Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 April 1

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April 1

people actually do this?!

I've never heard anyone say to a cashier an item should be free because it didn't scan where I live (Western Europe.) Is it an American thing? Asmrulz (talk) 02:14, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Nobody ever says it and means it, everyone makes that joke thinking they're original, but the cashier has heard it a million times. Similarly, I had to get an ultrasound once, I'm a male, so I would joke that they might find a baby, but didn't make the joke with the ultrasound operator knowing she probably hears it every time. Ryan Vesey 02:17, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The archaic form of this feeble joke is that it must be free because there's no price tag stuck to it. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 02:20, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

"Nobody ever says it and means it" oh, thank goodness. Faith in humanity restored)) Asmrulz (talk) 02:26, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I have said it, and meant it, at least twice within the last month. (I also suggested, when the registers were down, that if all ten or so of the people in line were to rush the door with all we had, the most they could do would be to grab one of us.) It's not my fault if the cashier doesn't go along. μηδείς (talk) 03:00, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I guess I just assumed "things" about Americans' mentality in general when I thought people said this in earnest. Asmrulz (talk) 03:55, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

We learn new things about American morality every day. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 10:05, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

[Insert basic anti-american statement that nobody in our hypersensitive time would tolerate about any other nation or group]. Shadowjams (talk) 12:38, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Trying to get something for nothing is by no means limited to Americans. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:34, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

In some supermarkets, if the scan is for the wrong price, the item is free. Maybe some folks think that should extend to not registering at all. RudolfRed (talk) 03:06, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

See these two news articles: Canada, America. Of course, scammers do it too [1].--Auric talk 04:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

(...when I thought people said this in earnest) and with no legal claim, too )) Asmrulz (talk) 05:06, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Michigan once had a law that if an item scanned for more than the listed price, the buyer was entitled to receive ten times the overage, which would make it free in many cases. I'm not sure what became of that law. StuRat (talk) 05:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The extremely weak joke is that the speaker is intentionally conflating "no price" with "no cost."

It's one of those annoying jokes that everyone who makes it thinks they've thought up for the first time. APL (talk) 04:59, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

shipping historic

what can we learn from shipping historic ? its not a homework, only for my general knowledge !! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.225.229.248 (talk) 07:51, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

What time frame do you have in mind ? Perhaps the most recent major innovation is the development of the container ship, which greatly reduced shipping costs. As such, it's a major contributor to globalization, for good and for bad.

For much older shipping history, you might want to look at our Silk Road, and the spice trade articles. In Roman times and earlier, the amphora served as a standard shipping container, especially for liquids, like wine and olive oil. StuRat (talk) 16:27, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

First amusement ride to use a 360 degree dome screen

What was the first amusement ride to use a 360 degree dome screen? I believe it was Back to the Future: the Ride. I'm not sure if the ride used a 360 degree screen though. Am I wrong? Wondering if anyone has info on what the first ride to use a 360 degree dome screen was. Rebel Yeh (talk) 08:05, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Skinning a cat

What are the uses of a skinned cat? --Carnildo (talk) 09:50, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Cat fur is frequently used as an inexpensive replacement for other furs in clothing - see Fur clothing#Sources. Cat meat is reasonably edible (see this news item), and is frequently used as an inexpensive ingredient in takeaway food - see this article (from the Daily Mirror, I'm afraid). Tevildo (talk) 10:30, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Note that the expression "There's more than one way to skin a cat" doesn't mean a house cat, it means a big cat. StuRat (talk) 15:34, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Oddly enough, lions and tigers are used to the idea that "there's more than one way to skin a human." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:21, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

The better To Serve Man. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:18, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

They are considered edible by some, and have on occasion likely been sold as "rabbit" or "squirrel" by hunters. An old joke has a purchaser of such a "game animal" telling the hunter "It tasted great, but next time please leave one paw on it." Edison (talk) 01:35, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Inter Organisation Marketing Strategy

