Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 April 28

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.

April 28

Fear of living forever

Does the fear of living forever have a name? Is it somewhat unknown? Which authors wrote about it? A poem at least, anything? The articles on immortality, eternity and afterlife say nothing about it. A.Z. 03:16, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I seem to recall a Greek legend about someone who was doomed to live forever and suffer eternal remorse for his misdeeds, but I can't bring to mind any details. Sorry, A.Z. -- JackofOz 03:53, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

You're probably thinking of Metal Gear Solid 2, JackofOz. Down M. 13:49, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, thank you for trying. I think an eagle would come and eat this person's liver every day. However, it's likely that people will think that the guy would fear the eagle eating his liver plus the perspective of it never ending, while the mere perspective of one's life never ending is in itself frightening. A.Z. 04:02, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

That sounds suspiciously like Prometheus being chained to a rock by Vulcan. JackofOz 04:11, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

(ec) Prometheus, although there isn't a word for immortality fear as far as I know. -- ReyBrujo 04:29, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Those sound more to me like a more general fear of Eternal Punishment...although possibly an appropriate one for the crime of giving such knowledge to us mortals. However, the fear of living forever would not at present seem to be a very realistic one and I imagine most individuals suffering from it would eventually be disabused. I do know of that issue being spoken to in fictional works, science fiction novels for example often depict scenarios where nanotechnology has granted humanity near-immortality and explore the psychological consequences of this development. I can think of a few examples in that genre and I'm sure there's many more but off the top of my head no work where that is the major thematic subject comes to mind, sorry. My advice to anyone experiencing this fear would be to, "give it some time, no need to be hasty, wait awhile and see how it all plays out."--Azi Like a Fox 04:47, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Could also be that sissy Phus. I wouldn't want to spend eternity toiling away at a thankless job that has no end. Hmmm...is it just me or does this sound strangely familiar? Clarityfiend 07:31, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Like in that book, where the person commits suicide when they go insane because their picture is aging instead of them? (hoping to spark someone's memory because mine sucks) -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 06:00, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

That sounds somewhat like Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey. I can't quite see the point of coining a word for this fear, or even having such a fear, since human immortality is unachievable. Maybe Woody Allen came closest to expressing this fear when he said "I intend to achieve immortality by not dying". He's as full of fears as any person I've ever heard of, most of them irrational, but I think his primary fear is of dying, not of not dying. If thanatophobia is the fear of dying, maybe the fear of not dying is antithanatophobia (or antinecrophobia). Google has no record of such a word (not surprising, I just made it up). JackofOz 06:08, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Dorian Grey, that's it -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 07:22, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

The fear of not dying isn't that unusual: Borges discussed it in an interview once, and it may be one of the themes of the vampire meme. But there isn't a word for it. Personally, I think athanatophobia sounds nicer than antithanatophobia, since the latter sounds as if one were taking a militant stance against the fear of death. --Charlene 06:16, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Who is Borges? A.Z. 06:56, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

If you have to ask, you'll never know. Unless you wiki Borges, of course. Algebraist 08:40, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I've seen uranophobia, the fear of Heaven. I believe Q might have suffered from this, and in his case it amounted to the same thing as the fear of living forever. ---Sluzzelin talk 09:00, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Well maybe it's Coffeyfixaphobia, Paul Edgecombe's fear in The Green Mile that he would live forever because of what John Coffey did to him. Or because of what he did to John Coffey. Anchoress 09:24, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Ahhh, because of what Edgecombe did! I like that interpretation. Very poetic. [Mαc Δαvιs] ❖ 11:28, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I know my mother had this fear of outliving her money. --Zeizmic 12:11, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

A lot of seniors have this fear of outliving their money, what with the high cost of medical care getting higher, and pensions seldom keeping pace. I've heard "when the money runs out, I am checking out" many times. This is not a fear of living forever, per se, but rather a fear of living in poverty for whatever period of time. Bielle 18:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

See Flying Dutchman and Wandering Jew. Corvus cornix 00:14, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

A fear of living forever wouldn't be a phobia, as phobias are irrational fears.

