Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2008 February 17

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[edit] February 17

[edit] hump in the back

what do people mean by 'hump in your back'??its not an english figure of speech or anythin. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arya237 (talk • contribs) 11:11, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

They could be referring to Quasimodo or spinal curvature. Is that what you're thinking of? Julia Rossi (talk) 11:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Since it's not a figure of speech, you need to supply some context. To give someone the hump means to annoy them. To live off one's hump means to live off your own resources.--Shantavira|feed me 13:06, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
I've never heard either of those expressions. Corvus cornixtalk 21:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

To 'have the hump' means to be disgruntled.86.200.128.246 (talk) 15:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)petitmichel

It does? Corvus cornixtalk 21:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
It's off topic, but is that related to "getting your back up"? Julia Rossi (talk) 22:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree with all those uses, and there's also "to hump [something] around": carry something heavy, and "over the hump" meaning over the worst. As to "putting your back up", I believe that's from cats (and other animals, no doubt) who arch their back when cross. So whether "the hump" refers to this, or rather grouchy camels, I don't know. Gwinva (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 02:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Canadian government lost a document and everyone had to spring clean to find it

Is it true that something (a CD? a paper?) was lost by a department of the Canadian government, and it was deemed important enough that all civil servants had to stop work for a day, and go through all the stuff on and around their desks, even moving furniture, to try to find it? BrainyBabe (talk) 12:49, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


      • Yes, it is true. The documents in question were related to the Somalia Inquiry which was going on at the time (and missing documents). None (to the best of my knowledge) were found. -- Cdn Searcher —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.228.192.163 (talk) 00:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for confirming my understanding, but can anyone provide a reference, or even the date when this spring clean took place? BrainyBabe (talk) 10:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] British sex case

This is a classic British silly season story, but it was reported in the broadsheet (serious) newspapers at the time. A group of colleagues was on their way home by train from a day out when two of them, no doubt tired and emotional, decided to "perform a sex act", which is a newspaper euphemism that deliberately leaves one wondering --presumably in this case fellatio. Everyone in the crowded carriage pretended to ignore what was going on, being British, but the final straw was the post-coital-or-whatever cigarette, when the happy couple was upbraided for smoking in a non-smoking carriage. Thus the case came to court, and thus to the newspapers. Does anyone have access to the archives to check this? I seem to recall it being July or August 1991 or 1992. BrainyBabe (talk) 13:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it did happen, but I can't find any more info at the moment. I think the story was made into a book and/or tv drama.--Shantavira|feed me 13:17, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Am I missing something? Your CPS link concerns the appointment of three new Assistant Chief Crown Prosecutors. The story is reported reguarly and I'm sure it's an urban myth. The Best Book Of Urban Myths Ever! (ISBN 1858685591) contains on version of the story, on the 6:04 from Brighton; no date is given. This book dates from 1998 but I'm sure I've read the story in an earlier publication, possibly Fortean Times from the late 1980s. It is also mentioned on a large number of internet sites. --80.176.225.249 (talk) 19:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Read further down the page:

Among his previous cases are allegations of international cricket corruption; theft of body parts from the Royal College of Surgeons, which were used for sculpture moulds; and prosecution of a couple who had sex on a train in full view of the public but the only complaint was about them smoking afterwards.

— Matt Eason (Talk • Contribs) 19:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The one part that's not true is "nobody complained until they started smoking"; what actually happened was that there was no complaint in the legal-system sense because the train crew ignored the other passengers' complaints until they started smoking. It happened in the summer of 1992. If you do a Google Groups search on the words sex, train, and Horseferry, you'll find an article where a clerk at the Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court is quoted as saying something like "it's the sort of case you don't forget". --Anonymous, 00:12 UTC, February 18, 2008. (Copyedited later.)

dodgyhumour If they weren't smoking during the sex act, it can't have been that good. /dodgyhumour Steewi (talk) 01:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
OK, I followed the Google Groups link, and found this archived from alt.folklore where someone had inputted an article from The Scotsman, dated 7 August 1992. It names the individuals and gives the date of the offence as 25 May. The fact that it was widely published could, however, mean that it was picked up on the wires by gullible editors looking to fill space in the silly season. More importantly, the article also names the prosecutor as Nazir Afzal, who Shantavira has discovered is director for West London of the Crown Prosecution Service, see also here. So unless this senior civil servant is in on the joke -- and they are not prohibited from having a sense of humour -- the story would appear to be real. It is possible that it is a joke, but more likely that what started as as joke then became a case of life imitating art.
I would be interested to hear about any book or TV that resulted from the event, and also what the individuals did next. BrainyBabe (talk) 10:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Question about Milwaukee, WI

On the Washington County, Wisconsin page, the cities section listed states this:

Milwaukee (City in Milwaukee County which annexed a small triangle of land in Washington County, at the request of a restaurant owner who wanted police and fire services.)

