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I always use my laptop (a Dell Latitude) plugged in to the power supply. Every so often, apparently completely at random, the power indicator in the system tray starts strobing, as if the battery needs charging. Soon after the "Your battery level is very low" warning flashes up, and the computer goes into hibernation. When I restart it, battery level strobes for a few more seconds, but then stabilizes back at 100%. Can anyone suggest a reason for this behavior? Would a new battery help, or am I looking at replacing the whole power unit (if that's even possible)? Rojomoke (talk) 06:34, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In our office setting, that tends to indicate a bad battery. We get about two years out of a Dell laptop battery on average. I'm sure if I ran the numbers, it would be somewhere between 2 and 3, but at 2, we plan ahead to replace the battery or the entire laptop. Batteries are not very expensive. We pay $60/battery buying in bulk, so I expect yours would be around $80. Then, you can know for certain if it is a battery issue or a driver issue or a charger issue, etc... 12.116.29.106 (talk) 11:40, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't really a computing problem, but I'll ask here. My cousin and I needed to get the area of a piece of land that is bounded by a hexagon. He used a planimeter and he sent me a printout from Google Earth, with the lines drawn and a line segment scale showing "1000 feet". I used a website that will give the area of quadrilaterals (with the hexagon broken into two quadrilaterals). I double-checked with county tax maps, which gives the area of a more inclusive area. My method gave a result that was inconsistent with the other two methods. The only way to reconcile the methods is if the 1000-foot scale on Google Earth is actually about 730 feet.
I believe so, but I'm, not sure. My cousin sent me the paper with the Google Earth map with his measurements of the area on it. But that raises the question - how did his planimeter get it right if it used the wrong legend from Google Earth? I used a ruler and protractor on the tax map, and it is consistent with his figures but not with mine. Bubba73You talkin' to me?21:22, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Google Earth gives a 3D rendering, which can result in distortions when a piece of terrain is viewed under an angle. If you have the geolocation, you can compare the printout with Google Maps satellite view.
Perhaps the website giving quadrilateral areas is broken. There is a relatively simple formula for determining the area of a simple polygon given the Cartesian coordinates of its vertices, called the shoelace formula. --Lambiam05:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You could always check by repeating your exercise against something that you know the real-world distances for. For example, if there is a running track nearby or even a regulation football/baseball field, that kind of thing. Pitcher's rubber to home plate will be 60'6", etc. Matt Deres (talk) 14:53, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We do not have enough detailed information to point to a likely origin. Can the outcomes be divided into two groups, say group A and group B, such that the inconsistencies are only between outcomes in group A and outcomes in group B (so either group just by itself is not plagued by inconsistencies)? If so, is one group considerably smaller than the other one? Or do the measurements and procedures determining the various outcomes in one group have an element in common not shared with the other group? --Lambiam17:43, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I want to know when Adobe's patent for DNG expires. The Wikipedia article has a section about it but no certain expiry date. I think patents expire after 20 years, but I searched the web and couldn't find the filing date, or anything really. Thanks for your help. Commander Keane (talk) 06:53, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Researching, it appears that there are questions about Adobe's claim of a patent. Adobe does have patents, but multiple websites, including the Library of Congress, point to Adobe's self-published "patent license" web page and do not include any information about the patent itself. Of those pages, many point out that there is no patent reference for the patent license. Searching for patents is easy. I can state that there is no patent by Adobe that includes "DNG" in any form. It is a specification for camera raw format files. I found no patents for adobe that include "camera" in the title or body of the text. Therefore, it is difficult to identify which patent, assuming there is a patent, is being referenced by Adobe's "patent license." 75.136.148.8 (talk) 12:50, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Adobe's Digital Negative (DNG) Specification, Version 1.7.1.0, September 2023, opens with the statement: "The Digital Negative (DNG) Specification describes a non-proprietary file format for storing camera raw files that can be used by a wide range of hardware and software vendors."[1] [my emphasis by underlining. --L.] So while Adobe states that the file format is non-proprietary, at the same time Adobe requires people distributing an implementation of that format to display a prominent notice: "This product includes DNG technology under license by Adobe." It does not make sense. --Lambiam17:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well if you are not using the "license" then you would not have to display that message. But you should also look out for trademark restrictions. I suspect it is a variation of a paid license, but no pay is required to use this. Perhaps you could have a compatible product without a claim that it was. If you seriously want to develop a product, use the specification and not put on the notice, I suggest you consult a lawyer. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:04, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think only seasoned lawyers can interpret the language of Adobe's DNG Specification patent license. As I (but IANAL) interpret it, the text does not imply that this is a patent licence in the sense of a licence granted by a patent owner. The requirement of the prominent notice applies to all licensees who distribute a compatible product regardless of any claims they make (other than the notice itself). Again, IANAL, but I can't think of a legal argument why a vendor of a compatible implementation should avail themselves of this weird licence. --Lambiam06:59, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given the results from powers of tau in the trusted setup ceremony ; the verifying and the proving key, how can I find the point [f] resulting from the trusted setup in Groth16 ?
For each circuits, Groth16 requires to compute a point f such as f=s×G. While revealing the scalar s used for computing f would allow to produce fake proofs, f can be exposed to the public.
Sorry, the f point I was talking about is defined here. The full definition is the scientific paper from Jens Groth, but that’s little use to find where do I get the information from a compiled Groth16 circuit program written in the circom1 language (I’m meaning getting the info from the generated files) 2A01:E0A:401:A7C0:6867:6FFB:B9F6:EFF9 (talk) 14:55, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am afraid that only someone familiar with the operation of the compiler will be able to answer the question. You could have two compilers that both work fine but store the information differently. If the information can be retrieved from the generated files, it could be anywhere, depending on what the creators of the compiler thought would be a good way. --Lambiam17:49, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The compiler generetes a proving key and verifying key and .params bloat for veryfying the result of the trusted setup ceremony (no backdoors).
Groth16 is an algorithm independant of any compilers. In fact, the Zcash circuit was handwritten by mathematicians. Compilers are for automatically converting programs into polynomials qap.
I assumed the information would be encoded somewhere in the compiled Groth16 circuit program, not necessarily in a compiler-independent way. Also, while the mathematical algorithm is (obviously) independent of any compilers, it can presumably be implemented by programs that are not necessarily identical.
The link is not particularly helpful. We learn that [f] stands for an elliptic curve point in G1, but after this disclosure there is no mention whatsoever of how [f] plays a role in whatever. The original Groth16 paper does not mention [f] at all. Since you refer to it as "the target point", a term not used in either source, you apparently have another source of information. --Lambiam13:09, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That s what I was thinking (same thing as you). Looks loke the point appears under a different name in the paper.
This is what I referred to above as "The original Groth16 paper". It does not mention [f].
Suppose for a minute you succeed in figuring out how to find [f]. What good would this do? What could you use your knowledge of [f] for and how, precisely, could you use it? --Lambiam12:08, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since it’s not on the paper, it’s referred on the paper under an other name : there’s several blog talking about it under an other name.
I'm going to use examples from Wikipedia itself, but this is not a question about how Wikipedia works - instead, I'm asking about IPv6. At WP:AIV, there's an automatic option to shorten an IPv6 to just 64 bits (16 characters), followed by two colons "::" and then "/64".
Normally, it seems that despite removing detail, all the edits from that shortened IP are from the same person. Is this always true, and if so, what's the purpose of these extra characters at the end? Cheers. LucasR muteacc (talk) 05:32, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They may be from the same person but from different IP addresses. They may also be from different persons. For example, I see no reason to think that all contributions from the range 2001:8A0:FA6F:1600::/64 are from the same person; all that is certain is that they share their ISP. Edits may be from different users even when from exactly the same IP address. --Lambiam10:00, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The "A:B:...:D::/N" notation denotes a range of IPv6 addresses, specifically the addresses who first N bits in hexadecimal are AB...D. (A base-10 example might be if, for numbers between 0 and 999999, 17::/2 represented the range of all numbers who first 2 digits are 17, or the numbers 170000 to 179999. That's numbers; in general since it uses binary a /N IPv6 range will contain addresses.)
Meanwhile, the reason those addresses are commonly shortened is because Internet Service Providers will usually grant customers a range of IPv6 addresses instead of a single one. E.g. I could be granted a /67 range of addresses, meaning my IP address could shift to any IP address beginning with some preset 67 bits; that then in theory gives me addresses I could come from, or about 2 quintillion. But
the first 67 bits will be constant (unless the ISP gives me a new range); and
(I'm not 100% certain about this but I think) it's doubtful I'm using all 2 quintillion addresses at the same time, so the ISP could also quietly take part of the range I'm not currently using and give it to someone else who's in need of a range.
That's how you can end up with /64 ranges generally corresponding to individual people, but also multiple people possibly falling under the same range. But regardless, a person's full IPv6 address (at that moment) will still always be the entire 128-bit (16-character) string. 2603:8001:4542:28FB:69D8:B1B6:9002:A492 (talk) 15:42, 15 July 2024 (UTC)(Send talk messages here)[reply]
What do people think is the best AI detector? I frequently use gptzero.me, but zerogpt.com gives me different values. Thanks! Drmies (talk) 15:02, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here are some comparisons: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. Originality.ai is on all lists and the most often at the top. It is not free (but you can test it for free). Here is a comparison of 10 free AI content detectors. --Lambiam21:51, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As far I understand it correctly, GF(Integer) is used to declare a finite field which can for example be used for declaring an elliptic curve (this is what I want to do).
But why using a very large composite number (2 or 3 thousands bits long) seems to take too much time to feasible ? How to declare a dummy elliptic curve without using GF() ? 2A01:E0A:401:A7C0:9CB:33F3:E8EB:8A5D (talk) 10:09, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It appears you are referring to order or prime power, such as the 5 when using "GF(5)". If that is less than 2^16, it uses the C++ library which is efficient and fast. If it is larger than that, it uses an internal representation of polynomials over smaller fields, which is much slower. Perhaps that is what you are witnessing. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 14:09, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
However, when I run this program, two things happen I don't want to happen. If I'm on just "Float" on the mode, all numbers goes to three digits (ie 3.829 for a 15% tip on 25.53). Also the last number runs 4 digits, so it's breaking onto the "Done" line. I'm aware if I change Float to 2 in the "Mode" menu, this solves both problems. However, it is tedious to change this back and forth just to run this program. I asked ChatGPT and it told me to use "toString(int", but this isn't available on the TI 84 Plus Silver Edition. Any help? Therapyisgood (talk) 13:27, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ChatGPT was way off, the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition does have a round function and I was able to find and use it, thank you. I implemented it and it works. Therapyisgood (talk) 16:37, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm about to upgrade from an AMD GPU to an NVIDIA one, not for gaming, but for the sake of AI ML and video editing. Will there be any driver issues (including with DirectML, GPUOpen, or OpenCL), so that I'll need to de-install those? 2003:DA:CF11:CF56:691A:42A:6552:8061 (talk) 19:53, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My procedure for systems running Windows is to 1. uninstall the GPU drivers normally through the windows control panel (or settings app), then 2. run Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to remove leftover bits and traces of the old GPU drivers before changing out the graphics card for a different model, especially if it's one from another brand. DDU works best if you run it while Windows is in safe mode. There's multiple ways to enter safe mode in Windows 10 but probably the easiest way to do it is going through the "advanced startup" menu accessed by clicking "Restart" in the start menu while holding down the shift key - see here for full instructions on that. — AP 499D25(talk)06:14, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
According to GPUOpen, it's a partially open-source middleware competitor to Nvidia GameWorks (proprietary and closed) and I would be prepared for changes. Do you rely on GPUOpen for some specific functionality? Does GameWorks claim to do the same thing? There may be work-arounds. Similarly, OpenCL (I'm not familiar with it) is an open standard maintained by both AMD and Nivida, among others in the Khronos Group. It seems at a quick glance that each manufacturer provides its own implementation. If you have been using OpenCL with AMD's implementation you may need to review Nvidia's offering to see what is possible: varying levels of compatibility with the latest standards are implemented with driver releases from individual manufacturers, for specific bits of hardware (see OpenCL#Vendor implementations). MinorProphet (talk) 17:08, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The DirectML (aka Direct3D) API is part of DirectX. Although my brain exploded while trying to make sense of it all, there should be few problems for you (hah!) since this is M$'s own API, and individual manufacturers should interface with it correctly... MinorProphet (talk) 16:18, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the light of recent outages, I would back up my entire current boot drive with a disc-to-disc copy before making any changes, just in case everything went pear-shaped. MinorProphet (talk) 12:17, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is a differential equation an equation that relates one or more unknown functions and their derivatives? Newton listed 3 types of DEs with the third one being partial derivatives. "Visualization of the heat transfer in a pump casing created by solving the heat equation." SU2CAfrazer123 (talk) 21:47, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I recently bought 2 Intel processors (I couldn't resist, as they look so similar to the famous Intel 4004), but I don't know what the purpose could be. Looking at the ceramic package, I can imagine that the product was created maybe between 1972 and 1975. Maybe someone can give a hint?
I hunted around for some time, but drew a big blank other than similar chips offered on Ebay with no further description, and the pics on Commons. Is it even a CPU in the accepted sense? I could find absolutely no clues. MinorProphet (talk) 17:28, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Several aeons ago (i.e. perhaps 15 years back), I reckon that yer average search engine would have served up at least ten sites hosting the exact information you seek. I remember realising with utter clarity one day how all my finely-honed search query results seemed to have changed almost overnight: and not for the better. Sadly, this has now become the New World Algorithm™ (available in taupe only, except for our special merch recipients—you know who you are.) All changed, changed utterly. Subscribe! Why not sign up for our weekly podcast, where influencers with the intellectual capacity of a piece of seaweed will babble shit for half an hour! I bet at least some of the sites are still there, (sort of, I'm not a betting man), but if there are any left, they are now not worthy of the search engine's notice, since not easily monetizable. I suspect that the old G**gle search engine is no longer available, even on the Wayback Machine. Is this the case? I think we should be told. </rant> MinorProphet (talk) 17:49, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
University IP address blocked from editing, but something is weird
Just earlier today, while I was at university, I stumbled upon a "This IP address is blocked from editing Wikipedia" banner when I clicked on the edit button of a Wikipedia article to check out some source code. I was like fine, there are thousands of users on this network and so quite inevitable someone's gonna do something bad leading to IP addresses / ranges being blocked from editing. All until I spotted something very odd regarding the IP range that is blocked, compared to the current IP address.
It said, the blocked IP address or range is 122.56.x.x/20, but then it also said, your current IP address is 202.36.x.x. I know quite a bit about subnets and how IPv4 addresses are divided up, so something just didn't seem right to me here! On a /16 to /23 IPv4 range, the left two groups of digits never change. 202.36.x.x is obviously not part of 122.56.x.x/20. I was thinking, how is this possible?!?
If I clicked on the "Talk" or "Contributions" buttons in the upper-right corner, indeed I would get the 202.36.x.x IP address and not one in the 122.56.x.x/20 range. Looking at the IP's contributions, there were like only a dozen or so edits, quite a few from 2019, but absolutely no edits from 2020-2023, and one edit in 2024. The talk page had this shared IP address banner at the top saying that it is registered to the University of Auckland.
According to WHOIS info, the 122.56.x.x/20 subnet is registered to a well-known large ISP for educational institutions here in New Zealand, and the 202.36.x.x IP address is registered under the name of the university itself, with even stuff like the building location address being of the university.
My guess is that the 202.36.* network is actually the university's own "private ISP" kind of network, used for communication between the different campus buildings, while the 122.56.* network is the public ISP that the university network is connected to and is using for internet.
Does anyone else know what's going on here? Man, this issue definitely explains a lot of those IP address unblock requests where the user claims that their IP address is never blocked but they are somehow unable to edit, getting a blocked from editing message. — AP 499D25(talk)10:19, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's probably going to be 122.56.192.0/20 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial)), though I don't think the specific network is particularly relevant. There seems to be two questions here. The first is why you are using two different networks. 122.56.x is a Spark network. In my experience, as well as schools, Spark deals a lot with mobile Internet (wifi, 5G, and so on), and I would guess that may be a factor. I also read in an undated article that Spark is helping 'upgrade' the university's networks. Being two local behemoths they're probably best buddies and all entangled anyway. This type of network splitting seems quite common to me, though whether the difference is explained by device, access point, content filtering, other routing considerations, or something more arbitrary, is beyond me. The university does use its own network for at least some Internet stuff - you can see it regularly edits Wikipedia.
The second and more interesting question, if I'm reading the original post correctly, is why a single block message is showing a different current address to the blocked address. Maybe there's some XFF weirdness, a badly coded template, or just a bug somewhere. I seem to vaguely recall autoblocks and cookie blocks being accused of causing this behaviour, but it seems unlikely, and you should get a different message. Someone over at WP:VPT might have some details. I'd suggest we need to see the block message (with obfuscated IPs if you prefer), if this applies. -- zzuuzz(talk)14:19, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I occasionally have a similar experience, in which my talk page and contribution record show one IP, but when I press "publish" on an edit I get a block notice specifying another IP address. Two examples: I composed an edit under IP 92.8.218.114 but got a block notice on pressing "publish" for 92.8.218.47. I later composed an edit under IP 91.216.246.45, but on pressing "publish" got a block notice for 85.115.54.202, which is a different network. 79.78.116.149 (talk) 11:57, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
At home, the public IP address that appears in my router's info page is different to what I would get when going to one of those "What's my IP?" websites. I found out that my ISP actually uses CGNAT to get around IPv4 address exhaustion (learnt the hard way after hours of trying to port forward a game server to no avail). Though strangely, with my previous ISP, some other public IP finder websites would show a slightly different address, within the same subnet or neighbouring one. One thing for certain is the public IP that appears on my router page is never what I get or see on internet websites though. — AP 499D25(talk)12:59, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Both of you are correct in that the blocked subnet that would appear on the blocked IP address banner was this one (blocked for several years by User:Ohnoitsjamie).
Here's the contribs page for the IP that wasn't blocked btw.
Though to add on to the strangeness, the day after I made this post, when I got back there and tried out the edit button again (on the same Wi-Fi network, using the same laptop, in the same building location), that time it didn't say my IP was blocked, and I seemed to be able to edit! I checked the IP address signature in talk page message previews and the address I would see was the non-blocked one.
I am trying to find documentation on the "plan" keyword in Oracle. I am not looking for "explain plan." That is completely different. What I am looking for is the plan keyword in this context:
select a.id
from a, b
plan a
where a.date between begindate and enddate
I have two different Oracle documentation books in PDF. In both if I search for pages with "plan" that do not have "explain", I come up with zero results. Searching the web, I only find explain plan, which has nothing to do with that as far as I can see. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 20:04, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can you tell us where you saw that code and what version of the software it was designed for? When I tried it, the word "plan" was interpreted as an alias for the table b reference, and the following "a" was considered a syntax error. Here is a fiddle. -- Tom Ntalk/contrib00:45, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is used extensively in samples of code for a slide deck for Oracle Health EHR. Nearly every snippet of code has that syntax. I avoided using the actual table names because every slide has a huge "Propietary: Do Not Distribute" watermark on it, but I don't think the table names make a difference. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 11:22, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm curious as to what exactly caused the current CrowdStrike outage. According to this article,[7] the root cause is a single file located in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike\
and is named C-00000291*.sys. Even though it ends with the sys extension, it is not a kernel driver. I don't have CrowdStrike on my PC and I'm just wondering if this file is a text file, and if so, has anyone compared the broken version with the fixed version and figured out the delta? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 21:51, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, this is the Computing ref desk of Wikipedia, we hold ourselves aloof from such minor niggles as the proximate cause of bringing down half the world's IT systems because some CrowdShite CrowdStrike techie couldn't be arsed to check whether their patch worked before releasing it into the wild (and consequently half-asleep IT teams across the globe). It's a channel .sys file to update the Falcon Sensor software, not an AV update, which seems to have caused a page fault, try The Register at e.g.[8] It will be a BitLocker problem for many, since Win 10 removed the ability to boot directly into Safe Mode. Where are your 48-digit recovery keys?[9] On-prem, I hope, in a locked safe, to which there are two keys, since one has gone on holiday with the IT department's boss. MinorProphet (talk) 16:59, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently the error was not in the patch itself. A logic error in an existing driver, CrowdStrike’s Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) driver, running in kernel mode, had until recently gone unnoticed. It was triggered when parsing the content of the patched file, a configuration file. (For more detail, see [11], but the reporting on where the logic error was is a bit confused.) --Lambiam21:15, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If aliens took a spherical Kuiper belt object with the composition of Saturn's highest-water-content ring and the perihelion of Pluto, and reshaped it into a cube, how massive would it have to be for humans to detect the shape change before gravity reverted it? NeonMerlin05:49, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are two sensible ways how the shape could be detected: a light curve or an occultation. A light curve uses the fact that for a non-spherical shape (or a spherical shape with non-uniform albedo) the brightness varies as the object spins on its axis. Professional telescopes have other things to do than collecting light curves of KBOs, but if this thing is at least around 500 km in size, it gets into range of bigger amateur telescopes. Some of those occasionally take light curves of some KBOs. But you can't really prove a cubical shape this way, as the light curve can also be explained with a funny albedo variation.
