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August 30

Raymond of Cabannis and Philippa the Catanian

Recently while reading Nancy Goldstone's biography on Queen Joan I of Naples, I came upon this unusual couple. Raymond of Cabannis was a former Ethopian slave who rose to become Grand Seneschal of the kingdom of Naples and his wife Philippa was a Sicilian laundress who was appointed governess to Queen Joan when she lost her mother as a child. I have searched the Internet to discover more about these people but to no avail. They had four children who married into the Neapolitan aristocracy but apart from this fact I have not been able to find out anything else about them. Would anybody happen to have more information on the Cabannis family? Thank you.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 11:47, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

There seems to be a decent amount online about Raimondo de Cabanni and Filippa da Catania (Filippa la Catanese) but it's all in Italian.--Cam (talk) 16:50, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Cultural influences on relationships

What is causing young people to have relationships these days through peer pressure ? Is it cultural, media? 176.250.252.78 (talk) 12:41, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Could you elaborate? What sorts of relationships? Sexual, friendships, aquaintences? --Jayron32 13:20, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Girlfriend/boyfriend sort of relationships. 176.250.252.78 (talk) 14:32, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Young people have been forming girlfriend-boyfriend relationships for a long time. It didn't just start "these days". The Wikipedia articles titled Dating and Courtship have a wealth of information. --Jayron32 15:51, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

What country or area are you looking at? What evidence do you have to suggest that young people are doing this more than at other times? What evidence do you have to suggest that peer pressure is a factor in their decision-making? If you can answer these questions (which are implied by your first question), you may find you already have the answer to your second question. AlexTiefling (talk) 16:18, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

The OP's IP address geolocates to London. --Jayron32 16:44, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

The 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony was a widely viewed cultural and media event in London which emphasised (amongst other things) the positive aspects of young people being in (apparently romantic) relationships. (See 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony#Frankie and June say...thanks Tim (21:52–22:09)) However, I would agree with Jayron's point - young people entering into relationships is a natural thing for them to do. One might as well ask to what extent, and in what way, cultural and media pressure is discouraging young people from doing so. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:57, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. 300 years ago in Western culture, it was common for people to marry by their 18th birthday. A generation ago, it was still uncommon for people to make it out of their 20s without being married. Today, people wait until their 30s to get married. I would say there is a prevalence today for people to delay long-term committements. --Jayron32 20:03, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

The often quoted idea that age at marriage in "Western culture" has been steadily increasing for centuries is probably inaccurate; see, eg, these figures. Colonial North America was unusual in having relatively early marriage. However, in northern Europe at the same time it was substantially later - comfortably over 25 on average - remaining relatively high through the following centuries and not dropping dramatically until the 20th century. In the UK, the lowest period of age on first marriage for both men and women is comfortably within living memory! Andrew Gray (talk) 12:56, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Romeo and Juliet? Sexual reproduction? Puritanism? Sexual repression? μηδείς (talk) 03:37, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Who in India speaks English?

It says here that India's second official language, English, is native for just 0.02% of the 1.2-billion population of the country. Who are they? Are they characterised as belonging to specific ethnic groups, social classes or immigrant communities, or specific cities and regions? --Theurgist (talk) 18:32, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

0.02% of 1.2 billion is 240,000 people. My guess is that some of these are children of people who have moved to India from elsewhere in the Anglophone world, and these would be concentrated in the major metro areas. There are some people of European/English decent who moved to India during the colonial period, and never left. I suspect their decendents may still live in India and would likely learn English at home. --Jayron32 18:36, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Just settling the exact figures: according to the list English is #44, with 178,598 speakers, or 0.021% of the total population, which is 1,210,193,422 people according to the 2011 census. --Theurgist (talk) 18:45, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

No, it isn't. 178598 divide by 1210193422 is .0001475, or 0.01475%. That's 1/3rd off from the 0.021% figure. If it has all three of those numbers in the article, something is wrong: either the math or the number. --Jayron32 19:01, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I didn't do any math. I just copied the numbers from here and from here - without much thought, actually. Evidently, something needs editing. --Theurgist (talk) 19:07, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

That's why I said exactly that. --Jayron32 19:12, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

An English speaker counts for 50% more than everybody else, by gad. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:12, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

As a first language: almost no one. As a second language: those who went through decent schooling and went to a decent university, which is 9% of the population (much less than any one thinks, but India is mainly not English speaking). — Preceding unsigned comment added by OsmanRF34 (talk • contribs) 20:08, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Have a look at Indian English. It talks about "the relatively small Anglo-Indian community and some families of full Indian ethnicity where English is the primary language spoken in the home". Alansplodge (talk) 20:49, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Loads of people in India speak English, but most of them learn it as a second language and they wouldn't be as fluent in it as people in the West. AFAIK, people going to school in India have to learn 3 languages; Hindi, English and whatever language happens to be the main language of the state they live in. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 08:01, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

People going to schools in India usually, but not always, learn Hindi[1]. I believe that in Tamil Nadu teaching of Hindi in schools is rare as it is seen as an "imposition from the North". -- Q Chris (talk) 10:42, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, see Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu. It was because of this that English retains an official status in Indian government. Alansplodge (talk) 17:19, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Mmm, that's interesting... I must have got confused. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 14:06, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I know a full-blooded native Indian whose name is J. Smith and whose first language is English; he was adopted and raised by Anglo-Catholic parents. μηδείς (talk) 01:07, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Kimveer Gill's journal

I read that his profile on VampireFreaks is no longer available, but is there any way to look at his journal entries? Maybe copies of the journal?. Thank you. Mark. Alabamaboy1992 (talk) 20:11, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Is there any link between the murder of the Afghan war lord and the World Trade Center attacks?

I'm sorry I can't remember the name of the war lord. Thank you. Mark. Alabamaboy1992 (talk) 22:00, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Probably not. Bin Laden's group had been gearing up for September 11th for some time. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was organized by Al Qaeda some 8 years before. The leader you are thinking of is likely Ahmad Shah Massoud who was assassinated 2 days before the September 11th hijackings. That's just way too close in time for it to have had any effect on the event. The hijackings would have had to have been planned down to exacting detail, including the days and times of the flights, and tickets for those planes were purchased considerably ahead of time. There's no chance his death had causal effect on September 11th. Additionally Massoud was an enemy of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, so I don't think there's any reason to think he would have inspired anything of the sort by his death. --Jayron32 22:10, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Or both events were Al Qaeda acts and the timing was strategic. I don't think the question is only about one influencing the other. Tom Haythornthwaite 22:21, 30 August 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hayttom (talk • contribs)

Yes, it is the opposite causation from what Jayron implies. Massoud was killed by Al Qaeda because the date for 9/11 had been set. I remember reading of his death (and predictions that August in the NY Post that attacks were imminent) before 9/11. μηδείς (talk) 21:44, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I would assume Massoud was assassinated right before 9/11 in the hopes of causing the Northern Alliance to collapse before the West intervenes in Afghanistan, thus making it much bloodier and harder for the West to overthrow the Taliban and remove al Qaeda from Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda's stategy in regards to this didn't work, as Western money, weapons, intelligence, and strategic efforts were able to hold the Northern Alliance together and help it out after Massoud's death and 9/11. Futurist110 (talk) 22:32, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

And why do it shortly before the attack? Wouldn't it be much smarter strategically to win the civil war over the Northern Alliance and then go to the 9/11 attack? You don't want to engage too many enemies at the same time normally. Obviously, this rationale is only valid if we assume their leader to be rational thinkers, what appears not to be the case. OsmanRF34 (talk) 23:02, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Look at the link provided by Jayron. At least one FBI agent and one congressman familiar with the situation immediately assumed that Massoud's assassination was a prelude to attacking the United States. Obviously we'll never know what Osama was thinking, but it's possible they wanted us to have as little warning as possible. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:05, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

We won't know either whether these both guys indeed connected the dots. The Taliban and Al-Qaida had been fighting the Northern Alliance for a long time before this attack on Massoud. I don't see how could you see it as an exceptional case. Even the attack on the US is not that surprising, considering that they tried it before. OsmanRF34 (talk) 23:23, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't really understand what you mean by the first statement. While the Congressman only mentioned that they drew the connection quite a while after the attacks, so it's impossible to know if they really drew the connection at the time or whether it was just a minor thought that occured to them, one of many such thoughts that would have been ignored had it not been for the attacks. However the other cases the statements were from before the attacks, as the person died in the attacks, so unless the friends are either lying or misremembering what was said, we can be sure they really had these thoughts. Of course perhaps they always had such thoughts and would have often been sharing them with their friends (I say 'would have' because perhaps they weren't doing it when working for the FBI). Whether you want to say they 'connected the dots' or 'got lucky' is of course a bit arbitary, as it nearly always is although does depend on whether you believe their thesis is correct (the results were, doesn't mean the thesis was). BTW the article also mentions the possible reasons for his assasination in relation to the attacks, however it doesn't suggest the timing was on purpose. Nil Einne (talk) 19:21, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I was reading a book by As'ad AbuKhalil a while back (I can't remember which one it was and I don't have it with me right now) in which he made the case that it was definitely connected to the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban knew both that the US would retaliate for al Qaeda's actions and that the Northern Alliance would be a natural ally of a possible US ground assault/invasion. The assassination was a strategic attempt to destabilize the Northern Alliance and thereby make them less valuable, and less effective, as a possible US ally.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 23:36, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, the link is there: both are enemies of Al-Qaida, and it was attacking both of them. Coordinating both attacks seems to be rather difficult, since the 9/11 required careful planning way in advance, and the Massoud's assassination was more of an opportunistic attack. OsmanRF34 (talk) 23:45, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

This might be conjecture on my part but maybe al-Qaeda was worried that if it kills Massoud too early the Taliban might get a bit of sense and decide that since they now defeated the Northern Alliance, there's no need for them to keep on helping and sponsoring al-Qaeda any further. Al-Qaeda thought that if the Taliban conquered all of Afghanistan maybe the Taliban would feel that they don't need any more trouble, especially with big powers like the U.S. (and al-Qaeda was very good at causing trouble for the U.S.). Keep in mind that the Taliban and al-Qaeda did have some tensions in the pre-9/11 era, and maybe al-Qaeda felt that the Taliban could eventually do a big political U-turn with them like they previously did with opium in 2000 and eventually kick al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan (without a safe haven, it would have been much harder for al-Qaeda to implement a successful large-scale attack against the U.S. on the scale of 9/11). Futurist110 (talk) 01:45, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the Northern Alliance was that important to the US attack on Afghanistan. Yes, they were used as ground troops, but, had they been completely defeated by the Taliban prior to that, the US would still have won, it just would have required US/NATO ground troops. (Of course, either way, holding Afghanistan is far more difficult than conquering it.) But this might have inadvertently helped Saddam, as the US would have had too many ground troops committed in Afghanistan to invade Iraq. StuRat (talk) 08:31, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Have you seen the article published recently in various American media about a Polish spy, Aleksander Makowski, and his revelations about his relationship with Massoud? Especially this fragment:

Makowski now thinks that Massoud held back intelligence about bin Laden and the 9/11 plot because of the CIA’s lack of interest. “I am aware of the fact that the development of modern Afghanistan doesn’t matter to the Americans,” Makowski recalls Massoud telling him in August 1999. He knew, however, that the United States was interested in bin Laden, and he feared that if bin Laden were killed, the U.S. would reach an accommodation with the Taliban. He decided to play it coy, Makowski says. “I will stall for time until I make sure they had stopped supporting the Taliban and are ready to support me instead," Makowski said Massoud had concluded.' In mid-June 2000, Massoud practically ordered his commanders not to cooperate with the CIA in hunting down bin Laden. Makowski thinks Massoud also avoided telling the Americans of bin Laden’s plan for the 9/11 strikes. “I think there is a very good case that he allowed this to happen,” Makowski told McClatchy, speaking of 9/11. Unfortunately, Massoud missed a key part of bin Laden’s 9/11 planning: Massoud’s own assassination, which took place on the eve of the Sept. 11 attack. CIA balked at chance to kill bin Laden in ‘99, Polish ex-spy says

— Kpalion^(talk) 11:20, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

To be fair, Massoud was simply worrying about his own interests, similar to how Ahmed Chalabi and other Iraqi dissidents exaggerated and/or lied about Iraq's alleged WMDs and nuclear program in order to increase the odds of an American invasion to remove Saddam. And StuRat, while the U.S. would have been able to overthrow the Taliban without the Northern Alliance, it would have been far bloodier for the United States and thus al-Qaeda speculated that it would be harder for the U.S. to invade Afghanistan if the Northern Alliance had already collapsed by that point. Of course, the Northern Alliance didn't collapse and even if it would have collapsed al-Qaeda greatly underestimated the rage of the American people at 9/11. Futurist110 (talk) 06:07, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

August 31

Heavenly Theology

NASA recently successfully landed the Curiosity Rover on Mars to search for signs of life of non-terrestrial origin. Other efforts, such as SETI, are also doing the same thing.

Hypothetically, if tomorrow it was announced that extraterrestrial life had been found, how would the theology of religions such as Catholicism, Judaism and Islam deal with this?Honeyman2010 (talk) 00:48, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Sounds to me like this calls for speculation. In any case, this was already asked and discussed here this month. See Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Humanities/2012_August_17#Religious_implications_of_extraterrestrial_contact to read the previous discussion.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 01:25, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

There is a discussion of this in The Eerie Silence by Paul Davies. He says that the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life would "deal a severe blow" to religion, but that it may be possible for them to assimilate it in a similar way to heliocentricism and evolution. It would pose theological problems for Christianity in that Jesus was specifically sent to save humans, which begs the question of how the aliens (who may be far more advanced than us) are to be saved. Two solutions that have been suggested are that (a) Jesus was incarnated as an alien on many different worlds (which has Biblical problems, apparently) and (b) that we are somehow supposed to convert the aliens to Christianity. Surveys of believers indicate it would not make much difference. Hut 8.5 19:20, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

What are the Biblical problems? 109.144.162.204 (talk) 22:58, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I believe the idea is that it would be problematic since none of the Evangelists mentioned it. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 08:05, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Pope Benedict XVI reportedly said it wouldn't matter if extraterrestrials were encountered. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:25, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The Pope said no such thing; an employee for the Vatican Observatory said it. That gets thrown around a lot like it was some kind of ex cathedra declaration or something, but that's not the case. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 08:05, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

• Regarding Judaism, I have no doubt that the aliens would be considered just another set of goyim and if they were amenable to our religions, local congregations would probably have a fit about how the conversion is to be done and whether the alien counts towards a minyan. However, I don't think it would rock the religion to its feet.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:07, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
  • HA! If they convert, I see no problem with counting them for a minyan. My shul would definitely be open to having alien members! Bzweebl (talk • contribs) 23:29, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Wright Enrichment's Logo-with-motto

http://www.anh-usa.org/wild-west-supplements/

Dateline aired a documentary about dry labs, that's fake labs giving a 3rd party verification of authenticity of ingredient lists. Wright Enrichment which seems to be the Wright Group [2] seems to have the CIRCULAR logo here.

On the doc, I saw a another logo which a motto. Can someone provide the picture? Thank you.Curb Chain (talk) 06:06, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Michigan and Virginia Presidential Vote in 1884 and 1888

How come Michigan was so close in the 1884 election and how come Virginia was so close in the 1884 and 1888 elections when they were solid states for a particular party in other years such as 1876, 1880, and 1892? Futurist110 (talk) 06:21, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand the Q. Why would having voted solidly for one party in a given election require a state to do so in all other elections ? The issues will be different in each election, and some issues divide down by geography, while others do not. StuRat (talk) 08:24, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The voting patterns relative to the rest of the nation were very constant for most states between 1876 and 1892. Thus, Michigan and Virginia were exceptions to this rule and I want to know why. Futurist110 (talk) 01:24, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

One reason might be that Blaine, the Republican candidate in 1884, was not a midwesterner, and had less appeal to people there. In all other elections from 1868 to 1900, the Republican candidate had been born either in Illinois (Grant) or Ohio (Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, McKinley). I'm better at the 1896 election, but recall some discussion in Stanley Jones' The Presidential Election of 1896 that Virginia was an uneasy part of the Solid South and Bryan didn't take it by any great margin.--Wehwalt (talk) 09:58, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

In regards to Virginia, did it allow black people there to vote in 1884 and 1888? Black people formed than a third of Virginia's population at the time, if I recall correctly, so if more black people were allowed to vote in Virginia in those two elections then the GOP would have gotten a greater percentage of the vote there since blacks before the Great Depression voted overwhelmingly Republican. Futurist110 (talk) 01:24, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Contstitutionally, they had the right to, that is Virginia could not pass any explicit laws banning them, but Southern society had a lot of ways to suppress the black vote. Starting in the 1870s, and lasting through the civil rights era, black people were systatically driven out of the polls. Some states had poll taxes, which most black people couldn't afford (and which poor white people were conveniently excused if they didn't pay) or "civics tests" which kept illiterate people from the polls (or which the graders would outright cheat and fail African Americans). See Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era and Jim Crow laws and Solid South for some background. The Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 helped to put an end to this, though there are still some systemic and social disenfranchisement of black voters even today; Voter ID laws are seen as a more modern take on Jim Crow, though often they are targeted at Latino/Latina voters as much as African Americans today. --Jayron32 02:14, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, and other kinds of anti-black discrimination in the South after the Civil War. However, I am wondering if there were less efforts to prevent blacks from voting in Virginia in 1884 and 1888 in comparison to other years (1876, 1880, 1892). Also, I think voter ID laws are more partisan than racist, though I think there were several hundred people who voted illegally in MInnesota in 2008, which might have been enough to give Al Franken a victory in the Senate race there that year (if enough of those people who voted illegally that year voted for Franken). Futurist110 (talk) 03:52, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

. --Jayron32 04:15, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Here you go -- http://www.minnesotamajority.org/Portals/0/documents/ReportOnFelonVoters.pdf . However, looking at it again (I haven't looked at it for over a year), I'm not sure if this report is accurate. Futurist110 (talk) 05:07, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Do you have something that isn't produced or hosted by a partisan website like Minnesota Majority? Their website makes clear they are not an impartial agency. I wouldn't necessarily trust anything published there without independent verification from an actual reliable source. Sources need to be reliable to verify claims here, and that website doesn't have any of the hallmarks of reliability as spelled out at WP:RS. --Jayron32 05:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Is the statement by Byron York here (http://washingtonexaminer.com/york-when-1099-felons-vote-in-race-won-by-312-ballots/article/2504163) about 243 people being on trial for voter fraud and about the possibility of some people who might have committed voter fraud not having enough evidence to be prosecuted also an unreliable source? For the record, I'm not saying that there was large voter fraud in Minnesota in 2008, only that I want to look at all the evidence in regards to this issue. Futurist110 (talk) 05:33, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Dewey Grantham, in The Democratic South (Lamar Memorial Lectures, Mercer University, October 1962; W.W. Norton, New York, 1965) groups Virginia with North Carolina and Tennessee as Upper South states that remained battlegrounds between the two parties from 1876 to 1892 (pages 25-26). —— Shakescene (talk) 23:59, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Blaming Jews for Jesus's Crucifixion

I apologize if this topic is controversial or offensive, but how come Christians have blamed Jews for Jesus's crucifixion and used it to justify various atrocities and horrible acts towards the Jews for hundreds of years? I mean, Jesus was allegedly resurrected a few days later anyway, so Judas (and the Jews) didn't do any permanent harm to anyone. Thus, what was the point of blaming the Jews for something that allegedly did not permanent harm (and for the record, it's also stupid to blame all the Jews for the crime of one Jew, but this isn't my main point here)? Futurist110 (talk) 07:05, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

See Antisemitism and the New Testament. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 07:24, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

See Matthew 27:25. As a strictly legal matter, the Romans of ca. 30-35 A.D. did not allow the local native Jewish authorities (High Priest etc.) of the Roman province of Judaea to impose the death penalty, so the execution took place under Roman auspices, and a Roman official had to take direct personal responsibility for ordering the execution (as is clear from the New Testament account). AnonMoos (talk) 07:33, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Matthew 27:25. Alansplodge (talk) 17:13, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Telling people "the Jews killed God" is easier than explaining subtle theology. If you need an excuse to get rid of some Jews (because, for example, you're a Christian king who owes them money and you don't feel like paying your debts), it's an easy way to whip up a mob. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:07, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

And besides, it's not like even all Jews back then voted on it. Only a small group of Jews decided to request the death penalty. And, even if all Jews had voted on it, our society largely rejects the idea of hereditary guilt (although that was big in Biblical times). As to your point of it not doing any permanent harm, on the contrary, the resurrection of Christ is the very core of Christianity, so the crucifixion was absolutely necessary. Thus, Christians should all be thankful to Jews. StuRat (talk) 08:17, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. Our article on Felix culpa may be instructive on the point. Marnanel (talk) 11:57, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

While there's no excuse for antisemitism and persecution of Jews, the argument that 'it did no harm' doesn't really go (at least from a Christian perspective). Guilt is not determined by the outcome, but by the intention. According to the Torah, if you falsely accuse someone of a capital crime and this is discovered, you get the death penalty, because despite the fact that no harm has been done (the falseness of the claim was discovered), you intended for the accused to receive this unjust penalty. - Lindert (talk) 08:56, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Another cynical note: at least in ancient and medieval Christians, the very idea that Jews still existed was pretty embarrassing. If Jesus was really the saviour, why wouldn't all the Jews convert? Accusing them of being "Christ killers" was another way to deal with this frustration. Also, we have an article about deicide and Jewish deicide specifically, which may help. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:13, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The 'no permanent harm' element is highly misleading. The story of Doubting Thomas makes clear that (according to the Gospel writers) Jesus still had his death-wounds after the Resurrection. And torturing someone to the point of death is bad whether or not they survive. But as others have noted: it's pretty clear from the Gospel accounts that the death sentence was called for by a collaborationist elite who were threatened by revolutionary preachers. Jesus was far from unique in falling victim to this situation; John the Baptist died because the Tetrarch and his family disliked criticism. And the crowd calling for Jesus' death are specifically said to have been incited by the collaborators. Moreover, Jesus himself preached against the idea of hereditary guilt on more than one occasion. (I can think of three examples: the man born blind, and the historical references to the Tower of Siloam disaster and the massacred Pharisees.) Of course, we only have the Gospel-writers' word for it that Caiaphas and the other leaders of the Sanhedrin that year were collaborators, etc. While it's plausible, it's worth remembering that we don't have corroboration for it. So in short, blaming 'the Jews' for Jesus' death runs counter to the text of the story, the teaching of Jesus, and the way we generally understand culpability. None of which has stopped bigots down to the present day from continuing to do so. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:25, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The WP article above also has two Gospel quotes to support treating Jews with respect - John 4:22 and Romans 11:28; (although the latter is a bit ambiguous). As previously noted, it doesn't stop bigots. Alansplodge (talk) 17:12, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Modern sensibilities are repulsed by notions of collective guilt and judgment. But collective judgments are not a monopoly of Christians. Originally there were, in addition to Christian gentiles, Christian Jews who participated in synagog. About 90 AD, in order to exclude these Jewish followers of Jesus, the traditional 18 Benedictions that were read in service were amended to add a 19th "blessing", the cursing of the apostates, or Birkat Ha-Minim:

"For the apostates let there be no hope. And let the arrogant government be speedily uprooted in our days. Let the noẓerim (i.e., gentile Christians) and the minim (i.e., Jewish Christian) be destroyed in a moment. And let them be blotted out of the Book of Life and not be inscribed together with the righteous. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who humblest the arrogant"

μηδείς (talk) 17:36, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Has anyone here noted that Jesus was a Jew himself. One thing: it wasn't so much physical damage as it was the experience that Jesus had went through. Plasmic Physics (talk) 08:01, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Federal crowns

I am actually on the Reference Desk looking for a reference! Our article on corporations sole says at present:

Because Australia and Canada have federal systems of government, Elizabeth also has a distinct corporation sole for each of the Australian states and Canadian provinces – for example, Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Queensland and Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Ontario.

This is unreferenced. I have a dim memory of reading that the Canadian provinces and Australian states are not in fact in similar positions, that in one each subnational unit has its own crown but that in the other they are just aspects, as it were, of the national crown. (Casual readers should note here that "crown" is The Crown and not any sort of fancy headgear.)

I should like to correct it if it is wrong, but either way I should like to supply a reference. I have not yet found one. Could one of you help me in this?

(This is not, I should emphasise, a request for legal advice: I have no intention of becoming king in right of Ontario, and if such a thing should happen you are to restrain me from accepting the post.) Marnanel (talk) 11:53, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I am by no means an expert on Commonwealth governments, but there is a Governor General of Canada and a Governor General of Australia that represents the interests of the Monarchy at the Federal level, and there are in Canada Lieutenant governors and in Australia these are called Governors of the Australian states, and likewise serve a similar role. That is, just as in the United States, where the individual semi-sovereign states have constitutions that model them after the Federal govenrnment (The U.S. states have governors and cabinets that work like the President and his cabinet; they have bicameral legislatures with Senates and Lower houses, etc.) it would appear that the same sort of parallelism exists in Canada and Australia: The British/Commonwealth model of the "Queen-in-Parliament", and of the role of the monarch in the apparatus of the state is modeled not only at the Federal level, but also at the Province/State level as well. I don't think that this means, strictly, that the Queen is individually the "Queen of Alberta" or "Queen of New South Wales". She's still just the "Queen of Canada" and "Queen of Australia", but since those are federal nations, and all that implies, her role within the federal government of those countries is paralled with a similar role in the state/provincial governments (as represented by the Governors General/Lieutenant Governors/State Governors). That's my reading of the relevent articles, anyways. --Jayron32 12:43, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Point of information not related to the original question: The Nebraska Legislature does not have a lower house. --ColinFine (talk) 15:44, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Both are federal governmental systems in which some power is reserved to the states or provinces. You need to have an executive to commission (and, rarely, remove) the government, in both cases, there were already British-appointed governors for at least some of the governments at the time of union, and having an independent route to London was part of the features whereby the smaller jurisdictions would not be completely subject to the federal government. Others included reservation of powers to the states/provinces, and a non-representative Senate where the less populous states or provinces would be able to stand up more to Ontario/New South Wales.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:24, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The title "Queen in right of Ontario" is certainly used in legal documents: see here [3] or here [4] for example. --Xuxl (talk) 14:39, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, but all the above is background knowledge I was aware of. But can we find a reliable reference that says that there is, or is not, a monarch specifically of Alberta, Queensland, etc, as the page on corporations sole claims? (My recollection is that there is a monarch of Alberta, etc., as Xuxl points out, but not of Queensland, etc. But clearly I can't use such dim recollections as Wikipedia references.) Marnanel (talk) 15:50, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe it to be the case that each Canadian province is a separate crown. I read through this, the official page by the Canadian government. Also available is A Crown of Maples, which describes in general how the Canadian monarchy works. Lots of mention of Lieutenant Governors and provincial parliaments, but no separate crowns. Mingmingla (talk) 16:20, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the difference is subtle but real, and the language difference is key. When the title "Queen in the right of Ontario" is used, this is not the same words as "Queen of Ontario", because the two concepts are different. As I read the difference, the former means, roughly, "As the Queen of Canada, acting on her role as such in the Government of Ontario" and the latter means merely "Queen of Ontario". She is not individually Queen of Ontario, she is Queen of Canada, and as Queen of Canada, that role grants her certain rights as they pertain to the provincial governments. That's my understanding. --Jayron32 16:40, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

That's how it's taught in political science classes at Canadian universities. The Queen of Canada is acting in right of Alberta, as opposed to in right of another province or the nation as a whole; she's still Queen of Canada, but this specific act or document pertains only to Alberta. --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 20:56, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The separate Australian colonies had constitutions which made the queen the head of state. In the court system, criminal charges were "Queen in right of Queensland v Smith", for example. When the colonies federated in 1901, they ceded some of their powers to the federal government, but retained separate court systems. While there is no "Queen of Queensland", criminal prosecutions continue to be made in the name of the corporation sole.--Shirt58 (talk) 03:23, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Which is exactly what the article says, but without a reference, which is what we're looking for. D'oh. Let's see, my constitutional law textbook is... in the law school library, where it always was, as all the textbooks cost $ 200 or more... --Shirt58 (talk) 03:30, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

For information about the putative "Queen of New South Wales", "Queen of Queensland" etc, see History of monarchy in Australia, particularly the section called "The Dismissal, and the Hannah and Wran Affairs". -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 21:45, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Longest finite term length for an elected official

A U.S. president is elected to a four-year term, a Mexican president to a six-year term, a French president (formerly) to a seven-year term, etc. What is the longest defined term length for an elected office-holder (of any kind, at any level)? Note that I am not interested in lifetime appointments, or situations where an office-holder serves an arbitrarily long time, as in some parliamentary systems. I am interested only in predetermined term lengths. Thanks! LANTZY^TALK 13:36, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Some judges in Virginia are elected by the legislature to 12 year terms.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:40, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

It isn't elected, but the Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the U.S. serves a 14-year term. --Jayron32 13:41, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The New York Court of Appeals used to have judges elected for 14 year terms. - Lindert (talk) 14:00, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Term of office says that judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces have 15-year terms, but they are appointed. The recently-dropped House of Lords Reform Bill 2012 would have led to members of the UK's House of Lords being elected for 15-year terms (there is probably quite a good chance that this reform - or something like it - will happen eventually: all three main parties have agreed in principle to elections with 15-year terms since 2007). 81.98.43.107 (talk) 15:24, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

New York State Supreme Court Justices are elected for 14-year terms.... Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:34, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

U.S. Bankruptcy judges serve for 14 years as well. Shadowjams (talk) 19:26, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

True, but they are not elected (they're appointed by the Court of Appeals for their circuit). Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:56, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Popes are elected. Our article gives Pius IX (31+y) and John Paul II (26+y) as the longest "reigning" officials. If this satisfies your requirements for a "predetermined term" / "not a lifetime appointment" I can not judge. To the best of my knowledge a pope may retire prior to his death. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:11, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, but that still isn't a "fixed term". The OP is clearly looking for offices whose defined term is the longest. The office of pope doesn't have a defined term, even if it is elected. --Jayron32 20:28, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The Comptroller General of the United States has a 15-year term but is appointed and not elected. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:26, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Mayors in the german state Saarland are elected for 10 years. --192.124.26.250 (talk) 11:35, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The President of Ireland is limited to two 7-year terms, and most of them get it if they want it - O'Kelly, De Valera, Hillery, and McAleese all did 14 years, Hide, and Robinson did 7 years, and Higgins has said he only wants one term; Childers died in office in his first term, and O Dalaigh was forced to resign in his first term. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 12:44, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Was Hamid Karzai on the Taliban's side before the World Trade Center attacks?

I'm sorry that I'm kind of a compulsive asker on the ref desk but I love it, and I learn a lot. I'm 20 and I'm rather interested in the Afghanistan War and my question comes about after I read that he wants to negotiate with the Taliban. Was he ever on their side before the World Trade Center attacks? Thank you. Mark from Alabama. Thank you indeed! Have a nice weekend! Mark. Alabamaboy1992 (talk) 14:55, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I think he was on the side of the Northern Alliance since at least 1999 when the Taliban killed his father. Futurist110 (talk) 19:48, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Yep, Hamid Karzai's Wikipedia page confirms my previous statement. Futurist110 (talk) 01:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Who was the first US President to have an official Presidential email address?

I'm guessing Reagan and maybe even thinking George H. W., but my friend thinks the White House was really at the forefront technologically and says Carter. Peter Michner (talk) 15:06, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The first president to have an official email address was Bill Clinton, in 1993. It seems very likely that there were ways of emailing things for the attention of the president before that, but there was no official presidential address. Looie496 (talk) 16:52, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, the OPs question is not unreasonable. The internet as a commercial enterprise doesn't extend much before Clinton, but it began as ARPANET, and as such was an early project of the U.S. Defense Department. It isn't unreasonable to think that the U.S. President, as head of the armed forces, would have had some form of email address for use internal to that network, even if Clinton was the first to have an official, publicly known email address. --Jayron32 20:00, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I think a lot would depend on when the first networked computer was installed in the White House. Blueboar (talk) 20:18, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Possibly, though messages intended for the president could have been sent by email to somewhere in, say, the Pentagon and then printed and couriered to him. Thus, he would still have an email address without the need for networking in the White House. --Jayron32 20:58, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Kikuanoki or Kikuanohi

Princess Kikuanoki or Kikuanohi

Does anyone know who was the Princess Kikuanoki or Kikuanohi that Henry Byam Martin met on his travel to Hawaii in 1846-1847? The closest name it matches is Kekauōnohi but that is only still a guess. Does anyone know more definitively?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 16:37, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Bordertown capitals

Capital cities are usually more or less centrally geographically located. However, Vientiane sits on Laos' border with Thailand along the Mekong. Are there other capital cities which are located on national borders? Jerusalem doesn't seem to really fit, as those who claim it as the capital of Israel aren't the ones to recognise the Palestinian state. Ottawa is pretty close to the U.S. border, but then again so are most of Canada's populated cities. Perhaps there are historical examples as well? --182.52.48.117 (talk) 17:02, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Stretching a point, but you could make a case for London being a coastal city - after all it has (or had) a dockland, and is on a river whose estuary starts within its boundaries... it's definitely not centrally located in either England or Great Britain. --TammyMoet (talk) 17:08, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Asuncion, Buenos Aires (more or less), Gaborone, Kinshasa, Bangui, Lomé, N'Djamena, probably more. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 17:14, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Kinshasa is quite a long way away from the geographic center of The Democratic Republic of the Congo, and directly on a national border, as does its sister sity of Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo. Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, has corporate borders that lie on the national boundary with both Hungary and Austria. If you want one that will really blow your mind, Mafeking, which was the official capital of Bechuanaland, was not in Bechuanaland, but rather in neighboring South Africa. --Jayron32 17:22, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Before 1958, Brazzaville was the capital of a much larger area, French Equatorial Africa, stretching north to Niger. Another coastal city, Dakar, was the capital of French West Africa, stretching from Chad to Mauritania southwards. ¶ By the way Sporcle has a whole subcategory of quizzes about capitals, including distances from borders and other countries or states. —— Shakescene (talk) 23:47, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

During the US Civil War, the two capitals were Washington, DC and Richmond, Virginia, which are within spitting distance of one another. Marnanel (talk) 18:07, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, Washington DC was also literally on the border of the Confederacy, and two prominent battles, the Battles of Bull Run, happened within an easy day's walk of the Potomac. There was some serious threat that Maryland would secede, and that would leave the Union capital entirely within Confederate territory. Maryland in the American Civil War covers some of this, the article obliquely notes that Maryland "decided not to secede", though a good part of the reason for this is that Lincoln declared martial law and rounded up enough of the legislators who would have voted for secession and imprisoned them to ensure that the vote never went that way. --Jayron32 18:15, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

For a similar case to Mafeking, note Chandigarh, which is the capital of two states in India despite not being in either of them - it's on the Harayana-Punjab border, but is formally a union territory. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:30, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

If we're dealing with subnational divisions, For U.S. state capitals, there's Juneau, Alaska which lies on the border with British Columbia, Carson City, Nevada lies on the border with California, Trenton, New Jersey lies on the Pennsylvania border, Tallahassee, Florida lies very close to the border with Georgia (I don't know if it officially touches it though), Providence, Rhode Island is again very close to the Massachusetts border, though it may come a mile or so from touching it. --Jayron32 19:45, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I live in Providence, which is separated from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by a river, plus either Pawtucket or East Providence (both separately-incorporated cities). People from Providence visit Seekonk and the Attleboro's all the time, but they have to cross other Rhode Island cities or towns to get there. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:50, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Tallahassee is separated from Georgia by probably ten miles of forest. - Presidentman talk · contribs Random Picture of the Day (Talkback) 11:57, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Canberra isn't anywhere near the centre of Australia, although the centre is pretty much empty. Judging by the number of examples given, I think we need to question your assumption that capitals are usually centrally placed... --Tango (talk) 19:29, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Copenhagen is close to Sweden

Copenhagen is far from the center of Denmark – at least for such a small country. It's practical to have a big city by the coast but in Denmarks case that would also allow a central position. The second largest city Århus is by the coast in the center. Sweden built the Barsebäck Nuclear Power Plant just 20 kilometers from Copenhagen, in plain sight across the water. That was not popular in Denmark which chose not to have nuclear power and pressed for the closure of Barsebäck for decades until it finally closed. Copenhagen is not near a land border but the Øresund Bridge runs to Sweden. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:57, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

When it was founded and established at the capital, it was near the center of Denmark, however. History has hacked Denmark back to its modern size. See Treaty of Roskilde, which transfered all of the teritory on the east side of the Øresund to Sweden. It had been Danish territory since almost time immemorial, and was the original source of Denmark's right to charge the Sound Dues. Denmark had ended up on the wrong side by the end of the Thirty Years War, and Sweden pressed its advatages gained in that war to exact further wars on Denmark and gain those territories. But Copenhagen was originally at the center of Denmark. The problem is that Denmark moved... --Jayron32 21:26, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

One nation definitely agreed with the OP. Brasilia was built from scratch because they wanted a capital close to the center of the country. Ssscienccce (talk) 21:29, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

When the site was chosen, Washington D.C. was fairly close to the geographic center of the U.S. at the time. Again, that it isn't today is because the U.S. moved. --Jayron32 21:44, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Just check out where Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, is located. --Theurgist (talk) 00:27, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Also, there could be little surprise that no country that is mostly covered by the Sahara desert has its capital anywhere near its geographical centre. --Theurgist (talk) 00:41, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Until 1923, the capital of Turkey was on a different continent to most of the rest of the country. Alansplodge (talk) 00:43, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Why'd they change it? I can't say. I guess they liked it better that way. --Jayron32 02:06, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Some readers may have missed the allusion to the song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)". -—Wavelength (talk) 02:19, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see - I've never heard of it. I was just going to say that the reason they changed to Ankara was that Istanbul was under British occupation at the time. Alansplodge (talk) 09:22, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Jokes aren't funny after you explain them. Anyone that didn't get it doesn't need to... --Jayron32 02:20, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Well at least we now know what you're talking about. Alansplodge (talk) 09:22, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't go for these newfangled names. To me, it's still Byzantium. :-) StuRat (talk) 11:40, 1 September 2012 (UTC) StuRat (talk) 11:40, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Alansplodge -- It was reasonably centrally-located until the First Balkan War only a decade before. The ca. 1923 border was constructed so that the former Ottoman capital of Edirne/Adrianople was just barely within the new Turkey. AnonMoos (talk) 10:51, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

So is Moscow today. --Theurgist (talk) 00:50, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The location of Tashkent within Uzbekistan is interesting too. --Theurgist (talk) 02:41, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Cities like Lagos, Dar es Salaam and Abidjan were established as ports, through which the colonial powers established commercial and administrative control over their hinterlands. After those countries became independent, their governments moved their capitals to more central locations, less associated with a colonial past - Abuja, Dodoma, and Yamoussoukro respectively. But, many other countries in Africa and elsewhere have retained the port cities - which became their main, sometimes dominant, economic centres - as their capitals. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:35, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

As a PS, I'd suggest that the location of a capital city often reflects the extent to which a particular country was focused on external relations as against internal administration and control. For example, Addis Ababa is at the centre of a long-established uncolonised country, concerned with internal organisation more than external trade. Similar examples might include Berlin, Paris, Moscow and Madrid. But, countries where external sea-based trade was more important tended to establish their administrative capitals in their major commercial ports, which were obviously on their coastlines. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:52, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

That's a very interesting perspective, just some more evidence to confirm it is that Russia moved its capital to St. Petersburg at a time when it changed its outlook from inward-looking to outward looking (under Peter the Great), i.e. when Russia actively sought a trading relationship it moved its capital from the interior to a port. --Jayron32 14:37, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is only 25 miles from the border with North Korea. During the Korean War it was captured and pretty much destroyed in a series of battles for control of the city. However it was much more central when Korea was a unified country of course. Quintessential British Gentleman (talk) 11:05, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Do any sovereign capitals lie on a border other than a navigable river? —Tamfang (talk) 05:17, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

How about Monaco and Vatican City? --Theurgist (talk) 11:30, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

And Rome, of course. --Theurgist (talk) 02:01, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Haha, good one! —Tamfang (talk) 05:04, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Kraków used to be the peripheric capital city of the vast Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. By the end of the 16th century, the capital had virtually moved to more centrally located Warsaw, which had become both the principal royal residence and a regular meeting place of the parliament. Kraków remained the site of royal coronations and burials, though.

And Berlin went from being a capital city of the Kingdom of Prussia located in the western part thereof at the beginning of the 18th century to being a capital city of Germany lying about 60 km from Germany's eastern border. — Kpalion^(talk) 04:43, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Slightly off topic, but Buda and Pest were two separate cities, side-by-side along the Danube, with different nationalities on each side (German speaking in Buda, and Serbians in Pest - both of which were gradually replaced by Hungarians coming in from the surrounding countryside) until a suspension bridge was built in the 19th Century, unifying the two into Budapest. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:38, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

When I was little, there was a wooden puzzle map of the U.S. at my Montessori school, where each state was one piece of the puzzle, and the little knob you held was located at the position of the state capital. The one I remember most for being way off-center was Cheyenne, Wyoming, though it's hardly the only one. (Nevada, Massachusetts, and Florida must have had knobs close to the edge of the puzzle-piece too; I don't know why Cheyenne was the only one that really made an impression on me.) Angr (talk) 11:38, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Kimveer Gill's journal

Does anybody know where I can read them? I saw a documentary on the Montreal shooting and would like to read his journal. It's a repeated question, I asked this last night. If it's not allowed to repeat the question, please tell me, I'm new to the site. Have a nice weekend. Mark from Alabama. Mark. Alabamaboy1992 (talk) 18:23, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi Mark, and welcome. We normally encourage people to only post their question once (at the top of the page it says "When will I get an answer? It may take several days. Come back later and check this page for responses.") Your question will be archived after a while (7 days?), so it's probably ok to post again after a week, but a question that goes that long unanswered is probably never going to receive an answer.

As to the question itself, I'm afraid I have no idea specifically, but have you tried the Wayback Machine? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 19:21, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you Mike, I'll try that. It's about a Montreal shooter who had a journal on VampireFreaks.com. Thank you again and remove this question if it fails any Wikipedia policy. Thank you again. May you have a nice weekend. Mark. Alabamaboy1992 (talk) 19:29, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Don't worry, there's no need for the question to be removed. It's not a matter of policy, more of politeness: asking a question twice before anyone gets a chance to answer is like the kid at school who waves his arm around shouting 'me Miss! Oh, me!' But there's no hard feelings - we were all new here once. And, since I'm sitting here watching gold medal after gold medal roll in for Paralympics GB, and seeing the team sitting 7 places above the US in the medal table, I think I will have a VERY nice weekend! :-P I hope something makes you happy this weekend as well. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 19:41, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

That sounds nice though I'm an American! Haha! Alabamaboy1992 (talk) 19:46, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

A quick web search found this page giving Kimveer Gill's user ID on vampirefreaks. I didn't check whether the journal is still accessible. 67.119.15.30 (talk) 02:43, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Library Cataloging

I reckon this might be a science question, as in 'library science' but anyway--

Sometimes a book on the inside of its cover shows the LCCS (library of congress classification system) number yet the one that the library has placed on the spine is different. What is the reason that a library would choose to ignore what the LoC thinks ought to be the call number?

199.94.68.91 (talk) 19:03, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Whoops, I should clarify---I don't mean the library in question has used an entirely different system, Dewey or some such, I mean they're still using the LCC system just with a different call number199.94.68.91 (talk) 19:08, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Could it just be an error? The Library of Congress Classification is supposed to be subject-based, so I don't see why a library would intentionally change the number over the LoCC code. --Jayron32 19:14, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Have you asked the librarians? I use Dewey for my own books, but I often find that the LoC or whatever has given it a classmark I disagree with. (One recent example was ISBN 1906173087 which my reference catalogue wanted to put under 155.937 for death but which I wanted under theology at 248.86.) I can't see why it should be any different if the LCC is being used; the classification system is not the catalogue, and they're not going to send the cops round if you disagree with their index. Marnanel (talk) 19:23, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm a cataloger, here's my explanation: Usually this is because the library already has other, similar books that they have already classified in another area (for example, putting a series of travel guides in the "G" schedule rather than putting them in the schedule for the location covered by the guide) and want to keep everything together. Alternatively, the classification system may have been changed since the CIP record was done and the LCCN in the CIP data might no longer be valid. Otherwise, it could just be a matter of disagreement with which aspect of a book is the most important. Happens all the time. eldamorie (talk) 19:25, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Technically, this is classification not cataloguing! There are multiple reasons the library might use a different number:

a) System changes. Classification systems do change gradually over time. If the system has been changed since the CIP data was added to the book, it will often be reclassified under the new one.

b) Local emphasis. A book on "military strategy in the Roman Empire" will probably be classed under history of ancient Rome (in DDC, this would be, I think, 937.0035*). However, if your library deals predominantly with the ancient world, you may want to avoid grouping all the books together like this, and instead file it simply as military strategy (with a subdivision for Rome).

c) Local practice. Many libraries use a de facto modified version of their classification system - most commonly for literature, but I've worked in places with simplified classification systems for fine art and music, both things Dewey handles a bit clumsily. So, they'll default to this system rather than the "complete" one.

d) "Opt-outs". I don't know about LCC (I've never worked somewhere using it) but two or three parts of Dewey effectively have alternative classification systems - you can use the standard one, or use a different one they also suggest for that topic. Obviously, the one in the book is likely to be the standard.

e) Finally, differences of opinion! The more weirdly crossdisciplinary a book is, the more easily it is to disagree as to whether it's really this or that or the other thing. I often encountered this when trying to determine if a book is about drama (in Dewey, file in 811/821) or theatre (file in 792); it's a fuzzy line, and classifiers will draw different conclusions based on their own collections and their own audiences.

In addition to the above, there's also the very common case of using a shorter number (simply because you don't want too much detail or too confusing a call number) or, very simply, the occasions when the CIP data inside the book is wrong! Andrew Gray (talk) 19:27, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Fascinating! Thanks so much for the information, it seems like the LCC can be seen as more of a suggestion or guideline, but not as a rule to be simply copied? Interesting stuff!199.94.68.91 (talk) 19:34, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Treating it as a "suggested solution" is probably best. You won't go far wrong if you just copy it blindly, but it's not a hard and fast rule. Ultimately, these numbers are meant to place books in a linear sequence, on a findable location on a shelf, and near other books on a meaningfully related topic; if the numbers as read would place the book somewhere you don't want or somewhere counterintuitive, then working out a new number is entirely the right thing to do. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:44, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

One more possibility—the LC can be wrong! That won't be the case most of the time, or even often, but it can happen. Now, if you're asking this as a cataloger, only assume this in extraordinary cases. There's a lot of benefit to having the same book classified the same way everywhere, but just remember, the LC catalogers are human too. --BDD (talk) 20:48, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

IME, probable printing errors (974 for 947, etc) were more common than classification errors, but there's certainly enough of both around to at least sanity-check a number you don't recognise. Andrew Gray (talk) 21:03, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Kalakaua on the Kaimiloa

In these two images File:Kalakaua on the Kaimiloa (PP-96-13-013).jpg and File:Kalakaua on the Kaimiloa (PP-96-13-05).jpg Kalakaua inspects the Kaimiloa with Antone Rosa and Paul P. Kanoa. Does anyone know which figure is Kanoa?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 21:55, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

De Beers advertising

In this Stay Free! article it states:

"Other techniques De Beers used are familiar today; they sent representatives to high school home ec classes to teach girls about the value of diamonds and feed them romantic dreams."

Does anyone have any sources for this...I can't seem to find anything. It'd make an interesting article...teaching folks the value of diamonds=PSmallman12q (talk) 22:56, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Not explicitly home ec, but the general practice has certainly been reported before:

N. W. Ayer outlined a subtle program that included arranging for lecturers to visit high schools across the country. "All of these lectures revolve around the diamond engagement ring, and are reaching thousands of girls in their assemblies, classes and informal meetings in our leading educational institutions," the agency explained in a [1947] memorandum to De Beers. The Atlantic, 1982

Andrew Gray (talk) 23:06, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

That's a pretty long, but comprehensive piece. Our coverage at N._W._Ayer_&_Son#.22A_Diamond_Is_Forever.22_slogan_with_De_Beers and De_Beers#Marketing is very weak.Smallman12q (talk) 01:31, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

September 1

Does a smoker cost more or less for public healthcare than a non-smoker?

In countries with universal healthcare, do smokers put more strain on the healthcare system than a non-smoker? Or do they actually cost the system less because they die earlier? I already read Tobacco_smoking#Economic which cite a CDC report (irrelevant), and two unscientific studies by biased parties. A8875 (talk) 05:21, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I doubt if there's a simple measure. My country's health system is now providing considerable psychological and other support to a 14 year old boy I happen to know whose mother died of lung cancer two months ago after spending five years dying. How do we measure that broader impact? HiLo48 (talk) 05:40, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Yea, I think that's rather typical of how smokers die. They don't tend to die quietly in their sleep after being in seemingly perfect health, they linger for years, at great expense to the taxpayers and suffering to themselves. Also part of the equation is the years when they are unable to work, so aren't paying taxes. StuRat (talk) 06:08, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The opposite argument is that smokers tend to succumb to the various diseases rather quickly, thus lowering the amount of care they require. I'm just looking for numbers to back these claims up. I'm looking for just the healthcare numbers. The emotion and social detriments of smoking are obviously enormous, but they are much harder to quantify. A8875 (talk) 07:34, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

You might want to look for general figures on how long it takes people to die from lung cancer, emphysema, and other diseases which primarily affect smokers. StuRat (talk) 09:06, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

My general impression from the research is that when you contrast the direct economic burden of smoking related illnesses with the direct economic benefits of the tobacco industry's existence (including taxes), you're about break even. The largest differences between the figures produced by various studies tend to be caused by differences in how the costs are calculated and what counts as a cost, as HiLo suggests. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:23, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

A little Googling (try "cost of smoking on health care") found dozens of articles and papers trying to answer that question. They reach lots of different conclusions, though... In my search, two consecutive results were BBC News articles. One from 1998 concluding that smokers cost less due to living shorter lives and the other from 2009 saying they cost an enormous amount (and not making any reference to the savings from not dying of other things). --Tango (talk) 13:34, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, Tango. So far you're the only one to bring up relevant numbers.A8875 (talk) 17:26, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Here's what came up in my own googling - Total spending on health care in Canada is expected to … reach a forecast $200.5 billion in 2011 plus $4.4 billion is spent each year on health care for smoking-related illnesses in Canada. equals two per cent of total health care costs.

(That second source also says The costs of tobacco use to the user and to society are much higher than the money collected from tobacco sales. However, Health Canada says 31,066,986,500 cigarettes were sold in Canada in 2011. Prices vary wildly but if you take an average of $94.13/200 cigs the yearly amount spent on cigarettes is at least $14.6 billion.)

Anyway, this academic paper, The Effects Of Obesity, Smoking, And Drinking On Medical Problems And Costs, found a 21 percent increase in inpatient and outpatient spending and a 28 percent increase in medications for current smokers. 184.147.128.34 (talk) 14:27, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

What about Public Finance Balance of Smoking in the Czech Republic?Smallman12q (talk) 15:35, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

They reach a lot of different conclusions because the equation is an entirely political one. Smokers don't rob the national treasury at gunpoint to fund their liposuction, cancer treatments, or even cigarette habit. Politicians do rob the taxpayer and give a certain percentage of that money directly and indirectly to people who may or may not be smokers. But that has nothing to do with health care per se or the "cost" of one citizen to another, (like the "cost" of invalids the socialists euthanize) and everything to do with party politics. μηδείς (talk) 02:20, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

There are studies which discuss this at Public_Finance_Balance_of_Smoking_in_the_Czech_Republic#Further_reading. The question is whether death prior to retirement, or death before becoming a patient of the state negatively impacts GDP...which depends on how such costs are calculated.Smallman12q (talk) 13:19, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Navarrese colonial empire?!?

I found a statement at the article Thalassocracy that the Kingdom of Navarre established colonies in Newfoundland, but I can't find any further information to confirm that claim. I see some notes at Placentia, Newfoundland and Labrador that Basque fisherman may have established a seasonal base there, but does anyone have any further information on this. Is it fair to call this a Navarrese colony, or was it simply a case of a few fishermen mooring their boats in the area? --Jayron32 05:37, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

There were lots of Basques there (there is even a place still called Port aux Basques today), but never a specific Navarrese colony...unless you count the part of Navarre that was joined to France in 1610, since there were certainly official French colonies and the Basques were still active in Newfoundland after that. But that's a bit of a stretch. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:29, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I was considering paring back the "Thassalocracy" article, since there are many states there listed that are clearly not Thassalocracy. A Thassalocracy is not "a state you need a boat to reach the different parts of", which is how the list seems to be built. Navarre was going anyways, but I saw the claim that it had outposts/colonies in Newfoundland rather bizzare. That there were Basques in Newfoundland is, as you note, unsurprising, but that doesn't mean that Navarre had anything to do with that. Thanks for clarifying and confirming my initial suspicions. --Jayron32 14:30, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

ROMNEY / RYAN

WHY IS THERE A RED STAR ON THE U S FLAG LAPEL PINS WORN BY MITT ROMNEY & PAUL RYAN ? THANK YOU JAMIE — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.130.82.232 (talk) 05:49, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

It is apparently the U.S.'s Secret Service's logo on the pin. President Obama wears the same pin. You can google "Secret Service logo imposed on the US Flag" to find a number of Youtube close-ups and discussions of the pins. Bielle (talk) 06:18, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Where does Hamid Karzai's clothing come from?

I mean, his headgear and his cloak? What culture does it come from? Thank you. Mark. Have a nice weekend. Mark. Alabamaboy1992 (talk) 13:46, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

His hat is a Karakul, which is common throughout Central Asia, and according to our articles has been worn by Afghani leaders for a long time. The rest of his clothing I couldn't comment on, but the hat is definitaly common in Afghanistan. --Jayron32 14:11, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

And his cloak is a Chapan, "It is worn in Central Asia, including Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and other surrounding countries". Alansplodge (talk) 00:23, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Small points: 1) Please, 'Afghan', not 'Afghani'. ('Afghani' refers to Afghan currency.) 2) Karakuls are not actually common in Afghanistan. Yes, they are worn my some leaders and elders, but New York Yankee hats are far far more common in Afghanistan. [Please forgive this original research. I lived in Afghanistan for five years.] Hayttom 18:16, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

trying to remember a term - Someone's Syndrome

He was on a Grand Tour, I think, and was at the Louvre, I also think, or maybe Rome, or Venice -- and he suffered a litany of symptoms arising from being overwhelmed by the wealth of cultural treasures on offer in the Louvre or Rome or Venice...

Can anyone help please? Thanks Adambrowne666 (talk) 14:28, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Are you thinking of Stendhal syndrome? Paul (Stansifer) 14:45, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I am! Thanks heaps, Paul Stansifer - case closed! Adambrowne666 (talk) 22:28, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

In a similar vein, there's also the Paris syndrome and the Jerusalem syndrome. 164.71.1.221 (talk) 00:16, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you - I was also interested to discover Lisztomania is more than just a film by Ken Russell Adambrowne666 (talk) 02:49, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Holocaust

If you were in the unfortunate position of being a Jew living in a ghetto and you had been selected to be herded onto the cattle trucks but you failed to attend on the day, what would have happened to you. For instance if your family were selected to be 'resettled' surely the instinct, particularly later on in the war after it became apparent that this was a euphemism, would be to go into hiding and abandon where they knew you lived? Did the Nazi's have a register and refuse to allow the train to leave until everybody was accounted for?

My second question relates to the freight trains themselves. In most photographs on the Umschlagplatz these trains appear to made out of flimsy wood only secured by a bolt. If they were overloaded with hundreds of people wouldn't people have tried to kick it in and escape, rather than accept that they were going to be murdered. Thanks Toryroxy (talk) 17:31, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Plenty of Jews did try and hide or escape - many of them were even successful. People were encouraged by various means to inform the authorities if they knew where some Jews were hiding, though. After a while, the borders were closed and it became very difficult to escape the country. We have an article, Jewish resistance under Nazi rule, which you may find useful. --Tango (talk) 19:49, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Regarding your second question — why would you do that? It's extremely dangerous to fall out of a moving train, and kicking it out would be extremely difficult in the first place: these cars were choked so full that you'd not have room to get up the momentum to damage the wood. Remember that those being carried in these cars generally didn't know that they were heading to their deaths; unless you were really in despair, or unless you had some knowledge that the vast majority of your compatriots lacked, you would think the results of falling out of the train to be worse than the results of just staying where you were. Nyttend (talk) 21:17, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

You ask a lot of complex questions, and we can only really scrape the surface here. Many Jews did not realise that the "resettlement" offered was a death sentence. Life in the ghetto may seem with the benefit of our knowledge of the Death camps to be a preference, but the ghettos were pretty awful places in the main, and the option of being able to work in the countryside would have seemed attractive to many. Many ghettos' Judenrats were given quotas to fulfil by the Nazis - if you avoided the call, some other person would have to go in your place. Ghettos were generally small, well contained and most hiding places would have been fairly well known to the Judenrat's police. As for the trains, there are stories of people being able to get out of holes in the trains. Some died in the attempt (jumping from a train travelling at speed is something only fictional secret agents take lightly). However, it is clear that the boxcars were reasonably strongly constructed - sufficient to restrain frightened livestock. Furthermore, documentary evidence has it that people were so tightly packed that the dead were often still standing on arrival. Being packed in like sardines wouldn't have made it easy to escape.

Fundamentally, your thoughtful questions about the experience make me want to suggest you read some survivor memoirs, if you haven't already. I strongly suggest Primo Levi as a first port of call. --Dweller (talk) 21:15, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The movie Schindler's List had some (dramatized) scenes like this. In some cases there was also armed resistance, e.g. Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa. 67.119.15.30 (talk) 02:53, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The rail vehicles generally used in these transports are known in the UK as "cattle wagons" but I see they're called Stock cars in the US. A vehicle designed to contain live cows isn't going to be very fragile. Alansplodge (talk) 20:31, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

This is a relatively standardised answer, from giving it so much. In 1939 the Germans made use of Polish census data to register Jews is Poland, this provided a bureaucratic basis for other actions. Many, very large numbers, of Jews were not eliminated by transportation to specific death sites. In 1941 during the invasion of the Soviet Union, the primary effort was in large demonstrative public pogroms and other clearance actions (which proved both ineffective and problematic in its effects on members of actions). The link here is between military control of civil life (something the German military apparatus was very experienced with by 1942 and 1943), and the clearance of villages. My understanding is that in ghettos, where Jewish civil organisations were responsible for census operations, or in less formal ghettos, the "action" moved from transportation over into policing and onsite execution after a period. This is because the point of clearing a ghetto was to make it "Jew-free." So they'd go through with dogs, informants (snitches) and guns. Dweller's suggestion of Primo Levi is a good start, I'd suggest If Not Now, When? (novel) I'd also suggest reading perpetrator accounts. I recommend The Good Old Days. I'd also suggest reading about Einsatzgruppen A's actions in the Baltics, and the Kiev clearance action (Babi Yar). Fifelfoo (talk) 22:16, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Political Debate

Hi, I am getting the four political clubs on my campus together for a debate as part of a junior project. I was wondering if any political debates by college students ever got brodcasted on ony news stations or newspapers that serve the larger community? Thanks.--99.146.124.35 (talk) 17:38, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

This is the type of thing a public access cable channel would specialize in, in the US. A local PBS affiliate might carry it, as might a small-town newspaper. However, this isn't their top priority, so you might have better luck getting on during a slow news day. StuRat (talk) 19:03, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

College debating societies usually only get mainstream publicity when they have a famous guest speaker (and, even then, usually only if it is a controversial famous guest speaker - from an extremist party, for example). --Tango (talk) 19:14, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I do know some like Oxford Union do get some press coverage, but usually as Tango says when they have a famous speaker to debate--and there are only a handful of the most elite universities that get any kind of regional coverage in rare instances. I also know that many cities (beyond Cable Access) actually have city or county channels that usually broadcast council, committee and commission meetings, you may have some luck contacting them for broadcast (it would be a great alternative than rerunning the city council meeting from 2 weeks ago yet again). Finally as a former HS debate champion, sometimes having cameras around can weird out participants and even audience members, as Antonin Scalia and others have pointed out in Congressional hearings on televising Supreme Court arguments, basically you get participants that slip into "playing up to the camera" instead of actually debating merits. Since many debate societies evolve into something mirroring the complexities and nuances of court or assembly hearings (things that are boring or confusing to the typical channel surfer) some leaders have expressed concern that a type of "I could be a star" mentality takes over and instead of the debate evolving it devolves into a crude talent show of one-upsmanship. Simply put the real thrill of debate is to have participants that want to be there for the mental challenge and a small audience that is passionate enough about it to travel to it and turn off the cell phones. If you truly are looking for television exposure (though be careful for what you wish for after the lense starts zooming in on "debaters") I also know C-SPAN is doing remote broadcasts from across the U.S. (if your in the U.S.) and may be interested in profiling part of a local college debate for local flavor. I know what your thinking C-SPAN? the vast majority of Americans sadly only channel flip through them possibly just staying a few minutes to watch some hyperbole or attack that in the long run is just showmanship and harmful to productive debate which leads us back to what Justice Scalia was getting at before, when the red light comes on and the lense swings your way and zooms in its human nature to want to make it your 15 minutes of fame (Warhol plug lol) or be the next Kardashian or Ryan Seacrest, even the best of us have that running through our minds. The result is that a principaled, well prepared debate becomes from 1 or 2 participants a really cheap reality show or Tosh.0 material. I for one love watching C-SPAN for hours, but just realize human behavior is effected by that digital eye. Here's hoping your debate organizations can rise above that, best of luck! Marketdiamond (talk) 21:53, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

YouTube. 67.119.15.30 (talk) 02:54, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Does the college have its own television channel, specifically one that is student-run? Most do. Contact the school's Communications or Broadcasting faculty.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 03:30, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

If you can get Chris Hitchens or Andrew Breitbart to front your debate you are set. If not, try to get Ann Coulter. The only problem with her will be the costly death threats, especially in Canada, with its culture of violence. Besides those issues, you will have the venue of the year. μηδείς (talk) 04:43, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Haha very funny. --Activism1234 04:49, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

how did people choose colors for technicolor?

is there some way to "discover" from the black-and-white film whether a dress was light red or light green, for example? Or is it someone's choice and might be completely wrong? Do you then have to keep track of every object in every scene, to make sure you colorize it the same if it pops up again?

This isn't really current, as technicolor has not been a necessity in some time, but I was just wondering. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 18:48, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the technicolor article, I might have my terminology wrong. I mean black-and-white films that were colored after the fact. How was it done? --80.99.254.208 (talk) 18:52, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

That's called colorization. Sometimes the dress would just be grey in reality, as that would best allow them to know ahead of time how it would look in black and white (the contrast with her skin, etc.). In some cases, there was documentation of what color things should be, especially if the film was made from a book which described such things. If not, then they just made it up based on historic fashions, etc., as they colorized it. Early colorization efforts seemed to result in all pastels, so they didn't always do such a good job. StuRat (talk) 18:56, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Okay, this is helpful. Take this example. This File:BeerbarrellBW.jpg was colorized to this: File:Beerbarrel.jpg. Is there any way from LOOKING at the original that the people could have known the guy's shirt who is in the middle wasn't red? (what I would have thought). Can you reference desk people for example personally tell from the black-and-white that that was a blue shirt? (and not a red one)? Curious here. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 19:00, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

There are situations where something has been filmed in colour, then only black-and-white copies have survived, and it has been possible to reconstruct the colour. That has been done with Dad's Army, for instance. See this article. If it was only ever filmed in black-and-white, then I don't think you can work out the colour other than by context. I guess if you have footage you know what taken under different colour lights, you could figure it out - if the shirt looks black under red or blue light but white under green light, then it must be a green shirt. That isn't going to be relevant very often, though. --Tango (talk) 19:19, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

There are sometimes colour photographs taken on the set. For example The Misfits was filmed in black and white but there are loads of colour photos taken by Eve Arnold during production. If they were ever to colourise it (heaven forbid), the costume colours could be correctly done. --TrogWoolley (talk) 19:48, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Psst! (It is little know that Orson Welles had his wife Rita Hayworth's hair dyed pink and green for the classic Lady from Shanghai.) Whatever you do, do not link to the article Technicolor! μηδείς (talk) 20:23, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

An acquaintance once complained that Stan Laurel's red hair was colorized as brown. I retorted that maybe he was playing a brown-haired character. — A brief scene in Ed Wood: Actress: "Which dress do you like better, the red one or the green one?" Cameraman: "Which is which? I'm colorblind." The joke hit me later: this conversation happens in a BW movie made long after color became the norm, and I didn't notice at the time. —Tamfang (talk) 04:44, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

(Can you tell from B/W what the color was?) No, you can't. There is a formula (used in television, I think) that goes like this: grayscale=0.3 R + 0.59 G + 0.11 B (by luminosity.) So, you can see that there's no 1:1 correspondence, it's ambiguous. Information DOES get lost when you film in B/W. 92.226.93.192 (talk) 14:38, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

UK and Eire police cars

Why do Gardai and the UK police use so many variety of police cars not to mention maybe having different cars within the same class of vehicles. Its kind of a waste of money why not just have one type of car for the traffic corp that specializes in pursuit, one for patrol, one for 4/4 (use the same van that has a speed van just the design is different), one public order van, one unmarked vehicles, one type of motorcycle, two tactical response vehicle (One that has heavy armour to take abuse while the one can handle a situation for quick responses) if these were in place it would cut down on costs immensely. --86.41.85.120 (talk) 21:01, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Certainly in the UK we do not have a "UK Police" but each county or group of counties has its own police force. Each police authority has its own budget and they each buy what is required to do the job in that area. MilborneOne (talk) 21:30, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I expect most of the variation is simply because of age. They don't replace all the old vehicles as soon as they decide on a new type (that really would be a waste of money). We do, of course, have an article: Police vehicles in the United Kingdom. It doesn't talk much about the models, but it does explain the different purposes vehicles are put to. I don't really see why uniformity would be immensely cheaper. It's a little cheaper, since you can share spare parts, you don't need extra training on new vehicles and you don't need to spend time deciding what to purchase, but those savings are relatively small (for the most part, they are pretty uniform already). --Tango (talk) 02:30, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

This 2010 story talks about the NPIA changing its guidelines to individual forces, to reduce the variety of cars offered. There is some benefit to standardisation, and some economy of scale (but 5600 vehicles/year isn't huge, so they have only modest bulk-bargaining power, even if they pooled their buying and bought only a single model from a single maker) - but competition has benefit too, and a formal or de-facto monopoly can be both expensive and a barrier to innovation (I can't but wonder whether North American police forces were really well served by the dominance of the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor). Another thing the Police vehicles in the United Kingdom article should cover, but doesn't, is who actually finishes the UK's police cars. Given the variety and relatively low numbers, and the specialised nature of a police car, I'd have thought that specialist coachbuilders would take bare cars from Ford etc. and do all the interior and performance mods to make them police cars. 176.250.67.119 (talk) 18:26, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

More detail about the 2010 NPIA purchasing agreement that 176.250 linked to above. "A new "ready to drive" specification for the most popular and recognised police vehicle - the 'beat car' - has been put in place. Four suppliers (Ford, Vauxhall, Hyundai and Peugeot) will now deliver fully modified cars that are liveried to national standards and have IT, lightbars and safety equipment fully installed.". Alansplodge (talk) 20:23, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Also, the idea of having only one type of unmarked vehicle would not work. As soon as everyone knows all the unmarked vehicles are a Ford Focus, for example, everyone would be perfect law-abiding citizens the moment one turns up, even if it's an old lady driving it (Not that I have anything against old ladies - my 70-year old mum drives one). KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:08, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Agreed - when I learnt to drive in the 1970s, the Metropolitan Police had acquired a large fleet of Hillman Hunters at a knockdown price because nobody wanted to buy one. So when you saw one with two big gheezers in it, it was time to start driving sensibly. I believe that the Hunters turned out to be very popular in Iran in the end. Alansplodge (talk) 00:18, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

NRA codes

"I have not investigated fully to determine what effect the adoption of the NRA codes may have had on cooperative purchasing; my impression is that substantial savings would still be possible". Citation is Russell, John Dale. "The College Library as Viewed by the Administrator." The Library Journal 60.22 (1935): 89-93. In this passage, Russell is talking about college library administration during the Great Depression, urging college librarians to consult with each other to form money-saving consortia to spare everyone from buying separate copies of books when one or two copies could be shared among multiple institutions. In what way would NRA codes be applicable here? None of the codes mentioned in our article appear to be relevant. Nyttend (talk) 21:31, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Not really my specialist subject, but does this help? (What a Special Library Can Do for a Trade Association, Special Libraries, Jan 1934) - Cucumber Mike (talk) 21:45, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Is nuclear power competitive without huge government subsidies?

The other day I heard a renewable energy advocate and solar power company owner say he'd be happy if government subsidies to renewable power were cut as long as the subsidies to nuclear power (and coal plants) were cut as well. He claimed that the nuclear power industry in the US is effectively heavily subsidized by the government because they insure the plants, and without their subsidies and on a truly level playing field, nuclear power would be completely unable to compete against renewables. Is there any truth to these allegations? -- noosphere 21:47, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The problem is not the lack of huge government subsidies--no form of energy is cheaper or safer--the problem is huge government regulation and litigative cost, see below. μηδείς (talk) 04:00, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Cost of electricity by source gives estimates by several organisations, at least some of which conclude that nuclear can be more expensive than coal, gas, geothermal, onshore wind, hydroelectric, tidal, and biomass. My understanding is that large-scale hydroelectric dams are traditionally seen as the cheapest source of energy (hence aluminium smelters are often built near dams). Their big downside is that they are only suitable in certain areas, and cause huge environmental damage. 130.88.73.65 (talk) 15:02, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Not sure about specific dollar amounts, I have heard that US regulations post Three Mile Island are very expensive and some suppliers of waste containment and other processes have moved on to other industries driving up costs for nuke plants. You may want to google Bernard Cohen (physicist) he was the leading proponent for nuke power savings and safety. Great question. Marketdiamond (talk) 22:11, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The new regulations aren't very expensive. The lawsuits filed against new plants post-TMI are expensive. At the moment the plants store waste on site for the most part, which isn't particularly expensive, I don't think (it is just dry cask aboveground storage). There have been moves to have the private plants pay into a fund for disposal but I'm not sure if that's actually something that has happened. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:06, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

There is some truth to it, but the full situation is more complicated than that.

The insurance issue is the Price–Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act — check out the article for it. Basically, private insurance won't cover nuclear disasters — too much potential risk (which maybe should tell us something) — so the government basically guarantees it. Which means the risk is subsidized by taxpayers. If there are no accidents, then there's no actual cost. But if there is... Anyway, that's a valid argument, though it's not quite the same thing as saying that the taxpayer is propping up the industry. But not far from it.

But more practically, the development of nuclear power was heavily subsidized, if not outright sponsored, by the US government. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission spent billions on making commercial nuclear power viable. So there are sunk costs. That's something.

More directly, the main issue with nuclear is that it has very high capital costs (which post-TMI also include very high costs for fighting all of the lawsuits that come up trying to open a new plant), and that in order to make it truly profitable, two things must happen. The first is that the plants have to operate at reasonably high efficiency for a very long time — many decades and decades. That makes them poor short-term investments for obvious reasons, and also means that anything which reduces the efficiency of the plant operations (such as accidents or shutdowns or just ineffective staffs) cut deeply into the bottom line. The second is that the cost of nuclear energy, which is more or less fixed (it is pegged at the cost of uranium, which is not especially volatile, though there is a market there) needs to be competitive against other industries. This is something that can change over time — with nuclear, the only way it becomes a good payoff is if the plant runs for basically half a century or so, and the relative costs of other energy sources almost certainly will change over that time. So that makes it a difficult investment, and explains to a large degree why utilities, on the whole, have not been super excited about making new nuclear plants. At the moment, most of the functions of the cost of nuclear power — fuel pricing in particular — run, I believe, on a private market, but historically they were pegged at fiat rates by the US government, whose investment in their nuclear weapons program during the Cold War gave them an abundant supply of uranium and enrichment facilities during the Cold War. (It gets more complicated if you talk about the non-US situation, so I'm ignoring that.)

Three Mile Island gets a lot of credit for killing the US nuclear industry, which is partially deserved — the aforementioned lawsuits add a huge amount to the bottom-line capital costs in starting up new plants (look at the history of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant if you want the nightmare situation from an investor point of view). But it should be noted that the nuclear industry was already tanking before TMI — because it became clear that it wasn't that great an investment compared to other energy sources from a purely profit standpoint, and the cost of oil and coal had dropped considerably by the late 1970s. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:06, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Mr. 98 raises some great points, I can see how the lawsuits are very expensive from NIMBY's, greens and others, however you need standing in court, so in those legal complaints they are citing regulations, many of which were passed in response to TMI, technically I believe Mr. 98 is correct that its the threat of suits and actual suits but before you can sue you need a law or regulation that has been or is being violated. Great info Mr. 98, forgot about those good 'ole market forces in the 80's too with price drops in oil, NG and coal. Marketdiamond (talk) 00:20, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Is the cost of nuclear power really pegged to the cost of uranium ? I would expect all those other variable costs, like shutdowns, facility costs, and labor, to completely dwarf the fuel costs. StuRat (talk) 04:30, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. Nuclear is by far the cheapest form of energy save legal obstruction. μηδείς (talk) 04:38, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I very much doubt that. If you only consider the price of the raw Uranium, then that is probably true. But If you include the cost for building, operating, and safely decommissioning power plants, and for treating, recycling and storing nuclear waste, then the claim is very much nonsense. Not to mention the fact that both initial research and much of the infrastructure for the nuclear industry has been paid for by tax payers. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:59, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The reason insurance companies won't touch nuclear disasters isn't the high risk - they would just charge a high premium if that was all there was to it. The problem is the concentration of risk. It is very unlikely for there to be a nuclear disaster, but if there is one it will be extremely expensive. Insurance companies like to have a large portfolio of risks that average out so they know roughly how much they'll have to pay out, they just don't know which policy they will be paying it out on. You can't do that with nuclear disasters. They would have to keep an enormous reserve to cover the potential cost, which would lock up almost all their capital, but would be very unlikely to ever get used. That means they would end up having the charge a premium equal to the maximum cost in order to create that reserve (they won't have any other source of capital with that kind of business model), which obviously defeats the point of having insurance. --Tango (talk) 13:40, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

It's not just the insurers (really the underwriters) won't provide liability insurance for nuclear accidents; it's that they can't. It's a fundamental precept of insurance that the insurer is able to pay any claim on the policy (either by themselves, or by dint of reinsurance they already carry). The potential cost of a nuclear accident is so vast that no one can honestly promise they'll be able to pay out. If they were to write a policy and charge a premium anyway they're be committing fraud. It's the same reason that your car insurance doesn't cover damage caused by global thermonuclear war. 176.250.67.119 (talk) 01:32, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Our article says the cleanup from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is expected to cost $13bn. I'm not sure what the total cost of the disaster will be, but List of Atlantic hurricane seasons#2010s puts the damage from the last Atlantic hurricane season at $20.8bn and the insurance companies managed just fine. It isn't the size of the potential claim, it is the high variance that causes the problem. Insurance companies are fine with hurricanes because they know roughly what a hurricane season will cost. They don't know where is going to get hit, but that isn't important, they only care about the total cost. There is no way to know what the total claims for nuclear disasters next year will be. It will probably be zero, but there is a very small chance that it will be enormous. Insurers can't deal with that. (There is potential for a nuclear disaster to be far, far greater than Fukushima, but the insurance policy could easily include a cap on the total claim for any individual disaster to protect the insurance company from that. It's not at all unusual to have capped insurance policies. The government would have to pick up the excess, I guess.) --Tango (talk) 11:28, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, our article says that "the government will spend at least 1 trillion yen ($13 billion) to clean up vast areas contaminated by radiation from the Fukuahima nuclear disaster", not that the total cost is US$13 billion. Note the "at least", and "the government will spend" (leaving out costs borne by the population at large, by TEPCO and its insurers, and remaining damage deemed uneconomical to clean up). The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates the average cost of a severe disaster at US$ 400 billion.[5] --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:15, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The total cost of the Fukushima accident is estimated to be $71bn to $250bn: [6]. That's similar to the ~$100bn cost of Hurricane Katrina... --Roentgenium111 (talk) 16:36, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The major cost of nuclear regulation has been its instability. (I attended a conference where a state regulator boasted that she had more than doubled the regulations on nuclear power plants in her state. I asked if she had actually discovered so many pipes that were not on the original plans, to several minutes worth of unexpected applause, and jeering.) Nuclear projects which used to start under one regulatory regime finishied up fifteen regimes later. My father began his professional career as a project engineer for the Salem Nuclear Power Plant after working at Brookhaven National Laboratories, then oversaw the shutdown of WHOOPS, the unfortunately named Washington State nuclear power authority, due to regulation-driven cost-overruns. He ended his career, after his World Trade Center 77th floor South Tower office was destroyed on 9/11, by building a beautifully designed mental hospital on Manhattan's Upper West Side. μηδείς (talk) 03:45, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Time to plug my idea of building nuclear plants in old (dry) abandoned mines, far from population centers (with the cooling towers above ground). We can relax regulations and let them pollute the cave all they want, just push the radioactive waste to the back of the cave, fill the cave in with concrete when they leave, and call it good enough. The reduction in insurance risks and lawsuits should more than make up for the increased distribution costs from the remote location. StuRat (talk) 06:44, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Do you think nobody has thought of that? There are practical requirements that must be met for somewhere to be a viable location for a nuclear power plant. It needs to be close enough to where its workforce live, for instance, so you can't be that far from population centres. It needs a readily available source of water and humans tend to establish their settlements near readily available sources of water, so you are likely to be near a population centre for that reason too. (Water sources also aren't likely to exist near a dry mine, since the mine wouldn't be dry otherwise.) --Tango (talk) 13:47, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Their thought processes seem to neglect game theory. That is, they don't consider the public opposition to building nuclear plants in populated areas, and the resulting regulatory and insurance burdens and subsequent government reaction. If these are factored in and assigned monetary/risk values, other considerations like providing a water supply and paved roads may turn out to be less risky and expensive. They could also do the "company town" approach, where they build living facilities for workers and their families, as was done for the Hoover Dam construction. StuRat (talk) 08:17, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Surely this already is taken into account - at least, the nuclear power stations in the UK are mostly in the middle of nowhere (Dounreay certainly wasn't chosen for its proximity to large numbers of people). 130.88.73.65 (talk) 08:58, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

September 2

Yemen and Iran

How come Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen didn't try forming a strategic alliance or at least closer ties with Iran like Bashar Al-Assad did? Saleh, just like Assad, was a Shiite (Alawites are Shiites) in a heavily Sunni neighborhood that heavily disliked Shiites. Futurist110 (talk) 00:12, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The article has a very big clue: "Ali Abdullah Saleh was a long-time ally of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and supported Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990." If you're unsure why that wouldn't make Ali a friend of Iran, then you'll also need to read up on the Iran-Iraq war. Also, don't read too much into the Shia-Sunni thing in relations between the political leaders of Islamic nations. Yes, there are Shia-Sunni disagreements, but rarely can one predict with any reliability how political leaders will get along based merely on which strain of Islam they happen to adhere to. --Jayron32 00:24, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Allright, but why did he ally himself with Saddam in the first place? Did he think that the West was not going to stop Iraq from taking over Kuwait? Also, it's worth noting that Saleh and Saddam were on the opposite sides during the Cold War, with Saddam being a Soviet ally and Saleh being an American ally. Futurist110 (talk) 00:27, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Saddam wasn't exactly a Soviet ally. United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq war. True, Iraq received more support from the Soviets, and the U.S. technically supported both sides. But it wasn't like either Iran or Iraq were securely within the Soviet or American sphere. Again, I think you're oversimplifying the way in which the cold war polarized places. Certain areas (especially Europe) were quite polarized, but outside of those areas, there were many parts of the world which did not fit into that model. The Non-Aligned Movement included both Iran and Iraq as founding members. --Jayron32 00:41, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps I am oversimplifying it to some degree, but the main reason that the U.S. supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War was because they considered Iraq to be the lesser of the two evils at that time (Saddam was a secular nationalist pro-Soviet leader, while the Iranians were perceived as a bunch of fundamentalist religious nutjobs--which one of these seems to be the most predictable to you?). This is similar (at least to some degree) about how the U.S. supported the U.S.S.R. during WWII against Hitler and the Japanese for the same reason, only to have hostile relations with the U.S.S.R. return after WWII ended. (As far as I know), Saddam was much closer to the U.S.S.R. than to the U.S. during the Cold War, to the extent of being a Soviet ally. Heck, even Wikipedia's own map of the Cold War in 1980 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cold_War_Map_1980.png) shows Saddam as a Soviet ally. It's true that he wasn't a Soviet puppet during this time, like, say Bulgaria or East Germany, but he was a Soviet ally during the Cold War nonetheless. Futurist110 (talk) 00:49, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, the U.S. also supported Iran in the same war. Support for both sides was on the sly but the U.S. kept a finger in both pies, as it were. And it is true that Iraq had a close relationship with the Soviet Union. But I think you are overplaying that relationship in being somehow deterministic, as though every "friend" of the Soviet Union would hate every "friend" of the U.S. It wasn't so simple. Plenty of countries kept cordial relations with both. Plenty of countries disliked both (Iran, for example). Saleh's alliance with the U.S. was one of convenience to him; the existance of South Yemen as a communist ally of the Soviet Union meant that Saleh had good reason to wish for good relations with the U.S. But it is also incorrect, in your initial question, to say that Saleh didn't also have close ties with Iran. From the already linked article on Saleh "Iran continued to garner support from Yemen well into December 2010, with Mahmoud Ahmedinejad meeting with Saleh on Iran-Yemen cooperation, whereupon Saleh confirmed his support for Iran's nuclear energy program." And there's other stuff there too. --Jayron32 05:45, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Note that Sunni nations aren't always friendly with each other, either. And befriending Iran doesn't make you many other friends in the region. Then there's the US to consider. Al-Qaeda and affiliates are a threat in Yemen, and having US drones taking out their leadership is a definite plus. Being friends with the US and Iran at once would be difficult. StuRat (talk) 04:37, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Yet Afghanistan is able to do this trick and be friends with both simultaneously. Futurist110 (talk) 08:00, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

---

Futurist110 -- the Syrian-Iranian alliance is not based on Shi`ite doctrinal solidarity. Alawism can be considered to be a kind of offshoot of Shi`ism, but falling more under the ghulat or "extremist" type, and traditionally many Muslims have not considered Alawites to be Muslims at all... AnonMoos (talk) 18:34, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

True, but Iran probably was (and is) much more willing to work with Alawites like Assad than Saudi Arabia and other Sunni governments were. Futurist110 (talk) 06:08, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Urban-rural linked to liberal-conservative

In this map of the results of the 2010 UK election, it's not unreasonable to make this hypothesis: rural areas are more conservative than urban areas. London, West Midlands, South Wales, Glasgow-Edinburgh, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle - these areas are coloured red, to represent left-wing party Labour; on the other hand, the less densely-populated constituencies (which take up a larger area of the map) are mostly coloured blue (in England that is, the other 'countries' have their local parties for their own special reasons), to represent the right-wing Conservative party. Now, there are exceptions to this - you wouldn't call Ynys Môn urban, nor the City of Westminster rural, but generally the distinction can be made.

My question is this: why is this the case? Is this a well-documented trend? Has there been a study to see whether this trend is statistically significant, or to explain the different views of people living in urban and rural areas? I have searched online, and I found numerous websites where people had asked the question, but the responses tended to be less than helpful ('country people aren't as well educated', 'country people are incestuous', etc.). Many of the questioners were from the US, which suggested that this phenomenon is not confined to the UK. I am British, so I would find a UK-based answer rather more helpful than a US-based one. Thanks. Thelb4^(talk) 00:17, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I am an American, but the same reasons that apply to this phenomenon in the U.S. probably similarly apply to the U.K.. Some of these reasons are:

• Rural people are often more religious and have more conservative definitions of "family values"
• Rural people dislike big government
• Rural areas often have less young people and minorities, who are generally more liberal
• Rural people aren't as well represented among more liberal politicians

That said, I'm not an expert on U.K. politics, so I really can't elaborate much further. However, I hope that my response has at least helped you somewhat. Futurist110 (talk) 00:20, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The general phenomena of "liberal" urban votes is pretty well-documented. People have speculated on the exact reasons for this endlessly. In the US context, What's the Matter with Kansas? is one fairly well-known work on the subject. I'm not sure there is any universally-accepted answer. My experience in the US context is that "liberals" tend to support more or less collectivist outlooks (pool risk, pool benefits, pool taxes) where as "conservatives" are more of the go-it-alone crowd, and both of those experiences are reinforced by the particular situations of urban vs. rural living (no one who has lived in a very big city can possibly believe that such places would be livable as crowds of totally independent people — it is a collectivist experience; understandably, those in rural areas find government collectivist interventions to generally be a hassle and an intrusion into their preferred forms of collectivist activity, like religion). Education is generally a factor, too, to be sure, along with income levels, class, age, race, and other demographic markers. I guess what I'm saying is, yes, this is a pretty common political truism (though not always true, like most truisms — there are occasionally quite conservative urban areas), but as for the exact explanation, you will find many, many opinions and views. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:22, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with what Mr. 98 said, and Yes, education is a factor in causing people to have more liberal views. Urban and suburban people are on average more educated than rural people, and thus they are on average more liberal than rural people. Futurist110 (talk) 00:24, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

So long as by educated you mean indoctrinated. I am unaware of any truth that obeys racial lines, beyond Aryanism, and the like. That a certain ideology only applies to city dwelling minorities makes me think of Morlocks and Mein Kampf, and nothing else. μηδείς (talk) 03:38, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Both sides are of course indoctrinated with their respective doctrines...which I'm sure is what you meant :) Adam Bishop (talk) 07:41, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Obviously nobody is saying that, but once again you jump right into straw men and slippery slope arguments. People have known for thousands of years that living amongst the diversity of a city — cultural, racial, linguistic, ethnic, ideological, and so forth — tends to make people on the whole take a broader view of the human condition than people who live in small, relatively homogenous communities. (Similarly, when you know people who are of different groups — minorities, homosexuals, what have you — it increases your general level of tolerance of those sorts of cultures and behaviors; this is no shock, it is well established by sociology). In the United States in the last decade that has mapped on to "liberal" versus "conservative," but that's less rooted in any kind of deeply philosophical ideology than the the way the two-party system shakes out. In previous centuries that particular divide was expressed along different party lines. Since the 1970s, the Republican party has made an explicit point of being quite explicit that its idealized "American" is white, Christian, heterosexual, and some notion of a "rugged individualist" (which maps onto "rural"). When you base your party platform around such an ideal, it is unsurprising that those who fit outside of that ideal, or who experience people outside of that ideal on a regular basis, go the other direction. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:38, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Yet it was while living in multi-ethnic Vienna that Hitler became fanatically anti-Semitic. And most skinheads are from large urban areas.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:48, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

That is wrong. Hitler's anti-Semitic views are from his school days. Equally, German's anti-Semitic views are deeper than Hitler.

Regarding skinheads, it's not surprising that they are an urban phenomenon, in the same way as maybe all subcultures. OsmanRF34 (talk) 22:11, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Here's a map showing the same thing for the U.S. in 2008. The most Democratic (liberal) areas are the most urban ones and the ones with high minority populations:

• 
• Futurist110 (talk) 00:41, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The comparison to the US is not necessarily helpful. Leaving aside the massive differences between the US and UK political systems, it's important to note that there are very few parts of the England that can be considered rural in the same way as much of the US can be considered rural. There isn't a single definition of urban or rural in use by the Office of National Statistics, but by one method of classification as much as 81% of England is urban [7] (scroll through to Appendix A). The actual divide is not so much between urban and rural as it is between large industrial (or formerly industrial) conurbations and everywhere else. The Labour Party has its roots in organised labour and the trade union movement and unsurprisingly organised labour was most organised and most able to get its candidates elected in the big industrial cities of the Midlands and the North and in London. (Similarly in Wales and Scotland, the industrial South East and Central Belt respectively have been where Labour was strongest, though there are complicating factors in both countries that I'll sidestep for the purposes of this response). The historical tendency for people in these areas to vote Labour continues to a significant degree even though the Labour Party nowadays is no longer principally the voice of organised labour (and the trade union movement is also much less important). It's probably fair to say that one of the reasons the tradition has persisted is that Labour has courted immigrant voters (initially the Irish, later Afro-Caribbean and Asian immigrants) who though relatively small as a percentage of the population as a whole are concentrated in London and the big industrial conurbations.

I won't spend too long pointing out the unhelpfulness of throwing in the terms "liberal" and "conservative" in reference to Europe when lots of Americans will insist on understanding them as though we were talking about the US. Suffice it to say, that the Conservative-led government in the UK is proposing to introduce legislation to legalise same-sex marriage, so they're clearly unlike US conservatives. I'd also warn against using the term "left-wing" to describe the modern Labour Party. There is some link between level of education and political beliefs and my understanding is that people with higher levels of education tend to be more "liberal" in certain ways (not necessarily in a US big-government sense of the word, I stress, more in areas of social and political liberalism that might be as readily be found in some strains of libertarianism as in left-liberalism). Someone else can find detailed references but here are a few (percentage of Americans in favour of death penalty lower for those with postgraduate education [8], support for gay marriage higher among those with college education [9] [10] - American figures all, as these are what I can find). "Rural people" may be on average less educated in the US (I don't know, but it doesn't seem improbable), but as I've already pointed out there a few "rural people" of the same kind in England, and people from rural areas of England in fact get better school qualifications than the national average and are more likely than the average to go on to higher education [11] (p.14-16) - though that report (from DEFRA) concedes that it does not show whether such people then move to urban areas. I'm slightly frustrated as I'm sure I've read that the educational level of the average Tory voter is higher than that of the average Labour voter, but I can't find a reference to confirm this. What however is clear is that a greater proportion of Tory voters are from higher socio-economic classes and (no great surprise), socio-economic class is one of the biggest factors in how people vote in the UK (for a brief rundown re: the 2005 election see here) and people in the professional and managerial classes ABC1, who are far more likely to vote Tory, are also more likely to have a higher educational level so I'm pretty sure this will be the case.

This issue of socio-economic class is the best explanation of the UK map. In order to turn an area on the map red or blue, only the plurality of votes is needed. Fairly few seats in the UK are actually won with an absolute majority as England has a three-party system with some meaningful support for minority parties and Scotland and Wales have a four-party system. Consequently, the very definite red-blue split disguises a more complex picture. People from the C2DE socioeconomic classes who are primarily from the old industrial labour class which Labour historically gets its main support from form a greater proportion of the population in the big conurbations and London. These are also the parts of the country with the largest number of people living in social housing, a group that is very solidly Labour (as much for historical reasons as reasons of current party policy, I'd suggest). Obviously there are significant numbers of C2DE people in the blue areas too, but they're less likely to be linked to an historical industrial base, and less likely to be in council housing. More importantly, the middle classes, who are in proportionally smaller numbers in the inner cities (apart from wealthy enclaves like the aforementioned Westminster), are in proportionately greater numbers in the suburbs, smaller towns, and the countryside (such as it is). Valiantis (talk) 05:55, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Just as an addendum, you may like to compare this map, which shows average household income by local authority area (the darker the map the higher the income). Not an exact correlation with the voting map (for starters this is by LA area rather than constituency), but there's definitely a link in much of the country between higher income and greater likelihood of electing a Conservative MP. This is absolutely not the case with income and political affiliation in the US, where the question is frequently asked - at least among those who believe that Democrat policies are better for the less well-off - as to why poorer people would vote Republican. In the UK - although there is now and always has been a working-class Tory vote - to put things very crudely, poorer people are more likely to vote Labour and richer people are more likely to vote Conservative, so the areas where there are more richer people (as indicated by higher average household income) correspond to the areas where Conservatives win seats. Valiantis (talk) 06:19, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Valentis. The big battle ground now in UK politics is the large number of voters who see themselves as coming from a working-class background, but who might be persuaded that they were now middle-class, the trick that Margaret Thatcher pulled off in 1979, and whom Tony Blair managed to swing the other way in 1997. Additionally, the Conservatives have messed-up in a big way in Scotland, and have lost their traditional rural support. Religion doesn't enter into it in a big way here, but the churches tend to be very liberal on issues like welfare provision and immigration. The days of the Church of England being "the Conservative Party at prayer" went 50 years ago. Alansplodge (talk) 20:09, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

That's a good (and detailed) answer. I think one factor you are missing is age: rural areas in the UK have a stark surplus of elderly people and a corresponding lack of people aged around 20-40 due to younger people moving to urban areas to work, and older people retiring to the countryside (see the population pyramids starting on page 63 of [12]). Older people are significantly more likely to vote Tory (I suspect this is largely down to social policies - elderly people tend to have an authoritarian approach to crime, are more religious, etc.). You mentioned same-gender marriage - I don't think that is really a very good example of the difference between conservatives in the UK and the US. Until very recently, the Conservative Party supported some fairly extreme anti-LGBT policies such as section 28 and even Labour didn't support full marriage equality, while there are prominent Republicans like Dick Cheney who support same-gender marriage, and it isn't completely inconceivable that this could become the party's policy in the next few years given how quickly public opinion is changing on the issue. Maybe a more clear-cut difference would be opinions on abortion? 130.88.73.65 (talk) 14:40, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

It's perhaps also worth mentioning that the most sparsely populated regions of the UK (places like the Scottish Highlands and Islands, Southern Scotland, the far North of England, Mid and West Wales, Devon, and Cornwall) are not especially conservative. I don't know if there is a general explanation for that - all of those places are fairly idiosyncratic. 130.88.73.65 (talk) 16:45, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Both North-West Wales and Cornwall have a strong mining and non-conformist heritage that has traditionally made them anti-Conservative and (again traditionally) Liberal-Democrat strongholds; however, they are both affected by large migrations of retired people that contradicts that. As previously mentioned, the Thatcher era lost the once strong Scottish rural vote for the Conservatives - "The Scottish Conservatives have yet to see a revival of fortunes following the 1997 wipeout; only one Conservative MP was returned to Westminster for a Scottish constituency at the general elections of 2001, 2005 and 2010." Alansplodge (talk) 00:08, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

The issue with the areas 130.88.73.65 mentions goes back to my basic point; that the issue in the UK is not a rural/urban divide, but a divide between wealthier and poorer areas (i.e. a division on socio-economic class). Whereas the "rural" (more accurately perhaps ultra-suburban) areas of the South East, say, are both the wealthiest areas and strongly Conservative-supporting, the more truly rural areas are poorer and (consequently, I'd suggest) less strongly Conservative-supporting. As Alansplodge mentions, many are areas where the Liberals have traditionally won seats - or at least where the Liberals are often the main challenger to the Tories. This goes back to my point about Labour being strongest in the big industrial centres. Where labour was less organised, the Labour party was less strong historically and never obtained the kind of monolithic support it enjoyed at times in the Northern cities, and the Liberals were able to retain (or perhaps later regain) the support of less wealthy voters. Within England, you actually have, say, five different political battles. In (most of) London and most Southern and Midland cities, Labour are the dominant party gaining most of the support from lower income voters with the Tories as the challengers (having a degree of success) and the Liberals squeezed out - Birmingham would be a prime example; in Southern and Midland suburbs and larger towns, as affluence increases, the party balance moves from marginal seats which tend to swing between Tory and Labour depending on the overall support in the country - Swindon might be an example; in rural areas, the Tories are the main party but the main challenger is often the Liberal Democrats, who get the support of the lower income groups (or the anti-Tory vote splits relatively equally between Labour & Liberals); in certain Northern cities such as Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the Tories are largely absent, with Labour dominant from the support of the less well-off and the LibDems picking up support and winning council seats, and occasionally constituencies, in more affluent areas which would tend to vote Tory in the rest of the country; finally, there are enclaves of wealth in urban areas - mainly London - (Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea) which are strongly Tory as they don't follow the general rule that the average income in inner-city areas is lower. Valiantis (talk) 23:02, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

130.88.73.65's point about age is well made. However, though age skews in favour of the Tories - older people are much more likely to vote Tory (see the reference re: 2005 I linked to above) - it doesn't impact strongly against Labour whose support is constant across the age groups, but rather against the LibDems, who have much lower support amongst the elderly (whose political views, I'm guessing, were formed during the period when Liberal support was in single percentage points, and who - I surmise again - are also less likely to change to a "new" party than younger people). The point I made about same-sex marriage was principally to indicate that the use of the term conservative in the British Conservative party should not be assumed by (principally) Americans to have much to do with the cultural conservatism that the term often refers to in American discourse. Section 28 (etc.) was very much a generational issue at a time when the country was run by people who came to adulthood when homosexual acts were still illegal. And also it was a sop to the socially conservative press and the blue rinse brigade who form a signifiant part of the Tory party at grassroots level. I'd suggest that when there remain countries in the world today that make gay sex a capital crime, a law that prevented local authorities promoting homosexuality - whatever that means - falls some way short of being extreme, especially as it didn't create any kind of criminal offence and no local authority's actions were ever successfully challenged in the courts under this law. Or to put it bluntly, though it had a deleterious effect due to self-censorship, in actuality it was a paper tiger which appeased the (mainly older) socially conservative wing of the party while probably (along with the party's continuing grassroots hostility to the EU) alienating the sort of young people who went on to become Orange Book liberals. Valiantis (talk) 23:02, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

How come there has been so few female dictators throughout history?

Besides sexism and misogyny, I mean. After all, there were some female queens throughout history, even in the pre-Industrial era. Futurist110 (talk) 01:02, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, there haven't been enough female leaders, period. Your besides is essentially the answer. And there have been female leaders who have been seen as brutal and opressive, but given the tiny fraction of leaders that there are female, there's even a tinier fraction of those that have been particularly despotic. Mary I of England didn't get the epithet of Bloody Mary for nothing. Catherine de' Medici wasn't exactly all flowers and peace. She's often implicated as the mastermind behind the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and escalated the French Wars of Religion. In China, the Gang of Four was led by a woman, Jiang Qing. There's probably more, but that will give you a sampling. --Jayron32 01:27, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Sexism and mysogyny are rather modern pretenses. Why are all the monsters of Greek mythology female? They are the defeated deities who have become the chthonic demons of our dreams. Since the ascent of Indo-Europeanism, weapon wielding sky gods and worldy warriors have been the norm. Before that were the scheming bird and poisonous snake goddesses. Look at the Queen in Snow White, the Lady of Elche, Tanit, Hera, Tiamat, Echidna, Medusa. Look at Baba Yaga and the Harpy. At Circe, and Kali and the Sphinx. We call them witches now because their pre-Bronze age reign has faded into myth. But merciless women poisoners ruled the world before men and their innocent violence. μηδείς (talk) 03:15, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Elena Ceausescu held a lot of influence over the Romanian state. Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency, removed opposition-led state governments, and ruled by decree for 2 years. Wu Zetian is famous for treating her inner circle brutally, including murdering her relatives. (My parents thought it would be cool to name me after her. I'm not a girl.) Lu Zhi, mother of emperor Hui of Han and de facto ruler of Han, "had Concubine Qi's limbs chopped off, blinded her by gouging out her eyes, cut off her tongue and locked her in the latrine, and called her a "Human Swine" (人彘). Several days after, Emperor Hui saw the "Human Swine", and after realising that it who the "Human Swine" was, the emperor was so sick of his mother's cruelty that he virtually relinquished his authority and indulged in carnal pleasures" (according to Records of the Grand Historian). --99.227.95.108 (talk) 03:31, 2 September 2012 (UTC) *

That's a great answer, and I have given you a star for it, 99.227.95.108. I am so tired of people assuming women are subhuman. μηδείς (talk) 03:33, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Wot, Medeis, you haven't mentioned any of the Ancient Rome female nasty pieces of work yet? I'm sure you can reel some off. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:14, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Well I have watched I, Claudius, and Siân Phillips is one of my favorite actresses. But I thought I had given enough examples. μηδείς (talk) 04:13, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Catherine the Great was not a woman to whom one would say "no".--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 08:33, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Her predecessors Elizabeth of Russia and especially Anna of Russia were not to be trifled with either. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:48, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Odd coat of arms

Does anybody have an explanation for Isaac Newton's coat of arms? At first I thought it was some weird vandalism, but no; Sir Isaac got two shinbones crossed on a black field. Arrr, be he jollier than I ever thought? Clarityfiend (talk) 05:52, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The coat of arms had been used previously by the Newton baronets of Barrs Court, whom Isaac Newton claimed decent from. this answer at Wiki Answers says that Newtons had been using some form of that device for even longer than that, and that its origins are unknown. So the answer seems to be Isaac Newton used it because many Newtons used it, but no one is sure why the Newton family used it. I also found this reference from the article Sir John Newton, 2nd Baronet, which shows the shinbones on a Newton family crest (the Newtons of Barrs Court), on page 384. --Jayron32 06:14, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Then there be nothing sinister about this action. Thankee, matey. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:38, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd say it means that this is all that remains of those who double cross their family, but perhaps that interpretation is too black and white. StuRat (talk) 06:38, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd look for a family connection with the Shanks family - and no, that's not meant to be a joke. --NellieBly (talk) 02:12, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

There are Iberian families named Costa(s) with ribs for arms. —Tamfang (talk) 05:10, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

De Vrije Katheder, Nazi-occupied Netherlands

All I've been able to decipher from a search in the Dutch Wikipedia is that De Vrije Katheder was a student/Communist/underground newspaper. Archival material indicates it was active in early 1942, possibly earlier. Was it also the name of an Amsterdam-based resistance group? I'd appreciate help with:

• an accurate description of its nature and activity
• its name translated to English

Thanks, -- Deborahjay (talk) 06:32, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Translation: "The Free Lectern". StuRat (talk) 06:35, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

'De Vrije Katheder' was an illegal/underground newspaper started in 1940 under the Nazi occupation by communist students of the University of Amsterdam. They used the subtitle 'Bulletin for the defense of Universities'. Although their political ideology was closely tied to that of the Communist Party of the Netherlands, there was no formal connection. The group's stated goal was to stimulate the resistance among students and also to fight for democracy and social justice. The paper was initially distributed among students from Amsterdam and Leiden, but soon it spread to all universities/colleges in the Netherlands. During the war, two staff members of the newspaper (T. de Vries & H. Veldman) were arrested and died in a concentration camp. After Dutch universities were closed in 1943 and continuing after the war until 1950, the newspaper functioned as a platform for leftist intellectuals and artist. (taken from [this] and [this]) Some information available in English [here]. - Lindert (talk) 14:03, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Southern vs. Northern Whites in the U.S.

How come Southern whites are less educated than whites in the Northern U.S. and in the West Coast of the U.S.? Futurist110 (talk) 07:59, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Not to be that guy, but are they? Hot Stop 08:01, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, apparently. I am reluctant to offer any simple guesses as per below; I doubt a stock answer that was current 150 years ago is anything more than tangential at best now. — Lomn 13:48, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Probably a result of losing the Civil War, which left the South impoverished, due to destruction of property and loss of slaves. Some parts of the deep South have never quite recovered, economically, since then (such as Mississippi).

Another reason might be their reliance on agriculture during the industrial revolution, which was bound to leave them behind, economically and socially. StuRat (talk) 08:12, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I suspect that it's becoming an outdated stereotype, to some extent. Certainly places like North Carolina are becoming powerhouses, as evidenced by Obama having his coronation there.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:50, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Coronation? 69.62.243.48 (talk) 02:48, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

This is a short summary of the book Black Rednecks & White Liberals. Quote: Sowell traces this culture to several generations of mostly Scotsmen and northern Englishmen who migrated to many of the southern American colonies in the eighteenth century. The outstanding features of this redneck culture, ... included “an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship, reckless searches for excitement, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery.” It also included “touchy pride, vanity, and boastful self-dramatization.” ... The great tragedy for much of the black population, concentrated as it was in the southern states, was that it absorbed a great deal of this white southern redneck culture, and has retained it longer than the descendants of those Scottish and English immigrants. /end quote. Personally I buy that argument but I'm sure not everyone will. Royor (talk) 15:27, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm reminded of Rhett Butler's comment in GWTW, something like this: "They've got factories, shipyards, coal mines and a fleet to bottle up our harbors and starve us. All we've got is cotton, slaves... and arrogance." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:43, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Here is a graph of education spending per pupil for various US states. The South here spends about the same as the West (except Arizona), but a lot less than the Northeast. Some of the data is misleading — Wyoming looks like an educational powerhouse, but it's likely just because the population is very small; California looks the same as Kansas, even though the public higher education possibilities are much broader in California — but it's not a bad place to start thinking about this sort of thing. (Certainly better than vague notions about the Civil War.) --Mr.98 (talk) 16:28, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but money availible to spend on education has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is usually an industrial base. The state can't spend money on schooling that it doesn't have. Lots of books on economics and history, both technical and popular, make a clear connection between extractive and industrial economies and development. I'm reading one right now (1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created). For economies that are primarily extractive (based on producing raw materials) there is little need to provide infrastructure or development. You basically want to get stuff out as cheaply as possible. Such a system promotes the existance of a landed elite (often absentee) and a large, uneducated and cheap workforce. Industrialization encourages urbanization, and cities breed innovation and devlopment, see this issue of Scientific American, the issue is also discussed in Malcolm Gladwell's work The Tipping Point, and he also has a good bibliography that leads to more source work that discusses the issue. So the urban, industrial North had the resources to provide for its people, and the people lived in places that of their very nature tend to encourage development and innovation. The rural, extractive South lagged behind because there were not enough resources to have excess to provide proper education and infrastructure. The South started behind, and got farther behind. It is urbanizing, and it is industrializing, and it is catching up, but that doesn't happen over night. See New South vs. Deep South comparisons for some ways in which parts of the South have improved their situation as a whole. But the core of the problem is that it takes resources to provide the system necessary to drag a population out of poverty, and those resources don't just magically appear when needed. You can't fund schools to educate people (white or black) without the tax base to collect money from. --Jayron32 19:54, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

More complex. Australia is an extraction economy, but has managed consistently high funding for education. Perhaps it relates to the rate of urbanisation. Australia is an extraction economy (according to the CPA-ML, an extraction colony or semi-colony), but has always had higher than average rates of urbanisation. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:05, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Nothing directly to do with the type of economy. The difference is that in the USA, with more decentralized government, education is generally funded at the state or lower level. In Australia, more/most funding comes from the central government. So what Jayron32 says is true about the USA, but not Australia, because the money the US states "spend on education has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is usually an industrial base." The individual states cannot create their own money - forbidden by the US constitution, and have to tax or borrow. But if the US or Australian central government spends on education, the money does "come from nowhere". It is created by the act of the central government spending it. (Or if one wants to speak badly, it comes from the central government's taxes & bonds.) Of course the real resources used for education or anything else, which the money operates as a claim on, must "come from somewhere". But if the US had run education, more like Australia, at a federal level, it could have equalized spending & outcomes if it elected to. John Z (talk) 22:59, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Australian education is state funded and controlled.* So your conjecture fails at the level of fact. (* I am deeply familiar with the funding model and basis, but the repay is about equivalent to the taxation powers lent, and states maintain effective curriculum control even over the state funded catholic system.) Fifelfoo (talk) 23:18, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

According to this: [13] "While most school funding comes from the Commonwealth through its wider tax base, the States’ share of these taxes (in terms of untied general purpose funding or specific purpose payments) is generally recognised as State funding of education.11 11- "The NSW government describes specific purpose payments SPPs as a means “to implement policies in areas which are the constitutional responsibilities of the States. An agreement between the Commonwealth and the State governs each SPP, and details the specific purposes. These agreements typically last three to five years, and are renegotiated after that time.” (NSW Budget Statement, 2003-04, Section 7.4)." If I understand correctly, this is saying most of the money comes from the Commonwealth, one way or another. The important thing is whether spending is equalized across the country - is it? - not the particular details. I certainly may be wrong about Australia.

My main points were trivial - it is not a law of nature depending on their tax base that US (or Australian) States differ in educational funding and outcomes, but a federal government decision to run things that way. And the spending doesn't depend on the type of economy, but the political goals & real capacities & wealth of the economy. The US tends to be an outlier in such decentralization compared to other countries, and I used Australia, which you brought up as an example, which may not be correct. Unfortunately the USA has moved in the opposite, unsustainable direction, away from Revenue_sharing#In_US_taxation, which IIRC was itself a reduction of the amount of fiscal support to states, instituted by Nixon, compared to earlier arrangements. Our articles in this area need work. In the US, federal support of education like the GI Bill and the Land-grant university have been, mainly in the past, a highly successful, productive counter to the general trend Jayron describes. John Z (talk) 00:49, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Under the U.S. constitution, education is basically the responsibility of individual states, and the U.S. federal government has a somewhat supplemental role (and definitely can't issue any orders to state governments on how much money to spend). AnonMoos (talk) 09:13, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Nothing prevents the Feds from giving money to the states (with strings attached) for some purpose, or spending money in that state for some purpose, as in the two examples I gave, and that purpose could include equalizing spending and outcomes across the states.John Z (talk) 00:36, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

It has also to do with patterns of immigration. Immigrants came to the US through NY, if they were educated they would stay and work and big cities, which had industry. Otherwise, they would move to regions with a farming economy in the south. The same still happens in the US, but immigrants come now to big cities. Poorly educated immigrants go to pick fruit in the countryside. OsmanRF34 (talk) 00:32, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Wrong. Not all immigrants (past and present) enter the USA through New York. Mexican immigrants would hardly take this route. Ellis Island did not become operational until the 1890s. My mother's ancestors arrived from Ulster, England and France at various ports, none of which included New York. They settled in the south and were educated and extremely literate thankyouverymuch.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 08:31, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

---

Before the Civil War in the U.S., Massachusetts was a strong pioneer in universal education (under the influence of Horace Mann and others), with New York following close behind. There were many educated people in the South, but the South fell far behind most of the Northern states in providing publicly-funded free education, because of differing ideas about the role of government, and also because the dispersed pattern of farms in many areas of the south (as opposed to centralized villages in New England) made it impractical to set up rural schools that children could walk to... AnonMoos (talk) 03:32, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

filtering coffee by pouring from one cup to another

I didn't have any coffee filters so I just put grounds in a hot cup of water, waited for it to settle and wanted to see if I could pour off just the coffee into another cup. It appears to have worked, although I stopped pouring near the end. If I wait for the second cup to settle and repeat the procedure, again stopping at the end, will I get coffee as good as if I had actually filtered it? Or does the filter catch something minute that wille like poison me if I do it this way? --80.99.254.208 (talk) 10:30, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I can't speak to the science-y parts of it, but I highly recommend a French press. I imagine you could substitute a cleverly folded paper towel for a coffee filter if you were really desperate (I wouldn't try it with toilet paper). But of course, that's not what you asked; I can also tell you with 100% certainty that you're not going to be poisoned by anything; sounds gross, though. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 10:38, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

One reason why I carry a plastic jar of instant coffee with me in my travels, especially since many hotels no longer give you a pot of coffee, just a cup. In this scenario, I would suggest stirring, waiting for it to settle, then carefully pouring to another cup leaving as much of the grounds as possible in the first cup, which you then rinse out. Repeat as needed.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:53, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Maybe you guys didn't read my question carefully, or I was just being unclear, but your "in this scenario I would suggest..." is EXACTLY what I am doing and which I asked you about :). So, I guess it's okay :) --80.99.254.208 (talk) 11:02, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Israelis in a workplace with a hot-water dispenser for making tea from teabags or instant coffee, prepare what's called botz (Hebrew: mud): place in your cup a heaping teaspoon of ground coffee and sugar to taste (or none), add hot water, stir briefly, then allow the grounds to settle. You quickly learn at what point to stop drinking. -- Deborahjay (talk) 11:14, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The method you used is known as cowboy coffee. It makes excellent coffee if done well, but the disadvantages are (a) it works best if you use a coarse grind and wait for several minutes; (b) it works best for large quantities, because you lose a certain amount of coffee in the process. Lots of backpackers use that method because it doesn't require any special equipment. Looie496 (talk) 17:13, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

"Filtering", though, is a misnomer; what in fact is being done is decanting, not filtering. - Nunh-huh 17:31, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

...aaaaaaand I've just finally learned what decanting means. Thanks a lot guys! --80.99.254.208 (talk) 19:25, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

This is the original and traditional method; everyone used to do it. Then came percolators and espresso. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:09, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Unfiltered coffee has been shown to raise LDL cholesterol levels. Apparently the main culprit is cafestol, which is blocked by paper filters. See also [14]. So you may want to stick to filtered coffee if you have high cholesterol. -- BenRG (talk) 20:38, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

How many Countries worldwide?

How many countries were there worldwide during Richard Nixon's administration?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 13:15, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

According to List of sovereign states by date of formation, when he took office in January 1969 it was 135. During his administration, some further countries became independent: Tonga (4 June 1970), Fiji (10 Oct 1970), Qatar (3 Sept 1971), United Arab Emirates (2 Dec 1971), Bahrain (16 Dec 1971), Bangladesh (16 Dec 1971), The Bahamas (10 July 1973). And Zimbabwe had declared independence in 1965 but was not officially recognized until 1980, so if you count that it was 136+7. 184.147.128.34 (talk) 14:05, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately that leaves out countries that have ceased to exist in the meantime -- most notably the USSR, but also including for example the GDR and Yugoslavia. Looie496 (talk) 17:09, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The USSR, GDR, and Yugoslavia all still existed at the end of Nixon's presidency. — Kpalion^(talk) 18:19, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but they aren't in the list mentioned above, which only shows countries that exist now. Sorry for being unclear. Looie496 (talk) 19:01, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I counted all three of those countries as well as Czechoslovakia, but welcome someone else to do a recount. I was unclear - I meant I used that list to do the count. 184.147.128.34 (talk) 02:21, 3 September 2012 (UTC) (Here's my list in sets of five: )

5 Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Argentina

10 Australia Austria Barbados Belgium Benin

15 Bhutan Bolivia Botswana Brazil Bulgaria

20 Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Canada Cambodia

25 Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia

30 Congo x 2 Costa Rica Cote D'Ivoire Cuba

35 Cyprus Czechoslovakia Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador

40 Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Ethiopia Finland

45 France Gabon Gambia East Germany West Germany

50 Ghana Greece Guyana Haiti Honduras

55 Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran

60 Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica

65 Japan Jordan Kenya Kuwait Laos

70 Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein

75 Luxembourg Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives

80 Mali Malta Mauritania Mauritius Mexico

85 Monaco Mongolia Morocco Myanmar Nauru

90 Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger

95 Nigeria North Korea Norway Oman Pakistan

100 Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal

105 Romania Rwanda Samoa San Marino Saudi Arabia

110 Senegal Sierra Leone Singapore Somalia South Africa

115 South Korea Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Swaziland

120 Sweden Switzerland Syria Tanzania Thailand

125 Togo Trinidad Tunisia Turkey Uganda

130 USSR UK USA Uruguay Vatican City

135 Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Yugoslavia Zambia

136 (Zimbabwe)

You have to add an extra Vietnam and an extra Yemen.--Cam (talk) 03:57, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Panama and Taiwan are missing, as is Sikkim. Sussexonian (talk) 22:01, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

It also depends on how one counts the USSR. According to the United Nations, Belarus and the Ukraine were independent nations. According to their own official histories, the three Baltic nations were not part of the USSR either. So, depending on what your criteria are, you can count the USSR as 1,3,4, or 6 countries. --Jayron32 04:07, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Defining what makes something a "country" is not easy. Going with "sovereign states", as has been done above, doesn't seem a terrible option, but then again, I'm not from Scotland. You will also have to deal with politics. In today's world, deciding which of the following sample examples are or aren't countries and are or aren't sovereign states will depend on your POV: Somaliland, The Principality of Sealand, South Ossetia, Vatican City, Israel, Palestine. Our excellent article, List of states with limited recognition is of interest here, as perhaps is List of historical unrecognized states --Dweller (talk) 09:29, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for answers. Great help!--Doug Coldwell ^talk 22:39, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Chinese surnames and ancestry

Is there any study as to what percentage of the Chinese Han population have adopted surnames as opposed to surnames that stretch back ancestrally to a progenitor with that surname? How many Chinese could trace their ancestry through their surname?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 14:54, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Every surname had a first bearer! I'm guessing you mean something like: What's the average number of generations (or years) that a Han could count back as using the same surname? Or: what would a histogram of such numbers look like? —Tamfang (talk) 05:24, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Well know, every Smith in the world probably did not descend from one man or one family named Smith. Most Chinese surnames traced their beginning to a clan or family around the Zhou Dynasty (ignoring the mythical beginning during the time of Huang Di) when even commoners begin having surnames. My question is how manyt Chinese can trace patrilinealy to that period by their surname. In later periods, conquered southerns and settlers from barbarian/foreign regions came into China and assimilated into it, so they shouldn't count. Their were studies into the legendary origins of Irish surnames which proved that many Irish were descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages. --KAVEBEAR (talk) 15:00, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Swedish House of Holstein-Gottorp

Since Gustav, Prince of Vasa's line died out in 1907 with his daughter Carola of Vasa? Who is the heir-general of the Swedish House of Holstein-Gottorp?--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 18:13, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, the article itself states that inheritance passed to the House of Bernadotte via the children of Victoria of Baden and Gustaf V of Sweden. It appears that Victoria may have been the closest living relative of Carola. --Jayron32 19:42, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The corresponding Swedish article shows descent ending up with the current king, Carl XVI Gustaf. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:06, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Here is the sequence, put together from WP articles:

• Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden (1710–1771)
  • Gustav III of Sweden (1746–1792)
    • Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden (1778–1837)
      • Gustav, Prince of Vasa (1799–1877)
        • Carola of Vasa (1833–1907)
      • Princess Sophie of Sweden (1801–1865)
        • Louis II, Grand Duke of Baden (1824–1858)
        • Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden (1826–1907)
          • Frederick II, Grand Duke of Baden (1857–1928)
          • Victoria of Baden (1862–1930)
            • Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden (1882–1973)
              • Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten (1906–1947)
                • Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden (1946– )

—Tamfang (talk) 05:57, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

How Come the U.S.S.R. Didn't Annex Mongolia Like It Did WIth Tuva?

I was always wondering about this. Futurist110 (talk) 18:48, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Possibly because of China. That's what I am guessing. A sort of buffer state.--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 18:49, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

But the U.S.S.R. already bordered China and China's military strength wasn't anywhere near that of the USSR. Futurist110 (talk) 19:00, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Futurist, you may be quite interested in the following concept: "You can't prove a negative". Which is to say as it applies to the question "Why didn't So-and-so do whatever". You've been asking a lot of these questions lately, and such a question is fundementally unanswerable. Questions that ask people to speculate as to why somebody didn't do something are fiendisly difficult to answer satisfactorily, because unless the person was asked directly "Why not" at the time, then it would be impossible to say. This is especially difficult because all of your recent questions, and the responses you have given after people try to answer, indicate that you have reached the conclusion in your mind that reality should have worked out differently. It is much easier to say why things did happen. " Why did the U.S.S.R annex Tuva?" is an easier question to answer than to answer why they didn't formally annex Mongolia. Why didn't they? Mr. Spy's answer is quite a possibility, yes their absolute military strength may have been greater at the time than Chinas was. But there are still a billion Chinese, which is something to give any regime pause no matter how many bombs they have. The solution to international diplomacy is not "We'll do whatever the fuck we want because if anyone objects, we'll bomb the shit out of them." The Soviet Union may have had their differences with China, and they may not have gotten along very well, but that doesn't mean they were eager to instigate an actual war over any issue, or to escalate tensions against them. The Soviets were heavily involved in Mongolia, and the article and section titled Mongolian_People's_Republic#The_1945_Sino-Soviet_Treaty_and_Mongolia.27s_Independence explains how the Soviets and China negotiated over the status of Mongolia. Now, if you believe that the Soviet Union should have just said "Screw it, we're just annexing them", well I don't know what to say about that. But the fact remains that they didn't, that they negotiated with China over guaranteeing the independece of Mongolia, as the greater concern was that China would annex it, not that the Soviets would. --Jayron32 19:38, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Excellent answer, Jayron, on all accounts. See also Tuva. 02:55, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Blue Stripe in the Red South

• 
  U.S. Presidential vote by county, 2008
• 
  The location of the Black Belt (sociological sense) in the U.S.
• 
  African American percentage of the total population in each census tract, 2000.
• 
  Largest ancestry in each U.S. county, 2000; African Americans predominate in those colored dark purple (the key's first color)
• 
  Percentage of slaves in each county of the slave states in 1860
• 
  Upland cotton acres harvested as percentage of each county's harvested cropland acreage, 2007 (Agricultural Atlas of the U.S.)

So, this image of the 2008 US presidential election shows a near-continuous stripe of Democratic support from the NC/VA coast through Georgia and to the Mississippi Delta. Anybody know if there's a particular rhyme or reason to that, or is it just a quirk of coincidence? — Lomn 19:59, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

This is where African-American people live. That blue area covers such places as the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, the I-85 corridor in North Carolina (see North Carolina's 12th congressional district), Atlanta, Georgia and the Mississippi Delta region (that blue stripe along the Mississippi River) and the connecting strip across Alabama and Mississippi contains places like Montgomery, Alabama and Selma, Alabama. Those blue areas of the South are mostly either a) Urban centers (which tend to vote Democratic more, regardless of where they are) or b) rural areas where blacks outnumber whites significantly. These factors are accentuated in urban areas with high African-American populations, like the aforementioned Hampton Roads or Atlanta. --Jayron32 20:18, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

¶ I've taken the liberty of adding maps above of the African American population in 2000 (lifted from African American#Demographics) and the Southern slave population by county in 1860 (from Slavery in the United States#Distribution of slaves) —— Shakescene (talk) 05:19, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Good addition. The 2000 census map showing African American population overlays the southern blue areas quite closely. It shows what we've been talking about quite well. --Jayron32 05:21, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

See also this map of upland cotton acres harvested as a percentage of all acres harvested in the 2007 Census of Agriculture. This is part of a wonderful Agricultural Atlas of the U.S.. Perhaps, someone who regularly uploads files to Wikipedia/Wikimedia would like to add the cotton harvest map to the gallery above for comparison; I've done enough work for one night, and I don't upload images often enough to do it smoothly now.  Done —— Shakescene (talk) 06:09, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, basically what Jayron said. As for why blacks vote Democratic, many blacks have the feeling that Republicans don't care about them and Democratic policies such as more social programs and affirmative action are beneficial to most blacks. As for white urban dwellers, they generally vote Democratic either due to social issues (support of abortion and gay marriage) or due to economic issues, if they feel that the Democrats will handle the country's economy and debt better. Futurist110 (talk) 20:26, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Given the United States regular reconfigure which party houses the progressive vote, and how racist political machinery works, could you give a start date on the link between southern Democrat voting and urban and black rural progressive or liberal voting patterns? Fifelfoo (talk) 22:01, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The changeover happened during the 1940s-1980ss. See Dixiecrat and Southern Strategy and Reagan Democrats for the major events that caused the most recent reshuffling of the party ideologies. The key changes in philosophy came when a) The Republicans abandoned civil rights and other progressive issues in favor of a business freindly policy, and b) the Northern Democrats abandoned labor and took up civil rights and social justice, broadly speaking. The first volleys came when the Democratic Party (which owned the South to the point where most Southern ballots didn't even have a republican on the ballot, see Solid South) shifted its power base to the North under the FDR administration. This left the Southern Democrats (White power elite in the south) feeling abandoned, they bolted the party to form the Dixiecrat movement. These southern White power elites were part of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" when he directly courted them in the late 1960s. The final shift occured in the early 1980s, when the socially conservative Northern Democrats, mostly union and former union workers, were courted en masse by Reagan. This redefining of party lines changed how the party system worked; it didn't happen over night (it took about 35 years or so), but that was the basic outline of how we went from the old system (Republican = Northern business + Progressives, while Democrats = Northern Old Money + Southern White Supremacists) to the modern system of Republicans = Social conservative/Economic libertarian and Democrats = Social justice & under-represented minorities. --Jayron32 23:28, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Northern Democrats abandoned labor? 69.62.243.48 (talk) 02:51, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Essentially. That's who the Reagan Democrats were: socially conservative working class northerners. AKA, labor. --Jayron32 02:54, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be more likely to say that blue collar workers abandoned the Democratic Party, rather than that the Democrats abandoned labor. The recent recall election in Wisconsin would show the truth of that. 69.62.243.48 (talk) 02:57, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Or you could say that if the Democratic Party had platforms that appealed to those voters, they wouldn't have had a reason to leave. It's all perspective. But whether you want to say the Democrats abandoned them, or they abandoned the Democratic party is probably unimportant to the main point, which is that it was a signficant effect in the makeup of the two parties. --Jayron32 03:10, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Blacks began voting Democratic in 1932. I think that most urban areas began voting Democratic in 1928 or around that time period, though I could be wrong on that. Southern Whites began voting Republican in the 1960s and 1970s. Futurist110 (talk) 23:20, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry, do we have a source that indicates Southern Whites vote 90%+ Republican? μηδείς (talk) 04:08, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Where did you get that number from? --Jayron32 04:18, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I didn't "get" that number, I posed a question. I do believe that blacks normally vote 90% Democrat, though. μηδείς (talk) 20:01, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I've never seen that number myself in any discussion or article or anything regarding racial and geographic breakdown of party affiliation, so I soubt you would find any source to indicate it so. It's a strange number to pull out of the air. There are certainly less whites in the Democratic party in the south than other parts of the country. Doing some digging, I did find this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette which has some statistics, though none are formulated as "percent of white voters in south who vote Republican". The article is fairly recent (like, last week) so the numbers should be fairly current. --Jayron32 21:54, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

If the Republican vote among Southern whites were consistently that high, then the Democrats would never win a Southern election. Whites still form a majority of the population in every Southern state (although not in the District of Columbia), and I've read that Southern Democrats estimate they need to win or retain at least a third of the white vote to have a chance of winning (which they frequently do, even for President *). On the other hand, I've also read that the Republican vote among black voters, once almost-unanimous and still significant into the 1950's, is now so low as to be negligible. * [For example, every Southern and border state except Virginia and Oklahoma voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976, while Bill Clinton carried about half the Southern and border states in 1992 and 1996. In 2008, Barack Obama carried Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, which would have been impossible had John McCain won 90% of the white vote.] —— Shakescene (talk) 05:37, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure how much stock I'd put into that fourth map, given that it lists "American" as an ancestry definition. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:32, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd also be cautious about how to use that map [which I took from Black Belt (U.S. region), where you might also like to comment], but it does show that the counties where more residents (of any race) reported their ancestry as "American" than reported any other in April 2000 were also more likely to give more of their citizens' votes to McCain-Palin than to Obama-Biden in November 2008. —— Shakescene (talk) 02:15, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

This article sounds like exactly what you're looking for. In short, the blue stripe corresponds to an ancient coastline, when sea levels were higher. When water receeded, the life in those shallow waters left behind excellent nutrients for cotton production, for which slavery was particularly economically attractive. After the descendents of the slaves who farmed those lands gradually gained the political power they were theoretically entitled to after Reconstruction, they showed up on map. Unsurprisingly, they rarely vote for the party which raised objections the last time the Voting Rights Act came up for renewal. Paul (Stansifer) 20:23, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Was the Cuban intervention on african independence wars an act of solidarity or something else?

Here in Cuba we're proud of the role that we played in Africa, but in a Cold War context was the solidarity a major reason to fight?(sorry for my English isn't very good, not advanced at least)CubanEkoMember|(talk) 19:45, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

No preocuparse; that sentence was perfectly good English. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:27, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

No nation ever does anything out of pure virtue. Nations do things because they expect to benefit from them. Looie496 (talk) 01:46, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

That nations try to act in some sort of vague self interest (if "nation" is the right unit of analysis, which I'm not sure it is) is in and of itself not exactly relevant to the question as asked.--Mr.98 (talk) 02:08, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what you mean by "an act of solidarity" — do you mean, did the Cuban government think that it should support African independence for ideological reasons alone? My understanding is that there were strong ideological reasons, but it was arguably also because "exporting revolution" was an ideological stance that also helped to increase Cuba's own prominence in the region and importance in the Cold War (which was important for guaranteeing continuing Soviet interest). This is a very American perspective though, and the American perspective tends to underestimate ideology when it looks like something positive and overestimate it when it leads to things we find negative. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:08, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. What is meant by solidarity? Christopher Hitchens went to Cuba and slept on an open-air cot as he laboured manually to plant doomed coffee seedlings. That was an act of solidarity with the party in power, if nothing else. See his memoirs, Hitch-22. Sending professional mercenaries to countries without even bourgeoisies in order to install friendly regimes sounds a lot more like Stalinism to me than anything else. Not that I am an expert. μηδείς (talk) 04:05, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

(Sending professional mercenaries (...) to install friendly regimes...Stalinist) Riiiight.92.226.26.242 (talk) 08:47, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

You could start by looking at Cuban intervention in Angola and Ethio-Somali War. 130.88.73.65 (talk) 13:43, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Also, Che Guevara was involved in Africa. He spoke at a conference in Algiers, and later worked as a revolutionary in The Congo. --Jayron32 15:30, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Historical Religion Data for the U.S. Before 1948

I just created this article -- Historical religious demographics of the United States -- and I need some help finding historical religion data for the U.S. before 1948. I know that the U.S. census does not record religion, but have there been any polls or studies in the United States before 1948 that asked about religion? Thank you very much. Futurist110 (talk) 23:19, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The article titled History of religion in the United States has lots of references. You could comb those. --Jayron32 23:35, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Maybe I'll use some of those references for my article later on. However, I was asking more about historical religious data (in %) for the United States, and unfortunately the article that you linked to doesn't have much of that. Futurist110 (talk) 00:09, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Have there really been no nationwide surveys and/or polls about religion in the U.S. before 1948? Futurist110 (talk) 21:44, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

September 3

Freemasonic influence on the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow?

The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Christ_the_Saviour contains what to me are very odd references to the influence of Freemasonry -"The first finished architectural project, by Aleksandr Lavrentyevich Vitberg, was endorsed by Alexander I in 1817. It was a flamboyant Neoclassical design full of Freemasonic symbolism.... Alexander I was succeeded by his brother Nicholas I. Profoundly Orthodox and patriotic, the new Tsar disliked the Neoclassicism and Freemasonry of the project selected by his brother". These statements are not referenced and have no sources cited. I am not saying they are wrong as I am not an expert but the little I know about Orthodoxy and Freemasonry would indicate that it would certainly be surprising if an Orthodox cathedral was full of Masonic symbolism.I think those references to Freemasonry need to have sources cited for them or be removed. I have asked about this on the article talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cathedral_of_Christ_the_Saviour and at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Russia but no one has replied. Can anybody help on this? Thanks/ Smeat75 (talk) 01:56, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The architect Karl Magnus Vitberg was a Swede who only converted to Russian Orthodoxy to secure the commission. It shouldn't be too surprising if as a western architect he had a Masonic background. μηδείς (talk) 02:50, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Someone at WT:WikiProject Freemasonry might have a source. Roger (talk) 13:55, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Note that the Masonic-influenced version was only a design, and was not actually built. Unfortunately our articles on Freemasonry say nothing about Russia, but Tolstoy's novel War and Peace says quite a bit about the role of Freemasonry during that time period. Looie496 (talk) 17:17, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

CIA headquarters in Alabama, or at least offices

I'm 20, and I would like to enter the CIA or at least the FBI, does anybody know where can I resort to? Auburn, Alabama. Thank you. Mark. Alabamaboy1992 (talk) 13:15, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

There should be information online. I doubt the CIA has many local offices as they, in theory anyway, lack most jurisdiction within the US. I am sure you can start the process online, though. You'd do better with a college degree, I would suspect.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:20, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The FBI usually wants a degree in law or accounting for applicants: the CIA will want a relevant degree and would prefer foreign language ability as well. Both have online applications, and both have extensive testing and prequalification requirements. This assumes you're looking for field agent work. There are, of course, other positions for technical employees that have differing requirements. Acroterion (talk) 13:33, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

This is the CIA careers page, and this is the FBI careers page. 130.88.73.65 (talk) 13:39, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Some years ago, a branch of the British secret services ran newspaper adverts, explaining that they were recruiting. How to apply wasn't explained, on the basis that people who couldn't work that out, were not good candidates. --Dweller (talk) 13:45, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The CIA and FBI have booths at career fairs, so they aren't that obscure. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:57, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

For the British, I always found "Stand at the foot of Nelson's Column, and a man with a pink carnation in his lapel will approach you at 12.15" very quaint.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:37, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Another couple of options. I have a friend who got a job in the CIA with her degree in library science. The degree is actually very applicable because library science is a lot about database management (creating databases and organizing them and retrieving information from them) and information management is a very important part of what the CIA does. So that, or some IT degrees would likely qualify you for certain jobs at the CIA. Also, it should be noted that the CIA and FBI are very different agencies. The CIA is a foreign intelligence gathering operation primarily. The FBI is a criminal investigation service; which has an intelligence element to it, but the focus of what each agency does is quite different. Another agency in the U.S. is the National Security Agency or NSA, which is involved in cryptology. There is also the Defense Intelligence Agency or DIA, which is a military intelligence gathering service. My friend's dad was a civilian analyst for the DIA. --Jayron32 15:27, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Cost of a burial plot at Willesden Jewish Cemetery (UK)

Dear Wikipedians,

I am aware that Jewish burials typically only take place at Jewish cemeteries, and that many of these are filling up. I have heard however that there is a market in the remaining plots at many of these sites, and was wondering if I could find the rough cost of one for a London based-funeral. There is no urgency, but I would be keen to know the sorts of prices I should expect. I have been told Willesden cemetery is the most expensive, hence me asking about that one in particular so I can know the full spectrum of options. Many thanks, 86.163.45.50 (talk) 14:52, 3 September 2012 (UTC). NB: I do not wish to know the rough lifetime cost of a burial plan obtained by being a member of a synagogue, which I gather is a common route. I'm interested in the cost of purchasing the plot directly. Many thanks, 86.163.45.50 (talk) 14:53, 3 September 2012 (UTC).

I'm fairly sure that Willesden is closed for new burials. The United Synagogue's main cemetery is in Bushey - see ([15]). You can contact the United Synagogue Burial Society using the contact details on this page. They do perform burials for people who are not members of the burial scheme, but it is, as you imply, very expensive, regardless of which cemetery you opt for. I could be wrong about Willesden - you can ask when you contact them. --Dweller (talk) 15:42, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

TICLAUDIUS CAESAR

Resolved

I was recently at the Savaria Karneval in Szombathely, Hungary. There were lots of Roman shows on, and one of the activities we could get involved in was to actually make a Roman coin in the way the Romans made Roman coins, by hitting round pieces of metal on a mold. Anyway, I looked at the inscription, and it said on one side 'TICLAUDIUS CAESAR'. I know that Claudius was the Caesar at the time when Savaria was founded, but what is the 'TI' before his name? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:58, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

It's the same as the "T" in James T. Kirk. The full name of Claudius is "Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus", but he acquired most of the later ones during his lifetime. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:12, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Aha, of course. I knew the Romans abbreviated their names, but I just hadn't expected a two-letter abbreviation. Thanks. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:54, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I know you resolved this, but you may find the articles Roman naming conventions and Praenomen. The Praenomen (or pre-name) were usually chosen from among a limited number of names, and there was a fairly rigid convention by which these were abbreviated consistantly. For example, Ti is usually Tiberias to avoid confusion with T which is usually Titus. A person may have had multiple Praenomen, among which one which they were commonly known, the one they used for personal use would usually be the one left unabbreviated. --Jayron32 21:47, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the extra information and links, Jayron. I did Latin for A-Level at school, and I vaguely remember it now (this was back when it was still a spoken language :) ). Thanks. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:53, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Breasts and kissing

Why do men find breasts sexually arousing; is this a culturally learned response? And wherin lies the sexual appeal in a kiss? Ankh.Morpork 22:30, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Breasts#Sexual_characteristic has a brief intoduction and a lot of links for you to follow. I seem to recall Desmond Morris, in one of his TV series on Human Sexuality drawing the connection between the shape of breasts mimicing the shape of buttocks; and that connection being his explanation for sexual arrousal caused by breasts. Kissing#Sexual_or_romantic_kiss has some discussion, and while it doesn't have a lot of internal links, it has some explicit and footnoted references that you can follow. --Jayron32 22:40, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I can't recall where I read this, but the theory I heard was that having breasts look like the buttocks helped encourage face-to-face intercourse, which promoted emotional bonding (which itself has been argued as evolutionarily important). Someguy1221 (talk) 23:43, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

That is a commonly spouted theory. It is clearly nonsense, though, for one simple reason: breasts don't look anything like buttocks. There is a slight resemblance if the breasts are contained in a push-up bra, but push-up bras didn't exists for most of humanity's evolutionary history... --Tango (talk) 20:52, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

The greater effect is probably that breasts are often tactile erogenous zones in both males and females; that is many men and women get aroused by having their breasts and nipples touched. Men may either recognize that a woman's breasts are a source of sexual arousal for the women, or they may recognize by analogy that the region is a place of sexual arousal for themselves and associate it with women as well. I suspect that plays a key role in seeing another's breasts as sexually arousing. --Jayron32 22:12, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

That just shifts the question, though - why are breasts an erogenous zone? It's just an example of sexual selection. It doesn't have to have any particular meaning. Secondary sex characteristics tend to be indicative of health and good genes, but that small advantage can be blown out of all proportion by many generations of self-perpetuating sexual selection. (Read those two articles for more details.) --Tango (talk) 23:10, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

It's a bit of both. Culturally, there has been a push towards larger sizes (small ones could fall under Micromastia and require augmentation according to some physicians). Some relevant literature:

• Jasienska, G. (22 June 2004). "Large breasts and narrow waists indicate high reproductive potential in women". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 271 (1545): 1213–1217. doi:10.1098/rspb.2004.2712. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Freund, Robert M.; Dyne, Alexander Van (17 June 2004). Cosmetic Breast Surgery: A Complete Guide to Making the Right Decision--from A to Double D. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-1-56924-455-5. Retrieved 3 September 2012.
• Williams, Florence (7 May 2012). Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-08386-6. Retrieved 3 September 2012.
• Riordan, Teresa. Inventing beauty. Random House Digital, Inc. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-7679-1451-2. Retrieved 3 September 2012.

Smallman12q (talk) 00:32, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Not all men find breasts sexually arousing (I certainly don't), while some women do. As for kissing, see kiss#Biology and evolution. 130.88.73.65 (talk) 08:29, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm quite certain that male attraction to big breasts is just as culturally influenced as women's attraction is to powerful men. If only we could get Hollywood on board with our genetics, then maybe we'd make some progress... Shadowjams (talk) 10:18, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

During much of the 1920s, the idealized body type pushed by western "glamour" media was somewhat small-breasted, while the 1950s went to the opposite extreme... AnonMoos (talk) 15:31, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

September 4

Recycling cans and bottles in California

In California, a deposit called the California Redemption Value of at least 5 cents is paid by the consumer for each bottled or canned beverage that is purchased. Last time I was in California and paying attention, it seemed that every supermarket had a big machine out in the parking lot, about the size of two outhouses, that would let consumers insert bottles and cans into a receptacle, where their UPC codes would be scanned and after depositing 1 or 50 or 200 cans or bottles, the machine would give the consumer a ticket, which he would bring to the supermarket to get paid the CRV refund. Now, here in Orange County, California, I don't see any of these machines. What happened? Stingray Xray (talk) 01:28, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I don't understand the question exactly. I'm familiar with the process since we have a similar redemption program here in Vermont. What I'm confused by is your use of "Last time I was in California..." and then "Now, here in Orange County, California..." Did you mean to say that you saw the machines in some parts of California but not others? That aside, you can find centers that will take the bottles at this link which is linked off our California Redemption Value article. That page lists 148 locations for Orange County alone. Dismas|^(talk) 01:43, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

All the recycling places I've seen in CA all redeem cans by weight and the amount they give you is tied to the price of aluminum (or glass or plastic). I've never seen a place that actually gave back the same amount paid for CRV. RudolfRed (talk) 04:46, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I see from the link given above that the per-container redemption is required if (A) you ask for it up front (before you give up your cans) and (B) if you have less than 50 items to turn in. RudolfRed (talk) 04:51, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Have there ever been a killer in history with down syndrome?

Have there ever been a killer in history with down syndrome? Neptunekh2 (talk) 03:12, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, one has been charged in December 2011 with killing battery in the death of his father. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:18, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Did Kevin Mitnick made an internet-accessing device from a radio receiver when he was in jail?

I saw such sayings from some internet sources--124.172.170.234 (talk) 06:25, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Religion and the U.S. Census

I read, several years ago, that U.S. Federal law prohibits the U.S. census from asking any questions about respondents religion.

1. What is the logic behind this law? I presume forcing people to declare their religious affiliation may raise constitutional questions. But why can't they include an "optional" religion question, as they do here in Australia (and, I believe, in various other countries)?

Our article on Race, ethnicity, and religion in various censuses states "The U.S. census have never counted Americans by religion out of fear that this will undermine the separation of church and state and make it easier for various politicians to implement agendas based on their religious beliefs". I'm puzzled - how would this be the case?

2. Has there ever been any serious attempts to modify or revoke this law? 58.111.175.223 (talk) 06:27, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

2. separation of church and state is part of the U.S. constitution. It doesn't get changed often. Rmhermen (talk) 06:45, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that an "optional" religion question would, in fact, be unconstitutional as a matter of law? 58.111.175.223 (talk) 06:50, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

This site says "The Bureau of the Census collected information in the Census of Religious Bodies from 1906-1936. This information was obtained from religious organizations. Public Law 94-521 prohibits us from asking a question on religious affiliation on a mandatory basis; therefore, the Bureau of the Census is not the source for information on religion." so it sounds like we are talking about an ordinary law, not a constitutional matter. 130.88.73.65 (talk) 08:24, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

The collection of Religious data would likely be OK under the constitution, as such an act would violate neither the Establishment clause nor the Free Exercise Clause directly. However, philosophically the U.S. tends to err on the side of caution with regards to any connection between religiousness and the Federal Government (the matter is more cloudy with State and Local governments). The "wall of separation" doctrine is something that dates to Thomas Jefferson, and because of that philosophy, it explains situations like the aforementioned PL 94-521 and the reason that religious data is not officially collected by the census or any other federal agency. There are private surveys of religion by various organizations, but the feds take no part of that. --Jayron32 13:14, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

(from the OP) Question: Public Law 94-521, it seems, only prohibits asking questions about religious affiliation on a mandatory basis. So, is there anything in current U.S. Federal law which would prohibit the Bureau of the Census from including voluntary questions about religious affiliation in the Census? Or is it merely the philosophical squeamishness to which Jayron32 refers which stops such questions from being included? 58.111.175.223 (talk) 16:06, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Don't rule out the possibility that a "voluntary" question might be considered statistically meaningless. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:29, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

One awkwardness about asking questions about religion but not applicable to topics that the Census currently tracks is that there are tons of non-numerical possible answers to a religion question. Most things on the Census are either numerical (e.g. your income, the number of people in your household), non-numerical but picked from a short list with definitions that most people will understand (e.g. race and ethnicity), or not meant to be tabulated statistically (e.g. the names of people in your household). How are you going to put together a list that will allow virtually everyone to self-classify without forcing the self-classifier to go through a massive list? Nobody's going to appreciate being a member of an "Other Religion", and for every small group such as Eckankar that you include, you're probably going to omit several others, thereby making its adherents unhappy. Nyttend (talk) 23:54, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Excellent point. They get into enough trouble hair-splitting over racial and ethnic groups. Maybe the closest they could come would be a vague general religious question, like "Do you believe in a religion?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:57, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Legality of the Awlaki Killings

I have a friend who is an expert in U.S. Constitutional law and a staunch Ron Paul supporter who said that the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son by the U.S. military/govt. was illegal, partially due to the Supreme Court ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio and partially because Awlaki never got a trial in the United States. Does my friend's position hold any validity, or not? For the record, this is a serious question. Futurist110 (talk) 06:31, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Thankfully, the court has ruled on this very question. See https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2010cv1469-31 where Al-Awlaki's father brought a case asking for the "kill order" against his son to be revoked. To quote from the judge's ruling:

Stark, and perplexing, questions readily come to mind, including the following: How is it that judicial approval is required when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for electronic surveillance, but that, according to defendants, judicial scrutiny is prohibited when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for death? Can a U.S. citizen -- himself or through another -- use the U.S. judicial system to vindicate his constitutional rights while simultaneously evading U.S. law enforcement authorities, calling for "jihad against the West," and engaging in operational planning for an organization that has already carried out numerous terrorist attacks against the United States? Can the Executive order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organization? How can the courts, as plaintiff proposes, make real-time assessments of the nature and severity of alleged threats to national security, determine the imminence of those threats, weigh the benefits and costs of possible diplomatic and military responses, and ultimately decide whether, and under what circumstances, the use of military force against such threats is justified? When would it ever make sense for the United States to disclose in advance to the "target" of contemplated military action the precise standards under which it will take that military action? And how does the evolving AQAP relate to core al Qaeda for purposes of assessing the legality of targeting AQAP (or its principals) under the September 18, 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force? Read the ruling yourself - I suspect you'll find it fascinating. 58.111.175.223 (talk) 06:41, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll look over the ruling when I'll have some more time. Futurist110 (talk) 07:02, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, as I understand it, the court explicitly declined to rule on the issue, but only declared that it has no jurisdiction. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:45, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Your friend is of course correct, there are many sources arguing for the illegality of these killings. It appears necessary nowadays to argue that 2+2=4 and that black is not white. I think it fair to say that anyone who said that the president has the legal authority to do such things would have been thought insane a few decades ago, so much has the US legal system and the common understanding upon which it rests changed. It is the current US government position that nobody would have thought to hold any validity, not your friend's. For instance, take Lincoln's famous statement about the barbarity of assassination and its disappearance among civilized nations; don't have the time to search for it, as googling is not so easy for obvious reasons. Of course, one can always make a "legal" argument for anything.John Z (talk) 00:21, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Synchronization of calendars between civilizations throughout history

Different civilizations had been in contact from early on in history, but only in modern times has this contact become virtually continuous. In such historical times, each of these different civilizations would have kept their own records, and counted their own years. It also seems most likely that throughout history, certain events would have resulted in the disruption of year reckoning in some localities (whether it be reform, unrest or disasters resulting in loss of earlier records, etc.) The year of the passing of Gautama Buddha, for example, varies up to centuries when compared between different schools' chronologies. This suggests that not much effort was put into keeping records in sync with each other. However, such an issue never seems to be mentioned in discussions involving dates in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Do we know, as a fact, that the reckoning of the Julian and Gregorian calendars was never broken? (Perhaps there is astronomical evidence?) How did Western nations avoid discrepancies between each other's records, especially during the Middle Ages? (Perhaps through the central position of Constantinople, and then the Vatican?) Are there discrepancies when compared with other systems, such as the Chinese, Islamic or Hebrew calendar? And how did these major calendar systems remain united, while the Hindu calendar, for example, has devolved into dozens of regional variants?

Also, the seven-day week has been used throughout the Old World for millennia. With no correspondence to either the Sun or Moon cycles, it seems even more amazing that its reckoning would never have been broken. (The linked article says, "The seven-day weekly cycle is reputed to have remained unbroken in Europe for almost two millennia...") I would have thought it very likely for Marco Polo to find that Monday in one place had drifted to Tuesday in another. Have any "updates" been required in order for Sunday to fall on the same day throughout the world? --115.67.34.198 (talk) 06:43, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Days of the week (like Monday) don't drift in the way days of the year (like January 1st) do. That is, if you don't account for leap days and such, January 1st will eventually end up in the middle of summer, and need correction, but nothing like this happens with days of the week. The daily day/night cycle basically resets any drift every 24 hours, with a possible exception at the poles, where 6 months of night and 6 months of day could make keeping track of the day of the week tricky, before modern timekeeping techniques. Some type of natural disasters, like a volcano, might also make it impossible to distinguish night from day, for a while. StuRat (talk) 07:40, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Who says the seven-day week has no correspondence to either the Sun or Moon cycles? The Moon has a 29.5-day cycle that is commonly divided into four phases (new, first quarter, full, last quarter). 29.5 ÷ 4 = 7.375, but it would be weird to have a week with 7⅜ days, so it gets rounded down to 7 full days. (Maybe someone could have introduced the idea of 3 "leap weeks" of 8 days within every period of 8 weeks, but they didn't.) Pais (talk) 08:35, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

There is no mathematical reason to choose a 7-day week as opposed to any other number based on a lunar cycle. It would be much more accurate to use 5, 6 or 10 days: 29.5 ÷ 6 = 4.92; 29.5 ÷ 5 = 5.9; 29.5 ÷ 3 = 9.83. All of these are closer to whole numbers than 7.38 is to 7. More importantly however, there is no way to use a lunar or solar cycle to synchronize the weeks, so if a day was skipped or added, it would not have been noticed in that way (which is I think what the OP was referring to). - Lindert (talk) 09:04, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

But there is an astronomical reason to divide the lunar cycle into four, as I mentioned. Pais (talk) 21:34, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I can give you some examples from the Middle Ages. Sometimes the Julian and Islamic calendars were synchronized, more or less accurately. For example wherever Muslims and Christians lived together, a date might be recorded in both systems...I thought I had a perfect example of this from 15th century Spain, but I can't find it at the moment (it was a business contract though, and the date was given in both calendars). Sometimes in chronicles you'd also find both dates mentioned. The Julian/Gregorian and Islamic years didn't match up then and they still don't now, so the same problems of synchronizing them still exist.

More often they would just use a regnal date, "in the third year of the reign of King so-and-so", which was also the most common way of dating things even where the Julian calendar was used exclusively. But even when western Europe used the Julian calendar exclusively, some countries started the year on a different date; if your year started on January 1, then for three or four months you would be in a different year than a neighbouring country that started their year on March 25. The Papacy (not "the Vatican" back then) always used regnal dates, but that had no effect on when the year started for anyone else. The Byzantine calendar, on the other hand, was also Julian, but started on September 1, and was dated "anno mundi", from the creation of the world, which was something like 5509 BC.

I don't know much about the Hebrew calendar but I know there were sophisticated calculations to match up that calendar with the Julian one. Actually I work with someone who can calculate the Hebrew date given any random medieval Julian date, which is pretty amazing. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:43, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, once the Hebrew calendar became "regularized" (that is, months had a specific length and you didn't have to go peering at the sky to see if a given month would have 29 or 30 days, you could easily calculate against the civic calendar in use locally. So for the past 1800 years or so. Note that the calendar is flawed and is very slowly moving later in the year. Rosh Hashanah (the first day, not the evening before) will not occur again on September 4, and the last September 5 is coming up in a few decades. I call it Judaism's Y10K problem, that is about when it will swing out of September permanently (or at least until the calendar comes around again).--Wehwalt (talk) 10:14, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

The adoption of the Gregorian calendar wasn't done all at the same time. Different countries around the world adopted the calendar at different between the years 1582 and 1923. Depending on the date of the changes, countries needed to skip 10, 11, 12 or 13 days. However, I don't think any of them skipped any days of the week. So for example, in Spain and Portugal Thursday, 4 October 1582 was followed by Friday, 15 October 1582, while the in the British Empire Wednesday, 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday, 14 September 1752. One exception was Alaska: when sold to the USA, the state moved across the international date line as well as switching to the Gregorian calendar, so Friday, 6 October 1867 was followed by Friday, 18 October 1867. Astronaut (talk) 17:31, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

As an aside: The various era mentioned in the articla concerning the Buddhist calendar, don't all count the years from the passing of the Buddha, but they all use the Buddhist calendar for calculating how long the year is. For example, the Chula Sakarat is alleged to start with the conquest of Burma by Buppasoranhan, and the Saka era is counted from the beginning of the Western Satraps kingdom. Why the Buddhists of Thailand would count their years starting from those events, though, I can't say. I have also heard that the current 'Buddhist era' used in Thailand doesn't count from when the Buddha died, but when his teachings reached Thailand.

This is not so surprising, I could use the Gregorian calendar, and put its starting date at a completely different point in time from both the birth or death of Christ. V85 (talk) 17:56, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

It could only have started at either one of those events, not both of them. But the fact is that the Gregorian calendar started at neither of them. It started on 15 October 1582, and was not retrospective. Don't confuse the era we happen to be in with the calendar we happen to be using. Eras are about sequences of year numbers; calendars are about months and days. The world could theoretically have decided that 1 January 2001 marked the beginning of a new era, the Me Era (ME). This year would be Year 12 ME, not 2012 CE (or AD, if you prefer). But today would still be 4 September. (This post comes to you from someone who is not here.) -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 20:07, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Indian or Indian-influenced calendars often use the "Saka era" (78 A.D.) because very little solid absolute chronological information from before that time survives in traditional Indic literature... AnonMoos (talk) 21:54, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

How Come France Was Extremely Angry at Germany for Taking Alsace-Lorraine in 1871

to the extent that it was unwilling to establish good relations with Germany? The France attitude towards Germany between 1871 and 1914/1918 always seemed a bit excessive to me over a small amount of land. Are there any sources explaining why France was pissed to that extent over losing Alsace-Lorraine to Germany? Or was it more than that, such as angry at Germany for making France lose its dominant strategic position in Europe? Thank you. Futurist110 (talk) 07:54, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

You seem to underestimate how upset a nation can get over losing a small amount of territory. Is Syria OK with having lost the Golan Heights ? Is Jordan OK with having lost the West Bank ? StuRat (talk) 08:01, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, Jordan is okay with losing the West Bank (considering that it gave up its claim to it and signed a peace deal with Israel). Syria is angry at Israel, but it hated Israel and Israel's existence way before Israel took the Golan Heights from it. Futurist110 (talk) 08:08, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

There are countless examples of serious disputes over relatively small or unimportant pieces of territory: Northern Ireland, Timor Leste, Kashmir, Taiwan, Tibet, the Falkland Islands, Kosovo, Karelia, Schleswig-Holstein, the Preah Vihear Temple... 130.88.73.65 (talk) 08:17, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Kosovo is very important to the Serbs from a cultural and nationalistic perspective. Futurist110 (talk) 08:28, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

The population of Schleswig-Holstein actually contained one-third of the population of the Kingdom of Denmark, so relatively speaking it was not either small or unimportant. And of course regarding Tibet it is a matter of an entire country being seized by a foreign nation, which naturally would cause a serious dispute. So generally speaking it is not that difficult to see why serious disputes could arise over what to outsiders may look like "small and unimportant pieces of territory". --Saddhiyama (talk) 09:58, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Have a look at this; it may be helpful. - Karenjc 08:16, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Will do. Futurist110 (talk) 08:28, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Who wouldn't hold a grudge after being humiliated by losing a war (badly) and having somewhat more than a "small amount of territory" (more than two Delawares) taken away? Now if the South had won the Civil War and decided to annex New Jersey, well that would have been another story. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:38, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

To added, this was the latest episode in a long series of Franco-"German" (Prussian) rivalries that went back to the time of Napoleon. Also, you forget that the actions of the war itself contributed to the anger, not just the peace settlement. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 10:08, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Alsace and Lorraine were important territories for France - they gave it considerable mineral and industrial assets, vineyards, and farmland. They also gave it control of the whole west bank of the Rhine from Strasbourg up to the Swiss frontier. This was seen as being of considerable strategic value, and also relates to the historical French expansionist argument that France should expand to its 'natural frontiers' - the Pyrenees, Mediterranean, Alps, and Rhine. I've no idea what, if anything, was the northern 'natural frontier', mind you. Moreover, Lorraine had come to France after being granted to Louis XV's father-in-law Stanislaw Lechynski as part of the negotiations for the marriage of Maria Theresa - this was a complex diplomatic feat, and seeing it undone by crude force was galling. The other reason that the war of 1870-1 was so aggravating for the French was the fact that Louis Napoleon was tricked into being the aggressor in the affair of the Ems telegram - 'Honest' Otto von Bismarck's political judo had cost France dearly. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:14, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

We do have an article about Stanisław Leszczyński; you just have to spell it right, so it doesn't appear as a red link. — Kpalion^(talk) 12:20, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)French foreign policy from at least as far back as the seventeenth century ideally wanted the Rhine to be the natural border between France and Germany. If Germany held Alsace-Lorraine, this was strategically very bad for France and very good for Germany, since Germany then held both sides of the Rhine, and had access to all the resources and fortifications there. Also, conceding land, any land no matter how small, in a place as ethnically diverse as Europe sets a bad precedent for future land claims. Of course, as it turned out, it didn't really matter who held Alsace-Lorraine, since it's just as easy for the Germans to get into France if they pretend Belgium doesn't exist... Adam Bishop (talk) 10:16, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

It should also be noted that, ethnically and linguisticly, the population of Alsace and Lorraine is mixed German and French, often in neighboring households. It is quite impossible, on that regard alone, to decide if the territories are strictly French or German. The territories also passed between French and German (or Germany's antecedant states) many times through history. The area had been contested for literally over 1000 years, going back to when it was the "Middle Kingdom" established by the Treaty of Verdun which divided the Carolingian Empire into 3 states. The northern part of that kingdom was generally known as Lotharingia, after Lothair I, from whence we get the name Lorraine. The western Kingdom of that division became France, and the Eastern kingdom became the Holy Roman Empire or at least the Kingdom of Germany portion thereof. Alsace#Alsace_within_the_Holy_Roman_Empire shows how long Alsace (Elsass) had been part of the German HRE, from the Treaty of Meerssen which divied up the remains of Lothairingia in 870 until France incorporated it in 1648 as part of the Treaty of Westphalia. So, it had been a German territory for almost 800 years before it passed to France. The German speaking people didn't wake up the next morning and start to consider themselves French. The region of Lorraine is a bit more complex, but the part that the Germans took after the Franco-Prussian war had, like Alsace, been part of German lands for a long time. The Three Bishoprics had been part of the HRE until the 1550s, the Duchy of Bar until the mid 1400s (though it was still officially part of the HRE, it was inherrited by the French Anjou family), and the Duchy of Upper Lorraine until around the same time. So, we have a situation that, from the 800s until the about the 1600s, the region had been closer associated with the Holy Roman Empire than France. It is worth noting that the Congress of Vienna considered the region to be an integral part of France. If you want to look at the modern situation, Languages_of_France#Statistics shows that, in Alsace there are still some 660,000 native German speakers. The entire discussion is not to justify the attachement of the region to either Germany or France at any point in history, but to explain that it isn't so clear, historically, who had the "right" to the region. It was a historically ambiguous thing, and had been, since the creation of France and Germany (or their predecessor states) been at various times part of neither, or both, of them. To answer the original question as to why France was so mad; well it was French territory, it had all been since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and had been confirmed so by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which it should be noted was a body that was created basically to take stuff away from France. If they found it an integral French territory, then France certainly had claim to it. --Jayron32 13:04, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Category for the President of Pakistan

The President of my country, President Asif Ali Zardari has survived a series of plot to assassinate him. Shouldn't the category on attempted assassination survivors be added?. Thank you. He's a hero and the father of the Nation right now. Pakistanihat (talk) 15:27, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Feel free to add it if you think it belongs. However if someone removes it or otherwise objects, don't put it right back, and instead discuss the matter with them and come to an agreement. --Jayron32 16:22, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I've added it. One of the plots were to blow up the medical center where his father was ill and where finally died. But the wisdom of the Prophet (peace be upon him) saved him in time and the plotters were arrested. Pakistanihat (talk) 16:34, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Surviving some particular incident does not necessarily have anything to do with divine intervention. Hitler escaped a bomb attempt, and he claimed divine intervention too, though I doubt he credited Muhammed with saving him. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:55, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm. I was going to remove that edit, but I see another editor has beaten me to it. The problem is that putting Zardari in that category makes a claim, which is itself controversial. The article appropriately mentions both sides of the controversy: "In May 1999, he was hospitalised after an alleged attempted suicide. He claimed it was a murder attempt by the police". But by adding that category the article is then taking sides in the argument. See the second paragraph of WP:CAT#Articles.

The information you have mentioned above does not appear in the article, and so cannot be the basis for the categorisation either. --ColinFine (talk) 22:29, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Ganesh Chaturthi

Unfortunately I have no control over our travel planning process for work, but I've been scheduled to be in Mumbai for Ganesh Chaturthi, which is listed as September 19th this year. Is the 19th the start of the festival? The end where they have all of the environmentally unfriendly dunking our article talks about? I'm guessing that it won't be a productive working day, but probably worth confirming. 150.148.0.65 (talk) 20:49, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Calculus

Who invented the name? When was it invented? How did the person decided to name the math we called "calculus" today? I couldn't find any of this info on the internet.65.128.133.237 (talk) 22:55, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

In the Latin language, the word calculus meant "little pebble", and sometimes could refer to abacus-type calculations conducted with little pebbles as counters. Don't know when it was applied to differentiation and integration... AnonMoos (talk) 23:02, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Does your internet not include our articles Calculus and History of calculus?

Dude I have read those two articles and they don't mention about the origin of name. Plus I already know what "calculus" means in Latin and that's not what I'm looking for.65.128.133.237 (talk) 00:50, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

But to answer your questions: the name is Latin for 'pebble', and was originally used to refer to counting-stones. It came to be applied to mathematical methods generally, and then (after Newton and Leibniz's work) to the differential and integral systems especially. No one person invented or adapted the name; the changes were gradual.

Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz worked in parallel on what we now call calculus during the late 17th century. We have an article on the Leibniz-Newton calculus controversy, too. They didn't name their methods 'calculus', though; Newton called his 'the method of fluxions', and Leibniz mostly used a symbolic system to deal with what he regarded as a problem of infinitesimals. AlexTiefling (talk) 23:08, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

"Calculus" is just short for "differential and integral calculus". As Alex says, lots of different mathematical methods were (and occasionally still are) called calculuses. Differential and integral calculus was just the most used, I guess, so it ended up getting the shortened name. --Tango (talk) 23:13, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Here's some word-origin info:[16] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:51, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Ok "Calculus" is just short for "differential and integral calculus" but why did we name that kind of math "differential and integral calculus" in the first place? "differential and integral calculus" has the word calculus in it, obviously the math has nothing to do with pebble. Let me get thing straight, I'm not asking for what its original means since I already know it. I'm asking for who was the first person who called the math we call today "calculus". Who was the first one that named that math calculus? It must started somewhere, like someone must be the first to use the word "calculus" to describe something in math. I'm surprised nobody in history ever records that. Last question: why did that person (the person that was the first one who used Calculus as a math term) name that kind of math calculus? I mean it could have many other names beside calculus but why choose "calculus" to describe that math? Not sure if my questions make sense to everyone.65.128.133.237 (talk) 00:50, 5 September 2012 (UTC)