Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous

????

What do you have to do to prove its a fact!!

Generally a few reputable sources are adequate. National newspapers, respected works (books). That sort of thing. This is a rare occasion when one can ask "what are you trying to prove?" whilst not looking at a man rolling up his shirt sleeves and gritting his teeth. --bodnotbod 05:35, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

In general, you can't really prove something to be absolutely a fact. There is usually always the possibility of new evidence emerging to contradict your original statement. The best you can often do is to argue that the opposite of your statement is relatively absurd, and the balance of evidence at the present time lies a certain way. --Fangz 02:43, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Also known as the legal argument of "reductio ad absurdum." To disprove something by following it to its logical conclusion. Otto 01:27, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"...can't really prove something to be absolutely a fact." Mathematics exempted, of course. ;) Nightstallion 06:35, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You might want to look at philosophy of knowledge, epistemology, philosophy of science etc.

Also try solipsism, if you want to get even more discouraged. --Robert Merkel 23:18, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Great grandmother

I'm a new Great grandmother that would like someone help. Can anyone tell me if there is a name that Indian used for Great grandmother.

Thank you kueenb

encarta101@yahoo.com

Indian like India or like American Indian? And in any case, you'll need to be more specific, hundreds of languages in either case. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:28, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

In Tamil language, you are a koLLup paatti. -- Sundar 09:19, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

Compartmental syndrome

Is carpal tunnel syndrome some type of compartmental syndrome? If so, can it be treated using mannitol? --Eleassar777 17:47, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Carpal tunnel syndrome is sort of similar in that swelling within a tight fascial compartment seems to contribute to the chronic inflammatory neuropathy. However, the term compartment syndrome is used mostly for acute swelling within a fascial compartment that represents an urgent threat to the blood supply and vitality of all the tissues in the compartment, not just the nerves. It needs to be relieved within hours to prevent significant ischemic damage. Carpal tunnel syndrome has some additional aspects, such as the psychosocial complexities of chronic pain and work-related injuries. Compartment syndromes are acute surgical emergencies like appendicitis without the psychosocial dimensions. alteripse 19:13, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Computers can't communicate with each other

I have 4 computers (all WinXP) on a home network with a wireless router. They can all access the internet but cannot communicate with each other. When I go to "Network Places" I will occasionally see the other computers shown on the network but when I click on them I am told they are inaccessible or I don't have permission to use them. I have Norton Antivirus and am wondering if that has something to do with it though I have tried turning off the antivirus to solve the problem (unsuccessfully). I have turned on File and Printer sharing on all computers but this has made no difference. Any suggestions?

No suggestions, but I have the same problem. I've tried networking my two home computers every different way I can think of; for some reason it refuses to work. I hope you get a solution. ike9898 02:02, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

If you have Service Pack 2, the Firewall could be blocking you... I have an XP box and a 2k laptop networked, and they see each other. Alphax (t) (c) (e) 03:02, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

It is possible that the wireless router is not acting as a hub, which is to say, it will route each PC to the internet (I make the leap of imagination that this is an ADSL router) but not route each to eachother. I (think) I have this issue, which I solved by the expedient of putting a hub between the router and the PCs. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Have you actually shared any files / printers?

If you haven't already, (re-)run the 'Network setup wizard'. Make sure you activate 'shared documents' everywhere, and use the same workgroup name ('mshome' will do fine).

See if you can ping the PCs (go to start - run, type 'cmd', and enter. Then type 'ipconfig', enter. Now on a SECOND PC, open a cmd window and type 'ping 192.168.1.100' where 192.168.1.100 is the IP address you got with ipconfig on PC1.

If you have a router, see if you have anything in the router with 'netbios', 'file sharing', or 'nbs', and toggle it.

Remove any software firewalls other than the built-in XP one: you don't need them if you have a router, and the XP one is good enough for 99% of all cases even if you have no router. User:Anárion/sig 14:24, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

XP's own firewall can be just as responsible for blocking SMB (under circumstances I, and I fear no-one on earth, don't entirely understand). Disabling the XP firewall is the obvious first step, and if that works one can re-enable it and configure it properly (to allow TCP 139 and 445 and UDP 137 and 138 to specified hosts). -- John Fader 19:57, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Latin Motto

I've decided I can't be without a personal motto another day. Could anyone tell me what "Kick them when they're down" is in latin? Pomp My Socks... To Da Max 01:58, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The best I can do (though you may want to get a second opinion) is Eōs ferī pede ubi cubant. --Gelu Ignisque

That's a harsh motto. Perhaps you meant Illegitimi non carborundum - don't let the bastards get you down? Otto 01:22, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What is the collective noun for internet trolls?

bunch? -- Ferkelparade π 09:06, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

An acountability of trolls?

A Legion of Trolls, of course! 195.158.6.172 10:09, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A "short bus" of trolls. (Yep, going to hell for that one.) -- Cyrius|✎ 14:07, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A pile of trolls, since trolls are rock-based and internet trolls have rocks for brains. User:Anárion/sig 14:17, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"thicket" -- John Fader 19:49, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A "bridge" of trolls. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 19:50, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I vote "trollosphere". I know it doesn't make sense, but that's what I feel in my heart. Rhobite 20:09, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

A 'lurk' or trolls. Or maybe a 'lure'. DJ Clayworth 18:23, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A packet! Duh! :^)

It depends on the gender. Trollers is the male collective noun. Trollettes - the feminine. Remember: Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and internet trollers and trollettes "lurk" in the Trollosphere. To communicate, a "pile" of trolls in "thickets" will then form a "bridge" to take the "short bus." But it's an expensive trip. Otto 01:32, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedians. - Ta bu shi da yu 01:39, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A block of trolls.-gadfium 01:48, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A lir of trolls. Neutrality^talk 04:23, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

HISTORY OF FAMILY NAME "BURDSALL". THANK YOU

• Maybe the links in the Genealogy article will help you. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and therefore probably not the best place to ask for information on family histories. Following those links will get you to message boards and sites who specialize in these things. Good luck!Mgm|^(talk) 12:03, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

Try [1]. — Itai (f&t) 08:46, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

'Silly Rabbit'

This phrase appears in Kill Bill, and on a Public Enemy song. Where does it come from?

See Trix (cereal). Frencheigh 11:11, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Strange - I can't open that page. I get a forbiden on that, but not anything else.

'Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!'

If you still can't get in, the relevent text of the article says:

"The cereal is well known for its commercials featuring an anthropomorphic cartoon rabbit character that tries to get the children to give him their Trix cereal. The rabbit's attempts fail every time. The children, who refuse to give him the cereal, say, "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!""

— Asbestos | Talk 15:57, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I remember this rabbit thing was spoofed in an episode of The Powerpuff Girls. -- Toytoy 10:37, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

"Les Miserables" not translated to English

(moved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Les_Mis%E9rables)

Can anyone tell me why the title of Victor Hugo's novel "Les Misérables" is never translated into English? Was it just that "The Miserable People" doesn't sound very good? --Mjklin 21:31, 2005 Feb 14 (UTC)

Who knows, personal choice of the translators/publishers., I assume. A general perception is that French has some cachet, so I guess they wanted to be a little different and interesting for marketing purposes more or less. It is also enough of a cognate that people get the gist anyway, even if it is not direct English. So thats just a plausible guess. I don't know if the answer is known or knowable for sure. - Taxman 23:28, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

"cachet" -- Jmabel | Talk 07:16, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Foreign branding - David Gerard 15:05, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Because "The Glums" was already taken as the title of an early UK soap opera! :) -- Arwel 23:41, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's also somewhat difficult to translate succinctly. Aside from the fact that we would have to attach an awkward people somewhere, French misérable is not the same as English miserable. The primary English meaning has to do with extreme sadness; the primary French meaning has to do with poverty (both come from Latin but they have evolved in different ways). I don't believe there is any English word that has the same nuances, so it may be better left untranslated. It means more pitiful, wretched than sad. -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:14, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"The Third Man" - Novel first or screenplay?

I have noticed the the article on Graham Greene lists his classic screenplay The Third Man as a novel. As a fan of the movie, I am interested to know whether it was a novel before or after it became a screenplay.

The answer is on the page (The Third Man) you linked to... (section 7, the novella)

Copyright status of a European Union website

Hi, I am unsure of the copyright status of this European Union website:

http://www.mondes-normands.caen.fr/angleterre/index.htm

It contains a fair amount of excellent material on Norman history that could be used on Wikipedia. It is sponsered by the European Commission and I wonder if it is like US Govt sites that are in the public domain. I see no copyright tags. Any help appreciated! --Stbalbach 08:11, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

European Union documents do have free access. I don't know about copyrights. You should probably find out who wrote the document (seems it belongs to the mairie de la ville de Caen) and send them an e-mail asking for permission to include material in Wikipedia. This seems to be the only solution. BTW; if you know French, this will probably help you a lot ;) --Eleassar777 08:50, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The project in question was merely sponsored (for which read part funded) by the Raphael Programme of one of the departments (Director Generalships - DGs) of the EU. Copyright will almost certainly not have vested to the Union, but will remain with the project partners. Meanwhile in general, there is copyright on EU documentation, but it tends to be released with the rubric "Reproduction is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged, save where otherwise stated" (e.g. [2]). But, to be clear, this does not apply to documentation developed by projects that are merely funded by the commission. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Help for relations and categorazation

We are working on GNU related, content management project. Our project aims to create a semantic web enabled portal for encyclopedia articles. We are working at TIFR under the guidance of Dr.Nagarjuna G.

We are currently working on the articles at the Wikipedia site. We went through the documentation on the meta.wikimedia.org site and the schema of the wikipedia databases, but could not get any information about the relations between the articles.

We would like to know if the articles at wikipedia participate in any knid of relations besides their categorization and from where shall we acquire them.

Also, needed somehelp about categorization. The table of categorylinks gives us only the article ids and their category names. We wanted the database giving us information about various category levels starting from the root level categories such as Culture Geography History Life Mathematics Science Society Technology and then narrowing down to the lower level of categories such as religion, prayer and so on until we arrive at the specific article.

Thanking you,

Sakecwiki team (TIFR)

Good to know about your research interest. I doubt if these relationships are reflected in the database schema. But, I would advise you to download a dump of Wikipedia and parse the articles to get this information. I had once downloaded a dump for a mining experiment which I never could start. -- Sundar 12:01, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Dumps here might help. Otherwise, you can look at the archived discussion on this. -- Sundar 12:10, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

These people have been asking for help for months now, and seem to come back a month later asking pretty much the same questions. Fellas, the database dumps and database schema are all there is. There isn't any magical semantic relationship data that we're hiding from you.

If you want a category tree, you're going to have to build it yourself. The data in the table is quite sufficient for the task. And be careful, because it's a directed graph, and thus not guaranteed to be a tree at all. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:20, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

a new category

i only want to propose a new category into the lists of jews, i think a category about jews by occupation. it is very interesting to know the contribution of jews in each field of knowledge.

I think I understand what you're asking, but I'm not certain :). I'm guessing that you want to create a new subcategory of Category:Lists of Jews that lists jews by occupation, or maybe a list?

Well, there's a couple ways you could show this. You could either create a new list, like List of Jews by occupation, and add Category:Lists of Jews to the bottom to add it to the category. This would probably be most consistent with the way things are currently done there. The other way is to make a new category, like Category:Jews by occupation (as a subcategory of Category:Jews, and create new subcategories under that, such as Category:Jewish professors, Category:Jewish accountants, etc.

Hope that helps! -Frazzydee|✍ 23:02, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Winamp presets

In Winamp (5.08), I want to auto allocate a preset EQ to each song I have, rather than manually selecting the given settings for each song. How do I go about this? Nichalp 19:38, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

The lack of an answer, thus far, suggests it can't be done. I'm thinking that the only way would be in the meta-data attached to each file, but I haven't heard of that being available for individual tracks. I reckon the people that write the software wouldn't account for someone, such as yourself, who really wants to tweak each individual track to that extent. --bodnotbod 06:12, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Secondary Master/Slave

I have an old CD-ROM drive (secondary master) and a CD-RW (slave). I want to make my CDRW my master as I have some problems with the ROM. I've tried all sorts of permutations and combinations but I still get the RW as my slave and ROM as my master (even when I have connected them one at a time). Are they any jumper settings that I have to change to get my RW as master and ROM as slave? Nichalp 19:46, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

On the back of each drive, there should be a jumper with three possible positions. It should look vaguely like this, with a jumper set in one of the positions:

...
...

All you need to do is move the jumper on the CD-ROM drive from the master position to the slave position, and vice versa for the CD-RW. So if the ROM has the jumper in the middle position, and the RW has the jumper in the right-most position, you would place the ROM's jumper in the right-most position, and the RW jumper in the middle position. The meaning of each position on one drive will be identical to the meaning for the other drive. Pidgeot 04:12, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try and connect it. I'll keep you informed if it is a success. Nichalp 19:25, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia vs Centripedia

What is the relation (assuming there is one) between Wikipedia and Centripedia?

anon.

What is centripedia? Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 20:03, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Google doesn't show up anything for "centripedia"... There are a large number of encyclopedia projects which use Wikipedia material, and this may well be one of them, but I can't say without being able to check it. Shimgray 21:21, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Quadratic equation

How would you go about solving the equation $2x^{2}=11x$? Thanks, anon.

Did you even read the article you linked to? *mumbles something about walking to school in the snow uphill both ways*

Regardless, here another way to do it

 $2x^{2}=11x$ 
 is the same as 
 $2x^{2}-11x=0$
 which reduces to 
 x(2x-11)=0
 and the rest is left as an excercise for the reader

--DaveC 22:32, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I was instructed to manipulate the numbers and solve for $x$ rather than use the quadratic formula given at the article. Thanks again! --anon.

In this case, the quadratic formula is overkill. One obvious solution is zero. For the non-zero solution:

$2x^{2}=11x$

Divide both sides by x:

$2x=11$

Divide both sides by 2:

$x=11/2$

Jmabel | Talk 00:13, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

... except that you can only divide both sides by x if x is not 0. So the full answer is "x=11/2 or x=0" - which is what you get from DaveC's factorisation. Gandalf61 10:05, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC) Must carefully more read ! Gandalf61 09:43, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Well, in Jmabel's defense, at the beginning of his work he points out that zero is an obvious solution. The point is worth underscoring for those who are just starting to learn algebra, though.--DaveC 18:33, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What is "hacking the Gibson?"

See Hack the gibson. Goplat 01:48, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Making a piece of software Copyleft

I'm currently writing a program useful for experimental simulations in AI. I've read the articles at Copyleft and Text of the GNU Free Documentation License, but am still not quite sure what one needs to do secure copyleft. Is simply attaching the license to the code (e.g. in the comments) with the copyleft stipulations explained enough to ensure copyleft and all that it implies (free distribution, no copyrighting by third parties)? The Copyleft page notes that copyleft has no legal implications.

