Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 March 25

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 25

humor & academic journals

Are there any academic journals that aren't about humor or humor-related subjects, but which regularly employ and/or encourage the use of humor in the articles they publish? So, in other words, not a journal about humor, comedy, screenwriting, the psychology of laughter, etc. but, say, a political, philosophical, or sociological kind of journal that's has witty/funny articles. (Not looking for an alternative read, but a venue that "counts" (in the academia sense) for people who maintain blogs that manage high intellectual sophistication and wit/humor). --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  00:15, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The Journal of Irreproducible Results — What, no link? Try:[1] —71.20.250.51 (talk) 05:36, 25 March 2014 (UTC) —Update [06:20, 25 March 2014 (UTC)] Here it is → Journal of Irreproducible Results

Not really a peer-reviewed academic journal of the kind the OP is looking for though, is it? --Viennese Waltz 06:24, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I Didn't read "peer-reviewed" in the query; anyway, see also: Annals of Improbable Research (or not) —71.20.250.51 (talk) 06:34, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Slate (magazine) "Combines humor and insight in thoughtful analyses of current events and political news" — if that's what you're looking for. The "peer reviewed journals" are about humor — e.g.: HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research by The International Society for Humor Studies.  —71.20.250.51 (talk) 07:24, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

In the medical sciences (I know, it's outside the scope of the 'humanities' topics you named) the very well-respected (and recently open-access) BMJ publishes many of their most humorous papers in their special Christmas issue. See, for example, Keaney et al. (2013) "The Brady Bunch? New evidence for nominative determinism in patients’ health: retrospective, population based cohort study":

Objective To ascertain whether a name can influence a person’s health, by assessing whether people with the surname “Brady” have an increased prevalence of bradycardia. ...

The results may surprise and delight. See also Smith and Pell's seminal 2003 paper, "Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials". Cheers, TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:56, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

No, there isn't any such thing, because being witty and funny isn't something that can be objectively peer reviewed. It also doesn't meet the broad goals of disseminating research, which is what most peer-reviewed journals claim as their mission. As several mention above, many scholarly journals will occasionally publish such pieces as a one-off or in a special issue, e.g. this famous example [2]. This blog tracks humorous papers through NCBI, some of which are intentionally funny, some of which are unintentionally funny - though they come from various journals [3], [4]. Other journals may have a small blurb that is mildly humorous, but those aren't peer reviewed, they are under editorial control. I'm very confused by the question. If one wants to be witty and funny in print, they can write a blog, as you suggest. Why should that be peer reviewed, or "count" for credit in an academic career? I do know of a few researchers who try to "sneak" some humor into every paper, but the paper is still primarily about communicating findings, not about being clever and funny. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:05, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Interesting responses so far. Thanks. @SemanticMantis: - I don't know why these are mutually exclusive. Why wouldn't you be able to perform a serious study, analyze serious results, and take the material that could easily be published in a scholarly journal, but write it in an entertaining way? Why would that make it "count" any less? The peer-review wouldn't be an analysis of its humor unless the humor gets in the way of the other material. The practice isn't unheard of, but typically reserved for those who are already well. One current example of someone who works in both social sciences and humanities and consistently writes using humor/irony is Bruno Latour. But the point is, the journals that publish his work would publish his work regardless. My question is if there's a publication that explicitly values that kind of expression. Communicating findings, as you say, but doing so in such a way. Probably not, I suppose. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  17:09, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the problem is that humor can often mislead people who are reading it literally. Sloppy language of any kind has to be avoided at all costs in scientific writing. If I'm measuring the number of cracked ball-bearings in a factory and I say that I've found a ton of them - are people going to assume that I mean "quite a lot" or are they going to assume that I found approximately 2,240 lbs of them? We have to be careful. Jokes very often rely on exaggeration or confusing contradictions for their effect - and that's the very last thing you want here. "An airline pilot visits his doctor with a urinary tract problem - the doctor asks 'When did you last have sex?' - the man replies '1954'. 'Oh, it's been quite a while then.' says the doctor.'...the pilot checks his watch...'but it's only 2100 now'."...the shift in meaning is what makes the joke work - but that kind of fluidity is precisely what you need to avoid in scientific description. It's possible that (with care), one could fabricate humor into a scientific paper - but it's very, very dangerous - and may simply not be worth the risk.

