Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 July 11

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July 11

Stochocracy trial runs?

Are there any experiments, of any scale or duration, with stochocracy in an actual governance situation of some kind? I'm particularly interested in relative levels of corruption from representatives chosen by lot from a self-selected candidate pool versus those vetted by election voters. I can't see any reason why less reputable potential candidates wouldn't see the exercise as a bribe lottery, defeating the purpose, but ordinary election candidates have the same failings very often too, and perhaps ambition and corruptibility go hand-in-hand. I suppose it all depends on whether a large enough proportion of high quality candidates stand for ... selection. 75.166.197.187 (talk) 01:25, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Here's a successful attempt at it, on a small scale.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:27, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

European Communities Commission members

I have a picture of an unknown date (but probably early 1990s) showing US Representative Lee H. Hamilton meeting with some foreign dignitaries; there's a short note on the back of the image, but all it says is "James Curry - Deputy Head of Delegation - European Communities Commission". From this I have several questions:

1. Is the European Communities Commission simply the European Commission?
2. Do we have an article on this guy? Presumably a European Commissioner meets WP:POLITICIAN #1, "Politicians and judges who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office", but neither James Curry nor James Currie lists any European politicians.
3. Do we have a list of former commissioners? I couldn't find it.
4. Assuming the answer to #1 is "yes", what kinds of delegations did the Commission send? Should I assume it to be just another group of diplomats who got sent to the US to discuss whatever was an important matter at the time?

2001:18E8:2:1020:353E:172B:682A:D93E (talk) 14:18, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Is this [2] the same person in your pic? 174.88.9.124 (talk) 14:40, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

[on a different computer, so different IP address, but same guy] Perhaps. Problem is that nobody in the picture (except Hamilton himself) has glasses or grey hair, so I guess that this shows the effects of nearly 20 years of ageing. I'd like to scan and upload the image, but even aside from copyright concerns, that's not an option right now. 2001:18E8:2:1020:1DC:B109:F51C:1F42 (talk) 15:11, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh well, just wondered, since if it was, the misspelling of Currie as Curry suggests "European Communities Commission" could be an error too. And delving more into "Jim Currie" might give his specific job title at the time. 174.88.9.124 (talk) 15:17, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Apparently he appears in this video, but I couldn't download it in full. [3] --Lgriot (talk) 08:45, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Can I ask 2001:18E8:2:1020:353E:172B:682A:D93E if he is the same user as was asking at the end of May about a picture of Lee Hamilton with the Defence and External Affairs Sub-Committee of the Expenditure Committee of the British House of Commons? Because I have got the list of members of the sub-committee in 1971-72. They were Sir Harwood Harrison, James Boyden, Bernard Conlan, Maj-Gen James d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Geoffrey Finsberg, Dr John Gilbert, Dr David Owen, and John Tilney. Sam Blacketer (talk) 09:49, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'm the same guy; there aren't that many people with IPv6 addresses working on Lee Hamilton :-) It's not too late to go back and update the thing I was working on in May, so I'll take care of that immediately. Thanks for checking back on it! 2001:18E8:2:1020:3851:4713:742B:BDCC (talk) 13:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

• The EU was the "European Community" prior to 1993, and I suspect the title you have recorded is simply someone getting confused about the change! Until recently all diplomatic delegations were officially from the Commission (the executive body) rather than the EU itself. Your photo is of James Currie, a career UK civil servant who held EEC posts from 1982 onwards. From 1993 to 1996 he was deputy head of the European Commission delegation to the US . He retired in 2001 as Director-General for the Environment and Nuclear Safety. (There's a brief summary in Who's Who, which is usually good for senior-sounding UK administrators) Andrew Gray (talk) 17:05, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

• Thank you for the details! I'd like to consult the printed Who's Who, but there are so many works of this sort that neither my university library catalogue nor Worldcat is helpful for finding just the A.C. Black publication, and (guess what!) my university doesn't subscribe to the online edition, since we're in the USA. Could you give me the ISBN, so I can use Special:BookSources for it? 2001:18E8:2:1020:3851:4713:742B:BDCC (talk) 13:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC) Never mind; I misunderstood my library catalogue and have found it. 2001:18E8:2:1020:3851:4713:742B:BDCC (talk) 14:54, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Slaves per capita

