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August 1

Map of 50 new states for the USA

In the eighties there was a map of fifty newly designed states for America based on a rationalization of state boundaries according to geography. I assume it was in Scientific American, Discover or Omni magazine. Can anyone give a citation, or better yet, link to such a map? μηδείς (talk) 04:15, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've been digging, and I kinda remember the map you are talking about. I haven't found it yet, but I did find this fun map blog: [1]. Here's one giving all 50 states nearly identical populations: [2]. (after more searching) My best guess is This map by George Etzel Pearcy that I was actually looking for; perhaps this is the one you remember as well? It dates from 1973. --Jayron32 04:43, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An interesting, fanciful idea that conveniently ignores what a "state" is, in the context of the USA. Not to say that would never change. But not likely soon. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:53, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a very occasional visitor, I've sometimes wondered if California could be two states. It's big enough, both in space and population. HiLo48 (talk) 05:10, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It could be, if both the state and Congress agreed to it. And don't forget Texas, the largest of the lower 48, with its vast expanses of nothingness between its major cities. The likelihood of Texans agreeing to name their state something besides Texas, never mind the idea of reshaping it, is roughly that of Texas issuing an official pardon to Santa Anna. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:14, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I can see that with Texas. I noted the Texas shaped waffles I was served for breakfast and the map of the state being part of its self image. There's a real ownership of "the great State of...". I didn't get the same feeling with California, and a north/south division with the obvious North/South names would not seem so impossible. HiLo48 (talk) 05:22, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It can't happen unless the party that controls both houses of Congress is also the party that stands to benefit. At the moment I think that's the Republicans. For the foreseeable future both California senators will be Democrats; a split along the lines of a proposal recently in the news (creating a "South California" that was really more like Southeast California, excluding LA) could easily mean two new Republican senators. --Trovatore (talk) 05:27, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) California and Texas both joined the union under, lets say, unusual circumstances which is the major reason why they were so large. California, unlike almost every other state, didn't have to go through the standard "be a territory first and then apply for statehood" procedure; the timing of its statehood is tied up in the complicated politics of the Compromise of 1850. Basically, since Californians had no desire to legalize slavery, the Southern U.S. States would only allow California to be admitted as a single state; if it had been split into multiple smaller states it would have upset the balance of power between free and slave states in a way that Southerners wouldn't have allowed. Additionally, the only real population center was San Francisco; what we think of as Southern California was lightly populated desert; there would have been no one there to make a seperate state out of. Texas was supposed to be split up into 5 seperate states, but it sorta never got happened. See List_of_U.S._state_partition_proposals#Texas and Texas divisionism. Part of the issue was that Texas was a pro-slavery state, and for the same reasons California never got split up also applies to Texas from the other direction; Northerners didn't exactly want 5 new pro-slavery states where 1 would do. --Jayron32 05:33, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it was George Etzel Pearcy's map, most definitely! I liked it because it used totally new names. Jayron's second link was also interesting-but I didn't find the relevant map at your first link, the overlong blog page. Is a direct link available?

And thanks to Bugs for pointing out the very relevant and overlooked political fact that the states are sovereign, not geographical conveniences. μηδείς (talk) 05:26, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Even changing a state's name is a big deal. Every so often, a governor of North Dakota will propose renaming the state to simply "Dakota". The proposal will typically die in a hail of laughter, with the South Dakota governor saying that instead it should be renamed simply "North", given its "Frozen North" reputation. I think the last name change to a state or a portion thereof was when West Virginia split off Virginia and stayed in the Union during teh Civil War. States are very defensive about their borders. Along the Mississippi River, there are various places where pieces of a state are on the opposite side of the river, due to the changes in the rivers meandering. Rather than re-drawing the map, they keep the borders the way they were in the 1830s or whenever. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:37, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There have been a few minor adjustements since then; jurisdiction over the Delaware wedge wasn't resolved until the 1920's, and a large part of Ellis Island was officially ruled to be in New Jersey (and not New York) in 1998. So there have been some border changes. --Jayron32 15:31, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen that Pearcy map here and there. Always thought the state names were...curious. Funny how his state of "Erie" doesn't border Lake Erie. And I'm not sure about Memphis being the main "Ozark" city! Still, I enjoy maps like that, despite being fanciful. Pfly (talk) 10:41, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A more modest name change proposal was one I saw used as an example in a discussion about states. It had southern California separating and merging with Arizona, resulting in a new stated called "Calizona". Those fanciful maps are fun. I can't find it on the internet, but in the early 1970s someone had a map of the world's oil reserves, with each nation or region's size proportional to its supply. Hence the US was fairly small at 8 percent while the middle least was huge, like 53 percent. And then National Lampoon ran the same map, relabeling it "stupidity reserves". It's a good thing that things have changed since then, yes? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:44, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pfly, I've never thought of you as being fanciful. Just a little idiosyncratic, perhaps. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:36, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List_of_United_States_territories_that_failed_to_become_states#Proposed_but_non-existent_entities has links to other plans for splitting and combining US states. --Colapeninsula (talk) 12:15, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

China vs United States economic management

It seems that because China embraced capitalism under it's "one government, two systems" policy China has been able as a nation to manage its resources in a far superior manner than the United States and out-prospering the United States, without resorting to the stimulus of war. Chine seems in far better control of its economy and by lending the United States money vying for a position from which it can dictate terms and even absorb the United States without resorting to war (of course unless the United States does not follow China's dictates like no public meetings between the Dali lama and members of Congress or the President. Does China have the advantage by ruling over capitalist enterprises as if it were a giant department store and it was the administration as opposed to the United States which appears to have nothing near the control of China over its industries and businesses? --DeeperQA (talk) 05:46, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly is the question? Stimulus of war? Dictate terms? Absorb? What? - ArtifexMayhem (talk) 06:36, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Does China have the advantage by ruling over capitalist enterprises as if it were a giant department store and it was the administration; as opposed to the United States which appears to have nothing near the control of China over its industries and businesses?" Seems like a perfectly reasonable question to me. 2.101.8.165 (talk) 11:44, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Does China have the economic management advantage? --DeeperQA (talk) 08:31, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your question is still vague to the point of being difficult to answer. You have to be more precise in what you mean by "advantage" here. Are you asking whether China's economic management will lead to higher annual growth (as a percentage of GDP) than the US, or to a lower Gini coefficient, or to a smaller percentage of the population with a wage lower than one USD per day, or to a smaller ecological footprint, or to a higher GDP per capita, or what? Are we taking long-term or short-term views? What do you mean, exactly, by a "superior" management of resources? Gabbe (talk) 11:39, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by "more precise", "asking" ? The question was clear. 2.101.8.165 (talk) 11:46, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Let me put it another way... are the people of the People's Republic of China the sole stock holders and do they garner all of the profits versus collecting taxes and is this the reason why China will be able to crush the US economically in the rapidly approaching and not too distant future. --DeeperQA (talk) 11:44, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The government of the PRC is not the country's sole stockholder. Companies and individuals own and trade stocks on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, for example. And they do have taxes in China too, see "Taxation in the People's Republic of China". I'm not sure what you mean by "crush the US economically", but if you look at "List of countries by GDP (nominal)" you'll see that the Gross Domestic Product of the US is at present approximately three times larger than that of China. The growth rate of the US has averaged about 3% per year in recent times, whereas that of China has been in the vicinity of 10% per year. If (and this is a pretty big if) these rates were to hold for the following decades the GDP of China would equal that of the US in about 16 years or so. Gabbe (talk) 12:16, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Did you use the price of gold as a standard or the currency exchange rates to figure the rate of growth? --DeeperQA (talk) 13:48, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Gabbe. An economy does not crush another. That would be stupid to crush a customer and / or provider. The Chinese economy will out grow the American economy, very likely, but that will not necessarily harm it. The American economy is likely to continue to grow, at its own pace. This will be like when the US economy became larger than the British economy. The British economy was not crushed by the American economy, it simply became the second economy in the world instead of the first. --Lgriot (talk) 12:44, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My application of the word "crush" is in regard to the American ego for not having an economic and government system that allows it to be superior to a Communist State run by a bunch of "chinks," even though it may retain its transition size. --DeeperQA (talk) 13:14, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

However, you only have to look on the shelves of every store in the US, not fail to find a Chinese eatery somewhere, find a university engineering department not filled with Chinese students already receiving offers from NASA and other agencies including the Pentagon.

When you couple all of this with owning China over a trillion dollars then it makes one begin to ask, who will have the real economic management advantage in a short order of time, China or the US? --DeeperQA (talk) 13:26, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Conditions in the United States today are very different from those in China. The United States has a "mature" economy. It has already made full use of the technologies currently available for improving productivity and uses its work force at something approaching its full potential (though in recent years, high unemployment certainly leaves some room for improvement in human resource utilization). By contrast, China has had and continues to have much more opportunity for improving productivity and moving its work force up the skill ladder. As a result, it has much more potential for growth, and it has been realizing that potential. Its position is similar to that of the United States in the first 3 decades of the 20th century, when the U.S. economy grew at rates similar to those of the Chinese economy today. This is not a matter of economic management. It is a matter of different economic circumstances and levels of development. In fact, I don't think that there is a lot of difference in economic management techniques between China and the United States.

The main difference is in the countries' political systems, not their economic management. In the United States, an outwardly democratic but actually plutocratic system means that control of government and the economy is diffuse, but generally oriented toward the perceived interests of the very rich. The democratic trappings act as a pressure valve allowing the masses the sense of having a say and arguably giving the very rich freer rein than they have in China to loot the economy. In China, an autocratic system allows more central control of the economy and creates a different set of political constraints. Because of a lack of democratic forms, the ruling Communist Party has to be more concerned about legitimacy than the U.S. officials elected by the voting public but demonstrably serving wealthy campaign contributors. Consequently, the Communist Party may use its power to manage the economy in such a way as to ensure that the benefits of growth are distributed just widely enough to limit the potential for unrest. It is impossible to say which political system offers the greater "advantage," especially since different groups within each country are differently advantaged (or not) by its political system. Marco polo (talk) 15:02, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The OP points out that "China [has] embraced capitalism." Now that the government uses two systems, it inherits the follies of each, rather than one canceling out the other. This story talks about bubbles: the capitalistic folly; this story talks about dissidents and online censorship: a traditional communistic folly.
The Chinese seem to not be able to see their own wisdom; take a look at this article. Schyler (exquirere bonum ipsum) 15:17, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the OP's opening question; " It seems that because China embraced capitalism under it's "one government, two systems" policy China has been able as a nation to manage its resources in a far superior manner than the United States ". In fact the term is One country, two systems and this policy was introduced purely for enabling China to unite with the independent capitalist territories of Hong Kong (British) and Macau (Portuguese). Outwith these territories, China was supposed to remain socialist. But now in fact China is one country, one system-- deeply authoritarian in its power and control structures, very liberal and capitalistic in its economic policies--but no longer communist, except in name only. Chinese citizens can be as entrepreneurial as they like and can make as much money as they like with little or no state interference.

"Chine seems in far better control of its economy and by lending the United States money vying for a position from which it can dictate terms and even absorb the United States without resorting to war" . China manipulates its economy by keeping its currency weak so as to boost its exports. Yes, it has bought about a quarter of all foreign holdings of US securities but that doesn't take into account where the rest of these securities are held. The total foreign holdings are less than half of the total amount of treasury securities issued (47%). So China's total holding is about 11% of the total. Sorry can't see them absorbing the US any time soon.

"Does China have the advantage by ruling over capitalist enterprises as if it were a giant department store and it was the administration as opposed to the United States which appears to have nothing near the control of China over its industries and businesses?" . You have a point here. State monoliths in China are starting to buy into foreign companies but even then these state companies aren't the 'dead hand' of the former eastern bloc of the soviet empire--they know exactly what they are doing and everything is geared to increasing wealth. The OP's statement that the US doesn't have the control over its industries and businesses as does China. Well that's true and it isn't true both at the same time. Which governments are not involved in their countries' economies--none I would suggest. But the US is one of the major economies that promote a smaller state footprint and stands for no state control, no state ownership--the land of the free (sorry got carried away there).

So, an authoritarian capitalist economy such as China (with no looking over the shoulder at the next election) will always be in a better shape than democratic economies, as President Obama is finding out. --Bill Reid | (talk) 18:33, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you have 41 minutes there's a lengthy interview with historian Niall Ferguson at http://bigthink.com/niallferguson where he shares some interesting insights on the issue, including his identification of the six "killer apps" of Western civilization and their adoption by China. Gabbe (talk) 19:27, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

[ec] I don't think it's possible to make a sweeping statement that authoritarian political economies "always" outperform. It happens to be true of these two countries at the moment due to circumstances at this juncture that are mostly independent of the countries' different political systems. During the period from 1870 to 1913, Germany had an authoritarian capitalist economy, while the United States had a pluralist capitalist economy. According to the first table on this page, Germany's GDP grew during this period from $72,149 million to $237,332 million in constant US dollars, representing a respectable average annual growth rate of 2.8%. During the same period, the GDP of the United States grew from $93,374 million to $517,383 million, representing average annual growth of 4.1%. So, in this case, the authoritarian capitalist economy underperformed the pluralist capitalist economy. The advantage of a freer capitalist economy is that it can respond more nimbly to market forces. Other things being equal, less profitable units and activities are more easily eliminated and capital is shifted more readily to more productive uses in a free economy than in an autocratic setting, in which less productive or profitable activities may be protected for political reasons. So I don't think that we can look to China's authoritarianism as an explanation for its relative growth advantage. Marco polo (talk) 19:56, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's fallacious to say that China is outperforming the U.S. simply because its economy is growing. Yeah, maybe it looks that way if you own stock or yuan. But in terms of what it provides for the people - no one denies that China is still poorer overall. Whether it can peak at a point where it produces more goods and services per work hour than the U.S. still has to be determined. Wnt (talk) 00:52, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"One government, two systems" my ass. That the dictatorial central committee of the Chinese communist party has been employing free market reforms says nothing about their totalitarian, unjust rule. Hans Rosling explains why the developing world is growing so much faster than industrialized countries. The investment gamble offer to those willing to tolerate moderate risk: Bet against war and famine to outperform local index funds. 64.134.228.55 (talk) 01:11, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comparing the pre-1914 economies of Germany and the US and then using that to make comparisons of present day economies isn't particularly helpful. For example, in those days although Germany was authoritarian and its growth by European standards was impressive, yet it went in for socialist style large scale nationalisation programmes -- not a feature of the US economy of the time (nor now). Germany started to introduce large scale costly welfare programmes to counter the growing socialist movement--the US didn't need to do these things. In the present day, the democratic political systems of the west are checked by what these governments think their electorates will tolerate and the present economic crisis in the US is no different -- if I understand the situation the US government will now make an additional $2 trillion of treasury securities available and China will be in there snapping them up -- Obama wants to be re-elected. Ireland and Britain have sacked their governments that were perceived to be responsible for their present circumstances. Greece, Portugal and Spain will most likely do the same. China alone doesn't give a damn about its electorate--it doesn't have one. So I disagree, the political system of China is the main driver of its economic growth. --Bill Reid | (talk) 16:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Global economic crises are typically preceded by oil price peaks, regardless of individual national management. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 22:31, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, because I cannot see through closed doors, imagine this: China became concerned long ago about America's ability to pay back principle and interest on US bonds China acquired. This is because China got its vast surplus by wise management albeit dictatorial management. The whole budget deficit crises which the US prolonged today by increasing how much it borrow today merely to show China that even depriving its own people would not stand in the way of the US repaying principle and interest to cover its bonds. We agreed today to deprive our own people through spending cuts to pay the interest on the bonds we have sold to China and others by selling even more bonds to then instead of raising taxes. China is the better manager of money than we are.

China told the US not to show support for the Dali Lama in public although freedom of religion is one of the hallmarks of American ideals.

