little_details

Very simple: I just need some English words translated to Russian for one of my characters. I've tried Googling, but most of what's available in the area of translation and dictionaries are in Cyrillic, and...I can't really use that. (I also don't trust most internet language sites, due to inaccuracies.) Along with the words below, I'd also like to know if there's an endearing term a mother or grandmother might use for a young son/grandson. The boy's name is Brandon (he has an American father, so that's where that came from), he's about nine years old and very intelligent, living with both maternal grandparents and his mother. They live in Moscow and this takes place in present times (2004, exactly), if that helps. I've looked in the tags as well, and couldn't find what I'm after.

What I need:

Grandfather (and familiar variations)
Grandmother (I know "babushka", but that seems formal--are there other variations a young child is likely to use?)
Mother/Mommy
Hello (I've been told there are many variations on this, based on to whom a person is speaking and how familiar they are. Specifically, I need a greeting in person to an unfamiliar person, a greeting in person to a familiar person, and a greeting in answering the telephone)

I also need:

"Don't tell your grandfather."


Thanks for any help. I'll probably need some more in the future :)


Edit: I think I've got what I need now! Thanks, guys :D

I didn't go to Starbucks at all over this past holiday season, so I don't know: did they have the Eggnog Latte this year, or not? I just went today and they still have three holiday drinks available, but none were the Eggnog Latte. Trust me, this is story relevant.

Hey all :) New member here (a friend very kindly referred me to this comm, and it looks brilliant for fiction writers!)

Anyway here's my question. 

Setting is present day. My character's been performing a lengthy heart massage on a man (but it failed and he didn't survive). Question is, would bruises from the heart massage appear on his chest, post-mortem?

I've been looking it up all around google and all I could find is answers that don't reassure me fully:

One source says that bruises can appear post-mortem (apparently a body that had drowned had a bruise appear on its forearm from being grabbed out of the water).
Another source says that post-mortem bruise needs great force to appear, so I'm wondering if a heart massage would be enough to make bruising appear. But since the other website seems to say that grabbing someone out of the water created post-mortem bruising... I don't know what to think any more.

So um... help? Please? :)

Okay, I've scoured erowid.org, justice.gov/dea, NYC, DC, and Houston DEA branch websites, and the obvious - Wikipedia and Google. Google search terms involved quote marks around various combinations of 'cocaine', 'kilo', 'seizure', 'transport', 'distribution', 'consistency', and 'qualities (of)'.

I have learned more about cocaine than I ever knew possible (including some details that help my plot along) - except for the main three things I need.

1. When compressed into kilo 'bricks' for overseas transport, what is the texture and consistency? Does it break down easily?

2. A dealer-slash-transporter makes off with a little less than 1 kilo. By the time he could have access to it, I'm assuming it would have already been broken and separated out into smaller packages, is this correct? Or would he be able to obtain a full brick?

3. Disposal. Character (very reluctantly) has to dispose of about half of the coke - situation is rushed and profit be damned, at this point he's just trying to save his skin. I currently have him emptying and flushing everything down the toilet (assuming it's already been separated out, as above), but am not sure if this would fly. How would one get rid of this much in a hurry? No one's beating down the door, but it needs to be within a few minutes. Stashing it anywhere is not an option; it has to be gone.

Any help at all would be appreciated. Or if you know of a drug enforcement agent who would be willing to answer these questions, please let me know.

Oh, and setting is current day USA; character obtained cocaine on west coast.

Setting: London, UK, 1916-1925

Situation: My MC (a young, educated, unmarried woman from the upper middle classes) is attempting to contact a dead writer in the hope that his spirit will help her complete his unfinished stories.

Googled: Any and every variation on Edwardian/postwar mediums/psychics, contacting the dead, automatic writing.

The problem: I can find a lot about the general existence of mediums in the 1900s, but none of it is particularly detailed: what would these visits involve? How large a group would be present for a single seance? Could I have my MC and the medium in a one-on-one session, or would that be unrealistic? How accurate is the stereotypical image of people holding hands around a rocking table? How much would a trip to a medium cost?

Relatedly, I've read that mediums/psychics became extremely popular after WWI and that their activities were the topic of serious scientific study - would there be any kind of social stigma attached to visiting a medium, beyond generally thinking the MC was superstitious and a bit of a flake? 

Any help would be appreciated beyond belief

ETA: YOU GUYS ARE AMAZING. AND FAST. VERY, VERY FAST.

If you leave your question in a comment here, I'll repost it to the community under my own account. That way you don't have to create a sockpuppet.

Make sure that your question follows the rules, especially the part about including your search terms and setting.

Comments are screened to keep answers all in one place, but you should still comment anonymously, just in case I have to ask you to change something before posting.

(I should have done this BEFORE Yuletide but I didn't think of it.)

...or something like that, I think.

Setting: It's a fanfic for the Princess Tutu anime, so it's based off a German town. The time is... not current, but perhaps in the first half of the 20th century? I'm at a loss for how to pinpoint it further.
Searches: Wikipedia "metalworking" and related articles; Google "medieval shield making" "medieval shield making metal decoration" "shield repair" and other things of that nature; Google "Achilles' shield." But I still can't seem to stumble upon the right keywords to get at what I want to ask.

The character owns an antiques shop, but seems to stock mainly (what I would think of as stereotypical medieval) armor and weapons and to do things like repair swords. I need him to be busy with a project. Because it would work nicely with the story, I'd like him to be restoring/repairing a shield reminiscent of Achilles' or Aeneas' shields--that is, metal and ornately decorated and telling a story through the pictures. I imagine something that detailed would keep him occupied and require a lot of his attention.

The only problem is, I have no idea what he would be doing with it. What kind of damage might need to be repaired--nicks and scratches to the metal due to battle or to carelessness in later storing it or using it as a decoration at home? Could parts of the decorated figures get knocked off? I don't really have the first clue as to how such a shield would be constructed, so I can't accurately imagine how it would fall apart. How could the character then restore these damages?

I don't really need specific details and terminology, but I'd like to be able to have some description at least in passing of what he might be doing at the moment. "He was heating the shield in the fire so that he could smooth out the nicks"? "The decoration was worked in gold, so he carefully beat and reshaped the figures"?

Any help you could give me to make my ignorance less obvious in this scene would be appreciated.

Setting: A roughly modern fantasy world. If it makes a difference, these events are taking place in a hot, dry climate, though the character is near a major river delta when he's first wounded.

I’ve searched:  “blood poisoning, shrapnel” “septicaemia, shrapnel” “MRSA wound” “infected wounds” and every variation I can think of, and I’ve consulted Little Details before. My research has helped, but I just want to be sure I'm getting this right.

This is a follow-up to this post,on giving a character a potentially fatal infection from a wound, while still keeping him functional for a time.   Back then, when this part of the story was still in the planning stages, I thought I wanted the situation to play out over a much longer period of time; now, it’s more like ten days or so.  And while I always meant the kitteh character’s life to be in danger, I used to think there was no need to have him actually at death’s door when I  swooped in with the healing phlebotinum. I now cannot fathom this: of COURSE he should be at death’s door!

I think the contracted time-scale actually helps with plausibility.  But another change may be more of a problem - back then, I imagined that the kitteh character, who is a fugitive, would receive no professional medical attention at all. Now he  actually has two rounds of access to medical treatment – once when he’s just been injured, and later, in another country, when he’s very ill indeed. Despite this, I need him to not get better.

So I thought “Well, I’ll just write what I want to happen, using the information I have (from the last post), and finish the story, and polish it up later.” and polishing it up is the stage I’m at now.

The character is a fugitive in his early 30s, This may be relevant in that we may assume their bugs are at different stages of resistance to antibiotics, or something – but I’d prefer to have this feel like something that could happen in the real world.  I described him as otherwise healthy before, but if necessary he could be physically run down – he’s been living a gruelling sort of life.
( I decided to blow him up a little bit... )
 

I am trying to name streets and districts for a fantasy novel. The city itself is in not-exactly Hungary, and I had a look at addresses from Budapest, but, not being Hungarian, these made no sense to me. What sort of names would districts in a Hungarian city have? And what street names would be popular? What is the equivalent of 'George Street'? If it makes any difference, the country is German-influenced.

Thank you.

Anglo-Spanish wars at sea at the very end of the 18th century.

I've googled all the obvious: Spain history;  Spain war Britain; Spanish history timeline; Britain and Spain at war; Iberian Peninsular War etc., and bounced around Wikipedia checking Nelson and Napoleon, but there's a big fat gap between what seems to be a brief war at sea from 1796 (when Spain declares war on Britain) and 1797 (when the British navy defeats the Spanish) and 1804 when Spain declares war on Britain again. Then in 1805 Spanish ships join the French against the British at Trafalgar.

Specifically would Spanish shipping in the Atlantic have been fair game for British Privateers between 1797 and 1804? Did the defeat of the Spanish end that short war or was it just a temporary setback for Spain?

According to http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/napoleon/timeline1.html Spain declares war on Britain in 1796 but in February 1797, the British navy defeats Spain at the battle of St Vincent, off Portugal, and seizes Spanish Trinidad and Dutch Tobago (West Indies).

But what happens then between the two countries? I can't find any details of whys or wherefores; whether it's an uneasy peace, sometimes broken, or whether Spanish shipping is completely off limits to British navy and privateers. What exactly is the state of play in 1800 in the Atlantic when much of my action takes place?

My British privateer is sailing the Atlantic from 1797 to 1801 with Letters of Marque from the Crown. Which countries' shipping (apart from the obvious France) are fair game without them being branded as pirates?

Thanks.

Doing early planning work for a novel set in a north eastern US city, which doesn't really matter except that it involves a fair number of political dirty tricks including sabotaging the city's snow removal during a blizzard to make the incumbent mayor seem incompetent.

Many years ago I read a story about city workers protesting the introduction of snow plows by placing crowbars in the snow to mess up the works. My very fuzzy brain recalls this as Boston or Ottawa for some reason, but don't count on that. I need to know if anyone else recalls the details of this, if it was true, and what the crowbars actually did.

Any other suggestions for how to mess up city snow removal in a nasty political campaign would also be appreciated.

Google searching snow plows, unions, crowbars, sabotage, snow removal, and city workers all turned up nothing. But I do know where I can buy a good snow plow and a good crowbar in the same store ;). I read a couple histories of the snow plow, including one on weather.com, also of no use.

I am trying to figure out how much a fashionable portrait painter might charge in 1912. The painter is either American or British (I'm still deciding, and may well make my choice depending on the results of this search). His clients come from both sides of the Atlantic. He's well-established and popular, filling a niche similar to that of John Singer Sargent a few years earlier. A rough estimate or range is fine.

I've tried googling the word "portrait" in combination with various permutations of "cost," "price," or "commission" and "Edwardian" or "in 1912." Any variant of "cost" or "price" in those searches turns up recent auction prices and sites selling reproductions. "Commission" has just gotten very general mentions without any actual dollar or pound amounts attached. I've read the Wikipedia entries on John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase, and the material about Sargent on this site. I also looked at the Smithsonian's online collection of Sargent's letters, but found myself having an embarrassing degree of difficulty with his handwriting and was unable to determine if they contained anything relevant.

UPDATE: Thanks, folks! I've got an answer that's precise enough for my needs. I appreciate all the help and suggestions.

Setting: Fantasy!Medieval England

I have a wizard who's performing a spell to find someone and bring them home safely. I'd like for said wizard to use a bundle of appropriate herbs tied together with something of the person's, because it's very wizardly and such. The only problem is that I have no idea what various herbs mean, and thereby which herbs he should use so that it would make sense. I've tried searching on neo-Pagan sites but haven't found anything (the sites tend to be rather vague and focus on how to win money when you're gambling). So help me, community-wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.

 I'm writing a story in which a character moves to London from Paris as a result of her parents' divorce, and I'm trying to find a suitable school for her to have attended whilst there. Her family is high-class, with both her parents wealthy French professionals, but I keep being directed to lists of bilingual schools for English-1st-language expatriates, or to lists of high schools in Paris, Texas. From the one list of normal French schools I could find, I'm currently thinking of the Lycée Victor Hugo, but for all I know that could be wildly inaccurate (though they do have a 70% rate of mentions at Bac level, I'm not sure just how good that is).

Can any of you suggest a posh lycée for her to have left behind?

Edit: Thanks for the help guys! Think I'll go for Janson de Sailly for now, but the others were also pretty well suited, so I may switch to them yet.

I had read in reference to Jing Ping Mei(The Golden Lotus, or The Plum in the Golden Vase) that it was supposedly written so luridly as a murder attempt: that the ink would be mixed with some highly toxic poison and that as the reader got into it and licked his fingers to turn the pages, he would smear the ink on his hands and ingest it. Now, whether or not this is true of the Jing Pink Mei, I highly doubt.

HOWEVER, is it technically possible to poison someone with a book in this way? Let's just assume that it's a pretty toxic poison to begin with, and not one where you'd have to ingest a large amount or you'd more likely get just some vomiting and such. Exactly what type of poison can be worked out(suggestions if you know one way or another would be appreciated), but I'm really primarily concerned about its overall feasibility since it seems to have worked its way into a crucial point in my fantasy story.

There's not much more information relating to this and the Jing Ping Mei than what I just described, and various searches pretty much only turn up answers on what happens if you directly drink modern manufactured ink.

Setting: USA, modern day

My friend's characters are debating whether or not a swelling brain could cause a human skull to crack, and so my friend would like to know how many psi would be required to crack the skull from the inside.

She has searched "skull cracking from inside psi," "internal skull fracture," "internal skull strength," and "psi to break skull internally," but without any luck, so I offered to post her question here.

Any help is greatly appreciated by both of us. Thank you.

Edit: Thanks to those who have suggested herniation; however, this particular discussion is about the theoretical rather than the practical. So, assuming there were something (not necessarily the brain) inside the cranium exerting pressure, how many psi would it take before that something fractured the skull?

Setting: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada - 1995/1996
Searched: "Fanfiction history," "history of fanfiction," "fanfiction in 1996," "internet communities in 1995," "internet communities in 1996" "anime fansub VHS tapes," "VHS tap eexchanges anime," among other things - which gave me great timelines of fanfiction history, but didn't answer all of my most nagging questions.

So I'm working on a supporting character for a novel set at the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1996. My goal is create a twelve-year-old author of truly atrocious slash fanfiction.

You'd think that nothing would be easier to research online than fanfiction, and Googling and Wikipedia have given me some good information, but there are still some nagging questions:

( Help me create a truly awful fanfiction writer in 1996 )

Thanks in advance for any help!

ETA: Wow. Just wow. I knew I'd get a couple of good responses here, but I realize in retrospect that I probably should've turned off my e-mail notification :)

Not that I'm complaining. I have all the material I'll ever need for this character, and then some. Thanks, all of you!

Would a brain injury at birth caused by lack of oxygen show up on an MRI/CAT scan in an adult? Setting aside the fact that obviously they would have developmental issues, would the damage be visible on those scans or does the plastic nature of the brain "remodel" it by adulthood to such an extent that you couldn't see it? Is there even a "change" you could see?

So far I've searched for-
"anoxic brain inury long term" "anoxic brain injury" "cerebral hypoxia at birth" "HIE" "hypoxic encephalopathy" and checked wiki, as well as a few books at the library whose titles were complicated. Are there other terms for the diffuse brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen?
I've searched every variation I can think of, but the only thing that ever comes up are ambulance chaser websites and websites devoted to adults who got brain injuries during their lifetime, not during their birth.

I've tried Googling "British peerage," "line of sucession," "dukedom inheritance," and "what happened to a duke who was injured beyond recovery?"

In my book, the eldest of two brothers becomes the duke after his father's death, but only a few years later he is thrown from his horse during a fox hunt. He doesn't die, but he suffers permanent brain damage.

Would his younger brother take over his title, even though he's not technically dead?

I'd really appreciate any help anyone could offer!

Happy New Year!!!