Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 May 5

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May 5

Generational differences

I have noticed that the older generation often complain that the present day younger lot are lazy and shirk physical labour. They also say that the Gen Y are materialistic and have turned their face on traditional occupations like agriculture, carpentry etc which require physical labour. How true is this? Sumalsn (talk) 02:02, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Must be; it's a universal that every generation when they get old think the next generation are a bunch of lazy bums. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 02:13, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I've occasionally seen quotes to that effect that are like 2,000 years old. However, I do like the way Larry Miller said it in his standup act: "My father worked 3 jobs and went to school at night. If I have to go to the bank and the cleaners in the same day, I need a nap. And if the next generation is even lazier than mine, I can see myself telling my son, 'In my day, we didn't have jet-packs; we had to drive to school!'" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:04, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

You had it soft (video). Cuddlyable3 (talk) 08:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

This study doesn't address laziness per se, but it goes to show that (at least in the last 30 years or so) young people aren't really changing that much in a variety of important dimensions. Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:10, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As I approach age 50, I think that I would be considered in the "older generation" by many, and I take the opposite view. I think that young people today are harder-working and more open to physical labor than people in my generation were at their age. Life was relatively easy when I was young in the 1980s. It's much harder now to get a job that will pay the rent. It used to be that jobs like trash removal and street sweeping would only be taken by desperate immigrants or ex-cons, but I am seeing more and more able-bodied, native-born young people taking these jobs. Similarly, there is much more interest among young people today in agriculture and other hands-on jobs than there was in my day. Of course, this is purely anecdotal. Marco polo (talk) 18:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but can anyone further elaborate? Sumalsn (talk) 01:47, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

The US and most Western nations have moved steadily from agriculture to manufacturing and now into lower paid service industries. In the case of agriculture, it still occurs on a massive scale here, but the automation is such that far fewer workers are needed now. In the case of manufacturing, that has largely moved to China, where lower wages and lack of regulation allows companies to operate more cheaply. So, the observation that fewer people now work in agriculture and carpentry is likely correct (although carpenters are still needed for wood homes that are built on-site). Attributing that to "laziness" is iffy, though. It's more likely that those jobs just don't exist anymore. StuRat (talk) 04:54, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I believe that very little fundamentally changes between generations. The exceptions are progress. Every generation believes the version after it is lazier, and every subsequent generation believes the one before it was worse. Cultural changes are real, and not every new version is forward progress, but we're all virtually the same DNA and generational conflicts are, by and large, comically self-interested. Teasing out the real changes is a much more interesting, and relevant task, and it's unfortunately clouded by this kind of self-interested thinking. Shadowjams (talk) 05:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Also note that modern devices do tend to require less physical effort from us. The changes in earlier generations, say with the introduction of the car and washing machine, reduced labor far more than in our generation, though. One labor saving device I appreciate is touch tone phones. The rotary dial phones were painful to use when you needed to make mass callings. (Unfortunately, that probably means touch tone phones are to be blamed for the rise of telemarketers.) Another labor-saving device I appreciate is the computer/printer combo, in place of the typewriter. So, while I expect that older generations would have been "lazy" if they had the opportunity, they didn't. StuRat (talk) 07:05, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Printer cartridges and car washing? Rotary phones? Shadowjams (talk) 08:07, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

But ink tapes on typewriters needed replacing, too, and horses also needed washing and brushing. Unlike with a car, a horse kept wet and dirty might get sick. StuRat (talk) 00:19, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I do hope you don't seriously believe present day telemarketers use touch tone phones Nil Einne (talk) 11:10, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Not now, no. Back then, when they first came in. StuRat (talk) 00:19, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Cicero said the same thing about 2000 years ago. 92.28.243.102 (talk) 11:55, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

We have an article 'sort of' on the bias of seeing the past as better than the present Rosy retrospection and the saying 'memoria praeteritorum bonorum'. Essentially - as others have noted - this is something that (at least some within) every generation in history has said about the next generation coming through. ny156uk (talk) 21:38, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

