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December 13

Multiple Questions on Historical Sources

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone here could offer sources (journal articles or books, preferably online) dealing with any of the following subjects:

• The air war element of the Korean War.
• Mass killings of civilians before, during, and after the Korean War.
• The 1965-1966 Indonesian coup and mass killings.
• Reliable sources (i.e. non-conspiracy theories) on stay-behind and/or Operation Gladio.

Thanks, GAB^Hello! 00:48, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

For #1: The Air Force Historical Research Agency has a very detailed 62-page timeline of U.S. Air Force actions in the Korean War, along with lots of statistical information (aircraft losses, sorties, type of flight, etc.). For more of an analytical or topical approach, see the Coalition Air Warfare in the Korean War, 1950–1953, which transcribed the proceedings of a 2001 Air Force Historical Foundation symposium on this topic. There were four sessions of the symposium, which became four sections of the anthology: Planning and Operations; Air Superiority, Air Support of Ground Forces; Air Interdiction and Bombardment, Air Reconnaissance and Intelligence, and Logistical Support of Air Operations. Neutrality^talk 07:16, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• Mass killings in Korea, or elsewhere in the region also, or anywhere? Mass killings by the Koreas, or also by other states that participated in the Korean War, or by anyone? Lots has been written on the Nanking Massacre (our article cites a lot of stuff that looks useful), but that was thirteen years before the Korean War started, and the string Korea doesn't appear except in a couple brief mentions of South Korean government protests against something the Japanese prime minister did in 2006. Nyttend (talk) 23:55, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
• Hi GAB. For quick overviews of mass killings, Death by Government by Rudolph Rummel, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things by Matthew White, and Final Solutions by Benjamin Valentino are good places to start. If I recall correctly, they all contain sections on the Korean War, North Korea, and the Indonesian mass killings. Death counts and sources from Rummel and White are online here [1] and here [2] respectively. I've found some of the citations on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the No Gun Ri Massacre article useful, but I'm sure you know about those already.--Wikimedes (talk) 05:06, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Brill books question

Did Claude Garamond really cut this italic type?

On Wikimedia Commons there's a photo of a page from a 1540 book, a French edition of Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars, and published by Robert Estienne. The typeface is identified as being an italic cut by French engraver Claude Garamond (or Garamont), after whom many modern fonts are named. It is used on many Wikipedia articles on Garamond and his typefaces in various languages-indeed, I put it on the English-language wiki before I got suspicious.

I'm a bit concerned about this image, since I have seen a lot of sources saying it is not clear Garamond cut italic type until the mid-1540s while working as a publisher himself. The French government article on Garamond says he 'perhaps' cut one for Estienne, so it has doubts too, and of course the one supposed to be by him might not even be this. Warde (1926) thinks no italics until after this book was printed. Two modern books on the topic which seem to be relevant are published by Dutch academic publisher Brill, which I know gives e-book licenses to Wikipedia. I don't feel this one query merits me applying for one, so can someone who has one of those licenses look them up? They're 'The palaeotypography of the French Renaissance. Selected papers on sixteenth-century typefaces. 2 vols' (Vervliet) and 'Dutch typography in the sixteenth century: the collected works of Paul Valema Blouw'. I've cited both on the Garamond article, but I've only been able to read the bits on Google Books. The answer may not be hard to find - Vervliet lists notable books which used each font he was able to attribute to a specific designer.

As for the image in question, I doubt its caption reflects any modern research. It was bought by a collector in 1948 and transferred to Colorado College in 1981. Their website simply prints what the donor told them in 1981. (Claude Garamond is a well-known engraver of type, so my impression is that it was a bit too common in the past to attribute anything that looks nice in 16th century French printing to him without looking too closely at how it matched types he used in his own publications.)

I'm out of my depth here. I'm a sciences person with no formal qualifications or experience in historical research, printing, reading French-language sources or art history. But I feel that the attribution of this book to Garamond is more than doubtful and needs to be cleared up. Blythwood (talk) 07:12, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

What made 'liberals' rethink their stance of not attacking terrorists?

Why have liberals changed their mind about the war on terror? For example, they recently started supporting the idea of bombing the ISIS. --Scicurious (talk) 19:08, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

That question has an awful lot of assumptions and false premises wrapped up in it. Which 'liberals'? Where? When? Did they not support bombing ISIS before? Do they actually support bombing ISIS now? Is there actually a meaningful way to 'bomb ISIS', when its members tend to be intermixed with a non-terrorist civilian population? Is it remotely meaningful to try to lump all 'liberals' together as having a single viewpoint on anything?

More generally, your use of scare quotes around 'liberals' and the sheer ignorance of the question leaves me to wonder if you're just trolling here. In 2001, for instance, there was essentially unanimous support for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists among both 'liberals' and 'conservatives' (the lone vote against came from a House Democrat, but her objection was to the wording of the authorization, rather than to the use of military force against terrorists). TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:26, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Liberals are not supporting bombing the ISIS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Denidi (talk • contribs) 19:39, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

The split has been present a long time - see Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. My guess is that those in or near power tend to enjoy exercising their bombing prerogatives, while those further from it tend to find more reason for reflection. (Under those circumstances it is not difficult to guess who tends to prevail...) Wnt (talk) 21:53, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

It would be particularly interesting to see a study on that note — of course you couldn't do a blind test (hard to find placebos in this kind of setting, and no two chance-of-war situations are identical), but I can imagine a PhD dissertation being written about the extent to which legislators' and other politicians' support for or opposition to the use of military force (whether American politicians or those from other countries) is related to their support for or opposition to the politician or group of politicians that's advocating the use of military force in a certain situation. For some American examples, Republicans supporting Bush's calls for force and opposing Obama's, or Democrats opposing Bush's and supporting Obama's. Nyttend (talk) 23:50, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

From a liberal POV, bombing anyone is a bad thing, but so is allowing a genocidal regime to continue to commit atrocities. Thus, as the atrocities got worse, that side of the equation gained the upper hand. Note that this isn't unique to liberals, though. Many others might agree. StuRat (talk) 23:58, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• Jesus, Morgoth, & Joseph, can we at least demand the OP specify what he means by Liberal before ejaculating all over the place? μηδείς (talk) 01:30, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

No, we don't get to demand anything from OP (other than perhaps WP:CIVIL), but you may respond or not as you see fit. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:36, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

If I may respond as I see fit, what was the point of your addressing me? μηδείς (talk) 18:51, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I was responding to your question. You asked "Can... we demand...?" and I provided an answer of "No". The point I was trying to make is that respondents don't really get to make demands of OPs here. Respondents can leave responses, or not, but we don't get to tell anybody what to do, and we certainly can't prevent others from answering if they see fit. You can request a clarification of course. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:43, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Most American liberals supported bombing the Japanese Empire and the Nazis during World War II, regimes that routinely engaged in conduct that can be called "terrorist". Liberal support for bombing was strong early in the Vietnam War, though it faded over the years. But even at the end, the hardcore anticommunist liberals like George Meany supported the bombing, and there is little doubt that the Vietnamese communist forces engaged in what we now call "terrorism". Many (though not all) liberals supported bombing the Taliban in Afghanistan post 9/11. So, the premise of the question seems flawed. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:40, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

The Streets Of Ashkalon

In 1962 Harry Harrison wrote a sci-fi short story by this title, wherein a primitive race struggles to understand Christianity, and finally decides to seek a major miracle to prove God's existence: the crucifixion of the Missionary to see if he will rise from the dead on the third day. The name "Ashkalon" appears nowhere in the story except the title. I assume it is a biblical reference, probably from the Protestant New Testament, but cannot find it. The title is obviously a metaphor but to what biblical text does it refer? mcruss 14.137.92.225 (talk) 22:02, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

We have an article on Ashkelon, and also an article The Streets of Ashkelon. The place is mentioned in the King James Bible in Judges 14:18 (where Joshua slew 30 men) and in Jeremiah 14:5 (Ashkelon is cut off with the remnant of their valley) and in Zephaniah 2:4 (Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation) and several other places, but the most likely reference is the second book of Samuel 1 verses 19&20: "The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph."). [ I read lots of Harry Harrison's stories many years ago, and recall looking this up, but couldn't remember the answer until I looked it up again.] Dbfirs 22:28, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Ashkelon is not exactly unheardof to us atheist Catholics. μηδείς (talk) 00:56, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I was surprised that the OP wrote Protestant New Testament because that version tends to be smaller than some other versions, and the last mention of Ashkelon is in Zechariah at the end of the Old Testament, and the place is never mentioned in any version of the New Testament as far as I know (though I haven't read them all). Dbfirs 08:38, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

No, the 'Protestant' New Testament is not any smaller than the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox versions. The New Testament apocrypha you linked to are not accepted by any major Christian denomination. Unlike with the Old Testament there is virtual unanimity about the New Testament canon among Christians. - Lindert (talk) 09:30, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Which seems to imply that the second sentence of the lead of the article (New Testament apocrypha) is incorrect. Contact Basemetal here 09:38, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, or at the very least misleading. I will try to improve that paragraph; thanks for pointing that out. - Lindert (talk) 10:03, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for that correction. I wasn't intending to imply that the Roman Catholic New testament version was different, but I wasn't sure about other denominations or sects. There is, of course, some disagreement, even within Protestant denominations, over some of the other books. Dbfirs 12:30, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

