Content deleted Content added

Inline

Revision as of 20:10, 11 March 2015

Welcome to the humanities section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

Shortcut

WP:RD/H

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

How can I get my question answered?

Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
Note:
- We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
- We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
- We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
- We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

March 6

Okhrana

During Nicholas II's rule, who was leader of the Okhrana and to what degree was Nicholas involved in its actions? Did it just report to him or did he actively control and decide its policies and actions?2602:306:C541:CC60:E461:E76B:164E:EA4 (talk) 00:46, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

website comparing UK as unitary and Canada as a federation

Is there a website that shows a comparison between UK as an unitary state and Canada as a federation state? Please and thanks. My cousin who lives in UK thinks that UK is a federation but I argued it is not but unfortunately he is a narrow minded person. Please answer my question. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.33.169 (talk) 01:03, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what you mean by "unitary state". The UK is a Constitutional monarchy. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:20, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And so is Canada - same Monarch. [1] AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:26, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, no. Same human, different monarch(y) Mingmingla (talk) 03:39, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If the Commonwealth Realms "technically" don't share a monarch, why the rule that they must all agree on changes to the succession? And why do they exchange High Commissioners rather than Ambassadors? —Tamfang (talk) 21:21, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say it made sense. Mingmingla (talk) 16:32, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the OP is referring to a unitary state. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 15 Adar 5775 01:38, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We also have federation, confederation (for Canada) and federal monarchy. If I remember my high school politics class correctly, Canada is a federation because several different political units joined together to form one state, with the previous political units surviving within the new state; i.e., Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia all still exist, as provinces within the country of Canada. The provinces have their own laws, education, etc. For historical reasons we call this the confederation of Canada, but in modern political science terms, Canada is a federation, not a confederation. Obviously this is not how the UK was formed, but I'm not sure I can explain why it's not a federation...it just isn't. Adam Bishop (talk) 04:32, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The status of federation is independent of the way in which a state was formed: yes, often a federation is the result of multiple independent states (or multiple colonies) coming together, but some federations were formed by other means, and some unions of multiple jurisdictions aren't federations. In the UK context, the country is a unitary state because the national parliament is supreme over everything else, and there are no other jurisdictions in the country aside from ones that are its creatures, i.e. it could get rid of any of them or override any of their laws, if it wanted. This is in contrast to Canada and Australia, in which the provincial and state parliaments are independent of the federal parliament, as it is unable to abolish them or override their laws on just any topic. Nyttend (talk) 05:38, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just to piggyback on what Nyttend says, in a federation, the constituent states have reserve rights which, constitutionally, the national government is not allowed to remove or eliminate except by their mutual consent. Thus, in both the U.S. and Canada, the States and Provinces respectively have constitutionally guaranteed rights and roles which the National governments have no authority to supersede. The U.K. has allowed devolved powers to its constituent nations (such as the Scottish Parliament, and National Assembly for Wales) which are allowed to decide policy for those regions, but those bodies serve at the pleasure of Parliament, and at any time Parliament still has the constitutional authority to override any of their acts, abolish them at any time, etc. Thus, the U.K. is a unitary state, which allows a degree of home rule to some of its regions, but that still doesn't make it a federation, which is a constitutionally very different means of organization. --Jayron 32 18:38, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just to piggyback on the piggybacking, we have to distinguish between Parliament having the constitutional authority to do something and Parliament being politically able to. As Jayron notes, the UK Parliament could abolish the Scottish Parliament tomorrow (or have the Welsh elect the Scottish Parliament, and the Scots elect the Welsh Assembly) if they felt like it; it would be politically unpopular enough that they'd never be "able to pull it off", so to speak, but there's no legal impediment to it, and that's the difference between a federation and a unitary state. Nyttend (talk) 23:15, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should clarify the mutual consent bit too. Notably, unanimous consent generally isn't necessarily needed to affect the rights of states (by which I mean the entitites constituting the federation), in fact often it isn't needed. What you generally need is a constitutional amendment.

Often this requires the approval of the states themselves (generally meaning their legislatures), but usually only a majority or supermajority, e.g. Constitution of Australia, Article Five of the United States Constitution, Constitution of India (I think for relevant amendments anyway) or Amendments to the Constitution of Canada.

Sometimes this requires a majority or supermajority in a nationwide referendum however there's no requirement for a majority in each state, I think Constitution of Venezuela is an example of this [2].

But sometimes this only requires a supermajority on the federal legislature/s, e.g. Constitution of Malaysia (mostly), and I think Constitution of Nigeria [3], and also I think Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. (Note most of the earlier examples also required this or something similar in addition to the other requiremens.)

Of course it can often be complicated, our articles often don't seem to cover amendment processes that well (they mention historic amendments, but not how the constitution is amended, sometimes this may be mentioned in another article, but I'm not sure it always is). It may not always be entirely clear how courts will intepret amendments which affect rights of states, particularly if the states themselves are in majority disagreement, even if the constitution seems to allow such changes. And it may not always be simple whether the constition allows it, e.g. Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany entrenches federalism, but I'm not sure how far this is generally intepreted, can you remove most of the rights of the states?

In any event, in the cases where the states themselves don't get a direct say in constitutional amendments which will affect their relationship with the federal government, some may suggest the countries are to some extent unitary states, but most of the cases are still usually called federations/federated states. (There are other reasons why the country may be said to have some features of a unitary state, see e.g. our article on India, or Federalism in Malaysia.)

But despite the IP's comments below, I'm not convinced that the UK will generally be called a federation even if England get's a devolved parliament.

Nil Einne (talk) 13:37, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest that Jayron's definition is a too strong. Suppose that the UK repeated in England what was done in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, by creating a legislature separate from the UK parliament and devolving specific powers to this new body. Then suppose that 10 years later the UK parliament winds back the clock, abolishes the various legislatures, and reclaims all the devolved powers for itself. I say that for those 10 years the UK would have been a federation. --05:30, 7 March 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.49.169.183 (talk)

You can also say the moon is made of green cheese, but uttering words doesn't make them true. --Jayron 32 15:26, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Syrian swastika?

While cataloging a small private library, I encountered this book, about missionary work done by the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America in Latakia and surrounding regions of Syria. Published in 1913, the book includes a swastika on the cover. Was this device often used in Syria at the time, or is it more likely to be an example of Western use of the swastika in the early 20th century? The latter seems odd, because the article says that it was a good-luck symbol, and this church at the time typically condemned good-luck symbols as superstitious. Nyttend (talk) 05:43, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See Secret Sects Of Syria: A Consideration of their Origin, Creeds and Religious Ceremonies and their Connection with and Influence upon Modern Freemasonry by Bernard H Springett, London, 1922 (p. 331), which states: "ORIGIN OF THE SWASTIKA... By certain early Christians it was known as the 'Tetragammaton', the unspeakable name of the Deity, as represented by four Gammas...". I'm not sure how reliable a source this is - it doesn't correlate with either our Swastika or Tetragammaton articles - but it does prove that some believed that it could be a Christian symbol. Alansplodge (talk) 11:00, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nyttend -- The Syrian Social Nationalist Party had its swastikesque "hurricane" or "whirlwind" symbol, but the party did not exist in 1913. Swastika-like symbols have occurred in many cultures across the globe. AnonMoos (talk) 18:05, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It could possibly be Zoroastrian - Syria is on the western edge of the area where Zoroastrianism thrived. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:28, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

historical sculpture

Was there a sculpture of an airplane seatbelt at one point or another? (It was made from whatever was left of Aloha Airlines Flight 243.) If yes, what has become of it?158.222.165.116 (talk) 06:56, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Entirely unsure if it is what you are looking for, but apparently Honolulu International Airport has a memorial to C.B. Lansing, one of those who died in the crash. See here. Might be a lead. --Jayron 32 16:12, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently the memorial is just a garden named after her, so there isn't a sculpture there. See the bottom of this page and this photo of the plaque to Lansing.

