Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 November 25

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November 25

Font

What font is wikipedia in? 86.130.249.161 (talk) 05:14, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

It depends what skin you are using. When you're using the default skin, Monobook, the default font is Arial, when you are using Cologne Blue it is Verdana, I believe. Be aware, however, your browser could be set to over-rule the default font. Rockpocket 08:40, 25 November 2007 (UTC) (striking, because its misleading based on Ilmari Karonen's reply below) Rockpocket 00:33, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The Monobook skin specifies the font as "sans-serif", which simply means your browser chooses whichever sans-serif font happens to be its default. On Windows, this might indeed often be Arial; on a Linux box, it might be, say, FreeSans. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

If you're talking about the logo, I believe it's Hoefler Text — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 01:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Plug-hole water. Silly question possibly?

You know the whole water going one-way down the plug-hole in the northern hemisphere and another in the south? What happens near the equator? Presumably there is an area where things 'switch'. Say if you were to have a 100 gallons of water and could get the (vortex?) going and then could maintain the flow long enough to travel from northern hemisphere to south would the water just continue on its current path or switch? I know you can do the opposite in each hemisphere using your hands, just more interested in what would happen in the above scenario. ny156uk (talk) 00:33, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

You are referring to the coriolis force urban legend? [1] --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 01:06, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

To be fair, the Snopes page neglects to mention that under carefully controlled conditions – allowing the water to settle undisturbed for an extended period of time (several hours or more) and pulling the plug in such a way as to avoid agitating the liquid – the 'correct' rotation induced by the Coriolis force is indeed observed. (This was demonstrated for the Northern hemisphere by Shapiro at MIT in 1962 (A.H. Shapiro, "Bath-Tub Vortex", Nature 196:1080-1) and for the Southern hemisphere by Trefethen et al. in Sydney, Australia in 1965 (L.M. Trefethen et al., "The Bath-Tub Vortex in the Southern Hemisphere" Nature 207:1084-5).) So for an ideal system, the vortex will go the right way, assuming that there are no other forces acting on the system to overwhelm the Coriolis force.

Note that once the vortex starts, reversing it is unlikely, even if your hypothetical experimenter carried his apparatus across the equator. Vortices, once started, tend to build their momentum; the little push from the Coriolis force is almost certainly going to be too weak to reverse the vortex's direction. (The Coriolis force is going to be extremely weak close to the equator anyway—establishing a system that is sufficiently unperturbed to demonstrate the Coriolis effect at all will be very difficult, and moving the apparatus any distance is likely to make matters even worse.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:05, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The Coriolis effect is weak everywhere on the Earth. What's different at different latitudes is its direction. The "force" is caused by the Earth's rotation and therefore is always parallel to the Earth's equatorial plane. Which means it's horizontal at the poles (an object moving horizontally deflects sideways), vertical at the equator, and diagonal everywhere else. The original poster's question reflects the misconception that there is a sudden change in the effect as you cross the equator, but that's not true. Rather, the direction of the force changes gradually all the way from one pole to the other.

Normally only the horizontal component matters since the vertical component is much less than the object's weight and can simply be ignored. For example, when a vortex forms from a fluid converging horizontally -- whether water in Shapiro's drain experiment or air in a hurricane -- only the horizontal component of the Coriolis "force" contributes to the vortex. The horizontal component is maximum at the poles -- but still very weak! -- and gradually decreases as you get nearer the equator. This is why there is a zone several hundred miles wide near the equator where hurricanes never start.

By the way, this question really belonged on the Science reference desk, where, as it happens, the Coriolis effect came up in the last few days here and then again here (which presumably will soon be here).

--Anonymous, edited 05:40 UTC, November 25, 2007.

It should be noted that the MIT study on bathtub vortices used a very large carefully constructed, precisely cylindrical tank with a very small plug hole in the center. It took a long time for the water to lose all of it's internal 'swirl' so that coriolis would be noticable and the results they came up with were only just better than chance. Even something as simple as pulling the plug out asymmetrically is enough to wipe out the effect. It would be very tough indeed to see that effect in any real situation. Hence one should not deduce from the study that: "Yes, Coriolis forces does affect bathtubs" - the correct deduction is that for any real bathtub, coriolis forces do not in any way affect the direction of the swirl.

