Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 January 5

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January 5

XXX Kisses XXX

How come, kisses in letters were/are abbreviated as xxx / x x x ? The oldest mentioning I find in 1937 Any games with pronounciation? Why not kkk ? Play It Again, SPAM (talk) 09:00, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Although I'm not thrilled with either the article or its references, you may want to look at Hugs and kisses#Origins. Deor (talk) 10:41, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

This could just be folk etymology, but I've thought for a long time that it was obvious that X abbreviates "kiss" because it's pronounced (in many words) like "KS". And that O, used with it, represents a hug because it symbolizes the shape the arms make. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 04:38, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I understand that interpretation but for a long time I couldn't keep them straight (not that it was weighing on my mind that much) because when kissing, the lips make an O shape and when hugging, the arms have to cross with the other person's. Dismas|^(talk) 13:23, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

In the US at least, kkk or particularly KKK doesn't have the best connotations. Even in 1937, it would already have been fairly controversial. To be fair, xxx isn't necessarily a great connotation for all love letters either, but that's fairly recent and it's also not so strong. Nil Einne (talk) 13:39, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

• Given no one has said it here explicitly, these are symbols, not the letters ex and oh per se. μηδείς (talk) 02:45, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

What would be the values of X and Z on this case?

Imagine we get a country (X) and look at the distance (Y) between itself and the most distant country from itself (Z).
What would be the value of X and Z that would result on the biggest value of Y?
201.79.50.59 (talk) 10:58, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

You seem to be asking which two countries are the furthest apart? --Dweller (talk) 11:19, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Since you ask to imagine, do you consider fictional countries on other planets? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:23, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Nope it was just a case of lack of english skills, dweller got the thing right201.79.50.59 (talk) 14:54, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

The largest possible distance between any two points on the earth's globe along a great circle path would be half the circumference of the earth, or about 12,500 miles. You can look at the antipodes map to get a rough idea of what countries might be half a great circle away from each other. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:22, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Even easier, there's a list of such countries at Antipodes#Countries. It's quite a long list. Pick your X and Z from there. --Dweller (talk) 12:25, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Not all pairs on the list would qualify, if say Russia and Brazil were on the list of antipodes, they would probably not be the right answers because they are so big, there would be two points in the two countries that are much closer than the antipodes. It's also not purely a matter of finding the smallest pair of countries, though that would get you close. I think Solomon Islands / Guinea seems a likely pair. --165.225.80.101 (talk) 13:43, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Only if you're measuring from the countries' borders. If you can measure from any point within the country, it's fine. The OP hasn't stipulated either way. --Dweller (talk) 14:52, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Obituaries and cause of death

I've always wondered why (most) obituaries do not give the cause of death. Thank you. SueRescues (talk) 11:58, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Because it's not necessarily any of the public's business; and because the family usually constructs the obit, they can include or omit whatever they feel like. But you can often get a hint about it if they ask for donations to a particular charity, such as the heart association or cancer society. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:18, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

To me, an obituary is most likely to mean a kind of newspaper article reviewing the life of someone who has recently died, so unlikely to have been written by the family (in fact, newspaper obits for prominent people are usually written long before their deaths, so as to be ready, with minimal last-minute editing, when they are needed). The cause of death is sometimes mentioned, e.g. here, but in general it's not relevant to the obit, which is a review of the person's whole life. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:03, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

One of my grammar school teachers died on Sunday. She was not famous enough to have an obit readied by even the local papers. But the funeral home still posted an obit on their website. So, while I agree that notable people often have obits that are ready years before their death (and sometimes published too quickly), what gets posted/published are still referred to as obituaries. A friend of mine worked at a local paper in another part of the country and would, as part of her daily work, communicate with the families of the deceased to put together the obituaries for other non-famous people. She and the paper referred to them as obituaries. So, both newspapers and funeral homes both refer to "a summation of a person's life posted/published after their death" as an obituary. But now we're straying from the OP's question. Dismas|^(talk) 15:35, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Not only what Bugs said but also because the cause may lead to people to make incorrect assumptions. For instance, those who die of lung cancer are often thought to have been smokers, but many people who have lung cancer have never smoked. Also, the family (who usually have some say in the content of the obit) would probably rather concentrate on the person's life than the reason for their death. Dismas|^(talk) 15:35, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

