Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 March 4

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March 4

Are residents of Baltimore Southeners?

From my reading of the map, Baltimore is "below" the Mason-Dixon line. So does that mean that residents of Baltimore consider themselves "Southeners"? 121.44.174.80 (talk) 03:08, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

This article from a Baltimore magazine makes a point of arguing that nobody is really sure. No surprise, really, for a place that is almost right on the boundary. I suspect it is like Washington, DC, in the sense that those who come from the farther north (e.g. New England) find it to be very Southern compared to anyplace they have been; those who come from the Deep South think of it as being quite Northern. It's in the middle and is a muddle of both cultures and mindsets. --Mr.98 (talk) 03:19, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

There's a gradient as one heads south from Pennsylvania towards Richmond. Baltimore has some southern character, Washington has more. Most Baltimoreans would not consider themselves Southerners, except by comparison with New Englanders. Baltimore's character was shaped in the early 20th century by significant migrations of African-Americans from the South, and a considerable migration of whites and blacks from Appalachia to work in mills. The Baltimore dialect is not far from the Philadelphia dialect, however, and the cities share a similar culture. The South isn't far away. Go to Delmarva or southern Maryland, and you're firmly in the South. Acroterion (talk) 03:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

See under "Maryland" on Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars. (For some reason I can't link directly to the section.) --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:30, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

And Talk:Maryland/North (Mid-Atlantic State) vs South (Southern State). --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:31, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Determining required emissions equipment

How do I determine if my auto requires California emissions equipment? Macillac (talk) 17:53, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

This page at the DMV seems relevent: [1]. It will depend on where you live and/or the age of the car. RudolfRed (talk) 00:30, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Illinois Midland Railroad

I see that you have the Illinois Midland Railroad listed under Defunct Illinois roads with no information about the railroad, it's history, or any photos. I have some information and copies of pictures of 2 of their engines. This information includes why this vibrant small road was abandoned. The Illinois Midland was the shortest rialroad in the US for some time and might be interesting to people. How would I go about adding the story and the photos to the page? thank you and have a great day. Howard Whitney — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.5.75.176 (talk) 19:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

If you have some photos that you are sure that are in the public domain, or that you own the copyright of, you are very welcome to upload them to Wikimedia commons and use them in the article: see WP:Picture tutorial. If they are (or may be) somebody else's copyright, then you should not add them.

As for the information you have, if you have reliable published sources for the information (which doesn't need to be online, but must be published) you are welcome to add it to the article, but information that is only from your own knowledge, or from unpublished documents, is not verifiable, and should not be added to Wikipedia. --ColinFine (talk) 20:19, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

How about Illinois and Midland Railroad? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:18, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Windows Movie Maker

I'm adding a bit of text on top of a picture (it's a slideshow of photos, with background music). The text effect is typewriter. The duration of the picture is 5 seconds. Now, I can either make the typewriter "type" very slowly and make it linger for 5 seconds, or make it type fast, complete the text in 3 seconds, and then simply vanish. Is there any way I can make the text appear in say 4 seconds, and then make it linger for a extra second without any additional animation? I'm using movie maker 6. 117.227.131.116 (talk) 19:04, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Is the background image changing at the time ? If not, I assume you can just clone or remove frames to add or subtract time at each step. StuRat (talk) 06:08, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Who are D.A. Morrison and Gordon A. Brown?

Who were D.A. Morrison and Gordon A. Brown? I am asking because there are two middle school who feed their graduates to East York Collegiate Institute. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.107.120 (talk) 20:14, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

My Google Fu is not up to the task, unfortunately. (My suspicion would be that one or both were former senior officials with the school board or municipal government.) For the reference of other researchers, the East York Collegiate Institute is a high school in the Toronto District School Board. You might be able to find out by asking the TDSB directly; phone numbers and an email address for general inquiries are provided on this page. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:35, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Dalton A. Morrison and Gordon A. Brown were former principals of their respective schools. Schools were renamed in their honor after in 1980 and 1983. (Source: history pages of schools' web sites.)--Itinerant1 (talk) 10:47, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

This email has been round the world 7 times

I make it clear to all my online friends and others that I will not respond to emails that promise me good fortune if I forward the email on to a certain number of other people within a certain time, and bad fortune if I don't. So, most people now know not to bother sending me crap like that.

But they still appear in my inbox occasionally, and I sometimes read them just for a laugh. I'm still amazed at how often expressions like "This message has been round the world 7 times" are used. I never know just what point it is they're trying to get across. It's not as if emails only ever travel in the same direction, say from east to west. And it's not as if the number of alleged circumnavigations is ever updated; which suggests that this sentence appears on the originating email, which suggests the author is an outright liar, which suggests that everything else in the email is a fraud, which would be a surprise to nobody except gullible fools. So, just what is the point of these accursed things? Who ever derives any benefit from them? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Isn't that best left as a Rhetorical question. Just ask the Wizard of err.. whats 'is name.--Aspro (talk) 21:18, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

We also have an article on hypertension. Relax, let these piles of trials (and potential hemorrhoids) that appear in your inbox -float over you – and away.--Aspro (talk) 21:29, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Apart from the ones that ask for money or give malicious advice, there doesn't seem to be any point at all. At least, our article Chain letter doesn't manage to identify any clear purpose. Deor (talk) 21:24, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

No point? Seemingly innocent emails can be the start of a 'hook'. The point doesn't become apparent until they 'hook' their target. Intelligence is no defense against this psychology attack as they seek out the naïve. --Aspro (talk) 21:37, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

There's always a point to any human behaviour. The doer always gains some perceived benefit, even if the principal focus of the action is someone else. Sometimes, however, the point is far from obvious. What is it in these cases? This is not a rhetorical question or a rant; I am genuinely curious about the motivation of these people. (Btw, my blood pressure's fine, I had it checked only last week. And hemorrhoids are not an issue.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 23:30, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Glad your in fine fettle. The point is: once someone replies they start to expose something of themselves which the a scam artist can then focus on with more customised follow up email- working towards the payoff.

