Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 July 24

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July 24

Has Ronald McDonald ever been played by a black actor?

Has Ronald McDonald ever been played by a black actor? Thank you . YŶwechen (talk) 10:59, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Almost certainly - but it's hard to tell because of all the white paint. McDonalds is not without humor - for example, HERE is an advert from McDonald's Japanese division that features a female "Ronald" - without all of the paint. So it's perfectly possible that they used a obviously black Ronald in some market or other. Also, bear in mind that this character probably shows up many thousands of times a day across the world - often at individual branches of McD's. So there must be at least a few hundreds of clown suits and hundreds - if not thousands - of "actors" (and minimum-wage fry-cooks given the job for the day!) who've donned the big red shoes. It would be pretty surprising if not one of them was a black person because that level of discrimination would probably be illegal. But finding actual evidence of that happening might be hard to find because the restaurants want to maintain the fiction that the guy interacting with your kids right now is THE Ronald McDonald. SteveBaker (talk) 13:31, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Beyond the US, according to List of countries with McDonald's restaurants, McDonalds is in South Africa. (Two or so other African countries but they don't seem to be ones with a high "black" population.) McDonalds unsurprisingly only appeared in South Africa after apartheid. I don't however know how common Ronald Mcdonald is in South Africa (AFAIK he isn't particularly common here in NZ). Nil Einne (talk) 15:05, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

This one seems black. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:32, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

This site provides a list of actors who "played Ronald McDonald" with dates and such - from doing a Google Image search on their names, not one of those is black...but that list can only refer to the Ronald McDonald who appears in major events and TV adverts because the character shows up at FAR too many minor, local events for just one actor to do them all...so this list certainly isn't definitive. SteveBaker (talk) 13:53, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

We have a similar list in our article Ronald McDonald which has a few different names but confirms it's just referring to national US TV actors. Nil Einne (talk) 15:01, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

The role of Krusty the Clown was once filled by Mr. Black. He didn't care enough to dress up, though, and was strictly yellow. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:02, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I did find a comment attached to a YouTube video (sorry, hardly a great reference!) that says that McDonalds trains people to wear the Ronald costume at a special school in NewYork. The same person remarked that African Americans are actually preferred for the role because their bone structure is a closer fit for the idealized Ronald character. Sadly, it's really hard to find information about this place online because every web search turns up a bazillion references to the the Ronald McDonald charity schools - or the "Hamburger University" where managers and franchise owners are trained. But I bet that if we could find that institution, we'd be able to confirm that black actors do indeed take the role on occasions. SteveBaker (talk) 19:05, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Would it be safe to assume "bone structure" meant something like this and "idealized Ronald" meant something like this? An offline black clown in Montreal said something of the sort to me, years ago. He wasn't Ronald, though. I have no idea what his clown or real name was, or whatever became of him. So at least your reference is better than that. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:31, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Buying shares

Is it better to buy shares at a high price and wait for the dividend or buy at a low price and sell when the shares increase in price ? Thank you . YŶwechen (talk) 10:59, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't think we're equipped to give that kind of financial advice here. It's going to depend DRAMATICALLY on the business you're investing in. Some companies (Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon) don't pay dividends at all...so clearly you wouldn't want to buy those and "wait for the dividend"! Which you should do depends on what you know about the company, what level of risk you want to take, how long you anticipate holding the shares...far too many variables. You should consult a financial expert who can assess your situation and give the advice you need. We can't do that. SteveBaker (talk) 13:42, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

If you never intend to sell the shares, then it doesn't really matter at what price you buy them. But if you want to sell the shares eventually, it is obviously better not to buy them when their price is high. For an individual share, it is impossible to know whether its dividend yield will be greater than its net change in value from the time of purchase to a given future date. It is also impossible to know whether a given stock with a high price (measured, say, by its price-to-earnings ratio) with a high dividend yield will outperform a stock with a low price and a low dividend yield. For actual advice, you need to consult a professional financial advisor rather than random editors on the Reference Desk, though even the best financial advisor cannot predict the future. He or she, though, can suggest strategies to minimize the risk of loss and improve the potential for gain. Marco polo (talk) 15:53, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Dividend income is much less risky than income from an increase in the stock price (a capital gain), but it is also much less profitable: dividend yields on the S&P500 are typically 1-3%. Returns from capital gains can be much greater; of course, you need to pick the right stock, which is either largely a crap shoot, or entirely a crap shoot, depending on how much you believe the Efficient_Market_Hypothesis is correct. Having said that, you will be lucky to beat inflation by investing for dividend yield, and as the saying goes ". . .taxes takes the rest." OldTimeNESter (talk) 16:50, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Maybe you are just talking about buying directly before or after the company pays the dividend? In general, the difference does not matter - the day the dividend is payed, the ex-dividend price of the stock is lowered by the amount of the dividend. There are always exceptions, but in general, information available to the whole market will not give you an advantage. If everyone knows that "tomorrow I will get EUR 5 dividend for the stock", then people are willing to pay about EUR 5 more today than otherwise. See efficient market hypothesis. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:18, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Life in 1991 in the UK