Thanks! — Asbestos | Talk 10:42, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It depends on the license. To license your software under the GPL, for example, you need to add a copyright statement and a GPL notice to each source file. You also need to distribute the full text of the GPL with your software, and you need to comply with the terms of the GPL yourself (making source code available for the cost of distribution, for example). The FSF also recommends that your program should produce a message informing the user that it's free software licensed under the GPL. I'm not necessarily recommending the GPL here, just using it as an example. The GFDL isn't designed as a source code license, by the way, it's intended for software documentation. And as the article mentions, "copyleft" is just an informal term. You still hold the copyright, but you're licensing it to everyone. The Open Source Initiative has a large list of OSI-approved licenses: [3] The licenses are very different. BSD-style licenses are much more permissive of commercial use and redistribution than the GPL for example. Rhobite 20:02, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the info! (and sorry for the delay in getting back to you...) — Asbestos | Talk 13:31, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The information provided by Rhobite in in significant error. If you wrote it, you AUTOMATICALLY have the copyright to it (in America, anyway). Putting a comment on it saying you permit others to copy it subject to the GPL license allows others to copy it subject to the restrictions in the GPL in addition to whatever the law allows regardless of your license (no license can prevemt "fair use"). YOU (the Owner of the right) ARE NOT resticted by the license in any way. You can even cross license what you write. (Google "cross license"). But, if you transfer ownership of the copyright, then you must obey the license like anyone else.

What are you talking about? I never said that the GPL forced you to give up your copyright. Rhobite 18:14, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I guess I see what you're referring to. I guess if you want to be pedantic, you don't NEED to put a copyright statement in your source code. You do own the copyright by default. However, there's no good reason to leave out the copyright statement - it can only help you in a legal dispute. The FSF recommends copyright statements in source code, which is why I listed that as one of the steps to license under the GPL. Rhobite 18:18, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

DivX and MPEG4

what's is the difference between Divx and MPEG4 ? (question asked by 213.181.231.22, moved from CSD)

I think the Wikipedia article on DivX answers this rather nicely. --Robert Merkel 23:07, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

AOL username reuse?

Hey all. Quick question, and one I am somewhat stumped for an answer to...

Does AOL reuse its old usernames, or allow them to be reused? In other words, john@aol cancels his account way back when; is the user-id "john" now off-limits permanently, or is another user allowed to register under this account at a later date? My vague recollection is that a deleted account couldn't be replicated, but that may just have been over a short timeframe - after a few years or so, it's probably safe to assume that the risk of confusion would be lowered, and allow the username to be recycled.

(For context - I'm trying to determine if someone using a given AOL id now is reasonably likely to be the same person as used it ten years back, and for various reasons don't want to enquire of the user themselves. My apologies if that seemed a bit cryptic...). Thanks in advance. Shimgray 22:36, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Why not contact AOL customer service and ask? They don't need to know why you're asking, do they? It's a reasonable inquiry. Otto 01:43, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Tiff

Is the use of the tiff image format free or are there any copyrights? --Eleassar777 17:46, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Adobe own the tiff format but the specification is open and they do not enforce any licence terms. If you want to be completely IP-free, consider using PNG. adamsan 18:50, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Tracking down a thief.

Someone got hold of my check card number, but apparently not any of the other important info like expiration date or address. This anonymous thief made multiple attempts at online purchases, each attempt with a different expiration date. My bank put a block on the card after the 3rd or 4th such attempt. I have now closed the account permanently. However, as of yesterday, the thief was still trying. The bank gave me a list of the attempts, but they won't investigate because they didn't pay any of the attempts. The local police will take a report, but they also won't investigate because I didn't actually lose any money. The Internet Fraud Complaint Center has a complaint form, but I don't have answers to the majority of their questions. It really bugs me that this punk is still out there trying to steal my money. Is there any way of tracking him?

It's very likely that the subsequent attempts weren't by the original perp, and equally that future ones won't be by either. There's a healthy black market in stolen numbers, and likely all those who tried to use your card aren't connected with the original person (some bar or shop worker, probably) who first copied down your number (you can tell it's multiple people because a single person would give up once the card had been declined). As the crimes appear to be online tracing them would be a major job for the authorities (criminals are smart enough to use technical means to conceal their online identities and to use dead-drops for physical deliveries, making such an investigation very expensive), and clearly (and frankly unsurprisingly) they want to direct their resources to successful criminals. I don't think there's much you can do to find the person, and any pattern you may see in the transations is probably coincidental. The one thing you do need to do is to keep a close eye on your credit report for the next year or so, to make sure someone hasn't leveraged some knowledge of you into a full-blown identity theft. I think that credit reporting agencies in most countries are obligated to provide free reports if you've been the victim (or presumably attempted victim, as in your case) of a credit theft. -- John Fader 19:37, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Request for references or comment

From World War II, last section. 119 20:21, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The repatriation, pursuant to the terms of the Yalta Conference, of two million Russian soldiers who had come under the control of advancing American and British forces, resulted for the most part in their deaths.

Comment: yep, Stalin was a m----------r.

The destruction of Europe and the destruction, via aerial bombing, of a significant proportion of the United Kingdom's cities would also symbolically destroy the aura of invincibility the European nation had in the eyes of their colonies. Coupled with the enormous amount of money it had expended during the war, an empire was perceived to be an unnecessarily expensive possession. Thus this would provoke the rapid decolonisation process that would see the empires of the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Portugal and others swept away.

Comment: This is unimpressive "history" because it is (1) impossible to either prove or refute, (2) it really doesn't give us a new and productive way to look at things or predict that we will discover any new correlations, but mostly because (3) big processes like the end of European imperialism only have single causes to those of limited imagination and experience. My 2 cents anyway. alteripse 03:10, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

contacting you

How may I contact you?Also, may I us your information on Alexander Bell, his picture, and a picture of crank phone.

Wikipedia is not run by any single individual, making contacting anyone who had input on an article like Alexander Graham Bell difficult to say the least. A short answer to the second part of your question is a qualified "yes". The qualifications being as follows:

• Wikipedia is covered by its copyright policy
• If you are using this information in a paper you should also look at how to cite Wikipedia
• Also, each individual picture has its own particular restrictions, so while the picture of AGB is in the public domain and thus free to distribute, the same may not be true of the crank phone picture, which I could not find.

--DaveC 22:12, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Voltage and Current Surge

In an avionics circuit with power and a number of devices attached what is current in rush and surge, and what are the cautions/preventive measures to be taken.

A parachute and life insurance.

Wikipedia SQL dump - english version

Hi,

Can someone tell me where I can get the english version of the database dump? I went through the list of dumps on download. wikipedia.org but in vain.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

http://download.wikimedia.org/archives/en/ 119 06:08, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Shakespear

I have to choose a character from a TV show I like, and a character from 'The Midsummer Night Dream' by William Shakespear, and compare them. I want to choose Chef, from South Park, and maybe Bottom, from 'The Midsummer Night's Dream'. They both seem like funny characters who get ripped on by the others. What else can I write? PLease help!

Chef breaks out into song on occasion, whereas Bottom prefers the extended soliloquy? Seriously, you're asking us to write your assignment for you. That would be cheating. If you can't find any more connections between these two maybe you should choose some other pair of characters. --Robert Merkel 23:12, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I think you're setting yourself an amusing task, but maybe not one that'll give you many academic merits. Not that Chef is without philosophy mind. --62.255.64.9 03:25, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't say Chef "gets ripped on by the others." He is generally looked up to. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 03:42, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

Actually I think your right. Chef might not be the best character. I dont want you to write it for me, but what's your opinion on what South Park character would be good to write about to compare and contrast with Bottom?

morgan mildiner

when I got onto morgan mildiners name on yahoo list this site came up but i cannot find any reference to morgan mildiner.......what is the conection with him and you please email me on hpuseymildiner@yahoo.com

User:Morgan Mildiner is my hero. He's a legend on Wikipedia. See: Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits. Otto 01:10, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The manufacture of a credit card?

The bank sent me a new card. I took my old card apart. I think the card has these five layers:

(FRONT)

1. Metal foil: Card number, name, dates and the holographic bird
2. Thin clear plastic film: I think there's a hidden watermark on it
3. Printed card body: There's a 4 by 4 coded matrix hidden under the holographic bird (FRONT) and a coded string hidden under the signature strip
4. Thin clear plastic film: Don't know if there's any anti-forgery feature on it
5. Magnetic strip and signature strip

(BACK)

The 4 x 4 coded matrix on my expired card reads:

.A..

...#

..#.

A...

A is a capital alphabet, # is a single-digit number, dot "." means space. You may notice each row and column only has exactly one number or alphabet.

The coded string on the back reads:

VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID

VOID VISA CARD    AAAA AA AA-A######    VISA CARD VOID

VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID VOID

"-" is just a "-" (hyphen). The same string also appears on the upper right corner of the back side. It is visible. I don't know if these hidden texts are readable without taking the card to pieces.

I think a blank credit card is composed of layers 2, 3, 4 and 5. The metal foil, I think, is a long strip of wide metal foil ribbon with birds on it. The bank worker put a blank card in a Dymo- or typewriter-like machine and let it print letters and the bird on the card surface.

You can use a hot iron to flatten the letters and restamp them. I can't believe it. Wikipedia does not have an article for Dymo. -- Toytoy 13:42, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Where can I find Japanese Character codes for Wikipedia?

While editing various DBZ infomation I noticed that a technique list had Character translation sections to them. (The ones that show a character and its meaning) I tried doing that too but I only got the standard characters instead of the Wikipedia code ones.

Is there a part of this site which has a whole page of Japanese Kanji codes which I could research and apply to my edits. Because everyone seems to know how to use these codes except me and I don't even know where to look to know how.

Is there a page in Wikipedia that does this? Louisisthebest_007 13:57, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand your question. If you want to copy and paste some Kanji characters but don't know how to do it, there are some clumsy work around methods:

1. If there's a Japanese Wikipedia page, you may check if that Japanese page has that Kanji character.
2. You can use an English-Japanese dictionary such as Yahoo! Japan's (http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/ please select "英和・和英" (E-J/J-E dict) to get you that Kanji character). For example, if I want to get the kanji for octopus the marine invetebrate animal, I'll enter "octopus", it will return "タコ" (tako; katakana). If I do need its kanji character, I'll select "国語" (Japanese dict) and look for "タコ", it will return "たこ" (hiragana), "蛸" (Japanese-only kanji), "章魚" (original Chinese hanzi) and "鮹" (seldom used).

You have to know a little Japanese. I know it is stupid. It's better than nothing. -- Toytoy 16:22, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

List of Titles - allentitlesinns0.gz

Hi,

I downloaded this file - allentitlesinns0.gz. But can't quite figure out which format its contents are, once uncompressed? Is it just a txt file??

Thanks, --vatsan

According to Gurunet (answers.com) this is a compressed file, the format is used in Unix gzip. --Eleassar777 22:08, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Gz is a unix compressed file. Uncompress it with the command:

>gunzip allentitlesinns0.gz →Raul654 14:48, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)

Skin

How long does it take before every cell at the very outermost layer of your skin has fallen off and now has a different outermost cell in its place? Wiwaxia 20:32, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• I think that depends on what part of the skin you mean. People with dandruff won't take very long to do this on their head, but I expect it takes much longer for the skin on the back of your hand, so I don't think there's really one answer. I seem to remember hearing about it in a school lecture. I think it took less than 24 hours on average, but I'm not sure about that. Mgm|^(talk) 14:12, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)

According to the little booklet in my organic exfoliant, it's also a matter of one's age. Skin cells exfoliate more rapidly when one is 16 - about once a week. By the age of 30, that slows to approximately once a month. That's the outermost layer of facial skin, and why exfoliating is good for facial complexion. Not the best reference, I admit. Otto 01:18, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Does "exfoliation" measure the time it takes a cell to go from the bottom layer of the epidermis to the corneum and fall off? It sounds like it, because that's a lot longer than 24 hours, and the article Skin says it takes 30 days -- a month -- to go through the cycle, which is the booklet's time for a 30-year-old. From what I heard (just like MGM's "less than 24 hours" count, if I spray my hand with Raid all over and don't wash it off, then after 24 hours not one skin cell that had the Raid on it will still be on me. If that's true, then that means that any one skin cell has a lifespan of less than 24 hours once it reaches the corneum. Wiwaxia 20:50, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What is the largest sea animal?

• The Blue whale is the largest animal known to have ever lived. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 17:19, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

george washington

what day of the week was george washinton born?

That would be Friday, according to this perpetual calendar. Note that the calendar for this year is "old style", since the colonies did not switch to the Gregorian calendar until 1752. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 20:35, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• also note --JimWae 20:49, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
  • the day of week sequence did NOT change when shift was made
  • Old Style New Year began on Mar 25 - most computer calendar programs do NOT handle this
  • Oh, so I made a wrong correction to George Washington! oops. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 20:53, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • You're not the first - but I left a comment there so maybe, other than anon vandals, you'll be the last--JimWae 21:06, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)

Changing Icon beside IE URL

Ok, I'll go straight to my example as it is self-explanatory from there. First, try bookmarking one of the Wikipedia pages. Then go to Favorites and then click on the favourite. You will see that beside the URL that the standard IE icon of the E in front of a page is changed instead to the wikipedia W. I've seen this in other places, not the wikipedia W, but the changing of that little icon there. Anyone know what code in the website changes this? CSS? --Colonel Cow 02:26, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Browsers automatically request "favicon.ico" from a website. If you are hosting, place it in your public_html dir. 119 02:44, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Favicon 119 02:51, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Cool, thanks for the help --Colonel Cow 16:40, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Gaining weight

I'd like to be a fat chubba. What's the fastest way of gaining pounds? Doesn't have to be healthy! - Ta bu shi da yu 01:45, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Odd coincidence: There's a new indie film on this that premiered at Sundance, I believe. Some healthy fellow ate nothing but McDonald's for a month and chronicled his 30 pounds +++ weight gain. Otto 01:52, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The movie was Supersize Me. 119 01:54, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

And it definitely wasn't healthy. What's wrong with you? Have we entrusted admin powers to someone with a death wish? Stay calm, but I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you to step away from the keyboard... alteripse 02:33, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There are many options available for dangerously underweighted individuals like yourself. I recommend a slow, steady gorging process combined with assal horizontology. You'll want to focus on the neglected food groups such as the whipped group, the congealed group and the choco-tastic. Be creative. Instead of making sandwiches with bread, use Pop-Tarts. Instead of chewing gum, chew bacon. Brush your teeth with milkshakes, and remember, if you're not sure about something, rub it against a piece of paper. If the paper turns clear, it's your window to weight gain! Dr. Nick Riviera 02:47, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

At the risk of being un-PC: you might look at the diet advice given to people with AIDS. Tends to be precisely aimed at being healthy and fattening. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:56, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

You want to gain weight? Eat shitty food every day at a university cafeteria. I gained 25 pounds. Go me! Mike H 04:02, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

I eat shitty university cafeteria food everyday and I've lost 25 pounds! Adam Bishop 22:54, 22 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, you're weird. Or not being catered by Aramark. Mike H 22:59, Feb 22, 2005 (UTC)

Sodexho here. Adam Bishop 01:04, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Do what Sumo wrestlers do: eat high-carb, high-protein foods. Apparantly they can then lose the weight quite easily afterwards. Alphax (t) (c) (e) 04:51, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

You may want to look for the recipe of Chankonabe (see nabemono, hot pot, ja:ちゃんこ鍋). That's the perfect weight-gaining food eaten by every proud and self-respect sumo wrestlers. There's even a Japanese manga that tells you how to gain weight and be stronger. The hero is a talented mid wight boxer who wants to be the heavy weight champion. -- Toytoy 15:43, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

One trick to increase your food intake is acidity. If you can tolerate the taste, you can add more vinegar and lemon juice to your second portion of food. When you finished eating your first portion, dress your next one with vinegar. The sour taste is a secret to sell many kinds of food. If you don't particular like it, add some more sugar and fat to mask the sour taste. And don't forget to garnish your food with mayonnaise. By the way, green vegetables do not get along with vinegar. They will turn yellow. So do not eat your greens. Do you like Tabasco? Some people cannot live without mayonnaise, I know people who cannot live without Tabasco. There are people who wouldn't go anywhere without carring their own favorite condiments. Try it! -- Toytoy 15:26, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

You could use marijuana to stimulate your apetite. It works. It also will help you enjoy sitting in front of the TV, and avoiding unnecessary exercise. Might sound like a joke but I really think this could help you gain weight. ike9898 20:33, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)

Ancient Greece/ the Roman Empire

Can someone please suggest good books on the history of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. I minored in history at the University of Oslo, so I am primarily interested in a comprehensive history of the subjects (not "introduction to").

