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October 26

Who's minding the store?

One frosty December night when I was a small boy (never mind what year), I had the bejeezus scared out of me when the TV started announcing that DEW Line radar was tracking an unknown incoming object over North America. They dragged out the joke as far as they could before finally announcing it was merely Good Ol' St. Nick beginning his cheerful peregrination. (I still think it was a sucky joke.) In my more mature years, it was a small but definite comfort to think that we did at least have radars up there in the frozen wilds of Canada - you can get a lot done with 15 minutes' warning, ya know, if you have to. But at last came a day when the Evil Empire crumbled, and I remember feeling a bit worried when a short time later it was announced that American bombers etc. were no longer patrolling the skies 24/7, ready and able to deliver a return blow if a nuclear Pearl Harbor was sprung upon us. Later still, I began hearing of missile sites around the continental U.S. being deactivated or removed. Then when Sarah Palin stepped down from the governor's chair up in Alaska, and so was presumably no longer keeping an eye on Putin and his aerial machinations, it seemed the last defense had fallen. My question is, should I be worried about all these developments - or just relax and enjoy the Millenium? Textorus (talk) 05:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Am I the only one reading excessive paranoia between the lines? Please, the world is not a place like that. Get out of the house once in a while, look at the cloudless sky... and try to smile. --Ouro (blah blah) 06:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So there's no chance of, say, Kim Jong-Il one day taking a notion to smite the La Brea Tar Pits into nothingness and succeeding because everybody's watching the Superbowl instead of manning the radar sets, you're quite sure? Textorus (talk) 07:13, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Considering all best estimates suggests Kim Jong-Il doesn't have access to ICBMs capable of reaching the continential US and likely won't for another ~5 years [1], 'one day' would have to be 5 years away at a minimum. Nil Einne (talk) 07:41, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Paranoia it is, and in its proper and somewhat restricted meaning of a fear of a threat that does not exist. Which is not the same as the modern street usage which implies just, well, anxiety. I know, usage is everything in language but I wish I could be less irritated when I hear the modern usage! On a political note I think Mr Putin is one of the last people to be worried about. Richard Avery (talk) 07:30, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hence the word paranoia, Richard. I try to use my words carefully, it's the job... --Ouro (blah blah) 09:13, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think Richard did acknowledge you used the word appropriately, Ouro. He was just having a side swipe at those who don't. Or, more accurately, he was praying for greater tolerance of them. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 10:25, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I understood that. I didn't mean to sound negative or to take offence. It was just an acknowledging comment on my part. Thanks and cheers. --Ouro (blah blah) 17:13, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bombers aren't really necessary anymore anyway - we have about 450 LGM-30 Minuteman missiles armed and ready to nuclearly annihilate anyone stupid enough to start something big. Honestly, the threat of large-scale nuclear war is probably the lowest its been in 60 years. I guess the people who rum the Doomsday Clock disagree with me, but I don't really see the threat that Pakistan and India or North Korea get in a regional nuclear war on the same scale as a worldwide atomic inferno that seemed so ever present during the cold war. Buddy431 (talk) 13:38, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finally, someone who understands the serious question behind the tongue-in-cheek jocularity. Thanks for your answer. Although after 9/11, I don't think we can ever say nothing bad can possibly happen. Textorus (talk) 14:15, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

