the crap out of me. So when I got home I hopped on the computer to find whatever I could about low lymphocyte counts, everything kept leading me back to HIV, so I appreciate you giving me other examples. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.205.179.63 (talk) 20:19, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

You are welcome, I hope you return to full health soon. Rockpocket 22:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The sky in the North East of Scotland

I live in the north east of Scotland, and just now there is an incredibly bright light in the sky, not a star but like a constant almost gold coloured light that barely moves from morning until night, although its obviously only visible at night. Is this a satelite monitoring something, or something else? Thanks. JG. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.178.239.127 (talk) 22:45, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

If it barely moves yet is very bright, it can't be a satellite. Pfly (talk) 22:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can make out, you should be able to see Saturn - low in the sky - and Mars, somewhat higher. One of these might be the culprit. See if you can figure out this site, for instance. Aberdeen is 57.15N 2.11W. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tagishsimon (talk • contribs) 23:03, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

There is no way for a star or a planet to not move across the sky as the earth rotates. If we have the whole story here - then this has to be something 'geostationary' - but anything that's in a stable geostationary orbit would have to be a long way away (not like low-earth-orbit stuff like the ISS that are close enough to be naked-eye objects) - and that would make it too dim to see. I don't see how this can happen - can we get some more information please? Where is it relative to the horizon? High or low? Is it to your north, south, east or west? Are you in hilly or flat terrain? SteveBaker (talk) 00:00, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Could it be this? -- Saukkomies 21:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

No! As I said before - the OP says that the object is almost stationary from dusk to dawn. For that to be true, it would absolutely have to be in a geostationary orbit. A comet travels in a very elongated ellipse around the sun - taking weeks to months to pass by the earth and around the Sun and then back out into deep space. So over the course of several days, the comet is more or less moving in a straight line more or less towards or away from the Sun. But our intrepid OP is standing somewhere up towards the top of the earth (maybe a third of the way down from the pole to the equator) - spinning around like a top once per day. The comet (and the sun, the moon and all of the stars, planets, moons, minor planets and asteroids) are pretty much crossing all the way across the sky over the course of 12 hours...their own motion is all too slow to make much of a difference compared to crossing the sky as the earth rotates. The only things that can stay still in the sky has to be things that are going around the earth exactly once per day - or a stationary object that's sitting where the pole-star (Polaris) is. I doubt that Polaris is bright enough to be notable - and all of the planets and comets are far too close to the plane of the ecliptic to appear that far north. If this object isn't using gigantic rocket motors to do maintain this freakishly strange motion - then it has to be in a geostationary orbit - and that means that the object must be exactly 35,786 km above the equator - and somewhere low in the Southern sky if you are watching it from Scotland. The problem with THAT is that we're pretty sure that we know all of the objects up there in geostationary orbit - and they're all pretty tiny. There is no way that any man-made object is going to be visible to the naked eye 36,000 kilometers away. So - I can't imagine ANYTHING that fits the description. Which means that I'm personally quite certain that the OP's description is wrong in some way. SteveBaker (talk) 03:33, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Have your powers of imagination deserted you that much, Steve? What about objects that are not man-made? (I'm not saying it's a ginormous alien spacecraft ... well, not necessarily).  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 03:58, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, if it's some natural object in geosynchronous orbit - we'd know all about it we have an awful lot of satellites up there - and it's getting crowded. There are lots of people watching that special orbit to keep an eye on space debris - there is really no way for something unexpected (and large enough to be seen with the naked eye fro 36,000 km away)! If it's not in geosynchronous orbit, it has to be expending a phenomenal amount of energy in a carefully controlled manner in order to be geosynchronous without being in that special orbital band - that implies intelligence and very, very big engines! So pretty much it's got to be a ginormous alien spacecraft...or the OP made a mistake. SteveBaker (talk) 04:15, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not an alien spaceship, and it's not geosynchronous. It's my spaceship, which I carelessly left parked over JG's house. Sorry, my bad, I'll move it, didn't mean to disturb. --Trovatore (talk) 04:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

But seriously, a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, even if visible from the ground, would not appear stationary over Scotland. Over Ecuador, maybe. Steve, you're slipping -- I would have expected you to catch that. --Trovatore (talk) 04:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, never mind -- you did say "over the equator"; that's true, you could see that from Scotland, but from a lot of other places too. I was assuming it was localized to Scotland, which you can't do with an orbit. --Trovatore (talk) 04:29, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Satellites in geosynch orbits still appear stationary from Scotland - they have to be in an equatorial orbit...true...but they are 36,000 km away - so they'd still be pretty visible in the Southern sky. (Which is why I asked where in the sky this thing appears). SteveBaker (talk) 12:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

That's good - I thought it was Santa out doing a practice run. Steewi (talk) 04:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Pu-lease! Rudolf's nose is RED - the OP said "almost gold coloured" - but perhaps Santa practices with the lesser-known "George the gold-nosed reindeer" - about whom very little is known. SteveBaker (talk) 12:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The OP didn't say where in the sky this light is. If it is near the horizon it could easily be something terrestrial. A new bright light on top of a radio tower or giant wind turbine tower, etc. Pfly (talk) 06:05, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

That's why I asked the follow-up question of whether he lives in a hilly area. My best guess is that it's a light on top of a radio tower or something (except those would be red) - so it needs to be something like a regular light in the window of a building high up the side of a mountain or something...but he sees the light at dawn and at dusk - you'd think the fact that it's terrestrial would be obvious). SteveBaker (talk) 12:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Mars made a close approach to Earth on 18 Dec and will come into opposition on Dec 24. Details: [1] --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 10:54, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

One more time for those who missed reading the earlier explanations... The OP said: "...light that barely moves from morning until night..." - so it can't be a star or a planet or a comet, those move across the sky in a huge arc from dusk 'til dawn...so no! It's definitely not Mars! The only thing outside of geostationary orbit that stays stationary in the sky (more or less) is "Polaris" - the pole star. But planets can't be there because they lie in the plane of the ecliptic. SteveBaker (talk) 12:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

What about a huge paper kite attached to the ground. That has the advantage of being not only (more or less) stationary but also stationery.  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 21:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I wonder, just out of curiosity, what kinds of mushrooms grow in Scotland... heh. -- Saukkomies 16:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Mmmm'K: Chlorophyllum molybdites, Amanita muscaria. SteveBaker (talk) 04:00, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Competition driving prices up?

I know competition is supposed to make prices lower, and it does in most cases, but has anyone noticed that it also drives up prices?

Many years ago, GAP jeans were good quality and were $30-40. Then diesel jeans came out for like $80. Then Seven's came out, drove the price to $120+. Then diesel jeans raises the prices on the next batch (or next seasons jeans), and now I see jeans for over $250 (I'm not talking high end stuff like Armani or D&G). Its kinda crazy, and GAP jeans prices have gone way up too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.167.138.192 (talk) 23:37, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

There's a sucker born every minute..hotclaws 23:44, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it was competition doing that - it's "What the market will stand". You can still get <$20 jeans in WalMart - you simply have a clientel who don't want to spend less because there are social benefits to telling people how much you paid. SteveBaker (talk) 23:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. See false premise. It's merely that demand for the intangible benefits of over-priced clothes is increasing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tagishsimon (talk • contribs) 00:24, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

See Veblen good. -- Coneslayer (talk) 01:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I would have to disagree with your statement about "There's a sucker born every minute." I buy nice expensive jeans because I can, I like them, and most other people either cant or are not willing to spend the money. And yes walmart does have $20 jeans, but the prices of the same jeans from the same store have gone up way more then the rate of inflation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.105.78.106 (talk) 06:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, so how often would you say a sucker is born? One a minute is just about half a million a year, out of, let's see, maybe 100m or so total? Half a percent, that's less than one might guess, actually. --Trovatore (talk) 08:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Don't rule out Price fixing too (not that I'm saying they are just in case any Lawyers are watching), but you'd be amazed at what products some companies will inflate the price of.[2] - 86.21.74.40 (talk) 14:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Competition does not affect prices. It's the law of supply and demand. When there is competition (to supply), supply is increased which lowers the price. If the increase in demand outpaces increase in supply, price will still rise. On the other hand, there could be competition (to demand) to purchase raw materials causing the finished product to cost more. NYCDA (talk) 15:52, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Really, read Veblen good. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 05:00, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

December 20

question about mobile phone numbers

what is the longest recorded held mobile phone number used to date, my freind has has his since mobiles first came out over 15 years ago and still uses the same number is this a record? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.97.161.115 (talk) 00:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

My mom has had the same mobile phone number since 1992. Mobile phones as we know them today have been around since the early 1980s so I highly doubt 15 years is anywhere close to the record.--ChesterMarcol (talk) 03:40, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The Nordic Mobile Telephone network opened in 1981, and in Finland at least, many people have mobile phone numbers that they have kept since those analogue days. So someone may well have had the same mobile number since 1981.--Rallette (talk) 09:12, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe Prince Philip had an early-model car phone in the 50s. No idea what his number was, though. Maybe "1." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

"Songs"

Hello, I was asking how can you write a treble clef and bass clef and alto into a grand staff and write the time and key signature with it? I'm trying to write sheet music for a song I'm writing and I was wondering how you could wirte like Mozart, five-hundred years before the advent of computers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.250.175.113 (talk) 01:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Not sure I understand your question. Look at any orchestral score - it will have different lines for different instruments. Some use the treble clef, some the bass, some the alto. Harps use both treble and bass, as do pianos if there are any in the orchestration. All the instruments have the same time signature, and the same key signature (except for transposing instruments). It's not the case that all the treble-clef instruments are at the top, all the bass-clef instruments are at the bottom, and the other-clef instruments are in between - they're more or less all over the place. It's a lot more orderly when it comes to songs with a guitar or piano accompaniment. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:37, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you talking about being able to compose music like Mozart did - which was that he would write all the different parts for each instrument as he went along through the piece? In other words, Mozart would write the notes for a particular measure for the violins, then for the same measure for the violas, then for that same measure again for the cellos, and then again for the bass, and so forth on down the page covering all the instruments. Then he'd start again at the top with the next measure in the piece - writing from top to bottom for each measure. Everyone else in the world writes music so that they would write one instrument at at time. So they'd write the whole piece for the violin, then go back and write the whole piece for the viola, etc. We know Mozart did this because we have some of the manuscripts he used to compose his original works, and we can see by the way the pen was dragged slightly down the page that he was composing in this way - the only person known to be able to do this kind of thing for a full orchestral symphony. WHat is more, he would not go back and edit his music very much - he got it right the first time through. This means that he had inside his head the entire symphony for all the pieces in the orchestra at the same time, and was transcribing onto paper the whole thing all at once. A true genius. -- Saukkomies 21:46, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not the original questioner, but I can't help asking a secondary question. Wouldn't that sort of vertical writing with few corrections be far more likely to indicate that he was simply copying the music from another source? (perhaps a rough draft?) I'm sure this has been researched thoroughly, but the way you described it makes it sound naive to assume that he held entire symphonies in his head to the last detail. 72.10.110.107 (talk) 16:43, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

If Mozart had done this once or twice, then yes, maybe it would mean he was copying it. However, it's pretty much how he composed, and there are some eyewitness accounts that this is how he did it, too. Sometimes he would play billiards while composing between turns and picking up right where he left off in the middle of a measure. The type of brain that can do something like that is just absolutely amazing. -- Saukkomies 16:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Almost as amazing as a deaf composer. :-) Pfly (talk) 08:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Formal academic format

In formal academic writing, should the paragraphs be aligned left or justified? As well, how many spaces of indent should there be between subsequent paragraphs and should there be a line space between each paragraph? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 02:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

It varies. Get a copy of the journal you want to submit to, and see what they do. --Trovatore (talk) 02:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Following Trovatore's advice, if you're submitting to a particular journal, each will have its own specifics, and will be supplied by the journal or specified on their website. If it's not for publishing (e.g. for a school assignment) the exactness probably doesn't matter.