Thanks, Thomas Bullen, Orlando

Well, for starters, have you read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? Not the last word, certainly, but certainly up there, and a great read. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:59, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

I second the above. Gibbon is great! More recently, anything by Michael Grant is good. And of course so are the originals, if you like narrative history: Herodotus, Thucydides, and Livy. alteripse 04:06, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Project Gutenberg has Gibbons --Tagishsimon (talk)

I suggest Belknap Harvard's A History of Private Life (volumes one and two) for information on the Roman Empire. Neutrality^talk 04:15, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

For Greece I got through undergrad Ancient History with Bury and Meiggs' old but good A History of Greece which can be had very cheaply and Robin Osborne's Classical Greece which is good for the er, Classical period. If you want a really comprehensive read then you'll have to get two or three books at least to cover everything from Mycenae to the Hellenistic world. Anything published by Routledge is usually good. adamsan 19:05, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How does Burckhardt's The Greeks and Greek Civilization rate? 119 19:39, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I haven't read it but if Oswyn Murray was the editor, it should be good. His Early Greece is another reliable standard text.adamsan 20:01, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

All very good and solid suggestions - I would add Xenophon (Anabasis, Histories) and Theodor Mommsen (History of Rome) -- Ferkelparade π 08:53, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Color photocopier / laser printer

Wikipedia pages exist that explain how B/W photocopier/laser printers work. How do color photocopiers / laser printers work? Do they also work via electrostatics?

Yes - I think they make multiple passes of the paper in the printing process, once for each colour (commonly CMYK). Alphax (t) (c) (e) 05:01, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

That's correct - laser ones have cyan, maroon, yellow and black toner in them. Some colour copiers, notably the HP all-in-one printer/copier/scanner/fax line of products, scan the document and use an inkjet to print the copy (with the driver on your computer doing the actual data moving and massaging) - David Gerard 15:14, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Maroon, not magenta? -- Jmabel | Talk 18:24, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

an evil history alot like the friday the 13th movies

i've heard that their is possibly a man that is either running around the camp or camps at crystal lake in michigan and killing people and wondered if it was true or not possible name richard sharpe

No, I don't think that's true. Some people will believ aarrgggh!!!!! he's at the door. Someone, if I don't post by tomorrow - call help! - Ta bu shi da yu 12:26, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Be nice. I guess if I were worried about whether there was killer on the loose locally I would look it up in the encyclopedia also. alteripse 16:27, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Just so you know, it's traditional for almost all camps to have their own "mass-murderer" stalking the grounds. They must be attracted to the wood-shop or something. — Asbestos | Talk 15:05, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What do you think they do in the winter since I'm sure the camps don't pay them for more than the summer months? Department store Santas maybe? Or maybe being a summer camp murderer would be a good summer job for schoolteachers... alteripse 05:33, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Joining Quicktime movies

Is it possible to join movies in the Quicktime (.MOV) format together to make one file? Thanks, Alphax (t) (c) (e) 05:08, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

One way to do it is to upgrade to QuickTime Pro, then you can cut and paste movies from one file into another. I don't know of any free software that can do it though. adamsan 13:34, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Before the second coming of Steve Jobs, plain vanilla versions of QuickTime can do that. You can also do soundtrack replacement with QuickTime. For example, you may extract the soundtrack of a speech, mix some background music in another program, and paste the new soundtrack back to the speech. I forgot how to do that. The last time I edited QT was in 2001. -- Toytoy 15:12, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

So, there's no free software that can do it? Bummer. Alphax (t) (c) (e) 02:01, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

You could use something like FFmpeg to convert your Quicktime movies to something you can edit and join them together using a seperate program (such as VirtualDub). You can then save it as an AVI (Windows Media 9 gives very good results), which you could probably find a program to convert with - FFmpeg might work, but no guarantees. (Alternatively, you can create a "fake" QuickTime movie by saving it as an MPEG-1 movie and renaming it .MOV - Quicktime will still play it.)

You can also use RAD Game Tools' Video Tools to convert from Quicktime to AVI - but depending on your machine, you may be forced to convert to an uncompressed AVI, which can quickly eat up several gigabytes. --Pidgeot 08:47, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK, that sounds good - Windows Media Maker thingy can join them, right? Alphax (t) (c) (e) 08:58, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but AFAIK, Windows Movie Maker is very limited in saving options. It's better to open the first in VirtualDub, open the second as append (requires matching framerates), and save as an AVI using the Windows Media 9 codec. Of course, if Movie Maker does what you need, go ahead and use it. --Pidgeot 10:20, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Grr - looks like I'll need Cygwin to compile FFMpeg. This is not easy... The framerates should match, all the movies were taken with the same digital camera. Alphax (t) (c) (e) 15:00, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

You may find it easier to use MinGW along with MSYS. I personally failed to compile it with Cygwin - but that may just be me.

If you want, I can send you the binary I compiled (MinGW/MSYS, so doesn't require Cygwin). E-mail me through Wikipedia or my website, or leave a message on my talk page if you're interested. It's ~1.1MB when zipped, or 1MB as an NSIS installer (expected size), and you can choose between a download link or an attachment. --Pidgeot 23:25, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ballistics gelatin

Will someone help me and tell me how to make Ballistics gelatin? Request moved here from article space. Left note on IP talk page directing here for answers. SWAdair | Talk 06:56, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Well! if you take a look at Ballistic gelatin, you'll be happy to note a link to a FAQ on exactly that topic! Could be we need a redirect from Ballistics gelatin, though. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 06:29, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Done. Alphax (t) (c) (e) 09:02, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Net worth statistics for the United States

What is the median net worth for all Americans?

How many/what percentage of Americans have a net worth of over $100,000?--Jiang 10:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A 2001 study showed a median net worth of $71,700 and a mean net worth of $282,980, both figures including real estate holdings.[4] Net "liquid" financial assets was only a median of $9,850 and a mean of $124,346. Rmhermen 01:01, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

But be careful with means like this. The mean credit card debt for example is a few thousand dollars, but it would not be accurate to say that the average American is in debt for thousands of dollars and has $124,346 in liquid savings. These are mean values for the entire population, and it's safe to say that most people who are in debt don't also have hundreds of thousands of dollars saved up. Rhobite 21:36, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

Linguistic contractions

Are double contractions such as "I'd've" (for "I would have") or "shouldn't've" grammatically correct? DO'Neil 20:46, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

• I would argue that the acceptability of contractions isn't a point of grammar, it's a point of usage and formality. In formal English contractions aren't used (in contrast to, say, French, in which "j'ai" and "du" are mandatory at all levels). At increasingly informal levels, you might find "don't" and "didn't" accepted. Double contractions are so informal that I'd expect to find them only in representing highly colloquial speech, or in very familiar personal communications. In fact I would see them as a borderline case of "eye dialect", in which nonstandard spelling is used to indicate (what the writer considers to be) nonstandard speech. But their grammatical correctness is strictly a question of whether their expanded forms are correct. (And in the case of I'd, which could be "I had" or "I would", the speaker gets the benefit of the doubt.) Sharkford 21:10, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)

Switching focus

One of the most irritating things about windows is how the focus changes randomly from window to window at times when a program starts up, finishes something etc. Is there any way to make it never automatically change focus? I am typing something in one focus, and another window opens and the rest of the typing goes in that box. Aargh. I hate it.

In general, no. If you are being annoyed by pop-up windows from your internet browser, then consider changing to a browser that will block pop-up windows. This depends on what operating system you have, but in general, Internet Explorer is not the optimum browser for general internet sites, and you should consider Firefox, Opera, or Safari (on Mac). If the problem is that you have a program which is launched by a timer (that you set up) at regular intervals, which grabs the screen focus, there's probably little that you can do, although it may depend on the program. If a program you haven't chosen to have run does appear regularly, you may have spyware installed on your system; take a look at Lavasoft Ad-Aware if you're running Windows.-gadfium 08:14, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There is a freeware Microsoft add-on program TweakUI which has a 'prevent applications from stealing focus' option. 119 04:58, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What do vetranarians do with dead animals?

I need to know what veteranarians do to dispose of the dead animals they have for one reason or another. I know for a fact, that in the US, very few dead housepets end up at rendering plants. I'm pretty sure that they don't go into regular landfills. So, where do they go? ike9898 20:23, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)

stir fry? -- John Fader 01:56, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I suspect they are cremated. →Raul654 02:24, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

I imagine many go to veterinary schools' anatomy labs. Rhobite 16:01, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

If you mean a veterinarian in private practice, then the vet does whatever the pet's owner wants. Usually, they keep the bodies for a week or two (in a freezer), and a company picks them up and cremates them. The pet's owner can usually choose either a mass cremation or not (mass cremation being quite a bit cheaper). If you're talking about vets working in science labs and the like, I don't really know, but I'd assume they are also cremated. Tuf-Kat 22:35, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

They cremate vets working in science labs?? Oh, the sheer pity of it all! ;) Otto 20:44, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Source for notable cover song list

I am curious about Wikipedia's source for notable cover songs. A song I recorded in 1999 and did not even know was being distributed has ended up as the notable cover for Helen Reddy's "Candle On The Water". I think it's ok, but it seems that someone else thinks so as well. I'd just like to know who. --- Paula Jarvis

You could try going way back through the logs to find out who added it... it was on List of notable cover versions when it was set up... and when it was moved from Cover version back in October... sampling one in May [5] doesn't have it, so let's dig between then...

Here it is [6]! Unfortunately, that's an anonymous IP - someone who's not a registered user - and as such I can't tell you anything more than "probably in the US" (a Bellsouth customer?). They don't seem to have edited anything since last September, either ([7]) so your chance of identifying them is limited... especially since it's an ISP-provided IP.

But you do have a fan, so hey! :-) Shimgray 02:18, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Munich Agreement

From Munich Agreement:

None of the powers in western Europe wanted war. They severely overestimated Adolf Hitler's military ability at the time, and while Britain and France had superior forces to the Germans they felt they had fallen behind, and both were undergoing massive military rearmament to catch up. Hitler, on the other hand, was in just the opposite position. He far exaggerated German power at the time and was desperately hoping for a war with the west which he thought he could easily win. He was pushed into holding the conference, however, by Benito Mussolini who was totally unprepared for a Europe-wide conflict, and was also concerned about the growth of German power. The German military leadership also knew the state of their armed forces and did all they could to avoid war.

Hitler was "desperately hoping for a war with the west which he thought he could easily win"? He is reported to have been surprised and disquieted when the UK and France declared war upon his 1939 invasion of Poland, making this passage suspicious to me. Is anyone able to reference this or clean this up? 119 06:52, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

it's even self-contradictory. western Europe overestimated Hitler's military ability, and Hitler was in the opposite position, overestimating his own military ability?? I don't think so. I would just remove this part. dab (ᛏ) 08:44, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I dunno, from all the books I've read it seems that both the Western Powers and Hitler really did overestimate Germany's military power in the late 1930s - so the only contradiction in the paragraph is the sentence "Hitler was in just the opposite position" (of course, while Hitler overestimated his newly formed army's strength, the Wehrmacht leaders knew quite well what their army was and was not capable of, as is correctly indicated in the paragraph in question). I also think it is a bit inaccurate to say Hitler was "surprised and disquieted" by France's and England's reaction to his invasion of Poland - Hitler had planned to invade France anyway, and the declarations of war were happening according to his initial plan. The only nasty surprise came when after Germany's victory over France England did not back down but decided to continue the war on its own -- Ferkelparade π 15:19, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

world war

from Talk:World War: When was the term "World War" first applied to either WWI or WWII? I think it was in the 1950s, but I need some reference. Was the term maybe coined by Churchill in A History of the English Speaking Peoples? dab (ᛏ) 08:44, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If you have access to a good dictionary - I'll have a glance at our multi-volume OED in the reference department tomorrow if I remember - try looking them up and seeing if there's a citation; I think "World War Two" was in use as early as the 1940s, possibly even during the war, but I don't know when it became the "proper name". Shimgray 16:51, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Being a little more helpful... "the world war" is used in The World War and What was Behind It (1918); it's uncapitalised, but the meaning is clear and it's definitely used as a specific term.

In January '43, FDR commented "In the years between the end of the first World War and the beginning of the second World War..." [8]; again, the meaning is fairly explicit.

The terms were still ambiguous by the early 1950s, though; my 1952 Revised Edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable feels the need to note that ...in all references to the two Great Wars of this century, World War I indicates that of 1914-18, World War II that of 1939-45. (it's interesting they say -18 not -19, but I digress) Shimgray 17:31, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Why is it "interesting they say -18, not -19"? Last time I checked, World War I was generally agreed to last until 1918. Please enlighten me. Nightstallion 19:19, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Aha, but here's the rub - fighting lasted from 1914 to 1918, but the Treaty of Versailles was only signed in 1919. As such, the war was often referred to as lasting until 1919 at the time, even though there was no fighting that year; you often see war memorials referring to the "1914-1919 War", contemporary medals were often marked "1914-1919", and the like. This fell out of use over the years, and now 1918 is far more common. If you look at Google, for example, "1914-18" gets about ten times as many hits as "1914-19". (partly due to the emphasis in many countries on the Armstice celebrations, but I suspect it also had a lot to do with the growing emphasis on "social history" rather than "diplomatic history", and the reduced role of people Learning Dates Of Treaties. I haven't ever studied that, though...)

I wasn't sure when the general transition of "the correct dates" shifted, but for some reason I'd expected it to be later than 1950. Another one for research... Shimgray 20:31, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

thanks! I'm copy-pasting this to Talk:World War until I have time to work it into the article. dab (ᛏ) 18:41, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

thinking and talking, are they sound waves, pressure waves?

I`m curios as to just what thinking and talking are. Are they considered pressure waves, sound waves.What exactly consists a thought and talking. I was told that thinking is electric currents carried by sodium(?) ions (as opposed) (to electrons) I do know that talking is considered a pressure wave(sound wave) because it vibrates. But I`m confused when it comes to thinking,because the human body emits ELF waves, but our thoughts and talking are considered pressure waves or are they? So I don`t really know how to word the question, this is the best I can do, Thank you very much, Linda PS I was given the information on thinking from a website called ABC Online Forum.

Hi Linda — I recommend you check out some of the articles we have here, such as Thought, the Brain, Brainwaves and Sound.

