Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 April 1

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April 1

using a coin for a logo

Hello, I was wondering could I use a picture of a halfpenny coin for a logo our name is halfpenny and it would be neat to put that on our busniess cards! Would I need to ask permission---- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mhalfpenny (talk • contribs) 03:31, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Even though I'm Australian, and we once had halfpennies too, I'm guessing that the question is coming from the UK, in which case I would suggest that it would best be redirected to the Royal Mint. If anyone owns the copyright it would be them. HiLo48 (talk) 03:55, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Unless they are referring to the Half cent (United States coin). The U.S. cent coin is colloquially known as the "penny". --Jayron32 04:35, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Yep, but was the Half cent known as a "halfpenny"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 05:19, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

It might be worth noting that this very organisation uses images of many coins on the relevant pages. Knowing how sharp WP is about copyright I can't imagine these are being used in violation of any copyright laws. Richard Avery (talk) 07:29, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Are coins classified as "artistic work" by the UK government? See File:1936 George V penny.jpg. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 07:37, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, but many of our coin images are non-free and used under a claim of fair use. For example, the current range of British coins. On the other hand, the copyright on some older designs, such as this old British ha'penny, will have expired and could therefore be incorporated into a logo without problems. AJCham 07:42, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

British coins are subject to Crown Copyright, which for these purposes expires January 1 of the year following the 50th anniversary of the design. I am uncertain which halfpenny he is referring to. The classic seated Britannia: I have my copy of the 1997 edition of Coincraft's Standard Catalogue of English and UK Coins 1066 to Date in front of me, and it says the classic right-facing Britannia was designed by William Wyon and his son Leonard Charles Wyon, and later modified by Thomas Brock (p. 589), and were first struck in 1838, although coins with a similar concept of Britannia (variations of a seated Britannia) go back to 1672 (in a time when the year did not end until March 24, and contemporary accounts say the halfpennies were not issued until after Christmas).(p. 583). Those earlier coins did not say "HALF PENNY" on them, this was not introduced until 1860. If we are talking about the "ship" halfpenny (1937-1970), that was designed by Thomas Humphrey Paget in 1936 (a few Edward VIII halfpennies were struck as patterns with a 1937 date). Both are safely out of copyright. The new halfpenny struck with dates from 1971 to 1984 (pages 619 to 620) was actually first issued as part of decimal set wallets in 1968, though with a 1971 date, and so I guess will be out of Crown Copyright in 2019. All British halfpenny coins are demonitised.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:48, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I always said that decimalisation was the Devil's work! {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.103 (talk) 13:42, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

The metric system surely was. And probably soccer also. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:18, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

And how. I've worked on that article, by the way, but there is a shortage of online sources or I'd improve it further.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:50, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Cruise ship safety

Are safety standards on cruise ship declining? Since the Costa Concordia disaster in January, the BBC has reported problems with several other cruise ships: 3 Feb: British cruise ship passenger 'seen falling overboard', 27 Feb: Cruise ship Costa Allegra adrift off Seychelles, 31 Mar: Azamara cruise ship sails for Malaysia after fire repairs, and I'm sure there are a couple of other incidents I can't find right now. Do things like this happen regularly on cruise ships, or has it just been a bad couple of months for the industry? Astronaut (talk) 14:02, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

See Gambler's fallacy, which can be summed up with the statement "randomness happens in streaks", in other words, among relatively small sample sizes, otherwise random (i.e truly stochastic) events without direct causation can occur in streaks or clumps. Humans, seeking to find an expalanation for such randomness, erroneously try to assign a "cause" for such streaks. Which is not to say that your assessment of the safety standards of the cruise industry is correct, but that also doesn't say that it is incorrect. It is just that the temporal proximity of several apparently related events is, in itself, not convincing evidence that such events are related to each other, or indeed, anything at all, other than dumb luck. --Jayron32 15:42, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Except that cruise ship accidents are not random events. A rapid increase in global cruise passengers leads to a rapid increase in new cruise ships, while the pool of experienced and reliable captains remains relatively constant. Anonymous.translator (talk) 21:03, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Individual events have causes; but seperate events are not necessarily related. The question is not over whether or not each accident has a cause (it always does), it is whether or not the cause of two different accidents is related to each other (it doesn't have to be). The fallacy is in finding patterns in unpatterned events. --Jayron32 21:55, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

These events are related because they are the result of the declining quality of cruise ships, crew, and maintenance standards arising from the rapid expansion of the cruise industry over the past two decades. When the events are not truly random but are correlated with a common underlying cause then the Gambler's fallacy doesn't apply. 99.245.35.136 (talk) 23:19, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

To some extent there could be elements of Confirmation bias and the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon (we really should have an article about that.) Here and here are a couple of articles on those subjects and the effect on the media. Wikipedia articles you might wish to take a look at include Hostile media effect and Selective exposure theory. Basically, once the media discovers that cruise ships have accidents, they find those accidents everywhere.

