Miscellaneous desk
< December 5	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	December 7 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 6[edit]

future of children who are not adopted[edit]

What happens to children who are not adopted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.107.148.210 (talk) 08:16, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In what situation? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:22, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect our OP is referring to children "available" for adoption but who are never chosen. I think the article arrived at from Ward of the state will help. HiLo48 (talk) 08:24, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

They spend their childhood in care. Either in a children's home or, if they're lucky, a series of foster parents. They are then often left to pretty much fend for themselves once they turn 18. It's not a good start to your life. The rates of crime, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, unemployment, etc. are all well above average for people that spent their childhood in care. (My knowledge is of how things work in the UK, but I doubt other countries are much different.) Here is some information on the educational outcomes for children in care. I expect that site has information on other aspects as well, and Google will find you plenty of other sites. --Tango (talk) 12:55, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In my US county, children who have been in foster care and then turn 18 can receive funding for independent living in somewhat supervised housing, if they wish,for some period (not sure if it is until age 21 or a lesser time) and get counseling to help them find a job, and can get financial assistance to attend college if they qualify. These benefits are not so available to 18 year-olds who have simply been living with their parents. Edison (talk) 22:05, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Financial concerns might well be secondary to emotional ones. Children who grow up feeling unwanted are unlikely to be successful, even if well provided for. StuRat (talk) 22:21, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, they might be more self-reliant and self-starting, and able to cope with adversity, compared to indulged pampered spoiled children who were well provided for,given lavish material possessions, led to expect that the world will give them anything they crave, spared following rules, and protected against any adversity, within a setting designed to "foster self esteem." See also One-child policy#Possible social problems for a generation of only children. Edison (talk) 23:15, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the responses everyone. The links are very helpful. (poster 124.107.148.210|124.107.148.210) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.201.210.228 (talk) 04:26, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

end of an era[edit]

Why is that when any notable celebrity dies, tributes often run on the same lines, " end of an era" such like.I am sure a death of an actor cannot be an end of an era under any stretch of imagination? Sumalsn (talk) 10:17, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Got an example? HiLo48 (talk) 10:26, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It has recently been used of Muammar Gaddafi, whose death is certainly the end of an era in Libyan history.[1]

On the other hand, it's often used of the death of the last major figure associated with a particular period in history/arts/entertainment/business, either globally or locally. In this sense, it marks the last link with an era or period of history for some person or persons (not necessarily history proper, or global history, but the history of a particular area, art form, culture, etc). It has become a journalistic cliche, but it sums up the feeling that when someone dies you sometimes lose a link with the past. Examples: "Lucian Freud's death marks the end of an era"[2] - Freud was the last major figure of post-WW2 British figurative painting (the generation that included Francis Bacon, R. B. Kitaj, etc). Herbert John Fleure "His death ... marks the end of an era" - he was the last of the founding generation of British academic geographers.[3] --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:59, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Selection bias? --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:03, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

the death of Steve Jobs, or Dev Anand, for example. For Gadaffi, of course , the cliche is understandable Sumalsn (talk) 11:52, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Writers like to embellish things, and humans in general like to categorize things. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:26, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

....and to use cliches.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:27, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You bet! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:00, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose you can have a local "era". That is, while Gaddafi's death is just a footnote to most of us, in Libya they really will talk about the Gaddafi era and the post-Gaddafi era, for many years to come. StuRat (talk) 22:19, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Archangel spotted at Rolling Stones concert, please advise :)[edit]

Sigil from an unknown source in the "Paint It Black" video (1:36)

Alright, this is Just Plain Odd. A few days back I was watching the music video "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones, purely for curiosity, and then, wait a minute, there's a some kind of symbol written across the audience. I decided it looked like one of those angelic sigils from the movies, so I looked them up in a search, and voila: it matched. I think. The original source I found gave seven different symbols and I thought it was almost a dead ringer for the one corresponding to Gabriel, except the main horizontal line was weak at the left. Which raises "a few" questions. ;)

First, is this real? Does the match I've diagrammed above actually amount to some low probability of correspondence by chance, or are there so many ways to position and distort text that you could see anything in anything? Is there any conceivable way to prove the significance or lack of significance of the match, given how many different things a person might see in visual static?

