Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 December 31

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December 31

List of National Days in date order?

The National Day article lists them in country order. As a teacher, I'm planning to use national days as a trigger for activities on each day I see a particular set of students. I could trawl through the list in that article, but a list already in date order would make my life easier. HiLo48 (talk) 02:12, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

See Help:Sorting for how to convert the data in that article into a sortable table. It would take some work, but then it would only have to be done once. Since you already have to trawl through the list to gather the information anyways, might as well improve the usability of the article. --Jayron32 02:28, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

This seems a rather odd omission for an encyclopedia that has sortable lists of everything under the sun. It was discussed beteeen 2007 and 2009 @ Talk:National Day#Fomatting the list, but it went nowhere. A job for a list guru. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 02:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

OK. Hands up all list gurus. (Keeps hands firmly stuck in pockets.) HiLo48 (talk) 02:36, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Not me. --Jayron32 02:37, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately the list in National Day is not in a table format, otherwise it would be easy. Maybe it would be possible to split it up in something like Excel and then reinsert in the article, but then creating a wiki table from the ground up is pretty tiresome. And dang, List of national days is just a redirect. --jjron (talk) 06:51, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

And what do you do with the ones that "float"? Instead of a table, it might be more elegant to simply create a second list that's by date, and the floating items could be inserted at their approximate date, e.g. "first day of summer", or whatever, would be around June 21. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:37, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Isn't that celebrated as the "Longest Day of the Year", and always on 21 June, regardless of the solstice. It's certainly not the "first day of summer" in most of the world! It wouldn't take long to create an Excel or Word table with all these dates. I can't do it just at the moment, but if you give me a day or two ... (but then I'd need an expert to turn this into a Wikitable). Dbfirs 09:37, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

The summer solstice is by definition the start of summer, according to the "astronomical" convention, which is the one generally considered "official" in the States. I know that Europeans tend to put it at the start of a month, but to me that's just weird -- months are artificial; seasons are natural, so seasons can't be month-based. It's true that there's still some arbitrariness in the astronomical definition (in some sense they're shifted by half a season, which corresponds roughly but not exactly to the temperature lag) but at least it's not based on the artificial calendar. --Trovatore (talk) 09:45, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

No, astronomers regard the solstice as the middle of summer. There is no "astronomical definition" for the start of seasons. I don't know where this "official" idea comes from, though it makes good sense in regions where the temperature lag is about six and a half weeks, as it is in some parts of the USA. Do people in Florida follow the convention? Anyway, the disagreement doesn't matter here because the date is June 21st regardless of either summer or solstice. Dbfirs 13:17, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to flatly contradict you. There is in fact an astronomical definition for the start of seasons. --Trovatore (talk) 18:39, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

All the astronomical sites that I can find talk of the mid-summer solstice, contradicting your assertion. I'm puzzled, though, about where this idea of an astronomical definition came from. I agree that many people claim that it exists. Is it an astrological notion? Dbfirs 23:12, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I didn't say anything about astronomers. It's "astronomical" in the sense that it's based on an astronomical event, not in the sense that it's particularly useful from an astronomical point of view. I don't think it comes from astrology though I couldn't be sure of that. --Trovatore (talk) 01:59, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

There is an American astronomical definition for the start of seasons, which happens to coincide with the American traditional definition. Personally, I always found both very unnatural. As you say, it implies a 45-day temperature lag, and that lag is normally smaller. It is particularly obvious if you live in an area with permanent snow cover. For example, in Montreal, Canada, daily mean temperatures go below freezing on November 21 and back up above freezing on March 23. In Warsaw, Poland, freezing lasts just under three months, December 8 to March 2. In Barcelona, Spain, historical mean temperature on December 1 is 11 C, and it reaches the same point around March 12. In all three cities, winter thermal lag is almost exactly the same, it works out to about 28 days. This would make the calendar-based definition (starting seasons on December 1, etc) considerably more accurate than solstice-based definition in all three.--Itinerant1 (talk) 23:29, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, the problem with the calendar-based definition is that it uses the calendar. I'm sorry, that's right out. That means that if different political decisions had been made in the past (e.g. the length of February) we'd have a different start of summer???? That's just not acceptable.