BTW - Lansing's was the only death, and there was no crash, the aircraft landed normally in spite of severe structural damage. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:32, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

New communism

From the 50s to the 90s the main enemy of America seemed to be communism. However, I read an article recently stating that starting in the 21st century, the primary enemy of the US is Islam. So is Islam the new communism? Successiontomr (talk) 10:59, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, Islam is Islam, it's a religion, not a political designation. Saying Islam is the 'new communism' is like saying 'orange is the new black' - total gibberish. What would be a 'new communism' anyway? For it to be called 'new', it would have to be a different form of communism from previous forms, something which doesn't happen. If people are too thick to be able to think of the phrase 'replacement for', then they shouldn't be listened to. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 12:05, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You say "However, I read an article recently stating that starting in the 21st century, the primary enemy of the US is Islam."[4] Can you link to the article or quote a relevant passage from it? Thanks. Bus stop (talk) 12:17, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It was in vlog format - here Successiontomr (talk) 14:22, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You do know that anyone can write anything, but merely mashing keys on a keyboard doesn't make them true. People can make provocative statements like "Islam is the enemy of the United States" and just saying it doesn't actually make it a fact. I can say "Cheese is the enemy of Bolivia", and that doesn't mean Bolivians are going to invade Wisconsin any time soon... --Jayron 32 16:08, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Cheese-flavoured cocoa puffs are apparently the enemy of good taste. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:25, March 6, 2015 (UTC)

You clearly misunderstood the video. The point of the video is that Islam (even radical Islam) is not a major threat to the US. It is the "new communism" because just as communists were fired from jobs and ostracized during the hysteria of the Cold War, Muslims today are being discriminated against in the hysteria of the War on Terror. Just as politicians used the supposed threat of communism for political gain during the Cold War, politicians today are using Islam to fearmonger. You might agree or disagree with this analysis, but that's the point the video creator is making. --Bowlhover (talk) 05:46, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, main enemies don't have to pose major threats. They just need to be the focal points. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:55, March 7, 2015 (UTC)

The greatest threat is officially climate change, at least till further notice. But it can't be a main enemy, because talking about stopping it gets "scattered applause". InedibleHulk (talk) 06:02, March 7, 2015 (UTC)

Sort of like how advocating the opposite of terrormongering gets "audible grumbling" InedibleHulk (talk) 06:08, March 7, 2015 (UTC)

Pre Indian southeast asia

What was the religion of mainland Southeast Asia before contact with India? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joey13952 alternate account (talk • contribs) 14:44, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Before the introduction of Indian religions (Buddhism & Hinduism chiefly), native religious beliefs include forms of animism and shamanism closely related to Chinese folk religion. See, for example, Vietnamese folk religion, Satsana Phi, Ua Dab, etc. --Jayron 32 16:06, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly animism, shamanism, and folk religion, but the close relationship to Chinese religion came only after the spread of Chinese influence to the region around the same time that contact with India began. Marco polo (talk) 20:13, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there's a chicken-and-egg problem here. It's not like some alien space ship set down fully-formed Southeast-Asian cultures in place with their own religions already in existence, which lived in total isolation for centuries until China and India suddenly "discovered" them and decided to oppress their native beliefs and supplant them with their own. Cultural evolution is a continuous process, and for thousands of years cultures have been influenced by those that border them. What is "native" is highly contextual, and really depends on what and when you mean. Even so, it is unlikely that there exists a "pure" religion of the area which is wholly uninfluenced by any single other culture, at ANY time in history. --Jayron 32 00:58, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Problems Dubai is facing as a developed city

what are the problems that Dubai is facing as a developed city? Such as sea level rising, population growth water shortage unemployment... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.25.14.66 (talk) 15:39, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know.. If you want to know more information, see the article titled Dubai, which can be used for you to formulate your own understanding of its situation and challenges. --Jayron 32 16:00, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a bit about a very recent domestic water law, and a slightly older foreign program. Might be helpful. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:22, March 6, 2015 (UTC)

What System of rule would this be?

Throughout history nations have had all sorts of systems of rule; Monarchy, Republic, Empire, Oligarchy etc. etc.

But what would it be called if a nation has several provinces/holds/regions that is each ruled independently by, say, Jarls and there is no king. But all of the Jarls get together occasionally in some sort of assembly and put down laws and make decisions together to rule the nation, as equals? Perhaps they even elect a 'king' or a leader-type amongst themselves, but it still can't be a republic, since it would only be the Jarls voting, and not the people. The position of Jarl would also follow bloodline rather than voting, so all the Jarls would be Jarls by birthright.

2A02:FE0:C711:5C41:40F5:404A:1E78:5E9 (talk) 17:37, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't that be an Oligarchy or an Aristocracy? I'm not sure from our articles what the difference is between the two. Rojomoke (talk) 17:49, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) That's a Monarchical Federation or Federal Monarchy (depending on how you want to put it). What you have described is exactly how countries like the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia run. See Politics of the United Arab Emirates and Yang di-Pertuan Agong for information. Historically, two states which ran that way also were the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Also, while today we tend to think of "Republic" and "Monarchy" as exclusive concepts, there is some historical overlap; in the Federalist Papers, Poland is referenced as a "failed republic" for its badly run elective monarchy, for the writers of the Federalist Papers, Poland was a type of republic merely because it elected its leader, even though that leader was also a King. Another historic example might be the Dutch Republic, which was nominally a republic, but ran like an elective monarchy almost exactly like you describe. See Politics and government of the Netherlands (1581–1795). The various constituent provinces had Stadtholders which were very monarchical in nature. One Stadtholder, that of Holland (also simultaneously of Utrecht and Zeeland) became the hereditary right of the House of Orange-Nassau, by extension they became the de facto (though not de jure) hereditary leaders of the Netherlands. One of these supposedly republican Stadtholders even became king of England, see William III of England. --Jayron 32 17:52, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just thinking, another example would possibly be the rule of the Twelve Tribes of Israel under the period before the United Monarchy, i.e. the Israeli people during the time period described by the Book of Judges. In that case the "Judges" were the temporary leaders of the entire nation, but under most times each of the twelve tribes managed their own business, being united mostly by religious connection, i.e. the worship at the Tabernacle at Shiloh and the role of the Levites, which held Israel together, since they lacked a central political authority. --Jayron 32 18:21, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also sounds like something close to the system used in the Icelandic Commonwealth, where they had an Althing from 930. The infobox of the article defines it as "Federation under religious democracy". --Saddhiyama (talk) 11:49, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for answers. Gives me food for thought, and goes to show how intricate and complex these things can be sometimes. How I have seen these things have mostly tended to be rather black and white, but there's certainly lots of colors in between... 2A02:FE0:C711:5C41:40F5:404A:1E78:5E9 (talk) 18:45, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's important to remember that as humans, we have an instinct to classify things; but at some level every nation is a sui generis creation unto itself which has worked out (and in most cases is in a constant state of "still working out") how to govern itself. When we classify such a diverse group of entities into a small set of categories, there are bound to be many edge cases. --Jayron 32 18:50, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Who should clean in a utopic fair society?

