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March 31

Buddhist immortality

I know the title seems like a contradiction. The focus of Buddhism is the dissolution of the self and impermanence. Well, I am taking a class on Buddhist art and we recently read the Tsukumogami Ki (Record of the Tsukumogami). It mentions an esoteric Buddhist patriarch called Nagabodhi (Jp: Ryuchi Daishi, 龍智大士) taking an elixir of immortality so he could be alive long enough (800 years) to pass his teachings on to two future priests of the Shingon sect. It also mentions a certain Kudonsen (瞿曇仙) who was supposedly an immortal wizard in India. That sounds like a Japanese transliteration to me. I haven't been able to find very much information on both men regarding their life in India and their immortality. Can someone help me find good English material about them, as well as provide examples of other so-called Buddhist immortals? Thanks. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 04:03, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

A brief Chinese Google search suggests that 瞿曇仙 is "Gautama". There seems to be masses of scriptural references, both ancient and more modern texts, mentioning the name. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Likewise a Chinese Google search for 龍智大士 turns up a lot of material. "大士" is an honorific. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

As for 龍智, do these help? [1], [2], and [3]. Oda Mari (talk) 06:25, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I have previously read the majority of what has been presented. Most of the material just says Nagabodhi was the student of so and so and passed on a particular form of esoteric Buddhism. I have found one book that mentions him receiving a siddhi for extending his life, but there has to be more on the subject. I guess the Japanese version of the original Indian tale was colored with Taoism since the "siddhi" became an "elixir." I would like to at least date when he supposedly flourished (that is if he was historical). I read about the Gautama connection to Kudonsen after my original post. It has to be referring to someone else besides Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha. I know it is a common given name. Thanks to all of those who have responded so far. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 12:05, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Our article on Nagabodhi's master Nagarjuna states he lived during the 3rd century CE, so I guess that is a start to dating the historical Nagabodhi. This is the book I was referring to which talks about him receiving the siddhi for immortality. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 13:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

A now-living example of a Buddhist immortal is Tenzin Gyatso born Lhamo Dondrup who is believed by Tibetan buddhists to be the latest reincarnation of a series of spiritual leaders titled Dalai Lama who have chosen to be reborn in order to enlighten others. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 07:12, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand the concepts of immortality and reincarnation Cuddlyable3. According to Buddhist beliefs, all living things re-incarnate until they achieve enlightenment. The Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama, everyone else in China, all the animals in the world - all reincarnate, according to Buddhism. It just so happens that, because the chief Lamas are regarded as important spiritual beings, their reincarnates are actively sought out and venerated. Immortals do not reincarnate. They, by definition, do not die. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:12, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Are cellphones pulling Africans out of poverty? By how much?

I could find the cheapest prepaid phones for $15 in the US nowadays. I wonder how cheap they'd be in Africa. In any case, how fast are user numbers growing, and how are they using these phones to pull out of poverty? How fast is their economies growing thanks to these phones? --70.179.169.115 (talk) 11:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

One of the ways that cell phones help poorer countries is that governments do not have to invest as much in infrastructure to provide connectivity. A cell phone tower provides connectivity to many thousands of people at a fraction of the capital cost that laying wire lines would, and (for example) can provide that connectivity to people living in remote areas where getting a land line in would be rediculously hard. For the consumer, the costs may be identical between a landline phone and a cell phone; but if there is no land line to plug your phone into, it is useless. Its one of the reasons why cell phone usage rates are actually higher in the developing world than in the developed world; in many of those places land lines were never laid or were of substandard quality; those countries can literally skip that technology. In the developed world the existing landlines means that people are not forced to change to cell phones if they do not want to... --Jayron32 12:56, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Microfinance institutitions like the Grameen Bank often fund people in developing countries like India and the Philippines to buy a cellular phone. Sometimes the phones people buy are reconditioned phones bought second-hand from people in the developed world (in the UK companies like Mizuma Mobile do that). Relative to people's income the phones are very expensive, but they buy them not for their personal use but as a business venture. A while ago I heard a BBC World Service documentary about microfinance for mobiles in the developing world. One phone was bought by a collective of small farmers in a village in Africa. They sold their product (I forget what - let's say goats) in town (two days walk away). Sometimes there was a shortage of goats in the town, and they'd get a good price, and sometimes a surplus, and they'd get a bad price. If they drove their goats into town and the price was bad, it wasn't economic for them to drive them home, or to sit around until the price improved. Sometimes they sold to a middleman, but he took a bunch of the profit. With the mobile they could phone into town and check the market, and they'd only drive goats into town if it looked like the prices were okay. For them that made for big improvements to their income, and paid for the phone (and was, more macroeconomically, beneficial for the country, as it made the goat-supply-chain more efficient). Similarly the programme talked about "mobile phone ladies" in the Philippines. One lady walked between several villages over the course of a week. If a villager wanted to talk to a relative in the city or overseas, they could rent the phone from her for a few minutes. I think she also took incoming messages (for which she'd also charge a fee). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 12:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Some articles here[4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. Alansplodge (talk) 14:26, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

If you’re homeless, but just learned the finer intricacies of entrepreneurship, how would you invest this money to get a self-sufficient life again?

It takes money to make money, but both big or small investments could land you in a far better, self-sufficient situation in life than you’re in now if you’re homeless. Therefore, how should one invest 1¢, 5¢, 10¢, 25¢, 50¢, $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $200, $500, $1000 to get back on their feet? What could it buy and how could that purchase lead you to regained self-sufficiency?

(Please answer what you can for each point. Thanks.) --70.179.169.115 (talk) 13:07, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I have edited your question to take up less space. A person can comment on each denomination without putting it under 15 different sub-headings. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 13:28, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I do not think each and every one of these points will engender enough separate discussion to warrant 14 separate sections. The reason for this — and the same reason that the number of categories to consider is fallacious — is because the marginal utility of most of these categories is the same, therefore most are redundant. From a practical standpoint, I would collapse all values from $.01 to $10 into one category. This also has practical benefit — it's relatively easy to beg or borrow up to that amount in one afternoon, so considering a "less than $10" category makes more sense than trying to consider the difference between $.10 and $.25 (because the answer in both cases is likely to be the same — go out on the street and beg for quarters). I don't have data, but my gut feeling is that the difference between $10 and $20 is a bit steeper — obviously you could do the same thing two days in a row, but you're going to incur, say, food costs in between then, making it not quite linear. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:30, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Didn't we just answer the same question a few days ago? In any case... for amounts over $200, I would suggest "investing" in some new clothing... to wear at job interviews. Blueboar (talk) 14:01, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

The answer is defintely get yourself cleaned up with the money and go to interviews to get a job. If you can't even get a job for yourself, and therefore remain homeless, I won't want to do any business with you. So having understood the "finer intricacies" is not helping you if you smell, because to do any business, you need to meet people, so you can't be smelly and expect success at those meetings. --Lgriot (talk) 14:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Please don't generalize... Not all homeless people smell (in fact, not smelling is very important to most homeless people). The point being made is that when you apply for a job, you want to present a neat and tidy appearance... you want to look professional (which will be different depending on the job you are seeking). Homeless people may not have been able to afford to keep up their wardrobe (their meager resources going to more important things like food). Their clothing may have become frayed, faded, ripped etc., and frayed/faded/ripped clothing will not impress a potential employer. Blueboar (talk) 15:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that, if you are not presentable already, making yourself presentable would be the first priority for investment, and that would probably take at least $50 for a trip to a thrift store for used clothes, a drug store for toothpaste, toothbrush, and soap, and perhaps a fee for the YMCA to use their shower. The next step would be to get a job, probably doing day labor, that would generate enough income for you to establish an address (preferably by renting a room, but at least to rent a mailbox if you are going to stay for now at a homeless shelter) and to set up a cheap cell phone account. The reason is that most jobs other than day labor require an address and a phone number. Your next step would be to get a job that pays better than day labor, preferably a job that pays enough for you to rent a room where you can get your life together. Your next step would be to get a job that teaches you about the business in which you want to exercise your entrepreneurial skills. The reason for this is that it is not enough to have entrepreneurial skills. You also need to know something about the specific business in which you want to exercise those skills. No matter how excellent your entrepreneurial skills are, they won't allow you to compete if you don't know the details of the business, unless you can hire someone who does know those details. It would be easier to learn the details of a business on the job than to amass the $200,000 or more that you would need to invest if you want to have any chance of success starting a new business that you know nothing about. Much of that money would be needed to guarantee a year's salary to someone who knows the details of the business. Since you are starting with nothing, it would be easier for you to work in the business in which you want to be an entrepreneur until you 1) know enough to run the business yourself, and 2) have saved up a somewhat smaller sum (at least maybe $30,000 depending on the business) to start the business with yourself as the only employee, with the expectation that you will live on very little income until you build up the business. Marco polo (talk) 15:43, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Get a job, eg gardening (which you could obtain by having some flyers printed), then after doing it for a while to get experience, employ other people to do the work. 92.29.127.125 (talk) 19:37, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

If I hadnt been too lazy to bother, what I meant to write was: Get a job eg gardening, then after doing it for a while to get experience, either continue on your own self-employed or if you want to avoid the physical labour employ other people to do the work. Obtain work by having some flyers printed which you put in peoples letterboxes/mailboxes. 92.15.8.176 (talk) 13:14, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Better to start off working under someone else. Starting a new business legitimately takes additional funds, and doing it incorrectly (esp. for something like gardening) can expose you to legal liabilities (e.g. you are edging someone's property and you accidentally sever their sprinkler system or scratch their car — and they sue you for the repairs). For 14 year old who mow their neighbor's lawn, this is not something that is worried about, but if you are a grown adult and trying to do real business, you have to worry about things like this. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:23, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Are they stumbling around drunk? 92.15.8.176 (talk) 12:48, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

If they've got no money, there is no point suing them. 92.29.127.125 (talk) 22:38, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Alas if that were true. But you can sue people without money, and get court orders which garnish their future wages. In any case, part of what I was trying to point out is that the "just start a new business, what could go wrong?" approach is not very sensible. It's extremely hard to start a new business or to be self-employed. If you are in a really quite marginal situation, you are better off trying to find something under someone else to begin with, and only branch out into self-employment when you have some fallback. This is something you see firsthand if you have friends (as I do) who have failed businesses. (The suggestion of self-gardening is especially impractical unless you are suggesting that they magically already have all of the tools.) --Mr.98 (talk) 01:20, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

You're suggesting that nobody bothers to get out of bed in the morning, as they could be sued. Its unlikely that anyone is going to take a down and out to court for the things you have described. When the business is more established they can get business insurance. Its easy to start a new small business in the US or the UK, the difficult thing is making enough money to keep it going. If you cannot find a job, then taking the initiative and becoming self-employed may be your only option. I suggested gardening because in my experience people charge high rates per hour for what is a low-skill job with no qualifications required. The potential gardener may have a garden already and hence have the tools and some of the skills already. If not then home gardening tools can be bought cheaply, and there are many popular books to read about gardening. What your friends may have done is to invest/borrow a lot of money in their business, which they lost when the business folded, but this does not apply much to a self-employed gardener. 92.15.8.176 (talk) 12:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Where is heaven?

Where is heaven physically located, according to Christianity? Where is hell? 92.29.127.125 (talk) 19:35, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Different denominations of Christianity have different beliefs on the subject. See Heaven (Christianity) for details. Similarly, see Hell in Christian beliefs for details of the different versions of hell in different denominations. --Tango (talk) 19:44, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The Bible describes Heaven as being physically located just above the Firmament, the covering over the earth, on which the stars are attached. However, most modern Christians do not hold this belief, since it is not consistent with our best understanding of the structure of the world. Some modern Christians believe that Heaven is a purely spiritual place, with no physical location. Others believe in Heaven as a real, physical place, but not one that is reachable by any physical means- although they don't phrase it this way, they seem to think of it as a kind of parallel universe. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 19:47, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

It is not at all clear that the Bible describes that. The Bible (unless you are Ethiopian or Eritrean Orthodox, who have the Book of Enoch -- which does have cosmological descriptions -- in their canon of Scripture) has no clear cosmology -- the passages in Genesis, Psalms, and Job that hint at cosmological matters are all highly poetic and possibly contradictory if taken literally (in Genesis 1 the earth appears to float upon waters, in Job 26 it is hung "upon nothing", for example; the first may mean "earth" as in "lands" and the second "the world", but they may be poetic with no clear cosmological vision). God is in some sense 'above', but again all this is highly poetic -- there is little clear reason to take these passages literally. In any case, the idea of Heaven as a location for human souls in the present age is New Testament -- the OT visions of punishment and reward focus on the Judgment Day, and have little interest in the intervening state of the dead (though there are hints in the Deuterocanon, eg Wisdom of Solomon 3) -- and the New Testament has even less cosmology. Christ ascended in a resurrected body, so some sort of bodily existence is at least possible there, but it seems not to be physical quite in the sense we know -- "a spiritual body" from 1 Corinthians, etc. Vultur (talk) 08:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

It should be noted that a lack of understanding as to the actual physical location and properties of heaven and hell doesn't actually mean they don't exist, from a religious point of view. One can accept both that they exist and that one does not have enough information about them to know their nature. --Jayron32 20:09, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I think heaven and hell are best described as states of existence of the soul, rather than physical locations. EamonnPKeane (talk) 20:30, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

The question isn't about what you think, though. Personal beliefs aren't relevant on a reference desk. --Tango (talk) 20:36, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Keane's description is one I've heard a number of Christians use, so it's not just his personal idea. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:55, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Tango I think not. But that's a fault of mine to work on. A personal belief that has gained significant and enduring notice by the world at large, see WP:N, is appropriate to record in Wikipedia and therefore is also mentionable on a reference desk. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 07:21, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The two citations that Tango posted originally here contain lots of information on various theories/beliefs as to the nature of heaven and hell. There is a lot of variation, and some of these theories are like what Keane said. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:38, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"... most modern Christians do not hold this belief, since it is not consistent with our best understanding of the structure of the world." By that logic, most Christians wouldn't believe in God or Heaven at all. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:50, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The OP should also bear in mind that "heaven" and "hell" are ill-defined terms. Each means some subset of:

• where God is
• where God and some angels are
• where God is not
• where all dead people go
• where some dead people go
• where some dead people go before the final judgment
• where some dead people go after the final judgment

The concepts developed gradually over the time the Bible was being written, so if what you mean when you ask about details of either one according to Christianity is "according to the Bible", you may get different answers depending where you slice it. Marnanel (talk) 20:49, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

According to this article, Heaven is in London, England. Blueboar (talk) 21:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

