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Hi, I want to know how to stop the cursor blinking across all of Windows 11. I have disabled blink in Settings, but some apps still blink, and I can't fix it. The worst case is Geany, my otherwise excellent text editor. Any suggestions? IBE (talk) 00:12, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh hey that's based on Scintilla, I use SciTE myself.
Geany sets its own blink rate. There is some confusing discussion about how Scintilla GTK (which is what Geany is?) respects a setting for GTK blink rate "if available". On Windows, I guess it isn't.
The blink setting in Windows affects the text inputs rendered by Windows' toolkit. All applications that have outsourced their text inputs to Windows' toolkit automatically follow this setting. But Windows' toolkit is only available on Windows, so if you want to create a cross-platform application (like Geany), you can (A) maintain two versions, one with Windows' toolkit, one without; (B) use a cross-platform toolkit; (C) build your own text inputs. (A) is a lot of work, as you have to maintain two versions of every graphical input/output function. Geany uses (B), in the form of the GTK toolkit. I suppose GTK's developers may try to read Windows' settings, but the interface to Windows' settings is a poorly documented moving target.
There may be a tool on Windows to configure GTK. I haven't used Windows in ages, so I never tried this myself. That may help for the GTK-based applications, but not everything else. Some applications could have hard-coded blinking, so no way to change it. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:25, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, in this case, poorly documented moving target is undue. It's GetCaretBlinkTime(), and that was true in 1996, which is the age of my copy of WIN32.HLP, and it's still true today. I just tried, it returned 530 milliseconds. Microsoft's online (web) help closely follows WIN32.HLP, if you can find your way into the right parts of it. (Reading an actual .hlp file in 2024 is not so simple, I must admit, since they removed the reader years ago.) I'd imagine that every Windows GTK-based application ships with its own copy of GTK, rather than attempting to use or install system-wide shared libraries. For instance I see my GIMP has a libgtk-win32-2.0-0.dll, hidden among a million other dlls, in its \bin alongside the application binary. So a system configuration for GTK on Windows is probably not an option. Card Zero (talk)11:03, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for those replies. Looks like I'll have to keep searching to see if there's a way around it. Sad because when I had it on Windows 10, it was all good for some reason, easy to disable the blink (I'm pretty sure there was a setting under Edit->Preferences). IBE (talk) 00:08, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Code page 850 cites both IBM[1][2] and the International Components for Unicode[3] in the header of the table describing the layout of the code page. IBM[1] and the article provide a table where the characters at positions 0x00–0x7F match Code page 437, but International Components for Unicode provides a mapping[3] that instead agrees with ASCII including ASCII control codes. The IBM mapping[2] agrees with the IBM table not the Unicode mapping. Is the situation here something like the whole ISO 8859-1 vs Windows-1252 thing, or is one of the sources just wrong?
Other Wikipedia articles on Dos codepages have similar issues, but some only provide a table for the upper half and state that the lower half is the same as Code page 437. What should the articles say? McYeee (talk) 20:08, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think you'll be fine. Any enhancements that came out in the last ten years are not likely to impact a beginner. The basic core is still the same. 41.23.55.195 (talk) 05:01, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Finding a new book will be difficult because the popular beginner language changes over time. When I was a child, it was basic. That was eventually overtaken by Pascal and I thought all the kids learning Pascal were weird. It keeps changing. Right now, it is Python. If you look for Python Programming for Kids, you will find hundreds of books published this year alone. My opinion is that the language doesn't matter. The concepts matter. Learn what a variable is. Learn what control structures are. Learn what functions are. When you view programming as pushing values in and out of memory with functions, it doesn't matter what language you use. They all do the same thing. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 12:06, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly are control structures, and, functions...? Are those terms used in web-programming languages? I'm familiar with terms like variables, and while loops/for loops. Classes and objects. I feel like when you said function, Java and C++ have the same idea but as another word. 66.99.15.162 (talk) 18:00, 29 August 2024 (UTC).[reply]
According to programming books we have: Control structures manage the program counter, affecting the flow of the program. If-else, while, for, etc... Anything that controls the program counter to do something other than flow from one line to the next is a control structure. Functions are very similar to a control structure. They are named locations in memory where you store code so you can use that name to execute the code, along with parameters and return values. It is not "web programming." It is "programming." If you are using a langage that doesn't have control structures, you are stuck writing a program that always goes from line 1 to line 2 to line 3, etc... If you don't have functions, you cannot repeat an algorithm multiple times with different parameters. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 10:49, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By program, you mean compiler? Because compilers read from top to bottom, left to right. What do we call control structures in non-web programming like Java or C++? And what you said for functions seems to be my understanding of variable. 66.99.15.162 (talk) 20:58, 4 September 2024 (UTC).[reply]
It is talking about programs in general. A program is executed by obeying an instruction somewhere in the program. The default would be to move on to the next statement in the program. What happens next can be changed by a control structure that causes a different command to be obeyed. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:50, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A maximally-unbalanced binary search tree is the same as a sorted singly-linked list except that it has an extra null pointer per node. In hash table implementations such as OpenJDK's HashMap, where hash buckets are linked list by default but hash flooding# attacks are resisted by "treeifying" overcrowded buckets whose keys are at least partially ordered, could this equivalence be exploited to decrease the number of branch instructions further than has so far been achieved? NeonMerlin23:35, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was working at my Dell desktop computer, running Windows 11, and stepped away for a little less than an hour. When I came back, I saw that Outlook was opening all of the windows that had been open when I took my dinner break. I then observed that Word and Access had been restarted, and Word had restored two documents from Autorecovery. This wasn't in the time window that I have specified for automatic restarts. Is there a log that records why the computer was restarted? Why did the computer restart itself?
Robert McClenon (talk) 02:07, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, User:Ian P. Tetriss - There was a RestartManager event logged just about at the time that I went back to my computer, that said that Windows Explorer could not be shut down. I haven't gotten any more information at this time, but this confirms that there was some sort of event. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:12, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The cat presses the keys on the keyboard. She doesn't press the power button. The computer is a desktop model, and the power button is facing forward about eighteen inches off the floor. That isn't where the cat would have anything to do with it. I would not be surprised if it was an update that didn't respect the time window. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:34, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This answer is based on Windows 10. I don't think Microsoft has changed any of this for Windows 11 but I'm not sure.
If it was Windows update, this should show be clear in Event Viewer. E.g. Event 1074 for User32 would be something like:
The process C:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe (COMPUTERNAME) has initiated the restart of computer COMPUTERNAME on behalf of user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for the following reason: Operating System: Service pack (Planned) Reason Code: 0x80020010 Shut-down Type: restart Comment:
As mention above, a restart due to system error should also be clear from the Event Viewer, beyond the bugcheck you'd also get a critical event from Event 41, Kernel-Power The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly. although as the event says this could also be due to a sudden power loss, so you'd want to look at other stuff like the bugcheck to try and work out what went wrong. Although you may not always be able to work out exactly what went wrong. E.g. unless you have some sort of hardware monitoring, I don't think you could tell the difference from pulling out the power cable of a system without a built in battery, and a system that died due to thermal protection, and even pushing the reset switch. For that matter, rarely you might get an error which does BSOD which I think there might not be signs of. Still, you at least have the idea it was a sudden unclean shutdown.
Probably the most uninformative is the typical
The process C:\Windows\System32\RuntimeBroker.exe (COMPUTERNAME) has initiated the restart of computer COMPUTERNAME on behalf of user COMPUTERNAME\USER for the following reason: Other (Unplanned) Reason Code: 0x0 Shut-down Type: restart Comment:
This could be a simple you restarted via the GUI. It could be something else. You can look for other events which might reveal stuff, but you might not always find stuff. Note that with the majority of desktop computers, pushing the power button on the keyboard will either turn the computer off or put it to sleep. It will not restart the computer. If you push it once and the computer shutdowns then push it again later it may start back up, but this should show up as a shutdown rather than a restart in Event Viewer. Likewise if somehow you push the reset switch, as I noted above this should show up as an unclean shutdown.
I don't think it's very common for computers to have soft restart switches since it's not considered necessary. I think some variants of *nix, may show up a shutdown menu where you can chose what you want to do when you push the poweroff button or for that matter the ACPI soft-off switch. And I'm sure you could get something which would do that in Windows as well, or maybe there's even a way to change some setting somewhere to do that. But I assume you'd still need to click on restart.
You could but I don't see the reason for that. AFAIK, all the details that screen provides will be in the Event 1001 BugCheck event. Also I should mention that there are variants of restarts e.g. depending on what's being installed you might get
The process C:\Windows\servicing\TrustedInstaller.exe (COMPUTERNAME) has initiated the restart of computer COMPUTERNAME on behalf of user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for the following reason: Operating System: Upgrade (Planned) Reason Code: 0x80020003 Shut-down Type: restart Comment:
instead of the service pack one. There's also
The process C:\Windows\system32\MusNotificationUx.exe (COMPUTERNAME) has initiated the restart of computer COMPUTERNAME on behalf of user COMPUTERNAME\USERNAME for the following reason: Operating System: Service pack (Planned) Reason Code: 0x80020010 Shut-down Type: restart Comment:
I might actually be confused earlier and the TrustedInstaller ones are generally for restarts required during updates and the MusNotificationUx ones are for restarts to initiate installation, not sure. You could look more if it matters, but my main point is if it's a regular restart by the system for an update, it should be clear from the Event 1074 that this happened. If it instead shows up as an unplanned restart, this suggests something else whether a GUI initiated restart, a command line one, or something else. If you installed some weird software to manage updates, perhaps this will also show up as a simple unplanned restart.
BTW, to be clear, if you restart via the GUI even if you tell it to update, I think this will generally show up as a unplanned restart. Although you can look at the Windows update events and confirm that an update was awaiting restart and installed after you restarted. However this wasn't a force restart per se, even if you did it because you knew you'd eventually be forced. (Sort of, AFAIK, the 7 day rolling delay is technically infinite.) Nil Einne (talk) 10:16, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am developing a web application whose front end is done in plain HTML and CSS. One of the pages shows a printable page with rows of pretty much identical <div> elements that look like rectangular text boxes of identical width and height, only the text contents of the elements vary.
Now there is a new requirement that the number of these elements that end up on each individual sheet of paper when physically printing the document should be configurable. Is there any other way to do this than fine-tuning the CSS layout of the page to get the height of these elements and the space surrounding them to match the height of the paper? JIP | Talk11:16, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In general, i'd say that restrictions like this are pretty unfeasible to guarantee in HTML. It is a markup language (designed for a single page medium), and not a typesetting language. You get very little control about positioning, esp wrt the concept of a 'page'. You can do some best effort with page break suggestions, but that is about it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:55, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I use page-break-after for elements to force them to break to a new page. The issue is setting the div height. I scanned two books on CSS and I am not sure if vh is relative to the page size when printing or not. If it is, you can easily adjust divs to a percent of print space height using vh. If it is locked to the window's viewport, that won't work. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 12:05, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience, shut downs like that have three primary reasons: 1. overheating of a component (might want to check if all the fans are clean, working and freely spinning) or 2. possibly a hardware failure in one of many components, but generally gpu or cpu memory. 3. a bad driver that causes a crash with a level of randomness.
Determining which one is the cause can be a challenge. But in the BIOS, you can generally observer temperatures and run a memory check, which might be helpful. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:02, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any requirements in DVD-Video Specifications that require adding a user menu and title selections features on consumer DVDs at minimum? Or, that movie scenes and show episodes play chronologically? What I mean to ask is, why don't companies just dump TV show episodes higgledy-piggledy onto a DVD or BluRay in random order without menus? 76.14.14.83 (talk) 01:47, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It was mandatory for works published between January 1, 1978 and March 1, 1989 in the United States. Since March 1, 1989, it has been optional with the understanding that failing to include a copyright notice will greatly limit the publisher's ability to protect the copyrighted material. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 12:25, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The DVD specifications are kept private and only available if you pay their $5,000 licensing fee. Even if someone paid for them, they wouldn't be able to tell you about them as their contents are under an NDA. So I doubt you're going to be able to get a definitive answer here. Whether or not forgoing the menu is compliant with the specifications or not, it's certainly technically possible. For example, here's a tutorial showing how to do it in DVDStyler. Pinguinn🐧09:04, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It took a lot of hunting and I found a mention of it on some random message board... I remember a DVD that would often be marked as "defective" because it didn't have a menu. You pop it in. The movie starts. It isn't in our collections anymore, but I now know it was Ghost Dad. The official DVD had the movie, just the movie. Nothing else. No menu. No garbage. Because it didn't have a menu, people would check it out, I assume they watched the movie, and they would say it was broken because there was no menu. I remember it because I put it in my DVD player, the movie started, I pressed the menu button and no menu came up. There wasn't even a chapter listing. Just the movie. Surely this isn't the absolute only example of a commercial DVD with no menu, but it proves that at least one exists. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 10:27, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The first DVD version was distributed by GoodTimes Entertainment, which was an incredibly low-budget operation. I found a picture of its back cover which shows a menu screenshot, but perhaps they weren't able to get it working. 2000 was still an early time for DVDs, after all. The second DVD release was by Universal, and while its back cover doesn't show a menu, it would surprise me if Universal of all people neglected to put one in. Pinguinn🐧13:17, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
At the end of the chapter "...Wien's displacement...", after equation (8), Max Planck gives the formula: Then a new formula: Ok, but the second formula that follows from it is incomprehensible to me: One has: Any idea ? Malypaet (talk) 12:58, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody knows what Malypaet is trying to get at... The answer here, I guess, is simply that is a new name for , nothing more, nothing less. Planck doesn't know what looks like (all he knows is that its argument is ), and he doesn't know what looks like (all he knows is that, because , it is also a function of ). --Wrongfilter (talk) 15:46, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Written like that, we can admit it. In his combinatorial demonstration we find this analogy of functions between logarithms and exponentials. But he does not write it. Thank you. Malypaet (talk) 18:59, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This question is mostly theoretical, because there's no feasible way to create such heavy neutron-rich isotopes at present. But: what predictions are there on the N = 126 shell closure at low proton numbers? In particular, is 176Sn (Z = 50, N = 126) expected to be doubly magic, or will this shell closure disappear that far from the valley of stability (like N = 20 does)?
Yes of course, since 78Ni is also quite unstable to beta decay. What I'm curious about is (1) whether 176Sn should exist and (2) whether it does close the neutron shell, or if the energy gaps are expected to change in this extremely neutron-rich region. Double sharp (talk) 04:33, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The heaviest isotope of tin known is 140 50Sn , which lives less 50 ms and already drips neutrons. The existence of an isotope as heavy as 176 50Sn seems unlikely. Magic number itself does not mean that the nucleus exists in any meaningful way. You can look at 10 2He . Ruslik_Zero20:48, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's beta-delayed neutron emission, so the drip line hasn't been reached yet, as expected.
It seems then that the best we could find at the moment are the papers Nucleus hydro elemon found at first, which suggest that 176Sn should be more or less on the borderbetween being bound and being unbound. Those two papers suggest N = 126 is still magic (because the two-neutron separation energy has a big jump going from 176Sn to 178Sn), but this one makes it less clear. Since this is so far from what's currently known, it's probably not possible to do better at the moment. I'd guess, therefore, that the best possible answer to my question at the moment would have to be "no one really knows; could be either way". Double sharp (talk) 06:27, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I found a reference by Fang et al. about beta decay of 176Sn. Its β− decay energy is around 22 MeV (comparable with 29F 21.7 MeV) and has a half-life of <1 ms. 176Sn should undergo β−n instead of only β−.
The calculated mass excess of 176Sn is 217.59 MeV, as predicted by KTUY. Mass excess of 176Sb is predicted to be 195.49 MeV, thus the β− decay energy will be 22.10 MeV, not far away from Fang et al. Somehow the decay process β−,23n to 153Sb+23n is actually possible with decay energy 2.47 MeV.
