The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.
The rate of unemployment seems to be known pretty well in the United States. What about the rate of job offerings which remain unfilled out of the total jobs offered? --DeeperQA (talk) 01:08, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I did a Google search for unfilled jobs, and I found this article.
Its not that I'm lazy (which I actually am)... its just that I was not expecting to find any information so readily available, much less under the word "unfilled." Thanks. --DeeperQA (talk) 04:18, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That article is a bit mystifying. Employers don't want to hire "overqualified" candidates because they're afraid they'll bolt when the economy improves? Really? Is there anybody left who thinks the U.S. economy is going to improve this decade or next? Wnt (talk) 03:00, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, in the current U.S. system, anytime a business hires a new employee they are at a real disadvantage. There's human resource hours, training expenses, taxes, insurance, and a plethora of legal risks and other considerations that must be weighed. ESPECIALLY When times are tough, like now, it often makes more sense to increase the compensation of existing employee to take on more of the work load, rather than to hire someone new. This can be good for long-term employees to "move up the ladder", but, unfortunately, also decreases the number of employment opportunities. Politics aside, this can become a reinforcing loop, and is not good in the big picture, but makes sense for an individual company who's main concern (and rightfully so) is profit margins. Quinn░ RAIN05:10, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Also, employers can afford to be picky and leave job openings out there without actually hiring someone if they don't like the candidates that apply. When the job market is bad, they know they'll continue to get applications and will eventually get someone they like. SDY (talk) 07:39, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Many businesses, particularly with large numbers of low-paid staff, have very high staff turnover (e.g. the turnover rate for McDonalds kitchen staff is over 100% p.a.[1]). This means that even in a recession there'll be a lot of staff leaving, a lot of recruitment and hence a lot of vacancies. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:19, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Quinn's comment is mostly right, but I see little evidence that U.S. employers are increasing compensation for existing employees when they increase the workload. Real wages have been trending steadily downward since the last recession and, anecdotally, I don't know of anyone who's received a significant raise in the past few years. Far, far more common is to increase the workload without increasing compensation. Marco polo (talk) 14:25, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Philosopher who doubted physical world could hurt him?
I'm trying to figure out the name of an ancient philosopher I heard a story about. Supposedly he wasn't convinced that water could drown you or falling could kill you, so whenever he went out some of his friends went with him to keep him out of danger. But supposedly he chased his cook through the streets of Athens for having served a poor meal to his guests. It might just be solipsism but I thought there was a school of philosophy that took its name from him. Any idea what name I'm trying to remember? RJFJR (talk) 01:58, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That seems to overlap somewhat with this account of Pyrrhon of Elis, aka Pyrrho -- except that Pyrrhon is said to have dismissed a student who chased the cook, not to have chased the cook himself. Ring any bells? Looie496 (talk) 02:26, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is the a list of political criteria by which presidential candidates are rated or compared with other candidates, which might effect whether they are chosen over another candidate? (for instance, when Lincoln ran for President a girl suggested that he might be more electable if he wore a beard - so facial hair could be considered one of those criteria.) --DeeperQA (talk) 05:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Beard: "The last President of the United States to wear any type of facial hair was William Howard Taft, who was in office from 1909 till 1913." Looks like no beard is a criteria of the last 100 years. Rmhermen (talk) 21:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've been amused by the fact that since Obama was elected, a number of people, who wouldn't have voted for him in a pink fit anyway, have been somehow trying to prove that he is a Muslim. HiLo48 (talk) 08:29, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is imperonating a federal agency a crime in the US?
Suppose a website wants to cause some drama by pretending it was hit with a ICE seizure. Instead of the "correct way" of faking it they put up a 404 page secured by ice.gov's SSL certificate. When a user visits the site they are hit with a SSL security warning page showing that the website is supposedly associated with the ICE somehow. Would would this violate any US federal laws? Anonymous.translator (talk) 06:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I know there's a law about impersonating a federal agency to gain something of value, but I can't remember if impersonating per se is forbidden. 18 USC 912 is the chapter and verse on obtaining things of value. The exact text: "Whoever falsely assumes or pretends to be an officer or employee acting under the authority of the United States or any department, agency or officer thereof, and acts as such, or in such pretended character demands or obtains any money, paper, document, or thing of value, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both." In this case they are arguably "pretending to be" ICE. Whether they're "acting as" ICE is less obvious. If they actually gained an advantage against a competing business, that would be a "thing of value" and they'd be in violation, but you'd probably have to demonstrate to the court that there was a gain, not just a possibility of a gain. SDY (talk) 07:35, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nowadays if you acknowledge indebtedness and the person you are indebted to writes off the debt after you have failed to pay then the underpaid debt may be considered income. If your website tactic is what convinced the creditor to write off your debt and it is now considered income then it might also be considered gain. Some Federal prisons have tennis courts. Enjoy. --DeeperQA (talk) 08:13, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Just for clarity, I just know this line because somebody accused me of it a little while back on my talk page (long story). If you want an actual opinion of whether that particular behavior is illegal, you'll have to ask a lawyer. All I know is that there is a law, and the law has some really awkward wording. SDY (talk) 18:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There are always phony snail mail envelopes going through the mails with legal-looking seals trying to make people think they come from governmental agencies. Those don't seem to be illegal. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 18:48, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Questions of "Would it be legal to do X?" or "Is party A breaking the law by doing so and so?" are inappropriate here. The Ref Desk volunteers may not give any legal advice, and certainly one would be unwise to rely on any legal advice obtained from anonymous strangers ion the internet. Edison (talk) 21:04, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
relative income
Warren Buffet does not mind if he and his peers are taxed heavily on income above $1,000,000 a year while Obama sets the amount at $250,000. The poverty line is currently $10,890 for an individual (which is a disgraceful joke if you have a car and rent or have a mortgage on a house) while the average income is $49,500. That means the average income is 4.54 times the poverty line while $1,000,000 income per year is 91.83 times the poverty line and 20.20 times the average income. $250,000 is 22.96 times the poverty line and 5.05 times the average income. Why are the multiples of the poverty line not used to determine how much individuals can afford to pay in income tax or is there a more accurate curve that does? (You can think of the multiple as the number of years you can go without a job.)--DeeperQA (talk) 07:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To start, a point of clarification: El Presidente doesn't set nuttin' when it comes to taxes. Taxation and all revenue is controlled by the House of Representatives, the so-called "power of the purse." Obama may have some influence over it as the leader of the Democratic Party, but given that they're the minority now that's not much influence. He can ask for things, of course, and he's got one heck of a megaphone for that purpose, but he doesn't actually write the rules. Speaking of the House of Representatives, any decision they make over taxation tends to be political horse-trading. If taxes were set by the bureaucracy ("intelligent design"), they'd probably have a more complicated base formula with more headahces but less loopholes. Since they're set by the House, they're like swiss cheese (which goes well with ham). Assuming that there is an intelligent system is a serious flaw, the tax system is a product of evolution, where the same base system has been tweaked slightly according to the political pressures of the day, but it still likely resembles its American Civil War-era origins and the 1913 Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The system you're proposing makes sense on a certain level, but it's not how the tax code is written. SDY (talk) 08:33, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See also our article on progressive taxaxtion. The US federal income tax, speaking vaguely (without getting into the aforementioned swiss cheese), taxes income on a scale that isn't really concerned with what your income actually is. The first $X isn't taxed at all, whether you work part time at a gas station or are Warren Buffett. Income from $X to $Y is taxed at a higher rate, but this doesn't affect the taxes you owed on the first $X. Income from $Z to $Y is taxed again higher, and again ignores taxes owed on the first $Y. Particularly since the tax structure is such that those below the poverty line generally don't owe taxes at all, there's no need for $X, $Y, or $Z to fall on exact multiples of a very rough approximation. Note also that a single-number "poverty line" does nothing to account for regional differences in cost of living: an income of $A will vary widely in whether or not it represents real poverty based on where (and how) one lives. Note how this also impacts your tying income multiples to "years without a job". — Lomn13:11, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The current U.S. tax system does have Tax brackets set to various income levels but the system is much more complex than simple multiples of the poverty level. And further complicated by all the deductions, AMT, dividend taxes, deferrals, etc. (It matters not only how much you make a year but sometimes how you make it, how you spend it, when you can spend it and how large your family unit is.) Rmhermen (talk) 13:20, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
where was the "Strictly Come Dancing" advert filmed?
Here is a link to the BBC's blog site for Strictly Come Dancing, and the video seems to show it was on a film set somewhere, so not a real location. If you're into SCD I thoroughly recommend the BBC's minisite for the programme, where answers to questions like yours are easy to come by. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You may be talking about a different advert to me then: the one I've seen and saw on the BBC website featured a row of houses, and the picture on the BBC website clearly showed that the house front was just that - a brick facade held up with timber struts. Do you have a reference for you assertion of the address? You've obviously found it somewhere, otherwise why would you have asked? --TammyMoet (talk) 22:47, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I finally got to a computer that wants to show me video clips. The YouTube version can be seen in HD and you really can read the roadsign at 0:48. I've looked several times but can't see "a brick facade held up with timber struts" that TammyMoet mentions. Perhaps I'm missing something? Alansplodge (talk) 01:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If God does exist, then why would God ultimately exist?
So, many so-called philosophical “ultimate questions” have been asked in history such as: Why are we and the world here? Where did everything ultimately come from? How do we know that God exists? What happens after we die? I’ve seen and heard many greasons and answers for these questions, and there is a purpose behind all of these questions. Nevertheless, people continue to ask these questions today. Apparently however, few or even no one has ever tackled what I think could be “the ultimate question.” Here is the question I’ve been contemplating recently: If God exists, then why does God ultimately exist and what’s the ultimate purpose for His existence? It’ll be difficult to explain what I mean, but I’ll give it a shot. In this situation, let’s suppose that God never decided to create everything. Therefore everything would remain non-existent. It won’t matter if there was or was no God in the midst of non-existent because non-existence would still be and remain non-existence. Now, in this next situation, let’s suppose what many religious people teach: That there is a God and in the beginning He decided to create everything for His own pleasure. Many religious people also teach, however, that He doesn’t need nor depend on His own creation for anything nor does His creation affect Him in any way. He can destroy it with no problems at any time and He could have decided not to create everything. He loves Himself infinitely more than He loves us and the rest of creation, which is still infinite though according to Christians, Jews, Muslims, and all those who teach it. Christians, Jews, etc. believe that God wants us to have fellowship with Him even though He doesn’t need it nor depend on it. As a result of all this, it might not make any difference as well to God in the ultimate sense if He decided to not create anything. Therefore, it doesn’t ultimately make a difference between no God in the midst of non-existence, a God in the midst of non-existence, and the existence the God supposedly created. Yet another thing to keep in mind here is that according to the Bible and the Qu’ran probably, God can do all things, so He could probably bring Himself into non-existence if He wanted to. Final thing, saying God is eternal is a very long time indeed. He could have created everything an infinite amount of time ago, an infinite amount of time in the future, or never. With all of these things in mind, it all brings us to the question again, but I’ll word it differently and into several different questions in one: What’s the ultimate reason for God’s existence and what’s the ultimate purpose for His existence if He does exist? Are there any possible answers to this question? If there are no possible answers to this question, then why are there no possible answers available? Willminator (talk) 18:34, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Being as how we can't even prove the existence or non-existence of God, the "why" of it is that much harder. But I once had a minister tell me the answer is in the first four words of Genesis: "In the beginning God". What was before the beginning (i.e. the Big Bang or whatever), only God knows. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 18:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Better to say no convincing proof has yet been found of the existence or non-existence of God. While most major religions look on God as both omnipotent and benevolent, there is no good reason for either premise. God's nature or natures are bound to affect the question of whether a proof is possible: if God is indeed omnipotent but is also whimsical, self-serving, or malevolent, then there could be no proof of the existence of a God of a different kind who in fact does not exist. (Of course, it's eccentric to think of God as having a gender, but our longstanding bias may never be overcome in the English language.) Moonraker (talk) 19:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We have no trouble calling a dog or an owl or a dolphin "it". We like to personify God because (a) we are supposedly made "in His image" and (b) his Son (who was also God) supposedly took on human form as Jesus of Nazareth - but whatever God is, God is not actually a human being and we can safely get away with calling God "it". Or "It". -- Jack of Oz[your turn]20:16, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe; but you wouldn't refer to your father as "it" without appearing rather rude. Christians believe in "one God, the father almighty", so the same principle applies. You may refer to God in whichever way you please, but some will (sooner or later) take offence. Alansplodge (talk) 21:13, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
These are metaphysical questions. Metaphysical questions are such that it is not humanly possible to get an answer for sure. Anyone who claims they have an answer --people who say they KNOW there's a god -- or that they KNOW that there is a "reason for everything" -- or they KNOW that "God has a plan" are really just parroting what they have been told to say. The reality is that these people just BELIEVE these things, not know them. That's just intellectual dishonesty which is being taught in churches, mosques and synagogues etcetera. The Rastafarians are famous for saying they KNOW that Hallie Sallesie is the messiah not merely believe. Unfortunately a paycheck hangs in the balance for clergy, so they promulgate the idea that you can KNOW (insert metaphysical faith claim here). Then there is the esoteric school who claim that they have special hidden knowledge that has been revealed to them (um, not really likely). They only thing we humans have at our disposal as a tool is reason. Reason tells us that if a claim is just unknowable in principle, then we cannot be held responsible morally for the answer. The answer to these questions are simply irrelevant. Whatever metaphysical theory or model you adopt for yourself to get you through your day, and makes you a wonderful decent person is a valid as any other. If you think the purpose of life is to worship and adore an invisible old white guy with a flowing white beard, well please just keep it to yourself. There isn't any point in trying to get other people involved in a personal metaphysical model. Other people have different models which are equally valid. There is no "meaning of life" there is only a meaning of your life. If you want to learn more about "unanswerable" questions, then I would recommend that you study or take a formal class (from a legitimate academic not some crack pot with a pov) in metaphysics and one in epistemology. I think you will find that the only real answers come when you think for yourself. Greg Bard (talk) 20:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
All knowledge is belief. At what level can you be certain that the world you are interacting with really exists and isn't, instead, some elaborate hallucination you are having? How can you prove that to yourself? Certainty is illusion, and people define for themselves at what level their "reality" is real. You don't know anything about the world your interact with anymore than anyone else believes in God. It's just a distinction of semantics you make to give yourself a sense of superiority because your belief system is superior based on the criteria you created to make it better. --Jayron3203:53, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
All knowledge is belief, but not all belief is knowledge (by a long shot). Jayron, I'm sorry but if your point is to say that well we can't call anything knowledge because of some radical skepticism about our perception, I'm afraid that just isn't reasonable and certainly not scientific. We can reasonably call knowledge our observations of the world just fine. What we cannot call knowledge are faith claims. How do I KNOW that I do not live in the Matrix? Everyday I wake up, and the world behaves as if it is real. It happened yesterday, the day before, and the day before. It is REASONABLE to say that I KNOW that I do not live in the Matrix. So too with the claim that the "sun with come up tomorrow", and the claim that "my car will start when I turn the key." It's called the principle of induction, and its pretty solid. So solid that I'm sure you have no trouble placing "faith" in, for instance, elevators, and ceilings that do not fall on you, and airplanes not falling either. Your claim that "[I] don't know anything about the world [I] interact with anymore than anyone else believes in God." is a COMPLETELY FALSE claim. Your attempt to equate scientific knowledge with religious belief is COMPLETELY WRONG. I do apologize, too. I am a logician, and so it really is my job to tell people "don't think that way." I try not to be too much of a jerk about it, but perception is what it is. I do appreciate your contributions here and they are usually quite brilliant and right on. However, it is obvious that you are a religious believer, and that is unfortunate because religion basically turns even brilliant people's brains into mush and this is an example of that. I'm certainly not aiming to portray myself as superior to anyone. However, science is clearly superior to faith as a source of knowledge and I cannot apologize for promulgating that fact. Greg Bard (talk) 04:49, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Just one correction. I didn't make any attempt to equate scientific knowledge with religious belief. You will find that claim nowhere in my statement. I could easily claim that your position is that scientific knowledge and religious belief are mutually exclusive concepts. I don't see why they need to be, yet you seem to be arguing from that position. --Jayron3204:54, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Your claim that "[I] don't know anything about the world [I] interact with anymore than anyone else believes in God." is tantamount to saying that somehow my physical scientific observations of the world which can be verified by others are no more and no less valid than someone just having any old belief floating around in their head. That's just epistemically irresponsible to say the least. So when I say that I observed the result of some litmus paper and someone else says that they believe that the world is on top of a elephant on top of a turtle on top of an elephant, that is for me (to quote you) not knowing that a sample is an acid anymore than the other person knows that the world is on top of a turtle?!?!? Really?! How about this: I know with 100% certainty that 100% of the scientists on earth and 100% of the logicians on earth are going to join with me in correcting you in that irresponsible position. It's completely wrong and a bit frustrating to have to explain to an obviously intelligent person.