An occultation happens when this object passes in front of a background star. Multiple observers on the ground on Earth can detect the exact times when the star disappears behind the KBO and reappears later. With enough observations, one can see the silhouette of the KBO and confirm it's cubical. Around 10 observers in the occultation path, the width of which equals the diameter of the KBO, should be enough. The KBO doesn't have to be bigger than 50 km or so. Those observers are typically amateur astronomers, whose telescopes don't need to be big enough to see the KBO; seeing the background star with sufficiently short integration time (sub-second) is enough. The difficulty is knowing the orbit of the KBO accurately enough to predict the occultation and finding enough telescopes in the occultation path. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:51, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I drank a 0,5 l bottle of 5,3% beer and another 0,5 l of a 4,9% beer, would it be correct to say that I drank 1 litre of 10,2% beer from physiological and chemical perspective? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 07:48, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, not from any perspective, physiological, chemical, or mathematical. You don't add the percentages, you take the mean. (5.3 + 4.9) / 2 = 5.1% by volume. AndyTheGrump (talk) 08:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But, you can't exactly take the mean of the percentage-by-volume, because the mixture of ethanol and water causes a nonlinear volumetric change... For example, our article about alcohol by volume states: "The phenomenon of volume changes due to mixing dissimilar solutions..." is its partial molar property. The volume change is small, but non-zero... and it makes the ABV of the mixed drink non-equal to the arithmetic mean of its constituent ingredients. Our universe is amazingly complicated! Nimur (talk) 16:56, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But is the inaccuracy significant in the context of people drinking (say) beer in pints and halves and estimating their likely degree of insobriety? Personal physiological factors are likely (in my experience as a trained beer drinker (really!)) to outweigh the physical chemistry aspects. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 06:56, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I will ignore the mass/volume difference of alcohol and water. So assume that a liter is a kilogram, and alcohol by volume equals alcohol by mass.
0.5 liters of 5.3% alcohol contains 0.0265 liters of alcohol. 0.5 x 0.053 = 0.0265.
0.5 liters of 4.9% alcohol contains 0.0245 liters of alcohol. 0.5 x 0.049 = 0.0245.
So 0.0265 + 0.0245 = 0.051 liters of alcohol. You had three and a half tablespoons of alcohol.
If you drink one liter of 10.2% alcohol, you consume 0.1 liters of alcohol. Tenth of a liter is a deciliter, right? Which is twice the amount of your two pints above.
In practice, effects of alcohol intake will depend on things like how quickly you gulp the beer vs. hard spirits, how often you will need to drain the weasel, and such.
The laws of gravity are presumably the same throughout the universe: the force is proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distances. So why do we observe very different structures at different scales? Solar systems involve a few discrete objects orbiting a sun, galaxies have various shapes but often spirals, and then over larger distances the distribution of galaxies is like a 3-D network of filaments. I believe that simulation models can produce all these different structures, but I am hoping for some intuitive explanation of why the different outcomes. One possibility might be that things happen relatively faster over small distances, and that the universe would also develop into something like a giant solar system given more time. Another possibility is that some processes happening only at the local scale (e.g. nuclear fusion in stars) interfere with what would happen if gravity alone were operating. Or is it something else entirely? Thanks. JMCHutchinson (talk) 12:01, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The small-scale stuctures, such as the discrete objects in solar systems and the spiral structure of galaxies (even the disk itself) arise due to non-gravitational processes. When a cloud of ordinary (baryonic) gas collapses its density and temperature increase and it gives off an increasing amount of electromagnetic radiation, this leads to a loss of energy (radiative cooling) that speeds up the collapse and leads to the formation of small-scale structures. Dark matter, which is only subject to gravity, does not do that and there is no comparable small-scale structure in the dark-matter distribution. There are purely gravitational cooling mechanisms such as violent relaxation but they are much less effective than radiative cooling and operate on larger time scales. The time since the Big Band has been sufficient for galaxies and clusters of galaxies to form (less massive objects form first, more massive objects later), but not yet for objects on larger mass scales (superclusters exist but they are not bound objects yet). This is the reason why matter on the largest scales is organised in filaments but not in bound, more or less spherical objects. Finally, the presence of dark energy and the consequent accelerating expansion of the Universe set an upper limit to the mass of bound objects that will ever form — I don't know what that limit is but I guess it is in the supercluster range. --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:27, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I've noticed that the term "neuroplastic pain" has 700 thousand hits on Bing search, but there is no article or redirect for it on Wikipedia. However, it seems similar to nociplastic pain, but I'm not completely sure. Is here anyone with medical background who could confirm/decline this? --Pek (talk) 16:35, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to be an incipient medical term, with 107 Google Scholar results. Just glancing down the squibs Google provides shows that it is listed separately, for instance, "Nociplastic pain is hypothesized to differ from nociceptive and neuroplastic pain...". Neuroplastic pain appears to be a sequela of neuropathic pain. The results from the Google Scholar and regular searches show a lot of scammy stuff, and I worry that creating a redirect (to neuropathic pain) may be a bad idea. Conversely, without good sourcing, an article may be impossible to create at this time. I would take this to WT:WikiProject Medicine. Abductive (reasoning)21:36, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Does the velocity of an electromagnetic wavefront depend on the medium?
Our article Velocity factor states: The velocity factor...is the ratio, of the speed at which a wavefront (of an electromagnetic signal)...passes through the medium, to the speed of light in vacuum. So it seems that the velocity of an electromagnetic wavefront does depend on the medium.
However, our article Front velocity states: The earliest appearance of the front of an electromagnetic disturbance (the precursor) travels at the front velocity, which is c, no matter what the medium. Similarly, our article Wavefront states: Wavefronts travel with the speed of light in all directions in an isotropic medium. So it seems that the velocity of an electromagnetic wavefront does not depend on the medium.
I wonder whether this is a contradiction between our articles (if so then how should they be corrected?), or - probably - I miss something here (if so then what do I miss?)... HOTmag (talk) 21:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have corrected the sentence in wavefront — the article talks about waves in general, not specifically about electromagnetic waves (in which case it should have been the speed of light in the medium). The "front" discussed in front velocity is not the same thing as a wavefront (= a surface of constant phase) but, as in your quote, the earliest appearance of an electromagnetic disturbance (again one could talk about non-em disturbances but we won't). For instance, some switches on a lightbulb a distance from me. The question is "At what time can I know the lightbulb is on?" and the answer is . The reasoning is that because this is a discontinuous signal (the mathematical formulation involves the Heaviside function) the spectrum of the signal includes all frequencies, in particular very high ones. In most (any?) media the refractive index approaches 1 for very high frequencies, i.e. the propagation speed approaches the vacuum speed of light for high frequencies. Therefore, the high-frequency part of the signal arrives first, and the bulk of the signal later. Due to this dispersion, the temporal/spatial shape of the wave signal changes as it propagates (think of what sound does on a frozen lake). --Wrongfilter (talk) 05:52, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding our article Front velocity: As opposed to other readers (including me), you've understood that it refers to a beam of light containing the whole spectrum. However, if the beam of light contains, not the whole spectrum, but e.g. two types of waves only, e.g. red and blue, then the front velocity of this beam of light does depend on the medium, right?
Here is the full quote, from our article Front velocity: the wave discontinuity, called the front, propagates at a speed less than or equal to the speed of light c in any medium. In fact, the earliest appearance of the front of an electromagnetic disturbance (the precursor) travels at the front velocity, which is c, no matter what the medium.
Is the claim in this quote correct, as far as my red-blue example mentioned above is concerned? In my example, "the earliest appearance of the front" of this electromagnetic disturbance is the appearance of the blue wave, right? If it is, then shouldn't the paragraph be corrected, for all readers to understand that it only refers to a beam of light containing the whole spectrum? HOTmag (talk) 08:55, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The spectrum is the Fourier transform of the disturbance. A discontinuous disturbance has signal at all frequencies, not just "red" and "blue". These things are not independent. --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:16, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Got it, thank you.
So, If I want the value of the speed of light to be independent of medium, I must refer to the front velocity of a beam of light containing the highest frequencies possible, right?
If your answer is positive, then how can the formula be justified, when applied to a red light moving in water? In this case, so is a finite number, while so according to this formula, we get which is false...
I'm pretty confused now. Unless no mass is allowed to be attributed to the light, not even a zero-mass, so my last question will vanish. Am I right? HOTmag (talk) 10:14, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not letting myself get drawn into the mass debate again. Light is complicated, light in matter is even more complicated. If you want the momentum of a photon, use . --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:25, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. What about my only question still left, in my second sentence? "If I want the value of the speed of light to be independent of medium, I must refer to the front velocity of a beam of light containing the highest frequencies possible, right?" HOTmag (talk) 10:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see the point of that sentence. Why would you "want the value of the speed of light to be independent of medium"? The front velocity looks like an interesting theoretical curiosity with little actual physical relevance. --Wrongfilter (talk) 11:13, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've only wanted to know if, the only way to define the well known speed of light - usually denoted by c - must rely on the vacuum, or the speed of light can also be defined without the concept of vacuum? Assuming we don't want to define it numerically (299,792,458 m/s), nor by ratios between other physical constants.
So according to your previous clarifications, I thought that perhaps the speed of light could be defined as the front velocity of a beam of light containing the highest frequencies possible... HOTmag (talk) 12:39, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You are perhaps falling into the trap of thinking that the speed of light in a vacuum, c, is determined by a property of light (in the sense of e-m radiation). It is not: it is (as a limit) a fundamental property of Spacetime, to which light and everything else (though not spacetime itself) has to conform, including other massless 'particles' which must perforce travel at it in a vacuum. It just so happens that it is easiest to observe (and measure) using light, and was thus discovered and named. Or so I understand the matter. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 07:37, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, of course I've always knwon that c is just a limit being a fundamental property of Spacetime. But instead of using the complicated expression: "a limit being a fundamental property of Spacetime", I used the common term "speed of light", as most people do (including you - as I guess), just for the sake of convenience and simplicity. That said, I only asked if this limit - which I called "the speed of light" for the sake of convenience and simplicity, could be defined - without the concept of vacuum - as the front velocity of a beam of light containing the highest frequencies possible. HOTmag (talk) 22:33, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be confusing the (expectation) values of the momenta and their uncertainties. Conservation of momentum demands and says nothing about the uncertainties. --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:24, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Uncertainty means that can take any value within . So taking the intervals like or is suitable for the order of magnitude. U240700 (talk) 12:19, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The total momentum in quantum mechanics is conserved meaning that
Your value comes from a different experiment, not Rutherford's, and is therefore not relevant here. It applies, for instance, to a measurement of the average charge density in an atom. This would be a low-energy experiment, taking care not to disturb the electronic structure of the atom. The uncertainty principle does not stop you from setting up an experiment to measure the instantaneous position of an electron more precisely, but the concomitant momentum uncertainty would likely ionise the atom. Rutherford's alpha particles had energies in the MeV range, if I'm not mistaken, much higher than the binding energies of electrons in atoms. They could in principle — I don't know how, and Rutherford's experiment is certainly not set up to do so — be used to locate electrons to much smaller than the value you give. --Wrongfilter (talk) 03:53, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have no questions for , I have a question for . The proton is located in center of atom in very small boundaries () . It violates the uncertainty principle. The proton must be smeared over and (like the electron) be detected (materialized) everywhere , not just in center. U240700 (talk) 06:57, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, like you I got too hung up on the location of protons and electrons. The Rutherford experiment does not actually measure the location of nuclei, it measures their size. The experiment does not tell you where the nuclei are (not even in relation to their electron shell). Putting them at the centre of atoms is subsequent model building. --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:14, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The momenta of the proton and electron are only equal and opposite if the total momentum of the atom is zero. In that case, the position of the atom is completely indeterminate. In order for the atom to be localized, it must have some uncertainty in the total momentum, which means that you can't equate the momentum uncertainties of the proton and electron in this way. The proton can have a larger momentum uncertainty, and a smaller position uncertainty, than the electron. (Note also that the uncertainty principle is an inequality, and it's worth calling out that the ground state is a minimum uncertainty state.) --Amble (talk) 00:35, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Rutherford scattering experiment did not actually measure the position of nucleus. It only measured differential cross-section, which appeared to be one of a point-like charge. Where this nucleus is located is absolutely irrelevant. Ruslik_Zero20:20, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you can read Swedish, I think this is the original publication in which Ekeberg announced his discovery of tantalum. If you can't, maybe someone who knows Swedish and has some familiarity with the terminology of analytical chemistry will be kind enough to summarize the procedure, which I think is described in the later half of the article; on p.78 I see Detta nya metallämnet ("this new metallic substance"). --Lambiam11:26, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, the Scandinavian languages are something I never looked deeply into. Though it's starting to seem clear that I'm going to need to look into Swedish to study this period of chemical history. :) Double sharp (talk) 12:19, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is a strongly abridged extract of the second half of Ekeberg's article, referring to the newly discovered metal with the incorrrect name tantalium. It does not give the isolation procedure of the elemental metal but only some of its physical properties as well as chemical properties distinguishing it from tin, tungsten and titanium. --Lambiam09:37, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
{{ec}} If anyone wants to have a go at manual- or machine-translation from Swedish, I uploaded what en:tantalum and sv:tantal appear to identify as the original article as File:Ekeberg-1802.pdf. My naive first pass with Acrobat was able to do some extraction, but had trouble with some of the diacritical marks and correctly representing them in my system's font, and also gave too many disjointed text fields to make it bulk-selectable. DMacks (talk) 19:32, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. The German translation AstroLynx points to can be copy-pasted from the generated PDF, so here's a somewhat cleaned-up reading of the relevant bit:
Dieser neue Metallstoff zeichnet sich durch seine Unauflöslichkeit in alle Säuren, wie man ihn auch mit denselben behandelt, aus. Das einzige Auflösungsmittel, das ich auf denselben wirksam gefunden habe, ist das ätzende fixe Laugensalz, so daß, wenn man das Erz mit demselben brennt, und das Gemenge mit Wasser auszieht, ein großer Theil in der laugensalzigen Lauge aufgelöst wird. Aus derselben kann er durch eine Säure gefällt werden, aber der Niederschlag wird nicht wieder aufgelöst, wie viele Säure man auch zugießen mag. Abgeseihet und getrocknet erscheint er als ein Pulver von ausgezeichneter Weiße, welche Farbe er auch beym Glühen behält. Wenn der Theil des gebrannten Klumpens, welcher von der laugensalzigen Lauge nicht aufgenommen ist, mit Säure ausgezogen wird, bleibt ein weißes Pulver von gleicher Beschaffensheit nach. Seine eigenthümliche Schwere, nach dem Glühen, war 6,500. Vor dem Blaserohre wird er leicht vom Borax und Phosphorsalze aufgelöst, gibt den Flüssen aber keine Farbe. Auf einem Heerde von Kohlengestäbe in einem Ziegel, ohne Zusaß der Hitze, welche zu einer Braunsteinprobe erfordert wird, ausgefeßt, untergeht er eine Art von Verfrischung, bey welcher er zu einem grünlich harten Klumpen zusammensiedet, welcher auf der Oberfläche einen metallischen Glanz hat, aber im Bruche nur matt glänzt und schwarze grün aussieht. Auf diesen haben Säuren keine weitere Wirkung, als daß fie ihn wieder zu
der weißen Halbsäure verwandeln. Das Verhalten bey der Verfrischung und die eigenthümliche Schwere, gaben mir Anleitung, diesen besondern Körper unter die Metalle zu rechnen.
It sounds like the English abridgement omitted to notice the word Erz there. That makes the procedure sensible: it seems that Ekeberg converted the ore via alkaline digestion to Ta2O5 (certainly a mixture with Nb2O5, though he wouldn't know that), then attempted to reduce it with carbon. This actually should have a quite poor yield under his likely experimental conditions, but clearly, it was enough for him to draw the correct conclusion. I'm extremely impressed. (V, Nb, and Ta are quite a pain to reduce from the oxides to the elemental metals, especially if you want a reasonably pure product.) Double sharp (talk) 10:05, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Was the grünliche harte Klumpen (impure) elemental tantalum? It is a pity Ekeberg did not give its specific mass, unlike for the ore, or other physical properties. --Lambiam18:04, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wasted several seconds looking at it. It's what we call a solidworks engine. take any positive displacement pump, add fuel and oxidiser, hey presto semi believable engine animation. The total absence of technical info in the youtube I saw is a bit of a giveaway. "Get more energy out than you put in." yeah and I've got a bridge to sell you. Greglocock (talk) 05:54, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the H-bomb is considered a "holy grail". The term has been used for nuclear fusion as a source of "clean energy", where the hope is that "we can obtain more energy than we put in".[13] In this context, the wording "obtain more energy than is put in" is IMO somewhat justifiable: after all, E = mc2 gives mass–energy equivalence, not mass–energy equality. Claiming to obtain more energy than is put in for combustion engines is not justifiable. --Lambiam13:03, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Julian day says that the next Julian period will begin in AD 3268. When representing dates after this period begins, do mathematicians/astronomers/etc. reset the date count to 1 in 3268, or do they continue incrementing dates unchanged from 3267? If this is answered in the article, I missed it. Nyttend (talk) 21:57, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not convinced this is a math question, so perhaps it should be migrated to the science or computing desk. Are there people who actually need to keep track of dates that far in the future? --RDBury (talk) 02:14, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest asking the question again some time after the year, say, 3250, when the people in charge have started thinking about it. Personally, I would think that resetting would be rather inconvenient and serve no practical purpose. --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:21, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
nasa.gov already has free Julian astrometry to day ~5,373,483 (Anno Domini 9999, if they ever go to 9,999,999.999999999 you could get major solar system object positions till December 20th 22666 AD (a Thursday)). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:10, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No resetting: the Julian date is a continuous count. The epoch is fixed to the beginning of the current Julian period, it doesn't float to the beginning of the Julian period of times in the distant future. See for example "The Julian and Modified Julian Dates" by Dennis McCarthy from the USNO: "The Julian day number (JD) is the number assigned to a day in a continuous count of days beginning with the Julian day number 0 assigned to the day starting at Greenwich mean noon on 1 January 4713 B.C., in the Julian calendar extrapolated backwards ('proleptic')." Similarly, if you look into the IAU's SOFA software, it uses a fixed epoch, and defines the range of valid dates for the conversion routines [14], [15]: "The earliest valid date is -68569.5 (-4900 March 1). The largest value accepted is 10^9." This shows the understanding that Julian dates corresponding to future Julian periods are expected to be counted from the current epoch, without resetting. --Amble (talk) 16:18, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could you find a specific citable source for no-reset? I'm uncomfortable citing the software, and I can't find the quote in McCarthy. Nyttend (talk) 21:44, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd recommend going with the McCarthy article and/or the IAU resolutions from 1997. For McCarthy, look in the last paragraph, just before the acknowledgements, pg. 330. [16] For the IAU resolutions, look at resolution B1 and the appendix here: [17]. --Amble (talk) 16:12, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Scene in Laramie, Wyoming, USA. I'd like to put it into Commons categories for the trees along the street — particularly the big prominent one near the centre — but I don't know anything about this kind of thing. Nyttend (talk) 08:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
PS, I was guessing blue spruce for the big one at the centre, but the shape is quite different from those of the trees pictured in that article. Nyttend (talk) 08:20, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A zoom-in on the image shows some distinctive spruce cones, and it is certainly blue-ish (Caveat: the blue spruce is an uncommon specimen tree in the UK and I'm not sure that I've ever seen one in person). Alansplodge (talk) 10:53, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking as a regular WP:Wikiproject Plants contributor, I would prefer that users didn't assign species categories to images such as this unless they were absolutely certain of the identification. Ideally, the image would include the label from the arboretum or botanical garden. Abductive (reasoning)21:11, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For deriving the Lorentz transformations, our article Derivations of the Lorentz transformations relies on their linearity. How do we know they must be linear? Our article answers: Since space is assumed to be homogeneous, the transformation[s] must be linear. I wonder, how their linearity is deduced from the homogeneity of space, before we've found how they will look like...