Around here, the astronomical convention works reasonably well for summer, maybe not for the other three. August is usually the hottest month (and it can easily be September). --Trovatore (talk) 01:55, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Around here (which is, I think, almost the same as where you are), seasons are very vague and having a start date arbitrarily off by a month is not a big deal. Back in Mother Russia, no one would consider the solstice convention credible, because December 21 is deep winter by any reasonable standard and it's not uncommon to have temps dipping below -20°C at night. Likewise, mid-June ("spring", according to the solstice convention) is considerably warmer, on average, than mid-September ("summer"). (daily means in Moscow on June 15: 17°C, on September 15: 11°C.) --Itinerant1 (talk) 02:55, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see that Trovatore meant "a definition based (arbitrarily) on an astronomically fixed event", rather than "a definition used by astronomers", so we are in agreement. I'm still puzzled about how so many people seem to believe that the equinoxes and solstices begin the seasons, even in areas where this convention is totally inappropriate. Some seem to think that astronomers have decreed this "definition"! Dbfirs 17:36, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the summer solstice. In any case, if you tabularize it, how do deal with something like Burma's national day, which is "10th day following the full moon of the month of Tazaungmone (beginning of Student led protests against British colonial government in 1920), in late November or December"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:08, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

An awkward aspect of that is that the summer solstice is the same instant across the Northern Hemisphere (actually the whole planet, except that in some places it's the winter solstice), so which day it falls on, in addition to varying from year to year, also depends on your time zone. --Trovatore (talk) 18:48, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Good point. Any suggestions? I suppose we could insert the date for the coming year, but then we'd have to keep updating the table. Myanmar (Burma) seems to be the only country that doesn't have a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar, but some others have "first (weekday) in (month)". ... (later) I've used the 2012 dates, but with a note explaining the variability, and just put Burma between November and December. Dbfirs 13:17, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

To clarify some of the above comments (although I'm pretty sure HiLo48 knows this), ~ the 21st June is not universally the summer solstice nor universally the longest day of the year. Also Season includes various definitioons including the astronomical one and concurs with Dbfirs on that. Nil Einne (talk) 13:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

... nor universally the "first day of summer" in the north, and never "the first day of winter" in the southern hemisphere, but it is the fixed date of Greenland's National Day, irrespective of the date of the solstice. Ought we to include other national days such as Sami National Day? Dbfirs 13:51, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Going back to the original question, I've got as far as July with the list in date order, using Word and Excel, but I'm not likely to have time to finish it off on Sunday. There are rather more national days than I anticipated. I'll have a try at turning the list into a Wiki table, but I don't know much about tables -- I've only ever edited them, not created them. Happy new year to everyone (within the next 12 hours for some). Dbfirs 23:18, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm actually quite surprised at the professed level of non-competence about table creation from most users on this thread. I'm no great shakes at complex tables, but I have created a few dozen simpler ones in my wiki-travels. They're not hard; just find an existing one that fits what you want, and then replace the data. With experience come a few little tricks. I'm sure I could create the table HiLo is after, but I'm recovering from a 3am finish to a NY Eve party, and I just don't have the energy, or to be honest, the interest. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 00:14, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not technically difficult, it's just tedious. And working from an already-built table is definitely the way to go. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:18, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

... (after reading Help:Table) ... Yes, it's not as difficult as it looks, especially if you use double pipe. Already-built tables are fine for small amounts of data, but it would be very tedious to insert hundreds of cells. I started with a table in Excel, then edited it in Word, then inserted the Wiki markup globally into spare Word columns, then converted to plain text and, rather to my surprise, it worked first time with only very minor errors. It needs a bit of cleaning up, but I've created a collapsed sortable table that I've added at the end. See Talk:National Day Dbfirs 07:56, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Excellent work, Dbfirs. Before this question was raised, if anyone had asked me if we had such a list, I wouldn't even have bothered to check. I would have just taken it for granted, and I would have assumed it was a very early addition to the encyclopedia, c. 2003 vintage. Yet here we are in 2012 and it's only just happened. Amazing what can fall through the cracks when we're not practising eternal vigilance. I wonder what else we've forgotten to attend to. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:34, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

And it's all because I'll do anything to try to gain and maintain the interest of my darling Year 7 students. HiLo48 (talk) 09:45, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I hope you give them due acknowledgement for unknowingly inspiring you to correct this major deficiency. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Police communication practices

I don't know whether this happens in other countries, but I'm seeing it more and more here in Australia. Some incident occurs in which someone loses their life suddenly and violently. It could be a traffic accident, a murder, a farm or industrial accident, a dog attack, a child taking tablets from the medicine cabinet thinking they were sweets, anything that requires a police presence. Police go on TV to report the basic facts of the case, what investigations they're carrying out, maybe call for public assistance, whatever. In amongst the factual stuff, they'll often say things like "This incident was an absolute tragedy for the family/community concerned" or similar such words (and it's always an "absolute" tragedy, never just a tragedy).

