Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 November 18

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November 18

Pizza dreams

I know of at least three different people, none of whom know each other, who happen to have strange dreams after eating pizza. I've also heard of this happening with people who eat pasta with tomato sauce, so I'm thinking that the culprit is a type of herb found in tomato sauce. Has anyone been able to figure out which ingredient is responsible for enhancing the dream state? Viriditas (talk) 12:36, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I have heard this nugget repeatedly throughout my life, I have always assumed that it is an old wives' tale enhanced by confirmation bias. Two very powerful herbs indeed. --Jayron32 12:44, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

It's neither an old wives tale nor confirmation bias. None of the people involved mentioned tomato sauce or pizza to me. As it turns out, tomato sauce was the common food item ingested by all three before they went to bed. I suspect that these people have some kind of sensitivity to the herbs in the sauce, as I have never had strange dreams after eating tomato sauce. Viriditas (talk) 12:52, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Or the cheese, perhaps. 88.104.4.123 (talk) 13:41, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Totally anecdotal, but when I eat foods that might cause indigestion or any sensation as they pass, such as pickles, hot mustard, pepperoni, wasabi, hot chili, Chinese, Thai or Indian food, jalapenos, etc., I tend to have more vivid or disturbing dreams. My guess is that one, this has to due with the 'gut brain', and two, the tendency of the brain to incorporate ssomatic stimuli during sleep into a dream. For example, if I sleep in a cold room I will dream I am outside in bad weather. If I sleep on my arm so that it is numb I will dream I have wounded it. If I sleep with my mouth open and it is dried out I will dream my mouth is full of ash or my teeth are falling out. See Dream#Incorporation_of_reality. μηδείς (talk) 17:54, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Do you think that Chinese, Thai and Indian people routinely have disturbing dreams? HiLo48 (talk) 19:44, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, if they eat something like a lot of cheese or milk causing gas that they are not used to. Or was your question whether I am a racist? μηδείς (talk) 20:00, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

No, wasn't thinking racist at all. It was the matter of perspective, and maybe cultural differences. It was at least partly a serious question. Your response addresses it well. HiLo48 (talk) 21:19, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I should have added spicy since fried rice never gives me nightmares, but assumed it was obvious in the context--God, I am hungry now. μηδείς (talk) 22:56, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I think we have dreams all the time, but forget most of them by the time we awake. However, any food which causes you to wake up while in the dream stage results in you recalling them. So, unusual or hard to digest foods, or those consumed in large quantities, might do it. StuRat (talk) 22:24, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

There is also the dreams of the rarebit fiend. :-P --85.55.204.69 (talk) 23:26, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

And we're coming up to that part of year where Scrooge quotes apply: "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!" ". StuRat (talk) 23:34, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Do you mean scare quotes? Those look like regular quotes to me. Are scrooge quotes decrepit and less generous, kind of ≈like this≈? μηδείς (talk) 20:31, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

[In response to Jayron's now deleted comment: "Sigh...", I said]: First, please keep your bodily functions to yourself, Jayron, I don't report my quee... farts to readers. Second, I know who Scrooge is, what Westerner doesn't? But I still don't know what ≈Scrooge quotes≈ are. My Mom does have the Dickens' Village Scrooge House, though. It's going for twice used what she paid for it on Amazon. μηδείς (talk) 04:11, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I take it you are joking, but Jayron didn't get it. I can barely tell, myself. I suggest you use small text, a smiley after, a LOL, or another method to make such dry humor more obvious. StuRat (talk) 04:49, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I was flummoxed for more than a day by your comment, and only just figured it out right before Jayron recanted. It sounds so natural: "Scrooge Quotes". (And I do think it horribly rude to sigh in one's writing, not just to the person you're sighing at, but everyone.) I think there is a book about phrases and words that should have meanings because they sound so good, and "scrooge quotes" definitely belongs there. μηδείς (talk) 05:03, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Wow, I thought everyone would immediately get that it's a reference to Ebenezer Scrooge, especially when I included a direct quotation from that character. StuRat (talk) 07:18, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I thought you made up the statement, since I don't associate food talk except of turkey with the story, and were referring to it as a scrooge quote for being mean spirited or something, kind of the way one speaks of a spoonerism without attributing it to Spooner. Does the quote come from the book? I have only ever seen the cartoon. μηδείς (talk) 17:18, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I haven't read the book, but I assume it's in there, since it's in every stage and screen version I've seen. I assume the problem with the cartoon version is that it's too short, so leaves out all the great lines like this. One of the best versions was an old black-and-white film, since it's the only one which explained how Scrooge and Marley got rich (accountants of that era rarely did). As I recall, they were called in to do an audit of a company with "certain financial irregularities". It turned out that the company treasurer was embezzling money. The great part was how completely unrepentant he was. He knew that they wouldn't call the police, as this would panic the investors. So, he was allowed to retire "for health reasons", having already spent all the money. Scrooge and Marley then said they have a fiduciary responsibility to fully disclose the results of the audit to the stockholders ... unless, of course, they were to be made shareholders themselves. And thus they got 51% of the company as "hush money", and soon used that controlling interest to enrich themselves. StuRat (talk) 04:26, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

• Sleep Tight, the 1992 San Francisco stage show by Bliss Kolb and Bob Venezia, used the premise that, after eating a late-night pizza, a man has a series of strange dreams. Before the show started, a video ran showing a mouth eating one slice of pizza after another. Buffalo News July 2, 1995 "Pizza Dreams" notes "eating pizza causes me to have weird dreams." There's a pizza dreams app (to find pizza).-- Uzma Gamal (talk) 12:40, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

When do royalties start after advance?

