Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 May 1

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.

May 1

Chicken breast gender

So, I frequent a local butcher (one of the few advantages of living in a rural community is that there is still such a thing as a "local butcher" that one can go to for cuts of meat.) While conversing with her, she mentioned that some of the chicken breasts she had for sale were rooster (male) breasts. I didn't say anything at the time, (and having worked for a butcher for a short time in my youth, I thought I knew most of the "ins-and-outs" of the profession), but I suppose I had always assumed that the chicken breasts I purchased, whether from the butcher or the grocery store, were from female chickens. Is this not the case? What proportion is from male vs. female birds? Is there a difference? Is this something a consumer can inquire about at their local grocer? And does it bother anyone else that your chicken breasts might come from roosters? Thanks, Quinn ^✹SUNSHINE 03:12, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Why would you assume they're from female chickens? I would expect the ratio to be 50/50. It simply doesn't make economic sense to discriminate against one sex. Our article on broilers use the phrase "male and female" which implies both sexes are used. Perhaps you've confused broilers with egg-laying hens?173.32.168.59 (talk) 03:51, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

No I think that is the meat (excuse the pun) of my question: I had always assumed that they were from females (I don't know why), and I wonder if this is a commonly held misconception? Quinn ^✹SUNSHINE 04:10, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

And, furthermore, since we're getting into this, I guess, for reference desk purposes, I wonder if the gender of the meat (any meat) affects the taste, texture, etc? Quinn ^✹SUNSHINE 04:12, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't know how reliable this is, but it sounds plausible: This answer[1] claims that chickens raised for meat are slaughtered before they really reach sexual maturity, so the meat is basically the same either way. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:15, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I found a very interesting website that I think is industry associated, but nevertheless should answer any poultry husbandry issues you might have: [2]. This specifically [3] says that both male and female chickens are used for meat, but that the males are larger, and may be separated. Shadowjams (talk) 07:02, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Yes, that sounds right for modern factory farming. In earlier days, it was common to keeps the females for laying (and to eat them when they were too old to lay, but by then the meat was tougher and could hardly be called chicken), and to fatten up most males to be sold as capons. Dbfirs 07:07, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm a leg man, myself, so I dont have an opinon on this question. Benyoch^{...Don't panic! Don't panic!...} (talk) 07:11, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

And here's an antique, from Moran and Mack:

"We had a thousand chickens, and 999 of them laid eggs."

"What was wrong with the other one?"

"He was the head man."

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:53, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

No way I can provide a source for this, but I heard a local restauranter on radio recently saying that female pork tastes better than male pork. HiLo48 (talk) 07:19, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I think most female chickens are destined to lay eggs for commercial sale. See Chick sexing. Oda Mari (talk) 07:56, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

And are there any capons still about, or eunuchs as Quinn might know them! Richard Avery (talk) 08:56, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this is correct if you read the article carefully. My impression from this source [4], but which is also supported by our article you linked and broiler and to a lesser extent Chicken (food) and Poultry farming is that while such practices may have been common in the past, they're now rare particularly with large scale commercial breeders. Breeds have now specialised, with there being chicken breeds selected for egg laying, and others selected for meat. They usually don't bother keeping many of the male chicks coming from the egg laying lines, it's not considered worth it. So in terms of meat, the ratio is probably not far off 50/50, although there are some male chicks from egg laying lines, including some capons. On the other hand, some of the sources suggest male chickens can be more problematic because of fighting, although I haven't found any source which says any breeder selectively kills male chicks from meat lines nor and the sources also suggest it's less of a problem nowadays because the chickens are usually killed well before sexual maturity. (All these factors and I presume the increased consumer preference for lean meat make capons far less common then they once were.) Obviously as with others, I'm not surprised that a large percentage of the chickens we eat are male, after all they're called chickens not hens. Nil Einne (talk) 16:49, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I can answer the capon question. You have to give the capon time after the animal would have reached sexual maturity to develop the size, flavour, and fat content representative of the bird. The big producers aren't set up to produce capons - it would just be too different from their assembly-line production, and they make good money as is so why bother trying something that might fail? Many smaller producers raise capons, though, and you can find them at specialty markets in larger cities as well as at many farmer's markets. Although according to a friend of mine, capons are easier to find in Winnipeg than in New York City! --NellieBly (talk) 19:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Pork from male pigs may have boar taint which many find offensive.Sjö (talk) 15:16, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

TRIO (program)

What does TRIO stand for? The article and all government documents I can find refer to it as Federal TRIO Programs (TRIO) for some reason, as though that were supposed to explain the acronym. Is it even an acronym? 184.98.183.164 (talk) 06:51, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Could there be three answers to this question? Benyoch^{...Don't panic! Don't panic!...} (talk) 07:11, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

This tells me it's not an acronym, but was called Trio because there were originally 3 programs. It's since expanded to 7 programs but the original name (very confusingly, imo) remains. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 07:17, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Its craziness is milliganesque:

