Miscellaneous desk
< July 13	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 15 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 14

Sexual Psychology

From a psychological standpoint, is polygamy more "normal" than homosexuality among humans? --71.185.131.150 01:48, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See the last time someone from your IP range asked this. --Charlene 02:35, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just read through that link, but that question is different from mine and my question was not answered in it. --71.185.131.150 02:40, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Anon, highly opinionated and unreferenced...Polygamy, like all other forms of marriage, is a social construct, where as polyandry, heterosexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality are innate components of any given individual within that society. Now, are polyandry or bisexuality (not equating the two, just lumping them together for the straw man) more "normal" than either heterosexuality or homosexuality? Yeah, probably...any port in a storm, or at least as many as possible, right?...Love! 24.250.33.41 05:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

24, polyandry is a form of polygamy. Polygamy includes polygyny (having many female mates) and polyandry (having many male mates). Bisexuality, homosexuality, and heterosexuality all appear to be innate to the individual, but marriage is a social construct based on how society wants to control, direct, or repress those innate tendencies. --Charlene 17:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You know, that's terribly embarrassing. I meant polyamory and not polyandry...specifically the desire for multiple sexual partners. Rats and double rats. 24.250.33.41 18:50, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Coincidentally, I've just read an essay that points out that in nature, every single solitary polygynous (one male, many females) species is arranged so that the males are the pretty ones and the females always, always choose the mates, never the other way around. Most human men who fantasize about polygyny, though, imagine that polygyny means they are the ones who pick the women (for looks, of course) and they can have as much sex as they want. There are a handful of human societies like this, but the essay contends that they are highly un-natural and are generally unsuccessful in the long run. The combination of being a picky male who chooses his mates and having a lot of sex is simply not seen in nature. --Charlene 15:59, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the desire of men to have many sexual partners so as to have as many offspring as possible seems to have an obvious evolutionary explanation. However the desire to stay with one person, and provide for your children, thus ensuring their survival also makes sense. So in conclusion, I don't actually know what is more natural, although if naturality is the way of deciding what is right (controversial) then our current climate of stopping polygamy but allowing gay marriage certainly makes no sense. Cyta 16:02, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If naturality were the best way of deciding what was right, it would also make no sense to take a sick child to the hospital. Death from an infection or a broken bone is natural. --Charlene 23:08, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia passing viruses ?

Is that really true ? A computer expert claims that Wikipedia is a hotbed for viruses and the like. He says that people use Wikipedia to upload bugs and others get them everytime they come to anything Wikimedia. 205.240.146.58 02:23, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't claim that it is not possible to do that but I certainly believe it would be difficult. Whatever the case you must protect your computer yourself and not expect the websites you visit to be secure, whatever the website is. Read http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Computer_insecurity for more information. racergr 02:30, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please provide a link to the claim. I have been reading and editing Wikipedia for years, and have never gotten a virus here. Corvus cornix 02:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Many "computer experts" are not experts in much other than scaremongering. --Charlene 02:37, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Allegedly the US govt. made the claim, but I'm unsure. Tried to Google this matter. 205.240.146.58 02:41, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Who is alleging that the US government made this claim? Corvus cornix 02:51, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One of my family members. 205.240.146.58 03:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Tell your family member that unless they can provide evidence, they're talking urban legend. Corvus cornix 03:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To be entirely honest with you, that's complete bullshit. Really, there's no such thing as "upload bugs so others can get them on each visit". Wikipedia is pretty safe to surf, software-wise, and you should be more worried about the reliability of the information present here, since anyone can edit the content. — Kieff | Talk 03:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

yep, agreed. Total BS. Unless someone manages to upload an infected jpg to imagespace, you download it onto your computer and run whatever virus is in it, WP is safe. It's far safer than Myspace, forums, just about anywhere on the internet is going to be dangerous, but WP is definitely no a 'hotbed for viruses'. Tell your family members to stop being idiots and spreading everything they hear. --L^augh! 03:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some noxious vandal added a malicious link to the German page on (I think it was) Blaster, and then SPAMmed people requesting they click said link. The only thing ON WMF servers was the link, which was removed and the page protected when they found out. 68.39.174.238 15:01, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right, the Nov 2006 BBC report is here. Someone added an external link to a German Wikipedia page on the Windows Blaster worm and then sent out spam emails with a link to the archived page, telling people to click on the link. Once the de administrators found out, they just deleted the revision. The interesting bit is that the hackers felt that Wikipedia had enough credibility that it was worth seeing if people would just trust the Wikipedia page to be correct, though the "you are looking at an archived page" notice should have been clue enough that something was wrong. - Banyan Tree 06:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)l[reply]