It does happen though - sometimes in quite prominent ways. The Alpher–Bethe–Gamow paper was written by Ralph Alpher and his advisor George Gamow. Hans Bethe was added into the author list even though he played no part in writing it just to make the author list sound like the greek letters alpha, beta and gamma. The paper turned out to be very important and it's often still called "the alphabet paper" and written as "the αβγ paper" in many serious works. Bethe said that should the paper turn out to be incorrect, he'd probably have to change his name to Zacharias!

SteveBaker (talk) 22:24, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Nature publishes a science fiction story on its inside back page every week. Many of these are humorous to some extent, eg using puns, because it's quite hard to write a serious story in a single page. Here's an example-gadfium 00:01, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

The Strings conference proceedings, see e.g.:

Physica 15D (1985) 289-293

Unified String Theories, eds. M. Green and D. Gross, Proc. of Santa Barbara Workshop, Jul. 29 - Aug. 16 (World Scientific, Singapore, 1986) 729-737

Superstrings, cosmology, composite structures, eds. S.J. Gates, Jr. and R.N. Mohapatra, Proc. of Maryland Workshop, March 11-18, 1987 (World Scientific, Singapore, 1987) 585-593

Strings '88, eds. S.J. Gates, Jr., C.R. Preitschopf, and W. Siegel, Proc. of Maryland Workshop, May 24-28, 1988 (World Scientific, Singapore, 1989) 475-483

Strings '89, eds. R. Arnowitt, R. Bryan, M.J. Duff, D. Nanopoulos, and C.N. Pope, College Station, TX, March 13-18, 1989 (World Scientific, Singapore, 1990) 535-549

Strings '90, eds. R. Arnowitt, R. Bryan, M.J. Duff, D. Nanopoulos, and C.N. Pope, College Station, TX, March 13-18 (World Scientific, Singapore, 1991) 523-529

Strings and Symmetries 1991, eds. N. Berkovits, H. Itoyama, K. Schoutens, A. Sevrin, W. Siegel, P. van Nieuwenhuizen, and J. Yamron, Stony Brook, May 20-25 (World Scientific, Singapore, 1992) 593-599

Strings '93, eds. M.B. Halpern, G. Rivlis, and A. Sevrin, Berkeley, CA, May 24-29, 1993 (World Scientific, Singapore, 1995) 485-490

Count Iblis (talk) 01:45, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

One of the punniest authors, Donald Knuth is famous for both his contributions to computing science and his writing. In The Art of Computer Programming he discusses several fast multiplication algorithms, and you find the words,

"Since then, computers have multiplied." (emphasis mine)

In Factoring into Primes there is a remark about running out of time with huge composite numbers, but (paraphrasing) "not out of money; I'm on free idle time, not expensive prime time."

Not to mention the Knuth reward checks. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 07:17, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Several internet users publish fractal image galleries, often with bits of the underlying math. The "attractive" (in the sense of both "beautiful", and that they are limits of infinitely many initial values) fixed point is a thoroughly abused term.

217.255.149.83 (talk) 10:48, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

The axis of evil

Rumsfeld Hadrons

Remodeling the Pentagon After the Events of 2/23/06

How To Kill a Penguin

*-Wars Episode I: The Phantom Anomaly

Nutty Bubbles

Nuttier Bubbles

Count Iblis (talk) 15:36, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

LGBT name question.

Why dont the LGBT name have 2 names for bisexual and 2 for travestite, one for male and another for girl, like it has to homosexuality (gay for males and lesbian for females)?
Or why dont the LGBT name just one name for homosexuality (instead of splitting it betwen male one and female one), like it has for transvertite and bisexual? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.78.202.254 (talk) 13:05, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

There's quite a lot of etymological discussion, including dozens of proposed variations on the term at our article, which is helpfully located at LGBT --Dweller (talk) 13:11, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

