Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2009 August 11

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August 11

Nasir Khusraw

Does anyone know where is the tomb/shrine/grave of Nasir Khusraw located? the wikipedia article says that he died in Yamagan, but does not specify if there is any grave associated or believed to be His?

According to this source ([1] an oasis near Yamagan called ziyarat-e hazrat-e sayyid (Holiness Sayyid Shrine) is probably the burial place of the traveler poet. --Omidinist (talk) 04:47, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Importance of time

i wanted to know what is the importance of time in our life.Please Reply.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.253.210 (talk) 11:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Have you read our article (and its many related topics) on time? We note there that "time has been a major subject of religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has consistently eluded the greatest scholars." Additionally, WikiQuote's time-related content may be of interest. — Lomn 13:05, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It's a human thing. Animals live in the present. Humans think about the past and the future. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 13:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

So squirrels hiding nuts are not thinking about the future at all? Googlemeister (talk) 13:32, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Not consciously. It's instinctual behavior to be sure. Their little brains are wired for hiding nuts (and they can hide hundreds of them and recall where they are kept, if I remember correctly), and so they hide them. They aren't thinking, "gosh, this nut will sure do me well in December." I suspect it is different than my dog, for example, who hides bones primarily because she fears I will take them away from her after awhile (which I will). (Things that I don't take away, she never bothers to hide.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Are you implying that instinctual behavior not count as cognition? Just because a squirrel doesn't ruminate over his nut cache or other affairs, it does not mean he's not a thinker. In any event, I get a little irked when people make presumptions as to what animals do and don't think about. You don't know, you're not them. The only thing we can say with certainty is that if they did have any such thoughts, we possess no means of knowing them. Vranak (talk) 14:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I took the question about squirrels to be whether the squirrel considered "the future" as a concept to be worth worrying about. I don't think the squirrel is actively thinking about the future. I suspect the squirrel has an urge to collect and hide nuts and to go get them again when he can't find more nuts to collect and hide. We actually can determine that most animal instinctual behavior is not part of a generalized way of thinking that humans have. Animals on the whole don't generalize—they don't conceptualize. (See, e.g., work of Temple Grandin on this subject.) I am not impugning the squirrel's brain, tiny and specialized though it is. It can do a lot of things with its brain that humans can't do (like routinely memorize where it has hidden tiny nuts over a vast area of land), which indicates quite strongly that our generalized notion of "intelligence," broadly speaking, is heavily species-specific (humans are "dumb" if being able to do that is your metric). And I do think animals vary quite a bit in their cognitive capacities—dogs are clearly much more able to adapt and generalize complicated concepts that squirrels, and at certain tasks are much smarter than, say, human children. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 16:49, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Humans have the luxury of recording information, which probably no other form of life has. Thus time becomes slightly less relevant, because books and all the other "recording" devices address certain aspects of the time problem for us. We need not remember where we parked the car because our "Record-O-Vac-Auto-Park-Remembrance-Device" (patent pending) has that information available for us whenever we need it. Bus stop (talk) 16:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Probably as an iPhone ap

The squirrel analogy is a good example of evolution / natural selection. Squirrels don't have any way to record where they've stashed their food except to remember it. So the squirrels that were best at remembering it would have had a survival advantage. Only a few humans could remember where they had stashed each of hundreds of things (I'm thinking idiot savants and serial killers, for example) the rest of us would have to record it - and then we have an advantage over the squirrels, provided we don't lose track of the records themselves. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 13:08, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

See also memory, which covers how we perceive time and events, sentimentality, which covers how we perceive those parts of our life in the past, and related links. The question is incredibly broadly based, but those will help you on your way.Somebody or his brother (talk) 22:21, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

One of the best ways of understanding the importance of time is to consider two events that each take the same amount of time, but which would seem to be very different. For example, during a 10-second period, holding one’s breath might seem to be a short time, but holding one’s hand over an open flame would seem to be much, much longer.DOR (HK) (talk) 03:16, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Mail delivered via Luftschiff Hindenburg postmarked 2 5 37 How could this be?

