Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 April 21

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April 21

journalism?

Hello, I've often written news articles and research news stories. I have always wandered is there such a place in which I can post these articles and if any news papers think its good enough to publish them. I'm a real novice when it comes down to journalism. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks --(Aytakin) | Talk 00:41, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

You might want to look into our sister project Wikinews(link to site). I don't know if it would be a way to get directly into the news business, but you may find people there who can offer you some advice. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've contributed to Wikinews and have some warnings for you. One is, like Wikipedia, your contributions will be ruthlessly edited by others. The other is that, at least when I was there, it had a strong ultra-liberal, anti-authoritarian bias. Thus, you would find articles about "police brutality", which were really about police breaking up an illegal "rave" party, for example. (I'm very strongly against police brutality. myself, but think that representing cops doing their jobs as "brutality" doesn't help the cause.) StuRat 12:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all the info, but I was not looking for wikinews, I'm looking for newspapers. Thanks again. --(Aytakin) | Talk 14:15, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikinews is a newspaper, an online newspaper. As time goes by, I expect a larger and larger percentage of newspapers to be online. StuRat 19:55, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Houston Gunman Kills one, self / Ed Anger Safety Plan

Today on FOX News and other news outlets, a gunman hit the Space Center, took hostages, killed one, killed himself. This is on FOX News, related news outlets. Question: Why is this NOT mentioned ?? The incident had begun at two CST/CDT today, and is still on the news, and people such as Michael Savage has commented on it.

• It is on the news. See Wikipedia's sister project Wikinews. Here is the story [1]. J Are you green? 02:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, I've found a plan by Ed Anger, who is a columnist for the Weekly World News that says that pigs placed at airports and the like will reduce terrorisim, since "you" HAVE to touch the pig OR "you" will either get arrested for terrorisim or just get shot. The pigs will be the ever popular Vietnamese pot bellied pigs or other pigs. Is THAT worthy of a article under th Ed Anger article ?? 205.240.146.156 01:32, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Of course Ed Anger has a metal plate in his head that may have corroded. 205.240.146.156 01:42, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Banknote Identification and Translation from German

File:10 Heller Note.jpg

I believe this banknote to be either Austrian or German. Translations from free services like Google and Babelfish came of garbled. Can this be identified? A translation may help too. J Are you green? 01:46, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

It's a 1920 ten-heller note from the Austrian commune of Viechtwang: that much I can tell. Edited because of course it's "Viechtwang", and here [2] is a copy of the currency online. --Charlene 02:51, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

And to add to this: a heller was one-one hundredth of a krone, which before 1923 was the old Austrian unit of currency. Also, and I keep editing this so bear with me, it's emergency currency. I don't know specifically which emergency - lack of actual currency or hyperinflation or what (both took place in the early 1920s in Austria) - but that's what it apparently was. Searches on eBay suggest that the bill is worth about sixty cents, which is more than it was worth when it was in use. --Charlene 02:54, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Translation

"Community of Viechtwang

According to the G.R.B. (probably Gemeinderatsbeschluss/Community Council Decision) of April 6, 1920, the Community of Viechtwang issues certificates up to the amount of 50,000 Kronen and commits itself to pay out these bills in the form of legal money until March 31, 1921.

The Vice-Mayor, The Mayor, The Vice-Mayor (the other one I guess)

10 Heller

Imitation will be punished!"

Viechtwang lies in the district of Gmunden in Upper Austria (Oberösterreich, hence the Ob.- / Öst. under the emblem. ---Sluzzelin talk 03:09, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... I do not think that Wikipedia has an article specialised enough for this scan. However, thanks for your help in identifying it. It always is interesting to learn what these things are. J Are you green? 19:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

See Austro-Hungarian krone. -- Arwel (talk) 19:00, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

If Wikipedia is a person

If Wikipedia was a person, what would it look like?--69.233.24.199 04:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Note: If this contains trolling, I apologize in advance for unintentional trolling.

