Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2010 February 5

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February 5

Identify a Sumo Wrestler

This photo

I'm interested in determining the identity of the guy in the right of this photo (with the brace on his right leg). He has a really hairy chest, and then I noticed that he doesn't appear to be Asian. Is he like some Caucasian guy from New Jersey that decided to become a sumo wrestler? DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 04:27, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Category:American sumo wrestlers 75.41.110.200 (talk) 05:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

At first glance I thought it was Baruto, arguably the most famous white sumo wrestler in Japan, but on closer study it looks like Kotoōshū Katsunori, who's Bulgarian. Most white guys in Japanese sumo are European; most of the Americans are Hawaiian. FiggyBee (talk) 07:31, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Here are the results of that particular tournament. Could it be Kokkai Futoshi? Clarityfiend (talk) 07:55, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it's Kotooshu. Kokkai is somewhat flabbier, and according to our article Kotooshu has a longstanding injury problem with his right knee, hence the brace. Compare Image:Sumo_May09_Kotooshu.jpg. FiggyBee (talk) 08:46, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

By the way, I love it how both mentioned wrestlers have ridiculously obvious names. Kotoōshū is just the stable prefix Koto- followed by the Japanese word for Europe (well, he is European, aint he?), and Baruto is just the Japanese word for Baltic with some fancy ateji because, well, the guy is Baltic after all :) --TomorrowTime (talk) 09:29, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I enlarged the photo before reading your comments. I'm sure he is Kaloyan Mahlyanov (Kotoōshū). I am a Bulgarian and I'm not interested in sumo, so I wouldn't be able to recognise anyone or anything else related to sumo except Kaloyan. --62.204.152.181 (talk) 11:11, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It's definitely Kotoōshū. --Smashville^talk 22:57, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Craigslist Job Listings

Why do most job listings on craiglist ask you to provide a credit report? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.129.139.60 (talk) 17:56, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe most job listings ask for one. Actually, I rarely see a job listing which asks for one. --Quest09 (talk) 18:06, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

This could depend on the field in which a person is seeking a job. It would make sense for the employer to want a credit report for a person applying for a job that involves handling money, for example. Marco polo (talk) 18:40, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I've never been asked to provide a credit report. Mind you I have never applied for a job through Craigslist. Make sure you don't give sensitive financial information to a prospective employer until you are sure that they are genuine. DJ Clayworth (talk) 21:45, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I've never seen a job listing where I was asked to provide my credit report. However, prospective employers have ran my credit report themselves once I had given them my Social Security Number and signed a document allowing them to do so. This almost seems to be standard operating procedure for human resources these days. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

You should probably be alert for identity theft here (phishing)...be sure that this isn't some cunning trick to get your bank account details and social security number from you without there being a real job at the end of it. SteveBaker (talk) 01:25, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Those Japanese red and white striped　fabric panels

What is the name of those red and white striped fabric panels hung at formal events in Japan? 207.216.177.88 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:10, 5 February 2010 (UTC).

Could you provide a picture of these panels? I just checked out the banner article which led me to the Sashimono article. Do they look anything like that? Dismas|^(talk) 22:35, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

No, they're not sashimono. You can see them in the background in several photos here and here. 207.216.177.88 (talk) 01:02, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

that looks like plain old bunting to me. bunting often takes the colors of the national flag (red and white in japan's case; red white and blue in the US) put in some simple geometric pattern. --Ludwigs2 01:53, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. Bunting in Japanese is とばり, but I get no relevant Google image results and there's no J-Wiki article. 207.216.177.88 (talk) 02:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Ludwigs2 basically has it, (as far as the colours) see Consequences of the Genpei War which says:

"In addition, this war and its aftermath established red and white, the colors of the Taira and Minamoto standards, respectively, as Japan's national colors. Today, these colors can be seen on the flag of Japan, and also in banners and flags in sumo and other traditional activities." (my italics)

The Japanese name however is still eluding us. Japanese for "banner" is apparently Nobori (幟), this appears similar to a Sashimono but longer—220.101.28.25 (talk) 16:24, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

