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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/May 2005

The Hawai'ian word for slow
Can you tell me the Hawai'ian word for 'slow', the opposite of wiki, meaning 'fast'? →Iñgōlemo←  talk 02:24, 2005 May 3 (UTC)

 * Lohi, apparently. --Tagishsimon (talk)

magnetic moment of the H2O molecule
- Hello, I was looking for the magnetic moment of H2O. However, I can't seem to find it under water(molecule). Does anyone have this information? thanks in advance. (145.97.223.207 18:03, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC))

 * Hmm...well the dipole moment of water can be found here. The magnetic moment of water would then depend on the magnetic field in which the water is found. --HappyCamper 12:30, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Some molecules have a magnetic moment even without any applied field, but in this case your answer is zero. H20 is diamagnetic, with χ =  -9.0 ×10-6 (times the permeability of free space) .  Diamagnetism is only observed when the individual molecules carry no magnetic moment of their own.  Perhaps this material constant should be added to the water page, though...I'll get on it.--Joel 05:24, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

The Only Black Referee in the English Premier League
Does any know the name of the only black referee in the league?

Thanks takeshifujii 12:30, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Uriah Rennie. See http://www.ratetheref.co.uk/Ref/RefData.aspx?RefID=37

Flash and MySql
I am a student designer and I m interested in learning some basics bout saving and retrieving data from a MySql to a Flsh program, just to be able to make few collaborative web experiments (think www.tenbyten.org for instance). Searching on the internet I could only find or complicated explntions of how to mount web server with flsh support or little flash games with Mysql s  secondary gadget for high scores.

Do any of you have good suggestion of a ready made fla source that does the simple job of saving and reding back information?

Thanks a lot--Alexandre Van de Sande 13:44, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not sure what this anon was asking, but thought I would separate it out
iwassending onebosseto maurice kenolandthe postofficemaurry avenuenovember11/1/2004to haiti gonaives but my father h es nerver receive tell me what happing aboutthe bosseiwasfour paper fromand the post office but the bosse hesnervercoming please answer my question
 * (translation attempt) "I was sending a bosse (?) to my father, Maurice Kenol in Gonaives, Haiti, but he never received it. I sent the bosse on 2004, November 11. What should I do?"
 * Incomprehensible details: Maurry Avenue (Google suggests this is probably actually Maury Avenue), "i was four paper from and the post office".

What are the main arguments against the Veil of Ignorance thought experiment?
I've been skimming A Theory of Justice, and finding that I have several objections to the idea that the Veil of ignorance is a valid tool for making arguments about what is or isn't just. Since Wikipedia isn't designed to be host my personal rants, though, I'm wondering if there are any widely promoted arguments against using the Veil. If so, could some of them please get mentioned in the Veil article? --Ryguasu 12:50, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm only vaguely aware of the details of the theory. I personally like the theory mildly.  Anyhow, one counter-argument is that the veil of ignorance is just a mind experiment.  I would reccomend that you read up on other philosophers... the one mentioned in the article on Veil of Ignorance might be worth it.  DoomBringer 07:57, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

EU Civil Service
On this page (scroll down to "Director-General") it talks about ranks in the EEC-->EU civil service. Can someone provide me with a full list of ranks?--anon 05:56, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Photos of flowers
I made a few photographs of some plants/flowers, but have no idea how they are named. They were photographed in a hilly area of Romania. See them at the commons bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 13:37, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Beautiful feminine female rap
I have, but only rarely as far as I can remember, heard beautiful feminine female rap. I mean that the lyrics were rapped by a woman with a feminine-sounding voice, and she did not seem to affect a "hip-hop" voice or "hip-hop" rhythm. Where can I get more of these? (Personally, I find the accent typically used by black performers to be unattractive. Also, I do not want gangsta rap, etc.) Also, why I'm at it, I wonder why women don't rap more. Some of them have such beautiful voices, why spoil them by the changes in pitch we call singing? Yet it is typically the men who rap and the women who sing. --Juuitchan

American History
Are there any sources dealing with mentoring that were available for men such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and others to read? Related to this, is there a source for researching those men's thoughts on posterity, other than "Fame and the Founding Fathers?"--66.82.9.65 20:52, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Could you try rewording that? I can't make head or tail of it. Are you asking about how they were educated, or how they functioned as mentors to others, or what? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:29, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Nazi Use of an old switching station in the old stripland of Central Use
I heard a story along time ago, which has come forward again.

I want to know if the story is true in all or part.

Suposedly, many of the railroad cars used to transport "captives" were concered so soiled and rife with disease, that they could not be used again. I heard just today that livestock cars provided better ventilation than box cars, according to a survivor. Often this disease process started with the sickness of young children and older adults - often with simple cases of diarrhea.

The rolling stock (and its contents) were abandoned in an orderly fashion at this worthless switching station. After awhile, the Nazis used ore cars, especially when they wanted to get rid of people. The cargo was unloaded with cranes and replaced with coal. This was a terrible place, from Hell - and it was destroyed by the Nazis late in the war to hide what had happened. I think many of the missing (a lot of them Russian soldiers and Poles) ended up here. It may be in that part of Poland, which once belonged to Germany.

It was rediscovered after certain documents were translated in the mid 1950s - and a trip was made to the area. It was old stripland, so entrance was not a problem at all, despite its presence behind the Iron Curtain. The area was radioactive to some degree. Our relations were bad with the Communist countries - Germany was our ally - it was a matter of letting sleeping dogs lie.

I heard this story as a child - and repeated it as an early teen - I got into terrible trouble over it. I actually did not understand what I was saying. Only since the memories have come back, have I understood it more.

Is there a place like this, that is not commonly known. There were workers there, who often deserted their duties.

Identifying of Flowers
Can someone please identify the following flowers:

 * My first impression was that 6 was a daisy, but the leaves are wrong. Might be camomile. Flower 10 might be tansy. 82.210.117.169 14:24, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 2 and 8 both look like hibiscus to me. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 16:34, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 5 looks like a fuchsia to me, but I could easily be wrong! Thryduulf 20:50, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 1 is a dahlia. 2 is a double hibiscus. 3 is lantana. 4 is unknown. 5 looks like a legume but I can't be sure. It certainly isn't a fuchsia. 6 is indeed a daisy but this is a very generic term for a large group of flowers. I suspect the leaves behind it are more green than the grey they appear. 7 is a petunia. 8 is a double hibiscus. 9 is unknown. I agree with the above anon that 10 is tansy. 11 is arctotis also called African daisy. 12 is unknown.-gadfium 21:14, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I think 6 is a Shasta daisy. RickK 23:57, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

 * Big thanks to all who have helped me out! --Fir0002 08:56, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

cost of foster care
I would like to find the total monies paid to foster carers in England.
 * As I understand it, fostering is handled at a local government level. Consolidated information may be available from the National Audit Office. Contact information for the NAO can be found at NAO Contacts. --Theo (Talk) 12:18, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Song lyrics of the 1920s -- where to find?
My old Zen teacher was talking about some humorous songs that he used to get with his crystal set, long long ago -- in the 1920s. He remembered some of the lyrics. One was something about "little pudding basin from my old Aunt Flo" and another the "good ship windowblinds", as bizarre as that sounds. He remembers these as being British recordings, even though he was listening to them in Honolulu. The reference to "pudding basin" sounds British.

Is there any online repository of lyrics to popular music circa 1920-1930? We'd like to get the music and lyrics, work up a ukulele accompaniment, and surprise him. Zora 09:32, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Norwegian/American flag tapestry
I am searching for a tapestery pattern of the Norwegian & American flag with the Lion in the center. This tapestry hangs in many Norwegian homes and organizations her in the States. My family never had one and I would like to embroider on for us. Can you help in this matter or direct my letter to someone who can. Thank you, Linda

 * I haven't found any such image on the web, but why not ask one of the organizations you mentioned? Maybe the NAHA? Lupo 11:37, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Korean breastfeeding dress?
Are there any information about these Korean women's breastfeeding dresses?

 * Image:National geographic 1910 11 laundress and street baby.jpg
 * Image:National geographic 1910 11 peasants.jpg
 * Image:National geographic 1910 11 korean laboring women.jpg

National Geographics Magazine, November 1910, p. 899:

 * ''The dress of the laboring class of women consists of a jacket or waist which extends about three inches below the armpits, while the skirt has only a tightly drawn band, thus exposing to view several inches of dark-brown skin between the waist and skirt-band. ...

These clothings are for the lower class only. -- Toytoy 15:19, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

iTunes and podcastings
I've read some many times (in newspapers) that the newere version of iTunes comes with podcasting compatibility. I've searched the web and couldn't find any other mention of how to do it (wich, in apple usability standards is quite weird). I supose the newspaper meant that iTunes actually plays mp3 from podcasting which is a rather dumb thing to say, as it's quite obvious. Can iTunes download podcasts? --Alexandre Van de Sande 20:46, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Nope, simply not true. If you want add a 'podcast', you have to download and add it to the library manually. --Nidonocu 03:38, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
 * You need a podcast aggregator. I haven't done it myself, but look around at this link:  ...  DoomBringer 07:48, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Identify this song
I heard a song on KBLX today (a radio station that plays adult contemporary songs by African-American artists) that contained the words "excites me" and "all night long". I think it was something about "loves me all night long" or "love you all night long", but the lyrics weren't very clear. It had a long, jazz-like intro before the lyrics started. I searched for "excites me" and "all night long" on Google, but the only song that had both of those phrases was "Watching You" by Hall & Oates. Can anyone tell me the name of this song? Wiwaxia 23:17, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Male or female singer? Why don't you ask KBLX directly? If you know the approximate time they aired that song, they might be able to tell you what it was—or at least narrow it down. Maybe their playlist can give you a hint... Lupo 11:10, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

 * You might try Musipedia. Read about Parsons code, and see if you can encode part of the song in that searchable format.

French Civil Service
Can I be provided with a list of ranks in the French Civil Service? Thanks,--J.B.
 * Each corps has its own ranks (see for instance French National Police) or classes (for instance, a professeur agrégé can be classe normale or hors classe). I don't know of any single and comprehensive list of all corps and ranks available online. David.Monniaux 14:22, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Hermann Göring quote
From WikiQuote - Hermann Göring - "No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Göring. You may call me Meyer." -
 * Firstly I always thought it was Berlin not the Ruhr; but secondly, what is the significance of the name "Meyer" in particular? Jooler 12:44, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * I believe that Meyer is a common Jewish last name; Goering was probably making what passes for a joke in Nazi circles. --  — I. Neschek |  talk 14:38, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Actually, it's not a common Jewish name. If he had wanted to make a joke alluring to a typical Jew, he would have used a name like Goldstein, Grünblatt, or something like that. Meyer is one by a large margin the most common German name (if you count all of its variants, like Maier, Mayer, Meier, Mair, Mayr, Meyr, Meir, ...), so that's the gist of the joke. Nightstallion 15:50, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * It could well have been an in-joke. Many Jews had adoped the name "Meyer". (I just amended German family name etymology to reflect this). Sebastian (talk) 17:47, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

 * What's your source for this? I know of a small number of Jewish "Meyer" like names, but at least some of them come from other sources, I think -- for example, Louis B. Mayer was a Russian named Meir; Golda Meir's husband was a Meyerson... --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 16:28, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Good question. Let's discuss this at Talk:German family name etymology. I refuse to discuss this under the headline "Hermann Göring quote" — Sebastian (talk) 18:35, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)

effects of being soaked in water
is it bad to be soaked in water for too long in water??? as your cells die. If yes, tell me what are the effects...

--Sakura1980

 * I can't see why there should be ill effects - assuming that the water is not too cold, or something. After all, before we are born, we spend 9 months suspended in amniotic fluid, for much of it without the sort of thick, impermeable skin we have today. Though, I suppose, that is not water.--Fangz 21:54, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Ironically, you'd probably dry your skin out (losing oils). -- Jmabel | Talk 05:37, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * I am not a doctor, but I can reasonably claim that you won't die from staying in water for too long. As long as the water is of the right temperature, of course, and all your needs are checked after.  If you are concerned over osmosis (the transmission of water across membranes) causing cellular death, I can say that you shouldn't have much to worry about.  That only happens on a small level, and only with waters of certain salinities (that don't exist in your ordinary bathwater).DoomBringer 07:42, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Drinking distilled water has been disrecommended, for reasons of osmosis. I find these claims dubious, because anything you drink is separated from your living cells by a thick layer of goop, so that the difference between distilled water and ordinary clean water shouldn't matter.  Actually, skin contact may possibly be more hazardous.  It probably won't rupture your cells, except for the outermost layer or two, which are dead anyway.  However, it will cause your cells to become distended and misshapen, which might have some ill effect. --Smack (talk) 04:37, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Looking for an old classmate
I am trying to locate,an old friend.Her name,was Von Cain.She was in the green forest,Arkansas,area.Her,mom.I heard maybe going by Yvonne Mathis now. I don't no Von's middle name.Is there,any body by,these names in Arkansas?I checked out the,old look up section.Never did the right person. My letter's came back.I sent letter's to all the Yvonne Mathis & Jimmy Cain's.No answer,yet.If,you don't have the time.That's fine.Just thought I would ask.Thank you.Julie

 * Wikipedia itself doesn't keep track of people unless they've done something particularly notable, so the Wikipedia can't help you directly. One thing that does come to mind is locating your other classmates and seeing if any of them know what she's up to?  Also, if she went to college and you can find out where, you might try contacting that college's alumni department.  They won't be able to give you her details for privacy reasons (I would expect), but they might be able to contact her on your behalf. --Robert Merkel 01:27, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Try using this website. There's an old woman of 87 in Arkansas with the name "Vonnie Mathis". I could find no other combinations in that state, but there are plenty across the USA. It would help if you knew her age and had a credit card. Dmn / Դմն 22:48, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Participation of various countries in peacekeeping
Is there a list anywhere of how many soldiers each country currently has deployed with the UN Peacekeeping forces? The peacekeeping article appears to imply the existence of such a list, at least for 2004. I'd like to see the whole thing so I can see where, for instance, Canada and Belgium appear on the list, and I'd like to re-sort it by number of soldiers divided by population of the country. I've also posted this question on Talk:Peacekeeping. Thanks. moink 18:56, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Are these documents anything like what you're looking for? They're from the official UN website, so they should be reliable. -- Vardion 06:25, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks Vardion! That's exactly what I was looking for. moink 02:08, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Special Website formatting
Note the special formatting on the title on the top of this news article, what HTML/other code causes this special format (I've seen it used on other news websites as well) ? --Colonel Cow 23:24, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Do you mean the title "Martin vows child-care funding"? I'm not sure how's it unique, but it is a h2 whose display attributes are defined in a few different Cascading Style Sheets from http://images.theglobeandmail.com/styles/article.css, search "#headline h2". 119 01:16, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

research question
haloo guys, i want to know, do wikipedia give the informasion of kuantitative methodology in language, and do wikipedia give and absolud sceme of the kualitataive methodology?

 * If your spelling is correct, then no, we do not yet have an article on kuantitative methodology. Could you check your spelling again? Zzyzx11 | Talk 04:34, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * This page is to help people, not mock them. Superm401 23:19, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about Quantitative method?

specific name for this common programming method?
Videogames nowadays, considering the speed of systems they run on, pace themselves such that the CPU speed doesn't affect the physics or speed of the gameplay itself -- your SoW-endowed elf druid runs at 30mph regardless of whether or not your computer's CPU is 4ghz or 450mhz -- but it requires a clock-based pacing inside the main game loop to keep it that way. Is there a name for this method? Just about everything else in computer science has a name ("Ford-Fulkerson method! Dijkstra's algorithm!  Z-test depth buffering!  Semaphor-controlled pipe access!  Blah blah blah!"), so is there a fancy-schmancy name given to this particular necessity in videogames+simulations that a professor or hotshot mathematician would use? In all the tutorials I've seen about this, I haven't seen a "(name)'s theorem/algorithm/method" for it, if you know what I mean. --I am not good at running 10:06, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I would call it simply a "software clock" or "software timer", but I haven't been able to find a nice explanation of it on the web. There's a good explanation of the concept in the book Game Programming Gems 4 by Andrew Kirmse.-gadfium 20:00, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * There isn't a very technical or specific term for it, as far as I know, from the game programming books I've encountered. Some games cap the FPS, like Doom3, which is a related but different idea, I suppose.
 * I've always referred to this as "CPU independent timing" though I couldn't tell you where I got that term from - possibly even made it up myself and just forgot about it. Generally speaking it's not so much the CPU speed as the monitor refresh rate that's an issue to timing, as the "lazy" method of software timing, particularly for games, is to just halt execution until the monitor reaches it's next vertical blank. Systems that didn't rely on that were generally called "Refresh independent timing"
 * Noodhoog 00:47, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Tiger Woods and Cerritos, California
The following line is part of the page on Cerritos, California:

"Tiger Woods a famous golfer, grew up in a modest house in Cerritos. His childhood handprints are still visible in the sidewalk cement in front of the house."

I tried the Discussion link on the Cerritos page, but it was archived.

I lived in Cerritos for my junior high school and high school years (Cerritos HS Class of 1975), and I think I would have heard that Tiger grew up in my hometown. I suspect that this line might have been misinterpreted from the fact that Tiger attended Cerritos Elementary School, which is in Anaheim, CA. In fact, all three schools that Tiger attended (Cerritos Elem, Orangeview Jr High, and Western High) are in Anaheim. Tiger's father's book, "Playing Through," states that Tiger grew up in Cypress, California (which is adjacent to Anaheim and is probably in the same school district). So I would question the reference that stated that Tiger grew up in Cerritos.

Bruce Rogers seismc@comcast.net
 * I added that because a colleague of mine met Tiger's dad (in the summer of 2000 I think) at the house Tiger grew up in, and saw the prints himself. I suppose it was possible it was Cypress instead and I made a mistake on the name. I added that early in my Wiki days and never went back to verify it from another source. I'm sure it could be verified somewhere. For a start though, his dad's book sure sounds more reliable than my recollection. For now, I removed the tidbit as unverified. - Taxman 15:16, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

Maybe Asynchronous? May 16, 05 Dave

The history of paranoia in the United States
I am putting together a unit for my U.S. History class. For lack of a better title, I am calling it The History of Paranoia in the United States (I am sure a better title will emerge later, but that's what I am calling it during these planning stages). There are some obvious topics to cover in such a unit: Salem witch trials, both Red Scares, Palmer Raids, Espionage Act of 1917, Sedition Act of 1918, Sacco and Vanzetti, Smith Act, Japanese American internment, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, House Un-American Activities Committee, Hollywood Ten, McCarthyism, Alger Hiss, J. Edgar Hoover, Operation TIPS, USA Patriot Act

There are some other topics that will also fit in nicely: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Unidentified flying objects, Mattachine Society, The Puppet Masters, Peekskill Riots, The Crucible, John F. Kennedy assassination, Area 51, Camp X-Ray.

I am just starting to work all this out. Please help me with brain-storming. I am looking for anything that describes how (at any point in U.S. history) the government or a realm of society develops tremendous fear.

Please post your suggestions, ideas and answers at User:Kingturtle/paranoia. Thanks! Kingturtle 19:20, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Burkhard Heim
I am in the process of expanding the Burkhard Heim page on Wikipedia, and I would like to find some substantiated, authoritative biographical information and references about this late German theoretical physicist. Printed references in any language would be greatly appreciated - I am willing to put in the time to translate the information into English so it is accessible to more people.