Also, please let me be clear there is nothing inherent in science or religion that makes them exclusive at all. In fact, for any scientific fact that can be known there is always the possibility that someone could just believe it on faith.Greg Bard (talk) 05:55, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I see the truth of what you are saying, but I still wonder what the point is of comparing the degree to which one knows, and the degree to which another one believes. I was thinking that you were saying they were equally valid (they certainly are not!). However one can certainly know the result of a litmus paper to an equal degree to which another person believes there is a god. However who cares about the degree of fervor in belief, as compared to confidence in knowledge. Its apples and oranges. People can believe ridiculous things with great fervor, so what?!? Greg Bard (talk) 06:28, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Bible says "Jehovah himself gives wisdom" (Proverbs 2:6). In God's infinity He held the advantage of meditation and inherently infinite wisdom. He wants us too to have this ability, by means of "treasur[ing] up his own commandments." The Bible says Jehovah's purpose may be carried out by means of His kingdom. To make known the eminence of this kingdom was the purpose of Jesus' ministry on Earth. In order to answer your question about God's reason for existence, another question may very well be posed: for what reason do you exist? Indeed, reason is man's wisdom, and man's wisdom is foolishness with God; also, God's wisdom is foolishness with man, which is why the love of many cools off. Schyler(exquirere bonum ipsum)00:24, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See Theological veto. Yes it's true. Reason and logic do not support any particular metaphysical view. So anyone wanting to push their particular view onto others will eventually have to say that logic and reason are bad. It's a very unfortunate side effect of the politics of organized religion. It's when religious believers abandon reason that we get the crazy woman who throws her babies into the river because "god told her to." This is why reason has to come come first morally. You have to have a reasonable faith, and you have you go by your conscience, not anyone else's "teachings". Greg Bard (talk) 00:47, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The god who created these colliding galaxies forbids you to eat shellfish and sleep in the same bed as a menstruating woman. Divine wisdom or anachronistic chauvinistic tribal taboos?-- Obsidi♠nSoul06:00, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Putting aside the question of existence, siding with that literalist biblical god, is like siding with a despot because he is kind to you when you follow his nonsensical laws that have horrible punishments when broken. He promises plentiful rewards if only you follow him unquestioningly. In the periphery of his throne, you see the people who didn't listen being tortured by his underlings and hear their screams. You ask him why, and he just smiles and says it was their fault and he loves them anyway. If that god does exist, it is pure evil. And even if it is proven to exist, I'd rather burn.-- Obsidi♠nSoul06:00, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well... you burn in hell? ;P That's another thing. The exclusivity of organized religion. If we supposed that only one was true, only a very very tiny amount of people would be 'saved'. Majority of all the humans that ever lived would suffer for eternity. Even within a religion, different sects believe different things and these differences are apparently enough to burn one sect for eternity, but not the other. Christians, Muslims, and Jews all worship the same god, yet most of them act as if each other's version was satan himself despite differing only in very minor details. It's as if they deliberately maintain exclusivity so as to appear chosen, special, and religions regularly taunt each other about the others burning in hell, as if saving oneself by being a sycophant to a cruel deity was the most blessed of human attributes. And the rather horrific thing about it all, is that doing good matters very little if you do not belong and do not perform the same rituals everyone else is doing. What happened to the Good Samaritan? He was inarguably a person with a kind heart, the epitome of the person what most religions strives their followers to be. But he belongs to a people that were rejected and still are by Jews despite sharing the same monotheistic religion. Did he go to hell as well? And if he did, would you really call a god who would allow that to happen 'good'? Jealousy is not a very divine trait.-- Obsidi♠nSoul10:15, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As a Roman Catholic, I do believe God exists, but I think it very differently from most other Catholics. For one, I don't believe the Earth was created in 7 days (although it could be thought of as true in a symbolic way), and I believe that God used the Big Bang to create the universe and evolution to create all the creatures on Earth (us included). I believe that things can be seen from a scientific perspective, but there is still something or someone that controls all these things, including physics. That person is God. Narutolovehinata5tccsdnew09:33, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's not "very differently from most other Catholics", it's mainstream Catholic belief. Catholic schools will generally teach science and the history of the Universe in accordance with the scientific consensus. Very few Catholics have bought into Evangelical Protestant ideas of 'Biblical literalism' and Young Earth Creationism. We can even point to early Christians who, without having a scientific theory to compare it to, still argued that it was missing the point to take the Genesis account as an accurate, literal history (Augustine is the classic example, I think). The Magisterium of the Church deliberately leaves the question somewhat open, so as not to unnecessarily exclude anyone on a matter that isn't (spiritually speaking) terribly important.[4]. 86.164.76.231 (talk) 12:26, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have to agree. It's the usual stance of almost all Catholics I know, including my immediate family, LOL. I also find it puzzling why other countries seem to have a stereotype of Catholics as terribly traditional and literalist. Perhaps because of its rather bloody history? By experience, it is the opposite.-- Obsidi♠nSoul14:39, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really want to take this much further off topic, but that little discussion leads to the inevitable question of "What is a Catholic?" Clearly, in the minds of those who just posted, it doesn't mean someone who follows the teachings of Rome. Well, certainly not all of them. Just those that suit at the time. I find those sorts of attitudes (and not just among Catholics) a bit concerning, especially when it comes to those myriads of articles on Wikipedia telling us fairly precisely how many Catholics, Christians and assorted others there are in the world. HiLo48 (talk) 23:21, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why you'd think this topic raises the question of "What is a Catholic?". Perhaps you are under the impression, despite my (I thought) very clearly explaining that the Vatican doesn't take a Young Earth Creationist position, that agreeing with the scientific consensus is somehow not following the teachings of Rome? I even linked to the relevant section of the Catechism, which shows you that the official position of the Church only concerns itself with the theological aspects, and encourages scientific education and enquiry. People spout a lot of rubbish about what the Church actually teaches: I recommend a read of the Catechism for the official position. There are a variety of completely valid Catholic positions on Creation, all of which are in line with Church teaching, one of the most popular of which is described by Narutolovehinata5.
But to answer the question of "What is a Catholic?": a Catholic is someone who has received Baptism, or other Sacraments of Initiation, in the Catholic Church. There is no question of "He isn't really Catholic because he doesn't make it to Mass"/"She isn't really Catholic because she believes X": one can be a lapsed Catholic, or a non-practicing Catholic, or out of communion (excommunicated) with the Church, and still be Catholic. The Church lays down very clearly what the actual points of dogma are (the things that are required to be believed to be in Communion with the Church), but nobody has the power to strip someone else of their Catholic status, and there are a whole load of things which are not dogmatically defined, and on which individual Catholics will often have a position.
Every article on Wikipedia that gives a figure for members of a faith should give a source, or several sources, for that figure. There are a lot of organisations that determine numbers by what people say they are, or by how many people attend a faith service every week, or whatever. I don't see why this should be "a bit concerning", as any trustworthy source for numbers will tell you the basis they used. 86.164.76.231 (talk) 12:57, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I notice there isn't actually an answer to the original question in the thread above
(Subheading created for attempting to provide actual answers to the question asked. I apologise if I missed a serious answer to the question above.)
The traditional answer from a Judeo-Christian point of view is that God answered this question when he spoke to Moses from the burning bush: "I am that I am". I recommend a read of our article on that description of God. This points to the concept of God as existence itself: God's basic property is existing. This makes God the answer to the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?": God is existence, self-contained and uncaused: the unmoved mover, the Causeless cause. It passes the problem of existence to God, leaving God as the embodiment of the problem. Since God (in this conception) is existence, asking why God exists is the same as asking why existence is. It is, by its nature, an unanswerable question, because existence itself, God, cannot have a cause, and so cannot have a reason for being. It simply is. If it had a cause, it would not be existence, because something would have had to exist outside it.
I should also note that Christian and Jewish philosophers don't generally hold that "God can do anything that I can think of", but rather that "God can do anything that He wills", which is quite different. God isn't going to create a square circle, or an object so heavy He cannot lift it, because God isn't going to be nonsensical. There was something about God being perfect in terms of Glory, and so everything works to the Glory of God? And so God wills that which leads to more Glory for Him? I don't remember: maybe someone else could point us to that concept.
My apologies, but I thought I gave the best possible answer that I could. There is a sense in which the question is meaningless, however (not trying to be a jerk, I mean "meaning" in a strict sense). It's a hypothetical question about IF there was a god, and one should enter into the hypothetical sincerely if we are to be intellectually fair-minded about it I suppose. You have brought up a few things and there seems to be a common theme with the whole "I am that I am" thing. That is a consequence of the law of identity. An object is always the same as itself. So we have a big circle. In metaphysics, you very often find that the answer involves a big circle, i.e. a circular definition or in other cases, very often an infinite regress. If you are serious about getting answers (and not merely trolling for god --which is a very common thing at this ref desk-- happy to oblige) I would recommend giving up on the idea that there really exists a god at all. Religious belief does nothing but cloud the issues, and makes it impossible to get any real answers. You inevitably get hung up in the mythology and can't escape it.Greg Bard (talk) 19:34, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Gregbard, I don't think that the Reference Desk should be used as a preaching pulpit to try to convert anyone to a particular belief. Why should anyone here say to me or anyone here whether I or someone else here should start or stop believing in God or a god? Willminator (talk) 00:54, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies, you are right. It was a good faith response however. I think it is a little more respectful to be forthright about things than to troll at the ref desk so people think about god. I don't know for sure that that is what the OP was into, but it is pretty common here at the ref desk. In my opinion, religion turns people's brains to mush, and I find that quite sad. Greg Bard (talk) 20:22, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you seem to question my motives for asking this question? I thought I’ve made clear that my question was never meant to go after any group of people. I was being fair in my question. I'm not going after you nor anyone, so don't worry. Just take a deep breath. :) Willminator (talk) 14:10, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh no I don't question your motives at all. (I think you might be joshing, but I want to be clear.) It's just that for living life and being a good person, the metaphysical view doesn't matter at all. There are good people of every religion, even because of their religion. So I support them. However, if you are exploring big metaphysical questions, you just aren't going to make any real progress, because all the gobbly-gook mumbo-jumbo gets in the way. It just isn't a good idea.Greg Bard (talk) 19:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would question 86.126's statement above that God wouldn't square a circle and so forth. I would say that crediting God with genuine omnipotence is vital to giving the concept a fair consideration. To me the creation of the underlying system of mathematics and logic is far more impressive than the creation of physics and matter. We've seen mountains chewed to dust by human hands, and imagine creating vast explosions, even to the extent of universes. But the mere fact that we can't imagine how pi "originally got" one particular value or why there are dimensions and matter or why a lump of nervous tissue making calculations actually "feels" things - those are what really make a person wonder how, and by whom, a universe is created. In addition, it gives people more room to interpret specific traditional scriptures in a way that makes sense. For example, God is described as making humans and animals in a Garden of Eden, this can be interpreted as the creation of the Forms (from the Theory of Forms) rather than specific families, genera, or species. Rather than seeing God as a mere gene engineer puttering around the lab making up animals that work according to the same rules as everybody else, it is possible to see God as deciding what evolution can produce, what logically is possible for it to produce, and then (perhaps) making sure it works out that way. Wnt (talk) 14:20, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I actually made no such definitive statement about the properties of God: I merely provided the usual definition of 'omnipotent' applied by Jewish and Christian philosophers when attributing that property to God (since this was clearly the framework the question was being asked within), and provided a link (one of many) where one could read further about this view, and other related views. This is because I was trying to answer the OP's question. I really couldn't care less what your personal conception of God is, just as I don't imagine the OP gives a toss what I personally think God is like. They wanted to know if people had considered these ideas, and if so who and in what way. And by 'people', I mean notable people, notable for their views on religion and philosophy. 86.164.76.231 (talk) 15:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why do so many theological discussions between religious people, agnostics and atheists wind up turning into ridiculous childish competitions?
I thought I’ve asked a legitimate, sincere question, which I can’t find the answers to nor any other people in history who have asked that question. I did take an “Introduction to Philosophy” course in college. I also studied religion, and had a religious upbringing too. In all these studies, I learned about those philosophers and theologians who have asked and tried to answer the questions: Why are we here, where do we come from, what happens after we die, how will the world end, and is there a god? I learned that the reason religion exists because of these questions, and the goal of any religion is to attempt to answer these questions with their different stories. However, I’ve never heard about any philosopher, theologian, or layman in history and even today try to answer the question about why does God ultimately exist if He does. I thought about the question while I was taking the philosophy course in college. No one I asked knew how to answer the question. The reasons behind this question I tried to explain in detail in the very first post of this section. The reasons I came up with came from my study of philosophy, religion, and my religious upbringing, so my question is an educated one. All I want to know is what are the answers, if any, to the question I asked that have been brought to the table? Also, who in history asked the question would be helpful to me. If no one has come up with the answers to the question and if there aren’t any answers available to my question, then why would that be? That’s all I was trying to ask. I don’t know how my question can tick off some people here. I don’t know why some people here seem to be “Avoiding the Question” which is a logical fallacy, which you can look it up in the “Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Willminator (talk) 00:42, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It ain't your fault that some people have those reactions to a legitimate and important question. I have asked myself that question about God a few times, though never really thought about it at length. I'm afraid that in any internet forum with a large number of people, you will often find that people wish to get into big angry discussions about this sort of thing. In those discussions, they want to show themselves as either being a holier-than-thou atheist that feels they have it all figured out or a very religious person who is super offended and feels they must spread their wisdom to those not touched by God etc (both of which I find to be rather disagreeable, even though I'm a religious intellectual :p). I would recommend having this conversation with your most intelligent friends and family. they're a better choice than people in the intertubes. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom!00:51, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm the person who posted "What if god does exist, but it's not yours?" I did that in a deliberately somewhat provocative way without the capital "g" on "god" to highlight the inherent Judeo-Christian bias in the original question. I like to think that in an open environment like Wikipedia, such questions, which appear to be general in nature but are really already loaded in a particular direction, can be healthily broadened in scope. I hope others don't see that as too childish. HiLo48 (talk) 03:37, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Because what to most people are mere exercises in philosophical questions had and still has deadly implications for some of us. You can perhaps afford to smile benignly at scriptural literalism and fundamentalism, because after all, it doesn't and hasn't affected you. Some of us can't. Anyway my shot at the original question:
I believe it's the fascination of the great mystery. You've probably experienced it, but didn't know what it was. I certainly have and still do at times. An example: when you look up at the night sky and realize that every blinking light is a massive star with their own worlds and that even then they only constitute a very small part of the vastness of everything and out there are more blinking lights, each of which is a galaxy containing more stars than you can see now, and even farther out in both distance and time are ancient massive things you can't even begin to imagine the true natures of. You feel a certain powerful awe - I guess you can call it the numinous - and you really can't help but ask 'Why?' And it happens for different reasons for different people from listening to monks chanting vespers as the sun sets, to a particularly vivid dream, to watching lightning split open a tree and start a brushfire.
A religious person would describe it as ecstasy, transcendence, illumination, magic, divine wrath, the supernatural, the face of god, etc. A nonreligious person would describe it as wonder, awe, horror, etc. We experience the same things, and ask the same questions, but we do not reach the same conclusions. It inflames the imagination and we try to capture it, share it, and most importantly explain it. From tribal folklore to modern sciences, all are driven by the desire for an explanation. Some claim to have found the answers already, some don't. Some are satisfied with the explanations of others, some have to write new interpretations for it. Some answers are playful and silly, some are deadly serious. Some answers are simplistic to the point of absurdity, some are so complex no one really honestly understands it. These are our arts, our songs, our dances, our religions, and our sciences.
While I doubt we ever will find the answer, it doesn't stop us from asking. As Albert Einstein said, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." -- Obsidi♠nSoul12:19, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
First off, "You can perhaps afford to smile benignly at scriptural literalism and fundamentalism, because after all, it doesn't and hasn't affected you. Some of us can't." -- That is actually entirely wrong, please do not make such assumptions when you know nothing about the person. My girlfriend is a member of Israel's Air Force and is endangered by various fundamentalists and literalists of the three major Abrahamic faiths. So, it very much affects me and her given that I wish to marry that girl and have a family with her rather than have her die as a result of the many forms of death that her job and assignment (her airbase) put her in danger of (something I worry about every day). please consider in the future, when making such assumptions, that a person is in fact affected by the thing you are talking about so as to avoid making grossly inaccurate and rude statements.
When I say childish, I am referring to direct digs at people's faith meant to provoke them, such as this comment above, "The god who created these colliding galaxies forbids you to eat shellfish and sleep in the same bed as a menstruating woman. Divine wisdom or anachronistic chauvinistic tribal taboos?-- Obsidi♠n Soul 06:00, 17 September 2011 (UTC)" (I didn't look at the author until this morning btw :p), which seems, to me at least, to mock certain Jewish beliefs (even though I don't adhere to the latter and do find it silly, still). They're unnecessary and distract people; I have seen it so many Off-Topic forums. It's okay to engage in theological discussion and critique, but it's rude and not anthropologically sound to mock the cultural traditions of another group just because you dislike them (and I'm pretty sure that is not the purpose of Wikipedia). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom!13:54, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Believe it or not, I was referring to the Christian selective interpretation of Leviticus in response to using the bible to directly imply firsthand knowledge of the motives of god. I was picking the most blatantly anthropocentric passages I can think of, the thought of the Jewish kosher (and indeed, Muslim halal) did not enter my mind at all. >.< -- Obsidi♠nSoul14:12, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, no worries, I know/remember very little of that Christian stuff, and it had crossed my mind that it was probably something Christian you were referring to, but you see the inherent danger if the thing your talking about is present in more than just your own errr... culture? Religious familial background? (you know what I mean). Better to just say that it is suspect in your view that any divine being who creates such wonders would also trouble themselves with some of the strange laws we see in the Abrahamic religions (that way no one can say "he is mocking X-belief!"). I will admit that the only reason I picked that one out though is because it was so visible and I didn't feel like reading the massive amounts of text already in place, so there may have been some more calm and civil discussion. When I see stuff like that though.... Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom!14:30, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As it turned-out, a Scottish newspaper displayed a picture of one the footballers (albeit with his eyes obscured, however his identity was plainly obvious).
Before I post my question - this is not a request for legal advice, simply a query concerning the jurisdiction of English Law on US-based websites.
Recently I have noted a number of examples, where English citizens have been prosecuted or investigated for comments they have posted on either Facebook or Twitter:
1. Kate Middleton's friend interviewed under caution by police after 'joke' about shooting illegal immigrants
Using London-based law firm Schillings as an advisor, action has been undertaken by the footballer against Twitter in an attempt to obtain information on some of the users involved in naming Giggs.[18][19] The action is known as CTB v Twitter Inc, Persons Unknown.[20] A blogger for Forbes magazine remarked: "Giggs has not heard of the Streisand effect", observing that mentions of his name had significantly increased after the case against Twitter had been reported in the news.[21] According to measurement company Experian Hitwise, traffic on Twitter in the UK rose by 22% after the action was reported.[22] Peter Preston, former editor of The Guardian, compared the CTB situation to the Spycatcher affair of the 1980s, in which Peter Wright's book had been openly on sale in Australia and other countries, despite being banned in the UK.[23]
The headquarters of Twitter are in San Francisco, and legal experts pointed out the difficulties in suing in a United States court, where First Amendment protection applies to freedom of speech. London-based lawyer James Quartermaine commented: “Twitter will probably just ignore it and consider it to be offensive to their First Amendment rights. It’s probably an attempt to try and show that actions have consequences in cyberspace.”[24] On 21 May 2011, lawyers at Schillings denied that they were suing Twitter, and said that they had made an application "to obtain limited information concerning the unlawful use of Twitter by a small number of individuals who may have breached a court order."[25]— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaseywasey (talk • contribs) 18:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but if I travel to Florida and see an English person and say something that may be illegal in Britain. That English person may try to report me to the US authorities, however I can claim "Freedom of Speech". When we both return to England, he can try to report me to the British police, who will advise that as the alleged incident took place in America, it is outside British jurisdiction - Surely this is identical to what is happening with the Facebook/Twitter comments Jaseywasey (talk) 19:21, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a request for legal advice - the point I am making is that Scottish & Irish newspapers have ignored the "Super-Injunctions" due to these orders only applying to England & Wales, therefore I cannot see how any comments posted on US websites can be covered by English law! Jaseywasey (talk) 19:30, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not a lawyer and don't pretend to understand English laws limiting freedom of speech, but conceivably a person subject to English law could get away with having banned speech appear in a print publication outside of England because a paper publication could be confiscated once it reaches England. However, since English authorities do not (yet) seem to block websites, a publication on a website, no matter where it is hosted, might be considered a publication within England in a way that a print publication is not. (Apparently, though, Wikipedia is careful not to use servers in the UK to avoid exposure to English libel laws.) Marco polo (talk) 19:44, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I found the following line in the Freedom of Speech article:
On 27 February 2008 civil servant Darryn Walker was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Unit for posting a work of fiction allegedly describing the kidnap, mutilation, rape and murder of the girl band 'Girls Aloud' on a fantasy pornography website. While the website was hosted outside the UK, Walker's prosecution was possible under UK law as he is a British citizen living in the UK. He was found not guilty on 29 July 2009 as the CPS offered no evidence.
