Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2017 February 18

= February 18 =

Intelligence and orientation in the US of A
I've been watching thump...and it begs the question whether there truly is any correspondence in IQ and political affiliation. Where do things stand between the Republican V Democrats in the faculties between the ears department.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.98.249.243 (talk) 00:06, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * IQ stands for intelligence quotient. Or in other words: the score gained from undergoing certain tests. Nothing to do with social/machiavelli abilities.--Aspro (talk) 00:47, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * One thing you can be sure of: Each side thinks it's smarter than the other side. I don't have to cite that the sky is blue. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:48, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I'll just copy my comment from the last time this came up: High IQ correlates well with self-identification as a liberal, and low-IQ with self identification as a conservative. It's not an enormous difference, with "very conservative"s averaging out at 95 IQ points, and "very liberal"s averaging out at 105 (so a difference between slightly below average and slightly above, rather than a difference between genius and brain damaged as some might suspect). This correlation is consistent in the UK as well. It's interesting to note that intelligence also correlates similarly well with degree of religiosity, so there could be a connection there. Also, now please also consider all of the problems with measuring IQ. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:03, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * If liberals are so smart, how come they keep losing elections? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:23, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * They don't. Obama won twice with wider margins, while Trump only won the electoral college, losing the popular vote by millions.  And the difference between the two we can blame our founding fathers deciding that no matter how small a state's population is, it should still get 3 electoral votes, giving rural states disproportionate power in presidential elections.  If you want to go back further, the younger Bush also won by narrow margins, while Clinton won by wider margins.  See US presidential elections.  StuRat (talk) 05:03, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * They do. From state government to Congress, liberals have consistently been losing since 2008. See Democratic losses since 2008--William Thweatt TalkContribs 05:20, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * That's a rather short-term argument. Political trends tend to last for a decade or two in the US.  That doesn't mean the wind will never change direction again. StuRat (talk) 16:58, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * If Albert Einstein was so smart, why was he not a famous athlete? Why is reality TV popular? Intelligence is often not the deciding factor in winning things. 91.155.195.247 (talk) 16:10, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Intelligence is overrated. Persistence often whips intelligence. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * One thing that may contribute to this perception is how conservatives often ignore science, facts, etc., such as believing the easily disproven lies Trump and team send out daily. This looks like a lack of intelligence to liberals, but it's more of a "willful ignorance" than a genuine lack of intelligence. StuRat (talk) 05:06, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * on your claim that Trump and team send out "easily disproven lies" daily! 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 10:10, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Have there been any days when Trump and team didn't say anything? If so, that would technically "disprove" StuRat's comment. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Trump keep his mouth shut for an entire day ? Are sutures allowed ? :-) StuRat (talk) 23:40, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I suspect it's more accidental. There are other notable correlations to be found in this sphere, such as a decreased interest in educational attainment among evangelical Christians (possibly because Universities are bastions of liberal heresy), and uneducated whites tending to work in industries harmed by more often by the democratic party than the republican (or at least, that's the perception). I find the argument, "Republicans court voting blocks that happen to correlate (very slightly) with lower IQ", is much more compelling than, "Republicans are stupid and everyone who votes for them is stupid." Someguy1221 (talk) 05:13, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Here are 80 lies, spread over Trump's first 28 days.  