Just to be clear here: On what grounds being afraid of living forever is rational? --80.222.116.225 20:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

The idea of living forever is scary, of course. Now, the fear of it actually happening to you is rational when one realizes that one has no idea about whether one will live forever or die one day.

Another terrible fear one feels when one realizes that one will either die or live forever, and that both are terrifying. A.Z. 04:59, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

One might emulate Oscar Wilde and say "There's only one thing worse than dying, and that is not dying".  :) JackofOz 05:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Earlier, on the Science desk, we were talking about quantum immortality - which I think would scare most people - and could actually be true within the boundaries of known science. Whatever the word for this phobia is, I could well understand anyone who has it. (Although it should be pointed out that a phobia is not just a fear of something - it's an overwhelming, irrational, debilitating kind of fear.) SteveBaker 09:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The Greek mythology character referred to above is Tithonus. A chilling tale. --Dweller 16:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Universities....

Which city has the highest number of Universities (in the whole world) ? Thanking you in anticipation - Pupunwiki 03:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Boston, Mass I think, I'd need to look it up to be sure. Do you mean "City" or "Metropolitan area" though? It might sound silly, but there's a large difference. The Kansas City Zoo might not be in Kansas City (city), but it is in Kansas City (metropolitan area). -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 05:13, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I like your implied connection between universities and zoos! We may have been at the same ones. Bielle 18:49, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, a Zoo University... That might explain why you didn't do your research! (Check my user page, I only have a GED thus far :p Only been to a college twice, once when I was 10, and when I was taking the above tests.) I actually wasn't going for that, but I suppose it is an entertaining thought. I've been unintentionally funny like that lately...Like when I subconciously said I wanted to Hallow out a bible and put a mini computer in it! I love my Freudian Slips-- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 13:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Machining

Engineering: A surface was being checked by a 100 mm sine bar which, due to an error in setting, was placed 6 mm out of square with the slope of the surface. The angle obtained from the sine bar readings was 59 deg 30 min. Find the true angle of the surface being measured. Show your workings. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 220.255.40.207 (talk) 04:58, 28 April 2007 (UTC).

Quoted from the top of this page: "Do your own homework. The reference desk won't give you answers for your homework, although we will try to help you out if there's a specific part of your homework you don't understand. Make an effort to show that you've tried solving it first." --Charlene 05:54, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Seriously. It'd be one thing if you were asking us to do your Philosophy homework for you, but Engineering, come on.--Azi Like a Fox 09:40, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Helpful tip for here, or any "homework help" site on the net, like PF, you'll probably get answers if you don't phrase it exactly how it reads,

Mac! Don't tell them that! That's our little secret here! The copied-verbatim-straight-from-the-homework-assignment phenomenon is tremendously useful as an indicator of which questions we just don't need to waste any time trying to answer at all. If the I-want-someone-to-do-my-homework-for-me crowd starts learning how to disguise their questions better, they might get away with it more often. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:32, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

"I'm having this personal problem with a spherical cow ..."  :) --TotoBaggins 02:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

...be polite, say that you are struggling with it, and how, and show some work or your own thoughts on it. If you don't have any thoughts on it you need to see a friend or the teacher. [Mαc Δαvιs] ❖ 11:26, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm against this kind of homework as we know it and so seem to be most of my fellow Wikiversitians. The ridiculous question above is rather boring both for people who know a lot about the subject and for people who know little about engineering and mathematics. Such a question will never make the poster interested in Engineering or Mathematics, which happen to be topics much more interesting than the question appears to be.

My advice is that you do start asking these questions at the Engineering Help Desk of Wikiversity. I must tell you that the help desk is new, and you will be one of the first to ask questions there, and you may not get any answers at all. But, if they do answer, maybe they can even convince you that engineering is cool and teach you how to solve engineering problems on your own. Good luck! A.Z. 18:20, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I dunno, I found it pretty interesting to learn what a sine bar is. I'd never heard of such a contraption. Plus it is always rather amusing to see people using degrees and minutes as units of angle measure (a lot of analog electronics people use degrees for phase, but I rarely see minutes). Anyway, the question as stated is a simple trigonometry problem. If the OP shows some initiative in trying to work towards a solution, perhaps we'd be more inclined to give some guidance. It doesn't do you any good for us to do the problem for you! -- mattb 19:01, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't think that the actual question itself is a problem. In different contexts, it would be an interesting question. For instance, if we made a volunteer study group to learn about measurement units and trigonometry.

