Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 March 30

= March 30 =

Skyler rose
what is a skyler rose? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.82.122.63 (talk) 01:05, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Where did you see a reference to it? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:23, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Skyler Rose is the name of a Canadian woman wrestler. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 01:56, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Skyler is a name and the only meaning of "Skyler rose" appears to be people. There are images of the wrestler at commons:Category:Skyler Rose. Skyler Rose Samuels is an unrelated actress. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:00, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Skyler Rose is people! It's people! μηδείς (talk) 16:10, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Cell phone rings in TV ads ?
I hear many common ringtones, at low volume, playing during US TV ads, where there is no phone shown in the ad. Are they using those to get our attention ? Can anyone verify this ? StuRat (talk) 01:54, 30 March 2014 (UTC)


 * You might find this illuminating. I Hear Ringing and There's No One There. I Wonder Why. My simple cure is to fill the TV's speaker cone up with quick setting concrete. --Aspro (talk) 18:01, 30 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Have you had your ears checked for tinnitus, Stu? --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:30, 30 March 2014 (UTC)


 * If you hear a bunch of low beeps that sound like someone is dialing a phone number, those are there to communicate information to the station's broadcast technology to make the commercial or something else run. You as an end user shouldn't normally hear that, though. - Purplewowies (talk) 20:37, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

No, this isn't tinnitus, communication beeps, or phantom rings, but specific ringtones (not my own phone's) playing in the background of certain TV ads, when there's no phone in the ad. I suppose it could be accidental, that someone's phone rang when filming the commercial, but I tend to think it's there intentionally to grab our attention. StuRat (talk) 21:06, 30 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Can you find an example on youtube? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:33, 30 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Hmm. Many/most of our ads here are either modelled on US ads or actual US ads (I don't understand why they think we Aussies would particularly respond/relate to uber-American voices advertising Maybelline or whatever, but that's a query for another day), but I've never noticed the phenomenon you describe.  That may be because of the tinnitus that has been my loyal and constant friend since August 4, 1989, and often compromises (or completely annihilates) my hearing of low volume background sounds.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:03, 30 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't actively watch TV, but my partner's TV runs down the hallway most of the time, and I occasionally spend time in the TV room to be sociable. This is in the United States, and I have never noticed the ringtones that StuRat mentions. It would be interesting to hear an example on YouTube. As a reluctant denizen of corporate America for employment, I don't imagine that ad agencies or their clients think American accents are especially alluring to Australians, but I imagine they have calculated that the marginal increase in sales from hiring Australian actors to do ads specific to the relatively small Australian market would not cover the production costs. Marco polo (talk) 00:38, 31 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that makes sense. Except for the ads made in Australia for Australian eyes and ears, that prominently feature people with strong American, British or New Zealand accents. It's happening quite a lot now.  It may just be an artefact of multiculturalism and mass immigration, but I still don't really get why they'd choose an atypical Australian voice to flog Australian goods to Australian consumers, rather than a typical Australian voice.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:21, 31 March 2014 (UTC)


 * So these commercials are not set in places like customer service call centers where the ringtone would be considered background noise by the foley artists? Dismas |(talk) 05:29, 1 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Has no one else considered the possibility that StuRat's partner/flatmate/friend/child/parent/whoever regularly receives calls during ad breaks because, well they are ad breaks and StuRat is too fancinated by the ads to notice? As to why StuRat doesn't hear talking when the person takes the call, well I guess either StuRat is attuned to mobile phoe ring tones that they notice this distraction but not the talking or maybe the person thinks StuRat doesn't notice but they will the talking so takes the call elsewhere to avoid distracting StuRat. Nil Einne (talk) 12:42, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

One ad has a lawyer sitting at his desk talking about his law firm, and the ring tone is in the background. Since it's in the same ad at the same place each time, it can't be coming from anything besides the ad. StuRat (talk) 17:00, 1 April 2014 (UTC)


