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March 25

modern satire

so nowadays you see people like matt stone and trey parker being compared to other satirists throughout history as a "contemporary swift" and whatnot.

my question is whether it's a unique phenomenon for a satirist to be compared to his predecessors, or if it's something that is always realized in retrospect. did people call swift the contemporary voltaire? voltaire the contemporary chaucer? chaucer the contemporary aristophanes? or is this a newer phenomenon? Jasonberger (talk) 22:03, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I suspect comparisons of all forms go back as far as people do: "Grog not funny, Grog just rip-off Ugh". StuRat (talk) 05:13, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I think you meant "I suspect", StuRat. Yes, but I'm not sure that earlier ages had the sweep of history available to them for comparison the way we have today. They had "the classics", to be sure (whatever that meant in a given period) but apart from that very little writing, drama or music was available even from the previous generation, let alone a century before. (An example I'm thinking of is that Bach was all but forgotten until Mendelssohn "rediscovered" him less than a century after his death). --ColinFine (talk) 08:14, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, typo fixed. StuRat (talk) 08:29, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

First Crusade and the Jews of Bodrum, Turkey

I have a book on the Kaifeng Jews of China that recounts oral legends by their ancestors to a Chinese researcher during the 1980s. One legend claims the Jews were originally from Bodrum, Turkey and fled the Crusader armies to China in the 1060s (yes I know the Crusade kicked off in 1099). Researchers believe the Jews actually came from Persia to China as merchants, so the legend has no basis in history. I think the legend may have been influenced by a then newly translated book on the Crusades, but I am not sure which one it could possibly be. Are there any books on the First Crusade which mention Bodrum at all? If I can find one or two, I might be able to find out if any of them were translated into Chinese during the relevant time. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 02:27, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

The First Crusade didn't go anywhere near Bodrum, but the Hospitallers built a castle there in the 14th century. I'm not sure what book would have been translated into Chinese, but in the 1980s the standard work on the First Crusade was the first volume of Steven Runciman's "History of the Crusades". (I've only glanced at it quickly just now, but I don't think Bodrum is mentioned in it.) Sorry, I will check further when I have some more time. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:12, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Halicarnassus was securely within the Byzantine empire in the 1060s, and was subsequently threatened by Seljuk Turks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071... AnonMoos (talk) 11:55, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

French monarchy/titles......?

Hi! I am a French-Canadian, living in Japan. Following the devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11, I want to help the people in northern Japan to the best of my ability. Therefore, my question: About 35 years ago, a woman connected to geneology in the French government, contacted my father and informed him that he was the inheritor, of a title of duke of a province (?) of France. My father did NOT want to have this (his)title recognized/registered, at that time. I have never considered using the title, myself, until now...... if I used the title to help get some kind of aid to the victims of the earthquake/tsunami in the north of Japan, I would like to get information about claiming/using the title. Any ideas as to where to begin? Thank you.Afrenchduke (talk) 02:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Title would be duc. See "extant" in incomplete List of French dukedoms.
Sleigh (talk) 04:45, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Be careful. It may be a scam. "Recognition" or "registration" might come with a big price tag. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:58, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

And how would having a title enable you to help Japan ? Maybe if you were a king, people might pay some attention to your appeal for charity, but for a duke, I'm skeptical. StuRat (talk) 05:05, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree; this sounds like a common scam. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:56, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

There is no real French nobility anymore; there are still "titres de noblesse", but since 1835 they have no longer been connected to the ownership of land. It sounds like a scam to me as well, but if you have proof of a noble title, you could get in touch with the Ministry of Justice to make it "official."[1] All that would mean is that you would have the right to use it on official documents in France. See also the Association d'entraide de la noblesse française website and this article, which explains the history of the French nobility. Lesgles (talk) 05:35, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

If you're a homeless man with newfound business savvy, how would you get back on your feet with no more than $10?

Let's assume that your company goes under and you lose your house, your good suits, and whatever else would easily help you re-land a career:

You either have $10 left in your fraying billfold, or you panhandle or visit a church and make a good enough friend with a congregation member or clergy to have them grant you a $10 bill.

With that $10, how would you turn that investment into a larger amount of money, and feed that return into more investments until it balloons into you getting a new place, vehicle, and suitable life for yourself?

If I ever get homeless in my soon-to-be post-college life, I would hope to know exactly how to get back on my feet.

(Let's assume that employers won't hire you just because you're homeless, or don't have good enough interview attire. Therefore, you'd be forced to somehow turn $10 into a growing pocketbook.)

Thank you,

--70.179.169.115 (talk) 03:40, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

You seem to be asking where you can find magic beans. Anyone with 'business savvy' will understand that they don't exist. In order to make money, you need to be able to sell something: your labour, most likely. If I knew of a sure-fire way to turn $10 into more without effort, I'd either (a) do it myself, or (b) pay others to do it for me - the latter being the preferred method once you have the startup cash. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:57, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

(E.C.) Did I mention "without effort?" I hope not. I know it takes effort to buy apples at a discount grocery and sell them on the street for twice the price, but that's just a Great-Depression example; before people in most American places stopped trusting homeless-looking street vendors. (And my apples could rot before I managed to sell enough of them anyway. I'd need something that's robust and not as limited by time as perishable items though.)

Bus stop, so if the economy/conditions were bad enough not to be able to land employment, what would you do with the $10? --70.179.169.115 (talk) 04:26, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think apples would work, because nobody wants to buy food from somebody who looks diseased. Selling flowers at intersections might be a start. Many try that. Then there's "outsider art", where being a crazy old bum might help your "rep". StuRat (talk) 04:38, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Apple sales in the US Depression were a pyramid scam. The following are all tactics I have observed over the years. In the present day, "street people" (aggressive moochers) regularly enter my downtown church and ask for money. Many folks will give them $5 just to get them to leave quietly. Four churches, easily visited on a Sunday morning, would thus yield $20. Then a common scam is to request the fare for a ride on mass transit. The reason is "I have a job interview at the other end of the city, and I only need $2.25 for the transit fare to get there, and then I will become a productive member of society." Who could refuse such a plea? One can also sit outside a fast food restaurant shaking a cup and asking passersby for money to buy a sandwich. ("I haven't eaten for 3 days! Please have a heart!") A Big Mac costs about 3 or 4 dollars, a basic McD hamburger is a buck or so. If someone actually buys the sandwich and gives it to you, you could eat it (quite tasty) or if full, return it to the counter and demand a "refund" on the grounds that it "tastes terrible." An enterprising scammer should thus be able to accumulate $50 on a given day. Then take that to a thrift shop and buy a set of interview clothes, along with getting a haircut ($12 plus tip) and buying a razor and shaving cream and deodorant, as well as a $15 cell phone to receive callbacks from employers. A smelly, shaggy person with no phone contact number and no references is hard to place in a job. Big cities have facilities for a penniless person to take a shower and thus be presentable for interviewing. A public library will provide a computer and printer for preparing a resumė and researching companies who are hiring. A bit of "social engineering" should provide some good-hearted folks who will provide glowing fictitious or slightly prevaricating references, or an address of record to use on a job application. If you look and sound foreign, you could research suitable colleges which were destroyed in some civil war and "graduate" from there, with a created transcript, or buy a degree from one of the US diploma mills. Many jobs require no college degree. Even in this economy, there are part time jobs at stores paying $8 per hour for 30 hours work. The trick then is keeping low the expense for food and lodging while accumulating funds and networking. Contractors hire laborers as needed and pay pretty well for hard, sometimes dangerous work. Appearing sane, sober and washed as well as not having long shaggy hair and beard would help with many employers. Crashing with a friend and mooching for grub are promising tactics. Many immigrants to a country with poor language skills and no capital become cab drivers or deliver pizzas, but a deliverer needs a car, generally. Back in the day, I got a couple of "good" (at the time) entry level jobs just by showing up when thee person doing the hiring was in a bind because someone had just left or been fired, and the boss had to do the job until he hired a replacement. Timing is everything, and "No job openings" can change in an instant when someone leaves. There is a vast hidden job market, such that employers do not post vacancies because they do not want to receive 2,000 applications, but they are looking for someone with particular attributes. Being a clean and honest-seeming individual they wouldn't mind working with is a good start, and training and experience certainly help. Go get 'em, entrepreneur! Edison (talk) 04:55, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Faking a CV ("resume" I think in American english) by saying you worked somewhere which has now closed down and gone out of business (hence unverifiable) might be dishonest but ethically acceptable in some circumstances. 92.29.127.59 (talk) 10:17, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Not to my sense of ethics, it wouldn't. I would say the only time it would be ethical to lie on a CV would be if you know you'll be unjustifiably discriminated against if you tell the truth. Discriminating against someone that has no relevant work experience is entirely justified. --Tango (talk) 12:51, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

You could sell a street newspaper. --Frumpo (talk) 10:29, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

If you know how to bake and have access to a kitchen, you can invest your $10 in flour, sugar, eggs, milk, and flavorings, and bake and sell cakes. Or if you have access to a plot of land, you can invest it in seed and grow and sell flowers and vegetables. If you're not absolutely repulsive to look at and have low self esteem, you can invest your $10 in slutty clothes and become a prostitute. There's lots of ways to make money. Pais (talk) 11:09, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Though those three suggestions aren't exactly winners. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:58, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Only because you're looking at them individually... but consider a hooker who sold pies and flowers as a side business and there's no way you could lose. Guys would come over for the whoring, then pick up a pie to take home to the wife for dessert and a bouquet to apologize for being late. Everybody wins! Matt Deres (talk) 13:17, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

But is $10 enough to invest in pie ingredients, flower seeds, and slutty clothes? I suppose you could start with one of the three jobs and then expand to the others as you gain capital. Diversification is important in business, I think. Pais (talk) 13:30, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

P.S. - Hustler, not hooker. The OP's header does specify a homeless man. Pais (talk) 13:34, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Where I come from, "hustler" means a con-artist... --Tango (talk) 12:53, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Isn't this the basic premise of The Pursuit of Happyness (at least in part)? Astronaut (talk) 13:48, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Recall, though, that despite the presence of Horatio Alger and get-rich-quick stories (and how we Americans still love them!), they are exceedingly rare. They should not be seen as plausible models for success. The income disparity statistics alone show the falsehood of these kinds of myths. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:57, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

In Britain the local authority is required by law to give you accommodation (which could be b&b or if you are lucky a flat) if you were genuinely homeless. The state would give you money for rent on the flat, and give you money to live off, which includes being able to buy other things in addition to food. So you would have enough food, be clean, and able to afford a haircut.

My point is, you would have a physical address. So spent the $10 on a cheap mobile/cell phone from Tescos so that you have a phone number. Get an email address by using the free computers at your local library. As the state likes to help people to get a job, provided you were not fussy you could probably get a not very good minimum wage job quickly. You could get an interview suit very cheap from a charity shop, or the state would probably be willing to loan you the money to buy one. Then do evening classes to study to get qualifications that will earn you money such as accountancy, not arty-farty useless things like media-studies. You could take other qualifications, such as a degree as a mature stuident, full-time, which will give you something to do for three or more years and give you a fresh start. 92.28.242.170 (talk) 18:18, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Are you implying that the OP would not be wise to embark on a quest for an MA in History, Philosophy, Religion, or English?Edison (talk) 01:14, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, isnt that obvious? All of those subjects would have virtually no demand by employers. They would however give evidence of your ability, so they could be usefull for jobs that did not require any particular degree. Or they could be useful to teach those subjects. English might be useful in journalism, but I expect journalism qualifications would be preferred. 92.29.127.59 (talk) 10:11, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Given the most recent budget, I would be reluctant to say that 'the Government' is going to provide anything of the sort to people in exactly this situation over the coming years. I know of at least one, concrete example of a job-creation scheme which has had all its funding withdrawn, tipping the workers onto the dole. Given the tightening of the 'disability benefits' qualifications to exclude many people with serious, debilitating disabilities, I fully expect the papers next year to be full of stories of individuals and families who find the council has declared them 'intentionally' homeless, when of course they intended no such thing. All the qualifications processes are going to tighten, so as to give the impression of still providing the service at greatly reduced cost. Your local library is one of the first things on the block, unless you have a full staff of volunteers and somehow raise money for the bills, so no free internet and word processor! Have you not noticed what has been discussed in parliament and all the local newspapers for months? I mean, I know my area is going to be less badly hit than most (our CAB has funding to stay fully open about as far into the future as ever, unlike Birmingham's), but even we know it's going to hurt exactly this sort of thing.

Emergency loans and benefits from the state have a notorious waiting time, anyway, so it's not like you'd get the money for a suit when you needed it ;) Except now, you won't get it at all. 86.164.69.241 (talk) 23:27, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

You're going to have to get a job, I'm afraid. If you have business savvy, you will impress your boss with your business acumen (unless of course he or she ends up firing you because you're telling him or her what to do all the time) and as you assume new responsibilities you will be granted responsibility for them until you are able to get promotions and raises, and get enough experience to get higher-level jobs in the same field, etc. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:55, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I think in Britain you could go straight from being homeless to being a full-time student. That would give you the thinking time to think up some internet business that did not require any significant capital to start. 92.28.242.170 (talk) 19:05, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree. Spend the money on a suit ($10 can go a long way in a charity shop - it won't be a good suit, but it will be a suit) and then get some job interviews. --Tango (talk) 19:38, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

In supermarkets in Britain you can buy a suit for a very cheap price, although more like $50 than $10. 92.28.242.170 (talk) 20:14, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I didn't say supermarket, I said charity shop. Supermarkets sell new suits, I'm talking about buying one second hand. That is much, much cheaper. --Tango (talk) 12:49, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Why do the Brits use $ and not £? Interestingly curious... --70.179.169.115 (talk) 19:13, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Because the OP used $, because we assume most people reading use $, and because $10 is only about £6. 2.97.210.137 (talk) 20:24, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I would start Begging in a good location, such as Canada: according to our article, the median income is $638 CAD. If that didn't work, I'd buy One_red_paperclip. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.186.80.1 (talk) 19:01, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Is that per month? Anyway, it's not weather-friendly; wouldn't many homeless die every year from the winter colds? --70.179.169.115 (talk) 19:13, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

US Healthcare: Federal support of HMOs?

Hello.

I was wondering how much the federal state subsidises HMOs (and MCOs in general). I tried giving [HMO] and other pages a read, but mostly they speak of the "national healthcare dollar". When I know that eg. US Medicaid administrative expenses are ~2% of their budget, it confuses me to see some write 7%. At some point, budgets are conflated, and I don't know which.

Also, I've heard HMOs can attempt to increase their subsidies from the federal gov't by inflating certain costs, so that their on-the-paper costs meet a certain criteria. Their deductible towards the state, if you will - the same way that many insurees have deductibles. Is this the only area where the feds sponsor HMOs?

Thank you.

80.213.11.105 (talk) 11:32, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I edited out my "Purchasing Power?" at the end of the title. I forgot to remove it. 80.213.11.105 (talk) 12:33, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean by "subsidize." HMOs don't get subsidies from the government like Amtrak does. But they do get government funds when the government pays for patients' healthcare, such as in the Medicaid program. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:54, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit conflict] Your question suggests a misunderstanding of the US healthcare system. The system is mainly funded privately, by insurance contributions from individuals and their employers. Private insurance firms then pay healthcare providers (though individuals receiving the care also typically pay a fee at the point of care). Some Americans, however—mainly the poor and elderly—are covered by government insurance programs. These government programs pay healthcare providers (hospitals, HMOs, physicians) for care, just as private insurers and individuals do. The main government program for the elderly, Medicare, is funded by the federal government. The program for the poor, Medicaid, is jointly funded by the federal and state governments. Neither program specifically promotes HMOs over other healthcare providers, nor do their payments for services constitute subsidies in the usual sense (any more than the government payments to electric utilities for the cost of lighting government buildings are subsidies to those utilities). Marco polo (talk) 23:07, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, some jurisdictions have forced Medicaid recipients to join HMOs. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:45, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

List of Ulster Defence Regiment commanders

Resolved

Would anyone happen to have a list of or be able to point me to an online site that has a list of all the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) commanders since its formation in 1970? Thank you very much.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 13:49, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

The History section of this site names a couple of them with dates. It also seems to have an active guestbook. Perhaps worth asking the question there? The Google results for 'UDR commanders' throws up a few more names. It might be possible to piece it together. Dalliance (talk) 19:33, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your link. An editor has since located their names and added them to the UDR article. Cheers!--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 10:25, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Wouldnt it be a security risk for them? 92.29.127.59 (talk) 18:53, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Epilepsy

I just lost my Brother yesterday 24th march 2011,Age 35years, Doctor in Nigeria said to my parent to be using this drugs for him

1. Leukeran Tablets 2mg (Chlorambucil)
2. Alkeran Tablets 2mg (Melphalan)
3. Docetaxel Tablets
4. Irinotecan Tablets
5. Oxalipatin Tablets.