This seems to raise more questions than it answers, but it appears there is a mechanism within UK (English?) law - I would be interested in finding out more information concerning this provision Jaseywasey (talk) 19:51, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Have a look at this page on the Crown Prosecution Service Website and scroll down to "Improper use of public electronic communications network - Section 127 Communications Act 2003". This seems to be the legislation used to convict the Facebook troll cited above. I can't see that the location of the server has any bearing on it. "If a message sent is grossly offensive, indecent, obscene, menacing or false, it is irrelevant whether it was received. The offence is one of sending, so it is committed when the sending takes place."Alansplodge (talk) 20:09, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My question would be, were they in the UK when they sent these messages? If they were, then even though the server was outside the UK, this would not strike me as an attempt at extraterritorial jurisdiction. (I generally take a very dim view of claims of extraterritorial jurisdiction.) --Trovatore (talk) 07:20, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In the linked newspaper article about the Facebook case, it says that the offender was unemployed and lived in Reading, so rather unlikely to be flying off to foriegn parts to make his posts. Alansplodge (talk) 16:25, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed Travtore is right. If you are in England when you click the "post" button, then you are performing an action under English jurisdiction, and liable under English law. That seems to me a reasonnable interpretation from the judges.--Lgriot (talk) 08:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There may not be any specific law, but the usual justification of charges is that they are incompetent to make decisions for themselves, so anyone who has sex with them is committing a form of rape (similar logic as for statutory rape based on age). Although, in some nations there are also eugenics laws that ban the retarded from reproducing, and they may also ban sex, as that can lead there. StuRat (talk) 19:08, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The relevant law is the Sexual Offences Act 2003, specifically the provisions relating to 'Offences against persons with a mental disorder impeding choice', 'Inducements etc. to persons with a mental disorder' and 'Care workers for persons with a mental disorder' in sections 30 to 44. Link here. Down Syndrome comes within the ambit of mental disorders under this Act. Sam Blacketer (talk) 19:28, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A prohibition sounds horrible in some cases. I'm positive that some people with Down Syndrome are intelligent enough to know what they are choosing. 88.8.79.204 (talk) 20:18, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, it sounds reasonable. I don't believe it is applied systematically against certain group of people, but rather on those impaired enough to not be able to make an informed decision. It's more about the lack of ability -and dependence on a tutor- than the deficiency -Down syndrome, schizophrenia that you have. Wikiweek (talk) 23:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes the legislation is clear it only applies when the person "lacks the capacity to choose whether to agree to the touching (whether because he lacks sufficient understanding of the nature or reasonably foreseeable consequences of what is being done, or for any other reason)" or "is unable to communicate such a choice to A." [5]. Nil Einne (talk) 01:51, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It still seems vague to me. If somebody believes a person with mild Downs Syndrome is able to to make their own choices, must they get an opinion from the court, or else risk their freedom by having a relationship based on their own perception ? If an IQ point was used as the dividing line, instead, then having those test results in hand should protect them. The vagueness of this law is similar to if age of consent laws just said the person must "be mature", rather than specifying a specific age. StuRat (talk) 05:25, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Of course it's vague: it's dealing with a vague area that requires individual judgement. An IQ test line would be a horribly unjust and ridiculous approach: why would someone's ability to complete a pattern accurately reflect their ability to consent to sex? A 10-year-old maths prodigy isn't necessarily (or often) more emotionally and socially developed, such that they can consent to sex. By its nature, this has to be a matter of judgement. As a general rule: if you think there is any doubt about someone's ability to consent, or you think other people will generally doubt they truly consented, don't have sex with them. This is a basic rule unless you're a rapist. Doubts about their consent? Don't have sex. Don't engage in other sexual behaviour. It won't kill you. I really don't see the problem for anyone except sexual predators and those who harbour stalker-like delusions as to their 'lover's feelings. Either they can unambiguously consent, or sex is not an option. 86.164.76.231 (talk) 12:09, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What strikes me is the apparent lack of concern for the viewpoint of the "protected" person. Maybe they actually want to have sex - that feeling seems to be fairly common among "normal" people. While I see the need to protect mentally handicapped people from predation, does society have the right to deny them a healthy sex life by effectively criminalising most sexual activity? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:20, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
AFAIK society has the right to protect more vulnerable members from themselves if needed and if the mentally handicapped person really wants to have sex with somebody who is also willing then the issue has some simple rules. S/he will have to talk to his/her legal guardian (usually the parents). Those in turn will judge if the person is capable of understanding the whole issue. If they agree the person can have sex with his girlfriend. If they disagree the person can't have sex with his girlfriend. IMHO such conversations (the couple simply talk to the parents before doing anything) solve the majority of all cases.
However if the couple disagree with a negative judgement it has two choices: they do it anyway and the whole issue can end up in a court of law (and the girlfriend/boyfriend can be considered guilty of breaking the law). The other choice is that they hire a lawyer and go to court with the intent to prove that the person is capable to decide this issue. Either way the court will have to decide who is wrong and who is right. I imagine that such legal cases are rare. Flamarande (talk) 16:31, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
LOL @ asking your parents for permission to have sex. Will they then discuss sexual positions ? What color is the sky in your world ? StuRat (talk) 16:58, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We aren't talking about normal horny teenagers. We are talking about mentally handicapped persons who are vulnerable and therefore under the protection of their parents who are their legal guardians (under a certain POV they never cease to be children - at the least in the eyes of the law). If they don't trust their own parents and are ashamed to talk about sex despite knowing that they themselves are handicapped then they are somewhat unable to judge the matter at all. Flamarande (talk) 17:15, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Because while they are embarrassed to talk to their parents they aren't mentally handicapped and therefore have the legal right to decide the issue for themselves (as they reach the proper age). 'Mentally handicapped' is not only a medical condition, it is also a legal one in which de facto and de jure you have fewer rights as society considers that you are vulnerable and that you need better protection against anyone who might wish to take advantage of you and from yourself if needs be. Therefore the legislature passes certain laws (which vary from country to country) which grant your legal guardian increased power and responsibility over you. He has the power to decide certain issues even if you don't agree with his judgement as you are considered incapable of deciding such issues. If you disagree you can go to a court and argue your cause. The court might agree and decide that you are capable of deciding said issue. They might even give you a different guardian (if they consider that your present one is inadequate). Flamarande (talk) 14:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe they do, in which case they will consent. But if you cannot say with certainty that somebody has consented to sex, you cannot assume that they would want to just because you think it would be "normal" to want to. And you cannot assume that they have sufficient understanding to have consented. This is all about the viewpoint of the "protected" person: the default assumption has to be that somebody doesn't want sex unless they can unambiguously consent. It would be far worse for someone to be raped than for someone to not have sex who'd quite like to. And there is almost certainly going to be a power-differential element as well, just as we do not allow teachers to have sex with 16-year-old students, who are above the age of consent: two people with a more limited social and emotional maturity having sex is less likely to involve predation and coercion than a person with limited social and emotional maturity having sex with a person with much greater social and emotional maturity. All of this complicated and variable stuff is why it is left vague, to be a judgement call. Anecdotally, abuse and taking advantage of mentally handicapped adults is far more common than prosecution for the same :( 86.164.76.231 (talk) 16:02, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But a power differential is also very common where both parties are adults of normal intelligence. <satire>Shouldn't all boss/secretary relationships be legally considered rape, too ?</satire> StuRat (talk) 16:12, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
All, Stu? You don't give secretaries much credit for free thought, free will, and the ability to say "Boss, I'll type your letters, I'll make your coffee, I'll even buy your wife's anniversary present, but I won't sleep with you, and if you ever make this suggestion again I'll have you charged with sexual harrassment and I'll also tell your wife what's going on". -- Jack of Oz[your turn]19:47, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused now. First you suggest that all boss/secretary relationships should be legally considered rape, but now you're saying that not all relationships with uneven power are abusive. What exactly are you saying? -- Jack of Oz[your turn]20:06, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you are wearing it to actually tell time, then no Wikipedian is qualified to tell you, because it is up to you to determine what is most convenient for your needs. If you are seeking out some prevailing tradition to conform to, well then by all means wear the thing on the opposite hand from the one which you favor.Greg Bard (talk) 20:17, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This page says that men started wearing watches on their wrists at the end of the 19th century, in particular, British officers in the Second Boer War. My conjecture, but at the start of an attack, they would have needed to have their watch on their left hand, to have the right hand free for their service revolver (unless left-handed). Right-handed men wearing watches on their right hand (at least in the UK) is a modern affectation and I never saw it done until recently. It still looks a bit odd to me. Alansplodge (talk) 20:56, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've always thought that people wear their watches on the opposite hand than the one they write with because it may be uncomfortable to have a watchband under their wrist as they write. Dismas|(talk)21:00, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I wear a watch out of habit (on my left wrist), but I remove it as soon as I get to work because it is an annoyance when I'm typing. -- kainaw™15:55, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wristwatches are virtually always worn on your off wrist. So for you that'd be your left. If it's an analog wristwatch, you may notice that the winding stem is facing to the right, that's so that righties can wear the watch on the left wrist and wind/set it with their right hand. (Us lefties are pretty much forced to take an analog watch off before we wind or set it.) APL (talk) 22:15, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I typically (but not always) wear my wristwatch on my dominant wrist. I think it's a matter of personal preference. Most people seem to prefer to wear it on the opposite hand, but I'm not aware of any cultural values that stipulate that one should do so. I think it's up do you; I doubt that most people would notice, or that those who notice would pass judgment. At least for me, as an American, it doesn't matter at all. I certainly have never had anybody take issue with my wrist-watch wearing habits, and only very occasionally has someone even cared to comment on it (perhaps twice or three times in my life). Falconusptc23:06, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't get this question, how can anyone say "unless the stem is on the right side", etc. Watches are worn on the left hand, period. That's the rule. Lefties will break this rule, almost always doing so consciously. (As opposed to writing with their left hand, which doesn't break any rule). So, now you know the rule. You are absolutely under no means to follow it, and regardless of whether you are a rightie or a leftie or have a watch wtih a stem on the right or left side, you can wear it on either wrist. You can even wear two watches, one on each wrist, or two watches on the left wrist (one very narrow band watch). All of these also break the rule. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.234.207.120 (talk) 23:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have never in my life heard this. I have always heard that watches go on the off hand, even in formal dress. Maybe back in the olden days when it was considered shameful to be lefty, you'd wear the watch on your left to hide your shameful hand-preference, but that certainly hasn't been the case at any point in my lifetime. (Back then a gentleman would never write with his left hand, either. Not in public, anyway.)
Furthermore, you say this "rule" applies even with left-handed watches?!? So you're saying that even if you've paid extra to have a watch that was specifically manufactured as a left handed watch to be worn on your right wrist, the "rule" says that you have to wear it on your left? Anyone who noticed would laugh at you! APL (talk) 03:28, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What? I have certainly never heard this "rule" (and might I add, have violated it nearly every day for the past decade); while someone may have written this "rule" down, I would personally be shocked if more than a handful of people are aware of it or give it any consideration whatsoever. So maybe it's a rule for somebody somewhere, but it's not a rule for my culture, not by any stretch. Falconusptc06:26, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I too think this is a matter of personal preference. Some right-handed people wear the watch on the left hand, some prefer the right hand. – b_jonas11:34, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I too was taught by my parents that the watch should be on the left hand. Looking for phrases such as "wristwatch", "left hand" and "right hand" on google shows that it is generally acknowledged that the majority of men wear the watch on the left hand, but as for there being any rule on this, opinions differ: Some believe that there is no rule ([example 1], [example 2] ), some believe that it should go on the non-dominant hand ([example 1], [example 2]), and some believe it should go on the left hand ([example 1], [example 2]. None of the examples are particularly authoritative. In case any one is interested, Miss Manners is in the first group. 188.117.30.209 (talk) 14:59, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've heard of such things, but my impression was that they were (once) practically based. If a person is going to swing a sledgehammer or reach up a cow's birth canal, best to have it in the less vulnerable position. But if what you do is type on a QWERTY keyboard all day, well, the left hand there gets more use than the right, even for a right-handed person. I would assume any and all such "rules" were limited to a time, place, and profession and are now obsolete. Wnt (talk) 14:02, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was recently thinking about how Austria, like Germany, was divided into zones of control by the UK, US and Soviet Union after World War II and found myself wondering how it ended up that German was split into two separate countries while Austria remained unified. Given its geographic proximity to communist Eastern Europe, I would have expected Austria to end up facing a similar fate to Germany. Why didn't this happen?
12.34.4.33 (talk) 20:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See the articles on History of Austria (1945-) and Austrian State Treaty (1955). Basically it seems like the USSR agreed to leave Austria alone as long as it was proclaimed as officially neutral (see Declaration of Neutrality) and wouldn't join NATO. Which is a bit odd. Germany is the odder case of the two, though, owing to its role in starting WWII and it being essentially the border state for the USSR (given the fact that Poland was already well in the bloc). --Mr.98 (talk) 21:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not an expert on this at all, but can't this be because the war ended in Berlin (in the middle of Germany) where neither US or the USSR would be in a position to simply say "you can have it", which would mean that the other party was the "official liberator". Austria or Hungary probably didn't have the media attention Germany had. Joepnl (talk) 23:51, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't say Berlin is in the middle of Germany. Anyway, it was the product of negotiations, as Mr.98 pointed above: you give me Türingen, I give you half of Berlin and Austria remains by her own. Wikiweek (talk) 23:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Media attention didn't really have much to do with the Allied negotiations. And it's of note that the partitioning took place well before the actual end of the war — e.g. the Yalta convention. Germany certainly had a special situation because of its being to hot spot for Hitler and all that. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:16, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes — I would have corrected the red link with a preview but I was in a rush. And yeah, I also would have double-checked it against Potsdam! I didn't quite remember actually submitting that edit, as it was still a work in progress.. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:56, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Discussions about possible partitions occured at Yalta, but nothing was finalized in stone there. As the "situation on the ground" became more clear, and Germany's fall became iminent, the Potsdam Conference had a lot more to do with the eventual fates of the Axis Powers, especially with the division of Germany and the status of Austia. See especially the Potsdam Agreement, the resultant document of that conference. The Wikipedia article Allied-occupied Austria also covers why the Soviets had so little influence there. --Jayron3205:22, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Something to consider... with the Anschluss, Austria was officially part of Germany. So one could say that when the war ended, Germany was actually divided into three parts: West Germany (US dominated), East Germany (Soviet dominated)... and Austria (neutral). Blueboar (talk) 14:11, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed Austria (and Vienna) where divided into four zones/sectors after the war just as much as Germany/Berlin were. See The Third Man for a film set in divided Vienna. As pointed out above Austria got re-united in exchange for neutrality. Stalin extended the same offer to Germany. The then German government under Adenauer rejected the offer. There has been much discussion whether that was a mistake, or whether Stalin would have kept his word. 109.158.106.147 (talk) 23:02, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
IIRC many historians think that Stalin viewed Austria as a loss leader, hoping to persuade the West Germans to go for neutrality too. Whether he simply hoped to remove the German resource base from NATO, or planned yet another central European coup to add it to the Warsaw Pact, I probably unknowable now. Matt's talk17:39, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Aynthing you say can and will(?) be used against you in a court of law"
What's the meaning of "will" in the Miranda warning? It can't mean literally that anything the suspect says will be used in a court of law. Maybe there won't be a court of law, or maybe the suspect answered "Yes" to "Do you want a smoke?". In both cases the officer lied to the suspect if the warning was taken literally. If it doesn't have to do with me not understanding that "and will" is just a normal way of emphasizing in English, does it mean that for example the officer is not allowed to ignore something incriminating the subject says, so he will tell it to the judge? Joepnl (talk) 23:27, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In case it's not clear, the meaning of the example is that I'm not just able, but intend to do so (still in the hypothetical case that you piss me off). 82.234.207.120 (talk) 23:42, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The key here is the use of the word "anything" rather than "everything." "Anything" implies that any sentence uttered is subject to scrutiny in court, including any cigarette offers. Perhaps the subject being a nonsmoker is important to his or her alibi, etcetera. "Will" has nothing to do with "anything" (not a pun, yet apt). Perhaps you are thinking of "Will" versus "shall." If it was "shall" then the officer would be required to use the affirmative reply to the cigarette offer against the subject in court for sure (which could end up being quite silly). "Will" is permissive, while "shall" is mandatory.Greg Bard (talk) 04:22, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks both. I thought shall is just an old fashioned way of saying will, but that they mean the same. That's why I thought anything was actually turned into everything by using will. Now I wonder what you mean by (not a pun, yet apt) :)Joepnl (talk) 18:24, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
People use the phrase "...nothing to do with anything" quite frequently. What I was doing was mentioning not using. The sentence I stated means The word "will" as used in the miranda warning has nothing to do with the word "anything" in the miranda warning. See use-mention distinction. Aren't I clever? (har har).Greg Bard (talk) 20:31, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is interesting. I suspect that "will" is being used here, to some degree, in the archaic sense of desire, rather than as a synonym for "shall". Unfortunately Wiktionary doesn't have an entry for "can and will", and I don't know how far back the combined phrase goes, but I think that there is some difference in meaning between how it is used there and simply saying "anything you say will be used against you...", where I think the average listener really would expect to see the entire conversation transmitted by the prosecution with some certainty. "Can and will" gives more of a sense or an implication that it is possible that it will used and that the person giving the warning wants to use it. English modal verbs are a terribly muddled system to indicate such things, but at least you don't have to learn six different endings ... Wnt (talk) 17:02, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The use of the term "will" as permissive and "shall" as mandatory is very common in the law. If you draw up a contract and you want someone to do something FOR SURE, well you'd better use the term "shall." If the law said that when a police officer sees a crime he or she "will" place someone under arrest, that only puts the matter subject to the officer's will. The officer may or may not arrest and that is just fine. Instead of arguing with the officer about it the officer just points to the term "shall" in the law and tells the subject that it isn't up to them, they should tell it to the judge. I'm not really sure that is the archaic form of "will" you were talking about.Greg Bard (talk) 19:42, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Can" signifies legality, and "will" is a warning of intent such that the defendant cannot then complain to the court that he was misled because he didn't think that something he said to the "good cop" would be used against him. μηδείς (talk) 03:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How much of TD Ameritrade is owned by its founder/family?
hi,
Can a Chinese immigrate from a county to another county? what is the status of Hong-Kong on this matter?
And what about democracy?can Beijing change the results of the election?
Exx8 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:53, 17 September 2011 (UTC).[reply]
Emigration from China requires official state permission, which can be denied (or granted) rather arbitrarily. (There is an editorial account of one such emigration in the New York Times today, which is interesting.) See Chinese_emigration#Late_20th_century:_modern_emigration for more information. People with "clean" political records can often get business or student visas.
The PRC is not really a democracy. There are elections (see Elections in the People's Republic of China) but they are all more or less for the same party (there are no opposition parties). I'm not sure Beijing needs to change the results of elections, but, if they needed to, they probably would. There is not an independent judiciary or anybody to conduct real oversight. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:02, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I assume that a Chinese citizen in good standing is not free to leave, which is what separates the "evil" countries like dictatorships, communism, totalitarian, countries, from "good" countries like the U.S., Canada, European countries, etc. This is just my impression though. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 01:12, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the OP meant to say 'province' but used 'county' instead. I don't believe the OP meant 'country', as 'a country to another country' makes little sense here. I lived in China in the early 1990s, and there was little freedom of movement. There were many rural people coming into the cities to find work, but very often they were being sent back to their homes in the countryside again. I believe the situation is different now, but how different, I do not know.--KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK)01:42, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Right, I also believe the OP really meant county, but anyway: if you can't even leave your county, it's certainly impossible to leave your country. Quest09 (talk) 01:48, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not necessarily. It's easy to imagine a country where because of possible population density problems or fears of ethnic tensions or whatever, migrating from one county (or whatever) to another is difficult in at least some cases but they don't care if you bugger off somewhere else. Nil Einne (talk) 05:04, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Generally no, but there is a widely used system of requesting exemptions for past and relatively minor or less pertinent crimes. I believe laywers are frequently granted exemptions for DUI felonies in most states. 208.54.38.212 (talk) 01:47, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Or maybe Onion dome? The way the spire bit bulges in the middle does look a bit like an onion dome; and there are similar structures in pictures in the Wikipedia article. --Jayron3205:52, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly not a minaret. It's not quite an onion dome (too narrow). Steeple is, like spire, awfully general for shape, and tends to specifically connote part of a church. If it's any help, the town is mostly Norwegian American, and I'm guessing that it is something specifically Nordic. - Jmabel | Talk07:55, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you'll give me a minaret to summarize this not-so-dome question, the peak is steep enough to be a steeple, but can only aspire to be a spire, and that's my finial thought on this. StuRat (talk) 19:55, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Do cats think?
