Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 May 30

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May 30

Rolfing: classification

Is Rolfing (a) a type of bodywork (alternative medicine), (b) a type of manual therapy, or (c) a type of massage? (Despite appearances, this is not a homework question.)
—Wavelength (talk) 00:50, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Why does it need to be only one? --Jayron32 02:48, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Maybe it can be more than one.—Wavelength (talk) 03:06, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:14, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Which (one or more) of these statements is true? (This is not a homework question.)

• Rolfing is a type of bodywork (alternative medicine).
• Rolfing is a type of manual therapy.
• Rolfing is a type of massage.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:43, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

According to our articles on the topics, all three seem true enough to me. Especially since WP considers massage to be a subclass of manual therapy. However "Rolfing is a type of massage that has not been proven effective, and is often considered a form of pseudoscience or quackery" also seems true to me. See e.g. these links, and the medical journal articles cited therein [1] [2]. I guess the problem is, bodywork comes with "alternative medicine" implied, so it stands to reason all techniques in that area have not been rigorously tested for effectiveness. However, manual therapy also deals with the "straight" world of medicine and physical therapies, so considering Rolfing as manual therapy might be seen as giving it too much credence. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:54, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

After doing some reading on the subject, I'm inclined to say that "bodywork" is the best descriptor, based on the sources that seem to be most familiar with the topic. By the way, SemanticMantis, the sources you link to above should be taken with a grain of salt, as the Skeptic world definitely has its own spin, with a penchant to look for wild claims even if that's a stretch. Both of these articles seem to be more interested in getting a laugh than presenting the material thoroughly or accurately; the Skeptic's Dictionary does provide some good info (albeit without citing its sources). As to quackery, it seems that most of the claims made about Rolfing are the type that *might* be able to be proven scientifically at some point in the future, such as the various aspects of physical alignment. Metaphysical claims do not seem to be a big aspect. But, this is not terribly relevant to the discussion at hand. The point is, sources need to be evaluated for their merit on the specific topic. --Karinpower (talk) 06:24, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. My question was prompted by a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories#How to deal with conflicting sources on how to categorize a topic. Here is a link to the version of 17:19, 30 May 2014.

—Wavelength (talk) 23:32, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

This was a bad place to ask that question for that purpose. The difference between how something is generally and "correctly" classified and how Wikipedia classifies it is profound. Wikipedia classifications are intended to be an additional means of navigation rather than an encyclopedic statement of fact. That's why we don't require references for classifications. Very often we may wish to deliberately mis-classify something in order that people can find it more easily. A common misconception that X is a kind of Y may result in us "incorrectly" putting X into category Y so that people looking for X will find it if they (incorrectly) search for it in category Y. So the issue here is not whether Rolfing really is a form of any of those things - but rather a question of whether people could usefully be pointed in the direction of reading about it if they are trying to research those types of activity. SteveBaker (talk) 16:12, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I searched for a guideline supporting what you said, but my search was unsuccessful. Please direct me to a supporting guideline.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:26, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Self-storage in Bangladesh

Can anyone find a Bangladeshi self-storage facility that has an online presence? It can be anywhere in the country, as long as they either have a website or are at least mentioned somewhere online. -Elmer Clark (talk) 01:24, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Bangladesh Storage Assessment gives a table of 6 warehouses available for rent. Bangladesh Cold Storage Ltd. provides cold storage facilities to agricultural producers. The company is based in Khulna, Bangladesh. No online presence is mentioned. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 23:44, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Suitable car for tall driver

Hi. I'm tall (actually I'm not that tall, but have rather short legs, so sitting down I am). I've been looking for a new car today, but although just sitting in some is fine, once on a test drive I find I cant really fit in them properly. I have had larger family cars in the past, but am looking for something a bit smaller - renault megane and peugeot 308 were the ones that took my fancy today - but once driving, the headroom wasn't sufficient. Is there some sort of list of headroom, or is it just a case of trying everything? Thanks, and sorry if this is wafffly.86.157.129.169 (talk) 18:18, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

