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March 2

Phobia term

ive checked through the list of phobias page, and wasnt able to find it. so i ask you: is there a set phobia for a fear of things falling on someone? 71.223.201.126 (talk) 02:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The page, for the interest of others, is -phobia. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:00, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that very few phobias have real names. Almost all of the supposed names - even on our list - are made up crap from various websites. Forget it - there is no name - if you have to have one - make it up yourself, it's about as meaningful. SteveBaker (talk) 03:52, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hennypennyosis. B00P (talk) 10:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've found a few Google hits for Chicken Licken Syndrome. He had a fear of things falling on him. Although most uses seem to be metaphorica. --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 17:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wallpapers

Can anyone recommend a safe website that offers a vast array of high-quality, high-resolution wallpapers? Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 05:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I like GNOME backgrounds, myself. --69.146.230.243 (talk) 06:27, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, thank you! --Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 07:19, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are also featured categories over at commons for wallpaper and another for widescreen. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 08:55, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can also download beautiful free wallpaper from National Geographic. СПУТНИК^{CCC P} 15:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Any topless native women ? :-) StuRat (talk) 20:06, 3 March 2009 (UTC) [reply]

What is not mandatory is forbidden: I took the liberty of removing the pipe ('|') from the NG link. —Tamfang (talk) 02:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

workforstudents.org.uk

Hi, does anyone have experience of dealing with workforstudents.org.uk - they claim to pay £25/hour for data entry work, but you have to pay them £25 upfront for training. The only Google result for "workforstudents.org.uk" is a Yahoo Answers question, and searching on just "worksforstudents" brings up results for an unrelated company in the US.

It seems like a scam to me, but just thought I'd ask before walking away from good money. Thanks in advance! — FIRE!^{in a crowded theatre...} 13:37, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a scam to me - you pay them for a "training package", and they make no guarantees as to providing you with work. Their website is a free site on wix.com , and they use a live.com email address for their contact. DuncanHill (talk) 13:44, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

£25/hr for data entry sounds too good to be true, so almost certainly is. --Tango (talk) 13:59, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Other things that make me suspicious:

Website made with free edition of Wix;
Postal address is given as "Head Office Edinburgh" (though Google knows them as 72 Mayfield Gardens, Edinburgh EH9 2AX)
Google Maps seems to think that "Mayfield Gardens, Edinburgh" only has numbers as high as 40.
"Regional Manager" is wearing a telephone headset in her picture, and looks suspiciously like a stock photo;
Can't find anything about this company on the web.

DJ Clayworth (talk) 14:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A couple more:

"The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service." AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:38, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"It's totally upto [sic] you how you get paid choose from Paypal, Cheque or even ask to have it put straight into your Bank Account. It's strongly advised that you set up a PayPal account to avoid any fees or oncurring [sic] costs." Use PayPal to avoid fees? Perhaps they mean "paying tax"...

AndrewWTaylor (talk)

A total scam. Tell them you accept their offer and that they can take the £25 out of your first hour's pay. Heck, you can even offer them £50 in the form of your first two hour's pay. See how quickly they turn that offer down. :-) StuRat (talk) 16:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They've thought of that: "the charge is to make sure that only serious applicants apply". But I'm sure we're being much too cynical: there are two positive replies to the question on Yahoo Answers. By an amazing coincidence they're both from people who joined YA the day after the question was posted. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But if you're willing to pay them twice as much (from your wages), then you must be twice as serious, right ? StuRat (talk) 05:30, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

By an equally amazing coincidence the question on Yahoo joined only the day before asking the question. DJ Clayworth (talk) 16:59, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So what is the correct procedure for reporting this scam, and Mr James Gilpin, or whoever is behind it? BrainyBabe (talk) 14:58, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I sent an email to their webhost(Wix). I doubt it will make a difference, but maybe if enough people complain... Or maybe there is a Wikipedian in Edinburgh who might like to go and check out 72 Mayfield Gardens in person. DJ Clayworth (talk) 16:42, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing that I live, what, maybe 300m away from the alleged address, I've had a look. As suspected Mayfield Gardens only goes up to number 40. No other houses on that road that look likely either.195.128.251.103 (talk) 22:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, the awesome power of Wikipedia. DJ Clayworth (talk) 18:35, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note that while certainly a scam, it's probably a legal scam. The only way I can see that they could be in trouble with the law is that they said they would be willing to employ people at a rate which they have no intention of actually paying. But proving intentions is quite difficult, you'd need a recorded conversation or written proof of their intent. Otherwise, they could just claim that the 2nd part of their plan, to pay for data entry, never materialized. StuRat (talk) 20:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

musical instrument

What is the name of the musical instrument used in orchestra that sounds rather like a music box and I think the name is something like "chelest"but that is not the correct spelling? I cannot find the answer to my question anywhere so far?Bartlett pair (talk) 16:51, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Probably a Celesta. DuncanHill (talk) 16:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Italians would no doubt pronounce it "Chelesta", and I've occasionally heard it pronounced that way by English speakers, but its usual pronunciation is "Selesta". -- JackofOz (talk) 20:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And, for what it's worth, the thing is a celeste to me—always has been and always will be. I think I got that from staring at the organ stop names while counting rests in the church choir. With an "s" sound. "Celesta" is the real name, though, according to the OED who tell us to "see celesta" under "celeste". "Celeste" also means "sky blue", by the way. --Milkbreath (talk) 21:08, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It seems both "celeste" and "celesta" are valid names. I've always assumed the inventor, being French, called the thing simply "celeste", and it only later acquired the -a ending, with or without his imprimatur. But I can't find any evidence of that. Fwiw, My Grove V has a separate entry for "Céleste" (note the acute accent), and refers to "Organ stops"; but its appearance in the Organ Stops article is spelled without the accent. Anyway, they're all lovely names, and if I had 3 daughters, I'd name them Céleste, Cérise and Céline. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Vice fund

How has the Vice fund been doing amidst the recent economic chaos? 86.8.176.85 (talk) 17:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See the prices for VICEX. On the whole, not so good. It has been in a tailspin since late 2007. --140.247.253.176 (talk) 19:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Although regular vices like tobacco and alcohol have recession-resistant or even counter-cyclical elements, most funds that rely on vices are heavily weighted towards gambling. Gambling in the US (Las Vegas) relies on travel and discretionary income.NByz (talk) 10:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree it often involves travel, I would like to point out U.S. gambling is just Vegas anymore. You can't hardly throw a stick without hitting a casino. There are 450 commercial casinos in nineteen states as well as 360 Indian gaming establishments run by 220 Indian tribes. In 2004 Nevada only accounted for 1/3 of commercial gambling revenue.[1] Rmhermen (talk) 18:17, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see that fund is heavily weighted towards defense. Another story altogether.NByz (talk) 10:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mixing clothes in the washing machine

It's well known that one should separate coloured and white clothes in the washing machine, in order to prevent the whites from discolouring. But what if you have an item that has equal dark and white stripes? Should that go in the coloured load or the white load? --Richardrj ^talk ^email 17:58, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Except maybe the first time you wash a new item, I've never found it necessary to separate whites and colours. Just chuck it all in and don't worry about it! New items should be washed with darks. --Tango (talk) 18:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Coloured. You can't stop the coloured stripes from discolouring the white stripes, but at least you can stop them discolouring anything else. DJ Clayworth (talk) 18:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Colourcatcher may be of help also. I'm not sure if it's available outside of Ireland, but it's fantastic. Queenie 19:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What if the stripes were colour-fast but something else in the load wasn't? --Tango (talk) 19:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This probably looks like a plug, but isn't. Honestly, colourcatcher would solve that. It absorbs the colour; e.g. if you had white pants and a red t-shirt you'd put in a colourcatcher sheet, and the red dye would go into the cc sheet rather than the white pants. Queenie 20:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but putting it in a light load would solve it without costing anything! --Tango (talk) 20:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What temperature the water? I believe hot makes colours run, and cold somehow contains colours. Julia Rossi (talk) 06:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So, why don't we have a page on Color catcher sheets? We have pages on laundry detergent, Laundry bluing and Dryer sheets. Are we just missing a redirect from some obscure generic term or do we need a new page? To stop the color from running, adding some vinegar to the rinse water will sometimes work. Soak the item in warm/hot water in the sink and see what it does there. OR: If you're a guy and the item has red stripes I'd strongly advise against putting it in with the whites. My significant other was rather unhappy about pink underwear caused by color run from a towel with red stripes. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 11:54, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What's wrong with pink underwear anyway? --Richardrj ^talk ^email 13:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Describe the hudson plains in one sentance.

If you had to describe the hudson plains in one sentance (or one word) what would you write? {Wookiemaster (talk) 19:44, 2 March 2009 (UTC)}[reply]

I'd go to the article Hudson Plains and crib the first sentence from the lede. - Eron^Talk 19:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's also a short short version at Hudson Bay Lowlands to test your editing skills. :) Julia Rossi (talk) 06:14, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would go for a sideways approach. What's a creative mis-spelling between friends? (Or freinds, as the young Jane Austen would have it.) Why not pleasantly surprise your teacher with a one-sentance [sic] description of the plane on the Hudson? BrainyBabe (talk) 14:25, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or just a plain Hudson. Livewireo (talk) 19:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or HUDs on planes. Fribbler (talk) 09:49, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

3gp codec for Windows Movie Maker

Moved to Computer refdesk. BrainyBabe (talk) 14:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Philosophical debate

I know it's inappropriate to have philosophical debates here on the RD. What I'd like to know is if there a good website to initiate such debates where really smart people such as Wikipedians hang out? — Michael J 23:58, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ILovePhilosophy.com and philosophychatforum.com are both intellectually stimulating. Rockpocket 00:44, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

*sigh* Usenet, once upon a time ... —Tamfang (talk) 02:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

March 3

how do you spell

how do you spell funsway, phunswey etc.? and what is the meaning? thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.88.122.142 (talk)13:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you thinking of feng shui? --LarryMac | Talk 13:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

yes thank you so much I couldnt think of that to save. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.88.122.142 (talk)

Nasty gas or something on the underground

This question has been removed. Per the reference desk guidelines, the reference desk is not an appropriate place to request medical, legal or other professional advice, including any kind of medical diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment recommendations. For such advice, please see a qualified professional. If you don't believe this is such a request, please explain what you meant to ask, either here or on the Reference Desk's talk page.

Sudden, unexplained onset of a symptom is something that you should talk about with your physician, rather than with some random strangers on the internet. I'm afraid that Wikipedia cannot offer you more specific guidance than that. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:52, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion of this deletion is at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Removed request for medical advice. DuncanHill (talk) 15:12, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

One possibility would be PM (particle matter). Assuming that you still live in Vienna, this site [2] lists the measurements of PM10 at various locations. Compared to other emissions / pollutants (CO2, SO2, NO2 and Ozone) they seem a bit poor, but there are no separate measurements for PM2.5. The article on particulates has some data on the health effects. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 15:00, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for a memoir by an ex-nun

This was written by a English woman who entered a convent on the eve of WWI and came out during WWII. Much of the memoir describes the spiritual and practical lives of nuns, and the other part follows her Rip van Winkle-like awakening to the modern world. All I can remember about her personally is that she had been educated with women of upper middle class (at least), and that she was related (as a niece?) to a British prime minister, though I'm not sure when he was an active politician. It was a fascinating read. Any ideas? BrainyBabe (talk) 18:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I Leap Over The Wall: A Return to the World after twenty-eight Years in a Convent by Monica Baldwin, a niece of Stanley Baldwin. LANTZY ^TALK 18:59, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Magic! (Az da kidz seh.) How did you find it so quickly? BrainyBabe (talk) 19:05, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I typed "nun memoir prime minister" into Google. LANTZY ^TALK 20:21, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hits self on forehead. (Except I did try something similar.) BrainyBabe (talk) 20:51, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Non-fiction by children

Are there any competitions for non-fiction works by children (up to 16-year-old or similar) that are free to enter and apply to the UK? There seem to be plenty of creative writing/poetry competitions, but I can't find any cover this area (I've tried searching a bit). Thanks.

The Guardian has the Katine Journalism Competition, open to UK children aged five to ten. LANTZY ^TALK 02:50, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Literacy Trust has a long list, and while many are for creative writing, not all are.[3]. The Royal Mail's young letter writer of the year competitions are quite famous. There are a lot of journalism and criticism prizes if you try Googling, though many of them have fairly short periods for entry, so you'll have to keep a look-out. In the past there's been things like Sky young journalist award[4], Guardian young critic[5], young film critic of the year[6], Bayer/Daily Telegraph science writer award[7]. There are also many regional awards e.g. the Neil Gunn award in Scotland[8]. --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 11:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Public disasters in eerily convenient or appropriate places

US Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson River "roughly abeam 50th Street (near the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum)". The 7 July 2005 London bombings included a bus explosion. "The detonation took place close to the British Medical Association building on Upper Woburn Place, and a number of doctors in or near the building were able to provide immediate emergency medical assistance." Coincidence or what? Enquiring minds want to know. And some more examples would be fascinating, of sudden unexpected events happening in just the right place to deal with them or commemorate them. BrainyBabe (talk) 21:07, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, coincidence. Think of how many disasters happen - that two happened somewhere convenient (and not even convenient in the same way) is hardly statistically significant. There are doctors all over the place, it's really not unlikely for a disaster to happen without running distance of a hospital or doctors surgery. --Tango (talk) 21:34, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well and think about it this way. The Hudson River happens to be right next to a main runway from the airport. (Many rivers, are in fact, used as major airplane approaches and things like that for urban areas because you don't have to worry about buildings, as much noise, etc.) And the London bombings—do you really think the terrorists were hoping that they'd set it off next to a bunch of doctors? Is that how terrorists really think? It seems unlikely. And given the density of a city like London, you're going to be near a lot of things no matter where something happens. Neither of those two examples raise any of my eyebrows. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:09, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If Flight 1549 ditched a little further south, it would have been eerily close to the Empire State Building, which a plane crashed into in 1945. A little further, and it would've been eerily close to Ground Zero. Another mile, and it would've been eerily close to the Newark Airport. You can't throw a rock in a city without hitting a doctor or a cultural site. Ironically, if you hit a cultural site, the doctor can't fix it, but if you hit the doctor, you'd have to find a doctor. Coincidence? --Fullobeans (talk) 23:55, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - exactly. You could pick absolutely any point in or around the city and have found a hospital conveniently right nearby - or an airline office - or the offices of the company running the tourist boats that rescued the people, or the home of one of the crew or...something. There are just too many things that you would have found coincidental had it not been this thing. And...if you could find a place where there was absolutely NOTHING of relevance nearby - then that particular event would simply be conveniently absent from your list of coincidental things. A better way to evaluate your claim would be to do so in advance. Let's say that an airplane crashing within a mile of an aerospace museum is your criterion for 'coincidence'. Now look back through all of the plane crashes of the past decade and see how many of them crashed within a mile of an aerospace museum. When you have your answer, look at the number of aerospace museums per square mile of the earth's surface within (say) 100 miles of an airport...and see if that number is disproportionately high. If so - then you have proved something important...if not...not. I'm pretty sure the answer is 'not'. SteveBaker (talk) 00:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There was a helicopter crash at a Michigan hospital last year, although since it caused closure of part of the hospital, that's not very convenient[9]. The National Transportation Safety Board is located in Washington, DC., less than a mile from the site of the 1982 Air Florida Flight 90 crash, though I don't know if the NTSB was there at that time. I'm sure there was some fairly recent major disaster or terrorist attack that happened to occur near a conference of emergency medicine or similar, and the people there were able to help, but I can't remember the details. --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 11:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