 * What is the ad for? Maybe we can find it on YouTube?  Dismas |(talk) 20:33, 1 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Aspro's very first comment directly and rather thoroughly addresses the problem, if you read the linked article. 86.146.28.229 (talk) 05:37, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you 86.146.28.229. I was wondering when anybody would wade through the whole article.--Aspro (talk) 19:49, 3 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, thanks. I thought that article was just about phantom rings, but I see they go beyond that at the end.  And the ad was for 1-800-LAWYERS, with the ringtone embedded in the background music track, so it makes sense to make the listeners think of their phone as they try to get you to call them. StuRat (talk) 03:57, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Note that the article actually questions how often these sounds are even intended to be ring tones. One person quoted suggests they may be at least partially intended to be intepreted as ring tones but two others suggest they may not be so, with one suggesting they are simply intending to draw attention (and it's later suggested in the article that people generally respond to these sounds hence why they are used for ring tones). The other simply suggests the "modern, atonal sounds" are" "cutting edge".
 * Also all seem to agree that these sounds aren't generally really ring tones per se (as you have implied) but simply sounds which some people intepret as such. In fact, one person even suggests they have sometimes remove stuff which they feel may be heard as ring tones if they feel it's unwanted (although I'm not sure if they have much involved in advertising).
 * I'm sure any decent audio engineer working on anything where it comes up must have many real ring tones which they can and do insert when it's needed but while I can't speak for the particular ad you're referring to, it sounds like these aren't actually used as much as you seemed to imply at the beginning (in fact the two people I referring two at the beginning haven't even been asked to insert them it seems).
 * Nil Einne (talk) 13:00, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * BTW, I can't find the ad you refer to. The only ads I can find for 1-800-LAWYERS online don't have any ring tones or for that matter, background music. All they have is the sound of someone dialing the number at the end [//www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPtYtG42LCo]. They've evidentally been doing this for 10 years [//www.youtube.com/watch?v=77MiWit1lO0] at least (nearly 30 as it turns out), although as per the first ad have moved to an iPhone.
 * From seeing these ads, and for that matter the name, I wouldn't be surprised if the ad you refer to does have real ring tones. And this may be the source of confusion. I think most people here were primarily thinking of the sort of high end ads on prime time TV on major channels and it sounds like that's what the NYTimes article was mostly referring to.
 * If you're primarily thinking of ads like those from 1-800-LAWYERS, I'm guessing that these are generally low budget affairs on at late night or on minor channels (or worse, both!), I would guess these have use cheaper effects (so would often use real ring tones rather than stuff which some people may intepret as such) and are less sophisticated and more directly manipulative. So these ads may often have real ring tones as you suggested unlike the the more expensive prime time ads which may have sounds which may or may not have been intended to be intepreted as ring tones.
 * Nil Einne (talk) 13:16, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * (You indented to show you are replying to yourself ?) I took that "we don't put ring tones in but if others interpret those sounds as ring tones that's not our fault" to just be them covering their butts from subliminal advertising accusations. StuRat (talk) 13:34, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Decline of mutual funds in the last 15 years?
I remember back in the late 90s, I constantly heard about mutual funds. Now I can't remember the last time I've seen them mentioned in media. Is it because there has been a major shift in receptiveness towards this product or something else going on? Perhaps, the late 90s was the high point of mass participation in investing in stocks; something that definitely is no longer the case, so that has reduced popular interest/buzz a lot. Gullabile (talk) 18:54, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I haven't noticed any lack of news. "global mutual fund assets to have hit an all-time high in 2013". And for the U.S.: "Ownership of mutual funds by U.S. households grew significantly in the 1980s and 1990s and has remained steady over the past decade. On average, the household ownership rate of mutual funds has been 45 percent since 2000. In 2012, 44 percent of all U.S. households owned mutual funds." 75.41.109.190 (talk) 19:29, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Most money invested in widely popular 401(k) plans sits in mutual funds. —Nelson Ricardo (talk) 01:57, 31 March 2014 (UTC)


 * It's possibly due to the rise of low-fee index funds that invest along a specific criteria but charge much lower fees and don't pretend to know the market much better than the fund's principle target. Shadowjams (talk) 05:07, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Water channel, Wilmette, IL
What is the channel that ends at approximately 42.07611°N, -87.68444°W? Using a USGS topo map from mapper.acme.com, I've gone through several miles of it, but all I can find are "North Branch" and "North Branch Canal", and those are way south, near downtown Chicago, and I suspect that it's only the name for the section south of the confluence at 41.97361°N, -87.70444°W. It looks like part of the Chicago River, but since it flows into Lake Michigan north of the city and flows into the river west of downtown, I suspect some sort of canal, not a natural river. The North Branch Canal article isn't right; that's a no-longer-extant canal in Pennsylvania. Nyttend (talk) 20:25, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * North Shore Channel which normally doesn't flow except during floods. Chicago's rivers are basically flat and can go multiple ways. 75.41.109.190 (talk) 22:59, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Greatest grandparent?
In theory, if someone lives to be 105 (rare, but certainly not unheard of, even pre-20th century), and the average age to have a first child is around 15 (not true in the modern western world, but perhaps historically), they could be a great-great-great-great-great grandparent at death. Are there any reliable records (so no 800-year-old Biblical patriarchs) of so many generations between living relatives? In other words, what is the "greatest" grandparent on record? Smurrayinchester 20:47, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Guinness World Records says seven generations. 88.112.50.121 (talk) 21:14, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * FYI, the biblical account says that the antediluvian patriarchs typically were hundreds of years old when fathering children, so the subject of the Guinness account easily beats them as well. Nyttend (talk)

Derailment at Hitchin in 1891, and a ghost
In 1894 a letter was sent to the Hertfordshire Express claiming to be from a GNR engine driver who had stopped an express train in 1891 because he'd seen a ghost, thus narrowly avoiding collision with some derailed trucks at Hitchin. I read about this in a book of ghost stories, but Google found the letter reproduced here:.

Obviously it's not possible to substantiate whether the driver really believed he saw a ghost. But is it possible that some kind of record will have survived of whether there was a truck derailment on the ECML at Hitchin on some evening in 1891, and whether the express was stopped to avoid it? Marnanel (talk) 22:29, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * This sounds like a very familiar question. If it was actually answered here before, searching the archives might find it. μηδείς (talk) 00:08, 31 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The Railways Archive web site knows about 9 accidents at Hitchin, but they were in 1859 (two), 1862, 1866, 1904, 1930, 1939, 1958, and 1974. They don't have details for 1862 and one of the 1859 accidents, but the other seven were all (non-fatal) collisions, not simple derailments.  However, even if a simple derailment that did not injure anyone was the subject of an official report, it's possible that it hasn't come to the web site's attention. --50.100.193.30 (talk) 08:09, 31 March 2014 (UTC)