Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2009 January 29

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January 29

'track basher'

What is a 'track basher' is in reference to Antonín Dvořák? I think I may have misheard it on the radio- something similar maybe. I see the reference to 'mac basher' in the article on John C. Dvorak, but I'm pretty sure it's in reference to the composer. Nadando (talk) 04:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The only meaning of "track basher" that I know is a railway fan who tries to travel over every separate piece of track on a railway (see Railfan#Basher). I mention this in case the term was not being used in reference to the composer or if it was some sort of pun on the railfan sense. --Anonymous, 07:32 UTC, January 29, 2009. (Copyedited later.)

I have no idea if this helps, but: On a few websites, Antonín Dvořák is desribed as having been a train enthusiast and gricer (where gricer seems to be a term for trainspotter). --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 12:51, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for "gricer". It's a relatively new word, with its first quotation from 1969. The etymology is uncertain, but it may be related to "grouse" "on the basis of the supposed resemblance of train-spotting to grouse-shooting". Also "grice", and verb "to grice". --Milkbreath (talk) 13:59, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, well in that case maybe he was a track basher in the gricer sense. --Anonymous, 05:11 UTC, January 30, 2009.

It looks to me like we've arrived at the correct answer piecemeal by dint of inadvertant teamwork. When I first read this question, I casually tried to guess what might have been misheard as "track basher" and then gave up, having little hope that any progress could be made and not giving the idea of Dvorak as railroad nut much credence. Many heads are better than one. --Milkbreath (talk) 19:49, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

the only british female marine

Is it true that only one woman ever made it into the royal marines? i remember hearing this ages ago —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.20.139 (talk) 13:23, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes that is true, the woman was called Hannah Snell, and entered in the 1700s however apparently she pretended to be male to get in the marines. But still got a military pension, try here for further reading Spitfire^Tally-ho! 13:32, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Or here Spitfire^Tally-ho! 13:33, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Women are currently trying to earn the green beret which means having to pass the endurance course designed for men. I believe one has recently made it, if not she only just failed.86.200.130.201 (talk) 15:57, 29 January 2009 (UTC)DT

I thought the problem was that all marine positions are considered front line combat positions and women aren't allowed to serve in them. --Tango (talk) 16:25, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

That's my impression as well Spitfire^Tally-ho! 19:27, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Note that there are two tiers of soldiers who have earned a Marine beret. There are the actual Marines themselves, and then there are various attached trades such as artillery, signallers, REME and so on. These latter types do the "All Arms Commando Course" and wear a green beret, but with the cap badge appropriate to their corps rather than the Marine globe. It may be that women are permitted in this category; I don't know. I also don't know whether the All Arms course is supposed to require the same standard of fitness etc as the main Course, or whether it is a lesser standard. Even if lesser, it's still no picnic! 93.97.184.230 (talk) 00:07, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Any of these objections about "aggressive camping" to accommodate women in the forces make interesting reading[1] Julia Rossi (talk) 07:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the term aggressive camping. But if anybody wants to join a particular unit, and can meet the standards ESSENTIAL to that unit, why shouldn't they ?90.4.246.42 (talk) 16:49, 30 January 2009 (UTC)DT

The catch (where the "aggressive camping" remark comes into play) is that they can't meet the standards. The allegation is that the government performed an investigation, but ended up watering down the requirements (or standards) to the extent that they were testing little more than "aggressive camping". This meant the results were completely inapplicable to the requirements of the units they were supposed to represent. – 74  05:15, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

What do other encyclopedias do?

Are there any notable encyclopedias (present company excepted) which maintain lists of people with disparate charictaristics? I have no problem with lists of Greeks, or list of Greeks living in Detroit. When we come to list of Greek plumbers, IMHO it seems that the category itself lacks notability. If I posted this query in the wrong place, please move it and drop me a note. As always, thank you. Phil_burnstein (talk) 17:41, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

We don't have a list of Greek plumbers. If you come across any List articles and wish to challenge their notability, then I recommend you peruse Wikipedia:Guide to deletion. If you come across categories which look dubious, take them to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:39, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Frankly, what other encyclopedias do is kind of irrelevant, at least to me; if it's genuinely useful or informative, it's good enough for us. That said, I certainly agree that a list of Greek plumbers seems completely pointless (but then again, we don't seem to have one). If you have a problem with a specific list, it's not at all impossible to get rid of it: it'll just go through a normal AfD process. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 18:44, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

