Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2010 March 14

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March 14

Oil transportation economics

Would it be more economical to build a refinery close to the source of the oil or close to the customer market that would use that oil?--LastLived 01:12, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

It is practical for oil refineries to be close to their customers because 1) It costs more to ship the many different products of refining than a single commodity crude oil; 2) Oil producing countries would get excessive control of markets if they also controlled refineries; 3) Few oil sources are in developed countries so there are extra infrastructure costs in building refineries close to source.Cuddlyable3 (talk) 01:57, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

USN flight control rank

If a person was in the flight control room of a USN aircraft carrier, radioing taxi instructions to airplanes preparing for takeoff, what would his/her NCO/officer rank be? And also, what is the lowest rank a USN fighter pilot can be?--LastLived 01:14, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Pilots are always officers. I don't think you are expected to do any other job before becoming a pilot (you aren't in other forces I know of), so you would start training as an Ensign. You would probably have been promoted at least once before you actually fly in combat. --Tango (talk) 01:40, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Our Air traffic controller article claims military ATC controllers, worldwide, are usually enlisted. Comet Tuttle (talk) 04:44, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Air Traffic Controller (US Navy) is indeed an enlisted rating. US Navy and Air Force pilots are always Commissioned Officers, but Army (helicopter) pilots are Warrant Officers. An exception to "usually enlisted" military ATC controllers is the RAAF, whose controllers are officers. FiggyBee (talk) 11:08, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Roger Williamses marriages

Was pianist Roger Williams married three times? Believe he was married to a woman named Jane Arnold, from Audubon,Iowa, in addition to the two cited in his biography. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Emelar35 (talk • contribs) 02:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

His wiki bio says he's been married twice, but there are no sources for that. I looked everywhere else possible, no mention of his marriages. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 03:41, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Which Roger Williams are you talking about? Dismas|^(talk) 06:33, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The pianist. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 06:50, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Why there are not many ship routes along the southern coast of Indonesia

I was looking at the Pelni ship routes. Why is it that there are no ship routes along the southern coast of Indonesia ( Java in particular). If it is due to not having any ports/ major cities along the southern coast, why is it that there are no ports/ majour cities along the southern coast. 220.227.207.32 (talk) 05:45, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, there are very few major cities along those coasts. The landscape of Indonesia, and particularly that of Java, suggests the ridge of high volcanoes keep the interior of the islands largely inaccessible. The volcanoes are also generally closer to the southern coasts leading to steeper slopes and shorter, faster flowing rivers in those areas. Rivers were an important means of transport in the past, while slower flowing rivers on gentle slopes are better for growing crops. The climate can also play a role - it seems that Indonesian waters (presumably the waters between Java and Borneo, though I'm unsure about this) are less prone to violent storms and typhoons than along the coast of the Indian Ocean. It is therefore unsurprising that cities grew near to the rivers and gentle slopes of the northern slopes. Astronaut (talk) 12:15, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

These routes are all inter-island routes within Indonesia. There are simply no major islands off the south coast of Java, so there is no need for a ship route to connect them to Java. If you look at the northernmost islands in Indonesia, you will also see that there are no routes extending north from them. Certainly there are shipping routes extending south from Indonesia to Australia, but these are not handled by Pelni. Marco polo (talk) 16:01, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

solid waste management

what is third waste? and briefly discuss its attributes —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yogeshmech549 (talk • contribs)

Could you give us more information about what appears to be a homework question, given that the question doesn't really make sense? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:08, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Coincidentally, rabbits have their own way of recycling first waste. And dogs will happily eat catshit and occasionally eat dogshit, so they in a sense can produce third waste. Does that answer your question? PhGustaf (talk) 05:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure it answers the question, but it does point out how one can learn something new every day. :) P.S. I was going to add something about flies dining on cowpies, but I figured I would get ragged on about that. :( ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:33, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm no waste expert, but most discussions of waste thirds I can find relate to 42 USC § 6924(g) which specifies a division of waste into three classes or thirds, for disposal in landfill, with the first third the most dangerous and the most highly restricted; the classification of waste into thirds is done by the waste producer not by law.[1][2] --Normansmithy (talk) 11:16, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Painting