What amazes me is that this urban legend ever got started. I mean you only have to watch the water flowing out of your bath or sink half a dozen times to realise that it's utterly bogus. How is it possible that ANYONE was taken in by the legend? Are people really happier to hear some story than to look for themselves?

SteveBaker (talk) 09:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The continued existence of religion seems to suggest that the answer to your final question is a resounding "Yes!".

Atlant (talk) 17:17, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, this very evening on the BBC programme Long Way Down, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman demonstrated what happens at the equator: using a bowl with a small hole in the bottom and a couple of matchsticks they showed that 20 metres north of the equator in Kenya water swirls one way, 20 metres south it swirls the other way, and actually on the equator there tends to be no vortex. Quite interesting, and worth catching the programme if it's on in your area. -- Arwel (talk) 01:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Bull. What you saw demonstrated was a magic trick. --Anonymous, 03:23 UTC, November 26.

Hogwash --ffroth 05:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. I call "bogus". From what I've seen of that show, (although I haven't seen that episode) I very much doubt that was a properly set up experiment. After all, we know that even the slightest amount of initial swirl due to how the bowl was filled is enough to overwhelm the coriolis effect. To see the effect at all, you've got to do statistical tests. I'd bet that this was either rigged or the result of a 1:4 chance of getting that result by luck alone. You can easily do the math on this - the forces involved in the coriolis effect are utterly minute on that scale - it's quite unbelievable that you'd be able to see this other than in an incredibly carefully designed experiment...which I'm certain this was not. SteveBaker (talk) 06:34, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I recall Michael Palin successfully demonstrating this effect on one of his programmes when he crossed the equator in Africa. DuncanHill (talk) 09:44, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I remember that too... but as I remember it, he explained that the men demonstrating it were street performers looking for money from tourists, and the effect wasn't real (which it isn't). FiggyBee (talk) 10:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Yep - it's trivially easy to fake. You just swirl the water around in the desired direction with your hand. Let the water sit for a minute or two so that the obvious visual appearance of motion of the water has smoothed out - then pull the plug to demonstrate the effect. Try it in your bathroom sink if you don't believe me! The MIT study shows that it takes HOURS for that initial motion to settle down to the point where it doesn't overpower the coriolis effect - and even then it's still only noticable as a statistical bias. SteveBaker (talk) 14:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Reference desk, i luv u! y can't i search u?

I'd like to argue for a new wiki that is unique to (and enhances) reference desk questions. I have posted many-a-question to the reference desk, questions not quite entertained in Wikipedia articles, where one elite user or another would reply: look "here" or "here" for another question posted similar to yours. I am not a reference desk pro and cannot recall off the top of my head when other questions like mine were posted. I can't even search for such questions! As far as I know Wikipedia has only one general search that does not posit reference desk questions anywhere on its popularity charts. I looked for keywords of all my old questions (extremely unique words) and nothing popped up.

I love Wikipedia so much: trust knowledge to users of the world, regulated by users of the world and together we will come up with an answer. Tonight I posted the exact same question to answers.yahoo.com as I did to the reference desk on entertainment [2] and within 20 minutes I received 2 answers from yahoo and several hours later 0 answers from Wikipedia. Citizens of Wikipedia: I love you all, and we must alter course to be able to provide the most timely replies to rogue questions that may, not to put too fine a point on it, enhance our species. I can't stomach the fact that all the beautiful, glorious debate of the reference desk, and all those amazing questions are lost to the world. Sappysap (talk) 01:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

There's no question that Wikipedia's internal search leaves something to be desired. However, this is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that Google regularly and consistently indexes Wikipedia. Add the string site:en.wikipedia.org to any search on Google, and it will return only results that come from this site. To narrow your search further, you can add the page name to your search: site:en.wikipedia.org "Wikipedia:Reference desk".