According to socialists, and intellectual creators of any other "alternative" society, who should do the menial work? Some menial work, like shoe polish, could disappear, but what about cleaners? How to distribute work if you give all an education?--Noopolo (talk) 19:37, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Robots. Blueboar (talk) 19:54, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Have people volunteer for the work they are qualified for and like, with some positions in such demand that hiring is competitive and some people would have to settle for their second or third preference, then distribute the rest by lots, with the least desirable kinds of work requiring the smallest weekly time commitments. (For example, people would be required to list unclaimed jobs in order of preference. Let's say that robots for cleaning toilets have not yet been perfected and cleaning public toilets gets the lowest average ranking among such jobs. The required X hours of public toilet cleaning required in a municipality in a week would be divided such that those assigned that task would devote fewer hours to it per week than other such tasks that need to be assigned.) Marco polo (talk) 19:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

An apocryphal story is told of Holocaust survivor and writer Ephraim Kishon, who as a new immigrant on a kibbutz (egalitarian society) agreed to a regular assignment cleaning the public lavatories with shorter hours as compensation - time he devoted to acquiring the local language so as to more quickly return to his profession. -- Deborahjay (talk) 20:56, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This question has been answered in quite some depth by many people who think about such things. Two related topics the OP may want to look into is Tragedy of the commons and Post-scarcity economy both of which approach the problem of "who does work that needs to be done when there's little net individual benefit of doing it". --Jayron 32 20:02, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Even in a non-utopian society job design allows the menial tasks to be incorporated into various occupations. Job enrichment is a related approach, so rather than employ people who only clean, you could employ people who have responsibility for a whole area of estates management. Another strategy, which could be used in combination with those ones, is to expect everyone to start at an elementary level, but provide sufficient training so that no-one stays at that level for long. If you don't already know William Morris's News from Nowhere you'll find that it explores these issues in fictional form. Highly recommended. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:38, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I also say let robots do it. They don't mind, and beats giving them powerful positions. If a human really wants to clean, and they don't slow the robots down, I don't see why not. It's their utopia, too. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:56, March 6, 2015 (UTC)

Cleaning could be split between everyone, I've previously lived at a place where everyone was assigned one rotating chore per week. Cleaning could also be done as punishment for crimes, aka, community service. 184.145.53.236 (talk) 22:34, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's not a lot of crime in a typical utopia. Not enough to build a workforce, even in the shabbier ones. But if everyone is rotating shifts, that'd be too many, so I guess not enough complements that ideally. And if everyone's cleaning, the one who doesn't will naturally be looked at as a deviant, written law or not. He'd compel himself to clean or leave, so the spotlessness would sustain itself. We couldn't kill him for it, because we just cleaned. And we couldn't lock him away, because he'd get filthy.

But your idea makes sense. I'd like to steal it and write a screenplay. Thanks! InedibleHulk (talk) 23:37, March 6, 2015 (UTC)

One guy we lived with committed the crime of being an asshole so we gave him the choice of double chores or leaving. 184.145.53.236 (talk) 01:30, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As long as the group isn't big enough for subcultures to sprout, self-policing is good policing. Did he leave? InedibleHulk (talk) 05:48, March 7, 2015 (UTC)

I suppose that if you define a utopian society to be one in which everyone is doing the job they most enjoy, the answer is that the menial work is done by those who most enjoy menial work. To see why, suppose otherwise: if any of the people doing menial work is dis-satisfied with this arrangement then they are not doing the job they most enjoy, and thus you no longer have a utopia (per definition). Trivially, therefore, the only solution that matches our definition is that the menial work is performed by those who most enjoy it. If there are no such people, it must be the case that no menial work is performed. RomanSpa (talk) 01:16, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

By people, anyway. Robots don't dislike the things they don't like. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:48, March 7, 2015 (UTC)

A truly fair society would pay people proportional to both the importance and the distastefulness of the work. If you pay enough, you'll never run out of folks interested in what we consider low-end (but vital) jobs. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:49, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck finding that particular utopia. AndyTheGrump (talk) 09:08, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't expect to. The OP's "utopic fair society" is imaginary. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:37, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In a capitalist society, people who wished to do the job for the wage offered would do the work, with the help of all sorts of nifty inventions like rideable floor polishers and on scaffolds hanging from skyscrapers. What is really interesting here is the premise that under a socialist utopia anybody would be forced to do anything. Is that how socialism works? To me that sounds like a communist dictatorship. μηδείς (talk) 18:04, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The market doesn't work when everything's equal. Who would pay the menial workers, and where would they get enough money to do so, except from working many times more hours in the day? We'd need some sort of special treatment for payrollers, and many other "important" jobs. Utopias shouldn't have currency, I think. Someone always gets hurt. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:12, March 7, 2015 (UTC)

When everything is equal is what's called the heat death of the universe. Some people will always get hungry or horny before others. Then the horny ones can plant while the hungry ones can prostitute.

The general principle is, one should always do that work for which one gets the greatest reward. For example, you and I can both work as a salesman or a secretary. If I can make $50/hr as a salesman, and you $20, and we can both make $15/hr as a secretary, then I should work as a salesman, and be willing to pay you $20 an hour to work as a secretary, even though I could do the same work for $15/hr. Evene though I have to pay you $20/hr, I still net $30, which is $15/hr more than I would doing the secretarial work myself. And you net $20, $5 more than you could as a secretary, and $15/hr more than if you made $20/hr at sales and had to pay me $15 to be your secretary.

This is called division of labor. Download economist and professor George Reisman's college textbook on free-market capitalism for free in pdf form at http://capitalism.net/ μηδείς (talk) 22:37, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So he burst out laughing at last, and said: "Excuse me, neighbours, but I can't help it. Fancy people not liking to work! — it's too ridiculous... "What a queer disease! it may well be called Mulleygrubs!"

Morris, op. cit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Itsmejudith (talk • contribs)

"Socialism" covers quite a few different concepts. If all property, businesses, etc are state-owned, then the state can set whatever wages for or conditions of employment it wants. If all businesses are run as workers' cooperatives, then the workers would presumably decide among themselves how work would be assigned and how wealth created would be shared out, and if someone thought they weren't being compensated enough for doign all the cleaning, they could presumably leave and find another coop to work at. Also, bear in mind that just because everyone in this utopia has been educated, doesnt' mean everyone will be equally capable of all jobs. Or that they will want to do the same jobs - plenty of people prefer doing manual labour to working in a office. Iapetus (talk) 14:35, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

