Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2010 August 3

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August 3

Any real counterpart for my dream sword?

I dreamed about an elegant unsheated sword last night. It looks European in origin, straight, double-edged and is about 5'5" in height (don't ask me how I learned its height, I just knew that info in that dream!). The crossguard is a straight bar and seems to be golden or bronze. The grip was made of a dark material, probably bound strips of leather. The blade itself looks like steel. The blade was beautiful but I told myself it is a pity that I can't wield it because it is bigger than me. (do historical warriors use swords bigger than themselves?)

Any idea what is the closest real counterpart of my dream weapon? Probably with almost the same details as mine.

I won't be asking about what the dream means (I think that's beyond the ref desk's duties anyways) but I won't mind if you want to play Oneiromancer:).--Lenticel ^(talk) 02:58, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It sounds a bit unwieldy, in that if it had the mass per unit length of a typical sword, it would be hard to swing it fast enough to sword fight effectively, although if your opponent were considerate enough to stand still, it should be easy to inflict ghastly wounds. Edison (talk) 03:02, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Re the length, see Zweihänder. At over 6', it is longer than many people are tall. Dismas|^(talk) 03:20, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Could also be another type of Greatsword. --Jayron32 03:48, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

you didn't grab it and go charging into any mossy caves, did you? --Ludwigs2 04:02, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

BTW, I can't see any of these rediculously long swords and NOT think of the video for Holy Diver. --Jayron32 04:05, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Claymores are big, but they're not THAT big. Remember that the bigger the sword, the more heavier they are going to be, greatly attributing to the difficulty of handling it. If it not a Zweihänder, I don't know what it could be, because that thing was the longest (and heaviest) piece of steel that I've ever seen. It is most likely that the sword is, as stated in your question, just an imaginary manifestation in a dream. Anyone would like to tell me what was the largest sword ever made? 64.75.158.194 (talk) 11:33, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Re: "what was the largest sword ever made?" Probably impossible to say, but the Japanese had 'large' swords designed to be wielded by two samurai that were intended to remove the legs from horses. See Zanbatō. On a trip to Japan I saw such a swordblade. It was at least 5-6 feet long, as far as I can recall. The Zanbatō article mentions that very long swords "were solely used for ceremonial purposes". See also Ōdachi and some pictures [here] --220.101 (talk)^\Contribs 12:38, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Our article Two-handed sword offers several other possibilities. Dreams don't have meanings - they are most likely just the brain's way of reorganizing memory into a more compact and accessible representation. While that re-org is going on, things don't make a lot of sense for a while. Hence, we shut down and sleep while this chaos is going on. Normally, we don't remember the process - but if you happen to wake up while the dream is in progress, you'll have a disorganised mess in your short-term memory...and it won't make sense because it's not a real memory but a hotchpotch of stuff that happened to be being rearranged at the moment you awoke.

You might find the WikiCommons 'Category Swords' useful for finding a similar-looking thing.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:38, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Dreams do or at least can have meaning, but it's a meaning pretty much knowable only by the dreamer. There are certainly recurring themes in dreams, for example as expressed in the scene in Bull Durham where Nuke Laloosh dreams he's playing baseball wearing nothing but a jockstrap. Crash Davis tells him he has that same dream all the time. That's a classic "anxiety dream". But it's unwise to try to read too much into dreams. Dreams are basically just your head messing with you. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:49, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I think both Steve and Bugs are perhaps speculating a bit far as to the "meaning" of dreams. We don't really have a very firm idea of why people dream (or even why they sleep). There are some plausible-sounding theories, to be sure, but none of them are very strong empirically, so far as I understand. To argue for their total lack of signifying internal states seems to me a bit rash (especially since there are some dreams which seem common across cultures), though to put as much stake in their revelatory power as, say, Freud did, seems certainly too far as well. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:58, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

"Dreams are basically just your head messing with you" Ah, good to know we have a professional presence Richard Avery (talk) 18:54, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Freud was a professional. How well did he do with the subject? (See 98's note for further commentary.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe "meaning" is overstating it. If someone is in tune with their own head and what's going on, the dreams could "make sense". But that doesn't mean that dreams have any highly mystical significance, such as predicting the future or other such malarkey. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Please stop. This is a Reference Desk, and we supply references, not offhand, poorly thought out opinions. Dream interpretation is the relevant article, if anyone must know. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:05, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