Our article Advance against royalties says

For example, a book's author may sell a license to a publisher in return for 5% royalties on sales of the book and a $5,000 advance against those royalties. In this case, the author would immediately receive the $5,000, and royalty payments would be withheld until the publisher's takings from selling copies of the book reached $5,000, after which point the 5% royalty would be paid on any additional sales.

It previously said

...withheld until the publisher's takings from selling copies of the book reached $100,000...

but an IP with no other edits before or since changed it on 14 July 2011 to $5,000 with the edit summary

Changed the amount the publisher would receive before paying royalties. They would have to cover the advance of $5k before paying out the 5%. Previously the text claimed $100,000. Not sure how this arbitrary sum was arrived at, but this was wrong.

Which is right? I would think it would be $100,000 since at that point at 5% royalties the withheld royalties have offset the advance. References, please. Duoduoduo (talk) 15:17, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Reading this, which is the website of a literary agent, royalties being payed after $100,000 in publisher's takings would be correct if the royalties are payed net (i.e. calculated as a percentage of publishers takings). If the royalties are payed on retail price that would be $100,000 worth of books at reatil price, rather than publisher's takings. In any case the $5,000 figure is wrong as it currently stands. Equisetum (talk | contributions) 15:45, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Equisetum. I've corrected the article. Duoduoduo (talk) 15:59, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Surely this is something that can vary depending on where one is in the world, which nobody has mentioned. HiLo48 (talk) 19:42, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Only in the sense that minor contractual details could vary. As a general case (do royalties following an $x advance start after $x sales or after $x royalties would have been paid on $y sales?), only one answer exists worldwide. — Lomn 22:41, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Name of Game?

There was a game I remember from middle school where one player selected a four digit number and the other player guessed a number and was told how many digits were in the correct place and how many were the right digit but in the wrong place. We called it bullseye because the right number ion the right place was called a bullseye (and in the wrong place was called a hit.) Does anyone know what this game is called? (I want to see if I can find a discuss of strategies online.) Thanks. RJFJR (talk) 16:05, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Bulls and cows. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:15, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Never knew that. I knew it as Mastermind. Mingmingla (talk) 18:16, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Invicta Plastics (on whom we don't have an article!) always used to get very annoyed if any publication missed out the space ("Mastermind" rather than "Master Mind"). Cf "Biro". Tevildo (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I would guess that "Mastermind", without the space, can't be copyrighted trademarked, being a single English word. StuRat (talk) 23:36, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I would guess that copyright is completely irrelevant; this would be a trademark issue, and quite certainly single English words can be trademarked. Your confusion may be that descriptive English words cannot be trademarked (at least under US law.) So, I couldn't trademark "MILK" for the brand name of my bovine product. However, I could very well trademark "MILK" for my line of footwear. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 02:15, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I had thought you were describing Mastermind. Loved that game. μηδείς (talk) 22:53, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Very similar to what I remember as "bagels". WP has bagel (game), which redirects to a page that describes it. --Trovatore (talk) 02:19, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

False flag campaign ads ?

In the US, since superPACs are now allowed to buy ads without revealing their donors, can they put out an ad supposedly for a candidate, which is really against them ? At the end, when they say something silly like "Paid for by Americans for truth, justice, and the American Way", that certainly won't give us any clue who really paid for it, after all. StuRat (talk) 23:44, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

((( What is a PAC? What is a superPAC? -- SGBailey (talk) 11:25, 20 November 2012 (UTC) )))

A PAC is a Political Action Committee. They can campaign for specific candidates, but also have to report their donors. A superPAC, on the other hand, doesn't have to report it's donors. They are supposed to just campaign on issues, and aren't supposed to support or oppose a specific candidate, but they get around that easily by avoiding a few key words in their ads. Thus we get ads that say "tell candidate X how you feel" rather than "vote candidate X out of office". StuRat (talk) 17:20, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean by no clue who paid for it. But why shouldn't they be able to say whatever they want? I'd think a sarcastic 'pro-' ad could work brilliantly. μηδείς (talk) 04:22, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

In the last election, we got a taped message phone call which purported to be from the Tea Party urging us to vote for the Republican candidate for the state legislature, telling us about his conservative beliefs, but if you sat through the whole message, at the end, it indicated that it was paid for by the Democratic candidate. Apparently it was an attempt at associating the Republican with the Tea Party. 216.93.234.239 (talk) 04:27, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