From the other end, where does this sigil come from? It is described as "anangelic script" by someone who I think very likely copied it from some old reference work. Is this a notable, famous, or canonical symbol, or something invented one day by a web poster? Wnt (talk) 22:03, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like this example gets at some general question of whether image recognition is philosophically possible, or whether it represents, in general, only a probabilistic guess entirely dependent on our assumptions. Wnt (talk) 22:03, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are lots of shadows in that picture; you've picked out a few specific ones, but there are others you didn't highlight. I think this is probably a simple case of Pareidolia. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 22:19, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. There doesn't seem to be anything there at all, no evidence of any sort of writing. Of course it would be easier to discern if the red flashing letters didn't appear at a rate which makes it very difficult to make an assesment about the unedited image. --Saddhiyama (talk) 10:54, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Re 2) There is an extract of a book by Ernst Kurtzahn on Tarot (1st printing 1920, 2nd printing 1925) that uses the seal on p. 88 [4]. Another link refers to a CLM manuscript [5]. This could be a manuscript at the Bavarian State library in Munich, which labels its Latin manuscripts CLM (Codex Latinus manuscriptus), and if we knew the number, we could study it online, without the number, I will not start searching. The seals looks to me like 16th century. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 17:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That it's a case of Pareidolia is supported by the fact that you thought you saw the word "Gabriel" and immediately decided it represents some "Arcangel" (sic). It could have been the name of the band's chief roadie. It's always easier to find something mystical if one goes looking for it, "knowing" that it exists. HiLo48 (talk) 17:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, from the beginning I thought it followed my vague recollection of what an angelic sigil looked like - I just looked them up and found one (from seven) which seemed to match. I tried to map it to an English word but didn't come up with anything as convincing to my eyes. Pareidolia may apply, but note that unlike the Face on Mars this doesn't come from a vast library of images, and I don't think there's any special neural tendency to see these sigils, as opposed to faces which even wasps are specially wired to recognize^[6] (I bet it's a homologous area of the brain ... ;) ). The lines seem as real to me as trails I've spotted on Google Images maps and then walked on ... then again, Schiaparelli probably would have said the same about the canals of Mars. ;) Wnt (talk) 21:50, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see anything. I see all kinds of letters and symbols at the same fidelity that used to highlight the symbols you chose. --Daniel 22:37, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see a cat, shark, elk, chicken, bear taking a poop, monkey, and scorpion.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 03:17, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, that is just plain awesome. Apparently the initial step of imagination is the most difficult! Wnt (talk) 04:35, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

LOL! Actually, this helps illustrate a problem with the original picture. Alternating between the original and the marked versions leads to a noticeable after-image, reinforcing the impression that it is 'real'. I suspect you could convince people that more or less any pattern was present using such methods. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:48, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the cat at least has some mystical meaning. Look at its blank soulless eyes. It's hiding something. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 10:28, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What it's hiding is that really it's clearly a raccoon with a big striped tail! Obsidian just drew that one a little wrong. ;) Wnt (talk) 22:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And in other news... Mona Lisa’s Secret: Hidden Animals? Wnt (talk) 14:23, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pomegranate Questions[edit]

Within a pomegranate are many small (about 1/4" long in my limited experience) dark-red "things". They are soft, mostly water, but have a crunchy bit inside which I take to be the seed.

1) Do people who eat pomegranates regularly typically eat the red "things" including the seeds?

2) Is there some convenient way of separating the outer red part from the crunchy seed?

3) Supposing someone is consuming substantial amounts of pomegranate, is there any health reason why they should not swallow the crunchy seeds? Or, on the other hand, any health reason in favor of consuming the crunchy seeds?

4) From our pomegranate article, I'm unsure if the dark-red "thing" including the inner seed is called an "aril" or whether the aril is the red stuff not including the seed. Which is the case please?

Thanks, CBHA (talk) 23:37, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See http://pomegranates.org/index.php?c=7.

—Wavelength (talk) 23:54, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I recently bought one and didn't like how long it took to get the arils out and how much of the pomegranate was wasted. They really need a machine to do that and put them into a bottle for me. :-) StuRat (talk) 04:05, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My Google search for how to eat a pomegranate reported 6,330,000 results.

—Wavelength (talk) 06:03, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My Google search for ask about pomegranate reported 5,920,000 results.

—Wavelength (talk) 06:07, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article aril says it refers to the covering of the seed. Pomegranate#Culinary use says that the seed and aril are consumed.

Incidentally, at least in the UK you can usually find in supermarkets the seed+aril extracted from the outer fruit and packaged in an airtight plastic box/bag, if you can't be bothered manually extracting them from the fruit (although if you whack the fruit several times with a spoon, as recommended in the article, it's a lot easier to get them out). If you don't like the hard central seeds your best option is probably Pomegranate juice. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am a bit late to the party (a good 5 years) but I am from Australia and my Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull taught us Australians how on the show Kitchen Cabinet. What he does is fill the sink with water, then put the pomegranate in, and rip it apart, rubbing it, which makes the seeds float to the top. Wish I was on Wikipedia back when this question was asked. JoshMuirWikipedia (talk) 04:50, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]