Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2008 December 3

= December 3 =

How random is the random article feature?
Is it truly random, like if you kept hitting it you wouldn't get a repeat for months? Every single article? All 1,000,000+ of them? If so, how is this achieved? As soon as a page is created does it get thrown into the hopper? --THE WORLD&#39;S MOST CURIOUS MAN (talk) 01:02, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Most probably a Random number generation facility called from PHP, the scripting language of MediaWiki, the software which drives this site. Something like rand working on the set of primary keys for all articles in the wikipedia: namespace. In essence, if you know there are 1,000,000 articles, then rand(1,1000000) will return a random value - say 178982, which happens to be the ID of an article. It is not truly random, but is near enough for rock'n'roll. And there is a possibility that you'll get the same article, but a vanishingly small possibility. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:11, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It looks random enough to practice bibliomancy. I asked the oracle whether I should share the power of wiki-divination with the world's most curious man, and the oracle answered with Time is of the essence (not kidding), so... :S ---Sluzzelin talk  01:40, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Funny, because when I do the random article function, its about even money that I get a stub about a French commune, or an article about a single Simpsons episode... --Jayron32. talk . contribs 05:05, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * All I ever get is UK soccer players, mainly English ones. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 05:58, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * In any random system it's possible to get the same result several times in a row, it's an astronomical chance in a collection as big as Wikipedia though. It may not take "months".  And yeah, I usually get some rail station or roadway.  "Oh, wow!  This road passes through Coddington!  No way!"  That's why I hardly ever hit the random article link.  Dismas |(talk) 08:18, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hrm... CambridgeBayWeather's aura must have rubbed off on me a bit.  I just tried the link again and got a disambig page followed by an Argentine football player. joy...  Dismas |(talk) 08:21, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I usually get U.S. counties. "Random" seems to have a different meaning depending on who presses the button.  --  JackofOz (talk) 08:28, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I used to do the following: choose 10 random articles and try to add or correct something to at least half of them. Anyway, right now I got a US submarine, the current Nepalese presidential election, and Portable DVD player. --Ouro (blah blah) 08:57, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I always seem to get roads and railways too. (And as proof, my first hit just now was Andoversford and Dowdeswell railway station.) Adam Bishop (talk) 09:14, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure Jack's right. I invariably get a little known town/village/county. I just tried five times! Zain Ebrahim (talk) 10:26, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

<-Theoretically, the odds of hitting a particular category is dependant on the number of articles in that category. If there are 10,000 articles in the category little known towns and villages and 10 articles on DVD players, the odds are a thousand to one that you will get another hit on the towns/villages before you get one hit on DVDs. Phil_burnstein (talk) 10:58, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Two sportsmen, two obscure musicians, two counties (Brasil and Poland) and a disambiguation page. No partridges, nor pear trees. Steewi (talk) 23:45, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * For me, it's always Japanese railway stations. There is a phenomenally active group who write about Japanese railway stations. SteveBaker (talk) 05:56, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * See Birthday paradox: you'll start getting repeats much sooner than you expected. --Carnildo (talk) 01:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * When I started up my own Wiki (using the same MediaWiki software as Wikipedia) - I initially had just a handful of articles. It was very clear that the system had a very strong bias towards recently created articles.  However, that bias gradually went away as the number of articles grew.  Somewhere we have a WP: article that talks about the randomess of random-article - and there is some statistical bias that comes about because of the way it works. SteveBaker (talk) 05:56, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * What would be great addition to the random link is a way to see random links based on a topic. Such as random links based on the Mafia, ot The Simpsons, etc... —Preceding unsigned comment added by JelloTube (talk • contribs) 09:06, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

This was discussed about a year and a half ago; the conclusion was that the random article feature was as close as possible to being completely random. See Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 June 17. Warofdreams talk 15:46, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * See also FAQ/Technical. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:17, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Disorder
I'm trying to figure out the name of a disease/disorder in which someone believes they have an illness and act as if they're sick, but are really not. I've tried finding it, but have had no such luck. Might anyone know what disease/disorder it is? 74.95.169.158 (talk) 22:39, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You'd be talking about psychosomatic illness, I suspect. Confusing Manifestation (Say hi!) 23:10, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * And hypochondria. Julia Rossi (talk) 04:47, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * And Munchausen syndrome. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk  -  11:21, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Note that the first is an actual illness caused by the mind, the second is people who just think they're sick, and the last is people who try to fool others into thinking they're sick. StuRat (talk) 14:54, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Also malingering. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:12, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Weight of Manhattan Island?
How much does Manhattan Island, buildings, average amount of people, cars (basically everything thats possible to be calculated), weigh? How would one go about calculating this? (All I know right now is that the Empire State Building weighs 365,000 tons)