However, there doesn't seem to be any voluntary attitude of the student towards doing this homework: the teacher probably just told the student to do the homework and didn't really care about whether the student was having a pleasant and fun experience and was interested in the subject.

I think it's very clear that the student is not having such an experience, since the student just copied the question here for us to provide the answer and didn't even care to participate on this thread again. The student seems to just want to stop having to deal with this question, which the student must consider rather a time-consuming and boring problem in their life rather than something interesting, exciting, and valuable.

That's what I meant when I said "I am against this kind of homework"! I have nothing against trigonometry or to find out the specific answer to this question, but if someone tells you to just do it and you are forced to do it, it will be a boring thing to do, no matter how much you know about the subject. A.Z. 20:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that you were against trigonometry; I understood what you meant. However, since when are practical problems necessarily exciting? Laser diodes are pretty darn cool and perhaps even mildly exciting, but the math required to design them is anything but. Satisfying conditions for population inversion alone (involving Fermi-Dirac statistics) is a chore, not to mention optimizing the design of the Fabry-Perot resonator and the waveguide (Maxwell's equations) to minimize the number of output modes supported while maintaining minimum dimensions to save material and keep device resistance low... And so on...

My point is only that while it's great to make engaging homework problems, at a certain point the student just needs to understand and become proficient with the basic skills needed to make the end result happen (in this case, trigonometry). At least in my experience (and especially with maths), sometimes the best way to gain proficiency is by working through numerous straightforward (if a little boring) problems. Learning styles vary, but I don't think anyone should get into the habit of thinking that you can just hand off the tedious and boring parts of any real design problem to someone else. Meh, sorry for the tangent... -- mattb 02:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

website song permission

Please help me to acquire permisson to use the song STAND on a new non profit website I am tring to create for Support for Chronic Illness families. The song Stand is so perfect for the site making a very strong statement never to give up which is what my darling daughter asked me not to do when we lost her on march 4,2005. My website is non profit I just want a place for families to go and talk and support each other. the website is www.whatsuprap.com that needs to be put into webbrowser as we are working on it still. Please help me to get permission for the use of this song. I would be so grateful. please contact me at [email removed] and let me know as soon as possible if this would be ok. Thank you so much for your help. Sincerely Dorothy Lutz. I need also links to my website so that I can advertise so that people can find it. thanks.

Um, write a letter/e-mail to the copyright holder? I'm no expert in copyright law. Splintercellguy 15:34, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

For sure you can't just use it without permission - definitely not. Whom you need permission from can get a little complicated. If you intend to use your own performance of the music - then you may only need permission from the song's author - but they are likely to have entered into legal agreements with publishers and perhaps performers to allow them sole access to the song so the author may not be able to grant permission even if they wanted to. Things get much more complicated if you intend to use a recording of an existing performance because then the performer of the music as well as the author of the song will have to grant permission - and again, they may all have entered into other agreements with publishers. Since you are putting it on a website that can (presumably) be accessed from all over the world, you may have to get permission from a number of different publishers since very often music is licensed differently in different countries. Things can get yet more complicated if the music has been used in a movie or something. Bottom line here is that what you are asking is going to be very hard to achieve and it's definitely not going to happen quickly. Probably your best chance is to appeal to the performer of the music - explain that you are a charity doing good works and perhaps they will talk to whoever else needs to grant permission - you might get lucky if your cause happens to resonate with the performer's personal history. But you shouldn't depend on that...your odds of success here are slim at best. If I were you, I would go to your support group website and ask if there is a poet and a musician who could create something original for you that would fit your needs perfectly - that will bring your community together and make your music entirely your own. You would be amazed how many talented musicians are just aching to get their work out under the eyes of the public. SteveBaker 09:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Secondary education

How does one become a high school drama teacher? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.3.162.234 (talk) 17:53, 28 April 2007 (UTC).

it depends on where you live. there are different requirements for different states--Kittycat rox 19:52, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

