Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2009 February 19

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February 19

Desire

How is the song Desire by U2 critical of religion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.166.182 (talk) 07:40, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Who said it was? It's a drug song, obviously—shocking, coming from those good Catholic boys. It mentions in passing a "preacher stealing hearts at a travelling show", a reference I'm sure I misunderstand at least somewhat, not being Irish. It would seem to allude to a practice there having a counterpart in the US, the evangelist's tent meeting, where a silver-tongued con man would snake-charm a passel of gullible rubes into putting their money on the offering plate, pull up stakes, and move on to the next county. (See also "Revival meeting".) But it's not like U2 are the first to indict the practice, and I would think that good Catholic boys would be applauded at home for denigrating Protestant excesses. (It is likely, I think, that they are alluding to the American phenomenon, though.) --Milkbreath (talk) 12:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Who says U2 are "good Catholic boys"? Bono at least is the child of a mixed (Catholic/Protestant) marriage: attended Church of Ireland when he was young; was married in a Church of Ireland church, and as far as I know has never been a practicing Catholic. DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I was fooling around. That's what we call them at home here. But they do seem to be the sort a traditional Irish mother would be proud of—hope and charity, anyway, two out of three. --Milkbreath (talk) 16:17, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Apologies. My 'gentle sarcasm' detector is normally pretty good. It must have been set too low.

Incidentally I think many U2 songs probably are critical of religion to some extent, especially religion that is not related to actual faith in God. DJ Clayworth (talk) 17:58, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Someone put Desire (U2 song) in Category:Songs critical of religion. I also find it questionable. --Sean 13:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I've removed it. --Sean 13:25, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Two paintings' names

Who knows these paintings' names?

• Paint 1: http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/431/pic01kb3.jpg
• Paint 2: http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/5997/pic02ij1.jpg

Thank you in advance. --百楽兎 (talk) 14:35, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

#1 is Echo and Narcissus by JW Waterhouse. #2 is Medieval Town by Water by Karl Friedrich Schinkel — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 14:45, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much. --百楽兎 (talk) 15:17, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Is this true?

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. *

• As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English". *

• In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". *

• Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. *

• The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. *

• There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. *

• In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. *

• Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. *

• Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. *

• By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". *

• During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. *

• Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. *

• Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.* —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.95.140.188 (talk) 17:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Not true, not at all true, this is one of those emails which does the rounds from time to time, I think it's supposed to be a joke. DuncanHill (talk) 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

It's certainly a joke - a very good one, though. --Tango (talk) 17:36, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Not just a joke, an old one; it may be the first I ever read online, and that was in the early 1990s, when it was just Usenet.

It's a lot older than that. Mark Twain wrote something very similar called something like "A Simple Plan for the Improvement of the English language". StuRat (talk) 22:02, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

(after edit conflict): Yes, an old joke. Possibly its earliest incarnation, which has been (probably apocryphally) attributed to Mark Twain (who nonetheless did have verified views on spelling reform) is called "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling". Thylacoleo (talk) 22:05, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

See also "Meihem in ce Klasrum". —Tamfang (talk) 06:10, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Just shows that old jokes are new jokes to people who haven't heard them. Hence the popularity of banana skin jokes with the young.86.197.170.129 (talk) 17:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC)DT

Why is it impossible to unscramble an egg?

Or derust something by removing oxygen? Or push sweat back into yourself and break it down to it's original body chemistry? Or take the sun apart, etc.? Why can only some actions be undone? It seems logical. If I can add 1+2 to make 3, then take 2 away and end up with the same one again, then why can't I undo everything? I place something on the counter. Now I remove it. One step forward, one step back. If you were to film yourself scambling an egg, then play it backwards, you would see frame by frame how to "undo" the scrambling (removing heat in exact increments, stirring counterclockwise, etc.). I wonder if this could work in practice. If someone with no life had the patience...... Is this what's meant by a "thermodynamic arrow of time"?TinyTonyyy (talk) 20:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

See Entropy. To be slightly more expansive, some of the things you suggest can be done to some extent, including converting rust back into iron. DJ Clayworth (talk) 20:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think it's fundamentally impossible, just totally impractical. Egg white is largely a solution of protein that becomes denatured and aggregated upon cooking. It's not impossible to de-aggreagate and renature proteins, but in many cases it can be quite hard and probably has never been done. Similarly mixing two things together, in this case egg-white and yolk, can be undone; this is the realm of separation science. ike9898 (talk) 20:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

It is possible to undo pretty much anything, however sometimes it requires energy to do so. That's the key point. You can remove the oxygen from rust to get iron back again - that's basically what smelting is - but to do so you need to supply energy (in this case, heat). The others are similar, although rather more difficult. --Tango (talk) 21:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

This egg example is complicated because there are all sorts of ikky chemical changes. Let's pick something simpler for the sake of discussion: If you drop a china teacup - it'll fall and smash into maybe a dozen pieces which will fly off in all directions. But - if you could propel the pieces from wherever they landed at PRECISELY the opposite of the speed, orientation, rotation that they flew apart - they'd magically form into the same exact teacup again. From our human perspective, it would seem like it's MUCH harder to put the teacup back together again than it was to take it apart...almost impossible in fact. However, what you're thinking is "Heck - I could drop the cup any way I wanted and it would still smash - but I have to be super-precise in order to put it together again." If you are thinking that then what you're forgetting is how incredibly hard it would be to drop a second, identical teacup and have it smash in EXACTLY the same way as the first one - with the pieces landing in exactly the same positions and so on. So as hard as it would be to reverse the action of your egg-whisk to 'unscramble' the egg, it's no harder than trying to scramble two identical eggs in the EXACT same way. However, having said that, there are some things going on here that simply aren't reversible. When the teacup breaks, the gravitational potential energy required to do that eventually ends up as heat energy (and some sound energy...but the sound pretty soon ends up as heat too). What we CAN'T do is make that 'left over' heat flow in such a way as to cool down the fragments of broken china that had been heated up by the collision with the ground and use the resulting energy to create motion. That's because of the laws of thermodynamics - you can't make heat do that. You ask "Why can only some actions be undone?" - but I'd argue that there are NO actions that can be perfectly undone. If you push a teacup six inches across the table - then push it back again - have you "undone" the first push? Not really - the friction that the teacup made with the table made the table and the cup a bit warmer. Your body burned a few calories - so you are not the same at the end. So it's really hard to think of an "action" that can truly be "undone". SteveBaker (talk) 21:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