According to the causes section at Aviation accidents and incidents "...80 percent of all aviation accidents occur shortly before, after, or during takeoff or landing..." That would mean that although some airports are going to be a fair distance from the city they serve, most will be within convenient distance from a hospital. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 12:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

March 4

Filling a room with popcorn

How much corn would I need to buy to make enough popcorn to cover a 5m x 5m room to a depth of roughly a foot? 86.8.176.85 (talk) 01:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Googling popcorn expansion ratio gives, for instance, an expansion ratio between 40 and 44. If we take 42, then circa 0.182 cubic metres of unpopped popcorn is required. Now we need a volume to weight conversion for unpopped corn, and we're there. So. Based on an assertion that a 1 ounce serving is 3.5" by 2" by 8" (i.e. 0.000917676 cubic metres) then we need 8303 one ounce servings, or 235 kilograms of popping corn. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:50, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(EC with above. Leaving my solution anyways) Let's do a little Fermi problem on this. Let's just guess that a popcorn kernel is 1.5 cm x 1.5 cm x 1.5 cm. That's 3.375 cubic centimeters or 0.000003375 cubic meters. Assuming we are filling a rectangular prism of size 5 m x 5 m x .305 m as you describe means that we need 7.625 cubic meters. 7.625 divided by 0.000003375 is 2,259,259 kernels. So you would need 2 million kernels. I have no idea how much this translates to in terms of how much of what sized containers of popcord you would need to buy. But I say, why stop with a 5m x 5m room 1 foot deep. Go all the way and do what they did in this fine piece of cinema. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 01:58, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Don't forget to use a chemical laser. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 02:08, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(EC)From a few Googles, I came up with a figure of around 500 kernels per average bag of microwave popcorn. So you'd need about 4,000 bags of microwave popcorn. Of course, factoring unpopped kernels per bag, you might want to get an extra hundred bags or so to be sure. There's a 6-pack of cheap popcorn that I got at Aldi's for $1.49, so it'd cost you roughly $1000. Of course, if you used gourmet popcorn, it'd probably be considerably pricier. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 02:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, quick answers, brilliant. I'm going to use the crappy popping corn you can buy in half-kilo bags in supermarkets here; a bag is normally about 60p. If it's not prohibitively expensive/timewasting I'll do more than a foot, but I need to know what I'm getting in to. 86.8.176.85 (talk) 02:17, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note that my first answer has changed, as I made a basic error. It seems to be rather a lot of popcorn... --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As another cross check, this paper shows an experiment in which 30g of popcorn produces circa 1250 ml of popped corn. You have a volume of 7,620,000ml to fill, which would be 6096 * 30g servings, or 182kg. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:31, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Let me just say that I love it that you weren't asking this just out of curiosity, but are actually crazy enough to fill a room with popcorn. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 07:46, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If it happens I would love to see some pictures. Lanfear's Bane | t 09:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget to put up a web site, like this previous reference desk questioner. :) --Sean 14:02, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Depending on the circumstances of your prank, you may be able to get away with significantly less popcorn if you're just aiming to achieve the appearance of a full room, rather than an actually full one. If you elevate the floor (using sheets of carboard or plastic) and pile a a few inches of popcorn on top of that, the apparent depth is increased. Similarly, placing large boxes about the room will displace some popcorn and reduce the volume you need to fill (Archimedes' principle!).

Another alternative is to construct a box inside the room, with dimensions slightly larger than the doorway. Line one side of the box with clear plastic sheeting. Install the box just inside the room, flush against the doorway with the plastic sheeting facing out. Fill the box with popcorn. To the casual observer, the room now appears full – floor to ceiling – with popcorn when the door is opened. (This solution also reduces the hassle of cleanup, as there won't be popcorn jammed into every nook and cranny of the room.) Don't forget to construct a similar bag or box of popcorn around any windows which might be visible from the exterior. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:37, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am totally in favor of this kind of prank - yes, the ENTIRE room must be filled. Anything short of that WILL be a letdown - and you will not be able to tell your grandchildren about it with the pride it deserves. Resist all temptation to do a half-assed job. However, I would urge finding something better/cheaper to fill it with. Filling the room with something bigger/cheaper might make sense. Balloons is a be passe...but you CAN think of something!

When a friend at college went home for spring break - we took the door off of his bedroom and moved the hinges to the top edge of the door - so you had to lift the entire thing upwards and outwards to get in. This was OK - but it was a half-assed job and we knew it. So the following Xmas break - we removed the wooden surround to his door - we nailed 2x4's across the gap, nailed sheet-rock (aka plasterboard) to that - plastered it over, spackled it and painted it to match the rest of the walls in the corridor - we even added a bit of trim at the bottom to match the rest of the wall and hung a poster on that section of wall to make it look 'natural'.

The room was GONE! As far as anyone could tell, it was never there.

Then I went to a friend's wedding - and met my (now) wife as we happily wallpapered his car. The big pink roses really added something to the look of his rusted out wreck - and it looked so much nicer like that that he never did remove it...sadly the car didn't survive more than a month or two before heading off to the car crusher.

SteveBaker (talk) 16:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed pranks are fun, when they go as planned. If you fill the room with popcorn remember that both the people doing the filling (may we suggest blowing the fluff in?) and the people opening the door will have to breathe. Be sure to have emergency procedures in place to get a] a person out from underneath an avalanche of popcorn, b) errant popped corn out of s.o.'s airways. Safety first. (Lots of OR to back that one up :-)76.97.245.5 (talk) 08:19, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all the answers, I'll try and get photos, but I don't think we can afford to entirely fill the room. I might try and get some popcorn cheap at the end of the day from a cinema, and hopefully we can get a consistent 40-50 cm of popcorn on the floor. Strongly considering the catflap door too. Thanks 86.8.176.85 (talk) 01:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Natural American Spirit tobacco

So I finally managed to get my hands on a packet of these cigarettes, and I must say, I am very, very pleased with them, but they are so hard to find in the UK. After getting a packet of these, I do not wish to ever go back to regular cigarettes. There is none of the harshness in the taste, and the smell is not nearly as bad.

A few questions...

Where can they be bought in the UK? I'm not ever smoking regular cigarettes again if possible, these are so good. They have rolling cigarettes in this form, but I am bad - bad - at rolling. I notice Asda has the rolling tobacco, but if I was to smoke these I'd have to become more proficient at rolling.

Do they not stink up the places you smoke them in as badly? Seriously, I think in comparison with regular tobacco, the smell is almost like incense. I notice that the cigarettes are slower burning as well.

Is this like the original way that tobacco was smoked like the American Indians first did, free of additives? I notice there is a Native American man on the packet.

The article says that they are as bad for your health as regular cigarettes. I do NOT want a lecture on the health effects of tobacco, but somehow I feel that they are not as bad as regular cigarettes. My throat tells me this.

I do wish to give up smoking, but am not pursuing it actively.--I Want To Do This (talk) 01:46, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I live in Brighton, and the Sainsbury's here sells them. The Waitrose I used to work in, in London, also sold them. I've always had the impression that they're uncommon but fairly easy to obtain. Oh, and they're much worse than real cigarettes; they taste like someone else has already inhaled them. 86.8.176.85 (talk) 02:14, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What? No way.--I Want To Do This (talk) 04:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Native American smokers did not originally use paper to wrap their tobacco. They almost certainly used a pipe and / or wrapping made of tobacco leaves, i.e., a cigar. DOR (HK) (talk) 08:01, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We don't seem to have an article on Native American tobacco smoking in general, but there is Peace pipe, which has some info. The article says, A type of herbal tobacco or mixture of herbs was usually reserved for special smoking occasions, with each region's people using the plants that were locally considered to have special qualities or a culturally condoned basis for ceremonial use. I'm not sure whether Native Americans smoked recreationally or for non-ritual purposes. I suspect that modern commercial tobacco cultivation is far removed from pre-Columban tobacco farming. I doubt this brand is at all similar to "the original way that tobacco was smoked like the American Indians first did." Pfly (talk) 09:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad you're happy with the choice, though "the smell is not nearly as bad" strikes me as faint praise. --- OtherDave (talk) 11:18, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lot of companies selling them online if you Google "american spirit cigarettes uk" (WP seems to frown on links of this sort); make sure to check store reviews and see you get a reputable supplier since some online cigarette companies will be selling smuggled or other dodgy merchandise. (Incidentally I notice Native American Spirit got a nice bit of product placement in recent film He's Just Not That Into You, is that the reason for the sudden interest?) --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 11:50, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"I notice there is a Native American man on the packet." I think images of American Indians have been used to promote tobacco ever since it was commercialized. See cigar store Indian for another example. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have the quote, but Santa Fe Tobacco insists this wasn't product placement and that they didn't even know they were so prominently featured in the film until after its release. Tomdobb (talk) 13:37, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As for having difficulty rolling cigarettes, have you tried a rolling machine ? StuRat (talk) 16:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you really want to quit smoking like you said, I need to tell you my story. I was what you might call a party smoker most of the eighteen or so months that I really did smoke, but I also did enjoy the occasional puff now and then when walking in the street or just to take a reality break. Anyway, at the same time I also suffered from stomach ulcers for seven years or so. At one point almost two years ago my ulcer burst and I threw up digested blood, which kinda tastes like vomiting chocolate mixed with water, and a lot of it. I was sent to the hospital instantly, and the doctor told me that I shouldn't even look at a fag, much less smoke, because smoking (more or less) dries up your mucous membranes in the digestive tract (apart from other things) and helps nasty things develop. And that was the moment. All it took was for them to appeal to health. This is not, I believe, medical advice, as I am not advising anyone to do anything, it's more in the sharing-of-a-personal-story field. Right? On occasion I do feel I'd love to have a smoke, and I know I'd enjoy it, if it weren't for the fact that I know that I'd feel rotten afterwards again. Hope I didn't sound lectury. Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 21:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Translation for Americans: "fag" = cigarette. StuRat (talk) 06:38, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You took the time to read all that? --Ouro (blah blah) 08:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, my eyes don't glaze over until I hit responses which are over a page long. If there's no end in sight, then I move on. StuRat (talk) 06:19, 6 March 2009 (UTC) [reply]

What horrible horrible cigarettes do you get in the UK if you like American Spirits this much? Back when I was a smoker a friend of mine bought a pack of those and they were the harshest most foul tasting brand I've ever tried.-- Mad031683 (talk) 00:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re. native American smoking. Some nations used what gets translated as "cherry leaves". I have no idea what plant they were from. It's just as likely to have anything to do with cherry trees as not. (OR You have no idea how happy I was when I found out that "frog eggs" in one recipe turned out to be a water plant :-) - 76.97.245.5 (talk) 08:02, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Communicating with an alien

Inspired by the SETI question above, I was wondering if we ever encountered an alien, would we be able to create a foundation for communication? What would this be based on? Is there anything we could express that isn't dependent on (or can be simply translated out of) an agreed system of symbols? Even stuff like the Voyager Golden Record seems like it wouldn't convey much to a totally different form of life. 86.8.176.85 (talk) 02:11, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If we were to encounter a form of life from an entirely different planet/culture/etc. from ours, I'm not sure we'd ever be able to communicate fully, probably leading to a war a la Ender's Game. The drastic differences in our perceptions of life would make it very difficult indeed to find any sort of common ground whatsoever. If one culture (either ours or theirs) had been observing the other for a very long period of time, they might be able to approach them on some sort of common ground, but if we just ran into one another out of the blue, I don't think we could communicate. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 02:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, any civilization sufficiently technologically advanced enough to recieve and/or send communication with us will likely also be looking to do so, much like we are (they quite likely have their own "SETI" program). They also would likely have at least as advanced an understanding of Cryptography as we have, and so even if they couldn't directly translate our language (and us theirs) they should at least be able to recognize it as language. Also, certain things, like universal constants (say Pi and other mathematical constants) should be universally recognizable. They may not use base-10 numbers, but that is a minor deal; any decent mathematician in any society should be able to work out that someone is broadcasting math at you... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 02:20, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mathematics is the basis of most of the intentional signals we have sent, many of which attempts are discussed in Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Rmhermen (talk) 02:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You assume, Jayron, that they have something that is reasonably similar to our idea of language, or, like Alinnisawest implies, that they won't mistake our "language" for the guttural noises of beasts... it's clear my dog is trying to communicate with me, but that doesn't mean I'll take what it says all that seriously. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:00, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, but if your dog transmits radio signals or flies around in a starship, or fills a planet with cities, I bet you're gonna take him seriously, guttural noises or no guttural noises. Barring situations where the alien life form is, oh, the laughter in a child's voice or something as conceptual as that, the idea that one species would mistake another for dumb animals is a kind of a non-issue. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 07:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But suppose we send off a series of the first 100 prime numbers in the hope of contacting them - and 50 years later, what we get back is some kind of interpretive dance with associated digital data representing the odours given off by the dancers. Now what? SteveBaker (talk) 15:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Then we have a problem, obviously. But at that point, the question is not "are these dumb animals"?, because clearly they're transmitting something to us. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 12:23, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed...and I don't really think it's likely that we'd find that kind of problem at the outset. Any civilisation capable of detecting, receiving and decoding our message would have to have a reasonable grip on mathematics. Assuming they don't get strings of binary numbers arriving in their radio telescopes every day - we'd expect a fairly vigorous attempt to understand it. I'm sure they'd spot a prime number sequence for what it is. What will be tough will be the higher levels of communication. So perhaps we'd exchange some numbers - perhaps some equations...but it's not clear that we'd get much further than that. If our interpretive-dance/odor communicators really do that as their only means of talking...it would indeed be tough to get any kind of idea about what they are saying to us. The worst part is that every generation of human scientists only gets to ask maybe one question and get one answer back from it...in the worst case, you'd ask the aliens something - and never live to hear the answer. Understanding the aliens in such a fashion would be an exercise in utter frustration.