I have in my hand a letter addressed to my grandmother which came to her via the airship Hindenburg on it's last trip to the U.S. The letter is postmarked 2 5 37, four days before the Hindenburg was destroyed by fire while landing at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. How could this letter have survived the destruction of the Hindenburg? Could the mail pouches have been dropped to the ground just before the Hindenburg caught fire? Was that standard practice to expedite mail delivery? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.252.46.46 (talk) 14:54, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

You may have something very interesting on your hands! Some of the mail was salvaged and delivered to it's destination. Have a look here: [2]. Fribbler (talk) 16:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Of the 17,609 pieces of mail on board, only 358 pieces were salvaged in a burned condition. Cool! --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 18:43, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

And only about half of those were cancelled. The examples on the site listed by Fribble show them selling for 10 to 20 thousand dollars. There are probably some fakes around as well, so provenance is important. You can compare your envelope to the samples shown. Did Grandma write to someone about receiving it, was there an article in the newspaper at the time, etc. Congratulations on finding a postal treasure. Edison (talk) 22:17, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

If that's genuine then it's pretty amazing. I saw a nice doco about airships and the LZ_129_Hindenburg and was surprised to find out that most of the people on board actually survived! I had no idea. Including one very young cabin boy who survived practically unscathed, they had an interview with him filmed for the doco of his reminiscing about the events. Vespine (talk) 03:27, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

If you would like to be on TV, I bet these people would find that a fun thing to investigate. It's the kind of oddball thing they go for, that could be used to tell an interesting story. (Even if it is for some reason not authentic, that itself would be an interesting story.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:47, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Online Holiday Reviews - any Impact on Tour/Flight operators?

I was recently allocated the tightest seats imaginable on a British charter flight and I am only 5'4". The cabin staff told me that after every sector they routinely pass on to management the complaints from all 12 occupants of similarly arranged seats on that aircraft - but nothing ever happens to improve matters. So, in planning my next holiday - a 10 hour flight - I have been browsing as many holiday review sites as possible and to my amazement, found thousands - yes literally thousands of similar complaints about tight seating, inedible food, lost baggage, late arrivals/departures, and unresponsive cabin staff, and dirty, smelly rooms and bathrooms in hotels. Yet despite being able to see this stuff so easily, the airlines/operators seem not to be interested in improving things so as to attract more and repeat business. Question - do these review sites have any impact at all on the operators or are they perceived by the bosses as mere whingeing sites that don't deter future business? 92.22.87.92 (talk) 16:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

To focus on the airlines, they are aware of complaint levels, but there are several reasons that service and comfort are as bad as they are: You get what you pay for. Most traffic on airlines is composed of passengers who intentionally choose the very cheapest fare available to get to their destination, and comfort and service are secondary considerations. Knowing this, every airline has to cut every cost in order to be able to offer fares at the lowest possible price, just like every other business; and some of those costs include food and the number of seats they cram into each airplane in order to maximize revenue per flight. That's why you have the CEO of Ryanair actually claiming this year that they were considering installing pay toilets in their aircraft. The solution, unfortunately for you, is to pay more to get a business class or first class ticket. From time to time the service gets so bad that some airlines make service or comfort improvements in coach that are hawked as a big deal — JetBlue has made a big deal of the TV at every seat, and American Airlines ran an ad campaign a few years ago bragging that they had 2 inches more legroom in coach (meaning they did reconfigure the seating, an expensive endeavour for all their aircraft, to remove some seats to make room for this). I think that since then they've crammed the seats back in. By the way, I would keep in mind that a seeming flood of complaints may be dwarfed by an ocean of travelers who take their trip without a problem — "normal" experiences don't drive people to rush to the Internet to express their displeasure. You're reading the angry outbursts that come from the worst travel experiences, and these complaint sites don't give any weight to other data. Tempshill (talk) 16:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to legislation sponsored long ago by March Fong Eu, pay toilets are illegal in California. Presumably the crappers would be unlocked over our fair state, as the bars used to be locked whilst flying over Kansas. The solution to the pay-toilets-on-planes problem is simple, and Samuel L. Jackson could put it into words better than I. Bummer for the cleanup crew, though. 18:54, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The problem is this: When people choose an airline to fly with, they go to one of the big online sites (Expedia or Travelocity, etc) and they see all of the flight times and prices laid out - and, almost inevitably, they pick the cheapest. (Those who don't - fly 1st class or Business class). Given that, if one airline puts in bigger seats, spends more on food, etc - they'll have to charge more for the flight and NOBODY will fly with them. You can see this effect in action because the airlines compete very hard in the 1st class sector where people do care more about the facilities than the price - and the adverts talk about the way the seats recline so you can sleep comfortably - that the food is better - that you get better service. The problem is that while we dislike these problems, we don't seem to dislike them enough to pay a bunch more money to get them fixed. The airlines are simply responding to market forces - as most big businesses must. The lost baggage thing is generally nothing to do with the airline and has everything to do with the baggage handling system at the airport. Once again, people don't choose their holiday destination on the basis of which airport loses the least baggage - so again, there is little or no pressure to fix things. That's also why the airlines are pulling crazy stunts like charging for hand-baggage, charging for meals, in one case even charging to use the bathroom. SteveBaker (talk) 19:16, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I doubt airlines pay much notice to review sites; unless there is a sudden and dramatic rise in complaints about a particular part of their service across many reviews. The trouble is, people who had a bad experience might complain, but hardly anyone ever writes a review saying the flight met their expectations or they had a great flight. If you do have a complaint, go directly to the airline customer services.

