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July 16

July 18

Lake Lats and Longs

Is there an accepted, standard location when finding latitude and longitude for ponds and lakes? Or, is wherever the pond lake first encounter? It is probably changed with GPS and Sats. DMc75771 (talk) 19:47, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If there were one, I believe it would be the same for any type of geographic feature occupying an area with a somewhat defined shape, such as an island, a swamp, a salt flat, and so on. A plausible candidate, if one doesn't want to single out a specific feature of the area, is its geographical centre. As stated in a United States Geological Survey document quoted in our article, "There is no generally accepted definition of geographic center, and no completely satisfactory method for determining it." For most purposes, the centroid of the area will usually be satisfactory in practice. I suppose one will want the location to fall inside the area, but if the area is not even roughly convex, for example C-shaped, its centroid may fall outside the area. --Lambiam 09:04, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed; the United States Geological Survey used "locations of lake centers in latitude and longitude" in its Digital Data Base of Lakes on the North Slope, Alaska (1986) p. 1. Alansplodge (talk) 11:18, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Surprisingly hard to find a definitive statement from a major cartographic agency, but the Natural History Museum, London guidelines for recording the location of species says "It is best to use the geographic centre (the centroid/midpoint of both the latitude and longitude extremes) for the coordinates of named places". [1] Alansplodge (talk) 11:48, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This definition means that – in theory – two disjoint lakes can share their centres; look here. --Lambiam 23:50, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your long and curved lake is better suited to the advice for rivers: "Make a straight line from the mouth of the river to the head of the river. Calculate the centre of this line, and place the coordinates closest to the centre of the line on the river itself". Alansplodge (talk) 11:21, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another twist here is that for feature geometries polygons can have holes, and water body features are often modeled with multipoloygons, that is a set of polygons each of which can have zero or more holes. So even for a convex polygon there is no guarantee the centroid or the center of the bounding box are inside the feature. fiveby(zero) 02:03, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From Centroid § Properties: "The geometric centroid of a convex object always lies in the object." It is not hard to show that this also holds for the centre of its bounding box. --Lambiam 09:11, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A convex polygon with holes is not a convex set, but if there are holes i guess it's not a simple polygon and you can't really call it convex. fiveby(zero) 13:42, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that there's an actual requirement for perfect mathematical exactitude; if the co-ordinates indicate a point somewhere in the middle of a particular lake, then the job is done. Alansplodge (talk) 11:36, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As I wrote, "I suppose one will want the location to fall inside the area", but if one is writing a program for assigning locations to geological features of a known extent, one needs some more precise definition. For example, if the centroid is not inside the area, the algorithm could select the location inside the area as far away as possible from its boundary, and if there are several such locations (for example for the C-shaped lake in my illustration), one as close as possible to the centroid. --Lambiam 13:17, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some rounding to avoid false precision may be appropriate. Giving the position of Lake Superior to arcsecond precision may be excessive, as degree precision is good enough. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:57, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It may be worthwhile to point to WikiProject Geographical coordinates's guidelines on the matter. Elsewhere on that page one finds "For geographical features with an area, such as lakes, reservoirs, and islands, use a point reasonably in the center of the feature. (Remember not to specify too much precision; see Precision guidelines below.)" Deor (talk) 13:55, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 19

Getting cash directly from the Internet

I got to thinking, would it be possible in some way to get cash directly from the Internet, by using one's bank account credentials but without using a debit card or going to a bank office to ask for cash in person? You would log in to your bank over the Internet, withdraw money, and have the money somehow physically appear in front of you in cash.

MikroBitti magazine published an article of a "home banknote printer" in the early 1990s as I recall. The article announced a new kind of home printer that would print cash. "Of course, the printer won't print cash out of thin air", the magazine said, "you have to go out and buy licences for it." But this was an April Fool's joke. Would such a machine actually work, by withdrawing money from your bank account over the Internet and then printing it out in cash? JIP | Talk 20:32, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's a term for printing your own money: Counterfeiting. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:40, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Counterfeiting is not printing your own money, it is printing someone else's money. I can invent my own money and print it right now. As long as it is not a copy of an existing bank note, copying of which is indeed punishable by law in most places.