In effect the US is still following the foreign policy it had of selling scrap steel to Japan before WWII. Either that or the US is providing foreign aid to a Communist country by depriving its own citizens of aid which might be okay if tax cuts, tax breaks and tax loopholes for the rich were what was being deprived instead of cost of living increases necessary to offset increasing prices. --DeeperQA (talk) 00:49, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a reference desk, not a soapbox. Do you have any more questions, or are you looking to hold a discussion? Gabbe (talk) 11:17, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

...then get off yours. --DeeperQA (talk) 14:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Many people have become aware of China's economy because of its ability to export (it now ranks #1, and #2 in imports, worldwide). However, more than half (about 55%) of both exports and imports are by foreign-invested companies. So, perhaps what China has become is a good place to do a certain kind of business. DOR (HK) (talk) 07:40, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cyrus Cylinder

Was the Cyrus Cylinder known about before its discovery in 1879? If so, for how long before?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 13:16, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In the Discovery section it says it was found in a foundation deposit during excavations of the temple Esagila. That leads me to believe that it had been largely forgotten since it's placement there, which would be before the temple's destruction in 482 BC. —Akrabbim^talk 14:30, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

O.K., thanks.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 11:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source of Terence McKenna quotes?

I'm looking for the source of some Terence McKenna quotes: 1. "Ego is a structure that is erected by a neurotic individual who is a member of a neurotic culture against the facts of the matter. And culture, which we put on like an overcoat, is the collectivized consensus about what sort of neurotic behaviors are acceptable." 2. "There may be entities seeking control, but to seek control is to take enormous aggravation upon yourself. It's like trying to control a dream." 3. "We are so much the victims of abstraction that with the Earth in flames we can barely rouse ourselves to wander across the room and look at the thermostat." I can find these quotes littered around the web, but there is no indication as to where they're from (at least that I can find). Ericoides (talk) 15:31, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

He used to give lots of talks, many of which were recorded and passed around on cassette tapes. I had a good box full of them once upon a time. I would guess a lot of quotes come from those. He said an awful lot more during talks than he wrote in books. Some years back I came across a large collection of audiofiles of talks he gave. Perhaps such archives are still online. Might be hard to find a specific quote though. 12:32, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Incredulity

This is logic, and so part of philosophy. That's why I am asking in this topic.

''If one sees 100 coins on a table, all heads up, it is a good indication that someone deliberately placed them there with all heads up. If, on the other hand, about 50 were heads up and the others were tails up, in random order, then it could be a result of chance. Mathematicians who work with probability speak of certain very small such probabilities as being equivalent to impossible.''

Isn't it an argument from incredulity to say that it can only be a product of an intelligent person, not chance? Or is the argument from incredulity not always a fallacy?

WW2 protests against segregation

When large numbers of US troops during WW2 entered the UK and fraternised with the UK troops and population, the US forces were racially segregated. However the UK had no such segregation in living memory. The agreed common enemy was the intensely racist Nazi regime. Are there sources about protests from the British about the restrictions placed on black US soldiers? Cuddlyable3 (talk) 22:14, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If the UK had no tradition of Jim Crow laws, they certainly had a strong tradition of everyone knowing his "station" so the cobbler's son did not try to date the Lord's daughter. I read a novel, perhaps consistent with history, about black US soldiers visiting Northern Ireland. They liked being able to go to a dance and dance with white women without being lynched. Men urged them to desert and travel across the border to the Irish Republic and be done with the war. I've read of general resentment of white US soldiers' success with UK women: "They're overpaid, they're oversexed, and worst of all, they're OVER HERE." [4] says that because the American blacks and whites fought when they went offbase to bars, the authorities alternated "white nights" and "black nights," and parents only authorized their daughters to go to bars on selected nights (without specifying that it was always white nights.) Many American black jazz musicians loved living in Paris in the 1920's-1930's, because they were not subjected to the constant insults and discrimination they encountered in the US. I haven't read of such an exodus of American black musicians to the UK in the 20's and 30's. When Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington toured Britain in the early 1930's the reception was disappointing. Listeners would sometimes walk out, or throw pennies on the stage as an insult. Armstrong's concert promoters sought to find a band of English black jazz musicians, but could not, so they brought in a band from Paris. Perhaps it is the history of slavery in the US, and antimiscegenation laws, and Jim Crow policies that fostered racism in the US in the 1940's, but did the average UK citizen see no difference between their daughter dating a white or black American soldier? Were they inclined to run around like 1960's Civil Rights activists and protest racial inequality in the policies of the US military? What was the percentage of African descent in the UK population 1941, before the US influx? Edison (talk) 00:43, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've looked through several pages of that book you linked to: where does it say coins were thrown on the stage? In fact it says that Duke Ellington was very well recieved in Britain, with crowds turning out, as he had a well organised publicity campain beforehand. Louis Armstrong had a more mixed reception because he didnt have so much publicity. I think it more likely that people booked seats at the London Palladium, the top nightspot at the time, regardless of what was offered and then some people left when the music was not to their taste, or perhaps they wanted dinner. According to the book jazz was rare in Britain at that time, with records difficult to get, so jazz was only familiar to a monority. A jazz session may have been very different to the entertainment they were expecting. In my experience some people walk out in cinemas, even though the film was not objectionable in any way. 2.97.215.11 (talk) 11:24, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're right the account of unhappy listeners throwing pennies on the stage referred to Ellington's tour in the 1930's, not Armstrong's. The book did say "20 to 30" unhappy listeners walked out of an Armstrong performance. 20 years earlier, when Armstrong as a lad was singing with a few friends in the streets of New Orleans, he had been happy for people to toss pennies at his feet. Edison (talk) 18:47, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know anything about what happened in the US, but page 234 of that book appears to be what you are greatly misrepresenting about Ellingtons performance in Britain in the 1930s. It says most of the audience were "ecstatic", the rest baffled, and "a few" people threw coins and left during one particular piece. Far less than 1% of the audience I expect, as the Palladium probably seats thousands of people. Charlie Sheen had a very much worse time here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzKq3CUgXUE 2.97.215.11 (talk) 18:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nevil Shute's novel, The Chequer Board is interesting... even if, one may say, a bit "didactic". -- Vmenkov (talk) 00:32, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

At the time, the English societies were recovering from their abuse of the Indian caste systems resulting from company rule in India, so racial segregation was probably a taboo subject of conversation. The unspoken understandings of the analogous situations, however, likely often spoke louder than words. 64.134.228.55 (talk) 01:05, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's at best just guessing, and not true. I've never heard of anything like that. Do you have any sources to back it up at all? British people were grateful and respectful of any foriegn person who volunteered to fight for Britain, irrespective of colour. Indian people formed an essential part of British administration in India. See the writings of Rudyard Kipling for example. 2.97.215.11 (talk) 11:29, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I read a comment from a British person during WWII (don't remember where, unfortunately) remarking on how Southern white U.S. soldiers would raise a ruckus when they saw a black guy in a restaurant they were dining in, even when it was a British black guy. The writer in jest recommended black Britons wear a pin or armband or something to indicate their Britishness. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:21, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here are a couple of links I've found: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/67/a2337167.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/96/a1921196.shtml I think most or nearly all British people did not approve of the discrimination shown by white American soldiers, in the same way that I'm shocked by the active discrimination in the US as late as the 1960s. 2.97.215.11 (talk) 13:30, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't true to say that there was no racism in Britain in the 1940s, but much of it was a jokey, derogatory sort of racism that white people thought was harmless fun. This continued into the 1970s and 80s before it was generally thought to be harmful. There were very few people of colour in the UK before WWII; my father's photos from an ordinary state school in 1920s east London show only rows of white faces. During wartime there was much propaganda about the "Imperial Family" and how we were all in it together; I think this was generally accepted. When mass immigration began in the late 1940s, race became a more pertinent issue; there were famously signs saying "NO IRISH OR BLACKS" in adverts for rented accomodation. Alansplodge (talk) 18:33, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is funny to depict Britain as a society devoid of racism in the early 20th century. Consider Agatha Christie's popular book "Ten Little Niggers." Consider the black dog named "Nigger" featured in the WW2 story of a bombing program popularized in The Dam Busters about No. 617 Squadron RAF. Consider the common usage of Wog i the early/mid 20th century as a derogatory word for "dark skinned" people, particularly from the Middle East, the Caribbean, and the Indian subcontinent. When did Packy become a British slang word for a Pakistani? Edison (talk) 01:31, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Nigger" simply meant "black" and wasn't usually used in a derogatory way in the UK, as it was in the USA. Perhaps, in future, "black" will become a racist label? Dbfirs 00:45, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If we listed all the instances of racism in the US during the same time periods, then we'd need several large volumes, and the racism would be very much more serious and institutionalised. The words you list were slang terms at the time, and did not have the same intention of offense as they do currently in the US, although the "w" word was intended to be offensive. In Britain we have plenty of slang terms for even European people, such as "frogs". 2.97.219.104 (talk) 11:10, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mentioned above, but worth a bit more detail, in Nevil Shute's 1947 novel The Chequer Board. From our article: "The novel deals fairly with the question of racism within the US forces during World War II and portrays black characters with great sympathy and support." It is set in rural England, among villagers who have never previously met black people. They like them a lot better than the arrogant white soldiers from the American South. Presumably Shute was drawing on a wartime trope. BrainyBabe (talk) 22:57, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

August 2

Starving in Britain

I read about someone starving to death in Britain in the early 20th. century. What was the latest date at which a person could starve to death in Britain from lack of money? I also read another book - The South Country, a collection of the prose non-fiction writing of Edward Thomas (poet) - which describes the unemployed starving around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. I expect when the welfare state was intoduced in the late 1940s, then starvation stopped, but does anyone have more precise details? 2.97.215.11 (talk) 12:46, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You'll likely find that the rate of starvation just reduced, but didn't end, due to people too proud to accept charity, etc. StuRat (talk) 13:55, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is information on poverty and malnutrition in the UK today in this report. There's a narrow line between starvation and malnutrition, and as StuRat says, the availability of benefits doesn't mean that everyone eligible does actually claim them, or knows how to. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

English Poor Laws explains legislated "relief" for the poor existed as far back as at least 1536. Moving ahead through history, read Liberal welfare reforms for new laws passed between 1906 and 1914 that did things such as make free school meals compulsory. National Assistance Act 1948 created the modern social safety net. There's also Timeline of the Poor Law system. 67.22.236.140 (talk) 14:22, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, free school meals are no use to people too old to go to school. Pais (talk) 14:40, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This sort of thing is always caused by alcoholism or mental illness or child abuse or state violations of human rights. No one simply starves to death in the modern West without some other cause than mere lack of abundance of food. μηδείς (talk) 21:15, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You have not read the question. 2.97.215.11 (talk) 22:47, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I answered you. Never, unless there were some other more fundamental reason. μηδείς (talk) 23:51, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You have still not read the question, sigh. 92.29.116.165 (talk) 10:02, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Although the Liberal welfare reforms (linked above) provided limited unemployment benefit, old age pensions and sickness pay, there were many who were not eligable for these payments. For them the last resort were the workhouses, which were not finally wound-up until 1929. For those unwilling to submit themselves to such an austere regime, starvation could have been the end result. Alansplodge (talk) 23:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are reports of death from starvation during the depression of the 1930s, although this was rare.[5]

Generally, England has not suffered serious food shortages for a long time: Famine#England says the last peace-time famine was in 1623-4. As mentioned above, England has had welfare provisions since the middle ages (see English Poor Laws). Depending on your definition of Britain, the Irish potato famine killed a large number of people in Ulster as well as the rest of Ireland in the 1840s, and at that time all Ireland was part of the UK - see Great Famine (Ireland). The Highland Potato Famine in Scotland in the 1840s doesn't seem to have led to significant deaths from starvation, thanks to state aid.[6]

People still die of starvation today, typically through anorexia nervosa and other mental illness, child neglect[7], or the neglect of old people in homes and hospitals who who are unable to feed themselves[8][9][10]. There are reports of an elderly woman dying in 2009 of "self-neglect" after failing to eat enough[11] although poverty was not involved. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:54, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The amount of food in the economy is not the point, the point is if someone who had no money to buy food would starve. 92.29.116.165 (talk) 10:08, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is outright nonsense. Show one documented case since the government-caused Irish famine of a person dying of starvation on the street, asking for food, who was refused charitable aid. Just one case. μηδείς (talk) 20:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Medeis, are you perhaps very tired? Other users have repeatedly suggest you reread the question, as you are responding to things that are not there. 86.163.1.169 (talk) 21:06, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The question is based on the false premise that without government involvement, people would routinely be starving to death due to lack of money. The premise is manifestly false. If it isn't, surely we can get some pictures of starving Yorkshiremen or quotes of villagers in Arkansas saying that they knew old man Smith was slowly dying due to lack of food but didn't know how to help him. Except for starvation caused by other problems--mental illness, abuse, government-caused famine--no one has starved to death in the civilized world for hundreds of years. μηδείς (talk) 18:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Whole communities were short of food and money, not just isolated individuals. A starving person would be among others who were barely managing to escape starvation themselves. The standard of living in the past was very much lower than what we take for granted today. Food was very much more expensive than it is now, and made up a high proportion of families expenditure, up to 100%. 92.24.179.252 (talk) 18:48, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, people died of starvation in Britain up to and including the 1930s. Starvation is not always straightforward: hungry and malnourished people will often die of a disease that they would be able to fight off in other circumstances. (See, for example, the Hansard record of the Case of Alleged Starvation at Tain (1882).) And the most likely people to die are babies, because their mothers are not well fed, or because there is not enough to wean them on. (Look for stats on infant mortality.) George Orwell documented the starvation conditions under which the poor lived and died before WWII. (See his essay The Politics of Starvation, and much else of his writing.) As for the assertion that "no one has starved to death in the civilized world for hundreds of years", see our List of famines. There is a long extract from The Thirties: An Intimate History Of Britain by Juliet Gardiner here. For a case last year, how about this article from the Scotland Herald site: "Starvation contributed to death of 450 Scots" 10 August 2010. BrainyBabe (talk) 00:05, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Malnutrition is not starvation, sensationalist headlines notwithstanding. Your "quoting" me to point out the existence of famines caused by government policies and war by deleting the beginning of the sentence: "Except for starvation caused by other problems--mental illness, abuse, government-caused famine--" was particularly clever, for which I congratulate you. Special pleading about malnutrition (200,000+ a year dying from diet due to type 2 diabetes yearly in the US) and child abuse, neither of which problems are solved by the welfare state, does not amount to a single case of pure and simple acute starvation without some other pathology in a civilized setting. μηδείς (talk) 16:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I point the OP and anyone else interested to our article on starvation, which says the condition can stem from medical conditions or "circumstantial causes: Famine – for any reason, including overpopulation and war; Fasting – done without proper medical supervision and lasting more than a month; Poverty". I make no comment about the welfare state, nor the use of the contentious adjective "civilised" to describe an otherwise unspecified set of places, but certainly there was widespread poverty, deprivation, and malnutrition in Britain in the 1930s. A good resource, looking internationally, is Hunger: A Modern History by James Vernon, professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of its Center for British Studies. The entry on "The Great Depression" in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics says almost in passing, in reference to the United States, that "some people starved". In Canada, still then tightly tied to Britain, people starved for lack of work [12]. Back in England, there is "Urban Famine in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Effect of the Landcashire Cotton Famine on Working-Class Diet and Health" here. The landmark London study Round About a Pound a Week was published in 1913 and is still in print; it describes "details of the division of food within the family, with the breadwinner being given a much greater share of the food than the rest of the family. This was because the other family members were completely dependent on the breadwinner. Nonetheless, this was rarely a sufficient amount". These were not the poorest in society, but still, "one in five of the children died at birth, and another one in ten before they reached adulthood." People (especially babies and children) died from lack of food. BrainyBabe (talk) 18:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and Jack London's The People of the Abyss (1902) describe those who were above starving but are still good non-fiction reads about the poverty of that time. 92.28.252.178 (talk) 15:13, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

First to claim prayer is ineffective?

