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September 11

Question about communism?

So if communism is supposed to be a society where everyone is equal, then why are communist governments so totalitarian and undemocratic? Why do they have poor human rights records, massive censorship and lack of freedom of speech and (some) have cults of personality? Wasn't communism supposed to be a Utopian society where there are no rich or poor and everyone is equal? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:05, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

It's the classical case where everyone is equal, but some are more equal than the others. Quest09 (talk) 00:12, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

No, my question, is why are communist countries so totalitarian and undemocratic? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

It's the classical case where absolute power corrupts absolutely. Quest09 (talk) 00:20, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Conversely, why do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in capitalist countries? It's the classical case of "man... dominating man to his injury." Schyler (exquirere bonum ipsum) 00:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

That's not the question of the OP. Quest09 (talk) 01:10, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

You may want to read Communism first, and then Utopia, and then try to think how neither is unobtainable without a huge change in human nature, and then work out why certain totalitarian governements have used the desire for both as an advert to get them into power. However, not all Communist countries do badly, in terms of what you say. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 01:55, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The rich get richer but fortunately so do do the poor in capitalist countries. Any 18th century king would probably love to trade places with someone "poor" in the US or EU now. He would love to fly, he would love to get medicine that do work, he would love to be able to communicate with someone on the other side of the globe within seconds. Communism focuses on moving wealth from the rich to the poor so we can all be equal which is a sad and childish way of looking at how people behave or think. A communist country needs to constantly force people to behave in a way that's not natural to human kind. People like having money. People don't care about things they don't own themselves. That's the basic problem with communism, and that's what leads people to poverty.Joepnl (talk) 03:38, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Or as Frank Zappa once said, "Communism doesn't work, because people like to own stuff." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Reading the article on Marxism-Leninism (which has been more or less the dominant strain of "Communism" with regards to actual governments, as opposed to people who write pamphlets and stand on street corners) might give you a clearer indication than the Communism article, just because the latter is full of a lot of totally philosophical or unsuccessful strains of the ideology. Just take it for what it says about itself (even just the first paragraph), without worrying about even what happens when it gets corrupted, or a paranoid guy ends up at the top of the hierarchy for some reason, or even a guy who isn't paranoid but sometimes makes mistakes. Note that it is not strictly Communism — it is about creating the conditions for a communistic society. Communism is that wonderful utopia at the end of the tunnel, the one that never quite shows up. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:41, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The utopia idea probably refers to something more akin to the Federation in Star Trek or to a society where everyone is wealthy and poverty has been abolished. If electricity were too cheap to meter (expected to be the result of fusion power) then that might be the start to achieving the utopia but then you will still have to deal with people who base their sense of worth on money instead of their freedom for the need of it to have and acceptable standard of living. Cuba by the way has climate which all enjoy but then also secret police who can assure that you are never heard from again. I would not call Cuba a utopia but only a nation that has reduced the gap between rich and poor to the point where wealthy American business men can [no longer] come to find young poverty stricken girls and boys for sex - the situation in Bangkok now. --DeeperQA (talk) 04:13, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The statements you make Naruto may be largely based on your education/indoctrination. Children of capitalists may be taught they have the ability to rise to be the head of state or very rich, while Communism is evil and everyone suffers as you can't be uber-rich and they use censorship to control the populace. Children of communists may be taught that their society is fair and all man are created equal and are equal in life and this is great for ethical reasons, while capitalism is evil and a large portion of the society suffers from wage slavery, lack of education (post-secondary), health care, homelessness, and so on and the governments use a form of censorship to control the populace.

I also hope the op knows that there has never been a true communist state, and of those who claim(ed) to be partly communist, Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, USSR, PRC, are all VERY different in their governments. Also these nations didn't just switch over to leftist and were accepted by the world, most of these nations had to fight very long and expensive wars as the USA attacked them, and the US has launched economic warfare against them all (who's totalitarian now?). Public awareness (talk) 08:40, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

OP if you really want to know, here are two very readable works of fiction that will enlighten you. Animal Farm by George Orwell for how it went wrong, and News from Nowhere by William Morris for what if it goes right. Or any textbook on 20th century world history. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:13, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Stalinism, as its article states, is dismissed by the Trotskyites as a corrupt means to power while using Marxist rhetoric; but even Trotskyism holds that the communist revolution has to be worldwide, or all the capitalist countries will attack (with armies or economics) the Communist countries out of fear that communism will spread. Communist state is our article about the so-called Communist countries of the 1900s, by the way. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:15, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The short answer is that there is very little in common between working class self-emancipation through communist politics aimed at all society governing all society, and highly centralised militarised party organisations made up of middle class intellectuals bent on seizing control of the bourgeois state. This analysis goes back to Trotsky's critiques of V.I. Lenin's thoughts on the party go back in 1905, and even earlier criticisms of the role of middle class intellectuals in socialism in general. The long answer is long. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:59, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Historically most communist countries were formed after long periods of crisis and war, e.g. the USSR, China, Afghanistan, East Germany. Such circumstances tend to breed authoritarian regimes of either left or right - note that democracy is recent and tenuous in most parts of the world. If you have a society sufficiently unstable to produce a communist revolution, it's unlikely to be in a good condition after the revolution.

Arguably there were "nicer" communist/socialist-leaning countries, but like Allende's Chile they were unable to resist destabilisation by right-wing forces, or like present-day Venezuela were forced to take increasingly totalitarian measures when faced with attempted coups and external influence. Moderate/reformist communists in Eastern Europe following WW2 were crushed by Stalin and successive Soviet leaderships. Power tends to corrupt, and to hold on to it in an unstable part of the world, you don't get far by being a nice guy. Nobody questions why fascism led to war and tyranny, but it too was often formed with more-or-less good intentions of ending crisis, instability, and weak government. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:16, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

"Under Capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism, it's the other way around." Seriously though, the idea is that the dictatorship is the people's, i.e. proletarian dictatorship. This would be like Apple saying "You own this ecosystem, it's yours." Meanwhile, they lock it down in your name... 82.234.207.120 (talk) 10:33, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Marxist-Leninism was never a fluffy peaceful shiny-happy-people ideology. It was all about the "proletariat" crushing the "bourgeoisie" to establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat," and since the proletariat wasn't going to spontaneously rise up as a class, the Party, as the "vanguard of the proletariat," was authorized to do all the crushing. With such a confrontational basis, it was to be expected that Lenin and his successors would establish a totalitarian state that would go to extreme lengths to squelch real and imagined enemies for decades. All of the Communist Bloc dictatorships were established through confrontation; the spread of Marxist-Leninism was not generally a consensus-building exercise. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:36, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I think all posters who try to pretend that the self-declared Communist nations were equivalent to� the self-declared Capitalist nations really do have their heads in the sand. There is no comparison between DDR and GDR; there is no comparison between the USA and the USSR. Yes, the capitalist nations did some nasty things, but their nastiness was never as systematic and widespread and horrible as the self-declared Communist nations. The Cold War ethos that considered Communism (as expressed, not theoretical) to be essentially equivalent to fascist totalitarianism was correct to a large degree. Capitalism has its deep problems and inequalities but has basic assumptions about liberty, freedom of speech, and due process that simply never existed in the Marxist-Leninist/Maoist states. To be sure, the self-declared Capitalist states did some real awfulness in the name of anti-Communism (propping up essentially fascist states, for example), but that doesn't let the Stalinists off the hook. One doesn't have to be rabidly anti-Communist to be clear-eyed about such a thing, just as one doesn't have to be a Royalist to think that Robespierre went too far. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Libyan flag?

So in almost all the articles that I have gone to which have an icon of the flag of Libya, the flag shown is the flag of the National Transitional Council or the old flag of Libya. But I thought that there were two governments that claimed to be the de jure government of Libya, although the NTC is pretty much the de facto government, as Gadhafi (or Gaddafi, or Qaddafi, however you spell him) is on the run and almost all of his stongholds have been defeated. Is that the reason? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

See National Transitional Council#Foreign relations. Most countries now recognize the NTC as the sole legitimate government. The editors at Template:Flagicon and it's related pages decided that this was reason enough to change the default Libyan flag to that of the NTC. —Akrabbim^talk 01:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

(EC) Yes, as you say, it is the recognized government presently. Therefore that is the flag used in our articles. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 01:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Why isn't the date of Jesus' crucifixion or birth known?

So if he really did cause a commotion in the temple and the authorities were after him, then why isn't the exact date of his crucifixion recorded? Was it simply not important enough to be recorded, or if it was indeed recorded, then these records have been lost, or is it related to the fact that Jesus never really became well-known and important until long after his death? And another related question, why isn't the birth date of Jesus known either? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 02:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

What makes you think the Romans kept records of any of the many thousands of people they executed or killed (such as in the gladiator arenas with lions attacking tied-up Jews, etc.) on an annual basis? He will (if he existed) have just been considered yet another criminal element by the Romans. Keeping records of all those they executed would have cost far too much, and would have been irrelevent. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:26, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I would guess that they did keep records, but just on papyrus, not carved into stone. Such records were unlikely to last very long. StuRat (talk) 02:29, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Possibly, but such records would likely have consisted more of the actual number of people for the day's crucifiction (after all, it was not an unusual form of execution), or some such, rather than people's names and what they'd done. The reason for the records would be more likely be to record the pay due to the executioners (all of the people involved in putting the people up on the cross), rather than to record the people who were actually being executed. Papyrus was expensive. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:49, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know, I thought the Romans would want records of births and deaths, for tax collection purposes, if nothing else. StuRat (talk) 03:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's what the census is for. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:08, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

And would Romans trust the Jews to report their population correctly, or would they insist on keeping records themselves ? StuRat (talk) 22:40, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Even the birthdates of people famous in their own lifetimes, and even some from recent history, are not necessarily known with certainty. And the death date of Jesus is implied by the timing of Passover, but it's not certain if it was the first or second night of Passover, hence the year can't be determined with absolute certainty. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:30, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

(EC) - There is the question of the census he (and his family) was supposed to have attended in Jerusalem when he was 12 (leading to him astounding the priests at the temple). Records of this census have been lost. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:35, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Of course another possible explanation for those dates not being recorded is that maybe Jesus never existed. (Believers need take no offence. After all, you believe.) HiLo48 (talk) 04:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Aye, and another possible assumption is that he may have been some invisible alien, but neither this, nor yours, are assumptions that our OP is bringing here to this table. The OP is asking from the point of view of if Jesus existed, though not explicitly saying his/her own beliefs. Seriously, to be asking a question like this, our OP must have already ruled out the assumption that Jesus never existed and is asking the question to get answers from an archaeological point of view, not a theistic/philosophical point of view. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 05:00, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I actually tried quite hard hard to work out the "assumptions that our OP is bringing here to this table", but couldn't be certain. They weren't obvious to me. Maybe our OP is being quite objective about the matter. HiLo48 (talk) 05:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

There's plenty of evidence that Jesus existed. The supernatural aspects are the debate. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:24, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

There's none from his lifetime. See Jesus myth theory. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:37, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me that if you needed to eradicate a person claiming to be God it might also be a great idea to eliminate any record. --DeeperQA (talk) 05:40, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

There were quite a few "false messiahs" running around, and most of them were dispatched and hands-washed of them. In the case of Jesus, they guessed wrong, but, hey, why blame the entire program just because of a single slip? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:45, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, ladies and gents, let's get back to the OP's question of archaeological evidence? Can we? Really? Go on, be a good doggie. Or do we just faff around on the unending debate on Jesus' and God's existence? Come on, guys, this is an archaeological question. Focus! Oh...my buddha.... --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 05:50, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The calendar used back then by the Romans was not accurate; today scholars believe Jesus was born in February or September 4 BC. The 25 December date was invented by the early Christian church to coincide with the pagan winter festival.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 05:55, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

What do those scholars use to calculate those two possible dates? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 06:01, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The appearance of Halley's Comet. The comet did not appear in the year 0.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 06:06, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

So, why is this not revealed to us by our teachers? I went to a catholic school, and the overwhelming majority of us did not care about Jesus. The overwhelming majority have also grown up to be skeptical of Jesus' existence (as we went to a school where education and educational achievement was expected of us, despite being a catholic school run by priests). The RC church must know certainly that they are losing their flock (in Europe), so why not give us this 'proof'? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 06:15, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The birthdate of Jesus is just not important.

—Wavelength (talk) 06:05, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

It appears to be important to the OP, hence the question. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 06:25, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Evidently, whoever authored the Bible considered knowledge of the birthday of Jesus to be unnecessary for Christians.— http://multilingualbible.com/2_timothy/3-16.htm; http://multilingualbible.com/2_timothy/3-17.htm.

—Wavelength (talk) 14:24, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

A perfectly detailed and unforgiving explanation of the exact relationship between Harry Potter and Hermione was never given by J.K.Rowling, but there are still people who want to know. Just as the OP wants to know the exact date of Jesus' birth, whether the original author(s) intended their readers to know or not. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:04, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I think Wavelength means to say that the answer to the question posed by the OP, "why isn't it known?" is "because it was not important enough to keep track of". 68.54.4.162 (talk) 02:36, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

See Star of Bethlehem for some attempts to work out his date of birth from the astronomical evidence.

@ Jeanne Boleyn: Halley's Comet is usually discounted as being close to a decade too early, but it is one of the possiblities. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 06:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Narutolovehinata5 -- Jesus really did not make much of a stir beyond Judea and Galilee and closely-neighboring areas during his lifetime. From the Roman point of view, he was a strictly-local troublemaker who presented more problems to the subordinate Jewish local authorities (Sadducees etc.) than he did to the Romans themselves. Therefore there was no reason why high-ranking Roman imperial officials would have paid much attention to him (except Pilate for a few days), and any "records" would have almost certainly been very local and ephemeral. Jesus' birth date is known with a fair degree of confidence to within seven years and his death date within three years, which is not at all unusual or greatly worrying for figures of ancient times -- the dates of Buddha and Zoroaster aren't even known to within a century! AnonMoos (talk) 08:01, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The First Jewish–Roman War in the AD 60s led to the destruction of the Jewish state, and there were many subsequent wars in the area, so any records kept by Jewish authorities would be even less likely to survive than Roman records. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:26, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

More recently, while the death date of Thomas Becket is known, his birth date is not, and he caused quite a commotion with the authorities. Googlemeister (talk) 14:23, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

An older Frontline program called From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians[1] does a pretty good job of explaining what was going on in the first century. It incorporates some archaeological and textual evidence and includes some interviews with scholars. The article on New Testament apocrypha states that it was in the 2nd Century when Christians wanted more detail about Jesus's life. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, not actually part of the bible has a bunch of myths associated with a child Jesus which are reminiscent of pagan mythology such as the infants Zeus, Hermes, and Dionysus. The hypothetical Q Document would have no details of Jesus's life at all. Biblical criticism contains some info on a more historical and scholarly approach to the bible. Gx872op (talk) 18:24, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

abuse of 911

I have several neighbors who are tired of Jehovah Witnesses and salesmen pounding at their door. In some cases they have posted notes saying they can only be reached by email or phone. However, there have been several cases of cell phone calls for help that triangulate to these properties. When the police arrive and get no response at the door they then take the liberty to break into the home.

Is this 1) the results of the Patriot Act, 2) preventable abuse of 911 call system, 3) an open door for the State to ignore: a) due process, b) invasion of privacy, c) the need for search warrants that protect citizens from abuse by the State, and 4) is there a way a genuine emergency can (must) be distinguished from a hoax before the police break in? --DeeperQA (talk) 05:33, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The 911 operator would typically try to discern what's really going on. If it sounds genuine, the police could well bust the door down on the grounds of a crime in progress, a legal justification that existed long before 9/11/01. And if it was a hoax call, I wouldn't be surprised if the caller would get a good-sized bill in the mail. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:43, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

What? No other means of preventing a government hoax perpetrated to intimidate (or worse) a member of the opposing party? --DeeperQA (talk) 09:05, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure what the question is. Can the question be restated in a simplified form? Bus stop (talk) 10:22, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

What real and absolute safeguards prevent a 911 call from being used by the authorities to sidestep things like probable cause? --DeeperQA (talk) 16:06, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Even the original question doesn't make sense. Who is it that's calling 911? I assumed it was the folks being visited by the JW's, but I'm not altogether sure. In any case, the followup suggests that the OP is merely trying to foment a debate. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:58, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

A debate with whom and about what? --DeeperQA (talk) 16:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Here's my interpretation if your rambling question: You suspect that someone (a neighbor?) is calling 911 to report some sort of crime or accident or what have you in another neighbor's house, or calling for help with their phone near the property, or something like that. The other neighbors are not home or do not answer the door, so the police break in.

To answer your specific questions, this has nothing to do with the Patriot Act. It's not clear it's actually abuse. If police have reason to believe a crime is in progress, or people are otherwise in danger (e.g. a gas leak), they can break in. This is not an abuse of due process, invasion of privacy, or the need for search warrants; it's an emergency-based principle that has been held up by judges again and again. What matters is if the police have probable cause to enter the establishment. This has a rather precise legal definition and there are things that do or do not stand up as probable cause.

The emphasis when it comes to answering 911 calls is to assume good faith, because if it is not a hoax, and they treat it like a hoax, that opens up the door for huge legal liabilities, bad P.R., and so on.

Abusing 911 is itself a crime. It is probably not too hard to figure out if someone is abusing 911 regularly, calling it on the same house again and again. So I suspect the police are not just doing this for kicks. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay Mr, 98 you are close to understanding the question. Consider the context as one in which the police look for ways around probable cause and may themselves fabricate a 911 call so they can enter without probable cause. Another example of such behavior is reading someone their Miranda Rights and then asking the person if they understand their rights and if the person answers either yes or no then the police are able to say the person was read their rights and voluntarily forfeited them by not remaining silent or if the person remains silent then charging them with resisting arrest without violence. This happens more often than you think in cases where a person may offend police ego or other sensibilities. The police are rewarded by the DA for convictions and for upholding the letter rather than the spirit of the law. --DeeperQA (talk) 16:01, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Eh? Just because someone didn't remain silent on one thing doesn't mean they've somehow 'waived' their Miranda rights on anything other then that specific issue. They can say yes and then remain silent on everything else. If they don't that either indicates they didn't understand their Miranda rights so shouldn't have said yes or they didn't wish to remain silent. Nil Einne (talk) 16:32, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

It seems my understanding of how the Miranda rights works in the US was a little bit wrong although I still don't understand what you were saying about the 'waiving rights' part. Miranda warning#Waiver notes the waiver must be 'clear and unequivocal'. It further notes most LEAs use written waiver forms for this purpose. I think it's quite clear a suspect simply answering yes or no to whether or not they understand their rights has not clearly and unequivocally waived their rights. It is true once a waiver has been granted, reenvoking the rights requires a 'clear and unequivocal' statement but as I said earlier, if the subject believes they've permanently waived the rights then they clearly didn't understand their rights (and if the subject wishes to remain silent they could just choose to remain silent, the interviewers may not leave but there's not much they can do if the person doesn't say anything). Our article notes without a source one state requires it be explicitly noted that Miranda rights are not a one time thing. Nil Einne (talk) 02:20, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

In this particular case, however, the occupant was suspected of being a closet Muslim or atheist and so someone decided the only way to find out was to get a look inside the person's house. What better way to perpetrate this cause than to dial 911 on a cell phone while on or close to the property and report an emergency so at least the police could get a look inside, one of which might be a local JW. --DeeperQA (talk) 16:21, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

How would a meddling neighbor find out if a closet Muslim or atheist lived in a residence if they called the police? The police would immediately determine that there was no emergency present. The police would not stick around trying to find out what the occupant's religious leanings were, and even if the police did see evidence of some religious affinity, it is not certain that the police would reveal this to the meddling neighbor. Bus stop (talk) 16:34, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the OP thinks Jehovah's Witnesses police officers reveal everything to other members of their religion? If they do, I suggest they withdraw their comments ASAP as that's an extremely offensive claim. Nil Einne (talk) 16:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Eh? Wikibooks:US Criminal Law/Searches without a warrant#The emergency exception suggests an anonymous call by itself usually isn't sufficient evidence for an emergency without corroborating information so at the very least said meddling neighbour is probably going to have to identify themselves, and risk being prosecuted if police decide they were just making it up. It also says, in case this wasn't obvious, they can only seize items in plain view. From reading it, said closeted individual may be at risk of having their property legally searched to determine if their is an emergency if when the police come said individuals tells the police to 'fuck off you stupid jw pigs' rather then explaining their is no emergency and politely answering any question. But if your meddling neighbour really wants the police to see whats in the house, a better bet is to break in to it himself and call the police that way they can see what in it when they come to arrest said neighbour [2] [3] [4]. Of course since despite all the problems in the US, it isn't illegal to be a Muslim or atheist, the police can't actually arrest the person who's house it is, even if he or she had big signs declaring they were a Muslim or atheist in their house, so only the neighbour would be going to jail. Nil Einne (talk) 16:39, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Bottom line to the question is what kind of ways can 911 call system be abused to escape the upholding of civil rights but which are in general not listed anywhere by a judicious review of cases. --DeeperQA (talk) 17:00, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

No, that was not your original question; and the above question can be restated as "Please list the ways to abuse the 911 call system that have not yet been exploited", which is outside the scope of this reference desk. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:31, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Here's a real-life anecdote: I once lived in a shared house where I became quite suspicious that the people on the top floor were running a meth lab. (They were continuously running a fan in the window, even in the coldest winter; there were all sorts of awful chemical smells; they were active up there at all hours; they didn't appear to actually live in the unit, just visit it; I once saw a huge amount of Sudafed in the seat of their car.) I talked to a lawyer I know about this (a defense lawyer, if you are curious — and not talking to me "as a lawyer," to be sure), and he said that if I really wanted someone to make sure it wasn't a meth lab, that I ought to call 911 and report a possible gas leak, whenever the neighbors weren't there. The firefighters would arrive, work the door open, and if there was a meth lab, call the police. Now this is a pretty round-about way to get something investigated, and calling 911 under false pretenses is a crime, so I decided not to do this. (I instead made contact with law enforcement in a more traditional fashion, and they performed a bunch of stakeouts, and eventually the people in question left the building anyway, so I don't really know what happened in the end. The law, incidentally, had been watching these guys already for other reasons.)