There are lots of different car "classes" with different shapes and profiles which may fit your needs. Many smaller SUVs and "crossover" vehicles have different interior configurations than a sedan, and may have the combination of head room and leg room you seek. There are also a trend for taller subcompacts like the Nissan Cube and Scion xB which are small and tall. --Jayron32 18:54, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of the MINI Cooper - for such a small car, it has really good headroom. You should at least take a test drive. SteveBaker (talk) 20:40, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

As you are in the UK, a second-hand taxicab would be ideal Taxicabs of the United Kingdom. The height is still regulated today, so a gentleman can ride in one without the need to take of his Top hat. They also have a very small turning circle, thus avoiding the need to do three-point-turns. As Michael Cain might have said “not a lot of people know that”.--Aspro (talk) 23:21, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

The trouble with buying a "Black Cab" is that they have a fairly low top speed. The very latest one tops out at 80mph - which means that you're redlining the poor thing even at normal road speeds. The older ones were often limited to 55 or 60mph. I don't think they make a very good personal-use car - unless you only EVER plan on driving it in town. Also, if you buy a used one - you can pretty much guarantee that the thing has an astounding number of miles on it, so plan on needing lots of repairs! SteveBaker (talk) 15:48, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Black-cabs have diesel engines and the chassis are well designed. So no problem with remaining life expectancy and spares. Why the top road speed thing? A Ferrari (even with soft plugs) still splutter and farts in heavy slow moving traffic. So what are you also saying: Don't get a Ferrari because you can never drive them slow traffic? (well you can actually but you have to keep blipping the throttle to stop the plugs sooting up). All the OP asked for was headroom. And most people, spend most of their time driving at common speeds.--Aspro (talk) 00:13, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I certainly wouldn't recommend a Ferrari for a daily driver! They are designed for a very specific role - and trying to use one as a daily-driver is obviously a bad idea. The black cabs are also engineered for a very specific role - decent passenger comfort, good fuel efficiency when driving narrow in-town streets with lots of stop-start traffic. Trying to use a black cab as a daily driver is only a good idea if your needs closely match that role. Driving along a motorway in a black cab is at least as far away from what they are designed to do as driving a Ferrari through central London in the rush-hour. For a daily driver, you need a car that's more of a generalist - it needs to not be horrible in busy traffic - and it needs to go fast enough to keep up with other cars on the motorway. So it's better to pick a relatively boring, conventional car (with sufficient headroom for our OP) than to start considering whacky ideas like black cabs! SteveBaker (talk) 14:54, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

If you're interested in a small car the Citroen C1/Peugeot 107/Toyota Aygo is surprisingly roomy. Sjö (talk) 10:01, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

OP : Many thanks for your responses86.157.134.7 (talk) 20:13, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

middle school teacher wants to reassure history students of Wikipedia's reliability

Hi,

I'm a middle school world history teacher in San Diego, California.

A student told me he read that Wikipedia is unreliable. (He said 70% unreliable, but he couldn't tell me his source. He read it on an app, he said.)

Our school librarian presents (during school wide lab orientation) a hacked Wikipedia entry for "Spot the Dog".

I'm seeking student accessible articles that can explain the editing and governance of Wikipedia webpages. Are you able to help me? I'd like to share the information with my students.

Thank you,

Alisa

A simple example of how vandalism gets fixed would be to show the edit history of Spot the Dog. It seems to have quite a few bad edits, but they never last more than a few hours, and are often fixed within minutes. The same pattern will be evident on higher-traffic pages, but the vandalism gets fixed faster, especially on pages known for abuse. Many articles are well-cited, and you can demonstrate to students that they can check out the original sources for the claims made in the articles. I don't usually reference Wikipedia directly in my work, but I often use it as a starting point for finding references I can use. Katie R (talk) 19:34, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Our own article Reliability of Wikipedia has some links to independent studies. Dbfirs 19:36, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Additionally, there are certain policies in place which guide content and the way that Wikipedia works. There are also guidelines that editors are expected to follow. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_guidelines and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_policies for proof of this. Giving a good glance at one or two of the important ones, I figure would be No original research, which basically means that you can't do your own original research, you have to abide it by a source. As well as neutral point of view, which stands that Wikipedia should have a neutral tone for aspects, even controversial. Tutelary (talk) 19:41, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Studies have shown that Wikipedia is more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica. That's pretty good. However, Wikipedia has one GIGANTIC benefit over other encyclopedias - and that's those little blue numbers you see scattered everywhere. We try hard to cite our sources...Britannica (and similar works) generally do not.

