Things you always wanted to know the answer to [Vol. 3]

[ambuletz]

This is probably an easy one and might show some lack of knowledge on my part but....

Why do people who are going through cancer treatment decide to shave off their hair? I can only guess that the treatment makes it more like that the entire hair folicle can pull out? meaning that someone who is undergoing treatment is better of shaving off to try and preserve as many folicles as possible should they come out of it and recover (and want a full head of hair still)

[DanielSan]

Willy Nilly said:

grumbledoak said:

Willy Nilly said:

Why do the Abrahamic religions have such a problem with sex?

Power. It's all about power.

Want support from the men? Place them above and ahead of the women.
Want an army of bds? Tell young men they can do what they like to the other tribe's women after they've killed the other tribe's men.

It's all about power.

So why the vow of chastity (and then fiddling with small boys)?

Sounds like joining the priesthood.

[steveo3002]

ambuletz said:

This is probably an easy one and might show some lack of knowledge on my part but....

Why do people who are going through cancer treatment decide to shave off their hair? I can only guess that the treatment makes it more like that the entire hair folicle can pull out? meaning that someone who is undergoing treatment is better of shaving off to try and preserve as many folicles as possible should they come out of it and recover (and want a full head of hair still)

maybe looks a mess with clumps falling out so take it all off ?

[Halmyre]

steveo3002 said:

ambuletz said:

This is probably an easy one and might show some lack of knowledge on my part but....

Why do people who are going through cancer treatment decide to shave off their hair? I can only guess that the treatment makes it more like that the entire hair folicle can pull out? meaning that someone who is undergoing treatment is better of shaving off to try and preserve as many folicles as possible should they come out of it and recover (and want a full head of hair still)

maybe looks a mess with clumps falling out so take it all off ?

I don't think shaving necessarily makes any difference, someone I know had their hair (which fell out in only a few days) come back perfectly healthy, post-chemo.

[ambuletz]

fair enough. thanks. i guess its a case of people shaving off before it looks bad.

[Jonboy_t]

How did cash machines work pre-internet? Did they just rely on people only taking out what they knew they had or was there some kind of communication every day to tell each machine how much money people had in their account?

[Europa1]

SpeckledJim said:

TTOBES said:

Judging by the last page of content, I hope I've come to the right place!

As the 25-year-old building housing my local VW dealership gets prepared for demolition and they move into a temporary showroom, up to what percentage of the cost of the new build might VW contribute?

I presume it's not very much, as there will be several floors of flats on top of the new build - perhaps to help pay for it all!

None, I should think.

Yep, none - and VW may well specify where the floor tiles must come from, the light fittings, taps, colour scheme...

[Halmyre]

Jonboy_t said:

How did cash machines work pre-internet? Did they just rely on people only taking out what they knew they had or was there some kind of communication every day to tell each machine how much money people had in their account?

IIRC the three main Scottish banks used X25 over dedicated lines for communication between branches, so I assume the other banks did likewise. Don't know if that included cash machines though.

[Cliftonite]

Jonboy_t said:

How did cash machines work pre-internet? Did they just rely on people only taking out what they knew they had or was there some kind of communication every day to tell each machine how much money people had in their account?

The first cash dispensers gave you ten crisp pound notes in exchange for your card (returned to you in the post) no matter how much was in your account.

[SpeckledJim]

Europa1 said:

SpeckledJim said:

TTOBES said:

Judging by the last page of content, I hope I've come to the right place!

As the 25-year-old building housing my local VW dealership gets prepared for demolition and they move into a temporary showroom, up to what percentage of the cost of the new build might VW contribute?

I presume it's not very much, as there will be several floors of flats on top of the new build - perhaps to help pay for it all!

None, I should think.

Yep, none - and VW may well specify where the floor tiles must come from, the light fittings, taps, colour scheme...

Dealer Standards being the most profitable department per headcount at any car manufacturer.

[P-Jay]

Cliftonite said:

Jonboy_t said:

How did cash machines work pre-internet? Did they just rely on people only taking out what they knew they had or was there some kind of communication every day to tell each machine how much money people had in their account?

The first cash dispensers gave you ten crisp pound notes in exchange for your card (returned to you in the post) no matter how much was in your account.

On a simular note, way back when in the days of 'Access' as in "does you do, or does you don't take access?". I'm sure the only security on credit cards was the signature and it seemed to all be paper-based they stuck the card on a medal plate thing with carbon paper, ran the handle over to make a copy of it, you signed and off you went.

How did they enforce limits, or stop theives roaming the country buying up anythign they fancied?

[marshalla]

P-Jay said:

On a simIlar note, way back when in the days of 'Access' as in "does you do, or does you don't take access?". I'm sure the only security on credit cards was the signature and it seemed to all be paper-based they stuck the card on a meTal plate thing with carbon paper, ran the handle over to make a copy of it, you signed and off you went.

How did they enforce limits, or stop theives roaming the country buying up anythiNG they fancied?

All the cards had a low limit which was authorised without any further checks. For anything above that limit, the retailer had to call for an authorisation code.

It was up to the retailer to check the signatures carefully and if there was fraud of that type, it was pushed back to the retailer as a chargeback because they were deemed not to have been diligent enough.

[walm]

P-Jay said:

How did they enforce limits, or stop theives roaming the country buying up anythign they fancied?

My first card had a little £50 on it somewhere, which I believe was the limit a retailer should accept without authorisation.

[dudleybloke]

I think the cash machines used to update after midnight until about 1994ish then it became instant like it is today.

[Vaud]

marshalla said:

All the cards had a low limit which was authorised without any further checks. For anything above that limit, the retailer had to call for an authorisation code.

It was up to the retailer to check the signatures carefully and if there was fraud of that type, it was pushed back to the retailer as a chargeback because they were deemed not to have been diligent enough.

This. And if you had a suspicious card in front of you and the customer was present you could ask for a code 10 authorisation and they would use a different script. You didn't need to be above the "authorisation limit" for this.

Fraudsters would choose busy times. Lazy fraudsters were easy to spot - very casual decision making on high value items, sometimes incomplete address or an address/tel number that didn't match.

Confiscating cards was a regular occurrence.

[wiggy001]

ambuletz said:

fair enough. thanks. i guess its a case of people shaving off before it looks bad.

I think you'll also find it's a lot about taking control of the situation. eg "I'm shaving my hair because I want to and won't let the cancer dictate when I lose my hair".

[Vaud]

Jonboy_t said:

How did cash machines work pre-internet? Did they just rely on people only taking out what they knew they had or was there some kind of communication every day to tell each machine how much money people had in their account?

The ATMs would not have had enough storage or bandwidth to do that.

It was a time of higher trust and also heavy penalties for withdrawing money you didn't have, combined with only issuing them to people that had good accounts, reduced the risk to the bank.

[Dr Jekyll]

P-Jay said:

............................or stop theives roaming the country buying up anythign they fancied?

They didn't stop them, until the thief made a mistake. Which is how Stephen Fry's roam of the country came to an end and he went to jail.

[anonymous-user]

ambuletz said:

This is probably an easy one and might show some lack of knowledge on my part but....

Why do people who are going through cancer treatment decide to shave off their hair? I can only guess that the treatment makes it more like that the entire hair folicle can pull out? meaning that someone who is undergoing treatment is better of shaving off to try and preserve as many folicles as possible should they come out of it and recover (and want a full head of hair still)

My wife had really thick, long dark hair. Unfortunately, she also had cancer last year and she knew the hair was going to go one way or another. Chemo works by killing all rapidly developing cells. Unfortunately it can't discriminate between bad-rapidly-growing cancerous cells or good-rapidly-growing cells which includes hair and to a lesser degree, your finger nails.

During the first month or two there was no sign of any hair loss, but she had it cut to a shoulder length bob (really suited her) and a month or so later when strands started to come out, she went down to a Pixie cut (again, looked great) to minimise the shock and general mess that going from long hair to no hair would entail. After the 3 months the Fec chemo drug really started to go to work, and her hair loss was more noticeable. It never came out in clumps but strands would come out during the night, during combing etc. Eventually she got me to shave the pixie cut down to a Sinead O' Connoresque buzz cut and a month or so later even that had gone, along with eyebrows, eyelashes, nose hair and body hair.

If you've ever wondered what purpose eyebrows and nose hair have, try not having them. She sneezed a lot and sweat and dust got into her eyes all the time. Evolution's had a long time to think about these things.

Ironically, at this point the 6 month treatment changes to another drug which doesn't kill off the hair but by then the hair-killing drugs are well in the system. The chemo stopped in early October and about a month later when the chemo had started to get flushed out it did started to grow back pretty quickly. Today she has more hair than me and from what we can gather, it's coming back black and straight as before, although a colleague's mum's hair grew back in a tightly-curled afro.

I would imagine the shaving is taking ownership of the situation and sticking two fingers up to cancer. One of the people in the support group my wife pops along to shaved their head the week after getting diagnosed. Bit eager but each to their own.

Edited by DrSteveBrule on Wednesday 24th February 20:54

[ambuletz]

wow, thanks for the insight. wishing you two all the best.