If I were to have done the 911 route, it wouldn't have been law enforcement or the fire department that were doing the wrong thing — it would have been me doing it. Morally I probably would have been in the right, but legally, no way. It might have been an abridgment of civil rights, for sure — but it would have been an abridgment by me, not the state. That's a significant difference. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:29, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay again Mr. 98. I agree and I would not make such a call because I try to subscribe to the Golden Rule. But where I live dirty tricks between the Republicans and Democrats takes up about 99.99% of their time. A fake 911 call would be nothing by the standard that governs their behavior. To make matters worse one party may populate the courts from County Civil to the State Supreme Court so that whatever they do they know they can get away with it if caught. It's not like the game of chess where you cannot get away with breaking the rules but far more sophisticated where getting away with breaking the rules is part of the game. --DeeperQA (talk) 23:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The OP describes suspicion of a fairly believable and very annoying exploit: pay cash for a prepaid mobile phone, store or trade it with a faraway friend to reduce the odds of archived video surveillance from the market, walk into your mark's front yard and dial 911, providing such suggestive stimuli as your imagination devises. Then turn it off, leave, watch hilarity ensue. Repeat as desired. Obnoxious indeed, but certainly not 100% foolproof especially if the mark invests in a videocamera of his own. I can't seriously picture passing the reform you'd need to prevent this from being possible - namely, a reform under which if you saw someone being raped in a mall bathroom, 911 would tell you you had to call the mall owner and get him to make the 911 call. It is clear that calls to police do come out of premises owned by others. It might be that the reform of some legal provisions regarding "good faith searches" could rule out certain types of evidence gotten pursuant to such a prank call, but that doesn't undo the disruption and intimidation. Wnt (talk) 20:12, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Still it seems like for the most part that while there needs to be freedom to contact the 911 operator and get emergency response without any hindrance whatsoever and tolerance for genuine errors and mistakes that calling 911 so the police will surprise your wife and her boyfriend in bed at the motel will be rewarded with the caller spending some time in jail, forfeiting a big chunk of cash and lousing all chance of the incident being used against his wife in court. --DeeperQA (talk) 23:29, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's a crime everywhere in the US to make a false 911 call, punishable with fine and/or jail, so you get that part of your wish for free. As for the evidence being inadmissible in court, I think that's a bad idea because that itself would be gameable. (Imagine the crack dealer who thinks he's about to be caught, making a fake 911 call, and getting all the cocaine in his house excluded from evidence.) By the way, I found this publication on the US DOJ website that notes another 911 abuse: Diversionary calls, where a drug dealer calls 911 from a remote location to get the cops away from his criminal activity. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:43, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

And adultery isn't illegal in the US so the only chance of the wife getting in trouble with the police would be if she were sleeping with someone underage or something else illegal. Of course her infidetally could come in to play in any divorce if the husband is able to get evidence but the husband faking a 911 call isn't going to help his case and if he's waiting to take pictures when the police break in, he's kind of given himself away. And he would be an idiot to do something like that when he could probably just pay the clerk at the motel to open the door. In case it isn't obvious to the OP, the legality of the police entry is largely a moot point since it isn't a criminal case and the police aren't the ones providing the evidence. Nil Einne (talk) 02:58, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually what truly surprises me is that no one has developed a virus that dials 9-1-1 and provides a convincing soundtrack of screaming and shots fired, whether using a DSP modem or nowadays as an actual cell phone virus. It would seem like such a virus would first cause tremendous mayhem and then essentially neutralize the 911 system for at least several days. Wnt (talk) 20:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Don't_stuff_beans_up_your_nose is appropriate here. Quest09 (talk) 23:05, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

What you're proposing is essentially a Distributed Denial-of-service attack. The operators would quickly get accustomed to the fake soundtrack and screen it out, methinks. If necessary, one would implement a Reverse Turing test. Yes, DDOS attacks can cause chaos. However, there exists a large body of r&d on resisting such attacks. 58.168.131.194 (talk) 05:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Lawrence v. Texas is a textbook example of a neighbor misusing 911 in circumstances almost identical to the above (consensual homosexual conduct) with the hoax call made by an alleged ex-lover. However, the plaintiffs chose not to dispute the legality of the police entry into the house, so I don't know how helpful a case it is. Any thoughts? 58.168.131.194 (talk) 05:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Last Queen of Rimatara

Who was the last Queen of Rimatara? Pictured here, center--KAVEBEAR (talk) 02:00, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

See here. The date given on the file page would seem to indicate Tamaeva IV, but the presence of a regent in the photograph suggests that it's probably Heimataura Tamaeva V, who seems in fact to have been the last queen. Deor (talk) 11:53, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

What language does the Rimataran speak? Tahitian? Because I was wondering why there seem to be a variation Temaeva and Tamaeva.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 18:34, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Autism/philosophy/psychedelia

Do you think, in a way, the autistic individual lives the perfect 'psychedelic' life? Upon thought we do realize that a psychedelic experience is very much internal, and very much constant... as such, considering that they're the most inwardly people, do you think autistic people get the 'full' experience? 62.255.129.19 (talk) 10:50, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

No. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:58, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

It says at the top of this page: "The reference desk does not answer requests for opinions or predictions about future events. Do not start a debate; please seek an internet forum instead." --ColinFine (talk) 14:01, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I've really no idea what you are referring to as a "psychedelic" life, but if you are curious about how autistic people perceive the world, one of the most vivid descriptions from the point of view of one high functioning autistic can be found in the works of Temple Grandin, who is extremely good at communicating her subjective states to neurotypical people. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Some psychedelic drugs have been dubbed by researchers as psychotomimetic or even "schizophrenomimetic"^[5], and schizophrenia has been argued to exist as an opposite extreme from autism controlled by some of the same genes. So in theory (my back of the envelope theory that is, not mainstream medicine...) administering a light dose of psychedelics should reduce autistic tendencies. I would be very curious to see what happens if this is actually tried on autistic children, especially those having trouble communicating otherwise, but beyond doubt such an experiment would be viewed by many as monstrously unethical. In any case the odds that so many rank generalizations really add up into a causative chain rather than disintegrating in a web of unrelated effects is probably pretty small. Wnt (talk) 19:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Praise for competitors

Which commercial entities (persons or organizations) have publicly praised their competitors?
—Wavelength (talk) 14:32, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Both Microsoft and Apple Inc. have said many good things about one another over the past many years. Of course, some are backhanded compliments, but others are serious. In general, Microsoft has praised Apple's fine-tuned product development and advertising strategy. Apple has praised Microsoft's ability to constantly push to support everything, not just hardware produced in-house. -- kainaw™ 17:03, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I imagine that the most common scenario for this is professional sports teams; it is routine for every team's owners, coaches, and players to praise their counterparts after every game. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:28, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Didn't Bill Gates own stock in Apple? That might explain why he would praise them. As for sports teams, they are to some extant also partners. Hot Stop talk-contribs 21:39, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Microsoft copies ideas of Apple (a form of praise) and even develops software for Mac's: Microsoft Office for Mac 2011

Microsoft worked with Apple frequently in the past. Applesoft BASIC was a port of Microsoft BASIC made for the Apple II computers, and Microsoft Works began as an Apple Macintosh software suite and predated the Microsoft Office line of productivity software. While consumers represent a rivalry of "PC vs. Mac" (and by extension of Windows vs. Mac OS), the two companies don't actually compete directly on much except the operating systems. Apple has long been a consumer electronics company primarily; it doesn't even sell its OS on the open market. Microsoft has mainly been a software company (XBOX not withstanding), and its software has been availible for use on many platforms, from UNIX to Mac OS to its own operating systems. There actually isn't many items you can walk into a store and comparison shop for a "Microsoft" vs. an "Apple" version of; they really don't sell the same stuff at all. --Jayron32 04:44, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Be it in sports or conventional business, praising your competitors gives them nothing they can rally around to try and defeat you. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:54, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Macy's in Miracle on 34th Street is the archetypal, if originally fictional, example. 69.171.160.26 (talk) 04:45, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

It's common at awards ceremonies. Most industries these days have awards ceremonies. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:32, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

If by "Publicly praising" you mean "knowingly hurting your own business", i've never seen it. "Publicly" is an important word in your question. Between competitors, representatives will genuinely compliment other companies for having a nicer product, lower prices, fantastic sales, etc. Towards possible clients any compliment will be something like "Apple really beat us implementing a mouse! (but we did a better job including right click so if you'd have to choose now...)" or "IBM was so good, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment (but times have changed)". Saying "Our product X is worse and more expensive than Y sold by our competitor (and there is no "but", please have us go bankrupt)" is something only Francisco d'Anconia would say. Joepnl (talk) 21:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The Internet Explorer team has a tradition of sending cake to the Firefox team when they release a new version of Firefox (not sure if this will continue now there's a new version every fortnight). --Kateshortforbob _talk 11:21, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Indibilis and Mandonius - ancient Spain

How many tribes did Indibilis and Mandonius directly control during the Mutiny at Sucro in 206 BC?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 14:55, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

When you asked about that mutiny earlier it came out that the only account is by Polybius, and we pointed you to a full version of it. What are you hoping for here? Looie496 (talk) 15:33, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and I appreciated that as I was able to develop an article from that. However there is no article on Indibilis and Mandonius. Polybius talks of Andobales and Mandonius and the Mutiny at Sucro in Book 11.28 however did not indicate how many tribes they may have controlled. Scipio Africanus indicates he could have easily conquered Andobales' army, but how many tribes did he have control of and how big would the potential army be? I imagine there would be some ancient sources that talk about Andobales and Mandonius (Mandonius and Indibilis), but so far I have not been able to find them.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 16:10, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Ironworkers and window installers on One World Trade Center

What's the average hourly wage of the guys walking across the beams (not the crane operator) installing more beams? How about the ones installing the windows? 69.243.220.115 (talk) 22:53, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

For New York, the average steelworker made

$34.15 an hour and the mean annual salary is $71,030. www.ehow.com/facts_6915469_average-steelworker-salary.html Rmhermen (talk) 17:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I bet they get some overtime too... Googlemeister (talk) 18:24, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I expect that overtime is common, since it gets the job done and shortens the need for construction financing, before the revenue stream from rentals or completion payments happens. Ironworkers rarely work 52 weeks a year, unless they have a job such as maintenance staff at a facility. They might work for months, then be collecting unemployment for months until they get hired for the next big project. Edison (talk) 19:32, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Country of origin of Northern Irish Protestants

Our article on the Plantations of Ireland states that most of them came from the Scottish Lowlands and from England. I would like to know how many of them were Lowlanders and how many English, whether it be 80% Scottish and 20% English or whatever. --Belchman (talk) 23:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

That's impossible to tell, Scottish people are in so many ways intermingled with Englishmen, that you can't count them apart. That's like Catalans and Andalusians, they are so mixed together that nobody know who came from where. Quest09 (talk) 00:26, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I meant: Where did the original settlers come from? In the case of Catalonia after the wave of Andalusian migration in the 1960s the population more or less doubled; so one can say that, roughly, half of Catalonia's population is of mostly Andalusian descent. --Belchman (talk) 00:32, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Our article Plantation of Ulster states that in the 1660s, Scots were 20% of Ulster's population, but 60% of its British population. By 1720, however, Scots were an absolute majority in Ulster. If we assume that the native Irish and the English-derived populations of Ulster each grew by 50% during this period (a period of population growth throughout Europe), and if we assume that in 1720, Scots had grown to 55% of Ulster's population through immigration, then an algebraic solution suggests to me the English-derived population would have been just under 10% of Ulster's total in 1720. In terms of the British (or in effect Protestant) population of Ulster, this suggests that it was about 18% of English descent and 82% of Scottish descent as of 1720, when the main period of the Plantation was complete. Marco polo (talk) 01:00, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Does your algebraic solution contemplate the case that someone could be both (regarding origin) - Scottish and English? That's the same case of Catalonia: if the population increased in the 60s by 100%, mainly of Andalusian descend, the present population of Catalonia is not 50% Andalusian, but something much higher than that. Unless you assume that each group of people interbreed within its borders. Quest09 (talk) 01:04, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

It is true that by the late 18th century, generations of intermarriage would have made it difficult to distinguish those of English from those of Scottish descent. However, during the early generations after immigration, these groups would have been distinct, and religious differences (Presbyterian Scots versus Anglican Englishmen) would have tended to maintain some separation. (Families would have discouraged children from marrying members of the other community and attending a different church.) The facts in our article, anyway, suggest that officials gathering numbers were still making a distinction in 1720. Marco polo (talk) 01:05, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

There was also considerable French Huguenot immigration to Ulster as can be borne out by the French names one finds in Northern Ireland such as Molyneaux, Camplisson, and Marchant, etc. It was the Huguenots who had set up the linen mills. There were also Welsh immigrants and let us not forget the huge amount of intermarriage that took place between Catholics and Protestants from the earliest days of the Ulster Plantation. Another thing, many Protestants today are the descendants of Irish Catholics who converted to Protestantism to avoid persecution and to inherit property under the draconian penal laws that were enacted against Irish Catholics following the victory of William III at the Battle of the Boyne. Hence today one finds in Northern Ireland Protestants bearing Catholic surnames such as Kelly, Murphy and O'Neill and Catholic bearing planter surnames such as Adams, Morrison and Crawford. Like all aspects of Northern Ireland, nothing is completely black or white. It's far more complicated.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 06:40, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Nozick and racism?

I am writing a little paper but I have stumbled in a discussion which bothers me: If justice is defined as a situation where a good has been aquired in a correct manner (as Robert Nozick does), would the transaction still be just (according to nozick) if the society is plagued by inequality based on social norms such as heterosexism, racism etc? In theory, this could mean that the transaction is in some way inherently unjust despite being based on free will. Has Nozick written anything about injustices based upon social norms? could anyone point me in the right direction? /Marxmax (talk) 23:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

AFAIK, transactions produce inequalities, which is fine, according to Nozick, if the transaction was a free exchange among informed participants. Further transactions, after inequalities have arisen, should be fair too. Quest09 (talk) 00:13, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an article on "Equality of Opportunity", section 7.1 of which is entitled "The Libertarian Critique: Robert Nozick’s Version.". Gabbe (talk) 10:47, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

September 12

Irish word óglaigh

What does the word óglaigh in Óglaigh na hÉireann mean? By that I'd like an explanation of the meaning of the word in English rather than an approximate English language translation, because, apparently, the word is rather hard to translate. --Belchman (talk) 00:05, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

It is explained in detail here. (Hopefully you'll be able to view the page I am linking to -- Google Book previews often show different sets of pages to different viewers.) Looie496 (talk) 06:37, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. That's exactly what I was looking for. --Belchman (talk) 10:58, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

what do mba's know?

could you guys link to like opencourseware but for mba's? (this is the reference desk after all). I know a lot of programmer-types are self-educated, and that means they've gotten four years or six of higher education just "over the wire" -- a lot of mba programs are one year. so other than the connections, what do these guys (mba's) know? 82.234.207.120 (talk) 00:47, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

p.s. i do realize that this knowledge might be secret, so that it is not as widely diffused over the internet as programming knowledge is, which has a culture of openness and sharing, etc. if so perhaps the best I could do is buy the same textbooks an mba uses? references to these is equally appreciated... 82.234.207.120 (talk) 00:47, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

As someone else said before: "You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library." – Will Hunting. 01:00, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

All of the people I've known in MBA programs said that 90% of it is connections and a fancy sounding degree that is mandatory for getting hired at a lot of places. The other 10% is musing about business strategy, basic investing and accounting, and taxes. That's just what I've picked up over the grapevine, anyway. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I understand that some MBA programs include mathematically oriented courses on data-based decision making, but operations research is not really something that can be taught in such a short time. Thus, at least some MBA's know that the field of operations research exists and can be useful. 130.188.8.11 (talk) 10:20, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

There's the [[6]] for of us who do not believe that advanced business knowledge is a privilege of some. Quest09 (talk) 11:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The decline of Native American? And the discovery of America

I read that the population of America in North and South were declined a lot in around 15 to 16 century when the European came. It mainly because of disease that cause a lot of people died. My question is why native Americans are the only one who are dying because of disease but not the new immigrant people from Europe?Trongphu (talk) 03:09, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

And why America was not found until Christopher Columbus first found it in the end of 15 century? It should have been way earlier Boats were available long time before that. People were like going all over the places to trade long before that.Trongphu (talk) 03:09, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Vikings were aware of it centuries earlier, but it was pretty far away and at that point there didn't seem much reason to hang around. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:13, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

You may be interested in our article about the Columbian Exchange. In particular that it mentions syphilis was transferred for the New World to the Old. Schyler (exquirere bonum ipsum) 03:16, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Great table in that article, thanks. Comet Tuttle (talk) 04:41, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To answer your first question, you should read the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus which provides some great insightes on the pre-Columbian state of the New World. And yes, the population decline of Native Americans was directly due to Eastern Hemisphere diseases that were brought to the West by Europeans. It worked both ways, though. There is some reason to believe that, while the small pox and other such diseases went west across the Atlantic, syphillis made the return voyage. The people in the Americas definately ended up worse off, however. As to the second question, there were undoubtedly people who arrived in the Americas before Columbus. Vinland predates his arrival by almost 500 years. That represents the only positive confirmation of Europeans in the Americas prior to Columbus, but there have been other possible candidated of Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact which vary in reliability from the very likely, to the possible, to the not very likely. --Jayron32 03:17, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Yellow fever took a huge toll on Europeans in the New World (it, however, probably originated in Africa), but not enough to prevent Europeans from arriving in large numbers. Acroterion (talk) 03:23, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The first known (or believed) European to sight the New World was Bjarni Herjólfsson. I always figured he didn't get the credit in textbooks, because nobody could pronounce it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:26, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, Norse exploration of the New World, while it happened, didn't lead to widespread colonization. Within less than a century, the Norse had all but abandoned settlement of the Americas (save Greenland, which barely held on until right around the Columbian discoveries; before being abandoned) while the Columbian explorations led to a massive colonization of the Americas. While Columbus wasn't there first, his was the voyage which had the greater historical impact on later events. --Jayron32 03:32, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

It may not be a coincidence that by 1492, gunpowder was in rather wider use in Europe than it had been during the 10th century (especially as it hadn't been brought to Europe yet). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:37, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

You misunderstand the epidemics. These weren't new diseases, these were old diseases brought by the European colonists themselves. Smallpox, influenza, and even measles. Diseases which may still be fatal to Europeans, but usually only minor annoyances as their bodies had long adapted to them.

However, geographically isolated populations do not develop the same resistances to the same diseases. An American visiting Asia may get sick from drinking stream water a native can drink safely, and vice versa. Country border immunization requirements is partly based on this fact, as getting immunized lets your body 'experience' diseases which we may haven't encountered yet, building natural immunity safely.

Native Americans however, were isolated from the rest of the world for thousands of years (earliest ancestors of Native Americans came from Asia through the Bering strait at about the same time that humans began learning to build cities: 16,500 to 13,000 years ago) and thus did not regularly come into contact with other humans. The diseases brought by Europeans were new to them. Having no resistance to diseases like measles whatsoever, these new diseases were devastating.

The estimates of the total death toll from epidemics is as high as 90% to 95% of the total population before European contact. Which is why there are far more descendants of colonists in the Americas today than comparable European colonies in Asia and Africa. See Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas and History of smallpox. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 03:50, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The Arrow of Disease points (mostly) one way, as a Discover magazine article explains. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:54, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Interesting article. From what it says, it appears that one hypothesis is that the source of most "crowd diseases" (diseases that spread via close human contact like small pox or cholera or the like) is from domesticated animal vectors, and the lack of widespread animal domestication in the Americas (compared to Eurasia) means that there weren't any such diseases availible for transmitting to Europe; while Europe was teaming with them because of the animal domestications. It is a compelling explanation as to why Europe didn't carry back many devastating American diseases; there just may not have been any. --Jayron32 05:05, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Has someone pointed to OP to guns, germs, and steel yet? It is an essential read, even if you disagree with the conclusions. --Lgriot (talk) 08:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I was about to. The thesis with regard to disease is what Jayron is discussing. Europe had animals and the animals allowed it to build up great centers of population density. The combination of being around lots of animals and in large populations means you get lots of epidemic diseases. Over time you develop partial or complete immunity to them if you're around them a lot. You then go over to some place that has never had any of these diseases, and they get wiped out pretty quick. Instead of waiting for them to recover on the own pace, you take over. Consider what would have happened if, say, the Saracens had invaded Europe right after the Black Death... --Mr.98 (talk) 12:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Why didn't Vikings introduce diseases to the Americas ?

Or did they ? StuRat (talk) 15:20, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure they were in America proper. Quest09 (talk) 15:21, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The Americas =\= America. Canada is part of the Americas (and they are known to have lived there for at least a bit), but not in America (where there is some questionable evidence that they visited). Googlemeister (talk) 15:32, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think anyone will ever know; the documentary evidence consists of some garbled stories in the Norse sagas. They seem to have had rather limited contact with the locals. "(Viking) settlements in continental North America aimed to exploit natural resources such as furs and in particular lumber, which was in short supply in Greenland. It is unclear why the short-term settlements did not become permanent, though it was in part because of hostile relations with the indigenous peoples, referred to as Skrælings by the Norse." Alansplodge (talk) 15:41, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

StuRat -- They probably didn't have significant domestic animals with them at L'Anse aux Meadows (which was only inhabited for a relatively brief time by a few people in any case). They may have spread disease in Greenland, but Greenland was not very well-located as a site for diseases to spread to the Americas... AnonMoos (talk) 15:45, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The Norse presence in the Americas was limited to Greenland and, as far as we know, the island of Newfoundland. Their ships may have explored or occasionally come ashore elsewhere in what is now eastern Canada, but probably not long enough to have more than a brief hostile interaction with the indigenous people, probably insufficient for much contagion of disease. Even in Greenland, we know that the Norse avoided interaction with the ancestors of the Inuit. Most such interaction was hostile. The Norse avoidance of any but brief and hostile interactions with indigenous people may have prevented contagion. This pattern of interaction was very different from that of later European colonizers, who variously enslaved, engaged in trade with, or intermarried with the indigenous population. Those patterns of interaction could and did result in a lot more contagion. Also, Greenland, like Newfoundland, was an island, whose indigenous inhabitants had little interaction with mainlanders. If the Norse did transmit any Old World diseases to indigenous people in Greenland or Newfoundland, they are likely to have died off before they were able to transmit the disease on to mainlanders. By settling in the most densely populated parts of the New World mainland, areas linked to other parts of the New World by indigenous trade routes, later European colonists gave rise to contagion that spread rapidly among indigenous populations. Marco polo (talk) 16:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

To address the second question, several innovations in navigation and ship design led to the ability to make long distance journeys without the need to stay near coastal areas. These changes made Columbus's voayage possible (bit not pleasant). See also Age of Discovery. Rmhermen (talk) 17:40, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Just a thought on "why didn't the Vikings pass on their diseases to the indigenous peoples of the Americas?": it is possible that there had been regular contact with these peoples who lived on the coast for millenia, and so coastal populations would be more resistant to European infections than those living inland. My reason for saying this is that evidence of continuous trading links between European coastal communities is growing through recent archaeological discoveries. I even remember reading about the discovery of tobacco leaves in Egyptian burials. Later European contacts were more sustained and penetrated deeper into the American interior, thus giving more chance for indigenous peoples to catch these diseases. I'll go and have a look for some links and get back here. (posting later) Well we do have an article on everything: Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:04, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

But that would just lead to the question "if coastal peoples in the Americas were exposed to European diseases, why didn't they pass them on to those living in the interior ?". Certainly trade links existed there, as well. StuRat (talk) 18:19, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

does America still have social mobility?

It used to be, anyone could work hard and become a millionaire or billionaire in America (me, for instance). Is this still so? If it is, I don't get why people suggest you should tax the rich for their "extra" money, as wouldn't this mean that this would stop being true? I mean, I wouldn't give up all the investment in time that it takes to get rich when the extra money would just be for taxes, I'd rather just watch TV in that case... It seems like I'm not getting something... 82.234.207.120 (talk) 10:51, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Surely as a millionaire/billionaire, you understand that millionaires still have much, much more disposable income than the average person, even in countries with extremely progressive tax codes? --140.180.16.144 (talk) 11:59, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it was ever the case that anyone could become a millionaire or billionaire. You were supposed to need talent for a start. And luck. Wasn't there meant to be an element of risk-taking? Itsmejudith (talk) 12:05, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it was or is the case that "anyone" would be excluded from becoming a millionaire or billionaire. There is no automatic exclusion of some people, which doesn't really mean that people are climbing the social ladder, however. Quest09 (talk) 12:33, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Right, anyone can do it. Talent and luck are not really required, though I suppose retroactively you could call hard work "luck". In my experience the harder you work in America the higher you get. Of course, this does not apply to blindly applying makeup to celebrity asses, it requires career planning. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 12:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Statisticly speaking, there is very little social mobility in America; less so than in countries with better social safety nets.(see [7] for just one story). Americans believe their society to be more egalitarian than it really is; while in the U.S. there are anecdotal examples of "rags to riches" stories of people who move from abject poverty to obnoxious wealth, such examples are so rare as to be insignificant in the overall picture of the U.S. social class structure. America lacks a named aristocracy, and has no legal hurdles to achievement of wealth, so people seem to believe that means that anyone can do anything in America; that isn't actually borne out by actual data, where very few people are able to escape generational poverty, and many wealthy powerful people are that way because they were born into wealthy powerful families. The deal is, this is pretty much unchanged from past generations. The myth of social mobility in America is far reaching and quite old. --Jayron32 12:48, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

In many ways this all depends on what you mean by "social mobility"... if we equate that term to "economic mobility"... certainly it is possible for people to change their economic status. That mobility is more common at the lower end of the spectrum... with people who work hard going from poverty to working class, and those who are successful in business moving up to the middle classes (of course mobility also goes the other way... some people fall from middle class to poverty). It's much rarer to go from middle to upper class (but it is possible... Bill Gates being a prime example).

