Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 December 8

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December 8

Coronation

Who holds the world record for the most royal coronations in their lives? Usually a monarch is only crowned once but in some countries like the Holy Roman Empire, the Emperor could be crowned more than once.--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 02:30, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how many formal coronation ceremonies there were, but someone like Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor had an impressive number of monarchical titles, as King of Germany, King of Italy, King of Spain, and Holy Roman Emperor. That isn't even including his ducal or county titles which may have been "palatine" in nature, and thus may have counted as a ruling monarch as well. --Jayron32 04:13, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

There are no coronation of dukes or counts within the Holy Roman Empire or anywhere I believe. Only Emperors and Kings are coronated and then there were some kings, like in Spain, didn't have coronations at all. Charles V was crowned King of the Romans, King of Italy and Emperor, but Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor was crowned twice as King of the Romans, once as King of Bohemia, once as King of Italy, once as King of Burgundy and once as Emperor for a total of six coronations. Could there be someone who beat that?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 04:53, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Second time in as many days I've heard people using the back-formed verb "coronated". It's "crowned", n'est-çe pas? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 05:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The OED lists the verb "coronate" as 'rare', but has examples from 1647. The word is regularly formed, and instantly comprehensible: the only problem with it is that it doesn't happen to be in common use. --ColinFine (talk) 08:11, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Usage: The hungry motorist stopped his coronate lunch. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 13:25, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

A pun that doesn't really work unless you speak a bizarre dialect in which all the vowel sounds are completely wrong. 87.114.101.69 (talk) 13:54, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it doesn't work in my variety of American English either. I had to ponder for quite a while before I figured out the pun that was intended. Marco polo (talk) 19:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Do leaked US government documents carry intellectual property rights?

I stumbled upon this article on the WikiLeaks talk page: The U.S.'s legal options against WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. From what I can gather the first part of the article states that the government may try to use laws that prohibit stealing of government property to go after WikiLeaks. Now given that federal US government works do not generally carry copyright protection could these leaks still specifically be considered government intellectual property? Or would this fall under other laws specifically meant to protect confidential government intellectual property? –TheIguana (talk) 05:48, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

That would be a good one. Anyway, the US will always try to find a way of getting him. Although I think the problem is not just him, but the people behind him too. Getting him into prison won't do any harm to WikiLeaks. Quest09 (talk) 12:28, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

According to the article that you linked above, the copyright protection is only valid for US federal government for domestic use. This would be a case of copyright violation. Mr.K. (talk) 12:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

What? I don't see that in the linked article. Works of the US federal government enter the public domain. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Assange is possibly a copyright violator too (no pun intended), although this is one of his smallest problems. He could also be charged with espionage (on the top of that sexual crimes charges in Sweden).

"In general, under section 105 of the Copyright Act,[3] such works are not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law, sometimes referred to as "noncopyright."

The act only speaks about domestic copyright. The USA can still hold the copyright of those works in other countries.[4]"

Mr.K. (talk) 12:22, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

This is a nice article on the various laws and legal theories behind the "theft of government property" charge when applied to the dissemination of classified information. It's complicated and legalistic and doesn't have anything to do with copyright. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:44, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes. All documents have an inherent copyright except the government documents only have it outside the U.S.
Sleigh (talk) 03:45, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Not in general. The PD status is typically (though not universally) exported to other countries via the Rule of the shorter term (which, if applied, limits the protection of a work to the protection granted in its country of origin). Does anybody know if the US has ever asserted copyright on its PD documents anywhere in the world? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:04, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Is there an equivalent to the board of governor's waiver fee for the UC/CSU system?

or anything else like the BOG waiver?THISBITES 06:18, 8 December 2010 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thisbites (talk • contribs)

Have you tried contacting anyone at the admissions offices of any of the universities in the University of California or Cal State systems? --Jayron32 08:13, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad someone had a clue what the question was about. --ColinFine (talk) 08:20, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Irrationalist atheism?