We had this allegation before (also from a supposed "expert") - it's complete nonsense. It's possible to infect a poorly defended computer using a web page - but Wikipedia web pages are not directly entered by our editors - we edit the wikipedia database - and that database is turned into web pages on-demand. It's not at all clear to me that it's possible even in principle to put a virus or something up onto a Wikipedia page. It's also possible to put a virus into a jpeg image (again, this would only affect a poorly defended Windows PC's). But if this were happening with any frequency at all, the Wikipedia community would be all over it. This expert is talking complete and utter B.S. It might be possible in theory - but it's certainly not true in practice. SteveBaker 16:10, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to say that. Can we check if this questioner has made the question twice? --Taraborn 19:51, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My antivirus protection has never complained about anything actually on Wikipedia, but it is not unusual for someone to add "External links" or "References" which are external sites which attempt to load viruses onto the computer when you click on them and which get a block from the antivirus program. I suppose that when you find one of these it would be appropriate to delete it, but I do not know of a central point of contact to alert admins of it other than perhaps WP:ANI for someone to look into whether a user deliberately is adding virus prone sites to articles. Edison 00:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I thought about it again and without having read the other comments I wanted to come back and tell you that it sounds more like an urban legent to me, so I guess I totally agree with Corvus cornix. My though was that, in theory, there is a small possibility that the wikipedia website is insecure somewhere. There is also a small probability that some malicius user might find a way to Exploit the problem. But there is a huge probability that the problem will be reported within minutes as there are many computer-literate users on the website. So by calculating the changes we end up into something which is not even close to the 'hotbed for viruses' description. By the way, has your "expert" been infected by a virus because of his own irresponsibility and accuses wikipedia for it? racergr 00:43, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Torque vs Horsepower

I have read all the Wikipedia pages and many articles explaining this topic with Google; but I still am a bit foggy about this subject. What is the difference between torque and horsepower? I know that they are mathematically related and changing one means changing the other. But what exactly do they do (in perspective of a manual automobile)? In flatout drag racing, what roles do each play? I know that the best time to shift is when the engine torque at the present RPM on the present gear starts to fall below the engine torque given at the RPM of the next gear. Thanks. Acceptable 02:50, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It certainly is confusing. Torque is mathematically just a rotational force. But cars have these wheel thingies that turn rotational forces into linear forces - so the torque is just the force that the wheel is applying to the ground. Accelleration is force divided by mass - and since the mass of your car doesn't change (much), we can say that your accelleration is proportional to your torque divided by the mass of the car. So in practical terms, more torque is more accelleration. So let's stop talking about torque and call it 'accelleration' instead. Horsepower is the amount of energy the engine can produce per second. Horsepower tells you how much energy the engine can put out to oppose things like friction and air resistance when you are going at a constant speed. In a car, your peak horsepower determines to your top speed in a given gear. Torque tells you how fast your car can accellerate. SteveBaker 16:02, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it best to keep the car in the power-curve and towards the peak of the horsepower curve for maximum acceleration and performance? Acceptable 23:13, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Acceptable: That's wrong. You have to keep the car's engine close to the peak of the torque for maximum acceleration. However, in order to find the maximum acceleration ever possible on a car is something extremelly complicated. You have to consider the whole torque curve and how it is altered the ratio of the gears and then decide at exactly what rpm you need to change gears. Even if you find the optimal values you need to be very precise to actually do change gear at the optimum moment. racergr 00:25, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The following was one of the articles I read on the subject: [1]. I was not unable to understand it all, hence my question here. But towards the bottom, titled 'At the Bonneville Flats', the author explicitly states that it's best to keep the car near the power-peak. I found concurring statements on other articles I have found. Acceptable 00:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The author of [2] is speaking about the top speed, not the most efficient acceleration. You have to distinguish the feel of the "power" that you get when you drive a car than the scientific definition of the word "power". The feeling is mostly related to the perception of the torque by humans, we tent to think of torque as "power" of the car. By the way, I had the same concers with you at high school as what the teachers were saying didn't fit to what I was reading in automobile articles so keep reading and comparing and you will understand it better. You might also want to look and compare data from motorbike and car engines to assist you. racergr 02:06, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Torque measures the amount of force that is can be exerted at the circumference of a wheel. Horsepower measures the amount of work that can be done in a given amount of time. Time is the key difference: by chabnging the the gear ratio, any horsepower can be converted to any torque. A farm tractor has an engine with a low horsepower, but the gearing is so low that the tractor applies a huge torque: it can pull a multi-ton load up a fairly steep incline, but only at a very low speed. A dragster has an engine with a high horsepower: it can apply less torque than the tractor, but it can continue to apply the torque even at high wheel rotation speeds.As a thought experiment, consider what happens when you enter a tractor and a dragster as competitors in a tractor pull. Now enter the same two machines in a drag race. -Arch dude 03:16, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quick bible question