However, economic status is only part of social mobility in the US. There is also a social divide between "old money" and "new money". The gilded age's self made millionaires, like John D. Rockefeller, were considered "Nouveau riche" and socially unacceptable by those who made their money in earlier generations. Rockefeller's children, on the other hand, were considered extremely socially acceptable. Blueboar (talk) 13:28, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

• So, having money that you didn't earn yourself is more honorable than having money you earned? Quest09 (talk) 13:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, because those people will presumably have been raised in a "cultured" way, and thus be sophisticated, whereas the "new money" people tend to be obnoxious, in theory. However, Donald Trump and Paris Hilton manage to be both "old money" and obnoxious. StuRat (talk) 14:38, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

When you say "more" in regards to economic mobility, you need to make clear you are speaking from a purely American context. Within America, and compared to no other country, it is easier to make smaller changes to ones income than it is to make larger changes. That is pretty much all you can say; that someone will find it easier to raise their income level from, say, $10,000 per year (below the poverty line) to say $40,000 per year (say, squarely "middle class") than it is to go from $40,000 to $400,000 per year (into the realm of the very wealthy). However, that doesn't mean that economic mobility is more prevalent in America than in other countries; far from it, when comparing moves between economic groups in America to other well-developed countries, America lags behind; that is over the past several centuries more Swedes, say, have been able to move up the economic ladder than Americans. That is the relevent data to deal with; not comparing how poor Americans fare compared to richer Americans, but rather how poor Americans compare to the poor in other countries with similar economic development. And America frankly doesn't do all that well. See also Gini coefficient, which deals with related (though not identical) measurements of economic distribution. --Jayron32 13:37, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and Bill Gates isn't a very good example of a "rags to riches" type of economic mobility in America. He's more of a "riches to more riches" story; his father was a prominent and wealthy attorney in Washington State; the term "upper middle class" (as used in Gates's article) in America is a codeword for "rich and powerful". In America, everyone is middle class; as both "wealthy" and "poor" have perjorative connotations, so the rich describe themselves as "upper middle class" and the poor describe themselves as "lower middle class", even though the former often have millions of dollars in wealth and the latter have no savings and live "paycheck to paycheck". Middle class is a meaningless term. Gates economic move went from growing up wealthy enough to not have to ever worry about money to being wealthy enough to not have to ever worry about money, but even moreso. The Gates story is more about moving from a lot of money to a shitload of money than from poorness to richness. --Jayron32 13:45, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Although Bill Gates' story might not be an example of "rags to richer", his co-founders at Microsoft, which in some instances also made billions, indeed are examples of something like it. Quest09 (talk) 14:17, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Jayron... I think we are actually in agreement here... At least in America, it is quite common for people to move up (or down) one rung on the economic ladder... it is quite rare to move multiple rungs (and, yes, it is very difficult to move up to the highest rung). Rags to riches may be a myth... but the traditional "American Success Story" is valid... however, it's a multi-generational story. A poor man works hard and makes enough to move into solid "working class" status. His son goes to college, starts a business and moves into the middle classes... the grand children grow the business, make more money and move into the upper-middle class. Of course not every family ends up being that successful in three generations. But enough follow the pattern that the "story" is valid. Blueboar (talk) 14:24, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

There's Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, who started out as an illegal immigrant from Mexico who jumped the fence, got into America, somehow got enrolled in college here, and by having a good brain and working hard and no doubt being extremely lucky, is now a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University. I think he "overcame" the citizenship problem by a temporary amnesty program during the Reagan years (incredible luck again). 20.137.18.50 (talk) 14:30, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but the plural of "anectdote" is not "data". Yes, individual people have raised themselves up by their own bootstraps, but not enough to make the U.S. look all that good compared to other nations. For every Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, there are thousands of individuals who have lived in poverty their whole lives, and whose children will, and their children will; the number of people who are in that situation in the U.S. is far greater than in other contries of comparable levels of development. --Jayron32 17:27, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with you, and the point of bringing up this incredibly lucky guy was to show how much plain luck outside of one's locus of control is a factor in success. I'd suspect population is a problem that makes it harder for people to get ahead in the US. Do any of the developed countries have more humans-per-job opening than the US, I wonder? 20.137.18.50 (talk) 17:43, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with others that BG is a good example of a riches to riches and a favourite example of mine. There's no denying his tremendous achievements. But and from his and his family's history I'm guessing there's a good chance they'll agree with me, he was likely greatly helped by his family background. He was using computers via his school when I'm guessing few people had ever seen one in person. He went in to business at an early age (I mean the stuff before Micro-Soft), his business acument and skill must have helped a lot but I'm guessing so did his connections. He left university to form his own business (with his parents support) obviously always a risk but a much smaller risk if you know you can likely also count on them to support you if you do your best but fail (and realisticly he probably could have gone back to Harvard or some other university if he needed to not like someone on his scholarship). I know Micro-Soft had success early on, helped I'm sure by BG (and PAs) skills but I wonder whether they needed any initial funding (for example I'm a bit unclear Monte Davidoff worked for free with the hope for future payoffs or was a paid coder) but if they did, there's a fair chance even if it didn't come directly from his family (or PAs) their connections helped them get it. P.S. PA is normally considered the only other Microsoft co-founder AFAIK (and supported by our article), although there must be others involved who got rich. I wouldn't consider PA a rags to riches story. Perhaps his family wasn't as rich as BG's but he went to the same school which strongly suggests they weren't exactly poor. The article on him also mentions his father was 'an associate director of the University of Washington libraries' not someone you would expect to be poor. At best, perhaps the middle class to extremely wealthy someone mentioned earlier. Incidentally, PA is sometimes said to be the person who got rich off BG. I don't think this is fair, but I would also suggest it's fair to say it's not clear how well he would have done were it not for BG (the same perhaps for BG vs PA although perhaps to a lesser extent) so issues of 'luck' (for lack of a better word) do come in to it. Nil Einne (talk) 07:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd say it's pretty safe to say that BG and PA can attribute much of their financial success to Tim Paterson. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 16:39, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Seems like these studies (I found for instance "Cross Country Differences in Intergenerational Earnings Mobility", G Solon, 2002) are based on the average wage in America and the average wage in Sweden, and on the assumption that people earning the average wage in whatever country they are in must belong to the same economic class. If I've got that right, it seems like a totally arbitrary thing to study. It may be easier to get rich for Sweden in Sweden, but you're still in Sweden afterwards, and have not become a rich American, and you would not be rich if you took your Kronor to America. Using absolute measures would be hard because of exchange rates. Maybe something based around a market basket?  Card Zero  (talk) 15:08, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it would be valid if we were comparing, say Zimbabwe or Papua New Guinea, whose level of development was vastly different than the U.S., and whose standard of living wasn't measured on the same scale. Sweden and the U.S. are pretty much indistinguishable, developmentally speaking; they both fit into the highest category of the Human Development Index, though the U.S. ranks slightly higher on the overall number, Sweden ranks higher than the U.S. on inequality-adjusted HDI. The idea that America is THE BEST is taken as axiomatic to the point that no one is willing to concede that anywhere in the world could be comparable in terms of standard of living. Even you show this by downplaying any studies which show better standard of living in Sweden by saying something to the effect of "you're still in Sweden afterwards", as though we should somehow axiomatically accept that it can never be as good as the U.S. That doesn't make any sense. --Jayron32 17:27, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Mapping the range of incomes in one country onto the range of incomes in another, and assessing mobility within the two ranges as if they were the same thing, is not comparing like for like. The standard of living in the two countries being comparable does not mean that the ranges of income are therefore equivalent. There are presumably super-rich people in the US who have no counterpart in Sweden. Have the richest from both countries been lumped together into the same class? Is what's truly being said here just in Sweden, you can reasonably hope to get quite rich, but in America, you can only with great difficulty become super-rich? That would be a non-sequitur. For the sake of appearing unbiased I could also point to the super-poor, and ask whether the study says in Sweden, you can reasonably hope to escape from mild financial embarrassment, but in America, you can only with great difficulty escape abject poverty - again, it's not measuring economic mobility between the same economic classes. It's just making a false comparison, and producing apparent disparity of economic mobility as a result, GIGO-style.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

See Horatio Alger myth. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 13:12, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Some factors which promote social and economic mobility:

1) Free education, from preschool through college/university, for the poor.

2) Free child-care for the poor.

3) Free job-training for the poor.

4) Free medical care for the poor, including birth control.

5) Free basic transportation for the poor.

6) Free basic housing for the poor. (Nothing luxurious, though.)

7) Free basic, healthy food for the poor (no pop, alcohol, tobacco, junk food, etc.).

8) Free business clothing for the poor.

9) A jobs program which provides jobs to the poor directly.

10) Banning colleges/universities from having lower admission standards for "legacies" or those who come with a large financial contribution.

11) Basic communications for the poor. These days, this might include a basic cell phone (no camera, etc.), and access to a basic computer (no games) for email.

Note that many of these items are expensive, and the money to pay for them can't come from the poor, thus it must come from those making more money. This is a progressive income tax. Also note that the benefits to the poor can't be so good so as to remove incentives to work for something better. Food programs, for example, shouldn't provide anything beyond the basics. Perhaps all processed foods should be banned, and the poor should only get raw produce provided (of course, this would require that they have cooking facilities). Just giving the poor a large chunk of cash to spend is also a bad idea, as many of them would waste it on tobacco, alcohol, illegal drugs, lottery tickets, vacations, cable TV, widescreen TVs, and other entertainment.

The reason these things help the poor move up is that, without them, they might think "I'd like to go to that job interview, but they couldn't call me to tell me when it is, I have nobody to watch the kids, can't get there, have no idea how to behave in a job interview, have no decent clothes to wear, have no place to shower first, don't have the college degree or job experience they said they require, and might pass out from low blood sugar". StuRat (talk) 14:53, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if 10) is doable. Universities which do that are the private ones. Quest09 (talk) 15:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure even private universities receive some state and federal money which could be pulled. For example, all student loans and grants to students at such colleges could be pulled (although this could backfire and hurt the poor more). Perhaps there are also federally funded research programs which could be pulled. StuRat (talk) 18:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how realistic a lot of this is. It seems to me that if one could have all that without needing a job, there would be little reason not to accept you lot in life and live a poor life of leisure. Googlemeister (talk) 15:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I addressed that. The "life of leisure" would be raw foods, a bunk in a homeless shelter, a bus pass, but no car, no vacations, no TV, no video games, no alcohol, no designer clothes, no jewelry, no fur coats, etc. Most people would want more than that. StuRat (talk) 15:44, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I admit that I am very cynical, but I feel that this list is not based on reality. For example, America has free education from kindergarten to 12th grade. Where I live (Charleston, SC), it is very easy to find children of the poor who do not go to school by order of their parents. Instead, they are tasked with panhandling the tourists until they are too old to be "cute". Then, they are drug couriers (because juveniles don't do hard time). Then, when they turn 18, they are just plain criminals. How does having free education help the poor? What is required is forced education, not free education. Health care is similar. Job training is similar. If the poor refuse it, making it free doesn't help anything. All it does is create a new tax and a new office in government. -- kainaw™ 15:37, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, inevitably some portion of the poor won't be ambitious enough to move up. However, others will. School is mandatory up to a certain age, although I'd extend that to 18, where they then can decide for themselves if they want to try to improve their lives. Also note that free schools are often pathetic, in the poorer areas of the US. They need to be improved, part of which requires more money (from the middle class and rich). I assume when you said "What is required is forced education, not free education", you meant it should be forced AND free, since, of course, the poor would have no way to pay for it otherwise. StuRat (talk) 15:48, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think one can deny that the poor, proportionally, make more bad choices with regards to taking advantage of educational opportunities. It may, however, be more productive to ask what it is about the social and economic context that the poor live in that leads them to make those bad choices. It is not outside of the realm of possibility to cause better choices to be made by providing the poor with a different environment in which to make choices. The difference between economic disparity and socioeconomic mobility among countries of similar development levels may have more to do with how those countries treat their poor in ways that frame the choices the poor make, than anything else. --Jayron32 18:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

And some of those bad choices may be due to a lack of education, too. If you don't know some math, then the rent-to-own furniture at $100 a month may sound like a far better deal than buying new furniture, and a lottery ticket that can pay off a million dollars tonight might sound like a far better choice than a savings account that only goes up 2% per year. StuRat (talk) 18:45, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but you suppose that children are going to pay attention in school and do their homework merely because you demand that they do; and when they don't it appears your attitude is "fuck'em, they had their chance!" My point is just that that specific attitude is a costly one, economically; speaking of investment it seems that if we can invest more wisely in making it easier for children of the abjectly poor to choose to pay attention in school and do their homework, it ends up being better for our society in the end. There are societies which do a much better job of that sort of thing than the U.S. does, and those nations which do also correlate to better economic mobility and higher levels of education than the U.S. has. --Jayron32 18:52, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea of straight bribery to get kids to do their homework. It works in early grades, where a sticker may be enough of an incentive. However, in later grades, when kids aren't influenced so cheaply, we'd need to give out things like music CDs. (Giving at-risk kids wads of cash is probably not a good idea, though.) In middle-class homes, presumably the parents reward kids for doing homework and/or punish them for failing to do so, but, in poor homes, the parents may not be as reliable or able to do so. StuRat (talk) 19:15, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Superficial and doesn't address the underlying problems. Better options are to provide a safe environment for children to live in, provide additional after school programs for both academic and social development, to provide better employment opportunities for their parents, to have a better social safety net so parents can better provide for their children's needs. There's not much you can do in school to help a kid has to dodge bullets every day to get there. --Jayron32 02:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

There's always boarding school, to take the kids out of the bad environment. StuRat (talk) 16:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Another method some areas have tried is the compliment of a progressive income tax, where minimum wage earners have their incomes supplemented by the government (taxpayer dollars). This can get by the problem of "working poor" who may otherwise do worse than those on welfare. Alternatively, the welfare benefits could continue for the working poor. StuRat (talk) 16:01, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

At our Horatio Alger myth article I read, "For Alger’s characters, wealth was the product of a meritocracy, and the direct consequence of “honesty, thrift, self-reliance, industry, a cheerful whistle and an open manly face.”"

Are such qualities as and "thrift", "self-reliance", and "industry" on the ascendency or on the decline? Bus stop (talk) 18:49, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid they are in decline. Modern heroes aren't like Ben Franklin, Abe Lincoln, or Thomas Edison, who made it by working hard and being thrifty, they are more likely to be rap stars who lucked into their wealth and spend it even faster than they make it. StuRat (talk) 19:19, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

It also says "The characters in his formulaic stories sometimes improved their social position through auspicious accidents instead of hard work and denial." 20.137.18.50 (talk) 19:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Is there some way of increasing the likelihood of "auspicious accidents"? Bus stop (talk) 19:06, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

There is an experimental place in Detroit where they provide tools and materials for inventors, in the hopes that they will invent something good. The availability of microloans also appears to be important for starting small businesses. StuRat (talk) 19:08, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The US became more of a meritocracy in the 1960's with standardized tests forming a larger part of the admissions basis at universities. I have read books written for the benefit of college admissions personnel in the 1920's and 1930's which said that the admissions officer would do well to avoid letting in the son of a pushcart merchant, but should instead admit the son of a banker or businessman. With the SAT, Johnny Pushcart could outscore Bobby Banker and get admitted to a good school, with a merit scholarship. This was a route to go from a socioeconomic status of just scraping by to a well paying profession. Anecdotally, I have seen first-generation college men go into glorified trades, such as engineering, as opposed to more artsy-fartsy fields, which their children are more likely to choose. The rich have successfully set up systems to make it easy for their descendants to stay in the upper-upper socioeconomic class. Limiting or eliminating inheritance taxes, priority admission for legacy college applicants, having powerful friends such as politicians make secret calls to admissions committees to get a marginal applicant admitted in front of more promising applicants, all are ways of keeping the upper class the upper class. Yet it is easy for a child of privilege to throw it away, drop out, do drugs, or rebel against the parent by joining some violent radical group. Influence still comes into play, since it only takes a heart-felt apology to the parents to gain their influence to get charges dismissed or sentences become "rehab and community service", followed by amazing job opportunities in business, government or academia for "fortunate sons" (and daughters). The meme in the US today is "Cut the taxes of the very rich (for some reason referred to as "small business owners") and they will "create jobs." Yeah, at new factories in Vietnam, Somalia or Bangladesh. Or jobs in the US building and maintaining mansions, with crews of undocumented workers. Or, for the shrinking middle class kids, serving coffee at Starbucks, after getting a degree at State College. Edison (talk) 19:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

That's the reality behind Perry's "ponzi scheme" comments. Our system depends on people continuing to earn more money. As we continue to erode the middle class, our ability to support social security evaporates. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:09, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

If standardized tests made the US somehow a meritocracy, then merit is based on knowing concrete facts, because that's what standardized tests measure: facts that you know (and not the rationale, your critical thinking, etc). Quest09 (talk) 23:25, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Not always true. College admissions tests like the SAT tend to have very few questions on facts, and far more on your ability to reason solutions. It is true, though, that the modern classes should put more emphasis on the ability to think and less on memorizing facts, since facts are now available at the click of a key or mouse. StuRat (talk) 23:40, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Disagree with the claim that standardized tests "only test knowledge of facts." I have studied test construction and have constructed such tests as student exercises. I recall that it was common for a standardized college admissions test to provide a passage of science, history, literature, or whatever, then have questions about that passage. They did not just ask "Who was Charlemagne's father?" At the same time, they might have a passage about "The martyrdom of Polycarp," and the student who had not studied some "book of martyrs" or who had not had a lecture on "Famous Catholic Martyrs" in his parochial school education was left with a vague image of someone who looked like a bunch of fish being killed, but it was still possible to muddle through with answers to the questions based only on the passage read. They might have a passage on "Fin de siècle" art, and the rich kid whose parents dragged him to art galleries would be more likely to recall that the passage was about the end of the 19th century, but the uninformed could still muddle through just by knowing that it was about the end of some cycle or century, and still get a score in the top 1 %. Edison (talk) 00:42, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

It should be noted that while the general SATs do not test facts (subject SATs do, of course), they do involve predictable types of questions, and someone who has purchased test prep classes and book (conveniently offered by the same people who make the test!) has a huge advantage over someone who cannot afford such luxuries. This is clear to everyone who has anything to do with education these days, and has been that way for quite some time. There are huge problems with using standardized test scores by themselves, and there are also lots of criticisms of the way standardized testing warps classroom autonomy. That being said, it's hard to argue that the pre-testing era was better. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:32, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I am kind of surprised at the huge number of anecdotes on offer here and the general dearth of actual facts. Economic mobility is trackable and quantifiable. We have an article on it. There are lots of interesting reports on it all over the internet. The general gist of them is that in the US, upward economic mobility has shrunk a lot in the last 40 years. The US has much less economic mobility than other industrialized nations — more than the UK, less than France, way less than Canada.[8] There are more facts on this question than you can ever know what to do with. Ignore all famous people! The fact that they are famous makes them exceptional, and not representative data! --Mr.98 (talk) 22:38, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

As figure 3 on page 5 of the EMP Report you referenced shows, making a large leap up would seem to be so rarely exceptional that anyone who did it was by definition exceptional. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 19:09, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

People's Party in Europe

How many right-wing political parties in Europe have the name "People's Party"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.105.72 (talk) 15:51, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

There are 18 in Europe, according to [9]. Rcsprinter (talk) 15:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

That chart doesn't identify which are right-wing, though. For that you'd need to read up on each, although some may not be so easy to classify. StuRat (talk) 16:04, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

See also People's Party#See also. In Denmark we have the listed Danish People's Party but also Conservative People's Party (Denmark) (usually just called The Conservatives), and Socialist People's Party (Denmark) (left-wing, often abbreviated SF in Danish). There are also a couple of tiny parties. A total European count will be difficult and depend on what you include. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

national party in Europe

How many right-wing political parties in Europe have the name "National Party"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.105.72 (talk) 16:12, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean translated into the local language? It's probably just easiest to use a dictionary for the major languages and see if you can find a party like that... my guess would be that each country has at least one party by that exact name. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 16:44, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

"Category:Nationalist parties" might be of interest. Gabbe (talk) 08:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Notable ones are listed in our article National Party. Warofdreams talk 11:45, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

"Current" ancestry

I came upon http://www.ancestry.com as a good way to track my biological dad's family (being adopted and having recently gotten a copy of my adoption record from the state) given that he died a few years back and also because multiple people have evidently built his family tree in the process of building their own. The only problems I encounter are that it doesn't give much hint as to anything that happened to living relatives after about 1995-2000, including my dad's siblings and my mother's entire family. This leaves me with the problem of trying to track down living relatives through other means. In my mom's case, I can't find any records of who she may or may not have married or divorced (and thus have no idea of her present last name) or where she may have moved to since about 1996. What are some good ways for tracking down people who have been "lost" for this long? (Just as a disclaimer, I already know that the state of Kansas will conduct searches for birth parents, and they are presently doing this for my mother. I'm just conducting my own search at the same time since they say it can take months for them to complete a search.) Thanks in advance, Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 16:49, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The Salvation Army used to offer a family tracing service for people like you, but I seem to recall they ended this service a few years ago due to lack of resources. Still might be worth contacting your local branch to see if that's true or not.--TammyMoet (talk) 17:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Ancestry.com defaults to not showing living people, unless they happened to be in tyhe 1930 census or earlier, or if they happen to fall into certain types of record-keeping, such as certain states' marriage records. It's connected with the Mormon church somehow, so the Mormons might be a good place consult. Within ancestry.com, however, if you can contact those who have built those trees, they might be willing to share some info. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:46, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

There are privacy concerns for living people; they may not wish to be found, and in some cases the law may protect them. --Jayron32 18:48, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes indeed. If you already know someone's name, and if they appear on certain public records, you may be able to find them by searching within ancestry.com (at least if you're a member). However, trees typically don't show living persons explicitly unless you've been given some rights to see a tree. Another, totally public source is findagrave.com, which of course is also dependent on user input. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:09, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

My family tree is in Ancestry, and there are good reasons for just saying "Living (Family name)." Full info would make it too easy for a scammer to find one's "mother's maiden name," or "paternal grandfather's name" or other weak security question used by various online sites. Edison (talk) 18:59, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Precisely. But if the OP is an ancestry.com member, he should be able to send a message to owners of public trees, and they might be willing to help him... after some proper scrutiny, obviously. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:06, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I did that for my father's side of the family, the only problem is it doesn't seem that anyone has built a tree including my mother and her family, so I have nothing to go on at Ancestry. That's why I'm looking for other ways of finding that side of my family (my parents were not, so far as I know, ever married (or at least weren't when I was born), but the two people I sent messages to that had my father's side constructed were ones that had a person with my mom's last name listed as his spouse). Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 19:58, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

For tracking purposes, it's not unusual to list a "spouse" that's merely a biological parent and not legally a spouse. Those two that you wrote to... were they unwilling to share info? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:07, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I have yet to get a response, I'm just slightly pessimistic that I will since it says for both of them that their most recent login was over 6 months ago. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 20:27, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I've seen that on folks that I know were on there just yesterday, so take it with a grain of salt. If it's been awhile, try again. Also, you never know how often someone will do something. I've gotten responses months later, in some cases. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, that works for me, it's just that the whole reason I'm doing this search is that I'm hoping it will take less time than the state's search (albeit that the state's is probably more likely to be the one that succeeds). I just don't know where to go look for stuff while I wait for a reply given that I've exhausted Ancestry's information on my mother. I could check the state of Colorado given that my mom was born and lived there for a while both before and after I was born, but from what I can gather on their website I wouldn't qualify to request vital records information from them on either of my birth parents. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 20:40, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

You might need to talk to someone there directly, rather than using a website. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:34, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The way to do genealogical research is to go backwards. Start with the information you have and write to the appropriate agency (usually a county clerk's office, a state records office, or a church parish office). Start by requesting death and burial information. A death certificate or burial records will provide you with clues for your next step. Then move backwards and request marriage certificates, etc. Then move backwards and request birth records. This method will save you time, and provide the most clues sooner. Good luck. Greg Bard (talk) 18:56, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

COULD IT BE POSSIBLE THAT ATLANTIS WAS THE BIBLICAL GARDEN OF EDEN?