My question, was something more like, "why this illogical is the most used one?".201.78.202.254 (talk) 13:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Language is not designed by some arbiter of logic and reason. Words pop into existence, have their meanings changed, twisted, duplicated into other words. Words adopted into one social group may spread into other groups - or may become the badge of a niche following. Expecting some kind of ordered system to emerge from this process is asking a lot. It's like expecting the weeds that grow in your back yard to form a neat rectangle symmetrically centered on your lawn! SteveBaker (talk) 13:54, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I take your point, but your last example just made me think of fairy rings, which indeed show an unexpected structure emerging from natural conditions. :) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:00, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I specifically chose "rectangle" rather than "ring" because rings do happen naturally and rectangles really don't. But the point here is not that ordered, logical language cannot come about - it's more that it's not inevitable that it should. If the linguistics did happen to be very well-ordered, then we might be surprised and look for a reason, however, if the language is a mess - then we don't really expect to find a clear, simple reason. So, finding a language where (for example) absolutely all words describing a group of people ended with "-ano", that would be tremendously logical - but it would be the a strong suggestion that you're looking at a synthetic language (in this case, Esperanto) - where in English, we get words like that ending in "-ian" (eg christian), but others just with '-an' (eg american) and then others in "-ish" (eg english, spanish). English is a mess precisely because it's a language that's evolved messily. SteveBaker (talk) 22:03, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

¿ "rings do happen naturally and rectangles really don't" ? - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 06:12, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Small point of clarification, gay includes homosexual women and men. Also, some people use terms like bi-man or bi-male to mean a bisexual man, in cases where describing the sex of the person is desirable. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:00, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

"Small point of clarification, gay includes homosexual women and men. " I was assuming that it doenst, since GLBT also includes lesbian. So you would have (if gay means both male and female) Homosexual Human|Homosexual Female Human |Bisexual Human |Transexual Human.201.78.202.254 (talk) 16:48, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

In general parlance, the term 'gay' generally includes women. It doesn't always, it's sometimes only used to refer to men, but usually qualification is offered in cases like that (e.g. gay men). Some women who identify in that way may dislike either or even both terms but I think most who identify in that way don't mind being called either. See e.g. the comments here [5]. Nil Einne (talk) 21:34, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

• Yes, you'd think the team that brought you fuchsia and mauve would have a better term. Gay is positive and economical, Queer is brisk and ironic. LGBT seems to come more from the OCD, ADHD, DMSV-V, ICBM, FUNEX nerdy political and social science wing than the clubbers. μηδείς (talk) 16:08, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

• Note that having some gender-specific words for relationships yet lacking them for other relationships also occurs outside of sexual terms. For example, we have aunts and uncles (gender--specific terms only), cousins (non-gender-specific term only) and siblings/brothers/sisters (both types). StuRat (talk) 17:11, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

It's kind of like how English has no easy noun to mean "nongender-specific boyfriend or girlfriend". Some terms just never happen and there's no real reason. The language just developed like that. 50.43.148.35 (talk) 20:10, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Significant other. StuRat (talk) 13:21, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

But again, the language is a mess because it's evolved that way rather than being designed. I guess a non-gender-specific boy/girlfriend is just a "friend" - but the terms boyfriend and girlfriend have slowly gained more specific meanings so that if I were to tell you that I have many friends, you might think I'm a fairly nice guy - but if I tell you that I have many "girlfriends" - then you're immediately thinking I'm some kind of a philanderer. My wife and I don't agree on whether she's still "my girlfriend" now that we're married. Linguistics are a fluid process - and meanings drift slowly over time.

Quite often you can see this drift happening with extreme rapidity. One that I've been noticing in TV adverts here in the USA is that the word "twice" is being aggressively removed from TV ads and being replaced with the extremely ugly "two times". ("Our dish soap is now two times as effective at removing grease"..."Our dogfood has two times the amount of meat"...and so forth) That's really only happened noticeably over the last 12 months - it's gone from something I heard once and thought was weird and ugly - but it's nearly universal now. I really listen out for it because "two times" really grates on my ears - but "twice" is more or less dead already! If this seems surprising, consider that the word "thrice" (meaning "three times") sounds quaint and old-fashioned and you rarely hear it anymore. It looks like "twice" is going the same way. I can't comprehend why that should be - but it's how language works.