Despite having train in grapghic design, I am unable to paint very small delicate peices, I wish to paint hair-thin lines, and minute details. no matter how small the brushes I use I tend to get much larger lines than those I want. Is there a technique to this? I have had my best results using impliments other than brushes eg a table knife. But this is still unsatisfactory, what is the usual traditional method of creating small details with oils or water based, or oil based paints. and any other info would help thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.172.58.82 (talk) 16:39, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I spoke once to a maker and painter of high-end furniture and decorations for dolls' houses. He uses toothpicks (wood and plastic depending upon the effect he wants), pen nibs, and sponge applicators like the tiny ones used in furniture refinishing. He also uses the one- and two-hair brushes, as does a friend who creates magic-realist paintings up to 4 feet by 6 feet in size in egg tempera. (The latter's paintings take about a year to finish and he makes his own brushes.) Part of the technique is to use very little pressure on the applicator and to work under a magnifying glass. If you only want one or two lines, you can also tape it (or them) off, or make a template and paint it like a stencil. (You need to be very careful with templates, however, as the paint tends to bleed under them.) Here's a video of someone painting miniature flowers using watercolour. Note the brush technique. Bielle (talk) 17:49, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Winsor Newton make "special" miniature brushes. [3] see also, [4]--Aspro (talk) 18:03, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Miniatures, especially portrait miniatures have a long history, although they fell out of fashion with the advent of photography. These small-scale composition necessitated specialized techniques. You may want to investigate the techniques used by 17th and 18th century miniature portraitists. I apologize for not having details/more comprehensive references, but I believe that they did things like paint with a single cat's whisker to obtain the fine detail needed. -- 174.21.235.250 (talk) 18:13, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

(Pity the cat that happened to be walking by.) Bus stop (talk) 18:17, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

removing dog hair from clothing

I have a dog that sheds a good deal, especially in the now-impending springtime.

I have tried all of the following methods to remove dog hair from my clothing, with the following results with my clothing and my dog's fur:

• trying to get the excess hair at the source with a Furminator (works pretty well in reducing overall volume of hair, but I still get it on my clothes)
• sticky lint roller (time consuming, only somewhat effective)
• non-sticky lint brushes (totally ineffective)
• washing the clothes (does pretty well, all things considered, but is not good for when I am running out the door, obviously)

Is there something I have missed, some magic bullet, some easy way to do it? Some magic, high-tech gismo that uses static electricity or something otherwise clever to quickly and effectively and easily de-fur my clothing? (Is something more effective possible even in theory, if not as a product?) I suspect not, but I thought I would ask, just in case...! --Mr.98 (talk) 17:06, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

You participated in this thread from January, so I guess the shedding has gotten worse. The 3M Velcro device that I mentioned might help and might be a little better than those sticky lint rollers. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:46, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Have you considered getting the dog groomed and clipped? If it's trying to get rid of hair, you could be helping that process along.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 18:33, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

You could try wet sponge - water makes hair stick together, so it is easer to remove them and unless you overdo, your clothes should remain dry enough. 193.40.56.38 (talk) 19:28, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Humor me for a minute here. We've all seen pictures, and some of us have participated in the science project involving a Van de Graaff generator, in which a lot of static electricity makes one's hair stand on end.

Suppose our OP had such a device near their back door. Would a 30-second session with one's hands on the globe cause all the dog hair to fly off in all directions??

Making no claim that this is practical. DaHorsesMouth (talk) 20:26, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Shave your dog completely naked. Then buy him a coat if he gets cold?--79.68.142.101 (talk) 20:46, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, we're not going to shave the dog. (Wrong kind of hair for that anyway. And the dog would definitely not enjoy it. And would look silly.) It's not so much that the dog sheds so much (which she does), but that the hair gets totally stuck to my clothing. I suspect this would be the case even if the dog didn't shed so much (there'd still be enough to get on my clothes), and I find lint rollers fairly ineffective. (I can get a lot of the hair off with the sticky ones, but I have to use maybe three or four separate pieces of the tape to get it all off—it loses its stickiness quickly).

