Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 December 24

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December 24

Baggage Tracing service

What baggage tracing system does Southwest airlines use to trace and return lost baggage. It is odd that southwest does not have a page where you can track your baggage.--logger (talk) 01:45, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

No airline would ever do this. Your baggage is supposed to be on the same flight as you. Any tracking system would be tantamount to admitting that it could go missing.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:17, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Lyrics websites

There are hundreds of song lyrics databases online, but they all seem to be clones/mirrors of each other, sharing identically flawed transcriptions of many songs. Is there a better lyrics website--i.e. one without a lot of annoying popups and garish ads, or one that actively fixes mistakes in lyrics? Or are they all the same?--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 02:24, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Lyrics sites are generally considered copyright violations. There was a big one that was shut down a while back, I think: which probably explains why people aren't investing a lot of money now in making a good one, as it would be at high risk of being shut down at any time.--Pharos (talk) 02:51, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

This one [1]doesn't seem to have pop ups but that may just be my pop up blocker. Cryo921 (talk) 03:26, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Yahoo! is trying to do it the legal way, but they don't have as many entries as most of the others. Recury (talk) 12:50, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I usually use sing365. I don't get any popups, but that could just be from Firefox blocking them. Matt Deres (talk) 16:45, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I tend to use www.songmeanings.net as it has the added bonus of people's interpretation of the meaning of the song. news wise try (http://www.betanews.com/article/Yahoo_Launches_First_Legal_Lyrics_Site/1177449549) and (http://www.thebusiness.co.uk/the-magazine/columns/33914/going-for-a-song-ndash-lyrics-offer-music-industry-online-lifeline.thtml) ny156uk (talk) 16:59, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Since you're a Wikipedia user, you'd probably appreciate Lyriki or LyricWiki. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme (talk) 17:28, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

free convertibility of indian rupee

what is free convertibility of indian rupee?

Try this? Lanfear's Bane | t 13:39, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

See Indian_rupee#Convertibility and the explanation of Capital account convertibility at http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/03/22/stories/2006032201860600.htm William Avery (talk) 17:23, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

HD coaxial?

I've heard that a Coaxial cable can send HD 1080i signals. So i set up my TV with this in mind. However, now I've heard that coaxial CAN'T send HD signals. Which is true? --67.84.12.248 (talk) 19:40, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Coaxial can transmit HD signals, it can actually carry many HD signals at the same time. HD signal from cable companies are send via Coaxial but HDTV cannot accept HD signals in coaxial cables. In the old "tune to channel 3" days, it involved encoding the output signal from (a VCR) and transmit this over coaxial then the TV tuned to channel 3 would decode this. But this practice stopped long ago since it involves extra equipment and cost and the encoding/decoding actually degraded the signal. NYCDA (talk) 20:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I forgot to mention the new DRM law requires HD content to be encrypted so the only way to get 1080 signals is to use DVI/HDMI connections on consumer electronics. Coaxial is out of the question. NYCDA (talk) 18:21, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Yellow and black road signs in the UK

For as long as I can remember, I've been seeing mysterious yellow and black signs on British roads. The main one seems to be a diamond shape, sometimes with an arrow pointing towards a side road. There are never any numbers or letters on the signs. I am assuming they have some kind of military use. Can anyone enlighten me? --Richardrj ^{talk email} 22:36, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

They are emergency diversion signs. The idea is that they are pre-laid out to provide a diversion in the event of a motorway problem or something. All they have to do in order to divert traffic is to put up a sign saying "Diversion: Follow the black diamonds" - and they don't have to rush around putting up dozens of signs. You may also see black triangles, squares, circles, hollow squares, hollow circles, etc. When people are not being diverted, the sign doesn't convey any special information and they may be ignored. SteveBaker (talk) 23:01, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

According to the Highways Agency website, such routes are called "Off Network Tactical Diversion Routes". Apparently there is a project underway to increase (from 25% to 85%) the proportion of the motorway and trunk road network for which such routes are designated and signposted. (Sorry, that sentence was hideously constructed!) Here's the page about them, and here's an example of a "route card" given to traffic control officers to help them put a diversion in place. I'm sure I've got, or have seen, a full list of the symbols somewhere — I think Steve has identified most of them... Hassocks5489 (talk) 23:23, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Yay — found it! It's the Know Your Traffic Signs publication from the Department for Transport. I've got a booklet version of this as well. Page 107 of the pdf shows all eight of them, and examples of how they can be used. In case the pdf takes too long to download, the variations are black square, hollow square, black circle, hollow circle, black triangle, hollow triangle, black diamond and hollow diamond. Road signs in the United Kingdom could benefit from a section on these; I'll see if I get time... Hassocks5489 (talk) 23:42, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

A similar system of prearranged detours exists in Germany. As I recall, each route is identified by the letter U (for Umleitung) and a number, like "U16 –>", and you see these signs at Autobahn exits. --Anonymous, 01:10 UTC, December 25, 2007.