Justified usually looks better and neater for an assignment, and is more often used, although there are many who prefer a left justification because the varied gaps between words can confuse the brain slightly and reduce reading speed.

WRT indent and paragraph spacing, usage also varies, especially by country/region. A smaller indent is better if you're using columns. A line space between paragraphs can help when the last line of the previous paragraph is almost at the end of the line, but also wastes space.

It's probably best to ask the person who is going to receive the work. If in doubt, be consistent, and keep a back-up copy so you can make changes if necessary. Steewi (talk) 04:39, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Better yet, write it in LaTeX -- then you put the entire document into a new style, as needed, just by changing a line or two at the top. --Trovatore (talk) 04:48, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Eh, that really depends on the discipline. LaTeX is not common in the humanities at all, and I've heard horror stories of trying to get it to do things that are quite common in the humanities (inserting complex images, for example). --24.147.86.187 (talk) 14:19, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

As Trovatore says, it varies. If you are submitting a paper to a journal, then find their "guidance for authors". Sometimes they want work to be submitted in one format (eg double spaced) while they will publish in another. If you are wanting to make a piece of text that looks "academic" then find a journal that you want to emulate and follow its format. If you want to write something that looks "professional" to submit as homework, then the journals that I have here use justification, with no extra line between paragraphs, and an indent of about 2 letter widths (.15 inch). SaundersW (talk) 10:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Note that journals often have very counter-intuitive formatting guidelines (e.g. all text 12 pt, all text double-spaced, including footnotes, etc.), that they standardize both for their own purposes (preferences in reading) but also so that they can reliably estimate what its printed page length would be. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 14:15, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

To summarise: write in the style the reader requires. Discover this from observation or from asking. If there really is no preferred style then create one for yourself. But always leave sufficient space between the lines and paras for the reader to annotate. My set-up allows for the style requirements of four different publishers.86.197.21.184 (talk) 15:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)petitmichel

this is a question from a Millenium Quiz

Determine from the beginning letters of the following 'phrase' what the answer is for the phrase

"P of BCM" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.237.18.2 (talk) 03:10, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe that would be the Privatisation of British coal mines. 70.162.25.53 (talk) 03:46, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Pieces of Big Chocolate Monkeys? Adam Bishop (talk) 08:02, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Or maybe Propagation of Bible Centred Ministries? Richard Avery (talk) 09:05, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

More likely that than Publication of "British Chess Magazine", at any rate. I like the chocolate monkeys idea. Grutness...wha? 11:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Then it had better be Piles of Big Chocolate Monkeys" or there won't be enough to go around! SteveBaker (talk) 11:59, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

It would help if you gave us the context, such as an event that occurred in 1994. [3] --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 10:42, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Do I smell King William's College Quiz? SaundersW (talk) 17:33, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh - the horror! Although not all that different from manning the Ref.Desk on a bad day! Last year's quiz - for those with a few sleepless nights to kill. SteveBaker (talk) 21:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The only one I could come up with off the top of my head is "the Rock Island Line is a mighty good road". Is there a link to the answers somewhere? --Trovatore (talk) 05:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1997386,00.html#article_continue SteveBaker (talk) 12:33, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

And I am wrong: the 2007 quiz is here.SaundersW (talk) 22:46, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Panel of Bean Counting Managers. Edison (talk) 05:42, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

What are Value Addition Norms?

Hi,

Want to know in detail about the Value Addition Norms (Economics) esp in relation to India. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.7.86.7 (talk) 04:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Phonetic Alphabet Text-to-Speech

Has a text-to-speech application using the International Phonetic Alphabet ever been made (or considered)? It would be pretty easy to make, considering all the sounds are uniform, right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.208.109.169 (talk) 08:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Apple's PlainTalk synthesizer accepts phonemic input, not exactly IPA though. See http://developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/Sound/Sound-201.html. ›mysid (☎∆) 09:39, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

In most (perhaps all) implementations of text-to-speech, the software first translates ordinary English words into phonemes - then in a separate stage converts the phonemes into audio. Those are really completely independent problems. Breaking that chain in the middle and allowing the direct input of phonemes is easy. The software I last worked on that did this had a dictionary of special pronunciations that the end-user could edit by entering the English spelling and the corresponding phonetic version - and a way to input phonetic text directly if you wanted to replace their front end with your own or edit the phonetic output before sending it to the phoneme-to-audio section. But as Mysid points out - the phoneme format wasn't IPA. The reason for that is that good text-to-speech has to know to do things like inflecting the pitch of a sentence upwards at the end if it's a question - which is something that IPA doesn't attempt to handle. SteveBaker (talk) 11:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

beverage can dimensions

What is the circumference of a typical beverage can? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smith22793 (talk • contribs) 14:27, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

We're not supposed to do original research, but the beverage can article doesn't have the information. My Coke can is 10⅛" 8⅛" around. How sad for you to live in a place where there is no Coke and no tape measures. --Milkbreath (talk) 14:43, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

While the lack of tape measures could be inconvenient, the lack of Coca-Cola would be a boon. DuncanHill (talk) 16:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

You see - that's the entire problem. Do you do a series of carefully controlled double-blind experiments and use appropriate statistical tools to analyse your results? No - you just go out and measure a can. Without references, how can we verify that you measured the can? Perhaps it was in truth a somewhat atypical can.

What you need is MATHEMATICS! Logic dictates that the beverage industry must have picked can dimensions that minimise the amount of materials needed to construct a can of given volume in order to maximise profits. Hence we may easily deduce the size of a coke can from first principles. 12oz is 355ml, and the minimum area of aluminium sheeting for a can of given volume is when h=2r so it follows that they will have chosen to make the can 7.67cm tall with a diameter of 7.67cm. Hmmm - sadly, my Diet Coke can is 12.5cm tall with a diameter of 6.3cm...damn! Stoopid can manufacturers! Don't they realise they could be using 10% less aluminium? Bah! SteveBaker (talk) 16:09, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Whereas you could be using 11% fewer letters if you adopted the correct spelling aluminum. --Trovatore (talk) 18:34, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

According to Aluminium, it's an American\British thing, and Steve is apparently of British origin. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:56, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you Americans are easily confused: AluminIum - it's exactly like Platinium. Of course there are exceptions - element 11 for example - we Brits say: Sodum. SteveBaker (talk) 21:15, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The flat endcaps may have to be thicker than the cylindrical part, in order to withstand the pressure. There may also be a cost-per-unit-length term for the seams connecting the cylinder and endcaps. At this time, I cannot accept your submission to J. Bev. Contain. Eng., but I hope that you will expand your analysis to include the aforementioned factors. -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:18, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The Can Manufacturers Institute actually has standards: [4]. Note that dimensions use an odd format. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 16:29, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

We were having a perfectly good time before you came along and introduced facts into the discussion. The nerve of some people. -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

And it's not even Friday here yet. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:28, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Coneslayer suggests there may be a cost-per-unit-length for the seam connecting the cylinder and end cap(s). I respectfully submit that there must be such a cost as the seam uses extra material. SaundersW (talk) 16:43, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The top is indeed thicker, basically because there's no way to make it as thin as the sides and still have the can manufacturable, but several years ago they actually started making the top smaller in diameter just to save a little on the amount of alumin*um involved. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Like any important decision with good engineering logic behind it, the can's dimensions were determined not by engineers, but by the marketing department. anonymous6494 04:45, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Gotta have enough room for the logo! I once worked for Philips - one of the things I worked on was the very first CD-ROM. I'm told that it took longer for the marketting department to decide where to place the little Philips shield logo than it took to design the CD drive! SteveBaker (talk) 12:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

A physics teacher might say "First, assume an ideal spherical Coke can." Edison (talk) 05:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

(If it's a teacher, they'd have to add "Neglecting friction and air resistance"). SteveBaker (talk) 12:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

a company's duty (true or false)

What with Christmas around the corner and the rampant commercialism praying on my mind, I was wondering whether it's true that (one of) a company's duty(s) is to turn a profit. I wondered if this was to the exclusion of everything else, and also started to wonder if there was room in business for 'nice' people. thanks 83.104.131.135 (talk) 16:01, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe that maximising the value of the company to shareholders is a requirement for publically traded companies - they could probably be sued by their shareholders if they didn't. But a privately owned company can presumably do whatever the heck it likes. SteveBaker (talk) 16:12, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, within the applicable laws that govern them, of course.

Atlant (talk) 16:48, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, see our articles on non-profit organizations, not-for-profit corporations and cooperatives. Gandalf61 (talk) 17:03, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

This was the subject of a book called 'The Corporation' by Joel Bakan, probably one of the most disingenuous books i've read (save for some of Michael Moore's work). There is a requirement to run a business for the interest of the shareholders, this is because they own the company - not the people who work for it (of course some staff are stockholders too). This doesn't mean there is any requirement to do anything except for act in their interests. Anybody with an ounce of credibility would acknowlwedge that there are many ways to make more profit for a company. Some are (on paper) terrible - things like under paying of staff, reduced spending on safety at work, sacking workforce while paying top bonuses. Some are (on paper) wonderful things - provide competitive wage, provide benefit packages, offer above regulatory requirements safety features, treat workers with respect, give workers stability/opportunity to develop etc. ALL these things CAN be seen as 'wasting' of shareholder value if you want to look at them that way. They can also be seen as factors that create more wealth for shareholders through improved staff-morale, increased quality of staff hired, dedicated staff etc. The actual 'requirement' is 100% ammoral. It neither requires good or bad behaviour to occur. The implementation of pursuing profit is where issues can occur. A desire to make money can lead people to do many things, but the simple fact remains that the company is ran for the interest of its owners, and when shareholders don't operate in the company the people they employ are duty bound to act in their interests.