I have looked at the official Milwaukee city map and seen the portion on the map that is in Washington County. I am confused about something. In that little triangle, there is no restaurant, it's a recycling Facillity. So I am wondering why Wikipedia says there is a restaurant there? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.230.149.114 (talk) 16:47, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The claim also appears in this source, which implies that the annexation took place in the historical past. It is not hard to imagine that the restaurant went out of business and sold its property and that the recycling facility has since been built on the same site. Marco polo (talk) 20:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Itchy

This question has been removed. Per the reference desk guidelines, the reference desk is not an appropriate place to request medical, legal or other professional advice, including any kind of medical diagnosis or prognosis, or treatment recommendations. Your doctor or pharmacist will be able to recommend possible treatments.--TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Walking machines of death"

I read an editorial in a Finnish newspaper once, critiquing terrorist tactics. It began by showing three instances of heroic acts in war: the Trojan war in ancient Greek times, the American war of independence, and the Finnish Winter War. It then contrasted these with what is happening in Iraq in the 2000s. It gave a graphic example: two school-age girls are at a market, petting the various live animals for sale. Unknown to the girls, they are walking machines of death. When enough people have assembled around them, some terrorist somewhere remotely detonates the rings of explosives they are wearing around their waists, killing both the girls and dozens of people around them. Now at the risk of sounding callous about this tragic incident, and altogether emotionless, I have to ask a technical question: How the heck does one carry enough explosives to kill dozens of people around one's waist without knowing it? JIP | Talk 19:35, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Could they have been drugged perhaps? Or somehow there was C-4 or any other explosive embedded as a thin sheet into their clothing? --Ouro (blah blah) 20:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
I heard a news report about this incident on the radio. According to the report, the girls were mentally retarded. Marco polo (talk) 20:07, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
I can imagine this on the Jeremy Kyle Show - are YOU or someone you know a walking machine of death? Call us and you can be on next week's show. -mattbuck (Talk) 20:11, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
This CNN report (e.g.) confirms what Marco Polo wrote. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:41, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
How do you do it? Pretty easily, depending on the explosives. Plastic explosives are very small and pack a lot of wallop, especially if you add some sort of shrapnel agent (e.g. nails). You can mold them into creative shapes, too. So it wouldn't be hard to put a bunch of them into a belt or a vest and not have it be very large at all. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 21:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
The Tamil Tigers sometimes mold plastic explosives into brassieres of female suicide bombers. If the breasts are strapped down this would effectively hid the explosives. --S.dedalus (talk) 06:55, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why would near death experiences becaused by a lack of oxygen to the brain?

It doesn't make sense for something so elaborate to occur if you don't have enough oxygen, so why do people say that? MalwareSmarts (talk) 22:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