I've long held that the solution in the book/movie "Contact" has it about right. What you do is to send a complete description of how to build a computer system - what all of the software that has to be loaded into it - which would comprise an AI package designed to respond as much like a human as possible - with a database like (maybe) Wikipedia. Then the aliens can learn as much as possible about us on the first round-trip - so perhaps their reply ends up being in similar form. But that's an awful lot of information to send at the low data rates we're likely to be able to use reasonably. SteveBaker (talk) 04:40, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If we imagine the alien to be very similar to ourselves, then communication becomes not such a problem. If they are some kind of hivemind, then not so much. If they are some kind of poisonous space spore, then even less so. The assumptions make the answer. There are about a billion different sci fi answers to this question, some more encouraging than others. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For initial communication, to prove sentience, use math. (Or "maths," if they are more like the British.). Edison (talk) 05:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Assumptions inherent in the above posts: Aliens exist; we actually notice said aliens (i.e., they aren’t microscopic); aliens communicate; alien communications require technology and / or cryptography (no telepathy or billion light-year eyesight for semaphore). Folks, we have no idea if any of these assumptions are correct! DOR (HK) (talk) 08:06, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think most people would accept all that implicitly, DOR. At the same time, we can't say they don't exist, either. We just don't know either way. They certainly might exist, hence SETI etc. -- JackofOz (talk) 19:55, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A slightly similar communication scenario with fewer assumptions is discussed here and here. Leaving messages for future far distant generations who's culture might be very different to our own, about the dangers of radioactive waste. meltBanana 16:32, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some musings: Starman is a simple summary of fantasies about aliens: we'd shoot them. Humans already shoot others who are not like themselves so why not aliens? And until we can communicate with other beings (the opposite sex, other age groups, whales, dogs, insects etc) why would aliens be better at communicating with us than we are on our own planet and vice versa? Maths is just one code or signifier, though a brilliant one, it does restrict the options. It's also interesting that filling a planet with cities is a kind of coda for "advanced" – don't ants already do that? I guess it depends where you're looking from. Julia Rossi (talk) 22:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Who are you?

A couple of years ago my employer, as part of the agreement, bought jackets and windpants for all the workers that wanted them. Mainly aimed at the sewage/water truck workers it was offered to all. Out of 7 at the airport only two, myself and another wanted them. My co-worker has worn his constantly since then but I just started using mine about four months ago. I wear the full set and he wears the jacket with a different set of windpants and any of the water/sewage people have long since worn theirs out. Since I started wearing mine several people have called me by my co-workers name. Not a problem, it was on the street and they were at a distance and had to look twice. However, two incidents had me wondering. I was in the store talking to someone and as the conversation finished and they walked off they called me by my co-workers name. Earlier today, at the post office, I met one of the elders, that I have spoken to several times. After both of us saying good morning she asked me a question. I missed it or thought I heard wrong and she repeated it, "How's co-workers wife's name?" Without really thinking and assuming that she had confused the name of my daughter I said fine. She replied that she hardly ever saw her about anymore. I then realised, as she walked off, that it was my co-worker she was thinking of. I said that I was not my co-worker and she turned round, walked back and looked puzzed. I repeated myself and with some surprise she realised that I wasn't who she thought I was. So, after all that (sorry about the length), the question is, what role does the face play in recognising other people? Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 06:12, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Face perception plays a very big role in how we recognize other people. However there is a rare disorder, Prosopagnosia, which inhibits a person’s ability to ability to recognize faces, often even those of close friends and family! It’s unlikely that you just happen to have two coworkers with Prosopagnosia though. How well do you know these people exactly? I’d put it down to coincidence personally. --S.dedalus (talk) 06:48, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Do you look at all like your co-worker? I am terrible at remembering people I seldom speak to/meet in the workplace (well, ok, everywhere) and if you happen to share some common traits with your co-worker that would be enough to add in to the confusion. For instance if you are both white, tall, with short-brown hair, clean cut with no glasses then it's more likely you'll be confused as each other. Expectation is a large part of recognition in some circumstances. Example - If you walk into your family home you might not expect to see say the barber you've been to every month for the past 10 years, the circumstance alone may be enough to make you question your assumption of who you think it is. Not saying this is the case here, but there is more to recognising people than simply their face. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the replies and the links. Recognition of human individuals explains why on the street people see me as my co-worker. Just to clarify, the two people were not co-workers. I'm 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in) and my co-worker is 1.93–1.98 m (6 ft 4 in – 6 ft 6 in), we both would be wearing toques, though his is white and mine is black, at this time of year and both wear glasses. The person in the store is a good friend who I see almost every day. The elder is a relative, by marriage, and has been at my house at least twice in the past year. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 11:36, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I rely far more on voice to recognize people than faces. A couple of times I've run into coworkers outside of work, and I didn't recognize them until they spoke. StuRat (talk) 16:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This doesn't really help answer your question but it's related and might give you some insight... I work in a clean room, so the only parts of a co-worker that I see are their eyes. The first and third images in that article will give you an idea of what the suits look like. Although with ours, you can see even less of the face than what is shown in the first image. There are ~200 people that work in the clean room with me. I've worked there for a few years now and I'd say that I can pick out 99% of people just by their body size, posture, gait, etc. even from a few dozen meters away. I don't know them well enough to know all their names but I can tell who is who. And it can be a little strange running into someone in public who I work with since my brain tries to figure out who they are by looking at their entire face, clothing, etc. and I no longer have the context of the clean room in that situation. Dismas|^(talk) 16:55, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Similar issues apply for surgeons and nurses wearing masks in the operating room. There must be medical papers on the subject, or official guidance in training? And similar issues apply in places that observe sartorial hijab for women -- the Iranian-style headscarf strips out a lot of identifying features, but the Arab abaya and the Afghani burqa are even more anonymising, and yet apparantly children have no problem following their mothers aroudn the shops. Maybe it is the walk that adds distinctiveness. BrainyBabe (talk) 17:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The way a person walks (Gait?) definitely aids in recognition - i can't begin to count the number of times i've known a commentator was wrongly specifying the name of a player on the soccer pitch because i could tell by the way they run/walk that it wasn't the person they said. Also I think one of the Fifa games such as FIFA 07 specifically mimics the running/walking style of players in the game to increase the realism. ny156uk (talk) 20:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think all these replies have given me the answer. As I was coming home earlier I saw a different co-worker. He's a tall skinny guy who always wears a black parka, like this. Because of his hight and slim build the parka hangs on him in a distinctive way and he always has the hood up masking his face. But as soon as I noticed how they were walking I realised it was someone else with a similar build. That reminded me that when I lived in Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories we all wore parkas like these. Every Christmas or Easter you would either get a new parka or the outer shell would be replaced (the fur and inner duffel would be the same). For a week or some it would be difficult to figure out who was who with the new parka/shell. So I suspect that because we live in a place where for most of the year, and that sometimes includes summer, our clothing is such that it's difficult to see the face we learn other ways of figuring out who people are. I think it must be a combination of all the suggestions above, clothing, build, walk, posture, etc. Then we end up doing it for so long that even when we can see the face we still use the other clues. In the case of my co-worker and myself the jacket is so distinctive, only two in town, and he has been wearking his 18 months longer than I have, it's blocking out the differences in the other clues we use. Thanks to all for helping me figure this out. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 23:21, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

StuRat (talk) 23:41, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

looking for a children's book author

story is about angels who each day line up at the gate and go to earth to help people. the main character is called 'little dream' who patiently waits her turn to finally be allowed to go to earth to help people. the book was a soft cover, approx 12" square blue pages, about 10 - 16 pages in length. how can I find the book? I hope you can help me aunty julie2605freedom (talk) 08:14, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The book you're talking about is called Little Dream and it's author is Cynthia Leonetti.It was illustrated by Laurie Sharp, John Taylor and Cynthia Leech. It is copyrighted 1969 by Atransa Park Television Pty Ltd and printed and published by Sungravure Pty Ltd. There is no ISBN or cataloguing information. I think you can find it in the rare Australian section at most State Libraries. It is comparatively rare and hard to come by, since it dates back to the 1970's. Best of luck with your search. La Alquim ista 10:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Library Resources Classification

Discuss five reasons why Library resources are classified?

Evaluate the NLDS Act in relation to the establishment of Libraries in Zimbabwe? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Weddington (talk • contribs) 10:11, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misevaluation, but it is our policy here to not do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn how to solve such problems. Please attempt to solve the problem yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. Thank you. Nanonic (talk) 10:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Articles

How do we know when a place, or a school, or a temple, etc. is important enough to merit it's own article in Wikipedia? Does it have to be important at all? If Wikipedia aims at having "the sum total of knowledge of all the people in the world" then shouldn't even the most insignificant things and tiniest objects have their own article?? La Alquim ista 10:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See here Wikipedia:About#Wikipedia_content_criteria and the links there-in. Notability is a big part of this - because something is notable/important to a small group of people in City X does not make it worthwhile being included as a page on wikipedia which is visible to pretty much anyone. Obviously there are ongoing debates about these - particularly as wikipedia seems to have a huge volume of extremely detailed 'pop culture' articles such as crazily-indepth articles like say episode 7 of series 3 of Third Rock from the Sun (no idea if that is a correct example but you get the idea). 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:07, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked Jimmy Wales to be more nuanced about the "sum of all human knowledge" statement, because basically it's a statement about Wikimedia, rather than Wikipedia. Wikipedia isn't a dictionary. Dictionary knowledge belongs on Wiktionary. Quotes belong on WikiQuote and public domain poetry and books belong on WikiSource. And then there's the whole verifiability thing; we can't cover something that can't be checked and we have to make editorial decisions to keep articles a readable size. So we're not the sum of all human knowledge just a lot of it. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:15, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I really don't think it makes much sense to take that statement very literally. It wouldn't be the total sum of human knowledge unless everything everyone knew was in there, which is obviously impossible -- it couldn't even contain all of my knowledge, let alone everyone's. That's got little to do with how much I know and much more to do with the nature of my knowledge. It's a pretty good statement of an ideal, though. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But that statement does mean, people come here and promote their business or website, because they think everything can be included. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:27, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Those people don't come here to promote their business because they think everything can be included, they come here to promote their business because they want more customers. It's got nothing to do with whether they believe in collecting the total sum of human knowledge. (They may well quote that when an argument ensues, but that's blatantly disingenuous.) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 11:41, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The thing is, Notability is a ridiculously fuzzy concept. What generally happens is, we try to create an article on every town, every high school, etc, within any area in the world that people are willing to write articles on. Small businesses, bands, people, etc. are easier to determine notability for. ~A H 1^(TCU) 16:28, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

changing the extended network box message?

how do i change the extended network box message? all i seem to find on the web is replace it with a picture not how to change the message —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.69.142 (talk) 11:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is this about MySpace? Please explain.--Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 11:53, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

yeah myspace :P, i tried a few tricks but it didn't work out properly

Well, nowadays, MySpace has an option where you change it. It's called Mood and Status setting. Good luck! 66.229.148.27 (talk) 18:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Automotive price conversion question

I'm looking at the new Ford Focus on Ford's New Zealand site, and am trying to work out the currency conversion. The models I'm interested in is the 2.0 Zetec five-door hatchback, at $35,490 (New Zealand dollars), but how much is that in United Kingdom pounds?

Ta. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.45.219.185 (talk) 14:36, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Should add it was because I was thinking of getting it as a grey import. Ta. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.45.219.185 (talk) 14:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Google does currency conversions automagically direct from the search box.

