Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2010 July 3

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July 3

Article help

Anyone have library or other access to the Chicago Tribune? I'd appreciate it if I could get this article emailed to me for article writing purposes.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:29, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, you can buy access to the article (in PDF) from the web site for $3.95, with other price options if you want to access more than one article. Won't that do? --Anonymous, 03:05 UTC, July 3, 2010.

I strangely had a similar issue recently with the Tribune. Most libraries carry their recent archives, at least the past few decades. Shadowjams (talk) 06:47, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

If you ask nicely at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request, someone who has access to the online archive will supply you with a copy of the article. I've found them very helpful. Deor (talk) 11:36, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Send me your e-mail address and I'll send it to you. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:32, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all. Posted at Mr. 98's talk. I will definitely check out the exchange Deor, especially since I have many resources of my own to share.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:20, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Telephone interview times

An earlier question, and the conclusion that the OP should be ready for his job interview at 3.30 am, got me thinking. Do people who arrange phone interviews for international job applicants generally take into account the time zone differences so that the interview is at a convenient time for both parties? Astronaut (talk) 03:06, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Possibly, but given the assymetric relationship between the interviewer and interviewee, that's unlikely to happen. There are almost always more applicants than availible positions, oftentimes grossly more applicants than open positions, meaning that the hiring company has no incentive to make anything at all convenient for the applicant. Rather, the since the applicant is often mostly indistinguisable from the multitude of other applicants, such requests can be a negative for the interviewee; if there are applicants willing to be interviewed at any time without raising any objection, then there's no need to reschedule any interviews for people who do ask for it. --Jayron32 03:26, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not asking about rescheduling or even the applicant requesting a particular time; after all, flexibility in such things might be an asset to the employer. I'm just wondering whether a hiring company would commonly and deliberately arrange the interview to be at an inconvenient time for the interviewee, or whether people just don't think about things like time zone differences at all? Astronaut (talk) 04:36, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

It's not that HR is working to deliberately make it hard, its just that they don't have to give a shit. It is quite likely that HR doesn't even consider these things, because of the reason I explained above, it doesn't have to. From the HR's perspective, there's likely not "one" perfect candidate for a job, there are merely hundreds or thousands of roughly equivalent applicants. In a situation like that, HR is generally looking for applicants to "self-select" themselves out of the pool to make their job easier. It doesn't fear losing the "perfect" candidate because there isn't one. There's just a lot of work sorting out some random person who will be competant enough at the job not to make HR look bad in hiring them. By making yourself a pain in the ass, even a minor one, you make HR's job easier. Not every company works this way, but enough do. I have worked for some organizations with some pretty callous HR staff. --Jayron32 04:45, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

That's a wild (and utterly unreasonable) generalization. The HR people where I work take recruiting very seriously and if we think someone's resume indicates that a phone interview is a good first step, we work quite hard to arrange a mutually suitable time. It's not just a matter of time-zones either - the person we're interviewing may have a job already and would find it difficult (to say the least!) if we called them while they were at work. So even when the time-zones match, it's still sometimes necessary to interview at a time that's rather inconvenient to us. We do actually want to recruit people (assuming they are any good, that is!) - and pissing them off at the outset isn't a good way to get the best people. Recruitment isn't always about having an embarrasingly large number of candidates, almost any of whom could do the job. Sometimes (as with us, right now) it can be quite hard to find enough really good people to do the work. SteveBaker (talk) 05:23, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I've had several telephone interviews in the last year and every time I was either called to ask when would be convenient or asked to book a time online. Perhaps there is a difference depending on the job you are applying for. I was applying for new graduate jobs with a salary above the average for new graduates. Companies are very keen to get the right people for such jobs and will try to help applicants give an accurate impression; they would never reject you application just because you say you're unavailable at the time they want to give you a telephone interview. If you are applying for a minimum wage job then, as Jayron says, there will probably be hundreds or thousands of suitable applicants and it doesn't really matter which of them ends up getting the job, so they'll reject applications for all kinds of bad reasons just to narrow the field to something they can work with. --Tango (talk) 15:12, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

standard height of the roof

The average height of a story seems to be 10-12 feet for modern constructions in my part of the world. What are the factors that determine the height of the story? Isn't it quite a waste of material to construct a story that high since 7-8 feet would be enough for human beings to move about and live in comfortably? --117.204.93.114 (talk) 09:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

My ego needs at least 14 feet. I'm sure others feel similarly. Shadowjams (talk) 10:07, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