For starters, I would like to know his
 * Education background
 * Postgraduate endeavours
 * associates and acquaintences during his life
 * place of work
 * hometown
 * childhood hometown
 * involvent with the Nazis during World War II and its extent
 * apparent involvement with the development of nuclear weapons, particularly the "clean H bomb"
 * magazines and articles in Germany who published and popularized Heim's works
 * influences which lead to the development of his Heim theory
 * life during the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s

In addition, any biographical information which can be substantiated would be greatly appreciated. The article is currently missing this type of information, making some of its content questionable. The information available on the internet is rather sparse and does not seem as reliable as printed materials. If you could help answer this question, your efforts would be greatly appreciated! It would help tremendously in improving the articles on Heim. Thank you for your help! --HappyCamper 21:51, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fire ships in the Spanish Armada...
For a History project, I have chosen to do an essay about Jambeli (wrong spelling) who made the fire ships for the English fleet. Does anyone know how to properly spell Jambeli, so I can look it up on Google etc.?

--Zooba

Here is a quote from : ''Sir Francis Drake is given the credit for what happened next but an Italian called Giambelli should also receive credit for building the "Hell Burners" for the English. Eight old ships were loaded up with anything that could burn well. These floating bombs were set to drift during the night into the resting Armada. The Armada was a fully armed fleet. Each ship was carrying gunpowder and the ships were made of wood with canvas sails.'' You're welcome. alteripse 08:05, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

 * As the fire ship article notes, Drake's fire ship attack in the Battle of Gravelines did not burn any Spanish ships, but caused the Spanish fleet to scatter in panic. Gdr 19:12, 2005 May 1 (UTC)

Music Theory - Key signatures for jazz/blues
I'm trying to score Gershwin's Summertime from his opera Porgy and Bess. The song uses the a minor scale as a base (indicated through the use of Am, Emaj and Dm chords, but also with C nat.). Which key signature should I use? Either the Amin key signature which means f sharp and g sharp will need accidentals, or the F#min key signature, which means that only c will need an accidental. Being classically trained, I've only ever had to deal with major and harmonic minor based pieces. --Alexs letterbox 07:19, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
 * "Summertime" is notated in Am, indeed, with the accidentals for chordal expansions; the melody, as I'm sure you've noticed, needs no accidentals at all. (Damned, it's amazing we don't have an article on this wonderful song; it's perhaps the best known jazz standard. I think I have a project...) --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 14:20, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Arabic Translation
Can somebody tell me how to say "caution, fragile wood" in Arabic? www.logos.it gives "caution" حذر "wood" خشب "fragile" سريع العطب but I would prefer transliteration, as I also need the vowels. dab (ᛏ) 14:48, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Try asking one of the translators. Daniel 17:22, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

LoveToKnow Flowers
LoveToKnow, the same people that scanned the 1911 Britannica and put it at http://www.1911encyclopedia.org, have put online a flower encyclopedia at http://www.lovetoknow.com/Flowers/flowers.htm It appears to be a 19th century public domain encyclopedia (it uses some archaic placenames), but its name is not found anywhere on the site.

Can anybody here identify it ? bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 22:27, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

animalis
Is there a -nym word or other word that means "sound made by an animal" or "animal that makes this sound", e.g.  Dog is the ****nym of woof?
 * I doubt it, since animals don't speak or use words (which is sort of implied by the -nym suffix). All I can think of is onomatopoeia which probably isn't what you want. -- FP 06:51, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

In some instances, making animal noises could be classified as coprolalia, but only if it's a tic and people would find it offensive.

Will the auto industry be crippled by false information?
Canadian Government is running a specious  program called the ONE TONNE  Challenge which is an attack on the Auto Industry. MY question is:what is the weight and name of all the gases emitted through the tailpipe of a modern car using one one litre of gasoline? Cordially Ron Dabor Sr. (former car man) RR 4 Warkworth ON K0K 3K0  705 924 9007
 * The people at the chemistry science shop at Utrecht University have done loads of research of emissions of cars. You can contact them at cwu(AT)chem(DOT)uu(DOT)nl. 131.211.210.12 10:20, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

 * The One Tonne challenge seems to be aimed at greenhouse gases specifically, and in practice almost entirely CO2 unless I'm very much mistaken. DJ Clayworth 18:52, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Meeting Canada's Kyoto committment is dead easy - put every third car in a shredder. --Wtshymanski 02:20, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * If you want to figure out roughly the mass of CO2 emitted, assume that gasoline is pure benzene, and that all carbon in it is completely oxidized. These are both conservative estimates (i.e., they'll give you a slightly higher mass of CO2), but fairly good ones assuming use of a catalytic converter (which does a good job of reducing NOx and oxidizing CO) and limited production of soot.--Joel 18:23, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Pure hexane would be a better approximation, but once you assume complete combustion, the number of hydrogen atoms floating around doesn't really matter that much. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:32, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

TV question
Okay. Here's a toughie....it's been bothering me for quite some time... I'm looking for the name of a US/North American cancelled television show that probably aired in 1997 or 1998. I don't remember very much about it... I remember thinking that it was a lot like 7th Heaven, possibly introduced as a competitor from a rival network. Also I remember the boys in the series had long hair....and the title, I believe, referred to a location. Can anybody help? Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy)  05:58, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * No clue. Can you remember the number of people in the regular cast and approximate ages for any of them? Also, I'd like to know hair color. 131.211.210.12 10:22, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

 * The best place to ask is on IMDB's I Need To Know forum] Jooler 11:09, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Could you be thinking of Apple's Way? or The Jimmy Stewart Show? RickK 66.60.159.190 18:17, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * He'd have a bad sense of time if he were, as those both were from the 1970s, not the mid- to late-1990s. --  user:zanimum
 * Maybe Second Noah ? Rmhermen 23:12, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

Accessing the file system from flash on a web page
Hi, my friend wants to know the method by which one can access files on the user's desktop from flash on a web page. A code snippet will be greatly appreciated. Thanks. -- 10:39, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure you can do that (think of the security problems that would enable!), but if it is possible, the keywords you are looking for are "Actionscript" and "FileSystem". If you Google around with these two terms, you can see the results of other people who have asked a similar question. In my quick look, I've seen a lot of people who want to do it, but no actual suggestions. I'm not sure you can do something like this without making the user download and install software first. --Fastfission 03:49, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, Fastfission. -- Sundar 07:23, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

Perceiving reversed causation
Ordinarily, time is perceived to "flow" at a certain rate in a single direction, and from this sense, the perception of causation is firmly established. The idea of causation in the opposite direction is not intuitively realized; that is, one does not perceive a ball as leaping from the ground into one's hand.

 * 1) Is our idea of "forward" causation necessary, or would it be possible to function without perceiving causation?
 * 2) If an individual were to experience a reversed causation, how might they cope with its opposition to their perception of "forward" time?
 * 3) How might they cope with the sense that the conditions of their present existence are due to events that have not yet occurred, which they have no causal control over?
 * 4) Is this a known phenomenon or syndrome?
 * 5) If one suddenly experienced a reversal of their causation perception, what might the medical or psychological implications be?
 * 6) What philosophical work exists on the subject of the directions of time and causation?

‣ ᓛᖁ  [ ᑐ ] 11:11, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm not an expert in this (nor a philosopher), though here is what I have seen around and about:
 * Philosophically speaking: Concerns over the arrow of time and relation to causality were, I believe, discussed by a number of Ancient philosophers, though I can't name any off the top of my head. It also came up in discussions over the implications of the second law of thermodynamics in the 19th century. If you look at the more "metaphysical" writings of James Clerk Maxwell and Helmholtz you will find quite a lot of things about causality, determinency, time, etc. And there is of course the discussions over the nature of time engendered by the work of Henri Poincaré and Albert Einstein a bit later (see Peter Galison's book Einstein's clocks and Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time if you are interested in these discussions). Additionally I'm fairly sure that the early days of quantum mechanics (esp. in the work of Niels Bohr) were concerned with such philosophical issues. Richard Feynman's approaches to quantum electrodynamics have often been cited as being highly counterintuitive in this fashion, but I'm not familiar enough with them to comment.
 * Cognitively speaking: The work of people like George Lakoff probably holds the answers to these sorts of questions, i.e. why we perceive causality in a certain fashion. His book Where Philosophy Comes From likely covers this at some point, though I don't know for sure.
 * Medically speaking: I have no idea. Disorientation? Deja vu? Things of this sort, I'd speculate. But I am just speculating.
 * Practically speaking: How would people react to sense that the conditions of their life are related to events which have not yet occurred? What you're asking about here is fate, one of the most common dramatic tropes in Western culture. There are about three dozen Greek tragedies about this particular situation alone, in a way.
 * Hope that's at least a little bit useful... Fastfission 03:45, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Windows batch JPEG optimizer
Many years ago I used a DOS/Mac OS freeware to perform Huffman coding loseless batch optimization to my JPEG image files. Is there an equivalent freeware/shareware for Windows?
 * How about Jpegtran? David.Monniaux 15:50, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Are there any freeware/shareware that can batch convert GIF 89a images to GIF 87a? I hate transparent GIFs. -- Toytoy 11:16, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

 * ImageMagick should be able to do the conversion on the command line. You'll have to write a batchfile to do them in batches.  I have a similar job to do occasionally, and I have a bash script running on cygwin do it (as I hate writing DOS batchfiles). -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 12:26, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

What was the original meaning of squift?
What was the original meaning of "squift"?

You say it's "out of the language" but someone with an OLD book wants to know. TIA!

 * The Oxford English Dictionary redirects to the entry swift, which starts by saying that it has also been historically spelled as:
 * Also 1, 4-6 swyft, 1, 3-4 (6 Sc.) suift, 4-6 swifte, 5-6 swyfte, (4 sweft, sweyft, squift, Ayenb. zuift, zuyft, 4-5 squyft(e, 5 suyfte, sqwyft(e, swyfht, 6 swiyft), Sc. swuft, swofte, suofte, (7 suifte, Anglo-Ir. shwift(e).
 * That's all I got. --Fastfission 03:33, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Capitalizing on the 1929 stock market crash
Say you were an investor in the US (or Western European) stock markets prior to 1929. And say you were particularly insightful or lucky. What could you have invested in that not only would avoid destruction of your porfolio following the 1929 stock market cash, but could actually have made you rich? RickK 66.60.159.190 18:02, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I wonder what the market conditions were like during the 1920s. If short selling were allowed, then you could have made money. However, this depends on a lot of issues, like risk and whatnot... HappyCamper 18:51, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Dump stock, convert to gold, and then spend the next few years buying debt and foreclosing. Guettarda 19:04, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Also see Short selling. — Asbestos | Talk  12:23, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

 * In addition to gold, you could buy land and weather the storm, because that's always going to be worth something. Not sure it could make you money, but you'd lose less. Dunc|☺ 20:47, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Cash in a safe, not in the bank. Short selling doesn't work if buyers, brokers, and insurers go bankrupt. At the bottom (1934?), buy productive assets. --Macrakis 22:42, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

John Maynard Keynes provides one possible model.

Sexual senses of words
The words "knowledge" and "conversation" have archaic senses concerning sexual relations, senses usually found today in the legal phrases "unlawful carnal knowledge" (i.e. rape) and "criminal conversation" (i.e. adultery). Are there other similarly innocent-looking words that have sexual senses? PedanticallySpeaking 19:02, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

 * I might even venture to say that any word can have such connotations, provided that there is sufficient context for its usage, and that the meaning is understood by everyone who is using the word. This is of course due to the tremendous ability for the human brain to assign meaning to abstractions. What context are you looking for specifically? For example, without a particular context, ordinary words like "book", "table", and "paper" can be interpreted as loaded terms. HappyCamper 19:57, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

 * A specific example: William Wycherly claimed that the word 'china' acquired a sexual connotation after he used it like that in a scene of his play The Country Wife. DJ Clayworth 20:09, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, the word intercourse itself is non-sexual but has come to be used almost entirely in a sexual context. According to [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=intercourse dictionary.com defines it as Dealings or communications between persons or groups., from Middle English entercours, commercial dealings. RickK 23:06, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

Matthew 1:24-25 states "Then Joseph ... took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son," which is often interpreted as meaning that Joseph had sexual relations with Mary after Jesus was born. People often refer to the word "know" in this way as, e.g. "Did you know her in the Biblical sense?" For instance:, ,. — Asbestos | Talk  12:12, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Spin rate of a CD
An LP spins at 33 1/3 RPM. How fast does a compact disc spin? PedanticallySpeaking 19:19, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

 * Revolutions per minute says "Audio CD rotation rates vary from about 500 rpm when reading the innermost CD track, to 180 rpm when reading tracks near the outer edge (CLV)." Naturally data CDs can spin 24 times faster than that, or more. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 19:36, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Note also that some audio CD players (particularly automotive ones, or high-grade home ones) spin the disk faster. These are units with a large data buffer between the decoder and the DAC, and if a serious error is discovered (one that a CD's basic error-correction code can't fix) the track can be reread and maybe the retry will get a valid read of the track. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 20:06, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I doubt they continuosly spin at a faster rate - if they did, the buffer would eventually run out of space, since the datarate of an Audio CD is always 150KB/s. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 16:39, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I would expect that the car CDs mentioned above would spin at a continuously faster rate, but throw away any data they read if the buffer was full. That would probably be easier than trying to change the speed of rotation in response to a failed read. DJ Clayworth 21:20, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Interesting but not really important is that unlike the LP (and 45/78 rpm) recording protocol, CD recordings start on the inside and continue outward. hydnjo talk 20:26, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Branchville, North Carolina?
Is there a town named Branchville in North Carolina? Where is Branchville, South Carolina? Does anyone know of a Branch family who lived there? Supposedly there is the old Branch home in Branchville, near a river, and supposedly the house is hauntedpeople living there heard noises--a cradle rocking? on the second floor. Any information would be appreciated-c hamrick

See Branchville, South Carolina and Branchville, New Jersey. A Google search for Branchville +"haunted house" brings up 38 hits, but I think most of those are about a Halloween haunted house. RickK 23:11, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

Kubrick: Entertainment Weekly's 23rd Greatest Director
I read that Stanley Kubrick was voted the 23rd Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. (I think this list is from a few years back)

I searched online for this list because I wanted to see who else Entertainment Weekly deemed worthy of the list - and which 22 directors they thought deserved to beat out Kubrick!

I cannot find this list ANYWHERE - can anybody copy and paste the list or a link to the list if it is found? Thanks so much.

This must be it. It's from 1996, but Kubrick is listed as 23rd.--amysayrawr 00:28, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

 * What? Where's Michael Bay, McG and Kaos? :-) Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 21:37, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Aristotle
Today I discovered that Aristotle described the photic sneeze reflex. The problem is, the reference in the OMIM article is incomplete (Book XXXIII, but of what?) Replies on my talk page, please. JFW | T@lk  22:37, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I suspect it is in the Problemata, which is his only work divided into more than 10 books. I do know that it has a significant section on problems of the nose. Try vol xvi of the Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle; I think it is widely available in England and will give you both Greek and English (the Oxford edition would just give you the Greek, which I understand is all anyone with a good English education would need, right?). alteripse 01:26, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Mouthwash
Is there any scientific (i.e. not funded by the companies) research on the benefits/harms of alcohol-based floride mouthwash? Specifically, is there a measurable effect on plaque formation/whitness of teeth, and is a low pH, high-alcohol mouthwash harmful? Thanks.
 * Well I couldn't find all your answers, but you could search something like pubmed and find what you need. Yes there certainly are studies on a lot of that. All noted below are from peer reviewed articles, so they are likely to at least not be pure corporate shills. One review (Marinho VC - Cochrane Database Syst Rev - 01-JAN-2003(3): CD002284) of 36 studies found proper fluoride containing mouthwash use resulted in a significant decrease in tooth decay incidents, and that seems to be established medical opinion. Another found the need for most people with fluoridated water supplies to be in less need of fluoridated mouthwashes. I don't know if the fluoride and aclohol themselves do much for the plaque reduction, but the studies mention chlorhexidine and others as antiplaque agents. Another study (Leyes Borrajo JL - J Periodontol - 01-MAR-2002; 73(3): 317-21) found a chlorhexidine and fluoride mouthwash without alcohol to be just as effective in terms of plaque, gingivitis, and papilla bleeding indexes as the one with chlorhexidine fluoride and alcohol. They noted that the alcohol can be problematic for many people, including those with oral mucosal hypersensitivity. That seemed to say the alcohol was only a problem for people with certain complications, not for everyone. I didn't find much else on the dangers, but one study (FDI Commission - Int Dent J - 01-OCT-2002; 52(5): 337-45) did mention "Acute and chronic side effects from established and recommended mouthrinsing routines are extremely rare but ethanol containing products should not be recommended to children for long-term use or to individuals with alcohol problems." As to the pH, most mouthwashes would be relatively balanced I would assume, but I could be wrong. Yes, this should all go in the article, as it is currently full of weasel words and unsourced claims. - Taxman 22:53, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Light and the Milky Way
How long does it take light to travel across the Milky Way?

 * According to our article, the galaxy has a diameter of about 100,000 light years. --David Iberri | Talk 16:54, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
 * So the direct answer (in case you're not clear on what a light year is) is 100,000 years - Adrian Pingstone 08:34, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Getting Java to run Sourceforge stuff
Okay. You see a cool program on Sourceforge. It's written in, say, Java. You have the Java Runtime on your machine. You download a zip file and open it, and it's a whole bunch of disconnected files. Now, you ask yourself, how do you get Java to look at all that stuff and make a program? Good question. Mjklin 18:37, 2005 May 3 (UTC)

 * Sometimes it's a JAR file (which you should not unjar) - in that case you run "java -jar foo.jar". If it's delivered as a bunch of class files (that's becoming increasingly rare) you need to find out which is the main one (really you need read the accompanying readme) and if the main is in foo.class you'd run "java foo". -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 18:48, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

May 3 - American Idol - Bo's Song??
Tonight on American Idol Bo Bice's second song was what my dad claimed to be a Warren Zevon song.

My question is two-fold.

1 - We thought the topic for the second song was This Week's Billboard Top 40 Songs - but if this song is in fact a Warren Zevon song it can't possibly be this week's top 40 - unless someone remade it?

So what was the topic for the second song? are we right?

2 - What is the title of the song and is it indeed by Warren Zevon?

 * The second song category was actually a song from any Billboard chart, of which there are many genre-specific ones beyond the popular one everyone hears about. See Billboard_magazine.

 * According to http://idolonfox.com/contestants/bo_bice/, the second song was titled "Heaven", which is a song by Los Lonely Boys. Postdlf 19:57, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

sleep - high school schedules
I have heard that some public high schools in the U.S. have changed their schedules so that first period starts later, that these changes were in response to studies that indicate that teenagers need more sleep. Where can I read more about this? books? websites? articles? Kingturtle 05:29, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
 * My high school starts at 7:30...as Mark Twain once said: "God created idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards." But, as to your question: The National Institutes for Health has written that "Researchers have found that imposing too early school start times on children requires unrealistic bedtimes to allow adequate time for sleeping. Early school start times for adolescents are frequently associated with significant sleep deprivation, which can lead to academic, behavioral, and psychological problems, as well as increased risk for accidents and injuries, especially for teenage drivers. Completing our understanding of biological clockworks will lead to better treatments for diseases affected by circadian rhythm, as well as to methods of coping with disrupted sleep patterns." Here's more the NIH. Here's a good piece from PBS,  another from CNN, and the following are all about school boards who have or are considering changing start times:  Neutralitytalk 05:37, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks! those a very useful. Can you please re-post the CNN link? there appears to be a typo in it (http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/children/09/28/sleepy.teens.01/here's). Kingturtle 08:23, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I think Neutrality meant: here's another from CNN.-gadfium 08:45, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * There's no such thing as an unrealistic bedtime. It's all relative.  If you train yourself to go to sleep at 9 every night, you'd find it perfectly reasonable.  In fact, I'd imagine that, in the day when artificial lighting was expensive and cumbersome, people did exactly that, and would think it ludicrous to stay up until 11 or 12. --Smack (talk) 04:45, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

 * They might even have coined colorful phrases to describe that kind of behavior, like "burning the midnight oil"...or so I imagine.--Joel 18:36, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Which is really faster?
Sirs,

Just wanna clarify if which of these two are faster? Cray I or the ILLIAC IV. It seems ambiguos since some pages says one or the other. Please clarify.