According to this article, it's somewhere on earth. Marnanel (talk) 22:19, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Hell is in California. Albacore (talk) 22:55, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Funny, I always thought it was in Michigan. Nyttend (talk) 00:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"Do I know where hell is? Hell is in 'Hello'. Heaven is 'Goodbye forever, it's time for me to go'..." from the song "Wand'rin' Star", from Paint Your Wagon. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:57, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"Is this heaven?" "It's Iowa." "I could have sworn it was heaven." "Is there a heaven?" "Oh, yeh. It's the place where dreams come true." "Maybe you're right. Maybe this is heaven." -- Dialogue from Field of Dreams. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:59, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The explorer-researcher L. Ron Hubbard reported[9] "I have been to Heaven.", apparently a high place in the mountains of an unnamed planet. Two experts that disagree about the entranceway to heaven are Eddie Cochran "there are 3 steps to heaven" and Celine Dion "four steps away"[10]. Wheelchair users who strenuously overcome these hindrances croak on arrival "I'm in heaven, And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak"[11]. After recovery, the newcomers according to an interviewed imam find themselves in comfortable homes, reclining on silk couches....given the delights of sex, the delights of wine, the delights of food. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 11:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Heaven Is in the Back Seat of My Cadillac. Although it might be in the front seat. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

What do people who believe the Bible to be literally true make of space rockets etc? 92.29.127.125 (talk) 22:36, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Umm, we believe that they exist, fly around, etc. What's the confusion? Nyttend (talk) 00:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"Fiery chariots". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:54, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I have never met a person who really "believed the Bible" so maybe they persons, not bibles don't exist. However if they do, they will be conceptually challenged by the "etc" that the 92.29.127.125 wrote. A person who believes stories about a talking snake, a talking ass and a man using a whale as a submarine would on seeing a space rocket sing Psalm 68:33 "To him that rideth upon the heavens, which were of old; lo, he doth send out his voice, and that a mighty voice." Cuddlyable3 (talk) 21:24, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"I have never met" does not mean "does not exist". See Biblical inerrancy. Corvus cornix_talk 22:20, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

To go back to the original OP question. Most Main-line Christian Churches accept that Heaven is not located in the physical but as a state, in the Spiritual realm. In the atricle page Saint Dismas, Saint Thomas Aquinas, (sorry wrong person, put here), refers to Saint Dismas in Heaven even though he was more physically in hades / sheol. So, too, we accept the same of Hell, that it is not a "physical" place but a state. The Gospel references are quite clear, and many. MacOfJesus (talk) 19:31, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

According to the Satanic Bible hell is here on earth; as for heaven, it's not a place Satanists would wish to spend eternity.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 15:25, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Question on location of place in Colorado (Census maps needed)

I'm trying to figure out where 1829 Denver West Drive, Bldg. 27 Golden, CO 80401 is located? Is it in a municipality? Or a CDP? Where can I find very detailed census maps that can help me find this? WhisperToMe (talk) 23:34, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

It's either in Lakewood or West Pleasant View. The 2000 census didn't really produce such detailed maps for many communities, and factfinder2.census.gov (the main webpage for the 2010 census) doesn't have maps available yet, as far as I can tell. However, I can give you another type of source: the Jefferson County website has a detailed GIS that you can use. Go to it, accept their terms, and navigate to the area that you want. You'll see that there's a blob of Lakewood that literally has Denver West Drive as its eastern boundary; when I put the address into Google Maps, it shows me a spot almost exactly on the southern boundary of the blob. The GIS window says that it has an option of using aerial view, but I've not found it yet. Finally — according to a 2000 Census Bureau map, the circle within that blob is included within West Pleasant View. Although I can't find a 2010 map, I know that West Pleasant View is still in existence, so it probably includes that area. Nyttend (talk) 02:10, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Better answer — it's definitely unincorporated, so unless the boundaries have changed for 2010, it's in West Pleasant View. If you look at the page I linked as "go to it", you'll see a link entitled "Address Wizard". Go to it, enter the house number (just "1829", not "1829 Denver West Drive", or it will complain that "D" and "e" and "n" and all the other characters aren't integers :-), click Submit, click 1829 DENVER WEST DR, click Submit, and it will give you a report on the property with tons of information ranging from its municipal status (unincorporated) to such well-known information as the names of the U.S. Senators for the area. Nyttend (talk) 02:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Google Maps takes you to the Jefferson County Board of Education Building, so if all else fails, call them and ask. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:21, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Except that people often have no idea whether they're within municipal limits at the precise moment (unless they're at their house, because they should know whether they pay municipal taxes), especially when they're so close to the border, so I'm sure that the county's GIS should be trusted here. Nyttend (talk) 11:57, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Nyttend :) WhisperToMe (talk) 19:34, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

April 1

Famous "pointing at celebrity" photo?

There's a famous photo that has someone standing next to a celebrity, pointing at them and grinning. I've seen references to this photo a million times, but I don't know what the original is! Here are two such references: 1 2 All my friends think I'm crazy and that there is no original photo with this pose. I think there must be. Help me out? --✶♏✶ 00:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The first picture I thought of after looking at your links was Lynndie England. There's also Elvis & Nixon; it looks like the King is pointing, but it's just his belt buckle. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 04:10, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

This has to be an old gesture. I recall this is something that Regis Philbin used to do with guests on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, although a bit more gently than in these pics. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:52, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I would say that it would have to be a pretty old and iconic (and family-friendly) to be paid homage in a Disney movie... 99.245.16.5 (talk) 07:38, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes. It might be ancient. Think of old-style advertising where someone is wearing a big grin and pointing to something that they want you to pay attention to. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:40, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

There is a very iconic feel to the pose. It seems like one would say "this guy here, this is the guy" while making it, and as a matter of fact, a GIS for that very phrase yields these charming lads. Doesn't get us closer to an original, though. I also tried splitting the phrases in the image search. No better luck there. Nor did "I'm with this guy" or "I'm with him/her" paired with smile, grin, point. So at least I know a few blind alleys now. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 12:59, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Do you think this is an arguable thesis? (The Sun Also Rises)

So I'm writing a major paper for my junior Am. Lit class and just found out I have to do a last-minute thesis switch for my paper on The Sun Also Rises because someone else is doing the same topic that I chose to write about. I like the idea of arguing that Brett is the only thing preventing Jake from becoming a code hero. Don't worry, I'm not asking you to write my essay for me! I'm just wondering if you think that (a) it's true, and (b) I would be able to argue this for 4 or so pages. In particular, I'm thinking about Jake's reckless behaviour around Brett (especially betraying his aficion), and his rational behaviour dealing with everything else (e.g., when Cohn wants to run off to S. America, he is being a typical Hemingway hero, while Jake's advice is that of a code hero). What do you think? I'm kind of panicking right about now, and so I'm not sure if I'm thinking clearly or not. Who knows? I could be completely wrong...

Oh, I should clarify: Most people use "Hemingway hero" and "code hero" interchangeably; however, my teacher defines a code hero as one who "backs his play then makes it" and a Hemingway hero as one who "makes his play then backs it" (like Cohn wanting to go to S. America but not considering the consequences or Jake introducing Brett to Romero without considering the consequences). — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 02:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Jews or... Proto-Jews?

Is it correct to refer to Hebrews who lived before the Assyrian exile as Jews (as is done here, for example)? The word "Jew" is derived from the tribe and/or kingdom of Judah, so to me it seems anachronistic to apply it to the pre-exile Hebrews as a whole. On the one hand, we have precedent for giving people names that they didn't use themselves (e.g. the Byzantine Empire); there was, for the surviving tribes, no fundamental religious or ethnic cleaveage as a result of the exile; and antisemites would surely try to exploit the semantic notion that Abraham and Moses weren't Jews; but nonetheless, there is the fact that they wouldn't have self-identified as Yehudim. Has there been any discussion of this question anywhere? --140.232.183.234 (talk) 04:36, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Just a comment on the term "pre-Jew". That could mean "whoever came before Jews", including people of completely different religions and ethnicities. Perhaps "proto-Jew" would be more in line with your intention. StuRat (talk) 04:53, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

(Note that the title has now been changed). StuRat (talk) 04:59, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

140.232.183.234 -- All the ancient languages had only one word (Hebrew יהודי, Greek Ιουδαιος, Latin Judaeus etc.) to express three separate meanings: 1] A "Judahite" or member of the tribe of Judah by genealogical descent. 2] A "Judean" or inhabitant of the region of Judea (or before 586 BC, an inhabitant of the southern kingdom of Judah). 3] A "Jew", or member of the distinctive monotheistic religion which was associated with Judeans. Note that the kingdom of Judah included Benjaminites, Levites, presumably the remnants of Simeonites, and scattered members of other tribes (not only Judahites). After the reforms of Hezekiah or Josiah (and the fall of the northern kingdom), anyone who accepted the leadership of the Jerusalem authorities was effectively a "Jew", regardless of tribal affiliation. By the time of the Book of Esther, there's even a Hebrew derived verb participle mityahed "becoming Jewish". If you consider the term "Jew" to be anachronistic for the pre-7th-century-BC period, then the accepted alternative term is "Israelite"... AnonMoos (talk) 06:53, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

An interesting comparison to the Jews and Judaism is the Samaritans; after Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Post-exile, the two groups formed distinct ethnic and religious groups; though both descend directly from the pre-exile Israelite people. The Samaritans are basically the descendants of the people of the Northern Kingdom in the same way that the Jews are the descendants of the people of the Southern Kingdom. For various reasons, the Samaritan people are a much diminished group and have not been as historically recognized as the Jews, in Roman Empire times their population rivaled that of the Jews; today there are less than 1000 still extant. --Jayron32 14:23, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

In the Persian and Hellenistic periods (before the militantly anti-Samaritan Maccabees conquered the north) the numbers of Samaritans and Jews in the southern Levant may have been roughly comparable, but I don't think that the total numbers of Samaritans rivaled the total numbers of Jews (i.e. both in Judea and elsewhere). AnonMoos (talk) 16:03, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with AnonMoos that the correct word for the ancestors of the Jews is Israelites. Marco polo (talk) 17:28, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Abraham is usually considered "the first Jew," meaning the first person to practice the religion that would come to be known as Judaism. It is true that the word "Y'hudi" did not become prominent, as far as we know, until the Persian period. However, that does not mean that the Israelites of the pre-exilic period were not "Jews." Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman probably didn't refer to themselves as "African-Americans," but that doesn't mean they weren't. That said, it might be more appropriate to call the Jews of the pre-exilic period "Israelites" or "Hebrews," especially if referring to the period of the divided monarchy. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:19, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Mwalcoff, but that's an exaggeration perpetuated by Chazal to amplify and magnify the stories in Genesis and to allow people to better relate. It doesn't make for good stories when Abraham didn't keep any of the laws. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 05:34, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Song without a chorus

Is there a term for a song that doesn't have a chorus? I'm thinking of rock or pop music in particular. Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:11, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The structure is often called the AAA-form or AAA-song-form. (As opposed to AABA etc). ---Sluzzelin talk 06:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

And see strophic form. ---Sluzzelin talk 06:47, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:31, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Which parts/cities of China or Taiwan will have the lowest cost of living?

I was told that the SSI payment of $674/month is the salary of a middle school teacher in China. However, apartment prices may vary wildly between Beijing and Wuxi. Which cities in China or Taiwan will have at least 50,000 people, but the lowest costs of living in the nation? As I'm taking Chinese language classes now, I hope to escape to China to run away from the inevitable student loan payments and invest in any kind of online business that'll give enough of a ROI to finally enable me to pay off all debts, domestic and international. Thank you kindly. --70.179.169.115 (talk) 09:58, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Nice, run off and leave the taxpayers with the bill. I will not be party to conspiracy to commit fraud. Googlemeister (talk) 13:14, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Ditto --Reference Desker (talk) 14:26, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

It's generally a good idea to avoid tipping people off when you're planning a scheme like this. Qrsdogg (talk) 15:31, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the refdesk strongly disapproves of people who want to pay off all their debts! Had you said you did not intend to pay off your debts, then Googlemeister, Reference Desker and Qrsdogg would have helped you. DuncanHill (talk) 16:08, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Duncan, in both cases he/she is defaulting on loan payments. Making up for it later, while it might be better then never paying it back, would still be tantamount to robbing a bank, investing the $$$, and then giving the bank it's money back a couple years later so you can keep the gains. I think the FBI would not be a fan even though you gave the $ back later. Googlemeister (talk) 16:18, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

All I'm saying is, think about what the consequences would be if the Cyber Police backtrace you... Qrsdogg (talk) 18:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

You're right, banks don't usually take out loans they likely can't repay with the intent of defaulting on them. That's because they can count on the taxpayers to bail them out as soon as they threaten to default. Since that is moral, how can this scheme be immoral? Wnt (talk) 12:26, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

You are the first person I have ever heard who thought that action was moral. Googlemeister (talk) 13:46, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Folks, I was once in the situation of being unable to make student loan payments because my income was insufficient to cover my subsistence needs plus the loan payments. I went into temporary default until I could raise my income enough to pay off the debt, which I did. So I will spare the questioner from moralistic and judgmental remarks and point out that the cost of living is generally lower in mainland China than anywhere in Taiwan. Furthermore, in general, the cost of living is lower the further you move from the coast of China and the further you are from a large city. China has thousands of cities of over 50,000 people, so it would be unwieldy to provide a list here. In fact, Chinese cities with populations under 100,000 tend not to even have articles on Wikipedia. This site compares consumption expenditures (a proxy for cost of living) in China's provinces. As you can see, the provinces with the lowest costs are Heilongjiang, Guizhou, and Gansu. You might consider a smaller city such as Liupanshui or Tieli, for example, but with research, you could identify dozens of locations in these provinces alone. Marco polo (talk) 16:38, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thinking about your issue some more, however, I have the following observation: Is China really the best location for an online business? The Great Firewall of China could impede internet communication between China and the rest of the world, particularly during times of political tension or crisis. Unless your goal is to try to tap the Chinese market, maybe you'd want to consider another low-cost venue with greater freedom of expression, such as India (where English is widely understood). Marco polo (talk) 17:23, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

On the ethical question, this person wants to put himself or herself into a position where he or she can pay back a debt. What is unethical about that? It is not like stealing a bank. The Federal government will continue to charge interest on the unpaid loan, as well as nonpayment penalties, all of which this person presumably intends to pay, so the government continues to get its return. Marco polo (talk) 20:41, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm I don't know, how about willfully not abiding with the terms of the loan they signed? I mean it is one thing if they actually try to pay back their loan as they go and fail, but to skip town and say, "I will pay on my own terms, not those that I agreed to" is not ethical and helps to raise interest rates for everyone else. Googlemeister (talk) 21:00, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

A loan is a private contract between two legal or natural persons right? I don't know anything about how the student loan scheme operates in the US (I presume we are talking about the US), but if the terms of the loan are such that they create a loophole whereby the OP, by living overseas, can delay repayment, then that is part of the rights created by the contract, and if the lender does not like it, then they should have retained better lawyers to do their drafting! It definitely is not fraud to take advantage of your legal rights under a contract even to the disadvantage of the other party, unless you had forced the advantageous term upon the other party by unfair means. When it's a borrower against an institutional lender, I can hardly imagine how this can be the case.

As to the ethics of it, a student loan that demands repayment regardless of the person's earnings seems, to me, to be unethical. (I come from a country where student loans are provided by the government, and do not need to be repaid until and unless your income within said country exceed a reasonable threshold.) Some might even say that an education system that makes you take on debt in order to afford it is also unethical. I don't think it's nearly so clear cut whether delaying (or even avoiding) your student loan obligations are unethical if the education thus paid for has not allowed you to generate the income necessary to repay the loan.

