Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 May 31

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May 31

Why is there no human mating season?

Why is there no human mating season? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Firstonetotalk (talk • contribs) 10:56, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Being able to breed all year round seems like an obviously better way to maximize the number of offspring. The more litters you can have in a year, the faster your population can grow. So it's easy to see why it's a good idea for humans. So, perhaps a better way to understand this question to turn it around and ask "Why do so many non-human species have a seasonal mating pattern?"...and we have an article about that: Seasonal breeder.

Mostly, the reason for seasonal breeding is so that the young are born at a time when a suitable food supply is available. In many species, the timing of mating is carefully optimised so that the young appear exactly when some food item becomes available.

Some animals, such as the Periodical cicadas do it for the opposite reason - to NOT have offspring at a time when predators are there to eat them. These animals take this to an extreme by only breeding once every 13 or 17 years. This strategy works by starving out their predators...no species can easily evolve to survive by eating 17 year cicadas because they'd have to go for 16 years and 10 months at a time with no food!

In many other species (eg the Black widow spider or the Crematogaster ants), the effort of producing young is fatal to one or both of the parents - so the breeding season is limited to the amount of time it takes a newborn of the species to get to breeding age. In the case of Crematogaster, the male and female ants grow wings, engage in a nuptual flight and then the males die and the female loses her wings forever.

Migratory animals also have to time their breeding to fit in with their migration patterns. The young have to be sufficiently strong to endure the migration - and that ties the breeding period to the appropriate time for migration - which may be related to weather patterns, winds, tides and so forth.

That said, humans do have a set of specific times when mating is effective in producing offspring - that being once each month when our females are fertile. But because we're a "pair-bonding" species, it's valuable for us to have sex between the effective mating periods in order to form and maintain those social bonds.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:13, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Modern humans in most parts of the world are now able to have a supply of food available year round, but this wasn't always the case. However, humans take so long to grow up that, unlike many other species, we can't do most of or growing during one season, so there's not much point in timing births to hit during a time-of-plenty. StuRat (talk) 20:17, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

vegetable

is it true that in north america, pizza is considered a vegetable because it has tomato ketchup on it? approximately how many full tomatoes in the form of ketchup would there be on an average pizza? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coolist404 (talk • contribs) 12:14, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't say that everyone in the USA thinks that! The pressure to come up with this crazy idea is that in some parts of the USA there is legislation requiring that children who have school lunches are provided with at least one serving of vegetables with each meal. Labelling a pizza (or even a serving of ketchup) as "A vegetable" allows schools to occasionally serve food that kids will actually eat - despite the legislation. Very recently, there was a study about the effectiveness of the law - and one finding was that although every child would duly have to pick a serving of beans or peas or something with their meal - nobody was checking to ensure that they were actually being eaten. Hence the law was producing enormous amounts of wastage of food...which might go some way to explain why this fairly crazy claim that the tomato sauce on a pizza is a "serving of vegetables".

FWIW, I'd heard the claim that a serving of ketchup was claimed by some schools in the UK to be a "vegetable serving" for much the same reasons. So it's not just the handful of crazy US school districts that thought this up!

But please don't go away with the idea that all Americans think that Pizza is a vegetable - I'm fairly sure that a large percentage know that pizza is not remotely a healthy food - and nearly everyone laughs at the idea of considering it to be a "vegetable portion". This is a stupid artifact of a poorly thought out law.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:22, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

See Ketchup as a vegetable, in particular the "Similar efforts" section. Graham87 14:26, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