He always used all this tablets together since then,because he has epilepsy since early 90s and they finally take him to one private hospital for treatment in Octorber & Novermber 2010. All the Tablets finished two weeks ago and they can only find this two(Leukeran tablets & Alkeran Tablets) last week as they couldn,t find the remain Three Tablets in Lagos,he was using the two tablets until last saturday & Sunday when he got Epilepsy Action again & Again and he lost his voice,he couldn't speak till he die on Thurday morning 24th March 2011,Please help me!!! what could have happen to him during this process please?

Many Thanks Joseph Omotoso — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jossydove77 (talk • contribs) 14:33, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

(Reformatted for better readability.) --Thomprod (talk) 14:41, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

It's very sad that you lost your brother, but the ref desk cannot answer medical questions. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:06, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Here are links to all those drugs: Leukeran Alkeran Docetaxel Irinotecan Oxaliplatin. Looking at those pages, those are all very serious cancer drugs! Nothing to do with epilepsy. I have a hard time believing your brother took all those drugs at once, and an even harder time believing he took them outside of a hospital setting. Ariel. (talk) 18:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Salary requirements for a position

How exactly would I go about finding out the standard salary requirements asked for a position? I'm looking at a job right now on CareerLink, and to my utter dismay, it states Please include salary expectations. Unfortunately, I've been out of work for several months now, and while I've worked in the field, I haven't worked as much as I would like to. It is a computer "desktop technician" job. 68.232.119.30 (talk) 15:45, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

What country are you in? In Australia, for example, such things are codified by the Industrial awards. In the USA, in most non-unionized industries, there are no general legal rules, but the Department of Labor maintains the database of the so-called "prevailing wages": http://icert.doleta.gov/ You need to search by occupation name (e.g. "Computer Support Specialist" or whatever) and geographical area (state, and then metropolitan area or county). This is not mandatory for employers, in general, but has to be used in certain situation, such as federal contracting, or hiring foreign workers. This is extremely detailed, and has both current-year and prior years' data, but lots of numbers seem to come from the thin air ("interpolation" or "extrapolation" of some kind?) - on an occasion, I was amused to find the prevailing wage for streetcar drivers in a state that has not had any streetcars for 50+ years. Still will give you some idea, though.

As a practical matter, though, when responding to a job ad you don't really have to include "salary expectations". If they like you enough to invite you for an interview, they'll do it whether you have provided "salary expectations" or not... If the question comes up during the interview, you can always ask them to make their offer first. -- Vmenkov (talk) 16:07, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

It depends where you are and how much experience the job requires. Look at similar posts in similar organisations in your part of your country and you'll get an idea. Or ring a few recruitment consultancies that specialise in your field, in your city. If you're really stuck, you could indicate that you are "flexible" regarding salary, as you are "very keen to work for your organisation". --Dweller (talk) 16:13, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

1) I live in the United States (you can see it on my geolocate data next to my IP.
2) They did say to include it, so it would show terribly upon me as a candidate if I ignored it.
3) Good idea Dweller. I'm going to do some further reading and see if that's standard. 68.232.119.30 (talk) 16:35, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I am in the same position of pursing a new career. I discussed the salary issue with a representative from the local employment commission yesterday— she advised to not give a hard number, but to state that salary is negotiable. Here are two sites that look pretty good: [2] [3] ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:48, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

That is a great set of resources. I will have to spend a while reading that (*sigh*, I will be turning the application in later than I wanted to now... that's what I get for waiting til the last minute!). But seriously thank you all. I will leave this thread open in case anybody has any specific requirements they would recommend for someone in central Pennsylvania (see my geolocation) with a computer science degree, several years out of the field (poor career choices, not lack of talent), in a "desktop support" role where I'd drive around the state fixing people's computers (e.g., making Windows work, getting the printer up, networking, and internal support). 68.232.119.30 (talk) 17:52, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Another good source is Salary.com, which will provide an average salary for a specific location such as yours. The standard advice is not to state a specific minimum salary, but instead provide a range (knowing that the employer will focus on the bottom of your range), or to state, perhaps that you are looking for something in a general range around $X, but that the salary is negotiable depending on the details of the job. When stating X, take into account 1) the average local salary and 2) your relative inexperience, which would suggest that X should be maybe 15-20% below the average local salary. Marco polo (talk) 18:45, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

By the way, you mention that you will be driving around the state. You don't need to bring this up in your cover letter, but during your interview you should find out how (or whether) they will reimburse you for your mileage, assuming that they expect you to use your own vehicle. According to this source, the standard mileage reimbursement rate this year is 51 cents per mile. During the interview you might say something like "I assume that you will reimburse me for mileage at the standard IRS rate. Can you confirm that?" If they do not reimburse, then you would have grounds to adjust your salary expectations accordingly. Marco polo (talk) 18:50, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure this response is way too late for you, but I hire this type of mobile desktop support position pretty regularly. I should point out that this is for mostly entry-level people in a very simple hardware-only support role in Vancouver BC (so a higher wage environment, but CDN dollars). For someone with A+ and a couple manufacturer certs, but no experience, $14-16 an hour is typical starting wage. With a couple years experience, $15-$19 is reasonable. In my business, hard-working and experienced printer techs are the real gems, so they can fetch $20+. Your comp. sci. degree would be helpful for software support, but frankly, in today's service delivery environment, most of that is done in a centralized helpdesk. If you're on the road, you're doing hardware. My advice is to concentrate on being hardworking, independent, trustworthy, good at keeping up with your paperwork and good with the end users. If you're dismayed by having to provide salary expectations, think about things to improve your confidence. Having low confidence while unemployed is something that I understand completely, but becomes a self-reinforcing loop eventually. NByz (talk) 05:06, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Student loans for mature students, UK

I heard from the radio that under a proposed new system for student loans, you have any debt cancelled when you reach age 51. Is this age fixed regardless of how old you are when you take a degree? I'm wondering what would happen if you are a mature student in your forties, fifties or sixties - and when I was a student I did know other students of those ages. Thanks 92.28.242.170 (talk) 18:53, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

The standard student loan isn't available to mature students. I think there are schemes to support mature students, but they are separate. --Tango (talk) 20:06, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Can you give a citation for that Tango? I've looked on the direct.gov website which doesn't mention this. It does mention other schemes but they don't seem to be aimed at higher education. --TammyMoet (talk) 20:53, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm... it appears I'm mistaken. This page says you can be any age and get the tuition fee loan and the age limit for the maintainance loan is 60. I think that's changed since I started university in 2005. (That was just before top-up fees were introduced, though, so it's not surprising things have changed.) I'm sure there will be something to stop people aged over 48 getting everything for free, but I don't know what the rules will be. --Tango (talk) 12:45, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Eastern europe holiday home investments

When it became possible to buy property in eastern europe, it was said they would make very good investments.

Was this actually true? Have people who bought holiday homes in eastern europe made significantly more money than they would have investing in somewhere in the UK?

Also, what about purchases made in france or Spain etc? Have these appreciated more than those in the UK? Thanks 92.28.242.170 (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

We are unable to give financial advice. Consult a professional, and pay him or her for services rendered. DOR (HK) (talk) 03:58, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Well that's a very silly answer. I havnt asked, and I'm not looking, for any financial advice. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 15:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Origin of a middle name

Can anyone figure out where Madeleine Bordallo's middle name comes from or what the "Z" stands for? --MZMcBride (talk) 19:22, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Zeien, says it was her father's last name, etymology obscure. meltBanana

Awesome, thanks! --MZMcBride (talk) 21:12, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

March 26

Holocaust

How did the SA and SS know who was Jewish and where to look for them. Surely if your only a Jew from an ethnic perspective it would make it very hard for them to track you down. And I'm sure that once the leaders of the synagogues realised the precariousness of the Jews' situation they destroyed all their records relating to their congregation. So my question is how did they know. Obviously a few people their neighbours but in the majority of the time this doesn't seem to be the case; also, unless you were a practising Jew they wouldn't have noticed would they? My guess is that people who looked "Jewish", that is to say, semitic, were arrested. Thanks, Hadseys 00:34, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

You assumption is based on a non-centralist census. As far as I can see census information in pre-war Germany was carried out in a centralised way. So it was not based on local religous authourities but local governmental authorities. --Saddhiyama (talk) 00:42, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

• Yeh but obviously if you wanna find out whose a jew you see whose coming out the synagogue? So maybe the rabbis encouraged their congregations to steer clear because synagogues keep their own records dont they. --Thanks, Hadseys 00:45, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

This answer to a similar question is unsourced but credible. Marco polo (talk) 00:53, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Did churches really provide fake baptism records for strangers? I hope they did. There was a similar question to this one here some time ago. 92.29.127.59 (talk) 10:32, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

In a police state, information is severely restricted, as is travel, so they might not have any idea what was happening, until it was too late. Bribing authorities might work for a while, but sooner or later the authorities' greed was likely to exceed the ability to pay. If they tried "passing" for non-Jews, they would need fake documents, as they had to present those periodically to the authorities. Another option was to hide, which required non-Jews who were willing to risk their lives to hide them and bring food and supplies. Escaping to a neutral or Allied nation was another possibility, but, since travel was difficult, this was normally only practical for those near a poorly guarded border. StuRat (talk) 01:15, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

At various points in the Nazi regime, Jews were allowed to emigrate, although after awhile they were essentially "taxed" so heavily that they would have to basically leave almost all of their assets behind if they were to be allowed out. Remember that the "Final Solution" was not fully implemented until 1942 — it wasn't necessarily the only way that the Nazis were going to deal with the Jews. We have a tendency to read the past backwards and say, heck, it's obvious from Mein Kampf that this was going to happen. But it's always a lot harder to figure out what's going on at the time, much less what will happen next. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:44, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Check out the book IBM and the Holocaust if you'd like a rather thorough account. It's really rather amazing. They had extremely adequate censuses in Germany, and had done a massive one in 1939 with the express point of identifying who was Jewish. They had the ability to put family records into computers, they could trace name changes, track genealogies, and, if I recall, in many instances they even had the cooperation with many in the Jewish community, which is rather awful in retrospect, but life is complicated like that (it is often the case that oppressed groups "cooperate" on the assumption that the results will be worse for all if they don't — in this case, that turned out not to be the case). It wasn't about "looking" Jewish or other such crudities — it was a very "modern" approach. One of the first really tragic uses of information technology. They could not have pulled off such an organized effort without it. (There are plenty of awful things you can do without IT, of course.) --Mr.98 (talk) 01:44, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Our article on the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in France says "Until the German occupation of France in 1940, no roundup would have been possible because no census listing religions had been held in France since 1874. A German ordinance on 21 September 1940, however, forced Jewish people of the occupied zone to register at a police station or sub-prefectures. Nearly 150,000 registered in the department of the Seine, encompassing Paris and its immediate suburbs. Their names and addresses were kept by the French police."

Fear of the consequences of disobedience must have been a motivating factor. Jewish families would have been known in their local communities and possibly distinguished by distinctive surnames or occupations. For many people, suddenly pretending not to be Jewish was not an option. Alansplodge (talk) 02:35, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

My father, when the Nazis invaded his (Polish) village in 1939, was herded into the town square along with all the other males under 65, at which point they were all ordered to drop their pants. An acquaintance of his, who happened to be circumsized (but not Jewish) was led away with the other Jewish men - to God knows where. 121.44.248.32 (talk) 05:08, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

It is indeed worth noting that the Nazi's approach in Poland was often much cruder than their approach in Germany and France. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:54, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, in the East they didn't seem to bother with passing laws and keeping records, so, in D&D terms, they were "chaotic evil" in the East and "lawful evil" in the West. StuRat (talk) 19:59, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Although the circumcision check is depicted in at least two French films about the era - Au Revoir les Enfants and Un Sac de Billes. Alansplodge (talk) 00:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

That's what people in India did when there were tensions between Hindus and Muslims as well; it's not just the Nazis who resorted to checking for foreskins to determine religion. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:48, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Ahnenpass has the answer regarding public servants. The Nazis do cared about lineage way before the final solution - on 1942. Anyone working as a public servant would have been labeled as Jewish/non-Jewish. It was simply too late for most for trying to pass as a non-Jew. Quest09 (talk) 12:06, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

The cases of Jews passing as Aryans (e.g. Europa Europa) are usually those who are completely cut off from their families and traditional communities in some way. This should not surprise us — the entire means of identification (for this purpose or any other) are generally connected to one's embeddedness in society. It's certainly not realistic that entire communities could suddenly give themselves new identities without being recognized, to suddenly disconnect themselves from all of the paperwork that binds them to their history. We tend to think of the 1940s as being a much more "free form" time in terms of papers, records, etc., but it is really not true, especially not in Germany, where the modern bureaucracy was born. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:23, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Are you aware of the article page: Star of David, under the paragraph: "Holocaust"? Many did escape: "Scarlet Pimpernel", for example, a nick-name given to the one who organised their escape. MacOfJesus (talk) 20:51, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

It seems the Nazis often used a thin end of the wedge tactic. At first they have very minor restrictions, but these got worse and worse. In the days of sparse and controlled media, it woyuld not be easy to guess what was going to happen. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 16:04, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Season by Hemisphere

During the months around January in the Northern Hemisphere, e.g. around the US, the season is called Winter. In the southern hemisphere, e.g. Australia, during the same month--while they experience warm weather--do they call the season Winter as well, or do they call it summer? Lord Arador (talk) 09:27, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

We Australians call the warm months summer and the cool months winter, just like you. They just happen 6 months out of phase with the northern hemisphere. HiLo48 (talk) 09:36, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

If you think about it, words like "wintery" and "summery" denote cold and warm weather respectively. We share (sort of) the same language, so it'd get terribly confusing if "summery" to us meant what "wintery" means to you, and vice-versa. So, as HiLo says, we very sensibly have our summer when it's hot, and our winter when it's cold. But despite this, much of our Christmas paraphernalia down here is about snowmen, fir trees, people all rugged up and cosy in woollen jumpers, chestnuts roasting on open fires, heavy Santa Claus suits and all the rest - which are utterly and completely inappropriate for our climate here at that time of year, which is decidedly hot. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:52, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

One important point - we don't use the name Fall for the season after Summer. We use the British name of Autumn. HiLo48 (talk) 09:56, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

In Britain the first day of spring is traditionally said to be the 21st of March - see Spring (season). However this makes the first day of summer far too late, on the 21st. June, although I understand that this is used in North America. In southern England, at least, May is definately part of summer. Which makes it difficult to split the seasons into four three-month periods, as August is summer too. The way I prefer to spilt the months up is: Spring - February, March, April. Summer - May, June, July, August, September. Autumn - October, November. Winter - December, January. For me, in mild south-eastern England, spring begins on St Valentines Day on the 14th. February, and September is late summer with many fine sunny warm days. In more northerly parts of England, at higher elevations, then these seasons do not hold. The natural markers are: trees leaves going brown - beginning of autumn; trees have lost all leaves - winter; flowers appearing - spring; trees all in leaf - summer. 92.29.127.59 (talk) 10:43, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry mate, May is Spring in southern England however you look at it. May Day is a traditional spring festival. Some trees are not even in leaf by then. Alansplodge (talk) 10:58, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

They are where I live. Most of them are in leaf in April. Its warm enough not to wear a coat on 1st. May. In fact I havnt been wearing a coat for the past two or three days, and its still March. Even earlier than that, there was a day warm enought to just wear a t-shirt. Yesterday I noticed that some trees were in bloom with white or pink blossoms - you could not say that that happens during winter. May I suggest going on country walks, to see things at first hand rather than via tv? 92.29.127.59 (talk) 11:09, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Blackthorn is - as always - the first to blossom. A warm spell in March that brings out the blackthorn is called a Blackthorn Winter. Some ornamental trees such as almonds are out early too. Hawthorn is already in leaf but won't flower until the end of April - hence "mayflower". "Oak is sensitive to temperature and will normally leaf in a warm spring from mid-April to the first week of May, whereas ash tends to leaf in May rather than April." says Dr Kate Lewthwaite of the Woodland Trust.

