Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 March 23

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March 23

Company Wurth Illinois Inc. Bensonville, Il.

I worked for a company in Bensonville, Il. from 1990 to 1993, I know the corporation has been closed, but I need proof that the corporation disolved. As a manager, I had a company cellular phone, and was allowed to keep the service, but know the carrier wants proof that the company no longer exisit, so I can now place the phone in my name.66.94.205.192 (talk) 01:48, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

The Illinois Chamber of Commerce web site lists them as still existing -- see http://il.chamberocommerce.com/member/6355309/Wurth_Illinois_Inc_400_Eastern_Ave_Bensenville_IL_60106. The web page gives a phone number -- you can try calling it for more information, I guess. Looie496 (talk) 02:36, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Scaring your kids

What kinds of real or fictional critters do parents/babysitters in western Europe invoke to scare kids in order to make them behave? In the English-speaking world, I know, the Boogieman is the most commonly invoked for this purpose; in Russia, it's variously Baba-Yaga, the wolves, the owls, or (less commonly) a mythical, presumably wolverine-like creature called the Dzhomolunga; and in some gangster families, according to urban legends, it's Kaiser Soze. So what equivalent critters do they scare their kids with in western Europe (France, the Netherlands, etc.)? 24.23.196.85 (talk) 05:09, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Huh? How does Mount Everest scare anyone? Particularly someone in Russia? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 05:38, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

• The fear of snipers? I dunno. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Original research: This has to do with my father's nanny, who was reportedly a well-educated woman with lots of miscellaneous knowledge (frankly, I think she might have been a geography teacher out of a job). Anyway, her favorite phrase that she'd tell him was, "If you don't behave yourself, the Dzhomolunga will get you!" And while we're at it, how would a preschooler know that Dzhomolunga is the Chinese name for Mount Everest? 24.23.196.85 (talk) 05:51, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Did you link the word to Mount Everest above because you were told that it has that connotation when used to scare children, or because you knew separately that it (or something that sounds sorta like it) is the Chinese name for the mountain? If the latter, that link is very misleading because, as you point out, no non-Chinese pre-schooler would ever make the mental association (and probably very few Chinese ones either). Fwiw, I checked with my ex-wife, a native Russian speaker, and it meant nothing to her. I know from hanging around Russians for ages that many families have their own made-up names for all manner of things, names that would mean nothing to anyone outside the family, and my gut tells me this Dzhomolunga thing is in that category. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 19:33, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Did you not notice your first linked article includes somewhat unsourced mentions of France, Netherlands, Germany.... Nil Einne (talk) 06:01, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Yep, I've just read through it -- in the Netherlands, they would scare their kids with "Black Peter", and in France, with the "Hand-Cruncher". So this article more-or-less answered my question. 24.23.196.85 (talk) 06:39, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

How about an unspecified "monster" ? StuRat (talk) 07:01, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

In Bern, Switzerland there is a fountain dedicated to Der de:Kinderfresser who eats children (Note: The English interlanguage link from that article comes back to Boogieman but then doesn't mention Kinderfresser). And slightly off topic, as a teacher of moral lessons there is Struwwelpeter. Dismas|^(talk) 07:05, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

One time i was thte airport and a woman told a kid to behave or THAT MAN (pointing at me) is going to hurt you (or get you or take you away, i can't recall exactly what she said). She was a complete stranger. I felt very wronged.--There goes the internet (talk) 08:04, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

It could have been worse. What if you were one of her kids? Wouldn't that suck, big time? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:01, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

The aurora borealis, or northern lights were and still are used to scare Inuit children. The belief is that if you whistle the lights will come down and chop off your head, and possibly play soccer with them. When I was a kid it was the Romani people, called Gypsies then. Sometimes you hear parents tell kids that if they don't behave "that man" or the more direct Kabloonak (non-Inuit), is going to get them. It's usually aimed at an authority figure, which is great because it excludes me, such a RCMP, teacher, government official or store worker. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 08:07, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Boogieman? Nope. Bogeyman was the UK spelling. I found this cool site for you. When I was a girl I was told the policeman would come and take me away if I misbehaved. And of course there's the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. --TammyMoet (talk) 11:23, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

In French Canada, the scary creature who takes away misbehaving children is called the "Bonhomme Sept-Heures" ("Seven o'clock Man"), which is supposedly a corruption of the English "bonesetter", who became a creature of fear because his work made people scream in pain. In France, there is the "croque-mitaine" [1] as a generic term for this type of scary creature. I see they're both listed in the bogeyman article, which has a number of other examples from around the world. --Xuxl (talk) 15:11, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone! 24.23.196.85 (talk) 19:20, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Krampus --Viennese Waltz 22:29, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

• My mother always simply warned us, "Wait til your father gets home!" μηδείς (talk) 01:59, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't told about Bogeyman, but I did get the full on British, don't talk to strange men with 70's haricuts. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 20:39, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I still say that to my other half every single time he leaves the house. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 21:52, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I think ArbCom..... Rich Farmbrough, 21:59, 25 March 2013 (UTC).