I just finished reading the Wikipedia Articles on Atlantis and The Garden of Eden and just started wandering could Atlantis have been the garden of eden could it be possible that the fruit from the tree of knowledge was a metaphor for one atlantis`s advance techinologies which destroyed it leaving adam and eve the only two survivors it would explain the prescence of others as stated within the old testament. Basically what i want to know is does my theroy make any sense or am i just a crackpot? THANK YOU. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.77.89.236 (talk) 19:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

There are plenty of stories about nostalgia for something past, and those are just two of them. One good theory I saw was that the Garden of Eden story was probably based on nostalgia for hunting-and-gathering ("living off God's bounty") as opposed to the drudgery of "modern" agriculture. Atlantis is thought to have been inspired by the violent volcanic eruption of Santorini, an island near Greece, much embellished through centuries of retelling. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:49, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The problem with your theory is that you are relating two myths. There is no way of confirming your idea because their isn't any information about Atlantis or the Garden of Eden beyond their related myths. On the other hand, your idea has been put forth in fiction before. The video game series Assassin's Creed deals with a science fiction story about Ancient astronauts (not unlike some ideas about Atlantis) being responsible for the Garden of Eden and the continued struggle for the "apple" throughout history. In short, your idea makes for good fiction, but is undoubtedly crackpot if you tried to discuss it in real academic circles. Aside from a comparative mythology standpoint. --Daniel 20:17, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

A similar story is Noah's Ark, which could well be based on memories of the time when it's theorized that the human race was nearly wiped out by a supervolcano. Different mythology can have similar-looking elements. But since they are mythology (in the academic sense, not necessarily the "fairy tale" sense), it's very difficult to say with any certainty that any two stories have the same origin, unless they are very similar, which Atlantis and Eden really are not. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:24, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it's been more commonly speculatively connected with Black Sea flooding than with the Toba event... AnonMoos (talk) 01:32, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The geographical description of the four rivers of Eden in the Book of Genesis in the Bible is kind of confusing, but if you filter it through the geographical knowledge that a ca. 7th-century-B.C. Israelite was likely to know, then it seems most likely to me that Biblical Eden was supposed to be somewhere in the general north Mesopotamia area (pretty much what in modern times is called Kurdistan). Others argue for a southern Mesopotamia location, possibly partially influenced by old legends of Dilmun. By contrast, Atlantis was an island in the sea, almost certainly located to the west of Greece. Therefore the two legends really don't seem to converge... AnonMoos (talk) 21:44, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

In any case, converging or similar myths should not surprise us. To drop a little Joseph Campbell, humans like to tell more or less the same half dozen stories over and over again, with different names and places and scenery. Even if Atlantis and the Garden of Eden were similar, it doesn't make either of them more likely have existed than it does Santa Claus or Odin. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:12, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Wait... are you saying... there's no Odin??? My inner child is devastated. ); ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Odin IS Santa Claus Bugs. Heiro 14:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

A recent-ish BBC series on Biblically relevant archaeology suggested that the Garden of Eden story was a political/religious allegory referring to the abandonment of the (mythical) pure original observances practiced in early Hebrew temples, which from Babylonian (I think) influences had internal decorations depicting gardens (a local word for which is the origin of "paradise") with fruit trees. I don't say I necessarily accept this, but it's another angle.

Of the many speculations about Atlantis, about which I've been collecting books for some years (and assuming Plato didn't make it up out of whole cloth for didactic purposes), the one I currently find most convincing is that it describes Troy and the Trojan War, as contemporarily (mis-)perceived by Egyptians (who may have incorporated elements of the Santorini/Thera eruption), recorded in hieroglyphs on a temple pillar, (imperfectly) translated to the travelling Greek statesman Solon and handed down by him to his descendant Critias and thence to his young relative Plato, just as Plato actually relates (bar the errors in transmission) in the unfinished Critias. The belated realisation of this would explain why Plato abandoned the Critias and never embarked on a planned third volume (the Hermocrates) of what, with the Timaeus, was intended to be in effect a three volume encyclopedia. The book which puts forward this hypothesis (which unfortunately I don't have to hand and whose author and title I can't recall) bolsters it with apparently authentic survey details of the somewhat changed topography and almost-vanished canals and harbours around Troy which correspond very well (save for scale) with Plato's descriptions of Atlantis. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.53 (talk) 01:40, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

A question about Forbes list of billionaires

When was the first time that Bill Gates was came to no. 1 on Forbes list of billionaires? 84.110.111.150 (talk) 20:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

He got to #1 in 1993. Googlemeister (talk) 21:14, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

September 13

9/11 Memorial pools dimensions

(edited)Most coverage of the new 9/11 Memorial pools at the World Trade Centers site just shows an aerial view. It looks like there is a memorial tablet, not very high,serving as an outer barrier around a very deep waterfall, with another "bottomless" square hole in the center of the pool. It is reminiscent of animal habitats at zoos, into which people have jumped, for whatever purpose. Is there a dimensioned cross section of it somewhere, with depths? It looks like it would be easy for the distraught or reckless to climb over the surrounding memorial tablet and slide down the waterfall, and if they survived, then to plunge into the center pit. Edison (talk) 02:40, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The pools are about 30 feet deep and 1 acre in area each[10]. No idea on how they will deal with someone who decides to kill themselves by diving in. --Jayron32 02:56, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Is that a 30 foot drop to a foot-deep water pool, or a 30 foot drop to deep water? Might make a difference. How about the central "bottomless square hole?" How deep, and what is at the bottom? Edison (talk) 03:17, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Not sure. The website I linked is the official website of the memorial itself, so you may find the information you seek by poking around it. --Jayron32 03:22, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I could not find much information about the structural dimensions at the official website. I thought there might have been published plans in some architectural magazine. Edison (talk) 04:50, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

At least the Memorial is true to form. While it may have some very well thought out features like the Twin Towers, many of the features that it has may not be very well though out or thought out at all. --DeeperQA (talk) 04:38, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Are the diagrams secret/proprietary or public record? I mean the construction companies had to work from something, and the builders had to submit something to get building permits. Edison (talk) 04:41, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

this site seems to indicate the maximum depth of the central hole to be 70 feet from the surface. It also has several diagrams, including some that seem to show structures underground which allow viewing of the waterfalls from the bottom (well, the side) as well as the top. You may find what you want there. --Jayron32 04:52, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the site says the maximum depth of the entire structure is 70. I suppose the central hole might bottom out a bit above the very bottom of the structure, but that puts it in perspective a bit. Thanks. Edison (talk) 13:56, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Slavery in France, Spain, Portugal, England, Netherlands and Italy

Like U.S., did France, Spain, Portugal, England, Netherlands and Italy have slavery and the slaves were from Africa and became citizens as of today? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.31.19.196 (talk) 02:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

In Europe, black African slaves were not as prominent as in the New World (and the U.S. was not as prominent of a slave-holding society when compared to other places in the Americas. It did of course exist in all of the country during some point, and in the Southern U.S. until the Civil War, but never at the levels which existed in the Carribean and South America.) Wikipedia has some information at History of slavery which covers some European countries, and there are also some seperate articles for some countries, including Slavery in Portugal and Slavery in Britain and Ireland. --Jayron32 03:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

France, Spain, Portugal, England and the Netherlands all imported slaves from Africa in large numbers to their colonies. Not so many of those African slaves ended up in Europe, but there they did become citizens. And in the Caribbean, Central America and South America, the black and mixed-heritage citizens of today are descendants of the slaves brought in by the colonising European countries. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:00, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. The great majority of non-white European people migrated from colonial territories after World War II. In the UK, there is a substantial community originally from Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana and other former British colonies in the Carribbean who settled here in the 1950s and 60s. Their ancesters had been transported as slaves to the Carribbean from western Africa in the 18th Century. Slavery wasn't legal in the UK itself, and although some were brought here as domestic servants, they were set free if their owners could be brought to court. See Somersett's Case. Alansplodge (talk) 08:30, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

You may be interested in this news report - allegedly, slavery is still occurring in England today. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:37, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The Haitian Revolution, which ended slavery in what was before then a French colony, is one of the defining moments in the struggle against slavery. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:05, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The Barbary pirates enslaved up to 1.25 million Europeans by 1780 mainly from the western Mediterranean both from the coast and from ships but also from South America, western Africa and the North Atlantic.
121.91.53.163 (talk) 14:53, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

See Sack of Baltimore, Turkish Abductions (in Iceland!) etc. for examples of that. AnonMoos (talk) 15:20, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

---

70.31.19.196 -- During the period you have in mind (mainly 16th-18th centuries, I would assume), there were very few slaves actually "in" England, France, and the Netherlands, while Italy was not politically unified... AnonMoos (talk) 15:20, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The OP never stated a time. From the beginning of Slavery in Britain and Ireland (which I am not the first to link to), "From before Roman times, the practice of slavery was normal in Britannia. Slaves were routinely exported." And it stillexists -- from the website of Anti-Slavery International: "A new exhibition at the Museum of London and Museum of London Docklands will lift the lid on the shocking reality of trafficking and forced labour in the capital....In partnership with Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights organisation, Freedom from: modern slavery in the capital explores the personal impact of human trafficking and slavery in London in the 21st century." BrainyBabe (talk) 15:51, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

However, slaves were not predominantly from "from Africa" until the 16th century. Anyway, slavery seemed to greatly decrease in overall economic importance and become somewhat vestigial during the late medieval period in northwestern European countries. In England, by Elizabethan times there were no native slaves in England, and Elizabeth enacted a scheme whereby the remaining serfs would buy themselves out of serfdom. In any case, fully-lawful open and aboveboard public slavery should not be indiscriminately confused with furtive illegal human trafficking... AnonMoos (talk) 18:10, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. The HM Government is very active in trying to stamp out this sort of behaviour - see this concerning new legislation on the issue. Alansplodge (talk) 08:03, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Joint venture

In Canada, does the government have the right to ban a joint venture? What I'm finding on the Internet suggests that Canada has no laws specifically addressing joint ventures, but I find this hard to believe. Suppose two major competitors decide to have a joint venture and start selling some new product. Wouldn't the two companies essentially have a monopoly? --140.180.16.144 (talk) 08:00, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

This page from the Canadian government says that the Competition Act covers various types of merger, namely "asset acquisitions, share acquisitions, corporate amalgamations, and business combinations otherwise than through a corporation, such as a joint venture." It can prohibit such mergers or demand they be dissolved. --Colapeninsula (talk) 13:02, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Was Port Durnford (Natal coast) named after col. Anthony Durnford ?

Hello Humanities lovers ! I am translating into french the articles about 2 Anglo-Zulu War figures : Lord Chelmsford , and Anthony Durnford (btw, thanks a lot for the substratum !) , and I find in the article battle of Ulundi , § "Invasion" : "(Chelsmford) had established the supply depots of Fort Newdigate, Fort Napoleon and Port Durnford when Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived in Cape Town...".

Can you tell me if the port was named after col. Anthony Durnford ? If it seems obvious that Fort Napoleon was named after Napoleon III's son, could it be possible that Chelsmford accepted to give a port the name of an officer he had just charged with the responsability of Isandlwana disaster ? I assume that Port Durnford is related to the light-house cited in the article List of lighthouses in South Africa , & located in http://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?pagename=List_of_lighthouses_in_South_Africa&params=28_55_00_S_31_55_30_E_&title=Durnford+Lighthouse ?... )

Thanks a lot beforehand for your answer, t.y. Arapaima (talk) 08:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

"It is believed that Port Durnford, Natal was named after Midshipman Edward Philip Durnford". This is a family website and may not be the most reliable source. I'll see what else I can find. Alansplodge (talk) 08:56, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

"Port Durnford... derives its name either from a Midshipman E P Durnford, who surveyed the coast here in about 1822, or from Captain A W Durnford of the Royal Engineers, who came to South Africa in 1871 and was killed in 1879 in the Zulu War. The latter's activities seem rather on the late side for the place-name however." Dictionary of World Place Names Derived from British Names by Adrian Room, Routledge 1989. So the answer seems to be probably not. Alansplodge (talk) 09:15, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

"...August 13th (1824), Mr E. P. Durnford the principal hydrographer remaining on the Leven, after whom the ports of that name in southeast Africa as well as in Madagacar were named, fell a victim to dysentry." Memoirs of Hydrography 1750 to 1885 by Commander L S Dawson RN Alansplodge (talk) 10:05, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

This snippet suggests that Port Durnford was named in April 1879 by the crew of HMS Forester because of its proximity to Point Durnford. Alansplodge (talk) 10:05, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Here we go... "A ridge of mountains takes its rise in about 29 degrees south, at a point in the coast we named Point Durnford; (after the young officer who was appointed to delineate it)" From an article called "Narrative of Voyages to Explore the Shores of Africa, Arabia and Madadgascar; performed by H. M. Ships Leven and Barracouta, under the direction of W. F. W. Owen R.N." in the The Eclectic Review for July 1833. We have an article on William Fitzwilliam Owen which briefly describes his survey of the African coast 1821-26. Half the crew of the two little ships were killed by tropical diseases, apparently including the unfortunate Midshipman Durnford. Alansplodge (talk) 10:05, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Ten commandments

I have a little conundrum. One of the ten commandments explicitly says "Thou shalt not kill/murder". But aren't people who have children doing this? After all, prior to having the child, they know fully well that one day it will die, so in effect are they not killers? --Thanks, Hadseys 11:40, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

No. Giving life to something that will eventually die is not the same thing as actively killing it, much less murdering it. If there was any doubt that the Commandments did not mean that, it is resolved by the copious amount of references in the rest of the Bible saying, "have lots of babies." --Mr.98 (talk) 11:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

That is the weirdest logic I've ever read. I thought you were going to ask about the military. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 12:08, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Had God been concerned about passive "killing", the commandment would have been "Thou shalt not kill, nor through inaction allow someone to die." Mitch Ames (talk) 12:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Christians generally believe that it's for God to decide when somebody dies. This is not considered murder (although for fairly obvious reasons the Ten Commandments don't apply to God.)

Another thing: if you have the option to have a child, but choose not to, aren't you in fact depriving a child of life, which is the same as murder? --Colapeninsula (talk) 13:07, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Psalm 139:16 may be relevant to my first point above: "Your [i.e. God's] eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." --Colapeninsula (talk) 13:10, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Murder is a crime with a precise legal definition, and none of your examples qualify as murder. I would recommend studying Mosaic case law to find if your examples would have fit the legal definition of murder for that jurisdiction at the time. Googlemeister (talk) 13:42, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Murder does not have a precise legal definition although the Wikipedia article misleadingly implies that it does, albeit with the Common Law definition followed by a minority of jurisdictions. There is no need to pick up a bible or statute on murder here because the question commits a syllogistic fallacy. Specifically, the question has an illicit minor. The syllogism is this: All births result in deaths; all murders result in deaths; therefore, all births are murders. In the same form, you can substitute the terms for: All fours are numbers, all threes are numbers; therefore, all fours are threes. The question contains an illogical conclusion, this is why there is a conundrum. See Prior Analytics by Aristotle. Gx872op (talk) 15:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

• In my question i did not once suggest it was murder, however, regardless of how you want to spin it parents are responsible, ultimately, for the death of their offspring, and i just wondered if the biblical commandment would hold them to account. --Thanks, Hadseys 00:12, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

• "One of the ten commandments explicitly says "Thou shalt not kill/murder". But aren't people who have children doing this?" That is clearly a suggestion that having children is "kill/murder" and therefore against the commandment. I'm using conventional rules of grammar and logic to read your words. Should I be doing something else besides dismissing the question as nonsensical? Gx872op (talk) 16:28, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
• No they aren't, unless they shoot them or something. God, or Nature, or whatever you want to call It, is responsible for their deaths. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:02, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

• They're responsible in so far as that they created it knowing fully well that one day it would die, maybe if they werent aware of that i would agree with you

• Murder is the unlawful taking of life. Giving birth does not qualify as murder. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:31, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Because you are using the Bible as your main source of reference, why not use all of it? Elijah (and others) never died. Therefore, the claim that giving birth automatically means that the child will eventually die is completely wrong. Since your assumption is wrong, you cannot accept your conclusion. -- kainaw™ 15:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

And don't forget those few people who died like Lazarus, were raised from the dead, and presumably eventually died again. Googlemeister (talk) 16:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Hadseys, think of it like politics. No matter how electorally successful a major party may be right now in a given jurisdiction, I can tell you with 100% certainty that it will eventually be defeated by some opposing party. Sooner or later that will happen, most probably sooner. So why bother ever voting for any party when you know that it is going to be defeated? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 18:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Can someone who speaks Hebrew go back to the original? Does the original actually say "kill" or "commit murder"? The Mark of the Beast (talk) 19:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

It is covered well in You shall not murder. -- kainaw™ 20:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 20:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

In answering you, one must remove oneself from modern definitions and stick to Biblical approaches to the law. The Bible, in defining its version of manslaughter (which has its differences from modern versions I'm aware of, but I'm not a lawyer) where the offender must flee to one of the Cities of Refuge, specifies that a key condition is that he "did not lie in wait" for the victim, ie there was no intent to injure. Thus, someone who punched someone else intending to harm but not kill might be guilty of manslaughter in many modern law codes, but not the Biblical.

Logically, this intent to injure therefore separates Biblical murder from Biblical manslaughter - you need an intent to [at least] injure to be even in the realms of being guilty of murder. As no parent could possibly intend to injure their child at the moment of conception, the logical extension you're proposing falls down. But an interesting idea. --Dweller (talk) 10:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

The widely prevailing view among contemporary ethicists, is that "killing" and "letting die" are two totally different things morally. Still a widely prevailing view, (but not quite as wide), is the view that that there are situations where it is morally permissible to let die, usually involving suffering etcetera. Still a widely prevailing view, (but again, not quite as wide), is the view that that there are situations where it is morally required to let die. In any case, it is almost universally accepted by ethicists that it is morally permissible to give birth. BTW, one really should take the view of contemporary ethicists as more valid and responsible than anyone's view from biblical times including the authors of the Bible. The number one moral issue in human history was slavery, and I am pretty sure the Bible is completely morally wrong on that issue and many, many other issues as well.Greg Bard (talk) 06:08, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Why do native tribes in Africa still exist?