You do know that those countries with "free" education is just passing the costs on to all of their taxpayers rather then those who actually benefit directly. Googlemeister (talk) 13:45, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

For the OP's question - definitely somewhere inland, away from the major cities. Of course you have to consider whether you have the ability to survive there, and whether the added risk of, say, being arbitrarily arrested, outweighs the benefits of a lower cost of living. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

You're going to need a few more considerations than just cost-of-living. What visa are you on? Does it allow you to enroll in formal Chinese classes, or are you planning on illegally hiring tutors? Will the city / town let you stay there, or do you require a residency permit? Where are you going to live? DOR (HK) (talk) 08:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

kevin book at clear view energy

is there a bio?

just saw him speak, but web page is just a blank logo.

is this how i request that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.10.145.66 (talk) 14:41, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I have no idea what you are asking. And the fact that this question has been up for ten hours and nobody has tried to answer it suggests that other people are also unclear what you are asking. Can you be more specific? What web page are you talking about? --ColinFine (talk) 23:19, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I still get cross at Wikipedia's policy of not capitalising words after the first in Section headings, but the total absence of capitals in this heading renders it meaningless. HiLo48 (talk) 00:13, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I will guess that the OP wants to know if there is a bio of Mr. Kevin Book, the managing director of a company called ClearView Energy Partners LLC. (he has been interviewed on the business news shows such as bloomberg.com). I do not know of one. Blueboar (talk) 01:01, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, so US-centric as well, with no thought from the OP that this is a global encyclopaedia and, when the country in't identified, some of us don't automatically think of the USA. HiLo48 (talk) 00:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

If you google [kevin book], there is a very short list of references to the guy. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I didn't know it was a guy. I thought he was a book. HiLo48 (talk) 08:08, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That would have been a reasonable assumption. I'm still not totally sure, but one of the google items had something about energy as a subject, which fits Blueboar's comment. Google is not necessarily a good indicator of notability, but it's a fair indicator of lack of notability, as the number of references seems pretty short. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

He just spoke at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference and I see him quoted in news stories on Google, but I can't find out anything about the company he works for. There seems like there's a lot of google clips but no details.

Guanfu

When in the Qing Dynasty was the Guanfu salt-making site abolished? My book says Guide was abolished in 1756 and Dongguan in 1789, but said nothing about Guanfu (or Huangtian for that matter). Thanks Kayau Voting IS evil 16:01, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Not really an answer. but some information here "Before the Dark Age, Jiangxi people relied on Guangdong salt. Because of the Great Evacuation (1661-69), they used salt from the Huai River instead. Moreover, few salt-making people returned to Hong Kong. The government's efforts to revive the industry failed. Nowadays, there are still salt-making sites in Tuen Mun and Tai O, but the quality of the salt is inferior to that of the previous dynasties". Alansplodge (talk) 12:07, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That's exactly the page for which I'm trying to find the info. Look at the page history. :P Kayau Voting IS evil 12:33, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I hate it when that happens! Alansplodge (talk) 15:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

finance question

What is the best way to hide $ from the US government? I want to cheat on my taxes but I will pay them back in 10 years if I am still solvent.

Googlemeister (talk) 16:43, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Marry one of the Windsors. Try Princess Anne. I bet she's desperate.92.15.8.176 (talk) 17:00, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

You'd have to persuade her to divorce Captain Tim Laurence first though. --TammyMoet (talk) 17:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Or you could try nicely asking the IRS if they'll treat you like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. Simply make a request to pay your taxes back as you please, without imposing any sort of financial penalties whatsoever, and justify it by stating you simply couldn't find a convenient time to file your 1040. It worked for Dodd and Frank; hell, they are/were the chairs of the Finance Committee in the Senate and House respectively, so why shouldn't it work for you? If they can't get their shit together for their taxes, how could they possibly expect you to? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:48, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Or just throw TurboTax under the bus like Tim Geithner did. Qrsdogg (talk) 18:02, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

That depends on how much money, and how it is earned. Income earned the "normal" way: as a salaried or wage earning worker at a reputable place of business, is much harder to hide than money earned by the self employed. If you make money selling produce at farmer's markets, most of your transactions are in cash, and you just report (and pay taxes on) a lower income than you really earn. The government could check on it (check how much money you're spending or saving, compare your income to others in similar positions, etc.), but it's more work. If you work as a clerk at Walmart (or whatever), your employer gives you a W-2, which the government can track down pretty easily.

If your super rich (either legitimately, or as a member of organized crime), you hire a lawyer who knows a lot more about U.S. tax codes than we do at this reference desk. They can take advantage of legal means of sheltering income ("tax loopholes"), as well as illegal means. The "traditional" illegal way to shelter large amounts of money is to hide it in an offshore account. Switzerland used to be a common place for this (see Banking in Switzerland), but my understanding is that the Swiss aren't nearly as friendly to this activity as they used to be, and now the Caribbean nations and such are more popular. In any case, there are lots of scams out there about offshore banking [12]. If you do plan on sheltering large amounts of money offshore, within the law or not, get a competent lawyer. Buddy431 (talk) 17:53, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Googlemeister, you're on record as saying, very recently: "I will not be party to conspiracy to commit fraud". Now, two threads later, you want to "cheat on your taxes", and you're seeking the advice of others, i.e. asking them to conspire with you to commit fraud. Do you seriously expect us to do that which your morals prevent you from doing? Wait, what morals ... ? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it was an experiment. See talk page. ---Sluzzelin talkñ

Yes, I see that now. This is not what the ref desks are for. Besides, I've had my fill of falling for April Fools Day jokes. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:41, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Tax avoidance is smart business... Tax evasion is a crime. We can give you lots of advice (not necessarily good advice, but lots of it) in regards to the former... we will not advise you as to the latter. Blueboar (talk) 01:13, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

That raises the issue of whether we should be giving "advice" at all, about any subject. You wouldn't go to a reference desk at a library and expect to be given advice about how to avoid tax, about how to approach that cute girl in school, about how to lose weight, about how to dress for an interview, about how to fix your car, TV or computer, or just about anything else. You might be given the names of reference material or organisations that could help you. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 01:28, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The top of the ref desk page says: The reference desk will not answer ... questions that ... seek guidance on legal matters. It seems pretty clear to me that the OP's question is out of scope of the ref desk. Mitch Ames (talk) 04:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

HG Wells quote

The quote "civilization is a race between education and catastrophe" is attributed to HG Wells. But I cannot find where the quote comes from. Help? Kingturtle = (talk) 19:58, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

More accurately, "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe". It's from chapter 41 of his The Outline of History. Full context here. --Antiquary (talk) 20:28, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

April 2

Evil or uniformed?

First Im sorry for bad english, Im Serbian.

I have this question that I've been thinking lately, especially in the past few months. When I was a child and America bombed my country, everyone here used to say "Average Americans are not evil, they dont know about war crimes Clinton is commiting". Then when they invaded Afganistan and Iraq our politicians still said "Its Bush, average Americans dont know about real reasons and they are uninformed". Now that they attacked Libya, even respected American intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore condemned it,so obviusly an average American can know the truth if he wants to learn it, but still I dont see any massive American protests against the new war.

This got me reading about past American policy and I red a speech made by Che Guevarra made 50 years ago in which he explains basicly that just because Kennedy is invading Cuba it doesnt mean all Americans are evil, they are just not informed.

And these days every single political party in my county condemned bombings of civilians in Libya, but still no party condemned the whole American people.

So for years its always an excuse: "Its not all Americans(or British or French in the last few decades) that support war crimes, its their governments". But it is not logical that for that many years one nations governments commit these atrocities all the time, but that people dont know whats happening.

So my question is: is it possible that Americans are really that ill-informed ("stupid Americans", as Russians say), or is it simply that they are aware of everything that is happening, but they simplz dont care. I mean, every country had SOME bad governments, by country included, but if one nation keep electing one evil president after another, then there must be something wrong with that nation?

Is there a book or a web site that I can learn more about this, cause unlike most people Im not anti-American and there must surely be an explanation for this other then "they are an evil nation"?

Thanks and once again sorry for grammar mistakes --77.243.20.194 (talk) 01:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you'll find that there are too many answers to list. Just using my siblings as an example, the knowledge of the events in Libya would go from complete ignorance from my youngest sister (in her 40s) and a well read opinion from my brother (in his 50s). Dismas|^(talk) 02:10, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

You don't seem to question your own assumptions that all of those military actions are unjustified. Some are definitely justified by UN resolutions/international support as well as a causus belli:

1) The war crimes (massacre of civilians) by Serbia justified the attacks on them.

2) The 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center definitely justified an attack on Afghanistan to get at al-Queada and their Taliban supporters.

3) The Arab League voted for air strikes against Libya after Gaddafi threatened to massacre civilians.

Now, the invasion of Iraq and the Bay of Pigs in Cuba were less justified, but your assumption that everything the US does is evil is just plain wrong. If it is, then all of the UN states that voted for those actions are also evil, which is most of the world. StuRat (talk) 02:13, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Stu Rat, Im not really interested in discussion on these subjects, but I presume that you are American and it fits well into thesis that Americans are not evil but just uninformed. There was no "massacre of civilians by Serbia" and Serbian civilian victims by NATO bombs (over 1000) and especially by Albanians during and after(to this day) the NATO intervention were much higher then all Albanian victims during the conflict altogether. Of course, bombing of Libya is very similar, I find it interesting that you dont know that leading peaceful nations of the world like Russia and China abstained from voting in UN Seczrity Council and later called for American bombings to stop, but your answer serves well to support the theory that Americans really do believe in what they are told, whatever its Cuba,Vietnam,Serbia,Iraq,Libya or any other country.

But like I said, Im not really interested in discussion since this is neither the right place not do I have the time needed to explain my question to those who dont understand it. I am marely interested to find out if theret is a book or a web site that explains this phenomenom of the most agressive country in the world and especially its ordinary citizens. I tried to compare it to Germans during Hitler rule, but its very different, since Germany had peaceful governemnts after that, like Willy Brant, unlike US.I highly doubt that any of us can answer that question here, its much deeper issue. I found a good article on this subject by American author Noam Chomsky and if anyone know where I can find out more, it would be much appriciated. --77.243.20.194 (talk) 02:35, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Note that China and Russia didn't vote against it. Why do you think that is ? And apparently the actions taken by the US weren't enough, since Gaddafi is again on the attack. The US has now passed control on to NATO, so you best blame all of them if you still have a problem. StuRat (talk) 05:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

By civilian massacres, I refer to the Srebrenica massacre, the Prijedor massacre, and Siege of Sarajevo. Now I must ask if you are evil or just ignorant. StuRat (talk) 05:21, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Do a search for "Marxist history of America" and you will find the justification for your point of view that you seek. After that, you can explore the other "peaceful nations" such as Russia (see invasions of Afghanistan and Chechnya, or earlier, the Kulaks) and China (Tibet, earlier the Cultural Revolution).Seaphoto^Talk 02:58, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Seaphoto, but I highly doubt that an American can answer my question. StuRat tried by claiming that "most of the world" voted for Serbia and Libya bombings, while actually UN Security Council refused to allow military interventions in Serbia and Iraq and as for Libya, only 10 countries voted for it. I appreciate very much Americans trying to answer my question, but its really impossible, since if Americans could answer my question, they wouldnt be widely hated all over the world. And I dont "seek point of view", I was marely asking for further info on which point of view is correct: that they are evil or that they are ignorant.

I personally have no opinion on this issue yet, otherwise I wouldnt have asked this question. --77.243.20.194 (talk) 03:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

If you want some insight into why America intervened in the Balkans, there is a bibliography attached to this article[13]; you might find some answers there, if your mind is open.Seaphoto^Talk 03:12, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

'77.243.20.194', there is another possibility here: that it is you that is ignorant. Or come to that, maybe we all are. I think there are a lot on negative things that can be seen in US foreign policy, but simplistic 'good' vs 'evil' arguments and/or accusations of 'ignorance' are unlikely to throw much light on the issue. But then I strongly suspect that you weren't actually looking for answers, but instead looking for an opportunity to spout your own bias - in spite of your denials, you seem to have your mind made up. If you really want to learn about such issues, I'd suggest you start by ditching your own assumptions. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

viewpoints

...man has dominated man to his injury. — Book of Ecclesiastes 8:9 You may be interested in the Biblical answer to such mental predicaments. When Jesus preached about God's Kingdom he was referring to a sovereign government in Heaven. Daniel 2:44 seems to say that this Kingdom of God is an enemy of the kingdoms of Earth. Additionally, John 17:16 reifies this assertion that God's Kingdom is opposite of the kingdoms of the Earth. Schyler (one language) 03:20, 2 April 2011 (UTC) I see absolutely no relevance to the OP's question in �what you've posted. If you are going to suggest the Bible is useful for something, please make it pretty clear why. Otherwise it looks like off-topic preaching, which is frankly not appropriate here, whatever the religion. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:32, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you should look at Srebrenica massacre, Siege of Sarajevo, List of massacres in the Kosovo War, and War rape#Former Yugoslavia to begin with. Ordinary Americans were presented with the impression that the Serbian government was working with its paramilitary allies in adjoining former Yugoslav republics to commit atrocities on a regular basis. Now, I understand that Serbia was not the only guilty party in the conflict, and that America's perspective was skewed by various factors. For example, bear in mind that by and large the reporters of America's "free press" used to report the news by booking a room in a hotel close to the U.S. embassy in the capital, spending the time getting drunk, talking to friends, and occasionally pointing a camera out the window if anything made noise. Unfortunately for the Serbians, they chose to besiege Sarajevo for four years - making a bad impression - and the fact that the U.S. had just been watching Olympics sporting events there didn't help either. Also consider that Serbia was considered a natural ally to Russia, which the U.S. at the time put a huge priority on trying to break apart and weaken. Now I suspect that despite all such biases, there really was something rotten in Serbia against which some sort of military action could be justified; but I could certainly believe that the U.S. response could have been excessive, poorly aimed and not well coordinated with potential allies. Wnt (talk) 05:51, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Harold Pinter's highly controversial Nobel Lecture, "Art, Truth and Politics", may be of interest to the questioner. It can be viewed here. At 10:40, Pinter changes the subject rather abruptly, from reflections on his own work, to his opinion on American foreign policy:

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory [of the artist] since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

In the remaining 36 minutes, Pinter harshly criticises the United States for military aggression and their support of "every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War", and ironically praises US politicians for their use of political language to provide "the American people" with a "truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance."

You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable.

Manipulation of public opinion to justify violence, or make people believe that it didn't happen, is of course an art that politicians of many nationalities (Serbian politicians included) excel in. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 11:51, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Intelligent people will sometimes disagree on whether things are justified. Entire nations will sometimes see things differently. The basic answer is that most (but not all) Americans see these things differently than you do. Now the question seems to be, do we see it wrongly and you see it correctly, or vice versa? Because that will explain who is ignorant and who is not.