March 7

Bhagavad Gita

Is there a standard, or particularly well though of, (modern) English translation available? I'm aware that there are many versions free on-line (including on WikiSource); in my experience with other translated works, though, you tend to get what you pay for with that. I was happy to pay for a copy of Seamus Heaney's Beowulf instead of grabbing one of the free ones out there, for example. Annotation would be a bonus, but not necessary. Any suggestions? Matt Deres (talk) 15:42, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have a copy of Bhagavad- Gita As It Is, by his divine grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupãda [5] Don't know if this is what you want but is is in English and makes a lot of sense. Understand this mighty tome and one has the equivalent of a collage education for less than a tankful of gas.--Aspro (talk) 20:23, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The obvious problem with this book is that it is very important to most of Hinduism, which also has disagreements on core tenets which make Christianity look like a bunch of Borg in comparison. So, think of all the different version of the Bible available in the West, multiply that number tenfold or so, and that might give you an idea about how many variants there would be in the Bhagavad Gita. My best guess might be to take one of the Penguin editions, like those listed at Amazon, or similar editions from presses which print a lot of "classics," which probably have the best chance of being what might be the least divergent and most basically "academic" editions. John Carter (talk) 21:43, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Bible has different translations, and Catholics accept a few more books into the canon than Protestants. But the actual content is almost identical across all versions. Pick any verse in the Bible and 95 times out of 100, there's no controversy about what the verse means or whether it's authentic. Differences between Christian denominations are usually due to differences in interpreting the Bible, in extra-biblical doctrines, and in tradition, not differences in the Bible itself. (Early Christianity was actually far more diverse than it is today; I talk about this in Early Christians Believed WHAT?). --Bowlhover (talk) 00:30, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And to expand on the above points: see Arvind Sharma's The Hindu Gita for the varying ancient- and medieval-time; and Catherine Robinson's Interpretations of the Bhagavad-Gita and Images of the Hindu Tradition for varying modern interpretations assigned to the text. That said, let not all this debate keep you from reading the work. Gita makes for pretty quick and easy reading, and it is only when one tries to collapse it into ONE CORE message (or rather, tries to derive/justify ones existing philosophy) that one runs into such complexity. If you read it as you would read Shakespeare, or Homer, none of this an issue. Abecedare (talk) 04:13, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Bhagavad- Gita As It Is is thr Hare Krishna version which is not considered to be accurate by scholars. It depends what you are after - something clear and readable, or something thst goes into detail on the problems of interpretation.Paul B (talk) 22:34, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Something readable and accessible is foremost. Some background info would be fine, but I can also get that on WP. This is just out of interest, so I'd like something I can read and enjoy, ideally without having to reach for a reference book every third word or something. Don't get me wrong; I understand Arjuna and I don't share a lot of common ground and I'll likely need to look some stuff up regardless of the edition. Matt Deres (talk) 02:52, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oxford's World Classics generally does a great job, and they have a Bhagavad Gita translation here. The translation has 20 pages of introduction and extensive commentary on the text, which you can see using "Look Inside". I've never read it myself, so I can't vouch for this translation specifically, only for the World Classics in general. (Their annotated Bible is superb, if you ever plan on buying one.)

If you find a better translation, let me know. I plan to read the Bhagavad Gita in 18 months or so. --Bowlhover (talk) 07:47, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Matt, there are over 300+ translations of Gita in English (a bibliography of 1891 translations was compiled way back in 1982 by Calleweart and Hemraj), so you definitely don't lack for choice. What translation you prefer will depend upon your taste, and what you intend to get out of it. Assuming you are looking for modern complete translations, in a recent Biography of Gita, Richard Davis highlights the following ones:

J. A. B. van Buitenen's for its scholarship (although it's not the easiest one to read casually; amazon link)
Stephen Mitchell's for it's poetry (amazon link)
Swami Prabhupada's as a devotee's translation (amazon link)
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan' as a philosopher's translation (amazon link)

Davis also has pocket reviews for a few other translations that you may be able to see here. Abecedare (talk) 03:44, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

'Red hot coals' on moon

There was 'Red hot coals' on the moon according to this page. What does that mean? Is it something that could be seen by people? Apparently there was an earthquake then and also a solar eclipse. Any more info anywhere on these events of 1185? --Christie the puppy lover (talk) 16:07, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The entry says "Solar eclipse 'Red hot coals' on Moon. Prominences?". Sounds like an attempt to describe what the eclipse looked like as in our picture of prominences during a total eclipse. Rmhermen (talk) 16:36, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)As I understand it, the "red hot coals" were reported to be visible during the solar eclipse. However, according to List of solar eclipses in the 12th century, the May 1st 1185 solar eclipse was more or less in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, so its surprising that anyone saw it. I'd take the report with a grain of salt... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:44, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps this was a reference to what we now call Baily's beads. If the sun was relatively low in the sky at the time of the eclipse, these might appear red, just as the sun appears redder when closer to the horizon (sunrise and sunset). RomanSpa (talk) 18:22, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That page does give sources although it's not immediately obvious...if you can find them, the ones for the 1185 eclipse are Botley, C.M. 'Some centenaries for 1985'. Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 95, 2, 1985; Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 89, 3, 1979; and Stephenson, F. R. Historical Eclipses and Earth's Rotation. Cambridge University Press, 1997. This sounds like the sort of thing some British or Irish chronicle or annals would have recorded, so hopefully one of those sources mentions which one. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:15, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you - you guys are sweethearts.--Christie the puppy lover (talk) 20:04, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

March 8

Portugal

What legislative bodies has Portugal had?Ohyeahstormtroopers6 (talk) 04:08, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know but while you're waiting, you might want to browse through Category:Politics of Portugal. Dismas|^(talk) 04:38, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dismas, I'm afraid that category is somewhat lacking. (Not a critique of you, but rather the lack of info in the articles themselves.) Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 17 Adar 5775 04:40, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, our Portuguese articles seem to be in need of a lot of work, but from what I've been able to find, there was a bicameral 'Congress of the Republic' during the First Portuguese Republic, The Corporative Chamber and National Assembly under the Estado Novo, and the Assembly of the Republic today. Hope that's all of them. Like I said, those articles need a lot of work. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 17 Adar 5775 04:40, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Libraries

What was the first public library in America? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.207.45.199 (talk) 04:58, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Depends on how you define "public". There are almost a dozen candidates, ranging from oldest building to house what is now a public library, to the oldest library to allow access to the public, to the oldest tax-supported library, etc. etc. Read this article for information on all of them. --Jayron 32 05:08, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Burying somebody on public land?

Is it illegal to bury somebody on public land? Have there been any court cases around it? I'm more curious about it in Western countries, rather than in developing countries where this might be common. Qooterton (talk) 05:01, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In the U.K., at least, it seems you are required to bury someone in a cemetary or other such place designated for burial. See Burial Act 1857, the full text of which is here. --Jayron 32 05:12, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That act regulates burials, but doesn't forbid them in private ground (provided it's not near a watercourse or might cause other problems). Permission to bury on public land not designated as a burial place would probably not be given except in exceptional circumstances, but burial on private land is not unusual -- I know of three such burials near to where I live. Dbfirs 08:52, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. You can bury someone in your back garden in the UK, but you need to have planning permission (despite it being private land). Also, when you come to sell the house, you have to mention to potential buyers that there is a grave in the garden, which may potentially lower the price of the house considerably. I don't know what rights the new owners would have about what to do with the body, but I'm sure that consulting the local council wouldn't be amiss. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 11:09, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You do not need planning permission for a burial on private land in the UK, so long as it is for a limited number of people such as family or residents of the property. You do need the landowner's permission, a certificate from the Registrar, and a durable land burial register, setting out the dates, details, etc., which will need to be kept with the deeds of the property. You should also meet Environment Agency guidance (apparently not legally binding) about the protection of water supplies. Source. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:29, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, I am pretty sure that I heard that we do need planning permission, as well as all of the above. Maybe I misheard or was given misinformation when talking about the topic (which is not often, by the way). KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 14:52, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For clarification, you mean public land not specifically set aside for burials? Because cemeteries i.e. land specifically designed as burial grounds may sometimes be public land in a number of Western countries. Nil Einne (talk) 13:36, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is likely to be one of those questions where it will depend on which country (or state... or even county or town) you are talking about. It may be illegal in one jurisdiction, and legal in another. Blueboar (talk) 16:01, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You often hear about someone being cremated and their ashes being spread on what is clearly not private property. However, "ashes" are merely pulverized bone, which is presumably not the health risk that an improperly buried body could be. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:54, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And yet that often requires permits as well. Which I've never understood. Dismas|^(talk) 04:34, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK, there is no "public land" as such; it is always owned by somebody, even common land. Therefore, you would need the consent of the land owner. Land owned by local authorities is usually the subject of bye laws which may not specifically exclude burial but would probably prohibit digging holes. Alansplodge (talk) 09:11, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You can bury qualified people on some public land at least. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:56, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What sort of qualification are we talking about here? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:15, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Clarity linked to Arlington National Cemetery, which explains who "qualifies". I know of someone who's buried there, and I know there was a process the immediate family had to go through, but it got done. Presumably the rules would be similar at other national cemeteries. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:42, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is a lot of public land in Alaska, and most of it is wilderness... However I don't know if it is legal to be buried there if you die. Blueboar (talk) 00:57, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Truly, Alaska is a very, very big back yard – Yet, the Inuit have been doing interments there since they crossed the Bering Strait, so who's going to know that your mortal remains have been popped into a hole? It is further north than Detroit. 'Legal' only applies to areas where the law can be enforced, like round and about the vicinity of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – and I doubt even that sometimes.--Aspro (talk) 01:31, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What a great advertising slogan, lol: "Alaska--It's Further North than Detroit" μηδείς (talk) 01:59, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

