Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 July 31

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July 31

Hands around the nose and mouth

There's a kind of gesture whereby the person cups their nose and mouth with their hands. It's usually a sign of surprise, whether good or bad. And it seems to be something that women do more than men.

Does it have a name, what's it meant to be doing, and why is it more of a woman thing?

PS. I was thinking about asking this question a few hours ago. In the meantime I was watching a TV show, in which a surprising thing happened in the story line, and in response a male character did the hand thing around his nose. It did seem to be an unusual behaviour, coming from a man, whereas had it been a woman I wouldn't have blinked twice. Fwiw. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:56, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I think I know what you mean, but I don't know the name of the gesture. I've looked in List of gestures, but can't see anything there that sounds like what you're talking about. It's not a facepalm, but it's similar enough that I looked there in the hope it might be mentioned as a "see also", but it isn't. Iapetus (talk) 09:40, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I think you will find this gesture is only employed in company, which suggests the person wants to conceal her facial expression at that moment. 2A00:23C6:2403:E900:C082:245:B6E4:3992 (talk) 10:45, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

A referenced article called Body Language of Hand Covering or Cupping The Mouth suggests: "Synonym(s): Cupping The Mouth, Mouth Slap, Slapping The Mouth, Hand Slapping The Mouth". Alansplodge (talk) 11:23, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

The article Body language has this to say: "Covering one's mouth suggests suppression of feeling and perhaps uncertainty. This could also mean that they are thinking hard and may be unsure of what to say next." This does not seem to cover the gesture as a sign of surprise or sudden dismay. When performed in a slapping motion, I associate sudden mouth cupping with situations in which others might say, "O My God... O My God..." – which also seems more often used in such situations by women, at least in the US. -- Lambiam

It might have to do with "politeness", as with covering one's mouth while yawning. And I recall this bit from Mary Poppins, when she does something magical and the kids are watching in open-mouthed astonishment: "Close your mouths, please. We are not codfish." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:52, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

What I'm talking about isn't really about the mouth per se. The index fingers are pointed into the inner corners of the eyes, the palms cover the the nose, and only by extension cover the mouth. If it were just about covering the mouth, the nose and eyes wouldn't be involved at all. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 13:20, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Like this? Alansplodge (talk) 14:24, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

No, not at all. Sorry. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Or is it like in this video clip: see especially 1:28. At that timestamp Mel Giedroyc has just surprised herself (and everybody else!) by accidentally burping very loudly during a TV programme. She uses what I believe to be the "cups nose and mouth with hands" gesture you are referring to in a mixture of surprise and embarrassment. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 14:56, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Aha! Yes, that is exactly what I'm talking about. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

It's rather famously used by former SNL character Stefon. Our article doesn't display the gesture, but this is it. Matt Deres (talk) 22:42, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

That's a version of it; the nose is still partly visible up the top. The one I mostly see is where, as I said above, the index fingers are in the corners of the eyes, or touch each other above the top of the nose, and nothing of the nose can be seen at all. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 03:12, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

By now technical question...

Here is my (correct), definitive request on this matter: as regards the punched card systems, the monitors of the computers connected to the machines, in addition to the names of the candidates and their respective votes, they also showed the numbers of the percentages of the cast votes? I mean, did the machine automatically calculate the percentage, or did poll workers have to process it "by hand?" I don't know if you can help me satisfy my curiosity, I would be happy, otherwise thank you very much the same. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.41.100.198 (talk) 13:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Assuming this is the ongoing nitpicking about punch-cards in Florida, voting results are not displayed in polling locations. When I lived in Hawaii, there was a push to ban results from being displayed in any way until polls closed in Hawaii. It just feels a bit pointless to go vote after work when all the TV stations have already declared a winner. So, if you are claiming that there are monitors in the voting location that display the voting results, I wonder where you read that such a thing existed. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 15:11, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't believe that they are suggesting there is a running tally displayed during voting, but is instead asking what reports the individual tabulators generate once the polls have closed.

To the questioner, I would be very surprised if the individual tabulators did generate percentages, as it would be of little use. I'd expected them to have instead reported the total number of votes cast, the number of valid votes for each candidate, the number of undervotes (where no candidate is selected), and the number of spoiled ballots (or overvotes). We really need a tabulator manual or set of election official instructions to answer this for you, but we've previously failed you in that regard.