For the time being, I'm adding an Einsteinian source for this claim in the article, even though I don't know how Einstein derived this claim. HOTmag (talk) 23:41, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. However, rather than assuming linearity - from the very beginning (as you do), Einstein's claim I've quoted from our article - derives linearity - from the homogeneity of spacetime. My question was: how can the quote be justified. HOTmag (talk) 10:02, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is the article in which Einstein introduced the special theory of relativity. His spacetime is flat, and the reference frame of a stationary observer is basically the same as for Lorentz, so space is an Euclidean 3-space. The "homogeneity" is that the laws of physics are invariant under an isometric transformation of space. Just homogeneity is not enough; to reach the conclusion, the flatness is essential. --Lambiam00:19, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Let's assume that the space is flat, and that the laws of physics are invariant under an isometric transformation of space. How do you infer from these assumptions, that the Lorentz transformations (which are actually not isometric) are linear? This is what I can't understand yet... HOTmag (talk) 18:35, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So I get that in around 100 billion years, our observable universe will be limited to the Local Group due to Hubble expansion (bummer), but would that include the Virgo Cluster? Some sources say that they would join due to gravity (https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/V/Virgo+Cluster, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe) but I'm also reading responses saying the Hubble expansion is more powerful and therefore Virgo would end up outside of the observable universe. I realize there a lot of variables that we don't know or could change. 184.96.249.124 (talk) 02:28, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that it is receding now does not necessarily imply that it will continue to recede forever. The Andromeda galaxy and the Milky Way once receded from each other but have by now turned around and are approaching each other. Every bound object (more exactly, "virialised object"), say a cluster or group of galaxies, has formed out of an initially expanding, but overdense region of the Universe that through the action of gravity has by now recollapsed (a "little crunch", if you will). Throwing a stone up in the air is a pretty good analogy: When I do that on earth, the stone will first move upwards (recede from me) but then it will invariably turn around and fall back down. When I do it on a sufficiently small asteroid, throwing the stone with the exact same force, it may well escape to infinity and never come back. What the analogy does not capture is the effect of Dark Energy, which prevents structures on very large scales from recollapsing, and, as I wrote in another recent thread, I do not know where the limit is. The article Laniakea Supercluster suggests that this structure is not bound, i.e. will not recollapse. You may want to have a look at the references therein. --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:44, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you but I know all of these. However it is well known that Virgo supercluster (as any supercluster) is not gravitationally bound. The present recessional velocity of the Virgo cluster is more that 1000 km/s. There is not nearly enough mass to even slow this expansion rate. If fact this velocity is already increasing due to the cosmic repulsion. Ruslik_Zero21:11, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure the results of the study support a statement like "immunity via infection doesn't provide much protection - at least in regard to severe infections" given that only about "a quarter of individuals with either a moderate or severe first infection coinciding with hospitalization also were hospitalized at the time of reinfection", although the difference might not be due to their immune responses. Sean.hoyland (talk) 06:56, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The unpredictability of viral infection and immune response at the individual level is quite impressive. I got an AstraZeneca shot, a Moderna shot about 6 months later and a Moderna booster 6 months after that or thereabouts and I didn't experience any symptomatic Covid infections, despite being surrounded by people with active infections quite often. Then finally, a couple of months ago, I had my first symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. And despite having lived through decades of dengue seasons and thousands of mosquito bites in various places during dengue outbreaks without any symptomatic dengue infections, I had my first dengue infection a month after Covid. Hats off to scientists trying to make sense of these immensely complex systems. Sean.hoyland (talk) 07:47, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
SARS-CoV-2 is a quickly mutating virus with many variants. The immunity provided after infection by one variant is strongest for that specific variant. Evading immunity is a driving factor in the evolution of the virus, which is why we may expect recurring waves, as we are used to for influenza. Next to reinfection with a different variant, the immunity after infection or after vaccination wears off after a couple of months. I have taken all shots and booster shots as soon as they were made available, yet I have been symptomatic twice. Since the vaccines are developed mostly for specific variants, and one usually does not determine the specific variant responsible for the infection of a symptomatic patient, I doubt that there are studies that have determined whether vaccination provides the same level of protection as that after infection. I'm not sure, but so many factors play a role that I think it will be very difficult to collect the data necessary for drawing a conclusion. --Lambiam09:29, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The immune system having a sort of predictive system via somatic hypermutation complicates matters. I think labs at La Jolla Institute for Immunology have done some work on comparing the immune responses to infection vs vaccination, immune memory etc. Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:57, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation says Frames of reference can be divided into two groups: inertial (relative motion with constant velocity) and non-inertial (accelerating, moving in curved paths, rotational motion with constant angular velocity, etc.). The term "Lorentz transformations" only refers to transformations between inertial frames, usually in the context of special relativity. Greglocock (talk) 04:25, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I learnt in school that different types of elements can bond in different ways, like non-metal atoms bond covalently together while a non-metal atom with a metal atom bond ionically, but why is that? Also, what factor(s) determine why some elements (like hydrogen) share/transfer 1 electron, while others (like carbon and nitrogen) and share/transfer 2 or 3 electrons? Bestfweind (talk) 04:58, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
More than anything else, it's the number of valence electrons that each atom has, and the number that it needs. Hydrogen needs just one extra valence electron to have a full outer shell, so two hydrogens share a single electron. Nitrogen needs three, so two nitrogens share three electrons. Nyttend (talk) 07:00, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, you may be thinking of common compounds such as table salt, sodium chloride, which involves an alkali metal (at the left end of the periodic table) and a halogen (near the right end). Like the other alkali metals, sodium has just one valence electron, so it's highly electropositive (ready to give up an electron), and like the other halogens, chlorine needs just one valence electron, so it's highly electronegative (ready to gain an electron), and it's extremely easy to create an ionic bond between atoms that are both highly electropositive/negative and that need to give/take the same number. Nyttend (talk) 07:06, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The bond is better described as ionic when one atom is much more electronegative than the other. In something like table salt you can approximate the valence electron of Na as having passed completely to the Cl, although in reality it's not a complete transfer. Covalency happens when the electronegativities are similar. It is all a continuum from one to the other: Na–Cl will be more ionic than Li–Cl, which will in turn be more ionic than C–Cl.
The first-row elements B–Ne have a larger tendency towards multiple bonding than their higher homologues in lower rows, because their atoms are so small that non-bonding pairs of electrons result in significant repulsion. It's less of an issue for things like Al–Ar. Double sharp (talk) 07:24, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Our Double bond rule is quite light on cited content for the concept itself, and gives (with cite, that I can't access) a different rationale. Please update if you've got a ref. DMacks (talk) 03:02, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I keep meaning to split up that hybrid (ha!) of an article, but obviously keep never getting around to it. DMacks (talk) 04:37, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If image sleuths were to discover that the unexplained "Little Red Dots" observed by the JWST,[18] as seen from the solar system against the cosmic expanse, actually spell out a message in a well-known two-dimensional barcode, namely, "Of course I exist, you blockheads. Yours forever, God", would this seem relevant evidence? --Lambiam12:09, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most people who believe in a god believe in the same one as their parents, implying that they do so because of what some would call cultural influences, but which I call love bombing and brainwashing from birth. HiLo48 (talk)
I will add that the big bang is what happened after the creation, but was not the singularity that was the start of the Universe. So creation is at time 0. Big bang in the interval (0,CMB visibility] Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:59, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is stated in our article on the Big Bang, with sources (see the "Singularity" section), that some authors use "Big Bang" to just mean the initial singularity and others include some periods after it. I'd argue that the name Big Bang nucleosynthesis sort of implies that at least the first few minutes (when deuterium, helium, and lithium are synthesised) can be taken as part of the "Big Bang". Double sharp (talk) 06:03, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since it doesn't only refer to an object's length, but also to any abstract length, so why isn't this general fact mentioned in the lead of the article Length contraction, nor in (most of) the common literature discussing the phenomenon of length contraction?
Explanation: The lead of our article claims the following: If we (travel on a train and) observe a moving "object" (e.g. a moving building), for which is the object's length measured in the object's reference frame, then we will meausre the object's length to be shorter, i.e. So, why does the lead of our article (as well as the professional literature discussing this phenomenon) only mention an "object", even though this is also true for abstract lengths? Just substitute "distance" (e.g. between two buildings) for "object", and you'll get the following true analogous sentence: If we (travel on a train and) observe a moving distance (e.g. a distance between two co-moving buildings), for which is the distance's length measured in the distance's reference frame (i.e. in the reference frame of the buildings), then we will meausre the distance's length to be shorter, i.e.
Indeed, our article contains some hints, e.g. in the chapter "Basis in relativity": Here, "object" simply means a distance with endpoints that are always mutually at rest, i.e., that are at rest in the same inertial frame of reference. Yet, this general fact is neither mentioned nor implied, neither in the lead - nor in the chapters that prove the length contraction - nor in (most of) the common professional literature. HOTmag (talk) 19:26, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The phrase "any length in the moving object's reference frame" is ambiguous. Supposedly it is the length of some (other) object. Is it co-moving with the first object? By "a moving object measures (some length)", do you mean, "an observer to whom this moving object is at rest measures (some length)"? It is not very clear. --Lambiam20:20, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There once was a fellow called Fisk Whose fencing was strikingly brisk So fast was his action That FitzGerald contraction Reduced his rapier to a disk —I thought this was an original Lear, but can't find it. It was printed in our physics books at school in the 1970s.Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:48, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Let's focus on the following concrete example: If a moving observer measures a given distance between two trees to be one mile long, then we measure this distance to be shorter, i.e. mile long, right? So, why isn't this fact mentioned in the article? It only mentions an "object's length", which really includes the observer's length, yet not any abstract length, e.g. a distance between two trees and likewise. The phenomenon of length contraction is not only about an object's length, right? HOTmag (talk) 22:04, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the observer is moving along a row of trees, the trees are moving relative to the observer, so this moving observer will observe length contraction by a factor of for the distance between successive trees, compared to this distance as measured by an observer in whose frame of reference the trees are not moving. So, if "we" are the latter observer, we measure this distance to be longer, by a factor of than the length reported by the moving observer. If, on the other hand, the trees are moving with the observer, who (from their point of view) is standing still among a row of trees while seeing us whizz along in a rocket, this observer, who is moving only relative to us and not to the trees, will not observe length contraction for the distance between successive trees, whereas to us in the rocket the trees are moving, so we measure the inter-tree distance to be shorter by a factor of Do you feel our article should explicitly mention the fact that length contraction is not observed by an observer in whose frame of reference the object is not moving? --Lambiam06:32, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm really referring to the latter case you've mentioned, in which the trees are co-moving with the observer, who sees them at rest. It's only us who see, both the observer and the trees, co-moving at the same velocity.
As for your last question: No, I don't want our article to mention the obvious fact that no length contraction is observed by any observer in whose frame of reference the object being measured is at rest. However, I do want the lead of our article, as well as the professional literature discussing the phenomenon of length contraction, to mention that this phenomenon is not only about a given object's length but also about a given abstract length.
Let me explain my point: The lead of our article claims (in my own words) that: if we (travel on a train and) observe a moving "object" (e.g. a moving tree), for which is the object's length measured in the object's reference frame, then we will meausre the object's length to be shorter, i.e. right? I guess you agree (if not to my exact own words then to their content). So, why does the lead of our article (as well as the professional literature discussing this phenomenon) only mention an "object", even though this is also true for abstract lengths? Just substitute "distance" (e.g. between two trees) for "object", and you'll get the following true analogous sentence: If we (travel on a train and) observe a moving distance (e.g. a distance between two co-moving trees), for which is the distance's length measured in the distance's reference frame (i.e. in the reference frame of the trees), then we will meausre the distance's length to be shorter, i.e. right? This was my question from the very beginning. HOTmag (talk) 07:57, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly two trees set a distance apart is an object that has length. They don't have to be touching anymore than the solar system's planets do. Modocc (talk) 11:22, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the term "system's length" is more appropriate, than the term "object's length", as far as a distance (between two trees or two planets and the like) is concerned. Have you ever called the solar system "an object"? HOTmag (talk) 11:58, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Our solar system is a physical object. As are galaxies and our universe. Of course, these kinds of objects have spatial dimensions and a time dimension. Modocc (talk) 12:11, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Which name is more appropriate: a "solar system" or a "solar object"?
On the other hand, which name would you prefer: a "system" consisting of two trees, or an "object" consisting of two trees? HOTmag (talk) 13:14, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Depends on the physical context. The term "system" regarding physical objects tends to be more abstract and typically refers to processes like with manufacturing and computers. An atmospheric cloud is both a system of particles and an object. Modocc (talk) 13:24, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Back to the trees observed by an observer on a moving train, who sees them co-moving and measures the distance between them: They are pretty wide, so the length being measured is not required to include their width, but only the distance between them, i.e. excluding them. This distance is influenced by the effect of length contraction. Would you call this distance an "boject", a "system", or simply a "distance"? The same question may be asked about the distance between two stars, excluding them. HOTmag (talk) 14:10, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With relativity the measured contraction is not an "effect". I've never disagreed. I called it "effect", just because it's called "effect" - in the lead of our article Length contraction - and in common speech.
The length between buttons is the same as the distance between them. This is exactly what I'm claiming from the very beginning. That's why I'm asking, why the lead of that article - only attributes that contraction to objects - and not also to distances as in your example of a distance between two buttons. HOTmag (talk) 17:02, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right. Matter is composed of various objects and referring to distances between their elements is simply redundant when length suffices, especially when talking about object velocities. Modocc (talk) 17:46, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Referring to distances between their elements is simply redundant when length suffices. Does mentioning "length" alone, suffice? Our article is not satisfied with mentioning "length" alone, and mentions an "object's length", so I asked: Why "object's length" only, and not also a "distance's length", as in your example of a distance between two buttons. This distance has nothing to do with matter, because it excludes the buttons. HOTmag (talk) 18:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The distance between buttons is spacial is it not. They are embedded in actual space. Thus the distances between the ends of rulers are the same as their lengths. Modocc (talk) 18:47, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
is it not. Yes it is.
the distance between the ends of a ruler is the same as the ruler's length. Your argument is the following: With regard to length contraction, OBJECT includes a ruler, whereas RULER includes any abstract length, Hence OBJECT is supposed to include any abstract length...
Just as, with regard to time dilation, OBJECT includes a clock, whereas CLOCK includes any abstract time, hence OBJECT is supposed to include any abstract time......
According to your explanation, the leads of our articles Length contraction and Time dilation, should've used, either the terms "object's length" and "object's time", respectively, or the terms "ruler's length" and "clock's time", respectively, or "length" alone and "time" alone, respectively.
However, this is not the case. The lead of our article Length contraction attributes "length" to an "object", rather than to a "ruler", whereas the lead of our article Time dilation attributes "time" to a "clock", rather than to an "object". How do you justify this asymmetry, between length contraction and time dilation? HOTmag (talk) 19:38, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Rulers and clocks are objects that measure space and time. With relativity their asymmetric reference frame dependencies are a consequence of a coordinate change given the supposed existence of SR and GR's spacetime which conserves the distances of its worldlines. It is by no means a classical model. Modocc (talk) 20:02, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I recently asked you about how "you justify this asymmetry between length contraction and time dilation", I didn't refer to what you're calling now "their asymmetric reference frame dependencies", but rather to the asymmetry between - how the lead of our article length contraction attributes "length" to an "object" rather than to a "ruler" - and how the lead of our article time dilation attributes "time" to a "clock" rather than to an "object".
Please notice, that according to your explanation in your previous response, the leads of those articles should've used, either the terms - "object's length" and "object's time" - respectively, or the terms - "ruler's length" and "clock's time" - respectively, or "length" alone and "time" alone respectively. However, this is not the case in the leads of those articles. My recent question was: Why, and it only referred to the leads of those articles (as well as to the common professional literature). HOTmag (talk) 20:36, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Our articles state: "Length contraction is the phenomenon that a moving object's length is measured to be shorter than its proper length, which is the length as measured in the object's own rest frame." and "Time dilation is the difference in elapsed time as measured by two clocks, either because of a relative velocity between them (special relativity), or a difference in gravitational potential between their locations (general relativity). When unspecified, "time dilation" usually refers to the effect due to velocity." Both descriptions refer to measurements of objects in relative motion. Modocc (talk) 21:05, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As you quote, the lead of our article length contraction states: "Length contraction is the phenomenon that a moving object's length is measured to be shorter than its proper length", right? So the lead of this article attributes "length" to one "object", instead of attributing length measurement to two "rulers" - a stationary one and a moving one, right?
On the other hand, as you quote, the lead of our article time dilation states: "Time dilation is the difference in elapsed time as measured by two clocks", right? So the lead of this article attributes time measurement to two "clocks" - a stationary one and a moving one, instead of attributing time to one "object", right? My question was: How do you justify this asymmetry between the leads of those articles. HOTmag (talk) 21:46, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The first article does not attribute "length" to an "object". Objects have lengths as a property and there are different ways to measure them. In addition, not all objects tick in any obvious way and measure time, so of course clocks are mentioned. Twins do attain different ages per the Twin paradox. :-) Modocc (talk) 22:01, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The first article does not attribute "length" to an "object". Objects have lengths as a property. Maybe you didn't interpret me well. By "to attribute X to Y" I mean "to mention X as the property of Y". The expression "a person's feelings" attributes feelings to a person, just as the expression "an object's length" attributes "length" to an "object". Both lengths and feelings are properties attributed to an object/person - respectively, i.e. a length/feeling is a property - an object/person has - respectively.
not all objects - [mark and] tick [moments] in any obvious way - and measure time, so of course clocks are mentioned [in the lead of our article time dilation]. The same is true for rulers: Not all objects - mark and tick centimeters in any obvious way - and measure length, so rulers should apparently have been mentioned in the lead of our article length contraction. So why weren't they mentioned in that lead, even though they should've been mentioned in that lead, just as clocks are mentioned in the lead of our article time dilation? HOTmag (talk) 23:30, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IMHO the articles' ledes are fine, as is, and they appear to be written in accordance with the literature and my understanding of it. Without going into what would amount to original research I don't believe I have anything more to contribute here today. Modocc (talk) 23:41, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why, even though plastics degrade slowly, over hundreds to thousands of years, microplastic particles detach from its parent body (often bottles), contaminating the surrounding area, but glass bottles, for example, seemingly don't have such property? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 10:58, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, most glass bottles are made from materials that, when worn down into particles, are virtually identical to natural sands, so do not contaminate the marine environment. See also Sea glass (which I have always known as drift glass). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 (talk) 00:27, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure where to start. This work defines 12 basic colors. Some are named, and I tried to match them up to sRGB equivalents...
However, I'm no expert on colors.
The original is written in the 1880's, and the author was connected with commercial printers in the US.
It seems reasonable to assume the basic colors were originally intended to match up with available basic pigments available at the time of publication.
So what are the likely 12 original colors (ideally based on pigments that would be generally available to a printer in the US) as modern (and sRGB equivlants?)
The author writes, "These colors were adopted because the writer believes that a greater variety of mixed colors can be produced from this selection than from any other containing the same number; besides, these colors are not only the most useful, but also, the most common, and best known among printers." So they were obviously widely available as printing inks, although I doubt they were thought of as "basic" pigments. We have a List of inorganic pigments; I expect most of these 12 are among them. Even if identified, it may not be obvious how to place them in sRGB colour space. --Lambiam19:23, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't sadly know where to start looking for information as to common printing inks in the 1880's, but from initial reading around, I'm finding that the articles on pigments don't necessarily have sample colors on them. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:10, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You probably know this already, but 'The Printer's Manual: An Illustrated History: Classical and Unusual Texts on Printing from the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries' by David Pankow says that Earhart's 12 colors came from "twelve stock inks". Maybe they had the same names that he used...not that that helps you get closer to your objective in any way whatsoever. Sean.hoyland (talk) 17:23, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can you give us a pointer to a source defining "Gödel's version" of intermediate logic? Also, is there evidence that Gödel defined the notion of proof for this logic? --Lambiam18:46, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given the results from powers of tau in the trusted setup ceremony ; the verifying and the proving key, how can I find the point [f] resulting from the trusted setup in Groth16 ?
Is there any smooth function with the following two properties:
, i.e. the nth derivative of f is strictly positive for every x and n.
for every b > 1. The hard case is when b is small.
Functions like (for a > 1) are the only ones I can think of with the first property, but none of them has the second property because you can always choose b < a. So I am asking whether there is any function with the first property that grows slower than exponential.
Wouldn't any power series with positive coefficients that decrease compared to the coefficients of the exponential do? The exponential is , so e.g. should do the trick. The next question is whether you can find a closed-form expression for this or a similar power series. --Wrongfilter (talk) 13:02, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good thinking. It is of course the case that the first property holds for any power series where all coefficients are positive. Plotting on a graph, I think your specific example doesn't satisfy the second property, but others where the coefficients decrease more rapidly do. 120.21.218.123 (talk) 13:26, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A variant of Wrongfilter's idea that I think does work:
(taking to be ).
Numerical evidence suggests that One might therefore hope that would also work. However, its second derivative is negative for --Lambiam22:20, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the sum of the first m factorial numbers is equal to the sum of the first n positive integers, i.e. 1! + 2! + 3! + … + m! = 1 + 2 + 3 + … + n, then (m,n) = (0,0), (1,1), (2,2), (5,17), right? 220.132.216.52 (talk) 20:30, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The triangular numbers, modulo 19, are reduced to one of 10 possibilities: 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 15 and 17. The sum 1! + 2! + 3! + ... + m!, for m > 17, modulo 19, is reduced to 8. Therefore no further factorial sums are triangular. --Lambiam22:19, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at mod 7 with about the same result. The left hand side is 5 for m≥6 and the right hand side can never be 5. So you only have to check m from 1 to 5. (Btw, I would count 0! = 1 as a factorial number, so the sums of factorials would be 1, 2, 4, 10, 34, ... . (sequence A003422 in the OEIS)) --RDBury (talk) 22:28, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wrote up a quick MATLAB script to find numbers which can be used as modulos to show that the list is finite, it starts: . Obviously if a number appears in the list then all its positive multiples do too. The list of nontrivial numbers starts GalacticShoe (talk) 03:01, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(On math section as it's a geometric/trig problem essentially)
In CSS, color-mix() takes 2 Params.. However I have colors to mix that take 3 or more params.