Thank you.

 * Hello there. This is actually a point which can be used to improve the Wikipedia articles on computing. There is a good reason why there is ambiguity on whether a particular machine is "faster" than another. This is because the term "faster" itself is ambiguous. In what sense is one machine "faster" than another? There are lots of factors that go into this, like computer architecture, machine instruction sets, parallelism, etc... What metric would you like to use to compare the machines? For example, "instructions per second"? Or "the one machine that boots up quicker"? Or "the one machine that runs program X" faster? I hope this helps! HappyCamper 11:48, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
 * See benchmark, FLOPS, MIPS for various discussions on measuring the performance of a computer. --CVaneg 20:06, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Using a plasma TV as a PC monitor
Recent plasma TVs are high resolution and being marketed as HDTV-ready, and have large pixel counts, so should also be suitable for use as PC monitors. But they typically seem to have non-square pixels, for instance a TV with a 16x9 aspect ratio, but a pixel count of 1024 by 1024. If I connected this to a PC, the display would presumably look very stretched in the horzontal direction. Is there an easy way to overcome this (using MS Windows)? rossb 09:26, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
 * If your TV has a 4:3 mode, that would probably work. In reality, it really depends on all of your hardware - what resolution the monitor reports as supported, what the graphics card supports, etc. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 17:52, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Lipid transport.
1) I've found the name of a work somewhere on the site of an educational institution:
 * Reading assignment: Meisenberg, pp 399-418.

The questions which follow seem to indicate it's a work I should be interested in, but I can't find any evidence of a first name or whether it's a book or an article. What should I be looking for?

2) Also, a lot of articles show a lot of nice images for processes, but none of them tell whether HDL particles are loaded on the plasma membrane or in the cell. Images aren't helpful that way. Can someone tell me where this loading of lipoproteins and cholesterol takes place or, if that's too much, provide me with a hint on the matter? 131.211.210.14 11:25, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Could you clarify what you mean by the term "loading"? HDL transport across the membrane? Or simply the location of where HDL is on plasma membrane?? Generally, the "exact" distribution of HDL depends on the type of cell you are interested in, hence the textbooks tend to adapt "generic" illustrations of these processes to emphasize the important concepts. Is there a particular cell type you are interested in? HappyCamper 11:52, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I assume "loading" to mean to incorporation of lipoproteins in the HDL particle. The transport I'm most interested in is the recycling of these particles to the liver. 131.211.210.12 12:51, 4 May 2005 (UTC) (yes I know other computer ;)) BTW, the article turns out to be a book. You can stop looking for the answer to question 1 now. 131.211.210.12 12:51, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Ah, I see. Maybe try this overview? - I am not sure how in depth you would like your answer to be. Let us know how it turns out! HappyCamper 17:16, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Your reference is to Meisenberg, Gerhard and Simmons, William H., Principles of Medical Biochemistry, Mosby, 1998. (It's about $60 at Amazon); those pages are the Lipid transport chapter. But any basic text of biochemstry would do, and Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry is a more widely used text (though more expensive). - Nunh-huh 19:09, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I have "Biochemistry" by Stryer. It's great for some stuff, but it completely sucks at explaining stuff in an orderly fashion. I was hoping Principles would be a little lighter a read as one Amazon review suggested (I just found it myself as I noted above). Thanks anyway, I'll take Lehniger into the equation. Mgm|(talk) 13:58, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

I need more information on Allders department stores
Dear Sir/ Madam

I need more information on Allders department stores .The article I found on your site is very informative. However it isn't sufficient for my dessertation.I want past articles about Allders from the year 1997 to the current year that is 2005 .I would appreciate it if you could tell me how I can get these articles'

Thanking you

Yours Sincerly Miss Samantha

Articles in the news media you mean? What Allders' issues are you looking for? A Lexis Nexis search reveals thousands of articles about Allders' in that time period in the press.

Lotsofissues 19:06, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

The movie "Everything Happens to Me" starring Dorothy Bounchier
I am trying to locate a copy of the 1938 movie titled "Everything Happens to Me." I have a friend who has a relative that was in the movie at the age of 12 years old and played as one of the orphans. Her name is Phyllis Howard and she is now 84 years old and is terminally ill with cancer. Her one wish is to watch that movie one last time.

If you can be of any help we would appreciate your input or finding.

 * Sincerely yours,
 * Dennis L. Tredinnick

This film was produced in the UK by Warner Brothers so you could try contacting them or the British Film Institute. As far as I can tell it has never been released on video.--Theo (Talk) 16:05, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

The British Film Institute invites inquiries - number located on this page

Lotsofissues 18:57, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Management Quantative Analysis
Could anyone please explain why it is better for society to have the market, and not governments, determine prices of the goods we buy. If the government was running the market, how would you see marketing of goods and services differ than if society has the market?

Thanks, Sugar1 2May.05

 * Thats a question that economics is designed to discuss. Then read supply and demand and think about what would be required for the government to decide every price in the economy. That's millions of goods and services, all of which would require a team of people trying to decide what's the best price for things. That would be very expensive. That alone doesn't make market systems "better" but gives you some framework to think about it. The second clearly is your homework assigment, so I'll let you read some and try to learn for yourself. But think about pricing as a signal, both for the consumer and the producer. Given a price set by the government with certain production and marketing costs, would that affect the amount and type of marketing and the response to it? - Taxman 18:55, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

 * It's not neccessarily always better for the market to decide prices. In certain goods, the government does intervene.
 * Of course it also depends on what your definition of "better" and "is" is. :) - Taxman 12:54, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

The experiment of letting the Government decide most prices was of course tried in the Soviet Union during most of the 20th Century, and in other centrally-planned economies for varying lengths of time. It's pretty clear that marketing and enterprise management had different priorities in such an environment, and considerable waste and inefficiency resulted. It's also arguable that in advanced western-style societies there are just too many prices and that the amount of bureaucracy needed to manage any major proportion of the market for goods and services would be unsupportable. rossb 11:04, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Would there be interest in a reference lookup desk?
Some editors currently attending college are fortunate enough to have access to the full range of online subscription research databases from Lexis Nexis (every major English language paper and magazine archived), academic journal archives, comphrehensive early modern English text library, etc. I wish to share this advantage if a page hasn't already been created. Any other editor seeking for info from an article that is behind a subscription wall can ask me to fetch the needed info. I would willingly man this desk by project page/AIM. Have I struck on a new or an existing idea? Lotsofissues 19:17, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * A student with access could only describe so much of the paper without violating the copyrights of the journal. I would hesitate about putting up more than the basic premise and the conclusions. These, however, are usually contained within the paper's abstract, which is almost always available free from Lexis Nexis, PubMed and so on, and easily searchable from a free source such as Google Scholar. — Asbestos | Talk  21:28, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I disagree with that. As copyright only protects expression of an idea, not the idea, those who would man the reference desk would be free to describe papers' contents.  They could not quote wholesale from the papers.  However, there would be nothing wrong with explaining the conclusions in depth. Superm401 03:57, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

 * Your ability to explain and interpret in your own words depends upon your expertise in the subject. As a librarian, I am only allowed to find information for people (hand them a book, interlibrary loan photocopies of things we don't have, help them search our subscription databases, etc.) I am very cautious about restating the findings in my own words -- I could be sued for giving medical advice or practicing law without a license, for example. If the library patron cannot understand or interpret what they read by themselves, I can try to find it written by another authority in simpler language, or else I must insist they consult their doctor, a lawyer. I assume that people with expertise in each subject are writing/correcting Wikipedia articles, and they should have the original text to work from.

4.1.117.42 19:50, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Monopril
I am a college student whom is taking anatomy 50. I am working on an essay regarding Monopril and its effects. What I am in need of is on a molecular level, how does monopril assist high blood pressure? This is a must presentation for my essay. I hope for your assistance.

Thanks,

Kim

 * Monopril and ACE inhibitor would be good places to start. --David Iberri | Talk 21:50, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

 * Well, first you need the generic name for the brand "Monopril", which is fosinopril. If you look that up you will find that its mechanism of action is that it is an ACE inhibitor. For explanation beyond our articles, you'll need to consult a pharmacology text, and a physiology text regarding the renin-angiotensin system. - Nunh-huh 20:18, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

What was valuable in the past, but cheap today?
I'm working on a story idea involving time travel. I'm trying to come up with something that was very valuable circa 1880-1910 that is cheap and easy to get ahold of now. This substance/object should be portable and legal to obtain in 2005. I've considered aluminum, as I've heard that it was "worth its weight in gold" before it was able to be made in large quantities.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? Brian Schlosser42 20:07, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Manufactured goods and pharmaceuticals always get cheaper with time. The same is true for information. So your time traveller can go back with a sports almanac (hello, Back to the Future) or a geodetic survey map of accessible oilfields discovered since 1910. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 20:22, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * The process for making synthetic diamonds wasn't invented until the 1950s. Of course, even the synthetic ones aren't super cheap now.--amysayrawr 20:56, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

 * Indeed - ideas are free now, but would have been very valuable at the right time. Just make sure you don't copy the plot of Lest Darkness Fall, where I believe the protagonist goes back in time and invents the alcohol still and the printing press. Actual objects, though... As John Fader says, anything manufactured generally gets cheaper over time. Acurate wrist-watches, spectacles, and so on. Also I believe that products such rubber, ink and so on are much easier to obtain now. — Asbestos | Talk  21:07, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * aluminum! Lotsofissues 22:23, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

If you adjust for inflation, just about everything was more expensive back then. →Raul654 21:39, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

 * Love. -- Toytoy 08:24, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

 * Some latetral thinking is required for this because you need to look at it from the opposite direction too. The real question is with whatever you take back into the past, what are you going to exchange it for and bring into the future? You need something that was cheap then but is now expensive and something that you will be able to exchange now. I'm presuming that you're not intending to bring back a load of early 19th century US dollar bills or something. Your initial thoughts might revolve around gold, but you will need to think about the relative price of gold in comparison to the commodity you take to the past. Of course gold is heavy and unweildy and there may be other things (like rare works of art, or precious stones, or lost manuscripts, or whatever) that might give you a better exchange. Another option would be to simply invest in a successful modern company that was just starting at the time in the past in which your story is set. Of course it all depends on what time and place in the past you intend to go back to. If I was writing such a story I would go back to Holland in the 1630s and have my hero take back a few genetically engineered black tulip bulbs. There was an absolute craze and for tulips at this time. See Tulipomania. I think this would make an interesting story. There are of course other interesting commodities (particularly spices) that were worth a staggering amount in the past. Nutmeg is a good example. Jooler 08:59, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I had been thinking along the lines of spices as well, but a hundred years ago really isn't that long ago. Nutmeg certainly wasn't as rare as it was in the 16th century, and neither was saffron, although as that it still worth its weight in gold today one might make a tidy profit on the few percentage points its worth has decreased since. — Asbestos | Talk  13:12, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

 * On the matter of "an interesting story", you might be amused to read Yellow Snow (online copy), by Charles Stross. The protagonist does much the same thing, figuring out a highly valuable product for the timeframe he's going to... (Family Trade, by the same author, deals with a related copncept - not time travel per se, but effectively a very small modern import business to a medieval society. Quite a fun read, and thankfully a sequel's due soon.)

 * As for the actual question, hmm. The obvious answer is penicillin - but that wasn't known in ~1890, and short of staging a "great discovery", it's out. 1880 is also too late for most spices - it's an interesting timeframe, since most small technical equipment is either too modern (ie, electronic calculators) or just as easily constructable then (medical instruments). Small electric motors? We churn them out by the pocketful, and they're probably an order of magnitude more compact than would have been available then. Or watches? Shimgray 15:02, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Ahh I should have read your question more closely. "1880-1910". Aluminium is of course quite light so "worth its weight in gold" is perhaps not such a great deal. What about Quinine? It wasn't prduced by artificial means until the 1940s. Jooler 09:23, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Aluminum in fact was worth much more than its weight in gold. In fact, Napoleon had a set of treasured aluminum cutlery! Aluminum during your time period was extremely hard to produce. HappyCamper 03:04, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Consider synthetic dyestuffs. New colours are always in great demand.--Theo  (Talk) 17:59, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Cubic zirconia passed off as diamond? Rmhermen 18:34, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

 * Radioactive isotopes, for medical purposes. At the time only a few powerful ones were known (radium, polonium) and they had to be purified from scarse natural quantities. A gram of radium cost on the order of a million dollars in 1920s USD (Marie Curie participated in two large fundraisers in the US to raise the money for two grams of radium, one for her lab and another for a lab in Poland). However by the 1930s, advances in nuclear technology allowed for the use of artificial radioactivity so that radioactivity could be induced in non-radioactive materials (i.e. radioactive sodium, produced by the cyclotron at Lawrence's Rad Lab) which greatly drove down the price. (You couldn't say "radium" because it was itself still expensive. But isotopes in general for use in medicine and scientific research got very cheap. The invention of the nuclear reactor also encouraged this). --Fastfission 16:32, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Moustache wax, toilet paper, and loyal and appreciative Chinese railroad workers. --I am not good at running 04:36, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

1985 Essay Help
I need a bit of help with writing an essay on the MOST IMPORTANT event of the year 1985. I've decided between the US-Soviet relations and Gorbachev OR all the air line problems and hijackings. I know that the more important one is the Gorbachev-Regan and American Soviet relation. Does anyone have any place with good research on this dealing specifically with the year 1985. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks- Jorg
 * You should look at the article 1985. That should give you some information to start your research. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 00:25, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I'd say Mikhail Gorbachev becoming the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. But your idea is a fine one Jorg. Kingturtle 03:52, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

what is love
See love. Neutralitytalk 02:02, May 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * I'd argue that Urban legend is more appropriate. --I am not good at running 07:40, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I second that. See hoax. Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy)  07:44, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

 * What is a bad tennis player? -- Toytoy 08:18, May 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Any British one. Thryduulf 08:58, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more. (It had to be said.) --Tothebarricades.tk 21:41, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Battle of Traflgar
What was the name of the ship commanded by Pole-Carew (or Carew-Pole?) at the Battle of Trafalgar?
 * The only Pole-Carew I could find is Reginald Pole-Carew (July 28, 1753–January 3, 1835), however, he was a Privy Counsellor in 1805, and did not serve in the Navy as far as I can tell. A search suggests that there was no ship commanded by a Pole-Carew (or a Carew-Pole); a full list of the ships and their captains can be found here. JRM · Talk 15:05, 2005 May 5 (UTC)

name of theorem
I'm sure we have an article on this, but I don't know how to look for it. What is the name of the statistics theorem that "most numbers begin with 1", i.e., when counting things (cardinal numbers), numbers are more likely to begin with lower digits. dab (ᛏ) 12:59, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Maybe you can jog your memory by checking cardinal number or large cardinal. Mgm|(talk) 14:14, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

 * The distribution you are referring to is the celebrated Benford's law, also known as the "first digit law". This article might interest you too: --HappyCamper 14:41, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
 * that's precisely it, thanks very much! dab (ᛏ) 17:02, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Walkin' down the line
does the phrase - walkin' down the line - have any common meaning? Is it commonly used to mean something? I first heard it in the bob Dylan song...

Well, I'm walkin' down the line/I'm walkin' down the line/An' I'm walkin' down the line/My feet'll be a-flyin'/To tell about my troubled mind.

...what does it mean? Or did Dylan just make it up?

 * I have never heard of that song, but let me give this a try. I think the "walking down the line" is either an idiom, or a metaphor. It looks like it's deliberately used in the song to invoke a specific type of imagery. For example, "walking down the line" in this context seems to portray a person either nervous or confused. Note its similarity to "walking down the aisle" (as in a wedding), and "down to the wire" (as in running out of time/opportunity, creating a sense of urgency). Note that the word "down" is used, and not "up". This might be deliberately chosen to convey a sense of sadness, anxiety, depression, or whatnot. Quite clever lyrics, I'd say! --HappyCamper 23:05, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

 * The idiom "down the line" can mean "later on" or "sometime in the future." However, the expression "walk on down the line" has been used in a few popular songs in the US, and those may help to understand "what Dillon meant" (always a dicey prospect).
 * The song "Heard it in a Lovesong" by the Marshall Tucker Band includes the phrase:
 * If I ever settle down, you'd be my kind
 * And that's a good time for me to head on down the line
 * This phrase is paralleled in other verses with the idea of leaving a relationship. For example, the next verse ends:
 * Never said that I loved you, even though it's so
 * Where's that duffel bag of mine, it's time to go
 * So, to "head on down the line" is to leave, to "move along". The Commodores also had the song "Sail On" with a similar theme. In this song, the phrase is "sail on down the line", but the meaning seems the same.
 * Your (very amateur) song interpreter, -Rholton 03:40, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses - Both seem plausible. I sort of thought what HappyCamper said was the most likely in the beginning especially because of the part "to tell about my troubled mind" - but it could also mean later on in the future.

Later lyrics in the song includ: my money comes and goes/and rolls and flows and rolls and flows/ through the holes in the pockets of my clothes;

i see the morning light/well it's not because i'm an early riser/i didn't go to sleep last night.

so that gives me the sense of hes walkin' down the line - confused with a sense of urgency to tell about his troubled mined (also stating he's got the walkin' blues) but possibly hes also walking down the road into the future singing his blues.

Thanks for your responses! Dylan always will be an enigma, a wonderful one, though.

 * You're most welcome - keep in mind that the interpretation of lyrics and songs is rather subjective. One could argue that there is no "correct" interpretation, rather a "reasonable" or "meaningful" one would often suffice. Of course, this is one reason why lyrics are intentionally ambiguous - this allows many people to easily relate to it. In the future, you can consider lyric interpretation in other contexts too. For example, what is the mood of the music? The chords used? Its social, political, economic, aesthetic influences? Et cetera...just some food for thought :) --HappyCamper 18:51, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Say And Tell
Hi.I have searched thru wikipedia and also on the internet thru google but was unable to find a clear cut 'in english' answer to my question.I would like to know the correct usage of the words "say" and "tell" ie)When do you use the word say in a sentence and when do you use the word tell.Thank you.--Siga

 * I'm not an expert on English grammar, but I think you use "tell" when you want to refer to speaking to someone. The word "say" does not have this meaning attached to it. However, it's possible to use both words in different sentences so they mean the same thing. For example: If you are in a conversation with someone, and you want clarification, you could say: "Could you say that again?" or "Could you tell me again?". Note how the subjects are different. I hope this makes sense! HappyCamper 23:00, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I believe that the difference is that "tell" is a transitive verb, and thus must take both a subject and an object. "Say" can just be left by itself ("I say", "You say", "He says" etc) while "tell" requires an object ("I'll tell him that..."). See Tell and Say at wiktionary. — Asbestos | Talk  09:07, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

The following are right:

 * I said, "The cat sat on the mat".
 * I told him, "The cat sat on the mat".
 * I said to him, "The cat sat on the mat".

The following are wrong:
 * I said him, "The cat sat on the mat".
 * I told to him, "The cat sat on the mat".
 * I told, "The cat sat on the mat."

DJ Clayworth 19:07, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Response to Asbestos: Both "tell" and "say" can be both transitive and intransitive, depending on the context.

"I told him something" - "tell" is transitive; the direct object is "something", "him" being the indirect object

"I told him not to go" - "tell" is intransitive because there is no direct object

"I said something to him" - "said" is transitive, "something" being the direct object

"I said not to do that" - "said" is intransitive because there is no direct object.

