Miscellaneous desk
< August 14	<< Jul \| August \| Sep >>	Current desk >

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

August 15

Why does the Man in the Yellow Hat own two houses?

If you're a Curious George fan, you might remember that the Man in the Yellow Hat owns two houses: a cottage in the countryside and an apartment in the city. I'm not sure how it's practical to own two properties when they're a considerable distance apart and you have to pay a hefty sum for said properties. TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 04:39, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Owning two (or more) houses is not at all unusual for those who can afford it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:21, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, see second home for examples. Alansplodge (talk) 10:48, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Air conditioning didn't become widespread until the 1960s. Prior to that time, people who could afford it would escape the summer heat in the city and leave for cooler environs if they could. While it's true that the countryside could often be warmer than the city in some places, I think that if it was at a slightly higher elevation, the air would be cooler. I suppose that if the country house was in a valley, it could be a problem. My grandparents didn't get AC in their city house until the 1950s, I believe. Viriditas (talk) 21:20, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just remembered something else that I discovered while researching the California Coastal Trail. Many people here probably already know this, but up until the 20th century, Americans didn't really travel all that far from home in terms of distance to escape the summer heat. For example, early tourism in California, from around 1880-1914, generally involved people traveling less than 50 miles to go on vacation from their local communities. This was especially true in places like San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley in Northern California, and Riverside and San Diego in the southern part of the state. In recent years, the stark contrasts between two places so close together have been lost to time, as urbanization and the loss of green space have flattened out the differences between the urban and country environments. But in the 1970s, I had a unique opportunity to travel widely throughout the state, and back then you could still notice a kind of transformation when you crossed from San Francisco to the East Bay or from Los Angeles to Riverside to San Diego. It was easy, therefore to imagine, how people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries could travel very short distances and think that they were on some kind of remote, exotic vacation. That's all gone today. Viriditas (talk) 22:45, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The entire government of British India used to move from Calcutta to Simla (something like 1000 miles) to escape the summer heat. 50 miles is really not trying. DuncanHill (talk) 23:09, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Right, but the state of California is famous for regional microclimates within the space of just a few kilometers. Heck, try walking one mile from the Mission to Noe Valley in SF. It's like you've traveled to another world in terms of climate. Now extrapolate that out, farther and father. My point is that 50 miles in California really was like traveling to another country at one time based on climate and environmental variability. On the Big Island of Hawaii there are eight climates alone. This is the same idea in a smaller space. Viriditas (talk) 23:27, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Even just San Francisco has microclimates. Had Mark Twain lived in Potrero Hill, he would not have issued his biting judgement of summer in San Francisco. --Lambiam 01:14, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That might indeed be said of whoever originated that quote, but it wasn't Mark Twain. [1] CodeTalker (talk) 20:28, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think Lambiam knows that, but most of us just pretend Twain said it anyway. It's more fun. Viriditas (talk) 23:36, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." - Mark Twain. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 18:09, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"I didn't say that." - Mark Twain. 136.54.237.174 (talk) 19:40, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

He could have anticipated Yogi Berra if he'd said, "I never said half the things I said." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:58, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mark Twain also said, "Don't believe everything you read on the Internet." CodeTalker (talk) 21:00, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... could've sworn that was Abraham Lincoln. TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 23:43, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You mean, the vampire hunter? Viriditas (talk) 23:59, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another factor was the bad air and diseases of cities made them really foul places if you could avoid it. Smoke pollution from coal fires, manure on the streets from horses and cattle, often sewage just dumped at the back of houses, and the cholera risk before it was appreciated that cholera was waterborne. Cities in the nineteenth centuries were slums, rich people came into them to conduct business and left their families well away if they could. Blythwood (talk) 11:35, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See also:

Snowbird (person) --136.54.237.174 (talk) 20:09, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Synchronicity is high. I repeat, synchronicity is high. I just wrote an article about Édouard Vuillard's villégiature period, where he spent time painting on holiday spread between cottage estates in the countryside outside his apartment in the city. Viriditas (talk) 21:22, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

applied psychology: conflict management

I am looking for information about a concept from applied psychology that has to do with managing conflict: it is about classifying the person you are in conflict with using two independent dimensions: one is aggressive vs nonaggressive, i forgot what the other one was, maybe cooperativeness. The trick is, in conversation, to use this classification to adjust your own behavior to be in a different quadrant: in my memory (I read this somewhere on Wikipedia an now I cannot find it back) it had to be either an adjacent quadrant or the opposite one, I cannot remember which.

Could you help me identify which method this is? I am kicking myself for not bookmarking this page. Which I guess makes me aggressive/noncooperative.