Either the three-letter currency code or some approximation to the currency name will work. Their algorithm is quite clever. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:44, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's a pretty serious issue - and I can almost guarantee it's a bad idea. Make sure that the NZ version of it meets UK emissions/economy/safety standards - and that it's tuned to run well on whatever kind of gasoline is common in the UK. There are frequently significant differences between vehicles made for different markets. Within the European community - you should be OK because the standards have been 'harmonized' between the european countries - but with NZ - all bets are off. You'll have to pay import duties on it too. Shipping from NZ will probably cost you several thousand on top of that. If you are looking for grey imports - it makes sense to stay within the European markets where you could probably go and pick up the car yourself and drive it home - where all of the laws regarding vehicle standards are harmonized - and where there are no import tarrifs to worry about. You might also look as US prices...at least the shipping will be cheaper. SteveBaker (talk) 15:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The US and Europe are, of course, LHD. Grey import vehicles can be complicated: warranty, taxation, MOT and specification details, parts and servicing will all have to be considered. Also the hassle of shipping (as well as the cost). A quick google found this forum where users discuss shipping cars from NZ to UK, all offers quite different views. Also here's a shipping company which offers some info. Goggle will find you more shipping companies. Gut instinct tells me it wouldn't be worth it: NZ is not the cheapest place for new cars (but then, the UK isn't either, so who knows). And don't forget you might be able to get a good deal from UK car sale companies at the moment. And why buy new? Gwinva (talk) 21:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Europe's LHD, but you can order a RHD car from somewhere else in the EU provided you're prepared to wait for it to be built. (People doing that is the reason you sometimes see RHD Opels.) That way you'd also avoid having to get it tested for SVA - if I've read the reference correctly, you'd have to get that done for a car imported from NZ. Don't know how much money you'd save that way, but you'd certainly save a bit of effort! AJHW (talk) 11:36, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I need a certain title for a book

The book has to do with Slaves in Antebellum America and in one scene, a certain slave's breasts are torn off. Please help =] 66.229.148.27 (talk) 17:53, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

DO you want to find a book, or do you needa title for a book you are writing? Thnaks, Genius 101^Guestbook 22:14, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Toni Morrison's Beloved is a book like that, but can't recall that scene exactly, it has violent stories in it. It's been awhile since reading it though. Here's a list of her other books. Unless you do need a title for your own antebellum brutality book. Julia Rossi (talk) 22:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think Kindred by Octavia Butler has something similar to that, too. Steewi (talk) 00:22, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Chicken Wound

Monday night, my bantam chicken disappeared. Tuesday night I found her trying to get back into our yard (she was on the other side of the fence). However, she now has a small wound on her chest. She also seems fatter than before and can't seem to flap her wings. Does anyone know what might have caused this and if I can do anything for her. Should I take her to a vet?--Pufferfish4 (talk) 17:55, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you are concerned, taking her to the vet would be the best plan. Even a small wound can get infected, so I would certainly advise getting professional help. A bunch of random people on the internet are not the best people to trust with your pet's well-being. --Tango (talk) 18:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, a random chicken does not have a lot of monetary value, so a replacement might be cheaper then repairs (vet). 65.167.146.130 (talk) 20:20, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would've said the same as 65.167 but judging by the reference to 'her' and 'she' and asking about vets I guess this is more of a pet than a commodity. as Tango says you'd be best off seeing a vet to find out more, anything we say would likely be of limited use (unless you follow 65.167's advise, eat your current one and replace it with a new chicken). ny156uk (talk) 20:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you are fond of the banty, take her straight to a vet who deals with such animals. She might or might not need a bit of surgery or antibiotics. We do not provide any veterinary advice, unfortunately. Edison (talk) 00:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Since it's usually impractical to give chickens the quality of veterinary care that larger animals receive, I think it's appropriate to answer such questions here. We had many wounded chickens after a dog attack. Some were so far gone that we euthanized them. For the others, we washed out the wounds with saline and a topical antibiotic, sewed the wounds closed, bandaged them up, and separated them from the other birds. Except for one beloved hen which got a worm infestation and died, all 5 of the wounded made full recoveries. You should get a book on bird doctoring before you proceed. Good luck! --Sean 16:41, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I found another, but smaller, wound under her wing, so we think she might have been picked up by a hawk and then dropped and she may be slightly bloated because of bruises. I've been applying Hydrogen Peroxide and Neosporin on her wound and they look a little better. She is also running around, eating and drinking. But if the swelling doesn't go down soon I will call a vet. Thanks for your help. If you have any more suggestions, they are welcome--Pufferfish4 (talk) 01:33, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bad grades

How does people interpret bad grades? Bad luck? Foolishness? Lack of motivation? And how important are they? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.12.16.53 (talk) 18:48, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That depends on the circumstances and the people involved. Grades in what and at what level? How bad are they? Is it one grade that's bad or lots of them? Did the person in question do sufficient work? What are the grades being used for (getting a job, getting into the next level of education, etc.)? Were there any extenuating circumstances? Without more information, there is no way to answer this question. There is no single explanation for people getting bad grades. --Tango (talk) 18:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, and I realize this will sound snarky, but when the person trying to explain their bad grades says stuff like, "How does people..." it tends to over-ride any explanations or justifications they might have. A grade is a teacher's interpretation of how well a student is doing; using incorrect grammar will also influence people's interpretations of how well the student is doing. Matt Deres (talk) 21:24, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The IP address traces to Spain. In Spanish the most direct translation of the English word "people" (gente) is construed as singular (this brings me back to one of my hobby horses — people is not the plural of person; it's a mass noun construed as plural, as gente is a mass noun construed as singular). Unless the poster plans to study in an English-speaking country (or get a degree in English) I wouldn't worry too much about this particular aspect. --Trovatore (talk) 09:09, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your whole post looks advanced to me. The mathiacs in my high school class had really high grades in maths and the sciences but barely registered on the literature, language scale. They were highly regarded though. Another person had average grades though he worked hard and consistently and was well-regarded by teachers as well. His nice attitude seemed to attract people too. Later he became a teacher himself. But to answer your question, mostly the person who gets bad grades is blamed for it along the lines that you have there. Bad grades are important in that they can prevent you from going further and they give the impression that's all there is to you, but doing something about it and improving grades through commitment and consistently working in class and in assignments can change things. That makes a good impression and people are patient with someone seen to be making an effort. Julia Rossi (talk) 22:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience students getting bad grades either could do well, but for whatever reason (maybe their own fault, maybe not) are not achieving their potential, or could not do well, no matter how hard they try. There is a world of difference between the two. Luck has very little to do with it as far as I can see—grades are a complicated calculus of ability plus time spent on it. That's it. A deficit in either side of that equation (much less both sides) can lead to a bad grade. I give a lot of bad grades, for both reasons. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you believe that you have had a bad day, bad luck or that under other circumstances you'll get a better grade go for independent exams: SAT for bad high-school grades, GRE for bad undergraduate grades, or perhaps TOEFL for bad English grades. A short (1 year) master can repair bad graduate grades.

Bad grades will clearly influence your chances of getting to the next level of education. That can be specially harmful for you, if you plan to study further.--Mr.K. (talk) 12:31, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It would be even better if the OP took independent exams that exist in their country (Spain, apparently). People stop assuming the entire world is in the USA. --Tango (talk) 13:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Does mixing mayonnaise and English mustard give an approximation of American mustard?

It certainly seemed to. I just tried it. English mustard is too strong, and that's coming from someone who likes heavily spiced food. But the article doesn't seem to mention this practice.--Rosechu (talk) 21:14, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And when I say American mustard, I might also mean French mustard as well. You know, just the milder stuff, NOT the Coleman's stuff which I'm trying to dilute.--Rosechu (talk) 21:17, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is American mustard and yellow mustard the same? 65.167.146.130 (talk) 21:51, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well something like French's is much sweeter than english mustard with mayonnaise from my experience, but you'd certainly be getting closer to american mustard and further away from the stronger/more potent english mustard. ny156uk (talk) 22:17, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have no experience with English mustard, but might it make sense to mix it with honey to make a honey mustard? It's rare for American mustard to have anything mayonnaise-y in it, though mustard sauces and dressings often do. Here are the ingredients for the three best-selling American mustards:

French's classic yellow: distilled vinegar, water, No.1 grade mustard seed, salt, turmeric, paprika, spice, natural flavor, garlic powder

Plochman's mild yellow: white distilled vinegar, water, mustard seed, salt, turmeric, onion powder, spices, natural flavoring

Gulden's: vinegar, mustard seed, salt, spices and turmeric --Fullobeans (talk) 03:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think the difference between American Hot Dog mustards and the traditional English brown mustards is the type of mustard seed and the addition of tumeric, which gives the distinctive yellow color. There is usually no oil or egg in it at all, which are the operative ingredients in Mayonaise... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 03:13, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that the difference between American and English mustard is that English mustard is mustard powder mixed with water - nothing more. Other mustards tend to have vinegar, sugar and other diluting agents in it. It's a source of mild amusement to use Brits to see Americans go for the English mustard with the same vigour as they go for the milder American stuff! --TammyMoet (talk) 09:08, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Coleman's English mustard also contains wheat flour, sugar, salt, turmeric, but it seems that there's a greater quantity of mustard flour[10]. So it's more in the proportions than anything else. --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 14:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect Tammy meant "the mustard that most English people eat and think of as mustard" when she said "English mustard", rather than "a branded product that calls itself English mustard". I think it's pretty common just to have a tin of mustard powder in the cupboard (which, as far as I can tell, contains nothing but mustard flour), which you can mix up with water, or vinegar, or milk, or whatever, and is also useful for adding to various recipes. 79.66.56.21 (talk) 18:40, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dijonnaise is a blend of (Dijon) mustard and mayonnaise. You'd end up with something more like this then American mustard IMHO. Nil Einne (talk) 18:13, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Really large payments

When some company or organisation buys something really expensive, like a ship or an aeroplane, from another company or organisation, how is the payment actually handled in practice? Does someone sit at an online banking website and key in a transfer of several million euros/dollars? And, a question that has been nagging at my mind, what if say, a ship costs € 100 million, but the customer only pays € 99'999'999.95? Does the provider say "No can't do, we won't deliver the ship until you pay us the missing 5 cents"? JIP | Talk 21:58, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Most businesses buy things on 'account', so they are given the product without paying, and then billed later. For businesses where this is a 'standard' purchase that would be reasonably normal. ny156uk (talk) 22:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That really depends on how they want to do it. I mean, if the two parties trust each other enough, I'm sure they can use an online banking service if they like. Hell, they can even use an IOU, I guess. Typically, though, large transactions like this are done on a bank's premises, or with an officer of the bank presiding over the transaction at another location. In cases like this, money is held in escrow. In other words, if you're buying that 100 million ship from me, in the beginning of the process, you authorize the bank's officer to take that money from your account and hold it in escrow. This ensures that you indeed have the money, and that you can't suddenly take the money and the ship and run (or only pay me a part of the money). The terms of the escrow dictate that I will get the money when we both sign the purchase agreement. The bank officer then releases the money to me. The details can vary, but this is how things are typically done. (That's how it works if you buy your own home, too.) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 22:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) I suspect it depends entirely on the terms of the contract. Payment may be spread out in some form (advances, milestones, installments, etc.), divided into multiple classes (stock, assets, cash, etc.), or paid as a lump sum (often with the assistance of one or more banks). The contract will also probably provide resolution for partial payment, though I suspect few would bother with a 5-cent discrepancy. I would also doubt that any employee would have access to a website where large amounts of money could be transferred with little or no oversight—moving that much money most likely requires multiple-level approvals. (This is conjecture; I, unfortunately, do not have personal experience with such amounts of money.) – 74 22:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have to say, we all probably wish that we had that much money lying around. *sigh*. Genius 101^Guestbook 22:49, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You don't say... With even one million €, I could pay my rent and eat a 15 € meal every day, without having to lift a finger to work, until the year 2091... 194.100.223.164 (talk) 13:34, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You haven't accounted for inflation. You need far more than €1m to retire that early. --Tango (talk) 13:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Invest it. With a million to start with, you shouldn't have any trouble finding something that will match inflation. --Carnildo (talk) 00:02, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To use a lump sum of money to retire you need to invest it in a way that allows you to live off the interest without touching the principle (and, in fact, allowing the principle to grow to compensate for inflation keeping the real value of the interest constant). You can try guessing when you are going to die and working out when you can start spending the principle, but you risk running out of money when you're 90 years old, or something, which wouldn't be pleasant. --Tango (talk) 01:40, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

principal. —Tamfang (talk) 20:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about other such huge purchases, but aeroplanes aren't actually 'bought' as such. The financing transaction (varies between transactions, of course, since they are so major) works like this. The customer (airline, say) enters into a contract with a bank to pay a monthly sum (call it rent or interest). The bank securitises that income stream, and sells interests in it (i.e. the right to receive money coming in from the airline) to financiers who, in return, cough up the money up front. That money goes to the seller of the aircraft.

You can, of course, add other bells and whistles to make the transaction more complex, but basically the money upfront flows from financiers --> bank --> manufacturer, the plane flows from manufacturer --> airline, and the repayments (rent) flows from the airline --> financier, and thus everything goes full circle.

In other (less) large international trade transactions, a letter of credit is often used to facilitate the movement of the money. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

One of the bells and whistles PalaceGuard left out would be an insurance company. They often insure both ends to some extent. It's called risk management. So the buyer will have an insurance that will help out if they face financial difficulties and the seller will have a "bad debt" insurance. In addition large purchases are sometimes insured separately from the company's general risk insurance. (... and if lots of companies default on payment for their deals the insurance companies get into trouble - see AIG) 76.97.245.5 (talk) 07:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In H. Norman Schwarzkopf's autobiography (he was a commander in the early 1990's Gulf War), he described how the Saudi government contributed something like US$ 500M towards the war costs, by simply writing a check for that amount to the US Government (I think the check may have been signed by the king of Saudi Arabia) and handing it over to one of Schwarzkopf's people. IIRC, Schwarzkopf immediately had someone jump into a military jet and fly the check to Washington DC for deposit, since sending it by normal courier would have taken a couple days longer, and the daily interest on such a large amount was enough to justify the cost of the special flight. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 13:48, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Binocular Chemicals

I'm doing a science project and I need to know the chemical they coat the prisms and lenses with to make the image look sharper, or whatever. I seriously need help soon! <(^_^)>Pokegeek42 (talk) 00:41, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Take a look at Anti-reflective coating, then ask any additional questions. Edison (talk) 00:49, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you SOOOOOOO much! You're the best dude! <(^_^)> Pokegeek42 (talk) 21:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

March 5

Jeopardy Music

I am having a debate with one of my friends, does the live audience of the show Jeopardy hear the music during Final Jeopardy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.231.197.20 (talk) 03:02, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Ken Jennings in his book Brainiac talks about how it feels to be hearing the music while actually playing the game. If the players can hear it, obviously the audience can too. --Anonymous, 05:30 UTC, March 5, 2009.

I wouldn't be surprised if they still dub over with a "clean" copy of the music, though. APL (talk) 13:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the audience and players hear all the music while the program is being recorded. The music that the home viewer hears comes from the same source. As User:APL alluded to in his reply above, the music is sent to the recording tape machine or server "clean" by using a mixer so that the levels of all of the studio microphones, video playback devices, music and sound effects can be adjusted and properly mixed. On a show like Jeopardy!, which is recorded "live to tape", post-production editing is only employed to fix mistakes, add graphics and cut the show to the exact duration needed for syndication. --Thomprod (talk) 17:28, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian Public Company Financial Statements - Data Format

Does anyone know of a good, free, source for Canadian financials in a "data format" like .csv or .xls?

Sedar.com provides the information as .pdfs. I spend a lot of time manually inputing data.