Not that I'm saying they shouldn't, they should and I hope they continue to exist. I'm just curious how/why they didn't get absorbed into civilization yet. Like in Nambia for example, I would have assumed that most of the native tribes would have been either destroyed or absorbed into the local "modern" governing system especially during the age of colonialism. How did they survive? ScienceApe (talk) 14:17, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

First of all, I don't think you can make a distinction between tribes and civilization. The two can and do coexist. In fact, African tribes generally have been incorporated into more or less modern political systems, though tribal loyalties may influence those politics. The only big exception is Somalia, where the national state barely exists and no longer controls most of the country, and where tribes really do have somewhat autonomous political power. Now, in many African cities, tribal identities are relatively weak, because many African city dwellers have intermarried with members of other tribes and derive their identity more from neighborhood or religious affiliations. Also, in cities, most people, whatever their tribal or ethnic affinity, tend to speak the local lingua franca rather than the language of their rural homeland (if it is different), especially in public. However, in rural areas especially, tribal identities remain strong. In Somalia, the tribes share a Somali ethnic identity. However, in many parts of Africa, the groups that have been called tribes are really ethnic groups, some of them with their own precolonial history of forming entities very similar to nation-states (such as the Baganda of Uganda). In rural areas, these ethnic groups dominate relatively large regions. Each "tribe" or ethnic group has its own language and customs. It is not surprising that people who grow up in communities belonging to these "tribes" or ethnic groups would identify with them, particularly when dealing with people from other "tribes" or ethnic groups who speak a different language and have different customs. What would be surprising in this context would be for tribal identities to disappear. Marco polo (talk) 14:41, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Marco Polo makes some very good points. The word "tribe" or "tribal" is often misused. In the context of non-Western socities, it usually means "any cohesive group which does not have a national government of its own". Such usage is somewhat insulting as no one would describe, say, the Quebecois or the Basque as a "tribe" or "tribal", but in the context of Africa, there are many groups, some of them quite large and cohesive, with a distinct cultural identity; and those groups are invariably described as a "tribe" or a "tribal group". The term "ethnic group" or "ethnicity" would probably be more accurate. These are all merely cohesive cultural groups which lack their own autonymous national government, and they aren't any different in that regard than such groups in Europe or the Americas. --Jayron32 14:59, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Another angle on this is the continued existence of hunter-gatherers amidst pastoralists and farmers. Much can be learned from the example of the Khoisan (including Bushmen): "The San include the original inhabitants of Southern Africa before the southward Bantu migrations from Central and East Africa reached their region". Survival International has good resources to learn from, as well. Note that in many African countries, no one ethnic or linguistic group forms a majority of the population; this may make it easier for small groups to hang on. BrainyBabe (talk) 16:02, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah this might be a semantic issue, but I'm talking about the hunters and gatherers that still exist in Africa. I'm sure the word "tribe" carries a lot of baggage that I'm not actually talking about. ScienceApe (talk) 18:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics is a classic arguing that life is not necessarily hard for hunter gatherers. It might be getting harder now though. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:44, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

It should be noted that there are very few actual hunter-gatherers anywhere in the world at the moment. Most "tribes" you are probably thinking of (e.g. the Maasai people) are actually farmers or semi-nomads (with domesticated stock). Essentially the only modern hunter gatherers in Africa are the Bushmen, and there are only 90,000 of those (the size of a small city) distributed across multiple countries. Many (most?) of them are actually farmers now. Why do they do it? Because it's what they know and enjoy doing. It's their culture. But this position is clearly in the minority in the world, where most such peoples have either been assimilated, exterminated, or put onto lands where continued hunting and gathering is impossible. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:21, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the good land has mostly been taken by farmers. Farmers and herders are constantly encroaching on what's left. The young people of foraging groups generally see little point in maintaining old ways as a result. Marco polo (talk) 23:27, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't asking why they did what they do, I completely understand that they want to preserve their traditional life. I'm asking how they were/are able to exist especially during the colonial period and today with modern civilization encroaching on their villages and such. ScienceApe (talk) 13:54, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

The short answer is that by and large they aren't able to coexist and are fading away pretty quickly. This is also the case with the few remaining hunter-gatherer tribes in South America as well. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:21, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure which is bleaker, ScienceApe's distinction between tribes and civilization, or Marco polo's enlightened observation that the two actually coexist. It doesn't strike me as any different from a group of Wagner snobs who might discuss why people listen to jazz instead of contenting themselves with listening instead to music.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 01:11, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

This is the organisation I was trying to remember: Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee. Their website here has as one of its top pages its answer to the question Who is Indigenous?. That page points out that "Particular communities, due to historical and environmental circumstances, have found themselves outside the state-system and underrepresented in governance" -- which doesn't answer the OP's question, but suggests that IPACC may well have resources to begin to untangle the issue. See also our article on Indigenous peoples of Africa. BrainyBabe (talk) 20:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

FLEC-FLAC (Angola)

this article quickly mentions the FLEC-FLAC, without explaining what it is. At first, I thought it was a typo for FLEC-FAC, but I found other mentions of FLEC-FLAC online, without finding the meaning of FLAC (and its relationship to FLEC). Could sombedoy expand the article (and FLAC (disambiguation))? Thanks. Apokrif (talk) 14:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps "Força de Libertação Armada de Cabinda", see here? - David Biddulph (talk) 15:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Probably FLEC-FAC, there are various FLEC factions around, FLEC-FAC one of the major ones. FLEC-FLAC is probably a typo. --Soman (talk) 13:42, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

ACH Process

After reading about the ACH process, it looks like when Alice buys a shirt at Bob's Gift Shop for $15, Bob's bank (the originating depository financial institution (ODFI)) sends an ACH Point-of-sale (POS) entry to Alice's bank (the receiving depository financial institution (RDFI)) and then Bob's bank increments the balance number for Bob's account and Alice's bank decrements the balance number for Alice's account. Since there's nothing tangible to physically transfer between banks like coins or bills, it's the bank's own responsibility to change the numbers as it ought to and each bank's motivation to change the numbers as it ought to is the idea of the punishment it would suffer if the law ever found out that it didn't change the numbers as it should have. But if they didn't change the numbers as they should have (say Alice's bank didn't decrement her number after acknowledging Bob's bank's Point-of-Sale (POS) ACH message, letting them (Bob's bank) go ahead and increment his number), how would the inconsistency most likely get found out? 20.137.18.50 (talk) 16:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

At the end of a trading interval (usually a day) each institution prepares a balance. If everything is correct (all the money and value received and all that transmitted) then that balance should be zero. In practice, both with manual systems and with electronic ones, there's often a nonzero balance, and it's generally the case that banking regulations compel the bank to look at their transaction logs and identify the cause of the discrepancy. Also, when two banks process lots of transactions that move value back and forward between them, they obviously don't exchange wheelbarrows full of money between them for every transaction. They each prepare a balance - these can be nonzero (one bank moves a net amount to the other) but they both have to have the same value for the net balance (that check is called a "reconciliation"), and if they don't then people have to sit down and figure out why. Even without banking regulations, it's in the interests of all the banks to get this right, as if someone got stuff without there being a relevant transaction completed for that, it means someone else (which usually will be bank) that's short by that amount. Banks don't like losing their own money, and their systems are pretty good about keeping tabs on what went where. Where governments get particularly involved is where the value that's being transacted is a cash-equivalent - I worked on one payment system (the name of which I'll not mention) which was an electronic cash-equivalent system (you had electronic value on a payment card). To "print" this money the banks had to essentially give the central bank an equal amount of real currency (I think it was held in escrow somehow). In addition to merchant<->customer payments, they also could do interbank payments (using robust versions of the same payment equipment). The payment system had a 3-phase-commit scheme so that an interruption in the transaction wouldn't lose or gain value. The banks (reportedly; I wasn't there) showed off the robustness of this exchange to the central (government) bank, and demonstrated the damaged-exchange recovery process. Which failed, and which annihilated the transaction. Destroying (again, I heard, so it may be apocryphal) a seven-figure sum. Even though the central banking folks had seen the equipment lose the value, and the system ensured that the same value couldn't reappear later, they refused to let the private banks regenerate the same value again, meaning they essentially lost the (large) sum they'd been exchanging. TL;DR: there are end-of-day balances which must be reconciled. If the reconciliation produces a non-zero value, someone has to eat that cost, and so everyone is very thorough about keeping records to make sure that the someone isn't them. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The end-of-interval settlement would cover the diffs for that interval. What if Alice's crooked bank lied to Bob's and said at the end of that day "Yeah, you got $15 from us." Now the next day and henceforth, the imbalance doesn't show up on daily settlements, unless the gov't regularly gets all the total amounts from all the accounts of all the banks to see if the volume is the same, which I would think is pretty impossible even with computers as powerful as they are nowadays (and also given that the gov't doesn't have jurisdiction to check the balance sheets of banks in other countries that US account holders may have paid). 20.137.18.50 (talk) 14:12, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Both Alice's and Bob's banks both keep totals for their mutual transaction. If Alice's bank is crooked and claims it sent more money than it did, that total won't be the same as reported by Bob's bank at reconciliation. So Bob's bank is $15 short, and Bob's bank would have to eat that sum themselves (which they don't like doing). So Bob's bank will phone Alice's bank and they'll both go over their accounts. If they can't figure out the problem, and Bob's bank is convinced the fault isn't theirs, they'll stop dealing with Alice's bank altogether. A bank that can't, or won't, balance its books will very quickly go out of business, because no-one will deal with it. In practice the reconciliation is greatly aided by the way the books are kept and the transactions logged. Firstly, when banks make transactions they exchange cryptographic tokens regarding the transaction (usually a message authentication code covering the time, a sequential transaction number, and details of the accounts and amounts involved). So the very act of successfully sending money entails getting a receipt (a cryptographically sound, verifiable by banking regulators or courts, undeniable receipt). Secondly there's a sequential transaction number, which makes identifying missing or duplicated transactions easy. And thirdly both keep (or can reconstruct from their transaction logs) a running total for the day. In reconciliation they compare running totals (wrt numbered transactions) and the first time at which these differ is the cause of the discrepancy. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:28, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

As for international transfers: these are more complicated for banks to run, because they have to comply with two sets of banking laws, and each country will often have more stringent checks for international transfers than domestic. For this reason it's very common for smaller banks to be unable to perform international transfers (SWIFT, CHIPS, etc.) themselves. So instead they do a domestic transfer to an agent (which is a big international institution like CitiBank). The agent then does an international transfer to itself (e.g. CitiBank merchant account UK to CitiBank merchant account US) and that account then does a domestic transfer to the recipient bank. So if there's a mismatch on the international transfer, CitiBank would be cheating CitiBank. And don't underestimate the capacity of banking regulators to cooperate with one anther if they think there's some international shenanigans occurring, and governments tend to take a fairly "long arm" view as to "where" a banking transaction occurred. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:37, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

A culture where only the corrupt rise to power

I'm trying to remember a term which consists of a surname (I think it starts with a "W") and is followed by "law", "rule" or "principle" or something similar. It's a theory or an observation rather about the social dynamics in certain modern organizational or societal cultures whereby a climate of corruption and lawlessness has become so prominent that in order for anyone to rise to power in this climate they must themselves be willing to take part in the corruption. I know we have an article specifically discussing it, but I'm unable to recall its name or otherwise locate it. __meco (talk) 16:49, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like an adaptation of one of the many "iron laws". -- kainaw™ 16:56, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I did a search for the term 'corrupt' on our List of eponymous laws, but the only one that came up was Campbell's law, which doesn't look like what you are looking for, but take a look at that list and see if it helps. —Akrabbim^talk 17:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Kleptocracy? Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:10, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Nope, none of the suggestions so far. __meco (talk) 08:48, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

French colonies

Why does France still hang on to several of its colonies instead of giving them independence? --75.60.15.28 (talk) 22:48, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

France has generally offered independence in recent years to any dependency that voted for it. The remaining dependencies generally do not want independence, though New Caledonia is divided over the issue. Marco polo (talk) 23:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

If you can answer the question "Why doesn't the U.S. grant independence to Hawaii" or "Why doesn't the U.S. grant independence to Puerto Rico" you can answer the question of why France doesn't grant independence to its Overseas departments and territories. Many of them are full Departments of France and the French State doesn't recognize any legal difference between, say, French Guiana and Morbihan or Pas-de-Calais. A department is a department, and they are all part of France, wholly and completely. There are some overseas territories of France which are not departments, but they do have some representation within the French National Assembly and can vote in National elections, so they have some role in the French State, but they are generally given more autonomy over local issues than actual departments are. That doesn't mean that there aren't some form of independence movements within these overseas departments, but that doesn't mean much, necessarily. There's an independence movement in Texas, and the U.S. isn't giving that up any time soon. --Jayron32 00:37, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Most modern-day holdout colonies are small, remote islands with tiny populations and economies propped up by investment, tax breaks, and often direct subsidies by the metropole. The locals, especially those with money and political influence, have a vested interest in preserving this situation. So France (or the US or UK) can offer independence to these places with little risk of the offer being accepted. LANTZY^TALK 00:56, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Recently some French Polynesian politicians tried to get support for calls for its independence [11] at the Pacific Islands Forum but it's not clear how much support their movement had [12] [13]. Note French Polynesia is no longer considered a colony by the UN (actually that was their primary goal at this stage) Nil Einne (talk) 07:20, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Also, read French_North_Africa#Decolonisation. France treated some of it's overseas possessions as more integral to France than how colonies are typically viewed - François Mitterrand illustrated this when he said " L'Algérie, c'est la France" ("Algeria is France"). Buddy431 (talk) 04:43, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Part of the problem (and this still continues today) is that while Algeria may have been France, Algerians were not treated as French. That's largely why Algeria is no longer France. Even today, France has problems integrating people from immigrant backgrounds into Metropolitan French society, especially those from outside of Europe (People with a European immigrant background have a much easier time assimilating, c.f. Nicolas Sarkozy). Every few years in France there are riots and general strikes among French Arabs; even those who are born in France have problems assimilating into French society. See Islam_in_France#Integration and 2005 civil unrest in France. There is some controversy in even seeing these riots as being due to integration problems, as France officially prides itself on being a more multicultural society than many of its neighbors, (see the somewhat perjorative term Beurgeois), but clearly the official stance and the "facts on the ground" differ as to the experience of those of Arabic descent within France. --Jayron32 04:53, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I think Algeria was partly treated more as a part of France because there were a lot of white Europeans who settled there during the 120 year colonial history - the Algerians may not have been considered as very French, but the European immigrants were. I agree with what you're saying though; France does seem to have had a difficult time integrating its foreign born population. Buddy431 (talk) 03:48, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The spread of colonization

When the Norse discovered America in 10th century, why didn't the European started to colonize America from that time? Why have to wait 5th centuries later?Trongphu (talk) 23:51, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Because communication wasn't as good, because most other European peoples probably weren't even aware of the Viking settlements in Newfoundland. The Vikings in the 10th and 11th centuries were pretty much "Those pale people who just invaded to steal our women and rape our sheep" and they probably didn't spend a lot of time discussing where their cousins vacationed the prior year. The world in 1000 was a very different place than the world in 1500, probably as different as the world today is from the world 500 years ago. Europe wasn't really ready for exploration and colonization in 1000 in the same way it would be around 1500. --Jayron32 00:28, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

There are stories that Christopher Columbus visited Iceland, but by that time the Greenland settlement was defunct, and it's doubtful whether he could have picked up too much practically-useful information other than that there was something "out there" to the west (at least in northern latitudes). AnonMoos (talk) 01:12, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Jared Diamond points out (in Guns, Germs, and Steel) that the Vikings only try to settle in exceptionally difficult places to settle. This was on account of their transportation at the time — they could only hug the coast, and so it was quite an effort even to just get to Newfoundland, which is still pretty cold and unpleasant. They didn't have the technology or the economy to resupply their colony, and they didn't pick particularly fruitful places to try and set up camp. They didn't communicate their discovery to others or really recognize the magnitude of it. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:40, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

When North America was discovered it was colonised. But the Europeans didn't know Greenland was part of another continent and it was very cold.
Sleigh (talk) 06:38, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Developments in navigation were important. The mariner's compass was invented in Europe around 1300, though the Arabs and Chinese had simpler versions. The middle ages also saw steady improvements in astronomical navigation tools (quadrant, astrolabe, etc), initially in the middle east. The invention of the caravel in 15th century Portugal allowed European mariners to sail across oceans rather than simply hugging coastlines. The Portolan chart, a type of navigational chart, was a 14th century invention. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:12, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

The Vikings settled (a bit) in Ireland, and (a lot) in Normandy, neither of which were exceptionally difficult places to settle, so not sure that argument holds. In their accounts they said Vinland was an attractive place as I recall, so the main reason it wasn't colonised must be that it so far away. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:43, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, I meant in their attempts to go further West. But yes, the distance is important with the technology at the time, combined with the fact that their home base (Iceland) was not economically prepared (or politically organized enough) to create a real colony at that distance. Greenland was not an adequate forward base. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:22, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Europe was not ready politically, economically, or socially for long-distance colonization in the Middle Ages. Long-distance colonization required a few preconditions: 1) a strong national state to support colonization militarily and sometimes financially, 2) urban mercantile economies that could serve as markets for colonial products and additional sources of financing, and 3) a population willing to emigrate due to constraints on their livelihood in the home country caused by such factors as a shortage of arable land, improved agricultural techniques that reduced the demand for agricultural labor, and urban economies that had not yet industrialized and were unable to provide a good livelihood for the surplus rural population. These three preconditions did not begin to come together in Europe until the very late 15th century, so it is no surprise that large-scale overseas colonization did not begin until the 16th century. Marco polo (talk) 13:30, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Donald W. Meinig posits three key traditions/skills required by European peoples in order to colonize the Americas: 1) Seafaring, with the ability to extend the range of operations across the ocean in a sizable and sustainable way. 2) Institutionalized conquering: Buccaneers and raiders might be able to win an outpost or foothold, but to secure a larger area required garrisons of soldiers under orderly administration. 3) Planting of true colonies, with settlers or slaves or whatever. With some exceptions, conquest of coastal America tended to result in native depopulation, for a variety of reasons. In order to turn conquest into a long-term return European powers had to have the ability and know-how to resettle Europeans and/or Africans in significant numbers.

One can argue that while the Norse applied all three of these abilities in parts of Europe, in the deeper Atlantic they were unable or unwilling to conquer—Iceland and southern Greenland were uninhabited when they arrived, and they only managed a small, short-lived outpost on mainland North America. Even by 1500 only a few European peoples had all three abilities and traditions. Meinig points to the Iberian Peninsula, where the Spanish and Portuguese had a centuries old tradition of conquering and planting in the form of the Reconquista, and had already extended it into the deeper Atlantic and south along the coast of Africa. That the fall of the last Moorish stronghold in Europe came in 1492, the same year Columbus stumbled upon America, is telling if not exactly causal. The other early colonization "hearth" was around the English Channel, especially the Huguenots in France and the English. This area was quick to tap the fisheries of North America but slower to colonize. Still, the region had some conquest and planting experience in their centuries old relation with the Celts of Brittany, Wales, Ireland, etc. Pfly (talk) 03:28, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Final destination of Wikipedia?

I wonder when Wikipedian will no longer write anymore new article? In other word when will we have an English version of Encyclopedia that cover everything in human knowledge from every languages in the world? I noticed the number of new article created are declining due to "a great" amount of knowledge has been covered. I can tell the end of this hard working road to achieve the greatest Encyclopedia in human history is coming soon. The longest time it's going to take is probably less than a decade according to what i think, it could be in few years who knows. What are some of you guys opinions on this?Trongphu (talk) 23:53, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

• Well because new things are happening, being discovered and researched everyday, and that there are some questions that can probably never be answered either due to lack of information (did Jesus actually exist? how were the pyramids built? etc) or their complexity (the origins of the universe or god for example), that wikipedia's work may never be done --Thanks, Hadseys 00:17, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Well that basically expansion from existing articles. I agree that new things, knowledge are born everyday but not all of them will create another article to write about. Example, today someone may discover something new in a a specific math field doesn't guarantee that we will create a new article about that information. We can just add that new information into existing articles. One thing can certain is new branch of any ology like math, science... won't just come out often. It takes years, could be 10 years, 100 years who knows. What exactly i'm asking is when wikipedia will cover all the knowledge since the first human until that day, not including new information come out on that day.Trongphu (talk) 21:38, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

• • New people are being born all the time, new events will always happens, so there will always be new things to document. As long as humanity exists and keeps publishing new information about new things, Wikipedia will always have reliable sources for new articles. --Jayron32 00:23, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Note that "The reference desk does not answer requests for opinions or predictions about future events." (see header) However, we can safely say that as long as Wikipedia is still functioning there will always be new articles written (although perhaps not at the rate they have been previously). For example, before 2008, Justin Bieber was not notable. Now he is. Arab Spring wasn't anything in early 2010, now it's unlikely that any comprehensive encyclopedia would omit it. Likewise the winner of the US Presidential Election of 2040 likely doesn't have an article now, but should have one in 2041 (if Wikipedia still exists). There will always be new celebrities and new events which rise from unknown beginnings to notability. -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 00:22, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

The biggest threat to Wikipedia is not a shortage of material to write about, but rather a shortage of contributors. Right now we don't have to worry about that happening any time soon, but things can easily change within the next 10 to 20 years. Social networks and other online communities rise and fall all the time... if a bright entrepreneur were to start a successful project that compiled information better or faster than we can, then that would basically spell the end of Wikipedia. Ragettho (talk) 01:38, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

By an end I meant that when we finished writing everything in human knowledge not that wiki is going to die. I doubt wiki would ever die. Even there is a project that better and faster than wiki but it still needs a lot of volunteer contributors and donation just like wiki. Why would someone try to build something else when it's already there somewhere else? It doesn't matter if the new project is way better, they both are encyclopedia, have the same function and purpose. By the time someone else build something faster and better i think wikipedia would have cover every knowledge at that time. I doubt that someone will stupid enough to try to build another mimic encyclopedia. So wikipedia will live forever in my opinion of course because i can't prove future nor can I guarantee it. It's not like there haven't been something that still well known by people since it first found or created until today.Trongphu (talk) 21:38, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Last topic pool. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:55, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 September 6#All human knowledge? How many articles? and User:Emijrp/All human knowledge.

—Wavelength (talk) 05:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

September 14

most snobbish languages for an American to know and speak as a foreign language?

What are the most snobbish languages for an American to know and speak as a foreign language, in order please. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 11:07, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

The Queen's English would be a good start.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

As opposed to Strine? --Dweller (talk) 11:18, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Classical Greek. Even the Romans were impressed by it. --Dweller (talk) 11:18, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I said foregin, but fine -- The Queen's English is foreign enough, because -- it's 2011 why have a queen? So, first on the list will be the Queen's English, second is almost certainly French... And then? 82.234.207.120 (talk) 11:52, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Spanish. --Belchman (talk) 11:55, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay, fine, English, French, Spanish...and then? I really feel like you're drip-feeding me here, I'm asking for a pretty COMPLETE list. I want to know where Italian, where Portuguese fit in, etc. Please be more helpful and offer a more complete list. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 12:02, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I would think Latin.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 11:58, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Jeanne, I meant modern language, but you can include any ancient language I guess... put it in Brackets. So maybe now we have: English, French, [Latin], Spanish or what? What about the rest of the languages... 82.234.207.120 (talk) 12:02, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

This is terribly subjective, and this is not a place to start a debate over which languages are "snobbish," much less what order they belong in, much less whether being multilingual is perceived as "snobbish" or not. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:18, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the other respondents know what I'm asking.

I think I do, too. But there's no way to create a "complete" list of the sort you're asking for, and it's entirely subjective. Much less its "ordering". You're asking for a debate. That's not what we do here. There is no such list. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:47, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

There's no one true list, I'm asking for a subjective list. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 13:09, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Clarification

I do not mean to imply that the snob would speak all of the listed languages! For example, if I learned that an American speaks Italian as well, that would score pretty high snob points. I think the other respondents know what I'm talking about... As a visualization exercise, you can imagine that it's an educated American who was not raised with this other language/these languages, but learned them. (In fact I don't really care). 82.234.207.120 (talk) 12:05, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Why would speaking Italian make you a snob? In my experience, most people who speak Italian have Italian parents or grandparents, and would definitely not be considered snobs by any normal polling (unless you happen to consider blue collar Bostonians to be snobs). A businessman who works with companies in Italy — is he a snob if he learned the language? You see what I'm getting at. This is entirely, 100% subjective, at least for any living language. We could say, as a whole, that anyone who speaks a Dead language, with the exception of a Roman Catholic priest or something along those lines, is probably doing so just for the educational value of it, which perhaps we could call "snobbery" (if we want to be anti-intellectual). But other than that? It seems really quite arbitrary. I don't think speaking a foreign language is snobbish. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:50, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to ask the respondents, why are you even attempting to answer this question? It is much too subjective and there will be no concrete list from anything approaching a reliable source. For instance, it's perfectly reasonable for someone around my area to speak French since Vermont borders Quebec. Dismas|^(talk) 12:52, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It would depend on the subject matter being spoken about, but I think French has the most potential for off-putting snobbishness, to an American.

Americans are generally thought of as being rustic; the French are generally thought of as being sophisticated. France has a history of cultivated taste in a variety of areas—food and art for example.

It is the fact that the sensibilities of the two countries are so different. Americans pride themselves on being "straight-speaking". If a French person expounds upon the values that distinguish one fine wine from another, or one fine painting from another—an American's eyes glaze over. Bus stop (talk) 13:22, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

• Seriously, how is this an answerable question? The reference desk specifically requests that we do not ask, nor answer, questions which require opinions, and the OP is asking (and later clarified this point unambigously) that he is looking for people's subjective opinions, and not any facts or references. What is the point of this? --Jayron32 14:03, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if it is absolutely subjective. We are starting with one well-defined term—"Americans". That one term may be open to some interpretation, but only within limits. "Snobbishness" is also defined to some degree. So why can't we productively respond to that which corresponds to snobbishness in relation to the language of Americans, which is traditionally regarded as English? More than one response is possible, and one should not get too carried away with farfetched responses. But taking into account the problematic nature of the question, I think one can provide measured responses that would be appropriate uses of a Humanities reference desk. I think the question is acceptable.

Some things are quantifiable. I read there are 1,000 cheeses produced in France. Americans who are bred on American cheese, also known as Processed cheese, may find the French approach to cheese "snobbish". What other language but French provides this clash of sensibilities? Bus stop (talk) 14:23, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

The USA has more Michelin-starred restaurants than most nations (certainly more than the UK or Italy) and more varieties of wine than most. New York is the centre of the world art market (art's pretty snobby). Depending on definitions, the USA produces more arthouse films than any other nation. Its art galleries are richer than anywhere in Europe, particularly when it comes to recent purchases. Its operas and orchestras are world-class. It leads the world in modern dance. It's had some of the best classical music composers of the later 20th century, and the best novelists and poets (notwithstanding the prejudice of the Nobel judges). Its universities are among the best in the world (only the UK challenges). I could go on. Basically YOU ARE SNOBS. --Colapeninsula (talk) 17:09, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Relax...every list above puts English in the first place. After all, we're talking about an educated American in question to begin with (and what foreign languages this hypothetical american knows)...there's a reason for that :) 82.234.207.120 (talk) 18:11, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

all right guys, here is my own (OP) list. Please add to it: English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, [Latin], German, (and getting lower on the list), Russian, [Ancient Greek], Chinese, Arabic, [Sanskrit], (and getting much lower on the list) Hindi... and the bottom of the list is things like Korean, Thai, Bengali, Cherokee, etc.

