Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2009 January 26

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January 26

college baseball lines?

Hi, does anyone know of any sports books that offer college baseball lines? For example.

Run Line-Ohio State(-2 1/2) versus Ohio(+2 1/2) Moneyline-Ohio State(-250) versus Ohio(+210) Total- Over 9 versus Under 9

What about college hockey lines? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.88.16.237 (talk) 00:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

The run line is a spread bet line. If you see "Ohio +2 1/2", and you bet that, it means that you add 2 1/2 runs to Ohio's score and if they still win, and you bet on them, you win 2x your bet (like, if you bet $100, you'd get your stake and an extra $100). If you bet on Ohio Stare -2 1/2, it means you SUBTRACT 2 1/2 runs from the score for Ohio State, and if they win still, you win your bet. The Moneyline is an "odds" style bet, put in terms of cash. In this case, if you put $250 down on Ohio State, you stand to win $210 extra if they win the game (straight up win, no spread). On the flip side, if you put $210 down on Ohio to win, you stand to win $250 if they do actually win. The actual payout is adjusted accordingly if you bet a different amount. Both bets tell you that Ohio State is favored to win, since in the first case, you are counting on them winning by MORE than the 2 1/2 runs; and in the second case you stand to win more money by betting on Ohio than on Ohio State... The third line is the Over/Under; in this case what you are betting on is the total runs scored by BOTH teams. If you take the over, you are betting that the sum total of runs scored in the game will be greater than 9 (regardless of who wins). The under, of course, is a bet that the score will add up to less than this. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 05:17, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Uuh...that's not what 76 is asking. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:44, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Then could you or someone explain it. I, for one, have no idea what the answer meant, much less, the question itself! Dismas|^(talk) 08:03, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

The question is essentially asking if it is possible to bet on college baseball and hockey; I'm sure it must be, since if something can be gambled upon, someone is gambling upon it somewhere. Jayron just explained what all the numbers mean, which is not what the question asked, but helpful for the rest of us I suppose. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:11, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

He's asking for sportsbooks, i.e. places to place sports bets (I'm guessing websites like Ladbrokes since he presumably can't get to Las Vegas). Clarityfiend (talk) 10:21, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Alternatively, he may just be after the actual numbers for various games (an amateur bookie perhaps?). Clarityfiend (talk) 11:54, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

AH! I'm sorry. I thought the OP was asking WHAT the lines meant on a college baseball book. I didn't know he was LOOKING for a sports book. I imagine there's several websites that would be helpful in that regard. See this DMOZ link which is cited in our article on sports betting. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 18:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Smoking Alternative?????????

Many of my friends have been explaining to me the joys of these 'electric cigerettes'. im sure you've seen them . i just want to know are they legal, but most importantly are they safe?? Compared to normal cigs that is? Cheers JP —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.203.65.40 (talk) 01:26, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Our article on the Electronic cigarette answers those questions. They are typically legal or unregulated in most places (with the exception of Australia). Last year, the World Health Organization said: "no rigorous, peer-reviewed studies have been conducted showing that the electronic cigarette is a safe and effective nicotine replacement therapy." They may be safer than regular cigarettes, but that doesn't make them safe. Rockpocket 02:03, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Please help me with my dilema

I got so drunk on New Year’s Eve I ended up sleeping with my boyfriend’s brother, i’ve been with my boyfriend, who’s 20 (i'm 19) for just over a year but things have been a bit strained between us recently and we had a huge argument during the day on New Year’s Eve. I told him I was going back to my ex and he said he didn’t love me anyway and had stopped fancying me ages ago. I was really hurt.

It was awkward because I was spending the day round his house and staying the night. In the evening his brother, who’s 25, suggested we all go down the pub - I jumped at the chance because I just wanted to get out of the house. No one else knew about the argument with my boyfriend but the atmosphere between us was terrible.

We all went down the pub, my boyfriend as well. I had drink after drink. Just before 10.30 my boyfriend suggested we all go to a club -his sister was keen but i wasn’t so he and his sister went off leaving me with his brother. We stayed in the pub until chucking out time. We walked home and there was a note from his parents saying they’d gone round to friends so not to expect them home till very late.

We sat and chatted. He was as drunk as I was and we carried on drinking. He got a bit amorous and I was so drunk I just went with the flow. We got completely carried away and ended up naked on the sofa making love - I can’t say it was mad or passionate, I just don’t remember much about it or how careful we were –I don’t think we used any protection. What I do remember is stumbling upstairs half-naked and falling into bed.

