Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2008 December 15

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December 15

Comma instead of "and"

Why, in headlines, are commas usually used in place of "and"s? For example, why "Person was beaten, stabbed" instead of "Person was beaten and stabbed"? 58.165.14.208 (talk) 00:56, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

It simply takes up less space (and therefore can be in a bigger typeface). It's the same reason why the articles "A" & "The" are almost never used in a headline, unless part of a name. Tastyduck (talk) 01:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep.

Some papers also write headlines with single instead of double quotes (in North America) and omit commas at the end of a line. This last convention can get confusing if the comma is being used to mean "and": you can end up with a headline like "person was beaten stabbed at party" (where there is a line break after the third word). --Anon, 01:56 UTC, December 15, 2008.

Expecting grammar in Headlinese? Read all about it. Julia Rossi (talk) 06:13, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

The "beaten, stabbed" convention seems to be peculiar to North American newspapers. I've never seen it used in British papers. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 08:21, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

The one thing I often find myself noticing in British newspaper headlines is use of the word "tot" (ie a small child or baby). It's a fairly archaic word that I rarely hear in conversation, but see all the time in tabloid headlines as it's the shortest word available to mean "child". ~ mazca ^t|c 09:58, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Another distinctive feature of British headlinese is the heavy use of adjectival constructs; sometimes a whole headline is made of adjectival constructs and one noun. Here's one from the BBC site: "Mother's Hostage Freedom Relief". Here in North America our headlines may be verbless sometimes, but when they are, they usually have a preposition or an implicit "is"; we don't load so much into adjectives. --Anonymous, 04:51, December 16, 2008.

Infact a lot of modern punctuation and abbreviations came about as a result of the printing-press didn't they? As I understand it things such as don't, won't, can't, shouldn't etc. came about from a desire of early papers to save space/costs. Additionally constantly using the word 'and' makes your writing sound like it was written by a seven year old child. Example..."We went to the beach and had ice-cream and then we played in the sea and then and then we built sandcastles and then we went home". With a few commas you could drop that down to "We went to the beach, had ice-cream, played in the sea, built sandcastles and went home". 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:10, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Or, as a headline writer would put it: "194's holiday: beach, ice-cream, swimming, sandcastles then home". On the issue of "tot", there is an article in Fowler's usage book on headlinese (the article is not very informative), pointing to a number of these short words that are beloved of headline writers because they save space but are not used anywhere else. His advice is to avoid them if possible. --Xuxl (talk) 16:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Fowler fading, pals claim. --- OtherDave (talk) 22:01, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

No, 194, most abbreviations don't go back to the printing press. No doubt some abbreviations are attributable to printing, but many more must go back to manuscript tradition (which included everyday letter-writing, record-keeping etc until typewriters became common). Contractions like "'can't" certainly have their origin in spoken, not written English. --ColinFine (talk) 23:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, we cannot blame newspapers and mobiles for a proliferation of abbreviations. Thos. Bros. & Wm. Wms. operated bakeries and grocery vans back in the good old days, and men signed letters as Yr. Obt. Svt. Gwinva (talk) 01:47, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

A printing press would have saved stonecutters lots of time -- e.g., "M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT." --- OtherDave (talk) 01:44, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I came here to declare 194's: Family buried in fun! but still laughing at cutter's terse (s)tone. Julia Rossi (talk) 07:29, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you would like to join my Eschew the Zero Copula campaign? (I don't actually mind it in headlines, but certain radio newsreaders have a habit of speaking this way all the time, and it drives me crazy. They tend to insert a pause where the "is" should be, so it doesn't even save time: "The suspect... still at large.") -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:21, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Well spotted CS. In the case of newsreaders, they are speaking headlinese so that the pause becomes a rhetorical device to artificially deliver a sense of urgency and authority preventing viewers from thinking: "the suspect is, is he? now why is that?" Instead they are impressed with "Suspect? Still at large! Aaah. Must keep watching..." Julia Rossi (talk) 22:45, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Which golf tournament is this?

I remember, when I was in kindergarten, watching a video with a series of childrens' shows. A golf tournament was taped at the end of the video for some reason. Ernie Els and Patrick Burke were in this tournament, and they were head-to-head (the taping showed them playing the last hole). Which tournament was this? What course were they playing at? 58.165.14.208 (talk) 02:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

When were you younger? Adam Bishop (talk) 08:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Patrick Burke doesn't seem to have had much of a career... could it have been the 1996 PGA Championship? Neither of them did particularly well, but here are the results. --Fullobeans (talk) 09:11, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Multiple Counts for One Crime