March 9

Georgia the U.S. State

What lawmaking bodies has Georgia the U.S. State had?Mcleod Allen Mueller Hill, aka Ohyeahstormtroopers6, Imperator Universi 03:32, 9 March 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ohyeahstormtroopers6 (talk • contribs)

If you want to include Georgia in all its forms, then according to Province of Georgia it had a bicameral legislature—presumably from the colony's foundation—with the Commons House of Assembly as the lower house and the General Assembly as the upper up to the dissolution of the Georgia Colony during the American Revolution. In 1777, the Georgia General Assembly was founded and was a unicameral body until 1789 (the same year we adopted our current form of federal government), when it became bicameral with a Senate and House of Representatives. That system survives to this day. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 18 Adar 5775 03:53, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Government

Can all government-related institutions be labeled as executive, legislative, or Judicial? Mcleod Allen Mueller Hill, aka Ohyeahstormtroopers6, Imperator Universi 04:27, 9 March 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ohyeahstormtroopers6 (talk • contribs) 04:25, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Those definitions depend on the rule of law, as the legislative branch makes laws, the executive branch enforces them, and the judicial branch judges people under the law, and perhaps judges the laws themselves. In a system where there are no laws, and the absolute ruler just does as he pleases, there really aren't any branches of government (or all branches are controlled by him). Sometimes those branches exist, in theory, but have no real power. StuRat (talk) 06:12, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ohyeahstormtroopers6 -- The idea of a strict distinction between executive, legislative, and judicial functions was pretty much invented as part of an 18th-century reform agenda (see Separation of powers#Montesquieu's tripartite system); there have been many systems over the centuries without such separations... AnonMoos (talk) 08:30, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The division of government into "executive", "legislative" and "judicial" to some extent depends on the definitions used, and the lens of political theory through which the various functions are viewed. A good example of a country which does not characterise its institutions using this tripartite system is Taiwan, which uses a quinquepartite system in which governmental functions are divided into "executive", "legislative", "judicial", "control" and "examination". The two unfamiliar (to Western eyes) functions can be best thought of as "independent audit" and "civil service personnel selection". There are obvious advantages to a fully independent auditing function, and many Western governments also have such a function, though it is not regarded as a separate branch of government. The "examination" function has its roots in deep Chinese history: the Chinese imperial bureaucracy had an important function in maintaining and controlling social mobility, and thus provided a mechanism by which otherwise difficult-to-control areas of the empire could be managed and integrated into the body politic. In modern times in Taiwan, the Examination Yuan is largely concerned with quality maintenance. RomanSpa (talk) 12:41, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In the United States, the States and the People are not branches of the federal government, but superior to it: "Amendment X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." μηδείς (talk) 17:50, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nonetheless, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and generally speaking the states cannot deny rights to citizens which the federal grants. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:52, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, but a convention of the states could amend or re-write the Constitution. They simply haven't done so. The ninth and tenth amendments are not mere words. μηδείς (talk) 01:56, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be complete, at one time anything not expressed in the Enumerated powers ocf Constitution did not directly apply to the states, it took the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the process known as "incorporation" for much of the protections guaranteed by the United States Bill of Rights to actually apply to state governments. Prior to the judicial process of incorporation, the phrasing "Congress shall pass no law..." was seen as applying ONLY to the Federal government, meaning the state government was free to shit on every right the Constitution guaranteed people. Since the states law generally applies to how people's day-to-day lives run, most of the Bill of Rights didn't apply to people until incorporation. For example, Congress couldn't pass a law establishing a national church, but states could (and did), see for example Massachusetts had an official state church until 1833; it was not forced to abolish it, but did so of its own accord. --Jayron 32 04:17, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's incorrect. Only the First Amendment says anything about the Congress, the following seven amendments are along the lines of no person shall be compelled, denied, subject to, and so forth. Here's the text, although you have to scroll down. The Fourteenth Amendment's a fine thing, but the first ten were not without effect in the states. μηδείς (talk) 04:10, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Pre-European Australian religion

George Frazer says in The Golden Bough:

the aborigines of Australia, the rudest savages as to whom we possess accurate information, magic is universally practised, whereas religion in the sense of a propitiation or conciliation of the higher powers seems to be nearly unknown. Roughly speaking, all men in Australia are magicians, but not one is a priest; everybody fancies he can influence his fellows or the course of nature by sympathetic magic, but nobody dreams of propitiating gods by prayer and sacrifice.

Is Frazer right about this, or is his ~~racism~~bias shining through? Did the Australian aborigines really have no priests and no prayer or sacrifice before European colonization? --98.232.12.250 (talk) 05:02, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Can't help on the magic vs. religion question, but in anthropological use, the term "priest" usually refers to a full-time religion specialist of a type which doesn't generally exist in "band-level" societies such as those of pre-1788 Australia. However, see Shaman#Oceania... AnonMoos (talk) 08:20, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am confused as to why Frazer was either right, or he was a racist. It's a false dichotomy, and even if his statement were false, I see no reason why it would be called racist in any case. I don't disagree with AnonMoos's link, but unfortunately it gives no sources. In any case, by a priest is normally meant a member of a special trained bureaucratic class of an organized religion. Shamans predate such ideas. They are (counter to the claims of prostitutes) the oldest profession, a guild combining the roles of medicine-man, lore-keeper, and charismatic religious figure. Often hey are berdaches. I have no specific knowledge of Australian Aborigines, but they certainly did not have any organized religion. Not knowing how the OP wants to define his terms, I am not sure we can say more than that. μηδείς (talk) 18:05, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's also possible that he could have been right regarding pre-colonial Aboriginal Australian belief systems (not saying he is or isn't), but still racist. Frazer's model still places Europeans at the peak of civilization, and kinda assumes that the Aboriginal Australians never really advanced beyond climbing out of the trees (even though their ancestors would have had to have figured out expert sailing before whitey learned to quit drawing on the walls). Ian.thomson (talk) 18:32, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wallace's Line which divided Sunda and Sahul (basically, Australia from Eurasia) during the last ice age was 22 miles across, and the ancestors of the current Australians most likely walked there from New Guinea which was then attached by a now submerged land bridge. Asserting that Wallace may have been a racist is like saying Abraham Lincoln may have been a child molester. Unless you have evidence, it's a vicious slur. And Frazer said nothing about Australians climbing down from trees. Calling the rather skilled cave art found in some parts of Europe "whitey drawing on the walls" is simply silly, given such rock art is also found in Australia (and the Americas, and Africa), and the European cave artists were not at that time blue-eyed blonds. μηδείς (talk) 19:08, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(OP here, different IP) Sorry, I didn't mean to imply there was a dichotomy. I should have said that he could have been biased, since he calls the indigenous peoples "the rudest savages as to whom we possess accurate information". Even if that's true, viewing someone as the rudest savage is not conducive to understanding their belief systems objectively. --98.232.12.250