All the major-league atheist writers base their position on rationalism and logic, but are there any who appeal explicitly to intuition and emotion? I ask because I recently read of a survey which revealed that more Britons believe in ghosts than in a deity, implying the existence of superstitious atheists. And of course many forms of historical paganism were essentially superstitious atheism, since "the gods" were utterly unlike later Abrahamic conceptions of an omnipotent, omniscient, personal thing. Since atheism and irrationalism/superstition are not conceptually incompatible, why is it not a more visible position? It would even seem in some respects to be a more robust, commercially viable alternative to the Dawkins-Hitchens-Harris brand, and immune to many of the charges leveled against atheism ("reductionist", "soulless", "spockish", "unsatisfying", etc.) There would seem to be an untapped market, a niche waiting to be filled by some Deepak Dawkins. Then again, perhaps stuff like Zen already fills this niche. Any thoughts? 166.137.9.3 (talk) 14:51, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The emotional argument for non-existence seems rather feeble to me. "Look into your heart... and you'll find zero existence for God." Just not very compelling from any standpoint, no? (I say this as an agnostic-atheist who indeed does not find God in his heart, but nonetheless finds that to not be very compelling on an emotional level.) I think part of the old difficulty here is that "atheism" doesn't say much about what you do believe in. Many of the atheist proponents are really advocating something else, e.g. a sort of extreme scientific materialism in the case of Dawkins and Hitchens. If I were looking for a more emotional atheism, it would probably be in secular humanism, which spends a lot of time emphasizing the importance of humanity (e.g. humans are all we have — no deities; this is the only life we have, so we'd better do it right; etc.), which has some emotional appeal. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:09, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Note that both Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are listed as secular humanists. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:13, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Speaking only for myself, I disagree. (Incidentally, it was I who posted the query, from someone else's computer.) Speaking as an atheist of the rationalist school, I nevertheless feel more emotionally "comfortable" with atheism, or polytheism, or a mere "republic of ghosts", than with the paradoxes and abstractions of Abrahamic theology, which are designed to be both confounding and overwhelming. Monotheism feels almost inhuman to me. It defeats you rather than simply constraining or challenging you. On an emotional level, I like the idea of being able to piss off one god and then escape his wrath by moving to the next valley over. To me that feels natural and right. Also, in my view, an atheistic animism is far richer, far more emotionally engaging and personally empowering, than the streamlined, top-down character of most monotheistic religions. I don't actually believe in any of these things, having undergone a certain amount of logical toilet-training, but I'm inclined to that kind of system. And I would expect that many other people would be as well. Wouldn't it be a unique selling point for a writer to say something like, "Monotheism is wrong and harmful because it blinds us to the richness and diversity... yada yada yada." I'm just surprised there isn't a lot more explicitly atheistic hocus-pocus, considering the increasing acceptability of atheism in many parts of the developed world, along with the persistence of superstitious impulses in the same populations. LANTZY^TALK 16:26, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I detect a certain strain of emotionalism in a lot of the popular atheism, of the variety "i couldn't believe in a god who allows all these horrible things to happen". that's not logic or skepticism, so much as spite. Gzuckier (talk) 15:32, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Nevertheless, it is related to a very persistent philosophical paradox. --Saddhiyama (talk) 15:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Of course you could argue that atheistic religions like Buddhism and Jainism are atheistic philosophies which appeal to intuition. Their followers would claim that they appeal to a spiritual reality thought. -- Q Chris (talk) 15:41, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

That's why I'm thinking that Buddhism serves this "market", which may account for the absence of irrationalistic atheist personalities. However, Buddhism is not explicitly atheistic. It often permits atheism, or at least nontheism, but it also tends to emphasize the irrelevance of the question. I doubt if any important Buddhist school has ever adopted an explicitly atheistic doctrine. That's what I'm looking for. Something explicit. Indeed, I'm not really looking for a "religion" per se, since atheism is not a religion but a philosophical position. I'm merely looking for someone whose atheism was motivated by emotion/superstition/intuition. Either an individual or a group. LANTZY^TALK 16:44, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Please don't confuse Atheism with a capital 'A' (the express belief that no God, soul, or other transcendent 'things' exist, which is often associated with extreme forms of scientific rationalism), with small-'a' atheism (a slightly stronger form of milquetoast agnosticism that is usually anti-religious, but not necessarily anti-spiritual). Atheists (capital-A) do not believe in gods, ghosts, ghouls, or other super-natural manifestations which are beyond rational investigation; athiests (small-a) might believe in such, but resist organized efforts to dictate what they do and do not believe. very different types of belief structures, those...