Can anyone tell me what these expressions are designed to achieve? My view is that it isn't the job of the police to be telling the community that such and such an incident was "an absolute tragedy". If the families concerned think it is, they'll have worked that out for themselves without anyone having to tell them. But if they ever did need anyone to tell them, the last group of people they'd go to for an opinion would be the police. No offence to police, but their role is to examine these sorts of incidents rationally and dispassionately, and not to let their personal feelings get in the way of cold, logical analysis. So, what gives? Are they trying to appear more human, more empathetic, less authoritarian? My concern is that if they decide that incident A is "an absolute tragedy" but incident B is not to be described in such terms, then they might be tempted to invest more resources into A, when B may be just as deserving of their attention.

I also hear police telling us after a holiday period when too many people were killed on the roads (I never know how they decide how many is too many and how many is perfectly OK) that "The message is just not getting through". I always feel like I'm in a school classroom of naughty children when I hear that, or I'm being given a damn good talking to by an angry parent who's fed up to the back teeth. The reality is that the number of people on the roads at these times is way more than usual, yet the number of deaths is a tiny, minuscule percentage of road users. I'm not diminishing any road death, but I do take issue with this didactic approach the police take when they seem to be talking sternly to the whole community, when their remarks ought to be addressed to the tiny proportion of drivers who speed, drink-drive, drug-drive and commit other illegal acts. The vast, overwhelming majority of people don't do anything to be criticised for; indeed, the police ought to be congratulating them, in amongst the brickbats for the offenders. They ought to be acknowledging that the do-gooders vastly outnumber the offenders. But no, we're all tarred with the same brush together with the offenders. If the police deliberately set out to antagonise people, they couldn't have picked a better way.

The 2 matters I raised above seem to show police acting in ways that are not consistent with an overall strategy. On the one hand, they seem to be wanting to be kinder, more warm, more human (that's when they want our help); but on the other hand they're going out of their way to be hypercritical of the whole community because of the actions of a few (that's when they just want us to comply). They probably wouldn't see it that way, but I certainly do. I'd be very untrusting of a person who acted in such manipulative and two-faced ways: being all nice when they want something but being an arsehole otherwise. Maybe different arms of the police force run their own show and have their own ways of dealing with the public, I don't know. Does anyone have any inside knowledge of their thinking about these sorts of communication practices? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 07:29, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Regarding messages on speeding, many drivers (perhaps more than half depending on the area etc) speed at least sometimes [1][2][3] You say "their remarks ought to be addressed to the tiny proportion of drivers who speed, drink-drive, drug-drive and commit other illegal acts" but how are the police supposed to know who these people are and direct a message only to them? In fact based on who speeds they need to speak to a significant proportion of the population, and I'm sure people who don't drive but are concerned about being killed by speeding drunk motorists are also grateful for these messages.

As for police saying something was a "tragedy", with the rise of 24-hour news (both on TV and internet) they're increasingly required to go on television and give statements and press releases. If they only make clinical statements like "the body was hacked into thirty pieces and blood smeared all over the wall", then people attack them for being heartless and having no respect for victims of crime; if they don't talk to the press at all, people attack them for that and stories are leaked anyway in an uncontrolled manner (possibly giving away details they want kept secret); as you say, people do not want to see them go the other way and weep uncontrollably with emotion; while you object if they try and express some sympathy.

It seems you want the police to remain out of sight, emerging only to track down criminals, not speaking to the media. However, most police forces consider it essential to maintain good relations with the public (see e.g. [4][5][6]). This allows for "policing by consent", where the population obeys the law not simply through fear of being caught, and willingly assists the police, provides the police with information about crimes, and avoids rioting and similar public disorder, and avoids situations (found e.g. in certain poor black areas of the USA, and formerly in parts of Britain's inner cities) where the police function as a paramilitary organisation only moving into an area to arrest suspects, shooting first, and asking questions later. Part of this relationship-building is expressing sympathy with the public, and part of it is being seen to be taking action on issues that are important to the public (cracking down on crime and "antisocial behaviour").