It may be short, but: Yes, we do have a list of Greek plumbers. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The category system is an example of something that's hard to do usefully in a paper encyclopedia - which is why many encyclopedias don't do it. It's undoubtedly useful - and so long as the categories are carefully chosen and policed - it's a good thing. Wikipedia isn't short of disk space - and I don't think there is a special limit for the number of categories an article can belong to - so it doesn't really hurt anyone to have "Greek Plumbers" as a category. The important thing to bear in mind when looking at a category is that one should NEVER assume it's complete. SteveBaker (talk) 02:27, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I was going to say something extremely rude about Greek plumbers, but, alas, discretion got the better of me. :-) StuRat (talk) 06:20, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The questioner should look at Wikipedia:Size comparisons. Wikipedia is 25 times as big as Encyclopedia Britannica and over 100 times bigger than the single-volume Columbia Encyclopedia (by word count). There are printed lists of plumbers available: write to a plumbers' trade body in your area and they'll almost certainly send you one. What Wikipedia's enormous size does is to allow it to include many things ordinary encyclopedias judge insufficiently deserving of space: EB may have a list of kings and queens of England, just as Wikipedia does (List of English monarchs), of countries of the world, etc, but Wikipedia also includes a lot of less commonly-used lists. On a similar note, references books like the Time Out Film Guide used to (and may still do) include indexes by director, actor, and subject matter, which function similarly to Wikipedia's lists of people by profession, though this is so much easier to do online with IMDb or Wikipedia's Lists of actors. It's also worth noting that lists are much more useful if they act as hypertext links (as WP list entries do), rather than just a column of names on a piece of paper, which helps explain their presence here: a list on WP is more useful than a list in a paper encyclopedia. --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 13:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Followup question

Is there any Mediawiki or third-party tool to ask which articles are in the category "Greeks" and also in the category "plumbers"? --Sean 19:43, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Check out Wikipedia:CatScan. --Tango (talk) 19:45, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

high level IQ tests

I've run across these interesting tests that seem legitimate. The problem is I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do. Is that part of the test? :) Without any instructions the test could be anything. Each test could be a few dozen chances to draw as perfect a circle as possible in the answer box, or an opportunity to prove Goldbach's conjecture with abstract art as an inspiration. Am I missing out on some implicit IQ-test rules that everyone's supposed to know? .froth. (talk) 18:25, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I suppose legitimacy is in the mind of the beholder, but the only IQ test I see here is whether you send money to Croatia or not. – 74  19:31, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Yep, the test is definitely whether or not you send them money. Since you asked here before sending money (but didn't realise you shouldn't send money yourself), you get half marks! One clue that something isn't right (apart from the tests making no sense) is that the first once says it is most accurate for between 2 and 5 standard deviations above average. Assuming a normal distribution (which is how IQ is usually considered), the number of people in the world more than 5 SD's above average is about 4,000. That means finding people to try the test out on in order to correctly calibrate it is extremely difficult - there are basically no IQ tests that are accurate at such extremes (you can do fancy statistics to try and extrapolate, but I think you would need more than a simple test like the ones given - a proper interview with a trained psychologist, or something). And, of course, it would be remiss of me not to mention that IQ's are almost completely meaningless. They measure your ability to do IQ tests, the correlation between that and any useful definition of intelligence is pretty weak. --Tango (talk) 19:44, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Definitely a scam - with those picture type puzzles, the most intelligent people score badly because they can see so many ways in which any one of the answers could be right. The whole "You may need 3 months to solve them" thing is just crap. Either you get them within 30 seconds or you don't...it's not like you can go off and do pages of math to resolve them. Please don't spend money on them. Since there are so few people with IQ's in the super-special range - who is setting the tests? How would someone with less IQ than the range being tested know that they've come up with a puzzle with only one unique solution? If there is a reason for some different answer to be 'smarter' than the one you thought up...how would you know? To take a stupid example, suppose you ask:

"1, 2, 3... what number comes next?" Most people will say '4' but an intelligent person might wonder whether the answer is '5' because these are all supposed to be prime numbers...or 9 because these are the number of prime numbers which when added together equal the year in which the first four US presidents came into office? (I made that up!) To test the smartest guy in the world - only someone still smarter can set a test that is unambiguous. Nope - it's crap. Ignore it. SteveBaker (talk) 02:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, if a person was that intelligent, he'd probably be aware that 1 is not a prime number :) Belisarius (talk) 18:08, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, that's got nothing to do with intelligence. It's merely a convenient convention that 1 is defined not to be prime. It might just as easily have been defined to be prime, since it meets the criterion of being divisible only by itself and 1. The fact that it is 1 is neither here nor there. In order to exclude it from the definition, they had to tweak it out, explicitly. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:08, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Save your money. If you are looking for a challenge take a couple of these "what's the next number in this sequence questions (you should be able to find plenty o them online for free) and prove that the next number in the sequence is 13. Answers don't have to be limited to mathematical functions and 3 dimensions. (Numbers as letter codes, number of vowels in a word, page references in a book, graphics, chemistry, anything goes). Just "because I say so" isn't permitted. The math club at our school used to have regular challenges with one group trying to prove that it couldn't be 13 and the other proving it should be (the 13s usually won). You'd occasionally get someone shout out of the blue because he had just found a proof for a past problem they had lost. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 18:06, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but seeing as these are linked to by many of the high-IQ societies, these are legitimate. It's fairly obvious what to do (find the next/missing item/picture/whatever) in the sequence/set. How to do that is of course not obvious (How else are you supposed to test that whoever takes the test has an IQ above 150?). You might want to have a look at [2] for more material on high-end IQ tests.193.109.51.215 (talk) 00:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Which high-IQ societies have linked to them? Can you show me where? And be careful when appealing to authority - most high IQ societies are not run by people with any expertise in IQ testing, they are run by people with high IQ's. What to do is not at all clear. Without some kind of clue as to what the sequence it meant to be there are infinitely many possible next items. In simple cases, there is sometimes an obvious "best" answer (for example, if the given values are numbers fitting an arithmetic or geometric progression, you should go with that), but for more complicated ones like these there is no clear way of determining the right answer. --Tango (talk) 01:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Well here's two. There are a dozen such ugly pages all purporting to be a high iq society, although there's not much on their sites except their members' scores and what tests they accept. Also they're all very similar...... suspicious, but apparently those tests were written by different people. Also we have an article listing them, not that that means much. And yes they're supposed to measure the top fraction of a percent Tango .froth. (talk) 16:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, so the question is what you mean by legitimacy? Any proof that the scores on any of these tests actually correlate with IQ (whatever that is)? No, there is none. I would think that these tests being accepted as entrance criteria for a high-IQ society is as close to legitimacy as you get. On the other hand Paul Cooijmans [3] is making at least a decent attempt of trying to verify his tests (publishing statistics on the correlation of the test scores with more traditional measures of IQ). As for "There are infinitely many possible next items": Point taken. Some certainly are debatable. A sequence like -1, -1, -1, 17, ... (taken from one of the above tests) looks pretty arbitrary to me and the answer that I know of (and I believe the test setter is after - found after some inventive googeling...) doesn't at all convince me of being "obvious when you see it", or even the sort of thing that a 160-IQ person would think of after 30min. It's and "either you've come across it at some point, or you haven't". But some of the graphical ones, if you take the effort to think about them, have got a surprising and subtle "obvious" continuation. Note that I'm not connected to any of these people, nor a member of any of these societies. But I find it interesting how one would construct a test to tell the 4000 most intelligent people apart from the rest, and I find (for myself), the attempt is at least credible.195.128.250.163 (talk) 23:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC) (PS: I'm the same person as 193 above - need to get round to registering...)

Deal or No Deal: does the banker win?