Rudest savages in that context doesn't mean least polite murderers. It means culturally most like our hunter-gatherer ancestors; relatively uneducated and living in the wild. He was not an Australian anthropologist doing his own research and lying about how brutal or ignorant the Aborigines were. He was writing on comparative mythology based on the sources available to him and in the idiom used at that time. μηδείς (talk) 01:49, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt there's a single fact that is true of all Aboriginal tribes. There were something like 800 groupings, and while those living adjacent to each other may have understood some of the other's language and shared some of their cultural practices, those living more remotely would not have. To the European eye they were all the same people, but each tribe considered themselves to be as racially and ethnically distinct as the Vietnamese and the Scots. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:12, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If the topic interests you, you can email Claire Bowern at Yale http://pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3/, tell her you edit Wikipedia and are interested in Australian languages (see her talk page offer at Pama-Nyungan languages and she will email you a pdf of Australian Languages: Classification and the comparative method (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory). The consensus among Australianists is that all the languages of Australia form one phylum, like Indo-European, (or better yet, in the mode of its distribution) Niger-Congo, with most of the Aborigines not in the northwest belonging to the Pama-Nyungan subbranch, somewhat like the Bantu languages are a southern subbranch of the Niger-Congo language phylum. μηδείς (talk) 01:49, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Frazer's statement about a lack of worship appears to be false for at least some indigenous Australian peoples. See, for example, our article Rainbow Serpent. Marco polo (talk) 18:46, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Frazer's opinions seem to be mainly reflective of the sterotypes held by some scholars of the era. You can read an intellectual history of the field in Bigotry and religion in Australia, 1865-1950 of the journal Humanities Research. See Chapter 4, Interpreting Aboriginal Religion by Henrika Kuklick, in particular. Abecedare (talk) 19:52, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Did the Australian aborigines really have no priests and no prayer or sacrifice..." Can't speak for the Australian aborigines, but the question of what constitutes priests and prayer is an interesting one. Personally I'd say Buddhism has no priests and no prayers - the monks are in the monastery purely to follow their own path to nirvana, not to act as priests, and since Buddhism teaches there is no god you can't very well pray to him. But what's a priest? A good definition is that it's someone who acts as an intermediary between humans and the supernatural, in view of his/her special gifts and/or knowledge. A shaman could be classified as a priest on that basis, and I think the aborigines had shamans (everyone else did). PiCo (talk) 08:11, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

According to Indigenous_Australians#Belief_systems, among some groups were people called Ngangkari who served the roles that shamans/healers/priests do in other religions. A shame we don't yet have an article about them, but it is at least a note. --Jayron 32 21:14, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

During the 15th-19th centuries, did European Christians recognize each other as Christians?

I noticed on the ecumenism article that actual ecumenism efforts began somewhat recently in history, which may imply that before that time, each "Christian" denomination was non-ecumenical, parochial, ethnic, and uncooperative with each other. Despite the interdenominational hostilities (Catholics kill Protestants; Protestants kill Catholics), did they nevertheless regard each other as "Christian", however wrong they might perceive other denominations to be on doctrine and practice? Also, did the interdenominational religious persecutions occur in the United States too, or were European Americans forced to assimilate into a melting pot of religious pluralism and tolerance? 66.213.29.17 (talk) 17:00, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on where, when, and even who you're talking about. "Europe in the 15th-19th centuries" is actually a pretty broad category. John Dee claimed to be Anglican in England and Catholic abroad, and Paracelsus was comfortable in either Protestant or Catholic churches. However, Reginald Scot blamed Catholicism for witchcraft, and made an early form of the Protestant slander (later codified by Alexander Hislop) that Catholicism is just quasi-Christianized paganism.

Ben Franklin's autobiography generally describes most American religious groups getting along, treating each other with a "live and let live" mentality. There's little point in showing animosity toward Quakers if that means you lose your medical care in the process, or Methodists if that means you lose the help of the best carpenter in town, or Presbyterians if that means your children can no longer attend school. That said, there probably were instances where a Protestant businessman would refuse service to a Catholic (though under some pretense besides religion), since even into the 20th century there was a sense of "otherness" about Catholics among American Protestants.

IIRC, renewed studies into Gnosticism were partly the result of Catholics trying to accuse Protestants of being just another Gnostic group, and Protestants seeking to refute that. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:22, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Quasi-Christianized paganism" may not be such a bad thing. Christianity in general developed largely in Europe, and so it has various and countless allusions and relics of the past. People are always influenced by current events and history, so forming a new religion (Christianity) from old indigenous religions (European paganisms) might be a way to continue the cultural and familial heritage. I remember reading something about the Virgin Mary in a peer-reviewed journal(Kinship of the Virgin Mary), and it proposes the development of the Virgin Mary in Roman Catholic thought and culture: that perhaps the Virgin Mary is a transformation of a mother goddess figure in the old European paganisms. 66.213.29.17 (talk) 17:48, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's a case for contextualization and syncretism, but Hislop and his ilk made the claim that the Papal office and the reverence for Mary were nothing but the continued worship of an imagined cult for Nimrod and Semiramis that adopted a Christian gloss, rather than the Virgin Mary being a part of Christianity that gained new contexts among formerly pagan peoples. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:07, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding IP 66's comment, compare the local parading of various Virgin Mary statues (often with oddly non-Semitic attributes) to the Roman practice of evocatio. That may be the origin of many non-historical and locally venerated saints. μηδείς (talk) 18:10, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As Ian.thomson says, the answer to your question depends on the time and the place. During the 16th and 17th centuries, when post-Reformation conflicts were at their most heated, Protestants and Catholics often did question one another's credentials as Christians. Protestants saw Catholicism as a perversion of Christianity as revealed in the Bible, and Catholics saw Protestants as heretics. Even in North America, especially in the 17th century, there was definitely persecution of people who did not adhere to the dominant sect in many colonies. Pennsylvania, where Benjamin Franklin lived, was something of an exception in allowing religious freedom for all Christians, a fact that indicates that in the eyes of some, at least by the late 17th century when Pennsylvania was founded, Catholics and various kinds of Protestants were all viewed as Christians. However, in Massachusetts Bay Colony, religious persecution was widespread, such that dissenters such as Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were forced into exile. Catholics were banned from many colonies, which is the main reason why Maryland was founded as a haven for Catholics. By the 19th century, in most parts of the Western world, most Protestants and Catholics grudgingly viewed one another as (flawed) Christians, but as Ian.thomson points out, in many countries where Protestantism was dominant, including the United States, discrimination against Catholics persisted into the 20th century. This is original research, but I happen to know that a golf club in the New York town where I grew up did not admit Catholics (or Jews) until the 1960s. Marco polo (talk) 18:17, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Discrimination against Catholics at a golf club? What does that have to do with religion? Or perhaps, the people didn't want to associate with Catholics, because they feared that the Catholics would proselytize them? 66.213.29.17 (talk) 19:36, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Did Swedish Lutherans and German Lutherans see each other Christians? What about German Lutherans and Greek Orthodox Christians? Was there any hostility among Protestant denominations? 66.213.29.17 (talk) 18:37, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am not Alexander fucking Hislop. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:47, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the misreading, Ian; I've corrected my comment.