Whilst with 2 params you can do a simple linear interpolation, based on the weights of the 2 params, I wasn't sure how it could be done for 3.
One approach I had considered was (at least for an RGB blend) is to compute the centrepoint of a triangle in 3D space, where the 3 points of the triangle are the three colors. However that would assume equal weights of each color, I figured
So for a given "triangle" defined by (r1,g1,b1),(r2,g2,g2), (r3,b3,g3) and a mix ratio of w1:w2:w3 compute the centroid(?) of the triangle representing the blended color. ?
I don't have an actual computer graphics answer, but the interpolation method still works for three points, simply take the weighted sum of points assuming (if not, then just define new values which do add to .) In other words, you can just take (or, more concisely, .) GalacticShoe (talk) 17:45, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The weighted average makes sense for additivecolour mixing, but the colour resulting from pigment mixing is not so easily determined. For example, the colours and are complementary. Their sum in RGB colour models is and their average is , as grey as it gets. However, mixing red and green paint gives more of a brown colour.[19] A colour model that is more likely close to that of The Color Printer is the RYB colour model. If the pigments are fully opaque, the subtractive model is adequate, but generally pigments are not fully opaque. --Lambiam21:22, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am reading "A Fragment of Life" by Arthur Machen. Darnell, who is (or thinks he is) a clerk in the City, "was indeed almost in the position of the man in the tale, who, by a sudden electric shock, lost the vision of the things about him in the London streets, and gazed instead upon the sea and shore of an island in the Antipodes". What is the tale that the man was in? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 00:07, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know, but I hope it's not excessively pedantic to point out that the literal 180° antipodes of the great majority of land on earth (including London) is deep ocean, as can be seen in File:Antipodes LAEA.png etc... -- AnonMoos (talk) 01:24, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The term the Antipodes (used as a proper noun, with a capital A) may refer rather loosely to the southern hemisphere. This corresponds to the sense of Ancient Greek ἀντίποδες, a plural, which did not have the restricted meaning of a precise location. Then there are the Antipodes Islands, often referred to as just "the Antipodes".[20][21][22] Possibly, the gazed-upon island was one of the numerous islets of the Antipodes Islands. --Lambiam06:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Why doesn't the "Israel-Hamas War" article mention the estimated number of Palestinians who've fled Gaza to Egypt during the war?
According to Reuters - it's around 100,000 people.
People locating to Earth tend to have strong feelings in the matter. Tying the suggestion of a risk of non-NPOV edits to the Middle East is uncalled for. --Lambiam15:54, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was warning the long-established editors who were giving duff advice to an IP. I'll give you one too Bugs for being a typical ignorant American if you like. Or might it be unfair to assume that because you are from a particular locale, you share particular characteristics? DuncanHill (talk) 19:32, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I'm trying to put together a biography of Will Spens in my sandbox, but I don't have access to newspapers.com so it's slow going. One thing I'm still trying to track down is an award that was informally referred to as the "New York City Civilian Heroism Award", which he received. My guess is that it goes by another name, which is why I can't find any mention of it. I suspect there is some kind of coverage of Spens getting the award on newspapers.com through the Wikipedia Library, but I can't look. Viriditas (talk) 22:34, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that’s what I thought too, but I couldn’t find a historical list of all medal recipients. The subject would have won the award some time between 1970 and 1990. Viriditas (talk) 02:09, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(For clarification, a mouse story is defined as a story with talking animals that is centered on mice.)
We know that cats are often associated with evil in mouse stories. I understand why this is standard. But dogs in mouse stories sometimes represent the need to save mice from cats. Is this logical?? Do dogs often save mice from cats in real life?? If not, then why is it standard in mouse stories for dogs to be used to save mice from cats?? (I want an answer from someone who is a real expert on mouse stories.) Georgia guy (talk) 15:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you wait for "a real expert on mouse stories" here you could be waiting a long time. Some examples would help. Recalling Tom and Jerry I would suggest that the dog is more interested in getting at the cat, and the consequent saving of the mouse is incidental to that. Shantavira|feed me15:44, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
True for some episodes, but not all. In “The bodyguard”, the motivation of Spike the dog is to help Jerry, and hurting Tom is secondary. – b_jonas09:41, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Surprisingly, this is a good question, it is easier for some breeds of pet dogs to be friends with pet rodents in the home than it is for cats, which appear to naturally want to hunt, torture, and consume them. Obviously, there are some breeds of dogs that will do this too, but there's lot of people who have dogs that don't kill mice, while cats are more prone to just freaking out and getting murder-ish. My guess is that the trope of dogs saving mice from cats arose from this, but is also a way to show that dogs are friendlier and more social with people, and by extension with other animals. Let's also remember the most important thing: in the last 9,000 years, cats were not domesticated like dogs, hence their wild predilection. Viriditas (talk) 21:28, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From the human point of view (cats were originally tolerated around human settlements because they preyed on rodents who ate stored grain). AnonMoos (talk) 19:37, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Don't Panic! The Magratheans are intradimensional beings who take the physical form of mice. What you call "pests" are responsible for building and maintaining the Earth. Be nice to them, they are working on computuational problems of such complexity your puny human mind can't possibly comprehend.Viriditas (talk) 21:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Charming as the image may be, I question the characterization as being nested. The image is that of a scribe holding a document with a text. The image is accompanied by an image caption, a brief text explaining the image. As was then usual, such a caption was not placed above or below the image frame, but written inside it (like film subtitles today, but with a freer placement). In this case, the whole is a wall painting; classifying it as a document is stretching the concept. --Lambiam21:06, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it can. The Wiktionary entry's definitions 2 and 4 do, I think, cover such wall paintings.
I am also not certain whether the 'caption' to which Lambiam refers actually is the black on white script, or the (more usual) coloured script below it. I would have interpreted the former as part of the illustration: however, not being conversant in heiroglyphics or ancient Egyptian, I cannot tell. Any Egyptologists present? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 06:50, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I meant the larger coloured hieroglyphs. The white object is part of the depicted scene: a scribe holding up a result of his labour. --Lambiam14:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In which case, how is that depicted result, a document written in hieroglyphs, not nested within another document, the painting, also (partly) written in hieroglyphs, as Temerarius originally observed?
Tangentially, do you consider mediaeval illuminated manuscripts to be documents? Some of them also include illustrations of documents, which would also be 'nested'. The substrate of a document, whether parchment or wall, is surely unimportant. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 08:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Consider the document shown here to the right. Is this an example of a document in Oriental characters within a document in Oriental characters? --Lambiam13:09, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can only say that there was no such paragraph extant in the small section of the work I studied in the late '60s, but as it was about the Siege of Massilia, one wouldn't have expected it to.
Certainly Latin school textbooks could be censored in such a way. I recall our Latin master reading us one of Horace's Odes that was, along with a few others, excluded from the copies available to us impressionable lads. It mentioned a slave being forced to bugger his master and "meeting yesterday's dinner coming the other way." Possibly III.6? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 08:54, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
His edition may have said something like "edited for the use of schools" which while it could mean "with any passages that might embarrass the masters removed" but could also mean "with an index and a gloss of the hard bits". DuncanHill (talk) 10:14, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing to do with Caesar, but when I was taking an undergraduate Latin class about reading the poems of Catullus, there were only 3 or 4 students in the class, and we didn't all use the same book, and in the edition used by one of the students some lines of one of Catullus's poems was omitted! This was not a book intended for high school students, and not necessarily a textbook as such (probably more of scholarly edition), and likely published after the 1950s, but it was still censored to some degree... AnonMoos (talk) 12:24, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There seems to be some important ruling/update from Supreme Court of India about 'Maintenance for dependent' (specially rights of divorcee women) including under section 125 of Indian CRPc code. (Ref)
My primary google search and understanding suggests, "Section 144" under new Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) replaces earlier section 125 of Indian CRPc code since July 1, 2024.
There may have been versions prior to Parliament passed the final bill, my wish is confirm the link WP article is accurate enough. Please help confirm accuracy of above given link as presently applicable BNSS law in India.
2) Please also give links of en WP articles related to 'Maintenance for dependent Law' (incl. Women) to confirm updates to the relevant articles.
3) I am just curious if en WP has any non-country specific general articles relating 'Maintenance for dependent'
It's more commonly known as Alimony and/or Child support. In India in the 1980s, there was the infamous Shah Bano case (there doesn't seem to be much about it in Wikipedia), where Muslims held numerous protests and rallies against the idea that Muslim divorced wives were entitled to alimony... AnonMoos (talk) 08:13, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the States of America which first cousin with opposite sex cannot merry, can first cousin with same sex merry?
In the States of America which first cousin with opposite sex cannot merry, can first cousin with same sex merry? For first cousin with same sex, genetics isn't even an issue. I only know that for Illinois, the answer is “no”, see [23] and [24], but how about the other 30 States of America which first cousin with opposite sex cannot merry? 2402:7500:92C:19CD:A1F0:F846:FD54:2CEF (talk) 09:47, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can see that article doesn't mention same-sex marriages at all, which is what they are asking about. Obviously not all the considerations are the same. Johnbod (talk) 13:35, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It may not be explicitly mentioned in the laws of particular states. If one law states that first cousins cannot marry (without clarifying language on the sexes of the couple) and another law states that same-sex couples can marry (without clarifying language on the degree of relation of the couple), then it follows that same-sex first cousins cannot marry and it would require an explicit declaration in law to say otherwise. -- User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:49, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
True, but unless that was specifically mentioned in the law against cousin marrige it would have no legal weight. To qualify for a legal marriage, the couple must meet all legal requirements and not fall under any prohibitions. One disqualification renders it illegal.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Googling the subject, a sampling of states reveals that the laws about opposite-sex cousins marrying are not necessarily the same as same-sex cousins marrying, so we can't draw any inferences. They would have to be researched state-by-state. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 01:15, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Errol Musk is a former anti-apartheid member of the 1970s and 80s Pretoria city council. In 21st-century English-language sources, he has been covered in-depth for his controversial relationships with famous family members, but to create a BLP on him, we really need fulltext access to an archive of 1970s South Africans daily newspapers like Die Burger or Pretoria News.
> Was Andrew Jackson Senior a U.S. citizen?
> Wikipedia does not mention whether the father, Andrew Jackson Senior, and mother,
> Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, of President Andrew Jackson were U.S. citizens. 47.146.79.188 (talk) 15:13, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Andrew Jackson Senior died in 1767, so he could not have been a US citizen. I'm not aware of a source that goes into it, but Elizabeth could reasonably be considered a US citizen after 1777, since she was a free inhabitant of the states that joined in the Articles of Confederation. She died in 1981. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:39, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see this dotty round-end serif style in bronzes and other things sometimes, does that follow use of a particular tool? To me it looks a bit soldering gun-ish.
Just looking at it, it seems like they may have used a tool which leaves a circular hole to define the ends of some of the strokes, and then carved between these circles... AnonMoos (talk) 19:30, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Alma Rattenbury was a song-writer, adulteress, and accused murderer. She had two sons, Christopher (b. 1921), by her second husband Compton Packenham, and John (b. 1928), by her third and last husband Francis Rattenbury. She and her lover George Percy Stoner (b. 1916) were tried for the murder of Francis. he was found guilty, she was acquitted. Stoner was sentenced to death, but his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, and he was released after seven years. She committed suicide by stabbing herself on the banks of the Hampshire Avon, less than a week after her acquittal. My question is what happened to her sons, who would have been about 14 and 7 at the time of her death. Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 22:28, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There used to be a British "right-wing populist" party that (1) was active around 2015 (2) was led by an Irish-born woman who happened to be gay (3) had a trident as a symbol. Does anyone remember what that party was called (and what the name of that woman was)? I don't know if they're still active. 178.51.74.75 (talk) 19:12, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per Left- and right-hand traffic, BC changed from LHT to RHT in stages. Why? The last page of [26], a provincial government publication, notes that the temporary disparity occurred in regions with no road connections to each other (so you wouldn't have awkward border crossings), and [27], from the Vancouver Sun, notes that the switch was delayed in Vancouver etc. due to the need to modify tram tracks. But why did the provincial government choose to switch regional BC before it switched the southwest, instead of waiting until the southwest was ready before switching everything at once? Nyttend (talk) 21:58, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the facts with his mind set up on priorities, Superman in the forties started his career throwing automobiles around fighting vilains. Back in the twenties, saving the world was still considered urgent matter. So in the mountains backwards most of the traffic would mostly be going on using horses or mules and such - for an unpredictable period of time, and you do not change those sentients manners too easily without having they themselves realize by necessity they do have to. There may even have been requests explicitly expressed to that regard. --Askedonty (talk) 00:03, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The two sources that are cited give different explanations. The "Did You Know" item in The British Columbia Road Runner of March 1966 states:
"The change of the Rule of the Road for British Columbia from left to right hand driving became effective July 15, 1920, with the exception of the area west of Hope to Vancouver and Vancouver Island as there were no road connections. It was not until December 31, 1921, that the Rule of the Road became uniform throughout the Province."
The "Week In History" item in the Vancouver Sun of January 1, 2016, has this:
"The province’s Automobile Club had been lobbying for eight years to bring B.C. and Vancouver in line with Washington state and the rest of North America. The interior of the province had changed to the new system in 1921. But because of the retrofitting that had to be made to streetcars and tracks, the change in Vancouver was delayed a year."
The latter makes more sense. Vancouver was connected by road to the US State of Washington, where RHT had been the rule for decades. Presumably the pressure of BC's Automobile Club made the province decide not to wait until also tardy Vancouver was ready, a decision made more easy by the lack of East–West road connections. --Lambiam09:15, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I'm looking for a short story, or maybe a part of a novel.
It's about a sacristan/custodian of a church in England. He fulfills duties with joy, but he can't read/write. As the (new?) priest notices it, and after discussions the sacristan gets "sacked". He then opens a cigar shop, has great success, expands and so on, but he still can"t read. The story ends that a customer or someone else asks him surprised: "You created all this, without being able to read? Imagine what you could have been, if you COULD read!"
The former sacristan, now shop owner, replies: "oh, that is easy! I would still be sacristan at St. -Elsewhere-."
Can someone help me? Sadly I don't remember the author, or the title, not even the church name. What I do know, the language was english. (I'm German).
Thank you all! William Somerset Maugham of course! Love his work! Must have read this story in a Public Library book many years ago, then! Now I have to get hold of a German edition of "The Verger", as a gift for a friend of mine, who doesn't speak english!
Hi, I'd like to point those interested to a discussion about the development of the letterforms at Talk:Proto-Sinaitic_script. (Yes, of course we're aware of WP:OR.) And I'd like to ask where's a better place to talk about it. A bit niche. I'm making a video series with novel hypotheses but I don't have anybody to give me feedback. Temerarius (talk) 03:09, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Having linked to the discusssion, and now looked at it, I'm quite certain that it does not belong on the talk page, or, probably, anywhere in Wikipedia. WP:Talk page guidelines says Talk pages are for discussing the article, not for general conversation about the article's subject. ColinFine (talk) 09:41, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In fact, see particularly WP:TALKOFFTOPIC, which says It is common to simply delete gibberish, test edits, harmful or prohibited material (as described above), and comments or discussion clearly about the article's subject itself (as opposed to comments and discussion about the treatment of the subject in the article). ColinFine (talk) 09:45, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note that that's strictly speaking not the same character, in terms of text encoding. The character you named is ° U+00B0 DEGREE SYMBOL, while the one used as an ordinal indicator should typically be encoded as º U+00BA MASCULINE ORDINAL INDICATOR. Fut.Perf.☼11:56, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Future Perfect at Sunrise: Uhm, many thanks for that hint. So in languages using the U+00BA MASCULINE ORDINAL INDICATOR, keyboards contain that character, while others probably do not (I on my German keyboard believed it to be a degree symbol)? --KnightMove (talk) 13:22, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Aha. "Masculine ordinal indicator", as in primero, segundo, tercero, etc. Exactly as we use -st, -nd, -rd, -th in English. Only it's easier in Spanish because all the masculine ordinals end in -o. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 16:10, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Error: Thank you very much for that list! Do I see it right that only the numeral ordinators are considered characters in their own right, while all the other superscript letters as in p.za are really just that - superscript letters? --KnightMove (talk) 06:33, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Plus: The ordinal indicators o and a are also parts of abbreviations in that list: camp.º, carr.ª - do I understand it right that this is technically wrong, and normal supercript a's and o's should be used in those cases? --KnightMove (talk) 06:36, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Here is the teclado nacional, deprecated since 1971 but still in use when I was there [29]. Job adverts specified either teclado nacional or teclado internacional (the one we use). Monday is segunda-feira, but often written as 2a. The top left key seems to be the one for that. You can see the French AZERTY layout at [30] (note the penultimate key on the top line). On the German and Swiss QWERTZ keyboards again note the top left-hand key [31]. 92.10.146.73 (talk) 16:37, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@KnightMove:: There are separate Unicode superscripts distinct from HTML superior letters. It also distinguishes the ordinal indicators and these superior letters. The Real Academia Española's DPD uses C.ª with the indicator and C.ía with HTML sup in the same line. It is not using the Unicode superscripts. RAE is authoritative but our articles say that it is not followed by all language users. Probably professional typographers may differ about it and unprofessional typographers tasked with text formatting tasks will differ further. --Error (talk) 10:31, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of the nine Federal states of Austria, six have a traditional English name, at a minimum Tyrol having a varied English spelling. Burgenland, Vorarlberg and Salzburg have not. In the former two cases, this may be explained with the rather young age of the names (1921 and middle of the 18th century, respectively). But Salzburg is really old. Why do e.g. Styria and Carinthia have English names, but Salzburg has not? Where does this difference come from? --KnightMove (talk) 11:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say for the same reason that Hamburg is written the same way in English and German, whilst Bavaria/Bayern isn't. The 'English name' of Salzburg is Salzburg, thus the same would apply for the state name. Presumably the name didn't create problems for English writers and they got used to writing it same way as in German. --Soman (talk) 11:57, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The traditional English names actually come from (or via) Latin or Italian, so why not have another traditional name derived from German? The Latin version would be Salisburg or something like that, with a pronunciation that is not far off "Salzburg" anyway. --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:07, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Salzburg" works in English, "Steiermark" and "Kärnten" don't. I mean Salzburg looks and sounds pretty much like an English word or placeneme might. "Steiermark" and "Kärnten" look and sound like nothing any Englishman might ever say or hear. But as Alan says, these kind of "why" or "why not" questions really can't be answered. DuncanHill (talk) 22:58, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, English exonyms tend to follow French ones, Cologne for example. French "bourg" endings are Anglicised as "burg", such as Strasburg and Luxemburg. Alansplodge (talk) 08:59, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Without looking up the meaning of the word "exonym", Portuguese names for overseas cities follow the German - Luxemburgo, Estrasburgo. English names, on the other hand, follow the French: "Luxembourg" (I've been there), "Strasbourg". There are places named Strasburg in America. 2A02:C7B:232:7100:5830:3E14:CB16:6F14 (talk) 14:09, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What do they call it when a court argues it lacks the authority/competence to hear a case and directs it to a higher court? If there's an opposite of a writ Procedendo, that might be it. But is there such a mechanism? Cheers! ——Serial Number 5412916:17, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That would actually seem to be the opposite! A high court sending a case back to a lower court? I mean a lower court that claims it does not have the legal authority so upstairs must deal with it. ——Serial Number 5412916:56, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's called a "referral" in England, but I'm having trouble pinning it down as the same word is used in a number of other legal contexts. Alansplodge (talk) 08:55, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on the context. If a magistrates' court decides at the outset that it doesn't have sufficient powers to deal with a charge, the act of referring it up to the Crown Court is a "sending", but if it's already convicted someone (or they've pleaded guilty) and it decides at that point to refer it up, that act is called a "committal". I'm not sure there is a general term that applies in all contexts. Proteus(Talk)09:50, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know any monogram or cypher (royal or otherwise) that use the same initial twice and facing in opposite directions (for example a capital letter and its mirror image) either back to back (the inverted letter first, when using a left-to-right script) or facing each other (first the usual letter). I'm specifically interested in the Latin alphabet but if you've got examples in other scripts, do include them. I know there's a cursive double L that Louis XIV used. I'd thought there was a double E that some Elizabeth (Elizabeth I?) or other used but I can't find it. Anyway, any example is good and gratefully accepted. 178.51.74.75 (talk) 01:58, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are a couple of examples in the gallery at royal cypher that seem to fit the bill, most obviously that of King Carol II of Romania (not very clear in our photo, but described as "two opposed Cs"). That of King George I of Greece appears to be two crossed Γs (the Greek letter gamma). There are also a couple that don't quite fit your criteria because the letters themselves are symmetrical and so you can't tell what direction they're facing: Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai (seems to include two Ms) and King Michael I of Romania (four Ms with both reflectional and rotational symmetry). Proteus(Talk)09:42, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks guys. Is there any theory out there as to how this originated. Would this have originated as an abbreviation of a name being written in two different directions (the right-to-left form being a mirror image of the name)? Problem is I've never ever seen anything like that? Have you? Another possibility: it symbolizes the name (represented by its initials) being "broadcast" in two directions? Speculation. Any actual theory put forward in a reliable source? Also: any idea who first originated this sort of design? How old it is? 178.51.74.75 (talk) 02:42, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"the development of the more stylised royal cypher seems to date from the reign of William and Mary. To emphasise their joint rule, their initials were interlaced and – apparently simply to add symmetry – the first R was reversed."[33] --Lambiam10:46, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In GoodReads, the book was saud to be originally published in London and Tokyo in 1991.