A private company can lose money/not turn a profit as long as it has the funds to operate. There are non-profit companies and there are mutual companys, yet most of these 'retain' money for future years of trading. Neither is morally better than any other. ny156uk (talk) 17:39, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The Body Shop is an example of a company that mixes social activism with its pursuit of profit. Most people, I think would suggest Anita Roddick was a person who was both successful in business and "nice" in the sense she promoted ethical consumerism. Rockpocket 18:34, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course this could be debated until the end of time. For example a huge number of the products quite simply don't work or are placebo's or things designed to appear 'nice' and at the very least are decietful. Its a shop that makes people want stuff that has no benefit to them what so ever, quite unehtical from this point of view.--Dacium (talk) 23:56, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

"Niceness" and ethics are always a value judgment. But that The Body Shop, at least under her stewardship, had objectives beyond turning a profit are beyond debate. Whether one agrees with those objectives or, question her motivation, is of course another matter. Rockpocket 06:50, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

USA serial killer list

I don't have enough information to contribute, but I do know that John Norman Collins (Michigan)is one of the first serial killers in the U.S. and is not on the list. Also, Timothy Spencer (Richmond, Virginia), the first serial killer convicted on DNA evidence in the U.S., is not listed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.172.193.106 (talk) 21:00, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I added the link to the list the OP is referencing. -- Saukkomies 16:29, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Well you obviously know how to edit, so why not contribute yourself. I think we would be more then happy to see you add it BonesBrigade 00:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by BonesBrigade (talk • contribs)

Dang, dude, what was in your cup of coffee this morning? Just because I added the link does not mean I know the answer to the OP's question. Get a grip. -- Saukkomies 11:01, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Women

Where can women be found who are okay with (faithful) polygamous marriages?

EDIT: Faithful as in no extramarital affairs, not as in religious.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.227.25.175 (talk) 22:03, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know much about the subculture, but the practice of having multiple dedicated, long-term lovers is called polyamory. The article forms of nonmonogamy has a list of other similar terms and variations. I don't know where such women can be found per se, but I know at least one personally, and there are probably websites or something similar designed specially for this purpose. --Masamage ♫ 22:33, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

There usually are swinging groups in every town/state, you should try a google search. -Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 22:37, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

What does swinging have to do with polygamy? Dismas|^(talk) 11:17, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

You get to have sex with more than one person? I doubt it works for the OP anyway, as he seems interested in getting some gals to share him, but not get shared with other guys. Good luck, buddy! :) Matt Deres (talk) 11:50, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Why don't we try focusing on answering the question that the OP has posed, which is about POLYGAMOUS MARRIAGE, not polyandry or swinging. If you want to get technical, what the OP is asking about is Polygyny. There actually are some sites that are like the standard online dating services you see advertised a lot, except for Polygamists. Now, mostly these are geared for religious types. But there are non-religious sites out there, for instance this one. -- Saukkomies 11:09, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

December 21

Serious Question

This is a totally serious question and it's something I've been wondering for awhile, what would Wikipedia's IQ be?

I Found a Cat in my Hat (talk) 02:07, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the last time it took the test, the result was 42. But that's just a rough estimate. -Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 02:21, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

IQ tests are unreliable on people, applying one to an abstract concept would be about as useful as applying it to a random number generator. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 02:23, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Or if we interpret the question as regarding the collective IQ of Wikipedia's users, readers, or some combination thereof, we are left with the impossibility of testing some vast number of people that we don't even have statistics about to get to square one.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

It's a redirect page to Intelligence quotient. Duuh. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

It would not only be unusuful, it would be impossible. Intelligence (what the IQ evalues) comes from intellegere, which means "to understand". Wikipedia doesn't understand anything because it doesn't have a mind of it's own, it's a concept, an idea. It cannot develop on it's own, don't WE know? -Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 02:31, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

If one assumes that "Wikipedia's" intelligence is the average intelligence of its users, then given a large enough user base, and assuming that its users are rather representatively drawn from the overall population, it should be around 100. If you take Wikipedia to be a form of artificial intelligence itself, then it doesn't have any intelligence; it is a collection of information, it has no processing or understanding skills. As an aside, one might take the Chinese room into consideration. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 02:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd bet that the result would probably be the same, or very slightly higher than the result you would have gotten if you had given the same test to the smartest (highest IQ) editor who was participating in the exercise. Typicaly IQ tests will test your logical abilities not your knowledge, so Wikipedia's vast store of knowledge would be almost completely irrelevant. Since the solutions to logic problems are usualy obvious once someone has explained it to you, I would expect that if you somehow asked Wikipedia the questions from an IQ test, the easy ones would be solved by whoever got to them first, The dificult ones by a small group of editors, and the absolute hardest one that could be answered would be by whoever was the 'smartest' among the group of editors participating.

Sure, I'm simplifying a bit. I'm assuming that the difficulty of a test problem is a perfectly linear and objective value. But I think that on an (theoretical) ideal IQ test that's how it is supposed to be.

On this topic, check out Kasparov versus The World, where everyone on the internet had the opportunity to collaboratively play against Kasparov. What wound up happening is that after move 9 the world started always following the lead of the best player commenting on the match. That is, until the world mysteriously didn't follow her lead on move 51, (possibly because of a security flaw in the voting system.) and made a fatal bad move. APL (talk) 03:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's IQ would be zero. Intelligence Quotient scores are based on the ability to work things out. WP doesn't work anything out, it's just a dumb thing with infinite memory. --WebHamster 07:39, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Intelligence is not knowledge. IQ tests work hard to NOT require knowledge in order to get a good score. They don't ask things like "On what year was Franz Joseph I of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary born? [ ]1820, [ ]1830, [ ]1715, [ ]1955". Instead, IQ tests have questions like "Square is to circle as rectangle is to...[ ]triangle, [ ]square, [ ]ellipse, [ ]circle" (except they do this all in pictures so you don't have to know what a circle, a square or a rectangle is). Wikipedia has vast stores of knowledge and I suppose could be said to be able to answer the first question (well, it has the KNOWLEDGE to answer it - but it's search capabilities can't answer that question literally). But it's a dumb computer with no powers of reasoning - there is no chance that it could answer the second question. So, yeah, it scores a big fat zero.

If you are asking "What is the average IQ of Wikipedia editors?" then that's a harder question. It's very likely to be greater than 100 - because people with VERY low IQ's can't understand how to use computers or Wikipedia's interface - so there has to be a slight bias to the high end. But we don't really know much about the demographics of Wikipedia editors - we have no clue about age distributions or national origin or sex - we have no chance to know people's IQ scores!

SteveBaker (talk) 12:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

To find the IQ of a group, calculate the harmonic sum of the IQ of its members. That is, you take each person's IQ, take its reciprocal, add them all up, and take the reciprocal again. Sometimes it's said that you take the IQ of the least intelligent member and divide by the number of people in the group, but actually that's just an approximation. --Trovatore (talk) 18:42, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The post-title MD in the US: Recognition of a degree or of a licence to practices medicine?

In the US, is the title "MD" (as in Dr Joe Bloggs, MD) recognition of someone who has a degree of Doctor of Medicine, or is it recognition of a license to practice medicine? I'm wondering about this - does someone with a non-MD medical degree (e.g, a British or Australian MBBS) who is licensed to practice in the US have the right to use "MD" because they are a doctor of medicine licenced to practice, or is it just a sign of completing a Doctor of Medicine degree? (I'm not logged in because I'm on a shared terminal, but by wikiname is User:Gunny01). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.45.22.51 (talk) 02:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if there are statutory restrictions on the use of the letters "MD," but I can tell you that American physicians with other types of degrees, such as a DO, do not call themselves "MDs." Instead, they would call themselves "Dr. Joe Smith, DO." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

So-called doctors (technically speaking you ain't a doctor unless you have and doctorate) with an MBBS are not licensed to practice medicine in the US, but neither are people with an MD. Both have to take the United States Medical Licensing Examination before they are licensed (and those with non-US medical degrees also have to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates Clinical Skills Assessment and ensure their degree was awarded by an institution in the International Medical Education Directory ) If you pass those exams and checks, you can practice in the US irrespective of your type of medical degree. Rockpocket 06:32, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

So the title MD indicates you have a Doctor of Medicine - i.e. it has nothing to do whether you are licensed or not? --121.45.22.51 (talk) 07:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

That is correct (and similarly true in Canada). Matt Deres (talk) 12:25, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, to confuse matters further though, it should be noted that most US MD programs incorporate Step 1 and Step 2 of the Medical Licensing Examination. So while an MD does only indicate that you have a Doctor of Medicine, its also true that most people who have an MD already completed the Licensing Examination as part of the program, and thus are licensed to practice under supervision. Typically people with MD's take Step 3 of the exam during their residency, this permits them to practice unsupervised. So, generally speaking, in the US having an MD will usually equate to being partially licensed! Rockpocket 20:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The meaning of life?

In the description of the Reference Desk, it said to ask anything. So I'm going to ask something wondered for years.

What is the meaning of life?