• In 1971 Spike published his first volume of autobiography, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, with the sub-title "The first part of my trilogy".
• Then in 1974 came "Rommel?" "Gunner Who?" - "the second part of my trilogy", and
• in 1976, Monty: His Part in My Victory - "the third part of my trilogy".
• Undaunted, in 1978 came Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall - "the fourth part of my increasingly misnamed trilogy". It also carried the message: "Don't be fooled this is the last, volume four of the war memoirs" (which itself was an exquisitely ambiguously worded sentence; read on).
• Again undaunted, he then proceeded to publish three more, for a total of seven volumes. He didn't call the latter three volumes "parts of his trilogy"; I guess he figured the joke had had its impact by then. But at least he acknowledged the absurdity of it with "increasingly misnamed". -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 22:09, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

See also The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels, a trilogy in five parts. I think Spike's work was quite a big influence for Douglas Adams, so this may not be a coincidence. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 08:11, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The first volume of the Hitchhiker books was first published in 1979, the year after the 4th instalment of Milligan's trilogy. It's hard to believe Adams would have come up with the same gag independently, particularly if he was a Milligan aficionado. So, no coincidence there, I'm afraid. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 12:22, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

United Nations

How many countries does the UN have? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.203.90.157 (talk) 09:04, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

See Member states of the United Nations. --Dweller (talk) 09:08, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

1/20 cents

What does it mean when it says on the back of coupons (in the US) that the case value is 1/20 cents? I can't see it meaning that if I hand the checkout guy in ShopRite twenty of them that I'll be able to get a penny back, but maybe that's what it means? DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 12:35, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

You'd probably have to send them to the manufacturer, so you'd be operating at a loss from the start. Here's a good write-up, even though it seems to assume you could get your penny at the grocery store. Searching "coupon cash value" will give myriad results for your further reading pleasure. --LarryMac | Talk 13:25, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/296/why-do-grocery-store-coupons-say-cash-value-1-20-of-a-cent

(ec) This page indicates that the practice has historical roots in the now-essentially-defunct trading stamps. Giving such stamps a face value was designed to curb some of the more serious abuses of the stamp issuers. However, a few U.S. states' rules regarding such stamps are written broadly enough to cover coupons as well, so U.S. coupons today continue to be printed with a negligible, nominal face value. I'm not sure what the legal obligations are surrounding redemption, however, and whether or not you'd have to mail them in to the issuer's head office. (That said – and as the linked page notes – I suspect that most shops would be willing to give you a penny just to make you go away.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:34, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

If you look in the archives, there was someone here who took a large number of coupons (I think Pizza Hut but I'm not sure) to somewhere to get 10 cents or a dollar or something. BTW, I'm also pretty sure I've seen this question discussed plenty of times before in general. Nil Einne (talk) 16:51, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

It was Pizza Hut and it is somewhere in the archives. Dismas|^(talk) 01:52, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The earlier thread is here, though it doesn't really add anything to this discussion. Deor (talk) 08:04, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually that's only part of the discussion, the OP later came back and said they had success changing their collected coupons. Nil Einne (talk) 09:19, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, that would be here. Deor (talk) 11:54, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Would Code-Talking still be effective in this era?

I'm not sure if this would go in Humanities or Computers, but I was wondering if Code talking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker) would be at all effective these days? There are a lot of languages with very small populations that still practice them, so I think it would be effective for casual people listening in, but then a friend mentioned that a computer could easily crack a code like this after n intercepts. For that matter, does language even matter for for cryptography these days? 142.244.35.108 (talk) 16:08, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

To me this seems reminiscent of Security through obscurity, or perhaps Security through minority, which has been fairly heavily discredited. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:13, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Once in written form, it should be relatively easy for a computer to break the code. However, spoken language is more difficult for a computer to deal with, since every speaker says each word a bit differently. So, a short bit of speech by somebody with a thick accent, that only a listener familiar with them can interpret, using a fair bit of context to fill in the gaps, in a language the computer doesn't know, would indeed be quite a tough code for a computer to break. StuRat (talk) 17:15, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

For similar reasons I suspect this to still be pretty tough. You are mixing something that humans are bad at (deciphering code) with something that computer are bad at (deciphering spoken language). 109.149.80.86 (talk) 23:22, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

There's a lot more known and published about linguistics now than in the 1940s. It may still be possible to find a language that's not well-documented but still has enough speakers, but there's still more linguists around now than in the 1940s and very few language families that aren't documented to some extent. And properly-implemented modern cryptography is very secure and considerably cheaper. --Colapeninsula (talk) 08:39, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

But if I understood the point of code talking correctly, the question is "is it faster?" 128.232.241.211 (talk) 11:57, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

My guess would be that its no faster than an encrypted phone and with a greater chance of misunderstanding. -- Q Chris (talk) 12:54, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

It still might have some advantages, though, like when planning an escape with a fellow POW in a room that might be bugged. And, unlike with the phone, merely capturing a code-talker does not automatically allow you to decipher messages, you first need to convince him to cooperate. (Although a smart code system would use different encoding between each pair of phones, so the capture of one phone wouldn't make all the phones insecure.) StuRat (talk) 17:17, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