I am a part of Quality domain for Offshore business centre for a reputed organisation. I have 3 concepts that i have designed, these are primarily dashboards and high level quality reports from transactional monitoring. i am now in the process of marketing them internally across all centres so every stakeholder gets to understand these. i wish to know what innovative methods i can use to market these reporting tools. Emailers are just too conventional. hence kindly assist me as i was unable to search this string on Wiki. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.50.4.42 (talk) 11:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

It might help if you restated the question in plain English. The overwhelming density of marketing-speak gobbledygook in your post renders the question impenetrably opaque to the vast majority of readers here. Roger (talk) 13:23, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

OP seeks a more effective way to spam. (April Fools?) Looie496 (talk) 14:55, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Sadly, my work experience enables me to understand the OP. The OP claims to want to market (digital) tools, not spam. If the OP doesn't want to use email, some other possibilities might be to post an article on the company's intranet site, demo or use the tools at meetings, try to arrange informal demo sessions with decision makers or with lower-ranked people who can influence decision makers. If this person shares a work site with any potential "customers", another option would be to tout these tools during odd encounters around the building. Marco polo (talk) 15:35, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm confused by your use of the term "Inter Organization". "Inter-organization" means between different organizations. Do you mean "Intra-organization", meaning within your organization (company) ?

As far as an answer, perhaps an entertaining video on YouTube might work, although you still need to direct people there, and emails might still be the best way to do that. StuRat (talk) 16:19, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

lip miving while someone is talking to you

What causes some people to move their lips along while you are talking to them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.39.177.60 (talk) 14:55, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Different parts of the brain are linked together. In some cases, parts which should operate independently don't. Synesthesia is one example of this. In the case of lips moving when the person is listening or reading, this would be a link between the speech recognition and speech generation centers. A similar instance is people who must count out-loud.

As far as evolution, this condition isn't likely to reduce the number of offspring a person produces, so it isn't very strongly selected against. Therefore, genes that lead to such conditions have not been bred out of the gene pool. StuRat (talk) 15:36, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

• See mirror neuron. You'll also notice that if you stick your tongue out at a newborn they will stick out theirs. Ramachandran's The Tell-Tale Brain is a good read on this and various other phenomena as part of the origin of language. μηδείς (talk) 18:05, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

From personal experience: older persons who have lost some of their hearing sometimes move their lips as you speak to them, in a sort of "lip reading" to help them understand what you are saying. Mimicking your lip movements may help them understand you. Edison (talk) 04:40, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Restaurant promotions biased towards unhealthy food

I've observed that this is the case. For example, Max and Erma's recently had a promotion where they offered one free item every 2 weeks to members with their loyalty rewards card. Those items were as follows:

                                                               Sat   Trans
                                                Fat     Fat    Fat   Fat    Chol   Sodium   Carbs   Fiber   Protein   Sugar
                                      (cals)   (cals)   (g)    (g)   (g)    (mg)    (mg)     (g)     (g)      (g)      (g)
                                      ======   ======   ===    ===   =====  ====   =======  =====   =====   =======   =====					
Nachos Grande                          1070      580     64     22    1      90     1640      99      11       6        32	
Chips and Cheese                       1090      510     56     13    0      45     2150     128      10       7        24
Soft Pretzel Sticks (with cheese dip)   590       90     10      3    0      17     3890     100       3       5        22
Fried Pickle Chips                      870      620     71     12    0      20     2640      55       3       4         9

Now, Max & Erma's does have healthy food on their menu, like black bean roll-ups, grilled asparagus, a black bean burger, and salads. But they don't seem to promote those. And it's not just this chain, I rarely see promotions of healthy food anywhere, and when I do, it's a much less of a deal, like $2 off a $6 Wendy's salad (33%), versus 100% off their chili-cheese fries: [2].

So, why is that ?

1) Is the profit margin higher on unhealthy foods, allowing them to discount them more ?