Who is the first person or philosophy in history to claim prayer doesn't work? --RisingSunWiki 13:32, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article "Efficacy of prayer" implies that Francis Galton in 1872 "made the first statistical analysis of third-party prayer". Gabbe (talk) 13:47, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I believe some Enlightenment philosophers questioned the efficacy of prayer in the 17th century, at least 200 years before Galton. --RisingSunWiki 13:51, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you define prayer as asking a deity for favours then you could say that The Buddha was the first. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:31, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Later followed by Jesus, when he asked "God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Christians no doubt have a different interpretation of that line, which we're no doubt about to hear.)--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:55, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see how anyone, Christian or otherwise, could interpret Jesus' quoting Psalm 22 as an assertion on his part that prayer is ineffective. Pais (talk) 15:29, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The reason he said this is because he was a fervent apocalypticist. He said it in response to realizing that the world was not going to come to an end and that his central message was completely wrong.Greg Bard (talk) 23:24, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

... in that case, his disciples obviously didn't believe him! Dbfirs 00:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Possible candidate: Cicero quotes Diagoras of Melos, about 2,500 years ago, as mocking people who had prayed to be saved from shipwreck and drowning and who were now offering prayers of gratitude (see Diagoras_of_Melos#Philosophy). However, note also that History of atheism claims the belief God doesn't exist is at least as old as the belief that God does exist. Presumably atheists have always said prayer is ineffective, so your question may not be answerable. (Another 2,500-year-old text you might look through: Ishvarakrishna's Samkhyakarika.) 207.107.246.140 (talk) 14:56, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To the OP: Define what you mean by "doesn't work". If I pray for a new car, I'm not likely to be handed one. However, if I pray for spiritual strength, I'm very likely to receive it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:40, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For example, "Dear God, please cure my cancer", or "Dear God, please protect me while I drive on the freeway". --RisingSunWiki 16:52, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

From a theological point of view, the idea that God is omniscient is very hard to reconcile with the idea that human prayer can cause God to change his mind. This has been a sore point for the Catholic church for hundreds of years, which they have mainly resolved by ducking and weaving. The official doctrine since the middle ages, I believe, has been that the proper function of prayer is not to influence God's actions, but to bind oneself more tightly to God. But it is not considered heretical to ask God for something, only misguided. Looie496 (talk) 16:59, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Who was the first to claim that prayer does work? It is possible that the claim that prayer doesn't work preceded the claim that prayer does work. Do we have a historical record of the earliest claim that prayer does work? Bus stop (talk) 17:01, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So, Looie, if it's misguided to use prayer to ask God for things, what's "Give us this day our daily bread" all about? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:15, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It seems foremost like a metaphor; that forgiveness is as vital to the spirit as food to the body. Wnt (talk) 14:12, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's rarely used as a metaphor, though. Drought-affected communities pray for rain, often led by their local Christian clergyperson. People pray that their child/parent/relative/friend survives the major surgery they're undergoing. People go to Lourdes and other places to get the sacred water and pray for cures for incurable diseases, and there's a whole industry that's grown up around this, fully sanctioned by the Church. How does that work if it's considered theologically misguided to pray for such things? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 23:23, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. This view may be Looie's, but it is not the view of the Catholic Church. While the Catholic Church doesn't require belief in any post-Apostolic miracles or revelation, it does clearly endorse the idea of prayer being answered, and of God continuing to have a robust presence through the physical world. I have never understood why people think God being omniscient poses a problem for prayer: I am currently training a toddler to be polite and considerate, as much as a toddler can be. I know that this toddler wants to eat fruit, and I can be certain that they want cherries if I am eating cherries. But I wait for them to ask properly, because it is important for them to learn how to communicate properly with others. I know that they will, eventually, ask properly, but that doesn't mean they don't need to actually remember and decide to do so. And just because they ask for something properly, doesn't necessarily mean they get it: if they ask for something too bad for them, or (if you like) too 'outside my will', I will not allow it no matter how nicely they ask. When they are older and more mature, they will be able to identifiy these situations for themselves. 86.161.210.242 (talk) 13:22, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Epicurus properly held that if the gods exist they are perfect, and hence not concerned with our affairs. Unfortunately for Bugs' theory above, the belief that prayer can give one spiritual strength is based upon a false notion of the later, and if it succeeds, it only does so accidentally. You cannot petition the Lord with prayer.

μηδείς (talk) 20:43, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Bus Stop above. I like to think that man was rational before someone tried to fool him with religion. Not praying (i.e. having no faith in prayer) would have come before believing in it. HiLo48 (talk) 20:50, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, HiLo48. Dominant male chimps pound their chests at the sky and shake the trees when it rains, constituting a divergent branch of the priesthood of the primate rain god. Video.

μηδείς (talk) 21:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think you missed an "Original research"-template. --Saddhiyama (talk) 21:48, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If that comment was meant for me, you obviously didn't follow the source I gave. Others are available. Sweep your own stable before sniffing mine. μηδείς (talk) 23:54, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's no reason to think that humans were "reasonable" and were then "fooled" by religion. Human beings seem to create folk religions almost spontaneously. We're clearly hardwired to do it. (Probably because we're hardwired to make meaning out of the world, and our brains are wired to accept bad or partial answers pretty readily.) "Rationality" or "reason" much less "empiricism" has not been our lot's default state, something which is stressed implicitly by the amount of training it takes to become a reason-machine (philosopher, scientist, logician, what have you). I suspect most people's experience backs this up. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:34, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. The so-called "pagan" religions, or "folk" religions have been around forever, i.e. the tendency to anthropomorphize (sp?) natural phenomena. Listen to descriptions of weather events, and you'll observe that paganism is alive and well. And there are countless folks who will tell you that any given event "happens for a reason". The notion of atheism, at least as an overt "anti-religion", is relatively recent. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Prayer is mostly effective in guiding action, or changing non-personal probability from 49% to 51%. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 22:25, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is what is called thought, not "prayer". μηδείς (talk) 03:55, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Observing a scientific study on prayer that finds it isn't an effective sort of magic is a little bit like watching a caveman beating a wildebeest over the head with a pistol and deciding it isn't a very good weapon ... or perhaps sniffing a dispenser for intranasal flu vaccine and deciding that there's nothing special about it. An unusual but invaluable practical use, as described in the article about the Diocletianic Persecution, concerns therapy against precognition using the sign of the cross. Absurd, absolutely, but not if you've had occasion to use it... Wnt (talk) 06:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hair removal in ancient time

How did men and women remove body hair in ancient time? What were the tools used by them? --Cosmic Cosmos (talk) 14:52, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by ancient? The razor dates back to the Bronze Age. Before that I would guess they didn't bother.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I recall reading that in Roman times (when being hirsute was not in style), they were plucked by slaves. (Brief mention in Plucking (hair removal).) Tweezers are a simple enough concept that I would not doubt they had them in ancient times. -- 174.24.213.112 (talk) 16:26, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, while our article states that razors date back to the Bronze Age, it also states that before the Bronze Age sharpened flints, clamshells, and other objects were used as razors. So it is likely that hair removal dates back well into prehistoric time. Still, I don't think we can assume that the removal of body hair was necessarily practiced in every past culture. Hair removal is a matter of fashion, which changes over time. Marco polo (talk) 17:20, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tweezers also date back many millennia. Pais (talk) 17:35, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Scissors actually seem more complex, so I wonder how people cut their hair before that. StuRat (talk) 17:47, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You only need one blade to cut your hair (it's easier with two blades, but it's possible with one), so anything sufficiently sharp that can be used as a knife can be used to cut hair. Pais (talk) 18:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Having had haircuts before with nothing but a straight razor and a comb, a skilled barber doesn't need scissors. A properly sharpened razor blade works fine. You use the comb to guide the blade to cut the hair to the proper length. --Jayron32 19:44, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pumice stones ,sugaring ,and I believe the Egyptians used honey in some way but I can't find a decent link right now. Hotclaws (talk) 21:19, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have read of native Americans plucking hairs with clamshells. Edison (talk) 01:43, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aristophanes mentions at least three techniques in his plays. In Assemblywomen, Praxagora celebrates her lantern, among other with "Thou alone shinest into the secret recesses of our thighs and dost singe the hair that groweth there, and with thy flame dost light the actions of our loves.". Another woman states: "I began by throwing away my razor, so that I might get quite hairy, and no longer resemble a woman." ([13]). (technique mentioned above). In Lysistrata, the protagonist's words "with our dear Venus-plats plucked trim and neat" [14] refers to a third technique (also mentioned above). ---Sluzzelin talk 02:38, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This blog post may be interesting. It also mentions threading (which according to that article dates back to ancient Persia) and primitive depilatory creams, for which the Romans used quicklime or arsenic [15][16] (modern depilatory products typically use calcium hydroxide rather than sodium hydroxide, according to Chemical depilatory). --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:07, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Status quo

I fully understand why kingdoms etc.Have a two tier system of government,but I do not see why former communist countries and America/s have adopted such an undemocratic form when the idea was to be governed by the majority and not a load of rich,appointed farts who only wish to maintain STATUS QUO for their own advantage !! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.135.76.4 (talk) 17:50, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, don't be rude about the Royal Family. British people are proud that they waste our money. 2.97.215.11 (talk) 19:24, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is this supposed to be a question? AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:53, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are asking why representative democracy is almost universally practiced over direct democracy. Is this correct ? If so, here are a couple reasons:

1) It historically wasn't logistically possible for everyone to vote on every issue, as this would involve them physically going to voting booths on a daily basis, or voting via mail, which wouldn't work well for the illiterate and would slow things down considerably. Modern technology now makes this possible, however.

2) There's concern that the "uneducated masses" might not vote logically. For example the Tea Party movement in the US might just choose to default on the US debt, regardless of the dire consequences. StuRat (talk) 17:56, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The majority do not possess the necessary skills to make many decisions directly, so they appoint representatives. The results might be more disastrous if every individual had a direct say in almost everything. Bus stop (talk) 17:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah -- just look at Wikipedia. Looie496 (talk) 18:02, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's probably a good comparison. It was once thought that only "professionals" could write an encyclopedia, and that the anarchy resulting from everyone writing one would make it useless. However, that hasn't turned out to be the case. Sure, there are idiots out there who contribute, but the majority quickly revert their edits. Would the same lessons apply to direct democracy ? That is, no doubt there are morons who would just vote to "nuke the foreigners" on every international issue, but presumably the majority is intelligent enough to vote them down. I'd also suspect that most people would abstain from voting in areas outside their expertise, so, for example, we might get public school systems designed by teachers and parents, not by politicians, which might be a good thing. StuRat (talk) 18:07, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Our dignified representatives already voted to "nuke the foreigners". Bus stop (talk) 18:17, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure, and our article says also, that was by executive order so there wasn't much voting.... Nil Einne (talk) 02:51, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That seems to be somewhat contradictory. If most people abstain from voting in areas outside their expertise, then it's easy for the 'nuke the foreigners' or whatever crew potentially without the expertise but who do care in whatever way to overule the teachers and parents. Although I'm not sure the majority of parents will always make the best decision anyway, look at creationism (including its recent intelligent design and 'teach the controversy'/'academic freedom' iterations in the US or whatever else. There is also the infamous South Dakota resolution [17] which was originally going to suggest the teaching of 'astrological' effects on climate change (but was changed I believe by the SD senate), this was from politicians but are such things less likely if it was only parents voting? I'm not convinced.... Of course 'abstain' is perhaps a little generous anyway. Sure some people may abstain but more likely many people just can't be bothered to vote. The Minaret controversy in Switzerland may be one example where the a lot of people didn't really care and so didn't vote so resulted in a decision which may not have had the support of the majority of the voting population even if it gained the majority vote of people who voted because they came out to vote. I'm sure of course these and plenty of other risks of direct democracy are discussed in the appropriate articles and in other external sources I won't comment more. Nil Einne (talk) 02:47, 3 August 2011 (UTC) [reply]

My perception is that the average total moron doesn't want anything to do with voting, but, if forced, is likely to vote to nuke anybody who annoys him. StuRat (talk) 04:07, 3 August 2011 (UTC) [reply]

One area where direct democracy doesn't help is with what I call "temporal bias". That is, either people or their representatives will vote themselves benefits now, and freely borrow money to do so, not worrying about the negative consequences which occur later, quite possibly to subsequent generations. I suppose we need to invent a time machine, so that those affected in the future by our current actions can also have a say. StuRat (talk) 18:16, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See Tyranny of the majority. Just as applicable to Wikipedia. Schyler (exquirere bonum ipsum) 20:29, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, wikipedia has been around for less then a decade and really hasn't had a real crisis. The fact that it is a model of direct democracy that has not really been tested, and that no one is forced to live with does not really instill much additional credence to the direct democratic model for a government. Googlemeister (talk) 20:08, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Job Creation

In the history of the United States who has created the most jobs- Government or the Private Sector — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.65.250.106 (talk) 20:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the U.S. Federal government is the largest single employer in the United States. They directly employ 2 million people. That doesn't include people who work directly for State governments or county governments or municipal governments. According to Economy of the United States, 22 million people are employed in public sector jobs overall, accounting for about 8% of all jobs. Now, this does not include contractors and other people who's jobs depend on the government, including people who work in the defense industry, infrastructure maintenance and building (like road crews), garbage collection, etc, a whole slew of industries that are privately owned but which contract from the government. Indeed, it is probably almost impossible to "parse out" which individual private sector jobs are dependent on the government and which aren't; a paving company has to pave both public roads and private parking lots; and it would likely employ less people if it had no roads to pave at all, but it makes calculating which specific people owe their jobs to paving roads, and which to paving driveways. The same is true of lots of "private" industry: Boeing builds planes for private airlines, but also builds military planes. The government at all levels (federal, state, county, and municipal) has an important role in creating lots of jobs in the United States, and not just because of people it employs directly. On raw numbers, over the course of history since 1776, one would have to say that most people have been employed by the private sector; but in the modern economy (as I outlined above) extracting who is responsible for those jobs is a tricky thing; it's tricky enough that it allows both political parties to create bullshit statistics to demonize their opponents with. --Jayron32 21:37, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) What are you defining as "creating a job"? If you mean, do more people work not directly as government employees than not, then yes, clear the private sector taken as a whole dwarfs the public sector. But many government "job creation" programs are not directed at direct employment: they are in the form of stimulus funds, contractors, or tax rebates that incentivize jobs in the private sector. So I'm not sure how you'd count that sort of activity in a systematic way. (We may also consider, perhaps, which sector has "destroyed" more jobs — at least national ones ones. How many U.S. jobs did the automobile industry dis-create when they decided to relocate their production facilities abroad?) --Mr.98 (talk) 21:38, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The American debt

Hi. This may seem ignorant or insensitive, though I'm not trying to post a diatribe nor start a debate, but is there any specific reason the United States cannot send $15 trillion USD to China all at once to settle the debt problem? Thanks. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 22:19, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

China only owns something like 11% of the US's debt, for one thing. For another, yes, the US could "print" US$15 trillion of money, but this would be a very inflationary move — this Federal Reserve link seems to say the M2 money supply measurement is only about half that amount. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:45, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As an example, take Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, and this image, of what a local newspaper in Zimbabwe did as a publicity stunt. And yes, those are actual bills. -- Zanimum (talk) 23:21, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That looks like London to me, not Zimbabwe. Its probably a newsdpaper published in Britain for Zimbabwean ex-pats. Besides which if they made comments like that in Zim, they'd get arrested and disapear. 92.28.249.101 (talk) 22:48, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The 'US debt problem' is not related to China at all. The US has set its debt limit by law. It's a completely different situation from countries like Greece, which cannot take more debt because no one would lend to them (at a reasonable rate). Quest09 (talk) 23:40, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