When someone gets arrested, I often hear that they were charged with mutiple counts of the crime. For example, someone beats someone up and they are charged with 3 counts of assault. How can that be if they just committed one crime? Where do the other two "counts" come from? Tex (talk) 03:04, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I've often wondered this myself. Does every punch count as a separate assault ? They often seem to have an absurd number of counts for what was essentially a single crime. StuRat (talk) 03:16, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Typically, when someone is charged with multiple counts of a crime such an assault, they are talking about different instances of the crime. For example, if person A were to show up at person B's house today and punched them, and then did the same thing tomorrow, that'd be two assaults. Even if they were to just go away to another room and come back ten minutes later and punch them again, that could well count as two assaults, depending on the circumstances. Other variations of the theme can include a situation where person B has a friend over and person A punches both of them, for example -- that'd be two assaults, even if it all takes place during the course of a single fight. A classic situation might be a bar fight, in which a person first attacks someone, gets pulled off the target and then charges back in to start all over again a little while later. Or the cops might arrest someone for domestic violence, and then be informed by the victim that this is not the first time this has happened. (Also, just because a news item says that there was a fight and the cops arrested someone for multiple counts of the crime, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting all of the information about the circumstances in which these counts took place -- that one event may have triggered the arrest, but the charges may be based on other things as well.) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 04:24, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Some jurisdictions have what we might call "cascaded" breaches, where for every breach, there are various lower-level breaches that might apply in certain circumstances. For example, if the most serious charge is "dangerous driving", there might also be a different charge of "driving without due care and attention" and and another one of "reckless driving". If you qualify for the most serious charge, you automatically qualify for the lower-level ones too. They might charge a person with all of them, and then, when they've got enough evidence for a case, they'll decide which is the highest-level one that's likely to stick, and drop the other ones. But technically, they could proceed with all the charges, because a single act can simultaneously offend against more than one law. Another example is if you murder someone, you're liable to be charged with murder. But because the act was successful, then ipso facto there must have been an attempt, so a person could technically be charged with attempted murder as well as murder. In an extreme case, a really hostile court could abide by the strict letter of the law, convict a person of both charges, and require the sentences to be served consecutively rather than concurrently. That's probably not a very realistic example, and the court might itself be offending against the spirit of the law, but I could see how it might apply in some places. -- JackofOz (talk) 05:18, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

In the States these are called lesser included offenses (though this may vary from state to state, like most aspects of criminal law). I think that you can't be sentenced for both an offense and a lesser included offense. This fact can make the determination of what counts as a lesser included offense incredibly important. The sharpest example is that most if not all states use the felony murder rule and in some states it's a circumstance that makes you eligible for the death penalty. The rule says that a killing in the course of an "inherently dangerous felony", whatever that means exactly, doesn't have to be intentional to be murder. But the felony can't be, for example, manslaughter of the person who wound up dead! because that would be a lesser included offense.

I'm not a lawyer so no warranties on any of this. If you kill someone and wind up on death row, don't come suing me. --Trovatore (talk) 05:39, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

In many jurisdictions, the merger doctrine holds that generally one cannot be convicted of both a more serious offense and a lesser included offense. (That is, if you slit someone's throat, you cannot be convicted of both murder and assault for the same crime.) A few jurisdictions explicitly repudiate the merger doctrine, and do allow an individual to be convicted of the lesser included offenses along with the more serious one.

There is also abundant case law dealing with the questions surrounding how one determines if two events are part of the same offense. For example, if I were to break into someone's home and shoot the occupant twice (killing him), it would still be one offense — you couldn't charge me with aggravated assualt for the first shot, and murder for the second bullet. On the other hand, if I shoot the occupant once during the robbery and then come to the hospital and shoot him again the next day then that's probably two offenses. Somewhere between those two extremes, a lot of lawyers get to be very well paid indeed. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:38, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

In the U.S, you can sometimes get charged for the same criminal action in different jurisdictions. For instance, indicted for murder by the state and for depriving someone of their civil liberties by killing them as a federal charge. I seem to hear about this dodge of double jeopardy mostly in reference to civil rights cases where the local judge and jury made a controversial decision to acquit someone and the federal charges were filed later. Rmhermen (talk) 14:50, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, all. After doing some searching around, I found some very strange things. Apparently say, someone is arrested for having a baggie full of narcotics... If they have 150 pills in the bag, they can be charged with 150 counts of possession of a controlled substance. That's just crazyness. Tex (talk) 15:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Worth noting is that being charged and being convicted are very different things. I suspect that in the 150 counts for 150 pills case, a sensible judge would have said some very nasty things to the prosecutor had the case gone to trial. (But you never know.) It might also have been a gambit to intimidate a defendant into accepting a plea agreement. Heck, it might even have been a charitable act — based on the total quantity of controlled substance, the charge might have had to have been 'possession with intent to distribute' instead of simple possession. By dividing the quantity up that way, the result could have been 150 minor suspended-sentence misdemeanor charges rather than 1 big mandatory-prison-sentence felony. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:15, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