"Evil" doesn't come into it in a way I can see. There are sometimes some conflicts in values, and perhaps you deem it correct to make moralistic judgments about them. But I think we'd find that most of us have essentially similar values when it comes to wars and killing — we think they are justified if done in the service of a higher cause we believe in, we think they are unjustified if done just for the sake of enriching people or asserting brute power. The question is whether we agree on the facts behind these wars. I think all sides in such a debate should acknowledge up front that unless they do seriously spend time investigating said facts (rather than just repeating whatever they've heard from friends or their local media), that they probably know less about it than they think they do. One of the nice things about Wikipedia is that, on the whole, for articles where serious editing has taken place, you get a broad description of numerous points of view, backed up and attributed quite specifically. That's gives some considerable advantage over relying on one set of viewpoints, in my opinion. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:35, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

To the OP, for what it's worth, I'm an American who has created a few articles on Serbian royals. I did not support the US bombing against Serbia. However, I met a Kosovan man of Albanian origin who told me some horrific tales of Serbian atrocities committed against Albanians of all ages and both sexes. Do I believe all Serbs are evil? Of course not, just like I am not "evil" because my nation has attacked other nations. It is the archaic concept of War itself that is evil.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 12:04, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

This is possibly a troll thread (lines such as "respected American intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore" can be read as irony or naiveté). In case the question is genuine, check out the book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning for one take on the topic. —Kevin Myers 13:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem with the question is that the questioner has not considered the fact that other people may disagree with him as to whether the military actions in question were justifiable. People can legitimately disagree as to whether U.S. military action in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya was right or wrong. But it's not like Clinton, Bush and Obama were James Bond-movie villains cackling evilly while plotting to kill thousands for fun. The U.S. intervened in Kosovo because there had been a lot of criticism over the country's failure to intervene in Bosnia and the White House feared another Srebrenica massacre. The Libyan intervention, whether you agree with it or not, is clearly based either on Western leaders' humanitarian concerns or the fear of what would happen to themselves politically if Gadhafi were to massacre thousands of people while the Western leaders did nothing. Afghanistan was a response to 9/11, and there is clearly concern about what would happen to the people if we were to leave. I think instead of ruminating on whether Americans are evil, the questioner should read up on the political background of the decisions to intervene militarily in these situations. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Many western leaders have in mind Edmund Burke's axiom; "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing". 1930s Germany is an example where refraining from action military by the western powers may have led to a worse evil. It is often postulated that a firm military response by Britain and France to the Remilitarization of the Rhineland would have limited Hitler's ambition[14]. Maybe. Alansplodge (talk) 11:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Shirer discusses this at length. The French made no move to stop the German Army from entering the Rhineland with only two divisions.

The section title is in fact ironically correct - a great deal of evil is indeed undertaken by people who are uniformed (in uniform) at the time. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 12:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

We have to define what is a good person, what is an evil person/situation. Then, when is a situation so potentially dangerous to the vulnerable to merit intravention? Assuming everyone here is good, and would want to do good. MacOfJesus (talk) 16:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Also, the "attacked party" may very well use subterfuge and deception in order to wrong-foot the opposition, suddenly taking the position of the injured party or offering "friendship and brotherhood" to the "attacker". The use of Wisdom is needed to decipher the correct path. MacOfJesus (talk) 21:34, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

"The West" was accused of not taking seriously the report that "Hitler" had concentration camps of extermination and were accused of not acting, even when it was aired in parliament! The League of Nations was formed, the fore-runner of the United Nations, meant to deal with this type of conflict. (I have not mentioned NATO). MacOfJesus (talk) 22:12, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

memorials to quake victims

By any chance will there be memorials built for the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2010 Chile earthquake, and the 2011 Sendai earthquake? The reason I'm asking is I'd be more than happy to donate some money to help build them. Please let me know where I can do so. Thank you.24.90.204.234 (talk) 07:24, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

All I can say is, for the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, there are two annual memorials, but nothing 'concrete' like a statue or anything. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:07, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Looking for a (probably jewish) small town in volin (Ukraine)

The town`s name in yiddish is "וויזשווע", and its pronunciation is something close to "vaizshva". I need any kind of information you may have about the exact location, name or anything else about the town. Thanks in advance! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.130.108.164 (talk) 18:10, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Most likely Vyshnivets, which is today part of Ternopil Oblast, but parts of Ternopil were once historically part of Volyn (known today as Volhynia). There's also a Vyshneve, but that is nearby to Kiev, which does not appear to be part of any current or historical definition of Volhynia. The village you are looking for is most likely Vyshnivets, since that name also appears on a list of Jewish settlements in the Ukraine, seeList_of_shtetls#.C2.A0Ukraine. --Jayron32 20:25, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Also found Vyshnivchyk in Ternopil and a "Stara Vyzhivka"(no article at en.wikipedia, but found it at List_of_urban-type_settlements_in_Ukraine_by_subdivision) in Volyn Oblast. Maybe one of those as well. --Jayron32 20:31, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The Shtetl Seeker is a good resource for this sort of thing. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't even know if it exists anymore; my grand-grand-grandfather lived there. Vyshnivets does fit the description. thanks a lot! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.130.123.99 (talk) 12:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

What would be the correct name for the 1706 financier Thomas Allen of London?

Do we have an article on this Thomas Allen? Apparently he had an association with William Talbot, the Bishop of Oxford.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 21:07, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

We have an article about his father; Sir Thomas Allen, 1st Baronet, who died in 1690. There is no article about Sir Thomas Allen, 2nd Baronet as yet. Was he notable for anything? Alansplodge (talk) 21:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

He has a page on the Peerage.com but doesn't seem to have done anything of note except to extinguish his baronetcy by dying childless. Alansplodge (talk) 19:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the chap associated with the Bishop of Oxford was Thomas Allen (divine (1681-1755))?

April 3

Retired Air Force officers say UFOs turned off nukes

I tried to ask about this at the Science Desk[15] without much luck, but it occurred to me that I'm actually much more interested in the journalism aspects of this story. And as I've been reading more, my questions have evolved into more of a humanities bent, so I'm going to try again here.

Last September, several retired USAF officials told the National Press Club that they had witnessed nuclear ICBMs deactivating at the same time that UFOs were being reported above ground at the same facilities, and had compiled at least 120 such reports. Those officials included Bruce Fenstermacher, a former USAF nuclear missile launch officer, Charles Halt, USAF Col. Ret., a former deputy base commander, Robert Jamison, a former USAF nuclear missile targeting officer, Jerome Nelson, a former USAF nuclear missile launch officer, Robert Salas, a former USAF nuclear missile launch officer, Patrick McDonough, a former USAF nuclear missile site geodetic surveyor, and Dwynne Arneson, USAF Lt.Col., a retired communications center officer. Here is video, reports from CBS News, the Socio-Economics History Blog, a VeteransToday.com discussion site, and excerpts from one of the organizers of the National Press Club event.

My current question is very simple: Has anyone come forward to question the credibility, integrity, trustworthiness, or any other aspects of the officers who have reported these incidents? I am also interested in people's personal evaluations of these reports. 99.2.149.161 (talk) 02:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, there are two different questions regarding 'credibility' here. Firstly there is that of the officers themselves. I've no reason to think that they would lie about events they believed had occurred, though that isn't actually evidence that such events occurred in the way they reported them. More significantly though, there is the issue of the credibility of those who gather 'evidence' regarding isolated events in order to 'prove' some wild theory regarding UFOs etc. Such persons are usually actively searching evidence for the very 'theory' they are trying to prove - and ignoring any evidence to the contrary when it suits them. They generally believe in the theory before they gather evidence - hardly an objective approach. So the answer you got from the science desk is probably appropriate regarding the 'factuality' of such phenomena. As a social phenomenon, one could look at the subject in other terms, and it would probably increase understanding to draw parallels, as others have before, with beliefs in fairies, spirits and the like - they are 'real', but as a social/psychological phenomenon rather than a material one. Probably not the answer you were looking for, but the best you are likely to get. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Another problem is with those sources. YouTube videos and blogs are not regarded as reliable sources for Wikipedia. The only one with any value is the CBS news link, and unfortunately, it's full of links to blogs too. So we are left with some statements by ex-service folks 30 years after the alleged incidents, at an event organised by a "UFO researcher". (What qualifications do you need to claim that title?) Obviously it cannot be further investigated because of both the military secrecy and time barriers. Hardly compelling evidence. It would be interesting to hear from other people who were at those bases at the time. HiLo48 (talk) 03:02, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it's important to distinguish between evidence of a UFO and missile shutdown versus an extraterrestrial origin for the craft. For example, nuclear weapons have elaborate safeguards. Maybe other country drifted a balloon over the base with the right equipment to send a bunch of random missile codes, so the missiles locked out additional login attempts. (I have no evidence for that, but I daresay no one has evidence those craft came from another planet either) Wnt (talk) 05:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

As my father used to say "Any FO is U until it is I". They may have been aircraft developed in secret by another (or the same!) country. I remember seeing a UK documentary on this subject, with someone who worked for one of the UK aircraft builders claiming that they developed and tested a "flying saucer" type of aircraft, but because it caused panic when it flew over built-up areas, they didn't continue development. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That's right, Tammy. There's no need to assume extraterrestrial visitation, when a much more obvious explanation is available and is recommended by Occam's Razor: these craft are flown by Earth-dwelling non-human sentient creatures. When they say "We are not alone", they should be looking for the "others" right here in our own backyard. Literally. Maybe humans are the latecomers to planet Earth; maybe we're the real aliens here. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 10:23, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Help finding a source document

I'm trying to find the source document for some information on the wiki page for Cleopatra VII. Under the sub-heading, "Assassination of Pompey," there doesn't seem to be a reference number for the source document. Any help would be appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boydgarrett (talk • contribs) 02:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That section has no footnotes, so there is no direct inline citation for it. Cross checking the Pompey article, however, turns up several footnotes in the section "Civil War and assassination". Maybe you can get more information in those sources... --Jayron32 04:51, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Accessory to murder

Consider the following scenario: someone is fatally stabbed. As he is dying, he assists the person who stabbed him in escaping justice. Does that make him an accessory after the fact to his own murder? --Carnildo (talk) 04:40, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It depends on what the local authorities charge him with; if there is no formal charge no legal crime has occured. I am not aware of many modern western democracies that charge corpses with crimes, however. Furthermore, since he cannot stand trial (being dead), he cannot be convicted of the crime, so legally he didn't commit it. --Jayron32 04:48, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

You can't charge a dead man with a crime, for various reasons. Charles Whitman, for example, probably would have bent sent to Old Sparky for his shooting rampage, but he was never tried for that crime, having been gunned down by the police. Kenneth Lay was convicted in the Enron thing, but he died before the appeal process could get going, so the conviction was vacated. The OP's scenario sounds strange, but I wouldn't rule it out in the case of the Mafia, for example. Vincent Gigante (acting on the orders of Vito Genovese) tried unsuccessfully to put a bullet through Frank Costello's head, but in Gigante's trial, Costello refused to identify Gigante, claiming he couldn't see who shot him, and Gigante was acquitted. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:00, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Whitman's article has a detail new to me, which is that he apparently suffered from glioblastoma, which (per that article) apparently has a median survival time of 3 months untreated, or 1-2 years with treatment. So even in Texas, and even in 1966, I'm not sure he'd have lived long enough to be executed. --Trovatore (talk) 09:46, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That's one theory as to why he did it, i.e. that he was in some sense not responsible for his actions. We'll never know, since he was taken down. But the point is that he was never charged with anything, because he was dead. He was merely reported as the killer. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I always thought that not trying dead people causes certain problems:

1) Can lead to lazy police work. That is, they can just blame an innocent dead guy for a crime and not worry about who actually committed it, since their accusation will never have to hold up in court.

2) The family of the deceased person accused of murder might like their day in court, to defend his name, but never get it.

3) Other people involved in the crime may go free. For example, if the deceased was a hit man, the person who hired him may never be determined. A trial wouldn't guarantee that they would be, but evidence needed for the jury would likely include this. StuRat (talk) 18:07, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires that a person charged with a crime have the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against". That's a little hard to do when you're dead. You raise some good concerns, of course. This was not an issue in the Whitman case, of course, but other situations could be less clear. However, it's important to keep in mind that the police have to judge a situation as it's happening. If a guy pulls a gun on them, or acts like he is, they have to make a quick decision on using deadly force. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:45, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, so let's make the OP's question more interesting. We all agree that a dead man cannot be charged with a crime, so the OP's question is essentially moot. Let's change the scenario, however, such that the victim is stabbed, albeit not fatally. Thus, the victim does not die and remains alive (to be charged by the police). Can he be charged with being an accessory after the fact to his own attempted murder (or assault or whatever the underlying crime is)? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC))

I think he would be more likely to be charged with "obstruction of justice". However, a good lawyer might make the case that he was not in his right mind... having just been stabbed, ya know. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Women have been punished by courts when they have suffered domestic abuse and later protected their abuser by refusing to testify against them in court.[16][17] However in such cases they are not charged as accessories, but more normally for contempt of court or similar offences. Some jurisdictions, e.g. California, have legislation preventing victims from being punished for refusing to testify in certain circumstances.[18][19] --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

generally speaking, if a victim refuses to file charges, the police are stuck prosecuting the perpetrator with lesser crimes; in this case, the prosecutor might be forced to file for a weapons charge or a minor assault charge (e.g. charges that can be filed by the state independently). Such crimes generally wouldn't be susceptible to accessory rulings. The only case I can imagine where this might happen is if someone goes on a killing spree, and the only survivor tries to help him escape - the state can then prosecute murder charges on the other victims and prosecute accessory charges on the victim for those. however, I have doubts that a prosecutor would do that, because of the impact on the jury: they'd be prosecuting someone who was very sympathetic (a victim who is for whatever reason showing a great deal of high-minded forgiveness), and that never bodes well. --Ludwigs2 22:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

A few things. The dead can't be charged with crimes, so that's one step. Ludwigs: that's incorrect; as a practical matter the lack of a cooperating witness might derail a case, but the right to charge someone rests entirely with the state, as a general rule. Victims are not "parties" to criminal actions, unless there's some specific statute that modifies certain details. The 6th amendment point's interesting, but the Confrontation Clause has some exceptions in the case that the witness is dead, although they've been changing with Supreme Court precedent lately. There's also a doctrine in criminal law that the protected class of certain laws cannot be charged as accessories under those laws. The most famous case is the Mann Act didn't allow a woman involved in the Mann Act crime to be charged. That could possibly apply here, although it's not a subject I know much about. Shadowjams (talk) 22:41, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but I wasn't talking about the lack of a cooperating witness, I was talking about the lack of a cooperating plaintiff. If someone attacks me and I refuse to press charges, I don't think the state is allowed to press charges on my behalf (nor would it be effective if they did, since it would be devastating to a case to have the supposed victim appear as a witness for the defense). --Ludwigs2 05:06, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Legal online gambling owner American Rick Salomon despite illegal in US?

