Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 October 29

= October 29 =

Mary Rice Hopkins and Puppets With A Heart
Is it possible to bring Mary Rice Hopkins and Puppets With A Heart to your network? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.140.82.162 (talk) 01:16, 29 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Do you mean is it possible to have articles on those subjects? We already have an article on Mary Rice Hopkins.  If it can be established that Puppets With a Heart is sufficiently notable in its own right, rather than just being part of Ms Hopkins' activities, then it could also have an article.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  02:50, 29 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Or did you perhaps mean to address your question to a television station? This is the reference desk for Wikipedia, the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. --ColinFine (talk) 13:04, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

What license this image should be?
I've put all the necessary information including where I found the image and who is the author?Hope you could help me about this problem, thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by NalizAS91 (talk • contribs) 03:23, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
 * It should be deleted unless you have the author's permission--unless you have something notable to say about her acute and apparently morbid lordosis. . μηδείς (talk) 07:44, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Travel from India to England in 1888
If someone were travelling by ship from India to England in 1888, how long would they expect the voyage take? If it makes any difference, assume they'd be wealthy enough to travel in reasonable comfort, probably first class. --Dweller (talk) 14:46, 29 October 2012 (UTC)


 * This site says that the P&O voyage from London to Bombay took 12½ days in the 1890s, if that's close enough. The steamers left London every Saturday for India and fortnightly for Australia and China. Fares were £55 first class to India; £35 - £37 10s for second class. - Ka renjc 20:30, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thanks. --Dweller (talk) 20:47, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Iceland - the height of the Aldeyjarfoss waterfall
Good afternoon !!!

Just a small question,

Your article on the Aldeyjarfoss waterfall : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldeyjarfoss, mentions a height of 20m, but your River Skjálfandafljót article : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skj%C3%A1lfandaflj%C3%B3t, mentions a height of 10m !!

I'm translating a document from French into English and would like to know which height is the correct one please ???

Thanks in advance for any help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.242.237.167 (talk) 16:32, 29 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, a website for white-water canoeists called Icelandic River Guides says of Aldeyjarfoss ; "A large rapid is quickly followed by a 15 metre waterfall which is not for canoeing." NB This is the UK use of the word "canoeing" which includes kayaking. Most tourist and photography websites go with 20m, but maybe they got that from Wikipedia. Over at Google Books, we have Fundamentals of Physical Geography by David John Briggs, Peter Smithson, which claims a height of 40m. There is an intriguing "snippet view" of Inner- und Nordost- Island: Erinnerungen aus meiner dritten Islandfahrt (1913) which says; "Der Aldeyjarfoss (325 m ü. M.) hat zwei vertikale Fälle, von 6 resp. 19,5 m Höhe und 58 m Fall...", although a century of erosion may have changed that figure. Alansplodge (talk) 17:14, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Well thanks very much for your help ... now I've REALLY got a choice of heights !!! I think I'll go for the 20m, as you suggested.78.242.237.167 (talk) 08:15, 30 October 2012 (UTC)karangreg

Which hotel is this?
These are pictures of a hotel I visited in Berlin, Germany, three years ago. It's located rather near the exact centre, one or two kilometres away from Berlin Hauptbahnhof at the most, and only a walking distance away from Unter den Linden. It is a rather expensive hotel, with even the cheapest rooms costing over 100 € per night. I think it's part of an international hotel chain. I of course learned the hotel name when I got there, but I have since forgotten it. And I don't have the bill from the hotel any more, since I paid it three years ago. Could anyone help me remember the name and exact location of this hotel? J I P &#124; Talk 19:55, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Not that I could even if you did, but do you have any exterior shots of the hotel? Because these rooms look like generic hotel rooms.  It looks unremarkably like half of the hotel rooms I've stayed in in my life.  People may be more able to identify the specific hotel with some exterior shots.   -- Jayron  32  20:25, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Even a shot of the city scene looking out the window might help. There's a building visible through the window, but maybe not enough for identification. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:48, 29 October 2012 (UTC)