Cheers JackofOz 05:10, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

One difference between them is that "tell" implies some content being conveyed (information or instruction), whereas "say" is broader and can be used in other contexts as well.
 * "When I stepped on his foot, he said, 'Ouch!'" - perfectly correct.
 * "When I stepped on his foot, he told me, 'Ouch!'" - wrong. JamesMLane 20:46, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Quiz Bowl
I'm a high school student interested in starting a Quiz Bowl team. Are there any local affiliates/circuits in Palm Beach County, Florida? 69.163.150.70 23:09, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

 * You might want to try asking on the Yahoo Quizbowl Group, or the Quiz Bowl bulletin board, which is a lot more active nowadays. Adam Bishop 21:33, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Quemoy and Matsu
What's the culture like on Quemoy and Matsu? What's life like there? Do people there want to be a part of China? Saw some discussion on whether these islands should be considered a part of Taiwan, but I couldn't find much information about these areas.--BlueSunRed 23:49, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

 * This question is difficult to answer. Before early 20th century, people living in Quemoy, Matsu Islands and Pescadores Islands were mostly loyal to their families or clans. These days, clans in Fujian and Taiwan provinces were known to engage mass armed conflicts. If you must let these islanders choose one, they would be Chinese rather than Taiwanese (until the end of WW2). Geographically and ecnomically, they did not belong to Taiwan.

 * After the KMT government's retreat, these islands were still more or less under KMT's control. After the fall (or liberation) of some Zhejiang province's islands, namely Yijiangshan Island (一江山島) and Tachen island (大陳島; 大陈島), in 1954-1955, these Fujian islands became the only remaining non-Taiwan territories of the Republic of China (see: First Taiwan Strait Crisis). Afterwards, the islanders began to study and work in Taiwan. (OK, I know Taiwan is an island too.) Tachen people were all evacuated to Taiwan and relocated in several cities (e.g. northwest part of Yonghe City). They managed to keep some of their cultural heritages. Many of them become global model minority.

 * Despite of similar cultural background and dialects, these people generally do not consider themselves Taiwanese (politically). They usually prefer to use Republic of China. And culturally, they are Chinese. The full-scale wars were ended in 1958, afterwards, people kept bombing each other for a couple of decades. Then since the late 1980s, they began to trade legally or illegally with China. And then the Chinese part began to grow until today.

 * On the other hand, Taiwan independence movement usually cares very little about them anyway. It's a movement originated on the island of Taiwan by the people (or families) who were closely tied with the Empire of Japan (see: History of Taiwan). They don't care much about Quemoy and Matsu even until today.

 * Today, people on these islands usually recognize the fact that they cannot be seperated from China. Many of the kids like to study in China or Taiwan when they grow up. A vital difference between them and most Taiwanese people is they have seen the war. They know the value of peace (MY OWN POV). In fact, most Taiwanese during the WW2 were safely shielded from the war (much larger and more deadly battles occured in the Philippines and Okinawa; those who joined Japanese imperial forces were mostly non-combatants (軍伕; like most U.S. blacks during the war); only a few cities and military targets were bombed by U.S. bombers). That means many Taiwanese people today are still romantic about wars. They have seen nothing. Media in Taiwan usually provide very limited coverages of wars elsewhere. People in Quemoy and Matsu are much different from them. -- Toytoy 03:42, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Taste bud sensitivity
Can taste buds be damaged or desensitized by excess salt, sugar, or MSG? Also, what are the detection thresholds for salt, glutamate, and acids? ‣ ᓛᖁ  [ ᑐ ] 18:56, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure an excess of acid or salt would be damaging to someone's tastebuds purely because of the effect such an excess has on the human body. But I can't tell you detection tresholds or the amount/dosage that would be damaging. Mgm|(talk) 19:57, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Exponents and logarithms
Is there anything other than convention, according to the order of operations, that $$2^{3^4}$$ is evaluated as $$2^{[3^4]}$$ instead of $${[2^3]}^4$$?

 * Yes. $$2^{3^4}$$ is $$2^{81}=2417851639229258349412352$$ while $${[2^3]}^4$$ is, by the normal rules of powers, equal to $$2^{3*4}=2^{12}=4096$$--Fangz 19:27, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, I know what they are and that they are different. The question was is there any bigger reason for that order versus the other besides thats jsut the way it is done. - Taxman 03:08, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
 * Connecting the dots in Fangz's comment: There are two ways to write $${(x^y)}^z$$, namely $${(x^y)}^z$$ and $$x^{yz}$$; but there is no simpler way to write $$x^{(y^z)}$$. So it is more useful to have $$x^{y^z}$$ mean $$x^{(y^z)}$$. --Macrakis 23:10, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

The question only came up when I was trying to solve my real question of how to evaluate the number of digits in the decimal expansion of numbers like $$256^{256^{256^{256}}}$$, etc. that arise when trying to calculate for n as small as 4. See Steinhaus-Moser notation. I know I can take the base 10 logarithm to get the number of decimal digits, but how does order of operations work there and are there any other tricks I'm missing? For example, I assume $$\log_{10}{256^{256^{256^{256}}}} = {256^{256^{256}}} \times \ \log_{10}{256}$$, but where does that get me? Is it as simple as the fact that $$256^{256^{256^{256}}}$$ has more than a googolplex digits, and that there isn't much more to say that can be written down? What I'm looking for is a way to convert numbers like that into a form like $$10^{10^{10^{10^{...}}}}$$, combine the fractional exponents, etc. Thanks - Taxman 21:00, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Who Killed Cock Robin: Canadian Edition
Okay, some robins have made a home in my family's outside security light, and had three babies. Yesterday we came home, one had presumably felt out of the nest. Knowing we couldn't get human scent on it, we got out some gardening gloves that hadn't been used in at least six months, and put the bird back in its nest.

Today after supper, my mom happened to be looking out the window, just as the mother started lashing out at it. It finally grabbed onto the baby and threw it down to the pavement.

Hypothetically, do these robins have family issues, and mothers murder their young on occasion?Or would she have just been removing a sickly carcass? -- user:zanimum

 * Robins, like most nesting birds, are very quick to eliminate the corpses of nestlings from the nest. The most prevalent theory is that this is a sanitation exercise: particularly critical if the baby died of disease. --Theo  (Talk) 08:29, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks Theo, I guess that's the most logical. I was hoping my conspiracy theory was right though... :) --  user:zanimum

Ms America and husband
gary collins & wife she was miss america at one time don't rember her name they were in commercials could you bring mr up to dateon this couple.
 * Internet Movie Database: Gary Collins says he's married to Ms America winner Mary Ann Mobley, ever since 1967. They had one daughter. -- user:zanimum

To the questioner: Try some Capitals, commas, full stops and whatever else may be necessary to render your writing reasonably accessible. It's also called courtesy.

Small Calendar App for Win98
Can anyone recommend a small free calendar application, nothing bloaty, that will gracefully do me the following:

 * Show dates when I have an activity in a different colour
 * Note the activity in that date
 * Allow me to set myself reminders that will pop up at a preset time (or as soon as I boot up if I am not switched on at that time).

I want something that won't take up much disk space and doesn't have tons of functionality. Thanks --bodnotbod 15:43, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

 * I can't say I've used it extensively, but Mozilla Sunbird is free. I can't say how big or whether it does exactly what you require, but it seems to do what you want. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 15:53, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I only tried Sunbird for a few minutes, my experience could be biased, but I think Sunbird is kind of slow for older computers. I installed Sunbird on my Celeron 500 MHz, 256 MB, Windows XP, IBM Thinkpad A20m a couple of months ago. It was too slow. I uninstalled it immediately. -- Toytoy 11:08, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

 * I haven't looked at the specifics, but EssentialPIM is a standalone Win32 calendar at 1.3MBs. 119 01:05, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks all. Sunbird seems fine for me and I have a lower spec than yourself ToyToy: 500mhz, 196mb, Win98!  Case solved.  Cheers. --bodnotbod 18:44, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

When did fights return to Jerry Springer?
I'm expanding the article and have found fights were toned down in '98, renegged, again in '99, and renegged recenttly (probably last year). Anyone have info on this?

Lotsofissues 00:49, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Altitude/Elevation question
Can anyone out there help me with this small bit of knowledge no one can seem to give me just yet? I live in Tacoma, Washington and all I want to know is the land elevation here, altitude, whatever you want to call it, if your the person who knows please share the info. Thanks. Heidi

 * Tacoma has an elevation of 380 feet/116 metres. I have updated the article. --Theo 09:09, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

 * How is "elevation of a city" defined? Shouldn't a sea port be approximately at sea level? Or is it the highest point in the city that counts? What about a city in a valley? Would it get higher and higher as neighboring hills are incorporated? — Sebastian (talk) 02:39, 2005 May 10 (UTC)
 * I assume it is measured at the "center of town", the same place distances from city to city are measured from. I don't know if there is a true standard for either, but some Wikipedian is probably going to find out. - Taxman 03:35, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * It might differ. In Denver, for example, the mile of elevation that gives the city its nickname is marked on the steps of Colorado State Capitol. But that might be a special case. —Charles P. (Mirv) 03:41, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

fee
How much is the popularization fee of "dummy phone"?

 * I am not sure that I understand the question but dummy phones (non-functional replicas of mobile phones) cost between 10 and 50 US dollars from online retailers. --Theo (Talk) 09:17, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Which is to say, much more than you should be able to pay for a real one second-hand, at least in my part of the world. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:41, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Olestra
Is it possible to purchase olestra for consumer domestic cooking use? Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy)  13:00, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Sure. Olean is the brand name. RickK 22:43, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

I've never seen Olean in a bottle in the supermarket, though. Have you?

 * It looks like they don't want to sell it directly to consumers (visit http://www.olean.com/). I mean this kind of oil substitute can be abused by people. One who does not know about it may "borrow" someone else's Olean in a dorm kitchen. A fat person may overuse it in the hope of instant weight reduction. A baby could drink it. This kind of product, if abused, can lead to very serious trouble.

 * I guess someone may produce small olean capsules. Each of us may have ingested a little fat-soluble toxic organic componds. To take olestra occassionally may help you get rid of these things. But currently, you may eat junk food (olestra chips and fries) to detox yourselves. :) -- Toytoy 11:44, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm not certain of the current status, but when the US FDA first allowed Olestra in consumer products, it was only approved for very limited applications, mostly only salty snacks. The approved applications may have been expanded over the past few years, but I'm pretty sure it is still significantly limited in the types of products it can be used in.  I don't think it has yet been used in ice cream type products (although other fat substitutes have been). And I think that it has not yet been marketed directly to consumers.  You might be able to obtain a sample from the manufacturer, if you could convince them that you are a business formulating a new food product.  ike9898 16:19, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Rechargeable batteries
I've heard that rechargeable batteries need to be discharged completely before being recharged. Otherwise it gradually loses its charge capacity. Is this true? The charging time stipulated for my mobile phone is 2 hours. What if I charge it for an hour daily without discharging ? Will it give me the complete charge as expected for the numbers specified for the battery ? Jay 13:18, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

 * It can happen (see Memory effect), mostly in nickel-cadmium cells. Your cellphone will probably have a NiMH or LiON battery, which (essentially) doesn't have a memory effect.  And in any case, where a battery is charged inside the device that uses it (like a cellphone  or laptop) the recharge circuitry is generally smart enough to avoid doing bad things.  In particular, it will resist overcharging (so once the cell is back to voltage, the recharge circuit cuts out - it doesn't matter how long you leave it plugged in). -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 14:31, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Wow! it already has an article. I could have never found that article myself considering its title has nothing to do with batteries, also its not linked from the battery article. I found more information from Nickel-cadmium_battery than the main article. Thanks John. Jay 15:31, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Who's this Russian siren?

 * http://myweb.hinet.net/home5/kof3100/onepa.wmv

Who's this Russian falsetto singer? The blurred Russian text looks like Вимас (Vimas) but I could be wrong. The Chinese subtitle is funny but nonsense. -- Toytoy 13:47, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

The subtitle looks like Вимас to me too. I can find no singer (певица) called Вимас, however. Which is a shame, because I, for one, would wish to hear more of this fellow. --Theo (Talk) 16:21, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

It's not Vimas, it's Vitas (in "cyrillic italics" if there is such a term), http://vitas.com.ru/ dab (ᛏ) 01:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Geometry question ...
I wanted to know how to solve problems of the generic form "A regular hexagon is circumscribed about a circle with a radius of 8 centimeters. What is the length of a side of the hexagon?" —anon. Scratch my question—I found the algorithm on my own. —anon.
 * Which parts of this problem are variables? The shape? The radius? both? --Theo (Talk) 21:28, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

corpse in a vacuum room
What will happened if a corpse be put in a vacuum room/container? Will it decay? --anon

 * I'd speculate that it would depend on the conditions of the vacuum. At an elevated temperature, the corpse would dessicate, leading to a ceasation of all mechanisms of organic decay (say, due to bacteria). Furthermore, assuming that the dessication thoroughly continues, you'd likely have a very well preserved specimen. Think of how "freeze dried" ice cream, peaches and strawberries for astronauts are made! HappyCamper 12:04, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Some internal decay in the trunk would occur until desiccation was complete due to anaerobic bacteria. Think of "natural mummies". alteripse 12:34, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the answer...

Allowing internet access only to specific sites
My son is about to get into exams, and wants to help himself stop procrastinating on the web. Is there a free program where he can limit internet access to only a few specific sites during certain times of the day?

Thank you very much, James M.

 * See internet filter. You may also want to google for "internet filter" or "parental control software". — Sebastian (talk) 02:05, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

 * Self-discipline is also useful, albeit difficult to muster. :) Superm401 04:14, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

Can someone be conditioned with possessiveness?
If someone remains possessive over someone [else] for a long time during a serious relationship, will it condition (as in Pavlovian) the [former] person even after the relationship ends on an acrimonious note or otherwise? -- Sundar (talk · contributions) 12:19, May 9, 2005 (UTC)
 * It would not be a case of Pavlovian conditioning. Pavlovian conditioning occurs when there are repeated instances of two events which occur within a very short window of time. It's a pretty simple neurological arc: the neurons begin to associate one pattern of firing with another. There may well be left over emotions of attachment between people who have been together for a long time, but it would have not have anything to do with Pavlovian conditioning. — Asbestos | Talk  14:33, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

 * To answer the question more thoroughly, you would need to define 'possessiveness' more precisely. HappyCamper 17:03, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

 * 'Possessiveness' as I understand is the feeling and expression of 'jealousy' when someone other than oneself gets to be close ( in space or time) to one's favourite person. -- Sundar (talk · contributions) 04:31, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

You might also look into Stockholm syndrome. RickK 22:46, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * Interesting. -- Sundar 06:19, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

UK Cabinet Reshuffle
I have some questions about the results of the reshuffle: Thanks,--anon
 * Is the Minister of State for Communities and Local Government in the cabinet? If he is, he should be a Secretary of State, surely.
 * What happened to the parts of Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that didn't get taken by the Department for Communities and Local Government?
 * Why change the name of the DTI to the Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry?

I'll take a wee stab at these questions. I hope that helps. I'm sure someone will check to see if this right. --Gareth Hughes 00:21, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * The Minister of State for Communities and Local Government is a new ministerial post with a seat in the Cabinet of the United Kingdom. The holder, David Miliband, is not a Secretary of State, but a Minister of State.
 * I believe that Communities and Local Government are still a part of ODPM, as it has had (since its creation) a number of junior ministers working under the Deputy PM. In the latest reshuffle, Miliband has been given the task of getting Labour's local and regional government reform back on track, and has got the Cabinet seat to demonstrate the increased importance of the role.
 * DTI has lost a lot of its responsibility for overseas trade, and hence has been renamed. This was done mainly due to the increased politicization of this aspect of DTI's former role. I imagine that the FCO is now responsible.

Mineirão page history is incorrect
Mineirão page history is wrong. I am not sure how it happened, but somehow when an edit conflict occurred Wikipedia put my edit about 6 hours earlier than I did it (and before the article was created), so now it says I created it and I didn't. Can you just get rid of my edit, or move it to a more appropriate place (although I am not quite sure where it should be)? --John 21:12, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Maybe the edits before yours got deleted? What time zone are you in? Mgm|(talk) 07:11, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * The edits before mine are in the list, at the right time. Mine was not done at the time it says, and is in the worng place in the list.  I am in BST. --John 15:59, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Fruits with seeds on the outside
I was eating some strawberries today and noticed it had seeds on the outside. Then I started wondering: "are there any other fruits with seeds on the outside?". After some thought, I couldn't think of any. Surely this can't be the case? Is there a list somewhere? Maybe we can spontaneously make a list and even add it to Wikipedia? :-) --HappyCamper 00:23, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * that's because it's a false berry :o) I think the list there and on accessory fruit is what you're looking for. dab (ᛏ) 01:24, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Interesting. I didn't know that botanists were so remote from real life as to call most berries "false". Here's a related question. The berries article says: "These fruits tend to be [...] of a bright color contrasting with their background to make them more attractive to animals". What about blackberries? Are they actually infrared or UV? — Sebastian (talk) 01:38, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

 * Thanks very much for your answers! I really appreciate it. HappyCamper 04:56, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Is a cashew nut a seed? The nut is on the outside of the fruit. RickK 66.60.159.190 16:29, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Microeconomics question
I've removed the following text from Signal, for ignorance of what else to do with it.

 * (in a partnership card game) a player's choice of card to play at a particular time, which gives information to a partner, in a partnership card game (see signal (bridge)).

First I wanted to create a page entitled signal (cards), then I realized that it's more general than that, and signal (games) would be more appropriate, and then I decided that it relates somehow to signaling (economics). Could some economist figure out a way to work this in? --Smack (talk) 04:53, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't see what was wrong with the text you removed. If anyone can add information about a relationship between the usages in economics and contract bridge, the addition should presumably go into both Signal (bridge) and Signaling (economics).  In the meantime, see Talk:Signal for my disagreement with your edit to the dab page. JamesMLane 21:26, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Trying to find MIDI file...
I am looking for a MIDI file of Franz Liszt's arrangement of Camille Saint-Saen's symphonic poem, Danse Macabre. The sheet music can be found at [blacklisted link removed]. It's quite a lengthy piece (c.600 bars), but I'm sure someone has made a MIDI of it. --Alexs letterbox 11:11, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Note that you're violating copyright in most cases by downloading such MIDIs, except of course when the author gives permission.
 * Ignoring that, as most people do, here is Liszt's arrangement (can't tell if it's complete) and here is a large sequencing of the orchestra version. Otherwise it's off to the music editor you go to enter those 600 bars... :-) JRM · Talk 18:41, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

 * Two versions of the Liszt transcription can be found here (towards the bottom of the page), though I believe you have to register (freely) to download files from that site now (MIDI contributions there are fine for personal, non-commercial use (and of course, the music itself is long out of copyright)). --Camembert 18:23, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Who creates newspaper crossword puzzles?
So all crossword puzzles say "Edited by" so and so - like the New York Times crossword puzzle editor, Will Shortz, for example. Now it says EDITED by not CREATED by. And I have heard various things.

One was that people just send in crossword puzzles and the editor just puts them all together and makes them work into one crossword puzzle.

Another was that there are people who acutally create teh crossword puzzle and he just edits them to his liking.

But that doesn't seem too hard. I mean the hard part is afterall creating the whole thing and the clues and making it work and all that - so who actually creates crossword puzzles - and what does the crossword puzzle editor do? Is he the creater, too?

Thanks.