Is this the 3M velcro thing? Worth investigating, I suppose (reviews on the web are mixed; it seems to me to depend a lot on the type of surface it is being used on). And yeah, I wondered if someone had/could invent some sort of static electricity based mechanism, though I wonder if that wouldn't either be dangerous if it was to be effective. (I am not going to go off and start experimenting with electricity so don't worry about giving me thoughts on this!) --Mr.98 (talk) 22:40, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's the 3M device I was mentioning. I have mixed feelings about it, myself. It's OK. Maybe it'll work better for you than for me. I don't use it on clothing, but on furniture. By the way, we should raise a fund for someone to do DaHorsesMouth's suggestion. Mostly I just want to see it on YouTube. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:11, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The Van de Graff generator approach would make the hairs try to stand on end - that's because static electricity likes to collect at sharp edges and points - and the tip of a hair is pretty pointy. The points (having like charge) would then repel each other. However, I can't imagine a mechanism that would make them fly off of the clothing as a result. Most efforts at removing pet hair from clothes seems to involve neutralising static charges - not inducing more of them! SteveBaker (talk) 23:40, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

SB: don't overlook one key fact: when static electricity makes your hair stand on end, it's STILL ATTACHED AT ONE END :-). It has no choice but to stick out, eh? What would happen if it weren't attached on EITHER end? DaHorsesMouth (talk) 02:06, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I suggest segregation. That is, you need to have certain "dog free zone(s)", such as your clothes closet. Play with the dog before you get dressed for work or to go out, then lock the dog up, put on your good clothes, and leave the house without sitting down or touching anything in the "doggie zone". This should allow you to limit the hair. If your car seat is also covered with dog hair, this will present a problem. If you have two cars, I suggest that one be a dog-free car. StuRat (talk) 03:12, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

If your dog is a uniform color, another option is to buy lots of clothes in that color and the same texture as the dog's hair. That way the dog hair won't be nearly as visible. StuRat (talk) 03:14, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Swap the dog for a pet without hair - a fish or a lizard? Honestly though (and I'm sorry to sound unsympathetic here) you have a dog, therefore you will find its hair all over your house, your car, your clothing and anywhere else the dog goes. Hair everywhere is just one of the things that comes with dog ownership (along piles of poop in the garden and large bills from the vet). Astronaut (talk) 03:35, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

A more practical answer: wrap sticky tape round your hand (sticky side outwards, of course) and dap your hand over hairy clothing. It's hell of a lot cheaper than sticky lint rollers, so long as you don't get too obsessed with keeping your clothes absolutely free of dog hair all the time. Astronaut (talk) 03:38, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Consider nudism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.125.132.178 (talk) 17:30, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Anty sound effects

Video of ants building a bridge to cross a pond, then ripping a crab to pieces from the inside out. Fair warning for anyone who doesn't like insects.

Throughout much of this video, there's a quiet rustling noise - presumably, the sound ants make as they work. Or is it? Is it really possible to isolate that sound from the background noise...or was it just added in post-production for better effect? Basically: Is that sound real? Vimescarrot (talk) 21:59, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

A lot of those movies fake the sound - I wouldn't assume it was real without further evidence. SteveBaker (talk) 23:31, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see a source for that assertion, Steve. For a documentary series, I would think they'd like to be as accurate as possible. And I don't think it's that unlikely that they'd have a very good unidirectional mic with them. Dismas|^(talk) 23:41, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I haven't viewed the linked video, but can back up Steve's assertion generally. In the superb "Private Life of Plants" series by David Attenborough, there are most definitely fake sound effects employed throughout, including bellows noises when pitcher plants inflated and tearing/ripping sounds when mushrooms were sprouting. These things were filmed in super slow motion; there's no way they somehow recorded the sound of an apple ripening or a leaf unfurling; even if those things did make a sound, it would be completely blotted out by the background noise. Also note that some scenes are actually filmed on the equivalent of a set and are in no way done out in nature; the purpose of a documentary is to educate, not create Cinéma vérité. My reference for the filming on sets are all the various "making of" videos BBC nature crews include where they make no effort to hide the fact. Matt Deres (talk) 01:32, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree that some of those sounds are obviously fake. I've also noticed that the sounds don't seem to be at the right scale, in many cases. For example, I'd expect a smaller object falling to produce a high frequency sound, but it produces a solid thud in the movie. It would be interesting to look at the credits for such a movie to see if they have a Foley artist listed, which is somebody who makes fake sounds. But, even if they don't, that probably just means the Foley artist is listed under "sound engineer" or something less obvious. StuRat (talk) 03:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