That would be like trying to associate Poland with Warsaw. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:27, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I've just noticed a series of fumbled attempts to hat this comment, so I hope this shows up: Bugs is correct to imply that the Tea Party is pretty much a proper subset of the Republican Party. Whether that would be accurate, or complimentary, as an association to draw about a specific candidate, depends on the candidate, and could be highly debateable. But if it's true that a Democratic campaign paid for a message like the one described, that would definitely seem to be a false flag operation. AlexTiefling (talk) 16:30, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

And I've just unhatted that, because censoring the context for my reply is unhelpful, and what Bugs says is hardly earth-shatteringly controversial. AlexTiefling (talk) 17:04, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

And I've just re-hatted. Bugs is notorious for using the ref desks as a platform for mocking Republicans. This isn't the place for that. Please don't do that again. Joefromrandb (talk) 17:10, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I've just unhatted it. If you will hat Bugs' comment, then you will also need to hat the last comment in the post to which Bugs replied, as that contains the inherent presumption that the Tea Party is not associated with the Republican, which to many people would be illogical - which was Bugs' point. A simple logical statement, not soapboxing, unless you are reading "the Tea Party" with prejudice-tinted spectacles, which is hardly appropriate here. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 18:10, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

You could have left it as I had it. The editor made a "baiting" comment with an inherent false assumption, as you indicate. Most if not all the teabaggers have run in the Republican primaries to try to replace moderate or reasonable Republicans with radical right-wingers. The voting public has begun to figure them out, and are working on weeding them out. But they are typically under the Republican aegis, for better or worse. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:37, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Things like that can be effective if they are untraceable, but they backfire if they are done in the light of day. Looie496 (talk) 04:37, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Am I missing something? I thought PACs were required to list their donors. μηδείς (talk) 05:35, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

They are. But donations to super PACs can be made through anonymous corporations, making the donations essentially untraceable. A8875 (talk) 06:15, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

That's hardly true. Corporations have to be registered, they're not some sort of magical entity. It just means there's more work to be done. The implicit message here is that stupid uninformed voters shouldn't actually have to figure out what's going on for themselves, someone else should do that for them. μηδείς (talk) 17:02, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Registration doesn't equal disclosing the shareholders list. There are plenty of jurisdictions out there offering the option of anonymous bearer share corporations; Seychelles, Belize, and Panama to name a few.A8875 (talk) 18:45, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

A super PAC here being a PAC that has no direct affiliation with any political party or candidate, and is just a corporate citizen speaking its mind. Even when PACs have revealed their donor lists, those lists have often turned out to consist of even more obscure PACs rather than actual names. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:53, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

But those obscure PACs are legally required to disclose donor lists, no matter how obscure they are. It's basically a form of obfuscation through paper trails. However, by the end of the day, all those donor lists are freely accessible online[1], so it only takes a bit of programming skills to sort through the money trail. This is not the case with super PACs, where donors can set up an off-shore anonymous corporation, make a donation, and dissolve that corporation, leaving no paper trails behind. A8875 (talk) 07:18, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

StuRat, is there an actual request for references here? If not I think it's time someone marked this incitement to debate as resolved. μηδείς (talk) 17:02, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, what, if anything, would prevent a super PAC from putting out an ad which appears to support one candidate, but really undermines them. I'm not talking about a satirical ad, where you can tell, by the end, that it's making fun of the candidate it seems to support, but something more subtle, perhaps misrepresenting that candidate's positions. StuRat (talk) 02:44, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Who are you going to put in charge of stopping such misrepresentation, the Democrats, the Republicans, or both? Remember that the bipartisan election committee decided in 1992 that any candidate polling above 5% would be included in all future presidential debates, and then Perot, who was polling around 10% in 1996, was excluded arbitrarily (i.e, at the behest of both Clinton and Dole) because he was "not a serious candidate"; the rules be fucked. I am all in favor of stronger enforcement of the defamation laws, but every recent case about election ads that has been fought as defamation or fraud has been decided on the principle that one can say just about everything in politics. The issue certainly can't be about who is paying for the message, since anyone can pay for anything. The issue has to be truth. But so long as what would normally be defamation under common law is fair play, I don't see any legal remedy. μηδείς (talk) 04:03, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Knowing who is paying for an ad is critical to evaluating if it's true or not. In the present climate, if Candidate A funds an ad about Candidate B's positions, we can pretty much assume it to be all lies, while if they are talking about their own positions, there's still some possibility they are telling the truth. This saves a lot of time, but depends on us knowing who really funded the ad. StuRat (talk) 04:55, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Really? In my experience it's usually the other way round! --TammyMoet (talk) 20:31, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

This might be a good time to quote Vilhjalmur Stefansson: "What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public" (Discovery, 1964). -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 02:00, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

The recent US campaigns had more bad lies than a public golf course on senior citizens day. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:32, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Q: "How do you know if a politician is lying?" A: "Their lips are moving." --Jayron32 04:03, 22 November 2012 (UTC)