The OP is located in Kerala, India. A room with low ceiling height is difficult to illuminate evenly and an electric lamp will give unpleasant glare at eye level. It is difficult to ventilate sources of smoke or steam such as coal fires, cooking or candles. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 11:30, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Hey, how the hell you know where OP is located ? You psychic or something...or just kidding ?  Jon Ascton  (talk) 07:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I was neither kidding nor using my psychic gift. The article Whois explains the system for identifying the approximate location of IP address(es). Cuddlyable3 (talk) 23:08, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Ceiling heights below 7 feet seem oppressively close to the head, particularly for many adult men. Add to that the thickness required to raise the floor to allow power, phone and data to run whereever they are needed (1 foot); and the thickness required to insert air conditioning ducts in the ceiling (2 feet); and the thickness of the building's floor structure (2 feet). It is easy to see how the height of a storey in an office building can be 12 feet or more. Astronaut (talk) 12:26, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Historically A higher ceiling is a display of wealth - among other things it shows you can afford to build taller, it shows you can afford to 'waste' heat and it also works to give the impression of space (the same size room with lower ceilings will appear smaller than with a higher ceiling). Most modern homes will be build to consumer preference so whilst it might be less economically cost-wise if you can't ultimately sell the homes then the saving is worthless and it seems around 9 feet is probably as low as your average consumer likes (save for the quaintness of cottages and those that like them), with higher probably less common in average modern homes but more common in 'luxury' homes. As someone who has lived in a small apartment with 'standard' height ceilings (i think 9 feet) and now live in a victorian period house with (I think) 12 feet ceilings with similar size rooms I can definitely say that it gives a huge amount of feeling of 'space' and 'air-y-ness' - much nicer. ny156uk (talk) 15:19, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

sorry just measured my ceilings - seems my sense of height is rubbish! My victorian period house has 9 feet ceilings, and so I can only assume my apartment with 'standard' height was around 7 foot like most people below have noted. Next time i'll check before I rely on my eyes for measuring things! ny156uk (talk) 18:45, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Ceiling heights are typically lower in coald climates to keep the warm air close to the occupants. In hot climates, a high ceiling is a low-technology way to keep heat away. Otherwise, prosperity tends to increase ceiling height, as does room size - a small room with a high ceiling feels like a chimney, while a large room with a low ceiling feels confining. I will point out that ceiling height and story height are not directly correlated. One needs space for structure, which will get deeper as the structural span increases, and in commercial space, room for utilities, which can take up a meter or so of space between the ceiling and the structure, so a story can be 50% higher than the ceiling height in many commercial applications. Acroterion _(talk) 16:18, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Until recently, standard ceiling heights in North American houses were around 8 feet, with 9 feet becoming popular in recent years. 9 feet is a fairly standard ceiling height for office space, with 10 feet in very large or higher-end office space. Acroterion _(talk) 16:22, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

As somebody guessed here, I am from Kerala in India. We have hot sun for nine months of the year. Humidity is high for almost 11 months of the year. Flat concrete roof is the pre-dominant roofing here. Until a few decades back it was tiling or thatching. Flat concrete roof with no effective ventillation traps the hot air above anyway. The window height would be six or seven feet. If the window height is raised to the lowered ceiling height of say 8 or 9 feet, I think there is a better chance for hot air passing out. It is to be considered that there is no raised floor structure or false ceiling for air conditioning ducts. Only rich people can have air conditioning and when there is it is invariably wall-mounted with no need of ducts passing along the ceiling. Ceiling fans are ubiquitous and they will have to be converted in the prospect of a low-ceiling. But that is easy as wall-mounted fans will be more effective with a lowered ceiling. As such the current height of ceiling leaves much unused and unwanted space for dusty walls, cobweb, wastage of lighting, proneness to echo etc. In several respects it is a huge waste. For example, the walls would need a fresh coat of paint each year or in two years. Three feet less is considerable reduction in cost. I would like to know what other dissuasive factors could be there against a lowered height in ceiling.--117.204.80.10 (talk) 00:57, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry for assuming you were talking about tall multi-storey commercial buildings. Here in the UK, such high ceilings are very rare in modern residential property. When our labour costs, property costs (according to this page from the BBC the average house price in my town is nearly £250,000 - about 10 times the average yearly salary) and heating costs are very high, modern residental property tends to have quite low ceilings, and if a construction company can save money by using less construction materials, they can make more profit and claim the place is cheaper to heat in the winter. Of course, if you are rich and can afford to get a house built to your own specifications, you can have any ceiling height your want. In my case, the disadvantage of a low ceiling is it traps the heat; for example during the recent spell of hot weather, my apartment (with its ceiling height of just 2.25 metres (7.4 ft)) has been too hot from midday 'til midnight. IMHO, you are fortunate to have an archtectural style with high ceilings and I hope Keralan construction companies don't start thinking like ours and sell small pokey houses at high prices. Astronaut (talk) 10:47, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Standard floor to ceiling heights are 2.4 metres in the UK and 2.5 metres in France. Plasterboard sizes vary accordingly. 2.4 metres can feel quite low. The height of the whole storey is greater than 2.4 or 2.5 metres of course. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:12, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

numbers

can someone pick a random number for me, between 1 and 35? 80.47.187.29 (talk) 14:57, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes I just did. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 15:09, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