The article does not say anything about this, but it does state that cats dream. Seeing as they do dream whilst asleep, it makes me wonder whether or not they actually think when awake. Would anyone know whether cats do in fact think? Thanks.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 07:06, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sure they think - if we do. Defining "thought" is tricky, though. Several animal have shown clear signs of self-awareness - see Mirror test. However, I'm not aware that cats have passed this test so far. Of course, this is obviously only because the Supreme Masters of the Universe do not deign to participate in tests set up by their litter box cleaners. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:46, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My favourite 'test' of cat intelligence, carried out by reserchers who clearly had little experience of cats, involved pulling on bits of string to get a tasty treat. The reserchers noted that dogs would learn to pull the right piece of string to get a treat, but cats wouldn't. They seemed to think this refleced badly on the cats' intelligence, but frankly it reflects badly on the researchers. Playing with bits of string is a cat's ultimate goal, especially if they aren't particularly hungry: why would they reject something they like for something less appealing? It would be like a dog manipulating a piece of meat to make string dangle: it's not that they can't, they'd just never want to. 86.164.76.231 (talk) 11:52, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My favorite book on animal intelligence in general is Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation. Give it a read — you'll be glad you did. It is simply fascinating. They do think, but they think differently than most humans do. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:24, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, and I was a bit suspicious of it at first. But it's for real — and pretty interesting. Grandin is one of the most influential and most important animal behaviorists of our day. She's also one of the most important autism (and autistic) activists of our day. It's actually pretty profound stuff, and she's extremely good at indicating where she's going out on a limb and where she's not (unlike most science writers). Heavily recommended. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:49, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cheers - I have ordered it from our local library. I used to teach autistic children and I'm interested in animal behaviour, and of course, linguistics. :) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK)17:53, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But in truth, we could be p-zombies too. It strikes me as somewhat implausible that humans would be terribly different in that respect from other mammals with sufficiently developed brains. I suppose one could consider phenomenal consciousness a threshold effect, but that seems like kind of an odd, exceptionalist assumption to me — the burden of proof would be on showing that human conscious was somehow different from animal consciousness (given that humans are, in fact, animals), not the other way around. But I'm sure that our understanding of what consciousness really is still has quite a lot of room for development, yet. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:52, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You could be a p-zombie. I couldn't. From your perspective, of course, it's the other way around, unless you really are a p-zombie, in which case you don't have a perspective at all. --Trovatore (talk) 19:43, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cats have a very different socialization than common pack animals such as dogs or horses. They appear to be indifferent and uninterested when they aren't particularly hungry, probably because it gains them some kind of an advantage to wander off as opposed to remaining with groups. They certainly think and exhibit problem solving behavior when they are goal-oriented, such as when they are stalking prey. Most of the time, though, it might be fair to say that their minds wander. 70.91.171.54 (talk) 20:41, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No other form of life, aside from humans, can plan long term projects. The projects don't even have to be particularly long term. Other than humans, no form of life does much in the way of planning. I don't mean that which is biologically programed into a creature, but rather cogitation, conceptualization, holding onto and idea and doggedly pursuing an aim. Bus stop (talk) 14:20, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's so not true. Heh. See this for example. Tool usage is another. It's always wrong to judge sentience based on anthropocentric criteria. If we applied those criteria on a three year old human child, we'd come to the conclusion that our children are all non-sentient automatons.-- Obsidi♠nSoul14:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How long ago in human history do you think the first efforts were made to get to the moon, invent a printing press, invent a computer, develop long range communication? I realize that this Chimpanzee is using a stick. But that is a severely limited activity in human terms. Bus stop (talk) 15:24, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We are actually discussing this very thing in our class with Dr. Allison Brooks. We're basically trying to determine what is human culture and does it have a beginning. We have covered the multiple forms of tool use (and advanced planning) various tribes of great apes use, etc. I even wrote a nice paper which I am not showing anyone here, but let me submit, for your approval, some clear examples of complex learned behaviour.
See, for instance, this video of chimps hunting, catching, and proceeding to nom a poor little monkey using pretty advanced planning and tatics for lower animals imo (reminiscent of buffalo hunting)
And of course, one of those most important of human characteristics, the ability to play Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault. [7]. Need anymore be said on this topic?
Oh btw, I (and probably other people) determined that the reason why the chimps and such can't go as far as us is they start doing something like say using two rocks to smash nuts, and think "this is good.", and leave it at that. We use two rocks to smash nuts, and think "this is good, but how can I make it better?" That's what sets us apart from other animals. That's the reason why chimps still do the same stuff that our most recent common ancestor probably did. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom!21:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A caveman didn't wake up one day and say, "Someday, I will go to the moon! Today I will look for food and then later learn how to make fire so I can make that possible." Human advances were cumulative. Forward planning and memory is actually a pretty common thing even among lower animals. Sure, some animals are just robots of DNA, but given that we humans aren't, why shouldn't there be others who aren't as well?
I mean, think of it, where did we start from in the first place? Sentience was not a magic thing suddenly bestowed on humans and humans only, the capacity for it developed gradually from somewhere, and these animals are developing it too (at least partly). As we've found out, having more processing control and breaking the DNA's prime directive of 'replicate me through whatever means necessary' is pretty nifty. It's called convergent evolution.
Arguing that only humans are capable of sentience at all is a kind of species-solipsism that is just as easily likely to be from avoidance of guilt. Just less than two hundred years ago, people used the same reason as an excuse for slavery on fellow humans. And no, I'm not a tree-hugger and I love meat. :P -- Obsidi♠nSoul03:04, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Slavery on fellow humans".[8] Give me a break. Humans probably conceptualized space flight to the moon thousands of years ago. The computer was probably conceptualized thousands of years ago. You linked to an article on a crow using a twig to poke a rubber spider. Other forms of life address issues right in front of them. There is no long term planning. Humans think conceptually. Even a human of thousands of years ago would have understood numbers, and would have conceptualized that a machine could help a human to make mathematical calculations. That would be a thought concerning an archaic computer. When metallurgy was explored and developed, human beings would already have had in mind the sort of machines they wanted to build. Concerning human beings, the planning is already in place before the means even become available. The complexity of human projects sets humans apart in a virtually absolute sense from other animals. I think that has been the case for tens of thousands of years. The case can be made that humans are like animals but not the other way around. : ) Bus stop (talk) 03:33, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's not the point. Of course human slaves are generally capable of long-term planning. The question is, why would it make slavery any better if they weren't? --Trovatore (talk) 05:02, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It still appears to me that you are claiming that there is no moral issue with the enslavement of animals, and that partly in support of that position you adduce the claim that they are not capable of long-term planning. Are you saying that, or not? It's certainly possible that I have misconstrued. --Trovatore (talk) 05:11, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have not touched upon any issues concerning morality. I am making a distinction between humans and other forms of life. I think that distinction is just a functional distinction. Bus stop (talk) 05:17, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough; my mistake. Still, I'm pretty sure ObsidianSoul was making a moral point, namely that we risk dealing unjustly with animals if we deny their capacity to ... feel, suffer, hope, whatever. I think it's a point at least worthy of taking into consideration. --Trovatore (talk) 06:53, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) But I don't think that using an animal as a beast of burden would constitute "dealing unjustly with animals"[9] whereas coercing a human to do demeaning work against their will would probably be unjust. There are reasonable distinctions that can be made between humans and animals due to not insignificant discontinuities found between our capacities and those of lower forms of life. Bus stop (talk) 12:59, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Er... wasn't that the point? By drawing the line between which organisms are capable of sentience to humans only, it makes it easier for humans to coerce animals to do demeaning work against their will. Exactly like what we did with slavery before.-- Obsidi♠nSoul13:15, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think a harnessed animal reflects on such notions as "demeaning work" or lack of remuneration. It is not necessarily going to suffer a slight to its dignity because a human is directing its activity. The animal may experience a degree of pain associated with exertion. But the animal is not thinking about how embarrassed it would be if its kids saw it pulling a plow. Bus stop (talk) 14:00, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So are those the criteria for sentience then? Embarrassment, dignity, and awareness of the lack of remuneration. We can apply the same things, like I've said earlier, to human toddlers. They also are not embarrassed, have no concept of dignity, and don't expect you to pay them. So are human children not sentient then? Are they also just animals instinctively running around, playing with toys, eating, smiling, attempting to imitate sounds, and whatnot? And if they are not sentient or at least only of limited sentience, does that also justify cruelty? The elephant below is slowly going insane from its barren environment, but it's not a human being and thus by your argument, not sentient.
Human children are human children—they are still human, even if they are children. It would be possible to treat animals in a way that would constitute cruelty but I am certainly not advocating that. Nevertheless we do use animals in a variety of ways. For instance we kill them and eat them. Yet we don't countenance cannibalism—the eating of human flesh. And most of us do not countenance the enslavement of other humans. These are standard positions held by most people. There were times in the past when the institution of slavery had the imprimatur of such august bodies as sovereign governments. But nowadays human trafficking and associated abuses are frowned upon although practiced in an unlawful way. I am not excusing human slavery and I am certainly not advocating that we treat animals cruelly. Bus stop (talk) 15:22, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Recognize it? It's commonly mistaken for dancing. But think prisoners banging their heads repeatedly against the wall to the tune of NIN (lol) before going berserk. An instinct robot wouldn't do that, as long as you provide food and shelter, they should have been perfectly happy with things.
You did posit complex planning as the only indicator for intelligence. I contend it's far more complicated than that and you're putting too much emphasis on human criteria that no nonhuman creature will understandably achieve. That article is about animals planning.
The problem is how do you we know that animals don't think conceptually? Elephants mourn. That shows an awareness of the concept of mortality. They have been documented extensively for the ability to show empathy not just to fellow elephants but to other injured creatures. They also know the concept of revenge. Those are abstract concepts. Dolphins also have names for themselves and for each other, and have at the very least a rudimentary language. Those are also abstract concepts. Dolphins exhibit very complex play, behavior done for the sheer fun of it. Both these animals (as well as a lot of others) have the capability to go insane in captivity. And despite what you said, both understand numbers, something shown in numerous studies.
What do they need to prove that they are aware of themselves and their environment in more ways than that of a robot gathering input? Do we need them to start walking on two legs and building spaceships before we say that 'ah! I think this one thinks'. It's like two people from different continents meeting for the first time, each unaware of the other's language. Is it fair if one person expects the other to speak English as a way of determining intelligence? This is more than that. Nonhumans might have different priorities, different thought patterns, and different senses.
And yes, like Trovatore said, that was the point I was making with slavery. Slave owners refused to accept that slaves might actually be humans. Later on when it became too difficult to deny, they then refused to believe that slaves might have souls. Not because they could not recognize common humanity, but simply because it made it easier for them to accept their reality that they were basically working someone else who felt and thought the same way they did to death. The capacity for cruelty increases the less empathy we have for someone else. We can swat a mosquito without feeling guilty about it afterwards, but vivisecting a puppy is another matter.
And no, I think you're putting waaaay too much credit on humans. Perhaps we get that impression now given how much our communications have improved and how much we know. But humans only started planning really complex projects around 11,000 years ago with the realization that they can cultivate food and build their own caves. Civilization. That's 11,000 years out of the 400,000 to 250,000 years our species have existed on this planet. Precolumbian American civilizations never invented the wheel, nor did they have iron. The ability to do maths, to read and write, and make art were sheer magic (cf. runes) limited to specially skilled people to the vast majority for most of human history. And it's most certainly not true that humans planned spaceflight 'thousands of years ago'. They thought stars and planets were just pretty moving lights, eclipses were caused by giant dogs, the world was resting on turtles all the way down and it was flat, and that a rabbit was pounding rice cake on the moon. Where do we draw the line for sentience? Homo habilis? They had tools, probably a primitive language, but they probably did not plan much beyond what the next season would bring.
Note that I'm not arguing that cats may be sentient, just that sentience is not a human-exclusive trait and that it's not merely about the capacity to plan complex projects.-- Obsidi♠nSoul12:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A thought is basically the result of the brain manipulating symbols. In the case of humans and cats the symbols are made out of the meat of the brain, whereas in a computer they are made out of ones and zeros. In the cat's cabesa there is a symbol for "wet cat food," and one for "dry food," one for "balls of yarn," etcetera. These are all concrete objects which appear in the mind as an image of that object. Abstract ideas do not appear in the mind as the image of any particular object. Whether or not cats have abstract concepts is debatable. These are things like "hope," "decency," "pride," etcetera. Cats obviously get hungry, and so "hunger" as a concept is there, but this is the type of abstract idea that is very closely associated with the cat's biology. Greg Bard (talk) 04:59, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cats are also masters of thermal regulation. They know which spots in the house are warmest and coolest, and go to the appropriate spot to warm or cool themselves. They also know that the temperature is dynamic, and will move to follow a sunny patch as it moves across the floor. This shows some rather abstract thought capability. StuRat (talk) 05:23, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Does the exhibited behavior to which you refer, indicate that they will be exhibiting much different behavior 100 thousand years hence, and especially—does it indicate that they will gain much better control over the temperature of their environment 100 thousand years hence? Maybe they will convince humans to provide them with feline-friendly thermostat controls 100 thousand years hence. Bus stop (talk) 05:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if this is a bit of daft question. I was thinking about personal correspondence i.e. a person sending a letter to another person. Historians/authors often make use of personal correspondence of people of interest, but I was wondering how they get their hands on the letters.
When I send a letter I don't make a copy, I just send it to recipient - so the only copy lies with the person I sent it to. Obviously email has changed all this, but what about decades and hundreds of years ago?
Is correspondence collected by getting recipients to donate the letters they received to a central archive? Or was it common for letter-writers to carbon-copy their letters, wikipedia Carbon_paper links to http://www.kevinlaurence.net/essays/cc.php which says carbon paper was invented around 1800. So perhaps letter writers after about this time used carbon copies to keep track of what they had written, but what about before 1800ish?
It depends. We do have a fairly good collection of Jefferson letters, because he kept a copy of every letter he sent - he actually penned a draft, then the good copy, and then the archival copy. He tinkered around with a polygraph to make things easier. See here for an image and description. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:41, 17 September 2011
Lewis Carroll had an elaborate record-keeping system for keeping track of every letter he ever sent, but many others were much more lackadaisical (as to be expected). I really don't think that carbon paper was at all commonly in use by ordinary private individuals until long after 1800, but forms of the pantograph did exist (see Polygraph (duplicating device)). By far the most common method of copying documents ca. 1800 was hiring lowly-paid copy clerks, but often there would have been understandable reluctance to expose sensitive personal correspondence to such clerks. AnonMoos (talk) 12:53, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It really depends on the person and the time period. (I say this as a practicing, professional historian, albeit one of the late 20th century period.) In the 20th century it is not uncommon for people to keep both sides of their correspondence, if they feel it is important (and they feel that they are important). However, it's also not uncommon in any century for an archive to only have one side of a conversation. For terribly important people, it's not uncommon to try and track down all other correspondence kept in other archives (so you get both sides of the conversation between two people important enough to end up in an archive) and to make copies of them and move them to a central archive (e.g. a rather extreme and systematic version of this is the Darwin Correspondence Project) . But no matter who or what you research, it's common to have only one side of the letters, and to really have to search them out. Fortunately this has become much easier in the last decade or so, because archives publish their finding aids digitally. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:28, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Carbon paper would not have worked well with quill pens circa 1800. Even a 19th steel pen nib would likely bend if enough pressure were applied to make a carbon copy. A pencil would have worked fine with carbon paper, as would a mid 20th century or later ball point pen, or a late 19th century or later typewriter. Edison (talk) 19:29, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The letters of J. R. R. Tolkien were published after his death because he kept copies; I'm not sure if he made carbons or just wrote two copies. I'm working right now in an archive that has the papers of former US Senator Birch Bayh, including letters sent by his constituents (and lots of other people, too) — the staffers that worked with these letters and wrote the replies almost always made carbon copies of the replies. Hoping that this is close enough to "personal" to be helpful for you. Nyttend (talk) 14:14, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In 20th century US government, in particular, copies are made of everything. Overrun bureaucracy and red tape ironically make life a lot easier for historians. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:33, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why is that ironic? It would be ironic if, for example, there was a government office concerned with preserving historical documentation, but its actions made it much more difficult for future historians to study the government. The fact that the creation of massive amounts of documentation makes it easier for scholars of the government to do their job is in no way ironic. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 21:19, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Elaborating on the Jefferson example above: US founders like Jefferson, Adams, and Washington knew that posterity would be interested in their correspondence and so they went to great lengths to preserve many of their letters. (But not all of their letters: of the three, only Adams made sure to preserve letters between him & his wife; for the others, this was too personal.) Founders who did not take pains to preserve their correspondence, like Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, get less attention from historians as a result. —KevinMyers05:02, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Also, people of that era kept track of letters with a letter book/letterbook. (It's odd to see that those are red links, since we have articles on almost everything.) During the Revolution, there's a letter from John Adams to Abigail advising her to get a binder or letterbook to preserve their correspondence. —KevinMyers05:17, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The archives I deal with are largely commercial correspondence between 1930 and 1970 between trade unions, their branches, members, politicians, peak bodies, media, etc. Over the course of this period of time you can see the quality of record keeping change dramatically due to the commercialised impact of technology. Carbons are rare in 1930, minute books are hand written. By 1970 carbons are constant and continuous (seven slips deep, etc). By 1970 some "new" office procedures start impacting on the quality of retained data: thermocopies degrade rapidly, thermofaxes yellow to black. I dread what the historians of 1985-20XX will face given poor data and records policies by institutions of that period.
One interesting thing is with only the flimsies, often you don't get to see the letterheads... sometimes flimsies are from drafts, not finals, etc. Still, with deep primary sources like this, it is often about building up an interpretive stucco rather than deeply analysing single items of correspondence. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:53, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That is interesting. It would be fascinating to find out when the change happened. By World War II, the use of carbons was widespread in the US government. I wonder if the boom in general (non-government) usage is before or after WWII. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Correct name for leather belts without holes (clothing)
Re-enactment groups seem fond of using a certain sort of belt that has no holes in it, and a ring in one end around which a knot is tied. I'm not sure such a belt has a historical basis. Here is an image which better explains what I mean;
Are such belts notable enough to be mentioned on Wikipedia? Are they only used by reenactment groups? The article on belts makes no mention of them. Images of historical belt buckles suggest conventional belts have been used for a long while.