Related to this, many in the police force see that they must take action to prevent crimes, which includes providing public information on crime prevention, and delivering stern messages to people not to break the law. In view of the effort required to catch and prosecute a speeding or drink-driving motorist, it is probably cheaper to discourage a motorist from breaking the law via public statements, public information films, etc, rather than to catch that same individual (especially if the state will have to pay for damage they cause). --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:34, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

In the US, at least, traffic tickets are a major source of revenue, which makes cops go out of their way to give tickets to people doing nothing dangerous, in various forms of speed traps. StuRat (talk) 15:47, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

please. My googling found nothing to support that but angry blog comments with no sources. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 17:09, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Proper speed limits are always going to be matters of opinion, not fact, but here's a rather reliable-looking commentary on a couple speed traps in New Orleans: [7]. Note that the author comes down for stricter enforcement in ticket collections, so they aren't just a Libertarian who wants all traffic laws repealed. Here's another from the Baltimore Sun:[8]. Understanding the conflict of interest inherent in having the people who decide what is illegal also benefit (directly or indirectly) from having more things be illegal makes it clear that speed traps are inevitable in such a situation, especially when the fines go disproportionately to people passing through who have no vote in that community (a form of taxation without representation). There is at least one state (I forget which) that has a law that any community with over a certain percentage of their income from tickets loses the ability to give out tickets (the state takes over). This is a step in the right direction, but will result in communities keeping their percentage just under the limit. Here's an article about a proposed law in Michigan to limit speed traps: [9]. StuRat (talk) 17:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Those links do not state that tickets are a major source of revenue. In fact the last one talks about a revenue drain of contested tickets. Rmhermen (talk) 02:02, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, here's an article about a study which proves "that local governments use traffic citations to make up for revenue shortfalls": [10]. Here's an article about a state which limits local revenues from tickets to 35 percent, and had one community up around 80%: [11]. Sounds major to me. StuRat (talk) 02:20, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

A 1995 law in one state that has been violated a total of twice since then. Rmhermen (talk) 03:21, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

No, they only CAUGHT two communities. As the 2nd article states, no agency is assigned to enforce the law. Under those circumstances, it's amazing any get caught. StuRat (talk) 09:20, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

@ Colapeninsula: how are the police supposed to know who these people are and direct a message only to them? - I wasn't suggesting they get down to that level of individual personal detail. I was suggesting they use wording that recognises their main message does not apply to most road users. When I hear a senior police official saying "We are extremely disappointed at the high road toll over the Christmas-New Year period. The message is just not getting through", I feel I am personally being criticised for some error of commission or omission, along with every other member of the community. Yet, almost all of us have done exactly what we were asked to do: drove within the speed limits, never drove while drinking or drug-taking, always used seat belts, never talked on our phones while driving, etc etc. But what do we get for our efforts? We're told the police are disappointed in us, and we're not listening to their messages. So, I have now become responsible for the driving behaviour of millions of my fellow citizens I will never meet, which is an absurd position to arrive at. Imagine if the murder rate went up beyond expectations, and stayed up: would the police come out say how "disappointed" they are in the trend, and would they tell us "the message is just not getting through"? Of couse not. All their communications would be about specific offenders, or offenders generally - not about law-abiding citizens. OK, most adults are road users, while most adults never have any involvement in murder cases; but law-abiding road users no more deserve criticism than law-abiding non-murderers do.

Another thing is that when a communicator acknowledges their communication has failed (which is what "The message is just not getting through" does), it's up to them to communicate differently to make sure their message does get through. But the tone they use when they trot out this line time after time is that it's the community's fault for not receiving the message. It really is an extremely simplistic and ignorant approach to communication, one that doesn't even work when directed to school children, let alone adults. Which is why I wonder who devises their communication strategies for them and where they did their training (the local after-school care centre, perhaps). -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 23:16, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

1) Saying something is an "absolute tragedy" helps them sound less cold, say when they blame the parents for leaving pills where the toddler could get to them. Since the chief of police sheriff is often elected, PR is quite important if he wants to keep his job.

2) Saying "the message isn't getting thru" might be a way to move public opinion towards more strict law enforcement practices, like sobriety check lanes.

3) I've also noticed they never call anyone a "suspect" anymore, they are just a "person of interest", presumably so they don't get sued for calling somebody a suspect and ruining their reputation when they have no evidence against that person. StuRat (talk) 15:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

The Chief of Police (or equivalent rank) is seldom an elected official in the united States (see Chief of police), and the practice of electing senior police officials is even rarer in other nations. (It is unheard of in Australia, for instance, which is the jurisdiction about which the OP asked his question.) While this does not entirely obviate political concerns for these senior police officials, they are not directly at the mercy of a fickle electorate. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:31, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

You've not provided any evidence that's it's unheard of, in Australia, for the lead law enforcement officer to be elected. I suppose I could ask for your qualifications on the matter, but consider doing so to be rather petty. StuRat (talk) 22:46, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Take it from me, and I'm sure HiLo will back me up here, Stu, the concept of police officers and judges and governors being elected is completely foreign to Australia. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 23:31, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Yep. HiLo48 (talk) 01:31, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