KTUY predicts S2n of 174,176,178Sn are −0.42,−0.52,−2.69 MeV, implies all of them can possibly undergo 2n emission. The big jump from 176Sn to 178Sn suggest N = 126 is still magic.
I think 176Sn wouldn't get seriously affected by 2n emission, due to some trends related to atomic number. There is no heavy 2n emitters (the heaviest is 26,28O with Z = 8), so I just show it with 2p emitters. Despite 12O (S2p = −1.737 MeV, Z = 8) has a lower decay energy than 67Kr (S2p = −2.89 MeV, Z = 36), it decays much faster (8.9×10−21 s vs 7.4 ms). If the trend follows, then 2n emission of 176Sn is just not important compared to beta decay.
Not only would the signal-to-noise ratio be minuscule, but due to its orbit around the galactic center the signal would have to be aimed at where the Messier 13 cluster will be 25k years from now. 136.54.237.174 (talk) 18:05, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From the data given in the article, I arrive at a minimum diameter of the receiving antenna of 2 kilometers. The diameter of the Arecibo dish is meters, the wavelength of the signal is cm. The beam divergence angle is then radians. Because is very small, the solid angle is to a good approximation , the exact formula is . The area of the beam after traveling a distance of r is then . Then with the power of the beam of 405 kW, at a distance of lightyears, the flux of the signal will be Watt/m^2 at M13. This signal can then be detected using one or multiple antennas. If the total area of the antennas is A, then the received power is F A. If we assume that the temperature of the antennas and receivers are T = 20 C = 293.15 K, then the noise power will be where is the bandwith, that in this case must be 10 Hz or larger, as this is the frequency shift used to modulate the signal. The signal power must be larger than the noise power. If we then equate F A to P and solve for A and then assume a single antenna is used, and put then the diameter of the receiving dish is 2 r and if I didn't make any mistakes, this yields a minimum diameter of approximately 2 kilometers. Count Iblis (talk) 19:25, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's also the matter of integration time. Noise adds incoherently, signal adds (hopefully) coherently, so with a longer integration time, the signal may rise above the noise. In this case, the integration time is limited to no more than 100 ms by the 10 Hz bitrate. The difference between the 0 bit and the 1 bit was only one wave, so a longer integration time doesn't help to decode the signal, but it may still help to detect the carrier wave.
Beam size matters too. The wider the beam, the more noise from other sources like stars; the narrower the beam, the less likely those aliens pointed it well enough at Earth. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:31, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[2] says that the gain of Arecibo antenna at 2.38 GHz was 77 dBi, only 600 mdB short of Count Iblis's estimate from the physical diameter (an aperture efficiency × antenna efficiency of 87% if true). A receiver temperature of 20°C is a little pessimistic; usually the receiver would be cooled (it is not necessary to cool the antenna, assuming that it is low-loss). catslash (talk) 00:09, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the integration time: when there are two possible symbols (0 and 1) represented by two orthogonal signals of equal energy ( = received power × time) then the bit error rate is something like
where is the complementary error function. This assumes (1) that it is known exactly what the two signals are - there is no random change in the phase between symbols, and (2) that the prior probability of each symbol is equal.
Without error-correcting codes it is impossible to reduce the error rate to zero, so it is necessary to decide what rate is acceptable before building the receiving antenna. catslash (talk)
[3] (Table 1: Legacy Arecibo Observatory planetary radar system.) says that the gain of Arecibo antenna at 2.38 GHz was 72.9 dBi, which seems more plausible. catslash (talk) 15:57, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
At the last point of the tabel or matrix about the far future, there is something like: "Because the total number of ways in which all the subatomic particles in the observable universe can be combined is
10
10
115
{\displaystyle 10^{10^{115}}},[152][153] a number which, when multiplied by
10
10
10
56
{\displaystyle 10^{10^{10^{56}}}}, disappears into the rounding error,"
My question is: How is the point about the rounding error valid? 2A02:8071:60A0:92E0:30AB:357:41DB:5492 (talk) 16:54, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Or does the text try to say that is negligible compared to the rounding error in ? The intention is not clear to me. Why should these numbers be multiplied and what do rounding errors have to do with it? The argument should be, I think, that since there are "only" possible combinations, the specific combination that results in a repeat of the Big Bang is bound to occur sometime in the next years. However, this seems to assume that all combinations are about equally likely and ignores the effect of the expansion of the universe. I suspect SYNTH. --Lambiam19:57, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When an electron collides with positron, and when a proton collides with the anti-proton, both situations they are transformed into 2 photons. Can those 2 photons be distinguished from the 2 situations? That is, can the 2 photons be traced to being formerly an electron or proton? They have different energy of initial states, different total spin? Thanks. 66.99.15.162 (talk) 17:46, 29 August 2024 (UTC).[reply]
See electron–positron annihilation and annihilation. At low energy, electron-positron annihilation will produce two photons, and you can be sure they didn't come from proton-antiproton annihilation because the total energy is less than the rest mass of two protons. The annihilation of a proton and antiproton, or an electron and positron with higher energy, can produce a variety of end states including baryons and weak bosons. A proton-antiproton annihilation to two photons would be a fairly rare process, see [4]. So we're talking about fairly uncommon end states. The high energy electron-positron annihilation and the proton-antiproton annihilation could produce the same types of final states, but with different probabilities, so you can make some statistical inferences, especially if you can observe multiple events. --Amble (talk) 19:15, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And then, photons that were created from an electron moving up/down an orbital or shell, are obviously different than the above mentioned photons? Have different measurable properties? These properties (or just energy) are measured when a photon hits a solid, the energy measured by a photo-multiplier tube? 66.99.15.162 (talk) 20:22, 29 August 2024 (UTC).[reply]
Well these photons have lower energy than those created in annihilation. Also they are usually produced one at a time, rather than a pair or triple. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:28, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But the concise answer to your question is: no. Once a photon is created, its only unique property is its energy. There is no difference between a 511 keV photon created from positron-electron annihilation or one created from any other source of 511 keV photons. See: indistinguishable particles. PianoDan (talk) 16:04, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A friend of mine has a battery-powered clock. It stopped running. It was over a week before he got replacement batteries. When he went back to the clock, it was running again. Is there an explanation for this? Bubba73You talkin' to me?16:04, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This effect is readily seen with a flashlight when the cells (battery) are approaching the end of their useful lives. After a short period of operation the light from the flashlight becomes dim. If the operator turns the light off and waits a few seconds, then turns it back on, the light is usefully bright again but only for a few seconds before it becomes dim again.
The active materials in the cell migrate to get to their electrode and that takes time. Similarly the exhausted product migrates away from its electrode. Allowing the cells to rest for a short while allows these materials to migrate to/from the electrodes and improve the density of the active materials surrounding each electrode. Dolphin(t)22:13, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Temperature also plays a role. Batteries near their end of life are more likely to fail if the room turns cold. If it warms up again the clock may restart. Shantavira|feed me09:04, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An additional factor may be a slight irregularity in a clock's mechanism, such as a slightly mis-shaped or corroded cog tooth, that is overriden by the power of a good battery, but provides enough resistance to the weaker power of a near-dead one to stop the clock. If the clock is then moved or disturbed by vibrations, this may jar the tensioned mechanism past the obtruction, restarting the clock for a time. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 09:18, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
it might be that the relationship voltage-current is non-linear and/or hysteretic. when the clock doesn't get enough juice, it stops drawing any current, the battery "recovers" via the chemical mechanism above, the clock starts drawing current again. the system "clock -- battery" thus oscillates which manifests itself in just such intermittent operation Aecho6Ee (talk) 18:07, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
some devices do this (poweroff when voltage drops below a threshold and back on when it rises) intentionally as part of "brownout detection" or "undervoltage lockout" Aecho6Ee (talk) 18:14, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the United Kingdom, is room space and building height measured in metric units? And has rail transport seen any metrication in its history? --40bus (talk) 20:38, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Rightmove are the UK's biggest online property agents. As you'll see from their website, they quote room space in sq ft but with conversions to sq m. I don't know about rail transport. Mike Turnbull (talk) 20:49, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
40bus: "On 5 May 1975, rail traffic switched to metric measurements for loads, capacities, tare weights and brake force. On the traffic side of the railway we are chiefly concerned with distance and weight. As to distance, no metrication is planned for the time being... (i.e. distance is still measured in miles, as are road distances). [6]Alansplodge (talk) 16:22, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And are there any everyday things that are measured in metric units in the United States, as oppsoed to scientific things? --40bus (talk) 21:11, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ammunition is measured in mm. So are camera lenses. And mechanical pencil lead widths. And a lot of other things that are too small to be comfortably measured in inches -- such as jewelry components. Wrench sets are made for both metric and US customary units. Backpacks and other luggage are sized in liters. We run 5K and 10K races.
A lot of components of food and supplements (carbohydrates, cholesterol, sodium, caffeine, etc.) are measured in grams or mg, especially on standardized nutrition labels -- and they've crept into the vernacular from there. Nobody talks about how many ounces per day of protein or grains of caffeine one should consume. -- Avocado (talk) 02:03, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Miles are still used in Norway, but those are metric miles of 10 kilometres. The traditional Norwegian mile was 11298 metres. English miles have obviously never been in common use in Norway, but the abovementioned race is an English mile long. PiusImpavidus (talk) 17:48, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, yeah, not saying we don't use customary units for those things at all. Just that we do commonly use metric ones for them, too (such as 9mm for ammo). -- Avocado (talk) 13:53, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I hope that the US will metricate at least some everyday things in next 20 years so that US-related articles will use metric units first in 2044. --40bus (talk) 17:25, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know everything about British railways, but if I'm to believe openrailwaymap, it appears that some British lines have a speed limit in kilometres per hour and some have a limit in miles per hour that is an obvious conversion from a round number in kilometres per hour. Look at the high speed lines like High Speed 1 (not the older, improved lines with 125 mph limit), DLR and some of the more recent lines of the London Underground. So it looks like a conversion has started. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:39, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tower Bridge is 130 years old. The sources (and the sources' sources) are therefore far more likely to use Imperial units. The response to the Grenfell fire is contemporary, so better reflects current practices. -- Verbarson talkedits05:06, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not mistaken at all, Verbarson! The operations were performed by hydraulic pressure, supplied by hydraulic accumulators, but "[w]ater at a pressure of 750 psi (5.2 MPa) was pumped into the accumulators by a pair of stationary steam engines" – see Tower Bridge#Hydraulic system. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 21:45, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, thank you. When I saw it was 'hydraulic', I somehow assumed it used the London high-pressure network (which was itself steam-powered). What makes it feel most like steampunk is the combination of ancient (Gothic turrets), more recent (suspension spans for the approaches) and up-to-date (steam-hydraulic powered bascules) styles and technologies. -- Verbarson talkedits22:17, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do bears have a cold nose like a dog? Wasn't able to find an answer with Google and finding out myself would be against the policies of my health insurance. --Question123Ka (talk) 04:46, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Dog noses are cold because they are cooled by the evaporation of moisture on their noses. Dog noses are moist because dogs lick their noses when they get dry. So the question amounts to, do bears lick their noses, regularly? I suppose your health insurance covers the risks of an investigation if carried out in a zoo or using binoculars or a zoom lens. --Lambiam06:29, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't go outside. That's where bears live.
But thanks, you helped me: If one specifically searches for bear and wet nose or rhinarium, one might find some results. At least one in Google Books: International Wildlife Encyclopedia, where they say brown bears have a wet nose.
Thanks, that's exactly what I found out too, that polar bears have a cold nose (means: colder than the rest of their body). I'm mostly interested how it would feel to touch a bear's nose. --Question123Ka (talk) 12:32, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
According to the book "Grizzly Bear Science and the Art of a Wilderness Life," all bears lose heat primarily through their paws, but also through area with limited hair such as their nose and ears. That makes the nose appear warmer than the surroounding face because it is radiating more heat. Checking "Ecology and Behaviour of North American Black Bears," it agrees that all bears lose heat through their paws, ears, and nose. It also states that the grizzy and black bears have a stronger sense of smell compared to other bears and they further accentuate it by using their tongue to force air into their nose in a motion that looks like licking. A side effect of this is that the water evaporates on their wet nose, cooling it down, and allowing more heat to escape. As a result, grizzly and black bears tend to have more and larger blood vessels just under the surface of their nose. Being so close to the Appalacians, we have plenty of books on bears, but most are aimed towards children. I didn't check those because I assume they won't have anything of interest and, usually, they don't have an index where I can quickly look for pages about the bear's nose. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 10:44, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Quote from the article: "A potential efficiency loss of only 12.79% can be achieved, or 4.26 kW⋅h/kg out of 33.3 kW⋅h/kg." What is the reason for using 4.26 out of 33.3? Is there some significance to those numbers? I get 12.79 out of 100 but what is special about 4.26 out of 33.3? 196.50.199.218 (talk) 13:49, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The section was introduced in this edit, you could try to contact the author (but they haven't edited since 2018). I cannot find those numbers in the reference given. Not sure what to make of that. --Wrongfilter (talk) 14:36, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can anyone explain how it is technically possible for a cat to be simultaneously alive and dead at the same time? I've seen this referenced in pop culture a few times, but I don't understand. 146.200.107.107 (talk) 00:59, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the cat in the box has a philosophical bend and knows Latin as well as the Schrödinger equation and wave function collapse, it might think, Miror si vivo vel non. Ergo vivo. But, actually, we as outside observers do not know whether the cat knows anything. If it does not know whether it is alive or dead, it is more likely dead. The cat may be in a superposition, though, of a state of knowing and a state of not knowing it is alive. --Lambiam08:43, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The question is, does a cat count as an observer for quantum physical purposes? And can its quantum state be collapsed inside the box but not yet outside? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.3230.195} 94.6.83.137 (talk) 12:24, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Whenever quantum whatever is mentioned in pop culture it's probably better to just enjoy it as it is, because it's probably completely off the rails.
