Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 February 20

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February 20

The first phone jacks in California

What year were phone jacks first installed and available for use in California? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.226.41.243 (talk) 04:08, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I can't find any definite answers, but based on personal recollection and the information at Bell System#Government sanctioned monopolization, a good bet would be 1984, with the breakup of the Bell monopoly -- before that, since everything connected to the phone system was owned by the telephone company, they would have used screw terminals rather than modular jacks. --Carnildo (talk) 04:31, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

• Certainly not that late. My parents' house in New Jersey had phone jacks in it when we moved in in 1974, although the kitchen and master bedroom phones were hard-wired. Jacks were available in the '60's: Telephone plug. I remember unplugging a phone and dismantling it and reassembling it in 1976 including taking the jack off the wall and disconnecting the four wires attached to its base. We even had Phillip's heads! μηδείς (talk) 04:58, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

How many heads did Phillip have? — See also Henry F. Phillips. —Tamfang (talk) 06:50, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

We have an article: Telephone plug, but from personal experience, I can tell you that the 4-prong 505A plug was available for Bell System (presumably including CA) in 1962 (and perhaps earlier) as a customer installed option. The modular AT&T jack was available for service installation by 1973.[1]  ~Eric:71.20.250.51 (talk) 06:01, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I hope you realize how ridiculous your claim we have an article "telephone plug" is, Erik, not to mention the absurd notion modular jacks were available before 1974. μηδείς (talk) 06:37, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Why isn't curling played by mixed teams?

I can understand that in the interest of fairness sports that require physicality like tennis are played separately by the sexes, but curling? --Dweller (talk) 12:24, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Do you mean Mixed curling? Justin Bieber would give that a go I imagine. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:36, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

But why is it played in single sex at all, and particularly so at the Olympics? Is that a contentious statement about Mr Bieber? --Dweller (talk) 12:41, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't know why, there's no good reason, but there's no good reason that men shouldn't play women in darts, snooker, bowls etc, but it doesn't happen in those sports either. Although Justin Bieber would definitely enjoy darts. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:43, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Is there another Olympic sport where the division of the sexes seems nonsensical? --Dweller (talk) 12:49, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Archery? Shooting? The Rambling Man (talk) 12:52, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Utter madness. How come feminists haven't put an end to this? --Dweller (talk) 12:58, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. There's no reason at all that these hand-eye co-ordination events shouldn't be mixed. I blame Bieber. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:19, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Steve Cram and Jackie Lockhart were actually discussing this earlier on on the BBC coverage. Obviously the difference in performance isn't as big in curling as in other, more power based sports, but the men do have an advantage over the women in the sweeping - the men are able to sweep harder, which allows the stone to be kept straighter. This should mean that male sweepers could make a stone that would otherwise curl much further keep straight to pass a guard stone and then curl dramatically into the house. So, whilst mixed curling exists (and I guess that there's no reason why it shouldn't be an Olympic competition), you would generally expect a team of men to slightly outperform a team of women with comparable curling ability over 10 ends through the strength of their sweeping and the different tactics that this enables them to use. So you probably won't ever see all male teams taking on all female teams in Olympic competition. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 14:02, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

And in shooting? Archery? The former involves pointing a tube at a target and pulling the trigger, no strength (endurance perhaps), while the latter involves pulling a pointy stick backwards and letting it go towards a target. There's no question that the length of the shooting is an issue (so strength, once again, not a problem). Is it that men have better endurance in all sports than women then? The Rambling Man (talk) 14:09, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Splitting archery makes sense: in the 2012 games, the best-scoring female competitor would have ranked #15 in the men's competition. Shooting sports, not so much: men's competitions involve firing more shots than women's competitions, but once you normalize for that, the scores are similar. For example, in the 50-meter rifle, three positions, the #1 qualifier from the women's competition would have been #1 in the men's, while the #39 female competitor would have been #41 in the men's rankings. --Carnildo (talk) 01:12, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Then by the same rationale European teams should not play against Oriental teams because the Europeans are larger in stature and can sweep harder. http://www1.skysports.com/winter-olympics/news/12040/9165823/winter-olympics-great-britains-women-curlers-score-easy-victory-over-japan Seems a very "weak" argument to me. ;) 196.214.78.114 (talk) 14:12, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually, there is a different argument. Men, on average, seem to have better motor coordination than women. [2] Having teams composed of the best performers in each nation, regardless of sex, might result in all-male teams in many cases. As a consequence, women might be discouraged from pursuing athletics and might never have the chance to compete in the Olympics. Even though they may be handicapped against Europeans in some sports because of differences in body type, at least the best Japanese athletes do get to attend the Olympics. Segregating sports by sex is arguably the stronger feminist position, because it gives women more of a chance to compete. Marco polo (talk) 16:41, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