I was hoping for someone to produce a list like this. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 14:38, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Isn't English the language of America? Bus stop (talk) 14:43, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It's only the official language of Virginia KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:52, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this is true, it is only in Virginia that English is the only "official" language. But in practice English is by far the defining language of America. Bus stop (talk) 15:46, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It was specifically "Queen's English" further up. And now the OP has made their own list and we can be done with this. Dismas|^(talk) 14:45, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Without justification being provided, such a list is arbitrary and subjective. Bus stop (talk) 14:47, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I just gave some justification below, which is lengthy: 82.234.207.120 (talk) 14:50, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Also, I don't know where Hebrew goes, ancient and modern. There are a couple of approaches to getting the source of the snobbism. First of all, American culture has its background in Britain, and there historically the language of the court was English mixed with plenty of French at one point, and going back much farther you would get to Old English which was kind of Germanic. But that is going back quite far: in the meantime, the learned languages were Latin and Greek. Now I would say the "cosmopolitan" languages or lanuages of the world were mostly the colonial languages, which would surely be based around France, Spain, and Portugal (besides the UK). But if you go back just a bit farther you do get The Netherlands as a world power, so I think Dutch is an important language to include well before you get to Korean and Cherokee. German was a continental language (as opposed to a colonial one) and so figures lower on my list. Cultures largely cut off from Europe (e.g. asian ones continuing to the present day) during colonial times would figure lowest on the snob scale, with indigenous peoples who have now been supplanted by the colonial powers (as Native American languages) being lowest of all -- these languages are hardly taught or studied, in fact, as part of a general education (i.e. a bachelor's from Harvard in Art History or English Literature, you would not be surprised to find this includes learning French or Russian or Japanese, but including a Native American language to a high degree of mastery would be far rarer). These are just general approaches, but my list leaves, for me, much to be desired. Where we read widely of a literature, as Russia's, Chekhov, Tolstoi, Dostoevski, etc, that should seem to promote it as a snob language. Where we do not read a literature at all, as Punjabi, that pushes it down quite low on the list. Other considerations are, academic languages, languages of music and opera, languages whose poetry is studied at american universities in the original language after a period of study of the language by the students, etc. Also, nowhere in my list are the "rest" of the Romance languages, like Romanian, the rest of the Slavic languages, like Czech, etc, other Germanic languages, proud national languages like Gaelic (Irish), which would seem to me to score quite high on the snob list, etc etc. In total, I would like a complete listing taking all these factors into account, preferably of all the major languages of the world. My own list shows much ignornace and room for improvement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.234.207.120 (talk) 14:47, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

also my own list includes only some 14 languages and another 4 much closer to the bottom of the list. I'd like a more exhaustive list like my own with justification if you like, as I myself have given! Thanks... 82.234.207.120 (talk) 14:55, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Research approaches. You could look at what languages the Ivy Leagues teach. You could look at what languages academic works often cite in the original (certainly renaissance Italian figures here strongly). You could look at documents in which languages history scholars bother to learn enough of the original language to look at. You could look at patterns of art, travel, etc, as reflecting on the tastes of the rich, etc, etc. Did you guys even read the snob article? 82.234.207.120 (talk) 14:50, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Snobbishness doesn't always correlate with wealth; snobbishness can also correlate with an attained level of being "cultured". Bus stop (talk) 15:10, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

very true, you'll note almost all of my examples are from culture and the arts, including higher learning. only one example (travel) is more closely related to being rich. still, there is some overlap... 82.234.207.120 (talk) 16:35, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

OP, you'll have to work out your own list. Where will you place, for example, Finnish? Speaking a language immediately impresses people at a cocktail party. "Oh, you speak fluent French? How come? ... Ah, I see, your father is Canadian." (less snob value). "Oh, you speak fluent Finnish? How come? ... Really, you taught yourself in only six months?" (more snob value). In other words, snobbishness is an illogical, ephemeral, inconsistent thing. If you want to study it systematically, you must propose an appropriate research methodology. Simply asking for the impressions of random people on a helpdesk isn't a research method. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Canadian provinces and US States

Nova Scotia is called Mississippi of Canada because of its black population and the racism it faced so what about the rest of the provinces? Which states are they compared to which states of America? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.92.154.99 (talk) 15:45, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

on the Nova Scotia thing. --Jayron32 15:46, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Windsor, Ontario is allegedly the Florida of Canada.[14][15] Alberta is the Texas of Canada, based on its oil, political conservatism, etc. There seem some debates about whether New Brunswick or Nova Scotia is the Maine of Canada. And lots of places claim to the the Hawaii of Canada with considerable implausibility. (This is mostly based on googling "X of Canada", but the Windsorites seem quite serious.) --Colapeninsula (talk) 17:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeh, I remember seeing lots of palm trees growing in Windsor. All of them indoors, of course. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:39, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Aside from the Alberta as Texas thing, I've never really heard any of these (I'm Canadian in Vancouver). Refs on the Mississippi thing? Mingmingla (talk) 22:59, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

As Douglas Hofstadter points out in Metamagical Themas, such analogies are pretty ill-defined. An example he used (he was writing in the mid 1980s) is Who is the first-lady of England? Was it Margaret Thatcher? Queen Elizabeth? Perhaps Margaret Thatcher's husband, Dennis?—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 01:05, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Oregon, of course, is California's Canada. Or is it Idaho's Portugal? --Trovatore (talk) 01:12, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

That, of course, makes California Oregon's Mexico. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:05, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

These sorts of analogies remind me of the time when Lucy (in Peanuts) told Schroeder he was the Beethoven of music. His response was: "!" -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 01:42, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yep, Beethoven was a bit loud.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 09:05, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Political parties of Europe immigration

Which political parties of European continent are pro-immigrant? I know that most of them are left-wing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.92.154.99 (talk) 15:49, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd take issue with your last statement. They're only "left-wing" in comparison with the parties in the US, both of which fall far to the right of any right-wing mainstream party in Europe. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:24, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

So far I know that Labour Party of U.K. is pro-immigrant because its has non-white members in the parliament like Rushanara Ali and other South Asian politicians, Socialist Party of France because the last time it was in power, it gained African and Arabs and Asians vote. --65.92.154.99 (talk) 19:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)65.92.154.99|65.92.154.99--65.92.154.99 (talk) 19:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

There are two subtly different questions. At least in Germany, all the major parties are at least nominally "pro-immigrant". However, there is a lot more differentiation about the question of actually encouraging immigration. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:18, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't say any German party is pro-immigration in the sense they wish new immigrants (excluding soccer players and engineers). Although all mainstream parties are certainly pro-immigration rights, at least nominally. Quest09 (talk) 21:05, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

True. Pro-immigrant, well all mainstream parties will say that they wish current immigrants well. Non-white MPs in Britain are mostly the sons and daughters of immigrants, therefore the link to current immigration is indirect. The Conservatives also try and recruit non-White people as far as possible. Pro-immigration is another question. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:07, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

There are also non-white Tory MPs such as one of my local MPs, Nadhim Zahawi. It's fair to say that all mainstream UK political parties are in favour of immigration, because as it's the policy of the EU to allow free migration between EU countries, we have to uphold it. However, attitudes towards immigration from non-EU countries vary. The parties in the UK who want zero immigration from whatever source are UKIP and BNP, and other fringe (nominally right-wing) parties. However, I think it's fair to say that no party would put up with a situation where jobs such as hospital consultant are not filled because of a block on immigration. --TammyMoet (talk) 07:41, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

This lengthy article gives a detailed overview of the politics of immigration in the UK, albeit from a socialist viewpoint. Even they admit that in the 1950s and 60s, immigration was supported by large businesses who were short of labour, and opposed by the trade unions who feared unemployment. So for a while, the usual dynamic was reversed with the right "for" and the left "against" immigration. Alansplodge (talk) 11:43, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Is there a specific term for...

I was wondering if there is a specific scientific/sociologic term for the following (common/uncommon?) human behavior/attitude/tendency:

Crimes of people who are not related, or very distant (geographically but also ethnically?), are much more readily considered carefully thought-out, purposeful and caused by simple evil intentions than when this criminal behavior is shown by relatives or other people that we are close to or feel related to. In the latter case, we'll often think in terms of those people being "fundamentally a good guy/girl", but maybe "easily influenced by bad friends" or "having had a terrible childhood", or "a bit simple minded". Another manifestation might be when someone would show xenophobic (anti-Islamic, racist...) attitudes in general, but have no problems at all with close neighbors or acquaintances who nevertheless fit into the categories they otherwise despise. A sort of blindness for one's own selectivity combined with unconscious dehumanization. Sort of. At least it sounds like something that could have been studied extensively already.

170.162.35.250 (talk) 16:07, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Some ideas from List of fallacies:

• Mind projection fallacy
• Faulty generalization
• Association fallacy
• Genetic fallacy

Some more ideas from List of cognitive biases:

• Confirmation bias
• Expectation bias
• Stereotyping
• Fundamental attribution error
• Outgroup homogeneity bias

Picking through those you may find some insight. --Jayron32 17:21, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Outgroup homogeneity bias sounded closest at first and lead me to Trait ascription bias, which lead me to the Negativity effect, and the combination of these three seems to come close... But then I got to Fundamental attribution error eventually, and that seems to be it. People who we are not connected to in some way (not in one of our ingroups), we will tend to collectively "simplify". That is, we will easily turn a blind eye to all kinds of psychological complexities that we DO acknowledge in ourselves and in people that we know better, and furthermore the negative aspects will more easily be attributed to basic personality than circumstances. Sounds like what I was looking for. 91.177.162.240 (talk) 08:49, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, I think the basic term for all this is prejudice. Looie496 (talk) 17:35, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Why are these American cities declining in population since the 1950s?

I was told on the answers to a previous question a while back, which by the way was not really a population question, that the reason that Chicago’s population is declining is because of gentrification whereas the reason that Detroit’s population is declining is because of bad economic conditions. I recently read that the metropolitan areas of these cities are growing though. A similar situation might also be happening to the metropolitan areas of population declining cities in the U.S. I also noticed that the population decline of Chicago and Detroit simultaneously began in the 1950s. I mentioned previously that in 1950, Chicago had a population of over 3.6 million people, and Detroit had a population of over 1.84 million, but today Chicago has about 2.7 million and Detroit has over 700,000 people. Now, to the point....

I discovered that Washington, DC’s population has also been declining since the 1950’s. The population at its peak was at 802,178 in the 1950s. In 2000, the population was 572,059. The population has stabilized a bit today.

The same declining population situation is also happening in Philadelphia. The population, as all the American cities I mentioned above, was at its highest in the 1950s, which was about 2.07 million. Today, it has gone down to 1.5 million people. The population has also stabled a bit today.

I found out that St. Louis has also been declining in population since the 1950s. In the 1950’s, the population was at its highest. It was 856,796, but today, it is 319,294.

I was told that Chicago’s population was declining due to a gentrification that’s taking over the city and that Detroit’s population was declining because it is really a city in decline, but what is going on with Washington, DC, St. Louis, and Philadelphia? Which of these cities is experiencing gentrification as a reason for population decline and which of these cities is experiencing what Detroit is experiencing as a reason for population decline? Also, why did all the cities that I’ve mentioned (Chicago, Detroit, Washington D.C, St. Louis, and Philadelphia) simultaneously start declining their populations in the 1950s? What occurred in the 1950s that started the decline of many American cities and that is generally still continuing today? I know that there are other American cities that I haven’t mentioned whose population has been declining since the 1950s. However, I noticed that Boston hasn’t experienced that sharp of a population drop since the 1950s that other cites are experiencing. The city has had its downs and a bit of ups in population, but in the 1950’s its population was at its highest, 801,444. Today, it is 617,914. Willminator (talk) 22:05, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, DC, Philly and St. Louis -- as well as Chicago -- have parts of the city that are pretty much ghetto. In STL and DC, it's huge chunks of the city. Second, people generally take up more space than they used to. Families are smaller. Instead of 6 people in a 2,500-square-foot house, you might have 3 or even 2. The metro area is growing because there are more families and more houses. But in a built-up part of the area, the population will decline. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:12, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

One possible answer: beginning in the 1950s, you start to see the rise of suburbanization — movement out of the urban core, into suburbs. That's what it sounds like given your comment on the metropolitan areas — you're seeing all of those little periphery places getting larger, while the core is depleting in terms of actual residency. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

See: Jane Jacobs, Laissez-faire liberalism, Welfare state, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire μηδείς (talk) 22:18, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

None of which has anything to do with the question at hand. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 17:37, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The big bad guy here is the GI Bill, enacted in 1944 to help out returning soldiers after WW2. It contained provisions making loans more likely for those Caucasians moving out of the cities into the suburbs than those remaining in the city (in part to help out automobile companies who wanted people to drive more). (The reason the population loss wasn't seen until the 1950's is that some of the millions of returning soldiers remained in the cities for a few years while they attended college, saved up money, etc.) 2.4 million veterans had home loans backed by the Veterans' Administration. This directly caused a population loss, as those people and their families moved to the suburbs, but also caused a more devastating long-term trend. Since the young, upwardly mobile white families moved out, this left older folks and minorities in the cities. This shrank the tax base considerably, as retirees and minorities have lower incomes. As generations passed, more people were born in the suburbs or moved there, while the cities were progressively more starved for revenue, and thus decayed, leading to even more "white flight" and a lack of people moving in to replace those who moved out or died of old age. StuRat (talk) 22:22, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Maybe you could give some support for your racist accusations, like showing how negroes were excluded from the GI Bill, rather than just making the assertion? μηδείς (talk) 22:35, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Support is below. Also, you should avoid saying "racist accusations", as it sounds like I am making accusations which are racist, rather than "accusations of racism", which is the unambiguous way to state it. StuRat (talk) 23:59, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Apparently, admitting the existence of racism is the equivalent of accepting it. Quest09 (talk) 15:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Wow. I am sure you will be happy to show us a reference that explains how Negroes were excluded from the GI bill to support your racist allegations. μηδείς (talk) 22:38, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

This was the 1950s. Racism was the norm. See African Americans and the G.I. Bill. StuRat (talk) 23:41, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Considering the state of that article, I would hesitate to use it to support any point, except that Wikipedia is a work in progress. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 12:39, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

That article contains a large number of references, so, if you don't like the article, track down those references and read them. StuRat (talk) 15:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I did read instead the talk page dispute about whether those sources were used correctly (or at all). 75.41.110.200 (talk) 20:52, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

This is an interesting edition of Scientific American magazine—on cities. Bus stop (talk) 23:47, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It's not that cities in the whole U.S. are shrinking, its that cities in the Rust belt are shrinking because, mostly, the jobs have left those areas. Cities in the sun belt are growing, major cities in the Southeast and Southwestern U.S. like Raleigh, Orlando, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix all experienced population booms at the same time that the major Northeastern and Midwestern cities were shrinking. Its not so much that cities are shrinking (indeed, the U.S. is more urbanized than ever before in history) it is that the population of the U.S. is moving southward. --Jayron32 01:48, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to all those who answered. You're all helpful indeed, but if I may, 2 more things recently came to mind that needs some clarification after I read and thought about the answers and after I did more research.

First of all, Buffalo hasn’t been too lucky according to the Scientific American link I was going over with that was given to me by BusStop. Today, it’s half of the city in population that it once was in the 1950’s. I read there that it’s going through a Detroit kind of decline. But I realized that New York City, unlike Buffalo geographically not too far away, didn’t begin to lose population in the 1950s, and the city’s population is still booming, rapidly. It seems that its residents are not moving to the Sun Belt. I’ve learned that there are parts of New York City that are ghetto, such as in the Bronx. Yet, New York City’s population, and the Bronx especially, is still rising. It doesn’t seem as if the 1944 GI Bill and white flight affected NYC’s population growth. There are places in New York City that are undergoing rapid gentrification such as Williamsburg in Brooklyn, much of Upper Manhattan, Long Island City in Queens, SoHo, Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and many more NYC neighborhoods and places. Yet, New York City’s population and the population of these areas are still growing. The suburbs of New York City are growing and expanding, which is making the metropolitan area one of the largest in the world, but New York City’s population is still growing. New York City seems to have been and be going through things that has caused many of the cities I've mentioned to decline in population since the 1950's, which hasn't happened in New York City. Could New York City be an exception to the rules of city population decline? If so, why?

The second thing is why does it seem to me that some politicians in the population declining cities complain about the population decline if it does not always mean a bad thing (like the gentrification reason) at least in some of the population declining cities? Willminator (talk) 15:27, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, NYC does have some thriving industries, like tourism, entertainment (such as Broadway), banking, stock trading, and fashion. In some cases being "the biggest US city" and perhaps "the most well-known US city" have provided advantages that smaller cities lacked. Also, being on the coast, NYC was used as the major arrival point for immigrants coming by ship, many of whom stayed, leading to many immigrant communities which continue to attract new immigrants (even those who now come by plane and could just as easily fly elsewhere). StuRat (talk) 15:44, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

New York City did suffer a major population decline in the 1970s, when crime was bad and the economy was horrible and so on. From 1970-1980 it suffered a population loss of about a million people. From about 1980-2000 it re-added that million as the economy (in particular Wall Street) picked up again. The population of the borough of Manhattan in particular declined pretty steeply from 1950 to 1980, and has had a moderate level of growth since then. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:51, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

You're right that New York City had experienced population loss, but what I was trying to say was that New York City as a whole seems to be more lucky than those American cities who are still experiencing population decline since the 1950s. In the 1970s its population was 7.895 million, which was higher than its 1950s population which was 7.892 million. The increase was greater than the decrease. In the 1970s, the population declined again, but more sharply, but the population loss was stopped again. After doing some more reading, I found out today that Newark for example, which is a NYC suburb across the river from Manhattan, hasn't been so lucky. 442,337 was the city's population in the 1950s, but today it's down to 277,140. By the way, Manhattan had also experience population loss between 1910 - 1930. Its population was actually 2.33 million in the 1910's. I imagine it probably went down during this time because of the skysraper boom. Willminator (talk) 15:44, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Declining populations pose real challenges to city mayors:

1) The city services and staff of city workers must be cut back accordingly. This means massive lay-offs (depressing the economy further) and then there remains the issue of how to continue to pay the retirement benefits for the large number of retirees.

2) The old number of roads and other infrastructure can no longer be maintained. So, how do you choose which roads to abandon, knowing that some people live along all the roads ? In Detroit, the mayor recommended moving people out of areas in the worst shape, but that didn't go over very well.

3) While gentrification can bring in people with higher incomes and thus improve the tax base, there the concern is that poor people and minorities are being abandoned and pushed out of the neighborhood. StuRat (talk) 15:52, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

A major difference between cities in the South and especially in the Southwest and cities in the Northeast and parts of the Midwest is that cities in the "Sunbelt" typically expand their municipal boundaries to capture areas of new development, whereas Northeastern cities' boundaries were typically fixed 100 years ago or so. Northeastern cities are surrounded by a ring of suburban municipalities jealous of protecting their more affluent taxpayers from the expense of supporting the needs of the central cities' poorer populations. This circumstance may create a vicious cycle of deterioration in the urban core. New York City is something of an exception because it is such a center of highly paid employment, art, and culture. New York City is a very desirable place to live for affluent people and for middle-class people who enjoy those cultural amenities. The jobs involved in providing services to all of those businesses and affluent people is a magnet to immigrants, who really account for most if not all of New York City's population growth. Also, while New York City's municipal boundaries are more than 100 years old, the metropolitan area is so large that commuting from new suburban development on the metropolitan fringe into the central city is too time-consuming to be really feasible for people with family responsibilities. (New suburban development on New York's metropolitan fringe provides housing almost exclusively to people who commute to jobs in other suburbs.) Therefore, the dynamism of New York City's economy has led to increasingly vertical development. There is some infill, but buildings in trendy neighborhoods are also being built taller than their predecessors to accommodate population growth. That just doesn't happen in any other American city, except to some extent in Los Angeles. Marco polo (talk) 18:04, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

New York City also has the "advantage" of having its central business districts on an island, which adds a lot of time to a driving commute. It's easy to get in and out of Buffalo or Detroit from a leafy exurb. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:18, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Also note that now the businesses have largely moved out of Detroit, too, so the need to commute is gone. I imagine this has happened in other cities, too. StuRat (talk) 04:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Last follow up post.... Have businesses also largely moved out of cities like Chicago whose population decline is partly do to bigger housing space and increase in gentrification? Also, did ghettofication really begin in the 1950s in many of those population declining cities? If not, how did it cause the 1950s population decline? I was told above that one of the reasons for the population decline that began in the 1950s was because part of those cities are ghetto, but I imagine that its possible that they had ghettos before the 1950s, but I could be wrong. Willminator (talk) 15:17, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

All large cities have, and have always had, poorer sections, sometimes called ghettos. The difference is that some US cities are now almost entirely ghetto, with no tax base to improve things. In the case of gentrification; large, old businesses like factories might still close down, but may be replaced by many smaller service-oriented businesses for the new rich. They all need restaurants with insulting waiters and dog-groomers, after all. :-) StuRat (talk) 19:18, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Ancient Roman punishment

Near the end of Livy 28:29 it says for a punishment: These were stripped to the waist and conducted into the middle of the assembly; all the apparatus of punishment was at once brought out; they were tied to the stake, scourged and finally beheaded.

1. What is all the apparatus of punishment?
2. What is the meaning of tied to the stake, especially the stake? Was it a common practice then for severe punishment for criminals to be tied to a stake?
3. "scourged"? Were criminals then burned at the stake?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 23:30, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Regarding points 3 and 2, to Scourge is to whip. Jesus was scourged. Presumably they were tied to a stake to hold them in place while being whipped. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:37, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

And the apparatus of punishment must have included a stake, unless there was one already present, a scourge (whip), and an axe for the beheading. "The stake" rather than "a stake" is normal English but perhaps a bit old-fashioned now. Joan of Arc was "burnt at the stake". Itsmejudith (talk) 08:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The most serious Roman whip was called a Flagrum, about which we have a brief article. A Google search for "Flagrum" brings up lots of sites, many religious (connected with the Passion of Christ) but some of a (ahem) "special interest" nature ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 08:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Appreciate the answers, thanks.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 11:42, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The Latin is nudi in medium protrahebantur et simul omnis apparatus supplicii expromebatur. deligati ad palum uirgisque caesi et securi percussi

I don't particularly agree with the translation you have there. The phrase nudi in medium protrahebantur means "They were dragged (protrahebantur) naked (nudi) into the center (in medium)." There is no phrase to indicate they were stripped to the waist. Perhaps your translation didn't want its readers to assume the mutinous soldiers were not completely naked, which from the Latin, it appears that they were. The verb protrahebantur is from protraho protractum. It's where we get the word "protracted" which means drug out over a long time. The image here is more than conducted. These soldiers were dragged forcibly and naked into the middle of the assembly of soldiers.