If you accept that reality is real, then a macroscopic event really happens in real life and the cat really lives or dies, one or the other. So the original trigger to the experiment (a beta decay, say) is probabilistic based on a superposition of states. Note we need to remain ignorant for as long as possible as to whether the particle has decayed if we keep the superposition across the system -- see Zeilinger's quote in the superposition article -- you can see how that would be a problem if you expect the cat itself to be entangled with the particle. The question is, when and by what nature does the system decohere? In some sense, we know how to describe the experiment from when it begins to some midpoint and how to describe it from some midpoint to when it ends, but somewhere in the middle the magician critically slips the other cards into his pocket -- so when did that happen (or maybe it wasn't a card trick to begin with)? SamuelRiv (talk) 18:21, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't get the other people's responses, but I thought it had to do with multiple universes. That is, after an incident happens to a cat in a box, the scenario is split into 2 additional universes: 1 in which you open the box and the cat is dead, and the other where you open the box and the cat is alive. 66.99.15.162 (talk) 20:55, 4 September 2024 (UTC).[reply]
At the infobox for promethium(III) chloride we find two different sources for this compound's colour, one calling it purple and the other calling it yellow. Probably few have seen this compound (considering the short half-life of Pm), but what's the story here? Is it perhaps similar to how the colour of NdCl3 varies under lighting conditions (between purple and yellow as well)? Double sharp (talk) 04:40, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I read the definition of correlation, it boils down to "as one attribute rises, the other rises. As one attribute falls, the other falls." That makes sense for two ordered sets of values. What if you have unordered sets. For example, I have 5 people and I want to know if weight is correlated to nostril radius. So, I have five weights like [ 150, 127, 210, 108, 250 ] and five nostril radii [ 2.4, 2.2, 3.0, 1.9, 2.7 ]. I can arrange those attribute pairs however I like. So, it isn't that one is rising or falling. They are independent values. If I say they are "correlated", what do I really mean? Is it called something other than "correlated" because they are not ordered? Is the basic calculation, which I often see named "Person's Correlation" the same? I hope that it is clear that I am asking for a layman's term for correlation to use when data is not rising or falling, assuming that correlation is a proper measure to use for this data. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 12:22, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For correlation, you need to know which values in each set belong together - ie there are five individuals with the weights and nostril radii given, so each weight is linked to a specific nostril radius. Then you can put the weights in rising order, and if the corresponding nostril radii in that order also rise, then you have a correlation. If the radii in that order actually fall, then you have an inverse correlation. If the radii show no pattern, there is no correlation. -- Verbarson talkedits12:54, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Alternatively, plot weight as x-value and radius as y-value on a graph, giving five points. If they look like a diagonal line, there is a correlation of some sort. (Vertical or horizontal lines would only occur if all the values in one set were roughly identical, so no correlation.) -- Verbarson talkedits12:58, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So, what you are saying, is that it doesn't matter what the order of the values in the sets are, the correlation will be the same, correct? If that is true, I am having trouble with the definition "as one rises, the other rises" because I can rearrange them however I like to disrupt rising and falling data points. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 10:30, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You have five people. Each person has a weight and a nostril radius. If you want, you can order the people from smallest to largest weight (which induces a particular order on the nostril radii). If you want, you can order the people from largest to smallest nostril radius (which induces an order on the weights). But no matter what, each weight always corresponds to the same nostril radius (unless you're doing some pretty serious surgical intervention), so what you really have is a list of five ordered pairs (weight, nostril radius). Correlation does not care about which of these points you label first, second, third, fourth, fifth; but it would care a lot if you changed the correspondence between the two coordinates of the pair. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 10:37, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So basically, factoring out the constant, instead of
you want
Notice that the series diverges at multiples of π. The graph zig-zags between positive and negative infinity, with asymptotes toward infinity at the even multiples of π, and asymptotes toward negative infinity at the odd multiples. I think it's possible to work out a closed formula, but I think I'll leave that as an "available upon request" kind of thing, since it will take time to work out and the result may not mean much to you. (Unless someone else wants to work it out.) See this Alpha result for a quick and dirty sketch. (Does anyone know how to get Alpha to find the closed formula for the infinite sum? I tried a few times but kept getting "could not determine the general term.") --RDBury (talk) 04:24, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I did
But Alpha only gave me a partial sum formula with complicated Lerch transcendent terms. Under the assumption that those terms tend to , it would seem that the function is explicitly equal to
I think that what Wolfram Alpha is telling you is trivial: Let Then Then do a bit of algebra and take the antiderivative. Basically all of the work is the final line (showing that the sum actually converges). 100.36.106.199 (talk) 15:08, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nice closed formula. It doesn't seem to have much interesting application, unlike just the first term giving cosine. Thanks, cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ22:01, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
simple question, I’m seeing discrete logarithms records are higher when the finite’s field degree is composite and that such degrees are expressed as the degree of prime and the composite part being the extension of the field.
But how does that makes solving the discrete logarithm easier ? Is it only something that apply to index calculus methods like ꜰꜰꜱ or xɴꜰꜱ ? 2A01:E0A:401:A7C0:6861:5696:FAEB:61D1 (talk) 19:14, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I’m also seeing it applies to variant of the ɴꜰꜱ. The paper about 2809 discrete logarithm record told the fact 809 was a prime power was a key difficulty. And indeed, all the larger records happened on extension fields (with a lower base prime exponent than 809)
Looking at Hypercube#Graphs, it looks like the projection of the n-cube into the BnCoxeter plane has a no central vertex exactly when n can be written as 2m for some positive integer m. The pictures confirm this is true for 1 ≤ n ≤ 15.
So:
Is this true in general?
What's the general term of the sequence (an), where an is the number of vertices projected to the centre (i.e. 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 4, 2, 0, ...) ?
Did you intend to include a "not" in the question? I get no central vertex for n=2, 4, 8. For n=9 I get 8 points projected to the center. --RDBury (talk) 23:02, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For those who want to play along at home, I'm pretty sure the projection in question, translated to R2, is given by the matrix with columns and There may be a scaling factor involved if you're picky about distance being preserved, but this is irrelevant for the question. It's not too hard to show that these vectors are orthogonal and have the same length. So the question becomes, given n, how many combinations of add to These vectors form half of the points on a regular 2n-gon. It's not hard to see that there are at least two ways of doing it if n is odd; just alternate signs. A similar sign alternating idea shows that the number must be at least 2mp if n=mp where p is odd. So if n has an odd factor then there are points which project to 0. Proving the converse seems tricky though. --RDBury (talk) 00:04, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PS. I think I have an argument for the converse. The n points on the circle are all of the from ρk where ρ = eπi/n. We need to find a combination of these powers of ρ, which amounts to a polynomial in p of degree n-1, where all coefficients are ±1. If n is odd then ρ satisfies (ρn+1)/(ρ+1) = 1 - ρ + ρ2 - ... + ρn-1 = 0, and this polynomial has the desired properties. If n has an odd factor, say n=pq with p odd, then p satisfies (ρn+1)/(ρq+1) = 1 - ρq + ρ2q - ... + ρn-q = 0. Multiply by any polynomial of the form 1 ± ρ ± ρ2 - ... + ρq-1 to get a polynomial with the desired properties. But if n is a power of 2 then the minimum polynomial for ρ is ρn+1=0. The degree n is greater than n-1, so no integer combination of the powers of ρ from 1 to n-1 can add to 0 except when all the coefficients are 0. In other words, the condition that the coefficients are all ±1 isn't needed; we only need that they are not all 0, FWIW, it appears that the number of vertices projecting to the center is given by OEIS: A182256. It's a lower bound in any case. --RDBury (talk) 00:44, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if there was a settled answer to this question. "Primary factor" would be appropriate in commutative ring theory. (Primary ideal) But this usage is not standard in this situation. Tito Omburo (talk) 21:44, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. That is a bit of a mouthful (i.e. too long to use repeatedly). In my mind, and in notes to myself, for years I have called it the "prime component". Soon I expect to be writing up something, so I wondering if there is a recognized term. Bubba73You talkin' to me?02:28, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This has to be a really dumb question but it seems slightly paradoxical. Say you are going to bet $1 on a coin flip. One way to look at this is you plunk down your $1, the coin is flipped, and if heads you get back $2 (your original bet plus $1 winnings), net result +1. If tails, you lose your $1, net result -1. So the expected value is 0.5(+1) + 0.5(-1) which is 0, not surprising.
Another way to see the same proposition is you start with nothing and the coin is flipped. If heads, you receive $2. If tails, you receive $(-1) (i.e. you now have to pay $1). So the expectation is 0.5*2 + 0.5*(-1)= 0.5.
What has happened? It's the same proposition both ways, I think. Is there a systematic way to tell which analysis is the right one? The second calculation has to be wrong, but it's not obvious how. Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:C030 (talk) 22:12, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The first way, you gain net $1 for a win; the second way, you gain $2. (The dollar in escrow does not change that.) They are not the same bet. —Tamfang (talk) 23:37, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The calculations by themselves are both correct, but (as noted by Tamfang), they represent different betting propositions. Assume the coin comes up tails. In the first version your loss is the $1 paid in advance, in the second you pay $1 afterwards for losing the bet. So that amounts to the same loss. But now assume the coin comes up heads. In the first you pay $1 in advance and then receive $2. In the second version you just receive $2 without having to make an advance payment. That is clearly more advantageous. To make your second version equivalent to the first, replace "you receive $2" by "you receive $1". --Lambiam06:00, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To supplement to the arithmetical explanations above: It's not a paradox, and since you know which answer is right, you know the basic analysis is to step through it slowly and carefully. This may not be possible in a real-world cash transaction, and this is how quick change scams work (and similar for some street gambling scams) -- in other words, it's not a dumb question, it's not obvious, and if you can think of a truly easy generalized way to work this stuff out for people in real-time social situations, you'll have done a huge service for humanity. (See video examples of the quick change scam from Noah Da Boa and The Real Hustle.) (Right now, most people online say just not to give change to strangers -- the best way to win is not to play.) SamuelRiv (talk) 18:23, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, one way to see that they are different is to determine the (maximum) amount you would be willing to pay to be in the second position instead of the first. (I get $0.50) Tito Omburo (talk) 20:10, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Question is:How far incidences of 1967 can be corroborated through news in then news media or RS books specially about any alleged misbehavior against women?
Naxalbari uprising: 1967 an ultra left (communist) violent farmer/ tribal agitation was going on in West Bengal state, India.
1969 April 6, A scheduled musical night in Kolkata (Draft) (earlier spelling Calcutta) went haywire with ensued violence that allegedly included en masse misbehavior against women. The violence and the controversy was further politicized.
An investigative journalist's report that I got translated from a Wikipedian about 1969 April 6, incidence goes as below.
.. According to weekly Manus माणस dated 17th May; a session of robbing, firing, rapes, murders etc completed with the farmer riots in 1967. The offenders were arrested. Fortunate for them, Jyoti Basu became Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister in 1969 and released all these men. These men were the organizers of the 6th April event.[1] ..
The investigative journalist probably is speaking of the 1967 Naxalbari uprising. In cases of crime corroborating investigative report remains difficult and 1967 - 1969 is too old story.
But still How far incidences of 1967 can be corroborated through news in then news media or RS books specially about any alleged misbehavior against women? Bookku (talk) 13:25, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can think of no other way of doing so other than to research deeply all the available records from the era dealing the subject and see what emerges. A considerable task, perhaps suited to someone who intends to write a book on the topic.
Given the nature of the events, it is likely that much was not published in newspapers (which have no brief to be comprehensive and which don't like to say what people don't want to read), or stated publicly by officials (who may have similar self-interested scruples), so official reports, perhaps not published at the time, may have more. In the UK and other countries there is the Thirty year rule, which annually causes the release of previously sequestered documents that journalists and others can study. Is there a similar procedure in India? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 16:08, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your inputs. As you say the topic would necessitates some deep dive.
As such I suppose Naxalbari uprising (violent communism) is reasonably reported and academically studied topic.
For example " 'The Goondas' Towards the reconstruction of Calcutta Underworld" by Das Suranjan, Ray Jayanta K. (Department of History University of Calcutta) 1996, explains linkages and distinguishing factors between common criminality and political violence. Das and Ray seem to have taken note of crime of some criminals mentioned by above said investigative journalist, same time conspicuously silent about 1969 criminal incidence.
Another problem for that era is most sources though of Indian origin are in Western and US libraries and not available on Wikipedia library or google books. Deep dive seem to need some support from who have physical access to those libraries too. Bookku (talk) 05:08, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Bookku. I'm not sure exactly what is your question. What would be the linkage between Naxalbari uprising and the April 6 event? Surely none, and what is stated from Manoos would have been a fringe view at the time. --Soman (talk) 12:04, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since the Manoos's investigative journalist seems to have traveled all the way from Maharashtra to Kolkata specially to investigate specific April 6 incidence.
I did not write off totally since was not sure that the journalist specially traveling long distance in 1969 would have done false reporting for the sake of it. We do not know if his sources so I thought better to get confirm.
On side note one of the later, the same year, a column of The frontier complains selective reporting of media about Rabindra Sarobar stadium incidence but does not report on similar incidence Rabindra Rangshala Delhi same or previous year. When I searched for Rabindra Rangshala Delhi haven't got much news sources, but curiously a 2019 fiction novel mentioning some incidence to have happened at Rabindra Rangshala Delhi in those times. (Of course there is no question of giving credence to any descriptions in any novel)
^Majgoankar, Shrikant, ed. (17 May 1969). "शापित द्रौपदी"(PDF) (in Marathi). No. 51 (51 ed.). Rajhans Prakashan Maharashtra India. p. 14. Retrieved 23 December 2021.
The former I'm not familiar with, but the latter is usually mentioned as the handful of known Sassanian musicians: Āzādvar-e Changi, Bamshad, Nagisa (Nakisa), Ramtin, Sarkash (also Sargis or Sarkas) and Barbad. I know Āzādvar-e Changi's name is given as simply Azad sometimes, but I'm not exactly sure who they are. It would not be too suprising if they were the same, since Nagisa and Barbad, for instance, are only really known from colorful depictions in later literature—more focused on the story than their musical importance/history, which seems to be the case for Azadeh (Shahnameh). Aza24 (talk)00:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
According to Azadeh (Shahnameh), she was associated in story with Bahram-e Gur akaBahram V (who lived 400–438), while according to Nagisa (harpist), Āzādvar-e Changi aka Āzād seved in the court of Khosrow II (ca. 570–628), so assuming these facts are accurate the two cannot have been the same person as they lived nearly 200 years apart.
However, since Shahnameh was written around 1000, about 400–600 years after the two allegedly lived (if they really existed at all), and is openly based partly on myths and legends, its reliability as to dates and identities is presumably questionable.
I am reminded of the popular legend of the Trojan war refugee Aeneas and his famous love affair with the Carthaginian Queen Dido, which ignores the fact that plausible dates for the two place their lives around 400 years apart. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 06:05, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm having trouble finding "Kish, 1924, 799 Obv. 1 16." The reference found in S Langdon's Babylonian Menologies, page 111. I tried "Report on the excavation of the "A" Cemetary at Kish, Mesopotamia" by Ernest Mackay 1925-1931, where the page numbers don't go that high.
Temerarius (talk) 16:45, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I follow you, you're thinking that that's a page reference, but it's actually a reference to an archaeological find from Kish excavated (or perhaps catalogued) in 1924. In this paper by S. Langdon, we read on page 70 that "Kish 1924-799 (excavated by the writer) is the upper right corner of Tablet XV of HURRA = hubullu", whatever that means. "Obv.", the same paper makes clear, stands for "Obverse". There's a diagram of that tablet on page 71. --Antiquary (talk) 20:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Great! Thanks. The detail I was seeking was on page 74. I wish archive.org wouldn't restrict download of these old papers that are in the public domain now. https://archive.org/download/fieldmuseumoxfor28fiel/fieldmuseumoxfor28fiel.pdf Here's another by Langdon on Kish with some interesting finds. The early pictographic script has comic book-like panel divisions, like the undeciphered "bonus" Deir Alla inscriptions. There's an ancient solid copper frog, which I don't think I've ever seen before. And by ovens, they've got cup holders like Macalister's Gezer's High place. Different from cup and ring marks.
From the Section Burial in the article you link, "His undisturbed tomb was rediscovered by French Egyptologists Pierre Montet and Georges Goyon in April 1940, just a month before the Nazi invasion of France. Montet had to stop his excavation until the end of World War II, then resumed it in 1946 and later published his findings in 1958. . . . On the mummy were found two gilt funerary masks, two pectorals, necklaces, bracelets, rings and a cloisonné collar. Four of these items bore the name of Psusennes I.[18][19] The funerary masks depict the king as young, although Goyon stated that at the moment of discovery the masks had an expression of suffering and pleading, later softened after restoration.[18] The mummy and funerary goods are now in Cairo Museum."
The Article's References cross reference to its Bibliography, which details various volumes, including Goyon's 1987 La Découverte des trésors de Tanis. Perséa. ISBN 2-906427-01-2, though not Montet's 1958 publications. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 00:16, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That "softened after restoration" comment is quite suspect, don't you agree? Did Goyon (or Montet) ever fall under rumors of fakery?
Years ago I read about the English translation of Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel What the Maid Saw. The translation was notorious because at one point, there is a quotation from T. S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", but the translator seemingly did not recognize the quotation and instead translated Tsutsui's Japanese translation back into English. Eliot's original text read as follows:
I grow old ... I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
But the English translation of the novel rendered the text as:
The years are taking their toll.
It’s time to roll up the cuffs of my pants—
Time to part my hair from the back—
Time to eat peaches.
I put on my white flannel pants and walked on the beach.
I heard mermaids singing to each other—
Mermaids who would never sing out to me.
However, I seem to recall reading later that this (i.e. the English translator not recognizing the poem and translating it on his own) was an urban legend. And, indeed, I can hardly find any references to this online. One of the few I can find (https://aclanthology.org/1997.mtsummit-workshop.6.pdf) cites it to "a 'clipping' (undated) from the New Yorker", that is, one of the "snippets containing amusing errors, unintended meanings or badly mixed metaphors ... used as filler items, accompanied by a witty retort", which doesn't seem to be a particularly reliable source.