 * The quality isn't brilliant but the flyer on the desk looks like it has the logo of Mercure Hotels on it. Does Mercure Berlin Mitte look familiar? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:36, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the logo on the door label and the menu on the bedside table looks more like an A with a bar over it. Two Berlin hotels with names beginning with 'A' sprang to mind, but it's clearly not the ultra-swanky Adlon Kempinski. It might be the Aldea Novum (which I've stayed at) - but that wasn't nearly as expensive as you're saying. Do you remember anything about the location? What was the nearest U-Bahn/S-Bahn stop? Was there an elevated rail line in the road outside? Were there any landmark churches nearby, or any waterways? AlexTiefling (talk) 22:06, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
 * That room is a dead ringer for a room pictured at the site of the Meliã Berlin. Go to http://www.meliaberlin.com/en/hotel-berlin.html and click on "Gallery" under "The Hotel" in the menu at the bottom of the page, then select the first picture. Deor (talk) 02:46, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Not only that, but the Ã logo on the aforementioned door hanger matches the Melia logo exactly. That's the one. Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 04:10, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I am now fairly sure this is the Meliã Berlin Hotel. Thanks! J I P  &#124; Talk 05:58, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Ã confirms my suspicion that Ã is found in Portuguese and some other languages including Vietnamese, but not in Spanish. The Meliã Hotel seems to have Spanish associations, but not Portuguese ones. Can someone explain this? --  Jack of Oz   [Talk]  07:32, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I was curious about this too. The actual copy of the website names the hotel "Meliá", which is different. Looking at some of the other logos of the hotel chain (particularly "Grand Meliá"), I wonder if the tilde is a product of artistic license and represents an acute accent. Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 07:45, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think Ã is ever found at the end of a word in Portuguese, is it? It's always part of a diphthong. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:42, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * This page reports their changing the "Meliá" in their logo to "Meliã", apparently for esthetic (?) reasons. The official name of the company, however, is Meliá Hotels International, so I shouldn't have reproduced the logo's tilde in my remarks above. Deor (talk) 12:22, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Which begs the question - how do we now pronounce it? I have stayed in many Sol Melia (lack of accent deliberate) hotels in the 70s, 80s and early 90s and the staff always pronounced it Sol Melia. With an accent on the final letter it should be rendered Sol Meliá, but how the flying Henry one is supposed to pronounce it with a tilde over the final a. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. Richard Avery (talk) 15:56, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it's like the metal umlaut (and the acute accent may be, too), intended not to affect the pronunciation but to impress the viewer with the hotels' coolness. Perhaps it works on someone. I wonder whom. Deor (talk) 16:54, 30 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Pretty sure you mean "raises the question". Begging the question is a logical fallacy. Just taking this opportunity to raise awareness :) SemanticMantis (talk) 18:41, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * More like invites the question. To raise a question is to ask it. —Tamfang (talk) 05:49, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Yup, my ignorance, I'd go for 'raises the question' Richard Avery (talk) 08:37, 31 October 2012 (UTC)


 * The article is from June 2011. How does that explain how I found a Meliã (not a Meliá) hotel in Berlin in July 2009, almost two years earlier? J I P  &#124; Talk 17:22, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I was wondering that myself, JIP. If you look below the text, the "current" logo of Melia Hotels and Resorts (with a tilde) is shown above the logo "before 2006" (without). So it looks as though the "Hotels and Resorts" logo was changed five years before the name change to "Hotels International", with its tilde-bearing logo. Deor (talk) 13:17, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Adam Bishop, you're probably correct about Ã never being found at the end of a word in Portuguese. But my point is that it's at least a feature of Portuguese orthography, whereas it does not occur in Spanish at all.  Or any other major European languages.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  20:20, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Does that make it a metal tilde then? -- Jayron  32  21:29, 30 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Chalcatango Mixctec, a Mixtec language, has final nasal vowels such as the word kwãã, "to buy". See A Grammar of Chalcatongo Mixtec.  Mixtec has a rather exotic phonology, which my Mixteco friends used as a secret language, telling others they were speaking "Chino".  Much of therir vocabulary sound straight out of the three stooges, with a word like his "nyuck-uck" /ɳãʔãʔ/ being perfectly acceptable to and typical of their phonology. μηδείς (talk) 20:22, 31 October 2012 (UTC)