As a very quick summary, sound waves are patterns of compressions in the air called longitudinal waves, which are picked up by the ear through the vibration of the eardrum. Thinking, on the other hand, is a result of transmissions between neurons in the brain. These are electrical, but not in the same way that an electrical wire is - rather, charge moves down the neuron as the result of voltage differences between the ions in the neuron (such as sodium ions). Brainwaves (properly called Electroencephalography) are the patterns of voltage changes across the brain, and are thus electric and not the result of pressure like sound.

As an aside, the likely reason that your "internal voice" actually sounds like something (in a sense) is probably because the brain activates areas of the auditory cortex, the areas of the brain associated with hearing things, when you are thinking to yourself. — Asbestos | Talk 14:45, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Put you mouth on your wrist and make low pitch sounds imitating a rumble from a great distance. You can feel the pressure waves, the vibration of matter, your body moving very small distances back and forth caused by your throat vibrating causing air to vibrate causing your skin and ear hearing parts to vibrate.

This causes your nerves to use electromagnetism (see electricity, magnetism, magnets, photons, light, ions) to process and communicate information allowing you to think about what you are doing.

Hold two magnets close to each other or turn on a flashlight. That's what the brain uses to think. Electromagnetism.

Slap your hand on anything that makes a sound. That demonsrates the forces involved in sound such as talk.-hope I helped-

Getting listed in a general search

moving question (and reply) to the Helpdesk -- Ferkelparade π 15:45, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Maroon 5's video for "She Will Be Loved"

Who are the actresses who play the mother and daughter in this video? PedanticallySpeaking 16:15, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

Who is the founder of scout movements

If you mean the Boy Scouts it is Robert Baden Powell. The Boy Scouts of America was founded by Kentuckian Daniel Carter Beard. PedanticallySpeaking 16:37, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

Chiss homepage

Just wanted to let you guys know that the information on the chiss is good. But not all of it is right. I know. Trust me.

If you have better information, you can edit the article yourself. I assume you mean Chiss.-gadfium 03:11, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What do vegetarians do with dead animals?

I need to know what vegetarians do to dispose of the dead animals they have for one reason or another. I know for a fact, that in the US, very few dead housepets end up at rendering plants. I'm pretty sure that they don't go into regular landfills. So, where do they go?

I am not going to answer your question. But here is an interesting side-issue, not very closely related to your question:

But it takes some effort to accommodate business and religion when it comes to cowhide. The Hindu religion forbids eating beef and slaughtering cows, but permits taking the hide of a "fallen" cow, or one that has died naturally. Muslims, who can slaughter cows, work in slaughterhouses and butcher shops. But in the case of "fallen" cows, a low-caste Hindu does the work, because it is against Islamic belief to skin an animal that has died naturally. -- "How Many Ways Can You Skin a Cow? In Hindu India, There Are Plenty" by Daniel Pearl, The Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2001.

You knkow people are smart and the rules are created for us to bend and break ... -- Toytoy 06:12, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

See the above question for the answer Tuf-Kat 22:37, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

My severely disabled nephew asks questions about US Military

Moss, my nephew, has asked me how many Armored Divisions are in the US Army, and how many armored tanks there are in an Armored Division. Although he is developmentally disabled, Moss is working on constructing enough tanks for all armored divisions. Part of his disability makes him exceptionally precise - he always wants exact numbers, amounts, etc. - and he perseveres until his goal is accomplished.

Knowing little about Military ops, I'm not sure these are even reasonable questions, or if this is the place to ask them, but I really would like to help Moss, and if you can help me with his questions, it would be wonderful. Many thanks. Jamie Flick, Ukiah, California

There are ten/eleven active divisions according to the U.S Army site[9]:

• 1st Cavalry Division
• 1st Infantry Division
• 1st Armored Division
• 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized)
• 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized)
• 7th Infantry Division (Light) (Actually reserve?)
• 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized)
• 25th Infantry Division (Light)
• 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry)
• 82nd Airborne Division
• 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)

And three armored cavalry regiments:

• 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment
• 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (Light)
• 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment

By name, there is one armored division in the U.S. Army. However, the difference between armored and mechanized divisions is the balance of a few more tank or infantry battalions. ACRs are approximately brigade strength. Armored divisions are organized as armor and infantry brigades. An armored brigade has two of these battalions, and the infantry brigade has one. Mechanized infantry formations are organized the same, only they use the M2 Bradley.

There are 116 M1 Abrams tanks to an Armored Brigade, and 58 to an Infantry Brigade.[10] With two armored brigades and one infantry brigade, the 1st Armored has 290 M1 tanks and 232 M2 Bradleys. 119 08:18, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dual booting GNU/Linux with XP

So, I want to run a dual boot, and I already have WinXP installed. How do I install (whichever) GNU/Linux distro so that XP won't eat it? Alphax (t) (c) (e) 09:49, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Is your problem making sure you can boot into either, how to resize your XP partition to install Linux, or preventing that Windows sees the partition as unalloacted space?

If it's the first, your distro installer should be able to install LILO or GRUB for you and do an auto-setup so both will appear. You should also be allowed to define your own configuration file. (At least, this is what Red Hat 9 does - I haven't tried any other distro yet)

If it's the second, you need a program like Partition Resizer (FAT16/32) or ntfsresize (NTFS). Both are free programs that can resize your FAT or NTFS partitions like PartitionMagic without data loss, and in the case of ntfsresize, it can also move data so you don't need to defragment before resizing. (Be sure to print out the instructions, though!)

If it's the last, Windows should still recognise the presence of the partition (from the partition table), but won't be able to read data from it - that is, it will be shown as being present and having X MB of space, but it won't know the file system (ext2, ext3, etc.) or anything like that. --Pidgeot 17:57, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I forsaw this problem and got a seperate HDD to put Linux on, and have a FAT32 partition as a "swap drive". ATM the new drive is sitting there, plugged in, but not recognised by Windows. Do I just go into the BIOS, auto-detect it and install (whichever) distro? Also, how hard is it to update a distro once installed? Eg. I install Mandrake 8 but later get hold of 9. Thanks, Alphax (t) (c) (e) 14:54, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you need to get your bios to recognise the new disk first. For that to happen (assuming it's an IDE disk), it needs to be set differently from any other disk on the same cable, ie one must be set to master and the other to slave. Windows XP won't show it in My Computer if their are no partitions on it.

In Linux, depending on the distro, it will offer to partition the new disk for you. It will probably refer to the disks as hda and hdb or hdc if they are IDE, where hda refers to your primary master hard disk, which is almost certainly your Windows XP disk, and hdb is the primary slave disk (on the same cable), and hdc is the secondary master disk.

Most distros of Linux, including Mandrake, allows you to upgrade to a newer version. You can't upgrade from one distro to another (eg from Mandrake to Fedora Core), as such, but if you have a separate partion for /home then your user settings will generally survive such a transition.-gadfium 18:49, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This seems to be another FAQ. Maybe someone who knows should write it up. It's well out of my league. --bodnotbod 06:50, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, should I have a 1GB partition for my /home and such? User:Alphax/sig 07:59, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

Newspapers in Portsmouth, Ohio

Does anyone know the name of any defunct daily newspapers in Portsmouth, Ohio? PedanticallySpeaking 15:13, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Have you tried contacting their public library? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:42, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

The State of Ohio has this new on-line reference desk service called "Know-it-All" staffed by librarians and I've posed the question to them. They're working on the problem as we speak but I'd welcome any input here. PedanticallySpeaking 15:44, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Rocks used in building

What rocks are used in building and where (for example: Rock name, pavement or similar). I already have the following:

• Granite - tiling floors, war memorials
• Slate - roof tiles
• Marble - pillars, sculptures and columns
• Sandstone - paving stones

Thanks very much, and please reply soon.--anon

Sandstone and granite are both common structural building materials - I come from Edinburgh, where a large number of buildings are sandstone (and thus now horribly blackened and eroded by pollution) and am now in Aberdeen, the city centre of which is almost entirely granite. Shimgray 18:55, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Different rocks are used in different places according to availability. Limestone has been used for many public buildings in the US. Fieldstones were commonly used for 2 centuries in the eastern US for farmhouses and fences. alteripse 21:41, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Soapstone is used for sinks, countertops and fireplaces. Mica was sometimes used in fireplaces and stoves. Limestone is used in concrete. Rmhermen 02:01, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

I was in a walled city in England - I think it was Lincoln - and there appeared to be large pieces of flint in the walls. Slate is often used in walls and pavements. Alphax (t) (c) (e) 15:07, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Schist is used for Belvedere Castle in Central Park in New York City: "The Castle is constructed of the same dark gray Manhattan schist as its promontory, giving it the magical appearance of rising out of the rock itself." [11] JamesMLane 04:10, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

International Phonetic Alphabet

Could someone please explain how to use the IPA, what the technical terms mean and so on? I'm at my wit's end.--212.100.250.226 17:40, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• For that purpose, Peter Ladefoged is the place to start. He has sound files of all the sounds in it. After that, you should probably look up some of the basic concepts: phoneme, place of articulation, and manner of articulation. - Mustafaa 02:12, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

history of CD-RW

????

!!!!!! —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 14:58, 2005 Feb 26 (UTC)

!?!?!?!?

Bloke with a pipe

A few years ago you could hardly go anywhere without seeing this picture of some bloke with a pipe stenciled everywhere. People had pictures of him on t-shirts and on bags etc. What was this all about, do we have an article about it? Jooler 13:34, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You're presumably talking about the Church of the SubGenius -- Ferkelparade π 13:38, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yeah that's it. Thanks. Jooler

Praise Bob. -- Cyrius|✎ 14:21, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Rate of Oxygen in Blood Sys

what should be the rate of oxygen in blood sys? (question asked by 83.170.59.67).

If you're talking about oxygen saturation, then the answer is above 90% (lower is hypoxia). When I was in the hospital, being mostly healthy, my oxygen saturation, as measured by a little light they clipped onto my finger to shine through it, was between 98 and 100%. So I suppose that's a normal value. grendel|khan 02:40, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)

I don't recognize the phrase "rate of oxygen in blood sys." Are you asking about O2 concentration, O2 partial pressure, O2 saturation, O2 carrying capacity of blood, rate of whole body O2 consumption, or something else? alteripse 05:27, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Symbol on Food Packages

On bags of potato chips, I've noticed some have a symbol which resembles the copyright symbol but is a "U" in a circle. What does this mean? PedanticallySpeaking 15:45, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

It's one of the innumerable kosher symbols. [12] -- John Fader 15:52, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

to expand on that, a kosher symbol is the mark of a particular Jewish religious authority or individual (Orthodox) rabbi, and certifies that the processed food item (i.e. the ingredients and how it is prepared) meets the requirements of Jewish law. The one you mention is called an "O-U" and is probably the most prevalent of the kosher symbols. -- JimCollaborator 21:40, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Pa. Dept. of Agriculture

Some food packages note the product was registered with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. What does this mean and why do companies do this? PedanticallySpeaking 15:47, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

• A classic Straight Dope question. Sharkford 21:15, 2005 Feb 26 (UTC)

Smokey and the Bandit and Coors

In the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit, Jerry Reed and Burt Reynolds are hired to go to Texarkana, Texas, to bring back Coors beer to Atlanta, Georgia. When the idea is proposed to him, Jerry Reed says "That's bootlegging!" Why would that have been bootlegging? I know Coors was not available in the east at that time. Is that why? PedanticallySpeaking 15:49, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, even in U.S. States (and Canadian Provinces) in which alcohol is readily available (i.e., in corner stores as opposed to gov't-run shops), its distribution and retail sales are regulated and licensed, and it's usually illegal for anyone other than a licensed distributor to bring more than personal-use quantities (I believe generally defined as a bottle of liquor or 24 beer) across State (or Provincial) borders or resell it to another person. "Bootlegging" in its core sense was the illegal making of alcohol, but post-Prohibition the economic justifcation of that is very small, and the illegal transport and resale of commercial alcohol is now called bootlegging. It can take the form of bringing brands to where they are not normally sold, selling it to minors (a very serious offence in most States, where "minor" means under 21), unlicensed home delivery (inevitably a rumoured sideline of small-town taxi companies) or just keeping some on hand for sale to friends after hours. I'll put some of this in Bootlegging. Sharkford 21:09, 2005 Feb 26 (UTC)

• • But isn't the pertinent point that they are failing to pay the taxes due on the alcohol? - Nunh-huh 07:35, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• • State or other local-jurisdiction taxes are part of the regulation of alcohol but I think you'll find that unlicensed cross-state transport of alcohol is prohibited even if you offered, somehow, to pay the taxes. And besides, the line is "that's bootlegging", not "that's tax evasion". Sharkford 16:56, 2005 Feb 28 (UTC)

38th grammy awards

Where would I be able to view the 38th Grammy awards(1996)?

A Netherwood, painter British (?)

Can you help me to find any information on the artist A Netherwood RCA. This name is on a family painting of a country scene, probably painted early 1900s???? I cannot find an artist by this name I would appreciate any help you can give Many thanks Jenny Foulds

RCA probably stands for Royal Canadian Academy in this case. You could try emailing them. Their homepage is [13]. -- John Fader 19:56, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Or maybe Royal Cambrian Academy [14]. -- John Fader 20:01, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Self-drawn insignia?

Are insignia such as those at User:Emax/Image gallery/Stopnie freely licensable if you draw them yourself? I'm sure that if I drew the 'Ford' logo, it would still be the Ford logo and subject to restrictions. What about military insignia, then? grendel|khan 02:27, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)

Regardless of copyright, trademarks are trademarks, regardless of who actually drew the article in question (which goes to your Ford logo, but not Emax' insignia). Assuming you didn't follow their design too slavishly, your version of the Ford or Coke logos would be your copyright only. I think the same is true for Emax' insignia - assuming Emax drew them, and didn't slavishly trace some gallery of insignia, then Emax' versions aren't derivative works of anyone else's work. So I think Emax can fairly claim copyright. -- John Fader 14:26, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Jewish names

How come so many Jewish-Americans have surnames that include "-burg" or "-stein" at the end? Neutrality^talk 05:47, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

In regards to "burg", I will hazard an educated guess. Contrary to what the burg article states, the origin goes back further than England, as Bourgeoisie says "The term is a French word derived from the Italian borghesia (from borgo, village, in turn from Greek pyrgos). A borghese, then, was a person who had a house in the center of a village." .. In the Middle Ages Jews almost always lived in urban areas (for a variety of reasons) and would have been called "city people", or some derivative of "burg" depending on the vernacular. Thus, when surnames were first created (mainly for the purpose of record keeping for the purpose of tax collection), it was often the name of the place of residence and/or some description of the person (see William for example of the many variant origins). In brief, when they were handing out last names, Jews were associated as urbanites, thus the "burg". Stbalbach 06:22, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I disagree: burg is a Germanic root, ultimately going back to *Proto-Indo-European and having cognates in Gothic, Middle Irish, Avestan, and Sanskrit. --Gelu Ignisque

burg means town or city Stbalbach 09:51, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Burg means town (or fortress), berg means mountain. Stein is stone, but also glass (weinstein - wine glass). Bear in mind that Ashkenazi Jews either adopted surnames while living in German-speaking areas, or spoke Yiddish. The name they got depended on their status (whether they were wealthy/powerful enough to choose their own names or were given one by local officials). Guettarda 17:11, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

When the lawmakers decided that everyone needed surnames, manny people took those of their profession or their location. Some immigrants to the US were arbitrarily assigned them when they arrived at Ellis Island - so you get names like Appletree or whatever. Alphax (t) (c) (e) 00:12, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Greengrocer's apostrophe

In the apostrophe article, it says that a wrongly placed apostrophe is called a greengrocers greengrocer's apostrophe. Why?--212.100.250.218 07:27, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Because it is so frequently encountered on the handmade signs that greengrocers make to advertise their special sales. For example "Apple's, 10 cents off" or "6 tomato's for a dollar" - Nunh-huh 07:32, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You can read all about that in the ludicrously popular book on punctuation Eats,_Shoots_and_Leaves --bodnotbod 03:52, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

what is the internet code of firefox mozilla

{{delete}}, I think.

