Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2008 December 21

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December 21

Is there such a thing as a bus/train hybrid?

I couldn't have been the first one to think of this. Imagine the time saved- Take road to crossing, jump on tracks, beeline to next town, take backroad shortcut, hop on tracks again. Town billboard touts Time saved. Trus to New York city! Faster than Amtrak. At Trus,- we earn your trust!.--THE WORLD'S MOST CURIOUS MAN (talk) 00:50, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

See Dual-mode bus, Trolleybus, and Tram. The first is probably exactly what you are talking about, but Trams (which run on city streets, often between traffic lanes) could be thought of as a hybrid bus/train, as could a Trolleybus, which is like a Tram, but not tied to tracks. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 01:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

No, Jayron, a dual-mode bus does not mean it can run on tracks. This question is asking about a road-rail bus. As you see at that link, they have been tried, but not with any success. The engineering requirements for a good bus and a good train are just too different. (Similarly with road vehicles that turn into boats or into airplanes. Okay, DUKWs have found a niche role as tour vehicles, but it's a very limited niche.) --Anonymous, 03:34 UTC, December 21, 2008.

In Adelaide they have a bus which leaves the road and goes onto its own guided trackway, its called the O-Bahn Busway. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.165.239.250 (talk) 04:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

• Again, this does not run on railway tracks. --Anon, 21:51 UTC, December 21, 2008.

The one I know is developed by Hokkaido Railway Company in Japan. They are working toward the practical use. Watch this. Oda Mari (talk) 07:59, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

It might work in fairly isolated communities where trains are infrequent, but on more tightly controlled lines it would never work. However, making a bus and a train can work - for instance the British Rail Class 143 is built on a bus chassis. -mattbuck (Talk) 01:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

goats milk

waht would cause yeast in goats milk and how can i fix the problem —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.179.180.71 (talk) 01:22, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeast is floating around in the air all around you; it will alight on foods, and if it finds a friendly medium it will grow and multiply all on its own. You could perhaps pasteurize it... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 01:32, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

And any particular goat teat may have a yeast infection. If so, I suggest not drinking such milk until the goat is treated and healthy. I don't know that the yeast itself would be a prob, though, it's opportunistic infections that worry me. StuRat (talk) 14:55, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Infections of goat mammaries are noticeably smelly and painful. Udderly disgusting. Polypipe Wrangler (talk) 11:03, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Where did the word "gozangas" and another crude term originate?

What is the origin of the phrases "wham bam, thank you maam" and "gozangas"? As in "Hey, checkowtdat brawd wit da big gozangas!" and "with him, it's wham, bam, thank you maam!" These sound kind of silly and raunchy at the same time so I suspect one of those old WWII type burlesque shows.Sunburned Baby (talk) 03:50, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

And since we're on the subject, does anyone know where the word "broad" came from?Sunburned Baby (talk) 17:59, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a bastardized version of either congas or maracas. The second phrase sounds a bit "Island pidgin". WWII seems a bit too far back IMHO. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 08:38, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

To me, WWII doesn't seem far enough back for "Wham, bam, thank you ma'am"; I'd be surprised if it weren't older than that. (Why, didn't the twelfth-century women refer to Maimonides as "Rambam, thank you ma'am"? ;-)) Deor (talk) 00:33, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, I suppose I'll have to take that back (the skepticism, not the parenthetical joke); the OP's guess of a WWII origin may well be correct, at least according to the dictionary cited in this posting. Deor (talk) 05:48, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and this book dates gazongas—note the spelling, which seems to be much more common than yours—to 1978, although this one dates it to the 1960s. As this one points out, it seems to be one in an extensive series of terms that ultimately derive from bosom. Deor (talk) 06:13, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

St.Paul

How many times St.Paul tell about his conversion in the Book of Acts ? THANKYOU —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.252.237 (talk) 06:05, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

