Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 November 11

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November 11

Real pics of JFK ?

Are these [1] [2] real ?  Jon Ascton  (talk) 01:28, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The second one looks just like him, and Jacqueline wearing a hat such as she wore on the assassination day. His jacket and ""pocket square" match assassination day, but his tie looks less patterned than the one he wore when he arrived in Dallas, and her jacket and blouse might be different, since photos of Jacqueline that day show dark lapels. One account said that her aides urged her to change out of the clothes with blood and brains on them after the shooting and before the photos of Lyndon Johnson being sworn in as President, but she refused and said "Let the pictures show what they did to him:" [3], [4]. The first one looks nothing like him circa 1960-1963, since he actually had slight sideburns, unlike the guy in the photo, and the eyes look nothing like Kennedy's. The mouth is conveniently covered up. Fake/hoax/someone else: [5]. Edison (talk) 05:49, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

These pictures are the cover art for 11/22/63, by Stephen King. I'm reading it right now, and the picture of the young couple dancing is opposite the newspaper article that covers how happy the public is that **SPOILER** Kennedy didn't die. I don't think it's meant to be JFK and Jackie.Catrionak (talk) 01:39, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

British student having to pay European Open University rates

Hi all. I am currently studying with the Open University and living in Germany. According to the OU's website I must pay the European fee rate because I no longer live in the UK (the same rate any other non-UK student would have to pay from Europe). Somebody said its because the UK government doesn't want to foot the bill for people living in Europe or something like that. The funny thing is the UK government are prepared to foot this bill for anyone living in the UK (whether they are British). On the other hand the German government will help pay for your educational fees through Bafög, which usually applies to all people living within Germany also, however OU students are NOT eligible despite the fact that they fulfil the criteria for this fund (several european court cases are ongoing). So my question is, are there any funds or scolarships or the like which I could apply for? I know I am a pretty unusual case but I don't see why I should be singled out and end up paying more than twice the amount that I usually would if I still lived within the UK. I'd be very grateful for any replies! ;) 91.49.41.175 (talk) 07:26, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The OU should be able to give you advice. Have you contacted them? --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:54, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Presumably the rationale for the higher fees is that you are (assumed to be) not paying UK tax. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 10:44, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

From memory there are exceptions: if you started a course in the UK you can continue to follow overseas you can pay the lower fee

This last point is right. Living in the UK means being there at the time of enrollment. The point is that you'll be able to pay the same UK price if you give the address of some relative. You simply will have to travel back to the UK for examinations and manage to get the material by post. But yes, you can save a lot doing that, specially if you are studying the whole program.

Googling "open university " + bafög produces a lot of hits. It's amazing, but true. I suppose the German government doesn't want to pay to a foreign university. 88.14.195.138 (talk) 15:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The funny thing is the argument used against funding the OU. Although the classify the OU as equal to German universities, they are unhappy about the OU admitting people without formal qualifications. The thing is I moved here 8 years ago...so ironically I actually have the German 'abitur' which would entitle me to study at a German university. Regardless the arguments used against funding people at the OU are absurd and unfair. The EU really needs to take action, but as usual they don't seem to being doing anything at all, despite the many complaints. :( I don't think there is anyway around this. :(91.60.238.133 (talk) 17:03, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

To the poster who said I only have to be there at the time of enrollment. I don't even have to contact anyone at the start of the enrollment face to face. My gran still lives in the UK and I could have the stuff sent to her as you said. Since there are no actual examinations (only essays handed in via email) that wouldn't be a problem either. However if this were allowed surely everyone would be doing so? I think there must be some restriction on this. I don't want to do anything illegal. :/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.60.238.133 (talk) 17:27, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Their rules say only that UK residency means being there at the time of enrollment, which you could do if you wanted to play by the rules. You certainly fly back to the UK every now and then. However, not everyone can do this, since not everyone has someone in the UK, and not every coursework is limited to essays. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.39.16.11 (talk) 21:07, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Would you post a link to that rule, please? It sounds like a very good idea. Even if I fly over and then back a few days later the expenses are lower than paying the EU version of the fees! 91.49.41.78 (talk) 12:12, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Let's hope nobody from the OU is reading this - loopholes can be easily closed! Alansplodge (talk) 17:22, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Do their rules say UK residency means being there at the time of enrollment or being resident in the UK at the time of enrolment? Note that these could easily mean very different things. Nil Einne (talk) 18:55, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit: A quick search for 'open university definition of uk residency' found [6] which relates to specific extra funding for students with financial difficulties, which the OP may not care about but importantly it does mention

You must also be a ‘home student’. This is defined as being ‘settled’ in the UK on the first day of your course and ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK for the previous three years preceding that date.