SteveBaker (talk) 22:03, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

• The use of "Lesbian" in contradistinction to gay, originally meant as sex neutral, was a result of intentionally argued gender politics, not spontaneous generation. This is covered endlessly by Christopher Street Magazine. μηδείς (talk) 23:32, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Can I further clarify that the 'T' does not stand specifically for 'transvestite', but simply for 'trans', an umbrella classification which has a lot more to do with such serious matters as gender dysphoria than with the recreational wearing of different clothes. AlexTiefling (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I disagree - most "offical" definitions include the T as "transgender." Regardless, it seems like the term is constantly evolving. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration's (SAMHSA's) current version is LGBTQI2-S - lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, two-spirit. Justin15w (talk) 19:45, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Wow. I'm all for inclusivity and cultural sensitivity and all that, but if it keeps going, they'll have to come up with an abbreviation for that abbreviation. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:39, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

• The LGBTN question almost scuttled the European Union as far back as 1968, when the French Alliance Quère sued Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands for using the LGBTN initials. The matter was finally settled when the Nightclub Faction of the Alliance Quère accepted an undisclosed payment to drop their claim to the initial N and changed their name to the Club Kids. μηδείς (talk) 20:02, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

unlocking

My nokia c2-05 says phone restricted,undo then says enter restrction code i want to know the code — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.246.55.133 (talk) 13:28, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Phone unlocking may not be legal and we wouldn't be able to do it for you. That said, there are phone shops on many high streets with signs in the window saying "Phones Unblocked". I couldn't possibly comment on whether you should try one of these. --Viennese Waltz 14:24, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Our SIM lock article doesn't mention whether unlocking is legal in Zimbabwe (where 77.246.55.133 possibly lives). It's always worth asking the current service provider for the restriction code (if there is a current provider), otherwise try the person who sold you the phone, or a shop as suggested above. Dbfirs 17:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Office favor

Not ref desk material. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:03, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
My lover's not happy with - ahem - bedroom performance and I was thinking of asking a coworker to assist me, to act as a trainer/coach for certain sexual activities to improve my techniques. Is this a bad idea? Is is perhaps even sexual harrassment to act for such a favor? Ent-Req (talk) 13:38, 25 March 2014 (UTC) Wouldn't it be simpler to ask your lover?--Shantavira|feed me 14:14, 25 March 2014 (UTC) Troll. --Viennese Waltz 14:25, 25 March 2014 (UTC) Wikipedia reference desk cannot offer medical advice. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:03, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Anyone who orks cows is more than qualified to help. The Yellow Pages are your friends. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:10, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Reference added for the geek-impaired. – I doubt the YP are helpful here either...

Hatted for the wrong reason IMHO – asking for legal rather than medical advice. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 07:27, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

what is bit coin?

what is Bitcoin? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.18.44.48 (talk) 19:06, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

To read our article on this, type "bitcoin" in the search box at the top of the page. If you need further help with a specific question let us know. μηδείς (talk) 19:15, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

For further info, check the article titled Scam. Or Google "bitcoin scam" and you will see plenty of entries. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:35, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I've read the article, and I'm not much closer to being able to answer this question than I was after I read it six months ago. All I know for sure is I probably shouldn't touch it. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:31, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

That's a myth, and neither will you grow hair on your palms, Inedible. μηδείς (talk) 02:07, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Let's shoot for a reasonable (and very much simplified!) answer here.

Bitcoin is intended to be a currency - money - like dollar bills. So first we need to understand what a dollar bill is.

A dollar bill is a piece of paper. They cost just a few cents to print - so its inherent worth is almost zero. It has value only because people choose to agree that a dollar bill represents the promise that other people will also treat it as an item of value - this is supposedly acceptable because there is a large pile of gold in Fort Knox, and the government promises that there is enough there should anyone want their paper money turned into gold (that's not true anymore - but it's the idea). There is also a requirement that it's not too easy to make one yourself by forgery. (In the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy story, a bunch of people decide to use leaves as currency - which fails for rather obvious reasons!)

OK - so why do you need the piece of paper? Clearly you don't because your net worth is probably just a set of numbers in your banker's computer someplace - and we can buy and sell things using those numbers via credit card companies. I have gone for almost two years now without having a single dollar bill in my wallet...I simply don't need cash anymore. So the dollar bills are now more imaginary than real. We're actually doing all of our buying and selling by telling our banks and credit card companies to move numbers from one place in their computers to another.