References

Dbfirs had it. According to the book of Joshua, it was one of the five main Philistine cities, along with Ashdod, Gath, Ekron and Gaza. --Dweller (talk) 14:21, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Armenian constitutional referendum, 2015

Is there a reason that it was a referendum and not a plebecite? Is it merely that the former term is more common in today's English-speaking sources, or a WP:ENGVAR situation, or something else? Our referendum article notes that certain countries distinguish between them, but Armenia not being a primarily English-speaking country, I doubt that either term would get much local usage. Nyttend (talk) 23:46, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't know about Armenian but in some languages (e.g. Romance languages) there is a difference between a referendum and a plebiscite, the latter being a referendum used specifically to render legal after the fact an act of the executive that was originally illegal, e.g. a coup, e.g. French_constitutional_referendum,_1851. Contact Basemetal here 01:02, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

1996 U.S Presidential Election

Why did Bob Dole lose to Bill Clinton in the 1996 U.S election? --Röladix (talk) 23:59, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

See United States presidential election, 1996. Note that Clinton was the incumbent, and defeating a President in office is an uphill battle (although Clinton managed to beat incumbent Bush Senior, just 4 years before, probably for violating his "Read my lips, no new taxes" pledge). Dole's age may have also played a role, with a similarly aged Reagan having Alzheimer's disease shortly after leaving office, and perhaps while still in. StuRat (talk) 00:03, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Another factor is that people just liked Clinton more than Dole. Bob Dole is not Mr. Personality. He even parodied that aspect of himself on TV. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:26, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• Ross Perot is sometimes cited as a spoiler candidate – his party appealed primarily to Republican voters and took about 8% of the vote which would otherwise mostly have gone to Dole (or not gone out at all). However, that was a big drop from his 18% in 1992 (where he had a bigger impact), and I don't know whether Dole would have carried many more states without Perot's intervention. Smurrayinchester 16:26, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

(Just checked. If Perot had dropped out, and every single Perot voter had then voted Dole, he would have won Ohio, Wisconsin (by 0.1%), Missouri, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Oregon, Kentucky, Arizona and Tennessee. That's 21 + 11 + 11 + 23 + 4 + 7 + 8 + 8 + 11 = 104 electoral college votes, which would give Clinton 275 and Dole 263. Still not quite enough to give Dole victory, but a much closer battle (especially if Dole managed to snag the now razor-thin marginal of New Hampshire), which would almost certainly end with months of chad-checking in Wisconsin.) Smurrayinchester 22:01, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

(It's also worth noting that Clinton was a Southerner, which probably helped him in the Republican heartland – Clinton took more southern states than any Democrat since. That got him quite a few electoral college votes, including 25 from Florida, 11 from Tennessee and 9 from Louisiana) Smurrayinchester 16:36, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

StuRat, Why should a president be blamed for taxes, and area in which (s)he has practically zero authority? I thought taxation was purely the domain of congress? What was Bush Snr supposed to do, use his presidential veto powers? 101.188.33.181 (talk) 20:57, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

He had in fact promised to do just that. --Trovatore (talk) 22:07, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

By the way, 101, you seem to geolocate to Australia. You may or may not be aware that the veto is viewed rather differently in the United States than it is in countries that have supposedly-apolitical heads of state. In Australia or the United Kingdom, the royal veto is a reserve power, theoretically possible but not considered justifiable except in rather extreme circumstances. In Italy, there is a middle position; the president of Italy is expected to serve as garante della costituzione and veto legislation if it is unconstitutional, but is not supposed to veto legislation just because he/she disagrees with it as policy.

In the United States, however, the veto is a genuine political tool. For the most part a president is unembarrassed to veto legislation on pure policy grounds. To be sure, the side that supported the legislation will often try to spin it differently, but it has little effect. --Trovatore (talk) 22:12, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

It should be noted that in the early American republic, the president typically only used the veto when he believed that the legislation was unconstitutional (along the lines of the current Italian model). The first six presidents used the veto power only ten times - it was not until Andrew Jackson and John Tyler that presidents started to use the veto for political/policy reasons. Neutrality^talk 17:15, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Neutrality. I had some vague notions that something along those lines might be true but I didn't know details.

Indulging in a personal reflection here, for the most part I despise Jackson for his invention of the Imperial Presidency, but in this one area I have to give him a little credit. It's a good thing to have more hurdles to passing legislation; most legislation is bad. (The flip side is that it sometimes encourages legislators to pass bills for show, knowing they will be vetoed, so they don't have to worry about the details too much.) --Trovatore (talk) 19:41, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

The President is blamed for everything, including the weather. Although, as discussed above, he could have vetoed tax increases (whether doing so would have been wise is another matter). A substantial part of the modern Republican Party views any tax increase ever as an unpardonable sin, and although this sentiment wasn't quite as strong back then it definitely existed (for instance Grover Norquist has been pushing this dogma since the '80s). --71.119.131.184 (talk) 05:55, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point. GHWB promised to veto any tax increase, and then he didn't. Here's what he said, from our read my lips, no new taxes article:

And the Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say, to them, "Read my lips: no new taxes."

Now, that is absolutely a direct promise to veto any tax increase. It's true that he doesn't use the word "veto", but there's nothing else it can mean. He made an explicit promise and unequivocally broke it. There is no question that that cost him a huge number of votes in 1992. --Trovatore (talk) 18:03, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Agreed, it was the broken promise that was the problem, not the actual tax increase. StuRat (talk) 07:24, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

December 14

Balanced View & Candice O'Denver

Dear Wiki:

Oddly, Wikipedia does not have any information on the 'Balanced View' Cult and it's leader Candice O'Denver.

Even more odd is that all information on the internet except the official 'Balanced View' and 'Candice O'Denver' website is unavailable. A complete blackout - wow!

Who is this Candice O'Denver? What are some facts about 'Balanced View'?

Thanks Much!

-P.H. Siegel — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.127.222.235 (talk) 00:07, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Most stuff that's out there isn't on the Internet or Wikipedia.Itsmejudith (talk) 10:11, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

One independent review of one of their meetings is here. Ghmyrtle (talk) 12:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Elected Female Saudis?

We've currently got the first local elections allowing Saudi women to vote at ITN;

and this: http://news.yahoo.com/woman-wins-seat-mecca-municipal-council-saudi-polls-054406124.html;_ylt=AwrXgCMdg21WGCYAJhDQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByM3V1YTVuBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMzBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--;

saying they Saudis are proud to have their first women office holders. Leaving out the proud part as POV, is the implied fact part true, that until now no women Saudis have ever held elected office before? Thanks. (My underlying point is that if this is true, ITN should reflect the fact.) μηδείς (talk) 00:51, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

It appears that in 2005, two Saudi women were elected to the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce & Industry (40,000 members, 3,000 women), and one woman was elected to the board of the Saudi Council of Engineers (5,000 members, 20 women). here and here

Norah Al Faiz was the first Saudi woman to hold a cabinet post (vice minister of education, 2009), but this was an appointed post, not an elected one.

In 2006 the Shura Council appointed six women as advisers, and by 2011 that number had risen to 12, but women advisers have no right to vote (see Human Rights Watch).

So this most recent election does seem to be the first time Saudi women have been elected to government posts, although since Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy and the local councils have no lawmaking power, it may not be all that more significant than the earlier elections to the professional bodies. Neutrality^talk 02:21, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

What is the proper name for the priest's script in a Roman Catholic Church mass?

When a priest celebrates a mass in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, he speaks according to a certain "script". In other words, in every mass, the priests all say the same words verbatim, for the most part. Does this "script" have a name? And a Wikipedia article? Thanks. 2602:252:D13:6D70:455D:E1EF:3361:ED2 (talk) 01:19, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Missal. See also Liturgical books of the Roman Rite. Note that not all Masses are the same, but they're still standardised; different days have different "scripts", but the priest always has a script to follow. Nyttend (talk) 01:20, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

The specific script is one of the various liturgies, and not all "Catholic" missals carry the same liturgies. See, for example the Ruthenian Recension, a version of the liturgy of the normally "Orhtodox" Saint John Chrysostom used by us Byzantine Catholics. μηδείς (talk) 01:36, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! My next question: Recently (perhaps 2 or 3 years ago?), they (whoever "they" is) changed some of the words that the church congregation speaks during certain parts of the Mass. For example, in the olden way of doing it, the priest would say "the Lord be with you" and the congregation would respond "and also with you". But, with the new changes, the congregation now responds "and with your spirit". There are several other of these minor wording changes. So, why were these changes made? And is there an article about that? Thanks. 2602:252:D13:6D70:455D:E1EF:3361:ED2 (talk) 04:01, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

