Wikipedia:Reference desk archive/Miscellaneous/2006 August 9

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[edit] Brave New World

I remember trying to read that a long time ago, but it was distressing so I stopped. Anyways, I remember reading near the beginning about a laundry girl, I think it was, who had a condition meaning her teeth were red... or something... and it had something to do with coral too, I think. What was that? I realise it's probably not anything real. Could I have an explanation, please? Vitriol 03:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Well I searched the online text link at the end of the article it did not take me long to find:
"Henry!" Her smile flashed redly at him–a row of coral teeth.
As the proceeding line mentions lupus I looked that up here at this very encyclopaedia and—discounting a Japanese rugby team—guessed that it may have been Lupus erythematosus Huxley was referring to, which mentions tooth reddening. Do you see how easy this internet thingy is? MeltBanana 14:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] animal census

I am doing a movie on human population worldwide and am looking for comparison with other semi-large animals to illustrate our proliferation. For instance, I have found that there are just under 1 billion sheep worldwide. I would like to compare with number of cattle, pigs, horses, coyotes or any other animal near our size worldwide. Thanks, Robert Simpson–

You can use the United Nations FAOStat website ([1]) for domestic animals. Search for "live animals" using "World" for the country. Pigs came in at almost 961,000,000 in 2005. Rmhermen 16:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Just count the legs and divide by four. --DLL .. T 18:56, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nike + Ipod

The Apple company has recently introduced what they call "Nike + Ipod". It is an excellent idea; one has a chip in his or her Nike shoe and it communicates with his or her Ipod making it act like an exercising database. The Ipod visibly and audibly informs the user of times, pace, calories burned, et cetera. This is all truly wonderful and I support the idea in full, however, this technology is only available for the Ipod nano; this, on the other hand, I absolutelly do not support and do not understand. Would it not be better for the Apple and Nike companies and thier customers if this technology were compatible for the video Ipods, or, better yet, all Ipods of all sizes and generations? Thank you in advance for your time and thought.

I would think the reason for this is that the iPod nano is a flash memory-based device, whereas the video iPods and all other iPods (apart from the iPod shuffle which doesn't have the screen or computing power to do this) use a small hard disk for storage. Now hard disks don't take all that kindly to being "jogged" around, while flash-memory being solid state has no moving parts and is less likely to be damaged by the owner running around with the iPod in their pocket. --Canley 08:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I would think the reason is they are trying to make the nano more appealing in the hop that you'll buy one, even though you don't need one. Philc TECI 13:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
No, Canley is right. The hard-disk based iPods are unsuitable for any exercise more intense than walking. Taiq 13:54, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much, I fully understand now.

Maybe you have an ipod that isn't Nano and you are concerned. :p --Proficient 11:55, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] mixametosis

Is there no article on mixametosis,the search turned up nothing, but then the search features pretty rubbish. Philc TECI 13:33, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Your spelling is not exactly miraculous either. Try myxomatosis. JackofOz 13:41, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Still patronizing......
I googled mixemetosis, and used the did you mean, because I thought that would correct my spelling, obviously it didnt work. Philc TECI 19:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

JackofOz has a point about your spelling, I do believe in the power of correction though :

