Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 April 23

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April 23

Driving age in California, USA

I remember ten years ago there were a proposed law to delay the driving license age to 18 in California stating that individuals born after the year 1990 would not eligible to get a drivers license until the age 18. Were there a proposal to delay the permit eligibility? Did they plan to delay the permit to 16 or 17. Because at that time some people told me the permit were going to stay the same, just instead they wouldn't receive a drivers license until the age 18. If they did propose to delay the permit is it 16 or is it 17. Is license age still 16 in California, USA?--107.202.105.233 (talk) 01:17, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

See Driver's license in the United States. Dismas|^(talk) 01:42, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

In California, if you are under 18, you can get a driver license. But this license has certain restrictions for the first 12 months that you have it (like you can't drive certain hours or people of certain ages, and so on). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:D:7B01:BB34:9D03:FE46:2D34:D7EF (talk) 18:56, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

subsides by state goverment

in INDIA is a state goverment is allowed to give subsides on CHINA agricultural pumps rather then giving subsides on same products produced in india ?

Is there any law to stop it ?

NOTE:- CENTRAL GOVERMENT GIVE SUBSIDES TO STATE GOVERMENT FOR THE LOCAL MANUFACTURERS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.199.108.93 (talk) 03:42, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Answering this question definitively would require a good knowledge of India's constitution, which I lack. Because India is a federal state, unless the constitution gives the central government the power to restrict this kind of state government spending, then the rules on this kind of subsidy could vary from state to state within India. According to this document, however, "India’s public procurement regime, except for a limited degree of preference for micro and small enterprises/public sector enterprises, maintains non-discrimination between domestic and foreign suppliers." India's National Manufacturing Policy outlines a government policy of promoting domestic manufacturing, but no requirement that government expenditures be limited to domestic manufacturers. So, if the central government has a policy of limiting subsidies to domestic manufacturers, it does not seem that state governments are required to observe those limits. However, as I say, I am not an expert, and for a definitive opinion, you should probably consult an Indian constitutional attorney. Marco polo (talk) 14:29, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Note in the case where the federal government is giving money to the states, as the OP's final statement seems to imply, then unless this is money the government is required to give, or there's some constitutional issue preventing the government from restricting how money they voluntarily give state governments is spent, then there's a fair chance the government would not need explicit constitutional allowance for them to limited how it's spent. The states could reject the money if they aren't happy with the restrictions, or accept it with the restrictions. Nil Einne (talk) 16:36, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

What you say makes sense in a case in which the state government is merely distributing a central government subsidy, but this is not clear from the question. To me the question suggests that there is a separate state subsidy program, part or all of which ends up subsidizing pumps made in China. It is plausible that the central government gives states money to support manufacturing within each state, while a state may have a separate program giving money to farmers to help them purchase pumps, some of which end up coming from China. But your scenario is also plausible without further information from the questioner. Marco polo (talk) 20:40, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

knowing which pages we edited.

I created an account with Gpavlou in july 2014 and can't find which pages we edited - I want to use this for an assignment as evidence of helping the public (by uploading academic information) can you show me which pages i edited please — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:388:608C:4C03:F800:B495:8EF3:BAEF (talk) 05:51, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

There appears never to have been an account created on the English Wikipedia under the name Gpavlou - and without the name, finding edits is going to be difficult. Can you remember any particular article you edited, and approximately when? AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:01, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

There is one, see Special:Contributions/Gpavlou. Sjö (talk) 09:15, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Oops - I must have mistyped or something. Thanks, Sjö. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:03, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Who is "we"? You and who else? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:11, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Does the baby chicken come alive when you are boiling the egg?

Mommey hen sits on the eggs to give them heat to give them life. When you boil the egg it also gets heat. Does that make it come alive for a bit before it boils to death? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 39.179.116.161 (talk) 15:53, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

The eggs we eat are unfertilized, so there is no baby chicken inside (perhaps you noticed that when you broke open the shell). We don't boil baby chickens to death, only lobsters, and only adult lobsters. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:57, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

True, although it is possible for a rooster to sneak into the hen house and fertilize an occasional egg, especially on small, organic farms. However, the "baby chicken" is unlikely to make it past an embryo, as it's growth would stop as soon as the egg is taken from the hen and (in the US) refrigerated. StuRat (talk) 16:04, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Also, oysters and clams are most often cooked alive as well. Unless you're eating them at a raw bar, at which point the oysters are merely numb. --Jayron32 16:23, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

To be pedantic you missed out crabs, prawns, langoustine, then there are fried ants, locus, scorpions etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aspro (talk • contribs) 16:42, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

And witchetty bugs. Yum. John Carter (talk) 17:01, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

And of course octopus.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:11, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

For Mr Pseudo-Pedantic Aspro: Locus is what the link says. I think you were meaning locusts. Lesson: If one cannot be exactly, precisely, bone-crunchingly, mind-destroyingly correct in one's pedantry, one may as well not even try, because there's a conga line of people like me, just itching to out-pedant the try-hards. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:23, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

People like I may succumb to such temptations, as well. Of course, Jack's usage of the objective case would arguably be acceptable in general, but strict pedantry is vital in this genus of posting. :) Tevildo (talk) 10:30, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

This genus of posturing, more likely.  :) According to Point 9, "People like you and me should have no problems with grammatical case". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:30, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

One should point out that it isn't the heat of the mother that gives them life. It maintains the already-existing life. Mingmingla (talk) 17:11, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

That, and yolk. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:55, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

What about balut (food)? The embryo is alive prior to cooking and I'd imagine this is more in line with OP's question. Justin15w (talk) 14:58, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I needed that. (not) ―Mandruss ☎ 15:05, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