That's an average of one every 8 hours 24 minutes. 5.150.92.20 (talk) 13:42, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Does that average take sleep time into account? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:22, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm sure he's working on a way to tweet his dreams out, too. Maybe a voice recognition system that activates whenever he talks in his sleep ? StuRat (talk) 03:56, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * This from a source which claims the election polls were accurate when in fact they were almost all off by 5 points or more! Before accusing our President of even misspeaking, let alone lying on purpose, they should look themselves in the mirror! 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 04:12, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * It's possible that the polls were accurate, at the time, or that people lied about who they intended to vote for. And you can fact check what Trump says yourself.  For his claim that he won the most electoral votes since Reagan, just look at United_States_presidential_election.  Of course, lying politicians are hardly new, but what is new is Trump's blatant and transparent lies.  Most politicians only tell lies that are believable. StuRat (talk) 04:32, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * No, it's NOT possible they were accurate at the time -- I was talking about the poll results on Election Day! As for Trump's statements, of the ones listed in that "80 lies" source, many were actually TRUE, and of the ones that were false, most were semantic errors (i.e. misspeaking), as opposed to deliberately lying! 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 06:34, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * In that list of 80, it's claimed that Trump refused to take 1,250 "refugees" held by Australia, with Trump calling them illegal immigrants. In fact, Trump was correct; they are refugees who travelled into Australian waters by boat, thereby entering Australian territory illegally. Scroll down to "What you need to know about the refugee deal" here. Travelling into Australian waters changes their status to illegal immigrant. Continue reading down, where it is stated that Australia refuses to take asylum seekers who arrive by boat. Akld guy (talk) 12:00, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * See Refugee. Australia signed both the 1951 Refugee Convention that defines a refugee as "A person who...is outside the country of his nationality..." and 1967 Protocol that removed temporal and geographic restrictions. Wikipedia has an article Asylum in Australia that describes that country's peculiar "punitive approach" (quoting UN OHCHR Special Rapporteur François Crépeau) towards migrants who arrive by boat. Blooteuth (talk) 17:26, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * It's possible to be a refugee who becomes an illegal immigrant by entering territorial waters illegally. Trump was correct. Akld guy (talk) 03:09, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * "Semantic errors" can be deliberate deception. For example, saying that 80% of the district court's cases are overturned by the Supreme Court (when it's actually only about 1%, when one includes the vast majority never challenged in the Supreme Court) is designed to make it look like the district court is totally incompetent, which is not borne out by the true 1% figure. StuRat (talk) 16:53, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Winston Churchill.
 * In general, political lies are so commonly told by such a broad ideological cross-section, they can't be used as evidence of intelligence, character, or lack thereof. There have been exceptions, although it's said that Governor Earl Kemp Long of Louisiana was involuntarily committed to an inpatient psychiatric hospital for telling the truth at the wrong times (as when he publicly alluded to some of his political opponents having engaged in miscegenation).
 * If one considers inaccurate statements made by the current President of the United States to be evidence of a cognitive deficit, the door swings open for his predecessors to be so considered. Barack Obama made so many false statements that the Pulitzer Prize-winning Web site Politifact.com has four pages of them. Bill Clinton was disbarred and found guilty in Federal court for perjury, which is the act of lying under oath - a serious offense Clinton just missed being declared a felon for having committed. Never mind all the times that other Presidents of both parties lied.
