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The same reference/abbreviations are on the Premier League official web site "next game" banner http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb.html so the use seems consistent, therefore "official status" maybe by default, who knows, lol The Original Filfi (talk) 11:14, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for that link. However, it shows me that they are not necessarily official, as there are differences in some of the abbreviations. (e.g., STO cf. STK for Stoke, and MNC cf. MCI for Man City.) → Michael JⓉⒸⓂ 14:56, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There are no official abbreviations of team names and they do vary from time to time. --Dweller (talk) 12:22, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Who was the one that said:
I may be drunk tonight but tomorrow I will be sober and you will still be ugly. (Please show reference!)— Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.198.90.62 (talk) 03:31, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, a version of that was said by W.C. Fields in the movie It's a Gift. The exact quote in that film was, "You're crazy! And I'm drunk. But I'll be sober tomorrow and you'll be crazy for the rest of your life!" ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 03:53, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I believe W.C.Fields stole it from Winston Churchill:
Bessie Braddock: "Sir, you are drunk."
Winston Churchill: "I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly."
The Braddock article concedes that another woman has also been attributed. It would be interesting to know whether the Fields or Churchill thing came first (for Fields it was 1934), and to find out whether it's a really old joke that Churchill and Fields might have run across independently. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 04:51, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And I see that I had misquoted Fields. The exact quote, following on the other guy exclaiming, "You're drunk!", is as follows: "Yeah, and you're crazy; and I'll be sober tomorrow and ... you'll be crazy for the rest of your life!" ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 23:30, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Typical men's disposable razor bladesWomen's disposable blade with "bumpers" all around the blade
Nearly every time I'm in the shower, I look up at my or my wife's razor and wonder why women's razors are so much bulkier than men's. At right is a selection of various men's razor blade refills. I use a Gillette Mach3 and my wife uses whatever Gillette calls their women's model. Where the blades clip onto the handles are the same and the blades interchangeable which makes packing for a trip a bit simpler. The women's blades though have much more plastic all the way around the blades. The cartridge is basically oval shaped with what I think of as "bumpers" all around the blade. What is the purpose of so much bulk? I could imagine that if a woman were to shave her pubic region then the extra plastic would get in the way of getting into tight spots like where the leg meets the pubic area. I especially noticed this when I recently ran out of blades and had to borrow my wife's razor. I found it very hard to cut the whiskers just under my nostrils.
As a side note, while trying to research this and find an image of a women's razor I went to the Gillette web site and could not find any women's products. I know they make them but could not find them on the site. I don't remember any "guy mode" in my browser settings, so I wonder how women are to find info about their razors on Gillette's site.
Anyway, if someone could tell me what the bumpers are for, I'd appreciate it. Thanks, Dismas|(talk) 06:31, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Why is this......different than this?Jayron is right that a lot of it is marketing. However, I think there is some actual utility to the different designs. Put simply, they have different use cases. The idea is that women's razors are (primarily) for shaving legs, while men's razors are (primarily) for shaving faces. Now, I'm sure you know that faces and legs are rather different things, but here's the key distinctions for shaving: compared to a face, legs have much more surface area, and much less curvature. So, the plastic float/bumper makes it more efficient to shave a large, relatively flat shin, while a smaller blade head makes it easier to shave e.g. the philtrum area. Some brands even have soap/lubricant embedded in the pads, so that you don't need to reapply shaving cream to the leg as you go. Also, the grips are different for a reason. Have you ever tried to shave your legs? Bending over at awkward angles, a nice big handle on women's razors helps keep a good grip. But, for shaving a face, you want a smaller handle, allowing for greater dexterity. Finally, I do know women who just buy men's razors, and men who use women's. It's not like they fail to work if your gender does not match the razor's. As for me, I don't shave much at all, but I am concerned about the razor blade singularity[1]. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:29, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
On the marketing front, men's razors are marketed differently from women's, in ways which pander to the ad men's impressions of what will make a product sell. For men: technical details, an angular shape, many blades, male colours (blue, grey, black), avoidance of razor burn, and the impression that your favourite sports or movie hero uses the same product. For women: it would appear to be that the razor won't leave gashes all over your legs, it is a female colour (pink) with a more rounded and feminine shape (presumably so your man won't want to use it on his face), and a close enough shave that silk clothing won't cling to your stubbly legs. Astronaut (talk) 16:58, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The hair on women's legs is tougher, and therefore harder to cut, than the hair on men's faces. It needs tougher machinery. (Sorry ladies.) HiLo48 (talk) 18:47, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You either know the wrong women. Or the wrong men, User:HiLo48. Sorry. μηδείς (talk) 22:24, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't that be "the wrong women or the right men"?--Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:00, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi All,
I am trying to help out in a couple of areas and one issue has been raised which I can not find out whether it can be done on wiki or not.