As for the follow-up question, certainly Lutherans from different countries would have seen one another as Christians. As for Greek Orthodox Christians, certainly there would have been a recognition that, like the Catholics, they thought themselves to be Christians, but 16th or 17th century Lutherans would have seen the Greek Orthodox as guilty of many of the same perversions as Catholics, such as the cult of saints. Marco polo (talk) 19:04, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a source with me, but I seem to remember that Martin Luther admired the Orthodox church for rejecting the papacy. Perhaps, there are some Lutheran-Orthodox connections there? 66.213.29.17 (talk) 19:15, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Orthodox were credited for not being "papists", but they were often still seen as corrupt for their veneration of saints, elaborate religious art, monasticism, and other practices without a scriptural base. Marco polo (talk) 20:14, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect the overemphasis on scripture may influence perceptions of the Bible among nonreligious people. Many atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, seem to take a very Protestant view of scripture, reading the scripture without any extrabiblical traditional interpretation or guidance from the church fathers. Richard Dawkins was raised Anglican, so he might have gotten this approach to scripture from his own childhood church. If he had been raised Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, then he would criticize the scripture by disagreeing with the church fathers or something. 66.213.29.17 (talk) 20:36, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Emphasis" maybe; "overemphasis" is definitely a Point Of View. Alansplodge (talk) 20:59, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Despite the rhetoric of denominational bigotry, I think all Christian denominations have recognized that the other denominations were Christians... distinct from complete non-believers like Jews, Muslems, Hindus, etc. Blueboar (talk) 01:09, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think there might well have been a difference with some of the restorationist groups. In general, I think the best way to determine if one Christian group recognizes another as Christian is to consider whether they see the baptisms of other groups as valid to their own group. If they do, then they would most likely have to be seen as seeing the other group as at least Christian in a significant way, even if it is also heretical to their own beliefs. John Carter (talk) 01:16, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The important thing to remember about the European religious wars (and religious wars in general, including the ones we find ourselves in today) aren't really about religion per se, except around the edges. The root causes of these conflicts are the same things we fight over always: economics, access to resources, political power, etc. Religion provides a convenient excuse, and an ex-post-facto jusitification for such conflicts, but they aren't really about religion. The underprivileged revolt against who they perceive is oppressing them, political factions vie for supremacy, leaders fight other leaders for land and hegemony, these are what we fight over. Take any religious war, and you find the root cause is most often one of these core issues. In the time period described, 15th-19th century Christendom, you find nearly all religious conflicts have an economic or political basis. Take the Thirty Years War, often cited as the biggest and most important of the Protestant-Catholic wars. Really, it was about internal political conflicts within the Holy Roman Empire and then with foreign powers coming in to take advantage of said conflicts. There's a whole lot going on before one even gets to the whole religious issue: issues of foreign influence within Germany, the Aristocracy exerting political control over the Emperor, ethnic issues between Germans and non-Germans within the empire, etc. Religion was at best an aggravating factor, or a motivation to fight, but religious differences are rarely, on their own, the primary cause. It's a nice thing for political leaders to tell the people that will be dying so they themselves can consolidate power "Kill them because you should hate them because they have a different religion". But that's about it. Prior to being fed such propaganda by their leaders, the average person is too busy feeding their family and just living to care about such matters.--Jayron 32 13:40, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Venezuela

What lawmaking bodies has Venezuela had, in all it's forms?Mcleod Allen Mueller Hill, aka Ohyeahstormtroopers6, Imperator Universi 20:32, 9 March 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ohyeahstormtroopers6 (talk • contribs)

Are you going to ask this for all 194 (or so) countries in the world? LongHairedFop (talk) 21:25, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, over an extended period of time. Why?2602:306:C541:CC60:ACDE:A050:9B28:BE5A (talk) 21:56, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Because, you can do all of your own research by looking in Wikipedia articles like "History of XXXX" and "Politics of XXXX" articles, and then following links from THOSE articles around. That is exactly what anyone you ask here is going to do, and now that you know how to do it, you don't have to ask us to do it for you... --Jayron 32 13:20, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, at the risk of angering you yet again , I would like to remind you that I am not forcing you to answer my questions. If I really needed the answers to these questions, I could just do research myself. But I think it's more fun to ask a question and get a helpful response. I won't complain if that response takes a while. Most of the questions I ask, including this one, are merely curiosity questions, and not just questions for a class. I can and do often help myself, but I also like to ask questions and get a helpful response. I am truly sorry if you cannot understand that.Mcleod Allen Mueller Hill, aka Ohyeahstormtroopers6, Imperator Universi 18:26, 10 March 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ohyeahstormtroopers6 (talk • contribs)

March 10

market

Is more correct "immovable property market" or "immovable properties market" or other?--95.247.22.119 (talk) 10:59, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably you talking about Immovable property - as such it may depend on where in the world you wish to say the expression. In the UK, we would say "the property market".--Dweller (talk) 12:12, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And in the US, you say "real estate". Note, however, that houses can sometimes be moved, although at great expense and/or risk, so it's normally only done with historic buildings. (And of course mobile homes can be moved, but that's not what we're talking about here.) StuRat (talk) 16:14, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Which Progressive policy influenced the Seventeenth Amendment?

Which Progressive policy influenced the Seventeenth Amendment? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.25.170.174 (talk) 15:52, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. You can read about it yourself at Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which does describe some of the political and social background to the Amendment. --Jayron 32 15:56, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also note that there are four constitutions that have had a seventeenth amendment. Jayron has assumed that you are United States (which is where your IP address resolves to), however for your future reference you should state which country you are talking about. LongHairedFop (talk) 17:13, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Of these four, how many were influenced by Progressive policy? —Tamfang (talk) 17:56, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Margaret Thatcher

I have a question about Thatcherism: When Margaret Thatcher was carrying out her policies in the 1980's, how did the British 'Left' go about responding to the challenges of Thatcherism? --Roadinffrog (talk) 20:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We have articles titled Premiership of Margaret Thatcher and Thatcherism that contain critique from the left. --Jayron 32 21:09, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A good place to start would be our article on Thatcherism. I would also recommend you read a copy of Quintin Hogg's 1976 Dimbleby Lecture, Elective dictatorship (if you are a university it will be in the politics library; if you are at school you may have to search around a bit for a copy). Once you are clear on the general modus operandi of Thatcherism and the UK government at that time, you'll have some context for understanding what options were available for the Left to organise its response.

Broadly, we can split the Left's response to Thatcherism into two main strands: parliamentary opposition and extra-parliamentary action. As you'll see from the references I've already mentioned, and as you should understand from your general knowledge of UK constitutional theory, a determined government with a united party forming a clear majority in the House of Commons is largely invulnerable to opposition tactics in the big "set piece" debates. Parliamentary opposition thus necessarily had to consist of work during the "committee" stages of the government's bills, and speechifying in preparation for the next election (that is, the next opportunity for the Left to get real power). The parliamentary Left was split between those who recognised the need for the Thatcherite reforms, and those who sought to preserve the explicitly socialist (as opposed to social democratic) traditions of the Labour Party. Much of the Left's parliamentary energy was expended in sniping between those two factions, leading to the formation of the SDP in the early 1980s. This split of the parliamentary Left lasted through much of the 1980s, and may have reduced the effectiveness of the Left's parliamentary opposition to Thatcherism.

Extra-parliamentary opposition consisted, to a large extent, of activities by organised labour, much of it under the auspices of the Trades Union Congress and/or individual Trades Unions. The great culmination of this was the famous UK miners' strike (1984–85).

