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February 24

info on montreal

is there any stores like marc emery's in the montreal area

Not sure what that is, but www.yellowpages.com may have an analogue in Canada; or maybe it even covers there, I haven't checked. That's the first place I'd look; both for store name and then for type, so you have some idea of what else might be there.209.244.30.221 (talk) 19:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

The Canadian version is [1]. Thanks, Genius101^Guestbook 21:26, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Re-Naming of a Non-Profit

I would like to rename a non-profit corporation that will provide housing services through multi-family and single family affordable housing opportunities, but may also be used for nursing homes, retirement centers, governmental housing (military), or hospitals. Each of these will be under their own corporate entity, but will be ultimately fall under the umbrella of the approved non-profit. Initially, the name Phoenix Foundation or Phoenix Housing was discussed for its meaning of rising from the ashes, but this name has been used quite a number of times and would be very difficult to get approved.

Your help and input would be greatly appreciated and would help this entity in making the first steps on a very solid footing.

Thank you in advance.--RobertNOP1 (talk) 04:06, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

How about a simple modification: "The Phoenix Egg Foundation" ? SteveBaker (talk) 04:13, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Phoenix Nestbuilders (?) 76.97.245.5 (talk) 10:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

How about The Bennu Foundation? Would probably be too obscure a reference though. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 13:07, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure "rising from the ashes" presents a positive image for a housing services foundation. I would suggest something involving stability and shelter instead, but I don't have any prepared names. – 74  18:34, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

It was the spontaneously busting into flames part that bothered me! SteveBaker (talk) 21:22, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

What country/region are we talking about? --Milkbreath (talk) 18:40, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

There only seems to be the Phoenix in Arizona when it comes to places.76.97.245.5 (talk) 16:24, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Not really. And even if that were the case, there's nothing in this question to indicate that this corporation is named after a place. Tomdobb (talk) 16:55, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Oops. My google map apparently had myopia. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 18:42, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

This is from RobertNOP1 - Thank you all for your input, however, I am primarily asking for help in finding a new name and gave Phoenix as example only. Anyone eles think of an appropriate name. I like the Bennu, but this may give some people problems with the exact definition and intent for affordable housing projects, health care project, etc . . . I would like to find a name that would give people the impression of a new beginning, hope, building —Preceding unsigned comment added by RobertNOP1 (talk • contribs) 18:17, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

comic book site

My friend is planning on promoting a comic series by posting a one-shot teaser on the internet to attract readers and probably publishers. Do you know any sites that could freely host these images without messing up the resolution or copyright issues?--Lenticel ^(talk) 04:31, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Comic Genesis claims to be a free comic hosting service run by Keenspot. Their copyright policy seems sensible, but I have no idea what resolutions are supported. – 74  05:27, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll talk to him about this.--Lenticel ^(talk) 12:30, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

looking for documention

Is there documented information there could be a chance a GRANDCHILD could have scheuermann's disease from grandfather rated 100% Agent Orange. Not spina bifida. I,his mother, also have back problems including spinal problems. I found some info on the children able to have problems from deformities to death. Just looking for possibility of documentation on son or daughter being able to paa something onto their child. If the dioxin and other herbicides could be past down.

Thank You,

Pkatie

This is not medical advice, but I suspect the possibility of toxins passed from father to child to be extremely remote—there just isn't enough transfer of material in sperm. Genetic mutations, however, can be transfered (transferring genetic material is the point of sperm, after all) so exposure to mutagens might cause inherited genetic damage. Again, we cannot provide medical advice; please consult a medical practitioner for questions about your specifc case. – 74  05:37, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

You definitely need to consult a professional. For example your comment "rated 100% Agent Orange" makes no sense to me but a professional will be able to ascertain what you mean and whether your understanding of the grandfather's condition is accurate Nil Einne (talk) 13:41, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

OP wasn't looking for advice but rather for an other documented case. People here [2] might be able to point you towards a reliable source. There is a birth defects registry, but that seems to have some commercial background. The combination "Agent Orange" and "Scheuermann's disease" gets only 155 ghits and a lot of those are junk. Since we can assume that, if there is a relation, many of the remaining are second generation cases, it seems unlikely there's a third generation one burred there. Give it a try. (You might have more luck with "Osteochondrosis" and "dioxins" or "TCDD".) Spina bifida is well documented for second generation effect. Scheuermann's disease is listed as "multifactorial with unknown causes". (That means they don't know what causes it but are pretty certain that several factors have to come together for the condition to present itself.) There's at least this one report that indicates there are occurrences of father to son transmission. [3] Even if you do find some other cases it may still be within the usual statistical variation and doesn't necessary help to establish a cause and effect relation. Someone with access to medical databases and journal articles might be able to help you further. BTW: If you are asking for help finding information or reference sources it's not good to include personal case history here. That will make people think you are looking for medical advice which we can't help you with.76.97.245.5 (talk) 18:38, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

VIDEO KILLED THE ARTICLE

wikipedia needs to create a youtube section for educational material. It will will create more depth to your website and gathering information will be more efficient. I believe that it's faster to watch a video than to read an article, videos also depict information with more depth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.93.158.3 (talk) 07:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

And your question is? Richard Avery (talk) 08:07, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

• The Wikimedia Commons stores videos as well as pictures. It is just harder to get videos because of copyright issues and then I'm not even mentioning the fact that editing video in a wiki fashion is a nightmare. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:43, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

The Reference Desk isn't for suggestions about things Wikipedia should do; if you have a suggestion for Wikipedia you could post it at Wikipedia:Village pump. This is divided up by topic and you should read the introductory text there. --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 11:25, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I would dispute that in terms of information, videos are more efficient. Text is an infinitely better organizer of complicated ideas and content, and you can navigate it quite quickly. Video, on the other hand, basically forces you to watch it straight though, at the pace of the person who created it, and usually cannot sustain complicated diction or grammar. Not to mention the whole difficulty of wikifying video concepts. There are some things videos are better at than text—but for most purposes of an encyclopedia, text should be primary, while images, sounds, videos, etc., are secondary, ways of giving certain types of evidence that text cannot give very well (how something sounds, how something looks, how something appears while in motion, etc.). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Example 1

Example 2

One example, compare these two diagrams showing the same physical process. Which of them is quicker and easier to understand? In my opinion the static one wins hands down—same amount of information (if not more), delivered near instantly, while the animated one takes an unnecessarily long amount of time to show something that a few arrows and our clever visual forebrains could put together in an instant otherwise. (Barring the fact that the animation on the right has some scientific/conceptual problems as well... which are impossible to correct without the original source that produced the animation, another strike against the idea.) In short, animation for its own sake—without attention to what animation can do better than text—is a horrible, horrible, horrible idea, and one which is for a number of practical reasons incompatible with the requirements of Wikipedia (easy to edit collaboratively, easy to cross-reference, etc.). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:22, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the OP is talking about animation. More about live action video and other such things. Personally I agree with you, text is usually far better. But I also read this [4] a while back so it appears the OP isn't the only one who feels that way. Kids these days, eh? :-P N.B. I'm not saying we should follow the OP's suggestion Nil Einne (talk) 13:33, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Videos may support the written word (and that's how Wikipedia uses it) - but:

• You can't efficiently search video (try searching for all occurrances of "Deuterium-tritium fusion" in a bunch of videos).
• The audio track is essentially impossible to edit, so you can't easily correct errors of fact, grammar, pronunciation without re-recording the entire track.
• You can't conveniently add footnotes and references to a video.
• Video is a linear media - I can't quickly scroll down to the "History" section of the Oxygen article and find out who discovered it without waiting through a 20 minute presentation about stuff that I don't care about.
• Video is costly to store, costly to stream, etc. I can pull a bunch of text onto my Kindle and read it - despite lack of color or fast screen updates.
• Text can easily be cut-and-pasted seamlessly into another document.
• Text can be edited right there in your browser with no additional tools.

Take (for example) my article on the Mini car. Since November 2006, it's been edited close to 1000 times by about 150 people. If each person who improved the article just wanted to insert a tiny bit of additional information or change the phrasing or correct a small error - how could that be possible AT ALL with video? Suppose that after reading a book on the subject I discover that the car was manufactured for a short period during 1968 in Portugal...how could I add that into a video? Firstly, I'm adding 10 seconds of new material...but I don't have video of the car being made in Portugal to create 10 seconds of additional material. Next, my voice has a british accent and perhaps the narrator of the 'video article' speaks with an Australian accent...the change of voice over just one sentence would be glaring and horrible...I'd probably have to re-record the entire article.

No - a video version of Wikipedia would be unmaintainable and almost impossible to search or to quickly dip into for an occasional fact. Your suggestion sucks in every possible way! SteveBaker (talk) 13:38, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I just opened IE and as I thought the gif is static. Text is currently superior to video for users. Sure videos are great if you have a connection that can handle them but text will always load. With text I can jump to the section in an article that I want rather than having to wait and fiddle with a video to find what I need. That's assuming that I don't want to read the whole thing. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 13:41, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I just opened IE (and am typing this in it now). It's not static although it does have problems (artifacts/ghosting) here. Looking at the image page with the original GIF it appears fine. Are you sure you're not using some ancient version of IE like IE6? IE7 has been out for over 2 years now and was long overdue (IE6 was ancient even then) so you really should upgrade if you are. Speaking of SB's problem re: voice, we do have spoken versions of some articles but they suffer from the problems SB describes. Nil Einne (talk) 14:48, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Yep. I forgot again. I was using the one work computer that still has IE6. Nobody uses it for Internet access, some minor work related stuff and then only with Firefox. The only reason I left 6 on it was because I can't get 7 to support Inuktitut syllabics and it gives me one computer that can look at the odd page that is set up for IE. And some pages are still like that. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 20:45, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm kind of forced, aren't I? I've got several sites that don't load well in Chrome or Firefox, so I have to use IE6. Installing IE7 would bring my computer to a grinding halt due to memory bloat and space on harddrive issues. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:00, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Your objections are interesting and I think the OP's suggestion is a good one. Isn't SVG supposed to be able to do animation with Javascript or SMIL? Then you could do animations like "Example 2" and they'd be correctable and editable by anybody with a text editor instead of inaccessible to anyone without external tools, or in the case of more complex animations the original project files. Even if SVG animation isn't supported by browsers, mediwiki could render it as gif, like it currently renders SVGs as PNG. .froth. (talk) 18:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Videos almost always have extremely annoying music. --Milkbreath (talk) 13:47, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

No, absolutely the worst idea for an "improvement". Just take a look at some of those "how to..." or "instructional" videos you can find on Youtube an you will instantly see it is a very bad idea. Astronaut (talk) 15:11, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

"Worst" is a little too superlative, don't ya think? I mean, hypothetically, "Now that we have experience creating an online encyclopedia, I suggest we delete all the articles and start over from scratch." would be just a bit worse, right? – 74  18:45, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Can you be "too superlative"? --Tango (talk) 18:57, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Nothing succeeds like excess (Oscar Wilde). -- JackofOz (talk) 21:33, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I meant to say "absolutely the worst idea for an "improvement" - so far."  :-)) Astronaut (talk) 23:30, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

While I agree that text is far better, at present, I wonder how many of these shortcomings of video are inherent and how many are only limitations of current technology. For example, I can easily imagine video that would allow you to jump to any section or subsection immediately, using a table of contents. StuRat (talk) 21:44, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

UK and US Stock Markets during the war

What happened to the stock-markets during World War 1 & 2? Were they closed/suspended or were people still making a living by trading on the exchange? What about people who owned stock? 194.221.133.226 (talk) 13:05, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

According to the article NYSE, the market was closed for a little more than 4 months in ww1 and not closed at all during ww2 Phil_burnstein (talk) 17:13, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

The LSE was "closed from the end of July until the new year" in 1914. and "closed for 6 days and reopens on 7 September. The floor of the House closes for only one more day, in 1945 due to damage from a V2 rocket – trading then continues in the basement." in 1939, according to their official history. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 17:24, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Paradox

You could ruin your perfection if you commit a mistake but if you're perfect in the first place you wouldn't commit a mistake, thus could you in no way ruin your perfection? 94.196.9.90 (talk) 16:56, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

So you're saying that perfect people can't stop being perfect because in doing so they'd be doing something that isn't perfect? It doesn't really follow because 'perfect' things stop being perfect all the time - in fact, most things are 'perfect' until they go wrong. But I'm no philosopher. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 17:20, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

You are confusing two kinds of perfection. One calls someone perfect because they have never made a mistake. The other calls someone perfect if they are inherently incapable of making a mistake. A perfect person of the first kind can make a mistake and become imperfect. A perfect person of the second kind clearly cannot. DJ Clayworth (talk) 18:20, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see a paradox, all you're saying is that being perfect implies you are perfect. That's a tautology, not a paradox. --Tango (talk) 18:38, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Yep - it's people who are always inconsistent that you need to worry about. SteveBaker (talk) 21:18, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh boy that's so close to something I read once that I cannot find anywhere, or maybe it was on TV. Something like "At least I always lie. It's people who aren't consistent you have to watch out for." Please tell me you know what it's from! .froth. (talk) 21:38, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I just made it up...although presumably other people also just made it up. SteveBaker (talk) 03:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I think froth is thinking of Jack Sparrow's quote from Pirates of the Caribbean: "Me? I'm dishonest. And a dishonest man, you can always count on to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for. Because you can never predict when they're going to do something... incredibly... stupid." (It's what sprang to my mind first too, even though it's not really the same as what Steve said.) Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 07:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you I would have never remembered .froth. (talk) 17:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Practice makes perfect, but nobody's perfect, so why practice? I am a nobody so therefore I'm perfect.--Lenticel ^(talk) 01:43, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

You might be interested in the Free will article. --JGGardiner (talk) 01:54, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

"You could ruin your perfection if you commit a mistake but if you're perfect in the first place you wouldn't commit a mistake, thus could you in no way ruin your perfection?" That is correct. If someone or something makes just one mistake, that person or thing is not perfect. We might use the phrase almost perfect. The reverse is also true: a person or thing that is perfect cannot make even one mistake. If there were a way to prove that a machine were perfect, for example, you could indirectly prove that it would never make a mistake in futuro. A machine might appear to be perfect until it made one mistake. Note the word "appear" here; the machine would not be proven to be perfect in this case. If you wrote about it later, you could still say, "The machine worked perfectly for two years."