My opinion is that if it really matters, your best bet is to find the information that you need in a Wikipedia article - then to follow the blue number links to the references at the foot of the article. Then you can check where the information came from and see for yourself whether we somehow distorted the facts when we wrote about it. However, if it's just idle curiosity, or some relatively unimportant matter - you can generally trust what you find here.

That said, vandalism is an issue in some sorts of article. You can look at the history of the article by clicking on the "history" tab at the top - and from that you can see how recent each change to the article is - if the article is changing a lot - and especially if it's bouncing back and forth between two different versions of the truth...then distrust it.

SteveBaker (talk) 20:36, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

(Since others have given good references already, I'll share my thoughts as a teacher) I usually tell my college students that WP is not a reliable source (it doesn't even meet its own standards on the topic: WP:RS). However, that is not to say that WP isn't an incredibly useful resource for education, school projects, and research. When I teach math, I tell students that they can almost always trust things like trigonometric identities and List_of_logarithmic_identities on WP. First, there is almost zero controversy or politics involved, and also these are basic facts, and the key pages for highschool and college math are watchlisted by many expert editors. That is not to say that it is easy to learn a math topic on WP, quite the opposite, but our math pages are excellent for reference use. For other topics, a standard thing to do is to read the WP article for an overview of a topic, then use the sources that WP uses. By using forward citation records (e.g. "cited by X articles" on google scholar), many reliable sources can be found that are perfectly valid for school projects and even academic research papers. Of course, middle schoolers are a bit different. I guess I'd aim to convince them that WP is usually right (as indicated by DBfirs' links above), but to remain skeptical and critical of what they see here, unless they can find corroborating evidence elsewhere. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:45, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

One of the most valuable things I learned in history is that it is written be the victors. Therefore, it is better to presume there is no ultimate reliable source. Wikipedia is perhaps the best starting point today – but like anything else, it needs to be compared to other sources. For instance, I was taught that Julius Caesar's last words were Et tu, Brute? However, on deeper inquiry, he was a high class roman so could have well said 'και συ τεκνον' as high class Romans spoke in Greek. My best teacher once said, “Hey guys, I'm only telling you what the examiner will pass you on but I'm not convinced myself.” That is what education really means... To draw out and awaken the intellect. Otherwise you'll might as well just be programming robots. So yes, Wikipedia is a very good starting point, yet like every other source it needs explaining.--Aspro (talk) 00:00, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Certainly Wikipedia requires interpretation and critical thinking on behalf of the reader-who-cares - but in that regard, it's no different than any other encyclopedia or other reference work. No books of any kind are ever error-free. What's kinda 'special' here is that in the past, there were many different encyclopedias that one might wish to consult to get a variety of perspectives and thereby form a coherent view. But that's getting harder to do. Wikipedia has so taken over the world that other sources that might have competed are vanishing. Encyclopedia Britannica is no longer in print - and the online version requires a subscription or LOTS of popup ads and other annoyance...and the online edition can now be edited by the general public - so it's going to start having similar problems to Wikipedia in that regard...it's dying. If Britannica - with it's impressive reputation - can't stand up to this juggernaut, then no other general-purpose reference work stands a chance.

If Wikipedia becomes "the only game in town" (as now seems inevitable) - and "The One True Source of All Human Knowledge" - then teachers need to adapt to how it works and what it can truly do for students. Learning when to accept it and how to check it is not just a skill that students need for writing papers and doing projects - the ability to be able to use Wikipedia effectively becomes a skill that's as important to their future intellectual development as knowing how to read.

That's just a part of a wider skill-set - knowing how to find facts on the Internet and figuring out what to believe and what to ignore. If I search for "Dangers of Vaccinations" - I'll find more complete nonsense about vaccinations causing Autism than I'll find useful material about the real risks such as injection-site infections. Figuring out what to believe and what to ignore (Hint: Look for a peer-reviewed journal article!) is a crucial life-skill these days. When I was a kid, we were taught how to use the Dewey-Decimal system...useful knowledge, actually. Well...yeah...that, but for the 21st century!

