Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 May 25

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May 25

What is the most northern community in Sierra_leone?

What is the most northern community in Sierra_leone? I'm just curious. Neptunekh2 (talk) 04:09, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

You have a problem in that the northernmost part of the country's northern border is a straight east-west line, so multiple communities could be equally northernmost. Google Maps shows several settlements along the southern side of the border, although none of them have articles: the closest to the line appears to be Kobaia, just west of the eastern end of the line. Nyttend (talk) 05:30, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Well done - see Kobaia, Sierra Leone: "Kobaia is the most northern community in Northern Province of Sierra Leone".Alansplodge (talk) 16:54, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Too bad the OP created that page after Nyttend answered the question. --Daniel 17:18, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

D'oh! I hate it when that happens ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 17:43, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Grains for breakfast

Tonight I cooked rice to eat for my lunch tomorrow; while it was on the stove, it occurred to me that I sometimes eat rice at lunch and dinner and frequently eat oatmeal for breakfast, but I never eat oatmeal at other meals nor rice for breakfast. Furthermore, I can't think of ever hearing of others doing this in contemporary American society. Was my childhood in rural Ohio unusually devoid of breakfast rice and lunchtime oats, or is it common throughout the USA? If my experience were common, why do we eat these grains only at these times? I can't think of a nutritional basis for eating this way, so persumably there's some other reason, although I suppose I could simply be unaware of a nutritional reason. Nyttend (talk) 05:26, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

You may be interested in Congee which is often eaten as a breakfast. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:32, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Its article says nothing about the USA; I'm simply asking about American practice. Nyttend (talk) 05:38, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Rice Krispies are a breakfast food, if you consider that to still be rice. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:10, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

And oatmeal cookies can be eaten at any time of day! Pais (talk) 08:43, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

During the Middle Ages, peasants in Scotland, England and Wales ate oats at every meal.
Sleigh (talk) 11:31, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for insufficiently explaining: I'm talking about cooked hot grains of whichever food, prepared by cooking previously-uncooked grains just before eating them — I mean that I never heard of people eating oat porridge at lunch or dinner or newly-cooked rice (put it in water, boil the water, eat the rice) for breakfast. Nyttend (talk) 11:39, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it's just cultural. How often do you eat vegetables for breakfast like carrots and broccoli? What about roast chicken with new potatoes? And in the other direction, how often do you eat pancakes or waffles or French toast with maple syrup or even fried/scrambled/soft-boiled eggs for lunch or dinner? There's no nutritional reason for it; it's just that in America (and presumably in other cultures too) we have an idea of what is and isn't appropriate "breakfast food", and it's just an accident of history that oatmeal (porridge) established itself as breakfast food in the U.S. and rice didn't. Pais (talk) 11:47, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Eating pancakes and french toasts and eggs for lunch or dinner isn't all that rare in the US. We have IHOP for exactly that purpose. Googlemeister (talk) 18:23, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Maybe this is splitting hairs, but if I go to IHOP and have pancakes etc. in the afternoon or evening, then - at least in my POV - I'm not having pancakes for dinner, I'm having breakfast at a noncanonical time of day. Pais (talk) 11:34, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I have developed for myself a tasty (well, I like it anyway) dinner dish that I call an avenotto, after the pattern of risotto, based on oats. I brought it up in an earlier refdesk post, here. --Trovatore (talk) 11:38, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

A traditional British-Indian breakfast dish is Kedgeree which is rice and smoked fish. Not very common nowadays though. Rice didn't figure highly in the British diet until the mid-19th century. mainly because it doesn't grow here. Alansplodge (talk) 12:58, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

And for the trendy foodies out there, there's snail porridge[1][2]. Alansplodge (talk) 15:36, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

All my life I've had rice for breakfast. With milk and sugar. 216.93.212.245 (talk) 18:31, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

A sample size of one out of six billion or so is not very informative in itself. It might be more relevant if you were to explicate your geographical location, cultural background, and how representative you are of both. </snark> {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.74 (talk) 09:12, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Rice Krispies90.214.166.169 (talk) 20:44, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Pro-Communist bias of Wikipedia

The Wikipedia article on Augusto Pinochet calls him dictator, but the articles on Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong don't call them dictators. Why Wikipedia is misleading unsuspecting readers? --Drum of Mars (talk) 07:31, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah you seem to be under a misapprehension here as to how Wikipedia works. There is no central committee deciding on what wording should be used to describe various people in their articles. Everyone, including you, is free to amend any article at any time. So if you think Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao should be described as dictators, go right ahead and put that in the articles. --Viennese Waltz 07:41, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