New Year’s Day was hell - my boyfriend knew something was wrong but just thought I was hung-over(which I was) That night he told me he regretted what he’d said and that he still loves and fancies me - What can I do?

There’s a chance I could be pregnant with his brother’s baby – or have caught something from him, since he’s a real ladies man. How can I ever tell my boyfriend what happened and expect him still to care for me?

Please help - I'm going out my mind Grebcheck (talk) 16:32, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

On your second-to-last paragraph, you should get a home pregnancy test from Boots and go to the doctor to get yourself checked out for STDs. As for the rest, unfortunately we're not an advice forum and you probably shouldn't be taking the advice of a bunch of random strangers on the internet. You should talk to your friends about this. Good luck. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 16:55, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

You might want to try the Samaritans (charity) - you can email or phone them, and they will listen unendingly, and refer you to practical help if you want it. Good luck! BrainyBabe (talk) 17:06, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

If you're worried about pregnancy or a sexually transmitted infection, see a doctor. That'd be the responsible thing to do.

Apart from that, you either tell him or you don't, and he'll either find out on his own or he won't. We don't know your boyfriend or the particulars; we have no way of knowing how he'd react. Is there anything to be gained from telling him? Would he be better off knowing that you had sex with his brother? It's easy to start assigning blame here: you shouldn't have slept with your boyfriend's brother, his brother shouldn't have slept with you, your boyfriend shouldn't expect that you're going to stick around if he tells you he doesn't love you, and he shouldn't be so stupid as to say something like that if he doesn't mean it. That's just for starters. Frankly, there was a lot of stupidity to go around between the three of you that evening, but maybe you're smart enough to keep your mouth shut, and so is his brother, and you two make a concentrated effort to not let your own stupidity mess him up as well, and your boyfriend is worth the effort this will require and the guilt it will cause, and you learn to live with it. Or maybe you'll make a tearful confession and convince him that this was just an aberration, a weird one-time thing that will never happen again, and because he's basically a smart guy with a healthy sense of self-esteem, who understands that in this life, shit happens and it's not the end of the world, he forgives you. I don't know, I can't see the future.

In the end, though, it's a relationship, not a deposition: you're not obliged to provide full disclosure, and he's not entitled to it; it's all right to feel guilt, but frankly, if he told you that he doesn't love you and want you, he can't expect you to stay committed to you. (Which is not to say that he doesn't do so anyway, of course; he'd be wrong, but that may not be much of a comfort.) In any case, if you don't want something like this to happen again, you need to control your impulses, and you and your boyfriend need to improve your communication. Otherwise you'll just end up in the same position all over again. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 17:22, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd say you've likely permanently poisoned your relationship and you should break up with your b/f. If not, say you keep quiet, get married, have kids, then some day he finds out about all this. Somebody could end up dead or you could end up a single Mom. Walking away now is the best way to prevent this type of thing, and use more sense with your next b/f. StuRat (talk) 17:59, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

These statistics might inform your decision Men are better at detecting infidelities Dmcq (talk) 18:16, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Ask yourself how this could have happened. Were you so drunk you had absolutely no idea what you were doing (in which case, your boyfriend's brother has some explaining to do, because if he was that drunk as well he probably wouldn't have been up to much)? If not, why did you let it happen? I notice you talk repeatedly about whether or not your boyfriend loves you, you never once mentioned whether or not you love your boyfriend. I think you need to give some careful thought about whether you actually want to be with your boyfriend. --Tango (talk) 18:21, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

There is always the option of becoming a nun.--Artjo (talk) 20:42, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

There is, but unless you seriously want to devote your life to religion in that way, it probably won't work out very well. --Tango (talk) 23:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Although others have fictionally done this before you, apparently. Julia Rossi (talk) 07:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Sub-Prime Mortgages and other disappearing tricks?