For what it's worth, we're usually pretty good at answering questions. I haven't looked at the Entertainment Desk, but I know that over at the Science Desk we answer two-thirds of questions in the first hour after they're posted. Over all the Desks, we answer about 96% of questions eventually (with nearly all of those answers in the first 24 hours). See Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#So how good are we? for more stats. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:14, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

TenOfAllTrades, that is a wonderful and perfect reply. Isn't is such a reprehinsible shame that no one (without the information in your reply) will ever read it? Something is wrong here. Sappysap (talk) 02:47, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I figured that it's a useful thing worth preserving, so I went to add a link to it in an appropriate place. It turns out that the Ref Desk Archives page already has a link to a Google search—and one that happens to be even more specific. Turns out we're even better than I thought. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:08, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

At the moment Wikipedia is many things but it is not easily traversable (it's better than Wikimedia Commons, where you have to know exactly what sub-category the type of image you are looking for is in if you are going to find it! Woe to him who doesn't know the sub-species of the animal he looks for). "At some point" this will no doubt be improved, either by people developing the project or by some entrepreneurial soul who will realize that it will be a pretty great "killer app" to make it easier to find things on Wikipedia. In the meantime, though, it might be worth posting a note or two on the Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives page about better ways to search the desk. As for speed of reply, we make no guarantees to speed or quality or even breadth. Certain types of questions are often answered within moments of them being posted, while others languish because nobody who reads them happens to have a useful answer (some should languish a bit more than they do, as people who reply do not always have useful answers!). Alas, such is life. For things like Entertainment in particular I bet Yahoo! Answers will give you better answers but I'd be surprised if they could give anywhere near as good Humanities and Science answers as the reference desk, the two areas where it regularly excels above any other site I've seen. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 04:07, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

(P.S. I don't read the Entertainment desk because I'm not good at trivia and find it, well, trivial, but I went over and managed to find the answer to your question in about 15 seconds. I bet others could as well, but my bet—and maybe this is a bit chauvinist—is that there are probably less people who answer the Entertainment Desk and that the better quick-researchers here, among which I count myself, might not frequent it much or as often). --24.147.86.187 (talk) 04:19, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's search engine certainly isn't great - but the idea is that Wikipedia isn't a search engine. The idea is to let search engines do searching and encyclopedias store information. It's hard to build a really good search engine - and it's better that the Wiki developers work on making a better data repository than going off and re-inventing the wheel by developing another search engine. So going outside of Wikipedia and using Google (or whatever takes your fancy) isn't something you should recoil from. It's how the thing is supposed to work.

As for the Entertainment desk, sadly it's one of the less popular ones - as you can see from the chart on the right, it gets fewer questions than any of the other desks except for math - but (worse) has a much larger percentage of questions that go unanswered than on any of the other desks. This is sad - but there are simply fewer people interested in answering questions of that nature. SteveBaker (talk) 09:27, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Steve, I'm not sure that's really the case (or entirely the case, anyway, since I agree there are fewer folks there). I think part of the "problem" is that entertainment questions tend to be very idiosyncratic. If I have a science question, it can be answered by anyone anywhere in the world because science is translatable. If I have a question about a Canadian sitcom, chances are good that nobody outside of Canada will have a clue as to what I'm asking. Worse, the questions are often very specific ("who played this part", "what's the name of this song", etc.) where unless you know the answer it's very hard to approach the question. Contrast that with questions on the science and humanities desks which are answered by folks who might not have the specific answer at hand, but are versed in related topics, making it easy for them to find the answer, provide some context, and help the questioner. Matt Deres (talk) 15:44, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

When I did that analysis, it turned out the the Entertainment desk has more "unanswerable questions" for various reasons, e.g. more questions lacking context or coherence, e.g.