What was life like in 1991 for people in the U.K? Thank you . YŶwechen (talk) 10:59, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

It varied. --Viennese Waltz 13:20, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

1991 in the United Kingdom gives a general idea, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:23, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I lived in the UK in 1991 - I don't recall it being in any way special. Does our OP have some specific aspect of UK life in mind? Given the huge range of people living there with wildly different life-styles - without more direction it's an incredibly vague question! SteveBaker (talk) 13:34, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Apart from the fact that people were watching television, using land lines to make phone calls, reading books, or spending time in pubs instead of using computers and mobile devices to access the internet and communicate, life wasn't really much different than it is today. (The internet existed at the time, in a more primitive form without the web, but few people had access to it other than scientists, computer geeks, and a subset of university students. Personal computers existed, but they were used mainly at work or for writing texts to send to a printer, and most were not connected to the internet. Primitive mobile devices existed as an expensive niche product, but they were not widely used.) The UK was in a fairly bad recession in 1991, and there were riots in some cities that summer connected to discrimination against ethnic minorities. But most people got up each morning, went to school or work, came home, watched television, and went to bed each night, much like today. Marco polo (talk) 15:42, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Another big social change in the past 23 years has been the demise of VHS and the home video rental market. I assume the concept of "getting a video and a pizza" is as archaic to today's generation as a trip to the music-hall is to ours. (I wouldn't say mobile phones were that exotic in 1991, compared to (say) 1985 - they were heavy, expensive, and inadequate of battery, but were to be commonly found attached to the ears of yuppies in the financial districts of our cities and, most notably, in our trains...) Tevildo (talk) 18:29, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Quite a recent change, though. My small and unremarkable town had a Video Sales & Rental Shop operating until about 3 years ago, though it was transitioning to DVDs. (I didn't have a VCR Player myself, but occasionally bought them as presents for relatives.) It's now a Pet Shop, but the numerous Charity Shops (AmE: Thrift Stores) still have a good turnover of 2nd-hand videos (as well as DVDs, of course.) However, I digress. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 19:04, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

@Marco: You're way off about the computer thing!

The UK had the ZX80 home computer in 1980, the ZX81 in 1981 and the Sinclair Spectrum in '82. The Spectrum in particular was huge as a games machine - they sold 5 million of them (which, for a country with a population of around 50 million people is a LOT!) and lots of families had them - about 20,000 games were published for that computer alone. Just about nobody used them at work because they were just awful for text entry...and the only printer that worked with it was a piece of junk, so they weren't being used for writing text. That was a games machine - pure and simple - and they were EVERYWHERE - not just with us geeks. Computer games in the form of machines like the Atari 2600 have been around in the early 1980's and were not just commonplace - but rapidly being obsoleted by "real" computers. By 1991, I had been using the Commadore Amiga for 4 or 5 years and the Atari ST for some years also. My Commodore PET, Apple ][ and Tandy TRS-80 were *way* obsolete and collecting dust! I had an IBM PC clone too - the IBM PC was already 10 years old in 1991. Games were big on all of those machines and there were *MANY* mainstream games magazines in every high street store that sold magazines...so this was not just a niche thing. I didn't quite have have Internet access from home - I think that came a year or so later...but you could use a cheap modem to access "bulletin boards" and services like that did enable you to "get online", play online games, chat with people in realtime, etc. At work, we had (and used) email both within the building and to and from people in Europe and the USA via "Usenet" and the fledgeling Internet - and we could exchange documents and other files using services like Gopher (protocol) (which allows for primitive hypertext links). We also had forums and such via Usenet "news". For people who had that access, the arrival of the Internet over the next few years was more evolutionary than revolutionary. SteveBaker (talk) 18:55, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I would agree with Marco on this issue, to be honest. The important words are "For people who had that access". You and I may have been among them, but being "on-line" was a very rare hobby to have back then. Computers were ubiquitous, true, but not the Internet or its equivalent. There was a question a few months ago on RD/H (about Russian nobility, as I recall) which lead to a link indicating there were only 200-odd UK internet users in 1992. I didn't believe this at first, but, on thinking about it, it doesn't sound unreasonable. But this is personal reminiscence unbacked by data. Tevildo (talk) 19:19, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