This is the FIFTH "St.Paul" question in the last few days! Maybe it's time to stop and read the book? SteveBaker (talk) 06:31, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Excuse sir , i have read the book —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.252.237 (talk) 06:53, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you just count how many times then? Adam Bishop (talk) 07:40, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

As I said in answer to your previous question, the Road to Damascus story appears three times in Acts, once when it happens, and twice more when Paul tells about it. The details are different each time. Paul, himself, never wrote about any such experience in the epistles. B00P (talk) 09:41, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

That would be because the Bible is a rambling incoherent mess...as is obvious to anyone who attempts to actually read it from cover to cover as I once did. It does not appear to contain historical truth - so you're really just asking what was in the minds of the original authors and of the hundreds of subsequent amenders and tinkerers with the book. SteveBaker (talk) 22:09, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

It rambles because its written by several dozen authors over the course of a thousand years. Go to your library, take 70 random books off of a few shelves, and read them all. You don't expect a consistant narrative there, do ya? The Bible was compiled to be in roughly chronological order, but there is not the expectation for it to be a cohesive story. Outside of the Pentateuch (which is likely written by dozens of authors and compiled over hundreds of years itself) each individual book is rather coherant and self-consistant. Even in the Pentatauch, there are coherant stories that have a beginning, middle, and end, but they don't quite match up to the beginnings and ends of the books. Remember, the Bible is not a story, its an Anthology. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 02:57, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

If you pick 70 random books on different topics - sure you get a mess. But if you take 70 random books on Quantum Theory - or 70 books about the Watergate Affair - then I expect a fairly consistent story with a reasonable degree of correlation on the basic facts. The bible can't even get straight such rather fundamental things as the 10 Commandments! You'd really think that the one time God told the world what the actual RULES were - carved them on actual stone tablets - that the people who wrote about it afterwards would have taken just the teensiest bit of effort to get the wording straight. But no - there are at least three different versions (wildly different actually) of such a fundamental mission statement - not just different wording - totally different commandments! If the book (as it and it's proponents claim) is 'The One True Book' - then it is indeed a horrible mess - even on very basic factual matters.

At any rate - for our OP, when you've read all three versions of the story about the Road to Damazcus - you've read all there is to be said on the matter. The inconsistencies are...inconsistancies...and that's because this is mostly a work of fiction written by a bunch of different people with different agenda's to push. If you've read it from cover to cover without preconceptions (as I have) then such 'enlightenment' as you're likely to get (zero, IMHO) has already been gotten - and asking a bunch of people on the Internet for more information is a road to nowhere because they have no sources of information that you don't already have in that book. It's like asking what happened to Harry Potter on his 50th birthday - if J.K.Rowling didn't write about it then that information does not and cannot ever exist. Worse still, the authors of the Bible have all been dead for a very long time...and what they wrote has been messed about with considerably since then (evidence the number of different versions of the Bible over the years). SteveBaker (talk) 15:21, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

"The inconsistencies are...inconsistancies..." - very good, Steve. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but I might turn it into a handy quote ("At the end of the day, inconsistencies are just that - inconsistancies"). Thanks. -- JackofOz (talk) 19:35, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Surprisingly - that one was intentional! Too many people see an inconsistancy and imagine something deeper going on - building huge wobbly conspiracy theories (or even entire religions) on something that was just an author making a mistake in a work of fiction. Just head out to any Star Trek convention and you'll be amazed at the amount of time spent trying to see deeper meaning in outright inconsistancy on the part of an author. SteveBaker (talk) 22:14, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Someone slap me if I ever use the form X is just that: X. —Tamfang (talk) 17:29, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Help