It can be rather difficult to find references saying something doesn't happen when that it doesn't happen isn't remotely notable. Elected law enforcement is a peculiarly American concept and is unheard of pretty much everywhere else (there may be a handful of exceptions). There is a plan to elect Police and Crime Commissioners in the UK, but they will just oversee the police they won't actually have police powers. The second paragraph of Sheriff#United_States says: "The political election of a person to serve as a police leader is an almost uniquely American tradition." (It gives one minor exception.) --Tango (talk) 23:54, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I have no special qualifications in police studies; none are needed to read the article I linked, nor for general knowledge of Commonwealth police services. If you're looking for further sources, however, they're readily available in Australian Federal Police, Law enforcement in Australia, and the linked pages for the assorted Australian law enforcement agencies. Moreover, even a brief examination of sheriff or Sheriffs in the United States would have revealed that elected police officials are a nearly exclusively American phenomenon.

It is petty of you to pick on a point like this just because I pointed out that you were making up (bad) numbers in one of your responses yesterday. Nevertheless, I can't help but notice that you've edited your original post in response to my first note here. I'll take that as acknowledgement that however gracelessly you're handling it, you're aware that you made another mistake in your off-the-cuff remarks today. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:59, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Whether the elected law enforcement officers in question are called Chief of Police or Sheriff is hardly central to my argument. StuRat (talk) 02:08, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Sheriffs aren't elected in Australia either. There are such people here, but their public profile is WAY lower than what we see on American western films and TV.

The very idea that law enforcement officials of any kind are political animals rather than government appointees and/or employees, is anathema to us. Very senior police officers like Police Commissioners and their deputies are directly appointed by government; lower police ranks are employees of the state whose progress up the ranks is based on qualifications, experience and perceived merit. Our counterpart of your District Attorneys are usually called Director of Public Prosecutions, and they're government appointments, as are judges.

Only the most senior law officer in each state and federally, the Attorneys-General, are elected, but they're elected as members of parliament first and foremost; their appointment to the A-G portfolio or any other portfolio is a matter for the government of the day, but given the formal tick by the relevant state governor or governor-general, who is also an appointment by the government of the day, but given the formal tick by the Queen, who gets her job by heredity, but ultimately because the law says that's how the system is; the law is made or changed by parliament, whose members are all elected by popular vote, and countersigned by the Queen or her vice-regal representative (see above).

The only people in Australia who get their job by popular vote are legislators at the federal and state levels (members of parliament, senators, etc) and local government level (aldermen, mayors). -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 04:12, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Right Jack, they aren't elected there. But did you want us to limit answers to Australia only ? You didn't say that, did you ? StuRat (talk) 07:22, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

No, I specifically mentioned other countries in my opening sentence. But we were discussing your argument that certain senior police officials (whatever their titles may be) are "often" elected. TenOfAllTrades covered that with "The Chief of Police (or equivalent rank) is seldom an elected official in the united States (see Chief of police), and the practice of electing senior police officials is even rarer in other nations." I was just adding some more facts to that counter-argument, hopefully to demonstrate that the practice of electing law enforcement officials, let alone judges, is a peculiarly American idea (and I mean peculiar).  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 07:38, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

[ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14888118] is an article about the recent appointment of a new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, the UK's senior police officer; "He beat three others to the job after interviews with the Home Secretary and Mayor of London." No election. Alansplodge (talk) 01:43, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Police have always had a particular form of language. I'll never forget "The female person ran from the member". HiLo48 (talk) 22:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused why JackofOz thinks saying something is a tragedy is inconsistent with an overall strategy. Here in NZ, it's very common for the police and others to say something is a all the more tragic because it could have been easily avoided etc. A quick search shows this happens in Australia too. [12] [13]. They also say something could have been a tradegy. e.g. [14] [15]. As StuRat said, saying something is a tragedy helps them sound less cold, particularly when they go on to use it as an example. They definitely aren't going to say 'the only people who died were completely at fault, so it wasn't a tragedy although a clear reminder to people not to do the same thing. They could perhaps not bother to say it is anything but simply use it as an example, but it's not clear that this would be more effective, particularly since it could easily cause controversy. Nil Einne (talk) 09:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Jack, you can actually contact the vic police media unit, (perhaps email and ask for brief call) and discuss this with them. Have a go. Polypipe Wrangler (talk) 09:37, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I might do exactly that. Thanks for the tip. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 09:44, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand, are you disputing that some terrible murder or deadly house-fire is a tragedy? Or are you simply wondering why the cops waste precious seconds saying so? If the former, I don't know what to tell you, but if the latter I'm sure it's to avoid appearing overly gruff or unfeeling by simply standing up there and rattling off the facts of some gruisome death. It's a social nicety. Like starting a conversation with "Good morning" even if any fool can see that it's a nice morning.