Also, if you can think of another place that I could post this (that might have more Canadians, especially market people), I'd appreciate it. NByz (talk) 05:20, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you are just looking for a template [11] one of these may help. Otherwise, I don't know. Canada's not my turf. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 07:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fixing a water distiller

If the original manufacturer has gone out of business, can a plumber fix a domestic water distiller, or is an engineer required? Neon Merlin 09:48, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Depends on the plumber.86.211.110.247 (talk) 15:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)DT[reply]

Water distillers generally aren't particularly mechanically complex - I would imagine a competent plumber could fix most faults with one. Certainly a plumber would be my first thought to getting it fixed - the worst that happens is that he says he can't. It does, of course, depend on what's gone wrong with it - if a proprietary part in a distiller from a defunct manufacturer breaks irreparably, it may be very hard to source a replacement. ~ mazca ^t|c 15:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Crime against humanity

When I read that article it immediately seemed to fit Bush's last government. Does anybody else agree? Could Bush be charged with that? 212.219.0.20 (talk) 10:13, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not use the reference desk as a soapbox. Thanks. 88.112.63.253 (talk) 10:54, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto. This isn't a place to discuss political views or to start a debate. Papercutbiology♫ (talk) 12:35, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The question seems like a valid one for me - under what circumstances can (ex-)presidents be charged with criminal offenses?

--Mr.K. (talk) 12:43, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The question asked if Bush's last government compares to a crime against humanity. How many people would agree, and how many people would disagree? Papercutbiology♫ (talk) 12:57, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In this form "does anybody else agree") it is not an acceptable question. However, the part "could Bush be charged with that" is a legit question. --Mr.K. (talk) 13:03, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, so I guess it should probably be reworded.Papercutbiology♫ (talk) 13:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is true that the question as asked doesn't pass the sniff test, but the underlying question is a good one. The "See also" section of the article "War crime" should keep the questioner busy for a good long while. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has jurisdiction only over its signatories, for the most part, though it can decide cases brought to it by the United Nations Security Council. The US is not a signatory. The International Court of Justice adjudicates among UN member states, mostly. The United Nations Security Council can take military action on its own initiative. The recent rulings against Sudanese president Bashir by the ICC show how hard it is to enforce such things even against a relatively feeble state. International law is in flux, and war crimes cases and rulings are receiving a lot of scrutiny and criticism, not least for the issues of partiality your question raises. If you watch television, British television aired an amusing yet incisive satirical look at the issue that's worth watching, The Trial of Tony Blair, in 2007, featuring Blair, not Bush, as is to be expected, but he does get mentioned, also expected. --Milkbreath (talk) 15:55, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Leaders are rarely charged or convicted by their own country for crimes against humanity. If you look at the Nuremberg trials and Tokyo trials, both were conducted by conquering powers. Leaders are sometimes held accountable by their own countries during/after revolutions for various reasons/charges (not necessarily crimes against humanity). Benito Mussolini, King Louis XVI, Nicholas II, and Pol Pot come to mind (although these were more of mob actions that real trials). I could be wrong but I don't think the International Criminal Court has ever convicted a single person. Could Bush be charged with a crime against humanity? It's possible, but unlikely. Even if charged, it is even less likely that he would be convicted. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:36, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In fairness to the ICC, it has only been around since 2002 and issued its first warrants in 2005; it was 2006 before it got its first indictee. It hasn't really had much time to go about convicting people yet. It's forerunner, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has indicted 148 people since 1994, with 100 proceedings completed and 48 people found guilty by the tribunal and sentenced.- Eron^Talk 01:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In regards to the ICC, there is some question as to whether the US would surrender its sovereignty to a foreign body. See the article United_States_and_the_International_Criminal_Court for more information. This is purely speculation on my part, but there might be an ex post facto issue given that the United States has not ratified the ICC treaty. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You might also be interested in the book "United States v. George W. Bush et al." by Elizabeth de la Vega [12]. In it she presents a legal case that Bush and others committed fraud based on Title 18, United States Code, Section 371 [13]. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:08, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No-one so far seems to have mentioned sovereign immunity which has been argued as excluding all proceedings against a head of state for any alleged crimes committed in their official position. This was one of the defences used by Milosevic, if I remember it right, although the court was not impressed. Sam Blacketer (talk) 00:58, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, in the US the state is (generally) immune from prosecution, but individual members of the government aren't. If that's correct, then sovereign immunity doesn't help Bush survive a trial for crimes against humanity. --Tango (talk) 01:16, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There was certainly the considered possibility of Nixon being tried in a domestic court which led to his pardon by Ford. Rmhermen (talk) 13:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unemployment

When slavery existed was there any unemployment? If the possibility of slavery still existed today would people try to get a job for many months in vain? 94.196.103.53 (talk) 15:19, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, people were unemployed, yes, but unemployment insurance didn't begin until 1932.Livewireo (talk) 15:41, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

One problem with unemployment is that people are neither unconditionally mobile nor downwardly flexible. It takes a lot for someone to pick up and leave their home and go where there might be work. Obligations, like providing for family members, availability of accommodations that meet what the individual considers his/her current minimum standard, language barriers, cultural differences, unpredictable conditions and the like keep people from moving. People will only consider accepting work below their former skill level, experience and pay scale once they have run out of other options. It is not an advisable career move because it creates a break in one's employment track record and basically means starting over in a new career path or from an inferior position if the original career path is resumed. (Women returning to work after caring for a child are often faced with this reality.) Societies that used slave labor did not replace existing jobs with slaves. The employment tiers were created with slaves at the bottom. A disruption in that system might cause a shift toward the bottom. When slavery was abolished in the South many farms failed because of insufficient availability of "cheap labor". The existing system had been based on prices calculated without any payroll costs for the slaves and only minimal expenses in that area. Many plantations closed. So, yes if the existing system were disrupted people would go look for jobs for months until they got desperate enough to accept working and living in conditions like those of slaves. See Human trafficking for present day examples.76.97.245.5 (talk) 16:19, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You question requires answering, first, "if slavery was legal, could/would unemployed people sell themselves into slavery?"

Given that slavery is selling away some of a person's basic human rights, and each person ordiarily places some value on their liberty, it probably would not happen unless there were absolutely no other option. That is, when comparing slavery against a given Option A, for example, where Option A does not involve permanent bondage, most people would probably choose Option A even if it paid much less, depending on how much they value their own liberty.

In any case, in this part of the world social security and the welfare safety net means that anyone eligible for those benefits (i.e. excluding illegal immigrants) has a viable and more attractive laternative to slavery in any circumstance. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:47, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Being an indentured servant would generally be chosen over being a slave wherever possible. --Tango (talk) 01:12, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

largest rifle

What is the largest standard round fired from a gun that is carried by one individual, not vehicle mounted? I know the .50 caliber has a very large bullet, and some sniper rifles are that size but are there any larger? 65.167.146.130 (talk) 18:49, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To understand this issue, you need to learn the difference between caliber and a cartridge (firearms). Simply looking at bore size does not tell the whole story. There are grenade launchers with a much larger than .50-inch bore which are carried by a person, but I don't know if that qualifies as a standard round. .50 BMG is the most powerful one I'm aware of in common usage, but there could be larger ones, once you decide what you mean by "larger". Friday (talk) 18:54, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PS. Muzzleloaders and shotguns are commonly available in larger than .50 caliber, but they're nowhere near as powerful as a .50 BMG. Friday (talk) 18:56, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Soviet PTRD fires a 14.5x114mm round; that article says that came in a 64.4 g bullet, whereas the heaviest .50 BMG seems to be 52 g. At 17.3 kg a PTRD is certainly man portable, but (with the bipod, sight, and some ammo) you're not going to want to carry it very far by yourself. Bigger still is the Czech RT-20, which fires 20 mm caliber; that article claims a bullet mass of a whopping 100g. 87.115.143.223 (talk) 22:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And beyond that we're into the realm of recoilless rifles like the SPG-9, which is certainly a gun and just about man portable (although no-one is going to be happy at being asked to carry a 60kg gun into battle; in practice you'd use a golf-caddy-like set of wheels). That fires what is essentially a 73mm artillery round. 87.115.143.223 (talk) 22:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll see your 73 mm and raise you the 84mm Carl Gustav recoilless rifle. Which I can tell you first hand is man portable, as I am a man and I have indeed ported it. (With no wheels attached, sadly.) - Eron^Talk 00:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, but the CG's rounds seem to be around 3.3 kg, whereas the SPG-9 fires rounds up to 6.9 kg. Mimetic Polyalloy (talk) 12:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What boy wouldn't be delighted to find a .551 caliber (13.9 mm) antitank rifle under the Christmas tree? It weighed just 35 pounds (16 kg). Edison (talk) 19:10, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Undiscovered Tribes

What are the chances that there are undiscovered tribes living somewhere on the planet? BigDunc^Talk 21:43, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is difficult to prove a negative, i.e. that there are no more such tribes to be discovered. BrainyBabe (talk) 21:49, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And, of course, such encounters can be stage-managed, or even outright faked. Groups can be found, and then "lost", and when found again c. 60 years later, have no memory of the previous encounters, as Sabine Kuegler claims about the Fayu in her memoir of living with them. BrainyBabe (talk) 22:04, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Uncontacted peoples may be of interest. --Fullobeans (talk) 00:22, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Undiscovered by whom? I imagine there are plenty of small groups out there who have had no contact with what we'd call "civilisation" - but it seems unlikely that they'd not be in contact with other groups who are perhaps just on the edge of contact. SteveBaker (talk) 03:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We seem to know quite a lot about a people listed in that article - surely that means there has been some contact. --Tango (talk) 12:41, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In any case, uncontacted is not the same thing as undiscovered. And we need to define what "undiscovered" means. There may be some tribes whose existence is known only to surrounding tribes, not to the world at large. Does that make them "undiscovered"? There could be some tribes that have been discovered by some Westerner, who chose to let them live their lives in peace and not tell anyone about them. Does that make them "undiscovered"? I think it's possible there are undiscovered tribes, in the sense of tribes about which there is zero published information; and I also think any such tribes will be discovered eventually, but when? - who knows, because by definition we have no way of knowing where they are, how many of them there are, etc. They probably don't exist in places like New York City ... but then, you never know. When the Amazon forests are finally all chopped down, we'll probably find lots of previously unsuspected tribes there (that's if there's anyone left on Earth to do the discovering). -- JackofOz (talk) 17:45, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Does it count if "we" know there are people in a given place but "we" don't know how many tribes they are? —Tamfang (talk) 05:33, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Jane's Dilemma"

This is a purely hypothetical case. Any relation to real life events is entirely coincidental. Now, talking hypothetically, let us say there's this girl -we'll call her "Jane"- and her older brother -we'll call him "Joe"-. Now, let us say that "Joe" really likes a girl at his school -we'll call her "Jane 2"- and "Joe" doesn't have any courage. At all. "Joe" has never even taken any interest in any girl before. So, "Joe" goes to "Jane" and asks her what he should do, since "Joe" wants to ask "Jane 2" to the prom. "Jane" has no idea what to tell him to raise his confidence. "Jane" is also really angry at "Joe" since this is more a question he should ask his mother, instead of younger sister, who knows absolutely nothing about love, since she's only in the sixth grade. But, "Jane has to answer his question, because "Joe" doesn't want his mother -the only person who knows the correct answer to his question- interfering in his high-school crush. "Jane" also can't ask "Joe's" mother, because then "Joe's" mother would ask why "Jane" needs the answer to this question. I would very much like it if someone could respond, since it would make "Jane" very, very, very, happy. Remember, all this is purely hypothetical, and any relation to real life events is entirely coincidental. <(^_^)> Pokegeek42 (talk) 00:51, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hypothetically speaking, I would suggest that "Jane" tell "Joe" to just be brave and ask "Jane 2" to the prom. The worst that can happen is she says "no". Just go up to her sometime when she's on her own and say "Hi, I was wondering, would you like to go to the prom with me?" It's as simple as that! --Tango (talk) 01:09, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the worst thing that could happen is that Jane #2 could say, very loudly for others to hear, "I wouldn't go to the prom with YOU! You're just a fucking loser!", then laugh obnoxiously in his face, and then proceed to spend the next few weeks with her friends tormenting Joe for nothing more than her own amusement. But, maybe then again she'd just politely say "no"... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 02:51, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In which case we have to consider Jane#3 through Jane#N. But there isn't really an alternative - all of the sneaking around and the machiavellian planning doesn't really get you very far - and the well-known problems of all teens in soap operas and sappy movies revolves around not getting in there soon enough before Jane#X has agreed to go with Joe#Y (where X=2 though N and Y>1). So - be bold - be early - be presentable - be sickeningly polite - don't do it in front of all of her snotty friends (see Jane#3..N, above). As for the consequences predicted by Jayron#32 - c'est la vie, que sera-sera, Nec Aspera Terrent, Kaphar hunnu bhanda marnu ramro ...and so on. I doubt that Mommy (whom I shall call "Jane#0" for completeness and consistency) would be able to help - since she probably doesn't know Jane#2 and is therefore unable to predict the consequences of the direct approach. SteveBaker (talk) 03:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your hypothetical Jane could suggest to your hypothetical Joe that he watch this how-to video. :) --98.114.146.46 (talk) 04:27, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, if Janes 2 thru N all turn Joe down, he could always try asking his sister to the prom :-P Astronaut (talk) 04:37, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That would be worse than Jayron's scenario but not worse than taking Jane#0 to the prom! Zain Ebrahim (talk) 12:32, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tango was absolutely correct. "Joe" should pick some moment when "Jane 2" is alone, and just ask her. On the other hand, Jayron32 was quite wrong. If "Jane 2" behaved like that, "Joe" would be miles ahead of the game by never having to waste even one more minute thinking about a total loser. -- B00P (talk) 06:01, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed - if "Jane 2" reacts like that, "Joe"'s only mistake was liking her in the first place. If she does torment his about it, he should practice his look of disdain - it's a very useful look, second only to disappointment. --Tango (talk) 12:39, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think Jane should tell Joe that she's just 12 and shouldn't be giving him advice about high school romance. And that maybe he should go see Wikipedia's reference desk because they seem to give that sort of advice. Otherwise, yeah, chicks dig confidence. I heard that in a movie but Jane wouldn't be old enough to get in to see it. --JGGardiner (talk) 11:01, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your suggestions. By the way, "Jane" is 11, not 12, and she probably could see that movie since she already watches and reads very, "adult" anime and manga. Another thing, "Jane #N" already has a boyfriend so "Joe" can't ask her out, go figure. I hope "Joe" stops being a big, fucking coward. Frankly, I don't know what he sees in the bitc...uh, girl. I'll tell "Jane" to tell "Joe" what you said. <(^_^)> Pokegeek42 (talk) 00:27, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have to confess, I'm lost - there are far too many hypothetical people in this discussion and I've lost track of them... I hope all the Janes, Joes, Jayrons and people with terrible taste in computer games but fantastic taste in numbers live happily ever after! --Tango (talk) 01:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I hope that, too. <(^_^)> 76.188.37.208 (talk) 15:03, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