If someone or something makes just one mistake, that person or thing is not perfect. - OK, who's perfect? Not me, not you - because we make mistakes all the time. But what about a tiny baby. A baby is incapable of making a mistake. Thus, it's perfect (by your definition). But somewhere along the track, it loses its perfection, not only by becoming capable of making mistakes, but because it actually makes them. The paradox is that it would never learn - anything - if it did not acquire the capacity to make mistakes. Then it spends the rest of its life in a fruitless quest to regain the perfection it once had. But it learns rather a lot along the way. What's better - to be perfect but know nothing; or be imperfect and get to learn a lot? I know which option I'd choose. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Suppose that you were perfect and you were delivering a speech. The fact that you were truly perfect would prevent you from making a single mistake. At the same time, you and your audience would know that you were not really perfect if you made just one mistake in your speech, even if you had delivered speeches for ten years and never stammered once.75.89.22.45 (talk) 02:17, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

February 25

Games not played

Why do some people buy games just to leave them untouched? Also, if they have never touched the game, how do they know so much about that game? Yes, I know they might have played the game before, but what if they haven't? And I know they leave games untouched so they can sell them in mint condition, but why does the original buyer buy the games if they won't even touch them? JCI (talk) 02:10, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

So they can sell them in mint condition. It's not a game to them, it's an investment. -mattbuck (Talk) 03:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

An extreme example on eBay, the very rare Super Mario RPG. Useight (talk) 03:37, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Why is that game so rare? The article doesn't really say. And I'd be more convinced it was woth $1000 if the bidding had gone up to that, rather than it just being a buy it now. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 10:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

And I know they leave games untouched so they can sell them in mint condition, but why does the original buyer buy the games if they won't even touch them? You're answering your own question. Tomdobb (talk) 13:54, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your question is exactly, but I have occasionally bought games with the intention of playing them, then never get around to it. (I don't play them immediately, then newer, better games come out in the interim.) Leaving them still in their shrink-wrap. I've done this a lot less since I got a Gamefly Account. APL (talk) 14:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Quite a few have also been gifts (e.g. from relatives) at some point. Dealers then either pick them up at garage sales or from "game swap" places. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 14:20, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

For me and my family, it's mostly gifts of games we already have...the duplicates are in mint condition because we never opened them. Also, many people in the games industry (I'm a game programmer) get freebie copies of games they've worked on. Free copies are often given to people who were only involved in the most tangential manner. Anyway - most of those copies end up being unopened and in mint condition simply because if you've spent the last few years of your existence trying to get the darned thing working well - the very last thing you want to do at the end is to play it at home! SteveBaker (talk) 17:08, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The Best Custom Online News Source

I have been using Google News pretty religiously for the past several years. I like the fact that there isn't an editor making news decisions, that nearly any news story published has a chance of making it, and that stories are displayed based, somewhat, on popularity. I also like that it doesn't really have any huge geographical biases (like say... CNN...), and instead displays only what you ask for.

I do have some sticking points. Firstly, local coverage is very difficult. Setting up a section for "Vancouver" or "Canada" often just yields the most popular stories that have those words in them, not the news that's most relevant to people who live there. And, although the layout is customizable, I think there could be better ways of delivering the content. Can anyone recommend some good, free, online news source/aggregators that have the benefits of delivering stories from the huge array of sources that Google News has, but maybe offers more features and better editing and story filtering. More generally, what sources or tools do you use to make sure that you keep up with international, local and (important to me) business news? NByz (talk) 08:01, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's a bit more labor intensive but you could get an RSS feed aggregation program and pull RSS feeds from your favorite web sites: Local, national, and international. You may be inundated with all the various stories from each periodical/web site. Dismas|^(talk) 09:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Your concerns will largely be addressed by looking at the website of an actual news organization, that isn't restricted to web publication. I've found http://new.bbc.co.uk to be excellent, but given your mention of Canada you may find http://www.cbc.ca/news to be more relevant. These organizations do have news editors and do make decisions based on something other than popularity. And while they aren't customizable they do have region-specific sections. DJ Clayworth (talk) 14:20, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Try [5]76.97.245.5 (talk) 16:02, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

His concerns will not be addressed at all. I am sure he is quite aware already that individual news sites exist, but like me he may feel that there is no single site that is satisfactory. Luwilt (talk) 16:40, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, my ideal would be unlimited sources (like Google News) but with unbiased editting (like no media source I'm aware of...) Maybe some HAL 9000-like super-computer?NByz (talk) 08:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Mumbai query

what is dupping ground, and where are dupping in mumbai location? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.182.144.191 (talk) 13:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I have added a header to differentiate your question from the one above, but I'm afraid I don't understand what you are asking for. Could you explain in more detail what you mean by "dupping ground" (perhaps "dumping"?) so we can try to help you? Thanks. Karenjc 13:34, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

If you are referring to landfill sites, here is a great page to get your information. Fribbler (talk) 14:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec) See "Landfill". There is a dumping-ground in Mumbai at 19°08′13″N 72°50′23″E. --Milkbreath (talk) 14:55, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

U-Haul rates

Has anyone ever moved from one state to another and rented a U-Haul? I am moving from an apartment in Pennsylvania to New Jersey. I am already living in Jersey, but need to get my things back in PA (sofa, bed, desk). I figure I will only need one of these bad boys. Does anyone have an idea of the cost? It's less than a 200 mile round trip and I'd only need it for one day. Also, should I rent the truck in Jersey or can I rent it in PA and drop it off in Jersey? Which would be most cost effective? Also, what is the deposit amount? Any help or ideas of cost would be most appreciated. --Endlessdan and his problem 14:37, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Not to be a dick, but you could try calling U-Haul. Tomdobb (talk) 14:52, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Or click on "reserve now" at the link for that "bad boy" you gave us, enter all the information we don't have in the green window (left-hand panel) and follow the thread from there. They'll quote you a price right there. If you're not in the boonies a pod [6] might come cheaper if you don't have s.o. to drive your car up. They don't service everywhere. They'll e-mail you a quote. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 15:14, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Before renting it, you should determine whether your auto insurance will cover any damage to the truck. U-Haul will try to sell you insurance for around $100, so you'll need to know whether you need it. --Sean 16:02, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

What percentage of men remove their pubic hair in some way?

I'm just wondering: is it normal for men to remove some/all of their pubic hair? The articles pubic hair and hair removal give no information as to the incidence of pubic hair removal amongst men. And what about women, what proportion of them remove some or all of their pubic hair? It's actually quite an interesting topic, although would be kinda taboo as a subject therefore difficult to estimate reliably unless surveys have been done... but have such surveys taken place?--HootlePooch (talk) 17:46, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure there's a lot of variation across age, race, culture, etc. I wouldn't call it abnormal, although it may not be exceptionally common. I'm sure Maxim or Men's Health or Cosmo has done some survey on this, unfortunately I am Google-less in my current state, but it shouldn't be terribly hard to track something down. Tomdobb (talk) 18:10, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Does "Google-less" mean you were over-zealous with the hair removal? Cycle~ (talk) 18:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I imagine so. But I can't find anything on it at the moment.--HootlePooch (talk) 18:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Conversation with my barber:

"Hey Joe, can you take a little off the top? And trim up my sideburns a bit. Oh, and tidy up my balls for me too, wouldya? It's getting a little hairy down there." --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:18, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Heh. I mostly cut my own hair, but when I do go to the barber (my contribution to keeping the economy flowing), I trust them to know their job, so I've rarely given instructions any more definite than "The same as it is now, only shorter" (which they knew anyway, but you've got to say something). However, in view of Jayron's comment, I'm going to be a little more precise from now on. :) -- JackofOz (talk) 20:14, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Here's an actual source, but it certainly doesn't cover much   ;-)   – 74  19:26, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. But I would like more actual information. And I'm not talking about specialised treatment, really - merely simple removal of hair.--HootlePooch (talk) 20:46, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

According to this article: "The Flinders University survey showed that 60 per cent of heterosexual men under 50 removed some or all of their pubic, back or buttock hair at least occasionally, with almost a third doing it weekly, fortnightly or monthly." – 74  22:44, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Throwing back hair in with pubes on a survey seems a bit odd. Not wanting to look like a sasquatch isn't the same as wanting to look like a member of the Vienna Boy's Choir, after all. StuRat (talk) 21:31, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm curious what exemplar you would choose to represent the third category. Anyway, the survey results were published in Body Image and are available here (not free), so I don't know if that was the format of the survey or some artful interpretation by the article writer. – 74  23:33, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

A peach so moldy that it's growing "hair" ? StuRat (talk) 16:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Interesting to know, thanks. It's just 'cause I always kinda assumed that the only place that straight men were supposed to have hair removed was on their face, neck, and scalp. But evidently not...--HootlePooch (talk) 23:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Straight men will do just about anything if they think it will get women to touch their penis. Picture, if you will, a woman who said "You know, I really dig it when guys have cleanly shaven balls." 95% of straight men, upon being told that by a perspective date, would probably be figuring out whether to use shaving cream or an electric for the job. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 03:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Interesting that this should be asked now. Seven Days just came out with their bi-yearly Sex Issue. For the issue, they always put together a survey for people to fill out. One of the questions was, of course, about pubic hair. You can view the entire article here. Dismas|^(talk) 03:31, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Odd that there's a question about preferences (in a partner) but not about practices. —Tamfang (talk) 21:12, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

It is always hard to judge questions like this, because the sort of people who complete sex surveys may well not be representative of the general population. They may be suspected of being more open, or exhibitionistic, or boastful. There are other sources of information. One is health professionals -- urologists, obviously, but family doctors/GPs too, and family practice nurses, etc. You could ask yours when you have an appointment, or ask any you meet socially (great ice breaker!). A second source is artwork or public projects such as those by photographer Spencer Tunick. Tunick specialises in persuading thousands of people to strip off simultaneously and walk around a city naked, all turning to the right or raising their arms at his word. The artistic effect is a surreal one. His volunteers are, by definition, not shy about their bodies. The last video I saw featured people of all ages, mostly 20-50 but not all, and very very few shaven pubes. BrainyBabe (talk) 06:57, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I shave my head once a month and while I'm doing it I shave under my arms and my public hair. Have done for about 10 years now. I don't do it for any sexual reason (I've been married for 7 years so I'm passed all that now). I do it because it makes me feel cleaner, more hygienic. I highly recommend it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.215.183.223 (talk) 10:46, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I assume that you meant 'pubic'.Either that or it's general admission day at 121's genitals. Buy a ticket and come and join in the fun... Lemon martini (talk) 17:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I shave mine too, but generally only before a date... if there's no prospect of anything happening I generally don't bother... I find it just seems more "clean" in appearance to the woman... Plus as I personally prefer a hair-less woman down there, i feel its hard for me to ask her to do that if I won't do it myself... Gazhiley (talk) 10:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

?! Julia Rossi (talk) 12:22, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

?! what? Gazhiley (talk) 13:30, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't take any of the above too seriously! Dbfirs 19:54, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

This brings me to a related question- how many men prefer women to shave their pubes and how many women actually do it? --124.254.77.148 (talk) 12:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Again, see the survey I posted. Dismas|^(talk) 12:57, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Groundskeeper Willie viewing a pic on upkilt.com: "Eww, this lass could do with a bit a groundskeeping... Ach ! That's Willie !". StuRat (talk) 16:21, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Per the previous response, see also (nonworksafe) Snopes on The Queen sitting next to Men Wearing Kilts. Edison (talk) 02:46, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Lytton report

Are there any copies of (the text of) the Lytton Report online anywhere free? I had a quick search, but couldn't find anything online. I'm interested because history sources tend to paint the reports as fair and well-judged, but an overly-long tim in the making, but I'm interested to see just what it said (having influenced British thinking to a very great extent). Extracts would be a great start. Thanks, - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 18:56, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I can't seem to find an online copy. Karl Radek famously said of it that "nothing is to be learned [from it] that any reader could not learn from the Encyclopedia Britannica". But he also said "joking aside, the bad literary composition of this scientific research brigade... has nevertheless a great deal of value"; and "there is more significance in what it says between the lines than in what it states". Strawless ^(talk) 23:42, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Typing your pin in reverse at an ATM

I've just received a message from a friend on facebook which tells me that...
"When a thief forces you to take money from the ATM, do not argue or resist, you might not know what he or she might do to you. What you should do is to punch your PIN in the reverse, i.e if your PIN is 1254, you punch 4521. The moment you punch in the reverse, the money will come out but will be stuck into the machine half way out and it will alert police without the notice of the thief. Every ATM has it, it is specially made to signify danger and help. Not everyone is aware of this. Forward this to all your friends and those you care for." This sounds like a load of old cobblers (or worse) but before I reply informing them of this, I thought I'd check. Is this possibly the case? Could ATMs do this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.111.86.8 (talk) 21:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC) (Formatted: all-caps removed. – 74  23:27, 25 February 2009 (UTC))

False & False, thanks. Of course, one would hope it was true, but there we go. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:56, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

If it were true it would be self-defeating. To be effective most people would have to know the trick. Yet to be effective it relies on any potential thief not knowing the trick. DJ Clayworth (talk) 22:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Not true - after all, what if your PIN is palindromic. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:14, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the OP might consider getting rid of the shouting, now that the query has been answered. // BL \\ (talk) 23:02, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, as I thought, thanks. So what's the point of these messages? Is there something more going on behind them or are they just pointless? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.111.86.8 (talk) 22:42, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

See chain letter. – 74  22:47, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

They are pointless. I suppose what motivates people to write them is the challenge, in most cases. (In some cases, there are clear political motivations, but it doesn't seem to be the case here.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 23:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about the shouting // BL \\ I didn't know how to change a block of text to lower case without re-typing the whole thing. How's it done? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.111.86.8 (talk) 23:34, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

MS-Word and many text editors can change case between five or more options - title, sentence, upper, lower, and, err, I forget. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:11, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Fully capitalised? --Tango (talk) 00:43, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Toggle case, in case you've been typing with caps lock on. Under 'Format' -> 'Change Case'. 67.169.118.40 (talk) 01:29, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

This is just one in a wide variety of "send this to all your friends" messages. They basically qualify as computer worms - the intent is for the content to reproduce itself in the wild, and the challenge is to write something plausible enough that it will get widely distributed. One of the ingenious ones was about how Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC because they had genetically modified their chickens so that they weren't chickens anymore. I suppose the proof of success is when you get your message back weeks later, then you know that your creation was successful. It's amazing how many people fall for the wilder stories. Franamax (talk) 02:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

But in this case, you're liable to get a good punch in the face when your card gets rejected the first time. Franamax (talk) 02:10, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Not all such email warnings are false. I received the following message today from a 100% reliable source and I urge everyone to heed it lest they fall victim to this devious scam...:

This warning is VERY important. Please send it to everyone on your email list. If someone comes to your front door and says they are conducting a survey and asks you to show them your arse, DO NOT show them your arse. This is a SCAM, they just want to see your arse. I wish I'd got this yesterday. I feel so stupid and cheap.

