Looking at this page of stamps from the US Postal Service, I was struck by the fact that many of the stamps have "USA Forever" printed on them. Why is "Forever" struck out? DuncanHill (talk) 23:46, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The denomination would be struck out to void possible use -- "forever" stamps don't have denomination, since they are valid "forever" even if the price changes. —2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 23:58, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see, thanks. I thought perhaps it was some sort of "Lo, all our pomp of yesterday, Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!" moment. DuncanHill (talk) 00:50, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that obscure reference, lest we forget. 2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 01:31, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The UK doesn't sell forever stamps? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 05:25, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but they have "1st" and "2nd" on them, for 1st and 2nd class postage (Do we have an article on postage class?). Other stamps have the price in pence on them. Rojomoke (talk) 05:53, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See Mail#First-Class, written in a rather US-centric manner alas. DuncanHill (talk) 15:05, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you scroll down that page you will notice that the $1, $2 and $5 dollar stamps also have lines through the values. This is to make is difficult for people to copy those images from the website, then print them and try to use their homemade versions to pay postage. Wymspen (talk) 15:06, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Before the "Forever" stamps came to be, an illustration of a stamp would typically have had a diagonal line striking through the value, like this: ${\displaystyle {\cancel {25}}}$.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 01:02, 12 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What advantage would the odd tail configuration on both the E-2 Hawkeye and C-2 Greyhound have? Presumably, it has something to do with take-off/landing on an aircraft carrier, but I can't think of any advantage. —2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 09:58, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

According to the article on the Greyhound, to which you linked, "The C-2 has four vertical stabilizers, of which three are fitted with rudders. A single vertical stabilizer large enough for adequate directional control would have made the aircraft too tall to fit on an aircraft carrier hangar deck. The four-stabilizer configuration has the advantage of placing the outboard rudder surfaces directly in line with the propeller wash, providing effective yaw control down to low airspeeds, such as during takeoff and landing. The inner-left stabilizer lacks a rudder, and has been called the "executive tail", as it has nothing to do compared to the other three." DuncanHill (talk) 10:12, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• It's called a "stabilizer" for a reason. As with almost any stabilizer/rudder design, only a portion is used as a rudder. The fixed portion keeps the aircraft from yawing. My guess is those two aircraft split the stabilizer function like that to reduce the height in order to fit the plane on the hangar deck. -Arch dude (talk) 17:12, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

location https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Lake+Gnangara/@-31.7871338,115.8645465,1287m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x2a32b263cc1afe1f:0xd9071584fd8a9462!8m2!3d-31.7878568!4d115.8684422

Ok here is where the problem starts I have contacted the local government to find out if this Island in the middle of the lake was named due to my son asking me the same question? Ok now here is the problem its not on any maps that i can find it has not been named so I have tried to claim the right to name the island as Coruscant Island after the starwars planet and now after there pushing my letter from one Minsters office to another I have decide that i will declare it as a territory and make a micro nation would i be with in my rights to do so? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.14.53.132 (talk) 15:13, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to do that would eventually reveal the actual owners, but I think the Western Australia Environmental Protection Authority might contest your right to an island in their conservation area. Dbfirs 15:29, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

WA has a "Torrens system" of land registration (first introduced next door in South Australia). You could ask to see the relevant Index Map which may lead you to the relevant title certificate. All land in WA which is not owned by some person or organisation is, I believe, owned by the Crown. You could follow the lead set by Leonard Casley in 1970 but be warned - you are a lot closer to the seat of government. The government of Western Australia is fiercely protective of its territory - it has checkpoints on its borders with NT and SA. Oh - I see you work for the state government. 86.131.233.241 (talk) 14:52, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