Personal checks, store credit coupons, lunch vouchers, local currencies and many others are scrip that promise to deliver goods and services, and are issuded by non-govermental entities.

We could invent a form of cryptocurrencies that can be printed out. Takes a bit of thiking though: how do you prevent them from being copied. Someone out there must be clever enough to figure it out, if not has alreadly done so. 85.76.35.183 (talk) 13:59, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can certainly print your own checks. That's routinely done in business. That's not the same thing as printing actual money. And printing "your own money" is not printing actual money either. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:05, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's also worth pointing out that none of those things are legal tender. No one is required to accept checks nor bitcoins as payment. And note that the OP said "cash". None of those things qualify. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:22, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bitcoin was briefly legal tender in the Central African Republic. It is legal tender now in El Salvador.^[2] --Lambiam 11:54, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If a country wants to abandon its monetary system in favor of "vaporcash", they could do so. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:51, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not promoting it; I just felt it was also worth pointing out that your statement "none of those things are legal tender" is not entirely accurate. Also, something that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, becomes, by virtue of that quality, "actual" money. --Lambiam 22:16, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, a business can accept various forms of payment, including checks, credit cards, and even crypto if they want to. But that doesn't make it "legal tender" except for a country which has decided to allow bitcoins as such, for whatever reason. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:54, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

DigiCash had a cryptographic protocol that would allow this. The "cash" was, as for bitcoin, a digital identifier, which could be represented as a conventional string such as 2ABA28C066F74CC8710ED3B22798255E, but for the purpose of home-printed money should be machine readable, as for example a QR code. As with any form of digital money, there is a potential problem of someone attempting to spend the same digital string twice. One solution is that a central system keeps a list of the unspent digital identifiers issued, validates a digital identifier when the money is used for a payment and at the same time removes it from the list. The DigiCash solution was decentralized; a malicious user could in theory spend a digital identifier twice, but this would reveal their identity. Otherwise, the user would remain untraceable. --Lambiam 22:33, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 20

Professional diving water jets?

during a diving competition that is aquatic diving. What is the purpose of the water jets that spray into the pool? Brad (talk) 16:30, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA) requires[3] surface agitation to provide a visual cue that helps divers judge when to enter their rotation as they dive into the water. Philvoids (talk) 16:50, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

thank you for your prompt reply! Now I just wonder why that didn't show up in the first place and I tried to Google it. Thanks again

Farmer market "slogan"

Why do some farmers market stands say "We grow what we sell"? What does that mean, anyway? TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 21:48, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because a lot of market stalls don't make what they sell. They buy their products from wholesalers. Nanonic (talk) 21:59, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So it means that they themselves are the farmers who grew the produce you find at their stand. --Lambiam 05:58, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I used to live in a town with a large farmer's market. The local news investigated and found that almost all of the food for sale was purchased from a wholesaler who distributed food grown in other states and countries. The concept is that a farmer's market supports local farmers. But, over time, this market was overrun by people who did nto have a farm and simply resold food they purchased in bulk without the overhead of running a grocery store. Those who did grow their own food were characterized as lawyers who grew a few tomatos on the porch and sold them at a loss just to get tax writeoffs for having farmland on their property. I am certain that this practice is far more widespread than one city. So, people hear that the farmer's market doesn't actually have any local farmers and there is no incentive to go. It is necessary to advertise that the people are local and the food was grown locally. But, are they honest? Why not purchase vegetables off a plane from Brazil and sell it with a big sign that says "I grew this locally!" (Will anyone actually go through the trouble to sue for false advertisint? Will be be very hard for a lawyer to argue that "grew locally" includes "purchased from a shipment from another country"?) This exact same issue comes up with "farm to table" restaurants. They claim to primarily use ingredients from local farms. Do they? How do you know? What farms? What does "local" include? 75.136.148.8 (talk) 18:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps local means local group. I'd be very surprised to see anything coming from further away, but not sure that I'd be willing to eat it.-Gadfium (talk) 20:46, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The advertising admits "We supplement the bags with fruit and veg from further afield when local produce is not available."[4]. Here the advertising is "Strict rules apply so you can be certain that everything sold at the market is being sold by the farmer who grew it."[5] 2A00:23D0:E91:1101:C919:B9E0:1479:94A5 (talk) 12:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget that time dilation will keep the goods fresh for longer than you might think. —Tamfang (talk) 00:37, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 22