In the case of prominent people, there will be a news story about the person's death, which usually does give the cause of death. The obituary appears elsewhere and (as AndrewWTaylor correctly notes) often does not. --Viennese Waltz 15:57, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

There are several types of newspaper death records, and which types are used depend on the newspaper. Almost every newspaper has "boilerplate" paid death notices. These are generally written in cooperation between the undertaker and the family, and are brief, and are a special form of classified ad, paid for by the undertaker (whether as part of the package or itemized back to the family). They usually do not state the cause of death, but they may say something like "died peacefully at her home" (could be any natural cause) or "after a long illness" (probably but not necessarily cancer). A paid death notice is usually a single paragraph. A news obituary, in the strict sense, is a short biography written by an obituary writer. Some newspapers do have a policy that they will publish an obituary for anyone who spent most of their life in the city or region, and, in that case, the obituary information is provided by the family and revised by the reporter. News obituaries, whether fully staff-written for prominent people, or submitted by family and edited by staff, do include a cause of death. In fact, some newspapers state that they will not publish a family-submitted obituary without a cause of death. Some even have complicated rules for what is a cause of death. "Heart failure" is not a cause of death, because it is a clinical effect of death. "Congestive heart failure" and "heart attack" are causes of death. There are also now a sort of hybrid death report, which are long, multi-paragraph death accounts (obituary-length) written by family. Because they are paid for, line-by-line, and not written by staff, they are not subject to editing. (Paid death notices are subject to verification, but usually only to determine that the person actually existed and then died, which is done by a call to the undertaker. The reason for this verification is mainly to prevent the malicious prank, common in the eighteenth century, of running a death notice or obituary for one's enemy.) So there are multiple types of death records in newspapers. Staff-written or staff-edited death notices are considered reliable sources if the newspaper itself is a reliable source, which newspapers usually are. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:00, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Somebody up above said "the cause of death is not any of the public's business" (or some such). Which made me question: aren't death certificates public documents that are freely available to the public (at City Hall or wherever)? Or no? (I am referring to the USA.) Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:16, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, my cousin disappeared after we became estranged from his sister, and his parents had passed away. I had no difficulty finding out that he had died from pituitary complications at 50, from which he had suffered since teenagerhood, by calling the PA coroner. The bottom line is that there are two types of obituary. Those of celebrities, which usually include CoD if it is known, and private obituaries which are locally published and for which it is none of your business, unless you knew the deceased, in which case you will already know the cause. μηδείς (talk) 21:28, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

What I am asking is this: is a person's death certificate public information (i.e., freely available to the public)? Can anyone request a copy? Regardless of relationship (or lack thereof) to the deceased. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:24, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I just did a web search and found that it depends on state law. According to this in Florida [1] it takes 50 years before "Cause of death" becomes public information. --Modocc (talk) 23:34, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

The Indiana Supreme Court recently "ruled that causes of death are public records and must be available at county levels". [2]. --Modocc (talk) 00:02, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

In my home state of North Carolina, the general public cannot obtain death certificates, only close relatives and people that need it for legal reasons. [3] --Modocc (talk) 02:14, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Regardless of a given state's laws about death certificates and the like, I doubt that there are laws requiring any specific information in obituaries, which are typically paid for by the family and hence are like "want ads". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:03, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Of course, the contents of an obituary are pretty much at the discretion of the family (and/or funeral parlor), subject to whatever "rules" the newspaper might have (e.g., no offensive curse words, etc.). There are certainly no "legal" requirements for an obituary. (Although that makes me wonder: can an individual simply submit a fake obit to be printed in the paper? I mean, can I just submit to my local paper an obituary for someone famous, like Cher? How about for somebody not famous, like my uncle? How about for a totally made up person?) Someone above said that the cause of death is "no one's business in the general public". My point is that indeed it is the business of the general public, at least in states where the death certificate is a public record. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:30, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

If someone in Indiana, for example, wants to go to the trouble of inquiring about a specific death certificate, then they could presumably do that. But there's no reason for the obituary writer to do so. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:52, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. My point is that the cause of death is the business of the public (in some jurisdictions). It is incorrect (at least in those jurisdictions) to say that the cause of death "is nobody's business" (presumably, outside of the family). Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:20, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