Every day we are bombarded with stories of collapsing banks and financial institutions. We are told of rapidly increasing unemployment and store-closures. Here in Britain we are now "officially" in recession with incessant talk of it getting worse, possibly until 2012 or so. But all of that leaves me totally confused when trying to discover the root cause. So the US Banks loaned money to people without evidence being required that the borrowers could pay their loans back; and those risky mortgages were bundled up with good mortgage risks and sold on to banks all around the world and now we are told those bundles are "toxic" and no-one can say how big the debt mountain really is. And public confidence in Banks has now disappeared. But surely, merely blaming sub-prime mortgages for economies around the globe collapsing is a bit exaggerated? I mean, do I have to believe that so many people in the USA have actually defaulted on their mortgage repayments? If so, they would have to be in their tens of millions. Is that really the case, or is this just a cover-up for some major international fraud on a gargantuan scale?Can some clever Wikipedian please explain in simple terms how we all got into this mess in the first place before I take to drink? Thanks in anticipation. But I think i'll have a drink anyway. 92.22.161.201 (talk) 20:31, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Although the term sub-prime is probably overused, what really this crises boils down to is the banks lent out to much money compared to the money they actually had in assets - they started to lend against the money they expected to come back from the other loans. That stated the downward spiral; the rest was simply history repeating itself. Also, it's not really possible to overstate the effect of a lack of confidence in banks. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 20:38, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

You yourself exaggerated when you refer to "economies around the globe collapsing". No economies are collapsing, they are merely undergoing an adjustment/recession. We've had them before, and it's not the end of the world. StuRat (talk) 21:22, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Iceland's economy isn't far off total collapse, as I understand it. The rest of the world is just looking at a run-of-the-mill recession, though, you're right. --Tango (talk) 23:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Sub-prime mortgages was the trigger, but as with any major event it takes a lot of things to be just right for that trigger to start a domino effect with massive consequences. In this case, it's mostly to do with far too many people and companies around the world being far too dependant on borrowed money. If we weren't so dependant on debt, the banks stopping lending wouldn't have been such a bit problem. --Tango (talk) 23:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Well I have my own pet theory having looked back over last year's news headlines and I think it was Oil speculators wot did it. Sure, people and banks were playing a crazy wealth creation game by seeing homes as investments instead of as homes. Everyone wanted to buy to let. Everyone wanted to borrow 125% of the "value" of the home they were going to buy, and others wanted to cash in part of their so-called "equity". And then oil goes up to $145 a barrel - not because the Oil sheiks put their prices up - oh no - it was Wall Street and London Stock Brokers who were driving up oil prices. And that caused gas and electricity prices to rise. And that pushed up commodity consumer prices. And the camel's back broke and the home mortgagees just gave up on their homes and loans - and the chickens came home to roost. Yes, it was greedy oil speculators and short-sellers on zillion dollar and sterling bonuses methinks. Without them, things would have carried on as before.

Bastards!!! 92.10.84.247 (talk) 03:09, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

There's some interesting discussion about this subject in the newsgroup uk.diy. Google has a cache of a particularly relevant thread here. If you're just skimming (it's quite big) start with posts by "M Holmes", who in my opinion knows what he's talking about. 93.97.184.230 (talk) 08:53, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Short version: During the 1990s, the Clinton Administration put heavy pressure on banks to lend to minorities who would not otherwise have qualified for loans, with the "politically correct" goal of closing gaps in home ownership and claiming increased minority ownership, a claim continued by the Bush administration. Surely there have been historical inequities and other genuine reasons why minorities on the whole have lesser incomes and credit histories than majorities, but those gaps should have been rectified by additional educational, job training, and financial management training opportunities, not by banks making unsound loans. So the sub-prime market was invented. This incremental demand started to push up prices (see "law of supply and demand"), which became a self-propelled spiral upward -- investors and homeowners began to jump on the bandwagon of rising prices, pushing the spiral up further, until you saw cases where families were devoting 75% of their take-home pay to housing, or buying homes they couldn't afford with "teaser" introductory-rate mortgages, certain that they could resell at a profit and/or refinance when the introductory period ran out. Eventually, you run out of people to sell to (known as the "greater fool" or "last fool" theory -- the last fools in lose), and the bubble bursts. See the Dutch Tulip Bulb craze of around the late 1600s (from memory, without looking). All speculative bubbles follow the same pattern. But the igniter was the creation of sub-prime loans for political means and vote-grabbing. As usual, when decisions are made for political reasons rather than sound economic reasons, we all pay a high price. Unimaginative Username (talk) 09:11, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