Be warned! Rockpocket 07:10, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, but - you forgot the part about "SEND this to ALL your friends". That's the difference - obviously that one was a genuine warning :) Which reminds me, this morning a slip of paper was stuck under my apartment door "We will be testing smoke alarms in all units on Mar. 2". I see now it's just another one of those scams... :) Franamax (talk) 08:17, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

You have to send it to all your friends, not just some, or you will get 100 years bad luck and/or your email account will be terminated. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:12, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

What if your PIN is palindromic? Either it will alert the police every time or it won't ever alert them. 194.100.223.164 (talk) 09:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, you say that...but it's well known that if someone is forcing you at gunpoint to ask stupid questions on the Wikipedia reference desk, all you have to do is to sneakily HIT THE CAPS=LOCK KEY AND THE HIGHLY TRAINED RESPONDANTS ON THE REF DESK WILL KEEP WHINING ON ABOUT IT WITHOUT ANSWERING THE QUESTION UNTIL EITHER THE POLICE GET THERE OR YOUR ASSAILANT GETS BORED AND GOES HOME. ALL REFERENCE DESKS AND FORUM SYSTEMS ARE BUILT LIKE THIS. SteveBaker (talk) 01:55, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Quick, somebody type up an email! We've got to get the word out and save countless lives! – 74  03:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

ALERT THE INTERNET! -mattbuck (Talk) 16:52, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Nah,let's tell people whose opinion actually matters.... ;) Lemon martini (talk) 17:07, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

February 26

Straight people in gay bars

I heard that some gay bars are actually becoming places where heterosexual females are to be found in increasing numbers, and the heterosexual males are following them there too, defeating the purpose of a gay bar. What is the prevalence of this? It's difficult to enforce gay-only entry to gay bars in a number of different ways, so has this phenomenon been picked up on much? There is the term 'fag hag' but that doesn't explain the acceptance of straight couples in gay bars... or is it just that gay bars are tolerating straight people as well as long as they don't dominate?--HootlePooch (talk) 00:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I just had this bizarre flash on how one would check to confirm if a customer was gay, as opposed to pretending to be gay, or straight but meeting up with gay friends or family, or straight but a stranger and not aware that gay bars are only for gays or . . . I think the answer is that, with a few exceptions, most bars in gay neighbourhoods welcome customers who eat and drink and don't cause injury to themselves, each other, the staff or the premises. Unless the customer is behaving in a way that makes the staff or the other clientele uncomfortable, no one will care. Women often like gay bars because they may be lively and yet no one is likely to hit on them there. And straight men frequently follow straight women. I don't know of any jurisdictions where, if you are behaving yourself, a bar (as opposed to a private club where membership is required) has the right to refuse to serve you because you aren't gay (or Latino, or a biker or a stockbroker or even a lawyer. . .) // BL \\ (talk) 00:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I can't speak about the prevalence. What is the purpose of a gay bar? Well, one purpose is to create a place where gay people can meet, without fear of harrasment. If non-gay people are there, as long as they don't do any harrassing, that purpose is not defeated. While it might be assumed that, in general, a person at a gay bar is gay, this is not the case when it comes to many visitors. Some straight women like going to gay bars because there's little or no chance of being hit on, apart from straight guys (and lesbians) who happen to also be there. And some straight guys like going to gay bars, whether accompanied by a woman or not, because they like gay people, have no issues with homosexuality, and maybe they even like flirting a little (or a lot), or like being noticed by other guys, even if they'd never "come to the party". There are some men-only and woman-only bars that cater for the gay community, and anyone who enters is assumed to be gay, but I'm sure there have been many exceptions. As for tolerance, the gay movement is all about tolerance; and if they can't tolerate the presence of non-gay people, their cause would be doomed from the outset. That's why most gay bars have no such thing as a "gay only" policy. Quite how a person "proves" they're gay is quite beyond me, but I do believe there are gay-only bars. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Based on my personal experience of being a straight man who spent a lot of time in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C., my sense is that a lot of bachelorette parties went to gay clubs, where young attractive women could get trashed without having to worry about being groped or hit on. I can imagine that this would attract some straight men, but I didn't see it. I have no idea what gays think of this. It should also be noted that gay bars are just as diverse as straight bars, e.g. there are some bars that you go to when you just want to have a drink with friends, with perhaps more pictures of half-naked men on the walls than one would otherwise see, and there are some bars that are known far and wide as meat markets. I can't imagine that the owners of the former would have a problem with straights wandering in, as long as they weren't engaged in some kind of 'gay tourism', but I think people who go to the latter would be justifiably annoyed if some straight came in and messed up the social expectations. - BanyanTree 03:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

At least in the Peel Hotel case I mentioned below, I don't think gay patrons particularly like hens parties because they often don't just go there to get trashed but to oogle the gay patrons. Of course if they really just go there to drink then I suspect the gay patrons would not be so concerned. Nil Einne (talk) 11:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Let me sing you the ballad of Canal Street my children, and the things that happened there.

Once was a land of gay bars in a time when this was shocking. And these gay bars served a community, as well as those who travelled from afar to see the wonders that could be seen. And lo, they were a refuge and a happy place for many gay people.

And then, as these things became less shocking, ladies who were, in fact, attracted to men began to spend their nights out in the gay bars. For they wished to dance and drink with their friends without being groped, and knew of no other place they could enjoy such a thing. Also, the gay bars were full of men dressed up and dancing in an attractive way, but this in no way influenced their choices... And for a while things were happy, as the women who ventured into the gay bars with their friends were generally the sort who had no issues with men who liked other men.

But then, people who would previously have nothing to do with such things came to hear of the lovely time these women were having, dressing up nicely and drinking and dancing without men assuming they were doing it for the benefit of men. And less understanding crowds of straight women descended on the bars, and the gay men came to feel self-conscious and objectivised. And the exact straight men who the straight women were trying to avoid heard of all these women going into clubs and enjoying themselves and thought 'We'll be in there'. And these straight men were not the sort of straight men who would have gone to a gay bar unless they were pursuing women with a mob of other straight men who were all defensive about their masculinity. And these men made the gay men feel threatened, and frequently that feeling was justified. And violence and bitter language broke out in what had been a safe haven. Fights. With chairs.

And so, many clubs sadly said they would only let in truly gay people, and judged that as they saw fit. Some just by looking, some by questioning. And so if you were a member of a musical theatre company, and many of your members were not gay, you found yourself refused entry to clubs you had previously treated as decent nights out and introduced new members to. Which was sad. But on the other hand fewer people got hit over the head with chairs.

The end. 79.66.56.21 (talk) 02:05, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

About 12 years ago, I - a straight male - would go out on the Canal Street gay scene on occasion with some gay friends. I can affirm that most bars and patrons were either perfectly welcoming (or at least tolerant) of my presence. A very small minority did appear to have an issue with me being there, but not aggressively so. It seemed to me that straight people who treat gay bars as a zoo are generally unwelcome, but if you are respectful and mind your own business then most people don't give two hoots. Rockpocket 07:24, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

But how the heck would they know you were straight? I don't mean idiots who come in pointing and laughing; when you went with your gay friends, what set you apart? Franamax (talk) 08:10, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Gaydar? In some cases it came up in conversation with between myself, my friends and other people in the bars. Rockpocket 20:12, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It appears that whereas men generally want to meet women, women want to avoid meeting men. 194.100.223.164 (talk) 09:17, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

???? Evidence? What on earth are they doing in a bar - any bar - if they want to avoid meeting men? -- JackofOz (talk) 18:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Having a drink with their friends? --Tango (talk) 18:43, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I think "meet" is perhaps being used euphemistically by the IP. Rockpocket 20:12, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. The impression I get is, whereas men often want to go to bars to hit on women, most women usually do everything they can to avoid being hit on. 194.100.223.164 (talk) 11:48, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

An interesting example, as noted in our gay bar article is the Peel Hotel in Melbourne which banned (well can refuse entry to) non gay clientele because of concerns over the atmosphere and actions of non gay patrons [7]. Australia does have anti-discrimination legislation but it was ruled acceptable given the reasons for the ban [8] [9] were considered sufficiently justified. One of the articles say they ask you if you are gay. Obviously you can lie, but I doubt they care about the odd person who does so. If you start to behave inappropriately they can kick you out and because they've said non-gays are not allowed in and you lied about your sexuality, you're not going to be able to sue them for discrimination for example. Nil Einne (talk) 11:47, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Tiny red bugs

Okay, so my mom's pregnant asthmatic friend stopped me before going to school to see if I new what kind of insect this bug was that she found in her hair. It was tiny and red, and found on her head (No, I don't usually speak in riddles). Could someone tell me what this bug was and give me a link to the page about it (if there is one) Filosojia X Non(Philosophia X Known) 02:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It's hard to say without a picture, but the tiniest, reddest bug I know of is the spider mite. - Eron^Talk 01:18, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

How many legs did it have? (6 means it's an insect - 8 would suggest a spider or a mite). Where in the world are you? (It really helps a lot to know). SteveBaker (talk) 01:30, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I am in CA, near Davis and Sacramento Filosojia X Non(Philosophia X Known) 02:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Whilst Steve's right to ask, like Eron I'd anticipate it is a spider mite. -Tagishsimon (talk) 01:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, it didn't look like it was smaller than 1 mm in size, but I guess it couldn't've been much bigger either, I suppoze it could be a spider mite, but it would help to know what else it could've been Filosojia X Non(Philosophia X Known) 02:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Try this Phil_burnstein (talk) 02:58, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd also try seeing a doctor... Gazhiley (talk) 11:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

That would be an enormous overreaction. -Elmer Clark (talk) 14:11, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me then but if I found something crawling around on my skin that I didn't know what it was, I would go see a doctor first rather than show it to someone else and them discuss it on a ref desk... But as I said maybe that is just me... Gazhiley (talk) 08:59, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

But it wasn't a ladybug, and it was too small to be one anyways. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.137.194.47 (talk) 00:45, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we really have enough to go on, but what the hell—harvest mite (adult)?

Why not post this query on the Science Reference Desk? -- Deborahjay (talk) 14:21, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

boeing 747

Can I please ask how many Boeing 747's have ever crashed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.90.178.189 (talk) 02:27, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Boeing 747 hull losses may be the nearest we get to - 47. There may be many other crashes in which the aircraft was not destroyed beyond economic repair. But if, as I suspect, you mean big-ticket crashes, not low-speed impact with the air-bridge and other taxiing accidents, then that may be what you're after. And that would be 47 out of 1,412, fwiw. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:57, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about that. While I would agree any accident resulting in a hull loss could probably be considered a major crash (although I note 22 of them didn't result in any loss of life and our article says some of them were written off partially because they were old), I would personally also consider any crash which results in fatality directly attributable to the accident a major crash and it's possible some have happened without hull loss I presume Nil Einne (talk) 11:38, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Of course, you can also have a hull loss not caused by a crash. A number of hull losses – including the first two in our article – were aircraft that had been hijacked, landed, and blown up on the ground after the passengers had all disembarked. Depending on how you choose to define 'crash', the Tenerife airport disaster may also not qualify. Two 747s collided on the ground (one was taking off in heavy fog when another aircraft taxied on to the runway). In 1977, Korean Airlines 007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:45, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Free motion gallery/ video footage for use in youtube (creative commons?)

I recently noticed even the BBC's [www.bbcmotiongallery motion gallery] want payment for use of their "royalty free" footage. So much for them working for the nation! Lord MacAuley once said "Copyright is monopoly, and produces all the effects which the general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly. [...] Monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good." So, is there anywhere on the entire net that I can find videos that have creative commons licences? It seems to me most of the videos on YouTube are breaching copyright in some way. Many of them made by children or teenagers...surely these aren't breaking the law, they're merely being creative! Is there any other (large) site except than wikipedia that takes creative commons seriously? Thanks, --217.84.188.209 (talk) 10:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The Creative Commons themselves do obviously. I believe Flickr also allows video nowadays. There are also some news agencies (Brazilian for example) who also release their content under the CC license unfortunately they are not always clear when the content isn't theirs/CC. Then there are public domain stuff released by the US government (particularly NASA has quite a few videos I believe) Nil Einne (talk) 11:31, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Prelinger Archives has lots of PD licenses, Internet Archive in general has lots of CC ones. --140.247.254.97 (talk) 17:12, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Job descriptions asking for "customer service experience"

I'm looking for a job in Liverpool, UK, and I've seen a lot of call centre based jobs on offer. They usually ask for either "sales experience", which I don't have, or "customer service experience", which I do have but not in a call centre. I've been a receptionist and a library assistant. My question is, am I wasting my time by taking these "customer service" ads at face value and applying? Anyone know if this is jargon for "call centre experience", or if they are interested in people who have dealt with customer enquiries face to face? 86.166.68.249 (talk) 12:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Generally right on the latter - what they want is people with experience of dealing with customers... Sales experience is helpful in the majority of call centre jobs, but generally as long as you have had customer service experience, that is generally enough... Also to be honest, the turnover of staff in call centres is that high that generally they can't afford to be that picky - any customer experience, whether it be phone or face to face - is often accepted... from one call centre worker to another potential call centre worker, good luck... Gazhiley (talk) 14:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed completely. I have helped set up call centers from the US to Canada to India. If it'an inbound customer support group for something general (like a wireless provider), they are looking for a strong, confident and pleasant phone voice. But most importantly, they are looking to reduce first-year attrition. The most important questions they will ask you will be around "life goals" or "where you see yourself in five years." They want to hear that you appreciate the work, think that the wage is great, and are going to be around for the long haul (whether you are or not). Many sites have average tenure of less than one year (or annual attrition rates of > 100%). Since most include 2-10 weeks of paid training, his is generally a call center's biggest cost: even bigger than IT. NByz (talk) 17:56, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

We should also note that the reason for such attrition is burn-out from the enormous amounts of apathy and abuse you will receive from the people you call. Adam Bishop (talk) 05:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I would think it depends on the job description. Customer service/sales especially in a call center environment pertains to thinking on your feet and doing what you can to help the customer while maintaining the best interests of the company. They want to know that you are good with people, able to handle concerns in a friendly manner, and possibly able to sell. You should look into your transferrable skills and put these forth should you get an interview. As a manager in a customer service environment, I think that with experience as a receptionist and as a library assistant, you are dealing with people a majority of the time. You should be well suited for a job asking for these qualifications.

Wonder the name of the fonts

1. As in http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/cns_font_1.jpg
2. Title of a film named The Terminator.