71.220.213.101 (talk) 03:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

See Meaning of life for an incomplete response. -Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 03:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

This reminds me of a story my old friend told me when he was in guitar class. After finish learning something the teacher asked "any questions" to which one student said "whats the meaning of life?". randmom i know but i couldn't resist telling it...ahh but now to sign this post, which will most likely end up with sinebot signing it anyway after i did. BonesBrigade 03:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by BonesBrigade (talk • contribs)

That's because your signature has a link to User:Esskater11 (your old username perhaps?) instead of your current user page User:BonesBrigade. —Keenan Pepper 07:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes - specifically, you logged in as User:BonesBrigade but your signature links to User:Esskater11 instead. The SineBot looks at an edit made by User:BonesBrigade and expects to find a link to User:BonesBrigade indicating that the message was signed. Not finding that link makes it assume that the message wasn't signed - so it goes ahead and adds its own signature. Fix your signature so it links to BonesBrigade and SineBot will behave itself. SteveBaker (talk) 11:56, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Why does life always have to have a meaning? Does the sky have a meaning? Do baseball bats have meaning? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 05:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Two answers: "42" and replication of DNA. That's about it really. --WebHamster 07:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that the question is always worded badly. You can ask "What is the purpose of life?" and get a meaningful answer - or you could ask "What is the meaning of the word 'life'?" - but things and processes don't have meanings. Nobody asks "What is the meaning of digestion?" or "What is the meaning of driving a car?" - it's a grammatically incorrect sentence - which is the only thing that makes it hard to answer. SteveBaker (talk) 11:47, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Which is why I answered both :P --WebHamster 12:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

According to Wiktionary life has 10 separate meanings; the first one in the list is "the state that precedes death and follows birth or conception". Gandalf61 (talk) 13:45, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

If I may put my musings in here, thank you. I have been pondering on the same thing for a few months now because I very often feel lost in civilisation, among people, in the rush of every day. Although on the other hand I can make myself feel at home practically everywhere, having mastered two foreign languages and travelled quite a bit, I feel now more than ever that I don't fit in. I've thought about the meaning of life, and I've come to the conclusion that we are meant to leave something behind for the future and/all for mankind. Something definitely good, that people will benefit from one way or the other. All people. Because, well, replication of DNA leads inevitably to death anyway, and as for 42, although Japan had recently almost confirmed UFO's and there's a good deal of certainty that They're somewhere out there, we aren't really all that capable of truly reaching out to the stars. So, do something for people, so that they will remember you and speak your name for centuries to come. --Ouro (blah blah) 18:23, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

My favorite definition of life is #9 on Wiktionary: "A term of imprisonment of a convict until his or her death." Oh, and 42 isn't the meaning of life; it's the answer to life, the universe, and everything. --Masamage ♫ 18:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

If you believe Arthur Schopenhauer life has no meaning. --S.dedalus (talk) 01:57, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Despite what our article is (incorrectly) called, what DNA wrote about was "The answer to the Ultimate Question of life, the universe and everything". Answers don't exist without questions (not even in Jeopardy); they are like two sides of the same coin, although the analogy fails because it's like a single obverse (a question) with at least the possibility of multiple reverses (many possible answers). But you get my drift, I'm sure. "The answer to life ..." is as meaningless as "the meaning of life". The answer to the appropriately worded question is still 42, though, last time I checked.-- JackofOz (talk) 21:59, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I a looking for a web page where the edges of knowledge can be discussed and expanded.

Dear Sir or Maam,

I am looking for a web page where the edges of knowledge can be discussed and expanded. It seems to me that the real power of a user-editable knowledge-sharing web page is for practical problem-solving. However, Wikipedia has a NOR (No Original Research) policy which is frustrating to me. What is the proper place, what is the proper forum for the organized yet informal sharing of ideas for the common good? Such discussions could consider medical, scientific, industrial, business, or other matters.

For example, if your child had a certain disease and the doctors could do nothing, then you would have somewhere to turn. You could go to the medical section, look at a list of diseases or topics, pick the one your child has, and enter into a discussion with other people around the world who have concerns like yours. Perhaps they too have a child with the same disease. Maybe they know something you don't which is not in print. (Have you ever seen the movie Eulie's Gold? [How to spell Eulie?])

Or, perhaps you have a young, gifted mind who wants to reduce global warming by designing a more efficient solar panel. He could join a discussion on this topic in the science section.

In my opinion, such a website (or added function within Wikipedia) would have the potential for great good. If such a website already exists, then I would like to know how to find it. If it does not exist, then I would like to ask the people at Wikipedia to create it.

Greetings from tom (talk) 12:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this is what you are looking for: http://wikidiscovery.org/wikiresearch/index.php?title=Main_Page. - Dammit (talk) 12:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

That Wiki has a grand total of six pages on it! It's hardly ready for prime-time usage. SteveBaker (talk) 14:52, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that un-trained, un-methodological, and un-organized pursuit of new knowledge rarely leads to much good for all of the effort that is expended. That is why in most cases resources are concentrated in systems of knowledge production that have historically been extremely powerful—the institutions of science and research—rather than on projects like the one you have described. But I'm not trying to be discouraging; I'd just be surprised if for the amount of time and effort (which are valuable resources, in my book) put into such a thing that there would really be much if any usable payoff. In some arenas—medical issues—I could imagine all sorts of negative things as a possible side-effect as well, if things were inexpertly diagnosed or understood (which is why we don't give medical advice on this desk). --24.147.86.187 (talk) 13:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how Ulee's Gold pertains to this topic. I think you're probably thinking of Lorenzo's Oil, which does pertain to this topic. MrRedact (talk) 13:53, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The way the original poster described this idea sounds like it would be a superstition mill of the highest order. "Oh, your sick child owns a rabbit? So does mine! I think we're onto something here!".

Such a web site would need some sort of verifiability standards, like a real scientific journal. It may seem undemocratic, but treating Darwinism and Alex Chiu's New Darwinism as though they were equal is a recipe for disaster. One is a real scientific theory that makes real predictions that can later be confirmed by observation or experimentation, and the other is some vague nonsense about static electricity.

When you talk about "informal" scientific research, I'm guessing that what you really mean is "amateur" scientific research, which frankly makes it worrying that your first example is about medicine. I'm sure there are plenty of forums on the internet where people pass the time by idly speculating on what homeopathic placebo might cure some incurable disease, but a website designed specifically to give this practice some sort of legitimacy sounds like it'd be putting itself in a tricky legal situation, to say nothing of its moral situation.

If such a site overcame these problems and became popular, vandalism would also be a huge problem, unless contributers could be proven reliable before being allowed to contribute. APL (talk) 00:38, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Evangelical christiandom

Having seen the afore mentioned phenomenon spread across Southern Africa in the late 90's. It is also apparently commonplace in the USA. Personally I feel it is not all for the best as many of those I knew held very right wing zenephobic view, but my personal feelings aside, is there some person or organization that it running this, or organizing it. Beacuse, much like a cult they seem to be recruiting young teenagers mostly. So 1. who is organizing it internationally, and 2. there was a movie released a few years ago about this, can any one tell me what it was called. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.2 (talk) 13:23, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

No, there is no organization "running" the Evangelical movement. This movement began in the 18th-19th centuries and continues to this day. That alone should strongly suggest that there isn't a single organization running the movement. Our article on Evangelicalism should also suggest that as true given the diverse denominations that can be grouped within the term. As to whether they are a cult because they recruit young teenagers mostly, I have to disagree. Yes, there is a large movement to attract teenagers, but it isn't as though they start recruiting at that age. Teenagers often rebel against their parents and therefore the movement (broadly speaking, of course, as there is no single one organization) may focus extra effort on that group to ensure they do not stray. To answer (1) each mainline denomination would have their own proselytizing group, and (2) are you thinking of the Left Behind series, or Jesus_Camp, or Saved!?--droptone (talk) 14:04, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Saved, thats the one. Is there any organization that is trying to counter this movement, besides the obvious Church of Satan and the like. But seriously, an organization that can be taken seriously. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.2 (talk) 15:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I didn't think the Church of Satan was a reaction to Evangelical Christianity, but more a reaction to Christianity in general (especially since they were founded in the mid-late 60s). But regardless, there are plenty of churches who are contrary to many of the principles Evangelicals would claim, most notably Unitarian Universalism. I'm sure the Catholic Church opposes many of the fundamentals of the Evangelical movement, especially biblical literalism. I don't think you will find a (somewhat) mainline Christian denomination that is openly antagonistic to the Evangelical movement, but plenty would be very opposed to the claims of Evangelicals. Also worth checking out is Unitarianism.--droptone (talk) 18:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

If you are asking about a Christian reaction to hardline Evangelicalism, sadly there isn't. The problem is that the liberal wing of the church which tends to embrace pluralism is not very good at being organised and acting in concert. There are quite a few people in the church I belong to who are survivors from extreme evangelical churches. It can be a very battering experience. Another reaction to extreme evangelicals (apart from Satanism!) would be extreme secularism, and they do get themselves organised better. SaundersW (talk) 19:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that Evangelicals are far from a monolithic movement and there are many Evangelical leaders who are speaking out against some of the extremes of Evangelicalism themselves, particularly the relatively recent close ties between Evangelicalism and the Republican Party. See, for example, [5] and [6]. Donald Hosek (talk) 19:46, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there are organizations that are trying to counter evangelicalism. The National Center for Science Education is an organization that specifically works to counter Christian fundamentalists and does not take a position on religion otherwise. Also see Category:Atheism organizations for a different approach. I would disagree that the Church of Satan is particularly interested in countering Evangelicalism specifically. As for why evangelicals try to recruit teenagers, this is a conscious strategy as I understand it. Some people call it Generation Joshua (referring to the Biblical general). According to Michelle Goldberg’s book Kingdom Coming this is strategic attempt to raise “holy warriors” (intended symbolically I hope). As Levi says in Jesus Camp “We're being trained to be God's army.” Of course I may just be showing my atheistic bias. . . Hope that helps, --S.dedalus (talk) 01:20, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Verizon BlackBerry Pearl 8130

I would like to use another program other than VZ Navigator, How do you use the built-in GPS?--Dlo2012 (talk) 13:52, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

7 Wonders

(removed double posting of question asked also on the Humanities desk and which has received responses there.) Edison (talk) 16:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

1920's jazz

Hiya, I am trying to find the chord to Thats you baby by Annette Hanshaw, for guitar. I would also be interested in any of her other songs. Aswell as chords to any Ruth Etting music. I have searched the web reletalessly and would be eternally greatful if some one could tell me where to find guitar chords to any music by eith of these women thanks people —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.2 (talk) 15:20, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I regret to say that we can't provide links to websites that infringe the copyrights of composers and other artists. ›mysid (☎∆) 19:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

If it is from the 1920s, it is very possibly not copyrighted anymore. Anyway we provide all sorts of links to YouTube all over the site without caring much about copyright status. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 20:47, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

If you've already searched the web, the odds are they aren't to be had on the web. You'd probably better be served going to a music store which might be able to direct you to a book of jazz songs which could contain the artists you mentioned. In my experience most online guitar chords are primarily for more modern songs, but offline you can find a lot of older stuff. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 20:47, 21 December 2007 (UTC)--24.147.86.187 (talk) 20:47, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

White spots in our nails

Why do white spots appear in our nails? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gopi kve (talk • contribs) 16:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

This is called Leukonychia, and there are many reasons for them to appear, most commonly, hurting your finger right at the nail's base or nail biting. -Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 16:55, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

But if you also have suffer from hair loss and/or a slow immune system, then the white spots are probably caused by a zinc deficiency instead. --David Broadfoot (talk) 03:13, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Are edamame pods edible?