The issue; a large listing has many links to the source information all URL's start with something like "http://www.example/sever/locale/" and then there are a reference number and a status i.e. "1234/44/made" making a final link of "http://www.example/sever/locale/1234/44/made".
So, the question is, can I declare the url as a variable and reference the variable in wiki text to reduce the overall size and making load times faster, less resource hungry etc.
Thank you The Original Filfi (talk) 10:38, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wikitext cannot define variables in Wikipedia. Something similar could be achieved by creating a template, for example so {{sever|1234/44/made}} produces http://www.example/sever/locale/1234/44/made. I don't recommend this if all the template does is make part of the url, but if it does more like format a reference then it could be useful, especially if the source is also of use in other pages. A template would be more resource hungry than just writing the full url in the wikitext. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:14, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Can someone direct me to an article that explores the position that, because human brains are finite, it is therefore impossible for any human brain (or set of brains working together collectively) ever to comprehend and understand the whole of reality? There must be a term for this, but, being particularly stupid today, I can't think what it is. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:41, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Found a little something here. Page down to the second question. --Jayron32 11:49, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So if we had picture in picture that is only 150 years of memory?? Which means I may have less than 100 years left, not to sure about this! The Original Filfi (talk) 12:18, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That answer only relates to capacity to store memories. My question is over the capacity to understand reality. We would not expect, say, dogs, or earthworms, to understand as much about reality as we humans do. But, there must be a limit to our capacity to understand. It is not infinite - but, the complexities of reality may well be infinite. Where has this been discussed? It's probably a philosophical question more than a scientific one, which is why I am asking on this desk. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:22, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This reminds me of Haldane's Law: "The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine". --TammyMoet (talk) 14:20, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sort of, but that's really not much more than a facile aphorism. Have philosophers and scientists never seriously considered this? Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:29, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Gödel's incompleteness theorems might be a good place to start. When you say 'comprehend and understand the whole of reality' you're actually asking about a theory of Conciousness, which is another big subject. Blakk andekka 15:30, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
How fundamental do you want to get? The earliest philosophy I know of relating to "unknowable nature of true reality" is the allegory of the cave. It doesn't specifically get at the "finite human brain" issue, but it does come to the same conclusion: all we can ever see or know are merely shadows. I don't keep up much with modern philosophy, but I think the cave has been periodically discussed and analyzed throughout history. Check SEP coverage here [3], and also see the general topics of metaphysics and ontology. Between the SEP and the references to our articles, you can spend months or years tackling this issue. If you just want a short expression though, it's the "allegory of the cave" SemanticMantis (talk) 15:41, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The claim is a self-refuting idea. To say that the nature of reality is unknowable is to make a claim of knowledge about the nature of reality. It's the sort of thing that sounds interesting in Philosophy 101. Adults come to realize that qualified statements like "there are things I don't know" are much more useful. See unknown unknowns. μηδείς (talk) 18:16, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I am an adult. You are not addressing the question I was asking - though you are agreeing with me by implying that there may be aspects of reality that no human can ever know. The previous answers are interesting, thank you. Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:03, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I don't agree that there are aspects of reality which no human (i.e., sentience) can ever know, just facts that might be out of the grasp of individual perception. For example, there may be planets so far away they are outside our light-cone and hence forever over the horizon to us. That doesn't mean that the planets themselves are unknowable. There may be things like the big bang that we can't experience directly, but we can still know about them. There's either the semi-mystical claim that certain things are Unknowable in capitals as such, which is self-refuting, since it is itself a claim to knowledge, or there is the trivial claim that some brute facts are unavailable to me, like whether there was a fly on he pizza before I picked it up at the shop. But those are trivial matters not dealing with things that are Unknowable with a capital unk. μηδείς (talk) 19:27, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Where did I refer to "no sentience"? I didn't. I referred to no human. Not the same thing. Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:35, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There's no such thing as an infinite sentience. I am fairly certain you have understood my point. μηδείς (talk) 21:27, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously, a human brain (with a finite number of possible 'states' it can be in) does not have the capacity (for example) to know the precise location of every atom in a kilogram of hydrogen gas - much less the entire universe...and even less, the historical position of every atom that's currently in that container over the past 14 million years. So clearly we can't "know" even a microscopic fraction of everything there is to know.