See Dominus vobiscum and Liturgiam authenticam. In the original Latin mass, the priest says "Dominus vobiscum" or "Pax vobis" ("Lord be with you" or "Peace be with you"), and the response is "Et cum spiritu tuo" ("and with your spirit"). When Vatican II replaced the Latin mass, this was translated as "And also with you", which fits the meter quite nicely, but isn't a literal translation. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI were both quite conservative and didn't really like the idea of translating the mass loosely, so they prescribed a literal translation. John Paul II's Vatican started the process, but the official translations came out after his death (which means that Benedict gets more of the praise/blame for the change than he perhaps deserves). Smurrayinchester 10:37, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. But hasn't it been like that (the old way) for many hundreds of years? Why, all of the sudden (in 2005 or whenever), did it start to get attention? Thanks. 2602:252:D13:6D70:14C4:9303:8519:D32A (talk) 17:05, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Does this [3] help? They change things when they want to. By "the old way" do you mean the response "and also with you"? If so, then no, it had not been that way for hundreds of years. Prior to Vatican II, Catholic mass was generally given in Latin, and so "and also with you" would not be the response. Ask some Catholics, those that remember mass before Vatican II will likely be happy to discuss how bad/good it was, and how things are the same/different now. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:57, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Here is the article for Second Vatican Council (often referred to as "Vatican II"), which led to huge changes in Church practices. For the OP, you're going to have to do some reading if you want to learn the history of Catholic practices. The Catholic Church is a top-down affair. The services, rites, etc. are all officially defined and published by the church hierarchy, so for any question along the lines of "When did the Church start doing this?" you should be able to find the document(s) setting out the change, though you might have to do a bit of digging. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 23:47, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Very helpful information! To anyone who is interested, I am also posting a (tangentially related) follow up question below (under the heading "Why are certain saints' names listed in the Roman Catholic Missal?", dated December 15, 2015). Thanks again. 2602:252:D13:6D70:14C4:9303:8519:D32A (talk) 03:54, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Discrimination in abortion

1. How many are aborted because they have a disability (like Down syndrome)? 2. How many are aborted due to their gender? 3. Is there a link between lack of religion and high discrimination in abortion (not just in China)? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jangan Perkauman (talk • contribs) 08:53, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

The term to use is "sex", not gender. A fetus has a sex, but not a gender. Our article on sex-selective abortion is a good starting point. Here are some specific scholarly studies you might be interested in. One about these issues in the Netherlands [4], one very long study about patterns in India [5], and one about India-born mothers in England [6]. I did not see anything about lack of religion linked to more sex-selective abortion. If anything, the opposite. In the India study, Urban/rural splits, education, and region have much more impact on the practice than religion. Table 6.27 shows no strong differences between Hindus and Muslims in "ideal" sex ratio preference - both skewed strongly toward males, while "other" (which I think includes atheists/non-religious) has a preferred sex ratio that is closer to even. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:18, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Sex and gender distinction has some drawbacks - it seems to replace a Procrustean bed with a Procrustean mattress and a Procrustean pillow, since there are many unrelated characteristics and so many intermediate values. [7] And it is all so ... semantic. Abortions in these countries are based entirely on the social status and economic effects of their "sex", which is to say, their gender, so why call it sex-selective? I'd think 'sex-selective' would be more like an abortion done to avoid the chance of an X-linked recessive genetic disease, perhaps. Wnt (talk) 16:14, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the biases toward/against a fetal sex are likely due to gender biases. Still, I (and most dictionaries, and most biologists) prefer reserve "sex" for the biology bit, and "gender" for the social bit. A bit off topic, and I probably shouldn't have opened with the quibble. "Sex-selective" is what it's called in the literature, and so I thought the wording distinction might help OP and others find the relevant info. Searching for /gender abortion/ gets you results about men's and women's view on abortion, while searching for /sex abortion/ gets hits that talk about preferentially aborting female fetuses. Of course it's a semantic distinction; we're talking about the meaning of words. And on that topic I can't stand when people use "semantics" to mean "unimportant" or "not worth discussing" - knowing what we're talking about and what words mean is very important for effective communication in science! :) SemanticMantis (talk) 16:39, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Genetics_and_abortion is our article relevant to selective abortion related to disability of the fetus. "Disability-selective abortion" will lots of useful results from google scholar [8]. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:25, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining the correct terms. Sex-selective abortion seems most common in China (where most people not religious) and India (where most people are very religious). But disability-selective abortion seems more common in the West, where Christians oppose abortion and non-religious people defend abortion. Hope we can find numbers for disability-selective abortions in the world or by country. What are views on disability-selective abortion in different societies? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jangan Perkauman (talk • contribs) 05:32, 15 December 2015 (UTC) <!-Autosigned by SineBot-->

You might find Female infanticide an illuminating article. The practice of abandoning babies (especially girls or disabled boys) is described by anthropologists as commonplace. We have articles about infanticide in several countries. Modern surgical abortions should not be understood in isolation. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 12:37, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

"Wharton graduate"

A presidential candidate in the Philippines is being criticized by another candidate for allegedly not being a "Wharton graduate". The candidate claims to have finished a bachelor's (undergraduate) degree at the Wharton School of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, a claim which was later proven by news outlets and the school itself. However, it is claimed that him being called a "Wharton graduate" is inaccurate as apparently the term only refers to people who completed a Master's course in the said school, while the candidate in question only finished an undergraduate course in the said school. The question I'm asking here is: is this practice accurate? Is the term "Wharton graduate" only used to refer to Masters graduates of the said school, or does the term apply to graduates of bachelor's degrees as well? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 14:09, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a silly objection to me. Wharton's web page [9] prominently shows their undergraduate programs. Sounds like some politicians are just playing games and not respecting compositional semantics. Put simply, being a "Wharton graduate" means only that one graduated from a place called Wharton - nothing more, nothing less. It may be true that some people shorten "I have an MBA from Wharton" to "I'm a Wharton graduate", but that doesn't make it incorrect to say that you graduated from Wharton if indeed you received a b.s. from Wharton. Now, you might get in to trouble if you graduated from Wharton_County_Junior_College, and said "I'm a Wharton grad" - you'd still be telling the truth, but in this case it could be argued that people will naturally expect that the world-famous school is meant, not the semi-obscure junior college. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:32, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Agree. In English "graduate" is usually defined as follows:

noun ˈɡraj(ə)wət/

1. A person who has successfully completed a course of study or training, especially a person who has been awarded an undergraduate academic degree.

[...]

So if he has been awarded an undergraduate degree, he is a graduate of that school, in the normal usage of the word "graduate" of the English language. --Lgriot (talk) 16:03, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

This might turn out to get tricky. At issue is that undergraduates are enrolled in the university, where Wharton offers a concentration of coursework. But are economics majors enrolled in the Wharton school, and do they graduate from there? I have no idea, but I'd be wary of easy answers in this kind of semantic pit. Wnt (talk) 16:07, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm tempted to believe that this [10] is a fairly reliable source, and if so then Wharton/U.Penn registrar has said he's a graduate of the Wharton School at U. Penn. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:32, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

The thing is, my question is less about the definiton of "graduate" and "undergraduate", and more of asking if the claim that the term "Wharton graduate" is used in common speech only to refer to graduates of Masters degrees from the said school and excluding those who only finished a bachelor's degree is accurate. Are there any Wikipedians who are alumni of Wharton or the University of Pennsylvania who could clarify this matter? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 17:48, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I have nothing to contribute, except to say I was rather startled to realise that this question wasn’t about a certain other Wharton alumnus (or whatever) running for election right now… Blythwood (talk) 20:00, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

That's actually not as offtopic as it may seem. It seems Trump is likewise a graduate of the undergraduate and not the MBA program [11] [12] [13]. (To avoid controversy, I chose these sources because they seem to properly confirm he attended the undergraduate programme and not the MBA, I'm not suggesting people comment on other aspects of these sources except any that directly relate to this question.)

So is Trump (and his children, who according to one of those sources attended the same programme) commonly called a Wharton graduate? One of those sources refers to a classmate as a Wharton graduate, I'm presuming this is from the undergraduate programme and not because he also did an MBA. Likewise a search finds sources referring to Trump [14] [15] or one of his children [16] [17] as Wharton graduates.

OTOH, I'm not sure if most of these sources even know about the undergraduate programme. (Clearly the one writing about him doing the undergraduate programme did.) And definitely a search for Wharton graduate, if you ignore the stuff relating to this controversy or the graduate school or association or whatever, does find stuff about expected career earnings or possible jobs for Wharton graduates. I strongly suspect these are referring to Wharton MBA graduates only. So IMO< it wouldn't be particularly surprising if the aunderstanding most people have when you say you say someone is a Wharton graduate, is that said person has an MBA from Wharton. This is regardless of whether or not people feel that means it's inaccurate to say someone is a Wharton graduate, if it was from the undergraduate program.

Nil Einne (talk) 22:33, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Thinking about this, that is good evidence that nobody seems to think this is a problem. If Trump was exaggerating about being a Wharton graduate you bet someone would have mentioned it by now. Blythwood (talk) 06:24, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

How do you call someone who hate Muslims and Jewish people?

Both are semitic, but it seems that 'antisemitic' has the exclusive meaning of 'hating Jewish people'.--Ashortquestion (talk) 19:52, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I think it's fairly rare that many Indonesian Muslims or Malaysian Muslims or Pakistan Muslims are considered semitic, even if they know some Arabic. Nil Einne (talk) 20:06, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

That's because merely knowing or speaking Arabic does not make one Semitic, just as merely knowing the Hebrew language does not make one Jewish. Jewishness is an exceptionally complex case (see Who is a Jew?), but in the case of the Semitic people, one has to have genetic (= blood) connections with them to be considered one of them.