 * Most newspapers (with notable crosswords) employ the same person for years. Crossword puzzlers tend to get used to the style of the setter, and take a while to get used to a change to a new guy.  Some setters remain anonymous (such as the setter for the UK's Sunday Times crossword), writing under a pseudonym (perhaps they're scared of reprisals, I don't know).  I guess Shortz gets described as the editor is because that's a specific rank within the newspaper heirarchy (so he'll rank with a desk editor or subeditor or something).  A few publications publish crosswords contributed by guests, but that's quite rare. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 16:58, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

In the UK each paper has a stable of crossword compilers; this is clearest in papers like The Guardian where the individual compilers sign their puzzles, but it's true of papers like The Telegraph where the compilers are anonymous. A typical arrangement is for a compiler to compose one puzzle a week; a paper thus needs about 7 compilers, plus a few for spares. The job of the crossword editor is to communicate with the compilers, who are freelancers; and to check the quality of the puzzles submitted, making sure that the puzzles fit with the newspaper's standards for difficulty, vocabulary, strictness with respect to the Ximenean rules, and so on. For example, the Guardian allows "difficult" words (not in everyday vocabulary), but the Telegraph generally does not. It's not a full-time job; either the crossword editor has other jobs to do on the paper, or else is a freelancer like the compilers. Gdr 17:49, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

 * As a long-time Guardian crossword fan, I concur with both User:John Fader and Gdr on the distinction between compiler (setter) and editor, although I think 20 is a more reasonable guess than 7 in the matter of regular compilers. In the UK, compilers have different styles. Editors determine which crosswords go in which issue of the paper. Traditionally the Guardian crosswords start straightforwardly on Mondays and end with the prize crossword on Saturdays, for example. Hugh Stephenson is the crossword editor of the Guardian and writes monthly columns which provide some insight into his job, columns to which I subscribe on line. Recent columns have included discussions on whether "centurian" was a fair word to use (most British English dictionaries refer to "centurion") in the February 7th and March 7th columns: the compiler included the word as an answer and the editor permitted it. The editor then had to justify it to his readership. Older columns have discussed how he decides how many crosswords to include by each compiler. More recent columns have addressed the problem of "the great god Google" (as in complaints of "but Google finds 10 thousand million hits for...") and the spelling of Scottish daggers. So yes, in essence, in UK cryptic crosswords, the crossword editor edits. And the compilers compile and have recognisable styles to aficionados of the genre. How applicable to US crosswords this is (and Sandy Balfour's book Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose make the case that UK and US crosswords differ greatly), I don't know. Telsa 23:09, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Wal-Mart and Playboy
An article on Playboy magazine said one reason its circulation is far below its 1970's peak of 7 million a month is because in the 1980's activists persuaded stores not to sell it, citing 7-11 and Wal-Mart. It seems dubious that Wal-Mart would have ever sold the magazine. Anyone confirm this? PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * It's probably a reference to Walmart replacing stores that sold it. --SPUI (talk) 18:13, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

 * They sold it. They still sell millions of grossly sexually explicit books every year to anyone of any age, but these are all "Romance" novels, which are exempt from scrutiny, for some reason.

 * An acquaintance of mine (who has published the odd pornographic - sorry, erotic - novel) has commented that even there there's different levels of what's accepted; all sorts of interesting and subtle coding involved, with wildly different standards in different sub-genres and the like. But on the whole, it's "not having pictures of nekkid wimmin in 'em" that probably is the major point they still get sold. Shimgray 15:35, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Political science
Someone told me once that all a poli sci degree is good for is it makes its holders more interesting guests at parties. What can one do with it except teach political science. PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC) Ambrose Bierce said a diplomat was someone who engaged in the patriotic art of lying for one's country. But back to the main question about what good is a poli sci degree: has anyone ever seen an employment ad that sought someone with such a degree? PedanticallySpeaking 17:47, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * There's political experts commentating on elections and certain major events. It's quite important to have such people available in journalism, I think. 82.172.23.66 17:30, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Umm, you could become a politician. Or do some work that had nothing to do with politics ... there is a general purpose element to most humanities degrees, non? --Tagishsimon (talk)
 * You can also go and *work* for a politician. The poli-sci students tend to become the hacks, people with actual useful knowledge the policy wonks.  --Robert Merkel 02:03, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
 * The understanding of how political systems work is invaluable for interstanding the workings of other countries' governments. So polsci (or ideally polsci+history) is a good thing to have for those intending working in their country's diplomatic service and foreign-relations office.  Ditto for foreign intelligence services (cf Kremlinology), and for other government functions which interact with foreign political systems (trade relations, military pacts etc.).  Large corporations, lobby groups, professional organisations and occasionally powerful individuals need the services of those who can navigate the byzantine workings of their own country's government.  Pollsters and media companies hire them to analyse elections and political trends.   Companies, unions, and other institutions have their own internal politics, voting schemes, constitutions, etc, so they need someone who understands that kind of stuff too.  And police, national law-enforcement, and domestic intelligence services need them too, for asking and answering difficult questions like "Are the people who belong to the XYZ liberation front dangerous terrorists, or a bunch of cranky windbags?". -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 18:47, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I suppose there are also non-specific skills you can learn through the subject - ie. the attitude to life and general mental balance of a politician can be useful in other areas. Well, you never know when the ability to lie convincingly can come in handy...--Fangz 03:41, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
 * No. But I've seen ads for jobs that just require *any* degree.--Fangz 18:11, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Most degrees these days aren't vocational IME - employers will often ask for a type of degree (I know of plenty of cases where a "science degree" or "numerate degree" is favoured), but the existence of the qualification is often seen as more important as the specialism. In this way, political science is much the same as art history or philosophy - the chance of someone explicitly wanting to hire a graduate from that field is very low. Shimgray 00:55, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Rape of a man
A Law and Order rerun had a plot where women were on trial for raping a man, saying New York law had been specifically amended to permit such a prosecution. Is this correct? I know in the Uniform Code of Military Justice only a woman can be raped, in the case of a man it would be something like forcible sodomy, but what about other jurisdictions. Is it legally possible to rape a man under any other state's laws? PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * The California penal code makes no gender distinctions in its definition of rape. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 23:34, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

 * We tend to think of rape as a penis being forced into a vagina without the permission of the woman. But that's a very limited and simplistic view of rape, just as is believing that any act that does not involve penetration of an orifice is not sex (the Clinton excuse).  As I understand it, any sexual act at all that is perpetrated on another person without their consent, whether it's penetration, fellatio, masturbation, cunnilingus etc etc etc - can be considered to be rape.  And fair enough too.  JackofOz 04:53, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I haven't seen the Law & Order episode in question, but they may have been referring to the New York State Sexual Assault Reform Act. This act introduced (among other things) gender-neutral language to relevant sections of the NY penal code.  Many states have made similar changes over the last couple decades.  In some of these states, rape (which carried a gender-specific like "forcible penetration of a vagina by a penis") carried a heavier penalty than "sexual assault" (as detailed by JackofOz above).  Obviously, this is ten kinds of wrong, and sometimes allows a rapist to "get off easy" because the rape in question does not fit the state's narrow definitions.  --amysayrawr 14:16, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

California prisons
Where would a woman felon who had committed a non-violent felony (embezzlement) be sent int he California penal system? PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * I think they induct at Chowchilla, and it and Corona take low category prisoners. She might, however, be categorised higher/differently due to priors, gang-envolvement, or special needs (suicide risk, etc) and go to Stockton. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 18:09, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Chowchilla is the largest women's prison in California, but another large one is Chino Women's Prison. RickK 22:52, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * Interesting. I read this at http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/CA3082/: More women are incarcerated in the small Central Valley town of Chowchilla - where the largest women's prison in the country is across the street from the second largest -   than any other place in America. The  two adjacent state prisons are the Central California Women's Facility with around 3,500 inmates, and  the Valley State Prison for Women, with another 3,400 (both facilities were designed to house 2,000 inmates each)..  RickK 22:55, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * The full list of facilities is at (note that they say the Chino facility is really on Chino-Corona road in Corona). -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 23:06, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Hawaii's time zone
When Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, it was 7:55 A.M. local time, 1:25 P.M. in Washington. When did Hawaii change to being a whole number of hours behind Washington? PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * According to the "northamerica" file included in glibc's time zone database, Hawaii's time zone was changed from UTC-10:30 to UTC-10:00 in 1947 . It gives June 8 as the switch date, but another rather more obscure source (, copy the text in the first box) gives June 13 as the last day. Rumor has it that the definitive references on time zone gerrymandering and adjusting in the U.S. regions is the American Atlas, ISBN 0935127380, which I haven't read. JRM · Talk 19:20, 2005 May 10 (UTC)
 * I have a copy of the American Atlas, which is designed for astrologers, but didn't think to look in it. PedanticallySpeaking 19:52, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Daylight Saving Time
Congress is set to force America to be on DST for nearly all the year in the grab-bag energy bill the House sent to the Senate a couple weeks ago. By what right can they do this? Has there been any litigation on Congress's power to fiddle with the clocks? PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * Well, in a way, their fiddling is its own legislative authority to do so... constitutionally, though, I guess you could make a case that it's covered as part of their power to regulate interstate commerce. That's a little contrived, but no more so than some of the other things that have been held covered by that clause. Shimgray 19:27, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Also, there are a couple of states who ignore DST as it currently stands. Chances are, if it becomes really burdensome, even more states will start to ignore it and defeat the goals of the bill anyway.  This does make me wonder, though, what clock do federal buildings and miliary bases run on in localities where DST is not observed?  --CVaneg 21:14, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * They retain the local time. Is Congress planning on changing the summer time to two hours off, or will it be one hour off all year 'round?  RickK 22:57, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that certain members of Congress want to extend the number of months in which the US observes DST. They basically want to reap the benefits of DST for a little bit longer (in this particular case an average savings of 1% in energy costs per day DST is observed).  How much energy savings the US would realize is not entirely clear, though. --CVaneg 03:45, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Quadruplets
What's the average birth weight of quads? Anyone have any percentages at each weight, e.g. X % weigh 3 pounds, Y% weigh 4 pounds, etc. PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Repeat after me. I will search google before asking here. :) The first four results for quadruplets birth weight got some good data. Basically the weight varies most by sex and what gestational age the babies were. The best easily accessible data was from a study of Japanese births. It doesn't appear to give an overal average, presumably because that is not meaningful to a medical practitioner, but it does have a percentile chart for quads. From that, across the gestational ages in the chart, the 50 percentile weight ranges from about .9 to 1.7kg for quads. Eyeballing from a table of the data, the median gestational age for quads gives about 30 weeks, that would put the median birthweight at about 1.2kg from the first chart. That's just data from Japan, but you could find more if you needed. - Taxman 04:43, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

René Auberjonois
How is the surname of the Benson and Deep Space Nine actor pronounced? PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Google is your friend. JRM · Talk 18:27, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

Hollywood Womanizers
Warren Beatty is notorious for success with the ladies. If we were drawing up a top five list, with him as number one, who else would round it out? PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * What, you mean like "top five notorious cheating scumbags who degrade women" or something like that? DJ Clayworth 17:54, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

 * If we're talking historically and by reputation, Errol Flynn. --Robert Merkel 02:01, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * He is only in one movie as far as I know, but as detailed in the article on Wilt Chamberlain, if you believe his claims he would certainly be the winner. - Taxman 17:14, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Vanity plates
American states make a mint selling vanity license plates. Do other countries have vanity plates or are car owners stuck with what the state gives them? PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * The UK does this sort of thing - --Tagishsimon (talk)

 * If you mean the special plates that some states make (with different graphics etc) then the UK is entirely different. In the UK, plates aren't made by the government. You go down to Dave's Carparts Shop and he'll make you one up. The government, however, seriously prescribes the formatting of the plate, to such an extent that there's no real equivalent of vanity plates, affinity plates, or special-plates (like veteran's plates). You can get your name written in little letters on the bottom, and sometimes you can try quasi-legal fonts or hacks that allegedly evade automatic numberplate detectors (both of the latter are illegal, and the fuzz take a dim view of them). -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 17:15, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Up to a point. You can in the UK, as per the reference, make a bid for a certain combination of letters and numbers. So I could apply for TAG15H, for instance. Assuming it has not already been released, AFAIK, they'll sell it to me. --Tagishsimon (talk)

 * I think they mean plates where the letters mean something like "IM VAIN" or "2 MCH MNY". They do exist in the UK and here in Canada. Usually there is an extra fee involved. DJ Clayworth 17:45, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * They exist to a limited extent in the UK, in that they have to be in one of the formats that have been used in the past see British car number plates for the formats. Not all letters/combinations are used in all formats, and some combinations are banned (e.g. in the most recent AA11AAA format plates starting FU are banned). Since 1963 the plates have identified the year the car was made, and although you can make a car look older than it is you cannot make it look newer (e.g. you can put a 1999 X123ABC plate on a 2004 car, but you cannot put a 2004 AB04CDE plate on a 1999 car). Thryduulf 20:15, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

 * In India, the format is very rigid. The registration id will be typically of the form "TN 59 B 9314", where TN refers to the state of Tamil Nadu, 59 refers to the district of Madurai, the following alphabet(s) indicate the Regional Traffic Office that issued the number (G is reserved for government vehicles) and the 4 digit number that follows is a running number. People to bid for fancy numbers like "9999" etc. I think when the numbers are exhausted, they can have more alphabet combinations like XY etc. -- Sundar (talk · contributions) 06:58, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

 * I think France has a system like this - strictly regionalised - but it's been a long time since I paid even passing attention... Shimgray 16:26, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

 * It also happens in Australia. My CEO's BMW has on the plates. I don't live in Australia, so I don't know details. 82.210.117.169 09:53, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

 * In South Australia:
 * Only plates made by an approved manufacturer comply with the requirements of the Motor Vehicles Act. The display of non-approved plates incurs the risk of a Traffic Infringement Notice and a fine.
 * and
 * You may choose between the standard alpha-numeric plate or, for an extra fee, choose one of the special plates available.
 * I think it's pretty much the same for the other states. See for more. The alphanumeric plates in SA are along the lines of ABC-123, but the oldest I've seen start at R. Txx used to be reserved for trailers and motorcycles, and Qxx for Government vehicles. A few years ago they introduced AA-1234-A style plates (as an option), which are now up to about the BDs or so. The others are up to X (I think). Some states have 123-ABC style plates. All the states use different colours (for the standard non-vanity ones). Alphax τεχ 09:11, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

 * It is also possible to get a vanity plate in Germany, although your options are a bit limited - German license plates have a fixed format where the first one to three letters designate your home city or county, then comes a dash, two more letters, and a couple of numbers. It is possible to ask for a personal combination of letters and numbers after the dash, but depending on where you live, it might be rather difficult to find something suitable (most smaller cities and counties have three-letter ID codes, so you might be stuck with something like HDH or OAL at the beginning of your license plate). The bigger cities generally use single letters, so if you're from Stuttgart, you might go for S-KL as a Mercedes driver or for the ever-popular S-EX. Procedure varies quite a bit between cities - some cities hand out vanity plates on a first come, first serve basis, some demand some form of compensation (although this is not official and will probably be denied if you aks about it), some do not hand out vanity plates at all -- Ferkelparade π 11:51, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

 * In New Zealand we also have vanity plates. You are restricted to 6 letters or numbers (cars and trucks standard plates run AA1 - ZZ9999, and then commencing with AAA1 to eventually end with ZZZ999) or 5 letters or numbers (trailers, motorcycles and tractors etc), and you cannot select a combination that has been previously used. The vanity plates are issued by a stand alone company and are replacements for an original set. They are personal property and transferrable whereas original plates are not. The vanity plates cost $NZ400 while the original sets cost is included in the initial registration fees. Replacement standard plates cost around $20 when the original plates are returned or a statutory declaration is made as to why they cannot, or when the owner wishes to transfer their vanity plates to another vehicle. Vanity plates are vetted for rude or insulting words/phrases. Spacing between the characters seems to be allowed to be altered slightly within the prescribed size of the plate so that the message makes more sense or for aesthetic reasons such as [I AM 1] instead of [IAM1]. However set on the plate, there would be only one set with this combination issued, i.e. [IAM 1] would not be issued.

L-Bit 00:41, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

The Queen's handbag
The New York Times on Friday, May 6, had a photo on the front page of Tony Blair "kissing hands" with Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. I found it odd she'd be carrying a handbag around her own home but it also made me wonder: what would the Queen carry? She never buys anything, so she wouldn't need money. She usually has someone else drive, so no need for a license. She doesn't have a passport. She wouldn't need keys. So what would the Queen carry? PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * According to Majesty magazine the Queen carries a comb, a handkerchief, a small compact, and a tube of lipstick in her handbag. On Sundays she also carries a folded banknote for the church collection plate. As an aside: she uses small movements of the handbag as coded communications with her aides. --Theo  (Talk) 18:05, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Dubbing actors
I read in Edward Epstein's The Big Picture that Gert Frobe's entire performance in the James Bond film Goldfinger was redubbed by an English actor, Michael Collins, because of Frobe's accent. Glenn Close replaced Andie McDowell's entire vocal performance in Greystroke. Ditto Mel Gibson and Mad Max. Anyone else think of another film where a major character whose entire vocal performance was replaced? PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * In the Italian cinema, dubbing is (or was) the norm. All the characters, including the leads, are (or were) dubbed; I believe the reason was to allow the director to match voice to appearance as necessary. —Charles P. (Mirv) 17:11, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Mirv, but I was more interested in films in their original distibution, so I'll rephrase. Can anyone identify English language films intended for distribution in English language nations where a lead role was completely redubbed by someone else?  PedanticallySpeaking 15:53, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * How about the Star Wars films, where it was felt that Dave Prowse's Somerset accent wasn't really appropriate for Darth Vader, hence the dubbing in of James Earl Jones. --OpenToppedBus 16:41, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
 * Good! That's the sort of thing I was looking for.  I always assumed Jones was dubbed in to make him sound more sinister.  Thanks, Open!  PedanticallySpeaking 17:37, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

An American Tony Benn
In an episode of the Elaine Stritch-Donald Sinden comedy Two's Company from 1977, Robert gives his preferences if he was forming a government. He declares he'd send Mrs. Thatcher and Mrs. Williams to the backbenches to tend to their knitting, and he'd send Benn as ambassador to Outer Mongolia. I do know who Benn is--e.g. I saw him May 6 on the BBC talking about the previous day's election--and I know something of his politics, but if we were to relate him to American politics, who on the political spectrum here would we best compare him too? Ted Kennedy? PedanticallySpeaking 17:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * Honestly not sure - but, remember, in 1977 Benn wasn't viewed the same as he is now. He came to prominence in the sixties, where he was the government's Bright Young Thing (Private Eye once portrayed him as worshipping a statue of Concorde), with the White Heat Of Technology and all that. By the 1970s he'd become more leftwing, but still in the political mainstream (he was in the Cabinet still) - but by now he's well to the left of the rest of the Labour party.

 * Are you wondering about Benn now, or Benn thirty years ago? Shimgray 18:59, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, both actually. PedanticallySpeaking 19:50, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Apples and Oranges. Benn in 1977 was viewed as a left-winger, but we had a left-wing government. Still there were plenty of people who found him irritating, and would have relished the idea of banishing him to Outer Mongolia hence the joke. He is very intelligent and very principled. He used to record everything he did in diaries, but now he records everything on tape. I don't know enough about American politics to suggest an analogue. Jooler 17:40, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah; AIUI Benn wasn't really viewed as he was because of his politics, but more because... well, because he was Benn. Odd, idiosyncratic, often outspoken. I'm hard pressed to think of a British equivalent to Benn-77 today, come to think of it. The Cabinet's too firmly in line. Shimgray 21:06, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Thinking further... Tam Dalyell, perhaps, or Robin Cook? Again, couldn't really convert those into American names... Shimgray 23:58, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Caribbean Islands
I recently was reading about Hispaniola and was wondering if it was the only Caribbean island that is divided between two nations - i.e. are there any other islands on which two nations hold territory? --Neo 17:13, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * None that I can think of. You could argue for Cuba, I suppose, depending on which interpretation of the lease you subscribe to. Shimgray 19:28, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * There is at least one other: Saint-Martin/Sint Maarten. JRM · Talk 19:30, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

What's up with PedanticallySpeaking? Speculate here
Seems like an awful lot of questions for one head.

