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January 25

What makes a fictional work existential

Why people say that some fictional works - films and books - are existential? What has to happen in the work? Since many, or almost all, films and books could be a reflexion on our human life somehow, wouldn't the term existential be almost meaningless? 88.8.69.246 (talk) 00:52, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A nice line from the intro of our article on Existentialism: "In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called 'the existential attitude', or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world." That's jibes with what I've usually associated with works existential fiction or film. There are plenty of works of art which do not fit into this category: they are about showing or glorifying order, or meaning, or success. Concrete examples: An existentialist war film, for example, would be about the meaningless or absurdity of war (think Catch-22 or Apocalypse Now). A non-existentialist war film, by contrast, would be about the glory of war, soldiers, or technology, or what have you (think Saving Private Ryan or Lawrence of Arabia (film)). Now you could say, there are plenty of glorifying war films that have absurdity in them; but it's not the entire point of them, it's not the conclusion of them. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:22, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Existential works, on some level, get you to question your very existence, or the meaning of existence. Sometimes, it's a very direct and blatant, like how in Existenz or The Matrix, the characters are constantly talking about whether they're living in a simulation or not. But it can be very subtle, too, like how in Citizen Kane people wonder what Kane is really like ... and Kane himself wonders who he really is. --M @r ē ino 22:47, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does India get its oil from the Strait of Hormuz?

Does India get some of its oil supply from the Strait of Hormuz? 99.245.83.28 (talk) 02:49, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, but it does from "Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, the UAE and Kuwait" via the Strait. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:24, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Also note that it wouldn't particularly matter, in that world oil prices would shoot up if Iran mined the Straight, so even those who get oil from other sources would be affected. StuRat (talk) 05:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Strait...--Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:53, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, I see I'm in Dire Straits, spelling-wise. And Hormuz isn't even a straight strait. I just hope our crooked politicians will straighten out this mess, not just tell Iran to get bent. StuRat (talk) 18:22, 25 January 2012 (UTC) [reply]

The oil prices will go up, by any real problem like mines or imaginary, like silly politicians from both sides talking about war. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.36.33.29 (talk) 17:48, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would expect the prices to go up far more from mining than just talking about it, since then you have both the panic and the actual reduction of supply. It does make me wonder if oil companies pay off Iran to make such threats, so they can justify increasing prices, though. StuRat (talk) 18:24, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need oil companies to profit from Iranian threats. Just buy future options for oil. 88.8.69.246 (talk) 21:43, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

the 17th century equivalent of 'decor'

This is a question I posed at Language, which people had trouble answering - the consensus, finally, was 'furnishings' - I wonder if someone here might be able to find something different? It's possible there was no word for it until 'decor' was coined....

Here's the original question: Decor is a 19th Century term; was there some equivalent that was current in English or French in the 1650s? Our interior design article is very heavy on US designers - I was hoping for something earlier, obviously: I suppose 'interior design' must be a very recent phrase - I wonder what term it replaced...

Thanks Adambrowne666 (talk) 05:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The words appoint and appointment(s) are now somewhat pretentious but have been used of furnishings in the 16th Century. The OED gives, for sense 15 of appoint, the quote "Their several Lodgings, which were as well appointed as such a season would permit." (1664). And for appointment, from a private letter from 1575, "Hiz honorz exquisit appointment of a beautifull garden." It seems from the other quotes that these words were more often used of clothes, but they certainly could apply to a room or a garden.--Rallette (talk) 07:42, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a little from the OED that might be of use to you.

furniture:

"4. ... d. Hangings and ornamental drapery; also, the coverlets and linen for a bed. ...

1683 T. Tryon Way to Health 586 Most People take care that their Furnitures are daily brushed and rubbed."

"7. ... a. (The prevailing sense.) Movable articles, whether useful or ornamental, in a dwelling-house, place of business, or public building. Formerly including also the fittings. (†Occas. const. as pl.) ...

1637 Documents against Prynne (Camden) 99 My interest in the lease of Swanswick, and my hangings, pictures, and furniture there."

decoration:

"2. That which decorates or adorns; an ornament, embellishment; esp. an ornament temporarily put up on some special occasion; formerly used (after the French) of scenery on the stage.

a1678 A. Marvell Wks. (1875) II. 208 (R.) Our church did even then exceed the Romish in ceremonies and decorations."

household:

†3. The contents or appurtenances of a house considered collectively; household goods or furniture. Obs.

1621 in S. Tymms Wills & Inventories Bury St. Edmunds (1850) 167 Desiringe him‥he would bestowe some of my howsholde of my brother Nicke."

design [I think this one captures at least one meaning of our contemporary 'decor' particularly well):

"7. ... a. The combination of artistic details or architectural features which go to make up a picture, statue, building, etc.; the artistic idea as executed; a piece of decorative work, an artistic device.

1644 J. Evelyn Mem. (1857) I. 73, I was particularly desirous of seeing this palace, from the extravagance of the design.

1670 Sir S. Crow in 12th Rep. Royal Comm. Hist. MSS (1890) App. v. 15 Their ordnary designes [in tapestry]‥beeing deformed and mishapen."

--Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 12:51, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that does help Adambrowne666 (talk) 06:43, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WWII pilot commemorative plush toy

I'm trying to find a Pappy the Black Sheep plush toy. It's a sheep wearing a black outfit. It's supposed to represent the Black Sheep Squadron. Where can I find such a plush toy? Anyone know?24.90.204.234 (talk) 07:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here's one merchant. And here's another. However, I have never ordered from either one, so I don't know their reputations. --M @r ē ino 22:35, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much.24.90.204.234 (talk) 05:11, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

David Stuart (Michigan politician) : cause of military career brutal end in 1863 ?

Hello Learned Humanitarians ! I translated into WP french "David Stuart (Michigan politician)", & am doing the same for Political general (& BTW a lot of thanks for the text !) .

It seems that before and during the Vicksburg Campaign D. Stuart has been faithfull to Sherman and Grant rather to McClernand. He resigned from the Union Army in April, 1863.

Are there any proofs that D. Stuart's nomination as brig.gen. was refused by the US Senate because John A. McClernand's friends vetoed against it ?

Thanks ++++ beforehand for your answers Arapaima (talk) 08:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Egg coddler

Where can I buy an egg coddler online in the UK?? Amisom (talk) 22:05, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let me google that for you. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=egg+coddler&hl=en&tbm=shop

--M @r ē ino 22:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) I'm from the UK, but I'd never heard of coddled eggs. I had to look it up. However, I have heard of poached eggs, which seem to be quite similar, and you can get egg poachers on almost any High Street. Argos have one, for instance. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 22:33, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No they'e a bit different. If memory serves it's a little china cup (with a metal lid) that you break your egg into, stand it in boiling water and then eat it out of the cup when cooked. There are lots online; click on the Google search link above. Alansplodge (talk) 09:03, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

January 26

Theoretical stance of Australian Labour and Liberal parties

Could someone advise me as to what is the theoretical stance of the Australian Liberal and Labour parties? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.172.126.65 (talk) 04:56, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Stance on what issue specifically? Wikipedia has articles titled Australian Labor Party and Liberal Party of Australia which discusses the parties political philosophies in some detail. Is that what you are looking for? --Jayron32 05:01, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Russian Revolution reasons

What were major reasons for the Russian Revolution (and later the Russian Civil War)? Was World War I was a reason? Is it likely that if WWI was reduced to the July Crisis that the revolution would happen at all? Thanks! 64.229.180.189 (talk) 16:11, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is this a homework question? It sounds like one. I'm guessing from your reference to the July Days that you mean the October Revolution; that article should provide some useful pointers. Note that "if not for X, would the revolution have happened at all?" questions are never going to be definitively settled. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 16:57, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) The reasons for the Russian Revolution are multitudinous and not easily explained in a few sentances. Which is why I am going to try to do just that. Several issues:

Backwardness of Russia towards its lower classes, especially compared to other contemporary societies. Socially, Russia had been at least a century "behind the times" compared to other societies. Russia ended serfdom only 50 years before this, see Emancipation reform of 1861. Most Western societies, with whom the Russian monarchy had long tried to align itself, had ended such state long before then. Russia was still an agrarian society even in the early 20th century, the "Industrial Revolution" had completely skipped Russia. When people are in a backwards state, and are aware that they are in such a state, because the rest of the world is "passing them by", this is a recipe for disaster. This created a lot of tension within Russian society, a tension capitalized on by the Bolsheviks et al.
Russia had been "revolting" for some decades before the "Big one". The importance of things like the Revolution of 1905, the February Revolution followed by the ineffectiveness of the Alexander Kerensky-led Russian Provisional Government, etc. cannot be underestimated. In large part, the most famous phase of the revolutions, the October Revolution that swept the Communists into power, was largely a result of said Communists taking advantage of a situation rather than causing it directly themselves. Russia had been weakened by others for some time, and the Communists shrewdly waited until they could capitalize on it.
Russia's failures in WWI cannot be discounted at all; many Russians felt that the War was going badly. Initially, there was widespread support for the War, but it became perceived that the Russian leadership was screwing it up badly. Sadly, the Karensky government continued to fight the war, but had little more success (see Kerensky Offensive). Indeed, it is likely that the decision to continue in the war, more than anything else, is what brought down Karensky's government and led to the October revolution, as Lenin's group espoused withdrawal from the war almost from the first.

All of these ideas probably fed the stew that was necessary to create the conditions for the October revolution. Had Russia more agressively modernized, socially, or had Russia been more effective in fighting the war, or had the Karensky government withdrawn from the war and concentrated on securing the homefront rather than fighting a foreign war, etc. etc. then the Bolsheviks may not have ever been able to gain power. The Bolsheviks never represented anything like the majority will of the Russian people, what they had was shrewed timing, good strategy, and a willingess to be brutal. That will carry a well-organized group a LONG way in bringing themselves into power. --Jayron32 17:10, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Bolsheviks also had some help from the Germans [1], because they (correctly) thought it would hasten Russia's exit from the war. They didn't foresee the consequences. Alansplodge (talk) 09:38, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to point out that the book you've linked to in defense of that is a little bit nutty — grand conspiracy theories about Wall Street and the Bolsheviks mixed with the idea that FDR and Hitler are more or less the same (see Antony C. Sutton). He doesn't go down the standard anti-Semitic path, but I wouldn't call it reliable. It doesn't detract from your point (which is true nonetheless) other than looking like a semi-arbitrarily chosen source... --Mr.98 (talk) 16:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gosh, how embarrassing. It really was "a semi-arbitrarily chosen source". Is this better? Alansplodge (talk) 00:19, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the causes in a nutshell. --SupernovaExplosion (talk) 18:14, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That source mentions Rasputin, which I also planned to mention. He was very unpopular, and his association with the royal family made them very unpopular, too. Other Russian aristocrats, not wanting the whole system to be dragged down by him, killed him off, but apparently too late. StuRat (talk) 18:25, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rasputin's role in causing the revolution tends to get WAY overblown because he's a wacky character, and wacky characters make a good narrative. But ultimately, Rasputin is a product of the Great Man theory way of thinking about history; that individuals with powerful personalities can move history. If you really get down do it, Rasputin's role was to alienate the royal family from the rest of the Russian nobility, but I'm not sure that had much to do with the social and economic factors that led to the widespread unrest during the first decades of the 20th century. It would be like claiming that Monica Lewinsky caused the Dot-com bubble at the end of the 1990s. Just because Rasputin was "in the news" and was damaging to the credibility of the royal family doesn't mean he had much to do with the Revolution. Being around at the same time doesn't make one a cause of the events. --Jayron32 05:40, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A relatively minor thing can be a trigger, even if it's not a deep, underlying cause. StuRat (talk) 20:03, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cartilage, Curtilage

So I read this: "the farmhouse where [person A] and his family lived, which is within the cartilage of the farm". I've never heard of "cartilage" as an architectural term, so I looked it up in the OED, which listed no meaning that made sense in this context. But there is the similar word "curtilage" (a small court, yard, garth, or piece of ground attached to a dwelling-house, and forming one enclosure with it, etc), which does make sense in this context.