While the current US debt isn't yet at the point where the US can't "borrow from Peter to pay Paul", it may be at the tipping point beyond which this will one day inevitably occur. StuRat (talk) 00:03, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Besides the other objections that have been mentioned, China wouldn't have anything to do with that money except use it to buy US government bonds anyway. That's the only thing they can think of to do with the trade surplus they run with us. What China would really like to do, I believe, is simply throw our debts to them in the trash -- they're really just a nuisance both to them and to us. Looie496 (talk) 03:01, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To explain a bit more what Looie496 means: China has a trade surplus with the U.S.; that means that lots of Chinese goods go to the U.S., and to buy those goods lots of cash goes to China. Now, as an individual, what do you do with excess cash? You don't keep it under the mattress; you probably want to invest it, and usually in something low risk. Most people keep their excess cash in a savings account at the local bank. Now, lets say you have a metric shitload of excess cash lying around: What is the safest investment vehicle in the entire world for excess cash? Like, literally the safest investment you can make (assume, for a second, we're talking 10 years ago, just for the sake of arguement). It's United States Treasury securitys. As Looie496 indicates: China doesn't buy U.S. debt for any nefarious purposes, it buys it because it has to do SOMETHING with the cash we keep sending them; they can't just keep piles of greenbacks lying around, so they invest it in something safe, which happens to be U.S. debt. That's all that's going on here. --Jayron32 03:10, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One possibly paranoid allegation being made in my country, Australia, these days is that China is buying up lots of our land. I guess that's a fairly reliable investment. Don't know if it's happening in the USA. HiLo48 (talk) 03:55, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's actually a fairly shitty investment in the U.S. of late, given what happened in the real estate bubble of 2008. It started as overinflated housing prices, but that sort of thing infects the entire real estate market: not only is no one building houses, but commercial properties lie vacant, and undeveloped land now stays undeveloped, depressing its value. That shuttles you back into Treasury securities for safety... --Jayron32 03:58, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That means it was a bad investment prior to the collapse of the bubble. Now that prices have bottomed out, it's a good investment again. StuRat (talk) 04:02, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sort of, except that there's an oversupply of real estate on the market still. As would be expected, construction didn't stop the second the bubble burst; so before prices start going up we're going to need to see all the excess supply get taken care of. The real estate market hasn't bottomed out like a "V", it has bottomed out like an "L", real estate prices have been flat for a while, and are likely to remain flat for a long time to come. That makes real estate still a pretty lousy investment when compared to the bond markets, which generally have a guaranteed rate of return (excepting the rare possibility of default). There's no real sign of a genuine recovery in real estate prices for a long time; meaning that while they may become a good investment in the future, they probably aren't right now. --Jayron32 05:15, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, but Americans have an ingenious solution to that. First the homeowner can't pay the mortgage some scammer sold him that has its rate explode unexpectedly. So the police throw him out of his home and give it to whatever company eventually turns out to own the mortgate. This company tears down the house and gives it to the local government to use for "open space" (which incidentally means no more taxes are paid on it; what's curious is how doggedly a local government in this free society will fight any attempt to build a church let alone a mosque because it would take land off the tax rolls). The company gets a tax writeoff for their charitable gift (I think that actually means they get a negative income tax subsidy, assuming they didn't really make money any other way, but I could be wrong) And we get more and more homeless people to pretend to care about while viciously kicking them from place to place until someday they learn dignity in jihad. If Americans were any cleverer, we'd be too stupid to breathe... [18] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wnt (talk • contribs)

Wnt, if you're going to engage in hyperbolic demagoguery, you could at least sign it to claim it... But it isn't particularly helpful to try to explain general trends using a highly specific example. In the article you cited, this is not being used as a widespread policy by the banks; rather it is being used in specific cases in really bad neighborhoods in rust belt cities like Cleveland and Detroit where the reposessed homes are valued at less than a used car. The banks aren't bulldozing $150,000 homes, they are bulldozing $1,500 homes; I daresay they probably have a lot of homes on their books that they are NOT bulldozing because they still have value; but if the sale price of the home doesn't even cover signing costs, the bank really has no options. Yes, it is happening, but it doesn't mean that one can extrapolate those specific examples into a nationwide policy. --Jayron32 05:31, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To answer the original question, as others have said, the debt problem is not simply the amount that the United States owes to China. It is the total amount owed, and the ongoing deficit, which requires continued borrowing. Printing money to pay off the debt might be part of the solution, but printing money to pay off only China's debt would mean that China would probably just buy up the remaining debt and/or the newly issued debt. This would drive up the price of US Treasury bills and further lower interest rates, to negligible levels. Such a move would greatly reduce the appeal of holding assets denominated in US dollars, causing the relative value of the dollar to fall sharply. Such a sharp drop in the dollar would almost certainly lead to consumer price inflation, as it would push up the cost of any imported goods or goods whose price reflects imported inputs (such as the cost of petroleum-fueled transportation or production, e.g., food products). To truly monetize the debt, or pay the debt off through money creation, and truly "solve" the debt problem, the United States would first need to eliminate its deficit and its need to borrow through some combination of cutting expenditures and raising taxes. Then money could be printed to pay off the outstanding debt. Of course, if creditors such as China had no option of rolling over the cash that they received into new or recycled US debt, they would be forced to convert their US dollars into other currencies and/or use the dollars to buy up other assets, such as agricultural land in Australia or other places. The effect of such a large increase in the money supply would be a drop in the relative value of the US dollar and very high inflation. Conceivably, eliminating US debt could end the role of the US dollar as the world's chief reserve currency. This role has played a key role in supporting the relative value of the dollar. Ending this role and flooding world markets with dollars that have little remaining intrinsic value could cause the value of the dollar to plummet and dollars held worldwide to flow back to the United States, causing galloping inflation or even hyperinflation. Solving the debt problem in this way would create a set of new problems. Marco polo (talk) 13:16, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright, Canada: can this image be made PD?

A newspaper takes a photograph of a costumed character of Winnie the Pooh (the official costume), in a mall, at a public event. The newspaper has:

the permission of Disney to take the image,
the permission of the mall,
the permission of the kids in the mall,
full copyright on the image, as the photographer was staff.

Can they choose to release this 1970s image as public domain (or CC-BY 3.0, or something else free), now? Similarly, they have a photo of amateur curlers on Halloween. The curlers (that's a sport, FYI) are wearing handmade costumes of McDonaldland characters, similar to cosplay. Again,

permission of people in the photograph,
permission of venue,
staff photographer,

... but this one is unofficial characters. Note that the M on Ronald's outfit is just a Roman alphabet M, not the golden arches, so that's one trademark gone, it's just the fan-made characters. Each costume is clearly not official. Can the newspaper release that image as PD? -- Zanimum (talk) 23:16, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You should ask this exact same question at WP:MCQ. --Jayron32 00:28, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is unfortunately, I think, a bit too close to legal advice for the Reference Desk. I would scrutinize closely what the permission of Disney to take the image says (assuming it is in writing). Barring something obvious there, I would check in with the newspaper's legal counsel. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:25, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

August 3

Why is the phrase "I'm going to the city" applied only to Manhattan, but not to the Bronx as well historically speaking?

People have told me all sorts of reasons as to why Manhattan is sometimes referred to as "the city" by New Yorkers of the outer boroughs even though Manhattan is part of "the City:" Manhattan is the most urban of all the boroughs of NYC, Manhattan is the center of the New York metropolitan area, Manhattan is the special borough that is more than just a borough, Manhattan is an island unlike Center City (Downtown Philadelphia) in Philadelphia or "the City of London" in Greater London, everyone wants to live in Manhattan, everyone commutes to Manhattan to work, Manhattan is more associated with NYC than any other boroughs, there is so much to do and see in Manhattan compared to the other boroughs, it was hard to go to Manhattan before the bridges and the subways were built, etc. That is all true, but one of the reasons also given to me for the phrase was that before New York City consolidated into the 5 boroughs in 1898, New York City only covered the island of Manhattan, but that is not true. Wikipedia's article on the Bronx in the introduction says that "The West Bronx was annexed to New York City (then largely confined to Manhattan) in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895. The Bronx first assumed a distinct legal identity when it became a borough of Greater New York in 1898. Bronx County, with the same boundaries as the borough, was separated from New York County (afterwards coextensive with the Borough of Manhattan) as of January 1, 1914." So historically and in that context, why wouldn't the Bronx be considered part of "the city" by New Yorkers, including those from the Bronx, even though the Bronx was already part of New York City before 1898 and even though it was part of New York County until 1914? Willminator (talk) 12:41, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Because the expression "the city", as used in the region, dates to earlier than 1874. Marco polo (talk) 13:03, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, the Bronx in 1874 was still pretty rural; even as it was being annexed into New York City. It never had a defined "city center" of its own; it was basically a few small villages which had grown, or were growing, into bedroom communities as public transportation was extended across the Harlem River. Some areas in the Bronx, even today, retain some of their earlier "small town" or rural feel, see City Island, New York for one example. --Jayron32 14:06, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't know about this earlier annexation of part of The Bronx. A bit of googling seems to show Jayron has it right. There's a bit about the annexation and reasons for it here. Pfly (talk) 17:32, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think Jayron is also right. Marco Polo could also be right too. By the way, didn't you ask a similar question recently? 71.98.161.166 (talk) 23:42, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Contacting a New York Times journalist

Hi! I am having trouble contacting Noam Cohen, a New York Times journalist. I used the "e-mail him" function on the NYT website, but I haven't heard back from him. I need to hear from him because of an issue on the Wikimedia Commons. Does anyone know how I can get an e-mail address to contact him or how I can e-mail someone who will relay the message to him? WhisperToMe (talk) 16:52, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, he may not care about the Wikimedia Commons issue and is probably under no obligation to respond. In a situation like this, I would try phoning the New York Times editorial offices. I found the following phone number for the office: 212-556-1363. I would ask for Noam Cohen. You will most likely get his voice mail and can leave a message asking for his help and hoping that he cares enough to respond. Sometimes people are more likely to respond to voice mail. Another tack would be to do a little research and contact an editor who is likely to work with Cohen. Again, I suggest the phone, as e-mail is easy to ignore, especially if you are someone who gets 100+ e-mails a day and has to choose some to ignore. Also, if you don't get a response to voice mail, you can dial the number repeatedly (at decent intervals) in hopes of getting a live person. If the issue is that you need information from Cohen to determine whether an asset is fair use or public domain, be prepared to go without that information and to act as if that asset is not free for public distribution. Good luck. Marco polo (talk) 17:18, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I left a voice mail. If I hear back I will post more details on here. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:18, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The reporter himself is unlikely to have the decisive word on a copyright issue. The NYT probably has a department or person dedicated to the licensing of content who might be able to help you. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:31, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's not a copyright issue. I want to ask him a question about whether the way a name was ordered was a mistake, or was intentional. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Somalia aid

It's really depressing to read about how aid is not getting through to starving people in Somalia. I'm looking for any references that point to solutions - any organizations that reliably can say they are getting aid in. Is the Red Crescent, for example, or Muslim or non-Western organizations having better luck than the UN and western aid groups? Thanks.Dreenik (talk) 15:26, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The typical problem is that local warlords use food as a weapon. That is, they give food to those who support them and starve those who don't. So, it's not about religion so much as power. Therefore, the only way to guarantee that food gets through is by military intervention, to defeat such warlords. However, there may also be limited success by bribing them (but, in the long run, this gives them more weapons and power, which may ultimately lead to even more deaths) or perhaps parachute food drops. The warlord's soldiers will still try to collect this food, but, if enough small drops are made, they may not be able to get them all. StuRat (talk) 15:53, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to have to agree with StuRat here: This is one of those situations which is really frustrating for which we really can't do much about it. The problem is with the people in power in various parts of Somalia; and until and unless those people are either forcably removed or miraculously become better quality people, the famine will go on despite our frustrated attempts to ammeliorate it. Either some major world power goes in and kicks ass and cleans the place up (an act usually seen, perhaps rightly, as imperialistic and colonial on the part of the "invader") or the situation isn't going to get better. This sort of shit happens all the time, all over the world, largely because the countries that have the technical power to fix the situation don't have the intestinal fortitude to deal with the backlash from what is likely to be the only solution. Somalia is NOT a new situation, just look at the situation in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge or Rwanda in the 1990s or the Balkans in the 1990s or Biafra in the 1960's or any of a number of other analogous situations where simply wanting to peacefully help isn't an option. --Jayron32 16:25, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Forcably removed"? Is that removing them with a fork? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.153.125.105 (talk) 23:28, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the interesting discussion. I do appreciate it. I still hope, however, that someone might help me find references to any particular aid groups that say they are trying approaches that work or might work.Dreenik (talk) 19:17, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This website, of the UK Government's Department for International Development, might have some relevance to your commendable interest. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.52 (talk) 21:45, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A recent BBC article claims that SAACID are having some success at getting aid to the people who need it. Warofdreams talk 15:21, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You might find more information in the sources used for 2011 Horn of Africa famine. BrainyBabe (talk) 00:15, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Laborism

Could laborism be an alternative to capitalism? In a laborist system, labor is treated as the critical resource of production. Salaries or wages stem from the sale of time, instead of the deployment of capital. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.38.96.241 (talk) 19:37, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Under capitalism, salaries or wages can also be said to amount to the sale of labor power, typically measured in units of time. The distinguishing feature of capitalism is ownership of the means of production by private entrepreneurs who invest to make a profit. In other economic systems, the means of production are owned by different entities. It isn't clear to me, in your proposed system, who would own the means of production (the tools, equipment, hardware, software, intellectual property rights, etc.) used to produce goods and services. Can you clarify? Marco polo (talk) 19:43, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) See "Criticisms of the labour theory of value". Gabbe (talk) 19:44, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds like a homework question… …I take it from your use of "laborist" that you're either Ameriphone, or Australian. You may wish to strongly investigate the periods of Australian Labor Party governance, both at a state and a federal level, in Australia. In particular the Australian "long boom" period from the 1940s to the 1970s, when "Laborism" in the Australian sense was quite significant (it is the local variant of the social-democratic or Fordist bargain). This society was still fundamentally capitalist. Other people talk about the "Australian settlement" of arbitration, racism, living standards, capitalism and democracy. This is also associated with Laborism. Rick Kuhn provides a vehement and closely developed critique with others of his group, focused on the failure of the ALP to ever be a worker's party. Correspondingly there are ALP leftist thinkers, and ALP rightist thinkers who also provide information on Australian Laborism. These are not connected with using labour time (either simple, or socially necessary average productivity) to price goods. For that you'd want to look at socialist idealism in the mid to late 19th century, including anarchists. There's also a trend within vulgar marxism that advocates the use of socially necessary average labour time to price goods—as Marco polo observes, these often assume that the proletariat isn't in possession of the means and tools of production directly, and tend to have a statist tinge. Gabbe's suggestion is a good one, but may misdirect you into vulgar criticisms of vulgar marxism due to the low quality of our articles on Marxism. I'd suggest, quite strongly, 19th century idealist socialists. Is it an alternative to capitalism? No—it is capitalism, see Marx on capital's reliance on socially necessary average labour time to produce long run values, and the broad acceptance of long run values being dependent upon labour as the fundamental input in a fair bit of Keynsianism.

In fact, your suggestion that there are two means of appropriating social goods: "sale of labour" and "deployment of capital" mirrors the methods of appropriation, and control over productive things, that the workers and capitalists respectively possess at the moment: workers sell their labour and are paid for their labour, capitalists own capital and are paid for owning capital. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:47, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose

In "James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose" site his date of birth is given as 25 October 1612. Where as most authors and historians do not give a specific date for the Marquess's birth but agree that it must have been in late October to early November 1612. Now I am finding references that use Wikipedia as a source when citing 25 October as his date of birth. Where did Wikipedia obtain this date of birth for the first Marquess of Montrose? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hagrarian (talk • contribs) 21:44, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, when User:baraqa1 added the birth date in this edit in November 2008, they failed to follow Wikipedia policy, and added the information unreferenced; so we can't tell where it came from. You could try asking baraqa1 on their talk page; but they don't seem to have been active since December 2010, so you might not get an answer.

