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February 19

Where is the offense?

Why is Sarah Palin so offended? The portrait of a Down person going to a date and saying - "“My dad’s an accountant, and my mom is the former governor of Alaska,” is not exactly disparaging or demeaning or whatever. I even think it was breaking some prejudices about Down's syndrome, depicting them as pretty normal people. --ProteanEd (talk) 15:55, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, when Sarah Palin was running for the VP candidacy, Trig was made a primary media story and Palin received a lot of scrutiny for it. I believe there was also a rumor going around that Trig was not Palin's child. I wouldn't exactly call her offended. Of course, she'd be frustrated; it's her child and the media was ARGUABLY being rather overzealous (as opposed to the Obama administration saying that the kids were "off-limits"). Naturally, it doesn't excuse any of her other political shortcomings.--WaltCip (talk) 16:01, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not offended? Sarah Palin said the screenwriters were "cruel, cold-hearted people" and daughter Bristol said the writers were "heartless jerks." --ProteanEd (talk) 16:08, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Protean Ed is talking about a specific, recent reference in an episode of (I think) Family Guy. 86.182.38.255 (talk) 16:19, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's out of my league then, since I have neither the need nor desire to watch Family Guy. More of a Black Books fan myself.--WaltCip (talk) 16:32, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

let's see: Family Guy did something crass; Sarah Palin got offended... and yeah, the sun rose this morning. so what else is new? --Ludwigs2 17:03, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The interesting question is, did they actually do something crass? I haven't yet seen the episode, so I can't comment, but descriptions I've heard do not sound crass. They actually sound like a positive appearance of a character with Down's, something very rare on TV. Much like Joe is pretty much the only current, full-time character with a physical disability in a mainstream programme, and he is something other than an inspiration for others. Or like the Cleveland show is unusual in having a black family as the main family in a mainstream show. 86.182.38.255 (talk) 17:47, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is this incident referring to the episode where Stewie cloned himself? Googlemeister (talk) 20:18, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No. The episode in question is Extra Large Medium, which aired a little while ago. Our article details some of the brou-haha. Personally, I thought the Down Syndrome thing was no more viciously done than many of their other jokes, and probably lighter than most. The girl in question at first seems to be nice and happy (a stereotypical "Downy", I guess), but turns into a complete bitch after Chris gets to know her better. In a way, I think it's similar to their treatment of Joe (the wheelchair cop), which, while still no-holds barred, manages to provide the perspective that just because someone has a label doesn't mean they don't also have a personality of their own. In between the jabs and put-downs, you end up noticing that Ellen (the DS girl) is a person. Matt Deres (talk) 23:07, 19 February 2010 (UTC) added word so my post makes sense now...Matt Deres (talk) 03:10, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Though of course the entire point of Family Guy is to be crass. (And arguably the entire point of Sarah Palin is to be mock-offended whenever it gives her a chance to be in the daily news cycle.) --Mr.98 (talk) 16:24, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The actress who voiced Ellen has DS herself.http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/02/19/family-guys-down-syndrome-actress-responds-sarah-palin...hotclaws 23:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

what the different?

Hi Helpdesk,

I am puzzled by my daughter!

My time in school till now, I write one thousand this way (1000 or 1,000). As for ten thousands, it will be 10000 or 10,000

My daughter was taught to write one thousand this way (1 000 with a spacing after the 1). My girl write ten thousands like this (10 000).

Please enlighten me.

Cheers

Kelvin wong —Preceding unsigned comment added by Estelle-christelle-wong (talk • contribs) 17:01, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how old your daughter is, but I was told in school that a comma looks too much like a decimal point. As for the spacing, it's so that it's easier to tell how many zeroes there are after a number, making identification easier. Library Seraph (talk) 17:05, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Thousands separator.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:08, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am surprised that the article does not mention the underscore "_" which can be used as a thousands separator in some computer programming languages. It can be used in perl, "$population = 6_803_800_000", but I don't know how many languages share this. 58.147.58.28 (talk) 01:40, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Basically, in some countries a comma is used as a "decimal point". In some, a period is used as a thousand separator. To avoid confusion whether 1,956 is almost two thousand or is slightly less than two, a number of people now recommend using a space instead of printable punctuation to separate thousand groupings. -- 174.21.247.23 (talk) 17:17, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I've ever seen a space as a thousands separator in handwritten numbers. Feels like you'd need handwriting that's a good deal neater than mine to prevent it from just being confusing. APL (talk) 22:12, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was taught the spacing method a quarter century (!) ago, in Ontario, Canada. Our teacher told us that spacing thousands was the "metric" way of doing it and using commas was an "American" thing (insert melodramatic organ music as we gasped in horror at our collective brush with treason). Matt Deres (talk) 03:13, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Did it sound a wee bit like [1]? Edison (talk) 04:23, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ha, yes, close enough, but that's a very quick "dun dun dun"; the last note should hang for a bit to increase the emotion. Matt Deres (talk) 13:58, 20 February 2010 (UTC) [reply]

