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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 February 10

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February 10

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Kitaru Movie details

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I came across this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vq_y1hFlrY which was posted almost a year back. I searched for a long time, but couldn't find any info about the release date of the movie, or the studio (aoineko) that created it. I went to the official website too (http://www.aoineko.com/), but since my net connection's too slow, most of their pages didn't load properly for me. Wikipedia doesn't have an article on either the movie or the studio. Any pointers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.97.231.0 (talk) 12:15, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, by looking at the studio's webpage it seems like they have never released the film in a theathre. It seems to be kind of a hobby project, and that implies that they aren't notable for Wikipedia. --I'm the cavalry, chase me ladies (talk) 16:53, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Undead versus garlic

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2 questins:

1. What was the name of the crashed airplane flight that has been reported to have ghosts haunting other airplanes after the scrapped parts have been recycled?

2. The only thing that is guaranteed to keep away just about any form of undead is garlic. Why is that? Who came up with such an idea and possibly when? 64.75.158.193 (talk) 13:42, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The thing with garlic repelling the undead started with just vampires and was popularized in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Our article on garlic has a bit about it. As for why garlic is used rather than, say, broccoli is more difficult to say, except to mention that virtually every plant, number, animal, form of weather, lake, and hand position is considered special or holy or evil or lucky by one superstitious group or another. Matt Deres (talk) 13:59, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 is the aeroplane crash. DuncanHill (talk) 15:39, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Garlic is a traditional snake repellent. Collect (talk) 16:12, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Matt has some good source info above, but I think the rationale is not as arbitrary as he implies. Garlic's characteristic odor and taste are actually due to its chemical defense mechanisms. See e.g. Plant_defense_against_herbivory, List_of_repellent_plants, and the toxicology section of garlic. So garlic is actually a pretty good choice for a fictional repellent of a fictional creature. Stoker may have known this, or not, but it is an area where folk wisdom (e.g. the snake-repellent use mentioned above) is fairly consistent with the science. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
From the novel, it's pretty clear that Stoker knows he's dealing with a long-standing central European bit of folklore, though he implies that such "knowledge" wasn't known in England. Our article says "The association of garlic to evil spirits may be based on the antibacterial, antiparasitic value of garlic, which could prevent infections that lead to delusions and other related mental illness symptoms." and supposedly backs this up with two references. In fact, it's a ridiculous bit of OR; the first reference here mentions the various healthful properties of garlic, but rightly sticks to what studies have shown and doesn't mention anything about being able to prevent delusions in any way (having stomach ulcers doesn't give you visions...). The second doesn't mention garlic at all, but is simply an overview of neurodegenerative diseases. Matt Deres (talk) 01:50, 11 February 2011 (UTC) p.s. - I've removed that nonsense from the article. Matt Deres (talk) 01:54, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

delicious roaches yummy

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Is it true that people eat roaches? Would eating flies exist as well? 64.75.158.193 (talk) 13:55, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Entomophagy mentions that cockroaches are eaten. I do not see mention of the common housefly, but I would expect that those are eaten (probably the maggots anyway) as well in some places. Googlemeister (talk) 14:38, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fly larvae are occasionally eaten, as in casu marzu. I've heard that Saami/Lapps enjoy maggots, but can't find an authoritative reference. I don't imagine there's much meat on an adult fly, and can't find any references about them being eaten - maggots are easier to catch. If you eat food kept in insanitary conditions it's likely you'll eat some larvae, grain weevils, etc, and everybody has had the occasional fly flying into their mouth. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:28, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Many, many animals eat flies. People in Malawi love fly burgers--Shantavira|feed me 16:32, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The fly larvae that Sami might eat are probably Warble fly or botfly. See http://www.taiga.net/projectcaribou/pdf/activities/botfly_boogie.PDF. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 01:00, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

alcohol

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how long does alcohol stay in the blood system ?

We can not give any medical advice. To answe your question, it depends on your gender, age, weight and other things. Happy (and safe) drinking ;) I'm the cavalry, chase me ladies (talk) 19:08, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Unless you've deleted something, I see no request for medical advice here, just a request for information about how the body handles alcohol. It's the sort of thing you expect to find in our articles, although many people wouldn't know how to find the right article. If you find our article alcohol, you find yourself bombarded with a lot of scientific information about a class of molecules. BUT, if you look at the little writing at the top of the page, it suggests that we really want the page alcoholic beverage (alcoholic drink, with a pointlessly pseudo-scientific name). Reading the introduction to that article, I clicked on the promising-sounding blood alcohol level, which has a rather poor section on metabolism of alcohol that tells us The rate of elimination in the average person is commonly estimated at .015 to .020 grams per deciliter per hour (g/dl/h)[citation needed]. Is that really reliable? I went back to the article alcoholic beverage and clicked around, but didn't find an answer or further relevant information, even in ethanol metabolism.
So, sorry. I'll see if I can dig anything up off-wiki. 86.164.25.178 (talk) 19:46, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A VERY rough guide is an hour per Unit as measured by a pub measure, ie, a small 35ml whisky or half a pint of beer, or small wine. So if you want to push it to the limit begin by timing yourself from your first swallow, but how much easier and safer is it to get a taxi????? And remember - your kidneys and liver don't go into overdrive to cope with excessive consumption - they only work at minimum wage rate - which is like a supermarket queue - if there's a hell of a queue, there's a hell of a wait - just don't do it. And this from Scotland which has vastly different tolerance levels than other jurisdictions. Oh, by the way, it's not about what you can get away with - it's about NOT killing other innocent people - 92.30.183.72 (talk) 01:18, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think the above mentioned Blood alcohol content article contains some good information and also links to outside sources. And I don't understand the presumptuous nature of your response, 92.30...for all you know the OP is asking out of concern for someone else's practices, or writing a novel for that matter. Please don't preach, this is a reference desk and this was a perfectly valid question. 10draftsdeep (talk) 15:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
YES,OF COURSE. AND LET'S LEGISLATE THAT DRUNK DRIVERS ARE ONLY EVER HANGED BY A SILKEN ROPE. 78.146.43.68 (talk) 00:09, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

rename images here at WP

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An image was uploaded by someone else, after some prodding from me to find the source, author, date, etc for the file, they did. I'd like to change the file name to the title of the work of art. Anyone know of a template to add or procedure to follow? Heiro 21:47, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

By the looks of it, for an en.wikipedia image, add {{Rename media}} to the image. For commons images, use the rename template --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Got it, thanks abunch. Heiro 22:09, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]