Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 November 10

= November 10 =

Are world records kept for how much younger cosmetic science makes one look?
Currently, I hear of cosmetic science making someone look 25 years younger, but I don't hear of much beyond that. How far can cosmetic science take us, as it is in 2011? (Seems that Joan Rivers does extra well; is she the recordholder?)

Then by the time I'm 65, how far might cosmetic science advance? Even though WP might not be a crystal ball, we already have articles on future nanoscience, so an article related to the future of visually turning back the clock ought to be floating around our wiki somewhere. Thank you, --70.179.178.145 (talk) 09:36, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Interesting perspective. I work with teenagers. They use (overuse?) cosmetics to make themselves look older. HiLo48 (talk) 09:39, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * How can you have world records when it's all subjective how much younger you look? Clarityfiend (talk) 11:53, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, you "hear" of cosmetic science making someone look 25yrs younger - you hear it because it's marketing hype. Let's see some genuine independent per reviewed scientific research on this before paying heed to any claims (and no, information produced by the Pond's Institute doesn't count). And regardless, as Clarityfiend says, it's subjective; if someone has cosmetic surgery at 45, by the time they're 65 we'd have to (a) make a subjective judgement about 'how old' they actually look, (b) somehow determine how old they would have looked if not for the surgery, then (c) use these two dubious figures to work out how much younger they now look, and (d) then attribute any 'benefits' to the procedure performed, which itself would not be particularly valid. Try getting unbiased results out of that mish-mash. --jjron (talk) 13:59, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * There was a TV show, known as 10 Years Younger (US) and 10 Years Younger (UK), the premise of which was that they polled a bunch of people how "old" the contestant looked before their makeover, and then they polled a bunch more people after their makeover. That would seem to be the closest way we could get to judging this; it's still a subjective opinion, but at least its the opinion of a bunch of people... -- Jayron  32  16:27, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The most effective ways to look younger aren't rocket science at all, or even cosmetic science. Get a haircut that enhances your face shape. Get your teeth done. Perhaps a little makeup, enhancing your best features (optional). Clothes that suit you. A good night's sleep. Smile. (Note to self: must remember to get round to these things.) Itsmejudith (talk) 16:43, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Well let's face it, I'm sure someone 24 years old would appreciate looking 25 years younger... what? --TammyMoet (talk) 18:32, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * We're working on materials to do that: Metamaterial cloaking. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:05, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

land rover discovery 200 tdi fan cowling
hi just a quick one i hope. i need a new fan cowling for my land rover discovery 200tdi 2,dl diesel.:

does the fan cowl for the new 300tdi fit the older 200tdi, as all i can find is the cowling for a 300tdi? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.168.26.115 (talk) 15:46, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * There must be a landrover forum on the net somewhere that'd be more likely to provide a quick answer to this. I'm not sure that we excel on spare-part questions. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:56, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Type "landrover forum" into Google and you will find a whole page of such listings. Textorus (talk) 17:03, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Morse code translation
I have a message in morse code that I trying to decode, but it does not have clear spaces between the dots and dashes to show where new characters begin. All online translators I found though require spaces. Is there a program that can determine the text without spaces, or can someone decode for me? The text begins with ..-.-.....---...-..-..--......--..-.-.-.-..-.....-.-..-.-.-.-.--..-..-..-..-...-...-.-....--.-..-  Thanks!! Reywas92 Talk 21:47, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Please give us more information about the source of this "message." Without separation between the letters, there are countless possible decodings. Knowing the language and subject would be useful, as well as knowing if it might include numbers or symbols. Assuming it is International Morse, and that there is no punctuation, for instance the first letter could be e, i, u, or f, depending on how many dots and dashes are included. The last letter could be t, a, u, x, if there is no punctuation. The whole sequence sequence could begin ertheostiti, or it could begin lb2vuephp, or it could begin eeteteeeeettt and so on, since every dot could be an e and every dash could be a t.. If someone skilled in Morse sees a familiar letter sequence, they might be able to puzzle out a sensible reading, but such a sequence of dots and dashes might conceivable have more than one sensible decoding. In ham radio transmission, it is common to run together letters in the sending, without long pauses between letters, so that only context allows decoding into words. More than 4 dots in a row suggests "h" as part, but could also be a string of i and e, perhaps along with an h. On the other hand it could be a number such as 5 with a string of dots. Someone who loves ciphers should be able to puzzle out some words. Look for common short words such as "the," which is -....., "of", "and" "you", etc. Edison (talk) 01:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The number of possibilities is truly vast. I can count no fewer than 237 words of five letters or longer that would match some part of this sequence. For example, symbols starting at position 78 match the word "infuriate", starting at position 39, the word "crescent", and at position 6, the word "hamster". Do you have any idea what the message is supposed to say? Is it even in English? --Itinerant1 (talk) 04:56, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I got 328, but that's including capitalized words. Some of the proper names that showed up: Albert, Caesar, Deanna, Fabian, Hattie, Hittite, Kenneth, Parker, Saturn, Semite, Sparta, and Teasdale. My best attempt so far at putting it all together: "In the oil tube I get art. Fifteen tar got Edna infuriated." It's an interesting puzzle but I think more context will be needed. 67.162.90.113 (talk) 06:48, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Or it might as well be: "... in that tire tube. I'm in tent fifteen. Ten knot rain. Last leak ..." Really hard to make any sense of the message without context, possibilities are numerous. Longest word candidates ("infuriated" - 23 bits, "peckers", "crescent", "flasks" - 19 bits, "spectra" - 18 bits, "dredges", "spectre", "tickers", "arrested" "realign" - 17 bits) fail to connect with any nearby sequences in any meaningful way. Very possible that we're dealing with some kind of radio slang or there are numerals in the sequence. --Itinerant1 (talk) 10:24, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Did you use some program to find words? In the mode of the Ref Desk being instructive, it would be helpful to "teach'em to fish" rather than "handing them a fish sandwich." It is usually helpful for the questioner to tell us more about the message than "here it is," since a questioner might just put up a random sequence of dots and dashes as a lark. Edison (talk) 15:35, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I wrote a short program that took a list of English words, encoded each one into morse code, and tried to match it against various positions in the sequence. Then I took the list of hits and tried to fit the words together in Excel. Decoding letter by letter does not work because the number of possibilities explodes exponentially. I'd roughly estimate that the full sequence above can be decoded in about 1014 possible ways, with 99.99..% of possibilities complete gibberish.--Itinerant1 (talk) 22:23, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Though I could really go for a fish sandwich right about now. Just sayin'. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:52, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's a Python program (to assist a human in guessing each letter in turn, by displaying the options):

imorse = {'a': '.-', 'b': '-...', 'c': '-.-.', 'd': '-..', 'e': '.', 'f': '..-.', 'g': '--.', 'h': '....', 'i': '..', 'j': '.---', 'k': '-.-', 'l': '.-..', 'm': '--', 'n': '-.', 'o': '---', 'p': '.--.', 'q': '--.-', 'r': '.-.', 's': '...', 't': '-', 'u': '..-', 'v': '...-', 'w': '.--', 'x': '-..-','y': '-.--', 'z': '--..', '1': '.', '2': '..---', '3': '...--', '4': '....-', '5': '.....', '6': '-....', '7': '--...', '8': '---..', '9': '.', '0': '-', } source = '..-.-.....---...-..-..--......--..-.-.-.-..-.....-.-..-.-.-.-.--..-..-..-..-...-...-.-....--.-..-' output = "" while len(source): current_chars = for i in range(1, 6): if len(source) < i: 			break for c in imorse: code = imorse[c] if len(code) != i: 				continue if code == source[0:len(code)]: current_chars = current_chars + (c,) print current_chars while True: choice = raw_input("Character: ") choice = choice[0] if choice.isalnum == True: break output = output + choice source = source[len(imorse[choice]):len(source)] print output
 * Card Zero (talk) 17:05, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

It's supposed to be a quote by Lucretius, the English translation I assume, printed in code on this mural. I tried looking at parts of it again using decoders but the output was random letters so I must have been doing something wrong. You guys do seem do be very good at finding possible translations from the unspaced version though! I'll ask the librarian if he knows anything else about it and will let you know. Edison, come on! I'm not purposely giving you a lark! Thanks to the rest of you! Reywas92 Talk 19:28, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I've tried to match the sequence against the text of De rerum natura in Latin and in two English translations, but there were no obvious hits. Are you confident in your transcription? Is there more of the sequence? Is it possible that you got it backwards?
 * BTW, the ratio of dots to dashes is consistent with Morse code, but the sequence is too short to make definite conclusions about language. In my two English translations of the book, dots account for 61.6% and 62.1% of symbols. In the Latin text, the share of dots is 59.9%. In the sequence above, the share of dots is 61%.--Itinerant1 (talk) 22:11, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Here's an interactive solver that lets you choose from a list of words instead of one letter at a time. (I didn't include digits. Exercise for the reader.)