The climate where I live in northern England must be very different from that of Alan's southern UK because in recent years May has been the sunniest time here, so I tend to regard it as summer, whereas we have known hard frosts at the start of September, and winter definitely started in November last year. Dbfirs 11:12, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I've never understood the logic of the "first day of" a season being the equinox or solstice because, without temperature lag, these astronomical events should be the mid-points of the respective seasons. Americans apparently seem to think that these dates are "official" in some sense, as do some people in the UK, but the meteorological division of the year into groups of three warmest, coldest and "in-between" months is becoming more widespread (with summer in the northern hemisphere being the months of June, July & August). The Scandinavian "spring" is defined in terms of temperature, so its start varies from year to year, and the official start gradually creeps north with the sun. I suppose there are regions of the northern hemisphere (perhaps especially in America) where the temperature lag is around one eighth of a year, and in these areas it makes sense to use the "traditional first day". The Celtic tradition in the UK (and elsewhere) has the equinox (actually May March 20th not 21st) as the middle of spring. Dbfirs 11:03, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

The half-season shift is somewhat arbitrary, but much less arbitrary than using months. Months are completely artificial.

Well actually the seasons are an arbitrary human construct because temperature does not vary consistently like sunlight, so the least arbitrary is the Celtic definition with the equinox as mid-spring. Dbfirs 18:26, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I think you meant March 20th, right? But you know, the equinox is not a day. It's a (reasonably) precise instant, definable at least to the minute, and varies from year to year. --Trovatore (talk) 17:35, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I did mean March (now corrected). The moment of the equinox is almost always on the 20th, not 21st, especially in America. Dbfirs 18:26, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

If you look at Hardiness_zone#Britain_and_Ireland_Hardiness_Zones then some places have better climates than others, and being north or south is not the only thing that matters. 92.29.127.59 (talk) 11:22, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

What about the Late Spring Holiday then? Alansplodge (talk) 12:15, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

That applies to all of Britain, and summer is shorter and spring later in Northern England and Scotland (when I visited northern Scotland in August once, people were wearing overcoats and I shivered). Only a minority of UK people live in the south. 92.29.127.59 (talk) 12:34, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

In the US, the official start of summer is the Solstice, June 21... but most people think of summer as starting on Memorial Day (which falls on the last Monday in May). The same happens at the end of summer... most people think of summer as ending on Labor Day (first Monday in September) but the season officially continues until the equinox on the 21st. As for the other seasons... the official dates are also around the equinox/solstice, but the "perceived" start/end dates are a bit flexible. Blueboar (talk) 13:35, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

What makes it "official"? HiLo48 (talk) 16:51, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, "official" may be the wrong word... but since every US calendar I have looked at all agree on the date, certainly "approved and accepted" applies. As for who does the approving and accepting (sets the date)... The US Government? Astronomers? The calendar makers? A secret cabal of Freemasons? Blueboar (talk) 17:46, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I've been trying to find out how this "official" idea started, and I've failed. This pseudo-astronomical definition seems to go back several centuries. Dbfirs 18:26, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

User talk:JackofOz#Happy First Day of Spring! might shed some light on this question. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:37, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Do we have any article on Roman seasons? I still don't understand why an astronomical fixed point on March 20th (astronomically mid-season) should give rise to a "first day of spring" on March 21st. Dbfirs 07:57, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I think it's more astrological than astronomical. 21 March or thereabouts (the exact starting point differs slightly every year) is when the Sun enters the sign of Aries, which is traditionally considered the beginning of the astrological year. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:46, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Although, early February is the coldest part of the year, so I have always thought of that as being part of winter. Meanwhile June 21st is also midsummer's day. Personally I use the lunar new year as the start of spring, the last new moon before the equinox, it seems to work. 148.197.120.206 (talk) 13:52, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Did you mean June 24th as midsummer? (The solstice is "midsummer" in Celtic and Chinese and some other old traditions). November and December were the coldest months last year where I live, and this February was comparatively warm, but weather patterns vary. The weather does seem to change with the moon, but I don't know why. Dbfirs 18:26, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

The traditional seasons are based on equinoxes and solstices. There is another concept of the start-and-end of seasons, used by weatherman. See Meteorological winter, for example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:31, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

And at least in the American midwest, the midpoint of winter is Groundhog Day, February 2nd, which is one of the coldest times of year. Exactly 6 months later, early August, is one of the hottest times of year. So at least here, the traditional seasons make sense. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:32, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, in parts of America (and some other parts of the world), where the temperature lag is half a season, this makes sense, but much of the world has a shorter lag, and the older traditions use insolation-based seasons where the equinoxes and solstices are the mid-points. There is no consistent logical definition, they are all culturally defined and reinforced by confirmation bias. Dbfirs 07:48, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

And for US school kids, "Summer" is defined by vacation time... starting whenever school lets out "for the summer" and ending whenever school resumes. The exact dates vary from State to State. Blueboar (talk) 13:52, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Bugs' explanation is good. The division of the year into 4 by the solstices and equinoxes is ancient, and still in use today. Rents may be payable on quarter day, for example, academic journals typically come out quarterly. How well the four quarters correspond to meteorological seasons depends where you are and if you actually have four well-defined meteorological seasons. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:21, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that the division is ancient, and that the quarter days probably corresponded to the equinoxes and solstices at one time, but that doesn't mean that they were the start of the seasons, just the start of a payment or hiring quarter. In fact the Celts (who are at least as ancient as the Romans) regarded these days as mid-season. Dbfirs 16:18, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

In ancient times, at least in Europe, the spring equinox was March 25, and it was connected with rites of spring and fertility and such stuff as that. It was also the start of the "new year" (and also connects to why Annunciation Day and Christmas Day were assigned as they were). Starting the year on January 1 is a relatively recent decision. In the American midwest, at least, these four dates are nowhere close to "mid-season". They are just about perfect for start-and-end of seasons. But it's also a function of "how long" the seasons last. In the American south, for example, summer is longer and winter is shorter, from a weather standpoint. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:41, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I accept all that, but I still insist that these were the middle of the respective seasons, hence Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" with the midsummer festival on June 24th. This is still celebrated in some areas of the UK. Dbfirs 22:56, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Where I live March 21 isn't anywhere near the beginning of spring - we still have snow on the ground and it was -16 last night. And I suspect that's the problem - where for you it seems ludicrous that a date as late as March 21 should be considered the beginning of spring, to me it's ludicrous to think that spring could ever begin so ridiculously early. March 21 seems a reasonable compromise. --NellieBly (talk) 02:51, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I appreciate that spring is variable (it begins in February in Florida), so why do we insist of the "first day" concept? Dbfirs 07:02, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

In London, for example, what maybe 2-week period is the hottest of the year, on average? And what 2-week period is the coldest? Whatever they are, those would be the peak of summer and the depth of winter. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:33, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

That was the basis of the old "mid-summer" (June 24th) and "mid-winter" (December 25th) festivals. The hottest and coldest period varies from year to year and from place to place, but we could take an average as you suggest. The answer will be different for each region. Dbfirs 07:02, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure how relevant the change of calendars is. According to the internet, midsummer day used to be on the 5th. July. The calendar change may affect other traditional dates too. I recall hearing that Christmas day used to be celebrated in what we would think of as January. 92.15.14.99 (talk) 11:33, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't know where the claim of July 5th comes from, ( probably a mistaken calculation of 11 lost days from June 24th) but the Wikipedia article on Midsummer says that June 24th used to be the solstice in Roman times, so the Roman tradition seems to coincide with the older Celtic tradition of the solstice being the middle of summer. Dbfirs 18:14, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Number of Euromillions lottery tickets bought for Friday 25 March 11 draw

Does anyone know? I'd like to calculate if you ever get a positive expected value with UK tickets. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12867793 Thanks 92.29.127.59 (talk) 13:05, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

That news report and Camelot's prize report for that draw would suggest that sales were normal and the temporary glitch hardly affected anything. This report from the Spanish lottery shows that the sales for the 25 March draw were €192,122,304, meaning the number of tickets sold was 96,061,152 (the ticket price is €2). It might be difficult to find out how many of those tickets were sold to UK players.

If you really want to do your own calculation, you will need to seek out the report from each of the lottery partners to get the number of winners in each winning category for that draw. You then apply the prize fund division rules to the €96,061,152 prize fund (50% of sales). The jackpot is handled differently because that receives extra funds from previous week's rollovers. Bear in mind that all calculations are in Euros and there are special rules concerning the rounding that occurs - though I can't remember what they are.

I'm unsure what you mean by a "positive expected value" with UK tickets, but if you mean do UK players get a fair chance of winning the jackpot, then they certainly do. There have been several UK jackpot winners (see Euromillions#Notable wins). However, certainly in the early days of Euromillions, many of the winners were from France. The simple reason for this was that the majority of the players were from France. Nowadays, the proportion of players from the UK is much closer to that of France relative to their respective populations. Astronaut (talk) 17:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

"Positive expected value" means that the total prize money for a particular draw, divided by the total number of tiickets bought, then minus the cost of a ticket, gives a value greater than zero. Although the lottery organisation takes a proportion of the ticket money for charity costs and overheads, so that normally each ticket has a negative expected value, what I was wondering was if the amount of extra prize money from "rollovers" etc is sometimes enough to put things into a positive expected value rather than the usual negative. That draw was "a six-time rollover".

If the total europe-wide ticket sales were 96,061,152 and the price per ticket is two euros or equivalent, then all I need now is the total europe-wide prize money (including rollovers etc) to calculate the expected value of each ticket. Does anyone know what it was?

I should not have said "in the UK" but I was thinking of how US lotteries sometimes have a positive expected value.

Calculating the expected value of a ticket in each particular draw would be of great interest - the lottery organisation likes to keep this quiet.

On reflection, if on average only 50% of the ticket price is used as prize money, then the total amount rollovered would have to be enough to at least double the prize money. Does this ever happen? Thanks 92.29.119.112 (talk) 11:43, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

In my experience, most lotteries are run to make money for other causes (the "good causes" in the UK, education in some US states, the blind at ONCE in Spain), not to simply redistribute money from the losers to the winners. The prize fund is usually set at 45% to 55% of sales, the remainder is used to finance the specified cause, run the lottery business (eg. advertising, staff wages, retailer commission, and so on), and perhaps pay government taxation. If a jackpot rolls over to the next draw, it is added to the next draw's jackpot (ie. it is not added to the prize fund and redistributed to all winners) and it usually has the effect of increasing sales.

If you want to do your calculation for a Euromillions draw, you would need to visit the website of each participating lottery and get the number of winners for the draw you are interested in. You then add up the number of winners in each category from all the countries and multiply by the prize in that category (in euros). You can then add all the prize money together. This total, plus the 6% bonus pool (a feature of Euromillions used to finance superdraws), should be roughly equal to the €192,122,304 sales plus the amount rolled over from previous draws. Note that the previously mentioned rounding can have a large impact (lotteries round their prizes either up of down to the whole cent/10 cents/euro - the precise rounding rules vary from lottery to lottery and by game. IIRC, the rounding rules for Euromillions are the same for all the participating lotteries, but I just can't remember the fine detail for now).

For example the 25 March draw had 2,796,521 winners of the '2 + 1' category (€8.24 - a total category prize outlay of €23,043,333.04), but 24% of €96,061,152 is €23,054,676.48; the difference of €11,343.44 is the rounding that cannot be divided among the 2,796,521 winners in that category. It is distributed elsewhere in the calculation, moved to the bonus pool or added to the jackpot - I just can't remember where. Astronaut (talk) 14:41, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Come to think of it, you might not need to visit each participating lottery. The report from Spain that I linked above tells you the number of winners across all the lotteries; if that is all you need. I recommend you stick with Euros because the UK has a special provision (the Millionaire's Raffle game) which hides the effect of a variable exchange rate from the players and winners (and I imagine a similar thing happens in Switzerland). Astronaut (talk) 14:48, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

when do you get new options?

For a stock I've been following, the latest (most in the future) available options on the market have been the January 2013 options - this has been true for more than a year.

When will there be april/may 2013 or any 2014 or later options?

The stock is Apple, you can see what I'm talking about on this page. 89.132.119.207 (talk) 16:05, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Winston Churchill as an author

What books by Winston Churchill are good reading? I would either be interested in autobiography, or books about his involvement in or explaination of events after 1914, as earlier history means nothing to me. Thanks. 92.29.127.59 (talk) 19:24, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

He did not write an autobiography per se, but his history of World War I (The World Crisis) and his six-volume history of World War II (The Second World War) are both largely focused on his particular role. The World War II history is considered his masterpiece, and won him the Nobel Prize for Literature. But in general he was an excellent writer, and many of his works are good reading, including A History of the English-Speaking Peoples and his multi-volume biography of his illustrious ancestor the Duke of Marlborough (although the last of these is pretty biased). Looie496 (talk) 19:52, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec) He wrote "The Second World War, vol 1" which would seem to fit your point about explaining later events, although I really enjoyed reading "My Early Life", which despite Looie's assertion is an autobiography! Regardless of what you know (or not) of late 19th century history, I'd recommend reading that. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:56, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article about Winston Churchill as writer. I assume the OP asks about the British prime minister and not his grandson nor the American novelist, both of whom share the name Winston Churchill. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 03:27, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

March 27

China in the US?

Just curious. Do the Chinese follow the Soviet model of funding anti-nuclear, anti-war and peace organizations in the US? Is there any study on this topic? I searched in google, but did not find reliable sources except some blog opinions. Given China's quest for global influence and the international relations in today's world, I think it is possible, just a guess though. --Reference Desker (talk) 03:27, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

They are basically the landlords of the US. Would they engage in covert operations which diminished the value of their property? Is the US more valuable without nukes, and with the resulting rolling blackouts? Just asking. Edison (talk) 03:39, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I've heard of a few things. At the very, very beginning the Black Panther Party got funding by selling boxes and boxes of copies of Mao's Little Red Book that it had gotten from somewhere or other. And it seems like Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party, USA at least puts on airs of association with the Chinese. But in terms of serious impact? It's hard to tell. There was a huge flap over John Huang in the Clinton White House, but was it Chinese influence or merely "track II diplomacy"? If there's one thing people give the Chinese credit for, it's being discreet. Wnt (talk) 04:12, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there was anything sinister about distributing the Little Red Book. That link tells us "By May 1967, bookstores in 117 countries and territories around the world...were distributing Mao's Quotations." I bought a copy myself at a public bookstore in Melbourne, Australia. HiLo48 (talk) 04:29, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

It seems interesting that they came across a large number of copies of it very cheaply. Wnt (talk) 04:34, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I can't seem to find the LRB I acquired some years back in a second-hand bookshop, though I recall that it was mass-produced, but well made (unlike the Soviet-printed Communist Manifesto I got at about the same time, which has since fallen apart... Oh, the irony ;-) ). I suspect that like Gideon Bibles they were given away free by the publishers. Whether they expected the Black Panthers to sell them, or hand them out for free, I don't know, but that wasn't the point. You don't charge for advertising/propaganda, you just pump it out. As it happens, as far as propaganda goes, it was an abysmal failure for anyone who could actually read, rather than merely recite passages. Banal excerpts from speeches, with no coherence, and less political analysis than I'd expect to see in an episode of Trumpton. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:19, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I see/hear "LRB" and I think Little River Band. The LRB meaning "Little Red Book" was not even listed among our LRB acronyms, so I've now added it. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:12, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Martin Van Ruin

Does Martin Van Buren's nickname "Ruin" mean the English word "ruin" or Dutch word "gelding"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Henswick (talk • contribs) 09:56, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

The English word. He was President during a time of economic hardship, when many businesses failed... hence "ruin". Blueboar (talk) 13:10, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

A book / short story I recall from my youth

I've been trying to work out the identity of a book I recall from my youth. It's either a book or (less likely) a short story. In it someone wakes up to find that they're in a white featureless room, abducted by aliens. In due course the walls of the room disappear one by one, each time revealing someone else in a similar room, until I think there were four characters in total, two men and two women. In due course all the walls disappear to reveal that they're on a beach on a probably alien world.

Any thoughts as to the identity of the book concerned?