But it's more likely to stay there if you can support it with a reliable reference. Alansplodge (talk) 08:04, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

BBC calls Stalin dictator [3]. Is this source OK for you? And google scholar [4] return a lot of results. Here is a book [5] published by Taylor & Francis and written by Adam Jones. Are you ok with these sources? --Drum of Mars (talk) 08:21, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not about whether those sources are OK with us, it's about whether the description of these people as dictators helps to improve the article. In my view it's a fairly loaded and culturally biased term which we should probably avoid. As Adam says below, it would be better to remove the description of Pinochet as a dictator. By all means insert those references into the articles on Stalin, but be prepared to defend yourself against others who may not hold the same view. --Viennese Waltz 08:25, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It's more likely that we shouldn't call Pinochet a dictator. What does that really mean anyway? It's a word that may make Drum of Mars feel better about himself or something, but it doesn't usually accurately describe something that is actually rather complex. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:13, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Dictator is a loaded word. Should be avoided in any biographical description. HiLo48 (talk) 11:52, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it's okay in the articles on Julius Caesar and his predecessors. Pais (talk) 11:57, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, yes, but in that case it's a technical term in Roman law and politics. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:36, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I removed the term; I think it's a WP:LABEL issue for a lede. It's also not necessary — the rest of the description is really quite straightforward enough (describing him as a general who takes over in a coup against a democratically elected left-wing leader and then kills all of the dissidents is more potent than the word "dictator"). --Mr.98 (talk) 15:43, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It's curious that the OP suspects a "pro-communist" bias on account of the lack of the appellation "dictator" to the mentioned articles. "Dictator" doesn't feature in the lede of neither Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini, so couldn't it just as well be a pro-fascist bias? --Saddhiyama (talk) 09:35, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, this is not ref desk material. Take it up on the talk page of the respective articles if you propose a change. --Saddhiyama (talk) 09:36, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I have moved this discussion (and expanded the scope) to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (words to watch)#The term "dictator". I took concepts from here, and added others by my own. Feel free to continue the discussion there. Cambalachero (talk) 17:41, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

• Calling Stalin, et al., dictators like the original poster here wants could be construed as pro-Communist. See Real socialism. --M@rēino 18:28, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Wasn't Pinochet the one that actually said 'people need to remeber who the dictator is around here' in response to some complaints? Besides which, using the same precisely approved on wording for every article would get boring and repetitive. 148.197.121.205 (talk) 07:27, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Music identification

What's this piece of popular music? (x represents some percussive sound like a cymbal, C's in the bottom lines represent bass notes; song begins with a pick-up)

c..A.c.A........c..A.c.A........c..A.c.A........c..A.c.A........
     x       x       x  C    x       x       x       x  C    x

c.A.c.A.dedc.cAc..A.c.A.GG.G.GAc..A.c.A.dedc.cAc..A.c.A.GG.G.GA
    x       x       x       x       x       x       x       x

—Keenan Pepper 17:10, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Googling "identify tunes" gives a number of sites that claim to identify tunes specified in various ways. --ColinFine (talk) 23:07, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but none of them turn up anything for this. —Keenan Pepper 17:55, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Poor man's copyright and email

We all know that the poor man's copyright, as it's called, can be easily faked, as described in the article. My question is, do you think that it would be more reliable to email myself a document. Say I email myself something on Yahoo. It'll tell me that I sent this to myself on the exact date. There's no way I can somehow edit the email to add a document or change the date. And I doubt anyone could easily hack into Yahoo to change this information. Where's the problem? 69.207.146.64 (talk) 18:22, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The real problem is that "poor man's copyright" is, according to most sources for most jurisdictions, legally meaningless, and the precise methodology of implementing PMC (such as your email proposal) will not alter that. Our article on copyright registration notes that under the Berne Convention copyright is secured at the moment of creation, but that in the US, proactive registration with the United States Copyright Office provides various legal advantages. A copyright lawyer in your jurisdiction can provide you a detailed explanation of useful ways to protect your copyright. — Lomn 18:41, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It is trivial to fake email headers, including the date of the email. Sending it to Yahoo will not fix faked headers. -- kainaw™ 18:46, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

