Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 December 9

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December 9

Gary Owens/Eric Boardman educational videos

These were children's shows hosted by Gary Owens and Eric Boardman, produced by Midwich Entertainment with the first 3 released on video by Twin Tower Enterprises. In 1991, MPI/Videosaurus released the rest as well as reissues of the first 3. Dave Spear's soundtrack to the series was released on LP and Cassette by Cerberus Records, and CD in Germany. It contained music from ALL the episodes.

• Dinosaurs (This first show was from 1985, was re-edited as "More Dinosaurs". It was not released on video due to some rights concerning "Fantasia" clips. Ironically it aired on Disney Channel.)
• More Dinosaurs (Gary Owens wants Eric Boardman to find him a dinosaur and bring it back, clips from the silent "The Lost World" and "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend" movies to fill out where "Fantasia" was.)
• Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs (Gary Owens is turning into a dinosaur, so Eric must collect water from the Crystal Palace Dinosaur Court to stop the transformation. Clips from "Gorgo".)
• Prehistoric World (concerned extinct mammals of the Cenozoic; Eric and Gary visit the La Brea tar pits and meet Dougal Dixon)
• The Return of Dinosaurs (Gary and Eric and a bunch of dino-crazed kids at a dinosaur slumber party at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. Go on a bone hunt and reconstruct a stegosaurus, then on to Canada to visit the Museum of Paleontology and then explore the dinosaurs of Antarctica.)
• Son of Dinosaurs (Gary and Eric must protect a dinosaur egg with a living embryo from some sort of "Evil Russian"-type character.)
• The World's Greatest Dinosaur Video (a 1990s repackaging of "More", "Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs" and "Prehistoric World" at a higher price, aimed at home video rentals)

What is the American equivalent of a British newspaper reader?

Following on from the place associations above...

What is the American (and indeed other nationalities') equivalent of the British stereotype embodied in the well-established phrases "a typical Guardian reader" (left-leaning, university educated) and "a typical Daily Mail reader" (right-wing, xenophobic, Little Englander)? Thanks. BrainyBabe (talk) 09:17, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I would say "Liberal" and "Redneck" would be the comparable versions of those stereotypes. There are other versions - "NPR listner" and "Nascar Dad" would kinda fit too. But at least Daily Mail readers read...that's something you couldn't accuse that section of the US public of doing! SteveBaker (talk) 14:22, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a New York Times reader and a Rush Limbaugh listener? Note that there are big differences between the political views of the Guardian and the NYT, but I've heard the phrase "New York Times-reader" to refer to East Coast liberal intellectuals. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 18:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Here are some of my own perhaps inaccurate perceptions of a couple of stereotype newspaper readers in the US (and I get these perceptions from having worked as a Reference Librarian at a busy urban Serials Desk for a number of years):

• People who subscribe to or read the "Wall Street Journal" are considered to be either very much into business, or are thought of as being politically moderate intellectuals.
• People who subscribe to or read the "New York Times" (especially people who do not live in New York) are considered to be liberal and highly enducated. Within New York City this distinction does not apply.
• People who subscribe to or read "The Washington Post" are considered to be very liberal, but perhaps not quite as sophisticated or intelligent as the New York Times readers.
• In Chicago (which is really two separate cities joined together) there are two major daily newspapers, each of which has its own very specific readership and stereotypical reader. The "Chicago Tribune" is more popular among readers on the city's North Side, and its readers are more middle class, traditionally conservative, and educated. The South Side paper is the "Chicago Sun Times", whose readership is more working class, traditionally liberal, and not-so-educated.

In the US there are also strong stereotypes that go along with news magazines such as the conservative "US News and World Report", or the liberal magazine "The Nation". -- Saukkomies 20:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Wall Street Journal readers are politically moderate? The paper's editorial stance sure doesn't reflect that. Corvus cornix_talk 21:32, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

To be clear, neither Chicago paper is explicitly marketed as a "North Side" paper or a "South Side" paper; they both cover the entire city. I'm a North Sider, but I've always read the Sun-Times. Zagalejo^^^ 22:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