I have come across such items as a fashion accessory (and been unable to work out how to use them properly!), so I'd say they're more general than just historic interest. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:25, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think that stress put on the leather at the point of the knot would result in breakage at that point after a brief few months of usage, if used as a practical way of cinching in the waist, thus I agree that a fashion purpose would be more likely than a practical one. Bus stop (talk) 13:45, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Can anyone identify the type or types of guns in these images? A source states that they date from circa 1945, so I'm confident that they're World War II (and their placement in rural Indiana makes it rather unlikely that they're non-US), but I don't know what type. Judging by the images and by my memory from 2½ months ago, I'd guess that they're all the same type, but I'm not sure. As far as I can see, none of the images show any sort of inscriptions on the guns. Nyttend (talk) 14:18, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
All of those little circular bits around the chair, and the fact that they look like the guns themselves are meant to easily pivot around the base, makes it likely that they are anti-aircraft weapons, probably for Navy ships. I'm not a weapons gearhead, but I think it's almost certainly a Mark 22 3"/50 caliber gun? (Image) --Mr.98 (talk) 14:26, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that this gun had a low-angle mounting and could use armor-piercing shells indicate it was sometimes used against surface targets as well as anti-aircraft. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 14:44, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Like everyone else he had two. According to the Grover Cleveland Library his grandfather on his father's side was William Cleveland, silversmith and watchmaker of Beacon Hill CT. His grandfather on his mother's side was a law-book publisher from an Irish background, named here as Abner Neale. Sam Blacketer (talk) 22:42, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Prime Minister of Canada Jean Chretien and Middle East
I remember that Jean Chretien went to Middle East like UAE when he was the Prime Minister. What was the reason of the visit to the Middle East? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.92.152.96 (talk) 02:42, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
According to Ernest Herbert Pitcher, he was awarded the Victoria Cross "by balloting". The sole reference states "P.O. Pitcher was selected by the crew of a gun of one of H.M. Ships to receive the Victoria Cross under Rule 13 of the Royal Warrant dated 29th January, 1856." Does this mean his crew mates got to pick him for the highest award in the British military? This seems to imply that the powers that be figured one was enough for the entire crew. What gives? Clarityfiend (talk) 04:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Almost every human being can speak a language fluently, but in developing countries, only a much smaller percentage knows how to read and write. It seems that one way to instantly make the illiteracy rate 0 is to invent an alphabet and spelling system such that there's a one-to-one correspondence between a word's pronunciation and its spelling.
Interesting theory. A couple of points. Such languages have sort of been "invented". In fact, most languages are better than English in this regard. Languages like Malay and Indonesian, where the application of the western alphabet to the sounds is relatively recent, behave very consistently. Trouble is, there are many factors that contribute to literacy. A person has to want to read, and has to be given the opportunity to learn. With television rather than the print media being the common source of much information today, the motivation to read is lower. HiLo48 (talk) 05:48, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hangul was created for exactly the purpose the OP posited. It's a phonetic alphabet invented because Chinese ideograms were very difficult to learn for ordinary Koreans back in the 15th century. It makes you realize that the Latin alphabet, which is another phonetic alphabet, is already quite adequate for most purposes.
Phonetic alphabets are the simplest you can get if you want a one-to-one correspondence with sounds and symbols, and it's already very widespread. Yet it doesn't affect literacy rates in say, Africa. The answer is not because the Latin alphabet is complex, but because there simply aren't enough educational systems to teach it to people in the first place.
And for what it's worth, the apparent disparity between written and spoken language (words pronounced differently from how they are written) particularly in English and French, does not affect other languages like you think it does. It's the result of spoken languages evolving faster than written languages. Usually, the longer a language has been associated with a particular writing system, the larger the disparity. In languages that just recently adopted Latin script, it's not a problem.
And a side-note: comparable to Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia, our own national language - Filipino (which is really just Tagalog despite protestations of legislators otherwise), was itself an artificial construct. Unlike those languages, however, Filipino languages lost the native rudimentary writing systems (Baybayin) very early in the Philippine colonial history. Latin script came with the Spanish in the 16th century and has remained the only form of writing for majority of the islands (a notable exception are the predominantly Muslim autonomous regions in Southern and Western Mindanao which use Arabic scripts). When Filipino was first proposed, it was not to make it easier for ordinary people to learn to read and write, it was purely for nationalistic reasons. A means of pulling together a very young nation fresh from the clutches of two colonial powers. Legislators retained the Latin alphabet (whew), but culled consonants they considered 'foreign' - f, z, c, etc. They also recommended phonetically spelling foreign loanwords such that 'Airplane' became 'Erpleyn'. The goal was to erase traces of European influence as much as possible. The result was not an increase in literacy (it was already quite high in the first place, from Spanish education systems reinforced by American Thomasites), but an increase instead in the propensity of people to misspell and mispronounce foreign words. The only thing they accomplished was make the language cruder.-- Obsidi♠nSoul06:45, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If English adopted phonetic spelling the written language would be hideously complex to learn - not only would one need many extra symbols, but most words would have to be spelt differently in different places to account for the different pronunciations in different accents. DuncanHill (talk) 09:19, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt Vietnamese language is worse. Speaking as a person that fluent in English (not like master it but i can speak, write, read pretty well. Good enough for typical conversation) and Vietnamese. Vietnamese has exactly same alphabet as English except we don't use z and f. We added some accents, like those little marks above or under the words to make new words. Vietnamese is a easiest language to learn, it's not because i learn it first so i think it's easy. Every word has only 1 syllable. There is no past tense or anything like that. Example i can say i run today, i run yesterday, i run before. Not like most languages there are past tense, perfect tense... (all kinds of tenses) Words always stay the same as they are. They never change to different words. There is no exception, every words follow the rules. The word system we used today was developed in 17th century by a french guy. Before that we use Chinese characters. So since it was created recently, so people tried to make it super easy and organize unlike English as an example with thousands of years so there is no actual organize. In Vietnam, most kids would know how to spell and write all the words in about 3rd or 5th grade. You don't learn new vocab at school because there aren't any. There is no spelling bee because everyone knows how to spell every words. People know how to spell and write ALL the words but it doesn't mean they understand what they mean. Vietnamese people use 2 old words combined them together to get a new word. Example a word "cat" stand alone mean an animal and "finger" stand alone mean an organ in your hand. They combined together mean something else(i made up this example). So basically if there are new words you never see before in Vietnamese, they will be the combination of 2 old words you have seen before. So as the conclusion it's the easiest language to learn but the hardest part is the pronunciation. People just can't pronounce the words correctly because their tongues were not fit to it.Trongphu (talk) 02:19, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't dispute any of that. My remark was purely in response to the "Latin alphabet with all sorts of phonetic things" Sir William referred to. There are clearly more diacritics per average word in Vietnamese than in Turkish. -- Jack of Oz[your turn]02:57, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(OP here) Interesting. So at least two languages--Hangul and Vietnamese--were invented because Chinese characters were too difficult to learn. It's obvious that Chinese itself could be replaced by a phonetic system--in fact, pinyin can represent the pronunciation of every valid character, plus a few sounds that don't correspond to any characters. I could write in pinyin when I was 6, as could almost every other Chinese child, but couldn't read or write in actual characters until much later. I'm pretty sure that any foreigner could learn pinyin in two days, so teaching a Chinese child how to read and write would be a trivial task if it were to replace the character system.
However, Chinese is tonal, which makes it very easy to use a tiny alphabet plus some accents to represent every sound. English and the Romance languages are not, so I wonder whether the same is true for these languages, or whether any phonetic alphabet would be too cumbersome to be useful. --140.180.16.144 (talk) 03:59, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
One writing system, a fairly recent invention (compared to most writing systems) which does match the spoken language rather closely is the Cherokee syllabary. Most languages writing systems were put into place so long ago that the natural and gradual changes which occur in spoken language aren't picked up by the writing system. English, for example, underwent the Great Vowel Shift during the 14th-15th century; English writings from the 1200s are understandable by modern speakers, but the language would have been almost impossible to understand to modern ears. Most languages have undergone similar changes over time to the way they are spoken, but the orthography (writing system) often doesn't keep up; the result is a situtation where what may have started out as a consistent system of writing, where the sounds matched the letters on the paper, drifts and changes to the point where the writing system no longer has a consistent one-to-one correspondence that it once did. --Jayron3204:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, Jayron beat me again, I was going to mention the Cherokee syllabary. From what I've read it was fairly easy for the Cherokee of the time (early 1800s) to get the hang of, even for adults who had been illiterate all their lives. Some sources on this: [10]; [11] "within fourteen years of its introduction, and seven years of the first printing, more than half of all households in the Cherokee Nation had a reader of Cherokee"; [12], "Cherokees began learning the syllabrary 'almost overnight', and its use became widespread...almost everyone learned to read and write in their native language..." Of course the rapid adoption was not just because it was relatively easy and phonetic, but also due to the efforts of missionaries promoting it and the publishing of Cherokee Phoenix newspaper. Still, the tale of a people who had been almost totally illiterate (and even somewhat hostile to the idea of reading and writing) gaining significant levels of literacy within a decade or two is moving. Pfly (talk) 09:48, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Also, even in just the United States there are regional differences in pronunciations. It's not uncommon, for example, to hear something like "I axed you for a pin". Pfly (talk) 09:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why are numbers written in the five (5) format?
This has been perplexing me for years: on most U.S. official documents, numbers are first spelled out and then written using a numeral in a bracket-e.g. five(5). An example of this would be File:Anthraxreward.jpg, but also school report cards, government forms and the like. Why? I'd presume anyone with sufficient literacy and language ability to read the document would also know how to count to ten. For whose benefit is the numeral included? Thanks, Puchiko (Talk-email) 09:56, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Simply to avoid confusion. Writing out amounts makes something more legible. Redundancy also makes it easier to spot errors. e.g. Five thousand (50000) < you will immediately know that the extra 0 is most likely a typo. The same reason why you write out numbers on checks. You wouldn't want to be paying $50,000 on a $5000 item just because you were scatterbrained that day and wrote an extra zero in.-- Obsidi♠nSoul10:11, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That reminds me. In my local bank, we have to fill in the withdrawal slips ourselves (because billions and billions of bailout money just isn't enough). I went to the bank the other day and tried to draw out a very small amount - less than you can get from an ATM, which is why I went into the bank itself. The girl at the window proceeded to count out £400 for me. I only wanted £4:00....... --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK)17:51, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
IIRC, it's usually the other way around, e.g. 5 (five). This is to stop numbers being altered by, for example, people adding zeroes, and so on. I've never seen it done like 'five (5)'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK)13:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
One place I've seen them is on medicine, for example "three (3) doses daily"; I've always assumed that's so if one is obscured the right amount is still taken. Grandiose(me, talk, contribs) 20:37, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And for a hand-written prescription, hopefully one or the other will be legible, despite the doctor's best effort at poor penmanship. StuRat (talk) 20:42, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In Final Score and similar programmes, when football (soccer) teams score seven goals, it's usually rendered "7 (seven)". This is because the 7 looks similar to a 1 and the latter is common and the former very unusual, increasing the chances of a mistake. --Dweller (talk) 10:21, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
New ways to make money for those in financial straits? (Disability = hard to employ)
So I tried unconventional ways to earn money; turns out, I can't donate blood/plasma if I've been to Germany, even though I haven't been there for 21 years. (No signs of CJD after 21 years = very likely no CJD at all. Why can't the FDA acknowledge that?)
There is no sperm bank in 66502.
There is no skin bank in 66502.
I haven't seen a consignment secondhand goods store around town.
Disability + no work since 2009 = hardly a chance to get a job. (Thanks to the economy, the ratio of job-seekers to openings is so incredibly out of proportion, that even "not being employed for over 2 years" is enough of an excuse not to hire me, because even if they whittle down the criteria to "only consider those who currently have another job as of application date," there's still too many of them to interview.
So are there some un-common (legal) ways to get a better living? Paying off a private student loan with a federal student loan may be better interest-wise, but that's still paying off debt with debt. (Like "fighting fire with fire?")
You may be able to make a small living, or at least get some interesting stuff, by searching for online competitions and free product samples and applying for lots of stuff. There are specialist websites that will help. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:17, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Youtube for $?
I read that some make a living off of posting to YouTube. However, what are the odds of getting that to happen to me? How do I increase said odds? Where can I take (free) courses on how to edit videos so they all can look more professional and appealing to a wider audience? (What websites can I learn this, if no physical locations?)
What other great websites that I might not even know too much about, could I get paid to freelance, etc.?
There could be freelance writing; I can do that. What websites offer this though?
Can there be a selling venue of common intellectual property? (like drawings on MS Paint, or more stories, etc. to write?)
(Lastly, as for auctions, eBay/FeePay has gotten too expensive to sell there; they only seem to care about the big-wig sellers, not the everyday ma-and-pas. Is there a popular auction site that will cater to people like us? Thanks.) --70.179.163.168 (talk) 19:54, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For selling many cheap things, like under $10 each, you may do better to sell them locally, as the shipping costs eat up any profit, otherwise. Perhaps a garage sale or swap meet ? (Does your disability allow you to leave the house ?) StuRat (talk) 20:48, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For writing, you might want to do something like proofreading student's papers for them before they turn them in, so they can fix all their mistakes. StuRat (talk) 20:56, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Some people say it's because women didn't carry swords or other weapons - for men, the sword (usually carried in a scabbard on the left, and drawn with the right hand) would catch on the 'lip' of the shirt if it buttoned the other way. Others say it's because in the old days, women had maids who would dress them, so it was easier for the maid if the buttons were on the other side. No-one actually knows. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK)20:44, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that it has more to do with jackets than shirts. If you want to reach into your jacket and draw your sword, you need the left hand side of the jacket to be over the right hand side. The shirt then just buttons the same way as the jacket. --Tango (talk) 21:59, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That is a possibility. The thing is, swords were usually worn outside everything, including jackets. I think it would be very uncomfortable to be wearing a jacket over your sword. A long winter coat, maybe, but only if it's open, defeating the purpose of where the buttons go. "Sir, please be a gentleman and wait while I unbutton my jacket so I can get my sword out to parry your wiley surprise attack, what!". :-) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK)22:27, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
While those might explain the origin, the reason it remains this way is that we feel the need to have gender-specific clothing, the classic example being pink and blue clothes for baby boys and girls. If our society valued unisex clothing, then our clothes would all button on the same side (or both button on either side). StuRat (talk) 20:54, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The protesters in New York City recently are asking a question I'd like to know the answer to myself: why doesn't capitalism work? And I'll add, when did it stop working? For example:
1) Supposedly gas prices are the outcome of supply and demand. So why did the fall of oil prices from $100 a barrel to $82 a barrel produce no relief in prices? Why do governments which have taken active steps to manipulate gas prices not experience shortages, but instead the companies simply keep selling at the lower rate? (For example Honduras exercised a contract clause to take over oil storage tanks in 2007 and announced a 42-cent price decrease, [13] but the only news I see about gas shortages came with the ensuing coup against Manuel Zelaya in 2009)
2) Supposedly labor is a good traded on the market. So why can't the unemployed simply lower their price and get back to work at any time?
3) Supposedly profit encourages businesses to expand and make more profit. So why is it that businesses in the U.S. have been making record profits, but do nothing to expand and hire people?
4) In Republican fantasy, when they explain why millionaires must continue to pay lower tax rates than the middle class, they say that this is necessary because they are "job creators". But where are the jobs? And I've heard that small businesses lead employment recovery - doesn't that mean the middle class is the job creator? Why can't the middle class create jobs?
this answer is funded in part by paragraph breaks supplied by stu rat
It is simply a mistake to say that "capitalism doesn't work". Capitalism is about using resources that are worth something and owned by someone using them to create value that did not exist before the person or entity using that resource created that value. In other words, capitalism is not prescriptive, it is descriptive of what happens when you have de facto or legally recognized private property.
There is no way to allow private property and free selling and buying without resulting in capitalism. It is a simple fact of nature that if people can have private property, they can create value, and the minute you let them buy and sell it freely, you have people using resources of value to create more value -- bam, you have capitalism. The only way to eliminate capitalism is to make it illegal for people to own private property.
Even this does not work: people will continue to own themselves; they (or their families) can invest, if nothing else, time, into their education, thereby making their personal resource worth more. They thereby create value. Think of the city you're in: would you be worth any more if you learned French fluently and could teach it to people who didn't know it yet? Of course you would be worth more. You just used resources (time and maybe money) to create value. Unfortunately for communist countries, this, and only a few other ways of creating value, were "allowed", and the state had to steal every other means of production.
Here's an answer to some of your questions:
"Supposedly labor is a good traded on the market. So why can't the unemployed simply lower their price and get back to work at any time?"
At what price would you take French lessons from a Persian Cat who grew up in Paris? Is it twenty cents an hour? Would you take two hours of lessons from that French cat for 40 cents? You would not. The cat is not able to create 40 cents worth of value by giving French lessons. Likewise, the unemployed might not be able to create even $1 of value per hour. If they or their families invested time and money into their education and increasing their skills, this value would increase.
Under communism, where every other means of production must be stolen by the state, this is the only acceptable means for increasing a person's value. In a free country, a person can increase his value in a multitude of other ways: such as by dressing respectably and being hired due to looking presentable (under communism private clothes are illegal, and the state must determine and supply all clothing: you can't just be having object fetishism willy nilly, which is what good clothes sold at a good shop front would be).
Or you could getting a van and open a business using it on it (you would at a minimum need some special license I guess under communism, you can't just buy and sell whatever service you want just by registering a company -- after all, what if you employed someone? Only the state may employ someone, since anything else is slavery), etc etc.
Or you could get a printing press and print nice posters and make photocopies etc. But not under communism, where you can't own a private press and buy and sell a good freely.
The key thing about capitalism is freedom: you have to actively suppress a person's right to buy and sell property and services, including their labor, to prevent capitalism. Anything else is capitalism by definition automatically.
"Supposedly profit encourages businesses to expand and make more profit. So why is it that businesses in the U.S. have been making record profits, but do nothing to expand and hire people"
Businesses can do whatever they like. Why would a family with two children who are in their twenties and rich lawyers not want to produce a third child to eventually make a lot of money, if the parents are still fertile? Just because you are doing well does not mean you want to expand operations.
"Was capitalist theory always this irrelevant to reality? If not, what changed to make it that way?"
Also, to put a real monkey wrench in the thing. Even though if you have ANY private property and right to buy and sell property, you automatically have capitalism, in my opinion it is completely obvious that you have to take SOME of these rights away if you want anything like a well-functioning society or progress.
That's because why doesn't someone have the right to come up to you as you're setting up that copier or poster printer I mentioned above and say, "Look, kid, you're attracted by the $40/poster market rate, aren't you. You figure you can get in for $2000 worth of machinery and break even in a year.
Well, thing is, we would like to keep these $40 and actually us producers are moving up to $50 two months from now. But we can only do that if everyone is in. How's about I pay you $2000 right now to keep hush hush and follow our pricing, welcome to our trust." You'll take it, won't you, after all he has just removed all your risk or you can repay your loan or backer. But this reasoning works for everything from sugar to oil to metal.
If we allowed people this "freedom", we never would have computers, as potentially every single input into that would have been priced out of commodity prices and into unattainable land. So, it's pretty obvious to me that you can't just allow someone to form a trust and create a monopoly -- we played this game in the 19th century, and everyone lost out. So, even though ANY amount of freedom to own goods and buy and sell goods and services instantly results in capitalism, it's obvious that you have to remove at least parts of these freedoms if you want a society worth living in. That's what the question almost always revolves around -- how much of these freedoms to remove. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 23:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I numbered your questions so I can respond in kind:
1) Price fixing can cause prices to be higher than competition would produce. If so, then government limits on prices would work, until the profit margin was so low that the companies could make more money by investing elsewhere.
2) Minimum wage doesn't allow this, and having a social safety net means people might prefer to live on welfare rather than take such low-paying jobs. Also, the large number of illegal immigrants means the low-paying jobs are already taken.
3) They've been expanding overseas. Also, expanding only makes sense where you have an expanding market or market share.
