Miscellaneous desk
< February 28	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	March 2 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 1[edit]

Fiscal year v. calendar year[edit]

Why do some entities and governments choose March 31 or another date rather than the calendar date to end the fiscal year? Gullabile (talk) 07:25, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reading the article on fiscal year would probably answer the question. Hot Stop 07:32, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Australia's fiscal year is 1 July to 30 June. While I suspect we inherited the practice from Britain, it makes a lot of sense to not have it matching the calendar year. The period from Christmas through New Year and a couple of weeks after is summer holiday time, and a large proportion of people are not at work. HiLo48 (talk) 07:34, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In the U.S., the federal government's fiscal year starts October 1. It's supposed to give Congress more time to pass a budget, but that hasn't exactly happened in recent years. Hot Stop 19:43, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is this really poutine?[edit]

A restaurant I frequent (in an English-speaking city in Ontario) serves dozens of varieties of "poutine" that don't include gravy or melted cheese. An example is the "Greek poutine" (fries cooked in olive oil, with feta cheese, olives, diced tomatoes and onions, spiced like a Greek pizza). Would most Quebecois consider dishes like that to qualify as "poutine"? Neon Merlin 10:17, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No true Quebecois would. Matt Deres (talk) 13:14, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As an English-speaker from Ontario, that is clearly not poutine! Adam Bishop (talk) 13:52, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Poutine is only one thing: Cheese curds and gravy over fries. However, like many other iconic dishes, variations exist. Most people eating these "alternative poutines" know they aren't getting actual poutine. Strictly speaking, even replacing the curds with regular cheese makes it not poutine, but in a pinch most people will let it slide. This comes from a Vancouverite poutine fan. Mingmingla (talk) 16:52, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As a guy on the provincial border, I'd like to think I'm neutral. Curds and dark gravy make the best poutine, but if someone offered me shredded cheddar and light, I wouldn't look at them like they're crazy. Feta's pushing it, and the second a tomato or onion shows up, it may as well be mashed potatoes. The last sentence in the lead of our article is was downright loony. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:43, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

People can call whatever they want, whatever they want. If someone wants to put tomato sauce and mozzarella on french fries and call it "pizza poutine" let them. It brings no one any amount of harm to do so, and frankly, it sounds kinda tasty. For a parallel example, there's a hundred different varieties of shredded beef-and-cheese-onnabun out there, and most of them are called some variety of "Philly Cheesesteak" and people bitch and moan about whether or not any of them qualify as a true "Philly Cheesesteak". Those people have nothing better to do with their lives and thus need to foist their misery on the rest of the world with their pointless and pedantic debates over words. The rest of us eat food that tastes good, don't eat food that doesn't taste good, and leave the debate over the names of said food to the miserable people who can't find a way to be happy unless it's telling other people they are wrong. --Jayron32 19:51, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A little intolerance isn't a bad thing. It's why poutine (and Quebec) continue to exist as they do. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:02, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jayron32, that's true to a point: poutine is becoming a whole category of food now, rather than a single dish. But if that point is where you can no longer get remotely close to what you expected (a la Greek poutine in NeonMerlin's example), than it just doesn't work; what would you call the classic to be able to order it? That classic stays as the archetype for all others to follow. Example, Canadian french fry chain New York Fries offers a few variations of poutine: pulled pork, butter chicken and braised beef: these all need to be qualified as a suset of poutine, while the original is just "poutine". Mingmingla (talk) 20:45, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind adding subset adjectives, like "veal poutine" or "honey garlic poutine". But they should be firmly based in fries, gravy and cheese. Once you start replacing ingredients, you have a new species of food and have to back up a level, to "fries" (hopefully they all have fries). "Pizza fries", in Jayron's case. Good stuff, whatever it's called. "Ketchup poutine" is disgusting, but was somewhat popular in my old town. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:50, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen "garlic aioli" on menus. I can only wonder what it is they put in the unqualified (and presumably non-garlic) version. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:22, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We must have an article somewhere on these interlinguistic redundancies, right? "Minestrone soup" would be another one. But they do serve a purpose; if you don't know that minestrone is a soup, you can at least figure out that minestrone soup is probably a soup. --Trovatore (talk) 01:36, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if some of them are retronyms. --ColinFine (talk) 01:40, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps relevant in light of the discussion above: No True ~~Scotsman~~ Poutine. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:52, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Matt Deres linked to that right at the beginning. --ColinFine (talk) 19:45, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, oops. I guess I missed it because he made a similar link joke :) SemanticMantis (talk)