If you propelled the teacup pieces in reverse, you wouldn't end up with something you'd want to pour tea into, no matter how exact you were. Same with the egg. Even if you could restore the components to their original positions, they wouldn't be bound together the same way. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Regarding rust. There are chemicals that remove the oxygen from the rust. But the metal lattice that kept the iron that turned into rust linked to the rest of your metal gets broken. You also don't get pure iron or steel back. The oxygen gets replaced by an other substance. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 22:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Some years ago Ian Stewart was giving the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (his subject, unsurprisingly, was mathematics) and gave a surprising demonstration. He had a pot of a very viscous, transparent liquid (a gel really), dropped a line of red dye in it. Then he turned a handle attached to a paddle in the pot, so as to rotate the gel slowly, and the dye smeared round in a cylinder. Then he turned the handle back, and the dye collected pretty well back into its original line. Obviously this depended on the gel being very viscous, and turning the handle slowly; but I was surprised that it reformed as well as it did. --ColinFine (talk) 23:14, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

How long does it take a Nigerian prince to mail something?

Does anyone know long it takes to mail something to and from Nigeria (to U.S.)? I sent a check out that way, and if its lost in the mail, then how the hell am I gonna find it?(!) How would I go about tracking where a letter's been worldwide? It's been a month and a half now. Does my letter require extra handling (and time) because he is royalty, and is that why it's taking so damn long!? Sunburned Baby (talk) 21:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Uh oh. I hope you haven't fallen victim to a Nigerian scam. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:25, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

If the mail has been lost, it's probably under a bridge. --LarryMac | Talk 21:31, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Unless you sent the cheque by some kind of registered mail, there is no way to track it. Has the cheque come out of your account yet? If not, cancel it and, if you have a legitimate reason to be sending Nigerian princes money (because they randomly emailed you isn't such a reason) then send a new one by registered mail. --Tango (talk) 21:39, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The questioner has a history of asking nonsensical questions, such as "Is there a NASCAR driving in reverse?". DJ Clayworth (talk) 21:41, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

He asked that question after this one, so not really "history". ;) --Tango (talk) 21:46, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, by the time we get to commenting on this question, we're aware of more recent questions, so we can now see that he has indeed established a "history" (if 2 questions counts as a history). At the time he asked this question, there was no such history, but now there is. Get it?  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 05:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

The history is much longer than two questions. DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:30, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

See Nigerian Royal Regalia. The chances of one of your acquaintances from Nigeria being a member of some royal family are higher than for most other countries, simply because there are so many of them. Many bloodlines are still actively traced and have some local village ruling/advisory powers. OR I know an abdicated king who's working as a forklift operator and a prince who's a cook. Cancel that check and don't mail checks to Nigeria. Unfortunately wire transfers and EFTs also have a patchy history of not making it. (..and don't fall for one of the many scams!)76.97.245.5 (talk) 23:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I know the guy you mean. He no longer lives at that address; he's visiting me right now, and we're sharing a bank account. He has ordered all of his mail destroyed,so you can just re-write the check and send it my way. NByz (talk) 03:48, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

progressive vs regressive tax

Regarding the US names for taxes, a tax which hits the rich harder then the poor is called progressive while one that hits the poor more then the rich is called regressive. Where did the etymology of these terms originate? 65.167.146.130 (talk) 21:19, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

According to the OED, it first appeared in Thomas Paine's Rights of Man II. v. 85. Plasticup ^T/C 21:24, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Tennis

1. What is the longest time a point of tennis has lasted?

2. What is the longest time a game of tennis has lasted?

3. What is the longest time a set of tennis has lasted?

4. What is the longest time a match of tennis has lasted? JCI (talk) 23:20, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried looking in the Guinness Book of Records, or using a famous word search engine? -mattbuck (Talk) 01:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

But...but...but...this is Wikipedia!!! Surely we have an article called something like Longest tennis match records ? Oh...wait...we do! (We also have Shortest tennis match records and even an entire Category dedicated to tennis records...Category:Tennis_records_and_statistics which has links to over a dozen more tennis match records. SteveBaker (talk) 02:08, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

THIS... IS... WIKIPEDIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!! :-P Ilikefood (talk) 22:46, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Golf

How can you play at a private golf course? Because I'm planning some golf trips and some of the courses I'm going to are private. JCI (talk) 23:20, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe that to play at a private golf club, you need to be a member, or be with a member. Thanks, Genius101^Guestbook 00:45, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Your own golf club may have reciprocal arrangements with other clubs, or your club secretary or captain may be willing to write letters of introduction for you to the committees of the clubs you wish to visit. Other than that - write to the clubs you would like to visit and ask if they have any facilities for non-members (some will have certain days or times when non-members are welcome, or they may put you in touch with an existing member who would invite you as his guest). DuncanHill (talk) 00:50, 20 February 2009 (UTC)