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

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 31

Rotton Milk smell from fridge

Where I work we have this rotten smell of Milk coming from the Milk fridge. We have cleaned the fridge 3 times but the smell keeps coming back. Last time we moved the fridge, cleaned the floor underneath it, replaced the drainage pipes (we didn't know there were there and so we broke them when moving the fridge), stripped everything from the fridge (removed all the sheffs, tuck apart the ceiling and back walls, removed the fans etc) POWER WASHED every thing with a brand new power washer bought just for this job, and yet a few days latter the smell started coming back. We can't think of anything else to clean in this fridge and the next plan we have is to simply buy a new fridge (it's that bad). I was hoping someone here might have a less drastic suggestion. Oh and we used LOTS of bleach (min. 1 full 2L bottle) all three times.

86.45.217.245 (talk) 01:21, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me you need to determine if the smell is actually coming from the fridge or someplace else. The obvious way to do this is to move the fridge some distance away, let it sit for a day, and see if the smell moves with it. On a home fridge there's a drainage pan which gets some nasty stuff growing in it, do commercial fridges have those, too, or does everything drain directly into the sewer ?

If the smell doesn't move with the fridge, I'd look into the drainage lines more. Does it dump into a drain in the floor ? If so, the rotten milk may be down there. Pouring bleach in alone may not do it, because it runs right down. You need a way to retain it in there for a long enough time to get the job done. I wonder if there is something you could pour down, which would clog the drain, but then eventually dissolve and unclog once you fill it with bleach.

One other thought, the companies that come in and clean up black mold may know how to deal with this type of problem. StuRat (talk) 04:06, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Baking soda and water has a great and historic reputation for sweetening the smell of refrigerators, when you wipe down all surfaces. Edison (talk) 00:29, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't expect baking soda to do better than bleach. The problem is finding the source of the stench, so it can be wiped out. StuRat (talk) 03:18, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

If you're certain that the problem is the bad smell clinging to the fridge, and not some remaining hidden "yuck" or the drains, I gathered a number of suggestions recently after a family member absent-mindedly turned off the freezer before leaving on a 2-week holiday.

Put one or more of these in the fridge and keep the door closed for several days. Then check to see if the smell is reduced, and repeat with fresh stuff:

• Lemons or onions cut in half
• Baking soda or dry, unused ground coffee in a bowl (large amounts)
• Bag of odour -absorbing cat litter or charcoal
• Crumpled newspaper stuffed in the shelves.

You could also try wiping down the inside with white vinegar.

It can take days or even weeks of doing this repeatedly to shift the smell, and you may not be able to get rid of it completely, but they do seem to at least reduce it to manageable levels.--Kateshortforbob _talk 15:03, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

---

Some responses: "It seems to me you need to determine if the smell is actually coming from the fridge or someplace else."

It is the fridge. 86.45.217.245 (talk) 01:02, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

"The obvious way to do this is to move the fridge some distance away, let it sit for a day, and see if the smell moves with it."

Not an option. 86.45.217.245 (talk) 01:02, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

"On a home fridge there's a drainage pan which gets some nasty stuff growing in it, do commercial fridges have those, too, or does everything drain directly into the sewer ? "

Direct to the sewer. 86.45.217.245 (talk) 01:02, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

"Put one or more of these in the fridge and keep the door closed for several days."

There is no door, and even if there was, this would not be an option. 86.45.217.245 (talk) 01:02, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

"The problem is finding the source of the stench, so it can be wiped out."

We POWER WASHED EVERYTHING we could find. 86.45.217.245 (talk) 01:02, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Old name of China

1)what is the old name of CHINAMathematics2011 (talk) 03:50, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

It depends on how old, and who was doing the naming, and what they were naming. See a whole variety at Names of China, including the section "names in non-Chinese records". ---Sluzzelin talk 03:56, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I changed your question's title to no longer be incredibly useless. StuRat (talk) 03:57, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

In English, the most commonly used "old" name for China was Cathay; the name survives to the modern day in the name of the Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific. --Jayron32 04:36, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

And elsewhere. The Russian name for China is "Kitay" (romanised). -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 06:42, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

The name derives from the Khitan people who lived in and dominated what is now Manchuria and Mongolia from the 4th century, but was gradually applied to China as a whole. Ghmyrtle (talk) 07:17, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

