Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 September 15

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September 15

How to Sterilize razor blade

I am looking to purchase a used, high-quality straight razor. What cleaning steps should I take to ensure that the blade is clean from any HIV or blood-borne pathogens that the previous user may or may not have had? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 01:34, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Fire. --Jayron32 01:50, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Haha. Dip it in alcohol and light it up. We did that in my high school's science classes. Hot Stop talk-contribs 01:57, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Will this damage the carbon steel blade? Acceptable (talk) 02:28, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you type the question you ask into Google, you get this: [1]. Caveat emptor. --Jayron32 02:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The typical sterilization approach for carbon steel surgical implements is to bake them in a dry oven, e.g. 150 C (300 F) for 90 minutes. Are you sure it is carbon steel, though? I would think that it is more likely to be stainless steel, which is easier to sterilize. Dragons flight (talk) 02:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

And can the handle handle such temps ? StuRat (talk) 03:18, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

How about if you just wash it in alcohol, then sharpen it, which should remove anything from the blade the alcohol missed. StuRat (talk) 03:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Cleaning it with soap and water is enough to remove any conceivable blood-borne pathogen. But let me note that dipping in alcohol is no longer considered an acceptable way of sterilizing surgical instruments: studies have shown that it takes any unreasonable time to kill all bacteria that may be present. There are much more potent germicides available. Looie496 (talk) 03:27, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

And just for the record, if you read HIV you will see that the virus is unable to survive outside the body in dry conditions for more than a very short time, so no worries there. Richard Avery (talk) 07:08, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm surprised you are even considering a using the used blade. There is a chance it might harbour some disease, but there is a much higher chance of a rough, painful and poor quality shave. Sure, you can buy a nice quality used handle, but make sure you install a new blade. This is based on my limited experience at my barbers, where the blades in their straight razors are changeable. Of course, if your razor's blade is non-changeable, then ignore what I've said. Astronaut (talk) 11:41, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

As I understand it, the disposable blades used by UK barbers are a precaution against the spread of CJD, whose infective agent is unaffected by heat treatment. Alansplodge (talk) 12:00, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The OP is referring to a straight razor with a fixed, non-removeable blade. Heating would probably damage the handle, depending on the materials. Bleach is very effective at destroying HIV and other viruses by unfolding their proteins. Personally, I would be hesitant about a used razor. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:42, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes. British barbers who wish to use a "cut-throat" razor now have to use one with a replaceable blade. Alansplodge (talk) 21:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I know I'm new to answering questions here, but isn't this a request for medical advice? Reaper Eternal (talk) 12:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

It's not exactly a request for medical advice. It's more like asking an internet forum how to pack a parachute immediately before jumping out an airplane. In other words, you'd be an idiot to take any advice given in this thread, no matter how well-intentioned it is. --Colapeninsula (talk) 13:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Nobody has suggested boiling water? If you can remove the blade from the handle, you could sterilize the blade by boiling it for 20 mins or so. Googlemeister (talk) 13:55, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Depends on what you are worried about. Boiling kills nearly all active bacteria and viruses. However, many bacterial and fungal spores can survive being boiled. Boiling is probably good enough for most concerns, but wouldn't be considered sterile for surgical purposes, etc. Dragons flight (talk) 17:20, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Using enough bleach to really sterilize the blade (as opposed to simply cleaning it a bit, and making yourself feel a bit better) will almost certainly cause carbon steel to rust. Dragons flight (talk) 17:20, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I have hatted the above question, the OP is basically asking for advice on how not to catch diseases, answering is clearly medical advice. Please do not add any further to the discussion--Jac16888 ^Talk 22:30, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I've reverted. Discussion on talk. APL (talk) 05:38, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Likely hiding places for dirt, bacteria, fungus etc. are 1) inside the hinge of the razor, 2) on the Razor strop, if used and 3) in the Shave brush, if used. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 07:29, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