An editor said that dreams are meaningless, and he was wrong. So either go talk to him or keep your trap shut. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll do so as soon as you stop guessing, and start providing references in your answers, as we are all supposed to here on the Reference Desk. Deal? Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:26, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

<reset> Uh guys, I think you took my Oneiromancy joke too seriously... Anyways, based on your answers it seems to be a Claymore. It matches everything even, the 5' 5" length. Actually, it looks a lot like File:Wallace svärd.jpg minus the "curls" on the guard. Thanks for the help :)--Lenticel ^(talk) 01:32, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Music/podcasts on iTunes

Like with apps, are music and podcasts reviewed by Apple before they're put on the iTunes store? I guess they'd just put an explicit tag on rude stuff, but does anything ever get rejected? Thanks. Chevymontecarlo - alt 12:30, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Loops of material on the back of trainers?

My second question; why do you get little loops of material on the back of trainers? Is it spare/too hard to remove or it is just design? Thanks. Chevymontecarlo - alt 12:33, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I always assumed it was so that you could hang them on things. SteveBaker (talk) 13:30, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Aren't they just the same thing as bootstraps? AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 15:09, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I always believed it was because proper running shoes need to be a tight fit; the loop is to hold onto when you pull them on. Alansplodge (talk) 18:29, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I had no idea. I just came across it the other day when I noticed all the trainers I could see had them. Weird...anyway, thanks for the ideas/theories. I had never heard of bootstraps before :O Chevymontecarlo - alt 19:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

A little research reveals the existence of "Boot hooks" which engage in those loops to help you pull on difficult shoes and boots. See the red-handled gizmos in the image at right. You insert the metal end of the hooks into the loops on the back of the shoes and yank on the handles to pull them on. SteveBaker (talk) 03:15, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, so they're a bit like a shoe horn - they help you get the shoes on. Thanks for the research guys, very helpful. Chevymontecarlo - alt 05:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Take caution. On many shoes today the loops are just there for show and tradition, and aren't as strong as they need to be. Imagine when one breaks as you are pulling your shoe on, and you chuck the point of the hook hard into the back of your leg. /88.131.68.194 (talk) 06:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

That's true! Chevymontecarlo 09:34, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Spas in Las Vegas hotels

Hello,

My internet connection is blacked out but I need to find information on spas in Las Vegas hotels. I`m looking specifically for the Belaggio, but anything will help. I have searched Wikipedia for 3 days now and can`t find anything. Could you copy and paste the spa `menu`, please?

Thanks so much! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.96.178.33 (talk) 16:10, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I won't ask how it is you can access Wikipedia but not Belaggio, but anyway: what exactly are you looking for? The spa page for the Belaggio does not say much by itself, just a list of services, and you have to drill down for more specific information. The headings are "SPA PACKAGES", "SPA RESERVATIONS", "FITNESS CENTER", "MASSAGE THERAPIES", "WORLD THERAPIES", "FACIAL CARE", "BODY CARE", "HYDROTHERAPY", "WAXING & BEAUTY CARE", and "SPA ETIQUETTE GUIDE". I've put "Spa packages" down below, as it is seems like it would be the most useful given your vague query above.

Extended content

Pamper Party Custom Pamper Party Packages available tailored to your needs. Choose any service offered on the menu. Ask about food and beverage options. The Meditation Room $50 (per hour) Usage is included with the Spa Journey, Couples Reflection and Spa Splendor Package. May add as an upgrade or (option 1). May be added as an upgrade or (option 2) included with another service. Please contact the Spa Package Coordinator for pricing and details. Advance reservation is required. Rest and Relaxation Package $470 (per person) Receive 50 minutes of soothing warmth and refreshment with our Bellagio Signature Stone Massage. Get pampered with a specialized Bellagio Signature Face and Body treatment for the remaining 80 minutes. Duration: 150 minutes For the Ladies Package $310 (per person) Start with a 50-minute Aromatherapy Massage. Feel the effects under the healing waters of our 25-minute Vichy Shower Body Exfoliation. Finish with a 25-minute relaxing all natural hydrotherapy bath. Duration: 120 minutes Spa Journey Package $370 (per person) Enjoy a 25-minute Indian Head Massage session. Followed by our 70-minute Thai Yoga Massage. End with a moisturising parafin hand and foot treatment. While in the Meditation Room, you will receive a complimentary beverage and enjoy a Spa Light lunch. Duration: 150 minutes Couples Reflection Package $540 (per person) Self indulgence for you and your partner by unwinding and relaxing side by side during our custom couples massage. Discover and learn to float your partner with a Watsu Therapist in the warm Watsu pool. This tandem soak is the height of the 70 minute Watsu experience. Choose from any 50 minute facial from our treatment menu and pamper the skin after you emerge from the water. While in the Meditation Room, you can enjoy a smoothie, specialty drink or light snack. Duration: 210 minutes Spa Splendor Package $470 (per person) Enjoy a 70-minute aquatic Watsu massage experience in our luxurious Watsu Room. Relax during a 50-minute Bellagio hand, foot, scalp Royal Ritual. Finish with a 25-minute luxurious Body Polish Treatment to gently exfoliate your skin. While in the Meditation Room, you can enjoy a specialty drink or light snack. Duration: 180 minutes Services and prices are subject to change. Hours of Operation: Open daily 6 a.m. - 8 p.m. Reservations: Spa Bellagio takes reservations three months in advance. We suggest you make your reservations as far in advance as possible due to limitations on select appointments. Call 702.693.7472 for reservations. Spa Brochure: View Brochure

