Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 September 30

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September 30

barcode

hi,In your description of barcodes you wrote that the barcode starting with 678 is reserved for future use. I recently bought a product with the barcode 6788814939. I am wondering what country is now using this barcode. Please update your information. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:569:FA43:D600:745E:385E:EFD4:98D8 (talk) 00:06, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Please link the page you refer to. I can find no mention of this in barcode or elsewhere in Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:19, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

GS1 seems to think 678 is still not assigned, and they'd be the ones to know. If you know the full barcode, you can look it up here and see if it's actually registered. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:40, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Maybe your product barcode was for internal use in an organisation that uses the 678 code unofficially. Dbfirs 17:59, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

How can I use directory assistance for England and Australia since I live in Canada

I want to call a friend in London and find out her number. 50.68.118.24 (talk) 05:21, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

This page lists a Canadian international directory assistance number: https://www.reference.com/government-politics/call-international-directory-assistance-3aaadd8c9981b439 Rojomoke (talk) 06:06, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Why don't you just use web-based look-up services? There is this one for the UK [1]. However, many people are unlisted these days. --Viennese Waltz 07:17, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

https://www.whitepages.com.au/ for Australia. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:25, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

irrelevant digression
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This woman in Barnstaple, Devon, UK had her call to the police routed to the Barnstable, MA, USA police department, she may have a few tips. μηδείς (talk) 22:09, 30 September 2016 (UTC) Probably not, Medeis; according to this article, she merely used Cortana to contact the police, so presumably she didn't even see the phone number that she had rung. Nyttend (talk) 19:05, 1 October 2016 (UTC) Cortana? Is that like voluntary leprosy? μηδείς (talk) 10:14, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Yards and miles

Spoiler warning: While the question I'm asking right now does not reveal the plot of The Shawshank Redemption, the following link does.

Here, the narrator, portrayed by Morgan Freeman, says:

[...] 500 yards [...] just shy of half a mile

So, knowing that half a mile comprises 1,760 ÷ 2 = 880 yards, or half a mile equals to 804.67 meters while 500 yards equals to 457.20 meters, then how is 500 yards "just shy of half a mile"? --Theurgist (talk) 17:13, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

It's one of many mistakes in the movie. -- BenRG (talk) 19:24, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

"just shy of..." is not a precise term. Even if it were, this is a work of fiction, and not a peer-reviewed journal. You didn't need us to fact check the math, you did that yourself. So what, exactly, is the research we're supposed to help you do, exactly? Can you tell us what references you want us to provide for you? --Jayron32 21:21, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Who knows? I realized it could have been a mistake, but then it's an American movie and Americans deal with miles and yards just as often as we deal with meters and kilometers, so I found it very unlikely that no one in an entire film crew should have known how many yards there are in half a mile, or that they shouldn't have noticed such a simple and blatant mistake if they did know that. It was quite some time after I learned about the miles that I became aware of the existence a different unit of length called "nautical mile", so I wondered if still other units of length exist that are, or were as of the time the plot is set, known as "miles" or "yards". Then I wondered if it was something with the expression "just shy of" – could it mean or imply something different than I think it means or implies? Indeed some terms are less precise than others, but one wouldn't wish to use terms misconveying the idea meant, even if they're technically not wrong.

Whether it's a question touching on a vast topic and requiring research to be done and references to be provided, or it's a straightforward question that just requires a simple factual answer, it can be asked here, right? That's what the Refdesks are for. --Theurgist (talk) 00:23, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

It certainly appears that King's original (factual) line was changed. It could have been the screenwriter, or it could be that the actor forgot the exact line and improvised it. Have you tried contacting the screenwriter? And if everyone in the crew was focused on their particular job, they might not have been paying attention to the exact words. One glaring mistake (glaring to science geeks, anyway) was made in the original Star Wars, where Han Solo said something about getting from point A to point B in some number of "parsecs", as if it were a time measurement, which it ain't. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:06, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

That's not necessarily a mistake in Star Wars. It could have been some slang usage of "parsec" among people familiar with hyperspace travel, just like the way people speak of "pounds" of pressure when they mean pounds per square inch. --69.159.61.230 (talk) 05:29, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Critics at the time it came out said it was an error. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:08, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

We don't know whether it was an error. If it was then George Lucas hasn't admitted it. See Kessel Run and Wookieepedia:Kessel Run for explanations offered in official media. They are not part of the post-2014 Star Wars canon so if it comes up in the Star Wars#Untitled Han Solo Anthology film then we don't know how it will be treated there. Star Wars: The Force Awakens repeated the 12 parsecs claim without saying what it means, but the mention indicates Lucasfilm/Disney stand by the original film. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:34, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

By the way, King's original novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption has: "Five hundred yards. The length of five football fields. Just shy of a mile". ---Sluzzelin talk 22:02, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