If you want to download Mozilla Firefox, go to http://getfirefox.com. grendel|khan 23:03, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)

Reactivity of caesium

In terms of electronic structure, why is it that a caesium atom is more reactive than a lithium atom?

I think it's because it's bigger, and the electrons are further apart. (shrugs) I haven't done chem in a few years... try reactivity or something. Alphax (t) (c) (e) 09:30, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

Just about that. The reasoning is that, as the atom gets larger, more shells of electrons are introduced. The shell pertinent to reactivity is the outermost one – the weaker the force keeping this in, the more reactive the atom (this is for metals only). Electrons, being negatively-charged, are kept in the atom by the electronic force from the positively-charged protons in the nucleus. As the atom gets larger, e.g. lithium, sodium, potassium, caesium, francium, the outermost layer is further away from the nucleus. The force of attraction is therefore weaker. The force between the nucleus and the electrons is therefore weaker. Therefore it is easier for the electrons to be taken from the atom, which is the reaction occuring. Smoddy (t) (e) 22:45, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just being larger and having more shells is not enough to make an atom (or metal) reactive. Think of lead as an example of a large but very unreactive atom. Caesium is reactive because it only has one electron in its outermost shell (like lithium), and atoms are most stable (unreactive) when the outermost shell is full (or empty, meaning the shell one in from that is the new outermost shell). See alkali metal. For the alkali metals, the answers above are correct. See also Ionization energy. Note that for the halogens, the rules are very different due to their much greater electronegativity.-gadfium 01:39, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Help needed!! Is Gas allowed in flats....

Hello!

I am trying to find out the law / legistlation on having gas in blocks of flats in the uk.

Can you tell me if gas in flats is allowed?

Does the block need to be built before / after a certain date?

Does the block need to be of specific building regulations?

Does the amount of floors in the block count?

Do you need planning / council permission?

Do you need freeholder permission if it is a leasehold?

Can anyone point me in the right direction of finding out the law on this?

Many thanks Faye_coventry@yahoo.co.uk

My advice would be to try contacting your local Citizens Adivce Bureau; I suspect there's some weirdly complex set of legislation about it, and they're about as qualified as anyone to give you an answer. [15] has addresses for some in Warwickshire, taking a guess that you're in Coventry; otherwise, try your local phone book. Shimgray 21:31, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Articles you probably don't want to read: Ronan Point. -- John Fader 21:41, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

what is the relationship between cache and RAM

Does the Wikipedia article on caches answer your question? Basically, a "CPU cache" is a small amount of expensive, very fast RAM on the CPU that keeps a copy of the RAM locations accessed recently. When the CPU tries to access RAM, it checks the cache first to see whether the data is stored there. Because the cache is much, much faster than normal RAM, and a computer tends to reference the same memory locations over and over again, the time taken to check the cache is more than made up for by the time saved by not having to retrieve the data from RAM when the data is in the cache.

For a high level view, also check out the article at memory hierarchy which talks a bit about latency and points out some other articles worth looking at. --DaveC 22:51, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson - Birthdate Correction

This is from the horse's mouth, in his autobiography, 'Kelly: More Than My Share of It All', Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson has Feb 27 1910 as his birthdate. Your website lists his birthdate as Nov 27, 1910.

Please correct his birthdate.

This isn't the only place it's listed as November 27. Will investigate further. Alphax (t) (c) (e) 09:38, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

What the different between magnetic storage and optical storage?

What the different between magnetic storage and optical storage?

Magnetic storage works by magnetizing the medium. When a charged electro-magnet passes over a specific point in the medium (be it tape or disk) that part of the medium becomes magnetised. If you then run the magnet back over the medium again you can induce an electric current from that magnetised section. Optical storage works by creating pits in the medium by ... hey I'm bored writing this... just read http://computer.howstuffworks.com/removable-storage2.htm and http://computer.howstuffworks.com/removable-storage7.htm Jooler 00:46, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Scandinavian language

I've got the urge to learn a Scandinavian language, probably Swedish or Norwegian. I realize that the languages are pretty closely related and mutually intelligible (atleast somewhat). Since I don't have a real preference I was wondering if there is any advantage to learning one over the other. For example: is one of them more readily understood by most Scandinavian language speakers? Is one of them easier to learn or pronounce for English speakers? I'm hoping someone can tip me one way or the other, before I invest in some books and stuff. Thanks in advance for any help, DJ Bobo 02:07, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• You could delve into some Wikibooks on those languages before you buy some books. 131.211.71.50 08:46, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Swedish. Definitely. They are the biggest of the Scandinavian bunch. Plus, my Finnish friend says that all Finns speak really good Swedish, and a Norwegian chick in my uni, who happens to be sitting next to me, had to learn Swedish at school. However, the Swede doesnt speak any other SCandinavian languages. Dunno any Danes of Icelandic people, but Danish is more like German than Swedish. I read a Swedish newspaper yesterday, and understood about 5% of the words. Slut means finished--Wonderfool (talk) (contribs) (email) 08:56, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Being German and speaking a fair bit of Norwegian, I can tell you that Danish is definitely not more like German than Scandinavian :P The differences between Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are rather miniscule (especially Norwegian and Danish - basically the same language with some differences in pronounciation), so which of the three languages you learn is pretty much a matter of personal preference (I decided on Norwegian because I know some people from there, but talking with Danes and Swedes and reading newspapers is generally not much of a problem). Icelandic is quite different - its relation to the other Scandinavian languages is like that of Middle English to modern English. It's also not that useful to learn since there are so few Icelandic people and most of them speak a Scandinavian language anyway. -- Ferkelparade π 12:22, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

phenotypes & genotypes

can someone give me 10 examples of phenotypes & genotypes. please. i'm doing my school work for a big test tomorrow in school and i was absent for the lesson. my teacher wont help me out. and i would greatly appreciate it, thanx.

Genotypes refer to the precise genes a person or other organism has. Sometimes we are restricting attention to a single gene, and we use the term genotype synonymously with allele.

Phenotype refers to the aspect of the organism that is observable. It may be a physical characteristic like a crooked finger or bowed legs, or it may be a differently functioning (or non-functioning protein). Many phenotypes are simply the products of specific genotypes, and for some genes, there is a one-to-one correspondence between genotype and phenotype such that one can immediately deduce the genotype by knowing the phenotype and vice versa.

Some human examples:

Genotypes and phenotypes of beta-globin (part of hemoglobin) gene variations:

• Genotype: wild type (this is the term used for the most common version a gene in the population—you might also call it the “normal” version)
• Phenotype: normal hemoglobin that carries oxygen efficiently

• Genotype: A for T in sixth codon of the gene
• Phenotype: altered hemoglobin molecule with valine instead of glutamic acid at position 6. This results in deformity of the red blood cell under certain conditions, reducing oxygen delivery to tissues. This phenotype is referred to as sickle cell anemia.

Genotypes and phenotypes of glucokinase gene variations:

• Genotype: wild type
• Phenotype: glucokinase in pancreatic beta cells triggers insulin release when blood glucose level reaches about 90 mg/d.

• Genotype: Y214C
• Phenotype: this version of glucokinase triggers insulin release when glucose reaches a blood glucose of about 30 mg/dl. This causes severe hypoglycemia from the first day of life.

Genotypes and phenotypes of alpha 1-antitrypsin gene variations

• Genotype: wild type
• Phenotype: functional protease inhibitor that limits damage from release of inflammatory enzymes during minor infections or other environmental stimuli

• Genotype: A instead of G in 342nd codon
• Phenotype: this produces a lysine instead of glutamic acid at that position and is referred to as PI type Z. This type of AAT molecule cannot be secreted as readily by the liver, which in term leads to accumulation in liver cells and liver damage. The amount of AAT in the lung is reduced, leading to chronic inflammation and early emphysema.

Genotypes and phenotypes of the DMD gene variations

• Genotype: wild type
• Phenotype: Produces normal dystrophin, a protein molecule that connects contractile elements in normally functioning muscles

• Genotype:deletion of large piece from any of the first 9 exons
• Phenotype: The dystrophin protein is defective and muscle function is steadily more and more impaired (weakened). This phenotype is called Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy.

Is this what you wanted? How many examples do you need of each? alteripse 03:50, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See genotype, phenotype, all articles in category:classical genetics should be of general help. I'd say a genotype is the two alleles at the one locus, say for the alleles A and a, giving the genotypes AA (A-homozygote) Aa (heterozygote) aa (a-homozygote). But you should note dominance, so that if A is dominant over a, then the genotypes AA and Aa have the same phenotype.

I think the examples given in the previous answer are not genotypes but descriptions of mutations through which the other alleles arise (i.e. allelotypes).

Phenotypes may also not correspond directly to genotypes, see genotype-phenotype distinction. Some good examples to look up are blood group, sickle cell anaemia, cystic fibrosis. You could always try going to NCBI and typing in random numbers... Bascially, you need to find out the name of the proper allele and how they dominate each other. Dunc|☺ 19:26, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK, let's argue, Dunc, and maybe you can teach me something. I have never heard of allelotypes and you know what the red link means-- not many others use the term either. The examples I gave are commonly referred to as genotypes in medical practice and the medical literature. Are you claiming that non-clinical geneticists have a different usage for genotype? alteripse 00:02, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

accounting scandals

Hi, Does anyone have or know how to get the list of corporate accounting scandals for the last decades? This site has provided those from 2000 to 2004. Thanks a lot. - Vivian

You might be able to get another 5 years worth from this tricksy search. I can see BCCI and Barings in there for a start. --bodnotbod 03:58, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

... although BCCI and Barings were both bank failures, so may not meet the original questioner's definition of "corporate accounting scandals". Certainly the collapse of Barings was due to failures in risk management, operational controls and (possibly) regulatory supervision, rather than any accounting problems. Gandalf61 08:42, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

• Ah, sounds right. Hopefully there's other more relevant material in there. --bodnotbod 03:19, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

German language genders

Who decides whether new words in the German language are male, female or neuter? And how is the decision made? Please also link to their webiste, if there is one. Thanks,--212.100.250.212 17:13, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If by new word you mean a loan word, then the word usually is given the gender of the corresponding German word. Sometimes different genders are used in different regions, die Cola in the north, and das Cola in the south. Basically, whatever the Duden says, goes, as far as gender. You could try searching Google to find which gender is most common for a loan word. If by new word you meant a new word that is just the combination of existing words, then the noun always takes the gender of the last part of the compound word. (Disclaimer: German is not my native language.) DJ Bobo 18:30, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Which a linguist would call the head of the compound word. A technical way to state the underlined part is that in Germanic languages, the compound's head is its rightmost morpheme. Thus a motorboat is a type of boat, a tree toad is a type of toad, a wastebasket is a type of basket, etc. --Gelu Ignisque

Note that the "rightmost part" rule even applies to minor-seeming suffixes like "-chen" (a diminutive, i.e. "small"); this can be surprising sometimes, as in the common example of das Mädchen - the word for a girl is neuter, not feminine, because the "small" part overrides the "maid" part. I think this goes it beyond the suggested rule about the "head" of the compound, since surely the head of "small maid" would be "maid", not "small". - IMSoP 20:59, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hm, there seems to be a remarkably similar question to this, with different answers, further down the page! - IMSoP 00:41, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

North Carolina license plates

Do North Carolina plates give any indication of what county the vehicle is registered in? PedanticallySpeaking 18:33, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think so. I checked out the DMV site and it doesn't look like any of the current designs leave room for the county's name. One of the registration stickers specifies the month and the other the year that registration expires. -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:43, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Oh, but apparently there's a certain area of the state called the "Global TransPark" that has special optional plates starting with "GTP", which would at least give you some information about the county of origin. The things you learn... [16]. -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:52, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Wouldn't you know it I was behind someone today with a N.C. plate and the name isn't spelled out but there are two stickers on it with numbers and I just wondered if those numbers were the county. Ohio's plates have stickers like this, e.g. "83" equals Warren County. PedanticallySpeaking 16:02, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Uplink port on routers

On most routers/switches, there is an uplink port/similar which is built in so that if you want to connect another switch to the router/switch, you plug it in there. However, if you plug a switch into this port, it usually disables another port (usually the one beside it, at the end) and you cannot use that other port at the same time as you use the uplink port and vice-versa. Why is this and why don't networking manufacturers just seperate the ports? --Colonel Cow 22:20, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

(On small-scale hubs etc.) an uplink port is simply a normal port with the Rx and Tx pairs switched (i.e. it includes a "null-patch" cable) whereas ordinary ports are just straight-through wired. So if linksys make a four-port hub, one of the ports is wired to two different cat-5 receptacles, one labelled uplink and one not. So even though it's a four port hub (and the chip inside has four channels) it appears to be a five, as it has five receptacles. Other manufacturers just have four receptacles and have a switch to invert the cabling of one. Or they could just ship an ordinary four-porter and you'd have to use a null-patch (i.e. swaparound) cable to make an uplink. Note that on datacentre grade switching equipment the "uplink" is generally something else entirely (1 or 10 gb ethernet vs 10 or 100 base regular ports, or some kind of proprietary interconnect). -- John Fader 22:38, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ok, but is there any specific reason why manufactuers like Linksys in your example choose to split one of the ports to two receptacles? Or is it just their chosen method of enabling crossover without the special crossover (swaparound) cable you mention? --Colonel Cow 23:56, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Exactly, just to avoid the need for special cables or little switches. Now, the cynical might think it also makes the hub look like it has five or nine ports when it really only has four or eight. -- John Fader 00:01, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've got it now, thanks for the help. --Colonel Cow 21:24, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Math Question

How many three digit numbers can be named using the natural numbers 1,2,3,4,5? 67.80.209.134 (Moved from Help Desk by Alphax)

125 (5*5*5, or 5^3). I think. It shouldn't be too hard to just write them out (111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 121 etc). Alphax (t) (c) (e) 00:00, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Well, it also depends on whether or not you can reuse a number, so it may be 5!/2! or 60 --DaveC 00:15, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

An early-1970s dinosaur TV show

I remember there was a TV series in the early 1970s that involved with some teenagers in a dinosaur valley. These kids were taking a boat (or rubber raft) ride in a river. They entered the valley because they were too dumb to see the waterfall. I think they had found a flying saucer man in the 2nd season of the show. That's all I can remember. -- Toytoy 01:57, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Are you thinking of Land of the Lost (1974 television series) ? Joyous 02:14, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

It sounds right, Joy! If it helps Toytoy, the alien reptiles were called "Sleestaks" or "Sleestacks". It was a truly dreadful series! - Nunh-huh 02:20, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, the Sleestaks were generally played by college (or high school?) basketball players. Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 07:02, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I smite the person who besmirches the fair name of Land of the Lost!! Joyous 02:32, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

I'm thinking that what you were smitten by was Wesley<g>. - Nunh-huh 03:10, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's it! You can watch the theme song at http://www.landofthelost.com/LOTL.rm ! I didn't notice that show's unbelievably low quality at that time. -- Toytoy 02:38, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Spiders

Do web-spinning spiders reuse remaining materials from old webs? In other words, if they have a web from a few weeks ago, that still has strands remaining, might they utilise it in a web? If so, might a spider reuse webbing remainder from another spider's web? Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 07:06, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I believe spiders sometimes eat their old webs, so I guess that could count as "reusing." I don't know of any that actually recycle old webbing. Joyous 12:15, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

I'm by no means knowledgeable about spiders. But having observed them in the bath I can think of a couple of problems with something of such size and physiology trying to carry bits of old web about for reuse in new construction.