Which society have had the most slaves per capita? P. S. Burton (talk) 14:34, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

The highest rates in our article Slave (all are sourced) include 95% of population of Haiti in 1789, 80% of the U.S. population in 1860 (if my math is right; is says 393,975 individuals = 8% of total population and number of slaves = 3,950,528), 75% of the population in 1649 Russia, 75% of the population in Crimea in the 16th century, 65 to 90% of the population in Zanzibar in the 19th century. 174.88.9.124 (talk) 14:57, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

And this book [4] gives a 97% figure for the imperial household in 12th century China; not sure if that fits your society qualification, though. 174.88.9.124 (talk) 15:13, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

In Russia at the time, the majority of the people were serfs — definitely not freemen, but not exactly slavery either. Serfs could be bought and sold (read Gogol's Dead Souls for a humerous treatment of the subject), but like Western European serfs in earlier centuries, they were normal peasants, bound to certain obligations but generally able to tend their lands and make daily decisions without the constant oversight that we normally think of as being attached to slavery. 2001:18E8:2:1020:1DC:B109:F51C:1F42 (talk) 15:17, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe need to redo some of the math? The Wikipedia article 1860 United States Census opens:

The United States Census of 1860 was the eighth Census conducted in the United States. It determined the population of the United States to be 31,443,321, an increase of 35.4 percent over the 23,191,875 persons enumerated during the 1850 Census. The total population included 3,953,761 slaves, representing 12.7% of the total population.

This is a far cry from 80%. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 15:42, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

To be fair, I think the response of 80% was a typo... in the parenthetical that explains that number, 174.88.9.124 says the numbers come out as 8% (which is a lot closer to your 12.7%.) Blueboar (talk) 16:42, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

You're kind, but no, I was just totally confused by the article ("According to the 1860 U. S. census, 393,975 individuals, representing 8% of all US families, owned 3,950,528 slaves."). I thought that meant 393,975 people = 8% of the entire population, therefore entire population = 4,924,687 people. Clearly not. Will strike the US reference as it's obviously not in the ballpark. 174.88.9.124 (talk) 17:30, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Jamaica#British rule says; "By the beginning of the 19th century, Jamaica's dependence on slave labour and a plantation economy had resulted in blacks outnumbering whites by a ratio of almost 20 to 1" although not all the black population were slaves. Alansplodge (talk) 16:45, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Generally speaking, it's quite possibly one of the Caribbean colonies between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries; they contained little other than slaves and slaveowners (mostly agricultural, no major free settlements or industry) and had a very high European mortality rate (so most slaveowners died fast or stayed away). Haiti's figure of 95% is matched by Dutch Suriname, which had a 25:1 ratio in the early seventeenth century. (Charles Mann, 1493, p. 470 my UK pb ed.) (The other possiblity is the Congo Free State, c. 1900, which was essentially an enslaved country, but I'm not sure of the actual numbers.) Andrew Gray (talk) 18:26, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

• The problem with treating slave colonies here is they are not stable societies. They depend on an artificial isolation and suppression from outside, where the enslavement of an entire island would not continue after outside rule is removed. The OP might be happy with this, but figures for Greece or Rome or the US as a whole (since the South depended on the North's economy and antirunaway laws) might be better for "societies". μηδείς (talk) 18:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Classical Sparta had 7-8 helots for every Spartan citizen (see Spartan hegemony). After the Battle of Leuctra this was higher, but I haven't been able to find a source that says how much higher. --Bowlhover (talk) 05:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I was just wondering if convicts on the First Fleet to Australia, establishing New South Wales as a British colony, would count as slaves? Of 1373 people to arrive at Sydney Cove, 754 were convicts and their children. That's 55%. The convicts didn't have a lot of rights. HiLo48 (talk) 07:36, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Connell and Irving go into this in Class structure and Australian History. No, they wouldn't count as slaves. Fifelfoo (talk) 07:55, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Journalism

What topics are included in a course in Journalism (specifically at stanford University). Miss Bono^(zootalk)☆ 17:03, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

See Stanford Department of Communication. They only offer journalism as a graduate degree. The general subjects are listed in Journalism school. 174.88.9.124 (talk) 17:42, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Cannot follow the links. Thanks anyway :) Miss Bono^(zootalk)☆ 17:51, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