EUREKA! kōhakumaku (紅白幕) ! (Googled for "Japanese Banner") 4th page in had it, on Wikipedia!--220.101.28.25 (talk) 16:49, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Huzzah! I was in the middle of a long response when you found that, but here's what the Japanese article says, briefly summarized: the colours probably originate in the war flags carried by the Genji (red) and Taira (white), but also represent birth (aka=red, aka-chan=baby) and death (white), i.e: (a person's) life; the traditional clothing worn at weddings (red and white) and to bury the dead (white); and festive foods like sekihan (red rice) and kōhakumanju (a kind of sweet). Interestingly the article doesn't mention the Japanese flag as a source of the colours. Also, unlike bunting, which seems to have a kind of political connotation in that it's associated with political/national events, this stuff isn't generally associated with the emperor and prime minister or with national events like Coming of Age Day (whereas you do see Japanese flags at such events). While it's common at official events like graduation ceremonies, it's also used at outdoor tea ceremony events as a kind of barrier to or mark out the space where the event takes place. So I suppose it's accurate in English to call it a type of bunting (Japanese:とばり), since they are "festive decorations made of fabric," but in Japanese it's obviously conceptually a separate thing. Thanks! 207.216.177.88 (talk) 17:21, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome, that was fun. re "Interestingly the article doesn't mention the Japanese flag as a source of the colours", the English Genpei War article says fairly straight out that the Genpei War is where the colours come from, but if our friends in Nippon are unsure? Genpei is also supposed to be the source for red and white in the Japanese national (and other) flags. Pretty much everything I have read (in English only) follows this line. Even in Japanese martial arts competitions red & white are frequently used to designate the opponents, and for the judges flags.
A large contributor to the Genpei article is User:LordAmeth "Masters in Japanese Studies"! Lived in Japan for a year and speaks Japanese!. LordAmeth actually wrote the section I quoted in my first reply! May be good to contact them if anything seems doubtful. —220.101.28.25 (talk) 00:47, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Haha. Thanks for contacting me. I suppose when you put it all out there like that, my credentials sound pretty darn impressive. But I'm still a student, and there are tons of things I don't know; very few things on which I would consider myself an expert. As for the Genpei War, that was one of the first articles I wrote, before most of those other things happened. In any case, I do get the impression that it's a pretty standard story to cite the origins of red & white as the two sides in a competition (e.g. sumo) back to the Genpei War. I get the impression that that is sort of the conventional wisdom. But, as for it being truly hard and fast historical fact, who knows? The events of the Genpei War have been heavily fictionalized and embellished, figures from the Tale of the Heike being turned into legends portrayed over and over again in literature and drama (and later, in TV and film) in all kinds of fictionalized, embellished, and skewed ways. Note the prominence of red and white in Takashi Miike's "Sukiyaki Western Django", a film which is based upon these legends.

I'm afraid I do not have on me right now the books from which I may have gotten that tidbit of information - namely, the idea that the Genpei War marked the origin of the use of red and white as national colors - so I am afraid that I cannot relate exactly what the context was, or exactly how it was phrased in that book. It is important to remember, however, that while red & white have played a major role in Japanese culture (as described by our OP several comments above, in the colors of birth and death, seen at weddings, eaten in sekihan, etc), there could not have been any 'national colors' until the 1860s, when there was first a (modern-style) nation-state of Japan. Up until the Meiji period, there was no "State of Japan" or "Empire of Japan" per se, and no national flag of Japan, as far as I know. The Tokugawa shogunate, and each shogunate and other ruling party before it, had their own crests and banners, their own symbols, and they ruled over a Japanese archipelago not united into a single solid nation-state as today, but united into a confederation perhaps more comparable to the original idea of the United States of America, each state (or feudal domain, in Japan's case) holding a considerable degree of semi-independence, and self-identity, with separate flags or banners, crests, etc.

In short, if kôhakumaku predate the Meiji period, and they might, they would have been derived from all these cultural associations, and perhaps from the red and white of the Taira and Minamoto as well, any 'national flag' or 'national colors' being not really a consideration yet.

Interesting stuff. Thanks for bringing it up. Some casual searching brought me to this website (in Japanese), which describes the various theories as to the origins of the use of red and white as standard colors. I should get back to my studies right now, but in a little while, if I find the time, I'll read it over and share what it has to say. (Anyone else is more than welcome to do so in my place, if they are so inclined.) Cheers. LordAmeth (talk) 03:08, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I should have exclaimed 'Banzai!' or perhaps 'Sonnō jōi!, Ameth Sama. Thanks for getting back to us. Don't think I have heard of Sukiyaki Western Django, look forward to seeing it sometime. I would hazard a guess that a Stephen Turnbull book would be a likely source. But as you say regarding the website above, our Japanese friends aren't certain either! (Studies first absolutely!) Revere Wikipedia, Expel the Vandals!— 220.101.28.25 (talk) 07:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

"Revere Wikipedia, Expel the Vandals". Love it. Brilliant. LordAmeth (talk) 18:42, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Lows getting me down

Friends, as you can see in this graphic, the high in New York on Friday will be 58°, and the low will be 42°. If I'm looking at that widget on Friday afternoon, can I be assured that it will be 42 some time before Saturday afternoon, or might that temperature have occurred at 1am Friday morning? Is there some convention for what period those high and low predictions cover? If you're obliged to guess whether the low is early Friday or late Friday the utility of the prediction is greatly reduced for no good reason.

Some weatherfolk make the graphic much more understandable by having the lows interstitial between the labelled days, like here, although I guess strictly speaking that could be misleading if we started having nights hotter than the days.