4) Whether small business owners are middle-class or rich depends on the politician talking and which way the wind is blowing. And giving money to rich people doesn't help the economy nearly as much as it does to give it to the poor. The reason is that the poor tend to spend all the money they get immediately, and locally, thus helping the local economy. StuRat (talk) 21:05, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Lack of competition from consolidation and de facto collusion troubles the petroleum markets, but there is nothing antitrust regulators can do. It's congress's job to impose more effective taxes in the absence of clear evidence of conspiracy in the face of record profits and rising gas prices on declining oil prices. But that brings us to the real problem, which is the lack of public campaign financing which makes congresspeople beholden to contributors from large companies and the rich likely invested in them. Several major reforms (health care, tax, renewable energy, sentencing, patent, etc.) all are heavily inhibited by campaign contributions. 70.91.171.54 (talk) 21:07, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)In general people are indifferent. The answers to your questions are amazingly pragmatic, i.e. completely emotionless.
I don't know enough about this topic, so sorry
Price ceilings and price floors are impediments to free trade, so it is said. Even if a worker wished to trade his labor for money at less thean minimum wage it would be illegal, as far as I understand
The business I am employed by is making "profit." Is accounting the same as reality? The company's debts are owed to the personal funds of the owner.
The jobs are in a trust fund to be doled out when there is trust in funds.
"Capitalism," such that it is, works just fine. It still keeps a small group of people who control the means of production in control (this is of course a very simplistic explanation). Your fourth question is the most telling in this regard, the middle class can't create jobs because they don't control the means to produce much of anything. Capitalism isn't intended to be good for everyone and in my opinion is actually bad for virtually everyone, but that's a different question. --Daniel22:07, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't buy the minimum wage explanation. If that were the explanation, the occupations with high unemployment would be those already paying minimum wage, but those with higher wages would see a free market wage drop and an increase in the number of people employed. I don't see an indication that this is what happened. Wnt (talk) 00:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the assumption that employers would all hire more workers if they were cheaper (or an infinite number if they were free) is faulty. First off, the wages are only a small portion of the total cost incurred by an employee. There are also benefits, administrative costs, managers needed to manage them, risk of lawsuits, supplies, training, etc.
And more employees doesn't necessarily make your company more productive. It rather depends on the type of work being done. For physical labor, more hands is probably helpful, but not so with mental work. Hiring two computer programmers to write the same program isn't likely to get it done in half the time, it may even take longer.
Finally, the assumption that companies want to be more productive is not always true, either. This is only the case if they have more demand for their product or service than they can meet with their current staff. Let's say the employer is a newspaper. If they hire more columnists, are they going to make the paper thicker ? A newspaper with twice as many columnists isn't likely to be worth twice as much to customers, so such a decision might not be in the best interest of the financial health of the company. StuRat (talk) 04:47, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My buddy Nolan explained to me about these guys, and how they say they were inspired by the Tahrir Square guys, but the motivations and behaviours are actually hand in hand with those of the Israeli protests, but considerably less effective given how few there are. He then lamented the fact that most Americans are too lazy and apathetic to join, etc. and stated his belief that the protestors should riot (which the NYPD are really huge fans of btw; their nightsticks are even bigger fans) I'm not sure we have seen an actual failure of capitalism as well to be honest, but my mum is the one with a BA in Econ (and a JD in ERISA :p). We are just seeing the perfect storm of economic cock-ups. It might mean that it takes longer to recover, but as far as I know, there will be recovery (as part of the holy boom-bust cycle). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom!21:06, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Capitalism was designed to not work. It is proven every 80 years, and has been written above in terms of linen and coats. →Στc.01:30, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it depends on what we mean by work here. If we mean it's meant to enrich people, then it does (a small number of people though). Then again, I guess that my family and I count as owners of the means of production so it works in our eyes (but not, say, for my buddy Nolan who has to work in retail even though he is well-educated and very clever; or my genius buddy Michael who cannot attend college as he is too poor and not stupid enough to take out college loans). Hmmm, wait, that doesn't work well at all. =/ Given that this whole topic invites people to give opinions, I think it's a mix of capitalism and socialism that helps to support the less wealthy while still encouraging people to compete and make money (with lots of nice regulation on private enterprise to ensure there are no companies that get too powerful, raise prices too high or sacrifice quality). How do you define working in this case my good Sigma? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom!01:41, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have discussed my thoughts in my earlier days on the wiki. The conversations have been archived in two subpages of my talk page. You are free to look at them if you wish, though I do not bandy about my past of inappropriate usage of talk pages as a platform for irrelevant material. →Στc.01:54, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If, by capitalism, you mean laissez faire capitalism, the petroleum industry is the worst of possible examples. It is hugely regulated by the government regarding additives, building refineries, and limits on drilling. It is very highly taxed. A much better example of laissez faire would be the internet, which, at least until recently, has been untaxed and unregulated. If you want to read a standard Austrian school defense of laissez faire capitalism, here is a free pdf of a definitive modern defense from George Reisman's http://www.capitalism.net/. What we have in the modern west are various forms of mixed economies with the government usually controlling somewhere around or more than 50% of the GDP. The US was closest to laissez faire capitalism from the end of the civil war 1865-1890 to the adoption of the first anti-trust legislation, with monopolies and subsides given to railroads in that era being a notable exception. Grover Cleveland was the greatest actual and effective champion of laissez faire. The progressives Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson ended the capitalist era in the US with their militarism, trust busting, regulation, bureaucratic racism, the drug war, the institution of the draft and modern central banking with the creation of the Federal Reserve, which caused the boom that lead to the depression. Nixon finally broke all ties with reality by going off the gold standard. Ironically, Communist China is much less regulated and the Communist Party only controls about 15% of the GDP, hence their boom. Were they to eschew militarism and adopt objective law and an independent judiciary to protect the property rights of all individuals they would have the freest society on earth. μηδείς (talk) 01:18, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you're holding up the 1890s as the acme of capitalism in the U.S., then many people would have little desire to return to the societal and business structures of that period. Anyway, I think it can be agreed that in most circumstances (not all) unrestrained capitalism is great at generating economic activity, but not so good at ensuring that such activity doesn't have many overall negative social consequences... AnonMoos (talk) 05:02, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The point was that trade was the freest in the US during that period, not that there was something magical about all the other cultural aspects of that time. It's rather odd to imply that a return to free trade would mean resurrecting corsets and reservation wars. As for negative social consequences, I doubt you can point out any that weren't actually caused or worsened by government interference rather than free trade itself. Free trade simply means that--trade which is neither prohibited by nor subsidized by the government. Free trade doesn't mean social conservativism, special favors for big business, Jim Crow, allowing polluters to destroy property without having to pay to clean up the messes they make, the freedom to commit fraud in sales or advertising, or any of the other sorts of things leftists like to tar it with. It just means free trade, the goverment neither stopping people from voluntarily buying and selling nor forcing such buying and selling. The hidden premise behind this thread is the equation of "big business" with capitalism as such, and the implication that because such government-created and regulated monsters as the Oil industry have problems that free trade has failed. Monsters like BP, which got government favors from Britain in regard to Libya and the Lockerbie bomber and from the US which bore the cost of the Gulf oil spill are not the products of free trade but of cronyism at the highest levels. Criticisms of such entities are not criticisms of free trade but of government corruption and incompetence at the highest levels. μηδείς (talk) 16:29, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I had in mind plutocratic "robber barons", monopolistic "trusts", and brazenly-corrupt politics much more than corsets and handlebar moustaches. There was a certain kind of unsavory and exploitative individual such as Charles Yerkes who seemed to flourish in the conditions of the 1890s -- no matter how many times the voters of Chicago unequivocally sent the message at elections that they wanted to get rid of the hated "traction railway" monopolies on public transit (i.e. low-quality shoddy accident-prone level-ground cable cars), it took them well over a decade to make any progress at all, and in the meantime Charles Yerkes retreated unobstructed to Philadelphia with a very large bag of cash... AnonMoos (talk) 18:17, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the problem is that terms like robber barons and "monopolistic" trusts are inherently derogatory and rife with POV. Companies like Standard Oil became large by providing a new good at a low price which appealed to all consumers. They had no more "monopolistic" ability to force people to buy their products or need to steal their land with government backing than does (or did) Netflix. Actual monopolies are only created when they government grants and defends such privileges (i.e., private laws) with the threat of legal penalties. Industries like many of the railroads (notorious in California) were granted government subsidies and allowed to seize private land by corrupt officials. Tarring both as robber barons simply because they were big businesses is hardly fair. Government intervention on the side of one business against another or against the public or to further illiberal ends such as racial segregation (note that the racial segregation of passenger rails was forced by government regulation against the wishes of the industry) is the antithesis of free trade. One has to give specific examples of such evils. When you find them you will always find either short-term self-liquidating criminality (Enron--brought to you by Paul Krugman) or stupidity (Netflix), which is rightly punished by the courts or the markets, or, more likely, politically connected corruption at a grand scale such as Trent Lott's obstruction of dealing with the Worldcom/MCI fraud and bankruptcy or the government seizure of GM with money legally owed to bondholders under bankruptcy law funneled to the UAW instead. For real long term robber baronism and abusive monopolies look at the Soviet Union and our man from the KGB, Vladimir Putin. In Russia the capitalists have all been jailed or assassinated. There is plenty of outrage to go around at such corruption, but the ones to blame for institutionalized corruption are the ones accepting the campaign contributions--and who hold the monopoly on jails and guns.μηδείς (talk) 18:07, 23 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What is the point of asking questions like this:
"Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies? " Would someone ever answer yes? Has someone been caught with that silly question? What happen if you answer yes, just as a joke? Besides that, the question is poorly written, I think. If you persecuted Nazis, like Simon Wiesenthal, you should also answer yes. But maybe it's just me being a Grammar Nazi. Quest09 (talk) 22:05, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Persecution doesn't imply unlawful persecution. If you are trying that a group of people (drug dealers, child molesters, war criminals) get imprisoned, that's persecution too. Quest09 (talk) 23:48, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To me (and our article on the topic), mistreatment is an element of persecution. One could argue that someone being tracked down for prosecution is being mistreated (because it is stressful, limits a normal life, etc.) but then society as a whole would be persecuting a pretty wide range of individuals, yet nobody seems to describe it that way (although I suppose even that is up for debate). Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 00:12, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Using the word persecution, as a legitimate persecution, is not that rare: "The additional available resources will allow police to focus enforcement on other issues such as persecuting drug dealers (...)" or "They bomb us under the pretext that first, they are eliminating the guerilla forces and second, they are persecuting drug dealers, ..." or "Caribbean nations, including Jamaica, that allow their ships to enter their territorial water persecuting drug dealers, but drug traffic keeps growing (...)" Or even better: Simon Wiesenthal persecuted a single Pole"Quest09 (talk) 00:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's my understanding that once someone has entered the US under ESTA, simply being in one of those categories (that make someone ineligible for "visa free travel") isn't grounds alone for prompt deportation. But lying on the form is. So, supposedly, it streamlines the removal of someone who wasn't eligible but who got in anyway. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk22:22, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody really expects that you will answer in a positive manner if you did or are doing any of these things. Their purpose is to give the government a legal reason to strip you of your new citizenship and to expel you from the country (if you're an immigrant) when someone finds that you're guilty of any of these things. An US citizen is obliged by law to inform the government if he is working for any foreign government. With such a law the government has something to prosecute a spy because he obviously failed to obey the law. Flamarande (talk) 22:26, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"involved" is an ambiguous word; it can mean either "implicated" or "concerned in some way with". They mean the former, but I'm not sure what they'd say to be clearer; "implicated" or "concerned with the commission of" is perhaps better, but not perfect either. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk22:29, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The really complicated part is the "moral turpitude" question. Very few applicants are, our could be argued to be, war criminals or enemy spies. Given the context, you'd think "moral turpitude" means crimes that are also fairly rare and particularly vile; when I first saw it on an I-94/W I (like I imagine most people) thought it meant something akin to "are you a child molester?" But as the Wikipedia article shows, moral turpitude can be a complicated and rather surprising one. Someone with a 40 year old conviction for burglary would (on the face of it) fail, but someone who'd recently been convicted of loan sharking would pass. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk23:09, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As a foreigner who has answered that question the OP describes a few times myself, and been in the company of several others when they have answered it, I observe that almost every time it has to be answered it leads to declarations about what a dumb question it is, and how stupid the American government is for asking such a dumb question. Now, to Americans reading this, please don't shoot the messenger here. I'm simply telling you how some foreigners perceive this question. And while you can easily say "We don't care", I suspect that at some level at least some of you do. Maybe the "real" reason (Is it outlined well enough up above yet?) for this odd question could be made clearer to those having to answer it. HiLo48 (talk) 00:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I also dread entering the US and dealing with annoying forms. But the underlying requirements are not unique to the US. Canada has a very similar set of rules; you just don't have to fill out a form when you cross the border. If a Canadian border guard asked the corresponding Canadian question, would it be dumb for the same reasons outlined above? Is it the use of "moral turpitude," the meaning of which is absolutely opaque to anyone entering the country? To me, it's the combination of both: the form plus the impenetrable wording. The rules themselves are not that big of a deal. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 02:02, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The rules are OK, although overdone at times. It's the dumb questions that are the problem. They lead to mockery and a lessening of respect, where it's the opposite that is presumably desired. HiLo48 (talk) 02:28, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As previously stated, the question exists as part of the regime for kicking war criminals out of the country once they're already in the country, not for keeping them out of the country to begin with. For example, the granting of citizenship is generally irrevocable -- unless the government can prove that the person lied to get into the country or obtain citizenship. This is how John Demjanjuk had his citizenship revoked. When he applied to immigrate in 1951, he didn't mention being a death-camp guard. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Also as previously stated, the question makes the American government look like a bunch of fools. It may serve a purpose, but it gives a lousy impression to the millions of foreigners who are forced to answer it every year. HiLo48 (talk) 10:26, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Demjanjuk didn't mention it because he possibly never was a death-camp guard, and the whole German trial was just a farce to make Germany look tough on Nazi criminals in a rather pathetic way. But that is a topic for a different question. 88.8.79.204 (talk) 03:21, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Probably he wasn't but it is more likely that he was, or do you truly believe that the US court simply decided to strip him of his US citizenship and to expel him so "that Germany may look tough on Nazi criminals in a rather pathetic way"? Jesus, I see this so often: "the German who wasn't even born before 1945 has to pay and keep paying for the Holocaust and WWII". Even in the United 93 (film)#Criticism. They had to portray the only German passenger as a hysterical coward compared to the brave and courageous American passengers and crew. Screw this pathetic self-righteous "we are holier than the Germans" attitude. Take your cheap shot at another nation, preferably your own (whatever it may be). Flamarande (talk) 03:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I said he possibly was not and you reply with "it is more likely that he was"??? That's REALLY a serious reason to convict him and THAT's what I mean by pathetic. Note: I didn't watch the film, and commenting it here is also not relevant. 88.8.79.204 (talk) 03:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Let's end this. You wrote that "the whole German trial was just a farce to make Germany look tough on Nazi criminals in a rather pathetic way". If this was meant in an ironic way then I'm truly sorry, but it's kind of hard to hear/read an ironic tone of voice. Flamarande (talk) 04:04, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean by "people don't care"? And are you referring to PhD.s or M.D.s? In the US at least, people will care a lot if you are pretending to be an M.D. They might not care if you pretend to be a PhD. Blueboar (talk) 02:04, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
just sign your name Dor. John SMITH. People will assume it's a foreign abbreviation for "doctor" (whereas, though you don't mention it, you've just taken up the pen name Dorothy). 82.234.207.120 (talk) 02:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Vietnam, i would say. People is not going to call you with special tittle even you are a king or the best person in the world. They just call you by your name.Trongphu (talk) 02:20, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was not asking where do people do not care about legit degrees. It was more like: in what countries the Dr. before your name is not regulated or where nobody cares if you did your PhD or not. In what countries John Smith could simply print a card with Dr. J. Smith and get away with it. Quest09 (talk)
Well i guess the answer to your question is "all the poor countries and some developing country". It's also base on chance, in any countries in the world, you may get caught if you unlucky. In richer countries like the US as an example, there is more chance of being caught by doing illegal stuffs like claim that you have a PhD but you actually don't have one.Trongphu (talk) 02:39, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am not aware of any law in the United States that forbids claiming you have a PhD even though you actually don't. Now, if you induce someone to buy your services on that basis, that's different; that's fraud, which is illegal pretty much everywhere I'd think. But just lying about it, with no transaction involved? As far as I know that's perfectly legal. (Note: I am not a lawyer.) --Trovatore (talk) 02:53, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely not the United States, you get in trouble there for using "Dr" even if you have a Doctor Juris degree (JD), which is literally a doctor of law, but only the first legal degree and not the terminal one. some woman politician got in troubl for that recently... I am sorry for saying "woman politician" I wish there was some way to edit this. I should have just said someone who was a politician (a woman). 82.234.207.120 (talk) 04:43, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In the UK, if you hold a doctorate in any subject, you can call yourself "Doctor" quite legitimately. Unfortunately, people tend to think that only medical doctors are entitled to use the term "Doctor". This can cause problems. Is this the sort of situation the OP is referring to? --TammyMoet (talk) 12:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In the UK, anyone can call themselves anything they like. There are laws against practising medicine without a license and there are laws against fraud, but neither of those stop you using any title you like socially. --Tango (talk) 12:08, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean by 'get in trouble'? I've looked in to the case and I'm finding no evidence there was any real legal risk. In most countries with a free media and resonable level of democracy, calling yourself by a title people feel is undeserved or unwarranted is liable to have a negative effect on your reputation which is generally a bad thing for a politician, but this is a rather different thing. There are of course some circumstances where you may get in trouble as Tango mentioned for the UK (but likely apply to the US) and Trovatore mentioned in the US but again that doesn't mean it's illegal to call yourself a Dr in all circumstances in the US if you have no (what people would call) legitimate claim to the title. Nil Einne (talk) 03:54, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How many people were dead each year in the gilded age in the United States (after civil war to 1900 year) by working in coal mine? What are the majority cause of the death like black lung disease or accident or...? Is there any protection for coal miners during that time like equipment or something like that? What are the protection, equipment? Total death toll for coal miners in 19th century in the US? And if anyone knows any more info and statistic about coal mining in gilded age. Everything about it would be helpful. All the info should only from in period of the gilded age in the US. Thanks!Trongphu (talk) 02:35, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Social sciences and humanities approaches to past labour safety issues have fallen under historical Industrial Relations and Labour History. These fields tend to not produce statistical compilations, due to the highly contested ideological nature of what constitutes a work place death and socially acceptable safety equipment. My understanding, from reading the abstract to This Book and from Gollan's book on the Australian coal miners, is that coal mining was paid on a piece rate system by gang, where the Boss controlled the piece rates, causing the use of safety apparatus and shoring work to be underfunded systematically (See Emile Zola's novel Germinal). Total Death Tolls for mining are hard to compute. Do pinkerton murders count? Does drinking yourself to death because you hate the work count? Does dying at 60 from exhaustion count? Black lung? As Gollan observes in relation to Australia, coal miners became class conscious at a very early stage—control over the mining industry was about naked class warfare, including day-to-day resistance. Treating this kind of territory as if it is amenable to a statistical analysis of agreed "industrial deaths" and acceptable "protection equipment" is futile. Miners wanted more shoring and more money for shoring universally. Employers wanted to (and did) test the minimal necessary shoring requirements by destructive testing. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:24, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So there are no statistic before 20th century? I found some statistics about total death toll from beginning of 20th century forward. By death toll i mean all the deaths involve in mining (suicide because you hate the job would also count since mining caused it). There are actually no safe equipment to make the job safer? I doubt it, i believe over the past century they have developed many equipment to make it safe for mine workers.174.20.78.221 (talk) 21:42, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In many cases, safety equipment was technologically available, but not provided by mine operators. See, for example, the Darr Mine Disaster; 239 deaths because open lamps were used rather than safety lamps, which had been developed almost a century earlier.