When the big bus-sized 6000 pound US satellite reentered a few weeks ago, it seemed that the US and Canada lacked the ability to track it as it passed over the US and Canada, and had to guess as to which ocean it splashed in. It made me wonder if the DEW line had been diminished or shut down. Edison (talk) 15:00, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My sense was not that the US lacked the ability to track the satellite, but rather that they lacked the ability to predict its trajectory with much accuracy very far in advance of its reentry into the atmosphere. It may be that, even though the debris from the satellite ended up in the Pacific, there was some concern that debris might fall on Australia or a Pacific island, and officials did not want to provoke undue panic, so they failed to announce the range within which they expected debris. Marco polo (talk) 20:35, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's happened before. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 05:17, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It always does land in Australia, doesn't it? Aren't you guys tired of being dumped on? And does your government send a bill to our government for the clean-up? Textorus (talk) 12:33, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we have quite a bit of real estate up our sleeves, and we are a very hospitable people. But we have long memories, too: "The Shire of Esperance fined the United States A$400 for littering, a fine which remained unpaid for 30 years.[15] The fine was paid in April 2009, when radio show host Scott Barley of Highway Radio raised the funds from his morning show listeners and paid the fine on behalf of NASA.[16]". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 15:48, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That was an American DJ I hope. I'll add my apologies for being litterbugs. Textorus (talk) 06:10, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your apology on behalf of the American nation and people is accepted by me on behalf of the Australian nation and people. Now, let's kiss and make up. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 09:52, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, anything to further the cause of world peace and international harmony. Your place or mine? ;) Textorus (talk) 18:36, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

These romantic trysts are better discussed privately, not where the entire online world is privy to them. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 21:50, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

wut if terrorists invent plastic and ceramic handguns

r there some plastic or ceramic guns that terrorists can sneak onto airprlanes and through metal detectors unnoticed. i saw on tv once, but i don't know if this is pretend or if this is something we should really fear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.228.90.14 (talk) 08:43, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Inconclusive Straight Dope article from 1995 says there (at that time) probably weren't any such guns but it might be possible. Some sources I've come across suggest that ceramics and other similarly dense/hard material would show up in airport X-ray detectors. Since terrorists can make bombs from unidentifiable fluids (2006 transatlantic aircraft plot) I'd be more worried about that. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:07, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Any reasonably skilled and intelligent terrorist shouldn't have much trouble getting dangerous devices of any sort on any airplane, including guns and bombs and such. It just requires a modicum of planning and setting up, someone good at Social engineering, and an understanding of how to foil the relatively porous security theater present at most airports. --Jayron32 14:35, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not really an expert, but ceramic be too brittle to make a gun out of? I feel like the recoil could shatter it after a shot or two. Hot Stop talk-contribs 14:45, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are a zillion different types of ceramic, each with different properties. Some of them are extremely strong. APL (talk) 16:01, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My feeling is that making a nonmetallic gun is not something an individual terrorist could do, but the gun industry could pretty easily develop a carbon-fiber based gun if it wanted to (not necessarily capable of firing a lot of rounds). There are pretty obvious reasons why governments would discourage this, though. Looie496 (talk) 16:17, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are high-quality, ever-sharp, ceramic knives, though. Our article says, about the security aspect: Ceramic knives may present a security problem as ceramics are not seen by conventional metal detectors. To hinder misuse of concealed knives many manufacturers include some metal to ensure that they are seen by standard equipment. Ceramic knives can be detected by extremely high frequency scanners (e.g. millimeter wave scanners) and X-ray backscatter scanners. Bielle (talk) 16:26, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah i saw the cermic knifes on TV infomercials. I hope there is not an unethical company who support terrorism and makes ceramic knive with ZERO METAL. i wonder if it is against the law.--24.228.90.14 (talk) 16:28, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the OP and others here are unfortunately a bit mistaken about what is going to stop the next 9/11-style attack. It is not that the terrorists will be deprived of sharp weapons or guns. It's the fact that 1. all airplanes in the US anyway now have locked and reinforced doors to the cockpit, and the pilots aren't going to open those for terrorists; and 2. because it's now an expected outcome that terrorists will intentionally crash a plane anyway, the "sit and ride it out" mentality is essentially gone for both pilots and passengers. The lack of both of those things is what made 9/11 possible. Bombing an airplane is an entirely different security problem and a much more difficult one to deal with. (I might also note that it would be trivial to bring in fake guns that wouldn't set off metal detectors. You aren't going to want to be actually firing too many guns on an airplane anyway unless you're into ricocheting or depressurization.)

