Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 November 21

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November 21

I want to open a beer in a really alpha masculine way

How can I open bottles with my knuckle? lots of issues | leave me a message 04:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Knucle? thats wimpy. The real alpha masculin way is to quickly pull out a knife, stab the top then down the beer. Thats ALPHA masculine. Knucle is like more Alpha middle school drinker masculine. Esskater11 04:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Even more alpha masculine would be to break off or smash the neck of the bottle, then down the beer. Clearly being too alpha masculine can cause injury. As to how to remove a bottle cap with a knuckle, I’m afraid someone else will have to help you, as I’m not of the legal age to imbibe alcohol in the US. --S.dedalus (talk) 05:56, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget to crush the bottle against your forehead when you are finished. (Does not constitute real advice). Lanfear's Bane | t 11:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I once saw a guy at a train station wack the top of a wine bottle and the cap just popped off. Guess he'd had a lot of practice. Think outside the box 11:49, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Something along the lines of sabrage perhaps. Lanfear's Bane | t 13:10, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The cap? Pah! I'd be impressed if he just smashed the whole neck of the bottle off, spilling it all over the place and bloodying his hand from the broken glass, then tilted his head back and drank all the rest of it at once. --ffroth —Preceding comment was added at 06:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I can do the whacking it onto the edge of something hard thing - it's not that different from sabrage. Find something with a nice, hard (preferably metal) edge - (The top of my refrigerator works pretty well) lay the side of the bottle against the edge and either jerk it downwards really hard (or less impressively, whack it on top with the palm of your hand) so that the edge of the crown cap hits the edge of the surface (the top of my fridge in this case). If you do it right, the top will pop right off. However, it's not particularly masculine - an ex-girlfriend showed me how to do it - so it's a positively girly way to open a bottle. I agree that stabbing through the cap with a knife and twisting it to make a triangular hole is the only completely macho way. And we aren't talking about your wussy boy-scout knife here - we're talking 8" blade, serrated back edge with blood grooves. Ask yourself honestly: WWCND? (Oh - sorry - that's "What Would Chuck Norris Do?" for the less masculine amongst us). SteveBaker (talk) 14:14, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, how very tough you lads are. This is almost an alpha male convention. Excuse me while I put up some trees for you to pi** on.

Dude I went to high school with used to open beer bottles with his teeth. Think he wedged the cap against a back molar and just popped it off. We thought it was cool... Probably absolutely terrible for his teeth though, so, not advice, do not attempt, consult a dentist or whatever. Azi Like a Fox (talk) 16:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

My sister used to do that (thus rendering the 'alpha male' thing questionable...) until she chipped a tooth. Painful. I advise against it. Skittle (talk) 17:53, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Yep - there you go. Biting it off - also officially girly, sorry OP - you're going to have to order that Bowie Knife and just stab away at those bottles (although...a North Korean bayonet circa 1938 would be MUCH more macho...you know...just sayin...not that there's anything too effeminate about a Bowie knife). SteveBaker (talk) 20:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Yea its either a Bowie knife, or you could do the next best thing though you would get arrested. You could take the bottom find the closest guy and break the top of his head Esskater11 20:22, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Lay a bottle down on a hay bale with a bottle opener wedged in the cap, put a glass under the bottle. Go back 50 yards and shoot the bottle opener with a arrow. The cap will pop off and the beer will fill the glass. I saw a guy do it on TV once.--ChesterMarcol (talk) 20:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Bow and arrow? No, no, no - that won't do at all. A crossbow maybe? A .44 Magnum would be playing more on the safe side. "Did I shoot the caps off the entire six pack or only five? Do you feel lucky punk?" SteveBaker (talk) 05:54, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

You're all missing the point. A true alpha male wouldn't have to open their own beer. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Pretty much. On a slightly different note, there was a woman on TV who had enormous breasts with which she could crush empty beer cans. Not in between, but via gravity. It was pretty amazing. --Masamage ♫ 04:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Basketball

Please explain what "high-low game" and "low-high game" are. 81.89.88.106 (talk) 07:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet "high-low game" means the offense runs through the bigger players (so the Power Forward and/or the Center), whereas "low-high game" means the offense runs through the smaller players (the point guard and shooting guard, and maybe the small forward).

Teams with dominant big men who have good hands would run a high-low game, where when offense gets set they pass the ball to the big man who tries to get position on his defender. Since he is so good there would be defensive help from another defender which would leave another person open, or at least partially open. The offense runs through him since he can either score directly or move the ball around to an open player who would score.

