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December 20

Cosmetics and culture

Are there cultures in which, if you give a woman makeup as a gift, it's offensive because it implies she's unattractive? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.16.166.44 (talk) 00:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

"Offensive" isn't quite the word I would use. In North America, we give perfumes as gifts to both sexes, though that may be a holdover from the days when the elements of perfume were costly and rare. Now there are rare and costly perfumes, to be sure, but there are also many that are quite accessible to the population at large, and all of them are in my elevator every morning. Make-up I would not give at all because I hate it, but, if I were to give it, it might be an appropriate gift for a young girl for her first trials. Once past that age, women who wear make-up generally are quite brand and product loyal, so it would be risky to give anything not from a list. Teenage girls, though, often give each other make-up, and in that case, the gesture is usually friendly. Perhaps other cultures are different. Bielle (talk) 01:53, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Not cosmetics per se, but in the (Christian) gift-giving spirit of the current holidays, be aware that women's clothing can also be dangerous for the giver. Many (most?) women are sensitive about their size, and some will choose to think the worst no matter what you give: Too large? You think she's gaining weight and will soon be able to wear them. Too small? You want her to lose weight so that the clothes will fit. Fit just right? What are you, some kind of pervert who went thru her drawers checking sizes? Of course, you don't know if you are gift-giving to such a person until it's too late.... Cosmetics and/or perfume is a MUCH safer gift. -SandyJax (talk) 20:27, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Bear in mind both of these answers are only really applicable if you don't have an existing close relationship with the person. I presume if you do you may already know their size and if you do, I don't think they're likely to think your a pervert (well unless they never told you and you really do know because you went through the person's drawers). Of course you still have to be careful to make sure you get the right size and if you remain unsure it might be helpful to make sure the item can be changed if it is the wrong size and to make this clear when giving the gift. Similarly if you have a close relationship you're likely to know what brands and products of makeup they like. Nil Einne (talk) 10:17, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Fine arts

with the tchnological advances of the 21st century, how will the fine arts be affected? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.148.95.190 (talk) 02:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean future technological advances or present ones (since we're only a few years into the 21st century)? But in either case, it's worth noting that the trend between technology and art has been quite mixed. On the one hand there are going to be those who will try to immediately integrate new technologies into art (and probably be denigrated in the short term for it), and there will be those who insist that the fine arts are defined in part by their old heritage (even though some aspects of it are much newer than others). That's not a great answer, and certainly not a specific one, but maybe it's a start for thinking about the interplay between new technologies and art. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 02:44, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

There's already a lot of exploration into the possibilities of fine arts in New media, including computer generated arts, computer assisted design and computer-designed art, micro-art, flash art, technologically themed art (in fashion, etc, such as clothing with built in electronics, even a TV), as well as incorporating digital effects and concepts into classical music. As 24.147 says, some leap into the change, while others resist. Steewi (talk) 04:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Use of logaritms in economics

What role do Logarithms play in economics? What exactly do economists mean when they use expressions like "log of growth rate"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cutesonu (talk • contribs) 02:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Logarithms do a few useful things - they turn multiplicative relationships into additive ones, they turn a log-normal random variable into a normal one, and they take things which are centred about 1 and make them centred about 0, which in some circumstances can make analysis easier (the first two properties are more useful than the third). Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 04:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Another note: Because economics is heavily influenced by humans, many of the distributions are logarithmic. A very basic example would be distribution of taxes. Say the upper class pays $100 billion in taxes. The middle class pays $50 billion. The lower class pays $33 billion. That is a logarithmic distribution. If you plot it on a normal x-y axis, it looks like a curve. If you plot it on a graph where the y axis is a log-scale (1, 10, 100, 1000...), it becomes a straight line. Logarithmic distributes are extremely common in nature (as well as anything that humans strongly influence). I believe Zipf was the first person to do a lot of studies on this phenomenon. -- kainaw™ 04:38, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

A note on Econometrics (which is the main topic where such expressions as "log of growth rate" may appear): You take logs of variables for a series of causes, mainly:

1. Logs reduce scales, and thus reduce possible heteroskedasticity issues.
2. Double-logaritmic regressions give out direct values of elasticities, which may be handy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pallida Mors 76 (talk • contribs) 17:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Many time sequences, also in economics, display exponential growth, or something close to it. If you have something that exhibits exponential growth at a steady growth rate r per time unit (for example, per year), then you get a geometric sequence like A, Ar, Ar², Ar³, ... . By taking logarithms, this sequence is transformed into an arithmetic sequence. Putting B = log(A), and d = log(r), you get instead the sequence B, B + d, B + 2d, B + 3d, ... . The arithmetic increment d is the log of the growth rate r.

GRE in the UK

How common is the Graduate Record Examination in the UK? Is there an equivalent to the American GRE?217.168.3.246 (talk) 10:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be fair to say that it is virtually unknown in the UK. Graduates here would quote their degree, degree class and their university and the employer would make a judgement based on their perception of the relative valuations of the three. SaundersW (talk) 17:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The GRE has nothing to do with employment. It is used as part of the admission process for graduate school (Master and PhD programs). Our article claims "Many graduate schools in English-speaking countries (especially in the United States) require GRE test results as part of the admission procedure." I don't know how true that is. Rmhermen (talk) 18:33, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

My comments apply equally to postgraduate qualifications. There are very few places that could be regarded as graduate schools in the first place. One exception might be Cranfield Institute of Technology. In general masters degrees are run by the same departments as undergraduate degrees, and PhDs are generally run on an apprenticeship principle, that is by individual supervision. SaundersW (talk) 19:47, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Think of graduate schools as a colllege within a university. The U.S. has relatively few stand-alone graduate-level schools as well. But simply getting a degree at a university/college will not qualify you to begin work in its graduate division (often refered to as a school or college). A separate admission process is required - just like applying to undergraduate but (usually) using the GRE test instead of the ACT or SAT test. My question remains: Is our GRE article incorrect about the wide use of the test outside the U.S.? Rmhermen (talk) 15:23, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the GRE is not so widely used as the articles states. Probably it is more of an American thing. And not even that, depending of the university, the GRE is highly relevant or not relevant at all.217.168.3.246 (talk) 01:08, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

In New Zealand, if you have a local degree your GPA and class (if you did honours or Masters) will usually be the main factors taken into account. The university won't matter much (we only have 7). The type of degree does of course matter, if you majored in Chemistry you might need to at least do a graduate diploma before undertaking further work in Biology for example. If you're degree isn't local, they used to ask graduates from universities outside New Zealand they don't trust (India I think was one but I'm guessing many developing countries fit the bill) to do a graduate diploma first before undertaking a Masters. Now that you usually do a postgraduate diploma first (well unless you have a Honours degree) and then a 1 year Masters instead of a 2 years Masters I don't know whether things have changed. I don't think GRE is used much if at all for entry into local universities. It may help if you're applying for scholarship although even then I suspect it'll only be a minor advantage. GRE does appear to be used in Singapore for entry into postgraduate programmes but only the general part not the subject specific part. [1] Nil Einne (talk) 11:47, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Nazi voters

What sort of people voted for the Nazis and why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.156.3.178 (talk) 12:24, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The articles Hitler's rise to power and Nazi Party#Rise to power: 1925-1933 will be able to answer this question for you. User:Krator (t c) 15:05, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The base of support was largely middle-class, from the traditional Mittelstand to the new white-collar workers. Politically speaking the Nazis managed to reintegrate a group that had largely fragmented after 1918. For further reading I would suggest the following; Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter (University of North Carolina Press, 1983) and (ed) The Formation of the Nazi Constituency (University of North Carolina Press, 1986); Conan Fischer (ed) The Rise of Nazism and the Working Classes in Weimar Germany (OUP, 1996); Richard Hamilton, Who Voted For Hitler? (Princeton University Press, 1983); Michael Kater, The Nazi Party (Blackwell, 1983); Helen Boak,’Women in Weimar Germany: The “Frauenfrage” and the Female Vote’ in Richard Bessel and E.J. Feuchtwanger (eds), Social Change and Political Development in the Weimar Republic (Croom Helm, 1981). Clio the Muse (talk) 01:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

What did the Marxists get right?

While acknowledging that Marx and his immediate followers had insightful things to say about commodity fetishism, the nature of the bourgeoisie and so on, I have never seen Marxian science, namely its historical and economic theories, greeted with anything less than derision. I'm familiar with some of the howlers (labor theory of value, communism taking root in the most advanced country, a dialectical certain path from feudalism to stateless communism etc.) but what I'm interested in finding out is what, if any, non-obvious, empirically verifiable scientific predictions did the Marxists get 'right? Skomorokh ^incite 17:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, for one thing you're using a different definition of science than they are. Their "science" of history is not what we would consider a natural science at all and shouldn't be judged as such. In any case, some Marxist approaches have proved fruitful in the field of history, but it's overall neo-Hegelian "this will happen and it is inevitable" program is, well, trash, at least to this historian. The only time there are "laws of history" are when you are either ignoring the complexity of it (either purposefully or accidentally) or you are saying things so broad as to be useless.

Now if you want to talk about natural sciences, it actually is a more complicated question. Aside from all of the bad science done in the name of Marxism—let's just get Lysenkoism out of the way here—there actually was quite a lot of good science done in its name and, according to practitioners, according to its values and based on its ideological preoccupations (e.g. dialectical materialism). A Western scholar would probably say, "well, the correctness of their scientific findings/theories is coincidental/incidental to the philosophy under which it was done" but this can be a somewhat problematic argument to put forward, at least if one takes philosophy and history of science seriously and isn't willing to simply divide science into the "facts" and its "context" with no real back-and-forth between the two.

If I can venture an opinion—Marxism is simply not a "science" in the more methodologically limited way we use the term in the West and especially in the modern period. Treating Marxist historical approaches as one of many arrows in an analytical quiver, at least for a historian, is no big problem; treating it as the only system that produces correct answers is, of course, ludicrous. Marxist approaches have informed American historiography to a point where much of it is not really noticed anymore, but none of its "big theories" about history are taken terribly seriously, except by that occasionally Cold War holdout, the academic Marxist (sad bunch, them). --140.247.240.65 (talk) 19:01, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think any of classical Marxist theory is about "empirically verifiable scientific predictions", including the derided labour theory of value, which was normative rather than predictive. How so did Marx' expectation fail that communism would first take root in the most advanced country? Unless you believe that history is over, you can still hope that some day, somewhere, people will realize that the current dog eat dog mega-greed-driven system steamrollering over cultural diversity and all values on a human scale, demanding unlimited access of international corporations to the world's resources in the name of freedom and democracy – never mind how the local population feels about it – is a dead end, and replace it by a system embodying the maxim From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. If that ever happens, it is most likely to start in one of the most advanced countries, and unlikely to start, let alone be successful, in countries struggling to supply basic needs to all citizens. The main contribution (if any) of Marxism today is that of a method for analyzing developments in society, including both historical and economical aspects.  --Lambiam 20:28, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

It should be noted that Marx got his economics from Smith, etc.; in Das Kapital, the "labor theory of value" was very explicitly credited to Smith and called a great discovery of the economists. (I.e., not his discovery.) Moreover, it is true to the extent that it was significant within Marx's theory; it has been rejected by economists only because it is not precise enough to handle what economists do with economic theory (manage financial institutions, etc.). Marx was not trying to predict prices, only to explain the basis of the difference between the price of labor and the value of labor. His explanation of the discrepancy seems adequate to me, even if he fails to take into account the fact that value varies with the quantity of production; we could interpret his work as having merely made the simplifying assumption that quantities of production are fixed (which certainly makes sense as far as the production of the means of subsistence is concerned) and that would solve the problem. (That is, the problem of falsehood; not the problem of being useless to the Fed.) Most of Das Kapital seems to be Marx's verbose, tedious rendering of Econ 101 as it was understood in 1860; the only worthwhile passages I have come across are basically asides dealing with the psychological consequences of the commensurability of labor and commodities.

In any case, I suspect that most people who hold opinions about Marx have not read any of his work. My advice to you is not to listen to anyone who won't tell you what he has read. (I suppose I should add that I say the above based on an incomplete reading of Das Kapital.) —Jemmy_tc 00:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I can only answer from the perspective of historical scholarship. What did the Marxists get right? Why, nothing; nothing at all. Now, how is that for a sweeping value judgement!? Radical comprehension still continues to be popular, though, at least in some quarters, in a way that the old prophet could never have predicted. But if you want to know the value of the Marxist and Hegelian model of history as a telelogical process, then you could do no better than look at this. On second thoughts I'm sure, Skomorokh, you could use your valuable time much more productively. Clio the Muse (talk) 00:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

Ho hum, I guess I overstretched in couching my question in such empiricist terms; I take Lambiam's point about post-Soviet communists still holding out, unrefuted for a Marxist alternative; I also take anon's point about using a different conception of science than the Marxists ere. To reformulate, coming from an economists background wherein Marxian economics was accorded such respect as a major school of thought (see academic Marxists comment above) though I could see, following the Muse, no value in it, I wish to know which falsifiable predictions/analyses/whatever Marxist theorists - in any field - made that are deserving of merit when viewed from our vantage point. My concern is that I am one of those identified by Jemmy who deride Marx's work (and, unquestionabl, Hegel's) without having read it, and I'm interested in hearing alternative points of view, or at least a devil's advocacy. So if I were to drop the term science and ask simply, what did the Marxists get right, in the broadest sense, that no one else did? Although I remain unsated, thanks ever so much for your responses thus far Skomorokh ^incite 01:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Your question has a certain flaw in it. Marx was not someone who worked in the Natural Sciences, or Hard Sciences. Instead, his work was within the Social Sciences, or Soft Sciences. In the Natural Sciences the goal of researchers is to arrive at ways to empirically predict the outcome of various phenomena that occur in the universe. In Social Science the goal of researchers is not to predict, but rather to understand the underlying forces that work within human society and in individual human lives. The reason there is a difference is that the Social Sciences study human behavior mostly through Qualitative Research, and to a lesser degree through Quantitative Research. In the Natural Sciences the focus is to formulate and work with rules and laws that are natural in origin. Because of mankind's freedom to choose how to react or behave (as opposed to being driven purely by instinct or natural laws), it is impossible to predict behavior except in certain very generalized cases that involve huge numbers of people, and only then in certain circumstances (such as predicting the outcome of an election based on polls). But even then, it is quite often the case that predictions made within the Social Sciences turn out to be incorrect.