A friend of a friend apparently performed the sound of an eagle landing on a cliff in a BBC nature documentary by vigorously flapping a pair of leather gauntlets together in front of a microphone. The video was shot from many hundreds of meters away with a long lens - no way to record the real sound. 93.97.184.230 (talk) 23:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Don't be so sure, Dismas — see Nature documentary#Staged content, which only cites two examples; but I think Disney's nature documentaries from several decades ago did this a lot. Comet Tuttle (talk) 04:51, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

As you say, the Disney example is from decades ago. The equipment in use now wasn't (as easily) available then. And the source for the staged content that you pointed me to doesn't mention sound work. (note: I only checked the last ~10 years entries on the source) It says quite a bit about scenes being filmed in zoos instead of in the wild and so on. I still say that it would be easy enough for a recent documentary to have good enough sound equipment for the sounds to be genuine. Compare the sounds at this page with the sounds in the clip provided by the OP and you'll hear that they're not very dissimilar. So, yes, maybe the sounds in the video didn't come from those specific ants. But they may very well be genuine ant sounds and thus not "fake" according to my definition of the word. Dismas|^(talk) 05:18, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

A bit off topic but related to the veracity of the film, I noticed that the crab does not seem to react at all to the ants biting its soft tissues. It goes from a menacing, active, state straight to a completely still (dare I say - dead) state without any sign of any sort of reflex movements. I can't believe it would happen like that. But of course the camera never lies;-) Richard Avery (talk) 07:33, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I have a novel idea. Let's find an answer to this question (with references) rather than speculating. A two-minute google search (using cunningly chosen words such as BBC, wildlife documentary sound recording) yields these two articles on the very subject: [5] - (mainly on music, but includes general reference to the difficulty of recording sound in the wild, with foley effects later) - and THE SOUNDS OF NATURE, PART II: Sound Editing in Nature Docs: The Second Narrator (scroll down to half way through) which tells you it's all done post-production: some foley, some stock audio. Gwinva (talk) 08:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Sarcasm aside, thanks for that! Dismas|^(talk) 08:06, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

(Sorry.) Anyway, here's Part One of the Sounds of Nature. Gwinva (talk) 08:11, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! (What more can I say? :p) Vimescarrot (talk) 13:22, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

On the general question about whether the documentaries take what we might call cinematic liberties, it can vary a lot. Recommending reading: Gregg Mitman, Reel Nature: America's Romance With Wildlife on Film (Harvard University Press, 1999). It is not at all uncommon for much to be tinkered with in the editing room to provide "greater realism" than can be achieved through just aiming a camera alone. Whether or not you interpret this as a "deception" or not depends on your definition of cinematic "reality" or "objectivity." There are and have been many different views on this. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:12, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Felix Arndt composer of "Nola"

Years ago, I heard or read that the song "Nola" was written spefically as a flashy demonstration of player pianos. I've also wrote it for and named it after his sweetheart.future wife.

Can anyone verify the piano demonstrion point?

reply here, please —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.66.115.4 (talk) 23:56, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

(Spacing and wording adjusted above to make question display properly)

I cannot locate a specific citation that supports your piano demonstration hypothesis. The nearest you get is Ragtime's entry on Donald's Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, which states that "coin-operated player pianos in public places were probably adjusted to play the piano rolls quickly in order to make money faster" and goes on to say that this led to "novelty" piano music, of which Nola is cited as an example. So it's probable that Nola was indeed regarded as a flashy novelty player piano piece, but that doesn't establish whether Arndt deliberately wrote it with that end in mind. Karenjc 00:13, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Ha! So that's why I could never play it properly! --TammyMoet (talk) 08:21, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Would that make it a toccata? 62.121.27.161 (talk) 09:27, 15 March 2010 (UTC)