Hello, 69.233.24.199, Wikipedia might well be three people actually: you, me, and a gigantic army of sockpuppets operated by someone who looks like this. ---Sluzzelin talk 04:49, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipe-tan for a cute anthropomorphisation of Wikipedia. --Candy-Panda 09:06, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Or this and this --antilived^{T | C | G} 12:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Mentally disturbed. Confused, delusional, confrontational, multiple-personalities, perhaps with Tourette syndrome. --24.147.86.187 14:37, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I strongly concur. It would have its eyes put out, disgusting lesions about its mouth, ears torn to shreds, its tongue cut out. Its only intact sense would be touch -- but its hands would be bound with a flag -- I'll let you guess which one. Vranak

Why the negativity? Multiple personalities, yes, but more along the lines of idiot savant, and polymath, and Renaissance man, I would think. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

All the mutiliation is supposed to represent Wikipedia's systematic biases towards 'reputable' sources, even though 'reputable' is ultimately just a matter of opinion. It represents Wiki's avowed disinterest in truth, and obsession with 'verifiability'. The mouth sores parallel those of the Mouth of Sauron, which got that way from 'speaking so much evil'. Vranak

If love was a train I think I would ride me a long one
Hear me talking -- fifty boxcars long...
— Michelle Shocked

Perhaps [[3]] Howard Hughes in his latter days. All time and efforts devoted to the encyclopedia project, none to personal life. Edison 04:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

A fat guy with Asperger's that likes The Simpsons? Recury 13:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

A fusty old professor who swears by the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica and contributes nothing to human knowledge. This does not stop him publishing endlessly, leeching off other people's research. He will only accept a new idea once all his younger colleagues have already published on the subject and it is already passé. From time to time he gets cautioned for masturbating on public transport, but uses his influence to prevent this being reported in the press. -Multivitamin 13:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

BMW 3 series vs Lexus IS

I was wondering how they compare in handling. My friend has an IS and says it handles very well, but not even close to a BMW. Anyone drive both? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.167.136.84 (talk) 06:30, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

Any time I've bought a car I've found that dealers are more than happy to give test drives. Savvo 11:58, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Also try parker's guide (http://www.parkers.co.uk/). Personally i'd choose the IS because I prefer the way it looks, its interior and generally reliability of Lexi (Alan Partridge phrase) are very good. As Savvo says, though, you can test almost certainly test-drive them yourself, or (failing that) be taken on a test-drive by someone. ny156uk 14:40, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

tecnology management

Explain the concept of a protection strategy for a discontinuous technological breakthrough and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of proprietary and open forms of control? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 155.232.128.10 (talk) 11:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

Please do your own homework. -- mattb 11:35, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, reference work does not include "explaining concepts", or "discussion". We can refer you to resources which will help YOU explain the concept, however -- if you're interested, please phrase your question appropriately, and we can help. Jfarber 14:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Concept: the planning and methods used by both established and new firms to gain (or maintain) competetive advantage in order to maximize the long term profitability of technological investments; where such investments may be affected, enhanced, or superceded by innovations that render prior technologies obsolete.

Discussion: for discussion on forms of control and the relative advantages, (See e.g., Anti-competitive_practices, Barriers to entry, Format war, Path dependence, Category:Market structure and pricing, Category:Competition).

Please also see "How to ask a question" which is listed at the top of all Wikipedia Q&A pages. Thanks. dr.ef.tymac 14:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Review of "sellyourlot.com"

Describe your experience doing business with NRLL, "sellyourlot.com"? Dprice1030 11:43, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

There are websites and forums [4] discussing this issue. I'm not sure that Wikipedia is an appropriate place to seek such opinion. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Everything's gone italic

Can anyone give me a clue why Firefox has been rendering wikipedia in italics for the last few weeks? It's really starting to annoy me -- checked all my font settings, turned on/off all the stylesheets I can find. Before I go to the lengths of removing and reinstalling Firefox, any help? Savvo 11:55, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

You can install the webdeveloper plugin which allows you to disable individual stylesheets and find the culprit or start carpet bombing them. Your choice. --antilived^{T | C | G} 12:03, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I have that plugin, have turned on/off all the stylesheets I can find. Savvo 13:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

You've checked Tools -> Options -> Content -> Fonts & colors -> Advanced -> Fonts -> Allow pages to select other fonts...? Does the problem occur on anything other than Wikipedia? Have you (or has someone else) been playing with User:Savvo/monobook.css.