Boy howdy. Our article for edamame states that generally, they are steamed and removed from the pod, then consumed. Kicking around looking for advice on the subject-line, I've seen some reference to eating the pod whole (I enjoy this, it's very fibrous) and some scare quotes from my sister's girlfriend stating that the pods are 'toxic, and should not be eaten...(!)' maybe akin to apple seed folklore. I appreciate the light you can shed on this subject. Love, 70.181.41.1 (talk) 21:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Never heard of such a thing. Being Chinese-American, I've seen plenty of people eat the pod whole, though I don't like it myself. It's probably an urban legend. bibliomaniac15 21:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Be sure to wash them thoroughly if you want to eat them though, their hairy nature can retain quite a bit of pesticide. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:30, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

(OP) Her story did have a smack of old wives tale about it. Thanks very much to you both. 70.181.41.1 (talk) 23:59, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Mars to be hit by Asteroid

I have just seen on the news, incl. FOX News and CNN that Mars is or will be hit by a asteroid tonight or tomorrow night. Is there any further info. on this ? Calculations, so far, show that Mars will be hit in odds of 1 in 400, a good chance exists that the asteroid may be deflected enough that it may hit US instead. 65.163.112.128 (talk) 22:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Just googled this matter: Mars will be hit (?) in two weeks from now. Can someone place a current event template on the Mars article, the asteroid article ? 65.163.112.128 (talk) 22:20, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Just read the Mars article. The odds are 1 in 75 of it hitting this planet. I'm still trying to find more info on this matter.65.163.112.128 (talk) 22:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Er actually it would hit on January 30, not two weeks. And no, there is no chance that the earth will be hit by this- even if it was, it's not like it would be a catastrophe. It's only 160 feet across. 70.162.25.53 (talk) 00:10, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Au contraire, mon frere. The energy released by the object has been said to be comparable to the Tunguska event which was in turn said to have the explosive magnitude 10 to 20 megaton nuclear bomb. Certainly enough to get your attention even if you were many miles away, or to devastate a large city. But the odds are 74 out of 75 that it will miss Mars, which is pretty good. People do lots of things where their odds of survival are 98.7%. Edison (talk) 01:05, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

This website is a fun place to go to calculate asteroid and comet impacts on Earth http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ - sadly, it fails for Mars because the gravitation and atmosphere models are all wrong. But if you want to play with "what if" experiments to find out what this thing would to do Earth, that's a great resource. SteveBaker (talk) 03:45, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

User:70.162.25.53 is right: an 160 foot diameter asteroid hitting the earth would not even from a crater. Only small pieces would make it through the atmosphere. --David Broadfoot (talk) 06:35, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Hydrogen bombs don't always create craters either. Airbursts of presumably meteoric origin can be quite effective, per Tunguska Edison (talk) 01:27, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Non TV watcher needs inside scoop on pop-cultural reference

The TV program The Office has a reference to a character who doesn't have family pictures up in his/her cubicle so the issue has something to do with them taking pictures from other people's cubicles. Do you know anything about this or is there some similar such reference in this TV show? Fill me in as I am pop-culture illiterate. Thanks. NoClutter (talk) 22:34, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think they are making any sort of external reference there, but the idea of someone doing that is damn funny. The characters on that show represent, to me at any rate, the different types of people that you will find working in the American office environment. I personally can think of a real life person for each of those roles though fortunately I didn't work with them all at the same time. So don't worry about why they make that joke, just laugh at the absudity of it. 161.222.160.8 (talk) 23:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

December 22

Strange headphone issue

I have a pair of Sennheiser wireless headphone and the volume adjustment on the headphone causes the right side to go silent, unless adjusted to a specific position. I've had similar problems with a Panasonic portable CD player is well, so I'm wondering if this is a manufacturing fault in the potentiometer used, or something more complicated. As neither are in warranty anymore, is there some way of fixing this, with a bit of soldering and new parts? --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:06, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

That always happens. The first step is to clean the pots. Get a can of spray that is specifically for that, squirt some inside the pot, and crank it around vigorously. Repeat several times if necessary. If the pot is sealed, you can sometimes get some in around the shaft. Try not to get the spray all over the headphones, mostly because it usually has a persistent annoying odor. --Milkbreath (talk) 02:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Will WD-40 work? --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:28, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, spraying some WD-40 on the pot fixed it, and the pot is now easier to turn. However, does anyone have an explanation on this effect? How can a potentiometer affect only one channel while leaving the other channel alone? --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:54, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it's two pots with one control? --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 04:51, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Correct. They are called ganged (or stereo) potentiometers--TreeSmiler (talk) 04:53, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

its likely there was some surface corrosion on the contacts and it was only working at some point where it had been left for a long time. A spray contact cleaner would also likely work and save you that greasy film in the future. Furmanj (talk) 10:23, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

reporting a suspect spelling...? Kapsu v. Kaspu

It would-appear that kapsu should be kaspu ... most google references to kapsu aren't about long-distance measurements, but kaspu are ... kaspu appears in Babylonian translations ... both kapsu and kaspu appear on a google book but where kapsu appears to be a singular misspelling....

I've searched a half hour and found no authority for either spelling, but leans toward kaspu.

I don't want to bother anybody with facts.... I'm not going to edit your fiction neither....

fixed. --David Broadfoot (talk) 03:48, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Shortest/smallest FA on Wikipedia

What is our shortest/smallest FA? I remeber seeing it on a page out here once, but I forgot to bookmark it. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:05, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Take a peek here. --Ouro (blah blah) 14:20, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Yep, there it is. Thanks, I appriciate it. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:51, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you do pinch harmonics using only your fingers?

I hate using picks because they are to use and have little precision, at least for me. My favorite guitar solo opens with a pinch harmonic on the seventh fret on the G string (the solo is the outro of Comfortably Numb), at least from what I have seen on the internet, and I want to know how this can be done with your fingers only, with no pick, if possible. Long live David Gilmour! MalwareSmarts (talk) 17:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Hammer the string down on the fret wire hard, without picking or anything, and snap release. It's easier with the pick hand. Tap hard and quick. Work the feedback. See tap harmonic. --Milkbreath (talk) 20:24, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Christmas traditions

Question: When and where did the concept of Santa Claus originate especially climbing down a chimney? 68.193.12.2 (talk) 17:39, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Snopes has an excellent Christmas section here. The entry about Santa Claus is here, and says that the chimney thing originated with A Visit from St. Nicholas ("T'was the night before Christmas"). --Masamage ♫ 18:33, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I was going to suggest this: Santa Claus in Northern American culture. --Ouro (blah blah) 18:38, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

If I may interject an anecdote, I deduced that Santa didn't exist because he didn't leave soot footprints on the carpet. Apparently I had no problem with every other aspect of the story, but that part was just unbelievable. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

's all part of the magic of Christmas :) --Ouro (blah blah) 10:53, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

That's a pretty awesome reason! :D Also from Snopes, I dig this piece on physics and the conversations that stem from it. --03:04, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Removing price stickers from gifts

What is the best way (using ordinary household products) to remove that sticky, gummy adhesive that is left on a product after you have scratched away or scraped off the price sticker? You know what I mean ... those price stickers that you have to scrape away little by little with your finger nails ... and then, when you're done, there is always that sticky gluey substance that remains on the product. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:33, 22 December 2007 (UTC))

A friend who sells electronics equipment uses something called "Goo Gone" which removes the residue from screens. It also, I am told, removes nail polish and artificial nails, and must be used carefully and not left standing on a surface. I have used nail-polish remover; it also works, though not, I am told, as quickly. Keep a damp cloth at hand to wipe the surface when the remover has done its work. Bielle (talk) 22:07, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

No! be carefull with the nail polish remover! it can remove paint from the product! I'd say cloth and some boiling water should work. --Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 22:10, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Some of these adhesives are not water soluble. I use - with care - a few drops of Zippo lighter fuel and the type of absorbent paper which can be purchased in rolls:) Smoking or sniffing during this process is mildly detrimental to your health and / or sanity. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:50, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Hi Hi, Ho Ho Ho, Shreeeeek ! And a Merry Christmas to you all! --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:53, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

And to you! To answer the original question, if something is waterproof or otherwise impermeable, CRC lubricating oil will dissolve the gum. If \the object is likely to be damaged by that, press a bit of invisible tape rpeatedly onto the gummy area - the stickiness of the tape will remove the gum. This often takes several attempts, but is often very effective. Grutness...wha? 23:12, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

There is also some very good stuff called "Sticky Stuff Remover" which removes sticky stuff. SaundersW (talk) 23:30, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

WD40 works very well - but obviously you need to be aware of what oil is going to do to the item. Goo'B'Gone and Goof Off are other products for removing this stuff - but they tend to be just as bad as WD40 and a lot more expensive. SteveBaker (talk) 01:58, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

If you have enough of the sticky stuff already removed then try using that to "lift" the remaining stuff. Also, depending in the surface, ordinary rubbing alcohol sometimes works. hydnjo talk 03:35, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

While I have never properly tested it, I do believe this works: If you spray furniture polish onto the sticker and wait a few minutes it should come right off. Of course you have to be careful that the polish isn't going to remove paint or otherwise ruin the surface - I believe the person that told me about this said he used it whenever he bought new mugs or cups - and such things are easily washable. Also if the item can be washed easily, try some warm-to-hot water. For difficult items like removing wine labels, I do believe I read on Google Answers (when it was still around) that you can try baking the bottle! (Do remove the cork/lid, I believe) Rfwoolf (talk) 05:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

White spirit (aka methylated spirits) can do some and vegetable cooking oil is a solvent for others, including some of the labels on bottles.Julia Rossi (talk) 09:01, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• White spirit is not Methylated spirits. DuncanHill (talk) 14:37, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Keereckt. My mistake - should be white spirit or meths. I'd rather go with euc oil.Julia Rossi (talk) 12:59, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Eucalyptus oil is excellent at removing (price) stickers. It works especially good on book and DVD covers. If you've attempted to manually peel the sticker off but there is some of it remaining or some residue, eucalyptus oil will fix it too.

You can avoid most of the residue problem by heating the tag with a hair dryer before peeling it of. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:56, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

So Joseph, it seems that you have gotten the collective wisdom of several "mothers" about this. C'mon back if you try one or more of these gems and let us know how it works out. hydnjo talk 02:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Statistics Question

I got a question about the statistics of Wikipedia (and maybe fir all Wikimedia projects). The Wikimedia statistics website is out of date (especially in the English Wikipedia) and on the EDIANS page, it claims you can get current statistics via this website. The problem is that I don't have access to the website, so can anybody who has access show me the current statistics of the Wikimedia projects? PrestonH 22:37, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Looking for a news story

A couple years back i remeber a army or national guard truck crashed into a barrier and onto a car in towson maryland. I tried searching but couldnt think of how to label it to get a good result. Any news story is good. Thanks. BonesBrigade 23:52, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

December 23

A question for people who have used acid or know people who have/are

What does it do to you as a person mentally or physically?

