Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2009 August 13

= August 13 =

film
Which hollywood film has the longest running nude/sex scenes (in the most explicit manner)? i am not talking about any porn movie, but normal movie which may be an R18-rated —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.186.5.105 (talk) 01:36, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * That's probably going to be very hard to answer. there isn't a very clear cut line between what is or isn't a "hollywood film" and what is or isn't a porn movie. I'm sure there would be heaps of "soft porn" type "straight to video" movies which would still qualify to be a Hollywood movie and got an R rating. If you're asking for mainstream release, big budget, with hollywood stars, my money would be on Basic Instinct. Vespine (talk) 01:58, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * 9 1/2 Weeks and Last Tango in Paris both were noted as mainstream releases with significant sex scenes... -- Jayron  32  02:05, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Shortbus? Or possibly Showgirls?  Or maybe Caligula with Jeremy Irons Malcolm McDowell.  I always get them mixed up.  Dismas |(talk) 02:07, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Why's everybody whispering? Clarityfiend (talk) 02:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * An anon IP removed only part of the "unsigned" template from the OP's post. So everything after the first small tag was made small.  Dismas |(talk) 02:42, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

There's a lot of difference between "nude" and "sex". I seem to recall that Amanda Donahoe is naked for most of Castaway (film).--Shantavira|feed me 08:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * By "hollywood film" do you mean mainstream? 9 Songs maybe? I haven't seen it, but it seems like a likely candidate. Also, Lars von Trier has caused a lot of controversy over some of the extremely graphic content in his films. Not all of that is just sex of course. :P --S.dedalus (talk) 08:49, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * For sheer length of nude scenes, I'd go with La belle noiseuse which is about 4 hours long, much of which is Emmanuelle Béart being drawn nude. The hours just seem to fly by somehow... It's not Hollywood, and I don't think it's rated either, but it would probably be an R if it was. Recury (talk) 16:45, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Consider also Lifeforce featuring Mathilda May. —  Michael J 21:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

There is a movie called "Prospero's Book" with Sir John Gielgud in which almost the entire cast is naked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Terrellschafer (talk • contribs)
 * Email address removed. JoeTalkWork 00:15, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't call most of what I remember of that film to be "sexual" in any way, unless we assume that artistic (and, frankly, bizarre) nudity is automatically sexual. I guess it depends on whether the OP meant "nude/sex" to mean "nude scene or sex scene" or "a nude sexual scene". Jwrosenzweig (talk) 08:14, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Origami boxes
Hi all; I would like to know how to make origami boxes. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.163.5.72 (talk) 01:38, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * There are a large number of different styles of origami boxes. here is a simple pattern.  And here are a bunch more.  Hope this helps. APL (talk) 01:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * That's perfect! Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.163.60.69 (talk) 22:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Demons' whips
How widely known, if at all, were depictions of demons wielding whips before Tolkien gave whips to his Balrogs? Neon Merlin  04:37, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * (recommend you move this to the humanities desk)83.100.250.79 (talk) 10:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't imagine that that would be the first use, as demons have long been associated with punishment and torture, though I have no sources to back me up. &mdash;Akrabbimtalk 12:19, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Dante's Inferno, Canto XVIII, references "horned demons with great scourges". &mdash; Lomn 13:02, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Are there any whips held by the daemons on Michelangelo's Last Judgment? Googlemeister (talk) 14:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * No - --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:25, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

A fresco in a Danish church, painted early 1500s show a devil type character with a whip, herding the harvested souls to hell. Can be seen here (not very clear I am afraid, but it cost a subscription to be allowed to zoom in, the guy with the whip is the black devil to the left in the picture, the red devil to the right is only holding a chain that is bound to the souls). --Saddhiyama (talk) 14:45, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia even has an illustration (probably of Dante's Inferno) by Botticelli. The image is from the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, the caption translates to "Pimps and harlots flee from flogging devils.". ---Sluzzelin talk  15:27, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Intriguingly, the Flemish 15/16-century painter Hieronymous Bosch produced several works graphically depicting hell and the tortures of the damned therein, but on cursory examination of all those reproduced on Wikipedia I could not spot any showing whipping (though he seems to have had an inordinate preoccupation with impalement). 87.81.230.195 (talk) 00:21, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Here are some more depictions of flagellating devils, all illustrating Dante's Inferno and all made before Tolkien was born: As seen by Stradanus, by Botticelli again (larger image here), and by Gustave Doré. ---Sluzzelin talk  12:55, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