You are weirdly obsessed with this ... and I respect that! Drop me a note on my talk page as I might be able to find out more for you when I next travel to Florida. This election was certainly a big deal in the US, and there has been a great deal of study on the voting mechanisms and their impact on the results, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is a room in a museum somewhere with a butterfly ballot, vote recorder, tabulator and all! If I ask around, I might be able to get some more specific information for you, perhaps even scoring a copy of a tabulator manual! -- ToE 16:31, 31 July 2020 (UTC) Edit: s/voting machine/tabulator/ -- ToE 22:35, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Why would each machine display a percentage? Unless you were dealing with a TINY polling place with only the one machine, the percentages for any particular machine would not matter for anything. Even the percentages for a particular polling place would be of no importance as there would probably be multiple polling locations in one voting district. The counts for any single machine would be no more of interest than the counts for votes cast by people living in one particular house. --Khajidha (talk) 17:54, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

The original tabulating machines were not connected to a computer; electronic computers had not been invented yet. Until the mid-1960s, when minicomputers were developed, computers were mainframes, costing in the order of a million dollars. The early minicomputers were cheaper than a house, but more expensive than a new car; no way a voting district would have been able to afford them in these days. By the time they became affordable, they were still not cheaper than an electronic voting machine; if punched cards were used at all, they were still tabulated separately. The same holds for optical scanners. If there were uses of computers directly connected to punched card systems, there is no reason to assume they worked the same way across the US; counties can purchase whatever system and technology they consider the best choice given the available budget; what the computer monitors show will depend on the software and can be adjusted according to the wishes of the buyers.  --Lambiam 16:50, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

10x the money

What would happen to the U.S. economy of everyone in the U.S. suddenly had 10 times the money they have now? How would it be affected? Heyoostorm (talk) 15:31, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry if this is qualified as a speculative question and can't be answered here. Heyoostorm (talk) 15:36, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Quite right, however some insight is available at Money creation. Alansplodge (talk) 16:16, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Different schools of thought in economics predict different effects; compare the Keynesian view with the monetarist view as sketched in the article on Inflation. If someone would be so kind as to perform the experiment, we could observe which view came closest to what actually transpired.  --Lambiam 16:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

In theory, a universal 10x revaluation or devaluation of a national currency such as the US dollar could be promulgated immediately so that US incomes, prices and deposits stay balanced. Effects on international trade will depend on whether trading partners accept proportional adaptation of existing contracts or seek renegotiations. A historical example happened in France January 1960 when the French franc was revalued, with 100 existing francs making one nouveau franc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.209.119.241 (talk) 17:22, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Although it is common to refer to a currency change as that from the old to the new franc as a "revaluation", it is actually a redenomination, in which a currency is converted to a different currency – although, in this case, to one having (partly) the same name. But in terms of economic effect the name of the currency is not relevant; the operation was not essentially different from when, on January 1st 1992, 1,936.27 Italian lira where converted to just 1 euro. The effective purchasing power of consumers was not affected (apart from some shop keepers allegedly excessively "rounding up" their prices in the new denomination).  --Lambiam 14:05, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Lambiam compares as "not essentially different" the French franc revaluation that had mostly cosmetic effect on coinage and notes, and had minimal effect on the continuing national inflation, with the sudden adoption in 1999 by Italy of the common currency of the Eurozone monetary union of 19 countries. Financial policies controlled by the ECB initially had intended positive effects such as newly attractive stable conditions for international trade, cooperation and tourism, and low borrowing interest see [1] that persisted, to the joy of consumers who bought houses and cars, until the misery a decade later of the European debt crisis. In retrospect, adoption of the euro is thought to have contributed to a sense of European unity, made France and Italy poorer relative to their neighbour Germany, and incidentally netted for France a windfall income of €550 million unexchanged franc notes. ~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.209.119.241 (talk) 16:09, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

These were not effects of the conversion itself, but of giving up the power to set national monetary policy by handing it over to a supranational entity.  --Lambiam 18:54, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

This can be answered from a statistical economics viewpoint. It isn't a theory that as incomes rise, costs of goods and services rise. If we throw out the "suddenly" part of the question, we can compare now (mean income between $60k and $70k) to the late 1960s (mean income between $6k and $7k). Pick just about anything that was for sale back then and is still for sale now. The Big Mac index is popular. It was 45 cents in 1967. It is $5.60 now. There is a forced skew in the numbers. Minimum wage forces lower incomes to rise, squishing the lower end of the curve into a spike. I specifically use the cost of Big Macs, gasoline, bread, milk, and bus fares in statistical analysis courses. Related to wage (mean, median, whatever), costs rise as wages increase. You have macroeconomics where national costs increase as national wages increase. You have microeconomics, where local costs increase as local wages increase. Seattle is a good example. The costs are unreasonable because the wages are high. The solution is to raise wages, which increases costs, which increases wages, which increases costs. I use other countries for comparison. China is an example where wages and costs are not aligned in the same way because the government controls costs of many goods and services. We could have the United States government create a law that regulate the cost of fast food. They've done that in the past with airline tickets. They could demand that all fast food hamburgers cost exactly $5.00. Then, if everyone made more money, they could purchase more hamburgers because the cost would not change. But, the restaurant is now paying 10x the salaries while bringing in the same income. Why would anyone stay in that business? Shut it down and move on to something profitable. Or, have government regulate all wages, all costs, and assign everyone a specific job to ensure all goods and services are supplied. As you can see, this topic quicky goes from "Everyone can be rich" to "Nobody owns anything." Yes, I know that the correct viewpoint is that "everyone owns everything." I just don't agree. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 19:13, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Statistical data cannot show us that rising incomes cause the costs of goods and services to rise, only that there is a correlation. The chain of causation might go the other way, or both could be influenced by common factors. For the rest, you are responding to the question by forwarding your own viewpoint as if it is the only valid way of analyzing things. That is not what the reference desk is for.  --Lambiam 20:20, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Nixon tried wage and price controls in the early 70s. The result was shortages, famously with gasoline - long lines forming, as with the COVID testing sites now. Which, in its own way, is a similar example of supply not keeping up with demand. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:57, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