From what I've seen, the Canadian women's curling team could whip any of the men's teams. Besides, we've evidence from our mixed curling article that away from the Olympics, it's the norm for the sport to be mixed. --Dweller (talk) 16:55, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

That's not what the article says, and I've only very rarely seen a mixed team on TV. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:54, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes and I'm pretty sure it's said something similar for a while since IIRC I saw something similar a week or two ago. This [3] may be a bit sexist but I presume the basic facts are right. According to that, there's only one case (not sure in how many years) in the Canadian Mixed Curling Championship (which it says is the highest level of mixed competition in Canada) of the winning skip being female. (I presume the main point is who plays the last two stones who doesn't have to be but often is the skip. Although I wonder if the thirds may be where men tend to have the biggest advantage as I think that may be where the biggest take outs often happen which is perhaps their biggest advantage. Not stated, but I'm guessing winning teams tend to have sweepers as sweepers as much as possible too.)

Yes, that is generally considered the best strategy. The 1998 Spanish Olympic curling team tried to have matadors as sweepers but the stones did not react well to the swinging red cloth. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:16, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Both that and [4] suggest there have been some of those made for TV male vs female matches (particularly it sounds like TSN Skins Game) with the male teams winning every time, and that evidentally includes one skipped by Jennifer Jones (curler).

And while both the Canadian male and female gold medal winners are undoutedly great teams, I'm far from convinced the female team could have beaten the male one and as per thesecond source even Cheryl Bernard thinks the men can generally do a little more.

Incidentally per the Slate source, there's evidentally a plan or at least desire [5] to include a mixed doubles in 2018. Our World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship doesn't say much useful so I don't know if there's a choice over what stones the male and female play but if there is I wouldn't be surprised if the Slate source is at least partially right and the last stones would generally be played by the male competitor (I'm not sure that 'third' has any meaning when there are only two players though). 2013 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship is interesting as it would seem to suggest based on the number of shared surnames that currently many competitors are either married or related by blood (I would guess siblings).

Nil Einne (talk) 18:41, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not saying they're the same thing but I don't think the descent thing is as simple as you suggest. For starters while it depends greatly on the sport, there's no guarantee the best athelete of any particular country gets to attend. While qualification requirements often do have regional components as well as special conditions encouraging participation of weaker countries, it's fair to say on average the 'weaker' best athelete generally has less chance of qualifying than the 'stronger' best athelete. (Of course we should also remember this means often a better athelete from a strong country has less chance of qualifying than a weaker athelete from a weak country.)

In any case, were talking about race or descent rather than country. In a number of sports people of quite a few different Asian descents because of apparent average differences in body type, size and other physiological factors appear to perform worse on average than people of many different European descent who themselves perform worse on average than people of some Africans descents.

But these people don't have to live in the place where there ancestors lived. So in a place with a fairly high percentage of recent immigrants like the US or Canada or New Zealand or whatever, this tends to be reflected in their chance of competing for the country of birth. Sure they may be able to compete for some other country, and it may be more likely they are able or willing to compete for a country if their parents or grandparents or whatever lived there, but it depends on the sport and person e.g. Victor Ahn and if we had total fluidity the average physiological differences will come in to play.

There's also the issue of whether simply competing is enough. While some of the qualifications requirements may arise naturally due to the regional nature of traditional competition, I don't think this is always the case. I doubt many people will be happy if different qualifications requirements are included for men and women to ensure that women are able to compete, even if they have no chance of winning a medal because they have to compete with men.

The main arguments against such seperation or segregation probably includes issues like tradition (sex segregation has been common for a long time), acceptance (I think most male and female atheletes are fine with such seperation, it even applies at very low levels in quite a number of sports). But the key one is probably that while sex isn't as binary or as simple as many people think, as cases like Caster Semenya have shown, and so there are some problems with Gender verification in sports, this is nothing compare to the possible variation in descent and the difficulty coming up with a meaningful classification system.