(Background: WP Article) First off, I'm assuming that the banker tends to play with his own money (that was how I understood the format when the show was launched here in the UK). Here's my question then: are there any statistics that show how successful the banker has been? For example, did the Australian banker "earn" more that the UK banker last year? Did any bankers lose money over the medium-long term? In theory, they should all win money, like slot machines do: they get to choose their offers after all - but what happens if the contestants decide to gang up and refuse to accept offers below a certain amount... well, I don't know, has it ever happened? Any information useful (particularly about the UK)! - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 18:58, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I always assumed "the banker" was just acting on behalf on the production company, with production company money. I don't know what the average winnings per contestant are, but you can probably google for it - that's the closest you'll get to finding out how good the banker is. Although, bare in mind the banker's goal isn't to never pay away as little money as possible, it's to make a good TV as possible. It people never won significant prizes, nobody would watch the show. --Tango (talk) 19:54, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it would appear from the article about the UK's Banker that he might be involved in the production company also. (It would be possible, however, to want both a good show and to walk away with a profit, I think.)In fact, the article goes on to suggest that only the British and American versions, plus possibly the French and Italian versions) to have a real-life banker and not just a computer. Maybe i've answered my own question... - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 20:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Based on my (admittedly limited) watching experience in the US, after about 2 rounds, the Banker's offer is virtually always below the average value of the remaining cases. Whether the Banker can be said to be "making" money is suspect, since the participants aren't really putting anything up, but it looks clear that the Banker loses less money than he is capable of. — Lomn 23:31, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Depends how you define WIN. What offer would the bank make if the sums left were 1p and £250,000. My guess is about £40,000. So any payout below that could be seen as a win. He will never pay more than £185,000. Kittybrewster ☎ 23:52, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Not to ruin the suspense, but I suspect that the show retains some type of prize indemnity insurance so they aren't paying prizes out of pocket. I'd say the banker is definitely part of the production crew and is probably guided by a "maximum allowable payout" table/program that is part of the insurance agreement. Beyond that, he's probably free to modify the offer in whatever way is most entertaining to the audience. (The insurance lets the production company amortize prizes over the run of the program and protects against the possibility of multiple high-dollar winners in a row.) However, I could not seem to find any indication of such an insurance contract online. – 74  02:41, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The figure seen as the banker in the U.S. show is most likely a flunky (say, the producer's son-in-law). Whoever sets the odds probably combines statistics with a prompt from the show's execs in order to turn up tension. No need for insurance; games shows are extremely inexpensive to produce compared with dramas or comedies--in 2002, each of the six main actors on Friends was due to receive $1,000,000 per episode. With over 10 million viewers a week in the U.S., plus the licensing of spin-off items, Howie could give away a million dollars every show, and both producers and network would still be raking it in. --- OtherDave (talk) 03:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I based my statement in significant part on the linked article, which states: "Most television game shows pay for prize indemnity insurance for million-dollar prizes." While definitely not 'required', there are still advantages to prize indemnity insurance for a show as successful as Deal or No Deal. It is much easier to budget a fixed-amount insurance payment than a $1-1,000,000 prize. Since the insurance payment is fixed, the production company can "root for" the contestants without worrying about financial consequences. Finally, there may be legal incentives to involve a third party in prize payments (intended to prevent, for instance, a company whose long-odds prize payment plan involves filing bankruptcy). In fact, prize indemnity insurance is rarely cheaper than direct payment (the insurance company wouldn't underwrite a policy that didn't show expected profit), but it is much easier to budget and provides a useful separation between the production company and the prizes. (For Deal or No Deal specifically, I seem to recall a statement on the US show about the prize amounts being randomized by a third party, which would probably be a requirement for any prize indemnity policy.) – 74  12:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I have always assumed that the "Banker" was just an actor up in the booth whose sole job was to look like he was doing something. I always assumed there is just an algorithm which a computer spits out which determines what the offer is. The entire "banker" thing just looks like theatre, and the rest of it is all predetermined (if there is X, Y, Z cases left, offer $XXXX, something like that). The only show I know of where the host himself stood to win was Win Ben Stein's Money, where Ben Stein started with a set amount of cash at the start of the season, and got to keep what was left over. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 20:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Opening a wine bottle

Is it possible to open a wine bottle with a natural cork without a corkscrew? JIP | Talk 19:52, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Yup. Repeatedly banging the base of the bottle against a wall can cause sufficient hydraulic force to dislodge it; a towel or similar to buffer the bottle and help prevent damage to the glass is advised. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:57, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

If you're just desperate to get the contents out, who needs a towel? - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 20:21, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I've had some successes removing synthetic corks with a knife. That might work with natural corks as well, but it wouldn't be easy. Algebraist 20:18, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I have had success with the "push the cork into the bottle" method. This page : [4] gives several options...good luck and cheers, 10draftsdeep (talk) 21:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I was once obliged to pick a natural cork out of a wine bottle with a pen knife. It was a pain -- taking about 20 minutes -- but I was hailed as a hero by my picnicking companion when I managed it. --Sean 22:30, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I once had a brilliant device that was wonderful at parties - I wish I still had it. You injected a long syringe through the entirety of the cork and then "wanked" the handle rapidly and repeatedly up and down so as to inject air, and thus create extra pressure between the top of the wine and the bottom of the cork, and the cork magically lifted itself clear of the neck of the bottle. I have searched for a replacement but with no joy as I understand the bottle would sometimes break under the added pressure - but never in my own experience. But oh - the expression on my dinner guests' faces (of both genders) was a joy to see - but strangely - I remember opening far more bottles then than I do now. I wonder why? 92.22.56.88 (talk) 01:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