The second phrase simul omnis apparatus supplicii expromebatur means "and at the same time (et simul) every instrument of punishment/torture (omnis apparatus supplicii) was brought forth (expromebatur). Simul, where we get the word "simultaneously" gives the impression that all at once were these naked soldiers dragged out into the assembly with all the means to torture them at the same time. Livy’s use of expromo gives the sense of taking something out for display and spectacle. The root for our modern word promotion follows the prefix ex which means out.

The last phrase, deligati ad palum uirgisque caesi et securi percussi means "They were bound to the stake (deligati ad palum) and hewn by a green tree branch commonly referred to as a switch (virgisque caesi) and cleaved by an axe (et securi percussi). The use of the conjuction que for "and" rather than the full et seems to indicate that the binding of the mutinous soldiers to the poles and thrashing them with green tree branches was a complete action as in "bound & thrashed." The use of virgis tells us that the instrument was not a scourge as in the medieval torture device, but just a branch designed for whipping, a green and flexible one. He verb caedo, cedidi, caesum is often used with axes to mean to cut, but can also mean to strike a mortal blow, beat, or cudgel. You must imagine that they were really going after these soldiers with these branches and inflicting wounds on their bare skin. The instrument for what can be implied as beheading was indeed an axe.

For your first question, apparatus here means equipment or a thing of preparation. It doesn’t mean a machine as our modern meaning has it, although in some Latin contexts it can mean a machine, just not here. There was no crazy torture machine, just instruments of torture.

For your second question, the palum or "stake" was a large piece of wood in the ground upon which soldiers could practice use of their sword, or where people could be tied for punishment. The article "the" is not present. I suppose if Livy wanted such emphasis, he would have use the pronoun ille, but there is none here. It could well have been translated as "bound to a stake"

For your third question, the soldiers were being thrashed with green branches to cause intense pain before they were executed. It was a harsh treatment for the purposes of not only punishing those who had rebelled against Scipio Africanus, but it was a spectacle meant for the other soldiers so that they would regain discipline. Our word "decimate" has the Latin root of decem meaning "ten." It was a practice among the Roman legions to kill every tenth man as an act of discipline if they did something like loose a battle. Livy is giving us one of many descriptions of a general enacting a severe form of punishment to maintain discipline in his ranks and command the utmost loyalty and respect. Gx872op (talk) 15:12, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Wow, great detailed explanation of these items and events. I corrected Publius Scipio to Scipio Africanus his son. The mutiny at Sucro took place in 206 BC; whereas Publius Scipio (father to Africanus) was already killed in 211 BC. Here is my question then:

Did the whipping of the green branch burn? (really, I'm serious on this question).--Doug Coldwell ^talk 18:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Gx872; I really enjoyed that response. Bielle (talk) 18:23, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I've never had a switch to the back, so I can't say for sure. It may depend on the type of wood used. This was green wood so it would have been both flexible and possibly wet with sap. Livy's word choice describes the cutting or hewing feature of the tree branches on the soldiers, so I think it did more than sting. Salt on a wound does burn, and so if they were sweating during this time, sweat and tree sap may have caused their shredded backs to burn. Methods of torture and discipline would be a good research project, but I'll leave that for someone else. 8 semesters of Latin was enough for me. Gx872op (talk) 18:41, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Might one refer to this as the similitude of burning?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 18:55, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The use of green branches implies they were fairly or very flexible, so not the equivalent of beating someone with a cudgel (which the Roman military also sometimes engaged in). So the punishment would've been most similar to birching (or switching which has some different nuances). Our article on birching says "According to some accounts, even the legendary sting of the cat o' nine tails was less feared than the birch in certain prisons" (in the 1800s), but also that "Judicial birching in 20th-century Britain was used much more often as a fairly minor punishment for male juveniles" (with a smaller and lighter birch). Like the punishment Livy describes, 19th and 20th century birching was carried out on the bare skin, and was much more likely to cut the skin than caning (but would bruise less), and would definitely sting. The article also mentions the tradition in parts of Scandinavia "to strike one's own body with soaked birch twigs in the sauna as a form of massage and to increase blood circulation and open the pores. The twigs are chosen carefully and do not have their leaves removed, and are often softened by keeping them in water prior to use. Being struck by the twigs induces a pleasant stinging sensation but very little actual pain". So again a stinging or burning sensation for this use of green twigs/branches, although at the opposite end of the scale for severity. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:02, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Tangentially related, I believe Scipio Africanus was one of the first Romans to appear on a Roman coin while still alive. I think he appeared as a bust, although this was minted in Spain I believe. Sulla appeared but not as a bust. I think Julius Caesar was the first to appear as a bust and minted at Rome rather than a province. Gx872op (talk) 20:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Doug, you keep asking if there is any burning, but I can find nothing in the original text (either the English, or the Latin that Gx872op has provided) that mentions burning. Do you have a particular reason for wanting there to be burning involved? --ColinFine (talk) 22:40, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I believe Gx872op has answered my curiosity as to a "similitude of burning", which looks to me to be stinging that would feel something like burning. I can just imagine being whipped with a green flexibly branch and it would definitely feel like much of a sting (similar to burning).--Doug Coldwell ^talk 23:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

September 15

Official residence of the Premier of Ontario

What is the official residence of the Premier of Ontario? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.92.152.54 (talk) 01:21, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Ontario. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:22, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not seeing anything in Google nor in wikipedia's article on official residences. Do you know for sure that the Premier of Ontario even has an official residence? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:29, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The contact form for the Ontario government is online at https://www.ontario.ca/en/contacts/feedback/index.htm Presumably, someone who answers questions there may know. --Jayron32 01:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Apparently not. According to this blogger, the Ontario Liberal Party bought a house for Dalton McGuinty to rent (at a below-market rate). Clarityfiend (talk) 01:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

US-Israel relations

Answered question turning into debate

Why does the US unconditionally support everything Israel does? --75.60.15.28 (talk) 02:03, 15 September 2011 (UTC) Because it doesn't. --Jayron32 02:12, 15 September 2011 (UTC) We weren't too crazy about the Jonathan Pollard situation, for example. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC) Additionally, relations were a bit tense during the Clinton Administration, which was quite critical at times of Israel's settlement policies, which the Clinton Administration saw as unneccessarily antagonistic and did not lead to a peaceful Two-state solution. --Jayron32 02:20, 15 September 2011 (UTC) Israel has been the middle eastern country most friendly toward the US, and with good reason. How many times has the US used its Security Council veto in favor of Israel, when otherwise there would have been Council action contrary to the interests of Israel? How many billion dollars a year does the US give to Israel, and what is the total since 1948? How loudly did the US protest the Israeli "accidental" attack on the USS Liberty, and how hard did the US government work to silence the ship's surviving crewmembers from discussing or writing about the incident? Edison (talk) 03:35, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Israel – United States relations: Whoa, what's that? A reference, on the reference desk?? That's crazy talk. How about a couple more? Here you go. Want some opinion pieces on why this is? More than enough of those. Here's a pretty good one pretty relevant to this topic [16]. Buddy431 (talk) 04:08, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Negroponte doctrine... AnonMoos (talk) 16:47, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Conservative and Liberal places of Bangladesh.

I read the Pabna article that Pabna is conservative because it has been a political stronghold of Jamaat e Islami and BNP. Is there other places of Bangladesh that are conservative in terms of religion or being political stronghold of Jamaat and BNP? What about places that are liberal due to being political stronghold of Awami League?

The article on the Bangladeshi general election, 2008 breaks down each party's seats by region, which makes clear where some party's strongholds lie. The majority of the BNP's seats are in Chittagong, with Rajshahi the other area where they are fairly strong. Jamaat only hold seats in Chittagong. The Awami League hold almost all the seats in Dhaka, and are weakest in Chittagong and Rajshahi. Warofdreams talk 15:13, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Fasces

How common was it to use two axes in the construction of the traditional Roman fasces? Did it then have a "winged" appearance?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 12:37, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Well... seeing as I can't find any, not common at all. LOL. The older Etruscan/Greek fasces incorporated a labrys, a woodcutting double axe which gives it a winged appearance. Romans also used a double headed axe (bipennis) for woodcutting, though it was far larger and had a wooden handle unlike the labrys. Roman woodcutting axes seem to be overwhelmingly single-bladed however, and depictions of fascia utilize one-bladed axes (secūrēs). The only instances where I can find two fascia crossing each other are in post-Roman Empire heraldry (which also seems to often use a telltale battleaxe instead of woodcutting axes) and I can not find anything on a single fasces with two axes.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 14:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

O.K., thanks.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 11:26, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

The world a thousand years ago

If we knew say in the year 1000 what we do now, could the people who lived back then have had the same kind of society that we have now with the infrastructure and internet etc? What im asking i guess is have these things always had the potential to exist but we've only recently discovered how to utilise them? --Thanks, Hadseys 13:22, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Innovations interacted with other innovations to get us to the point we are at now. Sudden possession of 1,000 years worth of knowledge would probably lead to a different set of circumstances. The incremental nature of change cannot be overlooked. By the way, it's a hard question to answer, because I don't think it is narrowly-enough-focussed. But I obviously find it interesting nevertheless. Bus stop (talk) 13:33, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean you individually, or society as a whole? If it is just you individually, you would find that a lot of the needed infrastructure to make what you know how to build is missing. I mean look at something simple like a bicycle. You should be able to invent that right? But with the tools a supplies you would have back in 1000AD, you would have a rough time. You will not have rubber for the tires, so you will need to use something else which will give a rougher ride, less traction and weigh more. You will not have aluminum or even tubular steel for the frame, so your bicycle will be rather heavy, and take a fair amount of time to fashion, either from solid iron or from wood. Moving parts will be tricky, because you will have to build them within decent tolerances with the tools on hand. Even if those trade offs are acceptable, roads at the time would not be in any condition for you to ride around very well. That is not to say that a knowledgeable individual from today would not be able to make some improvements, just don't expect airplanes, the internet and cellphones within his lifetime. Googlemeister (talk) 13:44, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Various works of fiction have themes of people with advanced knowledge of technology finding themselves in [largely] low tech worlds, either because they've gone back in time or because they're living in a post-apocalyptic world. My favourite of this ilk, although not quite right for your description is Day of the Triffids. I've not read it for years, but I thin A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court may be what you're describing - although I guess the tech is some way off 2011 levels! Various Dr Who storylines have used the idea, too. I'd guess it's fairly common. --Dweller (talk) 15:21, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Back to the Future attempts to deal with the subject somewhat, though admittedly not 1,000 years ago. IIRC, the Doc manages to build a new time machine using contemporary components. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:31, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

A British TV comedy sketch has an ordinary 21st century man transported back to the laboratory of Michael Faraday. When Faraday asks about modern inventions, the modern man suggests cars. "How do they work?" "Erm, you put petrol in them." "What is petrol?" - he doesn't really know. "Mobile phones?" "How do they work?" He doesn't know either. I might do better explaining an internal combustion engine, but I don't think I'd be an awful lot more useful in the past. Alansplodge (talk) 16:53, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Me again; you can see it here - sorry, it doesn't quite follow my script... Alansplodge (talk) 17:04, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Don't forget societal resistance to change ("burn the witch!"). Other SF novels include L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall and Leo Frankowski's Conrad Stargard series (heavy on the engineering). Clarityfiend (talk) 20:50, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, everything we have now could have been created earlier, if we had the technology. It couldn't have been created instantly though, as many intermediate steps need to be achieved first. I'm not sure how much more quickly we could go through the intermediate steps, maybe a few hundred years ? Note that one problem is that our technology might well outpace our social development. That still might be the case in the modern world, where we've developed nuclear weapons before we ended warfare, but at least we have world-wide trade and the United Nations, which tend to limit to scale of wars. Without those, we might have had a global nuclear war long ago. StuRat (talk) 17:03, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

??? How do you know it is the UN and worldwide trade that limits the scale of wars rather then nuclear weapons? Googlemeister (talk) 18:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

If only the threat of nuclear retaliation stopped wars, then that would leave open many wars where one of the two parties lacked nuclear weapons. StuRat (talk) 04:04, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

The question is interesting. Obviously if today's knowledge just suddenly appeared in the year 1000, it would take a long time to "spin up" the infrastructure that we take for granted today, what with digging mines and oil wells, creating all those laboratories, building all those cell phone towers, farming all that coca. Another interesting aspect is that our article world population estimates says that there were around 300 million humans on Earth in the year 1000, which is under 5% of what we have today — so in order to give everybody a cell phone, we wouldn't need quite so much germanium, for example, so it may be that 300 million humans could live in a way indistinguishable from the way we live today, but with a much smaller infrastructure that could be built faster than ours was. Fewer mouths to feed. Another twist: Europeans would not have visited the New World yet; many animal species that are extinct today could be saved and several entire human civilizations, as well, if some precautions were taken. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:14, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Transaccions in the ballpark of billions

Can they be really hidden? Aren't rough traders just a lame excuse for speculation and loss of billions?Quest09 (talk) 15:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Banks have internal checks that are supposed to make wild speculation by a given trader visible to the bank's management, in whose interest it obviously is to stem losses before they reach such outrageous levels. The meat of Nick Leeson's conviction was that he had resorted to deceit and forgery to conceal his losses. The underlying problem in that case was that his employers really didn't properly understand how their business worked and had pitifully bad internal checks to make sure that everything was working properly. For things to get this bad requires someone to go rogue, but also requires an institutional failure. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:12, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

This current BBC article, BBC Q&A: How do rogue traders do it?, probably prompted by the same incident you have in mind, directly addresses the question. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.79.217 (talk) 16:36, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Another article prompted by the same incident 90.200 mentions (and I guess was the catalyst for the OP) mentions [17]:

Louise Cooper, markets analyst at BGC Partners, said the arrest will call UBS's risk management into question and an unexpected trading loss could do "significant reputational damage" to the bank.

She said: "Rich people tend not to want to do business with a bank where there are questions over risk control.

"UBS needs to do a good job in explaining what went wrong and assuring its clients that it will not affect them."

Which supports what FW mentioned. On the other hand, I've heard it suggest for NL and possibly others that one of the common reasons for the problems in the institutions is they don't care as long as the rogue trader appears to be making money which perhaps partially relates to what the OP is thinking of.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the recent UBS incident prompted my question, although they are not alone. It seems pretty straightforward to check the whereabout of 1bn, since you just need a fraction of that to track it down. Quest09 (talk) 20:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

historical fiction

I know there are some works of fiction out there that portray a person from a more modern time traveling to the past and living there. Are there many works for the opposite, where a person from the past comes into present days? I want to specify that it is only for people of the past coming to the present, not people from the present going to the future. Googlemeister (talk) 15:26, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Not exactly what you want, but I once read a story by an author called Simak, called 'The Goblin Reservation', which was about a world in the future where time travel was normal, and people (and all sorts of now-extinct animals and mythical creatures) from our past were living in this future world, basically for the purpose of being studied. Entertaining read, and the main plot actually had nothing to do with time travel. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:37, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Les Visiteurs, Encino Man, Catweazle, and many at TV Tropes "Fish out of temporal water department. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:58, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

In TV sci-fi, we have Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the fictional character Professor Moriarty is brought from our past in our future. In the Stargate SG-1 series, the mostly fictional character Merlin is brought from our past into our present. StuRat (talk) 16:21, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

There is also Lost in Austen, where the main character - a lady from modern-day London - finds herself swapping places with one of the main characters from Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet, who ends up staying in modern London (and is followed by Darcy later on). Fictional characters, but still from the past. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:33, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

A TV example (if that counts) from my 1960s childhood, Adam Adamant Lives!, and from 1970s children's TV, Catweazle. Alansplodge (talk) 16:39, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Rip van Winkle. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:36, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

As something of a contrast to most of the above, you might consider the novel Brother Petroc's Return (1937) by "S.M.C." (Sister Mary Catherine), about a 16th century Cornish monk who, having apparently died and been entombed, is discovered in a state of suspended animation and revived around the date of the book's publication. It is not, however, easy to find. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.32 (talk) 22:12, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Time After Time, in which H.G. Wells really did make a time machine; Jack the Ripper uses it to come to the present (well, 1979), and Wells comes here too, to chase him. Wells is disappointed that 1979 isn't a socialist utopia, but does enjoy McDonalds french fries. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:58, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

He also enjoys Mary Steenburgen. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:13, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

As does Jack the Ripper. I don't think I disclosed any surprises there. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:16, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

You mean like the way they dispatched Jack by... Oh, I'd better not spoil it. :) One thing, though, is that Malcom and Mary carried their on-screen romance off-screen for awhile. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:25, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Isaac Asimov's The Ugly Little Boy.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 23:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

In Argentina we have the comic book Gilgamesh the immortal. It is about a sumerian king who arrives to modern day the old fashioned way: being immortal. Of course, from Sumeria to modern day, and everything in the way here: ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, Jesus, medieval ages, crusades, colonization of the americas, napoleonic wars, WWI, WWII, and so on... Cambalachero (talk) 23:28, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

In Philip José Farmer's multiple-novel Riverworld series, every human who has ever lived is reincarnated on the eponymous planet simultaneously, but this may be straying from what the OP is looking for. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.32 (talk) 02:53, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

There was an original Twilight Zone episode where a man about to be hung for his crimes in the Wild West is transported into the "present" (around 1960). Homicide ensues.

In another episode, a man from a wagon train is transported into the present where he finds medicine for his sick son. StuRat (talk) 03:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I can't believe no one (even Bugs!!!) mentioned Field of Dreams, where an entire baseball team comes from the past into the present. --Jayron32 14:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Is my face red, or what? Although those were the ghosts of deceased players, which is perhaps a bit different. And I did find it puzzling that Joe inquired about the lights, given that night baseball had been around for 25 years or so when he died. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

The Centurion's Empire, where a Roman centurion uses a hibernation technique to sleep for centuries at a time. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:16, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

UK riots - types of conviction

Hi,

I've been reading this article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14931987 about the offences that the perpetrators of last month's riots in the UK have been convicted for. They've mostly been sent down for burglary and violent disorder. There is, however, a statutory offence of riot, created by the Public Order Act 1986. But nobody seems to have been charged with that specific offence - always with "connected" offences like burglary. Does anyone know why this is? As far as I know, the Public Order Act 1986 is still very much in force. And it seems to fit the circumstances. Why aren't the relevant parts being applied?

--Privyet (talk) 21:15, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Most of those convicted so far are those who've pleaded guilty early in the process. I believe that's because there's good (probably video) evidence of someone taking stuff from a shop or chucking a brick at a police van. So the CPS are going to be tempted to charge them with the pretty undeniable stuff, knowing the courts will take the circumstances into account and give out a harsher sentence than a simple burglary or brick throw, and call that a success. Getting a conviction for riot sounds like a more nuanced case, one they'd need more than video evidence for, and perhaps evidence about a given person's conduct over more than just a single instant of criminality. The act talks about "common purpose" and says "The common purpose may be inferred from conduct"; that's clearly a case the CPS can make, but it's likely one they'd have to argue at some length in court (and a defence might be "my client just showed up, chucked a brick, and ran off - he didn't know any of the other people there, and wasn't acting in common purpose with them"). You'd think that the more serious cases, where a charge of riot would be appropriate, will still be bubbling through the system - if a defendant chooses to contest a charge, it can take at least 6 months (probably more, with courts and prosecutors so busy) before it comes to trial. And given the very hefty terms for riot (up to 10 years) it's a great motivator for anyone charged with that to defend it actively, and at least try to plea down to a lesser charge. So I think you will see a few people come to trial for the more serious crimes you mention, but they've not come to court yet. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

What will happen if the same thing occurs in the U.S. if all defendants request their jury trials? Certainly many of them end up pleading guilty to save money. Most cases are never tried by the jury (all facts are known and undisputed from the video) but what will happen if they choose not to plead guilty? What did they do in the 1960s? -- Toytoy (talk) 03:01, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

As in earlier times, they picked some political prisoners to blame it on. I assume Britain will do the same. Wnt (talk) 03:12, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

UN's legal capacity

UN Security Council mediator Count Folke Bernadotte and Observer André Serot were murdered on September 17, 1948 by Israeli agents. Later, UN passed General Assembly Resolution 258(III) to bring the case to the International Court of Justice to decide whether the UN has legal capacity to have an advisory opinion regarding reparation for injuries suffered by UN workers.

• http://daccess-ods.un.org/access.nsf/Get?OpenAgent&DS=A/RES/258(III)&Lang=E&Area=RESOLUTION
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/1284789

Does Wikipedia have an article for this ICJ opinion? -- Toytoy (talk) 23:49, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Our article on Bernadotte says he was killed by the Stern Gang, a terrorist organization. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:41, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes he was killed by the Zionist terrorist group Lehi and none of the murderers was punished for killing a peace-loving man who have saved hundreds of Jews from Adolf Hitler. However, without first consulting the ICJ, the UN's legal standing was not clear at that time. The ICJ's opinion granted the UN legal personality. It's, in fact, a textbook case to allow the UN to go to the ICJ. -- Toytoy (talk) 02:35, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Huh? The Lehis were an extremist terrorist group, not Israeli agents. In fact, they were forcibly disbanded by the Israeli government, if I remember correctly, by having most of them arrested. As the article says though, they were granted amnesty (usually a good idea in most situations to do so if you keep tabs on them). The UN though only has as much power as its member states choose to grant it, and that is mostly only that power granted by UNSC members (more specifically the permanents).

Out of curiosity, is this in relation to Turkey saying they're going to take Israel to the ICJ? I read that that can only happen if both nations agree to arbitration by the ICJ and then the UN takes the decision under advisement, but there;s nothing the ICJ itself can actually do. I could be wrong though, I'm no expert. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 02:45, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

A related case is the ICJ's ruling on the illegality of the Israeli West Bank security barrier. This was brought to the ICJ following a ruling of the UN General Assembly despite Israeli opposition. (See Israeli_West_Bank_barrier#United_Nations_and_International_Court_of_Justice and BBC.)--Colapeninsula (talk) 09:13, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

September 16

available employment not filled

The rate of unemployment seems to be known pretty well in the United States. What about the rate of job offerings which remain unfilled out of the total jobs offered? --DeeperQA (talk) 01:08, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I did a Google search for unfilled jobs, and I found this article.

• There are 2.6 million unfilled jobs in the U.S. Why?? - BusinessWeek

If others perform the same search, they can find more information.

—Wavelength (talk) 02:51, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Its not that I'm lazy (which I actually am)... its just that I was not expecting to find any information so readily available, much less under the word "unfilled." Thanks. --DeeperQA (talk) 04:18, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

That article is a bit mystifying. Employers don't want to hire "overqualified" candidates because they're afraid they'll bolt when the economy improves? Really? Is there anybody left who thinks the U.S. economy is going to improve this decade or next? Wnt (talk) 03:00, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, in the current U.S. system, anytime a business hires a new employee they are at a real disadvantage. There's human resource hours, training expenses, taxes, insurance, and a plethora of legal risks and other considerations that must be weighed. ESPECIALLY When times are tough, like now, it often makes more sense to increase the compensation of existing employee to take on more of the work load, rather than to hire someone new. This can be good for long-term employees to "move up the ladder", but, unfortunately, also decreases the number of employment opportunities. Politics aside, this can become a reinforcing loop, and is not good in the big picture, but makes sense for an individual company who's main concern (and rightfully so) is profit margins. Quinn ^{░ RAIN} 05:10, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Also, employers can afford to be picky and leave job openings out there without actually hiring someone if they don't like the candidates that apply. When the job market is bad, they know they'll continue to get applications and will eventually get someone they like. SDY (talk) 07:39, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Many businesses, particularly with large numbers of low-paid staff, have very high staff turnover (e.g. the turnover rate for McDonalds kitchen staff is over 100% p.a.[18]). This means that even in a recession there'll be a lot of staff leaving, a lot of recruitment and hence a lot of vacancies. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:19, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Quinn's comment is mostly right, but I see little evidence that U.S. employers are increasing compensation for existing employees when they increase the workload. Real wages have been trending steadily downward since the last recession and, anecdotally, I don't know of anyone who's received a significant raise in the past few years. Far, far more common is to increase the workload without increasing compensation. Marco polo (talk) 14:25, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Or increased workload and reduced compensation/benefits. Rmhermen (talk) 21:54, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Philosopher who doubted physical world could hurt him?