The people who work here at the Wikipedia reference desk (well, at least the ones who are good at it!) can pull off incredible feats of searching this vast array of material - teaching THAT skill would be incredibly useful to students later in life. It's a subtle skill - knowing which words, typed into Google, will get you the gold-mine of information that you need - and which will bury you in a sea of unrelated topics - is exceedingly difficult. But who teaches this to school-kids?

I recall one situation where someone posted a photo of a tree, looking out over a valley with some fairly nondescript buildings off in the distance and asked us where the photo was taken. They thought it was somewhere in Thailand - but it could have been literally anywhere in the entire world. And we nailed it, (it turned out to be somewhere in India) - being able to point out more or less exactly where the camera was, and finding another photo from a very similar location. The collaborative detective skills required to do that are what I believe should be taught. Figuring out how to use Wikipedia (and Google, IMDB, WikiCommons, WikiTravel, Wiktionary, etc) is just a part of that. Critical thinking skills are paramount - and a wide base of knowledge that allows you to filter out a lot of impossible answers.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:42, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Inducing Orgasm

What chemical process takes place during orgasm to make it feel good?

Can the same feeling be induced without sexual stimulation? Like a pill that releases the same chemicals and makes a person feel orgasm without genital manipulation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by LordNoodles (talk • contribs)

This really belongs on the science desk. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:33, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

This is a complicated thing. From what I can find, the actual moment of orgasm is a mental thing - it's the consequences of it that produce all of the chemical changes - notably the prolactin and oxytocin release that produces the profound feelings of relaxation afterwards. Oxytocin can be generated in other ways - and generates similar feelings of relaxation - but it doesn't CAUSE orgasm. Oxytocin is used in many medical situations - no orgasms result.

So I suspect that the answer is that there is no pill that can produce the orgasmic feeling itself - only the after-effects. Another problem with a literal pill is that these chemicals have to act on the brain - and most drugs can't cross the blood/brain barrier.

SteveBaker (talk) 04:21, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

• There is no drug that can reliably induce orgasm all by itself. However, there are some drugs that occasionally cause them. Antidepressants are the best known -- their usual effect is to inhibit sexual function, but there are numerous reports of some of them (particularly clomipramine) producing spontaneous orgasms in some people, sometimes, strangely enough, triggered by yawning. There are also non-drug-related ways of producing spontaneous orgasms, including electrical stimulation of certain points in the brain, and certain types of epilepsy. Looie496 (talk) 14:07, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

elephant in the room

Where does the phrase "elephant in the room" come from to denote something people can't see? Surely if there really was an elephant in the room, everyone would not only be able to see it, but also smell and hear it.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Elsa Anna 4 ever (talk • contribs)

It doesn't mean that at all. The elephant in the room is something that is making everyone present uncomfortable, but which everyone either ignores or refuses to address. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:34, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

agreed. It's the exact opposite of no one noticing. The reference is to something that everyone is VERY aware of, as they would be if an elephant was in the room. Bali88 (talk) 01:05, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I think a better expression would be "It's the dog poo on the carpet that nobody can see" (because if they see it, they will have to clean it up). StuRat (talk) 05:51, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

For an example of the usage, see The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party μηδείς (talk) 10:11 pm, Yesterday (UTC−4)

That could also be called an "unholy alliance", kind of like with the northern liberal Democrats and the southern segregationist Democrats, notably during the 1930s. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:21, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Driver-less cars

I heard that Google are making driver-less cars

Does the car have to take and pass a driving test, and get a driving license, before being allowed on the road? What would the picture be of in its license, the car itself? 200 ethernet cables (talk) 22:45, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Funny. As with anything to do with driving on public streets, a serious answer will depend on the laws of a given region, for example a US State. You may find Autonomous car of interest. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:54, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

The answer is "nobody knows yet". The likelyhood of these things becoming consumer items is still a long way off. Some US states are trying to work on laws about this - others are ignoring it for the moment. In some places, the gizmo that makes the car drive itself is considered (by default) in the same way as cruise control is legislated - so the car wouldn't need any special testing - but the person sitting in the driver position would take full responsibility for the behavior of the car. That interpretation of the law is what has enabled Google (and a few others) to put experimental driverless cars onto US roads for testing.

