Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2023 June 21

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June 21

Too fancy a name for a plain country girl?

Would it be halfway-plausible for a young lady from a small provincial Russian town (more specifically, from Kostroma) to have the name "Adelaida" (Russian for Adelaide)? And, would it be halfway-plausible for her to be a flight instructor specializing in fighter jets such as the Mig-29 and/or the Su-27 and their derivatives? 2601:646:9882:46E0:7DE6:4D87:FC8E:D68 (talk) 12:50, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Why? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:05, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Why what? 2601:646:9882:46E0:7DE6:4D87:FC8E:D68 (talk) 13:15, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Why do you think someone from the rural areas can't have a particular name or career? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:19, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, as far as the name, because it's Western in origin, and there's very little Western influence in Russia outside of the Moscow and St. Pete areas -- and as far as the career, it's because rural parts of Russia are very impoverished, so it's hard for someone from those areas to get into a high-skilled occupation (and doubly so for a woman to get into a highly-skilled and traditionally male-dominated line of work). But, of course, there are exceptions to (almost) every rule (barring the laws of nature, of course) -- and, besides, Kostroma is not that much of a backwater (not like Sretensk, for example -- which is so far away from the core part of Russia that it's actually more Chinese than Russian now)! 2601:646:9882:46E0:7130:A393:E500:58CF (talk) 01:06, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

It would have to be very old or very recent according to a coworker who moved from Georgia (when it was part of the USSR) to the United States. She told me, and I have verified it with a quick Internet search, the women were phased out as fighter pilots in the 1970s. It was just a few years ago that women were allowed to begin training as fighter pilots again. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 14:01, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Beethoven's song "Adelaide", "Adelaida" in Russian, was also popular in Russia, and Kostroma is not a godforsaken place in the backwaters of Russia. Is the person in question alleged to be a a flight instructor now, in 2023?  --Lambiam 18:50, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the info! In case you must know, this is for a work of fiction that I've recently started -- and it's quite a story to explain why the character in question must be a woman named Adelaide, must be from Kostroma and must be a flight instructor who can fly fighter jets! So, from what you've told me, this combination is unusual but not completely implausible, right? 2601:646:9882:46E0:7130:A393:E500:58CF (talk) 01:06, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

If the setting of the story is today, given the info about women being phased out as fighter pilots in the 1970s and only allowed to begin training as fighter pilots again just a few years ago, she should be in her (late?) sixties (while not impossible, not plausible either, as she also would have to be recertified after some fifty years without flight hours), or else a very recent instructor, since she could have started training medrely a few years ago and must have progressed in a meteoric career rise to have become an instructor today.  --Lambiam 15:09, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

That might work, because she has to be really good (her main role is to train the main hero for an aerial battle with a villain who [spoiler alert] eventually turns out to be Satan himself) -- also, the story is set in the near future when the Russia-Ukraine war is presumably over and relations between these countries have improved (presumably with Russia having a new government) or, alternatively, in an alternate reality where the war never happened (this will be implied at the beginning by showing the villain in his black fighter jet attacking Russian and Ukrainian cities alike). 2601:646:9882:46E0:9878:D86E:17F4:DB2E (talk) 03:16, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't know Beethoven wrote songs for Sinatra to sing in musicals. If you can hear it in your head, you're welcome. --Trovatore (talk) 18:53, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately I can only remember the chorus, which is now on repeat. Curse you. Better Sinatra than Brando, I suppose. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 19:46, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

A friend of mine once said about Brando's rendition of Luck Be a Lady that it was good enough to enjoy, but not so good that you didn't think he had sung it himself. --Trovatore (talk) 19:48, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Let's not forget Beethoven's famous "Moonlight Sinatra". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:52, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

A classic! 199.208.172.35 (talk) 21:03, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

WHOA! .....I mean, WHAAOE! CiaPan (talk) 13:33, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Some info from the article ru:Аделаида (цвет) that may be of intererst (translation largely courtesy Google):

"Adelaide"  is an outdated name for a red shade of lilac (violet), found in Russian literature. This colour epithet was especially popular in the first half of the 19th century. ... The name of the colour comes from a female name that became famous in Russia after 1797, when L. van Beethoven's song "Adelaide" appeared ... . The coloor "Adelaide" is repeatedly mentioned in the works of Russian writers of the 19th century. ... In Gogol's play "The Gamblers" (1842), the characters affectionately call a deck of cards "Adelaida Ivanovna".