-- JSH-alive ^{talk • cont • mail} 15:29, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

You might try cutting up the image and sending it into What The Font. APL (talk) 17:57, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

What the Font sucks 90% of the time. It points you fonts that are totally obscure and often quite, quite different from the input files. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:28, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if the Terminator headline font was its own font before the movie came out—it looks custom to me. You can easily find fonts based on the movie poster font though. The font used in white for the text is just plain old Avant Garde, of course. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:28, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The first one is remarkably similar to Myriad, though it is not the same. But if you are looking for a font with the same look, Myriad in bold looks pretty dang similar, it takes a very close eye to see it is different. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Juicing key limes

A number of key limes have recently come into my possession. They're adorable-looking little things, but their small size renders extraction of their juice most frustrating.

Can anyone recommend techniques to maximize recovery of key lime juice from these tiny, tasty fruits? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

A food processor and a strainer, perhaps? Note: I've not tried this myself, I just think it seems reasonable. Peel and seed as much as possible before pulping. — Lomn 16:19, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Or use a juicer, which is, effectively, a food processor with a built in strainer. --Tango (talk) 18:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, yes. But I assume Ten has considered such pedestrian, dare we say, passe methods and found them "most frustrating". I was hoping to hit the "more than juicer, less than chainsaw" sweet spot. — Lomn 20:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Truth be told, I'm actually coming from the position of having fewer tools, rather than more. If someone can recommend an appropriate gizmo that won't take up too much space in my kitchen or make a nightmare of the washing up, I'm willing to spend. At the moment, I'm just slicing in half, picking out the seeds, and squeezing mightily — and finding it to be a less-than-satisfactory approach.

If I were at work, it would be an easy matter — gross dissection with scalpel and razor blade, removal of seeds with forceps, and blend in Waring blender. (Subsequent centrifugation to remove insoluble pulp optional.) My kitchen is not so well equipped. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:37, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

A simple hand-juicer is a lot easier than squeezing, especially with small fruit. We have a nice one that fits over a measuring cup and filters out the seeds automatically. You just slice the fruit in half, twist it on the end, pow, you've got juice. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:41, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

One of these? They're great - very easy to wash and very effective at getting a decent amount of juice very easily (an electric juicer will generally get more, though). You should be able to find one at any half-decent kitchen shop. --Tango (talk) 22:58, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It will be well worth it, however you get the juice out. You have come in possesion of some of the most wonderful fruits on the earth. They aren't much like traditional limes, and aren't like lemons either. They have a flavor which is all their own, sweeter and more palatable than either lemons or limes. My favorite applications are key lime pie, key lime cheesecake, or key lime squares (like lemon squares or lemon bars, but with key lime juice). Their flavor reaches their peak when they go yellow. I am jealous. They are hard to find around where I live. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 18:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

One of the most beautifully and functional items in the entire history of mankind is the Philippe Starck juice extractor. It's gorgeous to look at - it works VASTLY better than the ugly contraption shown above because you can squeeze directly into a glass or cup - and it's easier to clean. There is not one single aspect of the design that isn't both entirely necessary and yet beautiful. Truly a masterpiece of the design art. SteveBaker (talk) 01:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

• cough* For the tenth anniversary of its launch, 10,000 were individually numbered and gold plated. ... The gold plated version was described as an ornament because the citric acid in a lemon discolors and erodes the gold plating. Starck is even rumored to have said, "My juicer is not meant to squeeze lemons; it is meant to start conversations" *cough* Nil Einne (talk) 02:12, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Well - yes, but that was after 9 years of not-gold-plated ones that worked just fine. I believe that the context of that comment from Starck was in discussing the gold plated version of it. And he was right...it just started a conversation. But the stainless steel version (which I have) is entirely functional and does a superb job of extracting juice from oranges, lemons and limes. SteveBaker (talk) 17:10, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The non-Stark one pictured above, as noted by the person who posted it, is designed to squeeze directly into a cup. The non-Stark one described before the one pictured is designed to squeeze directly into a cup. Everyone I know who has a Stark juicer says it looks great, but is functionally inadequate; juice dribbles down the legs and the rounded top doesn't 'gouge' the fruit as effectively as a normal hand-juicer. Does that not happen for you? 79.66.56.21 (talk) 18:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The juice certainly doesn't - indeed cannot - run down the legs. I don't know who you're talking to - but they either don't have the genuine article or they aren't telling you the truth. Look at how the legs attach to the body - note that the leg slopes down into the body. In order for the juice to run down the leg, it would first have to go uphill! The top gouges the fruit just fine and surface tension keeps it flowing against the side of the body and right into the glass beneath. Perhaps these people have a cheap knock-off of the original. Mine works great. SteveBaker (talk) 12:48, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Incidently, I recommend against the food processor/whole-fruit juicer idea. I think you'd get too many bitter flavors from the skins and pith if you did that. --Mdwyer (talk) 06:45, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I think Mdwyer has a point here. I know someone with a juice extractor (meaning the kind you put whole or sliced fruit in without removing the skin etc) and the manual recommends you remove most of the pith for citrus fruit. Also IIRC when doing rind you're generally supposed to avoid the pith Nil Einne (talk) 13:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

• All you need is to slice the limes in half along the circumference, dig into the flesh with a fork and gouge it around while squeezing. No other equipment necessary. //roux   06:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Lemons and limes produce more juice if they are rolled firmly in the hands first.This loosens the pulp inside and makes more juice come out.hotclaws 19:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Microwaving them for 20 seconds also seems to release more juice. SteveBaker (talk) 12:48, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

The Starck extractor is beautiful, but in an oddly unsettling way. It reminds me of alleged pictures of aliens, War of the Worlds, etc. I'm not sure I'd want to get up in the middle of the night for a glass of water and see that standing on the kitchen bench, eerily moonlit. I might never get back to sleep. Just putting it away in a drawer wouldn't help either - I'd know it was there, waiting, waiting .... -- JackofOz (talk) 21:23, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

They are too big to fit into a drawer! These things are gigantic. The tripod design and the cantilevered legs certainly look like some of the War of the Worlds war machines...but it's like that for a good reason. Three legs is the fewest you need - it's also stable and provides the most space for getting things underneath it. The cantilevered legs (as I pointed out above) prevent the juice from running down the legs because it would first have to run uphill. The teardrop shape of the body allows the juice to 'stick' to the body by surface tension and pour off the tip in a fairly smooth stream. The whole thing is fairly rounded and there are no little crevices - so it's easy to clean. That's what I like about it so much - there isn't one feature that you can point to that isn't there for a 100% functional reason - yet the result is just so visually appealing. Oddly though - a tripod design is a disaster for a martian war machine! How could such a thing move? As soon as it lifts a leg up, it would fall towards that leg! With bipedal motion, you can shift your balance by a small amount and balance on one leg while the other one moves - and with quadrapedal motion, you can lift one leg and three have three others providing a stable base. But a tripod is a terrible solution. Stoopid martians. SteveBaker (talk) 12:48, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Not at all stupid. The common three-legged martian hops in the manner of an earth rabbit, with two power legs at the back which move together. It shifts it weight forward onto the foreleg while the back legs sweep past and settle some distance in front. In this manner it can move extremely quickly and, given their size, they are capable of conquering whole continents within hours. The lesser-spotted three-legged martian is restricted to swampy regions, where the legs sink far enough into the ground to provide strength while the other legs move. They tend not to invade any planets that don't offer appropriate terrain. Gwinva (talk) 00:52, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

We're discussing limes and juicers here, not Martians..... La Alquimista 10:55, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Manav Sthali School

Does anyone have any additional information on the Manav Sthali School? I can't seem to find any information about the history of the school or it's chairman. Any help is appreciated. Papercutbiology♫ (talk) 15:41, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Power Point Problem

Hey, does anyone know if there is any way to open a .pptx file on an old version of powerpoint? I e-mailed a presentation to myself from Powerpoint 2007 and I have 2005, so I can't open it. I need to open it, so if someone could please tell me a way to open it ASAP that would be great. Thanks! Grango242 (talk) 23:04, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the answer, but in general it is unreasonable to expect old versions of programs to be able to read newer versions of their files. What you may be able to do is to persuade 2007 to store the presentation in a 2005-compatible file; but you are unlikely to be able to do anything with the software and file that you have. --ColinFine (talk) 23:18, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

This only mentions '03, not '05, but it might be what you want. Algebraist 23:49, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(This is really more of a question for the computer desk, but anyways...) If you go to Save As in Powerpoint 2007, there is the option to save it as a .ppt file. It will then warn you that you might lose some features of the original that are only available with 2007. The only problem I've ever had with this is some font changes and occasionally animation effects. And for some reason, the file usually becomes massively larger. If you're okay with that, there's your solution.

Of course, you said you want to open it "ASAP" so if that means you emailed it home from school, need to work on it tonight, and hand it in the morning, and you can't get to your school computer that has Powerpoint 2007, I'm afraid I don't know how to help you. Maybe someone who knows more about computers knows a way to convert the file without Ppt 2007. Best of luck. Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 23:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

You might be able to scrape the content out of it by using something like PowerPoint Viewer 2007. I've not used it, but it must be better than a locked file, non? --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:56, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Or, you could try downloading the 30-day trial of the most recent Powerpoint version, and, as above, save it as a .ppt file next time. Thanks, Genius101^Guestbook 01:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

A reasonable solution is to install the "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 file format", which will convert your pptx files into ppt files. I believe it's free and has no prerequisites other than a Microsoft operating system (the expectation that you have an earlier version of Office is so you can open the older-format files, although other software products can open older formats too). See [10].-gadfium 02:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

aircraft parts

What would become of US Airways Flight 1549 after the investigations are all done? Will the aircraft be dismantled now that it's a total write-off?72.229.135.200 (talk) 23:43, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The airline will determine if it's cheaper to repair the aircraft or write it off and buy/lease a new one (given the damage, a write-off is likely). If they write it off, the parts are scrapped and diposed of / recycled, as with any other kind of waste. — QuantumEleven 13:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Will any portion of the aircraft be donated the National Air & Space Museum?72.229.135.200 (talk) 19:09, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

February 27

Is the golfer Vijay Singh of Indian descent?

If so, are both of his parents Indian? - Vikramkr (talk) 01:08, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The article Vijay Singh (Golfer) says: "An Indo-Fijian of Hindu background,[1][2] Singh was born in Lautoka, Fiji and grew up in Nadi. His name means Victorious Lion." That's a start. // BL \\ (talk) 01:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Our article Vijay Singh (golfer) simply says he is Indo-Fijian, so yes, he is of Indian descent. It says nothing about his parents. DuncanHill (talk) 01:29, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

(ecc) Yes. Have your read our article on him? Vijay Singh seems to cover a lot of that ground. It says that he was born in Fijii and "of a Hindu background" - and both mother and father have very Indian-sounding names. SteveBaker (talk) 01:31, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

According to this site [11], his father's name is Mohan and his mother's is Parwati. I could find nothing else on their ethnicity. // BL \\ (talk) 01:38, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

He is almost certainly of Indian descent. There has been a long history of people moving around a lot between British colonies and former British colonies, and at some point (parents, grandparents) Vijay's family will trace back to India. He is not an indigenous Pacific Islander. As another famous example of this sort of free movement, look at the example of Freddie Mercury. He comes from a family of Iranian Zoroastrians, was raised in Zanzibar and went to school in Mumbai (then Bombay). --Jayron32.talk.contribs 02:15, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, he is on Indian descent, like nearly two Fijians in five. Indo-Fijians are the descendants of contract labourers imported to Fiji in the 19th century. The tension between Indo-Fijians and the indigenous majority is the central issue in Fiji's modern history and politics. Luwilt (talk) 16:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Victorian gays

Were gays seen as bad in Victorian time? Why was Oscar Wilde imprisonment while others continued or was it just he is the most well known? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 13:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe there was a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude at the time. That is, a closeted homosexual might have been reasonably safe, especially if they had the money to pay off anyone who caught them "in the act". However, public homosexuality was likely to result in severe punishment. StuRat (talk) 16:05, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 and particularly the Labouchere Amendment for more background to this. DuncanHill (talk) 16:14, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:19th century in LGBT history may also be worth looking at. DuncanHill (talk) 16:16, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

This certainly depends where you're talking about. In Europe and the US and Canada, male homosexuality was illegal in most places, and there were different social standards applied to men and women. Men who married but had affairs on the side with women were somewhat accepted. Married men who had affairs with other men were accepted only so far as class, money, and social permission would allow. Oscar Wilde was imprisoned more for sheer balls than for sex acts. He challenged the father of his lover; a social duel and he lost. For women, homosexuality was almost invisible, but the Victorian era fostered a culture of asexual love between women with the term "romantic friendship". Women may have seen themselves as asexual, but their records indicate they had passionate romances with each other. In the 19th and 20th century, gender roles were strictly prescribed and followed. Any variation brought social downfall. Men should be married to women and start families. Women should be married to men and nurture those families. If they had enough money, they might be able to fool around, but women refusing to adhere to their roles had to have a viable option, such as a convent, or again, enough money to be considered eccentric and rich. Men had some more leeway with bachelorhood, but buggery was a criminal offense, and a man who refused to marry and instead pursued sexual relationships with other men was only begging for social ostracism. See Cleveland Street scandal and Lesbian#Re-examining romantic friendships. --Moni3 (talk) 16:20, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Oscar Wilde was his own worst enemy. He was widely known as/assumed to be a homosexual, even if just exactly what he did, and with whom, was not generally known. Just being a homosexual was never a crime, but certain specific activities with other men were. He did not have to have his lover's father Lord Queensberry charged with libel for referring to Wilde as a "somdomite" [sic] on his calling card, and he was very strongly advised not to go down that path, because the court case would be forced to examine whether there was any truth in or not. But he charged Queensberry with libel anyway. He picked exactly the wrong issue to take a stand on, because what Queensberry wrote happened to be true, and Wilde knew it. He lost that case, and because of the details about Wilde's activities that had emerged during that trial, the authorities could not simply have turned a blind eye to it, but were virtually forced to then charge Wilde with gross indecency. He brought it on himself. Throughout his trials he lied through his teeth and grossly prevaricated, but they saw through him. He wasn't taking the gay-pride line "I'm gay and I don't care who knows about it"; rather, he was attempting to bluster and deny his gayness. He wrote about people needing to be true to their true natures, which is why he's one of my all-time heroes, but this was an extreme example of him not practising what he preached. And that was his undoing every bit as much as any illegal activities he may have engaged in. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:13, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Did Oscar have a chauffeur? I've wondered just who it was that drove Oscar Wilde. Edison (talk) 02:41, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I hope you're suitably ashamed of yourself for that... --Tango (talk) 14:46, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