Thanks! Bobby P Chambers (talk) 12:53, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and given that "my youth" isn't very precise, I'm pretty certain the book would be over 15 or 20 years old by now. Bobby P Chambers (talk) 12:54, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

US Healthcare: HMOs tried for insufficient treatment?

Hello again! First of all thanks to Marco Polo and the rest that've answered my questions on healthcare as of late. Now, on another healthcare subject:

I'm looking for legal cases where a HMO has denied certain life-saving treatments, but ended up being sued. I'm sure I've hard of some, but after googling about a bit, and rummaging through our articles on healthcare here, I couldn't find a satisfactory reference. Would any of you know of one? 80.213.11.105 (talk) 13:21, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit: Oh hello. I guess I had already found what I was looking for, just had to find the right tab in my browser. 80.213.11.105 (talk) 13:24, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

That article is from 10 years ago. It would be interesting to know how those suits turned out. One thing to keep in mind is that HMO's don't make doctors' decisions for them. Those suits seem to be about denial of coverage, i.e. money. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:31, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Technically right, but many doctors and hospitals will change their decisions based on whether they will be paid, so effectively the HMOs do deny treatment. StuRat (talk) 21:17, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

In those cases, it's the doctors who should be sued. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:30, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

So they should be expected to take the loss when the HMO doesn't pay up ? Why ? StuRat (talk) 01:35, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

It depends on whether the doctor's top priority is care for the patient, or care for his bank account. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:47, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

In poor areas hospitals can go bankrupt from this, resulting in less care for the poor in the long run. StuRat (talk) 02:04, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

So what's the solution? Cover a lot more, and raise the premiums a lot higher? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:17, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Some form of price controls seem to be needed. StuRat (talk) 22:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Call me Mr. Radical, but have you thought about having a pubicly funded healthcare infrastructure that provides essential care to everyone who needs it, regardless of their ability to pay ? Gandalf61 (talk) 14:14, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, in my experience, whatever the HMO doesn't cover gets billed to the patient. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

They can try, but there are some bills that obviously can never be paid by some patients. StuRat (talk) 02:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

"They" being the doctor, of course. It's the doctor who bills the patient for the balance no convered by the HMO. So the doctor has to decide what his priorities are. Another factor, though, is whether the procedure is, to be blunt, "worth the effort". For example, if a guy is 99 years old and needs a heart transplant, are they going to give him one? I wouldn't count on it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:06, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe the hospital does the billing, in most cases. StuRat (talk) 02:30, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Sure, you'll get various bills, including typically a separate one from the anesthetist. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:34, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Phrase for Napoleon tactic

I can't remember what it is, but I'm pretty sure there was a (French) phrase for Napoleon's battlefield practice of concentrating dispersed units or batteries on a single point, with the intention (I think) of eventually advancing on it and breaking through that point in an enemy's line. I think it starts with an "f". AlexiusHoratius 17:10, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Force concentration?Sjö (talk) 17:21, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

That's the basic concept, but I'm looking particularly for the French phrase (I've heard it a couple times, I think in the movie Gettysburg for one.) The mangled/muddled anglicized pronunciation is something like "foot-on-far" or "foot-on-fire" or something like that. AlexiusHoratius 18:53, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the phrase you're looking for is feu d'enfer (literally "fire of hell"), the name given, as you say, to Napoleon's tactic of concentrating artillery fire on one weak point of the enemy's line, also used by Lee at Gettysburg. There's a short essay on it here. --Antiquary (talk) 19:36, 27 March 2011 (UTC) EDIT: IMDb confirms your memory of the movie Gettysburg: "We'll concentrate all our guns on that one small area. A feu d'enfer, as Napoleon would call it."

That must be it - thanks! AlexiusHoratius 20:04, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

POV of an immortal

If a person somehow became immortal when early modern humans were still living in nomadic groups, and he or she lived through to the modern era, what do you think their views on politics, religion, war etc. would be? --Ghostexorcist (talk) 19:37, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Since most such views develop during childhood and adolescence, they might retain some rather old beliefs, like animism. On the other hand, perhaps the exposure to many different views might allow them to pick-and-choose. StuRat (talk) 20:28, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Have you been reading The Boat of a Million Years? Clarityfiend (talk) 20:41, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

No, but I was thinking about writing a story with an almost identical plot, minus the multiple immortals. I guess everything truly has been done before. I originally wanted some type of space travel as well, but decided to drop that in favor of a post-nuclear war type of future. I wanted to use it as a vehicle to showcase my love of history. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 22:04, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

His point of view can be anything that you'd like, really; 10000 years would give someone a lot of time to change his mind about things. The first thing you'd need to decide is how he feels about the fact that he continues living. that would give you a sense for his attitude, and help you figure out how he looks at the rest of the world. --Ludwigs2 22:22, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I have a good idea on how his outlook would be, I'm just trying to gauge if others have similar thoughts. He absolutely cannot die. It's not like on Highlander when they just revive after healing, or die because they have their head cut off. The prospect of living until the end of time would make me a pretty depressed guy, so that is the angle I am approaching it from. I would also like to focus on his thoughts on seeing civilzations rise, and the crazy amount of things that one could learn (and share with others) during an immortal life. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 22:46, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

The depression angle has also been covered, in the character of Nathan Brazil in Jack Chalker's Well World series. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:02, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

There's also Lazarus Long and his desire to end it all in Time Enough for Love, and a short story by Jack Vance, "When Hesperus Falls", in which the protagonist attempts a very elaborate suicide when the rest of humanity refuses to let him die. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:08, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

For the almost unendurable tedium of immortality, see also Borges's "The Immortal". Deor (talk) 23:41, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

This is a reference desk, not a debating forum, so I'm afraid we can't help you. --Tango (talk) 20:46, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Monarchist. 2.97.210.137 (talk) 20:49, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps I should explain for those who havnt twigged yet, the Immortal would be monarchist because they'd be the monarch. 92.15.14.4 (talk) 19:57, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Ghostexorcist, You might want to take a look at The Gnarly Man by L. Sprague de Camp. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:42, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the recommendation. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 22:04, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

There was a Star Trek episode on the subject. I think there was a Twilight Zone also. On the humorous side, there was Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner in their bit about the "2,000 Year Old Man". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:29, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Requiem for Methuselah is the Star Trek episode. Dru of Id (talk) 20:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

A reporter visits a 100-year-old farmer in New England. The reporter asks, "You've seen a lot of changes in your life, haven't you?" The farmer answers, "Yep. And I was against every one of them. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:16, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

British Asian#Communities

In your article, Burton upon Trent, Milton Keynes, Newport, Oxford, Pendle, Rugby, Southampton, Sunderland and Wakefield have not mentioned whether the South Asians are Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi or all. Do all three south asians groups in these cities? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.106.17 (talk) 20:03, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

The vast majority will be British by nationality - probably second or even third generation. In terms of ethnicity (rather than nationality), the statistics can be found (as a downloadable spreadsheet) here: [4]. It gives numbers, rather than percentages, so you'll probably have to work these out for yourself. As an example, the figures for East Staffordshire (which includes Burton upon Trent) are as follows:

People in ethnic groups: Mixed: White and Asian: 265

People in ethnic groups: Asian or Asian British: Indian 426

People in ethnic groups: Asian or Asian British: Pakistani 3,862

People in ethnic groups: Asian or Asian British: Bangladeshi 86

People in ethnic groups: Asian or Asian British: Other Asian 112

No doubt the proportions will be very different in the other places you name. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:05, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Not sure that "British Asian" even means all that much by itself anymore, since the typical experiences of Muslims and non-Muslims have often diverged in several respects, and nowadays a significant number of non-Muslims don't really want to be indiscriminately lumped together with Muslims in some supposedly homogeneous and undifferentiated "Asian" group. AnonMoos (talk) 21:24, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

NATO support for Libya efforts

I notice several countries within NATO are vocally supporting the 2011 military intervention in Libya, whereas several are against it. The lineup is a very odd one, and I'm trying to figure out why certain groups are supporting it, and why aren't. Here are my hypotheses:

• United States (easiest one, as I live here, and follow the news) - initially against, due to having a dovish leader (Obama) and being really sick of using its military in primarily Islamic nations; moved for, due to arguments by internal recommendations, notably Hillary Clinton (has always been more hawkish). Done also out of fear of losing any weak prestige it has among Islamic nations ("the US didn't support us against Gaddafi, but it had no problem invading Iraq and Afghanistan for oil"), and out of fear for losing its place as the "go-to" country for military issues, worldwide and especially in NATO.
• France - for; a bit of a surprise here; France is notoriously dovish, to the point of mockery. However, they have a more hawkish leader, who is interested in regaining the prestige of the French in the international field (especially in light of USA's ambivalance). Also, leader (Sarkozy) may be embarrassed by former support for Gaddafi. I cannot say whether the actions have much domestic support.
• United Kingdom - for; the British are the anti-French: they've traditionally been more hawkish, and have supported the US in the past. It currently has a conservative leader; is acting exactly as the US would, had it a more hawkish leadership.
• Germany - has come out against participation. With the conservative leadership of Germany, its strident stance is again a bit surprising. My only theory is that the German populace has traditionally been very dovish on military matters (post WWII, obviously); the country is already against participation in the Afghan war, despite its international nature.
• Turkey - has come out against participation. This is another confusing one, as even the Arab League initially spoke more strongly in favor. My only theories are a) Turkey doesn't like mass uprisings, in view of its own history of putting down such uprisings. However, this doesn't hold much water, as they recognized the independence of Kosovo just two years ago, b) the Turkish leader (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan) is known to be close to Gaddafi (e.g., Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights), and c) A modern pro-Islamic Turkey (as opposed to its secular past) really dislikes the West putting its nose anywhere near an Islamic nation (c.f., its support of Iran against western hostility).
• Australia (not strictly speaking NATO, although closely aligned) - against because it has a dovish leader.
• Canada, Denmark, Belgium - for: all have hawkish leaders.
• Italy - for, a hawkish leader, perhaps embarrassed by former support for Gaddafi.
• Norway - for, but with a left-leaning leader. I have no idea why they support this.

Anyway, sorry about the textwall, but I wanted to get some of your impressions of this, as I can't figure out why certain countries are acting certain ways. Can anyone verify or debunk any of this? I'm especially interested in Turkey and Germany. Thanks. Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:42, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Not sure why you think Turkey would tend to follow the lead of the Arab League... AnonMoos (talk) 21:09, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

They are a country torn between the Middle East and Europe. Europe appears to be mostly for the action, the Middle East also for it. Thus the cultural considerations give no clue as to their non-support. Magog the Ogre (talk) 21:12, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Look up the decline of the Ottoman empire for the sometimes-checkered history of Turkish-Arab relations. Anyway, many of the differences in alignment from 2003 are because this is not widely viewed as U.S. aggressive unilateralism... AnonMoos (talk) 21:16, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Of course the Turkish have terrible relations with the Arabs (I even mention this on my userpage). But lot of the traditional has been changing as of late (c.f., the Gaza flotilla raid). Also, I wasn't comparing this to just 2003 - I'm wondering why some leaders support it while others don't. Magog the Ogre (talk) 21:19, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Also for Turkey, just because their leader was granted an award by Gaddafi, doesn't mean they are allies, whilst the recognition of new countries is a complex diplomatic area (for example, back in 1908 or whenever Russia offered to unrecognise Bosnia in exchange for Austrian support against Turkey, and more recently Turkey and Russia seemingly exchanged recognition of Northern Cyprus and South Ossetia.) Meanwhile, perhaps the Germans and others don't want to see lots of their people killed, or to get involved in a potentially expensive campaign in the midst of a recession, quite reasonable interests they seem to me. 148.197.121.205 (talk) 21:20, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

It might be useful to compare with the US bombing of Libya (1986). There the reason was terrorist activities alleged to have been performed by Libya and Qaddafi's claim to the waters in the Gulf of Sidra. In that case the liberals argued "innocent until proven guilty" and that the bombing would just lead to a further spiral of violence (which it did, including the Lockerbie bombing), and that this would further antagonize the Arab world, whereas conservatives supported the action. However, the present situation doesn't lead to a clear-cut liberal/conservative divide like that, for several reasons:

1) The Arab League actually supports some action against Qaddafi. Thus some liberals may support action this time around.

2) In this case the benefit, in terms of saving civilian lives, isn't theoretical and eventual, it's clear and immediate. But, of course, some lives will also be lost in the process of protecting others, so this could lead to a divide between most liberals (who put protecting innocent civilians as the highest goal) and pacifists.

So, those are some reasons why liberals might be divided. Conservatives might be divided because, while they generally support the use of force to remove historic enemies, in this case it could lead to a reduction in the oil supply and possibly a victory for Islamic fundamentalists. Conservatives also like to act unilaterally rather than in a coalition. StuRat (talk) 23:56, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Regarding Germany, it is too simple to say that Germany has a conservative government; conservatives support military intervention; therefore we would expect Germany's government to support military intervention in Libya. Actually, no German party unambiguously supports military intervention anywhere. In fact, the German decision to take part in the war in Afghanistan was made by the government of Gerhard Schröder, a Social Democrat. The Angela Merkel, the current chancellor, is from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the traditional opponents of the Social Democrats. The CDU are a conservative party in the sense that they tend to represent the interests of businesses and the better off; however, the CDU have never taken a position in support of the military projection of German power. Such a stance is practically taboo in Germany because of its Nazi history. In fact, Germany's Afghan engagement is quite unpopular among Germans, who tend toward pacifism and tend to abhor the non-defensive use of military power, again because of the Nazi past. Meanwhile, Merkel has faced widespread opposition at home to Germany's assumption of a large share of the financial burden for rescuing the euro and supporting the finances of peripheral European nations in the current European debt crisis. I think, in this context, the German government calculated that they could not afford politically to undertake yet another unpopular action in support of Western allies.

As for Turkey, it is important to remember that the Arab League and the UN Security Council called for only the creation of a no-fly zone to protect civilians in Libya, not for the more expansive intervention on behalf of the Libyan rebels that NATO has undertaken. My understanding is that Turkey supports only the limited action requested by the Arab League and the Security Council and that they object to the more expansive NATO intervention. This makes perfect sense in terms of the Turkish population's general suspicion of Western intervention in oil-rich Muslim countries and in terms of the efforts of the present Turkish government to build stronger relations with Arab governments, many of which have also voiced opposition to NATO's movement beyond mere imposition of a no-fly zone. Marco polo (talk) 01:24, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

And I'd say for Germany this is still too simple. While Germany is generally very sceptical towards military involvement across party lines, things have changed slightly and generally Germany will support UN backed military action for humanitarian causes. Indeed Germany has supported (and actively contributed) to the Kosovo war (even without UN backing). A large portion of the German media blames the incompetence and amateurism of the foreign secretary Westerwelle for the German stance. Indeed both former chancellor Kohl (Conservative) and former foreign secretary Fischer (Green - traditionally pacifist) have strongly criticised Westerwelle for his (non-)action at the UN. At last weekends regional elections the share of the votes of Westerwelle's party (FDP, free democrats) was halved (probably not solely related to Libya, but likely a contributing factor). I don't believe the cost associated with the EURO stability pact has anything to do with it. 86.161.102.123 (talk) 23:18, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't say Canada has a "hawkish" leader; the troops in Afghanistan are supposed to come back this year, I think (and they were sent there by the previous Liberal governments, which I wouldn't describe as hawkish either - they sensibly stayed out of Iraq, at least). Canada has lost a relatively large number of soldiers in Afghanistan though, and Canadians are generally wary of sending more soldiers into combat zones, but I think in this case the chances of actual combat are very slim (aren't there only something like six Canadian planes involved in Libya?). For France, I get the impression that, even though Libya was never a French colony, France sees itself as the protector of Africa. They sent some troops to the Ivory Coast recently (though that was a former colony). Also, once Obama was on board, the French were much happier to join in - if Bush was still president, I don't think they would be involved. Adam Bishop (talk) 06:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure it is fair to call France 'notoriously dovish': have a look at List of French wars and battles#Modern period. Presumably the actions of Michèle Alliot-Marie, and Sarkozy's current unpopularity, have something to do with their position. In Britain, the action has cross-party support; the fact that a conservative(-led) government is in charge is irrelevant. More generally, I don't think you can explain governments' stances on this intervention simply by placing them on a left/right or hawkish/dovish scale. They will also be taking into account things like the level of popular support for intervention, the popularity of previous military interventions, and relations with other countries. 130.88.134.121 (talk) 12:59, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Dividing the world governments into hawkish and dovish is at best a misleading and inaccurate simplification of how international politics work. Decisions by head of states cannot be predicted by the mere facts of their labels (left, right, conservative...). Such big decisions are influenced by a complex array of factors distinct to each country: economics, treaties, internal politics, international credibility, leadership ambitions... If you really want to understand why each state behaved in the way it did, you should drop the labels and start studying the complex causes and conditions behind their politics. 89.82.190.163 (talk) 21:43, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. In this case, Libya was an Italian colony until after Word War 2, and France has a long colonial history in North Africa. Libya also is right across the Mediterranean from Italy, and it receives the brunt of refugees. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:06, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd hazard a guess that general population of Australia isn't too fond of it's military involvement in Middle Eastern affairs, based on my experiences of living in Perth and studying politics at Murdoch University. Since current minority Labor government has recently lost state elections in NSW they are doing their very best to cling onto power meaning they don't want to aggravate their electorate any further by involving themselves into Libya situation. Australia sees itself as regional power and will gladly conduct military and peacekeeper missions in the region but I think it does not perceive Libya as it's responsibility. Melmann^(talk) 12:19, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