Normally I would just dismiss the original usage of "cartilage" as a typo, but where I saw it was a judgment of the High Court of England and Wales, and you'd expect judges (or their associates) to know technical legal terms (which OED suggests "curtilage" to be); plus a brief google search turns up a few mentions of "cartilages" in relation to farm houses. So does anyone know if there is a possible meaning of "cartilage" that would make sense here, or is it really a typo? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 17:08, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Curtilage" seems to be a term in common use with UK planning authorities: "The term "curtilage"... refers to the land in the ownership of the householder, thus including any buildings, driveways and gardens within your property boundary."[2] See also [3]. I strongly suspect that this is a spellcheck error; a "Did you mean cartilage?" sort of thing. Alansplodge (talk) 17:30, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Probably an autocorrect error. I work for a housing authority, and have to type the word "curtilage" from time to time. The spellchecker doesn't recognise it, and if autocorrect is on it'll always change it to "cartilage". --Nicknack009 (talk) 17:35, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Also in the US: Curtilage.Sjö (talk) 11:51, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm surprised that Microsoft omit "curtilage" from their spelling dictionary (as do other electronic dictionary providers) because it is actually an older word than cartilage, going back to the thirteenth century, according to the OED. I've just added "curtilage" to two custom dictionaries. Does anyone know of a list of words that "ought" to be in spellcheck dictionaries but are often missing, then I could add them all at once. Wiktionary is too inclusive for my purposes because it includes many common mis-spellings and words of dubious authenticity. Dbfirs 12:27, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Girard, Philadelphy

Dear Sir, Madame,

I have been looking into Stephen Girard's Records: The City, The Co0llege, etc.

The Information I have from my father, as I was born after my Grand'Father died. is to the effect that the family history and there are recorded genealogy to this effect; Three Girard brother, from France were sailors, navigators, (a shipwreck is possible) have landed in the Quebec Province, (close to Quebec City, at La Malbaie or Baie St Paul).

I was told that One of them migrated in Lake St John area, another remained at Aux Éboulements, and the third migrated to the U.S.A. at the begining he would have been a trader, ammunitions as well as slaves, to later become a State Governor, and then interested in educationb,

Bsicly he would have landed, willfully or by accident in Charlevoix, Québec, with two brothers.

Yours truly,

P. S. I like Wikipedia and use it often, I would appreciate the possibility to contact by PostMail, even receive literature about Wikipedia.

Yours truly

l'ancien — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.145.152.115 (talk) 19:36, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A genealogist would ask: Was "Stephen Girard" the grandfather? What do you mean by "The City, The Co0llege, etc.." You searched the records of some identified city and college associated with your family history, or is there a city and college named for Girard? What were the names of the brothers? When did they land ? Which one migrated to the US? Any idea of their birth or death dates? Ancestry.com has lots of data files, such as Census files, and family histories. It would be a good starting point. Edison (talk) 19:48, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like you might be offering new information about Stephen Girard rather than asking a question. If you would like to present the information for discussion, you should post it at Talk:Stephen Girard.--Cam (talk) 01:14, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The article Stephen Girard mentions that he had relative in France when he died, who contested his will, but does not mention brothers, nor any connection with Canada. A reference in the article , [4], says he "came to America by way of Philadelphia in 1776" having earlier visited New York. It says he was the oldest of 9 children. (The Wikipedia article on the college says 14 children. His parents would have been pretty busy if he had 13 siblings under the age of 11, his age when she died. I will change it to 9 per the ref from the bio article). He went to sea in 1764 around age 14. No shipwrecks are mentioned. You might read "Biography of Stephen Girard," (1832) written by Stephen Simpson, available online via Google Books. I could find nothing in that biography, or in Google Book Search connecting Girard to Charlevoix, Quebec. The biography on page 37 says his brother, Captain John Girard, arrived in the US, and they formed a business at "Cape Française " (likely Cap Française, Haiti, now named Cap-Haïtien) called Girard, Bernard and Lacrampe." There was a falling out and the firm was broken up in 1790, with John getting $60,000 and Stephen $30,000. Page 42 says John died and left a large estate. Stephen's famous will, reprinted at the end of the book, mentions (Section IX) his brother Etienne Girard, who was bequeathed land near Bordeaux, France, and his late sister Sophia Girard Capayron of France. Other nieces and nephews are mentioned, but I did not find brothers named other than John of North America and Etienne of France. On page 20 of the will (number 6) Stephen Girard says New York was the "first port on the continent of North America at which I arrived," thus refuting the idea that he first landed in Quebec. A more modern biography, not available to read online, but widely available in libraries, is "Lonely midas. The story of Stephen Girard" by Harry Emerson Wildes, 1944. The widely discussed litigation about the will seems to indicate that he had no other living siblings or children of siblings when he published the will in 1830. Edison (talk) 20:42, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

January 27

Voting patterns in presidential election of 1860

Why, in the US presidential election of 1860, did all of the southern states, down to the county level, vote for Democratic candidates? Having studied election and demographic maps for a long time, something is fishy about that - people don't vote exactly according to state lines unless they have different ballots or different voting times.

To show it: File:PresidentialCounty1860.gif. You'll notice that even eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, which from the 19th century through 20th century voted Republican on the national level while there southern brethren did not (c.f. File:1892prescountymap.PNG, File:1896prescountymap.PNG, File:1900prescountymap.PNG, File:1968prescountymap2.PNG, File:1980prescountymap2.PNG, etc.) voted for Democrats in this election. Also, you'll notice sharp divisions even in the northern panhandle of Virginia (today West Virginia) between surrounding areas in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Ditto on the Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland borders. The only exception is southern Illinois (Democrat, bleeding into Western Missouri) and St. Louis suburbs (Republican, bleeding into Illinois).

What's going on here? Magog the Ogre (talk) 01:37, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lincoln wasn't on the ballot in most of the South, and had virtually no support even in those areas where he was on the paper. His victory was due to an overwhelming sweep of the free states, thanks to splits in the Northern Democrats. The formalization of the polarization of US society, by which the North's larger electorate put the South under de facto colonial rule by a party with no support, was the direct trigger of the civil war. Something similar happened in Ireland in the same period, and the same situation is happening in Scotland (with only one Tory MP, but under Tory government thanks to England's larger electorate, and thus on the verge of a unilateral declaration of independence) today. 209.137.146.50 (talk) 02:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lincoln's two immediate predecessors (Democrats) sat around and watched the south get its way on the slavery question time after time. With Lincoln in office, the game was up. Had Lincoln's philosophy been as hands-off as Pierce and Buchanan's were, it's not so likely the south would have seceded. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the situation in Scotland is remotely analogous. Scotland is not by any means 'on the verge of a unilateral declaration of independence' - all major political parties in the UK support holding a referendum on the issue and abiding by the results - so it is difficult to see how a declaration of independence (which remains unlikely according to polls) could be 'unilateral'. In addition, the lack of support for conservatives in Scotland is hardly the most important factor behind support for independence - the level of support has not really changed since they came to power in Westminster. Not to mention that there are large parts of England and Wales with very few Tory MPs, and of course, there are none at all in Northern Ireland. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 14:24, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Magog the Ogre -- Some things require more than looking at maps to explain. From 1853 to 1860, southerners and strongly pro-southern northerners dominated the presidency, the senate, and the supreme court, for a clear stranglehold on 2½ of the three branches of government, and a whole series of what were perceived as unilateral Slave Power aggressions (Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854, Border ruffians in Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, the caning of Sumner etc.) generated resentment and resistance in the north, resulting in the rise of the Republican party as a potent political force strongly committed to ending slavery expansion. Naturally the party had little support in the south -- and anyone who tried to actively campaign for the Republican party in many regions of the south would have been the target of mob violence. A final split between Douglasite Democrats and pro-southern democrats over the Freeport Doctrine and the Lecompton constitution smoothed the way for a Republican victory (though even if the Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell votes had all been combined, Lincoln would have still won the electoral college). AnonMoos (talk) 06:14, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth mentioning that Lincoln presumably had the support of the majority of the people in a large swathe of the South -- specifically, in those parts of the South where the majority of the people were slaves. --M @r ē ino 14:23, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe -- I would tend to doubt whether most slaves outside of the "border states" and big cities knew very much about Abraham Lincoln or the Republican party in 1860, and at that time the Republicans as a party formally disclaimed any intention of acting against slavery within the existing slave states (which would have been unconstitutional as the U.S. constitution then existed). Many individuals within the Republican party wanted to do more, but the main expressed collective goal of the party was to firmly and unyieldingly oppose the expansion of slavery into new territories (not to abolish slavery in the existing slave states)... AnonMoos (talk) 22:06, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The IP above has answered my question: Lincoln was not on the ballot in the southern states. Why wasn't Lincoln on the ballot in southern states? (PS. I did not need a history lesson telling me the GOP was unpopular in the South.) Magog the Ogre (talk) 18:13, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Magog, you answered your own question -- the GOP was not on the ballot because it was unpopular in the South, and especially unpopular among the wealthy, elite Southern politicians that controlled who had access to the ballot in most states. --M @r ē ino 21:17, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, official government-printed ballot papers were not too commonly used in the election of 1860 (the transition to what was known as the "Australian ballot" didn't generally happen until twenty or more years later), so being literally on the ballot was not too relevant. However, a vote for president didn't count unless the candidate had a recognized slate of electors in that state. (And of course in South Carolina there was no popular vote for president at all.) AnonMoos (talk) 00:28, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pachelbel's Canon/Werner Herzog/The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Which version of Pachelbel's Canon is this, found in Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser? Bus stop (talk) 03:14, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The music credits on this Google Books result simply credit "Pachelbel". Alansplodge (talk) 09:23, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Eureka! Pachelbel Canon (from L' énigme de Kaspar Hauser) The New London Orchestra (Performer). Alansplodge (talk) 09:25, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Great. Thank you very much. Bus stop (talk) 16:05, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Video in the National Archives

Can someone find a video in the National Archives online? Does the National Archives allow wikipedia or anybody to use one of their old films/photographs free of charge? Or do they charge fees to use their materials? --KAVEBEAR (talk) 03:59, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Which one of them, List of national archives? CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 04:56, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As your question below is about Hawaii, I assume you mean the US archives. If the video is the work of the federal government, it's in the public domain; otherwise, the situation will depend on the status of the creator and what permissions they've given. WP:COPY and the links there should cover every given situation. Bear in mind that Wikipedia videos are in the non-standard ogg format owing to free-use considerations. 209.137.146.50 (talk) 05:51, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If it is the US, check here and search under both "archival description" and "digital copies". A fraction is online. For the rest, someone needs to go to the national archives branch and scan it. You can hire someone to make the copies for you (the National Archive web site has lists of approved vendors) but we have good cooperation with the National Archives and often events at branches, see WP:NARA.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:00, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Congressional Visit to Hawaii in early 1900s

When exactly was the congressional visit to Hawaii in the early 1900s? Queen Liliuokalani was still alive and they paid a visit to her.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 04:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There was one where they visited her on her 71st birthday, September 2, 1909, here. There may have been others, but that was one.--Wehwalt (talk) 05:15, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

All WP articles lead to philosophy

I read about this on another website the other day and was delighted to discover that it appears to work. Pick any WP article (perhaps using the "Random article" link on the left). Click the first link in the main text of the article (i.e. not counting links in parentheses) to take you to another article. Keep doing this and sooner or later you will land on the Philosophy article. It works every time. Any theories about why this should be? Something to do with philosophy being at the root of all human endeavour, perhaps? --Viennese Waltz 08:31, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see what you are saying. I tested it. I clicked the "Random article" button and found the article Accident blackspot. Clicking the first links from this article, as you mentioned, lead to Road traffic safety, Pedestrian, Walking, Gait, Motion (physics), Physics, Natural science, Science, Knowledge, Information, Order theory, Mathematics, Quantity, Property (philosophy), Modern philosophy, Philosophy.

Another time, I found Pascal Pinard, then France, Unitary state, State (polity), Government, Legislator, Legislature, Deliberative assembly, Organization, Social group, Social science, Academic discipline, Knowledge. From knowledge, the rest is like the first.

So we can see all links will lead to the article Knowledge. This is why all articles ultimately lead to the article philosophy. HTH. --SupernovaExplosion (talk) 09:10, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you're interested in the mathematics of this, you could post it at WP:RD/M. I'm sure someone will have an idea.