So, in other words, one cannot say that Marx made any "empirically verifiable scientific predictions". He did make some predictions through Dialectic Materialism about the evolution of society from Capitalism to Socialism and then on to Communism. And he got some (not all) of those predictions wrong. There were reasons for this, and much has been written elsewhere. However, I am one who believes that Marx came up with a number of things that are worthy of study, and which may be said that he "got right".

In Sociology Marx's ideas are the basis for the incredibly influential Conflict theory and its related Social conflict theory, which still - even after the collapse of Soviet style Communism in the 1990s - continue to be used quite extensively by sociologists and others to understand changes and movements within human society. Another contribution of Marx that is still very influential is Historical materialism, something you touched a bit on in your question. Because Marx has fallen out of favor so much, some scholars and theorists try to distance themselves from him, even though they use theories that Marx espoused. There are a number of such fields of study where Marx's influence is very great, but he is not credited for them. If you look at the article on Post-Marxism it talks more about this.

Now, one of the ways to know whether someone really understands what Marx was talking about is if the person says that Marxism is completely dead and has completely failed as a philosophy. By no means is this correct. There are many scholars who are of the opinion that Marx might have been wrong about the timing of things, but that overall his theory of progression from Capitalism to Socialism is going along right now, and that ultimately there may come a day when Capitalism no longer will have the overriding influence that it does now. The underlying idea that Marx pushed so strongly that stated that under Capitalism it is unjust how the few are able to exploit the capital and labor of the many, while maintaining a certain percentage of the population in poverty and starvation is a very powerful concept. The principle that the worker should have stronger say in how his or her capital is put to use is also very powerful. These ideas have not gone away, no matter how powerful capitalism may seem right now, it is highly doubtful that it will last forever, and what will replace it might very well resemble something along the lines of what Marx was predicting. I include all this not to try to push my own point of view, but to balance out the conversation a bit, which seems to have gone all one way. Myself, I appreciate what Marx has to say, especially I love reading quotes from him, but I am not a Marxist. However, one cannot be a serious student of history without first fully understanding Marx. He operated at such an all-encompassing level that in order to comment or debate his philosophy, one must rise also to that level, and that is something that many people do not want to do. This is why Marx is so misunderstood today. In my opinion, of course... -- Saukkomies 20:46, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I must take exception to Saukkomies' dichotomy between natural and social sciences. Many within the social sciences are rigorous in their methodology seek and establish predictive laws, just as in the natural sciences, and certainly seek laws which have their origin in nature. There is overlap, in other words. See the Journal of Experimental Psychology for example. Edison (talk) 20:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I would love to take credit for my "dichotomy" between natural and social sciences, however it is entirely NOT my idea at all. I merely pass on what has been considered to be standard accepted agreement among academic scholars for over a century. Not only was this precisely what I was taught in my Introduction to Sociology class in college, but it also reflects the common perception among the vast majority of people who hold professional degrees in the Social Sciences. If you have reason to dispute this, take it up with them, not with me. As far as pushing my own theories, I would say that if anyone is guilty of this it would be you in using such a pitififul example to support your thesis as citing one journal out of countless others in the field of the Social Sciences to support your claim.

It is true that in recent years there has been more of a "blurring" between the two fields of the Social Sciences and the Natural Sciences. For instance, it says this in the very first paragraph of Wiki's article on the Social sciences. But this still does not mean that what I stated was my own opinion, as you seemingly wish to attribute it to me. Thank you, but no thanks - this is very much something that is common knowledge in academia - that there is a substantive difference between the two fields, and that this difference hinges on the fact that in the Social Sciences the aim is not to try to predict but to understand what is happening within human society and among human individuals. -- Saukkomies 20:25, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I am willing to be unfashionable and acknowledge some value in Marx's work. I agree with critics that his historical predictions are mostly wrong. Also, I think that his work has to be viewed critically and not as scripture. Where I think Marx is valuable and still relevant is in his analysis of the dynamics of capitalism. His theoretical framework helps make it clear how capitalism works and how the benefits are divided. In Marx's framework, for example, "exploitation" is not a meaningless word with an emotional charge. It refers to the relationship whereby an employer pays a worker less than the value of the worker's labor. The difference between what the worker is paid and what the employer gains from the worker's labor is surplus value, which is the basis for profit and for capital accumulation. In an unfettered competitive market, employers will outcompete and buy one another out until there is a virtual oligopoly or monopoly of employers in a given industry. The limited number of employers can force workers to compete for jobs by bidding down their wages toward a subsistence level. The only way to counter this trend, as Marx pointed out, is for workers to organize industrially and politically into blocs that can demand better wages and a greater share of the value of their labor. This insight was crucial to the success of labor unions in the 20th century, and it is to this insight that most of us in the industrialized countries owe our standard of living. This was just one of Marx's valuable insights.

Another was his recognition that capital accumulation can reach a state called overaccumulation. This is a state at which capital yields a declining rate of real return, largely because, by maximizing surplus value, capitalists minimize the income available to workers as consumers. At this point, productive capacity exceeds effective demand. One of the explanations of the Great Depressions of the 1930s and the 1870s is that a speculative financial boom led to overinvestment. A financial boom brought with it an expansion of debt (as speculators borrowed to invest into a rising market). Eventually, however, as workers' incomes failed to rise proportionately, the returns on these investments were no longer sufficient to service the debts on which they were based. The result was widespread insolvency, bankruptcy, and liquidation, which became a vicious cycle of shutting down productive capacity, further eroding workers' incomes, requiring additional shutdowns of productive capacity and so on. We may very well be at the end of another cycle of overaccumulation, this time due to overinvestment in real estate, financial instruments, and productive capital in East Asia that cannot possibly yield a return sufficient to service the debt on which it is based, because real wages for the workers who are expected to generate that return have failed to rise while the prices of the assets based on those expected returns have soared. If so, this insight of Marx's will be borne out yet again over the next decade or so. Marco polo (talk) 16:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

When, I wonder, can we expect to see the end of Capitalism in Communist China?! Ha! Ha!

Alas, my problem is that I seem to have read too much Marx, even Das Kapital (well, most of volume one), to come anywhere close to understanding what he is talking about. I am left with notions of Capitalism that seem devoid of understanding how real economies work, or of understanding the way in which they adapt to circumstances. I am left with notions not of a dynamic and historically evolving set of relationships, but of an Entity moving blindly, preprogrammed towards destruction. I confess, though, I was always puzzled by the adaptability of the Monster and the increasingly desperate attempts by the Marxists to keep up with its evolutions; for the theory, in other words, to capture and imprison the practice. Was imperialism, then, the highest stage of Capitalism? No, not quite. It had to be Fascism, then, the last stage of degenerate monopoly Capitalism? Again, sadly not. Who now believes that the rise of Hitler was a function of the conscious interest and intentions of Big Business? Oh, yes; I almost forgot. There is always David Abraham and The Collapse of the Weimar Republic! Capitalism goes forward, drawing on new sources of strength. Business is simply a way of doing business. Marxism tries to keep up with all of the enemy's subtle permutations; it falters; it atrophies; it turns into slogans; it dies. A theory that prides itself as a vehicle for changing the world becomes little more than a rather out-moded way of interpreting it; the vanity of moth-eaten dons in university common rooms. Ironic, is it not?

Yes, of course; I'm being highly polemical; it's one of my arts, after all. Marxism, for me, is an intellectual dinosaur, and we surely understand, from our reading of twentieth century history, that it is not a path and a method that should be chosen by the careful and the wary. For it is a dialectic that moves in ever more dreadful circles; from Stalin, to Mao, to Pol Pot; to politics and systems that make even the worst forms of Dickensian Capitalism seem harmless and benign. Give me Scrooge and give me Gradgrind! Do not, please, give me Marx, who in his dissertation On the Jewish Question seems to take on the mantel of a materialist Martin Luther, loving only what he hopes to destroy.

I am a historian; I look at these matters historically and in practical terms. Social being does not determine consciousness, which is a multi-faceted and complex phenomenon. Social classes do not trot on and off the stage of history, playing the wooden parts allotted to them by Marxist materialism. I know of no area of serious historical scholarship where Marxism is of any practical use, other than in a highly etiolated form, dependent for its survival on liberal transfusions of the life blood of 'Bourgeois' theory. I'm not even sure that we have any clear idea anymore of what Marxism is, beyond a vague series of precepts handed down in the nineteenth century. Who, now, are the heroes? Who has the authority to interpret the holy writ? Holy writ? An appropriate description is it not, for something that begins to resemble a debased form of Christianity. What, after all, is distinctive about Marxist historiography? Is there a Marxist historiography? I recall some words I read in a paper headed Chronicles of a Death Foretold, which concludes;

On the whole, the effect of the 'death of Marxism' has been to fold what used to be Marxist history writing back into the general body of historical scholarship, distinctive only on those occasions when it resolutely refuses to acknowledge the reality of its own disappearance, and shamelessly reproduces the clichés of the forgotten past. In that respect it is simply inadequate history. In a Tolstoyan vein, then, one might conclude that, for the time being, all good histories resemble one another, but each bad history is bad in its own way. Clio the Muse (talk) 01:01, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I completely believe you when you say that you do not have a clear idea of what Marxism is, Clio. However, I do believe that you are overlooking a lot of what Marx contributed (and is still contributing) to the analysis of history and the study of economic theory. Of course, this may be due to your not having a clear idea of what Marx was talking about, which is understandable. Let me put it this way: if one is prepared to accept that the ultimate and finest system that can possibly be achieved is Capitalism, then there really is no way that one could perceive what some of Marx's greatest contributions were. If on the other hand one sees the results of Capitalism are to continue to maintain a system in which a certain percentage of the world's population is to be kept below the poverty level, to make certain that a certain percentage of babies are starved to death each year, and to continue to insure that the working person's labor/capital is stolen from him or her and used to aggrandize the filthy rich Capitalists, then perhaps Marx's ideas have not completely died. Capitalism is unjust, unfair, exploitative, and it will eventually die just as slavery did because people will insist on taking ownership of their own capital. Not this year, not this Century even, but some day this will happen. Of this I am sure. And when it does, Marx will be seen as the one who originally invisioned it. -- Saukkomies 20:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, well; irony is clearly a dying art! I understand Marxism all too well, its theory and its practice. It seems to me to be a pernicious and benighted illusion that justice lies just beyond the horizon of a particular mode of economic organisation; that absolute bad is on one side and absolute good on the other. And if Marx envisaged paradise he also envisaged hell; for hell, practically speaking, is what he bequeathed in the pursuit of perfection; that is what all attempts at perfection encompass. Anyway, your rather emotive style of argument is not one with which I am comfortable. You and I clearly have nothing more to discuss. I think it best if I leave you with dreams of a Marxist paradise. I do offer my apologies, though, for wounding your sensibilities. Clio the Muse (talk) 02:43, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I do apologize if I came across as seeming to be too emotional. Perhaps I was too tipsy, since I'd written that after just returning from a winter solstice celebration that involved a couple of glasses of champagne. No, quite the contrary, Clio, I find it quite invigorating to discuss Marx - his flaws and his good points both. And I'll be the first to say that those who have called themselves Marxists have been some of the most wretched examples of any resemblance to a fair and just society. Marx to me is sort of like Wagner - it is unfortunate that both of these men have had a legacy of other people who came after them using them as inspiration to do evil. For myself, I believe the biggest flaw in Marx's theories was that he could not foresee that the earth's resources would be limited. To him (and almost all others of his day) the world was full of an endless supply of untapped natural resources, and such things as pollution and overexploitation of the fisheries and global warming never occurred to him. Another major flaw of Marx was that he assumed that industrial development would happen more quickly than it did. He assumed that within a short time that nobody would be doing any manual labor anymore because machines would be doing everything. When this didn't turn out to be the case it became impossible for anyone to subsequently follow what Marx's plans for a proletarian revolution were. When one of the most technologically backward nations in Europe (Russia) became the nation that assumed the role of leadership in bringing about Communism, it was so totally against what Marx had preached about as to be a ridiculous travesty. Nobody has practiced what Marx was teaching and hoping for, and nobody could because he did not accurately predict what was going to happen even within a couple of decades after his death. However, as I mentioned above, there are still things about his theories that are worth looking at. He wasn't a complete bone head in everything. Sorry to cause any offense or defense - I have nothing but respect for you Clio. I do hope you will continue to share your ideas and discourse with this lowly Caliban. -- Saukkomies 03:43, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, "what Marx preached about" (say in the Communist Manifesto) was the proletariat seizing power and overthrowing the bourgeois class. That is what happened in Russia, is it not? The problem may be that dictatorships are inherently prone to corruption; anyway, that is often said, although I don't know that it's true. (Are they more prone to corruption than democracies? Haven't there been dictatorships that were not prone to corruption? The tendency toward corruption may be a feature of the society rather than the form of government.) Cuba's communist government seems to be genuinely serving the Cubans, although the idea that communism is, as Marx put it, "the definitive resolution of the antagonism between man and nature, and between man and man; the true solution of the conflict between existence and essence, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species" is really quite pushing it. All the Cubans have done is solve poverty, and it is clear that communism is not the only possible solution to poverty.