I tried checking, and the Internet Archive copy of the book states:
The original publication was in 1989, in Nihonggo. It was in 1991 when Kodansha International Ltd. published the book. I originally wanted to ask the question here, but I might let other people know of this concern.
Also, I still can't identify whether the book is fictional or not (i.e. biographical, or a fictional character in nonfictional world). RFNirmala (talk) 13:52, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The original Japanese version was published in 1989. The translation was originally published in 1991, but under the title The Gambler's Tale (see here). The 1995 version (the "first paperback edition" from Kodansha) corroborates both of these dates, giving the publication date as 1989 and the copyright date for the translation as 1991. Dekimasuよ!14:09, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently the story of Abraham and Isaac occurs twice in the book. Do these stories agree, and do they belong to the category of traditions in which Isaac was sacrificed?
Temerarius (talk) 02:37, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The story of the sacrifice of Isaac is only told in Genesis A. In lines 2908–2922, a messenger from God commands Abraham not to slay his remaining son. --Lambiam10:12, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Stout of heart he mounted the high downs, and his son with him, according as Eternal God commanded, until he stood upon the ridge of the high land in the place which the Firm and Faithful Lord had showed him. And there he built a pyre and kindled a flame and bound his son, hand and foot, and laid Isaac, the lad, on the altar, and seized his sword by the hilt. With his own hand he would have slain him, and quenched the flame with the blood of his son. Then a thane of God, an angel from on high, called unto Abraham with a loud voice. In stillness he abode the herald's message and answered the angel. Swiftly the glorious minister of God addressed him from the heavens: "Slay not thy son, dear Abraham, but take the lad from the altar alive. The God of glory is gracious unto him! Great shall thy reward be, Hebrew prince, true meed of victory and ample gifts, at the holy hands of the Heavenly King. The Lord of spirits will bless thee with His blessing because His love and favour were dearer unto thee than thine own son."[34]
There are indeed two passages in that translation Alansplodge linked to, one in section XLI (around lines 2897-2908), and one in section XLVII (starting with lines 397-416). The second seems to be part of a summary of the genealogy of the patriarchs injected within a narrative of the Exodus. Both passages contain the sacrifice story including the divine command to spare Isaac in the end. Fut.Perf.☼10:56, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Many narratives now in the 'Old Testament' are amalgams of oral tales that originally had different variations in different communities, and even after initial redaction may have been further modified later to suit a changing religious and/or political agenda. There is no doubt that the early Canaanites, who included those who later differentiated themselves as Israelites and Judahites, practiced human sacrifice, probably including of firstborns, so extra- (and pre-) biblical variants of the Binding of Isaac story where Jacob was sacrificed probably existed: the eventual biblical version likely reflects a 'policy change' of child sacrifice being abandoned as part of a general distancing from other Caananites, and identity assertion as a separate people (see Canaanite religion#Practices).{The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 (talk) 10:50, 20 July 2024 (UTC).[reply]
We're talking here, though, about poems in Old English written in the late 10th century CE. The only knowledge its authors would have of ancient Caananite practices would be through the medium of the Old Testament. --Lambiam13:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In RSV Judges 11:30-39, the Israelite warlord Jephthah swore that in exchange for a victory against the Ammonites, the first person who "comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, and I will offer him up for a burnt offering." Sadly, that person was the daughter, whom he loved. She agreed to be sacrificed because of his pledge. "And at the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had made. She had never known a man. And it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year." Note: these Ammonites were the Middle Easterners, not the Mesozoic Cephalopods. Edison (talk) 22:05, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I just bought a Treasury bill maturing on 12/31 with one of those brokerages that pay out only the day after. As that will be New Year's Day, my money basically doesn't earn interest for two days, compared with a brokerage that pays out on the day of. Suppose it were a long holiday. That would be money out of reach for even longer. Hardly seems fair. Imagine Reason (talk) 14:03, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure if this is what you are asking about, but in banking there is often a delay between when you deposit funds in a checking account, and when those funds become available for withdrawal. This can be several days if you deposit over a long weekend. Blueboar (talk) 14:21, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And during that interval, even if merely overnight, the bank can invest the funds in the Money market and collect the interest paid on it. For an individual deposit this will only yield a small amount, but when the yields of all such funds held by the bank are aggregated, the total is significant.
The same applies to funds paid to a solicitor for imminent property purchases and so on. In the UK, for some transactions the solicitor is legally obliged to do so, and pay the interest gained to their client; in others they can keep the money themselves. [Disclosure: my father was a solicitors' chief accountant, and made such investments daily.] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 (talk) 10:14, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Define conflict. There was certainly some competition regarding delimitations of decision-making, that always happens. But what is important in this case is that there was no republican-level RSFSR Communist Party until the very end of the Soviet Union, unlike all other SSRs. Generally speaking power-struggles happened not between governments of administrative units of the USSR but between party organs (state organs implemented party policy, not the other way around). So the management of the RSFSR state government was directly under the Central Committee of the CPSU, the same party body controlling the USSR government. Towards the end stage of the USSR Russian nationalism was increasing in importance, in the sense of wanting more self-rule of RSFSR. The foundation of the Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was the key step in this direction. --Soman (talk) 13:25, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Look, these geographic units are completely arbitrary. You can consider Afghanistan as part of all of these regions, and these regional identities are not necessarily mutually exclusive. If you define 'West Asia' as Greater Middle East, then Afghanistan can be part of it, but let's be clear that the notion of a 'West Asian' region is a construct that only exist in the mind of people outside the supposed region. In terms of Central Asia vs South Asia, Afghanistan doesn't match perfectly in neither, Afghanistan was not directly part of Soviet Union as the rest of Central Asia and was not directly part of British empire as the rest of South Asia. Then the UN georegions is a different story, but UN region allocation is not a particularly important categorization except for UN employees. --Soman (talk) 13:36, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And it's confusing for UN employees too. WHO places Afghanistan in the ludicrous 'Eastern Mediterranean Region'. OCHA where I work, at least places Afghanistan in the somewhat more sensible 'Asia Pacific' region. (There is a concept called the "One UN" that nobody in the UN believes in.) Hayttom (talk) 00:40, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Lottery tickets are sold by "lottery retailers", which are typically not specialized offices but, for example, tobacco shops, gas stations and convenience stores. For example, tickets for Landbrugslotteriet in Denmark are sold by many, diverse retailers.[35] In some countries they are also sold by street hawkers.[36] --Lambiam10:05, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is true now, but historically there have been many offices/stores in Denmark whose sole purpose has been to sell lottery tickets. The Danish word for such lottery sales outlets is “lotterikollektion”. My question is whether there is an equivalent word in English for a shop that only sells lottery tickets. Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 10:20, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tickets for the National Lottery (United Kingdom) can be bought from newsagents, supermarkets and local grocer's shops, although at the outset in the 1990s, post offices were the main outlets.
As far as I know, none of the English speaking countries ever had shops dedicated to just selling lottery tickets, so they wouldn’t need a word for such shops. Blueboar (talk) 12:53, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I was in Portugal the streets were full of people selling lottery tickets. I assumed this was normal for countries operating a lottery (basically all of them except Britain). There was also the Totobola, a kind of national football pool which I believed to be widespread in Europe, although I don't know who sold the tickets - the results were announced on the radio at 7 PM on a Sunday night. When the British lottery came in it was controlled almost as much as the football pools, the emphasis being on tickets not being available on the street, and the pools seem to have largely died out. Similar coupons which were not pools were not so restricted - fixed odds football coupons are available in betting shops.[Edit] Totobola is apparently run by the Roman Catholic Church. 2A00:23A8:1:D801:A94B:5D04:D466:F650 (talk) 15:17, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but that refers to any store selling lottery tickets - which might also (primarily) be a gas/petrol station, a grocery store, a tobacconist, etc. Blueboar (talk) 21:36, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The lottery distribution network is based on that of the football pools. Nobody is allowed to visit National Lottery headquarters - agents come to winners. Bookmakers were formerly "turf accountants". It was illegal to visit their offices (the only place a bookmaker was allowed to operate was on the racecourse or at a dog track). Off-course credit betting was allowed, but punters had to phone their bets in (or post them). Notwithstanding, punters did visit their local "turf accountant". Every so often offices were raided - advance notice was given by the police of who would be targeted. Bookmakers employed "runners" who would illegally visit factories, hand out betting slips and results and collect cash bets. Pools companies termed these people "collectors" - clients could not visit the pools companies' offices but had to post coupons with the stake for the previous week's losing coupons. Later they were allowed to enclose the current week's stake. This system enabled those who wanted to cut ties with the pools company to stop receiving supplies of coupons through the post - they would send in coupons without money. The companies would then write back to say that because of the clients' "bad debts" they were being removed from the mailing list for coupons. Some collectors visited clients to collect coupons and stakes and they may have had an office clients could visit - Kelly's Post Office London Directory 1976 has an entry for "Vernons Pools: area office (7), 556 Garratt la SW 17". Otherwise, collectors operated much like lottery outlets - they did not advertise, but if you went into their shop you might well see coupons on the counter. One place you would not see football pool coupons was in the betting shops after legalisation. Television was not allowed, so commentary and results came over a telephone line from the Exchange Telegraph Ltd, otherwise known for relaying share prices. Casino bets were settled by cheque. In the nineteenth century the Prince of Wales was involved in the "Royal Baccarat Scandal", when it was alleged the gambling was conducted in a house where gambling was a business (and hence illegal) rather than socially in a private home. 92.29.246.121 (talk) 14:09, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm reading this news article
[38] about 2 men who allegedly spray painted “FREE GAZA” on an Israeli flag at a grocery store. The police are charging them with damage to property, disorderly conduct and hate crimes. I get why they're being charged with damage to property and disorderly conduct, but I'm not sure what part of this is a hate crime. If they had spray painted "kill all the k***s", that would be hate crime. I don't know if a serious political opinion like "free Gaza" is being treated as a hate crime. Or maybe there's more to what happened then was explained in the news article? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:40, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The example with the slur is gratuitous (I'd suggest refactoring your question) and we are not going to be able to solve all of the real or philosophical problems involved in the war here, but to answer the question it would make sense to go to the applicable criminal code, which is here. The two are accused of "misdemeanor criminal damage to property", and the applicable law defines this as a hate crime when it involves "the actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, citizenship, immigration status, or national origin of another individual or group of individuals, regardless of the existence of any other motivating factor or factors." Presumably the prosecutors will argue that this applies, but the accused have not been convicted of any crimes yet, so some jury will be tasked with answering the question you pose, or perhaps the accused will plead guilty to lesser charges. Dekimasuよ!03:33, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Somewhat obviously, the lawyers for the defendant may argue that the request to end the war was not directed to an individual or group of individuals (who would not be able to end the war anyway, whether they want it to end or not), but towards the State of Israel, represented by its flag. The flag was presumably put up to express support of Israel in view of the current conflict, and the spray-painting was clearly intended as a protest against such support, but AFAIK there is no reason to assume that the store employees who put up the flag were Jewish, and even less so that the alleged protesters knew their religion, ancestry, or national origin, which would be a mens rea requirement for this being a hate crime. While it is generally unpredictable how a jury will respond, this specific charge (not by the police, but by prosecutors), unless they know something not revealed in the news article, gives a bit the feeling of throwing things against the wall to see what will stick. --Lambiam08:48, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(a) You wrote, "any country's flag". Last time I heard, the US was still a country. (b) I have a hard time imagining the hypothetical perp being charged with a hate crime. This may, of course, be due to a weakness of my power of imagination. --Lambiam13:56, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is no "flag of Gaza" (there are the Palestinian and Hamas flags). Anyway, in U.S. law, a precedent was set in the Bremen flag incident of 1935, when a Nazi flag was destroyed, but at the time it had a somewhat ambiguous legal status in Germany (it certainly wasn't the official main national flag), so a U.S. court ruled that no diplomatic insult had occurred... AnonMoos (talk) 17:07, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing to do with flags, but though Gaza around 1980 was no paradise, Gazans had a large degree of freedom of movement then, and there were no heavily-fortified borders. The difference between then and now is almost entirely due to the effects of decades of attacks on Jews emanating from Gaza... AnonMoos (talk) 21:38, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I presume that part of the issue here is that it isn't just "free Gaza" but that "free Gaza" has specifically been spraypainted onto an Israeli flag, which directs it "at" someone much more obviously than spraypainting "free Gaza" onto a local bridge or abandoned building or what-have-you. But to answer your question in general, you may be interested to read this article, which outlines how this sort of thing has gone recently in Canada. -- asilvering (talk) 04:16, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've been under the impression that the goddess Ishtar is not much attested after the bronze collapse. Not necessarily that the goddess disappeared, but that the name went out of vogue. What late inscriptions are there?
Is there such a thing as a list of authors of the Atlas Van der Hagen? In case this is an easier question: What I really want to know is whether John Ogilby was one of them. Elinruby (talk) 02:31, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As it's you, I'm presuming the Portway is the one in Rowley Regis, West Midlands. Which would put it here, on 11 Portway Rd (there's a matching hill behind too).
Details such as the shape of the house and roof, the brickwork and placement of the chimney and doors and windows agree, so there can be little doubt it is the same building, unless a very similar building did not survive. (The building at 9 Portway Rd is its mirror image, and 20 Portway Rd is very similar, so more of the same type may have been built.) --Lambiam13:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a specimen of the same type of post card, estimated to be from "circa 1910s".[40] Image searches did not turn up ads or packaging for Fairy Soap, Lyons Tea or Lyons' Extract with matching text and lettering. --Lambiam13:25, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was amused to notice that the front door advertised Lyons' tea and coffee while the adjacent window advertised that "People who know drink Lyons' Extract" instead. Either Lyons was hoping for a presence in all markets or else they seem to have been undercutting themselves! --142.112.148.225 (talk) 02:39, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Any clue who the people in this video are (other than Kimberly Cheatle obviously). I assume they must be high ranking officials and not just random SS agents Trade (talk) 00:19, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All four of the translated names I have mentioned mean "the fox" or "the old fox". The original German name does not. It simply means "the old one".
Why is this? Is "fox" somehow implied from "old"? How is it possible that four unrelated languages (Finnish is not even Indo-European) have managed to do this independently? Or is there something I am missing here? JIP | Talk19:56, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not familiar with the series, but foxes are, in English (and I believe in Persian), proverbially crafty characters. An old one would be even more so. Reynard of course crosses cultures. Is the "Old One" of the series a cunning, crafty, type? DuncanHill (talk) 20:26, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Quoting our article The Old Fox: 'By understanding the psychological make-up of his suspect, the "Old Fox" craftily leads the criminal into his own trap, to the great surprise of his often perplexed staff.' --Lambiam09:48, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It does indeed seem that "Der Alte" in the series is a cunning, crafty type. The main Old Fox is an older Chief Inspector, physically slow, but mentally sharp with a deep understanding of human nature. Apparently Der Alte carries certain connotations in German as a Chief or Boss, implying that With Age Comes Wisdom and so forth. The TV series is a long-running institution in Germany, and the basic concept is indeed promising. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:13, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As a native German speaker - Austro-Bavarian - who has never seen an installment of this TV series: "Der Alte" is generally a term of respect and even endearment to describe a person of seniority and superior experience. In my understanding, the above mentioned characteristics of foxy cunning is not part of the semantics. However, I repeat to never have seen any of the productions. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:09, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Jürgen Prochnow as Kapitänleutnant (abbr. "Kaleun", German pronunciation: [kaˈlɔɪ̯n]) and also called "Der Alte" ("the Old Man") by his crew: A 30-year-old battle-hardened but good-hearted and sympathetic sea veteran, he complains to Werner that most of his crew members are boys.[4]
We use [brackets] to enclose parenthetical phrases that are inside another parenthetical phrase. That is, brackets are for a double parenthetical phrase. But what do we use when there are three levels of parenthetical phrases?? What do we use?? Georgia guy (talk) 11:54, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You're talking in English, right? What I've seen, on the rare occasions where it was necessary, was curved brackets {}: (enclosing [this {enclosing this} thusly]). --Orange Mike | Talk12:15, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From DPDk, with two levels it is (algunos estudiosos consideran su obra Fortunata y Jacinta [1886-87] la mejor novela española del siglo xix) but in mathematics and chemistry it is reversed [(4 + 2) × (5 + 3)] − (6 − 2). I remember from math class {2 × [3 × (4 + 5)] + 6} . Bracket (mathematics) says:
Square brackets are also often used in place of a second set of parentheses when they are nested—so as to provide a visual distinction.
Georgia_guy -- I think it's as common or possibly even more common (based on what I've seen) to use parentheses within parentheses: (...(...)...). This convention is reasonably clear (though it can be a little bit visually jarring if multiple ")" marks are side-by-side at the end). AnonMoos (talk) 22:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Parentheses may be nested (generally with one set (such as this) inside another set). This is not commonly used in formal writing (though sometimes other brackets [especially square brackets] will be used for one or more inner set of parentheses [in other words, secondary {or even tertiary} phrases can be found within the main parenthetical sentence]).
Why can't every language romanize Russian using scientific transliteration? It would eliminate irritating conventions using ⟨y⟩ for iotated vowels and ⟨sh⟩ for Ш etc. and reflect language's Slavicness better. --40bus (talk) 19:30, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Languages do not romanize. Did you mean, why can't publications in every language use scientific transliteration for Russian terms (presumably mainly proper nouns)? Many languages do not use a Latin alphabet, and in several of those that do some of the transliterations use letters not in their alphabet. Even if it solves a problem, it addresses only a minute part of the general problem; most non-Latin scripts do not have a "scientific" transliteration, and many romanization schemes rely on the English pronunciation of letters. --Lambiam21:30, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
40-bus -- We discussed this exact same topic not too long ago. My basic answer is the same as before: Most English-language speakers have been rather resistant to the use of diacritics (except as optional marks of sophistication for some semi-unassimilated loanwords borrowed from a few foreign languages which use the Latin alphabet, especially French). In the case of Finnish, Finnish speakers are accustomed to diacritics, due to the use of ä and ö in the orthography of their language, and there's no native Finnish way of spelling the "sh" and "zh" sounds, so there was no problem with introducing š and ž into Finnish practices for transcribing foreign words. However, none of that applies to English. The average native English-speaker reading an article about Eastern Europe, if he cares at all about how words transcribed from Cyrillic are pronounced, wants a rough practical approximate guide based on customary English spellings, and does not want to worry about strange little marks flying around various letters. (And that's assuming that his news source would even include the diacritics -- in the days of Wade-Giles, its diacritics and apostrophes were almost always omitted in mass-market English-language newspapers, as has also been explained before.) AnonMoos (talk) 22:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But West Slavic names usually appear with diacritics in English texts. If Russian used Latin alphabet, then there were no irritations and the alphabet would be similar to Czech alphabet. Thus I hope that Russian will eventually switch to Latin alphabet in next 30 years. --40bus (talk) 06:25, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You may well hope, but there is no chance that Russian changes alphabets. Cyrillic is perfectly adapted to the language, has been in use for centuries, and is known by the entire Russian population. Why should there be a switch, except to please a few eccentrics in foreign countries who don't even speak the language? Xuxl (talk) 09:34, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And most English speakers generally ignore the diacritics on West Slavic names. They get printed, but the average reader doesn't give a shit about them. My question is "why can't 40bus accept the fact that different languages are different?" Seriously, you keep asking questions phrased in such a way as to suggest that you know best and that any language that dares to deviate from your preferred methods is in some way deficient or wrong. STOP DOING THAT. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:35, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting that you refer to "West Slavic" and then only mention the Czech alphabet. Do you think Polish orthography, which also uses digraphs, insufficiently reflects the language's Slavicness?