Who was the fisherman who was seen as unlucky, and thrown overboard, or something to that effect? I looked up the names I thought applied, but he doesn't seem to be there --L^augh! 15:46, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jonah? I don't think he was a fisherman, though. Antandrus (talk) 15:48, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Simon Peter? (John 21:7)--Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the OP was thinking of Jonah's story, although Antandrus is correct, he wasn't a fisherman, he was just hitching a ride. Donald Hosek 20:43, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Book of Vacations, unfortunately not accepted by most religions, Jonah used to go flycasting for trout for two weeks every year. Gzuckier 15:24, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Criminals in the states

Given a random white US male and a random Afro-American male, how much more likely is it for the African American to be a criminal than the white male?

One thing to consider is social class - poorer people do commit more violence on each other. However, it is true that black-on-black violence is higher than white-on-white violence. Poor-on-poor violence is much higher than poor-on-rich violence too (not to correlate this with the races, just social class).

I'd have to dig up the stat from Crim101 to give a reference, but I think it's in the textbook The American System of Criminal Justice, by Cole, etc. Guroadrunner 17:58, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I Guroadrunner hit the nail on the head there. It's very obvious why a poor person is more likely to be a criminal than someone who is comfortably well off. There is no controversy there - it's obvious. Since African Americans are more likely to be poor than white Americans - it follows that they also commit more crimes. But it is very dangerous to extrapolate from that to some sort of racist conclusion that black people are 'naturally' more criminal than whites. So let's not go making that claim without detailed evidence. SteveBaker 21:59, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You need to consider large scale crimes, fraud etc before you draw an answer. racergr 00:14, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The short answer is the African American, for reasons already outlined. A more interesting question might be "do populations of different races but similar economic situtations have similar crime statistics?". I personally think they would, but don't have any data. One thing to consider is that historically white governments have made previously-legal activities mostly done by black people illegal, for various reasons. Examples include cocaine/marijuana use (a current corollary is the huge legal disparity between smoked vs. powdered cocaine), noodling, and (in my hometown) putting a couch on your front porch so you can sit out there and socialize with your neighbors. That last one is such a shocking thing to outlaw! --TotoBaggins 15:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And interestingly, if you take the American part out of it, the statistics don't add up to prove any racial 'superiority' or 'inferiority'. Check out the Statistics Canada report for 2000 - blacks in Canada have the lowest per capita rate of arrest and conviction of any race. The difference is startling the further west you go - in Alberta and BC, blacks have half the arrest/conviction rates of whites. --Charlene 15:32, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now there are lies, damned lies and statistics, so providing context for statistics is important. However we seem to have lots of context and explanation, but no actual answers to the question. Can the questioner not be trusted with the facts? The question is not fantastically worded, but it didn't take me too long to find that blacks are 6.6 times more likely to be incarcerated in the US, rising to 7.9 times among adult males. That is simply incarceration, no other details. (The source is Human Rights Watch [3]) Cyta 07:25, 17 July 2007 (UTC) Also we have an article Race_and_crime, but it is disputed so take it with a pinch of salt and check the talk page. Cyta 07:35, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The trouble with that statistic is that nobody actually knows how many of those African American people were wrongfully imprisoned or how many White Americans got off without going to prison after they actually did the crime. There is really no way to gather such statistics because nobody beyond the perpetrator/wrongly-accused person truly knows for sure. So the Human Rights Watch are correct in suspecting that there is a serious problem of a racist nature in how the criminal system works - but there is no possible way to prove it. Even if they boldly assert that there is nothing genetically based that could provide a true race-related difference (as common sense and the Canadian finding suggest), the fact that poorer people commit more crimes and African Americans are statistically poorer than whites means that you STILL can't prove that there is a problem with the justice system. The Canadian statistics are interesting though - perhaps those provide a reasonable basis for unravelling the root causes. Whatever it is, it's very disturbing and ought to be studied a lot more carefully than it is. SteveBaker 18:43, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As I said statistics need context, but that's no reason not to give them. Studying it more is no doubt a good idea though. Splitting groups by income, comparing arrest and conviction rates, things like that could give more details on what effects possible police bias, poverty etc have effects. One problem is many researchers won't touch this for fear of being called racist. I agree it is something that should be studied, hence I wanted to provide statistics for discussion, rather than censor them from the original questioner. I even found a nice PC source (one of my google results was J. Philippe Rushton who I doubt anyone would have believed!). For the sake of debate though, which is always fun, Rushton suggests testosterone levels are a genetic determining factor in crime rates. You know in true wiki NPOV style. Cyta 19:29, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What do you think this object is?