 * Come on. With a name like PedanticallySpeaking, would you expect any less? You leave him alone, now. He gave us some good questions to crack. :-) JRM · Talk 19:32, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

 * PS is clearly plotting out some elaborate political thriller. The dark secret is that secretly QE2 had quadruplets (of whom only Charles is acknowledged).  Now that Charles has plainly grown up to be an abject duffer, they want the others back.  Meanwhile, some shadowy Francis Ukhart type is trying to kill them, knowing he can manipulate King Harold III (Harry the Thick).  One has become a rakish hollywood actor, another a senator (whose assistant is falsely convicted). The remaining one is a Cambridge polisci don, who was kicked out of the FCO for leaking stuff about the UK turning a blind eye to torture in Onehorsiestan. The queen keeps photos of all four babies in her handbag.  The murderer is unmasked by deductions following personalised number plates ("1 D1D1T"), clues inserted into movie dubs, and a poem which contains a rhyme with Auberjonois.  Now, doesn't that sound better than The DaVincy Code? -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 19:42, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I've not been here much for the past two weeks and so I had saved up a list of questions in my notebook to post upon my return. PedanticallySpeaking 19:50, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I'm going to have to go with the political thriller explanation. JRM · Talk 19:53, 2005 May 10 (UTC)
 * Well, I've already written my political thriller, which does include a PM up to no good, but these questions haven't a thing to do with it. PedanticallySpeaking 19:53, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * In the meantime, I've figure out who the father was, why the other three were hidden away, how any brother of Charles could be successful with women, and the identity of the assassin. But, as this isn't SillyWritingPedia, I'll keep it to myself (unless anyone asks me on my talk page). -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 20:26, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation?
Does anyone know how to pronounce !Xóõ, as in !Xóõ language? There've been requests on the talk page, but perhaps we need to ask a broader audience. grendel|khan 21:14, 2005 May 10 (UTC)
 * I understand that in the word !Xóõ the ! represents a post-alveolar click (that is a click produced by the tongue in the position where one would produce a sh sound in standard English), the x represents the voiceless velar fricative (as the final sound in loch or Bach), the ó is a pure o vowel (as in boat in Received Pronunciation) pronounced at a high tone (which is, of course, relative to the median tone of one's speech), and the õ represents nasalisation of the vowel (a bit like French bon). I think the initial cluster must be slightly more complicated than I've described, but I'm not sure how. --Gareth Hughes 22:37, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Gibraltar £1 coin
I have just noticed that in the change I got from the supermarked at lunch time was a Gibraltar £1 coin. As near as I can tell it is the same size and weight as a normal British £1 coin, but the design is different, particularly the edge. Is this legal tender in England? Thryduulf 22:19, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * The article Gibraltar pound says that UK banks charge commission on changing Gibraltar notes: this suggests to me that they cannot, therefore, be legal tender, even if they are pegged at the same value as the pound sterling. --Gareth Hughes 22:42, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * In addition, the article Pound sterling says that it is not legal tender: the bank'll probably ask for a fiver to change for you! --Gareth Hughes 22:44, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

 * The Gibraltar pound coins - and, if memory serves, the Isle of Man and Channel Island pound coins - are different in design from "proper" British coins, but have the same physical properties. The problem is further complicated by the fact that the Gibraltar pound, and the other currencies above, are legally seperate currencies which just happen to be pegged at a 1:1 exchange rate to the Pound sterling. In effect, it has the value of one British pound, but it's not technically legal tender.

 * On the other hand, "legal tender" in England isn't quite what people think it is; to quote the Bank of England:

 * The concept of legal tender is often misunderstood. Contrary to popular opinion, legal tender is not a means of payment that must be accepted by the parties to a transaction, but rather a legally defined means of payment that should not be refused by a creditor in satisfaction of a debt. This makes legal tender a rather narrow legal concept that has little to do with the way in which most payments are made. In practice, people are often willing to accept payment by cheque, standing order, debit or credit card – in fact by any instrument that they are confident will deliver value.

 * In effect, most of the ways you might have paid at the supermarket anyway aren't legal tender, but that doesn't stop people accepting them. They are entitled to refuse to take the coin should you try and pay with it - and you'd have been entitled not to take it in change - but it has real value, and most people will happily accept it (if they notice!) and let it continue in circulation. (Personally I tend to take the quasi-foreign coins by choice; I like having them. But that's weird, I know... I also try and use £5 coins).

 * That's not really much help, I'm afraid; a simple answer is "No, but I wouldn't let that stop you spending it." Just don't take it to a bank... Shimgray 22:48, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

 * That's a pretty good summary. I fed a Manchester Metrolink ticket machine with an Isle of Man £1 coin today, and it was quite happy to take it! I only noticed it was different because it's got an interrupted milled edge - part milled and part smooth. -- Arwel 22:12, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I suspect - though I've no evidence - that it's deliberate; whilst it's no more expensive to mint coins with different mass properties, it's a lot more expensive to re-calibrate coin-operated mechanisms. There's a lot to gain by having coins of the "big country's" standard size for that sort of niche market, and it would only mean a lot of wasted money for (say) the Manx if they had to modify every coin-op drinks machine or clotheswasher. The potential different-value-coins issue here is handily bypassed by a British pound being worth the same as a Manx one - you don't have to worry about there being a foreign coin the same size but worth half as much. (I believe this is a problem in the US with Canadian quarters, and on a smaller scale Irish 2p coins used to be common in the UK). Shimgray 01:02, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Colonial American population circa 1776
What was the population of the 13 colonies in 1776 (a rough number is fine, and withing 50 years would be close enough for my purposes... but now I'm curious as to specifics)?

 * OK, got the data. From the US Census of 1850:

 * "PART II.
 * POPULATION.
 * CHAPTER I.-COLONIAL POPULATION.
 * THERE was no general enumeration of the people of the United States earlier than the census
 * of 1790, although conjectural estimates of population, more or less accurate, are to be found
 * among the records of the colonial period, and are valuable in the absence of other material.
 * Several of these are annexed. Upon the basis of the increase which was afterwards ascertained,
 * (viz: for the colored population between 1790 and 1800, being at that time least disturbed by
 * immigration,) the total population in 1775 would have been 3,490,740, including
 * 479,155 slaves, the population in 1749, 1.467,539, including 261,833 slaves; the population in
 * 1701, 390,299. But this mode of calculation would be very fallacious for extremely early periods."

 * So, looks like (in 1850) at least, they thought that the population at the eve of revolution was approx 3.5 million, 500,000 of whom were slaves. Note that this is based on regression from the 1790 numbers, so is probably suspect. I will keep looking. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 00:50, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

New data, also from the 1850 census:

 * CHAPTER II.-POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES.
 * THERE have been seven enumerations of the inhabitants of the United States, the periods
 * and aggregate results of which are as follows:
 * Number.
 * Census of 1790.......... 3,929,827
 * "   1800..........  5,305.925
 * "   1810..........  7,239,814
 * "   1820..........  9,638,131
 * "   1830.......... 12,866,020
 * "   1840.......... 17,069,453
 * "   1850.......... 23,191,876
 * At the close of 1854 the total population of the United States, upon the supposition that its
 * average ratio of increase has been maintained, or nearly so, may be stated in :round numbers
 * at 26,500,000.

The source document I obtained this information from is titled ''Statistical view of the United States embracing its territory, population--white, free colored, and slave--moral and social condition, industry, property, and revenue; the detailed statistics of cities, towns and counties; being a compendium of the seventh census, to which are added the results of every previous census, beginning with 1790, in comparative tables, with explanatory and illustrative notes, based upon the schedules and other official sources of information. By J.D.B. De Bow, superintendent of the United States Census''. This link may (or may not) correctly take you to the internet card-catalog at which I located the resource. You will likely be unable to access the resource unless you are a current student/faculty in the University of California system. The two extracts above were taken from pages 37 and 39, respectively. I have not explored all 400+ pages of the material, but stopped when I got to that second chunk, which ought to give you a certain degree of confidence on the earlier estimate. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 01:04, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

 * Incidently, someone (not me) may want to try adding some or all of this info to relevant Wikipedia pages. Also note this page from infoplease which has more Colonial population estimates but which does not cite its sources. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 01:12, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Deepest money pit
In addition to being the world's tallest occupied building, Taipei 101 is also one of the deepest money pits in Taipei. Many floors are unoccupied, some floors are rented by the government as de facto subsidy. Yesterday, a high-end gym inside this building went bankruptcy. What is the world's tallest profitable occupied building? -- Toytoy 06:22, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * This puts me in mind of the World Trade Center which for years was a white elephant and largely unoccupied. Its vacancy rate would have been far worse if David Rockefeller, the project's champion, hadn't prevailed upon his brother Nelson, the governor of New York, to force state agencies to move to the building.  PedanticallySpeaking 17:52, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually I think it is pretty normal for sky scrapers. Canary Wharf, the tallest building in London, had years of low occupancy which caused its original Canadian owners to go into liquidation, but with time it has gradually found tennants. Also 30 St Mary Axe has been half empty since its completion, after its owners, Swiss Re, decided to scale back from using the whole building. It is still early days for them and [Taipei 101]]. -- Solipsist 19:25, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

 * So far as I know, the tallest buildings in a city are usually not profitable even after a couple of decades. Then, which building in the world is the tallest and also reasonably profitable one? I mean it has to generate income within a few years and earn its investment back no later than most other lower buildings without any substantial subsidy. -- Toytoy 23:28, May 21, 2005 (UTC)

From Journalist: I don't understand how to report vandalism
I am a professional journalist and historian, but I don't understand the vandalism complaint process.

I found that the George McGovern page amounted to little more than political propaganda. For example, all references listed in the topic were by McGovern himself, or by his supporters.

I added a reference to Teddy White's "Making of the President: 1972" and details of the abortive 1972 campaign that apparently, McGovern's supporters would rather see forgotten. Everything i added could be validated through contemporary publications -- newspapers and magazines.

All were removed, and a previous version posted. Even the reference to Teddy White, the most famous presidential historian of all time.

I just don't understand how the Vandalism system works.

Please respond at ocnews at hotmail dot com

Thank you

 * There are two pages you could read to find out more about how Wikipedians handle vandalism: Dealing with vandalism and Vandalism in progress.
 * From what you wrote, it sounds like your changes have been reverted. You can try adding it again; it could have been removed for a variety of reasons. If it's authoritative, correct, and verifyable, chances are it will stay in the encyclopedia. If you feel the page you are editing on is biased, you can consider adding a "POV" tag at the top of the page, and then stating your reasons why you think it is not a neutral article on its talk page. However, be aware that edit wars can start! If things get a bit too heated, I would suggest editing on another page that interests you. Sometimes it's better to wait a little bit before adding material to a popular or highly monitored article. You can also consider getting a Wikipedia account. Some people consider edits under an account name generally more authoritative than one under an anonymous IP. I hope this helps! Welcome to Wikipedia! :) HappyCamper 13:01, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Just to add to HappyCamper's comments:

 * Firstly, what you describe is probably not "vandalism" as Wikipedia normally uses the word - it sounds like a possibly wrong, but good faith edit. I couldn't find the edits you're referring to in the edit history of the article (could you look through the articles edit history and point us to a version with your information and the version where it was removed?), so it's kind of hard to tell.  If you think your version was correct, the first response is to simply add it back in with an explanation on the talk page.  If it gets reverted again, please thrash out the discrepancies on the talk page and try to settle on a version that everyone can accept according to the Neutral point of view policy.  Of course, politics is a subject that raises considerable passion; it can be a difficult area to get an article that appropriately reflects the range of opinions, particularly on somebody as polarising as McGovern was (if I understand my history).  If you can't reach a consensus (on the article, not on McGovern, that's not what we're trying to do), you can bring it up on Request for comments.  Ultimately, if the article is proving particularly problematic you can try the English wikipedia mailing list, but keep this to particularly serious cases. --Robert Merkel 13:46, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I also could not see the edits you describe, but I only checked for the last 5 months or so. Was it longer ago than that? Perhaps you simply didn't hit 'save page' to save the edits, and your edit was never made in the first place. But if you have verifiable valuable information that is not in the article, please try editing again. Thanks - Taxman 17:06, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

 * I should note that I often find that Wikipedia gives me a preview instead of a saved version, even though I'm sure I've hit "save page"; I don't know if this is a glitch, or just me regularly making the same mistake (probably the latter), but if I'm doing that still despite having edited every couple of days for several months, it's quite likely someone unused to the system wouldn't notice. It might also be worth considering where to put the comments on the '72 campaign - the McGovern article doesn't give the summary I would (understandable, given that such a summary would involve the phrase "a painfully hideous clusterf*ck"), but there's a reasonably good bit on it in the 1972 Presidential Election page, where it's arguably more appropriate. (Especially given a lot of McGovern's problems weren't directly related to him, but his running mates dropping out, it not being a good year to run that sort of campaign, &c &c) Shimgray 17:19, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * For the record, the preview "bug" is apparently neither a glitch nor an error on your part. See my exact same question the other day at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Preview instead of saving. — Asbestos | Talk  17:32, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Has anyone e-mailed these responses to the querent as s/he requested? --Theo (Talk) 18:15, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I emailed the guy yesterday pointing out that somebody had replied. If he contacts me again I'll let him know that there's more information. --Robert Merkel 03:39, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Chemistry
Why is it that oxygen(O2) must exist in twos, what does it mean??? Does all elements have a number(E.g. O2, so the number I mean is 2)??? If yes, please tell me some elements(common) with their numbers If no, than tell me why is it that some elements like oxygen, hydrogen have numbers???

--165.21.83.230Sakura1980

 * By no means does oxygen have to exist in a molecule like this O=O. However, let's consider the following. Assume that we are at standard temperature and pressure. In this state, oxygen atoms do not like to be by themselves. One reason is that oxygen has an incomplete outer shell of electrons. However, if two oxygen atoms combine together to form an oxygen molecule the arrangement is more favorable. That's because both oxygen atoms in the molecule can arrange their electrons in a manner such that both atoms have an effective full shell. HappyCamper 12:47, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I was going to explain that Oxygen can exist in at least one other state - O3, Ozone. It's all to do with the fact that the oxygen atom has a charge (less electrons than protons) and so joins together with other oxygen atoms to share electrons. Elements can be thought of in their atomic form, but are normally found in nature bonded to other atoms because of this electron shortage / electrical charge issue. A chemist will be along in a moment to explain it properly with reference to wikipedia articles. But HappyCamper beat me to it. but to give you some examples, Hydrogen is normally found as H2, because it has a Valance of one (i.e. needs to share one electron), whereas Helium has a valance of zero, does not need to combine to be stable, and so is found as single atoms of He. --Tagishsimon (talk)

 * An oxygen atom, O, has an equal number of protons (8, its atomic number) and electrons and does not have an electric charge, but it does have two "holes" in its outermost electron shell (1s22s22p4). A charged atom, say O− or O+, is an ion.  According to oxygen, another allotrope, O4, tetraoxygen, can also be generated under sufficient pressure, and a double oxygen molecule (O2)2 is known. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:58, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Atoms like Oxygen form molecules because the molecular form has a lower potential energy than the atomic form of the element (see binding energy) and so is energetically favourable. The bond between the atoms in O2 is a chemical bond, in particular a covalent bond; essentially this means that the atoms come close enough together that their electron orbitals overlap. Gdr 13:23, 2005 May 11 (UTC)

 * There are various ways to justify this reasoning, such as those found in quantum mechanics - and in particular, the use of molecular orbitals. For example, if you were to fill the molecular orbitals of O2 with all the electrons, you will find that the arrangement results in a double bond. HappyCamper 15:47, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

The diatomic elements are Br2(omine) I2(odine) N2(itrogen) Cl2(orine) H2(ydrogen) O2 and F2(luorine) Some other interesting things P4 and S8 are both (more or less) stable allotropes of Phosphorus and Sulfer (Should I mention C60,70 etc. here or not?) Dusty78 22:30, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

British university departments
Apparently British universities are facing cash crises, resulting the potential closure of many departments. The architecture department at Cambridge, the chemistry, math and music departments at Essex, the philosophy, anthropology, solciology and possibly chemistry departments at the University of Wales, cultural studies and sociology at Birmingham... Is there any comprehensive list of departments that have or may shut down in the near future? Thanks, — Asbestos | Talk  16:34, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Architecture at the University of Cambridge was under threat (principally for failing to get a "5" or "5*" grade in its research rating - it got a "4" - and despite its excellent teaching record), but was reprieved. Chemistry at the University of Exeter (not the University of Essex) closed and the students went to the University of Bath, I think, and its article also states that Cognitive Science, Italian and Music are closing (or have closed), and maths is apparently "by far the weakest department of the university" at University of Essex, according to its article.

 * I was not previously aware of the others you list, but this (rather old) article in The Times states that "Newcastle University will no longer offer degrees in physics; chemistry would not be taught at King’s College London, and music has been dropped from Reading and Exeter", and the BBC provides another list: Derby (theology, colour and imaging), Durham (linguistics), East London (French, Spanish), Glasgow Caledonian (public management, consumer and trading standards, information management), Kent (chemistry), Kingston (German, history of ideas), Lampeter (Australian studies, anthropology and religion), Newcastle (pure physics, theology) and Queen Mary London (chemistry). I'm don't know of a comprehnsive list, though. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:22, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Ok, thanks. I wasn;t really hoping to find more than another five or six universities, so that's great. — Asbestos | Talk  08:08, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure what you want the information for, but if you try contacting the NUS or the AUT they'll probably have a prepared (and quite comprehensive) press release about the closures on file somewhere - and if they don't, they certainly ought to. Shimgray 11:22, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * It's not just British universities. The University of Connecticut has recently folded its geology department into Liberal Arts and Sciences, if I recall correctly. grendel|khan 15:55, 2005 May 12 (UTC)

Mathematical notation
I've got a rather complicated looking equation here which I'd like to make it look more compact, possibly as an infinite sum:

 * $$\hat H = \sum_{a} H_{a}^a \hat a^ \dagger \hat a +

\sum_{a,b} H_{ab}^{ab} \hat a^ \dagger \hat a \hat b^ \dagger \hat b + \sum_{a,b,c} H_{abc}^{abc} \hat a^ \dagger \hat a \hat b^ \dagger \hat b \hat c^ \dagger \hat c + \ldots $$

Anyone have an idea? --HappyCamper 16:21, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't. Dante Alighieri | Talk 19:29, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't either :) ...but the structure of this (I suspect) can be written as two nested sums and an infinite product. --HappyCamper 19:34, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Just FYI, that above message wasn't from me, it was an impostor who has since been blocked. Like my impostor though, I don't know how to help, sorry! :) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 07:15, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

 * Neither do I, I'm afraid - but I'm pathologically curious. What's the equation for? Name? Function? Thanks in advance! Nightstallion 17:53, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Well, it has to do with these topics: Hamiltonian, second quantization, creation and annihilation operators, coupling, spectroscopy, and quantum chemistry. You may fill in the gaps with your imagination - elegant and beautiful theories all put together! :) HappyCamper 18:08, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Oh, and I was expecting something highly mathematical, not quantum theory... Let's just say I'm glad that my special field for my final exams in Physics only encompasses the basic quantum theory experiments, and not these things as well. ;) Thanks, though. Nightstallion 20:57, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

From a purely typographical point of view, I'd have to say that's easily one of the ugliest equations I've ever seen. If you put a $$\hat{ }$$ on all variables in the term and use a $$H_{x}^x$$ in all of them, why don't you invent a new summation quantor, for example? And what's up with those $$\dagger$$s? Hmm:
 * Note that the creation and annihilation operators are "generalized complex conjugates" of each other. Usually, the notation is chosen in such a way that the a†(f) is the creation operator, and a(f) is the annihilation operator. The † reminds us that something "extra" is being added to the system. The topic can be misleadingly confusing if this is not done.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: mathematicians have an infinite capacity for creating perverse notations and sticking with them no matter what.

I'd like to rewrite it for you, but I can't. What's $$\sum_{a,b,c}$$, for example? Sum over all what of a, b and c? Does the order matter? Is $$H_{a}^a \hat a^\dagger \hat a$$ the product of $$H_{a}^a$$, $$\hat a^\dagger$$ and $$\hat a$$? A chained function application? A mix of these? If a product is involved, is it associative? This can probably be rewritten by judicious use of sums, but there's no way to tell for those not in the know.