So my question is: Did the English translation of What the Maid Saw actually include the mistranslated quote from "Prufrock", and if so, was there any explanation other than the translator not recognizing the poem? -- Metropolitan90(talk)07:32, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Urban legend, I think. According to the New Yorker clipping quoted in the Helmreich article you link to, the translator, Adam Kabat, renders Tsutsui's Japanese as "Katsumi had come across the image of the peach in a poem by an American poet. The years are taking their toll [etc.]". But in this 2011 reprint of the original 1990 Kabat translation we have something very different:
Katsumi had come across the image of the peach in a bit of verse by an American poet.
The poem also used images of mermaids, the beach and a necktie, but it was the symbolic line about eating peaches that had left the most vivid impression on Katsumi...
There is no quotation from the poem there. I wondered whether the 2011 reprint might have corrected this passage from the 1990 original, but only a 1990 copyright date is given for it, so seemingly not.
The 1990 edition is available on Archive.org. It does have the "The years are taking their toll..." version on page 82. See here (registration required). DuncanHill (talk) 10:19, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In Graves book "Goodbye to all that" he mentions a song that soldiers sang, I translate it back to English, it's "Whiter than white cocaine", "Brighter than white cocaine" or something similar.
Presumably "Oh wash me in the water that you washed the Colonel's daughter, and I shall be whiter than the whitewash on the wall" Sung in "Oh! What a Lovely War" here. DuncanHill (talk) 19:49, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't know that WW1 British pilots called their airplane "the bus" until I looked at that file. Many of the soldiers in Robert Graves' unit were from rural Wales, and he found that they would rather sing melancholy songs than aggressively anti-German songs... AnonMoos (talk) 15:53, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Robert Graves says, in his native English, "to the tune of the Salvation Army tune of 'Whiter than the snow'" (I believe this is a variation of Blessed be the Fountain) and gives the key line as "whiter than the milky cokernuts". See page 92 of the Penguin edition at Archive.org (registration required). DuncanHill (talk) 20:01, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am curious to know, 2A0D, which language you've found Graves's book translated into. The translator seems to have misunderstood "cokernuts" rather badly. --Antiquary (talk) 20:50, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Admittedly, "cokernuts" is a non-standard phonetic representation of the way Graves's men pronounced the word "coconuts", so the translator couldn't have got much help from any dictionary. And few translators get paid enough to be able to spend much time solving such problems. --Antiquary (talk) 23:02, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that ordinary WW1 trench soldiers without a medical background would have been familiar with cocaine in a white powder form anyway. Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. did manufacture and market (legal) "Forced March" tablets to soldiers, which apparently contained significant cocaine. A song which actually does mention cocaine is I Get a Kick Out of You (original lyrics)... AnonMoos (talk) 21:42, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See "cokernut" on Wiktionary, dating from at least 1913, a year before WWI started. Coincidentally, I have been devouring "Goodbye to All That" (yep, that physical Penguin edition), and it's one of the best reads I have ever come across, where poetry and prose intermingle endlessly. The sudden and wholly unexpected (and very British) humour in the midst of unbelievable suffering is astounding. I found his relationship with other well-known anti-war figures (eg Siegfried Sassoon) to be especially revealing. I wonder if the OP was aware of any jokes at all in the book, if "cocaine" is par for the course. MinorProphet (talk) 00:47, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Prince Radziwill is mentioned here as serving with the Russians: "There is no doubt that Cardigan overran the Russian battery as he was recognized there by Prince Radziwill whom he had know before the war." There is also an unreliable forum post which claims that Radziwill ordered that Cardigan be taken alive. Clarityfiend (talk) 12:06, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am reminded that I watched this film around three or four years ago, and my personal comment in the talk page was deservedly reverted. Nevertheless,
Sadly...
...this article fails to demonstrate what a load of self-indulgent twaddle this film really is. A deserved box-office bomb. If you think you might enjoy Trevor Howard grumpily yelling his tits off for an hour or so, and Harry Andrews growling his tits off back at Howard for a further hour and a half, coupled with David Hemmings slowly—very slowly indeed—seducing his best friend's wife, and John Gielgud's disappearing act, please watch this film. The genuinely exciting action sequences pre-date Waterloo by a couple of years, in which Rod Steiger's scenery-chewing knocks everyone's performances here into one of those proverbial cocked hats. On the other hand, Hemmings gives some stylish lessons in how to sit a horse.
Conversely, I found Letters from Head-Quarters (vol. 1 • vol. 2) remarkably refreshing, and makes it plain how much more the French suffered; despite the military 'victories', it demonstrates exactly how war should not be carried on with a so-called ally. MinorProphet (talk) 10:28, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Going back to the original question, I have deleted mention of the Heavy Brigade, since we won't be misleading anybody by stating that he was a Polish officer. I have also added a link to the Polish WP article. Alansplodge (talk) 11:12, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's still somewhat misleading, though. While he was a member of Polish artistocracy, he served as an officer in the Russian army and even fought on the Russian side in the Polish–Russian War of 1830, so from the point of view of Polish national historiography, he was a traitor and a tsartist loyalist. — Kpalion(talk)08:14, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
He was still Polish though, whatever his affiliation. Feel free to edit, but I was conscious that the quoted reference doesn't go into details. Alansplodge (talk) 18:12, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Still, "a Polish officer" is a bit ambiguous, as it could be read as both "an ethnic Polish officer" or "an officer in the Polish army". — Kpalion(talk)20:19, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Back when American railroads ran predominantly coal fired locomotives, they must have had quite the supply operation to keep the tonnage moving. What im curious about, and cannot find information on, is what percentage of total coal haulage went to the railroads them selves versus regular customers in industry and electricity production or export? 1%? 5%? Thanks,L3X1◊distænt write◊02:56, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I must have watched too many Westerns, I thought they burned wood... Although not directly related, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 the total of 'housekeeping' (wirtschaft) trains (which included trains with coal for the railroads' own needs, rather than military supplies and troops) amounted to approximately 10% of the total.[11]MinorProphet (talk) 11:13, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A critical factor you didn't mention is home furnaces and other smaller-scale building heating. [All statistics I'm citing come from this preprint by three US researchers.] Between 1920 and the mid-1940s, the majority of US homes were coal-heated, and bituminous coal was used by 2/3 to 5/6 of those homes (page 2). In 1920, per capita consumption of bituminous coal strictly for heating (whether residential or otherwise) was over 0.7 tons, a figure that fell to a little over 0.6 tons by 1940, and anthracite users consumed nearly 0.5 and 0.2 tons per capita in the same years (page 36). The latter page says the following: Retail (as opposed to sales for electricity, industry, coke, and railroads) sales of anthracite coal are not available until the 1950s. At that point, they were 20 percent of retail coal sales on a tonnage basis (Minerals Yearbook). Estimates in the mid 1920s suggested that 65 percent of anthracite was being used for heating.Nyttend (talk) 05:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, there's a complication if we look at sales, because many companies were vertically integrated. For example, the coal town of Wheelwright, Kentucky was operated by a steel company for 36 years — so the company wouldn't account for much of sales — and our article on the anthracite coal strike of 1902 notes that the Reading Railroad was then "one of the largest employers of miners", so the railways wouldn't have been buying coal from mines they owned. Maybe you could look for something from the Minerals Yearbook (cited in that paper I quoted), a USGS publication; the University of Wisconsin Library has many of them digitised, including some from the late steam era. The earliest volume, for 1934, doesn't have solid figures for shipping, but based on railway and river-barge shipping reports, it estimates that all US coal production in 1932 was 359,565,000 net tons (page 385 of the 1934 statistical report). I don't know where to look for railway coal consumption, but at least now we know how much was being produced. If you can find reports on railway haulage totals (maybe from the Interstate Commerce Commission?), you could work it out. Nyttend (talk) 05:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PS, I don't have further time to look, but you might check the 1934 statistical report to see if it has a table estimating how much coal production went to various uses. Nyttend (talk) 05:20, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have included following citation in a article Draft:Rabindra Rangshala under development. The book seem to be well catalogued so date of Publication may not be too crucial still less the confusion better hence requesting help in confirmation if possible.
First edition available on Archive.org (archive.org PDF link) does not show year of publication. But google book seem to show year of Publication 1991 but rest of preview is not available on google books. One entry at google books from Library of Congress seem to show question mark [1991?]. En WP article about book editor Gurbachan Singh Talib seem to show Talib's year of death 1986.
Talib, Gurbachan Singh, ed. (1991). "Chapter I : An account of the Guru Nanak quincentenary celebration within India". Guru Nanak Commemorative Volume (First ed.). Patiala, India: Publication bureau, Punjabi University. p. 2.
I couldn't find anything beyond what you found already, except that the first reprint was from 1993 ([12]). Worldcat also shows "1991?". Since it's good enough for Worldcat and the Library of Congress, I'd suggest also using "1991?" in the references. Dekimasuよ!08:05, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Invalid dates will likely get flagged as an error in a tracking category, now or future. Suggest 1991, with an inline comment and/or talk page discussion to this thread for more information. Like people, we sometimes don't know for certain when a book was born/published. You could also use {{circa|1991}} (c. 1991) -- but it would be an oddball case most tools and bots wouldn't know what to do. -- GreenC00:01, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Rabindra Rangshala, Can be ranked amongst largest amphitheatre?
Indian WP:RS media seem to claim that Rabindra Rangshala amphitheatre was one of world's largest in modern times. As of now I have not included the claim in the article. Can the rank or claim of being one of world's largest confirmed? Bookku (talk) 08:05, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. We have list of contemporary ampitheatres. 8,000 seats would sort very far down that list: however, the picture might be different if it was possible to filter out every "theater" that doesn't put on dramatic performances (not counting pop music or football), and to further filter out any built later than 1968. There's also the matter of ancient theaters still in use. The Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus is on that list (but should possibly be removed?) with 14,000 capacity, while Verona Arena is absent (but should possibly be added?) with 22,000. The ranking doesn't look great for Rabindra Rangshala on the face of it. Perhaps "constructed with the intention of being among the world's largest" would be easier to source. The number of acres on the site is large (about ten times that of the Verona Arena), but presumably nearly all of that is outside the structure. Card Zero (talk)13:46, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Phaistos disc is a characteristic example of what tends to happen on Wikipedia. If there are questions of authenticity, the page will say there was some debate, but scholarly consensus has aligned in favor of the item's authenticity. When that's not the conclusion to be found in the papers cited. I don't know why the articles are written with such a bias toward finding things authentic. In fact, there are almost no fakes in Wikipedia, only occasional (amateur) hoaxes. The Phaistos disc is ugly, anomalous, and egregious. I don't know how these scholars can look at it without laughing. I've read the papers weakly arguing it's genuine. I don't get it at all. Such an item should come with exceptional, or at least the usual, proof of verity.
It was excavated by a professional archeologist in a datable context (being amongst 'garbage' under a layer of debris caused by a known earthquake, in a long-buried cellar of a palace). To assert its inauthenticity as an ancient artifact, one would have to assume that the archeologist deliberately fasified his excavation records. This is of course possible.
Its relative crudity is evident, but let's remember that it was apparently discarded. (I conjecture that it was a practice piece.)
It appears less anomalous now than when it was discovered, because subsequently other, presumably authentic, artifacts of the culture have been found with similar features: carvings of some of the same symbols, jewellery with the same design of an inward spiral of (different-script) symbols.
Against that, there is a much later (Etruscan) object which it rather resembles, and which the archaeologist must already have been familiar with.
In fact stamps of the same symbols. There are "shield" and "rosette" stamps on pottery, with 8 petals and 7, uh, shield-nubs, just like on the disk. And there is the "comb", which although drawn with 6 teeth on each side instead of 4, still has these two comb-like parts joined by a T-shaped handle. Does such a sign crop up by chance, is the corpus of decorative Minoan marks big enough for that kind of selection bias in noticing similarity? I don't think so: I haven't seen a gradient of progressively less similar comb-like marks, only these two closely matching ones, like matching signatures. Though, of course, I'm not being shown all the failed near-matches that may for all I know exist. But I'll assume there aren't any, which makes these "combs" non-coincidental and persuasive. Ah, but of course there are 40 or so distinctive signs, which makes 40 opportunities for such a coincidence ... Card Zero (talk)19:12, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On the disc they were stamps (which I assumed everybody knows), on the other artifacts they were carved (or engraved), which I deliberately indicated. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 23:18, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes, the famous Cretan motifs of goatse, screwdriver, 8-ball rack, kewpie doll, kewpie doll with mohawk, "Keep on truckin'" guy, and chocolate chip cookie. Okay, maybe I spoke a bit oversure. I hadn't seen those other stamped goods. The parallels aren't cased closed, either. Now the James ossuary, those underworn letters look like they were made by somebody who learned modern Hebrew script in kindergarten.
We have articles on some famous fakes/forgeries that were later revealed: Piltdown Man, Cardiff Giant, etc. Certainly, many archaeologists have had their work scrutinized (perhaps excessively) because it was thought that their findings were in error. For example, any New World sites that purport to be earlier than about 13,000 years old go through very public criticism because earlier dates go against entrenched wisdom. See here for a particular example. I don't think anyone claims those were fakes, though. There are many archaeological ideas that are... unlikely (Solutrean hypothesis) or not provable (Aquatic ape hypothesis), but like in every other science, bad ideas are not nearly so bad as bad data. Matt Deres (talk) 13:52, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
James Mellaart: After his death, it was discovered that Mellaart had forged many of his "finds", including murals and inscriptions used to discover the Çatalhöyük site.
Lady of Elche has a section on Contentions of forgery.
I have been a Northern Californian for 52 years and Drake's Plate of Brass has been a source of both controversy and amusement for a very long time. The self-published book industry has benefitted greatly, and it has contributed to tour guide lore. Accepted as genuine by prominent academics half a century ago, its authenticity has been debunked, and it is now seen as a practical joke that got out of control.
I've just been reading the updated edition of Turin Shroud by Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince. A most fascinating read. They demolish the theory that it's the burial shroud of Jesus (which in itself was disproved by the 1988 carbon dating which showed the age of the cloth to be 1200 years too young); they demonstrate that it's a 15th-century forgery using what is essentially a photographic technique perfected by Leonardo da Vinci; they maintain, quite credibly, that the face on the shroud is none other than Leonardo himself; they prove that the face and the body belong to different people (and the body seems to be of a man of height 6 feet 8 inches) and were very crudely pushed together. They're on slightly shakier ground when they talk about modern-day scientists and their testing and their (so the authors claim, incorrect) conclusions about the unexplained unique characteristics of the image; but many of them seem to be devout Christians and believers of the Jesus theory (not that there's anything wrong with that per se, but it doesn't always sit comfortably with disinterested scientific accuracy, particularly when they maintain those beliefs in the face of the evidence that they themselves and their fellow scientists have discovered that flies in the face of such a belief). So much more engrossing stuff. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]18:01, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I thought I remembered something about Howard Carter; the article says his misdeeds were to do with genuine artifacts, stealing them.
From the ground, one would observe that the vista follows a series of man-made survey monuments that mark the border along the northern 49th parallel, the Alaska/Canada border, and the non-linear eastern border.
The 20-foot wide clear cutting of trees is clearly visible on google maps on the border between the contiguous 48 states and Canada. However, I can't seem to find any traces of clear cutting on the border between Alaska and BC/Yukon.