However, I ran my own experiment, and starting with List of acronyms and initialisms: H, I took a few clicks to get to Latin, then a few more to Ancient Greek. However, then it was straight back to Latin. Since I was just going round in a circle there was no way to get to Philosophy, or to Knowledge. I would suggest that the number of times that you DO get to Philosophy are merely sufficient to awaken our innate sense of coincidence. Since there is no limit to the number of clicks you are allowed BEFORE hitting Philosophy, logic says that, at most, you need 3,856,235 clicks to get there.

Something that I just thought of that argues slightly in the other direction is that by definition, the first link in any given article is likely to be quite 'meta'. It normally takes the form of <x> is a subset of <y> - things like London is a city in England, Greek is an Indo European language and so on. If you imagine Wikipedia as a nested list of subjects, your general trend will be upwards in the list, and Philosophy is probably quite near the top. That's probably why the theory above uses Philosophy rather than, say, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Cucumber Mike (talk) 09:34, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(To OP): you can read about it on this website too: Wikipedia:Getting to Philosophy. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:23, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(To Cucumber Mike): the OP said discounting links in parentheses. If you follow that then you won't get stuck in the "Latin rut": List of acronyms and initialisms: H -> (Acronym) -> Acronym and initialism -> Abbreviation -> Phrase -> Word -> Language -> Human -> Species -> Biology -> Natural science -> Science -> Knowledge, and from there as described above to Philosophy. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:30, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The first try for me pointed me to a loop: Nargis Fakhri → Bollywood → Standard Hindi → Devanagari → Deva (Hinduism) → and back to Devanagari

The second try did it: Fidel Maldonado → Albuquerque, New Mexico → List of lists of settlements in the United States → United States → Federalism → Politics → Group decision making → Individual → Person → Human → Species → Biology → Natural science → Science → Knowledge → Information → Order theory → Mathematics → Quantity → Property (philosophy) → Modern philosophy

I think SupernovaExplosion is right. Knowledge is the nexus of all this. If someone rewrites its lead paragraph, we probably won't ever get to Philosophy.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 10:48, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The reason Nargis Fakhri didn't work for you is that you clicked on Devanagari which is in brackets. Click 'standardised' instead and it works. --Viennese Waltz 11:10, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Obsidian Soul, you should not click Standard Hindi → Devanagari because it is in parenthesis. The links are Standard Hindi → Standard language → Variety (linguistics) → Sociolinguistics → Society → Interpersonal relationship → Limerence → Psychologist → Clinical psychology → Science → Knowledge, and from there Philosophy. --SupernovaExplosion (talk) 11:12, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, my bad.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 11:19, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is fun! Zoltán Eötvös -> Hungary -> Central Europe -> Europe -> Continent -> Landmass -> Ocean -> Planet -> Astronomical object -> Entity -> Abstraction -> Hierarchy -> Ordered set -> Order theory -> Mathematics -> Quantity -> Property (philosophy) -> Modern philosophy -> Philosophy. I suppose lots of articles start with a country or nationality, which are likely to end up at Continent or Ocean or something similar. Note that Philosophy goes to Ontology, which goes straight back to Philosophy. 130.88.73.65 (talk) 11:19, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that, since it shows that not all articles lead to Knowledge as stated by some posters upthread. --Viennese Waltz 12:50, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Worked for me too! Garret Hobart -> Vice President of the United States -> public administration -> politics and then from there as per the example by Obsidian Soul.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:32, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not all, but it seems a substanial number. In my case 3378 Susanvictoria → Asteroid belt → Solar System → Sun → Star → Plasma (physics) → Physics → Natural science → Knowledge. Also in the above case we still have the same root of Order theory as in the knowledge case. Also while philosophy may lead nearly straight back to philosophy now, comments on the talk page of Wikipedia talk:Getting to Philosophy which appear to be partially mistaken (well at least at the time of the OPs comment it seems the first link was not to Metaphysics) lead me to [5]. This suggests it may have went (I'm going by current versions from here so this may not be accurate) Philosophy → Reason → Fact → Experience → Concept which then leads back to philosphy, so at the time, you could have said all links lead to fact or reason (like you can now say they all lead to ontology). The talk page and Talk:Philosophy also suggests other historic changes, e.g. for a while Natural science resulted in a loop and evidentally so did mathematics. Nil Einne (talk) 15:31, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can't believe that nobody has posted Wikipedia:Six degrees of Wikipedia also Small-world network. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 20:43, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Testing (ignoring dablinks) Ai FM -> Chinese language -> Language* -> Human -> Taxonomy -> Ancient Greek -> Greek language -> Indo-European language -> Language family -> Language. Not excluding dablinks I go from Chinese language to a bounce between simplified and traditional Chinese. Second try: Alice de Toeni, Countess of Warwick -> Guy de Beauchamp, 10th Earl of Warwick, Magnate -> Late Latin -> Latin -> Italic languages. Third try: Tarbutt and Tarbutt Additional, Township (Canada), Australia, Southern Hemisphere, Earth, Planet, Ancient Greek, Astronomical object, Entity, Abstraction, Hierarchy, Ordinary, Ordered set, Order theory, Mathematics, Quantity, Property (philosophy), Modern philosophy, Philosophy. Fourth try: Itemirus -> Theropoda -> Bipedalism -> Terrestrial locomotion -> Evolution -> Generation -> Reproduction -> Biological process -> Organism -> Contiguity -> Aristotle (nope ;) -> Greeks -> Nation -> International relations -> Sovereign state -> State (polity) -> Government -> Legislator -> Legislature -> Deliberative assembly -> Organization -> Social group -> Social science -> Academic discipline -> Knowledge (and now we're on the path - see above).

Now it's pretty obvious any given page will lead to a relatively small loop eventually. I wonder whether, if we impose certain restrictions like all looping pages after the first are discounted, we could come up with a dataset which obeys Zipf's law. Certainly this is a very interesting sort of Wikipedia "psychohistory". Wnt (talk) 15:08, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

God's will and free will

This question has been bothering me for a long time now. Let's say, if a man became successful in life, when you ask someone why it happened, they would say it's God's will, but if he did something bad, then they would say that God gave him free will. My question is not about not blaming God (God is perfect, so we can never blame him), but why the free will clause almost always only occurs during discussions of bad things. Wouldn't it be possible that a person was able to become successful like Bill Gates or Barack Obama by using his free will well, or the person's wrongdoings were God's will because they were punishments for his sins? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 10:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on which brand of religion you subscribe to, if any. You could start by looking at our article on Predestination. Alansplodge (talk) 10:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In this case, Roman Catholicism. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 10:33, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In some cases one may want to honour God by associating good things to him. On the other hand, when talking about one's own case, one may want to be modest and not ascribe too much success to their own character. So instead of talking about how all these good things are a result of human action, instead one talks about how God permitted them or even caused them. Conversely, one may be very wary of speaking ill of God and so avoid relating bad things to him. This is all just speculation; whether any serious psychology has been done on this question I am unsure. However, the premise of your question may be doubted too. I take it to be something like: People "almost always" limit relating free will to bad things. Is this true? Maybe not--you would have to collect a broad amount of data to give good confirmation to this theory and not just rely on anecdote. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 11:01, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you do a Google search, a there are a great many articles and essays on the subject. We Anglicans tend to ignore the whole notion, but (as always) there are many strands of thought. Alansplodge (talk) 11:03, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can't ask that question without questioning the omniscience of [the Abrahamic] God as well. The very same question is asked by almost everyone who eventually became agnostics or atheists.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 11:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a dichotomy - it's not a choice of either God made this happen to me or there is no god. In my limited view, I have never really believed in a god that controls who succeeds and who fails. Saying that God is omniscient, and by definition all-knowing does not mean that God does or does not exert physical control over the happenings on the planet. Even if you say that God is omnipotent, that only means that God can do anything, not that God does. A lot of people have a lot of disagreement over these subjects. Falconus^{p t c} 11:49, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We are talking about omniscience not omnipotence. Whether God acts or not, does not come into the equation. An omniscient God means whatever we do is already known. Before we're even born, we've already been assigned a place in heaven or hell (or the equivalents thereof in the different branches of Abrahamic religions).

When whatever "choice" you make now, has already been accounted for, do the rituals, prayers, guilt, sins, scriptures, codes, sermons, conversions, sects, good and evil, everything still matter? If such a God knows you will sin, why does he punish you for it? He knows Adam and Eve will eat the apple, so why make them in the first place? -- Obsidi♠n Soul 12:28, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is a huge difference between predetermination (these people will be saved, these people won't, and there's nothing that they can do about it) and the idea that God knows what choices one is going to make and what that person's fate will be ahead of time. In the latter situation, the person is in control of his or her destiny, it's just that God can preview the results. Also, many Christians don't fall so neatly into these two philosophies. In the Anglican church, as referenced above, it doesn't seem to be discussed much; it's not an important issue in my Episcopal church. Falconus^{p t c} 12:40, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As for "why", I can't answer that. Falconus^{p t c} 12:44, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No there isn't. The difference between the two is simply who to blame. Predetermination blames the deity, free will + omniscience blames the individual. Both do not have room for the concept of "choices". Everything was, is, and will be as God knows them to be. Anything other than that means he does not know everything. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 13:03, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I will politely have to disagree; the latter is all about choices. It is not about God controlling what choices people will make, it is about God knowing what choices people will make. Prior knowledge does not equal manipulation. Why does knowledge of the future determine the future, rather than the future determining knowledge of the future? To me, the latter makes more sense. To be objective, there is also the third option - there is no future, only the present and the past, so knowledge of the future cannot exist. In that case, of course, there could be no omniscient God. Falconus^{p t c} 13:56, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The concept of divine omniscience does not necessarily preclude human choice. See C. S. Lewis's discussion of Boethius' treatment of the question on pp. 88–89 of The Discarded Image (assuming that you can see the same Google Books "preview" that I see). Deor (talk) 14:06, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Falconus: Because your choice is already known. Even the act and time of choosing is already known. Even if to a human the future seems to change because of his/her choice, that choice and the seeming "branching" of futures is already known as if it had already happened or is happening.

Omniscience does not merely mean prior knowledge, it is knowledge period. An omniscient being can not be subject to the tyrannies of time, he knows that which has happened, is happening, and will happen. The future is not the "possible". The future simply is. Any choices/actions, including those done by God himself is already accounted for.

C.S. Lewis/Boethius actually says the same thing in Deor's link: "..God is eternal, not perpetual. Strictly speaking, He never foresees; He simply sees. Your 'future' is only an area, and for us a special area, of His infinite Now."

@Deor: His 'answer': "As a human spectator, by watching my present act, does not at all infringe its freedom, so I am none the less free to act as I choose in the future because God, in that future (His present) watches me acting" is not an answer. Nor does it justify saying that omniscience would therefore not preclude human choice. An "act" is not a discrete moment, neither is time separated into snippets of choices, each determining what your fate will be. For how long would such a snippet be then? If presented with a chocochip or oatmeal cookie, does the three seconds it takes for me to choose the chocochip constitute a snippet wherein an omniscient being truly would not know what my choice would be? Would it be the microseconds it takes for my fingertips to touch the cookie of my choice?

Anything like that, no matter how fleeting, constitutes a blind spot. And such blind spots of knowledge would therefore mean that God is not omniscient. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 15:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Although, I must say the concept of a future not existing is definitely a novel idea. One which could solve the paradox where it not for the fact that Abrahamic religions themselves put special value on prophets.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 15:18, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

When you say "If presented with a chocochip or oatmeal cookie, does the three seconds it takes for me to choose the chocochip constitute a snippet wherein an omniscient being truly would not know what my choice would be?" how are you not viewing the omniscient being as inside time rather than outside it? There's no "three-second snippet" for God; he sees the presentation of the cookies, your hesitation, and your eventual choice all as part of his "infinite Now". Deor (talk) 18:08, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly the point, because then he knows my choice, does he not? If he already knows my eventual choice, it becomes a necessity for it to be. If I choose differently than what he knows I will choose, that makes him not omniscient. If I always choose what he knows I will choose, then that makes me not have free will.

