Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2010 January 19

I was unsure if this belonged in Science, Entertainment, or Computing, so here it goes...

On my car's stereo, the song title and artist will scroll across the display on some stations. And sometimes the name of the radio show will scroll across but not the songs that the show is playing. Then there's one station where none of this happens. First, what's the name for this technology and do we have an article? Also, where does the song title and artist come from? Does the DJ put it into a computer and then it's broadcast with the song? Or is it embedded in the song somehow? Do the stations that use this technology have all their music as MP3s or some such file? And does the other station that doesn't have song titles scrolling therefore do all their DJ'ing with CDs? Dismas|^(talk) 02:47, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

PS This is all terrestrial radio. I don't have satellite radio or anything special like that. Dismas|^(talk) 02:48, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's called Radio Data System (or RDS). The article explains how it works. DuncanHill (talk) 02:53, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! That answers some of my questions. Dismas|^(talk) 09:43, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What are the suitable colour combinations of ties vis-a-vis colour of the shirt and trousers , to be worn on both on formal and informal ocassions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.177.97 (talk) 05:56, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(UK) It depends on the occasion. If you are invited to a "black tie" dinner, you will be required to wear a white shirt, plain tie (preferably black and bow ties are more formal), and black, dark grey or striped trousers. Generally, black trousers/white shirt is more formal than any other combination. Also for more formal occasions, keep the ties plain and dark. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:43, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Errm - "black tie" implies a whole semi-formal dress code, including bow tie, dress shirt and dinner jacket/tuxedo for gentlemen. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:22, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes but OP didn't ask about the DJ bit! --TammyMoet (talk) 11:55, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

...and a black tie, or at least one with sober patterns and colours, is often considered appropriate at a funeral. Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:33, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See Color wheel and the various 'rules' that are applied. Opposite colours on the colour-wheel are considered attractive, as are colours very close to it on the colour wheel. It's really no different for ties/shirts than any other item of clothing. Trousers-wise the main 'rule' (if such a thing exists) is that black trousers should be worn with a black belt and black shoes, whereas blue-trousers should be worn with brown/tan shoes and belt. Colours that match nicely in ties/shirt combos...light shirt with dark-tie (both same 'colour' just different shades)...white shirt with a hint of colour (say in a cheque/stripes) - match the tie with the stripe/cheque colour. Best bet - look in shirt-shops for the 'combos' they sell and try to use those as a basis of colour-matching (they're usually reasonable matches). 09:41, 19 January 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.221.133.226 (talk)

". . . blue-trousers should be worn with brown/tan shoes and belt"? Not in my neck of Blighty's woods, where for the last forty years I and most others have more often combined black belt and shoes with blue trousers; light blue shirts with brown trousers, however, are quite usual. I wouldn't dissent from TammyMoet's and 194's tie suggestions, but really, such sartorial questions must depend on local customs that probably differ widely worldwide - rather than canvass from possibly divergent cultures to one's own, it would be better to visit a local business district and spend an hour observing what the better-turned-out individuals there favour, both in terms of colour and width. Remember, however, that tie choice is one of the few areas where, except in the most formal situations, males are permitted a considerable degree of individual expression. All that said, the advice of any slightly sartorially conservative female friend is likely to be more reliable than that of most men, including myself! 87.81.230.195 (talk) 10:31, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, brown shoes with a blue suit is a major fashion faux pas. I understand that is because long in the past black dye was more expensive, so to wear brown (except for camouflage when out in the country) signified that you were poor. The shirt should be a pale shade, the tie should be a darker shade. Usually the tie has a pattern (definately not any picture or lettering!) and the shirt can be a paler or pastel version of one of the colours in the pattern. I would avoid a striped shirt until you have more experience - just choose a shirt in a pale pastel shade without any pattern of any kind. Its a sign of the times that people dont have years of experience of wearing shirt and ties already and don't have to ask. 78.146.100.48 (talk) 12:35, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd question some evidence for the 'fashion faux pas' 78.146 - a quick google search for 'brown shoes with black trousers' suggests that black-trousers should not been worn with brown shoes (generally). Certainly from a colour-perspective that makes perfect sense to me - black and brown are quite difficult to match and you don't see a huge amount of it done ;within' clothes themselves. Sample link: http://uk.askmen.com/fashion/fashiontip/38_fashion_advice.html 194.221.133.226 (talk) 13:35, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do not wear brown shoes with black trousers or suits either. Only wear them with fawn or beige trousers. I'm puzzled how you hallucinated that I suggested that bad-taste fashion combination. Somewhat offended too. 78.151.106.238 (talk) 20:03, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to second Gandalf in saying "Don't wear a plain black tie to a black tie dinner". Black tie is a distinct combination requiring a bow tie and dinner suit.