It's OK - Edison is having a good day today. In the past 24 hours we've had 9 proper posts to just 5 horrible puns...a 5:9 pun-to-post ratio is really the best we can hope for under the circumstances.  :-P SteveBaker (talk) 02:41, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

why does this occur?

having followed the link and then searched for 'adolf hitler' i am deeply unimpressed by the article. please advise why i cannot get any actual information about the man —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.249.138.179 (talk) 13:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Please don't post your questions to multiple pages. Your time could be better spent reading responses to your posting at WP:HD. Algebraist 13:56, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

What an unfriendly comment! Luwilt (talk) 16:32, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

What an unhelpful response! – 74  18:35, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It appears the OP was looking at the page when it was vandalized. However, the amount of information on Adolf Hitler outside of Wikipedia is STAGGERING so if you are 'deeply unimpressed' by the lack of information, you are not looking hard enough. Livewireo (talk) 21:07, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Newspaper delivery in the United States

The websites of some American newspapers carry invitation to subscribe to the paper edition of the newspaper. This would never happen in the UK. Here, if you want your newspaper delivered, you go to your local newsagent, and arrange it with him. He sends a teenager out on a bike before school each morning to deliver to all his customers. We have about ten national newspapers, so it wouldn't make sense for each paper to have its own door-to-door delivery system. But so far as I can work out, in most parts of America, there is a choice of only one or two daily papers. In practical terms, if you subscribe to the paper edition of an American paper, how is the delivery actually arranged? Who organises the deliveries? The newspaper company, a contractor, a local store? Who physically delivers? A kid on a bike, a man in a van (would that be light truck?), the postal service? What time of day are the papers delivered? Luwilt (talk) 16:30, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Home delivery is primarily arranged my the newspaper company. I suppose a store could set up their own delivery system if they wanted, but this is not common. Historically, newspapers are delivered by paperboys, but it's entirely likely that your newspaper may be delivered by a girl or an adult of either gender. In more densely populated areas, it is almost always delivered on foot/bicycle, but more rural areas will typically have their mail left in a box by a driver (if delivery is available). Some national papers offer delivery via mail. In my paperboy days, I delivered the evening edition in the late afternoon. Now the evening edition is no longer offered and papers are delivered in the early morning, which I suspect is the most common situation. Tomdobb (talk) 16:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

In my paper boy days (late 80s), I delivered a local paper on my bike or on foot after school. The papers didn't usually get to my house in enough time to do the route before school. The customers worked it out with the paper itself and not a store. In many areas, the paper is not just thrown on the doorstep or driveway but put into a box much like a mailbox but it generally doesn't have a door to close. To get a better idea of what these look like, see the mailbox baseball article. Dismas|^(talk) 18:27, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

From what I can tell in my city (near Boston) the same guy delivers all of the different newspapers you can subscribe to. Sometimes he screws up and gives us the (vastly inferior) Boston Globe instead of our New York Times. For us it is a guy in a car, not a kid on a bike. Paper arrives around 6am. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:27, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Here, FWIW, is a UK example of the thing Luwilt says will never happen in the UK. Ho hum. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:43, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

In my part of the U.S. (urban sprawl) newspapers are delivered by people driving their personal automobiles. They load several hundred copies of the paper into their cars and then set off on their routes. Because these people are independent contractors, and not employees of the newspaper, they may have overlapping routes depending on the contracts they have been able to obtain. For example, the person who delivers the newspapers that are freely distributed at my workplace is not the same person who delivers the papers to the newspaper box outside for sale to passers by. 152.16.16.75 (talk) 01:50, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

When I was a teenager (some 30 years ago now) I visited the USA and I stayed for a few weeks with a family in suburban Connecticut. One evening around 6pm, I helped the family's teenage son do his paper round, delivering the local town's weekly paper. The papers had been delivered earlier in the day in a large box or two and left in the garage (I'm not sure where they came from - a local store or the printers). We spent about 30 minutes wrapping each paper in a rubber band and set off by bicycle. Each paper was thrown onto the path of every house on the route - at least until we got fed up and dumped the rest over a fence and into in some guy's pool. On more recent trips to the USA, I've noticed in rural areas that many mailbox posts have one or more newspaper holders (often open ended cylinders with the paper's logo on them). Astronaut (talk) 23:34, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Can you help me edit my grant proposal?

I am applying for a technology grant and need some help of what to add and what to edit. Any additional ideas would be greatly appreciated.

At minimum the proposal must:

Describe the different types of student populations and student grade levels that you serve; Provide the number of students that I serve; Clearly articulate hou you plan to improve student achievement by the integration of technology in to your classroom curriculum through innovative ways; Clearly describe how you will measure student achievement gains as a result of integrating innovative technology strategies into classroom curriculum; Describe any additional outcomes you seek to achieve; Describe how you will measure the success of these additional outcomes; Provide a detailed timeline for the implementation of the grant.

The school that I work for is a rural school with approximately 76% of the students receiving free and reduced lunches. I think that number reflects that socioeconomic status of our community. For many of our student’s the only access they have to technology is what we provide for them in our classrooms. Due to budget cuts and other changes in our district over the past year we have cut our computer classes, and now the school is relying more on teachers to pick up the slack, by bringing more technology in to our daily lessons. The benefit this gives us is that now technology is starting to be integrated more into students’ daily routines and is not treated as a separate entity. The problem we face is getting the technology in the hands of the students. With limited lab space, it becomes hard for teachers to plan lessons around when there are computers available.

I believe we have a problem that faces many schools. Our students are being prepared for the 20th century, when they are living in and will be working in the 21st century. We need to work on getting the tools our students will be using in their hands. With the school being the only place our students will be exposed to some forms of technology, I feel the burden falls upon the teachers to make sure students at our school are not falling further behind than they are already starting.

Our school could truly benefit by getting net books in our school. These are more cost effective than full sized computers and run nearly all the same operations. I would like to start by getting a class set of 20, so I could pilot the use of these computers. I believe once the school sees all the uses of these computers, they will allow us to budget for more of them in the future. There has already been talk about looking for cheaper alternatives to desktop computers, so I feel this would be a good alternative.

I would use this in my social studies classroom. Because there is only one social studies teacher per grade level, I see every seventh grade student in our building. With one class set of net books I would be able to serve nearly 150 students every year. Every student that came through our school system would benefit from the use of this technology in my classroom.

There will be a number of benefits to having this technology at our fingertips. In my classroom we study ancient world history. We will now have the opportunity to contact professionals in these areas. With the built in web cams we could even have face to face discussions with these people. I know these people are busy, but it would be easier to get them to spend five minutes with us online, as opposed to trying to actually get them to come to our school. We will be able to do the same thing with authors that have written books and have done research on these time periods. When we study ancient Chinese dynasties we would have to opportunity to skype students in china and see if we could start a discussion and see what they know.

I think having net books will have a direct impact on student achievement, not only in my class, but in other classes as well. Students will be able to improve their writing by creating wikis and responding to questions I post to the class. We will be able to publish papers to the web, my class will become authors and can have their work published online. They will also improve their critical thinking and editing skills by reading the posts of other students and responding to them. Reading achievement will be improved by providing students with access to more information that is outside the textbook. We will also have the ability to research topics that interest the students in greater detail. When students spend time researching and reading about subjects they are interested in they will be more engaged and more learning will take place.

By having the students blog and produce wikis I will be able to check and see what the students are writing about, this will give me instant feedback to see if students are grasping concepts I am teaching. I will also be able to assess their improvements in writing, and I will be able to work with language arts to make sure the students are using the skills that are being taught in their classes. There will be instant feedback available for me and the students, so we will be able to move through areas quicker when the students understand what is going on.

--Tuckerwillard (talk) 18:16, 27 February 2009 (UTC)Willard

Sorry, that's not what the reference desk is for. Try asking your colleagues, they may have made similar proposals in the past. --Tango (talk) 19:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I have a few suggestions for improving the grammar and sound of the proposal, including a few obvious mistakes (such as "student's" for "students"). Some of these suggestions depend on how formal you need to be.

• The school that I work for is a rural school with approximately 76% of the students receiving free and reduced lunches.
  • The school for which I work....
    • That sounds overly formal and stuffy. "The school I work for ..." is perfectly OK. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:53, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Actually, that is generally considered inferior to the original wording by most authorities on the matter: the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language goes so far as to describe it as grammatically incorrect, while Fowler famously describes it as a 'cherished superstition'. --Philosophus ^T 11:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
• I think that number reflects that socioeconomic status of our community.
  • I think that this number reflects the socioeconomic status of our community. (We can displace some of the uses of "that.")
• For many of our student’s the only access they have to technology is what we provide for them in our classrooms.
  • For many of our students, the only access that they have to technology is what we provide for them in our classrooms. (Including the pronoun "that" is part of the formal style.)
• Due to budget cuts and other changes in our district over the past year we have cut our computer classes, and now the school is relying more on teachers to pick up the slack, by bringing more technology in to our daily lessons.
  • Due to budget cuts and other changes in our district over the past year, we have cut our computer classes, and the school is now relying more on teachers to bring more technology into our daily lessons. (That would be more concise.)
• The benefit this gives us is that now technology is starting to be integrated more into students’ daily routines and is not treated as a separate entity.
  • The benefit that this gives us....
• The problem we face is getting the technology in the hands of the students.
  • The problem that we face.... ("That" should be included if the style of writing is to be formal.)
• With limited lab space, it becomes hard for teachers to plan lessons around when there are computers available.
  • With limited lab space, it becomes difficult for teachers to plan lessons based on the availability of computers. (This is just a suggestion.)
• I believe we have a problem that faces many schools.
  • I believe that we have a problem facing many schools. (I should include "that" for a formal style).
• We need to work on getting the tools our students will be using in their hands.
  • We need to try to provide our students with the tools that they will be using. (This reads better in my opinion)
• With the school being the only place our students will be exposed to some forms of technology, I feel the burden falls upon the teachers to make sure students at our school are not falling further behind than they are already starting.
  • Because the school is the only place our students will be exposed to some forms of technology, I feel that the burden falls upon the teachers to ensure that students at our school are not falling further behind than they are already starting.
• Our school could truly benefit by getting net books in our school.
  • Our school could truly benefit from buying net books. (That seems more idiomatic and more concise.)
• These are more cost effective than full sized computers and run nearly all the same operations.
  • These are more cost-effective than full-sized computers and run nearly all the same operations. (These look better hyphenated.)
• I believe once the school sees all the uses of these computers, they will allow us to budget for more of them in the future.
  • I believe that.... ("That" may make the sentence easier to read, especially considering that the subordinate clause comes first.)
• There has already been talk about looking for cheaper alternatives to desktop computers, so I feel this would be a good alternative.
  • There has already been talk of.... ("Of" is idiomatic.)
• Every student that came through our school system would benefit from the use of this technology in my classroom.
  • Every student who came.... (Using "who" for people would be preferable).
• There will be a number of benefits to having this technology at our fingertips.
  • There will be a number of benefits to having this technology readily available. ("At our fingertips" might be considered clichéd.)
• With the built in web cams we could even have face to face discussions with these people.
  • With the built-in webcams, we could even have face-to-face discussions with these people. (These are the proper spellings.)
• I know these people are busy, but it would be easier to get them to spend five minutes with us online, as opposed to trying to actually get them to come to our school.
  • I know that these people are busy, but it would be more convenient for them to spend five minutes with us online than to come to our school. (This is more concise.)
• We will be able to do the same thing with authors that have written books and have done research on these time periods.
  • authors who have written books....
• When we study ancient Chinese dynasties we would have to opportunity to skype students in china and see if we could start a discussion and see what they know.
  • When we study ancient Chinese dynasties we would have to opportunity to skype students in China and try to start a discussion and see what they know.
• I think having net books will have a direct impact on student achievement, not only in my class, but in other classes as well.
  • I think that having net books will directly impact student achievement, not only in my class, but in other classes as well. (Using “impact” cuts words and adds a bit of formality.)
• We will be able to publish papers to the web, my class will become authors and can have their work published online.
  • We will be able to publish papers to the web; my class will become authors and will be able to have their work published online. (Replacing the comma with a semicolon corrects the comma splice. You might also want to put all the verbs in this sentence in the future tense.)
• By having the students blog and produce wikis I will be able to check and see what the students are writing about, this will give me instant feedback to see if students are grasping concepts I am teaching.
  • By having the students blog and produce wikis, I will be able to see what they are writing about. This will give me instant feedback to determine whether students are grasping concepts that I am teaching. (Unrevised, this sentence is a comma splice. It might be advantageous to split it into two separate sentences as I have done here. You might also want to explain what a wiki is. Mention Wikipedia, which your audience may be familiar with. Mention that there are wikis for students' favorite television shows, too.)
• There will be instant feedback available for me and the students, so we will be able to move through areas quicker when the students understand what is going on.
  • There will be instant feedback available for the students and me, so we will be able to move through areas more quickly when the students understand what we are doing. (“The students and me” is preferable; the first-person pronoun should come last in the objective case as well as in the subjective case [The students and I].)75.89.22.45 (talk) 04:25, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with most of those, 75.89. I just made one comment on "The school for which I work". -- JackofOz (talk) 20:53, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Odd question

I live in the USA. If I wanted to purchase obsolete military equipment (Specifically a tank or APC), who would I need to talk to? I would assume that this is possible though I strongly suspect that they would remove or disable any weaponry on the vehicle. At least one would never have to worry about being booted or towed and you could really show up your neighbor who had an H2? No but seriously? 65.167.146.130 (talk) 18:40, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you would find it exceedingly hard to keep it 'street legal' - so unless you have a LARGE amount of private land to drive it on - you can forget it right now! They are definitely available though - and people do own them privately after they have been de-militarized. SteveBaker (talk) 19:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Can you get modern ones? I would imagine that even with all the weapons, etc. removed they contain too much classified equipment to be sold commercially. You probably have to settle for obsolete equipment (like the 1960's APC you mention below). --Tango (talk) 18:25, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like what I am looking for. Where can I get more info? 65.167.146.130 (talk) 19:44, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Possibly contact the producers of Tank Overhaul or the restorers they profile? Clarityfiend (talk) 20:06, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I typed "Buy Military Vehicle" into Google and started walking down the list of web sites. Generally about 99% of the things on sale are big trucks, jeeps, staff cars - that kind of thing. But on about the third site I looked at[12]. I found an M114 armored personnel carrier for sale - it has tracks, weighs 6 tons and looks big and impressive. It dates back to the 1960's. So clearly - if I found something after looking at just three web sites, it must be fairly easy to find quite a lot of this kind of thing for sale online. SteveBaker (talk) 12:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Dismantling (and remantling) a Swiss Army knife.