As I mentioned, my reviews of readership of various papers was my own perception, and was not meant to be stated as fact. However, one person's Moderate is another person's Liberal - or Conservative. These terms are quite ambiguous. As far as the Chicago Trib and the Sun Times, I lived for years both on the South Side and the North Side of Chicago. If you live on the North Side it would quite easy to be unaware that the Southsiders consider the Sun Times to be "their paper", and that the Trib is the Northsider's. Northsiders are for the most part pretty oblivious to many of the nuances of Southside culture... Just an observation... -- Saukkomies 22:50, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, the South Siders may consider the Sun Times to be "their" paper, but I've never gotten the impression that it's specifically meant for them. The Sun-Times' North Side coverage tends to be comprehensive, and the letters to the editor come from all over the city. Zagalejo^^^ 04:07, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Newspapers in the United States are kind of different from the ones in the UK -- they tend to be regional near-monopolies, and there really isn't a "national" newspaper (please no one bring up USA Today). So most people read the newspaper from their city, or from the nearest large city, rather than one that reflects their political biases. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal do have some national readers for political reasons, but it's a very limited effect -- really Journal readers are more likely to take it because of its financial coverage than its politics.

Most large cities also have one or two free weekly newspapers, supported entirely by advertising. These usually (but not always) lean a bit further left than the mainstream papers, but lots of people (like me) who tend not to agree with their politics still enjoy reading them for their information about cultural happenings and alternative film. --Trovatore (talk) 21:56, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Trovatore is right. There is a limited national newspaper audience so comparisons are hard. But radio programs have wider reach. The Guardian reader transplanted to America would listen to NPR. While the expat Daily Mail reader would go with Rush Limbaugh. But what would the Tele subscriber listen to? lots of issues | leave me a message 23:28, 9 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lotsofissues (talk • contribs)

Fascinating speculation. Thank you all very much. BrainyBabe (talk) 07:39, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedians who are in school

For the hell of it I have been cruising around the user pages of those who edit here and have noticed that several wikipedians seem to be in school. Some make note of it on their user pages by leaving those little box things to broadcast the fact (couldn't find an example), some leave messages or template on thier names space to advise people of that fact (KiaraFan13 (talk · contribs) and MBK004 (talk · contribs), respectively), and some seem to have vanished to better deal with school (TomStar81 (talk · contribs)), and others seem to have left altogther because they couldn't handle the pressure (Omicronpersei8 (talk · contribs). Out of curisotiy, just how many wikipedians are in school, how many others have taken leave or quit do to school, and how many seem to have trouble dealing with both school and wikipedia? 75.39.197.219 (talk) 09:41, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't demand any information from editors - you can edit without logging in - and even if you do create an account, you don't have to provide any information whatever in order to do so. So we really don't know the age range of Wikipedians. You have to be careful about simply counting the number of users who self-identify as being in school because you're assuming that these people are as active as older Wikipedians - and that they spend as much time on productive editing as older people. To take your examples:

• KiaraFan13 has only made 79 edits in total - of which only 18 have been to actual articles - an amazing 121 edits by this user have been deleted!!
• MBK004 has clocked up around 6000 edits - but only 1000 of those were to articles - most of the rest was in talk pages and a negligable percentage which have been deleted.

Those are two very different editors! The first is new here - and evidently (from the number of deletions) having a hard time getting to grips with the way things work. The second appears to be a productive and active editor. Let's look at the two who dropped-out:

• TomStar81 has an amazing 14,000 edits more than half of which were to articles and WP pages.
• Omicronpersei8 clocked up an incredible 51,000 edits in about ONE YEAR, that's 140 edits per DAY! More amazingly still, this was not mere chit-chat. 31,000 of those edits (close to 100 edits per day!) were in articles.

They were both incredibly active. Sometimes, that level of activity borders on unhealthy obsession. Certainly, it's hard to imagine these people getting much else done. It's not surprising that sooner or later real-life kicks in and these very active people realise that there are other things in life and take a Wikibreak.

I now have 10,000 edits (which puts me into the top 2000 Wiki contributors...by this rather dubious measure) - but I've been here for three years - making for a much more healthy 10 edits per day average. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SteveBaker (talk • contribs) 14:16, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

So the unanswered question is now how many of these users have trouble dealing with wikipedia and school. I think the number is split about evenly, I have seen a number of users that ID as being in school but do not seem to leave for any length of time because of it, and the opposite extreme where people leave becuase the wiki consumes them. In an case, thank you for the answer. 129.108.227.171 (talk) 06:00, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Another reason these sortts of things are difficult to calculate is that young Wikipedians are often strongly encouraged not to reveal their ages (we don't want any "grooming" to go on here...). As such, it's very difficult to tell exactly how many wikipedians are of school age. Grutness...wha? 08:31, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

boxing

how much did tickets for the mayfield vs. hatton fight at the mgm sell for? RobertsZ (talk) 11:24, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I found a press release saying the mayweather-hatton tickets were just under $1,000 for the "cheap" seats and $42,000 for ringside. Dave6 ^talk 08:23, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Organization