I'm also not sure the differences between the averages is as great in most sports and the fact we don't have total fludity but do have different levels of concentration on sport as well as different population levels and other factors perhaps combined with different levels of importance of various physiological differences tends to create a situation where people of many different descents have a resonable chance of not only competing but medalling.

Nil Einne (talk) 18:02, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Pure speculation, but if they were mixed, there would be fewer events. Splitting them male and female gives twice as many medals to be awarded. I will ignore the suggestion that there are differences between "Orientals" that make them somehow inferior athletes. By that logic, Indians are tiny little weak people given their sporting history. Mingmingla (talk) 17:27, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Why are competitions not split according to performance rather than according to sex (or ethnicity ow whatever), which would "giv[e] [all sportspersons, including the less gifted of them] more of a chance to compete" and would not "discourag[e] [them] from pursuing athletics" as Marco polo wrote? Apokrif (talk) 20:01, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there should be one Academy Award for Best Acting Performance, not separate ones for males and females. That's as artificial as Best Performance by a Left-Hander, or Best Performance by a Practising Christian, or Best Performance by a Dog-Lover. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:33, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

In tennis there's mixed doubles, which is fair because there's a guy and a gal on each side. But there is no mixed singles, at least not at major level. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:22, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

We have an article on marriage. I believe it is not a recognized Olympic event. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:50, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

What about marital arts? Some of them require much more stamina than rifle shooting or archery, for ex. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:36, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

At lower levels there may be large variations between individual curling players and the physical difference between men and women may not be a dominant factor. In elite sport like the Olympics, small differences matter and I doubt female players would be competitive with male over a whole tournament, although there would certainly be occasions where the women do better. Harder sweeping reduces friction so the stone travels longer. This means men can vary the length more after they see whether the speed is right. And physique to deliver a fast stone with full control gives an advantage in some takeouts when you want to hit multiple stones. A fast stone also travels more straight. I think the only meaningful form of mixed curling at Olympic level would be with a mandatory number of men and women on each team. If you make it mandatory then two of each is the only reasonable option. Mixed teams are bad in contact sports but it works in many other sports when the teams have the same mix. The Winter Olympics have mixed relay events in some sports with big differences between men and women. I think mixed relay works best when the order of men and women is the same. There is mixed relay swimming (not in the Olympics) where teams can choose the order, but it makes it hard to follow who is "really" ahead when a man on the last leg can catch women far ahead. It also makes me a little uncomfortable to watch a woman lose a big lead to a man in a prestigious event with teammates and fans who really care. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:36, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Not sure if this is still "live", but another issue (not my issue, mind you) could be that in many Muslim countries, men and women are not allowed to interact outside the family or perhaps limited commercial exchanges, so the idea of mixed sports teams (with all of the physicality and emotional bonding that takes place in athletic teams) would be anathema. Ending sex-segregated competitions could cause much of the Muslim world to withdraw from the Olympics. Not that I support religiously motivated segregation, but I imagine this is an obstacle to integrating male and female Olympic competitions. Marco polo (talk) 15:56, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't see why Muslims would withdraw when they can just omit participation in mixed events and not televise them. I suspect there are already events some Muslim countries dislike due to gender mixing, clothing or other factors. Equestrian at the Summer Olympics is not sex-segregated and 3 of 6 events are for teams, although the team element may be smaller in equestrian events and relays than in curling. Anyway, muslim countries aren't exactly known for their winter sports abilities. PrimeHunter (talk)

Document about tortured DRC returnees

Hi,

I'm looking for the whole text of the document mentioned here (or the reason why the journalists didn't publish it even in a sanitized version).

Thanks. Apokrif (talk) 19:37, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

"Top secret" usually doesn't mean good things for freedom of press. But the Internet is much more open. I'll see what I can see (but I'll try not to ask too many questions). InedibleHulk (talk) 20:04, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

But first, does anyone know Wikipedia's stance/restrictions on sharing classified info? Seems a little iffy. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:07, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

It seems like it'd be fine to share if someone finds it, but I haven't. I'll keep an eye open and try to remember my French. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:52, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

One might ask Diane Taylor and Mark Townsend, mentioned before the article.DanielDemaret (talk) 07:25, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Sure. Apokrif (talk) 17:31, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Apostle Island Sea Caves on Lake Superior

I , and a few friends are very curious as to why these caves are referred to as sea caves , when clearly they are in a fresh water lake . Should they not , in fact , be called lake caves ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gerry Dionne (talk • contribs) 22:10, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

The term sea cave seems to relate to the way they are formed - by wave action on areas of weakness in cliffs. There are probably relatively few 'lake caves' as only the largest lakes will produce waves of sufficient size to cause such erosion, and hence there hasn't been a need to name them. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:37, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

You may call them lakes, others call them inland seas. 75.41.109.190 (talk) 19:28, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

What examples of change are explored in the book Maus II?