True the internet was uncommon, but gaming wasn't. I was 11 in '91, and was pretending to be characters from Space Quest, already on it's 3rd iteration with my pals. If an 11 year old was savvy enough for, that, I can't imagine what older kids were playing. SimCity was another favourite. Mingmingla (talk) 00:25, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

I can recall in 1991, for some machines you still had physical discs, with copy protection that meant they wouldn't load. Didn't encounter it myself, but I recall someone recently mentioning that 1991 was when they encountered cracktros.21:26, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

No-one has mentioned so far the Sony Walkman, as popular among teenagers back then as mobile phones are now. Definitely a difference one would notice if one were to go back. Tevildo (talk) 19:37, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I remember pagers being pretty popular, and watches almost universal. Also, far fewer coffee shops, fewer food outlets in general, and less out-of-town shopping. Newspapers were much more widely read, and there was a great deal of interest in the top 40. There were many more payphones, and they were used more heavily. TV and monitor screens were generally smaller, although the CRT devices were huge. Offices were more heavily paper-based, and typewriters - including electronic typewriters - were still widespread. Rail was still nationalised, with services remarkably similar to now, but cheaper, and bus networks tended to be more extensive. In terms of society, there was slightly less ethnic diversity, and homophobia was much more prevalent. Warofdreams talk 01:30, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

For those of us who lived and worked in London, there was always the slight worry that we could be blown to pieces by Irish terrorists (see "The Troubles"). A friend in our office overslept and missed his usual train, thereby avoiding the Clapham Junction bombing in December 1991. The following April, I left a drink-up early at a pub near the office, and avoided being showered with glass when the Baltic Exchange bombing happened later that evening. A teenaged girl and two other innocent bystanders were killed. 91 people were injured. Alansplodge (talk) 07:47, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Correction, it was more likely to have been the London Bridge Station bombing of February 1992. Alansplodge (talk) 12:55, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

On the subject of technology before email, the fax machine was the popular for business use. Some people I knew had one at home too. People used to send each other jokes by fax. A none-too-bright colleague received a hoax call-up paper for the Gulf War on an official looking fax, asking him to report to the nearest barracks. He was quite taken-in until he read the details. One point was that recruits were expected to bring their own map of the Iraqi desert; "if you can't obtain one, a sheet of sandpaper will do instead". Alansplodge (talk) 08:47, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

And another thing... before the Sunday Trading Act 1994 we were subject to the bizarre laws which meant that generally, only small newsagents and corner shops were open on a Sunday. It was legal to buy a Chinese take-away but not fish and chips. It was legal to buy a pornographic magazine but not a Bible. This meant that everybody had to do their shopping on a Saturday. Before the Licensing Act 2003, pubs (if I remember rightly) could only open on Sunday between 12 noon and 3 pm and then from 7 to 10:30 pm. There were some counties in Wales where the pubs couldn't open at all on a Sunday. Alansplodge (talk) 12:47, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

(We need a Wikia for anecdotal social history.)

Here are my thoughts:

• I'm suprised no-one's mentioned the whole BIG deal about going to see a musical act live, compared to downloading the youtube video.

• Compared to now copyright infringement was at least according to PSA undertaken by dodgy market traders ("As Advertised on Crime Stoppers!") as opposed to organised crime, ). There was still an ongoing scare about video nasties (it reached it's peak a few years later with the Bulger case). People still made 'mixtapes' and taped from the radio version of the top 40.

• I can just about recall a series of downright creepy PIF(PSA to the US) about fire safety.
• AIDS was still cultrally misunderstood, despite attempts by various charities to educate.
• Gay whilst legal was not openly discussed as national issue, although I think Pride was becoming a massive event by this time.
• There was IIRC a row about 'seedy' roms (not dissimilar to the current arguments about net porn), and about video game violence.
• I also seem to recall a lot of fuss about British Beef and so called Mad Cow Disease.

• The Police were still respected. although the tabloid media were not even in 1991 respected.

• Channel 4. (And Euortrash)

(I might have more if people can prompt my memory) Sfan00 IMG (talk) 21:23, 26 July 2014 (UTC)