Someone on craigslist is doing a guessing game of sorts. I just want to know what it is.

What's this item?: http://tucson.craigslist.org/zip/373762905.html

-- Guroadrunner 17:54, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's a tank of some sort of pressurised gas. Bart133 ^{(t) (c)} 18:37, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, part of it is. I can't work out what the whole (apparently home-made) device is though. I assume by the phrasing of the offer that it's a tool used in a particular activity - the offerer wants to make sure it goes to a fellow enthusiast. I wonder if it's some kind of gas analyser, perhaps for diving - the black cylinder seems to have a cable coming out of it and running under the board that it's all mounted on. I'm a bit mystified by the white plastic contraption on the left - it would be useful to know whether gas flows in or out through it. I also wonder about the blue plug on the manifold near the bottom of the picture - whether it's actually some kind of connection point, or if it's just being used to blank-off a port because the manifold has more connections than the builder needed. The fact that it's all mounted in a plastic box is presumably for portability, which reinforces the idea that it's to be taken on-site for some sport or activity.

If you ever do find out what it is, I would be interested to hear. PeteVerdon 20:41, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The link no longer works. A notice saying that the article has been "flagged for removal" also says that the title willl be deleted shortly. We are doomed not to know. Bielle 22:30, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is a tank of "Inflamable gas"... oxygen? Too bad the image isn't any larger. The white thing on the left appears to be a vacuum pump, sometimes used by auto mechanics for bleeding brakes. I have no idea what the black device on the right is. I imagine that you would attach something to the black device, turn the valves to connect the vacuum pump and evacuate whatever is attached. Then, you would switch the valves, and then fill the whatever with whatever gas is in the cylinder. That's my guess, at least. By the way, it would probably be illegal to ship that, if the cylinder isn't empty. --Mdwyer 15:53, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's obviously an instrument for killing Schrodinger's cat --L^augh! 22:37, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How can you be certain? --LarryMac | Talk 14:15, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some sort of welding equipment? An oxygen tank used for medical purposes? Bart133 ^{(t) (c)} 16:29, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess it's something for pressurising bottles — maybe sparkling wine? — Gareth Hughes 16:37, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sparkling wine is made sparkling with fermentation, and that doesn't look like any kind of winemaking apparatus I've ever seen. It's filthy and doesn't look completely sanitizable. (And the picture's gone.) --Charlene 23:10, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]