March 6

How widespread was World War II

I was watching the film Destination Gobi earlier today. The film, supposedly based on a true story, featured a group of US Navy sailors in the Gobi desert, trying to return to the sea while evading Japanese spotter planes and horse-mounted patrols. I was quite surprised by the idea that the Japanese army would have any interest in the Gobi desert and it got me thinking... Was there anywhere in the world that was unaffected by World War II? Astronaut (talk) 01:34, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect Antarctica had nothing going on. Areas of South America as well. 12.216.168.198 (talk) 02:17, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You'd think, right? But alas. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but there wasn't any actual fighting in Antartica. BTW, I forget the details but there are some pretty nice conspiracy theories that the Third Reich still exists because New Swabia was not conquered, and that Hitler will return some day from his secret base on the Moon. Or something like that. :) And of course there's my own OR that because the Soviet Union and Japan never signed a peace treaty, the war never really ended, and if fighting breaks out, the Axis powers can still win. :) A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 04:06, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just because nobody traded bullets there doesn't mean it didn't play a part in the war... if the Germans expended time and resources on it for military purposes, then I'd say it was part of the war, in the same way that, say, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was part of the war, even though nobody was actually fighting there... --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:10, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, Antarctica is a landing pad for alien space ships, and with his interstellar alliance, Hitler now rules the Inner Earth. Or possibly the outer earth, if you believe space travel is a conspiracy. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:10, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Prompted by 98.217's link to New Swabia, I found Participants in World War II and the interesting animation File:Ww2 allied axis.gif. Thanks for your help. Astronaut (talk) 04:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

While there were of course neutral countries even in Europe during the second world war (Switzerland, Sweden, Ireland etc), I think most all countries were effected at least economically by World War 2. Possible exceptions are those that had very little trade or contact with the wars participants. Perhaps Bhutan or somewhere... TastyCakes (talk) 04:27, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bhutan was not fully independent at the time; its foreign affairs were in British hands, and Britain was at war. Further, it was bordered by British territory on one side (namely India) and China on the other, and China was also at war. Still, I suspect Bhutan was a lot less affected than many other places. --Anonymous, 06:01 UTC, March 6, 2009.

You might be interested in the Undiscovered Tribes question above. =) --JGGardiner (talk) 10:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Many neutral countries had no armed forces fighting, and were the scenes of no battles, but were likely affected by attacks on commerce (oops, didn't see the neutral flag). They were also the scenes of espionage and foreign intrigue to win them over or to use them as transit routes, or as places of refuge. Edison (talk) 19:03, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is this really copyright infringement

I was watching the film Be Kind Rewind earlier today (I know, two films in one day!). Towards the end the shop is visited by bailiffs claiming the amateur reenactments are a massive copyright infringement. Under the threat of a $3bn fine and a ridiculously long prison sentence, the entire stock of tapes is seized and crushed under a steam roller just moments later. To what extent does copyright extend, and could the copyright infringing material be crushed moments later? If I was to reenact my favourite film starring my friends and using my video camera and not-so-special effects, would the result be a copyright infringement, a parody, a fan-fiction or what? Astronaut (talk) 01:33, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A (complete) fan-made re-enactment of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark recieved approval from the writers, but I don't know if there would have been a possible copyright challenge on it. Steewi (talk) 02:03, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would think that a shot-for-shot restaging of a film could be considered a copyright violation. It might be possible to seek protection as a parody under fair use, but of course the more faithful the adaptation, the harder it might be to claim parody. That said, Gus Van Sant reshot Psycho (1998 film) almost frame for frame to match Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 original. IANAL, but I believe that the original would still be in copyright after 38 years; it would be interesting to find out if Van Sant had to pay for the rights. - Eron^Talk 02:09, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I did notice in the credits at the end of Be Kind Rewind, it has a section like "Reenactment approvals and rights" followed by a list of the films they reenacted. Seems they sought approval when making the film, but I assumed that was because they were actually making another hollywood film, with professional actors playing amateur filmmakers. Astronaut (talk) 02:24, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As far as the Psycho remake goes, Gus Van Sant didn't pay a cent. Quite the contrary, he was paid for the job. If anyone paid any money for the rights, it was Universal, but since Universal owns the original film, I'm pretty sure they were free to do what they wanted with the property. (Robert Bloch, as the author of the original novel -- or rather, his estate -- possibly got paid, though, depending on what kind of a deal he made when he sold the film rights.) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 09:15, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's a really murky aspect of copyright law. The standard mantra is that you can copyright expressions, not ideas. (You can patent ideas, but that is different.) But in practice, "expression" often covers a LOT more than the exact frame-by-frame shots, and such things would probably be seen as a court as a derivative work.

Whether they qualify as "parody" is a totally different aspect of copyright/fair use law. It's more specific than most people understand the term "parody" to mean — you have to be parodying the original work, not something else. (So you couldn't parody George Bush with a send-up of King Kong, if that makes sense. You can parody King Kong with a send-up King Kong, and that's it, under the legal definition of "parody.")

Ages ago I heard a whole paper on the various copyright debates about "fan fiction" going back to the 19th century... for the life of me though I can't recall what the punch-line is, other than, "yet again, very murky, not easy to define from legislation alone."

Not very helpful, eh? Welcome to copyright and fair use law... where the courts are basically just making it up as they go along, and nobody really wants to start trying to come up with hard and fast rules... browse through some of the key fair use cases hosted by Stanford's Copyright and Fair Use center and you can see how fairly arbitrary it can be. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:42, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aside from the law about copyright - what doesn't ring true is the bailiff's just showing up and doing these bizarre things. In most countries, bailiffs act to enforce decisions of the courts. So in order for this to have happened - there would have had to have been a court case - the outcome of which would have been some kind of ruling. Seizing of the offending material is a possible result - and failing to turn it over might get you in contempt - but I don't think the bailiff is empowered to say "do this or pay that". As for the fate of the tapes - they might be destroyed in due course - but I can't imagine them doing it on the spot - and certainly not with a road roller! But this couldn't possibly happen as a surprise - they would have to have served the store owners with the court papers, held the trial, etc, etc. So nothing here really rings true.

As for the legality or otherwise of your own movie - we're not allowed to give you legal advice here at the WP:RD. SteveBaker (talk) 03:27, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I realise, of course, the film was in part a parody of the whole MPAA vs pirates thing and reports such as this one about pirate DVDs being crushed. The world is safe though: I have no intention of making my own copy of <favourte film here> - I'm just no good in front of camera. Astronaut (talk) 04:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Various films have been re-made, sometimes with identical shot-for-shot treatment. How the authorities of the day treated them I have no idea, but if you need examples for comparative purposes, you might consider The Prisoner of Zenda (1937 film), the classic of many adapatations of the novel, remade as The Prisoner of Zenda (1952 film), which was judged no match for the original. BrainyBabe (talk) 07:29, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

General

On which date the 'world Population day' is celebrated? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.89.56.18 (talk) 01:14, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

According to our cunningly-named article World Population Day, it's the eleventh of July. Algebraist 01:16, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question

On the bank of which river is Patna located? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.89.56.18 (talk) 01:26, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See Patna. Algebraist 01:27, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

...which says "The modern city of Patna lies on the southern bank of the Ganges. The city also straddles the rivers Kosi, Sone and Gandak.". SteveBaker (talk) 03:15, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

...and your geography homework will really help you get better grades if you try doing it yourself. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 04:32, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Music in new Star Trek trailer

I just watched the new trailer for Star Trek (film) and there was some background music. (The link, on YouTube, is here which will probably be deleted soon.) I've searched adtunes and used Google but have been unsuccessful. What is the music? --Blue387 (talk) 07:16, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you haven't been able to find it, chances are that it's gonna be music that was created just for this movie. BTW, the trailer does not look very promising. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That would be somewhat unusual. Movie trailers are often produced before the score for actual movie is ready, so they tend to use music from other similar movies. Or so I've read. --Anonymous, 09:05 UTC, March 6, 2009.

That's my impression as well, however I couldn't recognise the music, too, and the original poster couldn't find a title, so I believe my suggestion is warranted, even if the case would be unusual. And Star Trek adventures usually deal with a lot of unusual... ;) --Ouro (blah blah) 09:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comparisons of Greek Language and Icelandic Language Wikipedias

Icelandic Wikipedia - 24,000 articles. Icelandic language - 320,000 speakers. 0.075 articles per speaker Greek Wikipedia - 36,343 articles. Greek language - 15,000,000 speakers. 0.00242287 articles per speaker

Icelandic has a ratio of articles to speaker that is more than 30 times than that of Greek.

Now if there's anything that makes me believe in Madison Grant's anthropological theories, it's this sort of thing. Whilst the ancient Greeks may have possessed more Nordic admixture, over the centuries following, they interbred with people from the east and south (such as during the time they were a part of the Ottoman Empire), and gradually became more mongrelised. As such, there are fewer people with the drive to write Wikipedia articles, something requiring a level of academic intelligence. Books such as IQ and Global Inequality lend weight to this idea.

Is my theory worth anything? Should I stop thinking like this? How do I stop thinking like this? Am I paranoid?--UB891UB (talk) 09:41, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon my bluntness, but what??? You're deriving Wikipedia growth ratio inequalities from genetics? We're not a forum. --Ouro (blah blah) 09:53, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tremble, mere mortals, before the intellectual titans known as Manx speakers. While numbering only in the hundreds, they have created over 2,000 articles. Anyhoo, hasn't the theory that the ancient Greeks were all called Olaf been discredited long ago? Fribbler (talk) 15:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's nothing to do with genetics. My own OR suggests that it's more to do the the higher levels of internet usage amongst Icelanders compared to the Greeks. Astronaut (talk) 15:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The ratio of Latin articles to native Latin speakers is infinite. How do you like that? Also, UB891UB, you can stop thinking like by that ceasing to read terrible books, and by recognizing that IQ is objectively meaningless. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also suggest that any anthropological theory that uses words such as "mongrelised" to refer to human beings can be safely discarded as crypto-racist garbage. - Eron^Talk 16:45, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not even all that crypto, in this instance. Yes, original poster, since you ask, you should stop thinking like that. You stop thinking like that by recognizing and accepting that it's ignorant and stupid, and it's in your best interests to be neither. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 23:17, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, you're not paranoid; you're a moron. Assuming your numbers are correct, Greek Wikipedia is 50% larger than the Icelandic version already, but given the relative sizes of the populations, each time one new Icelandic article was written fifty new Greek ones would have to be posted just to keep up. --- And "mongrelized?" Disgusting. B00P (talk) 00:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Moron? Whatever happened to "no personal attacks"? -- JackofOz (talk) 20:54, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're all wrong. A very large number of articles are written automatically. For example, the articles about nearly every town and city in the USA started off in the English language Wikipedia being automatically generated by a 'bot from USGS and US Census data. That's why so many articles about tiny, boring places are almost identically worded. Of course the auto-generated articles for many places have gradually been hand-edited - and now are quite diverse and interesting.

If just ONE enthusiastic Icelander took the trouble to dig out that bot (and a mere handful of others just like it) - changed it to generate Icelandic instead of English and then set it running - then the icelandic Wikipedia could easily have hundreds of thousands of bot-generated articles. If nobody in Greece could be bothered to do the same thing - then the Greek Wikipedia is going to be missing a bunch of that kind of article. Similar things happened with elements in the periodic table, all manner of simple largely-numerically-based articles. Look at this article on the little city of Cedar Hill in Texas. Do you seriously imagine that a Haitian Creole author took the trouble to write this? Not a chance. It's a 'bot.

Hence, our OP's reasoning is bogus. There is NOTHING that the WP article count has to tell you here.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:26, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

SteveBaker has a very good point. My first thought was the difference in climates. Iceland (62.7% is tundra. Lakes and glaciers cover 14.3%; only 23% is vegetated),1,2,3. Compare with Greece,1,2,3,. It is easy to imagine most people spending more time indoors in Iceland, and most people spending more time outdoors in Greece. 152.16.59.190 (talk) 03:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

But what came first and why??

what was the first article published to wikipedia and was it through pure chance or some logic?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.249.138.179 (talk) 11:06, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia did not arise by chance. It was deliberately founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. The details are at History of Wikipedia. The oldest surviving edits are listed at Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles. Algebraist 11:11, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

with all due respect, a truely microsoft answer - factually correct but not answering the question, i understand that wikipedia was a deliberate act, and that link does lead me to beleive that on 17th jan 2001 the first article was 'standard poodle' however i was under the impression that wikipedia was founded 2 days earlier. if that is the case was 'standard poodle' 2 days after founding the first article published. If so that answers the what but not the why. Why, one wonders, when attempting to capture all human knowledge would you start with a poodle?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.249.138.179 (talk) 11:24, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What would you start with? Aardvark? Big Bang? Cogito ergo sum? Genesis? Phil Collins? If you're actually planning on compiling the sum of human knowledge, it couldn't matter less what your first article is. But, to give you an actual answer, I don't know; nor do any other editors, seemingly, or it probably would have been added to the History of Wikipedia article. There could be an interview out there somewhere that answers this question, though I for one am too pooped to look for it. --Fullobeans (talk) 11:36, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that the order doesn't matter if you intend to cover everything. Since it takes years to cover everything, the first item will be there for a long time before the last item (especially since there is no last item, since human knowledge is always expanding). So, the first item will have far more impact on setting the reputation of Wikipedia, and human knowledge of that topic would likely be enhanced in the meantime. StuRat (talk) 14:36, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The earliest edits are lost to the mists of time - the software didn't store everything permanently back then. There are some clues about early articles and some people remember the first few days, but most is gone for good. But basically, people wrote articles on whatever they felt like, pretty similar to how it is now. --Tango (talk) 12:29, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose the firstarticle was probably published by one of the founders, who knows? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Monomath (talk • contribs) 12:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To Monomath, who knows, we know - read the article linked above. Specifically at Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles#Earliest surviving edits and other data which quotes Jimbo as saying it was literally "Hello world". And to the OP the oldest known surviving edit is the index page for the letter U, not an article for standard poodle. If you don't count that as an article the article for United States is claimed to have preceeded the U entry. Rmhermen (talk) 12:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably you mean "the article for United States is claimed to have preceded the standard poodle entry", right? – 74 14:33, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the claim is that the United States article preceeded the article for U which preceeded the poodle article. See Wikipedia:UuU. Rmhermen (talk) 17:42, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it would seem to me that, if you were talking about the oldest article, you'd lead with "United States" then. Perhaps it confused only me, but saying that "United States" is older than UuU *if* you don't count UuU as an article seems to be a roundabout way of stating the order. To summarize: "United States" has a good claim but little evidence, followed by UuU with a good claim and evidence, and "Standard poodle" is further behind those two. – 74 21:38, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the original edits would have been tests of the software. Over time, that evolved into well-written articles. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 14:32, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If God had done her job properly she would have arranged for each child to be born with the sum total of its parents knowledge pre-installed as it were.--(Why has this come out in bold I wonder?)Artjo (talk) 21