List of most successful marketing companies in the USA
Where could I find a list of the most successful marketing companies in the USA? --Ye Olde Luke (talk) 09:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, here's a list for worldwide . I'd wager many of these companies are American Fribbler (talk) 10:28, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Are you defining success within a particular market or industry segment; or overall largest revenue, or some other definition? Nimur (talk) 17:13, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Overall profits. Of the largest and most successful companies in America, what marketing firms are hired by those? --Ye Olde Luke (talk) 19:16, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, this is 2 questions. If Fribbler's excellent link isn't enough and you really mean profits and not revenue, the next source I would go to is the last paper-printed "Forbes 500" issue of Forbes Magazine, which in the same issue has lists like "Top 10 Energy Companies" and, I believe, "Top 10 Advertising Companies".  I don't think they publish these lists on the Net (at least, I'm having trouble finding the list), so I'd go to the library and find the last "500" issue of theirs.  If you are asking the second question, "which ad agencies are hired by the largest and most successful companies in America", that sounds difficult to evaluate and a bit subjective, and I'm unfamiliar with any such list; Advertising Age is the most likely source of such a list.  Tempshill (talk) 19:41, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Coca-Cola bottles
My co-worker found this blurb on the Coca-Cola website:
 * "If all of the Coca-Cola ever produced was put into 8-ounce contour bottles:
 * There would be more than six trillion bottles, which stacked end-to-end, would reach 468 miles high - 85 times taller than Mount Everest.
 * The six trillion bottles roughly equals 966 bottles - or more than 56 gallons of Coca-Cola - for every person in the world.
 * If laid end-to-end, these bottles would reach to the moon and back 1,677 times."

We quickly determined that "stacked end-to-end" and "laid end-to-end" could not mean the same thing, as 1677 round moon trips certainly is a much larger distance than 85 Mt. Everest elevations. We figured that "laid end-to-end" is simply all the bottles added lengthwise, which gave the accurate moon distance number, but we couldn't figure out how we could orient the bottles to get the 468 miles value. Any thoughts? &mdash;Akrabbimtalk 12:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You could have given us the dimensions of an 8 ounce bottle to help out :-). Nonetheless, I calculate that the average distance of the earth to moon is 38440300000cm and going there and back 1677 times, divided by the estimated 6 trillion bottles, gives the bottles a height of 21.49cm (which is probably about right, as you suggest). However the 468 miles converts to 75317299cm, which divided by 6 trillion is 0.00001255cm or about 125nm which I think (at this late hour) is smaller than the wavelength of visible light. So doesn't seem to add up. I'd say Coke have stuffed up. --jjron (talk) 13:27, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * When they say stacked, I think they mean in a (semi-)structurally sound way. If you place one bottle on top of another, you may reach the moon 3300+ times, but you'd be lucky to get one bottle to balance on top of another.  What if you tried to make a pyramid?  That might be what they were implying - you'd have an enormous base, and it wouldn't be hollow, but you'd still go 468 miles up! ~ Amory  (user • talk • contribs) 13:50, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Volume of Pyramid = Area of the base * Height * 1/3
 * Volume of Pyramid = (753172m2) * (753172m) * 1/3
 * Volume of Pyramid = 1.424*10e17
 * (Assume a cubical coke bottle)
 * Volume of Coke Bottle = (21.49cm)3
 * Volume of Coke Bottle = 0.0099m3
 * Coke Bottles In Pyramid = Volume of Pyramid / Volume of Coke Bottle
 * Coke Bottles in Pyramid = 1.44x10e19
 * So, if I haven't slipped a decimal point here, a pyramid that size would require at least 14 quintillion bottles of coke. APL (talk) 14:04, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, they goofed somewhere. According to my calculations, they could have a pyramid that tall, but the base would only be 75m square, and it would be 753000m tall, so probably not easy to tell it is a pyramid.  Googlemeister (talk) 16:02, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * But most cola is not bottled - it's sold as industrial syrup supply, and probably mixed with carbonated water at the point of sale. In the US, this usually means a fountain drink style machine.  Nimur (talk) 16:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the whole thing is prefixed with the assumption that it all being put in standard bottles. We know that isn't true, but these numbers are only being used to look impressive. --Tango (talk) 16:34, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