2) Do people who eat healthy foods not care about promotions ? StuRat (talk) 19:34, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Some people claim that the distribution of agricultural subsidies distorts the relative prices of foodstuffs in such a way that unhealthy food is cheaper than it would otherwise be - agricultural subsidy#Impact on nutrition. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:43, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Personally i'd say they put promotions on some of the highest selling items as they are the ones that are likely to get customers in for a meal..this assumes that the most popular meals are the ones that are least healthy. ny156uk (talk) 21:29, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps, but this seems to have the effect of fighting change. Let's assume that unhealthy foods were once most popular, even at the same price, so then they added promotions for them. Now, let's say that healthy foods would be more popular today, if the same price. However, promotions are still in place for the unhealthy foods, and their lower price thus continues to make them look more popular, and thus they keep those promotions in place. StuRat (talk) 14:14, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Have you ever had a Nachos Bell Grande from Taco Bell? It's amazing. Shadowjams (talk) 04:39, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Is there some reason why we are defaming this private business here? Did one of the waitrices intentionally spill something on someone's lap? μηδείς (talk) 19:15, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not defamation if it's true. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:55, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Defamation, how is any of this defamation? Ryan Vesey 12:27, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

If listing the nutritional info from their web site is considered defamation, then they seriously need to improve their menu. StuRat (talk) 22:47, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

World records on farts?

So, what are the world records for:

1. Farting the longest?
2. Farting the loudest?
3. The smelliest fart?
4. The most painful?

And is there any that sounds most like actual music?

Also, where in the Guinness World Records database will these kinds of farts be gone over? --129.130.239.181 (talk) 23:01, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

PS: How about the one with the most torque / propulsion? Any that could propel the farter into the air? --129.130.239.181 (talk) 23:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

As usual, we have an article on flatulist, and Category:Flatulists. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:57, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

For the last part - can a fart lift someone into the air? The most a person farts through an entire day is about 1.5 liters of gas (about a quarter of that is more normal) - let's be generous and suppose that (s)he lets loose the whole lot in one go. The amount of kinetic energy produced has to equal the gravitational potential energy of the person at the top of their trajectory. Kinetic energy of the fart is m_fv²/2 and gravitational potential energy of the person is m_pgh. Let's suppose a very light person...(m_p=50kg) and let's suppose they are lifted just one millimeter off the ground (h=0.001m). 99% of the gasses involved are roughly the composition of air - so the density is 1.2kg m^-3 and the volume is 1.5 liters - so m_f is 0.0018 kg. So the required velocity of the fart is the square root of (50x9.8x0.001x2/0.0018)...about 23 meters per second - which is around 50mph. A typical fart travels at about 6 mph (several sources say 10 feet per second)...so to lift themselves even just one millimeter requires:

• Being a fairly light person (50kg)
• Letting loose a whole day of worst-day production in one go.
• And doing it at ten times the speed of a "normal" person.

It's kinda borderline possible maybe...but there are a lot of very generous assumptions there - and one millimeter of height isn't really noticable. To get to even a couple of centimeters, you'd need a supersonic fart - and that's just not credible. SteveBaker (talk) 20:18, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Most painful old farts: I nominate the Republican Party (United States). Clarityfiend (talk) 00:17, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

As for the Guinness World Records thing - over the past 15 years, the book has ceased to contain even a fraction of the records that the company tracks. Even their website does not contain even a fraction of the records that they keep. To find that information, you have to write to them via snail-mail - and expect to wait a month or two for a response. If you need the answer urgently, you can pay a few hundred dollars for the privilege and get an immediate answer. However, they have started to sharply curtail the set of records that they keep - and in particular, they've stopped keeping records that they think may be injurious to the people who might try to break them. It wouldn't surprise me to find that they'd refuse to keep records relating to excessive farting because of the risk that someone trying to break those records would hurt themselves.

So the odds are good that this information is not knowable. SteveBaker (talk) 14:04, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

See Johnny Fartpants. Astronaut (talk) 15:31, 3 April 2013 (UTC)