Yes. For example, looking at Google Earth, you can see the cut marking the boarder between the Alaska panhandle and BC is clearly visible just west of Stewart, BC. Blueboar (talk) 20:58, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, taking off the ref-desk librarian hat to give a personal opinion for a moment, I think if you see the anger itself as the problem you want to resolve, you're pretty likely to get stuck. Then you get to feel bad about not making progress, and maybe that makes you more upset, etc etc self-reinforcing cycle. You're more likely to get somewhere if you can identify why you're angry in the first place. Then you can try to avoid being angry at all (rather than just trying to be less angry when you become angry). You might also discover that you're trying to deal with anger on a much higher difficulty rating than most people - for example, a lot of physical/mental health conditions can cause you to become angrier, or angry more often. I'm rarely angry (lucky me), and one of the more recent times I can recall being so, it was because I had run out of a daily medication that I couldn't get refilled in time - I found the anger a real surprise! You might be living that way every day and not have noticed because you've "always been that way". Bodies are messy and minds are part of them. -- asilvering (talk) 16:27, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I see from your userpage that you're in high school. In this case you're probably stuck with "the typical collection of hippie stuff" for now. Teenage emotions are just really... loud. Eventually, you get older. -- asilvering (talk) 00:06, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you find anger or anxiety or anything else is a significant impairment on life, you should consider asking a professional for resources and mitigation strategies.
That said, one great use of ChatGPT I've seen was someone using it to check and clean their outgoing emails and social media posts for passive-aggressive (and aggressive-aggressive) anger. As noted earlier, anger is self-reinforcing, so being able to check it when it starts, and being shown in near-real-time how to communicate in a de-escalating manner, is a huge modern boon. (You might also ask ChatGPT for advice on mitigation strategies when you're feeling angry in the moment, which may be somewhat more reliable and friendlier than a search engine, but as a LLM its best way to shine is on tasks involving language.) SamuelRiv (talk) 18:58, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How and when did the word "Taiwan" become the common name in English of Republic of China?
I speak Chinese and in Chinese the word "Taiwan (Chinese: 台灣)" more commonly refers to the island (as you can see in Chinese wikipedia 台灣 is the island), the location or Taiwan Area (a term both available in PRC and ROC, which means a region with its own law, and a way to avoid conflict with no emphasis on belonging), which are neutral words and do not emphasize unification or independence. Taiwan is Taiwan and ROC is ROC, which are their original meanings. But in English the word "Taiwan" is regarded as the common name of Republic of China and it seems to be described as a common sense for I can't find reliable sources talking about it.
How and when did the word "Taiwan" become the common name in English of Republic of China? Does this give people the feeling that Taiwan is already independent as Taiwan equals to Republic of China and there is no need to announce independence? By doing so, are people who claim "Taiwan" is the common name in English of Republic of China supporting Taiwan independence?
The use of "independence" for Taiwan can be ambiguous. If some supporters articulate that they agree to the independence of Taiwan, they may either be referring to the notion of formally creating an independent Taiwanese state (Republic of Taiwan) or to the notion that Taiwan has become synonymous with the current Republic of China and is already independent (as reflected in the concept of One Country on Each Side).
By the way, as I am too interested and bold in Taiwan topic, I am not allowed to edit the topic right now. If you think there is something needed to edit, just do it. ZeehanLin (talk) 16:05, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm old enough to remember when it was called Formosa almost as much as Taiwan. (Perhaps more when referring to historical events, the age of Spanish and Portuguese exploration, lives of the early Christian missionaries etc. But I'm old enough to have been taught those things.) -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]17:39, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For everyday habitual use, English-speakers need a country to have a short one- or two-word name without an internal preposition. "United States of America" is too long (and has a preposition); "United States" by itself is OK, but many people prefer "America". "German Democratic Republic" and "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" were never useful for this purpose (which is why "East Germany" and "North Korea" are preferred), and "Republic of China" isn't either. If abbreviating "Republic of China" as "China" is blocked, then what's left is "Taiwan", which in that sense is quite natural as an English short form. It may be awkward in some respects, but is still much better than "Chinese Taipei" used by the Olympics! AnonMoos (talk) 20:14, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
North Korea and South Korea, West Germany and East Germany were established at a similar time. But the relationship between Taiwan and China seems to be more complicated. It doesn't seem quite appropriate to compare them. ZeehanLin (talk) 13:53, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's actually harmless to say this in spoken language, but it seems that everyone uses Taiwan as a formal common name, which can easily conflict with the island. ZeehanLin (talk) 13:56, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's no such thing as a formal common name. If you are using common names, you aren't being formal. There are formal short names, which often match the common names, but the two things are different.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 09:34, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, how could it "conflict" with the island? If you have list of "Germany, Peru, Kenya, Taiwan", anyone who seriously believed that "Taiwan" in that instance referred to the island would have severe cognitive deficits. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:46, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I was in grade school, we called the island "Formosa" and the country "Nationalist China". Those seem to have gone by the wayside. Work colleagues of mine who were from that country tend to call it "Taiwan". As to stuff like "Democratic Republic" of communist countries, those terms are seldom used except in a formal or official sense, because they are seen as propaganda put forth by totalitarian dictators. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 21:02, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Occasionally people will say Free China, but obviously this conveys a particular political position. I haven't heard it in quite a while, maybe because the implicit subtext is that the ROC is the legitimate government of the whole of China, which (quite irrespective of whether it would be desirable or not) does not seem to be a realistic aspiration at the current moment. --Trovatore (talk) 21:20, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OR: I lived and worked in Taipei during the transition. Prior to the 1980s, it’s all politics. If you prefer the KMT, it’s ROC; if you like the CCP, it’s Taiwan (or, in international conventions, “Taipei, China,” or “Taiwan Province of China.”). From the 1980s, Taiwan was commonly used by anyone not pro-CCP, or forced by the PRC to use one of the "polite" titles I cite above. And, since the ROC includes many small islands that are not Taiwan, using Taiwan also began to mean “we really, really don’t want any Mainland government to have the least bit of control over our lives.” DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 19:05, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are there sources for the long-term real estate (or raw land) prices across the world? I'm especially interested in "new" settlements such as Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Dubai from the 1950s or 1960s to Dubai. I'd like to compare them to neighboring cities (Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Riyadh, Jeddah, Kuwait City, etc.). I can't find anything... a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 11:29, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Technically true, but the real discrepancy is not that great. Per the articles:
"Prior to Raffles' arrival (in 1819), there were only about a thousand people living on the island (of Singapore]", and
"Kuala Lumpur is considered by some to have been founded by the Malay Chief of Klang, Raja Abdullah, who sent Chinese miners into the region to open tin mines in 1857, although it is unclear who the first settlers were since there were likely settlements at the Gombak-Klang river confluence prior to that in the 1820s."
@DOR (HK): yes but that's not the point. I'd like to see the price increase since the "boom"/"birth"/"independence" of these cities. So for instance, 1948 for TLV, 1965 for SG, 1971 for DXB and 1980 for Shenzhen (even though it has "this area has seen human activity from more than 6,700 years ago, with Shenzhen's historic counties first established 1,700 years ago"). a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 07:21, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tel Aviv became a substantial urban settlement starting in the mid-1930s, but I really would not expect much correlation between property values there and in Jerusalem (which has an entirely different geographic location and cultural history), much less cities in hostile foreign countries (as Egypt was before the late 1970s, and Lebanon and Syria still are). Maybe there could be a correlation between property values in Tel Aviv and Haifa... AnonMoos (talk) 23:27, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm interested in this lack of correlation: you bought a piece of land in the mid-1930 (or 1940s) in TLV, Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Alexandria, Gaziantep, Limassol, Sharm El-Sheikh, etc.: what are they all worth today? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 07:23, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While there may well be pre-WWII sales prices for some real estate in those places, there is almost certainly nothing comparable to the city-wide averages (or similar) we have today. Apples and mangoes. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 16:24, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sources must exist, presumably there would have been adverts in newspapers and magazines. Presumably people had to disclose value of properties for taxation reasons, at least in some of these cases. --Soman (talk) 22:21, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I don't hope to find an index but some anecdotal evidence such as ads in newspapers or mentions later in newspapers and books ("My dad bought this land in 1965 for 150 dollars"). Thanks @Soman, that's a great example. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 08:25, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
""Land for any purpose is sold by the square foot, and a residential or suburban villa in Dubai may cost as much as $15 per square foot - or $600,000 per acre. A suburban villa rents for $15,000-$20,000 or more per year, with a 2-3 year payment in advance. Because of these land costs, it is easy to understand why private investors lean heavily toward high-rise apartments of some 13 or 14 stories." ([14]) Now this quote is from a 1977 publication, so post oil boom of the 1970s. --Soman (talk) 11:02, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From 1963: "The market in Dubai was fairly brisk in July and August considering the time of year, and, as usual, was very busy in September. Although reexports to Iran were not good more goods were going to Pakistan and India again. But there was a hint of overstocking and many merchants appeared to realise for the first time how much of Dubai's present prosperity depends on the uncertain prospect of oil. The cost of land remained high (23/- to 30/- a square foot for land in the business area 6/- to 9/- in the residential areas), fewer sales were made." [15] --Soman (talk) 11:13, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Dubai, 1961 - "His Excellency the Ruler has also instructed his Engineering Consultants to prepare plans for a bridge across the creek, which is expected to cost $190,000; and to continue design studies for the reclamation of a narrow strip of land along the Daira water front, on which shops and a road would be built; the road should help to relieve the present traffic congestion considerably. The asking price for land in this area is sometimes as high as £4-10 sh a square foot, and the sale of the shops might well pay for the reclamation." ([16]) --Soman (talk) 11:18, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, "/-" is an alternative abbreviation to s, which is the "shillings" in a price, originally, for example, 4l 10s 6d (four pounds, ten shillings and sixpence, 4.525 pounds in decimal money. The presence of the pound sign in the second quote indicates "4l 10s" (4.50 pounds in decimal money). 2A02:C7B:232:500:3CB6:5B8B:EF2E:8517 (talk) 17:27, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The 1961 factoid relates to the Deira seafront, which would have been a top location. And it says "up to 4-10 sh" so presumably there were some cheaper lots as well. The 1963 estimates would have been the more normal prices perhaps. --Soman (talk) 11:06, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I guess q collapsed into k in Coptic. The reason I'm asking is to distinguish these places from those called Qos and Qosia, such as Cusae. I've seen at least three minor Wikipedia pages for such a place name, and I've been meaning to see if they're erroneously various, ie redundant, or numerous. And now I don't know how to find them again; the A-Z index isn't helping.
I've noticed so far in the index--it's giving a few places in Iran (and less the expected Arabian locations) that start with similar, though. What does qos mean in Persian?
I've just posted a query @ Talk:The Way of All Flesh, but I have a different (if not unrelated) query for my esteemed colleagues at the Ref Desk.
We say Samuel Butler took the phrase "The way of all flesh" from the Douay–Rheims Bible, specifically 1 Kings. I note that the first part of the DRB Old Testament, in which 1 Kings is located, was published in 1609.
However, the phrase appeared in John Webster's play Westward Hoe [sic], published in 1607.
I saw him even now going the way of all flesh, that is to say towards the kitchen.
Webster is not in Category:Translators of the King James Version (pub. 1611), so I presume he wasn't (known to be) involved in that. But could he have been involved in the Douay-Rheims version (1609), and perhaps there re-used an expression he had coined for his 1607 play? Our article doesn't mention any individual translators, there's no Category:Translators of the Douay-Rheims Bible, and google produces no results.
"The most noble and myghty prince Ferdinandus the Romayne Emperour, for whose Funeral this preparation and concourse is here made, hath entred the way of all fleshe" E. Grindal, Serm. Funeral Prince Ferdinandus sig. C.ii. 1564. "Compare post-classical Latin via universae carnis the way of all flesh (from 11th cent. in British and continental sources". OED. DuncanHill (talk) 00:44, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so for me that makes it even less likely that Butler got it from the DR Bible. It seems to be an expression that had been bandied about for centuries; then it found its way into the DR Bible. Curious. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]07:16, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Vulgate generally uses (ingredior) viam universae terrae, "(I enter) the way of all earth", but Genesis 6:19 has (animantes) universae carnis, "(living creatures) of all flesh.[17]Onulf of Haumont [fr] (11th century) uses (ingredior) viam universae carnis.[18]Thomas Aquinas (13th century) refers to Genesis 6:19 when writing finis universae carnis, "the end of all flesh". [19] --Lambiam09:49, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There was a series of pulp novels whose main hero refused to kill his opponents, but would sometimes shoot them in such a way that the bullet grazed their skulls, knocking them unconscious. No need to point out that this is unrealistic; I understand that.
Well, the Avenger article you linked does say (at the end of the the "Gadgets" subsection) that "Benson could shoot someone so that his bullet just touched their heads and knocked them out". Deor (talk) 15:31, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"At midnight, on the 12th of August, a huge mass of luminous green gas erupted from Mars and sped towards Earth..." does the Narrator mean Midnight at night or Midnight in the morning? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 01:11, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's genuinely ambiguous. One of the advantages of the 24-hour clock is it makes this clear; you can say 2400 on 11 August or 0000 on 12 August, to indicate the same instant. --Trovatore (talk) 01:13, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seems to be a paraphrase of a passage in Chapter 1: "As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the 12th, and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity torwards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve." (The War of the Worlds, Book One: The Coming of the Martians, 1 The Eve of the War). The year is 1894; since the narrator is in England and the subject is astronomical, the time will be in GMT (which was renamed for astronomical purposes Universal Time (UT) only in 1928). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.83.137 (talk) 12:14, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Then that answers the OP's question. The only way to go "toward" the midnight of the 12th is from the 12th. So "midnight of the 12th" would mean the point between the 12th and the 13th. "Midnight in the morning" would simply mean the earliest point in the morning, of the 13th in this case. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 14:28, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that struck me as a really odd way of phrasing it. In my somewhat limited experience of life, midnight always happens at night! I think the question is really asking whether it means the midnight that marks the end of the 11th and the start of the 12th, or the midnight that marks the end of the 12th and the start of the 13th. AndyJones (talk) 12:52, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For much of the 20th century, stamps of the Republic of Turkey stamps were denominated in para or kuruş, and while 100 kuruş equalled a lira, the larger unit sometimes wasn't used on denominations: for example, the 1950 stamp series had values of 10p, 20p, 1k...100k, 200k. After a while, inflation caused everything to be denominated in a larger number of kuruş, and then eventually everything went to lira only, but technically the kuruş still existed as a subdivision, even though the lira was worth so little that a basic postage stamp cost hundreds of thousands of lira.
With this in mind: when was the para formally abolished as a subdivision of the kuruş? Like the kuruş, did it formally exist long after it ceased to be a meaningful amount of money? I know that it hasn't existed since the revaluation of the Turkish lira in the 2000s, but I'm unsure if it were abolished before then. Our article on the para doesn't mention anything specific after 1844, except for mentioning that the new lira doesn't have para. The Turkish lira article doesn't even mention the para. Nyttend (talk) 22:15, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Other than the was, how many named Egyptian staffs are there? As a matter of interest, there are Burkinabe dead ringers for the was sceptre in “Land of the Flying Masks: Art and Culture in Burkina Faso” by Wheelock and Roy, objects 237-8.
Temerarius (talk) 00:35, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I consider the use of "as" in sentences like "People who steal are called as thieves." to be unnecessary as well as improper; such a sentence should say "People who steal are called thieves." instead. My best guess is that some people see sentences like "People who steal are referred to as thieves." and run with the erroneous assumption that "as" should always go after a verb before a noun in cases where they really shouldn't.
Examples of correct uses of as:
John doe was called as a witness.
"John Doe was called a witness." would have a different meaning.
The battle was regarded as having been won.
The phrase "regarded having been won" wouldn't sound right.
The backup plan was considered as an option.
The phrases "The backup plan was considered an option." and "The backup plan was considered to be an option." mean the same thing, whereas the use of "as" would imply that the backup plan was indeed taken into consideration.
The CEO was derided as a menace to society.
The phrase "was derided a menace to society" would sound weird.
The Army veterans were praised as heroes.
"Praised heroes" would refer to heroes who are praised, so it could work in theory, though it would sound weird.
The chosen one was championed as a role model.
The phrase "was championed a role model" may not sound right.
The king was referred to as mighty.
The phrase "was referred to mighty." wouldn't sound right.
Examples of questionable uses of as:
The actor was called as a movie star.