<- stack them as a pyramid, but two dimensional, not three. I get 84 times Everest, but close enough. One on top, two underneath, then three etc. 6 trillion will stack (roughly) square root of twice 6 trilllion, or 744,000 rows.-- SPhilbrick  T  17:09, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * DOH! Silly us, thinking in 3D. Googlemeister (talk) 19:20, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's Hip to Be A Square! Fribbler (talk) 20:28, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks like they've started. Not far to go now... Gwinva (talk) 04:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Crime and Punishment
Is there any precedent of someone aged 8 years or younger being tried for a felony in the US in say the past 100 years, specifically for homicide or manslaughter? Googlemeister (talk) 19:28, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Even though there is an article "Youth justice in England and Wales", there is no American parallel. This will take further research. &mdash;Akrabbimtalk 19:52, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * According to this and this, many states have a minimum age for being tried as an adult (12 for CO, 14 for KY). But as I started answering this time, I can't remember if a minor can be tried for a felony without being tried as an adult? &mdash;Akrabbimtalk 19:58, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Defense of infancy cites this Amnesty International document and say this about the US:
 * "Age determined by each state; the minimum age is 6 (North Carolina) however only 15 states have set minimum ages, which range from 6 to 12 years. States without statutory minimum ages rely on common law, which means that 7 is the minimum age in most states; for federal crimes the age has been set at 10."
 * I can't find anywhere that has individual extreme cases mentioned. &mdash;Akrabbimtalk 20:06, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * According to this, it looks like child felonies are not unheard of, though I can't find anything about child murderers. Whenever I google "child murder" I come up with results about the murder of children, not murder by children. "Murder by children just comes up with non-relevant abstracts. &mdash;Akrabbimtalk 20:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's a 13 year old, claimed to be the youngest in US, but youngest to be convicted of murder, doesn't mean youngest tried for manslaughter.-- SPhilbrick  T  21:58, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's an 11 year old.-- SPhilbrick  T  22:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Isn't there some law about keeping crimes by the very young secret? I have a vague recollection that if they aren't tried as adults - then they are not exactly responsible for what they did - so when they emerge from 'the system' they need to be able to carry on with their lives in some sort of normality.  That would explain the lack of specific information about very young offenders.  SteveBaker (talk) 03:34, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * When an 11 year old girl named Ryan Harris was found murdered in Chicago, Illinois, with evidence of a sex crime, police charged 7 and an 8 year old boys with the crime, and claimed they confessed. They were later exonerated., . The felony charges had devastating effects on the innocent boys , , . Edison (talk) 03:45, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Steve, in Canada (thanks to the Youth Criminal Justice Act and its predecessor the Young Offenders Act), young criminals' names are kept secret, but not their crimes. Apparently this is not the case in the US, although I suppose it might differ from state to state. (It also doesn't apply to Wikipedia - there are a few Canadian "young offenders" whose names I wouldn't know if they weren't mentioned in Wikipedia articles, which seems a little sketchy to me...) Adam Bishop (talk) 15:20, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

simple questions about the Reference Desk
Reference desk (Gee, I didn't know you guys had what maybe a better alt to Yahoo! Answers!)

In some answer sites, like Answerbag, questions are open indefinitely. On YA, they are open for a week--hence the repetition ("What's your favorite Michael Jackson song?").

How does it work here?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a question get's old, and I didn't get a good answer, I understand that I am to ask it again, with a link to the old question. Sounds good.

Now what if I want to answer an old question?