Mr. Salomon is described as being an "online gambling website owner", and as far as I am aware has not been arrested etc regarding this. Yet online gambling is illegal in the US. How is this discrepancy explained? Thanks 92.15.9.102 (talk) 12:11, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Maybe his servers are in Mexico, or Brazil, or...... HiLo48 (talk) 12:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm doubtful the location of the servers would matter to the US law if his customers are in the US. 92.15.9.102 (talk) 12:26, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Your doubt on the matter does not change the reality of the law: It is not illegal for U.S. citizens or residents to own online gambling businesses outside of the U.S. --Jayron32 12:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

If that is true, then why is Mr Saloman in the clear while Party Gaming had to pay a big fine and close down US operations, and have not resumed it again either? See PartyGaming#U.S._legislation. I believe the principal, and probably other senior staff, was or is an American. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 13:45, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Can one access his gambling site from the U.S.? Bielle (talk) 17:59, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

What is illegal is operating a gambling site in the US, not a US citizen owning a gambling site. --Tango (talk) 22:05, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

How would you define "operating a gambling site in the US"? PartyGaming appears to have always been based outside the US, yet they still got into trouble. 92.29.115.116 (talk) 10:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

There are two intertwined legal issues. One is whether the site is operated inside the US — you can't run a gambling enterprise in the US unless you are in one of a few cities (or happen to be the state). The other is that you can't run a gambling site that allows US citizens to gamble on it, even if you are located outside the US. This latter one is what PartyGaming has been complying with, and their penalty fees had to do with some agreement to avoid any future prosecution, or something like that. Frankly I don't know what site Saloman is supposed to own anymore — most of his bios on the internet say he used to own such a site, e.g. back in 2004 or so. If it was before the SAFE Port Act in 2006 then he wouldn't have come into the same kinds of problems that PartyGaming did. Otherwise he presumably didn't let people in the US gamble. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

鄧蔭南

What's the proper romanisation for the name? Neither Deng Yinnan nor Teng Yin-nan returned any results. Thanks. Kayau Voting IS evil 12:31, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The 7th result down on this Google search has 'dengyinnan' in the search result, but not on the page itself when you click on it. The page is from a server in China. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

And this confirms it. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:49, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

So Deng Yin'nan seems appropriate. Thanks! Kayau Voting IS evil 14:30, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Note that you can actually take that text and mark it up like this: 鄧蔭南 and as you see, each hanzi links to its entry in Wiktionary. I wish we had better string functions enabled so we could have a simple template to mark text up this way. With WP:POPUPS enabled you should even be able to read the pronunciation without opening each page, I think. If you follow the links, they have that the Mandarin pronunciation/pinyin is dèng, yīn or yìn, nán or nā. True, that isn't entirely helpful by itself (you still need to figure out the right pronunciation for the sense in which it is used), but it does provide extra information. It looks like Wiktionary still needs t work on breaking down the pronunciations according to meaning. Wnt (talk) 17:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

This question belongs on the Language Ref Desk. StuRat (talk) 17:56, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

AV voting - why count the 2nd. choices of the least popular candidate's votes only?

From the presentation here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12892836 it is shown that if no candidate gets over 50%, then only the voters of the least popular candidate have their second choice votes used instead. 1) Would it ever make any difference to the eventual outcome if voters for all but the most popular candidate had their second-choice votes counted all in one go? 2) Is it unfair on voters who voted neither for the most popular candidate, nor for the least popular candidate, as their second choice votes are ignored? Thanks 92.15.2.39 (talk) 14:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Most of the time, there will be two or possibly three candidates left at the end - let's just assume there are two for a second. Yes, those two could end up different because of second preference votes from eliminated parties. However, in your post, you say "all but the most popular candidate", which isn't how AV works; there are always two or more people left at the end - the others are eliminated, and cannot win (in your case, the person with the most votes wins automatically - in other words, like first past the post). If you meant "top two" then yes, that could be a plausible (if different from AV) system:

Consider candidates A, B, C, D and E who get {4,3,2,1,1} votes. In your system, both C, D and E's 2nd preferences are simultaneously counted, ergo we have their combined 4 second preferences distributed between A and B. (You haven't said what would happen to second preferences for C, D, E or another not-top-two[sic] candidate.) Under AV, E would first be eliminated; let's say to C. Then D, also to C; that leaves A B and C with {4,3,4}; in other words B would now be eliminated and C could easily win - who under your system would have been eliminated in the single round.

However, I note this example with caution because your idea of eliminating all but the top one doesn't make sense in the context of AV - the second preference only being considered after your first preference candidate has been eliminated. On your second point, the fact is AV supporters would say that all votes cast under first past the post which aren't for the eventual winner are "ignored", and thus under AV more of them are counted. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I don't understand your answer. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 15:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

To answer question 2 shortly, no it doesn't matter. If ballots were counted eliminating the last person at each round eventually you would get down to two candidates. If one of them got past 50% of the votes some of the way, there is no way that the other person could beat them. As for your first question, it would make the system nonsensical. If everyone except the leader's second preference was counted, then nobody else's first preference was counted. The idea behind the system is that in the end everyone's vote will count for either the most or second most successful candidate. So if you vote for the loser, your vote will end up being for your second preference, unless they get eliminated, in which case your third, etc. etc. While it's true they stop the counting when someone gets to 50%, that's only because it is now impossible to beat them —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.192.209 (talk) 15:12, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Intially there will be one candidate who has the most 1st. choice votes (ignoring ties for the sake of arguement). If they do not have more than 50% of the votes, then wouldnt it be fairer to count the 2nd choice votes of all the voters who did not vote for the 1st choice candidate? Or wouldnt this make any difference? It just seems peculiar that on the 2nd round, its only the votes from the least popular candidate (which may be some extreme party) that are given a very big weight in deciding the fate of the most popular candidates. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 15:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict wiith 124, 92) Let's look at an actual example somewhat along the lines of what you describe: Burlington, Vermont mayoral election, 2009,[20]. Things are a bit confusing because several candidates are dropped in the first round, but this is done because it's mathematically inevitable that this will happen. If you don't agree, you can treat it as if the lowest place candidate was dropped in a second round each time, and you'll arrive at exactly the same results. Essentially, a candidate (Andy Montroll) who would have beat any of the other candidates in a head to head race (Condorcet criterion) lost. This is largely because those who voted for the second place candidate (Kurt Wright) would have preferred the third place winner (Andy Montroll) over the first place winner, Bob Kiss. This may seem a bit unfair to those who voted for Wright. In my opinion, the system still worked well, in that the person who would have won under a First-past-the-post voting system with less than 1/3 if the vote (because his opponents were split between several similar candidates: see Independence of clones criterion) lost. However, the voters disagreed, and voted to repeal IRV (AKA AV) in 2010. In favor of a Two-round system where only 40% of the vote's needed to avoid a runoff. What's really facinating is that under this system, the same candidate would have won the election! Moral: voters are stupid..

So yes, occasionally AV/IRV can be "unfair" to those who vote for a losing candidate who's not last. However, this isn't a reason to keep your silly First-Past-The-Post system (which,in some senses, is unfair to everyone who votes for a losing candidate when no majority is reached, while IRV/AV is unfair only occasionally, in very specific circumstances). If you really want to avoid these problems, demand the Schulze method, which many nerds (see Schulze_method#Use_of_the_Schulze_method) consider to be superior.

There are a lot of smart people who have though long and hard about what the advantages and disadvantages of different voting systems are. See Single-winner voting system. IRV/AV is better than Plurality voting system, including the First-Past-The-Post system used in the UK, by nearly any criterion. There are other methods that are even better than IRV according to certain criteria, but in voting theory, it's impossible to create any system that's perfect: see Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem. But just because no system's perfect doesn't mean you should stick with a system that's clearly inferior </soapbox>. Buddy431 (talk) 15:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Why is it the 2nd. choice votes from the least popular candidate rather than the 2nd choice votes from the second most popular candidate that are counted? Wouldnt that give more people an input and therefore be fairer? Why does the process go in one direction rather than the other? 92.15.2.39 (talk) 15:56, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately the good information in Buddy's answer is wrapped up in some anti-FPTP bias for some reason. Anyway, OP: you can't count all the other candidate's second preferences, because that can't work. If you did that, you'd not get any narrowing of the field, except for some extra votes the leading candidate gets. We stop counting their first votes, and then add their second votes - in parallel to how AV works, where the people who voted for the lowest candidates's first votes are discarded. In fact, the sense of narrowing the field is important. Before any candidate's votes are split among the others with their second preference, they are formally eliminated - and can't win. The lowest candidate is eliminated first because they are furthest from 'winning' and so eliminating them is seen as fairer (and is undoubtedly so). Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:02, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

What sort of system would you get if you just elected the candidate who had the lowest average rank on all the voters lists? That would seem to be a better way of doing it than AV, as everyone's vote would count and nobodys vote would be ignored. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 16:17, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It would strongly encourage tactical voting where people don't vote for what they really prefer. Suppose there are three candidates and a voter is convinced that only A and B have a real chance to win. Then suppose the voter prefers A over B, and B over C. Many voters in this situation would vote ACB, because ABC would give B a better chance to beat A. If all voters who prefer A or B places the other of them last for tactical reasons then the result could end up a surprise win for C even if a large majority of voters actually prefer both A and B over C. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:39, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

If people are being dishonest about what they put down on their voting forms, then they've only got themselves to blame. If I like A but actually vote for B, then I cannot complain if B gets elected. So perhaps the system encourages honesty. It seems a better system than ignoring a large proportion of people's votes, as FPTP or AV seem to do. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:32, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you understand the situation I described. There, somebody who likes A will of course vote A first, but if they vote B second then it risks preventing their first choice A from being elected. My last part about C winning was a more theoretical situation. I think a lot of people who honestly voted ABC would be rightfully upset if their second vote B prevented their first vote A from winning. Many of them will realize this in advance and therefore vote ACB instead. This means the system would encourage dishonesty and not honesty. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:51, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems preferable to FPTP where you never even vote for your preferred candidate if you think they are unpopular. I would hope in the scenario you have outlined that at least you get your second choice. Which system gives the least proportion of disgruntled voters? I imagine it is impossible to have no disgruntled voters, unless someone gets 100% of the vore. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 18:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, the OP would seem to allow not expressing additional preferences, thereby making it a "bullet vote"; this isn't all preferable. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 17:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Never said that. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 18:06, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I was merely going off "Then simply ignore the vote boxes that the voter has not filled in.", which does seem to suggest I can just have my first preference and no other preferences. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 18:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I misread your comment. But even under AV you don't have to fill in all the boxes on your voting form, if you want you could just fill in one box. I don't see that its any problem. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 18:26, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The other problem with that system is that every voter has to express a complete set of preferences. In real life, there might be one or tow they like the look of, one or two they don't, but lots of people (for example independents) they can't rank. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:48, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Then simply ignore the vote boxes that the voter has not filled in. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That could cause big problems in some circumstances. Suppose there is a very obscure candidate that has a tiny number of strong supporters. Those supporters will rank this candidate highest, while almost everyone else doesn't know anything about the candidate, so doesn't bother ranking them. This candidate has a good chance of winning on the basis of a tiny level of support. 130.88.134.221 (talk) 11:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, so treat only partly filled in voting forms as spoiled votes if you want. 92.24.184.244 (talk) 16:39, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what method 92.15 is talking about, but it sounds like he's advocating some sort of Borda count. The Borda count is not an inherently bad way of voting, and it is used used politically in a few places. As PrimeHunter mentions, the Borda method strongly encourages tactical voting, to a greater extent than IRV or even plurality voting. Borda count is, in some senses, more likely to lead to a candidate who, overall, everyone is generally OK with, rather than a candidate who the majority like, but a large minority dislike, as can occur in IRV. That's still better then FPTP, where you can elect a candidate who only a minority like, and a moderate majority dislike. Borda count also encourages parties with similar ideologies to field as many candidates as possible, as this makes it much more likely that one of them will win. This problem is largely absent in IRV/AV, and the opposite problem occurs in FPTP (where candidates with similar ideologies hurt each other). Buddy431 (talk) 17:19, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

"Borda count is, in some senses, more likely to lead to a candidate who, overall, everyone is generally OK with" - great, that's what we want! 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The reason the Borda Count is not used is because of what I call the Bozo the Clown problem. Let's say you have four candidates: A, B, C and Bozo the Clown. No one votes Bozo with their first preference. But the A voters hate B and C so much that they vote Bozo with their second preference. Same with the B and C voters. So when everyone's second preference is counted, Bozo wins! In instant-runoff voting, Bozo is eliminated first, so he can't win. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 20:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

You could I expect think up such circumstances under any voting scheme. In FPTP - everyone hates A,B,C, so they all vote for Bozo - Bozo wins! In the example Mwalcoff wins, I cannot see what's wrong with Bozo winning if people vote for him. He was the second preference of most people, preferred to ABC, so there's nothing wrong with him winning. I think this is a straw-man argument. 92.24.184.244 (talk) 16:34, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

So is there any consensus on the best voting system to use? And I'm curious, is it possible to say which voting scheme works best with similar artificial intelligence decision-making systems? 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

No, because there are differing aims of the system. We don't know which result is the right one. For example, Buddy mentions a case where the result changed - the system he praises for not electing someone on a third of the vote is the same one I'd criticise for not electing someone with a third of the vote. You suggest that tactical voting is a personal issue, but this isn't the case. The problem with tactical voting is that often, a candidate who no-one wanted gets in, and chances are they don't want them is related to how good a job they'd do - for example fringe candidates. That's going to affect everyone, not just those making the tactical vote. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 17:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Exactly: no voting system is perfect. And that's not just an empirical observation, but a mathematical fact: Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem (edit: and Arrow's impossibility theorem). And yet, I will reiterate that a voting system that has gained wide support among smart people is the Schulze method. It is complicated and hard to understand, which makes it undesirable to many voting populations. It would probably never be used by choice by the masses. However, mathematically, it is a very good voting system, precluding many of the problems that can occur with Plurality (FPTP), IRV, and Borda methods. People who tend to have strong mathematical and computer skills (and who actually think about such things) tend prefer it. It's what we use at the Wikimedia Foundation [21]. It's what Debian Project uses [22]. It still has some susceptibility to tactical voting, but not as much (and not as obviously) as other methods, especially FPTP and Borda count. Obviously, I'm biased, in that I think smart, tech savvy people are better able to judge the merits of different voting systems than the general population. Buddy431 (talk) 18:10, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The Borda system is used by a lot of universities according to its article, so its what the intelligent prefer. I've begun to think that the AV system is undesirable, because it puts your votes through a sort of arbitrary spagethi machine. The Borda system seems preferable to AV. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 18:31, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The Borda system works well when people vote in good faith, truly ranking candidates in their order of preference. It works well for things where there are many good, truly differentiated candidates, and only one can win, as in sports trophies (i.e. Heisman Trophy [23]) and Eurovision Song Contest. Notice that in many of these examples, the votes are publicly known, which can discourage things like burying second choice candidates under obviously weaker rivals. It works less well when there are many voters with secret ballots (who are less likely to vote their genuine choices), or when it is easy for very similar candidates to enter the race to skew the results (Strategic nomination). In my opinion, there are good reasons why it is used frequently for sports trophies, but infrequently in politics. Buddy431 (talk) 18:56, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Protecting people from themselves who are being deliberately dishonest is very low on my list of priorities. And I can't think that having more than one candidate with similar views is such a bad thing: you might prefer Tory A to Tory B. It may even be preferable. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 19:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The trouble is, you're rewarding dishonest behavior. It's in people's own best interest to vote contrary to what they truly believe. Most voting systems do this to some extent (quite a bit in FPTP, less in IRV or a Two-round system), but Borda really is the worse in this respect.