Yet Marx's point about "social being determining consciousness" as Clio put it, in denying it, actually seems to me quite a good one. Erich Fromm's book Beyond the Chains of Illusion elaborates on this with many quotations from Marx. (It is much more fun to read Marx when someone has edited him down to short quotations.) It is often said that "you are what you do" and it is merely taken for granted that "what you do" is what part you play in the capitalist economy. Does the stunning fact of this cliche prove that "social being determines consciousness?" Well, I'm not sure exactly what that means; in any case, as Clio says, it is very complex. But I'm not sure Marx had nothing to contribute here. Perhaps at least he popularized a good idea. Here is what Fromm said:

<<[Historical materialism's] main postulate is that the way in which man produces determines his practice of life, his way of living, and this practice of life determines his thinking and the social and political structure of his society. [...] Marx's idea that man is formed by his practice of life was not new as such. Montesquieu had expressed the same idea in terms of "institutions form men"; Robert Owen expressed it in similar ways. What was new in Marx's system is that he analyzed in detail what these institutions are, or rather, that the institutions themselves were to be understood as part of the whole system of production which characterizes a given society. [...] Man himself, in each period of history, is formed in terms of the prevailing practice of life which in turn is determined by his mode of production. [...] Marx's main criticism of capitalist society is precisely that this society makes the wish to "have" and to "use" into the most dominant desire in man; Marx believed that a man who is dominated by the desire to have and to use is a crippled man. His aim was a society organized in such a way that not profit and private property, but the free unfolding of man's human powers are man's dominant aims. Not the man who has much, but the man who is much is the fully developed, truly human man.>>

I think there's some merit here. Look at the sort of men capitalist society produces today, and compare them to the sort of men that we read about native American societies producing. Is it possible to produce the latter sort of people and yet retain the whole edifice of high-tech industrial capitalism? Or could you take the one form of society, add industry to it, and yet retain its culture? Is that possible to imagine? Not to me, although I am told that "the friendly and flowing savage" is a myth, anyway. I suppose ultimately we can reduce the principle to the rather obvious fact that economic institutions and culture develop interdependencies in their evolution, or rather that economic institutions are not distinct from culture at all and it all evolves together--but then you have to admit, economic institutions are quite more limited by "material" factors than "culture" is normally said to be. So, yeah, I think there is some merit here. —Jemmy_tc 13:31, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

- quoting Jemmy: "what Marx preached about (say in the Communist Manifesto) was the proletariat seizing power and overthrowing the bourgeois class."

I think that it was more complicated than that. There are several areas in which Marx's theories went, one of which was yes the area of class struggle between the proletariat class and the rest of society. However, one of the other areas that Marx explored was precisely how this was to take place, which he believed would be an inevitable process as Capitalism basically transformed itself into Socialism. Marx believed that this transformation was something that could not be stopped, just as the transformation from Feudalism to Capitalism had been an unstoppable force. He felt that Capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction, and that given enough time these seeds would sprout and bear fruit, resulting in the eventual transformation of society into Socialism. What Marx was trying to figure out, though, was how to speed the process of this transformation up. He theorized that through revolution social "progress" could be expedited. He had as his working model for this the French Revolution, which did actually speed the process of transforming French society from Feudalism (which was dying out in France in the late 18th Century) to Capitalism. He felt that if the Proletariat could seize the reins of power in what he called a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat", that they could hasten society's transformation through the passage of laws and creation of government programs and entirely new social systems to create a Socialist - and then ultimately a Communist - society.

What he envisioned was that this would take place in a highly industrialized country in which Capitalism was at its peak. This would allow the transformation process to be much more successful because it would insure that much of the process would already have been put into play. Far from hating Capitalism, Marx felt it was a fantastic thing - it produced enormous gains in the production of goods and services. What he wanted to do was to transfer the ownership of production from the elite few to the working class many. Of course, none of this played out. Russia had only about 3 or 5% of its population in the Middle Class, and was very backward in terms of being capable of its manufacturing and industrial capability at the time of its revolution.

A reporter once asked Marx what he thought about the Irish struggle for independence from Great Britain (this was before Irish independence of course). Marx replied that before Ireland could have its revolution, that first Great Britain must have its revolution, and then naturally the Irish would have their's as a consequence of that. What this means is that Marx felt that countries with little or no industry (such as Ireland in the late 19th Century) could not successfully adopt his model of change from Capitalism to Socialism - that this must FIRST be done in industrialized and highly Capitalist countries such as Great Britain. Since Marx died before the Russian Revolution and then the takeover by the Bolsheviks, he wasn't around to comment on what he thought about it all. However, one may take what he said in this above case to show that he probably would have NOT APPROVED of the Bolsheviks' revolution in Russia - that he would have said - "First the revolution must take place in Germany, and then in Russia" - or something to that effect.

The fact that the Communists' push for power in Germany failed after WWI - and also in Great Britain - was the death knoll for Communism in Europe for the 20th Century. What took place in the Soviet Union had only a twisted, farcical resemblance to what Marx had envisioned. The Soviet Union was a travesty of Communism. As a result of the botched efforts by countries that were only in the periphery of Capitalism in the early to mid 20th Century (Russia, China, Cuba, Yugoslavia, etc.), the result was that Communism and Marxism was NOT successful, and moreover, it created a "taint" that has lasted to this day. However, no nation on earth has yet to date actually practiced (or come even close to practicing) what Marx preached. However, there is one thing that is still moving along the way that Marx predicted: Capitalism is in the process of becoming increasingly more powerful until it will take over all the earth. Marx predicted this. Part of the process that will take place, according to what Marx theorized, is that the struggle that will ensue between the Capitalist rich elite and the working masses will ultimately create transformations in society that will lead to Socialism. This is a process that has increasingly made slow changes in societies around the planet as Capitalism reaches it maturity. It's a slow, organic process, but it is happening - even in such very strong Capitalist hold-outs as the United States, which is getting prepared to adopt National Health Care probably within the next decade (as just one example).

Although Marx's theory that this process could be sped up through a Proletarian Revolution has failed, it does not mean that history has stopped - it does not mean that the process of society's transformation from Capitalist to Socialist has halted. And in this regard perhaps Marx was indeed correct: that eventually the "progress" of human society will move on to the next phase, and in a few hundred years or so Capitalism will have gone the way of all the other stages of human society in the past (such as Feudalism and Slavery), and the world's nations will be Socialist. Who knows for sure, but there are indications this is indeed how things are developing around the world. And if this is the case, then Marx has by no means become irrelevant. His perceptions of social change and historical development are still important to understand - even if one disagrees with them. -- Saukkomies 09:29, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Second Arbitrary section break

I certainly don't mean to say that the seizure of power by the proletariat is all that there is to Marx. Yet that is what he called for, and it is what happened in Russia. In the end, it didn't work out the way it was supposed to. I don't know that its preindustrial status was the reason for this; it may have been, although I don't see why it would be. (It's interesting to note that all successful communist revolutions have been in largely preindustrial societies. Perhaps they are just more susceptible to revolutions?) To try and suggest that the development of the welfare state fits into the Marxist model seems a bit of stretch to me. Marx couldn't conceive of capitalism as anything but unadulterated laissez-faire capitalism. The existence of a minimum wage, of child labor laws, of the official shortening of the work week, and also of the techniques used to manage currency and interest rates, tax and spend jobs policies, and outright welfare--these all invalidate the foundational premises of Kapital and its predictions of the progressive immiseration of the proletariat, production crises, etc.. The welfare state, far from constituting revolution, actually only makes it all the less likely. Ousting the bourgeois on your model would perhaps mean (and would at least have to mean) abolishing inheritance. Yet the bourgeois clearly have enough control over the state to prevent this. The welfare state provides the means to the bourgeois class to ensure the welfare of the proletariat without altering the social order. The bourgeois cannot increase wages simply by increasing wages in businesses, for that would be suicide to any individual business; but it can increase wages as a class, through collective action with the participation of every business enforced by the state, and doing so ensures its ability to survive as a class. Economists would say that the welfare state is a public good for the bourgeois class. Of course it is good for the proletariat as well. In any society, it is good for the powerful to keep the powerless happy. —Jemmy_tc 16:03, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, here's where we are in agreement, then, Jemmy:
1. There is more to Marx than the Proletarian seizure of government.
2. Marx was opposed to labor unions, the passage of child labor laws, shortening of the work week, and anything else that would ameliorate the complete despondency that the working classes were heading towards, which would ultimately put off their support for revolution.
3. The powerful use welfare programs and support labor laws in order to keep the working class happy and avoid revolution.

Here's where we disagree (and please correct me if I've got this wrong):
1. That there has ever been a successful revolution that truly represented Marx's philosophy. (I don't think there has, and I believe it seems that you do).
2. A national health care system is part of the welfare state and not a socialist program. (I believe it is a socialist program, and hence something that we have inherited indirectly from Marx's ideas, and I believe you feel that it is a welfare program).
3. This we don't necessarily disagree over, but I'm including it: that Russia's (and other so-called Communist) revolution failed due to its being pre-industrial. I believe it did, you I think don't.

Now, as per the last point, I would also point to what Lenin himself admitted after the Civil War following the Bolshevik's seizure of power in 1918 - 1922. The Soviet Union's economy had completely gone down the toilet, and Lenin's government was facing incredibly grim times if it was to succeed. In 1921 Lenin pushed through a policy to change how the Soviet Union's economy would be run. His program was called the New Economic Policy, and it incorporated certain aspects of Capitalism to provide a boost to the Soviet economy. Lenin, describing why he was doing this, said "We are not civilized enough for socialism". By that he meant that the Soviet Union had not acquired a strong enough Capitalist base before trying to adopt Communism. Lenin felt that if the Soviet Union could somehow build up a strong Capitalist economy - under the watchful eyes of a Proletariat Dictatorship - that it could more speedily arrive at a point where it could then transform itself into true Communism. This was sort of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by trying to take backwards Russian society and pushing it to fit into a Marxist/Communist model. It didn't work of course. And neither has any other attempt at Communism worked, because (as we've both pointed out), every country that has tried to make Communism work has each been an undeveloped country in which Capitalism has not had a chance to take full effect.

Now, if one looks at what is going on right now in China, it is quite interesting to see that their country is adapting to Capitalism with leaps and bounds, and may ultimately surpass European and North American economies in sheer economic power. Does this mean that Communism/Marxism has died in China? Why is the government still Communist? Why does the Communist government allow all this Capitalism? The answer is that the Chinese Marxists are successfully pulling off what Lenin tried to do in the 1920s - allow their country to develop through its Capitalist phase under the watchful eye of a Communist government with the goal of eventually reaching the point where they will be at able to successfully move from Capitalism to Socialism of a kind in which everyone has enough of the necessities of life so that the economy can afford to do this. In addition to this, the current policy of Chinese Communists has been to abandon the approach of violent revolution as a means to achieving their goals through the application of a policy called China's Peaceful Rise. Deng Xiaoping addressed these points in a speech he gave in 1984 at the beginning of the internal push to enact the reforms in China we see taking fuller fruition today. He stated:
"What is socialism and what is Marxism? We were not quite clear about this in the past. Marxism attaches utmost importance to developing the productive forces. We have said that socialism is the primary stage of communism and that at the advanced stage the principle of from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs will be applied. This calls for highly developed productive forces and an overwhelming abundance of material wealth. Therefore, the fundamental task for the socialist stage is to develop the productive forces. The superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of those forces than under the capitalist system. As they develop, the people's material and cultural life will constantly improve. One of our shortcomings after the founding of the People's Republic was that we didn't pay enough attention to developing the productive forces. Socialism means eliminating poverty. Pauperism is not socialism, still less communism." — Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping on June 30, 1984[27]
If any country will ultimately pull off an economic transformation of the kind that Marx envisioned, it could very well be that China might be the one to do it. If, as some here have claimed, we are to completely throw out all study of Marx's teachings, advising people who come here with questions to not bother studying Marx or Marxism, then we as Wiki Reference Desk editors would be making a big mistake because Marx's philosophies are still being used as a reference guide by the country with the second largest economy in the world. How can anyone with integrity state that Marx's ideas are unimportant or not worthy of study when we are faced with the possibility of China doing what it said it will do: to make long range goals of using the strength of a highly developed Capitalist economy to propel it into a Socialist transformation? I say that Marx is incredibly relevant today, and if people neglect to study his philosophies, they will be unequipped to understand the world that is unfolding in the 21st Century. -- Saukkomies 14:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

More on the crusades

I am interested in some of the points being raised above about the crusades. Would it not be possible, I wonder, to put a positive interpretation on the movement? After all it was only an attempt to recapture christian lands that had fallen to the muslims after the battle of Yarmouk. I would appreciate your views.86.151.240.196 (talk) 17:44, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

It is possible to put a positive interpretation on anything. Humans are great at rationalizing things. -- kainaw™ 17:55, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

It played an important part in renewing religious vitality in Europe. It also brought the west in closer contact with Islam. Both of these things were key to the rise of Scholasticism, which was a medieval Renaissance of sorts. Wrad (talk) 18:18, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

That may depend on which Crusade you mean, also. The Children's Crusade was, at the very least, a lot of wasted effort. As Wrad mentions, there were some silver linings to the affair, and you can find fallout of both positive and negative effects from just about every major event in history, but then you have to consider the ends vs. the means issue also. ◄Zahakiel► 19:02, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Textbooks typically mention that the Crusades helped to reopen long-distance trade between Europe and the Levant (which in turn spurred trade within Europe). The growth of trade spurred the rise of cities, and with it a general increase in prosperity and population. Contact especially between Italy and the eastern Mediterranean ultimately (200-300 years later) led to the rediscovery of classical learning and the adoption and adaptation of Muslim learning that produced the Renaissance and helped shape the modern era. Marco polo (talk) 18:58, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Italy benefited a lot from the newfound spice trade that grew from the crusades. This helped Italy gain the wealth it needed to begin the Renaissance. Wrad (talk) 19:44, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

What goes around comes around. I've been here before! Addressing myself specifically to your final statement, 86.151, here, slightly adapted, is what I said.

