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August 26

Who is this?

Please identify the person in this photo. According to the twitter post where I found it, he is an American politician from Missouri. StellarHalo (talk) 05:45, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jeff Smith (Missouri politician) (?) 2603:6081:1C00:1187:E102:EAF8:DD1:441A (talk) 08:08, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Access to restricted sources, newspaperarchive.com and University of Pennsylvania

I have just posted the following query in the talk page for BULLY BEEF. I would be happy to track track this down myself if I had access to the sources.

The article BULLY BEEF has the following phrase in the opinion of Lord Paget Henry William Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey, died in 1854, but it is still possible the 1862 reference is quoting him.

I've been unable to check the reference, which is an old newspaper, directly The Naval Estimates, Morning Post, 25 February 1862 It might be available on newspaperarchive.com A search also turned up: https://franklin.library.upenn.edu/catalog/FRANKLIN_9954970423503681 which requires a login ID

Nor can I locate an explanation of old mahogany. It might be Royal Navy slang.

I keep running up against sources which are not freely accessible so i'd appreciate advice on how to get past this roadblock.

I have replied at Talk:Bully beef#Which Lord Paget?. Please add further comments there, so that we're not double-posting. Alansplodge (talk) 13:17, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Author of question about access to limited sources

Sorry, I forgot the tildes to identify myself Humphrey Tribble (talk) 11:39, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1990s cultural upheaval

Did the 1990s global cultural upheaval, which included Disney Renaissance, music galore, film proliferation through VHS and similar trends, get it's own overarching name, similar to Roaring Twenties? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 16:33, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Having lived through it - no. It wasn't a cohesive thing; I don't know of anyone referring to a "global cultural upheaval" in the 90s as if the various shifts were part of a greater whole. Matt Deres (talk) 17:09, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Alansplodge (talk) 21:58, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
212.180.235.46 -- The 1920s were a coherent era because they marked the final downfall of Victorian and Edwardian rigid restrictiveness and standards of propriety, so young people uninhibitedly enjoyed themselves, and women in particular wore outfits which would have given Victorian arbiters of good taste and morality the conniption fits. (In the U.S., there was also Prohibition, of course.) I don't really know what's culturally distinctive and significant about the 1990s other than grunge music and everybody wearing lumberjack shirts for 15 minutes. There was the rise of the consumer Internet of course, but people were still experimenting with what it would mean, and the quasi-monopolies of later decades (Amazon, Google, Facebook etc) either did not yet exist, or were not yet quasi-monopolies. However, there's a book The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido by David Friend (ISBN 978-0-446-55629-3) if you want to read it (I'm not too interested in it...) -- AnonMoos (talk) 22:20, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The original "Naughty Nineties" were the 1890s, although apparently in America, they were the "Gay Nineties". Alansplodge (talk) 22:57, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You have still not given an actual citation (even a publication of your own) for this thesis that you state as true in such a definitive manner. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:28, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If the photos of the 1920s Berlin puddle-jumping women which I linked to (wearing clothes which presented a very strong contrast with customary Victorian attire, and doing something which Victorian women basically never did) didn't persuade you, then there's various material at Roaring Twenties#Fashion, and especially Roaring Twenties#Sexuality of women during the 1920s, which you probably could have easily found yourself with a basic search. See also WP:BLUE. AnonMoos (talk) 22:44, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I stopped replying because all the points were made. You made some good ones. There was nothing I had to say on the matter that I hadn't said. However, it's a far cry from making a rigorous (or even semi-rigorous) survey of nearly a century of cultural shift that you're proclaiming to generalize, and from there teasing out causal and essential elements through quantitative and qualitative means (or however one might do such a study). It's the kind of claim that requires an actual rigorous study, in whatever field of scholarship you choose, preferably several, to lend support. Like I said, even your own work is fine, but just a few links on a discussion page is not a theory. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:15, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever, dude -- I do not have to do any personal research when I merely refer to the accepted conventional wisdom (i.e. the quasi-consensus of those who have much relevant knowledge). If you want to try to overthrow the accepted conventional wisdom, on the other hand, then you'll have to do quite a bit of research, though I'm not encouraged in that respect by your apparent ignorance of the strong discontinuities between the pre-WW1 era and the 1920s in cultural norms, women's fashion, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 23:38, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. If you want to read other people's voluminous research, then you could look at the first of the Middletown studies, intended to document the "changes in the white population of a typical American city between 1890 and 1925", some of those changes being the fairly wide availability of cars, formal social recognition of the single-couple "date", young women wearing somewhat loose-fitting dresses with hemlines almost to the knee, etc., which made the lives of young people rather different in 1925 from what they had been in 1890... AnonMoos (talk) 11:52, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There was definitely a marked disruption in the commercial distribution channels for time-based media products intended for mass consumption. The OP's examples fit that pattern. This is somewhat more specific and limited than suggested by "global cultural upheaval".  --Lambiam 20:36, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There was certainly some cultural (and political) upheaval at the beginning of the 1990s. "I saw the decade in, when it seemed the world would change in the blink of an eye, and if anything then there's your sign of the times" -- Right Here, Right Now (Jesus Jones song)  Card Zero  (talk) 23:30, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The 1990s were the prime period when Generation X came of age (not born, but became media consumers), with the tail end of the 1990s being when the transition to the Millennials came of age. The end of Gen X and the start of the Millenials; i.e. those being late teens-early 20s in the late 1990s are often called Xennials. --Jayron
I would suggest that absolutely no-one is aware of the future-historical importance of what they are experiencing, being bound up in the actual experience (the original here and now) of the infinite ecstasy of the current moment. Only later is it possible for writers like Douglas Coupland put it into words. MinorProphet (talk) 15:21, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Future historians, which by-and-large are the people with access to the wealth and power necessary to get certification as "Valid Historians", get to decide what is and is not important. Still, these are the terms we have been given by many of those people, Coupland included. --Jayron32 17:55, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

August 27

Incel vs excel

[1] I don't get this joke. If I infer that an excel is supposed to be the opposite of an incel, I still don't get it. Something to do with the Excel spreadsheet? Doesn't help. Commenter says it is geeky, but I'm geeky and still don't get it. Can someone explain? Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 04:23, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Because Excel spreadsheets, if you type some number in, they might assume it's something or another, automatically convert it. So if you put in something that looks like a date format, ie. mm/dd/yy or whatnot, (see ISO date format for more on date formatting) Excel will convert it, even if it wasn't actually a date. Whereas incels, might assume that spending some time with someone was a romantic date when it wasn't because they don't go out much. It's not that funny when you have to explain it. Andre🚐 04:30, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Especially when the joke is kind of a stretch, using unrelated prefixes. Like the one about con being the opposite of pro, hence the opposite of Progress is Congress. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:30, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Courtesy link: incel. 2A00:23C4:570A:601:FDCE:26A1:A97A:C64B (talk) 11:04, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Andrevan:: "Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process." --Jayron32 17:24, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
hahaha, exactly Andre🚐 17:25, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The image is not meant to suggest that excel and incel are opposites. It is a Venn diagram; the blue lune in the middle represents the commonality between the two: both tend to make the "same" incorrect assumption (the same only by relying on two different meanings of the word date). It is a nerdy joke.  --Lambiam 16:35, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks all. Yeah I know what Venn diagrams are and what incels are and what the spreadsheet is, but I didn't know about the date conversion feature in the spreadsheet. Now I get it, and I do think it was funny. Heh. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 20:42, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have to say that the follow-up cracked me up more ([2]).--Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:00, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A dialog from Henry James

In a lecture from 2015, sociologist Eva Illouz incidentally mentions a dialog from one of Henry James' novels, in which one (presumably female) character gets another (presumably male) to justifie his love for her, to which she replies that, had his love been true, he wouldn't have been able to answer so astutely. From which of James' work would that be, if any? 2A01:E0A:59A:3010:7948:B676:9137:15A2 (talk) 17:03, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

August 28

East india company

How many are there? Brit, french, dutch, dane, swede. Any others? 37.252.81.124 (talk) 16:46, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also Genoese, Portuguese and various Austrian. --Antiquary (talk) 17:59, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As listed in East India Company (disambiguation). Clarityfiend (talk) 03:37, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

August 29

Fighting inflation by printing less money?

To fighting inflation, instead of raising interest rates, can't we simply print less money? My understanding is that the Federal Reserve already has history of printing more money, why not less? I'm sure there's a good reason. I can't be the first one to think of this. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:50, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's rather complicated, since "Fractional-reserve banking" means there's more effective money in the economy than issued by the government, and there are various measurements of how much money there is (M1, M2, M3 etc). See Money supply... AnonMoos (talk) 19:37, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In particular, there is a lot more money than physical currency. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:20, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A commercial bank creates money when it grants a loan, while central banks can regulate how much they can lend (and thereby how much money they can create).[3][4] The limits imposed are usually more concerned with preventing bank failure than fighting inflation, but "money printing" (by a central bank) is a colloquial term for a form of what more formally is called "quantitative easing", specifically by purchasing securities on the open financial market and adding the amounts to the the bank reserves of commercial banks. Quantitative "squeezing" instead of easing may not be the best way to fight inflation; if the conditions are not right, it might lead to stagflation.  --Lambiam 09:31, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that the Fed mostly prints money to exchange with banks to replace worn-out bills. If you go to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, you can buy a bag containing thousands of dollars - ground into near-dust confetti. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:30, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Physical currency, which is to say paper bills and coins (M0), is a minor and mostly insignificant portion of the money supply. The vast majority of money exists as ledger entries in the banking computer systems. --Jayron32 17:31, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1945-1991 Baltic maps

There is a bit of a recurring theme around State continuity of the Baltic states, with a ANI thread ongoing. One of the arguments being pushed is that there would have been a broad consensus on non-recognition of the integrations of the 3 Baltic SSRs into the Soviet Union. This really isn't my area of expertise, but the argument clashes with my own impressions of this time period. Engaging in some original research, I tried to go through some contemporary maps to see if there was any established practice to visually distinguish the Baltics from the rest of the Soviet Union,

...and so forth. My question is, are there examples of contemporary Cold War era maps that doesn't show the Baltics as integrated parts of the USSR? --Soman (talk) 20:11, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Because of Welles Declaration I think at least some US maps of the Soviet Union didn't include them, though my quick search for such maps was inconclusive. Other countries that diplomatically recognized the Soviet Union after the Baltic annexation ostensibly did so with Baltic states included. Brandmeistertalk 21:06, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Soman -- In the 1980s, I saw physical paper maps issued by the U.S. government; they didn't show the Baltics as separate independent states, but there was special boundary line marking, and notes on the map that the U.S. didn't recognize Soviet annexation... AnonMoos (talk) 00:01, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, exactly, State Department maps have been referred in the discussions at times. So it would have looked like borders of Jammu-Kashmir or something similar. But it seems, from this very unscientific review, that this practice never reached outside of the government. It appears this practice was not implemented by commercial map makers in the US? --Soman (talk) 13:13, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Maps arent't the only criteria regarding recognition. The three Baltic states maintained diplomatic representations in Washington, DC (and probably elsewhere) during the Cold War, and a number of Western countries had a standing policy that their ambassadors to the USSR would not travel to the three states in order not to give additional recognition to the annexation. The three were the first states whose independence from the USSR was recognized by Western countries after the failure of the August 1991 putsch in Moscow. When Canada did so on August 26, 1991, "External Affairs minister Barbara McDougall declared that Canada had never legally recognized the Soviet Union’s takeover of the Baltic countries after the Second World War, but had instead been waiting for them to reclaim their independence and “that day has come.” [5]. Xuxl (talk) 14:46, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not implying that map-making is the sole criteria for diplomatic recognition, in fact it's a different issue. The point I'm trying to explore is if, in the Cold War era, if the diplomatic positioning of the U.S. government on the Baltic states had any wider cultural bearing in the Western world. The quote you bring up from Canada I think shows an attitude of certain opportunism, affirming the non-recognition of integration of Baltic SSRs in USSR in 1991. --Soman (talk) 18:41, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

August 30

"No body, no parole" laws - do they actually work?

Where I live, there's something of a debate going on around introducing legislation, whereby in the case of a murder conviction in the absence of a body (a relatively uncommon occurrence, but it definitely can and does happen), the murderer should be denied parole until he/she reveals the location of his/her victim's remains. The obvious purpose is to help provide "closure" for the victim's family.

An obvious issue here, is that by the time the murderer is up for parole (murder sentences can last decades), any remains of their victims are likely to have deteriorated beyond identifiable recognition, making any recovery impossible, even if the murderer reveals the location. (though after conviction and exhaustion of all appeals, there would be no need for the murderer to wait until parole eligibility comes to reveal the victim's location). And some murderers may themselves not know where their victim's body is (e.g. they dumped it "somewhere" in a lake or river). But lets put those issues aside, as they are not germane to my specific question.

My question is, in those jurisdictions which have adopted such laws, have they, at least to some degree, worked? Like, has there been an increase in the number of victims' bodies subsequently recovered, in cases where the murderer was convicted in the absence of a body?

The main difficulty I can see here is the limited data-set, such successful "no body" murder convictions being the exception, rather than the rule. But can anybody track down actual experiences of jurisdictions which have experimented with such laws, and how well they did or did not work? Or research on this question? Eliyohub (talk) 12:50, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Still no bodies: Five years of 'no body, no parole' in Queensland, Australia
- Monique Moffa, Michele Ruyters, Greg Stratton 2A01:E34:EF5E:4640:9992:A3BC:8948:4388 (talk) 17:07, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like without a body, a significant part of the evidence in a murder case, the evidence itself would be rather flimsy to convict anyway. Of course, I'm in the US and we're known for unreasonable and wrongful convictions, so I'd lean to the side of "probably not a great idea and unlikely to work" just based on having been extensively involved in multiple murder trials and seeing how evidence is presented and handled first hand, as well as the decades of cases of individuals wrongfully convicted of murder.
I of course don't have any evidence myself in the form of sources, so... PICKLEDICAE🥒 17:12, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A very topical issue in Australia right now. A man has just been convicted of murdering his wife 40 years ago. No body has ever been found. He is being asked to reveal the location of the body. Here. Which has just made me think. It's obviously possible that this is a bad conviction and he is innocent. The proposal of no parole without a body would make the impact of any mistake worse. HiLo48 (talk) 23:52, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. The whole prison system operates on the legal fiction that a conviction implies guild. On the whole, that probably is a necessary assumption, but we should not forget that it actually only is a fiction. That's one reason why modern systems of justice focus more on rehabilitation than on punishment. Not only does it work better, it also mitigates any remaining errors. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:03, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's certainly the case that a convicted murderer might not have committed the crime (maybe for a very small number of them), which would make it hard for the convict to tell where the body is. Meanwhile, I'm curious to know which countries you consider to have "modern systems of justice [which] focus more on rehabilitation than on punishment." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:52, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That would be in most Western European countries. Concerning the very small number of convicted murderers who haven't commited the crime, this number is very hard to estimate, but I've read about some research in my generally reliable newspaper a few years ago, concluding, based on the fraction of convictions that get overturned on appeal and the assumption that the higher courts are about as likely to make errors as the lower courts, that about 10% of the convicts who have no more option of appeal is in fact not guilty. That was in the Netherlands. I expect the number in other western countries to be similar, and higher in less free countries. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:14, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Politician picture

[6] Is this guy someone I'm supposed to recognize? Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 18:52, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't this Homelander (a superhero) as portrayed by Antony Starr (an actor)?  --Lambiam 21:44, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I guess it's possible, I'll look back to where I saw the tweet linked and see if that makes sense. Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 14:42, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it is Homelander. Matt Deres (talk) 16:37, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Siege of Caen (1417)

I've stumbled upon what appears to be a contradiction in sources. In Siege of Caen (1417), the sourced sentence says "During the sack on orders of Henry V all 1800 men in the captured city were killed but priests and women were not to be harmed", similarly Historyextra.com says "Henry ordered every male over the age of 12 be killed – or so claimed a Venetian chronicler", without mentioning women and others. But The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus, p. 351 says "Enraged by the defenders' obstinacy, the king ordered the destruction all of Caen's inhabitants that could be found" and that "over two thousand men, women and children were executed that day". What to do about our info? Brandmeistertalk 20:22, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just report what both sources say and let the reader decide what to make of it. Conflicting sources for stuff like that is a common situation, even for modern events like the Ukraine war. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 21:21, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There is not necessarily a contradiction. What Henry ordered is one thing, what his soldier then did is another. When troops were sacking a town and killing all the men as ordered, it would have been next to impossible to prevent them killing women and children as well. Henry may have expected this to happen, but worded his official order so to leave himself blameless. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.208.90.29 (talk) 04:00, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The difference between orders and actual result at Caen is described in Henry V, Holy Warrior: The Reign of a Medieval King in Context, Thibodeau, Timothy M. (2022) p. 88:
When Henry's soldiers finally broke through the defences of Caen, a horryfying massacre occurred. Henry had given an order to his men that no harm should come to women or clergy, but apparently not everyone obeyed his command.
The author then quotes another history, Henry V as Warlord, Seward, Desmond (2001) p. 104:
If the chronicles are to believed, the victors then herded all the population they could find, civilian as well as military, regardless of sex, into the market place where, on Henry’s orders, they massacred at least 2,000 of them. Blood ran in streams along the streets. The king ordered the killing to stop after coming across the body of a headless woman with a baby in her lap still sucking at her breast. Instead he sent his men through the streets, crying ‘Havoc!’ to loot and rape.
Alansplodge (talk) 10:32, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A more rose-tinted view from James Hamilton Wylie (1844-1914) in The reign of Henry the Fifth, (1929) p. 61;
English chroniclers claim special praise for the king in that he issued orders that no woman should be outraged, no priest molested, and no church plundered — injunctions which unquestionably had some effect, though with all his discipline Henry could not prevent his men from sometimes getting out of hand.
If you can make any sense of Wylie's abbreviated footnotes, exactly which English chroniclers are specified there. Alansplodge (talk) 11:06, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks. Brandmeistertalk 11:07, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

August 31

No famous Portuguese composers?

Is there any historiographical reason or theory for why Portugal has not produced any composers of remarkable stature? Even outside of Italy, Germany France etc., most European countries have at least one big proponent who has had continent-wide or international influence (Enescu in Romania, Grieg in Norway, Sibelius in Finland, for instance) but I've always been surprised to find that the same is not true of Portugal (as far as I understand, that is). I'm vaguely aware of some Portuguese practitioners of Renaissance polyphony, and some troubadour-like composers (Galician-Portuguese lyric) as well, but no figures stand out from these tradition as especially notable. Aza24 (talk) 07:18, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there's Category:Portuguese composers, although I agree no names on that list stand out particularly. --Viennese Waltz 07:51, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
See also Music of Portugal#Classical composers. Interestingly, if you widen your search to Portuguese-speaking composers, i.e. Category:Brazilian composers, there are many more. From that category and its subcats I have at least some familiarity with Sérgio Assad, Luiz Bonfá, João Gilberto, Radamés Gnattali, Camargo Guarnieri, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Francisco Mignone, Ernesto Nazareth, Jaime Ovalle, Octávio Pinto, Baden Powell (guitarist), and Heitor Villa-Lobos. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 09:44, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It might be at least partly due to socioeconomic reasons. Our article on the economic history of Portugal says,
Despite its vast colonial possessions, Portugal's economy declined relative to other advanced European economies from the 17th century and onward, which the study attributes to the domestic conditions of the Portuguese economy...By the late 19th century, the country's resources were exhausted by its overstretched empire, which was now facing unprecedented competition. Portugal had one of the highest illiteracy rates in Western Europe, a lack of industrialization, and underdeveloped transportation systems. The Industrial Revolution, which had spread out across several other European countries, creating more advanced and wealthier societies, was almost forgotten in Portugal.
It also says that as recently as 2007 Portugal was described as "a new sick man of Europe". In an economically backward country with high illiteracy there might have been a string of potential Mozarts and Verdis over the centuries who never had any chance of an advanced musical education. --Antiquary (talk) 10:24, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
what is typically meant by "composers of remarkable stature" is "composers of the classical canon". A better question might be "why are the composers of the classical canon mostly germanic males" 2A01:E34:EF5E:4640:D8E1:906B:243E:E223 (talk) 11:12, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Germanic" like Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Mendelson,Verdi, Granados? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:54, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Stephan, you seem to be confused by the meaning of the word "mostly". I note that the word is not a synonym of "entirely" or "all" or "totally", which you seem to have confused it with. If you like, I can refer you to a dictionary so you can understand the meaning of that word, which may explain why your response is not as contradictory to 2A01.E34's answer as you maybe think that it is. --Jayron32 11:58, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's not a direct causal link between a country's economic wealth and engendering musical talent. Our own United Kingdom was the world superpower for much of the 19th century, but produced no top-tier composers until the end of that era, Sir Arthur Sullivan perhaps being the only exception, some might say. Alansplodge (talk) 12:08, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly national wealth won't produce musical talent of itself, but national poverty may suppress whatever potential musical talent there is. If your parents are too poor to send you to school then you are unlikely to become a famous composer, however huge your innate gift may be. I don't present this as a complete answer to the question but as one factor. --Antiquary (talk) 12:43, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There is no link between wealth and talent, but neither is there a causal link between talent and popularity, or more to the point of the discussion here, between talent and identification as a member of the "canon". The reason why the classical canon is so overrepresented by composers from Germany and underrepresented by composers from other musical traditions is that the Germans got to define the canon, and often did so in ways that favored their own nationalistic tendencies. this video from YouTuber Adam Neely is provocatively titled (clickbait works. Who knew), but well referenced and well sourced and explains exactly why the modern canon is not only Euro-centric, but even within Europe, heavily over-emphasizes the contributions of German-speaking composers. --Jayron32 13:10, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
European art history in general, and musical history in particular, has long had this tendency of having regional focus areas that act as centers of influence and innovation. It wasn't always the Germans. In the 14th century it was France, then in the 15th century it was the French-Flemish-Burgundian borderlands, then it was Italy, then for quite a while it was France and Italy in competition with each other, with Germany and other areas as artistic backwaters. Then, between the late 18th and 19th centuries, there was a relatively short time span when the German-speaking lands suddenly had a central role. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:25, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Classical music, by which is usually meant the common practice period (and holy SHIT don't get me started on the baggage attached to calling a specific, narrowly defined musical tradition "common practice") and the primary music theory associated with that music is the system of functional harmony of Hugo Riemann et. al. And he was basing the theory on the music of mostly German composers of the common practice period. So, he defines a system of analyzing music based on a narrow musical tradition, and for reasons it becomes the main system by which all western music is analyzed (heck, you can still find people using it in Jazz and Rock analysis, which it was never designed to fit), and wouldn't you know it, the kinds of composers who it says meet the platonic ideal of "good music" are the composers who's music Reimann was analyzing to develop his system. How'd that happen? Other music that was designated as "in the club" was music that also conformed to those standards, and it becomes a self-reinforcing system. --Jayron32 17:44, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That logic is bordering conspiration theories. Reimann is said to be inheriting from Rameau but the next serious French philosoph in line is Auguste Comte, straight theorician of science. The result in music is people educated along rigid logician constraints who are conditioned escaping them only by the way of caricature, Satie, unless they are willing to merely rely on their historical heritage, Debussy. --Askedonty (talk) 18:27, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's not conspiratorial, it's historical. The western canon was established by people who were selecting from a narrow range of music, using quality criteria (i.e. definitions of "good") built within that musical tradition. Is Mozart or Bach or Brahms or Beethoven objectively better than music from Portugal? What does that even mean for art to be "objectively better". There is art that connects with the audience, I suppose, but only the individual audience member can make that assessment for themselves. How do we measure if it is "better"? Why are those composers more worthy of recognition and study, where others are not? Why does the music theory developed expressly to analyze a narrow range of musical traditions get to be the arbiter of quality? --Jayron32 23:11, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
John Cleese was once asked why England never produced any memorable cuisine. He said, "Well, we had an empire to run, you see." Maybe that's also the answer to the relative scarcity of famous English composers. Perhaps the great English composer is to classical music what bangers-and-mash is to classical cuisine. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:04, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Much as I enjoy a good lecture, and despite the fact that English is only my second Germanic language, I'm reasonably aware of the fact that "mostly" does not mean "all" - otherwise, being a logician (hence logical) and a computer scientist (hence lazy), I would, of course, have listed only one counterexample. However, the ease with which counterexamples come to mind strongly suggests that a claim of "mostly" is also overstated. There are, of course many more Italian, Russians and French (where one may need to discuss what "Germanic" is supposed to mean) composers of note, not to mention Czech, Hungarian, and Spanish. German-language composers are strongly overrepresented in the period also known as Wiener Klassik, which may have something to do with the fact that it centred on Vienna, the German-language capital of a major European power. However, the canon does not stop with Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn. And, of course, a significant number of German composers are not "Germanic". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:34, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The point that you all are missing is that the rating system by which we define "great, memorable composers" was developed by Germans in the 16th-19th centuries and attuned to the kinds of music that were already being played at that time, in that place. Which is to say, when the "platonic ideal" of "good classical music" was established, what it was set as was that very thing that German composers of the baroque-classical-romantic periods were already doing. Which is not to say that the British, or French, or yes even Portuguese, didn't have a well-developed musical tradition. What they didn't have was a well-developed German musical tradition. Insofar as composers from other cultures conform to these standards of German music, maybe they get let into the Pantheon, but the entire system of establishing the Western Canon is built upon a specific type of music theory that was developed with the example of Classical, mostly German music by German musicologists for studying and analyzing German music. Then we look at composers who fit that ideal and adjudge them to be Great. It is not surprise that composers from outside of that tradition are lesser known, since the entire way we judge someone to be worth knowing is basically "do they play German music?" Why don't we know of many Portuguese composers from the era? Not because they weren't writing music worth listening to... (Heck "worth listening to" is itself a problematic phrase. What makes art worthy of consumption? Does it move you as the consumer? Do you connect with it emotionally? Do you enjoy it? Then it is worth is.) But back to the main point: People in Portugal were writing and composing and performing and consuming music all through the period in question. Why don't we know about them? Because the music they were making does not conform to the (entirely arbitrary) rules and standards of early modern German music. The relatively smaller number of Russians and Italians and Brits and French from the period we do know about were creating music that obeys those rules. Obeying rules does not make art worthwhile, necessarily. Don't get me wrong, I think it's fine to love the Western canon music, it's not wrong either, but what is a problem is saying that it has a higher value than music from other traditions. We've spent a lot of history insisting so... --Jayron32 15:31, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Some people thought that Thomas Linley the younger might have become a major internationally-known British composer, if he hadn't died at age 22... AnonMoos (talk) 16:58, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Curious to see this is where my question led the thread. Well, Jayron32 sums up most of it, but its worth noting that modern musicology and music theory in the West are directly built off of theories from Germanic thinkers, leading to a very skewed history of Western music (Alfred Einstein, Guido Adler, Friedrich Chrysander, Johann Nikolaus Forkel etc.). For a while, many musicologists entirely rejected Pre-Baroque music, even figures who are today considered hugely influential. Dahlhaus, for instance, essentially described Josquin and Machaut as irrelevant and largely unremarkable composers. Only recently has the canon firmly extended past German, French, Italian and Russian composers, and is continuing to expand, though at a pace of debatable efficiency. Aza24 (talk) 18:37, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for an American car tire company: B&S (23 August)

(edit conflict) I see the answer (Swinehart) was found last night, just seven hours before archiving. Well done, everyone! However, some gremlins appear to have crept into the links. The link to the advertisement for Bandes americaines B.&S. should be [7]. The correct 1903 reference is [8]. This [9] refers to Swinehart's patent for the "side-wire, truck and carriage tire." He gained a 50% interest in the Firestone company, which took ownership of the patent. However, the Swinehart Tire and Rubber Co. continued in existence till it filed for bankruptcy during the Depression, although on 10 February 1930 it was announced it would be reopened under new management.

[10] describes the mechanism for collecting the foreign royalties on the patents. The side wire patent was granted on 16 May 1899. This [11] mentions (page 365) that "These tires are made on royalty in France by Establissements J.B. Torrilhon." The final piece of the jigsaw falls into place on page 366, where it is stated that these tyres are 'known in France as "Bandes Amèricaines [sic] B.&S. Torrilhon" - the initials relating to the patentees, Byrider and Swinehart.' This [12] says the side wire tyre is equal to the Kelly tyre, mentioned in the answer. From page 100 we learn that Torrilhon had the rights not only in France, but also in Italy, Portugal and Spain. The final link discusses both the Kelly-Springfield Tire Co. and Swinehart. One anachronism remains to be cleared up, best by someone with a background in automotive engineering. The answer says says "bandes americaines" were already in use in 1887 although the patent was granted in 1899. One explanation which occurs to me is that bandes americaines may mean nothing more than "rubber tyres." 92.23.217.197 (talk) 11:41, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

On the history, there's a usable link at [13]. 92.23.217.197 (talk) 12:14, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This notes a William Byrider as an officer of the Swinehart Clincher Tire & Rubber Company, of Akron, Ohio. Could be related to our B&S. --Jayron32 18:14, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

September 1

Constitutionality of Biden's Tuition Debt Plan

According to the Constitution of the United States, Congress has the power of purse. A few days ago, President Biden announced a tuition loan relief program My question is that since Congress has the power of the purse, doesn't Congress need to pass a law (or something) to make this happen? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't the power of the purse only extend to what level of funding is put into the student loan program? The actual loans - who receives them, what interest rates to charge, penalties and forgiveness - would seem to be fully under the control of the executive branch.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 23:40, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This writeup gets into this question some:[14] ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:00, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Bugs, the answer to my question appears to be about half-way down in the article:
Here's another useful article I found in case anyone else is curious: Legality of Joe Biden's Student Loan Plan Relies on Coronavirus Pandemic, 2003 HEROES Law A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 10:17, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

September 2

Ownership of churches in Ireland

Are there any notable pre-Reformation church buildings in Ireland owned by the Catholic Church, or are they uniformly in the possession of the Church of Ireland? Lazar Taxon (talk) 00:09, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, Category:Roman Catholic churches in Ireland has only 18th-century, 19th-century, and 20th-century subcategories -- except for the Black Abbey... AnonMoos (talk) 00:46, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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