If Russia does after all decide to switch to the Latin alphabet, it may actually go for the English style, with ⟨sh⟩, ⟨y⟩, etc. That style is more internationally recognisable (which languages that chose diacritics weren't too concerned about when they did so), would make Russian orthography distinct from those of related languages, and already serves as the mainstream standard for romanizing the language. On the other hand, scientific transliterations, as the attribute scientific suggests, seek linguistic precision but not necessarily user-friendliness. --Theurgist (talk) 22:13, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They could. It would be more recognisable for native English users, but wouldn't be much more helpful to native Latin alphabet users who aren't native English users. A user-friendly transliteration system must be tuned to the target language, otherwise it isn't any more user-friendly than a scientific system. Russian ш is transliterated as š for a Czech or Croatian audience, sz for Polish, sch for German, sh for English, sj for Dutch or Norwegian etc.
The problem of English-based transliterations is that they only work well for sounds that not only exist in English, but are also the standard pronunciation of some letter combination, which, given the chaotic nature of English spelling, is far from given. (Zh is a remarkable counter-example. The sound /ʒ/ occurs in English, but the zh digraph doesn't; yet it's understood.) PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:36, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Pinyin and the Hepburn system, both pretty much universal romanization standards, already use ⟨sh⟩ for "sh"-like sounds. If Russian switches to Latin, other Latin-written languages will no longer adapt Russian names but will cite them as they are. A ⟨sh⟩ would then be a clearer indicator of something going on than a diacritic over a ⟨s⟩, which, as discussed, would be ignored by many and often even omitted. --Theurgist (talk) 00:49, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On the other hand, ch is in the Slavic languages using that digraph (Czech, Slovak, Polish) used for /x/, as it is used in German, Dutch and the Celtic languages. Using ch for /tʃ/ in transcriptions from Russian is more confusing for people who expect /x/ than using č. Over here, the newspapers usually get the diacritics right for Slavic languages. (Here, Russian /tʃ/ is usually transcribed tsj.) PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An American man and an American woman are "two Americans". This is gender-neutral and unambiguous. An Englishman and an Englishwoman are "two English". However, this is not that well understandable as it is not your first connotation when you hear "two English". What is talked about here? A translation from Spanish "to English"? Is the girlfriend of a Scottish boy "too English" for his grandmother? Is there a better, unmistakable way to address two mixed-gender people from England? --KnightMove (talk) 10:47, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When not in England, the term "Brits" (albeit in this particular case, as you say, imprecise) is something I've heard commonly used and used myself. Mikenorton (talk) 16:46, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a little curious about this. When I hear someone described as a Brit I generally assume they're English; I don't really think of the Scots or the Welsh and certainly not the Northern Irish. Is that the common understanding? --Trovatore (talk) 20:30, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I worked in Norway as an ex-pat for over five years and the Brits included Scots and Welsh as far as I can remember, but that's just a personal recollection, no citations available, sorry. Mikenorton (talk) 22:15, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am not aware of a generic & specific term for two people of mixed gender. The word "couple" may be useful, but it does not define two random people. Two Americans, two Britons, two Spaniards (or whatever) can be any combination of genders / sexes. And two Viennese könnten ja ein Paar Würschtel sein. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 13:15, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are you drawing a distinction between thigs like " there's a couple of people standing in that corner" and "there's a couple standing in that corner"? Because I would say the first about any 2 people but the second only if they were romantically linked. Except I would also say "there's a couple in that corner" as a response to the question "how many people are in this room?" Again, without regard to their sexes, genders, or relationship statuses.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:39, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that would normally be considered non-standard, though. There are some (most?) demonyms which are both adjective and noun (e.g. American/an American, German/a German), some which have different words for each (e.g. Spanish/a Spaniard, Danish/a Dane) and some which are (generally) only used as adjectives (e.g. French, Irish, Chinese). Generally those in the third category need "person" added to make a noun phrase (or "-man"/"-woman" in some cases), and that's where I'd put "English". There seems to be a slight shift towards treating the third category the same as the first category and using the adjective as a noun (e.g. I've seen "a Chinese" instead of "a Chinese person"), which is presumably why there are a few instances of "two English" being used, but it still sounds odd to my (British English) ear. (Admittedly, it does sound a little less odd in the plural. "I saw two English walking down the street" would be odd, but "I saw an English walking down the street" would be downright bizarre.) Proteus(Talk)15:27, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. Possibly the closest we can come in standard-speak is "The English are a curious race", or "You English are despicable". Not even "some English" works for me.-- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]15:46, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, here in Australia we also have the useful word "pom", sometimes expressed more fully as "pommy bastard", especially when an Ashes series is underway. Although the word almost always refers to male English people.HiLo48 (talk) 23:47, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like it, but I've never heard that one. There are expressions used throughout our wide brown land, but then there are some others that have currency only within much smaller communities. The Aussie way is to use such little-known expressions on unsuspecting strangers, whether they be from other parts of the country or overseas, causing the strangers befuddlement. They ask for a translation, and this immediately marks them as "not a local", and hence automatically suspect until such time as they can earn a degree of acceptability. That may take a few minutes, or a few generations, or anywhere in between. Xenophobia works on many levels, not just between nations. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]22:19, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't have so be an immigrant. "Pom" works for visitors too. I believe our King is visiting later this year. He will be called a pom by plenty of Aussies when he's here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HiLo48 (talk • contribs) 11:54, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey friends, having another puzzle over a wördle.de answer. Yesterday the solution was "DRONE" which has left me baffled. Any help on what the German language means by this word please? All I get from de.wikipedia are proper names. Thanks! 70.67.193.176 (talk) 22:53, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could the alternative spelling "Drone" have become common in German in recent years? Given how much has been written, discussed, etc. about these unmanned flying machines in the past decade, I wouldn't be surprised. It's now become the standard term in French. Xuxl (talk) 07:56, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience, it hasn't. "Drohne" and "drone" are not just different spellings, but also pronounced differently. I guess many German speakers may be more or less familiar with the English term too, but in my perception at least the German term is still the one commonly used, in both meanings of the word (bees and flying devices). Fut.Perf.☼08:12, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Short of a misspelling, the only think I can think of is the English word "drone" (as in "droning sound") that is sometimes used when talking about music. It doesn't seem sufficiently common to count as a loanword, though. In principle, it could also be the plural of a word *Dron, but that doesn't exist either. For a German (not English) word *Drone, the pronunciation would be the same as Drohne — the existing word Krone ("crown") is a perfect rhyme. --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:42, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As a native speaker (as is Fut.Perf.), I have never seen the AngloSaxon word "drone" used as a loan word in colloquial German. A typo can be excluded, as Wördle is a constructed linguistic game.
We're all native speakers here ;-) I entered "DRONE" into wördle today and it was accepted, which means that it is in the database. I haven't found out how the database was created and what is or is not in it (misspellings seem unlikely but not entirely impossible). Maybe the creator is a Sunn O))) fan and put Drone (Doom) in by hand... --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:32, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for all the discussion. It's not the first time this database has been weird, so I guess that's what's going on here. "drone" was indeed the solution, it tells you :) 70.67.193.176 (talk) 01:33, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note that Drône is an archaic spelling; the current French orthography is Dronne. Since the Saône is a much more significant and better-known river than the Dronne, presence in the Wördle db as the Germanized spelling of archaic DRÔNE is IMO not a satisfactory explanation. --Lambiam09:34, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Hebrew Bible has "explanations" as to why various people were given their names which are not always etymologically accurate; if such an explanation involves a similar-sounding word, I guess it could be a pun. The episode of Susanna and the Elders added to the Greek version of the book of Daniel has two specific puns on Greek tree names... AnonMoos (talk) 06:32, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have seen a book titled something like Puns: the foundation of writing. Much of early writing uses homophones for concepts that cannot easily be pictured. —Tamfang (talk) 22:37, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If all English sentences had their word order perfectly reversed, could this still be a conceivably natural language? Or, would this new Hsilgne language have any unnatural features that would make it unique among other languages? 2600:8800:718D:8D00:D4AB:BD6F:4954:2F7 (talk) 04:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For almost any order between several connected syntactical parts, such as a verb (V) with a subject (S) and an object (O), or a noun (N) with an adjective (A), there are languages whose grammar prescribes that order, so we have VSO languages, SOV languages, OSV languages, and so on. English is an SVO language, so English reverse would be an OVS language - a rare, but not non-existent type. Likewise, English is an AN language ("blank card"), but there are many NA languages, such as French ("carte blanche"). For more, see Linguistic typology, Word order and Head-directionality parameter. Some languages (e.g. Turkish) do many things in the reverse order of English; for exampe, "I don't know the man who stole your book" becomes "Book-your stealing man-the know-not-I". There is nothing unnatural about the word orders that reverse the word order of English. Therefore it is IMO a reasonable guess that kids growing up immersed in an environment where English reverse is spoken will pick it up just like they would pick up any natural language. --Lambiam07:07, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OVS OSV isn't unnatural or forbidden, but it's typologically disfavored as the main default word order in a language -- it's the rarest of the six basic word order types by a significant margin... AnonMoos (talk) 07:28, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I meant "OSV" (I had problems reversing just three letters!). I'm sure that OSV is viable as a language system, but it's very strongly typologically disfavored, as I meant to say. If you round to the nearest percentage, then the occurrence of both SVO and SOV among the world's languages is in the solid double digits, VSO is almost in the double digits, while the closest integer percentage to express the occurrence of OSV languages is 0%. AnonMoos (talk) 13:24, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do average English speakers in countries that have metricated almost everything (such as Australia and New Zealand) use word "kilometre" in expressions to indicate an unspecified distance, such as "kilometres away", "a few kilometres", "several kilometres", "thousands of kilometres", in daily lives? --40bus (talk) 19:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if Canada qualifies, but the answer here is "mostly no". I mean, you could say it and be perfectly understood, but I'd bet more than half the people you'd meet would use "miles". Kilometers sounds formal and scientific, almost stuffy. Light travels 300,000 kilometers a second, but that town is twenty miles from here. I think younger folks tend to favour the metric more, so perhaps this is changing. Matt Deres (talk) 01:59, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. In Canada you'd say about a family relocating to some far-away suburb: "they moved miles away from here", not "kilometres away" unless you want to specify a precise distance, which you would then include in the sentence. Xuxl (talk) 07:32, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is "several kilometres" ever used? Is it common to say "a several-kilometre-long traffic jam". In Finnish is common to say "useita kilometrejä". --40bus (talk) 15:10, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've noticed that many classic-format jokes, especially as found in joke books, do something odd with the tense: they have a tendency to remove the "to be" portion and I'm not sure what that would be called or what the purpose is. Example: "Two men in a barbershop having their hair cut..." rather than the more standard "Two men are in a barbershop having their hair cut...". Is it just for brevity and flow? The setup to a joke typically needs to be executed quickly - is that all it is? Is there a term for this kind of formation? Matt Deres (talk) 01:55, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can you give a full sentence exemplifying the phenomenon? There is nothing odd with the tenses in "Two men in a barbershop having their hair cut were startled by a strange sound" – although I'd insert a couple of commas. Also, "Two men in a barbershop having their hair cut" is a cromulent image caption. --Lambiam12:37, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A question I was reminded of reading the thread about reverse English: in the OSV and VSO order the predicate group is separated by the subject group? Isn't that a problem? Is the notion of "predicate" with verb and object (and other complements) belonging to it universal? Isn't it more natural that words belonging to the same syntactic group be close together by default? Do OSV and VSO languages have that notion of predicate?
VSO is of course the word order (is "worder" a word?) used in Ancient Hebrew, Classical Arabic, etc.: does the predicate group (if it does exist in those languages) being split have any implication? I've noted that the verbal forms in the past (the non-past is more complicated) have exactly the same order for the suffixed pronouns: verb + subject suffix + object suffix. I've also read somewhere that Ancient Egyptian cycled through various word orders at different stages in its long history. Is that true? Is there a natural way in which word order changes? 178.51.74.75 (talk) 02:01, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thus, Caesar's hae permānsērunt aquae diēs complūrēs, with hae "these" separated from aquae "flood waters", means not "These floods remained for several days" but "This time, the flood waters (unlike the previous ones) remained for several days."
V2 languages (including the Germanic languages other than English) also regularly break up the predicate. The concept of predicate (first definition) isn't used in the traditional grammar of every language and not all modern theories of syntax use the binary distinction of subject vs. predicate. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Even in English, the predicate may be broken up. "The devil is in the details" is traditionally analyzed as subject "the devil" + predicate "is in the details". By asking, "Is the devil in the details?", the subject is transposed to a position inside the predicate. --Lambiam12:25, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In modern linguistic theories, what 178.51.74.75 calls the "predicate" is often known as a verb phrase. In the four-word sentence "Who do you love?", there are two separate breaches of the boundaries of the verb phrase. The exact answer to 178.51.74.75's question would depend on the details of specific linguistic theories (and there's probably a lot more data and linguistic discussion about VSO than OSV)... AnonMoos (talk) 17:13, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The practice of referring to senseless chatter as yapping or yapping on (about something) doesn't seem new to me. Of course, the word's entry on the list of Generation Z slang points out that it dates back hundreds of years, but still, its use in its modern sense seems to have been popular for at least a bit longer than some sources might have us believe. Here's a couple of examples I can recall from the top of my head:
Here it is used in a play from 1953, in the sense of needless talking. Perhaps it is used on TikTok to refer to any speech act. --Lambiam18:34, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Every generation rejuvenates old customs, mores, folkways, and linguistic usages, and then gives itself credit for having invented them. Gen Z is no different from any other generation in this respect. --Trovatore (talk) 21:17, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The verb "suspend" seems to be undergoing a change, particularly in relation to political campaigns. Once, it meant that a campaign was being halted temporarily, but not permanently. Now, we read @ Kamala Harris#2024 presidential campaign:
On July 21, 2024, incumbent president and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden suspended his campaign for re-election in 2024 with Harris and endorsed her as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Yet, everything I've heard and read tells me Biden has abandoned his campaign, permanently and irrevocably. It's over. It's not just suspended. I've also seen this language with previous contenders who pulled out. Nobody believed they were just re-grouping or whatever, and intended to mount a reinvigorated campaign in the near future. No, they were withdrawing permanently. It seems to be a purely American phenomenon, as far as I can tell.
Wiktionary:suspend tells me @ Definition 3, that suspend can mean:
To discontinue or interrupt a function, task, position, or event, e.g. to suspend a thread of execution in a computer program.
That seems to be the only case where suspension can mean permanent cessation. All the other definitions are about temporary cessation. Computer jargon is often the most impenetrable rubbish, with expressions meaning things that are completely at odds with their natural meanings (eg. client). So, why is this computer jargon now being trotted out for use in political contexts? Is it that words that don't mean what they seem to mean are an obvious and natural fit for politics? </cynicism>-- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]21:40, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think this relates to some obscure aspect of American campaign-finance law. If you actually officially drop out, it triggers some sort of legal requirement or complication that "suspending" the campaign does not. So campaigns are almost never officially terminated, always suspended. I don't remember the details but I'm sure someone else can help you find them, or this might be enough of a clue by itself. --Trovatore (talk) 22:03, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This reminds me of a question I asked once on some refdesk; I think it was about Ruth Ellis. The article went into some detail about the possibility of a "reprieve", ultimately not granted.
Now to me a "reprieve" is a temporary suspension of the sentence, essentially the same thing as a "stay". But it was explained to me that the authorities had no option to actually commute her sentence, but they could have stayed it indefinitely, which is the sort of reprieve that was intended in the article. --Trovatore (talk) 23:08, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In US presidential campaigns in recent years, especially during primary season, it has become customary for a candidate to say they are "suspending" their campaign when it's obvious they have no chance of winning. There could be legalistic nuances to that, as Trovatore indicates. In the case of Biden, he's not resigning as president (at least not yet), and if Harris suddenly decides against running, Biden could still say, "Here I am!" ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 00:14, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here's an Atlantic article that deals with the subject. It's a "gift" article that should be de-paywalled for the next couple weeks (sorry future readers of the archive).
Financially, the benefits of a suspension are even more important. "By not officially terminating his campaign, a candidate can continue to raise money to retire debt," ABC News' Domenico Montarao explained after Herman Cain similarly announced the suspension of his campaign in December. "But a candidate would not be ALLOWED to terminate unless they paid off their obligations and debts."
In one scene of Good Burger 2, where Ed and Dexter found out that their old enemy, Kurt has a sister who wants revenge on them for ruining her family's legacy, Dexter should have said "Well your brother deserved it, because he's been adding dangerous, but illegal chemicals in the meat supply without knowing about the adverse side-effects it'll have on people." 172.13.193.84 (talk) 16:31, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are more movies that could do with a script rewrite. In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, when Austin Powers finds out that Dr. Evil plans to to drill a nuclear warhead into the Earth's core and trigger volcanic eruptions worldwide, he should have told him, "Your plan is dangerous and unethical; people may get hurt." --Lambiam21:02, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is one practice of the analysis of artwork in which you would emphasize that the movie poster seems to be deliberately if technically blurring the word "Austin" into a possible "Austim", whatever the purpose of the trickery if there's one there must exist a theory explaining that unethical processes could not warned against in the course of the intrigue. --Askedonty (talk) 22:27, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm looking for information about the 1964 TV Movie titled Don't Ever Talk to Clocks because I'm wanting to creat a Wikipedia page for it but I can't find any sources that show this movie or any articles that show if the movie has survived. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 18:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The IMDb has some info, but very little: [45]. Since we don't recognize this as a reliable source, this is not immediately helpful. But perhaps it gives a handle on finding sources such as newspaper reviews. --Lambiam20:05, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here is one reliable source, found by using IMDb info as search terms. No in-depth coverage, but it is a start. Using "Don't Ever Talk to Clocks" as a search term on the RTÉ Photographic Archive you get more hits, such as one revealing that Peter Collinson wrote an article about this TV movie for the RTV Guide of 14 February 1964.[46] It will not be easy to dig up a copy, but perhaps the RTÉ keeps archived copies of their guide. --Lambiam20:18, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I found just one reference in Newspapers.com (pay site), just a TV listing with no description. On Feb 18, 1964, on a channel called Eire Television, at 8:50 (presumably P.M.) Liverpool Daily Post (Merseyside ed.), p.3. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 20:48, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Behind the band, in the film of Roger Waters' In the Flesh – Live concert, is the usual back-projection screen. During the bitterly sardonic song "The Bravery of Being Out of Range", the view through a periscope, with azimuth graticule clearly visible, is thrown on the screen. I expected the General Belgrano to hove into view, Waters having been an outspoken critic of Thatcher and the Falklands War, but instead it's a (presumably manned) oil rig, which promptly (and spectacularly) explodes. Did this represent a real event? Doug butler (talk) 00:04, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Mea culpa — jumping to conclusions based on faulty memory. Thanks for that. It was a mighty film though; have to drag it out again. Doug butler (talk) 11:13, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I trying to find information about the 1962 TV Mini Series titled Crying Down the Lane. I'm also trying to find out weather if the tv show has survived or is now lost. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 14:59, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note that for the purposes of creating a Wikipedia Article, Wikipedia does not consider IMDb to be a Reliable source because (like Wikipedia) its contents are user-generated. Obviously this does not apply if you're merely pursuing an interest. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 07:15, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm locking for information to do with the 1954 TV Mini Series titled The Heir of Skipton. I'm also trying to find where if the show is now lost or has managed to of survived. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 14:05, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think you could maybe make one post with a list of all the TV series and films you are looking for, rather than make individual posts for each one? Thank you. --Viennese Waltz16:36, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It would also be useful to include links to the Drafts you have created, so that we don't waste time tracking down sources that you have already included in them. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 17:41, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An article in the 'Guardian' notes that Lars von Trier included a contest for viewers of his film The Boss of It All. The first person to spot all seven of what he called "lookeys" in the film would win a cash prize. Surprisingly, there is no mention of this contest in our article. My question, though, is: was the prize ever claimed? --Viennese Waltz17:17, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The website for the contest (lookey.dk) did not report a winner according to the Wayback Machine archives. When the domain name expired in 2012, the site was reqplaced with what appears to be an advertisement for vacationing in Ireland. Lars did not appear to mention Lookeys in future films and the lookey website does not mention any other films. Further, the lookey website does not explain how to claim the prize. So, assuming that somebody did solve the puzzle, what next? Perhaps the solution to the puzzle was the method of claiming the prize. Checking multiple interviews through 2006 and 2007, Lars only mentioned lookeys in 2006 interviews. Every mention in 2007 was a reference to interviews in 2006. Then, it was forgotten. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 12:04, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Whenever I caught my maths teacher making a mistake, they'd say, "It did that to check if you're paying attention." My theory is that von Trier invented this notion of "lookeys" so that when someone spotted an error in the movie he could say, "It's not an error, it' a lookey!". --Lambiam15:15, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
According to our article Cause Célèbre "is a 1975 radio play, and the final play by the English author Terence Rattigan. It was inspired by the trial of Alma Rattenbury and her teenage lover in 1935 for the murder of her third husband Francis Rattenbury and first broadcast by the BBC on 27 October 1975. Alma was played by Diana Dors." Do we know on which BBC radio station it was broadcast (Radio 4 seems to me to be most likely, but Radio 3 is of course possible), does a recording of the radio play survive, and if so where could one listen to it? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 21:28, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It was apparently on Radio 4 to quote from the BBC Year Book for 1977 (page 29), "The many other playwrights whose work was broadcast on Radio 4 include Ibsen, Chekhov, Noel Coward, Mustapha Matura, Bill Naughton and William Douglas - Home. One of the most interesting productions was Cause Célèbre, Sir Terence Rattigan's first play for radio, based on a Bournemouth murder case of the 1930s and with a cast headed by Diana Dors." Mikenorton (talk) 22:35, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We don't have access to the scripts of future episodes of Parineeti; for all we know they may even not yet have been written. Keeping the audience in suspense is a major trick in the scriptwriters' book for ensuring continued high ratings. I'm so sorry that the uncertainty makes you angry. May I recommend, for your peace of mind, that you switch to watching serials that do not involve murder plots. --Lambiam09:39, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am 😡 Because I am Unable to Sleep Peacefully because When is Dumb Director going to Tell Dumb Neeti to Remember that Dam DNA 🧬 Evidence can Prove that Pari & Parvati are Same etc? 49.205.118.129 (talk) 13:21, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Director does not tell Actors. Actors follow Script. Script is wriiten by Smart Scriptwriters. Smart Scriptwriters keep Dumb Audience in Suspense. Dumb Audience keeps watching. Smart Audience finds Something Better to do. --Lambiam15:08, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1. 😡 You still did not answer my question about how I can sleep peacefully etc?