The battleship in the forground of the picture File:USS Iowa (BB-61) Preps.jpg is in fact Indiana and not Iowa. How do I fix this without getting reverted? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.31.26.179 (talk) 07:28, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Start by providing a source for your claim. Algebraist 08:17, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Its an observational thing, you need to look carefully at the bridge designs for both classes for the difference to show. Additionally, the text of the image caption suggests that the battleship Iowa is in fact in the background and not the foreground. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.31.26.179 (talk) 08:22, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I take it the Indiana is meant to be in the background (captioned left to right), and here navy archives[1] state the same as the description in the file, "The Indiana (BB-58) & Iowa (BB-61) underway" then goes on to describe the Iowa. Do you have information to contradict this? It would help to have references or information that supports your view. Just saying "observation" is vague. Julia Rossi (talk) 08:26, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

No, Indiana is meant to be in the foreground, Iowa is supposed to be in the background. The description of the Iowa would be impossible to make from the location of the photographer: the paint scheme which is discussed can only be seen on the background ship, not the foreground, thus the caption in the Iowa article is incorrect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.72.221.167 (talk) 03:21, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I take it then, that you feel the navy has the wrong ship on their Iowa page. Will you take your concerns to the talk page of the USS Iowa (BB-61) article? Julia Rossi (talk) 06:09, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

St.Paul

In the first missionary journey of st.paul who were the two fellow workers with him? I got one fellow worker that is barnabas but i didn't get the other. I read the bible but i couldn't find the other . Please help me . THANKYOU —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.253.102 (talk) 10:14, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Titus ((Galatians 2:1–10). Available in the article, Saint Paul. Julia Rossi (talk) 10:41, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Are you right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.250.113 (talk) 11:10, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

About the second visit, not the first. This is not my thing, so read the article, especially that table with loads of links for you to follow. I stop short after command+F "Barnabas and" – Julia Rossi (talk) 11:25, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

i think it is not titus , it may be john mark —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.241.214 (talk) 15:04, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Why would the person post if she didn't think she was right? And, if you think it was John Mark, why are you asking us who it was?

Now, I'll admit to having a degree so I am probably further along with my memory, but John Mark accompanied them on one journey, and he got cold feet and went AWOL. This caused a split between Paul and Barnabas, the latter thinking that they could still use him. (And, later, in his last days, Paul includes Mark in those he wants to see, as he is "profitable for the ministry," so apparently the lad did grow up quite a bit later.)

Reasoning logically, Paul made 2 with Barnabas, and 2 with Silas, IIRC. Okay, so John Mark could only have fled on one of those, because the split was right after that. Therefore, it was Titus on the first, John Mark on the second. And, Silas on the 3rd and 4th.Somebody or his brother (talk) 17:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Look - this is the SIXTH "St Paul" question this week. All of the information that exists about this person (who in all likelyhood is fictional anyway) exists in the pages of one book. Our OP claims to have read that book. That being the case - he/she is now in possession of all of the information there is to be had on the subject. If there are any remaining questions - then they cannot be answered because they are entirely in the minds of some long-dead authors. We are edging into the realms of 'trolling' here. SteveBaker (talk) 22:14, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Somebodyorhisbrother, for righting my wrong. Julia Rossi (talk) 23:40, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Download Music of Blue - All Rise

I can't Download the Music of Blue - All Rise. everybody asks money to download the song. can anybody say me the site from where i can dowload the song Blue - All Rise. THANKYOU —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.241.214 (talk) 14:21, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, buddy, their music is copyrighted. That means that if you want it, you'll have to pony up. (but your best "illegal" chance is torrents or similar) flaminglawyer^c 14:55, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Daily Wages

equality among men and women in daily wages —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.241.214 (talk) 15:38, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like you're trying to use a search engine. The refdesk is staffed by real people... But as to your answer, please see the article occupational sexism. flaminglawyer^c 16:25, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Odd recurrent music in online features