The latter.

Btw, one does not say "Good morning" to report on the weather; it has nothing to do with the weather at all. One says it to wish the other person well for the rest of the morning and, by extension, wish them well for the rest of the day and, by extension, wish them well generally and for the rest of their lives. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok then, when someone says good morning do you get angry? Do you tell them that you were already planning on having a good morning anyway and you don't need them berating you about it? APL (talk) 04:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

No, of course not. (You seem to misunderstand what the word "berate" means, but no matter.) And I wouldn't have a problem with the police being all warm and empathetic on some occasions either, if they weren't prone to apparently condemning law-abiding citizens on other occasions. As I say, these two poles of behaviour seem irreconcilable, and do not seem to come from one single common unified over-arching communication strategy. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 04:29, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

(Oh, no. I'm operating from the assumption that you're using "berate" to apply to interactions that I would not normally consider berating, since I, personally, wouldn't consider the common "our public service message is not getting through" press conference to meet the dictionary definition of "berate".

On the other hand, I guess the press conferences in question might have a dramatically different tone in AU. I wouldn't know.) APL (talk) 04:47, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

As for your second part, it's entirely possible that they feel that their public service announcements aren't penetrating the populace as much as they would like. This is often an issue with marketing campaigns with low budgets. If that's the case, since the police are public servants, I don't see any reason they shouldn't say so clearly and in no uncertain terms when discussing the matter. If they were hoping that a public awareness campaign would reduce holiday accidents to some number X above average accidents, and they've fallen well short of that goal, then the simple fact is that their message is not getting through to people as much as they had hoped. (Probably because they have no budget, and the news stations don't like publishing boring public safety press releases as much as they like reporting on the accidents afterwards.) APL (talk) 11:10, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly why they say it. But have you ever heard of any organisation that's failing to get their product sold or whatever their message is got through, berating their would-be customers or clients for failing to heed the message? Advertisers change their messages all the time when particular campaigns aren't working any more. They don't come on TV and call the consumers idiots for not buying their products in as huge quanitites as they would have liked. They don't even come on TV and express disappointment about that fact. But here we have a sitation where the police tell us before the holidays what to expect if we do the wrong thing, and guess what, most people DO LISTEN TO THEIR MESSAGE; most road users DO drive more safely during holiday seasons, most DO slow down, most DO choose not to drive if they've been drinking, and so on. The message HAS GOT THROUGH. Yet, because a tiny fraction of people still choose to be idiots, the WHOLE COMMUNITY is told that they've done the wrong thing and the police are disappointed in them. It's an exceedingly disproportionate response. It's all based on whether that tiny fraction has fallen or risen compared with the tiny fraction they had at the same time last year - as if whatever last year's figures were should be taken as some sort of automatic benchmark. Last year, they were comparing the figures with the previous year. And so on. It's always these year-to-year increments. They never look at the big picture, They never tell us that the absolute numbers of road deaths have steadily decreased over the past 50 years, at exactly the same time as the absolute numbers of road users have steadily increased. The gap has been getting ever wider. All the campaigns HAVE worked. The culture HAS changed. People HAVE listened. We're doing better and better every year. Yet to listen to the police response, we should all be locked up for gross irresponsibility. This is what gets under my skin, being so out-of-kilter with the facts. This is why I asked this question, as I want to know more about the psychology of police communication strategies. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not about "most drivers". "Most drivers" would drive safely regardless of their message. The straightforward, plain English meaning of "our message isn't getting through" is that they're not sufficiently changing behavior from the baseline. The only hidden message you're supposed to understand is not an insult to people who would have driven safely anyway, but an insinuation that next year their department could use more funding for this campaign.

(To put it another way, was police propaganda the reason you, personally, did not drive drunk this New Year's? If not, then you can't really say that you "got the message", you didn't get it because it wasn't targeted at you.)

I think you're badly misinterpreting the intent and tone of those press conferences.

You said : "But have you ever heard of any organisation that's failing to get their product sold or whatever their message is got through, berating their would-be customers or clients for failing to heed the message? "

You are not a customer or client of the police department. The relationship is completely different. It's a false analogy. APL (talk) 04:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "from the baseline".

No, I didn't drive drunk this New Year's, and I wouldn't have anyway, because the message got through to me around my early 20s that this is a really dumb thing to do. Human beings have been known to make errors of judgment, so it's entirely possible that at some time over the past 40 years I could have driven drunk despite knowing how dumb it is. I don't think I ever have made that particular error of judgment, but that's irrelevant - the point is I so easily could have. So, road safety campaigns are worthwhile and I support the expense that goes into them. Current road safety messages are just as relevant to experienced and long-term drivers as they are to other drivers. It never hurts to be reminded of important things like this. So, I see myself very much as a "client" of the police department. I certainly would be if I were pulled over for an RBT or speeding or whatever.