 * So, it goes back to "can you prove he lied - as opposed to honestly being mistaken in his facts, or inexact in his language?" Many of the same people who call Trump stupid or insane for the false statements he may have made were passionate in insisting that the several lies Bill Clinton told under oath when sued by Paula Jones, and with connection to his extramarital liaisons with Monica Lewinsky were excusable and even testimony of his good character ("he lied to protect a woman's reputation" being a common refrain at the time).
 * If Trump supporters are intellectual lightweights, what's that make the people who ardently support Barack Obama for his even more egregious immigration policies (which literally ignored the express will of the American people through their elected representatives in Congress who declined to change Federal immigration law in the way Obama demanded)?
 * Most of those false statements Obama made shown in the Politifact Web site were made in the same amount of time (during his 2008 Presidential campaign) that the "80 lies Trump told" were made. What's that make the people who swallowed Obama's statements uncritically?  It certainly doesn't speak better of their political judgment than ignoring Trump's tweets does for his supporters.
 * It all comes down, in the long run, to the issue of intellectual differences along partisan political axes being one more mud-slinging contest.loupgarous (talk) 15:56, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * It's not just that Trump lies, but rather the volume of lies and how absurdly easy the lies are to disprove. For example, the claim that 5 million fraudulent votes were cast for Hillary, and not one for him, or the claim that his electoral college victory was the largest since Reagan.  This brings up the Q as to why he would lie so poorly.  Does he really believe these things ?  That would make him delusional. StuRat (talk) 16:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Stu, the Politifact Web site shows Barack Obama made four pages of false statements, mostly during his 2008 campaign. The fact that Obama's lies are craftier doesn't make them less false.  Nor does it make Barack Obama less delusional - if that can even be said of Donald Trump. Not once has Barack Obama retracted a lie he told on the campaign trail.   He "regretted" having made slanderous statements about voters who opposed him (the "clinging to their faith and their guns" remark) because it was costing him politically, but did not retract the statement. That's more probative of Barack Obama's worldview being informed by falsehoods, because Trump will admit when he's been caught saying what is not true.  Barack Obama doesn't ever seem to have done so publicly.
 * In fact, Trump's falsehoods being more palpable, while not a good thing, is less disconcerting than that Barack Obama was able to win such broad-based support for policies based on a skein of falsehoods.
 * The fact that the press is actually paying attention to when a President lies, after eight years when they mostly were his unpaid public relations firm, is heartening. We were closer to an elected autocracy under Barack Obama - with the enthusiastic permission of most of the people - than we're ever likely to get under Donald Trump, because people are paying attention to what he says and does - for once.  loupgarous (talk) 16:39, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Obama was in office for 8 years, with two election campaigns. The Donald has been in office for just about a month. He already has 7 pages of "false" statements, plus an extra 4 pages ruled "pants on fire" (Obama's fiery pants fit on a single page). 75% of Obama's statements are ruled "Half true" or better, while over two thirds of Trump's statements are "mostly false" or worse. Sure, politicians often have a flexible approach to inconvenient facts. But Trump trumps them all. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:07, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Again, it's the motivation for the lies that is the concern, along with the volume. It's simple to understand a politician lying if they think they can get away with it.  But Trump's lies are more difficult to explain, precisely because any intelligent, competent person would know he wouldn't get away with such lies.  So why would one tell lies, knowing they will get caught ?  If you are late for work, do you fib and tell the boss there was an accident ?  Or do you tell the boss you were transported to another galaxy and just got back ?  In the later case, your mental state is in question, but not in the former case. StuRat (talk)