The only question you asked was, "How long Do We have To wait". The Reference desk is not a forum for debate. Apparently, you do not understand the role of the director. You may as well demand an apology from your TV set. --Lambiam20:08, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The director is not reading this. I suggest you write to the showrunner. If it is affecting your sleep, try ignoring television for a month. —Tamfang (talk) 23:27, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm really confused about Eastern Football Netball League. What is meant by "netball" here? That article rather unhelpfully says they added "Netball" to the name "recognising netball as a key part of the league structure", but says nothing else at all about netball. Does "netball" just mean netball (the throwing-based court sport), or is "netball" a name for some variant of Australian rules football (that article says nothing about nets or netball)? If it's the former, I guess this means that the sports clubs operate both an aussie-rules team and a netball team (in a manner like a multi-sports club)? -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk10:52, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is referring to the game of netball, very similar to basketball. On the EFNL website, you will find teams and schedules for football games and, separately, netball games. You will also find the current rulebooks for each. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:14, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Football Netball cubs exist in a lot of country towns in the parts of Australia where Australian football is popular. They are a pooling of resources to support both sports. The men play football. The ladies play netball. Lots of juniors play both sports too .it's a social club for the whole family. The final sentence of the OP's question has it pretty right. HiLo48 (talk) 11:47, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the video of New Order's "Tutti Frutti" there's a young woman playing a dancer who appears throughout the video and is a central character in it. She's obviously the main dancer. When there's dancing the camera is centered on her, although there's usually a few other female dancers around her. She has long brown hair. Despite her importance in the video I could find nothing about her at the usual places (Imdb, etc.) Various AI assistants I've asked return nothing. Do you know of other sources for information about this video? Or can you recognize the woman? For example she's at 1m08-1m13, 1m42-2m09, etc. 178.51.74.75 (talk) 00:36, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This site names one Katja Škofic. (Google Translate: The group New Order recorded the video for their single Tutti Frutti in the premises of TV Slovenija, in which, in addition to the Italian actor Ricky Tognazzi, the Slovenian dancer and actress Katja Škofic appears.)--Wrongfilter (talk) 15:45, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What are the links to Billboard's Digital Song Sales Chart and Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales Chart for the first week of October 2023? Thanks. Bob K31416 (talk) 15:50, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very helpful. I was looking for a cover of "I Won't Back Down". Using your links as a starting point, I found it for the week of Oct 14, 2023 for Digital Song Sales at #10 [47] but not for Country Digital Song Sales (#6 was the supposed place). Bob K31416 (talk) 18:05, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For country, I think I found what I was looking for. It looks like the country link in your message is for "Hot Country Songs", which apparently is different from "Country Digital Song Sales" (see [48] p. 8). At the latter is the "I Won't Back Down" cover at #6. Bob K31416 (talk) 06:45, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Pratap555: If you don't understand the explanation in the decline notice, you should click the "Ask us a question" blue link in the draft decline message, to ask at the AfC help desk. RudolfRed (talk) 01:13, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The implied question is, "Can you please help me find sources to establish the notability of this film"? (In particular, sources with significant coverage of the topic, not mere mentions, but per Wikipedia:Notability (films) a major award would also do.) --Lambiam10:18, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As long as the text is understandable and does not violate policy, this should not an issue for reviewers deciding whether to accept or decline a submitted draft. But you're welcome to improve it as you see fit. --Lambiam20:37, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"...ingeniously uses a simple idea—a leaking tap – to deliver a profound message about water conservation. Through its minimalist approach." That sounds like it was lifted from a movie review somewhere. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 23:37, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can you prove this? If not, it is skirting very close to calling the editor either incapable of writing a cohesive, comprehensible sentence or a flat-out plagiarist.Maineartists (talk) 12:25, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So, not only very adjacent to plagiarism, but also favourably judgemental and therefore not NPOV: "ingeniously", "profound". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 (talk) 17:42, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do any of you guys know any information about the 1973 tv series titled For the Sake of Appearance. I'm wanting to find information about the show because I'm creating a draft for it and I want to know if the show has survived so can any of you send me the links here. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 12:52, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why do most older child actors play younger characters? For instance; 8 or 9-year-olds as 6 or 7-year-olds, 13 or 14-year-olds as 11 or 12-year-olds and 15 or 16-year-olds as 12 or 13-year-olds. 86.129.82.17 (talk) 19:57, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are legal limits to the work children can do: maximum hours per day and per week, dangerous environments, night-time work. Those rules get less strict as the child gets older, making it easier for film makers to work with older children. Furthermore, they become better actors as they get older. So it's best to work with the oldest available child that can believably play the age asked for by the script. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:15, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How do I get my voice to sound like Hank Hill? Due to something called puberty, I think I can do a pretty good impression of him if I practice it long enough. also because I want more friends TWOrantulaTM (enter the web) 23:50, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here is the secret:
If you want to be chill, like the King of the Hill, Propane. It's a flammable gas that's hard to surpass, Propane. Do the math, light your path, heat your bath, Propane.
Hank Hill has a central Texas accent. It is very similar to the accent you will hear through central Oklahoma, Kansas, West Missouri, and up into Nebraska and Iowa. Speak from your chest, not your diaphram. It is very breathy. Then, lock your jaw. Don't use your jaw to form sounds. Use only your lips and tongue. It will make the words slur together a bit and words like "wash" and "here" become "wush" and "hur". That is the foundation of the "midwest" accent that the Taxes accent is part of. From there, you need to raise your pitch at the correct times by practicing phases he uses. Then, keep focusing on your jaw. Don't close it when saying anything ending with "ing". It is supposed to come out just "in". Don't try to enunciate your T's, they are supposed to sound like D's. If you get flustered, go into a Boomhowser accent, which is more like the Northmern Midwest and just run it all toghether. Of you REALLY want to learn to speak it correctly, just move to Texas. They'll learn you right. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 23:55, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Any idea what is involved in an engine swap for a 2000-era Jeep Wrangler? No I'm not going to attempt it myself, I just want to be able to discuss it intelligently with mechanics. Other than a crane to hoist the motors and a lift to get under the car, is it basically within reach of a clueful backyard mechanic? Any idea what would make the old engine lose oil pressure when it gets hot? There is no blue smoke or anything like that, but out-of-town garage says a replacement engine is needed. Sounds drastic. A remanufactured crate engine is around $2500 which is doable (it's a fairly nice car without too many other problems) but I gotta wonder whether some simpler repair is eluding everyone. Car isn't mine, I'm asking for a friend as the saying goes. It runs fine as long as it's not under too much prolonged load. Oil pump has been replaced, which didn't help. Thanks. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:9BB0 (talk) 07:34, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think your chances of finding an experienced Jeep mechanic here are rather slim. You may be better off with a specialised forum like jeepgarage.org for example. Others are easliy found with a Google search/ Alansplodge (talk) 13:48, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, yeah, might try that. I'm asking more about the complexity of engine swaps in general though. Closest thing to that I've ever been involved with was a GM transmission swap, done in a friend's garage with the car up on ramps, plus multiple people muscling the stuff around. It has to be a lot easier with real shop tools. Maybe I'll check youtube. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:9BB0 (talk) 18:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is important to note if you are swapping the engine with the exact same model engine. If it isn't exactly the same, there is no telling what problems might arise that will end up costing more. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 23:48, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently Marie Van Brittan Brown was presented with an award from the prestigious "National Scientists Committee". There are hundreds of references to support this. However I can find no trace of this body, except in said references.
Does this body or did this body exist?
If so, what awards did it make? Is there a list I can consult?
If not:
Was Marie Van Brittan Brown and/or her husband Albert L. Brown given any other award?
How do we explain this in the article. "Numerous references claim ... but there is no trace of such an organisation.[Citation needed]"
Perhaps the awarding organization was the National Safety Council, which issues a variety of awards, such as its "Distinguished Service to Safety Award".[49] Someone may have made an incorrect guess what the initialism NSC stands for; others copied without checking. --Lambiam19:27, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
However another source dated 11 April 2016 here, also mentioning the award, provides sources, namely:
Raymond B. Webster, African American firsts in science & technology, (1999);
The Inventor of the Home Security System: Marie Van Brittan Brown by Think Protection;
Patent: US 3482037 A;
“Brown Interview with the New York Times,” New York Times, December 6, 1969.
It's not in 1 or 3. I can't yet find 2, and I doubt it will be in 4, since this was a short while after the patent was granted. It's not impossible that this author (Rebecca Hill) also consulted Wikipedia, which by then contained the claim.
OK it's the thinkprotection source. Here at archive.org. No visible author or date, but dated March 2016 by the upload directory. Hence postdating the introduction into Wikipedia. All the best: RichFarmbrough14:23, 13 July 2024 (UTC).[reply]
I know we usually don’t hat refdesk sections. But this has devolved into a non-ref-desk discussion. Some are trying to help. Some are taunting. But Pablo has been told to stop on his talk page, or get blocked. So any further discussion is not helping. -Floquenbeam (talk) 01:21, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I can’t seem to get into a normal Facebook page. Is there anything you can do to help? The page is for Menchies Frozen Yogurt. Thank you. It just shows a generic page saying “this content isn’t available at the moment” even though I know for a fact the page is exactly as it normally is. Could you please have this checked for me? Thank you. Pablothepenguin (talk) 19:39, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It works fine for me. This is not a problem that anyone here on the ref desk can help you with. Try again later, reboot your PC, try a different browser. And so on. --Viennese Waltz19:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can see why Pablothepenguin likes the page so much. It has a very interesting color palette that's visually appealing to some people. Viriditas (talk) 09:18, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is it possible they have blocked you from their page? If you log out of Facebook and can then view the page, that seems the most likely reason why you cannot view it when you are logged in.-Gadfium (talk) 23:02, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tried it when logged out and it worked. How do I ask to have my account unblocked? I’m not sure what to do now. I also don’t understand why I am blocked, as I said nothing vulgar or offensive. I also don’t understand why Facebook can’t just tell me about a block. Pablothepenguin (talk) 23:42, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The "owner/operator" of any individual Facebook page has the power to block anybody from that page, without any involvement by Facebook employees. I have blocked many people from my Facebook page for what I consider to be good reasons, but have no obligation to explain why. It is my page. Pablothepenguin, based on your edit history, you are highly focused on this frozen yogurt company, and are repeatedly lobbying them to expand the way that you want them to expand, as opposed to their own internal plans. If their employee responsible for their Facebook page has concluded that you are no longer a welcome presence on their Facebook page, then they have the power and the right to block you from it. Cullen328 (talk) 03:00, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Pablothepenguin, if the person or people running that Facebook page have decided that you are no longer welcome there, then there is literally nothing you can do about it, except to move on and find another hobby. Cullen328 (talk) 08:37, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I find that hard to believe. Cullen328 has it right – if your history of contact with this company is anything like your history of comments about it on this ref desk, I'm not surprised they've blocked you. --Viennese Waltz10:59, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can assure you it is true. I only ever leave short comments of a couple of words. I deserve a second change and I also believe the blocking system is unfair. I’ll explain why by reminding you of how blocks work on this very Wiki. As you may know, when a person is blocked here, they will receive a message on their talk page, and will have the ability to submit a block request. I don’t agree with the fact that this doesn’t happen on Facebook. At the very least there should be an official way to dispute a block. Pablothepenguin (talk) 11:05, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just dropping it...both here and there probably would be a healthy step at this point. Based on your edits on this topic here over the past several months, I'm sure you wore out their patience. People running Facebook pages don't have the same policies on assuming good faith and the like. They don't need a reason to block you. I'm starting to think a topic ban for you on discussing this company in any way on Wikipedia might be good for everyone involved. --Onorem (talk) 13:40, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I will probably take a break from it for a while at least. I still maintain my innocence and I can assure you once again that my comments on Facebook were polite and not offensive. I will admit they were a bit persistent and repetitive, but they definitely weren’t meant to cause upset or annoyance. Hopefully one day my dream will come true and Scotland and the UK will have the frozen yogurt stores I seek. Until then I have to be patient and not a pain in the rear end. I thank you for you understanding. Pablothepenguin (talk) 19:23, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Pablothepenguin While Wikipedia offers a fair process for dispute resolution among its own contributors, Wikipedia cannot give legal advice or formally endorse either side in a complaint you have with a media company and/or a yoghurt supplier. Both are companies that have prerogative to act according to their commercial interests as they see them. However there are other internet social media than Facebook where you with others like you may have your collective voices heard and noticed, in this example by over 200,000 viewers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKDD5t8FIY0Philvoids (talk) 20:15, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Pablothepenguin, a life lesson: even polite and inoffensive-in-themselves comments can be annoying if they are uninvited, unwanted and unrelenting; consider Sealioning, for example.
What you have been doing was not intended maliciously or applied knowingly, so was not sealioning, but consider another scenario: what if a sincere believer from a religion or sect you were not interested in continually pestered you, trying to persuade you to join it, day after day? Even if you had no particular dislike of that religion, I imagine you would soon get pretty annoyed.
It's easy to fall into such behaviour. When I was younger, I would sometimes 'lecture' my parents about some obscure-to-them topic I was interested in until they left the room to get away from me. One has to learn how others are responding to one's conversation (spoken or written), even when the signals are not explicit, and modify one's behaviour accordingly. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 09:33, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your interesting comments. I do believe that from what I’ve heard from correspondence, Menchies do favour expanding more. I think that they are taking it very slowly, which annoys me, and I suspect that they would like to have UK stores someday. At the moment, they seem to be focusing on making sure they’ve recovered from post-Covid turbulence. I am quite impatient, so that is why I am the way I am. I am also blighted by the fact that I don’t fully understand how the economy works, so I don’t understand why a business would not prioritise growing as quickly as possible at all times. Pablothepenguin (talk) 10:51, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Expanding costs money. Recouping these costs takes time, and it is always uncertain whether this will eventually be successful. Companies have gone belly up by expanding too rapidly.[50] Even if it is only the franchisee who goes bankrupt, this reflects badly on the company that granted the franchise. --Lambiam20:54, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I was a business owner, I'd prioritize both customer satisfaction and the well-being of my employees over growing the business. Pushing for more growth than is comfortably sustainable will tax the employees and may diminish the quality of the service offered. --Lambiam21:00, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I still think Menchies would like to grow at some point. Presumably UK stores would be part of that. I think what Lambian said reinforces my post that maybe post-Covid recovery is still a more important concern. Hopefully over the next few years, the global economy will continue to recover and get to the point where it is at pre-covid levels. So maybe, the idea is to wait for this to be clearer before expansion is given more priority. Of course, nothing is ever certain in the economic world, and unexpected turbulence may appear, but hopefully if I keep my fingers crossed, things will improve in time. Pablothepenguin (talk) 21:22, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you truly care about the company as much as you claim, why not put your effort into opening a local franchise using their franchising contacts here. I know the knee-jerk response is "I don't have money." Businesses are created every day by people who don't have money. That is the best time to do it. If you are broke and you end up with a failed franchise and a business loan you will be... broke. The same as before. If you are doing well and you have a failed franchise and a business loan, you will have gone from doing well to being broke. So, it is much better to put it all on the line when you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 16:39, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is also the matter of me having other goals that would take up a lot of my time. For example, I am currently studying sound engineering at a local college. I am aiming to become a recording studio engineer or perhaps a live sound technician. I am also worried that I will be refused a bank loan as I am on unemployment benefits. Pablothepenguin (talk) 18:07, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're trolling us now. You've already been told that your refusal to disengage and go and do something else is irritating to others. Now we have a perfect example of it. You're just going on and on as if this is some bench outside a boxing gym and you're there talking about how you could've been a contender if it wasn't for all these people refusing to listen to you. Move on. Nanonic (talk) 22:11, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I'm not sure that there's necessarily anything either "logical" or "rational" about food preferences. It's not uncommon to hear people say that they dislike a certain food except in one particular context or dish. ColinFine (talk) 15:46, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are you talking beef chops or pork chops? The latter have to be fully cooked. If it's the former, it's likely just a matter of taste. Some folks like liver, which is supposed to be good for you. I hate the stuff. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 20:38, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Does it make sense for someone to prefer their tea hot and their beer cold? I'm not sure that such questions make sense – I don't even know what they mean. --Lambiam22:37, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Food preferences are quite interesting, actually. Are they developed through trial and error, habit, or something that happens in the womb? Speaking only for myself, I think they are a combination of all of the above. However, there are other factors to consider. I've met people whose food preferences have been shaped by fear and traumatic incidents, particularly those that occurred during natural disasters when they were forced to eat certain food to survive. Later in life, they avoid those foods because of the trauma. On other social media sites, I've noticed other factors that are due purely to visual presentation. In other words, there's a subset of people who won't eat food that looks a certain way, regardless of how it tastes. I've always found that to be very odd, but apparently it is very common. I think one of the reasons I don't necessarily understand that approach is because I'm personally not so much a visual person when it comes to food. And that's where I stand out as odd. I'm far more interested in the health aspects and nutritional qualities, which I've discovered has little bearing for most people. Viriditas (talk) 09:05, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the novel Lucifer's Hammer, a doctor character claims that you shouldn't eat pork (or long pig in the novel) rare because pigs can catch most of the same diseases as people, while cattle don't. Whether this is true or not, I don't know. Clarityfiend (talk) 12:24, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Just to be clear, I am not asking a question about a prediction, I am asking a question about the finer points (data, evidence) that supports the techno-libertarian idea behind the theory that Elon Musk promotes, for example, when he says "AI would eventually replace all jobs on Earth, making employment optional and transforming jobs into hobbies as AI and robots would provide all necessary goods and services." My question relates to the bolded text. Why is this sunny outcome even considered likely, when the historical reality shows that a darker, dystopian Elysium-like outcome is far more likely to occur, where most of humanity is forced into dire poverty amidst deteriorating environmental and social conditions, while the wealthy who benefit from AI escape to their own walled gardens and new societies free from the teeming masses? Again, I’m not asking about a prediction about the future, I’m asking on what basis are we supposed to accept the idea that AI will benefit humanity? The technological innovation of agriculture clearly didn’t benefit the masses of humanity, and likely enslaved the great majority of them in some form or another. Why will AI be any different? Viriditas (talk) 02:46, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I want to add something else. I’ve recently been working on several articles about the history of pineapple. One of the most interesting things I discovered within this 500 year time frame, was that the best tasting pineapple varieties were for the most part extirpated. It turns out that there is an inverse relationship between taste and commercial viability (canning size, preservation, etc). In other words, what we know as commercial pineapple in the modern era is representative of the worst tasting pineapple cultivars, but those also happened to be the easiest to grow, produce, and distribute, hence the reason they were chosen and the others were discarded and disappeared (Side note, this may be true for all fruit varieties, I don’t know, but there was a recent article that implied the same holds true for commercial strawberries and blueberries). Why would this kind of thing not also happen with AI, such that the most beneficial AI tailored to help humanity progress to a post-scarcity society would be weeded out to serve the interests of resource extraction and scarcity instead? Viriditas (talk) 03:05, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The current pineapple you find in stores is in no way the worst tasting pineapple. There are many varieties that taste far worse. Some taste like chewing on wet grass. Similarly, the avacado you can purchase in a store is nowhere close to the worst tasting avacado. Both of these are not "easy" to cultivate. Pineapple is very difficult to cultivate and requires a lot of land and labor, which is why you don't see pineapple farms everywhere. Avacados are even harder to cultivate. It is possible that there is a relative to both the pineapple and avacado that tastes better, but implying that we only cultivate the worst tasting fruits to increase profits is not justified. Another example is the tomato. A much easier to cultivate tomato was developed, but it tasted terrible. So, it was abandoned. As for the overall claim that AI will create a few rich and many poor, there were few rich and many poor in the beginning of recorded history. They had oral traditions talking about the few rich and many poor long before recorded history. Throughout all of history, humans have created nations with a few rich and many poor. Why wouldn't the future be a world of a few rich and many poor? That isn't the result of AI. That is the result of humans. A few rich exploit the many poor until conditions are so bad that the poor overthrow the rich and replace them with a new group of few rich. Alternately, a few rich in one area get their many poor to fight with the many poor of another area so they can take away from another minority of rich. If humans were studied like we study all other animals, this would be labeled normal human behavior. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 11:16, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My source was Johanna Lausen-Higgins of Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. She's notable for her hands on work on the Lost Gardens of Heligan. She's a horticulturist and garden historian who studied at Bristol University. In the event that I misrepresented her, and it sounds like I did, here's a transcription of her 2020 lecture:
So the first classification that was done was by [Donald Monroe?] in 1835, and he lists around 52 different cultivars, many of which are thought to be lost now. And, this modern cultivar, iconically named [51MD?], really shows why many of these cultivars are lost now. [You've] got all the attributes of easier handling: you've got a smooth edge to the leaf, but also if you look at the outline of the fruit, it's basically been bred to fit neatly into a tin can, [so] cutting machines could cut equal slices with minimal loss...but the cultivars that were particularly favored in the 18th and 19th centuries, [are] very different. [You] see this strongly tapering outline to the fruit. And in the case of Sugarloaf and Queen...they also have very strongly outward protecting fruitlets. Which again is something that is not favored in the canning industry. And again, I can tell you the flavors are so incredible in these different old cultivars. So Abacaxi, so "Black Prince" now, a lost cultivar, is probably an Abacaxi type, actually has white flesh and really unusual, subtle flavors. You can still read in modern treatises on the pineapple, that Smooth Cayenne...this is the one that dominates the trade, has by far the poorest flavour. It's got the highest acidity and also possibly the highest amount of bromelain. Whereas Queen or Sugarloaf, which were particularly favoured as well...the aroma and the flavours are extraordinary.