• i am about having my own stage drama academy.pls,give me the names and personnels of stage drama and the instruments.also,give me the personnels and the faculties of stage drama —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sagbastar (talk • contribs) 15:58, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
• I was busy doing other things and I spotted a link for an angel game that needed an article, and I wanted to get my son playing it with a view to writing an article with his help, so if anyone knows the one I am talking about I would be grateful if they could let me know, thank you.--DitsyDaisy 20:54, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

When you look at the questions that it is reasonable to expect an informative answer for, there wasn't much difference between the desks. Rockpocket 19:42, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

That's not very scientific! If you discount questions that YOU can't see how to answer - then how do we know that this isn't a self-fulfilling prophesy? SteveBaker (talk) 06:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

If that is your concern, what is the scientific basis for your assertion that "there are simply fewer people interested in answering questions of that nature"? Obviously there is some element of subjectiveness in my analysis, as I acknowledged. However, I don't think its much of a stretch to distinguish non-specific questions along the lines of "I saw a link for a angel game one time... do you know what I am talking about" from specific questions such as "what actor played Mr Foo in The Foos". It is reasonable to expect one could find a reference for the latter, whereas the former doesn't provide enough information for anything other than a wild guess. If you have a more scientific way of analyzing over 1400 disparate questions manually, then be my guest. I look forward to reading it. Until then I stand by the conclusions I drew. Rockpocket 09:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Just because you can't think of a fair way to analyse some data doesn't somehow permit the use of biassed techniques instead. In the example you gave of an "unanswerable" question is demonstrably bogus. Just because a game with angels in it didn't immediately pop into your mind doesn't make the question unanswerable. We could have answered "Maybe this is one of those games by people like Wisdom Tree who make games with Christian themes. Christian video games might be of some help - it contains a list of such games, perhaps one of them will jog your memory.". Sure, that may not be a great answer (but I've seen worse!) - but you'd certainly have placed it into your "answered questions" pile if someone had given it. That specific answer wasn't given because I don't happen frequent the entertainment desk - so in at least one case, the lack of contributors resulted in one less answer being given. You see - just because YOU found it unanswerable doesn't make it unanswerable - and by putting that question in your "unanswerable" pile, you messed up the statistics because of your own personal bias. SteveBaker (talk) 12:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry you are unimpressed with the good number of hours I spent of my own time, in a good faith effort to provide some sort of analysis in response to a querent. Subjective as it obviously is, perhaps the readers would prefer your vague impression that "there are simply fewer people interested in answering questions of that nature" as a reason. Dare I suggest that just because YOU are uninterested in the Ents desk doesn't mean other people are. I'm not claiming my analysis is perfect, but at least I did some. What exactly have you done to support your explanation, because there is nothing in the analysis that I did, and you cited, that supports your conclusion? Rockpocket 18:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Wooooah. No - I didn't say your entire analysis was wrong (heck - I just quoted a chunk of it in answer to this question!) - and I certainly appreciate the time you took to do it. I'm only objecting to the bit where you started to make judgement calls about what questions were or were not worthy. I've just proved to you that your own example of an "unworthy" question can in fact be answered - that's indisputable PROOF that your method of determining "unworthyness" is flawed. So cross out that bit of analysis and the conclusions that stem from it - and we're good to go. Just because you put a lot of work into it isn't a reason to quietly accept a flawed statistical method! However you're right - I haven't done a study to see how many contributors there are...a quick count of the last three days says 11 respondants on the Ent desk, 18 on the comparably sized math desk...but this is not a valid statistical sample - so I've crossed out my unsubstantiated conclusions above. I trust you'll have the courage to do the same to yours. SteveBaker (talk) 01:00, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, I don't know what "worthiness" has got to done with anything; you introduced that term, not me. Secondly, I am at fault for using the term "unanswerable" incorrectly and without clarification. Clearly no question is "unanswerable", as you adeptly PROVE by answering one of my examples. What I meant was to distinguish between questions that lack coherence or context, or that requests information the is realistically impossible to provide, from those that beg a accurate, reliable and referenced answer. My (clearly ambiguous) shorthand for that was "answerable" and "unanswerable". The example I provided clearly lacks context, as your answer acknowledges. Another example is please find jurnals of training220.247.225.30 08:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC) As I state in the full analysis, thats not to say that these questions will not be answered with "requests for clarification, and will occasionally draw an answer based on what the responder thinks is being asked for". Therefore, if you read the full analysis, its clear that I am not claiming that these are technically unanswerable, just that there are characteristics (lack of context, coherence) that appear common to some unanswered questions, and these are enriched in certain Desks. If you remove these types of questions from the analysis, the Ents Desk does not differ from other, more populous, desks in number of unanswered questions. Hence the conclusion that a preponderance of this type of question is the reason for the Ents statistic. Clearly this still calls for some judgment, I'm not denying that, and indeed noted that "questions are difficult to accurately class" in the analysis. With that clearly stated caveat, the conclusion is flawed only as much as any other attempt at quantifying subjective criteria. Therefore I still stand by my conclusions and see no reason to strike it. I freely admit as a stand alone answer it is potentially misleading, though I had hoped the scare quotes around "unanswerable questions" might have offset that. Obviously not, though, so I have amended it accordingly. Rockpocket 02:50, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