I'm fairly sure the definition of home student here is probably the normal definition when it comes to the OU. If so, the second requirement obviously kills it for the OP but note the specific wording even for the first requirement. I'm resonably sure 'settled' does not just mean 'being there' as 80 suggested. Of course as with others I agree OU should be able to advise you on the specific requirements and should really have been the first port of call if you couldn't find it yourself.

Nil Einne (talk) 19:03, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

That doesn't seem to be accurate. According to [7] the European Commission have proceedings against the German government since 2009. (As anyone who has paid attention would know, such cases always tend to take a long time, in this specific case perhaps they're even partially waiting to see what happens in the German courts.) Nil Einne (talk) 18:55, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's really that funny. EU law requires countries treat EU students resident in their country the same as local students/citizens [8]. I'm pretty sure this is the same reason why you have to be resident in the UK to be receive full funding, if the UK government wanted to fund the OU for British students not resident in the UK, they would have to do the same for any EU students not resident in the UK. I don't think all EU governments are always happy about the requirement (I think those with close to fully funded education tend to have the most concern) but they have no choice if they want to be part of the EU unless they can have the treaty changed. Nil Einne (talk) 18:40, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

You should not interfere with mother nature

I remember watching a video when there was a lone baby elephant (seemed separated from the herd ) which came across 2 young male lions. There was a fight and this baby elephant stood its ground but in the end got killed. There were people and conservationists around but they didn't interfere with mother nature. There was a man who saved a baby hippo from the raging river. He took care of this hippo but got criticized (and if my memory serves me right, even faced charges) for he interfered with mother nature when he saved the baby hippo. I just finished reading this [9] and my question is “what are the exceptions?”. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.107.148.210 (talk) 09:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Basically the exception is that you can do what you want if the animal is cute enough. That's about it.

The article isn't referring to a formal system of rules, but to a more general feeling about what's right and wrong to do (although certain organisations and institutions have formal rules). Many people feel that it's wrong to intervene when one animal is preying on another (since that's all part of the natural order of nature, and predators need to eat), but it's ok to rescue animals from rarer natural disasters such as floods, fires, etc, because they're unusual situations and could cause serious damage to populations. You don't want to interfere with the food chain or ratio of predators to prey, because a population explosion in one species can have devastating ecological effects. Making a very rare exception, like saving these particular elephants, won't have a significant ecological effect in itself, but if people rescued every baby elephant you could end up overrun by millions of elephants. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:47, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Conservation of endangered species is one common exception. Of course you could argue that in many cases this is just counteracting the effect of other human "interventions" on the animals or their environment. -- Q Chris (talk) 12:11, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I would just point out that interfering in the first situation would probably mean either injuring or killing the two lions, or, at the very best, depriving them of a meal. That's a pretty severe intervention into the food chain and the total balance of animals. (I guess you could also toss a few tasty steaks to them and hope they lose interest in the elephant, but now you're getting into the "feeding animals" area which is also hugely interventionist with regards to their habits.) Interfering in the second instance meant just keeping one less dead hippo out of the river. That isn't without its ecological consequences (carrion feeders, etc.), or its evolutionary consequences (weeding out poor swimming hippos), but it's decidedly less interventionist than the first situation. I don't know where conservationists draw their line, but the two situations have some real differences. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:07, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

You might be interested in reading about the people who got upset when a zoo saved a baby polar bear: Knut. --Sean 17:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

It's difficult to understand why some Germans wanted to let Knut die. Knut was born in captivity. 88.14.195.138 (talk) 22:45, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

As an Alaskan I can tell you that this is something that comes up a lot. Our famous Eagle lady had both fans and detractors, as soon as she was dead the practice of feeding eagles was outlawed. Right now we are having yet another debate about what is euphemistically referred to as "aerial predator control" which is actually a state employee flying around in a helicopter shooting wolves with a high-powered rifle. Why? Because there aren't enough moose for all the people who want to eat them. Instead of tightening restrictions on hunting the State Board of Game is in favor of blaming it on wolves despite the fact that every shred of scientific evidence points to humans, and to a lesser extent bears, as the real problem. And you don't even want to know about the byzantine maze of commercial and sport fishing regulations designed to strike a balance between making a living off seafood and not killing every last member of a species in the process. Where I live on Kachemak Bay it used to be possible to catch shrimp from the shore with a bucket trap and a rope. That was waaaay to easy and all the shrimp[ got eaten up and now there aren't any. Meanwhile Don Young was on the news last week ranting about how there are too many sea otters in Southeast Alaska and they are out of control and have to be stopped. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:29, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

There are different ways to look at it:

1) The most extreme groups want the Earth to be as it would if there were no humans. That means that humans shouldn't interfere with nature at all, except to repair damage we have previous caused (like exterminating invasive species we have introduced). For example, I saw a nature show where they were talking about how crocodiles in a particular area regularly kill people, but they made no attempt to kill the crocs. Apparently they consider crocs eating people to be "part of nature" that should be allowed to continue.