Is it worth it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.23.79.10 (talk) 00:50, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

No wikipedia user will encourage you into experimenting with drugs and give you a personal point of view. Neutrally talking, you'll have a blast, if everything goes well that is. A whole lot of neurons will be gone, and you could get headaches and nauseas afterwards if you party to hard while on LSD. You have to be carefull, very carefull, you COULD buy dammaged stuff and you COULD overdose and DIE. If you can't find anyone in the real world that has already used and knows what they are doing then DON'T DO IT, it's very dangerous to experiment with amateurs. For more on how does being on acid feels like see this 1960 propaganda film that descrives the effects quite accurately. --Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 01:44, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Ha! Makes those meth commercials look tame. bibliomaniac15 01:49, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I remeber a film that showed the effect LSD has on soldiers. Funniest thing ever. If you can find it its a blast to watch BonesBrigade 02:53, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Is it worth it...? Not if you are a cat. Rockpocket 02:58, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not good if you're an elephant, either. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:26, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Personal anecdote/POV time: Being on acid is like being schizophrenic and drunk at the same time. You have no control over yourself physically or mentally, and your brain plays constant unbelievable tricks on you (you see many things that are simply impossible). Most people become incomprehensibly stupid while on it too, though they usually think they are geniuses. Is it worth it? In the long run, I don't think so. Most drugs aren't. You'd probably be happier with yourself in the long run if you spent your time doing something else. I used to experiment with a number of things when I was in high school (including LSD); none of them really helped me out at all in the long run, and a few of them may have laid the seeds for future health problems. I came out of all of that relatively well (I have put that behind me and am reasonably successful) but I know a lot of people who didn't, some who ended up in jail, some who just ended up doing nothing with their lives, and one who ended up a semi-comatose invalid (don't, under any circumstance, try to operate a motor vehicle while under the influence!!!). If I could do it over again, I'd probably spend the time reading philosophy instead; doing the drugs didn't make me any cooler, didn't really "open my mind" to anything I couldn't have gotten by just educating myself more, and didn't improve my long-term self-esteem or prospects. Recreational, occasional drinking and even pot smoking—these things I think are pretty limited in their effects as long as you aren't the addictive type and don't get in trouble with the law. Hell, some pot brownies, some good music, a few good friends, a lot of spare time—that's one hell of a good way to spend an evening. But I'd avoid everything else, personally. Not worth it. A good book can give you better experiences, better ideas, and in the end make you a better person than any psychoactive chemicals. The one useful insight I took away from LSD was, "Shit, our brains are quite fragile; a few milligrams of some chemical and reality just falls apart. I should treat my brain better." But that was an insight that took me about 10 years to really understand. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 03:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Aldous Huxley writes about the sensations and impressions he experienced under the influence of mescalin in the Doors of Perception, from which you can read an excerpt here. SaundersW (talk) 11:01, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

This might help... -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 11:18, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Reading

Is there any sort of reason why certain languages are read left-to-right and others are read right-to-left? Just curious. -- Sturgeonman (talk) 01:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Some languages are read top-to-bottom. Ancient Egyptian is read in different directions depending on the way the figures in the hieroglyphs are facing - that can vary from like to line in the text. There isn't a particular reason to favor one direction over the other - different writing styles evidently came about independently - so there is really no reason why they would operate the same way. One possible reason to favor top-to-bottom - or left-to-right for right-handed people - is that your hand doesn't drag over the wet ink as you write. A problem which left-handed people from an era when fountain-pens were popular are more than willing to testify to! SteveBaker (talk) 01:54, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Another reason which favors top-to-bottom - or left-to-right for right-handed people is that you can more easily see what you have just written. hydnjo talk 03:28, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Not only can you see what you've just written, but when using ink, it can dry before you move over it with your hand. Lova Falk (talk) 12:54, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

In early times both Latin and Greek could be written boustrophedon (as an ox ploughs) with alternating lines running left-to-right and right-to-left. (That is, the language was not written exclusively in either direction.) SaundersW (talk) 10:56, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Now that system seems sensible to me - you start in the left (or right) get to the end and then 'move down' and start reading the other way.

The quick brown fox
dog lazy the over jumped

Although having just typed that out it was incredibly hard work to figure out in my head (yes i'm that simple) so on second thoughts I likes left-to-right only. ny156uk (talk) 13:43, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

or perhaps?

the quick brown fox

god yzal eht revo depmuj

Furmanj (talk) 14:32, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The quick brown fox

.god yzal eht revo spumj

Would be better. DuncanHill (talk) 14:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Strangely that is easier to read to me. good work. I can't be alone in sometimes missing lines/re-reading the same line when my concentration is broken ny156uk (talk) 15:03, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

You'd really want to use 'full out' text alignment so that the right hand ends of all of the line ended at the same point on the page:

   The quick brown fox jumps
          .god yzal eht revo

But we need more text to show what it would look like 'for real'. Using the opening paragraph from our Hieroglyph article shows what I mean - sadly, you can see that while reading ".god yzal eht revo spmuj" is relatively do-able, for real text it's going to take a lot of re-learning of how to read!

A  hieroglyph is  a  character  of a  logographic  or partly  logographic
shpylgoreih naitpygE eht  ot derrefer yllanigiro mret ehT .metsys gnitirw
used by Ancient  Egyptians, but  is  also applied to the  ancient  Cretan
esenihC ot  osla  yllanoisacco  dna ,stpircs  qamk'iM dna  nayaM  ,naiwuL
characters. Ancient Egyptian writing consisted of over 2,000 hieroglyphic
hcaE  .62  ylno fo  stsisnoc  tebahpla  hsilgnE  eht  saerehw  sretcarahc
hieroglyphic character represents a common object from their day.

Without full-out justification, you'd really want to have the start of one line begin under the end of the previous one...but you can't do that without leaving big white gaps and in some cases, running out of page...

       A hieroglyph is a character of a logographic or partly logographic
shpylgoreih naitpygE eht  ot derrefer yllanigiro mret ehT .metsys gnitirw
used by Ancient Egyptians, but is also applied to the  ancient Cretan
  esenihC ot osla yllanoisacco dna ,stpircs qamk'iM dna nayaM ,naiwuL
  characters. Ancient Egyptian writing consisted of over 2,000 hieroglyphic
          hcaE .62 ylno fo stsisnoc tebahpla hsilgnE eht saerehw sretcarahc
          hieroglyphic character represents a common object from their day.

I think DuncanHill just inadvertently explained why alternating directions is OK for the ancient egyptian but bad for modern languages. In ancient egyptian, you have individual symbols that stand for entire words - hence you don't have to reverse the spelling on alternate lines - which hurts the brain's ability to 'grab' a single word with one snapshot because you have to be able to recognise the same word forwards and backwards which is obviously harder. If you don't reverse the words then as your eyes track along the 'backwards' lines, they can't move smoothely in one direction - they have to make big jumps from the end of one word to the start of the next. On the other hand, if you have hieroglyphs, using alternately reversed lines make sense because your eyes don't have to jump all the way over as they do with (say) English at the end of every line. So it makes perfect sense that zig-zag reading would be optimal for hieroglyphic languages but not for phonetically spelled languages. The interesting thing about Egyptian was that they made mirror-imaged hieroglyphs only for the figures and animals - but the direction that those symbols faced told you which direction to read each line...but there was no actual enforcement of alternating lines - you could write your text entirely left-to-right or entirely right-to-left - or mix them up to fit around a picture or some kind of architectural feature. Since they'd also write top-to-bottom in narrow columns of text just a few symbols wide, you also tend to end up reading them from top to bottom as well as left/right and you also needed to use these directional cues to tell you which order to read the columns in - which leaves room for a good deal of ambiguity. With over 2,000 symbols to memorize (some of them with little modifiers on them), the entire written language was a horrible mess. SteveBaker (talk) 16:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I hate you all. After that alternating stuff, I can't read english normally now >_< mattbuck (talk) 20:35, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry Steve, that argument fails for several reasons:

1. It is not true that boustrophedon was used only for Egyptian hieroglyphics: it was widely used for both Greek and Latin.
2. It is not true that hieroglyphics symbols stood for whole words. Some of them did, but most of the symbols in a text did not represent whole words, but single sounds or groups of sounds.
3. The practice of silent reading almost certainly does not go back to the period when boustrophedon was used (see http://www.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Manguel/Silent_Readers.html): until then, even practiced readers vocalised when reading, so the speed would have been limited by that process anyway.

The best answer for the OP is that for reasons which are not clear (though the practical matters mentioned by various posters above are probably factors) the original right-to-left has survived in several West Asian scripts, but been replaced by left-to-right for both European and South Asian derivatives. Like the answers to many 'why' questions, it is not really very satisfying. --ColinFine (talk) 01:02, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Steve, if you look at the image in boustrophedon of an ancient Latin text you will see that the letters are revered on the reverse lines, so the cues for the direction of reading are strong. This image illustrates the principle. SaundersW (talk) 17:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Cocaine for stuffy noses

Pleases note the following is purely curiosity: Stuffy nosees are caused by an inflammation of the nasal passages, which is in turn caused by inflamed blood vessel. Since cocaine is a vasoconstrictor, can it be used to help unblock stuffed noses of allergy-sufferers? Acceptable (talk) 02:33, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Hell no. Good way to end up in JAIL. Don't drop the soap while there. 65.163.112.128 (talk) 06:51, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The best option is to see your doctor and have him/her prescribe some nasal decongestants for you. Cocaine is strictly regulated in many places; have a look at Legal status of cocaine. --Bruin_rrss23 (talk) 09:00, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

At above: oh boo, 65's answer is uninformative at worst and trollish at best, and the question was hypothetical so 'see doctor' isn't an appropriate response. I did a little research and apparently cocaine isn't used for anything anti-inflammatory, only as an analgesic and vasodilator for nasal surgery in about 4-10% of operations. Many former cocaine users report stuffy noses, which could mean a lot of things, but seems to run counter to your theory. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 09:33, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the worst think about the Reference desk are these stupid replies. --Taraborn (talk) 13:07, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Nah, the worst thing about the Reference Desk are the people who insist on having metadiscussions about the Desk on the Desk rather than on the talk page. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:23, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Nah, the worst thing are people who complain about meta-discussions! And people who complain about them, too! ;-) --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:02, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

For those worried about it as a illegal narcotic, remember that cocaine was (and still is, in some places) used for medical purposes long before it became known for its 1980s-doing-blow-off-a-stripper's-back aspects. If I recall Wilhelm Fleiss used cocaine to treat a number of nasal issues; not sure if a blocked nose was one of them. If your nasal passage was sufficiently blocked you wouldn't be able to "snort" it as people do when they do it recreationally, but you might be able to get it up there some other way. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:02, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