"The actor was called a movie star." (people simply called the actor a movie star)
"The actor was cast as a movie star." (as though to portray a character; the meaning implied by the presence of the word as)
"The actor was called to be a movie star." (this would imply that the actor's destiny was to be a real-life movie star)
The campaign was considered as a success.
"The campaign was considered a success." (more correct)
"The campaign was considered to be a success." (same meaning)
The captain was deemed as worthy of honor.
"The captain was deemed worthy of honor."
"The captain was deemed to be worthy of honor."
Examples of incorrect uses of as:
The man in the yellow hat is named as Ted.
This phrase implies that some people are attempting to single out someone named Ted from amongst a crowd of people, and a man in a yellow hat has been singled out as possibly being the Ted that they're looking for.
I consider that you are being unnecessarily over-prescriptive, and give the appearance of being unfamiliar with the whole gamut of (at least British) English usage. Some usages of, e.g., "called as thieves" have become somewhat archaic, but are still understood by the fully literate; ". . . named as Ted" is acceptable current BrE; and all your "questionable usages" are, to my elderly BrE ear, also acceptable English, the beauty of which language is that the same thing can be said "correctly" in many different variations, often with subtly differing implications. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 14:43, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's no lexical reason that this is incorrect other than it not being conventional to some ears: the lexical value of called and the syntactic function of as agree well enough. Remsense ‥ 论21:06, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My personal opinions regarding the use of "as" could also stem from me being an American. In hindsight, my critiques would be no more valid than us being ridiculed for saying things like
This here /du:məhɪki:/ I done showed y'all way out yonder ain't doin' nothin' no more, so I'm fixin' to holler to the fellas that I reckon it done wonders for.
instead of
The device that I have shown you guys over there is no longer doing anything, so I'm about to talk to the fellows for whom I believe it has done wonders.
This is also entirely a function of our being brainwashed into the cult of the written word: speech is a flowing thing, so the ideology that "y'all" is somehow a deficient word and not what it obviously is—a more parsimonious way of saying "you all"—wouldn't as easily take hold because it's not spelled out as a different-looking sequence of discrete symbols. To a lesser degree, this holds to the use of linking words, which seem to flow more freely and are less prescriptively scrutinized when a written dimension is not considered: there's a lot of evidence that the concept of the "word" itself as a discrete unit of language requires the adoption of writing for a society to really introduce to their language.Remsense ‥ 论21:37, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We do expect formal prescriptive English in professional writing, it's just that some of the supposed rules are imaginary (like the proscription against using passives by a style guide that doesn't know what a passive is). Check with the OED as to whether 'called as' means the same thing as 'called'. (In my variety it doesn't.)
I don't have access to the full OED right now; maybe someone else can look it up. In the Compact, New and Shorter OED, I see no indication that 'called as' is considered standard for 'named'. None of the examples they give of this meaning use 'as', and this goes back centuries ('God called the light, Day'; 'the woman I was taught to call mother'). Generally IMO it's best not to use words that add no meaning, especially when the meaning they normally add is a mismatch for what the writer is trying to say. — kwami (talk) 13:50, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
what the Distribution of profits
What the Legal requirements
What the Capital Contribution
What the Responsibility of business debts
What the Continuity of the business
What the Set up and Start up of this form of ownership.
Do you think a sole proprietor will be a more suitable form of ownership for this business? Briefly motivate your answer.
Please see Wikipedia:Do your own homework. You will not learn properly if we feed you answers. Try using the Wikipedia search box at the top of every page (you may have to click a magnifying glass symbol to open it) to find articles on the terms in the questions, and read them. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 18:16, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As cursing, phrases like "What the Capital Contribution!?..." and "What the Distribution of Profits!?..." have a nice ring to them, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:18, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Okay, it looks like I fixed the Wiktionary entry. Somebody had added the wrong word to the dab page so the definition didn't show up. It's now there. However, I don't know how to best add the definition to the dab page like I did for visibility. Viriditas (talk) 21:33, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The arabic form for the letter ba has a dot underneath as part of its form. According to Arabic diacritics#I‘jām this is called an i'jam, and it's used to indicate that a letter is a variant form, or rasm. For example jim with a single dot below is a variant of the undotted ha. Looking at the rest of the Arabic alphabet we see that ta, tha, and pe are also variants of the same form as ba, with different numbers of dots above or below the form. But what would the original un-dotted form be? It is not present in the alphabet.
Comparing with the Hebrew bet, we see that it is a dotted form of vet. One might venture a guess that arabic or one of its precursors once had an original form va, now deprecated, that ba was the dotted rasm of. Would that be a correct guess? -lethetalk+contribs13:10, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Trying to look up the history of the Arabic alphabet, it seems as it was derived from the Nabatean alphabet, itself from the Aramaic script. The Nabatean script was used by both Aramaic and Arabian speakers, but it was only the Aramaic who had a phonetic b/v-distinction, which makes it rather odd that a dotted variant was the only glyph surviving in Arabic. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:15, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When several letters have the same rasm, that sometimes means they originated from the same Nabataean letter, but in other cases, they are originally different letters that just came to be written in the same way in the undotted script. The i'jam were added to distinguish them, but not in a very systematic way. In the case of ba, it was already a distinct letter in the Nabataean script. Adding a dot below did not create a new letter, it just clarified that the letter is ba and not something else. There’s not some other letter that ba was historically derived from and then lost. This is similar to the dot on the letter i in the Latin alphabet. The dot was not added to create a new letter, but just to further distinguish it from others in cases where they could easily be confused. —Amble (talk) 16:57, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Lethe -- Amble is correct. 21 Nabatean letters were borrowed to write Arabic, and in some cases dots were added to expand this 21 to the 28 that were needed for early medieval Arabic, while in other cases dots were added to distinguish some of the original 21 letters that came to have a similar or identical shape in cursive writing. The dot under the "b" letter isn't any different from the dot over the "n" letter, or the two dots under the "y" letter -- there's no related letter to be distinguished, but the medial form of each of these letters is the same (a simple upwards squiggle), so that the dots distinguish the letters from each other (and from the "t" letter with two dots above, and the "th" letter with three dots above). The Hebrew diacritic dot in the middle of letters (only ever one dot) is known as "dagesh", and distinguishes allophones of the same phoneme. It has no connection whatsoever with the Arabic dots (one or two or three) above and below, which distinguish basic letters from each other... AnonMoos (talk) 19:21, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As AnonMoos says. The closest analogue to the Arabic dots is the dot one or other side of Hebrew sin/shin: again, there is no "basic" letter without a dot, and the dots distinguish two different letters. ColinFine (talk) 21:00, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The -rus is from ros, from hors, meaning "horse", like hippo in hippopotamus. The inexplicable thing is why we think any Greek or Latin plurals are "correct" in English. It makes some amount of sense while the words are new additions and clearly foreign, but by the time these animal names start appearing on wall charts that teach the alphabet, it's bizarre that they should be haunted by scraps of foreign (and ancient) grammar. But then again I guess we're accustomed to a lot of irregular verbs from Sanskrit (swam, sang) and irregular vowels (ei) and silent letters (h) from French, so whatever, make the best of it. Card Zero (talk)04:19, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Zooming out, I suppose the Greco-Roman morphological loans have been part of English in some proportion ever since it started taking itself seriously as a literary language—so I don't see why we shouldn't treat them as part of English. It's fun to use them, it's fun to use them "wrong", and it's fun to say "really, they should be called octopodes." Fun for the whole family. That's the attitude most in vogue when we're talking the composite nature of other languages, so why not our own as well? Many misapplications from Latin or Greek that simply don't fit into English (e.g. the old proscription on splitting infinitives stemming from Latin not having multi-word infinitives to split) have basically been discarded, so all's well that ends well. Also, we should adopt the Anglo-Saxon / Norse / northern Middle English -en as a productive suffix for plural verbs again... Remsense ‥ 论05:07, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wish there was a good plural for axis. I don't like that axes looks like the plural of axe, and nobody likes it when I use axises. Oh, Wiktionary is now offering axiis (edited in last year by user Binarystep, thanks for that). Maybe I can stomach that one. Card Zero (talk)06:01, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
146.200.107.107 -- It's rather odd that two out of three forms you gave, "rhinoceri" and "platypi", are arguably not correct. AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Platypi is definitely not correct, although dictionaries have no choice but recognise it gets used regardless. From Wiktionary: The plural form platypodes is formed by application of the Greek (the language from which platypus derives) rules of forming plurals, precedented by the similarly formed plurals podes and octopodes (plurals of pous and octopus, respectively). However, being a fairly novel plural form, it is seldom used; the plurals platypuses, platypus, or, more rarely, platypi are more common. The plural form platypi is used sometimes under the impression that platypus is a masculine Latin second declension noun. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]11:00, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I picked up from somewhere that they come from Vedic chant. I'm afraid that I'm liable to go on repeating that until I investigate it in a way that sticks. You're saying Sanskrit had a smaller range of conjugations, corresponding to only swim and swum without swam? Card Zero (talk)08:05, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Then there's this hypothesis, mostly among Indian nationalists, that Sanskrit is - for all important details - identical to the Proto-Indo-European mother language, but it's generally discarded outside of these circles. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:27, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The article does mention Sanskrit grammarians at the start of the first section, "history of the concept", so it's probably one of those popularizing-versus-inventing things. Card Zero (talk)10:35, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sanskrit had complex verb conjugations, more so than any attested Germanic language, but it did not preserve Indo-European e/o ablaut, due to the well-known sound change of "e" and "o" merging with "a". Just look at Schleicher's fable, where Schleicher's original 1868 version, heavily influenced by Sanskrit, doesn't have "e" or "o", but these exist in all versions produced by later scholars, after linguists realized that Sanskrit wasn't as close to Proto-Indo-European as Schleicher thought it was. AnonMoos (talk) 17:29, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, the non-present forms of the Germanic strong verb represent a conflation of the earlier Indo-European aorist and the Indo-European perfect. Strong verbs as such don't exist outside the Germanic languages (though the Latin perfect is a separate and independent conflation of the IE aorist and perfect), Sanskrit still has separate and distinct aorist and perfect forms (as does ancient Greek)... AnonMoos (talk) 17:42, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, another Classical word which causes problems is "Ignoramus". This is a verb in Latin, and the 1st person plural "-mus" ending here has nothing to do with the 2nd-declension masculine nominative singular "-us" ending. And it's not too clear what the plural of "virus" even would have been in ancient Latin. Whenever the classical plural form is in doubt or would sound odd, the remedy is to apply ordinary English "-(e)s"... AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Remsense -- The modern English system actually gets a lot of use out of its relatively minimal inflection. The third-person singular present "-s" ending distinguishes finite indicative verbs from infinitives in the most common person-number combination, and also distinguishes singular from plural in the third person. In a few cases, it can even distinguish indicative from non-indicative ("I insist that he leave the room"), though not always applied by all speakers. You can look at modern German verb and noun inflections if you're nostalgic about "-en" endings, but I find them rather cumbersome. Dutch has "-en" endings in the written language, but the "n" is usually not pronounced in the spoken language (which is similar to middle English before deletion of word-final schwas). AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly! One of the big things that initially attracted me to Chinese was its almost total lack of inflectional morphology—I like the little ways in which Chinese is closer to English than to other European languages.Remsense ‥ 论04:41, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
According to English Wiktionary, bohr (bohrium) and bor (boron) are homophones in Polish. But can it really be so, for two words in the same field? This link seems to suggest that they are not supposed to be homophones after all, assuming my Polish hasn't gone totally rusty through disuse. :) Double sharp (talk) 11:56, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
According to the Polish Wikipedia article, "the Nomenclature Commission of the Polish Chemical Society recommends pronouncing the 'h' in the word 'bohr' in order to distinguish it from 'bor'." In modern Polish, the letter <h> is pronounced as /x/, which means that "bohr" should be pronounced /bɔxr/, rhyming with "ochr". — Kpalion(talk)07:44, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! After I made the change on English Wiktionary, some further changes were made by others, so that it now gives both the pronunciation with /x/ and the one without it (the sound file provided lacks the /x/). Double sharp (talk) 05:56, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, now I feel very silly for not realising that Chinese was an example of (2), when it is one of my native languages. :) Probably I overlooked it because it does not exactly use the same Latin stems, but cuts them down to one syllable and makes them fit Chinese phonology as needed.
Polish is a highly inflected language, so one of the key criteria taken into account when adapting the names of elements into Polish is to make them easy to assign to specific declension patterns. Polish does have a number of nouns borrowed from Latin with the -um ending, but most of them belong to the "non-inflected" declension pattern, meaning they have the same ending in every single case (e.g., muzeum, gimnazjum, etc.; album is the sole exception). Having the same ending for every case in the names of elements would make it awkward when creating compound names, so I think this is the main reason why Polish nomenclature consistently drops the Latin -ium endings. — Kpalion(talk)08:42, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
re: 2.: Russian semi-consistently does weird things with the Latin and Greek nominative endings, e.g. Dionysus - Дионис 'Dionis', Hephaestus - Гефест 'Ghefest', but: Chronos - Хронос 'Khronos'. Equally for element names, e.g. Aluminium - алюминий 'aljuminij', Palladium - палладий 'palladij'. Sometimes also the Russian seems to be derived from an inflected (Genitive?) form: Venus - Венера 'Venera', Eris - Эрида 'Erida' etc Aecho6Ee (talk) 17:30, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, it seems that the Polish element names were not actually fully standardised until the early 20th century (source, doi:10.15584/slowo.2018.9.09). In Jędrzej Śniadecki's Początki chemii (1816 ed.), some elements are adopted with the Latin suffix (e.g. osmium), some have it removed as in modern Polish (e.g. rod), and some have a different suffix (magnezyan, wapnian, stroncyan – but baryt). So probably we must look a bit later for why the paradigm of borrowing them consistently without the suffix was chosen among the other possibilities that had already been used, not to mention other choices such as tlen vs. kwasoród for O. That one is also pretty interesting; when Jan Oczapowski (1853) proposed the former to replace Śniadecki's choice of the latter, he argued on the basis that not all acids contain oxygen, quoting Śniadecki himself for doubts about that term: W ostatnich latach wykładu chemji sam Jędrzéj Śniadecki czuł dobrze niedokładność takich wyrażeń dowodząc publicznie, „że nie sam tylko kwasoród ma własność kwaszenia, ale są inne ciała rodzące kwasy.” Dla tych samych powodów dzisiejsi nasi chemicy wyrzucają z nauki kwasoród, wodoród, saletroród, wyrazy niewłaściwe i niemogące obok innych ciał w naukowém znaczeniu utrzymać swéj gatunkowéj rodowości. Whereas Russian still uses кислород (likewise a calque of French oxygène).
There's a word that refers to the inclination to buy a book based only on a negative review.
A case in point: Tim O'Brien's novel Tomcat in Love probably would not have interested me, were it not for a bad review. The reviewer referred to O'Brien as "... an insufferably smug and fantastically verbose windbag". That clinched it for me. And I'm glad I bought it, as it was highly enjoyable.
The Streisand effect is sort of related, but that's an active attempt to censor or downplay something, which backfires badly. A book review is not designed to persuade potential readers not to buy it. What's the word I'm looking for? -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]14:24, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yes, you're right. I was relying on my 15++ year old memory. I had collected that quote, and misremembered that it referred to the author. But either way, it's a winning endorsement for me. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]20:41, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've pulled out the actual hard copy review from my "filing system". It's dated 26-27 December 1998, which makes 25 years and counting. Time flies.
It wasn't even remotely a bad review, as it turns out. He ends with "His brilliance is such that it remains as ridiculous as it is sublime".