There are some misunderstandings here. There are no "code-talkers" until you make them, and there is no natural language that has been used as "code". If you and I agree that "icecream" henceforth means "toothpick" and we don't tell anyone else, no computer in the world will be able to "crack" that. If you do that for an entire vocabulary, it's fool-proof. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 17:28, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I think you made a good point that the code talkers required extensive training to accomplish that task. But I'm wondering—can't computer programs be developed to detect the illogic of certain words in unlikely contexts? In how many illogical applications of the term "ice cream" are we or a computer program expected to remain un-alerted to an underlying problem? Bus stop (talk) 17:40, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Why can't you just use a pair of people who speak an obscure language, one as the communications officer in each of two camps which need to communicate ? (Note that there are obvious risks to this approach, like one of them being killed or disabled.) StuRat (talk) 18:25, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Any fixed code (where the same letter or word always translates into the same other letter or word) can be broken with a large enough sample. For example, if you notice the enemy always talking about "bicycles" whenever tanks are around, you might figure that word out, etc. StuRat (talk) 18:21, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Hm... except for, there are 10 different words used for "tank," interchanged randomly, and the same is done for all other words. Result is that "cat icecream washing tree ball" means exactly the same as "children worm hop holiday", and could of course also be rendered as "way moon woodpeaker bitter drink"... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 02:00, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

That would be too difficult and confusing for the code talkers. StuRat (talk) 02:04, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't. And isn't. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 20:28, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Can you provide a reference which says 'there are 10 different words used for "tank," interchanged randomly, and the same is done for all other words' ? StuRat (talk) 15:57, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

All that does is require an increased number of samples: if you've got ten words for "tank", that just means (at most) ten times as many samples are needed to figure out what's being said. You start getting real security when "cat icecream washing tree ball" means one thing today, and something entirely unrelated tomorrow. --Carnildo (talk) 02:47, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I think the original question concerned the use of people who are speakers of obscure natural languages (e.g. Navajo) on both ends of a communication circuit to provide security against interception. To a limited extent, this technique still has some benefit, as organizations like NSA always have difficulty hiring enough language experts, but they spend a lot on finding and training people with an aptitude for quickly learning new languages (see e.g. Defense Language Aptitude Battery) and machine translation is becoming more effective. Overall, I think the answer to the original question is no, Code-Talking does not provide reliable security in this era.--agr (talk) 18:49, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The big advantage of using Navaho was that only one book on "Teach Yourself Navaho" had ever been written, and only a few copies (12 maybe) had been printed. The US authorities were able to impound all the copies before the project went live. So the only way of decoding the speech was with a compliant native Navaho speaker. I have also read that Scottish Gaelic speakers were used by the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division during the Battle of France. I'm not an incryption expert, but I imagine that actually identifying an obscure language would take quite a long time, and then finding a way of translating it and decoding whatever information was in the translation would be even slower, by which time it would be old news. Alansplodge (talk) 21:41, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that identifying the language would take that long. There is free software that can detect Arabic, English, Farsi, French, German, Hindy, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, Tamil, Vietnamese. I would assume that given a larger budget you could develop software that would ID more languages. Of course you still then have to translate it. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 01:45, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

StuRat above asked "Why can't you just use a pair of people who speak an obscure language...". The problem is that obscure languages are frequently without the technical words needed. So they either have to develop the words or use English. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 01:49, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, in the Navaho example, they developed a code, so that the Navaho word for "bee" meant fighter, "turtle" meant a tank and so on. Alansplodge (talk) 12:04, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Bee, fighter; turtle, tank, doesn't seem so difficult to figure out, I hate to tell you. Bus stop (talk) 20:19, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

It would be difficult to someone with not only no knowledge of the language, but also no knowledge of which language they came from. Probably harder to get away with nowadays, though. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:27, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

horned gods

metal detecting in nothern italy i found a small bronze statue. male face, long beard, large horns. how to identify? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.29.222.182 (talk) 18:19, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

According to the National Council for Metal Detecting any archaeological finds must be reported to the Carabinieri or the local Superintendency of Arts. Although we do not give legal advice here, I suggest you do this before attempting to identify it. If you have already taken this step, I suggest uploading a photo so that volunteers can have a go at helping you identify the object. Leave a message here if you need help getting the photos online. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 18:26, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Only an expert could offer an authoritative identification, but if it is really an ancient find, it could be an image of Cernunnos. Marco polo (talk) 19:53, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Given it was found in Italy, I would have thought that Pan was a more likely ancient god. --Dweller (talk) 13:37, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

In some countries you are also expected to stop digging after finding something of archaeological value, so take care with what you say. And do not try to cross any border with this statue. 88.14.194.7 (talk) 21:24, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, a bit late now! Richard Avery (talk) 07:44, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The reason that I suggested Cernunnos rather than Pan is that the statue was found in northern Italy, which was for several centuries dominated by the Celts of Cisalpine Gaul. Of course, if the statue dates from the subsequent (pre-Christian) Roman period, it might also be Pan. Marco polo (talk) 15:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)