I have a swiss army knife - one of the crazy ones with about 30 gizmo's...but a genuine Victorinox one, not a knock-off.

Due to a series of unfortunate events, the thing is gummed up with some tarry stuff that got spilled onto it - and since (a) they cost about $120 bucks and (b) it has a certain sentimental value - I want to take it apart and clean it with some kind of solvent.

So - here's the question. Can you dismantle a swiss army knife and put it back together without wrecking it? If so - how do you start? It looks like the plastic side panels are glued onto the metal frame - if I remove them, will there be a handy set of screws underneath for pulling it all apart?

SteveBaker (talk) 19:33, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The one's I buy (Huntsman) are nowhere near $120, about $20. Try leaving it for 24 hours soaking in petrol with all the blades open. I don't think they come apart. -- SGBailey (talk) 19:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah - but those are not genuine 'Swiss Army' - and you don't get as many high quality gizmo's. But that's irrelevent - it has sentimental value beyond it's dollar cost. SteveBaker (talk) 22:11, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if it has an apostrophe remover. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:08, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

The tweezers and the toothpick in combination can remove most extra apostrophe's. Edison (talk) 02:36, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Its a Victorinox Huntsman and is as genuine as you get. -- SGBailey (talk) 00:02, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

You could try several different solvents such as Xylene or Acetone. Depending on what the gunk is, they might dissolve it without harming the knife. 65.167.146.130 (talk) 19:45, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd be worried about damaging the plastic facing, playing around with solvents. Why not contact Victorinox or see if there's something on their web site about cleaning? --Anonymous, 20:15 UTC, February 27, 2009.

I'd try WD40 to start with, and if that doesn't work then soak it in petrol. DuncanHill (talk) 20:16, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Obviously if I can't get it apart, I'll try soaking it as-is. But aside from what that might do to the plastic panels, there are all sorts of plastic parts inside the knife. Mine has a tiny magnifying glass, and a ball-point pen for example. Plus, this tarry gunk has gotten into all of the hinges and springs and other mechanisms - without pulling it all apart it's going to be almost impossible to get into all the nooks and crannies. The 'soaking-it-in-stuff' answer is something I can handle. I specifically want to know if I can dismantle it down to the individual gadgets - because that way I can really get it clean...but I don't want to risk doing something fatal to the plastic side-panels if what's underneath is rivetted rather than screwed or bolted together. SteveBaker (talk) 22:11, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I have a translucent Victorinox penknife, and the things holding it together under the plastic look like rivets (they certainly aren't screws). --Tango (talk) 22:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah - that's what I feared. Darn. (A TRANSLUCENT Swiss Army Knife...sacrilage! Burgandy...it's the only possible choice!) SteveBaker (talk) 03:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any way to dismantle them - there are no visible screws, bolts, or rivets to work on. I think they are riveted together - the older ones certainly were, and you could see the ends of the rivets in the side panels. I've managed to dismantle most things I've ever spent much time fiddling with, but a Swiss Army knife never. Maybe get some cocktail sticks and work WD40 or petrol into the interstices with the tip of it, so you can get the gunk out a bit at a time without soaking the whole thing. On the Victorinox site they do say you can wash them in warm water (recommended if you have been cutting fruit), and should oil it regularly, but nothing about dismantling it. I've tried googling various combinations of "swiss army knife" "maintain" "dismantle", etc and not come up with anything terribly helpful I'm afraid. What exactly is the gunk? Maybe try working neat Fairy liquid (use real Fairy, it's heaps better than any other) into it as best you can then rinsing with warm water (used to work on tar from oil slicks). DuncanHill (talk) 22:51, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I've asked at the Escouts forum to see if anyone there has any ideas/hints/tips. Some very knife-minded and helpful people there. DuncanHill (talk) 22:56, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

And this just in - you can prise off the covers with a thin blade, and then dismantle by removing rivets - but you will find it hard to re-assemble without the precise size of rivets. Boiling in soapy water is suggested. [13]. DuncanHill (talk) 23:49, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

At the bottom right of this page (*NOT* Victorinox) is a javascript link to "how to change handles" (on a swiss army knife). That page says "Warning : the handles can be used one time only; when removed the handles are broken." The accompanying picture seems to indicate that friction, not glue, holds the plastic sides in place and that popping them off may damage them. If you carefully work them free, you probably won't damage them, but if Victorinox uses a similar method then this is something to be aware of before you start. Also, I've seen several pages that recommend placing the knife in boiling water to clean it, but wikihow specifically says not to boil swiss army knives as the plastic covers may warp. Allowing them time to slowly cool would probably prevent this, but you indicated a sentimental value to the knife so I thought I'd mention it. Another idea you may want to try before complete disassemby - once you've removed the covers, freeze the knife and then use isopropyl alcohol, toothbrush, dental pick and compressed air to clean out as much gunk as possible. A good tip from another page: If you do end up soaking the knife in a solvent / degreaser, be sure to remove the toothpick before doing so or you'll never get rid of the taste. 152.16.16.75 (talk) 01:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Eeek! Victorinex actually sell replacement toothpicks - you can buy a large box of them for very little. Same deal for the ballpoint pen refills. I have both. SteveBaker (talk) 03:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Have you considered contacting Victorinox to find out (A) how to do the repair, or (B) whether they will do it for you? B00P (talk) 03:20, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow! Lots of great answers. But rivets...darn...that's what I feared. I guess drilling out the rivets and then replacing them with nuts and bolts might work - but if I have to break the plastic to get to them...it starts to look like soaking might be the answer.

The gunk in question is a black tarry adhesive used for sticking parquet flooring to a concrete under-floor. The stuff is incredibly stubborn - when you get it on your hands, no matter what you wash with, you end up with brown stains on your skin that don't come off no matter what - it pretty much has to wear off! Anyway - I'd used the screwdriver blade on the swiss army knife to lever the top off of the can of adhesive - but for some reason forgot to pick it up afterwards. Well, a bit later, the can got knocked over (don't ask!) and somehow during the resulting uber-messy cleanup, the knife must have gotten pushed under something. Two days later, (and missing my knife terribly!) I find it under a pile of other stuff with this tarry glue stuff soaked into every crevice and dried to an asphalt-like consistency! I got the most obvious stuff off with various solvents from my alarmingly large collection...but still, there is goop everywhere and the insides of a swiss army knife are really inaccessible. Some of the smaller gadgets won't open at all anymore - notably the file/hacksaw and the fish-descaler/wire-stripper/metric-ruler are both wedged into their respective slots and won't come out at all. Soaking it in various solvents is probably my only hope - but I kinda doubt I'll get it back to decent condition - and I can practically guarantee that one or other of them will wreck the plastic parts - so the magnifying glass will probably end up as a sticky mess. Oh well - perhaps it's time for a new Swiss Army Knife after all! I do kinda fancy the one with the USB memory stick! SteveBaker (talk) 03:47, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not recommend the use of petrol/gasoline as a cleaner. Cleaning products such as those for removing label adhesive will probably work here; it is what I use for my Schrade knife when it gets gummed up from opening packages. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 03:55, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

You can get replacement covers as well as new toothpicks, pens, springs etc. DuncanHill (talk) 14:40, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

• Steve - is there a hunting/shooting/fishing type shop anywhere near you? Some do all sorts of servicing and spares, may be worth taking the knife into a couple and asking if they can help . DuncanHill (talk) 15:16, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Victorinox is usually very good about repairing damaged knives. Contact them. Edison (talk) 20:38, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Did your alarmingly large collection of solvents include any GoJo? That or WD-40 would be what I would try first. Dismas|^(talk) 05:11, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Overcharging a cell phone

I am told that leaving my cell phone on the recharger is detremental to the battery life. I do know that leaving it on the recharger unused for several days will make the cell phone warmer. Is there an optimal time beyond which I should take it off the recharger? Phil_burnstein (talk) 21:20, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Most phones tell you when they are recharged - but the charge time is variable depending on all sorts of factors so there is no hard and fast rule. The temperature in the room for example. Batteries charge faster when they are cool than when they are hot. But it also depends on how run down they were, how old they are...lots of things. SteveBaker (talk) 22:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I know that this wasn't asked in the original question but I thought I'd relate what I heard the other day anyway: Apparently there are outlets on the market now that can detect when a cell phone has fully charged and shut off power to the charger. It was on an NPR technology podcast that I heard about them. Dismas|^(talk) 05:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Surely the way to maximise battery life is to recharge a virtually empty battery rather than frequently topping up. (Depending on the kind of battery). Kittybrewster ☎ 14:39, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Telemarketers on cell phone

I live in Canada, and keep getting recorded telemarketing calls on my cell phone. I was under the impression that this was illegal (as per this link). Am I incorrect here? What can I do about it? I considered adding my number to the do not call registry, but am a little concerned that this won't work, as per this article. Any suggestions on what I should do? The number that calls me is 888-111-1110. TastyCakes (talk) 21:44, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It's only illegal if you have registered your number with the Do Not Call registry. As for how effective the registry is, you will note that the only figures quoted are for the one guy interviewed in the article. I've noticed a substantial drop in the number - plus when I do call people back to get my name taken off the list, it's extra helpful to be able to say "you just committed a crime". DJ Clayworth (talk) 22:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm what about this line from the first link above: "FCC regulations prohibit telemarketers from using automated dialers to call cell phone numbers. Automated dialers are standard in the industry, so most telemarketers don’t call consumers on their cell phones without their consent."? Is it possible to get my cell phone company (Telus) to block calls from this number and those like it? I have read of similar problems reported by others as shown in this google search. TastyCakes (talk) 22:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely right. I missed the 'cell phone' bit. You're probably best not registering it. DJ Clayworth (talk) 22:23, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I think (in some jurisdictions at least) it may actually be illegal to cold-call a cellphone. The legal decision that made "cold-faxing" illegal in the USA said that because the caller used paper and toner inside the fax machine - that this was a material cost to you. Since you hadn't authorized them to call you - or even given them your fax number - and you haven't done business with them - or given them any other reason to assume that you'd want to incur that cost - they were not legally allowed to waste your materials. Since many people pay for incoming cell calls out of their stock of 'minutes' - the same reasoning ought to apply. Even if not, they are running down your battery because (unlike a regular phone which is powered from the phone line) receiving a call consumes YOUR electricty, which costs you at least a little to recharge. Of course if you live in Canada - Canadian laws apply and all bets are off - I'm only familiar with the rules here in Texas. SteveBaker (talk) 22:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure Canada has similar rules, people have told me that in the past at least. But I guess tracking down the people responsible is pretty difficult... Thanks for the input guys. TastyCakes (talk) 23:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Gossip here suggests the calls originate with Mutual Consolidated Savings - http://mutualsavingsinc.com/ . I take it you googled the number? They appear to be winding up a great many folk. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:45, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

While phone numbers starting with 1 would theoretically be possible in situations where the area code must be dialed, such as a toll-free number, I don't think any of them actually exist, in which case they're falsifying their number. That might be a regulatory violation even if the telemarketing is otherwise legal.

The original poster, although in Canada, cited the FTC, which is a US agency. In Canada it's the CRTC whose area this is, and you can find their "unsolicited telecommunications rules" under crtc.gc.ca; there's nothing special about cellphones but phoning to deliver a recorded message containing a commercial advertisiment (I simplify the rule slightly) is prohibited.

But looking through the hits where people have googled the phone number, there are some suggestions that the calls are originating from the US. I'm not sure which country's rules or laws apply in that case. --Anonymous, 06:45 UTC, February 28, 2009.

Crap, I had thought that was the Canadian page for some reason... THanks. TastyCakes (talk) 17:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Here in the UK I signed both my home number and my mobile number up to the Telephone Preference Service (our version of the "Do not call" list) and I've found the service works very well. I have received almost no unsolicited calls for the last 6 years on either phone. And when I did receive an unsolicited text message a couple of years ago, I made a complaint, and some marketing company on the other side of the world got fined £100,000. A very effective remedy. Astronaut (talk) 22:29, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

February 28

junkyard dog

why was he called this? the wrestler i mean? i don't need a link to his page. plz ty --Dairywebz (talk) 00:39, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

It's a reference to the Jim Croce song Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. The title character was said to be "meaner than a junkyard dog." (It's not clear if Croce was the first to use the expression or not.) - Eron^Talk 00:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

And I guess it goes without saying that a junkyard dog is a dog that guards a junkyard, a stereotypically mean and tough beast (often depicted as Rottweilers in movies). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:37, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. Croce said of the phrase, "I spent about a year and a half driving those $29 cars, so I drove around a lot looking for a universal joint for a '57 Chevy panel truck or a transmission for a '51 Dodge. I got to know many junkyards well, and they all have those dogs in them. They all have either an axle tied around their necks or an old lawnmower to keep 'em at least slowed down a bit, so you have a decent chance of getting away from them." - Eron^Talk 01:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Google book search provides no instances of the phrase actually published before the song (there are a few ref with spurious dates). Neither does Google News Archive. They have lots of usages since the song. Edison (talk) 02:34, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

A comprehensive ProQuest search turns up no instances of the term before 1973 at all. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

sex position

in man's eyes, how man's penis and woman's bottom would look like in this position? (if possible, is there a video of that?)

Try it and see for yourself.--Artjo (talk) 14:47, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Aha, but you are assuming the OP is male. I've known women who were concerned as to how their posterior would look to a man in certain sexual positions. I'm sure there are certainly videos available. I dare say the internet specialises in such things. Fribbler (talk) 16:23, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

The OP doesn't necessarily have to be male to find out. They could experiment with a female friend with some aid or they could ask their male partner to take a picture. And the OP didn't mention any concern for the size of their posterior. --Dismas|^(talk) 18:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

They did ask, as part of their question, how a woman's bottom would look. Also they may not have a male partner to practice with, and merely want to know the theoretical visual effect. Though maybe I'm approaching this question backwards....... Fribbler (talk) 21:20, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

It's probably OR, but I'd suggest they look hot. - Eron^Talk 18:44, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

There are tons of videos of "that" on the internet. Google "reverse cowgirl" and you'll find a million such things. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:53, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

And if you google "POV Reverse Cowgirl" you'll get exactly what you are looking for. In porn-parlance, POV means the video is shot from the man's perspective, such that it appears that you are looking through "his" eyes. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 20:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Management dilemma 1 (from Threshold Competitor Participant’s Manual)

This is from the APPENDIX F of Threshold Competitor Participant’s Manual by Philip H. Anderson et al (book will be used for my cousre):

"“… and whichever of the decisions you choose to make on this matter is totally up to you.” The door closes behind you as you walk out of David Anderscott’s office. Just what you need, another smoldering fire that might burst into flames no matter what you do. You stop and chat with several office workers on your way back to your office. But your mind is really on this new situation concerning Emily Bergmeier.