You're the first person I've ever known who has made a distinction between "atheism" and "Atheism". Candidly, I suspect you may have formalized and codified a distinction that is, in reality, merely figurative. To say that a person is an "Atheist with a capital A" would, in my opinion, be merely a figure of speech, much as if one were to say that a person is a "Vegetarian with a capital V" or a "Trekkie with a capital T". LANTZY^TALK 16:44, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

An atheist does not believe in gods. 213.122.17.78 (talk) 17:50, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Sort of. See Negative and positive atheism. Though, as Dawkins wrote, he doesn't think he's ever met a "strong atheist", the sort that affirmatively denies there can possibly be a god. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Hell, I'm one! If "X" is understood to specify a particular set of logically incompatible qualities, then I'll comfortably affirm that "X" cannot exist. I affirmatively deny the possibility of married bachelors, square circles, and omniscient omnipotence. It all depends on how one formulates the definition of "god". I suppose, given the fact that no definition is authoritative, it is actually impossible to be an atheist about every god! (Someone somewhere might use the term to refer to a waffle made when the moon is full.) But certain characteristics are pretty unanimously attributed to Him by His earthly fanbase, and the sum of those characteristics is logical incoherence. LANTZY^TALK 18:43, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

You can have a square circle in that you have a cylinder with its height equal to its diameter. That shape would be a circle when viewed from the top, a square when viewed from the side, and is in fact neither a circle nor a square. Googlemeister (talk) 20:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It's okay, Lantzy doesn't believe in cylinders, nor in light. But we have already established that a strong atheist position is one of emotion rather than one of logic, so as long as Lantzy never has to do anything important with photons or cylinders, and never teaches maths or physics, everything will be fine. They have a right to their beliefs. We only have to start worrying when textbooks come with "cylinders are only a theory" and "most scientists consider light a wave" stickers. 86.161.208.185 (talk) 00:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

What's a person called who cannot conceive of there being more than one god, but believes there's not even one god? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 18:02, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Heh. Strong atheism would depend on epistemological absolutism, which is way out of fashion (everybody knows it's unscientific to declare yourself infallible). That article needs to express this idea somehow, because its opening sentence as it stands fails to distinguish positive atheism from negative. It needs to say something like "is an absolutely false statement" instead of just "is a false statement", because we normally interpret the latter sentence as expressing openness to other possibilities, what with us all being habitually open-minded. 213.122.17.78 (talk) 18:09, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The big-'A', small-'a' thing was just a pointer, not a label. The real distinction here is between those who reject the notion of transcendent beings on principle (e.g. there is no evidence supporting the existence of a God, therefore rationality excludes any belief in a God - infallibility has nothing to do with it) and those who reject religious doctrine as oppressive (e.g. Religions demand a belief in God because that gives them control over people's behavior, therefore the dictates of liberal society demand that we reject religion and its preconception of God). The first is a scientific rationalist rejection, the second a Marxist/socialist rejection. don't mix your modalities. --Ludwigs2 18:30, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I think Nietzsche's atheism ("I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time", "God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him.") was not a rational atheism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.171.56.13 (talk) 19:48, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Not scientific rationalism, no. But Nietzsche was a precursor to Marx: his complaints about God were complaints about the way that religion misuses ideology to distort the thinking of the average man. --Ludwigs2 20:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think your "big A" and "little a" atheist definitions are necessarily mutually exclusive. They don't seem terribly exhaustive on the range of atheism either. They seem to make something binary that is in reality a lot more varied than that. --Saddhiyama (talk) 20:46, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The point is that we cannot take the term 'atheism' as though it referred to a single simple concept which can be questioned on its rationality. If you want to make it more complex than I did, that's fine. --Ludwigs2 20:57, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I second Saddhiyama - I think the distinctions proposed here are simplistic, moreover - pointless. The originally proposed distinction between a capital and a small-letter atheist was really a distinction between a real atheist and an agnostic or an opponent of organized religion. The second distinction proposed, the rationalist/social atheist distinction, is even worse (don't get me started on using "liberal-society argument" and "Marxist argument" as synonyms of "socially-based argument" and of each other). These two alleged types are not mutually exclusive at all: one big reason why religion is deemed oppressive by atheists is precisely because it forces people to believe and obey irrationally, renouncing their own ability to think. Conversely, an atheist may say that one big reason why religion is so irrational is because this is its way of being an efficient tool to justify oppression. "Social atheists" may say religion should be rejected because it's oppressive, but they certainly don't omit the "rationalist atheist"'s argument that its doctrine is factually wrong or unsubstantiated: obviously, they couldn't argue what God has been invented for if they didn't start by arguing that He is invention and not a real thing in the first place. Would they say something like "Yeah, I guess God may well exist and be about to kill you and burn you in hell for not believing in Him, but still you shouldn't believe in Him, cuz that would greatly hamper the development of the means of production."? The social argument just adds some urgency to the rational argument (claiming that it's not just a false belief that needs to be rejected merely on account of its being false, but also one of particular harmfulness to humankind). And modalities are a fluid thing: compare "You must be a good boy!" - "to freeze water, you must bring it to 0 degrees C" - "to be in harmony with the universe, you must be a good boy". Really, the only point of such a distinction in real life seems to be to allow atheists who happen to be right-wingers or apolitical to somehow disassociate themselves from atheists who happen to be left-wingers.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:49, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