Sounds to me like your CSS got corrupted in loading somehow, which can have odd effects. I'd try making sure you emptied out all your caches and forced Firefox to reload the page. --24.147.86.187 14:42, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Firefox is designed to be used by multiple users on the same computer. So everything it does just for you -- every preference it saves, every extension it installs, every page it caches, every cookie it stashes -- is saved in your own "profile", not on a machine-wide basis. So if you're up for a bit of dinking around, you can safely nuke everything in your profile, and get an absolutely fresh start, without having to reinstall Firefox from scratch, and without permanently losing all your preferences, bookmarks, customizations, extensions, etc.

I thought there was a way to explicitly switch and manage profiles within Firefox, but I can't seem to find it just now. If you can find it, try creating a new, empty profile, and switch to it, and see if the all-italics problem persists.

What I would do (if I couldn't find an official profile-switching mechanism) is find Firefox's Profiles directory, find my profile in it, temporarily rename it, and restart Firefox, which would, I'm pretty sure, force it to create a new profile. Then, when I was done experimenting, I could either move my old profile back, or selectively move things (i.e. necessities like the Bookmarks file) from the old, broken profile to the new one.

Under Linux, profiles are stored underneath $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/profiles/ or something like that. Under Mac OS X, they're in ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/. I have no idea where they are under Windows. Your profile is a directory, and it has a name like abc5efg.your_username or qrs5xyz.default. (The letters and digits preceding the dot are random, and guard against an obscure security exploit.) —Steve Summit (talk) 17:35, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

NCAA basketball — number of tournament teams

I just made some corrections in the article on the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, in the listing of how many teams participated each year. (I got my information from the NCAA's official web site, which is already listed as a source at the bottom of the article. One of the items I fixed was that from 1953 to 1974, the number of tournament participants varied from 22 to 25 teams. (Actually, there were 25 teams 11 times, 23 teams five times, 24 teams four times, and 22 teams twice.) And the number didn't steadily increase; it went up-and-down like a zig-zag! ... Anyway, my question is: Does anyone know why the number fluctuated like this? ... (I wasn't sure which Reference Desk sports questions should go on — entertainment, humanities or miscellaneous — so I apologize if this is the wrong place.) — Michael J 16:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Until 1975, only one team per conference was allowed in the tournament. The variation in number of teams may have had to do with a variation in the number of conferences. -- Mwalcoff 02:24, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Closing dates on coupons

Is there any limit on the amount of time a coupon can be used if there is no closing date on it? I have acquired a pile of Reader's Digests going back to the 1960s and 1970s-some have coupons for reduced price goods or half-price subscriptions in them.If there is no closing date,then surely they must still be obliged to accept them?I quite fancy my 1-yr subscription for £1 :)

Lemon martini 16:32, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

What a good question. As I understand it, no date essentially means "indefinite", notwithstanding the fact that the supplier may be long gone, but I'd bet that there are a bunch of caveats/catches/provisos in consumer law and/or company policy. As you're in Britain, you could ask Consumer Direct and see what advice it gives. Adrian M. H. 16:53, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I suspect it may be the difference between a contractual offer and an Invitation to treat. I quite fancy them sending you a bunch of 1960s reader's digest publications that have been sitting in the warehouse taking up space :) --Tagishsimon (talk)

And those publications will themselves have more coupons in them, and the cycle will continue until Lemon martini ends up buried under a huge mountain of Reader's Digest magazines, though hopefully not like this case here! :-/ Carcharoth 17:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about that. Don't they usual sell older readers digests for more then newer ones? Nil Einne 23:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's generally the opposite. Since the coupon did not specify a closing date, the manufacturer can easily argue: 1) advertisements are generally not considered an offer; and 2) for this to constitute an offer, it would have to include all material conditions, one of which is most certainly the expiration date. Thus, as Tagishsimon indicated, if you do get anything, it's likely to be the booby prize. [See e.g., Lefkowitz v. Great Minneapolis Surplus Store. 86 N.W.2D 689 (Minn.1957) (USA).]. Read this too. dr.ef.tymac 03:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I suspect that such an argument wouldn't work in NZ. At the very least, the store could be had up for either misleading advertising or breaching the fair trading act (or both). Although probably not for a 1960s coupon Nil Einne 23:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

See Leonard v. Pepsico Inc. for an example of a case in which someone wasn't able to get what was advertised. In the mid-1990s, Pepsi allowed people to collect "Pepsi points" by buying Pepsi. A TV ad showed all of the things you could buy with Pepsi points, concluding with a Harrier military jet at 7 million points. This guy arranged to buy 7 million points worth of Pepsi and demanded his jet. When he didn't get it, he sued. The judge said the advertisement did not constitute a legal offer. -- Mwalcoff 02:29, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Deadliest school disasters