If you have researched the matter, and been unable to find any sources independent of Wikipedia which give the date, I suggest you remove it from the article. But if you do so, make sure you give a useful edit summary, so that neither people nor bots will think your edit is vandalism; and preferably post on the article's talk page explaining that the date was unreferenced and that you have tried and failed to verify it. --ColinFine (talk) 22:54, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Burke's Peerage and Cokayne's Complete Peerage give only 1612 with no month or day. I've cut the "25 October" from the article and added a note to the talk page requesting references for any more specific date that anyone might want to add to the article. A referenced footnote including information that it was "probably in late October to early November 1612" might be added, for example. - Nunh-huh 18:41, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

12 Angry Men (1957 film)

Why was the film called 12 Angry men? Indeed, only 11 were angry.... Quest09 (talk) 21:59, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Which one are you saying wasn't angry? Surely you don't mean the Henry Fonda character? He's as angry as the rest of them. --Viennese Waltz 22:01, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The title is not "12 men, angry against the accused" or "12 equally angry men." Each one is angry in a different way, and towards a different goal. 193.153.125.105 (talk) 22:08, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In politically correct terminology it could be called The 12 Disgruntled individuals. : ) Bus stop (talk) 23:27, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

12 angry people would be PC enough, but not necessary. There's a 1997's version with the original name, 12 male jurors -4 of them black- and with a female judge. ASAIK, no one complained about the lack of PCness of this new version. 193.153.125.105 (talk) 23:36, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An Indeterminate Number of Disapproving Life Forms. Bus stop (talk) 02:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Recent performances involving a cast containing both male and female jurors have been titled 12 Angry Jurors. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 18:07, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is that a joke? What next - The Aristocrat of Monte Cristo? The Two Citizens of Verona? The Adult in the Iron Mask? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 22:10, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Monte Cristo" won't work: you are offending the non-Christians.193.153.125.105 (talk) 15:54, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Markets "attacking" bonds

When the Spanish Minister of Economy and Finance talks about "markets attacking the Spanish debt/bonds", is she just talking BS or does it have some meaning? The price on the market for Spanish bonds is certainly higher, but how can investors "attack" bonds? 193.153.125.105 (talk) 23:21, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Anthropomorphizing "the markets" as though "the markets" were a sentient being has a long history, going back atleast as far as the "Invisible hand of the markets", a concept dating to the middle-late 18th century when Adam Smith coined the phrase. --Jayron32 23:25, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good beginning. But still: "Investors attacking bonds" is not very meaningful. If they demand a higher interest, is that an attack?193.153.125.105 (talk) 23:32, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The most common way for investors to attack a security is by short selling to flood the market -- unfortunately our article doesn't really explain that concept, although it is well known to economists. I don't know if that's what the minister was talking about, though. Looie496 (talk) 02:46, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

While I don't know any details about the situation in question, to me this sounds like defensive political language. The minister might hope to create pressure for regulatory action that would aid the Spanish bond-issuers by curtailing certain types of trading, or perhaps more likely, to engender sympathy for the Spanish plight that could be leveraged into concessions in other areas. I'm skeptical how much it has to do with the reality of the situation, but I suppose you never know.

(My skepticism is not particular to Spain — this is just what finance ministers do.) --Trovatore (talk) 02:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The finance minister is looking for a scapegoat so that she won't be blamed for what is happening; her scapegoat is "the markets". It is true that high-volume short selling can give the market a downward nudge, but it only works if demand is already weak at a given price. Meanwhile, short sellers help to slow market declines because they have to buy back whatever it is they sold at some point. So, a persistent decline cannot in any way be described as an "attack" by investors. Instead, it reflects a loss of confidence and a retreat by investors. Marco polo (talk) 13:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, Marco polo. μηδείς (talk) 16:30, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

United States presidents turning 50 in office

Barack Obama turning 50 today prompted me to do a bit of research. He’s the 7th US President to turn 50 while in office, but the spread is quite revealing.

In the 19th century there were four in the space of 31.3 years: Polk in 1845, Pierce in 1854, Grant in 1872 and Cleveland in 1887. (Garfield would have been a 5th in 1881 if he hadn’t been assassinated and died 2 months short of his 50th birthday)
Then a 21-year gap till Teddy Roosevelt in 1908.
Then an 88-year gap till Clinton in 1996. (Kennedy would have turned 50 in his 2nd term in 1967 if he’d been given a chance, but that’s still 59 years since Roosevelt.)
And now 15 years on, we have Obama.

So, what happened in the 20th century to have a string of relatively older people being elected US president, compared with the 19th century? Or is my logic complete crap, mathematically speaking? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 23:58, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's somewhat misleading to phrase this in terms of years. 88 years is 22 presidential terms, but they often come two at a time (and FDR took four, although he died shortly into his fourth term, which popped Truman in there without an election, so I don't know how you'd count that). It's still interesting, but it's not as far from "statistical fluctuation" as the phrasing in terms of time intervals might make one think. --Trovatore (talk) 00:05, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think a graph showing how age when first assuming Presidential office has changed over time might be more revealing than this somewhat-arbitrary point. Let's see what I can find... AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of Presidents of the United States by age has the necessary data to work this out. Time for some spreadsheet magic, I think... AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:14, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Male life expectancy in the 19th century was about 50 years (of course this was low in part because of high infant mortality). I would expect to see younger presidents mostly due to the fact their were fewer people over 50 to compete with. --Daniel 00:26, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the effect is much less; most deaths in a pre-modern-medicine society which dragged the average life expectency down were children dying very young and women dying in childbirth. For men who reached adulthood, most of them lived into their 60s and 70s, just as with today. So I wouldn't expect the average age of Presidents in the 1800s to be signficantly younger for that reason. John Demos did an excellent demographic study of Plymouth Colony, some 200 years before the time frame in question, and found that adult males in Plymouth Colony lived to an average age of 70 years old. Being all adult males (to this point), Presidents should be expected to live into their 70's, even in the earliest days of the Republic. If you look at the oldest presidents by age at death (rather than by age when they served) you'll find John Adams at #3 (aged 90 at death), James Madison (85) at #8, Thomas Jefferson(83) at #9, John Quincy Adams(80) at #11, Martin Van Buren at #12 (79) and Andrew Jackson(79) at #14. That's 6 of the first 8 presidents. So, the earliest presidents actually had LONGER lifespans than the later presidents. This has nothing to do on the age when they served, but demographically there's no reason to assume that the presidents had to be younger a long time ago merely because they should have all died before they reached their 60's and 70's. They didn't. --Jayron32 01:05, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pesky Microsoft Works spreadsheets - I've got a graph, but it looks a mess. It looks as if there may be a slight trend towards younger presidents over time, but I'll leave this one to the statisticians to figure out. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The average age at inauguration for the fist 22 Presidents was 55.6 years, and for the last 22, 54.7 years. However, I'm not sure that this tells us much. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:01, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't mean anything, given that your sample size is 44 people, the statistical error is significantly larger than the difference. Meaning that, statistically speaking, your two numbers are identical for all intents and purposes... i.e. that there is no difference. --Jayron32 01:11, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'm sure you're right. I've never done a lot of statistics, and its years since I've had to calculate significance etc. In any case, even the limited data we have is flawed, what with Cleveland getting in twice, and Ford playing a walk-in (not necessarily while chewing gum) part... AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:38, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Male life expectancy of the sort of person who becomes president (rich men, generally from wealthy families) has been around 80-85 years since the founding of the country. The improvement in general male life expectancy has been through improved living conditions, working conditions, and health care for the rest of the country's population. --Carnildo (talk) 01:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

At birth? I doubt it. I might believe that such a person who reaches the age of 18 would have an expected age at death of 80-85, but not from birth, unless you have something to back it up. --Trovatore (talk) 02:17, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A good question. It might be summarized "Why was it that between President X and President Y the US elected very old men to the presidency?" Perhaps medical advances made it less likely that an old man would die in office from high blood pressure, cancer or heart disease. Grover Cleveland had surgery for cancer in his mouth in 1893 at the age of 56. Woodrow Wilson had a disabling stroke at age 62, which his wife and handlers somehow kept a secret for a considerable time. Franklin Roosevelt had terribly high blood pressure, which his doctor apparently lacked the drugs to treat effectively, leaving it at over 200 systolic and 100 diastolic by 1944. By February 1945, at age 63, it was 260/150. It was 300/190 on the day he died. Were there no "water pills"/diuretics in 1945? Eisenhower survived a heart attack in 1955,at age 65, which his doctor treated with morphine as a pain killer. Kennedy, the youngest man elected president, had severe medical problems which were concealed from the public. Reagan, the oldest president inaugurated at 69 for his first term, served while increasingly senile during his second term, from Alzheimer's, but lived years beyond his presidency. In the Cleveland, Wilson, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan presidencies, the doctors served their patient rather than the public. Edison (talk) 01:10, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You threw me off for a few minutes with "Kennedy, the youngest man elected president", since Teddy Roosevelt was younger taking office, but he was only elected vice president. —Akrabbim^talk 13:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Raw data - if someone can format this properly, I'd be grateful (Age is in years, at inauguration):

George Washington 57.18 John Adams 61.34 Thomas Jefferson 57.89 James Madison 57.97 James Monroe 58.85 John Quincy Adams 57.65 Andrew Jackson 61.97 Martin Van Buren 54.24 William Henry Harrison 68.06 John Tyler 51.02 James K. Polk 49.33 Zachary Taylor 64.27 Millard Fillmore 50.50 Franklin Pierce 48.28 James Buchanan 65.86 Abraham Lincoln 52.05 Andrew Johnson 56.29 Ulysses S. Grant 46.85 Rutherford B. Hayes 54.41 James A. Garfield 49.29 Chester A. Arthur 51.96 Grover Cleveland 47.96 Benjamin Harrison 55.54 Grover Cleveland 55.96 William McKinley 54.09 Theodore Roosevelt 42.88 William Howard Taft 51.47 Woodrow Wilson 56.18 Warren G. Harding 55.33 Calvin Coolidge 51.08 Herbert Hoover 54.56 Franklin D. Roosevelt 51.09 Harry S. Truman 60.93 Dwight D. Eisenhower 62.27 John F. Kennedy 43.65 Lyndon B. Johnson 55.24 Richard Nixon 56.03 Gerald Ford 61.07 Jimmy Carter 52.30 Ronald Reagan 69.96 George H. W. Bush 64.61 Bill Clinton 46.42 George W. Bush 54.54 Barack Obama 47.46

AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, as usual Grover Cleveland screws up the data, and should Ford be included, or Truman? (I'll not comment on GWB...) AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You just did. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 01:29, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Like this?

President	Age
George Washington	57.18
John Adams	61.34
Thomas Jefferson	57.89
James Madison	57.97
James Monroe	58.85
John Quincy Adams	57.65
Andrew Jackson	61.97
Martin Van Buren	54.24
William Henry Harrison	68.06
John Tyler	51.02
James K. Polk	49.33
Zachary Taylor	64.27
Millard Fillmore	50.5
Franklin Pierce	48.28
James Buchanan	65.86
Abraham Lincoln	52.05
Andrew Johnson	56.29
Ulysses S. Grant	46.85
Rutherford B. Hayes	54.41
James A. Garfield	49.29
Chester A. Arthur	51.96
Grover Cleveland	47.96
Benjamin Harrison	55.54
Grover Cleveland	55.96
William McKinley	54.09
Theodore Roosevelt	42.88
William Howard Taft	51.47
Woodrow Wilson	56.18
Warren G. Harding	55.33
Calvin Coolidge	51.08
Herbert Hoover	54.56
Franklin D. Roosevelt	51.09
Harry S. Truman	60.93
Dwight D. Eisenhower	62.27
John F. Kennedy	43.65
Lyndon B. Johnson	55.24
Richard Nixon	56.03
Gerald Ford	61.07
Jimmy Carter	52.3
Ronald Reagan	69.96
George H. W. Bush	64.61
Bill Clinton	46.42
George W. Bush	54.54
Barack Obama	47.46

Is this the formatting you were looking for? ^Avic _ennasis @ 01:52, 4 Av 5771 / 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - yes, it looks neater and allows sorting by age, though as Jayron points out, it doesn't really tell us a great deal. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:26, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is really speculative and impressionistic, but there were two long stretches during which no one under 50 was inaugurated: the first 50 or so years of the republic and the long interval between Teddy Roosevelt and JFK. During the first years of the republic, the office of president was seen very much as that of a senior statesman, the father of the country. A younger man during that time would have had less appeal. I think it's kind of a matter of chance that no one under 50 took office after Teddy Roosevelt and before 1930, but the Great Depression had a profound impact on the generations that lived through it, at least as adults. It was a time of deprivation and insecurity but also of unrest, both at home but especially elsewhere around the world. The generations who had lived through that time as adults typically wanted an experienced father figure to lead the country. By 1960, the generation that had lived through the 1930s as children or teenagers and that had fought World War II as young people had come to dominate the electorate, and a younger generation, with no memory of the 1930s, had come of age. There was a fatigue with the stodgy conventionality of the 1950s and a taste for what was fresh, modern, and new. It was in this atmosphere that both nominees, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, were under 50. Later, when Baby Boomers came to dominate the electorate, they elected Bill Clinton, one of their own. Marco polo (talk) 13:06, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a graph with a best-fit line (basically flat, and r squared=0.02!):

I don't see much of a pattern at all. Calliopejen1 (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The graph would be useful if the zero point was not "zero" but was instead 35, the minimum age for a US President. As for patterns, I think there are some, but not across the entire period of time. It's interesting that in the 19th century there was a lot of oscillation between the pretty old and the pretty young, in pretty rapid succession. By the early 20th century you mostly have people around the same age. By the late 20th it looks a lot more random. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:39, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

From what I think I remember about statistics - and I await correction - a correlation of 0.02 means that 0.04% of the variation is explained by time. Shifting just one or two dots would result in the line going up rather than down. 92.24.140.101 (talk) 19:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An r-square of 0.02 means only 2% of the variation in "y" (age) is explained by the variations in "x" (time), and the remaining 98% of the variations are explained by other factors not captured here.

I'm not sure a straight line fit is the best model to use here, there should not be any particular reason to expect that the starting age of presidents have been trending straight up or straight down. Perhaps more thought should be given as to what kinds of shapes you'd expect to see in the model, and then try fitting those to the data. It could, for example, be a cyclical thing.

Perhaps absolute age is not the best measure to b investigating, maybe it's age relative to median age in the US (this would account for any sudden rise in general life expectancy), or perhaps age difference compared to the predecessor.

Or perhaps we need to just accept that any "trend" in age is better explained by other factors, e.g. economic, rather than simply by time. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:51, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am listening. Keep going, this is fascinating. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You are over-analysing randomness. There is no trend to speak of, just noise. The only measures you can do are the average and standard deviation. 92.24.179.252 (talk) 17:53, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is at least one statistical test for detecting a trend, but I've forgotten what it is called. 92.28.252.178 (talk) 15:29, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Mann-Kendall test detects if there is a trend or not in a time series. I havnt been able to find a simple description on the web - see http://www.oga-lab.net/RGM2/func.php?rd_id=openair:MannKendall There may be other tests also. The Trend estimation article dosnt go into numbers or maths. 92.24.133.68 (talk) 13:21, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above table makes me realize that if Ron Paul were to become president in 2012, then by the time he was inaugurated in January 2013, he would be the same age (77) as Reagan was when Reagan left office, and, assuming he would live out his full term, he would become the first U.S. President ever to turn 80 while in office. Pais (talk) 15:42, 5 August 2011 (UTC) You guys do realise you've got mathematicians over at the maths desk (quite a few in fact) who could explain all this to you and do the analysis more professionally, don't you ? o_0[reply]

So, I ran some statistics on the numbers provided. I am not a professional mathematician, but I have a B.A. in math with several statistics courses. The first model I tested was the linear model plotted above. I can tell you that not only does that model have a very weak effect (for each previous president, the next is predicted to be 0.07 years younger), but that effect is likely due to chance (p=0.339). This means, one in three times, I could get a result like this even if I assigned the order randomly, and therefore knew that no relation existed. For good measure, I tried it with inaugural year, in case that made a difference. It was an even worse model. R^2 of 0.014, coefficient of -0.012 (about the same, since it's now per year, not president), p-value of 0.4413. So, statistically, there is little reason to believe that a president's age is trending either upwards or downwards over the span of the institution. gnfnrf (talk) 00:23, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A sterling effort. Thanks, Gnfnrf. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:27, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

August 4

Literary firsts

Who was the 1st published afro-american female to be published??? conflicting entries in wiki sem to identify both Lucy Terry and Phyllis Wheatly```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.18.24.29 (talk) 02:38, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

They don't conflict, just the wording could use some reworking.

from Lucy Terry: Lucy Terry (c.1730-1821) is the author of the oldest known work of literature by an African American. ... Her work, "Bars Fight", is a ballad about attack upon two white families by Native Americans on August 25, 1746. ... The poem was preserved orally until it was finally published in 1855.

from Phillis Wheatley: Phillis Wheatley (1753 – December 5, 1784) was the first published African American poet and first African-American woman whose writings were published. ... The 1773 publication of Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral brought her fame, with figures such as George Washington praising her work.