I haven't been able to easily find a reliable source of statistics on the frequency of incidents on-board cruise ships. http://www.cruisejunkie.com/events.html is a possibility, although it only details events reported in the media, which brings me back to the problem above. But there is a Huffington Post article from a couple of months ago which analyses some of the statistics. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:08, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm inclined to endorse Cucumber Mike's observations about selective reporting and media bias, but it's also worth remembering that the cruising industry has grown remarkably in the last few decades. Worldwide, there were roughly 4.5 million passengers in 1990, 8 million passengers in 2000 [1], and 14 million passengers in 2005. There are twice as many vacationers at sea now as there were ten years ago. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:52, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Coming back to the question, it is not so much a question of standards declining, but of standards not keeping up with the massive increase in the size and the number of passengers (and relatively few qualified and experienced crew members) crammed onto these ships, a point made on last night's documentary on UK's Channel 4.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:36, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps the location of lifeboats on lower decks rather than the highest deck possible is an example. To me it seems to be a fundamental design and safety flaw to position the lifeboats at low level. Architecturally it may look good, but who cares how a ship looks when people are at risk of drowning? Oh, to begin with, the bean counter$ do. Benyoch (talk) 12:31, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Do you have some examples of this 'problem' in mind? In any event, I can think of a number of practical reasons why lifeboats might be better placed on a lower deck. Deploying boats from the topmost deck is complicated if the upper deck is not as large (long and broad) as the decks below; the boats would need to be cantilevered out over the perimeter of the decks below, which may be technically challenging at the best of times and potentially impossible if the ship is listing. Smaller upper decks also mean less space from which to deploy boats, and less space for passengers to assemble to board them. Deploying boats from the topmost decks mean the passengers on the lower decks have a long climb without elevators. (Counting rows of windows/portholes on the picture of the Costa Concordia, passengers on the lowest passenger deck only have to climb two decks; if the boats were on the top deck, they would have to climb up nine levels.) Deploying boats from one of the middle decks also shortens the average and maximum distances a passenger would have to travel to reach a boat. Recent cruise ships are so tall that deploying boats from the uppermost deck means an extremely long descent to the water that is potentially dangerous in high winds, whereas even the lowermost open deck is still a safe distance above the water. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:12, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

TenOfAllTrades ... you make some good points there, especially about the size of the top deck. Let's say, then, lifeboats on the highest possible deck. Examples of both high and low level lifeboats can be found using Google images>cruise ships. My armchair observer's view is that when a vessel lists the lower the lifeboat the quicker it will become unusable should the ship list so far that the lifeboats become 'trapped' by the superstructure or rendered inaccessible because of driving seas that rise up the side of the vessel. The higher the lifeboat the more time for evacuees to get to them. Your point about inoperable lifts could be valid depending on circumstances. Lifeboats on the highside will become inoperable and equally so regardless of the level of the lifeboat deck. I take your point, tho, about high winds, etc. The Costa Concordia has up to 8 decks above the lifeboat deck. It's a science and a safety trade-off, I expect, and I am not even a novice on the matter. Benyoch (talk) 13:40, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Whole Foods Market history

What was the exact location (i.e. address) of Safer Way in Austin, TX, which preceded the first Whole Foods Market? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.67.196.84 (talk) 14:16, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

The Whole Foods website indicates that this store is "just blocks from where Whole Foods Market began as a small neighborhood grocery store over 30 years ago." and serves as the company's "Flagship Store". That store is located on the corner of Lamar Blvd. and Sixth Street in Austin, so the original store is likely close by. You can contact them directly, someone there may likely be able to answer your question. --Jayron32 15:36, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

This interview says it was the corner of 8th and Rio Grande. Which is, in fact, several blocks from 6th and Lamar.--Itinerant1 (talk) 19:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Hotmail - creating folders

Hi. Currently, Microsoft Hotmail allows the creation of new folders. Is it possible to designate all senders of one email website address (for example, @facebook.com for all Facebook emails, or another website for all twitter emails) to go into a separate inbox? Any instructions available? Thanks. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 15:31, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't have a Hotmail account, so your milage may vary with this but with Gmail, I can do basically what you're asking by setting up a filter. So, it's probably in your settings somewhere under either Filters or Labels or some such terminology. Dismas|^(talk) 17:08, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Options -> More Options -> Customising Hotmail -> Rules for sorting new messages. Nanonic (talk) 17:45, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Most definitive reference for Drugs