There do exist "religious atheists" who believe there is no god, but do so on faith, rather than as the result of reason. A subset of the religious atheists are what could be called "bad faith atheists." These are people who are atheists, but only are so because they are mad at god. They really still believe in god because they do not have faith that he doesn't exist.

A person who philosophically calls into question science, uniformitarianism and the principle of induction on a highly intellectual level may also feel that it is a "leap of faith" to be an atheist or intellectually dishonest to claim that one knows that there is no god, and so instead is an atheist because they have, in their mind, made a leap of faith. Greg Bard (talk) 00:38, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The "mad at god" thing is only put forward by religious apologists. What you describe (no faith that god exists) is agnosticism. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 17:25, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Gustave Paul Cluseret

I am doing work on a Frenchman by the name of Gustave Paul Cluseret who fought in the American Civil War. I found a short biography of him on Wikisource. The writer of the biography referred to a biography of Cluseret written in the 19th century by either Jules Richard or Thomas Maillot (same person). I cannot find this biography anywhere, could I contact the Wikisource writer or could he/she contact me. I printed out this page on 12/1/2009, on the top of the page is written - Page:Men of the Time.djvu/270 - Wikisource

Thank you ``````` —Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.21.228.225 (talk) 19:59, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikisource is a sister project to Wikipedia, but is run independently of Wikipedia. What you need to do is contact the user at that site instead of here. To find them, you would click the "History" tab while viewing the article at Wikisource. There will be a list of people who contributed to that document. Just click the "talk" link next to any user who you wish to contact, and you will be able to leave a note at their Wikisource User talk page, much like you did here at this help desk. --Jayron32 20:54, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, be aware that Wikisource is different from Wikipedia in that it is basically digitized versions of public domain texts. That is, this is just a bunch of really old books. The person who entered the page at Wikisource didn't actually write it, they just copied an old book and put it up. So if the text contains a reference to another work, it is a reference used by the orginal author rather than by the person who uploaded the text. That original author is likely long since dead. It can't hurt to contact the person who uploaded the text in question, but given the way Wikisource works, it may not get you anywhere. --Jayron32 21:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and one last thing: Thanks for directing me to that article. Having read it, it looks like Mr. Cluseret was a really facinating character. I enjoyed learning about him. Another reason why Wikipedia is so cool. --Jayron32 21:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I cannot find the wikisource article form your description. Is there any possibility you could post the URL here? Thanks, --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:14, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Here you go. --Saddhiyama (talk) 21:21, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:27, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

breakfast food

Is there a cultural reason as to why beef, chicken and fish is so much rarer then pork products like ham and bacon in terms of breakfasts of people in North America? Googlemeister (talk) 21:51, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