The specific cause of death in the case of my cousin really wasn't anyone's business. "Natural causes" would have sufficed. My mother was concerned that it might have been murder or suicide. Those general classes, natural causes, misadventure, homicide, suicide, undetermined are what is generally considered a matter of public record. Consider Isaac Asimov who died from AIDS:

Asimov suffered a heart attack in 1977, and had triple bypass surgery in December 1983. When he died in New York City on April 6, 1992, his brother Stanley reported heart and kidney failure as the cause of death.[54] He was survived by his second wife, Janet, and his children from his first marriage. Ten years after his death, Janet Asimov's edition of Asimov's autobiography, It's Been a Good Life, revealed that the myocardial and renal complications were the result of an infection by HIV, which he had contracted from a blood transfusion received during his bypass operation.[55] Janet Asimov wrote in the epilogue of It's Been a Good Life that Asimov's physicians advised him against going public, warning that the anti-AIDS prejudice would likely extend to his family members. Asimov's family considered disclosing his condition just after his death, but the controversy that erupted the same year when Arthur Ashe announced his own HIV infection (also contracted from a blood transfusion during heart surgery) convinced them otherwise. Ten years later, after most of Asimov's physicians had died, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public.[56]

μηδείς (talk) 19:24, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: At the newspaper I worked for, we accepted obituary notices only from licensed funeral directors. If a family wanted to write their own obituary for someone, they would have to get a funeral director to submit it for them. (All were always accommodating to the family's wishes.)    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 21:07, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

That makes sense. I did not realize that that was the procedure. It makes a lot of sense. And, obviously, prevents crack pots from submitting fake obits. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:45, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Hollow cookies

My wife made some cookies (Brit. "biscuits"?) last night. I believe she said that she just followed some sugar cookie recipe she found in a cookbook. They're tasty but they have the odd feature of being either hollow or being rather dome-like. She cooked them on two separate surfaces. Some on a cookie sheet and some on a pizza stone. The cookies which were cooked on the sheet turned out hollow. They look normal by all appearances on the outside (basically as pictured in the sugar cookie article but without the cracks on the top) but are hollow in the middle. Those baked on the pizza stone look fine from the top but when you pick one up, there is no bottom and the middle is mostly missing. They sort of resemble a geode. What would have caused both of these results? Dismas|^(talk) 15:25, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Here is a forum thread that discusses the issue, Here is another short thread. Here is a more reliable article that discusses the chemistry of cookies and notes some causes of air pockets forming in cookies. Here is another similar article. This recipe notes other methods for removing air pockets. Here are some more methods. I hope one of these helps! --Jayron32 20:00, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

One possible cause is large chunks of butter in the batter. The chunks melt and leave gaps as a result. (The usual cause of large chunks of butter is using refrigerated butter and not breaking it up or allowing it to melt before placing the cookies in the oven.) I don't actually think this is the cause, in your case, because it sounds like each cookie has a single large hollow, rather than the multiple smaller ones that "butter gaps" might produce.

BTW, if I had a bunch of hollow cookies, I would be tempted to inject them with jam. If you lack the equipment to do this, you could cut them open, put the jam inside, then close them back up. I'd do this right before serving them, so they don't get soggy. StuRat (talk) 05:23, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you both. Yes, Stu, I don't think these are butter gaps due to, as you say, they do constitute the entire inside of the cookie. The cookies are just a shell. What I get from Jayron's links is that it might have been the order and method of the mixing. My wife figures that if they're going together anyway, what does it matter what order they get mixed in? So, she tends to just throw all the ingredients in a bowl and mix.