In any case having multiple candidates with similar views makes it more likely that one of those candidates will win. Suppose there are 4 candidates: Tory A, Tory B, Tory C, and Labour A. Furthur suppose that a small majority (maybe 55%) will vote vote Labour, while the remainder (45%) vote Tory. In a FPTP system, IRV system, Two-round system, or Schulze method system, candidate Labour A will win, and I think pretty much everyone will agree that that's the best winner in this situation (it's not like the Vermont case where multiple people could be considered the "correct" winner). However, in a Borda system, it's likely that one of the Torries will win. All of the conservative voters will vote for the three Tory candidates for their first three choices, and Labour A will be their last choice. The labour voters will all vote for Labour A as their first choice, but will still be forced to rank the Torries 2,3, and 4. So Each of the Tory candidates will receive a lot of points from the conservative voters, while the Labour candidate will receive a lot of points from the labour voters. However, the Tory candidates will also receive a lot of points from Labour voters (they are, after all, second choice), while the Labour candidate will receive very few points from the conservative voters. Depending on the point system, and the exact breakdown of votes, it's very likely that one of the Tory candidates will win, even though over half the electorate would have preferred the Labour candidate. That's not very fair, is it? Buddy431 (talk) 19:46, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Just have a rule: one party, one candidate. Problem solved. 92.29.115.116 (talk) 10:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

That could be easily circumvented by forming a new party, with identical policies to the existing one you favour. Even if you found a way of prohibiting that, parties are not equally spaced along the political spectrum - for example, think of the many very similar socialist parties, which would all be artificially boosted under this method. Warofdreams talk 12:44, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

A side comment about multiple-office elections and STV

While this is probably very tangential to the AV/IRV problems in a single-office election, it might just be worth pointing out (or recalling) that in a multiple-office election conducted under systems like the Single Transferable Vote (for example, the recent Irish general election where each single constituency returned four or five members of the Dáil Eireann; see http://www.rte.ie/news/election2011/prstvlogic.html), lesser preferences on winning candidates' ballots can be counted once those winning candidates have reached the qualifying minimum "quota" for election. (Some methods of counting look only at the ballots above that quota; the fairest systems look at the lesser preferences on all the ballots and distribute a proportionate "excess" fraction to each remaining candidate; others look only at a proportionate random selection of all ballots cast for a winning candidate.) In general, so long as there are still these "excess" second preferences to be distributed, none of the remaining candidates is eliminated. —— Shakescene (talk) 17:33, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Tiananmen Square vs. Libya

When the Chinese government slaughtered protesters in Tiananmen Square, the protests died out. When Gaddafi tried the same thing in Libya, why did the protests expand instead? --70.244.234.128 (talk) 14:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

We can only guess, but mine would be that, for a start, where Libya was concerned, there were a number of population centres simultaneously involved in the protests, and not just one square in the middle of a city, surrounded by troops, as was the case in Tiananmen. To be sure, protests were going on in other parts of China at the time of Tiananmen, but they were nowhere near as big as the one in Tiananmen, which is why it got practically all of the coverage. Another reason would be that, people had been mentioning a possible repeat of Tiananmen during the protests in Egypt only weeks before (though thankfully it never happened), and I would guess that people in Libya were prepared for it - unlike the unfortunate protesters in Tiananmen. Beyond my guessing here, I can only speculate. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:00, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

In Libya the rebels had access to both weapons and military support from other nations. None of these were available in China. StuRat (talk) 17:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

A far greater section of the Libyan elite has defected to the opposition than what happened in China in 1989. The Libyan rebels include former military officers and cabinet ministers and had such overwhelming support in many cities that they quickly gained control over the eastern half of the country. The Tienanmen protesters were largely students and other hoi polloi concentrated in the middle of the capital. Yes, there were 100,000 protesters -- out of a population of 1 billion. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 21:02, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

KägeTorä, virtually every major city in China had extensive protests in the late Spring of 1989, and in some of the inland provincial capitals, hundreds of people were killed in the crack-down. It wasn't a one-city affair. DOR (HK) (talk) 08:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I am well aware of that, DOR, which is why I said protests were going on in other parts of China at the time of Tiananmen, but they were nowhere near as big as the one in Tiananmen, which is why it got practically all of the coverage above. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Home CCTV

As I've had various things stolen from my front garden recently, I'm considering installing some kind of time-lapse camera overlooking it. This would as a side effect photograph anyone passing on the pavement at the time the photos were taken.

Where can I find out about what rules etc that I need to abide by in these circumstances, such as a "You're on CCTV" notice? Thanks 92.15.2.39 (talk) 15:15, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It depends on what country (or U.S. state) you're located in? -- AnonMoos (talk) 15:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I forgot to add that I am in the UK. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 15:28, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that any supplier of CCTVs in the UK would know what you'd need to do. I'll look around here and on the web for relevant laws for you, but in the meantime I would suggest asking your supplier.--KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how reliable this source is, but this came from googling 'UK CCTV law home' (which, incedentally, tried to autofill to 'UK CCTV law workplace', so you might want to check that out too). Other links from my search are Home CCTV Law and a government one. If you need more than internet links, then I would suggest contacting your local council, as they are bound to know. Best of luck! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:50, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. One of the links says I can use up to three cameras and I don't even need to put up a sign or do anything else. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:16, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

If those items are stolen at night, a motion detector that turns a light on might be more effective at preventing theft. Of course, if your goal is to catch the thieves, then a camera is needed, although you may not recognize them in the video. StuRat (talk) 17:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm already dazzled by the bright street lighting all night, so more isnt needed thanks. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

is there such a thing as

caring so much for a person that you kill yourself to protect that person from yourself? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.219.105 (talk) 16:24, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes. If you would like a broad example, you can read about the samurai in Japan, who were usually more than willing to die for their masters. In an individual case, Masuda Sayo's brother committed suicide so Sayo wouldn't have to prostitute herself to pay for his TB treatment (it's obscure, I know, but I'm planning on taking a crack at our article on Autobiography of a Geisha). There are many examples throughout history. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:01, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

"Recently surfaced manuscripts" of Ramon Llull

How did could documents from around 1300 only become known in the last few years? Where had they been for the last seven hundred years? The article does not seem to say. Thanks 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about Llull specifically (or how "recent" this discovery was), but it's not uncommon to find new manuscripts. Sometimes they aren't labelled and are bound with unrelated texts. Sometimes they're in a national library collection but have been mislabelled or lost in the archives. Sometimes they've made their way into a private library and the owner doesn't realize what's there. In this case, the manuscripts were presumably known in the Middle Ages, and were lost later; maybe they weren't very interesting to later medieval or Renaissance people (and therefore were not copied by hand), or early printers (election theory?! That's boring), or maybe they were misplaced during a revolution or war. I'm just randomly speculating, but it's not unusual. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The Dead Sea Scrolls had lain untouched for almost 2,000 years before being discovered. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:01, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Footnote 8's reference "LLULL'S WRITINGS ON ELECTORAL SYSTEMS", which describes the "discovery," is hard to read for a non-specialist. It seems to indicate that already-known works (tucked away in catalogued archives but otherwise ignored) had not been correctly identified as the 3 missing works in Lully's earliest bibliographies, either because they had different titles or maybe no titles. In other words, no one paid attention to the 3 works because they didn't know that those were THE 3 works, as opposed to just unrelated or unidentified documents. The 2001 "discovery" by the authors of the paper in fn 8 was the identification of the 3 works as BEING the previously "missing" wokrs, hiding in plain sight. If someone else has a better interpretation of this hard-to-understand source, please correct me.63.17.78.6 (talk) 04:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't see that. I can try to explain it more clearly then: essentially, we know what Llull wrote because he himself made a list, which included his works on election theory. That list was known in the Renaissance and was included in bibliographies of Llull's works, but some of the works on election theory were lost afterwards. One of them was always well-known, the one at the end of Llull's novel Blanquerna. The article mentions one manuscript of the novel in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, which is an important national library. The manuscripts in there are usually well-known, and in this case there are lots of other manuscripts of the novel anyway, so that one part of it, which takes up only one folio at the end of the book, must have always (or usually) been copied with the rest of the novel.

The second work they mention is De arte eleccionis, which is also very small, only one folio, at the end of a manuscript of Llull's works, copied by Nicholas Cusanus in 1428. It was copied from a manuscript which he found in Paris, which itself was written by Llull in 1299. This is one of the ways texts were spread in the Middle Ages - someone went to a library, copied the whole thing by hand, and brought his copy back home. At some point, the manuscripts in Paris were lost, or moved out of Paris, or destroyed somehow (the archive caught fire, perhaps; or just imagine all the violence that has occurred in Paris since the fifteenth century, and you can see there would have been numerous occasions for a library to be destroyed). So, Cusanus' copy is the only one left, but that's located in the Cusanusstift in Bernkastel-Kues, which is (I guess) a monastery library, not as easily accessed as a national library, and probably not arranged and archived systematically. So it took until 1937 for Martin Honecker to discover it.

The third one is Arte electionis personarum, which like the others is only one folio in a larger manuscript of some of Llull's other works. It has no separate chapter heading, so it's hard to tell that it's supposed to be a separate work, and it's also hastily and messily copied, as if the copyist was taking notes for personal use, not making a proper copy. The copyist was apparently Pier Leoni, the physician of Lorenzo de Medici, which likely means that he had a copy of the manuscript in Florence. I don't know what happened to the original manuscript, but the copy by Leoni ended up in the Vatican Library, which is like a national library...I've never been there myself but apparently it is enormous, idiosyncratically archived, and difficult to use in general, and there is a lot of stuff in it that just isn't archived properly at all yet. So it's not surprising that something could get lost in there. It was rediscovered (somehow!) by Llorenç Perez Martinez in 1959.

But even after that, some people knew of Perez Martinez's discovery, and not of Honecker's, and vice versa. The modern editors of Raimundi Lulli Opera, otherwise an authoritative edition of Llull's works, knew about Honecker but not Perez Martinez.

I hope that makes sense. Incidentally you can see photographs of the manuscripts, and transcriptions and translations, at The Augsburg Web Edition of Llull's Electoral Writings. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. You would think that everything in the various Vatican libraries would be properly catalogued by now. Its tantalising to think that there may be other lost classical works waiting to be discovered, there or in other places. 92.29.115.116 (talk) 13:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Maybe somebody who understands Adam's answer can edit this in the Llull article: Subsection: "Mathematics, statistics, and classification"

"With the 2001 discovery of his lost manuscripts Ars notandi, Ars eleccionis, and Alia ars eleccionis, ..." It appears to be inaccurate ("2001 discovery"?). 63.17.91.115 (talk) 03:19, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Lincoln, Civil War and Slavery

So, the Southern states chose to secede, because they were afraid Lincoln would abolish slavery, or so most people would say. (First question, is this accurate?) My main question is: if Lincoln were to decide to do so on the day of his inauguration (he wouldn't have tried, I assume, but let's suppose), and the Southern states tried to block him through purely legal means, could he have succeeded? Specifically, did he have the votes in both houses? If he did, could he have passed some law abolishing slavery that would be valid under the Constitution? I assume he couldn't have possibly got a constitutional amendment with Southern states opposed. And more broadly, why did the leaders of Southern states not try to oppose him legally first? --99.113.32.198 (talk) 17:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Without the War, Lincoln could not have abolished slavery by proclamation... What allowed him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation was the fact that the southern states were in open rebellion, and were technically under Marshal Law (and as Commander in Chief, Lincoln defined that law). And lets not forget that the EP only applied to rebel states ... it did not free the slaves in Maryland and the other slave States that stayed with the Union. Even then, A lot of people thought he was over stepping his authority in issuing it.

But to examine your hypothetical where there is no war... The Republicans did have a small majority in the House of Representatives, so I suppose it would be conceivable that a bill to abolish slavery might have been proposed and passed in the House. However, it definitely would not have passed in the Senate (where pro-slavery Democrats held the majority) and so would not have become Law. It never would have reached Lincoln's desk for his signature as President. The debate would have been heated, and would have affected subsequent elections... but probably with no real change... Abolition minded Republicans might have continued to gain seats in the House as the Northern States grew in population... but the balance in the Senate would probably not have changed much. As long as the Southern Senators could block any abolition bill, the situation would not have changed. Blueboar (talk) 18:39, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That's what I thought too. So wouldn't the Southern leaders see this too? --99.113.32.198 (talk) 18:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The South definitely seceded primarily because they were afraid Lincoln would abolish slavery, yes. The wrapped it up in the veneer of "state's rights" and all that, but slavery was the major issue they were worried about, and they were pretty clear about that at the time. In retrospect many have chosen to under-emphasize that aspect of things, but if you read their own reasons for secession, they were abundantly clear about slavery.

Interestingly, legal means were pursued by many — and probably would have succeeded if the South had not seceded. See, e.g., the Corwin Amendment. It is unclear to me exactly why they abandoned this route so early (as you point out, there is really a very slim chance that an anti-slavery amendment would have been able to get 2/3rds majority). Two obvious possibilities: 1. they were worried that if they waited too long, they'd lose some sort of military advantage (better to do it before Lincoln could start his presidency), 2. Those who were organizing the secession were too hot-headed to wait and compromise and bargain. But I don't know of either of those are really defensible theses. I do think we have adequate evidence from modern times that once people get crazy political ideas in their heads regarding how "evil" a given President might be, they are willing to run with them, no matter what the facts may indicates, and even if ultimately to their own disadvantage. But this is just an observation. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, that's very helpful. I'd like to point out that in addition to 2/3 requirement for the amendment, there's also 3/4 of states' legislatures requirement, which would simply make it completely impossible, short of creating a bunch of small states for the purpose:) --99.113.32.198 (talk) 19:01, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

98 -- Under the U.S. constitution as it existed at the time, the executive and legislative branches of the federal government simply did not have the power to intervene inside the states to overturn state laws on most subjects (including slavery), while the U.S., Supreme court was solidly under Southern pro-slavery control in 1861, so that it's really nonsense to say that Lincoln was about to imminently abolish slavery. Lincoln was very well aware of this, and stated it numerous times before his election (including in the Cooper Union speech). In fact, the Republican Party priorities were to eliminate forms of Federal government support for slavery that were not mandated by the Constitution, to closely examine the cases of Federal government support for slavery that were in fact mandated by the Constitution (i.e. requirements for return for fugitive slaves), and above all, to immediately and urgently block and prevent any further expansion of slavery into the federally-governed teritories. AnonMoos (talk) 19:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

So, it sounds to me like the Southerners were afraid of becoming some sort of second-class citizens in the North-Republican-dominated US society and that's why they wanted to secede and build their own. What an irony:). --216.239.45.4 (talk) 19:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

One thing to remember at this point was that most of the U.S. territory at this point was still unorganized as states; indeed the big thing that prevented new states from being formed was slavery. For over 50 years, a careful balance was struck (unofficially) that new states only be admitted as slave/free pairs, to prevent one side or the other from gaining enough of a majority to change the status quo. See Missouri Compromise and Compromise of 1850. There was a very real fear that Lincoln and the Republicans could have worked to simply create a bunch of new "free" states and overwhelm the slave state/free state balance and impliment their policies that way. Some 80 years later, a similar threat by FDR to pack the courts with Democrats (see Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937) was used to force through the New Deal. Back to 1860, rather than ascede to this threat, the south simply seceded. --Jayron32 21:10, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Jayron32 -- The strict parity of admitting one slave state for every free state had already broken down a number of years before the start of the Civil War (as John Calhoun had already clearly foreseen in the early 1840s would happen). However, the attempt from about 1854-1858 to make Kansas be a slave state was perceived by many southerners as an attempt to redress this lost balance. Unfortunately, those attempting to make Kansas become a slave state had to employ a number of dubious political manipulations and outright sleazy and underhanded methods to further their goal -- from the Kansas-Nebraska Act, by which the South obtained the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 36°30′ line while the North got absolutely nothing whatever in return, to many cases of voter fraud and intimidation by violence in Bleeding Kansas, the Lecompton Constitution fiasco, etc. etc. -- which very strongly alienated moderate Northern opinion, and directly led to the rise of the Republican Party as the first major anti-slavery party. So the strategy of trying to restore a parity of slave states at all costs without paying any attention to the political consequences really turned out to be greatly counterproductive... AnonMoos (talk) 01:41, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. The slavery issue was the elephant in the room during the first 75 years of the nation's existance, it influenced nearly every single political issue on a national level in a huge way. The very existance of any legalized slavery made the Civil War inevitable, despite all of the wrangling by the south to maintain slavery and by the north to avoid addressing the issue directly and avoid open revolt. Both sides ultimately failed in reaching a political end to slavery, which is why there was a military one. --Jayron32 02:55, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that the South viewed their choices as this:

A) Stick with the Union, and slowly lose influence as the population of the North continued to outstrip theirs, and new free states formed, as (perhaps over a generation or two) slavery would become more and more restricted, and eventually outlawed. At this point the North's further advantages in population and industrial capacity would make the South powerless to act.