my $wordlist = '/usr/dict/words'; my $puzzle = '..-.-.....---...-..-..--......--..-.-.-.-..-.....-.-..-.-.-.-.--..-..-..-..-...-...-.-....--.-..-'; my %morse = qw/ a .- b -... c -.-. d -.. e. f ..-. g --. h .... i .. j .--- k -.- l .-.. m -- n -. o --- p .--. q --.- r .-. s ... t - u ..- v ...- w .-- x -..- y -.-- z --.. /; sub morse {  return join '', map { $morse{$_} } split //, $_[0]; } sub mindex {  my @ret=; my ($h,$n)=@_; my $next=0; my $i; while(($i=index(substr($h, $next), $n))!=-1) { push @ret, $next+$i; $next+=$i+1; }  return @ret; } my @words=; open my $words, '<', $wordlist or die "$wordlist: $!\n"; print STDERR "Reading wordlist..."; while(<$words>) { chomp; my $orig = $_; tr/A-Z/a-z/; next if /[^ -~]/; tr/a-z//cd; $_ = morse($_); for my $loc (mindex($puzzle, $_)) { push @{$words[$loc]||=[]}, [$orig,length($_)]; } } close($words); print STDERR "done\n"; my $offset = 0; my @state = ; my @prev_offsets; while(1) { print "You currently have: @state\n"; my $leftover = length($puzzle) - $offset; print "($leftover symbols remaining)\n"; my $choices = $words[$offset] || []; print " 0. \n" if @state; print " $_. $choices->[$_-1][0]\n" for 1..@$choices; print STDERR ">"; my $reply=; defined $reply or last; chomp $reply; redo if $reply !~ /^\d+$/; redo if $reply > @$choices; redo if $reply==0 && !@state; if($reply==0) { pop @state; $offset = pop @prev_offsets; next; }  my $choice = $choices->[$reply-1]; push @state, $choice->[0]; push @prev_offsets, $offset; $offset += $choice->[1]; }
 * 67.162.90.113 (talk) 00:43, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You may try to ask the owner of the Omniglot blog to post this to the blog. He does sometimes post such puzzles of difficult to read writings submitted by third parties, and people visiting the blog can sometimes help.  You will find  contact information on this page.  &#x2013; b_jonas 19:17, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

polishing glass headlights
what is the best way to remove pits and scraatches from glass headlight lenses? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.169.161.1 (talk) 21:57, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * One way is to call up your windscreen repair person and ask them to sort it out. They put some kind of resin with the same refractive index s the glass in the crack.  Canada balsam can do the job, but may not be very long lasting in that situation. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:53, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If you just want it to look good for a day (like a wedding, or if you are selling the car and a bit unethical), then some type of clear wax would do the job quickly. StuRat (talk) 18:11, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Bots
Per, 497,362,899 edits have been made to en.wikipedia as I'm writing this. Very approximately, how many of them are by bots? --Theurgist (talk) 23:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * All things considered, there are not very many bots allowed to operate on Wikipedia. You can run a sum over the List of bots by number of edits (I count approximately 55 million edits by bot).  Of course, it is almost impossible to estimate number of edits made by unregistered bots - e.g., those who do not sign in, or who operate illicitly through a human user account; and things are further complicated by tools like WP:TW and WP:AWB which blur the line between human and robot edit.  Nimur (talk) 00:20, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

What is a bot, please?~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Froggie34 (talk • contribs) 11:27, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * "Bots are automated or semi-automated tools that carry out repetitive and mundane tasks in order to maintain the 3,792,837 articles of the English Wikipedia." That is, they're programmed tools for making repetitive edits to wWikipedia. You can find out more at Bots. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 15:47, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * "Bot" is short for robot, which in this context means a program which automatically makes edits to Wikipedia without human interaction. One such bot is User:Sinebot, which was triggered by your question asking what a bot is because you did not sign your edit (you need four tildes, no just one), so Sinebot signed it for you. To date, sine bot alone has made 1.3 million edits, or about 0.26% of the total edits to Wikipedia.  Other bots do things such as analyze new edits and revert what appear to be blatant vandalism, such as page blanking (where all the text is removed from a page).  Theurgist's question is relevant because many people will assume that all of Wikipedia's half-billion edits will have been make directly by humans, and would be mislead if a large percentage of these had been made by bots.   Nimur showed that only about 11% of all edits have been made by registered bots, which is a significant number, but not an overwhelming one. Also note that the last word in Theurgist's question is a link to BOT, which could have answered your question. -- ToE 16:00, 11 November 2011 (UTC)