One rule for playing it safe is not to match a patterned shirt with a patterned tie. One or the other should be plain. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 13:21, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The OP says "to be worn on both on formal and informal ocassions", implying the same outfits are going to be worn on both informal and formal occasions. That begs the question of what the definition of "formal" is. In general, a simple rule would be to get a cream shirt and wear it with a tie that is a similar (but not identical) colour to the trousers. Although with black trousers I would go for a tie with a colourful pattern. 78.151.106.238 (talk) 20:11, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Never wear brown to town" Alansplodge (talk) 17:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've been searching for semi-rimless glasses with the rim on the bottom, but there is literally an ocean out there of glasses with the rim on the top that keeps on clogging up my searches. Anybody care to help me find a pair of these bad boys? Thanks!

173.14.1.190 (talk) 07:53, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps your optician can help you -- check out an actual live proprietor in an actual live store. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 13:04, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The OP may need the image for other purposes. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 14:09, 19 January 2010 (UTC) Martin.[reply]

The OP never said that he needed an image. The way I read it, he needs the actual physical frames. Dismas|^(talk) 14:28, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I thought the OP *might* be an artist looking for a reference image. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 16:35, 19 January 2010 (UTC) Martin.[reply]

Some here: [1] ("Spodden"). Alarmingly cheap, too. Maybe I should buy my glasses online, seems the ones from the actual live shop cost an actual live 100% more. ...wait, clicking on "order now" took me to a different site which doesn't stock those. Maybe the whole thing is bogus. 81.131.52.120 (talk) 14:11, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Howdy folks, OP here. Yes, I'm actually looking for a physical pair of glasses. Pref. male or intersex. I didn't think they'd be this hard to come by really. 173.14.1.190 (talk) 20:30, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I've ever seen ones like you describe. I just paged through my favorite online glasses vendor's half-rim collection and didn't see a one. They've got the ones where the rims are over the top, and a few where they're over a the side in a weird way(here), but none where the frame is on the bottom.

If you're crafty, perhaps you could get a pair of rimless and modify them to get your desired look? Probably not the answer you were looking for, sorry. APL (talk) 21:54, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Found one!. I hope your head is 132mm wide, because they only seem to stock these in one size.

Also look at these out. They're similar looking to what you want, but there is a subtle partial frame along the top as well. APL (talk) 21:58, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