OP, it is not true that Muslims are necessarily Semitic. Many are, of course, but millions of people with non-Semitic blood have converted to or been born into Islam. Islam is a religion, not a race. Islam is fast becoming the predominant religion of Russia, and apart from Birobidjan, Russia has never been home to any Semitic peoples. There are more Indonesian Muslims than any other kind, including Arabs, and nobody with Malay or other South-East Asian ancestry is Semitic. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:23, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I think you meant to say "nobody with nearly exclusively Malay or other South-East Asian ancestry is Semitic", since it may be resonable for someone who's of half Arabic decent and half Malay descent (or whatever) semitic, particularly if they strongly identify with Arabic culture etc. Or to put it a different way, if they are considered an Arab, it's probably resonable to consider them semitic. And the former is definitely possible, just as such a person may be considered Malay. (Or I may be considered Chinese even though I'm half Malaysian Chinese and half Pākehā.) Otherwise I largely agree with you. My "rare" caveat wasn't actually due to this consideration, but to avoid confusion in case someone finds a weird definition that does include these groups. Nil Einne (talk) 22:26, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't say " Islam is fast becoming the predominant religion of Russia," They are for sure the second biggest religions group, if you are not splitting them in different groups of Muslims. And there is some slow growth in the Muslim population, but they are far from becoming a majority. --Denidi (talk) 22:28, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

"Bigots". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

"Partially anti-Abrahamic religiocists? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:25, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs actually has a good point here even if not properly explained. One reason why there's no good term to describe someone who hates both Muslims and Jewish people, or for that matterby the same token all semitic people, would simply because it's rare that such a categorisation is necessary or useful. Sure there are people who are like that, white supremacists for example, but they also tend to display bigotry towards lots of other people. Edit: And there isn't any particular reason to single out their bigotry for Muslims and Jewish people (or whatever) or put it in a category by itself. The earlier example, white supremacists tend to hate most people who they don't consider white (whatever some may say about just wanting to preserve the white race). While their hatred may be particularly strong for Jewish people, and nowadays often Muslims and perhaps also semitic people who aren't Muslims they tend to hate "black" people with equal measure. (Actually probably most people who display bigotry towards Jewish people and Muslims would also show it towards people they consider "black".) And it's not like they tend to be particularly kind to most East Asians, South East Asians or South Asians, or native Americans, or Indigenous Australians (actually the later are probably considered closer to blacks and the rest, except that other than Australian white supremacists, they don't really care). Nil Einne (talk) 22:26, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

The unusual term is explained at Antisemitism. Grayboard2 (talk) 21:58, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

What unusual term? Your linked article covers only a small proportion Dbfirs 22:44, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Antisemislamophobic. Seriously. The tedious old canard that "Arabs can't be Antisemites as they are themselves Semites" (which can come in several variants, e.g. the statement "The [Hyper Cacher] supermarket attack in Paris was about Palestine, about Isis. It had nothing to do with antisemitism; many of them are Semites themselves" spouted by Karen Armstrong here, among other places possibly; see this also) is doubly idiotic as (1) it is a fact of the English language that an "Antisemite" is not a "Semite hater" but a "Jew hater" and (2) since there are Jewish Antisemites, there would be no incompatibility between being both a Semite and a Jew hater even if "Antisemite" did mean "Semite hater" (which it does not). Contact Basemetal here 08:02, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

I came across someone like this on a newspaper comments section the other day and reported the post to the editors. 'Nazi' was my short description of the poster's viewpoint. It was pretty obvious. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:26, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Labour humor's so laboured. Contact Basemetal here 20:53, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

• This is a classic example of the Etymological fallacy, the belief that a word can only mean what its constituent parts say it must mean. In this case, people are pulling the part "semite" out of the word, and attempting to connect it to semitic peoples. The correct answer, of course, is that "Antisemite" as it is used by most English speakers, means "hates Jewish people", and does not include Arabic people. Of course, Arabs are not the majority of, nor are they exclusively, Muslim. Iranians, Indonesians, Bosniaks, Pakistanis, etc. are not Semitic in any way. So thinking someone who "hates Muslims" could be counted among "antisemites" is wrong on two counts: Antisemite, despite its etymology, really does mean "hates Jewish people", and most Muslims are not semitic peoples. --Jayron32 12:32, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

jefferson davis capture cartoons and photographs

hello: Jefferson Davis was captured May 10, 1865 in a womans coat....the press made fun of him printing cartoons and people made photographs. I have one of these photographs and want to know more about these photographs, how many were made? what did the people do with them (show them around as a gag?)...is there a Jefferson Davis library or archive? thank you gary — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.129.115.115 (talk) 21:39, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Davis may have been wearing a heavy shawl owned by his wife when captured, not as an attempt at a disguise, but because the weather was unusually cold. The incident led to mockery and propaganda cartoons. Yes, there is a Jefferson Davis Presidential Library. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:05, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Interestingly, Lincoln was wearing a shawl when he was shot, so it was not that exotic for Jefferson to be wearing one when he was captured. Edison (talk) 15:34, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

What's the name of this logical fallacy?

What's this called: A person has an opinion. They then shape their subsequent reading of data to reinforce that opinion, using "attack the source" or "could be a conspiracy theory; follow the money" takes on the data right away, rather than evaluating the data itself. Grayboard2 (talk) 21:45, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Dismissing claims as absurd without proving their absurdity is Argumentum ad lapidem. Or, declaring oneself an authority on a subject and using their own authority as an argument would be Argumentum ad verecundiam. There is also a list of informal fallacies you can peruse at your leisure. uhhlive (talk) 22:15, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Confirmation bias is relevant. The thing about logical fallacies and informal fallacies is that any given statement or behavior can be classified in many different overlapping ways. So while there are better and worse answers for this type of question, there is usually no single one "right" answer. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:17, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

This is not a logical fallacy. This is a bias. The bias is refusing to commit one's time and resources into studying the data based on one's world view. This is NOT a logical fallacy. A logical fallacy is when a person study a data and reject (or accept) a correct/wrong conclusion based on an incorrect logical deduction. 175.45.116.66 (talk) 01:23, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

This fallacy or bias is a cornerstone of politics. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:28, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

If they're assuming the data is wrong on account of its origins, that would presumably be a variety of Ad hominem. (Not to be confused with Ad hominid (which is what my spell-checker wanted to change that to), which presumably would be dismissing someone's argument because they are a damn dirty ape). Iapetus (talk) 12:46, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

December 15

Why are certain saints' names listed in the Roman Catholic Missal?

There is a part in the Roman Catholic church mass (toward the very end of the mass) where the priest reads off the names of some saints (perhaps six or seven). Off the top of my head, I think I remember: St. Felicity, St. Perpetua, Saint Sixtus, and St. Linus (I think, but I could be wrong). My question is: why are these specific saints named in the Roman Catholic Missal? From the many thousands of saints, why do their names get special mention? It always struck me as odd, since they seem (to me) like the more "obscure" saints, and not the "big names" that most people are familiar with. Thanks. 2602:252:D13:6D70:14C4:9303:8519:D32A (talk) 03:59, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

This is explained at Roman Canon; knowing nothing of it myself, it appears that the text covers founding figures, early Popes, martyred Popes, and then a few miscellaneous martyrs at the end who are least explicable - John and Paul, Saints Cosmas and Damian. Much of this is in parentheses - I'm not sure if that indicates whether that is part of the text made optional (?) by Pope Pius V during the Counter-Reformation. Wnt (talk) 09:24, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, and Cosmas and Damian all had ancient basilicas named after them in Rome (Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls, San Crisogono, Santi Giovanni e Paolo and Santi Cosma e Damiano. Why those ones are singled out from all the other churches in Rome, I don't know, but I suppose they are were the Roman Canon was developed. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:15, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

You can also read more at Canon of the Mass and History of the Roman Canon. --Jayron32 12:24, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. That article (Roman Canon) states the names of the fifteen saints who are mentioned, but it doesn't really say why those fifteen are specifically selected for mention. Does anyone know anything further? Thanks. 2602:252:D13:6D70:14DE:69F5:F4C:EAE3 (talk) 16:09, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Are you talking about the ones in the "second intercession" section? Adam Bishop (talk) 17:33, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Second Intersession section, yes. It lists: John the Baptist, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, (Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia) and all your Saints. 2602:252:D13:6D70:14DE:69F5:F4C:EAE3 (talk) 19:43, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure...and from preliminary research, it seems that no one else really knows either, it just sort of happened. None of these saints are really obscure though. They're all among the earliest martyrs. John the Baptist should be super famous. Stephen was the first Christian martyr. Matthias was the replacement for Judas. The seven female saints are all, well, pretty much the most famous early female martyrs. But why those saints and not others? I don't know. Adam Bishop (talk) 15:13, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, it always struck me as very odd. I mean: a saint is a saint is a saint. It's not like one saint is "better" or "more worthy" than another. Right? My guess is that this list was originally promulgated for whatever (arbitrary) reason. And then, through time, it just "stuck". 2602:252:D13:6D70:1076:CA7D:442C:6841 (talk) 19:11, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Like for other parts of the Canon, these saints and martyrs have ancient churches in Rome too...for the most part: Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, Santo Stefano al Monte Celio, Santi Marcellino e Pietro al Laterano, Sant'Agata dei Goti, Santa Lucia in Selci, Sant'Agnese fuori le mura, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, and Basilica di Sant'Anastasia al Palatino. So it's possible that these saints were mentioned specifically because there were already churches dedicated to them in Rome. But there are plenty of other churches for saints that aren't mentioned in the canon, and I don't see any for Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Felicity, or Perpetua, so this hypothesis may not work... Adam Bishop (talk) 20:14, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, all. 2602:252:D13:6D70:258E:2FDC:D3C8:55C9 (talk) 15:40, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

dictatress

WERE there dictatress?--87.7.180.212 (talk) 16:05, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Yup. --Jayron32 16:14, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