Even if his "infinite Now" is a timeless realm of all possibilities (with me choosing the chocochip cookie, the oatmeal cookie, both, or neither) then you'd come to the same conclusion - there would be no choice and no free will, as I've done all of them and none of them. And no, if you argue that perhaps my "soul" can only follow one of the possible paths, we're back to the singular reality where an omniscient being would already know which paths I would follow. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 18:35, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This part of the discussion is clearly going nowhere, so this will be my final comment. You're clearly not getting the point (or playing the game, if you will) by continually slipping in temporal terms—"already knows my eventual choice", "knows what I will choose", "would already know which paths I would follow". The thrust of Boethius' argument that "He never foresees; He simply sees" is that "knows what I will choose", "knows what I am choosing", and "knows what I have chosen" are all simply inadequate human expressions of the mode of knowing enjoyed by a timeless and omniscient being. The second and third of those expressions don't infringe on free human choice, and the first only seems to do so from our time-bound perspective. Deor (talk) 15:04, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why? By obeying linguistic rules in English, why would I somehow not understand it? I have repeatedly and explicitly tried to convey the fact that there is no future or past in an omniscient being even before you pointed out Boethius to me. But English as a human language forces me to use tenses. By all means, do remove or switch any tenses you don't like and get me a straight answer. Arguing about semantics is avoiding the issue which leads to a discussion that leads to nowhere.

If you wish, you can examine a clearer rebuttal of Boethius/C.S. Lewis' argument in the Argument from free will article. Which still clearly shows how such a "timeless" perception of actions would still mean the action is already predeternined to happen. If anything, it only cements your fate even more solidly.

Imagine you are God. And in your timeless reality, you see the following events in a person's life. This is in addition to all the events of course, but let's just focus on these three. To a human they are obviously a sequence of events - a choosing, the choice, and the consequence. But to you as God, they are all right there, happening all at once so there's no past, present, or future in them. Heck, they're not even in order as a human would see them.

Now tell me, is there any way at all for any of those events you are seeing to change? Or to avoid the tense problem, is there any way for the pictures to show something different happening? Is there another picture perhaps with the person opening box B? Is there another picture with the person not opening any boxes? Is there a picture where Schroedinger's cat comes out (alive!) instead of a snake?

No. There isn't. Because if even one of them does not happen, it will mean that you as God are not omniscient, since you saw an event that did not, will not, or is not happening. To a human being, it will also be impossible, since I can not possibly be doing all of those things at once at the same moment unless reality itself has branched.

Even if you are experiencing them all at once, the events are fixed, since that is how you know them. The person will always choose A and get bitten by a snake and die, regardless if you don't actually experience them linearly as would a human. Is that a clear enough explanation?-- Obsidi♠n Soul 23:33, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The position that the future does not exist now is not a novel idea among philosophers of time. It is implied by both presentism (which is a commonly defended view), and the growing block view (which, I would say, is uncommon).

It seems, an assumption of what you said so far is that one exercises free will in doing something only if one could do otherwise. From the Stoics on, many compatibilists have argued that this is not necessary for exercising free will, and that it is sufficient for one to act by virtue of an internal function or in accord with an internal principle in order to exercise free will. Indeed, some compatiblilists argue that exercising free will is possible only if actions are pre-determined.

Another assumption you make is that if one's action is known before it occurs, then one could not have done otherwise. Although this is a common position, it is not without controversy. Theoretically one can make a distinction along the lines of modality: Knowing that something is the case implies that that is the case, and, by double negation, that it is not not the case, however, it does not imply it could not not be the case. The point here is in not confusing statements about what is or isn't with statements about what could or couldn't be. To put it another way, the following statement does not seem like an unreasonable position to me, and you would have to argue against it to make your point: That someone will do something does not imply that someone must do that thing. As a counterexample, say we watch my friend, whom I know well, stroll up to pile of peanut butter cookies. You ask me: "Could he eat a cookie?" I answer: "He could, but he won't. And you, being a skeptic, respond: "If you admit that he could, how do you know he won't?" I answer: "Because he knows they are peanut butter cookies and that, as such, he is allergic to them, and he really does not want to suffer an allergic reaction." It don't think it would be unreasonable to have a judgement like that. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 10:16, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

1) Novel for me at least when used in this context.

2) Not much of "free will" then eh? And I was right the first time. It seems the only way you can reconcile the two is if we accept the fact that we have already been judged even before we were born. It's fine in Philosophical musings if they want to redefine "free will" as "not free" after all, but it destroys the foundation of religions.

3) And no. You are confusing possibilities with fact and regressing to a human viewpoint. The question you used in the first place is misleading. "Could he eat the cookie?" is asking about possibilities. That which could have happened but will not. Of course, he could have done otherwise, but he won't because you know he won't.

A more relevant line of questioning is thus: I as a human being will ask "Will he eat the cookie?", and the only answer I really care about is if an omniscient being will say "He will" or "He won't". Everything else is irrelevant.

An omniscient being is already assumed to know, how he knows or what the reasons are for the individual's choice does not matter. Even the question "How do you know?" is a red herring. The only thing that matters is that his choice will be what you know it to be. And it will be, because anything otherwise will prove that you didn't know after all.

The presence of an option (the could in your argument) does not automatically mean free will. That's like having two doors in which one is locked, barred, or otherwise rendered impassable and then declaring that there is a choice on which door to take just because there are two. No there won't, because only one of them can be opened. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 11:09, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Useless stuff I regret writing
Content which starts hidden Absolute predestination, including the implication that we had already been judged before we were born, is a tenet of the doctrines of some Christian theologians and their followers, including whole sects which have endured for centuries. So, one should not unqualifiedly say that having a compatibilist theory of free will destroys the foundation of religions. And I'm not sure if it would be completely fair to say that one would now be "redefining" free will if one employed the Stoic definition. If one uses a definition which is 2300 years old, even older than some of the religions which the definition supposedly undermines, then one is not exactly being innovative, nor skirting the issue. I do not believe I have confused possibilities with fact. Of course the "could" question is about possibilities--that distinction between the "could" (problematic) and "is" (assertoric) modalities, or categories of possibility/impossiblity and existence/non-existence ("fact", if you will), was indeed part of what the example was supposed to illustrate. And I don't think I've ever progressed to a non-human viewpoint whence I could then regress, but, of course, that is not what you meant. As to what you meant, I am unsure.

Anyway, with what you've said now, I am unsure of your position. You've said, I think, that questions of what one could do are irrelevant to questions of whether one exercises free will. But, assuming that, I don't know what you would take to be necessary or sufficient for the exercise of free will. Maybe it's best to start afresh with clear questions so that I'm not addressing a straw-man of my own making.

Do you think that, in any case of one doing something, if one could not do otherwise, then one does not exercise freewill?

Do you think that, in any case of one doing something, if what one does is known beforehand, then one could not do otherwise?

Is the exercise of free will even possible?

If it is, could you give an example (real or imagined) of such an exercise?

Again, if it is, what do you think is necessary for the exercise of free will?

Finally, again, if it is, what do you think is sufficient for the exercise of free will?

--Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 12:42, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've collapsed and struck-through most of my last response because it was really not helpful and didn't advance the discussion at all, and, as such, just muddied the waters. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 13:09, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Returning to the original question, let's look at each case:

"When good things happen, are they due to the action of the individual or God/outside influence ?" The individual is usually at least partially responsible, although there are exceptions, like when an unknown relative leaves you his vast estate. On the other hand, there almost always has to be some outside influence to enable the good thing to happen. In the Bill Gates example, he needed others with good ideas that he could steal, and a government which allowed him to become rich as a result.

"When bad things happen, are they due to the action of the individual or God/outside influence ?" Again, it's usually a mixture, although some people appear to be able to destroy their seemingly perfect lives all on their own (Nixon's Watergate self-destruction comes to mind). There are, of course, natural disasters which have nothing to do with human choices, like if you are struck by a meteor. StuRat (talk) 19:41, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're actually conflating two distinct concepts of religious morality: outcomes and behavior. Many people who do good things achieve little to no success in life (e.g. Mother Teresa); many people who do bad things become inordinately successful (e.g. Saddam Hussein). in religious thought, outcomes are provided by God, but behavior is controlled by Man, and worldly success is not a measure that matters. What matters is what happens after you die.

Yes, it makes for some confusion over why God would want bad people to succeed in the world and good people to fail. But keep in mind that what religions are trying to do (in their ham-handed way) is get people to behave well whether those people are failing or succeeding. Otherwise we end up with a society in which the golden rule is "Do unto others before they do unto you". --Ludwigs2 20:13, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly: in one case it is "if a man became", in the other case it is "if he did". One shouldn't be so surprised that the explanations are going to be different.

Actually, as the post below ([6]) illustrates, it isn't going to be that different for Atheists: just change "God" to "luck", "environment", "circumstances"...

Also, it might be a good idea to take a look at the article Grace (Christianity) (and other related articles and sources) for a more "nuanced" explanation. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:41, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your first mistake was believing that God exists, even though his existence would contradict everything we know about physics and, as shown above, would lead to logical paradoxes. Your second mistake was assuming that when people say something is "God's will" or "free will", they actually know anything about God's will. When successful people claim that their success is due to God's will, they conveniently ignore that the fortunate environment in which they grew up, their lucky decisions, and their superior genes played a much bigger role than their own choices. They ignore that a child in Africa could have become just as successful, if only he didn't die of cholera; they ignore that a thousand people in their own country could have become billionaires, if some more tax money had been spent on poorer schools; they ignore that had their competitors not waited 2 hours longer to file a patent, or not gotten into a car accident, or not missed a bus by 5 seconds, or not donated as much to charity, they would be out of business. As always in human history, religion becomes a way to justify the existing world order and cleanse guilt by blaming the victim--the poor and oppressed--for their own condition.

Your third mistake was assuming that God is perfect. In what sense is he perfect? This assumption is contradicted by the Bible itself, in which God gets angry, acts arbitrarily, and sometimes regrets his decisions. Perfect example: Noah's flood. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 20:25, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

<ahem> Science does not contradict the existence of God. The existence of God is simply a non-falsifiable theory, something which modern science frowns upon, but non-falsifiability is not a refutation of anything in and of itself (except in the mind of a certain class of skeptic who take Popper's outmoded ideation far too much to heart).

I understand where you're coming from, IP, I even mostly agree with you, but the real contradiction here is in your insistence that a skeptical position is right. A skeptic who isn't skeptical of his own skepticism isn't a skeptic at all; he's just an ideologue hiding behind the mantle of science. --Ludwigs2 20:46, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) God does not contradict physics. Science has neither proven nor disproved God. I agree with you about what you said about "When successful people..." We have spent quite a bit of time talking about that particular issue in my church. Systems of oppression, unequal opportunity, etc. Although, by the sounds of it, you didn't think that people who believe in God consider that stuff - I assure you, you are quite wrong on that count. In my church, we have devoted a lot of time to learning about and working with some of the poorest and most oppressed populations in the US; people that the middle and upper class generally never ever see unless they look for them. The prosperity gospel attitudes that you cite are representative of some very vocal Christian groups. However, I will state very sincerely that there are many, many Christians that feel that the Christian mission is to get rid of inequality, help the poor (and no, I don't mean throw money at them to feel good), reject things that contribute to the systems of oppression, spread the word about these issues, etc. The prosperity gospel is frankly opposite to what we see when we study Jesus's teachings. I completely respect that you don't believe in a God, but kindly refrain from making generic false statements about those who do. You will note that I am not telling you how you are wrong about what you believe. Also, this is not really related to the subject, so I have said what I have to say; I won't derail the conversation further. Falconus^{p t c} 20:53, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry if I implied that all religious people, or even most religious people, don't care about the poor. I was referring specifically to successful people who claim that their success was God's will, not to believers in general. As such, I think my comment is very relevant to the OP's question.