Regardless of the exact details, there's probably merit in inventing something like the infinite set $$A$$ for all $$\{a_0, a_1, a_2, \ldots\}$$ with $$a_{\ldots n}$$ denoting the set/sequence $$\{a_0, \ldots, a_n\}$$. Beyond that, though, you're on your own. JRM · Talk 10:59, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

 * The "hat" denotes an operator as opposed to a variable in this context. The daggers are typical notation found in quantum mechanics. The subscripts and overscripts on H represent the creation and anihilation operators that are associated with the particular scalar H. And yes, the sum is taken over all possible values of "a", "b", and "c", whatever they might be, and independent of their ordering. The product terms can be rearranged using the commutators of the operators. In fact, the a-dagger-a combination is also a number operator found in say, the quantum harmonic oscillator.
 * Actually that final idea was just what I needed!
 * $$\sum_{i=1}^\infty \sum_{a_1,\cdots,a_i} H_{a_1,\cdots,a_i}^{a_1,\cdots,a_i} \prod_{j=1}^i \hat a_{j}^ \dagger \hat a_{j}. $$
 * Double check, but I think this is it. Thank you :) HappyCamper 17:21, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

First ever music album?
What was the first ever music album, and when was it released? DO'Иeil 21:17, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

 * Album in the sense of a work intended primarily for release as a recording, or a sound recording of live performances? 119 21:22, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Sorry, I should've been more specific. I meant studio album, a work intended for release as a recording. DO'Иeil 09:25, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

 * Are you going to include the likes of collections of 78's in books like photograph albums (such as long orchestral works or opera etc) or are you limiting yourself to more modern 33.3rpm albums.
 * L-Bit 13:55, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Galactic directions home
I was reading a sci-fi book: Our hero gets picked up by galactic poachers, who then get pulled over by the galactic cops. The cops bust the poachers, but not before they wipe their logs and their nav charts. Our hero ask the cops, "Can you take me home?" The cops: "Sure. Where do you live?" Hero: "Uh..."

With this in mind, I thought I'd try to figure out a way to give the galactic cops directions to Earth. If we're still in the Local Group, this should be pretty simple - the Milky Way is the largest spiral galaxy in the Local Group, and we can use the Andromeda Galaxy (the second largest spiral galaxy in the Local Group) as a fix to our neighborhood of the Milky Way. From there we can get a fix on the Galactic Center, Polaris, the Pleiades, and Regulus (which are local landmarks weird enough to get noticed by aliens familiar with our neighborhood) and from there to Sol.

According to the Wikipedia articles in question, the celestial coordinates for Andromeda are 00h 42.8m, +41.16 degrees. The celestial coordinates for the Galactic Center are 17h 45m 40.4s, -19 degrees 00' 28.1 ''. The North Galactic Pole (which I used to figure out the galactic plane)is at 12h 51m, 17 degrees 08'.

Based on this, I worked out these directions to our neighborhood: Look down on the Milky Way from the north (Andromeda lies north off the plane of the Milky Way). Draw a line from the Galactic Center to Andromeda. Sol lies 57.34 degrees counterclockwise from this line, 26 thousand lightyears from the Galactic Center, and a little over 100 lightyears north of the galactic plane.

Would somebody care to check my math? Also, does anybody have any other suggestions for local fixes? I picked Polaris because it is a cephid variable with a 3.97 day period (as well as at a memorable position in our sky), the Pleiades because they are an open star cluster, and Regulus because it has an extremely high rate of rotation. Thirdly, does anybody have any suggestions on where to place this important information in the Wikipedia? crazyeddie 21:37, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Forget coordinates. The best way to fix our position is by triangulation. Find a few important nebulas or galaxies, and give the distance. So long as you can agree on a time interval, you have no problem. Hmm, on second thoughts, length contraction might be an issue... Does anyone have an idea as to how to compensate?--Fangz 21:51, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

That's essentially what I'm doing - giving the galactic cops the celestial coordinates (the direction objects lie from Sol) and distances to local landmarks and having them work out the triangulation. (I'm assuming that they have a nav computer or at least experience working out stellar nav problems - unlike me.) Ideally, we can work with just distance or just direction, but we'll do best with both. (Directions are probably better than distances - we know them with greater precision. On the other hand, the directions are only good from Earth - we'd need to give multiple fixes, probably including the Galactic Center.) But before we can do that, we have to narrow it down to our neighborhood.

I'm also assuming that the gal-cops have cheap FTL travel and have observations that were made from reasonably close in space, time, and velocity to Sol. Which means that landmarks visible from Sol will be known to them, we don't have to worry about stellar drift over time (although I don't suppose that would be much trouble over only 100,000 years), and we don't have to worry much about length contraction. The main thing we have to worry about is finding distinctive known fixes - Sol itself isn't a good fix because yellow-dwarf stars are a dime a dozen. We also have to be able to give the gal-cops position information. Time intervals can be negotiated - our hero might have a pocketwatch or be able to estimate how long a second is - "one mississippi, two mississippi..." Our hero is face-to-face with the gal-cops so their in the same reference frame.

I'm using a fix from Andromeda to get us to our general neighborhood, from where we can narrow it down using fixes on objects within a few hundred lightyears from Sol. I think I've worked it out, but I really need somebody to check my math.

The goal here is to create a crib-sheet that might be shoved into a wallet and perhaps memorized - just in case. crazyeddie 22:12, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * The Voyager and Pioneer plaques gave a location using pulsars; by giving the relative positions and known periods of these with relation to a central point, they reckoned it'd be fairly trivial to figure out both the time and place of origin if you had a reasonably good pulsar catalogue. Detailed in Murmurs of Earth, I think. Shimgray 22:03, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

That's one idea - but I'm also trying to keep the crib-sheet memorable - something that, say, an astronomy student might be able to reconstruct from memory. crazyeddie 22:12, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

 * You should both be aware of course that someone termed the Voyager plaque the "single most reckless act in the history of humanity," a lot worse than if the Aztecs had sent out a toy raft that drifted to Spain announcing where they were, how much gold they had, and that they had no wheels, horses, or guns. I doubt it would be Hollywood's Close Encounters of the Third Kind if someone out there really responds to the invitation... alteripse 03:24, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Eh, I'll take my chances. Anyway, like I said, I'm trying to come up with a crib-sheet of nav fixes that an astronomy student or an amateur stargazer might be able to reconstruct from memory. Here's what that means to me:

 * The fixes need to be "named" stars or the moral equivalent. The Galactic Center and the Andromeda Galaxy qualify. A not-visible-to-the-naked eye pulsar known only by a catalog number doesn't. Neither does the Galactic North Pole - which is why I'm trying to come up with "absolute" coordinates for the Polaris neighborhood.

 * Our hypothetical hitchhiker isn't going to remember the celestial coordinates for the fix itself. He is probably only going to remember what constellation the fix is in, and what the celestial coordinates of the constellation are. That's another reason I'm trying to pre-compute those "absolute" coordinates - otherwise, the errors are going to be rather large. The sole exception to the rule is Polaris - and even then, Polaris is two degrees off of true celestial north - a fact that our hitchhiker may or may not remember.

 * Our hitchhiker can probably remember two significant figures for the distances.

 * The fixes need to be fairly distinctive - something interesting about them that our hitchhiker can remember, and that the gal-cops aren't going find two of in the area.

The main thing I'm trying to confirm is if I'm right about us being 57.34 degrees off the Andromeda line. Is this correct? They didn't cover spherical geometry in school and I kind of had to wing it. crazyeddie 07:34, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Lydia Gueiler Tejada
Is Lydia Gueiler Tejada, interim president of Bolivia from 1979 to 1980, still alive? If so, what is she doing? If not, when did she die? -- Vardion 23:36, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
 * The most recent mention I can find of her was in a 2001 AFP article:

"Four days before an Americas trade summit, more than 100 prominent Latin Americans urged US President George W. Bush to reverse US support for Colombia's anti-drug initiative, arguing it was doing "more harm than good."

In a bid to broaden the agenda of the summit in Quebec City, whose main task is to facilitate a free trade agreement for the Americas, the signatories on Monday asked the US leader to use the gathering to explore new approaching to solving the drug problem.

"We, the undersigned Latin Americans, know there are no easy answers or quick fixes to Colombia's tragic dilemma of warfare and drug related violence," said the letter signed among others by Nobel Peace Prize winners Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina, Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala and former Bolivian president Lydia Gueiler Tejada."

She probably is still alive. If she had passed away I'm sure there would have been a mention found somewhere - all I've searched all English language newspapers and the US government foreign news translation service. Lotsofissues 21:52, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I had a dig through some major newspapers as well as Usenet, and didn't see anything much. The Bolivian embassy almost certainly would have some idea, if you gave them a phone call - admittedly, I have no idea how well they respond to completely random questions like that... Shimgray 23:55, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

What's this?
Yes, I know, but what type of cactus?
 * If that's your image, I encourage you to put a little note such as "I, user x, took this photo" and a license such as or  . We need that information to know images are free to use. 119 03:44, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I am pretty sure it is a Cardon cactus. Moomintrollmania 08:05, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Question on the brain

 * Is there any physical link between the Hippocampus and the Hypothalamus? That is, are they or aren't they indepedent of one another? For example, would drugs affecting one affect the other? --Tothebarricades.tk 03:58, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * My neuro-anatomy is rusty, but re your drug question, it would depend very much on the particular drug in question. Moomintrollmania 09:03, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Is there any physical link between the heart and the lungs? Are they independent of each other? Would drugs that affect one affect the other? The answers for these questions are the same as for your questions: yes there are lots of physical links, they are independent in some ways but perform complementary linked interdependent functions, some drugs affect both and some just one or the other. alteripse 11:41, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

IANAD but... It seems to me that if a drug can pass the brain-blood barrier, the drug will spred throughout the brain. The drug will affect a part of the brain if that part is chemically sensitive to it. If not, then it won't - directly, anyway. There is still the possibility that it will indirectly affect the other through all of those interconnections. crazyeddie 17:38, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

What's a "maja"?
I expanded La Maja Desnuda ("The Nude Maja"), a painting by Francisco Goya. But I couldn't find any real information on what "Maja" meant. The closest I could find was that it was the feminine counterpart to "majo", which was said to be related to "macho." I think it may literally just mean "woman" in some fashion, but the word is obviously a 18th-19th century Spanish socio-cultural reference to a certain type of woman. Postdlf 09:57, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * According to several web sites I found ( (in German), (in German, with many Spanish quotes, plus an image of La Maja vestida),  (in Spanish)), the term denoted a kind of young prostitute. Lupo 11:06, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * No, there it is being used to mean "pretty, well-dressed young girl", who might be a prostitute or indeed an aristocrat. See Majo.  — Gulliver ✉  11:27, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I see that you just wrote the Majo article. Could you provide sources, please? Thank you. Lupo 12:12, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Star Wars languages
In Star Wars does Han really understand Chewbacca's language? Does Luke really understand C3PO? Or do they just understand the emotional tone of what these characters are saying (loud growl = angry)? ike9898 13:37, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * I think the intent is that Han does understand Wookiee but can't speak it. Likewise Chewie understands English (or Basic or whatever) but can't speak it. Luke only understands R2D2 (I assume that's what you meant) when he's plugged into the X-Wing fighter, and the words appear on the screen. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 14:24, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

 * Would you believe we have a webpage on Languages in Star Wars? Like a lot of our Star Wars pages, the creators have not been very careful to distinguish between things that can be inferred from the movies themselves, things explained in the Expanded Universe, and things which are explained in the various guides but don't actually appear in any plotted work.  However, from my recollection of the story, Han and Chewy have conversations where Han could not have possibly known what Chewy was talking about without being understand the specific words of his language.  As far as Luke is concerned, you may be confusing C3PO (who claims to be familiar with over 6  (?) million forms of communication and has that distinctive foppish Brit tone) with R2D2 (who bleeps a lot).  Again, though, in R2D2's case I think it's fairly clear that Luke understands his "words", not just the emotional content.  The idea you wouldn't bother to build a speech synthesizer into a Turing test passing robot, but force the users to learn another highly unusual language to understand it, is another example of poorly thought-out depictions of technology in the Star Wars universe (of which there are many silly examples; Lucas is no engineer).--Robert Merkel 14:29, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
 * He's a better engineer than he is a script writer -- 160.5.82.208 15:56, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

It's pretty clear that Han can understand Wookiee - it may be that Wookiee is physically impossible for humans to speak. In the case of R2D2, there is a scene in Empire Strikes Back where Luke is looking at a screen in his X-Wing to see what the heck R2D2 is saying. So in R2D2's case, I think Luke only understands the emotional content. That might be why C3PO was partnered with R2D2 in the first place - to serve as a user interface. Luke's uncle did buy C3PO to talk to some machinery, so that might be a normal use for a protocal droid. I agree though, that is pretty stupid. crazyeddie 17:46, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

The funniest thing about C3PO's use as a translator is that he seems to be able to understand any language spoken by any creature in the film, but always talks back to them in English (with the single exception of the Ewoks) - which seems to indicate that everyone and every droid understands English, but nobody except humans bothers to speak it. With regard to Luke and R2, i seem to remember that they are havig some intricate discussions while stranded on Dagobah (right before Yoda tunrs up), where R2 is not connected to the ship and Luke has no screen to read, so it seems Luke can actually understand what a series of beeps is supposed to mean (I'm not too certain how accurate my recollections of that particular scene are, though) -- Ferkelparade π 10:56, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps these creatures aren't physically able to speak English, but all civilized creatures can understand it. The Ewoks would be an exception because they are primatives, not part of Galactic culture. On Dagobah, Luke was in the process of learning the Ways of the Force, so maybe he was using the Force to translate. Or maybe George Lucas wasn't too big on continuity, and wanted the audience to understand the dialouge with a bare minimum of subtitles, while retaining an atmosphere of exoticness. But that explanation isn't any fun... crazyeddie 20:41, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

What is this?

 * http://pdphoto.org/PictureDetail.php?mat=pdef&pg=5205

I guess it's an aquatic fish-eating reptile. -- Toytoy 14:13, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree it looks like some Ichthyosaur. You might want to try asking at the San Diego Natural History Museum, maybe Brad Riney. Or ask the photographer, Jon Sullivan, maybe he remembers where and what he photographed! Lupo 12:33, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

 * The highly-developed sclerotic ring, the short neck, the position of nostril openings, the sharp teeth ... They are like Ichthyosaur. I just don't know if there were some other marine reptiles that had these above-mentioned features. Needless to say, that picture is beautiful! -- Toytoy 01:54, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

Book
I am looking for a book on WWII that was discussed Friday night, May 6th on Almanac. Can anyone tell me what the name of the book is? Thanks. jill at beagle-books dot com

 * Thomas Saylor: Remembering the Good War, Minnesota Historical Society Press, May 2005. ISBN 0-87351-525-0.

 * Allow me to brag a bit: having found out (from your e-mail address) that you're in Minnesota, I found this Almanac from the Twin Cities' Public TV station and assumed it was the show you were referring to. Their archive indeed lists a show of May 6, which had a discussion (RealVideo) of the above book. Frankly said, it would have been easier for you to find that info yourself (e.g. by asking Almanac directly!) than it was for me, being located half-way around the world from Minnesota and never having heard of Almanac before. But it is astonishing what you can figure out these days with a few minutes of Googling. All the best, Lupo 12:00, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Movie Location One
Old Westbury House (photo here) in Old Westbury, New York, on the Gold Coast of Long Island, has appeared in three films I'm familiar with. It is the home Cary Grant is taken to meet James Mason at in North by Northwest. It is Ryan O'Neal's parents' home in Love Story. And it is Ryan Phillippe's aunt Louise Fletcher's home in Cruel Intentions. Anyone seen this house in other films? PedanticallySpeaking 16:03, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * The IMDB can help you here. According to IMDB it was also used in Wolf in 1994 and in The Age of Innocence in 1993. Mgm|(talk) 16:20, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Movie Location Two
In several films shot in Prague, I've seen the same dramatic entry hall. It is used in the film Mission: Impossible as the American Embassy, its a museum in EuroTrip, and its in the Julia Stiles film The Prince and Me. Any ideas as to what building this is? PedanticallySpeaking 16:03, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * The National Museum? David Sneek 07:02, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Mozilla Foundation Software - Integration
I'm new to, and very enthusiastic about Mozilla software. I've had Thunderbird a while. Last week I got Sunbird, which is fine. I just the other day switched from IE to Firefox and WOW what an idiot I was for not doing that sooner...

But I'm confused. These things I currently understand to be true from my reading:

 * The Mozilla Suite is no longer developed/supported.
 * There is a project to integrate Sunbird with Thunderbird shceduled to release something mid 2005 (soon). In the meantime there is the Calendar extension to Thunderbird and/or Firefox.

Now, I'm trying to organise my use of IT in a sane manner, rather than have everything all over the place.

How do I make the most of what I have in terms of software here? For example, I can't answer the following questions currently:

 * Should I stick with Sunbird and wait for the foundation to release an integration update? Or should I install the calendar extension?  And if I install the extension, should I plug it into Firefox or Thunderbird or both?  Is there a difference?

 * I feel I'm right in saying that there's no way, currently, for me to tell Thunderbird and Firefox of each other's existence on my machine. What integration tricks am I missing?  How can I make them work together?  Do I download the now defunct Mozilla suite (surely not)?

Any help greatly appreciated. I seem unable to get any sense out of Google and I'm getting a severe headache. --bodnotbod 16:26, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

 * For most users of the programs, their being "integrated" into a suite or available as a bunch of programs is largely one of convenience (and disk space). Firefox (and thunderbird) came about when people complained that in order to get the browser they wanted, they had to download the mail program, HTML composer, address book, and other stuff.  The actual difference between using Seamonkey (that's the old integrated suite) and Firefox/Thunderbird is pretty slight.  I'd stick to Firefox/Thunderbird because they are used by the majority of users (I guess) and are certainly the main core of ongoing development (so if there is any difference between Seamonkey and FF/TB/SB the latter will probably be the more mature).  As to integration between the two (on windows) the biggest thing is windows' idea of what THE browser is (the program that services http and like URLs) and THE mail program (the program that services mailto: and news: URLs).  In Windows XP this is settable (and is done by the respective installers of both programs).  I believe you said you were using windows 98, and I'm not sure that it allows this setting (it exists in later windows versions largely as a result of the microsoft anti-trust proceedings). -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 16:37, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * As for Sunbird, use whatever works for you today. You won't be tied down to whatever choice you make, and can upgrade when changes are made.  That's one thing you'll get used to when using mozilla stuff (firefox in particular): they rev it pretty fast, so you'll end up downloading new versions pretty regularly. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 17:00, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Getting a different standard browser can be done for Windows 95 and 98 - I've had Opera working this way before on a 95 machine - but IIRC it involves quite a lot of nasty hackwork and the wholesale removal of IE. Not advisable. Shimgray 18:12, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the answers thus far. I think I'm probably going to have to broaden my question to how can I organise, as a philosophy  ;o)  A few applications I've seen try to give you a tool to realise ideas in a book called Getting Things Done that I've not read.