On the point of being a 'gullible fool'. Some agencies of some governments already use a form of Forensic linguistics analysis in order to fabricate sting operations so successfully, that the individuals can be quite innocent of their alleged crimes but find themselves between a rock and a hard place. These days computers can do in milliseconds what the Stasi took months or years over with paper files, in their endeavour to find the physiological tender points of anyone they want to control. A early British pioneer in this work was William Sargant. Why shouldn't the scammers use this technology as well. After all, they have relatives too, and some of them must be working on developing these analytical tools and only too willing to pass the software on when the financial returns could be multiples of the legitimate salary.--Aspro (talk) 23:41, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes people are just bored and as a hobby would like to see if they can get to manipulate a large number of other people. This is one way to test this: make up some chain letter, and see if you receive it back after 2 months from someone who didn't know you were the originator. It means that a significant enough number of people have forwarded and it came back full circle. Then it gets a life of its own, because as you said, people are incredibly gullible.--Lgriot (talk) 11:05, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

That sounds very plausible; a little like throwing a bottle with a message in it overboard a ship, and seeing whether anyone ever finds it and calls your number, only in the email case there's a far higher chance of that happening.

I'm still particularly curious about the "this email has been around the world X times" thing. I've seen it many times and it still baffles me as to what message that sentence contains. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:14, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Probably to do with guilt, see how succesfull this letter is you couldnt possible not pass it on a lot of the original postal chain letters implied a percieved threat if you didnt pass it on this is just a milder version. MilborneOne (talk) 12:29, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

(EC) Purely ObPersonal, as I haven't references, but in my personal experience such phrases date back long before e-mails, to when chain letters were actually written on paper and posted using mail services.

The usual instructions were to post x (typically 6) copies to people you knew, which in those less globally connected days usually – but not always – meant people in your own geographical area: the claim that the letter had already been around the world x times therefore implied that it was already very widespread. This was supposedly important because (a) it demonstrated that its "magic" (the bad luck one would supposedly suffer by not sending it on; gruesome examples were often included – how were these known about?, you might ask) was already powerful and (b) that it had strong persistence.

The latter was important because when copying the letter for onward transmission one usually had to add one's name and address to the bottom of the list of such it contained, remove the name and address at the top, and send the latter a small amount of money, say y – it was a form of pyramid scheme purporting to net one a proportion of £/$y×6⁶, which like most such scams could work only for the originator or early participants. Obviously it relied on dim-wittedness, such that only those unable to see its illogicalities would perpetrate it.

And here (adding my OR) is when Darwinian selection comes into play: as such missives were predominantly transmitted only by the dim-witted, they perpetrated the form with various mutations – miscopyings that degraded or lost some parts of the text such that other parts no longer made any even internal sense, and also transferred the meme to e-mail when that was invented. The whole thing is in a way parallel to the continued practice of seemingly arbitrary religious/folkloric rituals whose original meaning most or none of their practitioners are aware. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.145 (talk) 12:38, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Most comprehensive reply yet. Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.

Lack of internal sense has never been a barrier to prejudice: I got a message that went on and on about the injustices the Australian Parliament and Government were perpetrating on the people, but it mentioned numbers of Senators and members of the House of Representatives that way exceeded what our Parliament actually has; and other things that made little or no sense in the Australian context (like references to an Electoral College). It was obvious it was originally a diatribe about the United States, and some genius had simply replaced every mention of the USA with Australia but left all the details unchanged. This was very widely disseminated before it ever got to me. Tragic that so-called educated people would just accept this without question. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:22, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Sadly, few educational systems seem to be able reliably to inculcate common sense and critical thinking. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.145 (talk) 19:49, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Well... back in the snail mail days, that claim did make sense. One of my older sisters had penpals as a hobby and I briefly dabbled in it. Those kinds of things were quite common. One version that I particularly liked were chain postcards. They did not contain those useless supersitious nonsense, just short messages or greetings in various languages. They could become a virtual mosaic of stamps which was fun to look at. It was thrilling (for a kid) to hold something which you know has really been around the world. When it becomes too full, the last person who receives it sends it back to the original sender.

Another version was something I think had an actual term in penpal parlance. I forgot what it was though. It was for postcard/stamp collectors. You get one from someone and send back a postcard in return, IIRC. Where it was from could be quite random. But yeah, even then you get the "pass this on or you will die in 10 days!" kind of bullshit as well.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 20:07, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

caterpillar tractor medallion (watch fob?) (plaque?)

I have an old caterpillar medallion. It may be called a plaque or watch fob. It is about 1-1/2 inch wide by about 2 inches in height. It has "CATERPILLAR" at the top. Below is written "tract-type Tractor". The rest of it has a pic of a tractor, front end facing to the left. On the back is written Carlton Company Albany, Brunswick Dublin, Savannah

I'm guessing it is pre 1920. Any idea of what it is? I have searched everywhere and can't find anything related. Ed — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.173.195.75 (talk) 22:51, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Can you show us a picture? hydnjo (talk) 00:21, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm thinking it's an advertising piece for the local distributor for Caterpillar. Possibly for use as a paperweight or the like. Certainly to be kept on a desk. But I'd like to see it. Rectangular medals were popular in the first years of the 20th century, by the way. I have a couple of Mint medals of about that size.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:33, 5 March 2012 (UTC)