First webs are made of pieces that are bound to many other pieces. If it tried to carry a piece about it would bring the rest of the web with it. If it cut the web at its joints with other sections it would have a short piece of web, which may not be up to new placement.

If our spider had a bit of web, would it be the right size for the gap it wants to fill?

So, my instinct (founded on no book learning at all) is that our spider would expend far too much energy in recycling jobs and would survive much longer if it built webs the way it knows best. What could be less elegant than a spider huffing and puffing about, carrying bits of second hand web? If they could emply staff, perhaps...

Of course a spiderologist will come along now and say "well, of course you're quite wrong..." --bodnotbod 18:46, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

They call themselves arachnologists ;-) ... --Gelu Ignisque

naming a firm

Any suggestions for naming a trading company mainly deal with China and Western trading?

1. Must be easy to remember
2. Easy to pronounce
3. Easy to tell the nature
4. Trustworthy
5. Fast and good services

If you're dealing with Chinese customers primarily, there is the "Chinese Restaurant name scheme", which essentially is to use one or more of the words "Lucky", "Golden", "Star", "Dragon", and "Palace". So call your company sells injection moulding machines, call it "Lucky Golden Injection Machine Corporation". If your business runs hotels, call them "Lucky Dragon Palace Hotels". On the other hand, if you're dealing with western customers, they like made up words that sound like they're greek or latin (which makes them think the company is run my some ancient, kindly uncle). Words like "Omnium", "Hypron", "Superiax" work well. To this one might often add "dynamics", "systems", "technologies" etc., producing "Omnium Dynamics" or "Superiax Systems". For truly international customers, mixing the two can be difficult but effective; "Omnium Dragon Technologies", "Superiax Lucky Star", etc. -- John Fader 12:25, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As a reader of Private Eye I have to warn you against using the word Solutions. Here in the UK we have companies providing seasonal decorations calling themselves Christmas Solutions, others selling doors calling themselves Access Solutions and companies selling boxes calling themselves Storage Solutions. This must be avoided.

One route you could take as to use a part of your name and add Co. So if your name is Edwards, you might choose Edco, Edwarco or something. Amstrad, I seem to recall, stands for Alan Michael Sugar Trading.--bodnotbod 19:01, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Acronyms and pseudoclassicisms can indeed be effective. Omnium, for instance, is technically Latin for "of everything." --Gelu Ignisque

There is a demo in Java 1.4 which does this exact thing, IIRC. User:Alphax/sig 22:25, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

What do Vietnam veterans do with dead animals?

I need to know what veterans do to dispose of the dead animals they have for one reason or another. I know for a fact, that in the US, very few dead housepets end up at rendering plants. I'm pretty sure that they don't go into regular landfills. So, where do they go?

They let them rot for a few weeks, then force-feed them, maggots and all, to people who don't know when to give it a rest. You're not funny, pal. Keep your bad jokes for your own blog. --Robert Merkel 10:49, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would think that there would not be a huge difference between Vietnam Veterans and any other section of the population in disposing of dead animals. I am guessing that you mean house pets that are deceased? Roadkill, or animals that simply die in yards etc I would imagine do either go in the trash, or get burried in the yard. The Recycling Troll 12:31, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to know what vegetarians do with dead animals. Or what Wikipedians do with dead jokes. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:34, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Send them to BJAODN. User:Alphax/sig 08:14, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

Qui and que

Can someone give us an explanation of when to use que or qui, in French. Its for my 70year old dad, to whom I was trying to explain in an email. I think I may have gone into too much detail, especially after divulging into dont, a laquelle and en for little extras. I'm sure its as simple as qui for subject and que for object, but somehow that isnt getting across. And no, he's not senile (yet). Go on Jmabel, this is one for you.

Yeah, that's right. "L'eglise qui est magnifique!" (subject) ("the church that is magnificent", the church is the subject) against "la fille que je voudrais" (object) - the girl that I like (I am the object, the girl is the subject). Dunc|☺ 18:00, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In that example, I is the subject (Surely this is one of the only times it is correct to say "I is") and the girl is the object. But then again, girls are always objects non? HAHA --Wonderfool (talk) (contribs) (email) 11:04, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

German genders

Who decides the genders of completely new words in German? For example, who decided whether Ipod should be a male, female or neutral word?--213.18.248.27 11:05, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In German, one would say der iPod (see de:Apple iPod). If a word sounds like another German word, then it often receives the same gender. If a word refers to something which has a biological sex, then it often receives the appropriate grammatical gender (male or female). Certain combinations just sound right, and so neologisms in German have often received their grammatical gender long before they reach a dictionary. I think Deutscher Sprachrat would be the most helpful place to find out about the language. Gareth Hughes 12:36, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

But who officiates it? What government body decides?--213.18.248.27

Some languages have academies that prescribe correct usage. I've always thought it was a bit of a silly idea. Duden is generally considered to be the authoritative source on matters of German language. In 1902 and 1955, Duden spellings were declared to be the authority for Germany, but not other German-speaking countries. The German spelling reform of 1996 required multilateral agreement of the German Bundesländer, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. This remains the case today. Gareth Hughes 17:12, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hm, there seems to be a remarkably similar question to this, with different answers, further up the page! - IMSoP 00:46, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

CALLING ALL WAR BUFFS--Fronts of World War I

I always thought World War consisted of primarily - the Eastern and Western Front. Suddenly it has been brought to my attention that perhaps there were four fronts. Could someone please: (1) identify by geographical description the location of the four fronts and (2) who the belligerents at each front were? I am quite a bit confused. Thanks! --anon

Don't forget the Ottoman Empire was in the First World War too. So there were also the Salonikan Front in Greece and whatever General Edmund Allenby's front in Palestine was called. adamsan 15:14, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See Dardanelles Campaign. There was fighting in Iraq and across the Middle East. There was fighting in colonial Africa, specifically an invasions of the German colonies of Tanganika (?sp) ( now Tanzania) and German South-West Africa (now Namibia). Dunc|☺ 17:50, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oh and Italy joined the war and opened up a front along its northern border with Austria. Dunc|☺ 17:55, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Off the top of my head:

• Western Front - North Sea coast to Switzerland
• Eastern Front - Baltic to Carpathians
• Alpine Front - Italy vs Austria-Hungary (mainly)
• Caucasian Front - Turkey vs Russia
• Dardanelles
• Sinai and Palestine Campaign plus Arab Revolt
• Mesopotamian Front
• Romania
• Balkans - Serbia & Salonika

Campaigns against German colonies:

• German Southwest Africa
• German East Africa
• Kamerun (Cameroon) and Togoland
• Pacific - German colonial possessions including northern New Guinea, Bismarcks, etc.
• Tsingtau - Japan and others vs Germany

There was also a campaign against the Senussi in the western desert of Egypt. Geoff/Gsl 03:28, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Archive?

What is the archive tag on windows files for? Thanks, The Recycling Troll 15:08, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's a holdover from DOS, but still has some utility. Essentially a backup program would search your drive (or some directories) and would store all files that have the archive bit set. So you'd "attrib +A" a file if you wanted the backup program to include it. -- John Fader 15:38, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So unless I have a backup program, it doesn't do anything? Thanks! The Recycling Troll 17:19, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. And I expect modern backup programs work in a rather more sophisticated way anyway. -- John Fader 17:28, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't be surprised if there are still some utilities, especially in closely controlled corporate environments, that make some use of this as an available spare flag. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:37, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

As I remember, the archive flag is turned on by all normal file operations. Backup programs turn it off after a successful backup. After that, if any other program modifies the file the archive flag will get turned back on. On the next backup, any files with the flag off can be ignored, since there has been no change since the previous backup. -- Bavi H 01:45, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

other measure computer speed

What are other measures of a computer speed other than the clock cycle?

In addition to clock speed (cycles per second) other measures are (instructions per second) each of which may take 1-4 cycles; and (floating point operations per second) or "FLOPS". Some measures (called benchmarks) measure the time taken to do other typical computer operations such as (database transactions per second). --Blainster

see the articles Benchmark, MIPS, FLOPS, SPEC, HINT and 3DMark for the most important ones - Marcika 18:41, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

off topic

i was on yor web site today and i was looking for where to find certain climate zones in north america and i was almost there when your website got off topic. i simply can't find what i want and i expected better from you people.why don't you fix this problem?

Why dont you fix the problem? Dunc|☺ 10:01, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Which buckethead came first?

I remember an advertising campaign for Church's chicken that featured the tagline "Don't be a buckethead, eat Church's chicken." It was when I was a child, sometime in the '80s I think. I don't remember any other content of the commercials, but I have a sticker with a logo from this ad campaign which I like very much. It has a man in a suit wearing a red-striped bucket over his head, enclosed by a 'no' sign. (The red-striped bucket was what Kentucky Fried Chicken used at the time, i.e. Church's competition.) Here's a small scan of the sticker: buckethead.jpg.

I tried to find some better images of this logo online, but all of my searches for "buckethead" have returned results about the musician with this name (see Buckethead). This lead me to wonder which came first: the Church's ad campaign or the Buckethead guy? Does anyone else remember the ads and can say with certainty which one inspired the other? -- Bavi H 02:03, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sermons in Song

I have a book that I am trying to find information on. It's called Sermons in Song. It was published in 1893 by two guys named Grant C. Tullar and Isaac H. Meredith. Apparently, it was used by both men and has original songs written by them. If anyone has information about the authors please let me know. Also, it was published by Meyer & Brother company in Chicago, Ill. 108 Washington St.. I would like information on the company too. thanks. User:70.33.2.94 01:30, 2 Mar 2005 (moved here from Interested in History by Rlandmann 02:24, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC))

Found it at Bookfinders.com. Here is the listing: Author is Tullar, Grant C. & Meredith, Isaac H. (Editors) Title is Sermons in Song... For Use in Gospel Meetings and Other Religious Services Bookseller: Book Haven, CA via Abebooks Publisher: Chicago: Tullar-Meredith Co. 1898; Hard Decorative Covers. Good Plus/No Jacket. No Edition Stated. 8vo - over 7 3/4 " - 9 3/4 " tall. 207 songs plus index. Covers are soiled and worn and four pages have had tears repaired with archival tape. Price: $20.00 (The same listing turns up on Alibris.com) --Blainster

Microsoft Access database

How do I build such a database?

• Employee's id (number)
  • Employee's name (string)
  • Employee's customers (unlimited number of names)

The point is some employee may have only 1 customer, while others may have tens or hundreds of them. I don't want to set an upper limit. -- Toytoy 03:17, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

That depends - can 1 customer be assigned to two employees? If yes, create a table storing the relations. This table contains one EmployeeID and one CustomerID per row, with both fields constituting the primary key.

If no, put an extra field in the customer table, indicating the ID of the assigned employee. --Pidgeot 04:06, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

British media and courtesy titles

Why doesn't the BBC use the courtesy title 'Dr' for people like Condoleezza Rice, Ph.D., Howard Dean, M.D., and others while using it in other instances? What sort of rule are they following? Politicians cant be called doctor? The New York Times uses it... --Jiang

In the cited example, Dr. Clark is speaking as a scholar. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:14, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

I don't have the BBC style guide available to me, but I do have those for the Times and Economist, both Good Users Of British English.

The Economist says [17] - "The overriding principle is to treat people with respect. That usually means giving them the title they themselves adopt. (...) Use Dr only for qualified medical people, unless the correct alternative is not known or it would seem perverse to use Mr. And try to keep Professor for those who hold chairs, not just a university job or an inflated ego."

The Times, OTOH [18] - "the title Dr should no longer be confined to medical practitioners. If a person has a doctorate from a reputable institution, and wishes to be known as Dr Smith, he or she should be so titled. See appellations".

Okay, two different approaches there. The rule I suspect we're groping towards is -

• Medical doctors are always called Dr., unless they are most commonly known by a different name. Howard Dean would be an example of that; he's very rarely seen to use the title, as I understand it. As such, people would be confused by "Dr. Dean".
• People with PhDs and the like may be called by their title, or may not; it depends on the journalist and the context. The rule for a long time was not to use it unless it was explicitly relevant (a scientist talking about their research) or they'd be very offended and annoy the editor if you missed it out; nowadays this is more flexible, but a lot of journalists stick with the older approach for simplicity. This is especially notable if you happen to deal with a lot of academics - as the Economist does - where every second person quoted has a PhD. Note that, as Jmabel points out, Dr Clark is speaking as a doctor in that context; were he being interviewed about something else, they might not have used it.
• As for politicians - yeah, they'll probably tend towards missing it out. The reason for this is, as mentioned above, that most politicians aren't known by that name, so it would be confusing to use it (...one of Major's cabinet was generally known by Dr., I think, but I draw a blank for other examples. David Owen? But he was an MD anyway. The BBC certainly misses it out for Paisley [19]).

The relative levels of importance attatched to the two may well be one of those transatlantic differences; the distinction between "real doctors" and PhDs is one I hear expressed occasionally. (Often by PhDs, come to think of it) Shimgray 04:43, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

American papers, with the exception of the NYT and possibly others I'm not aware of, don't usually use courtesy titles 'Mr', 'Mrs', 'Miss' etc. In the US, the common title for Dean is "Governor Dean" (as governor is among those positions that grant their holders the title for life). Even though these salutations aren't normally used, "Dr. Dean" seems much more common than "Mr. Dean": about 3:1 in favor of Dr Dean. It also appears not infrquently in headlines in american papers. --Jiang 04:58, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Many people who have earned academic doctorates through research resent that those with vocational qualifications are also allowed to use them. The Recycling Troll 15:15, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oddly enough, if you run the same comparison of "Dr. Rice" and "Ms. Rice", the results are only about 2:1 in favor of "Dr. Rice". I don't know if this says something about women in politics or just something about Condoleezza Rice. -Aranel ("Sarah") 04:17, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

binomial expansion

$(p+q)^{2}=p^{2}+2pq+q^{2}$

and by extension:

$(p_{1}+...+p_{n})^{2}=\sum {p_{i}^{2}}+\sum {2p_{i}p_{j}}$

(where $i\neq j$)

And to a bigger power:

$(p+q)^{4}=p^{4}+4p^{3}q+6p^{2}q^{2}+4pq^{3}+q^{4}$

But what about:

$(p_{1}+...+p_{n})^{4}$ ?