 * I don't think that there's going to be a statistic on this, simply because it's pretty much impossible to weigh a city. But you could calculate (number of cars in NY * average weight of a car) + (number of citizens of NY * average weight of a person) + concrete + buildings + the gators living in the sewers. And don't forget that it has the Statue of Liberty, too. flaminglawyerc neverforget 07:03, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The Statue of Liberty is not on Manhattan Island, it's on Liberty Island. Getting back to the question, you run into a problem due to the issue of, where do you stop measuring?  The island is part of a greater land mass, namely the North American continent.  So how far down into the earth do you go?  Or are you just wanting to calculate the man made bits?  The stuff on the island as opposed to the entire island.  Dismas |(talk) 08:14, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * See Fermi problem. You might be interested in William Poundstone's book How Would You Move Mount Fuji?.  For this particular problem, I would ignore all the man-made stuff, which is mostly empty space, and just calculate the weight of a volume of earth consisting of Manhattan's area times its average elevation down to sea-level or however deep you want to go.  --Sean 13:33, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * My guess is that they want to do exactly the opposite, and only measure man-made structures, cars, and people; thereby excluding the ground below. StuRat (talk) 14:43, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * But some of the most important man-made structures are holes in the ground. Do they count as having negative weight, then?  We must know! :-)  --Anonymous, 03:14 UTC, December 4, 2008.

Pick it up with a suitable implement (such as a spatula) and then very carefully place the whole assembly on a giant set of scales. Once you deduct the weight of the spatula, you will possess the relevant, if useless, information.


 * Ah - that's kinda like the "Burn's Hog Weighing Method":
 * Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a saw-horse.
 * Put the hog on one end of the plank.
 * Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again perfectly balanced.
 * Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
 * -- Robert Burns
 * SteveBaker (talk) 05:51, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I THINK THATS THE BEST, MOST PRACTICAL WAY OF SOLVING MY QUESTIONS, THANKS. I'LL BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THAT BOOK, THANKS!


 * Call up Mayor Amalfi and ask. -Arch dude (talk) 23:50, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

help finding an article
I was bored one day a while back, so I clicked the "Random Article" button. I got sent to an article called John Smith (judge), but instead on John Smith it was somebody's name. I can't remember the name, but I do remember that he got fired from his job as a judge because he mast'bated in his robes in court. Does anyone remember the name of this dude? Yes, I already searched it. flaminglawyerc neverforget 07:14, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Donald Thompson is mentioned in this random Wikipedia article. He claimed he wasn't masturbating. Fortunately, whatever he was doing seems not to qualify him for a Wikipedia article, or maybe it got deleted.--Shantavira|feed me 10:15, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Was he fired for hiring an inflatable, rubber woman as his bailiff ? StuRat (talk) 14:38, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, it was deleted in May 2008 through the proposed deletion system, which theoretically allows anyone to overturn the deletion. I don't see the point though, as the deletion reason seemed sound - he was only notable for one event. Graham 87 15:12, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Wow, that's a pathetic reason for deletion. Wouldn't pretty much every assassin be removed on those grounds ? StuRat (talk) 00:59, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * According to trial testimony, it wasn't one event. "At (Donald Thompson's) trial, his former court reporter, Lisa Foster, testified that she saw Thompson expose himself at least 15 times during trial between 2001 and 2003.


 * Come again? Edison (talk) 22:34, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Does this mean the deletion should be reconsidered? Maybe some sort of record was set. Wanderer57 (talk) 19:46, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The entire story can be read at these two articles from The Smoking Gun website. Matt Deres (talk) 21:15, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

The Friends' School (Hobart) - TCE French 5C
Does anyone have a copy of the syllabus?--121.223.157.145 (talk) 12:47, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * There are hundreds of Quaker-run schools. Where is this one? --Moni3 (talk) 16:19, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hobart. TCE stands for Tasmanian Certificate of Education.--121.223.157.145 (talk) 21:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The The Friends' School say they follow the TCE syllabus so I would think that here would be a start. Note that the syllabus expires 31 December. Of course asking The Friends' School or the Tasmanian Qualifications Authority might work as well. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 23:57, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

What can I get this guy for Christmas?
A friend of mine really likes trains. What kind of gift can I get for this person? The problem is that he's already got calendars of trains and other memorabilia (magazines, collections of timetables from around the world, etc). He also has a serious hobby train set. Does anyone have any suggestions for a train themed gift? I think I might willing to spend about $US 100. I live in Australia.
 * You can get DVDs filmed in the driver's cab. One or two of those, for some of the great railway journeys of the world, might be nice. --Richardrj talkemail 14:27, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * You may be able to get him parts or accessories he could use with the model train stuff he already has. Knowing what specificially he'd want may be a trick, though.  Friday (talk) 14:47, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Get him a ticket to rid the narrow gauge train from Durango to Silverton in Colorado. Train people love that, for some reason. I just got soot in my eye and thought Silverton was really cold. --Moni3 (talk) 14:55, 3 December 2008 (UTC) Moni reads the rest of the post about living in Australia and suggests getting the equivalent of the Durango Silverton train, feeling like a dumbass... --Moni3 (talk) 14:58, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

He's the train expert, you're not. You'd be better off getting him something complementary to his train set, that's not a train. Can you find out what scale his train set is? Get him some trees/houses/shops/sheep/whatever from a hobby shop to place alongside his train set. Ask the shopkeeper for some kind of gift receipt, so your friend can exchange the items if they're inappropriate, assuming he lives nearby. --Dweller (talk) 14:57, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * If you ever get to travel, you could buy a freight car or engine that is unique to that place. There are (or rather, were) many local and regional rail companies with their own logos and paint schemes, and these are sometimes reproduced in model size. That would certainly be a unique gift. You would have to find out what specific model train scale your friend has to make sure your gift is compatible. Buying an engine would probably be more costly and difficult due to potential voltage differences (if you are thinking about other countries). I don't know how much this would cost, because I'm not into trains myself.