If these messages are not about "most drivers" but about the tiny proportion of people who break the law, what is so hard about the police actually saying so? What is hard about them saying "Well done" to the good guys, alongside "The message is just not getting through", to the bad guys? We know they CAN be all warm and empathetic (viz. the "absolute tragedy" situations), so why do they choose NOT to be when it comes to road safety messages? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 04:50, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I can just see the next ad campaign - "Don't drink, Drive. Bloody genius". (That's especially for Jack, and others from the great state of Victoria, Australia. It's derivative of a very well know slogan here of "Drink. Drive. Bloody idiot.") HiLo48 (talk) 05:07, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Maybe the police expect that members of the public would encourage each other to follow and respect the law in some way, because otherwise the alternative is to increase stricter laws. Relatively close to here we had an incident involving four underage drivers who pinned a local constable underneath a van and he later succumbed to his injuries. The main driver now accused of first-degree murder became a quadruplegic and can no longer speak. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 18:43, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

A quote from my post up the page: So, I have now become responsible for the driving behaviour of millions of my fellow citizens I will never meet, which is an absurd position to arrive at. A little less extreme is being considered responsible for the driving behaviour of my friends and family. I would object to that, too. But I could go along with an approach that encouraged us all to encourage our friends and family to drive responsibly and to actively discourage them from driving irresponsibly - as long as ultimate responsibility for the behaviour of any individual driver remained with that driver and not with the community at large and not even with their friends and family.

If that's what the police are actually wanting us to do with their "The message is just not getting through", I have a message for the police: Your message is just not getting through. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:08, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

If you walk into a crowded room of twenty people where ten people are wearing red hats, and announce "Everyone Must Wear Red Hats", and when you come back an hour later only 12 people are wearing red hats, then your message has not gotten through, and there's no particular insult in saying so plainly.

If you're a public servant (From the Ministry of Wearing Red Hats At Parties, I suppose.) then you're likely to say so at a press conference, if you're privately employed you'd probably say so in a report to your boss or shareholders. Either way, there's no insult in it either to the ten who were already wearing red hats nor to the two that started after you made your announcement. APL (talk) 05:13, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

And here we come back to what you said above: "On the other hand, I guess the press conferences in question might have a dramatically different tone in AU. I wouldn't know". Right on.

Let me just tell you that when the Police Commissioner or one of his deputies is up there expostulating to journos about the road toll, and they say "The message is just not getting through", their non-verbals make it absolutely clear they do NOT mean:

• "Oh dear, we have been quite inadequate in how we communicated our message, and we're going to have to rethink how we do this in future",

and that they DO mean:

• "The public is not listening, and it's their fault the road toll is as it is. We've told them what to do, but would they listen? Oh, no, not the public.".

Most definitely that is their message, and I've seen and heard and felt this too many times to have got it wrong. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 10:27, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

New camera resolution

The time has finally come to replace my old camera, and here I have the opportunity to get a better one. Even at just 6 megapixels, the old one took pretty deecent photographs, crisp and clear with all the details visible, so I am sure anything more than that will be sufficient for my uses. However, the trouble comes when I want to film something, which I have started doing a lot more just recently. I have no idea how the specifications for the clarity and detail of moving images works on cameras, but I do know that my old one is not very good, producing rather smudgy and blurred films. Meanwhile, though, I am not interested in spending a lot more than I have to on getting the very best that is available, so I am wondering, roughly what sort of specifications should I look for to get a camera that can film at a similar quality as my old one took those photographs? Most of the time stuff I have filmed would be put on my computer, so if I can have it looking reasonably clear on a 17" or 19" screen like that, I'm sure I don't need to worry about showing anything on a huge HD TV screen.

So, in conclusion, roughly what sort of camera video specificatons should I be looking for, to get a decent quality without paying a lot more for something only noticeably better when studied closely on a large screen?