The more troublesome guns-that-don't-set-off-detectors situation is not airplanes but assassinations (as depicted in In the Line of Fire). That's a harder issue, because you don't actually need the gun to lead to mass destruction to be dangerous. Presumably this is dealt with by physical searches, alert security guards, training, things like that. But it's obviously only of limited effectiveness, historically speaking. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:58, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ceramic handguns have existed since the 1970s. Dualus (talk) 23:18, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Vanishing mobile phone credit

I have an 02 Pay As You Go Mobile phone which I only use occasionally for emergency calls, etc. About three years ago I put £50 of credit on it, and still had about £20 left. However, when I tried to use it yesterday I was redirected from the number I tried to call to the 02 top up line asking me to buy more credit. I requested a balance but received a message back saying this was unknown. Thing is, Can anyone tell me what may have happened. My voicemail has gone too as someone called me earlier in the day and the phone kept ringing rather than going to voicemail. When I called them back, their voicemail was also not working (they are also on the 02 network). Can anyone tell me what might have happened? Is there a fault with the 02 systenm? Why have they snaffled my credit? I know I had some because I checked when I last used the phone a couple of weeks ago. Cheers 31.53.101.250 (talk) 10:06, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to answer your question. Your "about three years ago" fits well with the condition that you have to top up every 999 days to stay connected. Contact customer services and I guess they will sort you out. In the future just top up £10 and then you won't get this happening again (and read the T&Cs carefully!). SmartSE (talk) 10:35, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. I gave them a call and they've sorted it out for me. Apparently I also have to make a chargeable call every 180 days, so I've just called my land line in case I don't use the phone again for a while. I also topped up. I had £27.93 on there, so with £10 top up and 10% added there's £38.93 now. I think I last topped it up in December '08 which I guess means the 999 day top up thingy has just expired. So, must do it again before June/July 2014. :) Thanks again anyway for your help. 31.53.101.250 (talk) 11:15, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Other networks have similar restrictions. Some will even reassign the number if it is not used for a number of months. Dbfirs 11:35, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

BTW you are lucky in the UK if you have 3 years or a chargeable call every 180 days is enough to keep your number and credit active. In Malaysia it depends on the network and the amount you top up but you generally have to top up your phone every 1-3 months. If you don't use your phone much you easily end up with a lot of credit. In NZ it isn't quite so bad but you still need to topup every year (although the minimum amount, $20, is fine. Note that the year is from when you reload.) In Malaysia and probably NZ, if you do let your credit expire you're probably pretty much SOL in trying to get it back (you will normally get an SMS a few days before). Nil Einne (talk) 14:38, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness

I found your article regarding RAOGK. I love their website and recently have been unable to find them. I was wondering if you have any information regarding their site? Is it down for maintenance or no longer available? Hope you can help me. I know a lot of people enjoyed this research tool for genealogy purposes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.31.58.201 (talk) 14:14, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A 10 second search for 'Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness' found [2] Nil Einne (talk) 14:27, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

how much influence does a member of board of directors have

Hi sometimes I look at the management profiles of big corporations. and lot of time all the management (CEO/CFO/COO etc) are white men and the head of HR is a white or hispanic woman. mostly white men. and then if you look at the board of directors, there is always a black person (sometimes it's even like an ex-football player or something of this nature) and a woman. call me cynical but i think they put the minority on the board for good publicity but i wonder if the directors actually do anything.

i am sure it varies from company to company but my question is does the TYPICAL member of a board of directors have any input into how the company is run or do they just rubber-stamp wut the CEO etc wants to do. Thanks