You could fake the date in the email header, but not the date that Yahoo (and any mail servers in between) received it. --Tango (talk) 18:51, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Yahoo will append a server date to the header, but you can add your own date with Yahoo's server ID in the header. That is used often by spammers to force their mails to sit back a couple years and not be grouped with all the other newly received spam. It makes it harder to select all the new emails in one group to delete them. Yahoo should auto-delete email that was sent too long ago (I've seen some spam dated as being received by the mail server in the 70's) and Yahoo should scan the header and delete bogus received messages from the header. I doubt Yahoo (or any online mail service) does either. -- kainaw™ 19:03, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the point Tango is making is there will be a date from Yahoo in the header which you generally can't remove or prevent from being added. The fact you can put your own forged server or email date is moot. Anyone looking at the headers can see all the dates and go by the oldest date. This could be forged but if you're trying to establish you created something before a date why would you? More to the point, presuming you don't have malicious intention you'll just send it to yourself without any forgery and check the headers establishing the recorded dates all line up and are within a few days of each other. The fact someone could have forged some of the dates is moot since anyone looking could tell that even if some of the dates are forgeries they don't matter unless you're trying to establish time with greater precision then within a few days. In other words, presuming the mail actually passed thru Yahoo's servers forgeries aren't generally an issue from a technical POV. I'm not suggesting this is likely to stand up in court. For starters your opponent is likely to question whether we can be sure the Yahoo mail servers didn't screw up and put the wrong date or fail to put a date (which you exploited either by brute force or by knowing how) or whether it's possible you had help from inside Yahoo. And a far bigger issue is that IIRC the commercial Yahoo Mail service has IMAP. While I've never done it myself my understanding is you can also import/add mail to a server via IMAP. Definitely I've seen talk of doing this via Gmail or Google Apps. In that case you could easily add an email at any time with whatever content, including headers, you want which was never sent thru any SMTP server. In other words, even though the content may be stored on Yahoo's servers, it's no better then you handing over a Eudora mailbox. Which is about as useful as handing over a Word document in an attempt to use the file and document creation, modified etc times. Nil Einne (talk) 20:25, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, the "poor man's copyright" has never been used in any court. Secondly, the real problem is not technological, but legal. In the US, registration with the United States Copyright Office costs US$35 online and is required if you are going to sue for damages and attorney's fees. (Here's their FAQ.) Even if there were a non-repudiable digital certificate of some kind that Yahoo could affix to your e-mail that were to prove that you had mailed yourself the work on that date, when you walked into court with that certificate, the court would dismiss your lawsuit because of the lack of a copyright registration. (See here.) The law lags behind technology often, and this is arguably one of those cases. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:49, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

As everyone else has said, forging an email to make it look a couple of years old is very easy, and most mail servers will pass it on without a blip, as if it had just gotten stuck for a few years on a really slow server. Some servers started filtering out these out-of-place-artifact emails because they're virtually always spam, but a judge wouldn't be impressed by that.

I doubt you're going to find a way of "proving" your copyright that's iron-clad enough for a judge not to roll his eyes but is still cheaper and easier than just registering copyright the proper way. Not only that, in the USA you get additional legal benefits from actually registering it, so it's kind of a no-brainer.

Really, if you don't think you can make enough money with your work to cover the cost of a copyright registration (In USA: $35 online, $50 the old fashioned way), it's a safe bet that you're not going to have the money to fight it in court anyway, even in the unlikely event that someone wants to steal the work you're not making any money on! APL (talk) 20:13, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

About how much money total in 2011 dollars to go to the moon the first time

About how much in 2011 dollars was spent by NASA from the day John F. Kennedy said "We choose to go to the moon in this decade" to the day Neil Armstrong said "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"? Yes, yes. Proceed to nitpick that other expenses made before the JFK speech must also be considered. I just want to know about the approximate expenses in the interval specified. Thank you. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 19:32, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Total NASA spending for fiscal years 1961 to 1969 inclusive was ~$220 billion dollars at 2007 prices, per our NASA Budget article. However, this certainly isn't a very meaningful answer - NASA was also running four other manned spaceflight programs in that period (Mercury, Gemini, the X-15, and the beginnings of the later-cancelled Apollo Applications) as well as its general scientific work, aeronautical research, and the entire unmanned orbital and planetary programs. The Apollo program article quotes an estimate of $170 billion adjusted to 2005 prices - but this of course also includes the costs of the six further flights, additional unflown hardware, and operations costs for 1970-73. A fair ballpark estimate might be somewhere on the order of $120-140 billion in current dollars attributable to Apollo up to and including Apollo 11, had Gemini and the unmanned programs still gone ahead. Shimgray | talk | 19:47, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Except the NASA article inflates 1961-1969 USD in terms of CPI. Consumer Price Indexes represent a consumption bundle of bread, rent, booze, books, movie tickets, petrol, etc. Spaceships are not built from money equivalent to bread, rent, etc… Spaceships, as megaprojects, are best compared as a proportion of generalised inflation corrected GDP. Using "Measuring Worth's" suggestions (http://www.measuringworth.com/indicator.html) and proportion of GDP, the 1969 NASA budget figure of USD4.2 billion is equivalent to 2010 USD63.3 billion. Notes about a particular budget year not being directly related to the cost of the lunar programme are worth remembering. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:21, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I feel a bit of a fool - I keep complaining at other people for quoting these sort of adjustments without checking! Yes, that calculation seems reasonable. One quick caveat, though - these are fiscal years, starting (presumably) in April. As such, only about a third of the 1969 budget is covered by "up to Apollo 11" and we can drop the total by a few percent accordingly. Shimgray | talk | 12:08, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