There is a tendency to assume that these cars are going to become very common very soon - and that's not likely. The super-impressive Google car relies on very up-to-date maps that are accurate to better than a centimeter and detailed enough to show curbs and drain covers and anything else like that. Making those maps is exceedingly difficult - you can't just scan the roadways because you have to distinguish permenant features (curbs, roadsigns, buildings, etc) from things that just happened to be there when the road was scanned (parked cars, etc). So having driverless cars (using the Google approach) can't happen until enough of the road system can be mapped that way - and an infrastructure put in place to update those maps almost immediately every time anything changes (eg a junction is remodeled, a new road sign added, etc). We'd also need an efficient way to redistribute those incredibly bandwidth-intensive maps to these cars.

The other driverless vehicles (such as the ones that participated in the DARPA challenge) don't need such detailed maps - but they are in a much less advanced state of development. Most are not remotely ready to drive safely in normal traffic.

The legal impediments to doing this go beyond a "driving test" - there is also the issue of insurance rules. If you send your car home without you and there is a crash, can you be held liable? What about if the problem is a bug in the software? What if two cars from different manufacturers both have flaws in their software such that each is safe by itself, but fatal when the two of them meet in the streets...who has to do the recall of 10 million vehicles and fix the problem?

Can cars be allowed to run by themselves - or with just small children inside? One idea is that you'd be able to tell your car to take your kids to school so you don't have to.

Then we have moral issues to contend with. One recent problem that popped up is with crash-avoidance. If your driverless car sees that a crash is inevitable, it needs to be programmed to decide what is the least lethal route to take. If there is a choice between driving itself off a cliff, inevitably killing it's owner - versus swerving into incoming traffic and hitting a much smaller car with three little children in it, yet only slightly injuring it's own driver - should it decide to kill it's owner or to kill three small children and merely injure it's owner? What if it detects that there is a choice between hitting two oncoming cars and has time to consult a database provided by it's insurance company so it can aim for the one that's least expensive to repair...or to always aim for cars that have insurance and to try to avoid uninsured cars? Would you like your Ford to preferentially hit Chevvy's rather than other Fords in order to improve the reliability statistics for Ford cars? Difficult stuff! Do you really want to buy a car that is programmed to sacrifice your life or ding your pocketbook in some altruistic act?

So we're a long way off doing this. It's not just technology - there are infrastructure, commercial, legal and moral issues to iron out too. I'm pretty sure that most states will hold off writing any laws at all until everything settles down and we can understand where we're going.

There is some precedent for passing overly-restrictive laws to start with, and relaxing them as the technology becomes more widely accepted. When cars first appeared, there were laws passed in the UK and some US states that a man had to walk in front of the car waving a red flag! (See Red flag traffic laws) That kind of overly-cautious, unbearably-restrictive law will probably appear first.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:03, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations to SB on one correct usage of it's = it is. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 21:55, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

...and thanks for violating your edit-ban to bring us that exciting piece of news. SteveBaker (talk) 14:44, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Having the decency not to post what you know is distorted English is not news to anyone sincerely here to build an encyclopedia. Four times gibberish in the same sentence (it's owner/it's own driver/it's owner/it's owner) builds only conceit. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 20:51, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Steve, lots of thought-provoking questions, but what is your source for the Google cars depending on maps that are "accurate to better than a centimeter and detailed enough to show curbs and drain covers and anything else like that. " I have not seen any suggestion in articles about the Google cars that they require more accuracy than typical GIS maps such as ordinary GPS units use. They have cameras/lidar to see curbs and such, and their press release shows them avoiding parked cars and traffic cones which one would not expect to me mapped down to a few millimeters in advance of the outing.