Putting one or two women or ethnic minority people on the board is known as tokenism. As for how much input an individual member has, yes it does vary from company to company and yes, they often rubber-stamp the CEO's decisions. An individual board member has little say on their own, they have more if they can get a group of board members together to vote for their position. This does sometimes happen. Institutional shareholders may try and get more control over board decisions. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:50, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are also two sides to a director role; one being a member of the board controlling the company as a whole; the second (sometimes) person chiefly responsible for an aspects of the company's work (e.g. Sales Director, IT Director, Production Director). These latter roles can and normally do give the director ample scope for very great input into a narrow segment of overall company work. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:03, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In most U.S. companies, a "director" is just a member of the board that meets maybe every couple of months to do things like approve takeover offers and share offerings, hire new CEOs, etc. Some of the directors are also executives, and some are from outside the company. The directors as a group are important, but an individual outside director would have little power alone. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:51, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The board of directors is extremely important. They are elected by the shareholders on a one-vote-per-share basis, and they are responsible for choosing and overseeing the management. In some companies the board of directors are basically puppets of the management, but that's a Bad Thing -- in a properly structured company the board of directors has tremendous power. Looie496 (talk) 01:39, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Influence to do what? Women board members aren't going to smash patriarchy, any more than poor-kid-come-good board members are going to abolish capitalism. While Looie496 observes that the balance between board and management can have an influence on the competence of the company to maximise shareholder value; from the perspective of organised, or disorganised, workers over the last 35 years: management and boards in the West have confronted the workers as a unified group. In most cases boards and senior management are drawn from a common class. Even then, most firms are bound by law to act in certain manners, and the difference in quality of management and boards comes down to insight and competence within this restricted domain of contracted or legislated actions. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:07, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

are we EXTERMELY luck we have not had terrorist attack

hi i am a american. and i was alive in 9/11. since 9/11 there has been no terroist atack except school shootings and tings of this nature. so why not. i have decided one of 3 options A) we have been EXTREEEEEEMELY lucky and one day a terorist will destroy us all B) all the terrorists are EXTREMELY stupid and icompatent, like the shoe bomber and underwear bomber and the times square "bomber" (you should read descriptions of the "bomb" he uses, it is HILAROUS!). and that is my second question. why are so many of the terrorists stupid as a brick. did gorge bush kill all the smart terrorists when he attack al quaeda as part of the war of terror. C) George bush and dick Cheney were very good men and they ran effective war on terror and obama did a good job as well, therefore we stopped all the terrorist attacks

I would not like it if C was the answer because i am not a fan of bush or even obama but i am still willing to consider this possibility. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.228.90.14 (talk) 16:23, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is one of those questions which is very hard to answer. While it may be possible to outline good reasons why a certain event did happen, because there is evidence left behind due to it actually happening; there is almost no evidence and thus no good explanation for the non-happening of hypothetical events. From the historical terrorist events, we can explain both how and why 9/11 or the Oklahoma City bombing or the 2004 Madrid train bombings all occured because, once it happened, we have something to study to understand. For events which never happen, there's just nothing there to understand. Why didn't anyone set off a bomb in Boston yesterday? Why didn't someone set off a chemical attack on the Paris metro yesterday? Who knows? Sometimes, we have events which are foiled by intelligence and police work. Sometimes, we have events which are foiled because they are badly planned, and both of those provide us some evidence as to why they went bad and didn't happen, but for the most part there are an infinite number of things which do NOT happen every second of every day, and it's quite impossible to explain why they aren't. --Jayron32 16:43, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

thank u for your answer but i must say i reject on a philisophical level. lets say i am a economist studying unemployment. and lets say there's like 99% unemployment and only 2 ppl have jobs (just for the sake of argument). you can have a intelligent discussion on WHY the rest of the people never found jobs. it (i.e., their getting a job) NEVER HAPPENED, yet you can still discuss why it never happened. sorry to go off on a tangent but just because something never happened it doesnt mean that you cant study why it never happened.--24.228.90.14 (talk) 16:48, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