It is easy to be a regional power when you are the only one in the region. Googlemeister (talk) 12:55, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Right. We'll just ignore 400 000 of active Indonesian military personnel and 62 million fit for service compared to 57 000 active Australian military personnel and some 4 million fit for service. Indonesia also has slightly larger economy, but not for much. Melmann^(talk) 13:06, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

MPs expenses scandal, UK

How much per capita per year have dishonest MPs taken in false expenses claims from the British public, before it was stopped? Thanks 2.97.210.137 (talk) 22:44, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

See United Kingdom Parliamentary expenses scandal for general background; there are some figures mentioned there. List of expenses claims in the United Kingdom Parliamentary expenses scandal has a table showing how much was required to be paid back. Gwinva (talk) 23:17, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Less than 1p each - why all the fuss? Surely its worth paying 1p to have democraxcy? 92.15.14.99 (talk) 11:09, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, people react in terms of principles, rather than reason. 1p is nothing, and given the waste of time that this scandal has produced, it has cost the country much more than it tries to save. But there you go, that is politics for you. --Lgriot (talk) 12:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Democracy is surely worth more than 1p per person. But the 1p was expended on corruption and not on democracy. Let them steal 1p and next year they steal 2 and on and on and on... The price of leadership is to be held to higher standards. Flamarande (talk) 12:53, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Yet our dear Windsor family pocket a great many times that, and as they are outrageously wealthy already may I suggest they don't need it, so why is it bad for MPs but luvvy-dovey gawd bless er me awld china for The Firm? 92.15.14.4 (talk) 19:51, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

You miss the point entirely. It's not bad for MPs to be paid public money to cover legitimate expenses. But it is bad when they claim for "expenses" they never incurred at all. That is outright fraud, dishonesty, lying, you name it. If that's the sort of people you want representing you, that says as much about you as it does about them. Namely, not much. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:05, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not even that - in many cases they claimed for expenses they had incurred (a famous example being moat-cleaning), and were, at least arguably, staying within the rules, as witnessed by the fact that they were reimbursed; so (again arguably) there was (in most cases) no dishonesty and no "false expenses". The main problem was that MPs were taking advantage of a rotten system. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:16, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

But you can say exactly the same with the Windsors. 92.15.14.4 (talk) 21:08, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

So, it appears the general public is content with one set of royalty, but draws the line at spontaneously developing any extra royals in the form of MPs with stately homes and inflated stipends. (By the way, the libertarian point of view is that the MPs are worse than the royals, who at least are decorative and tend not to interfere.) 213.122.54.179 (talk) 04:22, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, yes. Part of the point of an effectively powerless monarch is that it prevents anyone else moving into the position with actual power. 86.164.73.72 (talk) 15:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

March 28

Demanding an anorexia suffered to eat

In Skins, a character sends repeated messages to an anorexia suffered (Cassie_Ainsworth), demanding her to eat. Considering that anorexia is an anxiety disorder, and that this would not deal with the causes of it, isn't that a horrible idea? Quest09 (talk) 14:58, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that is likely to be counter-effective. Compare the options listed under Anorexia nervosa#Treatment. In a hospital setting, a person might be made to ingest food (possibly though an IV), but that would be ideally be combined with other forms of treatment. (By the way, "anorexia suffered" doesn't work. I would say "an anorexic person" or "a person suffering from anorexia".) Lesgles (talk) 15:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Or the nearest viable: "anorexia sufferer ". 212.169.179.193 (talk) 16:32, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

What is common to "Ford Mustang" Porsche and Ferrari

Looking for something common among "Ford Mustang" Porsche and Ferrari. The commonality could be anything. People/companies associated with them or just anything

Would appreciate any help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.31.252.236 (talk) 15:08, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

They are all cars with horses in their logos. Lesgles (talk) 15:47, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

They have 4 wheels and internal combustion engines. Googlemeister (talk) 16:38, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

They cater to young, affluent males with feelings of sexual inadequacy. Wait a minute, I had a '67 'Stang! DOR (HK) (talk) 04:05, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

"Mustang", "Porsche", and "Ferrari" all have 7 letters. StuRat (talk) 04:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

US politics/office-holders campaigning

Hi - I was wondering if Americans could explain something to me, after watching The California 47th. In this episode, Bartlet and his staff fly on Air Force One to California, for no reason other than campaigning in a Federal special Congressional election. This isn't uncommon in the show, e.g. when campaigning for re-election as President, Bartlet and staff fly there on AF1. Does this actually happen in US politics? (Presumably so?) If so, given that federal funding of party political campaigns is illegal (a point often referenced in the show, such as having election posters in the white house being illegal, even during a political party's own administration, or indeed in this episode, when staffers stay behind to campaign longer, they have to come off the WH payroll), how is the free flight on AF1, and all concomitant governmental expenditure not a massive donation to the campaign coffers of the party in question? Or do they just get to use it because the President has to travel in style, but then they have to re-imburse the government? What about staff pay for all the time they're out endorsing the candidate, even if they're nominally not door-knocking/handing out leaflets? I'd love to understand this better :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.195.197.254 (talk) 15:50, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and it's a major advantage for an incumbent. In 2004 George W. Bush used AF1 to campaign, and Dick Cheney used AF2. They're at the disposal of the president, and the Secret Service wouldn't let the president fly with anything less than that kind of security. It makes campaigning much easier, although the advantage was somewhat neutralized in 2004 because John Kerry is and was a senator (in contrast to most presidential candidates; having current or former governors is far more typical) and could more than afford his own air transportation. As to the aides, that's handled through the respective parties; many people aren't paid (a lot of interns and volunteers do the work at a local/regional level), but those who are get their checks from whichever political organization they're working for. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

[ec] :This article addresses most of your questions. As for paying presidential staff who spend time on partisan projects, they don't punch a time clock when they start or stop working on government business, which is the basis for their salary. What they do in their spare time (even if that spare time adds up to 40 hours per week or more) is their own business, though if a presidential staffer were found to be working mainly on a campaign, it could be the basis of a scandal that could threaten the president's re-election. Marco polo (talk) 17:58, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

It is an issue though if they use governmental resources, as I understand it. They may not punch the clock, but their use of offices, telephones, computers, etc., can fall under scrutiny. Much less if they use the implements of government more directly (e.g. firing judges for political reasons). --Mr.98 (talk) 19:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, don't forget that any (Air Force) plane the president is on is technically "Air Force One". Qrsdogg (talk) 18:38, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Karl Rove clearly worked on the 2004 re-election campaign for George W. Bush while he held the Federal office of "Senior Advisor to the President". I merely cite him as an example. Senior political aides for other presidents have also had roles in their campaigns. Marco polo (talk) 20:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

There is a current discussion going on right now about Governor of Mississippi Haley Barbour flying around the country at state expense for campaign events (he is an unannounced candidate for President). He claims he is travelling on state business while at the same time attending these events. Corvus cornix_talk 20:50, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Politicians in the United States have been doing that sort of thing for as long as I can remember and probably longer. (My memory of such things goes back to the 1970s.) Marco polo (talk) 23:54, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Rush und Bedeutung

In this text, is 'Milquetoast' a definite description and if so, what is its referent? Danke, Skomorokh 21:06, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe you are asking who Rush Limbaugh refers to in this quote: "The truth is, the sad reality is we may end up with Milquetoast as a nominee". Is this right ? StuRat (talk) 21:56, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

See Caspar Milquetoast. --ColinFine (talk) 23:23, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

And milquetoast seems to derive from "milk sopping" of bread (so, "milk toast"), a practice common in the Middle Ages but generally only used for the infirm or ill in later periods. So, essentially, Rush is saying that the only option left for the Republican party will be a weak candidate, because the strong ones are too divisive for the electorate. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Shapes in Chinese Calligraphy

I am learning Chinese calligraphy, and I need practice with a particular shape. I don't know how to refer to it other than by calling it what the author of the book I'm studying calls it. Rebecca Yue refers to it as the "horizontal form of the diagonal brushstroke to the right." It is the shape seens at the bottom of these characters: 之逞逗. I would rather prefer to write this shape as part of a word, rather than simply repeating the shape over and over. I need a way to locate words that contain this shape so I can practice them, but I can't find a way to do that. Can anyone help me with this? CalamusFortis 21:57, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

You could take a look at "What's in a Chinese Character" ISBN 9787800055157. It steps through the basic ideographs, giving their origins, and then shows how the basic ideographs combine into more complex ones. CS Miller (talk) 22:21, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Though the web site is for Japanese Kanji, [5] seems like a good way to find characters based on multiple radicals. CJEDictionary gives a disappointingly incomplete set of Hanzi based on particular radicals, but not in combination. Pablo allows a pretty good lookup from English to Chinese, with animated brush strokes, but I don't see much capability in the other direction (you must run as administrator or it crashes Windows Explorer). I hope someone will give better freeware answers than this so I can check them out. ;) Wnt (talk) 23:17, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

The radical you refer to is called a 走之, or 走之底. Googling "走之", the first hit I found was a page on "how to write 走之", which may be of interest to you. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:43, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Re-reading your question, I realised that you may have been referring to the stroke, not the whole radical. As you probably know, a downward diagonal stroke to the right with a light flourish at the end is called a 捺, "na". This particular form of that stroke is called a 平捺, a "flat na". Googling 平捺 took me to some video results teaching viewers how to write the stroke, so these may be of some interest to you.

If you simply want to find characters with this stroke, simply look up that radical in a radical-based Chinese dictionary. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:46, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Here are the list of characters with the two radicals. [6] and [7]. The second and the third are basically the same. And a list of radicals is here. Oda Mari (talk) 05:47, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

March 29

Census nosiness

I just filled in the UK census, and was puzzled by one pair of questions: why do they want to know the name and address of the organization that employs me? Does this mean that statistics will be kept for every business in the UK, however small? Will those statistics be published, so that I can see how many people work(ed) for the corner grocery store, and doesn't that seem very useful for tax enforcement, and not at all useful for statisticians? What's the ostensible purpose of the question? 213.122.2.47 (talk) 07:35, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

The address might be used for working out how far people live from their workplace (which might be useful when considering transport plans, etc.). That doesn't explain the name, though. Proteus (Talk) 07:51, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

The report here says: "The address and postcode of the employer is one of a number of questions contained in the census questionnaire about jobs, place of work, hours of employment and methods of travel to work. Answers to these questions help to build a profile of the economy of England and Wales and provide the foundation for other labour market and economic statistics published by ONS..... As well as underpinning the planning of public services, census statistics are also used extensively by the private sector. Information on such things as the skill and age profile of the workforce and where people live can help businesses to decide where to place new offices, factories and other places of work and what training they need provide for their employees." All individual forms are confidential, but the results will be aggregated to provide statistical information by location and by business type - not for individual businesses. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:29, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

By door number and business type, by the sound of it? 213.122.57.127 (talk) 08:53, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

The work postcode is extremely useful to researchers of all kinds. Without it there would be no travel to work statistics. The industry that your employer is operating in is also crucial for knowing the mix of industries in each local area. What ONS says about business planning is also true, although it may be useful to note that it is not just ONS that crunches the information. There are numerous consultancies, large and small, that use Census data to model local economic development. Businesses can buy the info in to assist with planning; larger businesses contract with consultancies to do that while it is filtered to smaller businesses through local authorities, HMRC, chambers of commerce, business associations etc. The individual information is never passed on to HMRC but aggregate information is publicly available and can be used by anyone. So if the Census shows your town has hundreds of people working in construction but no construction businesses are registered for tax, HMRC might decide to send a team of inspectors to have a look around. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:00, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

So, why do they ask for the name and full address, rather than the postcode? Is the excess information thrown away? 213.122.57.127 (talk) 09:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Thrown away? Ha. Forms are kept for 100 years then made available to the public. Don't forget, you can use the street name to check if the respondent has made a mistake in the postcode. That's the sort of thing they will be doing for the next 18 months before they are ready to publish the first tables of figures. Not by hand, by computer algorithms. They cross-check against the last census, against the electoral register, against the credit reference agencies' data. Oh, and by the way, the UK government maintains a database of UK businesses that is supposed to be comprehensive. It starts with VAT registrations, and records for small businesses not registered for VAT are being added now or in the near future. It uses the database to make the sample for the Annual Business Survey (which may have changed its name again, need to check and amend WP article). Governments in developed countries know a lot of stuff. Assume they know more or less everything. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:16, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, they already know the names of all employers and whom they employ from Tax & NI returns. They already know extensive information about every person under 20 who has been in the state education system. In the past, information was seldom shared between different arms of government, but this is all changing. Dbfirs 10:35, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Not just people under 20. Individual records go back more than 15 years for schools, colleges, and universities. Our health records are also held. These days it is easy to combine records from different sources. The government agencies work with external bodies to develop their data systems. Nevertheless, there are some limits. Data sharing and security protocols are applied more strictly after the headline cases of databases left in taxis. Most of this can be found out by enquiring of government departments but I think most people would be shocked to know how much info is held on them by how many different bodies. The Census is the most secure and least problematic. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:12, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I probably should have said under 25. It is only in the last ten years or so that the Government has forced schools to use unique identifiers (UPNs) for pupils and to submit data electronically to their database. Dbfirs 20:21, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

How do they help an area with high unemployment? Do they really reward businesses for opening up shop there, or do they tear down the neighborhood to make room for a car park for the local stadium? (The latter being Chicago's preferred response, for example...) Wnt (talk) 00:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It could be either, or neither. Authorities - central government, local government, and others - use census and other statistical information to develop policies towards an area - such as land use planning, or economic development strategies - that they consider appropriate, depending on the circumstances. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Professing and believing within Catholicism

I vaguely recall that within Roman Catholicism there is a meaningful distinction made between the two concepts, to the effect that a Catholic is required to profess certain doctrines, but technically he is not required to believe them. Or perhaps he is supposed to do both, but he is "more required" to profess a doctrine than to inwardly believe it. This is my very fragmentary recollection, and the reality is probably somewhat different. Can anyone clarify the point, or direct me to a source of more information on this particular distinction, and perhaps to critical discussions of the issue? LANTZY^TALK 11:26, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, attempted indoctrination by Roman Catholic church performed on me has told me that one has to profess and believe in the God. To claim belief but not truly hold it in your heart is a sin much like the fact that belief in God will save you from hell even if you are not baptised into the church and you can be forgiven your sin if you truly confess and regret it internally, but don't have the means to go to proper Confession at the moment. True belief is necessary for got to recognise you anything less is not a guarantee. What you do need to profess openly is rejection of sin (after every Confession), rejection of devil during marriage ceremony, baptism and few other ceremonies (godparents and parents on the behalf of an infant) and core set of beliefs known as Apostles' Creed which are recited on every mass and succinctly summarise the basics of the Roman Catholic belief. Melmann^(talk) 12:38, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Philosophical Defense of General Resurrection

Hello. Can anyone here point me to a rigorous philosophical defense of general resurrection as preached by the Catholic Church vis-a-vis resurrection? Please understand that I am only referring to the philophical arguments, not those discussing whether or not it is a biblical teaching or not, or whether or not it is more just than or as just as reincarnation. In particular, I am looking for treatment of questions such as "how can that which has a beginning be without an end?" That is, how something can be "immortal" but not "eternal". I asked for a "rigorous" defense because I have seen many so far and all of them touch issues which are settled as far as I am concerned, and their reasoning is misinformed or incomplete. Please do not hesitate to recommend a complex or highly theoretical work, I have a decent grasp of the different subjects in Western philosophy, and I am prepared to do the hard work to understand it fully. Please just let me know which is the strongest defense in this regard that you know of. Many thanks, ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 12:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