"but then the search features pretty rubbish", don't you think it's a little strange this sentence has NO verb? Evilbu 13:47, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Your not reading it right, features is a verb. MeltBanana 14:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
No you're not reading it right (Philc's creative punctuation). 'IT' is the verb, as in 'But then the search feature is pretty rubbish'.--Anchoress 15:43, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I missed an apostrophe ok? Are you done now? Philc TECI 19:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
A) Who are you? and B) Who are you talking to?--Anchoress 17:34, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I take offence at the suggestion that our contributions here are "pretty rubbish". Pretty can be a very insulting word, you know.  :--) JackofOz 14:47, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
If the 'search features pretty rubbish', that means that, when one searches, one is encouraged by a presentation of artwork made from re-used rubbish. Maybe I should look for this feature in my preferences. — Gareth Hughes 15:04, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually, this sentence no verb. --LarryMac 15:50, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
If you googled, then used "did you mean", I think your comments about the search feature being rubbish are misdirected. The searching was done by Google, not Wikipedia. Wikipedia's search feature isn't much cop as it happens, but your comments would carry more weight if you'd used it. Notinasnaid 17:52, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
But when I asked the question I didnt know I had mispelled it. Philc TECI 19:34, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I tried a Google search with the misspelling and it did not prompt me with the familiar "did you mean ...?" There were approximately four pages of results with that spelling, actually. By the time I'd worked my way back to Wikipedia and Rabbits in Australia, Jack had provided the correct spelling. --LarryMac 20:54, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Now that you've got that out of your system, you might think about putting redirects together for likely mis-spellings of the word. Such as mixamatosis, mixematosis, mixemetosis, mixametosis, myxematosis, myxamatosis, myxemetosis, myxametosis, myxometosis, myxymatosis, myxymetosis, mixymatosis, mixymetosis &c. --Tagishsimon (talk)
Excuse me? Now that I've got that out of my system? Is there a reason for that tone? Pardon me for relating a data point based on the experience I had when making an honest attempt to answer the posted query. I think it's time I left the RDs for awhile. --LarryMac 12:53, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
This is a bad example because Myxo is admittedly very tricky. But as a general principle I have never liked our system of redirects from bad spellings. It does not foster people learning the correct spelling of words, but basically reinforces and rewards bad spelling. If you don't actually need the right spelling, why bother ever learning it? - this seems to be the prevailing principle. I don't have a problem with the principle of quick navigation to desired information, but I wonder if the price we are paying for it is too high. JackofOz 23:19, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I think it is wishful to think that failing to find the article is more likely to improve spelling than is redirecting to the correct spelling. Nor do I think we should place a premium on drilling spelling into users' heads at the cost of denying them ease of access to information. Finally I note that in the example in this case, Google did indeed suggest the myxy~ spelling, reminding us that this business of a consensus on spelling is a someone doubtful proposition. Other than those small points I am with you all the way, Jack. Although I'm not clear about what you think the price of the redirects is. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Bad spelling redirects are both a good idea and a bad idea. I keep spelling Manitoba as Manitobia. Without the red link I wouldn't notice that I had the wrong spelling. On the other hand, if the wrong spelling redirect does not exist, then when a user types it in and gets nothing, they may (and have) create duplicate articles. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 00:08, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, people can type in what they think is the spelling, and go immediately via a redirect to the right page, without ever realising their spelling was crap. Thus the error is perpetuated. Languages change, and ultimately change cannot be resisted, but this type of change is closer to corruption than what I'd call any sort of positive change. I know we're supposed to move with the times, but I still place a much higher value on correct spelling, grammar, punctuation etc than seems to be the common view these days. Maybe I'm the one who's out of step. On the other hand, Wikipedia also values these principles in the texts of our articles - yet in other of our activities we abandon them on the altar of user convenience. I know there's no "right" answer to this, but it's worth talking about. JackofOz 01:48, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
If I could dream of an ideal set of features for MediaWiki, included would be some special handling for members of category:Redirects from misspellings. For example, a link to such a redirect would appear in red, like a non-existant link, or maybe in orange or something. Also, when arriving at a page via such a redirect, a special misspelling message would appear at the top--something a bit more prominent than the current "redirected from..." message. Or instead of having a redirect page, we could have a "did you mean...?" page, with one or more possible articles for the misspelled word. If we could couple this with the orange link I mentioned earlier, it would address a significant weakness in our current handling of misspellings. –RHolton≡– 05:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Jack, as the English orthography#History of the English spelling system points out standard spelling was not really set until the 1800s. That may give some indication as to why a lot of people have problems with correctly spelling certain words. Usually though if people do get redircted via a misspelling there is not at the top saying where you were redirected from. When I started editing Wikipedia I realized that due to my poor spelling ability I would need to have dictionaries available in my text editor and a general dictionary. I then found that I now spell words based on a mixture of commonwealth and US spelling. As seen above I spell "realized" with a z but at the same time I spell "colour" with the u. Another problem I have is with words that are spelt correctly but are the wrong word. The one I have a problem with most often is "please" as I frequently type in "pleas". Of course the spellchecker never catches that. One thing that can be done if you are interested in correcting spelling errors is to type a common mispelling into the search box and see what turns up. Try typing "commen" and "comman" to see what turns up. However, context must be observed. As an example there were several pages using the word "Inuits" as a plural for "Inuit". Of course "Inuit" is the plural of "Inuk". I went to correct one of them and found that it was the title of a book and could not be corrected. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 12:09, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Wow. o.O --Proficient 11:56, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unidentified Boston man