Now, what's the word for a selective quotation making one (even the selector in his dotage) think the source is the total opposite of that which it is actually is? :) -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]20:55, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No comment on how you mutated a constant? You used to be able to actually do that, or so I'm told, in old versions of FORTRAN, which used call-by-name parameter passing but accepted numerical literals as actual parameters. So if you passed the value 2 to a function, and then within that function set the value of the formal parameter to 5, then after the function returned, any 2 that appeared in your program would be interpreted as 5. --Trovatore (talk) 06:44, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes a reviewer so obviously misses the point that one that you have to buy the book just to prove to yourself what an idiot they are. DuncanHill (talk) 20:27, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
40bus -- As for 1, in Latin, "k" was commonly used only before the letter "a" in a few specific words, especially kalendae "first day of the month". Many centuries later, Old Norse and early German orthographies picked up on the letter "k" (though Old English and Old Irish didn't), but Romance languages were more heavily influenced by Latin in their spelling habits. AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In Middle English, letter K was used before E and I, but usually not before A, O or U. Why? And The fact that English does not alwsys use letter K for /k/ sound is a thing that I don't like; I think that letter C should be used only in unestablished loanwords, foreign proper names and in digraph ⟨ch⟩. --40bus (talk) 05:14, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because the spelling of Middle English was copied pretty directly from Old French.
Also—that's one of the classic silly opinions to have about English orthography, if you'll forgive me. Next time you write a paragraph-length reply, try actually replacing every applicable ⟨c⟩ with either ⟨k⟩ or ⟨s⟩—I personally find the results wickedly unpleasant to read, with the new unforced etymological confusion (e.g. cell versus sell; raking versus racking → rakking...) by itself far outweighing any theoretical benefit. Remsense ‥ 论05:53, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
40bus -- JRR Tolkien had diametrically the opposite opinion to you. In transcribing some Middle Earth languages, he used the letter "c" to represent a [k] sound even before "e" and "i". Of course, when transcribing the language of the Dwarves, he always used "k"... AnonMoos (talk) 17:39, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Though there are a few Quenya names (Melkor, Kementári, Tulkas) that JRRT tended to write with K, FWIW. And there's also some more usages of K in the late linguistic essays, e.g. Findekáno (Fingon) in "The Shibboleth of Fëanor". Possibly JRRT decided that it wasn't worth insisting on C after names like Celeborn got mispronounced too often, but that's just a guess on my part. :) Double sharp (talk) 12:08, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As for 3, in Old English the consonant letter "g" sometimes wrote a [g] stop consonant sound, and sometimes (more often, actually) wrote a voiced velar fricative (as explained in some of my replies to past questions). All the Old English velars were subject to palatalization, and the palatalized voiced velar fricative merged early with the "y" sound (IPA [j]). AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't actually see that in that page. The closest thing I can find is this passage:
per la fricativa palatale sorda /ʃ/, la grafia ‹sc› è attestata in concorrenza con ‹ss›, ‹sci›, ‹si›, ‹sg(i)›, ‹gi› e ‹x› (quest’ultima in carte liguri dei secoli XI-XII)
which is not talking about the sound in question (/dʒ/) but rather the unvoiced palatal fricative /ʃ/, and the 11th-12th century date seems to be talking about representing it by <x> rather than by <gi>, and specifically in Liguria.
A little higher there's mention of
le affricate alveolari sorda, /ʦ/, e sonora, /ʤ/, indicate con ‹z› in grafia d’oggi
which I think must be a misprint; it means /dz/ rather than /dʒ/.
As to the original question, why in the world would Italian ever have used <j> for /dʒ/? The letter j was always just a variant of i. --Trovatore (talk) 20:39, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The point of indefinite pronouns is that they are indefinite, so we definitionally are not specifying a specific car. Remsense ‥ 论20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If we need to combine the concept of that being an otherwise undescribed a non-specific car with the concept of it being my property, we say a car of mine (not a car of me, btw). -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]20:47, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Italian has la mia macchina for "the car of mine", but I believe una mia macchina is disallowed and would be constructed as una macchina di me similar to English. My Italian is pretty rusty, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:30, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As for 5, the English way of saying that is "A car of mine". "My" and "a" are actually both determiners, and it usually isn't possible to have more than one determiner preceding a noun... AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The article een is normally pronounced /ən/. It can be shortened to /ə/ or /n̩/. Dialectally /nə/, /nən/, /ˈe.nə/ and /ˈe.nən/also occur, derived from versions inflected for gender and case. As far as I know, /en/ isn't used for the article; it's the numeral one. This is also spelled een, but in positions where both could occur the numeral is spelled één.
Overall, it's relatively uncommon, although there are still quite a few examples. Many of the languages which seem to have both in some capacity are Turkic, as per the Common Turkic alphabet, but even there sometimes it's unclear:
One may hear that 'a' in 'lay', and it is certainly possible to imagine it from some English speaker in 'land' (lay-nd), although perhaps very unstressed. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:12, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the 1987 movie The Last Emperor (which is mostly unrelentingly grim) there's a little moment of comedy. Instead of asking "Where are you from?", the 15 year old Puyi asks Johnston "Where are your ancestors buried?", and Johnston replies, "My ancestors are buried in Scot-land, your Majesty", with /skɔtlænd/ a spondee of sorts.--Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 02:27, 31 August 2024 (UTC) J'adoube. Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 09:19, 31 August 2024 (UTC),[reply]
If you would pronounce it like "five to eighth", you should write "5–8th". If, however, you'd say "fifth to eighth" (as I would), you should write "5th–8th". --Lambiam23:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just struck me what an odd expression this is. The "were" appears to be the preterite subjunctive (or irrealis) but what is the rationale? Something like "as though it were the way I'm speaking"?
But that isn't what it seems to mean. It means something more like "this is possibly a slightly imprecise figure of speech, or maybe a deliberately provocative way of putting my point". --Trovatore (talk) 06:22, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps the original meaning was more about how something appeared to be, while knowing it was mere appearance. I can imagine how "He looked as if he were a ghost" can turn into "He was, as it were, a ghost". (Just guessing.) --Lambiam07:47, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The comparative sense of "as it were" is frequently used in the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries:
Like as a lion that is greedy of his prey: and as it were a lion's whelp, lurking in secret places. (Psalm 17, v. 12, BCP)
And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia...Book of Revelation, ch. 6 v. 9, KJV
Especially the latter fits well with the as if meaning: John the Divine reports that what he heard sounded as if a great multitude were saying, Alleluia. --Lambiam23:04, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've always thought of it as a fossilised phrase, particularly: "preserving of ancient linguistic features which have lost their grammatical functions in language". Vanishingly few users would even have heard of the preterite, let alone know what it means, so they use this expression mainly because others of their ilk have done so. The meaning comes not from the grammar or its deep etymology but from its more recent usage.
Preterite is really just a pretentious way of saying past. A lot of people know the past subjunctive for counterfactuals ("If I were a rich man"). Our English subjunctive article seems to be limited to the present subjunctive for some reason. I tried raising the issue at some point but couldn't get much traction. I might marshal up my sources and try again someday, but I suspect there may be people who hang around there who would push back, so it would have to be when I'm ready to deal with that. --Trovatore (talk) 20:00, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe the musicians compose an appropriate music, for the lexical tones of the given text to be kept under the appropriate music? If this is the case, then translating a given text from another language into a tonal language, while keeping the original music, won't be an easy task, will it?
It will probably be a bit analogous to the task of translating a given poem from another language into English, while keeping the rhymes, right?
In my experience of listening to far too much Chinese pop music tones are ignored. I can think of a few reasons for this. The main one is the challenge of combining a modern tune with the tones of speech. Many songs are intended for overseas markets where the tones would make no sense. In particular Chinese pop songs are often sung in different varieties of Chinese (so Mandarin songs are sung in Cantonese and vice versa), where the tones are totally different.
Here [29] is an academic article studying the differences in tone realization in singing in Mandarin and Cantonese. In modern-style Mandarin singing, as 2A04.* above pointed out, the tones are generally ignored, but Cantonese seems to have a pattern where some correspondence between musical melodic contours and linguistic tone is expected. Fut.Perf.☼11:48, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One more thought. Chinese pop songs almost always have subtitles. So any time you can't follow what's being sung including due to tones not being clear you can read what's being sung. It also helps speakers of other varieties of Chinese follow along.
Subtitles are widely used in Chinese video media, so in films and TV series. This means they can be sold in other markets where people speak other varieties of Chinese, as Written Chinese is the same independent of the variety of spoken Chinese. Or at least it's close enough that people can easily follow along.
For songs people want to not just follow along but also sing along, in e.g. Karaoke. There the small differences in the written language become important, and have to be dealt with. E.g. 不 is a common character "bu" which means "not" in Mandarin. But it's not used in Cantonese, which forms negatives in different ways. But if 不 appears in a Mandarin song which is sung in Cantonese the character is normally sung, as "bat", even though that then makes no sense in Cantonese. --2A04:4A43:907F:F6B6:C44D:CDCA:A3DE:F694 (talk) 12:33, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Moreover, it seems to be qualitatively the same as with any other language: it's telling that it's the exception rather than the rule for one to "know all the words" to a given song, right? It's always going to impact lexical comprehension, and the medium doesn't really require it as such. Remsense ‥ 论12:37, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Quite so. I may enjoy the music of David Bowie; the words and tune together make the song, but meaning is irrelevant, or secondary at best, witness mondegreens. "Chain chain chain/ Ouvrez le chien" doesn't need to mean anything to be memorable. Doug butler (talk) 13:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It really does depend on factors at every level (position in the meter, genre, penmanship...), including whether the discrepancies Genius would consider correct are actually mondegreens of my own perfect version. Remsense ‥ 论14:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like it's often ignored due to artistic license. I guess it could be somewhat compared to Eminem's rapping, where the intonation often is all over the place. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:32, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's a similar issue really even in Western music. It's very challenging to sing falling stress when the pitch rises. The line placida è l'onda, from "Santa Lucia", I find almost impossible to sing without stressing the -ci- syllable. --Trovatore (talk) 17:56, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Without disagreeing with all of the above, it may be useful to understand that Chinese tones are not really musical, but rather a rising (like asking a question: "is it?"), falling (e.g. a sharp command: "STOP!") or a combination thereof. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 23:22, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I clicked on all the language links for our article, French, Spanish, Russian, Finnish etc. They all say that it's peculiar to the English language amd originated in London. Alansplodge (talk) 17:23, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In Corvuso, Minnesota the claim is made that that name comes from a word that means "Gathering place for crows".
I looked for sources, and the Meeker County museum has this claim (in the sectiontitle) on its website.
There are and were many "Indian" languages and claims like this are worth doublechecking.
I suspect it derives from the nearby Crow River, which was called Khaŋǧí Šúŋ Watpá ("The Large Wing-feather of the Crow River") in the Dakota language.
Crows 💯 have regular meeting spots, as anyone who has ever lived near a regular crow meeting spot can attest. You might be thinking of ravens, which are more solitary. Folly Mox (talk) 21:32, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, our raven article has it that [t]here is no consistent distinction between crows and ravens; the two names are assigned to different species chiefly based on their size. Still, it could be that bigger corvids tend to be more solitary; that's well outside my range of knowledge on the subject. --Trovatore (talk) 01:22, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ User:Polygnotus, re your "I doubt crows have regular meeting spots unless there is a large quantity of food there":
This is really synchronistic. For about 3 years in my youth, my family and I lived in the city of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. The name was taken from the local indigenous Wiradjuri language, and was thought to mean "place of many crows" (since "wagga" means crow). The foundation plaque on the local Catholic church, St Michael's, is written in Latin, and includes the word "Corvopolitanus", meaning "city of crows". From the article: "Crows are considered a symbol of the city of Wagga Wagga, appearing in the council's logo, coat of arms, and throughout branding of local businesses, as well as in public artwork."
Only because of your question did I check out the Wagga Wagga article for some detail, fixed some vandalism, and discovered this: "Since 2019, the Wagga Wagga City Council has recognised this meaning as incorrect, instead adopting "many dances and celebrations." My late Dad was the City Engineer with the Council; he'd be turning in his grave now. I hope he's not reading Celestial Wikipedia. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]17:45, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just looked up the article and saw that Wagga Wagga "straddles the Murrumbidgee River". Good luck reading that without hearing in your head
...who in the Murrumbidgee wilds had stalked the Kangaroo/and killed the Cassowary on the plains of Timbuctoo
"That same farm"? Hrafn was (and is) a common Nordic personal name as well as meaning 'raven'. Don't you think it possible that there were two Viking/Danish farmers living several tens of miles apart, both called Hrafn? Or that one or both of the farms had a prominent population of ravens so was/were named after them?
Berlin is currently assumed to have gotten its name from a Slavic word for swamp, yet, the popular folk etymology of "Bärlein" (small bear) has led to a bear symbol still being widely adopted. Outside of Indo-European languages, I think pluralization of nouns by reduplication actually is fairly common. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:32, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Humph! One of my bugbears is made-up stories which purport to explain particular phrases (eg "square meal", "piss poor", "stony broke"). One thing that many of them have in common is that the era is wrong - usually the phrase is not recorded till centuries after the circumstances or events in the story, or occasionally it's the other way round and the phrase is older than the time of the story. Another common theme is that they provide a context in which a (to me) obvious metaphor is given a literal origin. In my view this amounts to an assumption that "people in the past had no imagination", which is a diminution of people-not-like-us that also underlies racism. ColinFine (talk) 17:44, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ User:ColinFine: Various people over the years have told me that "wog" is an acronym for "wily Oriental gentleman". When I doubt their story, they insist it's true. They can never give any evidence for it, other than "I've always been told that" (subtext: "therefore it must be true, and you can depend on it, and I won't be persuaded otherwise"). Then there's "fuck", which, so these etymological geniuses inform me, came from either "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" or "Fornication Under Consent of the King". Funny that it has two sources. The opposing camps should hold a pitched battle and settle it with blood and iron. Yes, that's the proper way these scholarly investigations usually take place. (I heard that somewhere, so it must be true.) -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]06:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
According to that article, "wog" comes from "golliwog", a type of doll which keeps causing controversies in the U.K., but which most people in the U.S. have never heard of... AnonMoos (talk) 15:47, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the worst peddlars of false etymologies are the guides employed on HMS Victory, who by the end of a tour, will have convinced every visitor that almost all the proverbs and idioms in the English language have their origin in Nelson's sailing ships. Alansplodge (talk) 12:03, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One of my favourite tours was at Berkeley Castle, where the guide would say "The story in this room is X, but the Castle Archivist says Y", giving you both options.
I'm a tour guide at two properties: I only tell two stories about the origins of words, and both I have researched and verified. ColinFine (talk) 17:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if that is a misunderstanding of the word Bar: that article says Writing of Scots heraldry in English, Nisbet themself uses the term ‘bar’ for the bend sinister. ColinFine (talk) 22:43, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is some terminological confusion underlying all this. In British heraldry (which uses Anglo-French vocabulary), a bar is a horizontal band that can be neither dexter nor sinister. The bend, being diagonal, can be either, and the bend sinister was often used in Europe (including Britain) as a signifier of illegitimate royal descent (and thus of noble distinction). However, in French heraldry, a bend is called a barre, and with the close connection between Scotland and France promoting noble bilingualism, the bend particularly in Scotland (and probably elsewhere) was sometimes called a bar(re), leading to the anglophonically impossible "bar sinister". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 23:13, 30 August 2024 (UTC).[reply]
The Beefeaters at the Tower of London are notorious for amusing themselves by misleading gullible tourists. One confessed to telling visitors that he could open the bascules of Tower Bridge at any time, because he was a friend of the bridge operator. Having looked up the published times for the bridge openings, he would vigorously wave in the right direction at the appropriate moment and hey presto! Alansplodge (talk) 11:15, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was recently at a party where there was a Nintendo Switch game being played. The idea was that there were two teams of two players each: The "Salad Fork Team" and the "Dessert Spoon Team". The teams took turns playing. On a team's turn, both players had to stand up and direct the game events with body movements. The thing is, only one player's movements actually affected the game, and the opposing team had to guess which player it was.