The claim comes down to the fact that government bureaucracies will tend to define what a "serving" is and what a "vegetable" is. We can reasonably define a vegetable (ignoring the edge cases, things like cucumbers and tomatoes which are botanically fruits, but which we all agree are culinary vegetables) and we can then define what a "serving" is. Let's say we agree that 30 grams is a reasonable serving size for a child (I have no idea if it is or it isn't. But lets just say that it is, for our argument). Now, if a piece of pizza contains 30 grams of an actual tomato as an ingredient, why wouldn't it contain a serving of vegetables? If I added 30 grams of tomatoes to a salad, that counts, but it doesn't in pizza? Now, this exercise may display the folly in this thinking (the idea that one can ignore the unhealthy portions of a meal merely because it happens to contain some randomly healthy ingredient), but it isn't dishonest or lying in any way. --Jayron32 15:24, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Indeed! But aside from the actual weight of vegetable matter on the plate, the larger problem is the way the the vegetables are prepared. The more heavily processed it is, the less value it has in terms of being "A Serving Of Vegetables" with it's associated health benefits. The tomato paste in a typical pizza is incredibly heavily processed...I'd be very surprised if the nutritional value of an actual tomato was remotely present in a slice of pizza. Sadly, these laws are rushed in by politicians who are more interested in "Being Seen To Do Something" than actually making the world a better place. Passing a dumb law that says that something that a certain weight of what was once a vegetable has to be placed on the plate of every child in the nation - is quite easy for them to do. Figuring out how to intelligently persuade our children to make healthier food choices and eat a healthy mix of foods is really, really hard. Hence, we get stupid laws with great gaping loopholes that result in kids STILL eating pizza whenever they can get away with it - but also wasting our money by tossing their peas and beans, carrots, broccoli and cabbage straight from cook-pot to garbage bucket. If that's what the majority of them are doing (as a recent survey suggests) - then we might as well allow pizza as a loophole just to save that horrifying waste. SteveBaker (talk) 16:42, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Do you have a source for "tomato paste in a typical pizza is incredibly heavily processed"? I make my pizza tomatoes two ways: either cook it to reduce moisture, or even easier, just drain chopped tomatoes in a sieve. What more processing is required? I'm also skeptical about "pizza is unhealthy" - I don't think the pizza I make is any less healthy than, say, soup I make. Just understand what you put in it. 88.112.50.121 (talk) 18:53, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, home-made pizza could be pretty good - I'm thinking of the stuff they are likely to serve in a school lunch line. SteveBaker (talk) 19:43, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

So the cooks go "Monday is casserole, get some healthy ingredients. Tuesday, soup, healthy, check. Wednesday is pizza - ha! Get the lard bucket and extra salt! And process (whatever that means) the snot out of those tomatoes!" Sure it is possible to have a kitchen that ignores health concerns, but why would a flat bread with toppings be the one particular evil in that kitchen? 88.112.50.121 (talk) 20:21, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

While pretty much any food can be made healthier or less healthy, some an inherently healthier than others. Pizza almost has to have cheese, for example, and that's unhealthy. It also has many ingredients which tend to have salt added, like the crust, cheese, sauce, and many toppings. So, you really do have to make an effort to make it healthy. A greens salad, on the other hand, is rather healthy to begin with, and you need to go out of your way to make it unhealthy, say by putting fried chicken on top of it. StuRat (talk) 20:33, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Even if we accept the implied absolute unhealthiness of cheese, a quick web search finds substitutes. Or just don't put so much of it it there! Cow's milk has calcium, gotta love that for my bones. I feel no more fear of salt in pizza than in a casserole or a pasta sauce (made with that mystical "processed" tomato again). A green salad does not contain essential amino acids; eating only green salads will eventually kill you. It's all more complex than "flat bread with toppings is processed (still wondering what that word means) and thus unhealthy".