I'm trying to figure out the name of an ancient philosopher I heard a story about. Supposedly he wasn't convinced that water could drown you or falling could kill you, so whenever he went out some of his friends went with him to keep him out of danger. But supposedly he chased his cook through the streets of Athens for having served a poor meal to his guests. It might just be solipsism but I thought there was a school of philosophy that took its name from him. Any idea what name I'm trying to remember? RJFJR (talk) 01:58, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

That seems to overlap somewhat with this account of Pyrrhon of Elis, aka Pyrrho -- except that Pyrrhon is said to have dismissed a student who chased the cook, not to have chased the cook himself. Ring any bells? Looie496 (talk) 02:26, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

The name seems to be about what I remembered hearing but couldn't spell. Thank you. RJFJR (talk) 02:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

As he lay dying eventually someday, was he arguing that it wasn't really happening? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:18, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

No, he was probably thinking, "One more day like that, and I will be finished...." --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

list of political criteria

Is the a list of political criteria by which presidential candidates are rated or compared with other candidates, which might effect whether they are chosen over another candidate? (for instance, when Lincoln ran for President a girl suggested that he might be more electable if he wore a beard - so facial hair could be considered one of those criteria.) --DeeperQA (talk) 05:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

...or, at least it could have been considered that in 1861. I'm not sure fashions should be included in such a list. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:33, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I too would love to see such a list. However it would potentially be infinite and growing as new issues arise. Here are some in no particular order:

• Support for ethanol
• Support for the death penalty
• From a populous state
• Skin color
• Criminal record
• Height
• Weight
• Gender
• Whether or not they are vegetarian
• Likes or dislikes Justin Beiber

Greg Bard (talk) 20:33, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Presumably no one in 1861 liked Justin Bieber. SDY (talk) 20:47, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Beard: "The last President of the United States to wear any type of facial hair was William Howard Taft, who was in office from 1909 till 1913." Looks like no beard is a criteria of the last 100 years. Rmhermen (talk) 21:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Psychodynamic's Article

There is in the Alfred Adler's article that one of the four holistic schools of psychology is Karen Horney's psychodynamic. But in the psychodynamic's Article there is not a mention to Karen Horney. How could it be so!? Flakture (talk) 05:35, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Is imperonating a federal agency a crime in the US?

Suppose a website wants to cause some drama by pretending it was hit with a ICE seizure. Instead of the "correct way" of faking it they put up a 404 page secured by ice.gov's SSL certificate. When a user visits the site they are hit with a SSL security warning page showing that the website is supposedly associated with the ICE somehow. Would would this violate any US federal laws? Anonymous.translator (talk) 06:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I know there's a law about impersonating a federal agency to gain something of value, but I can't remember if impersonating per se is forbidden. 18 USC 912 is the chapter and verse on obtaining things of value. The exact text: "Whoever falsely assumes or pretends to be an officer or employee acting under the authority of the United States or any department, agency or officer thereof, and acts as such, or in such pretended character demands or obtains any money, paper, document, or thing of value, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both." In this case they are arguably "pretending to be" ICE. Whether they're "acting as" ICE is less obvious. If they actually gained an advantage against a competing business, that would be a "thing of value" and they'd be in violation, but you'd probably have to demonstrate to the court that there was a gain, not just a possibility of a gain. SDY (talk) 07:35, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Nowadays if you acknowledge indebtedness and the person you are indebted to writes off the debt after you have failed to pay then the underpaid debt may be considered income. If your website tactic is what convinced the creditor to write off your debt and it is now considered income then it might also be considered gain. Some Federal prisons have tennis courts. Enjoy. --DeeperQA (talk) 08:13, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the answer. That clears everything. And yes, the website is indeed using this tactic to fend off creditors. Anonymous.translator (talk) 18:40, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Just for clarity, I just know this line because somebody accused me of it a little while back on my talk page (long story). If you want an actual opinion of whether that particular behavior is illegal, you'll have to ask a lawyer. All I know is that there is a law, and the law has some really awkward wording. SDY (talk) 18:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

There are always phony snail mail envelopes going through the mails with legal-looking seals trying to make people think they come from governmental agencies. Those don't seem to be illegal. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 18:48, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

They would have to stay this side of the line, i.e. to not overtly claim they're a government agency. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:09, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Questions of "Would it be legal to do X?" or "Is party A breaking the law by doing so and so?" are inappropriate here. The Ref Desk volunteers may not give any legal advice, and certainly one would be unwise to rely on any legal advice obtained from anonymous strangers ion the internet. Edison (talk) 21:04, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

relative income

Warren Buffet does not mind if he and his peers are taxed heavily on income above $1,000,000 a year while Obama sets the amount at $250,000. The poverty line is currently $10,890 for an individual (which is a disgraceful joke if you have a car and rent or have a mortgage on a house) while the average income is $49,500. That means the average income is 4.54 times the poverty line while $1,000,000 income per year is 91.83 times the poverty line and 20.20 times the average income. $250,000 is 22.96 times the poverty line and 5.05 times the average income. Why are the multiples of the poverty line not used to determine how much individuals can afford to pay in income tax or is there a more accurate curve that does? (You can think of the multiple as the number of years you can go without a job.)--DeeperQA (talk) 07:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

To start, a point of clarification: El Presidente doesn't set nuttin' when it comes to taxes. Taxation and all revenue is controlled by the House of Representatives, the so-called "power of the purse." Obama may have some influence over it as the leader of the Democratic Party, but given that they're the minority now that's not much influence. He can ask for things, of course, and he's got one heck of a megaphone for that purpose, but he doesn't actually write the rules. Speaking of the House of Representatives, any decision they make over taxation tends to be political horse-trading. If taxes were set by the bureaucracy ("intelligent design"), they'd probably have a more complicated base formula with more headahces but less loopholes. Since they're set by the House, they're like swiss cheese (which goes well with ham). Assuming that there is an intelligent system is a serious flaw, the tax system is a product of evolution, where the same base system has been tweaked slightly according to the political pressures of the day, but it still likely resembles its American Civil War-era origins and the 1913 Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The system you're proposing makes sense on a certain level, but it's not how the tax code is written. SDY (talk) 08:33, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

See also our article on progressive taxaxtion. The US federal income tax, speaking vaguely (without getting into the aforementioned swiss cheese), taxes income on a scale that isn't really concerned with what your income actually is. The first $X isn't taxed at all, whether you work part time at a gas station or are Warren Buffett. Income from $X to $Y is taxed at a higher rate, but this doesn't affect the taxes you owed on the first $X. Income from $Z to $Y is taxed again higher, and again ignores taxes owed on the first $Y. Particularly since the tax structure is such that those below the poverty line generally don't owe taxes at all, there's no need for $X, $Y, or $Z to fall on exact multiples of a very rough approximation. Note also that a single-number "poverty line" does nothing to account for regional differences in cost of living: an income of $A will vary widely in whether or not it represents real poverty based on where (and how) one lives. Note how this also impacts your tying income multiples to "years without a job". — Lomn 13:11, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

The current U.S. tax system does have Tax brackets set to various income levels but the system is much more complex than simple multiples of the poverty level. And further complicated by all the deductions, AMT, dividend taxes, deferrals, etc. (It matters not only how much you make a year but sometimes how you make it, how you spend it, when you can spend it and how large your family unit is.) Rmhermen (talk) 13:20, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

where was the striclty come dnacing advert filmed?where was the striclty come dnacing advert filmed?

where was the striclty come dnacing advert filmed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.40.97 (talk) 17:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Here is a link to the BBC's blog site for Strictly Come Dancing, and the video seems to show it was on a film set somewhere, so not a real location. If you're into SCD I thoroughly recommend the BBC's minisite for the programme, where answers to questions like yours are easy to come by. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

NO, not a film set. Braddyll Street, London SE10. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.40.97 (talk) 19:10, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

You may be talking about a different advert to me then: the one I've seen and saw on the BBC website featured a row of houses, and the picture on the BBC website clearly showed that the house front was just that - a brick facade held up with timber struts. Do you have a reference for you assertion of the address? You've obviously found it somewhere, otherwise why would you have asked? --TammyMoet (talk) 22:47, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

If God does exist, then why would God ultimately exist?

So, many so-called philosophical “ultimate questions” have been asked in history such as: Why are we and the world here? Where did everything ultimately come from? How do we know that God exists? What happens after we die? I’ve seen and heard many greasons and answers for these questions, and there is a purpose behind all of these questions. Nevertheless, people continue to ask these questions today. Apparently however, few or even no one has ever tackled what I think could be “the ultimate question.” Here is the question I’ve been contemplating recently: If God exists, then why does God ultimately exist and what’s the ultimate purpose for His existence? It’ll be difficult to explain what I mean, but I’ll give it a shot. In this situation, let’s suppose that God never decided to create everything. Therefore everything would remain non-existent. It won’t matter if there was or was no God in the midst of non-existent because non-existence would still be and remain non-existence. Now, in this next situation, let’s suppose what many religious people teach: That there is a God and in the beginning He decided to create everything for His own pleasure. Many religious people also teach, however, that He doesn’t need nor depend on His own creation for anything nor does His creation affect Him in any way. He can destroy it with no problems at any time and He could have decided not to create everything. He loves Himself infinitely more than He loves us and the rest of creation, which is still infinite though according to Christians, Jews, Muslims, and all those who teach it. Christians, Jews, etc. believe that God wants us to have fellowship with Him even though He doesn’t need it nor depend on it. As a result of all this, it might not make any difference as well to God in the ultimate sense if He decided to not create anything. Therefore, it doesn’t ultimately make a difference between no God in the midst of non-existence, a God in the midst of non-existence, and the existence the God supposedly created. Yet another thing to keep in mind here is that according to the Bible and the Qu’ran probably, God can do all things, so He could probably bring Himself into non-existence if He wanted to. Final thing, saying God is eternal is a very long time indeed. He could have created everything an infinite amount of time ago, an infinite amount of time in the future, or never. With all of these things in mind, it all brings us to the question again, but I’ll word it differently and into several different questions in one: What’s the ultimate reason for God’s existence and what’s the ultimate purpose for His existence if He does exist? Are there any possible answers to this question? If there are no possible answers to this question, then why are there no possible answers available? Willminator (talk) 18:34, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Being as how we can't even prove the existence or non-existence of God, the "why" of it is that much harder. But I once had a minister tell me the answer is in the first four words of Genesis: "In the beginning God". What was before the beginning (i.e. the Big Bang or whatever), only God knows. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Better to say no convincing proof has yet been found of the existence or non-existence of God. While most major religions look on God as both omnipotent and benevolent, there is no good reason for either premise. God's nature or natures are bound to affect the question of whether a proof is possible: if God is indeed omnipotent but is also whimsical, self-serving, or malevolent, then there could be no proof of the existence of a God of a different kind who in fact does not exist. (Of course, it's eccentric to think of God as having a gender, but our longstanding bias may never be overcome in the English language.) Moonraker (talk) 19:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

We have no trouble calling a dog or an owl or a dolphin "it". We like to personify God because (a) we are supposedly made "in His image" and (b) his Son (who was also God) supposedly took on human form as Jesus of Nazareth - but whatever God is, God is not actually a human being and we can safely get away with calling God "it". Or "It". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:16, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Maybe; but you wouldn't refer to your father as "it" without appearing rather rude. Christians believe in "one God, the father almighty", so the same principle applies. You may refer to God in whichever way you please, but some will (sooner or later) take offence. Alansplodge (talk) 21:13, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

These are metaphysical questions. Metaphysical questions are such that it is not humanly possible to get an answer for sure. Anyone who claims they have an answer --people who say they KNOW there's a god -- or that they KNOW that there is a "reason for everything" -- or they KNOW that "God has a plan" are really just parroting what they have been told to say. The reality is that these people just BELIEVE these things, not know them. That's just intellectual dishonesty which is being taught in churches, mosques and synagogues etcetera. The Rastafarians are famous for saying they KNOW that Hallie Sallesie is the messiah not merely believe. Unfortunately a paycheck hangs in the balance for clergy, so they promulgate the idea that you can KNOW (insert metaphysical faith claim here). Then there is the esoteric school who claim that they have special hidden knowledge that has been revealed to them (um, not really likely). They only thing we humans have at our disposal as a tool is reason. Reason tells us that if a claim is just unknowable in principle, then we cannot be held responsible morally for the answer. The answer to these questions are simply irrelevant. Whatever metaphysical theory or model you adopt for yourself to get you through your day, and makes you a wonderful decent person is a valid as any other. If you think the purpose of life is to worship and adore an invisible old white guy with a flowing white beard, well please just keep it to yourself. There isn't any point in trying to get other people involved in a personal metaphysical model. Other people have different models which are equally valid. There is no "meaning of life" there is only a meaning of your life. If you want to learn more about "unanswerable" questions, then I would recommend that you study or take a formal class (from a legitimate academic not some crack pot with a pov) in metaphysics and one in epistemology. I think you will find that the only real answers come when you think for yourself. Greg Bard (talk) 20:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

English Law and the US based web-sites

I asked the question below last September, during the press reports concerning the Super-Injunctions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Humanities/2010_September_22#Super-Injunctions_in_the_UK

As it turned-out, a Scottish newspaper displayed a picture of one the footballers (albeit with his eyes obscured, however his identity was plainly obvious).

Before I post my question - this is not a request for legal advice, simply a query concerning the jurisdiction of English Law on US-based websites.

Recently I have noted a number of examples, where English citizens have been prosecuted or investigated for comments they have posted on either Facebook or Twitter:

1. Kate Middleton's friend interviewed under caution by police after 'joke' about shooting illegal immigrants

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343017/Kate-Middletons-friend-cautioned-police-joke-shooting-illegal-immigrants.html

2. It’s snow joke as trainee accountant is fined for sending bomb tweet after frustration over airport’s snow closure

http://www.mablaw.com/2010/05/accountant-is-fined-for-sending-bomb-tweet/

3.Cameron praises courts for sending a 'tough message' after pair told people to riot on Facebook are jailed for four years

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026755/Manchester-Facebook-riot-inciters-Perry-Sutcliffe-Jordan-Blackshaw-jailed-4-years.html

4. Internet 'troll' jailed for mocking dead teenagers on Facebook

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8760504/Internet-troll-jailed-for-mocking-dead-teenagers-on-Facebook.html

Whilst I am certainly not defending any of the individuals above, I am really at loss to understand what English law they have broken?

Facebook & Twitter are American companies and therefore any content will be held on US-based servers

This is backed-up by the following Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTB_v_News_Group_Newspapers

Legal action after posts on Twitter

Using London-based law firm Schillings as an advisor, action has been undertaken by the footballer against Twitter in an attempt to obtain information on some of the users involved in naming Giggs.[18][19] The action is known as CTB v Twitter Inc, Persons Unknown.[20] A blogger for Forbes magazine remarked: "Giggs has not heard of the Streisand effect", observing that mentions of his name had significantly increased after the case against Twitter had been reported in the news.[21] According to measurement company Experian Hitwise, traffic on Twitter in the UK rose by 22% after the action was reported.[22] Peter Preston, former editor of The Guardian, compared the CTB situation to the Spycatcher affair of the 1980s, in which Peter Wright's book had been openly on sale in Australia and other countries, despite being banned in the UK.[23]

The headquarters of Twitter are in San Francisco, and legal experts pointed out the difficulties in suing in a United States court, where First Amendment protection applies to freedom of speech. London-based lawyer James Quartermaine commented: “Twitter will probably just ignore it and consider it to be offensive to their First Amendment rights. It’s probably an attempt to try and show that actions have consequences in cyberspace.”[24] On 21 May 2011, lawyers at Schillings denied that they were suing Twitter, and said that they had made an application "to obtain limited information concerning the unlawful use of Twitter by a small number of individuals who may have breached a court order."[25] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaseywasey (talk • contribs) 18:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Foreign laws have no jurisdiction over America as such. But if a Brit uses wikipedia or twitter or whatever in violation of British law, they might come after that user. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:53, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but if I travel to Florida and see an English person and say something that may be illegal in Britain. That English person may try to report me to the US authorities, however I can claim "Freedom of Speech". When we both return to England, he can try to report me to the British police, who will advise that as the alleged incident took place in America, it is outside British jurisdiction - Surely this is identical to what is happening with the Facebook/Twitter comments Jaseywasey (talk) 19:21, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

The answer to that hypothesis would have to be provided by a British lawyer. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:23, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

It's not a request for legal advice - the point I am making is that Scottish & Irish newspapers have ignored the "Super-Injunctions" due to these orders only applying to England & Wales, therefore I cannot see how any comments posted on US websites can be covered by English law! Jaseywasey (talk) 19:30, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer and don't pretend to understand English laws limiting freedom of speech, but conceivably a person subject to English law could get away with having banned speech appear in a print publication outside of England because a paper publication could be confiscated once it reaches England. However, since English authorities do not (yet) seem to block websites, a publication on a website, no matter where it is hosted, might be considered a publication within England in a way that a print publication is not. (Apparently, though, Wikipedia is careful not to use servers in the UK to avoid exposure to English libel laws.) Marco polo (talk) 19:44, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I found the following line in the Freedom of Speech article:

On 27 February 2008 civil servant Darryn Walker was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Unit for posting a work of fiction allegedly describing the kidnap, mutilation, rape and murder of the girl band 'Girls Aloud' on a fantasy pornography website. While the website was hosted outside the UK, Walker's prosecution was possible under UK law as he is a British citizen living in the UK. He was found not guilty on 29 July 2009 as the CPS offered no evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country

This seems to raise more questions than it answers, but it appears there is a mechanism within UK (English?) law - I would be interested in finding out more information concerning this provision Jaseywasey (talk) 19:51, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Have a look at this page on the Crown Prosecution Service Website and scroll down to "Improper use of public electronic communications network - Section 127 Communications Act 2003". This seems to be the legislation used to convict the Facebook troll cited above. I can't see that the location of the server has any bearing on it. "If a message sent is grossly offensive, indecent, obscene, menacing or false, it is irrelevant whether it was received. The offence is one of sending, so it is committed when the sending takes place." Alansplodge (talk) 20:09, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

See also this page about the Malicious Communications Act 1988 - actually this is more likely to be the law that the Facebook man fell foul of as he "pleaded guilty to two counts of sending malicious communications". The two pieces of legislation seem to cover much of the same ground in this respect. Alansplodge (talk) 20:29, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

downs syndrome

In the UK are there laws against a "normal" man or woman having sexual relations with a girl who has downs syndrome? 79.91.233.172 (talk) 18:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

There may not be any specific law, but the usual justification of charges is that they are incompetent to make decisions for themselves, so anyone who has sex with them is committing a form of rape (similar logic as for statutory rape based on age). Although, in some nations there are also eugenics laws that ban the retarded from reproducing, and they may also ban sex, as that can lead there. StuRat (talk) 19:08, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

The relevant law is the Sexual Offences Act 2003, specifically the provisions relating to 'Offences against persons with a mental disorder impeding choice', 'Inducements etc. to persons with a mental disorder' and 'Care workers for persons with a mental disorder' in sections 30 to 44. Link here. Down Syndrome comes within the ambit of mental disorders under this Act. Sam Blacketer (talk) 19:28, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

A prohibition sounds horrible in some cases. I'm positive that some people with Down Syndrome are intelligent enough to know what they are choosing. 88.8.79.204 (talk) 20:18, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

wristwatch fashion

I am right handed. I have a very nice wristwatch that I intend to wear to a formal event. Should it be worn on the right or left wrist? Googlemeister (talk) 19:53, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Usually the left wrist, unless the main control (to wind/set/etc) if any, is not to the right of the face. 70.91.171.54 (talk) 20:10, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

If you are wearing it to actually tell time, then no Wikipedian is qualified to tell you, because it is up to you to determine what is most convenient for your needs. If you are seeking out some prevailing tradition to conform to, well then by all means wear the thing on the opposite hand from the one which you favor.Greg Bard (talk) 20:17, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

This page says that men started wearing watches on their wrists at the end of the 19th century, in particular, British officers in the Second Boer War. My conjecture, but at the start of an attack, they would have needed to have their watch on their left hand, to have the right hand free for their service revolver (unless left-handed). Right-handed men wearing watches on their right hand (at least in the UK) is a modern affectation and I never saw it done until recently. It still looks a bit odd to me. Alansplodge (talk) 20:56, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Just to prove me wrong, here's an American chap doing it the wrong way round. Bloody typical! Notice how he has to point the pistol at his own feet to tell the time. Alansplodge (talk) 21:00, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I've always thought that people wear their watches on the opposite hand than the one they write with because it may be uncomfortable to have a watchband under their wrist as they write. Dismas|^(talk) 21:00, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Good point, and you don't have to lift pen from paper to see the time. Alansplodge (talk) 21:02, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Wristwatches are virtually always worn on your off wrist. So for you that'd be your left. If it's an analog wristwatch, you may notice that the winding stem is facing to the right, that's so that righties can wear the watch on the left wrist and wind/set it with their right hand. (Us lefties are pretty much forced to take an analog watch off before we wind or set it.) APL (talk) 22:15, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I typically (but not always) wear my wristwatch on my dominant wrist. I think it's a matter of personal preference. Most people seem to prefer to wear it on the opposite hand, but I'm not aware of any cultural values that stipulate that one should do so. I think it's up do you; I doubt that most people would notice, or that those who notice would pass judgment. At least for me, as an American, it doesn't matter at all. I certainly have never had anybody take issue with my wrist-watch wearing habits, and only very occasionally has someone even cared to comment on it (perhaps twice or three times in my life). Falconus^{p t c} 23:06, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Why East Germany but not East Austria

I was recently thinking about how Austria, like Germany, was divided into zones of control by the UK, US and Soviet Union after World War II and found myself wondering how it ended up that German was split into two separate countries while Austria remained unified. Given its geographic proximity to communist Eastern Europe, I would have expected Austria to end up facing a similar fate to Germany. Why didn't this happen? 12.34.4.33 (talk) 20:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

See the articles on History of Austria (1945-) and Austrian State Treaty (1955). Basically it seems like the USSR agreed to leave Austria alone as long as it was proclaimed as officially neutral (see Declaration of Neutrality) and wouldn't join NATO. Which is a bit odd. Germany is the odder case of the two, though, owing to its role in starting WWII and it being essentially the border state for the USSR (given the fact that Poland was already well in the bloc). --Mr.98 (talk) 21:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

"Aynthing you say can and will(?) be used against you in a court of law"

What's the meaning of "will" in the Miranda warning? It can't mean literally that anything the suspect says will be used in a court of law. Maybe there won't be a court of law, or maybe the suspect answered "Yes" to "Do you want a smoke?". In both cases the officer lied to the suspect if the warning was taken literally. If it doesn't have to do with me not understanding that "and will" is just a normal way of emphasizing in English, does it mean that for example the officer is not allowed to ignore something incriminating the subject says, so he will tell it to the judge? Joepnl (talk) 23:27, 16 September 2011 (UTC)