We have one of those syringe-type contraptions - basically a 3" long bicycle pump mounted onto a 4" syringe needle. You stab the cork all the way through and then pump like mad - and with any luck, the cork slides out with a soft 'pop'! It works OK when the cork comes out easily but when you get one that's a bit stiff ('encrusted') - it's 100% useless. Also, there is a warning on the side of the thing to tell you not to use it on oval or square-shaped bottles. Basically, it's a piece of junk that collects dust at the back of the cutlery drawer. The 'lever-arm' screw-type gizmo's are still 'state-of-the-art'. Then of course there is the faithful swiss-army-knife! I've had to open a wine bottle (yes, at a picnic!) using the screwdriver from my car's emergency kit...well, it WAS an emergency! Of course the corks in many sparkling wines and champagnes have that big bobble on the end - which when combined with the pressure inside the bottle let you remove the cork by hand - or even let you just remove the wire and sit back and watch as the cork magically removes itself, puts a 1" 'ding' in your ceiling and stains your very best tablecloth! SteveBaker (talk) 02:09, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Some of us have a corkscrew in our car emergency kits. I'm not sure if my kit includes a screwdriver.-gadfium 04:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

That's why I like Vintage screw-top drop du jour. :) Julia Rossi (talk) 04:56, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

My father has used a bottle opener for years which doesn't harm the cork. It's basically two knife like projections that slide between the cork and the bottle on either side of the cork. A twist and a pull, and it's out. You should be able to find one online or in any good liquor store. Dismas|^(talk) 16:19, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Those go by the names "Ah-So" or "Butler's Friend". -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:44, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

If your wine is sparkling, you could employ sabrage. -- Coneslayer (talk) 17:14, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes,I once cut round the neck with a glass cutting wheel,and a few weeks ago,when a corkscrew broke in the cork,smashed the neck off against the garden wall.hotclaws 13:49, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

UK road regulations concerning roundabouts

It's strongly possible that I'm misremembering this, but I have this idea in my head that you are only supposed to enter a roundabout when you can exit the roundabout straight away; i.e. no waiting on the roundabout, much like a box junction. However, checking the highway code online tells me otherwise. Am I wrong, or has the situation changed? --Rixxin (talk) 20:25, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Some roundabouts have traffic lights on them, which would make this tricky. Algebraist 20:29, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

You can't even necessarily see your exit clearly on some roundabouts. The rule is that you give way to traffic coming from your right - that's the only relevant rule I know of. Big roundabouts are usually wide enough that you can queue to exit while leaving plenty of room for people to pass you on the outside. For mini-roundabouts, such a rule might make sense. I'm not sure it exists, though. --Tango (talk) 20:57, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I am British and live in Scotland, and let me tell you that our roundabouts are accidents created to happen. The above responses are correct in every detail BUT, if ever you watched the Chidren's TV programme "The Magic Roundabout" - that is what you should expect - CHAOS. We have roundabouts with and without traffic lights - the road markings are so poorly painted that choosing the correct lane is a lottery - the signposts are either non-existent or badly indicative - and what is much worse is a multi-exit and re-entry system whereby you can enter the roundabout from a 3 lane carriageway only to find a 2 lane entry way with road-rage the norm. The worst of all has just got to be the roundabout at the junction connecting the Edinburgh City Bypass at the Sherriffhall roundabout on the A68. It interconnects - Edinburgh - Musselburgh - Dalkeith - Inveresk - The Butterfly Farm (can't remember the proper road name) and at peak times is total CHAOS. Last time I was there we saw stray cows crossing all 7 or so carriageways to get to the grass on the roundabout itself and when my wife (as my passenger) called the police on her mobile phone to alert them to the danger - they interrogated her as to why she was breaking the law about using her mobile whlst driving. They were totally unconcerned about the cows and the danger to traffic. British roundabouts?????? Sorry........... 92.22.56.88 (talk) 01:21, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Aaaaarrrggghhhh!!!! What?!?!?!