Biking

During a hot summer in California, is it better to bike in the early morning or the evening? TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 05:23, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Define "better". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:35, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's generally cooler in the early morning than in the early evening. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:59, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

☝🏽 that and traffic is usually lighter too, plus early morning cardio has health benefits. Folly Mox (talk) 10:58, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Airplane Engineers' Wages in the Late 1950s

Paul A. Suhler, From Rainbow to Gusto: Stealth and the Design of the Lockheed Blackbird (2009), p. 95:

Using a figure of $10 per hour, one week would cost $16,000. He (Kelly Johnson) added a profit of $500 per week and concluded, “For $225,000 can go full steam for 3 months” (Johnson, C. L., Archangel project design notebook, Lockheed ADP, Burbank, CA, entry for 26 April 1958, pg. 1).

It cost $16,000/week for a 40-man team to operate at full speed in 1958. I think this cost means wages + office costs (housing, utilities, many other things). How much money could an engineer make in the late 1950s? -- Toytoy (talk) 05:49, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The 1960 census report (published in 1962) here shows "craftsmen, operatives, and kind" had a median income of $6,200. It also shows that salaries increased a great deal between 1950 and 1960, even when adjusted for 1960 dollars. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 14:34, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Navy ship Palestine

Hello everybody. At one time, Palestinian security forces used the former fishing trawler Chandalahe for military purposes; Israel damaged it in 2002 and since then it has been abandoned off the coast of Gaza. I wanted to know what his current fate is? Vyacheslav84 (talk) 15:33, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Google has no results for that name except your query. You might try Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships? Alansplodge (talk) 15:19, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks. Vyacheslav84 (talk) 23:23, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is this the transliteration of the name in Arabic? --Lambiam 21:57, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I do not know. Vyacheslav84 (talk) 23:23, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have any accessible source mentioning this name? --Lambiam 09:35, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here the ship is named "Chindallah", and said to have been destroyed, although it may have been only "badly damaged".^[6] "Shindallah" (شيندالله?) looks like an Arabic name. --Lambiam 10:05, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 23

Joseph Redford's autistic pride flag

I found this in the Autism article, and here's what's wrong with it:

It appears to have been upscaled from a super low resolution.
JPEG artifacts are noticable, especially upon magnification.
There's a white dot in the infinity symbol and another white dot nearby in the golden region.

The Reference Desk may be a funny choice of place for me to bring up a shoddy image file, but this isn't the first time I had done that before. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 02:01, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is that flag copyrighted? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The uploader, Intervex, claims it isn't eligible for copyright because of its simplicity, but I don't know if that's true. After all, Seattle's flag is copyrighted. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 10:45, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[Edit Conflict] I'm not an expert on copyright, but as a former professional editor have more than a layperson's grasp of it. In my judgement, this design is too complex to be ineligible for copyright and the licencing claim (which is on slightly different grounds anyway, go read) is mistaken.

It would not be surprising if the designer, Joseph Redford, had released it under a suitable CC licence, but we have no evidence of that, as it's not stated in the linked source.