See Names of China. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 00:52, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Right, because when Sluzzelin linked it, that wasn't helpful or anything... ;) --Jayron32 01:07, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Funny, I read the thing three times and was amazed nobody had linked to it. Weird how that can happen. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 05:08, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Sister Bliss

I noticed that the name given in Hebrew is a lot shorter than the one in English, so I tried to translate it using google Translate and it seems her middle name "Deborah" is missing in the Hebrew form. Is that an error, or some sort of naming convention? -- 78.43.93.174 (talk) 08:47, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I've removed both the "Deborah" and the Hebrew from the article, since the (few) sources cited don't mention either. "Bentovim" is certainly in origin a Hebrew name, but in the absence of any evidence that she used Hebrew, it's irrelevant to the article.

In answer to the question, there's no particular naming convention. "Deborah" would appear in Hebrew as Devorah (or D'vorah). --ColinFine (talk) 09:31, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Popularity and Greatness

Specifically in the field of liquor sales, do the popular brands mean quality? I know this can be the exact opposite with beer, yet is an unrecognized liquor necessarily a lower quality liquor? Schyler (exquirere bonum ipsum) 19:42, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Are you asking, "Is the most popular {gin, scotch, bourbon, vodka} superior in quality to less popular labels" or are you asking "are unrecognized liquors necessarily inferior"? These are quite different questions. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 19:52, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Popular brands mostly mean cheapness, which tends to be negatively correlated with quality. Looie496 (talk) 19:55, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I am curious, schyler, whether you have a reason to believe that your proposal is true? In the areas of food, drink, cars, jewelry, and probably almost all consumer goods, there are "boutique" brands which cost a lot more than popular brands, ostensibly because of quality. Google 'taste test vodka' or the like for comparisons. (I will offer that boutique brands would often be avoided for something like an airliner or a bank. Steve Martin would joke about banking at Joe's Bank. "Hi! I'm Joe! I've got a bank! You want to deposit $20? Here, I'll put it ... in my left front pocket. I'll make a note of that." Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:00, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I will rephrase: Is a brand popular because it has a good quality (in at least some portion whereas peer pressure and price will affect popularity as well)? Schyler (exquirere bonum ipsum) 20:56, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Simple logic would suggest that big brands are popular because they the best (average) blend of quality and price. There will undoubtedly be better Gins on the market than Gordons / Bombay Sapphire and there are certainly some worse. I'm sure some people will say product X is garbage but truth be told it can only sell in the volumes it sells if people find the quality good enough. ny156uk (talk) 21:23, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

And "good" is completely subjective. To someone whose drink of choice is Gordon's Dry Gin, it's a good gin. To me, it's "the crap my Dad drank." --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 21:30, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

There is generally no agreed upon measure of "greatness", quality of taste is highly subjective. Popular brands of any foodstuff or drink (indeed of anything consumed, including music, fashion, literature, etc.) are usually popular because they are bland; that is they aren't offensive to anyone's individual taste, and are able to appeal, mildly, to as wide of an audience as possible. Things which have stronger, distinctive flavors tend to be of the "love it or hate it" type, and we often thing of "quality" as having a certain distinctive character to it, that is quality implies skill, skill implies not anyone could do it, and that implies a certain uniqueness which some smaller subset of people will like MORE than the "common" varieties, but which other people will like LESS than the "common" varieties. Popular brands are also popular for reasons like cost; American pilsner beers (of the Bud-Coors-Miller triangle) fit this categorization well: they are very blandly flavored, so don't offend anyone, and use lower cost ingredients (rice is a primary grain rather than the more expensive "all barley" beers) which is why they tend to be more popular than beers which use more expensive and stronger flavored ingredients. These principles apply exactly to any consumer good, so you could find the same trends in liquor: major liquor brands are popular because they aren't as distinctly flavored (so they tend to "chase off" less people, and have a wider base of people who will like them) and they are less expensive, meaning more people will consume them. --Jayron32 21:49, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes a drink is popular because it is consistently alright, rather than excellent, for the price. And the spirits market is particularly influenced by marketing: so a drink will be popular because people think people like them should drink it, and like it, or that it says something good about them to buy and drink it. Last year's final of the Apprentice in the UK had an alcoholic drink challenge, with presentations and tastings to people from the drinks industry. The drink which the industry people got most excited about ('Urbon', a bourbon marketed at young urban people) was pretty unanimously agreed to taste awful, but the marketing and packaging could easily make it popular. They would probably choose something fairly inoffensive for the taste, during R&D, and then just concentrate on packaging, colouring, and marketing.