 * Certainly, on reading threads about productivity, I was beginning to think the answer was "stop subscribing to lists/groups/rss feeds that make me read, interesting but, ultimately non-productive things. In particular, on a thread about how to make the best use of your time, the answer that most rang true was "unplug your modem".  ;o)

 * If anyone has any thoughts on resources for this (argh! More reading and the modem's still plugged in)... Hmm.  Yes.  this is a wider issue for me.  I need to think.  And I'll probably be better off doing it with a paper, a pen and a glass of water sitting on some grass. --62.255.64.9 23:56, 12 May 2005 (UTC) (non-logged in Bodnotbod)

 * On this topic I am delighted to have discovered a desktop wiki editor. Note that it doesn't use wiki syntax.  It uses something called Use Mod wiki syntax, so it's not an offline Wikipedia thingy.  However, it's exactly what I wanted as a rough and ready to do list etc. --bodnotbod 14:38, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

 * On the matter of unsubscribing things, I fondly recall a quote I ran across some time ago:
 * "I haven't been on Usenet for very long, but it seems to be a black hole with regards to the time it requires to keep up with it."
 * - it was written in 1983, when reading the entire net was still something one did over the morning coffee... Shimgray 15:00, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

 * It does get very silly. I think I'd be far better off noting the subjects I'm interested in and then just making sure I catch up with developments once every 6 months than finding ways of being informed immediately the next time something innocuous happens.  I have successfully pared down some of the "inputs" and now just want to be careful not to add any others without serious consideration beforehand.  --bodnotbod 20:24, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Problem
This is the only page I could find with a "contact us" type response form. There should be a selection on the webpage by which someone could report a mistake in the Wikpedia.

Speaking of that, I wish to report a mistake. I would have edited the page myself except for a "Catch 22". You are the only ones who would know the correct information:

The page on Yip Harburg (the lyricist) it says he "was" inducted into some Hall of Fame in "2007". That can't be since this is only 2005. But only the Hall of Fame people would know the correct year to insert.

Thanks.

Paul R. Otte - otte at hutchtel dot net

P.S. The Wikipedia is an interesting concept. I haven't seen it before.

 * Welcome to Wikipedia! I have slightly modified your e-mail address as you can see - these pages are replicated to lots of other sites. In the situation you described, you can always click on the article's "talk page" and post your concerns there. Chances are, some Wikipedian will come by and correct it eventually. Also, I would encourage you to get an account to edit the encyclopedia with. Sometimes, edits made by a user from an anonymous IP address are not taken as authoritative as one made under an account name. HappyCamper 16:39, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * That was a malicious addition from an anonymous vandal (he also added that Harburg helped create Fullmetal Alchemist, a recent anime, in 1932). It's been removed. Best, Meelar (talk) 17:01, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Halnor
Hello all. I am very interested and finding out where is Halnor, Prussa or Russia. My Great grandfather came to the USA in 1882 with his wife and son. And it states he was from Halnor Russia. Though there maybe a miss spelling of this name. I believe it must be right or close. Certainly All help would be Welcome news. Thanks, David (question moved by Meelar (talk))

 * I've just gone and dug through the huge gazetteer we have in the reference section here; nothing on Halnor. The best I can find is a "Halver", which would be pronounced vaguely similarly, which was in Prussia - but the old western area of Prussia, in Westphalia. It's about midway between Cologne and Dortmund, south of the Ruhr conurbation; is a map centred on it. By 1882 Prussia didn't exist any more per se, and "Prussia" generally referred to the large areas in the east of the country, but these western regions were often termed Prussia until after WWII.

 * It's often quite difficult to read penmanship that's more than a century old, so the Russia/Prussia confusion is quite understandable. If you have a scan of the documentation, I'd be willing to have a look at it and see if I can give you a second opinion on what it says. Shimgray 14:49, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Are equations copywrited?
I've been working on the Heim theory page, and I've recently added some equations which are already published. What is the status of equations? Are they copywrited? Can I add them to the encyclopedia?

Can I show all the intermediate steps which were omitted in the original papers if I can figure them out myself? I just want to know if I can indeed illustrate a derivation - a correct derivation that would likely not be in print anywhere at the moment. Would adding this constitute a violation of Wikipedia's "No Original Research" policy?

I'm asking these questions because I recognize that edits to this article are considered somewhat borderline controversial. To compound this problem, it is extremely difficult to find information on this theory by Burkhard Heim that is in English. I just wanted to get some advice from the community and see what people think. If this isn't the forum to discuss this, please redirect me to the appropriate one! Thanks for your help! HappyCamper 17:17, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * If this equation shows what the theory is about it should be included. I can't remember those ever being copyrighted. I would not include the derivation though. It'd probably be a long list of formulas most people wouldn't understand which messes up the article's format. Besides, it's likely original research on your part if you try to figure it out. I say stick with the one formula. 82.172.23.66 21:55, 12 May 2005 (UTC) (not logged in MacGyverMagic).
 * I know more about copyrights than patents, but I believe the US Patent office does grant patents on formulas. However, that would only limit ones ability to use the formula in question, not to copy the formula itself.  PedanticallySpeaking 17:43, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Historical and educational map of Colonial America
I need a good map of Colonial America that shows the locations of Alexandria, New France, Spanish Florida, Plymouth Colony, and the Dominion of New England (1688). I've been up and down a couple of search engines looking for such a map, and have yet to find it. Help! --Infobacker 23:03, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Not a great deal of help just now, but your local library should have some kind of historical atlas - poke around in the reference section, or ask the librarian. These are quite common, and surprisingly useful; they simply show maps for given historic periods, and the relevant locations. Otherwise, I guess your best bet is to get a blank map of the area, find maps of where each of them was, and roll your own... Shimgray 23:51, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Colonization and Trade in the New World (based on 18th century charts), National Geographic, Dec. 1977.
 * A Map of the Travels of George Washington (18th century), National Geographic, Jan. 1932.
 * New York and the Lower Hudson
 * Tidewater Virginia
 * Mount Vernon
 * Philadelphia and Vicinity
 * Boston and Vicinity

 * Get on the bus! Go to a library! The winter is gone! Time to go outdoors! -- Toytoy 08:18, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Electoral College & presidential elections
> What is criteria, in other words, how are electoral votes assigned? By > population? If so, how many voters per electoral vote? For study.Thnxs.
 * from "andy popovic"
 * Try Electoral college. 119 23:19, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

the buck stops here
what does this quote mean? what did truman mean by it?

 * Trying to get out of responsibility for something is known as "passing the buck" - you hand the problem on to someone else. When Truman came into power, he wanted to stop the culture of trying to avoid blame and pass responsibility - so he pointed out that he couldn't try and hand a problem on to anyone else. The idea was that no matter how much the buck had been passed, it'd have to stop at his desk - someone took ultimate responsibility for every decision made. (As operating principles for an administration go, I've heard worse) Shimgray 07:04, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
 * The phrase "passing the buck" derives from the movement of the dealer's marker in poker. I have added an article) to explain this and its origin. --Theo (Talk) 23:10, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Its now on pass the buck --Wonderfool t(c)e) 23:38, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

the crusades
i looked through the crusades page on wikipedia and did not find what i was looking for, so please don't link me to there. =)

this whole curiosity was sparked by an article i read about hollywood's new crappy epic, kingdom of heaven - where the critic claimed the Christians were made out to be the "bad guys" and the Muslims the victims.

I know the Christians killed MANY people in the crusades - but how many? how many jews? how many muslims?

did the muslims kill many, as well? jews? christians?

how many people died from the crusades?

ultimately who was in the wrong (who were the bad guys)?

...any "crusades" buffs please help! thanks so much!

 * "ultimately who was in the wrong (who were the bad guys)?" Any of the parties who committed killings during this periods were bad guys in my opinion. Unless they were attacked first, in which case I find defending your own life quite reasonable. Sorry, can't help you with the numbers. Mgm|(talk) 08:35, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, without getting into the muddiness of modern politics, there are theoretical justifications for a policy of preemption. Also, defenders haven't always abided by certain standards of behavior when dealing with POWs.  That having been said, I think there are very very few cases in the history of the world in which you can definitively say that someone was unequivocally the good guy or the bad guy.  Almost everyone has a rationalization for their actions, that, from the correct perspective, cannot be construed as purely evil.--CVaneg 20:41, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

 * This page could help. It has estimates for many historical wars and genoiceds. it doesn't touch the crusades that spefically but it gives soem numbers. Jeltz talk  16:01, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd just like to note that the movie doesn't make *all* Christians out to be the bad guys, but see the articles on Guy de Lusignan and Raynald of Chatillon, which are pretty accurate vis-a-vis the movie. 66.60.159.190 17:49, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

 * It's pretty much impossible to know how many people died...there are often numbers given for the size of an army, but ancient and medieval authors almost always exaggerate that sort of thing. For example, our Battle of Hattin article suggests there were about 22 000 crusaders at the battle and only about 3000 survivors (Hattin is depicted in the movie, at least the aftermath of it). But who knows. There's no way to know how many people fought and died over the 200 years of the crusades.

 * Who were the "bad guys"? It's not really that simple. Check out the background part of First Crusade. The crusaders did invade Syria/Palestine for apparently no reason (if you're a Muslim living there at the time), but obviously there is a lot more going on that that. In terms of the specific period of the movie (which is apparently 1184-1187), as 66.60.159.190 suggests, Guy and Raynald are traditionally seen as the aggressors, at least on the crusaders' side. Adam Bishop 17:56, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

The other thing to remember wrt. the Crusades is that it wasn't just Christian vs. Muslim. There was a lot of Christian on Christian violence, that is Catholic on Orthodox violence. There were many Orthodox Christians living, albeit in a somewhat oppressed manner, in Muslim controlled territories that were killed (either directly or indirectly) by Crusaders. Rangek 18:44, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

Implementing SHA-384/SHA-512 in Delphi
I'm currently working on creating an implementation of FIPS 180-2 (SHA-1 and SHA-2) in Delphi (for use in my own applications. So far, it's going pretty well - I have SHA-1, SHA-224 and SHA-256 working now (using the string "abc" as the test case, as listed in the specification).

However, SHA-384 and SHA-512 don't work properly, and I can't seem to find out what's wrong - I've checked and double-checked my implementation against the one mentioned in the standard, and I can't find a difference.

My current code is listed here: function TForm1.CalculateLongSHA2(Filename:string;SHA384:Boolean):string; var h0,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,h7:int64; File1:file of byte; s:string; t:string[8]; r:byte; i:integer; a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,s0,s1,maj,ch,t1,t2:int64; bits:Int64; w:array[0..79] of int64; const k:array[0..79] of int64= ($428A2F98D728AE22,$7137449123EF65CD,$B5C0FBCFEC4D3B2F,$E9B5DBA58189DBBC,    $3956C25BF348B538,$59F111F1B605D019,$923F82A4AF194F9B,$AB1C5ED5DA6D8118,     $D807AA98A3030242,$12835B0145706FBE,$243185BE4EE4B28C,$550C7DC3D5FFB4E2,     $72BE5D74F27B896F,$80DEB1FE3B1696B1,$9BDC06A725C71235,$C19BF174CF692694,     $E49B69C19EF14AD2,$EFBE4786384F25E3,$0FC19DC68B8CD5B5,$240CA1CC77AC9C65,     $2DE92C6F592B0275,$4A7484AA6EA6E483,$5CB0A9DCBD41FBD4,$76F988DA831153B5,     $983E5152EE66DFAB,$A831C66D2DB43210,$B00327C898FB213F,$BF597FC7BEEF0EE4,     $C6E00BF33DA88FC2,$D5A79147930AA725,$06CA6351E003826F,$142929670A0E6E70,     $27B70A8546D22FFC,$2E1B21385C26C926,$4D2C6DFC5AC42AED,$53380D139D95B3DF,     $650A73548BAF63DE,$766A0ABB3C77B2A8,$81C2C92E47EDAEE6,$92722C851482353B,     $A2BFE8A14CF10364,$A81A664BBC423001,$C24B8B70D0F89791,$C76C51A30654BE30,     $D192E819D6EF5218,$D69906245565A910,$F40E35855771202A,$106AA07032BBD1B8, $19A4C116B8D2D0C8,$1E376C085141AB53,$2748774CDF8EEB99,$34B0BCB5E19B48A8, $391C0CB3C5C95A63,$4ED8AA4AE3418ACB,$5B9CCA4F7763E373,$682E6FF3D6B2B8A3, $748F82EE5DEFB2FC,$78A5636F43172F60,$84C87814A1F0AB72,$8CC702081A6439EC, $90BEFFFA23631E28,$A4506CEBDE82BDE9,$BEF9A3F7B2C67915,$C67178F2E372532B, $CA273ECEEA26619C,$D186B8C721C0C207,$EADA7DD6CDE0EB1E,$F57D4F7FEE6ED178, $06F067AA72176FBA,$0A637DC5A2C898A6,$113F9804BEF90DAE,$1B710B35131C471B, $28DB77F523047D84,$32CAAB7B40C72493,$3C9EBE0A15C9BEBC,$431D67C49C100D4C, $4CC5D4BECB3E42B6,$597F299CFC657E2A,$5FCB6FAB3AD6FAEC,$6C44198C4A475817); begin if SHA384 then begin  h0:=$CBBB9D5DC1059ED8;   h1:=$629A292A367CD507;   h2:=$9159015A3070DD17;   h3:=$152FECD8F70E5939;   h4:=$67332667FFC00B31;   h5:=$8EB44A8768581511;   h6:=$DB0C2E0D64F98FA7;   h7:=$47B5481DBEFA4FA4; end else begin   h0:=$6A09E667F3BCC908;   h1:=$BB67AE8584CAA73B;   h2:=$3C6EF372FE94F82B;   h3:=$A54FF53A5F1D36F1;   h4:=$510E527FADE682D1;   h5:=$9B05688C2B3E6C1F;   h6:=$1F83D9ABFB41BD6B;   h7:=$5BE0CD19137E2179; end; AssignFile(File1,Filename); Reset(File1); while not eof(File1) do begin   s:=;   for i:=1 to 128 do begin     Read(File1,r);     s:=s+Chr(r);     if eof(File1) then begin       s:=s+chr($80);       while Length(s) mod 128 <> 112 do s:=s+chr($00);       bits:=FileSize(file1)*8;       //no 128-bit integer available, so assume the 64 most significant bits are 0'' s:=s+chr($00)+chr($00)+chr($00)+chr($00)+chr($00)+chr($00)+chr($00)+chr($00); //Writing as big endian s:=s+chr(byte((bits and $FF00000000000000) shr 56)); s:=s+chr(byte((bits and $FF000000000000) shr 48)); s:=s+chr(byte((bits and $FF0000000000) shr 40)); s:=s+chr(byte((bits and $FF00000000) shr 32)); s:=s+chr(byte((bits and $FF000000) shr 24)); s:=s+chr(byte((bits and $FF0000) shr 16)); s:=s+chr(byte((bits and $FF00) shr 8)); s:=s+chr(byte((bits and $FF))); break; end; end; for i:=0 to 15 do begin t:=Copy(s,i*8+1,8); //for some reason, Delphi doesn't like me writing Ord(t[1]) shl 56..., so using a workaround w[i]:=(Ord(t[1]) shl 24 + Ord(t[2]) shl 16 + Ord(t[3]) shl 8 + Ord(t[4])) shl 32+ Ord(t[5]) shl 24 + Ord(t[6]) shl 16 + Ord(t[7]) shl 8 + Ord(t[8]); end; for i:=16 to 79 do begin s0:=RotateRight(w[i-15],1) xor RotateRight(w[i-15],8) xor (w[i-15] shr 7); s1:=RotateRight(w[i-2],19) xor RotateRight(w[i-2],61) xor (w[i-2] shr 6); w[i]:=w[i-16]+s0+w[i-7]+s1; end; a:=h0; b:=h1; c:=h2; d:=h3; e:=h4; f:=h5; g:=h6; h:=h7; for i:=0 to 79 do begin s0:=RotateRight(a,28) xor RotateRight(a,34) xor RotateRight(a,39); maj:=(a and b) xor (a and c) xor (b and c); s1:=RotateRight(e,14) xor RotateRight(e,18) xor RotateRight(e,41); ch:=(e and f) xor ((not e) and g); t1:=h+s1+ch+k[i]+w[i]; t2:=s0+maj; h:=g; g:=f; f:=e; e:=d+t1; d:=c; c:=b; b:=a; a:=t1+t2; end; h0:=a+h0; h1:=b+h1; h2:=c+h2; h3:=d+h3; h4:=e+h4; h5:=f+h5; h6:=g+h6; h7:=h+h7; end; CloseFile(file1); Result:=Inttohex(h0,16)+Inttohex(h1,16)+Inttohex(h2,16)+Inttohex(h3,16)+ Inttohex(h4,16)+Inttohex(h5,16); if not SHA384 then Result:=Result+Inttohex(h6,16)+Inttohex(h7,16); end; function TForm1.RotateRight(bytes:Int64;amount:byte):Int64; begin Result:= (bytes shr amount) + (bytes shl (64-amount)); end;

I've left out the code that double-checks if an extra chunk was used, since that's not used for my test case (there are also quite a few places to optimize, but I'm postponing that until this works). Anyone knowledgeable in this area who can help out? --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 06:24, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

 * There are much better sites where you might get someone to check your software for you. If you haven't found any, can I recommend http://www.joelonsoftware.com as a good one. DJ Clayworth 15:59, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks to the clever heads at borland.public.delphi.language.delphi.general. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 20:47, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Questions about Sudoku
Having spent much of the day staring (in vain) at today's Sudoku puzzle in The Guardian, I found myself pondering. On a standard 9X9 grid, what would be the minimum number of "givens" needed to define a unique solution? And what would be the maximum possible number of givens that would allow more than one solution? --OpenToppedBus 16:11, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

 * The maximum possible is 77 = 9 * 9 - 4 - If you have any rectangle in which you have to fill the corners with two numbers, then you will not be able to distinguish between the two mirror images. The minimum... Um, no idea.-Fangz 16:39, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

 * According to http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=348348&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=# "It has been said that in a classic 81-square Sudoku grid, the fewest number of squares that can be filled in by the creator for the reader to have any chance of finishing the puzzle is 19." Jooler 12:39, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I have seen Sudokus with 20 "givens" - it would be interesting to see a "valid" Sudoku with only 19 givens. The majority of puzzles have 22 to 26 givens, with 2 to 4 in each 3x3 block, although easy puzzles can have 30 or more givens. Gandalf61 08:53, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

 * Go to http://www.sudoku-xls.com/puzarc.html and look at the puzzles rated Almost Impossible - those only have 19 givens. (At time of writing, there are two of these.) --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 16:28, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

 * On Talk:Sudoku there is an example of a 18-given valid sudoku. --Robert Merkel 10:49, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

European Union.
Critically examine the contention that the principle behind the formation of the EU had their foundation laid in congress system? What are the principles?

 * See European Union and History of the European Union. Sorry, the essay won't write itself ;) Good luck, and best wishes. Meelar (talk) 16:59, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Photo copyrights
Dear Sir,

I am 14 years old student, do not understand legal talk, Can I simply copy photos on the internet. Request permission to use several photos on you site for the purpose of publishing a set of educational book cards deipcting African American Achivers. there will be approximately 20, images (500 sets) which will be sold at a cost equal to production and research costs. Please advise and thanks,

Example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Love

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Louis

 * Well, each image has it's own copyright information on it. If you click on the picture you are interested in, then it will usually take you to a page that details this info.  Since you want to use such a large number of images, you should probably get an adult to help you read over all the different licenses in use on Wikipedia.  Each has it's own particular requirements regarding commercial use.  Also, you should never post your full name and address on the internet and especially not on Wikipedia since the information gets replicated many times over in many places and can be used in unfavorable ways.  I hope this helps. --CVaneg 00:13, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Let's see... is public domain, as is  and . This means you can use these for whatever you want.  however, has a stated copyright policy, that I think prohibits what you want to do.--Fangz 17:19, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Who's this celebrity?
http://tinypic.com/52j7e9

The third picture on there--the female celebrity, born 1981 (so she'd be 24)..who IS that? I havn't been able to figure it out, and I've been wracking my brain about it for like an hour. @_@

 * Could be Jessica Alba. Browse through the rest of Category:1981 births if that doesn't turn out to be right.  (I obviously didn't get very far...) ; )  Postdlf 01:36, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

What about the rest of them? I'm pretty sure the third one is Britney Spears now (finally got some info from somewhere else.)