It's not that elaborate. A small change of chemicals to the brain causes a lot of haywire things to occur, which we experience as very elaborate sensations but that's because the brain is already wired to produce sensations for us. You might as well wonder whether microgram amounts of certain chemicals could possibly produce elaborate auditory and auditory hallucinations. The brain is an elaborate sensation machine—it doesn't take much at all for it to start producing very odd (yet sensually coherent) results. Lack of oxygen no doubt screws up a number of processes which a brain would be struggling to make sense of and create all sorts of resulting odd feelings (out of body, bright light, etc.) in the person in question. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 22:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
(I'm not an expert but ...) There are a lot of different symptoms that people report in NDEs, but taken individually most of them are either simple brain malfunctions(Serenity, bright light at end of tunnel, feeling of being out of body and/or flying.), or things that commonly occur in dreams, even normal ones. (Meeting dead relatives, reviewing major moments in your life, feeling of being out of body and/or flying.) The fact that many human brains undergo the same failure modes when faced with a lack of oxygen should not be surprising. (If your car's serpentine belt breaks it will exhibit a large number of symptoms, but they will be very similar to every other car of that make and model that has a broken serpentine belt.)
The fact that NDEs can be induced artificially by reducing blood flow to the brain (pilots in centrifuge training, for example) strongly supports the theory that they are caused (or at least can be caused) entirely by lack of oxygen. Surely God would not be fooled by a centrifuge. [1]
I'm sure all of this is difficult for people who have experienced them to accept rationally. Dreams feel absolutely real when you're having them, and if a dream happened when you were awake then I imagine it would be very hard not to believe in it and rationalize away any inconsistencies. Especially if it told you things that you really wanted to know. (Heaven is real, and all your loved ones made it there with no problem.) It's important to remember this. APL (talk) 01:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I also suspect that much of the homogeneity in reported NDEs come from re-telling of the same stories too. Most of the methodology in studies that compare them is in my opinion suspect, e.g. they rarely note how long after the alleged NDE the account was taken and how many people the patient in question discussed it with first. What was initially just "a man" quickly becomes Jesus when you tell and re-tell the story over and over again; the human memory is quite pliable, especially when under that sort of stress and in a dream-like state. I suspect the re-tellings make them more coherent than they really are, as often happens with dreams. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 03:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


Further reading on this subject: Dying to Live by Susan Blackmore. Don't be put off by it having one of the worst titles ever devised. -88.110.17.187 (talk) 13:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

"NDEs can be induced artificially by reducing blood flow to the brain" Well of course, you're killing them if you cut off their blood flow! MalwareSmarts (talk) 19:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I said "reducing" not "Cutting off". Don't put words into my mouth. Centrifuge training reduces blood flow to the brain and is perfectly survivable. In any case my main point that the symptoms associated with a NDE are not actually that unusual. Especially when taken individually. I honestly find it puzzling why people attach so much significance to them when, and only when, they happen when a person is about to die or thinks he is about to die.
Even if NDEs do have cosmic significance, I would still recommend taking them with a grain of salt. If someone is in that rough of a shape that they have a NDE, then I wouldn't trust them to remember their own telephone number, let alone accurately relay messages from the Other Side. APL (talk) 23:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Reducing, cutting off, it's all the same thing. Your blood flow is reduced if it cut off. Your flow is cut off if reduced. MalwareSmarts (talk) 22:52, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Has anyone tried to calculate the American homicide rate under other circumstances?

For example, Detroit has a high homicide rate, but the rate is not as high as ones in poor countries such as Kingston. But if Detroit had comparable medical facilities, how much would the rate go up?

132.239.90.162 (talk) 23:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know of any studies, but it does make sense that there would be a correlation between a lower level of medical facilities and a higher homicide rate, based on poor or non-existent treatment of wounds leading to death which would have otherwise been treated. Steewi (talk) 01:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Though it's unclear to me that it would be a major factor there. Crime and homicide rates usually have a lot of factors in them; I don't think the medical treatment is going to make a huge difference where gunshot wounds are going to be a primary way of death in either case. There's only so much you can do for gunshot wounds no matter how high-tech your medical system is. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 21:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, if you look at the statistics, improved medical care over the past half-century is greatly reducing the murder rate. The crime rates for murder are down, but the crime rates for "I shot him, but he survived" are way up. --Carnildo (talk) 22:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely. If you have access to a good university library, check out A.R. Harris et al. (2002) "Murder and Medicine: The Lethality of Criminal Assault 1960-1999" Homicide Studies 6(2):128-166. If not, the free summary in BMJ is on PubMed Central: link. In brief, the authors note that while the murder rate in the United States has been essentially stable since the 1930s, the rate of aggravated assaults had risen by about 750% during the same period. In the absence of the continuous improvements in medical care since the 1960s, the authors estimate that the murder rate would be up to five times higher. Even within the United States (and other industrialized countries with well-established healthcare systems), there is a significant body of evidence that shows (unsurprisingly) that individuals who take longer to reach a hospital suffer dramatically poorer outcomes. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:01, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you so much for that link Ten. That is a scary multiple. I know a violent city like Detroit has 40 homicides per 100k. If that were 4-5 times higher than the rate would far exceed places like Kingston, Johannesburg, etc. Could the worst American cities be the most violent urban centers outside of war zones on earth? Lotsofissues 03:27, 19 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lotsofissues (talk • contribs)