Historically in England, children were threatened with whoever was the national enemy at the time. One speculative etymology for "Bogey" is that it was a corruption of "Boney". I've read of children being told that the Kaiser would get them. Whether anyone has been threatened with Bin Laden, I don't know. Alansplodge (talk) 15:40, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

My wife used to tell her little brother that the "Bad Boys' School" was coming to pick him up. Carter (talk) 20:04, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Wow, what a response from everyone! Thanks a million! 24.23.196.85 (talk) 06:04, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Car Insurance in the UK

Sorry for this off beat question but I don't know where else I might find an answer. I believe that some car insurance companies offer a discounted price if the car has a device that films the journey, giving continuous GPS location details, vehicle speed, direction, and will automatically call for help in event of an accident. What I want to know is which companies offer such policy discounts. I have such a programme on my iPhone called 'Witness' which I can highly recommend. Can anyone help please?85.211.138.47 (talk) 12:25, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

A quick search on the standard price comparison sites would seem to indicate that lots of insurance companies operate such a system - "telematics" is a useful search term. It looks as though you'll need to use a tracker box that's installed/approved by the insurance company, rather than using your own, though. Tevildo (talk) 12:40, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Chrome

Moved to Computing desk. Tevildo (talk) 16:43, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Betray

If I were to write a sentence like this: "He tried to hide his anger and failed, his irritation betraying itself by the sound of the keyboard being hit too violently." Would 'by' be the correct preposition here? With? At? 14.99.179.58 (talk) 20:22, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

I would say "in" - a quick google search gives us examples from Elizabeth Gaskell ([2]) and Nietzsche ([3]) Tevildo (talk) 20:40, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

You have one word too many for the sentence structure to be coherent. Try "He tried to hide his anger and failed, betrayed by the sound of the keyboard being hit too violently." "By" is the correct preposition here, and only choice. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 21:09, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

"Through" or "via" would also work, I think, but really the sentence feels awkward regardless. It's one of those cases where an active construction with the weight carried by noungs and verbs would work better than a passive construction with the weight carried by an adjective: "He tried to hide his anger, but the crash of his fingers striking the keyboard betrayed it." Looie496 (talk) 21:51, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

By and in or even through are okay, but as an American I would use with, second to by. Via also works but sounds very forced. μηδείς (talk) 22:35, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Only "by" works in the version I gave. In the original version, nothing really works. It is an apparently reflexive costruction with a second agent tagged on, compounded by the fact that the recepient should be "he", the subject of the sentence. The irritation is first "betrayed" by itself, and then by the playing. Big problems all around.

Obviously an attempt at a word for word translation from another language, carried out with the help of a dictionary and an imperfect understanding of English grammar, especially the use of grammatical voices. I suspect that the foreign word translated by "betrayed" here means something more like "reveal" or "show". My guess is that the OP picked the wrong option from the dictionary.

As a matter of fact, if you substitute "revealed" for "betrayed" in the orginal sentence, it almost works.... if translated word for word into Polish, but not English. I suspect the OP's own language (he's apparently from India) has an instrumental case and handles grammatical voices a lot more like a highly inflected language such as Polish than a minimally inflected one such as English. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 01:48, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I tend to agree "by" is needed in your sentence, but it's not the one the OP gave, is it? His was workable, and he had various options, some better than others, to convey the instrumental case. μηδείς (talk) 01:57, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Funny. I'm a girl. You guys should probably use 'they' when referring to the OP. And yeah, I'm an Indian, but I wasn't translating really. I guess the sentence does sound awkward though. But "He tried to hide his anger, but the crash of his fingers striking the keyboard betrayed it." doesn't sound nearly graceful enough 14.96.2.246 (talk) 08:26, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry about that, many of our users do assume male gender when they shouldn't. Anyway, "betrayed by" is the common construction in US English for this type of thing. For a re-wording closer to the original, how about "He tried to hide his anger and failed; his irritation (was) betrayed by the sound of the keyboard being hit too violently." (to me it's the "itself" that makes it awkward. The "was" is optional, and I like semicolons). SemanticMantis (talk) 16:28, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

No apologies from me. He is the default singular animate pronoun, and has been for over a millennium. An OP is always free to register an account and declare his gender if he wishes. μηδείς (talk) 03:18, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thanks! That works perfectly! Thing is, I use constructions which sound awkward but I can't pinpoint exactly how until someone else tells me from a fresh point of view, and then it seems obvious to me. Thanks again! (= 117.227.5.59 (talk) 21:22, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

'by the sound of the keyboard being hit too violently' can be shortened to something like 'by his thumping on the keyboard' Dmcq (talk) 00:51, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Except that "betraying" has the connotation that someone else is involved, and they would probably be aware of the thumping only by the sound it makes. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 12:17, 25 March 2013 (UTC)