As a concrete example, under Michigan's "650-lifer law", if you were convicted of possession of 650 grams of cocaine, the punishment is a mandatory life sentence without possibility of parole. If the drug is divided up into single-dose packets, the prosecutor could charge you with a great many charges of posssession of far less, giving the judge discretion in sentencing. --Carnildo (talk) 01:40, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm reminded of the time when my Father got stopped for speeding and the cop gave him two tickets...it turned out that the cop had followed him for a mile or more and my father had slowed down below the speed limit as he went through a small village. As he complained to the cop: "So you're telling me that I'd have been better off not slowing down for the village then?" SteveBaker (talk) 03:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Dog breed question

I had a question about a dog breed. I know there are a lot of bull terrier breeds; and that when they were created the English Bulldog was the bull part of the mix (although the modern descendent is a lot different)- I was wondering which of the many terriers breeds is the descendent (even if the modern breed is a lot different) of the terrier part of the mix? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.165.254.155 (talk) 07:16, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Given the scope of terriers (Tibetan, Japanese, Australian, etc) you might be better off looking at not a breed, but a landrace dog, or dog "type". Julia Rossi (talk) 08:34, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

If we're to believe the American Staffordshire Terrier article, likely culprits are the English White Terrier and the prototype of the Manchester Terrier, although I'm sure every scrappy terrier breed in the British Isles donated at least a little DNA to the cause at some point. --Fullobeans (talk) 09:01, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Old Magazines

I have a box full of old MAD Magazines from 1962 to 1971, does anyone know where I can find out if they are anything worth? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joneleth (talk • contribs) 07:55, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

You could try looking for the same or similar magazines on eBay and see what they are fetching these days. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 08:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

There are comic and magazine guides that have likely values in them (in the end, something is worth only as much as someone will pay for it). Go to your local comics shop and ask them if they can show you the guides for your magazines. (If the guy working there eyeballs them, makes a disgusted look, and offers to take them off you for only a penny, since that's about all their worth—that's a good sign they're worth something much more!) Value will depend on their quality, among other things. You could also go on eBay as suggested and see what they fetch on there, though that isn't always a good indication. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 13:27, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Judging by eBay, 1962 MAD magazines are reasonably common...the 'Buy it now' prices are around $15 - the 1971 magazines are being offered for around $4. But those are "Buy it now" prices - that's the asking price - it's no indication of how much they are actually selling for - and perhaps none of them are selling at all. A couple of the not-buy-it-now auctions for '62 magazines have zero bids with prices under $10...so I don't think they are really selling. Worse still, this offer of 28 magazines (some older than yours) have been on eBay for several days and not one person had bid on them (that's with an initial bid of $10 and a very reasonable $6 for shipping). Make your own conclusions.

I'm guessing that a serious collector would pay $15 for one or two especially rare ones if they are in great condition. Your best bet (assuming they are in great condition) is probably to put them on eBay individually at under $10 each and not overcharge for shipping. You might sell one or two of them that way. Personally - I'd say they aren't worth much.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:16, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Given that Mad Magazine was a widely published and read magazine, it is likely that such items, while collectable, are not all that rare. As with any market economics, though there may be a high demand (lots of potential collectors) the supply is also probably large enough to satisfy them (everyone that wants those magazines already has them). That keeps the price low... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

eighteenth century ferries

How do I find Wilson's Ferry on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania or New York in eighteenth century?Nad straws (talk) 15:15, 15 December 2008 (UTC) I have searched many sites!

Simple—just ask Mr. Peabody if you can borrow the WABAC machine. But seriously, I was unable to find it on this historical map of Pennsylvania from 1895. Take a look along the Susquehanna River; maybe I just missed it. It may well be that Wilson's Ferry wasn't there any more by 1895, though how they got across the river there in that case is anybody's guess. I stuck to Pennsylvania because the one Google hit I got on <"wilson's ferry" susquehanna> suggested it was there, and the Susquehanna can probably be easily bridged or crossed by ford up in New York, I'm guessing.

The first step was the aforementioned Google search. The next step was the USGS searchable list of geographic names. No dice there, so it almost certainly is not presently the name of a town. I next went to the monster collection of maps in Texas, where I found the link I sent you to above. You should look around in there for a good map of Pennsylvania from the period you're interested in. Me, I'm losing hope of being able to do this without getting out of sight of my refrigerator, so the next thing I would try is the Historical Society of Pennsylvania at this link. If you give them money, they will probably be able to find it for you, or you could drop in yourself and rummage (gently).