Bitcoin actually, formally. replaces the piece of paper with a number...a long string of digits...and also dispenses with Fort Knox. These special bitcoin numbers are chosen as being hard to calculate because they have to have some very special set of mathematical properties. It takes WEEKS for even a very sophisticated computer to calculate a new bitcoin number - but it's very, very easy for a computer to check that some particular number really is a bitcoin and not something someone just typed in at random! You buy things by giving someone the number - possibly via email or something - and they accept it as money, because that's what bitcoin enthusiasts choose to do. Each time you 'spend' your bitcoin, a new number is generated which is your bitcoin number - along with the encrypted number of the person you gave it to. Your original number no longer works as money without the number belonging to that other person being attached to it. Each time the bitcoin is transferred, the number gets bigger - this is called "The transaction chain" and it's a way to ensure that the same bitcoin isn't spent more than once. There is a mechanism to allow you to spend a small fraction of a bitcoin if that's what you need...it's complicated!

Evidently there is lots of complicated computer cryptography involved here - which neither you nor I will ever fully understand...but the upshot is that bitcoins really do work, just like "real" money - and solutions to all of the obvious problems you might imagine you'd have with them have been found.

So - why would anyone trust these bunches of numbers as "money"? Well, that's a very good question - but we don't have to worry too much about it because enough people clearly DO accept them for it to be useful. You can buy and sell things with bitcoin fairly easily - and there are organizations who will accept your bitcoin numbers and give you back actual dollar bills - and you can give them dollar bills and they'll give you back a pile of bitcoins. The value of a bitcoin fluctuates up and down against the dollar just like the UK pound or the yen or the euro. Recently, the exchange rate has been about $400 to $600 equals ONE bitcoin!

Sadly, there have been some difficulties with this new currency - which is a problem because it can make people lose confidence in the system, just as it would be a problem if confidence in some other currency were to change - or if Visa or Mastercard were to have problems. This affects the exchange rate - which fluctuates rather wildly - and also makes some people decide not to accept bitcoin anymore.

You might ask why you should care about bitcoin....why not just use dollars instead? Well, if you are really using actual *paper* dollar bills to buy things - and if your employer pays you in actual paper dollar bills - and if you trust that the US economy isn't about to collapse overnight - then you probably don't care. But if you buy and sell things online - or do international transactions a lot (or if you're a drug dealer or money launderer!) then it becomes a big deal. If I try to buy something from you online, using dollars, then I have to use some kind of agency to do the transaction...my credit card company, or maybe PayPal. But those guys charge either the buyer or the seller (or sometimes both!) for the privilege of transferring the money. Visa and Mastercard charge a few percent off the top of every transaction. If I earn (and spend) $50,000 in a year, most of it in the form of electronic transactions, then I'm probably paying between $1,000 and $4,000 a year just to have my money moved around! Usually, you don't see that cost because the people you're buying stuff from are paying it...but the cost of goods these days is inflated by a couple of percent so that sellers can recoup that credit fee...so you're paying more for goods because of the credit card and debit card transaction fees.

Another reason to use bitcoin rather than dollars is that it's not related to any government and there is no central controlling agency. So if you mistrust governments - then maybe bitcoin is for you! If you live in someplace with a very unstable government, then perhaps bitcoin is a more stable currency than your local currency.

If you use bitcoin, then you can (theoretically) transfer money to other people at ZERO cost! You give them your bitcoin numbers directly. In practice, there is still a small fee *if* you want your transactions to be handled quickly - which goes to some people who handle the bitcoin production in the first place...but it's very small, and you can avoid it if you're not in a hurry.

If you have some bitcoin, you can spend it at an increasing number of places. One fairly famous one is Overstock.com - who'll sell you any of a bazillion different products and let you pay for it with bitcoin. There are even a few employers who will pay their employees in bitcoin.

There are a couple of other "cryptocurrencies" like bitcoin - one is called 'litecoin' and another is 'dogecoin'. Both of those are relative newcomers to the field - and neither of them has the widespread acceptance that bitcoin has developed. However, it's fairly easy to exchange those two currencies with bitcoin as well as dollars - so you can choose.

Personally, I would not recommend that you sink your dollars (pounds, euros, yen, etc) into bitcoin without carefully researching the consequences. It's perfectly possible for the currency to drop in value spectacularly overnight - or to grow to ten times it's present value over a year...both of those things have happened before! Owning bitcoin is like speculating on the stock market...and investing in particularly high-risk stock.

I hope this helps...I'm sure I have made some minor errors here - which I'm sure others will come along and clean up for us.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:26, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

You've made a lot of technical errors. It's not actually that complicated and I wish you would learn more about it before you try to "teach" other people.