"please find jurnals of training" could have been answered - I would perhaps have read it as "What journals are there that deal with training?" - and that too could be answered. As it happens, I used to work for "Link Simulation and Training" - and we produced (amongst other things) training courses for companies. If you wanted to train your staff to (say) turn off the office lights before they went home, we'd find some actors, write a funny skit based around the problem, film it, put it into an interactive PC-based training product specifically for your company and sell it to you for vast piles of cash. There are many companies in that line of business and I happen know there is at least one professional journal relating to the training field because I've been published in it!

You may argue that my answer was a poor one - or that it was only my own guess as to what the question meant - but did you actually exclude questions under your "unanswerable" criteria that people had actually made a reasonable effort to answer? If someone had bothered to come up with a list of two or three professional journals that deal with the science and art of training people in a business environment - you would have classified that question as "unanswerable" (or whatever word you want to use for the questions you excluded) despite the fact that it was in fact answered? What about if the OP then replied with "Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted!". I very much doubt it! So now you are making these calls only after the event (a'priori versus a'posteriori reasoning is a dangerous thing in statistics).

Your set of unanswerable questions consists of only the questions that were not ACTUALLY answered, minus the ones that you personally did not believe COULD have been answered. Since we know now that at least two of those questions could have been answered if just one more person had been paying attention to the desk - it's clear that your judgement is flawed and that you excluded at least two (and probably a lot more than two) questions that someone could have answered. This bias in your recording of unanswerable questions results in you over-estimating the effect of impossible questions on the entertainment desk - and under-estimating the hypothetical benefit of having more people there to answer questions. This is PRECISELY how statistical studies get derailed by systemic bias and come to the wrong conclusions.

The same thing would have happened if I had been making the list. I'm continually amazed at how questions that I'd think could never in a million years be answered - actually come up with reasonable responses. So if I were making a list of the 'unanswerable' questions, I would not have included either of the questions you've listed BECAUSE I WOULD BE ABLE TO ANSWER THEM - and doubtless there would be questions on my list that you'd find that you could possibly have answered. If we had both made the list together, it would have been at least two items shorter. If 100 people made the list together, the list would be shorter still. Would the list ever shrink to zero? Well, I doubt that - but the fact is, we have NO IDEA how long the list should be - except that we know that it's too long right now.

That's the problem...the list is entirely subjective because it only contains questions that you'd find impossible to answer. That feeds into my supposition (and it is indeed only a supposition) that with fewer people on the desk, more questions go unanswered - and that in truth it has very little to do with the 'quality' of the questions. What we need is a statistical measure of the ratio of respondants to questions on the various ref desks. Sadly, I don't have the tools to do that study. SteveBaker (talk) 15:25, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Whether THEY CAN BE ANSWERED is beside the point, since - as I noted at length - the criteria has nothing to do with whether or not I consider the question could be answered, but rather whether the question is lacking cohesion or sufficient context to demand a specific answer, rather than a non-specific answer. Those type of questions did, indeed, appear to be answered less frequently and were enriched in the Entertainment desk. I'm sorry if my use of the terms "answerable" and "unanswerable" for remain confusing for you. I'll stop using them forthwith. Rockpocket 18:28, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I read (and respond on, if I feel able) all of the desks. I quite like the idea of a desk dedicated to large, old, tree-like creatures from the Tolkein universe. I imagine it would take quite some time to get an answer there, however. --LarryMac | Talk 22:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

How would one wear a v-neck tee?