[3] covers it moderately well. I saw it on a TV interview with someone at Google just recently - but I don't recall where. The reason their cars do so much better than the winners of the DARPA contest is that their LIDAR only has to see differences between the "true" map of the road and what the world currently appears to be. It's relatively easy for them to recognize the differences as being people, cars, etc - and to treat any difference as a hazard. Figuring out that there are traffic cones is fairly easy once you know where the road surface is and where you *care* about cones being present...and resolving what to do if cones are present is easier if you know already which other lanes are available to drive upon. The DARPA-challenge folks only had available digital maps to get a rough route from - they had to detect kerbs and other fixed objects using LIDAR or other measurement techniques on the fly - which is a vastly higher level of difficulty than Google have attempted. So far, they've only mapped 2,000 miles of road to this extreme level of detail - it sounds like a lot, but it's really not even a drop in the bucket. These aren't even really "maps" - they record things like the three dimensional location of each of the lights in each of the signals at every intersection to within a centimeter or so! They even know things like which days garbage trucks do pickups and when there are likely to be school busses present. It's far, far beyond what a typical GIS map would contain...although the concept of storing all of these data layers isn't a technological obstacle - it's just a matter of collecting all of that data for millions of miles of road - and then keeping it up to date - and guaranteeing it'll stay up to date for the entire lifespan of the cars that need it. (If Ford goes bust tomorrow - you can still drive your car, and probably get it serviced and find spare parts for it. But if Google decided to drop the driverless car data from it's servers in 10 years time, your car turns into a worthless paperweight overnight! SteveBaker (talk) 14:43, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Steve, you say "the person sitting in the driver position would take full responsibility for the behavior of the car". The newest Google cars have no steering wheel or pedals. There is no driver position. HiLo48 (talk) 00:29, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but it's far from clear whether any jurisdiction will accept them as legal. Google don't get to write the laws.

This article says that the Google car will have both steering wheel and pedals when it's tested in California (for legal reasons). It also refers to the extra-detailed maps. SteveBaker (talk) 14:43, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

That's lovely, but I pointed to an article and video which showed cars without steering wheel and pedals. Finding a different article doesn't negate mine. HiLo48 (talk) 21:06, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Sure, they are making them without steering wheels or pedals for some of their testing/demos - but that in no way implies that they'll be able to ultimately manufacture and sell cars for US roads without that equipment. My reference doesn't contradict yours - it expands on it by pointing out that this isn't what's going to be tested in California. Nobody knows what (if anything) is eventually allowed in production vehicles in various states of the USA and around the world. It's perfectly possible (indeed, quite likely) that we'll have laws that require a responsible, qualified driver to supervise the machine at all times. That simplifies the liability laws, issues of insurance and responsibility in the event of an accident or some legal infraction. If it turns out that wide-spread adoption of this technology turns out to be highly successful - then just as the laws requiring a man with a red flag to walk in front of early automobiles were soon repealed - so we may find that true driverless cars (without steering wheels, etc) become legal. It's also possible that we'll end up with some kind of compromise - maybe drivers have an emergency-stop button, or something like the dead-man's-handle on train locomotives.

We simply don't know what the legal framework will turn out to be - and the fact that Google have made a few prototypes without steering wheels proves absolutely NOTHING about how the laws will ultimately be written. SteveBaker (talk) 01:51, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Why are there so many American Organisations

Why is it that there are so many food and other companies which exist in the US, but not in my country (Scotland)? I found this when attempting a quiz app on food brands, and cheated on 90% of the questions, given they were obscure brands which only existed in the US. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.0.229.232 (talk • contribs) 22:58, 30 May 2014‎

Population of the US: 318,127,000. Population of Scotland: 5,327,700. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:06, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

It could be interesting to see some of those "obscure" US brands, and maybe some brands well-known to Scots. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:16, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

This isn't a chat forum. 208.31.38.30 (talk) 23:20, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I would like to see some of those brand names. That's information. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:21, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

If the question is about "number of food brands" one reason is simple - Americans markets can carry more than 60,000 different SKUs. This is quite a bit more than most European markets can carry, thus there is intrinsically a need for more "brands" even where they are made by the same company. European "hypermarkets" generally carry up to 35,000 SKUs it appears, and most local markets carry under 9,000 SKUs. As one example, Florida supermarkets generally carry more than 40 SKUs just for baked beans, which is likely more than one would find in a typical Scottish supermarket. Collect (talk) 01:40, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

• Not only is this not a chat forum, in the US we have organizations, not organis..a..whatsits. Also, that Americans give more to charity than any other sepcies is widely know. As for the reputation of Scotts, it's not our place to say, is it? μηδείς (talk) 01:55, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
  • It's fair to say that Montgomery Scott and Sir Walter Scott had good reputations.←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:29, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

For those of us unschooled in Inventory Management, "SKUs" are Stock keeping units. Dbfirs 05:50, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

...or more mundanely and specifically, a SKU is a unique bar-code pattern.