<moved to WP:RD/E>

It's nice to put a link to the section. --Milkbreath (talk) 20:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Mind relaxation techniques

well I am a 22 year old working in a reputed software concern. I am working nearly 15-18 hours daily. I would kindly request you to give me some suggestions on how can manage my time and some mind relaxation techniques. I would be very much pleased if you provide me with simple actions which I can add up in the routine life which will make me feel relaxed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.227.68.5 (talk) 18:12, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Did you read the article about meditation? The first line says: "Meditation is a mental discipline by which one attempts to get beyond the conditioned, "thinking" mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness." However, personally I would say to you: work less. Not being able to relax properly is a sign that you're working too much. Lova Falk (talk) 20:32, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, 15-18 hour working days are dangerous to your mental/physical health. How many days are you working a week? Are there no regulations for your working hours? Exxolon (talk) 20:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at our articles burnout (psychology) and stress management. There is also a fascinating bit on stress balls, which, to quote the article "are presented to employees ... as gifts". Mind you, you may prefer to squeeze your own in an emergency, unless, of course, it were to be a software concern. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:42, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Let me tell you something - I've been a software engineer and a team leader since before you were born and I take my job very seriously. I've worked in - (and run) many projects with horrible deadlines and a need to work 'crunch time'. Once you start working more than about 70 hours per week, within just a couple of days you'll be so unproductive (making mistakes - failing to notice things that are important) that you'll actually get your work done in a shorter time if you work fewer hours. I've seen this happen too many times. You can productively work 60 hours a week for several months - and you can productively push it up to 70 hours a week for a few weeks. But over 70 hours a week - or continuous 'crunch' over too many weeks is not doing either you OR your job function any good at all. If you utterly have to do this - a short nap (20 minutes maybe) works wonders. A caring employer may be able to set aside a quiet room with sofa's and such to let employees do this whenever they need to - it really helps when you are pushing it out over 60 hours a week. SteveBaker (talk) 22:04, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Kevin Rudd needs to read this. He seems to have gotten by on 3 hours a sleep a night over the past year, which works out to a 147-hour week (mind you, he has a lot of problems to contend with, many of them legacies of the previous government) but also expects his staff to be there at any hour of the day, which is why a stack of them have become burnt out and quit [2]. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:40, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

As a programmer who has worked many 80+ hour weeks, I've found one technique that radically improved my productivity: staying out of the office during normal working hours. If I was at work 9-5, I'd be called into meetings, asked to help other workers, then waste more time by being bitched out by the boss for not meeting my deadlines. I would spend weekends and evenings at work, but was at home during the 9-5 period (or maybe 7-7 period, to allow for early birds and people who stay late). When you present this to the bosses as the only way to finish the project on time, they become remarkably agreeable, all of a sudden.

As for stress relief, I liked to walk around the building to work off stress. I tried to time it when my program was running a test or something like that, and also would get something from the vending machines during the walk, so I had an "excuse" if asked why I was walking around.

I'm also prone to getting finger cramps, so I would occasionally shake my hands with my fingers flailing about wildly (is there a name for this exercise ?). This really helped. StuRat (talk) 04:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