The list of required modules is:

Journalism Law

Digital Journalism

Perspectives on American Journalism

Digital Media Entrepreneurship

Public Issues Reporting I

Public Issues Reporting II

Multimedia Storytelling

Comm 289: Journalism Project

Graduate Journalism Seminar

Rojomoke (talk) 18:33, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Rojomoke. Miss Bono^(zootalk)☆ 18:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Better community development, development of community interest, delegation of roles etc within the context of a minecraft community

Firstly, i would like to state that i hope i have placed my question in the right category. It deals with people and organizing efforts etc, which i feel falls more under humanities than miscellaneous.

I own a server on minecraft. Most if not all of my players feel its a very nice place to be. However, I am trying to give what effort i can to developing it to be greater. The main things i want to accomplish are these two:

- To gain wider player interest in being involved in the community. This goes beyond wanting to log in and play the game and means the player WANTS to invest their time in bettering the community, through whatever means are needed at the time, whether it be advertising, working on projects, becoming a person that promotes other players to higher positions, etc. I try my best to put forward a feeling that every player's opinion is worth something, and that their opinions greatly influence the feel of the server and community, which they do. However, people seem reluctant to do things like join forums etc.

- To organize things in a manner where responsibilities can be delegated, in order that we can do things more efficiently. The problem with this is the above involvement problem, along with the fact that some people are in and out, i have no means of massive incentive like payment etc, and it seems difficult to organize a structure that works in a community whose members change now and then based on people needing to attend their lives and or play the latest fad game before they come back for a while etc.

I have been trying various things for a while now in this matter, and i know what i am writing here can only scratch the surface without involving an in depth conversation with someone. However, I wonder if someone who has a successful organized minecraft community, or someone who has experience in community building and leadership in general could advise me, give some tips etc.

I have read a few articles in wikipedia involving Community Development, Participatory planning, etc etc, but most of these articles speak from the matter of a physical community of residents gathering in some grassroots governmental sense, so im not sure what i can glean from this.

If anyone has advice stemming from experience, or some solid truthful free resources i could access to help, i would appreciate it. I would prefer experienced advice, but anything will do.

Thank you very much in advance for your time. 216.173.145.47 (talk) 21:15, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Two words: "GNU Minecraft". So far as I understand Minecraft is a proprietary game people have to pay for (the article says it's sold millions of copies); as such, no one should ever rightly feel an altruistic responsibility to help build them up. I haven't bothered to look into minecraft's policies, but the general nature of the software business as a whole nowadays is that if you want to be able to play something, you're supposed to show them an ID card, constantly be online from your registered address, have everybody from the NSA to Your Future Employer have access to when and where and how long you played at every session from the first to the last, and never let anybody else play it or lose your whole account. It makes for an environment where people are rightly hostile to the industry and would like to see nothing more than its final and irrevocable collapse. Incidentally, doing the search for my two words found minetest.com , which is LGPL, if that counts. Wnt (talk) 22:05, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I play Minecraft, and it's not at all what you're implying. Minecraft is indeed proprietary, but for all intents and purposes, it is also open source. There's a very active modding community that takes decompiled Java source code and rewrites it to incorporate custom landscapes, blocks/mobs, and functionality. At the very least the Minecraft developers condone this modding and haven't said or done anything to suggest it is unacceptable. In actuality I think they highly approve of it, since almost every Minecraft server has mods that vastly improve playability and user-friendliness. --Bowlhover (talk) 04:56, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

And you don't need to be online to play. --Lgriot (talk) 08:31, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Although its possible that the fact you need to pay might affect your attitude, and i agree more open source communities are more likely to help, this is beyond the scope of my post. My intent is to ask advice on community building and organizing ourselves. 216.173.145.47 (talk) 15:59, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

You do not say what you have looked at already. Some server owners post advice on getting and keeping a community of players, I suggest looking at minecraftforum.net if you haven't already. Googling for "advice for minecraft servers" and "growing a minecraft server" returned a few results that might help. My quick impressions from reading these: it's hard work, regularly post videos, website and forum content to maintain player communication. -84user (talk) 21:04, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Tricksters in current pop culture

List of breakout characters says the following:

Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) in Pirates of the Caribbean, initially the character was written as a supporting trickster character, under Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. Depp's performance and the character proved popular enough to warrant him as the protagonist of the series, shown in the fourth film.