It does not seem to me to be in any sense legitimate to attempt a direct comparison between the Muslim occupation of the Holy Land after Yarmouk and the incursion of the Crusaders at the end of the eleventh century. This cross roads between Africa and Asia has been fought over for centuries; and of all the invasions that of the Muslim armies was, as far as I am aware, far less destructive of human life than the original incursion of the Jewish tribes at the time of the Exodus, or the wholesale massacre carried out when the crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099, or even the invasion of the Persians earlier in the reign of the Emperor Heraclius. Indeed, far from the land being Christian in any unified sense it had, prior to the Battle of Yarmouk, seen an intense factional dispute between the local Monophysites and the orthodox authorities in Constantinople. The Monophysites, who rejected the doctrine laid out by the Council of Chalcedon, settled down with very little resistence to Muslim rule, and the Byzantine state made no attempt to recover the lost heretical provinces.

The Crusades, therefore, most assuredly, did not follow follow from the conquest of Yarmouk, but came almost five hundred years later ( a time span which seperates contemporary England from the reign of Henry VII), and under very specific historical circumstances. Under pressure from the Turks in Anatolia, who had been steadily moving westwards ever since the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Emperor Alexius I Comnenus appealed to Pope Urban II for military aid. He wanted professional mercenaries; he got something quite different. Urban conjured up a popular movement at the Council of Clermont. Thus the crusades began, and with it began centuries of massacre and atrocity, from the pogrom of the Jews in the Rhineland, moving through the wholesale murder and rape of Christian communities in the Balkans, to the ultimate sack of Jerusalem. And so it continued.

In view of all of this it would hardly be surprising if the word 'crusade' had negative conotations. But it has not; at least not until recently. It was used in positive terms for centuries, long after the atrocities and outrages had been forgotten, as something good, noble and Christian, a myth of purity washed clean of blood. The negativity now associated with the word comes as a consequence of ever closer western military engagement with the Islamic world. From memory, I believe George W Bush actually used the 'C' word in the early days of the Iraq conflict, until he was reminded of the implications of this for Muslim people, and the history he was bringing to mind. I think it safe to assume that many Islamic people feel, rightly or wrongly, that they are threatened with a new crusade. We have now, it would seem, created Outremer once again; and it remains to be seen if it will be as long lasting, or if, in the end, Baibars will walk over the ghost of Richard the Lionheart. Clio the Muse (talk) 00:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

You might be able to say that it gave a different focus to fighting, allowing people to fight the infidels rather than each other. It could also reduce the impact of the growing European population as the 'dark' ages ended. Steewi (talk) 01:21, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Please, let's not use the term "Dark Ages". -- Saukkomies 02:25, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Lots of these things are not exactly true about the Crusades, since Europe already had plenty of contact with Islam - in Spain. Spain was the source of all the Latin translations of Arabic manuscripts originally translated from Greek; the Qur'an was translated into Latin from Spain; crusade-like events had been happening there long before 1095. For some reason we never really hear about that in school, it's always the story that Italy benefitted from increased trade in the 12th century and that led to the Renaissance, etc. That's true, but there was already lots of trade in exotic goods coming through Spain, and Italian cities like Venice and Genoa already had extensive trade with the Byzantine Empire (where they had autonomous trade centres, just like they did later in crusader cities), as well as with the Fatimids in Egypt. But it is true to say the crusades helped, especially since it was an aborted crusade that led to Venice's total dominance of the sea after they captured Constantinople (which also benefitted Genoa, and, by the way, directly led to the plague entering Europe!)

Clio says that the crusades did not directly follow Yarmuk, but one of the current vogues in crusade historiography would argue the opposite. This goes all the way back to the original crusade histories in the 12th century, actually. William of Tyre begins his history with the war between Heraclius and the Persians, and the subsequent fall of Jerusalem to the Arabs. Even back then (perhaps especially so) they realized the connection. And now some historians would argue the same thing, that the threat of Islam overrunning the whole world was imminent, and the crusade was a reaction to the fall of Jerusalem in the 7th century, which for various reasons took 400 years to manifest itself (and meanwhile was developed in fits and starts in Spain). Adam Bishop (talk) 02:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

This is all true. The vast majority of translations from Arabic came from Spain. Only a few came from the Crusades, and most of those were medical ideas, as Europeans encountered medical needs in Arab lands. Even so, Crusaders were less interested in translating ideas a more interested in religious zeal, commerce, and saving their skins from the angry Arabs surrounding them. Spain probably churned out way more medical translations than the Crusaders. Wrad (talk) 02:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Do our articles on the Crusades answer these questions? If they don't, they probably should. I've got a lot about Arabic and Greek translations I can add. Wrad (talk) 02:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I think they do to some extent. Personally, on top of not having much time to improve the crusade articles lately, I find them almost impossible to maintain. They are constant targets for vandalism, and for edits by well-meaning people who just don't know what they are talking about. If you can improve them, it would be appreciated! Adam Bishop (talk) 05:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll keep you posted. Wrad (talk) 17:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Some concrete non-mystical rationales for the first crusade were:
1) Christians remembered that Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah had destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009.
2) After Manzikert, some strategically-minded Christians were worried about Christian Europe being caught in a pincer of Muslim advances through both Spain and the Balkans. Part of the idea of the crusades was to take the battle directly to the enemy on his own home ground.
I don't know how many Europeans had the battle of Yarmouk specifically in mind, but in general the whole history of Islam was a continuous 450-year span of aggression from the Christian point of view of 1095 A.D... AnonMoos (talk) 01:58, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Domestic life in Georgian England

Could anyone recommend books (fiction or non-fiction) which describe domestic & married life in Georgian England? I'm specifically interested in the middle- and upper-classes. Thanks, --Kateshortforbob 18:15, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Can I call you Kate?! Anyway, Kate or Bob, for a question of this nature I would always suggest that you begin with the novels of Jane Austen, a great social commentator as well as a great writer. I am thinking in particular of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Persuasion. Though less well known Susan Ferrier's 1818 novel, Marriage, is an interesting exploration of contemporary attitudes. Looking now at matters from a quite different, and altogether more radical perspective, there is Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft's fictional continution of some of the themes she outlined in A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Wollstoncraft also deals with marriage in her other novel, Mary: A Fiction. Be warned, though: she is a great radical thinker; she is not a great novelist!

As for non-fiction, there is a wealth of material you might choose from, depending on how you wish to approach the issue. I would suggest Sex in Georgian England by A. D. Harvey; The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England by A Vickery; Wives and Daughters: Women and Children in the Georgian Country House by J. Martin; and High Society in the Regency Period by V. Murray. To put matters in a slightly wider context I would also recommend English Society in the Eighteenth Century by R. Porter. And that, I think, is enough to be going on with! Clio the Muse (talk) 00:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Clio, thanks so much for your recommendations! Jane Austen's novels are actually what's got my mind onto this track (sorry, I should have mentioned that!). I'm reading Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels at the moment, which I'm really enjoying, but has just piqued my interest. Marriage, in particular, and all of the non-fiction you suggested seems just what I was looking for - I think you've sorted out my Christmas holiday for me! Thank you once again (oh, and I'm a Kate, rather than a Bob!) --Kateshortforbob 01:25, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Happy reading, Kate (and I'm glad you are a Kate!) Clio the Muse (talk) 02:15, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Kate, I agree with Clio on her choices, just adding to the list: Evelina by Frances Burney is a precursor to Austen, with the heroine nicely positioned to comment on and compare the middle and upper classes. Also Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark deals with marriage and the care of a new-born son. Hope these help Lord Foppington (talk) 11:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Lord Foppington, much appreciated! I've never read anything by Mary Wollstonecraft before, and Evelina looks like a great read.--Kateshortforbob 01:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

December 21

Countries

Why do you guys believe in countries? Countries aren't real. They're just pieces of land surrounded by imaginary borders. 58.165.54.132 (talk) 05:09, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

People believe in countries because nationalism is the key to rule over masses of people. It leads to self-identification with the state bureaucracy. --Taraborn (talk) 19:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Like the equator, countries do indeed have imaginary borders. Unlike they equator, they seperate land that is goverened by individual countries, staties, or counties, and laws apply therein. Countries are indeed real. Whether you like the idea or not, they're 100% vital and important. How else would you be able to know where you were going to? You'd hear "A car bomb went off in that desert place nowhere near you killing 12" on the news and go WTF!? We couldn't use coordinates, they are imaginary, too. Perhaps a good read on countries would aid your misconception. Oddeven2002 (talk) 05:35, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Tinkerbell effect? William Avery (talk) 10:15, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I remember reading a piece by Buckminster Fuller, in Evergreen Review, I think, in which he argues that borders drawn upon the Earth's surface are meaningless. His argument is that if the Earth were a cube instead of a rough sphere, it would be impossible to divide the solid earth beneath the surface since each face could claim it as lying directly beneath its land area and thus within its borders. And therefore we cannot divide the Earth into countries. I had to go through his argument several times to convince myself that that was what he was really saying. Hm. Perhaps I'll read it again and see if it wasn't I who was mistaken.--Rallette (talk) 12:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think that would be best. With all due respect to Bucky and yourself, one of you must be mistaken imo. I don't see how whatever might be the case if the Earth were cubical could possibly be relevant to our actual non-cubical world. The logic is a bit like "If a cat were a dog, it wouldn't miaow, and therefore cats don't miaow". -- JackofOz (talk) 20:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually the article on Nationalism outlines a number of rationales. The presence of people greatly complicates things beyond "just pieces of land". William Avery (talk) 13:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Why are countries not real? Countries have just as much a claim to reality as the territorial boundaries of a wolf pack or the nesting grounds of Emperor Penguins. The lack of there being actual demarcated lines drawn on the surface of the earth to distribute the land according to different social groups does not mean that those boundaries do not exist. Throughout all of nature we can find the existence and importance of geographical boundaries, from the plant, insect, reptile, fish, mammal and human levels. Humans are no different from any other species in wanting to set up boundaries where others may not come and exploit resources or impinge their will. If you're looking for something that is "real", then perhaps the best approach would be to try to come up with a definition of what you believe "reality" is, which is much more difficult than it may seem at first glance. If someone used the same measure that you have in discounting national boundaries as being "not real", then there would be many things that would also fail that test such as language, love, beauty, and yes "truth" itself (which after all is a concept, not something that you can point at). -- Saukkomies 12:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Nation-states assert sovereignty over their claimed land and are able to enforce this by using coercion if necessary. At the bedrock that is what makes the lines non-arbitrary and non-imaginary, though in reality it is extremely rare that it has to come to that. In the end it comes down to a projection of power, a projection which has real effects over people's lives and how they live them. You can't call power of that sort "imaginary." --24.147.86.187 (talk) 19:36, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

We have been around this, though, in another way: privileging nation-state over other ethnic/national identity. For example, we describe Salvador Dalí as a "Spanish" painter rather than a "Catalan" painter. (Although we usually don't push that to the point of absurdity: Antoni Gaudí, an arch Catalan nationalist is at least described as "a Spanish Catalan architect"; he would certainly have rejected the former term, though there is no question that it was legally his citizenship. - Jmabel | Talk 03:59, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Hair dyeing and straightening cost

I'm a guy with curly brown hair and I want straight blond hair. How much is the cost generally of both hair dyeing and hair straightening?--69.148.16.245 (talk) 05:31, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Where do you live? There is a huge difference in price from city to city, between city and small town and between say New York and London. In southern Ontario (Canada) I can pay $400 for a haircut or $15. It depends on the salon, the sytlist, the part of town and sometimes, the day of the week. Bielle (talk) 06:01, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course if you skip the straightening it will be cheaper. I quite like guys with curly hair. :) --Candy-Panda (talk) 09:50, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I am a guy with long hair, it stops just before my butt. I went for a cut-and-colour I also had it straightened, it cost me about £70 and the straitening only lasts one day. it would be easier to buy your own straiteners and do it yourself everyday. I am sure your sister/girlfriend can show you how to use em, as you dont want to burn all your hair off. GHD make good products. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.2 (talk) 15:27, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

You can get your hair permanently straightened - it uses the same chemicals as perming. Bear in mind dying and perming your hair can wreck it's condition. Exxolon (talk) 22:09, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Parents Rights

There are all kinds of articles and laws to protect children's rights when there is seperation in the family. I have been looking all over for parent's rights when it comes to abusive or disrespectful children. Specifically what are the obligations of a child towards his parents. And in my case where the marriage ended up in seperation, what are my obligations towards a disrespectful child. If more clarification to the question is needed, please let me know. I live in Canada in the province of Quebec if that helps. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Easyone49 (talk • contribs) 09:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Your child has obiligation to follow the law of Quebec and Canada which means, for example he or she probably can't do things like hit you. However your child has no specific obiligations to you as an adult that I'm aware of anymore then you will have obligations to your child once your child reaches adulthood. 'Dispectful' or not you will likely be required to financially support your child if you are able to do so. Ideally you should also provide a home and the other necessities of life (including an education to your child) but if you are unable or unwilling to do so and attempts to patch up your relationship fail, most likely the other parent will be given sole custody or if this is not an option, another guardian may be appointed if there is an interested party or if not, your child will probably be places in foster care. If it helps, remember that you're the one who chose to have sex or otherwise have a child. Your child didn't chose to be born or have you as a parent. Nil Einne (talk) 09:59, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Your obligations towards your child? To love & cherish him, to put food in his belly, clothes on his back, and a roof over his head, to be on his side no matter what. I could go on, but we have a rule against posting diatribes - so I'll just add that Nil Einne got it pretty much right. DuncanHill (talk) 10:19, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, here in France there is an actual legal obligation for children to care for aged and/or infirm parents-- the principle is that of "solidarity between generations". Rhinoracer (talk) 14:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

If you are unhappy with the child, you may want to ask the child's other parent to take custody. You would still be obligated to contribute financially toward the child's support, probably until the child finishes university, if the child attends university. If the other parent won't take custody, if you can afford it, you could try sending the child to boarding school and/or hiring a nanny who could look after the child when he/she is not in school. However, this solution, while getting the child out of your hair, would not really solve any of the child's problems and would keep you from healing what after all should be one of your most important relationships. As for the child, the child has no legal obligation toward you except to obey the law, as has been said. Once the child reaches adulthood, you could cut off contact with him/her, but that would be a sad step.