Regarding overall fatality statistics, it's not that they don't exist, but they're harder to calculate - there was much less official reporting of this sort of thing in the past. You might find this paper interesting; it quotes an estimate of ~3 direct deaths per thousand workers per year in the late nineteenth century. There's a fairly broad bibliography, and you'll likely find all the statistics you need there... Shimgray | talk | 21:53, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How much has black flight contributed to the population decline and urban decay of many American cities since the 1950’s when compared to white flight?
In my previous question I asked why all those American cities that are declining in population generally started doing so in the 1950s and what were the reasons behind their decline. One of the reasons given to me had to do with the concept of white flight. That is a term I've heard many times before (but I'm not too familiar with) and that many of us are probably familiar with, but when I got into the See Also section of the white flight article I came across the concept of black flight. As black flight is now a new concept for me like I mentioned above, I’m curious to know to what extent has black flight contributed to the population decline and urban decay of many American cities since the 1950’s compared to white flight. Black flight doesn't seem to be a term that comes up often. Willminator (talk) 02:38, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure white flight has bigger influence. I'm not try to being racist or something. I'm a pro equally for ALL. But well i do have to admit that white typically richer than black (simply enough because they have been superior for so long, which shouldn't be that way) so there should be more white move to suburb and have a nice house(or just a house) than black.Trongphu (talk) 02:43, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think "black flight" would have much effect on city population, since only wealthy blacks typically leave, and they are a small portion of the population. However, losing wealthy taxpayers (of any race) has a disproportionate effect on the tax-base, especially if they are business owners and take their business with them to their new location. StuRat (talk) 04:32, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What are you looking for that the article doesn't cover. 9 million blacks moving from the inner city to the suburbs (1960-2000) certainly appears significant. Rmhermen (talk) 06:39, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Unscrupulous lending practices by banks allowed almost anyone to get a mortgage in the mid 2000s and buy a home, leading to movements to new suburban housing. This applies to blacks as well as whites; poor blacks have been facing a lot of repossessions since the credit crash. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:43, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There are two books you should read if you are interested in this subject:
Dreier, Peter (2005) [2001]. Place Matters (2nd Revised ed.). Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN0-700-61364-1.
Peterson, Paul E. (1981) [1981]. City Limits. Illinois: University of Chicago Press. ISBN0-226-66293-4.
The second paragraph of the black flight article says that “Early years of residential change accelerated in the late 1960s after passage of civil rights legislation ended segregation, and African Americans could exercise more choices in housing and jobs. Since the 1950s, there began a period of major restructuring of industries and loss of hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs in northeast and Midwest cities. Since the late 20th century, these events led to reduced density in formerly black neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, which have also had absolute population decreases, losing white population as well.” So, does that means that the black flight to the suburbs was indeed a significant and impactful thing, but still not nearly as significant and impactful as white flight was, and not nearly as significant and impactful to warrant significant attention in the history books? Willminator (talk) 17:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The main social impact of black flight has been to separate the poor African American population of many cities from the African American middle class, many or most of whom have moved to either the suburbs or to more affluent urban neighborhoods. This has led to the development of poor African American neighborhoods that lack role models and personal networks that might lead to employment opportunities. Before black flight, most African American neighborhoods included middle-class families who attended the same churches and schools as the poorer population and whose businesses might have offered jobs to poorer neighborhood acquaintances. Sociologists such as William Julius Wilson have argued that black flight has cut off many of these avenues of opportunity and consigned poor black neighborhoods to entrenched poverty. So, the main impact of black flight has not been on urban populations in most cities but on economic conditions in cities with large poor, black populations. Marco polo (talk) 18:24, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
does anyone know any jokes like this?
does anyone know any jokes like this:
person a: Do you know any (somebody's name) jokes?
person b: Yeah - (same name)!
In other words, person b is saying that that person themselves is a joke. for example:
Do you know any Michele Backmann jokes?
Yeah - Michele Bachmann!
I vote we move this to the Miscellaneous desk, but to the OP, can you tell us what on earth you actually want? How broadly are we to interpret your formula? If it has to be in the exact format you described, I could give you several, but they would all be the same, and by the way, none of them would be particularly funny. It's been emotional (talk) 06:13, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Could anyone tell me who owns pylons in the UK? If they are placed on public land (e.g. in/near parks), do the owners pay "rent" or any sort of fee for placing them there? And, finally, how successful are petitions to get them removed from public areas for aesthetic reasons? Thanks much in advance for any answers. ScarianCall me Pat!12:10, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding question 2, yes the power companies pay rent. See here for some details of wayleaves and easements (which are not the same thing in UK law, though Wikipedia seems to think they are). There was a big fuss a few years ago when the power companies wanted to pay farmers a lump sum instead of administrating ongoing rents. They didn't get away with it.--Shantavira|feed me16:02, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I seem to recall my father, as occupier of some land, though not the owner, used to receive one shilling per pylon per year back around 1970. He never did get very rich... -- Arwel Parry(talk)17:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Following on from Ghmyrtle's comment above, there is currently a UK competition (between professional firms of architects) for the design of the 'next generation' of the UK's pylons - one report with some pictures is here, others can be found by googling. What those stills don't make obvious is that most of the 6 finalist designs are shorter than (though retaining the same cable heights as) the current Scott design. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.78.49 (talk) 18:43, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed that Ghmyrtle's link says it was designed by GGS and I thought so too, but nearly everyone else seems to think that the winner of the 1928 competition (chosen by classical architect Reginald Blomfield) was a design by the Milliken Brothers (don't tell anyone, but they were Americans shhhh...) [16][17][18][19][20][21] Maybe the confusion comes from the fact that Blomfield was on the 1924 committee that chose GGS's design for the Red telephone box. Alansplodge (talk) 20:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The most successful way to get existing pylons replaced by underground ducts, is for yourselves to offer to pay for the necessary work – which is horrendously more expensive than overhead transmission. The problem with petitions is that the petitioners expect that for their unobstructed view, all the transmissions company's other customers should pay for it or other tax payers (if it comes from the public purse. --Aspro (talk) 19:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To answer one of your questions, petitions on their own are unlikely to succeed. A big campaign, which would include a petition, might have some chance if it is correctly prepared and if enough people join in. The first step is to talk to the local authority planning department(s) and find out their view. Find out if the land is in a national park or an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Is anything special about the landscape that means the power lines should be buried? Itsmejudith (talk) 19:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, especially in a place like the Ridge and Valley province of Pennsylvania, which has something of a Riverworld-like topology, stronger cables would really matter. I think it might make the difference between having a 50-foot wide clear-cut all the way down one forested hill, across inhabited valley, and up the next hill, versus having two small cleared areas at the top of each hill linked by cables you would barely see, except for the all too inevitable lights and spheres to warn off planes. Wnt (talk) 20:17, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Earliest certain celebrity endorsement in history?
Simple question - what is the earliest celebrity endorsement in history that historians are certain actually happened? Obviously this disqualifies conjectures that Da Vinci was on posters for Luigi's Quills & Scrolls... The Masked Booby (talk) 12:40, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would suspect there'd be something of this nature in Herodotus, but I can't think of a precise example right now. (Herodotus doesn't necessarily confer certainty, though). I think it would be celebrity endorsement for a fashion (a ruler or athlete or politician started doing or wearing something in a particular way, and others imitated), rather than for a specific branded product. Maybe that doesn't quite fit the question. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 12:57, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But the kiwi most particularly. We even call the people "Kiwis". Is there any other people on Earth who are regularly referred to by the name of an animal peculiar to their country? I doubt it. Australians are not called "kangaroos" or "koalas" or "platypuses" (but I have known a couple of Tasmanian tigers). -- Jack of Oz[your turn]20:42, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt it. For some unexplained reason, around 20 years ago it became customary to name to give every separate Australian sporting team a different nickname, even different names for the male and female teams. One of our rugby teams (can't recall which one) is called the Wallabies, but that's not a nickname for Australians in general. HiLo48 (talk) 22:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Survival rate of US government programs that kick in in the next administration
When some president actually gets something he's backing through Congress and signed into law, but that bundle of legislation is set to take effect after he's out (and won't be able to veto attempts to change it anymore), how often does it happen that that legislation gets reversed or modified at all before it even spends one day as active law as originally passed? For instance, in a current article talking about President Barack Obama's proposed debt plan, "[a senior administration official] added that any changes to Medicare benefits won't kick in before 2017." If such a thing passed, what are the odds (and by 'what are the odds,' I mean the odds based on past survival rates as I'm talking about) that those "changes," whatever they are, would become active law exactly as they were when they got passed (hypothetically assuming they did) by 2017? Yes, yes, past performance cannot predict future returns. I'm just asking the factual question of survival rates until implementation post-originator in the past. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 13:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd think it would depend almost entirely on who follows the current President:
1) If a member of the opposing party is now President (and dominates Congress, too), the chances it will last are very low.
2) If a member of the same party is now President (and dominates Congress, too), the chances it will last are quite high, especially in the case where the previous President was assassinated. StuRat (talk) 15:42, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, the way to stop this back-and-forth legislation is to require a supermajority to pass or repeal laws. Currently, the only mechanism for this for regular laws (as opposed to Constitutional Amendments) is the rather silly filibuster and cloture process in the US Senate. If both houses needed 60% to pass a law and 60% to repeal it, then laws would be unlikely to pass and even more unlikely to be repealed (since going from 60% support to 40% is a big leap). StuRat (talk) 15:47, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We effectively have a 60% majority requirement for anything at the moment on account of the filibuster requirement in the Senate. It has not proved very effective at actually making policy. This is in part because the current state of the filibuster does not require an actual filibuster, just the threat of one. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think filibusters can be used in all cases, though. For one, thing, they're exhausting. So, little bills get through, since nobody cares enough to filibuster them. StuRat (talk) 00:00, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You don't actually have to get up and speak to prevent passage these days. If someone indicates that they will filibuster the bill to prevent passage, the Senate will move onto other business. See Filibuster in the United States Senate. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing Reid pulling an LBJ at some point and making an opponent actually get up on their feet and talk for a while, but that's not likely to happen. Buddy431 (talk) 06:56, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What Buddy431 says (and I said) is correct. Filibusters are not exhausting anymore. They are used routinely. Since the Republicans became a minority in the Senate in 2007, there were well over 100 filibuster threats (note that the graph there are for cloture motions, which attempt to undo/avoid filibusters — so there are likely more filibuster threats than indicated on that chart), over a doubling of the previous period (which itself showed a steady increasing of filibuster threats from previous congresses). They've relied on the filibuster as their main "negotiating tactic" because it's very hard to get a 3/5ths majority and because they don't actually have to do any filibustering. One of the major reforms being suggested for reducing this abuse of the filibuster is to require them to actually filibuster again — if they are going to require 60 votes, they ought to have to work for it, not just say, "we're filibustering" and go home. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:08, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
President's Voting for Candidates
Can you make a Wiki Page of all the Former Presidents of the United States and can you list which candidate they voted for President throughout there lifetime? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.102.130.241 (talk) 23:06, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Very unlikely. We have a secret ballot. So at best we could report whom the former presidents claimed to have voted for. I doubt most of them ever even made a firm statement about that; it's generally just assumed that they voted for their own party, but you never know.
(Edit Conflict) The first part of your request is I think met by the existing article List of Presidents of the United States. The second part might be difficult: my understanding is that in the USA, as in most other countries (legally if not always in practice) everyone's vote is a secret ballot, so one could only know who they voted for in any election if they had come out and said so. Although some future or past Presidents might sometimes have done this (though who knows if all of them were always honest?), it seems unlikely that most of them did so for most of the times they voted. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.241 (talk) 23:30, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There used to be a very different attitude, where it was thought that anyone who campaigned for himself and voted for himself was too immodest. Back then, I wouldn't be surprised if they would have voted for another (or at least claimed to), so they would seem properly meek, and thus inherit the Earth, or at least the Presidency. StuRat (talk) 23:35, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Our article on the secret ballot suggests that this is possible for presidents who died prior to 1884 "In the United States, most states had moved to secret ballots soon after the presidential election of 1884." However, I'd suggest that the partisan nature of newspapers in that age, and the quality of recording Joe Q Public's voting for 40+ years prior to their presidency, means that no such data sets will exist. Fifelfoo (talk) 23:54, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
September 20
Bill O'Reilly and Vietnam,
69.86.208.28 (talk) 00:56, 20 September 2011 (UTC) Bill O'Reilly was born in 1949, which would make him 18 years old 1967. How did he stay out of the draft for the Vietnam War? Was it a high draft/lottery number? There's nothing on his wikipedia page about his draft status, and there probably should be, given his stature within political commentary and his interest in Vietnam:[reply]
"After the taping of his broadcast one recent evening, O’Reilly opined on the current uses of historical narrative. His large corner office on the 17th floor of the News Corp. building in New York, with a broad Sixth Avenue view, is itself a kind of history lesson, its walls filled with rare, signed presidential letters, photographs, and lithographs, hung alongside a homemade Viet Cong banner and the last flag of the Republic of South Vietnam to fly at the American Embassy in Saigon."
Conscription_in_the_United_States#Perception_of_the_draft_as_unfair says that if your parents could afford to send you to college you escaped the draft while you were there. This paper provides more information on college deferment. The draft was very dependent on when you were born. The draft picked up in mid 1965, and until 1970, the order of the draft was (1) "delinquents" (2) volunteers (3) people 18-25 in order of age from 25 down to 18 without a deferment (4) other groups, such as deferred graduates; and generally the first 3 groups provided more than enough people (so e.g. if you could last till you were 25 you were unlikely to be drafted). O'Reilly being 18 in 1967 would be low-priority at first; Clinton being a couple of years older was at greater risk. In 1970, this system was replaced by a lottery, but college deferments kept you out of that until September 1971. After mid-1971 the rate of induction was in any case vastly reduced, and the draft was suspended in 1973, so if you could escape from 1965-71 you'd be fairly safe. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why was it called a "deferment", when it wasn't deferred? Or are you saying it was a deferment, they just never got round to calling some/most of those who deferred, because the draft came to an end? --Dweller (talk) 09:57, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Draft deferments termed such because they are technically temporary. After finishing undergraduate study, you could be drafted again. In practice this was rare. Those who finished college during the draft period and who were still younger than 25 (the cut-off age for the draft) could apply for graduate deferment early on in the war, and later for occupational or dependent deferment. (From the same paper cited above.) The temporary nature of deferments was more clear in World War II, in my research experience. I have seen many records of people coming up two, three times before draft boards, deferring because of their connection to "vital war research". During WWII the draft boards were pretty aggressive and required very strong statements about irreplaceability to grant a war-research-related deferment. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:16, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"The students face misdemeanor charges of conspiring to disrupt a meeting and disrupting a meeting." Is this kind of law common in the U.S.; i.e., would you assume that it is the case in any given jurisdiction? Thanks. 66.108.223.179 (talk) 03:47, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There are lots of laws which are somewhat vague and allow the police to break up disturbances. The classic is Disturbing the peace which is likely (or a variation of it) the actual crime someone you describe would be charged with. There may be variations of the law in California dealing with various ways the peace can be disturbed, so the specific wording (disruption of a meeting) is likely one of them. --Jayron3203:50, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So apparently there was this former dictator in Africa named Jean-Bedel Bokassa who became notorious for giving diamonds to the former President of France and for ordering the killing of several schoolchilden, some of whom he reportedly killed personally, because they refused to wear a ridiculously expensive school uniform with his face printed on it. When he was crowned "Emperor", his Empress was Catherine, who was the favorite of his nine wives. But he was a Catholic (except for a brief period in 1976 when he converted to Islam). So how did he manage to have nine wives? Narutolovehinata5tccsdnew05:55, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, one of the key points of being a despot is that you make your own rules. Arguably, Bokassa violated various core principles of both Catholicism and Islam, but who would have challenged him on any of this? --Soman (talk) 07:11, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Basically, he claimed to be the inheritor of various traditions, including African traditions by which a chief or any other wealthy or powerful individual can practice polygamy. He obeyed whatever rules or traditions suited him best at the time, and made up his own when necessary. His whole coronation as "Emperor" was a mix of Napoleonian and African practices. --Xuxl (talk) 08:00, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Catholic Church may have preferred to have an imperfect Catholic than an atheist communist as ruler of the CAR. Not that they could have done much about him. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:48, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
From a Catholic point of view, nothing you do means you aren't a Catholic any more (as they say, "once a Catholic, always a Catholic") because Baptism is believed to leave a permanent mark on the soul which cannot be removed. However, any one of the actions you describe above are enough to automatically excommunicate him, which means no declaration of excommunication is necessary: he has excommunicated himself, and should be aware of that. This means he is out of communion with the Church, and remains so until he has fully repented in a way that involves ceasing to commit the sin, and sought Confession, and almost certainly he would need the excommunication to be lifted by a bishop or archbishop, maybe even the Pope. Since his sins were notorious, all Catholic priests would be expected to deny him Communion if he presented himself at the altar and they recognised him. I would be interested in any articles based on fact which discussed how (if at all) he practiced his Catholicism after becoming a dictator, and whether this involved pressure on certain priests. 86.164.76.231 (talk) 10:02, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently during the "coronation", N'Dayern read greetings from the pope. Other than that, I'm not so sure. He may have been religious as he wanted a coronation in a cathedral in Bangui and apparently during his trial he wore a white cassock and a cross given to him by the pope (at least according to a book that I read). Narutolovehinata5tccsdnew14:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
According to his Wikipedia page, by the time he died, he had 17 wives. That's a lot of wives. The fact that he was able to practice polygyny even if he was a Roman Catholic astonishes me. My point is, how did he manage to have this many wives? Narutolovehinata5tccsdnew14:06, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you valued your life in CAR at that time, you didn't say or do anything against the president. He basically just did what he likes. As to what his religion had to do with it, you'll have to ask his God what He has planned for him in the afterlife! --TammyMoet (talk) 14:26, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still not sure I see what you're asking. From the point of view of the Catholic Church he wouldn't have been a Catholic with 17 wives, he would have been a Catholic married to his first wife and committing adultery with 16 other women. 86.164.60.149 (talk) 16:56, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What does "unrewarded genius is almost a proverb" mean?
I read this is a quote by Calvin Coolidge:
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
To paraphrase, "Genius allowed to go to waste is extremely common", in contrast with genius that achieves great things because it is combined with hard work and perseverence, which is much rarer. --Xuxl (talk) 08:03, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb" means that people say "genius goes unrewarded" it so often that it has almost become a proverb. Like "Least said soonest mended" or "lightning never strikes twice in the same place" which are traditional English proverbs and just as difficult to prove. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It is literary shorthand that is generally acceptable in its use. One gets the gist from what is said because of the similarity between the phrase "unrewarded genius" and proverbs. The similarity is that proverbs are repeated interminably and are generally accepted as being factual beyond reproach. I think "unrewarded genius" is in fact not"almost a proverb" because proverbs are presented in the form of full sentences. By contrast "unrewarded genius" is only a phrase, and that is why I am comparing it to "shorthand": I think we understand that the phrase is similar to a proverb in that it is often repeated and seldom questioned. Bus stop (talk) 12:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"No matter how smooth I talked, they wouldn't listen to the fact that I was a genius. The man said 'We got all that we can use'. I've got those steadily depressin', low-down messin', workin' at the car wash blues."