I like the form "dictatrix", and its plural "dictátrices". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:18, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Hm, "dictatrix" was lacking from the list of -rix words on wiktionary [18], but I added it by putting a suffix template on the dictatrix page at wiktionary. The category is surely lacking a few others, so as a fellow enthusiast, perhaps you'd care to help fill out the list :) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:08, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

There was Jezebel.—Wavelength (talk) 21:29, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

You might (or might not) be interested to know that "dictatress" has been in use in the English language since 1677, and "dictatrix" since 1623. Dbfirs 21:40, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

I am. Is this from OED? Do they give the actual sentences or at least references for those first occurrences? Just curious who was worried about dictatresses/dictatrices (dictatrixes?) in the 17th c. Contact Basemetal here 05:41, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

"Dictatrix, a woman commanding things to be don" ([19]). More often in literature in the figurative it seems. Only about 450 years later the introduction of the word "macho" in the discussion would be making the score even! (Pig alone seem to have never achieved it [20]. )--Askedonty (talk) 07:16, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Looks like the first 1623 occurrence of "dictatrix" is as a lemma in a dictionary. There's no guarantee that the term was really already in use. It is suspicious that it occurs as a dictionary lemma before it occurs in a real text. Is the word "dictatrix" ever used in Latin? If used in Latin, it could only mean a dictator's wife or be used metaphorically, since women were not eligible to become dictator, consul, praetor, etc.Contact Basemetal here 09:38, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct that the 1623 mention is from another dictionary. The first cited actual usage in the OED is " The Church of Rome which is the great dictatrix of dogmaticall resolutions ..." from Theologia eklektike by Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down and Connor in 1647. Byron and Scott used dictatress in 1809 and 1827 respectively. Dbfirs 19:08, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

There it sounds as if dictator/dictatrix is used as "someone who dictates", not in the modern sense of a supreme political ruler. Contact Basemetal here 19:29, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

In the Western Empire certainly (which of course was the Latin speaking half), but look to Ulpia Severina as a possible exception to those rules. Also, the Eastern (Greek-speaking) half of the Roman Empire certainly had women hold important political offices in their own right, i.e. Irene of Athens, Zoë Porphyrogenita and her sister Theodora Porphyrogenita. --Jayron32 14:05, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

The Roman playwright Plautus used the word "dictatrix" in one of his comedies, but as a joke. Still, that means it was apparently a recognizable word even in pre-imperial Latin. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:36, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

That would fall under the metaphorical use I suggested. I don't think Roman emperors had dictator imperium. In fact I think they only had 12 lictors, just like the consuls. The last dictator was the first C. Julius Caesar. Contact Basemetal here 17:23, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

December 16

What's the name of this logical fallacy?

When someone from the perspective of the alternative medicine claims that mainstream medicine does not work, and cites some medical errors.--Scicurious (talk) 02:25, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

This is not a logical fallacy but an informal fallacy known as hasty generalization. --Jayron32 02:42, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Cherry-picking data is a cornerstone of conspiracy theories. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:02, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Good call, Cherry picking (fallacy) is the relevant article, a subcategory of the hasty generalization. Of course, cherry picking has a sense of "intent to deceive" to it; where as the other doesn't. --Jayron32 12:50, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

It could be intent to deceive, or it could be sincere but wrongheaded. I recall in the Apollo Hoax debate here some years ago, the circular reasoning used by the Hoax believers: That these little tidbits of what they considered "proof" that the government lied, had rational explanations; and that those explanations were unacceptable, because they came from the government, and the government lied. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:01, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

That's a different fallacy. Cherry picking is an informal fallacy, that is one based on incorrect information; not on logic, which is the way information is used to prove or disprove a proposition. Circular reasoning is different; it is an actual logical fallacy (or more properly a formal fallacy), which is based on misuse of logic; that is it doesn't depend on the information but rather on the process used to connect the information to a conclusion. The confusion between informal and logical fallacies is common (the OP has made it twice now in consecutive days). The best way to explain the difference is that a logical fallacy is an error in process, but an informal fallacy is an error in input. There are two ways one can reach an unsound conclusion: One can start with good information, but misuse the processes necessary to draw the conclusion (that's a logical fallacy), or one can use sound logic, but starting with bad information leads to bad results (that's an informal fallacy). From the Wikipedia article titled formal fallacy: "A formal fallacy is contrasted with an informal fallacy, which may have a valid logical form and yet be unsound because one or more premises are false." --Jayron32 13:19, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Informal fallacy: All men are alive. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is alive. If you grant the premises, the conclusion is obvious; we get a bad conclusion because the premises are bad. A different formal fallacy: All women are alive. Socrates is not a woman. Therefore, Socrates is not alive. A good conclusion, but bad logic, because if you insert the name of a living man, you'll get two correct premises, but your conclusion will be wrong. Nyttend (talk) 17:32, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

There's a bit of nirvana fallacy as well, since every human endeavor ever has involved errors. "Errors happen" is meaningless information. What is important is the rate and seriousness of errors and how they compare with the benefits. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 13:49, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Hawaiian Royal at British Coronation

In 1911, Abigail Campbell Kawānanakoa, the widow of Prince David Kawānanakoa but an American citizen by law, was invited to attend the coronation of George V because of her royal connections (news story here). That makes me wonder, during the event did she only attend as a private citizen (with no preferential treatment)? Who decided the guest list for the 1911 coronation? Who sent out invitations and what were the criteria for choosing someone? Besides the obvious heads of states and foreign royals of incumbent world monarchies were other non-reigning/deposed royalties considered? Also can anybody help me find British news coverage of her presence at the coronation?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 06:35, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Here is a source (actually an abstract of a source, but it gives you a title and bibliographic info to work from) which may be helpful for you. --Jayron32 12:45, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

The guest list at a coronation is truly immense, I haven't been able to find a figure for 1911, but there were 8,000 in the Abbey in 1902, all by invitation. Some idea of the list can be gained from this list of the 1911 "Procession of Royal Representatives, Royal Guests and their Suits", followed by the "Procession of the Princes and Princesses of the Blood Royal". In addition, there were a large number of Governors-General and prime ministers of the Dominions, colonial and Indian princes and rulers and colonial governors who took part in the procession through London on the next day. I suspect that your ex-princess was not very notable by comparison, but then there's not a huge volume of information on the web about the 1911 coronation - I'm trying to put an article together but struggling a bit.

As to who decided on the guest list, there was a Coronation Committee, [21] which was chaired by the Earl Marshal, but I suspect that they would have been advised on this issue by the mandarins at the Foreign Office. Alansplodge (talk) 16:59, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Would any US citizens be considered on that list? The notability in Kawananakoa's case to the American audience was because she was a US citizen and a former royal at the same time, but I don't know if the claims on the newspaper articles about her being the only American invited was true or not. --KAVEBEAR (talk) 07:23, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

According to this contemporary news article, there was an official delegation from the United States as well as many others. Hack (talk) 09:44, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Dates of Pastor Jack Graham degrees and appointments do not fit?

According to research on Pastor Jack Graham I am finding conflicting information on his degrees and his appointments as a pastor. How can he be studying in one place and pastor in another place at the same time? I found this information from 1970 to 1977 on Wikipedia. This was very confusing to me? Could you clear this up, please? Thank you for your time. Sincerely, crazy old lady — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FCC8:8444:1C00:B8CA:41EF:7A84:16C3 (talk) 15:46, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi, please don't leave spaces before paragraphs as it messes up the way your text is displayed. Anyway I take it you're referring to Jack Graham (pastor)? If so, I don't quite see the conflict you refer to in the early period. The article says:

In 1970, at the age of twenty, he was ordained pastor of his first church, married and halfway through Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree with honors.

and

Graham began his ministry as pastor of East Side Baptist in Cross Plains in Callahan County, Texas (1970–1971). Following his associate pastorate at Sagamore Hill Baptist Church (1972–1975)

As I understand US universities, per Academic term and other stuff I've read before, they generally start in September or perhaps August. And most degrees like the Bachelor of Science take 4 years for completion for a full time student. So if he was halfway through his undergraduate university study in 1970, this would suggest he was either in the end of the second year, or beginning of his third year. So he should have finished his study by August 1972. (Perhaps August 1971 if halfway was use more loosely and he's actually in the middle of his third year early in 1971. Or if he started at a different time then is the norm.)