I also think, however, that you can't dismiss the vocal Christian groups that adhere to the prosperity gospel. Like it or not, they're very prominent groups that have a large following. At least in the United States, the heavily religious tend to advocate for fewer benefits for the poor, less humane treatment of criminals, treating illegal immigrants like animals, taking away LGBT rights, and advancing a foreign policy that promotes American interests by trampling on all notions of justice or morality. Atheists are left to scratch their heads and wonder why it should be the case that a religion which claims to teach love of neighbor and "turning the other cheek" should be a potent force of hatred, while their opponents tend to be less religious or non-religious. I think that if a less advanced alien race were to look at Earth to decide what to include in their own civilization, they'd see religion fomenting conflict, justifying inequalities, and (historically) justifying the divine right of kings, slavery, racism, genocide, colonialism, and feudalism, and immediately exclude it from their societies.

As for whether the existence of God contradicts physics, I agree that the existence of God in general does not. This does not apply to the Judeo-Christian God, which is falsifiable (and has been falsified), because the Bible explicitly contradicts scientific findings about the origin and development of the universe as well as historical findings about the Israelites. It also does not apply to any omniscient or omnipotent God. Chaos theory, in addition to the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, means that it's impossible to predict the future any significant length of time in advance. It is impossible, for example, to predict whether a certain radioactive atom will decay after 1 second or 1 billion years. Any entity, including God, that can predict the future in this way is violating the laws of physics. It is also impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. If God is able to visit Earth, communicate with the people there, visit a civilization in the Andromeda Galaxy, and return in less than 4 million years, that explicitly and unambiguously violates the laws of physics. You might say that our knowledge of physics is incomplete, but so is our knowledge of mathematics, yet that didn't prevent Orwell from saying in 1984 that a government which can declare 2+2=5 is an example of ultimate tyranny. If that's true, religions are other examples of ultimate tyranny, for declaring "facts" that contradict the laws of physics and expecting people to believe them. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 21:58, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just in the spirit of fun, you've made a foible and an error:

Refuting the bible doesn't refute the idea of God. that's like saying you refute the existence of the internet if you break your computer.
Chaos (in the chaos theory sense) is absolutely deterministic. it appears chaotic to us because it's sensitive to initial conditions: small differences at the start lead to big differences farther on, and we don't have have the ability to measure those small differences accurately enough. a being who was actually omniscient would be fully aware of the initial conditions and thus able to predict outcomes perfectly.
The 'speed of light' limitation only applies to things with mass and to things that have to move from place to place. it's probably best to to visualize God as some guy scooting around from place to place in a UFO.

just sayin'…

--Ludwigs2 04:30, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

1. Refuting the bible refutes the Judeo-Christian God, but not God in general. How would you define the Judeo-Christian god, if not as "the god of the Bible"?

2. "Chaos", in the classical sense, is indeed absolutely deterministic. However, the essence of chaos theory is that small variations in initial conditions get exponentially magnified with time. The cause of those small variations are not deterministic--they could be the result of random wavefunction collapse, which are truly random.

3. That's 100% wrong. Photons are massless, but they're also bound by the speed of light. Any method of transferring information faster than light violates the laws of physics. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 08:31, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Generally claims of physics refuting the Judeo-Christian God are in relation to literal interpretations. Sure, science may contradict the idea that God created the world in 7 days and that Jesus walked on water. That is true, however many Christians don't believe that either of those literally happened either. And the image of God being debated here seems to be some dude flying around space - while an entertaining image, that's the first time I've thought of it that way since I was a young child. For me, God is not physical, but more spiritual, and exists outside of space and time (i.e. the universe). That is completely different. Why do I think that? Because a God flying around space pushing buttons just doesn't seem to work, for all the reasons mentioned here and 1000 more. Falconus^{p t c} 11:37, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

An obvious factor that is often overlooked is the possibility that God can see all possible outcomes of a given decision. It helps to get outside of normal human experience when theorizing about God. In fact, I think this concept was posed in a Mark Twain story, possibly The Mysterious Stranger. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:36, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The outcomes and the decision aren't two different things, of which one is outside the scope of omniscience. If being omniscient means he knows the possible outcomes, doesn't it follow that he also knows what the decision is? I know all this sounds very unrelated to the original post, but it does all boil down to that question. Who to blame for the "bad" things and the "good" things. Did we choose them, or have we already made the choice?-- Obsidi♠n Soul 22:49, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is this goofy theory about reverse time travel, that if you were to go back in time and do something that creates a paradox, the paradox would be resolved by the universe splitting into two parallel parts, with different outcomes. That's about as nutty an idea as I've heard. I don't know if whoever came up with that is a believer or not - but as silly as it sounds, there could be something to it: the omniscient God will have seen any and all of those "universes". So whichever action you take, you are free to do so. So the blame is on you, not on God. That's one theory, anyway. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:41, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The man who came up with that "nutty" idea - or rather the respectable if not universally accepted quantum physics version of it (which does account for time-travel paradoxes, although that is not its main thrust) was a "committed atheist" if his WP article is to be believed. Valiantis (talk) 04:09, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How old was he when he was committed? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:56, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A solution might be inferred from the text of Revelation (21:4) which says "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." Compare the idea of Lethe. From this I take the proposal that in the spiritual future, the history of the world will be such that all of the bad things we see happening now will no longer ever have happened. (In other words, that the wiping away of the sorrow is the revision of history to remove the offending events, rather than just an amnesia) Now in such a situation, those who have endured misery and suffering lose it, but retain the virtues that they have gained while enduring it. So, for example, a mother loves her son with the intensity as if she had watched him waste away from leukemia - without the leukemia. Such virtues are the product of free will, the choices people have made; they are not simply some robotic good behavior implant forced on the denizens of a perfect simulation. Those who have suffered the most, who have held out against the worst, retain the most; thus the last become first in the kingdom of heaven. And in this way, for those who can endure it, suffering can perhaps be viewed as a divine gift for their betterment, rather than any kind of hatred or punishment. Wnt (talk) 14:35, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That really has nothing to do with the OP's question about free will, though. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 21:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

January 28

Black women single?

Is there any book or website that talks about why black women are single, the causes and recommendations? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.107.218 (talk) 04:36, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That would be the same book that talks about why women in general are single. One of the causes is that they are not interested in being married and one of the recommendations would be that this requires no advice. Here's an article for your consideration. Bielle (talk) 05:31, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I know many married black women. I would guess the cause of being single would be those who aren't married. --Jayron32 05:32, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That explains the "cause(s)". The "recommendations" part could get trickier. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:58, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is social science research on race-based disparities in marriage rates, so the previously glib answer are perhaps out of place. However, the OP isn't exactly articulating what exactly they're after. Shadowjams (talk) 08:08, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here's an interesting article by a social scientist on why black women are single: [7]. In short, Ms. Stanley says that black women tend to marry later rather than earlier. The reason is that the war on drugs has swept millions of black men into prison, causing black women to significantly outnumber black men in colleges, so men and women are often not in the same physical, emotional, or professional spaces. Secondly, black men with a criminal record are considered less desirable mates. Thirdly, negative stereotypes of black women reduce their attractiveness to people of other races, further reducing their dating pool. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 08:51, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Another factor is unemployment. Most black women want to marry an employed black man, and these are hard to come by. StuRat (talk) 19:57, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

140.180.15.97 mentioned a website about black women being single. Thanks 140. I needed that. but still i am looking for a book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.89.40.91 (talk) 16:27, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

By "black people", perhaps you mean African-Americans? It is my impression that most African women do indeed marry, relatively young, and stay married. You may be thinking of the American book by Ralph Richard Banks, Is Marriage for White People?, which, despite the title, is not about white people, but about African-Americans, and why that demographic group has a low rate of marriage. It doesn't, from what I can tell without having read it, say much about Native Americans, Chinese Americans, and so on. BrainyBabe (talk) 13:12, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Interracial love

The preceding question made me very curious about interracial love. Which racial group is considered most attractive, and which is considered least attractive, according to other races? I've noticed that it's common for a Caucasian to think an Asian is cute, or vice versa, but few non-blacks consider blacks to be cute.

A related question is that, according to interracial marriage in the United States, Asian women marry white men far more often than Asian men marry white women. Is this due to racism and sexism in the Asian community? A plausible explanation is that Asian women are more submissive, meaning that they're preferable to both Asian and white men; at the same time, Asian men don't like the independence and assertiveness of white women. Another plausible explanation is that Asians consider people of other races to be less worthy, but because of sexism, it's appropriate for women to settle for a less worthy mate, but not appropriate for men to do the same. Is either explanation correct? --140.180.15.97 (talk) 09:24, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What's an Asian? HiLo48 (talk) 09:32, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming that's a serious question, in colloquial usage, it refers to someone of Chinese/Japanese/Korean descent, or who looks like someone of that descent. Respondents are welcome to include Indians/Pakistanis/Pacific Islanders/Turks/whoever in the definition if that makes it more convenient. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 09:35, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but the question annoyed me in several ways, including the use of the name Asian, which to many Americans and Australians really just means slanty eyed people. It's simplistic, and offensive to not be willing to get a little closer to someone's background. I also get annoyed with the way (some?) Americans seem to obsess over interracial marriage. Be aware of and interested in the cultural (I hate the word race) background of whoever you love, but don't make such a drama about it. The assumptions and generalisations behind the question made it pretty meaningless. HiLo48 (talk) 09:46, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

1. I don't really care what "many" Americans and Australians think. You'll note that "Asian" is the term used in our interracial marriage article, and it's also a common term used by Asians themselves to identify their ethnicity.

2. I'm not American, and I don't obsess over interracial marriage. As I said, I only asked the question after reading the preceding question.

3. Assumptions? Generalisations? I challenge you to point out a single one. All of my supposed "assumptions" and "generalizations" are in fact requests for evidence. I also question your aversion of generalizations, because I consider statistical phenomena to be very illuminating, even if not every data point is close to the mean. Also, if I'm interested in a certain subject, and somebody else has an answer, you have no right to say that the question is meaningless. I couldn't care less about Mormonism and the US presidency, but I didn't object to you asking about it earlier on this reference desk. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 10:16, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The concept of race is a very poorly defined one, generally based on superficial features such as facial features and skin colour, leading to very sloppy generalisations such as Asian. I also found "it's common for a Caucasian to think an Asian is cute, or vice versa, but few non-blacks consider blacks to be cute" to be unsourced generalisations. HiLo48 (talk) 18:17, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And what do you think people base their judgement of attractiveness on, if not superficial features such as facial features and skin colour? Anyone who thinks love is rational should get a sanity check. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 04:33, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the 'colloquial usage' varies quite significantly from country to country, see Asian and Asian people. For example, here in NZ it often includes most South Asians, South East Asians (usually including Malay and Indonesians not just Thai, Vietnamese or Filipinos) and East Asians. Possibly including Afghanis, but generally not other Central Asians or those from the Middle East. In some cases it may exclude South Asians, but this is far from universal even in colloquial usage. See also [8]. Pacific Islanders are of course not included (and this term doesn't include Māori). In the UK of course, it often refers to South Asians exclusively. In Malaysia, if the term is used it will generally include South Asians and East Asians (and of course South East Asians) and may include Central Asians or even West Asians as well. Nil Einne (talk) 12:17, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OkTrends, an "online-dating research blog" by OkCupid, has some data on race and dating: [9], [10]. --::Slomox:: >< 10:55, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

race is usually only relevant to marriage in an inclusive sense (e.g. it's not about other races, but rather that there is sometimes intense pressure in a given community to marry within that community). Outside of that, stereotypes of wealth and status are far more reliable indicators of interracial marriage than race. For example, if you watch BBC entertainment you'll find they frequently portray black/white relationships - something you almost never see on US tv - and rarely if ever show relationships between asians and caucasians. Britain doesn't have the negative stereotypes of blacks that are prevalent in the US, or the 'exotic' stereotype that many americans associate with women from Asian cultures. --Ludwigs2 18:35, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh my there's a lot of soapboxing going on in this thread. What I've "learned" is that Americans view "asians" (a term that's HiLo's decided to run with in a diatribe during which he uses the phrase "slanty eyed people") as exotic, the BBC's much more advanced than American television, and that race is so poorly defined we can't be bothered to really answer this question. And of course, stereotypes tend to be simplistic.