2) A more moderate position takes the needs of humans into account, too, and exterminates dangerous animals which live in populated areas. Those animals are allowed to live in remote areas and refuges.

3) Then there are those who want to manage animals purely for human benefit. This group often wins the debate, and thus we radically change the balance of nature, by exterminating most predators and having large herds of domestic animals. Note, however, that even this group has some things in common with environmentalists, since too much environmental damage, like the Dust Bowl, harms them, too.

4) Then you have the sentimental groups, which pretty much want to exterminate the ugly animals and protect all the cute ones. I tend to think that groups like PETA fall into this category. StuRat (talk) 18:02, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

PETA falls more into the first category. They may be insane, but they're pretty consistent that way...they even complained when Obama killed a fly. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:03, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Twitter

Can I see all the people that mention someone on Twitter, or do only my followers that mention someone show up? Does the person's "wall" of their tweets show other people who mentoin them, or does it only show up on the mentioners "wall" CTJF83 10:38, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

There's no way to 'automatically' do this, but if you enter the user of interest's full name in the search box including the @ symbol, e.g., @username, then it will load all mentions of that user. Note that this is a best case scenario - for reasons best known to Twitter, if you do this with a very popular name it only seems to return a random selection of the mentions, usually favouring other 'high profile' Twitter users. Refreshing the search can turn up different results. --jjron (talk) 12:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Got it :) That's exactly what I wanted, thank you very much! CTJF83 12:44, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

MBTI test

god day to you all!!

can anyone tell me where i can get an online free MBTI test?? i have searched on Google, and i got a few links, and they all gave me different types!!

can anyone tell me the most authentic link??

thanx — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.197.242.192 (talk) 16:09, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

This is the official Myers-Briggs website. I don't think you can get any more authentic than that! --TammyMoet (talk) 21:21, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

You can't do the test on that site at all. They direct you to qualified external testers, who charge for their services. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 22:07, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Maybe that, in itself, tells the OP more than what he needs to know! --TammyMoet (talk) 06:05, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

More, Tammy? If you don't quite know where to go, it's always handy to at least know where not to go. The official site is the authentic horse's mouth if you want information about what MBTI is, its history etc. But the OP wants to do an MBTI test, and a free one to boot. Unless he's a personal friend of an accredited MBTI test administrator, I fear he's going to have to pay if he wants a result he can trust. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:24, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for rendering my implicit sentiment explicit. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:29, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

My pleasure, Tammy. It's always good to get these things out into the open, don't you think. The OP did in fact need to be explicitly advised that a free reliable online MBTI test is not a goer, so we've done our job. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:06, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

(MBTI here stands for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator psychometric questionnaire.) -- ToE 00:30, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Hero

Removed forum-like post

You people here are smart,I need you tell me what you think of the anime game series similar to Fusion Fall(I made one episode on Youtube with my theraginglions account, 62 views is a sure episode 2) I'm making called Hero(don't steal!Cause I copyrighted it,which cost me 200 bucks!),and here is a short description:

Characters:

Kay Hyken(Main)

Cathra:(second)

Kay's Opening:Born with a scar on his left eye in Japan at 1994 with the ability admit positive and negative energy(people with powers are called Medea humans or Mutants,four kinds:Cosmixs,Blastons,Adaptions,and Ultimeas).Kay lived in Japan up until the age of three,his family moved to Africa due to his dad getting a job there,them a year later they moved to Inland cause his mom found a new job there,at seven Kay's family moved to Mexico until his dad could build a skyscraper,and then they moved to New York City where his parents built their new job.At eight, Kay met Cathra(an African American boy who is months younger than Kay,his left eye was struck by lightning that is how he get his electric powers after getting his parents killed by the NF and getting hit in the head,forgetting everything but his name.Cathra's parents were Cs which are a group of good guys with powers,which makes Cathra a Cs)at a hospital after Kay got hit by a truck in a massive thunder storm,they quickly became friends and are joined by new friends,they fight off any mutant that uses their powers for evil.

I made a game called Kay Hyken Chronicles,made with Blender 3D,I'm selling copies outside my house.I need you to tell me if this would make a good series? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.71.62.59 (talk) 20:05, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

For questions like this, about how good a video game sounds, you'd do better to post at a video game fan site. This Ref Desk is for factual questions, not opinions. StuRat (talk) 17:42, 12 November 2011 (UTC)