The petrol shortages and queueing might have had a little bit to do with the 1973 oil crisis as well. Fgf10 (talk) 07:23, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

As the article notes, they were interrelated. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:14, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Aside from the long comment about Seattle and China (quite off base on both), the subject is fairly well covered by others. The sole concern about adding another zero to Mr. Washington’s greenback is international: what will trade and investment partners do? Does the dollar rapidly become untrustworthy? Have the international terrorists and drug lords just lost their life’s earnings, because they can’t convert their dirty cash to new bills? No one knows. DOR (HK) (talk) 17:38, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

The way I interpret the question, it is not about a currency redenomination, but a much more imaginary scenario in which a fairy appears, waves her wand over the US and chants, Pro omnibus e pluribus multitudo decuplata – and suddenly everyone finds their wallets bursting at the seams because the bills therein have magically multiplied tenfold in number, while prices have not yet caught on. It is as if everyone at the same time won a big prize in the lottery, except for the poor (ten times nothing is still nothing). So now you can suddenly afford the smartphone/wedding ring/car/home/yacht that was out of your financial reach. Except that this holds for everyone, so there will be an acute shortage of some stuff that lasts till a new macroeconomic equilibrium is reached. More suitable for an SF author than for speculating on here.  --Lambiam 19:15, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

It would mean that a chicken egg that used to cost 10c yesterday would cost 100c the next day. A day's labor of an unskilled worker was $20 yesterday and is $200 the next day. Anything you buy in a store is 10x more expensive in denomination, and any work you do earns you 10x more in denomination. Your daily work would buy you the same number of eggs. An hour of your labor remains exchangable for your neighbour's hour of work.

Changing the value of currency neither creates nor destroys wealth. When European countries switched from national currencies to the Euro no value was created. Just the accounting unit was divided or multiplied by some number.

I used to be a millionaire in my old currency. Then we got the Euro and my wealth was divided by a pretty big number. No worry, the Euro I had could buy me the exact same number of chicken eggs as the day before. 85.76.65.201 (talk) 19:21, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

What you are describing is a currency redenomination. Did you read what I wrote?  --Lambiam 12:07, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I read what you wrote. What you are describing is currency redenomination combined with debt reallocation. If you owe someone you win, if someone owes money to you you are screwed. Bank accounts get wiped out, house loans get cancelled. For everyone that has no substantial incoming or outgoing debt, you are describing currency redenomination. If you define your scenario so that debts (a bank to you in the form of a savings account, you to housing lender, etc) are adjusted by the same 10x in the great re-allocation, we fall back to just plain old currency redenomination.

After the great 10x adjustment, if you are a barber, you will charge 10x the amount for a haircut. When you take that money to the baker's, he will charge 10x for a loaf of bread. Except for the money in your pocket, and the loans you have incoming/outgoing, all you have done is redenominated your currency. 85.76.65.201 (talk) 16:08, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Translated to econ-speak, you're simply asking, "Is money neutral?" As that article states most economists have come around to the idea that money is not, at least in the short run. For instance, even adjustable rate debts are usually only adjusted periodically. If $100,000 appeared in your bank account tomorrow, you could pay off a debt of that amount or less in full unless a bank holiday were declared. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:57, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Here's a real-world example, quite recent but on a smaller scale: The US government sent checks for $1,200 to millions of people. If you're assuming prices spiked, you're wrong: inflation slowed from February to June. It turns out adding cash does not cause inflation in the absence of demand. DOR (HK) (talk) 16:10, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Those payments aren't new dollars, though; they're from government borrowing. The question is about directly increasing the money supply by creating new money. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 18:53, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Which part of Money Supply didn’t you understand?DOR (HK) (talk) 01:11, 5 August 2020 (UTC)