APL- This is EXACTLY the sort of thing I was looking for. Phew! I owe you one! 173.14.1.190 (talk) 00:32, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Q: Why are your rimless spectacles lensless? A: Because I have perfect vision. -- Spike Milligan. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 10:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any reason more substantial than the admittedly valid one that it's their website and they can do what they want with it why the highest year one can see at timeanddate.com/calendar is 3999?20.137.18.50 (talk) 15:17, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No obvious reason. 3999 is 0xF9F suggesting that it should at least be able to cope up to 4095 as 0xFFF. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:29, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) It's a little known fact, but that's when the world ends.... but seriously, I don't think there is any technical reason to end it then. Depending on how they calculate their dates, there are some points that become arbitrary end-points—like the Year 2038 problem. But 3999 isn't one of those cutoffs, I don't think. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:31, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would speculate that it's due to uncertainty over whether a 4000-year rule for leap years will be instituted. See Gregorian calendar#Accuracy. -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:05, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this is probably the reason - but under present rules, 4000 is a leap year for the same reason that 2000 was. But a lot could change in 2000 years! SteveBaker (talk) 03:23, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No-one knows yet whether Herschel's proposed correction to the Gregorian calendar will be implemented. He suggested making years which are multiples of 4000 not leap years, thus reducing the average length of the calendar year from 365.2425 days to 365.24225. Although this is closer to the mean tropical year of 365.24219 days, his proposal has never been adopted because the Gregorian calendar is based on the mean time between vernal equinoxes (currently 365.2424 days) and because these observed values are currently increasing. Dbfirs 08:43, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do American police really refer to themselves as 'Cops'?Froggie34 (talk) 15:42, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, why not? It's not seen as offensive or belittling over here. It's a little informal, but that's it. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:58, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Informally and out of uniform, some American police will refer to themselves as cops. However—and my in-laws are a police family—not all police are comfortable with the label. Some do consider it disrespectful. I think almost none of them would use it to refer to themselves while in uniform and dealing with the public. Marco polo (talk) 16:16, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds strangely similar to how Latter-day Saints feel about the term "Mormon." Off-subject, I know. Sorry. Kingsfold (talk) 16:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some US police even embrace the "pigs" moniker (so long as they use it. All-police football teams often call themselves the Hogs. 67.51.38.51 (talk) 17:15, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not seen as disrespectful when children play "cops and robbers," or at least that's what the game was called deades ago. (Wow, I sounded old there! :-) The people I know who call them that probably use it because they just used that term playing as kids; I know just as many peple who call them "poolice." but, if that's consistent, then the ones who do call themselves that probably just grew up with the term, and would be likely to think, "Wow, I can't believe just 20 years ago I was playing cops and robers with friends, and now I'm a real cop."209.244.187.155 (talk) 19:43, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting comment, Marco polo; I assumed, being an American word, the Americans had fully embraced it. In NZ, the word is so mainstream, the Police use it for themselves even in official contexts, such as their recruitment website "New Cops". On a related note, in the UK, I knew a policeman who always referred to himself as a "copper". Gwinva (talk) 00:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I know one Australian policeman who has (or at least had, a few years back) a T-shirt with the logo "Pride Integrity Guts" (ie PIGs), so apparently Australian policement have turned the "insult" into a "compliment". A Goodle search suggests that the same backronym may occur elsewhere. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:58, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=pride+integrity+guts&meta=&aq=1&oq=pride+integr

Cop is short for Copper which came about because the first British police wore copper helmets. British police do refer to themselves as 'coppers' - but probably not 'cops'. SteveBaker (talk) 03:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not so: it's a person who "cops", i.e. arrests, people. ("It's a fair cop", etc.) Marnanel (talk) 03:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What snopes leaves out is the origin of "to cop" ("to sieze, capture, or steal"). According to my old Webster's, it is "probably" from Old French caper which is from Latin capere, which as you might guess, is also the origin of "to capture". Used in the sense of "steal", an example would be the expression "to cop a feel". Such as, of a roll of Charmin. Less obvious, perhaps, is a more modern usage, to "cop a plea". I might speculate that means to "take" a plea instead of going to trial. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:43, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for all the thoughts and references. Somehow I doubt that "I'm a cop" has the same punch as "I'm a policeman". Or just "Police!" as against "Cop!" The police, after all, set out to psychologically dominate - a necessary part of their activity since they must control a situation. Hence: "Name?" "John Smith." "John, where were you on...."Froggie34 (talk) 11:14, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I once met a policeman who claimed to have arrested someone with the immortal words: "You're knicked, son!". Somehow, his notebook recorded the phrase as "I'm arresting you on suspicion of theft..." Alansplodge (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nicked would be the normal spelling of that word. DJ Clayworth (talk) 23:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So long as the felon replied "It's a fair cop" and the notebook recorded "The suspect confessed immediately" then the balance of the universe is maintained. SteveBaker (talk)

why does a radium emit light in dark??/ where does it gets the light energy???

thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.197.251.178 (talk) 16:56, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's radioactive. Read the articles linked herein. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:02, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Radium is an alpha emitter, and alpha radiation is not directly visible. This page discusses how the radium was combined with ZnS, which glowed in the presence of alpha radiation. -- Coneslayer (talk) 17:11, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For the sake of completeness, radium also emits light in the light -- just not enough for it to visible. It is washed out by ambient luminance. Vranak (talk) 20:36, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Luminescence ≠ luminance. --Sean 21:53, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, fixed it. Vranak (talk) 05:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC) [reply]

As for where the energy is coming from, when radium atoms break down they release some of the energy that was used to hold them together. Eventually most of the radium will be gone, turned into other elements, but this process takes thousands of years, which is why it might seem like the energy is miraculously created out of nothing. Rckrone (talk) 05:56, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Watches used to have radium dials, until somebody figured out that maybe having radium next to you for years is not necessarily a good idea. Now they use a phosphorescent "glow in the dark" chemical which is presumably harmless and is also only temporary. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:07, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not entirely true. You can still get radioluminous watches.(Amazon link) They don't use radium anymore, but they use Tritium instead which is also radioactive. You can also get keychains. See Tritium illumination. APL (talk) 02:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you can still find antique watches with radium dials. They wouldn't be cheap, of course.

I would expect (though I take no responsibility for this!) that the health risk to the wearer would be negligible. Alpha radiation is made up of big particles; it doesn't go through stuff well. The number of particles that make it through a whole watch has to be tiny.

The real reason they stopped making radium watches was because of the risks to the workers who made them. These were not negligible at all; many of them died horribly. --Trovatore (talk) 22:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone tell me for a fact who invented Moose Tracks Ice Cream flavour. A company in upper Michigan claims to have invented it but I heard it was invented elsewhere, actually in Canada. Seems odd that a Michigan company would pick a name like Moose Tracks but that name would not be all that odd in CanadaWindDancerCanada (talk) 19:55, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there are moose in the Upper Peninsula, although I suppose it would be more usual to see a moose in Canada. There is "tiger tail" ice cream though and certainly the inventor of that never saw a wild tiger. I don't think it means much. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:54, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Denali Flavors in Michigan claims to have originated the name of the flavor. They've even made moosetracks.com their domain name. I am guessing that they would have faced some kind of lawsuit from the inventor of the name if their very public claim were false. Not all moose are Canadian. Moose's range extends into the northern United States, and many of us who live in the northern parts of the United States have seen moose. Denali Flavors is based in a part of Michigan that does not have moose, but people from that part of Michigan often spend summer vacations canoeing or camping in the Upper Peninsula, where there are moose. Marco polo (talk) 21:17, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's also clear that "tracks" is a bowdlerization of the commercial novelty of moose droppings being sold under various pretexts, so perhaps the only new thing the ice cream folks did was to get people to eat the stuff as a treat. --Sean 21:57, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And now for something not completely different: Møøse Droppings Ice Cream was obviously invented by these Norwegians, ja. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:07, 19 January 2010 (UTC) [reply]

In Michigan our moose-loving Norwegians are Finns: Finnish American distribution. I actually know one of the lawyers (in a Grand Rapids, Michigan law firm) who works on Moose Tracks licensing so I am pretty certain the claims are on a firm standing. Rmhermen (talk) 05:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And European Elk are native to Finland - I've seen one there. They're pretty much the same as a North American moose - different subspecies apparently. Alansplodge (talk) 18:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]