Yeah, there are popular narratives about nutrition. Everyone has knowledge gained from unexplainable sources about it, even more than about economics. Much of it is contradictory - get a paleo diet guy and a lacto-vegetarian in a room and ask them to discuss cheese - ka-BOOM! 88.112.50.121 (talk) 00:23, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Here's an example of how not to do pizza: [1]. That one has over half your daily sodium and saturated fat allowance in one serving, and nobody eats just one serving. Processed food contains all sorts of additives to simulate healthy food. In the case of pizza sauce, they might use unripe tomatoes, then add artificial coloring to make it red, add some acid to make it tart, add some sugar to make it seem ripe, add some preservatives to keep it from rotting, etc. Processed cheese is even worse, and often doesn't meet the legal requirements to be called cheese, since no cow is involved in the process. So, while pizza can be healthy, just declaring all pizza to be automatically healthy because it contains tomato sauce is not in the interest of the children who eat it. Instead, the schools must do the work to actually make sure the pizza is really good for the kids. As for salads, you can add some beans, nuts, and seeds to a salad to make it more complete, but my favorite is a steamed salmon fillet on top. StuRat (talk) 04:33, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

You should probably read the articles you link to lest they show your ignorance. I'll take the rest of your comments here at the same value. Rmhermen (talk) 20:24, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, pizza can be healthy, but the typical American pizza is far from healthy, with too much sodium, too many sugars, carbohydrates, calories, fat, saturated fat, and possibly trans fats, with minimal fiber, vitamins, and minerals. The classic pepperoni pizza is one of the worst, and there are even crazy pizzas that eliminate the tomato sauce and substitute something far less healthy, like alfredo sauce. Now, to make it healthy, it should have a thin multi-grain crust, minimal cheese, keep the tomato sauce but make it low salt, and put mushrooms and lots of veggies on it, avoiding heavily-salted veggies like olives and hot peppers. If you must have meat on it, avoid heavily salted and fatty meats like pepperoni, ham, hamburger, bacon, and sausage, and add grilled chicken, instead. Pineapple works, too. StuRat (talk) 19:51, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

At that point, what do you add to it to make it taste good, or at least to taste like pizza? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:26, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Grilled chicken and pineapple sounds good to me. StuRat (talk) 04:39, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

American pizza has pizza sauce on it - never catsup. 75.41.109.190 (talk) 16:44, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

According to those articles, the main difference is which ingredients are added to the basic tomato sauce. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:28, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I actually think the law requiring them to serve something healthy is a good one, and the attempt to weaken it is not in the interest of the kids. When I was in school I was appalled at the greasy junk food they served, like tater tots. I agree that, given the choice, most kids will choose junk food over healthy food. Well, don't give them the choice. Remove all junk food from the cafeteria menu, and remove all junk food vending machines. If the kids bring in junk food, at their own expense, that's between them and their parents, but schools should not be encouraging unhealthy eating. A kid who is hungry enough will eat healthy food, and may even grow to like it. StuRat (talk) 19:57, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

True - but a healthy diet is a mix of different food types. If the cafeteria offers that mix - then kids can get away with eating just the individual items that they like and dumping the ones they don't. The only way to fix that is to somehow force-feed with a Victorian punishment ethic ("You don't leave the table until the plate is clean!" - or "If you don't finish everything today, you get the left-overs back tomorrow") - or maybe you feed them nothing but Soylent (not Soylent Green!) where all of the ingredients are inextricably blended. In the end, the best you can do is offer a balanced diet and educate them to choose to consume a balanced diet. Education is, after all, what schools are supposed to be all about. The unfortunate part of school lunch programs is that many parents use the excuse that the kid is supposedly getting a good, balanced lunch to dodge the issue of feeding them properly at home.

Hmmm - maybe the answer is: Take a serving of vegetables and eat it all - or you get Soylent for the next three days! Either way, the kid gets a healthy diet!

SteveBaker (talk) 14:13, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

For American kids, I don't think you need to worry that they might not get enough fat, salt, sugar, and cholesterol in their diet if not provided in school lunches, they will get plenty of that at home. So, you can focus on only providing healthy foods at lunch, like salads with nuts, and skim white milk to drink, and let them pig-out elsewhere. StuRat (talk) 18:50, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

City of London

How many people have been murdered in the City of London since 1991? AppleSparkleDash (talk) 15:56, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

To be completely clear: You're asking about the City of London which is a tiny 1.1 square mile section of the place most people call "London" - which covers about 600 square miles. I presume you're aware of that distinction! It's mostly government buildings, parks and such - very few people live there. (About 7,000).