No need for them to develop as far as balut. I have laying hens and a rooster. I know that some of the eggs that I take from the nest boxes are fertilized and would develop if allowed to. Dismas|^(talk) 15:16, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

NB, every time you cook a fresh fruit or vegetable, it is also alive prior to cooking... SemanticMantis (talk) 15:18, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, originally Thomas Harris's book was going to be about a girl who grew up on a sweet potato farm, The Silence of the Yams. μηδείς (talk) 15:52, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Fun Horror Fact: Contrary to popular music, some eggs also bleed. If you find an egg with a beak, best to let it be. Or just quickly bite its head off, if you're a monster. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:20, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Speaking of Beatle finales in America, this invasive female carries mites which eat fly eggs from corpses, clearing room for her own, continuing the good kind of revolution, not the other. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:29, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

It's very likely that any chick inside an egg will be dead anyway, due to being refrigerated for several days before being boiled.KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 09:51, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I thought A) that you lived in the UK and that B) people in the UK don't normally refrigerate their eggs. I have a friend who lived in Ireland for a number of years and she said that many people in that area don't store their eggs in the fridge. Dismas|^(talk) 12:14, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

While not everyone in the UK always refrigerates their eggs (which, by the way, are not usually kept on refrigerated shelves in the shops/supermarkets), especially if they're going to use them within a few days and/or they have a non-refrigerated but cool larder, most people often do. I don't recall (in half a century) seeing a fridge in the UK that didn't have a door shelf with a row of hemispherical holders for eggs. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.218.13.204 (talk) 15:38, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Weird, I know what you're talking about in the UK (I'm a Brit, living in Texas) - but here in the USA, I don't think I've ever seen a fridge with those egg-holder dimples - and our eggs are ALWAYS kept refrigerated in supermarkets. SteveBaker (talk) 16:40, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@SteveBaker: I'm a US'ian and I haven't seen those dimples in fridges since I was a kid (around 30 years ago). So, unless you moved here before that, I wouldn't expect you to have seen them here. Dismas|^(talk) 03:11, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeah - I've been here close to 25 years...so that probably pegs the time they went out of style to the 25...30 years ago range. I suspect that with larger refrigerator sizes, it's just easier to dump a carton of eggs into the fridge than it is to take each egg out individually. Also, we've gone from buying eggs in packs of 6 to packs of 12 or 24...and there were never enough little dimples in the door to hold that many. In the UK, people tend to have smaller kitchens with less room for the gargantuan refrigerators we have in the US - so maybe it still makes sense to use otherwise-useless door space for that purpose. SteveBaker (talk) 16:57, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I have an old fridge with, oddly, dimples for 13 eggs. It's labeled "Whirlpool Custom Series". It might very well be that old (I inherited it). StuRat (talk) 17:17, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

In order to hatch, chicken eggs need to be kept at around 99 to 105 degF and with reasonable humidity for 21 days. So unless you leave your eggs out of the refrigerator and live in a hot place with no airconditioning, it's unlikely the chick would survive for long anyhow. Chicks also die if the egg is kept in a vertical position (like it is in a carton of eggs) or if it's not rotated every hour or so. It's REALLY unlikely that an unhatched chick could last more than a day without being cared for properly - and once it's dead, re-warming it wouldn't revive it. But as everyone has already pointed out - eggs intended for human consumption are not fertile - so no chick is involved in the first place. So the answer here is a very clear "No!"...don't worry about it!

If you suspect that there MIGHT be a developed chick inside an egg, you don't need to crack it open to find out...the light of a close-up candle flame is enough to shine through the shell...see Candling for more details. SteveBaker (talk) 16:16, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Or a narrow beam flashlight/laser pointer. Has to be dark in the room, though. StuRat (talk) 16:57, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

They also weigh more with a baby on board, and you can't hear a liquidy sound when you shake it near your ear. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:42, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Weigh more? On the face of it, that doesn't strike me as very likely - any weight gain would have to occur very early in the egg-forming process, since the weight isn't going to change once the shell is formed. I'd be glad to be proved wrong though - do you have a source?

I agree that it doesn't seem likely that the egg/chick combo would gain significant weight after it is laid, but it is possible, say if it absorbed moisture from the air. StuRat (talk) 20:57, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't have the science or a source offhand. But I have chickens, and that's how I tell the difference. My mom told me about it long ago. But yeah, not exactly solid reference desk work. Possibly untrue. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:13, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

To be clearer, though, I'm not talking about early detection of tiny embryos. I'm talking about not plopping a half-formed fetus into your cake. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:20, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Trying to find a source to back me up, but Googling words like "heavy", "dense" and "egg" overwhelmingly finds results about dense groups of heavy-laying hens, not their eggs. Also a lot about whether eggs are healthy for human hearts (still maybe, it seems). InedibleHulk (talk) 21:31, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

According to this blog post, eggs lose mass as they grow, but the transformation from liquid to solid may create a fake heaviness. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:39, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

The eggshell isn't an impermeable barrier...if it were, then it wouldn't be necessary to control humidity and ensure adequate airflow around eggs in an incubator. Oxygen, CO2 and moisture can pass through the membrane - so the egg could possibly either gain or lose mass over time. SteveBaker (talk) 03:32, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Aye, but in my case, I'm pretty sure I was being fooled by the moment of inertia. Only pretty sure, because most of it looks like gobbledygook to me, and not the kind I grew up learning. But much more sure than I am about it being a case of ensoulment. Even my mom knows those weigh precisely 21 grams. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:00, 27 April 2015 (UTC)