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August 4

I'm just wondering something... (send a quick answer)

I've typed in a letter to <email address removed>. I've translated this letter from English to Japanese:

Hello. Please don't take this e-mail as a confusing message because the title is in English and the message is in Japanese, unless you have a translator to describe the English title. I use a technique to translate English to Japanese so you can understand this e-mail.

I am a fan of the awesome manga Naruto from the United States. As a proud Naruto fan myself, I totally dig the characters. They are awesome, and so is Masashi Kishimoto, who created the manga. He simply became a great manga artist from Okayama Prefecture who made a great series. I just sent this e-mail to you guys to tell you of how much I like the Naruto series.

Now, it's translated to this:

こんにちは。英国のタイトルを記述する訳者がなかったらタイトルが英語にあるメッセージが日本語にあるので複雑なメッセージとしてこの電子メールを取らなければ。英語から日本語を翻訳するのに私は技術を使用する従ってこの電子メールを理解できる。私は米国からの驚くばかりのmanga Naruto のファンである。Naruto 自慢しているファン自分自身として、私は全く特性を掘る。それらは驚くばかり、従ってmanga を作成したMasashi Kishimoto である。彼は大きいシリーズを作ったOkayama 県からのすばらしいmanga の芸術家に単になった。言うために私はあなたにちょうどこの電子メールに人を私がNaruto シリーズを好むかどの位の送った。

Is this letter okay to send to the e-mail address? Send a quick answer please .

I don't speak Japanese myself, but I can tell you that Babelfish pretty much never actually works. If you ask very nicely over on the language reference desk, someone might translate it for you --L-- 17:40, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that it didn't transliterate native names makes it look completely ridiculous. 68.39.174.238 21:23, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What happens if...

I just saw this funny commercial for A1 steak sauce where a guy dripped steak sauce on the grill and then licked the grill and his tongue was covered with a pad. I'm just wondering, what hapeens if a person licks a lit grill?

Well you would expect they could burn their tongue very badly. It could even bond to their tongue which would be pretty bad. If it had just been lit then you might expect it not to be hot enough to do major damage but still won't be good. Still nice idea for a commercial. ny156uk 13:03, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dubious idea for a commercial, some stupid fool will try to do it with dreadful consequences!--88.109.197.227 13:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since the sauce contains a lot of water, the temperature of the sauce can't get over 100C until all of the water has boiled off - so you might be reasonably safe if you ONLY licked the sauce! SteveBaker 17:13, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's still 200+ F, which is really bloody hot. You would almost certainly get HORRIBLE burns on your tongue, and trust me, burning your tongue isn't fun, since it basically IS meat. Hell, I had one of those instant soup cup things once, took a swig without cooling it down, it couldn't have been very hot since I was able to hold it in my hand without dropping it, and it STILL burnt my tongue bad enough that it hurt for a couple weeks. Long answer made short: People laugh at you, post it on youtube, and you go into hiding out of depression and being unable to use your tongue. --L-- 17:44, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

About neumann

I have read that John Von Neumann the great mathematical genius was an ogler of women legs.How can a genius like him think about the opposite sex in such a way.Doesn't it disturb him in his study.I also heard that Albert Einstein was a great flirt.Is this why people become antisemetic.~Ecclesiasticalparanoid

Dedication to your study doesn't mean you don't have an interest in the opposite sex and/or a preferene for a specific body region. But i'm guessing you know this, since it doesn't take a genius like Einstein to figure it out... ny156uk 13:05, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

John Von Neumann had enough brainpower that if he spent 25% of the day ogling skirts, the rest of his day would still be a thousand times more influential than the average person's. He was perhaps one of the most high-wattage scientists of the 20th century, at least by the accounts from his already very high-wattage peers.

As for Einstein, he did have a number of ways with the ladies, but to suggest that this had any large role in anti-Semitism is ridiculous. The number of people who even knew that about Einstein until very recently was almost zero. In his time Einstein was far better known for his theory of relativity, and perhaps, at times, for his political activism. Whether either of those contributed to anti-Semitism is a complicated question (anti-Semites certainly seized upon those high-profile activities of a high-profile scientist and tried to use them as part of an anti-Semitic agenda), but in any case it is completely ridiculous to blame the anti-Semitism on the hated-Jew-in-question rather than the anti-Semites. --24.147.86.187 20:36, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. I guess from your question that flirting must be an exclusively Jewish trait then. What an appalling character flaw. No wonder so many millions of Jews have been slaughtered by the righteous down the centuries. It all makes sense now. --Dweller 10:54, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose you are from India a land where stereotyping is the most prevalent hobby.A scientist doesnt necessarly mean a fuseout with drooped shoulders and bulletproof spectacles.It just means he or she has pure passion for the subject or more fundamentally thinking.