A study of Cocaine#Chronic is instructive. The key line for me is "Due to the absorption of the cocaine from cocaine hydrochloride, the remaining hydrochloride forms a dilute hydrochloric acid". Rephrasing the question as "Doctor, Doctor, I've got a cold. Would stuffing dilute hydrochloric acid up my nose be an effective way of reducing inflammation of the nasal passages?" provides for a more intuitive answer. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:08, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, no...a lot of drugs are formulated as hydrochlorides: [7]. As they say, 'the dose makes the poison'. It's not implausible on its face that the effects (and side effects) of snorting two grand worth of cocaine off a hooker's ass every day might be different from the effects of a small amount delivered occasionally for nasal congestion. Note that I'm not saying that cocaine actually does help with allergies, but it's conceivable that exposure to a small amount of dilute acid might be a reasonable tradeoff to deliver a potent and effective drug. To take one example, oxymetazoline hydrochloride is used as a decongestant in nasal sprays. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:44, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

As someone responsible for consuming a large proportion of Colombian exports from the crevices of sundry harlots, I vigorously vouch for the efficacy of cocaine as a vasoconstrictor. But why stop there? Amphetamines work just as well, even alcohol can have similar effects in high dosages! Of course there may be side-effects such as dependence, arrhythmia, and early death. Pseudoephedrine remains the preferred treatment for a stuffy nose, as it lasts longer and is considerably cheaper (it even comes as a hydrochloride salt!). ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 23:07, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't this count as medical advice? Cryo921 (talk) 03:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

No.¹ ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 06:02, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

ThinkGeek for Canadians?

Are there any online stores that sell similar merchandise to what ThinkGeek sells, but have more reasonable shipping charges for Canadian customers? (At ThinkGeek, shipping charges increase the bill by around 50% even for an order of over $100.) NeonMerlin 16:12, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Other than http://www.amazon.ca/ i can't think of anything. I'll continue searching though. Cryo921 (talk) 03:31, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Spice girls and Pavarotti

In the live performance of "Viva Forever" by the Spice Girls featuring Pavarotti ([8]), what are the lyrics that Pavarotti is singing during the chorus? Thanks. NB: Video is work-safe. Acceptable (talk) 17:16, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Car accident statistics.

I'm trying to track down some statistics I found a long while ago relating the probability of having a car accident to the distance travelled. I believe it showed that your chances of having an accident were about the same whether you were taking a quick trip of just a few miles or a long trip of a hundred miles - presumably because most accidents happen at junctions and such like and the number of those that you take is similar on long freeway trips and short ones.

But I need the actual statistics.

SteveBaker (talk) 18:57, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

This may help [9], Haven't checked it though. Cryo921 (talk) 03:23, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

SS Tobruk - fictional ship or real one?

As a kid I became acquainted with SS Tobruk having read this this fiction(alized?) book. I thought it was fictional but recently I run into some data that suggests it might not have been. See: "CONVOY QP14... S Tobruk, loaded with apetite, left Murmansk on 8th September for Archangel and joined the convoy. She had been under repair for 6 months after damage sustained in bombing attacks."'; "Convoy SL.178/MKS.69: Reports of Proceedings, 15 December 1944... At 1417A 9th SS TOBRUK (PS) hauled out of line to bury a deceased seaman. "; model of the ship; this is quite convincing. Based on that now I am becoming convinced it was a real ship (or an elaborate hoax/mistake), but comments are appreciated (and any other pages related to this ship you can find; I may stub it if I have enough material).--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 23:44, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

We have articles on a couple of Australian shipe HMAS Tobruk and we have a redlink to a polish ship of the same name on the Tobruk (disambiguation) page. SteveBaker (talk) 04:46, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

December 24

Baggage Tracing service

What baggage tracing system does Southwest airlines use to trace and return lost baggage. It is odd that southwest does not have a page where you can track your baggage.--logger (talk) 01:45, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Lyrics websites

There are hundreds of song lyrics databases online, but they all seem to be clones/mirrors of each other, sharing identically flawed transcriptions of many songs. Is there a better lyrics website--i.e. one without a lot of annoying popups and garish ads, or one that actively fixes mistakes in lyrics? Or are they all the same?--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 02:24, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Lyrics sites are generally considered copyright violations. There was a big one that was shut down a while back, I think: which probably explains why people aren't investing a lot of money now in making a good one, as it would be at high risk of being shut down at any time.--Pharos (talk) 02:51, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

This one [10]doesn't seem to have pop ups but that may just be my pop up blocker. Cryo921 (talk) 03:26, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Yahoo! is trying to do it the legal way, but they don't have as many entries as most of the others. Recury (talk) 12:50, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I usually use sing365. I don't get any popups, but that could just be from Firefox blocking them. Matt Deres (talk) 16:45, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I tend to use www.songmeanings.net as it has the added bonus of people's interpretation of the meaning of the song. news wise try (http://www.betanews.com/article/Yahoo_Launches_First_Legal_Lyrics_Site/1177449549) and (http://www.thebusiness.co.uk/the-magazine/columns/33914/going-for-a-song-ndash-lyrics-offer-music-industry-online-lifeline.thtml) ny156uk (talk) 16:59, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Since you're a Wikipedia user, you'd probably appreciate Lyriki or LyricWiki. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme (talk) 17:28, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

free convertibility of indian rupee

what is free convertibility of indian rupee?

Try this? Lanfear's Bane | t 13:39, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

See Indian_rupee#Convertibility and the explanation of Capital account convertibility at http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/03/22/stories/2006032201860600.htm William Avery (talk) 17:23, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

HD coaxial?

I've heard that a Coaxial cable can send HD 1080i signals. So i set up my TV with this in mind. However, now I've heard that coaxial CAN'T send HD signals. Which is true? --67.84.12.248 (talk) 19:40, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Coaxial can transmit HD signals, it can actually carry many HD signals at the same time. HD signal from cable companies are send via Coaxial but HDTV cannot accept HD signals in coaxial cables. In the old "tune to channel 3" days, it involved encoding the output signal from (a VCR) and transmit this over coaxial then the TV tuned to channel 3 would decode this. But this practice stopped long ago since it involves extra equipment and cost and the encoding/decoding actually degraded the signal. NYCDA (talk) 20:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Yellow and black road signs in the UK

For as long as I can remember, I've been seeing mysterious yellow and black signs on British roads. The main one seems to be a diamond shape, sometimes with an arrow pointing towards a side road. There are never any numbers or letters on the signs. I am assuming they have some kind of military use. Can anyone enlighten me? --Richardrj ^{talk email} 22:36, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

They are emergency diversion signs. The idea is that they are pre-laid out to provide a diversion in the event of a motorway problem or something. All they have to do in order to divert traffic is to put up a sign saying "Diversion: Follow the black diamonds" - and they don't have to rush around putting up dozens of signs. You may also see black triangles, squares, circles, hollow squares, hollow circles, etc. When people are not being diverted, the sign doesn't convey any special information and they may be ignored. SteveBaker (talk) 23:01, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

According to the Highways Agency website, such routes are called "Off Network Tactical Diversion Routes". Apparently there is a project underway to increase (from 25% to 85%) the proportion of the motorway and trunk road network for which such routes are designated and signposted. (Sorry, that sentence was hideously constructed!) Here's the page about them, and here's an example of a "route card" given to traffic control officers to help them put a diversion in place. I'm sure I've got, or have seen, a full list of the symbols somewhere — I think Steve has identified most of them... Hassocks5489 (talk) 23:23, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Yay — found it! It's the Know Your Traffic Signs publication from the Department for Transport. I've got a booklet version of this as well. Page 107 of the pdf shows all eight of them, and examples of how they can be used. In case the pdf takes too long to download, the variations are black square, hollow square, black circle, hollow circle, black triangle, hollow triangle, black diamond and hollow diamond. Road signs in the United Kingdom could benefit from a section on these; I'll see if I get time... Hassocks5489 (talk) 23:42, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

A similar system of prearranged detours exists in Germany. As I recall, each route is identified by the letter U (for Umleitung) and a number, like "U16 –>", and you see these signs at Autobahn exits. --Anonymous, 01:10 UTC, December 25, 2007. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.76.104.133 (talk) 01:10, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Population vs land mass

I wish to know where 1/3 of the worlds land also has a 1/3 of the worlds population. How can I determine the answer?

CincyJoe —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.72.224.67 (talk) 22:46, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

If you look at List of countries by population, you can calculate that India and China, together, account for just over a third of the worlds population (~36.75%). However, these two countries, together, do not account for 1/3 of the landmass (they actually account for just under 9%). Now compare their proportion on the figure to the right to other geographical features (such as continents), there are no obvious geographical distinctions that corrolate with 1/3 of the population. Perhaps the closest would be the combined populations of Europe, Africa and USA (710,000,000 (Europe), 303,054,000 (USA), 900,000,000 (Africa) out of 6,671,226,000 (total) = 28.6%), and those, together, roughly corrolate with 1/3 of the landmass (10,180,000 km² (Europe), 9,826,630 km² (USA) 30,221,532 km²(Africa) out of 148,939,063.133 km² (total) = 33.7%) Rockpocket 00:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, after playing around with some numbers from List of countries by population density, I have found a combination that comes really close: 33.3288% of the population, & 33.1313% of the land. It's an odd list in no particular order click "show" to see.

82 Country Combination

Guinea-Bissau Palau Panama Nicaragua Tanzania Colombia Yemen South Africa Guinea Eritrea Latvia Cameroon Djibouti Zimbabwe Madagascar United States Estonia Liberia Venezuela Kyrgyzstan Laos The Bahamas Qatar Morocco Ethiopia Bulgaria Iraq Samoa Brunei Honduras Georgia Jordan East Timor Tunisia Swaziland Uzbekistan Senegal Lesotho Republic of Ireland Kenya Côte d'Ivoire United Arab Emirates Lithuania Ecuador Burkina Faso Belarus Fiji Bhutan Afghanistan Tajikistan Montenegro Chile Sweden Uruguay Equatorial Guinea Vanuatu Solomon Islands Finland Zambia Paraguay New Zealand Somalia Angola Papua New Guinea Belize Norway Republic of the Congo Niger Mali Turkmenistan Bolivia Oman Chad Central African Republic Gabon Guyana Iceland Suriname Namibia India Australia Mauritania

--Ybbor^Talk 02:29, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

That is awesome, however the land must be contiguous....... Are you up for the challenge? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.72.224.67 (talk) 02:47, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

No, not really :p. What is this for? Is this a homework question? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ybbor (talk • contribs) 02:51, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Ha! Quality work there, Ybbor. I appreciate the effort, even if our OP neglected to inform us of a rather crucial caveat which makes it rather academic. Rockpocket 02:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

If you want to work this out - you shouldn't be looking at overpopulated areas like India and China - if 1/3rd of the land houses 1/3rd of the people, you need places with very average populations. SteveBaker (talk) 04:22, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree. Asia is close to 1/3 of the world's landmass and Asia minus The People's Republic and Indonesia is close to 1/3 of the population (The sparsely populated Russia balances out India and Bangladesh). If you were to add a few select Eastern European or Middle Eastern countries, you might get contiguous 1/3s including overpopulated areas. Alternatively, PRC, Russia and most of Europe would probably get you close. Rockpocket 06:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Why is it that.....................