As others have said above, it is all about cost and you get what you pay for. In my experience, the worst offenders are the holiday charter airlines closely followed by the budget airlines. Regular, scheduled airlines, usually the flag carriers, are generally OK in economy. If you want better service and lots of room, pay extra for business class or first class. It is particularly nice for a long flight - the company I used to work for had a rule that you could fly business class if the flight was 10 hours or longer; so my flight to Johannesburg was really nice. Astronaut (talk) 00:22, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

As for other complaints:

• In-flight food is rarely good. Even in business class it is still rapidly heated in a metal tray, but you do get a wider choice. It is probably unrealistic to expect gourmet food in a £5 sandwich (see British Rail sandwich).
• Lost baggage is a problem, but your bag usually shows up - eventually. Many suitcases look very similar, so accidental removal from the baggage carousel by another passenger can happen (it happened to me once, the airline eventually delivered my bag to my hotel that evening).
• Departure and arrival are often at the mercy of air traffic control. At a busy airport the time between 'slots' is short and the slightest delay (whether caused by passengers, the airline, the airport, or mother nature) can affect many flights.
• Working as cabin staff is low paid, hard work, with a lot of time on your feet; and is nowhere near as much fun as it sounds. I find being pleasant works almost every time. If you are rude and keep jabbing the call button, I doubt they will be very responsive.
• With hotel rooms, it is again a case of you get what you pay for. Many 4 or 5-star hotels have a reputation to uphold and if anything is wrong they are quick to do what they can to fix the problem. Of course, you might not get such a good response at a cheaper hotel or hostel. Also note that location can also play a part, with hotels in tropical parts often providing anti-mosquito items and warning guests that lizards in the room are to be expected.

Astronaut (talk) 01:10, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I understand Continental is offering lots of extra time on the plane at no extra cost. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 01:04, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Being the OP, I am grateful for all the above answers, except the tongue in cheek one above about Continental as I have always found their services and staff to be highly commendable, including coach/tourist class - unless something has changed recently? And whilst I do accept the volume economics of travel bookings, what I can't accept is how on the same flight and class, some seats are very acceptable, whilst others are not - all I want is equitability throughout the cabin ie, the guy in front of me gets to recline his seat whilst I can not due to being backed up against a mid-cabin toilet block. If I am going to be so restricted, then why not fractionally reduce everybody's legroom accordingly so I can recline on a long flight too - no loss of seats, no loss of revenue, and everyone is treated equally - with those in front losing say half an inch of legroom. But also, if I do decide to upgrade to business or first class, am I not advertising (as some above correctly suggest)that I am not interested in the resultant cost, only the comfort factors - and get ripped off accordingly? 92.21.137.39 (talk) 18:32, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

To go back to your original question, if you are planning a holiday that involves a ten-hour flight, will it actually be a British airline charter flight? I see that Monarch Airlines goes to Trinidad and Tobago from Scarborough and maybe there are others, but the charter flights tend to be shorter distances. An economy seat on a scheduled flight on a long-haul flight on major airlines is a huge improvement on budget airlines. As to the equity of seats, I can assure you of appalling experiences in Business and First with some very reputable airlines. They are also not untouched by lost baggage. Finally, there are physical constraints to placing seats on an aircraft, in order to align them to emergency exits. -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 21:38, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