The OP is asking for medical advice, so here's some: Don't even think about using someone else's razor. Get a new one. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:11, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Second the warning on the brush -- years ago some were the cause of an anthrax outbreak. [2] Straight razors kept sterile in alcohol are safe AFAICT. Collect (talk) 15:15, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Although the danger from shaving brushes appears to be limited to examples made from Japanese horse hair during WWI. Not many of those on eBay ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 20:11, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Horses are not native to Japan. This would be like having a brush made from British panda hair just because the panda in question lives in a zoo in London. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:38, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

You've lost me there. They do have horses in Japan and obviously (from reading the linked newspaper article) they had a thriving trade in shaving brushes with western Europe in the early part of the 20th century; some having a free gift of anthrax spores. According to this, it is still illegal to import shaving brushes from Japan into the Republic of Ireland, also Tanzania. See The American Journal of Public Health (1925): ANTHRAX FROM SHAVING BRUSHES for the full story. Alansplodge (talk) 16:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Looking for an email address of an author

I'm working on a proposal for a project for school. It's based, in part, on an article that Alan Graham wrote for Make magazine. He has a website at http://agraham999.com but there isn't an email address listed. I tried his O'Reilly Publishing author's page and it lists an address but that address gets an immediate failure notice upon sending. He's done articles for other magazines as well like MacAddict, MacWorld, etc. How much success would I have in writing to these magazines to put me in contact with Mr. Graham? Is it even worth trying? Can anyone find a valid address for him? Dismas|^(talk) 04:00, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Assuming he's kept his website's WHOIS records up to date, I would try agraham999mac.com. ^Avic_ennasis @ 05:04, 16 Elul 5771 / 05:04, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! It didn't fail immediately, so there's that... Dismas|^(talk) 21:49, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

From SF to FIN

This list article tells us that in 1993 Finland stopped using "SF" stickers (or number plate ingredients) for cars and motorbikes going abroad and switched to "FIN" stickers (or ditto). I can make guesses as to why and perhaps you can as well, but guesses are of little value. What was/were the actual reason(s)? -- Hoary (talk) 11:53, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

There was no official reason, but the reasons reported by Helsingin Sanomat at the time were 1) to make the code more easily understandable abroad, and 2) to match the ISO country codes used in other contexts. The cabinet actually voted on whether to use the three-letter code FIN or the two-letter code FI, and the former won 9-3. However, the main reason the law on vehicle registration was rewritten to begin with was because of EFTA treaty obligations, and changing the country code was a minor side issue. 188.117.30.209 (talk) 17:59, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Excellent answer; thank you very much. (I do miss "SF". Of course at first I didn't know what it meant, but I learnt very quickly and thereby learnt my first word of Finnish. The second word only came much later with my first visit to Finland: Hei, of course.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:09, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Special:RecentChanges feed, streaming or watch notification

Here is the problem. For editors the Wikipedia software will notify all editors at the time they start to post their edit that the page there is an edit conflict, i.e. tha the page they are editing has been edited by another editor before their edit was posted.

For readers, however, there is no way to be notified of changes to the page while reading. If the data from the Special:RecentChanges could be streamed and filtered for the particular page being read and the changes highlighted and the page then reloaded from the server wouldn't this solve the problem? --DeeperQA (talk) 13:37, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

This isn't really a Ref Desk question; it's more of a Village Pump sort of thing. That said, I'm not sure what you've described is actually a 'problem', in a meaningful sense of the word. An article might change a week, a day, an hour, a minute or a second after the reader navigates away; should we attempt to track them down and notify them every time any article they've ever read is modified? Most articles don't change rapidly and most changes are relatively modest.