Emily is your purchasing agent and has been a trusted employee in Anderscott organizations for many years. She has a business degree from one of the better schools and has used her knowledge to keep your total purchasing expenditures among the lowest in the industry. Anderscott has just informed you that Emily has been accepting payments from one of your suppliers. For every $100 of goods she buys from the supplier, she receives a payment of $1 in the form of merchandise or cash mailed to her home. Information obtained by Anderscott indicates that no cost to the company can be traced to her actions. In fact, her performance has made her a highly recruited professional.

You must decide what to do about this embarrassing, if not illegal, situation. Your options, as spelled out by Anderscott, are to:

1. Do nothing since Emily is performing well and your costs are among the lowest in the industry.

The effect of this action could result in a $25,000 fine by industry governmental regulators. If you are fined, it will be paid next quarter.

2. Terminate Emily immediately. Call the supplier and tell them of the problem. Inform your new purchasing agent not to purchase from that supplier in the future.

The effect of this action could cause raw material costs to increase by 40% next quarter.

3. Terminate Emily immediately. Call the supplier and tell them of the problem. Inform your new purchasing agent not to accept payments from any of your suppliers.

The effect of this action could cause raw material costs to increase by 25% next quarter.

4. Discipline Emily immediately. Call the supplier and tell them of the problem. Inform Emily not to accept payments from the supplier.

The effect of this action could cause raw material costs to increase by 10% next quarter.

5. Appoint a committee of supervisors to investigate the accusations and report back to you with their findings and recommendations.

The effect of this action could result in a $20,000 fine by industry governmental regulators if no corrective action seems likely. You would pay this fine next quarter.

Enter the number of your decision on the Production and Finance screen...."

All the options suggest that this situation is bad. But I don't really understand what's so bad about Emily actions? Help?? 117.0.62.154 (talk) 16:10, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

It is very clear that Emily is accepting a bribe from the supplier. Whilst this may not be uncommon it is unacceptable, Not, perhaps?, for one person, but it can be the thin end of the wedge, and much more serious theft will occur. (It is theft since the amount she is taking could be deducted from your invoices.) Bear in mind, also, that she may be a brilliant agent, but she has allowed herself to get caught. In the given circumstances I think I would call her in and reprimand her strongly. She - it could be argued - has used her skills to generate personal income and may not even realise this is wrong. It is certainly against company policy. So I would want to keep her, but ensure she is honest from now on. Repay the monies...? Probably best to ignore. They will be spent, and if you want to keep her, leave it be. I would not tell the supplier. Make Emily do it.86.202.27.19 (talk) 16:41, 28 February 2009 (UTC)DT

The situation represents a conflict of interest, an ethics violation, not necessarily bribery (though bribery might be implied, it specifically requires a change in behavior, which seems unlikely here since the supplier is evidently significantly less expensive than average (40%!)). I also note that none of the actions appears moderate; why would you reprimand an employee before talking with her to determine the details of the situation. For example, placing an order with an office supply company might result in additional pads of note paper with the supplier's contact information. Is it wrong to accept those? If the office policy allows for workers to take work home, why not note paper to do the work as well? Similarly, a supplier might send "samples" in the hope of future business—if the company has no use for these samples should they just be thrown away unused? If the supplier treats these "extras" as a marketing expense, they will not be willing to simply deduct the "cost" from invoices. If this really is a matter regulated by some government agency (based on the details), then informing Emily of that fact and asking her to resolve the situation would seem to be the most reasonable action here. If she then fails to do so, a reprimand is warranted. – 74  17:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

It's certainly an ethics violation - the theoretical problem is that perhaps Emily could be getting even BIGGER savings for the company if she went with a different supplier - but she's not going to because she'd lose her 1% 'bribe' - at that point you can't accept that she's acting in your best interests 100% of the time. Furthermore - she's exhibiting a willingness to ignore your corporate ethics guidelines - and that means that she might do something MUCH more serious in the future. Worse still - you are dealing with a supplier who is prepared to bribe your employees - who knows what other kick-backs they might be giving to your staff? Plus - if they were prepared to give 1% to Emily - why won't they give 1% to your company? But it's also a matter of trust. Once you can't trust people to behave ethically - all bets are off. I don't know what the consequences should be - but for sure the answer isn't "let sleeping dogs lie". Personally - I think I'd use whatever disciplinary options are open to use against Emily - short of outright dismissal. I'd also confront the supplier - whose senior management (one would hope) would not condone this. If they DO condone it - then seek other suppliers because someone that sleazy is going to screw you in other ways if they think they can get away with it. I'd want to take a careful look at the quality and reliability of whatever it is they are supplying you - who knows?...maybe these supposed savings in purchasing are coming at the expense of increased returns, increased warranty costs or decreased customer satisfaction? Someone that low in price compared to their more ethical competitors is almost certainly taking short-cuts or doing something that could drag your company down with them. SteveBaker (talk) 20:16, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

 *Ahem* This is the business world; any time you start trusting someone you're inviting them to screw you over in some manner—this behavior is practically enshrined in the capitalist's "pursuit of profit" agenda. But before we assume that Emily is out to screw your company over, perhaps we should consider if she is accepting the kick-backs because doing otherwise would endanger a lucrative (for the company) supplier relationship? In some societies, refusing a small gift would be considered an affront. The real question here is "Can you establish that this practice is hurting your business in any way?" There are many examples of so-called "kick-backs" that are widely supported by businesses; to claim otherwise is blatantly false. Do your suppliers send you a "Holiday" gift of food? Do they take clients out to eat? Do they send trinkets (paper, pens, stress balls)? Do they provide privileged options to important customers? Finally, your argument for a quality review applies to any underpriced good. I don't dispute that this is a conflict of interest (you might note I said exactly that), but rampaging around like this behavior will be the ruin of the company is counterproductive and completely unwarranted. – 74  23:47, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd definitely go with the investigation option. The said "Anderscott has just informed you that Emily has been accepting payments from one of your suppliers". How do they know this and, more importantly, can they prove this ? If not, depending on the jurisdiction, there could be an even more expensive suit for "wrongful dismissal". Also note that ethics vary from country to country. In some places, accepting anything from a supplier would be a violation. In other places, small gifts are OK, but not cash. Then there are some places where such bribes are expected as just a normal part of business. StuRat (talk) 21:10, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

As a Member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (MCIPS), I would call her in, tell her I had information that she was accepting bribes from a supplier; explain that I would probably find it difficult to prove that information to be factual; but also explain that in order to protect her from such allegations being pursued by others in the organisation, to its professional and ethical detriment, I was proposing to ask the HR Dept, and the Finance Dept., to carry out an audit of her personal banking accounts (with her permission of course)(in her absolute own personal interests of course), and suggest that their findings might result in her records being referred to the Income Tax authorities. Any hostile redress by her, based on that course of action being an invasion of her privacy, would be countered by a re-referral to her contract of employment, that would reveal her permit to "such investigations by the company into a "potentially vulnerable" corporate officer's financial affairs" that would have been signed by her as a condition of her employment. I would also tell her a story about Al Capone before accepting her resignation.............92.23.187.14 (talk) 00:42, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I think there's missing information here. The situation MIGHT be embarrassing, but it's unclear why this would be illegal (set aside Emily's personal tax situation for the moment). Is the Anderscott organization one that comes under the purview of a federal agency like the SEC or quasi-regulatory authority like FINRA? Is it an insurance company that is regulated by the relevant state authority?

My feeling is advise Emily the company had evidence of the kickbacks and that behavior, if true, is a violation of company policy. See if she confesses. Given the relatively token sums (unless this has been going on for YEARS, it's not likely the overall amount is extreme), she may very well do so. No need to contact the supplier, have her tell them she's unable to accept their "gifts" anymore and leave it at that--with the understanding that it occurring again would result in termination. It would seem like threatening her with the IRS is a bit heavy-handed just to bring her behavior into compliance. Also, it's not indicated that Emily is a corporate officer (only that she is a purchasing agent) nor that she has an employment contract. Absent a contract and absent a court order, there wouldn't be any auditing of her bank accounts.--Brewfangrb (talk) 04:14, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

FIAT Uno 45-S

I own an FIAT uno 45S, I have searched everywhere and I haven't found any technical, or other information, even on Wikipedia.

Can somebody tell me some technical or other information about the 45-S ? thanks 85.220.102.49 (talk) 16:17, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

A Google search returned this result which seems to have significant technical detail (though I can't vouch for the contents). – 74  18:15, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

The article also has a link which, in turn, gets you to a download site [14] for a Haynes workshop manual. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 18:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I suspect you may be seeking for overly-precise information. There really were only ever two Fiat UNO's - the Mark I and the Mark II - and the differences between them are mostly that the Mk II has softer, rounder body lines. The '45' part tells you how many horsepower the engine you have produces (45 horsepower in this case) and the 'S' bit is just relates to the trim level. So pretty much any FIAT UNO information will generally apply to your car (in areas such as brakes, transmisssion, wiring, etc) - and even information about an UNO 45-S will only tell you that you have a 45 horsepower engine - not WHICH 45 horsepower engine (there were at least three different ones that used that designation). So you really need to pop the hood and look at the engine itself to see which one you have.

I used to have the Uno-55 with the Mk II 'FIRE' engine in it...the car was red - so of course we called it 'the fire engine'...I loved my Fiat Uno. They have their detractors - but I like small lightweight cars with the wheels pushed out to the corners. The Uno was a lot of fun to drive around little English country roads - it did great handbrake-turns, I learned to park in supermarket parking lots by zipping along the road - then when I saw an empty space, whacking the steering hard over, stomping on the clutch and yanking on the handbrake to whip it around 90 degrees and it would roll right into the spot...very alarming for onlookers...very bad for tyres and transmission - but a lot of fun in a 'disposable' car! SteveBaker (talk) 19:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Even more alarming for the owners of the cars on either side... Handbrake turns are certainly not a recommended method of bay parking... --Tango (talk) 20:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

^{[reference required]} Oh...Ok then. SteveBaker (talk) 21:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

"reference required"? What {{fact}} tags are you using? --Tango (talk) 22:37, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Geometry textbooks in Utah

Is there anywhere I can find what exact textbook the State of Utah uses (or the Granite School District to be more specific) uses for its Geometry classes? 75.169.209.126 (talk) 18:04, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

The obvious method would be to contact a geometry teacher and ask. I suspect most teachers would be happy to answer such a question. – 74  18:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

The school district should also have some sort of contact info on the web that shouldn't be too hard to find with Google. Dismas|^(talk) 18:13, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's the weekend, I really can't contact my geometry teacher right now (and I need the publisher of the textbook now so I can find it online, I know whoever the publisher is has the textbook online). I'll try seeing what the GSD website has to say, though... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.169.209.126 (talk) 18:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

To be fair, you never mentioned that you needed this info by Monday morning. As an aside, I'm having trouble figuring out why you would need the name and publisher of a text book for a class which you presumably are currently enrolled in. It's the middle of the semester, haven't you been using the book for several weeks now? Dismas|^(talk) 04:56, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Most likely because the title is eminently forgettable (e.g. "Geometry Applications and Principles") and the publisher is rarely, if ever, noted. The OP might, however, be able to identify the cover of the book using a Google image search. – 74  12:47, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Surely it is going to depend on what grade you are in? You need to give us all the relevant information if we are going to be able to help. --Tango (talk) 18:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Well if it's necessary I'm in Grade 9. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.169.209.126 (talk) 18:40, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Call one of your friends from the class...? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:03, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Only because I didn't skip being your age once: This looks promising [15] Your google broken? 76.97.245.5 (talk) 02:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

medical condition?

Is there a name for the condition where after copious ammounts of alcohol one finds certain females attractive, which they would never do if they were sober? For example the other night I was at an office function and i had a strong urge to get off with a 45 year old colleague of mine, and i am only 23 myself. 79.75.247.118 (talk) 21:06, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, we have the article Beer goggles. As for a medical term, I've only heard it referred to as "reduced sexual inhibitions due to alcohol consumption". No snappy name, I'm afraid. Fribbler (talk) 21:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I doubt there is a proper medical term for it - but 'disinhibition' might come close. Informally 'Beer goggles' is one I like (and of course we have an article on that!) It's interesting to watch the Mythbusters episode where they attempted to prove or disprove the claim by at least somewhat scientific means. Their result was not as clear as you'd like - and with a sample of only three people doing the testing, it could never be more than a game - but there was at least a general trend to seeing others as more attractive after HEAVY drinking - although it was not at all clear that this was the case after 'just a couple of beers' - in particular, their female subject strongly REDUCED her judgement of men after just a couple of drinks - only to come back with a large increase in her attraction to them by the time she was decently drunk. Make your own conclusions! SteveBaker (talk) 21:24, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there are a few concepts that are thought to influence this behaviour. The two major ones (which are not mutually exclusive), are alcohol disinhibition theory and alcohol myopia theory. The former essentially states that alcohol is a general disinhibitor and so it decouples the cognitive mechanisms that would normally moderate those sexual impulses. The latter states that drunk individuals are unable to process relevant sensory cues simultaneously because of a limitation in cognitive capacity associated with alcohol intoxication. Therefore drunk individuals are more influenced by salient environmental cues at the expense of less salient cues. In this case, the cue driving sexual contact was more salient that those that would normally tell you this woman was unattractive to you. Rockpocket 22:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, there's probably a psychological element to this as well, a sort of a placebo effect: if you believe that you find women more attractive when you're drunk, chances are that you will. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 23:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Resort

Do people think it's viable to resort to such low-cost options as the Internet especially during an economical downturn? As I see it, it's like people just didn't want to use it, even if it existed, maybe because of technophobia (mostly because they've not used it for most of their life so they just don't want to start). Now that everything is tightening up, though, they're going to be forced to use it because it's better than nothing... but really, it would solve a lot of problems. Thoughts? -- Mentifisto 23:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Resort to the internet instead of what? What problem are these people trying to solve? --Tango (talk) 00:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I've pointed that out in the first sentence. The current economical downturn... Woolworths already employed the tactic by opening an Internet-only shopping site. -- Mentifisto 00:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

No, you didn't point it out, the economic downturn is the reason for needing a low-cost option, not the problem that needs solving. So you're asking about retailers switching to online-only shopping? I doubt that will be very widespread, although there may be a few more examples. --Tango (talk) 00:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the OP means for retailers or businesses to resort to low-cost distribution like the internet as a sales channel during economic downturns. It's certainly possible. Many producers find themselves with excess inventory during a recession. Low-cost sales channels compliment "discounting" to shed that inventory. Most companies that are capable of internet distribution, however, don't suffer from technophobia. In order to be competitive, they have to recruit flexible and capable people who would see the internet as a viable option in all economic conditions.NByz (talk) 08:37, 1 March 2009 (UTC)\

Oh, and consumers will likely be willing to accept a lower "quality" sales experience (shopping online for clothing when they would prefer to see and touch the product, for example) in exchange for a lower price during a downturn.NByz (talk) 08:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I find online shopping to be better, in many respects:

1) No drive necessary (which is good, because I have very little drive left, at my age).