Call your daughter's teacher and tell him/her to stop teaching ivory-tower bullcrap that will just have to be unlearned later in the real world. --Nricardo (talk) 04:15, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When I worked in France, the client specified our system produce invoices with a comma character for the decimal separator (normal for much of Europe but not the UK) and a space character for the thousands separator (maybe specific to France). Does your daughter recieve her education in a different country from where you went to school? Astronaut (talk) 05:04, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

British school textbooks have used the space as a thousands separator for at least thirty years, but (older) teachers would never mark the comma as "wrong", we would just explain that it might be confusing to the French! Dbfirs 09:44, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't take much. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I used to work for an international insurance company; one of my colleagues mistook the three decimal places that go after sums in Egyptian pounds and inflated an already large claim figure by a factor of a thousand. It set a few alarm bells ringing. Alansplodge (talk) 00:34, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

same time shown by watches

pls tell me why does watches in adds show same time (ie 10:9:35 ) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.99.19.74 (talk) 20:01, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This Snopes article talks about why the clocks always seem to be set to 10:10. 24.120.166.97 (talk) 20:08, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We used to have an article, I think it was called "10:08" but in a dark day for Wikipedia, it was deleted. I don't know how to locate the AfD discussion, but I am pretty sure it's been linked here before. --LarryMac | Talk 20:10, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is a definite inclusion for our FAQs. It comes up at least half a dozen times a year. Would the person responsible for compiling the FAQs please raise their hand? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:32, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The article was 10:08, there are links to it from previous refdesk discussions [2]. DuncanHill (talk) 21:09, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The AfD that resulted in the deletion is here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/10:08 Astronaut (talk) 04:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

breaking my own rules about RD contributions It's really too bad that the article was deleted. It was my introduction to Wikipedia - i.e. the first thing I ever read here. And as we can see, it is something the people want to know about, indeed it's a piece of the "knowledge disseminated around the globe". Perhaps it only "deserves" to be a part of the Watch article, but as hard as it may be to establish verifiability, the fact that timepieces in advertisements are set to (approximately) 10:10 is not a myth. I even recall seeing an ad for a digital, talking, Mickey Mouse alarm clock that showed a display of 10:10, but a speech balloon showing Mickey saying "It's 8:30, time to get up!" Maybe I'll make a project out of getting an article re-established. --LarryMac | Talk 16:55, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the case of a traditional clock with hour and minute hands, it should be obvious why they use 10:08 (or sometimes 8:18) - it looks nice. Setting it that way on a digital clock seems kind of funny, but it's probably better than having it flashing midnight. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:49, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I really think there would be value in such an article - but for it not to be immediately demolished by AfD requires two changes: Firstly, it must be really well referenced. The last comment in the AfD suggested some links (this, this, this, this, and this) - but none of them look really authoritative to me. Secondly, the title needs to be changed. The problem is that 10:08 could be almost anything - and also that 10:08 isn't the only time they use 01:52 is another one. I think that if you could 'sandbox' an article together with those two things fixed, it could survive an AfD - particularly given that it's such a FAQ here on the reference desk (demonstrating that people do indeed notice this "fact" and come and ask why it is). SteveBaker (talk) 19:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It has now been userfied! User:LarryMac/10:08 Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:22, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Graeme! I find that two of the links in Steve's post are not even valid, so I'm sure they wouldn't look authoritative, and the second one is a blog that quotes the first one, so not much to work with there. I'll see what I can do. I welcome suggestions on my talk page for both content and title. --LarryMac | Talk 14:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that these were good references - I was merely passing on what little came out of the AfD discussions. SteveBaker (talk) 16:07, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do the police make jokes when making arrests?