However, flags are problematic, since they're meant to be publicly seen, analagous to heraldic coats of arms, which anyone writing about the arms' holder (for example) can depict without permission (a particular depiction may be copyright, but the point of arms, and usually flags, is that their essential details can be defined in words and redrawn from them). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 (talk) 11:13, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@MrPersonHumanGuy Do you have a reference desk question? If you wish to propose an improvement to any article the place to do so is the Talk page of that article, but the caption does make it clear that that is an old version. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:54, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have uploaded a photograph of the actual historic flag on display at People's History Museum during the 2023 "Nothing About Us Without Us" exhibition. If it is not used in the Autism article, it will eventually be deleted. --Lambiam 11:09, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Which one is upside down, the image embedded or the photo linked in the previous comment? 12.116.29.106 (talk) 15:20, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The photo appears to show the flag rotated through 180º. Normally the hoist should be on the left. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 15:49, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

File:Autistic Pride flag – Joseph Redford.png is about too be deleted. It was copied from https://phm.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Fabric-of-Protest-Get-Ready-June-2023.pdf, page 2. --Lambiam 02:12, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 24

Looking for one book

Looking for one book. I only remember the beginning of the piece. Some guy found a derelict computer, sat down at it and started doing something, and then he saw a man with a gun walk up to the desk, they looked at each other in silence for a while, then the guy mechanically pressed the Enter button and the man shot him back. The work was read in the 1990s or very early 2000s. The piece appeared no later than the 1990s (probably earlier). I also remember that the guy was doing something enthusiastically on the computer: at first he typed without looking at the screen, but the message on the computer monitor made him do his work more slowly and carefully. The phrases went something like this. The message on the computer screen made him work more carefully. Behind the desk stood a man with a gun in his hand. The guy had never seen a real gun, except in the movies, but he knew immediately what it was. The guy's hand dropped mechanically to the Enter button, and the same second the black muzzle of the gun burst into flames, ending his life. Vyacheslav84 (talk) 08:27, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, was this a novel, occupying a full printed volume, or a shorter work, perhaps the first story in a collection or anthology? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 (talk) 12:50, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't remember. --Vyacheslav84 (talk) 13:21, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What is the name of this fallacy?

What is the name of this fallacy?
1-A perfect man has the characteristics A, B and C.
2-Womans dont like a man with all the characteristics A, B and C.
3-So womans dont like a perfect man.

The problem here is that being perfect is about the result, if a woman dont like man X, he is not perfect, no matter what characteristics he has.
The fallacy implies having the characteristics A, B and C makes you perfect man, and then since this "A, B, C characteristics" man is not wanted by a girl, girls dont like perfect man.177.207.110.196 (talk) 14:14, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Fallacy of composition, Faulty generalization and Stereotyping. Modocc (talk) 14:56, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The English sentences are somewhat ambiguous. "A man" can mean "some man" or "every man". Take the following syllogism:

Every perfect man has all the characteristics A, B and C.
There is no man with all the characteristics A, B and C who is liked by women.
Therefore, there is no perfect man who is liked by women.

In this form, it is IMO a valid syllogism. --Lambiam 16:45, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree the wording is ambiguous. I interpreted it the same as you at first. But they added an additional condition below that; "if a woman dont like man X, he is not perfect", which means there is an additional statement: "2.5. Every perfect man is liked by women". The result of 1, 2, and 2.5 is "3A. Therefore, there are no perfect men". This, too, is logically consistent, and not a fallacy. Maybe the reason the original set of statements seems like a fallacy is that 1, 2 (and 2.5) are not really consistent with real life. Floquenbeam (talk) 21:40, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I read "The problem here is that being perfect is about the result, if a woman dont like man X, he is not perfectt, no matter what characteristics he has." not as an additional statement to the syllogism, but as a rebuttal of it, implying that their first statement meant "some man" is "A perfect man...". Modocc (talk) 22:11, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I find it difficult to interpret the sentence explaining the perceived problem with the syllogism, especally the part "being perfect is about the result" – the result of what, and why is that problematic? The best I can come up with for the rest of the sentence is that there is an additional premise:

4. A man who is not liked by some woman is not perfect.

Taking being liked by women to be a yes-or-no predicate, combining this prenise with the earlier conclusion 3 allows us to deduce that no man is perfect. --Lambiam 22:44, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The OP also wrote "The fallacy implies having the characteristics A, B and C makes you perfect man..." which confirms that not all men with these characteristics are perfect, only some are, which is why its conclusion is a hasty generalization. Modocc (talk) 22:48, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The fallacy would include the assumption that A, B and C are sufficient to define perfection. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:04, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The OP's syllogism comes as sad news to any perfect mans hoping for admiration from womans but ordinary literate men and women need not feel affected. Philvoids (talk) 21:10, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Don't be a jerk to people whose first language isn't English. Floquenbeam (talk) 21:29, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I will explain myself better, when talking about a perfect man, the word perfect is about the results, a perfect man A if he wanted a woman B would be able to make her want to date him and not want to leave him and would love staying with him, all that with 100% certainty.
The fallacy comes from the fact that the person saying all that, is implying that having characteristics A, B and C makes you perfect, what makes someone perfect is the result and not the characteristics he has (unless some set of characteristics leads to him ALWAYS having the result and this is not the case with characteristics A, B and C alone). After seeing that a girl didnt wanted a guy with characteristics A, B and C (that he implied it meant the guy was perfect), he says that because of that it means girls wont like a perfect man.
Another example, lets imagine that assuming perfect play you can always wins chess as white, an related example would be.
1-A perfect chess player has the characteristics A, B and C.
2-A player with those characteristics playing as white lost the game.
3-This means being a perfect player doenst imply that you will win as white.
Again a perfect chess player is one that always win, he implies that some characteristics make some player perfect and assume something based at what happened with a player that has his own definition of perfect player.177.207.110.147 (talk) 00:50, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For this to be a fallacy the conclusion 3 is either false or not implied, because being a perfect player means they win. Check. Then 2 someone with characteristics A, B and C loses. Check. The loser shares these characteristics with either all or some perfect players. Check. So 1 and 2 are not sufficient to conclude 3. Thus its a faulty generalization. Correct? Modocc (talk) 01:20, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"For this to be a fallacy the conclusion 3 is either false or not implied". 3 is false.

"The loser shares these characteristics with either all or some perfect players. " They dont share those characteristics with perfect players , the person saying thing 1 implied those characteristics make someone perfect, this came out of his own mind, one characteristic that would make someone perfect is to have the endgame tablebase up to 32 pieces (max amount of pieces you can have at chess) and also never misclick/mouse slip when playing chess (so the move he want to make and the move he make is the same) and also be able to move really fast (needed if they are playing fast time controls)177.207.110.147 (talk) 01:49, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It can be a valid argument even if the 1st premise is false and the conclusion is wrong. See False premise. Modocc (talk) 02:06, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

With a false premise the argument is unsound. Modocc (talk) 02:43, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's a Fallacy of presumption. Modocc (talk) 03:23, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The objection to the conclusion relies on a premise not given in the syllogism: that a perfect chess player always wins as white (or that the perfect man is liked by women). Since that's not a premise given in the syllogism, the conclusion is perfectly valid. --Avocado (talk) 00:52, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perfectly valid sure but unsound, nevertheless, when its premise(s) are known to be false. Thus, it is an informal fallacy, and the name of the fallacy is what the OP requested and it's listed in the article as a fallacy of presumption. It's a fallacy that frequently occurs with paradigm shifts. Modocc (talk) 01:05, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 25

Are Personal communications service (NANP) mobile numbers?

Personal communications service mentions that:

A personal communications service (PCS) is set of communications capabilities that provide a combination of terminal mobility, personal mobility, and service profile management.

Does it means that Personal communications service (NANP) are mobile numbers because of providing mobility? I cannot find the mention of ‘mobile numbers’ in NANP or List of North American Numbering Plan area codes. 49.182.135.140 (talk) 01:24, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most mobile numbers on the NANP, in the sense of telephone numbers assigned to mobile cellular devices, do not have a geography-based area code; although the first three digits of such numbers are commonly referred to as their "area code", this is a bit of a misnomer then. In the USA these mobile numbers have a 5XX "area code". However, according to North American Numbering Plan § Non-geographic services, the converse is not always true: personal communications service 5XX numbers can also be for fixed devices (not using a cellular network). --Lambiam 11:59, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Punjabi and Bengali instruction language university