Checking our article on Callahan County, Texas, it says it's in Abilene, Texas Metropolitan Statistical Area where the university is located. I haven't checked the precise locations of each one, but it sounds like it's easily possible these aren't that far from each other, so aren't really different places. So being the pastor at the church while studying full time at the university was probably possible if the demands on him as pastor weren't too high.

Next our article also says:

By 1976, he and his wife, Deb, had one son, and Graham was associate pastor of Sagamore Hill Baptist Church in Fort Worth, pastored by G. Fred Swank.[2] That year he also completed work for a Master of Divinity degree with honors from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. Four more years went by, and Graham received a Doctor of Ministry degree in “Church and Proclamation.”

and

Following his associate pastorate at Sagamore Hill Baptist Church (1972–1975), he went on to pastor First Baptist Church in Hobart, Oklahoma (1975–1978), First Baptist Church in Duncan, Oklahoma (1978–1981)

This is a bit more confusing as the years are a different (one implies he was still at Sagamore in 1976 whereas the other says he had already left). The Master if Divinity degree is also a bit confusing, although it's not clear what this entailed, it's possible it was done off campus particularly if it was primarily a research degree. Likewise precisely where he received his Doctor of Ministry degree from isn't clear, although even if it were Fort Worth, as I presume it was a research doctorate it may have been completely off campus. So this later section could do with some work, but it's only from 1975 onwards that the confusion begins although it may simply be that it should be 1976 rather than 1975 or vice versa.

Nil Einne (talk) 16:17, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Stats for (in)effective use of pepper spray in self defence

Amazon has apparently been illegally selling pepper spray and stun guns in the UK. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/16/amazoncouk-banned-dangerous-weapons-found-sale There is an argument going on in the comments section of the linked news report, between those who think these items should be legal available for use in self defence, and those who say they would be useless because any prospective attacker would have them too and would have the element of surprise. Are there any actual (reliable) statistics for how these items are used in countries where they are legal? E.g. how often do people successfully use them in self defence, vs. how often they are used offensively? Iapetus (talk) 16:09, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Does this help any? --Jayron32 16:35, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

That study reports on the changes to rates of injuries to officers, of injuries to suspects, and of excessive force complaints following the introduction of pepper spray into three North Carolina police forces. I suspect that Wardog was more interested in its effectiveness as a self defense tool for the average civilian. -- ToE 03:42, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Anecdotally, that Uber driver used it pretty effectively on his violent passenger, in a news story from a few weeks or months ago. It would seem that, whatever the situation, whoever shoots first has the strategic advantage. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:43, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Anecdote =/= data. That is, there is no meaningful way to extrapolate any universal principles from one story. Anecdotes should not be used to make statements about general trends or greater truths. --Jayron32 13:06, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Soytenly. The OP asked "how often do people successfully use them in self defence?" and we know the answer is at least "One". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:21, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

How does the euro affect economic growth?

(1) The euro removes the cost of doing business across currencies (good for growth) (2) The euro doesn't allow interest rates to be finely tuned for every country (bad for growth) Which of these effects is stronger? Is GDP growth in the eurozone higher or lower because of the euro?--88.81.124.1 (talk) 17:03, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Euro#Economics contains much of the data you would need to draw your own conclusions. --Jayron32 18:19, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Are you interested in the effects of euro adoption across the entire eurozone, or in a particular country? For the new adopters, such as Lithuania (Lithuania and the euro) and Bulgaria (see Bulgaria and the euro), adoption is estimated to boost GDP in the long term. See [22], [23]. Neutrality^talk 19:39, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Which flag did Transnistria use between 1990 and 2000?

The post-2000 flag of Transnistria.

Hello,

Article Flag of Transnistria states that the current flag was adopted in 2000, using a version of the 1952-1990 flag used by the Moldavian SSR. Transnistria split from Moldova in 1990.

The article does not mention which flag was used between 1990 and 2000. Is anyone able to put this information in the article? Answers welcome at Talk:Flag of Transnistria#1990-2000 flag. (Copied from the talk page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology by Skogsvandraren (talk) 18:15, 16 December 2015 (UTC))

This 1999 book and this 1992 newspaper article both refer to a green and red flag used after 1992.184.147.121.46 (talk) 03:32, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Flags of the World _ Dniestr Republic (Moldova) - Trans-Dniester Moldavian Republic / Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublika has quite a detailed article comprising a number of posts by editors and quotes from various sources. A note added before January 1997 says "The flag of the Dniestr Republic is identical to that of the old Moldavian SSR." A note added in November 2000 says; "A flag was adopted officially on 25 July 2000 (but before several variants were in use)." As the new Transnistria flag and the Maldovan SSR flag are very similar, I expect that the "several variants" weren't too dissimilar either. Alansplodge (talk) 09:04, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal on Vietnam War 1967

2602:306:C40D:D670:A6:6E45:4FDF:9EAE (talk) 18:48, 16 December 2015 (UTC) I have received two articles from Wikipedia about the above subject. I was a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War, was shot down, captured and incarcerated at the Hanoi Hilton for more than six years. I am currently writing a book about my life. A POW friend during his initial interrogation when asked the names of his squadron mates at the urging of his interrogators said many of his mates were against the war and proceeded to name some lessor known movie actors like Tom Ewell (sp). It was purported that the North Vietnamese brought this up at the Tribunal . The NVN were embarrassed when it was revealed that they had been hoodwinked. Needless to say the POW paid the price when the NVN returned to Hanoi. I have heard that some reporter possibly from the NY Times in the audience, after enduring a boring assignment sat up when he heard the NVN pitch and wrote an article about it.

Can you find any evidence that the incident took place ? Wikipedia has been very helpful to my task, many thanks.

Allen C Brady

Let's begin by nailing down Tom Ewell and Russell Tribunal - we have articles on these... what we want of course is the raw transcript or video of the proceeding. It looks like the Russell Foundation is here, but I'm not seeing what I want at first glance. This links to the transcript of a lecture, not the proceeding, unfortunately... I expect for someone of your distinction either of these ought help with research... but we certainly should look further... Oh, also, I suggest you should consider registering an account. There's a feature that if you have User:Allen C Brady set up as your account, someone can write "{{re|Allen C Brady}}" in a discussion like this and you'll get a notification of it whenever you next log in. That way you can raise various topics and know you didn't miss anything before they were archived. And of course Wikipedia is lusting for whatever scraps of non-copyrighted Army source material or photos you've taken of historic events that you might be willing to donate. :) Oh wait, this looks more promising: [24] Does that look like I'm on the right track? (I still don't like the 'selected and edited' bit) Wnt (talk) 22:48, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

ART - TRANSLUCENT PAINTINGS ON THIN LAYERS OF ELEPHANT TUSKS OR ANIMAL BONES

WHEN IN INDIA I PURCHASED A PAINTING OF A "A GOD OF LOVE" AND WAS TOLD IT WAS ON A THIN LAYER OF ANIMAL BONE AND THAT IN THE PAST THESE HAD BEEN ON THIN LAYERS OF ELEPHANT BONES. I CANNOT FIND ANY DESCRIPTION OF THIS TYPE OF ART — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.75.227.100 (talk) 20:30, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Please do not type in all capital letters. It is the equivalent of screaming at people, and is seen as rude when you do so. Wikipedia has an outline article titled List of artistic media which may be a start for your research. --Jayron32 23:14, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Please do not complain about people who type in all capital letters. Doing so is seen as intolerant, petty, and pointless... Wnt (talk) 12:49, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

By whom? Use of the passive when the active would do better is seen as ... wait ...  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:11, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

I guess by Wnt, but few other people. Considering that many people have changed their behaviour when informed of such simple netequitte; and that in a lot of the internet including on wikipedia and including this reference desk, typing in all caps is a good way to ensure plenty of people ignore you post (in some places in the internet it may even encourage deletion), it's very weird to say it's pointless. Far more intolerant, petty and pointless is making dumb complaints about people offering simple resonable advice on how to ensure people actually read your comments or question. Of course, if people actually choose to write in all caps despite knowing the consequences, that's their choice, but the evidence strongly suggests the majority of people doing so are simply ignorant of the consequences not intentionally doing so. Nil Einne (talk) 08:07, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

It's just miniature painting on ivory. Couldn't find anything in WP, or elsewhere for that matter. Here's something but it's pretty old. Contact Basemetal here 02:02, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

There's a brief mention at Portrait_miniature#Materials, although it's only talking about European painting.184.147.121.46 (talk) 03:13, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Incidentally the "god of love" you've got there is probably (I can't be sure of course since I haven't seen your painting; it'd be great if you could upload a picture of your painting so we could see it) "the" God of Love, namely kAmadevaH who was supposedly incinerated by zivaH (I'm using Harvard-Kyoto here because I'm too lazy to go look for the standard transliteration characters). That's why kAmadevaH is said to be "without a body" (an-aNgaH). Nonetheless he is pictured in numerous paintings (presumably his likeness before he was incinerated?). One of his typical attributes is that he has a bow made of sugarcane whose string is a line of honeybees. The arrows are various kinds of fragrant flowers. His vAhanam is a parrot whose name I forget. Contact Basemetal here 09:55, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Kāmadeva, Śiva, an-aṅga. I prefer to use the combining stem rather than include the explicitly nominative ending –ḥ, particularly when (as in the case of Śiva above) the noun is not used nominatively. —Tamfang (talk) 08:41, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Are you saying the noun Śivaḥ, the name of the god, is not used in the nominative? There are millions of occurrences of Śivaḥ (and its numerous synonyms) being used in the nominative. But maybe I've completely misunderstood what you were saying.