Teams with good guard play would run a low-high game. So when the offense gets set the small guys would use their quickness to beat their defender which would require another defensive player come help out. Then there is an open or partially open player that the small guy can pass to. This sort of play would use a quick guard or small forward. The offense would run through them since they could take the ball to the basket, pull up and take a shot over an off-balance defender, or pass the ball off to the player left open by the help defense.--droptone (talk) 13:46, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

VHS vs Betacam

I'm thinking of ordering some archival footage for my own use (potentially to digitize and use in my own film editing). On VHS it is only $10 a film, while on Betacam it is $100. Is the quality of the Betacam going to be superior enough to justify the extra expense? (Note that I am not asking why the expense should be 10X more; archives have ridiculous policies relating to price that usually have no correlation with work performed; at some they charge you much more to scan something at 600 DPI than they do at 300 DPI even though its exactly the same amount of work!!) --24.147.86.187 (talk) 19:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - Betacam is much better quality than VHS, it's THE standard professional format used throughout the TV industry before digital TV hit the world. Are you sure this is a version of BetaCam you can read? There are many different flavors of BetaCam - some of the most recent ones are digital - the older ones analog. VHS is 330x250, BetaCam is 400x300 - but that doesn't really express the difference properly. The colour quality of BetaCam is vastly better. Some of that $90 difference in price is just the cost of the tape - the rest reflects the cost of the hardware to record it. Whether you NEED that extra quality given the price difference is something only you can answer. But I'm a little puzzled...if you have the ability to play BetaCam tapes, surely you're a video professional and are therefore already aware of the difference in quality. Those machines are hideously expensive compared to VHS machines. SteveBaker (talk) 19:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a professional at all in video editing (this would be for my own practice/fun), but I have access to the vast technological resources of a well-endowed university and so reading and converting between different formats is a snap (they have a number of centralized tech facilities with machines set up for this sort of thing). Thanks for the reply—I think in this case the color will be quite important, given that these are really old archival tapes and the color is already going to be somewhat dodgy; I can take whatever I can get. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 21:43, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The other thing to consider isn't so much VHS vs BetaCam, but analogue vs digital regardless of the format used. If you go the analogue VHS route then any subsequent dubs will deteriorate in quality. Personally I'd see if you could use some of that uni gear to do your own conversion direct to computer using a minimally compressed digital format such as DV-AVI. Once you have it in that digital form you can do what you like with it. You didn't mention what format the original footage is in so it's hard to give advice on the actual conversion. --WebHamster 12:55, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Right, well that's what I'd be doing after I received the BetaCam or VHS. I don't have any choice in the original format other than those two (both of which are recorded from some sort of old movie reels), but I would be converting it to digital ASAP. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 18:29, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

In that case the BetaCam (especially DigiBeta if possible) is the way to go is quality is on your priority list. It does seem to be a strangely limited option. Any decent conversion house will give you a much wider range of options. The last time it was done for me I had the option of VHS, S-VHS, Video8, Hi8, Digital8 (the one I chose as I use that format) and DigiBeta. To be honest I wouldn't trust a place that can only offer two options, especially at such disparate prices. YMMV of course :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by WebHamster (talk • contribs) 01:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

USA Picture Postcards

I am British and consider myself lucky to have travelled fairly widely around Europe and the USA and I take it kindly that quite a few of the people we have met over the years have visited us in our Scottish home, and I include those from France, Germany, Spain, England, Wales, New England USA, California USA and Hawaii USA. Over the years we have also collected picture postcards from all those places and have kept those sent to us from them too. But as much as we love America and like visiting there, I just have to say the quality and photographic standards of the USA postcards compare extremely poorly with those from Europe. Today for instance, we got 3 cards from Hawaii, and the colour quality, the views selected and the general forgettability factor were all dire, I mean really DIRE. But the people who sent them are people who I consider to have otherwise good taste so I can only imagine they are choosing from a very poor range to start with. So, if anyone here can explain why that might be, I would love to know why that is. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.145.242.21 (talk) 20:38, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a fluke. There are postcards to be had here of as fine a quality as one could hope for. But I think that we generally see the postcard more as kitsch than as high art. --Milkbreath (talk) 21:52, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

American postcards are pretty poor today; very little money or thought seems to go into them, most of them have horrible designs, atrocious pictures, and gaudy text all over them. I don't know what the rest of the world is doing with their postcards, but US ones are nothing to write home about (ironically, no?). They have historically been this way—there is a book under the title of Boring Postcards USA for sale if you are interested—though I tend to find the postcards of the last decade or two phenomenally bad. If you browse through postcard holdings in antique shops you'll often find far more interesting ones, with better subjects, better photography, etc., in my opinion. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:32, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Gold Nuggets Worth

On average how much are gold nuggets worth today or in today's market? Haven't they hit a high price for this year? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.127.98.85 (talk) 23:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Gold is sold by the ounce. The weight of a nugget and its percentage of gold would determine how much it is worth. Corvus cornix_talk 23:16, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Gold hit $800 an ounce briefly today - that's some kind of a record I believe. However, it's more to do with the US dollar being weak than gold being suddenly worth a lot more. The 'normal' price over the past few years has been in the $600 range - but the dollar has fallen about as fast as gold has risen. I bet the Euro price for gold has hardly budged at all. Today's AP press release said: "The dollar slid to its lowest point against the euro, which fetched a peak $1.4855. A barrel of oil hit a record $99.29 in electronic trading overnight, while heating oil peaked at $2.7154 a gallon. Those moves helped hoist gold prices temporarily over $800 an ounce, as investors shifted assets to the traditional safe-haven metal." - remember that the Euro was equal to the Dollar just a couple of years ago. SteveBaker (talk) 05:30, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Obviously, particularly large or unusual nuggets will sell at a much far higher value than their mass would suggest. 130.88.79.77 (talk) 12:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume 21 editor

Help! I forgot to write down the editor for Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume 201; I need the editor for my essay! Anyone know who it is?--24.109.218.172 (talk) 23:36, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Jeffrey W. Hunter. Xn4 00:40, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

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