Bitcoins are not identified by numbers, hard to find or otherwise. The computationally expensive part of Bitcoin is the proof-of-work system that's used to limit any single entity's control of the transaction database. This computation consumes a real-world resource, electricity, and the people who do it are compensated in bitcoin. Though this is called "mining", the bitcoin is not found by the computation; it's awarded by agreement of all Bitcoin users. This reward is automatically halved roughly once every four years, and will eventually go away entirely. The proof of work will still be necessary at that point, but people will have to explicitly pay for it in transaction fees. It's been estimated that the current electrical costs of the miners are on the order of $100,000 per day, or about $1 per transaction. The computational cost auto-adjusts based on the computational power being used, so that real cost could decrease if people lose interest in mining, but it can't go too low or else Bitcoin risks a takeover by someone willing to suddenly invest a lot of computational power.

Once you have a trusted database (which could be maintained by a single trusted party, avoiding the electrical costs, except that Bitcoin proponents don't trust anyone), it's easy to build a digital currency system on top of it. You have 1 bitcoin if there's a record in the database of someone transferring 1 bitcoin to you and no record of your having transferred it to someone else yet. "You" are identified by a public key (or the hash of one), and you prove your identity with a digital signature.

"Bitcoin [...] replaces the piece of paper with a number [...] chosen as being hard to calculate" – no, see above. "You buy things by giving someone the number" – no. The only "number" you could give them would be your private key. That would allow them to spend your bitcoin, but you could still spend it too. The recipient would have to immediately transfer the bitcoin to a new address to be sure it was safe. The way it actually works is that the recipient gives you their address (derived from their public key) and you initiate the transfer. You don't give your private key or any other number to anybody. "my credit card company, or [...] PayPal [...] charge [...] for the privilege of transferring the money" – as I said, Bitcoin transactions have a real cost (currently quite large) that is paid by Bitcoin users either collectively through block-mining awards, or individually through transaction fees. Also, credit card fees pay for fraud protection among other things, while Bitcoin fees pay for waste heat. "There is a mechanism to allow you to spend a small fraction of a bitcoin if that's what you need...it's complicated!" – it's not complicated. Transactions are simply permitted to quote fractions of a bitcoin. -- BenRG (talk) 19:16, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you BenRG for your good exposition, free of patronising assumptions like "complicated computer cryptography involved here - which neither you nor I will ever fully understand". There are more than just "a couple of" of alternative cryptocurrencies; nine are counted as active in the table at Altcoin, which suggests that competitors together represent 30% as much capital as Bitcoin. The way a Bitcoin manifests is by the sequence of time-stamped transactions it has undergone, recorded securely in the "blockchain" which is maintained (like Wikipedia) by a network of volunteers. Anyone can look at the blockchain; right now it is approaching its 300000th block, each block contains multiple transactions and successive hash codes validate its history all the way back to the first "genesis" block "transaction" by Satoshi Nakamoto - whoever he/she was - in 2009. See Bitcoin network. When mentioning Litecoin, be clear that instead of the double-SHA256 hash codes used by the Bitcoin protocol for which a few miners have invested in single-purpose high speed equipment, Litecoin uses a complex memory-intensive scrypt algorithm which encourages broader participation. In either case, mining is competitive activity that is rewarded (unlike Wikipedia) in coin, this being an incentive to miners for maintaining the network. A guide to what the nominally "free" Bitcoin transactions actually cost is found by Googling whoever is your local Bitcoin trader and noting his buy-sell spread for fiat currency. I have seen it around 4%; if dealing then select your trader with care because as last month's closure demonstrated, the risk is greatest at this point. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 22:25, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I fail to see how mutual assumption of ignorance is patronising (sic). Especially when the OP doesn't know what bitcoin is and the topic at hand is computer crypography. It was honestly more patronising to act like Steve was addressing you when you haven't even participated in the conversation yet. 50.43.148.35 (talk) 23:42, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Bugs has it right. As Steve says - "Bitcoin is intended to be a currency - money - like dollar bills." But even if the intention was that, wishing doesn't make things so, and the weightiest voices have ruled or appear to be about to rule that Bitcoin is not currency. China Rumored to be Shutting Down Bitcoin Sites; Why IRS Ruling that Bitcoin is Property is Fatal to Its Use in Commerce in the US and As Predicted, IRS Deems Bitcoin to be Property, Limiting Its Usefulness in Commercial Transactions . The IRS has ruled that bitcoin is property, not currency. This makes it subject to capital gains taxation and thus "unworkable as a currency" Bitcoin tax ruling. Even more, the problem is what is imho the completely backwards reasoning often given by bitcoin supporters: As Steve summarizes - a "reason to use bitcoin rather than dollars is that it's not related to any government and there is no central controlling agency." Unlike dollars, which are backed by more than pure belief, by a real need to make payments to the US government with dollars, there is no powerful central controlling agency demanding bitcoins, no genuine demand based on anything more than the Greater fool theory. This does not argue for bitcoin as a store of value.John Z (talk) 02:35, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