A better course might be to seek counseling, both for yourself and for your child. You might want to see one counselor (psychologist/social worker) on your own, preferably a person who can help you develop parenting techniques that will improve your relationship with the child. You might want to hire a separate counselor for your child, who can help to uncover the reasons for the child's animosity and to help the child (and you) toward a more positive relationship. If these options are too expensive for you, I still think that you should seek outside help from someone with wisdom on these matters, preferably someone with parenting experience. (That would rule out Catholic priests.) Perhaps you could try talking to older women (grandmothers, for example) where you work or that you know in your life. 192.251.134.5 (talk) 16:08, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

This questionner appears to be looking for advice about what a child's obligations towards his parent(s) are, if any. The only enforceable obligations would be legal ones, I suspect, if there are such things under Quebec's Napoleonic Code. (Quebec is not governed by variations on English Common Law, as are the U.S. and the rest of Canada, for example.) Wikipedia does not offer legal advice. Everything from "Honour thy father and thy mother" on out is a moral (ethical, social) constraint, and is not enforceable except by the child's acceptance of a community standard of behaviour. Bielle (talk) 20:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you all for your input. I think Bielle is the one who got it right. I am very well aware of my obligations towards my child DuncanHill and that was not my question in the first place; it was the other way around. What amazes me though are the rules and laws in place that obligate parents to thier children regardless what but there is none in existance for the parents that say to get what you want you have to meet certain rules. What you are telling me is that a child can call his parent an "idiot" and not talk to him and get away with it and the father, in this case myself, is to bite the bullet and pretend nothing has happened. I am talking of an 18 year daughter here and not a child of 6. I have another child who is 14 and thank god he is the opposite of his sister with lot of respect for his parents.Easyone4969.157.238.44 (talk) 22:13, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

My father announced that I was disrespectful when I was a teen-ager. I was severely abused. Disrespectfulness is a completely subjective concept. Children neither ask to be born nor do they voluntarily engage in overt acts leading to conception. Laws protect children not because children are powerful but, rather, because they are so powerless. Be of good cheer, your child will soon reach majority and be free. I literally counted the days on a calendar until I was eighteen.

75Janice (talk) 00:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)75Janice75Janice (talk) 00:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Theories about Values and Ethics in Youth Work

I am currently working with a group of youth workers and want to explain, in simple terms, values and ethics in youth work, linking theory to this. Does anyone know of any simple explanations of different theories or sites where I can get this information from? Would like the information to be referenced accurately. Many thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by SMansell (talk • contribs) 11:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you want an ethical justification of youth work? Or reasons why youth work is valuable and ethical?--droptone (talk) 14:16, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I suspect the OP is asking for a discussion of the ethical considerations and questions which arise in the pursuit of youth work. SaundersW (talk) 20:13, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Livy in english

Is the historian Livy "ad urbe condi" books in english online someplace? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.162.205.64 (talk) 13:50, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Check out the links at the bottom of our page on Ab Urbe Condita. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 14:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Just in case, this is another link, from the Perseus Digital Library. Pallida  Mors 04:58, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Lasting legacy of our greatness

Is there an organization that proposes to rebuiild or restore the seven wonders of the world. Or an organization that would like to create and 8th, to leave a mark, of our society, for the rest of time, much like the egyptians left us the pyraminds. thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.2 (talk) 16:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The wonders are restored over time. Consider the Great Wall of China. It was falling apart and the stones were being taken for other construction. The Chinese government stepped in and restored a large section of the wall. As for building new wonders - you don't build a wonder just to build a wonder. The pyramids had a purpose. The Great Wall had a purpose. Building a wonder just to build a wonder would be a stupid waste of energy and resources. However, it is possible that something we currently have that meets some purpose (such as the International Space Station) could be considered a wonder at some time in the future. -- kainaw™ 16:20, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

In the creation of monuments such as Mount Rushmore National Monument, the Crazy Horse Memorial, or the monumental bust of dictator Ferdinand Marcos at Benguet in the Phillipines, there was a desire to create a monument which would stand for millenia. History shows that this desire sometimes ends like the statue of Ozymandias, as in the destruction of the Marcos bust after his fall from power [2], [3]. "The rest of time" that a "wonder of the world" survives can be very short given politics and modern explosives, like the Taliban destruction of the 1700 year old world's largest statues of Buddha at Bamiyan. Edison (talk) 16:36, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that the remnants of the Apollo 11 lunar module in the Sea of Tranquility Base is a pretty good bid for one of the Great Wonders of the World. -- Saukkomies 12:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• Wrong world! --Anon, 19:07 UTC, December 21, 2007.

Heh. I take your point. Perhaps there ought to be another list of the Wonders of the Universe that include non-Terrestial artifacts. -- Saukkomies 20:45, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Lol cats! 82.198.250.4 (talk) 18:23, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Umm - the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World are not restored over time - the Pyramids are the only one of the seven to have survived into mediaeval times, and the Great Wall of China, being unknown to Europeans until rather recently, was not among them. --ColinFine (talk) 00:01, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the Pyramids have been restored before. bibliomaniac15 01:06, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

to restore the pyramids we will need to cover them in Limestone slabs, and top them with gold. i thing can be done for a few million, which is not all that much. as long as we use as few beaurocrats as possible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.3.151.98 (talk) 13:14, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Would you use the (few) bureaucrats instead of limestone slabs, or as cement to hold them on? SaundersW (talk) 20:11, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Well according to [4] the price of gold per kg is about NZ$33590.78 (you didn't specify what dollars so I'm guessing NZ dollars). So for a few million (let's say $3.359078 million for the gold which gives a few more million for the rest of the stuff without going over the 'few' limit) then you can buy 100 kg of gold. How many pyramids do you intend to cover with this? Also, it's all very well covering the pyramids in gold but who is going to pay the long term cost of keeping a large security team for each pyramid to stop people stealing the gold? Nil Einne (talk) 12:45, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Further to my reply, according to Gold, the density of gold at r.t. is 19.3  g·cm⁻³. This means your 100 kg is ~ 5181.3 cm³ or 5.1813 litres. Okay perhaps I was a bit too stingy earlier let's say you use ~NZ$6.7 million on the gold. You now have ~10.4 litres to cover however many pyramids you want to cover. Yeepee... BTW, re: Saunders above another factor you haven't considered is the poor alien archaelogists. "I can get why they emtombed these people and why they put servants their to 'look after them in the afterlife'. But why did they stick people on the outside a few thousand years later that I don't get" Nil Einne (talk) 13:07, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

novelists getting published in C17 Europe?

How would a writer have gonebout getting published in 17th century France? Did he/she submit to a slushpile? Were there editors, subeditors etc in the publishing houses? Who were the publishing houses one was most likely to submit to?

Thanks Adambrowne666 (talk) 19:08, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

You might take a look at French literature of the 17th century, which gives a lot of context as to who would have been writing in the first place. I don't know the 17th century very well but I do know that publishing was still extremely expensive and had a very small audience until the 19th century in general; most of our ideas of how publishing works or should work come from this later period, when publishing becomes effectively "modern". --24.147.86.187 (talk) 19:33, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

That is some help, and a great article, thanks for that Adambrowne666 (talk) 19:19, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Captives in the war of the kingdoms

The massacres of the Irish royalists at Drogheda and Wexford by Cromwell have left a lasting impression. I was wondering if a different standard applied in England, or in Scotland, over the treatment of captives at this time? Irishbard (talk) 19:27, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I have always felt, and please forgive me for saying so, that what happened at Drogheda and Wexford has been accompanied by a 'mood of martyrdom’, if that's the right expression, which has done more to obscure than reveal the historical significance of these events. Yes, they were bad; yes, there was a mood of deep hostility in the English Protestant army to Irish Catholic rebels; but in themselves these incidents were not untypical of warfare in the seventeenth century. Indeed, as I have said before, they are as nothing compared with the truly dreadful Sack of Magdeburg during the Thirty Years War.

Generally speaking, though not always observed, soldiers taken captive in wars between nations could expect to be treated with a degree of mercy, especially where some ransom could be obtained. Civil war was different for the simple reason that those in rebellion against the legitimate authority of the state were technically traitors. At the beginning of the English Civil War there were those on the Royalist side who were tempted to take such an approach towards captured Parliamentarians, though a sense of realism prevailed, an understanding that reprisals would only be followed by counter-reprisals. Both sides, then, accepted the principle that those who surrendered on quarter were safe.

However there were degrees of surrender; surrendering at quarter, was one thing; surrendering at mercy, quite another. In the latter case-defence to the last extremity-it was up to the victorious commander if the prisoners lives were spared or not. Mostly they were, but sometimes they were not. There were notorious massacres in England at Hopton, Bartholmey, Bolton, Leicester and elsewhere. In Scotland the fall of Aberdeen in 1644 and Dundee in 1651 were followed by a sack, in which at least some of the civilian population was caught up.

There was also the more general problem that arose from the capture of large numbers of prisoners. Many died from neglect, not because of the deliberate cruelty of their captors, but simply because there was no process and system in place for dealing with captives on any scale. After his victory at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 Cromwell attempted to deal with the problem by allowing many of those considered less dangerous to go home. Even so, a great many of those who were left died in captivity. Clio the Muse (talk) 02:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much for this information, Clio. Who, I wonder, do you think was the worst in the treatment of captives, the royalists or the roundheads? Irishbard (talk) 21:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

December 22

1964 World's Fair

Time Capsule

In the 1964 New York World's Fair there was a Time Capsule. It seems like I remember signing a journal, with thousands of other tourists, that was to be put into the capsule. Probably a micro film (or digital) of the books were placed in the capsule. Is there a record anywhere of the people that signed this or copies of those books where perhaps one could look through? Are the original journal entry books someplace like National Archives?--Doug ^talk 00:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

There is (or was) a replica of the time capsule at the George Westinghouse Museum in Wilmerding, Pennsylvania; however that museum's website is down, so there's no easy way to determine if it still exists or if it included a replica of the signatures. A year ago, it was suggested that the museum's contents would be moved to the Heinz History Center. - Nunh-huh 07:05, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer - that now gives me some clues of perhaps whom to contact. Maybe they will know something on this.--Doug ^talk 15:54, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Bob Considine

I've been trying to sort out whether the Bob Considine who was son of vaudeville impresario John Considine (Seattle) is the same one who wrote Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. John definitely had a son Bob; standard short bios of John's grandsons, actors John and Tim Considine, routinely mention him as their uncle. However, they often refer to him as a "sportscaster". We don't have an article on Bob Considine / Robert Considine, although the author and columnist clearly deserves one.

[5] says the Bob Considine in this family wrote The Babe Ruth Story. [ His IMDB page] give his date and place of birth as "4 November 1906, Washington, District of Columbia, USA". The Find-A-Grave page on the Bob Considine who wrote Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo gives the same DOB. But someone might have been confused: these are not the strongest of sources. Does anyone have something more solid? - Jmabel | Talk 03:53, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Riley, S.G. (1995) Biographical Dictionary of American Newspaper Columnists lists "Considine, Robert Bernard" (14 Nov. 1906–25 Sept. 1975), born Washington D.C., writer for INS, author or editor of more than 20 books including The Babe Ruth Story (1948) and Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1953). His autobiography is: Considine, B. (1967). It's all news to me; a reporter's deposition. New York: Meredith Press. OCLC 1083315. Sorry, no mention of any family, but i'll keep looking.—eric 18:18, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, one step in the right direction: we now at least know with some confidence that the Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo guy is the same person as the Babe Ruth Story guy. Interesting that the birth date you have is off by 10 days from IMDB, though. - Jmabel | Talk 06:37, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

IMDB is not an unimpeachable source. It relies, as we do here at Wikipedia, on a large number of different contributors. They're supposed to check the veracity of everything, but that has as many loopholes as Wikipedia's policy of verifiability, where sometimes uncited facts get tagged as such, sometimes they don't. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Jahangir nanak

WHo is this Jahangir nanak in Bangladeshi politics? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.14.118.52 (talk) 04:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you referring to this Jahangir Nanak? —Preceding unsigned comment added by FisherQueen (talk • contribs) 13:03, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

What is the income range for middle, upper middle and upper classes in America?