So in a moment of folly I seem to have landed myself a v-neck tshirt. Now, this is purportedly unisex but I've tried, and v-neck tshirts on men just don't seem to work. Would anyone have any ideas how to integrate one that plunges all the way down to the chest with anything else to make it look remotely presentable? It's black, if that's important.

AlmostCrimes (talk) 04:55, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Wear it over a white turtleneck or a dickie. Corvus cornix_talk 05:09, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Well the deep v-necks are often worn with a shirt underneath, or i've seen people use them to show off their chest-hair. The more fitted v-neck is (I think) much more suited to men and is my preferred choice. The obvious difference for women is that a v-neck provides a point of interest on their chest, but really there is no reason why that cannot be similarly successful for men. I'm sure there are women who like chest-hair, strong chests, the revealing of some more skin, etc. Anyhoo it certainly depends on the depth of the 'v' as to how i'd say you match it out. Easiest choice is a casual shirt worn underneath but then unbuttoned. This would look good in my eyes. Here's some photos of different ideas....http://www.flickr.com/photos/diezelphotography/327757419/ (low v-neck, open shirt), http://www.flickr.com/photos/frankfarm/208277974/ (high v-neck, no shirt), http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhythmzslave/1914004603/ (low v-neck, no shirt). Of course the question of whether any looks good in your own eyes is just personal preference. 11:22, 25 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ny156uk (talk • contribs)

Colour blindness

I have a colour blind friend who has published a web page with white lettering on a very pale yellow background. The lettering is almost unreadable. What colour(s) do you think he thought that he was using. Any ideas please?--88.110.17.80 (talk) 07:16, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Try having a look at the following links.

• Colour Blind: Design implications of color blindness
• http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html (See the drop down in the bottom right corner

Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page | Contribs)} 07:49, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

It's really hard to know without knowing which kind of colour blindness he has. There are about a dozen kinds - most of which are very rare. I doubt it's the commonest weak-red/weak-green problem because if that were the case then the page would look pretty similar to him compared to how you or I would see it. The difference between white and yellow is the amount of blue present in the image. So someone who could only see shades of blue would think that white-on-yellow was a lot like white-on-dark-grey would appear to a normally sighted person - which would be pretty readable. But that would mean that your friend is seeing no red or green at all - and that's an exceedingly rare form of colour blindness. If he can't see any red at all - then white-on-yellow looks roughly like white-on-green and if he can't see any green at all then this looks like white-on-red to him. Either of those is pretty readable, so you can see how that might come about. But without knowing his exact colour deficiency, it's hard to guess what it might be like - and it's always possible that he simply has bad taste! However, his problem is likely to be one of the more severe kinds - my son is colour-blind (one of the milder varieties, thankfully) and he would never make that particular mistake. He needs to learn what set of colours he can use that will look the same to him as they do to us. But in the absence of further information, it would be useful to gently suggest that your friend sticks to using shades of grey from black through white for website design. That monochrome 'look' - done right - can be quite powerful for normally-sighted people and his web pages will look exactly the same to him as they do to us - so it's 'safe'. So I think he can still make an impression on people by powerful use of monochrome. SteveBaker (talk) 09:07, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all this erudition, I forgot to add the irony that my friend is an art dealer!--88.110.17.80 (talk) 11:20, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Advice on "Train your Brain" please.

Help - please. My wife has suggested she would like this for her Christmas present - but I don't know anything about it. Is it a CD, DVD or what? And if I buy it here in the UK, what equipment will I need to play it on? Apologies for being 60+ and still using Video tapes, Audio tapes, and Landline telephones. Thanks. 81.145.241.113 (talk) 13:03, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it is either Brain Age or Big Brain Academy on the Nintendo DS? FiggyBee (talk) 14:34, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Brain Age is sold and advertised as Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training in the UK, and is, I believe, the highest profile of these games in the UK (and the original?), and thus likely to be the one being thought of. Also, this game has targeted advertising at older people who don't play computer games, using the phrase 'train your brain', so I think it really is the mostly likely thing (although you might want to check with her! She could mean the book Saunders linked below, or something else entirely). If so, you would need to buy a Nintendo DS handheld console (as Figgybee linked above) and the game itself. I believe there are a lot of deals where you can get this game with the console, if you visit game shops. Skittle (talk) 21:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be a book too [3] so I hope that she already has the appropriate hardware installed.SaundersW (talk) 14:35, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