These young whippensnappers have it too easy, they'd never believe how hard we had it :) Dmcq (talk) 23:12, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Some comedian said years ago "Back when I was a kid, we lived in a stone hut under the mud, under the water at the bottom of a lake. Our father beat us to death each morning. Then we had to walk uphill to school, pulling a 20 ton rock." His partner replied, "Yeah, and when you tell kids that today, they don't believe you." Edison (talk) 01:53, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

See the link right above your post. It's at the end. StuRat (talk) 02:03, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

And if you didn't know it was the Monty Python team and not just "some comedian", then ... then ... I must be even older than I think. Oh, also, Cuddlyable3 linked the video way up above, only 4 posts in ("You had it soft"). Write out 100 times: "I must read entire threads to get all the context". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:15, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

And the old extension to that type of joke, "We had to walk 20 miles to and from school each day; and it was uphill both ways." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:52, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

That certainly puts a new slant on it. StuRat (talk) 17:50, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Especially so in the Fall, of our House of Escher. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

As mentioned in Four Yorkshiremen sketch (yes, a whole article just for that sketch), it predates Monty Python, though two of the future Pythons co-wrote it. -- BenRG (talk) 07:12, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

North Korea World Cup shirt

Hello, I have been collected World Cup jerseys for about 5 years and recently have began searching for a 2010 DPRK soccer jersey to no avail. Can anyone find one on the web or preferably ebay/Amazon? Thank you in advance.

I googled [north korea world cup jersey 2010] and several entries came up. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:47, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I did the same but a lot of them are either articles about the rarity of the jersey (this was at the time of the World Cup), a bogus link or are just plain not in stock. --Endlessdan (talk) 15:14, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I googled "North Korea World Cup replica shirt" (In BrEng we call them shirts - this might help you) I assumed you're not looking for a shirt that's actually been used by a player, so it's a replica you're after. This led me to this site, but there were loads of others. --Dweller (talk) 10:09, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

As a native BrEng speaker I would say that 'jersey' is a fairly common and definately acceptable word --iamajpeg (talk) 11:51, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Certainly acceptable, but rarely used for football tops. Compare "Norwich City football jersey" (6 hits) with "Norwich City football shirt" (56,500 hits). I'm trying to help the questioner's Googling, not correct their English. --Dweller (talk) 12:38, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I would note nothing in that site appear to be for the 2010 World Cup final. Some are for the 1966 World Cup, one is for the 1970 team (or something) and one is for the 2010 World Cup qualification. However [1] [2] appears to be what the OP is looking for and a search for North Korea legea or North Korea 2010 legea may find more (there was [3] on eBay before). [4] mentions how a number of them were sold so it seems they are out there. Nil Einne (talk) 11:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

A little off-track, but in sports the term "jersey" technically means a pullover, while a "shirt" has buttons. Hence, American football players wear jerseys and baseball players wear shirts. However, the terms are often used interchangeably. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:58, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

The articles shirt and jersey (clothing) don't seem to make that distinction. 81.98.38.48 (talk) 09:35, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Definitely a blurring or cross-blending.[5][6] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:21, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

What is the font used in airport diagram?

Hello, dear Wikipedians. Time has come for me to ask for your assistance again.

Concerning airport diagrams, such as

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/NKM_airport_diagram.png or

http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/El_dorado_airport_diagram.PNG/260px-El_dorado_airport_diagram.PNG

- which font is in use on these diagrams?

Thank you in advance!

80.213.11.105 (talk) 23:15, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The closest match I could find is 'Geometric 706 Medium' - not sure about the capital A, though. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:34, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

So far those "find a font" websites are about a million wrong answers to every right answer. Just saying. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

It's Futura Book or one of the many essentially identical fonts (e.g. Twentieth Century). But probably Futura Book. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

If you want a definite answer your best bet may be asking the FAA. From what I can tell all these originate from them. You can find similar PDFs for US airports (with the same header etc), not sure where these foreign airport ones came from but they appear to be the same thing and if you look at the sourcing info it usually indicates they came from an FAA or someone else in the US government's PDF. Anyway the PDFs I found aren't made in a way which preserves the font info at least having tried several tools including Acrobat Pro I don't think they are however someone in the FAA may be willing to tell you. Alternatively [7] [8] have a lot more text I think from the same font so perhaps that will help. Nil Einne (talk) 10:34, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