23 ny156uk (talk) 15:19, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

no, the 'correct' answer is 14. --Ludwigs2 15:29, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Note that without knowing how these numbers were generated, it's impossible to say whether they were random or not, and likely they are not. (Humans are very bad at making up "random numbers" in their head. They never pick "1", for instance.) If you want a random number, I suggest using a good random number generator. Random.org looks pretty good in terms of methodological rigor. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:36, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

strange, I wrote them all out in a rectangle and stabbed at it with a pen with my eyes closed a few times, they were all on or around 23. 80.47.187.29 (talk) 16:32, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

That's because stabbing with a pen isn't a very random act. --Tango (talk) 17:23, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

My brother, when asked to "Pick a number between one and ten", or something to that effect, always picks pi. The moral is to be clear what you're looking for. (e.g. do you want any number, or just integers?). By the way, Googling "online random number generator" gives a number of options. -- 174.24.195.56 (talk) 17:45, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

And you should specific the probability distribution too - "random" doesn't automatically mean "uniformly distributed". When I first saw this question I was tempted to suggest the OP toss and coin and choose 1 for heads and 2 for tails. That would be a random number between 1 and 35. --Tango (talk) 18:46, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

1 Edison (talk) 03:22, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

No. The OP asks for a single random number that cannot in isolation represent any specific distribution. Your temptation to suggest a DIY binary sequence of coin tosses should be resisted because it would give a uniform random distribution of the range 0 to 31 or 0 to 63, neither of which fits the requested range. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 11:20, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Ugh - I generated a random number programmatically in applescript (which uses a more-or-less uniform pseudorandom generator) and it came out to be 14. but in fact, since the OP only asked for a single number, any number will suffice (since randomness is an aggregate phenomenon, and aggregate phenomena have no bearing on singular events). I am (statistically speaking) correct on this. --Ludwigs2 05:33, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, "random" means "cannot be precisely predicted", so it applies to single numbers as much as to sequences of numbers. --Tango (talk) 06:27, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

42 52 3 47 20 Shadowjams (talk) 06:51, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

In the UK in the 1960s, there was a huge computer called ERNIE (Electronic Random Number Indicating Equipment), that used generate random numbers to find Premium Bond winners. Perhaps we could find it and plug it back in for you? Alansplodge (talk) 07:25, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

ERNIE is still going strong.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:19, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah - but it's not (nor ever was) a computer. It's an electronic random number generator that relies on physical random noise rather than software algorithms (which can never be truly unpredictable). These days it probably uses a computer to collect the results - but the actual "ERNIE" part is specialized electronics. SteveBaker (talk) 11:08, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Deus vult! SteveBaker how can you deny that the source of ERNIE's numbers is the Will of God? Rev. 13:18. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 11:32, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I finally read my own link - the original ERNIE is now in the Science Museum (London). Please accept my apologies - it's obviously not a computer - would "gizmo" be a better description? Alansplodge (talk)

Groucho: Give me a number between 1 and 10.

Chico: 11.

Groucho: Right!

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:59, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Put 5 apples in a line on a table and ask someone 'how many apples are between the one on the left and the one on the right?' They will tell you there are three. This is why no-one picks 1 or 10 when you ask them to give you a number between 1 and 10. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:09, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

17⅓. Well,no-one said it had to be whole... 23:34, 7 July 2010 Lemon martini (talk) 23:35, 7 July 2010 (UTC)(UTC)

Surface finish

4140 L80 - what should be the acceptable surface finish after turning inside and outside diameter? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alfredparakkalcochin (talk • contribs) 15:57, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Can you expand on your question, as I have absolutely no idea what you are asking about? For example, what does "4140 L80" refer to? By "turning" do you mean some mechanical process to remove a material from a rough shape, using a lathe or milling machine for example? What would be your measure for acceptability of surface finish? Astronaut (talk) 17:16, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

"AISI 4140" and "L80" appear to be standards for the composition of hardened steel. However, I don't see how we can discover what kind of surface finish is acceptable without understanding the application. We need more information from the questioner. SteveBaker (talk) 20:30, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Rain forests

What are the 3 main tropical rainforests ??? if anyone knows , please tell me !!! it is urgent !!! i think one is the Amazon rainforest... please tell me if i am wrong !!! thnx !!! lol (-; 81.147.6.161 (talk) 19:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC) (reposted here from Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment#Delisted_content_RfC by –– Jezhotwells (talk) 20:12, 3 July 2010 (UTC))

Our article on Rainforests lists Tropical rainforests in: Southeast Asia (Myanmar to Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and northeastern Australia), Sri Lanka, Sub-Saharan Africa from Cameroon to the Congo (Congo Rainforest), South America (e.g. the Amazon Rainforest), Central America (e.g. Bosawás, southern Yucatán Peninsula-El Peten-Belize-Calakmul), and on many of the Pacific Islands (such as Hawaiʻi). Looking at the map from that article, I suppose the Amazon, the band of rainforest in Sub-Saharan Africa and the band that straddles Southeast Asia would be the three "main" rainforests. SteveBaker (talk) 20:22, 3 July 2010 (UTC)