2) I can easily read customer reviews and technical specs for the product. For some reason, brick and mortar stores seem less willing to post customers reviews of how badly their products suck.

3) I can easily compare the price with other retailers. I often see "compare our price" stickers on store shelves, but somehow the product they are selling never seems to be the higher of the two. What a coincidence that it always works out that way !

4) I don't have to ask employees where the product is stocked, only to spot the product right behind them as they are explaining how they've never even carried that product.

5) I don't hear nearly as many complaints when I do my shopping in my underwear. StuRat (talk) 16:22, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Try going to a brick and mortar shop in your underwear - I bet nobody complains. You would get some funny looks, but people would act as if nothing is at all strange when talking to you. At least, they would in England - other countries will vary. --Tango (talk) 17:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that, while your fellow shoppers would probably pretend there was nothing amiss, an over-zealous store manager or "security" person might well deem you distressingly unconformist and try to make your life difficult. 93.97.184.230 (talk) 22:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh please - has NOBODY thought to link to No Pants Day? SteveBaker (talk) 04:43, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

They still where something on their top half, though. For some reason, that makes a big difference. No trousers - not a problem. No shirt - also not a problem (women may wish to wear a bikini top rather than a lace bra, though). No trousers or shirt - suddenly a problem (although, I maintain, not a problem any Englishman would dare mention). What an inconsistent race we are... --Tango (talk) 12:09, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Life

What should I do of my life? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.59.239.32 (talk) 23:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Run away from home and join the circus. -mattbuck (Talk) 23:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Whatever you like, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. --Tango (talk) 23:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

If you're bored, you can always sign up for some English lessons. --Ericdn (talk) 01:39, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like you are doing great -- asking questions is the best thing. Bus stop (talk) 02:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

My philosophy starts with "making things better for people than if I hadn't existed", is complimented by "more better is better" and ends with "maximizing the amoung by which I make people and 'the world' better."NByz (talk) 08:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Pass your genes onto the next generation - do what is necessary to ensure that the next generation is able to continue the trend. SteveBaker (talk) 02:22, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you'll find an answer in the Purpose of life article. --199.198.223.106 (talk) 07:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article for everything.--Mr.K. (talk) 13:08, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Why should sign up for English lessons? "do of my life" is wrong? "do with my life" is only more common or the right form? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.59.239.32 (talk) 13:11, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

That sentence takes the dative case, rather than the genitive. So, it can take for or with (for probably more refering to a career rather than other activities), but not of. In addition, Why should sign up for English lessons? is wrong; it lacks a subject - 'I' should be inserted before 'sign up'. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 13:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Language is about communication. The question was understood. English is just a group of refined grunts. What one does with one's life may or may not involve grunting in the English style. Bus stop (talk) 13:52, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, yes, I agree - particularly with speech. But the OP asked specifically; otherwise I would have ignored the relatively slight mistakes. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 13:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I must admit I don't know my dative from my genitive. Bus stop (talk) 13:59, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Bus stop, I think you do. Kittybrewster ☎ 14:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

It makes sense to talk of the dative when discussing Old English, but none whatsoever when discussing Modern English. DuncanHill (talk) 14:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, then the case uses a prepositional phrase rather than the genitive case involving the word 'of'. Personally, I find the use of the word dative more useful because English's prepositional phrase is equivalent to other language's dative (German or even Latin, for example), which the OP may know. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 15:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure he knows how to use them, but that's very different knowing what they actually are. (I would have to look it up to remember, although I think I once understood it.) It's like catching a ball - almost everyone knows how to put their hand out in the right place so the ball falls into it, few people know how to extrapolate trajectories based on the angles an object is above and to the sides of two base points over a short interval of time. And even fewer people care. --Tango (talk) 15:39, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I had to look at the OP's question several times before I could even work out what was wrong with it. When you read, you don't look at every word, you just glance at sentences and take in their meaning. The meaning was perfectly clear, so I didn't notice that the preposition was wrong. While I would never make that mistake in speech, I might well make it when typing quickly, so even if I had noticed it, I would have assumed it was just a typo and not mentioned it. --Tango (talk) 15:42, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

To answer our friend 83.59, "do of my life" is wrong. Why it's wrong is anybody's guess. This is the difficult part about English—we have hardly any rules, just idiom. Everybody says "What should I do with my life?", and nobody says "What should I do of my life?" or "What should I do in my life?" or "What should I do along my life?" when they mean to ask what career they should pursue. "With" actually makes less sense than "in", but that doesn't matter. It's "with". And you have a right to be angry about being told to take English lessons like that. That was rude of Ericdn. But if you do want any help with any problems you might have with English, you can ask over at the Language Reference Desk. --Milkbreath (talk) 16:59, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Jarry, Duncan has noted that 'dative case' is barely applicable to English; but you have not even analysed the sentence correctly. In talking about dative or genitive case, you are implicitly assuming that 'of my life' or 'with my life' is a prepositional phrase, but it is not: it does not pass the constituency test. (try clefting it: "?it was with my life that I did X"). In fact, the verb here is not 'do': it is 'do of', which appears to be a non-standard variant of 'do with'. That is the whole of the issue: the use of an unusual phrasal verb. There is no preposition, let alone one implying a case. And the 'error' (if you believe it is one) is simply choosing the 'wrong' particle. Interestingly, if the OP had asked 'what should I make of my life?' nobody would have cast aspersions on his or her grammar. Explain that in terms of 'dative'. --ColinFine (talk) 18:56, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

If this thread should teach the OP anything, the one thing he should NOT do (of/with/to) his life is to become a grammatical pedant... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Somehow the question turned to a complete unrelated discussion. So, what should I do with my life? Should I concentrate in sex/money/status/knowledge? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.59.239.32 (talk) 19:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Maintain a positive attitude, pursue your interests, and question everybody and everything around you. That's my advice as to what to do with your life. And also, sign your comments with four tildes (~), like this: ~~~~. Bus stop (talk) 20:11, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, properly signing your posts at Wikipedia is the true path to enlightenment on the meaning of life.   :-)   – 74  22:54, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Toss a coin and give one point to every single field that you named (sex/money/status/knowledge) but also family/friends/adventure. Start living when you got 100 points, giving proportional weight according to the coin. PS: if you don't like the result of the coin you can change it.--Mr.K. (talk) 20:13, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Either make yourself happy, make others happy, or a bit of both. As long as the net happiness of the world increases due to your influence, you've done good. (At least, that's my philosophy.) --Tango (talk) 20:33, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Education. It doesn't weigh much and gives you choices. So yeah, knowledge first. Then you can apply it to doing things you like. Julia Rossi (talk) 05:05, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

March 1

What is direct wire USB control?

What is the meaning of USB DIRECT CONTROL available in in car audio systems now-a-days? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Akshun1991 (talk • contribs) 11:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

USB Direct Control appears to describe the ability to connect an iPod via a USB cable and use the stereo's controls to select music on the iPod. In other words, the iPod isn't just treated as a line in source; you can "control" the iPod from the head unit without using the iPod's controls. – 74  13:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Pink

What is the lightest shade of pink? List of colors baffles me. Queenie ^Talk 16:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Someone may correct me, but I don't think there's an authority for that. The colours above are simply accepted; they may be Pantone. But by my reckoning, surely R:256, G:255, B:255 (Hex close to this) is the lightest shade of pink (essentially the whitest red). - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 16:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The lightest shade with a name might be found from Pantone. Jarry1250 didn't quite get the numbers right: the lightest shade of pink you can display using an 8 bit per component computer graphics card is #FFFEFE (that's R:255, G:254, B:254)...but it's SO similar to pure white that you'd find it hard to tell:

PINK (#FF8080)

WHITE (#FFFFFF)

The lightest possible pink (#FFFEFE)

PINK (#FFEEEE) per User:Jarry1250

However, that's limited only by 8bits-per-color computer graphics cards. Some fancy setups can do 10 bits or more per component. There are laser projectors that can do 16 bits per component. Those permit VASTLY more subtle colors - and pinks that are so amazingly subtly different from pure white that it would take extremely subtle instruments to tell the difference.

In the end, it's down to the ability of our eyes to distinguish it - and that's a question that varies between individuals, it varies depending on the ambient light levels and a bunch of other parameters. So there really isn't a single "correct" answer. SteveBaker (talk) 17:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Yep, my error (I was typing off the top of my head, always a mistake), but actually if you look at the three boxes, then back, to the first one etc, it's very hard to tell (as you say). - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 17:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I've decided to use white, as it actually looks pinkish when compared to the blue-tinted Wikipedia backdrop. Thanks once again, Queenie ^Talk 17:43, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Good plan - although the complementary color of blue is yellow - not pink - so your white box ought to be looking yellowish...but the Wikipedia logo and backdrop is grey - not blue. SteveBaker (talk) 04:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

SETI failure

Since the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence has failed so far, it seems probable that it will continue to fail. What are the consequences of this failure for science and for theology. Phil_burnstein (talk) 18:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know that it seems probably it will continue to fail. It's a big sky and you need to be looking in just the right direction at just the right time - it could well be that we just haven't gotten lucky yet. Even if it continues to fail for the next 100 years, it doesn't mean much for science or theology - just because there is no intelligent life out there sending signals we can detect doesn't mean there isn't any intelligent life out there, they could just have better things to do with their time and energy than send out random signals. We aren't currently sending out any signals that we could detect if they had come from another star, so there is no reason to assume other civilisations will be. Things may improve as our search of extrasolar planets continues - if we find some planets that look habitable by life as we know it then we can carefully listen to them (and maybe even beam signals to them) and might stand a chance of hearing something. Listening pretty much at random (there is some science to where they point the receivers, but it's mostly guesswork) is never going to give a very high chance of success unless there is an enormous number of civilisations out there. --Tango (talk) 19:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The odds that SETI will ever detect anything is basically almost zero (we are looking for the tiniest needles in the biggest of haystacks, and needles that may have not even been put in a place where we could find them, have long since passed us by, or will not be around for the tiny window of time, on a universe-wide scale, that we are actively looking for them). This does not reflect, though, on whether there are extra-terrestrial intelligences out there—it just reflects on our limited means of detecting them. Personally I think there is very limited scientific justification for something like SETI, but that fact has no implications on science or theology in general. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 19:22, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

There are lots of things which have not worked as yet, but that does not mean we abandon them. There were some rather long odds on other events which turned out to be quite real; people a century ago thought heavier-than-air flight was technologically impossible, and yet here we are today. SETI operates on a shoe-string budget, with meager resources, and it has a LOT of space to cover (well, ALL of it). I don't think its lack of data yet means much of anything. What fraction of known space has it analyzed? When that gets to 100%, then we can pronounce failure. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, we wouldn't even be able to declare failure then, because new civilizations might have sprung up in areas of space searched early on. Thanks, Genius101^Guestbook 19:37, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

And you have to study each bit of sky at a wide range of wavelengths. And then there are stars that have currently been ruled out as very unlikely to harbour life, but ought to be checked at some point just in case. And then there are other galaxies that it might be worth having a look at (although it would require a very powerful civilisation to signal over such a distance). --Tango (talk) 20:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Let me make an analogy. SETI, to me, is like making a giant bucket for your backyard—at some expense—in order to catch a meteorite in it. Would this be a reasonable endeavor? Operation Catch a Meteorite has so far been a failure... but that doesn't mean it won't succeed in the future, does it? Sorry, I don't buy it. I think the SETI money could be spent better elsewhere (for scientific research, even), and I think things like Seti@Home are a total waste of processing power that could otherwise be used for most practical projects (like protein folding). If we lived in a world where there were infinite resources, then sure. But we don't.

The problem with SETI is that if you reframe it around activities that are not done by licensed scientists it sounds stupid. You might as well bring up perpetual motion machines as your example along with heavier-than-air—just because none of the plans have worked yet, and we have no reason to think they might work under our current understanding, doesn't mean we should give up on financing research into them, does it? Or maybe it does. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:29, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

We have positive reasons for not searching for perpetual motion machines, since they violate of the law of conservation of energy. We have no such positive reason w.r.t. SETI, so a comparison of SETI and PM is flawed in conception. Sorry. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

But you don't need to build a big bucket to catch meteorites, you just need to wait for one to fall and then go and get it. You do need to build big radio telescopes and point them at distant stars if you want to find ETI. --Tango (talk) 12:13, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely none. Lack of news is not news. Jimmy Hoffa was not found either, with equally profound results. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, except with Hoffa, you can make conclusions based on his lack of being found—even if they aren't specific ones. You can say, for example, that if someone killed him—as seems almost surely to be the case—they did a pretty good job of getting rid of him. You can also say that the ability of the FBI to find him is somewhat diminished. All of this is because you know there actually was a Hoffa to begin with. You can't make any conclusions on the lack of SETI success—there's no way to distinguish the many possible reasons for that (there are no aliens; aliens can't communicate with us; they tried to and we didn't miss it; we're looking in the wrong place; we're looking in the wrong way; etc.). Which in my opinion is not encouraging. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The thing to bear in mind is this: If you took the most powerful radio transmitter than mankind has ever made - placed it in orbit around the nearest star to ours - then the most powerful radio telescope that humans have ever made would not be able to detect it. We have a LONG way to go. SteveBaker (talk) 03:56, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I said that already... Your strategy of being the last to reply to questions does have its drawbacks! ;) --Tango (talk) 12:13, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Er, I don't think that's quite true. This proposal notes that – using 1979 technology and a reasonable observing program – we could quite comfortably detect a signal from an Aricebo Observatory-type radio telescope using our own Aricebo at distances exceeding 1000 light years. I expect that in the intervening three decades, both our detectors and our data crunching capabilities have improved substantially.

...Which is not to say that the problem is easy to solve — that assumes that the aliens have deliberately pointed their transmitter at us, and that we happen to watching at the moment that they did. The situation is much worse if we are relying on leakage of things like television signals; there we probably can't pull in stuff from anything but the few nearest stars, though I'd check that with someone who knows a lot more about the topic than I. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:05, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

March 2

Phobia term

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

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

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

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

Wallpapers

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

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

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

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

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

workforstudents.org.uk

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

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

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

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

Other things that make me suspicious:

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

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