There is an article on Government policies and the subprime mortgage crisis. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 11:23, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Whether or not homeowners have actually defaulted on their sub-prime mortgage is irrelevant. The financial institutions have been passing the risk around for many years. Unfortunately, when more than one institution turns round and says they don't like this level of risk, the other institutions soon get nervous and start refusing to buy the debts. The stockmarket gets wind of this, particularly if banks post gloomier than expected figures with the SEC, and the stock price drops. Soon all the other stockbrokers get nervous and sell their bank stock while they can, the stock price plummets and soon everyone is selling everything. The only ones rubbing their hands with glee are those with extensive short positions. It is unfortunate that the stockmarket can plunge so rapidly on little more than a rumour, but a large part of the business is about managing risk. Astronaut (talk) 14:18, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

The best source I've seen on why everything went so spectacularly to the crapper explained in a way normal people understand are two This American Life episodes called The Giant Pool of Money and Another Frightening Show on the Economy. There are many reasons besides sub-prime that the economy collapsed and faith in the banks vanished (the biggest culprit seems to be something called credit-default swaps). They explain it extremely well in those episodes, in a way which is both very informative and easy to understand. They're also riveting to listen to. Both of them are now slightly out of date (the first being made in May and the second in October), but they explain the origin of the crisis in an admirable fashion. Belisarius (talk) 03:52, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Is there such a thing as INSTANT web surfing?

I'm not satisfied with DSL and thier ilk. Some pages still take time! I'm looking for a service with not one millisecond of delay. A no bullshit you punch in a web page with kazillion megabyte clip/song streaming/downloads, and it loads now!Zorba'sChosenOne (talk) 20:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

No. Some pages will always be slow. APL (talk) 21:04, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

More clearly, the speed of the "last mile" from your ISP to your house is only one part of the equation. You also need to consider the speed of all the links in the chain from your house, to the server. (It may be in Hong Kong, for all you know!) There may be congestion issues at any step in this process. Furthermore the web server itself may simply be running slowly. Many modern web-sites require a lot of database work to generate a web-site. If the site becomes popular the server may simply not have the power needed to generate the pages in a timely fashion.

In short, With enough money, you can control the speed of your connection, but you can't control the speed of what it connects to. APL (talk) 21:08, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

AKA all computers wait at the same speed. --Trovatore (talk) 02:22, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

While, theoretically, you could get a connection with infinite bandwidth, zero latency is impossible due to the speed of light being finite, so instant loading is impossible. --Tango (talk) 23:40, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

This Q belongs on the Computer Desk. StuRat (talk) 02:14, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Not really, it's not a computer problem. It's basic physics. SteveBaker (talk) 02:31, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

The two things that screw you are (a) the speed of light and (b) you can't improve the rest of the Internet. Even science fiction technology in your PC and from your ISP won't affect either of those things. A millisecond is about 300 kilometers. The Internet protocols require at least one round-trip - even with NOTHING taking time if the web site you want is 150 kilometers away (not "as the crow flies") - then you're doomed. But for a computer to turn around an internet request in under a millisecond is quite a challenge - and you have ZERO chance if the page you happen to want is not in RAM cache...and the performance of that server is out of your control. Then, if you are contacting the web site for the first time, you have to fight your way through a cascade of DNS boxes - which will add lots more inside-computer time and lots LOTS more speed-of-light distance. If someone else happens to want to access the same server at the same time, you'll probably get 'NAK' packets (Negative acknowledgement) - the Ethernet standard REQUIRES a multi-millisecond backoff-retry under those circumstances. Also - even if that page could conceivably refreshes in 1ms - your CPU will take many milliseconds to send the pixels at the graphics card - and the graphics card will take around 16ms to fling them at the display. So, "No"...as in "Hell No". SteveBaker (talk) 02:31, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

How do I destroy my short term memory?

I'm talkin the last 20 years or so. I want to live in the past! How do I destroy all incoming memories? I'm prepared to buy my childhood home then proceed with your advice.THE WORLD'S MOST CURIOUS MAN (talk) 22:14, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