Throughout all of history, humans have created nations with a few rich and many poor. Why wouldn't the future be a world of a few rich and many poor...If humans were studied like we study all other animals, this would be labeled normal human behavior.
Forgive me, but this sounds identical to an appeal to tradition. It's also the same argument abolitionists were met with when they opposed slavery. They were told that slavery was natural, and it was normal, and even that god approved of it. They were also told that they were going against the natural order of things in their opposition to it. Viriditas (talk) 23:17, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Example: Thomas Roderick Dew (1802–1846) professor, public intellectual, president of The College of William & Mary (1836-1846). Best known for his pro-slavery advocacy based on his belief that blacks were racially inferior, "defending slavery based on race as consistent with the natural order". Viriditas (talk) 01:23, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do not see it as an appeal to tradition. It is refuting the precedent. Your claim appears to be that because of AI, the future will change so that there will be a minority of rich people and a majority of poor people. That is refuted by stating that there has always been a minority of rich people and a majority of poor people. Therefore, the precent that the result is because of AI is invalid. You can make any claim you want. Because (whomever gets elected in November) the future will have a rich minority and poor majority. Because the Simpsons was signed for another season, the future will have a rich minority and a poor majority. Because Beyonce went into country music, the future will have a rich minority and a poor majority. etc... It isn't an appeal to tradition. It is a statement of history which should lead you to refine your claim. Because of AI, how will the rich minority and poor majority change? Will the minority become smaller? Will the gap widen, which is already does every generation? How much AI is required to make the change you are discussing? 75.136.148.8 (talk) 15:03, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think its refuted at all. You're ignoring the rise of economic inequality over the last several centuries. What I think you are doing is ignoring recent history. And this is, in fact, what all the discussion about AI focuses on.[54][55] So, I just find your comment a bit odd. Your comments are also highly reminiscent of all the discussions I've had with right-libertarians who refuse to accept there's even a problem and see the nation state and democracy as the true threat. Most of these types of people don't accept the concept of wealth disparity or income inequality and think it should be ignored. Viriditas (talk) 21:57, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IMO bringing in this fruit analogy does not help to clarify the central issue. The best tasting varieties were not "extirpated" and are mostly still available – only not in your local supermarket. Growing and transporting produce requires resources, which have a limited capacity. Capacity is unlikely to be a major limiting factor in deploying beneficial AI. If AI and robots provide all necessary goods and services, no one will have an income to buy them. Can one expect the profit-driven owners of the means of production to make them available to all for free? Why should they do that? They'll be happy when they themselves are provided with all necessary goods and services and have no incentive for extending this to the rest of us. --Lambiam12:13, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The example I was aiming for with the fruit analogy was to try and show that the agricultural preference for viable, commercial fruit that led one to select a certain variety for its qualities related to growing, packaging, shipping, and shelf stability, are comparably the same kind of commerical qualities we might expect with human-driven, artificial selection in AI development, leading to something like an algorithmic bias favoring poor outcomes for humanity, much as the flavor and palatability was selected against with the commerical dominance of Smooth Cayenne. According to Wikipedia "Smooth Cayenne is now the dominant cultivar in world production." Viriditas (talk) 23:45, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that historical precedents suggest rather strongly and convincingly that the most powerful people are not likely to give up their relatively privileged position voluntarily and will even resort to brutal measures to stay on top. Total control over the use of AI will make it much easier for the rulers of the world to remain the most powerful. They will need us no longer, so something drastic is necessary to save humanity from getting stuck in an Elysium-like future, one I'm afraid Matt Damon will be of little help getting us out of. --Lambiam11:49, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I guess my followup question is this: why do Musk and others in the tech community keep repeating this line? Are they merely hopeful, technological utopians, or are they deliberately lying? Hacker News has thousands upon thousands of comments by people in the tech industry insisting that AI will make jobs a thing of the past and everyone will have leisure time to pursue their own hobbies. The thing is, I'm familiar with the older literature. People have been saying this for a little over a century. It never happened, but what did happen was the complete opposite: human productivity was expected to increase just as industrialization maximized output, resulting in less leisure time than in the past. In fact, the conventional wisdom now is that feudal serfs had more leisure time 500 years ago than modern workers do today. So are people deliberately lying about AI or are they just delusional? Finally, if you're familiar with Musk, then you know his position is that humanity needs to merge with the machine as a cyborg. That's literally his answer, I'm not making this up. Why am I the only person who finds this unacceptable? If you're the least bit familiar with science fiction, the evil scientist who somehow convinces the public to become cyborgs always ends up removing their individuality and exerting complete control over them. Surely, someone else has pointed this out? Viriditas (talk) 00:01, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just to add a bit to the cyborg argument: my understanding as to why Musk and others make this argument comes down to this: 1) They believe that humanity has evolved or gone as far as it can go without being threatened with extinction by machine intelligence 2) They believe that one way to insure survival into the foreseeable future is to compromise by becoming part-machine and merging with it as a kind of cyborg 3) This idea almost seems to contradict their assertion that we won’t need to work and everybody will have access to abundant resources 4) Newer data indicates that AI consumes far too many resources and energy requirements that makes it a direct threat to human existence. 5) See 1. Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Viriditas (talk) 03:53, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hah, i recall an earlier question of yours concerning a passage in Consider Phlebas, did you continue past the cannibalism of the islanders living in a natural state to the comic passage of Horza delighting in his destruction of the shuttle AI?
I am going to question your understanding of history. If you believe that the technological innovation of agriculture clearly didn’t benefit the masses of humanity then i wonder what kind of metrics you are using to evaluate the human condition? History has been a very long path out of darkness, towards greater standards of living and more liberal societies. While i think you are correct to take a skeptical look at the AI hype, i don't think you have a historical argument for imagining a future where most of humanity is forced into dire poverty. Many live in dire poverty now, and poverty is widespread, but along with technological innovation there has been a substantial positive trend:
The chart shows that almost 10% of the world's population live in extreme poverty. It also tells us that two hundred years ago, the same was true for almost 80% of the world’s population. In 1820, only a small elite enjoyed higher standards of living, while the vast majority of people lived in conditions that we call extreme poverty today. Since then, the share of extremely poor people fell continuously. More and more world regions industrialized and achieved economic growth which made it possible to lift more people out of poverty: In 1950 about half the world were living in extreme poverty; in 1990, it was still more than a third. By 2019 the share of the world population in extreme poverty has fallen below 10%.
I think you misunderstood what you read. I was citing the famous passage from Harari, which I assumed everyone was familiar with by now considering how much it has been quoted. His argument is that we didn’t so much as master agriculture as it mastered us and turned us into slaves. Harari argues that we were the ones domesticated by the plants, which changed our lives from one of leisure to one of toil. Keep in mind, Harari is intentionally turning the conventional narrative on its head. He’s arguing that the agricultural revolution was not as great as we make it out to be. It destroyed our bodies with labor, it eliminated our leisure time, it gave us a poor diet, it was less economically secure than hunting and gathering, and if the monoculture was threatened or the climate changed, it killed millions of peasants. It offered less security due to the need to protect possessions and provisions. “Since we enjoy affluence and security, and since our affluence and security are built on foundations laid by the Agricultural Revolution, we assume that the Agricultural Revolution was a wonderful improvement. Yet it is wrong to judge thousands of years of history from the perspective of today. A much more representative viewpoint is that of a three-year-old girl dying from malnutrition in first-century China because her father's crops have failed. Would she say 'I am dying from malnutrition, but in 2,000 years, people will have plenty to eat and live in big air-conditioned houses, so my suffering is a worthwhile sacrifice'?...Rather than heralding a new era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with lives generally more difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers. Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud." Viriditas (talk) 02:01, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From another POV, see Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England (1983), which nicely illustrates the clash of civilizations in terms of agriculture. The colonists didn’t want to even try to understand how and why the indigenous people refused to settle down and stay put growing food on farms, aghast that they would even incorporate "lean times" into their worldview as an acceptable practice and normalized part of their life. Why don’t you just store food so you don’t have to go hungry, they would ask? The author investigates this question, finding that the nomadic, always on the move practice could have serious ecological benefits for the land, providing a kind of harmonious resiliency when things went well. Of course, when they didn’t, the risk of starving was very real. The book presents a very real look at an alternative way of life to agricultural farming in one place, perhaps a kind of living that has been entirely lost to history. And in spite of the ever present risks and dangers, there is a sense of a kind of special freedom and leisure that we no longer are aware of, one that has been lost to time. Viriditas (talk) 02:27, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hah, i recall an earlier question of yours concerning a passage in Consider Phlebas, did you continue past the cannibalism of the islanders living in a natural state to the comic passage of Horza delighting in his destruction of the shuttle AI?
Yes, I made it all the way to the eighth book, Matter, which I have in front of me. I threw it against the wall after getting so depressed by the events in it. I made it halfway through. I do plan on picking it up again so I can finish up with Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata. One of the things I don't like is how Banks constantly reuses the same words and imagery. One of the things I do like, is how he manages to combine very serious drama, violence, and humor all in a single chapter. That's quite an achievement, and I can't quite recall another author successfully mixing all those elements together before. Viriditas (talk) 03:05, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I think it's pretty obvious where this is going. This 2020 opinion piece from scholars around the world, "Do Democracy and Capitalism Really Need Each Other?" indicates to me, based on the trends that we are seeing, that AI will be used to eliminate democracy once and for all. It's also interesting to note how the philosophical impetus for cryptocurrency fits into all of this. Crypto was intended by anti-democractic libertarians to be used to bankrupt the state, paving the way for right-wing billionaires to take over and use AI to create a new world where they aren't taxed and where the general public works for them on corporate slave plantations (company towns) with no regulatory framework, no guarantee of human rights, and no public infrastructure for healthcare, safe water, food, or air, in an economy based on servicing the wealthy and powerful. Viriditas (talk) 21:56, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
If Hillary Clinton had won the Electoral College, in 2016, would there have been in reverse roles, faithless electors who would have prevented her election? Thanks. 2.35.188.164 (talk) 19:16, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is no way one can answer this question about a counterfactual hypothetical situation. There is no known reason to assume that some of the hypothetical pledged electors would have been faithless. --Lambiam19:51, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please read Faithless elector which describes several such Clinton electors in the 2016 presidential election. These were, in effect, protest votes cast when it was clear that Trump had won. Personally, I doubt those protest votes would have been cast had Clinton won the Electoral College, but this is speculation about a hypothetical. Cullen328 (talk) 19:56, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One can speculate about this counterfactual hypothetical, but there is no known reason to assume that some of the pledged electors in this hypothetical situation would have been faithless – unless Clinton had won by a landslide, but then any faithless electors would not have prevented her election. However, there are no known facts that imply it is impossible that many would have voted for Faith Spotted Eagle. Therefore there is no way one can answer this question. --Lambiam06:24, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is very complicated because the electors are ruled by state law, not federal law. The Supreme Court (Jan 2020) affirmed that electors fall completely under state law. Since then, states have taken more and more action to stop and punish faithless electors, including proposing laws to invalidate and replace a faithless elector's vote. In the end, it is state law, so any complete answer would require a discussion of how each state would be handled, along with the changes in the laws from year to year. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 20:30, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An exhaustive discussion of how each potential case would have been handled in each of the several states, informed by the changes in their laws from day to day, will not be of help in answering he question. --Lambiam06:30, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's because, as you keep pointing out, nobody can ever say what would have happened if some event that didn't happen had happened. The closest we could ever get is reporting the opinion of some commentator about what would/might have happened. But that's just their opinion; no-one can say whether it would actually have happened that way or not. And that is why we do not entertain questions that call for hypothesis, speculation or debate. And that is why I'm closing this now. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]07:26, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Is there an accepted, standard location when finding latitude and longitude for ponds and lakes? Or, is wherever the pond lake first encounter? It is probably changed with GPS and Sats. DMc75771 (talk) 19:47, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If there were one, I believe it would be the same for any type of geographic feature occupying an area with a somewhat defined shape, such as an island, a swamp, a salt flat, and so on. A plausible candidate, if one doesn't want to single out a specific feature of the area, is its geographical centre. As stated in a United States Geological Survey document quoted in our article, "There is no generally accepted definition of geographic center, and no completely satisfactory method for determining it." For most purposes, the centroid of the area will usually be satisfactory in practice. I suppose one will want the location to fall inside the area, but if the area is not even roughly convex, for example C-shaped, its centroid may fall outside the area. --Lambiam09:04, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Surprisingly hard to find a definitive statement from a major cartographic agency, but the Natural History Museum, London guidelines for recording the location of species says "It is best to use the geographic centre (the centroid/midpoint of both the latitude and longitude extremes) for the coordinates of named places". [56]Alansplodge (talk) 11:48, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your long and curved lake is better suited to the advice for rivers: "Make a straight line from the mouth of the river to the head of the river. Calculate the centre of this line, and place the coordinates closest to the centre of the line on the river itself". Alansplodge (talk) 11:21, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Another twist here is that for feature geometries polygons can have holes, and water body features are often modeled with multipoloygons, that is a set of polygons each of which can have zero or more holes. So even for a convex polygon there is no guarantee the centroid or the center of the bounding box are inside the feature. fiveby(zero) 02:03, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that there's an actual requirement for perfect mathematical exactitude; if the co-ordinates indicate a point somewhere in the middle of a particular lake, then the job is done. Alansplodge (talk) 11:36, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I wrote, "I suppose one will want the location to fall inside the area", but if one is writing a program for assigning locations to geological features of a known extent, one needs some more precise definition. For example, if the centroid is not inside the area, the algorithm could select the location inside the area as far away as possible from its boundary, and if there are several such locations (for example for the C-shaped lake in my illustration), one as close as possible to the centroid. --Lambiam13:17, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It may be worthwhile to point to WikiProject Geographical coordinates's guidelines on the matter. Elsewhere on that page one finds "For geographical features with an area, such as lakes, reservoirs, and islands, use a point reasonably in the center of the feature. (Remember not to specify too much precision; see Precision guidelines below.)" Deor (talk) 13:55, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I got to thinking, would it be possible in some way to get cash directly from the Internet, by using one's bank account credentials but without using a debit card or going to a bank office to ask for cash in person? You would log in to your bank over the Internet, withdraw money, and have the money somehow physically appear in front of you in cash.
MikroBitti magazine published an article of a "home banknote printer" in the early 1990s as I recall. The article announced a new kind of home printer that would print cash. "Of course, the printer won't print cash out of thin air", the magazine said, "you have to go out and buy licences for it." But this was an April Fool's joke. Would such a machine actually work, by withdrawing money from your bank account over the Internet and then printing it out in cash? JIP | Talk20:32, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Counterfeiting is not printing your own money, it is printing someone else's money. I can invent my own money and print it right now. As long as it is not a copy of an existing bank note, copying of which is indeed punishable by law in most places.
Personal checks, store credit coupons, lunch vouchers, local currencies and many others are scrip that promise to deliver goods and services, and are issuded by non-govermental entities.
We could invent a form of cryptocurrencies that can be printed out. Takes a bit of thiking though: how do you prevent them from being copied. Someone out there must be clever enough to figure it out, if not has alreadly done so. 85.76.35.183 (talk) 13:59, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You can certainly print your own checks. That's routinely done in business. That's not the same thing as printing actual money. And printing "your own money" is not printing actual money either. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 18:05, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's also worth pointing out that none of those things are legal tender. No one is required to accept checks nor bitcoins as payment. And note that the OP said "cash". None of those things qualify. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 22:22, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not promoting it; I just felt it was also worth pointing out that your statement "none of those things are legal tender" is not entirely accurate. Also, something that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, becomes, by virtue of that quality, "actual" money. --Lambiam22:16, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, a business can accept various forms of payment, including checks, credit cards, and even crypto if they want to. But that doesn't make it "legal tender" except for a country which has decided to allow bitcoins as such, for whatever reason. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 23:54, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
DigiCash had a cryptographic protocol that would allow this. The "cash" was, as for bitcoin, a digital identifier, which could be represented as a conventional string such as 2ABA28C066F74CC8710ED3B22798255E, but for the purpose of home-printed money should be machine readable, as for example a QR code. As with any form of digital money, there is a potential problem of someone attempting to spend the same digital string twice. One solution is that a central system keeps a list of the unspent digital identifiers issued, validates a digital identifier when the money is used for a payment and at the same time removes it from the list. The DigiCash solution was decentralized; a malicious user could in theory spend a digital identifier twice, but this would reveal their identity. Otherwise, the user would remain untraceable. --Lambiam22:33, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
during a diving competition that is aquatic diving. What is the purpose of the water jets that spray into the pool? Brad (talk) 16:30, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA) requires[58] surface agitation to provide a visual cue that helps divers judge when to enter their rotation as they dive into the water. Philvoids (talk) 16:50, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
thank you for your prompt reply! Now I just wonder why that didn't show up in the first place and I tried to Google it. Thanks again
I used to live in a town with a large farmer's market. The local news investigated and found that almost all of the food for sale was purchased from a wholesaler who distributed food grown in other states and countries. The concept is that a farmer's market supports local farmers. But, over time, this market was overrun by people who did nto have a farm and simply resold food they purchased in bulk without the overhead of running a grocery store. Those who did grow their own food were characterized as lawyers who grew a few tomatos on the porch and sold them at a loss just to get tax writeoffs for having farmland on their property. I am certain that this practice is far more widespread than one city. So, people hear that the farmer's market doesn't actually have any local farmers and there is no incentive to go. It is necessary to advertise that the people are local and the food was grown locally. But, are they honest? Why not purchase vegetables off a plane from Brazil and sell it with a big sign that says "I grew this locally!" (Will anyone actually go through the trouble to sue for false advertisint? Will be be very hard for a lawyer to argue that "grew locally" includes "purchased from a shipment from another country"?) This exact same issue comes up with "farm to table" restaurants. They claim to primarily use ingredients from local farms. Do they? How do you know? What farms? What does "local" include? 75.136.148.8 (talk) 18:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Paul A. Suhler, From Rainbow to Gusto: Stealth and the Design of the Lockheed Blackbird (2009), p. 95:
Using a figure of $10 per hour, one week would cost $16,000. He (Kelly Johnson) added a profit of $500 per week and concluded, “For $225,000 can go full steam for 3 months” (Johnson, C. L., Archangel project design notebook, Lockheed ADP, Burbank, CA, entry for 26 April 1958, pg. 1).
It cost $16,000/week for a 40-man team to operate at full speed in 1958. I think this cost means wages + office costs (housing, utilities, many other things). How much money could an engineer make in the late 1950s? -- Toytoy (talk) 05:49, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The 1960 census report (published in 1962) here shows "craftsmen, operatives, and kind" had a median income of $6,200. It also shows that salaries increased a great deal between 1950 and 1960, even when adjusted for 1960 dollars. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 14:34, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello everybody. At one time, Palestinian security forces used the former fishing trawler Chandalahe for military purposes; Israel damaged it in 2002 and since then it has been abandoned off the coast of Gaza. I wanted to know what his current fate is? Vyacheslav84 (talk) 15:33, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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