GilHamiltonTheArm (talk) 11:39, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I found a PhD thesis online, Identifying the Factors That Influence Conflict Management Behavior of Human Resource Professionals in the Workplace, that may contain the answer in Chapter 2: Literature Review. I think it is by itself an interesting read; in an organizational context such as a workplace there is the issue of what one seeks to achieve in managing a conflict; there may be a tension between the organizational goals and the interpersonal goals. --Lambiam 12:22, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help, Lambiam.

However, while the author mentions, in the literature review, the idea of using different conflict resolution modes in different situations, the text focuses more on people that have chosen a "best" approach.

It seems to me that this is not exactly the same subject: for example, "compromise" may be the best approach between two parties of equivalent power, when not much time is available for negotiation. This does not address the issue of personality. Also, it makes me think that I may have misunderstood this aspect: it is possible that it isn't about personality, but about adjusting your "conflict management strategy" to the affect/emotion of the other party.

GilHamiltonTheArm (talk) 13:38, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds very much like a variation of Nonviolent Communication. Viriditas (talk) 21:23, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Frequency of the 24 possible permutations of the last 4 Christmas gifts

There are 24 possible permutations of the last 4 gifts in The Twelve Days of Christmas. Those are the following:

Nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, and twelve drummers drumming
Nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven drummers drumming, and twelve pipers piping
Nine ladies dancing, ten pipers piping, eleven lords a-leaping, and twelve drummers drumming
Nine ladies dancing, ten pipers piping, eleven drummers drumming, and twelve lords a-leaping
Nine ladies dancing, ten drummers drumming, eleven lords a-leaping, and twelve pipers piping
Nine ladies dancing, ten drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, and twelve lords a-leaping
Nine lords a-leaping, ten ladies dancing, eleven pipers piping, and twelve drummers drumming
Nine lords a-leaping, ten ladies dancing, eleven drummers drumming, and twelve pipers piping
Nine lords a-leaping, ten pipers piping, eleven ladies dancing, and twelve drummers drumming
Nine lords a-leaping, ten pipers piping, eleven drummers drumming, and twelve ladies dancing
Nine lords a-leaping, ten drummers drumming, eleven ladies dancing, and twelve pipers piping
Nine lords a-leaping, ten drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, and twelve ladies dancing
Nine pipers piping, ten ladies dancing, eleven lords a-leaping, and twelve drummers drumming
Nine pipers piping, ten ladies dancing, eleven drummers drumming, and twelve lords a-leaping
Nine pipers piping, ten lords a-leaping, eleven ladies dancing, and twelve drummers drumming
Nine pipers piping, ten lords a-leaping, eleven drummers drumming, and twelve ladies dancing
Nine pipers piping, ten drummers drumming, eleven ladies dancing, and twelve lords a-leaping
Nine pipers piping, ten drummers drumming, eleven lords a-leaping, and twelve ladies dancing
Nine drummers drumming, ten ladies dancing, eleven lords a-leaping, and twelve pipers piping
Nine drummers drumming, ten ladies dancing, eleven pipers piping, and twelve lords a-leaping
Nine drummers drumming, ten lords a-leaping, eleven ladies dancing, and twelve pipers piping
Nine drummers drumming, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, and twelve ladies dancing
Nine drummers drumming, ten pipers piping, eleven ladies dancing, and twelve lords a-leaping
Nine drummers drumming, ten pipers piping, eleven lords a-leaping, and twelve ladies dancing

But how frequently are each of the above 24 permutations used for the last 4 gifts in The Twelve Days of Christmas? In particular, what is the rarest possible permutation? I would expect the most common order to be the "Nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, and twelve drummers drumming" order, which is the first one in the list above.

GTrang (talk) 21:02, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Don't they normally count down from twelve? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:22, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there is only one permutation permutating (weather permuting). Clarityfiend (talk) 03:15, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is this really a question about combinatorics, and not about the song? I've sometimes seen The Twelve Days of Christmas used to pose mathematical problems, but I think the usual question is how many gifts in total by the end. (364 according to our article.) You may be basing your question on an imaginary version of the song where the number of items, per-gift, changes with each verse, and since you ask about permutations, the numbers must cycle independently, which suggests it would be an extremely long song, maybe 1! + 2! + 3! ... 12! verses. Card Zero (talk) 04:33, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I interpreted the question how frequently these permutations are used as asking about the statistics of the population of renderings of these songs (which may be different for the population of versions in print and that sung in family gatherings). Both "twelve ladies dancing, eleven pipers piping" and "twelve pipers piping, eleven ladies dancing" have zero ghits. --Lambiam 11:47, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I see. "The gifts associated with the final four days are often reordered", says our article. Card Zero (talk) 12:24, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Frederic Austin was my great-grandfather, so in my family at least there is only one version, and I have no idea what you are on about. MinorProphet (talk) 14:15, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]