 * A safer idea is to buy a gift card or certificate for whatever store your friend frequents for his train supplies. Loves  Macs  (talk) 15:05, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad] suggestion gave me another idea: there must surely be historical train routes in Australia. You could get a ticket for one of those. Loves  Macs  (talk) 15:34, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * We have a list of heritage railways in Australia. Marco polo (talk) 23:27, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I still have a lot of fun with Microsoft Train Simulator. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 00:05, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I always liked the Railroad Tycoon series of games, but I preferred to design the railroads rather than drive the trains... --Jayron32. talk . contribs 14:06, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Buy him chocolate; seriously. Buying him a train item is going to be like buying a surgeon a scalpel -- likely to be either redundant or the wrong kind, but everyone loves chocolate.  --Sean 14:17, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It depends on where in Australia your friend lives and what kind of rail buff he is. However, if it was me I would consider a trip on The Ghan.  Some short one-way trips can be booked for less than AUD$150 if you book long enough in advance and are happy with the "no refunds, non-transferable" terms & conditions (talk to you friend first).  As others have pointed out, there are some smaller (and presumably cheaper) heritage railways in many states.  Astronaut (talk) 18:48, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Julia Rossi (talk) 08:23, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

forbidden question
Hi, two closely related queries. What is the original version of the quote, "That which is not forbidden is mandatory"? And who said it first? It's difficult to google for as I can't remember the exact phrasing and there is a lot of noise. 79.72.158.175 (talk) 21:33, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It does not show up in online collections of quotations I checked. In most contexts, it does not make sense, because many nonforbidden things would be unpleasant and unproductive. I read of a couple whom the sheriff in a rural caught inhaling the fumes of dog poop heated in a metal box. The sheriff said he checked all the law books at the courthouse and could find no law forbidding the practice. But that did not automatically make it compulsory. (The sheriff said he could think of no punishment worse than the original offense, so he just let them go on their way). The Dirac equation has 2 solutions which make sense in terms of electron spin, but there are 2 more solutions which imply negative energy. So a recent book about Dirac says "In quantum physics, generally "that which is not forbidden is mandatory." I expect it comes from modern physics or cosmology, in the mid 20th century. Edison (talk) 22:21, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I've certainly heard the phrase used in particle physics to describe particle interactions and decays - if there is no law forbidding a given particle from decaying into a given combination of other particles then if you watch enough of those particles for long enough, eventually such a decay will happen. I've also heard the phrase in other contexts to refer to extremely strict laws (either a country's laws or a religion's), but I can't remember the details. --Tango (talk) 22:25, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Strangely, the first use of a similar phrase I found at Google Scholar was from a medical perspective in the Journal of the Kentucky Medical Association, 1983: "Anything not forbidden is mandatory" by D.L. Stewart. In the world of physics, many uses of the phrase turn up after 1996, where Jorge.L. Lopez and D.V. Nanopoulos used it in Modern Physics Letters: "Of course, Einstein was misinformed, although on the other hand, since 'whatever is not forbidden is mandatory' one can say that he acted in a physically reasonable way." But note that they placed it in quotes as if it were a well known axiom or a truism. Edison (talk) 22:33, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * A similar phrase "everything not forbidden is compulsory." is in the book The Once and Future King. Wikiquote attributes Murray Gell-Mann. SN0WKITT3N  22:34, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

The context I heard it in (if I remember right) was an anthropological study (or a study of a study, or something along those lines) of tribal cultures with very rigid laws and traditions, and it was treated as a quote from somewhere else. The physical usage is an interesting surprise! 79.72.158.175 (talk) 22:35, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * A work by the same name is used as a reference in Biopunk and is listed under Katz's other publications. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 23:47, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

The Totalitarian principle discusses the version of the phrase with "compulsory". Warofdreams talk 12:50, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Number of articles
Is there a way of determining the number of articles we have about some "kind of thing" (which sounds a bit like a category). Eg how many articles about "people" or "live people" or "birds" or "types of car" etc. You can see the category of course, but "category:people" returns "28 subcategories + 4 people" rather than "123456 people". -- SGBailey (talk) 23:34, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * There are various tools on the toolserver such as categorycount which can count articles in a category and its subcategories. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:41, 4 December 2008 (UTC)