Is there a simple chart that records income by class? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.163.233.199 (talk) 14:40, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

These are arbitrary distinctions. The fashion is to pretend that everyone who works is middle class and that everyone who doesn't work is poor (as opposed to rich). A valid (that is, non-arbitrary) class distinction is that between the bourgeois (who obtain income by means other than wages: dividends, inheritance, etc.) and the proletariat (who obtain income only by wages, or perhaps contract work). Yet, within the proletariat there are clearly distinctions of class. These may have little to do with income; education is more important as what separates them socially. A grad student who makes next to nothing is nevertheless comfortably within the "middle class," whereas a factory worker who makes three times as much money likely is not. (This is true even if the grad student is studying literature and headed for a low-paying career, so long as it is an intellectual one; but if he winds up waiting tables then he becomes déclassé, de-classed.) Likewise, extremely well-payed workers (upper management types, CEOs) may socially mingle with the bourgeois; of course, at a certain level of wage income, non-wage income becomes an easy possibility and thus practical reality. The highest wages go to celebrities; here the simple unipolar measurement of class becomes ridiculous. Celebrities are not within the same class as CEOs or as old money bourgeois, even if all these classes have more intersection between them than with the lower classes, and celebrities may or may not have any money or income but retain their status. The analysis of the upper classes can't treat them as one bloc in the same way that is sometimes more feasible with the lower classes.

Perhaps the best marker of class within the proletariat, that is of being "middle" rather than "lower" class, is the schools to which one sends one's children: those in the middle class proper (which might be called the "upper middle class" by those who maintain the above-mentioned fashion) send their children to primary schools in which practically all well-behaved students (those who are not extremely stupid) attend universities and the most intelligent and well-behaved attend "good" universities. Within the lower class proper (which is likely to be called the middle class), the primary schools do not guarantee college admission to all of their students, but only to the best of them. The upper class would, in this system, be those who can afford to send their children to private primary schools which guarantee admission to the "good" universities. —Jemmy_tc 15:14, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I am interested to read that there are, apparently, so many fine distinctions in American society. For example, I have never heard the term déclassé used in the sense Jemmy describes, either informally, or formally in any sociological study. The separation between "bourgeois" and "proletariat" also strikes me as, well, arbitrary. As for the highest wages going to celebrities, I rather think that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, using just two examples, are right up there with any celebrity on an annual basis, unless you are defining "celebrity" to mean anyone who is known to make a lot of money. I'd appreciate some references where I might read further about these class divisions. Bielle (talk) 16:51, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what Bill Gates' salary is, but I imagine it is much less than a film stars. Of course, he's made a lot of money through capital gains, which are not wages. AFAIK, Warren Buffet does not receive wages at all; all of his income is through dividends and capital gains. His wages are zero, which is less than a waitress! I certainly didn't mean to say (nor did I say!) that celebrities have the highest incomes. The highest incomes are not wages; I did not mean to say otherwise! The distinction between bourgeois and proletariat on the basis of their source of income is arbitrary only in the sense that every distinction is arbitrary; I just meant that it is qualitative and concrete, unlike (say) some arbitrary amount of income. It is also a damned important distinction in sociological analysis!

As far as my use of declasse, its literal translation from French is "declassed." The first definition in the American Heritage Dictionary is "1. Lowered in class, rank, or social position." Its use to refer to someone who was born into a certain class, but has lost his class status, is (despite what you have seen!) quite common (considering that the word is uncommon) and is a simple literal usage of the French. The usage that refers to behavior unfitting of one's class status is secondary and metaphorical. In any case, when one refers to people rather than behavior as declasse, it always has the first meaning. —Jemmy_tc 01:12, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Social class and income are both extremely hard to measure and make sense of, if it is even possible at all. However, you may be interested in the following articles:

• Social class in the United States
• Personal income in the United States
• Household income in the United States
• Affluence in the United States

-- zzuuzz ^(talk) 16:57, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Was Jemmy describing U.S. society? I certainly don't find that explanation to ring true. "...primary schools in which practically all well-behaved students (those who are not extremely stupid) attend universities and the most intelligent and well-behaved attend "good" universities. Within the lower class proper (which is likely to be called the middle class), the primary schools do not guarantee college admission to all of their students, but only to the best of them.' What? Rmhermen (talk) 21:07, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Rmhermen, you were a little more blunt that I was, but my puzzlement remains at the head-scratching stage in respect of almost every one of Jemmy's claims. Bielle (talk) 23:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I am indeed describing U.S. society. What kind of question is "what?"? I will certainly agree that education is as arbitrary a marker as anything else; but if you look at American middle class you will see that I am not alone in assigning it a central importance (which is not to say that there is any sort of consensus either). Anyway, I emphasize that I only suggested it as a marker, as one indicator which I consider to be the best single indicator, though certainly not the whole story. It will correlate quite well with many other indicators, obviously. I think it is certainly far better than any dividing line based on quantity of income; does anyone disagree with that?

Your previous objection, Bielle, was simply based on your failure to understand that by "wages" I meant "wages" and not "capital gains." Perhaps I am being misunderstood in other respects as well. —Jemmy_tc 01:27, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I did assume that by "wages" you meant "wages", Jemmy. 'Tis true that wages are not capital gains, though they may include stock options, bonuses and commissions. 'Tis also true that, for the purposes of classifying people according to income range, as requested by the questionner, the difference is likely only of interest to Infernal Revenue. Distinguishing between the "bourgeois" and the "proletariat" based on the source of their incomes ignores a lot of crossover: the retired, and those with family money who also hold down jobs. Many of the people whose income is solely from inheritances, dividends and the like are the retired, especially the retired who have created their own "pension funds" through investment. Does this make them bourgeois? Do those who have inheritances, dividends and capital gains, but who also work at salaried jobs (like Queen Elizabeth, for example, though she is not an American, or many of the Kennedys) become a member of the proletariat by virtue of their wage? I wouldn't disagree that education, both the "where" as well as the "what", may be a class indicator, but I do not know of any primary school that "guarantees" admission to university or of any sociological study that equates good behaviour in primary school with admission to university. As for the class to which a graduate student belongs, my own observation would be that the student takes the class of his parents to school with him and, as post-graduate studies are expensive, most of such students will be at least middle class. Any such student who relies on scholarships and hasn't the money for the right clothes or the time to hang out in the right places will not be viewed as middle class, almost no matter what he studies. I would reiterate, these are my own observations; this is not a field in which I have expertise. I would be pleased to take a look at the studies on which you have based your conclusions. (Because we are wandering rather far afield from the original question, it might be more appropriate if you share your sources on my talk page.) Bielle (talk) 03:43, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, given that you used Warren Buffet as an example of someone receiving higher wages than a celebrity, it's clear that you either misunderstood "wages" or one of us is wrong about the source of Buffet's income. Regarding your question about the proletariat: I said, not that the proletariat is not anyone who receives a wage, but anyone who depends on a wage. Retirees are indeed bourgeois, technically speaking. You are not the first to point out that this distinction does not correspond to actual social groupings in every case; in fact, even I pointed it out, right before you did! Your response to what I said about schools is malicious interpretation. Obviously no schools guarantee admission to a university in the sense of, say, a contractual guarantee; that is so obviously false that you should interpret it not to mean that, if you really want to understand what I'm saying. "Primary schools which guarantee admission to a "good" college" denotes prep schools where most students go on to highly selective schools and practically 100% go on to selective schools. Likewise, decent private schools and public schools in sufficiently expensive districts send roughly 100% of students (exempting "bad students" and low IQ cases) to some college and regularly send some percentage to selective colleges. By "good behavior" I just mean that the student does the necessary work and stays out of "trouble"--that the student is a "good student"; do you really need a sociological study to tell you that bad students don't end up in good universities even if they attend a decent high school? Do I really need to explain my meaning of everything in such tedious detail? All that I have said here is either obvious, or definitional. You may think my definitions of class are no good, but they're at least quite plausible. Parents who cannot send their children to schools that guarantee a certain outcome (in the sense that pressing down on the gas pedal guarantees the motion of the car) are not securely within a class; that is why the line is so well-drawn there. —Jemmy_tc 21:57, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Coming at this from another angle: "upper", "lower" and "middle" are only one way of coming at things, and income is only one determinant of class. I have some friends who we jokingly refer to as "lowest middle class" because they are economically poor (some would technically be considered homeless), but definitely have educations and middle-class values, and (as long as their health is OK) could certainly at any time decide to re-enter the more mainstream economy and would be firmly in the economic middle class within a year.

Also, the amount of money you need to lead a particular lifestyle varies wildly between a city like NYC (where even a shabby studio apartment typically goes for well over $1000/month) and Detroit (where that same amount of money will rent you a house quite sufficient for a large family) or a rural area (where that's a more than adequate mortgage payment).

That said, for a typical middling American city, I would say a person living alone needs to be able to spend about $20K a year in cash or equivalent (e.g. artificially low rent, informal barter, etc.) to have the choice of managing their money carefully and leading what I would consider a lower middle class life. More income needed if they are older or have health issues. Probably another $10K for additional people in a household. Again, this is very rough, but anyone below that level, I'd consider basically poor. Anywhere from that up to about $100K a year (plus, say $30K each for additional household members, and again I'm talking expenditures, wherever the money or equivalents is coming from), someone is probably living a basically middle-class existence, but one with more and more perks: eating out when you want to, owning your home, owning a car, giving to charity, buying nice electronic stuff, increasingly expensive hobbies, increasing ability to pay someone else to do tasks you find unpleasant, the chance to travel, etc. At the top end of that range, poor people would consider you rich, but even at the top end of that range, there would still be a lot of things you could only do if you budgeted carefully. Somewhere around that $100K money starts to translate into power not only on a personal level but at a societal level, if you choose to spend it that way (simply not an option below that level).

Or at least that's how it looks to me. Naturally, though, tastes enter the picture. If you like to keep six cats as pets and three of them are diabetic animals that need a lot of health care, they can be as expensive as raising a child. If your idea of a good time is sitting at home reading a book, then you may effectively live a much higher-class existence on a given amount of money than someone whose idea of a good time involves several rounds of drinks in a nice bar. - Jmabel | Talk 07:05, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I see there has been a lot of discussion of this topic, and yet there really is not a simple breakdown of the different levels of income in U.S. society, so I thought I'd provide that as succinctly as possible. Sociologists generally measure U.S. income to be broken down into five different divisions, called Quintiles (which if you follow that link does provide some brief graphs of income range). However, there are some Sociologists who feel that the breakdown into five divisions does not properly reflect American society's cultural perceptions of class, and so they favor a breakdown that combines the three middle quintiles to create three separate divisions instead of five, so that it looks like this instead:
20% of population with highest income
60% of population with medium income (combines the middle three categories, each with 20%)
20% of population with lowest income
So one may choose either way to represent these figures: either 5 divisions or 3, depending on your intended audience and what you're trying to illustrate with your thesis. -- Saukkomies 08:27, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Looking for source of quote.

I'm looking for a source of this quote, purportedly by H.L. Mencken, "Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavored and colored, and put into cans." I probably read it somewhere in one of those quasi-reliable trivia books like the Bathroom Reader and it shows up on some quote pages on the internet (though not Wikiquote). Besides confirmation that it's something he did say (so I can add it to the WQ page), I'd just like to know what work it came from so I can read the rest of the piece. Matt Deres (talk) 14:56, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Mencken, H. L. (1926). Notes on Democracy. New York: Knopf. p. 192. OCLC 182664—eric 17:49, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Cool. Thank you very much! Matt Deres (talk) 02:25, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Sole Proprietorships and Partnerships

What are some examples (businesses) in the United States that are sole proprietorships or partnerships? 76.247.73.237 (talk) 16:47, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I found 5 partnerships in my yellow book: "the anonymous lobster-catching business that I found in a news article", "potbelly's", "partners in pediatrics, LTD", "Martin Painting & Coating Co.", "Digger & Finch Pub".76.247.73.237 (talk) 17:57, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Law firms, medical practices, architectural practices are all examples of the types of businesses that tend to be partnerships. Sole proprietorships are often the self employed, where the business's principal asset is the activity of the sole proprietor. Seamtress, a writer, a computer consultant (or another other kind of self-employed consultant) are examples. Bielle (talk) 19:45, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

In respect of the partnerships you found in your "yellow book", it is unlikely that "Partners in Pediatrics LTD" is a partnership, in spite of the use of "partners" in its name. "LTD" normally stand for "Limited" which refers to a company whose owners have limited liability, and that is definitely not part of a definition of a partnership. The same proviso applies to the business entitled "Martin Painting and Coating Co." where "Co." is short for "company" and a company is not a partnership, either, so far as I know. The lobster business might well be a partnership, but I'd be surprised if the pub were one. I have no idea about the business named "Potbelly's". Bielle (talk) 20:33, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

December 23

Mistakes in Holy Books and Proving Religions False

I’ve heard that one way you can know, test, prove, discover, or find out that a religion is false, that it is not the “one true religion”, is by finding, looking for, and searching for mistakes and errors in its holy religious book or books. By mistakes and errors, they could probably be, for example, scientific, historical, archaeological, chronological, or logical mistakes and errors.