So 10 different flavors of the same food item would each have a different SKU...but a pack containing 10 smaller containers, each with a different flavor and "Not labelled for individual sale" would be a single SKU. So it's hard to tie what a SKU represents to the variety of product present. Our local food store has bags of potato chips in a dozen flavors - each with a different SKU, but also sells large boxes, each containing a dozen bags of the exact same kind of chips in a variety of flavors - which has a single SKU. You'd also find that an item that comes in a variety of sizes of packaging will have a different SKU for each size. Some companies even change the SKU when they change the printing on the box for some reason. For smaller companies, the cost of owning a new barcode is significant (you have to register those things with a central agency who ensures that they are unique) - and it costs around $1,000 per bar-code to do that. So in some cases a variety of identically-priced and similarly-stocked items (like the same cuddly toy made with different colors of fur in some 3rd world sweat-shop) might share the same exact SKU.

So counting the number of SKU's and relating that to "variety" of product is a very tricky matter. Much depends on the store policy - especially in the case of gigantic chain-stores who can order the manufacturers to package and bar-code in a certain way.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:35, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

[4] FWIW, one can buy UPC codes for as little as $80 each. If one pays $750 and an annual fee of $150,one can get a humungous number of bar codes (cutting cost down to only a few dollars each) Collect (talk) 15:25, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

My understanding is that the problem is that the number on the barcode is part a company code and part a product within that company. The people who sell the $80 (or so) UPC's are giving you one number out of a batch that they own. So the company code is theirs, not yours. I found that there are three categories of retailers out there:

1. The big guys (like WalMart) demand that each company that they order stuff from have their own company code...so the $80 UPC's you describe are not acceptable to them. The meaning of the code is important to them.
2. Middle-tier organizations (and I happen to know that Hobby Lobby is one of them) only care that the code is unique - so they are happy for you to use the $80 UPC's because the entire code is still unique - even though it doesn't mean much.
3. Very small retailers don't give a damn so long as your product doesn't have the same code as anyone elses that they sell. So you can get away with picking a random number (with a vanishingly small probability of coming up with the same one as anyone else)...and I know that some individual stores take that attitude.

So whether your code costs $0, $80 or $1000 depends on whom you're planning to sell to!

SteveBaker (talk) 16:48, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

People, please? The OP wants their question answered. Stop going off topic! — Preceding unsigned comment added by TempUName (talk • contribs) 20:01, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

It's pretty much already been answered. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:46, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

The reference desk has a long and wonderful history of continuing to explore issues long after the OP has been adequately answered. New, somewhat tangential, questions arise (and not necessarily from the OP) during the answering of the original question - and cutting that off or starting a new topic seems unnecessarily complicated. So long as the original question has been answered, there is no harm in tackling additional matters that come up. SteveBaker (talk) 14:18, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I think the problem is that the question hasn't actually been answered; most of the above discussion is actually over a different question. The OP noted that in a quiz based on U.S. brands, he – being from Scotland – recognized only about 10%. Paraphrasing, the question wasn't "why are there more brands in the U.S. than in Scotland?" (which seems to be what most of the above back-and-forth is about) but rather "Why is there so little overlap in brands between the U.S. and Scotland?"