or lets say theres a baseball player who has a .000 batting average and his batting coach could tell him WHY he never had a hit so far this season, and so on and so on and so on — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.228.90.14 (talk) 16:50, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Those are different sorts of situations. Being employed or not is a very different sort of event than a bomb blowing up. --Jayron32 17:00, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One of the problems may be it's difficult to have a functioning economy with only ~200 people Nil Einne (talk) 17:20, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(Massive edit conflict) Not finding a job implies people tried to look for a job. Not being bombed doesn't imply that somebody tried. If you are looking for reasons why people have failed to set off bombs, you can do that with your examples in B. However, without isolating and interviewing the people that had the desire to set off bombs, but were discouraged or stopped for one reason or another (and are open to discussing it), you probably won't be able to answer this. You can come up with hypothetical reasons, too difficult to organize with increased government surveillance, weakened terrorist organizations, a shift in philosophy, directing the violence toward other people (i.e. bombing a place in Iraq rather than the US), supply disruption (after all, you can't just waltz into a Home Depot and pick up a few kilos of C4), or any number of things. Which is it? No idea. Probably something I didn't even think to mention. In any case, statistically, even if you know for a fact that we are going to have a major terrorist attack this year, you are much much more likely to die in a car accident, or as a result of the flu, or something like that. The deaths in 9/11 were a large number, but the fear it created was vastly disproportionate to the physical danger those types of attacks pose. So, it seems that at the moment, and in the foreseeable future, no terrorist attack will be able to "destroy us all", or even a significant portion of the population. That's not to say that even one victim isn't far far too many, but it is to say that as Americans, case A really isn't something to worry about. Falconus^{p t c} 17:24, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say a very major reason is that not very many people actually really want to bomb the US. Many may rail against the US (and with quite some justification), but that's a far cry from setting off a bomb that most likely will not kill important decision makers, but relatively uninformed and innocent Joe Blogs on the street. And the fact that only a small minority of people is willing to use - or tolerate - the indiscriminate use of terrorism makes it hard for terrorists to reach a critical mass that can provide the logistics and infrastructure for significant attacks. This is one of the more pragmatic reasons why overreaction and retaliation can be extremely counterproductive - it leads to a radicalization of more people, so it makes it easier to recruit people into groups that can perform large-scale actions. As a simple mathematical model, assume that 1% of all people you try to recruit will join The Cause, but 10% will go to the police, destroying your cell. If you want to recruit just 3 comrades, you will, on average, have to ask 300 people. Your chance of success are 0.9³⁰⁰, or, roughly, 0.000000000000002. Now assume an F16 drops a couple of cluster bombs, and kill 30 innocent children and a wedding party. Suddenly, 10% are willing to join the cause, and only 5% will snitch. So you have to ask 30 people to fill up your cell, and your chances of success are over 20% - still not even odds, but far from impossible. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:43, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone to a lot of talks about potential terrorist risks and threats — the whole risk gamut. I often end up asking (because it gets interesting answers), if this is so easy and dangerous, why hasn't it happened yet? Why have we not had any dirty bomb attacks, any stolen nukes, any chemical factories being blown up? (Forget the stuff that sounds easy but is really hard, like poisoning a water supply. There's just a damn lot of water in it.) The answer I usually get is: 1. we're lucky; 2. maybe it's harder than it seems; 3. these kinds of things are really risky and there are a lot of opportunities for them to derail; 4. they're biding their time; 5. they're distracted; and 6. there really aren't as many people interested in actually implementing international or domestic terrorism as the news would let on, and most of those people who would truly like to do it are either not competent enough to pull it off, or live to far away to do much harm. In the end I think it's worth noting that terrorism is still an extremely rare event, even in places like Baghdad, compared to other risk factors. In the United States, it is rarer today than it was in the 1970s. (In the 1970s, there were levels of bomb threats, actual bombings, and hijackings that seem surreal by modern standards. Something like a bombing a week for some of the years. Note that almost none of these were intended to kill anyone, though — they were about destroying property or monuments or buildings.) Our perceptions (and the news media, not necessarily intentionally) amplify these things to make them feel like they are quite common and quite risky, but the numbers don't indicate that it's the case. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:56, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tangent to the OP's question, but more to Mr.98's, for several years just after 9/11 I worked for a county government in Washington (state). The economy was already tanking at the time, though not as bad as later in the decade, so funding for various agencies and programs was dropping. But the emergency management department was able to easier get very generous fincial grants from the federal government. The money was intended for emergency management with the assumption that the largest threat and potential emergency the county would face was terrorist attack. And quite a few scenarios were put through a "dry run" test--things like a dirty bomb being detonated on a local college campus. Yet, to the credit of the county I think, the federal "anti-terrorism" money mostly went to the Department of Emergeny Management, which had quite a bit of freedom in how to spend it, and the county wisely (in my opinion) felt that the risk of terrorist attack (in the Tacoma, Washington area!) was minimal. The more likely large-scale emergency was a eurption of Mount Rainier and the lahars is might trigger; also the possibility of a major earthquake and, perhaps, tsunami. The county was able to use a lot of the federal anti-terrorism grants to strengthen their emergency management in general, with the primary focus being volcanoes and earthquakes. In short, it was nice to see a government agency realizing that the threat of significant terrorist attack, and the likley damage done, relatively small compared to many other "innocent" possibilities, was rather small. Pfly (talk) 10:22, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Terrorism in the US is difficult. In places like Israel and Europe a terrorist is likely to find sympathetic enclaves where he can construct devices, and then literally drive or walk them to a target. To attack the mainland US, terrorists need to first get here (difficult in itself - visas put them on government radar, and illegal immigration is harder than it seems on FOX News), then find some way to safely gather materials and construct a device, without the kind of local support he'd find in his homeland. The success of 9/11 was a combination of luck and bureaucratic sloth - they could have been stopped cold by the investment of a few thousand dollars for locks on airplane cabin doors or by the presence of air marshalls, both of which had repeatedly come up as legislation and been rejected. The reason there have been no terrorist attacks in the last 10 years has nothing to do with the government or its actions (TSA, for instance, is completely ineffective - there is no evidence they have ever stopped or discouraged any kind of terrorist activity); it is merely the same reason there were no terrorist attacks on US soil in the 10 years before 9/11 - the US is just out of the reach of workaday terrorists. You need a very wealthy backer like bin Laden even to have a shot at it, and there just aren't that many super-rich sociopaths floating around in the world. --Ludwigs2 17:26, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's also worth noting that in Israel or Iraq or Afghanistan, there is the mentality of either a civil war or being "occupied" by a foreign force. Such things make a big difference in what one is willing to do with regards to one's grievances. I have yet to see a force in history as potent as foreign occupation for getting loose bands of people to mobilize in rather extreme and violent ways. If you had people in the United States who felt they were sincerely being occupied by a foreign country, you'd probably have more of a chance of that stuff. There's already enough weird racism and nativism floating around with regards to our current President that I'm surprised (and grateful) we haven't yet had another Oklahoma City. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:02, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