What's a dollar worth now? 84.209.89.214 (talk) 17:14, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Rebuilding society after EMP

Hi, I was wondering, if a nuclear EMP were to destroy most of electric infrastructure on Earth, how much time would be necessary to rebuild the technology to, for example, 1990s levels — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.141.86.136 (talk) 19:12, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Obviously we can't make such projections, you'd pay millions to a think tank to get a good answer. This novel One Second After gives a concrete projection of the consequences. μηδείς (talk) 19:18, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

You'd pay millions to a think tank for an answer. They're about as qualified as us or authors, as far as untested waters go. I'll e-mail anyone my answer for $20, unless that's unethical. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:10, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Should we assume you're referring to Nuclear electromagnetic pulse? Don't rule out the possibility that, with a chance to start over, the world's people might decide to take a different approach. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:38, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

After 99.99% of them die in Holodomor or the troubles or the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution? Starvation isn't fun. The German word for to die is Sterben which resulted from the 30 Years' War, in which there was nothing deadlier than mere chaos. μηδείς (talk) 23:28, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Just so that no one gets the wrong impression from Medeis's little rant: The German word sterben has nothing to do with the Thirty Years' War. It's the English word starve that has specialized in meaning to denote dying by inanition. Old English steorfan simply meant "to die" as well, and none of the Anglo-Saxons had experienced that particular conflict. Deor (talk) 01:22, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, my fault. War is just fun, fun, fun. Ask the Cambodians, Ugandans, Bosnians. μηδείς (talk) 02:48, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

See Poe's law. It isn't, Medeis, that you are having fun. It's that you often give sarcastic, snide, or misleading answers to questions, and it's hard to tell the difference between your facetious answers and genuine response to the question. While those of us that know and love you recognize when you are doing so, many others do not. Thus, when you answer the question as you did above, it looks as though your 30 years war answer is "straight", which it clearly is not. --Jayron32 10:56, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Remind me why we tolerate this behaviour, again? AlexTiefling (talk) 23:17, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I meant it more as a similar geographic distribution of e.g. houses with electricity, running water, amount of cell phones per person etc. Though they would probably have more cell phones than we did in 90s 78.1.185.54 (talk) 18:53, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