Which universities in Punjab, India and Pakistan are known to give instructions or lectures in Punjabi and which universities in West Bengal are known to give instructions in Bengali? I was under the impression that all universities in Punjab, India; Punjab, Pakistan and West Bengal in India give only in Hindi and English. Please do enlighten. Donmust90 Donmust90 (talk) 16:46, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 26

Name for type of interchange

At coordinates 34.79749785424678, -82.37485296822788, there is an interchange. On both sides of the highway, there is a short side roadway that has multiple on and offramps. I've been looking at interchange designs, but I can't find an example of this "multi-interchange" with a proper name. I would like a reference that includes this interchange design. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 16:04, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That looks like a collector-distributor interchange. —C.Fred (talk) 16:06, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. That looks correct. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 16:32, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 27

Extraterrestrial orbiters update?

What's the latest data telling us about Jupiter from Juno and about Venus from Akatsuki? Have we learned anything new and interesting lately? Viriditas (talk) 01:05, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Juno news is still being updated here. Akatsuki news hasn't had updates, but the old articles are still getting minor updates here. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 11:29, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Boom box batteries

In Do the Right Thing, one of the characters needs 20 D batteries for his boombox. What sort of boombox would require 20 D batteries, or was that simply a fictional exaggeration? How many and what kind of batteries would one expect to use for a boombox of the size shown in the movie? 2601:18A:C500:E830:526A:B17D:E5EF:4ACD (talk) 04:25, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[7] Modocc (talk) 05:27, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So, 10 D batteries then. 2601:18A:C500:E830:526A:B17D:E5EF:4ACD (talk) 05:41, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is you would need 20 at a time because the 10 wouldn't last long enough. Viriditas (talk) 08:52, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You've got to fight the power consumption. Clarityfiend (talk) 11:06, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 28

Multiplication memorization

I remember back in elementary school, one of my classmates said he memorized multiplication tables by assigning a gender and color to each equation. For example, he would say eight times nine was male and purple and five times eight was female and brown. Is there a name for this phenomenon, and does this actually work? TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 02:49, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Grapheme–color synesthesia.-Gadfium (talk) 04:38, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Synesthesia is likely a natural in-born perception while the OP's classmate voluntarily cultivates an unusual (two-dimensional) form of Mnemonic. These can aid memory because we more easily remember spatial, personal, surprising, physical, sexual, humorous and otherwise "relatable" information than more abstract or impersonal forms of information. Philvoids (talk) 13:46, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 30

National Identity perceived

Hello. Small curiosity; I don't know if a census was taken at the time or something, but when England won the World Cup in 1966, what was the perceived national identity in the country that year, (England alone); did people describe themselves as more English or more British? Thank you very much. 2.45.43.119 (talk) 12:51, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Identifying as English or British is not exclusive of one another. A person can authentically identify as both. It is based on need. Your IP looks up to the United States, so in a American sense, a person can identify as Cajun, Louisianian, and American all at the same time, with none of those identities taking away from another identity or being more of an identity than any other identity. It is based on need. If asked for identity while in New Orleans, the person would likely claim to be Cajun. If asked for an identity at the Delta hub in Atlanta, the person might identify as Louisianian. If asked for identity at the Olymics in France, the person might identify as American. Similarly, a person might identify as English while in Britain, but as British while outside Britain, and even go further to identify as a Londoner if in Manchester. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 17:16, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The English/British nationality issue is complex and evolving, but my impression (I was 8 in 1966) was that English and British were used interchangeably by English people in the 1960s. Note that there was no question about ethnicity in the UK census until the 1991 United Kingdom census and then "White British" was the only option for "indigenous" people (for want of a better term).

For the current situation, see National identity, England and Wales: Census 2021 Alansplodge (talk) 18:16, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Alansplodge: I'm only a couple of years older than you, but certainly we were taught the difference between British and English. Possibly a north/south or London/rest of the UK issue? We lived in Yorkshire and I'm of mixed Yorkshire/Scottish parentage.

One can have been taught the distinction and yet use the terms interchangeably in informal speech. --Lambiam 08:35, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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