It's Futura... trying to ask the FAA is going to enter you into a world of bureaucracy. I say this as someone who once edited manuals like this for a governmental agency. The agencies themselves rarely do layout work; they farm that out to contractors. It's Futura. Leave it at that... --Mr.98 (talk) 13:08, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Every single airport diagram appears to use the same template and this is going back 5+ years with a new diagram evidentally being made every 6 months or something so there must be someone with a template (most likely it's a fairly automatic process). Also it seems Acrobat Distiller was used to produce one of the documents, GNU Ghostscript another and the diagrams themselves are all made with dgn2pdf. It doesn't seem likely the font is as mysterious as you seem to think. Perhaps the US government is more screwed up then I expected but I find it hard to believe you'll enter a world of bureaucracy. Most likely when you e-mail them you'll either get a response (pontentially up to months later) or won't get a response. I don't see why they'll ask you to fill out a form in triplicate to find out what the font is, but then again as I said perhaps I'm overestimating the US government. Nil Einne (talk) 13:58, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I can tell you: the US government is more screwed up than you expect. :-) I had my dose of working for government bureaucracies, and it was plenty... I don't think the font is mysterious at all (it's Futura! One of the most common modern font faces out there! Known to designers everywhere on sight alone!), I just don't think you're going to get a word from anyone in the government without lots of pointless struggling, because nobody who will field your questions will have the slightest idea where these diagrams are put together. The work I did in these kinds of diagrams (in a tiny cubicle, all day long) was done literally hundreds of miles away from the government agency that eventually tacked their names onto them. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:12, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

OP here! Thank you kindly. =) 80.213.11.105 (talk) 17:11, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I sent the following to the 9-AMC-Aerochart FAA e-mail address (it was a tossup between that and an e-mail for the airport diagrams) not long after my final post above

Hi,

I'm wondering if you could tell me what font is used in the airport diagrams produce by Aeronav and shown on the FAA site http://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/diagrams/. For example http://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/1105/00762AD.PDF and http://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/1105/00610AD.PDF . I mean the font used for most of the text like the AIRPORT DIAGRAM and the text in the diagram. I believe the same font is used for these documents http://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/1105/frntmatter.pdf and http://aeronav.faa.gov/content/aeronav/online/airportdiagrams/legendAD.pdf . Unfortunately the way the PDF is produced means the font is not shown in the PDF (some of them show Helvetica but this is clearly not the font used for most of the text). I believe it may be Futura but I'm not sure.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Here is the god-awful bureaucracy I received in reply today:

Good Afternoon,

Most of the text on an Airport Diagram (except for the identifier) is Futura.

Best regards,

(snipped signature)

since I did mention Futura (I decide there was no reason to exclude what I knew, it wasn't primarily intended as a test) I appreciate it is possible that was just made that up or the respondent was a font expert and guessed or even that they searched and found this thread but I personally find these explainations less likely then they just checked whatever they had (or even knew off hand).

As I said above, I'm not saying you will always be so lucky, but I'm a strong believer there's no harm in trying. And both government agencies and companies, in developed countries anyway, can be quite responsive to e-mails even those that are on relatively trivial matters. (Although sometimes they can also be quite slow, in this time I would say it was fast considering it was caught in the weekend.) If you think that's a waste of their time, that's up to you but if it's a relatively straightforward question and you are genuinely interested in the answer and they can ultimately provide what is likely to be the most accurate answer, I personally don't see the harm.

P.S. Just to be clear, I didn't do this to make fun of anyone or to prove anyone wrong. I'm a strong believer that a lot of questions can easily be answered with a search and failing that asking the appropriate people. Sometimes it may be better or easier to ask somewhere like here but often it seems people may not be aware of the alternative so I do try to illustrate that when I can.

Nil Einne (talk) 23:36, 10 May 2011 (UTC)