Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 May 31

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May 31

Are Amazon.com gift cards only available in the united states?

Are they not available in other countries? 2001:569:766D:AB00:6C5B:D4ED:24D2:EABB (talk) 00:01, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

A simple Google search shows them available for Canada and the UK, at the least. Here they are on the Canadian Amazon site [1] FlowerpotmaN·(t) 00:25, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

The American Amazon.com, or your regional equivalent? I have seen Amazon.ca gift cards at some stores in Canada, but never Amazon.com gift cards. And Amazon.com doesn't offer international shipping on gift cards. Reach Out to the Truth 00:35, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Fair point, ooops. Yes, certainly the UK ones are only valid for amazon.co.uk, and not for amazon.com. My bad. FlowerpotmaN·(t) 00:42, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Amazon.com offers print-at-home and email options, which may suffice.John Z (talk) 04:57, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

What terrestrial point is the most miles from terrestrial wilderness?

I don't know if there's a term for the level of naturalness I'm thinking of. Mainly it's not on a farm or ranch and you can't detect any signs of humans or domesticated animals with your senses more than like once a month (average). Except aircraft don't count as long as they're too far to hear more than once a blue moon and skyglow doesn't count because it's everywhere.

But if I see thinner trees but they aren't very young and the locations don't look geometric then I'd let it slide that the forest was cut down before. I don't feel like disqualifying the entire Eastern US just for there being more deer than natural and fewer carnivores and younger trees and non-native species and acid rain and all the native species aren't there. It still looks freaking natural to me. (because I'm a city boy my standard for wilderness is very lenient) I'm not even sure if I want to disqualify a location just for visible light bulb(s) that are enough miles away to look dim. Probably not. And only some terrain/biome combinations will show light bulbs that far anyway.

Oh, and the circle with no wilderness has to be mostly land otherwise the answer might be a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 07:27, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

This isn't a proper answer, but this map might be a useful starting point. Just looking at it, the point would appear to be in the vicinity of Ekaterinburg, but the resolution is low and the Mercator projection doesn't help. Finding the data on which the map is based is probably the next stage. Tevildo (talk) 08:12, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

It would also be useful to know what the colors on the map mean! Is the pale yellow the only non-wilderness color? --69.159.60.83 (talk) 21:21, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

I think green is the only wilderness area, but note that they require a minimum of 1 million acres to count a spot as wilderness. That seems overly exclusive, to me. If we include smaller areas, then large cities might be the answer, possibly excluding those cities with large parks like New York City's Central Park. 21:26, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Central Park isn't that big. It's only 800 meters wide, streetlit and it's so crowded that the grass has to be replanted before shoes kill it. Maybe one of the world's breadbaskets is the answer? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:48, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Breadbaskets are by definition farms, arable land used to produce crops for humans (usually grain monocultures). The International Union for Conservation of Nature has protected area categories that might help find what the OP is looking for. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 15:39, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

It's the wilderness that can't be on a farm, not the place that's furthest from wilderness. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:51, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

These criteria are pretty subjective. Personally, I would say that there is no wilderness in the eastern United States outside of Maine, with the possible exception of portions of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. With that in mind, I would say that the place fitting your criterion would likely be in or near Georgia (peninsular Florida can't qualify because of the requirement that the circle with no wilderness has to be mostly land). The closest wilderness to, say, Savannah would be over 1100 miles (either northern Maine or west Texas), although Savannah may not qualify under the circle-of-mostly-land requirement. I had initially thought that Europe would be a more likely answer, but I believe that any candidate areas of Europe would be closer than that to wilderness areas of either central Scandinavia or north Africa. John M Baker (talk) 19:01, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Lists of wilderness exist, with their definitions (often legal, not subjective); from these, calculations of distance from other points can be made. Our articles on Wilderness area, WILD Foundation, and World Database on Protected Areas are good places to start. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 10:41, 2 June 2016 (UTC)