Thankfully some more pragmatic people realized that people do make dating decisions based upon race, consciously or not, and however poorly defined, and that there are dating preferences that differ between races. The Ok Cupid blog post above I was going to reference... but somebody beat me to it. That's an excellent, if colloquial, summary of some dating trends taken from a large, real world sample. Shadowjams (talk) 19:23, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm quite happy if I have shocked some people into thinking a bit more deeply about "race" issues, and their own ignorance and prejudices. It can only be a good thing. Can you give a more accurate definition of the US usage of Asian than "slanty eyed people" in five words or less? One that actually matches how people really use the term? Oh, and does OkCupid operate outside the USA? HiLo48 (talk) 01:18, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The OkCupid data is very interesting. For one thing, it seems to imply that the frequency of interracial marriage is similar across all races, which apparently contradicts our article on interracial marriage. If we take both at face value, it implies that although interracial "attractiveness" is similar across all races, the ability to sustain a relationship and turn it into a marriage is not. Does anyone have more statistics to support/refute this hypothesis?

@HiLo: since it's clear that you don't have an answer to offer, please refrain from making further comments. I don't care that you think race is a poorly-defined concept, or that you're not interested in interracial marriage, or that you have problems with the word "Asian". For the record I agree with you on all three points, but other people do define themselves and others based on race, are interested in interracial marriage, and have no problems self-identifying as Asian. If you think the question is meaningless, don't answer it, but also don't clog up the entire thread. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 04:33, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One data point, or linguistic clarification: in British English, "Asian" means "someone from the subcontinent" (or someone descended from them). That is, British Asian is a product of the British Empire, people who would be demographically described as South Asian in American English (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka). East Asians are referred to in Britain as Oriental (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc.). BrainyBabe (talk) 13:21, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oriental is definitely the more appropriate term in English, but in recent years it somehow came under attack by political correctness, leaving people without a usable word. Comments like "I'm not a carpet" can come up. But yes, the Orient being to the east seems by far the best way to orient the classification.

I should add that I've found that perceptions in this regard can change pretty drastically over time. Until I was around 27, I really didn't perceive East Asians as even potentially attractive (a much larger difference than between male and female); but then over some years my attitude changed until the distinction seemed pretty minor. I am actually prone to attribute the beginning of this change to the pheromones emanated by a breeding colony of mice I was working with, which tended to make any female whatsoever distractingly attractive for about five to ten minutes after exposure, as they made me see some of these women in a new way. (Still wish someone would try that stuff on pedophiles and see if it could work the same way) Wnt (talk) 16:02, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ark of the Covenant makes you implode? Can't the suicidal test this?

So the AotC is stored in some orthodox church in Ethiopia. Legend says (or perhaps some verse in the Bible says, but I don't know which verse) that anyone who even LOOKS at the Ark, shall implode, unless it's the monk who is entrusted in it.

I watched a news vid recently that the church holding the Ark was needing renovations to the roof or else rain would leak through and contaminate the ark, hence the Ark needed to be moved. Then they mentioned this legend about one's body imploding.

Would any biological science buffs explain how looking at an artifact would cause an implosion? AFAIK, it is just not scientifically plausible.

Moreover, there are wealthy suicidal individuals in various places worldwide. If I was Kurt, I could have just boarded a flight to Ethiopia to look at the Ark. If the Monk (and his cohorts?) wouldn't have let me in, I would have hired guards to shove them out of the way so that I'd get in and see it anyhow.

Then Kurt would have been one of the most legendary rock stars in history (more so than he already was) because he would have disproved or proved the legend of the Ark's effects.

So why can't there be anybody who is brazen enough to test such lethal legends as these? --70.179.174.101 (talk) 10:39, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that you'll find a likely explanation for how looking at something will make you implode. Perhaps kill you, but not make you implode without a lot of other strange happenings. I could be mistaken, but I thought that in the Bible it had to do with either touching it or opening it, not looking at it, and I don't remember it being an implosion. It's not something that I looked at too closely. In any case, that, as with the Egyptian Pyramid curses, is a legend until proven otherwise. The ark may have well existed (while it's possible, I would be somewhat surprised if it still does), but I think it likely that the consequences for mishandling it have been a little bit exaggerated. Of course, if you take the Bible literally that's a whole different affair. Maybe it was a law that if you were to touch it you would be put to death [by other people] and that morphed into what is written today and in legend. As for suicidal people, I have no comment. Falconus^{p t c} 12:14, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c) The basis of magic, myth, miracle, and legend is that things don't have to be scientifically possible in order to be 'possible' or to 'happen' in terms of the legend. This is a significant difference between say religious belief and science. FWIW there is little to no solid evidence that the Ark even exists in this location, or frankly that it (still) exists at all. Re your final point, I am certainly not suicidal, but I'd be more than happy to 'test' this legend as I'm sure would many others, with some preliminary scientific tests implemented beforehand, for example that they weren't concealing a highly radioactive or some other toxic substance in their box, but in terms of imploding per your legend I'd not be concerned at all. I'm willing to bet Mythbusters could make a good episode out of it. It's not so much a case of there not being anybody brazen enough to test these legends, as it would be of the church holding the 'artifacts' being unwilling to have it tested, as by having it disproven it could lead to some loss of face and more importantly loss of revenue (Ark of the Covenant#Ethiopia even discusses such an incident in 2009). Just goes to show you though, don't believe everything you see on the news. --jjron (talk) 12:32, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Numbers 4:20 just says that the person viewing will die not implode. That was what happened in Raiders of the Lost Ark wasn't it? CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 13:07, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Ark isn't necessarily in Ethiopia. The Bible is rather silent on what the ultimate fate of the Ark is, and the "It's in some old church in Ethiopia" thing isn't a well respected theory. Its main proponent is The Sign and the Seal author Graham Hancock, the same guy who thinks An alien civilization based in Antarctica taught Egyptians how to build pyramids and stuff like that. --Jayron32 13:39, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's a bit unfair. It's not just one crank author; it's been a central tenet of the Ethiopian Church for centuries that the Ark is in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Axum. 78.146.193.122 (talk) 13:58, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The standards for historical truth are distinct from the standards of faith. I have no doubt that the Ethiopian Church believes they have the Ark, and I do not doubt their earnest faith, nor fault them for it. However, that doesn't mean that the existance of the Ark in that church has been established to a level of reliability normally expected of historians who wish to establish a supposition as a likely truth. --Jayron32 01:28, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Considering that the standards of faith are non-existent, it's not surprising that the standards for historical truth, or any other truth, are higher. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 04:14, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It may be a particularly large chunk of Uranium. :D -- Obsidi♠n Soul 16:35, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"lest they die" doesn't mean they will die. But I think that the key incident here might be "Korah's rebellion" [11]. One can interpret such things in... various ways.

Also note that in the Ethiopian church every congregation has its own Ark of the Covenant. Also I think that just like the Jews, the Samaritans had their own Ark of the Covenant and their own Mount Horeb and so forth. I might hazard a guess that some people have an Ark of the Covenant which they believe to be real, which is ancient... but might not be the precise Ark of the Covenant from the temple in Jerusalem. For all I know there might have been more than one of those... Bear in mind that materialism is a modern religion; what makes an Ark of the Covenant the Ark of the Covenant in the past (or a Mount Horeb the Mount Horeb) might not have been strictly the history of the actual physical atoms involved. Wnt (talk) 05:32, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why did pre-Columbian civilisations arise in such odd places?

In Europe, Africa and Asia, the major civilisations all arose and were centred around fertile lands with a mild climate (the Nile, the fertile crescent of the Middle East, the Chinese coast, the moist regions of the Indian subcontinent, the Mediterranean and so on). However, in the Americas the most advanced historical cultures in terms of technology and social organisation were the Incas (barren mountains), the Mayans (malarial swamps and virtually un-cultivatable jungle), the Aztecs (baking-hot desert) and the Iroquois (rugged hills, and buried under 10 feet of snow for a large chunk of the year). Meanwhile, the native tribes of places like California, the Argentine pampas and the Great Plains, never advanced far beyond the mud-huts-and-spears stage prior to European arrival. Why is this? Somewhere like the Los Angeles basin, with excellent farmland and fishing, no harsh winters and mountains providing a natural defensive perimeter, would seem like the ideal place for an advanced culture to take off. If harsh climates were the trigger for city-building in the Americas (because they forced people to cooperate in cities rather than just live off the land as hunter-gatherers), why did the same thing not happen in the rest of the world? 78.146.193.122 (talk) 13:55, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One word - agriculture.

Also you seem to have certain misconceptions about the Central and South American civilizations. Incan, Mayan, and Aztec civilizations at the height of their glory were in anything but wastelands. The Inca civilization for example, spanned a great deal of territory in South America with an advanced network of highways connecting various cities.

Aztecs did not develop in deserts either. Both Aztec and Mayan civilizations were in Central America, with the Mayans being more ancient than Aztecs. The stone structures of the Mayan and Aztec city-states were not in the middle of jungles as they are now. Most were in the banks of bodies of water, surrounded by smaller perishable settlements and vast cultivated fields. The jungle surrounding them today is simply the result of abandonment. The Aztec city of Mexico itself was once a virtually impregnable city-state built in the middle of a lake with satellite cities and fields surrounding it. Compare the ruins of Angkor Wat or Borobudur for example.

North American peoples on the other hand, never became city builders due to the simple fact that there were plenty of food without resorting to agriculture. Food that migrated and thus necessitated a nomadic lifestyle - animals. The most important of which is the American bison which once roamed N. America in vast herds. The rest were hunter-gatherers or subsisted on fishing, including the Chumash people of the Los Angeles area.

The few that discovered agriculture out of necessity (corn mostly) developed small civilizations that were nevertheless limited by the harshness of their environments and constant warfare with neighboring nomadic peoples. Examples of which are the Ancient Pueblo Peoples, the most famous being the Anasazi.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 14:53, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the climate in the fertile crescent can not in any way be considered mild. It consists mostly of barren desert, so out of necessity it was centred naturally around the only fertile areas, which was the narrow riverbanks that provided the water and natural fertilisation needed for agriculture. --Saddhiyama (talk) 15:07, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There were plenty of city-builders and farmers amongst native North Americans. Many of them were even still in place by the time the Europeans arrived. Charles Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and its sequel describe this quite well. The reason that Jamestown colony, for example, was positioned in such lousy land is because the rest of it was densely occupied by large numbers of the Powhatan Confederacy, who farmed extensively as well as hunted and fished. One of the reasons that Europeans considered them so uncivilized was because their farms were not the monocultured, fenced-in areas that were common to Europe. (It's amazing how important fences are to European peoples, in claiming something as civilized. It's a side-effect of having grazing animals, and nothing more. Because the North Americans did not have grazing animals, they had no fences, and the Europeans did not recognize their farms as such.) --Mr.98 (talk) 17:29, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh true. I guess I'm guilty of defining "civilization" in the more popular manner of those that leave behind lasting structures. The sheer number of Native Americans killed by the introduced diseases might have even decimated some of them before Europeans even made contact. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 17:56, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The city on the site now called Cahokia Mounds, in the Mississippi valley, had 30 000 inhabitants at its height, and lasted for several hundred years. --ColinFine (talk) 00:17, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Those swamps were not malarial before 1492 — malaria came from Europeans (via Africa). The Incan mountains were anything but barren — they were the site of the most immense irrigation systems in the world at that point, farming dozens of varieties of potato, which is practically a miracle food (it gives you 4X the calories per weight that a cereal grain does, and also gives you a huge amount of vitamins). (Keep in mind that your definition of "civilization" is in part "an agricultural production system that allows for distribution of labor" — the connection with agriculture is anything but incidental.) Anyway in general I think you have a somewhat confused and definitely out of date picture of this history. The Mann books are really quite excellent at describing what is now known about these peoples and civilizations. The initial impression of Europeans (that these areas were sparsely inhabited by pastoral people) have been shown to be exactly wrong by archaeology. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:36, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just to boil down what everyone else has said, large civilizations require one thing first and foremost: water. large numbers of people consume large quantities of water via drinking, irrigation, and maintaining herds, and boats/rafts are the only form of bulk transportation before the invention of the wheel, and the most efficient form of bulk transportation before the railroad. large cities in the early world could only by built on more-or-less well-behaved rivers, on lakes, where there where easily accessible aquifers or springs. large cities died when those sources dried up. I'd even argue that early political organization was mostly developed to manage water resources (collective construction and maintenance of large irrigation system, or as in early Egypt collective organization of farming around cycles of flooding. note that one of Moses' first acts after taking the tribes out of Egypt was to draw water from a rock in the desert (assumedly meaning he brought them to a natural spring); if he hadn't, the tribes would have been forced to break up into small far-ranging groups looking for water in small quantities, and they would have been absorbed into other, more settled cultures.