When I was very young growing up in the Polish neighborhood around St. Casimir Catholic Church, I was a member of the Parziki.(hnot sure about the spelling) The uniform consisted of a page boy type outfit. I'm looking for information on what the Parziki was all about. Also there was a similar group of girls but don't know what the name was that they used. Any information would be appreciated. Thank you, Jim Skrocki —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.61.50.213 (talk) 15:00, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego— Polish Scouting Association? Not sure where you are located, but there is a parallel organization in the U.S.—see the links at the bottom of the article. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:24, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't sound like the ZHP, the scouting uniform looks different. I did a little bit of quick Googling but can't find anything related to the information you provided, sorry. 'd be happy to help in case you can add something new. Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 18:45, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Scouting in Poland has a list of a dozen other scouting-like organisations. Maybe one of those rings a bell? SteveBaker (talk) 23:08, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

recycling of solid waste in India

In recycling we generally see four bins for different type of waste for sorting of waste.What are these colours of bins/boxes and in which type of colour which type of solid is put in? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.2.93.140 (talk) 17:51, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Can anybody read shorthand?

I posted this at the Language desk a week or so ago and nobody could read it. I thought I would try here, just to get a slightly different audience. Thanks.

I was doing some work in an archive today and among a bunch of regular writing I found this:

shorthand?

shorthand?

The author was an early/mid 20th-century American scientist—I am pretty sure it is shorthand? But I wasn't able to really figure out what the heck it meant, and I've never really done anything with shorthand before. Note that this is my re-copying of the original (as best I could!) so there might be little errors in it that are imperceptible to me, but it should be largely correct. No, I don't have the original scanned, but this is pretty much what it looked like.

I don't have much in way of context. It was in a list of responses from other scientists to a report. For this one it was just "<name> -- Re: Section IX: <shorthand>". I have no idea what it would likely be saying or even what it would be really referring to (I'm not sure which report it is talking about).

If anyone had any suggestions as to what it might say, I'd be very interested. I'm intrigued that it's the only thing in these archival papers that was written like this (everything else is just in English) and I'm pretty curious as to what it says. Thanks a ton. --Panoptik (talk) 18:33, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

That is definitely shorthand. My mother is "fluent" in it, and I'm about to leave for her house, so I'll let you know in a few hours (if no one else gets to it first). :) --Masamage ♫ 20:55, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

It is often difficult to read other people's shorthand, but I'd love to know. Hopefully Masamage's mother can work it. Steewi (talk) 03:26, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, we've been poking at it for a while, and so far our best rough draft looks like "this save for (???) doctors/doors be for another(?) r-oo-g-t-s". Not too amazing; the difficulty is exactly what Stewi points out. "R oo g t s" really has us confused; is there a name that might be imitati ng? And what general field of science are these reports about?

Since you recopied it, could you maybe clarify a couple things from the original draft? For instance, when you wrote symbol 3, did you start from the top or the bottom? It makes a difference between 'th' and 'f'. Also, after the symbol with the long line and the loop (and the curve hovering over it), there's a very small line. Is that really a line, or is it a dot? And is that the correct angle? And how accurate is that hovering curve? Then, in the second-to-last symbol (the one that looks like 'or' in cursive), is the line coming from the top of the loop really curved, or is it straight? Finally, did you add the quotes around the thing, or are they present in the original?

Sorry for the deluge of questions. We'll look at it again tomorrow. :) --Masamage ♫ 07:39, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

A thought. If the quote marks are in the original, and it's in a list of responses from other scientists, might the scientist whose archive you're looking through have copied this from something someone else wrote, thus adding an extra layer of potential error? In which case, you'd have to get creative in interpreting it. Skittle (talk) 07:45, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Getting a photograph of the original would probably help the translators - shorthand is a very subtle thing - tiny variations can make a lot of difference. SteveBaker (talk) 12:18, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's a great start! "This save for" sounds very plausible as a response to a section in a report. Doctors/doors sounds a little odd and out of place. I'll think about what that might be. Could "be for" be "before"? As to your questions:

1. It's entirely possible the last part might be a name. Any possibility of it spelling GROVES? Just a thought. As for the general field of science, the report is in reference to early nuclear weapons policy. He's a physicist but in this capacity he's acting as an administrator.
2. Symbol 3: I really can't recall. It's probably a 50/50 toss up how I did it. You're probably better off assuming that it could go either way.
3. Long-line and loop: it looked pretty much like that. I'd assume it was a line though again since he was just writing this for himself and probably quickly so it might be a dot that he just let get too long or something.
4. I think the "or" looking thing was curved at the end. Note that the last symbol might have been a little less angular (I had trouble getting its shape exact, I think it might have been a bit more curved).
5. Quote marks were in the original.