How do the weight carried and times compare for Secretariat and the Justify in the Belmont Stakes? That is to say, how many lengths would the four odd second advantage of Secretariat imply? How far back in the 1973 pack would Justify’s 2018 time place him? Edison (talk) 15:22, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't air density and heat index also factors? And wind assistance? I wonder how much of those would be needed to make the race 0.2 seconds easier. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:38, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Four seconds is greater than 0.2 seconds. Edison (talk) 18:55, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Horse timing was traditionally in fifths cause that's roughly how accurate the times were till the advent of fully automatic timing. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:43, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Secretariat won by 31 lengths, which sounds like a lot, but the second place horse only finished about 4 seconds behind him, as you noted, which works out to about 8 lengths per second. If you couldmagically plunk American Pharoah and Justify into that race and they could finish with the same times they actually did, Justify would be at the head of the pack and American Pharoah would be about halfway between Secretariat and the pack, i.e. about 15 or 16 lengths behind Big Red. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:09, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Bugs! If Man o War could be added to Secretariat’s running of the Belmont, and at the same speed he ran his (different length) race, where would he have come in?Edison (talk) 23:28, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's risky to try to predict what a horse might have done at a longer distance. As you indicated, Man o' War's Belmont was a shorter length, 1 3/8 miles, which he won by 20 lengths and covered in 2:14 1/5. So if I'm figuring it right, Man o' War ran 11 furlongs in 134.2 seconds, and Secretariat ran 12 furlongs in 2:24 flat, or 144 seconds, a furlong being 1/8 mile. That would be 12.2 seconds per furlong for Man o' War and 12 seconds per furlong for Secretariat. Maintaining his same pace, if possible, that would put Man o' War at 146.4 seconds for 12 furlongs, or 2.4 seconds behind Secretariat, which would put him about where American Pharoah finished. It's noteworthy that Secretariat, as Chic Anderson put it, was "blazing along" - he ran each quarter mile faster than the previous one in that race. I don't know if Man o' War was similarly accelerating. If he was, that could cut the difference. Gallant Man had set the previous record at 2:26 3/5, in the 1957 Belmont. In this magical scenario, Man o' War would have just nosed out Gallant Man and American Pharoah, whose winning time was 2:26.65, and would have finished several lengths behind Big Red. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:40, 16 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, but here's an interesting tidbit in the references in 1920 Belmont Stakes: both Man o'War and Donnacona (first and second) were so far ahead of their trailers that they apparently eased up in the final sixteenth. This suggests that in a flat-out 1 1/2 mile match race, Man o' War and Secretariat could have been very close at the end, assuming Man o' War still had anything in the tank at that point. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:19, 16 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

1. Did Ares in mythology hate his brother Hercules? 2. Was Livia Drusilla a bloodthirsty murderess? 3. Who did Julius Caesar crucify in history? 50.68.252.153 (talk) 02:10, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding 1. – You may want to check your terminology: Ares was/is a Greek god (whose Roman counterpart was Mars), while Hercules was/is a Roman semi-divine hero (whose Greek counterpart was Herakles). While there was considerable cross-fertilization between the Greek and Roman mythologies (particularly from the former to the latter), one should not conflate them and play 'mix-and-match' between their discrete elements.

Regarding 2. – we don't know, and there's nothing that in modern terms could be accepted as evidence for it.

Ancient Rome, riven by civil war and its aftermath, was prone to political rumours, propaganda, smear stories and 'fake news' even more vicious than, say, today's USA (where, for example, the Clintons have been accused of involvement in a completely fictitious paedophilic kidnap/rape/murder ring operating out of a pizza parlour).

The modern popular reputation of Livia as a multiple murderess stems largely from media adaptations of 20th-century novels by Robert Graves, which he based on writings by Plutarch, Tacitus and Suetonius, but they were compiling the aforementioned rumours, etc. and incorporating them into their works half-a-century or more after the actual events. Moreover, they were writing in a less-than-neutral milieux and presumably had their own personal agendas. (Compare Shakespeare's account of Macbeth, King of Scotland produced under a Stuart dynasty supposedly descended from MacBeth's enemies.) If there had been any reliable documentation and solid evidence of such crimes by Livia they would certainly have made use of them, but could not because there were none.

Regarding 3. – a partial answer can be found explicitly mentioned in our article Julius Caesar. Bear in mind that in his era crucifixion was a standard punishment in Roman law for certain crimes. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.220.215.83 (talk) 06:05, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am working on some articles that have Wikia as a reference. I don't want to violate the rules of Wikipedia, so I went here. Now here is the question: Is Wikia social media? TheSmartPersonUS1 (talk) 15:27, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(Explained on OP's talk page, since I saw it moved from the Help Desk before being moved to here). Ian.thomson (talk) 15:30, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I once found a video on Youtube that was "about" a saint. Maybe a St Sebastian? There were no words or story telling or anything. It was just pretty, serene music while the camera panned over images of the saint and of cathedrals. There was a dreamlike quality to it. The video was like what you'd see if you just searched youtube for "relaxing." I guess it was some kind of devotional/prayer aid and you would watch this video while saying Catholic stuff? I don't know.

