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April 11

Nonviolent resistance

Can somebody help me with this issue? Best regards--Hubon (talk) 14:02, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Template:Muslim saints

Does anybody get why some of the names are written in italics here?--Hubon (talk) 16:18, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Paging Megalodon34 (talk · contribs) who added a few of these links to this template, including most of the ones in italics. uhhlive (talk) 16:32, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Saints in Islam currently redirects to Wali. Perhaps some guidance in that article? --Jayron32 16:50, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

The ones in italics are redirects to other articles. But being a redirect is no barrier to being categorised, templated, linked, whatever, and everywhere such a redirected title appears, the system makes it appear in italics. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:45, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

No, they aren't all redirects. DuncanHill (talk) 21:46, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

In fact, none of them are. What I said is true of redirects, but it isn't relevant in this case. My apologies. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:51, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Actually, when you made the comment some of them were, but it had no correlation to the italicisation, which is caused by wikiformatting within the template. I changed those few redirects to direct links, as templates work better with direct links. DuncanHill (talk) 14:12, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

At one point, the template included this text: "figures whose name is not italicized means that he is explicitly alluded to as a prophet whenever his name is mentioned in Islamic texts." [1] - Nunh-huh 05:17, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to everybody for commenting. Now, I'd say the typography is in fact a bit confusing here without the former note cited by Nunh-huh, don't you think?--Hubon (talk) 15:37, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I think it's a little confusing even with the former note. I see no reason not to eliminate it. - Nunh-huh 17:10, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

April 12

airline price cap law

" In 1974, it was illegal for an airline to charge less than $1,442 in inflation-adjusted dollars for a flight between New York City and Los Angeles." [2]

What's this all about? Sounds like a price cap law of some sort? ECS LIVA Z (talk) 05:45, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

A price floor rather than a cap, and probably a regulation rather than a law sensu stricto, but other than that, yes. By "what's this all about" are you asking what the rationale was? That I wouldn't know. It was a boom era for regulation in general; they didn't always have to make much sense. But they probably had some stated rationale, which I imagine someone will be able to help you with, just not me. --Trovatore (talk) 08:24, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

"what's this all about" as in which law it was, when it was enacted, and by which agency (congress or FAA or some other entity). ECS LIVA Z (talk) 19:25, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Probably the Civil Aeronautics Board. That article may help you find the enabling legislation. --Trovatore (talk) 19:26, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

We have an article Airline deregulation which despite the name only seems to deal with the situation in the US. Although it deals with deregulation, it does mention the suggested reason for the original regulations (not specifically those to do with price but these reasons would seem to apply to price) with 2 refs (I wouldn't be surprised if these deal more with the fare issue). It also links to Civil Aeronautics Board and Airline Deregulation Act. The later potentially has more details (at the very least it has a quote from a US Supreme Court justice about the old price regulation. We also have United States government role in civil aviation although I'm not sure it includes much more useful info and only seems to have 3 refs. Nil Einne (talk) 09:06, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't know the economic situation of that era (it's before my time), but was there possibly a fear of deflation at the time? Given that deflation can "spiral", governments have, at times, put "price floors" on things. Can anyone clarify if there was any deflation going on in the U.S. 1974? Nixon shock (1971) would have been inflationary. So was there some sort of "correction" in the aftermath of the inflation three years later, once the "shock" had subsided, and the U.S. dollar now stable on its new, post-Bretton Woods system footing? Eliyohub (talk) 12:29, 12 April 2017 (UTC) EDIT: Would the 1973–75 recession have been a factor here? Eliyohub (talk) 12:32, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

• As I recall, the idea of air ticket price floors was to keep the airlines solvent and profitable by protecting them from price competition. Loraof (talk) 14:14, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

• Haven't had time to watch it, but This video seems relevant to the discussion at hand. --Jayron32 14:15, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm. That's a blog, and definitely not a university. It's also very committed to a certain POV (that of libertarianism). Guy (Help!) 22:43, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

The article is being a bit insincere by using a 1974 price. It would use a 1980 price if deregulation didn't kick in before that. In 1973, there was a major gas shortage. Fuel prices were very high. The government regulators responded by increasing the minimum airline ticket price to cover the cost of fuel. By 1974, airline tickets were very expensive. Then, the crisis was over and ticket prices fell again. After deregulation, ticket prices climbed from 1979 to 1980 during the second fuel crisis. It was the airlines doing the price increase, not the government, but for the same reason. The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics has a 5-year chart which skips over the spike in 1974, but shows the spike in 1980 and also shows that it never went down after that. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_03_18.html 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:27, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

The chart gives prices in then-current dollars (i.e., unadjusted for general inflation). So we can't tell from the chart whether ticket prices went down after 1980 in real terms or not. Loraof (talk) 17:18, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Secular perspective on the origin of the Quran?

I was looking for some information about the secular historical consensus about how the Quran originated. The article at Quran mainly deals with the traditional Islamic view, and doesn't seem to have many secular academic sources. Is there a good source where the well supported historical evidence is clearly seperate from the religious dogma? 50.96.223.254 (talk) 14:40, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

History of the Quran#Origin according to academic historians would be a good place for you to start your research. Also useful is the Sana'a manuscript, which has been radiocarbon dated to within a few decades of the death of Muhammad, and the Birmingham Quran manuscript which has been radiocarbon dated to be contemporaneous with Muhammad. --Jayron32 14:48, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

The rich and powerful

I don't understand how the rich is powerful. While it is true that the rich have a lot of resources to get whatever they want as individuals, the poor seem to have greater power as a whole. If a farm owner grows acres of plants, then he may need some farmhands to help with the sowing, weeding, and harvesting. If he pays the farmhands extremely low wages, then the farmhands can refuse to provide service on a massive scale, forcing the owner to go out of business or give enough to satisfy the workers. The employer may also seek cheaper labor in the form of work slaves, where individual lives don't matter, and people are forced to work, and if they don't work, then the employer may seek another batch elsewhere. But getting another batch of slaves may be expensive, so the employer needs to care for the slaves enough so they won't die. On the slave side, how do they get themselves enslaved in the first place? Can the workers or slaves form a huge network and rebel against the employer? Now, I'm not sure who is more powerful - the rich or the poor. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 19:25, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Speaking in generalities, would the poor like to be rich? (Yes) Have the poor become rich? (No) Therefore, do the poor have as much power as the rich? (No)

Much of what you're asking with respect to farm wages, etc, is covered by concepts related to organized labor -- if the poor can collect and coordinate their resources, they do in fact wield power comparable to the rich. However, this power is more fragile than that of the rich. In addition to the general requirements for collective action, the poor must also consider the limits of their own individual resources, which are less than those of the rich. During a strike, for example, the rich are considering at what point they're no longer willing to lose money at the current rate; the poor are considering at what point they're no longer willing to lack the money for basic necessities.

As for the history of slavery, you'll find that generally people "get themselves enslaved in the first place" via compulsion by threat of lethal force. — Lomn 20:06, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Sometimes, I wonder if everything boils down to dominance and submission. Those who threaten others into submission are taking advantage of the poor and weak. The poor and weak lack the resources to fight back, so they submit or die. For those unwilling to die, they submit and live with excruciating pain. For those who would rather die than submit, they may kill themselves and also remove themselves from the gene pool. If more people choose to die than to live in servitude, then the rich may remain and have to work for themselves and fight amongst themselves, until society collapses, and people return to the caveman way of life. Maybe, helping the poor people of the world will benefit the rich, because happy poor people sustain the rich and help create civilization. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 20:40, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, Hobbes wrote that the natural state of affairs was that life was "poor, nasty, brutish, and short", and that some form of social contract is necessary to effect civil society; such a contract, in some or another fashion, involves the redistribution of wealth or power from the rich to the poor with the general idea that both see a net benefit in the exchange. — Lomn 20:44, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

The poor theoretically may be more powerful, be this assumes that they all work together, which is virtually impossible. The poor are easily misled to support somebody who doesn't have their interests in mind (politicians, corrupt union leaders, etc.). Also, the rich often buy off the law and some of the poor people to act as "goons", so that any opposition can be arrested. When this happens, only a violent revolution can put them back on top. I suggest you read Animal Farm, which shows the difficulty in maintaining a democracy run by commoners.

Slaves were often prisoners of war, who may then be sold on to other parties. StuRat (talk) 19:58, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I take it you have never been hungry or cold or you would not say such silly things about people refusing to work. Dmcq (talk) 20:06, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

• While Animal Farm (noted above) is particularly cogent on the subject, it is a work of fiction. I also recommend Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States which uses class structure in the United States to examine how the upper classes maintain power despite the fact that the poor could overthrow them in violent revolution. Zinn's most insightful chapter, "The Coming Revolt of the Guards", while it gets a little Marxist in its predictions, does at least provide a perspective on how the Elite maintain power, and how they could lose it. The quote from that chapter which directly answer's the OPs question:

"In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbage men and firemen. These people-the employed, the somewhat privileged-are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls."

Explains exactly how the elite use the middle class as unwitting allies against any potential revolt against the elites. An interesting perspective; though I find Zinn's predicted "class consciousness" among those middle classes to be a bit fantastical. 37 years on, not much has changed in that direction, though Zinn's explanation is very cogent to answering the OP's initial query. While it is specific to the U.S., Zinn's interpretation of political stratification applies to just about any liberal democracy. --Jayron32 17:18, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

I once watched the film Animal Farm. I thought it was creepy version of the film, Babe (1995). But Babe had a cute pig and a happy ending. Animal Farm is just creepy. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 19:28, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

The book "The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide" by Richard Conniff was an interesting read on how rich folks are different from the rest of us. The consolidation of wealth (and therefore power) over time seems to be a natural preferential attachment effect between dollar bills and other dollar bills. Eventually when almost all of them are in just a few places, various instabilities emerge. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 23:56, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

I also recommend reading The Grapes of Wrath, or at least watching the movie. This shows how mistreatment of the poor was causing the US to slide towards a communist revolution. Fortunately FDR's "New Deal" and WW2 combined to end the Great Depression, in the US, before widespread violence broke out. StuRat (talk) 21:17, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Jesus' "missing years"

I believe that it is traditionally held that the years between when Jesus was age 12 (and engaging the Rabbis in the Temple) and when he began his Ministry at about age 30, are considered "missing years." It is my understanding that there are many theories and speculations as to where he was and what he was doing during that time. Has there been any research to suggest or support that he was simply studying (with a Rabbi or some form of "Seminary")in preparation for his Ministry? 198.72.29.37 (talk) 19:53, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

We have an article on the unknown years of Jesus that lays out the major theories. The chief issue with theorizing, as the article references, is that there is little historical information to support any particular theory. — Lomn 20:10, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Some people claim that he went to India during those missing years.Uncle dan is home (talk) 20:22, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

That's covered in the article called unknown years of Jesus referred to immediately above. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:29, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Parallels between the teachings of Jesus and Buddha have been drawn but the influence is not explained by mainstream Christian scholarship that finds no historical basis for travels by Jesus to India or Tibet. However unless the young Jesus who disputed with clerics was illiterate (like some popes that followed), it seems implausible for Him not to be aware of, and possibly even visited, the Library of Alexandria that was the intellectual center of the time. Blooteuth (talk) 22:01, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Jesus was certainly literate by the time he was reading an Isaiah scroll in Luke 4:16-19 (something which would have required knowledge of Hebrew as well as Aramaic). The library of Alexandria was the center of Mediterranean scholarship, but that type of Greek-language learning had very little appeal for religiously-devout non-Hellenizing Aramaic-speaking Jews in Judea and Galilee at that time (there's no real evidence that Jesus spoke or read Greek). AnonMoos (talk) 03:52, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Language of Jesus notes that (according to Josephus) it was very rare for Judeans to know Greek. I remember seeing an argument that Jesus Healing the centurion's servant was evidence that Jesus knew Greek, but Rome also recruited from the local population. Ian.thomson (talk) 04:26, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

It's possible; after all Herod Agrippa was educated in Rome and raised among the Imperial family (though, the Herodians were not Jews but Edomites). We have no way to know one way or the other how the conversation between Jesus and the Centurion went down (did Jesus speak Greek? Did the Centurion speak Aramaic? Did they converse through an un-noted translator?) it is certainly more plausible that there was an Aramaic-speaking Roman Army officer than that a backwoods carpenter would have had reason to learn Greek. --Jayron32 17:08, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Anyone who has visited the Middle East and/or Far East would be amused at the Rich Western World's assumptions that people generally speak only one language. For anyone engaged in commerce in a multicultural milieu, having working fluencies in half-a-dozen languages is, in my experience (yes, OP) commonplace. From our article Galilee:

"The archaeological discoveries of synagogues from the Hellenistic and Roman period in the [sic] Galilee show strong Phoenician influences, and a high level of tolerance for other cultures . . . ."

Literacy is another step, but the Greek alphabet (and its Roman sideshoot) derives from the same Phoenician parent as the Hebrew and is therefore not so difficult to grasp for one literate in the latter (even if one lacks divine attributes).

Re the "backwood's carpenter" – the term used in the (Greek) Gospels to refer to Jesus (and Joseph) actually had a wider meaning, more like "constructor", and could equally refer to a builder (in bricks or stone) as a carpenter (or similar craftsman). During Jesus's lifetime, the Romans were rebuilding a major town literally across the other side of the valley from Nazareth, Sepphoris, whose article says in part:

"At the time of Jesus, Sepphoris was a large, Roman-influenced city. Reza Aslan describes it at the time of Jesus's growing into maturity one mile away in the following terms:

'Rich, cosmopolitan, deeply influenced by Greek culture, and surrounded by a panoply of races and religions, the Jews of Sepphoris were the product of the Herodian social revolution - the nouveaux riches who rose to prominence after Herod's massacre of the old priestly aristocracy.'

It has been suggested that Jesus, while living in Nazareth, may have worked as a craftsman at Sepphoris, where, during his youth 'the largest restoration project' of his time took place."

so the area wasn't such a "backwood" and would have offered significant employment opportunities with Roman and/or Greek speaking employers for anyone with such skills. "Jesus the brickie" however sounds somewhat unromantic, even if a band of itinerant, disruptive manual workers with northern accents bears interesting parallels with the Boys from the Blackstuff. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 20:13, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

First off, Reza Aslan is not an archaeologist or expert in ancient cultures, and I'm not sure how seriously to take a book which has a pathetically absurd and nonsensical title like "Jesus the Zealot". Second, whether a Jewish inhabitant of 1st. A.D. Judea or Galilee spoke Greek probably had more to do with how socially connected that person was to manifestations of Hellenistic civilization, rather than geographic proximity alone. It seems likely that even if religiously-devout Jews who did not admire Hellenism had dealings with merchants and government officials, then they might acquire a practical command of spoken Greek (like Josephus), but would remain perfectly uninterested in Greek literature and philosophy. AnonMoos (talk) 01:20, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

I presume, then, that you will be amending the text of Wikipedia's Sepphoris article, from which my extract was a direct cut and paste?

I am unconcerned with the status of Reza Aslan (about whom I knew nothing other than his mention in 'Sepphoris'), but presumably his being quoted in the article suggests that a Wikipedia editor thought that he was a reliable secondary source for the matters quoted, and presumably Aslan's own sources can be checked: do you have competing sources that contradict the contents of the quote? – they seem consistent with what I've previously read elsewhere (books not currently to hand).

"Jesus the Zealot" appears to be your own invention rather than a title of Aslan's – the nearest I can see is Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, which does not in itself carry the implication you attribute (and in any case, titles are often chosen by publishers for maximum impact, rather than authors), but given that Jesus is widely speculatedto have associated with Zealots (Simon Zealotes and Judas Iscariot, for example), who were part of the same general anti-Roman movement, calling such an imputation "pathetically absurd and nonsensical" seems a little over-the-top, not to mention over-emotionally invested. I myself have nothing more than dispassionate interest in the history involved, as I do not practice any religion relevant to the context, and am technically agnostic (though fairly sceptical) about objectively-existing supernatural forces. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 13:46, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

If you don't care about Reza Aslan, then you shouldn't have quoted from his book with a bizarre title. "Jesus the Zealot" is my informal condensation of the whole unwieldy (and pointless) long title down to three words. In Jesus' day, Zealot was the name of one specific faction or alignment to which Jesus himself didn't belong (though at least one of his disciples had a Zealot background). It's like writing a book titled "Tony Benn the Tory" or "Abraham Lincoln, Member of the Democratic Party". I don't know too much about Sepphoris, but it doesn't affect my main point -- that during Jesus' lifetime there was a solid core of religiously-devout Aramaic-speaking Jews in Judea and Galilee who did not admire Hellenistic civilization, who did not learn Greek unless motivated by some practical concrete advantage this would give them in their everyday lives, and who (even if they acquired some command of practical spoken Greek) were unlikely in the extreme to travel to Alexandria to consult the library there... AnonMoos (talk) 19:49, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

I didn't quote Aslan, the Wikipedia article on Sepphoris quotes him, and does so (only) within the OP-relevant passage concerning the demographics and economy of Galilee and Nazareth, not any supposed links of Jesus to Zealotry, which is a complete red herring. Few astronomers give much credence to Fred Hoyle's ideas about faked Archeopteryx fossils or flu germs dropping from comets, but that doesn't invalidate his work on stellar nucleosynthesis.

I didn't imply that Jesus was a card-carrying Zealot, and I don't know (or care) whether or not Aslan's book does. We cannot know all the details of Jesus' dealings with the various religio-political factions of 1st-century Palestine (we almost certainly don't even know their full range, our main source Josephus was doubtless not exhaustive), but it is inescapable that he personally associated with at least one and possibly more Zealots or ex-Zealots, and was was somewhat aligned with the Zealots' aims of expelling the Romans (and Greeks) occupying their country, though not necessarily by the same means. Equating this to "Tony Benn the Tory" is absurd.

That there was a "solid core" with the characteristics you detail is not in dispute, but there is no evidence that Jesus was part of it (if I'm wrong, please point to it). Equally we cannot possibly know (given current known texts)) that Jesus did (or did not) visit Alexandria in the 18 (if not more) "missing years" of his life (though I personally doubt it). There is no evidence, even highly circumstancial, for such a visit: there is however tradition linking him to Egypt in that Joseph and Mary are said in the Gospel of Matthew to have taken him there in infancy to avoid Herod. This and the whole account of his birth and childhood in Matthew (and, abbreviated, in Luke) are absent from the almost certainly earlier Mark, and may have been pious fiction invented and added to bolster the growing "God not man" interpretation of the ultimately prevailing Pauline agenda, but the minor "Flight to Egypt" detail might have been inspired by some knowledge of a real connection. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 00:36, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Jesus was very aware of injustices, including those associated with Roman rule, but his main attitude seems to have been that the imminent Day of Judgement would make the Romans irrelevant. He certainly wasn't passing out weapons or inciting people to organize for future rebellion, or supporting people who were, so he wasn't a Zealot. We can't know with 100% certainty Jesus' exact degree of knowledge of Greek, but if you were trying to set yourself up as a knowledgeable Jewish religious authority in Judea/Galilee, then you were pursuing a path of extensive study which for the great majority was incompatible with becoming a connoisseur of Greek literature and philosophy. For Jesus to have gone to the library of Alexandria, he would have to have had not only "missing years", but a whole secret life that was basically incompatible with the public persona of the last three years of his life... AnonMoos (talk) 02:44, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Where is this "connoisseur of Greek literature and philosophy" coming from? As far as I'm aware, the suggestions under discussion are that

(a) Jesus might have spoken, and possibly been able to read (Koine) Greek, which had been the lingua franca of the larger region for a couple of centuries or so (something that seems to me quite likely), and

(b) he might have visited Alexandria, which then had the largest Jewish population in the world outside Jerusalem itself* (which seems to me unlikely but not impossible – after all, Saul of Tarsus got around the Mediterranean world quite a bit).

Neither require or suggest becoming a connoisseur of Hellenic culture, or even approving of it, they merely reflect normal interactions with parts of the multicultural world in which he lived (and wished to change, at least to the extent of ending Graeco-Romanic hegemony over Israel, possibly by fulfilling Messianic prophesies, possibly instead or also by more mundane means).

*From that article, I quote: "Alexandria was not only a center of Hellenism but was also home to the largest Jewish community in the world . . . . The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Tanakh [the Torah and other writings], was produced there. The early Ptolemies kept it in order and fostered the development of its museum into the leading Hellenistic centre of learning (Library of Alexandria) but were careful to maintain the distinction of its population's three largest ethnicities: Greek, Jewish, and Egyptian."

Whatever Jesus' own eschatological beliefs (as opposed to those attributed to him post mortem by various sectarian factions in later generations), he must have formulated them over an extended period requiring thought and study – if they were merely standard for (Pharasaic) Jews of his era (i.e. held from childhood), surely he would not have eventually found himself so at odds with the authorities (beyond the general ongoing Pharisaic–Sadducean antipathies). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 03:55, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

90.217.249.244 -- User:Blooteuth speculated that Jesus might have visited the Library of Alexandria, which started this whole current sub-thread, in which I've given a number of reasons that (circumstantially) suggest it would be quite unlikely. I'm not going to go through them in detail again, except to say that being a connoisseur of Greek literature and/or philosophy was in most cases probably a minimum requirement to be admitted to the research collections of the ancient Library of Alexandria -- and that such connoisseurship was more or less incompatible (in terms of both attitudes to Hellenistic civilization and the time required) with studying to become a knowledgeable and influential religious leader among the Aramaic-speaking Jews of Judea and Galilee. In ancient times, there were some wandering "seekers", such as probably Apollonius of Tyana and Pyrrho, who visited various lands in order to find the wisdom of each, but the Jews of Judea had lived for a long time in a small land-locked province of the Persian empire and were not generally long-distance merchants -- and so traditionally somewhat lacked a cosmopolitan outlook, and were more likely to seek answers from within their own cultural traditions than to go remotely wandering. (Any few dissatisfied individuals who did go peripatetically seeking probably usually ended up disaffiliating themselves from the Jewish community.) These overall general attitudes were confirmed by the struggles between Hellenizers and traditionalists which led to the rise of the Maccabees... AnonMoos (talk) 11:58, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Your criteria for being allowed into 'the' Library (was it so rigorously policed?) are not something I've seen documented (I'm open to references), and we know that some Jews did work there. Moreover, one would not have needed to enter the Library itself in order to interact usefully with the scholars (formal or hobbyist, Jews and others) who must have lived in the district – Socrates did most of his philosophical peer interaction in pubs, but still managed to be influential in contemporary Athenian intellectual life). In any case I agree with you that it's not likely that Jesus visited Alexandria, and less likely that he pre-emulated Karl Marx in the Library, but neither are either of these positively ruled out or rendered completely implausible by any evidence we have.

You keep referring to Judeans – Jesus was a Galilean.

Most people everywhere in the world throughout history tended to stick close to home, but a minority didn't – Jesus himself was clearly more peripatetic than the average Galilean.

Jesus didn't have to leave Galilee to encounter Hellenistic and other cultural influences and actual peoples – they were resident and influential in Galilee itself while he was growing up. I nowhere suggest that Jesus approved the hellenisation/Romanisation of his own country (and domination over his own religion, which was the real point), but it's something he had to deal with. However, his actual attitudes are obscured by the hellenisation (and his posthumous deification) of (what became) Christianity itself under the domination of the hellenistic Paul and his movement over that of Jesus' immediate family and followers.

We're clearly not going to convince each other of anything. I myself don't think it's desirable or possible, because there are too few certainties to work with, so I won't respond further on this thread. I don't think, however, that we should preclude reasonable and sensible speculation untainted by preconceived, unsupported dogmatic beliefs/assumptions, and I hope the OP and others who may have followed us this far have derived some interest and avenues for further investigation. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 19:30, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

• Personally, I believe in the John Prine song. --M@rēino 20:30, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Insurance

1. If everyone in the world accepts to pay for things (house, car, life, health) or lives with the consequences if they can't afford the total costs, then will there be a need for insurance companies to exist? 2. If a person's house gets wrecked by another person, and the house wrecker agrees to pay for all the damages, then the deal seems to be sealed. But what if the person's house is wrecked and the house wrecker can't afford the cost of damages but instead agrees to serve the other house owner as a slave or go to debtor's prison? 3. And what if a whole community of houses get wrecked by a hurricane, and everyone in the community decides to re-build themselves, without external help or any kind of insurance company? 4. What is the foundation of having insurance? 5. Why do humans need insurance, while other animals don't seem to have a concept of insurance? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 20:21, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Per our article, insurance is a form of risk management against the possibility of uncertain loss. It is not a fundamental human "need", but has a multi-millennial history in keeping with the general human tendency toward loss aversion. Our article notes, for example, that some religious communities have an aversion to commercial insurance, preferring instead an internal community-based self-insurance practice (as your hurricane example) -- but this is still, broadly speaking, insurance. — Lomn 20:41, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Some people can afford a house but not be able to afford another one. If their house breaks they don't have enough money to get another one. They need insurance. Some would rather pay insurance than build another house if a hurricane/mollasses accident etc. makes it out of order even if they could afford it. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:09, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

So, if humans do not experience loss aversion and decide to make do without any ownership to anything or emotional connections to anything and just live their lives trying to fulfill their basic needs on a daily basis (which includes eating, sleeping, defecating, urinating), then insurance will not be necessary at all? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 21:13, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I numbered the OP's questions.

Risk aversion is a psychological condition, it has nothing to do with why you need insurance. Losing your home and all of your possessions is a real physical problem. People don't have insurance to feel better. They have insurance to make sure they don't lose everything they own for reasons beyond their control. --Jayron32 15:08, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

The article Insurance explains its function which is a form of shared Risk management. It is more beneficial to a society that there be funds in reserve for controlled recovery from accidents or disasters than no more help be available than charity provides, or none. Insurance can be provided by a profit-making company, by a contract between a group of insurants or by the state. The overhead cost of insurance from a company is mitigated by the company's large reserve that may be greatly extended by Underwriting, its highly developed and law-enforced contract terms, and exposure to competition with other insurance companies in a Market economy. Here are numbered answers.

1. Insurance companies don't need to exist but the consequences of everyone relying on alternatives would be dire for the unlucky, with many activities ceasing because they are too risky.
2. Slavery is illegal and Debtors' prisons generally fail to recover owed funds. They have been supplanted by other Bankruptcy proceedings, see the History of bankruptcy law.
3. Wish good luck to the community because they will need it.
4. See introduction.
5. Animals don't convert risk taking into money. But rodents such as hamsters and squirrels, and birds, such as rooks and woodpeckers hoard food in times of plenty as insurance against times when it is scarce. Blooteuth (talk) 21:26, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, at least food is tangible. Money is just little symbols on the electronic screen. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 21:32, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

But people will give you food for it so you don't have to grow, pick and shoot everything you eat. Also if they give you too many symbols on the electronic screen by mistake someone with a gun will put you in jail if you spend more than you have without giving it back when they ask and they can't figure out another way to get the symbols back without enslaving you like taking some symbols from your income. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:22, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

If your hypothetical community in question 3 wanted to live as a commune, and was completely self sufficient, and was big enough to survive a catastrophe without outside help, then you're correct that insurance would have little value for them. But at that point you're basically describing a communist nation. ApLundell (talk) 01:09, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

I would argue that some animals do have insurance, in that they will take care of a sick or wounded member (provide food, etc.) until they recover. This is a way for the group to spread the risk around. StuRat (talk) 06:41, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

At least animals do so directly. Humans pay to insurance companies, and the insurance companies profit from estimating the risks. So, if you are high-risk, then you may have to pay more for insurance, unless you pay out of pocket or get someone else willing to pay the damages (not likely) or live with your own damages. Relying on family members and friends or some kind of support group for insurance seems to be a better option than paying to a health insurance company that assesses your risks and makes a profit. So, if you are high-risk and need healthcare, then you may not afford it. And if you are low-risk and don't need healthcare, then the money will just go wasted to some kind of event that is not likely to happen. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 13:02, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

It's possible for medical bills to run up into the millions. I don't personally have any relatives who could foot that bill. And I frankly wouldn't want them to. In that situation I would seriously consider dying rather than ruining the hopes and dreams of my extended family. With insurance, I won't have to make that choice.

If you extend "family" to a large enough group beyond immediate family, you're describing a sort of commune. Which has both advantages and disadvantages.

None of what you're suggesting are new ideas, it's always been part of the debate and philosophy of what it means to have a Civilization and how best to set one up. ApLundell (talk) 14:24, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Or perhaps you'd be happier in a country with Single-payer healthcare. That's basically what you describe, except the "family" is your entire nation. ApLundell (talk) 14:39, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

But then, some people with expensive medical costs refuse to die, and if there are more of those people around, then that can bankrupt the entire nation. It would be nice, if some people are willing to die for a better life for their relatives. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 14:54, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

So if you get terminally ill do you intend to refuse medical treatment and just let the disease run its course? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:26, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

There was one time when I was so hot I became temporarily blind. I thought I would lose my eyesight. Then, someone called an ambulance and offered me a cup of water. While waiting, I sat in my car and cooled down. When the ambulance arrived, they asked me whether I wanted to go to the emergency room because I had shock, but I said no. I would rather take a risk. I am more concerned about how other people would emotionally respond to my death than my own death. Anyway, I lived afterwards, and my eyes fully recovered. I wish hospitals would be more honest about their charges instead of just offering unnecessary medical care by default and then charging you high medical bills afterwards. I was fortunate that I didn't go to the emergency room, because a trip to the emergency room could cost thousands of dollars for something that could potentially heal by itself. I believe that death of an individual is more favorable and altruistic than debt of relatives. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 17:25, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

That's insane. You're basing a personal philosophy on the fact that you happened to get lucky.

That's like deciding that lifeboats serve no purpose because you once road a boat and it didn't sink. Or that traffic lights are a scam because you once ran a red light and didn't get smashed. ApLundell (talk) 17:38, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

It's called Confirmation bias, or more specifically Anecdotal evidence. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:16, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

50.4, that's not necessarily true at all. If you've only got, let's say, four relatives to fall back on, entirely curable diseases, or economic setbacks will ruin you. However, if those setbacks are uncommon enough, as most of them are, it makes good mathematical sense to spread that risk out. (For example, the overall cost of all the people in the country who need a hand reattached is pretty negligible. But if you're the guy who shows up at the hospital with his hand in a baggy, you'd never be able to pay for that surgery on your own.)

Whether it makes more sense to share the risk through government 'safety nets', or private insurance providers, or something in between is open to debate, but trying to compare such large-scale programs to a casual system of depending on a handful of friends and relatives is hopelessly naive.

I'm noticing that's a pattern with your questions, so I strongly urge you to research topics you're interested in, before deciding that you've thought of new ideas that are smarter than the ideas produced by centuries of mankind's greatest thinkers.

ApLundell (talk) 17:38, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

What "new ideas that are smarter than the ideas produced by centuries of mankind's greatest thinkers"? I never mentioned, said, or implied that my ideas were smarter or better or superior. I just wonder about the basis of doing things a certain way. If it were me, then I would just take a gamble and let nature determine my fate. If I survive, yea! If I die, oh, well. My time's up. In the middle, I'll just do whatever I can to stay alive and not die within my means. It may sound naïve, but I don't think it's any different than living a life in the wilderness. Animals that live in the wilderness are expected to have shorter lifespans than in captivity. But that is offset by the fact that they reproduce. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 19:07, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

That attitude is highly irresponsible, because insurances don't just cover unanticipated costs of consequences to yourself, they often also cover the cost for other people.

If, for example, you crash your car and incur (in addition to the car loss) injuries, your insurance will (hopefully) cover not only your (possibly huge) medical bills (and car replacement cost) but those of the people in the other car(s) you hit.

Unless you live as a hermit on an otherwise uninhabited island, your life inevitably interacts with and effects other people. Some of those interactions have the potential for you to cause them loss and/or expense. Where appropriate, insurance whose regular small premium payments you can well afford will if necessary compensate those people for losses you personally cannot possibly have the resources to pay for yourself. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 20:28, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

But if one doesn't buy insurance and can't afford the cost of payment, then can one sacrifice one's own life to compensate for the other person's losses? Or is insurance based on the concept that no one wants to sacrifice themselves to pay for another's house or whatever? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 21:00, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Your ritual suicide isn't going to fix my car. ApLundell (talk) 21:48, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Maybe you could sell tickets. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 03:00, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Why was Jesus crucified?

My objective is to see the information from my pastor's last two sermons included on Wikipedia, if it has not been already. I haven't found it. She claimed that raising Lazarus of Bethany from the dead was the event that led to people wanting to get rid of Jesus. I know there were many reasons why people felt this way (Jesus should be dealt with) which eventually led to the crucifixion but I don't seem to find any of these mentioned.

I didn't see a clear answer under Crucifixion of Jesus. Does Wikipedia have this information at all?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:15, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I haven't looked, but the opinion of your pastor is just that, the opinion of your pastor. Unless your pastor published her claim, Wikipedia cannot include it, since it depends on reliable sources for its content. HTH, HAND. Kleuske (talk) 21:18, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I thought the Romans crucified Jesus, because Jesus represented an enemy of the state. The punishment was to show people that Rome was the leader, not Jesus. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 21:28, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

That's a very common view and a plausible one at that. Kleuske (talk) 21:31, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Actually, at the time, I believe the Romans were trying to accommodate the Jews, by largely letting them rule themselves. This arrangement later broke down and the Romans went into all-out war and massacre mode. StuRat (talk) 23:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

There's no shortages of writing on this topic, but I enjoy this well researched summary provided by the Straight Dope : http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2011/who-killed-jesus

ApLundell (talk) 21:51, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

That's more about who killed Jesus. The short answer as to "why" is likely that influential men around the Jerusalem Temple high priest considered Jesus to be someone making erratic pretentious claims to unjustified religious authority, and also a general all-round troublemaker who would end up causing problems for them with the Romans. The "native" Jewish authorities didn't have the power to impose the death penalty, so they presented him to the local Roman governor as a political rebel (since the Romans didn't care about offenses against Jewish religion). AnonMoos (talk) 03:33, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

The article I linked covers that, and in more detail than your summary. ApLundell (talk) 06:18, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

• Don't forget the obvious religious answer (at least in Christian belief) to the question "Why was Jesus crucified?" Which is: "So he could taketh away the sins of the world" (or similar wording). Blueboar (talk) 23:45, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
  • YES. The Passion of Christ makes very little sense if you're expecting Jesus to act like a "normal" person, willing to stoop to any low just to not be killed. Satan, Judas, Peter, the Roman guards, and Pontius Pilate all try to convince Jesus to commit fairly minor sins in order to save His own life. Jesus's refusal to take the bait is all the answer you really need to the "WHY" question.20:41, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

• Since we have no accounts outside of the Gospels which give an explanation, we're confined to a) actual biblical text and b) wild-ass speculation. Sticking to a) since it is all we have, the Bible actually explains why Jesus was crucified in some detail. Jesus's last week of life (from the Triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the Crucifixion of Jesus) is the only time period which all four gospels cover, and while there are a few chronological differences between John and the Synoptic Gospels, we actually have accounts which explain why Jesus was killed. If we go to the Gospel of Matthew for example, at Matthew 26, most of the chapter but especially Matthew 26:57-67 where he is accused of blasphemy, which was the specific charge for which he was killed. The Bible is also filled with examples of Jesus embarrassing the political and religious leaders, for which they are stated to hold a grudge against him, as well as provoking a riot (the Cleansing of the Temple). After his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane he is brought to severals (depending on the account, at least 3) trials of which it is clear it is the Sanhedrin that seeks to have him killed for blasphemy and false preaching; both Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate initially refuse to condemn him to death, but Pilate relents as the Sanhedrin has riled up a crowd against Jesus. But really, read any or preferably all of the four Gospels from the Triumphal Entry forward to get a sense of why Jesus was wanted to be killed. --Jayron32 14:19, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it's the opinion of my pastor but something she found somewhere. If that "somewhere" turns out to be something acceptable to Wikipedia, that's what we could use as a source. Even if it is just the statement of a respected authority on the subject and presented as that.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 14:56, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

They aren't that long; the Biblical accounts of the Holy Week are about 4-6 chapters from each Gospel. Just read those parts of the four Gospels (start with the Triumphal Entry in each; our article at Wikipedia lists the chapter that starts at.) and read through to his crucifixion. Even if you're a slow reader, it shouldn't take more than an hour of your life. That's the only documentation you're going to find. Take care of commentaries that read too much beyond the text itself, you'll probably find someone who claims ANYTHING, but go back to the source material and decide for yourself before believing it. --Jayron32 15:05, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

What is important is what can be included here. I'm starting to understand why it's not here.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:23, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Where is here? --Jayron32 17:02, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

If the pastor's source is notable, it might have a place in one of the articles mentioned above. I think the standard of notability for the Crucifixion of Jesus article would be pretty high though, as there's no scarcity of sources on that topic, but there may be someplace else in the project it would go. For instance if there's a bio page about the author of the piece, or a page describing the specific religious doctrine they adhere to.

Tough to say without knowing what the source is. I would recommend caution, and asking on the articles' "talk" pages before making significant changes to them. Such pages will certainly have many editors working on them who are passionate about the subject matter, and suspicious of sudden additions. (I imagine a lot of crazies try to make additions to articles about Jesus, you want to avoid being mistaken for one of them.) ApLundell (talk) 17:47, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

User:Jayron32, "here" is "one of the articles mentioned above" or in another article I didn't know about. ApLundell, you said exactly what I believed would be the case.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:06, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

I talked to my pastor this morning. She showed me the scripture, but that didn't say what she said. When she explained it, it sounded like what we call WP:OR. She couldn't give me anything further. As far as something being her opinion, she stated she had concluded Jesus was the gardener on Easter morning and Mary Magdalene was not wrong. For reasons stated above, obviously we can't use that.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:27, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

What's the expected value of the number of years before the first big insurance firm is bankrupted by asteroid or comet?

How much can they afford? Dallas area destroyed? New York metro area destroyed? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:10, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

They normally do not cover such catastrophic events which can result in an extremely large number of claims being filed at the same time.--Hofhof (talk) 22:46, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

This article seems to suggest that if a meteor directly impacted your home they'd be on the hook, but if you got hit by indirect damage like the a shock-wave that wipes out a whole neighborhood is "open to interpretation". So good luck collecting on that one.

ApLundell (talk) 23:45, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Some Acts of God are excluded from insurance contracts.
Sleigh (talk) 23:49, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

If you are worried, check what your insurance contract says about compensation for Acts of God and ask in writing if it is not clearly stated. The Sentry risk table is the source for actuaries to estimate the likelihood, and premiums for insurance coverage against, strikes by Meteorite i.e. solid debris from a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid. Blooteuth (talk) 23:55, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Insurance companies are careful to spread their risks, so that a catastrophic event in one area would not take them down. Additionally, they protect themselves with reinsurance and particularly a type called "excess of loss" which cuts in once their total claims for any particular event reach a set value. These reinsurance contacts are spread around the global insurance market (mainly transacted in London) so that the "loss lighteth rather easily upon many, than heavy upon few". I dealt with some of the claims from the September 11 attacks, the largest component of which was not the buildings, the aircraft or even the people but "business interruption". Alansplodge (talk) 12:45, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

So might it be millions or hundreds of thousands of years? (assuming everything continues like it's 2017 which it will not) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:18, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

It might be, or it might be ten years, or less. Impacts of asteroids are somewhat random and unpredictable events. If one occurs, it might well wipe out human civilization, or all land life bigger than a cat (as did the one 65.8 million years ago) or all life larger than microbes – in any of those scenarios, claiming insurance will be somewhat moot. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 00:51, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Insurance can get tested by massive disasters. A common real life case would be, of course, the September 11 terrorist attacks. Some countries have made specific legal arrangements for insurance cover for terrorism, due to this. You might want to look at how the insurance system coped with this actual event. Can others fill in the details on this?

In general, most insurers will have Reinsurance, to cover them in the event that a single disaster costs more than x hundred million. A sort of "insurance for insurers". The primary insurer may cover, for example, the first $200 Million of any single disaster, and the reinsurer will cover the rest. If a single home burns down, the primary insurer will cover it, no problem. If a whole town or suburb burns down, you call on your reinsurance to cover part of the claim. See that article.

Also of interest, for a classic case of how insurance laws deal with potential billion-dollar disasters, check out Price–Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, which covers dealing with nuclear disasters (of the non-military sort). This is possibly the closest real life example of the question. In sum, should there be a disaster at a nuclear power plant, private insurance covers the first $12.6 billion, the government covers the rest. In a sense, de facto, the government is the "insurer of last resort", when the insurance system gets overwhelmed. Hope you find this helpful. Eliyohub (talk) 16:32, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Just as an example, I once had dealings with the insurance for an enormous chemical plant. As these things have the possibility of being completely destroyed by a single event, the initial insurance was shared by about 20 insurers taking 5% each (known as co-insurance), and each of those only kept about 10% of their share, the rest being passed on to about 20 reinsurers for each of the 5% shares. So if the whole thing went bang, the loss would be shared by numerous companies and underwriting syndicates, I'll let you do the maths! Alansplodge (talk) 17:05, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

April 13

Can non-European countries join the European Union?

Is the European Union only for countries in the European continent? Is it open for any country? Can the United States, Australia, Canada, China, India, South Africa, etc. join the European Union? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 01:49, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Algeria and Greenland used to be part. Maybe they'd want Iceland and Norway before they'd want the US, Australia, Canada etc. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:53, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Algeria and Greenland were part of the EU because they were parts of countries that were part. Just like how French Guiana, Reunion, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Ceuta, Melilla, and Mayotte are part of the EU. They weren't non-European countries that were admitted to the EU, they were part of European countries. I think the answers you're looking for are here: Future_enlargement_of_the_European_Union#States_outside_Europe --Golbez (talk) 03:07, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Although it's not mentioned in our article, I get the impression that a large part of the motivation for the EU is to provide a counterweight to the United States. So for the US to join the EU would seem a little like Russia joining NATO. --Trovatore (talk) 03:21, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Why should there be a counterweight? Why not make the United States super powerful in terms of military size, technology, and economy? Can the United States, China, India, Japan, etc. form their own "Union" to counterweight the European Union? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:26, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

The geopolitical goals of the United States and Europe are closer to each other's than either's is to China's. I don't have a citation for that but I doubt anyone will really disagree. However, within that commonality, the Europeans still want to protect what they perceive as interests distinct from those of the United States. --Trovatore (talk) 03:29, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

That may ultimately change when China becomes more economically and militarily powerful than the US. At that point a combined EU-US alliance (and toss in Canada, Australia, and any other democratic nations that want to join) may be needed to balance the power of China. StuRat (talk) 03:45, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

I still don't get this. Why don't people want to merge countries together and form one global country that unites all of humanity? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:51, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Let's consider the case of letting China in the EU. They are non-democratic, don't much care about global warming, and are building military bases on islands they are forming in the South China Sea to take naval territorial rights away from their neighbors. They are also propping up the dangerous regime in North Korea. Should we really work hard to improve their economy ? Or should we work to improve our own and exclude them ? Similar Q for Russia, which is sliding back into dictatorship, murders anyone who criticizes them, annexed Crimea militarily, and is sending rebels into Ukraine to try to topple that nation. StuRat (talk) 03:57, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

There are parts of American counties that don't see eye-to-eye, you think every country could possibly join together under one set of laws? --Golbez (talk) 04:01, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Oh, okay. So, countries really do hate each other, but can't change each other, because that can lead to war and devastation for everybody. Well, I suppose all the countries are formed to preserve national identity, culture, and ideas. These ideas just happen to clash, but a peace treaty is better than going to war. Huh... it's like a bunch of prehistoric tribes but on a global scale. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 04:21, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Don't underestimate the importance of common culture. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:01, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

See World government. Loraof (talk) 13:53, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

See Copenhagen criteria. The geographic criteria are set forth in Article 49 (formerly article O) of the Maastricht Treaty: "Any European State may apply to become a Member of the Union." This briefing from the European Parliament states that "There is no unequivocal interpretation of that criterion. It can be read equally well in geographical, cultural or political terms." Morocco applied to join the EU in 1987, but the European Council rejected the application on the grounds that Morocco was not a "European State." However, Turkey's geographic position (mostly in Asia, part in Europe) is not an absolute bar to its hypothetical accession to the EU. So the European Parliament briefing says that the "European State" requirement "is at all events a criterion subject to political assessment." Neutrality^talk 05:28, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Canada, Australia and New Zealand seem like they could make strong arguments for being European culturally and politically, and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the nations in the Americas could. But, of course, any such clause could be changed, should the situation warrant it. StuRat (talk) 06:34, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, in 2004, the European Union admitted an Asian country in violation of the Copenhagen criteria specifically the Maastricht Treaty. Cyprus is geographically Asian but inhabited by Europeans. In 1987, Morocco was refused admission to the European Union because it was an African country. But Morocco is inhabited by Europeans like other countries in North Africa, Russia and former members of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and countries in Western Asia.
Sleigh (talk) 08:17, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

The exact boundaries of Asia are disputed: "Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world" acording to our Asia article. Alansplodge (talk) 12:10, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

It depends which tectonic plate it is on.
Sleigh (talk) 13:10, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

@Sleigh: So what about countries on the Eurasian Plate?  :-) Also, it's a bit of a stretch to describe Arabs and Berbers as Europeans. Rojomoke (talk) 13:18, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. The Treaties of the European Union (functionally the European Constitution) can be amended and renegotiated at any time, and the matter of who gets in and who gets rejected is a political question, not a question of immutable physical law. If the existing members wanted Morroco or Turkey or Mongolia or Paraguay to be members, they'd find a way to make them members. If they didn't, they'd simply refuse to. They make the rules, and they can change them any time they want. Politics is still politics. --Jayron32 17:01, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

The sick man ... of Europe: Accession of Turkey to the European Union. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 17:05, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Article about it Sick man of Europe.Hofhof (talk) 21:14, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 France

Hello, I had a doubt. Do any of you know why the artist Le Barbier wrote in German in this painting while the painting was related to France and French Revolution. I couldn't find answers in the related articles. Thank you. 180.151.18.232 (talk) 15:11, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

What makes you think he did? Our picture in Wiki Commons appears to be in French. Rojomoke (talk) 15:19, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

@Rojomoke: This [3] did. It is printed in a whole lot of books. 180.151.18.232 (talk) 15:40, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Le Barbier appears to have painted several versions (or there were several copies made of his original). This one for example from the British Library website is different from the one in our article. The one in our article appears to be the version on display at Carnavalet Museum in France, as is the one from the BL website, see here where you can see both versions hang side-by-side. Here is a copy from a book, in French. Here is a black-and-white lithograph. It is a WELL copied picture, reproduced by later artists countless times in other media. If there are German-language versions as well, I would not be surprised. Le Barbier did not write in German in either of his original versions (on display at Carnavalet) however, as the image of the two paintings on display there, and the details thereof, can confirm. I don't know the provenance of the German versions, but they are clearly later copies. --Jayron32 16:57, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

• That German picture is unfortunately very fuzzy, but it appears to me that the body text could be in Optima, a typeface published in 1958. —Tamfang (talk) 07:43, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

How could Dao come back to his flight?

In the United Express Flight 3411 incident, how could Dao come back to his seat? Even if he had the right and will to come back to the plane, how could United let him flight after all? He was injured and unruly after the incident. Independent of the injustice of the situation, after the incident it was not a good idea letting him flight.--Hofhof (talk) 19:01, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

The article does not say United let him. It merely says he did reboard the plane and return to his seat, before being removed a second time (on a stretcher). People sometimes do things against the wishes of others. --Jayron32 19:12, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

OK, they didn't let him, but he managed to come back. Wasn't enough attention and security personnel on him to block him from doing it? --Hofhof (talk) 19:16, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Given that the security personnel involved were probably beginning to realise that, for no defensible reason, they had just beaten up and injured a completely innocent customer of their own company who was quite legally demanding the services for which he had paid, and that they themselves had very likely broken both their own company regulations and the law, they may have been less than clear headed and decisive at that point. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 20:42, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

That sounds plausible, but the article could benefit if non-speculative details were found and included. BTW, the security personnel were not removing a 'customer of their own company' since they were 'police officers from the Chicago Department of Aviation.' Hofhof (talk) 21:11, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

An interesting piece of information not known to me when previously posting (I'm the wrong side of the Pond to be seeing every local update on this debacle, even if I wanted to). So the Police Officers were essentially acting on apparently misleading information given to them by the Airline. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 14:02, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

'Demetrio [Dao's lawyer] said Dao had no memory of trying to return to his seat a second time. "He has absolutely zero, nada memory of going back onto that plane. Not a lick of it," Demetrio said'. [4] Alansplodge (talk) 01:55, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Can people go to police departments as safe shelters?

I am wondering about a hypothetical person who earns $9 per hour at an entry-level part-time retail or food service job. If such a person earns $9/hr and works 6 hours a day, 4-6 days a week, then that person makes at least $540 per month to maybe $1,000 per month. This may not be enough to rent an apartment, let alone buy a house. Living on the streets is too dangerous, because wild animals may be lurking, and even worse, violent human gangs may roam the streets. Can this person walk to a police department and treat the police department as a temporary home? Do police officers mind? What about sleeping in a locked public restroom stall inside the police department? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 23:02, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Typically they would direct you to a Homeless shelter or some other form of Supportive housing.

In a town or village so small there was no shelter they might try to help you out. But there's no general rule that police departments will operate as homeless shelters. I'd say the general rule is the opposite, it would impede their primary purpose.

I guess you could get yourself locked up if that seems like a good idea to you.

ApLundell (talk) 23:40, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

What's the difference between homeless shelter and supportive housing? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 23:57, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

I was going to tell you to read the articles linked, but I realize they don't actually make it clear. Supportive housing can be anything from an apartment, to a house shared by several people, to something resembling a college dormitory. A homeless shelter, on the other hand, is generally more like a vast number of beds inside a vast gymnasium-like room. All types will have other amenities available to residents besides beds. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:09, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

In small towns of yore, or at least in fiction, police would sometimes accomodate people in their drunk tank if they got stuck overnight. Trying to camp out in a modern big-city police station might be a good way to get beaten up. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 00:13, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

The earnings suggested may well be inadequate to rent an apartment (I presume multi-roomed) or buy/rent a house solo, but are they inadequate for sharing an apartment/house with one or more others, or renting a single room in a boarding house? Also, is state or non-profit Social housing available? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 16:15, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

The OP may find this of interest. Matt Deres (talk) 01:15, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

April 14

HMS Roselys

I can't really find anything about the Roselys ramming a U-boat outside of this article. The French Wikipedia has a brief excerpt about the incident, but it doesn't really describe what happened to the U-boat. One of the references in the French wiki is dead, and the other doesn't really go into much detail about the incident. Any help would be appreciated. Stikkyy (talk) (contributions) 00:29, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

[Admiralty?] "...announced (Jan. 29) that the French corvette Roselys had rammed and almost certainly destroyed a U-boat". Naval Review (London) Volume 30 1942 (p. 163). Sorry, only a "snippet view".

However: "On the 26th January, the Free French corvette Roselys lightly rammed a U-boat, which was also attacked with depth charges... It is probable that the U-boat reached home... [No U-boats were lost]". Donitz, U-Boats, Convoys: The British Version of His Memoirs by Jak P. Mallmann Showell (p. 54).

Seems to have been an optimistic claim seized on by the press. The Imperial War Museum has several photographs of the crew looking pleased with themselves: [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Note that the "HMS" title wasn't retained when HMS Sundew was on loan to the Free French. [10] Alansplodge (talk) 01:48, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

@Alansplodge: Thanks a lot. Stikkyy (talk) (contributions) 16:22, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

You're welcome. It might make a nice little article if you're bored; there's lots of sources on Google about Roselys' rescue mission in a minefield too. Alansplodge (talk) 16:41, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Was Cleopatra literate?

If so, at what level? Additionally, was she educated? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.21.96.144 (talk) 01:18, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Almost certainly yes, and at a high level. We don't know much about her youth, but her father was a patron of the arts and sciences, and Alexandria was the most important center of Greek learning at the time. Plutarch claims that she spoke Greek, Egyptian, Ethiopian, "the language of the Troglodytes", Hebrew, Arab, Syrian, Median, Parthian, "and other languages". I would assume that she was a fluent reader of at least Greek. Remember that Alexander had been educated by Aristotle - the Macedonians were not averse to education. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 02:14, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

A reference for Plutarch's comments is in Cleopatra VII, Daughter of the Nile by Kristiana Gregory (p. 182). That source also points out that other records were probably destroyed in the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Alansplodge (talk) 11:50, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

How is household income calculated if it's a multi-income household?

Dad may earn $120,000 a year; Mom may earn $100,000 a year; Son attends a local university and may earn $8,000 a year; Daughter attends high school and may earn $5,000 a year. Grandpa and Grandma are co-owners of the house and retirees but Grandma may work part-time for $10,000 a year, and Grandpa may work part-time for $10,000 a year. Then, Uncle just happens to find a job where his father, Grandpa, lives, and decides to move in. He may earn $60,000 a year, and his wife is a stay-at-home mother with a baby. Their personal taxes may be done by their employers, so they will probably receive their disposable income in a pay card or pay check or direct deposit. But what about filing for tax return? Are the Uncle's wife and baby the only dependents? What about Son and Daughter who barely earn enough to be self-sufficient? For a multi-income household, how do people consider socioeconomic status? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 01:59, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Household income is just that - the income of everyone in that household combined. As for filing tax returns it's best to just read the rules for US tax returns here. Socioeconomic status is typically going by household income, but this is going to be operationally defined by any study on poverty. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:06, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Can supermarkets predict consumer behavior if consumers base their decisions on what the supermarkets promote with reduced prices?

If a supermarket promotes a selected group of items on sale and one consumer decides to make a meal plan out of the selected group of items and only those items (fruits and vegetables), then how will supermarkets make money if consumers only buy promoted, reduced-price items over non-promoted/non-reduced-priced items? What if most consumers share this habit? Or will there always be a couple of impulsive buyers (buyers who don't care about the price and will buy even at regular price) that supermarkets can lure? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 04:44, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Supermarket pricing is a vast and complicated field with many different pricing strategies. The whole system is confused by the multiple and sometimes-overlapping types of customers: Those who visit multiple stores and only buy the cheapest items at each store; Those dedicated to one store who never change their shopping habits; Those who are willing to switch to a cheaper brand; Those who are beholden to their brands; those who don't even care what they're eating as long as its cheap; and even more types. Each type of customer responds differently to each possible strategy, and you also have to be aware of strategies being followed by nearby competitors. Some stores may operate on the assumption that only discounted items will ever be purchased, and ensure they make a profit if that is the case. Here is a paper I picked nearly at random [11] that talks about these pricing strategies, and you can google or google-scholar "supermarket pricing strategies" and similar phrases to find a huge amount of research on the topic. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:58, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but the use of the word "predict" causes a lot of issues. Supermarkets increase revenue through strategic price reductions paired with price increases as well as promotions and in-store placement of products. There are consumers who exploit the deals to get cheap food. Most consumers don't even use coupons. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 13:41, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Obviously supermarkets have been doing this sort of thing for a long time, have many years of data on very large samples on which to base their calculations and projections, and know exactly what they're doing. Different customers behave differently as individuals, but their overall behaviours will be statistically predictable to several decimal places. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 00:59, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

I wonder why my supermarket sells delicious chips for almost 8 dollars when other companies in similar neighborhoods sell that brand for half the price. Even Manhattan stores don't charge $7.79. Walmart charges 3 dollar upstate. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:10, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

In addition to the good points above, it's worth remembering that depending on where you live a lot of promotions aren't just something the supermarket does but something the supplier is involved in as well (including with pricing). Here in NZ this can include requiring the supplier to remove the remaining stock from the shelves when the promotion has come to an end, and maybe getting them to stock the shelves in the first place. At least here in NZ, from what I've read before a lot of these heavy promotions seem to primarily come at the expense of house/store brands which are still a lot less developed here than elsewhere. But the retail price of house brands are still often cheaper than the discounted other brands. How the profit margin for the store compares is going to be very complicated, especially since price strategies can involve things like rebates depending on how many are sold (well at least these apply to consumer electronics, but I'm fairly sure the same things are done for groceries). Still stores generally prefer to sell house brands for various reasons including their level of control. The frequent desire one of the major supermarket chain here to cut down on their SKUs is something which annoys suppliers no end but not something they can do much about. Point being, any analysis based on some simplistic assumption about how supermarkets and consumers operate is bound to fail. Nil Einne (talk) 05:22, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Working for the government

I know that paying taxes means part of your earnings goes to the government to provide public services. But the government hires employees, so those are public employees. Does that mean the office assistant who gets a paycheck from the government also returns some of that money back to the government in tax? How do the salaries of public employees and government officials work? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 05:02, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Judging from your IP address, I assume you mean the US gov't. The IRS says that government offices do have to issue W2s to their employees, even ones working overseas. That would indicate that they have to at least file taxes on that income, which would be pretty pointless if that income was always exempt. Ian.thomson (talk) 05:14, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Americans over the age of 18, or with any taxable income, must file returns with the IRS each year. It may be pointless, and even counter-productive, but (unlike all other civilized nations) it is the law.DOR (HK) (talk) 17:01, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

They pay the same taxes as anyone else, except I think they don't pay FICA tax (aka social security tax) on the theory that government retirement benefits will take care of them. In the case of the Federal govt that might make sense (if the fedgov goes bust it will take SS with it) but there have been instances of some city governments with the same deal going bust, leaving elderly ex-employees hung out to dry. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 06:26, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

The exempted government employees list is actually fairly small these days. Federal employees hired after 1984 pay the FICA tax. As you suggested, the reason for the shift is that Social Security has proven to be more stable than other pensions, so both the state and federal government have reduced their employee pensions so that their employees would be allowed to collect Social Security. --M@rēino 13:45, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Equivalent arrangements apply in the UK except that all employees pay National Insurance (unless they earn very little). Dbfirs 06:33, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Can nature be blamed for killing people?

A giant asteroid hits Earth. It hits an ocean and causes a tsunami, devastating several coastal cities. Can insurance still pay for a global disaster? Can nature be blamed? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 05:18, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

We have an article on this -- Act of God. Ian.thomson (talk) 05:21, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

See also Force majeure uhhlive (talk) 14:27, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

"Nature" can be the cause of such disasters, but the concept of blame applies only to animate entities acting with deliberation. Unless you think Nature is a conscious entity "performing" such events deliberately (despite their being demonstrable as the outcome of mathematically calculable physical laws), "blaming" nature is an irrational response. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 01:07, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Is the practice of not eating meat on the Good Friday a Catholic thing?

In my experience, here in Brazil it is normal to abstain from eating meat on the Good Friday, whether you're Catholic or Protestant. (I'm not saying anything about people who are not Catholic or Protestant, or not Christian for that matter.) But in the article Good Friday, the word "meat" is mentioned only once, in the section Good Friday#Day of Fasting. That section makes it sound like doing it is a strictly Catholic thing. (That paragraph even has a "citation needed"!) The words "fast" and "fasting" appear elsewhere too in the article, mentioning other forms of fasting in some cultures and religions.

I'm not a great expert in history, but it may be important to note that apparently Brazil has been historically mostly Catholic — not counting the African and indigenous religions — since its colonization in 1500 and started having Protestantism in the mainstream relatively recently. So the practice of not eating meat on Good Friday here in Brazil may have come from that Catholic ancestry.

My question (or questions):

Is the practice of not eating meat on the Good Friday a Catholic thing? (as opposed to a Protestant thing) Not counting Brazil, in other countries and cultures is it normal for Catholics only to do it? --Daniel Carrero (talk) 09:49, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Here in a Protestant area of northern England, I'd never heard of the practice of non-meat Fridays (Good or otherwise) until I visited an area with a Catholic population. The practice might also be common amongst some Anglo-Catholics. Dbfirs 09:58, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

See this recent discussion here, which pointed out that the requirement to fast on a Friday was done away with for Protestants at the Reformation. However, the practice of eating fish (an acceptable alternative to meat) has lingered as secular custom in some Protestant societies, hence the long queues outside the fish and chip shop on a Friday night in many parts of England. The Good Friday tradition in the UK is to eat hot cross buns, but in recent decades they have been made available all year round by supermarket chains who care nothing for our cultural heritage apparently. Alansplodge (talk) 12:01, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

The practice of fasting or abstinence is a very old christian tradition, dating back at least to the second century of church history. Many protestant churches (though not all) moved away from the traditional requirement to fast during Lent and on Fridays. The Roman Catholic church has generally maintained the tradition,, with some local variation - however, strictly speaking the requirement to fast on Fridays only applies if the day is not ranked as a Solemnity, which Good Friday is. That makes Good Friday the one Friday in the year when fasting is not required (unless Christmas Day or Epiphany happens to be a Friday as well). Wymspen (talk) 12:12, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

It might be worth enquiring into exactly what "meat" meant when the relevant directives were originally written (and translated?) In Middle English, "meat" meant any food (just as "deer" at one time meant "any wild huntable animal"). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 14:10, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

More than that, they are now doing "Easter crackers" and "Easter trees" [12]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:BE08:2100:890B:A60:D273:AE70 (talk) 16:34, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Dowry

Is dowry dependent on the number of children a family has? If Family A has one child (the only heir) and Family B has one child (the only heir), and the two families merge through marriage between the only child in Family A and the child in Family B, then is it still considered a dowry? Or is it a dowry if one person takes a fraction of the wealth because most of the wealth goes to natal family's own heir? The practice of dowry occurs in India and China, especially among the wealthy. Though, China has a one-child policy, so the brides are also heirs. Then, there is Miss Havisham in Great Expectations or Queen Elizabeth I of England. Neither married. If Miss Havisham did marry, then would she have to forfeit ownership of the property? Or will she continue to be owner of her property and bequeath it to Estella? And if Miss Havisham has children, then would the biological children take precedence over any adoptive children, especially if one biological child is male or transgender male? By the way, can English families fake the gender of their children and raise the daughters like homosexual sons in the 19th century so they can bequeath property to them, if they happen to be born of the wrong sex? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 14:52, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

So many questions all at once. Your first ones depend on what country and what tradition you are talking about so I don't think they can be answered until you let us know that. I do know that traditionally in China, that's to say among the Han Chinese dowry was not usually paid but rather bride price so you may want to look that up. Then England. A lot has been written about what might have happened if Elizabeth I married; it was not very certain. Miss Havisham is a fictional character in the 19th Century and it was in that century that the Married Women's Property Act was passed, so I suggest you look that up. People in England made many very complicated arrangements for their children's inheritance - indeed the plot of Great Expectations involves arrangements made for Pip. Property could be left to daughters so there would be no point in pretending that a daughter was a son. And people made bequests to adoptive children in their wills. There was lots of work for clever lawyers. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:13, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Chicken tikka masala and General Tso's chicken

Chicken Tikka Masala originated in England. General Tso's chicken originated in the United States. So, they are really English and American, respectively. Still, why do people treat them as Indian and Chinese, even though those specific recipes originated among British and American people of Indian and Chinese descent? Also, when news reporters talk about "British girls" going to Syria, it seems that most of these girls are Muslim. But their nationality - British - is emphasized more than their religion - Islam? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 16:17, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

You pretty much answered your own question - that they originated among immigrants of Indian and Chinese descent respectively. See American Chinese food and Anglo-Indian cuisine.--WaltCip (talk) 16:34, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

I think you'll find that all those girls are Muslims. 2A02:C7F:BE08:2100:890B:A60:D273:AE70 (talk) 16:51, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Ahem, Chicken tikka masala was (according to our article) devised in Glasgow which is in Scotland. However, moves by the Scottish Parliament to establish a Protected Designation of Origin for it has prompted top chefs in Delhi to claim that the recipe has been known in India for generations. [13] Alansplodge (talk) 16:55, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, there you go. "Vindaloo" is actually the Portuguese carne de vinha d'alhos. 2A02:C7F:BE08:2100:890B:A60:D273:AE70 (talk) 17:04, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

By coincidence, here in the UK very recently, there was a TV programme on the origin of "foreign" foods. One of the statistics they stated is that in the UK, 80% of takeaway shops we consider to sell Indian food actually sell Bangladeshi food. They also stated that chicken tikka masala was developed here in Britain, but did not specify where. DrChrissy ^(talk) 21:57, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

As for the 2nd part of your Q, I have also found this a bit odd. That is, they refer to someone as "American" or "British" based on their legal status alone, while I wouldn't consider somebody who came to the country, managed to obtain citizenship, but remained loyal only to their nation of origin, to be "American" (or "British"). This even applies if they were born in the US or UK. Being American or British implies some degree of loyalty to your nation, and belief in it's values. If they betray all of those values by joining ISIS, I don't consider them to be American or British, and I doubt if most people would. In the case of naturalized citizens, I would hope there would be a way to strip such people of their citizenship, as they have violated whatever loyalty oath they took to obtain it. StuRat (talk) 17:26, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Most of the girls who have gone to Syria from Britain were born in Britain, and have British citizenship by birth, not by naturalisation. Wymspen (talk) 17:53, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

In that case, if they've joined ISIS, they've committed treason, and should be tried for it. StuRat (talk) 23:03, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Hanged, drawn and quartered? Alansplodge (talk) 09:19, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

I prefer the Hogan's Heroes punishment: "You will be shot, then court martialled, then sent to the Russian Front !". StuRat (talk) 14:24, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

50.4.236.254 and StuRat -- It's been alleged that the Khadr family have no attachment to Canada other than using it as a convenient recuperation base and passport to facilitate their various terrorism-related ventures, but I doubt if there's much similarity between that and typical cases of radicalization... AnonMoos (talk) 20:06, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

change of meaning of "conservative"?

Were conservatives ever the party in favor of conserving natural resources and preserving and protecting the environment, while at the same time period, were liberals ever the party against spending money on environmental protections? Like maybe Eisenhower and Nixon? The sarcastic comment a liberal acquaintance of mine made was "gee thanks conservatives! Now the Great Barrier Reef is doomed. I thought conservatives wanted to conserve things." I thought this is a lie because after all Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, and Nixon started the EPA. 144.35.114.172 (talk) 23:05, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

The thing "conservatives" wanted to keep the same was the government, status quo, etc. And this term was from a time when little government money was spent preserving nature. So, it means to not spend money on things like that. Of course, by now, spending money to protect the environment is fairly well established, so undoing that may quality as reactionary. Note, however, that "not spending money to protect the environment" is fairly low on the list of conservative priorities, so it wouldn't automatically disqualify somebody, if they held an opposing view. StuRat (talk) 23:12, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

StuRat -- I don't think that's entirely accurate. There was a tradition of genteel conservationism among Republicans (to be distinguished from activist environmentalism, of course) which continued among Rockefeller Republicans at least until Ronald Reagan appointed James G. Watt Secretary of the Interior in 1981... AnonMoos (talk) 02:23, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

A quote from Will Rogers: "I can remember way back when a liberal was one who was generous with his own money." Then there's this: "A Republican moves slowly. They are what we call conservatives. A conservative is a man who has plenty of money and doesn't see any reason why he shouldn't always have plenty of money. A Democrat is a fellow who never had any, but doesn't see any reason why he shouldn't have some." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:25, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

• Baseball Bugs, I couldn't find your quotation of Will Rogers on Wikiquote, but I did find: " I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat."155.97.8.213 (talk) 00:41, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

First of all, neither conservatives nor liberals are a party (well, except in New York State, but that's a special usage we don't need to consider here). Don't confuse conservatives with the Republican Party or liberals with the Democratic Party; completely different things.

Second, properly speaking, conservatism and liberalism are not even necessarily in opposition to one another, as they measure different things. Conservatism is a position on how fast you want things to change, namely slowly. The opposite of conservatism is perhaps radicalism. Liberalism is not a position on how fast you want things to change, but rather on where you want to end up; its opposite is authoritarianism.

Therefore it's perfectly possible to be a conservative liberal, especially in a country that, like the US, is already pretty liberal. If you want it to remain liberal, that's a conservative position.

The environmental issues show a tension within conservatism. If you're a conservative and want things to change slowly, then what do you do in a situation where, if the legal framework changes slowly, the environment will change quickly? Different people who describe themselves as "conservative" may have different answers. --Trovatore (talk) 02:46, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

It's worth noting that Richard Nixon, as conservative a President as the US had had, founded the US Environmental Protection Agency. In the US, Republican opposition to environmentalism comes not from the conservative elements of the Republican party, but from y monied business interests of it; the rich stockholding class opposes government regulation of any sort as it decreases short term profits, and thus stock value. Such forces in US politics has little to do with conservatism in any traditional political sense. --Jayron32 03:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

It's certainly possible for conservatives to be environmentalists, but I don't think Nixon is a very good example, and I don't know where you're getting this "most conservative" thing. He wasn't nearly as conservative as, say, Coolidge or Hoover or Taft. He was elected in a time when statism was on the rise, and he caught the rising tide. One recent commentator, can't remember who, went so far as to describe him as a "hawkish Jill Stein". --Trovatore (talk) 03:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Please don't use words I never used and then disagree with the words you pretended I used as though it somehow makes me wrong. Address my words, not words you pretended I used so you could make me look wrong.--Jayron32 13:29, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Hmm? You said Nixon was "as conservative a president as the US had had". That was what I disagreed with. Did I misinterpret what you meant? --Trovatore (talk) 16:33, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

I never used the word "most". If you disagree with the notion that he was among the more conservative presidents, perhaps we can have a discussion. But I never said he was the singularly most conservative, and since I never said that, I feel no reason to defend myself against rebuttals to things I never said. Your entire counterpoint is based on naming Presidents who may have been more conservative than Nixon, which is meaningless because I never said there were not others as conservative as him. --Jayron32 00:54, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

No, you didn't use the word "most", and it was not intended to be a direct quote. It was just more succinct than "as conservative a president as the US had had". It's true they aren't exactly logically equivalent, because "most" would be refuted by another president that was exactly as conservative as Nixon (unlikely; two things are rarely exactly equal in any measure), and perhaps by another president who was more conservative in some ways and less in others, so that the overall level of conservatism could not be directly compared.

But that's not the argument I actually made. Rather, I provided examples of presidents that I thought were clearly more conservative than Nixon. It seems to me that "as conservative a president as the US had had" is refuted by a single other president who is clearly more conservative. If that's not what you meant, I apologize, but to me it still seems to be the plain meaning of that phrase. --Trovatore (talk) 07:35, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

 

Perhaps more substantively: No, I don't think Nixon was very conservative at all, except on cultural issues. If you take away the rhetoric, you could easily defend the position that he was a Great Society liberal, carrying on LBJ's legacy. Even his anticommunism did not greatly distinguish him from Kennedy and Johnson. --Trovatore (talk) 07:50, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, between working to recognize China and end the Vietnam war, he was far from your typical communist-hating war hawk. StuRat (talk) 03:29, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

He was a hawk and an anticommunist, but a pragmatic one. That wasn't really my point. Those aspects are more associated with conservatism (as understood in the United States) than a lot of other aspects of his policies. In a lot of ways he was a continuation of LBJ and the Great Society. --Trovatore (talk) 03:36, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

I think it's only on cultural issues that you can usefully describe Nixon as "conservative". He was defined in opposition to the hippie movement, spoke against "permissivism", that sort of thing. But those issues are usually mostly distractions. --Trovatore (talk) 03:42, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

The rich stockholding class isn't so strongly against government regulation when it discourages new competitors. —Tamfang (talk) 07:53, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

April 15

Objections to death by stoning and "human rights"

Are the human-rights-based objections to death by stoning made by the same people who live in countries that do not have stoning? In the stoning article, it seems that there are Muslims from Mediterranean and Central Asian countries who support stoning to a lesser extent than Muslims from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asian countries. Then, there are the "Human Rights organizations" that oppose stoning, because they perceive it's against "human rights". But Amnesty International is based in the United Kingdom, and Human Rights Watch is based in New York. Both places have a significant amount of Christians and secular humanists who may have different values to begin with. What is "human rights" based on? And why do the opponents seem to think that the "human rights" can't be stripped away after a grave moral wrong? If human rights can be stripped away after a grave moral wrong, then wouldn't stoning for adultery be justified? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 01:32, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Adultery by itself is not grave enough to stone someone for. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:50, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

It's a cultural/Biblical/historical peculiarity that in the history of Christian nations there have been many harsh and cruel punishments, but stoning has very rarely been included among them, due to the Bible verse usually numbered John 8:7 (though there's some doubt whether it was originally located in chapter 8 of the Gospel of John -- see Jesus and the woman taken in adultery)... AnonMoos (talk) 02:13, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Some points:

1) There's generally a ban on painful punishment in the West. In the US, that's covered by the "cruel" part of the ban on "cruel and unusual" punishments.

2) Sharia law, where stoning is often the punishment, seems heavily biased towards men. For example, if an unmarried woman becomes pregnant, she is assumed to be guilty of adultery, even if she claimed to be raped. Thus, they are assumed to be guilty until proven innocent. Women's testimony also often counts for less than men's. Thus, stoning is a method of oppressing women.

3) Stoning may also be the punishment for apostasy, and this is a direct attack on freedom of religion. Stoning a person for voicing an objection to a religious leader is also a violation of freedom of speech and/or freedom of the press.

4) Many in the West object to any form of execution. One reason is how it can be used to silence dissent.StuRat (talk) 02:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

This is the same OP that talked about people "refusing to die."[14] I'm surprised an Ohioan would have such radical, anti-life views. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:17, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

• Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International oppose all forms of the death penalty. As does the Council of Europe[15], the Pope[16], the Dalai Lama[17], and basically every philosopher and moral authority more civilized than Jack the Ripper. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 02:24, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

So, essentially, there is a clash of values between Christians, Buddhists, and secular humanists and Muslims in specific countries. And the former group believes that it is more civilized than the latter group. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 02:34, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

I think it would be wrong to blame religion for horrific death penalties. Many cultures in the ancient world regularly practiced truly horrific death penalties. Cruel methods of treating criminals and just accused criminals (and basically anyone else society disliked) were common in the western world until the concept of human rights began to be established in the enlightenment, over a millennium after Christianity became the most common religion in that world. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:55, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, cruelty had nothing to do with any particular religion at all. Christians came up with hanged, drawn, and quartered and auto da fe. --Jayron32 03:03, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

So, people during the Enlightenment thought that cruelty cannot be applied to wrongdoers. I wonder what led to this conclusion or a shift in thinking. I mean, surely people thought differently about justice in ancient times than in modern times, didn't they? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

In ancient times they also thought that the Sun circles the Earth, that thunderstorms are a sign of Zeus' displeasure, and that slavery is ok as long as it's "the others" that are enslaved. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 03:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

I am not talking about absolute truth. I am talking about perception. Ancient people probably believed in the geocentric model of the universe, because the world just looked that way, until Copernicus observed it and proved it with sufficient evidence. Ancient people, on the other hand, had limited evidence. Hence, limited conclusions. Ancient people probably thought the thunderstorms were a sign of Zeus' displeasure, because it looked that way, until someone suggested a more natural explanation for the phenomenon of thunderstorms. Surely, people viewed the world differently than people do so today, and thus, they believed that slavery was justified. Life was tough. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:22, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

You could describe it as a shifting standard (still shifting) of who deserves your empathy. Who do you consider a person? If you were an ancient Greek, other Greeks are people, at least some of them. Barbarians don't deserve any rights though, they are slaves because their kings own them. Criminals and prisoners of war don't deserve rights or empathy either, for some reason. In the antebellum south, blacks are not real people, at least not to the degree of whites, because they are mentally inferior, and you would be defective to offer them your empathy. Enlightenment thinkers were an aberration in proposing that everyone deserved empathy: men, women, children, criminals, the insane, and people of other cultures. This debate goes on today. Should you empathize with animals? All animals, or just the cute ones? Just the smart ones? Fetuses? A person who empathized with a tree would be considered delusional, and a person who empathized with no one would be considered a psychopath. The truth is that everyone is selective with who or what they empathize with, and everyone thinks they have it right, and plenty of people are kind of stunned that not everyone agrees. There are cultures today that would think you kind of batshit to feel bad about the death of a dog. But generally, society has been moving toward more inclusive degrees of empathy. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:43, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

You know, you do have a point. I notice that nowadays, there are vegans who believe that all animals are sentient and should not be exploited. Though, how does one distinguish plant sentience and the sentience of a relatively simple animal, like an earthworm? Plants seem to be just as sophisticated as animals. Do they deserve empathy as well and thus killing them is wrong? Now what? Humans should photosynthesize as the ultimate way to end cruelty for all life? I think all of this is subjective, as empathy is subjective and caused by mirror neurons. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 04:04, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, there is fruit (including tomatoes), which is meant to be eaten to spread the seeds. And milking a cow doesn't harm it. Taking unfertilized eggs from a hen may also be morally acceptable. Vegetables are more of a challenge, although even Jains don't consider it immoral to eat plants: "Jains make efforts not to injure plants any more than necessary. Although they admit that plants must be destroyed for the sake of food, they accept such violence only as much as it is necessary for human survival. Strict Jains, including monastics, do not eat root vegetables such as potatoes, onions and garlic because tiny organisms are injured when the plant is pulled up, and because a bulb or tuber's ability to sprout is seen as characteristic of a living being". StuRat (talk) 13:48, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

You try to persuade that view to every human on the planet. I'm sure some people will agree with that view, and some people will disagree, based on varying levels of empathy. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 14:40, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

For once, I agree. It's a clash of values between civilisation and barbarism, not between different religions. Per Noam Chomsky: The death penalty is an abomination that should not be tolerated in civilized societies. Most religions have been used to excuse barbarism at one time or another. The Ku Klux Clan swears to "uphold Christian morality". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 03:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

I wonder if the "values of barbarism" are really the values of the primitive Man. Maybe ancient people were more animal-like and fought like animals. They had no concept of human rights or cruelty. They fought like animals, because they were animals. Then, something happened culturally, which made humans "civilized", whatever that's supposed to mean. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:27, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

The Enlightenment. StuRat (talk) 03:43, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

There was a good deal of civilisation before the 18th century Enlightenment, and a good deal of barbarism afterwards, but it was certainly a leap forward in the right direction. Alansplodge (talk) 07:37, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Maybe the "good deal of barbarism" exists, because people extend empathy to all humans or those that are sufficiently close in the phylogenetic tree to elicit an empathetic response from their mirror neurons. If a human can photosynthesize and empathesize with plants, then he'll probably think that eating or hurting plants, like mowing the lawn, counts as "an act of barbarism". Realistically, there are psychopaths who fail to empathesize, and this characteristic has been a very maladaptive trait for them. It would be nice if everyone's mirror neurons would fire identically. That way, all humans will not disagree about moral questions anymore. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 12:45, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Modern day liberalism and social democracy

What's the difference between a liberal(in the modern sense) and a social democrat?Uncle dan is home (talk) 04:08, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

From what I can see, theoretically, social democracy is based on the idea of income redistribution. Theoretically, social liberalism is not founded on the idea of redistribution of income and wealth, but that state should intervene in the fields of education and healthcare. Social liberals are fine with income inequality, they emphasize equality of opportunity. On the other hand, social democrats believe in equality of outcome, and strive to achieve an egalitarian society through income redistribution. It is the idea of income redistribution that differentiates social democracy from social liberalism. --IEditEncyclopedia (talk) 06:31, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

taxi from Chicago to Louisville

Any idea how much it would cost to take a taxi from Chicago to Louisville (about 300 miles)? If you went to the cab line at O'Hare out of the blue and asked to go to Louisville, would they be at all likely to decline the trip assuming you were willing/able to pay the fare? In case it isn't obvious, I'm wondering if this strategy (with 4 taxis) might have avoided the United Airlines beatdown that's been in the news. Fwiw I knew a cab driver who once made a personal trip from Michigan to New York with the meter running (just for the hell of it--he didn't have to actually pay the fare). 50.0.136.56 (talk) 07:06, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

A taxi would be a terrible way to go. For trip outside the taxi's normal range, they will typically require you to pay for both the trip there and the trip back. Arranging for 4 taxis, assuming none have to go far outside their normal operating area, would cut that price in half, but would be a huge hassle. So if you wanted to do a single taxi 300 miles, the going rate in Chicago is $2.25 a mile, you are looking at a $1350 bill that you will likely have to pay in advance. A typical private car in Chicago, however, is $66 an hour. Let's figure the same rule, they ask you to pay for the car's return, and the round trip takes 10 hours, that's $660. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:25, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! That helps. Is a private car something you can flag down at the airport? In the above picture I'm presuming that the airline is paying either way, so it's more about saving drama and hassle than money. They offered everyone on the plane $800 to get off the plane and they got no takers, so they booted 4 of them (one of them screaming). $1350 doesn't sound that bad in retrospect. Why would it cut in half from 4 taxis? I expect Louisville is outside the operating area whether there's 1 or 4. The private car option is interesting and I hadn't heard of it before. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 07:56, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Oh, when you said 4 taxis, I thought you meant some kind of daisy chain of taxis, ferrying the one passenger to his destination in four legs. Never mind that then. You typically can't flag down a private car, you just call the company and arrange one to show up. Someguy1221 (talk) 17:40, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

They should have kept upping the offer until they got takers. This might be expensive, but it's the price of overbooking. I'm not clear on why they had too many people on the plane to seat the crew, either. Do they not count the people going in, and stop them when it's full ? Going over by 4 implies they screwed up badly. Also, the way to cure the problem of unused seats is to sell standby tickets. Those people understand they may not get on the plane. To me, overbooking regular seats is just fraud, selling more of something than you actually have. StuRat (talk) 14:22, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

The plane wasn't overbooked: they had a seat for everyone who bought a ticket. Then they bumped 4 passengers to board 4 airline personnel who were scheduled to be part of a flight crew flying out of Louisville the next day. The obvious thing to do would have been put those airline personnel in taxis or on Greyhound, but maybe they would have gotten a union grievance over that. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 01:35, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

I would call that overbooking, in that those 4 seats should have been reserved for those 4 crew members. Not doing so was a big screw-up on the part of the airline, and their customers should not be punished for their mistakes. Also, if they didn't have room on any of their flights, they could put their crew on a competitor's plane. StuRat (talk) 15:08, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Overbooking (actual term overselling) has a specific legal meaning and there are a lot of regulations around it. It means more tickets were sold than there are seats on the plane. If this happens they are allowed to deny boarding to the excess passengers, in a legally prescribed order of priority: in particular, people with confirmed reserved seats get on first, and various other groups get in only if there are still seats left. More particularly, airline employees don't appear to have any special exemption from this and (at least according to someone on Reddit claiming to be a lawyer) the airline broke the law by booting those passengers in favor of their employees. I suppose this will be examined further in the likely forthcoming litigation. It does look to me like news reports are coming closer to this viewpoint, having started out much more like airline apologists. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 20:36, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

An alternate option, although not guaranteed, is Greyhound; buses between Chicago and Louisville run several times per day (the route is very simple and convenient), and there's not a huge extra price for buying a ticket for "today". If you want Monday's bus from Chicago, it's about $30, but if you want the bus that leaves 2½ hours from now, it's about $40. The biggest risk is that they might be sold out already, so you wouldn't be able to get any seats. Nyttend (talk) 09:26, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Better you should rent a car and drive it yourself. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:31, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

It would have been cheaper for United to hire a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce with an on-board butler, than the gazillions of dollars they've lost through bad publicity. But hindsight is a wonderful thing. Alansplodge (talk) 12:02, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

A few years ago I asked a taxi in DC "how much to New York City?" (about 240 miles). He asked me where in NYC (like a 20-35 mile wide city matters that much for a mental calculation) I told him what borough, he thought for awhile then nonchalantly said 600 dollars. My curiosity abated, I took the bus home. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:06, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

The location in NYC could make a disproportionate diff, as far as time spent, especially if you hit NYC during rush hour. StuRat (talk) 14:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

---

This question is clearly about the person who was dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight by a security team to make room for a flight crew that had to be in another airport for that flight to take off on time. The clear solution if not enough passengers volunteer to get off the plane is to first try offering some serious money, and if that doesn't work to put the crew in a small charter plane, of which every airport has many, ready to be hired. In fact, AA almost certainly owns a few, some of which may already be at that airport. That gets the crew exactly where you want them to be with no question about traffic jams delaying them. As for costs, UA Lost a billion dollars in market value after doing that,[18][19] and three cops are now on administrative leave.[20] --Guy Macon (talk) 19:04, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, and it seems the OP is worried about getting dragged off the plane. The victim in the recent case needed to fly to his destination in order to arrive in time for appointments. If the OP is talking about driving, he's clearly not in a big hurry, so he could take the money and run (or drive). No need to be dragged off. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:44, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Also the flight that the flight crew was being flown on wasn't til the next day. The incident with the guy getting dragged off was at around 5:20pm iirc, so the crew could have travelled all sorts of ways. Taxi was just an example of something that's always available at airports if you're willing to pay enough. Fwiw, Delta just increased its max compensation for bumped passengers to around $10K, which surely would have gotten some takers on that UAL flight. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 02:57, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Remember though the crew need to not only arrive on time, but need to be sufficiently well rested in the opinion of United Airlines to function on the flight. I don't know and frankly don't really care about the details of the United Airlines case but the question will be not just whether they will make it in time, but whether United Airlines considers they will be sufficiently well rested. Traveling as passengers on aircraft seems to be accepted, as enabling sufficient rest, either before or after. Traveling ~500km on a bus or taxi, even as the sole passenger, I have no idea. Notably if the assumption was they needed to rest over night, a midnight arrival may be different from a 7pm one depending again on what time they're expected to be up the next morning. (I believe the flight concerned was delayed over the incident, so I'm not sure how this ended up affecting things.) Practically I've heard some horror stories about what pilots and other flight crew sometimes do when they're supposed to be sleeping and so how much sleep they sometimes get before they start working. But that sort of thing is hard to police unlike requirements for arrival times etc. As mentioned above there may also be contractual details about how the crew are expected to travel. Nil Einne (talk) 04:34, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

They had a much easier option, which was not to stop the bidding at a paltry $1000. How much would it have cost them to cancel the Louisville–SFO flight? Divide that by the four seats they needed, and keep bidding till they got there. I bet they would have easily gotten four volunteers at $2500 a piece. --Trovatore (talk) 04:51, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

I think that's already been stated, several times. Of course as also said, these things are also only clear with the benefit of hindsight as to how wrongs things went. Nil Einne (talk) 05:16, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Nil re "need to be sufficiently well rested", yeah, that was why I suggested 4 taxis (1 per person), so they could get some sleep during the trip. But for some reason until checking later, I had thought that the incident had been late at night. The idea of paying higher compensation to the passengers may have been too alien a concept to the company beancounters to think of it at the time, but surely United has enough clue about logistics to realize it had other ways to get its flight crew to its destination. And there's also the matter of the crappy organization it must have taken to not have the crew there ahead of time. There was a post someplace blaming the chaos on the layers of nested outsourced organizations that ended up with the responsibilities of moving around all the people and stuff on the ground for the airline. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 06:18, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

My understanding (from the East side of the Pond) is that the four staff weren't even employees of United Airlines, but of another company with which they had a mutual arrangement, and I too immediately wondered why they couldn't have sent them by a small chartered plane instead. Too far outside the box, I suppose.

As has emerged from media discussion about this case, many or most airlines routinely over-book seats because, statistically, about 5% of passengers don't turn up for their booked flight. Allowing for these no-shows increases economy (conversely, not doing so would result in more expensive tickets, more flights and the resulting pollution, etc.) but inevitably some flights will still have spare seats and some will have an excess of booked passengers.

Airlines' routine (escalating) offers of compensation plus a guaranteed seat on a later flight evidently mop up most of the bumped travellers without angst, but usually it involves not letting excess passengers on the plane, as 50.0.136.56 said above – UA's own regulations actually forbid bumping a correctly booked passenger once they're already in their seat, and doing so by brutal force cannot in any circumstance be acceptable. I suspect most of the world's airlines will be urgently updating their procedures to ensure this sort of clusterfuck never happens again. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 02:44, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Biographies of mayors that I should use as reference?

Hi, I'm a returning contributor to Wikipedia - I used another account (User:Will Xiu) before. Anyhow, I want to update João Doria up to recent development since he became the new mayor. The portuguese one is a good start, I think, but I want some references from the en-Wikipedia too. Any suggestions? Tetizeraz (talk) 15:51, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Centuries

Our article 1st century, for example, says it spans AD 1-100. Similarly, 19th century, for instance, says "1 January 1801 – 31 December 1900" instead of 1 January 1901 as the century's end. Since all of these yield 99 years and not exactly a century, and considering there's no year 0, why there's no offset to compensate, so that the 1st century would span 1-101 instead of 1-100 and so on? Thanks.212.180.235.46 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:52, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

You forget that the period from January 1st in year 1 to December 31st in year 101 would be a hundred and one years. Dbfirs 19:59, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

"1 January 1801 – 31 December 1900" is 100 years, not 99. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:01, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Specifically from 0 hundred hours (the midnight at the start of Jan 1) to 2400 (the midnight at the end of Dec 31). StuRat (talk) 20:40, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Many otherwise intelligent people celebrated the start of the Second Millennium on 1 January 2000 instead of 1 January 2001 (okay, I was one of them, but one can't party alone). Alansplodge (talk) 22:17, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Millennia are like buses - you wait a thousand years for one, then two come along at once. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 23:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

True fact: The trains that stop at the world's largest museum of natural history (disputed) are BC. The AD trains rocket by, faster than the BC trains ever go. They skip stops till Columbus Circle. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:57, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

April 16

Were college students in the past pressured by their families to attend university?

The common portrayal of college students seems to be young adults, within the 18-22 age range, usually fresh out of high school, sometimes pressured to go to university because their parents went to university, and it is expected of them to get a respectable job, like a doctor or engineer. In fictional and real history, there were Victor Frankenstein, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Aquinas. I read Frankenstein and the biographies of the real people, but they seemed very eager to go to university and were not some kind of senseless major, like "Undecided". How did "Undecided" even become a major in universities? Did parents in the past ever pressure their children to go to college? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:10, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, and at one time birth order largely determined what you would do in life, with the first-born male inheriting the land or business, and the rest needing to find another way to make a living such as the military, church, or academia. Of course, poor families without titles had little hope of sending children to a university then. Women were mostly expected to marry somebody who would provide a living, or become nuns. StuRat (talk) 03:26, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Hester Prynne was a seamstress. Laura Ingalls Wilder was a teacher. Surely, midwives were women. I bet some women went into prostitution or became servants and governesses too. Hypatia was a mathematician and astronomer and a teacher. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:44, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

It wasn't until a couple of centuries ago that midwives were educated beyond informal apprenticeship. Craftwork usually did not involve schooling but apprenticeship.

It's really only been in the 20th century that university became seen as something you must do and not a privilege for the talented, dedicated, and/or rich. In the 19th century, even high school would have been seen as optional for most people (especially farmers). In some ways, medieval universities were comparable to high schools: students as young as 14 was not all that unusual, and they all expected to study the same material for six years (some of which, like arithmetic, modern universities take for granted you already know). However, again, they were seen as a privilege for the elite, not something that everyone is expected to do. The medieval, renaissance, and even early modern equivalent of "you need to go to college or you'll end up flipping burgers" would have been "you need to work as an apprentice for the blacksmith or you'll end up a (serf/sharecropper)." The Roman equivalent to would have been "go listen to those old men argue and try to get the attention of the smartest sounding one or you'll end up giving handies to a Patron to pay rent." Ian.thomson (talk) 04:21, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

The Medieval university you linked to provides this statement: "During this period of study students were often living far from home and unsupervised and as such developed a reputation, both among contemporary commentators and modern historians, for drunken debauchery. Students are frequently criticised in the Middle Ages for neglecting their studies for drinking, gambling and sleeping with prostitutes." LOL. Times really haven't changed. Even today, unfortunately, college students do crazy things - drinking (even though it may be illegal for anyone under 21), gambling (which may be illegal), and sleeping with prostitutes (which may be replaced by college hook-up culture because prostitutes are illegal). Fortunately, bright students, like Isaac Newton and Thomas Aquinas, were probably too pious and conscientious to do that. There is a story that Thomas Aquinas refused to sleep with a prostitute, even at the pressure of his family to deter him from joining the Dominicans, because his celibacy was more important. Isaac Newton was probably celibate all his life. And Albert Einstein had a girlfriend who became his wife. The girlfriend shared the same major as young Albert, but she didn't get a diploma because of grades. Well, at least she married Albert. That's a life path. Raising kids is a full-time job. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 12:05, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Einstein's marital history was not exactly successful. The article Mileva Marić doesn't cover it that well. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 20:23, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Résumé and childrearing skills

Some people may have a degree in early childhood education. They will probably look for a job that involves day care and preschool. Do these people list childrearing skills on their résumé if they also happen to be parents? What about stay-at-home parents who are out of the workforce temporarily and return and want to list childrearing as a skill? Would "Parent" be a job title and $0.00 will be the compensation? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 12:14, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Usually not... although some CVs contain a section labeled: "Related Skills" (or "Life Experience" or similar phrasing) where things like parenting could be mentioned. Blueboar (talk) 12:53, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Not specific to childcare, but this British "career development" website has 6 Parenting Skills That Can Make You a Better Employee. Alansplodge (talk) 15:46, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Since the nautical day ends at noon,

is there a nautical Easter that starts at noon on Saturday? Is there also an astronomical Easter that ends at noon on Monday? (not to be confused with the proposal to replace the March 21st equinox and heuristically derived Full Moon dates with the actual ones) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:36, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

In the good old days (before the mechanical clock) the day ended at sunset. So no. Aspro (talk) 18:57, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Only for cultures with young Moon-based calendars. The Roman day ended at midnight and the Egyptian day ended at sunrise. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:31, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

I think that the nautical day was only used for navigation purposes - for the day-to-day running of the ship they used "civil" time ending at midnight. Our article explains. Alansplodge (talk) 22:12, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

And both the nautical and the astronomical day starting at noon were abolished pursuant to Resolution 6 of the International Meridian Conference in 1884, though it took a while to actually happen. --76.71.6.254 (talk) 01:58, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

76.71.6.254 Most of the astronomical "epochs" still start on noon of January 1st (currently noon of January 1st 2000, according to our article, formerly often noon of January 1st 1950 or noon of January 1st 1900). AnonMoos (talk) 12:22, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

a telling omission

can the omission of some fact by a source you know is partisan or biased be taken as evidence that that thing didn't happen? like for example when X is accused of a certain (outrageous) cultural practice and a source which is anti-X doesn't mention it. or for example when country A is accused of staging a massive hoax involving one of the Earth's natural satellites, say, and country B which is their adversary not only doesn't bother to expose the hoax but actually confirms country A did do it (meaning it was no hoax.) what is the technical term for it? Asmrulz (talk) 16:22, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

We have an article on that. DOR (HK) (talk) 17:08, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

that's a nice overview article you've linked. argument from silence seems to be what I was after, thanks Asmrulz (talk) 17:49, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Note that an opponent might withhold harmful info to use it at a later date, when it will have more effect. For example, somebody with anti-Trump info might wait until either the midterm Congressional elections or next Presidential election to make it public. StuRat (talk) 04:48, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd just like to note this is sort of the opposite of the Criterion of embarrassment, which is the speculation that if the speaker says something embarrassing about himself, it is more likely to be true. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:08, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Unless they say something embarrassing but relatively trivial in order to cover up or distract attention from something more serious. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 18:41, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

What are the battles/wars in which Egypt took part in, under Cleopatra's rule?

For example, any war that Cleopatra could have remotely been connected to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aeb1818 (talk • contribs) 17:19, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

We have a great article on Cleopatra that will answer almost all your questions. Blueboar (talk) 19:56, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

This is the OP's 5th Refdesk question about Cleopatra: either our article on Cleopatra is woefully lacking, or the OP lacks the skills to extract information from it. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 02:51, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Study on the psychology between the rich and poor

I have a vague recollection about a specific psychological study that rich people are more likely to give back surplus money, but it is also acknowledged that poor people are more likely to be empathetic and compassionate. I wish to find the original study. On a personal note, I was in 8th grade Spanish class, and like the other students, I did my homework and participated in class. I earned pesos from the teacher, because of my work; and I didn't really have a reason to spend it. One day, another student asked me for 5 pesos, because he didn't do his homework or forgot to bring it; and he would get a zero on his homework assignment, unless he had 5 pesos. I had a ton of pesos in my binder, but nevertheless I refused, because I thought it wasn't fair that he could get exempted from not doing homework. He borrowed pesos from other students instead, like a social welfare system. This experience has made me think of how real-life relationships work. Perhaps, rich people believe that they have earned their place, and that poor people deserve to be poor. Also, rich people can pay for their own troubles. If I accidentally didn't do my homework one day (not likely to happen, because I kept all the due dates in my planner notebook), I could have easily paid it off with my own pesos. Meanwhile, poor people require the help of others through a social welfare program, because the individual cannot afford it. Anyway, I would like to find that research study. Maybe it'll talk about in detail about the psychology of the ethical decisions between the rich and the poor. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 17:28, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

This? The book "The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide" was also interesting about the different approach to life sometimes taken by those who can afford it. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 20:27, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

No. The New York Times article is about reading faces. And that book is about the rich's approach to life. I'm pretty sure there is a scientific study about the generosity of rich people with surplus money and how they are more likely than poor people to give back surplus money. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 21:22, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Ruby Payne may be a good place to start looking. She may have not done the study, but it sounds like the sort of thing she would have cited in her works. --Jayron32 00:49, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Ruthenian (Byzantine Catholic) Easter Dinner and Passover Seder plate

Is there any good source addressing a comparison between the Jewish Passover Seder and the Easter meal of Ruthenian Rite Catholics?

Most of the sources I can find on this are folk/anecdotal. I'll mention the recognized Jewish traditions and the Ruthenian "variations". I emphasize that so far as I know, most of my Ruthenian relatives are entirely unaware of the Jewish parallels, and I am not sure if some of the differences are intentional, or from a loss of traditional knowledge.

(The double-indented, italicized comments referring to "our" means Ruthenian".) The six traditional items on the Seder Plate are as follows:

• Maror and chazeret — Bitter herbs symbolizing the bitterness and harshness of the slavery the Hebrews endured in Egypt. In Ashkenazi tradition, either horseradish or romaine lettuce may be eaten in the fulfillment of the mitzvah of eating bitter herbs during the Seder. Sephardic Jews often use curly parsley, green onion, or celery leaves.

The first course of our dinner is horseradish, mixed with a small amount of beets, giving the "color of the blood of Christ" but retaining an intentionally bitter taste.

• Charoset — A sweet, brown mixture representing the mortar used by the Hebrew slaves to build the storehouses or pyramids of Egypt. In Ashkenazi Jewish homes, Charoset is traditionally made from chopped nuts, grated apples, cinnamon, and sweet red wine

A rolled desert cake of chopped nuts and poppy seeds is our traditional snack, served before or after the main meal.

• Karpas — A vegetable other than bitter herbs, which is dipped into salt water at the beginning of the Seder. Parsley, celery or boiled potato is usually used. The dipping of a simple vegetable into salt water, and the resulting dripping of water off of said vegetables visually represents tears and is a symbolic reminder of the pain felt by the Hebrew slaves in Egypt.

A salad of chopped onions and cucumber with salt and pepper marinated in vinegar is served with our main meal.

• Zeroa — Also transliterated Z'roa, it is special as it is the only element of meat on the Seder Plate. A roasted lamb or goat shankbone, chicken wing, or chicken neck; symbolizing the korban Pesach (Passover sacrifice), which was a lamb that was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, then roasted and eaten as part of the meal on Seder night. Since the destruction of the Temple, the z'roa serves as a visual reminder of the Pesach sacrifice; it is not eaten or handled during the Seder. Vegetarians often substitute a beet, quoting Pesachim 114b as justification; other vegetarians substitute a sweet potato, allowing a "Paschal yam" to represent the Paschal lamb.

The meat served is almost always ham, a seemingly intentional violation of kashrut. Again, beets are used, and a cake of butter (again, in violation of kashrut) shaped as a lamb, with peppercorns for eyes, is served with our meal as a whole.

• Beitzah — A roasted hard-boiled egg, symbolizing the korban chagigah (festival sacrifice) that was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and roasted and eaten as part of the meal on Seder night. [I]t is not used during the formal part of the seder, but some people eat a regular hard-boiled egg dipped in saltwater as the first course of the meal.

Salted hard-boiled egg is served with our main meal.

• The sixth symbolic item on the Seder table is a plate of three whole matzot, which are stacked and separated from each other by cloths or napkins. The middle matzah will be broken and half of it put aside for the afikoman. The top and other half of the middle matzot will be used for the hamotzi (blessing over bread), and the bottom matzah will be used for the korech (Hillel sandwich).

Challah bread (called exactly as such) is served, this being leavened (a violation of kashrut) is served. It is broken, not sliced.

Further elements are that the meal is eaten before sundown on Easter, not after, that the parish priest blesses the basket of eggs, butter and bread at the church; the butter, pork and leavened bread being expressly treif.

Thanks if anyone can point me toward an objective scholarly treatment of this, especially in book form, as what I have found journalisticly seems far too reconciliatory and ecumenical. μηδείς (talk) 23:28, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

My sister is a Roman Catholic and brought home from the Easter service a service sheet headed Hagadah. I understand this to be a Hebrew term for the ceremonies of Passover, but in Catholic terminology it relates to the devotions between the evening of Maundy Thursday and early on Easter morning. 86.176.19.41 (talk) 11:27, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Or Haggadah. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:36, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

• My overall question is, do these traditions and deviations from them reflect divergence from a common tradition, the effect of Jews who have converted to Christianity bringing in their traditions, slow deviations from past similarity because Christians have lost the original meanings, intentional cultural appropriation and/or mockery, or a mixture of these factors and others? A comparative historical study would be of interest. μηδείς (talk) 20:17, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

April 17

Increased presence of Asian vegetables in a non-Asian American supermarket

It seems to me that there is an increased presence of Asian vegetables in a non-Asian American supermarket (such as green nira/Chinese chives, shiitake mushrooms, enokitake mushrooms, daikon radish, variants of bok choy). How did this happen? Are Americans inviting more Asian immigrants, who are demanding more Asian vegetables? Are Americans actually transporting native Asian plants to the United States? Or are the plants actually all imported goods? And how come non-Asian Americans are eating edamame, soy milk, and tofu, but things like tofu skin, dried tofu, Okara (soy pulp) are little known? And why the Japanese term is often preferred over the Chinese term, even though many of these foods are derived from China, not Japan? I once watched on YouTube, which had a woman from China who said that cheese is a foreign import, so cheese is very expensive in China. Are East Asians increasing consumption of foreign veggies the same way Americans seem to have increased consumption of Asian veggies? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 02:21, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Globalization, cultural diversity. μηδείς (talk) 02:30, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Note that the search for healthier food can bring foreign veggies to our attention. I've specifically seen many of those oriental veggies mentioned on PBS health shows they run during pledge week. They also run specific Oriental cooking shows, like Simply Ming, year round. StuRat (talk) 05:35, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Larger supermarkets (Kroger and the like) have had these for a long time. Keep in mind that there may in fact be Asian-Americans living near you that also shop there. shoy (reactions) 15:00, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

My experience tells me that Meijer has more Asian veggies than Kroger. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 16:56, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

World War II military assassinations

The Allies tried to kill Rommel and did get Yamamoto. Did the Axis ever try to knock off anybody? If not, why not? Clarityfiend (talk) 02:59, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Some examples here. --Jayron32 03:30, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Yamamoto took a big chance by flying through an insecure area. Even worse, their codes had been broken, so the allies knew he was coming. Most allied commanders didn't take such chances. Douglas MacArthur, for example, was known to have hidden out in his bunker in the Philippines, then evacuated, rather than spend much time at the front line. StuRat (talk) 05:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

There was even a song about McArthur's "personal safety strategy". Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:25, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Further to Jayron's link above, see Operation Long Jump. Alansplodge (talk) 09:00, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

The Allies tried to kill Rommel? See Erwin Rommel#Death to read what Wikipedia thinks about his death. Dolphin (t) 13:05, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

See Operation Flipper and Operation Gaff. --Jayron32 13:17, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Engineering

What jobs are good for engineers who like seeing the big strategic picture through a technical lens rather than just detail engineering, looking at very specific things? 2A02:C7D:B8FC:9000:B8C7:87EC:A8:3648 (talk) 12:38, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Project manager. --Jayron32 12:48, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Speaking from personal experience, if you are not a "details person", then engineering might not be the right job for you. Project manager might be closer to what you are looking for, but even PMs have their own details that they are in charge of. shoy (reactions) 15:03, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

For many projects there are engineers who look at the big picture. For example, if a new highway is being planned, some civil engineers will design the placement of rivets on each bridge, while others will plan the overall route. StuRat (talk) 15:08, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

What about even more bigger picture? Or would than cross more over into project/programme management and urban planning? 2A02:C7D:B8FC:9000:95C1:8D0D:2A8E:2A52 (talk) 15:47, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the bigger the pic gets the larger percent of the decisions are made for non-engineering reasons. For example, when planning a road system, you get into politics of which areas are available to use, the economics of how much money is available from taxes, and the legal issues of where you can get land by eminent domain. Of course, some engineering and scientific input can be useful even at the highest levels. For example, if two routes are under consideration for a road, and one is through an area with karst topography, that should be listed as a significantly negative, due to the risk of sinkholes. StuRat (talk) 15:58, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

But for some reason, nearly all of them sit behind a computer or in a meeting room all day. Actually what about technical advisors and policy makers? 2A02:C7D:B8FC:9000:95C1:8D0D:2A8E:2A52 (talk) 17:21, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Computers are pretty much the tool of choice for most engineering work nowadays. And meetings are one of the favourite means to communicate high-level decisions and results. It's pretty unlikely that you will find an engineering job that does not involve computers and meetings. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:38, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

If you're the kind of person who likes to be out of the office, a site manager may spend more time than other types of engineering-based jobs out of the office. There's still considerable office work though. --Jayron32 17:44, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

industry in The UK

How did the uk become such a financially centred economy and less focused on science and engineering, when it's the country which started the industrial revolution? 2A02:C7D:B8FC:9000:B8C7:87EC:A8:3648 (talk) 12:38, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

There's a somewhat general article (not specifically on the UK or its financial sector) at Post-industrial society... AnonMoos (talk) 12:43, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

• I would very much quibble with your characterisation the economy isn't focussed on science and engineering, given that the UK has the world's second or third largest scientific output (depending on how you measure it). Measuring the contribution to the economy is considerably trickier of course, but saying there's no focus on science seems incorrect. Fgf10 (talk) 14:34, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

• You didn't mention manufacturing, but that's the hallmark of the industrial revolution. Free trade has allowed most manufacturing to be done in other countries with lower wages and weaker laws protecting workers and the environment. Only protective tariffs and trade restrictions can end this. Of course, doing so means products will cost more and the UK may not be able to export as much, once other nations respond with their own tariffs, etc. StuRat (talk) 15:13, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Nazis and debt-free currency

Dd the Nazis ever issue debt-free currency? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.233.120.59 (talk) 16:43, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

The currency of Nazi Germany was the Reichsmark. Wikipedia's article on the subject could use some work, but perhaps it will give you a place to start your research. --Jayron32 17:04, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Exams

There is a person in Argentina that studies in a university, but for a certain reason he is unable to attend classes. He receives then a special arrangement: he is informed of the topics of all the classes and he is not required to attend them, but he will have to attend at some specified date and have the exam, having to study for it on his own. In Spanish it is called "examen libre" ("free exam"), is there such a system in English-speaking countries? How is it called? Cambalachero (talk) 17:58, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

In English speaking countries this is often called credit by examination. --Jayron32 18:01, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

At my university, we called it "having an 8:30 (AM) class", or indeed any class that met before 10:00 on Friday mornings. Blueboar (talk) 22:12, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

At what point does a group of people become indigenous?

It is believed that humans all came out of Africa and lived in different places on the globe. If the first wave of human migrants arrive to a place without humans, do they automatically become indigenous until later waves of migrants come in? What if the genes of the first wave perish or become intermingled with later waves of migrants? What about places like Australia and Canada and the United States and South America, where recent immigrants (within hundreds of years) are thriving while the earlier immigrants (thousands of years) are living in relative poverty? If the early immigrants slowly become displaced by or interbreed with the later immigrants, then will the successive generations all become indigenous to the land? As minority cultures merge into the majority culture, does that mean a loss of cultural diversity too? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 17:59, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

There is a Wikipedia article titled Indigenous peoples which has a section titled "definitions". --Jayron32 18:02, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

The term is relative, not absolute. People don't "become" indigenous, they are indigenous relative to later colonizers or invaders. A good long look at the History of Iberia will give you an idea. μηδείς (talk) 20:10, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Medeis, Unless the OP is flying there, I think Iberian Peninsula#Proto-history and Iberian Peninsula#History might be more appropriate.  :) Rojomoke (talk) 22:37, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Initials for US presidents

Wasn't sure whether to put this here or at the language desk; judgment call.

There are three US presidents known especially by three-initial abbreviations: FDR, JFK, LBJ. Is there any commonality that can be singled out for these three particularly? They are all Democrats, but in the same time frame, so was Harry Truman, who is rarely called HST. Moreover, if I had to name a fourth one, it would probably be George W Bush.

Partly I suppose it might be to distinguish them from other figures with the same last name? FDR from Teddy Roosevelt, JFK from Bobby and Teddy, LBJ from — I suppose Andrew Johnson? And GWB from his father. That would make sense, I guess. Can the guess be substantiated, or are there other possibilities? --Trovatore (talk) 20:17, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Consider the other presidents to whom we often refer using their middle initial or name. John Quincy Adams is, thanks to his father (but "John Q. Adams" is quite rare, and neither Adams is commonly addressed in popular culture anyway), as is William Henry Harrison (but again, "Henry" never gets abbreviated), while "Ulysses Grant" isn't hugely common, and "Rutherford Hayes", "William Taft", "Thomas Wilson" (how many people know that "Woodrow" wasn't his first name?), and "Warren Harding" are quite rare. Bush II, like Adams, is an outright matter of disambiguation, while Johnson outright paraded his initials; his campaign slogan was "All the way with LBJ", while nicknames and given names enabled his whole family (even the dogs!) to share the same initials. I'll just guess that Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson are more commonly in the popular consciousness, so people desire to abbreviate their names instead of using the whole thing, while the Harding-and-earlier presidents, being more obscure nowadays, don't attract much attention from people who are given to the use of initialisms. Nyttend (talk) 20:35, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Also TR for Teddy Roosevelt. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:00, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

(In)defeasible estates

In the cartoon The Wabbit Who Came to Supper, Elmer Fudd inherits money on the condition that he not hurt any animals; if he does, the money goes back to the testator's estate, an option he eventually picks because taxes and fees leave him actually owing money on the deal. If he were inheriting real property, and not just cash, would this be an example of a defeasible estate? And is there a term for a situation comparable to (in)defeasible estates in the context of personal property? Nyttend (talk) 20:39, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

As the article that you linked states: "An estate not subject to such conditions is called an indefeasible estate." --2606:A000:4C0C:E200:AC43:3B49:CF5E:E4EF (talk) 00:09, 18 April 2017 (UTC)