True there is a bit of NewSpeak going on here: terrorism has be become the ultimate 'double-plus-ungood' - any behavior we don't like gets lumped as terrorist, even while the same behavior by our allies passes as virtuous. nonsense… --Ludwigs2 22:20, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Foreign language education in North Korea

The article Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies states that a total of 22 foreign languages are taught and studied in that university, but lists only 12 of them: English, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, Arabic, Thai, Urdu, Khmer, Polish, and Italian. Could someone confirm what the other 10 languages are, and whether Bulgarian is one of them? I once heard that they do study Bulgarian somewhere in North Korea - if this particular university is not that place, could someone confirm where it is, if anywhere at all? Thanks in advance. --Theurgist (talk) 18:12, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are probably several Central Asian languages in there as well, owing to the large population of Koreans in Central Asia. See Koryo-saram. --Jayron32 18:18, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessarily - until recently, the -stans (i.e. the former Soviet republics of Central Asia) operated mostly in Russian. The descendants of the Koreans moved by Stalin in the 1930s are likely to speak Russian, and only possibly Korean, and unless they are young enough to have been educated after the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, no Turkic languages at all. BrainyBabe (talk) 00:53, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

BBC TV

Just wondering a couple of things here, firstly, if I have quite enjoyed watching a particular series on the BBC, is there any way of downloading it from iplayer or elsewhere that I could watch it back any time I want without having it simply vanish after a few weeks? What if I copied it onto my TV's HDD recorder or my Ipod? Secondly, is there any sort of service where I could find other programs I might like based on the sorts of things I have enjoyed before? Some list of suggestions of things similar, of the same genera, perhaps?

148.197.80.214 (talk) 18:40, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved this over to Entertainment now, where I think it is more appropriate and might get better answers. 148.197.80.214 (talk) 14:44, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

\o/ Dualus (talk) 23:19, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]