 --Lambiam 15:36, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

So perhaps her great-grandfather Colonel Ivan Aleksandrovitch was both an avid card player and an avid theatre visitor who named his daughter Adelaida Ivanovna, thereby honouring both of his passions. The name was then passed on to Adelaida's granddaughter.  --Lambiam 19:20, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Your backstory for her sounds good -- but as far as the last name, I think I'll name her Lebedeva, which in Russian means "Swan" (because she will be completely faithful to the protagonist once he wins her over, and because [spoiler alert] during the last battle against the black fighter jet she will get shot down, but survive). 2601:646:9882:46E0:B9A8:3AA7:6B2A:7B49 (talk) 11:04, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Note that Lebedev(a) is a family name, not a given name.  --Lambiam 10:05, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

And it's not strictly true that Lebedev means swan. The word lebed' (лебедь) is swan, and Lebedev/a is the family name formed from lebed'. The words have a relationship, but that's as far as it goes. Similarly, Tchaikovsky does not mean seagull, Putin does not mean pathway, Tolstoy does not mean fat, etc. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:44, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, you know what I mean -- bottom line is, this project requires a heavy use of symbolism (quite out of character for me, I should add), so pretty much all the names must mean something (for example, my main hero has the last name Nikiforov, and his nickname is "Navigator" -- any guesses why?) 2601:646:9882:46E0:18EB:AE4F:4BBD:3850 (talk) 02:44, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

@JackofOz: Indeed. Luís Cândido Furtado Coelho and many others were not actually "stolen rabbits" [1]. 2A00:23C6:2417:3101:194F:E4EE:A5D9:2232 (talk) 14:04, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

:) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:49, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

1990 Bantala rape case

I am searching for pictures related to this mass rape murder case. The picture can be copyrighted, from any book, journal, magazine, newspaper, inline archive. But should be taken during that time 1990 or 1991.

1990_Bantala_rape_case

The women were not gangraped by 5,6 men(I mentioned the number, as that number of accused, I read in gangrape news, but I never read such high number of accused and yet media is not discussing how top ministers were justifying the crime) but almost 50 to 70 men as per a Bengali newspaper report I read in 2007. Proloysant (talk) 14:37, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Difference between illusory correlation and synchronicity

Is there a (substantial) difference between illusory correlation and synchronicity? My reading of both articles shows they're essentially the same. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 21:05, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

They are very similar, but not the same. In the first, there are two entities that vary in time and have measurable aspects that can be tracked as time elapses. Say one is the sales figures of root beer and the other the market price of a bitcoin. These tracks can look similar purely by chance. In the second, there are two events that happen at instants of time. Say one is a conjunction of Venus and Mars, and the other is a princess getting engaged. These events can happen very close in time to each other by pure chance.  --Lambiam 23:13, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

You can look at https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations for some examples of a phenomenon of the first kind mentioned by Lambiam. --CiaPan (talk) 13:28, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. So looks like synchronicity could be regarded as a subtype of illusory correlation. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 11:03, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think so, at least not if you interpret "correlation" as a measure of the relationship between bivariate data, which is a dimensionless quantity, usually expressed as a number in the range from $-1$ to $+1.$ The higher the similarity, the higher the correlation; if there is no relationship, the value tends to be close to zero. A reasonable measure of the synchronicity of two events is the distance in time between them, which is a dimensioned quantity. A high degree of synchronicity requires this quantity to be close to zero (measured in seconds, hours, or days, depending on how flexible your illusory perceptions are).  --Lambiam 18:38, 23 June 2023 (UTC)