Hi! Someone knows name of the french pop song playing at the parade, when Congo and some other passing by the camera? // Zquid (talk) 18:57, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Only from swedish television, and I don't know if you can watch it outside Sweden. But here i is: [30]. 44 min from the start - we see athletes from China, (then Cyprus, Colombia, Congo...) and the song starts. // Zquid (talk) 18:09, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Mangal Lakshmi is fiction. It is not real. Fiction is always incomplete. This means that if your question is not answered within that fiction (I can't bothered to try to comprehend the wall of text in that article), there is no answer. Shantavira|feed me12:23, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not simply because it's fiction, but because it's a soap opera, and has only been running for six months, and isn't in English, so deep literary criticism of its storyline would probably be hard to find (though I must admit I haven't tried). In contrast, if the question was "why does Macbeth so unhesitatingly murder Duncan's servants right after his great trepidation about murdering Duncan," I could find references (absent from the article). Card Zero (talk)15:41, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm using Apple TV+ in the United States for this example, but I think this refers to any subscription service. I read numbers between 6% and 11% of U.S. households have Apple TV+ subscriptions. What is the criteria? What are they considering a "household"? Thinking of some extremes... If a prison gets Apple TV+ subscription for the inmate common room, does that count as one houseold? If four people in a house each get subscriptions because they are just roommates and don't share services, is that one household or four households? I'm trying to increase the context around the statistics to make sense of it. If I threw a rock into a crowd, what is the probability that the person I hit would have an Apply TV+ subscription? Honestly, I've never met anyone with an Apple TV+ subscription. Even to this day, if I mention something from Ted Lasso, I always get blank stares because nobody I've ever met has heard of the show. But, if was a Netflix show, everyone knows about it. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 13:40, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably they simply count each subscription as representing a household. I don't see how else they would determine the numbers. In any case "household" is a very vague term. They simply think it sounds better for marketing than "people". Shantavira|feed me13:54, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm looking for the name of a B&W murder mystery movie that I saw on cable back in the 90s (probably AMC) but I don't remember the names of any of the actors and only the vague outline of the plot. I remember the channel host referring to the female lead as "a daffy Nancy Drew" and apparently having her sing three songs was a standard feature of her films. As I remember it, the girl was arriving by train to a city and witnesses a murder in a building alongside the tracks. She keeps pestering a novelist for help and a pair of bloodstained slippers was a key clue. The movie took place around Christmas time, so one song was some kind of Christmas carol; the other two songs took place in a nightclub. For the ending, some guy took the girl to a warehouse, the girl ran off with the guy's brother, thinking that he was the murderer. Only for the other brother to turn out to actually be the murderer. The first brother managed to save the girl, the novelist burst in to mess things up, then the police arrived to save everyone. 76.7.206.70 (talk) 23:54, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Today I tried to get into genome.ch.bbc.co.uk but the website says it's now expired and now I can’t get into the website to research the information I'm looking for. If you guys know where I can find the information about these programs from Genome on a different website please let me know. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 10:14, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like the website's security certificate expired yesterday. I would expect this to be fixed/updated quite soon. The content is all still there (my browser allows me to continue past the warning message to the website; I'm not sure if all browsers allow this.) Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!)10:24, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Near the end of the film "Becoming Jane" (2007) the eponymous Jane Austen attends a gathering to hear an operatic aria sung by a soprano credited as Lynda Lee. Her performance is lovely. Can someone tell me the name or source of the aria? Philvoids (talk) 16:00, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I was about to fall asleep, I felt as thought I tripped on something despite laying down on my bed. I even felt a hard surface below my feet. What is that? TWOrantulaTM (enter the web) 15:09, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly what it is. Unlike other people, I often seek these out, because if I can facilitate a hypnic jerk, it somehow allows me to enter a deeper state of sleep. Obviously, this is not for everyone, as most people are fearful and anxious when it comes to the feeling and try to avoid it. But I think, in my case, it helps me enter into deeper, more restful sleep states. Viriditas (talk) 20:23, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And a subset of the above, the Night hag phenomenon, something I've experienced a few times, where it seems as if something is sitting on your chest and strangling you. Fortunately, I knew about it before experiencing it, so didn't think it was really supernatural once I'd woken, and recognised it immediately on further occurrances.
I've also repeatly felt as if someone was sitting on the bed next to me, even bouncing up and down on one occasion, the feeling of my air mattress deflating (it hadn't), and cats jumping onto the bed and laying down against me – a regular actual experience in a previous house, but here occuring in a house with none. The mind and body can do funny things! I like to think of them as free entertainment. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 18:05, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. If you go to the U.S. Electoral College faithless elector page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector), you can see that Texas is also colored light green. The light green stands, for if I am not mistaken, the invalidity of the vote without a possible fine. But it is my understanding that Texas does not (at least not yet) have a law on possible faithless electors, but I could be wrong. Who's right? Thank you very much. 5.94.86.20 (talk) 15:33, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are too many qualifiers there for this question to have any well-defined answer rather than just a conversation starter:
institutionalized
teaching
material
statue
literally (not representationally)
spiritual
god
At its core, your question seems to be interested in the most direct ways that established religious systems have attempted to bridge the material–spiritual divide, right?Remsense ‥ 论01:13, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Correct. This is limited to "folk" religion, which I doubt would be considered religion in other countries. It would be considered folklore. It is not limited to cities. In rural areas, it is common to have a statue on the corner of a lot that is considered a "god" that looks over the lot. I seriously doubt anyone truly believes that a little statue is casting magic over the land in exchange for gifts. But, it is common and if you don't do it, you are weird. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 14:27, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tokorozawa Doll Memorial Celebration: It describes how a shinto temple offers the Ningyo Kuyosai ceremony to dispose of used dolls, traditional Japanese or Disney: To the left is a makeshift counter and there you can any hand in any doll you want. The dolls will be noted and you will receive a paper slip containing the name of your doll. The soul of the doll thus is transferred to the paper slip which you can place into a wooden box at the pyre. Burning the slip with your doll's name on it will do the same service as ceremonially burning the doll itself.[...] while all the Hello Kitty, Teddy Bear, Snoopy and so on will get unceremoniously dumped into a Tokorozawa city garbage container out of sight. It doesn't matter. By now, the paper slip has taken over the soul of the doll. It will go into the fire and the soul of the doll will thus go to heaven no matter its origin.
Yes, likely quite a few. See animism. For example, the extant Jewish, Christian, and Islamic proscriptions against idols are popularly believed to be based on their reactionary attitudes to pluralistic religious beliefs, in particular, to animist, pagan belief systems, where the idols, symbols, and in many cases plants and even animals take on literal god-like manifestations. You could start by looking at Hawaiian religion as one of many examples. See aumakua. Viriditas (talk) 00:20, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not objecting, but I notice terms like "takes on physical forms", "spirit vehicles", and "manifest". What I mean is, unsurprisingly, no religion seems to have gods that can be destroyed by destroying the god-object. Card Zero (talk)03:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Destroyed for who?", I suppose would be an operative question. In a sense, the "institutionalized" and "materially-contingent" criteria are at odds with one another—the point of corporations (in the broadest sense) is that they're immortal—it doesn't make organizational sense to treat your god–statue the same way once you've got a church to run and a career to build, so to speak. Dunno if that makes sense. Remsense ‥ 论04:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For art, any art, to be strictlyrepresentational is very unusual in the history of cultures of the world, and it is a comparatively recent and long evolution in (some, mainstream) European art. So your premise, that a statue of a god should by default be expected to solely be a representation of a god, would seem silly on its face to just about everyone in the world for most of history. (Japan as mentioned has a lot of good examples since it's so common in Western media -- other art beyond crafts that are strongly non-representational include suiseki and kabuki.) SamuelRiv (talk) 15:12, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The film Land of the Pharaohs (1955) imagines ancient Egyptian religion where "There's a marvelous moment when the dead are being taken away from battle in their coffins, and someone says, "Let us hear the gods of Egypt speak." The camera pans over to one of the statues of the gods, and it talks. That's it-the statue talks!" - Martin ScorsesePhilvoids (talk) 12:05, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You neglected to mention the film was made by Howard Hawks, one of the greatest film directors of all time, and whose style was light years ahead of its time and is still relevant today. Whenever I see the name Howard Hawks, I imagine myself doing a deep Japanese bow. It's been 47 years since Hawks died and people like myself still revere him, that's how influential he was. Viriditas (talk) 20:53, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know you're joking of course—I think the different ways denominations understand what transpires in the Eucharist to be a great microcosm of the whole history: maybe I'm too undiscerning, but I feel equally receptive to the Catholic "well-defined Aristotelian mystery", the Lutheran "don't ask us how but we believe him when he says it", to the Orthodox "something definite happens but we're not sure what Greek word to use for it" to the Calvinist "definitely just a metaphor" Remsense ‥ 论09:19, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's an extended discussion over at origin of the Eucharist, which I find to be well written and informative. But to save you some trouble: nobody anywhere can make sense of the how and why of sacramental bread as it's deemed a mystery. Viriditas (talk) 09:19, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"He was talking on the phone, seated at his rather motley-looking desk, filled with family portraits (including me, at the precise moment of receiving a consecrated host with the expression of an expectant cannibal on my face) … " (Pablo Tusset, The Best Thing That Can Happen to a Croissant). -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]18:09, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would that I could see that photograph; I've always wondered about the appearance of the facial expression of an expectant cannibal. --Lambiam22:03, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my part of the world (for the purposes here, that might mean "Ontario", or "Western World", I dunno) there are a limited number of smells/tastes that are considered "fresh" and they have fairly well circumscribed areas where they're employed: mint, which is used to freshen breath (toothpaste/gum/candy); pine scent (we don't really have an appropriate article), which gets used for cars and furniture; and lemon, which gets used for furniture and room deodorization. There's a pretty limited number of others in the group: cinnamon sometimes gets used for breath freshening, some formulas use orange oil rather than lemon oil, that kind of thing. But we don't, broadly speaking, make use of pine toothpaste or mint room deodorizers, etc.
Or am I wrong and that's just the way things are near me? Our article on mint says that it was previously used as a room deodorizer, back when dirt floors were more common. I've seen cinnamon toothpaste and breath fresheners, but they're clearly a tiny minority compared to mint - are there parts of the world where that's reversed? Are there places where my list above would be completely inaccurate? Matt Deres (talk) 14:35, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Smell is a social phenomenon, invested with particular meanings and values by different cultures." That's the opening line of Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. I have yet to find the part where it discusses which scents in which part of the world mean "toothpaste" as opposed to "detergent". Card Zero (talk)06:26, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I don't have a specific answer, one thing to bear in mind is that's it's likely in quite a few places, such products were either imported when they were first introduced, or at least produced by people or companies from what we'd now call the Western world. Some of the places would be colonies of such, and even when they weren't they were often heavily involved in earlier industrialisation. And even when this wasn't the case, it's quite likely they were at least heavily influenced by and relied on stuff from there, e.g. their synthetic aromas. For example, AFAIK, the infamous Darlie toothpaste generally has mint flavours which I suspect might hark from their early days. It was a bit difficult to find much about the founders in English (it's said to originate in Shanghai from the Niem family [32] but their details are a bit unclear) but from machine translations of the Chinese article zh:DARLIE好來 it seems the founders were 严柏林 and 严中立 with Niem being a perhaps slightly unusual transliteration of Yan (surname 严). The controversial name and marketing itself is enough to show some influence from what's now the Western world, but it seems they and their employees came from zh:中国化学工业社 (Sinochem) who were possibly one of the early brands of local toothpaste in China (which our Darlie article suggests were mint flavoured). The machine translation of our article on Sinochem suggests they had problems in the early days due to a flood of foreign products. Of course I'm not totally sure whether there was a reason for mint to be associated with such things in what's now the Western world before it happened anyway. Nil Einne (talk) 22:51, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One of the most interesting things about menthol is how large a role it plays in Filipino and Latino folk remedies. See Vicks VapoRub where it is described as "a cultural touchstone among Hispanic and Latino Americans", in particular. Regarding Filipino culture, Gabbi Constantino writes: "It is a cultural trait that transcends generations, somehow marrying medical science and our propensity for anting-anting (talisman or amulet), sometimes on the same level as stereotyped eccentricities ('Don’t sleep when your hair is wet') or brow-furrowing dogma ('Watching horror movies will invite demons into you!'). Say, for example, the idea of cure-alls. Just as Nia Vardalos' big Greek family has learne]]d to trust Windex, many Filipinos have depended on a limited number of products (perhaps due to economics or convenience) to get through almost whatever ails us. Got a cough? Slather Vicks on your chest. Cough has morphed into a full-blown flu? Just put more Vicks. The comedian Jo Koy's mother Josie was one such believer. 'My mom never took us to the doctor. My mom raised us like we were still in the Philippines,' he joked in his Lights Out Netflix special. 'There was one time I thought I had pneumonia, I go 'Mom, I think I have pneumonia.' She goes, 'I’ll put extra Vicks in your body, Joseph. Just rub it everywhere, Joseph. Rub it on the bottom of the foot, then put a sock on the foot. And the Pneumonia will come out of the foot, Joseph,' mentioning a favorite go-to move of Fillipino moms to the howls of the Fil-American crowd."[33]Viriditas (talk) 22:39, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Lavender was widely used to deoderise rooms, especially wardrobes and clothes drawers. It is a very common garden plant in Britain, so you could just pick a bunch and hang it where needed. Somewhat out of fashion, as the scent of lavender is now commonly associated with elderly ladies. Alansplodge (talk) 11:23, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, of course. Witness the furore about the speculation about the colour of the then-unborn child of Meghan and Harry. (Btw, for the life of me I still can't understand what that issue was all about. Harry is white, and Meghan has half-African ancestry, so zillions of people were already wondering about and talking about this very question. But for a member of the Royal Family to voice such a thought - shock! horror! How dare they! I have a lot of respect for Oprah, but she seemed to be the main culprit in fanning the flames of this confected outrage.)
I remember my black uncle and white aunt wondering about the colour of their unborn children. And tbh I didn't realise Meghan was black until I was told. Hey ho. DuncanHill (talk) 20:27, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can't keep up with what's deemed to be offensive today that wasn't offensive yesterday. Can anyone make a submission to the committee that makes these decisions? Is there any formal appeals process? We have this ridiculous cultural situation now where people feel constrained to avoid certain words because of their alleged innate offensiveness. I remember when "negro" was widely used by the African-American community; Martin Luther King Jr. used it all the time, and he wasn't about offending his own people. It was the standard expression, and it wasn't offensive, innately or in any other way. But somehow its very essence has magically changed, and now it's innately offensive. As for the N-word, we can't even say the word that "N-word" represents, not even in some theoretical context where nobody is using it in reference to anybody else.
Get this: there is no such thing as a word that is inherently offensive. Some people get offended by certain words, while others don't have that experience of those exact same words.
The other aspect of the cultural thing is that for someone to be offended by something someone else says has become a fate worse than death, so we must all weave our way gingerly through the cultural and linguistic minefield we've created, to ensure that never happens. People are dying in wars and famines everywhere, kids are getting massacred in schools every day, DJT was elected president - there's no end of these disasters. How come people don't get mightily offended by any of that; offended enough to actually do something to change them? I guess that all seems too hard, so we stick to what we can manage (whether we should manage them seems never to be considered). We've become exactly like the Nazi book-burners and the Index of Prohibited Books, except we're all to some degree complicit in creating these Regimes of Fear and then making sure we keep ourselves under own thumbs. Neat trick that: self-repression in an age where self-expression is lauded as the sine qua non of what human life is all about. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]22:08, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, certainly. The trouble is, the things we're enjoined to be considerate about, and the list of Words We Must Not Use, grow longer every day. Ultimately, we might end up with a wordless language. (something to brush up on while eating foodless sandwiches). -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]02:23, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Following Human skin color § Melanin and genes and later sections, the genes that determine the amount of melanin produced (and other determiners of skin color) are somewhat scattered around the world, and combine with partial dominance. Assuming you're using a U.S.-based concept of race and color (and if I understand the articles correctly) one can have two light-skinned Europeans who carries a number of such alleles mate, and if the carried alleles all make it to the embryo, then the child can have significantly darker skin than both parents. SamuelRiv (talk) 16:35, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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Remsense ‥ 论 14:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
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