The article "Apollo plus 50" (21 May 2011, The Economist) notes that "The Apollo project cost about $150 billion in 2010 dollars, five times as much as the Manhattan Project and 18 times the cost of digging the Panama Canal." Gabbe (talk) 21:41, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

"Hap" poem

There's a depressing bit of verse that I sometimes recall a scrap of. It's very short, probably four or five lines, and I remember most of it. But somehow, no matter what permutations and combinations I try on Google, I can't find it. I think it might be by Thomas Hardy, which I think would put it in the public domain by now, so the omission is strange. The opening lines are something like My name is Hap/I'm fifty-odd. The narrator goes on to say he's never known a woman and wish to God/my father never had.

Ring any bells with anyone? --Trovatore (talk) 19:46, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Not yet, but here's a similar one that this site says is "translated from the Greek":

At threescore winters' end I died,

A cheerless being, sole and sad;

The nuptial knot I never tied,

And wish my father never had.

Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:54, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks. It sounds as though Hardy (if it was indeed he) may have made a different translation of the same Greek source, rather than an original poem in this case. Still, I don't understand why I can't find the version I remember, and would appreciate it if anyone can. --Trovatore (talk) 21:25, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Dude, this should totally be a limerick.

Aye, me name's Hapless O'Brien

In me fifty-odd years I've been tryin'

I never could find a young wan

To wed if I can

Unlike Pappy - the more hapless O'Brien! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.157.117.3 (talk) 22:02, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Scansion is not great. The second foot in the first verse is an awkward trochee, and there are four feet in the last verse, which also rhymes a word with the same word. --Trovatore (talk) 22:11, 25 May 2011 (UTC) Update — 188 has made some changes since I wrote this remark. At this writing there are no longer four feet in the last verse. --Trovatore (talk) 22:17, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I have great historical perspicacity for ending as I begun: "The limerick form was popularized by Edward Lear [...] It was customary at the time [...] for the final line of the limerick to be a kind of conclusion, usually a variant of the first line ending in the same word." Also, I should add that we wore an onion on our belt, as was the fashion at the time. 188.157.117.3 (talk) 22:22, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

By the way, I don't know that I agree with your take on the scansion. Did you try just reading it? 188.157.117.3 (talk) 22:41, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Thomas Hardy did write a poem titled "Hap", but it's not the one you're looking for. The title is the common noun meaning "chance" rather than a person's name. Deor (talk) 02:11, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, thanks, I remember that one now. I seem to have conflated that one in my memory with the one I was looking for here. OK, that casts some doubt on many of my search terms, but I am still fairly sure about the rhyme of fifty-odd and wish to God. --Trovatore (talk) 02:13, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Finally found it. It's called "Epitaph on a Pessimist". It goes

I'm Smith of Stoke, aged sixty-odd

I've lived without a dame

From youth-time on; and would to God

My dad had done the same.

It is indeed by Hardy, and seems close enough to the Cowper translation of the Greek verse that I doubt it's a coincidence. --Trovatore (talk) 03:32, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

even though it's not depressive anymore, I have an improvement to my limerick. Like this I think it's pretty funny:

Aye, me name's Hapless O'Brien.

In me fifty-odd years I've been tryin'

I never could find a young wan

To wed if I can,

Unlike Pappy - the less happy O'Brien!

94.27.134.217 (talk) 18:40, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

lottery and taxes in the US

I am working on writing a short story where a person wins a $100 million prize in the lottery and uses 100% of it to start a non-profit. My question is, if he gives it all away is it tax free, or does the government still expect to get its pound of flesh? Googlemeister (talk) 20:30, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Lottery#Payment of prizes suggests that you are almost certainly liable for taxes (unless by a quirk of state law there aren't any). Shimgray | talk | 21:32, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

This is kind of what happened to Joe Louis. During WWII, he decided to donate his fight winnings to the war effort and military-related charities. Unfortunately, the IRS still charged him taxes on the income, leaving him deeply in debt. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:26, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