So there are worse seats and better seats. To make a price differential, they either have to increase the price of all of the other seats (which results in everyone on Expedia, etc buying tickets from the $1 cheaper carrier who doesn't do that) - or you have to decrease the price on the less nice seats (which loses you money). Most of the people who book on an airline don't check the location of their seats - and while they might complain, that doesn't affect the business model very much. The bottom line here is that it's not about "fairness" - it's about making money (or, typically, losing money less quickly). SteveBaker (talk) 03:13, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I think the reason they don't let the rear seat recline is that it takes 3 or 4 inches of cabin space to do so, and if they were to scoot all the seats in the section forward 3 or 4 inches, then the frontmost row of seats would have really bad legroom, so a decision was made that the lack of rear row reclining was less important than unacceptable legroom in the front row. Probably it's claimed to be a safety issue if the front row is also an exit row. The solution is to get rid of a row of seats, but, since you're in coach, they have crammed all the seats possible onto the aircraft, and won't decide to remove a row. I would normally discount your concern about getting "ripped off", because you're just paying more for an improved seat, just like at a concert or theater; and there is competition, after all; you can shop for a Business Class seat at many airlines. You're not advertising that you don't care about the cost; you're stating, "I will pay 400 pounds for this Business Class seat and all the services accompanying it." Tempshill (talk) 16:53, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I am the OP and I thank you all for your comments and fully accept I am entirely at the mercy of the airline operators ie., I can either risk being landed in an uncomfortable (cheap) seat or elect to upgrade to a more comfortable seat at a premium cost. But I can't see the logic set out by Tempshill above that to allow my midcabin seat to recline by 4 inches would cause every seat in front of it to move forward by 4 inches also. The flight I was on and which energised me to pose this query had 27 rows in front of me right up to the front bulkhead row and there were no emergency exits in between. So why couldn't the 26 intervening seat pitches have been reduced equally by 4/26ths of an inch each i.e. about one-seventh of an inch or the thickness of a sick-bag. Oh, and about upgrading - I have done that at significant cost for my next holiday from Scotland to Cuba, and as a precaution have checked out the seat plan for the Upgraded cabin and guess what??? That cabin is separated from coach by toilet blocks. And guess what else??? The rear row of the upgrade cabin has 7 seats that - guess what??? - don't recline! So guess what I am now in the process of doing?? I am paying a further upgrade charge to select any 2 adjacent seats other than those on the back row. But pity the poor buggers who get landed in those non-reclinable seats and who will have paid a significant upgrade charge to ensure they are in a better seat than in coach. Wheesshhh. But I have no one else to blame but myself (and a few zillion others) who volunteer repeatedly to be treated like sheep being transported to market whilst paying handsomely for the privilege. 92.22.186.27 (talk) 20:10, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

The reason they can't take out 4/26ths of an inch from every seat is because the seats in modern airliners are fitted into a track system that allows the seats to be removed and put back - to change the spacing or to turn the plane into a cargo plane. Those tracks don't allow the seats to be adjusted to just any old spacing - the slots that the seats fit into have a spacing of something like 2" - so you either have to take away 2" or give back 2" - you can't adjust by (say) 1/2" or whatever. They can't redesign the track system to make them infinitely adjustable because the seats have to lock firmly in place for safety reasons. SteveBaker (talk) 03:44, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

OK Steve et al. I think I have exhausted my rant and will now shut up. But thanks again to all above. I will let you know how I fared on our trip to Cuba (January 10). Maybe I should take some Valium just in case. 92.20.18.207 (talk) 09:20, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

You might be interested in seatguru.com, with its aircraft seating plans and descriptions of the best and worst seats. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover all airlines or aircraft types and some of the judgements are in my opinion a bit too picky.

My criticism of holiday charter airlines was mainly because on both flights I've made with Thomas Cook Airlines I have not been able to pick my seat or change it a check-in, without having pre-booked a "premium seat" for £25(?) extra each way (you are also deliberately separated from your travelling companions unless you pay another £25(?) to be seated together). Most other airlines allow you some latitude in requesting a seat at check-in, and the online check-in systems I've used let me pick my own seat from those still available. Astronaut (talk) 15:18, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

AP Stats data

Hi everyone! I'm trying to finish this table that I inserted into Advanced Placement Statistics. Would anyone here have any idea of the number of students that took the AP Statistics exam in 2001?--Edge3 (talk) 18:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I've updated the page. Does it seem fine now?--droptone (talk) 12:26, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you so much! I've looked everywhere for that!--Edge3 (talk) 13:56, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

If you wanted to do work on the other AP subject test pages, College Board's archive is very data rich.--droptone (talk) 13:59, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Wow that really helps. Thanks!--Edge3 (talk) 14:12, 12 August 2009 (UTC)