"The last 20 years or so" isn't "short term". But just the same, appropriate brain damage will do the trick. Alternatively, they do say that when you're dying, your life flashes before your eyes. Both of these approaches would require you to knowingly do something pretty foolish, but it's starting to look more and more like it wouldn't be all that out of the ordinary for you. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 22:46, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually you might want to get dementia. An alternative way can be done by going to the hospital and asking the doctor to do something with your brain. If you die, I guess that's just bad luck but it is all worth it with the (rather low) chance of a successful result. --PST 23:07, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Whatever about your memories you would still live in the present. And that present might not be very nice if you are unable to look after yourself. Dmcq (talk) 00:10, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Short-term memory is minutes - not hours, days, years or decades. So you're talking about selectively erasing long term memory - and I seriously doubt that's remotely possible. We don't remember discrete time-lines - we associate one memory with another to form chains and webs of data. Old memories fade to make room for new ones. There is literally no concievable way to disentangle them. It would be like taking the milk out of your coffee. SteveBaker (talk) 01:26, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Retrograde amnesia does tend to affect recent memories more than older memories, as I understand it (although maybe only on the scale of hours, rather than decades - outside of TV anyway). This is apparently called "Ribot's Law". So, perhaps if you hit yourself on the head just hard enough, you could wipe out just the last 20 years! (Probably not, though...) --Tango (talk) 01:49, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

For an excellent fictional take, see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A really wonderful film. Of course this is aesthetic advice; I have never heard of anyone seeing the film and as a consequence forgetting the last twenty years. --Trovatore (talk) 02:39, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe long-term recreational drug use would work, though which drugs I don't know. -mattbuck (Talk) 02:43, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Amnesia isn't an erasure of memory though - that's CLEARLY the case because the memories gradually "come back". So they weren't erased, it was just the access mechanisms temporarily shutting down - older memories have more 'access paths' to them so they hang around better. This wouldn't work for our OP because memory would gradually return. There is no conceivable way for a drug to selectively target recent (on the scale of 20 year) memories either. The bottom line is that memory simply isn't stored that way...so selective erasure is quite utterly impossible...like I said - it's like unmixing the milk from your coffee. The laws of thermodynamics don't allow it. SteveBaker (talk) 02:59, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

@ poster, I've got a feeling, you've managed this already. ;) Julia Rossi (talk) 07:26, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Er...my learned friends, may I draw your attention to the 'giving medical advice' rule. It is an interesting (if preposterous) question but... _{(and there came a voice crying in the wilderness)} Richard Avery (talk) 08:03, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

And if it pleases the court, I submit that sous-pont feeding times require an adjournment?... _{making two voices crying in the wilderness} Julia Rossi (talk) 10:19, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Um, what was the question again? --Richardrj ^{talk email} 10:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

It started with "Um..." Julia Rossi (talk) 10:49, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Considering that we're clearly dealing with fiction here, I'm not too worried. The feeding part is another story. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 12:41, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

The OP is talking about erasing memories that develop anytime between the present moment and the future, and causing oneself not to remember what just happened, all the way into the future. This is not a question about erasing past memories. ~AH1^(TCU) 18:30, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

To the OP, there is certainly the possibility you can convince yourself of it; the movie (and book, though in the book the man had a tumor)) Somewhere in Time is a great example of this. I believe the best way is to handle this psychologically, and not medically, as there is no way to get the exact range.

So, surround yourself with nostalgia-related items. WIll you live in the past literally? No, but you can go so far toward it that, for all intents and purposes, you will *feel* like it. And, that's what you're looking for.

Just remember, the imagination is a great playground. I suspect some of the most obsessed of fans at Star Trek conventions actually imagine themselves as Klingons and other species, for instance. As adults, we just forget about it.

Indeed, you can have an imaginary friend and even an imaginary family if you want.Somebody or his brother (talk) 18:32, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Since this is going to end up in the archives; to anyone coming across this thread and thinking it's a great idea to live in the past: This isn't a healthy idea. If you feel tempted to try, seek the help of a trained professional before this fantasy turns into something that will hurt you and/or those around you. You can't re-create the past and the more convincing a copy you create for yourself the more disturbing you are going to find any deviations. This path doesn't lead back to the nest of your childhood but to the cuckoo's nest. Learn to deal with reality, however bad it might be. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 19:17, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Cyd Charisse

Can anyone recommend websites that have an unlimited amount of high-quality high resolution color Cyd Charisse pictures? Please avoid recommending The Official Cyd Charisse site or Legs - A tribute to Cyd Charisse, I've been there TONS of times. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 22:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Why limit yourself to just one site ? Here's the result of a Google search showing many such pics on multiple sites: [1]. Even a Cydophile like you should be satisfied. :-) StuRat (talk) 04:11, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Ooh, thanks! --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 04:52, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

But it was Lucille Ball who cracks the whip! Julia Rossi (talk) 07:03, 27 January 2009 (UTC)