Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 November 13

= November 13 =

Create online survey
What are the best free websites that I can use to create/publish an online survey?

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.129.144.14 (talk • contribs)


 * Blogger is available free to people with registered gmail accounts. (You can make up an account solely for that purpose, you needn't use it.)  One of the gadgets you can then add is a poll, inaddition to your main text saying what the poll is about.  I would assume other blogging sites like Wordpress offer a similar function.  I have set up blogs for people using blogger, but I have never used the poll function myself.  You can ask at the computing desk if you need more help. μηδείς (talk) 01:58, 13 November 2013 (UTC)


 * You don't have to go to the trouble of setting up a blog just to make a survey. The surveys that I've been asked to fill out online are usually hosted by Survey Monkey.  There are probably other services out there though and Google should be able to find them for you.  Dismas |(talk) 02:40, 13 November 2013 (UTC)


 * And of course you can just use one of the Google Docs/Drive Form templates to make and publish a survey online. It will then collate the responses in a spreadsheet in your Drive. Nanonic (talk) 07:47, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Society and Ghosts
Before I start, I don't want this post to devolve into whether ghosts exist or not.

Anyways, I've watched lots of National Geographic's 'I Wouldn't Go In There' episodes. Basically the show's premise is that ghosts and spirits are actually the manifestations of said place's traumatic history. For example, Vietnam has hungry ghosts because there's lots of prisoners that suffered through heavy labor and lack of food during the French occupation. On the other hand, Thailand has treasure guardian ghosts since they greatly revere their royalty. A fishing village don't have these ghosts but have drowned ghosts and life raft ghosts instead due to the constant rough seas that their fisherfolk have to face.

Do we have an article that describes this viewpoint? Basically the ghosts symbolizes the dark history that haunts their society. -- Lenticel ( talk ) 03:27, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The Ghost article leads in various directions. Have you explored that? I've never experienced anything such as that, but I've known a few who have, or at least think the have. One theory is that true psychics (if any) might not actually be literally sensing spirits of the dead, but rather might be somehow sensing what went on before, in a given location, vaguely like your premise. But read the article and look into its various references and branches, and you might bump into something. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:16, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I can't find a working theory yet using that article but the Culture section have some interesting leads. It seems that abortion related ghosts manifests as disemboweled yet beautiful creatures. -- Lenticel ( talk ) 04:31, 13 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I've come across the theory that buildings hold impressions of the events that have occurred in them, and that what we are seeing (or recording if you're using a tape recorder, or sensing...) are these impressions. I haven't come across a similar theory for nations. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:00, 13 November 2013 (UTC)


 * You might look at the Collective_unconscious article. I've also heard a similar idea used to discuss national cinema: for example, referring to the various Godzilla movies as expressions of Japan's collective trauma following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  And it's common for the appearance of literary ghosts to be based on their personal history (i.e. Jacob_Marley). OldTimeNESter (talk) 13:28, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It might be that ghosts supposedly reflecting a cultural aspect are actually the cultural situation being applied to what they would "expect" a ghost to be. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:45, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That's quite interesting. Perhaps a society's collective trauma does give birth to specific types of apparitions.-- Lenticel ( talk ) 02:21, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Mermaid's Origin
Hello Im so Happy to be here, This is by far the best Information Center for any subject or catagory. Here goes, On my FB Mermaid Group Page, someone posted this Question and now im curious and would like to know Question...what is the best tail color? Do certain colors mean something? Like where they swim or the age. Hope to find out more about it. ♥--MermaidCookie (talk) 03:41, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The Mermaid article doesn't have much to say about it. The illustrations of mermaids tend to depict the tails as gray like a fish; or green like seeweed (with hair to match). Hard to tell what the "best" color would be. Given that they're fictional, you could check Google to see if there's anything about it, or you could simply make something up - maybe assign them colors by rank and specialty, as with the personnel in the original Star Trek TV series. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:04, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * If we go by Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid then it's sea green. This early color illustration tells us that. Unfortunately the text itself doesn't elaborate on the tail's color although it describes the little mermaid's skin as "clear and delicate as a rose-leaf" and eyes as "blue as the deepest sea". You can use oysters, painfully attached to the tail, to denote rank as well as described in the tale.-- Lenticel ( talk ) 04:56, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Fireboat dohicky
What is the blue thing hanging off of the fireboat in this photo: ? The picture is from Venice, if that matters. RudolfRed (talk) 04:28, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I wonder if it's a pad of some kind, for when the boat gets a little too close to the dock. I Google-Imaged [Vigili del Fuoco] which is the name of the Italian fire-fighters (literally "watchers of/for the fire") and some of them have padding but nothing like this item. This same actual boat appears in another photo in Google Images, but the blue thing is not visible. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:57, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It looks like a random piece of shaped plastic that has been attached as a fender. The string (I can't dignify it with any better term) that holds it to the boat seems to have a rather random knot at the blue end.--109.145.216.52 (talk) 20:47, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It could indeed be an ad-hoc Fender_(boating), but it doesn't seem that well suited for the task ... it almost looks like a lid to a cooler, with beverage-holding depressions, like some of these Coleman models . SemanticMantis (talk) 21:51, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I found these rectangular fenders, but they seem to lack the circular holes. It does look a bit like cool-box lid, but why you would tow one behind a fire boat is a puzzle. Alansplodge (talk) 17:09, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Unless they lost the rest of it and only had the lid. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:01, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * In Memorium; the best cool-box we ever had... gone but not forgotten ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 17:48, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Or the coolest. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:28, 16 November 2013 (UTC)