After you are done with it, we will probably delete the content above to avoid any copyright questions. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I`m at work and Wikipedia is the only website I can access, but a client asked me to find out prices for the spas for them. Your answer was just what I needed! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.96.178.33 (talk) 17:30, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Well if you can only access one site, this is a good one. Googlemeister (talk) 19:04, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

French features

First of all, I realize that in any nationality there is natural variation and physical features cannot be used to identify someone as a member of any nationality with absolute certainty. HOwever I need to know some physical features that imply or strongly suggest French ancestry. THis can be recent ancestry if necessary. 70.239.234.196 (talk) 16:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid that the French look much like their neighbors. In particular, northern French tend to look like Belgians or Englishmen, southern French like northern Italians or Spaniards. Marco polo (talk) 01:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You might hear the expression "Gallic features", but what exactly that is supposed to mean, I don't know. (I guess a man who looks like Charles de Gaulle and a woman who looks like Audrey Tautou?) Adam Bishop (talk) 02:55, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

No - there is far too much interbreeding with other nationalities for that kind of thing to persist. For genetic differences to build to the level of making a distinctive feature, you need some kind of barrier to interbreeding - and continental Europe really doesn't provide that. My wife is French - and neither her nor any of her family have anything obviously, distinctively French. SteveBaker (talk) 03:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Without anything suggesting it's based in reality, I've often heard of a prominent nose being associated with French heritage, particularly provincial French heritage (see Gerard Depardieu for a frequently cited "example"). I'm not aware of anything that suggests that French people ACTUALLY have noses of any particular shape more often than the average but that might do for your purposes, which sound like they're for some fictional creation. - 115.186.196.83 (talk) 06:47, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

When talking about his drawings for the Asterix comics, artist Albert Uderzo has said that he pays particular attention to the noses; the Gauls have to have a "proper Gallic nose" (in his illustrations, large and bulbous) to distinguish them from the Romans, Britons, and others. Matt Deres (talk) 13:21, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Note, however, that the Gauls were conventionally 'Celts' who, traditionally, were largely displaced from all but the western peninsulas of modern France by the Franks, a Germanic tribe, much as the Britons (now the Welsh - Anglo-Saxon for "foreigners") were supposedly similarly displaced by the Germanic Anglo-Saxons (now the English) in Great Britain. However, recent genetic research may have introduced some doubts about this simple conventional model. I recall reading or being told, though I cannot adduce a reference, that although the Asterix books are otherwise well historically grounded, their depicted appearances of the Gauls actually resemble the real appearances of the Franks of the period. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 20:06, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

As SteveBaker notes, there's just been far too much mobility in Western Europe to have any European nation retain a distinctive set of features. Considering France, the current president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is of Hungarian ancestry, while France has had other leaders, such as Patrice MacMahon (of Irish background), or Napoleon Bonaparte, who was Corsican (read: Italian). It has been that way for hundreds of years. --Jayron32 06:02, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

There's all sorts of ways to interpret "a distinctive set of features":

• A set of features shared by everybody of a certain nationality, and nobody else
• A set of features shared by most people of a certain nationality, and not many other people
• A set of features which are noted for cropping up in a certain country a bit more often than elsewhere
• A set of features which are statistically likely to correlate with a certain nationality, but you wouldn't notice the trend unless you did a survey.