Hey, all you Bostonians, here's one for you. Many years ago, I kept a magazine clipping about a man who was found dead on a Boston street. He'd been beaten up, as I recall, and he may have been of Middle Eastern appearance. He had no documents of any kind on him, and all the resources of the authorities proved fruitless in ever being able to identify him. The thing I remember most was the date he was found: 12th July 1973. I kept the clipping for years in my "You Never Know When you Might Need This" file, but I gave it to my former partner for old times sake after we split up, because he happened to be born on, you guessed it, 12th July 1973. Does anybody remember this case, and did the guy ever get identified? I won't sleep till I find out. JackofOz 14:06, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... the boston globe unfortunately only has recent archives starting 1979... a google search was not fruitful, but you probably have tried that already. The best I can do is direct you to insomnia :) --User:bmk
I am sure him being unidentified doesn't help. :\ --Proficient 11:57, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
The Boston Public Library probably has the paper on microfilm. Most libraries will do a search for a small fee. Nowimnthing 00:26, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Candie's commercial with Pat Benatar

There is a new commercial currently airing in the US for Candie's clothes at Kohl's department stores. It shows Pat Benatar performing on stage, then a blonde woman with a guitar walks up on the stage and starts performing with her. Neither woman is identified, but I recognize Benatar. But who is the blonde woman? User:Zoe|(talk) 16:33, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

If you don't get an answer here, you could try asking on http://adtunes.com/ forums. I already checked and couldn't find anything about it already asked, though, so it probably wouldn't be any faster. :( --Demonesque 17:20, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll try that. I thought it might be Ann Wilson, but this woman is younger. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:26, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Googling for Kohl Candie "Pat Benatar" suggests Cheyenne Kimball. http://www.candies.com/ also mentions Kimball. Weregerbil 17:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks. I don't know why I didn't think of doing that! And there's an explanation as to why I didn't recognize her, I never heard of her!  :) User:Zoe|(talk) 18:00, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Purchasing Decommissioned Ships

Hello. How would one go about purchasing a decommissioned ship from a government, and/or who would one contact about such a thing? Thanks --Demonesque 17:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I think they just auction off ones that are only suitable for scrapping. However, if you actually want to refurbish the ship, special arrangements may need to be made. For example, they might seriously damage the ship when removing the equipment they intend to keep, unless they know the ship is scheduled to be reused. Also, old ships may not meet modern safety guidelines. For example, double-hulled tankers are required in many places, and if you buy a single-hulled, or double-bottomed tanker, the cost of upgrading it would be prohibitive. StuRat 17:40, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

But who is in charge of this? I found this website a few minutes ago:

http://www.dsca.mil/PressReleases/36-b/36b_index.htm

but it seems to deal exclusively with military-to-military sale. --Demonesque 17:48, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Can you tell us a bit more about why you want to buy a ship and what type of ship you want ? That might enable a more targeted answer. StuRat 16:45, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I want a battleship. Do you suppose they'll give me one with the guns still in place? --Serie 20:55, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Unless you're in charge of a 3rd world nation with good ties to the West, probably not. I don't think there really ARE very many battleships lying around these days - they've been kind of out of style since about 1941. This is probably the next best thing, though.--Pyroclastic 21:00, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] August 6,1979 New York Yankees line-up vs Orioles

I would like to the Yankees starting line-up for that game. It was the first game after Thurman Munson's death.(August 6,1979 New York Yankees line-up vs Orioles)198.65.201.104 22:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Can you find any archived newspapers from that day? They would have the lineup in the box score. Actually, from the next day, really. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:53, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

The website Retrosheet contains box scores for baseball games from many years back. (They are in the process of collecting every game ever, a long process.) Anyway, according to Retrosheet, the Yankees' starting line-up on 6 August 1979 was:
1. Willie Randolph, 2B
2. Bobby Murcer, LF
3. Chris Chambliss, 1B
4. Reggie Jackson, RF
5. Graig Nettles, 3B
6. Jim Spencer, DH
7. Bobby Brown, CF
8. Brad Gulden, C
9. Bucky Dent, SS
.. Ron Guidry, P
In that game, Bobby Murcer (who was Munson's best friend and delivered the eulogy at his funeral earlier in the day) went 2-for-5 with five RBIs accounting for all of the Yankees runs. Murcer's performance included a game-winning single which drove in two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the game for the Yankees 5-4. According to Yankeeography, manager Billy Martin suggested that the exhausted Murcer sit out the game, but Murcer insisted on playing. (The full account of this game is at this Retrosheet page.) — Michael J 09:38, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Current Events.

There seem to be a local Current Events link for all parts of the world except Europe? How can this be. Joneleth 23:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Good question! I notice that South America doesn't have a link either, and I guess that's just because no-one has created a 'Current Events' subsection of Portal:Europe yet. There is one, however, on the Portal:Latin America page, so that seems to be an odd discrepancy. I haven't really been involved enough in the portals to guess why this is the case, but hopefully someone else here knows a little more. Ziggurat 03:28, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Beyblade Manga/Anime

Moved to Talk:Beyblade 18:12, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
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