check out water politics. --Ludwigs2 18:18, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not convinced that civilization "arose" with the Aztecs, as they had conquered a large number of other peoples. By analogy, the Huns and Genghis Khan ruled over vast swathes of land, starting from the most barren haunts - yet it doesn't mean civilization arose there. Certainly there was, say, a Mississippian culture by the Mississippi, a Chumash people near modern Los Angeles; I don't see any obvious reason to say they were underdeveloped in civilization compared to the others. I do suspect that Indians who dwelled on fertile lands were made to go away with exceptional vehemence, and that their history may be underappreciated. Wnt (talk) 05:16, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's not quite right to say that the "Aztecs" (a vague category) just conquered. Strictly speaking what we mean by the Aztec civilization is the Aztec Triple Alliance, and as the article points out, that's a lot of different groups coming together over about a century. Tenochtitlan was a city of immense infrastructure (freshwater brought in by huge aqueducts; dikes that kept brackish water segregated in the lake; lonnng bridges; lots of artificially-added land) whose population was larger and richer than any city in Europe at the time the Spanish arrived. I don't know when all of these marvels were constructed, but I'd call that civilization. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:12, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

True - I didn't mean to downplay the Aztecs' engineering, and perhaps I chose too extreme a counterexample to the suggested idea. Maybe the Romans, who I suppose looted more than invented their technology, might be a more appropriate comparison. Wnt (talk) 15:43, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As others have suggested, your understanding of Western Hemisphere geography is a little lacking. The Incan homeland was very fertile, and they were able to take advantage of microclimates at different elevations in the Andes to grow a wide range of crops. Likewise, Mesoamerica (central and southern Mexico, northern Central America), home of the Mayan, Aztec, and various other civilizations, has a delightful climate and ample water supplies. The Aztec homeland is in the mild highlands of central Mexico. They built their capital city on an island in a freshwater lake, where they also farmed on artificial islands. As for the Los Angeles basin, that is actually a semidesert, devoid of water for 9-10 months out of the year. It typically rains there only in the winter, when the sun is too low and days too short to grow much. When European American settlers arrived there, they were able to farm only thanks to extensive and intensive irrigation, involving technologies far beyond the scope of a neolithic culture. Finally, the Iroquois homeland is not under 10 feet of snow much of the year. It is in a snow belt, but snow typically doesn't pile up much more than 4-5 feet most winters. It gradually reaches its maximum height between early December and mid-February, and then the sun starts melting it during the day most days. It is generally gone by April. So there are eight solid months with no snow on the ground, very fertile land, and a decent growing season. Marco polo (talk) 01:38, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rivers of the British Isles Map

I'm looking for a image -- similar to [12] -- prominently showing the rivers of the British Isles, for free personal use. Thanks. --90.220.162.175 (talk) 14:07, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Would this be what you have in mind? 78.146.193.122 (talk) 14:13, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Blue-red-green flag

Where to use the horizontal stripes blue-red-green flag with a gold rim and white dragon in the center? Странник27 (talk) 15:37, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I can't find any flag similar to what you describe - there are countries with horizontal blue-green-red flags, but none have dragons on. Did either of those links help any? --Saalstin (talk) 16:21, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It could be a variant on the Flag of Azerbaijan, similar to the Presidential Standard or the Army Flag but if it is, it's not a widely recognised one. In the US, a gold edge on a flag indicates it's a ceremonial flag, but doesn't have any real meaning (despite what conspiracy theorists claim), so it may not be a vital part of the design of this flag either. Smurrayinchester 16:30, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does the dragon have wings? A dragon with wings is a western dragon and a dragon without wings is an eastern dragon. The gold fringe on a flag is not part of the the flag.
Sleigh (talk) 08:04, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In the wings of a dragon is. A sechetanie given elemntov found no results? And like a gold fringe on some flags there? Странник27 (talk) 13:22, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gog and Magog

HELLO AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND TIME PEACE.IN YOUR EXPLANATION OF GOG AND MAGOG,IT WAS SAID IN A PASSAGE FOLLOWING THE QURANIC VIEW ON THE TOPIC,THAT A VERSION OF ANOTHER HISTORICLE ACCOUNT OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT MENTIONED IN YOUR ARTICLE ACTED AS AND I QUOTE"THE BASIS FOR THE QURANIC TALE OF DHUL QARNAYN.I HUMBLY REQUEST THE PROOF AND BASIS FOR THAT TALE,ESCUSE ME THAT CLAIM.THANKS AGAIN — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.14.113.70 (talk) 17:30, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't use all capital letters in your posts. It is hard to read, and is regarded as shouting on the Internet. HiLo48 (talk) 18:09, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The article gives a citation for that claim. It says it comes from page 123 of this book. --Tango (talk) 19:23, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Links Alexander romance, Dhu'l-Qarnayn, Alexander the Great in the Quran would probably have more information than "Gog and Magog"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 00:00, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Following these links, note that the Book of Ezekiel, written several centuries before Alexander the Great, mentions Gog and Magog. The interpretation of those, or the Dhul-Qarnayn, is apparently not so clear. Wnt (talk) 05:03, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Serbian Orthodox church

Within your articles relating to the Serbian Orthodox Church, you list Longin as the Metropolitan of Libertyville and Chicago. Longin is not a Metropolitan, but rather a Bishop of New Gracanica and Mid-Western America.

The Metropolitan of Libertyville and Chicago was +Christopher until his death in August 2010. In June of 2011, the Holy Synod dissolved the metropolitinate and the St. Sava Monastery (Libertyville) was elevated to stavopegial status under the Patriarch Irinej. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.167.192.215 (talk) 19:09, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top.
The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). --Tango (talk) 19:25, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

January 29

Why are most countries that have capital punishment poor?

For some reason, I associate the death penalty with developed countries, such as the United States, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, but it turns out that they are the exception, and not the rule. Why are most (not almost all, there are many wealthy countries with them, especially in Asia) countries with the death penalty rather poor? Most countries in Africa have the death penalty, and those same countries are the ones that are low in GDP. By contrast, most countries in Europe are stable, have good economies, and are high in GDP, and have abolished it (except Belarus, even Russia has practically abolished it, their moratorium is now indefinite). The United States is the only country on the North American mainland that still actively uses it, it is surrounded by Canada and Mexico, which have both abolished it. Why is this the case? Is it a human rights thing? Does a good economy normally come with good human rights? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:24, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really see a pattern at all there. You just listed many rich and poor nations with capital punishment, so what makes you think wealth and capital punishment are in any way related ? StuRat (talk) 01:40, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's one question there I'd be willing to answer - "Does a good economy normally come with good human rights?" The answer is "Yes". But the question concentrates on just one aspect of human rights, capital punishment, which exists where it exists for complex and diverse reasons. As I understand it, the United States doesn't really have the death penalty, but many of its states do. (Anyone know how many at the moment?) I'm not sure if federal legislation can override the states on this matter. So the question should be why those states still use it. Me? I dunno. HiLo48 (talk) 01:47, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is a Federal death penalty, too, but it's rarely used. The same is true of the few states which allow it, except Texas, which seems to pride itself on the body count it amasses. StuRat (talk) 01:50, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) The United States does have a federal death penalty as well, for things like high treason and a few other crimes, the U.S. federal "death row" is at Terre Haute, Indiana. See Capital punishment by the United States federal government. However, since most capital crimes (usually of the heinous murder type) are violations of state laws, most "death row" prisoners are executed by the states. States handle most normal crime-and-punishment issues within their borders. --Jayron32 01:53, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the detail fellas. I guess Texas just wants to be the biggest, in everything. HiLo48 (talk) 02:04, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In theory, I would expect capital punishment to be favored by weak or corrupt governments, because they can't be assured that prisons will actually hold their inmates. Given the choice between letting killers run free or killing them in turn, they might opt for the harsh measure.

That said, it doesn't explain the situation in the U.S., where the prisons are exceptionally unlikely to lose inmates. If extra punishment is desired, why not replace the death penalty with the rape penalty? It's more humane - indeed, one supposes prisoners could opt out at any time (or if they catch HIV, or become unattractive to paying customers...) at which point they'd go back to the regular execution queue. The pay-per-view and DVD highlights would make a fortune. And it's what all the yahoos in the crowd cheer and call for every time someone is sent up. Why let the prisoners decide when and how to dole it out? Wnt (talk) 04:48, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What?! I am trying to read this in a way where you aren't poking fun at rape; the only other possibility that I see is that you are being serious, which is even worse. Falconus^{p t c} 11:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, I was shooting for reductio ad absurdum. If you think this is an offensive proposal, I should add that I first phrased this a little differently back when the U.S. was executing children... Wnt (talk) 01:43, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is more a cultural and ideological issue than economic one. For example Saudi Arabia is a rich country, but low in human rights issues due to strong belief in Sharia, while the "poor countries" Kyrgyzstan and Nepal abolished death penalty. European developed countries have a high regard for individuality and civil liberties, which African and Asian countries generally lack (I don't know the exact cause). Another issue is political philosophy or worldview; unlike in Asia and Africa, liberalism is the dominant ideology in the Occident. Religion and nationalism plays a strong role in Asian societies compared to Europe. It has been observed, as HiLo48 pointed above, high HDI comes with high regard for human rights, but there are exception like Saudi Arabia. More religious and nationalistic sentiments generally results in "tough on crime" attitude and support for death penalty, while secular, liberal sentiments general results in concern for human rights, civil liberties and prisoner rights. I think the abolition of death penalty in Europe is associated with this secular, liberal outlook. --SupernovaExplosion (talk) 11:57, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You could also look at it from the POV of which religion is dominant. Islam can be very hard-core on punishments, and old testament "Christianity" seems to support the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" case, where the punishment should match the crime. Thus, the appropriate penalty for murder is death. The teachings of Christ, on the other hand, seem to be that we should forgive everyone and let them go, no matter what they did. Of course, this hardly seems practical, and any nation which seriously tried this would soon find itself destroyed by crime, so some compromise is commonly taken, with minimal prison sentences to at least remove the criminals from society for a bit. StuRat (talk) 19:04, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Use of capital punishment by country. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 13:42, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(E/C)The map used in the Capital punishment article certainly suggests to me that this is more about culture than wealth. Another thing to remember is that the death penalty is something that governments frequently lobby each other over. For example, European institutions like the European Union and Council of Europe have long promoted abolition, leading to countries like Turkey banning capital punishment as a step towards membership of the EU. Looking at the map, I wonder if there have been similar efforts in Latin America, the Pacific, or Southern Africa. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 13:58, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good point about the EU exerting pressures on it's members. If the abolitionist US states were able to do that on the states which retain the death penalty, the abolitionists might prevail in the US, too (hopefully without as much trouble as the last time the abolitionist states tried to exert their will on the rest) StuRat (talk) 18:55, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Developed countries are - as a rule - based on principles of the liberal enlightenment. As such, there is a strong tendency in such countries to place a high priority on the sanctity of individual rights and freedoms, and resistance to inegalitarian legislation. Depriving someone of their right to life runs against the liberal grain. by contrast, impoverished nations tend to be autocratic (socialist dictatorships, banana republics, juntas or other militaristic regimes, etc.), and autocratic nations usually place the interests of the state and its rulers well ahead of the interests of individual citizens. The US is a peculiar case, because over the last 60 years or so it has been eroding liberal rights in favor of authoritarian principles - basically politicians have been arguing that those who might potentially break the law do not merit the full range of rights and liberties that are supposedly guaranteed to US citizens, and have succeeded in weakening a lot of civil protections.--Ludwigs2 21:48, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We still have the death penalty in most US states because serial child rapist-killers, homocidal psychopaths, mass murderers, and terrorists need to be killed themselves. There is no fixing them or forgiving them ever. Fry em!LuciferWildCat (talk) 00:46, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Then it's a good thing you've never found the wrong person guilty, isn't it? HiLo48 (talk) 02:52, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Many people confuse vengeance and justice, LWC. No one already in jail "needs" to be killed for any pragmatic reason. --Ludwigs2 03:09, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How to indicate a book title w/out italics or underlining