The coefficients for $p_{i}^{4}$ is 1, $p_{i}^{3}p_{j}$ is 4 and $p_{i}^{2}p_{j}^{2}$ is 6.

But, what are the coefficients for $p_{i}^{2}p_{j}p_{k}$ and $p_{i}p_{j}p_{k}p_{l}$?

(I'm trying to get the Hardy-Weinberg law for tetraploid plants, but can't quite get my head round it)

Once you've done that we can do hexaploid and octoploid and decaplod and dodecaploid... Dunc|☺ 10:20, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'll chance my arm - the key is to find the combinations of the $p_{i}$ in each of the four parentheses. So, as you say

• there is only one way of creating $p_{i}^{4}$, taking the $p_{i}$ from each of the four parentheses
• there are four ways of creating $p_{i}^{3}p_{j}$, since there are four choices for the $p_{j}$ and then you have to take the same $p_{i}$ from each of the three other parentheses, and there is only one way of choosing the same $p_{i}$ three times
• there are six ways of creating $p_{i}^{2}p_{j}^{2}$, since there are four choices for the first $p_{i}$ and three choices for the second $p_{i}$, and two choices for the first $p_{j}$ and one for the last $p_{j}$; but the two $p_{i}$ and two $p_{j}$ are identical, so it doesn't matter which order you choose either of them them in, so you have to divide by two twice (4×3×2×1/2×2=6)

so, I think the answer is:

• there are 12 ways of creating $p_{i}^{2}p_{j}p_{k}$: four choices for the first $p_{i}$ and three for the second $p_{i}$, two choices for $p_{j}$ and one for $p_{k}$; but the two $p_{i}$ are identical, so it doesn't matter which order you choose either of them in, so you have to divide by two (4×3×2×1/2=12)
• there are 24 ways of creating $p_{i}p_{j}p_{k}p_{l}$: four choices for $p_{i}$, three for $p_{j}$, and two for $p_{k}$, leaving one for $p_{l}$ (4×3×2×1=24)

Now someone point out where I am wrong ;) -- ALoan (Talk) 11:12, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No, I think that's right (it certainly makes sense anyhow). The next problem is to find the generalised expansion of $(p_{1}+...+p_{n})^{c}$ Dunc|☺ 19:12, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hmm - my notation is probably wrong, but the coefficient for $\Pi _{i}\,p_{i}^{n_{i}}$, where $n_{i}$ is the power to which $p_{i}$ is raised in the composite product (so $n_{i}=0,\,...\,,c$) seems to be $\Pi _{i}\,c!/n_{i}!$ - that is, you divide $c!$ by the factorial of all of the powers of the $p_{i}$ included in the product you are looking at. Does that make sense? -- ALoan (Talk) 20:02, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Multinomial theorem, a generalization of the binomial theorem, may be of assistance. Dysprosia 05:22, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Excellent - thanks; I think that confirms that I my analysis above is correct. It is nice to be able to derive these sorts of things from first principles, rather than simply looking them up. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:48, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

writing out single-digit numbers

Is it correct that single digit numbers should be spelled out when used in a written work? e.g., 5 should be written "five," but 25 (being more than one digit) should be shown as "25?"

This is a matter of style, and it is totally up to you (or your editor, if you have one) if you adopt it. Almost all English-language newspapers, news agencies and publishing houses insist that single digit numbers be spelled out, while greater numbers be given as digits. It is a matter of style: Maximillian spent twenty-five pounds on those 5 tickets or Maximillian spent £25 on those five tickets: I prefer the latter. Gareth Hughes 16:08, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A related punctilio: Numbers of whatever length are generally spelled out at the beginning of an orthographic sentence, my guess would be to avoid confusion with the preceding period. --Gelu Ignisque

Some style guides set the write-it-out cutoff at eleven, and some at fifteen; and most say to use digits for all numbers in a list or where the reader needs to do a quick comparison ("John had 25 and I had 2", not "...I had two"). Newspapers, whose style optimize for narrow columns, may prefer digits where other formats would prefer words. I will add that I prefer written-out numbers in dialogue so I know if the person is saying "eleven hundred" or "one thousand one hundred" but that doesn't come up much and nobody asks me anyhow. 142.20.196.190 20:45, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What instrument/effect is this?

Haghllllright, I found (and was intrigued) by these two songs on the internet, one, a cover of "Supper's Ready" by genesis found: here and another song by Trismic of Songs to Wear pants to fame here.

So, question no. 1, on the "Supper's Ready" cover, what the heck effect is he feeding his vocals through? It sounds insanely cool, and if you can, could you direct me to a retailer or method of producing it by manipulating my vocals post-production?

Quesion number two- what instrument is Trismic using on "kazoo"? is it a sampler, a mellotron, what? I'm stumped, but I want one of these too, so any information on where to get one would be a godsend.

Thank's a bunch, quite a website you run here.

24.17.219.13 03:22, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

First one sounds like ring modulation. It's rather too fast to be a Leslie rotating speaker. -- John Fader 03:32, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Although the more I listen to it, the more it sounds like someone just pulling on the magnetic tape with their fingers during an overdub. -- John Fader 03:37, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually- I listened to some of this guy's other material, and he can apparently turn the effect on and off at will, I dunno, beats me, could it be some sort of vocoder? -- 24.17.219.13 03:44, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure the second one is a sampler. The kazoo instrument is a recording of someone saying "Kazoo!", the violin is a guy singing "Violin", etc... Key45 01:34, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Does anybody have any idea where I can get a sampler with those capabilities? (I.e. Recording actual noise samples and playing them on a keyboard, as opposed to using pre-synthised/sampled instruments) 24.17.219.13 03:38, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To make one, dive into the joys of DLS Bank construction (see Microsoft's Direct Music Producer, for one example). To play them, add a MIDI keyboard to your computer. Key45 01:55, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Best page ever

What, in your humble opinions, is THE BEST PAGE on Wikipedia? Don't ask me to define what I mean by BEST, I just wanna know, what page is really really good and better than everything else? I dont want a list of featured articles, I want one page only. And yes, I do mean to sound agressive--Wonderfool (talk) (contribs) (email) 11:14, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You wanna sound agressive? Right! The best page on wikipedia is this one dummy! the reasons are pretty obvious I think. If you want the best page on the web however, they don't come much better than this Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 20:09, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That one is very very funny Theresa, thank you for sharing it. Trilobite (Talk) 14:22, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if it's the best but this is the one I seem to visit the most. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 20:30, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

NO YOU ARE ALL WRONG, I HAS THE SOLUTION. Click here, please -- 24.17.219.13 23:37, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You could try this one. If you don't think it's the best page on its subject, please improve it until it is.-gadfium 23:58, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Death Valley National Park -- John Fader 01:03, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is my favourite. --bodnotbod 03:37, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Arabic calligraphy is probably the most beautiful. -- John Fader (talk · contribs) 02:55, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nietzsche's ideas on 'bank notes'

I am reading Chekhov's 'Cherry Orchard' and found in Act iii, the following quote 'Nietzsche...says in his works that there is nothing wrong with forging bank-notes'; of course Chekhov might have purposefully made his fictional character to misinterpret Nietzcshe, etc. But does anyone know in what work by Nietzsche, if any, is there reference to this? or in what context was it elaborated? Thanks

Wehrmacht Symbol

Does anyone know what the symbol's name/origins are? My friend has told me that it's a variation of the Iron Cross, but I'd like to find out for sure. Like the black cross with a white and another black stripe following the perimeter. A good picture of it is (wait until it's done it's little spinning) here. If animated .gif files don't work for you I also found another on a picture of a book cover here. Thanks --Colonel Cow 00:00, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks for sending me researching this! This form of the cross is known in English as the Greek Cross, and in German as the Balkankreuz (Balkan Cross). Until WWI, Germany used the form of the Crusader Cross that we recognize from the Iron Cross; this had been the emblem of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the Great. In 1915, the simpler Balkankreuz was adopted, as it is easier to recognize from a distance. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 00:39, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Cool, I couldn't find any information anywhere about this. Thanks very much for your help --Colonel Cow 01:10, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Fascinating. I hope someone finds time to write it up into an article. If you need a GFDL version of the image, let me know, and I'll see if I can cook one up. -- John Fader 14:22, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure it needs an article in itself; a brief mention in Cross and perhaps references in Heer, Reichswehr, Wehrmacht, and Bundeswehr would suffice. (How would such an article be titled, anyway?) --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 16:20, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Iron cross said "The insignia of Germany's military forces (the Bundeswehr) is a stylized Iron Cross" so I've added some info there. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:29, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • But I think maybe what you said isn't accurate, nor was the earlier form. The insignia is not an Iron Cross; the Iron Cross is in the form of a Crusader Cross, as is the Bundeswehr emblem, unless I'm missing something. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 16:54, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • Just a suggestion, I think that if the cross isn't to get it's own article it would still be appropriate to possibly put up a picture of the cross on the Wehrmacht page along with the added description of the cross, or on any other page where it's deemed relevant. Just a suggestion --Colonel Cow 21:54, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
            • I've added comments to Wehrmacht and Bundeswehr. -- ALoan (Talk) 01:16, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OPML - RSS feeds for Firefox / Thunderbird

Does anyone know how to import an OPML set of RSS feeds into either Mozilla Thunderbird or Mozilla Firefox? User:Alphax/sig 09:34, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

D.R.M.

Is it posible to add a D.R.M. to a ring tone to enable me to use it on my mobile phone, i have a sony erricsson k700i and it came with a vodaphone block to stop me using certain ring tones,the ringtone i want to use is the crazy frog.

International Voting data

I am looking for electoral data for the years 1990-2000 for the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA. In particular, I would like to find the votes for each political party as a percentage of total votes cast in each national election in the listed countries during the years 1990-2000. For earlier years, these data were published in 'The International Almanac of Electoral History', compiled by Thomas T. Mackie and Richard Rose, but no updated volume is apparently planned. Is there a source wghere these data can be found?

Wikipedian Adam Carr has an extensive archive of election results at his webpage: http://psephos.adam-carr.net/ -- John Fader 15:57, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Boston Red Sox in 1903??

See Image:1903 world series poster.jpg. I'm hesitant to delete it, since it appears on several pages, but the discussion seems rather convincing; the Boston Red Sox were the Boston Americans in 1903.

So, were the Sox referred to as such prior to being officially named the Sox? Is this a shoddy piece of fake memorabilia manufactured in good faith many years ago that needs to carry a warning label? Or is this an egregious fake that needs to be deleted? grendel|khan 18:59, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)

I have no idea on the authenticity of the poster, but I'm pretty certain that "Red Sox" was already around as a nickname. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:38, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

definition of..... ne plus ultra......

Question moved from WP:HD. Asked by anon 66.183.189.123

Could someone please create a good definition of the phrase "ne plus ultra"

Create? Do we need a page ne plus ultra? Is there one on Wiktionary? In the meantime, dictionary.com will tell you what it means. -- ALoan (Talk) 23:52, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

yeah...this is a very Wiktionary thing. Not very suitable for an encyclopedia. --Menchi 05:04, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

nec plus ultra, you mean. The nec plus ultra means what is top notch. Must be from latin. Tobu 02:31, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Geez, guys, let's just answer the question. The phrase means "nothing more beyond" literally, but figuratively it means the best or most extreme example of something. I'll put it in the List of Latin phrases. alteripse 02:44, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Dying computer

My primary computer will run fine for a minute or five before suddenly shutting off the monitor and freezing up. I put in a new hard drive and power supply and even disconnected the CD, disk drive, video card, and modem but it still occurs. Any ideas what the problem may be? This is really slowly down my ability to edit Wikipedia. I'm on an old slow computer with its problems until I fix this. Rmhermen 23:47, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

I have one that does much the same. I even changed the memory (try memtest86 to verify yours) but even that wasn't enough. It's either the motherboard or the CPU. A new motherboard and CPU combination is cheaper than the diagnosis effort to figure out which. -- John Fader 00:05, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Note that critical motherboard, CPU, or RAM problems are usually apparent at boot. If it fails with time under minimal load, then heat is a strong possibility. If heat is not the cause, then yes try memtest86 and more importantly Prime95. 119 00:14, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree that heat is the most likely cause, with RAM the second most likely. Turn off the computer, remove the case, and then restart it with the case off. Check that the fan (or fans) on the motherboard are turning. If it isn't try tapping the fan blade gently with the back of a pencil or similar. Of course, if the fan only works if you tap it every time you start, you need to replace it, but this may show you where the problem lies and let you use your computer in the short term.-gadfium 05:02, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oligosaccharides

Does anybody happen to know how oligosaccharides might be obtained? I know they occur naturally in various foods, but I was wondering if there was either an easy-to-moderately hard way to manufacture them or a way to extract them from organic sources. Any ideas? -- 12.5.49.10 01:29, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Oligosaccharides come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Is there any specific one you'd like to get? Mgm|^(talk) 08:12, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
• A limitied hydrolysis of starch will produce some oligosaccharides. You could accomplish this with acid and water. You could neutralize the solution to prevent the starch from hydrolyzing all the way to the glucose monomers. ike9898 14:28, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

I think he is referring to a trendy dietary supplement [20] which will tune your immune sytem and find your lost socks. However, see the concise explanation by Thomas Wheeler near the bottom of this page for a skeptical view. [21] But never let it be said that we don't let our readers make their own decisions: here is a recipe for do-it-yourself oligosaccharide jam: [22]. Of course caveat faber. alteripse 03:07, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New York City Hall's address

What is the street address for New York City Hall? From what I've seen (e.g. the Postal Service's address database and others) it does not appear to have one, "City Hall" being its official address. Perhaps it is like the U.S. Capitol, the Old Executive Office Building, and the Ohio State House in not having a number. PedanticallySpeaking 15:56, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Getting My Blog Indexed

I started a blog but so far it's not showing up in any of the search engines (e.g. Google, MSN, Yahoo). Would anyone be able to point me to information about how to get it indexed and noticed? Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 16:58, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Generally speaking Google will "get there eventually", although they may for a while just have the URL of your page listed, having not had a chance to index it yet (lots of Wikipedia articles are in this state, presumably because WikiSlowness means they can't get round our site as fast as they'd like). It can take them a while to work out exactly what your PageRank should be and therefore where you are placed in search results. If they haven't come across you at all you can prompt the Googlebot to come your way by putting your site in here. The most important thing however is to make sure there are incoming links pointing to your site, in which case they will find you sooner or later. I don't know about MSN but I'd assume they use a similar crawler system. Yahoo get their index from Google AFAIK, so Google is key. — Trilobite (Talk) 20:07, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually I have just checked the article on Yahoo and apparently they use their own technology now, but it's made me realise just how much Wikipedia has on this kind of thing. The PageRank article, for example, has loads of formulae you may or may not be interested in. — Trilobite (Talk) 20:09, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Moved from Wikipedia for organizations [23]

Wikipedia for ogananizations

How do you implement Wikipedia in an organziation? Typically this would be for a business organization out to make money. Large organizations have their SME's (Subject Matter Experts), but when they move on to another job within the company or outside the company, they take their expertise with them.

Also, organization are high on centralized, authority control (in spite of what they say about empowerment).