Try living in a land without roundabouts (Americans call them "traffic circles"). Texas, for example has a mere handful of them in the entire state. After just a few days of driving around without them and you'll soon yearn for their elegant simplicity. Roundabouts don't work so well when the traffic is super-heavy - but when it's not, you can sail through them without slowing down and traffic can easily cross each other at close to full speed - they are also amenable to having way more than four exits - and they provide a safe way to make U-turns too. Here in Texas, we have:

1. Traffic lights (same as in the UK) which are horrible when traffic is light because you randomly get stuck waiting for no good reason.
2. Four-way-stops (which - thank god - we don't have in the UK) where the rule is that you pull up to a dead stop - then allow everyone who was already 'on the line' at the intersection to go before you go. The trouble is that sometimes people don't remember to pay attention to who was there first - so they either go out of order (DANGEROUS!) or they dither and hold up traffic - or two people arrive at the line so close in time that nobody knows who should go first. Hardly anyone follows the rules when a road with two lanes in each direction meets at a four-way-stop. It's also a total waste of time to delay when two cars are not crossing each others paths (which is roughly 2/3rds of the time). They are lethal, time consuming, confusing. Then, as if that were not enough, there are normal stop signs where a lesser road meets a greater road and the ONLY way to know that this is not a 4-way is to notice that you can't see the back sides of the octagonal stop signs on the roads to either side...this too causes lots of fender-benders. They are also an ecological problem - when you have to stop NO MATTER WHAT then pull off again, you waste gasoline. A roundabout allows you to keep moving almost all of the time...that's a GREAT innovation.
3. HUGE cloverleaf interchanges. Hugely expensive both in construction time and land - and they are eyesores of the worst kind. You can plant trees and flowers in the middle of a large roundabout...they can actually be beautiful green havens in a busy city.

No the humble roundabout is a truly wonderful innovation - and even the much-hated mini-roundabout is preferable to the alternatives. The ONLY problem with roundabouts is when the amount of traffic flowing through them gets above a certain threshold - then traffic lights are better...that's why so many busy roundabouts now have lights on them too. The USA should really adopt them in a big way...but sadly, hardly anyone knows what to do when they meet them - so generally they are marked, and used, as if they were 4-way stops. Sad, but true.

After from Branston Pickle, 'proper' bacon and beer (Americans claim there is beer here - but there isn't) - roundabouts are the fourth biggest thing I miss about the UK.

SteveBaker (talk) 01:56, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

As an American who lives in a city (Boston) with far more roundabouts (we call them rotaries) than most American cities but far fewer than most British cities, I agree that roundabouts are generally superior to most other road junctions (intersections). I spent two weeks driving around Great Britain last year, and, while there are aspects of driving in Britain that are stressful (the congestion and the narrowness of the roads), the roundabouts are really a marvel of efficiency. Marco polo (talk) 02:24, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Are the traffic rules for 'rotaries' the same as for UK roundabouts? The few 'traffic circles' here in Texas (I've never heard anyone call them 'rotaries' - but that could be a regional thing) are marked with stop signs and 'right turn only' arrows - indicating that each entrance to the circle should be treated as a 'T' junction at which you do not have the right of way. So you are giving way in the same way you would in the UK - but you're required to stop - which destroys the benefits of the spiralling traffic flow of a UK roundabout. Roundabout withdrawal symptoms are not a pretty thing. In the huge multi-city metroplex of Dallas/Fort-Worth - and after around 15 years of driving around in the area, I believe there are only two traffic circles - one outside the Texas Ranger's baseball stadium in Arlington - and another I found in a small subdivision in Fort Worth. I drove home, got my 1963 Right-hand-drive Mini and went around around it about a dozen times with tyres squealing - just for old times' sake! (Think "List_of_Mr._Bean_episodes#The_Trouble_with_Mr._Bean") SteveBaker (talk) 02:46, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The point of a roundabout is not necessarily to make it so people don't need to stop, but just to make it generally easier for traffic. As you say, there are two types of crossroads. What you call a 4-way stop, and a standard crossroads (sans lights) where one lane has permanent right of way. I can certainly see why a 4-way stop is dangerous, but standard crossroads are bad for traffic flow unless the roads are fairly minor. If two non-minor roads meet then you have problems with people trying to actually get across the flow of traffic on the road without right of way.