There are so many different religions in the world today. Many of them have so many believers, millions and millions of them around the world. Many of them have existed for such a long time, for hundreds and thousands of years throughout history in the past to today. Religions have had such a big impact on the world’s history, art, music, societies, culture, recreation, holidays, people, philosophy, politics, government, and countries.

So I don’t understand. Is that it? Is it that simple? Can religions be disproved, proven wrong and false, and proven not to be the one true religion so simply, easily, and quickly?

Bowei Huang (talk) 05:13, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Most people can't think critically. It's sad, but true, and that affects every one of us. They are little more than trained animals. Despite any amount of evidence they will continue believing in that nonsense, which is either a false theory or a non-falsifiable theory. All believers share one basic false belief: the belief that the outcome of events are somehow affected by a mystical intelligence. Scientific tests prove this to be false, only random governs such things, but the populace will never accept that, they aren't intelligent enough. Something similar happens with the proof that 0.999...=1. Most people simply can't understand that, and will never be able to. As Max Planck noticed, new ideas triumph not because you convince your opponents, but because older opponents die and are replaced by younger people. --Taraborn (talk) 12:44, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be assuming that there is in fact a single religion that is the 'true religion' or that any religion is provable. Just about every religion claims to be 'the religion' or 'the chosen people' and that all the others are mislead. Rfwoolf (talk) 05:31, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Past experience suggests that the many errors which have been found in scripture have no great effect on belief. - Nunh-huh 06:48, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

A truly all-knowing God would be able to predict even the most random events. I don't see how your idea proves anything either way, Quantum Theory or no Quantum Theory. Wrad (talk) 22:43, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

(To answer the original question): Obviously not. If that were the case, everyone would have given up their religions by now. Sure, there are people who try to maintain that the Earth is less than 6,000 years old and that Noah had dinosaurs in the Ark. But many, many people who accept basic scientific principles also maintain their belief in religion. How? Well, some simply accept that the Bible, for instance, was written by human beings who lacked modern knowledge of astronomy and geology. But while rejecting the literal truth of the Bible's historical accounts, they maintain their belief in the religion itself because of its moral principles and because it is the tradition of their ancestors. Others refuse to take the Bible's historical accounts literally. In Jewish tradition, for instance, it's common to assume that the "Garden" of Eden, the "man" Adam and even the "days" of creation were not a garden, a man and days like we know them in the physical world. After all, if God is all-powerful, certainly He can mess with time and space to create humanity by way of the Garden of Eden in a metaphysical sphere and still make the physical world look like we came from Homo erectuses. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 07:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah many religions are either ambigious or support evolution Level of support for evolution#Support for evolution by religious bodies (not very good article but does cover it somewhat) even tho it appears to contradict the teachings of many religions particularly Abrahamic ones Nil Einne (talk) 08:15, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The bigger issue here is that religion often attempts to claim a place for itself afforded to no other system of belief, in the sciences or otherwise: that contradiction, historical errors, and other things we would normally use to discount a scientific theory are somehow not applicable. The paradox is that while religion is free to make scientific propositions about the creation of the earth, man, and historical events, it is not held accountable when those propositions fall through. For a good discussion on this, first try Stephen Jay Gould#Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA), then try this article. To be honest, I find the "non-overlapping Magisteria" principle silly - if religion should make scientific predictions, it should be taken accountable when errors are found. Your mileage may vary - precedent seems to say it doesn't matter anyway, people will still believe in stories contrary to scientific fact. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 09:58, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Non-overlapping magisteria is not itself a new idea. Paul H Hirst proposed the idea of "Forms of knowledge" ("logically discrete forms of rational understanding" see here)in 1965. He was not original in this idea either, but he was when he suggested that school pupils should be taught the different forms of knowledge, and that they should learn to think as scientists, mathematicians, historians, moralists, etc, and thus that they should be able to distinguish between situations in which the different modes of reasoning were applicable. ("It is because the concepts are used in a particular way that any proposition is meaningful. The concepts on which our knowledge is built form distinctive networks of relationships. If we transgress the rules of the relationships which the concepts meaningfully permit, we necessarily produce nonsense.") The existence of this question seems to indicate that he had a point. SaundersW (talk) 11:21, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Non-overlapping magisteria goes back quite a bit earlier, even. It's what sociologists of science call boundary work—erecting safe little walls in order to impress your authority over one area and maybe try to avoid conflict in others. It is never as non-contentious as its practitioners would like to pretend it is. The idea that different professions should know when and where they have the authority to say things goes back to medieval scholastism; the whole preface of Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is all about why a mathematician should or should not be allowed to talk about things usually reserved for "philosophers" (that is, why someone using "just math" should be allowed to talk about things in the "real world"). --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:09, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see where you are coming from here, and yes, I agree that it is dangerous to shut off bits of knowledge as appropriate territory only for specialists. Hirst's thesis was that all students should be taught to think in all these manners, so that they can distinguish between different categories and use the appropriate kinds of arguments in the appropriate context, ie that the same person can "do math" where math is appropriate and "do theology" where that is appropriate. SaundersW (talk) 11:55, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

"After all, if God is all-powerful, certainly He can mess with time and space to create humanity by way of the Garden of Eden in a metaphysical sphere and still make the physical world look like we came from Homo erectuses." — Mwalcoff, that's an interesting theological point of view; I don't believe I've ever encountered it before. Do we have an article on it?--Pharos (talk) 03:24, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

It's similar to Omphalos (theology) -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 04:55, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Not really. Omphalos is a pseudoscientific "explanation" for the material world. What Mwalcoff was describing was some sort of mysticism.--Pharos (talk) 05:39, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we have an article on the concept, but I once saw an article on the Internet talking about how creationism as promoted by some Christians is foreign to Judaism, and it gave the example of how the Garden of Eden and Genesis story are described in rabbinic sources. I can't find that article, but you can see in the Jewish Encyclopedia article on Adam that Adam in the Garden was clearly not a plain old "man" like we think of men. Here is Dovber Schneuri's description of the Garden of Eden [6]:

The Garden of Eden is an ethereal state of being, which is an intermediary between the physical and the spiritual, between matter and spirit. For example: the taste of an apple, though the taste is within the physical apple, yet it does not occupy tangible space. Before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge their bodies were also on this ethereal state; once they ate from the tree, they became more ‘materialized’ and therefore could no longer remain in the spiritual state of the garden. The Garden of Eden therefore exists on Earth, yet we (with our material eyes) cannot see it on the map. Just like the vegetative properties in the soil cannot be seen on the map. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 18:11, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

The difficult is that 'truth' is not the only real thing in life. Whether or not religions are disproved really doesn't alter the value they bring to many people (and yes problems too). We must remember that those with religion have their culture just as those without religion do. I would say to me this is the same idea as who is (or isn't) factually your family. By simple DNA you might tell a father his son of 20 years is actually not his at a.., but someone else's. Will that 'fact' alter their belief in who is their son? Often not. Why? Because the fact alone is not why they are their son - it is the years of shared-experience, the closeness, the connection etc. Similarly in religion if you suddenly had 100% proof that religion Y is based on false evidence will those who have put 30 years of belief into it convert? Not likely. They will consider the 'lie' to be worth as much as the 'truth'. It isn't a case of lacking intelligence or being resistant to change/ignoring new information - it is that there is bond in religion (as in most cultural groups) beyond the mere 'facts' which gets into many more aspects of life. In short it is not that simple, because proof isn't what many people are looking for. ny156uk (talk) 16:41, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The major holy texts are very, very old and have been written, edited, re-written, and translated by semi-literate people for hundreds if not thousands of years. To expect them to be of the same empirical quality as, say, modern work (if we hold that in a high esteem) seems to me rather foolish. To believe that the will of a deity has somehow guided said semi-literate monks correctly is itself problematic (what of multiple copies? who decides what is canon? where in the canon does it explain who decides what is canon?). Obviously fundamentalists (of any sort) believe this to be a good approach, but they are clearly not approaching this from an empirical or skeptical viewpoint, by definition. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:14, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Religions are not scientific disciplines, and scriptures are not science textbooks. I don't look to religion to tell me about the evolution of man or the diffusion of the world's languages. Science can answer those questions. I may look to religion to answer questions about what science cannot, such as morality and metaphysics. I'm sure many of the world's non-atheists feel the same way. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:05, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Science can't tell us anything about morality? -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 03:05, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Well not quite. Social-science can theorise and explain what differing cultures across the world/history think of morality 'en masse'. They could even look for constants and consider them part of a group of non-moving morals but it cannot provide facts or 'answers' any more than religion can. Philosophy would be a much better place for theories on morality and ethics because they seem to be more abstract and non-committal than things such as traditional sciences and even religion - which are both bound by more of demand for yes/no clarity to their decisions. The point, though, seems to be that science alone is not a guide to life - whereas religion can be. It offers direction in how to live, what is right and wrong that sort of thing. Good science doesn't. Good science doesn't say (for example) that killing animals is wrong because of the pain/suffering they endure. It provides evidence that this is the case and leaves society to make the decision on the relative value of that 'truth'. A poor example i'm sure, but the point is not about whether that is right or wrong, but that science is not an apparatus for proving morality. Religion on the other hand does not offer evidence, it offers guidance on what is right and wrong based on the words of deities/gods/whatever. Though to make matters worse even religious morality changes across time, across the world!! ny156uk (talk) 16:49, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Religion doesn't really have any answers about morality, just opinions. And I doubt we can say there are such things as "answers about metaphysics". — Kieff | Talk 00:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

And that statement itself can be seen as an opinion... Wrad (talk) 02:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

To be clear on the morality issue, philosophy has a whole branch called 'ethics'. Rfwoolf (talk) 19:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Fox on Barbados

Why did George Fox visit Barbados in 1671 and what was the impact of his visit? Major Barbara (talk) 06:54, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Here (http://www.quakerinfo.com/barbados.shtml) might help get a bit more info. ny156uk (talk) 11:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

There is also an online copy of Fox's journal where he discusses this time period. -- Saukkomies 11:13, 23 December 2007

And a similar question from september 2007; Fox on Barbados in 1671 SaundersW (talk) 14:14, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Hamilton and Montrose

First Question: Is there any obvious reason why James, 1st Duke of Hamilton should have been such a poor military commander and James, 1st Marquis of Montrose such a talented one, considering the first had more campaigning experience than the second?

Second Question: What was the reason for the decline in trust between Hamilton and King Charles I? Thank youDonald Paterson (talk) 11:42, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Q1 - Because experience is not a useful indicator of quality? There are those who have done things for years who cannot do them as well as those who have done them for weeks... On a scantly more useful note perhaps there were more factors at play than simply leadership in their respective commanding campaigns? Certainly when we judge political-leaders it is difficult to remove them from the global history/circumstances affecting what they could and couldn't achieve in power. 00:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

the promised one of Islam and the Seal of the Prophets

Muslims, to the best of my knowledge, are waiting for a "Promised One" of some sort, eg. Shi'a Muslims are expecting the return of the 12th Imam, and Sunnis the Mihdi, and/or the return of Christ (please correct any errors I have made here). However, they also regard Mohammed as the Seal of the Prophets, that is, the last prophet. How can they await the appearance of a Promised One if they also believe their prophet is the last? 203.221.127.216 (talk) 12:46, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a contradiction here: the Mahdi is the prophesied "redeemer", not a prophet. Skarioffszky (talk) 15:34, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Italian army in WW2

The performance of the Italian army in WW2 was generally very poor. The various failures over a number of fronts suggests a lack of preparation, surprising considering the militant nature of the regime. Is there any evidence, then, on the structure, organisation and levels of investment in the armed forces before 1940? Were there specific command or logistical problems that could explain successive defeats? Henry Henryson (talk) 18:46, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The poor performance of the Fascist Italian army during WWII can not be attribiuted mainly to insuficient investments in military hardware and logistics, there were severall other reasons:

1. the Italian fleet was given priority over other branches of the Italian army (and was one of them of powerful navies in the world at the start of WWII)
2. lack of morale
3. the inability of the Italian factories to produce large numbers of modern equipment, (medium tanks like the P40 tank never entered mass production)
4. The inability of Italian allies (Germany, Japan, Hungary and others) to suply Italian forces with substancial number of military equipment that they were not able to produce themselves. Mieciu K (talk) 02:10, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Cruelty reduced disposal

If I catch a mouse by a leg in a mousetrap, how should I execute it in the manner that is least cruel. I have no cyanide/ arsenic, etc. I am not prepared to hit it on the head with a hammer. - 91.106.39.188 (talk) 20:57, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Aspirin? 70.162.25.53 (talk) 22:38, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps let it run free rather than catch it in the first place? Alternatively if you've already caught it perhaps you could set it free after having a check to see how bad its leg is? Certainly I know that if I were to be caught by a trap i'd rather have a broken-leg (or snapped) and be alive than be killed...Of course it might be considered 'cruel' to set it free when it is liable to struggle to continue to survive so how about packing it on its way with a nice bit of cheese or whatever mice actually like to eat? ny156uk (talk) 23:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that instantly destroying the brain is by far the most humane death possible for any animal. But I, too, can see several problems with the hammer method. They say freezing to death is not too bad once you get past the shivering. See hypothermia. How about dropping mouse and attached trap in a bucket and filling it with ice cubes. Wait for the mouse to fall asleep from the cold, and then pour in water to drown it. --Milkbreath (talk) 00:42, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I've seen my father neck various critters in the past. Always seemed to be a pretty quick death if done correctly. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 00:49, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

A college lab lists several ways for humanely killing mice (they like to call it "sacrificing" but that calls up images of pagan rites). Anesthesia or sedation of the animal prior to killing is recommended by the lab. Edison (talk) 05:38, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

"the most humane death possible for any animal" would occur after that animal becomin' human ... Human death is NOT what electric chairs or drugs used for death penalty in some countries offer : why bother for mice and not for men ? -- DLL ^{.. T} 11:20, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

We may never know :) --Taraborn (talk) 15:10, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

One method of "sacrificing" lab mice is a guillotine, but that calls up images of the mouse getting a final ride through the lab in a little cart, with the other animals jeering and throwing refuse, like in A Tale of Two Cities. 71.57.125.95 (talk) 14:21, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that the lab techs' job? ;) --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 14:26, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Evidence of possession of WMD (Weapons of Mouse Destruction) may result in your home / suburb / town / state to be reduced to neat piles of smouldering rubble by the intergalactic ratpack. Corollary rodenticide will solve the problem of any relatives to Disneyworldian mice.

