Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 November 26

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November 26

Tashan Family- Turkey

What the meaning of "Tashan" the Turkey family name? Is there any historical information about this tribe? Where they lived exactly in Turkey? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.194.129.84 (talk) 01:04, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Surnames in Turkey were only chosen by most people after World War I in the reign of Ataturk. Many people chose their surname after their place of origin, such as one of the places called Taşhan in Turkey (in Siverek, in Of and in Kocasinan). Steewi (talk) 04:01, 26 November 2009 (UTC)Edited for formatting Steewi (talk) 04:02, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

That would be the Surname Law (Turkey). See also Turkish name. BrainyBabe (talk) 15:43, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

What about the meaning of the name? What its mean in Turkish? Thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.130.12.189 (talk) 13:56, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Steewi has suggested that it might have come from a placename, though he did not give any references for this. --ColinFine (talk) 20:11, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

ACORN

I am posting here at this reference page per your instruction, namely;

"Please limit discussion to improvement of this article. You may wish to ask factual questions about Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now at the Reference desk, discuss relevant Wikipedia policy at the Village pump, or ask for help at the Help desk."

I used Wikipedia to read up about ACORN after discovering the scandal at http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/23/breaking-san-diego-acorn-document-dump-scandal/

It seems to me that the Wiki article is a little one sided, in the absence of details about the ACORN office in National City (San Diego County, which apparently dumped thousands of sensitive documents on the evening of October 9th,, just days prior to the Attorney General's visit.

This is important information because;

"The laws governing how sensitive, personal information such as social security numbers, driver's license numbers, immigration records, tax returns, etc. must be treated are very stringent, and thus it seems as if ACORN may have committed serious violations in that department alone, with thousands upon thousands of potential plaintiffs."

I am bringing this matter to the attention of Wikipedia, to see if your entry about ACORN will be improved to reflect this development in the saga.

Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.221.85.33 (talk) 09:26, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

• Come back when an actual law enforcement agent starts prosecuting. F (talk) 11:42, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
• I don't see you factual question. If you have problems with the article, the article talk page is the proper venue, or WP:NPOVN. But unless your have better sources than a partisan blog, I doubt you will get anywhere. Please read and understand WP:V and WP:RS first, to avoid wasting your and our time. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:11, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Talk pages are always interesting to read to see how controversial articles have developed. (Talk:Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, for example) 75.41.110.200 (talk) 14:10, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

If you want to improve the article its talk page is a good place to start - just like the bit you quoted said. And as it said this is where you'd ask questions but I don't see a question. TheWP:5P is something I'd advise reading before trying to edit the article itself. Dmcq (talk) 16:24, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

What about the meaning of the name? What its mean in Turkish? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.130.12.189 (talk) 13:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC) Line added to wrong section, and duplicated above --ColinFine (talk) 20:12, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Sherlock Holmes' sexuality

Hi!, I read that he was not heterosexual, but what was he?, was he gay?. --FromSouthAmerica (talk) 16:21, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Our article mentions nothing to suggest it, but it does mention he had an interesting relationship with them. I guess he could be considered a notable asexual, but the evidence isn't really there. Prokhorovka (talk) 16:26, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

While to a reader nowadays it is relatively easy to assume that Holmes was indeed a closet homosexual, I believe you are closer to the mark, Prokhorovka. Irene Adler is introduced as something along the lines of: the only time the otherwise cold and detached Holmes showed an interest in a woman; and he is described as a bit of a mysoginist - he doesn't believe women can hold a candle to men intelectually, and Adler is the only woman Holmes meets that (in Holmes' opinion) could, which is why he expresses romantic interest for her. IMO the description "asexual" is closer to the truth. This is, of course, my own OR. --TomorrowTime (talk) 20:13, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Irene Alder#Holmes's relationship to Adler Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 16:30, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Sherlock Holmes was, of course, a fictional figure, and since nothing was written about his sexuality by his creator (who also as far as we know made no Dumbledorian pronouncements about it) we can only say that it was unknown. However Holmes has a huge following, and many people have speculated about his sexuality. This obvious search provides some links to people's speculations. Homes has also been subject to many interpretations, and one person may interpret him as gay, another as heterosexual, another as asexual. There cannot be a definitive answer. DJ Clayworth (talk) 16:31, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

We have actually already had a discussion about this a few weeks ago, which can be found here: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 November 3#No girlfriend —Akrabbim^talk 16:43, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Funding a genocide