That isn't mentioned at Joe Louis#Taxes and financial troubles which suggests although he did give money to the government, he also gave it to to family which wouldn't be counted as tax-deductable charity in most modern context (and invested it in businessed that failed) Nil Einne (talk) 12:55, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

It depends considerably on what your other income is, but the IRS does allow significant deductions for charitable contributions. In all likelihood, someone with no other income who just wins the lottery and then donates it all WOULD be stuck with a bit of a tax bill. The amount of deduction you get generally tends to be at whatever tax bracket rate you're in- i.e., if you pay 22% income tax, you get to deduct 22% of your charitable contributions. This is all highly tentative, of course. IdealistCynic (talk) 01:08, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

That's not actually how it works. At non-lottery non-AMT levels, you deduct 100% of your charitable contributions from your taxable income, and your final taxable income then determines your tax bracket. Thus, charitable contributions could reduce your taxable income to a point where you pay no taxes. However, we note at itemized deduction that charitable contributions have an upper cap of 30% to 50% of AGI -- while someone with a middle-class income might conceivably string together enough deductions to pay no taxes (50% charity, some mortgage interest, personal deductions, etc), a guy who just won $100 million won't stand a chance of doing so. — Lomn 13:18, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Interestingly, the cost of old losing lottery tickets can be deducted as they comprise the "investment" made toward becoming a lottery winner. Keep your old losing tickets.Greg Bard (talk) 21:06, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Indian caste system

Why does India continue to have the caste system? --75.40.204.106 (talk) 23:51, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Because it did before. For an analogy, do you think it's a coincidence that if someone is an ancestor of someone who was brought over the Atlantic forceably and as a slave, that person is statistically less likely to have access to good education, statistically more likely to be in an environment where they are surrounded by guns and violence, etc, as compared with someone who is an ancestor of someone who chose to come over the Atlantic? Of course it is not a coincidence, and I am surprised by the implication of your question "Why does India continue to have the caste system", since for me, it is hard to imagine why anyone would raise a question in that form. Put another way, I can't imagine anyone, for any reason, asking "Why does America continue to have an income disparity between the richest and poorest?" No matter what developments there are in the next 300 years, I just can't imagine someone asking that question at any point between 2011 and 2311: the answer would be obvious at any point during that time. It continues to have it because it had it before. 94.27.140.159 (talk) 01:15, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

The article Caste system in India might help answer that question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:20, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Does the Indian government still actively enforce the caste system? --75.40.204.106 (talk) 00:23, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

It does appear (from the article) to employ a sort of "caste affirmative action" for which purpose it keeps track of caste statistics and so forth. I don't think it actually forces people to comply with the caste system though, though it does appear to be essentially mandatory as a social/local convention in a lot of places. IdealistCynic (talk) 01:11, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

It's the same sort of thing that's happened to the burakumin in Japan. There, even though it's illegal to look up someone's ancestry to determine if they're a buraku, they're still viciously discriminated against (and they're something like 60% of the yakuza; hmmmmm...). In India, the caste system is just as entrenched in their national past (although much larger and more intricate), so it continues on; there are some protections now, but they're largely symbolic. The only way to affect real change is to get a Shigeru Kayano-type figure who disrupts business as usual enough that people will finally listen. In Kayano's case, he managed to get a huge amount of protections for the Ainu, and though they still have serious problems they're much better off than 20 years ago. That sort of thing hasn't happened to the same extent yet in India, so it persists. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:53, 26 May 2011 (UTC) I am, of course, referring to the countryside; I thought I had put that in, but I must've accidentally removed it somewhere along the lines.

Caste discrimination is not visible in urban India. Actually there is a reverse caste discrimination in India. See Youth for Equality --Reference Desker (talk) 04:28, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Pedant's note: it is a common error, and in other contexts can be confusing:

"if someone is an ancestor of someone who was brought over the Atlantic forceably and as a slave, that person is statistically less likely to have access to good education"

Ancestor -->descendent. Or recast the sentence: "if someone's ancestor was brought over the Atlantic..." </pedantry>. BrainyBabe (talk) 12:01, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

You could also use the word "ascendant". You are the descendant of your ancestor, who is your ascendant. --TammyMoet (talk) 13:57, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

You're too hard on yourself, Brainy Babe, because that's not remotely pedantry. Just because we can quickly work out what someone means when they actually say the opposite of what they mean, and just because it may be a common error, does not mean it's OK for them to keep on using a word in a completely non-standard and misleading way. They need to be apprised of their error and sent packing down the path of righteousness. You done good. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:15, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Jack, that is quite a boost, coming from you! BrainyBabe (talk) 09:04, 27 May 2011 (UTC)