..........some preachers and religious people believe that:

• the handicapped are hellbound ?
• those who are of a different religion are also hellbound ?

Wikipedia is not censored, and I'm being polite. I've heard some of these preachers, other religious personnel myself, but they would not say why they believe that people of different religions and the handicapped are goiung to hell. 65.163.112.128 (talk) 23:09, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

As for the question about the handicapped, the preachers merely have read their Bible well. Leviticus 21:16-23: "-- For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, --" ›mysid (☎∆) 00:12, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Leviticus 21:16–23 does not say that handicapped people are "hellbound". The only thing these people are prohibited from doing is performing the duty of the high priest by making a sacrifice to God. They are even allowed to eat the holy food reserved for priests! (21:22) I don't believe the Bible is the word of God either, but the worst thing you can do is make a straw man out of it by misinterpreting it. The Bible does not say that disabled people are damned. —Keenan Pepper 03:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Some people believe extremely mentally handicapped people are hellbound because they are incapable of "accepting Christ" into their lives (like babies and animals) and, in their opinion, if you don't accept Jesus then you ain't going to heaven. They see justification for this in Scripture. See here for more info about this theological question.

Similarly, in the opinion of some, if you do not believe in the same God as them, or follow His teaching in the same way they do, then you are going to hell. This type of Fundamentalist Christianity (though its not limited to Christianity) is characterised by a form of religious intolerance: that there is only one way of being "saved" and that happens to be the way that they tell you. Believing in a different God (or even the same God, but choosing to worship him in a different way) is no different to not believing in any God, in their opinion. According to a BBC report today, there are signs these "fire and brimstone" ministries may be "dying out" in the US Midwest, signs of a "softening of evangelical America". [11] Rockpocket 00:09, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

it did make a good south park episode: Do the Handicapped Go to Hell? Furmanj (talk) 00:16, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Can't beat a loving god...

Ex.4:11

Who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?

Lev.21:17-23

Whosoever ... hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken; No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God. ... Only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries.

If you are blind you get it pretty rough too. "And David said on that day, Whosoever ... smiteth ... the blind that are hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house." -- 2 Samuel 5:8. Lanfear's Bane | t 14:08, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

As stated above, all Leviticus (and 2 Samuel) mention is that the blind and lame, etc., cannot offer sacrifices in the Temple. That's not the same as saying there's something wrong with them. After all, the patriarch Isaac was blind. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 18:21, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

December 25

Adolf Hitler

Can anyone direct me to an Internet page that shows that A. Hitler was the most evil human being that ever lived? Also, can anyone define the word evil--TreeSmiler (talk) 00:41, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikitionary defines evil. There are plenty of web pages that proposed that Hitler was the most evil human being that ever lived, e.g. [12] but seeing it is a value judgment, no-one can "show" it definitively, it will always be a matter of opinion. Rockpocket 00:58, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Happy Xmas Rocky!--TreeSmiler (talk) 01:06, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

You are one of the few Admins I admire! :)--TreeSmiler (talk) 01:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm pleased to hear I have earned you admiration, which kind of makes me think we have interacted more significantly in the past, in another life perhaps? Anyway, no need to worry about that too much in this season of goodwill to all men. Happy Christmas to you too, Treesmiler. Rockpocket 01:46, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes lets forgive and forget at this time of good will to all men and women! (whichever you happen you be)--TreeSmiler (talk) 01:49, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Do the admins and the vandals come out and have a game of football in no-man's land? Lanfear's Bane | t 14:00, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

It would seem so. Problem is defining who is the real Wikipedian!

It would seem to be a gross simplification and trivialisation of the Third Reich to explain it with "...oh well, he was the most evil human being". Good and Evil, apart from being - highly arguable - human categories, are magnified / modified / minimised by the power of the individual to put into reality any of their plans, be they good or evil.

Once you attempt to define the concept of Evil, you run into all sorts of problems. Consider:

• Was the extinction of the dinosaurs (amongst many more) "good" or "evil" ?
• Is the survival of severely sick / disabled people "good" or "evil" ?
• If a radical solution to Global Warming were the violent reduction of the population of this planet to 3 billions, would this be "good" or "evil" ?

Finally, consider the obvious: Not a single country was spared the effects of WWII and not a single country would be what it is now.

So, the absurd - and disturbing - conclusion must be: Most of us would never have been born, had it not been for the existence of this, most evil, human being. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:08, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Doctors and accountants

How much do average doctors eg general practitioner roughly earn per year in New Zealand and Australia? Is it more than in a chartered accountant? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.90.0.137 (talk) 05:39, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

help me find this cable?

Im looking for an cable to connect my computer to my surround sound. I need one end to be a headphone input and the other end to be an audio output (the yellow end on American AV cords). Ive looked around and cant find one. Can you guys help me out, or if Im looking for the wrong cable help me out with what I might need? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.188.134.93 (talk) 05:50, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll assume you mean that you want to have the audio from your computer play on your "surround sound" (because you can't input sounds to your computer through the headphone jack). I'm pretty sure that, if you want the sound to be stereo (left/right), the input end (what you've called the audio output - the part that plugs into the stereo is actually the input) of the cable needs to be split into two endings - one for the left audio channel and one for the right (here in Australia they are typically coloured white and the other red). If it has only one ending then it is probably just mono sound. Not sure what a cable for 5.1 surround sound would be like, or even if a computer's headphone jack can output surround sound. Anyway, cables for headphone jack to stereo system definitely exist, I myself have one that I think I got from Jaycar (a electronics hobby shop). Another good place to get one would be a computer market or swapmeet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.208.109.169 (talk) 15:20, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

You don't provide enough information for me to be sure what you need, but I'll try to answer anyways. From what I understand, you're trying to connect surround speakers (probably 5.1) to your computer's headphone jack. That would be impossible. Computers' headphone jacks have two channels, stereo, a surround system uses multiple channels. 6 channels in the case of a 5.1 system, which is currently the most common. To send surround from a computer to a surround system you thus need 3 output connectors in your sound card, each of which is stereo. If you don't have them, you can't possibly use a surround system. As for the suround system side, it really depends on the system itself. Some use RCA as their input, some use TRS (jack), some use some sort of a clip not sure how it's called.

Note that if your sound card has three output jacks, it doesn't mean you can connect a surround system. The green jack is for stereo (and the two front stereo speakers in a surround system), the pink jack is a mic input, and the blue jack is a line input. If you also have an orange and a black jacks, you can connect your surround system, if you don't, you can't.

In short: From the computer's side you might need a new sound card, you'll have to figure it out. From the surround system's side, you'll have to figure it out. 89.1.184.190 (talk) 18:01, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

social security number

We noticed in your article on the SSA that SSA states it doesnr require a SSN to live and work in the USA. We also know since we have contacted the Citizen and Immigration service (cis) and ICE that 1. people need to be working under their own ssn; they cant be working under their spouses; child; cousin; whomever. 2. The person needs to be authorized to work in this country so if someone comes in as they married a citizen but havent been issued a green card yet since they dont get an automatic one; they arent allowed to work. These arent in your article at all. We are trying to find out the specific federal law that this comes under and even bugging CIS and ICE; we havent found it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.228.108.155 (talk) 17:25, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Cite all pertainable evidence and place it. 65.163.112.128 (talk) 21:39, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean cite all pertainable evidence? This goes on in contract work all the time. We know as we have done over 25 years of various contract work. Currently in a particular company in the phone book delivery business; the company hires one person who in turn hires others who work under him. He is the only one paid. We do not know if these people he hires are legal or not; we suspect not. This same company also contracted with someone else who just got married to someone from another country. She was not given a green card when she got here yet she has been been working since she arrived in the USA.

Other delivery work we have done includes newspaper; flower; etc. No one checks to see if anyone has the right to work. The companies just want warm bodies to do the work.

What we would like to be able to reference and see for ourself is the USC that this comes under so we know how to proceed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.228.117.71 (talk) 21:49, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Moccha salt

It is mentioned in Poached egg. No one knows what this is, and questions regarding it aren't answered. All that is known about moccha salt is:

1. It comes in a crystaline, or like crystaline form (at least sometimes).

2. It is green (at least sometimes).

3. It can be assumed to be edible in its green crystaline form.

4. It can be assumed to be complimentary with poached eggs.

None of the above have been tested, some or all of these assumptions could be false. All the assumptions are based on observation of the picture in said article, and the relationship between the picture and the article. What's moccha salt? 89.1.184.190 (talk) 17:42, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Image:Poached eggs with moccha salt.jpg was sourced from flickr, here. Which makes it clear that it's matcha salt, not moccha. William Avery (talk) 18:06, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Matrixism

Is Matrixism a real religion or not? 71.243.118.2 (talk) 21:52, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Obviously depends on how you define "real religion". I think most people would say "not", as it does not seem to involve genuine spirituality but is instead a pastiche of philosophical ideas derived primarily from a set of action movies starring Keanu Reaves, but really it's a question of definitions. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:59, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

This was asked just a couple weeks ago. Please check the archives or see the article on The Matrix. Dismas|^(talk) 23:51, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

This questioner is a troll - please don't feed. SteveBaker (talk) 00:10, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

God

Who is god? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.242.226.130 (talk) 01:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

See God --Tagishsimon (talk)

Which god? — Kieff | Talk 01:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

From which perspective are you asking? bibliomaniac15 02:24, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Some people think I'm god. Now, I admit, I write some decent stories, but I would never claim to be god... I let others do that for me. Soon I shall be the leader of a new religion, and I'll barely have to lift a finger to do it. mattbuck (talk) 02:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Search Engine Spike for Keyword "Interracial"

Can anyone figure out what caused the huge spike in searches for the word "interracial" from late December 2005 to early January 2006? I found the phenomenon using Google Trends but it didn't show any press articles related to the spike. The spike looks like it started on December 21st or 22nd. The spike is huge and it is the only one. 71.243.118.2 (talk) 03:11, 26 December 2007 (UTC)