What are you looking for, exactly? In the words of the old Catholic Encyclopedia (which isn't always in conformity with teaching) "The general resurrection can hardly be proved from reason, though we may show its congruity." While one can carry out philosophical arguments about it's necessity, any rigorous defence is ultimately going to come down to the Bible, Holy Tradition and the Church's teaching: it's not something that's derivable outside that context. Having said that, if nobody has a better recommendation you might want to look up the various works of the Early Church Fathers cited in that article (under Tradition), since I expect some of them to have provided a thorough treatment. 86.164.69.241 (talk) 13:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. I am aware of a number of philosophical problems with resurrection, such as those recounted here:[8] and here:[9], besides others that I am aware of. I think these objections present challenges, and that reincarnation presents a a more coherent account in comparison. I wished to know if someone, preferably someone defending the Catholic doctrine, had offered a detailed treatment of the issues. But your answer is very useful too, I just wanted to know what are the strongest defenses that people know of. --ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 14:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I should also note (and I wish I could be more helpful) that the reason it is relatively hard to find a detailed philosophical treatment of this from the Catholic perspective, is because the Catholic Church doesn't really think the details are terribly important. Catholicism doesn't go quite as far as the Orthodox churches in terms of "It's a mystery, and the details aren't important", but the afterlife and the end of the world are topics it doesn't think yield or need a lot of detail. After all, what difference does it make to your actions today? We 'know' (based on Jesus's words) that existence in Heaven is not really comparable to existence on Earth, for example, so further extrapolating isn't really possible. If you know none of the old rules apply, but don't know the new rules, how can you meaningfully say what is and isn't possible? 86.164.69.241 (talk) 17:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I think what you are saying makes eminent sense. However, I was still looking for one because the Catholic Church, in the present age, presents itself as one that extensively depends on reason and community tradition (and reasoning within that community) in the formation of its beliefs and practices, besides the scripture itself. Moreover, I have come across defenses of a logical nature presented of general resurrection, and criticisms offered of reincarnation from the Catholic point of view, just not ones that seemed very convincing. --ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 18:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Formal term for an "it's your word against his" situation

I am trying to express a negotiation situation wherein two sides both have limited information about each other, and make mutually unverifiable claims, with no objective evidence nor intermediary (i.e., a witness), such as when one says "it's your word against his". But this formulation lacks the requisite elegance (i.e., of the conceptual sort). Grateful for any ideas as to whether there is a formal and more elegant term, in law or logic or some other field, for such a situation. --Nicsilo (talk) 15:55, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

A specific instance of this is "He said, she said", which is a nice and more-elegant shorthand for the whole thing (except for your "limited information" requirement), but has sexual overtones. Our He said, she said article actually refers the reader to argument, but the desired meaning of "argument" is over at argument (disambiguation), which points the reader to disagreement, which is a redirect to controversy, which doesn't really address the topic. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:20, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

"One's word against another's" I think is intended to indicate a lack of third party or verifiable evidence. In a legal context, you can say a suit is "your word against mine" if there are no (or few) other witnesses available, and no (or few) documentary evidence available. Perhaps it can be expressed as "lack of external evidence"? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:18, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess there may not be an actual name for such a situation. Perhaps game theory has some answers, so I'll look at it from that angle. --Nicsilo (talk) 15:51, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe "hearsay" may cover it. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Hearsay is evidence which a witness received in a manner other than by direct perception. If a witness says "John told me he killed her", that's hearsay. It's not quite the same as what Nicsilo is asking for I think. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

It would be contentious, or contention. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 19:18, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Picture of Emperor Gaozu of Later Jin

What is the source of the image at this site? If the source is PD, is this pic? If this pic is not PD, does it qualify under WP's fair use policy? Thanks Kayau Voting IS evil 16:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

If the source is PD (and it certainly looks like it's old enough to be) then a faithful reproduction of it is of course PD. No clues in the text about the source of the pic though. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:16, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

A faithful reproduction of a Public Domain image is in the Public Domain In the United States (Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.). In other nations, it is less clear. In particular, the situation in the UK is somewhat murky right now. See [10] for some of the issues. The position of the Wikimedia foundation has been that US law is the only law that needs to be followed in this regard (in most instances on Wikimedia Commons, both the law in the U.S. and the law in the source country must be followed). Buddy431 (talk) 02:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

The source country is obviously the PRC, so I suppose the law of the PRC should be followed. In any case, googling the text returned no results, so I probably won't be able to find out if it's PD. Still, it may be interesting to note that as it calls Great Jin 'Later Jin', it's not contemporary. Assuming it's not PD, would it qualify for fair use? Thanks Kayau Voting IS evil 14:21, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's a slightly higher resolution of the same picture, found here. If I'm reading the Google Translation right, I think it was uploaded by this editor. If someone speaks Chinese, they could ask her where she got the photo from. And in general, for Wikipedia, it is the U.S. copyright law that's more important than that of the source country's. To qualify for fair use (WP:NFCC), you'd probably have to have a good reason to put it on a specific article where no free equivalents are possible (presumably Shi Jingtang). If looks like there are no pictures there, so it might qualify. You'd be better asking at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. Buddy431 (talk) 17:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

How to judge parents?

Is there a scale to judge parents? Obviously, not getting sneakers for $200 is not a blatant case of abuse, and on the other extreme, sexual abusing your children will always get you a 0 as parent. But how to grade the cases between these two poles? 212.169.190.250 (talk) 16:48, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Not to dodge the question, but judge them for what purpose?

I think that makes a difference. If you're doing some sort of scientific study and you need to grade parents on their 'fitness' (so you can compare your test group and your control group) you're going to a very specific criterion.

But other than that, it's difficult to imagine a good 'ranking' scale, except perhaps, how happy or successful the children are when they grow up. (Even then, which is better? Successful but not happy? or vice-versa?) APL (talk) 17:00, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, judging parents might be interesting for social workers or psychologists coaching parents to be better parents. Judging might sound as a too strong of a term. Evaluating is just as good here. I'm sure that happiness - which is partially genetic - is not an issue here, nor success - which is equally determined by factors beyond parents' control. 212.169.190.250 (talk) 17:37, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

At a first step, you'll have to define what a "good parent" is. What obligations do they have? Should be judge them by outcome or by intention? Should be pardon mentally ill parents or drug users? Excluding the obviously criminal, I see little chances of reaching a conclusion. Family psychologist could, however, still work on the relationship. Quest09 (talk) 17:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

One might also consider the happiness (or success, or whatever) of the children right at the moment, rather than concentrating on outcome. Does the influence of one's parents abruptly end when one reaches whatever the age of adulthood is? Is it unimportant how awful an experience a child has for those 18 or 21 or however many years, provided the emerging adult is in some sense "good"? Besides this, rather than attempting an objective assessment, one could ask the child to rate the parent by whatever criteria the child thinks are important, which of course will not always be the same. One child's good parent might not seem a good parent to another child. 81.131.66.235 (talk) 23:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

A ranking system like you describe only works if you can meaningfully say, for any two parents, A and B that either "A is a better parent than B", "B is a better parent than A" or "A and B are equally good parents". That clearly isn't the case. Consider a case where A is very caring and loving but can't hold down a good job so A's children have to go without things their friends have and B doesn't pay much attention to their children, but works hard so they never have to go without. Clearly, A is a better parent in one way and B is a better parent in another. You would need to decide whether being caring and loving or being able to financially support your children is more important, and you can't really decide that. They are obviously both important. Trying to quantify it will get you no-where. --Tango (talk) 19:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Everyone is assuming that no one studies this stuff or attempts to quantify what good parenting is. That's bullshit. The above people make it sound like its some crapshoot; that there is nothing at all to say that some actions people take make them better parents and some actions make them worse parents. There are scads of studies which clearly show high correlations between child outcomes and parental actions. The Wikipedia articles Parenting and Parenting styles which give a start. If someone wanted to do some research outside of Wikipedia, one could find oodles of studies which show what being a good parent takes. --Jayron32 19:24, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Of course there are studies into parenting, but they are of a qualitative nature, not a quantitive one. --Tango (talk) 21:27, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Nonsense, there are hundreds of quantitative studies regarding parenting, such as XXX% of parents that raise their kids a certain way end up with children who have a certain outcome. Those studies place hard numbers for the kinds of parenting that produce specific outcomes in children; i.e. studies on the effects of child sexual abuse regarding the outcomes for the abused children (with facts and figures), or maybe effects of parental involvement on student test scores (a number, mind you). There are LOTS of quantitative studies on what parents should do to be good parents, and what they should not do lest they be bad parents. It isn't just "kids turn out good or bad, and we have no idea how the parents figure into it". --Jayron32 21:54, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Teachers judge parents all the time, even before they meet them. HiLo48 (talk) 19:32, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

You are actually referencing the primary metric for measuring the quality of a parent - the children. The assumption is that good parents produce good children and bad parents produce bad children. -- kainaw™ 19:35, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Well in nature vs nurture, parents are responsible for both the nature (genetics) and the nurture (their parenting). Googlemeister (talk) 19:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, a strong correlation would normally exist. HiLo48 (talk) 19:47, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Does a scale exist for grading children? Obviously there are school grades, but do those reflect whatever kind of value the OP is interested in? Even if they reflected general moral worth, which they don't, is it good to attempt to measure people's absolute worth, outside of context? Seems a silly idea, and unpleasant. 81.131.66.235 (talk) 23:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that murdering the children would rate even lower than sexual abuse. And then there could be things worse than murder, like lifelong torture followed by murder. StuRat (talk) 20:50, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

So that would make This guy a particularly bad parent... --Jayron32 21:48, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

The problem with trying to analyze this kind of thing quantitatively like Jayron32 says is determining what is causation and what is mere correlation. For example, I saw a public service announcement telling parents to eat dinner with their kids, citing some study that said that kids who eat dinner with their parents are less likely to do all kinds of bad stuff like illegal drugs. But that doesn't mean that the exact act of eating pizza with Junior makes him a better kid. Rather, it's probable that the parents who eat with their kids every day are more involved in their kids' lives all around. They're also probably more likely to be better-educated and higher-income than people who don't eat with their kids (because they're working the late shift at Wal-Mart, or whatever), and those factors are probably more-closely linked to kids' well-being than anything else you can measure statistically. The fact is, while there are certainly many ways not to raise children -- being physically or emotionally abusive or neglectful, for example -- there's not one right way to do so. Amy Chua's daughter seems to have turned out OK so far; so have Benjamin Spock's kids (a rumor that one committed suicide is untrue). Suffice to say Chua and Spock raised their children rather differently. Of course, if it really doesn't matter whether one follows the Chua or Spock school of child-rearing, following the former path seems a bit cruel. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

You can isolate for all of that, however. You can say "OK, we're only going to look at low-income parents who work evening jobs, and see what they do differently, and see what has a negative or positive impact on their children in some measurable way (say, by looking at test scores, children in trouble with the law, adult incarceration rates, attendance at secondary education, whatever metric you use to look at the children)." Such studies can actually be very insightful, because they can show ways in which parents can have a positive effect, even in highly disadvantaged situations. --Jayron32 03:09, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It depends on the variable. With something like the presence of lead paint, it's fairly straightforward to draw a relationship between cause and effect. You can factor out income, ethnicity, parents' educational attainment, the absence of one parent, etc. from a comparison of kids who are and those who are not exposed to lead paint in their homes. If the 30% of the first group and 15% of the second group is involved in delinquency, you could reasonably draw a correlation between lead paint exposure and delinquency. But let's say someone finds that kids who play video games for two hours a day are more likely to get into legal trouble. No matter how many socioeconomic factors you adjust for, it's very difficult to prove that the video-game playing is a cause of the delinquency rather than another symptom of a root cause. Perhaps kids who play video games for 2 hours a day are more likely to have indifferent or neglectful parents. The only way to factor that out would be to do a detailed qualitative study of the family, and the more in-depth you look at each case, the fewer cases you can study. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:41, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Press conferences

I was watching William Hague and another address a press conference, entirely as one would expect in terms of the way it was carried out. As each question from the floor was being answered, the reporter who asked it would be furiously scribbling. Would it not be simpler to merely review the footage after? It did occur to me that it is something to do whilst the speaker is addressing both the questioner and the rest of the floor, but perhaps there is something more obvious? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

It's a timing thing. This will probably have been a print journalist who had to file a story for the next day's paper. He hasn't got the time to review the footage, he just has to write his story as quickly as possible and send it to the paper. --Viennese Waltz 17:00, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

As someone who used an audio-recorder to take notes in school, I can tell you that even with a tape, it's very useful to get down the key bullet-points on paper. If you're in a hurry (and I assume that reporters almost always are) trying to find the one good quote in two hours of tape is an ordeal. APL (talk) 17:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone use shorthand any more? 92.29.112.51 (talk) 19:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Certainly they do. The "furious scribbling" described by the OP could well have been shorthand. --Viennese Waltz 19:07, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Something else that sometimes happens is that the speaker reveals some info during the press conference that then makes the reporter think of a follow-up question, which they quickly scribble down, in the hope that they will be called upon. StuRat (talk) 20:46, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Is this what Highlander (film) and the spin-off TV shows were about? I haven't seen any of them. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 07:03, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

The answer to that is such a strong "no" (IMHO) that I am wondering if you meant to post this somewhere else. --Dweller (talk) 10:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

March 30

No gas day

Every so often, when the price of gasoline spikes, people here in the States will get the idea that there should be a day when none of us buy gas. And to that end, they send notices around social networks to their friends. They do this under the pretense that it will "send a message" or something to that effect. Is there any evidence that these No Gas days actually do anything? Financially or politically?

As for the financial aspect, I would think that it has zero effect since you're just offsetting which day you buy your gas on.

As for politically, again, I don't see it making a difference. It's not as if politicians are blind to the fact that gas prices have gone up.

BTW, no, we have no article on No gas day.

Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 00:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

So few people actually participate, it has zero effect. Secondly, even with 100% participation it would have zero effect, since all those people who participate either fill up their tank a day early (so they don't run dry that day) or some time afterwards; in the end the same amount of gasoline will be sold. If we really want to stick it to the oil companies, we'll all go out and sell our giant, gas-guzzling SUVs, buy fuel efficient hybrids or full electrics, and start demanding better public transportation and better urban planning to make use of it. Or we won't, and instead will all continue making symbolic one-day boycotts that have no effect while oil company executives smoke giant cuban cigars rolled in 100 dollar bills and blow the smoke in our faces. --Jayron32 02:58, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

[This article] seems to indicate that your friendly state and federal governments are profiting almost as much, or as much, or more than the oil companies are... for their own product. Kingsfold (Quack quack!) 16:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Arguably they have a negative effect on real change — see slacktivism. People get the "I am doing something" feeling for nothing, and don't pursue real change. --Mr.98 (talk) 03:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I sometimes wonder if oil companies aren't behind such efforts, reasoning that everyone will get out their anger against them in this ineffectual way, rather than demanding anti-gouging laws from politicians, etc. StuRat (talk) 06:16, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the idea of no gas day is to not use any gas, not just refrain from buying it. So for example you would use your bike instead of your car to get to work that day, which would actually save some gas. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 07:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if this link will work but this effort has been showing up on my FB account for a few days now. Apparently a few of my friends are supporters of it. Anyway, the text of the soapboxing only mentions refraining from driving once in the entire description of the 'event'. For the most part it prattles on about showing the oil companies that the organizers and supporters are sick and tired, yada yada... Dismas|^(talk) 09:04, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

This has been covered by Snopes, with the nice comment that 'all [schemes of this type] are reminders that "protest" schemes that don't cost the participants any inconvenience, hardship, or money remain the most popular, despite their ineffectiveness.' AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I'd looked but didn't find anything. Dismas|^(talk) 13:52, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Are there any federal agencies that'll pay off all my college bills, like the military, but for anyone who's medically disqualified from it?

I'm referring to the US military. Because I have anxiety and medications, I wouldn't get to join them.