So, Lucy Terry's work was around 1746, however it wasn't published until 1855. So, Lucy's work is older - but wasn't published until much later. Phillis Wheatley's work was published in 1773, so she was the first to be published, though other works by African-Americans are older. ^Avic_ennasis @ 02:46, 4 Av 5771 / 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Successful lottery investor

I recall reading a Wikipedia article about an investor who saw a mathematical flaw in the way the winnings of a certain lottery (Maybe in the UK?) was calculated. According to his calculations the expected value of each lottery ticket was actually slightly higher than its cost, making it actually profitable to play this lottery. In order to minimize his risks (2% chance of getting $100 isn't necessarily better than $1), he needed enough money and manpower to corner all the available numbers so that the investment becomes essentially risk-free. He then gather a small group of private investor and together they hired workers to buy hundreds of thousands of tickets. Eventually the lottery commision caught on and disabled some of the automatic machines, but it was too late. In the end the group made a sizable profit without breaking any laws or taking any risks. After this incident the lottery winning rules were updated to close the loophole.

I can vividly recall the details of the plot but can't for the life of me remember his name or which lottery it was. Can someone please help me out here? Anonymous.translator (talk) 04:31, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, just found it National_Lottery_(Ireland). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anonymous.translator (talk • contribs) 04:40, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also see a recent story from Massachusetts - "Cash WinFall". [19] Sigh... how incompetent does a government have to be to run a casino where the house doesn't always win? Wnt (talk) 15:08, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The house still wins, they get their cut when the tickets are sold. This just has to do with how the winnings are distributed, i.e. to a large 'jackpot' or many smaller prizes. The house cut and the prize cut are still the same, similar to a casino taking a rake from a poker game. In fact, the state may have made more money by people buying the extra tickets to exploit the payout. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.87.170.174 (talk) 20:25, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A few years back, a Canadian lottery (can't recall which one) deliberately paid out more than it took in for its first drawing and advertised it to drum up interest. I personally spent a few hundred dollars on it, but unfortunately, it wasn't enough for the law of large numbers to really come into play. However, some guy did "invest" tens or hundreds of thousands and made a tidy profit. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:30, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's been done a few times with state lotteries in the United States. The key factor that makes it possible is that lottery jackpots roll over: if there's no winner in one drawing, the prize money becomes part of the jackpot for the next drawing. Eventually, the expected value of a ticket becomes greater than 1, and occasionally a group of people will buy a complete set of all possible ticket numbers (and hope that nobody else also gets a winning ticket). The house still wins, though, because the expected value of all tickets sold to all drawings since the last time there was a winner is around 0.5. --Carnildo (talk) 02:12, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

KNIGHTS - HOW EXACTLY DID THEY DIFFER FROM BARONS AND COUNTS/EARLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES?

I've been reading sides up and down about knights, barons, counts, nobility and articles regarding feudalism and fiefdoms for some time, here on Wiki and on the net in general, but they all fail to explain (or maybe sometimes I fail to see) how knights differ from barons etc. in certain aspects.

I always thought that a knight would almost without exception be a high-born, and I do still, but perhaps contrary to what I have believed before knights did not necessarily need to be actual barons or counts themselves, but perhaps just members of a noble family, like a son or nephew perhaps of a noble lord. Because obviously, boys were sent away early to be pages and then squires, starting at seven usually if they were to become knights.

So far, I think I've got it spot on but I still have many questions unanswered :

1) Was it often or rare that an actual heir to a barony/county/earldom would become a knight as a young man, thus in the end both holding a noble title AND being a knight at the same time when he inherited his father's land and title? Or would these oldest sons of a lord have to be content with the knowing they one day would inherit their father's land, and then perhaps younger brothers and possibly nephews and such would aspire for knighthood instead? I know not on what criterias a boy was chosen to be sent away to start knight-training, so I'm uncertain about this.

2) What kind of land would a knight hold, compared to a baron (Barony) and a count/earl (county/earldom) ? The land these landlords would hold would vary on many things I suppose; size, richness of the land/soil and location of the land, but a knight would have to be able to fend for himself and hold men-at-arms which was vital of course for a knight, as well as for barons and counts. So would knights have as big a land as barons or would they have smaller ones with a purpose of providing for as many men-at-arms as possible? Last but not least, what would a knight's land be called? As I have understood it, Barons and counts were supposed to hold land more "permanently" than knights, who instead actually rented land from the king, sort of... Or so it is sometimes vaguely explained. It's hard to grasp the difference here sometimes - especially since many articles often refer to EVERYONE with their own men-at-arms as barons. It can be kind of unclear and confusing.

3) How many men-at-arms would a knight basically have, and how many would a baron and count/earl have? I'm interested to learn if there was any particular difference here between the three. Once again, size, richness of the land and how many people lived on and worked the land would certainly be a very deciding factor. But roughly? It's very hard to find any info about this. Would they hold 20 ? 40? 100? more?

I have left duke out of this since Duchies would sometimes be sovereign and independent, more or less, especially grand duchies, so it might be difficult to compare duke with barons, counts/earls and knights.

85.165.122.165 (talk) 12:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See the article Knight particularly Origins of medieval knighthood. Knighthood is generally granted by a head of state to selected persons to recognise some meritorious achievement. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 12:33, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing to remember is that Knight was also a military rank and a military unit: A knight was first-and-foremost a unit of heavy cavalry; because of the extreme expense in maintaining horses and armor and being trained for the use therof in battle, knights became a privileged class. Knighthood was really distinct from the ranks of nobility (like Duke, Earl, etc.) which were hereditary ranks and which were primarily administrative in function. Originally, Dukes and Earls/Counts, Marquises/Marcher Lords etc. were awarded those titles to give them a sort of "governor" status over land. Of course, by the age of bastard feudalism all of the titles became sort-of honorary as the actual means of fighting wars changed. If you want to get to the origin of the different titles, think of the title of "knight" to be more like a military rank (like Captain or Major or Colonel) and the titles of nobility (like Duke, Earl, etc.) to be more like political offices (like Governor or Mayor or something like that). It is far from a perfect analogy, but it helps to understand the very different origins of the terms and offices. --Jayron32 13:01, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Something else to factor in... the status (and function) of a Knight changed over time (the "Middle Ages" is a very imprecise term that covers several hundred years), and it differed from one region of Europe to another. So, are we talking about Knights in the year 1000 AD, 1200 AD or 1400 AD? And are we talking about England or France or Germany (etc.)? Blueboar (talk) 13:16, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the meaning of knighthood changed over time. In modern British usage, knighthood is an honor bestowed by the monarch. (You can see from my spelling that I'm not British.) However, before the late Middle Ages, it was essentially an occupation, with an associated rank. Generally, knights were the lowest level of the landed feudal elite. Typically, they controlled an estate containing one to maybe five or six peasant villages. (Most would have had no more than one, often small, village.) This estate provided them with the income needed to support them, their horses, armor and often one or more attendants, during potentially long periods at war. Until the late middle ages, all nobles, even monarchs, were expected to master the military skills needed to be a knight, and young heirs to baronies or counties might act as knights in battle, but their status was distinctly above that of mere knights, because they were heirs to a set of territories that would include several or many knights who owed allegiance to them. A knight need not command any attendants or men-at-arms. For that matter, a knight was himself considered a man-at-arms. Different levels of the feudal hierarchy were not associated with specific numbers of men-at-arms. There was a rough correspondence between the size of a fief or an estate, the number of men-at-arms that the estate could support, and the position of its lord in the feudal hierarchy, but it is entirely possible that a mere knight with an unusually large estate might have more men-at-arms than a baron with a very small barony, or that a very powerful baron might have more men-at-arms than a lowly count, though those would have been exceptions from the norm. I don't have enough expertise to offer specific numbers of men-at-arms that each rank would typically command. Those numbers would certainly depend on the region and the time period. Marco polo (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just to make it a bit clearer; knighthood was not a rank which confered an estate onto its recipient, that's actually about 180 degrees backwards: the status of being an estate lord was generally a prequalification for becoming a knight. It wasn't as though some poor kid picking turnips in the field would ever one day be able to aspire to becoming a knight; the best he could hope for was to become an unarmored infantryman carrying a spear or something like that. Knighthoods were specifically awarded to the estate-owning class, and were not a means of social mobility or anything like that. If you owned land and served as a lord of a manor, then it would be expected for you to serve in defense of the realm as a knight or equivalent. This sort of thing is ALSO distinct from titles of nobility; again you had to be a member of the land-owning class before you could be awarded awarded a Duchy or an Earldom; some estates became themselves attached to a title but the origin of the system was not as a means to give land to people; Duchies didn't ever get awarded to landless peasants; they were given to scions of important families and provided the family with additional lands and rights.

It can get confusing, because these terms end up being applied to the same people (thus John Doe would own estates, have a baronial title, and serve in the armored cavalry, so he can be considered a manorial lord, a member of the peerage, and a knight all at once). But they really began as seperate concepts with seperate purposes. The land-owning class was a product of Manorialism, which was the socio-economic organization of society during the middle ages: if defined ones social class, and also determined the economic organization of society; the source of wealth (being land), who had access to own that land (the upper class) and who worked the land (the peasantry).
Of seperate concern of this was the system of peerages and noble ranks (Baronies, Earldoms, Duchies, etc.) These were primarily titles associated with the apparatus of the state (what is in the U.S. known as "the Government"). Estates were given to people when titles were confered to them, but as land (rather then currency) was the primary form of wealth during this age, you can think of this land as being akin to the "salary and benefits package" that, say, a civil servant is given when they are employed by the government. The titles were heritable, but they also confered certain responsibilities: owners of a title often had administrative responsibilities over territories (like the responsibility of the Marcher Lords to police and control the borders) and stuff like that.
The responsibility of the Knight was defense of the realm: this was a responsibility as a soldier. His job was to carry arms and fight wars for the King.
The way these get to be tied up is through the system of feudalism, which sits on top of the manorial system. In order for the right to be a lord of the manor, the lord had to pledge to defend the realm in times of war: this relationship defines feudalism: the awarding of landholding rights in exchange for military service. However, when it is explained like this, it sounds like any old peasant could agree to serve in the army, and then viola, they were granted land and became part of the aristocracy. It didn't really work like that: The land owners were just expected to also serve as knights; it was an established, entrenched system which wasn't open to change or question or social mobility. If you were born the son of a manor lord, you inherited his estates, and his responsibilities to serve as a knight. Because all manor lords were also expected to right horses and wear armor in battle (thus, serve as the military role of a knight) that title became a shorthand, and later official title, as the default title for any member of the landed class who was otherwise untitled. That's why you usually see "Knight" listed as a rank underneath say "Baron". It generally meant "any member of the upper class who had no other title of his own".
When modern "knighthoods" are awarded as an honorary title, what is literally happening is the recipient is being inducted into an "honorary" military order; if you look at the language of the titles granted with honorary knighthood today (like the Order of the British Empire) they have ranks like "Knight", "Commander", "Officer", which reflects this military past. --Jayron32 15:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks guys ! I got much out of that. Having learned much already, but much of your helpful input helps fill in some blanks and make me see things in a clearer light. Always impressed to see how many fellow wikipedians share so much knowledge and so many viewpoints with each other :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.165.122.165 (talk) 18:53, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The answers you already have are great, but if I may add a bit more, Marco Polo is definitely right that the answers depend on time and place. The popular image of a chivalrous knight is mostly from, let's say, the fourteenth or fifteenth century, and from places where knighthood was already well on the way to becoming an honorary title (England, Burgundy perhaps). At that time they still followed their lords into battle, but by then governments were more centralized and lesser landowners did not usually have any sovreignty. If you go back a few hundred years to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it was different (you can go back even further, all the way to the Roman Empire, but I'll stick with the 11th-12th centuries since I know more about that). In the territory of modern France, for example, in the eleventh century there was a "King of France", who theoretically was the sovreign over all the counts and dukes and lesser lords in France. This had been true in the 8th and 9th centuries under the Carolingian kings, but in the 11th century it was not - the King of France ruled the Ile-de-France but had little or no influence anywhere else. There were some large dukedoms and counties that had just as much power and prestige as the king - most notably Normandy, Flanders, Champagne, Burgundy, Toulouse, Aquitaine, Anjou, and Brittany. The Dukes of Normandy were also Kings of England and later on also inherited Anjou and Aquitaine, so for awhile the King of England owned more territory in France than the King of France (and claimed the Kingship of France too, leading to the Hundred Years' War, even though the Kings of England were technically supposed to be vassals of the King of France in their role as Dukes of Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine...it's a little confusing!).

So while the King of France is doing whatever he is doing in Paris and the relatively small Ile-de-France, the others were independent. The King of France had vassals in the Ile-de-France who owed allegiance directly to him, but so did the others. The Count of Toulouse (for example) was essentially king in the south in all but name, and as the sovreign of his territory, he also had his own vassals, just like the King of France. The vassals could be other counts, or viscounts, or minor lords (barons or seigneurs) who owned only one town or castle. Down to the level of the smallest seigneury, the seigneur of the town/castle would certainly be a knight, and he would probably be related in some way to his sovreign, as pretty much all the landowners in France descended from Charlemagne in some way so they were all distant cousins. Even the most minor seigneur would be a knight because of his birth and upbringing, and may or may not have gone through some kind of ceremony as a teenager to officially become one (this depends on time and place too, but normally that happened around age 13 or 15). But it was also a matter of wealth and bearing afterwards. A knight by definition was wealthy enough to equip himself with arms and armous, and own and equip his own horse (the luxury car of the Middle Ages - if anyone else rode anything it was a donkey or mule, or if you were really unlucky maybe a very large dog, and otherwise you walked everywhere). Where did they get that money? Well, even in a very small village, there were hundreds of people farming the fields, growing crops for the village and for the seigneur, and paying all kinds of taxes to the seigneur, whether in goods (a portion of the harvest, for example) or actual money (a tax to use the roads, a tax to use the ovens, a tax to get married, a tax on tax, a tax on whatever the seigneur wanted to tax them for...and that was probably on top of whatever else they owed to the local church). So if this seigneur wanted to finance himself and his horse to go out and fight in a war alongside his sovreign (the count, or the duke, or the king, whoever it was), he paid for it from the money and goods he had been collecting from the inhabitants of his village. Those inhabitants were likely peasant farmers, maybe craftsmen and merchants in a larger town, but they were not knights. But just as this seigneur owed military service to his sovreign (as part of his feudal service), the seigneur could bring his villagers and peasants along with him as a fighting force. They wouldn't have horses or swords, but they could bring whatever weapons they could find. The seigneur could also have family members who were knights who would accompany him (sons, brothers, cousins, etc).

There are some existing lists of places and the number of knights they owe to their sovreign; the one I know best is not from France, it's from the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (although for these purposes let's assume Jerusalem was essentially just a French colony in the Near East). The list for Jerusalem has hundreds of knights, broken down according to fief; one particular count owed 24 knights, and then that was further divided among that count's personal territories, so one of his own vassals owed six knights out of the 24 (possibly those six were divided further as well but the list doesn't go that far down). For each of those knights, they would probably bring a handful or maybe a few dozen people who weren't knights, who fought on foot with whatever weapons. In a list of 600 knights, there might be ten times that amount of non-knights in the actual army of the entire kingdom.

And now that I've mentioned the crusades, I should also mention that going on crusade was extremely expensive for the kind of minor seigneur that I've been describing here. Many of those crusaders, and even many of the major ones, even dukes and counts, had to sell all their land to someone else to raise money for the journey (this is, in fact, one of the ways in which the King of France started to increase his territory in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, buying the land of people who were going on crusade). And along the way, since it was a very long way, it often happened that they spent all their money, or their horse(s) died, and they had to walk like the peasants who never had horses in the first place. This was a huge shame for them, because being a knight was more than a knighthood ceremony, it was status, and it was being seen as a knight with armour on a horse. What made them a knight if they had to walk?

In the end, as states like France became more centralized, being a knight became an honorary title. And for a place like England, which was already far more centralized as early as the eleventh century, or a place like the Holy Roman Empire which was almost chaotically uncentralized, it didn't really work like this at all. Hopefully this makes sense, I didn't realize it would end up so long... Adam Bishop (talk) 09:35, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

UK VAT number

would the UK vat number consisting of 8 digits (45234133 as a fictive example) be used as the EU VAT number as well? Or would the company have to do something special? Thanks. 89.135.188.193 (talk) 12:24, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Best bet is to consult an accountant, I think that a UK VAT registration is all that's needed as HMRC take care of the extra-national transactions. fwiw I only have a UK VAT registration and can use it for mainland europe transactions.