I'm not sure of the nature of the original question, though I tried to answer it above. The question as posed was: "What does 'unrewarded genius is almost a proverb' mean in the context of persistence?"
I am puzzled because the quote from Calvin Coolidge above says that "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence" and "Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."
It seems obvious that the quote is saying that "genius" cannot replace "persistence". Is there a question as to how this can be a proverb? Is there an implied searching for proverbs that embody this notion? Bus stop (talk) 11:21, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are trying to over-analyze the formulation of the question. The heading was only What does "unrewarded genius is almost a proverb" mean? The meaning may seem obvious to you but people are different. LijoJames was probably just trying to understand the Coolidge quote. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:14, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not really, because its a budget and not a check register. That is, a budget is something you do before you spend money. Its a plan of how much money you expect to take in, and what you plan to spend it on. The actual amount of revenue and outlay is quite likely to be somewhat different than the budget. Since the budget is the prospective spending, the intelligence community can keep it perfectly secret, and the actual spending can be covered up pretty easily as well. --Jayron3216:37, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think the question is more, couldn't you take the full budget figure, subtract everything that is listed publicly, and end up with the intelligence budget figure? It depends on whether the defense budget figure is included in the full budget figure, obviously. Presumably it is not, or is hidden into gray categories (e.g. discretionary spending given to the CIA or military). Usually when budgets are "hidden" in this way it is because they fall into vague categories that don't respond well to probing. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:32, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure, but in the UK I believe the total spend of the intelligence services is public knowledge, but not much beneath that (overall number of employees, I think). It wouldn't help sabotage it, really. Grandiose(me, talk, contribs) 16:57, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The secrecy doesn't prevent sabotage in the US, either, unless you consider "public oversight" to be a form of sabotage. The only plausible argument is that a nation like Russia or China would be able to track the budget's change over time and somehow infer programmatic decisions from it. But it's such a vague measure of that. You'd get more insight into programmatic information from reading the New York Times than from that number. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:02, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the US intelligence budget has been disclosed for the next year, for the first time in a long while. See here. $55 billion. Ooga booga. Don't tell any terrorists! --Mr.98 (talk) 17:02, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think that what is secret about it is the specific allocation of that amount among various programs, or even the names or existence of some such programs. Marco polo (talk) 18:33, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That is definitely secret. But it used to be the case, until quite recently, that even the bulk sum was classified. Starting in the 2000s they started to release those for the first time. And just recently they've released budget proposals in advance of actually having them approved. As the Secrecy News post discusses, this has been a major bone of contention regarding classification for awhile now. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:59, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I can see why, if the overall budget shoots up with no apparent reason, the public would question what was going on. For example, it might be a precursor to an invasion. StuRat (talk) 19:22, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It wouldn't actually impart any information, other than the fact that there was increased spending. You couldn't distinguish one crazy explanation from another based on that number alone (an invasion, a new airplane, a huge slush fund for retired officers, whatever). Anyway, apparently they've decided it's no longer a big deal, as I've indicated, and are treating it like regular defense spending to a large degree. Note that the real question here is why an intelligence budget should alone be treated this way — we don't treat our other military budgets this way, we don't treat any non-military budgets this way. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:14, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It could be any of them. Increment the expected cost of Bic pens by a nickel, of bullets by a dollar, of toilet paper by a few cents a roll, and viola; you have now burried a $55 billion intelligence budget. --Jayron3222:12, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There was just a report on NPR tonight [24] about last year's Department of Justice expenditures for food items at conferences and the like; they were paying a going rate of $16 per muffin and a snack of cracker jacks and candy bars cost $32 per person. You tell me where that money is going, cuz Otis Spunkmeyer isn't getting $16 per muffin. --Jayron3200:51, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The DOD has "discretionary" funds which are not audited publicly (but still have to be justified in executive committee sessions, to some degree). I'm not sure where the non-military stuff would be kept, but there are lots of places. During WWII the atomic bomb project was initially funded out of discretionary Presidential funds, later out of discretionary War Department funds. Wherever it is, it is likely in a big heap of other things with a bland, empty name, like "discretionary funding" or "special projects" or something like that. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:14, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
human "breeds"
Are people really subject to traits they have inherited (like violent tempers) that cannot be removed by surgery or drugs and if so could relief be found though messing with their DNA by inserting or removing fragments? --DeeperQA (talk) 17:43, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To put your question in terms commonly used: If nature influences behaviour as opposed to nurture (see nature versus nurture), will gene therapy change behavior? Well, as you can see in the nature vs. nurture argument, there is no clear indicator that nature strongly influences behavior. Of course, this can be taken to an extreme. If a person has a violent temper and you use gene therapy to turn the person into a vegetable laying on a bed without the capability to move or talk, was the violent temper removed? -- kainaw™17:47, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Behavior patterns, in adults, are mostly hard-wired in the brain, so difficult to change. Genetic changes might be more successful in controlling how the brain develops, if performed on children. As for drugs, a testosterone blocker should decrease aggression, but also has some side effects, like lowered sex drive. StuRat (talk) 18:06, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your first (embedded) question, the jury is still out on whether personality is mainly genetic or mainly a result of fetal and childhood environment and experience. No doubt, it develops from an interplay between both genetics and experience (or environment). As StuRat says, to the extent that personality is genetic, a genetic intervention would have to take place very early, perhaps before birth, since the neural networks and other structures controlled by genes are formed during fetal and early childhood development. Changing an adult's genes would have no more effect on their behavior than deleting a software installer after you have already installed the software. Marco polo (talk) 18:31, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In general, control over a violent temper requires sophisticated mental processing, i.e. frontal lobe function. Damage to the frontal lobe - even lobotomy - could degrade that and leave people more prone to problems (that article describes "irresponsibility", "lack of discipline", etc.) So I am skeptical of any easy, general methods to reduce violence unless they remove the capability for violence in general, even in situations where it is accepted like resisting a hijacking. (For that you could, say, cut the Achilles tendon or make a meal of the bicep muscle, or install a remote electric shock shackle, or some neurological equivalent action) Now it should be clear though that it is possible to get people to exercise that frontal lobe and be ready to use it, whether by conventional discipline or some new teaching. And it should also be clear that in individual cases, various interventions will reduce violence. If someone is a cocaine addict, cure the addiction; if their neighbor's kid is an aspiring tuba player, gift the child an XBox. Perhaps sometimes even hormones will work, if that is what is keeping normal self-control from working. Wnt (talk) 20:33, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Given the literally millions of offices throughout history, it may be difficult to nail down. Many Roman Republic/Empire offices were restricted to one-year terms, so they may have had hundreds of incumbants. One candidate may be the Pope of which there have been around 265ish (including Antipopes). The position of Roman Consul had a roughly continuous history for something over 1000 years, so you can find LOTS of people to fill that office (though its role changed drastically over time). See List of Roman consuls. --Jayron3200:48, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be more inclined toward the office of Member of the House of Commons in the UK — the UK is considered the legal successor of the Kingdom of Great Britain, which is considered the legal successor of the Kingdom of England, so the House of Commons has existed since 1341. Given its often large size (650 members right now) and its history of more than two-thirds of a millennium, the office of membership in it is a good candidate. Nyttend (talk) 02:24, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
They all serve on different councils, though. If you count that as the same office, you might as well count members of the UK parliament and members of the Australian parliament as being in the same office. --Tango (talk) 17:30, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
September 21
John Kalymon
The question above about ESTA made me curious about the deportation of Nazis from the US, specially when I read today in the news that John Kalymon will probably be deported (he is in the List of denaturalized former citizens of the United States). So, from a legal perspective, he is being accused of killing at least one Jew, in a region which was Poland, but is now Ukraine, and that was occupied by Germany then. How do they decide now where to deport him to? Israel, Poland, Ukraine, Germany, Hague? Couldn't the US claim something like a universal jurisdiction and judge him? Wikiweek (talk) 07:39, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well it depends who is asking for him to be deported. They don't just "deport", they have to have a request from a foreign government first. (Except if they want to simply get rid of someone that is embarrassing, then they just try to find a government that will accept a new resident, but usually, there is a request first). --Lgriot (talk) 08:16, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure this is the same case as John Demjanjuk: Germany is pursuing some former real or imaginary minor collaborators of the Nazi Regime. Surprisingly, Eastern Europeans get pursued much more often than former German Nazis (although the latter group is much bigger and easier to persecute, go guess). Not surprisingly, the courts try to proceed as fast as possible, to bring the proceedings to a close before the accused dies. Obviously, there are just a handful of such proceedings. When you wait 60 years to get tough on Nazis, as Germany did, there are not many Nazis left, and even Israel doesn't get interested on it. 88.8.79.204 (talk) 14:31, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Who Funded the 'No to AV Yes to PR' Campaign in the UK?
I would like to know if there is any information about the groups and / or parties that funded the No to AV Yes to PR campaign in the UK. I seem to remember some news stories saying that the conservative and labour parties had donated money, but some initial googleing has provided nothing definitive. --CGPGrey (talk) 08:59, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Their financial return is here. They report £21,149.67 of donations, but if you read down, all of that came in the form of non-cash notional spending on their behalf by the No Campaign. There may be more detail in the No Campaign's own return, which is not due until 5 November. Check back on the Electoral Commission website when it comes in. Sam Blacketer (talk) 12:51, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think racism correctly characterizes the conflict you refer to. You seem to be assuming that it does. Can you tell me how you see the referred-to conflict as being racially defined? Bus stop (talk) 12:08, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
75.6.5.122 -- There are well over a million Arabs (mostly Muslims) with Israeli citizenship within the borders of 1949 Israel, and less than 10,000 Jews remaining within all the 20 or so Arab-ruled countries (over half of them in Morocco, which is the only Arab country which has consistently protected a whole Jewish community -- not just a pitiful remnant of a few old people -- over the last half-century or more). So based solely on hard factual numbers (i.e. statistical-demographical grounds) it would seem to be more fair to ask why Arabs are racist against Jews. For example, in 1967 Libya (under the king, not Qaddhafi) conducted a classic old-style pogrom which reduced the Jewish population from thousands to effectively zero in about a week, despite the fact that there had been Jews in Libya since before there were any Arabs in Libya, and few of the Jews had much connection with Israel... AnonMoos (talk) 12:42, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd also suggest you read propaganda. Seeing any of the world's many complex and long-lasting disputes in simple terms is usually a result of propaganda from biased newspapers, TV etc, and general ignorance of the detail of these problems.
Your question can be turned around. You might easily ask (to take one of the muslim groups) why is Hamas racist against Jews and expecially Israelis?. Your question and the one I just posed both have elements of truth in them... and huge great lumps of untruth.
There are racist Israelis and there are racist Palestinians. But there are also many who are not, just like the people who live in the rest of the world. Nearly all the Israelis and Palestinians I've ever met have just wanted peace and an end to the killings and none of them have come across as racist.
And in the same way, you can interpret the statements and actions on both sides in many different ways. Racist or self-protecting? Aggressive or defensive? How you see these things, ultimately, will sadly often be affected by the propaganda you consume. See also historiography. --Dweller (talk) 13:34, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In formal logic, the reductio ad absurdum is a legitimate argument. It follows the form that if the premises are assumed to be true it necessarily leads to an absurd (false) conclusion and therefore one or more premises must be false. The term is now often used to refer to the abuse of this style of argument, by stretching the logic in order to force an absurd conclusion. For example a UFO enthusiast once argued that if I am skeptical about the existence of alien visitors, I must also be skeptical of the existence of the Great Wall of China, since I have not personally seen either. This is a false reductio ad absurdum because he is ignoring evidence other than personal eyewitness evidence, and also logical inference. In short, being skeptical of UFO’s does not require rejecting the existence of the Great Wall.
(EC) Legitimate form of argument according to whom? There is no official arbiter. Not only reductio ad absurdum, I have noticed most of the popular logical fallacies being used by reputable people and institutions under the impression that they are legitimate forms of argument; the point about listing them as logical fallacies is precisely because they are used as legitimate forms of argument. In the case of reductio ad absurdum, the essence of the logical fallacy comes in the leap between what is actually proposed and the version of it when its opponent has reduced it to the absurd. If the opponent does not leap the gap but instead makes a reasonable argument that the proposal would actually reduce to the absurd proposition, then that is not a logical fallacy. Sam Blacketer (talk) 13:09, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Many so-called logical fallacies can be legitimate (though not always conclusive), e.g. argument from authority should be persuasive if the people speaking are generally recognised as authorities on the subject under discussion, but if the Pope tells you something about biology that's less persuasive because the Pope isn't a biologist. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:07, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to argue from authority, it helps to talk about the credibility of an proposition rather than its truth or falacy. Since we know people aren't infallible, the best you can say is that something is probably true if an expert says it is. You can't say it is definitely true. If you can come up with a logical argument from accepted premises, then you can make a definite assertion of truth (conditional on your rules of inference being sound, I suppose, but you have to start somewhere!). --Tango (talk) 17:36, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Right wing Irish republicanism and left wing Ulster unionism
Since apparently there aren't any major political parties that take such a stand, who do more left wing leaning unionists and right wing republicans vote for? Also, why is that part of the political spectrum void of major parties in Northern Ireland? --Belchman (talk) 13:01, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There are left-wing Ulster Unionists, including most notably Chris McGimpsey who frequently spoke at Labour Party conferences in the 1980s and 1990s. The Democratic Unionist Party originally identified itself with the left-wing in economic policies, although this is less so nowadays. Back in 1918 the Ulster Unionists set up the Ulster Unionist Labour Association to attract the support of working-class voters. Two successive Unionist MPs for North Down have been or become Independent MPs who normally align with the British Labour Party: Robert McCartney and Sylvia Hermon. As far as right-wing republicans, many have conservative views on social policies. Sam Blacketer (talk) 13:09, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There have been a few historical occasions when some working-class Irish Protestants and Catholics have found common cause in economic grievances against the English ruling classes, but the Anglican ascendancy generally found this to be far more threatening than Catholic-only disaffection, and took steps to effectively break up such alliances. The main Catholic/Nationalist-aligned party which could be considered somewhat "moderate" (though hardly right-wing!) is the Social Democratic and Labour Party... AnonMoos (talk) 13:15, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There was previous discussion of left-wing unionism at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 October 3#Left-wing unionism. Historically, large sections of Sinn Féin and the Nationalist Party were conservative, and despite SF and the SDLP both being nominally on the left, significant minorities within the parties support conservative social and economic policies. Fianna Fáil, which is broadly conservative and historically republican, had planned to stand candidates in Northern Ireland before its electoral woes set in; it attracted interest from some SDLP members, and Gerry McHugh defected from SF.
As to why no major parties are left-wing unionists or right-wing republicans, I know of no good evidence, but I would hypothesise that republicans saw many of their supporters discriminated against, naturally desired social change to rectify this; meanwhile, unionists in defending the union with Britain have tended to see this as good reason to defend existing social conditions, or have romanticised those from the period before the Troubles. Warofdreamstalk15:36, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Take the number of additional list seats off from the other parties' proportional entitlement — A party is allowed to keep any overhang seats it wins, and the corresponding number of list seats allocated to other parties is eliminated to maintain the number of assembly seats. This means that a party with overhang seats has more seats than its entitlement, and other parties have fewer.
It's unclear to me how a party that is already over-represented ends up with an extra seat and makes the parliament bigger.
Lets say there is a ten-member parliament with 5 constituency seats and 5 list seats. There are three parties who win the results in all the constituencies as follows: A 34% B 33% and C 33%
Under this result, A would be over represented because it gets all of the constituency seats giving it 50% of the parliament. How are the rest of the seats determined and where do the overhand seats come from? --CGPGrey (talk) 15:22, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There are numerous ways of doing this. For an example, the Scottish Parliament uses the D'Hondt system. To allocate the first seat, each party's total votes are divided by a number one more than the number of seats they already won. Whichever party has the highest total is awarded a seat. This is then repeated until all seats are filled. In your example, assuming that party B had one more vote than party C, of your five list seats, three would go to B and two to C. There is more detail on the Scottish system in this factsheet, but bear in mind that this is only one possible way of apportioning the seats.
I think that the section in the article is confusingly worded, and I'm unconvinced that it is appropriate to call additional constituency seats "overhang seats" in these circumstances where the size of the parliament is not increased. Warofdreamstalk15:50, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's the first example in the overhang article - "Allow the overhang", not the second one which you asked about above. In this case, the extra list seat was granted in order to ensure that each party still got the number of list seats to which they were entitled - it didn't come "from" anywhere. Is the explanation about this in the mixed-member proportional representation article any clearer for you? Warofdreamstalk17:05, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Destinations per airport
Hello,
since traffic seems to fall under economics (by the way, I feel the helpdesk categories are a bit in "questions about giraffes/questions about non-giraffes" territory) I'm asking this here:
Which airport currently has the highest number of destinations served with scheduled passenger flights, domestic and international combined?
Domestic connections from FRA are limited by the size of the country. My personal hunch is the boring choice ATL. Just wanted to entrust myself to the Wikimind's better wisdom!
Contributors to this forum did some research and found that Frankfurt has the most non-stop destinations overall, including both domestic and international destinations. Neither Atlanta nor O'Hare really came close. It's not so surprising, really. Frankfurt is THE hub for a nation of 80 million people in a part of the world with a greater density of cities than North America, and it serves in addition as a transfer point for people traveling to and from every continent except Antarctica. Marco polo (talk) 18:51, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Questions on Non-Disclosure Agreements
I have some questions regarding non disclosure agreemenent. They are contracts, correct? If that is so, then do the standard requirements of consideration apply to them? Also, what are the remedies for its violation? Breach of Contract? What sorts of equitable remedies are there? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rabuve (talk • contribs) 16:21, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but there are also external links and references which can be followed. Perhaps the answer lies there. Wikipedia is a starting point, not a destination, for research. --Jayron3217:52, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Does the VP of the US have any authority to give orders to persons in the US military? Presumably, POTUS could as the commander in chief but I don't recall that the VP has any official military capacity. Googlemeister (talk) 18:17, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cheney gave orders to the military to shoot down hijacked airliners late in the sequence of events on September 11, 2001. It is not clear either that he had the authority to do so. It is not clear that the military would have carried out his order. Edison (talk) 18:23, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The vice president has exactly two constitutional powers: 1) He takes the powers of the presidency if the president dies or is incapacitated, and 2) In the event of a tied vote in the Senate, the vice president can cast a vote to break the tie. Unless the president has died or is incapacitated, the vice president has no more constitutional authority than a street vendor in Cairo to command the U.S. military. Marco polo (talk) 18:40, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As a de facto matter, the VP can probably credibly claim that the President's travel during a rapidly unfolding series of events is sufficient "incapacitation" to make his orders credible. If I recall correctly, nobody including the President ever objected to or refused the authority of Cheney's orders to shoot down the planes on 9/11 during or after the crisis. There's probably a law review or similar article about it somewhere by now. But I hope to goodness that the military wouldn't let a VP launch an attack against foreign soil or forces without much clearer presidential incapacitation. 70.91.171.54 (talk) 19:06, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Railroad workers in gilded age in US
Does anyone know any statistic about railroad workers in gilded age? Anything like wages, hour of work a day, total death toll (anything death that related to railroad work including suicide if caused by railroad), % of death out of total workers, any other statistic would be helpful. Thanks.Trongphu (talk) 18:28, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
And statistic on injured workers. Total and %?Trongphu (talk) 18:30, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