Oh, an interesting aside - roundabouts should have traffic lights on THREE of the four entrances. It's more efficient that way apparently. -mattbuck (Talk) 03:27, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

SteveBaker, I bet you'd kill for a ploughmans and a pint of bitter, eh? I'm not a driver, so when my wife is driving us to work I'm always watching drivers. It seems to me that the main drawback of roundabouts could benefit from the aforementioned "box junction" system (at least, the smaller ones, without traffic lights could), so maybe the thought is the father of the wish. P.S. Steve, do you see much of Stephen Fry over there? That'd be on my list should I ever move.--Rixxin (talk) 09:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

priority

end priority

(1) In Europe, there are no four-way stop signs, because, at any crossroads, one road will have priority. In France, there is a sign to indicate whether your road has priority or not.

(2) To save cash, the M50 motorway (Ireland) was built with roundabouts controlling access at interchanges. These soon proved hopelessly inadequate, leading to major congestion. They are being replaced at great cost and with further congestion in the meantime. jnestorius^(talk) 06:33, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Massachusetts' rotaries do not always have stop signs. Many of them seem to have yield signs with rather high-speed traffic. I understand the advantages, but I'm not a huge fan of them myself. It makes me nervous to be driving at 30MPH or more in such a tight circle. Multi-lane rotaries are worse, of course. I suppose little local roundabouts are superior to a four-way stop, but you don't see many small ones, even in MA, all you see are the big ones that intersect a couple of highways or entrance ramps or something. APL (talk) 19:54, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't know where you got that from OP as the roundabouts round here (Coventry, UK) are far too big to see if there's a clear exit or not: you get on them when you can. As to whether things changed, IIRC a few years ago there were some quite major changes made: the main one that affected me was the ability to undertake (ie. move past slower moving traffic on the left side rather than on the right side) on motorways where traffic flow permitted. Really, it just legalised a situation that had been happening in practise for years. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:08, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Ref Desk Order

How come the order of the ref desk pages is different on Wikipedia:Reference desk to the pages themselves, eg Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science? -- SGBailey (talk) 21:18, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what you're getting at, SGBailey. No individual page has an order. Are you referring to the list of ref desks in the "Choose a Topic" box on the right?

Btw, how come Choose a Topic is showing up blank half the time these days? -- JackofOz (talk) 21:54, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Is it? I hadn't encountered any problem. Algebraist 21:58, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Yep, it's frequently blank for me, too, usually on only one ref desk at a time for some reason. Deor (talk) 22:06, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

No problem encountered here. Richard Avery (talk) 22:46, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I usually access my first ref desk of the day from a diff, to see what the latest edit was. If I go to the top of that page in order to go to a different ref desk, sometimes the Choose a Topic box is populated, sometimes not. Entertainment seems to be the main offender, but lately other ref desk diffs are showing the same problem. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:10, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Ref Desk goes Comp, Science, Maths, Misc, Hum, Lang, Ent, Archives. The sub pages go Comp, Science, Maths, Hum, Lang, Ent, Misc, Archives. It is a very minor observation and I could easily alter one or t'other, but before I dif so I wondered if it was (a) worth altering and (b) which order is preferred. -- SGBailey (talk) 23:05, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd expect it to end Misc, Archive, so the second order works best for me. Misc is the dumping ground when all others have failed; one would expect to see it at the end of the list giving the reader an opportunity to exhaust all other possibilities. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:07, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

No prob here either. Julia Rossi (talk) 00:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, and since others have pointed out things not working for them I sometimes end up in the archives when scrolling up on the page of the day (today). I also just tried to post a Q at the science desk and it somehow ended up on Language until I reloaded. Odd. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 06:07, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The first of those is well understood: the first few days on each page are actually transcluded from the archives, so editing them gets you to an archive page. Algebraist 10:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I've done the edit to the top page and it displays correctly in classic skin on the template page and if I log off and view the whole top page in monobook. However, even after purging my PC's cache, I still see the top page classic skin in the old order. Is this me or is wikipedia's server cache not updating? I can't "nudge" the top page with an edit since it is write protected. -- SGBailey (talk) 11:20, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

A server cache purge seems to have worked. Algebraist 11:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Better now. Thanks. -- SGBailey (talk) 11:27, 30 January 2009 (UTC)