Are you saying that even the last of these is impossible in France? And the second to last (which is what the OP asked for)? Wurstgeist (talk) 01:34, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Electric heater

I live in Atlanta, Georgia. Last year, my monthly gas bill for heating my 1 bedroom apartment was about $110 in January. Do you think that I can save my by buying an electric heater?--72.145.151.60 (talk) 21:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Purely anecdotally- a few years ago, my furnace broke, and I had to heat my apartment with an electric heater for about a month while they were repeatedly fixing it. My gas bill went way down, but my electric bill went up so much that I ended up breaking more or less even. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 21:59, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Does Atlanta have unusually cheap electricity? Because it is usually more expensive to heat by electricity than by gas. By the way, your January gas bill for a 1-bedroom apartment was about half of my usual January gas bill for a 1-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts, but that's no surprise. Marco polo (talk) 01:50, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Generally, gas is a cheaper form of energy than electricity (a fair amount of electricity is made from gas - and that big power plant ain't free!) - but electric space-heaters are essentially 100% efficient - and gas heaters certainly aren't. So the devil is in the details. Just how much less is gas than electricity in your part of the world? Just how inefficient is your gas heater? We don't know the answers to either of those questions - so we can't answer your question rigorously. SteveBaker (talk) 03:28, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Gas heaters aren't? Electric heater are? That requires some assumptions. Surely, burning gas from a gas stove will give you 100% of chemical energy in the form of hear (in fact, it will usually give you slightly more than that, because you get the latent heat of part of the combustion product (water) condensing) for free). Now if you have a boiler in the basement, and need to pipe the heat up, you will certainly lose some energy - but then the same is true for electricity (substantially) on the way from the power plant to your home and (in principle) on the way from the meter to the heater. And if we talk thermodynamic efficiency, of course, electricity is obviously out if its generated via any kind of plausible heat engine. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:51, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

In a gas heater, a significant portion of the heat goes out the chimney with the exhaust, while an electric heater is only heating the interior of a room (which is presumably what you're trying to heat, rather than the outdoors). Buddy431 (talk) 19:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

If a significant portion of the heat goes out the chimney, you need a better heating system. See Condensing boiler. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The article you linked to says that practical condensing boilers are 82 to 89% efficient. If 11 to 18% isn't "a significant portion of the heat" - then...um...well, it is significant OK?! SteveBaker (talk) 03:16, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps an important point, and I think the one SS was trying to make above even if perhaps poorly worded is that while electric heaters are close to 100% efficient at converting electricity to heat, converting gas into electricity into heat isn't generally very efficient. So if your electricity largely comes from gas, then going directly to heat will usually be more efficient. This is one of the reasons why the price of gas is usually cheaper per unit of energy then electricity as several people including SB have hinted at.

Note that while it doesn't sound like this is relevant to the OP, if the temperature difference (between the outside and what you want inside) isn't too extreme, a heat pump will have a better coefficient of performance and so may be the most cost effective option of all ignoring the initial outlay. They are definitely likely to be more cost effective then a normal electric resistance heater under the circumstances I mentioned (small temperature difference, ignoring outlay). However these are fairly expensive so may take a long time to make up for that and require installation etc. (You may also end up spending more if you start to cool the house as well.) Of course other factors like the area you heat and the temperature you heat to will also make a difference. Better insulation may often be a better spend then a heat pump. If the temperature difference is large, then they start to lose their advantage although a geothermal heat pump may be another option (likely to be even more expensive).

Nil Einne (talk) 12:22, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

A furnace designer explained once that he could make a furnace achieve any desired efficiency by adding more heat exchange surface, but a requirement was that the exhaust gasses leave the chimney before the highly corrosive combustion products condensed, so he was limited to 80% efficiency, given typical code chimneys. Higher efficiency would have creosote dribbling down the inside of the chimney. Modern high efficiency furnaces go ahead and let the exhaust condense, then let it drip from a pvc pipe onto the ground (pollution, much?). Other modern furnaces use forced draft to get the combustion products out. So a really crappy old furnace might be in the 70's, a very efficient modern one might be in the 90's. An electric heater will be 100% efficient if it operates in the heated space. But the gas is usually way cheaper per unit of heat energy provided than the electricity. If you only heat the area you are in with a little electric heater, leaving the thermostat set low just to keep pipes from freezing in the rest of the house, you might save money. Note that a typical US electric portable space heater might draw 12.5 amps, thus using up the capacity of one household circuit. You cannot go around plugging in multiple heaters on one circuit, or on a circuit that runs lights and other appliances. Edison (talk) 03:41, 5 August 2010 (UTC)