And countries. Corvus cornix 20:52, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

In most countries schools don't even have drama teachers. jnestorius^(talk) 18:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Post-Off

I would like a definition of "Post-Off" as used on liquor commission web pages and wine catalogues.Dkrevanko 18:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

This (http://www.cga.ct.gov/2000/rpt/olr/htm/2000-r-0175.htm) is all I could find. Seems to be some sort of reduction but it doesn't really explain it very well. I guess because websites/catalogues operate cross-state (and they don't know which state you are in) they might have some sort of special arrangement for this. ny156uk 09:23, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Eurasia

If Asia and Europe are not geologically two distinct continents (just politically) then why are there some contries (eg Russia, Turkey) that span both? why dont they just define the border acording to political borders as they do with time zones? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.53.181.168 (talk) 21:58, 28 April 2007 (UTC).

The article on Continent might provide some illumination for you. Simply put, there is not definite political or organizational body that sets boundaries or even definition for what a continent is; the regions defining common continents(Asia, Europe, etc.) vary by regions. Some group the Americas (North, Central, South) into one continent. —Mitaphane _?|! 22:49, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

And some lump Europe, Asia and Africa all into one continent, because technically it is one continuous land mass (except for the human-made Suez Canal). — Michael J 18:08, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

and political boundaries can change.

The interesting thing is that for those who consider North and South America as two continents, they typically do place the boundary between them at a political boundary, i.e. the Panama-Colombia border. (At least we do in the US and Canada; I don't know about Latin America.) So what is different from the situation with Europe and Asia? I suggest that it's the geographical position of that political boundary, conveniently close to one end of the Isthmus of Panama. In Europe there's no political boundary along the Bosporos or anywhere close to the Urals.

Incidentally, I have heard, though not from a source I necessarily believe, that when Panama was part of Colombia, it was also considered part of South America. --Anonymous, April 29, 2007, 20:59 (UTC).

It's always bothered me too. The (relatively) tiny little neck of land between North and South America - or the skinny bit that connects Africa to Eurasia seem to provide a natural reason to describe those as separate continents - and whilst the precise delineation of where along that thin connection you put the boundary is somewhat arbitrary. But the border between Europe and Asia is utterly artificial - someone without the cultural background that we have would never have decided that they were different continents. So, personally, I'm going with 'Eurasia' being a continent and 'Europe' and 'Asia' being obsolete as a concept. Sadly, I don't get to decide these things. SteveBaker 08:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

For the 'skinny bit' between africa and asia, there are actaully two, one between the med' and the gulf of aquaba, and one between the med' and the gulf of suez, so really there are two options of where to end the continent.

Harm de Blij's Geography Book has a section on this very issue, and I found it very interesting. His approach to it was not defining continents, but rather in defining the edge of Europe. The three suggestions (if memory serves me) were to place the boundary near the edge of the old Soviet satellite states, the next to include those states and place it at the border with Russia, and the third was to use the Ural Mountains as the boundary. To be honest, all of these approaches are really quite arbitrary and they bear more towards your outlook on geography in general. But if you ever get a chance and find the book at a library, go pull it down and take a look at that section. –Pakman044 00:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The distinctions among Asia, Europe, and Africa date back to ancient times in the Western world. These distinctions are older than our modern concept of continents. The distinction between Asia and Europe made great sense to the ancient Greeks. The Aegean Sea, for them, divided the world in two. From a global perspective, it is not very significant. Yet that distinction has survived. As you recognize, it is really a cultural demarcation rather than a geographical one. The distinction between Asia and Europe is older than any of the nation-states that currently occupy the borderlands between these two so-called continents. Because the ancient Greeks saw the Bosporus and Dardanelles as the border between Europe and Asia, this is often seen as the border today, even though it runs right through the modern nation of Turkey. Likewise, premodern European geographers had only a vague notion of the position of the Urals and an even vaguer notion of the region between the Urals and the Caspian. But the concept of the Urals and the Caspian as the eastern limits of Europe (north of the Black Sea) is also more ancient than the nation-state of Russia, and so Russia today is classed as partly European and partly Asian. Marco polo 13:45, 1 May 2007 (UTC)