If you check this site [4]there are several types available, but I'd be a bit wary about the claims. Perhaps this is obvious but there are people... Richard Avery (talk) 14:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I have been looking for the same thing. Google "Accelerated Learning" and you'll find a wide choice.86.209.158.90 (talk) 15:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)DT

I agree that she's almost certainly talking about one of the Nintendo DS games. As for whether they work...there is no question that if you play one of these games regularly then your game score will get better. That means that you did improve your brain - but perhaps only in the limited area of that specific game. It doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get better at (for example) passing normal IQ tests. However, any brain activity is better than no brain activity - so exercising your mind with one of these games can't hurt. SteveBaker (talk) 06:22, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

There are two of the Brain Age DS games, by the by, and they each contain a bunch of different, self-contained activities -- what I guess you would call mini-games. In the first, the games are mostly writing (or drawing) responses to visual cues; the second game makes you turn the sound up and listen to cues a lot more. I'm a visual learner; I found the first game more agreeable, but my wife is more audio and liked the second game more. Sudoku is in both games, but that's the only game that's in both. I hope this info helps you if you have to make a decision between the games. Faithfully, Deltopia (talk) 16:57, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Freeways in the USA

What is the longest toll road in the USA by miles? The one with the most exits? Why are most exit signs on Interstates green? - Presidentman (talk) Random Picture of the Day 23:05, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The longest toll road in the United States is the New York State Thruway, whose main roadway (excluding the Niagara and New England Thruways and the Berkshire extension) is 496 miles long. Marco polo (talk) 23:25, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Does it have the most exits? - Presidentman (talk) Random Picture of the Day 23:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Tollroads and Interstates are not the same thing. The longest interstate is 3099 miles (I-90). All exits signs on Interstates are green because these federally financed roads are all suject to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Interstates do not have tolls. Rmhermen (talk) 23:50, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Most interstates don't have tolls, but parts of some do. For example, the main highway of the New York State Thruway includes portions of Interstate 87, Interstate 287, and Interstate 90. Another portion of Interstate 90 makes up the Massachusetts Turnpike, another toll road. Other stretches of Interstate 90 are carried by the toll roads the Ohio Turnpike, the Indiana Toll Road, and the Chicago Skyway. Interstate 90 is not the only interstate partly occupied by toll roads. Others include Interstate 95, Interstate 76, Interstate 70, Interstate 93, and Interstate 44. Still other interstates pass over toll bridges.

The New York State Thruway, by the way, also seems to be the toll road with the most exits (about 72). Marco polo (talk) 00:26, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Although at only a third the distance of the NY State Thruway (172 miles / 277 km), the Garden State Parkway comes close with 65 exits (unless I miscounted). — Michael J 01:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

1344 - and who's counting???

That's the number of named people in the Line of Succession to the UK Monarchy as listed in Wikipedia. But who keeps the official list and remains in touch with births, deaths, marriages (and whether those marriages were to Catholics thus disbarring potential candidates), and any conversions to catholicism (again disbarring potential candidates)? Is it a civil service functionary, or a member of the Royal Household, or perhaps an official within Burke's Peerage, or possibly a department of The Church of England? Fascinating stuff.81.145.241.168 (talk) 23:10, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Thats a really interesting question. There doesn't appear to be any specific body charged with that in the various Acts that define the line, so there probably isn't an official list. [5] In some ways its a theoretical exercise, because there is never, realistically, going to any need to concern ourselves who is beyond the first few in line. These are non-controversial and are easily agreed upon by following the wording of the Acts. Indeed they are listed up to 40th by the Royal household itself. [6] Since there is some debate over the exact interpretation of the clause forbidding a Roman Catholic being monarch, things start getting fuzzy the further down the line you get. If there was any succession related controversy close enough to realistically matter (as may be the case with Peter Phillips impending nuptials [7]), then it would probably be debated in parliament and settled with another Act if need be, as happened with His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 and the various Regency Acts, well ahead of time. Indeed, the Regency Act 1937 established by law the first four adults in the line of succession as Counsellors of State, so those are known well ahead of any time they may be required to step up. If there was going to be any controversy about those it would happen at this stage rather then when there is a possibility the person might become monarch imminently.