In a Donald Duck comic I just read, two policemen (Detective Casey and another detective whose English name I don't know) arrest a gang of money counterfeiters in their secret hideout. When they enter the hideout, Detective Casey says to the gang: "Hello, excuse me, but would you happen to know the penalty for having a sack full of counterfeit money?" The other detective continues: "When I last checked it this morning, it was three to six years of prison without parole." Now does this happen in real life? When the police arrest criminals, do they ever make jokes, or are they always strictly business and deliver the exact same lines ("You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you." or something), in the exact same words? JIP | Talk 21:08, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I once met a Welsh policeman who claimed that when he caught his first ever criminal, he used the words, "You're knicked son!". By the time it got to court, the phrase had become "I'm arresting you on suspicion of theft..." Alansplodge (talk) 22:04, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm having an eerie sense of deja-vu. Didn't you tell this exact same story about a half a year ago? :) Anyway, if we're exchanging anecdotes, there was a case some ten or so years ago here in Slovenia - two cops were chasing a petty thief (a grown man, mind you), he ran to his house, and the police decided to surround the house and wait for backup before going in. While they were waiting, the guy reappeared, dressed head to toe as a ninja and in all seriousness started throwing plastic shurikens at them. I think it'd take nerves of steel not to poke jokes at a guy like that while arresting him :) TomorrowTime (talk) 13:29, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies if I repeated myself - obviously a sign of advancing years :-) Alansplodge (talk) 00:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed the same thing but I believe it's less then half a year ago Nil Einne (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They're human. As such, in the absence of compelling evidence, I expect them to behave like other humans. Thus, some will crack jokes. While police in the US need to provide a Miranda warning to anyone they plan to question, there's no prohibition whatsoever against saying other stuff, too. — Lomn 22:20, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that is just not true; there are probably local prohibitions almost everywhere against humiliating people and robbing them of their dignity. This presumably would be punished by a slap on the wrist against the officer, or some other discipline, rather than letting an arrested person go free, of course. 63.164.47.229 (talk) 22:44, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Laws against robbing people of their dignity? I understand that most jurisdictions have laws about not committing crimes... ╟─Treasury Tag►duumvirate─╢ 21:37, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt there are many laws against making jokes during an arrest, but I expect almost all police forces expect their officers to behave in a professional manner. How much that expectation is enforced will undoubtedly vary from force to force. --Tango (talk) 22:55, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have friends who have seen police make jokes during arrests or "visits", so I would say yes. ~A H 1^(TCU) 00:57, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In general, my very few encounters with police have found them to very courteous and professional. Regardless, if I were ever arrested, I'd rather they made fun of me than to beat me to the ground with their batons. As far as a slap on the wrist is concerned, in court you've got the perp grousing to the judge that the cops made fun of him. How likely is the judge to put much credence on such a claim? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:46, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd rather they do neither (see false choice), and although it may not be a very compelling defense, but it's not completely impossible. The whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing means you cannot completely ignore what the defendant says (and you certainly can't discount it solely on the basis of him being charged with a crime). While it doesn't materially affect the facts of the case, a particularly convincing defense attorney may be able to argue that the irreverent nature of the police at the time of the arrest is indicative of them not being serious in other, more substantive, matters regarding the case, or that their willingness to crack jokes at the defendant's expense is indicative of them not being serious about protecting the rights of the accused in other manners. (Basically, if you are unprofessional during the arrest, where *else* have you been unprofessional.) It's a long shot, and may only work one time out of ten thousand, but that 1/10,000 chance means that there really isn't any reason to risk it, and so the police force may have official rules to discourage it. -- 174.21.247.23 (talk) 18:01, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are other obvious risks. For example if the defendent confenses or tells stuff to the police they may later say they were just joiking, in the same spirit that the police were. Suffice to say, there are reasons why the police should generally be resonably professional in the way they deal with people. Nil Einne (talk) 22:11, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I remember seeing a cop show where a guy was caught after stealing a car, anyway he started scolding the cops saying "why aren't you out catching murderers" etc, the cops all started laughing and being sarcastic with him ("yeah we shouldn't have wasted out time", "what's a murderer?" etc).--92.251.162.146 (talk) 21:33, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are lots of TV shows these days that follow police (and similar officers like immigration, customs, tax, etc) around - in the UK there are many shows on Sky and ITV like Road Wars, UK Border Force, Night Cops, and there are US version - and many of them show police officers making sarcastic or mocking comments to people they suspect of crimes or anti-social behaviour. Sometimes it's just banter, other times it's nastier. It may against police regulations (particularly if it could be seen as racist or discriminatory), but the victims are unlikely to complain, particularly if they were doing something wrong, and even if they do complain there's almost no chance of the officer being seriously punished. --Normansmithy (talk) 11:32, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Police are normal people. Some will crack jokes; some will be serious; different thinsg will amuse different cops. They're not forbidden to enjoy themselves, and a bit of banter makes any job more interesting. Not all cops will stay entirely professional at all times; and not all cops will have the same views on what is appropriate humour. As Normansmithy notes, there are many examples on reality shows. If you like deadpan humour, then this example is hard to beat: [3]. The establishment didn't seem to find it inappropriate. Gwinva (talk) 22:18, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]