Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 July 27

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July 27

Implied Warranty of ---HABITABILITY

I would appreciate having any of the legal citations statements or sentences in and to the above article. Virginia is the main State I am concerned about. Or, the locations of legal articles and examples of the use of this legal theory against landlords. My complete contact data is:

Kenneth L. Waldron <redacted for editor's protection> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.171.67.66 (talk) 02:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I have redacted your contact info -- it's not a good idea to post that sort of info in such a public forum. Looie496 (talk) 03:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Googling "implied warranty of habitability, Virginia" gave me the following page. It contains many references and statements that may be useful to you. Bielle (talk) 03:50, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

DANGEROUS NOODLES!!!

I have heard that noodles especially sold in India (I DO NOT WANT TO NAME THEM)can cause harmful diseases like Cancer because of the spice powder used in them.Is it really true...??? Please refer this content...Doctor's view is appreciated. THANK YOU — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.197.236.22 (talk) 11:28, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Its down to which colouring agent they use. See Sudan I. The UK the Food Standards Agency also states: “At the levels found in these foods the risk is likely to be very small” --Aspro (talk) 12:50, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

If you want a doctor's view, I suggest you ask your doctor. You have no way of verifying the credentials of some random person on the internet. --Tango (talk) 18:17, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia does NOT provide medical advice. It's against the rules. Some spices can potentially be toxic in very high concentrations; peppermint is one such spice. I'm afraid India doesn't really have an equivalent to the United States' Food and Drug Administration, so information about the contents of this particular product are not going to be possible to turn up. i kan reed (talk) 19:49, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm...any food can potentially increase or decrease your overall risk of developing cancer by a very small factor. Try searching "noodles and cancer" on Google Scholar. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 20:56, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Levels of vodka distillation

So it is the end of our archaeological dig and so I decided to get our assistant area supervisors treats. One of them, a huge 6' 2" fellow whom we affectionately refer to as "The Bear Jew", I got a bottle of quintuple-distilled vodka. The comments from others were that "he is going to get fucking hammered." This leads me to believe that there is something about this level of distillation that makes it more potent than less distilled (triple and such). I know nothing about vodka, so could someone enlighten me as to the different levels of distillation and what are the differences between them? What is the difference between triple and quintuple except the obvious {number of times they have been distilled}, and why is it this quintuple is going to most likely get this fine fellow drunk enough to do karaoke more so than a lower level (by which I mean make him very very drunk)? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 14:35, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

You need to go by what ABV or Proof percentage is printed on the label to guide you to the strength, because although 4x distillation can produce high ethanol concentrations, the main aim of multiple distillations is to get a cleaner taste. Therefore, some 4x is diluted down again. SeeVodka#Distilling_and_filtering After many years of practice I too can not drink pure XXXX vodka without getting hammered, but as practice make perfect - I will persist. --Aspro (talk) 15:44, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Also, if it has a cleaner taste, it may just make it easier/more pleasurable to drink more of it, and therefore get more drunk. —Akrabbim^talk 20:42, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Basically marketing nonsense. Pure vodka is simply pure alcohol--no one drinks it for the "taste". Beyond the cheapest brands there is no noticeable betterment by repeated distilling. μηδείς (talk) 03:27, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

You are misunderstand the capabilities of the distillation process. Cheap American style vodka has no taste or aroma because it has been filtered out with activated charcoal. It is only fit only for teenagers to add to their lime cordials. It is not the distillation processes that does this. Subject a good brandy/whiskey/rum etc. to the same treatment and it would come out tasting like cheap American style vodka too. In Europe we often drink vodka cold and straight, in which case we want some of the flavours preserved. Depending on what its first brewed from, 3x or 4x distillation does this just fine. --Aspro (talk) 10:45, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

"Pure" vodka is usually about 40% alcohol, and yes, some people drink it for the taste. thx1138 (talk) 20:02, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The taste? Of potatoes? With a nose that long I suppose you need to use a straw. μηδείς (talk) 22:37, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me, but calling it "American style" vodka is not entirely accurate. Absolut and Svedka are among the best selling "smooth" vodkas and they are both Swedish. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:47, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox. I think you've miss-read the posts or we didn't put it very well. Μηδείς appears to have only ever tasted American style vodka because most American vodka is too literally made according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives which defines vodka as a neutral spirit "without distinctive character, aroma, taste or colour." This sorry state was achieved in the US by passing almost any spirit through activated charcoal and is ubiquitous throughout north America. No amount of further processing can improve upon a dead spirit. Hence, I was showing by explanation that in producing true vodka, multiply distillations is no marketing nonsense as it produces vodka with some pleasant flavours and aroma that's associated with proper traditional vodka. This American way of doing things has been adopted by some other non US distillers because its a cheap way of making a tasteless ingredient for cocktails only and is what we in Europe mean by an American style vodka to differentiate it from traditional vodka - made to be drunk for its own sake. --Aspro (talk) 11:06, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