What examples of change are explored in the book Maus II? How do these examples relate to the generalizations about change? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Orientario (talk • contribs) 22:25, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Do your own homework. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:28, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

What were the consequences for of the Holocaust for the survivors in the book Maus II?

What were the consequences of the Holocaust for the survivors in the book Maus II? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Orientario (talk • contribs) 22:32, 20 February 2014‎

We don't answer homework questions. Read the book and find out for yourself. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:41, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

The short, general answer is "change". Just hand that in. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:42, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

• In a pinch, this study guide might be helpful.   Eric_theRead:71.20.250.51 (talk) 23:43, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Building a business case?

Presumably most smart business men would construct some sort of a business plan when they are starting or expanding a new business. Such a plan would generally estimate projected costs and revenues and provide information about similar businesses. My question is what sources of data do people generally use when building a business plan and where do they get it? If I have an idea to sell widgets, how can I estimate the size of the market and the prices people are willing to pay in the area in which I would consider doing business? If other companies sell similar products, then how can I estimate their market share, sales, costs, etc. It seems like a lot of the information that one might want in building a business plan is either going to be highly speculative or limited based on the fact that existing business don't tend to share most operational details. I don't have any particular widgets in mind to sell. I'm just interested in the general approaches that people take in order to gather concrete business data. Dragons flight (talk) 23:31, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Consider the scope of answers we can provide here. Yours exceeds that by several orders of magnitude. Try reading articles like business plan and the sources they name, then asking for specific clarifications if you need them. μηδείς (talk) 01:58, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Part of being in business is knowing your market and area of expertise. For virtually any industry there are trade periodicals that examine and relate all kinds of information about sales numbers and production methods and so on. There are conferences and friendly alliances and old-boy networks and employee movement that all help keep people "in the know". But more importantly, it should not matter what other companies are doing (I mean, yes, it does... obviously, but bear with me a minute). The part you need to figure out is your costs (raw materials, production, distribution, marketing, etc.) and then start making directed inquiries about what prices the market will bear.

The thing is, few successful businessmen wake up one morning and decide to start a widget-making conglomerate as you seem to think is the case; more often, someone making similar items decides to branch out, so that "Bob's Widgets" becomes "Bob's Widgets and Grommets". Bob decided to do that because, being in a related field, he already had a very good idea about what his costs were going to be and he already had contacts in the community that would let him slip into the lucrative grommet market more easily. Not to mention that he already had machines and personnel and real estate sitting around that could be used to hit the ground running. Or maybe George is a higher-up at Bob's that doesn't like the direction the company is going and decides to strike out on his own, using his own knowledge and contacts to become a competitor.

This is why "great ideas" mean so little in business. You having a great idea about a new widget means virtually nothing at all if you don't have the requisite background information. Matt Deres (talk) 13:05, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

As far as determining what people are willing to pay for your widget, you find this out with surveys: "What is the maximum price at which you would buy a widget ? Buy two ? Three ?" I just completed such a survey for Einstein Bros. Bagels and told them some things I would be willing to buy at the proposed price, and others I would not. It helps to give something away free with the survey, as this ensures a wider range of participants, and thus more accurate results. (The cheapest way seems to be to enter everyone who completes the survey into a sweepstakes, but I don't do surveys like that, I only complete them if I am guaranteed something for my time.) StuRat (talk) 14:21, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Fashion Designers 1970s 1980s

I was lucky enough to find fashion "label" clothing at an unclaimed freight outlet in 1980. The designer name started with a "P", I don't believe it was a person's name, but the name of the fashion house. I have had no luck at all in locating the name of this design house online. Thank you for your help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.225.13.136 (talk) 23:36, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

P•Luca for barami ?  (logo) ~:71.20.250.51 (talk) 01:05, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Emilio Pucci, perhaps? —Nelson Ricardo (talk) 01:06, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Was this US? UK? What kind of clothes (shirts, pants, dresses...)? More info would help, but how about Polo, Prada, Perry Ellis, Pepe, Pony, or Penguin? --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  20:13, 22 February 2014 (UTC)