59, 6 March 2009 (UTC) Because you used semicolons instead of colons. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:15, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply] Thanks, learned something then!--Artjo (talk) 07:15, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can imagine that world, but it then moves us on to what would all those people do with the sum of all human knowledge? Richard Avery (talk) 10:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Useless Information

What makes information useless? Is there such a thing as useless information? What i'm getting at is that you hear people being described as 'full of useless information'. But is their actually any PROVEN fact which is not of any use to anyone??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Monomath (talk • contribs) 13:24, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't think it's meant to be taken that literally. But, generally, it refers to trivia, which can often be quite useful. Tomdobb (talk) 13:31, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is normally means useless with respect to their lifestyle and employment. For example a farmer who knew all about vintage computers would be described as full of useless information, but a curator of a museum of computing would not. The same museum curator might be described as full of useless information by his colleagues if it turned out he knew a lot about crop pests. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:35, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

i understand the concept of the phrase, and may have worded the question badly. I am asking is there actually any truly useless information. I may even be answering myself when i ask: does anyone NEED to know the sky is blue,^{[citation needed]} for example? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Monomath (talk • contribs) 13:38, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Very few people probably NEED to know why the sky is blue,^{[citation needed]} but that doesn't mean there's no use for the information. There's a substantial difference between information that is necessary and information that is useful. Tomdobb (talk) 13:40, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - exactly. This is a good case in point: Back when I was learning this stuff - I absolutely NEEDED to know why the sky is blue (and more interestingly - why it's not ALWAYS blue). I'm a computer graphics guy and when rendering pictures of the sky (particularly near sunrise and sunset - and when doing bizarre things like viewing it in infra-red or when using night-vision devices) - you need to understand the underlying physics of raleigh scattering and mei scattering or you'll have a very hard time trying to make things look convincing. SteveBaker (talk) 23:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It depends, the Useless Information Society of Great Britain (who publish The Book of Useless Information) define it as any interesting information that will not be used by the general community in an everyday situation - citing for example that Hull City was in 2002 the only team in the English league whose name couldn't be shaded in on a pools coupon whilst idly waiting for the results. Nanonic (talk) 13:42, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

very few is not the same as no-one, the hull city thing is possibly useless as i cannot envisage any situation where it is needed unless you were compiling a list of the useless! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.249.138.179 (talk) 13:58, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you can't envisage such a situation, you need to work on improving your imagination. I myself have encountered that factoid as a quiz question on several occasions. Anything that improves your chances of free beer is certainly useful. Algebraist 14:02, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose there is information so trivial that it would never appear in any trivia quiz. For example, the name of the pet of a non-notable family, chosen at random. I can't imagine that being of any use. StuRat (talk) 14:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's certainly useful to some people, though not to most. Algebraist 14:26, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, then make the pet from 1000 years ago. That wouldn't be useful info to anyone still living. StuRat (talk) 15:09, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What if someone was researching pet-naming conventions of 1,000 years ago? To that person, it might be "useful information." Bus stop (talk) 15:17, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. In my experience, this kind of trivial information about societies is something historians can't get enough of. Algebraist 17:25, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Very little information gets passed down over a period of time such as 1,000 years. That alone magnifies the value of any little tidbit. Bus stop (talk) 17:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think that some names of pets of nonnotable people who lived more than 1,000 years ago may indeed be useful information. Deor (talk) 04:54, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Using a staple proof from mathematics: Assume some information is strictly useless. That information would then be the perfect answer to this question, thus it would have a use. The contradiction indicates our assumption (that some information is strictly useless) must be false. So no information can be strictly useless in the sense that it would never be of any use. – 74 14:27, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"People" being "full of useless information" is being used figuratively. In other words -- its meaning is not nailed down. Sure, there can be "proven" facts that are not of any use to anyone -- why not? Therefore there is such a thing as "useless information," that is, if that is your definition of useless information. As far as "what makes information useless," I think the questioner is defining that in his or her subsequent comments and questions. The questioner is defining "useless information" as that information that is "not of any use to anyone." My own personal definition of useless information, is information that can't be easily accessed when needed. Bus stop (talk) 14:40, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your definition confuses me busstop. perhaps useless information is information that is only useful in the context of knowing it for the sake of knowing it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.249.138.179 (talk) 15:21, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think knowing something for the sake of knowing it is very useful. You might disagree. I think any information is potentially useful. But I don't think we experience any incentive to store information that we perceive no use for -- potential or otherwise. Bus stop (talk) 15:58, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

People who say that someone is full of useless information typically mean that the information is useless to them. It's a pejorative, aimed at cutting down someone who is perceived to be better (or to believe they are better) than the speaker. I.e., "You may have three advanced degrees, but it's not like you really know anything useful." - Eron^Talk 15:37, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All information that's available has been recorded, somewhere, at some time. There must have been a reason to record it, otherwise it wouldn't have been recorded. But sometimes, people take existing information and extrapolate other information from it. For example, it's common for genealogists to connect living notable people with notable people from the past, such as discovering that GWB was the 17th cousin 9 times removed of Queen Elizabeth I (that's just made up). That would interest some people, so it's useful for them. But if they discovered that GWB was the 19th cousin 15 times removed of some utter nonentity in France in the 12th century, I can't imagine anyone having a use for that fact, by itself. Unless it's to use that connection to trace him further back and discover he's related to Charlemagne, for example. So, even then, that apparently useless information might prove to have that use. -- JackofOz (talk) 17:22, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

More closely related than your guess. GWB is the Queen's 13th cousin only twice removed! Rmhermen (talk) 17:40, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

From a lawyers' magazine a few years ago: A new lawyer opened a sole practice and had no clients whatsoever. So he placed his desk facing out the window, and recorded the number of cars going east and west on the street by his office every hour.(This was before the days of the internet, so he could not just websurf or edit Wikipedia to while away the hours). There was a traffic accident on the street, and he was called and paid as an expert witness on traffic density on that street. So you never can tell. Edison (talk) 18:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of course there is useless information. The location of each of the hydrogen atoms in the drop of beer that I just swallowed - to a precision of 1mm - at three minutes past midnight on April the 20th in the year 1234 BC. That is useless. Come on - I can come up with information so utterly trivial that of COURSE there is no use for it. SteveBaker (talk) 23:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Was it just coincidence that you chose Hitler's birthday, Steve? See, we trivia-adepts can find connections anywhere, and then use that information for ... whatever we use it for. Some knowledge is useful simply to know it but not use it for some particular purpose. I have a lot of such information filed away. I rarely share it with anyone, or even tell people I collect it. I just like knowing it. That's a use, because making Jack happy is a very valuable and noble thing. A lot of pure mathematics has absolutely no known practical application. Until such time as an application is discovered - which may be never in some cases - it's apparently useless except as something teachers of pure mathematics require their pupils to know. And it also turns up in text books, thus creating employment for many people. So it has a use after all. The bottom line is: if something is known, some use for that knowledge, no matter how mind-bendingly arcane the use may be, can, or will eventually, be found. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:00, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly disagree with your analysis. You remember Hitler's birthday because you find it interesting and/or useful. (And no - I didn't pick that date for any special reason). You maybe have memorized dozens or even hundreds of birthdays - but I absolutely guarantee you've only memorized the birthdays of people who are notable in some way (or perhaps personal friends and relations of yours). You haven't memorized the useless information of the birthday of the first hundred people who's biographies pop up when you keep hitting Wikipedia's "Random Page" - because even for a trivia pack-rat - some things are just TOO trivial. If your point is that some information isn't useless - then of course I agree. But that's not the question - the question is whether there is useless information - and you have utterly failed to demonstrate that. What about the positions of those hydrogen atoms three millennia ago? Assuming the information were available - would you even attempt to memorize it? Would it ever be interesting? Useful? Hell no...and even if you did find one or two of those positions were interesting 'trivia' talking points - would you need to preserve millions of such positions? Billions? Trillions? Of course not - because that information is useless. SteveBaker (talk)

But such information does NOT exist, and will almost certainly NEVER exist, so you're talking about hypotheticals. If someone did bother to spend the effort and time (not to mention money) to discover the exact positions of those molecules all those years ago, they'd be doing it for a REASON. They couldn't do it on their own; they'd need to involve the assistance of others, who would need to be persuaded there's a glimmer of POINT in such an abstruse exercise. The result they get would serve the PURPOSE of whatever that reason was. Not all information that could, hypothetically, exist, actually exists, so we should be talking about information that does actually exist. Because, until it actually exists, it isn't information. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We could try and assess this philosophically here and start asking questions like what is usefuleness? What makes something useful? How can we define information in this case? If we say that if information has no use it is useless, then how to we define a "use"? What about unknown information? What about the different kinds of information? What if the information is useless in one form but useful in another, is it still considered useful?

There's also the linguistic assesment: something that is useful implies that it is first useable, so in other words only information that is useable can be useful. Therefore, if some information is not useable, it is not useful.

I also think usefulness is subjective - i.e. its usefulness is dependant on assumptions on other information. For example the information that "cows produce milk" is useful if we consider that "milk is a nutritious and viable food source", which is useful if we consider that "nutrition is important for longevity and survival", and so on. Without those other assumptions, the idea that cows produce milk is suddenly a lot less useful. Rfwoolf (talk) 00:28, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This reminds me of the attempt to prove that all numbers are "interesting". We agree that some numbers are "interesting" - PI, for example. Perhaps nice round numbers in base 10 are interesting 1000 for example. So let's separate out all of the numbers into interesting numbers and non-interesting numbers. Now - the very first number on the "non-interesting" number list is "interesting" because it's "the first non-interesting number"...that's certainly an interesting property. So we move it off the non-interesting list and put it onto the interesting list...now, there is a new "first uninteresting number"...and by this process we can make all numbers interesting. Well, no - because if we move that first non-interesting numbers off of the non-interesting list - then it's not interesting anymore - so we have to move it back again. Similar problems come about with "the 1000th uninteresting number". We have to conclude that there is no clear test for "interestingness" with numbers - and the concept of "interestingness" must not be a simple binary thing.

I suspect we could construct a similar un-proof for 'usefulness' in facts. If trivia fanatics pay attention, they'll notice that the first "non-useful" fact is in fact extremely useful in answering the inevitable Trivial Pursuit question "What is the first non-useful fact?"...and off we go again. So 'usefulness' is not a property that you can arbitarily determine - there must be a spectrum of usefulness - ranging from totally useless to utterly valuable.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It might be useful to an individual that he, per doctor's orders, eats 35 grams of Cheerios for breakfast, but a log of the count of integral Cheerios eaten each day would likely be considered useless trivia. A log of the vehicle license plates seen while driving each day would likely be seen as trivial. Would the information ever be useful to anyone? Edison (talk) 02:22, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You might enjoy the story "The Sixth Sally" from Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad. An excerpt is here: [14]. It's worth finding the book and reading the whole story. It is marvelous. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 08:36, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - that's very apropos. (I love that book BTW - definitely in the top 10 list of my all-time favorites). SteveBaker (talk) 18:18, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PRO: Maybe Tautologies are useless? An information like "Today is Tuesday or today is not Tuesday" is pretty useless. Also doubled information in the same context might be useless, too: "The empty bottle has nothing in it.". CON: My first example is useful as an example for a Tautology. My second example might be useful in Lyrics to express something emotional... CONCLUSION: I think pretty much everything _can_ be used for _something_. Even random Data is of use in Computing for example. But would you call such information, that is of very limited use, "useful"? I wouldn't. --84.57.232.87 (talk) 16:28, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, one example of a tautology is useful - what about a million examples of tautologies though? There comes a point where further such examples become useless simply because of the vast numbers of them. You can use that sort of defense to justify the value of a few hundred otherwise useless facts - but there are an infinite number of them - and there must come a point at which their utility falls to zero. SteveBaker (talk) 18:18, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Off tangent, but regarding HS as a container for genetic information (and cognitive data):

"Sure, one example of a homo sapiens is useful - what about a billion examples of homines sapientes though? There comes a point where further such individuals become useless simply because of the vast numbers of them." Of course, I am quoting SB and, of course, you may replace "tautologies" with "planets" or "galaxies". Depending on who you are (homo sapiens) or where you live (planets / galaxies) this one additional unit may make a difference.