ALR (talk) 13:39, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Value added tax identification number article says "The full identifier starts with an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code", and lists the various formats employed by differing systems. So you'd use GB45234133. -- 87.115.147.37 (talk) 15:42, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

THE ENTRANCE OF NEW NATION IN ABIA AND IMO STATE OF NIGERIA

How can I get the contacts of some teachers in Abia state in Nigeria government secondary schools through this web site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Godson chibuzor (talk • contribs) 14:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We have an article List of schools in Nigeria, and a surprising number of Nigeria government secondary schools come up if you search the site. Some of the schools have websites listed which you might get information from. Unfortunately Wikipedia is officially "not a directory" so finding contact information here will be hit and miss, mostly miss. Wnt (talk) 15:02, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

French cheese

Bonjour all :) When I was little my mother tried to introduce me to good cheese but I wasn't very interested at the time (and let's just say her sense of good cheese was... not mainstream). I would now like to try cheese again, but my cheese-eating friends all warn me not to start too strong or I'll be turned away from the stuff again. They say Brie is generally the "gateway cheese", lol, but I find its ammonic taste and smell disagreeable. I'm looking for a French cheese that's not too strong but has an interesting and pleasant flavor (to set it apart from the plastic they put on sandwiches in the States), and is not too strong. I thought at first to just go out and buy a bunch of random French cheese to try but there are so many, I don't know where to start. Does anyone have any suggestions from their personal experience? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.98.102.189 (talk) 18:19, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to check out our article Types of cheese for an overview of the subject. Many different types of cheese are produced in France. It sounds as if you don't like (or don't yet like) soft-ripened cheeses such as brie. A mild cheese that you might like could be Port-Salut. Marco polo (talk) 18:47, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I find most bries to be mild, unless it is over ripe - ie almost past its best & runny. Also, the taste is milder if the cheese is still at 'fridge temperature - the taste increases as it warms up. CS Miller (talk) 19:19, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I know you asked about french cheese, but there are also many British cheeses: see List of British cheeses. White stilton is my favourite, followed by Wenslyedale. I do not like the blue cheeeses. 92.24.140.101 (talk) 19:20, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Roquefort is fairly industry-standard for a French Blue. It would likely be a good introduction to blues. --Jayron32 19:47, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Stilton cheese, at least the well-known kind of Stilton, is a blue cheese. I think it, like other blue cheeses, is a bit strong-tasting for someone who does not like strong cheeses. Still, if you are going to try a blue cheese, in my opinion, Stilton is the finest, and relatively mild. In fact, most British cheeses have a fairly sharp (acidic) flavor. This is not a flaw, but maybe not the best feature for someone who does not like strong cheese. If we are going to extend our range beyond French cheeses, I would recommend that this person consider Dutch cheeses, which tend to be mild, such as Edam or young Gouda. Marco polo (talk) 19:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Another delightful mild cheese from outside France is Bel Paese, from Italy. Marco polo (talk) 20:58, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would avoid Casu marzu until you have more experience. Or if you are gearing up for a performance on Fear Factor. Googlemeister (talk) 21:16, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Try Petit Basque. I serve it at parties and everyone likes it.--Fran Cranley (talk) 03:50, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you want the French equivalent of cheddar (at least in ubiquity, although not really in taste), you could try Emmental. It's not really French though, it's actually the stereotypical Swiss cheese. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:13, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Gruyère is also Swiss, not French (but at least it's from the French-speaking part of Switzerland!) and is very tasty IMHO. It's sharp like a well-aged Cheddar (but not too strong, as the OP asked for twice), but it's not smelly or ammonia-y. Pais (talk) 13:53, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

School Library Journal?

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but the Novels and Literature wikiproject pages seem to be mostly un-monitored, so I'm not sure I'd get an answer there. Anyway, on Moonrise (Warriors), ref 15 requires a page number. However, the link given requires a subscription, and I don't have one. I'd therefore like to ask if anyone can find the page number for me. The review in question is from School Library Journal, Volume 49, Issue 5, May 1, 2003, on Warriors: Into the Wild. Thanks, Bramble claw x 18:59, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You might be better off asking on the wikiproject library&resource exchange page - the folks over there will borrow the journal if it is available at their local library, and get back to you with the reference. CS Miller (talk) 19:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The page number is 154. Let me know if you would like a copy of the PDF. --Kateshortforbob _talk 10:39, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hostile legislative riders

In the United States Congress, here have been lots of occasions where Congressmen seeking to kill a bill that might otherwise pass add amendments or riders to it that are calculated to guarantee that the original bill will be rejected. This has been on display quite a bit lately, but in particular I have in mind the case described here.

I'm a bit rusty on my civics courses. How does a member of Congress (Senate or House) get an amendment approved to go onto a bill? Is it done by committee, or something voted for by the whole? It strikes me as a particular devious way to tank legislation. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:13, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Traditionally legislative bills start out as proposals that are sent to committees for approval or dis-approval. Once a bill successfully passes out of committee, lawmakers frequently amend it with a rider" ([20]). Schyler (exquirere bonum ipsum) 20:25, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bills can be changed in committee or on the floor after approval by the committee. The kind of amendment you're talking about is called a "poison pill."

Shields up!

Would America suffer a drop in living standards or even collapse if it decided to cease trading with the rest of the world, as Japan did in past centuries, according to economic theory? 92.24.140.101 (talk) 19:27, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, undoubtedly. It would be disasterous, given how interconnected we are to the rest of the world. --Jayron32 19:33, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think most mainstream economists would agree with that, yes. Our article Isolationism has this: "All the First World countries (the UK, United States, etc.) trade in a world economy, and experienced an expansion of the division of labor, which generally raised living standards. However, some characterize this as 'a wage race to the bottom' in the manufacturing industries that should be curtailed by protectionism. Some argue that isolating a country from a global division of labor—i.e. employing protectionist trading policies—could be potentially helpful. The consensus amongst most economists is that such a policy is detrimental, and point to the mercantilism of the pre-industrial era as the classic example." Recury (talk) 19:36, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A few decades back, when the United States was self-sufficient in energy, and trade made up just a small percentage of its GDP, isolation might not have had a huge impact on the US economy and living standards, though even then it would have had a negative impact. However, today, when the United States is dependent on imported petroleum and lacks the industrial capacity to meet its own demand for so many basic goods, a trade cutoff would result in what could only be called an economic collapse. Marco polo (talk) 19:45, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Those who propose these types of magical "solutions" often forget the other side of the equation, which is the benefit from exports. For example, a significant proportion of U.S. agricultural production is for export. Economic isolationism would destroy those sectors of the economy. Living standards would fall significantly before adjustments could be made to turn this production towards domestic needs (something which may not be possible in all sectors). --Xuxl (talk) 20:17, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are a lot of raw materials that are not produced in the US or not in great volume (coffee beans or tin, for example). And there's a lot of stuff that isn't made here anymore, such as TVs and silverware. It's possible that eventually America would find a way to make that kind of stuff again, even without the same raw materials, but the costs would be huge. Without Asia to import from, you can forget about a $20 toaster. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:41, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. There's a false idea that the standard of living in the U.S. would magically go up if we stopped shipping manufacturing jobs overseas, forgetting that if the U.S. built all that stuff locally it would make everything so much more expensive that our relative standard of living would be lower since our wages wouldn't be able to buy as many goods. --Jayron32 03:17, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the article on petroleum (and its links) shows a massive disparity in the quantities of oil consumed and produced in the USA. It would not require a crystal ball to forecast massive changes to the US transport system (and thus to society at large). --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 07:11, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The US is lucky in that it has supplies of most of the metals and fuels required by industry (oil, natural gas, uranium, copper, iron ore, coal, gold, silver, rare earths, etc), as well as significant untapped resources for solar power and geothermal. However it would have to massively increase extraction/production, with huge investment required (i.e. massive spending - not just on machinery, fuel, and land, but on research, training, skilled workers, etc) and major shortages until it came online. Only if the US's disengagement was very gradual could dramatic upheavals, chronic shortages, massive price hikes, etc, be prevented. While it would be possible for the US to survive in isolation, it is unlikely to bring benefits: there are many places in the world where it is far cheaper and easier to extract resources. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:47, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The US does not have the capacity to produce anywhere near the amount of petroleum that it consumes. A strong case can be made that the US does not have the capacity, even if coal production and renewables were expanded, to supply its current energy consumption from domestic sources. Meanwhile, the US has a vast agricultural output, much greater than its domestic market requires. Given this, it's difficult to see how it is to the advantage of the US to stop selling food in exchange for fuel. (Because I think that the classical economic theory of comparative advantage assumes away too much of the reality of today's world, I can see a convincing case being made for a tariff on industrial imports but not for a total trade ban.) Marco polo (talk) 14:24, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note that there are many options between absolute isolationism and unrestricted free trade. For example, the US could decide on a type of reciprocal trade agreement where, if the balance of trade was too far off with any given nation, like China, then stiff tariffs would apply to imports. This would likely require withdrawal from the WTO, and would also result in increases in the prices of heavily imported items, like petroleum, clothing, and electronics. In the long run, however, this might encourage some good trends, such as increased domestic production, development of alternative sources of energy, energy conservation, and development of industry in nations which currently have none, like some in Africa, where the balance of trade is currently against them. StuRat (talk) 14:56, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I could buy such an arguement for petroleum, but it simply doesn't make sense for manufactured goods for which there is no other alternative. If petroleum gets to expensive, it would force the U.S. to make better use of other power sources. If TVs get too expensive, people stop buying TVs. The extra cost of production for goods made in the U.S. gets passed onto U.S. consumers unless the U.S. can find people around the world who can buy those goods at the higher price. What good are higher wages for U.S. workers when those wages cannot buy as many products? Throw some numbers at it: If I make $100 per month, but it costs me $50 per month to meet all my needs, how am I better off making $1000 per month if it then costs me $750 per month to meet all my needs? Don't get caught up in thinking in absolute terms: the most important factor is the ratio of wages earned to cost of living, not the absolute numbers in terms of dollar bills in my hand, but the relative amounts of my wages to my costs which matter. Isolationist policies which increases both wages and costs, but increase costs faster than they increase wages serve no ones best interests. --Jayron32 16:35, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But why would you think wages would increase slower than prices ? Also consider that people would move to less expensive alternatives. In the case of TVs, maybe keeping the old one rather than buying the latest top-of-the-line TV is a viable alternative. It certainly would be better for the environment and balance of trade. StuRat (talk) 22:23, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that the low cost of imports is a function of a structural current account deficit, with the corollary of a steadily and unsustainably growing external debt. This structural imbalance threatens to lead to a serious debt crisis for the United States. For now, foreigners are still buying US debt, but what happens when it is 150% of GDP? 200% of GDP? Market forces, unrestrained, tend to produce bubbles that burst and states of growing disequilibrium that lead to disorderly reversals. When funding for the US current account deficit dries up, the dollar will collapse, most likely in a sudden panic, which will have the same effect as the sudden imposition of steep import tariffs. True, this would benefit export-oriented sectors of the US economy, such as agriculture and a few specialized manufactures, but these sectors employ a small share of the work force, and millions would be thrown out of work at a time of rising prices. Better to try to bring a controlled and gradual end to the imbalance before it leads to a catastrophic reversal by imposing calibrated and targeted tariffs, mainly on industrial goods imported from countries that are not important export markets. These would gradually rise until the current account begins to move toward balance and could be eliminated if the current account went into surplus. Such tariffs have been used by East Asian countries to promote domestic industries that went on to become powerful exporters, and the United States could benefit from a similar strategy. Marco polo (talk) 17:35, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The sovereign debt issue is largely a function of the U.S. government being unwilling to come to terms with the need to balance its accounts by raising revenue and/or cutting services. If the U.S. government is depending solely on the whims of the economy to balance its books, its fooked no matter what it does. Instead, there needs to be the political will to simultaneously raise revenue by placing greader burdens on the parts of society which are most able to bear it, and to cut spending by reducing inefficiencies which are rife in the system. There's little evidence that protectionist tarrifs do much to raise revenue for the government, and they certainly don't cut expenditures in any meaningful way. In the U.S., sensible compromise is impossible given the political system of the day; it doesn't make any sense for members of either party to compromise as compromise doesn't win elections. What wins elections is demonizing ones opponent and taking a hard stance and refusing to budge. So one party says "tax the rich and cut no services" and the other party says "raise no taxes at all and cut services until we stop losing money" and neither side has any incentive, in terms of political capital and the ability to be re-elected, in reaching a reasonable middle ground with a combination of increased taxes and lower spending. The sovereign debt issue is a red herring in this arguement, it exists and presents real economic problems which you accurately describe, but the sovereign debt is not caused by, nor can it be solved by, trade issues as you describe. --Jayron32 18:07, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is the current account imbalance, of which the dependence on external lending is just a symptom. Incidentally, this is not just a matter of sovereign debt, though that's an important part of it. It is also a matter of private sector (commercial, financial, and household) debt. If it weren't for Chinese support for US Treasury bills, for example, interest rates would have been higher for mortgages, discouraging the cash-out refinancings that paid for so much consumption before the present recession. A steady flow of foreign capital to the United States is required to finance the current account deficit. Our current account and capital account articles explain this reasonably well. Marco polo (talk) 20:40, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

UK Government bonds

I know little of the market, but given the turbulent time in the Eurozone at the moment, I thought I'd look at UK government bonds to see what was happening (just for curiosity). I found today's rates here. Now, could I get some things straight? 100 appears to be the price paid, so "99.88" would only be a profit if the "0.54" (yield) is included. Is that how it works? Secondly, why such a variation between 9 year (117) and 10 year (108) bonds? Is it something to do with the round nature of 10 years? Why does the price then rise for 15 years then go down? I would have thought such things would be related to the economic predictions for the relevant periods, but surely the statistics so far in advance won't tell you much? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 21:43, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

When the price of a bond goes up, the yield goes down. Say you have a bond that pays a coupon (interest rate) of 1% at a par (base) value of 100. No matter who owns the bond or what he or she paid for it, it will pay a coupon of $1 for every bond. Let's say you buy it at 110. Now you're not really getting 1%, because $1 is less than 1% of $110. So the yield for someone who buys it at 110 is 0.91%. As for why there would be a price difference between the 9 and 10 year bonds, I don't know, other than that 9 year bonds aren't that common and so probably have less liquidity (trade less often) and there are bigger jumps in its prices. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:31, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The coupon is quite a bit higher for the 9 year bond than for the 10 year bond -- meaning that the periodic payments received by the bondholder are higher. Looie496 (talk) 00:06, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I think I've got this. I buy the bond £99.73 now and get £100 for the six-month bond. In the case of 1 year up, I'm paying more than £100 because I also get the "coupon" value - is this paid yearly (like a dividend) or at the end? "Yield" would presumably reflects this. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:15, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here's how it works. The government wants to borrow $100 for five years, so it issues a (say) 5% coupon bond with a 5-year maturity and par value of $100. (I don't have the pound symbol on my keyboard.) You pay the government $100 and get a piece of paper back saying that it will pay you $2.50 every six months for 5 years and then give you your $100 back. A couple years pass and your company is having hard times, so you decide to sell your bond. Unfortunately, it's also just come out that the government of this country was faking its books or something, so I won't buy the bond for $100. You agree to sell it to me for $60. Now the government will pay me $2.50 every six months instead of you until the bond matures (or the government defaults). Since I'm only paying $60, but I'm still getting $5 a year, I'm in effect getting more than 5% interest a year. I'm getting 5/60 or 8.33%. That's the "current yield." But you've also got to consider that I'm also going to get $100 back at the end of the 5 years, even though I only paid $60. Plus I can take the $5 a year you're getting and reinvest it in something else. So the "yield-to-maturity" -- which takes those things into account and is the yield I really care about -- is going to be higher than 8.33%. Does that make sense? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:11, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

August 5

Looking for t the name of the Original Artist of a painting

A painting of The Victorian Lady has been recently painted by Alex Bonjour and is currently up on the web. However, I know this painting was done originally in the 18c or 19c but I do not know the name of the original artist. The lady in the original painting is an American lady. I have seen a copy of the original painting but cannot make out the Artist name. (87.192.145.145 (talk) 07:24, 5 August 2011 (UTC))[reply]