...which touches another topic: cell phones running on African children's blood. Only a side topic, though. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 07:58, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I understand that an EMP could destroy or damage electrical equipment within its field of effect, a certain geographic area. but how would it destroy all electrical equipment in the world? That would seem to call for lots of explosions worldwide. Would the US , China, or the Russkies deliberately destroy their own electrical equipment? It seems unlikely that there would be a global EMP war with tit-fot-tat EMPs without it escalating to actual nuclear strikes on industrial, military and population targets. If one industrial country were left largely unaffected, they would have quite a boom time supplying new equipment and parts. In any event, a generator or motor, transformer or circuit breaker which had damaged insulation and controls could likely be rewound or repaired and placed back in operation. Equipment which was stored without being connected in a circuit would be less effected. You would not be starting from the stone age. Many parts would be usable. A stored spool of wire might still have continuity and effective insulation, and the iron cores of electromagnetic equipment might be fine. Poles, towers, high voltage conductors, bus bars and insulators in the power grid might still be usable even if they flashed over from a momentary overvoltage,although the related article mentions insulators being damaged in some cases, and lines falling, It does not say every conductor and insulator was destroyed. Integrated circuits might be destroyed. Some systems in industry and military were "hardened" to reduce susceptibility to EMP, with surge suppressors and optoisolation. Equipment stored in a steel cabinet in a storeroom might be sufficiently shielded to survive. I've read a couple of books where unexplained extraterrestrial technology or sheer magic eliminates our present technology, and the complete elimination of electrical technology by EMP smacks of this. That said, it would not take but a small portion of control circuitry, generators, underground transmission cables and transformers being fried to cause a widespread and prolonged blackout, and even a weeks or months long urban blackout or region-wide would create chaos and misery. The article on the "One second after" book speaks of 90% of the US population dying in one year without electricity, which seems plausible, or 80% in one small town where there was some effective leadership, and 50% in midwestern farming areas. The Amish would be able to feed themselves and others, but might not cope well with marauders. The book apparently says people will die without air conditioning, which sounds funny to one who grew up in a hot climate without it. Looking the other way, life did not change that dramatically in a positive way in the decade after urban and rural areas first got electric distribution, and in rural areas in my grandparents' time many lived without electricity. Edison (talk) 17:21, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed answer :) Yeah, I agree now that a NEMP wouldn't quite destroy a lot of technology obviously, so it would be definitely possible to rebuild the society to its today's levels of technology if people still want to do it, I was just wondering how long could it take. 90% of people dying is however extremely far-fetched IMO. Consider places like Sarajevo during the 90s war or Grozny a few years ago; most people lived without access to electricity, clean water and heating (even though these are colder climates than the average for USA for example, especially Chechnya), and yet there were much fewer casualties. Also massive LOL at people dying without A/C of course, accomodation to a new climate lasts only a month at most (I can't find the article, but I read it on Wikipedia a few weeks ago), and I've been living in >35°C during summer and under -10°C during winter all my life with only central heating. 78.1.185.54 (talk) 18:53, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

You are not addressing the fact that a large portion of Americans don't even know how to cook, let alone have wells or livestock or even gardens in their yard. People in areas like Chechnya and Bosnia during there wars had already been living at 1900 levels. They knew of, but did not depend on automobiles, telephones, electricity, etc. Most of the coastal US is about 2-3 days away from being without food, and the number of americans who wouldn't even know how to clean a fish or bake a cake is amazing. Once any good propportion of the population is starving, you will have theft turning to riots turning to civil war. Over the winter, survivors will be burning down infrastructure like power poles for heat. There's simply no provision for replacing the powerlines and transformers and such that would be destroyed by an EMP attack. I recommend the same book above for details. It also references congressional reports. μηδείς (talk) 19:19, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I can't speak for Chechnya but I'm from Croatia and have relatives in Bosnia. I can assure you, even before 1990s nobody there lived at 1900 levels. Arguably, during ex-Yugoslavia there were several times fewer automobiles than today, but practically everyone had electricity and telephones except in very small villages. I can definitely believe that fewer Americans know how to cook though, although these days I think the % of those who can cook over here isn't great either. If I had to estimate, I'd say that living standards of ex-YU during communism were perhaps 30 years behind the U.S., FWIW. 78.1.185.54 (talk) 21:02, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

On another thought, you definitely bring up a valid point about livestock. I wonder what proportion of American meat and vegetables comes from small farms compared to Europe. 78.1.185.54 (talk) 21:07, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

"Levels" might not be the best word. But closer to wells and iceboxes than hot-tubs and ipads? How many Croatians during the last war were on lipitor, valium, and insulin? μηδείς (talk) 22:28, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Probably a similar proportion as Americans. And yes, iPads are pretty ubiquituous nowadays. As for wells and iceboxes, I wouldn't know, I haven't seen a well my entire life except for TV ;) 78.1.185.54 (talk) 23:12, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

A hot tub may be a good source of emergency drinking water and small electronics like iPads that are not plugged in could survive. None of the meds mentioned cause death if withdrawn in most cases and rates of type 2 diabetes have been known drop dramatically in wartime due food shortage. Most of the food we buy is not refrigerated. The big factors will be clean water food and fuel. Our article on Nuclear electromagnetic pulse says many, if not most, motor vehicles will survive. Roads and railway track will be unaffected, though traffic lights and signaling systems could be badly damaged. How well society will organize to overcome the obstacles is hard to predict, Hurricane Sandy was handled better than Katrina, though most people survived both. EMP effects would be worse some respects, but not so much in others. --agr (talk) 23:19, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

God help those poor souls with only their parents' hot tub to drink. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:42, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

But the roads will still be flat, and iPads will be a good source of your daily allowance of lithium. μηδείς (talk) 02:05, 27 March 2014 (UTC)