However, are there any other federal agencies that I can join and still get college-paying benefits like the military? Please link them. Thanks. --98.190.13.3 (talk) 04:35, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. --JFK

The Peace Corps allows you to defer student loan payments, and also offers some financial assistance for graduate studies (Masters and Doctorate degrees), see [11]. AmeriCorps offers an educational stipend which can be used to pay tuition at universities following your service, see [12]. Teach For America and other related state-level programs offer tuition reimbursement for people who make a commitment to teach in a disadvantaged community for some number of years (usually 2-3). Maybe one of those can help. --Jayron32 04:46, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Peace Corps only selects 1/3 of their applicants. I doubt I'd stand a chance. I don't know how selective Americorps is (provide that info please?) As for teaching, based on the way education is here, I'd rather teach overseas.

Thanks for the tips. Any more? --98.190.13.3 (talk) 04:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

If you pursue a teaching career with your degree, many states offer programs to pay off your student loans. The caveat being you must spend X years teaching in that state once you complete your degree & teaching program. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Which English-speaking countries let us go to college for free?

I know the UK subsidizes it at £3100/year, but due to their budget woes, that's probably about to go.

What other countries would have English-speaking universities that will not charge tuition and fees thanks to their wonderful government? Wherever it is, I MUST go there. Thank you. --98.190.13.3 (talk) 04:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Of course, you know that the education is not for free, right? The universities in question still have expenses which come out of taxes. So you still pay for it, though it is called something different (in this case a tax, rather than tuition), but in the end TANSTAAFL... --Jayron32 04:38, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

At least the taxes are through fuel and sales. I might get a motor scooter or take public transport, which might get me ahead in the long run. Moreover, if the VATs make us pay taxes out the nose, then at least I can find cheaper alternatives to what I'm looking for in most circumstances. You see, in this way, I'd have more control than by the tuition-based system back in America. That is all the more reason why I hope to attend an English-speaking college overseas for a lesser cost. --98.190.13.3 (talk) 04:52, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by "college"? That word has diverse meanings across the world. HiLo48 (talk) 04:41, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I presume he means "univeristy (post-secondary)" education, given that he asks, and I quote (bold mine) "English-speaking universities". --Jayron32 04:47, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Depending on how you define free, Australia provides it - in the sense that you effectively gain a loan from the government to be paid back once your income gets over a certain threshold via your taxes. See Tertiary education fees in Australia. You also find that HECS scholarships, where the debt is covered by the university, are available for postgraduate work in many universities. That said, true private universities, such as Bond University, also exist, and while the HECS scheme is better than full-fee paying, it isn't the same as free. - Bilby (talk) 04:59, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Well then, I suppose I'll have to visit the Office of International Programs at Kansas State University and speak to them about attending a university in Australia. Which one would you recommend and why? I suppose I'll even finish my schooling there, as a matter of fact. --70.179.169.115 (talk) 01:59, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Scotland is not free but they seem to offer a good deal, plus it's (mostly) a beautiful country.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Maastricht University in the Netherlands teaches many courses in English and is currently recruiting students from the UK. You may need to be an EU resident to benefit from the very low fees. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:42, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you need worry too much about educational debts in England - you only pay them back when your income is high enough, and in any case it is completely cancelled when you reach 51 (an extremely long way off, I know). So if you have a low income over your career, you get free education. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 19:26, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Well then, I suppose I'll have to visit the Office of International Programs at Kansas State University and speak to them about attending a university in the UK. Which one would you recommend and why? I suppose I'll even finish my schooling there, as a matter of fact. --70.179.169.115 (talk) 01:59, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

You might keep in mind that foreigners are seldom granted the same fees as citizens. Bielle (talk) 02:07, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. As you are a US citizen apparently, the UK universities will welcome you with open arms - and your money with open accounts! Even in the good old days over 30 years ago when I did my degree for free, foreign students were charged thousands of pounds a year for the privilege of receiving a British education. The thing about student loans in the UK only applies to UK citizens. I'm not sure what the position for loans is for EU citizens, except that UK institutions have to treat them exactly as they would UK students as far as fees go. So it looks like you're out of luck and might as well bite the bullet and pay up where you are!--TammyMoet (talk) 07:44, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

"Organic Atheism" -- or, have any atheist societies existed on a large scale in recorded history?

I'm an atheist, might as well get that out of the way. I'd also appreciate it if the axe-grinders sat this one out, as my question is purely one about history. Looking back over the 20th century, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan stand out to me as largely atheist societies. In the first, it was state-mandated and though vigorously enforced a strong religious undercurrent survived and (since the fall) has flourished in those lands. In the second, despite the government's official position, Buddhism, Daoism, and even a regulated form of Christianity have persisted. In the last, while very, very few citizens would be considered "religious", they nevertheless patronize a variety of Shinto temples, use Buddhist burial rights, and so on. Religion, it seems, has endured even in largely a-religious (or forcibly a-religious) societies, just as atheism has endured in highly religious cultures. And yet, by and large the theist humans are many, many times more numerous than the atheists. Which leads me presently to wonder if there have ever been any completely atheist cultures/societies in recorded history? This is a slippery slope to be sure, but I shall try to define it by requiring the complete absence of any supernatural beliefs whatsoever. The Masked Booby (talk) 05:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Just to make sure — in this question, do you use "atheist" and "atheism" to mean entirely non-religious? Some forms of Buddhism are atheistic in that they reject the existence of a deity, but obviously their adherents are not non-religious. Nyttend (talk) 05:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It would have to be a pretty austere form of Buddhism, as boddhisatvas and belief in Nirvana or reincarnation would put you in my theist basket. Not sure what all is left after that. All life is suffering, be nice, and meditate? The Masked Booby (talk) 06:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

That's what I expected that you meant, but I wanted to make sure. If I understand rightly, atheistic Buddhists reject the concept of God or the gods, apparently thinking that their religious activities are related to non-divine supernatural activities. Nyttend (talk) 14:38, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, probably there were "pre-theistic" societies in, say, early human cultures, that is societies where the concept of God or the Supernatural wasn't yet formed; these would be fully atheistic cultures. The formation of religion is one of those things that requires significant leisure time. When human society spent most of its time hunting buffalo and running from bears, there likely wasn't much time to ponder the hereafter. It would have been very early in human society, though, as there are clear indications that even neanderthals had as belief in an after life, given their burial practices. --Jayron32 05:37, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Burial practices would seem to disqualify most if not all, as you mentioned. The Masked Booby (talk) 06:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but there must have been some point in human society where they didn't bury their dead; i.e. dead people were just left where they lied, or perhaps there was some non-religious purely pragmatic burial methods, i.e. no one likes to hang around a stinky, rotten corpse. Those societies would have been purely pretheistic. --Jayron32 14:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I presume by culture/society you really mean "region" or "ethnic group", otherwise I could (annoyingly) say "sure, the Leeds Atheist Society is a society of atheists". I'd like to mention Inuit mythology - technically they are/were atheist, that is, not theist - but you appear to have ruled them out by barring all supernatural beliefs. Bah. 213.122.38.107 (talk) 05:43, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Your presumption is correct. I'll read up on Inuit Mythology, thank you. The Masked Booby (talk) 06:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Not directly answering your question, but have you seen Irreligion by country? The information there suggests that (depending on your definition and on the survey conducted) there may now be a majority of non-theists in countries as varied as Estonia and Vietnam. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:21, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Just as an aside, and perhaps what you are getting at with this question, but one of the more dubious claims I have heard atheists make is that atheism is a "default state" — that you have to be taught religion to be religious. (I say this as an atheist who has spent considerable time with other atheists.) This has always struck me as silly. Specific religious belief is obviously taught — you can't intuit transubstantiation, for example. But religiosity as a whole, and the attribution of activities to the supernatural, seem quite hardwired on some level, and take considerable training to "unwire." Left to their own devices, people seem to come up with naturalistic religions spontaneously. Various studies have shown genetic components to religiosity as well (which holds open the irony that it is an evolved trait). None of which is a normative claim, of course — it doesn't prove in the slightest that religions are true in any way, or even that we require them today any more than we require our appendix. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:41, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't getting at anything. My own observations support your statement beginning with "But religiousity..." and I was curious if I had overlooked some society somewhere sometime. The Masked Booby (talk) 13:31, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Can you qualify "left to their own devices"? I doubt any human left entirely alone from (just before) the time they are capable of being influenced by anyone else would survive long enough to "come up with religion". Specifically, an infant will not survive without the intervention of someone (normally a mother) who may influence the child's thinking. Or are you referring to a self-sufficient and isolated group of people, none of whom have ever been exposed to religion, "coming up with" a religion of some sort? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:03, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

There are some rather interesting studies of people who have been raised entirely without language (e.g. completely deaf in places where there is no accommodation for that) who nonetheless, once they acquire some language, immediately know what the idea of "God" refers to — something larger than themselves, something tied up with why things work out the way they do, something that explains the unknown, etc. That's what I had in mind. I also note that, as the query points out, religion is one of those things which is something of a constant in human societies, even if the specific expression varies a huge amount. It's easy to see why that would be, of course — Levi Strauss went a long way to showing that even the most "primitive" animistic religions do a lot of social and cognitive work, and explain quite a lot from the perspective of the people inside of them. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

That immediately devolves into a chicken-and-egg situation, Mitch. The Masked Booby (talk) 13:31, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

One belief is that after Adam and Eve sinned true worship was infiltrated by Satan. Therefore all religion is a deviation from the original. 129.120.141.200 (talk) 12:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

"Hard-wired" seems an unnecessary stretch. No need to postulate an in-built theory of gods: you could just say that gods are the most obvious explanation of various peculiar phenomena for the completely ignorant to reach for - that a shallow investigation of the world suggests gods. "What mechanism could possibly be behind this?", thinks the early human (skipping past the part where he thinks "what's a mechanism?"). "What kind of things do I know of which are capable of causing and controlling complex effects? I know - it must be - some kind of other, invisible human!" 81.131.22.209 (talk) 15:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

What I mean by "hard wired" is, "our brains are set up so that this kind of explanation comes into it quite readily." That's all. I'm not saying we have a "religion part of the brain" or anything like that (though there are theories to that effect), or that religion was necessarily specifically selected for by evolution (it may be, as you imply, just something that comes with all of our pattern matching abilities). --Mr.98 (talk) 15:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, OK, misunderstood, beg your pardon. 81.131.22.209 (talk) 16:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I haven't read all of the other responses here, but I can say conclusively that the human animal simply has religion ingrained into him. This has been my experience as previously both a non-religious and religious man, a man deeply interested in cultures and their religious expressions, and even through a sociology of religion class I took.

There may be exceptions, but humans will inevitably come to worship something - it's just in our nature. A great example is civil religion - even without a belief in a higher power, people come to exhibit decidedly religious characteristics toward an ideology. In the United States, people sing songs of allegiance and subservience while staring at a flag which represents a higher ideal (i.e., the US itself) - in a religious context, we call that worship (or, in a high church, hymns). In North Korea, they unfurl giant posters of their leader, and attribute godlike qualities to him (e.g., a supernatural birth or shooting 36 under-par on his first time ever golfing), while participating in long marches with pretty colors, etc. The allegiance to the country goes beyond a mere social cohesion for expedience's sake - there's a deep reverential quality that goes to the core of the human soul (however you define "soul", as being an illusion or actual thing).

Finally, I think you will find that atheist nations, at least in the west, are deeply unhappy, perhaps because they are shirking that god-given and/or evolution-given need to believe in a central higher power (I've yet to encounter even a polytheist religion that didn't have one guy at the top- though I could be wrong). IIRC, abortion/suicide/alcohol-abuse/etc. rates are depressingly high in Eastern Europe - List of countries by suicide rate certainly shows a rough correlation between irreligiosity and suicide, with the multicultural India as the major exception (perhaps the less concrete nature of Hinduism isn't as fulfilling as the rigidity of monotheistic or animistic religion? You'll notice I am not very politically correct in my scientific observations - I have a few more nasty scientific ideas to mete out if you should ask me). I don't think there can be any question that religion leads to someone being happier on average - whether you call it "ignorance is bliss" or "fulfilling a God-given hole in your life", it certainly exists IMHO. Magog the Ogre (talk) 15:10, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

PS. For a profoundly secular view of the evolutionary roots of religion, I recommend The Naked Ape. If you want a religious view, just ask me and I'll do a bit of research, as I'm sure more exist. Magog the Ogre (talk) 15:13, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

My suggestion (keeping it short) is that rather than say "it's just in our nature", we can say "it's just in nature", from the point of view of a human, that is, which is slightly simpler and doesn't entail explaining why our brains should play a mean, weird trick on us. By the way I've seen The Naked Ape parodied as The Mobile Mineral. It's reductionism. 81.131.22.209 (talk) 15:22, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Does the answer to the original question depend on whether you consider myth to be belief in the supernatural? Because anthropologists usually consider myth-making to be a human universal. I agree with them because it seems that trying to make sense of the world, looking for reasons and patterns, is an intrinsic part of what we are as a species. Science and religion, in that perspective, have a common origin. In pre-industrial societies, some questions can be answered through observation, e.g. "will there be a full moon tomorrow night?". And other questions call for a different kind of answer, e.g. "why does the moon have different phases?" It is only in recent centuries that we have tried to use observation and experiment to answer the second kind of question. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Judith brings up a good point. There's a difference between believing the Sun is carried across the sky on the back of a moose, and worshiping said moose. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Population for non-municipal settlements in Australia

Reading the article about Leigh Creek, South Australia, I was surprised to see that no population total is given, and obviously the Outback Areas Community Development Trust (OACDT), which functions as its LGA, isn't very helpful due to the fact that it covers the majority of the state. I notice that the latter article provides a population figure for Leigh Creek, but the source for this section is a map that says nothing about population. Is there any way to get official census population figures for Australian communities that aren't basically identical to one LGA or a group of them? Three further bits — (1) Forgive my confusion; I'm an American, so I may be misunderstanding something completely. (2) If I understand rightly, the census is a nationwide program, so I suspect that it would do its best to operate in a similar manner in all six states, or so I'd guess simply because that's the way the American census operates. (3) The OACDT article refers to communities such as Leigh Creek as "Proposed Unincorporated Area Districts", and this is backed up by the source that I linked above. Would such communities be similar to the concept of a census-designated place in the USA? I can't find relevant information in the source document. Nyttend (talk) 05:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

This probably won't help you, Nytttend, but the Outback Areas Community Development Trust has been replaced by the Outback Communities Authority, which seems to do essentially the same job. Our article ought at least to be updated.

I can confirm the Census is a nationwide data collection, and the same questions are asked everywhere on the same night. The Australian Bureau of Statistics runs the Census and has special arrangements to enable remote communities to participate. Census in Australia might answer some of your questions about how areas are classified.

The ABS is a friendly place - I used to work there and I like to think my legacy lives on :) - and they can help with any sort of enquiry about census or statistical issues generally. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:15, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Wang Jian

Who is the "Wang Jian" credited with writing many of the songs in Romance of the Three Kingdoms (TV series)? Is it the Tang poet? --Quadalpha (talk) 14:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It can't be the Tang poet given that many of the songs credited to this Wang Jian are written in vernacular, not classical. A google search took me to this Baidu Zhidao thread, which says, amongst other bits copied and pasted from the web: 王健(1928—— )女歌词作家。北京人。天津河北师范学院音乐系肄业。1949年业于华北大学三部音乐科。长期在中国音协《歌曲》、《词刊》任编辑，为副编审。代表歌词作品有《绿叶对根的情意》、《历史的天空》、《生命的星》、《妈妈的小屋》、《小小的我》、《让世界充满爱》（合作）、《歌声与微笑》 、《我是小鼓手》等。

My rough translation: Wang Jian (born 1928), female lyricist, native of Beijing. STudied at the Hebei Normal School Faculty of Music in Tianjian, graduated in 1949 from the Music Department of the University of Northern China (III). Long term editor of the Song and Lyrics publications of the Chinese Music Association. A list of works follows, including 历史的天空 which appears in the Three Kingdoms TV series. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

General Assembly of the Organization of the Americas and Summit of the Americas

What are the differences between General Assembly and Summit of the Americas in Organization of the Americas? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.104.154 (talk) 14:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried the article on the Organization of American States and Summit of the Americas? You should find some answers there. As a rule, though, general assemblies of multilateral organizations are standing bodies that discuss an organization's policy orientations, membership, budget and human resources at the working level (i.e., no heads of state there, only lowly minions, and perhaps ambassadors and ministers). Summits, on the other hand, are meetings of heads of state that usually discuss very, very broad issues, get a lot of media coverage, at the end of which a declaration is issued that will usually have been previously discussed and agreed-upon at the working level. Bear in mind that not all multilateral organizations hold summits (only a few do, actually), but they all have a standing body such as a general assembly. --Nicsilo (talk) 16:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

when do companies get new stock options?