B) Secede immediately, in which case they felt they had some chance of either avoiding a war or fighting the North to a draw, and thus establishing an independent nation where slavery could be preserved forever.

Now, that last goal, of maintaining slavery forever, seems absurd to me, as they would have become more and more isolated internationally as long as they maintained that practice, but they seemed to have thought it was still possible. StuRat (talk) 21:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

A lot of bad decisions seem like "a good idea at the time". Even at that, there was a degree of steamrolling and reluctance in the secession. The border states refused to align with the Confederacy. Western Virginia split off to become a new state. North Carolina's secession vote was a rejection, until they found themselves surrounded by Confederate states, and then they reluctantly re-voted to join the Confederacy. The South had the will and the leadership to win the early battles, but the North had the resources, and once they got some generals that were up to the task, and as long as they stuck with it, they would prevail. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't have any immediate practical effect in terms of slavery, but it was a brilliant political stroke, in that it took away any chance that England would come to the aid of the South, and guaranteed that the South would be treated like a "conquered nation" once the North's resources inevitably overwhelmed the South. The Confederacy was indeed a "lost cause", and the Proclamation was one of the nails in its coffin. The ultimate irony is that the decision to secede hastened the arrival of all the issues in your point (A), and it also helped accelerate the power and strength of the Union toward what it would become in the 20th century. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:31, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

StuRat -- A lot of Northerners interpreted the basic Southern position as being a classic case of "Rule or Ruin". From 1852-1861, southerners or those friendly to southern positions dominated the executive branch through extremely pro-Southern presidents, dominated the U.S. Supreme Court, and dominated the Senate, for a clear stranglehold on 2½ of the 3 branches of government (the remaining ½, the House, went back and forth after the political turmoil stirred up by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, see above). There was no clear and present immediate danger to the existence of slavery inside the slave states after the election of Lincoln to the presidency -- however, what would have greatly changed in 1861 would have been that the Southerners would have had to get used to the fact that they had lost their previous domination over U.S. politics as a whole. (Of course, some would say that the Southerners had wantonly thrown away their domination by engineering the Douglas-Breckinridge split within the Democratic party in 1860, which paved the way for Lincoln to win the election). A common Northern perspective was that Southerners decided what they could not dominate, they would petulantly attempt to destroy ("rule or ruin")... AnonMoos (talk) 02:01, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Lincoln did win without a single electoral vote from a slave state didn't he? Googlemeister (talk) 16:10, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

That's correct. See United States presidential election, 1860. The South had a couple of their puppets in the White House during the 1850s, and once Lincoln was elected, the South knew the game was up. (As noted by others earlier in this discussion.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:54, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

amount of grain used to produce a kilo of beef and economics

Hi, you always hear that it takes about 16 kilos of grain to produce a kilo of beef, which we normally think of as a science question, but isn't it rather an economics one? The (average) cost of a kilo of beef doesn't look to me (when I visit the supermarket) too much like 16 times the cost of a kilo of flour, so if it were taking 16 kilos of grain for each of those kilos of beef, surely the farmers would do better to sell the grain as flour. I know there's more to it than that, because the real determinant for the farmer is the market cost of the thing he sells to another firm, minus the production cost, with something more factored in for the delay in growing a cow (if it's not baby beef, at least). Still, these things look simple enough, and I would think that the trouble of growing grain, then feeding it unprocessed to cows, then looking after the cows must be greater (hence more expensive) than just growing grain and milling it into flour. Hence surely the hidden factors would be on the "pro-flour" side of the balance sheet, one would think. What of this argument? What is the difference in profitability for a kilo of flour and a kilo of beef, and does this translate correctly into the cost to the consumer, or is there some form of inefficiency clouding the market in some countries? I'm in Australia, but interested in what happens elsewhere, also. Many thanks, It's been emotional (talk) 18:01, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the farmer isn't paying for a kilo of flour retail, he's purchasing unprocessed grain. Part of the cost of the flour is the cost of milling it, packaging it, shipping it to the store, advertising it, lighting and heating the supermarket, paying for the checkout clerks, etc. There's also the issue of bulk discounts; the farmer isn't buying 1-5 kilos at a time, but more on the order of tonnes. The per-kilo price of several tonnes of grain at a feed mill will be less than the per-kilo price of flour purchased retail. By the way, the same can be said about the kilo of beef, too. The price the farmer will get for his cattle will be less per-kilo than you'd pay the store, due to butchering, packing, shipping, etc. costs. The fact that a kilo of flour and a kilo of beef are close to the same price retail is probably more an indication that the packing, shipping, etc. costs are similar. -- 174.21.244.142 (talk) 19:30, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Whilst I agree with most of the above, where I am, beef mince is of the order of pounds per kilo; flour somewhere in the tens of pence range, perhaps ten times less per kilo. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 21:06, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

And that argument against meat tends to be rather one-sided. That is, IF you were to feed cattle all on grain suitable for people, that argument might apply. However, cattle can eat things which people can't eat, like grasses, and most cattle have these as at least part of their diet. Now, you might think that (human edible) grains could just be grown everywhere grass is, but it can't, at least not at the same price. Cattle might also be wiling to eat grain crawling with bugs, which would disgust people. Also, some animals, such as sheep, can get at grass and grains in areas that would be impractical to harvest, such as hilly areas and those with mixed and/or sparse vegetation. So, all this makes meat not quite as expensive in environmental or economic terms. Also, those comparisons tend to say that we could get our calories cheaper from the grains directly than via beef, but if you look at getting protein that way, beef's a better bargain, since beef has maybe 10 times as much protein by weight. StuRat (talk) 21:38, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

...because 10 is greater than 16? ;-) Seriously, I'm a meat-eater as they come. But from an economic and ecologic perspective, going (more) vegetarian makes a lot of sense. Most people in the first world do not suffer protein deficiency (indeed, most suffer no deficiency in any kind of food, but rather the opposite). It is true that there are marginal environments in which animals can extract useful calories from primary production, but these are fairly rare. Most of the meat we (as a society) eat comes from more or less factory-raised animals fed with high-energy fodder that does crowd out potential human food production. If we ate half the meat at twice the price, that would be an overal improvement to economy, ecology, and health. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 02:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Where I live, cattle don't eat grain. They graze land, most of which couldn't be used to grow anything edible by humans on any commercial scale. Even more so for sheep and goats "The kilo of grain versus kilo of beef" argument is a strawman. Gwinva (talk) 02:37, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

See my preceding comment. The situation exists, but is rare for meat consumed in the first world. The argument is completely valid, although, as always, the real world us more messy than a laboratory. I'd be interested to know where your experience is coming from, though. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Open range cattle are not rare in the US West, and much of that land would require very major irrigation etc. to make usable for crops.

(Also, it does not seem entirely obvious that changing our agricultural practices in the First World, even to a much more efficient model, would actually help world hunger; much more food is produced globally than is needed to feed the total global population. The areas with really severe hunger are largely the ones cut off from being able to get food from elsewhere -- because of war-caused disruptions or extreme poverty or etc. So it isn't wholly clear that making more food in the US (or Europe, or wherever) would result in getting more food to sub-Saharan Africa (or wherever) -- though one could argue that a greatly lowered cost of food might well help. (The war-torn regions, which seem to be a large proportion of the really bad cases, would probably still remain unable to get the food...)

As for the ecological argument... that's probably even trickier, and may be simply a matter of weighing different goods and harms against one another. Open range cattle, and other models that allow real grazing [as opposed to feedlot/mostly grain-fed models] is probably closer to the natural environment of the central and western US than normal farms -- these were grazed lands, often by bison. Of course, cattle tend to overgraze, but even a severely overgrazed grassland is probably more like the original than a pesticide- and fertilizer-drenched corn monoculture. OTOH cows produce methane, which is a greenhouse gas... and there are a billion other factors... Vultur (talk) 08:35, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Most of this open range cattle will be move to a feedlot for "finishing" before being marketed. That's where the high-energy food is fed to them. I don't know how big the market for purely grass-fed beef is, but it's fairly hard to find in supermarkets where I have lived, and typically has a big price premium.

Yes, the ecological situation is complex (and made more complex because we have basically no "natural" land anyways - the great plains probably were partly shaped by managed burning since 10000 BCE or so). But that does not change the fact that intensive corn production (needed to feed cattle in feedlots) and deforestation to create pasture land have massive negative impacts. If we restrict our beef diet to just pastured cattle on existing pasture (something the market will not bear, of course), your argument would apply. As always, there is no easy solution to real-world problems, but we should at least stop subsidising over-production in ecologically harmful modes. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:18, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe Gwinva lives in NZ Nil Einne (talk) 21:09, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

The same conditions apply in parts of the north-west of England where grain will not ripen for human consumption, but where the land is well-suited to meat production. Dbfirs 08:53, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

According to today's commodity prices, corn is 7.36/bu ($0.131 a lb) vs feeder cattle at $1.419 a lb. That is a ratio of 1 to 10.8, not 1 to 16. Googlemeister (talk) 14:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Now you get to the fun part. For the cattle, what's the weight being quoted? If it's feeder cattle, it's probably the live weight, as opposed to the hanging weight (deskinned/degutted) or even total butchered weight. The 16-to-1 ratio was probably calculated based on the butchered-in-supermarket weight (because that's where it's most relevant, also where you'd get the most shocking ratio). If a live cow is 50% salable (finished) meat, the grain ratio for the live weight is then only 8-to-1. Also, the feeder cattle price is for the cattle prior to the feedlot, where they are typically fed more grain. A farmer selling feeder cattle hasn't put in 16 lb or even 8 lb of grain for every pound of cattle - and that's even assuming they've only been fed grain, as opposed to the most likely case where they've been grazed instead. As is typical with any statistic provided by someone pushing an agenda, the 16-to-1 figure represents the extreme. -- 174.21.244.142 (talk) 16:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

And where would Organic farming be without all that animal muck? Alansplodge (talk) 19:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Marge Simpson: "Homer, we need more manure for the crops."

Homer Simpson: "Geez, I'm only one man !" StuRat (talk) 07:12, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

If you pick up last week's issue of The economist food economics and the global food supply get 8 pages of coverage and the comparisons between meat and plant-based foods features prominently.124.171.192.209 (talk) 12:28, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Who were the boy's in the car with Sharon Carr when she murdered Kaite Rackliff?

Hi

Having read many articals on Sharon Carr and the murder of Katie Rackliff (Camberley, Surrey, UK) I am curious to find out if the 2 boys that were in the car with Sharon were ever found, or convicted, if so why have they not been demonised like Sharon.

In an artical by the Independant it say's

'Detectives seized Carr's writings and drawings, and questioned her for 27 hours. She gave three different accounts of how Katie had been killed, but in all of them the central theme was she had repeatedly stabbed her.

In two of the versions, Carr said she was with two boys in a car at the time of the attack, and they had engaged in sexual activity with Katie before dumping the body. She named the two boys. Police interviewed them but they provided alibis for each other, and were eliminated from the inquiry. However, the prosecution could not satisfactorily explain how Katie, who weighed 8st 8lbs, was dragged across a pavement and around a corner by a 12-year-old girl.' (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/i-was-born-to-be-a-killer-every-night-i-see-the-devil-in-my-dreams-1275032.html)

How can the boy's she mentioned be let go after giving EACH OTHER alibis??? - surely this way any 2 people who decide to commit murder could give each other alibis and get off - can you please explain this as a point of law - or is the Independant incorrect? Thank you.