I am writing a book review for a website that doesn't have advanced editing tools. How does one indicate the name of a book without the use of italics or underlining? Perhaps [example] or <example>? Quotation marks are only for the names of journals. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 00:26, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Traditionally you use underscores when indicating italicized or underlined text without the ability to italicize or underline. Herman Melville, _Moby Dick_, etc. You definitely ought not use brackets, which have a separate bibliographical use. You might of course check what others on the website have done previously. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:55, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And there's also single quotes ('), double quotes ("), and grave accents (`), so you can use something different for books and journals. StuRat (talk) 01:37, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Try /italics/ (a hint that some email clients use; it seems more reminiscent of actual italics than [italics] or #italics#, say). 90.202.164.239 (talk) 03:23, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The first / pushes the letters over, but the second / stops them from falling over entirely.--80.99.254.208 (talk) 09:30, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Since some of the above replies seemed to focus on how to hint at italic text, and not how to present book titles, I checked with the Chicago Manual of Style. Here they indicate that using _underscores_ is preferred, although you will see that ALL CAPS can also be acceptable. *Asterisks* can be used if emphasis is needed. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 12:37, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Israel

"Do you still beat your wife" question
Content which starts hidden Why does the US support Israel's genocide against Palestine? --108.225.115.211 (talk) 01:19, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply] Your question cannot be answered because it contains what is known as the "fallacy of the complex question". The classic example of this is "When did you stop beating your wife?" I.E. the question presupposes that you were beating your wife, which has not been established as true; and even moreso, the whole question isn't really a question, its an accusation phrased in the form of a question. The asker is accusing the askee of beating his wife, though such a fact has not been established. With your question, you have done exactly the same thing, you've presupposed the existance of a fact (genocide against Palestine) which has not been established. So we cannot answer your question one way or another. If you have another question you'd like to ask about Israel–United States relations which does not contain such a loaded question, we'll try to answer it. --Jayron32 01:24, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply] Genocide means systematically killing off a group of people. If there was genocide, then the Palestinian population would be going down, not up, as it is. StuRat (talk) 01:26, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply] Israeli policy includes maximizing civilian deaths in all attacks against Palestine. --108.225.115.211 (talk) 01:35, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply] Again, you've made a statement which you have not established as true. Please provide evidence of these statements you are making, or stop making them. If you are looking for information, please ask a question. If you are looking for affirmation, find it somewhere else. --Jayron32 01:38, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

loan calculation

I'm stuck in a third-world country but am actually a qualified profesional (in a field I can't use here, but only western cities where I speak the language) with great demand in an expensive western city I worked in recently and have positive feedback from tentative explorations. I don't have a place to live there or any means, and this country is on the brink of civil war and would make it possible for me to scronge together less than a dollar a day.

I've recently been thinking of the fact that the past six months of being here have cost me at least twelve thousand dollars, proably more like fifteen to twenty. (in direct lost wages) not to mention the opportunity costs of growing professionally (I'm just around 30). I've always been somewhat of a loner and don't have much family, but I do see that this situatin is untenable. What sealed the deal is meeting another american here at the embassy, who had a really nice background but was pretty well destroyed by being here too long. this place is the pitts.

I put an exercise to myself: how much money would I borrow if I had to repay it at 2x, 3x, 5x, 10x, or 20x APR payback that I would want to service within working there for one and a half years?

The answer is that counting 4 months to get a job (very conservative, as I normally can get one within 2-4 weeks looking full time, when I am actually there on site) will cost me roughly 1500 dollars to move there and into the cheapest accomodation in the city (this includes flight and deposit on a room), another $600 per month while looking for a job (room, food, misc), meaning betwee $2100 and $3900 depending on 1-4 months of looking for work.

My income then becomes roughly $2000/month (rock bottom, could be 25% - 50% better easily), meaning that continuing to live at the austerity level of $600 per month, I can service $1400 of debt per month (call it 1200 to be a bit more reasonable, build a safety cushion), meaning after 18 months I could service at most $21,600 of debt (which, by the way, something like the amount I lost in the past year due to being stuck in this third world rut while missing job opportunities).

I'm not exactly sure I'm using the right formulas, but given the above set of assumptions (or, indeed, even extending the search for work to 5 or 6 months) it seems to me it would be profitable to take on debt even at 20x APR. (20000%). My question is: how do I do this? I'm an Ameircan citizen and have no problems finding work in any major western city. What are your suggestions for me given this situation. Fundamentally it seems to me a loan shark is a bad idea, but could you explain why? What is the best solution to a situation like this.

Note: I'm also open to any other possibilities that would include me not paying for an airline ticket or initial rent, for example of cruise ship service workers were flown out by the company and put up. I htink this is unlikely, however. Better to work in my own profession. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.99.254.208 (talk) 08:23, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are an indigent American citizen living in Hungary (didn't know that was part of the third world or on the brink of war) who visits the embassy. I would have thought the embassy would have been able to help you return to the US or does it have something to do with you being on the terrorists lists? CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 13:30, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

lol, nice sleuthing (same IP here). I thought it was obvious I was just being lazy with that terrorist watch list remark - I wanted you guys to trawl through ebay instead of doing it myself. I'm not indigent, just too low on cash to move to a city I can work in. I would like you to address the question above at face value, without finding out more about me. Not asking for money or anything like that, just creative solutions which do NOT involve befriending people or being a con artist or anything like that. I will add that the US probably would ship me back if I really required it, but I don't. I'm not that down on my luck, just have an empty bank account and willingness and capability to work in a larger city west of me, where I can get by bus or train and have very high confidence of being able to work immediately, without having housing arranged. I'd like your creative solutions on this front. (Also anything else you could think of e.g.: apply to hostels, asking for accomodation as well; apply to an ocean liner; etc etc. I speak a bunch of languages that aren't useful here and can present OK. I can do anything, just in the wrong location right now and have always been somewhat of a loner. thanks. 188.6.80.222 (talk) 14:44, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also add that I'm very open-minded and above all would just like to work again, anything that satisfies the latter condition is ok by me (that's legal and ethical). My only large probelm is location ATM (i.e. I can't do a personal interview elsewhere). 188.6.80.222 (talk) 14:48, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you are in Hungary and don't have enough money for the train fare to Vienna, I think that counts as indigent. Who is going to lend you money in your current state, anyway? Time to go to the U.S. embassy for help if you can't make enough money to pay for air fare where you are and no one else can help you out. As for what to do about lodging when you get to the States, if there is really no one to help you, I hate to say it, but you might need to start out in a homeless shelter. If you feel you need an address to get the middle-class job you want, spend a few days doing day labor first to get the money to rent a mailbox somewhere. You might want to get a job, maybe part-time, someplace like a supermarket or coffee shop that will hire anyone who seems sober and literate, as a source of cash while you are looking for your middle-class job (and sleeping at the homeless shelter). Once you get the middle-class job, you might be able to borrow money somewhere, but then you won't really need it. Start out modest by renting a cheap room in a shared apartment while you save up the 3 months of upfront rent you'd need to rent your own place. Marco polo (talk) 02:24, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ethnic Cleansing.

Having just watched the movie 'Escape from Sobibor' that dramatised the largest ever escape by imprisoned death-camp Jews under the NAZI controlled occupation of Europe, it had been my intention to ask here how many generations must pass before such genocidal attacks on other ethnic groups might fade into history. But as a frequent reader of Wikipedia, I chose first to consult the excellent article therein entitled Ethnic Cleansing. And now, having done so, I have arrived at the point whereby I think the Human Race is doomed, not because every ethnic group throughout history has attacked every other group in its midst that did not exactly conform or comply, and not because the attacker wanted to eat the other group to satisfy real hunger, but merely for purposes of domination and control. Maybe mine is a childish philosophy for which I make no apology, but to change the direction of my original question, what would the human race ever have to do to live in a tolerant and harmonic society. Speculation I know, but does education and history and morality and logic and experience hold out no hope for us as a species?62.30.176.76 (talk) 16:06, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is a reference desk, not a discussion forum. Please stick to questions that can be answered by supplying facts rather than opinions. Looie496 (talk) 18:38, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Warfare and ethnic cleansing seem to result from a scarcity of resources relative to population, so keeping world population low, via birth control and, where necessary, sterilization, is the key. Note that the same effects are also seen where animal populations grow beyond the available resources, and they start to attack each other. I envision a world where nobody is able to have children until they can prove they have everything needed to care for them (to be accomplished by some form of reversible sterilization). StuRat (talk) 18:45, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Who or what would impose such a rule? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:41, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, scarcity is not always behind genocide. I'd even dare to say that almost never it is the case. Ideologies are behind it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.26.74.157 (talk) 23:43, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ideologies provide a justification for war. They are rarely the reason for it. --Tango (talk) 00:39, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Genocide and war aren't quite the same thing... and I'm not sure where the justification/reason bit separate out. The Nazi hatred of the Jews was certainly deeper than ideology. But the ideology did matter, especially with regards to convincing others to at least be ambivalent about the fate of the Jews. It's a complicated dichotomy. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:53, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For a contrary opinion, you might check out Steven Pinker's new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature (or many of the reviews of it which are linked to from the article), which argues that actually in the short and long term, violence has declined quite a bit since WWII. It's an interesting idea and statistically works in many cases. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:53, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Aldous Huxley available online

The Gutenberg.org site has released a book by Aldous Huxley. How is the copyright in this case? Could it be that it's out of copyright? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.26.74.157 (talk) 21:17, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Gutenberg project only uses public domain texts (as defined by US law), with a few copyrighted books that have explicit release by the copyright owners. They are very careful about this, so if they have provided a Huxley book then it has most likely entered into the public domain.

Huxley died in 1963, meaning that all of his books will be over 50 years old in 2013 (the standard for public domain, I think). --Ludwigs2 21:32, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is no one single standard for public domain in the US — this chart is probably the best attempt out there to sum it up — but 50 years after death of the author, or 50 years after publication, are not standards for works entering into the public domain. 50 years after death is the minimum specified by the Berne Convention but is not the maximum, and there are lots of other loopholes. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:08, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They seem to have two works of Huxley. One is Crome Yellow, his first book (published 1921), and the other is The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems, which appears to have been published in 1918. Both of those are sufficiently old enough to be in the public domain according to the chart I've linked to above. Generally speaking works published before 1923 are considered public domain in the United States, but there are exceptions and complications like everything in copyright law, and you should not take this as legal advice of any sort. (Note that Huxley was, of course, a British citizen. That complicates things a bit as well. Project Gutenberg is located in the US, which is why US public domain matters the most for what it posts.) --Mr.98 (talk) 22:12, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

January 30

Looking for the wording and source of a Jewish quote/adage/saying

I attended a Bat Mitzvah this weekend for a family friend (first time in a synagogue). Lots of fairly long readings in Hebrew that were incomprehensible to a WASP like me, so I spent some time thumbing through the prayerbook, which was in both English and Hebrew. I ran across a quote that I really liked, and told myself I'd look it up when I got home, but I'm old and my mind is feeble and I've forgotten essentially all of the details.

The gist of the quote was that a society cannot function if every one of it's rules and regulations is followed rigidly, without flexibility or compassion.

I've googled a few word combinations and come up with nothing. Does this ring any bells for anyone? I'd love a pointer to the exact quote and the ultimate source. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:08, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Was Galois Welsh?

The French word for Welsh is gallois. I wonder whether the mathematician Évariste Galois had roots in Wales.

Quelle est l'origine du nom de famille d'Évariste Galois? Avait-il d'aïeux gallois?

PaulTanenbaum (talk) 02:05, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pros and cons of each personal finance account--Jessica A Bruno 03:03, 30 January 2012 (UTC)s

Whats the pros and cons of having a checking, savings, money market, credit union, etc accounts?

As for me might be switching from my current account (checking and savings combination) to something else. Which I still have to go the bank (properly will be mon) and most likely going to remain there, but with a different service. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mybodymyself (talk • contribs) 02:46, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]