I'll leave it to my colleagues to flesh out this "bare bones" summary! RomanSpa (talk) 21:20, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A really good framework to add detail to. Remember, "the Left" was very far from being a monolith; in fact it was deeply divided, and with no agreement about to respond to Thatcher. You might find Hall and Jacques' The Politics of Thatcherism useful. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:31, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is how us Socialists in the North paid tribute to that witch. Do you know why she is called Britain's last female prime minister? Because she IS the last. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 22:05, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please delete or hat your comment. It's nothing to do with the question, and in no way answers it. RomanSpa (talk) 22:41, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Does it not illustrate one answer to "how did the British 'Left' go about responding..."? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:57, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks BB, for backing me up. She actually destroyed the North's economy, because we are socialist. She was capitalist. We were very happy to see her leave office. When she died, to be honest, none of us cared. We were too busy rebuilding the very stuff she had destroyed. THIS is how lefties think. This is a video of Liverpool football fans before a game with Sunderland (another city which she destroyed) singing together, the same chant. We stand together against a common foe. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 04:46, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Her buddy Ronald Reagan likewise set the tone for quite a few of the bad things that have happened to America in the intervening thirty-plus years. I wonder, though, how much of the vitriol directed at Thatcher was either because of, or enhanced by, the mere fact of her being female? I recall Monty Python making fun of her clear back in the 60s. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:45, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Her gender has nothing to do with it, her disastrous policies everything. 82.21.7.184 (talk) 07:57, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that what Kage-chan was getting at is that Thatcher put an indelible stain on the office that has impacted later female MPs. 13:37, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

That is exactly what I was saying. She was our first female PM, and it's just an unfortunate fact that anyone with any living memory of her will not elect another. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 14:34, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, Militant tendency and Arthur Scargill for some of the background reading. --Dweller (talk) 23:35, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The left's response to Thatcher was Tony Blair. μηδείς (talk) 03:59, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Only an American would call Tony Blair left-wing. 82.21.7.184 (talk) 07:31, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Tony Blair article indicates he identified as "left of center", so he considered himself to be at least somewhere on that wing. However, working hand-and-foot with Bush on invading Iraq doesn't really sound like a typical liberal approach - more like a Neo-Con. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:40, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What he said isn't relevant, how he acted is. Blair wasn't with Labour, he was with New Labour, completely different beast from the Labour in the ~~Witch's~~ Thatcher's years. Indeed far more 'neo-con' and not 'liberal', although both of those terms have very little meaning outside of the US. 82.21.7.184 (talk) 07:57, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'd tend to agree with both sides. The reaction of much of the Left eventually was to move to the Right. But you're both missing the point of the question, which is that this move to Blairism came during Major's premiership, after Labour managed somehow to lose the 1992 election and after the sad death of John Smith in 1994. The OP question was about "When Margaret Thatcher was carrying out her policies in the 1980's". --Dweller (talk) 11:27, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For some satirical insight into how we thought of Thatcher's government back in those days, I would suggest watching Spitting Image (available on YouTube). The only good thing she did was allow my dad (a trade union leader) to organize strikes, so I was able to get more time with him. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 11:22, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The evolution of the left began during Thatcher's term, not during Major's. Blair's election was the result. This is paralleled in the US where Jimmy Carter's defeat by Reagan led ultimately to Bill Clinton winning as a pragmatically rebranded "New Democrat". Blair is a much more historically contextual answer than "protests". μηδείς (talk) 16:40, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not to be confused with a New Democrat, of course. --65.94.51.62 (talk) 16:58, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think Kinnock's floundering over Clause IV gives the lie to any notion of Blairism predating, erm, Tony Blair. As I stated above, the crackdown on Militant is apposite for the OP, but it's hard to credit Kinnock (or even more so Foot) with really evolving the left in reaction to Thatcherism. --Dweller (talk) 17:17, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We all seem to have forgotten Derek Hatton. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 17:26, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking personally, the women of the British Left responded to the challenges of Thatcherism by organising themselves and caring for the families of striking trades unionists (when we weren't trying to keep our own families together). Some of us also left our families and protested against nuclear weapons. It brought about lasting friendships and respect borne out of adversity. --TammyMoet (talk) 16:08, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

March 11

Alledged election fraud

There is a sentence "Monarchists advanced suspicions of fraud that were never allowed to be proved." in the beginning of the article Italian constitutional referendum, 1946, but this is not elaborated upon in the article. Could someone explain what the fraud was about and why there were suspictions about it? Snowsuit Wearer (talk|contribs) 00:02, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's apparently citing a book, and given the lack of any other info, it could be a POV-push. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:55, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's more information in the Italian wiki article [6]. --Xuxl (talk) 09:49, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Unmarried companions and scholars and died like that

Besides Imam Nawawi and Salman Al Farsi, which other companions of Prophet Muhammad Peace be upon him and scholars died as unmarried men? I rather not to use the word bachelor or single because people might think that they were not interested in sex. Please and thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.33.30 (talk) 03:38, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has an article titled List of Sahabah which names many of Muhammad's companions. It would provide a good source for you to start your research. --Jayron 32 04:08, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

6th program FOCAC 2015

I tried to research 2015 FOCAC but it didn't say about what month will 6th conference occur? March? June? October 2015? How many African leaders will participate in the 2015 (6th program) FOCAC meeting besides Jacob Zuma will anybody from Malawi, Senegal, Zambia, Guinea participate. Is Xi Jinping going to be the coordinator of 6th program of 2015 FOCAC? Because I tried googleling they just said it will be in South Africa and Xi Jinping (I don't know if anybody else) will participate, any other leaders besides Jacob Zuma will participate. I just know by the article FOCAC program goes every three years, so this year we are suppose to have another one.--107.202.105.233 (talk) 04:00, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Art can't be replicated?

A long time ago, a professor claimed that one defining characteristic of art was that it could not be replicated, or it would cheapen its value. He made one exception for mass-produced well-engineered manufactured goods, though, such as high-tech refrigerators and television sets. Why are refrigerators and television sets and electronic devices not considered art, even though they involve a lot of originality and creativity in the creation process? 140.254.226.189 (talk) 16:03, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It all depends on your definition. OXO and Apple computers are both renowned for mass-produced, yet artistic, industrial design. StuRat (talk) 16:10, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There were several copies made of famous works, often by apprentices of the master who created them. Reproductions of out-of-copyright works are fairly common as well; the often cost little more than the time of the artist who makes them. For paintings, prints can be churned out for little cost. The aesthetics of prints are a different matter. In general the easier it is to make something, then then competition tends to drive down prices, however with brand prestige, luxury items can sell for far more than they cost to manufacture, compared to mass-market brands. LongHairedFop (talk) 16:49, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Recording of evidence from a closed case?

Hello, I'm writing a story that involves a closed murder case where the killer was never found. An important part of the evidence is a phone recording. I was wondering, would it be possible for the average Joe who is unrelated to the case to get their hands on the recording?

Thanks! 76.216.209.128 (talk) 20:10, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 372: / Line 372: @@
 :There were several copies made of famous works, often by apprentices of the master who created them. [[Replicas|Reproductions]] of out-of-copyright works are fairly common as well; the often cost little more than the time of the artist who makes them. For paintings, [[Printmaking|prints]] can be churned out for little cost. The aesthetics of prints are a different matter.  In general the easier it is to make something, then then competition tends to drive down prices, however with [[brand prestige]], luxury items can sell for far more than they cost to manufacture, compared to mass-market brands. [[User:LongHairedFop|LongHairedFop]] ([[User talk:LongHairedFop|talk]]) 16:49, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
+== Recording of evidence from a closed case? ==
+Hello, I'm writing a story that involves a closed murder case where the killer was never found. An important part of the evidence is a phone recording. I was wondering, would it be possible for the average Joe who is unrelated to the case to get their hands on the recording?
+Thanks! [[Special:Contributions/76.216.209.128|76.216.209.128]] ([[User talk:76.216.209.128|talk]]) 20:10, 11 March 2015 (UTC)