Population vs land mass

I wish to know where 1/3 of the worlds land also has a 1/3 of the worlds population. How can I determine the answer?

CincyJoe —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.72.224.67 (talk) 22:46, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

If you look at List of countries by population, you can calculate that India and China, together, account for just over a third of the worlds population (~36.75%). However, these two countries, together, do not account for 1/3 of the landmass (they actually account for just under 9%). Now compare their proportion on the figure to the right to other geographical features (such as continents), there are no obvious geographical distinctions that corrolate with 1/3 of the population. Perhaps the closest would be the combined populations of Europe, Africa and USA (710,000,000 (Europe), 303,054,000 (USA), 900,000,000 (Africa) out of 6,671,226,000 (total) = 28.6%), and those, together, roughly corrolate with 1/3 of the landmass (10,180,000 km² (Europe), 9,826,630 km² (USA) 30,221,532 km²(Africa) out of 148,939,063.133 km² (total) = 33.7%) Rockpocket 00:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, after playing around with some numbers from List of countries by population density, I have found a combination that comes really close: 33.3288% of the population, & 33.1313% of the land. It's an odd list in no particular order click "show" to see.

82 Country Combination

Guinea-Bissau Palau Panama Nicaragua Tanzania Colombia Yemen South Africa Guinea Eritrea Latvia Cameroon Djibouti Zimbabwe Madagascar United States Estonia Liberia Venezuela Kyrgyzstan Laos The Bahamas Qatar Morocco Ethiopia Bulgaria Iraq Samoa Brunei Honduras Georgia Jordan East Timor Tunisia Swaziland Uzbekistan Senegal Lesotho Republic of Ireland Kenya Côte d'Ivoire United Arab Emirates Lithuania Ecuador Burkina Faso Belarus Fiji Bhutan Afghanistan Tajikistan Montenegro Chile Sweden Uruguay Equatorial Guinea Vanuatu Solomon Islands Finland Zambia Paraguay New Zealand Somalia Angola Papua New Guinea Belize Norway Republic of the Congo Niger Mali Turkmenistan Bolivia Oman Chad Central African Republic Gabon Guyana Iceland Suriname Namibia India Australia Mauritania

--Ybbor^Talk 02:29, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

That is awesome, however the land must be contiguous....... Are you up for the challenge? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.72.224.67 (talk) 02:47, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

No, not really :p. What is this for? Is this a homework question? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ybbor (talk • contribs) 02:51, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Ha! Quality work there, Ybbor. I appreciate the effort, even if our OP neglected to inform us of a rather crucial caveat which makes it rather academic. Rockpocket 02:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

If you want to work this out - you shouldn't be looking at overpopulated areas like India and China - if 1/3rd of the land houses 1/3rd of the people, you need places with very average populations. SteveBaker (talk) 04:22, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree. Asia is close to 1/3 of the world's landmass and Asia minus The People's Republic and Indonesia is close to 1/3 of the population (The sparsely populated Russia balances out India and Bangladesh). If you were to add a few select Eastern European or Middle Eastern countries, you might get contiguous 1/3s including overpopulated areas. Alternatively, PRC, Russia and most of Europe would probably get you close. Rockpocket 06:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Note: the original formulation of this problem, requirement that the combined land mass be contiguous, is a simple 0-1 linear programming problem. With the continguity constraint added, since I can't easily reduce this to a classical problem, and exhaustive search is impractical, my next thought would be to throw it at a genetic algorithm solver, which should have a good chance of getting a good solution in reasonable time. This sounds like a good problem for a math or computer science class. -- The Anome (talk) 15:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Thinks again: this could also possibly be phrased as a variational problem, and solved in the continuous domain... I wonder if there's some trivial construction I'm missing here. -- The Anome (talk) 15:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Thinks again: 0-1 quadratic programming? Have the area and population constraints encoded as linear constraints, and then try to maximize shared edges (obtained by multiplying set membership for country on each edge, possibly weighted by edge length) in an attempt to encourage continguity, and hope that the optimal solution is contiguous... -- The Anome (talk) 15:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Thinks again: this sounds like a job for Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Mathematics. -- The Anome (talk) 15:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

OK - here are the relevent facts from our article Continent:

Continent	Area (km²)	Approx. population 2002	Percent of total population	Density People per square kilometre
Afro-Eurasia	84,360,000	5,400,000,000	86%	64.0
Eurasia	53,990,000	4,510,000,000	72%	83.5
Asia	43,810,000	3,800,000,000	60%	86.7
America	42,330,000	886,000,000	14%	20.9
Africa	30,370,000	890,000,000	14%	29.3
North America	24,490,000	515,000,000	8%	21.0
South America	17,840,000	371,000,000	6%	20.8
Antarctica	13,720,000	1,000	0.00002%	0.00007
Europe	10,180,000	710,000,000	11%	69.7
Oceania	9,010,000	33,552,994	0.6%	3.7
Australia-New Guinea	8,500,000	30,000,000	0.5%	3.5
Australia mainland	7,600,000	21,000,000	0.3%	2.8

The total land area of all continents is 148,647,000 km², or approximately 29.1% of earth's surface.