Is "trickster" really appropriate here? When I hear "trickster", I think of a mythological or folklorish character, such as Loki, and the intro to trickster says "In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is..." — this doesn't sound like it would encompass Pirates of the Caribbean. I know that WP:RDH generally doesn't offer opinions etc.; this is basically a question about the breadth of the concept of the trickster. Nyttend (talk) 22:21, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't think Sparrow fits the mold at all. If you're looking for something in modern entertainment that hews a lot closer to the traditional myths, take a look at Q (Star Trek) or, perhaps a bit more obscure, Mister Mxyzptlk. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:33, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Trickster is common way to describe Odysseus-like characters, and Sparrow is clearly of the Odysseus archetype. He doesn't normally openly call out his enemies and fight them face to face like Achilles would, but rather he uses subterfuge and strategems to confuse and mislead them, or to use his surroundings against them, and frequently just plain retreats. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 23:57, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

True. Odysseus is more of a literary/dramatic archetype than the religious/mythical characters primarily discussed in our article, though. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:30, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

How do reverse mortgages screw people (when they do)?

What's the typical sequence of events that happens when someone is ruined by one of those things? 75.75.42.89 (talk) 22:45, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

For those who haven't a clue what one of those is: Reverse mortgage. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:14, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I dont understand how a "reverse mortgage" can screw anyone as a person have to enter an agreement with a financial institution for a "reverse mortgage" and if that person did so of their own free will then nobody screw that person when did not pan out to their expectation. 220.239.51.150 (talk) 16:08, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, most people who go into reverse mortgages don't know what they're getting into, since it's in the bank's favor to write the contracts in dense jargon that even English majors have to sit and think about. In plain English, a person getting a reverse mortgage borrows money from some of the money they've already paid on a mortgage (while a home equity loan is a loan where you promise to give up your whole house if you can't pay). The financial institutions might try to word it differently to hide this, but that's what it comes down to (which is why I can't get a reverse mortgage but my parents who have paid off their house keep getting spam for it). There's interest on the money, but little to no requirements as to when payments need to be made. (What experience I have with financial institutions, this is to intended to lull the person getting the reverse mortgage into ignoring the little-to-no warning of upcoming payments that the financial institution will pretend to send at some point). The financial institution will also do really big advertisements for the initially low-sounding interest rates, and hide fine print somewhere letting them jack it up over time. They will foreclose if given a change. Then there's still the taxes on the house. If those are not kept up with perfectly, the financial institution can and will buy your house from the government for taxes you owe (a percentage of the overall value of it), and then resell it for it's original cost. If they're less scrupulous, they might possibly write it off as if they sold it for the "real" devalued cost (after all, the reverse mortgage did decrease its value), and maybe even continue to go after you for the "difference" (not that that would/should be legal, but most financial institutions really do not care about the law, just profit, and they know that most individual homeowners aren't going to be able to put up the fight necessary to get out of it). Even if they don't do this, they'll still screw you if you die or want to sell your home. If the reverse mortgage is not paid off and you try to move out, you have to pay the reverse mortgage in full before you can sell the house (otherwise, they can just seize your house and sell it to make up the difference, giving you none of the money). If you die, the financial institution legally gets to seize pretty much your whole estate, sell what they "can" to "make up" the whole reverse mortgage plus interest, and only then do the beneficiaries of your will get what's left. Also, if you die or move out, anyone living with you (spouse, child, whoever) has to move out as well.

Even if you do manage to get a lender who doesn't screw you with the payments and you do keep up with your payments and taxes, and pay off the reverse mortgage before you die, the money you borrowed off of your home comes out of the home's value. If you do everything right and try to sell the house or put it in the will for your kids, you/they will get less money for it. Not that the bank will be screwed this way if they seize and resell it...

The only time that a reverse mortgage would not be a bad idea is if it's for a small amountin an emergency and that can and will be paid off completely before you leave your house.