79.66.109.0 (talk) 11:18, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm to understand what matters is both resolution and frame-rate. Resolution wise it doesn't sound like you'd need full HD (1080) but it would seem sensible to pick something that does at least 720. You may not ever show it up at a higher resolution but if you want to send it on to family/friends they may. Frame-rate wise again my understanding is limited but the suggestion seems to be that for picking up anything quite fast moving you'd be looking for about 30fps (frames per second). Generally my understanding is that a lot of the point and shoot cameras these days allow you to specify a few different settings - e.g. sacrificing a bit of resolution to bump up your frame-rate and vice-versa. In terms of quality I think there's a lot of difference out there between how well the video processes and deals with things like changes to lighting/changes to focus etc. I'd highly recommend the site dpreview.com - it's quite technical and most goes over my head but they do good in-depth reviews of most cameras. ny156uk (talk) 14:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Many sites that review digital cameras (e.g. Steve's Digicams, DP Review) offer downloadable samples of video footage. You could check out some of these to get an idea of what is on offer. It will depend on things like the quality of the video processor chip in the camera and the speed at which the sensor can output image data. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Also note that the total time you can record at max resolution and frame rate might be tiny. Look for ones which allow you to expand the memory the most, by adding SD cards, etc. Sound should be considered, too, as some cameras, like mine, don't even record sound, and others are lousy at it. StuRat (talk) 15:55, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

my old camera was not that good with sound either, so I have been using a microphone as well. Trouble is, though, I am looking at a few camras and cannot actually find out many of these specifications, and so cannot find out how good any of them are. Where can I go, then, to find video recording specificatons for variosu cameras, the site given above seems to have only a few, mostly expensive and very high quality, whereas the various online shops I have looked at give pages of details on each camera, on all the little tricks it can do that will be rarely of any use, without giving the slightest hint whether it can even record films at all. 79.66.109.0 (talk) 18:16, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Once you narrow your list a bit (based on price, screen size, etc.), you may want to do a Google search by the make and model and look for Owner's Manual or Specifications to figure out what screen resolution ranges are available for movies (which may well be less than for stills) as well as the frame rate. You could also look for user reviews, but it can take a long time to read through all of those. StuRat (talk) 18:35, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

The actual megapixel count these days matters less and less now that everyone seems to be above 7 megapixels. What you want to look fro in image quality is the sensor size, which is unfortunately not often given in consumer cameras. While it's far from perfect, a good way to estimate the potential quality of the image and size of the image sensor is to look at the size of the lens. A larger lens and image sensor will produce less "film grain" in your images. As far as recording goes, once you find a good selection of cameras that seem to have good image quality while fitting your price range, you can do a better comparison by comparing detailed specifications and reviews. Since it sounds like you will be recording video, pay special attention to what reviews say about this. Sound will also be important in this case, but since I've found most cameras have poor microphones, looking for a microphone input on the camera is a good idea. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 20:51, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

spot welding

IF TWO PLATES OF 1.5mm AND 2mm IS SPOT WELDED EARLIER AND THIS IS AGAIN SPOT WELDED TO ANOTHER PLATE OF 4mm THICKNESS whether we have to take 1.5mm (lowest thickness) or we have to take 3.5mm (1.5mm+2mm) for checking (load) during the tensile shear test.kindly please give the standard reference also. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.192.165.132 (talk) 15:49, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Which school class gave you this homework assignment? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:55, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

If it is only spot welded and not arc welded, I would say you should take the thickness of the thinnest plate for the tensile shear test. You may want to check out some of these articles. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:20, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

When doing mechanical testing, you always take the cross-sectional area at the point of failure for determining mechanical properties. Since you have to measure before testing (because plastic deformation during failure will change the dimensions), standard practice is to assume the part will fail at the point of minimum cross-section (since that's usually the weakest point).

In practice, whenever I had to test a welded joint, the request was always for absolute tensile strength rather than strength per unit area, because the part would always fail in the base metal rather than the weld, and measuring the cross-sectional area of the (highly irregular) likely failure point would cost more than the customer was willing to pay. --Carnildo (talk) 01:42, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Currency conversion

Can someone convert $300,000,000 1991 AUD to 1991 USD? Thanks (and please give me the link where you converted it :). HurricaneFan25 — 16:20, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

The site x-rates.com (http://www.x-rates.com/cgi-bin/hlookup.cgi?ccode=USD&ccode2=AUD&frMonth=0&frDay=01&frYear=1999) shows that 1 AUD was worth 0.618204 USD on January 4th 1999. Making $300,000 AUD worth around $185,000 USD (or $185,461.20 if you just plug in $300,000 * 0.618204 into google). ny156uk (talk) 16:40, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

They asked about 1991, not 1999, but that site can handle that year, too. The conversion factor seems to have been between about 0.76 and 0.80, depending on the date. StuRat (talk) 16:59, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Oops - hard to believe I used to be a proof-reader sometimes! ny156uk (talk) 20:03, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

It's always easier to find mistakes in other people's work than in your own - that's why proof readers exist! --Tango (talk) 23:23, 31 December 2011 (UTC)