So, a popular drink is unlikely to be undrinkable to most people, and might even be tasty enough, but beyond that there is a heavy marketing influence. And then, there is also the 'maximum alcohol for lowest price' equation used by stupid young people and alcoholics, which makes cheap cider wildly popular in the UK. 86.164.73.187 (talk) 21:53, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Giving a more general answer, not specifically for alcoholic drinks, I'd say most people prefer mid-range brands. Low-priced brands often use cheap ingredients and processes, which are apparent in the end product. High-priced brands often seem "weird" or "foreign", in that they use unfamiliar "premium" ingredients. One cooking show, America's Test Kitchen, does blind taste test surveys, and that seems to be the general pattern. My classic example is getting a pizza at a high-end restaurant, and having it come out with Alfredo sauce instead of tomato sauce. To me, that's not a pizza. StuRat (talk) 22:20, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

When blind testing is done on many connoisseur products (wine in particular comes to mind), it often shows very little correlation between price and perceived quality. It seems likely to me that popularity is also only loosely correlated, and is probably more related to cultural factors (e.g. class markings — a "Bud man" feels his beer expresses something very different than does someone who only drinks small-batch IPAs; a Grey Goose drinker is likely drinking it as much for the reputation and advertising budget as they are for whatever the vodka tastes like). I think treating these things as classical economics, devoid of advertising, cultural cache, use in popular music (e.g. Tanqueray, Cristal), and so on, probably misses out quite a lot. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:36, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

And let's not forget the insane surge in the popularity of Jagermeister over the past 10-15 years, only made stronger by the horrible advent of the Jager Bomb. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:40, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Funny, I used to get free shots of Jaegermeister at a German bar-restaurant in the late 80's. Imagine my surprise when I found out people in NYC thought it was a delicacy in the 90's. Might as well mix Everclear, Karo and Nyquil. μηδείς (talk) 03:56, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Zip code - Canada?

Hi. I was recently attempting to register at a website open to American and Canadian residents, and it requested I enter a zip code. It would not accept a Canadian postal code. I'm wondering whether there is a specific default US-style zip code for all Canadians, and whether we have an article? Thanks. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 23:06, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd say they have a bug in their software. Canadian postal codes include letters as well as numbers, and they probably coded the web site to use an integer value, which, while appropriate for the 5 digit US ZIP code, can't work work for Canadian postal codes, and also might choke on the enhanced 9-digit US ZIP code, at least if the dash is included.

My suggestion, if they don't really need a ZIP code, is to make one up, like "12345". However, if they ever try to mail you anything, don't expect to get it. StuRat (talk) 23:30, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

When I worked in phone sales, we'd just put in 5 zeros and then make a note somewhere else in the order screen what the Canadian ZIP code should be. We eventually got a system that would recognize the letters and no longer had to resort to that. Dismas|^(talk) 00:38, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I usually just put 90210. If this is a site that may be mailing things to you, I would contact their customer service and explain the situation. Otherwise don't sweat it. 75.155.138.12 (talk) 01:39, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Add the Canadian postal code to the name of the city and use zeroes for the ZIP if nothing else works. Surprised you guys aren't used to this already and taught how to handle it in public school. μηδείς (talk) 03:48, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm surprised that the website designers haven't heard of Canada! Dbfirs 15:35, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

The above comment doesn't need to be small. That's a good point.. Usually it isn't an issue because the form designers take it into consideration. Mingmingla (talk) 16:58, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

It's not always so nefarious or ill intentioned. It could be that they previously didn't offer service to Canada and now do but the cost of upgrading their software is prohibitive. Or the bean counters at the company said that the company can't upgrade to a system that allows Canadian ZIP codes until the sales department can show that there is a cost benefit. Dismas|^(talk) 20:12, 1 August 2011 (UTC)