I found this which lists the names of all 500 people murdered in Greater London since 2006...so VERY roughly, 500 people in 8 years is 62.5 per year - so perhaps around 1,500 since 1991. It seems though that the murder rate has been steadily falling, and dropped abruptly by about 20% in the last few years - so I'd imagine that this is an under-estimate and mayb 2,000 would be closer to the mark.

But that same article lists no murders at all in the square mile of the city itself - and since it has a population of just 7,000 people and it's full of high-security areas with a ton of cameras and police presence - that shouldn't be surprising.

Looking at it another way, the murder rate in Greater London in 2012 was 12.5 deaths per million people - so we would expect to see a little over one murder per decade in the City itself. On that basis, the answer I'd expect would be just one or two people...and with the additional security of the area, probably zero. Once the numbers get that small though - statistical approaches break down. It would only take one major incident with a terrorist killing a handful of people to push that number through the roof.

SteveBaker (talk) 16:31, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

The City of London is mostly office blocks belonging to banks and law firms, rather than a seat of government. The British government is centred on the City of Westminster, another district of London roughly a mile back up the River Thames. Both are officially cities in their own right, despite being small areas of (greater) London.

Yup - statistics suggest that numbers would be very small this [2] seems to suggest that there have been no murders at all since 2006 (note that the City of London is in the drop-down list, suggesting that data hasn't simply been omitted). It should be noted though that terrorist attacks have occurred - the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing caused one fatality, and the bomb on the underground train between Edgware Road Aldgate and Liverpool Street during the 7 July 2005 London bombings killed seven people (other fatalities were outside the City). I can't think of any further incidents which took place within the City itself. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:47, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Agreed - those terrorist attacks are the only murders I can recall in the City for many years. There have of course been other unlawful deaths, but no other murders. AlexTiefling (talk) 21:52, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

The official statistics are here for 1990 to 2001/02 and here for 2002/03 to 2012/13. From which it appears that the number of homicides recorded in the City of London Police Force (identical with the City of London) was 3 in 1992, 1 in 1993, 1 in 1995, 2 in 1997, 1 in 2002/03, 1 in 2003/04, 2 in 2005/06, 1 in 2006/07, 1 in 2007/08, 2 in 2009/10, 1 in 2011/12 and 1 in 2012/13. Note that there is a discontinuity with data caused by the National Crime Recording Standard being introduced in 2002/03, although unlikely to have had much impact here. So 17 in total. Not all of those may have resulted in a conviction for murder due to various legal defences. Sam Blacketer (talk) 23:27, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

English law makes a distinction between manslaughter and murder, which may account for some of the discrepancy. It seems odd that the 2007 bombing victims aren't included though. The table Blacketer links also includes the British Transport Police, who might possibly have had jurisdiction over the killings, but the data doesn't seem to include them there either. I wonder whether the killings were all included in the Metropolitan Police figures? AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:55, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Were the 2007 bombings actually within the City of London though? And even if they were, did all the victims die on the spot, or in hospitals that aren't inside the City of London boundaries, so wouldn't be counted anyway? --TammyMoet (talk) 09:18, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Aldgate tube station is within the City (just), but it may be that terrorist killings are listed separately from murders. Alansplodge (talk) 12:02, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm...are murders recorded as at the place where the incident happens - or at the place where the victim actually dies? If the latter, then the numbers would be horribly skewed. It's also possible that the police record it one way and some other kind of official statistic list it the other way. I was trying to find which Accident & Emergency hospitals are actually within the boundaries of the City of London - but it's kinda difficult because all of the lists out there tell you where to go for those services if you are within the City boundaries...not which hospitals are within the square mile. If there are no actual A&E centers in the square mile, and the place of record for a murder is the place where the person is officially declared dead - then that might account for all sorts of statistical oddities. SteveBaker (talk) 13:52, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