According to Breakfast#United_States_and_Canada North American breakfast animals derive from those of the U.K. Historically in Britain, the primary meat animal for most of the population was the hog. If people raised and ate an animal for its meat, it was a pig. Other animals, such as cows (oxen) for work, or chickens for eggs, or sheep for wool, or goats for milk, were eaten only after their productive life in their main jobs was over. Pigs, on the other hand, are pretty much good for one thing: Eating. Thus, for most people in the U.K., the primary meat at all meals was pork. This sort of "stuck" for breakfast, since many other cultures which could have imported their breakfast-eating traditions into the U.S. don't eat meat for breakfast in any form. In otherwords, the only model the U.S. have for meat at breakfast is the English, and they historically ate pig a lot, and not just for breakfast. In many parts of America, I will note, steak-and-eggs is a common enough breakfast food, so it does occur that something other than a pig gets eaten. --Jayron32 22:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but Americans have adopted beef and chicken as their staple meats for other meals, yet for some reason have stuck with pork for breakfast. Why is that? Are beef and chicken too flavorful for the morning? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:08, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

When bacon became popular at breakfast (break-fast) pigs were breed with a lot more condition (fat). Fat is a very rich form of fuel. Early in the day, fat is easily metabolised by the body to provided energy. Carbohydrates are better eaten later. In olden days, one did not see the obesity seen to day. When people ate traditional meals made from seasonal foods, they were able to regulate their appetite instinctively. --Aspro (talk) 23:17, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a citation for that Aspro? While I cannot deny it is a possible explanation, it has rather the ring of one that somebody has made up.

Neither beef nor chicken are common for breakfast in England either MWalcoff, though they are both staples in the normal diet. I notice that most traditional breakfast meat and fish in England is smoked: bacon, kippers, smoked haddock. I don't think beef, lamb or chicken have ever been smoked very much. --ColinFine (talk) 23:30, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Introducing kippers and smoked haddock into the discussion is going off at a tangent to the OP's question. Fish is a high protein meal which was more fitting on the plates of the 'white collar' middles classes whom did not lead physically demanding lives. Bacon on the other hand is high density food. [1] ; [2]. Your question and scepticism, stands as a witness to the triumph, that the food industries marketing efforts have scored in winning people away from what was once common accepted knowledge. Someone remarked to me once, that Edward Bernays succeed in putting more Americans in an early grave than Hitler and the Japanese put together – and continued to repeat the feat every year. Think about it!--Aspro (talk) 00:58, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Aspro, the reason I mentioned kippers below (and presumably why others mentioned them) is precisely BECAUSE the original question mentioned fish in the very first line. HiLo48 (talk) 01:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it has to do with what takes longer to prepare? Smoked foods can be stored and be made ready quickly, but before refrigeration other meats would have to be killed and processed, and that would take too long. And even after refrigeration foods that can be prepared quickly would be preferred. Ariel. (talk) 00:32, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Kippers are breakfast food. They're pretty fishy.HiLo48 (talk) 00:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Kippers for breakfast? Is it St Swithin's Day already? Adam Bishop (talk) 02:54, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Could we have kippers for breakfast, mummy dear mummy dear? Got to have them in Texas, where everyone's a millionaire --Jayron32 03:11, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I do admit that outside of East Asian culture, I had not heard of eating fish for breakfast. Lox at a highbrow brunch, sure but not at a standard breakfast. The fast prep makes sense to me, since the traditional breakfast pork is in the form of cured meats, bacon, ham and sausage typically, and not porkchops or babyback ribs. Still, you would think that dried beef might fit in the fast prep criteria, and that is not common at breakfast in the US. I expect that it is then a combination between the fast prep and the lower cost. Plus bacon is very tasty. Googlemeister (talk) 15:06, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Dried beef IS a common breakfast food. See shit on a shingle. --Jayron32 15:10, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Modern Western breakfast traditions are not more than about 150-200 years old. Before that time most people had the same type of dishes for breakfast as for the rest of the meals of the day. That of course still makes it an interesting question why the various foodstuffs mentioned above are considered particularly "breakfast"-suitable, and considering the fairly short historical development, it should be fairly easy to come up with some answers. Are there any monographs on the subject of breakfast (that are not cookbooks)? --Saddhiyama (talk) 19:06, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Don't know about monographs, but there are various sites like this and this which make a start at explaining the meal's history. Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:04, 9 December 2010 (UTC)