Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2009 July 4

= July 4 =

Require a straight answer
I would like to know what is the difference in 1)	Dress size 2)	Weight and 3)	Height between a Petite, slim, average, tone and plus women? I keep reading women advertising themselves as petite, slim or  tone to what I term average or plus  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.225.232.154 (talk) 00:30, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If they are advertising themselves, the only ones you can be sure you are getting a straight answer from are the ones that call themselves plus-sized. You won't get one from us either, because the terms don't have set heights/weights/sizes applied to them. Probably your best bet would be to try a site that has users that post a lot of photos of themselves. Recury (talk) 01:29, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * See clothing sizes, US standard clothing size, Petite sizes for a general overview of some of the standards. --Jayron32. talk . contribs  01:36, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

NURSERY
Dear sir/madam

How do we designate staff team for a nursery nature company? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eflora (talk • contribs) 10:44, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Eflora, I removed your accidental duplicate question.
 * Please give a few more details. Does your company grow and sell plants? Do you need a name to call your staff members? If different people always do specific jobs, you could call them the Plant Team, the Customer Team and the Warehouse or Packing Team. If they all rotate doing the same jobs, you could call them all Gardeners. - KoolerStill (talk) 11:45, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If you are just looking for what to call them "nursery staff" works fine. "Gardener" is rather what we'd call the customers at a nursery.  If by "designate" you mean you are trying to figure out how many employees you'd need for each postition, start with an activity analysis.  Write down what tasks need to be done throughout the workday and how long each task is going to take and what tasks have to be accomplished at a certain time.  (That way you won't designate the same person to unload a truck and ring up a customer's order at the cash register at the same time.) 71.236.26.74 (talk) 16:34, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

drawing enlarging tool
I recently found a tool that i used a long time ago that concists of four sticks with holes trough them, a pointer, with a pencil and three pins [two short one long] used for enlarging or reducing draawing by tracing object with the pointer and tracing out with the pencil. i would like to know what it is called and if posible insructions thanking you in advance  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.59.179.11 (talk) 15:57, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I think you are talking about a pantograph. I have never used one but now you have the name you can research a bit yourself. If you look at the links at the bottom of our article there are instructions to build your own. Richard Avery (talk) 16:08, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah - this has got to be a pantograph - the fact that there are four rods makes that almost certain. So the idea is to connect the pencil to the end of one rod (on the left in the picture), the one end of another rod is affixed to your desk in some manner (on the right of the picture) - then hinge those two together - the other two rods need to be connected up to form a four-sided diamond shapes - a parallelogram - as in the picture.  The hinge at the bottom-center of the picture has the 'pointer' fixed to it.  Then you can trace out a drawing or a diagram with the pointer - and the pencil will make a copy of it.  Forming parallelograms of different heights and widths will allow you to make the copy either larger or smaller than the original...which is why (probably) your 'sticks' have more than one set of holes in them.  There are other possible configurations that also work. SteveBaker (talk) 16:36, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Electricity in Hawaii
The article AES Hawaii Power Plant mentions that coal provides about 11% of Oahu's commercial electricity supply. Does any Wikipedia article break down the sources of electricity for the state by percentage? Nuclear, coal, wind, etc. I assume there are no power lines connecting Hawaii to the mainland. Are there power lines linking the Hawaiian islands with each other, or does each island produce its own power? The article Environment of Hawaii mentions that the state "is going to be 70% powered by renewable energy in 2030". Crystal-ball concerns aside, it would be useful to have an article discussing how much of Hawaii's electricity right now is from various sources. --Mathew5000 (talk) 20:29, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Each island has its own power company but they are all owned by the same company. Electricity comes from seventy-seven percent imported oil sources (feul oil) and thirteen percent from imported coal. Looks like renewables haven't made much of an impact yet. Rmhermen (talk) 03:55, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! —Mathew5000 (talk) 00:16, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Did Sacha Baron Cohen invent the Mankini?
Did the Mankini actually exist as something that guys really wore to the beach or pool before it was featured in the Borat movie? --84.64.254.183 (talk) 22:51, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It's just a standard bikini bottom with the side straps pulled over the shoulders rather than over the hips. I am pretty certain Borat invented this particular style of wearing an otherwise standard bikini bottom.  --Jayron32. talk . contribs  04:14, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * No there's quite a bit more material there. Your suggestion sounds somewhere between painful and impossible.  Anyway, the Mankini page says Borat made it famous, not that he invented it, and pending new sources I'd go with that.  PhGustaf (talk) 04:55, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * This is starting to get into the realm of TMI. I can pretty well guess what it looks like from the back - probably the Pia Zadora look, if anyone remembers that. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 05:16, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Having seen it done, the method described worked fine. My buddy did it with a standard speedo-type suit.  Spandex stretches quite a long ways... --Jayron32. talk . contribs  00:38, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * See also: Wedgie and Atomic wedgie. :-) SteveBaker (talk) 16:18, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Great. Even more TMI. One thing that's puzzling is where someone said it was a standard bikini bottom stretched. What material would be that stretchy? Unless this is the bikini bottom worn by, say, Queen Latifah. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 19:37, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I saw something similar to that years before Borat was ever popular. Dismas |(talk) 00:52, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Fritinancy: Put on a Suit and You'll Look CuteThe worst -kini garment is surely the mankini, as made famous (ish) by the fictional Borat.Ms. Dowd Interviews the Inventor of the Telephone nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away.../put-on-a-suit-a.html--found this on google but cant enter site as on work PC and big brother forbids me to access the site but it may have the name on here if the phone call to the inventor is anything to go by??Chromagnum (talk) 14:22, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the mankini is simply a bikini bottom slung over the shoulders; this was actually part of a swimsuit style that was semi-popular for women back in the 1980s. The straps are not meant to cover the nipples, though; the breasts were covered by a second piece bandeau top and the straps went to the outside of the breasts to help squeeze them together, creating a more full look. A Google image search of sharon stone total recall shows how something similar was also done with aerobic leotard straps. Matt Deres (talk) 15:21, 10 July 2009 (UTC)