So, on the grounds of contiguity, we may eliminate all of the earth except afro-eurasia because all of the other continents are less than a third of the total land area. Since afro-eurasia contains over 80% of the world population and more than 50% of the land area we must find our solution by carving out a chunk of the super-continent containing an appropriate number of people. Since the OP does not require that we find whole countries that add up to meet the criterion, I'm at liberty to cut afro-eurasia up into any arbitary shape that contains 1/3rd of the landmass and 1/3rd of the population of the earth. That means that there must be at least one correct solution to this question. However, since the shape can be entirely arbitary, I may choose to take (for example) all of China, then a tiny thin strip of land less than a meter wide that reaches over to Europe and takes in (say) Germany and Spain...or whatever it takes to make the answer come out right. But there are an infinite number of crazy shapes that could contain 1/3rd of the people and 1/3rd of the land area.

Conclusion: There are an infinite number of possible answers to this question - all of which lie within the afro-eurasian super-continent. QED. SteveBaker (talk) 16:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we could ask for one with minimal perimeter size and no internal voids, just to keep the challenge interesting? -- The Anome (talk) 16:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

If you define "interesting" as "no answers to your question whatever" - then yes! In truth, there is insufficient data to do this. SteveBaker (talk) 00:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Why is it that.....................

..........some preachers and religious people believe that:

• the handicapped are hellbound ?
• those who are of a different religion are also hellbound ?

Wikipedia is not censored, and I'm being polite. I've heard some of these preachers, other religious personnel myself, but they would not say why they believe that people of different religions and the handicapped are goiung to hell. 65.163.112.128 (talk) 23:09, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

As for the question about the handicapped, the preachers merely have read their Bible well. Leviticus 21:16-23: "-- For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, --" ›mysid (☎∆) 00:12, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Leviticus 21:16–23 does not say that handicapped people are "hellbound". The only thing these people are prohibited from doing is performing the duty of the high priest by making a sacrifice to God. They are even allowed to eat the holy food reserved for priests! (21:22) I don't believe the Bible is the word of God either, but the worst thing you can do is make a straw man out of it by misinterpreting it. The Bible does not say that disabled people are damned. —Keenan Pepper 03:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Some people believe extremely mentally handicapped people are hellbound because they are incapable of "accepting Christ" into their lives (like babies and animals) and, in their opinion, if you don't accept Jesus then you ain't going to heaven. They see justification for this in Scripture. See here for more info about this theological question.

Similarly, in the opinion of some, if you do not believe in the same God as them, or follow His teaching in the same way they do, then you are going to hell. This type of Fundamentalist Christianity (though its not limited to Christianity) is characterised by a form of religious intolerance: that there is only one way of being "saved" and that happens to be the way that they tell you. Believing in a different God (or even the same God, but choosing to worship him in a different way) is no different to not believing in any God, in their opinion. According to a BBC report today, there are signs these "fire and brimstone" ministries may be "dying out" in the US Midwest, signs of a "softening of evangelical America". [2] Rockpocket 00:09, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

it did make a good south park episode: Do the Handicapped Go to Hell? Furmanj (talk) 00:16, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Probably --Candy-Panda (talk) 11:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Can't beat a loving god...

Ex.4:11

Who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?

Lev.21:17-23

Whosoever ... hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken; No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God. ... Only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries.

If you are blind you get it pretty rough too. "And David said on that day, Whosoever ... smiteth ... the blind that are hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house." -- 2 Samuel 5:8. Lanfear's Bane | t 14:08, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

As stated above, all Leviticus (and 2 Samuel) mention is that the blind and lame, etc., cannot offer sacrifices in the Temple. That's not the same as saying there's something wrong with them. After all, the patriarch Isaac was blind. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 18:21, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the fundamental problem here is that people when they see someone saying something extreme under the banner of a religion, then they assume that all people in that religion think exactly the same way. Its like assuming that all Muslims are terrorists... its faulty thinking. I would say that those who think that handicapped people automatically go to hell are in the extreme minority in the faith. Really, I mean its not up to these people anyways who gets into heaven or not, and really it is not their job to judge who will and who won't. As for the belief that handicaps and babies automatically go to hell because they cannot accept Jesus, that is plain and simple completely bogus. Croat Canuck Say hello or just talk 05:43, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Whilst you are certainly correct in saying that only a vanishingly small proportion of Christians would claim that disabled people automatically go to hell - there is also a large percentage who claim to believe the Bible is literally true. Sadly, this conclusively proves that only a vanishingly small proportion of that large percentage have ever actually bothered to read the book that they claim to base their entire belief system upon. This explains a lot. SteveBaker (talk) 16:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Ha! Very good point SteveBaker. But really its the same for humanity in general, there are lot of "passengers" who latch onto any kind of belief just so they can state they are of that faith... whether it be atheists, christians, buddhists or whatever.... every belief has those that know nothing about what they believe. Croat Canuck Say hello or just talk 18:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)