So then it's wrong in the original story and wrong differently in the movie. I suggest that the real explanation is that a lot of people in North America simply aren't aware of the correct conversion factor between yards and miles. It's not as simple as the factors of 10 or 1,000 that you get in the metric system and we don't commonly mix the two units as in "10 miles and 100 yards", so people who aren't technically inclined are likely to be unfamiliar with the conversion factor. --69.159.61.230 (talk) 05:29, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Stephen King is an American, and would certainly understand the American measurement system. Which, by the way, is superior to metrics for everyday usage. That's why Brits still talk about miles per gallon rather than kilometers per liter. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:08, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Although, annoyingly, all UK petrol pumps are calibrated in litres and my car's tacho is in miles, so I have to do some mental arithmetic to work out my consumption – about 9 miles per litre or 40 per gallon if I drive economically (it's a 13-y-o car). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.202.211.191 (talk) 09:15, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Please don't start this argument again. I point you to global usage of both measurement systems and leave you to draw your own conclusions. Suffice to say, the vast majority of the worlds population disagrees with you. 86.28.195.109 (talk) 11:14, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

You should direct your complaint to the IP who raised the issue. And since the majority of the world's population are obedient little sheep, their conformity to this metric stuff is of no importance. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:59, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

That's for sure. So much frustration each time they would find a reason to convert yards into miles, or the reverse. --Askedonty (talk) 15:17, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Get back to US when India and China, just to name the biggest examples, discover the alphabet. μηδείς (talk) 23:30, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, sure [2] --Askedonty (talk) 14:08, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies.

I realize the comparison between the two systems is a sensitive topic which sets off endless debates and incessant rehashings of old themes, but I can't help sharing a quote from a book I haven't read by an American author I hadn't heard of, which I've seen shared elsewhere on the web, e.g. in this blog post, and which I like a lot and I guess I would still like if I were an American.

In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.
—Wild Thing, Josh Bazell

--Theurgist (talk) 15:14, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Goodness, that blogger seems to have issues. Ranting about British/American units "contaminating" other countries, wanting to ban the use of inches for measuring screen sizes, wanting all trace of Imperial units erased from current usage, wanting people to petition politicians to enforce a bad, etc. Iapetus (talk) 13:43, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

In science classes, we used metric. The lab is a good place for metrics. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:00, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Leaving aside the bickering about what system of units is "better", it seems to me that what we see here is a distressingly common phenomenon of the educated person who can't be bothered, perhaps to learn a few simple conversion factors that are frequently needed, or perhaps to do very simple mental arithmetic even approximately, and wants to be given a pass on that because he/she is not in a STEM fieldmodified this last thought — see below. King apparently thought 500 yards was "just shy of a mile", and none of his editors called him on it.

Then we can infer that someone working on the film adaptation did notice the error, but wasn't sure what to do about it. "Just shy of a third of a mile" really doesn't have the same ring, and is still a bit of a stretch anyway. Maybe they could have changed it to "more than a quarter mile"? Or just left it out? That's Monday-morning quarterbacking; I don't blame the scriptwriters, who seem at least to have noticed the problem and tried to address it. --Trovatore (talk) 18:22, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

In King's defence (or defense?), American road signs use feet (rather than yards) for distances shorter than a mile, so he probably wasn't as familiar with distances in the four-figure yard range as a British driver would be. I always find it difficult to estimate how far "2000 feet" is when driving in the States, even though I'm familiar with non-metric measurements. Tevildo (talk) 19:47, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Where I've been, short distances are often expressed as 1/2 mile or 1/4 mile, or sometimes even 1/3 mile. "Feet" seems to be used for very short distances, like "1000 feet" or "500 feet". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:37, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Dividing by three falls in the category of "very simple mental arithmetic".

But even so, sure, it's the kind of thing that can get into a draft manuscript. I get that. I think it's somewhat telling that no one caught it. --Trovatore (talk) 19:51, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I thought it over, and it was not correct of me to attribute the attitude "wants to be given a pass because he/she is not in a STEM field" to King. I do think it's a distressingly common attitude. But I don't have any individualized evidence that King holds that attitude. --Trovatore (talk) 06:07, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• The difference is 14 & 2/3 per cent. How is this a monstrous miscalculation, given the author himself admits the inaccuracy? μηδείς (talk) 02:03, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

  One statute mile is 1760 yards. Half a mile is 880 yards. The distance through the sewer pipe was 500 yards. Which numbers are you comparing? --Trovatore (talk) 02:28, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