 * Motivation for both the politician and the press is out of whack. Trump (and his crew) are telling silly lies that are easy to debunk. The press is trying very hard to turn absolutely every word Trump says into a lie. Example: Trump said that antisemitism is bad and needs to stop. The press struggled greatly to figure out how to turn that into a lie, finally agreeing that since he didn't say it was bad a year ago, he must have been thinking it was good a year ago and, therefore, at that time he was implying a lie by omission. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 13:27, 22 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Trump was extremely rude (big surprise) to the conservative Jewish reporter who said he wasn't accusing Trump of antisemitism but wanted to know what Trump would do to halt it's rise in the US: . StuRat (talk) 17:48, 22 February 2017 (UTC)


 * In the past year, the art of taking two unrelated events and tying them together to make a false narrative was argued to be the basis for "fake news" and accused as the reason for Hillary Clinton's problems. Using the same strategy with Trump is, in my opinion, no different. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 15:49, 23 February 2017 (UTC)


 * To look at just one case of "willful ignorance", Trump promised coal miners that all those mines would reopen and they'd all get their jobs back. Any realistic assessment would say that this won't happen, because to return to the high point of coal mining, we would need to return to heating out homes with coal (mine still has a coal chute, but I won't be converting back any time soon), need to build new power plants to generate electricity from coal, and return to cities with smog and acid rain-affected dead lakes.  We would also need to prohibit the robotics which would be used to replace workers when the mines are reopened, and ban competing technologies to produce fossil fuels, like fracking and imported Canadian tar sands oil.  So, the truth would be to tell ex-coal miners they need to accept low-paying jobs and work more hours, although at least they won't have to fear cave-ins and black lung disease.  But, if you are an ex-coal miner, you can't be blamed for believing any lie that promises to return to the "good old days".  StuRat (talk) 22:54, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Hamedan Airport
In what year did the Hamedan International Airport in Iran begin operating? -- M2545 (talk) 16:35, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
 * If you search Google Books for the phrase: "Sanandaj Airport was opened earlier this year as were those at Kermanshah and Hamadan", then you will see that Iran Tribune published this fact in the year 1971. So, it's somewhat safe to conclude that the civilian airport was opened in 1971.  It would probably be helpful if the Wikipedia articles about Hamedan International Airport and Hamadan Airbase make the distinction that the latter is a military facility, located about 45 km north-northeast from the civilian airport. I hope this was helpful information to you. Cyberflag1 (talk) 16:36, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Heating
What is best for heating a small room; an oil filled radiator or a convention heater? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.201.241.54 (talk) 19:29, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Define "best". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:56, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Guess convection heater is meant. Note we have articles on convection heater and oil heater.


 * Much would depend on your local circumstances. Is a natural gas line available? Or a propane/butane tank? An existing central heating system perhaps? Or should it be electric and, if so, is there enough power available (fuse rating etc.)?


 * Also posibilities and energy prices vary highly around the world. Perhaps you'd be better off with an advice from a local expert. Jahoe (talk) 21:22, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I thought that the OP was asking about two types of electrical heater. If so, then convector heaters tend to use more electricity and provide more heat, but they heat the air to a higher initial temperature.  Oil-filled heaters tend to be slightly lower power (for the same size) and heat the room by radiation as much as convection.  Some people find them more comfortable if you are sitting nearby because the heat is more gentle at a lower initial temperature.  A convector heater circulates the warm air round the room more efficiently.    D b f i r s   21:54, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I love my oil-filled radiator. It's virtually silent (I just hear a click when it turns on and of), doesn't stink (got to love the smell of a hair stuck on the element of a forced air electrical resistance heater), and if I keep it on low, it can't burn me or start a fire, should something flammable land on it.  There are some slight disadvantages, though, such as it being slow to heat the room, and heating the ceiling, and hence the room above (might be an advantage, if you need to heat that room, too). StuRat (talk) 23:38, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * This site suggests that if you are "heating a whole room for a few hours or more", a convector heater is best. [] In my experience there is very little difference between the two but in general, the convector heater will heat the room quicker although not as fast as a fan heater.--Ykraps (talk) 11:47, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Youngest age for an erection?
What's the youngest age that it's physically possible to have an erection? Can babies even do it. What about with medically induced stimulation even? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.52.2.107 (talk) 23:17, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
 * In the womb, even. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106; &#x1D110;&#x1d107; 23:41, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Not sure if it's a good idea to discuss that here. Jahoe (talk) 23:46, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
 * No discussions necessary. Just search "fetal penile erection" for ample references. -- ToE 00:29, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * We happen to have an article on erections that contains the answer to your question (article contains nude images). Before posting a question to the Reference Desk, please try looking at articles to see if they answer your question. --47.138.163.230 (talk) 00:45, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Are you talking about Californians, or just in general? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:15, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Does it matter where someone is from? Why do you specify Californians? 86.28.195.109 (talk) 20:08, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * As opposed to Brits, for example. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:28, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Are you just trolling now or something? What does nationality have to do with the physiology of erections? --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106; &#x1D110;&#x1d107; 00:06, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Nah, Bugs specified Californians because he geolocated the OP and thought it would be smart to show the OP that he knew where he was from. He does that on a regular (but not frequent) basis. Richard Avery (talk) 07:43, 20 February 2017 (UTC)