Any clues would be helpful, any additional information at all that you have, and I'll poke some more. --Milkbreath (talk) 17:49, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Dead Grizzly bear or something near Creswell

Last night (December 14), between 6 and 7 PM, I saw a car accident on northbound Interstate 5 between Saginaw and Creswell. The weird part is, one apparent victim of the accident looked to be a GRIZZLY BEAR. THE THING'S CORPSE WAS BLOCKING THE WHOLE LEFT LANE. There's got to be a news site that tells me WHAT exactly I saw there, be it a Grizzly bear or something else. 71.220.217.84 (talk) 17:08, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Not necessarily, unless it is particularly notable that a grizzly bear was hit (around here, even though I have never personally seen a moose, I would not expect it to make the news if someone hit one). Try your local police website, they often post police reports there. Adam Bishop (talk) 17:32, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

You might want to list your state and nation, next time. I believe it's Creswell, Oregon, USA. This is within the Grizzly Bear's historic range, although they are currently pushed up more toward the Canadian border: [1]. Still, that's close enough that you might run into one occasionally in Oregon. StuRat (talk) 21:57, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

More likely, it was a common Black Bear. Unless you get a good view, it's hard to tell the two apart. --Carnildo (talk) 01:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, I checked the Sheriff's log and it was just a cow. 71.220.220.198 (talk) 04:11, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Secret broadcast

Is it possible, or, how can I, play a song on someone else's listening device? Here's what I want to do: You're on the bus/train and anyone else that is on the train with you in a 5 meter radius, that is listening to an ipod/cd player/mp3 player ect, rather than hearing their favorite Amy Winehouse song. It is cut in half and all of a sudden they hear what I am listening to, usually Slayer. I can just continue to read the paper and watch their reaction. This could be interesting no matter what your taste in music. So, how can this be achieved? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.3.145.61 (talk) 19:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

It could be achieved if the music listening device had a radio receiver of some sort, and if the person using it was listening to the radio. Seeing as most modern devices of this sort aren't built with radio receivers anymore (like IPODs) then you are likely not going to be able to do this. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 20:02, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Not easily. You could try a really powerful AM signal, and maybe you could get their headphone wires to pick it up enough to be audible.

However, this would A) Probably be illegal and B) Not get you the flawless results you're imagining. C) Be very likely to damage nearby electronics, and D) Probably, require more power than you could comfortably carry around on the train, anyway.

I gotta tell you that if my mp3 player was burned out so that barely-audible heavy metal could be transmitted to my earbuds, I would not be happy. If I looked around and saw someone lugging a giant battery, strange electronics, and a large antenna, he would have a serious problem. APL (talk) 20:10, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Using a Zune, you can wirelessly transfer songs to another zune - but I don't think that's what you're looking for... flaminglawyer^cneverforget 20:25, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, the Zune transfer process doesn't work in any way like a hijacking. You cannot forcibly inject your content onto someone else's Zune. — Lomn 20:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Why stop there? Why not tear their newspaper up? Or cut their clothes in half? --ColinFine (talk) 23:27, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

There is a difference between criminal damage and causing a nuisance. I wouldn't recommend either, but the former is clearly worse. --Tango (talk) 23:29, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I suppose a powerful AM signal at a wavelength that closely matched the length of the headphone wire might be enough to induce sound - but it wouldn't replace the music - it would only add to it. But in practical terms, this would be really hard to pull off. You don't know the exact length of the headphone wires - and if it's coiled up in their lap, the effective length is different. So you'd need to tune the thing up and down the frequency band and hope to pick up the right wavelength. But at such very short range you might not need an outrageous amount of power. Well, it would take some significant research to figure out how to do it - but I don't think it's impossible. SteveBaker (talk) 02:50, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I've actually pulled this particular trick on my dad a few times - he likes to listen to the radio on headphones while mowing the lawn, and by simple use of one of those cheap FM transmitters on an iPod I've given him a fair variety of auditory surprises. In these days of everyone listening to their own music though, it's much harder as people say. ~ mazca ^t|c 09:01, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Emily C Orr-pseudonym?

I have a book titled "Thoughts For Working Days", published in 1894 in London, by Emily C Orr, but I cannot find any information on the author. Does anyone know how to find info outside of Wiki, Google, etc...I am as lost in space as the authors' name is. Thank You!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Baclarke (talk • contribs) 22:31, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Amazon [2] offer the book published in 1904 by SPCK. Maybe you could contact them (SPCK) and see what they have in their archives? -- SGBailey (talk) 22:58, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Pine Valley Golf Question

Woody Platt once played the first four holes at Pine Valley in 6 under par. Is this a record for the first four holes on any course - or for that matter, any four consecutive holes on a course? Has anyone ever tied it? 58.165.14.208 (talk) 23:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)