Sure, smaller stores carrying a smaller number of unique products could certainly contribute to the disparity. (Though fewer SKUs can mean fewer brands, or it can mean fewer unique products from any one brand's line of products—or more likely, a bit of both.) As well, we don't know which brands were part of the OP's survey, so we don't know if they might have been deliberately chosen to be obscure or challenging. (In other words, are those brands that a typical American might also have some trouble recognizing? And were the brands specifically those of U.S.-based companies, or just brands belonging to companies that do business in the U.S.?) And then, of course, there are the companies that use different logos, or even different brand names, when doing business in different markets. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:48, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, the OP hasn't bothered to come back here and interact with anyone. However, Grumpy's initial response, about the relative sizes of the two countries, goes a long way toward answering the question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:54, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Note that after looking at many a food quiz myself, I another Scot, say that most of such quizzes are supposedly easier for Americans. Note that other food companies and not just brands may be important here. For instance, why are there more restaurant chains there than in the UK? TempUName (talk) 14:58, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

As an additional point, it's not clear to me that the OP has even distinguished 'brands' from 'organisations' or 'companies'. Plenty of large multinationals sell food under multiple different brands even within one country. Sometimes this even includes products which are nominally competing. The visibility and connection to the parent company on the product depends on various factors. Similarly the existence of the different brands, even when they are nominally competing, doesn't automatically mean that they are managed by separate entities within the company.

Of course it's obviously true well known brands in one place may be relatively unknown in another, even when they multinationals. An example of this is probably McCain Foods. They are large enough in NZ, and I think Australia and probably Canada and I'm guessing elsewhere that they could probably be said to be a well recognised household name, probably more so than the US senator and one time Republican candidate for president (another time candidate to be the candidate). This is evidently not the case in the US, at least if the discussion surrounding the disambig page is to be believed.

Nil Einne (talk) 04:34, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Light Bulbs

Energy companies and governments around the world are screaming that everyone needs to use compact fluorescent lamps because there aren't enough power stations. But there are more power stations in existence today than at any previous point in history, and years ago everyone used 100 watt incandescent bulbs instead of 7 watt fluorescents. Care to explain? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Melaonin (talk • contribs) 23:08, 30 May 2014‎

As far as I'm aware, nobody has suggested that there aren't enough power stations - the reason for advocating more efficient light bulbs is that doing so is intended to reduce the detrimental effects of power generation on the environment. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:13, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I've never heard that rationale either. Bali88 (talk) 01:00, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

WP:NOTFORUM, WP:NOTSOAPBOX
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
It's called the ethic of altruism, which means, I will fly on private jets for photo ops and you will buy lights you don't want to save coal you don't care about even though it is you and not Greenpeace who pays your electricity bills. μηδείς (talk) 02:09, 31 May 2014 (UTC) "But here's the curious thing: While Egyptians are content to live in filthy, battered buildings, the insides of their homes are always immaculate. Time and time again I trudged up darkened stairwells to apartments on the third or fourth floor, and when my host opened the door, I would step into an isolated world of elegance and cleanliness. …. When I asked friends if anyone had ever considered a neighborhood block association or an owners' association to clean up common areas, they would chuckle and say "Oh, THAT would never work here." No doubt it wouldn't. My friends did not feel that their responsibility extended beyond their own boundaries."Asmrulz (talk) 16:33, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

There are more power stations because the demand for power is still increasing. That's not just because of lightbulbs. Lighting consumes about 9% of domestic electricity use (at least in the USA - figures for the UK suggest that 20% is the figure in that part of the world). The biggest uses are heating, water heating, refrigerators and air conditioning. Domestic power consumption is only about a third of the total consumption. So lighting is about 3% to 6% of total electrical usage - and switching to CFL's would cut that to more like 1% (switching to LED lighting would reduce it still more). Demand is increasing across the board - and power station construction grows to meet that demand.

Global climate change means that we have to cut back on the amount of power we use. In practical terms, it's hard to improve heating and cooling in an existing home - so we encourage people to nudge the thermostat a few degrees to save on those big costs...to buy efficient refrigerators and freezers. But not many people are going to change their heating or aircon systems. Getting people to change their light bulbs *ought* to be a no-brainer. These more efficient bulbs pay for themselves and soon save you money - and they help (a little) to save the planet. Making that change isn't anywhere near enough by itself - but every little helps.

We're not saying that there aren't enough power stations - if that were the only problem, we could just build more of them. The problem is actually that there are too many of them! We need to reduce the amount of CO2 produced - so fewer CO2-producing power plants - which means using less energy - which means making every economy we possibly can. Switching to more efficient lighting is only a small step - but it's an easy one to take.

SteveBaker (talk) 04:01, 31 May 2014 (UTC)