Financially speaking: How much did the Holocaust (from the institution of the Nuremberg laws to the end of WWII--i.e. not counting the post WWII restitution) cost the Nazi government? has someone calculated a rough dollar figure for it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.151.135.122 (talk) 19:16, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I think they made a profit on it, as the homes and possessions of murdered Jewish people were given to loyal Nazis and friends of Nazis, or auctioned off at cheap prices. That was partly why Germans had a high standard of living during the war, the other reason being the occupation troops being paid very high salaries and sending lots of food back from the occupied countries. There are two books written about this in recent years - do not remember their details unfortunately. The Nazis also got free labour as well. 78.146.191.42 (talk) 21:31, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

They couldn't possibly have made a profit on it, because the Jews who lost property or were forced into slave labor were citizens of the Reich or the occupied territories, so their property and income was part of the national income already. --M@rēino 21:49, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

That seems like a sort of economic bookkeeping technicality to me. It is like saying that managers who steal their employees wages are doing nothing wrong, because they are all part of the same organisation. If you have a constant amount of wealth that is shared among a lower number of people, then the per-capita wealth will rise. 78.151.134.191 (talk) 00:28, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)While individuals may have profited from the Holocaust, I've heard it argued that instigating the Holocaust was, overall, a huge drain on the Nazi war effort. As well as fighting an "all out war" against the Allies, it was devoting large amounts of time, energy, money and logistical planning to finding and exterminating Jews on an industrial scale. Sure there was some slave labour they got out of it, but I think it's arguable if the average slave is as productive for a war effort as the average volunteer, which presumably the average Jew would have been if the Nazis didn't have their anti-semitic ideologies. And there are millions of Jews who were murdered or imprisoned that weren't put into slave factories, whose voluntary labour presumably could have been used in the war effort had Jews not been vilified and victimized and economically marginalized by the Nazis.

So although I have no idea if anyone has put a number on how much the Holocaust cost, I will suggest the somewhat glib answer that it may have cost Germany the war. I don't know if that's really true either, since the madness that generated the Holocaust can't really be separated from all the other crazy mistakes Hitler made. TastyCakes (talk) 21:53, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Driving Albert Einstein. Lise Meitner, and many others into exile certainly didn't do anything to ensure that Germany would have the best chance to build the first nuclear bomb... AnonMoos (talk) 00:04, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

No, but at the time that they did that, they didn't really think that an atomic bomb would be vital. Remember that they expected to win pretty quickly. The Manhattan Project was pretty optimistically conceived even for the U.S., who threw everything they had at it. (And, of course, Einstein and Meitner actually had next-to-nothing to do with actual nuclear weapons programs...) --Mr.98 (talk) 03:45, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Damn. You're ignorant. Nazi Germany had a nuclear program that they started in 1939. Einstein left Germany in 1932. No Jews were forced to leave. He left by his own volition.--Drknkn (talk) 01:53, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

What does that mean? Many Jews who were intelligent and aware of the trend of events and had the resources to leave left because they knew that it would probably be better for them to go rather than stay. AnonMoos (talk) 05:44, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

The question was about the government, not the national economy, and it is indeed possible for a policy to contribute more to the public purse than it costs in spending. Whether it contributed more to the public purse than it cost the economy or nation is an entirely different matter. As for the economy and finances of the Third Reich, a rather academic place to start (and one that reminds us the Nazis were not solely focused wholesale murder) would be Adam Tooze’s “The Wages of Destruction:.” DOR (HK) (talk) 01:43, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

There is another similar book to that on the same subject, whose details I forget. 89.242.102.107 (talk) 16:02, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, the idea was to build annihilation system that would supply itself. So prisoners in concentration camps were forced to run the Nazi machine (like the Sonderkommando). Also, many of the largest German corporation occupied enormous numbers of forced labours. For instance, Simens corporation had about 100,000 of them back then. The only daily 'payment', beside murder and satanic tortures, was usually one mouldy slice of bread -to keep them working to their death. You can also add the plunder (even of hair and golden teeth) and find that the greedy Nazis had huge profits. Infact, historians claim that the plunder of Jews yield signficant effect on the currency of the third reich and in any case, and even that concentration camps were non-profit organizations on the paper, was not negligible. Sadly for Germany which was taken over by those Nazis, the holocaust did take a price: many of its greatest minds, Jews, escaped to USA, USSR and other countries and Germany lost significant part of its Human capital. However, one huge profit Germany did gain from the war is the infrastructure for present days German industry that was largely built then, instead of becoming to another failed communistic state--Gilisa (talk) 20:15, 28 November 2009 (UTC)