Rather macabre, but in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, I've been wondering what is the deadliest ever incident that took place in a school? It has to be self-contained, so the schools devastated by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs don't count, but New London School explosion and Beslan hostage crisis do count. I think those two are the deadliest I've found so far, though Collinwood School Fire, Our Lady of the Angels School Fire, Aberfan, and Schoolhouse Blizzard are also candidates. Any more? Carcharoth 17:09, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Category:Disasters in schools and its Subcategories might list some more. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Beslan's count dwarves them all with 396 dead in total (and Aberfan wasn't strictly self contained, since only 121 of the that 144 died were in Pantglas Junior School.) Rockpocket 19:23, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

See Bath School disaster. Don't piss off a member of the school board if he has 1) unfettered access to the school basement and 2) lots of dynamite. See also Beslan school hostage crisis which was attacked by outside terrorists. Edison 04:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

One thing you can be sure of: Whatever's the top of the poll today will be superseded tomorrow :-(. We have far too many groups and governments in the world dedicated to advancing the cause of murder.

Atlant 12:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

video game

i remember playing this playstation game. it was about this mad scientist that created a kindof batman creature thing. the goal was to complete these puzzles and courses and avoid being captured by the doctor. everytime you would lose, it would say game over, with a shot of the creature in a small cage. thanx for the help! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.170.44.145 (talk) 18:15, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

was the creature a mouse? if so, the game is probably "dr. brain" or something like it. -Dixie48 19:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

NO!! just kidding, thanx, but thats not the one. It was a little darker than that.

Need help with my contact lenses

I put them in my eyes, but one of them is on the white part of the eyeball, so I can't see through it. I can't shift it and I can't get it out. Help! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.36.212.190 (talk) 18:19, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

When that happens to me, I can usually get the lens to pop out by pushing on the upper or lower eyelid from the outside. Barring that, I occasionally have to pull the lid away from the eye with one hand while probing for the lens with a piece of tissue paper held in the other. Barring that, try asking a nearby real live person for help. Good luck! —Steve Summit (talk) 18:26, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your help ... the rogue lens is now in place.

My contact lens often "go for their morning swim" when I first put them in. They usually find their place after I look around in different directions for a few mins to get them to set properly on the cornea. StuRat 19:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Ancient ruins

hi im looking for a acient ruins like stone hendge , in the outer hebrades (scotland ) that dates back 5000 yrs, nr the small islands of hirta ,st kilda west scotland im after pics , photos and exact wearabouts thank you.

Try Callanish Stones. Carcharoth 21:26, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Or possibly Standing Stones of Stenness. Carcharoth 21:29, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Neither of these, of course, is anywhere near Hirta, which is part of the St Kilda archipelago, which lies some sixty kilometers to the west of the Hebrides. Clio the Muse 23:40, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by near... :-) Anyway, St Kilda, Scotland#Prehistoric buildings is another possibility - with a picture of some sort of ruin included. But then I suppose this doesn't count as it is on St Kilda, rather than near it... Possibly the only thing "near" Hirta is this! Carcharoth 00:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Structures destroyed by wind and sand

what human made structure has been destroyed by wind and sand in the past few centureis? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Armaansd (talk • contribs).

My neighbour's beach shed and the shoreline of any island community after a hurricane! Perhaps you have a different order of magnitude in mind? Bielle 22:54, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Most man-made structures can only be damaged by wind and sand in a few centuries, total destruction takes millennia. StuRat 23:54, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

So you're saying those sand castles that I built are still there?!? :p --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Not only still there, I'm actually squatting in one of them (thanks btw, nice job). dr.ef.tymac 02:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

You should install a toilet. :-) StuRat 03:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Check any of a bazillion tornadoes - they take out structures by the force of wind alone all the time. SteveBaker 04:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

See desertification. Vranak

Rugby World Cup

Will this fall's Rugby World Cup be on TV in the United States? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.117.135.99 (talk) 23:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

Check the listings on ESPN. Also, if the matches you want to see aren't on that network, you can also try watching online. dr.ef.tymac 02:35, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

If you have DirecTV, the World Cup will be on Setanta Sports North America (Channel 615). — Michael J 00:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC)