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March 16

Trial court procedures: documents and their filing?

in civil litigation when a case settles..what are the settlement documents that will be required and where are these filed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.157.185.161 (talk) 00:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Anonymous poster, are you talking about US federal law, the law of some US state, or some other law? Please note that anything looking like a request for legal advice is not answered here.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 09:33, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

No Legal Advice - Just A General Fact Outline: But, generally speaking, (in the USA) ... when a case "settles", this simply means that both sides / parties have come to an agreement by themselves (not through the court). And, part of that agreement / settlement is to withdraw the lawsuit that had been filed in the court. In short, the document is simply an agreement / contract agreed / signed by both parties. In some cases, (not all, and not most) a court may have to approve of the settlement. Otherwise, a settlement is tantamount to Party A saying to Party B, "I agree to drop this lawsuit if you agree to do such and such (e.g., pay me $10,000)". Party B says, "OK". Then, Party A withdraws the lawsuit that they had originally filed against Party B to begin with. And the case is now closed. From the judge's (court's) standpoint, he just knows that the Party A dropped their suit and it's off of his (the judge's) plate. He doesn't much care how or why. Parties can withdraw suits for lots of reasons. Settlement is just one. It's really not the judge's concern or interest, for the most part ... the judge / court simply knows that the case is gone. In fact, the term you usually hear is that "they settled out of court" ... meaning that the two parties were able to mutually agree and resolve the case without the court's help / intervention. Hope this was of some general help. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 08:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC))

Sometimes the settlement forbids the parties to make its terms public. This would obviously be impossible if it were filed in the public record. —Tamfang (talk) 02:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

True. And good point. Sometimes, settlements between the parties are indeed confidential (if both sides agree to this stipulation). Which is fancy legal mumbo-jumbo that essentially allows big shots (large corporations, rich people, etc.) to get away with murder. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC))

... over and over again. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:01, 19 March 2008 (UTC))

In the United States, where the parties to a case are private individuals or corporations, generally all that must be filed is a form stating that the case has been resolved and the litigation is discontinued. Where the parties to a case are under a legal disability (minors or mentally disabled individuals) or where the case involves absent parties (class or derivative actions), the procedure is more complicated as court approval is required. In addition, if a party to the case is a public company and the outcome of the litigation may have a material effect on its financial condition, disclosure may be required in the company's SEC filings. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The Peloponnesian War

hi, i am a year 10 student in need of information about the Peloponnesian War, and i find wikipedia gives the best results however your artical about The Peloponnesian War says that it was a military conflict. but i cant see what the conflict was exactly about. i have read through it and just got confused. sorry about this, but i just cant find the answer

thankyou.

Courtney Stringer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.167.79.4 (talk) 00:42, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The quote from Thucydides that begins section 1. Prelude of the Peloponnesian Wars is unusually clear, I would have thought. There may be experts here who disagree, of course. ៛ Bielle (talk) 01:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Courtney, Bielle is absolutely right: the section headed Prelude could not make the causes of the war any clearer. In essence it was brought on by concerns in the rest of Greece over the growth of Athenian power. Have another look, and if it's still not clear come back with a fresh question. Clio the Muse (talk) 02:12, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear Courtney: As Bielle and Clio suggest: Re-read the Wikipedia article, then ask another question, and you will doubtless get another answer. Edison (talk) 03:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

College football season: US and Canada

When is the next college football season coming for both U.S. and Canada? I am a big football fan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Don Mustafa (talk • contribs) 02:33, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Football like American football? Those seasons generally start in early fall. If you mean soccer, I don't know. Paragon12321 (talk) 03:31, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

ESPN's first 2008 CFB broadcast is Thursday, Aug. 28: NC State at South Carolina and Oregon State at Stanford. Most teams start their season two days later. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 04:14, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The Canadian Interuniversity Sport football season stars on September 1, according to the official website. (With my old school playing the opening game!) Adam Bishop (talk) 05:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The Canadian Football League season starts around June. If you are looking for the NFL then you've just missed it. Soccer in Canada starts when the snow melts, because it's not a rich enough sport to afford indoor stadiums yet. DJ Clayworth (talk) 14:39, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

From my textbook: Hitler, racism, and "Anglo-Saxon supremacy"?

"Hitler was driven by a virulent form of racism and Anglo-Saxon supremacy."

Should I be scratching my head?

Lotsofissues 07:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Could we have the name of the textbook, so we know which to avoid? AllenHansen (talk) 09:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

What's the confusion? Okay, sure, we usually use the term Aryan, but Aryan, Nordic, Anglo-Saxon—they're imprecise terms (at best) for racial/linguistic groups that have a shared Germanic origins, and the Nazi racial theorists used them all at different points. I don't think it's too far from the mark, as far as textbook simplifications go. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:38, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Anglo-Saxon is a historic/political term, not a racial one. There was never a Nordic Kingdom, or an Aryan Empire, but there were several states that were Anglo-Saxon, that possessed laws and beaurocracies and that have modern successors. Ninebucks (talk) 15:52, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The central tenet of the sort of racial categorization that the Nazis (and others) used was that the historical and political (and hence the linguistic, even though they were well aware that anyone raised in a given culture will pick up the language) were linked to the racial, the biological. For this reason the terms are often used interchangeably and can't be easily extricated. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the compiler thought that Anglo-Saxon was simply a synonym for White? Likewise, I have sometimes heard Nelson Mandela refered to as an African American. Ninebucks (talk) 15:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Hitler did not just believe in "white" supremacy. Check out the links I gave above. He considered many groups of "whites" to be inferior (Poles, Slavs, probably the Irish, etc.) That particular brand of European racial theory subdivides "white" up very finely, unlike racial theories in the modern USA which tend to see things as white v. colored (bi-racialism). "Anglo-Saxon supremacy" is closer to Hitler's view than is "white supremacy," though both are simplifications. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

But Anglo-Saxon is used to refer to England and people descending from the English. AllenHansen (talk) 18:51, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The Anglo-Saxons were a Germanic people (see Anglo-Saxons). Hitler had no racial problem with the Anglo-Saxon British, except towards the way they operated their societies, if they had diluted their "blood", etc. Most of the internal (that is, meant for Germans to read) Nazi racial propaganda at the time argued that the "white" societies of France, UK, and USA had allowed themselves to become diluted from their original strong stock by allowing too much immigration, interbreeding, etc. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

But he wasn't driven by a virulent form of Anglo-Saxon supremacy!!!! AllenHansen (talk) 23:08, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this is right. A friend of mine recently went to the Saxon Museum in Berlin (I think), where they had a display board with lights to show the historical spread of the Saxons. The first lights are around (modern day) northern Germany, and then on the East coast of England (which is why the Romans built the Forts of the Saxon Shore). When I was at school, I was taught that 'the English' are supposed to be a melting pot of Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Celts, Norman Franks, Romans (whatever that means), etc., although modern genetic research [1] apparently contradicts this happy mythology (which, in its way, is as hopeless as the belief that Brutus fought Gog and Magog). As I understand it, Germans wouldn't see themselves as Anglo-Saxon; Saxon, perhaps, or Prussian, or Bavarian; the Angles came from what we would consider modern-day Denmark. The Angles (or, more correctly, the Anglo-Saxons, ie. used as a synonym for 'the English') were renowned (then as now) for their great physical attractiveness.

The Germans are (or were, until the 20h. century) traditional allies of the British: both nations united in a shared and understandable dislike of their common French neighbour!--Major Bonkers (talk) 10:13, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Allen, you are absolutely right: it's a bizarre and absurd contention. I can just envisage the Führer chewing the carpets of hell in his frustration! Clio the Muse (talk) 21:02, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Really tacky synthetic carpets, one hopes, in vile colors. —Tamfang (talk) 02:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Reminds of something in Mad magazine, I think, where two sweet little old ladies didn't realise that Hitler was dictator over most of Europe, but thought he was the interior decorator. AllenHansen (talk) 12:01, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Glorious Revolution

What was so glorious about the Glorious Revolution? Horace Morris (talk) 09:51, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Glorious triumph of parliamentarianism and Protestant religion, trouncing of absolute monarchy.--Wetman (talk) 11:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It was largely bloodless. In England, at any rate, the amount of bloodshed was astonishingly small. You also need to see it in terms of the seesawing Catholic-Protestant-Catholic-Protestant history of the recent centuries since Henry VIII's break with Rome, and the perception that stability at last was assured. --Dweller (talk) 12:01, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It was glorious because no one died.--nessup (talk) 18:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

That is quite untrue. Some died in England, more in Scotland, and lots in Ireland.

Horace, it was glorious because the victors said it was glorious: it's really as simple as that! It was an expression first coined by John Hampden, a leading Whig, formerly implicated in the Rye House Plot. In essence, it became a way of justifying what was, in simple terms, an act of treason against the reigning monarch, subsequently enshrined in Whig folklore from Gilbert Burnet onwards. Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason. Clio the Muse (talk) 01:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

You don't approve? I think you must be a Jacobite, Clio. Horace Morris (talk) 09:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I neither approve nor disapprove, Horace; my opinions are always guided by the facts. Clio, a Jacobite? Of course not! Clio the Muse (talk) 21:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Syrfia

Syrfia appears on sixteenth-century maps, on the right bank of the Danube at its mouth, between Bulgaria and Moldavia. There's nothing on the Internet under this spelling. What was Syrfia? Does it needs a Wikipedia article?--Wetman (talk) 11:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Yep, there's Syrfia on Abraham Ortelius maps, between Varna and Danube delta. My guess is that it is a variation of spelling of Servia (Serbia), but it is obviously misplaced quite a bit :) . But this is just a guess. Hope this helps, anyway. --Dr Dima (talk) 16:55, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking that too, or maybe a misplaced and misspelled Sofia? Adam Bishop (talk) 21:03, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so I've added the following at Varna: "In the sixteenth<ref>A map of Ortelius, Romania, Bulgaria, Walachia et Syrfia (Antwerp 1602) shows the small territory of Syrfia south of the mouths of the Danube.</ref> and seventeenth century<ref>In a document of 1630 the Greek Orthodox metropolitan of Ternovo was in charge of numerous bishoprics, including Varna in Syrfia (A. d'Avril, "Bulgarie chrétienne", Revue de l'Orient chrétien 2 (1897:39).</ref> Varna was situated in a region called Syrfia."

Practice for Lawyers, Doctors, Etc. - Derivation of Term

I am curious as to why lawyers, doctors and others refer to their practice instead of work. I do not believe it is the same as practice makes perfect.75Janice (talk) 12:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)75Janice75Janice (talk) 12:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

A practicing lawyer or doctor is one who is currently putting their training to practical use. The distinction is needed because people with professional qualifications are politely referred to as a lawyer, doctor, etc, even if they're retired or not currently working. FiggyBee (talk) 13:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Architects, too, have a practice whereas painters and sculptors have patrons. --Wetman (talk) 05:29, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Although one could also argue that, because law and medicine are always changing, they are continuing to get better at their trade and therefore practicing new ideas; however, that sort of breaks down with architecture, which I didn't realize was also considered a "ractice."4.68.248.130 (talk) 01:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Fragrence ın Sultan Ahmed Mosque, Istanbul

Can anyone help me fınd out what the ıncense or fragrence used ın the Blue mosque ( Sultan Ahmed Mosque, Istanbul), as ıt ıs really famılıar but I couldn,t fınd anyone who could tell me what ıncense\fragrence ıs used. Thanks 85.105.17.138 (talk) 14:39, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Frankincense? myrrh? Chanel No. 5? --Wetman (talk) 05:30, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

If you find it, please add it to the so beautiful article. Julia Rossi (talk) 22:13, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I got a chuckle from the use of the Turkish 'ı' throughout. Thought at first it was a flaw on my monitor! —Tamfang (talk) 02:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Atheist pope

Is it possible that the pope (present or any previous pope) does not believe in the existence of a God (which of course would be inadmissible), but does everything that he does, because he believes that it's in the overall interest of humanity, or is that just crazy-talk? ----Seans Potato Business 17:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible? Of course. One's private beliefs might have nothing to do with one's public actions. I have known a least one atheist priest, who saw his job as being about community primarily. There are other reasons, mind you, that one might act as a Pope other than believing in the "overall interest of humanity"—I tend to regard the positions of the Catholic Church as often being more about enforcement of power than much else, but I am rather cynical about that particular organization. (My suspicions come not from any doctrinal aspect of it, but the way in which is centralizes power. In my experience any organization which centralizes power too rigidly in a hierarchy ends up becoming an organization whose primary purpose is to consolidate and maintain that power, whatever the original or ostensible "true" purpose is. I speak here about the organization, not the followers.)

Is it likely is another question—that would require a very in-depth knowledge of any given pope to make sense of. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The Grand Inquisitor is an excellent "short story" discussing such a person. GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 18:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Three popes met by chance in a pub and they got to discussing athy-ism. They all freely acknowledged that they were athy, but to different degrees, and they couldn't decide who was the athiest, who was merely athier, and who was just athy. Then in walked Sisters Mary Benedicta, Perpetua and Vaticana for their daily rum and coke. They espied the popes and came over to join them; fortunately they were sitting in the smoking section, so they could all pull out their Havanas with impunity. Sister Benedicta pulled out her personal brass cuspidor from her generous bag and placed it on the floor near her feet. One of the popes turned to the nuns, explained their quandary, and asked them to help them decide. Sister Perpetua, the youngest and most highly-strung of the three, said "Oh, Your Holiness, it's not for the likes of one such as I to comment". Sister Vaticana said "Well, since you ask, Your Holiness, I have a view on the matter, but it's best left unspoken". The popes then turned as one, resembling a very small group of tennis spectators, to Sister Benedicta, the eldest. She pulled herself up to her full height, had 2 puffs on her cigar, and downed the remaining three-quarters of her drink in one gulp. She appeared to be about to speak, but she removed her spectacles, breathed on them, slowly rubbed them with her cassock, and carefully replaced them on her head. She took another deep breath, then opened her mouth, and said "

(To Be Continued). -- JackofOz (talk) 21:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Sean, you might very well be interested in San Manuel Bueno, Mártir by Miguel de Unamuno, which offers a fictitious treatment of the kind of situation you describe, with a possible outcome, though on a much humbler scale. I would hope that your atheist Pope would have the courage to act in the same manner as Don Manuel! Clio the Muse (talk) 01:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

But -- in short -- yes, that's just crazy talk. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 08:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC))

It is unlikely because of the amount of dedication and sacrifice (cost of entry) to becoming a high ranking member of the church and eventually the Pope. In addition, as the Pope is, through all stages of the process, chosen by his peers, he would have to do a damn good job of convincing his fellows of his religious conviction.

I would say it might have been more likely had the Pope retatined more temporal power: cast in the present day, it is not hard to conceive that an atheist Medici might be pushed to the Papacy simply in order to cement his uncle's legacy and his family's influence in the papal territories.

I say "cast in the present day", because back in the 15th century everyone was Catholic, which reduces the probability of the Pope being atheist. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:31, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Titanic

I'm sortof watching Raise the Titanic (OMG is a crap film!), and they think the Titanit in one piece and therefore "raisable". But in reality it split in two. How come they didn't realise that it split in two until they found the two bits? Kate Winslet was hanging onto one end as the bow went down then got in the water and hanging onto some flotsam until found by a lifeboat, - didn't she survive tell them, or if anyone didn't actually do that, then surely someone must have seen it go under? Bobble hobble dobble (talk) 18:48, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

zou do realise that raise the titanic predates the titanic movie by decades...? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.41.220 (talk) 19:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

And whatever you're watching, if Kate Winslet is in it, it sure ain't "Raise the Titanic". She was in "Titanic", a somewhat different movie. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:35, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Now it makes perfect sense. The makers of "raise the titanic" couldn't know that the ship was in two pieces because they hadn't seen the 1997 Titanic film yet! -- (OR MAYBE NOT). Read the question. Now can I have the real answer pls, thx. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bobble hobble dobble (talk • contribs) 20:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

If your reference to Kate Winslet is actually meant to be a reference to her appearance in "Titanic", a movie of which you make no mention in your question, then can I suggest the question is very poorly formulated and ambiguous. We're not mind readers. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Why didn't the makers of raise the titanit know the ship broke its back and sunk in two bits? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bobble hobble dobble (talk • contribs) 20:38, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The straightforward answer is that, at the time of the publication of the novel (1975) and the production of the movie (1980), it was widely held that the wreck of the Titanic was relatively intact (or at least, that the hull was in one piece). Although some passengers reported that the ship had broken in two as it sank, the official inquest determined that the evidence provided by others (namely surviving officers and some first-class passengers) more believable, and consequently concluded that the ship had sunk in one piece. It was not until 1985, when Robert Ballard and others discovered the wreck (in two pieces) that this belief was upended. In short, the makers of the movie simply didn't know the condition of the wreck; any research that they may have done would have led them to the conclusion that the ship was probably in one piece. Carom (talk) 21:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, basically, everyone always thought that it went down as one piece --- not broken in two. No one knew the truth until the wreck was discovered many years later (over 70 years later) in 1985. As far as the survivors witnessing the event, there were probably many factors. There would be lots of confusion and panic and unclear thinking. Some observers were (in life boats) quite a distance away. It was pitch black in the middle of the night, if I recall. The sinking of a huge ship would cause a great splash, obscuring much of the view. Ultimately, a lot of conditions made it hard to see perfectly clearly that night, I'd imagine. Also, perhaps from an engineering perspective, the Titanic should not have cracked in two (just like it should not have sunk). Maybe from an engineering / physics point of view, the ship was deemed that it would have / should have / could have withstood this pressure and the material was strong enough to survive and not crack in these conditions. But, they were wrong. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 08:31, 17 March 2008 (UTC))

Also, see this section of the Wikipedia article on the Titanic ---> RMS Titanic#Rediscovery ... it goes into detail about why people thought it sunk as one piece or broke in two. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 08:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC))

Do religious israelis in israel think god gave them the land they're settling?

Is my understanding accurate that the Israelis think God gave them the land they have been settling for the past few decades? -- Thank you!79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

update: I have been told by a roommate that no, it's just because israel is a place they were historically. the story in the bible that I'm thinking of, she says, is in modern-day iran. Could I get a reference for this? Is there any movement of jewish people who want to go to the actual place god gave them (in modern-day iran? Is that true??)? where in the bible is the whole god giving them thing anyway? Refernces, please :)79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

If you'd look at that article link I posted in the answer which you removed — do not, if you please, remove the responses of others, even if they are informing you that your etiquette is off, and being told that your approach is "rude" is not, under Wikipedia definitions, an "attack" — you'd see that 1. your roommate is wrong and 2. the precise Old Testament citations regarding this issue. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:31, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I understand your position but I don't appreciate being given the run-around. You linked a page which, as short as it is, is gibberish to me, and you carefully refrained from answering my question. So what's the answer, please, is my understanding that Israelis think God gave them the land they have been settling correct or incorrect?79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Look, here's a map, to make it extra simple. The red and the blue borders correspond to dimensions specified in the Bible; the specific locations are those citations on the right in the legend (Numbers 32:1-2, Ezekiel 47:13-20). The answer is clearly "Yes, the Old Testament says that God gave the Jews some land, and much of that land corresponds to the boundaries of modern Israel." I hardly think linking you to a concise article with both references (which you requested) and images (to make it super-clear) is a "run-around." The first line of the article I linked to answered your question: "In Jewish belief, The Land of Israel is the region of land given to the Jewish people, according to the Hebrew Bible," and the illustrations clearly show that this is in the area of the modern day Israeli state, not in Iran. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

You're STILL carefully refraining from answering my question!!! It is my IMPRESSION that your answer "Yes, the Old Testament says that God gave the Jews some land, and much of that land corresponds to the boundaries of modern Israel" means "Yes, the religious Israelis in Israel think God gave them the land they have been settling", but if you carefully compare the previous two quotations in this sentence you will see that, in fact, they don't mean the same thing at all!!! So does that make the answer to my actual question "no" instead? I asked about what religious israelis think, and you answered about what the Old Testament says. Is it one and the same? Could I read your answer ("Yes, the old testament...") for my proposed answer ("Yes, the religious Israelis..."), or is there some important difference? If not, could you answer my question in the same terms, rather than different, confusingly similar, but perhaps in reality quite different, terms? Thank you!! And sorry to be trying :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.41.220 (talk) 19:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes. --Dweller (talk) 19:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Could you add it to our Land of Israel article?79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:06, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've added it myself, we'll see if it's reverted, and with what explanation... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.42.52 (talk) 20:10, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

No. --Dweller (talk) 19:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

This seems to contradict the above. Can you explain (BRIEFLY) why not??? Please be very very brief, I can already read the linked articles, but I don't see HOW they contradict my statement above. Thank you!!79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry if the above pair of posts seem contradictory, but to explain the apparent contradiction will take more than one word. Sadly, in this world, complex issues rarely can be boiled down to one or two words without losing more than could possibly be gained. --Dweller (talk) 19:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Modern Israel is full of many people of many different religious beliefs. If you are asking, "Do the practicing Jews in Israel believe that God gave them the Promised Land, a territory which includes the borders of modern Israel and also some additional land on all sides?" the answer is "Yes." If you mean "Do all citizens of Israel believe this," the answer is clearly no. If you are asking, "Do most citizens of Israel believe this," the answer is probably yes, if you are asking "Does the current government of Israel believe this," the answer is, in that case, "I'm not sure, but probably." All around your problem here has not been with the answering, but with the asking. Going to a forum where people take their time to answer your questions and then berating them, before they've answered, about how they answer, is, in a word, rude. And it certainly won't get you useful results unless they have incredible patience. Had you just been a bit more deferent at the beginning, and simply asked for help clarifying the specific points you were having confusion with, we could have sped this along much quicker, couldn't we? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 20:07, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer! It confirms what I thought -- of course, I meant your first interpretation "Do the practicing Jews in Israel believe...", that's why I phrased it as "do religious israelis" in israel... As for the rest of your points, I think it's sufficient to say that I don't think you would have given these wonderful answers if i hadn't asked for this brief answer. Even as it is, until your post, the other ones had been handwaving and links to complete articles!79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Is it fair characterize one of your answers as: "The Israelis that practice Judaism in Israel believe that God gave them the territory which includes the borders of modern Israel and then some" ?79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Is this part of why practicing Jews in israel have been settling the land, or are the two things independent? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.42.52 (talk) 20:39, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

This is part of the reason why Jews have been trying to re-settle that area (and not, say, Alaska) for a very long time. There are more reasons than just that, though—historical, political, etc. To characterize all of that activity as being solely because of a few lines in the Old Testament would be an oversimplification. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 20:42, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Was there a movement to settle a different area, for example Alaska as you mention, a part of Africa, etc, or from the beginning did it focus on modern-day Israel?79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

See British_Uganda_Program. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:31, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

you say it's part of the reason why that area was chosen. I'd like to read more analysis for why that area was chosen to settle, can you point me to a resource? Thank you.79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The concept is discussed in Judaism 101, Level 1, here: [2] ៛ Bielle (talk) 21:39, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

okay, I'm reading it. Can other people here read it too and tell me if there are any glaring NPOV issues I shoudl know about since, it's a jewish site... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.42.52 (talk) 22:01, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

What did you jews do to this guy? he seems to have some 'issues'

87.102.124.155 (talk) 22:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about "you jews" but I can explain what "you reference desk people" did. I asked for a simple summary of the history of israel/palestine, and you blasted me with links and detailed instructions of what to read while avoiding answering my question. In fact, the same thing is happening here with the notable exception of 98.217.8.46, who is the only person to actually answer my question (and did so with "If you are asking, "Do the practicing Jews in Israel believe that God gave them the Promised Land, a territory which includes the borders of modern Israel and also some additional land on all sides?" the answer is "Yes.", though a reference that states just that would be nice) 79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Is someone not signing with four of these things ~? It's getting hard to follow first thing in the morning here. Thanks, Julia Rossi (talk) 22:13, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I went back and signed. 79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear Julia Rossi, The original question was whether RELIGIOUS Israelis in Israel (not all people, not the Israeli government, etc) believe that the land they have been settling for the past few decades has been given to them by God. What is your answer (about the religious israelis' beliefs). To me, it seems like a pretty clear "yes, they believe that" but as you can see the only person to give a clear "yes" (Dweller) as a response followed it with a clear "no" as a response! Can you weigh in as well? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:10, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Religious Jews think that God promised a land to the Jewish people, a promise the Bible has God making directly to Abraham, and reiterated to Isaac, Jacob and Moses. Religious Jews consider themselves the inheriters of that line. However, how that simple promise manifests itself is profoundly complicated and cannot be simplified by a "yes, no" question. Is it promised to them for them to receive now? Is 100% of modern day Israel "promised land"? Is Israel 100% of the Promised Land? These and a multiplicity of other questions are inherent in your question and the answers to every one will vary from individual to individual. Judaism is notorious for the climate it creates of a lack of uniformity of approach (2 Jews, 3 opinions is the joke). Chuck in the political overtones of the term "settling" in your question (a vast preponderance of religious Israelis are not "settlers", but live within the undisputed pre-1967 borders of Israel) and it becomes harder still to take your question with the simplicity you wish us to answer it. --Dweller (talk) 23:35, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

All right, now I seriously need some education (BRIEFLY) because I thought the whole country of israel didn't exist before 1945 or whenever, and now you're saying it had an undisputed old part? Since when? Thank you! (please please please don't link to dense text I'm barely literate). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

<excuse inaccuracies caused by trying to simplify> After WWI, the Brits (who owned that bit of the world at the time) said the Jews should have a country in that bit of the world. Shortly afterwards, they chopped off 2/3 of it and called it Jordan. Then, after WWII, the United Nations voted to grant the Jews a hunk of land and the Palestinians a hunk of land. The motion was carried by the necessary margin. Consequently, when the British "mandate" expired in 1948, the Jews declared an independent state, called Israel. The surrounding Arab nations invaded both the Jewish bit and the Palestinian bit. They lost the fight against the Israelis, but took the Palestinians' land. Then, in 1967, Israel won an overwhelming victory known as the Six Day War. Israel conquered chunks of land - Gaza, the Sinai desert, the Golan heights, Jerusalem and the West Bank. Since then, the various territories have had different fates. Gaza is now under Palestinian control. Sinai was returned to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace deal. Golan was annexed by Israel. Jerusalem and the West Bank? Well, they're an awful mess and let's avoid the bluelink plague you say you don't want. But in essence the "pre 1967 borders" are uncontroversial in all but the most extreme circles (Hamas, for example, by documentation, deny Israel's right to exist at all... similarly, you'll find if you look hard enough, Jewish extremists who wistfully make comments about territory east of the Jordan being parts of biblical "Israel"). Hope that helps. It's a horrible tangly mess that some of the brightest minds of the last 50 years haven't come close to solving. And I strongly advise you that any explanations that take a paragraph or two are probably misleading in one way or another... the more you delve into this one, the more you'll understand. --Dweller (talk) 00:09, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Wow, thank you. Much better than your "yes. no." above :) Thank you for not bluelining it to death either. I read your paragraph carefully, jeez, it's like a soap opera. But I don't see why you say one or two paragraph summaries are misleading in some way or another. Granted, they won't include all the nitty-gritty, but that's hardly misleading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.42.52 (talk) 01:36, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Dweller's answer above is an OK simplification except for two major errors. The first is the story that Jordan was chopped off from the country (the mandate) the Brits said the Jews should have. Many books says this, but it is just a very successful fabrication; Jordan was added to the smaller original mandate in the 20s, not chopped off from it. See the long note in Transjordan. The second is that it wasn't just the Arab states that took the land of the Palestinian bit in 1948. There was a 50-50 split of the Palestinian bit between Israel and the Arab states (Egypt and Jordan).John Z (talk) 04:03, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

And thank you guys because I didn't expect you to go to so much trouble. I know what tl:dr means with some of this stuff. I learned the diff between an Israeli and Jew by ignorantly assuming they were the same thing and the Israel person bluntly put me straight. It is well worth understanding if you can be patient. Cheers, Julia Rossi (talk) 02:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

and what is that difference please? Love you Julia. 79.122.42.52 (talk) 02:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

At the risk of showing even more of my ignorance, the Israeli is a citizen of Israel (which includes Arabs) and the like. This can include someone Jewish by birth yet not religious in the least (added: as in ethnic Jew).

Also living in Israel is the religious Jew who upholds the common values and sacred texts of Judaism, claims the lineage and keeps observance in the Judaic faith. This can be someone who ranges from a liberal "open" type that believes and keeps the calendar and goes to Temple, to more fundamentalist "closed" sects such as Hasidic Jews (pious ones) and all the little splinter groups within that. Getting clunky here, so I'll stop. Hope this helps Julia Rossi (talk) 03:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

This is not directed to the questioner who has the guts to admit to semi-literacy, but to anyone else who is interested in further reading: there is an OK-ish article at Proposals for a Jewish state which includes plans (some no more than wishful thinking, some fairly evolved proposals) for Jewish settlement in Alaska (Slattery Report), Australia (Kimberley Plan), Japanese Manchuria (Fugu Plan), Madagascar (Madagascar Plan). There was a settlement in C17 in Suriname (Jodensavanne). And wasn't there an early C20 one in southern South America? BrainyBabe (talk) 16:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

And on a separate note, "religious Israelis" are citizens of Israel who take their religion as a defining part of their identity: that could be Jewish, Muslim, Christian or any other religion. Jewish Israelis (as non-Jewish Israelis) may be secular, somewhat religious, or very religious -- I have heard them explain this tripartite division as "serves in the army, girls don't serve in the army, neither sex serves in the army". BrainyBabe (talk) 16:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Secular, Hiloni, means that they aren't religious, observant or believing. By somewhat religious, you mean shomrei masoret, followers of the tradition. They are fairly religious, believing and observe most of Judaism, especially holidays, but not as strictly as the very religious, or Orthodox.

Hilonim are just as likely to avoid serving as Orthodox Jews, but for different reasons. I know many Shomrei Masoret girls who serve. AllenHansen (talk) 23:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

E-mail and the law

Moved to Computing

request for summary of suicide bombings by palestinians.

when did they start and why? why don't israelis, the other side in the arab-israeli conflict, also suicide bomb? (or do they, please correct me if I'm wrong).

i'm looking for a neutral explanation, ie one that doesn't assume one of the faiths is right. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.42.52 (talk) 20:47, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the Israel/Palestine conflict, there is a conflict, and each side inflicts strategic damage on the other in the hope of achieving their objectives. The Palestinians use suicide bombing as a tactic because they have few other weapons, and because their religion encourages them to see themselves as martyrs in a righteous cause. The Israelis don't because they have more and better weapons and the power of a state to deliver them. The Israelis can, if they wish, send helicopter gunships into Gaza, but the Palestinians have no helicopter gunships to send into Israel. Both sides are using the weapons available to them. --Nicknack009 (talk) 21:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Ironically (or perhaps appropriately) it was Zionist extremists who started the bombing trend over there in the 1940s, first by bombing the British (who were occupying the area at the time), and then bombing the Palestinians (see Stern gang, Irgun, etc.). The radical Palestinians responded in kind after awhile of this medicine. But this was "just" car bombing—the use of vehicles to transport massive amounts of explosives to a target and detonating them—not suicide bombing. Suicide bombing didn't really take off in the Middle East until the late-1980s, when it was shown to be very effective in Beirut when used by Hezbollah in attacks against Israelis and Americans.

As for why the Israeli state doesn't use suicide bombings, a few reasons could be given: 1. they don't need to (suicide bombings are used because it is difficult for the Palestinians to otherwise penetrate "soft" targets with their weapons; the Israelis have much more advanced weaponry and can do so quite easily), 2. there is less of any sort of tradition of martyrdom in Judaism, at least to that degree, and you'd have a much harder time finding volunteers amongst the more affluent Israelis, and 3. suicide attacks, while they have a strong propaganda effect in terrorizing the enemy, also rob those who use them of moral legitimacy. While it could be debated whether the Israelis have a lot of moral legitimacy at the moment, their use of conventional arms makes them, at least in world affairs, taken seriously as a conventional player. The use of unconventional arms would make this more difficult, in the way that many countries will not deal with the current Palestinian government after the suicide-bombing group Hamas took over. It would be impossible for Israel to maintain its current relations with the USA if it started using suicide attacks, for example, as the USA has centered almost all of its criticism of the Palestinians on the tactics they have used. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 21:08, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The Israelis and the Palestinians are two different cultures with two different senses of morality. Many Palestinians think it is a good thing to strap bombs to yourself and blow up a shopping mall. Palestinians actually celebrate when these things happen. You'll be hard-pressed to find Israelis dancing for joy should someone blow up a Palestinian school. Israelis don't [www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1423506/posts dress their kids up like terrorists and suicide bombers] or use TV kids shows to indoctrinate children into terrorism. There are, of course, practical considerations, as 98.217 mentions. But I can't see the Israelis ever developing a suicide-bomber culture like that of the Palestinians under any considerations. There weren't any American kamikaze pilots, either. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:25, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

They celebrate not because they think blowing up a shopping mall is inherently good but because they think it is accomplishing a great goal, attacking a greater evil. The Israelis blow up things and sometimes people celebrate; when the United States atomic bombed two cities their citizens celebrated. It is not a case of having "different senses of morality" so much as it is "in the given context they saw this particular action as being necessary to win the particular war they were fighting." It's hard to find nations that have not, at various times in their history, targeted "soft" targets (malls, markets, etc.) because they felt that instrumentally that would help them at the time. I do agree, however, that the use of self-sacrificing tactics is relatively rare and requires a strong cultural component that would allow such a thing. But I think this is separate from the issue of targeting civilians in general, which is not at all unique. (By the the way, those children pictures are primarily just dressed up like warriors. Lots of countries dress their children up like warriors. I think it's gross, but it's hardly a sign of a culture of death. Palestinians hardly have a monopoly on violence in this world. It might be worth noting that I am not, in particular, pro-Palestinian, so much as I am generally unwilling to divide the world up into "good guys" and "bad guys" simply because one side is, at the moment, not targeting civilians as directly as they did before when they felt it was their best way to victory.) --98.217.8.46 (talk) 22:32, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

One other note: that Islamic fanatics used specifically suicide attacks is actually somewhat unexpected. They were not common before the 1980s. They were not used against the Soviets in Afghanistan, for example. It is very interesting that as a tactic it has made remarkable truck with Muslim extremists, but it's not like Muslims (of any nationality) have been doing that for hundreds of years, like it is some permanent part of their religion and culture. (Making war, sure. Like most people. But not suicide attacks.) It is also very interesting how something that has only been really used for the last 20 years or so (really making its first real show with the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing) is now taken to be a major part of their culture. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

There clearly are practical considerations to suicide terrorism (good for dedalus for mentioning Pape's book). However, when asking why one group does it and another doesn't, we shouldn't discount cultural considerations. To do so is to assume a deterministic view of history that doesn't square with reality. There are differences between cultures, just as there are differences between individuals. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Right, but we shouldn't assume cultural statics. It is easy (as even S.ded does) to say things like "X is almost never" as if this were a very common thing throughout history, as if the cultures themselves had allowed for this from the beginning. There's a lot of historical contingency there, much of this is much more recent than it is made to look. The final assessment is going to be a mix of practical and cultural—if it becomes excessively practical, the cultural (if it has the slack) will bend around it, they will mutually reinforce. Again, the atomic bomb example: quizzed on whether it is a moral act to slaughter hundreds of thousands of non-combatants most Americans would probably say "no", but in the context of "what is moral to have dropped the atomic bomb in World War II?" most would probably say "yes". Without being too cynical about that, it is clear that the culture has come up with many ways to support this "practical" action, some of which are what I would call "legitimate", some of which are less so. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 15:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Suicide bombing is almost never a tactic employed by a state (the kamikazes being the exception). It is a last resort tactic used in asymmetric warfare. Suicide bombing is also used almost exclusively against democracies. A suicide resistance depends on the understanding that the target nation will use at least some restraint. A dictatorship might simply exterminate the ethnic or religus group carrying out the bombings. Read Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by Robert Pape for a more detailed explanation. --S.dedalus (talk) 00:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It may be useful to remember that Palestinians were not the first to use suicide attacks. The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka predated them. The Tigers are a secular Marxist group, drawn from a Hindu culture -- not Arab, not Muslim at all. BrainyBabe (talk) 15:03, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

May you live in interesting times of Chinese origins?

I would like to ask someone on the Chinese Reference desk/Humanities (section) whether the curse/blessing May you live in interesting times is of Chinese origin. I do not know Chinese, so I can not do this. Could anyone here, who can write Chinese, do this and tell us/me if there was any reply? DanielDemaret (talk) 20:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The article you linked to above makes it pretty clear that it's somewhat unlikely to really be of Chinese origin. You might try the Language Desk though if you'd like it rendered into modern Chinese. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 20:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't have time to dig through my Buddhist history books, but this sounds very much like a poor representation of a common Buddhist "curse" from a story that was popular when Buddhism spread through China. The full curse was (from memory) "May you live in interesting times and die in peaceful times." I'm simply having a great deal of trouble placing the comment with the specific story. My mind keeps trying to place it in Journey to the West, but I know that is incorrect. What I remember is a young guard for a Buddhist master being told this phrase by the Buddhist master. It isn't really a curse or insult. It is really a "I hope you get what you want" type of comment since the young guard wants to fight and become famous in battle. Perhaps sleep will help me remember more. -- kainaw™ 02:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Have never heard of it in Chinese, as with a number of other "an ancient Chinese proverb is..." expressions.

As for your original request... I wouldn't bother, given that the Chinese Wikipedia is blocked in mainland China and is these days frequented only by users from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas communities. I don't hold out much hope of you receiving a credible answer, judging from the general standard of Chinese expression (very poor) in Chinese Wikipedia articles these days. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Despite my cynicism, I've posted the question in Chinese at: zh:Wikipedia:詢問處#英语中的所谓中国谚语"May you live in interesting times". Let me know if you notice a response before anyone here does and need help reading it. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

That is very kind of you, PalaceGuard008. Thank you. :) I was sad to hear that the standard of chinese expression is poor in chinese wikipedia due to being blocked. Perhaps the question could be put with better luck at Baidu Baike? I am aware that the current article states that nobody has heard of the quote/curse, but sometimes one gets lucky. The suggestion by Kainaw looks like it thereal thing. DanielDemaret (talk) 11:55, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Pictorial difference between hieroglyphs and cuneiform scripts?

What I understand is that they both represent objects through pictures, but that would mean that the languages would essentially be the same, when clearly a distinction has been drawn between the two. What would that distinction be?--nessup (talk) 20:55, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Did you mean cuneiform from mesopotamia and Egyptian hieroglyphs, or more generally?

The languages they describe are different.

Cuneiform means roughly "wedge shaped" the script is indeed wedge shaped - of the type obtained by pressing a knife blade tip into clay, the heiroglyphs are more pictoral.

Were you asking whether the two scripts were used for both languages or what.?87.102.124.155 (talk) 21:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I was asking what differences there were at all, because initially I was under the impression that they were both pictogram-ical languages.--nessup (talk) 21:22, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The article says that cuneiform started out as 'pictographs' which has essentially the same meaning as 'heiroglyphs', unfortunately wikipedia doesn't seem to have any examples.

But here are some http://karenswhimsy.com/cuneiform.shtm http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-66036/Examples-illustrating-the-evolution-of-cuneiform-writing that show the evolution of the script.

Hang around for another expert - hopefully they'll be able to tell you if the original cuneiform 'pictographs' are the same as the heiroglyphs (or maybe you can do this yourself.)

"cuneiform" + developement or history or evolution etc seem to be good search terms, also try a picture search.87.102.124.155 (talk) 21:30, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Neither of the two are true ideographic scripts. Hieroglyphs had an ideographic origin, but quickly became more logographic, where concepts are represented by pictures, but the pictures aren't necessarily representative of the idea. That is, you can't see a picture and know exactly what it means. The changes were based on things like the rebus principle, which in English would use a picture of an eye to represent 'I', because they sound the same. Then they started using elements of alphabetic script, which added more complexity to the writing, but also a lot more flexibility, because they could write things that are difficult to show with just a picture. The same thing happened, more or less with cuneiform, but because they spoke different languages, the ideographic to logographic progression went differently, and they ended up with different analogies between words. Steewi (talk) 01:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

This question might have been better asked at the language reference desk. The systems have a somewhat similar internal logic and development -- an early origin as pictographs, the use of some pictographs to write similar-sounding words whose meanings are hard to draw (the "rebus principle"), finally resulting in a mixed system of word-signs, sound-signs, and "determinatives". However, there are some historical differeences between the two systems, such as:

1) Egyptian hieroglyphs only wrote consonant sounds, and basically completely ignored vowels (with only a few very limited partial exceptions), while cuneiform sound signs generally indicated vowels.

2) The Egyptians preserved the original picture-drawing appearance of their writing system until the end (though they did also develop less cumbersome variants for less formal use), while once the Sumerians started to change their original picture drawings to simpler shapes easily formed with stylus-wedges, they quickly abandoned most iconic aspects of their script.

Both scripts were developed to represent their respective languages, and neither attempted to write pure ideas independent of language. There have been some such attempts in modern times, like Blissymbols, but neither hieroglyphic nor cuneiform are really specific precursors to Blissymbols. AnonMoos (talk) 08:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

AnonMoos (talk) 08:51, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Jewmasters

I'm translating the article about Norwich to Norwegian, and then I came to the word Jewmasters here. The sentence is as follows: In 1144, the Jewmasters of Norwich were accused of ritual murder. Does it mean Rabbi, like the 'masters' of the Judaism, or was it just some Jews living in Norwich during the Middle Ages? Or can I translate it with 'some Jews'? Kasschei (talk) 22:18, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

This might be related to Blood libel against Jews. Edison (talk) 23:52, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It is indeed an example of the blood libel, Edison, relating specifically to the murder of the 12-year-old William of Norwich in March, 1144. Kasschei, I have never come across the term 'Jewmaster'. I can only assume that it refers to prominent members of the community. Perhaps the most apt translation would be 'some leading Jews' Clio the Muse (talk) 00:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It was actually vandalism from back in November (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Norwich&diff=174179110&oldid=173308785). I've changed it back to just "Jews". Adam Bishop (talk) 07:29, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for helping. Kasschei (talk) 09:58, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Worst military defeat

I am looking for some good examples of the positively worst defeat in a nation's history in a single battle. What I mean is the kind of defeat that extinguished the country's liberty, or its very existence, for several generations or more. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Turnvater (talk • contribs) 23:25, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Battle of Hastings, 1066. Battle of France 1940, although it was more of a 6 week series of defeats and retreats than a battle. Edison (talk) 23:56, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The Battle of Hattin in 1187 pretty much destroyed the Kingdom of Jerusalem as an effective state. The Battle of Baghdad (1258) destroyed the Abbasid caliphate. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, there is the Battle of Alcácer Quibir,-the Battle of the Three Kings-in which Portugal suffered arguably the greatest defeat in its history. The body of King Sebastian was never found, allowing Sebastianism to enter the Portuguese imagination, with the once and future king occupying the same place as King Arthur or Frederick Barbarossa, returning through the mist in the hour of greatest need. In the short term his death was to lead directly to a succession crisis and the long union of Portugal with Spain.

There is also the Battle of Kosovo, so important in Serb national memory, which still resonates today. But my personal 'favourite' has to be the 1526 Battle of Mohacs, in which Suleiman the Magnificent defeated and killed Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia. It was such a disaster for Hungary that for all future generations the response to bad luck or misfortune of any kind was "Never mind; more was lost at Mohacs field." Clio the Muse (talk) 02:21, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Check out the following articles:

• The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World
• Battles of macrohistorical importance involving invasions of Europe
• List of battles by death toll

− Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 18:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The Battle of Carthage destroyed the state and the civilization of Carthage forever. Marco polo (talk) 18:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The Battle of Fallen Timbers, 1794. The Fall of Constantinople, 1453. The fall of Babylon, 539 BCE. The fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE (which History of Jerusalem strangely states happened in 597 BCE???????) Edison (talk) 19:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The Battle of Singapore was probably the British Empire's worst ever military defeat. Although the British ended the Second World War on the winning side, the Empire never really recovered from the fallout of what happened at Singapore. Xn4 19:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

did early europeans (colonial times) in America believe America was given to them by God?

So I understnd that the Puritans fled persecution by going to America, did they believe that this land was given to them by God? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.42.52 (talk) 23:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes.--droptone (talk) 01:40, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Note that that only refers to Puritans. There were a lot of non-Puritans among Europeans in Colonial times. I doubt there's one easy generalization you could make about it. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 15:29, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Not all the English in North America shared the Puritan sense of being specially favored by God, but when they compared how the land was actually being used by the Indians with a vision of the prosperous English-settled farms and cities that might arise there in the future, only a few of them (such as John Eliot) had true serious regrets... AnonMoos (talk) 07:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

March 17

6 month old news article

Hi there, I want to know if there any news relating to law such as laws suits, changes to legislation, controversial issues in the law and current events that happened 6 months ago like it happened in February, January, December, November, October or September of 2007? The news have to deal with either in Canada or outside Canada. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Don Mustafa (talk • contribs) 00:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Ask your friendly librarian to familiarize you with Lexis-Nexis... AnonMoos (talk)

No, I don't want the lexis thing but I want is that if CBC have any archives from September 2007 through February 2008 dealing with the question of mine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Don Mustafa (talk • contribs) 14:59, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm having trouble making sense of what you want here, but Lexis-Nexis is a news and legal archive. It is pretty useful for finding out exactly the sort of thing you are asking about. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 15:16, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Do other countries have Lexis-Nexis equivalents? Julia Rossi (talk) 23:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Precedents

Is there any precedents that to deal with the case that happened in 2007 where in Yorktown, somewhere in Canada, a principal of local high school called the police to do the search for drugs and illegal weapons and the boy was arrested but he said that he was innocent and this law suit had to do deal with Canadian Charters of Rights and Freedoms, Section 8. So any precedents relating to this case?

American artist - PEAKE, CHANNING (1910-1989)

I am searching for information about American artist Channing Peake.He created many murals, and was the West Coasts equivelant to Jackson Pollack. I understand he was born in Marshall, Colorado in 1910, then moved to the San Fernando Valley, California as a young boy. Later he owned a working cattle ranch/horse breeding operation in the Santa Ynez Valley, in Santa Barbara County, California. There is a county gallery space named for him and dedicated in his honour in Santa Barbara, California. I am curious to learn more about his years abroad spent with Picasso, Braque, Hemmingway, and his art dealer, Frank Perls. Oh, and also about his works created via the W.P.A. and where they are currently located, and the condition they may be in. May I THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! in advance for any help you are able to provide. Ejr26 (talk) 02:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Here is an exhibition in San Francisco (More information here). When you have put all this together, will you create an article? Please? SaundersW (talk) 10:20, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

is this woman for real?

OPRAH: So what kinds of things? You don't have to give us the gory details, but what kinds of things went on in the family?

"RACHEL": Well, there would be rituals in which babies would be sacrificed, and you would have to, you know…

OPRAH: Whose babies?

"RACHEL": There were people who bred babies in our family. No one would know about it. A lot of people were overweight, so you couldn't tell if they were pregnant or not, or they would supposedly go away for awhile and then come back…

Why would anyone do that???? She's just making it up, right????

link —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.42.52 (talk) 02:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

As to why someone would conceivably do that, see: Human sacrifice. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps see also Satanic ritual abuse. I would wager on it being crap, especially if it was on Oprah. Adam Bishop (talk) 04:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

As I understand it, despite the hype, there has never been a single substantiated claim of Satanic ritual abuse. There's a good page on it at religioustolerance.org. --Nicknack009 (talk) 09:09, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Jair-ri Jair-ri... Julia Rossi (talk) 23:20, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Nazi questions

I have some questions on the Nazi party, state and system of justice. 1)To what extent were women involved in the Nazi party? 2)Did Jewish people offer any protest or resistance to the boycott of April 1933? 3)Concentration camps were initially set up as a way of dealing with political enemies. How did the Nazis justify retaining them as a permanent feature of their penal policy? Did they even attempt such a justification? 4)Was the Gestapo always intended as a permanent part of the police apparatus? 5)In what way did the role of the Criminal Police change after 1933? 6)What was the Nazi approach to dealing with ordinary crime, like robbery and so on, and how was this received by the German people. 7)Was there such a thing as a specifically Fascist theory of justice? Sorry so many. Tee Pot (talk) 09:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Amazing. You have heaps of homework to do. Mr.K. (talk) 13:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

On your question (1), membership of the Nazi party was open to women, but there was a separate organization for them, the Frauenschaft, led by Gertrud Scholtz-Klink. And the League of German Girls, led for eight years by Jutta Rüdiger, was separate from the Hitler Youth for boys. One of Scholtz-Klink's tasks was to sell the message of male leadership. Our article on her quotes this from one of her speeches: "The mission of woman is to minister in the home and in her profession to the needs of life from the first to last moment of man's existence." See also Kinder, Küche, Kirche, for a little on Hitler's policy of squeezing women out of the employment market, until the Second World War led to a labour shortage. Despite discrimination, a few women, like Scholtz-Klink and Leni Riefenstahl made successful careers under the Nazis. Sadly, a disproportionately high number of the Nazi women who made names for themselves did so in the concentration camps. Xn4 18:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

In fact, although she made propaganda films, Leni Riefenstahl was never a member of the Nazi Party. Malcolm XIV (talk) 19:37, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Sure, but she made no secret of her support for Hitler and the party. Of Mein Kampf she said in the 1930s "The book made a tremendous impression on me. I became a confirmed National Socialist after reading the first page. I felt a man who could write such a book would undoubtedly lead Germany. I felt very happy that such a man had come." Xn4 20:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

And in any case, she was enjoyed the favor of the party to make her films, which is the salient point here. She had close connections to top party brass, though in later years she would try to underplay that (for obvious reasons). --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 20:29, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Some ten years ago I watched - by chance - an interview with Ms Riefenstahl on German TV. It was a chilling and disturbing experience as it was obvious that the woman had not lost her fascination with some aspects and personae of the Third Reich. Even more chilling was her blatant arrogance and ignorance, a sickening caricature of the spirit of the master race. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:36, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

|Good for you. Don't forget that the reference desk is not a soapbox. And nor are you supposed to post diatribes. Flamarande (talk) 22:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

All fair enough; I did not defend Riefenstahl. But the OP was specifically asking about women in the Nazi Party. Malcolm XIV (talk) 23:57, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I, for one, am prepared to defend Leni Riefenstahl as one of the great film makers of the twentieth century, a position for which I make no apology. Clio the Muse (talk) 20:48, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Xn4, this intrigues me: "a disproportionately high number of the Nazi women who made names for themselves did so in the concentration camps" – any links or refs I can go to? Julia Rossi (talk) 23:16, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Elisabeth Lupka, Margarete Rabe, Ruth Elfriede Hildner, Herta Ehlert, Elfriede Mohnecke, Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, Helga Hegel, Luise Brunner, Erna Petermann, Wilma Fath, Wanda Klaff, Lotte Johanna Radtke, Margarete Bisaecke, Ewa Paradies, Gerda Steinhoff, Erika Bergmann, Elisabeth Becker, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Emma Zimmer, Elsa Erich, Kaethe Becker, Jane Bernigau... Xn4 23:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that, now it's off I go... Julia Rossi (talk) 00:02, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

What about Ilse Koch, the Bitch of Buchenwald? Surely she's one of the most infamous. - Nunh-huh 01:20, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Tee Pot, I’ve now had a chance to consider each of your questions and would answer as follows:

• 1) Towards the end of the Weimar Republic women became involved in the NSDAP in ever greater numbers. By the end of 1932 the NS-Frauenschaft had a membership of 110,000, which leapt to 850,000 by the end of the following year, and to 1.5 million by the end of the year after that. I addition to that, the mass-orientated Deutches Fraunenwerk (German Women's Enterprise) was set up in September 1933, as an umbrella organisation to replace all those that had been banned by the Nazis for one reason or another. By 1935 it had a membership of 2.7 million, leaping to four million by the close of 1938, by which time it had become the largest non-compulsory organisation in the country. Tim Mason, a British Marxist historian, went so far as to argue that, in terms of the sheer numbers involved, the Nazi state enjoyed a higher degree of passive and active support among women than it did among men.

• 2) There was very little Jewish people could do to resist the April boycott, but some offered protests in the most direct and meaningful way they could. One Edwin Landau, a decorated war veteran and shop owner, donned his medals and visited as many Jewish stores as he could, as well as confronting the SA men posted on his own doorstep. In Berlin, some Jewish shopkeepers posted notice of their distinguished war records on their front windows.

• 3) After the war many Germans claimed they knew nothing of the concentration camps, a highly disingenuous position. In fact, from the very outset, they were part of the Nazi system of 'popular justice', whose existence was widely known and approved of by the community at large. It was Heinrich Himmler who offered a justification for need for 'protective custody' during the early days of the regime:

The state protects the life of all citizens. Unfortunately, it is only possible to provide such protection for certain individuals, and those involved have to be taken into protective custody under the direct protection of the police. The individuals involved, who are often of the Jewish faith, have through behaviour towards the national Germany, such as through offending nationalist feelings, and so on, made themselves so unloved among the people, that they would be exposed to the anger of the people unless the police stepped in.

Less than a week later he gave instructions to open a new camp at Dachau to 'protect' these social outcasts.

• 4) To begin with the Gestapo was set up on the initiative of Herman Göring, in his capacity as Prussian Minister of the Interior, as part of the ongoing struggle against the Communists. By September 1933, by which time what was left of the Communist movement had been driven underground, brief consideration was given the disbandment of the new organisation, a measure even pressed for in sections of the press. However, by that time, it had become far too important part of the whole police apparatus.

• 5) The Criminal Police-the Kripo-acquired a much more direct political role, with a strong degree of overlap with the Gestapo. They were released from all of the restraint under which they operated in the Weimar years, acting more and more as they saw fit.

• 6) First and foremost, they responded to 'ordinary crime' by enforcing existing laws with ever greater vigour. It was all conducted in the kind of populist language designed to appeal to the wider German community. In 1933 Admiral von Levetzow, head of the Berlin police, called on his force to fight for "law and order, for decency, for discipline and for morality." It all went down very well by people tired of crime and disorder. Years later when one woman fondly recalled the years of the Third Reich she claimed that even thieves were shot, so that thereafter "nobody took anything that belonged to anyone else."

• 7) Yes, there was, one that reversed the precepts of traditional legal systems. Equality before the law, the very heart of a liberal legal system, was effectively abolished. The Nazi system favoured speedy trials with minimal protection for the accused. In place of an old system of law that favoured, in their view, the 'security of the criminal', the chief thrust of the new law was aimed at 'securing the community of the people.' Citizens were told that the liberal principle of 'no crime without a law' had been replaced by 'no crime without a punishment.'

For all of these issues, and others along the same lines, I would strongly recommend that you read Backing Hitler by Robert Gellately. Clio the Muse (talk) 20:48, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The Founding Fathers and religion

While driving home yesterday, I found myself listening to Speaking of Faith. They were talking to Steven Waldman and some of the stuff was interesting. What made me get all bubbly was when they talked about the full interview. Apparently parts had been edited out for the show which talked about how the Founding Fathers of the U.S. objected to Roman Catholicism. I'm paraphrasing here since I can't remember the exact wording they used. I'd like to download the whole interview and listen to it but won't have time for a few days to do so. So are there any articles which might reference what they might be referring to? I can read WP at work but listening to an MP3 of the interview can't be done until the weekend. Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 10:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

At the bottom of this page is a link to listen to the full interview in Quicktime. I don't know if it will still be there at the weekend, though. SaundersW (talk) 11:21, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Anti-Catholicism in the United States--droptone (talk) 12:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The Founding Fathers were largely Deists—not only Protestants, but Protestants who were pretty unorthodox to begin with, who had purposefully rejected much of the structure of traditional organized religion. That they would have found the Catholic Church suspicious at the very least is not surprising—the Catholic Church was a standard foe of Enlightenment thinkers, as it stood for pretty much the opposite of everything they did (at least, that's how they saw it). It was as much a political power as well as an intellectual and religious one; it was a centralized, hierarchical organization that traditionally aligned itself with monarchies and preached such anti-Enlightenment ideals as faith, dogma, miracles, etc. No big surprise that they weren't fans of it, to say the least. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 15:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, all! I'll check out the article in the next couple nights. The Quicktime link is also no use to me at work. Basically there isn't any easy way to get 'net audio, MP3 or Quicktime, in the cleanroom. Dismas|^(talk) 01:47, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I researched this last year. The records of the ratifying conventions in the individual states shed light on the Establishment Clause, religious oaths, and no religious test for public office clauses. Speakers address their fear of Roman Catholicism openly. Reading the debates, I concluded that in their world-view Roman Catholics were not truly fellow Christians. No condemnation is uttered.Catholics are considered alien along with Jews and Moslems. It was not expected in most states that Roman Catholics would run for public office. The religious clauses were not discussed and debated as much as we would imagine. 75Janice (talk) 03:47, 18 March 2008 (UTC)75Janice

Marsh Creek Springs, California

what's the history of this place? what are the borders? what is the population? where are the census figures? when was it founded? who runs it? what is it? where can i find information about it?W-i-k-i-l-o-v-e-r-1-7 (talk) 10:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Your best bet might be to contact the Contra Costa County Historical Society. Corvus cornix_talk 16:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Or call the number on this page: http://www.oldmarshcreeksprings.net/ . To see where it is, click the globe icon on the wiki page. --169.230.94.28 (talk) 16:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

What if the south had won?

What if the south had won the American Civil War? I know this was probably impossible by military means. But what if, say, George McClellan had won the 1864 presidential election and concluded a peace because of general war weariness in the north? What is likely to have happened in the long term if the CSA and the USA became entirely separate republics? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yes, I believe it (talk • contribs) 11:39, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It says at the top of the page: Do not start debates. This question does not fall within the remit of a Reference Desk.

That said, you might like to brush up on what Saint Augustine said on the folly of speculating about what did not happen. 80.254.147.52 (talk) 13:55, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

This is a pretty common subject of alternate history fiction. The article mentions a few novels that use the South winning the war as a jumping off point. Recury (talk) 14:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

• Augustine of Hippo´s De Civitate Dei is a compendium of mystical speculation.
• Speculation is the essence of human intellectual development.
• As to your question relating to an alternative history I hope it will be answered - in the context of some hypothetical reality - by qualified historians. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Your question could be partly answered by looking at what the South hoped to retain and/or gain by fighting in the first place. Origins of the American Civil War outlines the culture and economy of the South with its investment in secession, slavery and white racism, high agriculture and export economy with low or slow industrialisation, a share in federal taxes for development maybe, a repeal of the Tariff of Abominations say, sustained kinship and racist culture. But when you get to that point it looks like things would have changed from the inside pretty well inevitably by outside intellectuals, economic pressure, consciousness raising and one of the things they feared, slave rebellions. Julia Rossi (talk) 22:36, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Have to laugh about St Augustine who would have had plenty to speculate about on the paths taken and not taken – shelving his mistress and child was one of them. Oouch. Clever to blame the pagans, turn celibate, get promoted and get published. Julia Rossi (talk) 23:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Ask Harry Turtledove#The Southern Victory or Timeline-191 Series. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The answer is simple: Harry Turtledove would have written novels about what would have happened if the North had won the war. --Anonymous, 01:51 UTC, March 18, 2008.

Winston Churchill wrote an essay called "If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg". See Alternate history#Early 20th century and the era of the pulps. Corvus cornix_talk 17:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

An interesting question, which really does not have to be answered by a complete 'alternative reality', the usual problem with counter-factual history. The simplest thing is to project forward already existing features of the economic and political system of the North and South.

The North was in the early stages of an industrial revolution, most likely carried forward with ever greater momentum, freed from the problems and economic costs of Reconstruction. The South would have maintained its peculiar institution, which would have acted as an even greater drag on an economy ruined by war. Huge amounts of credit would have been required to restore a ruined infrastructure and build a new shipping fleet to carry cotton to Europe. Could this have been achieved in the short term? Possibly, but only with substantial foreign help for a country with virtually no capital.

For the black people of the South the North, now free in absolute, not just relative terms, would have been a greater attraction than it was before, with no more Fugitive Slave Act or the possibility of a new Dred Scot decision. Presumably the states of the upper South would have to have maintained a strong militia presence to try to prevent the exodus. Would the states of the lower South have been prepared to meet a share of the financial burden involved? Well, we know that even during the war there had been strong centrifugal forces in the Confederacy, with people like Joseph E. Brown of Georgia taking an extreme view of States Rights. These pressures are likely to have increased with peace.

We also have to assume that all of the communities of the South would have settled down to independence based on secession, when over large parts of the Confederacy many were fighting against the whole process, and just as many in the Union Army. It is possible, then, that the new CSA would have faced its own prolonged internal struggle. At the very least, it is likely to have faced a guerrilla war, with Southern dissidents supported by Northern abolitionists, unhappy with the outcome of the war. This would have weakened its tired economy still further.

Touching on abolitionism, the end of the war would have left many in the north unsatisfied, people who are likely to have made the most of border clashes that are likely to have followed if the black exodus had achieved high, possibly unsupportable levels. Once the North had gathered its breath, and greatly strengthened its industrial base, a new war might have followed.

Would the South have carried slavery into the twentieth century? It seems inconceivable, and the institution is likely to have been abolished before the end of the nineteenth, possibly by 1889, the same time it went in Brazil. But how was the South, backward and weak, to afford the huge levels of compensation that would have been necessary without a strong federal reserve? Possibly by introducing the kind of redemption payments which allowed the Tsars to 'free' the serfs. In other words, by mortgaging the future and placing an intolerable financial burden on the poorest sections of the community. Hence more migration; hence an even weaker economy

Could the Confederacy have made it to the twentieth century? No, probably not; or, if it did, as a weak and economically dependant nation. Clio the Muse (talk) 21:56, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America --Nricardo (talk) 01:55, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, how I abhor alternative history fiction. Better to understand the events that created our present situation than wondering what else they could have begotten. bibliomaniac15 Midway upon life's journey... 02:01, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I love intellectual sports and challenges of all kinds; and this one is as good as any other. Besides, there is a world of difference between reasoned speculation-which forms part of most historical writing-and 'alternate history fictions.' Clio the Muse (talk) 02:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Edward I and the Edict of Expulsion

In your page on Edward I of England there is a section on the 1290 expulsion of the Jews. Some possible reasons are given for King Edward's decision, though nothing very specific. I would be grateful for any info on the reasons behind the precise timing of this measure. Thanks. Dora Kaplan (talk) 13:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

In truth, no-one really knows, although plenty speculate. Our article dismisses the usury angle because there was little for the crown to gain, but I think there's a good chance it may be relevant, particularly from the angle of baronial pressure for expulsion of those who were owed substantial moneys. Edward needed to keep his barons on-side and he'd rather they paid him any available cash to finance his ambitious wars, than any Jewish money-lenders. But, I'm speculating. The timing is odd, as it doesn't really coincide with any time of political weakness, but perhaps it's in an unusual lull in foreign martial exploits, so Edward was able to turn his attention to domestic affairs for once? --Dweller (talk) 15:50, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, we do know quite a lot about the precise timing of the Edict of Expulsion: the Wikipedia article here has clearly not yet caught up with the latest scholarship on the subject. Certainly Edward's decision was based on a long tradition of anti-Semitism, and the precedent of more limited expulsion, including one initiated by Simon de Montfort, who had expelled the Jews from Leicester early in his career. But in 1290 Edward needed money, which could only be obtained by a new Parliamentary grant of taxation. When Parliament was assembled, the knights of the shires demanded the expulsion of the Jews as a condition of such a grant. And so it followed. The measure was so popular that Edward received the biggest tax grant of the Middle Ages. Clio the Muse (talk) 21:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

US and PLA Marines

on the page QBZ-95, there are two pictures showing chinese and american Marines conducting joint exercises/meeting up. I was not aware that the american and chinese militaries had a relationship. Where can I find out more about this? --AtTheAbyss (talk) 13:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Try this search http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=us+sino+military+coop&meta= first two links look directly related to what you ask.87.102.13.144 (talk) 15:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I was hoping for something with less rhetoric, but they were useful nonetheless. Thanks. --AtTheAbyss (talk) 12:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Bankruptcy of mutual fund company: what happens to the fund?

This question is about U.S. law. Suppose you invest in a mutual fund that is administered by some large mutual fund company. Then the company goes bankrupt. Will you get your investments back, or are they treated as assets of the company and distributed among all the company's creditors in the normal course of the bankruptcy proceedings?

A different way to phrase the question: is the money you give to a mutual fund still your money (and therefore immediately falls back to you if the company folds) or is it considered the company's money (and therefore you are just one in a long line of creditors in case of bankruptcy)?

And a third way to get at the same thing: is the mutual fund legally separate from the mutual fund company? In other words, is it possible for the company to go bankrupt (e.g. because of an accounting scandal, or because they speculated unwisely with some of their money [not with the mutual fund money], or because they built too expensive a headquarters building etc.) even though the fund itself is still perfectly healthy (since the underlying securities haven't lost any value)?

[I already know that mutual fund companies are required to carry insurance for the case that an employee runs away with the mutual fund money, but that's not the case I'm interested in. I'm also not interested in the case of the mutual fund shares losing value because the underlying securities lose value.]

Thanks, AxelBoldt (talk) 19:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The assets of the mutual fund are owned by a trust company, which administers the fund on behalf of its investors. The trust company appoints a fund manager to manage those assets and a custodian to hold the assets. The fund's assets are quite separate from the assets of the fund manager, and will not be lost if the fund manager goes into liquidation. However, there is, in general, no guarantee that investors will get back as much as they invested in the fund, because the value of the fund's assets may fall due to poor fund management or general market conditions. In an extreme case it is possible that the fund itself may become insolvent, and would have to be wound up. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! In the case of a mutual fund of Vanguard or Fidelity, say, what role do Fidelity and Vanguard play? Are they the trust company, the fund manager or the custodian? And who plays the other roles? AxelBoldt (talk) 17:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Greatest Knight

I've seen it in the article on Gawain refer to him as the Greatest Knight, saying that he was one of few. Who are the others? Thank you in advance. 99.226.26.154 (talk) 20:59, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The Black Knight obviously БοņёŠɓɤĭĠ₳₯є 21:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Less obviously, there is the Mourning after the Knight Before. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Sir Alec Guinness, a knight twice over. ObiterDicta ( pleadings • errata • appeals ) 22:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Sir Ninian Stephen is a knight 5 times over. Other mere mortals may have more than 5. Of royalty, the Duke of Windsor had 10 knighthoods (the article lists 8 of them, but I believe he was also a GCMG and a GBE). -- JackofOz (talk) 02:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Welcome OP, the other knights are Galahad, Gawain, Lancelot and Percival. Bit like the best 007 contenders with a bit of Jesus thrown in. Julia Rossi (talk) 23:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

From Sir Ector de Maris's lament for his brother Lancelot in Malory's Morte d'Arthur:

“ Ah, Launcelot, he said, thou wert head of all Christian knights, and now, I dare say, said Sir Ector, thou, Sir Launcelot, there thou liest, that thou wert never matched of earthly knight's hand; and thou wert the courteoust knight that ever bare shield; and thou wert the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrad horse, and thou wert the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman; and thou wert the kindest man that ever struck with sword; and thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights; and thou wert the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest. ”

Xn4 23:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Basically what happened was this: Gawain was the original "greatest knight" of the Round Table (besides Arthur). Over the centuries, the story developed and characters were added to it. Many characters were established as "great knights" because they defeated Gawain in combat. He was like a right of passage. Lancelot, Lamorak, Galahad, and Percy beat him. It was like whenever the new guy showed up and bragged he was good he had to fight Gawain to prove it. Wrad (talk) 02:22, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

See also the Nine Worthies. Or people like Enguerrand VII of Coucy, or Jean Boucicaut. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Or even Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, "the knight without fear and without reproach". (But this is all as admittedly subjective as arguing over who the "greatest general" was.) Kirill 04:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

99.226, I assume, from the form of your question, that it is only fictitious knights that you are interested in, though others have offered you some real examples. On the basis of that assumption I will hold off from mentioning the greatest of all the Medieval knights! Clio the Muse (talk) 23:02, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Who "was blessed with a brain too small to impede the natural vigour of a big, powerful and tireless physique"?[3]—eric 23:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke. Or Warwick the Kingmaker? --Major Bonkers (talk) 13:48, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Gold ownership

Is there any information about the amount of gold available in each country? I'm talking about actual gold owned by people or the government, not ore. Regards, deeptrivia (talk) 21:44, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Official gold reserves gives a list of bank holdings. I doubt if numbers on private ownerships are available, as it would negate the purpose. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

What purpose? deeptrivia (talk) 00:16, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Any National banks selling gold bullions?

Is there any new information if national banks are taking advantage of the current high price of gold to sell gold reserves? I mean with Nixon the link between gold and currency was severed (in the major world economies at least). It would make a lot sense to sell gold reserves right now as the price is reaching record levels. Flamarande (talk) 22:30, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

• In what currency would they sell it ?
• Who would buy it ?

--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Any, except the US Dollar. I'm speaking of national banks who have little interest in keeping gold at all.

If the price is getting higher it is a signal that the demand for gold is increasing a lot in the first place (I hope you know of the the theory of "Supply and demand" and that prices usually rise when the demand increases). I suppose that plenty of ppl are buying and investing in gold because of the fear of the economic recession. Flamarande (talk) 22:59, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Yours is a very good question indeed, Flamarande. Bear in mind the following: national banks, though exhibit budgets and administer financial goods, have other goals than making profits out of circumstancial situations. What is more, gold reserves are meant to be stocked in order to back the financial system (e.g. to somehow act as a means of sustain of money, though not completely as in the times of the gold standard). In such a particular state of affairs like the current one, it may be not a good idea to sell an important amount of gold reserves. Pallida  Mors 03:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

national banks would be crazy not to hoard gold, because the us economy is the engine for the world's -- if the us had a depression, the whole world would feel it. Possibly EVERY currency would plummet in value, in the worst case. On the other hand, if banks have a big suprplus of gold then maybe now is a good time to sell off a little of it, if they need liquidity for whatever reason. IANAE —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.9.122 (talk) 22:03, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The thing is, gold isn't stable either. It's just as volatile as any other currency, because it's based on demand and supply. Hoarding gold artificially inflates the price, but the minute you try to use it as a primary currency, the gold enters the global economy and devalues as it's traded more and more. -- Kesh (talk) 01:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

March 18

Tahitian surfer with same last name

Is Tahitian surfer Manoa Drollet in any way related to the unfortunate Dag Drollet?72.229.136.18 (talk) 01:52, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah the Dag Droll-ay connection... Manoa doesn't mention any names here[4] but can be contacted via Tahiti Surf Club. Julia Rossi (talk) 02:29, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Laundering money

People who want to launder money or just want to avoid paying income or sales tax do something quite interesting I never thought of. Lets say you owe a person $950,000 for drug/prostitution deals to keep your clients happy and they expect payment. Instead of paying them in cash you build a house or office or buy a diamond broach or acquire land or whatever appraised at $950,000. If you "sell" the property to them no one can require you to show that the buyer actually paid. Transfer of title can be made without a corresponding deposit in your bank account that can be tracked and the property becomes a payment made only to appear as a sale. Does everyone except bureaucrats think that no one is going to transfer title without being paid know that this is how to work the system or how the system works? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.15.115 (talk) 02:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

It would be trivial to see if the person receiving the title paid anything close to market value for the item by checking their bank accounts, which may be why you do not hear about this sort of transaction that much. A much more common method is to buy something at market value and sell to the person you want to benefit at well-below market rates.--droptone (talk) 11:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately the law does not require that the trail leading up to any particular transaction be verified. In fact doing so under current law is considered an act of privacy invasion even possibly under a court order. The reason you do not hear about this all the time is because it is done all the time and is very easy to do and to get away with doing. Designating a transaction as a gift is by far the more common means in use to cover a discrepancy in price. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.15.115 (talk) 20:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I have examined many deeds for houses or land in the U.S. which described the property and said it was sold for "$1 and other considerations" without anywhere stating the total price. The "other consideration" could have been an unrecorded lease on some other property, or it could have been personal property, or it could have been art or bearer bonds. There is more to "consideration" than money in bank accounts. Edison (talk) 14:04, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

An explanation of the Jews

Recently I overheard someone use the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey to explain what happened to the Jews. The idea goes like this: The Jews having escaped Egypt and taking with them their belief of being God’s chosen people and incapable of sin or imperfection (some Jews at least) took on the personal attitude of self-perfection about themselves identical to the computer in the movie named HAL. Although believing themselves to be perfect or to have reached a state of perfection they failed to see anything they did wrong not as being the result of their own error but rather as the result of an error made by someone else. The problem being that other reasonable or logical beings faced with the absolute facts reached the opposite conclusion. Eventually this awareness of self deception was conveyed to a Jew (Jesus Christ) who was one of their own who realized the need to convey this knowledge to his fellow Jews with the idea that the only way he might convince them of his sincerity was to sacrifice his life.. The comparison deviates here somewhat in that the self sacrifice of Jesus’ life did not succeed and the Jews continued to see themselves as incapable of wrong doing or sin (error). The Holocaust then was the attempt to shut the Jews down long enough for them to go through a reset and perhaps then come to realize that they are in fact capable of error and need to question themselves based on the idea that they are not incapable of error and are not perfect despite the conflicting expectation of anyone told they are on a special mission as a child of God. Having heard this I am now curious as to whether the Jews actually believe themselves to be perfect or more perfect than or superior to others in the sense that they are in fact acting as the children of God under God’s direction? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.15.115 (talk) 05:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I can tell you that your friend is completely ignorant of the Bible and of Jewish history. If you read the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), you'll find it's full of sins that the Jews committed, from the Golden Calf to the idolotry of Solomon's wives to the rejection of the prophets like Jeremiah. Clearly, by adopting the books of the Hebrew Bible as their holy text, the Jews were acknowledging their own failings. The Bible also makes it clear that many of the bad things that happened to the Jews, such as the scattering of the Ten Tribes and the Babylonian Captivity, were due to their own sins rather than to "an error made by someone else." A Talmud story says that the Messiah will come only when (the people of) Israel repent for their sins and heed the voice of God. So undoubtedly, Jews are and have always been very attuned to their own sins and think themselves far from perfect. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 08:14, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

...and is part of the acknowledgment of their own imperfection the believe that God must absolutely conform to their reading of the Scriptures and in the event of God's assessment that His covenant with them had been broken could not become flesh and sacrifice that flesh as the final effort to save them from the consequences of their own undoing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.15.115 (talk) 18:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Your last question appears not to be a question but rather a diatribe or an attempt to start a debate on Jesus. Both diatribes and debates are improper for the reference desk, as the instructions above specify. There are many religion forums on the Internet where you can post such material. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:18, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Quite the contrary. However, if the Wikipedia reference desk is unable to provide unbiased clarification for the purpose of resolution in support of universal comprehension, enlightenment and understanding then entering into a debate here would be a bit like arguing with HAL. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.15.115 (talk) 02:35, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

What are you doing ,Dave?hotclaws 14:23, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Easily half of Judaism is about how much sin and imperfection Jews have and how angry God is on account of it. Honestly your friend doesn't know a thing about Judaism. Throwing in misc. junk about Jesus (which shows a total lack of knowledge of the New Testament) plus a dubious literary interpretation of the Holocaust (which seems to make it sound almost necessary or beneficial!!) really tops the cake. Your friend, and probably you too, if you entertained this nonsense, have a great depth of ignorance on these subjects. If you'd like to be pointed to some resources that would give a better understanding, I'm sure we can do that on here, but somehow I suspect you're already self-satisfied with your goofy answer because it plays to some other desires you have. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 16:51, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

This isn't the only interpretation I have heard. In another one HAL is characterized instead as the Devil who rebels against God. In another the idea is that HAL is a symbol of God being an imperfect creation of man rather than the other way around. Perhaps you have me confused with a Jehovah's Witness. If you have other resources as to what HAL might symbolize, please refer away. If you have any other resources as to what God might symbolize, likewise refer away. Same for Jesus and the Jews since you are partly right, I have no idea of my own. 71.100.15.115 (talk) 08:50, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

LOL! Clio the Muse (talk) 02:32, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Technical colleges

What are the advantages of attending a technical college? Also what are the career opportunities you may find? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.137.236.111 (talk) 06:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Practical skills? Mo practical less theory. Shorter time scale for graduation. Mo employability through recognised qualifications, trade and other certificates etc, less ...? Talking to a career counsellor at any tech college would help. Julia Rossi (talk) 07:54, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Mo? Odd argot. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Like "ho'" I suppose. ៛ Bielle (talk) 17:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Do I hear tut-tutting? No Bielle, not like ho. I was rushing at the time. Feel free to answer the OP's question anytime, cheers Julia Rossi (talk) 22:33, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

"Tut-tutting"? Not from me. Don't have a licence to drive one, for a start. I was just following Tagishsimon's comment with an example of a similar construction. It is similar, and thus not as odd an "argot" as he/she suggested, isn't it? I feel as if I am missing a point here. You have done a fine job in answering the question. Ms Ross; I have nothing more I could possibly add. ៛ Bielle (talk) 23:11, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

mo is the adjective whose comparative is more, of course. —Tamfang (talk) 03:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

global warming

moved to science desk FiggyBee (talk) 07:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC) what is the meaning of figgybee meanwhile —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.126.151 (talk) 13:54, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

FiggyBee is a banana bender from Down Under. On her/his user page s/he writes: "My username is a reference to acalolepta vastator, the Fig Longicorn Beetle." --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 01:36, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Need help finding melody

Hi, I am looking for a melody that is stuck in my head. I have already gone to Musipedia and used the various searches (keyboard, contour, rhythm, etc.) but have no luck. I am not good at music. I experimented with different things on the keyboard and after a while I put together something that sounds vaguely like it, although it is probably off key and wrong in many places (this is what was entered on the keyboard search field, and click play to hear it):

b''4. a''4. g''4 f''4 d''4 c''2 d''4 f''8 e''8 f''4. d''4 c''8 d''8 c''4 a'2 b''4. a''4. g''4 f''4 d''4 c''2 d''4 f''8 e''8 f''4. d''4 c''8 b'8 c''4 d''4 

If anyone has any ideas I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks, --75.7.61.2 (talk) 08:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[Irish accent] Before a, for -- gee -- for Ef$@*!idy -- foresee to the four effate afore! Before sea ate the ate sea, for -- aye -- too before! Aye, for! Gee, for afore the foresee to the fore for 88-F, for... . The foresee ate? Be ate, see! -- For the fore!

Makes perfect sense to me. I'm selling translations into English for $1,000 a pop, if anyone's interested.  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 10:17, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I hear (an imperfect rendering of) a well-known melody. Unfortunately I don't know where it is from, but I'm really amazed no one has identified it. It is in particular the following phrase (which I've slightly modified):

d''4 f''8 e''8 f''4. d''8 c''8 d''8 c''4 a'2

that triggers a sense of recognition.  --Lambiam 22:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Love is Blue? --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 09:14, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

First World War in Boys' Books (British)

I'm looking for information and leads on how the First World war was depicted in literature aimed at British boys in the early part of the twentieth century. I'm particularly interested in the way in which writers and publishers attempted to maintain a heroic illusion in the face of the realities of total war. Hope someone can help. Captain Wentworth (talk) 09:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I can't help with the early part of the 20th century, but I can tell you that boys' annuals in the 60s and 70s were maintaining a heroic illusion in their telling of 1st and 2nd world war stories. It's easy really: you just don't mention the pathetic bits and dwell on tales of daring do. All of this was helped by the reluctance of those who came back from the trenches to talk about it. Skittle (talk) 13:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Your starting point for this is definitely Biggles, though I would imagine you've found him already. He may be a special case as he started in adult books (I mean books aimed at adults, not adult literature) and became a boys character later. But he, and W.E. Johns other characters might get you started. DJ Clayworth (talk) 14:54, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I think, Captain Wentworth, that you should begin by trying to understand the general structure of boy's fiction at the time, a genre that was remarkably resistant to change. In essence the parameters had been set even before the Great War, in the kind of fiction offered by the likes of G A Henty, Herbert Strang, Percy F. Westerman and Robert Leighton. You will also find the kind of themes these authors preferred-tales of individual heroism against a late imperial setting-in weeklies like The Boy's Own Paper (which my father remembers with some fondness!), Pluck and The Boy's Friend. The atmosphere and semiotics of these publications, and others in a similar vein, is wonderfully captured by George Orwell in his essay Boy's Weeklies.

So, the generation of 1914 grew up against the kind of plucky and chivalric sentiment expressed by Henry Newbolt in Vitaï Lampada, with war depicted in a uniquely English way as a game of cricket;

The sand of the desert is sodden red-

Red with the wreck of the square that broke

The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,

And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.

The river of death has brimmed its banks,

And England's far, and Honour a name,

But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks-

"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

For some the actual experience of war, the unheroic ugliness of the whole thing, did nothing to moderate these fictional depictions. In 1915 Captain F. S. Brereton published With French at the Front, whose hero, Jim Fletcher, could have leaped straight out of the pages of Henty. He is killed in a German attack, calling on his men to fight 'for the sake of old England.' Inspired by his example the Tommies fight on "the thin khaki line of heroes, the cool, calm, cherry sons of Empire", beating back the Hun. It's romantic; it's glorious: it's a lie.

Brereton went on treating the war through a prism of rosy and heroic optimism. In his 1917 novel, Under Haig in Flanders, he paints a nice and cosy picture of life at the front, where the Tommies feed on "frizzling bacon, not to be beaten anywhere, bread that might have graced the table of a Ritz hotel, and jam that would have been the envy of any housewife." He goes on to depict the Battle of the Somme, with the great blood-letting of 1 July, one of the worst days in British military history, described as a "triumph for the Allies and a bitter blow to our ruthless enemy."

This kind of literature, and much more besides, clearly has a propaganda purpose, intended to attract more and more young men to the front with a promise of high adventure. The reality must have been truly shocking. But even after the war, when no further purpose was served by these fairy tales, the genre continued, largely unaffected by the revelations of Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Brereton's novels remained in print throughout the inter-war period, and were popular as school and Sunday school prizes.

If you want to take this further I would suggest A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture by Samuel Hynes (Pimlico, 1992). Clio the Muse (talk) 00:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Buster Keation - related to Diane or Michael?

Are either Michael Keaton or Diane Keaton related to Buster Keaton? I know that both can't be as the article says they are not related to eachother. -- Q Chris (talk) 10:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, Michael Keaton's name is actually Michael Douglas, so no; Diane Keaton doesn't seem to be related to him (she actually changed her name too, but Keaton was her mother's last name, so it's still possible I suppose). Adam Bishop (talk) 10:33, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I have found an unverified "quiz answer"[5] saying : "the relationship is the brother to the mother of Diane Keaton". -- Q Chris (talk) 11:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't find that mentioned anywhere else, and Buster Keaton's sister's name was Louise, whereas Diane Keaton's mother's name was Dorothy. FiggyBee (talk) 12:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Carr, Thompson, and Hobsbawm

This book review quotes the editor of the book as saying, "anything that has been condemned by Carr, Thompson and Hobsbawm must have something to recommend it." I know who Hobsbawm is, but was wondering who the author of the quote might have been referring to by 'Carr' and 'Thompson'. These two, perhaps? --superioridad ^(discusión) 12:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

according to this essay, "Some professional historians have gone as far as to dismiss counterfactualism as, in the case of E.H. Carr, a “parlour game” and a “red herring.”2 Indeed, E.P. Thompson went as far as to condemn what he called “counterfactual fictions” as “Geschichtswissenschlopff, unhistorical shit.”3" (2 E.H. Carr “What is History?” (1961)3 E.P. Thompson “The Poverty of Theory” (1978)) SaundersW (talk) 13:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, those are the two. They are two of the best-known British historians (even a lazy American like me is well-acquainted with their works). Carr in particular, in his What is History?, makes quite a show of how silly some forms of counterfactual history are, like the idea that if Trotsky had not had a cold then Stalin would have never taken power, etc. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 15:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

It might also interest you to know, superioridad, that the author of the book in question, Andrew Roberts, comes from an altogether different tradition from the 'three witches' of British Marxist academic history. His contempt for them is altogether more broadly based, going well-beyond their negative views on counter-factual history! Clio the Muse (talk) 00:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Russian Jews in London

Years ago, when I was growing up in London's East-End, my great-grandmother told me about the generally hostile reception received by Jewish refugees fleeing the pogroms in Russia towards the end of the nineteenth century. I've been looking around here for any more details on this, though I can find little beyond a brief article on the Aliens Act of 1905. It would seem clear that there was widespread resentment against these Jewish asylum seekers, just as there is often resentment against other asylum seekers today. Does anyone know any more, particularly on how politicians reacted to popular pressure? Dora Kaplan (talk) 13:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The arrival of large groups of destitute people, concentrated in already poor and overcrowded areas of the East-End, caused a rather unpleasant moral panic, Dora, one focused on fears for the racial purity of the nation. In 1904, Howard Vincent, the MP for Sheffield Central, wrote "While 260,000 people emigrated from the United Kingdom last year, their places were taken by no less than 82,000 of the scum of Europe." Arnold White, a leading eugenicist and racial theorist, considered most of the new arrivals in London to be 'diseased and destitute, a threat to British workers' While admitting that the Russian excesses had been 'regrettable', he said that this was based on a recognition by Russian statesmen that their country was threatened by a Jewish takeover. White was an influential figure, whose views of the Jews as diseased-ridden criminals, on the one hand, and exploitative international financiers, on the other, were widely disseminated. He included none other than Lord Salisbury, leader of the Conservative Party and three-times Prime Minister, among his correspondents.

It was Salisbury, while in opposition, who introduced a Bill in the House of Lords, calling for the expulsion of aliens, who 'threatened the peace and tranquility of the realm.' Destitute aliens, like those who were coming to the East-End, were also to be kept out.

In 1900, during the Khaki election, the anti-immigration East London Observer noted "Surely for Londoners, the election should have one object and that above all party politics. I refer to the presence in their midst of these foreign Jews." The cause was taken up by William Evans-Gordon, soldier, author and Member of Parliament. He co-operated closely with the British Brothers League in having a Royal Commission on immigration set, to which he was appointed chairman. It was as a result of this agitation that the Aliens Act 1905 was finally passed, though, in the event, it was far less restrictive than Evans-Gordon and his supporters would have liked.

It might also interest you to note that it was against this background that Bram Stoker's Dracula made its appearance, carrying themes of pollution by blood and disease, carried to England from Eastern Europe, giving it a particular relevance for the debates of the day. Clio the Muse (talk) 01:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

What's the geographic centre of Chinese politics?

Or, in other words, where does the Politburo meet? What's the Chinese equivalent of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.? AlmostCrimes (talk) 13:39, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Zhongnanhai. — Kpalion^(talk) 20:03, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Not sure...

...that this is the appropriate place for this question but it is the most likely (i think) to give me a helpful response. I work at a living history museum (pioneer village..though we eschew that title). We need the grass to look like it has been scythed but we don't have the manpower to scythe it all. We have used sickle bar mowers in the past BUT there are 2 problems: 1) the most reliable models/designs don't give us the uneven look that is historically accurate. 2) the brands & models we've used to date, break down too quickly.

Grazing animals might be ideal but would not have been tolerated in the front lawns of the more prominent families.

Any ideas/help would be most appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.226.90.6 (talk) 15:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Advertise for volunteers - and give them a cookie when they've finished. Maybe put up an advert in a local college - those places are full of people with lots of energy and time.87.102.47.176 (talk) 16:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Also you could get an uneven finish using strimmers see String trimmer87.102.47.176 (talk) 16:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Why would grazing animals be a problem for the "more prominent" families? If they were good enough for the President of the United States? — Michael J 21:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The string trimmer ( I call it a whipper snipper) mentioned above also has the added advantage of giving a scythe like pattern to the grass, as the operator does swing it from side to side in a fairly identical fashion and posture, using the pelvis as a fulcrum.

It is certainly faster (and much cheaper) than using a scythe but presumably slower than the sickle bar mowers. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:20, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Grazing animals have the mild disadvantage of depositing the metabolistic left overs of digested grass. Some visitors may turn up their noses at historical verism of such olfactory accuracy. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:32, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Expanses of scythed grass with no grazing animals in sight are anachronistic anyway. In what general region is this recreation? --Wetman (talk) 07:19, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

You could scythe the front lawns of the "prominent families" houses only; acquire sheep/geese/etc. for everywhere else. WikiJedits (talk) 13:25, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

You could try different sorts of scythes and, especially, techniques. The Scythe Connection has photos of seven year old girls scything wide strips of grass with ergonomic efficiency. BrainyBabe (talk) 12:00, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Iran

I recently read some where, i have forgotten where, but, In Iran you can have gender reasignment surgery, but being homosexual is punishable by death, there fore my question is, before one goes for the op, surely one is gay, and therefore cant get it done because. some one please explain this. Am i stupid, misinformed or is there something I am missing, oh, and I fully support gay rights as a straigh dude. just thought that should be pointed out. Cheers and Beers —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.115.175.247 (talk) 15:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it depends on definitions. Most gays don't want gender reassignment, and people who want gender reassignment see themselves as "born in the wrong body" rather than gay. Also, I don't know about Iran but in most countries with homosexuality laws the law was against homosexual acts, so a non-practising homosexual would be OK. -- Q Chris (talk) 15:57, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The assumption that one who chooses gender reassignment surgery is gay is the problem. There is some discussion of this in the gender terminology section of the transsexualism article. --LarryMac | Talk 16:04, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The timing of your question suggests you are referring to the BBC TV program "Transexuals in Iran" which aired on BBC 2 on Monday 25th February 2008 at 9pm, or to stories in other media ancilliary to that, such as this BBC radio 4 Woman's Hour segment. From memory, one interviewee said that as Iran is a conservative society, those in charge like things black-and-white; that men should fulfil a traditional male role, women likewise, and that a man+woman+kids family is the only valid domestic configuration. Homosexuality challenges this structure, as it implies a more complex and varied social unit: the resulting grey-areas vex the conservatives. So the government actively promotes (and pays toward) gender reassignment surgery - it's an effort to make the vexing homosexual conform to that rigid nuclear family template. It also smacks a bit of expediency in the face of rigid religious rule - if the prevailing dogma is that man+man=bad, but doesn't say that men can't become women, then changing one man in the unit into a woman "fixes" the problem in a theologically compliant way. The program also featured an interview with a gay Iranian man who said he was pressured into having the surgery; I believe the program implied that many or most of the gender surgeries done in Iran were really homosexuals seeking to find a livable existence, rather than people who would (in freer circumstances) have chosen gender reassignment. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:03, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

An older BBC story, in much the same vein, is here. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Is it true that merely being homosexual in nature is punishable in Iran, or is the punishment against homosexual acts? If a man told the authorities he was sexually attracted to men, but truthfully said he had successfully resisted these attractions and had never committed any homosexual acts, would he be in hot water? -- JackofOz (talk) 05:48, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Please tell me this is a joke!

So scientologists are saying that this "xenu" took his people to Earth in a DC-8? What the fuck? Can someone verify this isn't some kind of hoax or vandalism? --TV-VCR watch 16:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Not a DC-8, but a space ship that looks just like one. See Space opera in Scientology. It's all well verified. Friday (talk) 16:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, it wouldn't be in Wikipedia if it were not well verified, would it? For comparitive purposes, Days of Our Lives is also well verified, as are the Bible and the Qoran ៛ Bielle (talk) 16:58, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I think he means that it's verified that scientologists actualy believe that. It's worth mentioning, because if you didn't already know, you might think that it was some sort of negative smear/hoax to make Scientology look silly. 72.10.110.107 (talk) 20:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Of course, people catalog it precisely to make Scientology look silly. Unlike, say, Christianity, which has adherents who catalog its absurd beliefs in earnest -- scientologists don't do the same. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.9.122 (talk) 21:57, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia catalogs it because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. To not do so would be an omission. 72.10.110.107 (talk) 15:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

One reason they do not want us using stem cells to grow new body parts is because as you grow older in most cases you grow wiser too - or at least are not as gullible. Selling odd stuff like off base religions requires an audience which has not yet been there.

Using rationality in arguments about inherently mystic and unverifiable concepts is, by definition, futile.

Freedom of opinion and speech must apply, particularly if one feels the opinion stated is absurdly ludicrous. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Scientologists actually believe this? I mean seriously, just chopping off the engines of a Douglas DC-8, putting it on a space background, and claiming it was what a green martian from some space agency used to fly millions of people to earth to blow them up with H-bombs? My brain is going to melt from how stupid this whole "religion" is. Cockatoo, this is more than absurdly ludicrous... --TV-VCR watch 00:36, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

As there are those among us who may feel that some of the most cherished beliefs of the world's religions (except our own, of course) are not dissimilar in logic or scientific evidence as to what is believed by Scientologists, it ill behooves the Ref Desk to fall into religious name calling. I strongly suggest this thread stop here before we get into winged humanoids, the raising the of the dead or 72 virgin attendants. ៛ Bielle (talk) 00:49, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree... If Scientology is about all those things then I'm outahere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.15.115 (talk) 01:54, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm a Christian and not terribly fond of Scientology, but let's have the decency to show them some respect. I agree with Bielle, let's stop this name-calling now. AllenHansen (talk) 11:48, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Scientology has all the ridiculous theology of a major religion without the millennia of history to justify it. Imagine if Christianity were invented in the 20th century. Wouldn't that be absurd? Adam Bishop (talk) 12:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

And when things bear signs of their own cultural context, the hand of their creator, it makes it harder to regard them as mystical. As an example, in Paradise Lost Milton has the angels fighting in heaven with muskets and cannons, which is pretty much the same effect as a religion revolving around using a DC-8. When we recognize the creators of a religion as people more like ourselves, we start to suspect them as being just as dubious as anyone we know these days. Personally I find Mormonism suffers from the same problem—it reads to me (a historian) like something could have only come out of the early 19th-century imagination. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 19:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Inflation, It's cause

18:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)18:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)~~Is failure to establish a constant legal value for the dollar a significant open door to inflation ? (Lack of "Gold standard") (Establishment of a "labor Unit" as measurement, for example ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.164.84.229 (talk) 18:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Empirically, no; at least in the sense that inflation a problem for gold standard currencies - see Gold standard#Disadvantages. Meanwhile Inflation#Causes of inflation may or may not assist you. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

When the major currencies were directly defined by gold, the explosion (especially after the opening up of the Witwatersrand gold mines) in the quantity of gold in circulation had some big effects, not least in increasing the amount of capital available for economic development. We tend to think of inflation as always bad, but it isn't so simple. Xn4 21:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

hummm... a labor standard for the dollar. I like it. Trouble is that whether or not you extend it to mental labor or not you have the problem posed in the past by horses and today by machines. Even surgery has proven itself to be within the capacity of computer programming. Even computer programming now is within the ability of a neural networks to perform. What about intellect you say certainly human intellect can not be surpassed by a computer. Wrong again. Computers are fully capable of performing optimal classification and reducing multiple state equations to minimum form. Going by the capacity of a computer to play chess. I think we might be living with a dollar worth less than a few cents if we based it on human labor or the ability of human labor to get a job done.

old testament

what is inside the ARK of the Covenant? 24.182.28.106 (talk) 18:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

See Ark of the Covenant. --Sean 18:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The Ark of the Covenant is described in the Bible as a sacred container, wherein rested the Tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments as well as other sacred Israelite pieces.

Good isn't it.87.102.47.176 (talk) 18:39, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Leadership of Muslim communities/mosques

Who other than the Imam is in the (religious/administrative/...) leadership of a Muslim community or mosque? So, if a Muslim community intends to build a mosque somewhere--who would lead negotiations? Are their official positions, inofficial leaders (i.e. simply those John Does who step forward and do it), etc.? I realize that it may differ between schools of Islam; I'd be most interested in communities most popular at the US East Coast and in Western Europe. Thanks for all help, Ibn Battuta (talk) 18:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

A ra'is can be anything from a community leader to a president. A qadi was/is also a community leader. Adam Bishop (talk) 22:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

This is not an authoritative answer, but in general I'd expect there to be a committee formed of individuals from the community who have taken the initiative, who have the respect and support of the community, and are willing to represent it. Negotiations would be held with the committee, of which a few members may have been more specifically designated to be the primary spokespersons for outside contact, while other members may be more engaged with rallying support and fund raising in the local Muslim community. One of these committee members may happen to be an imam, but in general imams are supposed to be spiritual guides rather than administrators.  --Lambiam 23:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Ark of the covenant and Tablets of stone

The page referenced says that the stones therein were made of sapphire.

Question: what is the interpretation of sapphire here - slabs of corundrum seem unlikely, could they be by any chance made of lapis lazuli?

Your expertise, guesses and links appreciated.87.102.47.176 (talk) 18:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

One rather down-to-earth explanation I've seen is that the Hebrew word for book, sefer is related to the word for sapphire, sapir. I gather sapir was used rather generally for things of great value, so when the Talmud mentions a sapphire-like stone that shouldn't be taken literally as meaning a blue stone. But Hebrew isn't my subject. Xn4 22:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Our article states that sapphire was not known until the emergence of the Roman Empire and does, indeed, suggest lapis lazuli (used by the Egyptians in Mosaic times). As Xn4 above, I am neither a Bible scholar nor a Judaist. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 23:01, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm a "Judaist" (I guess) but not a Bible scholar, either. I did look up Tables of the Law in the early-1900s Jewish Encyclopedia, and it says that the "sapphire" of the Tables was "was of a nature that admitted of the tables being rolled up." So clearly we're not talking normal sapphire here. The material was "quarried from the solar disk." The use of the word "sapphire" in various languages to describe the Tables apparently dates to the Early Medieval period or Late Antiquity. The writers of the Midrashim presumably thought it was the best word to describe the literally other-worldly material of the Tables. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

@ 87.102.47.176, I was in a mini-conundrum about your word "corundrum", assuming it was a mis-spelling of carborundum. But then I discovered you must have been referring to corundum, something I had never heard of. So thanks for the opportunity to expand my vocab. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:20, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The word carborundum is a portmanteau formed from carbon + corundum. Let us hope you will never be in a carbonumdrum.  --Lambiam 23:40, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

As far as I understand it, the tablets themselves are only identified in Biblical texts as being of "stone". The sapphire reference occurs a few verses earlier (in Exodus 24:10), in reference to what Moses and his cronies see as they are brought into the presence of God. Since they are (presumably) prostrate, they only see the ground at the feet of God, which appears "like the working of a pavement of lapis lazuli." I am not a Hebrew scholar, but the relevant phrase is:

כמעשׁה לבנת הספיר

Gwinva (talk) 01:43, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

In this case, the Hebrew word sappir predates the English word "sapphire" by a couple thousand years or so. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, sappir appeared in the Septuagint as "sapphiros" (with both the "p" and "ph" pronounced). The Greeks seem to have adopted the word "sapphiros" to refer to both the Biblical "sapphire" and to lapus lazuli. When "our" sapphire was discovered, the Greeks probably called it "uakinthos" and the Romans called it "hyacinthus." Latin must have adopted the "sapphirus" to refer to our sapphire before it split into the various Romance languages of today. English takes the term from Old French. Incidentally, the OED says the word "sapphire" is probably not of Semitic origin. "Some scholars have conjectured" that it may ultimately be a Sanskrit word meaning "dear to the planet Saturn" and referred to "some dark gem" -- perhaps even sapphire! -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

ok thanks that was very interesting - I don't know the hebrew alphabet, or hebrew so on any interpretations of translations I rely on you. So... When an english bible says 'sapphire' it means 'lapis lazuli' or maybe lazurite or at least not the sapphire of today, and possibly just means a special material. Hoshen says a similar thing. Another question(s)

"quarried from the solar disk."

Anything you can tell me surrounding this would be great. Are there any other mentions of a 'solar disc' in this literature. Is it anyway similar to the 'vault of the heavens'?83.100.183.180 (talk) 14:13, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

That's the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia translation of a word in Canticles Rabbah, also known as the Song of Songs Rabbah, an Early Medieval Midrash. You'll need to go to a really big library (or a Jewish library) to find more information -- unless there's someone out there with quite a home collection of Jewish books. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:33, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The "solar disc/disk" is simply the sun, as seen from earth. That is, people who believe in a "solar disk" believe the sun is a disk in the sky. So the "solar disk" is hanging from the "vault of the heavens" in this primitive cosmology; a "solar disk" can also be the depiction of this solar disk (as in hieroglyphics). I confess I don't see any reasonable explanation for something being mined from the solar disk, though what unreasonable explanation there is I can't say. - Nunh-huh 06:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok thanks - might have been just a single reference, don't think I'll be able to follow this up right now. Maybe in the future. Thanks.83.100.183.180 (talk) 13:32, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

See also: Atenism#Link to Judaism, Exodus 24:9-12, Psalm 104 and Great Hymn to the Aten.—eric 15:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again83.100.183.180 (talk) 16:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

First black woman mayor in the United States

Mrs. Dessie Lee Patterson of South Mansfeild, Louisian is the first Black woman mayor in the United States, elected in March of 1971. Is there any documentation of this woman and her accomplishments?

Sincerely,

Vicki Lynn Mayweather (email removed)—Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.13.161.21 (talk) 22:12, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Vicki Lynn, your question will get attention without the all caps header, thanks. The protocol is to read the big box at the top of this page, check for your item in the search box, then ask your question as you did, without an email. Best, Julia Rossi (talk) 22:40, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

According to various sources, e.g. this and this, she was the first black woman mayor in Louisiana, and she wasn't elected in 1971, just appointed (although she did win several mayoral elections later on). Clarityfiend (talk) 00:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, they're not freely avaiable sources, but maybe your library has one of these publications or can help you get the respective pages. --Ibn Battuta (talk) 00:44, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Lutheran Hymns

What were three or four of the most popular Lutheran hymns in the 1760s? AllenHansen (talk) 12:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

These two websites The Lutheran Hymnal, 1941 and The Lutheran Hymnal Online offer versions of the Lutheran hymn book that include the dates the hymns were written. That doesn't tell you which were most popular, but you could at least start making a list of period-correct ones. WikiJedits (talk) 13:51, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, hang on, try this one instead: Lutheran Hymnody. It seems "hymnody" is the correct search term. WikiJedits (talk) 14:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Maybe I should rephrase my question. What were some of the most widely sung Lutheran hymns, in German, in the mid-1700s, especially the 1760s. A lot of the hymns in the 1941 Hymnal were obviously not sung by them at the time. AllenHansen (talk) 17:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Let me take a stab at this ... The second half of the 18th century was a time of great simplification in German, specifically Lutheran, church music, due to the combined effects of the Enlightenment and the stile galant, somewhat as a reaction to perceived excesses of opulence in the preceding period. Extravagant music, such as the cantatas, oratorios, and Passions of J.S. Bach, of was pretty much a thing of the past, -- for a while. The same hymns were often sung as in the first half of the century -- Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott, Christ lag in Todesbanden, Vater unser im Himmelreich -- but not necessarily with the same settings. Worship services consisted of hymns, readings, prayers, and preaching, with a much diminished importance of music for its own sake. Many, if not most, of the chorales you can find in the 371 Four-Part Chorales of J.S. Bach were still sung, though according to the article in the New Grove, some of the settings were recomposed in accordance with the taste for lighter styles. Antandrus (talk) 00:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Addendum: a good way to research this would be to take the list of hymns in the 371 by Bach, and then look through one of those Lutheran hymnals for post-Bach harmonizations of the same hymns -- specifically if you can find some dated to the 1750s and 1760s (most good hymnals give the source for the tune, as well as the composer and date of the harmonization). You may find the voice-leading and harmonies somewhat simplified from the versions by Bach. Antandrus (talk) 00:42, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

March 19

farm animal as pet animal B.C. Canada

I remember there was a news in Canada where in British Columbia where woman has a dwarf horse, which is a farm animal and she wants it as a pet but people and mayor of the town, which I didn't get the name, said it is not right to do that and they bring this matter into the court. Where I can find this news report? I ask this because I think it could change the law of Canada. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Don Mustafa (talk • contribs) 01:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Could it be http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=1a0bca94-57f0-49e4-9fa5-4f3edff82305? --Bowlhover (talk) 02:06, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

History assigment-help please

"The political crisis that overtook Scotland and then Britain in the period from 1637 to 1640 was not about Prayer Books; it was not about Bishops; it was about Power". It's a history assignment I have to do over the easter break. I am not asking for an answer. I'm just asking for some clues and some guidance. I know about the Prayer Book crisis and I know about the Bishops Wars. I'm just not sure how to put this information together to get the kind of answer looked for in the question. Help!Donald Paterson (talk)

Well, any political crisis is about power. The question itself is poorly crafted, it's basicaly telling you to come up with the answer they want to hear. Anyway, the Bishop's War was about Bishops, because secular and ecclesiastical power were intertwined. People had to attend church, christenings, marriages and deaths were recorded, invaluable information in pre-census days, so to change the hierarchy to a peer-based system, would hurt the King's authority. The actual church doctrine wasn't as important as who they answered to.

The prayer books, to put it simply, were how God heard the people. Charles was imposing his way on someone with a different set of beliefs. Basicaly, the conflicts were about who the church's power went to. I hope someone more knowledgable will chime in. AllenHansen (talk) 12:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, Donald, yes, it was about power, understood in a number of senses: the loss of power by large sections of the Scottish aristocracy following the Union of the Crowns in 1603; the acquisition of power by the Scottish episcopacy as agents of the crown; the misuse and abuse of prerogative power by a distant king. You should have a look at the page on the Covenanters, which covers these points in some detail.

In your position I would begin by looking briefly at the rule of James VI in Scotland, particularly in relation to the question of church government. The separation of the aristocracy from the more radical elements in the Presbyterian party had been one of James' political successes, enabling him to build a new national church in the north on an Episcopalian basis. When in London James, secure in his power and his peace, was famously to say that he was able govern Scotland 'by pen.' But this form of government was always fragile. It depended on James' understanding of the complexities of Scottish politics; it depended on his familiarity with the leading personalities of the realm; it depended, above all, on his ability to ensure that the nobility had access to office and position. But, in the end, there was only a limited amount of this to give.

Charles' reign started badly in the north. He alienated the nobility by an Act of Revocation, which threatened to claw back all former clerical lands that had been secularised since the Reformation. He did little to win over the Scottish nobility thereafter, preferring to restrict his counsels to a small and Anglicised group of favourites; people like James, Marquess of Hamilton. Scotland was thus left with a large group of suspicious and underemployed aristocrats. It was bad enough that most of these people had little or no access to the king, far removed in London; what made matters far worse was that, from the mid 1630s, Charles began to fill vacancies in the Scottish Privy Council from the panel of bishops, including the post of Chancellor, the most powerful of all. Jealous of the growing power and influence of their Episcopalian colleagues, the nobility only needed a cause to give their immediate and long-term resentments a precise direction. It came in 1637, when Charles insisted on the adoption of a new Anglican-style Prayer Book without taking any soundings at all from the aristocracy.

For the Presbyterian dissidents in an Episcopal Church opposition to the Prayer Book was an ideal cause around which to unite. But it may have come to nothing but from the support they obtained from the nobility: men like James Graham, Earl of Montrose and subsequently Archibald Campbell, Lord Lorne. A new and dangerous political alliance had been created, destroying all the work of James VI. The Presbyterians were able to challenge the power of the Bishops in the Church, just as the Nobility was able to challenge the power of the Bishops in the state. Scottish government was, in effect, completely removed from the crown, as both the Presbyterians and the Nobility went on to challenge the power of the King himself in the Bishops' Wars.

Charles was on a downward spiral. Unable to control events in Scotland he also lost control of events in England. In the end he lost his head, in more ways than one. The best of luck with your assignment. Clio the Muse (talk) 01:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks both. I knew you would not let me down, Clio. Donald Paterson (talk) 19:07, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Purchasing power of US dollar circa 1900

What was the purchasing power of a dollar in 1900 expressed in terms of a dollar today? F Chiles (talk) 11:58, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Follow the top links here... WikiJedits (talk) 13:53, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thus: $25.47 in the year 2007 had the same purchasing power as $1.00 in the year 1900. Conversely, $0.04 in the year 1900 had the same purchasing power as $1.00 in the year 2007. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:40, 19 March 2008 (UTC))

There are lots of ways of calculating historical currency rates—it's a case of what indicator you choose to use, and which one you choose to use (ideally) has to do with what you are thinking of purchasing with that dollar. If you're talking about the price of food or rent, the CPI is a good one to go with; if you're comparing government funding of science, the relative share of the GDP makes more sense, etc. Ideally your indicator will be most like the proposed purchasing that you are considering. Additionally, some of the indicators change more over time; food might be less of an expense today (or more of one, I don't know) than it was before, due to improvements in technology, expectations, availability, etc.

I've found this site the best overall conversion site, as it does all of the various types for you and let's you see how much variance there is. Note that you can't reliably do it for 2008, because to calculate these things you need values that won't be published until some time after the year is over, but you can go up to 2006 or so. It also describes the relative strengths and weaknesses of using different indicators, and gives some concrete examples of the sort of things you might use with one or the other. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 01:24, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

In 1900 you could hire a laborer for $1 a day, but you would get few takers today for $25.47 per day. Edison (talk) 19:01, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Edison --- why is that? If the dollar values are (theoretically) equal or identical. Wouldn't the same laborers willing to work for $1.00 (then) be the same group of people willing to work for $25.47 (now)? If not, why not, given that the dollar amount is the same? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 07:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC))

Most prolific fathers

Could someone provide a list of the most prolific fathers. And a list of the numbers of children they fathered.--Gary123 (talk) 14:06, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

You should check out the Guiness Book of Records --Dweller (talk) 15:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Brigham Young had at least 56 children. Osama bin Ladin has about 50 siblings. - Nunh-huh 15:47, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Living, it might be this man with 78 and counting. Historically, it's possibly Genghis Khan.[6] It would be very hard to devise a complete, well-referenced list. Marskell (talk) 15:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Agricultural commodity prices

What is a website where I can find basic commodity prices. I don't want one with a some big fancy graph that I can't understand or lots of big confusing numbers. I just want the prices. Ive been looking for awhile now and haven't found anything. Thankyou. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.119.61.7 (talk) 14:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

There is a table listing agricultural commodity prices on the right side of this page when the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is open for trade. Any website that keeps commodity prices current is going to be oriented to serious traders, who will want more information than you may want. Still, you should be able to find the information you want on this site or other sites that publish commodity price quotes. Marco polo (talk) 14:25, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

bible, talmud etc other books

The old testament etc really seems to be a mine of hisorical information. Are there any other sources that give a similar level of insight into 'bronze/iron age' societies and customs, outside these judaic related texts. (I've already considered egyptian heiroglyphs) - doesn't have to be middle eastern.83.100.183.180 (talk) 14:18, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Lots! (You want written documents, rather than archaeological data, right?) The History of Literature page is a great jumping off point. The Vedas are packed with cultural details, and you can look at the Epic of Gilgamesh, Book of the Dead and related items, early Chinese writings, and lots more. WikiJedits (talk) 14:47, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes thanks.83.100.183.180 (talk) 17:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The Talmud is a wealth of information, but for the early centuries AD. AllenHansen (talk) 17:25, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't forget the Amarna letters. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The Light

In near death experiences and the like, eg paranormal phenomenon, people are told to eith go or not go into the light. I wish to read our article if there is one on The Light —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.115.175.247 (talk) 16:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at our article on Near-death experience. Personally, I am suspicious that they are anything other than brain misfirings correlated with cultural expectations and experience, but I am without doubt a skeptic. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 17:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I take it that you are familiar with this poem? --Major Bonkers (talk) 13:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Popes and Emperors

Was there a gap between the last Roman Emporer and the first Pope, or did they overlap? Was there a transition when Emperors became Popes, or are they two distinctly different and unconnected roles? 80.0.107.56 (talk) 17:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Emperors and Popes are two different things. Emperors were typically crowned by Popes. Sometimes Emperors even disposed of Popes. To my knowledge no Emperor has been a Pope or vice versa though perhaps someone knows better than I. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 17:03, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

80.0.107.56, did you read the two articles that you linked to? Anyway, according to Roman Catholic tradition, the first pope (bishop of Rome) was Saint Peter in AD 33. Traditionally, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire was Romulus Augustulus. In AD 476, he lost his throne to Odoacer who chose not to use the imperial title and styled himself King of Italy instead. So between 33 and 476, you've got 443 years of overlap. The Roman imperial title was revived by Charlemagne when he was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in AD 800. During the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire, created in AD 962, and the papacy were the two major politial powers in Europe, often in conflict with each other (see Investiture Controversy). Arguably, the Austrian Empire (later Austria-Hungary), which existed from 1804 until 1918, was a successor state to the Holy Roman Empire, so from 962 to 1918, you've got another 956 years of overlap. Tha papacy had its ups and downs, but it has existed continuously for the last two millenia. — Kpalion^(talk) 18:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

And meanwhile, the real Emperor continued to rule in Constantinople until 1453, happily frustrating the Pope for centuries! Adam Bishop (talk) 18:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

And the tradition of the Eastern Roman Empire (and of frustrating the Popes of Rome) was later continued by the Russian Emperors until 1917. — Kpalion^(talk) 18:49, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

At the same time of the Ottoman Sultans also claimed of being the heirs of the Byzantine emperors. There were simply more than one emperor at the same time (sometimes as much as 3), all of them claiming to be the successors of the old Roman emperors (and hence political heirs of Julius Caesar). First there was the emperor of the Byzantine empire (which was called "Roman empire" by its inhabitants). Then in AD 800 the pope crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. After a while the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was portrayed by its emperors to be the revival of the Roman Empire and backed by the Catholic Pope. This irritated the Byzantine Basileus which were backed by the Orthodox church. After the Fall of Constantinople the Ottoman Sultans and the Russian Czars claimed to be its heirs. The term "real" is very subjective. Flamarande (talk) 19:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe Adam used the word "real" humorously. By the outbreak of the First World War, Europe had at least three, if not more, emperors, all of whom, in some way, claimed to be heirs to the traditions of the ancient Roman Empire. Their imperial titles derived either from the Latin word imperator (French empereur, Russian император) or from the cognomen of Gaius Iulius Ceasar (German Kaiser, Bulgarian цар). And it's not like there was always only one pope at a time. — Kpalion^(talk) 20:36, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Part of the confusion may arise from the fact that the Roman Catholic pope has appropriated some of the titles and other marks of nobility previously used by the ancient Roman emperors. See, for example, Pontifex Maximus. -- 128.104.112.85 (talk) 22:08, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

80.0, you might also wish to look at Caesaropapism, though this is more relevant to the Eastern Church.

I am not sure if Adam was serious in referring to the rulers of the Byzantine east as the 'real' emperors, though I suspect any humour intended was draped in the irony common among historians. I, though, am quite serious in insisting that they were the real emperors, intending no irony whatsoever! The occupants of the imperial throne in Constantinople were real in the sense that they had their authority and legitimacy from Constantine the Great, and through him all the way back to Augustus. Odoacer did not 'usurp' the imperial power; in removing Romulus Augustulus he merely ended its division, all nominal authority handed back to Zeno and his successors in Constantinople. One Emperor; one Empire; one God. Charlemagne, by this measure, was a parvenu; a pretender crowned by a western pontiff on no certain authority, simply because the throne of the Roman world was occupied by a woman! Alas, preserve us all from barbarians playing at being Romans! Clio the Muse (talk) 02:14, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Clio, is your last sentence a reference to the toga party, perhaps? That's what it made me think of, anyway. I think a case could be made that barbarians playing at being Romans (Theodoric comes to mind in addition to Charlemagne) are preferable to barbarians serious about being barbarians. Deor (talk) 02:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Toga parties, yes, that's good! Barbarians playing at Romans merely serves to highten their conceit-it does not make them any less barbarous! Clio the Muse (talk) 02:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I was half-joking, but people do tend to forget that the Roman Empire didn't disappear at all, it just wasn't in Rome anymore. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Enjoyable eastern and other non-western ancient classics?

What eastern classics would people recommend reading for pleasure? Similarly, are there other non-western classics people would suggest? 80.0.107.56 (talk) 17:03, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, depending on what you define as "eastern", "classic" and "enjoyable", I venture to suggest one of the most "enjoyed" such texts would be the Kama Sutra. 1001 Arabian Nights is also quite entertaining. Book of Esther is also a right riveting read, and topical too, as the anniversary of its denouement is this coming Friday. --Dweller (talk) 17:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The Richard Burton translation of Arabian Nights is most enjoyable in my opinion. You can tell he liked risqué stories. — Laura Scudder ☎ 19:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The Mahābhārata and the Ramayana are, without question, great works. Try also The Tale of Genji. Corvus cornix_talk 18:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand I found The Tale of Genji to be one of the most boring books I’ve ever read so I guess it’s a matter of taste. . . --S.dedalus (talk) 06:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I've never read Popol Vuh, but you might want to look at that, too. I don't know anything about African literature, unfortunately, to know what to recommend there. Corvus cornix_talk 18:44, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms from china could be compared to if anything shakespeares english war plays - lots of battles.83.100.183.180 (talk) 18:26, 19 March 2008 (UTC) Note I haven't actually recommended it but have heard that many have enjoyed it.

Genji is a very slow read... I'd recommend the Epic of Gilgamesh which has a lot of story (some of which you may find familiar in other settings). SaundersW (talk) 18:56, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Also from China, Dream of the Red Chamber aka Story of the Stone. Family, by Ba Jin, is a modern classic (early 20th century) of Chinese literature, along with Lu Xun's short stories (including Diary of a Madman, Medicine, The True Story of Ah Q and others). Steewi (talk) 00:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Shahnameh.--Goon Noot (talk) 03:57, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon. -- Julia Rossi (talk) 06:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Try The Art of War,the Tao Te Ching, The Setting Sun, Dream of the Red Chamber, and Ikite iru Heitai by Tatsuzō Ishikawa. Hope that helps, --S.dedalus (talk) 06:58, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Hagakure is challenging but good but hardly qualifies as ancient, being from the 18th century. Vranak (talk) 16:51, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

grandville sharp rule

I was wanting to ask a question about Grandville Sharps rule on Matt 28:19 when it states that if the article "the" is used more than once it is referring to different persons example: in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost does this rule apply also to the scripture Acts 7:32 I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Does this rule apply to this scripture and if not can you tell me why not? Thank you Kennyt77 (talk) 20:18, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Granville Sharp was, according to our article, writing about supposed mistranslations of the greek, and expressing his view of a rule pertaining to the greek original. I'm not sure that the rule is applicable to the English translation, for a couple of reasons: the English translation may be suspect (according to GS), and the rule may pertain only in Greek grammar. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Chinese instrument

I am looking for a Chinese (or perhaps Japanese) instrument that is pronounced "who", but am unsure of the spelling or type of instrument. Unfortunatley these are all the details I have - Google and Wikipedia haven't helped me out much here. Thanks in advance. 92.0.118.76 (talk) 20:38, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Have you had a look through Category:Chinese musical instruments, which sports such things as the Zhu (string instrument) ... or List of traditional Chinese musical instruments? Ditto Category:Japanese musical instruments and Traditional Japanese musical instruments. Good luck. You /might/ want to ask this on the language desk, since someone there may have a clue about whjatever chinese word might resemble the English "who". --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you perhaps mean the erhu? It's pretty well-known in the west, and is sometimes known as the "Chinese violin". Antandrus (talk) 00:20, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Erhu is one type of several grades of the Huqin: "Hu [ethnic group] string instrument". I suspect your "Who" refers to the various types of Huqin. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:06, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Who owns the freehold of London's roads & why

I'm playing around with articles on London roads & their names right now. And it occurs to me to ask, having read history after history of rich knobs building estates on their land ... who owns the roads? Case in point might be Tottenham Court Road, but the same might as easily be asked of Downing Street or Bedford Square or a hundred others. At the time of their development, the land beneath the roads was squarely owned by a Fitzroy or a Duke of Bedford or whoever. Who now owns the freehold? If not the landed estate (e.g. the Bedfords still own an unheathy amount of property in London), then, in general terms, how & when and at what cost was the freehold passed to the borough authority? --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:08, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I would suspect they count as a public road, i.e. part of the UK's roads - owned and maintained by the government at a cost to the tax-payer through Road Tax. That is unless they remain private roads which could allow them to introduce a toll (like a bridge near my home) to use it. I have no idea about the history of road-ownership but I suspect that the land-owners will have received some form of compensation for their troubles. There is the case of that weird house in the middle of the Pennines that has a bit of history to it (http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-2193,00.html) around government offering money for the land but the farmer refusing to sell). ny156uk (talk) 22:44, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

According to some of the Notes & Queries replies, and also our article, the house in question remained in place because the M62 motorway had to avoid it for engineering reasons. On your earlier point, roads in the UK are maintained out of general taxation: there has been no such thing as 'Road Tax' for many years. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 23:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It may not be that the crown owns the freehold to all public roads. In English law, there is a concept of right of way whereby the public holds a right of access across privately owned land. To determine the freehold status of a given road, you might need to consult the records at HM Land Registry. Marco polo (talk) 00:44, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, OP, you may have meant "rich nob" (nob noun Chiefly British Slang. a person of wealth or social importance). On the other hand you may not. (knob noun Chiefly British Slang. Penis) DJ Clayworth (talk) 14:44, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Note that the UK has Compulsory purchase orders, so ultimately it isn't open to a landowner to refuse to sell land which a public body is determined to acquire. AndyJones (talk) 19:36, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Long ago a phenomenon may have taken place in the UK similar to what took place in the US in rural areas: a farmer would grant the county a free right of way to construct a public road across his land, not purely out of altruism, but because road access increased the value of the land. In other cases the right of way could be acquired through a compulsory public domain process. If the county (or state) adandoned the road, or if a city vacated an alley, it could revert to the owner of the surrounding property. Sometimes a developer buys an entire city block, the city vacates the alley, and the developer builds over the former alley, which is no longer needed. This has the benefit of returning the property to the tax rolls. Edison (talk) 00:13, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Term Limits

Why are there no term limits for US Congress, Senators, and Federal Judges? I know the obvious answer is because the US constitution doesn't impose term limits. But my question is why shouldn't there be term limits? What is the argument for keeping this system. There seem to be arguments against them (i.e., the same arguments that give us term limits for other offices), but I don't quite see the argument for keeping it. Should the constitution be amended? Llamabr (talk) 21:46, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

One of the arguments that I have heard is that "term limits" for congressional representatives happens naturally every other November. That is, if the electorate does not like a particular representative, they are always free to not reelect them. The argument is that it would be improper to countervene the will of the electorate and force a "good" representative out of office, just because he's been reelected a number of times. - Now whether you think that is a good argument is another question. (I'm also not sure of your implication as to the prevalence of term limits in the U.S. Aside from the President, I'm of the impression that term limits are the exception, rather than the rule.) -- 128.104.112.85 (talk) 22:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

According to the article United States federal judge the Federal Judges don't have any kind of terms and aren't elected. They are appointed by the current President. Flamarande (talk) 22:11, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Term limits force elected officals out of office at the end of their term. This limits the right of the people to choose to reelect someone who they feel is doing a good job. The people already have the right to impose a term limit themselves by merely not reelecting someone. Thomprod (talk) 01:45, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Back in the early to mid-90s, when the term-limit movement was at its height, the group U.S. Term Limits tried to get term limits imposed on members of Congress. They got initiatives passed in some states putting term limits on U.S. representatives from those states, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that those limits were unconstitutional. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 04:26, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

As for "why the President and not Congress"... Congress amends the Constitution. The President just takes the blame. So, Congress is happy to impose a term limit on the President. Don't expect them to impose one on themselves. They are too busy giving themselves raises (with free health care) and blaming whoever the current President is for the cost. -- kainaw™ 02:03, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know that there'd have to be an amendment to the constitution in order to pass Congressional term limits at a federal level. Previous instances have been struck down in the courts because they were attempts by individual states to impose term-limits on Congress, but Article One of the United States Constitution declares that Congress itself has authority to determine conditions of election and eligibility for its members... AnonMoos (talk) 14:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Vehicle registration and inspections

When a rental agency licenses a vehicle in a particular state which requires emissions testing or safety inspections and then the vehicle is driven out of that state, what happens with the tests or inspections? The vehicle may not be back in that state, possibly, for the rest of its ownership by the company. So does the rental company just submit paperwork on all of its thousands of vehicles to the various states or is there some special article of the laws that these companies fall under saying that the vehicle may not be in the state and thus aren't required to get the vehicle tested? Or is it a matter of policing themselves and they are obligated to have them inspected when the time has come and if the vehicle is in the necessary state? This is concerning the laws in the U.S. by the way.... Dismas|^(talk) 22:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Who's to say it won't be back? Every time I've rented a car, I've been informed that if I don't return it to the point of origin, they'll add a $100 relocation fee to my bill. --Carnildo (talk) 23:53, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

What? I didn't say anything about the customer not returning it to the place that it was rented from. Dismas|^(talk) 00:00, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

So, if the customer either returns the car to the place where it was rented or the rental company returns the car to its place of origin if the customer doesn't, how would the car end up in a different state? In any case, what matters is where the car is registered. The car can be driven anywhere as long as it meets the registration requirements in the state where it is registered. The car must be registered wherever it is regularly kept by its owner, in this case the rental company. For the car to end up in a different state (other than through an accident), the rental company would have to decide to transfer it. It would then need to meet the registration requirements and be registered in the new state. Marco polo (talk) 00:09, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I read some sort of nefarious purpose to Carnildo's response. I'm not implying anything like that. So if the customer returns it to a previously agreed on location, which is not in the same state, what happens? In the last month I've rented two vehicles, both here in Vermont, which have had out of state plates. We have yearly inspections here. So if a Vermont registered vehicle is dropped off in another state, what happens? Dismas|^(talk) 00:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that if the rental company intends to keep a car in a different state from the one where it was registered, it needs to register the car in the new state. I know that in Massachusetts, the car's owner is legally required to register a car in Massachusetts within a certain number of days or weeks of garaging a vehicle here (i.e. regularly parking it here overnight). Of course, plenty of people maintain out-of-state registrations on vehicles kept in Massachusetts in order to save on insurance, but it isn't legal. I don't know whether car rental companies skirt these laws. Marco polo (talk) 01:23, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting (maybe) fact: all U-Haul vehicles are registered in Arizona. --Nricardo (talk) 01:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Bharata Janata Party West Bengal and Tripura leaders

Who are the leaders of the Bharata Janata Party of West Bengal and Tripura? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Don Mustafa (talk • contribs) 23:01, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The best way to find out would be to email them directly an ask; details can be found on the BJP website under "State Offices" Samilong (talk) 11:50, 20 March 2008 (UTC)samilong

March 20

H Donald-Frith H Donald Smith, portrait painter

Was there a portrait painter with a name like this? - Kittybrewster ☎ 00:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

There was a William Powell Frith, an English portraitist. Is that useful? ៛ Bielle (talk) 02:38, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Not the chap I am looking for. I think I am looking for H Donald Smith and would appreciate it if someone would create an article. - Kittybrewster ☎ 00:32, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Homelessness

I live in an area (40 by 40 blocks) where homelessness is rampant. Area businesses have learned to cope somewhat with people begging for money outside of their establishments. The area was originally developed to provide low cost housing for State university students but for the most part now has been turned into section 8 (low cost government funded) housing. The crux of the problem is drug and alcohol abuse for the hard core homeless and a mental inability or unwillingness to work to earn money for rent, food or clothing on the part of most of the remainder. I'm looking for a private or public agency or project or some other way to address all parts of this socio-economic problem. My thoughts are that some form of mental disability award could be made, but there are many critics to this solution who do not live in or near an area with this problem or stand any chance of ever having this problem themselves. These people need a life jacket or lifeboat and I have no idea where to turn. 71.100.10.177 (talk) 09:50, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

If you're in Alberta, I suggest you contact your MLA. (Since you didn't say where you live, I have to assume you live where I do. Everyone does, don't they?) --NellieBly (talk) 03:21, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Edit conflict: Thanks, no sorry, not Alberta, Canada. I live in the USA, in the State of Florida, in the County of Hillsborough. The City just South of the area in question is not as tolerant (if that is the correct word) of the Homeless as the County, hence one of the reasons that a large population of homeless exists just over the City line in the County. What most people do not really understand including the Deputies who patrol the area that while they are required to pay rent just as I most of these people are unable although it may appear they are only unwilling. It would probably take a psychologist or psychiatrist to comprehend the effect and power of the metal block that stands in the way which can only be removed after the person has be rescued. Its kind of like being overboard with two broken legs and being chastised for not helping to power the ocean liner by kicking when what is needed is a lifeboat and splints until the legs are healed rather than the requirement or demand to start kicking. Surely there must be a world wide homeless organization that knows and understands this and can offer some clear direction. Going to the County Commissioners is a good idea but not without a plan. I need an organization which in fact has a plan. 71.100.10.177 (talk) 09:50, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

No, Section 8 is a US program. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 04:22, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Behind The Choir of Hard Knocks was the recognition of lack of quality of life at this level – something that makes people want to get up in the morning. I googled "homelessness solutions USA" and there are discussions but there might be avenues of funding. Thing about the Choir is it raised people's regard for the participants – and while it began in one city, it caught on in another. I forget where (maybe UK?) that someone implemented a scheme that fostered "responsibility" (or a response at least) by getting people involved in organising something to do with their housing development. It just gave some dynamic to thinking as well as living at that level. Myabe you could get in touch with people who are active in this way. Have you seen our article Street newspapers? There's also The Big Issue as an example of this. Julia Rossi (talk) 07:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

• Unfortunately the homeless are rarely screened for entertainment talent but that is a very good idea. Theater might become an avenue for the homeless. I can think of any number of plays that reiterate the plight of the down and out. Who better to play the parts? A very good idea.
• Fostering "responsibility" seems to reflect a common misunderstanding. These people are very responsible. The problem is that they do not want to waste it. They do not want to be responsible for getting a job done, for instance, on behalf of someone else that drains them of even the will to live while making the other person far better off in comparison in exchange for a meal and a place to stay the night. They are people who have been robbed and who do not want to let themselves be robbed again.
• In America in places where buildings have been all but abandoned and the homeless have asserted squatter's rights, in some cases the government has supported their claims especially through adverse possession laws and an occupancy of longer than 7 years. In the area under discussion, however, many homeless wander the area looking for toilet facilities and have taken up residence across from the County bus terminal on the sidewalk so they can use the facilities as soon as they are open. Public toilets, aside from this, are non-existent in America by design forcing the homeless to search out private facilities. One of the most cherished jobs for the homeless is the job of being the first to arrive in the morning and to clean the bathrooms and police the property for trash before the fast food restaurant opens. The job can lead to things like working the grill when the restaurant opens. Many homeless have personality problems as mental disabilities so such jobs may not last long. 71.100.10.177 (talk) 09:50, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Would you mind signing with four of these things ~? It's hard to know which non-signer is speaking. Cheers, Julia Rossi (talk) 09:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Auto signing should be standard and manual override the exception as well as stable sidebar frames. etc. 71.100.10.177 (talk) 09:50, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

If I understand you right, you're looking for ideas? You're looking for stories of programs (anywhere in the world) that have had success in helping the homeless? Here are the ones I found:

Shared Learnings on Homelessness resource website

Care 2 message board discussion: Preventing Homelessness

5days.ca student awareness campaign

Seattle's FareStart job training program for the homeless

WGBH TV program on successful programs in Massachussetts

newspaper article on Philadelphia's phenomenal success helping the homeless

In addition, you might be interested in Do Something, a website that helps people channel a general desire to help into manageable, concrete actions. WikiJedits (talk) 14:51, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Correct. County Social Services has a Homeless Recovery Unit. They do not, unfortunately have a Homeless Rescue Unit. One gets the feeling County Services exist to recover the dead rather than than to rescue the living. Anyway I forwarded the information you have graciously provided to both the HRU by phone and to the Social Services director by email. The ball is now in their court, but in absence of any positive response I will look at each link myself and see what I might present to the County Commission. The non alcoholic or drug abuser homeless are more than willing to accept a fast food restaurant gift certificate. County Services at the urging of the County Commission might be able to provide them with food vouchers if the existing Catch-22 can be dropped. Currently residency must be proven to qualify for help from the County and proof of address is not possible for the homeless. 71.100.10.177 (talk) 03:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Divorce and women in the Middle Ages

I've been reading the Wife of Bath's tale from Chaucer. Clearly a woman of the world! This got me thinking of the position of independent minded women in the middle ages. The catholic church allowed divorce for non consumation of marriage. Are there any records of women taking action along these lines and, if so, how did the case proceed?Alisoun of Bath (talk) 13:34, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Not quite what you are looking for, but you still might be interested to read about Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was quite insistent about getting an annulment from her first husband. It was granted in 1152. But it wasn't for nonconsummation; they had two daughters and had been married 15 years. It was for consanguinity (they were distant cousins). (That was a far more common reason for annulment, btw).

Another feisty woman was Ingeborg of Denmark – her husband tried to annul their marriage in 1193 citing nonconsummation but she fought back, insisting on her rights. Unfortunately, her husband then locked her up for 14 years.

It may be hard to find what you want because nonconsummation seems to have been usually only invoked in cases of child marriage. See page 299 in this book. WikiJedits (talk) 14:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, in the Carolingian church (according to Frances and Joseph Gies. Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages. ISBN 0060914688.) valid grounds for divorce were: adultery, servile status, leprosy, lack of consent, impotence, one's partner becoming a monk or a nun. Not failure to produce children, much to Lothair II's annoyance when he tried to divorce Theutberga. He created this complicated story of incest, sodomy, witchcraft and abortion (he had to explain why he had acknowledged her virginity with a morgengabe and went a little overboard it seems). She insisted on a trial by ordeal, which her champion won, clearing her name. That didn't stop Lothair from continuing to try on different grounds for eight years until Theutberga was ready for an end and entered a convent.

The Anglo-Saxons were perhaps more equitable than others; under Aethelbert a woman was entitled to half the family's goods if she decided to leave with her children, and a share even if her husband kept them. But it seems Anglo-Saxon kings could dismiss their wives without any church interference.

Anyways, our article doesn't mention it, but the Fourth Lateran Council reduced the consanguinity ban from seventh to fourth degree to prevent more situations like Eleanor of Aquitaine's, where the couple sought annulment after years of marriage, claiming their weren't aware of the relation. Was never really a problem for peasants who didn't keep track of family trees. Bigamy was the more common grounds for divorce it seems. (Doesn't surprise me since you could be considered married simply by saying, "I will have you as my wife," rather than "I will take you as my wife.")

So far on how a case proceeded, divorce based on non-consummation meant checking the wife's virginity. Apparently in 15th century England there were provisions for checking the husband's impotence as well (interestingly, my book mentions that in some places this was done by appointing "seven honest women" to test him). — Laura Scudder ☎ 21:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I can give you, Alisoun, some words that might appeal to the Wife of Bath herself! Here they are;

"The...witness exposed her bared breasts and with her hands, warmed at the fire, she held and rubbed John's penis and testicles, embracing and frequently kissing him. And she stirred him up to demonstrate his virility and potency then and there."

"She says the whole time the said penis was scarcely three inches long... remaining without any increase."

Did I make these statements up? No, of course not! They can be found in the records of the Bishops' Court of York for 1433! Clio the Muse (talk) 02:54, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Medieval crime and punishment

I have another question about life in the middle ages, if I may. We think of the period as one of savage violence, both in crime and in punishment. Was crime peceived to be out of control and is that why punishments were so severe?Alisoun of Bath (talk) 13:32, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm guessing that most medieval punishments were based on the principle of retributive justice rather than rehabilitation. --Bowlhover (talk) 22:22, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

...or restitution. —Tamfang (talk) 19:47, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

And there's the also the perspective of the times to consider. They would probably consider our current forms of enlightened punishment, in the main, to be incomprehensibly and stupidly lenient. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:54, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, the question is somewhat flawed. It was not a period of savage violence; sometimes, in some places throughout the thousand years of medieval history, there was of course savage violence, but is this any different from anywhere else at any other time? Crime was sometimes out of control; sometimes there wasn't much crime at all, the same as now. Punishments were sometimes severe, sometimes not. I think punishments were surprisingly lenient sometimes! Actions that would lead to a criminal trial today were often dealt with under common law in the middle ages; assault, for example, was almost always punished by a fine, and the size of the fine depended on the social status of the assaulted and the assaulter. But on the other hand, there could be severe corporal punishment for crimes that would today carry a relatively lenient punishment (repeat offenses, like a third case of robbery, could be punished by chopping off a limb or two). My two favourite medieval laws/punishments, from Jerusalem (with which I am most familiar, although there are parallels in other societies) are that a man can kill his wife and/or her lover if he catches them in bed together, but he is not allowed to kill both of them; and if a man sexually assaults another man's Muslim slave, his testicles will be cut off. These are certainly nothing like any laws we have now! But as I said, laws and punishments are so varied across time and space that you can't have one set that applies everywhere at the same time. The only constant I can think of is that there were no prisons, which I suppose is because prisons require a stronger central administration and bureaucracy that was usually lacking in the middle ages. The counter-example to that is the Byzantine Empire, which did have prisons. So, I hope this answer has not been too vague or rambling; medieval crime and punishment is a very complex topic, and I could give you pages and pages of more examples, none of which would apply to all of Europe at any one time! Adam Bishop (talk) 01:04, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

(Hmm, I should clarify that there were universal laws and punishments, namely canon law, which applies to the previous question about marriage, and Roman law, which carried over into the middle ages in the Corpus Iuris Civilis. But still, there was no single law code that would have covered all crimes for, say, someone in Spain in 500 and someone in Poland in 1500.) Adam Bishop (talk) 01:48, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

In considering the kind of issues raised by this question, Alisoun, you might begin with Johan Huizinga's classic study, The Waning of the Middle Ages, where he says that crime was "...a menace to order and society, as well as an insult to divine majesty. Thus it was natural that the late Middle Ages should become the special period of judicial cruelty."

One has to consider punishment in this context, not so much as retribution but as spectacle more than anything else. It should not be assumed, moreover, that this was simply a top-down process, a way of 'educating' the community in the severity of the law. There was also a considerable amount of popular pressure for criminals to receive forms of punishment that were both harsh and terrifying. In 1389 in England Popular pressure persuaded Parliament to petition the king for the limiting of pardons granted for violent crimes.

The Middle Ages were violent for one reason or another. Legitimate and public violence was considered to be the only way of dealing with illegitimate and private violence. There was no prison, so all punishment had to carry some deterrent purpose; either the absolute deterrence of execution, or relative forms of deterrence implied in mutilation of one kind or other, which required the wrongdoer to live forever in the community carrying the stigma of his or her error. In A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, Barbara Tuchman writes;

The torture and punishments of civil justice customarily cut of hands and ears, racked, burned, flayed, and pulled apart people's bodies. In everyday life, passers-by saw some criminal flogged with a knotted rope or chained upright in an iron collar. They passed corpses hanging on the gibbet and decapitated heads and quartered bodies impaled on stakes on the city walls.

Yes, it was terror; but it was also about forms of reassurance: that justice was being served and society protected: the more extreme the crime, the more extreme the punishment. Even 'clemency', when it was exercised, was, if anything, even more barbarous. In England in 1221 one Thomas of Eldersfield was reprieved from hanging at the last moment. In a show of ‘mercy’ he was blinded and castrated instead! Robert Bartlett described the scene that followed, "...the eyes were thrown to the ground and the testicles used as footballs, the local lads kicking them playfully at the girls." It was all part of the salutary spectacle.

It would be wrong to assume, though, that the didactic purpose of punishment ended with the Middle Ages. In Discipline and Punish, Michael Foucault describes the gothic intensity with which Robert-François Damiens was done to death in 1757 for the attempted assassination of Louis XV. It was the apotheosis, it might be said, of execution as public display; of natural and divinely-ordained retribution. Clio the Muse (talk) 02:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

In addition to the books Clio mentioned, you may also be interested in Roman Law in European History by Peter Stein, Medieval Canon Law by James Brundage, and Trial by Fire and Water by the aforementioned Robert Bartlett. There are also numerous editions of actual legal codes that are fun to read, like the Germanic ones edited by Katharine Fischer Drew. I notice there is also a book called "Medieval justice: Cases and laws in France, England, and Germany, 500-1500" by Hunt Janin, which fits this topic and discussion perfectly, but unfortunately I am not familiar with it (Clio? Anyone?). Adam Bishop (talk) 07:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

North and South

Do the themes explored in Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South indicate that she was opposed to the political economy of the day?

From above: "Do your own homework. The reference desk will not give you answers for your homework, although we will try to help you out if there is a specific part of your homework you do not understand. Make an effort to show that you have tried solving it first." Marskell (talk) 15:20, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Have you read it? AllenHansen (talk) 16:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, have you read North and South? If you really want to know what Elizabeth Gaskell's view of political economy I would draw your particular attention to the passage where John Hale, the factory owner, gives Nicholas Higgins a book to correct his 'sad mistakes' about wages. In this poor benighted Higgins will discover that “wages find their own level, and that the most successful strike can only force them up for a moment, to sink in far greater proportion afterwards, in consequence of that very strike." Margaret Hales' vision of harmony between capital and labour is essentially that of John Bright, who argued that employers should always follow the road of 'enlightened self-interest' when dealing with their employees. There is no reason to suppose that Gaskell thought any differently. Clio the Muse (talk) 01:37, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Is the Swiss Franc still immune from inflation?

I heard that the Swiss Frank is immune from inflation, but the swiss franc article says

“ The Swiss franc has historically been considered a safe haven currency with virtually zero inflation and a legal requirement that a minimum 40% is backed by gold reserves. [4] However, this link to gold, which dates from the 1920s, was terminated on 1 May 2000 following a referendum regarding the Nazi gold affair with Swiss banks and an amendment to the Swiss Constitution.[5] ”

So...is it still immune from inflation, or is that a relic of the past, over as of 2000?

No currency is immune from inflation. Even when a gold standard existed, inflation could and did occur, for example in countries with trade surpluses. Prices in Switzerland are higher today than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Switzerland has a lower rate of inflation than most other countries, but it has inflation. Marco polo (talk) 15:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

when you talk about prices being higher, that could mean in real terms too, though. For example, prices in a small community in America could triple over a one-year period, but that doesn't mean the value of a dollar in real terms is reduced! So, if I am interested in using Franks as a medium to store value, against inflation that could strike dollar-denominated alternatives, I don't care about prices in Switzerland.....

Switzerland is small country with a population of 7.5 Mio.

One of the main industries is banking.

The country has a system of bank secrecy which would be impossible to maintain in the EU (or almost elsewhere, as far as I know).

If the banking system was forced to become transparent, massive amounts of investments would flow out of the country. After that, it would be easily confused with Swaziland.

The inflation rate in Switzerland is 0.6%, in Swaziland it is 6%. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 00:21, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Cockatoo is no doubt right that Switzerland benefits from its unique banking sector. However, bank secrecy is not the country's only asset. The banking sector has an unusual level of expertise in international finance for a small country that would allow it to retain international clients even without secrecy. Moreover, Switzerland has a much more developed infrastructure than Swaziland, which makes its real economy (outside the financial sector) much more efficient than that of Swaziland. Also, Switzerland has an internationally competitive precision instrument manufacturing sector (whose products are not limited to its famous watches), a strong food processing sector, a strong pharmaceutical industry and perhaps Europe's strongest biotech sector, and, due to its scenery and proximity to many other affluent nations, a strong tourism sector. I don't think that Switzerland is in any danger of resembling Swaziland in our lifetimes. Marco polo (talk) 01:14, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I neglected to add that while the Swiss franc has done well against the dollar in recent years, future movements of currencies are very hard to predict. At a certain point, Switzerland's real economy will start to be hurt by the high value of the franc, which makes its exports less affordable. Its central bankers will then be under pressure to ease interest rates to help cheapen the franc. Also, the current strength of the franc is a function of foreign investors' risk aversion. At a certain point, the appetite for risk will return, and their will be a sell-off and a sharp drop in the relative value of the franc. So, if you decide to invest in francs, you may need to be nimble. Marco polo (talk) 01:19, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

A picture of Wilhelm Liebknecht, Karl Marx and three of their comrades

Once ı saw a picture of Wilhelm Liebknecht, Karl Marx and three of their comrades on wikipedia. I can't find it. Can you provide it? Thanks in advance.

This image from commons fits your description, but it doesn't seem to be in use on the English wikipedia. DAVID ŠENEK 18:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The other three comrades are August Bebel, Carl Wilhelm Tölcke (redlink! but there is de:Carl Wilhelm Tölcke), and Ferdinand Lassalle.  --Lambiam 19:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

It looks like someone took the initiative to create the redlink. bibliomaniac15 Midway upon life's journey... 22:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

It amuses me to read that Lassalle and Marx were 'comrades'! They had enjoyed a reasonably cordial epistolary relationship, though this changed after Marx spent a month in Berlin in 1861 as the guest of Lassalle and the Countess Sophie von Hartzfeld. It was all far too bourgeois for the great prophet of revolution, and Lassalle himself altogether too vain, self-important and pompous. In correspondence with Friedrich Engels Marx began to refer to his 'comrade' as 'Lazarus', 'Baron Izzy', or, more distastefully, as 'the Jewish nigger', a comment on his dark complexion. "It is now quite plain to me," he told Engels, "as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify, that he is descended from the Negros who accompanied Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandfather interbred with a nigger)." The heavy-handed humour of the day, one supposes. Clio the Muse (talk) 01:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

agriculture,writing

There is a link is there not between the introduction of human agriculture (eg seed crops - wheat etc) , and the development of writing - or at least written records.

Q. Who have put forward this idea of a link, and who were the first? (to notice the connection)83.100.183.180 (talk) 18:26, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

As to why this might come about: agriculture means that grain and other crops can be grown beyond immediate needs, with the surplus being stored or traded, and a consequent need to keep records. Some early "writing" systems used little molded clay token to represent a jar of grain or such, eventually followed by impressions of a peice of clay in lieu of molded tokens. Agriculture engendered accounting, by this notion. Of course hunting could have similarly produced a need for record keeping, if pelts were traded. Animal husbandry produced a need to track sheep ownership. Mining and smelting could similarly produce a need for record keeping. Edison (talk) 18:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) Agriculture was developed at least 10,000 years ago, but the history of writing does not nearly go back that far. The oldest written forms of symbolic communication ("proto-writing") emerged in the 7th millennium BCE, with true writing (recorded human language) dating from the late 4th millennium BCE. With a gap of several millenia between the two innovations, any causal link can hardly be direct and strong. This is not to say there is no connection at all. Generally speaking, the development of writing can only flourish in a sedentary culture with enough division of labour to sustain a class of scribes, and that kind of culture is only possible when agriculture is sufficiently advanced. This equally applies to other professions, such as blacksmithing or architecture.  --Lambiam 18:59, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, you've given me some extra things to think about - metalworking is especially interesting, I need to explore more any link between transmutation or ore to metal, and the change in human behaviour (to a sedentary lifestyle as mentioned above) have a direct connect eg our muscles become weak but the iron becomes stronger - does correllation imply causation. Thanks again.83.100.183.180 (talk) 20:57, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Frederick the Great and religious belief

Was he a sceptic or not?

That is somewhat hard to answer also for lack of a precise definition of the notion of sceptic. Being a sceptic is not absolute; most people are sceptic about some things (like supporters of creationism are sceptical about evolution theory), and most self-identifying sceptics hold to some tenets (like the power of reason). According to our article on the man, his father was raised a devout Calvinist and feared he was not one of the elect. To avoid the possibility of his heir Frederick having the same fear, the king ordered that he not be taught about predestination. Although he was largely irreligious, Frederick adopted this tenet of Calvinism, despite his father's efforts. This paragraph in the article concludes: It is unknown if the crown prince did this to spite his father, or out of genuine religious belief. Adopting the predestination tenet of Calvinism does not quite jibe with being a wool-died sceptic, so if he was known to be a sceptic, historians would have concluded that he did not do this "out of genuine religious belief".

Frederick the Great had a long-lasting friendship and correspondence with Voltaire, who is often considered a sceptic. It appears, however, that Voltaire, although a free-thinker for the period in which he lived and critical of the Catholic Church and in fact all establishment, was likely not an atheist. Apparently, he even had a chapel erected on his estate at Ferney.  --Lambiam 20:48, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Frederick had a somewhat instrumental view of the social and political function of religion. His own personal views are, I think, better described as agnostic, rather than sceptical. He also had a tendency to see elements of good and bad in all religions. It was only atheism that he condemned outright, because it served to undermine the function of religion in securing social solidarity and cohesion. Above all, in Frederick's scheme of things, religion was necessary to secure obedience among the governed. Adherence to strict religious principles was not necessary for a ruler, though, and Frederick feely confesses that his ancestors became Lutherans, not out of any great religious conviction, but in order to acquire church property. They later became Calvinist for the same instrumental reason: to maintain better relations with the Dutch, and thus facilitate the acquisition of Cleves. Of all the eighteenth century rulers Frederick was the most tolerant, extending his protection to all religions and sects, even to the Jesuits. The sole exception to this general policy of toleration was the Jews, whom he condemned as practitioners of usury. Clio the Muse (talk) 00:53, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I've always thought that Frederick was somewhat suspicious of the Jews extensive ties all over the world. AllenHansen (talk) 18:46, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Heroes of their time

Is it possible to draw any comparison at all between Lermontov's Pechorin and Goncharov's Oblomov, or are they simply opposite extremes? Yermolov (talk) 20:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

What do you think? Try listing similarities and differences. AllenHansen (talk) 21:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Yermolov, in the very first detailed analysis of Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, Vissarion Belinsky, one of the leading Russian critics of the day, said that figures like Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin were inevitable in that period of history, the Russia of Nicholas I-"That is how the hero of our time must be. He will be characterized either by determined inactivity or else by futile activity." He will be characterised, in other words by passive conformity or pointless personal rebellion. If Pechorin represents the one pole-that of futile activity-then the eponymous hero of Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov surely represents the other, in all its passive indolence. They may illustrate opposite extremes; but for all that they are complimentary extremes, distinct symptoms of the Russia of Tsarist absolutism. Clio the Muse (talk) 00:31, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Case study on Anonymous

Before Anonymous (group) attacked Scientology I could do a google search for Anonymous and get what I want, but now I'm having trouble.

There was a satirical paper I read on the net, and it was an investigation on "Who is Anonymous?" Anonymous is responsible for many great literary works in history, and must have been one great mind! That's how I remember it. I need to find it again. 22:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

In Google, use the "-" operator to disclude any pages containing that word. Eg, "anonymous -scientology" --76.192.189.206 (talk) 14:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

University Applications

One of my acquintences claim that most Universities use computers to process applications, does this apply to a lot of universities, if any at all?

I'd be extremely surprised if the vast majority of unis don't use computers to process applications. But I don't know that as a fact. And I guess it depends on what you mean by "process". -- JackofOz (talk) 23:49, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about the identical wording, but a near miss edit conflict with JackofOz.

I would be surprised if there is a single tertiary institution which does not use database systems for the entire logistics of their operations.

I can´t give you a proper reference, but I have just checked about a dozen universities in the EU and in Australia and all of them seem to have student admin systems (not accessible to random browsers, but clearly there).

Out of curiosity, what makes you think this is odd ? Every government agency, every bank, every hospital and virtually every dime store at the next corner uses IT. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 23:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

One large public university in the midwestern US used a point system several decades ago for grad school admission. A regression formula assigned points for the GRE score, the undergraduate GPA, the quality of the undergrad school (determined somehow) the quality of the references (scored by a reader), and extra points simply fro being from certain racial minority groups. Extra points were added for publications and assistantships. The number thus calculated screened out the clear rejects. Naturally, offspring of large donors or politically prominent families got special consideration, regardless. The ones who were likely to get admitted got additional screening by a committee to make sure nothing dodgy jumped out, and the marginal ones got extra examination to choose the more promising ones, or to fill particular needs of the faculty. Books in the last five years or so about admission to selective undergrad programs in the U.S. said that the applications all got read, but some were clear rejects (excepting the connected or athletic) based on grades, test scores, and the quality of the high school, and some were clear admits, with the committee spending most time on the marginal cases. It would be irresponsible for a college charging an application fee not to track each application on a computer too follow its process, so as to make sure none were lost and to know how the class was filling up. Human scorers doubtless read the essays. Edison (talk) 00:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

It would be more common in larger universities than smaller ones. But you'd be surprised how much is read by a human as well. My wife worked as an admissions officer at a number of universities and she says they read just a ton of applications and essays and really put a lot of thought into it. While I don't think a system of the magnitude of the University of California can do something quite as comparable, these weren't the smallest schools, either. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 01:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

At least the University of Michigan must (have?) use(d?) a point system as this university was sued for its affirmative action program, which assigned extra points for being from a racial minority (compare what Edison wrote), see Gratz v. Bollinger; anyways, the use of points for affirmative action seems to be discontinued (read last paragraph of intro of University of Michigan... another sad example against grassroots democracy). BTW, the point system itself was never challenged in court, and I'd bet that this is what most schools with hundreds and thousands of applicants use.

Personally, if a point or grading system is used (and I'm not sure there's a better way to make dozens or sometimes even thousands of applications, read by different readers, comparable), I don't find any odds in having computers do the scoring for obvious calls, such as points awarded for certain test scores (which stink anyways), grades depending on school, etc. I would guess the only reason that many schools don't do this is that it might not pay off programming so many options and exceptions (e.g., the number of international schools, weighted with quality or whatever...). --Ibn Battuta (talk) 14:32, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible that the OP meant "process applications" in the sense of using OCR software to read them? That might make it a more reasonable question. Daniel (‽) 17:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Daring medical rescue

Nearly a decade ago, I saw this thing on TV. It was about a medical rescue by Navy SEALs. A man was with his family on a pleasure yacht. He somehow got injured or sick. The affected area was turning gangrenous. Someone radioed for help. The Navy sent their SEALs to rescue the man and his family. Eventually, the man got the medical help he needed. Does anybody know what I may be referring to?72.229.136.18 (talk) 23:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

March 21

Economies of the Home Countries

It has often been said that if California would be a country of its own, it would have the fifth economy in the world. How about the four Home Countries? If England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would become independent, how would their economies compare to the economies of existing countries? Aecis^Brievenbus 00:14, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

This took some calculation and extrapolation from existing statistics. The most recent statistics on GDP for subunits of the UK seem to be these numbers from 1998. Unfortunately, the subunits covered here do not correspond directly to the Home Counties as our article defines them. These numbers include Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire, and Sussex as well as the Home Counties more narrowly defined. Using this source, I found GDP in sterling for the UK as a whole in 2007. Then I estimated the 2007 values of GDP for the UK subunits assuming that they were in the same proportion to national GDP as in 1998. I know that this assumption isn't accurate, as I seem to recall seeing that the Southeast has grown faster than the UK as a whole, while Wales has grown more slowly, but this was the best that I could do to come up with numbers that would allow comparisons to our table of 2007 GDP for countries of the world. Comparing the UK and its subunits to this list, I found that the UK has the world's 6th largest economy. England alone would have the 9th largest (between those of Brazil and Russia, both of which have much larger populations). The Home Counties (including Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire, and Sussex) would have the 33rd largest economy, between those of Belgium and Bangladesh. Scotland would have the 53rd largest, between Nigeria (with over 100 million people) and Morocco. Wales would have the 64th, between Belarus and Ethiopia; and Northern Ireland would have the 71st, between Oman and Lithuania. As I have said, these comparisons probably understate the size of the economy of England and the Home Counties (whose economy is probably really larger than that of Belgium if the three outer counties are included) and overstate the size of the economy of Wales. Marco polo (talk) 02:26, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't think he intended to ask about "home counties" (i.e. southeast of England separarate from the rest of England) at all... AnonMoos (talk) 06:03, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your calculations and work, Marco polo, but I'm afraid my question was about the Home Countries, the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom, not about the Home Counties. Your answer did provide me with a lot of information though. I'm baffled why Scotland, with its massive oil and gas reserves, would only be equivalent to Morocco and Nigeria (with all due respect to those countries, obviously) and why Wales and Northern Ireland would rank so low. If I interpret these figures correctly, this would make the latter two the poorest areas of Europe. Aecis^Brievenbus 11:24, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita is more relevant than overall GDP, or alternatively limit the GDP comparisons to countries of similar size and in the same region. For Scotland that would mean Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Norway. The statistics place Scotland last among the five, and a long way behind Norway, but that does not seem unreasonable.

The figures shown in Wales and Northern Ireland, on the other hand, seem improbably low, in the same range as the Baltic States or even Poland. I don't believe that these can be at all accurate. As for England, it is such a large part of the United Kingdom that removing Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales would make relatively little different to the GDP or GDP per capita. It might be that England would be one or two places lower on the List of countries by GDP (PPP) than the UK, but it might also creep up the per capita list. Angus McLellan (Talk) 13:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

On a per capita basis, England would show a number slightly higher than the UK as a whole, close to Germany. Wales would have a higher per capita number than the Baltic States or Poland. The per capita number for Wales would be comparable to that for New Zealand. Northern Ireland's per capita number would actually be slightly higher than that for New Zealand and a bit below that for the Republic of Ireland. Marco polo (talk) 16:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

That isn't what the Wales & NI articles say: Wales 19,546 USD; NI 19,603 USD. I don't doubt you're nearer the truth than those are, but if you can find a reference it would be worth fixing those articles. Angus McLellan (Talk) 19:44, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Paul Scofield and Sir Thomas More

The sad passing of Paul Scofield prompts this question. What exactly does it mean when the title "Sir" is given to someone (for example, Sir Thomas More)? And where exactly does it come from? Also, am I correct to assume it is not a part of the person's legal name ... but, rather, a title no different than Mister or Doctor or Senator or the like? If so, why are these individuals referred to (for example, in Wikipedia articles) as "Sir". That is, why do we always refer to More as Sir Thomas More when we don't necessarily refer to George Bush as President George Bush? Thanks. PS: Rest in Peace, Paul Scofield. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:16, 21 March 2008 (UTC))

"Sir" means the person has been given a knighthood. I think that it is a title and does not form part of the person's name from a legal perspective. But from a cultural perspective, it may as well be part of their name. More would have been addressed as "Sir Thomas" (not Sir More, btw), and any references to him that weren't confined to his surname would be as "Sir Thomas More". Former U.S. presidents are called "President <name>", but that's more a courtesy title. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:42, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

"Sir" also applies in the case of a baronetcy, which can be thought of as an hereditary knighthood, although it's not a knighthood as such. Incumbent U.S. presidents are entitled to be called "President <name>" in formal settings, but we tend to drop the title when talking about them between ourselves or in the media, because it's cumbersome and it's clear who we're talking about. But we much less often refer to Queen Elizabeth II as simply "Elizabeth". -- JackofOz (talk) 00:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, though, the wife of a knight or baronet is Lady <last name> rather than paralleling the male styling. — Laura Scudder ☎ 01:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

So, how do you know when someone "takes on" the new name ... how do you know when he becomes knighted? For example, let's hypothetically say that Thomas More was knighted on January 1, 2000. So, prior to that date (up until December 31, 1999), he would be simply "Thomas More". And, on January 1, 2000 (and thereafter), he would be correctly known as "Sir Thomas More". How would we know when the correct date (and accompanying name change) occurs? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 08:42, 21 March 2008 (UTC))

"Honours Lists" in UK are published by the London Gazette - a UK registered as a newspaper published by Authority and established on 1665. If you want a list please visit this website. Probably this answers your question. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 09:15, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

And what I am really getting at is this. In the film A Man for All Seasons, is Paul Scofield playing a character / role by the name of Thomas More or of Sir Thomas More? That is, if More was knighted prior to his death, Scofield's character / role is "Sir Thomas More". If More was knighted after his death, Scofield's character / role is only "Thomas More". Am I correct? And how would I know which? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 08:45, 21 March 2008 (UTC))

He was knighted in 1521, long before his death. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Posthumous knighthood is currently impossible (as several petitions have discovered) and, as far as I know, always has been. Algebraist 10:48, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

You might compare it with the title "Dr" in some ways. Before his doctorate is awarded, John Smith is just John Smith. Afterwards he is Dr John Smith. SaundersW (talk) 13:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there's been no case of a posthumous knighthood I've ever heard of. There was a bit of a campaign to get George Harrison one such gong, but it went nowhere; his fans simply left their run too late. The media sometimes erroneously reports a "posthumous knighthood", where a person accepted the honour but died before it was publicly announced. Sir Henry Cotton is a well-known case. In such cases, the date of effect is made retrospective to a date no later than the date of their death, whereas every other new knighthood is with effect from the date the Honours List is promulgated. These awards are always communicated privately first, to see if the person actually wants to accept it, and if they do they have to keep their trap shut in the meantime (if they don't want it, they're supposed to never reveal the award was ever even offered). Paul Scofield himself declined a knighthood three times. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all of the input. So, in the UK ... the honor is bestowed by the Queen ... to whom? Whoever she sees fit? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC))

This article has some useful information. In short, the process varies by the order of knighthood to be conferred. Carom (talk) 05:44, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Percentage of scientists

Apporximately what percentage of the world's population is actively involved in scientific research? Also, what percentage of fresh workers commit themselves to scientific research? Thanks ahead. 99.226.39.245 (talk) 00:54, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, narrowing the question down to something more manageable — just physics in the US — I can say that there were roughly 12,000 physics PhDs awarded in 2005 in the US [7]. They spent on average six years getting their degrees, probably doing research about five years out of the six [8]. Add to that the 54,000 full time faculty with PhDs [9], which might lump some lecturers in, but we're not bothering to count the private lab researchers anyways so hopefully it'll all even out, and you something like 65k people in physics in the US doing scientific research, or roughly 0.02% of our population. So I'd guess around 0.1% are in science in general. Less for the world as a whole. — Laura Scudder ☎ 01:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

What would "THE" original battle of iwo jima flag raising photo be worth?

The first copy of the first picture taken of the original raising of the flag. How much would that go for?NewAtThis (talk) 01:06, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

However much someone would pay for it. It's the sort of thing that would be auctioned. (And would need to be authenticated, of course.) It doesn't have a pre-set pricetag. A trained appraiser could probably estimate how much it might be worth, but in the end people will pay for it what they will pay for it. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 01:49, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

well what's the going rate for historical photos like this one...like on ebay or that PBS show?70.1.91.172 (talk) 08:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd be quite surprised if any photo of the same caliber were on that show. We're not just talking about a posed picture of some general that was passed down through family members from generation to generation but one that is known to millions (billions?) of people the world over. One could even argue that the picture itself made the battle more historically significant, not due to the battle itself, but due to the coverage that it received from the media and the interest of people who wanted to know more about "that photo with the guys raising the flag". It's sort of akin to asking how much the Mona Lisa would be worth. Paintings of that much renown aren't sold often enough to gauge a very accurate estimate by the lay person that we most likely have here. Some expert appraiser who knows that market may be able to put a ball park guess on it but then they know the market and the potential bidders. Dismas|^(talk) 11:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

The original negative is in a file at a photo bureau. Countless prints were made from it. How would one be authenticated as the "first" as opposed to the 97th print? The very first print was probably a test print which went in the trash, to be followed by a better exposed print, or perhaps one with different cropping, dodging or burning to improve the appearance. Prints from the original negative might be distinguishable from prints made from a duplicate negative, to avoid wearing out the original. A print with a notation on the back by the photographer would be more desirable, as would be one with a special provenance, such as having been presented to some notable General by the photographer. Edison (talk) 16:44, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Communication technology and economics

I was thinking about expanding my article on history of communication with information about how it impacted our society. One of the first parts I am thinking about would be how changes in our communication technologies impacted business/economics. Any ideas and in particular referenced works would be highly appreciated.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:15, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Update: Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is a good source on printing press, but does not exhaust the subject.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 02:49, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Israel and ISM

Are detained ISM volunteers barred from entering Israel again at a future time? --S.dedalus (talk) 06:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Parliaments of the English Protectorate

Did they achieve anything at all and did politics operate in any normal sense during the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell?

Iranian Minority

Which part of Iran, meaning which provinces do minority Sunnis mostly live and which provinces do minority Christians live? Do Iranian Christians follow Roman Catholic or not? If not, which article should I read about which sect of Christianity do they follow?

See Islam in Iran and Christianity in Iran. The Sunnis are mostly in various border regions. The christians are mostly members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, who apparently mostly live in New Julfa and Tehran. Algebraist 15:46, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Arab Christians

Which Arab nations has the significant population of Christians? I believe Lebanon has the most - maybe a third? Everywhere else is 1-5%. --76.192.189.206 (talk) 14:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Yep. Wrad (talk) 15:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Some sources give the Christian share of the Palestinian Arab population as 6%. Coptic Christians number at least 4 million people, or 6% of the population of Egypt. The Copts of Egypt are actually the largest Christian minority in the Arab world in numbers, even though they make up a smaller percentage of the total population than do Christians in Lebanon. Marco polo (talk) 15:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Punjabi-speaking Pakistani scholars

Is there any Pakistani scholars who do tafsir quran and give lectures and speeches in Punjabi?

There is Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan. His writings are in Urdu or English, but you will find videos online of him speaking in Punjabi. There may well be other Punjabi-speaking mufassirun in Pakistan. Marco polo (talk) 19:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Indian bengalis

Do Indian Muslims in West Bengal and Tripura speak Bengali or not? Because I want to know if there are any Muslim scholars who give lectures in Bengali?

Yes, most people (including Muslims) in West Bengal and Tripura speak Bengali, and according to those articles Bengali is (with English) the main language of education. I can't find anything on Bengali lectures; it might be that university education is mainly in English. Algebraist 15:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Fall of the Directory

Would it be true to say that the fall of the Directory owed as much if not more to its own inefficiency and corruption than to the ambition of Napoleon? If so in what way was this inefficiency undermining the French war effort? Is there any way that French government could have been reformed from within without the necessity of military dictatorship? Thank you. 81.129.85.240 (talk) 15:06, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

current events-British Columbia-Canada

I am looking for the context of the quote made by MLA Dennis Mackay reguarding his statement that some (Aboriginal) people have benefitted from attending residential school.

Proving residency in a State

According to the Real ID Act one must prove a residency to a particular State. What if you were a vagabond and had no 'fixed' State of residency. In other words, what if a person was a fulltimer RVer and never settled in any one place for very long. Then when located in a place there is no utility bills, since it is automatically in the rent of the place where you are staying (since it is just temporary). Many resort places in the Southern United States rent condos to snowbirds for 90 - 180 days and the rent is all inclusive (all utilities included). In this case, there is no utility bills in your name. One can then be in one of these condos temporarly for 5 - 6 months and then be traveling the remainder of the time in a recreational vehicle. Say each winter one stays first in one of these all inclusive condos in Texas, then travels for the summer, then a condo in Florida for the winter, then travels for 6 months, then a condo in Myrtle Beach for the winter, then travels for 6 months, etc. What State does this person have residency in? My understanding is that there is something like a million fulltimer RVers. What about them?--Doug ^talk 20:17, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

A person only has to be a resident in a given state long enough to get ID from that state. ID from one state will be accepted in another. The rental contract (lease) for a person's winter lodgings would probably suffice as proof of residence. If not, then the phone or cable bill at that place of residence would work. Often, even a credit card bill can constitute proof of address. If the person secures winter lodgings on, say, December 1, that person can then go and apply for a state picture ID (e.g. a driver's license) in the first week of December. If the person stays at that address even through the end of January, he or she will receive his or her ID from that state and can then pack up the RV and move on to another state. Marco polo (talk) 20:37, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Is this any different than the residency requirements needed to get a driver's license in the first place, much less keep your vehicle registration up to date? You just need an address of some sort and proof that you receive mail at it, if I recall. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 20:42, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting about the lease agreement. So happens the condo complex I stay at in the South has no lease agreement. Also no Deposit. You just pay the monthly rental fee each month - which includes all utilities, hence no utility bills. Stay there 5 or 6 months a year, then travel in an RV the remaining time, staying at campgrounds, State and National Parks. Mail is "General Delivery" in the city I am at in the winter time. All other mail is by e-mail. Banking is by the internet and through Banks that have multiple Branches in many States. Which would be consider the State of my residency?--Doug ^talk 20:58, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Would that be the State that issued your driver's licence or your vehicle reg? Would a signed statutory declaration cover your winter residence? Julia Rossi (talk) 22:19, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

It really seems as if you have gone out of your way to eliminate any proof of residence from your life! I have rented dozens of apartments in my life in 4 different states and 2 different countries, and I have never once lived in one that did not require my signature on some kind of rental agreement. If you are concerned about establishing residency in some state, then I would find a condo that provides some kind of rental agreement and an address for delivery of mail. Short of that, I would write your address on your rent check and the following note in the lower left corner of the rent check: For <month name> <year> rent at the above address. When you receive the canceled check or its facsimile from your bank, you have your proof of residence. It really isn't a problem if your state of residence changes every year, but if you need proof of residence, you might choose situations that make it easier for you to establish it. Marco polo (talk) 00:46, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I like the check idea. Thanks for the hints and answers. Appreciate it.--Doug ^talk 14:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Francis Fowke and George Fowke

So, I've just written an article on George Henry Fowke, a senior officer of the Royal Engineers, b. 1864. There was a prominent engineer by the name of Francis Fowke, who died in 1865 aged 42; the DNB just says he had three children who survived infancy but doesn't give details. His wife was born in 1822, so would have been in her early forties in 1864.

"Fowke" is a fairly uncommon surname, and it seems possible to me that one is the son of the other - sons following in father's footsteps and all that - but none of the (albeit sketchy) biographies of GH Fowke that I can find make any mention of his father. Anyone any idea how to follow up this hunch? Shimgray | talk | 22:16, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

If you are prepared to invest a little money in the search, you could try to locate and track them through the UK Census. SaundersW (talk) 10:44, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Smoking Law In UK

Obviously it is illegal to purchase smoking products if you are under 18 in the UK. But is this the minimum age to smoke or just to purchase ? What is the minimum smoking age ? How can a minor legally acquire smoking products ?

That's the minimum age to buy or sell. I don't believe there is a minimum age to smoke, but I can't find a source. Legally acquiring tobacco as a minor might be difficult, since it is also illegal to buy tobacco for a minor. Doing so illegally is generally very easy, however. Algebraist 22:43, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Just as growing marijuana for your own use is okay, so growing tobacco for your own use would, I imagine, be okay for a 16-year-old. (caveant: jurisdiction specific). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:58, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Where is okay to grow marijuana for your own use? It is probably quite difficult to discover who is doing it, but I don't know if there is a right to do so. Mr.K. (talk) 14:24, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know of any jurisdiction where it's legal. It certainly isn't in the UK. Algebraist 14:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

March 22

Cult Definition

Why isn't Christ and his disciples considered a cult?

Max Weinreich famously said (on the difference between a dialect and a language) that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy". I think the same is true for cults versus religions. I'm sure that after 1000 years of recruiting the cult of Xenu will seem as respectable as the cult of the zombie that's given me the day off today. --Sean

A famous saying goes, "The difference between a cult and a church is how many members it has." -- Kesh (talk) 00:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, one could define cult a little narrower, to not mean so much "unpopular/fringe religious sect" but rather religious sects that require extremely high degrees of investment (cut of all ties to your family, divert all resources to the group, pressured or coerced to conform to group expectations, not allowed to leave the group). I'm not sure if the original relationship between Christ and his disciplines would fit into such a definition, at least by the New Testament account—participation seems to me to have been pretty much voluntary, and if anything Christ was a little contemptuous of his disciples deciding to follow him around, if I recall correctly. Perhaps someone who has read the book of Matthew more recently than I (it has been about ten years for this agnostic) could share with us their perceptions on how well this definition fits or does not. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 00:23, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Christ was not at all contemptuous of being followed. He told many of his disciples personally: "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men". He asked them to follow him. Wrad (talk) 00:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I seem to recall—and it has been awhile—him occasionally making disparaging remarks about how irritatingly dense they were at times. There were some times he seemed positively pissy. But again, it's been awhile. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 03:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I once saw an episode of a well-respected TV quiz show where the question was something about which religion some famous person belonged to, and the answer was supposed to be "Christianity". The answer given by the contestant was "He was a Roman Catholic", which he was. To the contestant's anguish and the viewers' amazement, it was marked wrong, and the explanation was that the religion is considered to be Christianity, but Catholicism and all the other varieties of Christianity are considered separate cults of the overall religion, and they weren't asking about the person's cult but their religion. Not sure how many complaints they had about that one. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:31, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Wow. Muslims would say he was Muslim. Wrad (talk) 00:37, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Since Jesus went to synagogue, his group was probably a sect in those days, with teachers commonly being accompanied by followers. Julia Rossi (talk) 02:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

A functional definition of cult is not based on the success of a cult, but on information control, use of fear, emotional manipulation, isolation from outside influences, power structuring, etc. Any gestures towards such definitions are routinely reverted at Wikipedia, a symptom of cult information manipulation in itself. --Wetman (talk) 09:29, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Christianity was originally considered a cult (by the romans), and persecuted. See Christianity#Early_Church_and_Christological_Councils87.102.16.238 (talk) 12:42, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Moral philosophy of evolution

Is there a moral philosophy which posits evolution as the source and answer to ethics questions? If so how would this philosophy answer the following paradox? (Is there a name for this paradox btw?)

An old lady and the Mona Lisa (or some great work of art) are in a burning art museum. You have time to save only one. Which do you choose?

Thanks, --S.dedalus (talk) 05:50, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

You could take a look at bioethicist Peter Singer especially this section[10] to do with evolutionary biology. Singer is an evolutionary atheist by the way. Now I hope to push the little old lady out of the way of the crowd rushing towards the mOna Lisa. Julia Rossi (talk) 06:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

PS I like your conundrum about the two little old ladies. The value placed on either of these is fraught. JR

I can not speculate on the legislation in other countries, but in the EU you would be charged with "gross negligence leading to the death" of Ms X, if you were to have saved Ms Mona Lisa. I think the US term is "criminally negligent homicide". --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 13:50, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

In most places in the U.S., criminally negligent homicide wouldn't apply, as there is no legal duty to put your own life at risk to rescue others, and as neither Ms. Mona nor Ms. Biddy are in your care. - Nunh-huh 14:09, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Altruism is considered to be mechanism which has affected evolution (or the other way round). Sorry if this is Weasel-speak, but I can´t find the reference I have stumbled across some weeks ago.

If my memory serves me right, these scientists (anthropologists ?) argued that altruistic behaviour may have been instrumental in the survival of tribe X whilst a less community oriented and selfish humanoid clan, tribe Y, may not have survived.

Maybe somebody else knows what hypothesis I am referring to ? --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:11, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you are referring to group selection as the proposed mechanism of the evolution of altruism. - Nunh-huh 19:59, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Personally I'd be very skeptical of any attempts to base a moral philosophy on some independent foundation, and in particular one from the natural sciences. There have been adherents of the theory of Social Darwinism who viewed this theory not as a descriptive, but as a prescriptive theory, legitimizing the elimination of "social misfits". I have no idea, though, how such people would have solved your conundrum.  --Lambiam 20:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand: Indosphere or Sinosphere?

Our Indosphere article places those countries in that orbit. Is this clear cut?

Lotsofissues 06:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Countries often fall into numerous spheres of influence - some of the countries you mention also fall into a 'sino-sphere' of influence.87.102.16.238 (talk) 12:40, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

All four countries currently use a writing system derived from Indian alphabets (as opposed to Vietnam, which used a writing system based on Chinese characters before going over to the Latin alphabet in the late 19th-century). However, active ongoing cultural influence from India may not have been too significant in recent centuries... AnonMoos (talk) 20:05, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Princess Anastasia

I saw a cartoon on tv yesterday about Anastasia. My mum says she thinks it was about a real russian princess. She dosent know any more. She says I should ask here. What happened to the real Anastasia. What happened to her family. Yours sincerely, Julia Mackenzie (aged 8)

The cartoon was probably Anastasia, which is based on stories told about Grand Duchess Anastasia, the daughter of the last reigning Tsar of Russia. The Tsar and all his family were killed in the Russian Revolution, but many people hoped that somehow Anastasia had survived, and many women later claimed to have been the long-lost Anastasia. Unfortunately, the stories were false, and the women, like Anna Anderson, Eugenia Smith, and Nadezhda Vasilyeva, were impostors: Anastasia had died in the Revolution with the rest of her family. -Nunh-huh 08:26, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Does the Christian celebration of easter have its origins in the Hindu Bahagavad Gita ?

If so, what is the relationship?

Easter festival was originally a pagan festival - search for "easter pagan" for more details.

See eostre for more details.

I don't know if the link goes back further - do hindus have an 'easter festival'?87.102.16.238 (talk) 12:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

This page gives a little more info http://hindugenius.blogspot.com/2007/06/pagan-origin-of-easter-festival.html I can't find a direct link though.87.102.16.238 (talk) 13:20, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The answer is "no". And "Eostre" only gives the name of Easter in English -- the actual religious observance of Easter goes back to the Jewish passover (the word for Easter is usually a variant of "Pascha" in most European-derived language). AnonMoos (talk) 19:32, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Philosophers Wealth

How did the great philosophers throughout human history- Plato, Aristotle, Descartes- earn a living and become considerably wealthy ? Surely all they had to offer were opinions and ideas about the nature of the world and time, where is the money in that ?

Descartes inherited sufficient wealth that he never had to work for a living. I believe Plato and Aristotle were in the same boat. Algebraist 15:49, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

As to antiquity: A significant number were, in modern terms, teachers of patricians. Have a look at our article on Academia which has a section on Plato, Plato´s Academy and Ancient times. One of his students, Aristotle, later took on a pupil by the name of Alexander, who presumably paid hefty fees before embarking on a spot of empire-building.

--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 18:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

There are basically four ways to make money with philosophy: 1. already have it, 2. teach, 3. find a beneficent donor, 4. go to law school and become a lawyer! ;-) --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 18:48, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Population

How can any organisation be even close when estimating the human population of this planet ? Surely as people are constantly dying and being born at only roughly equal rates, one can never be certain of the population. There must be no way of ever knowing how many of us there are, or if anybody's estimations are anywhere near the truth. Wikipedia states that on January 25th, 2006 the estimation was at 6.5 billion, but what is the margin of error ?

This website has information on methodology. Carom (talk) 19:03, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Population counting itself is not a unique statistical problem—statisticians have been dealing with exactly these sorts of issues since the dawn of statistics as a discipline (it was, at the name implies, the science of the state, that is, the science which tells you about the nation-state itself, about how many people are in it, who they are, how they are doing, etc.—what might today be more specifically called demography). In anything where you are tallying people you have to make certain assumptions about how reliable your models are, who you are missing, how much you can extrapolate from a small sample size.

The silliness comes in when places like the US Census make it look like their estimates are valid all the way down to the individual person. This is a display of false precision. I wish I could tell you the margin of error in such things but it is likely that the last four—and probably even more—digits given are just false precision, statistical junk that nobody has bothered to filter out. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 19:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) Demography and population statistics are specialized fields. If you count all people in a given area during a certain period, say a single day (as is done in some countries when census is taken) the effect of the difference between the birth rate and the death rate will be small. If the annual growth rate is 1.18%, the growth rate per day is only 0.0032%. The main error is then in not counting people who are away (or possibly hiding) when the census taker comes. Given the growth rate, which usually will not suddenly change dramatically, such numbers can be projected to dates like January 1. By counting some parts more precisely, it can be estimated what the undercount is in general. Using standard statistical methods, the variance can be estimated, and can further be checked with differences between projected and counted results. When summing estimates of different areas to obtain a global estimate, just add up the respective variances as well. The main issue for global estimates is that problems such as civil war may make it impossible to take the census of some countries. Such disturbing aspects are much larger than uncertainties related to the constant going on of births and deaths.  --Lambiam 19:58, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Art Work

What is the difference between G/P and S/N on a Thomas Kinkade painting?

Stalin's father

I read that there may be some doubt over the exact parentage of Joseph Stalin, not shown in your article. Is any more known? Rigsby's Cat (talk)

What do interest rate cuts have to do with inflation?

I'm trying to understand the US Economic policy, with its interest cuts and Economic Stimulus Package. I heard a few arguments on why interest cuts would increase inflation. Is this because more money will be able through credit? I thought the fed did a good job controlling inflation.