Hope that might clarify a little bit? Anyway thank you and thank your mother for this, any effort at all is GREATLY appreciated and don't feel put out if my transcription of another guy's shorthand is illegible -- the odds are stacked against you, any meaning you can get from it at all is massively impressive! --Panoptik (talk) 15:08, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the long delay in acknowledging this; the internet connection has been funky-tastic today. Mom's gone to bed, but I'll leave this window open tonight so that we can look at it more in the morning regardless of what the network's up to. It's been fun; she got out her old textbook and we've been digging around. And thanks for the extra info! That should help a lot. :) --Masamage ♫ 06:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, here's kind of the layout of our best guesses so far at what might be. We're calling the straight-line-and-loop along with its attendant dashes "4"; 4a is the floating line, 4c is the small tailing line. 6 a and b are the two curving lines that look like they may or may not be intended to work together. Most of them have multiple possible meanings; the only one we're certain about is the first.

• 1: this
• 2: serve, save (written differently than one would ordinarily write these)
• 3: for, there, their
• 4a: the, there, their, trans-
• 4b: mit, meet, mate
• 4c: -ing, -ship
• 5: doctors, doors, directions, does
• 6a: be, by
• 6b: is, his, for?
• 7: akak? If the top of the loop is a straight line rather than a curve, this is "another"
• 8: roogits, rockets, rockguts, something else? Definitely not Groves. The key letters are either r-oo-g-t-s or r-k-g-t-s.

Some combinations of this almost make sense; one possibility is "this serves for transmitting directions be is another rockets", but that has several of the not-very-plausible possibilities, and even as a whole doesn't quite work. X) But based on the other things you've read, there might be some way to work it out? (Maybe it'll give you a clue what Section IX refers to?) --Masamage ♫ 00:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

"This save for their meeting (something)" sounds extremely plausible, and at the same time quite mundane (making it even more plausible). They had meetings planned for the future to discuss some of the things in this memo so maybe he was saying they should put this section off until they got together to talk about it. I'm thinking about the "name" at the end there. One of the people on this committee was named Ruhoff? Doesn't look like it works but is the only name I can think of that sounds like that. ANYWAY, thank you and your mother for your IMMENSE help, you have given me a lot of insight into something which was previously totally intelligible! --Panoptik (talk) 01:57, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

OK - I think I've got it! I'd say that for 4a/4b/4c, transmitting is just too good to pass up - none of the other combinations make any kind of sense. But 7...not "another" but "akak"...which is phonetically "Ack-ack" - which is anti-aircraft (guns/artillery/missiles). If we can ignore 6a (or maybe merge it with 6b)...then now you have "This serves for transmitting directions for antiaircraft rockets.". In the context of a meeting about nuclear weapons policy in the "early/mid 20th century" (you're talking about immediately post-WWII) - nuclear weapons were still be delivered by aircraft - and the risk of your nuclear-bomb-laden plane getting shot down by antiaircraft fire would have been a serious one. The term "ack-ack" would have been very common back then (nowadays we'd say "triple-A"). So I'd bet he's talking about some way to prevent enemy bombers from reaching their targets? SteveBaker (talk) 02:11, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Elonka is, I understand, a professional cryptographer. Perhaps, especially given SteveBaker's ideas, she might be useful here. Bielle (talk) 02:47, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, wow! Good call on the ack-ack--that has got to be what this is. :D Way to go! Unfortunately, transmitting really isn't that likely, because the 'ing' ending is generally represented by a dot, not a line, and apparently short-handers have it hammered into them never to make that kind of mistake. The little line appears to indicate the ending 'ship', which is weird. The thing over it is positioned like 'trans', but it's curved like 'the'. (Unless Panoptik curved it. ^_^) Which makes it tricky. "Transmitship"? (The ending 'sion' is an attached loop.) Also, mom says she really doesn't think 6b can reasonably be read as 'for'. Then there's the mystery of 6a, while 2 isn't plural and the last one really is weird. ?___? Leaves us with something like "This serve/save for transmitship directions be is antiaircraft rockgets." Which almost means something, but not quite. --Masamage ♫ 04:23, 13 December 2007 (UTC)