Thanks people. :-D 68.179.108.25 (talk) 23:18, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * We don't encourage answering old questions. They cycle through about once a week. You could, potentially, answer an old one (there is nothing that stops you from doing it). But it's not generally encouraged. The Reference Desk is more about the here-and-now than it is about the long-term; answering a question when nobody will be looking at the answer does us little good.
 * And yes, incidentally, the Reference Desk is about a million times better than Yahoo! Answers if you want actual answers to things. My experience in reading Yahoo! Answers results is that there are 20 responses by people who don't know a thing and maybe one decent one; on here the ratio is much higher. (In part because people who give incorrect or stupid answers get berated for it.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:04, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. It just seem that as Wikipedia articles can be editted everyday, minute, or month, so might the questions. How about answering on the person's user:talk page. Say hi, refer to the question, and give an answer.68.179.108.25 (talk) 00:10, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The convention is to answer here at the desk, though it's possible to do what you're suggesting if the questioner were to request this. One problem with answering on a talk page is that other Refdesk viewers will only visit the Refdesk and will not visit the talk page, so you won't get any corrections to wrong information.  Tempshill (talk) 03:07, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Very few of us are prepared to respond on user's talk pages (or via email or anything else) - it's best to assume that nobody will. The idea is that these answers enrich the encyclopedia (and very often, we change the encyclopedia to better respond to the needs of our questioners).  Questions don't need to be here for more than a week.  If you don't get a really good answer within a day or two - then the odds are good that your question is unanswerable.  Most of our questioners stop coming back to check after just a few days anyway - so answering something after that time basically means that you're talking to yourself!  However, both questions and answers are archived forever - so you can always come and check the archives to see if a question has already been asked.  I agree that our responses here are VASTLY better than Yahoo Answers - it's hard to say exactly why that is - but I suspect that it's the nature of people who gather to this site to write an encyclopedia, who are just better read and better researchers than the general public who tend to frequent Yahoo Answers. SteveBaker (talk) 03:29, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * We generally see the archives as a record of past discussions, to which we might refer someone, rather than a forum for continuing discussions. But if you did happen to find an inadequately answered question in the archives (and answer it) it would probably be courteous to drop a note on the OP's (original poster's) talk page with a link to answer, since they would be unlikely to go back to it.  The ref desk is FAR superior to any other Q&A forum on the internet I have seen; along with the reasons noted above, I think this is due to the stated purpose/guidelines: we are here to provide references, not offer opinions, or discussions.  Thus, an emphasis on veriable fact.  This style attracts people who are well read, good researchers (etc) to contribute.  As Steve notes, we are interested in encyclopedia writing, not blogging. Gwinva (talk) 04:09, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think (perhaps quite wrongly) that if you answer a very-recently-archived question, it may pop back up here. Maybe that only happens in the weird situation in which I've sometimes found myself, where I'm answering a live question and then suddenly find myself in the archives, as the question's been archived while I'm composing an answer. With some questions that relate closely to an existing Wikipedia article or articles (e.g. a recent one asking the distinction between Fascism and National Socialism), it might be more useful to offer your response on that article's talk (discussion) page. There's a chance the original enquirer keeps an eye out on those pages where he or she might not bother looking at this page's archives. But in other cases of archived Ref. Desk questions, I think the user's talk page is a better bet; an orange flag usually appears the next time she or he logs in, if a registered user, or looks at a non-article page. Or at least you could drop a note on that user's talk page with a link to the revived discussion here. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:01, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it hasn't been archived yet, at that stage. I asked about it recently. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 07:11, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The RefDesk gets a lot more traffic than users talk pages, so if other people also had your same question, they can see the answers here rather than having to try and sort through who posted what where. Although, we do get a few repeats (but thankfully not as many as the Help Desk). Livewireo (talk) 18:01, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * One reason questions don't need to stick around indefinitely is because the Reference Desk is part of a larger project - the encyclopedia at large. If a question is persistent enough that it is commonly asked, then we need an article on that topic - and we often will write one.  (A lot of redlinks in questions and answers get turned into articles).  Many of the questions are indicators that our coverage of some topic needs improvement.  I also think the wiki format makes our responses much more dynamic - we can link to relevant articles within our answers.  Finally, I think we're better than many other internet forums because our responses (in fact, most everything on Wikipedia) is freely licensed - so the information may proliferate with minimal restraint.  Nimur (talk) 04:21, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe things have changed a lot, but back when I was more regular here (back when there was only one RD....ah, the old days), if the OP had a blue-linked WP username, I'd post an answer here, but then I'd leave a note on their talk page saying "Hey, I answered your question" or something along those lines. I don't know if it's done much anymore, but I always liked the courtesy of it (and appreciated it when I'd asked a question).  I'll certainly nod in agreement with the general sense of the other commenters above regarding the preference of answering here, and of not spending too much time on the questions long since shifted to the archives. Jwrosenzweig (talk) 08:20, 17 August 2009 (UTC)