Sources: here, here, here, and our articles. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:48, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Giving an appropriate answer to this question implies entering in legal consulting. This is not just calculating if a fixed rate fund vs. an index rated fund is better for you. It's about legal details. OsmanRF34 (talk) 17:06, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I would say there's a difference between giving legal advice and discussing legal hypotheticals. If someone asked what the 5th amendment applied to spouses, that's a hypothetical. If someone asked if they could plead the fifth when testifying at their own spouse's trial, that'd be legal advice. Or, to go with medical hypotheticals versus medical advice, if someone asked "what effects does bleach have on the human body if ingested?" is answerable while "I just drank bleach, what's going to happen to me?" is not. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:13, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

So, obtaining legal/medical advise is just a question of wording correctly? OsmanRF34 (talk) 17:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

That's not what I'm saying at all, I'm merely saying that the restriction against advice does not prohibit honest questions about medical/legal topics that are not requests for advice. If someone asks what amendment guarantees free speech, or what organ creates insulin, they shouldn't be turned away by the "no advice" rule if they are not asking for advice. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:33, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, I've long speculated that if someone asked, "Is murder illegal?", the first response would be "Yes, see murder", quickly followed by someone saying "Sorry, we don't give legal advice." —Kevin Myers 18:26, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Robert Louis Stevenson

Is the study of Robert Louis Stevenson covered in most American school curriculum or he more studied in British schools? --KAVEBEAR (talk) 22:57, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean the man himself or his books? His books are on many reading lists. Mingmingla (talk) 01:42, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

In British schools only A Child's Garden of Verses and Treasure Island are regularly studied. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:19, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Not universally though. I never studied any of his books (although I did read Treasure Island independently while I was in primary school). Falastur2 ^Talk 21:36, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, although Treasure Island was recommended by an education minister who thought it was a way to get boys reading. And it ticks the box as a pre-20th-century text that has some hope of appealing to 21st century children. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:23, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I was under the impression that most folks in the U.S. run across Jekyll and Hyde in school at some point, whether that means the full thing or an abridged version or theatrical adaptation. NW (Talk) 18:53, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

City of Benares sinking

Can anybody find some reliable figures for the number of people killed in the sinking of the SS City of Benares in 1940, especially the child refugees. Our article contradicts itself, quoting in different places 77, 80 and 83 children killed. I've found several references in Google Books but none agree with each other. Alansplodge (talk) 23:36, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

What would be reliable? Just wondering what to look for - obviously not another book.

• Apparently the official report is in the holdings of the Imperial War Museum. That site is making my browser crash (be warned) so I'm not clear on whether it can be read online.
• Another official option could be the records of the Children's Overseas Reception Board. Apparently these are available from the National Archives (maybe the Wikipedia Resource Exchange could help you there). This says 70 died.
• (FYI, re newspapers, The Guardian goes with 81 [5] (like you needed another number, sorry). From The Times I find only this letter from a survivor that says 13 survivors (=77) [6]. 174.88.9.124 (talk) 17:12, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Appears to be a bit confusing - The London Times first reported 83 but when news of the six survivors came in they changed the total to 79, with the 40 adult survivors the toll is said to be a total 260 killed, later reports say that 13 children a more adults were rescued. MilborneOne (talk) 20:11, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

A more recent BBC story from 2010 Remembering the SS City of Benares tragedy 70 years on says 83 children and 175 adults (258 total). MilborneOne (talk) 21:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

FWIW uboat.net gives the names of 82 children. (I added the list to the article talk page for info) MilborneOne (talk) 21:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry I have found a different list of children involved in the CORB scheme who had 90 on the voyage (83 missing + 7 survivors), they were other children of passengers that died which is probably causing some of the confusion. MilborneOne (talk) 21:40, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the bitty reply but finding stuff all the time. They were 90 children in the CORB scheme and seven were rescued so the papers declared 83 children died, after eight days another life boat turned up with another six children. This then gave 77 children killed and 13 survivors (total 90). But other children were on the ship who also died bringing the total up to 83 children killed (although I can only find 82 names at the moment). All original research and may still be wrong but I will make some notes on the article talk page, so I will not reply here again, thanks. MilborneOne (talk) 22:06, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Good work - many thanks. Alansplodge (talk) 07:22, 13 July 2013 (UTC)