On the death of a monarch, the law says, succession will have passed automatically to the new monarch under the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701. As with many things in UK legislature, there is a common law aspect to it - because we all understand that will happen, we don't really concern ourselves with who officially decides who is next and next and next. It just... happens, and we deal with any problem if and when it occurs. Ultimately, though, what the 1701 Act ensured was that it is up to Parliament to determine the title to the throne, so its the MPs responsibility to ensure our bases are covered in the event of Windsor-pocalypse. Rockpocket 08:17, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Toy Sale Question

Hello wikipedians, I have several old toys in my basement,which Iam planning to sell

• These include, an rubber dinosaur doll my sister gave to me when I was little.
• An action-figure size toy pig.
• A Teddy Bear
• A Tickle-Me Elmo
• An Arthur The Aardyark Doll
• Several Monsters Inc figurines
• As well as other Disney toys.
• And something, called Turbo Twist Math from LeapFrog.

My Question is, could you guess the indivual or collective worth of each of these toys. Which, ever one you prefer this may not be the best place to ask this question but I have no other place to go. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.161.94.149 (talk) 23:23, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

My suggestion is to look on eBay for similar toys and then average out the prices and starting bids for the other used ones. Cryo921 (talk) 23:34, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

My guess is that they are not worth a whole lot—they are not that old (ten years, max) and were all very popular toys (at least, the brand-name ones) which were mass produced and mass consumed, and these sound quite used on top of everything else (which means they have little collector value). I'm guessing you could get maybe $5 for any of them on eBay. But again, you can easily check how much these sorts of things go for on eBay if you search for things like "Turbo Twist Math" (there are around 50 currently up for sale) and see what other people are getting for them. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 05:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Sadly, I have to agree. I took a quick look on eBay - a new Tickle-Me Elmo is on offer for $60 but a used one is for sale with an opening price of $2 with no reserver - and after being up there for a week, currently has not one bid for it. Turbo-twist math is going for $5 to $7 (used). Various entire sets of Monsters Inc action figures are going for $1. A talking Arthur the Aardvark toy is selling for $10 (new) and $5 (used)...but again, there have been no bids for it. I don't see any of these toys actually selling - almost all have zero bids on them. Parents don't like buying used soft toys for very young kids because there is no way to wash/disinfect most of them and they are (often unreasonably) concerned about what diseased their kids might catch from old toys. Hence, the market is only for toy collectors. Old toys do eventually become collector items - I had cause to need to buy an early 1960's Corgi "James Bond Aston Martin" a couple of years ago (long story) - in good condition, with all of the bits and pieces and in it's original box - it cost me $120! Why? Well, they were popular but they were played with hard and long, small parts would break or get lost and their boxes were generally tossed out within minutes of opening them. Toys more than 20 years old that are in good to perfect condition and still in their original boxes can get very valueable. Many people remember that particular toy from their childhood and want one for their collection - so prices for old/good-condition toys is good. Old/poor-condition toys still sell - but for MUCH less. But a toy that's still being made (such as Tickle-Me Elmo) isn't really worth anything - a toy that's only a year or two old is not likely to create any huge yearning in adult collectors. Teddy bears are a bit different. Some of them - from very specific manufacturers and/or of great age can be worth hundreds of dollars. But you can buy a new 'no-name' bear for $5 in stores - nobody will buy a used one unless it's very special for some reason. Worse still, on eBay you've got to figure the cost of postage - which typically makes the cost of buying a used toy (plus postage) more than buying it new from WalMart. Sadly, I doubt these toys will sell at any price (at least not on eBay). SteveBaker (talk) 14:10, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe wait another 10 years? --Candy-Panda (talk) 14:07, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Even 10 year old toys don't usually go for much unless they are in really good shape and in their original boxes. SteveBaker (talk) 14:44, 27 November 2007 (UTC)