So: this is apparently a genre of video. I would like to see more. How can I find them? Thanks, Temerarius (talk) 21:47, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, are you a real person or are you a robot? It's a question we all ask, right. Like when you get a phone call, there is either a recorded voice or a real person. Sometimes the person sounds like they are real when they really aren't. Just don't trust anyone unless you know them. Am I the only person who asks this question? I don't know, but I need answers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.34.144.150 (talk) 02:00, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You're not the only person who wonders that. Broadly speaking, lack of faith in the truth of existence has popped up many times in philosophy; see, for example, simulation hypothesis and Solipsism. Or, if you prefer the more concrete, there's brain in a vat. There's some neat stuff here. If you prefer the psychological to the philosophical, there's Solipsism syndrome and Derealization. We're not robots here on the RefDesk, though we may or may not be dogs. Matt Deres (talk) 03:08, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's actually not that hard to tell a real person from a recording. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:07, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Turing test is not specifically to determine whether a computer is able to fool an interrogator into believing that it is a human, but rather whether a computer could imitate a human. CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test to determine whether or not a respondent is human. DroneB (talk) 10:31, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

CAPTCHA typically seems to be a test to determine whether I visualize things or interpret images (or questions) the same way as whoever designed the CAPTCHA. Iapetus (talk) 08:26, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. It seems to use particularly low quality images, leaving an awful lot open to personal interpretation. HiLo48 (talk) 09:00, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Which is of course the whole point of it. 131.251.254.154 (talk) 14:34, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What? To annoythe crap out of me becasue I can't figure it out, and head off to some other website? HiLo48 (talk) 22:26, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

On Wikipedia the CAPTCHA consists of two words. The letters are often so deformed that the CAPTCHA can only be solved by having regard to the meaning of the words - the right interpretation is the only one which makes sense. 2A00:23C0:8601:4501:980A:A922:1FFF:F590 (talk) 16:52, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If only the English language was so logical..... HiLo48 (talk) 22:26, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Almost a year ago, I submitted three I guess rather simple FOIARs to the CIA. Up no know I did not get any reply besides an early confirmation. Is that the normal case? The requests are rather uncontroversial "archival" ones, the papers were written between 1951 and 1978, so I do not believe that it was refused. Or could it be a problem that I am foreign (german) national? Has anyone experience with that?--Antemister (talk) 17:47, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You might need to consult your lawyer. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:32, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Details: "Time Periods under FOIA". www.dmlp.org. Digital Media Law Project. —2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 22:40, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That supports what I expected. And this from the National Security Archive at GWU but general also suggests a similar thing [1]. Namely if your requested is denied, or there is some other problem, they should tell you. Also the second source also suggests being a foreign national does not stop you making a legitimate request. Both sources also suggest somethin again to be expected. If you want to know what's going on, your best bet is probably to ask. Remember to include the tracking number or whatever you received with your initial confirmation. There's a reasonable chance it's just stuck in a backlog. Or maybe it somehow got waylayed. Nil Einne (talk) 03:43, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bear in mind that answering questions from random members of the public is not part of their primary mission, but rather something they're reluctantly forced to do by legal requirements. They probably don't approach it with any urgency, or devote many resources to it, as this would detract from their efforts elsewhere. Quite possibly they might want to investigate the questioner before actually addressing the question, to make sure the questioner doesn't have an ulterior motive in establishing contact with them. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.125.75.224 (talk) 04:51, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if to refer to a "WikiProject" or here? So, yeah?

When a show is airing in US, like Disney XD with Pokémon and a tv network in a different country was showing it. As the show in the US is behind some episodes, when the one in Japan isn't. So if a show's air date was added in, where the next 2 or 3 weeks were filled in, is that WP:CRYSTALBALL? As I did on this edit from a different show. (the air dates are for the US and most of the time a web-site to a tv network, only shown a t.v. show a week ahead.) Would it be ok to just wait until it airs on tv? and add it by then. But not like add the next 3 dates. As from my edit message from there. Tainted-wingsz (talk) 20:39, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The edit sounds like original research, to predict it will be on. But really it is not that serious a violation. You could say WP:CRYSTALBALL is relevant. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:11, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]