You want flavor, try our latest export from Alaska: [1]. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:52, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Napoleon, Julius Caesar and Jesus

It is said that Napoleon's religion teacher told him that Julius Caesar, whom Napoleon idolised, burns in Hell because he was not a Christian. How could Caesar have been a Christian when he died before Jesus was born? Was the religion teacher aware of this and using it to his advantage? Is this story even true? JIP | Talk 17:50, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Who says that? Christian teaching (at least in some denominations, I can't guarantee it is true for all of them) is that, following his death on the cross, Jesus "descended to the dead" and rescued the righteous that had come before him and hadn't had the chance to go to heaven. See Harrowing of Hell. --Tango (talk) 18:23, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

So Jesus visited Hell and said "Anyone who believes in me and converts to Christianity can go to Heaven and be happy for eternity"? That's swell, but all this still assumes that before Christianity was founded, all dead people automatically went to Hell because there wasn't a correct religion for them to convert to. They had to wait anything from days to tens of thousands of years suffering Hell's torments until Jesus came along and said that a correct religion has finally been invented. If all this is true, then God mustn't be very logical-minded. =) JIP | Talk 18:34, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I have maybe more trouble getting my head around the idea of idolizing Julius Caesar, who by my lights was a thug. But then we are talking about Napoleon....

Anyway, I don't believe any mainstream school of Christianity has ever taught that the righteous dead before Jesus were under punishment before the harrowing of Hell, though I'm not sure of that. One notion is that they were not in Heaven, but rather in a nice section of Hades known as the bosom of Abraham (Hades != Hell; Hades is just the abode of the dead). --Trovatore (talk) 19:03, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Jesus referred to Hades (Sheol) and Gehenna. When Christians encountered Germanic pagans, Hel (being) was amalgamated into Satan. Schyler (one language) 20:10, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Christian views of "Hell" are not as simple as "The guy with the pitchfork and horns pokes you while you burn", that's kinda the cartoony version of Hell. There is a wide variance among even mainstream Christian denominations over what Hell is, who goes there, and when they go there. If you want to know what the Christian view of the afterlife is from a theological perspective (as opposed to the simplistic view), the article Christian eschatology has some really good indepth reading on the issue. --Jayron32 20:58, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't know whether the story is true, but you should note that basic Christian theology is that every human since Adam and Eve has deserved to go to Hell, due to inheriting the sin of Adam and Eve. It is only the sacrifice of Christ that saves those who have faith, not any sort of acquired merit. According to that doctrine, if pre-Christian pagans all went to Hell, it is only what they deserved. (Dante, by the way, placed the righteous pagans in the "first circle" of Hell, where they do not experience torments.) Looie496 (talk) 21:00, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Back to the story itself. This is supposed to have happened at the military school at Brienne-le-Château. In Napoleon: A Political Life by Steven Englund: "Even the Catholic teaching orders could not stop themselves: their monks were constantly accenting the stories and characters of Plutarch, Nepos (author of On Illustrious Men), Livy, Virgil, Cicero, etc., while at the same time ruing that these pre-Christian souls were all consigned to hell or limbo (a contradiction that sufficed to make the adolescent Napoleon lose his faith)." And in A History of Christianity by Paul Johnson: "Napoleon claimed that he personally had lost his faith by the time he was eleven. This occurred after learning that Caesar and Cato 'the most virtuous men of antiquity would burn in eternal flames for not having practiced a religion which they knew nothing.'" Johnson leaves no room for the possibility that the story is apocryphal, but precisely the same story is told about Voltaire, so take it with a grain of salt. In any case, a relevant article is virtuous pagan. LANTZY^TALK 21:34, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

All this talk about what Hell is like got me thinking, how do people know it? I don't think anyone who has actually been in Hell has come back to tell what it's like. Have people just invented all this? This then leads into another (possibly unrelated) questions, how do people know what gods are like if they have never met them? Of course Jesus and Muhammed and the like were real people (although whether they had divine powers is up to debate), but how have people figured out all the details about such guys as Zeus, Odin, etc.? JIP | Talk 15:43, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The theological answer to your question is at Revelation. In summation, people know about pure faith-based information (like the nature of heaven and hell, or the status of Jesus, or the details of the Book of Mormon or the Quran or other texts) because God revealed the information to people. How did Moses know what God's law was supposed to be? God told him. How did Mohammad know to write the Quran? God told him. --Jayron32 15:52, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and in the case of Mohammed, occasionally Satan. μηδείς (talk) 22:40, 29 July 2011 (UTC)