Jojojojo2828 (talk) 21:00, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

They could give each other alibis, but as with any defence the alibis need not be believed by the Police or accepted by a jury. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 22:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

From reading the article, it seems that the only reason to suspect the involvement of the boys was Carr's statements - and these weren't consistent. Even without alibis, any charges against them would have been based on dubious evidence. On that basis, the only person who could be charged was the one person who was involved according to verifiable (if circumstantial) evidence. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:20, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Program applications

Hi. I'm a 12th grade student and in my final summer before college I have some summer programs that I'm interested in, for which I will no longer qualify after beginning college. (and which I finally have time for now that I don't have any more summer homework or "Extended Essays" or service hours to log) I will be taking various courses whose subjects I love but which do not figure into my career path. A lot of them require application fees or deposits, up to 300$, which is quite a lot. Will they just throw away my application without reading it if I don't pay the fee when submitting it, or will they read it then if I am accepted they'll send me a note saying I need to pay the fee before I can attend (that I can do). Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 23:24, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It is more likely that they would return your application unprocessed, saying that it should be re-submitted along with the fee stipulated. The delay this would introduce could mean that a deadline would pass or that all the available course places would have been filled by the time of your resubmission. If you are sure of having the necessary money by the time(s) of commencement, perhaps you could arrange a loan from a relative, friend, or some local businessperson with reason to trust you. There might possibly be some academic trust fund or bursary local to you (wherever you are) or at the institutions concerned (whatever they are) that would help out with cases such as yours, but without knowing those details no-one answering here is likely to be able to advise you further. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.248 (talk) 00:24, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

A $300 application fee sounds like a scam to me. It can't possibly take that much to hire people to read your application, so they must be making money off it. Stay away. StuRat (talk) 02:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree with the above scam assessment. Admission deposit (usually non-refundable) will be deducted from your total tuition; it's not an additional charge (one example). @OP: Different college has different payment policy, your best course of action would be to call the college (admission office/register) and ask. Royor (talk) 08:22, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Let me clarify: A $300 deposit, once you've been accepted, is reasonable. A $300 application fee is a scam. StuRat (talk) 07:08, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

There is a big difference between an application fee and an admission deposit. The former are usually low (though still irritating, in my opinion). The latter can be quite high — they are basically just recoverable, non-refundable fees for anyone who has actually enrolled. (If you transfer or drop out, you don't have to pay the rest of your tuition, obviously, but the university keeps the deposit.) --Mr.98 (talk) 11:59, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Do you get the deposit back if they don't accept your application? I've never head of such things in the UK. Some places charge application fees (of £10, say), but that's it. --Tango (talk) 21:20, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

April 4

Death of Theodoric the Great

Our article on him says that he died in 526, in Ravenna, but does not state his cause of death. Is it known? Vultur (talk) 08:41, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

There's a lot of legends about him, but it seems the cause is not known for certain. The two main explanations given by ancient historians are either that he died of remorse after executing Boethius and other decent people, or he died of typhoid or dysentery or some similar intestinal disorder[24][25] but I can't find any particularly authoritative references. There's also Legends about Theodoric the Great which is one of the most confusing and poorly-referenced Wikipedia pages I've ever read, and discusses theories that the legends may be about someone else. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:58, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

There are lots of people from that time period who were quite famous, but for whom the cause of death is not well known. If someone wasn't killed in battle or assassinated (both rather common enough hazards for someone of Theodoric's position), the cause of death wasn't often well known. Consider the death of Attila. According to contemporary accounts, he choked on his own blood as the result of overdrinking while partying (basically the same way that Bon Scott died), but there were other historians that claimed his wife killed him, and some more contemporary historiographers have claimed that all accounts of his death are suspect and likely written for political reasons, so there may be no reliable source to account for how he died. --Jayron32 12:23, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Our Legends about Theodoric the Great article says: "Theodoric the Great was an Arian Christian and despised by the Catholic Church for a persecution resulting in the deaths of Boethius, Symmachus, and Pope John I. Theodoric's death shortly after these killings was seen as divine retribution and in a church tradition dating at least from Gregory the Great's Dialogues, Pope John and Symmachus's souls were said to have dropped Theodoric's soul into Mount Etna, to suffer there until the end of days." . Alansplodge (talk) 16:10, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Me again. This site quoting Getica (The Origin and Deeds of the Goths), by Jordanes; "When he had reached old age and knew that he should soon depart this life, he called together the Gothic counts and chieftains of his race and appointed Athalaric as king." So either old age or the wrath of God seems to be the answer. Alansplodge (talk) 16:19, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

And no reason to say that they could not be one and the same. Googlemeister (talk) 18:19, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Although as divine retribution goes, it rather lacks drama. Maybe not one of God's better ones ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 19:35, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Question on Wikipedia content

No offense, just a free discussion. I was browsing Wikipedia:Featured articles and found some interesting statistics:

• Most FAs are related to Media/Films/Songs and Video games
• Compared to this there are ONLY 36 FAs on general Chemistry and mineralogy combined!!!
• Even fewer ONLY 19 FAs on Mathematics!!!!!
• Medicine has very few FAs
• Among the FAs on Geology and Geophysics, there are more history articles on individual earthquakes than articles on the science of Geology and Geophysics

So a conclusion can be drawn, which is very obvious, wikipedia has more coverage on individual films/songs and videos games (popular culture), than on science. The FAs on video games outnumber the FAs on medicine and chemistry combined. Any explanation? --Temporal back! (talk) 15:52, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

My own opinion would be that the areas listed would need expert contributors to bring them to FA status which we are possibly lacking in those departments. Mo ainm~Talk 15:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

All Wikipedia editors are volunteers. Most are quite young. Most people edit in areas that they are interested in (and know a bit about). More young people are interested in (and know a bit about) films, songs, video games (and individual earthquakes) than in medicine, chemistry, geology and geophysics. QED. Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:24, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

It depends on dumb luck, sometimes. You'll notice that there are a lot of good FAs on tropical cyclones. That's because there are a group of dedicated editors who work on those articles. If you find articles on minerology or chemical engineering or medicine or any other subject lacking, there is literally nobody to blame but yourself. Nothing at Wikipedia is done by anyone except lone individuals working on articles that interest them, and if you find that articles that interest you are of a poor quality, it is only because you did not fix them. You have no one to blame but yourself for Wikipedia's lack of quality. Shame on you! --Jayron32 16:39, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

FAs look for complete coverage of a topic, and as such it is easier to cover all the aspects of a particular hurricane, than, say predicting hurricanes. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:50, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Another possibility... being "Featured" can be a double edged sword... it can bring unwanted attention to an article, in the form of POV warring and vandalism. I have worked on at least two non-"pop culture" articles that could have been brought up at FAR and easily gained featured status, but the editors involved all agreed that doing so would cause more headaches than it is worth. We decided that it was better to have a really good article that remains under the radar and does not draw attention to itself. Blueboar (talk) 16:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Blueboar: Which two articles were they? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:47, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

And of course not everyone that writes articles has either the time or feels the urge to take a say B-class article any further, particularly if they are some form of 'expert' and have a day job. Mikenorton (talk) 17:00, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Some of us just don't care what status an article they wrote has. I could not possibly care less what my two primary content contributions get rated; I'd rather have the right information as opposed to some ranking on a website- which after all, is what articles status is here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

The obvious answer is that anybody can write about popular culture, while it takes quite a bit of education, and often some expertise, to write about science or mathematics. Keep in mind as well that the credit culture of, say, academia, is quite different than that of Wikipedia. Most of the academic experts I have met see no incentive to edit Wikipedia — it is literally a waste of time from their point of view. I don't see it the same way myself, but the culture of the university system is quite insular in this regard, and at every point one is encouraged to focus only on that which improves one's CV. And editing Wikipedia does not do that. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

On the other hand, being a principal author of a featured article on Wikipedia does give you some degree of "bragging rights" on myspace, twitter and the pop-culture web-forums. So editors who focus on pop-culture do have an incentive to spend time and energy gaining a "featured" status for their articles. Blueboar (talk) 17:40, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

The two major reasons have already been stated:

• People in general are more interested in popular culture than science or math.
• Anyone can write about pop culture but you need subject matter experts on science and math articles.

Here are a couple more:

• POV disputes. Some topics are beset by editors who are more interested in making sure a certain POV is expressed than actually improving the article.
• Online sources are more convenient to use, and you find lots of online sources for popular culture. Not so much for science and math, although that's changing I would think. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

These archived discussions link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias.

• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 October 7#Common personality traits of wikipedians
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 September 13#Average age of the Wikipedians

—Wavelength (talk) 18:22, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Another point to consider is that the criteria for reviewing and featuring a pop culture article are easier to meet. To be a featured article you have to cover the topic, the entire topic, with no notable omissions or weak areas, using engaging prose and professional-quality writing. It's a lot easier to cover encyclopedically the entire topic of a pop celebrity than it is to cover in an encyclopedic manner every important point of a war or a field of science. Though I would like to add that Wikipedia's area of concentration oftentimes does cover more serious topics than lists of pokemon. Areas that collect fans with encyclopedic levels of knowledge tend to produce the best wikipedia areas, and as a result our coverage of history, especially military history and most especially modern military history, is virtually unrivaled and oftentimes professional quality. Some of our editors in those fields could easily write books on notable battles. Same goes for some technology areas. HominidMachinae (talk) 20:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, fair enough. Another question: out of the 3,603,291 articles present in Wikipedia, how many have more than 1000 words? Is there any statistics available? --Temporal back! (talk) 08:22, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

These statistics are rather out-of-date, and don't quite answer your question but, as of January 2010, only 45% of articles were larger than 2KB in size. That was gradually increasing, but I'm guessing that would only translate to around 200 to 400 words, once you've allowed for templates, images, categories, etc. Warofdreams talk 16:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

closed
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
My dog I love my dog, but how can i tell if he really loves me and is not just interested in food and walkies etc?--DartingFog (talk) 19:30, 4 April 2011 (UTC) I think you first have to examine what "really loves you" actually means. There are essentially two views on animal emotions (including dogs). One is that all animals are essentially just robots going through programmed motions — Behaviorism. The other is that they have complex emotional lives that are quite similar to what humans have. The behaviorists clearly went too far, mistaking a methodological proclamation (don't anthropomorphize animals) for a descriptive statement about the world (animals don't have human emotions, brains, etc.). There is absolutely no reason to suspect that relatively advanced mammals don't have similar neural hardware, and that things like love/hate/etc. aren't quite "base" emotions when it comes to brains (as opposed to all of the extra stuff we get with that extra forebrain). On the other hand, assuming that animals experience things the same way that we do is clearly false; we aren't even sure that other humans experience everything the same way we do, emotionally. I cast my lot with the "dogs probably do love you to some degree" camp. They seem to act as if they have an honest-to-god pack relationship with humans, which is good enough for me. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:53, 4 April 2011 (UTC) Great name, BTW DartingFog. In response you may want to read the article Emotion in animals. In short, this is a controversial topic among scientists, even those that study animal behavior in detail. One of the key problems with studying animal emotion is that animals cannot describe their inner thought processes (well most, some Apes and maybe even a bird or two can, but not dogs). In otherwords, we know humans feel love because they can communicate to us what they are feeling and can describe their own emotions and inner thoughts in ways that we can analyze and categorize. In humans this is called metacognition, the ability to think about one's own thinking. Dogs lack the apparatus to communicate at this level, so we don't know: a) If dogs can love... b) If dogs can love, then can they recognize love in themselves and others c) If dogs can love, and recognize it, can they tell others about what they feel (as distinct from merely showing what they feel). All three suppositions would have to be true before we could say definitively that dogs love. All we can say now is that dogs behave like they may experience love, but we cannot ask a dog "Do you know what love is? Have you experienced it before? Can you describe what love, in general feels like to you? Does what you feel now in Situation X, you feel love?" See, that requires both metacognition and a level of communication that dogs do not appear to be capable of. So, all we can say is they may exhibit behavior that we, as humans, sometimes interpret as love when we compare those behaviors to our own expectations, but we have no way to probe or study whether it is love, or whether we are merely projecting our own understanings onto the dog, even if the dog is doing something entirely differently. If it helps you to believe that what your dog does with you is "love", there is no harm in believing so. There's just no way, in a scientific manner, to say whether it is or it isn't. --Jayron32 20:03, 4 April 2011 (UTC) They love in a doggy way? They bask contentedly in the knowledge that their owner is around and cares for them? Whatever your cat is interested in food, sleeping and late nights out, end of story. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:32, 4 April 2011 (UTC) Most mammals and birds (and a few lower animals) seem to have a need for companionship, for at least part of their life. This can take the form of pair bonding or "parental love" or just a feeling of membership in a pack. StuRat (talk) 22:03, 4 April 2011 (UTC) Dogs don't pair bond (males mate with any bitch in heat)... they are pack animals and bond with (love?) fellow pack members. Domesticated canines have learned to substitute humans for their pack. What is important is that you be the pack leader. Blueboar (talk) 22:42, 4 April 2011 (UTC) This is another LC sock, who has posed variations on this trolling question in the recent past. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:24, 5 April 2011 (UTC) I think many of us figured that apparently including some who posted. Nil Einne (talk) 06:47, 5 April 2011 (UTC) Banned uses are not allowed to edit, nor should they be responded to. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:05, 5 April 2011 (UTC) LC? Kittybrewster ☎ 09:17, 5 April 2011 (UTC) A banned user named "Light current". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:19, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

April 5

GK Geography question

Which non-european metro has a European name and also one of the largest in that country

I would appreciate any help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.111.228.20 (talk) 13:07, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Let's see, New York (as in Yorkshire), Cincinnati (named after a Roman), Norfolk, Virginia (same as the county in England), Wellington (as in the Duke of), Perth, Western Australia (Scottish name). Those are the more notable that come to mind. Googlemeister (talk) 13:23, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

There are probably dozens of possibilities. New York City has a European name, being of course named after York. Montreal has a "European" name in the sense that it's a French word (Mount Royal, or Royal Mountain), and French was spoken in Europe before it was spoken in Canada. Both anchor one of the largest metro areas in their respective countries. List of largest cities and second largest cities by country would help you in your search. --Jayron32 13:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

As usual, the questions from this site are horribly under-specified, and can have many "correct" answers. Knowing which one they are after is virtually never possible. The "one of the largest" bit makes it even more difficult to guess, since that could mean anything from top 2 to top 50%. Auckland is named after the Earl of Auckland for example. Since GK is unusually quite US-centric, I'd go for somewhere in the US. St. Petersburg, FL is obviously named after St. Petersburg, but not one of the largest by any definition. Birmingham, AL could be the answer. There is a Boston in England: Boston, Lincolnshire. Baltimore is named after a title in the Peerage of Ireland. Whether Santiago de Chile has a European name can be debated. There is for example Santiago de Compostela in Spain. I could go on... /Coffeeshivers (talk) 16:06, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Abe Lincoln bodyguards

Who protected Abe Lincoln from assassination during the US Civil War? I would think he would have a company of troops protecting him because he was president when the front lines were within 50 miles of DC. Surely they would have thought spies from the South might try to assassinate him and would not stick with his usual protective complement (which in 1865 was quite poor quality). Googlemeister (talk) 13:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

You'd be surprised; I imagine there was actually very little personal protection for him. Certainly, Washington D.C. itself would have had some troops protecting it, but I am not sure that there would have been a specific bodyguard or detail assigned to the President directly. The United States Secret Service was actually created by Lincoln shortly before he died, but it didn't gain its role as a Presidential bodyguard until after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. Prior to the Secret Service, the major Federal Police force was the United States Marshals Service, but that article makes no mention of Bodyguard duties for the President (though today, one of their promary rôles is to guard witnesses whose lives are threatened). Prior to the twentieth century, there was almost no security at the White House at all. You could literally walk up to the front door and ring the doorbell. White_House#Public_access_and_security notes that Abraham Lincoln was " was constantly beleaguered by job seekers waiting to ask him for political appointments or other favors." In other words, it sounds like that during the Civil War, you could go right up to the White House and pester the President directly; given that any one of these "job seekers" could have concealed a weapon rather easily, it seems as if security measures were nonexistant. --Jayron32 13:35, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I would have thought the army would fill in that role during the war. Googlemeister (talk) 13:39, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

As president-elect, Lincoln was helped partly by the Pinkerton Agency... AnonMoos (talk) 14:12, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Actually, upon deeper research, Presidential security may have been managed by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Apparently Allan Pinkerton helped foil the Baltimore Plot to assassinate Lincoln before his inauguration. In Abraham_Lincoln#1860_election_and_secession it mentions he was under substantial military security for his inauguration festivities, though it is unclear if this was standard security for his presidency, or a special security for the inauguration only. According to Abraham_Lincoln#Assassination, he had a personal bodyguard, but he stepped out for drinks during the play and left Lincoln totally unguarded. So, it does appear that atleast at some times there were varying degrees of "security" provided, though it does seem comicly inadequate compared to what sorts of security the modern President gets. --Jayron32 14:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)