I dabble in mathematics because I appreciate beauty. —Tamfang 16:53, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Science fiction story title & author

I've been trying to find the title and author for years. The story is about 2 men in a station on a remote place with a lot of frozen ammonia around. One was always "punning". The pun that got him killed was summed up with "ammonia bird in a gilded cage". I'll be quite surprised and pleased if this works.Eleeguy 15:37, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the story - but I would bet good money it's by Isaac Asimov. He wrote a ton of short Sci-Fi stories that wound up with terrible puns - many of them set in places like the outer planets where frozen ammonia would likely be found. He wrote 26 collections of his own short stories - and a huge number of others that were published in magazines and have appeared in anthologies of various kinds. Finding the exact title in amongst several hundred short stories is going to be tougher. SteveBaker

A google search on that phrase shows it's a common 'knock-knock' joke: "Knock Knock. Who's there? Ammonia. Ammonia who? Ammonia bird in a gilded cage." - and this page [1] attributes the joke to Asimov - so now I'm pretty much 100% certain my intuition is right...but I still don't know the name of the story. List of short stories by Isaac Asimov is the place to start - we have articles on almost all of them!! SteveBaker 16:55, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't get it

"I'm only a bird in a gilded cage." Google it.--Eriastrum 23:33, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like one of the stories in I, Robot. Though it's been ~~years~~ decades since I read the book, so I could be wrong. Dismas|^(talk) 13:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No - I already checked I, Robot - none of those stories is like that. SteveBaker 14:46, 5 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The story is titled "Fit The Crime" and it's by Noah Ward. The story appears in Isaac Asmiov's Science Fiction Magazine February 1979. Noah Ward is listed in the preface to the story as a pseudonym.

Group Marriage

If polygamy were to be made legal, what kind of economic rights would, for example, twenty people who all married each other get? Would it be similar to monogamous economic rights? 71.31.155.248 18:46, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever it would be, it would be something sane that doesn't cause people to groupmarry for money.

That's the kind of question whomever writing the polygamy-is-permitted law would have to decide. It's questions like this that make most laws extremely lengthy, detailed, and dull. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Polygamy is indeed legal in some countries, so perhaps you could look into their legal handling of the issue. Another option would be to look at a boilerplate contract of some kind that attempts to be fair to all parties, and which more than two people can enter into. Presumably a newly-legalized polygamous marriage would legally be somewhere between that and traditional marriage. --TotoBaggins 18:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Auto repair / Steering Wheel

Is the Steering Wheel from a 1994 Chevrolet Cavalier Compatible in a 1990 Chevrolet Lumina? (debolded Aaadddaaammm 22:55, 4 August 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Kit aircraft?

I know nothing beyond piloting a Cessna in MS Flight Simulator 2000. I'm handy with a wrench and I can follow instructions to the letter. I would like some good resources for this sort of things. What can I expect to spend for a kit? What would I need to know? I'm not sure where to start, though I'm confident in my ability to educate myself and build a plane, ultimately.

Any ideas on where to start? I realize I need my private pilot's license. What are some books I should read? Why doesn't everything have an IRC channel?

I don't mean to put you off or suggest you can't do it, but I would recommend restoring a glider first. Not only is it cheaper, but learning to fly a glider is definitely good practice for achieving a private pilot's license and the restoration would give you some idea of what to expect when putting your kit together. I would be surprised if a glider in need of restoration would cost any more than £1000. --80.229.152.246 21:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Taking that into consideration, where could I buy one and what would I need to do it? Where can I learn more about gliding?

I don't know what it's like in countries other than the UK, but here we have some very good and friendly glider clubs that you can join for a very small price. Not only will these clubs teach you to fly a glider, they will also teach you how it works, how to do groundwork and much more. They are also the best way to find gliders in need of restoration. Failing that, this website might be the best place to look, assuming you are in the UK. --80.229.152.246 13:21, 5 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kegar

What is a "kegar"? (as in, "intergalactic kegar")

It appears to be a corruption of kegger: a keg party. The phrase 'intergalactic kegger' appears in the movie Men In Black, as part of the line "We're not hosting an intergalactic kegger down here." TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pepsi and Cola

Are pepsi and coca cola companies owned by the same people? People keep saying this.

I would check the articles if I were you. Pepsi is owned by PepsiCo, and coca cola by The Coca-Cola Company SGGH ^speak! 22:14, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is no cabal --⁪froth^t 02:52, 5 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmn! Both Pepsi and Coca-Cola are public companies, which means that each is owned by its shareholders. To the extent that the two companies might have the same external shareholders, they could be "owned" by the same people. However, they are definitely not managed or operated by the same individuals, and those different individuals will likely hold a considerable percentage of the shares outstanding, in the case of each company. There is, thus, unlikely to be a Cabal. Bielle 18:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If they were owned by the same people, it would likely be a violation of U.S. anti-trust law. — The Storm Surfer 18:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 August 4

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