Thanks for any insight. --Sean 20:49, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this uses the 'conventional' assertion that night is the period of darkness between dusk and dawn, not the 'analytical' assertion that night goes from dusk to midnight. As I used to say in college, it aint a new day till you've been to bed. of course, sometimes that meant it was still tuesday for me when everyone else was on friday, but there are flaws in any system. --Ludwigs2 21:39, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Your graphic certainly does not show the current weather in New York! To answer your question, though, if you are looking at your graphic on Friday, you do not know how low the temperature will get between then and Saturday afternoon. The reason is that when a high and low temperature are listed for a single day, they are indeed referring to the period between midnight and midnight for that day. Normally, the low temperature for a given day will occur around dawn. Normally, the high will occur in the early or mid-afternoon. Occasionally, especially in winter when a strong cold front arrives during the morning, the high temperature for the day will occur in the morning, and the low could be toward midnight of that day. But this is exceptional, and it doesn't change the convention that high and low for a given day are the high and low between midnight and midnight. Marco polo (talk) 02:50, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Trains vs. Cars

Why are some trains so much smoother than cars?

Rails rarely develop potholes. Or is this about their paint jobs? Dismas|^(talk) 23:57, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

You obviously haven't travelled on the square-wheeled trains that British Rail used to provide on some lines in the 1980's. Astronaut (talk) 01:55, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

this is a joke, right? I've seen pictures of square-wheeled small-gauge trains (it works just fine if the track is designed as a cycloid, and it has novelty value), but I can't imagine anyone would go to the effort of making a commercial grade system. --Ludwigs2 02:06, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's a joke. I'm sure the trains never really had square wheels, but often the ride was far from smooth and definitely worse that I once experienced on a rutted gravel road in a car some years later. Astronaut (talk) 02:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Have you ever taken the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn? I'd be interested to hear how it compares. --Trovatore (talk) 22:51, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

more to the point, it's much easier (and much more cost-effective, and much more important) to keep rails in true than to keep highways in repair. a flaw in a roadway will give you a jounce, whereas a flaw in railway can cause a multi-million dollar wreck. --Ludwigs2 01:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the other part of it is weight. When your car hits a bump, the suspension compresses to try to avoid transmitting the force to the body and thence to the passengers. But the body of a train carriage is a lot heavier than a car body - there is a lot more inertia for the springs to overcome, (F=ma - so for the same force, a larger mass undergoes a smaller acceleration) so the ride is smoother. SteveBaker (talk) 03:22, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, there is usually suspension between the trucks or bogies carrying the wheels (whose "unsprung weight" is an often-quoted technical specification of rail vehicles) and the body of the carriage, both for passenger comfort and to lessen rail damage caused by a jolted-up wheel when it returns to full contact (similar to Hammer blow).

Astronaut's "square wheels" was a humorous hyperbole referring to the results of brake seizure. If a carriage (or locomotive) wheel brake seizes up, the wheel is dragged along the rail without rotation ('wheel slide', as opposed to 'wheel slip' where the wheel loses traction and spins faster than it should) until the brake is freed: this can grind a flat spot into the otherwise smoothly circular steel tyre of the wheel; the longer the seizure, the larger/deeper the flat spot. Once the wheel resumes normal rotation, every time the flat spot hits the rail a jolt is transmitted, which can range from barely noticeable to so severe as to necessitate slowing the train and retiring the carriage asap for repair. (Yes, the legendary schoolchild's excuse for lateness, "The train had a flat tyre", could sometimes be true.)

Modern improvements to train braking systems have greatly reduced instances of seizure and consequent flats, and while in even-more-straightened rail industry times less-than-incapacitating flats might have been ignored for some time, such flats as do now occur are probably rectified more promptly, so the phenomenon is rarer. At the same time, jointed rails which caused a jolt at each joint have increasingly been replaced by Continuous welded rail, eliminating those jolts also.87.81.230.195 (talk) 12:22, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

On the point about "square wheels", caused by braking. I remember on a vist to the Temple Mills#Railway works as a child, seeing a huge machine like a giant pencil-sharpener that made them round again. Alansplodge (talk) 17:36, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

hunh. how would that work? I mean, I think it would be particularly important to have train wheels be precisely the same size (otherwise the train would list in odd and dangerous ways), so any 'grinding down' process would seem to be prohibited. --Ludwigs2 22:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The amount of grinding would be rather small - and the procedure might be preceded by laying in some weld metal to first build up the surface. Also, assuming we're talking about carriage wheels (not locomotive wheels) - they come in pairs with a solid axle. Providing they grind down both wheels to the same diameter, there would be no leaning - and the bogies are not rigidly fixed to the carriage so a tiny amount of forward/backward tilt due to one pair of wheels being a fraction of an inch smaller than the other would hardly matter. SteveBaker (talk) 01:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

It is interesting that two carriage wheels joined by a solid axle can follow curves where it would seem that the wheel on the outer rail needs to turn faster than the wheel on the inner rail. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 16:58, 7 February 2010 (UTC)