Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2009 March 3

= March 3 =

how do you spell
how do you spell funsway, phunswey etc.? and what is the meaning? thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.88.122.142 (talk)13:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Are you thinking of feng shui? -- LarryMac  | Talk  13:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * yes thank you so much I couldnt think of that to save. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.88.122.142 (talk)

Nasty gas or something on the underground
Sudden, unexplained onset of a symptom is something that you should talk about with your physician, rather than with some random strangers on the internet. I'm afraid that Wikipedia cannot offer you more specific guidance than that. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:52, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The discussion of this deletion is at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk. DuncanHill (talk) 15:12, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * One possibility would be PM (particle matter). Assuming that you still live in Vienna, this site  lists the measurements of PM10 at various locations.  Compared to other emissions / pollutants (CO2, SO2, NO2 and Ozone) they seem a bit poor, but there are no separate measurements for PM2.5.  The article on particulates has some data on the health effects.  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 15:00, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking for a memoir by an ex-nun
This was written by a English woman who entered a convent on the eve of WWI and came out during WWII. Much of the memoir describes the spiritual and practical lives of nuns, and the other part follows her Rip van Winkle-like awakening to the modern world. All I can remember about her personally is that she had been educated with women of upper middle class (at least), and that she was related (as a niece?) to a British prime minister, though I'm not sure when he was an active politician. It was a fascinating read. Any ideas? BrainyBabe (talk) 18:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I Leap Over The Wall: A Return to the World after twenty-eight Years in a Convent by Monica Baldwin, a niece of Stanley Baldwin. L ANTZY T ALK 18:59, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Magic! (Az da kidz seh.) How did you find it so quickly? BrainyBabe (talk) 19:05, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I typed "nun memoir prime minister" into Google. L ANTZY T ALK 20:21, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Hits self on forehead. (Except I did try something similar.) BrainyBabe (talk) 20:51, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Non-fiction by children
Are there any competitions for non-fiction works by children (up to 16-year-old or similar) that are free to enter and apply to the UK? There seem to be plenty of creative writing/poetry competitions, but I can't find any cover this area (I've tried searching a bit). Thanks.
 * The Guardian has the Katine Journalism Competition, open to UK children aged five to ten. L ANTZY T ALK 02:50, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The Literacy Trust has a long list, and while many are for creative writing, not all are.. The Royal Mail's young letter writer of the year competitions are quite famous.  There are a lot of journalism and criticism prizes if you try Googling, though many of them have fairly short periods for entry, so you'll have to keep a look-out.  In the past there's been things like Sky young journalist award, Guardian young critic, young film critic of the year, Bayer/Daily Telegraph science writer award.  There are also many regional awards e.g. the Neil Gunn award in Scotland.  --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 11:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Public disasters in eerily convenient or appropriate places
US Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson River "roughly abeam 50th Street (near the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum)". The 7 July 2005 London bombings included a bus explosion. "The detonation took place close to the British Medical Association building on Upper Woburn Place, and a number of doctors in or near the building were able to provide immediate emergency medical assistance." Coincidence or what? Enquiring minds want to know. And some more examples would be fascinating, of sudden unexpected events happening in just the right place to deal with them or commemorate them. BrainyBabe (talk) 21:07, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, coincidence. Think of how many disasters happen - that two happened somewhere convenient (and not even convenient in the same way) is hardly statistically significant. There are doctors all over the place, it's really not unlikely for a disaster to happen without running distance of a hospital or doctors surgery. --Tango (talk) 21:34, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Well and think about it this way. The Hudson River happens to be right next to a main runway from the airport. (Many rivers, are in fact, used as major airplane approaches and things like that for urban areas because you don't have to worry about buildings, as much noise, etc.) And the London bombings—do you really think the terrorists were hoping that they'd set it off next to a bunch of doctors? Is that how terrorists really think? It seems unlikely. And given the density of a city like London, you're going to be near a lot of things no matter where something happens. Neither of those two examples raise any of my eyebrows. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:09, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * If Flight 1549 ditched a little further south, it would have been eerily close to the Empire State Building, which a plane crashed into in 1945. A little further, and it would've been eerily close to Ground Zero. Another mile, and it would've been eerily close to the Newark Airport. You can't throw a rock in a city without hitting a doctor or a cultural site. Ironically, if you hit a cultural site, the doctor can't fix it, but if you hit the doctor, you'd have to find a doctor. Coincidence? --Fullobeans (talk) 23:55, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes - exactly. You could pick absolutely any point in or around the city and have found a hospital conveniently right nearby - or an airline office - or the offices of the company running the tourist boats that rescued the people, or the home of one of the crew or...something.  There are just too many things that you would have found coincidental had it not been this thing.  And...if you could find a place where there was absolutely NOTHING of relevance nearby - then that particular event would simply be conveniently absent from your list of coincidental things.  A better way to evaluate your claim would be to do so in advance.  Let's say that an airplane crashing within a mile of an aerospace museum is your criterion for 'coincidence'.  Now look back through all of the plane crashes of the past decade and see how many of them crashed within a mile of an aerospace museum.  When you have your answer, look at the number of aerospace museums per square mile of the earth's surface within (say) 100 miles of an airport...and see if that number is disproportionately high.   If so - then you have proved something important...if not...not.  I'm pretty sure the answer is 'not'. SteveBaker (talk) 00:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * There was a helicopter crash at a Michigan hospital last year, although since it caused closure of part of the hospital, that's not very convenient. The National Transportation Safety Board is located in Washington, DC., less than a mile from the site of the 1982 Air Florida Flight 90 crash, though I don't know if the NTSB was there at that time.  I'm sure there was some fairly recent major disaster or terrorist attack that happened to occur near a conference of emergency medicine or similar, and the people there were able to help, but I can't remember the details.  --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 11:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * According to the causes section at Aviation accidents and incidents "...80 percent of all aviation accidents occur shortly before, after, or during takeoff or landing..." That would mean that although some airports are going to be a fair distance from the city they serve, most will be within convenient distance from a hospital. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 12:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)