When your hands start to crap out on you - it's definitely time to stop. I've suffered all sorts of repetitive strain problems after 35 years of keyboard pounding. Learning to manage that is vitally important if you still want to be using a keyboard 20 years from now. SteveBaker (talk) 15:03, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm hoping speech recognition will actually work in 20 years, unless MicroSoft buys up all the patents so they can put out their own defective versions. StuRat (talk) 02:17, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Wow! That must be what modern slavery is like. Most of my working life I've rarely exceeded 50 hours in a week, usually managing to keep it to 40-45 hours - and I've usually managed to make my deadlines, though on a few occasions it has gone wrong (eg. very late arrival of requirements specs after weeks of asking) and I have had to do some extra hours or work a couple of weekends. What the OP (and StuRat) needs to ask himself is: "what the worst that would happen if I went home now and picked this up tomorrow?". In most cases they will find the answer is nothing; the work will still get sone and the deadline will still be achieved. A couple of hints: Don't provide (or be forced into accepting) unrealistic estimates based on you working a 80-hour week. If the deadline is too tight or you are going seriously off target, tell the project manager or your boss as soon as you can. Astronaut (talk) 14:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I have blown off some crazy overtime assignments. For example, I was asked to work over the holiday season 1999 checking for Y2K bugs, but found out this company planned to lay me off soon after. I called in sick, instead. Alas, they didn't have any Y2K bugs, what a shame. StuRat (talk) 01:38, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Crazy overtime (aka 'Death march' and 'Crunch time') is endemic to some parts of the computer software business. Computer games companies are particularly bad at this. There is an utter-utter-drop-dead date to get computer games done in...if you don't get it done in time for Xmas - your sales will either be a tiny fraction of what they would otherwise be - or you have to delay release for an entire year - which will cause horrible liquidity problems for your company AND risk your game being 'trumped' by some other product in the meantime. What makes this worse is the open-ended nature of a computer game. They are NEVER "done" - we always could have made the game a little better if only we'd had more 'polish' time...another level...more easter eggs...more variety in the AI behavior of the bad guys...nicer graphics...more objects that react under game-physics...another sound effect. There is always SOMETHING that you could do. So sadly - for a few months at the end of pretty much every game project, you go into crazy crunch-time - 60 to 70 hour weeks (hopefully no more unless you have very dumb management). It doesn't matter how well you planned coming up to the deadline because the game is never, ever finished. So the pressure to put in just a few more hours to get that fancy last-minute effect in there is unrelenting and hard to resist. What's amazing is that the games business doesn't pay overtime...people do this mostly because of the love of the project and the peer pressure of not letting down your buddies. People will quite voluntarily put in more hours that would ever be demanded of them - and it often takes forceful pressure from team leaders to limit what people will do. When they get tired they make mistakes that cost more hours to fix - before you know it, each hour worked late at night takes more than an hour to fix up the following morning.

But over 70 hours is just plain stupid - and doing it for longer than a few weeks is also just plain stupid. A few games companies are starting to realise this and while we all know that long crunch hours just prior to a release is well worth it in terms of review scores and sales success - the resulting 'burn-out' of your best people isn't worth it in the longer term.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:03, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

As I suggested above, part of the problem is poor estimating. Many times I've been asked "how long will it take" and I used to say "I'll have it done this evening" (or "Friday", or some other guess) without giving too much thought to it. It then turns out to be trickier than I thought and end up staying late to meet that unrealistic dealine. The trouble with this approach is that I'm giving the project manager what I think he wants to hear, not a realistic estimate. For future projects, that project manager comes to see us software engineers as miracle workers and estimates according to past history... and we get a project doomed to be late from the start. Now, I try to as vague as possible, have a good look first to see what is involved, and if I'm really pressed for an estimate I give myself lots of contingency to get the job done comfortably. If I finish up early, I look like the genius I am and I get to go home early; and if it turns out to be a difficult task, I don't get management breathing down my neck a week later. Astronaut (talk) 18:46, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes - that's a classic problem. I know I can't do time-estimation to save my life. Nowadays I take a good hard look at what I honestly think it'll take - and double it. Only recently (in my previous job) did I discover that my boss was privately doubling what I told HIM - and still it sometimes took longer than it should. My best advice is to have short 'sprints' with well defined goals and to split the task into sprint-sized chunks. Treat the end of each sprint as a deadline - and work hard to meet each one. If the work doesn't fit the time available (and it never does) then the 'crunch' happens in little bits at the end of each sprint rather than piling up at the end. We use 3 week sprints - and you might find yourself working late a few nights at the end of every sprint - but when the last sprint is done - we're DONE...except that we won't be - for the reasons I outlined above. No computer game (and precious few computer programs of ANY kind) are ever "Finished". SteveBaker (talk) 22:09, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Income of felons/nonfelons controlled for other demographics?

I can understand that released felons as a group have substantially lower income than non-felons, but are there any comparative income data controlling for other demographic factors? (e.g. education, age, race, sex, etc) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Boomerpdx (talk • contribs) 22:23, 21 December 2008 (UTC)