  (It's true that 500 yards is less than a third of a mile by roughly the percentage you quoted. But the "third of a mile" was my suggestion as to one fix that the screewriters could have adopted; it wasn't in either the book or the movie.) --Trovatore (talk) 05:56, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Oh, my. I miscalculated that a third of a mile was 1720 ft, when it's actually 1760 ft, Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. μηδείς (talk) 09:38, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I wonder if the switch from gallons to litres wasn't a marketing ploy by the petrol companies to make fuel appear cheaper at a time of rising oil prices. The British system is more logical than the American. A gallon of water weighs ten pounds. A fluid ounce, which is 1/160 gallon, weighs one ounce. The metre doesn't relate to anything tangible, unlike the inch, foot and yard which all relate to parts of the body. 80.44.164.18 (talk) 13:36, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

According to Metrication in the UK:

"The changeover to selling of petrol by the litre rather than by the gallon took place after the Metrication Board [which presided over voluntary changes]was wound up. It was prompted by a technical shortcoming of petrol pump design: pumps (which were electro-mechanical) had been designed to be switchable between metric and imperial units, but had no provisions for prices above £1.999 per unit of fuel. Once the price of petrol rose above £1 per gallon, the industry requested that they be permitted to sell fuel by the litre rather than the gallon, enabling them to reduce the unit price by a factor of about 4.5 and so to extend the lives of existing pumps."

I'm sure obfustication of the rising price was an element in their calculations, and of course they made no effort to re-introduce the gallon when pumps went all-electronic, which would have been easy and design-cost free. By that time, however, the EU would doubtless have blocked it. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.202.211.191 (talk) 16:48, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

There is no need to assume that Stephen King got his conversion wrong - it seems just as likely that he knew perfectly well that 500 yards was nowhere near a mile - but thought it was the type of mistake a man of limited education who had spent his adult life in prison might well make. It is quite legitimate in fiction to have a character say something which is factually incorrect. Wymspen (talk) 16:23, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Sort of an unreliable narrator? I guess it's possible. I haven't read the novella. In the film, though, it doesn't seem to fit. The voiceover at that point seems to be trying to impress the filmgoer with Andy's bravery, not offer insights into Red. --Trovatore (talk) 19:06, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

It's not the first technical spanner Stephen King's dropped in a novel, though. He has a soldier shooting his sergeant in a radio station with "a recoilless rifle that fired seventy gas-tipped slugs per second" (page 219 of the edition of "The Stand: A Novel" shown on Google Books). For those who don't know, a "recoilless rifle" is a large piece of ordnance that fires one large (106mm wide for the US Army's M67 recoilless rifle in use when King wrote The Stand, 84mm for the M3 Carl Gustav recoilless currently used by the US Army) round at a time. Then one of the two-man crew using it has to manually pull the spent casing out and put a fresh round in. If one man's operating the weapon by himself, he'd better hope he killed off the opposition with the first round. It's a 'blooper' that didn't make it into the miniseries adaptation because it was filmed, not animated (evil grin). That said, Stephen King's a novelist, not a contributor to Guns & Ammo. loupgarous (talk) 21:36, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Ultimately, who cares, though? It isn't an unreliable narrator, King (and later the scriptwriter) fucked up. That's all there is to it. The OP knew that when he asked the question. The rest of this thread is intellectual masturbation. --Jayron32 21:39, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

As I explained, I thought it was possible but unlikely that it was a mistake. I don't think this exactly qualifies as "knowing" that it is a mistake. Anyways, thanks again, Jayron and everyone else, for the wonderful comments. I did enjoy the movie, I recommend it to anyone who hasn't yet seen it. --Theurgist (talk) 08:32, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Sort of my point, actually. People read Stephen King and watch movies based on his novels to be enjoyably scared. Not to be accurately informed. When King wanders into the real world (such as his Amazon.com-published essay on gun control), he commits the same general sort of errors, and then it's legitimate to string him up verbally and confront him with where he went wrong. But "poetic license" covers everything the OP and subsequent posters drew attention to. Sure, King fucked up. He fucks up loads of technical details in his fiction, which hasn't hurt his sales one bit (though I went on a permanent King vacation after the 2-part TV miniseries Desperation because I prefer my politics delivered on Sunday morning talk shows). loupgarous (talk) 22:06, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

It's still a great story, even with the blunder. Again, I'm extrapolating from the film. But I don't think "poetic license" covers unintentional inaccuracies. It covers stuff you do on purpose for effect, or stuff where at least you're aware that you don't have the facts and you decide you really don't need them. But not simple unintentional arithmetic errors, or missing facts that you're really supposed to know.

That was kind of the point I was making in the line I struck out somewhere up above. There's a certain line of thought that, if you're an "artistic" type, you shouldn't need to bother with learning some basic competency in math, science, and technology. I think that's an unfortunate attitude, just as bad as the opposite one that says scientists and engineers don't need to read Shakespeare or learn to appreciate surrealist painting. I did go too far in attributing that attitude to King personally, when for all I know he may have been mortified to discover the error. --Trovatore (talk) 07:00, 5 October 2016 (UTC)