If I am writing an academic paper and would like to cite a reference for the medical/pharmacological effects of common drugs such as Morphine or Codeine, what reference should I use? Is there some sort of "Gold-standard" book for common, well-established drugs? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 19:26, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Physicians' Desk Reference, perhaps? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:35, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article called Physicians' Desk Reference as well, describing the work. --Jayron32 19:44, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

See Drug Questions? Ask Curtis.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:47, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

How can the M&Ms factory prevent blonde workers from throwing out the W's?

Is that a problem to this day, or just in the past? Have they taken care of it yet? (If so, how?)

If not, my suggestion to prevent the throwing out of the W's is for a laser to read all the pieces, and have a machine above the conveyor belts stick out their mini-claws to turn the pieces around to all face the same way.

Then put the blonde employees on the one side of the conveyor so they ONLY see M's.

Will that work, and save the money otherwise wasted on the tossed M&M's in the long-run? Or will there be big downsides? (What, if so?)

But what ideas would you suggest, if different/better from this one? --Tergigress (talk) 20:35, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

It's not just the W's, it's also the 3's and the E's. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:39, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Tired jokes are tired. --Jayron32 20:45, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Every joke, like every face, is fresh to someone. On the other hand, let flogging horses lie, or something like that. —— Shakescene (talk) 20:53, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

For a much better M&M story, have a gander at this--Jac16888 ^Talk 21:27, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Mars meets Highlander. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:43, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

As every printer knoiws, it is simply a matter of "Who Shot the Serif?" Collect (talk) 21:28, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Dark suspicions have gathered around the hot head of his leaden-footed son Sam Serif, although some point an ink-stained finger at Sam's son Gill Sam Serif, well-known for harbouring a racially-tinged family prejudice against Egyptians like those associated with M & M and W & W. Investigators have been quoted (off the record) as saying, "We're quite familiar with this type of case. Let the experts sort this out." —— Shakescene (talk) 21:53, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Here's a better dumb blond factory joke: "During the recent Tickle Me Elmo craze, the factory which makes them had to hire extra workers. One was a blond hired for quality control. Unfortunately, the toys she had processed all had to be returned as "inappropriately anatomically correct", after she was instructed to give each toy "two test tickles". StuRat (talk) 16:20, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Too much lead in the body

My aunt has recently been told that the amount of lead in her body is off the charts! We have been trying to figure out where she could have contacted it. One place is a AT&T headset she used for over 10 years (approximately 1953-late 1960's, early 70's) where she was a telephone operator. Where would I being to search for the amount of lead in those "old" head sets?.

Brianna — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.61.165.250 (talk) 21:49, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

It is also possible to get lead through lead paint. As lead paint gets old and flakes, it can become aerosolized and get in the air. I'm not sure about the metabolism of lead in the body, but I suspect it would be unlikely to remain in her system for 40 years. It is more likely that a more proximate source of lead is in her environment. --Jayron32 21:52, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps it's in her drinking water. RudolfRed (talk) 22:24, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

This is one of those questions that is almost certainly discussed with the medical professional who conducted the test in the first place. (If the test wasn't conducted by a medical professional – if, for example, it was performed by or for an alt-med shyster who wants to sell you a 'detox' kit – then your first stop should be a real doctor who can help you to interpret the results.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:27, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes to the above! This rings alarm bells for me, ESPECIALLY if the person is recommending chelation therapy. Our article mentions the unapproved use of the therapy by "alternative medicine" practicioners in the controversy section. If that's the case, get a second opinion from a GP. Vespine (talk) 02:22, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

And, specifically, those pads you attach to your feet at night that turn dark by morning are normally used to convince people they are full of "toxins", but lead could also be claimed, if their goal is to convince you of the need for chelation therapy. They simply react with sweat, and always turn dark, no matter whose sweat is used. If we had a live human handy from 100,000 years ago, they would show the same reaction, so it has nothing to do with pollution and modern toxins. StuRat (talk) 16:14, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

If your aunt has been diagnosed by a real medical professional our article Lead poisoning may be of interest. There's a section with common exposure routes that are IMO more probable than wearing a headset, even if she worked as a telephone operator. Sjö (talk) 16:51, 3 April 2012 (UTC)