St Bartholomew's Hospital no longer has an accident and emergency department, it's now at the Royal London Hospital in Tower Hamlets. I can't see the point of compiling stats by which hospital people die in - it wouldn't tell you anything useful. Although as you say above, only about 7,000 people live there, about 300,000 more populate it during the day and the place is still lively late into the night. Thus it is temporarily bigger than Newcastle upon Tyne every working day. Alansplodge (talk) 17:46, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree that compiling murder stats by place-of-death isn't such a useful statistic- but I could believe that someone trying to figure out how many murders there were might go through death certificate records which record the place where the person was officially declared dead, not the place where the crime happened (heck, in some cases, they may not even know where the crime happened if the body was moved afterwards). I don't know, I'm just pointing out the possibility that this might seriously skew the numbers when we're talking about such a tiny area as 1.2 square miles with no A&E hospitals - and thereby explain the slightly surprising low murder rate. SteveBaker (talk) 13:32, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

The City is a surprisingly law abiding place. I recall that during the 1990s when much of London was plagued by a wave of street crime, a shoe shop in Fenchurch Street used to leave a collection box for the Poppy Appeal on a chair outside on the pavement. Alansplodge (talk) 19:11, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps it's not so law abiding if you consider laws about finance and fraud...?92.26.130.57 (talk) 10:13, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Well maybe. But it's by several magnitudes the largest financial centre in Europe and by comparison with some other financial markets, a reasonably honourable place (in my upinion). Alansplodge (talk) 12:14, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Trams

The article says Tramlink cost "£98m" for 39 stations, 30 trams, and 17 miles of line. Meanwhile, Edinburgh Trams with only 16 stations, 17 trams, and 8 miles of line "is expected to top £1 billion". Is there a reason for the vast difference in price? 186.88.87.143 (talk) 22:21, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Well the article you linked to, right in the WP:LEDE (and also in the article) says the cost is only $1 billion after interest. It's a bit unclear how much it was before interest but [3] suggest £776 million. That's still a lot more but not quite the over 10 to 1 your initial figures suggest. The £98 million is evidentally the purchase price of the completed system from the owner Tramtrack Croydon Limited a Private Finance Initiative which would likely be related much more to the worth of the system rather than the construction costs (and the construction was about 10 years earlier anyway) and particularly for a highly regulated public transport system there may be limited connection between the two. Per the articles, it sounds like the Edinburgh system was in a much more congested and busier area and was plagued with funding and political difficulties, which would increase costs. Nil Einne (talk) 23:45, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Japanese culture

Why is enjoying sex considered shameful in Japanese culture? イトになるこ (talk) 22:34, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Who says it is? 84.209.89.214 (talk) 23:26, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

If that were true, there wouldn't be any more Japanese. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:24, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

It is true, see Herbivore men. 41.46.232.131 (talk) 11:33, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

That's a subculture, not "Japanese culture" overall. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:58, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Germany and Japan have dealt differently with their wartime past. One nation legislated genocide-denial as a crime, while the other resorts to whitewashing such irrefutable atrocities as the "comfort women" - Kalliope Lee, The Desperate Cover-Up of a Shame Culture. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 12:40, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

The relevance to the question at hand is tenuous. —Tamfang (talk) 21:04, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Mousy girls

Is there a specific word for an attraction to women who have mouse/rat-like faces? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AnnaKendrickFan999 (talk • contribs) 23:49, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Don't think so. Society has a way of categorizing women into categories such a attractive, beautiful, pretty etc. But a mousy girl is someone you are interested in because of her personality. Men stop sort, at trying describe this je ne sais quoi so it comes out as simply Mousy Girl. Don't think that the etymology has anything to do with rodents.--Aspro (talk) 00:59, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

The term "mousy" is usually about personality. I can't think of anyone whose face I could describe as mouse-like. Perhaps the OP has an example? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:30, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I've heard of "mousy hair", which is grayish brown. StuRat (talk) 04:05, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Note that the OP is yet another blocked sock. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:32, 1 June 2014 (UTC)