However, we might (possibly) be able to "understand everything". It's quite plausible to believe that sometime in the next hundred years, physicists will discover a single, tiny, beautiful equation that does indeed describe absolutely everything...many believe it'll happen in their lifetimes. But therein lies the problem. Knowing the equation that encapsulates all of everything doesn't help you to know what your wife wants for her birthday next tuesday. Turning that knowledge into something useful is impossible in most cases.
On a practical level, we don't need to examine the orbit of every planet in the visible universe to understand their motions about the parent star...in that case, the laws of gravitation are completely able to summarize all of that motion into a single, tiny, beautiful equation and for us to be able to use that equation to tell us where Jupiter will be six months from now with incredible precision.
Furthermore, human brains don't have to hold all of that information. There is more (by far) information in Wikipedia right now than one person could read in a lifetime - but we don't need to read it all in order to "have" that information. If I don't happen to recall the orbital period of Jupiter, I can find it out using my knowledge of which buttons to press to get that information. What becomes important is not our raw knowledge - but the 'meta-knowledge' of how to find the actual knowledge if and when we need it. Anyone who works on these reference desks for any amount of time will attest to the fact that while we may not be smarter than the people who come here to ask questions, our ability to use search engines and other techniques to find information allows us to be more effective than our questioners in finding answers. Meta-knowledge is king here.
Humanity is moving from needing knowledge to needing meta-knowledge - skills like picking the right phrase to get Google to spit out what you need will get you further than simply trying to memorize a bunch of facts. That's a change that started when humans first invented the library - and has been gradually increasing in importance ever since. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SteveBaker (talk • contribs)
Even if we knew the fundamental rules about nature consider this, the people elected to government are in the main quite bright by normal human standards, and yet they spend their time doing really stupid things. How is that ever going to be fixed without another million years of evolution? If we tried to fix ourselves by tinkering with our genes we'd be bound to do something totally stupid and disastrous. Dmcq (talk) 13:21, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note sure if the OP is looking for a debate here or elsewhere, but the (seemingly) combative stance doesn't help what is otherwise a worthy discussion. Since they asked for further reading, I'll suggest a possible starting point: epistemology. My first thought was about the German concept of weltunschaaung, what we may call worldview. At a gut level, I can see no contradiction in saying the 'whole of reality' is fundamentally unknowable -- you don't have to know what (or how much) you don't know in order to know you don't know. El duderino(abides) 07:36, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Recharge electric car while stationary with on board engineedit
The BMW i3 is a range-extended electric car. It does 100 miles on electric, and another 100 miles on petrol. The petrol is only meant to be a backup - it's supposed to be used on electric only normally. For this sort of car (not necessarily that model), could somebody use the petrol engine to recharge the batteries with the car stopped like an on board generator? I imagine it would need a bit of reprogramming to do it.