This said, regarding the use of the stem instead of the nominative when referring to Sanskrit nouns in English, you certainly are in the majority. And noun headwords in all Sanskrit-English dictionaries I am aware of are indeed stems rather than nominatives. Nevertheless there are numerous reasons why the minority practice is preferable. Here are four: 1. the stem often violates Sanskrit phonological rules for the allowed finals so if you keep using stems you become accustomed to uttering sequences of sounds which are in fact impossible in Sanskrit 2. this practice is at odds with the common practice in all other languages (e.g. in Latin it would be equivalent to using "domino" for "dominus", "puero" for "puer", "urb" for "urbs" etc.) 3. using its nominative (or some other casual form if needed) when referring to a noun is the uniform practice of grammatical literature written in Sanskrit 4. for the stems in a, which make up something like three quarters of all nouns in the Sanskrit language, learning the nominative helps immediately remember if the word is masculine or neuter whereas if you only learn its stem you can't tell, you have to learn that in addition.

Contact Basemetal here 11:23, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

December 17

longest streetcar routes in world

TTC's 501 Queen streetcar route is the longest in North America but what about in the whole world? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.35.129 (talk) 04:59, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

The Coast Tram in Belgium. --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:55, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Belgium is quite a place for trams (streetcars); the Brussels Pre-metro is a weird system where the trams run in tunnels and stop at metro stations. When I visited in the late 1990s, it was a bit of a puzzle, because the trams were only marked with a number and when one arrived at the station, you had to run over to a very complicated map to find out where it was going. I'm sure information technology has moved on since then. Alansplodge (talk) 11:23, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Here's one seen in a pre-metro station in 2005, showing the destination endpoint Esplanade as well as the route number. A nice technique that most cities don't use is that the color seen on the rollsign, here light blue, matches the color used for this route on the system map (you'll find Esplanade just left of center, near the top edge of the map, and the route goes south from there). Similarly with the brown color on this route, which you won't find on the map since it is no longer operated. Unfortunately the STIB has abandoned this helpful practice, I suppose for cost reasons, for newer rolling stock on the system, which all has the same orange LED destination signs. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 05:45, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Damn! I never cottoned on to the colour code. Alansplodge (talk) 08:51, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

What made Greek/Ancient Greek such a major influence/factor on modern languages ???

What made Greek/Ancient Greek such a major influence/factor on modern languages ???

Even languages far different from their language, like all the Germanic languages for instance, have lots and lots and lots of words and vocabulary coming from the Greek language. I suspect even many languages which originate from other continents will be quite influenced by Greek. All these scientific words, as well as the names of so many animals and plants etc. If you look up the origins of a word, you'll so often find it stems from Greek. Why, and how ??

I know Greece supposedly raised many a philosopher and forward-thinker with theories and ideas, and which had a natural curiosity to match. They'd no doubt put words/names on many things, possibly before others had come so far, but it can't be that simple and it don't really explain why and how. The language's legacy is so widespread and such a big part of our every-day speech.

How and why did it come to be, to such a great extent ?

2A02:FE0:C711:5C41:BDE4:E107:4A9A:F02C (talk) 12:59, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

See Eastern Roman Empire. --Jayron32 13:03, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

And even before the empire split, Greece was an especially valued part of the Roman Empire (see Roman Greece) and the countries were close enough that Roman and Greek culture blended into one Greco-Roman culture. Roman writers enjoyed and quoted Greek philosophers and poets (much of what we know of the Greek-speaking Sappho for instance came to us via Latin authors) and this helped establish Greek as a respectable language to do intelligent things in. This was especially important in the Middle Ages – if you wrote in your own language, no-one outside your borders would understand you (nor would many inside it, before spelling reform and the printing press standardized the language) but if you used the classical languages of Latin or Greek, most educated Europeans would. Smurrayinchester 14:19, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, Greek culture was so influential on Roman culture that they even rewrote their own origin story to include explicit connection to the earlier Greek civilization, see The Aeneid, which makes the Homeric epics into the prequel for the Romulus and Remus story. --Jayron32 14:37, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

The story of Aeneas and of the Trojan origins of Rome was probably borrowed from the Etruscans: see this. There's also a little at Etruscan origins (skip the first paragraph). In fact much of Greek culture came at first to Rome through the Etruscan civilization. Contact Basemetal here 15:21, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Interesting. Thank you! --Jayron32 16:27, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Basically because of Alexander the Great's conquests. Even though his empire fell apart after his short reign, most of the territory he conquered remained under Greek rule for some time. In this Hellenistic period, the Greek language and culture became dominant in a large area, and Koine Greek became the lingua franca of much of the civilized world, which persisted even after some of these regions were conquered by the Romans. - Lindert (talk) 14:32, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. Also not to be ignored in the influence on future Western civilization is that Language of the New Testament was Koine Greek, greatly influencing the status of that language among Western academics (who were mostly Churchmen for much of the early middle ages anyways). The Koine Greek New Testament and the Vulgate translation by St. Jerome both had a profound impact on the status of Greek and Latin in Academic settings in Western Europe. --Jayron32 14:37, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

When did European languages start using Greek lexical elements (along with Latin lexical elements) to produce new words in science, etc. (e.g. "astrophysics", "chromatography", etc.)? I'm of course not talking of Greek words inherited directly from Greek or through Latin, which were already in use in classical times (e.g. in their Latin forms "philosophia", "historia", "musica"). Was this already happening in medieval Latin? Or did that practice only start in the 15th c. and 16th c. when the West started "relearning" Ancient Greek? Contact Basemetal here 15:53, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

According to Classical compound, "English began incorporating many of these words in the sixteenth century; geography first appeared in an English text in 1535." Smurrayinchester 08:42, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Medieval Latin did not really use a lot of Greek words, unless the author was unusually well-educated - they tended not to learn Greek in the Middle Ages (when they start to learn Greek again, that's one definition of the beginning of the Renaissance). Or, they were using classical dictionaries or wordlists of Greek words, just to sound fancy, kind of as a game, without taking any consideration of meaning or context. That was popular in Hiberno-Latin with Irish monks. Adam Bishop (talk) 15:31, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your time, and for your answers. :) 2A02:FE0:C711:5C41:BDE4:E107:4A9A:F02C (talk) 16:23, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

travel to eurape

hi

i am living syrian near boarder lebanon

my family, cousin to leave. please. the best way escape route syrian eurape, germany or safety to country here we canott be stay here long danger

thanks you please — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.141.221.102 (talk) 16:04, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid we can't advise you on the best route. You can read the Wikipedia article titled European migrant crisis which has some information on common routes taken by people in your situation. This webpage also shows common routes taken, though we cannot recommend which is best or safest at any time, at least its some data on routes others are using. --Jayron32 16:26, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Maybe you can contact Pro Asyl and ask them. Their English site is here. To contact them it is probably best to use email: proasyl@proasyl.de. But if you are truly in imminent danger the best is probably to just go to Lebanon (even though Lebanon is already swamped with Syrian refugees) since you say you are close to the border. Contact Basemetal here 16:43, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Why isn't there much information about the Angles?

But there's a lot more information about the Saxons? ScienceApe (talk) 18:35, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

History is written by the victors. The Saxons established a hegemony throughout central Europe, with many important Saxon groups and leaders taking prominent leadership roles in the emerging German nation. The Angles never did so. The Saxons became one of the Stem Duchies of the German kingdom, and the noble house of Saxony became one of the most prolific in Germany. You can start reading about this history at Duchy of Saxony and follow information from there. The Angles never got established as a major political force, and were largely absorbed by other groups, mostly the Saxons. Most of the smaller Germanic tribes were consolidated into one of the larger Germanic groups during the early middle ages, either the Saxons or the Franks, the Bavarians or the Swabians/Allemani, i.e. the Stem Duchies. --Jayron32 19:27, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Then wouldn't the term, Anglo-Saxons be a misnomer since the Angle contribution to these people would be very minor, especially since the Saxons absorbed other smaller tribes equally as much as the Angles as you pointed out? ScienceApe (talk) 19:36, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

The Angles were a distinct group during the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, which is why they get mentioned separately there. There was also a third group, the Jutes, which were also involved in the Germanic settlements of England; their name gets left out of the term "Anglo-Saxon", but Bede lists them among the three invading groups, they settled in Kent. The Jutes were later absorbed by the Danes; their name lives on in Jutland. The Anglo-Saxon settlement mostly occurred during middle 400s to middle 700s; the Stem Duchies didn't really coalesce until the end of that period. --Jayron32 19:42, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm a little confused. So are you saying that Anglo-Saxons are not comprised of Angles at all? ScienceApe (talk) 20:01, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