Now the only mystery that's left is the curious dome/geode like structure of those on the pizza stone. Dismas|^(talk) 13:19, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

When it comes to cookies, and usually baking in general, how you do everything affects the final product. Here is a pretty in depth article on the chocolate chip cookie that may offer some insight [4] uhhlive (talk) 17:51, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

It seems as though you inadvertently made choux pastry instead of cookies. That is usually the result of using the incorrect flour ("hard" instead of "soft", meaning flour with too much protein). If you've made hollow baked goods, that was probably the cause (your question is a little unclear). If they've simply domed up off of the baking surface, it gets trickier, but I would check the amount of moisture used and the temperature setting. Matt Deres (talk) 17:48, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Stop calls from "Bridget at card member services"

How can I stop telephone calls from "Bridget at card member services"? I have a call blocker that can block up to 80 numbers that I have been using for years. One problem is that the phone rings once before it kills a call from a blocked number. Now with my phone service I can block up to 25 numbers and they don't even ring once. But that still isn't enough. Bridget keeps getting new numbers to call from. Is there a way to stop them (I'm in the U.S.)? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:31, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Does your phone service allow blocking by area code? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:08, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

No, I can block 25 individual numbers only with the phone service. I asked if I could pay and get more - the said no. I can block by area code on my call blocking device, but with it there is one ring before the caller ID comes in. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 17:41, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I think other VOIP services allow for more numbers, and possibly area codes as well. I take a more basic approach, which is to leave the ringer off unless I'm specifically expecting a call. It's much more peaceful that way. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:32, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm using the cable company for the telephone, which I think is VOIP. I checked, and only 25 specific numbers can be blocked. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:14, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like Bubba's got Verizon, an incurable plague. I suggest turning of your ringer, having all calls sent ASAP to voice mail or the answering machine, and putting an announcement there that says if the caller is not a solicitor and it is urgent they can reach you at (XXX) 555-1234 if they wish to dial it. Also, never answer calls from unknown numbers out of area code, and buy a machine that has a flashing light, rather than a ringer. They sell them for the deaf, and are far less annoying that the ringing type. μηδείς (talk) 21:20, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

No, I get my phone from Comcast. I don't answer such calls if I can see the caller ID, but I need to have my glasses to read the caller ID and I don't always have them. My father is in poor health so I feel that I need to answer in case it is something important. But maybe let everything to to the answering machine (I have one) and direct them to call another number if it can't wait to get the message is a good idea. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 21:29, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

There is a service called Nomorobo that might be of use, although from what I can see perusing the help pages, you still will have the "one-ring" issue. They say it works with Comcast. --LarryMac | Talk 22:09, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, that sounds better than what I have now. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:30, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Funny, I only ever hear from her colleague Rachel. —Tamfang (talk) 04:18, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

You're "lucky" I guess. It sounds like some people get Rachel, Bridget and Carmen. [5] [6] [7]. Nil Einne (talk) 17:16, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I think the ideal solution would be:

1) Have a whitelist, for numbers that will ring through.

2) Have a blacklist, and hang up on them without ringing.

3) Take messages from the rest, without ringing, in case somebody you know calls from an unknown number (or the rare case where you actually want to hear what somebody you don't know has to say).

Will any device do this ? StuRat (talk) 04:25, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

An Asterisk (PBX) surely could, although that may be overkill for a home users. I suspect many decent SIP devices could be made to do this in a pinch, but I can't name any that definitely can off hand. I'm sure some VoIP providers would have this functionality too, but again I can't name any off hand. Nil Einne (talk) 13:44, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Bridget and her colleague Rachel have called me pretty often, recently. The phone number is never the same, and it's quite easy to spoof caller ID anyway. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 16:07, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Why did they call you pretty so often when they can't see you over the phone? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 19:08, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. A whitelist may be fine, provided your friends always use the same phone, update you with every phone change, don't intentionally or inadvertedly hide their caller ID etc. A blacklist is only really useful if you have a persisent call who is a clear fixed identity, but also isn't worth complaining to someone about. Nil Einne (talk) 16:36, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

About a month ago I filled up my 25 blocked callers so I deleted the ones from area codes in my state (there are five) because last fall I was getting a lot of political calls. But I needed to make room to block more telemarketeers so I deleted what seemed to be the political ones. When I fill up my list of 25 again I'm going to use Nomorobo. That way, the worst offenders won't even ring once. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 21:54, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

In the UK, it normally takes some time for numbers to get onto spamlists, so occasionally requesting a new number from your phone carrier or network is a valid option. Does that not work in the US? 94.12.92.219 (talk) 12:19, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

That would work, but I don't want to change my number. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:04, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Resolved