I already asked this once but didnt get an answer. When will Apple get stock options that expire later than January of 2013? Does no one know? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.182.29.153 (talk) 15:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

You are talking about LEAPS (long-term options). this site discussses some issues of these options. I quote the following, relevant item:

All new January expiring equity LEAPS are initially listed shortly following the expiration in either May, June, or July each year. The month that the LEAP is initially listed in is dependent upon the quarterly cycle of the option. Cycle 1 options January expiring LEAPS are listed after the expiration in May, cycle 2 after the expiration in June, and cycle 3 after the expiration in July.

Hence, by the middle of the year you will know if new Leaps have been issued for your stock. Pallida  Mors 19:48, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Archaeology

I know this is a very broad question but I would like to know, in general terms, the percentage of historical artifacts, structures, sites we have discovered and excavated out of the total number of artifacts, structures, sites there are estimated to be out there in the world.

More generally, is Archaeology a dwindling field where there is less and less to discover each year? Is it thought that at some point there will be nothing interesting left to find? TheFutureAwaits (talk) 15:38, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I've often wondered about this myself, but thinking about it now, it strikes me that there are at least three variables involved in the question which are very hand-wavy and philosophical:

• How far away is the past? (Consider industrial archeology. Is the past getting less distant?)
• How much of it is interesting? (Quantify that if you can!)
• How powerful is our ability to find out about it?

Then, you want to know whether our archeological power is outstripping the amount of currently interesting stuff remaining in whatever we currently call the past. It's a very slippery sort of question. If it's any comfort, though, I was reading recently about doggerland, and it seems that there's plenty of very ancient archeology safely (?) hidden under the sea, and in such abundance that it can be picked up accidentally by fishing trawlers. 81.131.22.209 (talk) 16:01, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Remember that as time passes more and more potential archaeological artifacts are created. Todays dumpster is tomorrows archaeological dig, and we have never produced more objects, structures and generally made a larger cultural imprint on the landscape than now. Archaeology can be about very recent things as well, for example there is industrial archaeology (ah, I see that is already mentioned above). --Saddhiyama (talk) 16:04, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is possible to give a useful answer in general terms. For example, for tens of thousands of years humans made flint tools, and the flakes that get chipped off in that process are easily recognized by specialists, and exist in vast quantities in quite a number of places. To get a meaningful answer, you really have to specify a period of time you are interested in, and a level of structure a site needs to have in order to interest you. Looie496 (talk) 16:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay to be more specific then let's say I'm only interested in buildings from the Roman Empire. Is there any sense of how much is still out there to find in that category? TheFutureAwaits (talk) 16:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

There is a difference between a site being discovered and a site having been fully archeologically excavated. For example, in Jordan, both Gadara and Petra are significant Roman-era archeological sites which can be readily visited but of which only a small percentage has been excavated. There's work for archeologists for a long long time at those two places; there are many similar sites like that throughout the Roman world. There are probably relatively few completely undiscovered Roman sites, but there are a number of places where the Romans were present where it has been very difficult to conduct any serious archeological work for decades (e.g. Algeria, Lybia, Iraq...), so you never know. --Xuxl (talk) 17:33, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Even in Rome itself new discoveries are made every time a construction project that involves digging is undertaken. --Saddhiyama (talk) 18:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Much of the material used in Roman buildings was re-used by later builders - not necessarily in major buildings, but by later farmers and so forth in the local area. For example, material from the Roman buildings at Caerwent was used in building Chepstow Castle a few miles away and several hundred years later. Ghmyrtle (talk) 18:30, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

In the 19th century, famous "archeologists" like Heinrich Schliemann were basically treasure hunters and self promoters, of the Indiana Jones style, who would go to what they imagined was the site of some famous ancient city and hire workers to dig swiftly down through the layers built up over thousands of years looking for valuable baubles which could be exhibited in a museum. When they finished, all context was lost, and there was little left for future archeologists. Modern archeology goes to a mound which might be a historic site and carefully excavates a defined trench, or a square pit layer by layer, centimeter by centimeter, preserving exactly where each artifact was found, and doing carbon dating of charcoal. The generally do not clear the whole site (unless a superhighway is going through or a building is going up on the site). That way, future scientists with better gadgets will have something to study. Edison (talk) 18:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

For an example of relatively recent archaeological sites, read our article on the Irishtown Bend Archeological District in the US city of Cleveland, Ohio — the district's period of significance (the time when artifacts found there are seen as archaeologically important) starts in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Most archaeological sites in Ohio are Native American, but the people who left artifacts at this site were Irish immigrants. Nyttend (talk) 21:05, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Wait a minute... are you telling me that Archeology isn't about sneaking into mysterious old temples, swapping the crystal skull for a bag of sand and then getting chased by giant boulders until you fall into the pit of snakes? Well, that's no fun at all! Better to be a paleontologist (at least there you get to recreate dinosaurs from their DNA). Blueboar (talk) 22:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Double snark! (Now drilling into my piece of amber to extract dino DNA) Edison (talk) 04:35, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

See http://www.sandiegoarchaeology.org/askanarchaeologist.htm. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:04, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Encyclopedic use(s) of "free election"

At Talk:Free election (Polish throne) we are having a discussion about how many encyclopedic uses the term free election gets. Another editor suggested I ask about it here, hence, the question. So far there is one certain use (the current free election (Polish throne)). We are discussing whether there are any other historical, accepted usages of the term, as well as whether the term free and fair election is encyclopedic and should have an article. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 15:50, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Why dosn't the BOE have a higher inflation target during recessions?

Why havnt the BOE/government(s) taken on board the theory of the economist Minsky (described in many places including Debunking Economics by Steve Keen, 2001, Chapter 11, pgs 253+, available to preview at Google Books), since it foresees and describes the current recession in the UK?

Minsky's theory

"Minsky argues that if the rate of inflation is high at the time of the crisis, then though the collapse of the boom causes investment to slump and economic growth to falter, rising cash flows rapidly enable the repayment of debt incurred during the boom. The economy can thus emerge from the crisis with diminished growth and high inflation, but few bankruptcies and a substained increase in liquidity. Thus though this course involves the twin 'bads' of inflation and low growth, it is a self-correcting mechanism in that a prolonged slump is is avoided..... If the rate of inflation is low at the time of crisis, then cash flows will remain inadequate relative to the debt structures in place. Firms whose interest bills exceed their cash flows will be forced to undertake extreme measures: they will have to sell assets, attempt to increase their cash flows at the expense of their competitors, or go bankrupt. In contrast to the inflationary course, all three classes of action tend to further depress the current price level, thus at least partially exacerbating the original balance.....The asset price deflation route is therefore not self-correcting but rather self-reinforcing, and is Minsky's explaination of a depression. ......A high rate of inflation during a crisis enables debts that were based on unrealistic expectations to be nonetheless validated, albeit over a longer period than planned and with far less real gain to investors. A low rate of inflation will mean that those debts cannot be met, with consequent domino effects even for investments that were not unrealistic.....This behaviour could well turn low inflation into deflation."

It will be interesting to read what the forthcoming 2011 edition has to say about current times. It would involve a political loss of face to revise the inflation target upwards, but it may have been done covertly already. Thanks 92.15.1.33 (talk) 20:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

This is not really a new idea -- John Maynard Keynes said similar things decades ago. The basic reason is that regardless of all such logic, people just simply hate inflation, because it makes their money have less value. The wealthiest people, who are the most influential, hate it the most. For the same reason, people instinctively are happy about deflation, because it allows their money to buy more, even though virtually all economists agree that deflation is devastating to economic growth. Looie496 (talk) 21:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe that surveys show that wealthy people actually have the most debt, so they ought in fact to welcome inflation as it would make the real value of the debt fall. The people who would suffer would be people whose income is mainly from bank interest on their capital, and there cannot be many of those. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 21:29, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

No, inflation causes stocks and bonds to lose value as well (bonds more than stocks). The only assets that protect against inflation are hard ones such as land and gold -- but putting wealth into those forms entails risks as well. Looie496 (talk) 00:01, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

And by the way let me point out that the US Federal Reserve has in fact set its inflation target upward a bit: to 2%. And even this has caused a huge amount of moaning and groaning by the Republicans, the party who primarily represent the wealthy. Looie496 (talk) 00:04, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Alternative vote encourages lunatic fringe?

In the UK we are having a referendrum to vote on switching to AV instead of the current system, but so far I've seen virtually no discussion of it and its implications in the media. I don't understand the article either.

1) Will AV make it easier for far right parties to gain a toe-hold?

2) Are Australians content with AV, or is there any wish to have something like we currently have in Britain?

3) Would having AV risk getting the kind of political instability seen in Italy?

I predict a low turn-out for the referendrum, as people do not understand it. Thanks 92.15.1.33 (talk) 20:33, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Is this a question, or an attempt to voice your opinion about AV? AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

They are questions. I think you are well named. I don't hhave an opinion about AV, I'm simply trying to find out its implications apart from just getting a description of the mechanics of voting. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 21:04, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I think these are valid questions. Have you read today's BBC articles, and some of the pages it links: those under the header "related stories" to the right of the main text area, and the links "What is the alternative vote? Q&A: alternative vote referendum, AV poll: Where parties stand" beneath the textbox just underneath? I think you may find these helpful. Regarding 1) and 3), there are definitely many opinions on those subjects on the linked pages, from people who know what they're talking about (well, politicians at least) Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:45, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It appears to be a bit of a coin toss at the moment; the particular issue is this: do the lunatic parties have concentrated support amongst, well, lunatics... are they something that most of us quite like but would never vote for, given 0 exlectability. My gut feeling (as a libertarian supporter but a reulcutant conservative voter) is the latter so I think there is some sense in that viewpoint... on the other hand BNP supporters are honestly no problem (EDL could be but no one can tell what they're for, apart from anti-Islam (a good aim admittedly but so is any anti-religion)) so the main lunacy is greens, who you'll have noticed already have a seat (a good justification for not giving students the vote). Or labour, which is criminally insane lunacy, if it were up to me I would have approximately half the parliamentry labour party put to death (not all of them, I like quite a few: Frank Field, Tony Benn, etc...])

So to er sum up my gibbering... it really is something we need to see what happens. Take a look at politicalbetting - a fantastic site with very clued up people. Egg Centric 21:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

For me, the most important deciding factor is which system will best keep the far-right out. I'm not certain which choice will do that. The "yes" campaign to my surprise say that they will; I think I like many other people am getting confused with proportional representation. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 21:31, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

For 1) No! AV is designed to find a winner that is acceptable to the majority of the voters. Chance of the far right winning a seat under AV is less than under FPTP. If you think of the situation where a sizeable minority may rank the far right first and pretty much everybody else ranks them last, then the far right would never win the seat under AV, whereas under FPTP they may just sneak in if the remaining vote is split between enough parties.

For 3) Also no. AV is not proportional representation. The Italy situation mainly arises since their version of PR gives every party with some fraction of the vote a seat, whereas most sane PR systems impose a limit of something like 5% or 7% of the overall vote polled before any seats are assigned. AV is miles from either variant. AV will do little to encourage smaller parties, but will split the seats between the larger parties more fairly. Hence less landslide victories, probably slightly higher chance of coalition governments. (Which, I consider a good thing; in general, not in the current incarnation.) 86.145.164.245 (talk) 21:42, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the simple answer is to point at all the countries that have an election system similar to that. Are their economies better or worse on average than Britain's? And as to people being able to understand it, do other countries have big problems with their voting? The experiment has been done a number of times - the scientific method to answer your question says to look at the results of the experiments. Dmcq (talk) 23:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Some political scientists would say that jurisdictions with instant-runoff voting are less likely to have two-party systems than those with FPTP because of Duverger's law, which says that FPTP systems lead to two dominant parties. Duverger's law seems to apply in the U.S., where voting for a third party (such as the Greens) is often considered counterproductive because it can split the vote on your side of the ideological spectrum and help the candidate of the opposite political orientation win. However, Duverger's law seems to be dead in the UK and Canada, neither of which has a single-party majority government. On the other hand, Australia has IRV and a very stable system in its lower house. There are three parties, but the two conservative parties have worked closely together for decades. So I don't think one can say that IRV would necessarily lead to more political instability. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:26, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Slightly offtopic to the original question, but to the first half of what MWalcoff wrote, there are others who argue that under the current US system, a vote for the Greens, or other minority party, is the opposite of "counterproductive" because if the minority party gets a lot of votes, this will push the dominant Democratic Party and Republican Party toward pandering to that minority party — in this last election, Tea Party candidates did better than expected, and many Republican Party candidates may have veered a little to the right as a result. All that said, I wouldn't dispute that there's also always concern among conservatives that a Tea Partier vote helps the Democrats. Comet Tuttle (talk) 03:01, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

The bit about the "political instability in Italy" needs comment. The postwar Italian political situation was if anything excessively stable until the early nineties. Many so-called "changes in government" would have been called "cabinet reshuffles" in the UK; even those that were not rarely changed the basic makeup of the ruling coalition, though the balance of power within it shifted a bit I suppose. A lot of column inches were generated in newspapers; policy stayed the same, and the two dominant parties, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, were usually in government, generally with some combination of the Liberals, the Republicans, and the Democratic Socialists — those five made up the so-called Pentapartito, the five-party. (There's a phrase, cambiare di tutto perche' tutto resti com'e`, changing everything so that everything will stay the same.)

The first serious change was likely brought on by the Tangentopoli scandal. The ruling parties, under no real threat of losing office, had become corrupt, and it all came crashing down. The dominant parties shattered and reformed into other coalitions; even the Communists changed their name and moderated their approach. The novel political entities of the Lega Nord, and the various parties headed by Silvio Berlusconi, gained at the expense of the old order.

That event was a genuine change. If that happened all the time, you could say Italy is unstable. But of course it doesn't. Berlusconi has been in power for five years; before that there was a center-left coalition for maybe a couple of years(?), don't remember exactly. Now Berlusconi is likely on his way out. This is normal alternation, something that was sorely missing in the supposedly "unstable" postwar period. --Trovatore (talk) 03:22, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Answering the "are Australians content", speaking as an Aussie, I say yes. You don't often see surprising results due to AV - left wing votes go to the left and get sorted eventually into the leftish major party; right wing votes go to right wing parties and sort down to the major right wing party. But it does mean people are more willing to take a risk on voting on a minor party where they wouldn't dare in first past the post. An example where I think this made a difference is the seat of Melbourne in the 2010 Australian federal election. I believe that in a first past the post system the seat would have gone to Labor. --203.202.43.54 (talk) 07:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

When bills are considered together

In Australian parliament when two closely related bills are introduced, members can speak to either bill during the (second reading?) debate. What is this called? 124.149.24.20 (talk) 22:58, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

A cognate debate. Closest we have is Cognate (disambiguation). -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:00, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I knew it started with 'c'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.149.24.20 (talk) 23:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

March 31

Buddhist immortality

I know the title seems like a contradiction. The focus of Buddhism is the dissolution of the self and impermanence. Well, I am taking a class on Buddhist art and we recently read the Tsukumogami Ki (Record of the Tsukumogami). It mentions an esoteric Buddhist patriarch called Nagabodhi (Jp: Ryuchi Daishi, 龍智大士) taking an elixir of immortality so he could be alive long enough (800 years) to pass his teachings on to two future priests of the Shingon sect. It also mentions a certain Kudonsen (瞿曇仙) who was supposedly an immortal wizard in India. That sounds like a Japanese transliteration to me. I haven't been able to find very much information on both men regarding their life in India and their immortality. Can someone help me find good English material about them, as well as provide examples of other so-called Buddhist immortals? Thanks. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 04:03, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

A brief Chinese Google search suggests that 瞿曇仙 is "Gautama". There seems to be masses of scriptural references, both ancient and more modern texts, mentioning the name. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Likewise a Chinese Google search for 龍智大士 turns up a lot of material. "大士" is an honorific. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

As for 龍智, do these help? [13], [14], and [15]. Oda Mari (talk) 06:25, 31 March 2011 (UTC)