Actually, in intermittent and increasingly rare sane moments I doubt if the undersigned additional unit to the humanoid database made any difference... --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:00, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's all completely subjective, of course. Pick up a random stone from the street. Nothing special about it, it's just a stone. Ask the first million people you come across if they want it, and they all say "Thanks, but I have no use for it". It seems pretty clear that it's useless. But ask the 1,000,001st person, and they might say "Ah, that's exactly what I've been looking for". So, a use for it has been found. Thus, it has a use. Same with apparently useless information. It may not interest the vast majority, but someone, somewhere, will want to use it, somehow. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:30, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The answer to this question is simple, it's UNKNOWN. To scientifically know if there is useless information, you'll have to gather all the information that exists in the universe, even those that are not written but that exist in the mind of people. Then you'll have to go ask each person in the universe whether each of these information is useless to them or not. If one of all these information is useless to ALL people in the universe, then bingo, the answer to this question is yes, there is useless information. However, this is a Herculean task that is probably impossible to be accomplished. Also, the answer will vary as it can be a 'yes' today and a 'no' tommorow as people are constantly dying and being born, and information are constanly being discovered and lost all the time (for instance, if an information exists only in the mind of a person, and that person die, the information is lost and no more exists, but may be rediscovered by someone else later). Since that question is unanswerable, I would have said it's useless to continue this exaustive but interesting discussion, but then I realise that this question is self-defeating since any useless information that exists, is no more useless as it serves to answer this question itself, meaning the previously useless information is now useful in answering this question. But then, what's the point of the answer to this question? It serves to satisfy the curiosity of the OP. It also helps to make an unknown unknown to become a known unknown (remember the Donald Rumsfeld's quote) for some people. Hence, any useless information is now no more useless, isn't it? --199.198.223.106 (talk) 07:28, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

March 7

Making light protest placards

I want to make signs which parody those of the Westboro Baptist Church. We'll print on A3 sheets of paper and stick four together to get A1. The question is what we stick them to which must be strong and stiff but also light enough to be carried for the duration of a parade. Also what can we use to stick the sheets to the boards? ----Seans Potato Business 01:51, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

1)Foamcore. 2)Spray glue or 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. Edison (talk) 02:15, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Call your local Green Party office and ask what they use for election signs. It should be a light and recyclable material. Please do recycle - you're trying to improve the world, right? Franamax (talk) 03:37, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How about two poster boards stapled to, and on either side of, a balsa wood support ? Beware that high winds make carrying such signs dangerous, no matter how sturdy they are, as they can pull you into the street or get away from you and slam into someone. Also, be careful about the parody, as signs like "God hates fags" are likely to inspire violence, and parody is often lost on the intended audience. StuRat (talk) 15:32, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Corrugated fiberboard or corrugated plastic are possibilities. Either should be available from art suppliers. The latter can also get wet, in case they sprinkle your group of diabolical sinners with Holy Water. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:07, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Content

The construction of the signs is boring compared to the content you intend to put on them. I don't suppose you'd care to indulge my curiosity? What *should* such signs say? – 74 02:36, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cruzcampo logo

Is the figure on the Cruzcampo bottle a male or female?.. All my mates are under the impression it's a male due to the lack of breast and the pot belly but I'm whole heartedly for it being a female... Hereś a link to the picture [15]... Cheers 81.35.160.200 (talk) 08:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with your friends. I don't think we have an article that will help you. But you might want to check out our article on beer goggles. --JGGardiner (talk) 09:54, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I ~~think~~ know he is a chap and his name is Gambrinus. Richard Avery (talk) 10:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's a guy, dude. I mean, that's male clothing, too. (Of course, this could be a transvestite. Or a transgendered person! But that may be going slightly beyond the scope of the question...) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 11:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But the face and hands are way to effeminate to be a guy... Let alone a guy advertising beer... This [16] is an older version of the logo I just dug up and I'm still convinced it's just a fat women... Probably German judging by the clothes 81.35.160.200 (talk) 14:02, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That link doesn't load for me. The original figure certainly looks male to me. Perhaps the haircut, which looks roughly like a pageboy, is what's throwing you off. That hairstyle has been in fashion for men at various times in history, most recently popular in the 1950s and 60s. Also, some advertisers feel it is better to portray a "typical customer" than an "idealized customer", as the latter can be a turn-off for those which fall short of the ideal (which is pretty much everyone). Also note that being fat once was the ideal, say a century ago. Thus, they may just have kept an old logo. StuRat (talk) 15:17, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It loads for me, but the hand is certainly not what I'd call effeminate, neither is the thickness of his holding arm. He's holding a glass with a handle, which may be a little too small for his manly hand, so he has to hold it any way he can. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:32, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

She's female. Have a look at the placquet (opening) of her shirt and see how it is constructed so the left side (as worn) wraps UNDER the right side. And that is universal and has been since men wore swords at their left hip and used their left hand to unfasten their coats while reaching for their sword with their right hand. Women didn't have to do that so they decided to arrange their clothing differently from men. 92.20.17.211 (talk) 00:06, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is inconclusive as the original / older version [17] does not have this detail of the collar. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 00:25, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Plus, that's just some lovely urban-legend reasoning, a just-so story. The gendering of which-side-has-the-buttons is a 19th century thing, if I recall. 79.66.56.21 (talk) 15:53, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like a man to me. I know what you mean about the face looking feminine, but I think that's just because of the shading and hair style. --Tango (talk) 01:18, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ownership of 9-1-1 calls

The "Octomom" recently called 9-1-1 because she temporarily lost one of her children, and the dialog and recording of the call were released here by CNN. In addition to this instance, I've witnessed several instances (at least on TV) where emergency phone calls are made public. My question is: are 9-1-1 (or emergency U.S. phone communication) calls public and how do the media (or anyone) get a hold of them? --99.156.92.12 (talk) 18:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is generally a state-specific question; many have written laws making some or all of 9-1-1 calls public record, which makes them available for open records requests. Some states have revised or are revisiting this issue in light of increased media interest. – 74 22:17, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for investigating! --99.156.92.12 (talk) 01:54, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If I had 6 children, and one went missing, what could possibly be wrong with saying repeatedly, in front of the surviving 5, "OH GOD, OH GOD, I'M GONNA KILL MYSELF" and then giving birth to another litter of eight? Edison (talk) 05:28, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Muffin (movie)

Hello,

A few years ago I saw a movie called "Muffin" at about 4am. I've tried to find it on the internet to show my housemates but can't find it. Is there anywhere I can find it on the internet (it's not on YouTube), or at least some info on it?

The plot is that a muffin gets taken around by various charectors in the movie, and it's only about an 1.30 long at most. 144.32.126.15 (talk) 18:33, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like this 2002 movie. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:19, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to go with [18] ...nevermind. :-) SteveBaker (talk) 20:38, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

March 8

Tattoos aging in the short term

Are there visible differences between a tattoo which is recent (say 1-3 years) and one which is around 10 years old due to the passage of time? If so, what are the differences you noticed? I looked up tattoos and aging but most of the resources only discussed longer intervals of time. By the way, I am not planning to get a tattoo myself. I am just curious if you can tell by looking at a tattoo if it is recent or older. 65.190.207.110 (talk) 01:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Google spit out a couple of links you might find interesting [19] [20] [21] They don't give precise data, but do say that there are notable differences. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 08:55, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bowling too fast in cricket

How fast would someone have to bowl in cricket in order to render the batsman impotent? How about baseball? 86.8.176.85 (talk) 01:33, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you know that bowlers do not aim for the batsman/batter's crotch. And that crotches are usually well protected in case of inadvertent contact with the ball (no pun intended). The protective device would have to be extraordinarily deficient for such an outcome to occur. But if that were the case, there could be a number of medically undesirable outcomes, not necessarily involving impotency. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:11, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

*ahem* Impotent can also mean helpless/powerless, as in "unable to hit the ball". – 74 02:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ha, yeah that's what I was going for. I meant "how fast would the ball have to be bowled so that after bouncing the batsman would be incapable of defending his wicket?" rather than "what velocity of cricket ball will break a batman's genitals beyond repair?". Sorry for any mix-up. 86.8.176.85 (talk) 02:30, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A baseball can be thrown at speeds up to 100 miles an hour or more (160 km/h), and batters are still capable of hitting it, so the answer must be significantly faster than that (and significantly faster than it would be physically possible to throw). But remember that in baseball, the batter is "impotent", as you say, usually 70% of the time (if you take "impotent" to mean not being able to reach the base safely, because obviously they hit the ball more often and it is caught or thrown to the base before they get there). I have no idea about cricket but from very casual observation the ball seems to be thrown much more slowly, and seems to be hit more often; is there a cricket equivalent of a strikeout? The ball also has to hit the ground first, which would greatly reduce its speed. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:59, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The cricket ball doesn't have to hit the ground first; that's just usually the best strategy. See full toss. But you can't put a full toss above the batsman's waist, and there are restrictions on the delivery, about extension of the elbow or something incomprehensible like that, that may make it difficult for bowlers to reach the velocity of MLB pitchers. --Trovatore (talk) 05:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I understand it, a pro batter can start his swing when the pitcher is releasing the ball, so the upper limit is probably not very much more than the current top speeds of pitches. Any higher and the batter would have to start swinging while the pitcher is in his wind up. Dismas|^(talk) 03:51, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sports Illustrated did an excellent article about a year ago on Tim Lincecum and the science of pitching, and cited several studies which indicated that the current upper limit of 100 mph is probably the absolute upper limit the human arm can throw a baseball without literally coming apart at the seams. There have been studies done on the stresses at the joints in a pitchers arm, and if they threw any harder, the materials in the arm literally could not withstand those stresses. So 100 mph is probably a practical upper limit to throwing a baseball, and baseball players do hit these. Seeing as a cricket ball is bowled, and not pitched, it is bound to be going much slower due to the physical limitations placed on the bowling motion, which is fairly innefficient. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed your spelling of Lincecum for ya... Dismas|^(talk) 04:33, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Our article says that cricketers can bowl the ball at up to 90mph - so evidently bowling is only a little less efficient than pitching. SteveBaker (talk) 08:29, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The fastest ball on record evidentally is 100.2 mph from Shoaib Akhtar although this is obviously very rare (Brett Lee's fast ball is 99.9 mph). Types of bowlers in cricket has some info on other very fast bowlers. This compares to possibly 104.8mph for baseball [22] Nil Einne (talk) 09:29, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

From listening to Test Match Special commentary, it would appear that cricket fast bowlers regularly reach over 90 mph, and so the article needs fixing. However, in cricket the ball actually hits the wicket and bounces most of the time, and it's not necessarily speed that "renders the batsman impotent" but trajectory after pitching. That's why cricket has slow bowlers who are very effective in taking wickets. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I was going to mention this. If you look at the Shoaib Akhtar article it has a link to the delivery and while I probably should delete it since I suspect it's a copyvio, you can easily find it online. While a decent delivery, it's hardly spectacular. While being able to bowl very fast is obviously an important skill for a fast bowler to have, as the article and the types of bowlers article explains, it's more then just bowling as fast as you can. Nil Einne (talk) 09:49, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Who is the First Indian IAS OFFICER

Who is the First Indian IAS OFFICER? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.89.57.87 (talk • contribs)

Google identifies "IAS" as "Institute for Advanced Study," 'International Accreditation Service," Internet Authentication Service," "International Accounting Standards," "International Association of Sedimentologists," "International Association of Scientologists," "International Association of Sufism'" and many other organizations. If you would be so kind as to let us know which of these "Institutes" or "International Associations" or "Services" you had in mind while you were typing, we would be better able to answer your ill-formed question. Edison (talk) 05:13, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess either Indian Administrative Service or Indian Academy of Sciences - but since the Academy of Sciences doesn't have people called "Officers" and the Administrative Service does - I'll assume the former. In that case, the IAS was formed from the British colonial ICS (Indian Civil Service). But there were Indian officials in the ICS prior to the name change - so I would assume that on the day the name changed, a whole bunch of Indian officials would have become IAS officers at the exact same time - making this a somewhat meaningless question. If our OP is really asking about which Indian first became an officer in the ICS - then that would make more sense. If all of this guesswork is true then the answer is in our article Indian Civil Service: "Gurusaday Dutt was the first Indian to stand first in one of the two parts of the ICS examination, in 1905." - our article on this fellow is quite long and detailed. SteveBaker (talk) 08:25, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Guys Gym Showers

How come most of the time in men's locker rooms or changing rooms at gyms and other similar places have showers that are all together in one room without separation or curtains for privacy? Are women's changing rooms built the same? Is it simply a matter of conserving money/space? Or is it something else? Stuffs80 (talk) 05:11, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it's because men are supposed to be less "bashful" than women? Honestly, I have no idea. By the time I got to school, showers were no longer required because of privacy concerns. However, my school's locker room had no curtains to separate the (unused) showers, too. The only public shower I ever had to use was at a hostel in Helsinki, Finland, and that did have curtains. So, I suppose it depends more on the location than anything. --Ericdn (talk) 05:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Generally speaking, women's changing rooms have individual cubicles for changing clothes and individual shower booths. The less expensive the fitness-club membership, however, the less privacy. When I was in high school, in an era when girls were not permitted to wear trousers to school and we hadn't yet even thought about fighting the good fight for jeans, change areas and showers were usually multi-user and uncurtained. Privacy was not an issue then; supervision was. // BL \\ (talk) 06:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the time, it's simply that if all people are doing is showering, that's not an activity that requires a lot of privacy, especially if that's what everyone else is doing as well. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 09:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, the answer probably has more to do with cost than anything. It's cheaper. Magog the Ogre (talk) 13:28, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're right. --Ericdn (talk) 13:37, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's both. Extra privacy is unnecessary, and costs more, so they don't provide it. If it didn't cost any more they would probably provide whether it was necessary or not, and if it was necessary they would provide it regardless of cost. --Tango (talk) 13:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Extra privacy is unnecessary? Speak for yourself! :) --Ericdn (talk) 13:51, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A screen, a carpet and physical exercise

I have seen people on a carpet with squares(?) on it, in front of a screen that instructed them to jump forward, backward etc as a form of physical exercise. I don't know if my description is clear (also my memory of the whole thing is rather vague), but would anybody know what I am talking about - and what is the name for this thing?? Lova Falk (talk) 14:55, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dance Dance Revolution. --Tango (talk) 15:05, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

...and many MANY clones of it! I wonder though whether our OP is thinking of some non-dance software that uses the pad specifically for exercise? I'm not aware of anything like that - but I could easily imagine someone doing it. That said - you do get a pretty good workout from Dance Dance Revolution. SteveBaker (talk) 15:25, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There was a company that put out a pad and 2 games/exercise programs waaay before any of the others. It was launched to coincide with some Olympic games (I think it was the ones in Seoul but could have been earlier). The stuff didn't take off and ended up being sold by places like "Big Lots". Because it was a no-name company and they only had those two options people probably didn't want to spend that much money on a dead end product. Maybe someone picked one up at a garage sale somewhere. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 15:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]