Or expanded: fill it, charge it, drive 100 electric miles, drive another 100 petrol miles, fill it, run the engine in the same place for a few hours to recharge the battery, fill it, and drive another 200 miles? --92.25.228.93 (talk) 15:23, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Uhmmm... sitting at idle with the engine running to charge the batteries would defeat the purpose, but I believe you could. — Preceding observation added by 71.20.250.51 (talk) 16:33, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well the engine would need to power the radiator and prevent the engine overheating, however as an occasional use for going on holiday, for example.--92.25.228.93 (talk) 16:53, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You would need to fill up "one and a bit" times to fully charge the batteries because of the cooling pump and fan and other energy losses. The "bit" might turn out to be a large proportion of a full tank. Does anyone have some figures for efficiency in using a car engine for battery charging? I would be surprised if it was much more than 50%, meaning that almost two tankfuls might be needed just for one full charge. Dbfirs 17:23, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If it were practical I would probably buy one. --92.25.228.93 (talk) 23:24, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Artist's conception of Napoleon not falling off a horse
If this were a realistic image, not a romantic image, would Napoleon be likely to fall off his horse soon afterward? Or can skilled horsemen generally stay on a horse when it's bucking like this? 2001:18E8:2:1020:111B:FF1C:2E91:2977 (talk) 19:28, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Look at his feet, the purpose of the stirrups and the strap around the horse's belly is to allow him to gain purchase. (I am not up on the names of all the equipment. Keep in mind also that the picture is depicting a dynamic event with various bodies with momentum, not a static pose. μηδείς (talk) 19:35, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the horse is "bucking", but rather it's "rearing", as in this video at about 20 seconds... and he definitely did not fall off the horse. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 19:51, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
[caption added by 71.20.250.51 (talk) 20:16, 5 March 2014 (UTC) — since the image overlaps subsequent discussion][reply]
...who interestingly has his feet in a completely different position. Richard Avery (talk) 08:38, 6 March 2014 (UTC) [reply]
Perhaps because the ability to freeze action at a moment in time was a product of photography - before that, artists had to guess what was going on. No artist was able to correctly depict a galloping horse's legs until Eadweard Muybridge produced Sallie Gardner at a Gallop in 1878. Alansplodge (talk)
Surprisingly, I haven't been able to find an authoritative source for a definition or explanation of the common term: artist's conception. It is fundamentally related to Concept art, but the term is not mentioned in the article, and I wouldn't want to add it without citing a "reliable source". I believe there is a distinction that is not derivable from the component terms artist + conception. Using, Art dictionaries and glossaries indexed by the OneLook® search engine: shows that all 116 sources don't recognize the term "artist's conception". (Btw, there is a related discussion over at Wiktionary). — Preceding query added by 71.20.250.51 (talk) 20:06, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
[reply]
Technically, one could argue that anyIllustration rendered by a traditional artist (for example, the Napoleon picture above) qualifies as an "artist's conception". The term is typically used in reference to entities that don't exist yet, such as buildings in the planning phase; or things that used to exist but don't anymore, such as the Colossus of Rhodes; or things for which there is no photographic evidence, such as surface details of Pluto. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 20:17, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's really no different here - Napoleon probably never did sit on a rearing white horse while dressed in full ceremonial regalia and an impressively dramatic bright red cloak on a steep mountainside that happened to have his name carved into the rocks right beneath his feet. It's just the artist's concept of what that would hypothetically look like if that's how Napoleon had happened to cross the St.Bernard pass. It's just like an architect might create a conceptual drawing of what some building might look like before it's built. The term "Concept art" means almost the same thing, work that an artist puts together very quickly in order that the guys with the money can decide whether it's what they want the artist to make "for real". But you may be thinking of "Conceptual art" - which is something completely different (as our article says, it is "art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns". SteveBaker (talk) 20:29, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think we all know what it means (that's why I previously linked Concept art), it's just that I can't find any sources. — Preceding re-focus added by 71.20.250.51 (talk) 20:37, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, I just checked OED and it's not there (which is ...odd). I believe I've seen an explanation of the term at NASA.gov, as they use the phrase and the material all the time. At a quick search of the site, I can't find it (just lots of examples), but if you have time to look there it might pay off. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:47, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's not in Wiktionary either, because it's just a sum of parts. Dbfirs 14:02, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OP, you say "I believe there is a distinction that is not derivable from the component terms artist + conception". The evidence - or lack thereof - would seem to suggest your premise is flawed. Whenever I've seen the term used, and it's been in the sorts of cases listed by Baseball Bugs above, it's meant exactly what you'd think it means from the meanings of the two words. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries] 22:21, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So... without a proper source, how can I discuss (pro or con) whether <whatever> does, or does not, qualify as an "artist's conception"; artist could be very broadly defined, etc. — And if I attempted to add something at the Concept art article relating to this subject, there is likely (with good reason) for somebody to add tag: [Citation needed]. — Preceding artistic comment added by 71.20.250.51 (talk) 23:10, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) I don't think it requires that degree of rigour. If I sketch my idea of what Los Angeles would look like after being hit by a H-bomb, nobody could gainsay that it is my conception, and since I am the artist, it is ipso facto this artist's conception. A different artist may well have a different and equally valid conception. When it comes to structures of which we have some information about their dimensions - Noah's Ark, for example - the conception would need to incorporate that information, but could otherwise vary depending on the artist. I've seen many drawings of the supposed Noah's Ark over the years, and the Colossus of Rhodes, the Tower of Babel etc etc. but I've never felt the need to go to some impeccable source to check the details. Same with children's drawings and paintings: They paint things in a way that adults don't. They have a child's conception of stuff. We don't tell them they're wrong just because of that. Generally, we think it's very cute and loveable. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries] 23:21, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Btw, Britannic never did look like 1, it was converted to 2 before launch (this was at the start of WWI). — Preceding clarification added by 71.20.250.51 (talk) 00:01, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what distinction the OP is going for, except perhaps that it would be fair to say that some artists ("concept artists"?) have a particular flair for reading blueprints or specs and turning those into more easily accessible illustrations for general consumption. Having clicked through a few related articles, it seems to me that there's both a ton of minute variation and a lot of overlap in the various fields. Matt Deres (talk) 03:52, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Aha! The key phrase in the article is "when no other accurate representation is available" -- I think the OP's point of contention is that we would usually say "artist's impression/conception" for e.g. a painting of distant planet (ideally informed by scientific descriptions), but, we would not usually call a regular landscape painting an artist's conception (even though it would technically qualify in terms of the component words.) -- perhaps a distinction of denotation/connotation? SemanticMantis (talk) 15:12, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There are a lot of different subjects being discussed here but they are all separate to the "artist's conception of..." Concept art and conceptual art are not the same thing. Conceptual art places planning before hand as the emphasis of its core idea after which is carried out to that plan. That could be anything, real, imagined or in between but is not what the OP is speaking of as this is simply a method of painting. Concept art is simply the illustration of something in a planning stage, before completion of a project or product. Concept art is not an artist's interpretation for the main reason that concept art is based on the idea and design already established by others and has a specific use for such things as car design, film story boards and of product design. These things need an artist to create concept illustrations to give designers a feel for the end product to their specifications. Many times the artist will redo the image from the suggestions or orders of a client.
An Artist's concept is a different animal and has a distinct definition. An artist's conception is when there is no existing image of a subject and an artist's uses any bit of information to "recreate" not "create". If you look for portraits of Julius Caesar, every image you find is an artist's concept of what the man might have looked like. Historic reconstructions of buildings, structures and other architectural elements from Ancient Rome utilize the "artist's conception" to illustrate lost monuments. We have no idea what the roman forum looked like, but artists have been conceptualizing the space for hundreds of years.
Now lets take the above examples of the Britannic. None of those are actually an artist's conception (regardless of the descriptions) because the images are based on photographs of the actual liner. That isn't a conceptual artistic expression but simply copying another image or altering an existing image. The artist's conception is when there is little to nothing to go on or you are depending on source material such as a description or even another conceptual interpretation as the base, such as the portrait of Caesar shown here based on another artist's concept in 3 dimensional sculpture. The conceptual interpretation here is skin, hair and eye color. The Theatre of Pompey article has an artist's concept of what that building might have looked like based on other similar structures, the written documentation of the theatre and archaeological evidence. SemanticMantis pretty much hits this on the head although planets no longer qualify as there are too many photos and artists use those and are not conceptualizing as much as representing the subject with the use of photos and other imagery just like the Britannic images. The artist's conception is defined, therefore, as the conceptual interpretation of a long lost subject, where no existing accurate representations exists.--Mark Miller (talk) 13:00, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The OP apologizes for apparently being obtuse. The OP's intent is to provide information relating to artist's conception for a WP article somewhere, perhaps as a redirect to a [new] section of artist's impression? These comments are helpful; unfortunately, Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous is not considered a reliable source. Btw, Britannic image (1) is almost certainly an artist's conception created from blueprints, engineering drawings, etc. It was (is?) common for ship lines to produce promotional art for travel posters, postcards, etc. prior to the ship's construction (by Willy Stöwer, for example); the Britannic postcard depicts her in her intended role, but she never became that. ~The OP also known as: 71.20.250.51 (talk) 20:19, 10 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It seems another term for this, in some branches of science at least, is a "restoration". See the discussion here. The term is still used in the article for a caption. --Dweller (talk) 16:45, 10 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
1) Yes
2) No
3) Maybe
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Btw, Britannic image (1) is almost certainly an artist's conception created from blueprints, engineering drawings, etc. It was (is?) common for ship lines to produce promotional art for travel posters, postcards, etc. prior to the ship's construction (by Willy Stöwer, for example); the Britannic postcard depicts her in her intended role, but she never became that. ~The OP also known as: 71.20.250.51 (talk) 20:19, 10 March 2014 (UTC)