No, the opposite. In the middle 400s, when the Anglo-Saxon settlement began, the Angles where a distinct group. By the middle 700s when the Stem Duchies were forming, they were not. 300 years is a long damn time. You've made the mistake of assuming all of history happened simultaneously. It's a common problem when people look back at the past. When they settled England, they were absolutely a distinct group. They disappeared as a distinct group some time later. --Jayron32 20:04, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

However, it wasn't all bad for the Angles, we ended up calling ourselves English rather than Saxonish, although the Welsh and the Scots still call us that. Alansplodge (talk) 08:47, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

As Richard Armour put it, the Saxons knew all the Angles. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:05, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Another way to put it: the Saxons who participated in the Anglo-Saxon migration were cousins of some of the ancestors of the Saxons who became prominent in later German history, but one shouldn't equate them. —Tamfang (talk) 08:44, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Note also the former were speakers of North Sea West Germanic whereas the latter were speakers of a form of Continental West Germanic. Another interesting observation is that Denmark used to be in the West Germanic area when the invasion of Britain took place and only later became part of the North Germanic area. Contact Basemetal here 11:40, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

One reason that the Angles may get neglected in the history of England is that while the Saxons used that tribal name for each of their kingdoms (Essex, Sussex, Wessex) the Angles didn't. Only the name East Anglia reveals its origin - but the much larger and more important kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria were also founded by Angles. Of the seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy three were Angle, and three were Saxon (with Kent being Jutish in origin) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.80.86.201 (talk) 15:47, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

There's also the issue that the major Saxon kingdoms (well, Wessex) largely survived the Danish invasions (excepting, of course, the times when they didn't), while the more easterly Anglian kingdoms were largely subsumed by the Danelaw, with only rump states left of Mercia and Northumbria. Of course, by that point in history (the 800s-900s, now almost half a millenium later than the initial Anglo-Saxon-Jutish settlements) the distinctions between Angles and Saxons was entirely inconsequential. That is, the ethnic distinctions that would have made Angles and Saxons a distinct people in the 450s when they settled England were meaningless by the 850s; there was instead by then a single "Anglo-Saxon" ethnicity (by now also quite distinct from the Continental "Saxon" ethnicity), as there arose a distinct "English" national identity, see for example Alfred the Great's unified plan for English-language education for the whole of his realm. By the early 900s, kings formally dropped the pretense even of "Anglo-Saxon" or "Angles and Saxons" (a formalism which had been maintained long after the groups had lost their individual identity) and adopted titles that indicated cultural unity, such as the title "Rex Anglorum" (king of The English) which was first adopted by Æthelstan (though how much he used the style is disputed a bit). Certainly by the time his brother Edmund I became King, the title "Anglorum rex" was fully in use. Later the style changed to "King of England", especially when used by foreign dynasts (such as Cnut and William I).

As a sidebar to all of this, it's interesting that Modern English, descended (with much modification and absorbtion of other elements) from the speech of the period in question, is most closely related not to the continental descendants of the Saxon, Angle or Jutish dialects/languages, but to Frisian.

I recall an exercise not too long ago where Eddie Izzard learned some Old English and then visited the Frisian Islands, where he was able to converse successfully with locals by using it (he bought a cow).

I've seen conjectures that at the time of the original invasions/migrations, the speakers of those related but perhaps not mutually intelligible tongues used Frisian as a lingua franca because Frisians, who had the most extensive coastline in the area, were coastal traders who came into contact with everybody else. (See also Ingvaeonic languages.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 18:07, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

The Ingvaeonic grouping postulates Low German is closer to Anglo-Frisian than to Dutch. That seems to go against Dutch, Low German and High German forming a single continuous dialect area, with Frisian not being part of it. Contact Basemetal here 20:44, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Regarding Eddie Izzard I am skeptical, but judge for yourself. Regarding Frisians, I don't know why, but German people think East Frisians (who no longer speak a Frisian language) are particularly dim. The East Frisian jokes are the German equivalent to Polish jokes. Contact Basemetal here 21:04, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

December 18

Shell Shock during WW1.

When troops had shell shock on the actual front line, how did it effect these troops? Did it alter their perceptions of the battlefield? --Vïtapalast (talk) 11:38, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Have you read our article shell shock (and its more modern diagnosis, post-traumatic stress disorder)? Shell shock manifested very differently in different people, but about 10% suffered Conversion disorder, which is when severe stress affects the senses. The article also mentions dizziness and hypersensitivity to noise, both of which would be severely disorienting and frightening on a battlefield. Smurrayinchester 11:59, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Some disturbing film exists of extreme manifestations of this disorder; see - British Pathé Shell Shock Victims. Alansplodge (talk) 13:49, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Between my wife and I, we had four biogical uncles who served in World War II. Two of my mother's brothers, and two of her mothers's brothers. One of my uncles and one of hers were killed, her uncle after 2-1/2 years in a Japanese POW camp. The two surviving uncles suffered from "shell shock" which interfered with normal family relationships for decades. War is hell. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:52, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Note that "shell shock" included both post-traumatic stress disorder and concussion/closed head injuries. As we know from recent American football studies, the latter can also have severe consequences, both physical and psychological. StuRat (talk) 07:18, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

December 19

carpet

There is a photograph with the caption "A meeting of Foreign Ministers about the situation in Syria is pictured at the Palace Hotel in the Manhattan borough of New York December 18, 2015" but I can't find an image of the pictured flooring using Google Image search. I am guessing is is a carpet. It seems so extraordinary that there would be an image of it online. Can anybody find it? Bus stop (talk) 02:11, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

[25] --164.215.104.173 (talk) 02:23, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that is it. Thanks. The design looks so much larger in the Reuters photograph. Bus stop (talk) 02:28, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, neither picture shows the whole carpet, so you may be seeing different parts of it. Possibly a similar pattern occurs in more than one place in more than one size. Also, note that the original photo seems to have been taken with a wide-angle lens, which somewhat exaggerates the size of things nearest the camera.

Here are two other pictures of the hotel's Villard Ballroom. On page 4 of this PDF document you can see a large table partly covering the central design feature from the original photo. And again in this photo a large table is partly covering that feature. That last table looks as if it would fill most of the space inside the U-shaped tables of the original photo. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 10:34, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Here is a pretty good picture of it. The original link I posted above no longer works. Bus stop (talk) 12:58, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Conference rooms I've been in are typically tight-weave carpeting. Tile or other hard surfaces tend to exaggerate noise and are less "cozy" anyway. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:08, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

South Korea: presidential or semi-presidential regime?

Article South Korea states that it has a presidential regime. But South Korea also has a prime minister. I'd always thought that any regime with both an effective non-ceremonial president elected through a general popular vote and a prime minister with a cabinet that comes out of parliamentary elections (e.g. France, Russia, etc.) is by definition semi-presidential. Wouldn't that make South Korea a semi-presidential system? If not, could anyone point to another presidential regime with a prime minister? And another thing: article Turkey says that it is a parliamentary system. But as far as I can tell it also fulfills the definition of a semi-presidential regime. Have I misunderstood something? Contact Basemetal here 10:08, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Turkey was a parliamentary system until recently, with very limited powers accorded its president. However, constitutional changes introduced in 2015 at the behest of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after his election as president have changed the nature of the regime, making it semi-presidential. Note that in the past, both Turgut Özal and Suleyman Demirel exercised significant power out of the presidential seat in spite of the regime being parliamentary in name. --Xuxl (talk) 10:33, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Citizens From Countries That Need Visas To Travel v Using Ethnic Profiling To Prevent Crime - Explain The Difference?

The passport that my wife holds, requires a visa to travel to most countries on earth. I am from a European country and hardly ever require a visa. She finds this completely unfair, and whilst I do sympathise with her, she understands that as her country is extremely poor and corrupt, a lot of it's citizens would like to leave and never come back.

But isn't this just the same as ethnic profiling to prevent crime/terrorism?

She has travelled widely with me and has always returned to her country (we both live there). Obviously we can go through the process of applying for a visas, but this is extremely troublesome and expensive. However, over time as she has visited more and more countries, the application process becomes a lot easier

But surely what foreign governments are doing is just a bigger version of ethnic profiling? Basically, they are saying either:

• The people in your country are generally very poor, if we didn't check you out in advance, you might not come back

OR

• We have noticed in the past some people from your country have overstayed, therefore you might overstay as well

So lets just substitute a couple of words, and then allow the police to use this logic instead of the border guards:

• The people of your ethnicity in this country are generally very poor, therefore you might be tempted to commit crime

• We have noticed in the past that people of your ethnicity are more likely to commit crime, therefore you might commit crime

Now of course, you can say that citizenship does not equal ethnicity, however, in many examples (especially in the developing world) this is actually true

In this day on age of political correctness, I'm amazed that the whole visa system hasn't be targeted as surely it is one of the last bastions of legal discrimination

However, if on the other hand, the visa system does work, then surely ethnic profiling should be adopted by police forces all around the world? Jaseywasey (talk) 17:46, 19 December 2015 (UTC)