All central ogranizations could use a living database of what their processes are for people to do their jobs. This would be ideal for new people to the company, people who change jobs within the company and even those who want to stay current on what works best for performing any job. This would apply to efficiency, safety and all aspects of an oragnization that need processes that need to stay current.

How about a start off structure for Wikipeia for organazations to document their processes such as this, so that they stay current, dynamic and relevant?

1. The recognized, formal controllers: 1. Sales person 2. User 3. Front Line Manger 4. Upper Manager They would start, create and control the formal, recognized page(s) of information

2. Unrecognized users. Hyperlinks from the formal page where they could submit their way of doing things without being controlled by the formal users. This page must also have a "hits" counter and a "ratings" counter. That way if internal users are using or rating it higher that the formal page, then it must be a sign that it should be implemented or intergrated into the formal page. The unrecognized users would be temporarly brought into the group of the formal controllers to do this.

3. You have to be able to track who makes the entries. One for accountability and two to recognize those who make significant or conistent useable entries. ( 16:55, Mar 5, 2005 User:199.126.216.26 )

I'm not sure what you're asking. Do you want a wiki for your organization (Wikipedia and wiki do not mean the same thing)? The restrictive formal structure with approval systems that you describe is not consistent with wiki operation. You'd probably want a more general Content management system, but I'm not familiar enough with them to make a recommendation. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:38, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A hierarchy that is not an inheritance hierarchy

A classic question in Computer Science: give an example of a hierarchy that is not an inheritance hierarchy. Thing is, I can't think of one. Any ideas? User:Alphax/sig 03:07, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to imagine why you would have a hierarchy with nothing inherited, but a close approximation is when a tree is used simply as a means of sorting. The only thing the "children" inherit from their "parents" is position, relative to some other element, according to a sort criterion, but the arrangement of nodes is hierarchical. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:37, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

It's funny that this question seemed like a strange thing to ask until I realized that everyone in CS classes nowadays learns to program in Java or other OO languages, so the novice programmer's first formal experiences with trees are typically with inheritance hierarchies and not data structures. The times, they are a-changing. In any case, it's pretty simple. Consider a hierarchical filesystem, in which there's no inheritance implied in the directory hierarchy; daughter directories don't inherit any particular properties other than their location from their parents in the hierarchy (excluding 'heritable' operations like changing ownership or permissions, which are usually done by recursion and not by inheritance). — Ts'éiyoosh 15:33, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. Perhaps their is something here that could be added to the hierarchy (computer science) article... User:Alphax/sig 22:21, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

How about a KD tree? - Sundar 11:46, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Orthodox Church architecture

What are the good articles/categories in Wikipedia to look up for traditional architecture of orthodox churches? No articles on architecture or church seems to turn up good hints. Circeus 04:40, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

You have discovered a bit of a hole in Wikipedia. There is a decent article on Byzantine architecture, but there could be a lot more written around this. Gareth Hughes 12:36, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Chinese proverb: "A true traveller..."

There's a Chinese proverb which could be translated to "A true traveller has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving" and attributed to Lǎo Zi. Does any body know how to write this in Traditional Chinese? (What language would it have been written in? Mandarin?) Also, Is there a traditional Chinese computer font that is recommended for its aesthetics? --Alif 04:45, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Can't say as to the proverb, since I don't speak Chinese. But having learned Japanese, which uses similar (or the same) characters, I'll say that there are various choices for fonts just like for Latin or Cyrillic characters. Typically for something traditional like a quote of an ancient source you'd use a brush-style font, which imitates traditional brush writing. For maximum decorativeness and unreadability, use a seal-script font which imitates the oldest written Chinese characters. And as for what language the proverb was originally written, well, it would have been Old Chinese, wouldn't it? :-) Check on the time period that he was alive and see if there's a corresponding dynasty, then check the historical linguistic literature for reconstructions of the Chinese language of that dynasty. Mandarin didn't exist back then, by the way, and neither did any of the other modern dialects of the Chinese family. — Ts'éiyoosh 15:13, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Lao Zi's proverbs are invariably recorded in some form of Classical Chinese. Classical Chinese for the most part uses the same characters as modern Chinese. Traditionally it was written using traditional characters. I'm not familiar with that particular saying, but Wikiquote lists it as unverified. Chinese WIkiquote doesn't have it at all. Diderot 22:55, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Criticism of scientific writing style

I'm writing a paper which discusses various criticisms of the modern scientific writing style, such as is found in the typical scientific journals like Science or Nature. This isn't the scientific journalism or science popularization, but the research oriented style with lots of passive voice, copious citations, dense specialized vocabulary, and the like that working scientists in various fields produce. I know I've read objections to scientific writing from literary critics and postmodern philosophers in the past, but I'm not getting any particular answers from Wikipedia that discuss scientific writing, but only discussions of criticism of science in general. Any pointers to particular works or people who have complained about modern scientific writing style? Defenses of scientific writing would be welcome as well. — Ts'éiyoosh 15:44, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As someone who reads lots of both basic and clinical science papers, and occasionally some things outside my expertise, and am doing this instead of writing one this afternoon, I would offer:

In defense:

The things that people find daunting about scientific writing arise from the nature of the communication, mainly its intended recipient and the nature of the information to be conveyed. The majority of papers reporting research are reporting small steps, not breakthroughs and are of interest only to a handful of others working on the same topic. The "point" of the report, the new piece of information offered by the author to the reader is often a couple of graphs or tables of numbers representing a novel observed relationship between two things; everything else is heading, enough context to orient someone already familiar with the field, and enough support to convince someone familiar with the field that the observation is valid. Someone familiar with the field usually doesn't need to read the discussion, because he/she will already know enough that it won't represent additional information. The best data "speak for themselves" and don't need much discussion to explain or justify them.

The "boring" sameness or predictability of structure allows the reader to more quickly determine the central message.

This is why you need to know some background and context to understand them. If every paper included enough additional backgound information to bring the educated, intelligent non-specialist up to speed, it would be far longer. Good papers often reference context sources in the introductory paragraphs.

Think of the big words as "macros" or subroutines. As soon as you know the meaning of the word, the sentence structure is usually fairly simple.

Any real breakthrugh articles tend to be accompanied by editorials or commentaries explaining the significance to a larger set of readers.

Finally, not all articles in scientific journals are reports of new research. Many journals also publish reviews, which are overviews of a field, to give someone the background to understand the research, or editorials/opinion articles, the purpose of which is to persuade the reader to understand something the way the author does.

In criticism:

There is undeniably a lot of trivial and redundant junk published.

The excessive quantity of published research on a topic arises from the academic custom of requiring a high number of publications for promotion, whcih sometimes persuades people to report their research in "least publishable units"-- parceling it out in the smallest pieces that might be perceived as justifying publication as a separate paper. Secondly, the proliferation of more and more specialized journals tempts people to submit basically the same work to multiple journals with different audiences, finding a slighlty different twist for each. When the author misjudges and some readers see the same info in both places, he gets accused of duplicate publication, but the line is not always clear.

alteripse 17:39, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Buddha Shakyamuni Link

Just writing to let folk know that there's a bogus article linked to "today's featured article" (6 March 2005) via the Buddha Shakyamuni link, q.v. Looks like it ought to go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha and purge/redirect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha_Shakyamuni. I'm new to this and don't know how to do it.

The featured article blurbs for the main page can be accessed by going to the featured article archive. The archive is protected though, so only an admin can do it (I have made the correction so that it goes straight to the Gautama Buddha article). →Raul654 19:26, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

Stephen Crane-died at 28

I was just reading up about Stephen Crane (writer of Maggie: A girl of the Streets and Red Badge of Courage) and I read that he died at 28 - does anybody know why/of what?

Tuberculosis. adamsan 21:30, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Malaria joined in to finish the job [24]. -- John Fader (talk · contribs) 21:32, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Background of Saami people

I thought I knew that the Saami people of northern Scandanavia and Russia were descended from the Mongols. The Wiki artical on Saami doesn't say anything about that, but through extensive googling, I did find some references that suggest that. Seems like the older the source, the more declarative of this relationship. Can anyone point me towards modern, credible sources that confirm or refute the Mongol - Saami link? Thanks if you can help.

anon

No, there's no special relationship between the Saami and the Mongols. The Saami, like the Finns, are believed to have roots in some unidentified northwest Asian area. In the old days, it used to be believed that their language was related to the Altaic languages, which include Mongolian, but this is no longer widely believed anymore. The article on Altaic languages covers the linguistic history, which was really the only link between the two groups. Diderot 22:45, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Help requested identifying evil spirit

I am interested in looking into all psychological and/or paranormal explanations for the following situation, a task that is quite daunting, to say the least, because Google searches for spirits tend to yield sites related to gaming, sites written as fiction, etc. and I have no idea where to start looking for psychological explanations.

The situation is thus: my friend (teenager, female), when she was very small, had a series of extremely terrifying nightmares in which she believes she may have been confronted with some manifestation of evil, possibly some evil spirit or some such. In any case, she is unable to shake the feeling that these dreams were different from others she has had, and that in them she was confronted and attacked by a malign presence. She is sometimes subject to seeing this malign presence in other people if the circumstances are similar to those in the dream (I am unsure if she realizes the circumstances are similar before or after she recognizes the presence). I am not sure with what frequency this happens, but it has happened only once that I know of since I have known her (nearly two years). She confirms that it has happened before, however. It is of particular importance that we clear this up straightaway, because she recently observed this malignant presence in someone who is our very close mutual friend, and unfortunately can no longer enjoy spending time with her because she reminds her of the dream and the malicious spirit, which causes her great distress.

I am inclined to accept either a rational, psychological explanation for this phenomenon (some kind of neurosis or paranoia?) or a paranormal one as equally helpful, and several options that I could look into further would be appreciated. Attempts to narrow this down on my own failed pitifully; my list for the paranormal possibilities alone went something like demon, ghost, faerie, monster, something else...

"The hag", Scandinavian origin, there have been some interesting psycho-physiological explanations. But I see that our article covers none of this. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:48, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

See Sleep paralysis, which some psychologists think may explain reports of alien abductions, sexual interference by demonic entities, and Michael Howard. -- John Fader (talk · contribs) 22:49, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion, she needs to get to know the real person, not the fantasy, better to dissolve the first impression. Don't encourage the nonsense by trying to strengthen the fantasy with bogus folklore identification. alteripse 22:57, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Suggest some qualified advice, whether psychological, spiritual or both, might be in order here. Manifestations, whether real or otherwise, are clearly a need for help. I would suggest that an online encyclopaedia is not the best resource for dealing with this problem. Smoddy (t) (e) 23:12, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A good pastor, priest, or other spiritual leader (one who is fairly easy-going and flexible, I would imagine) would be a great resource, especially if there is someone that you or your friend already knows and trusts. Random people on Wikipedia, not so helpful. ;) -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:37, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

origin of fuck

Does anybody know the origin of the word "fuck"?

See Fuck. 119 00:55, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See fuck. Neutrality^talk 00:56, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

LOL. Apparently 119 and I both edited at the same time! :) Neutrality^talk 00:57, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Atoms, atomic masses and moles( chemistry)

Please help me with these questions...I really do not know how to do them...Please give me the steps and explanation on why that step is done to my questions...:

1)How many moles of NaOH are there in 1 cubic decimetre of 3.0M solution? Answer:3.0

When you are working in term of molar solutions, there's no reason to use units of volume other than liters. If you convert everything to liters, it will be much less confusing!

1 liter = 1000 millilters

1 liter = 1 cubic decimeter

1 milliliter = 1 cubic centimeter

So the first question can be restated as:

How many moles of (anything) are there in 1 liter of solution, if the solution has 3 moles in 1 liter?

stated this way, the answer is obvious: you don't even need to do any calculations. In one liter of 3M solution, there are 3 moles.

 

2)How many moles of NaOH are there in 20 cubic centimetre of 0.1M solution? Answer:0.002

Restating:

20 cubic centimetres = 20 ml = 0.020 liters

How many moles of (anything) are there in 0.02 liters of solution, if the solution has 0.1 moles in 1 liter?

set up a ratio:

x / 0.02 = 0.1 / 1

multiply both sides of the equation by 0.02:

x = 0.1 x 0.02

x = 0.002 moles

  3)How many atoms are there in 18g of water,H2O? Answer:1.8 multiply by 10 to the power of 24

The question as worded is peculiar; they ask how many ATOMS, not how many MOLECULES.

given the atomic weight of hydrogen as 1 and the atomic weight of oxygen as 16, the molecular weight of H₂O is 16 + 1 + 1 = 18. There are 18 grams per mole of H₂O. (that is, the molar mass of H₂O is 18 grams/mol.

 

You know (or will look up) that there are 6.022 x 10²³ molecules/mol, and you have one mole of water...

So you have 6.022 x 10²³ molecules. In this case, there are 3 atoms per molecule, so multiply by 3 and you get 18.066 x 10²³ which equals 1.8 x 10²⁴.

4)How many atoms are there in 0.44g of carbon dioxide,CO2? Answer:1.8 multiply by 10 to the power of 22

Again, the question and answer are peculiar because they are asking about ATOMS. not MOLECULES. T

The atomic weight of carbon is 12, and oxygen is 16, so the molecular weight of CO₂ is 23 + 16 + 16 = 44.

There are 44 grams per mole of CO₂.

You have 0.44 grams, which is 0.01 moles, of CO₂.

There are 6.022 x 10²³ molecules per mole, and you have 0.01 moles, so you multiply them and find you have 6.022 x 10²¹ molecules in 0.44 g of CO₂.

Here again, there are three atoms per molecule, so you multiply this by 3 and get 18.066 x 10²¹ atoms = 1.8 x 10²².

More generally, if you are given the grams of a substance, you divide it by its molar mass to obtain the number of moles of the substance, and multiply it by Avogadro's number to get the number of molecules you have.

For question 3: 18 grams divided by a molar mass of 18 grams/mole = 1 mole, and 1 x Avogadro's number is 6.022 x 10²³ molecules (and you multiply by 3 to get # of atoms)

For question 4: 0.44 grams divided by a molar mass of 44 grams/mole = 0.01 moles, and 0.01 x Avogadro's number is 6.022 x 10²¹ molecules (and you multiply by 3 to get # of atoms)

at least I think that's right. If you use Google to search for "mole gram weight" you will find lots of tutorial pages that may be worth working through and may explain better. - Nunh-huh 09:39, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--Sasuke1990 08:48, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)Sasuke1990

• You may find our articles on concentration, mole (unit) and volume helpful. Mgm|^(talk) 09:15, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Removing alcohol

Is there any relatively simple way to remove alcohol from drinks (rum, wine, etc)? DO'Neil 08:52, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Heating - that's what they do with non-alcoholic beer. Other than that it's hard because ethanol and water have a strong affinity for one-another. Guettarda 08:55, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Heating can be used because ethanol (alcohol as found in drinks) boils at about 20°C less than water. Seperating the two liquids is the textbook case of fractional distillation. Wikipedia's article on this describes this process, including the diagram that everyone draws in school chemistry. Apologies if you knew of this and were looking for a simpler way. I don't know of one. — Trilobite (Talk) 00:49, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How do I download wikiwiki for personal use.

I been given a project to use wikiwiki for knowledge base. can you give me instruction how to download wikiwiki software?

Thank you.