The only articles which tend to experience frequent, rapid changes are those which deal with current events, and a) readers are warned about this by the {{currentevent}} template; and b) people shouldn't be using an encyclopedia as a substitute for a newsfeed anyway. The truly obsessive-compulsive can hit refresh in their browser or check the article history before they navigate away. There's no real justification to implement what would be a technically complex and resource-intensive 'feature' that few people would find useful—and most would find annoying. (Do you want to be notified if the article is vandalized and reverted to normal while you're reading?) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I for one take the Wikipedia with a grain of salt and keep an eye out for things which defy common sense. That said I recall the problem Jeopardy exposed when Watson gave the same wrong answer as another contestant. Think of it as a reliability indicator if not a full reload with highlighted changes. You are reading and the article is changed. You have another browser window open that is monitoring the history page. All that is needed is a server side reload instruction to be issued whenever the history page is updated. If you are concerned about changes while you are reading then you open the history page in another window and with the server side reload feature upon changes of the history page you know instantly when a change has been made - not after having read the whole article. Programming a server side reload instruction after changes have been made should not be that big of a deal and the history page will help you to know if the change was vandalism or a spelling error or not. --DeeperQA (talk) 14:53, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The foundation doesn't tend to be particularly interested in fancy AJAX which is liable to create numerous compatibility problems and significantly increase the load on their servers. Particularly for a problem which isn't a big deal with the vast majority of pages and which and even greater percentage of users aren't going to be interested in. Note that the function suggested will not be a very effective reliability indicator. Nil Einne (talk) 15:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

So you feel that generating a history page reload upon update is considerate of users who do not have time to do all of the manual labor you now require them to do? I'm impressed. --DeeperQA (talk) 15:44, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

You seem to be missing the point that the vast majority by far of users are not interested in the page history. More importantly, whether or not we make it easier to view the page history is different from providing realtime updates of page changes. Nil Einne (talk) 16:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

One of the reasons the Foundation avoids AJAX style interfaces, is that they work terribly on mobile devices with weak signals, which represent most of the users in the third world that the Foundation is trying to reach. 69.171.160.167 (talk) 18:49, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

There is a feed of RC changes both through an IRC room (this is what WP:Huggle uses) and repeated API calls (which is intensive and not recommended). The IRC method is the way to go if you were interested in implementing this. Shadowjams (talk) 05:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

When did the New Zealand Christmas Tree first appear in California

I searched under the topic of New Zealand Christmas tree but could not find when it was first brought to California or the United States and thus that is what I am trying to find out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.197.219.2 (talk) 15:20, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean Norfolk pines? 75.41.110.200 (talk) 20:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

This article (which is cited by our page on New Zealand Christmas trees) says they were introduced to San Francisco during the 80s. Specific mention is made of a tree planted in 1984, but the programme may have begun a year or two earlier, and I don't know if there were similar schemes elsewhere in CA. AJCham 23:49, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Amazon gift certificates

If someone bought me a present on Amazon, but they had none in stock and so the company sent me a gift certificate of the same value, would the person responsible for placing the order be able to find out when I spend the certificate and on what?

79.66.111.172 (talk) 15:42, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Unless you told them, I don't see why... They may know that Amazon sent you the gift certificate instead of the original item, but after that, once the gift certificate is in your name, it's your money to spend. I wouldn't think there would be any mechanism for them to find out. Common courtesy would dictate that you tell the person "Hey, look, thanks so much for the gift! Too bad, Amazon was out of it, so they sent me a gift certificate and I spend it on XXX instead." That would be the decent thing to do. People nice enough to give you free stuff don't deserve to be deceived. --Jayron32 16:26, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but if the "XXX" is rated XXX, and the gift-giver is the squeamish type, perhaps you might omit that bit of info. StuRat (talk) 18:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

It depends on what kind of friend the gift-giver was. It may lead to extra "gifts", nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more say no more. --Jayron32 21:11, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I've used Amazon gift certificates in the past. The gift-giver does not receive any notification of when or even if they're used. (By the way, this is normal behavior for gift certificates. It would be unusual for a gift certificate to alert the gift-giver about it's status.) APL (talk) 22:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The reason being that you don't want the customer to find out the person didn't want it and so decided to return it and get cash. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 01:17, 16 September 2011 (UTC)