It's 'Alix'. It seems to be a version of this, which the site says is unsigned. --Frumpo (talk) 08:05, 5 August 2011 (UTC). I've assumed 'Alix Beaujour'. Is that right? --Frumpo (talk) 08:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC) [reply]

But now I'm intrigued. Is the original artwork well-known? That's not the impression I get from the auction website and when I used tin-eye I didn't find it elsewhere on the web, so where did Alix Beaujour come across it? --Frumpo (talk) 09:54, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Book? Magazine? 92.24.188.168 (talk) 13:45, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pol Pot

If he wanted to restart civilization, why did he exclude rural people from his killing program? Those rural people were accustomed with the existing civilization, so how did he vision forming a new civilization with these people? --Reference Desker (talk) 09:56, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe he just hadn't gotten around to killing them yet. Genocide takes time. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:40, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Khmer Rouge did not want to restart civilization completely from scratch. They were obviously willing to make use of existing cultural elements such as language and themselves used various modern technologies. What they objected to was western culture and capitalism, both of which they believed had thoroughly corrupted the economy and culture of Cambodia's cities. So, their goal was to wipe out that urban culture and the people who carried it. They did not target rural people to the same degree, since they valued elements of peasant culture and sought to work with peasants to build an agrarian-based communist society. Marco polo (talk) 14:16, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There was also an anti-intellectual element to the genocide, such as killing teachers and anyone wearing glasses, both of whom were assumed to be more intelligent. StuRat (talk) 14:20, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pol Pot was a two-penny dictator interested in creating a cult of personality whereby he (and his regime) could be secure in their power in ruling Cambodia. He did this by murdering those people who posed the greatest threat to his security: Intellectuals and people with property and means. He left alive those people who could most easily be cowed: rural subsistance farmers who had no means to resist his rule. Like every single authoritarian dictator in history, he overlayed his desire for total power with a sort-of ex-post-facto justification cloaked in Marxist dogma; that is he basically created a rationale to cover the fact that he's just a brutal dictator with a lust for power. Don't ever look too deep into the cover story for why brutal regimes like Pol Pot do what they do; if they were more concerned with creating a better society, then they would be secure with not being the ones in charge of it. Authoritarianism is its own ends. --Jayron32 16:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Would rural people really be less able to resist his rule? Rural people are more likely to have access to guns and other hunting weapons, large knives and tools (e.g. for butchering, farming, building), and food and other means of subsistence, and it's typically easier to hide in the jungle/forest/hills than in a city. I suspect Marco Polo's answer is closer to the truth. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:50, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Rural people have less access to media and education, less access to information about the world around them, and are more likely to accept the world as presented simply for lack of access to possible better worlds. Having guns is not necessarily a major factor in presenting resistance to a brutal regime. The most important factor in a resistance movement is a willingness to resist, Pol Pot had no reason to be concerned about unorganized random farmers with primitive hunting rifles. You don't have to eliminate the people with the guns. Guns are trivial to obtain. You have to eliminate the people who are likely to want to use the guns against you. That was the goal of Pol Pots program. It is the goal of all authoritarian regimes. The touchstone, the true test of a revolutionary program which seeks to improve the lives of the downtrodden and make a better society is whether or not the people implementing the program aren't concerned with their own involvement thereof; whether the idea is more important than the personality. In the case of the Khmer Rouge and other authoritarian regimes of the same ilk, there is no empirical evidence (i.e., nothing based on the actions they took, rather than the things they said) that they intended to do anything except concentrate power in their own hands and eliminate all possible rivals. Actions, not words, are the only thing we should use to understand intent. Nothing in the Khmer Rouge's actions indicate that they gave anything except lip-service to their cover story of making a "better society". --Jayron32 17:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I do not disagree with Jayron. In fact, I agree that the primary motivation of the Khmer Rouge was to exercise and retain power. Above I was merely stating their rationale. Marco polo (talk) 18:41, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Khmer Rouge was Maoist, and Maoism differs from Marxism in one crucial way that's relevant here: Marxism looks for the revolution to come from the industrial workers, but Maoism sees the farmers as the revolutionaries. You're obviously not going to try to foment a complete revolution by killing off your entire power base. Nyttend (talk) 20:29, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The could have been facist anarchists, but it would have changed the core motivation for their actions, as evidenced by those actions themselves. Assigning labels to abhorrant behavior doesn't excuse it, and the cover story for their murders doesn't make the murders more palatable. They were brutal, power-hungry madmen, and found a convenient philosophy in Maoism that allowed them to excuse their consolidation of power and brutal policies to do so. Calling them Maoists is like calling Jeffery Dahmer an experimental chef. Sure, they used Maoism as the cover to excuse their behavior, but that doesn't necessarily make them ideologues. --Jayron32 20:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There have been many evil dictatorships throughout history, but there's only been one that tried the kind of massive agrarian/communist human experiment the Khmer Rouge tried on that scale. Some of the Khmer Rouge leaders got into communism while studying in Europe. The Khmer Rouge were not your typical Third World caudillos who sought power for power's sake but ideologues who sought to use a whole country as an experiment for their radical theories. The Khmer Rouge are called "Maoist" because Mao was also an agrarian communist. It's not a matter of trying to excuse anyone's behavior buy an attempt to explain the ideology in a simple manner. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I've a question here. We have seen other totalitarian dictators such as Stalin. But for any dictator, to maintain their power, they need a strong military and for that purpose they need an industrial economy. Stalin understood this, and for this purpose he emphasized heavy industry, and USSR made achievement in the field of heavy industry even though the standard of living was low and there was scarcity of consumer goods. But if Pol Pot wanted to establish a long-time authoritarian regime, how did he planned his future regime? He destroyed industrial economy, so how did he plan to keep a military to safeguard his power? --Reference Desker (talk) 06:46, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The author who best explains the beliefs and actions of the Khmer Rouge is Ben Kiernan. My limited understanding is this. Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, (or was it Khieu Samphan or all three?) were students in Paris in the 1950s. They were members of or close to the French Communist Party (PCF). Pol Pot wrote his thesis about the economy of Cambodia. The argument they developed wasn't orthodox in PCF terms; it owed a lot to third-worldism. They said that Cambodia was still in a feudal state, with no industry, that landowners were oppressing the peasantry, and that the peasantry had to free themselves and couldn't expect any help from urban industrial workers (because there weren't any). The mainstream view of Cambodia was that it was a land of happy peasants, without large landholdings. Pol Pot therefore argued that the supposedly happy peasants were oppressed by creditors who imposed massive rates of interest and held people in debt bondage, and that the towns were in essence oppressing the countryside. What happened next is that they ran one of the factions in the Cambodian communist party (Khmer Rouge) and organised a guerrilla struggle in the countryside. Cambodia was massively bombed during the Vietnam War, the Sino-Soviet split happened, their faction was loosely allied with the Chinese. As well as Maoist (called Marxist-Leninist) ideas about peasant guerilla movements, they drew on nationalism, xenophobia and peasants' resentment against townspeople. They were the dominant faction in the Khmer Rouge when the Vietnam War ended and they were in a position to take control of Cambodia. Their command was never very secure, and they were extremely paranoid, they used child soldiers to carry out massacres, and a vicious circle of paranoia-murder-popular opposition set in. There are a lessons for everyone in the story, I think, so long as you are willing to challenge your own preconceptions. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:01, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Was it morganatic or not?

Which status did Bianca Cappello have? I am not sure I understand her article correctly. The article seem to say that her marriage was not morganatic. She was given the title Duchess of Florence. But if the marriage was not morganatic, then why was she not given the title Grand Duchess of Tuscany? In short; which status did she have? Thank you. --Aciram (talk) 13:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Economics still deficient in explaining predicting or controlling current events?

1) Why cannot economics explain and predict recent slumps and other bad things in the economy(s)? 2) Why does there not seem to be a model of what the best conditions for growth are?

3) Economics has been studied for over a hundred years as far as I aware, but it still dosnt seem to know what its doing. Why not? 92.24.179.252 (talk) 19:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Economic forecasting relies on a whole heap of unknowns. Will a natural disaster disrupt a major center of economic production? Will unprecedented political squabbling turn a routine economic decision into a near-default? Will changes in regulation lead to vast amounts of predatory lending, which in turn will eventually lead to massive loan defaulting? Will a much-lauded, major corporation suddenly turn out to be based entirely on cooked books? The economy is a big, unruly, complicated, interconnected, messy system. There are a lot of unknown factors.

Economics, like most sciences and quasi-sciences, is based on simplified models or aggregate indices. It's not great at all the details.

Beyond that, there are a lot of other, more mundane factors. Many economists are advisors for major corporations. When the economy is going well, they do pretty well. So even when there are people warning that a big crisis is on the horizon, there are a lot of people who tend not to see it. This occurred during the 2008 crisis, where economists who predicted a looming problem were essentially marginalized and called pessimists. Additionally, most economic models are based on past evidence. The problem is that the economic world is constantly changing, and predicting the effects of those changes is a chancy game at best anyway. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:22, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Economies involve people, and people do not always operate in a logical or consistent manner. Thus even if you were to magically know all the variables, you still might not end up with exactly the right prediction for what happens because you could run the exact scenario 10 times and get a different result each time. Googlemeister (talk) 20:33, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

They don't have the maths for predicting complex systems, which have lots of independent variables. Despise that, they still make predictions about everything economics, when asked. They are normally predicting that the 2008 crisis will end in two years. A better question would be, why don't economists admit that they are crappy at making predictions? Quest09 (talk) 21:28, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Meh, Quest. There are so many statistical biases involved in your generalisation that most economic predictions are wrong it's hardly worth addressing. Most predictions an economist will ever make will be right, at least in general term. As for why they make them, well, that's their job. To predict how markets will act and to suggest strategies for improving them. I hope that answers your point. But it's rather off topic and forum-y.

As for the OP, well, most of economics works. You just don't see that bit. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 22:02, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, for one, people don't always listen to what economists say. A lot of economists may say, for example, that the U.S. should eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction, cut business tax levels and put on a value added tax, or raise taxes and cut spending when the economy is good so you'll have more money around for when the economy goes into a recession. Governments don't necessarily do those things. It's also worth remembering that things were a lot worse before economics got to where it is today. Before the emergence of modern monetary and fiscal policies, there would be an economic "panic" every 20 years or so. This culminated in the Great Depression, when the government and Federal Reserve did the exact opposite of what they're expected to do nowadays during a crisis (they tried to restrain spending and contract the money supply). If the government had slashed spending instead of trying stimulus in the recession, and if the Fed had hiked interest rates instead of cutting them, we might be looking at 25% unemployment instead of 9%. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:33, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say "most predictions are wrong" and I don't believe it. Indeed, I believe that they are meaningless, equivalent to a random number generator. Quest09 (talk) 22:21, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say the constantly changing economic system is the problem. In the US, for example, we've only had "minimal regulation and minimal progressive taxes, combined with free markets" for a few decades. So, lessons learned in the centuries before don't really apply. StuRat (talk) 22:18, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What evidence do you have that economics cannot explain and predict "recent slumps and other bad things in the economy(s)" and that there does not seem to be a model of what the best conditions for growth are? Mwalcoff is correct. Numerous economists published numerous articles in the popular press for *years* prior to the crash warning that housing policies would likely create a bubble. When the value of the dollar collapses in a few years time, no doubt people will ask why economists didn't see it coming. They saw it coming and they spoke out about it. The problem is that they are largely ignored until it's too late. Wikiant (talk) 22:42, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Open ended predictions are always right. You could also say: 'a comet will hit the earth.' You'd be right, but it's meaningless. Quest09 (talk) 23:04, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing open ended was the timing. The predictions weren't merely that the housing bubble would burst, but that there were specific policies (mortgage interest deduction, community development act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying up mortgages) that were inflating the bubble. Had anyone paid attention at the time, the crisis would have been diminished by reversing those specific policies. Of course, had politicians taken action, the predicted crisis would have been averted and, again, people would be saying that economists can't predict anything. Can't win for losing. Wikiant (talk) 02:18, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How can economists predict the impact on an economy of leading politicians from a party not in power constantly declaring that we're all doomed? (It's certainly happening in Australia right now.) HiLo48 (talk) 22:48, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone point to a published economical prediction (that already happened, or will happen.)? Something like US growth 3.4 next year or dollar 10-15% cheaper in 2012. 193.153.125.105 (talk) 00:34, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that's really a feasible question. There have literally been millions of economic predictions, and there are always going to be people who were "right" to some degree of accuracy -- 9 times out of 10 someone wins the lottery, for example, and that has nothing to do with skill.

Besides, trying to find one (or, probably a better idea, trying to work out the average economic prediction) would open yourself to a whole long list of biases. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 11:25, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Medical Arts

Hello. I pass by a few medical arts buildings from time to time and wonder... What are the medical arts? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 19:58, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it's a general term, like Medical studies. Google searches find everything from schools of Nursing to Massage Therapy schools to Acupuncture schools. ^Avic_ennasis @ 20:03, 5 Av 5771 / 5 August 2011 (UTC)

From my experience, they're generally buildings that house multiple medical offices of various sorts; I suppose that such a name is meant to convey that it's medical without restricting it to a specific type of medical. Or, you could go with a silly explanation — the medical arts are paintings of doctors :-) Nyttend (talk) 20:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The term "Arts", in the sense of applied imagination and skill, used to extend into the scientific realm too, unlike most modern day usage (as in visual, performing, literary, ... see our article on the arts). The classical seven liberal arts included arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. One of the seven mechanical arts according to Hugh of Saint Victor was medicine (the others were fabric-making, armament, commerce, agriculture, hunting, and theatrics). ---Sluzzelin talk 03:03, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Non-new Catholic dioceses without cathedrals

Is it very common for a Catholic diocese (other than one that's really new) not to have its own cathedral for a sustained period of time? According to Roman Catholic Diocese of Madison, Saint Raphael's Cathedral burned in 2005, and the diocese hasn't had its own cathedral since then. Nyttend (talk) 20:41, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think in extenuating circumstances like that, there would be a de facto cathedral which would just be the temporary seat church of the bishops of the diocese, or they would use a cathedral from a neighboring diocese. There are many diocese where the so-called "cathedral" is actually a minor church of its own right, and only is the "cathedral" because it serves as the seat of the bishop. Sacred Heart Cathedral in Raleigh, North Carolina could barely qualify as a Chapel under most definitions, and other churches in the diocese are much, much larger. Since the diocese you cite seems to be still in the process of deciding how to handle the burning of the cathedral, it just hasn't decided what to do; whether to rebuild the old cathedral, redesignate an existing church, build a new cathedral at a new location, etc. etc. Its probably not a decision they want to rush into. --Jayron32 20:49, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a minor note, the spelling is Raleigh, named after Sir Walter Raleigh. Falconus^{p t c} 04:40, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a doubly minor note, the keyboard on which I typed that misspelled word, and by extension my fingers, brain, fat ass, and house surrounding all of the above is located in said city. Whoops. I apologize and have corrected said error. It was, of course, spelled without the E when you made your note. --Jayron32 05:07, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin hasn't had a cathedral since the Reformation. It only has a pro-cathedral. The RC hierarchy is still officially hoping to get Christ Church Cathedral back from the Anglicans someday. Pais (talk) 22:11, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

August 6

United Kingdom

What is the gender neutral term of "Kingdom"? BTW, this country is ruled by a queen, but it is called kingdom, not queendom, why? The country has done so many things for achieving gender equality, but the name still shows gender bias, and no one, including those who claim to advocate gender equality, objects. Why? --Do098l (talk) 11:19, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_English#Arguments_against --151.41.138.181 (talk) 11:33, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Monarchy"? Gabbe (talk) 11:35, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Monarchy it too biased. I suggest Womon-archy! --151.41.138.181 (talk) 11:39, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Flags!

I'm searching for 3 non-Soviet pre-1945 flags of some areas of Russia (if existing): the general areas now occupied by Buryatia, Irkutsk Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Krai.
To be more clear, I'm searching 3 flags for (non extremely strict) historical "precedents" of these entities (I was able to find this historical flag of Yakutia: http://flagspot.net/flags/ru-14_h.html).
For example, [[21]] flag of Buryatia is too recent, and [[22]] is a Soviet one. Thanks! --151.41.138.181 (talk) 11:31, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]