If you use such a WMD in your home, you must be aware of the consequences. Regret and Ooopses post facto / post mortem are a bit too late. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:46, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

December 24

Bourgeois charms?

The movie title "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie", what does it mean? How can a charm be discreet? Is this a French thing? --Milkbreath (talk) 00:28, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Among the meanings of "discreet" are "unpretentious", "modest", "unobtrusive", "unnoticeable". I'd go here with the first. I'm sure it is meant somewhat ironically by Buñuel, since he obviously makes fun of the bourgeoisie and its pretentions, but perhaps he is also suggesting that, in spite of all their ignorance, stupidity and pretentions, the bourgeoisie nevertheless also has an unpretentious charm, like kids at play who don't know any better. But here I'm out on a limb.  --Lambiam 00:55, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think he meant it literally in any way. The movie spends the entire time lampooning the idea of the bourgeosie, portraying them in the worst possible light, with no redeeming qualities. (I thought it was a lousy movie, personally, but I'm no film critic.) --24.147.86.187 (talk) 15:50, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Why do Canadians shop in US?

The CAD is now at par with the USD. Say you live in Windsor, Ontario, and are shopping in Michigan for clothes, and you stay there for maximum 8 hours. When you return to Canada, you will have to pay GST, Ontario PST, Duties if it made in China, and I am not sure about this but the Michigan's Sales Tax.

So why do people consider cross border shopping as a money saving opportunity? --Obsolete.fax (talk) 05:40, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Few links: http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publications/pub/bsf5056-eng.html and Canadian_import_duties. --Obsolete.fax (talk) 05:42, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Two answers. First, if you bought the stuff in Canada you'd still be paying GST and PST, so that's not a factor either way. Only the duty and Michigan sales tax are factors. Canadian prices are often simply higher than US ones when exchange rates are stable: for one thing, the lower population density in Canada means that shipping tends to cost more, and the degree of competition between merchants may be different regarding specific products. In addition, prices of imported goods often lag behind exchange rate changes, as merchants base their prices on the wholesale prices they paid months earlier; with the Canadian dollar rising recently, this means Canadian prices are more likely to be higher than US ones. All this means that Canadian prices could be higher by enough to offset the duty and Michigan taxes.

The second answer is that some people cheat and don't declare everything they bought, hoping to get away with it.

--Anonymous Canadian, 05:56 UTC, December 24, 2007.

It's also just kind of fun, at first. Why shop at Zellers when you can go to Target, which we don't have here? I don't think there is going to be a logical answer here; people do lots of dumb things for no reason. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:38, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree that the "dumb factor" is overlooked way too often. Just have a look at the millions of people that play lottery, can you think of a dumber investment for your money? --Taraborn (talk) 15:20, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, this comes to mind... Corvus cornix_talk 21:21, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Well lottery players often have a problem with basic maths [7] so it's not surprising if stats isn't their strong suit. Nil Einne (talk) 12:14, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

It depends on what you buy and how much. I try to go clothes shopping whenever I'm in the US. One time recently, I spent about $200 for stuff that would have cost at least $400 in Canada, if I could find it there. And the sales taxes are much lower in the U.S. As long as you spend less than $400 for a weekend trip, you don't have to pay any tax when you go back to Canada. The key here, though, is that I'm going to the U.S. anyway. Someone who lives in Toronto could use up eight gallons of gas traveling to Niagara Falls and back, plus all of the other costs of driving. It could very easily cancel out the benefits of shopping in the U.S. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:35, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The Iron Guard

Why did the Germans offer no support to the Romanian Iron Guard when it was suppressed by Antonescu in January 1941? Captainhardy (talk) 06:54, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Did you read The Legionnaires Rebellion and the Bucharest Pogrom, Iron Guard and Romania during World War II? These articles seem to provide enough info for you to reach your own conclusions. Antonescu was an ally of Hitler and it seems unlikely that the Germans would have wanted to support an coup by an unstable and unreliable military regime against a resonably stable and reliable partner Nil Einne (talk) 12:11, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Why was simi banned?

Why was simi banned? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hadif Abdul Shaheed (talk • contribs) 08:40, December 24, 2007 (UTC) – Please sign your posts!

SIMI was banned because the Government of India believes that the organization is involved in terrorism. For more information, see Students Islamic Movement of India.  --Lambiam 09:31, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

explain process of putting up a picture for explanation

need a picture explained of a lot of famous people —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.81.232.111 (talk • contribs) 14:53, December 24, 2007 (UTC) – Please sign your posts!

Sorry, I can't understand what you are asking for. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 15:48, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Is your question about how to upload a picture that you have? Just click "Upload file" in the left margin and follow the instructions. You can only do that, however, it the image is free; if it is a copyrighted image you must not upload it here. You can find more information (a step by step explanation of the process) on the page Wikipedia:Uploading images. If you have further problems with uploading an image, you can ask for help at the Wikipedia:Help desk.  --Lambiam 15:55, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

On the other hand, if you don't want to put up the picture in Wikipedia, you can use a site like Imageshack to upload a photo, and link to it from here. SaundersW (talk) 15:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

American Indian Declaration of Independence

Reading about this reminded me of something I had read about an American Indian tribe issuing a declaration of independence sometime early on in the US's history. If I remember right, Congress actually approved it, but it was vetoed by the president (perhaps Andrew Jackson?) However, I haven't been able to find any information on this on Wikipedia or elsewhere, and I'm beginning to wonder if I imagined it entirely. I believe it was a tribe in the South, but beyond that I can't remember much anything else. Anyone know whether such a thing actually ever occurred? -Elmer Clark (talk) 17:35, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

It was the Cherokees of Northern Georgia in the 1830s. They created a Declaration of Independence using a lot of wording from the US Declaration. They were facing the Indian Removal Act. Gold had recently been discovered in their territory and they were being driven out. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor, but the President ignored them (this is something he doesn't have power to do, unlike a veto, which he does have a right to do). The Cherokees were driven from Georgia to Oklahoma and thousands died in what is now called the Trail of Tears. I see no article about their Declaration on wikipedia. I can't find a copy of the text online either. It's hard to distinguish it from America's declaration on search engines. Wrad (talk) 15:32, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

An 1861 Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled Them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America, loosely modelled on the U.S. DoI, can be found here. There is also a 1974 Declaration of Continuing Independence issued by "the First International Indian Treaty Conference", controlled by Lakota activists and mentioned in our Lakota people article. I can be found (as a PDF file) here.  --Lambiam 17:00, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I just wish we could find the 1830s Cherokee one. I have a print copy of it at home and it is really excellent. Wrad (talk) 17:06, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

If you have a print copy, and it is from the 19301830s, why not type it in and reference your print copy? SaundersW (talk) 17:34, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

It's kind of long... You mean just type bits of it in the Trail of Tears article and whatnot? Wrad (talk) 18:06, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, if it is from the 1830s it is likely to be out of copyright (all authors long dead), and as it is an actual document, then citing it will not be original research. You could either try to scan the text through an optical reader and upload it to wikisource or type bits that you feel are relevant into the article you think they are relevant to, andd add a reference to your document. SaundersW (talk) 18:28, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. Wrad (talk) 18:30, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Before you type it all in, try Googling a distinctive phrase from the document; I bet you 10 to 1 'tis somewhere out there on the World-Wide Web.  --Lambiam 19:45, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the ideas. I tried it out. Here's some links: a letter to Congress, here's the 1827 Cherokee constitution, the nearest thing to a "Declaration of Cherokee Independence" that there was, dated November 5, 1829. All of these documents clearly and intentionally mimic and refer to American legal documents such as the Constitution and D of I in order to communicate to Americans that they were standing on solid legal and moral ground in their arguments. Wrad (talk) 21:42, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the info, Wrad (and everyone else). I see I wasn't remembering quite right, but very interesting nonetheless. -Elmer Clark (talk) 20:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

what is the commercial law?

deffinition of commercial law ,

See Commercial law. -Elmer Clark (talk) 18:49, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

December 25

Six Questions To Norman Mailer

If,you could ask author Norman Mailer,six questions what would they be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.161.52.26 (talk) 00:34, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

From the top of this page: Do not start debates or post diatribes. The reference desk is not a soapbox.. Please do not ask questions which can only be answered subjectively. --ColinFine (talk) 00:58, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Alternatively - what the hell it is christmas and scarcely a day goes by when an 'opinion' question isn't asked (and answered) on the ref-desks...

1) How much of what you wrote in books about your life/experiences is true, and how much is poetic-license?
2) At the end of a long day what is your preferred way of relaxing/winding down for the evening?
3) What's the deal with books, do you get paid per-sale or per edition? Do you earn anything for library withdrawals?
4) Does writing take a long time or is it like every university assignment - left until the last minute and rushed through under pressure?
5) Which of the suits from your 6 wedding days did you like best? Did the suit have any bearing on the longevity of your marriage together?
6) Do you not think that the Warhol style and many other 'styles' are too self-congratulatory and that too much of people's interests are based on defining who they are not rather than who they are?
- There's my starter for 6. Some poor questions, some obvious ones, and some perhaps less obvious ones. Hope this gives you what you need - though seeing as Mailer died this year he isn't likely to answer the 6 posers i've set for you. ny156uk (talk) 02:32, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Here's my go 1) Why do people ask pointless questions on the wikipedia ref desk? 2) What should we do about it? 3) What do you think of people who ask such questions? 4) Why should I care it's Christmas? (not that it is Christmas anymore) 5) Does 'other people are doing it' ever justify us doing something? 6) Does it justify me doing it? 7) How can I speak to you when your dead anyway? 8) Is it okay I asked 8 questions even though I was only allowed 6? Nil Einne (talk) 13:12, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Looking for a photography project about a modern second coming.

I saw a photography project that someone did a while back, and I can't remember who did it or where to find it. The subject was a modern-day Jesus, who appeared in the pictures as a curly-haired man with a beard, not looking "obviously" Jesusy; he was shown sharing a meal of pet food with an elderly immigrant, getting beat up while trying to stop a gay-bashing, and so on. The last one had him dying in an alley somewhere with no one noticing; it was very sad. I think the series dated from the seventies or the eighties. Does this ring a bell for anyone? grendel|khan 07:48, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Try Maitreya (Share International). - CarbonLifeForm (talk) 21:38, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

No, that's nothing like it. It was just a series of photos, and the subject was explicitly labeled as Jesus; he just didn't look exactly like those well-known icons. grendel|khan 05:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Angels

Hi, Whilst you do seem to have copious amounts of information on Angels and thier Orders etc there is one thing I can't find.I am trying to solve a family arguement,I say that only the Archangels have wings as they were the messengers.That is being countered by all Angels have wings.Can anyone settle this for me..........please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.200.141.39 (talk) 21:55, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

• You may find this discussion from the "Angels" article helpful. --Halcatalyst (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 22:04, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

As far as I remember the creatures with wings in the Bible were Seraph and cherubim. See Christian angelic hierarchy. The Angles in the Second and Third Sphere apparently do not have wings. --S.dedalus (talk) 22:13, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Trust a guy called Daedalus to be an expert in wingiology. Even if it is the Dublin version :) --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:25, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Only Angels Have Wings. (Would that renowned theologian Cary Grant lie to you?) Clarityfiend (talk) 05:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The organization of angels into spheres/hierarchies came much later than the Biblical record, so if you're looking to that source you won't really find distinctions like that, although it's true that Cherubim and Seraphim (only) are specifically mentioned as being winged. Archangel(s) are mentioned only twice, and no references are given to wings at all. On the other hand, Zechariah saw "two women, and the wind as in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork" during a vision, (Zech 5:9) which perhaps had a degree of symbolic content, so it's not going to be possible to make a dogmatic statement about what kinds of angels have wings or don't without resorting to later tradition anyway. ◄Zahakiel► 17:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

December 26

Smallpox erradication and the soviet union

I'd like to know more about the soviet union's involvement in the struggle to erradicate smallpox. The article on smallpox seems to indicate they had a significant participation, but fails to state so, so I'd like to get the information to put it there. Cold Light (talk) 03:47, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The book you need is Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox by Jonathan Tucker, which details not only the Soviet contributions to smallpox eradication, but also their quest to mix smallpox with other bugs. A scary book indeed, and painstakingly researched. Among the key figures in the eradication program was Dr Viktor Zhdanov, then deputy minister of health for the USSR, who addressed the World Health Assembly in Minneapolis in 1958. He proposed a 'Soviet-style' five year plan to eradicate the disease. The USSR had eliminated smallpox by 1936 despite being little better than a third world country in terms of transportation and infrastructure, having poor quality vaccines, and having to service a huge, ethnically diverse, territory. Just the kind of expertise you'd need if you were trying to remove smallpox from Brazil or India. The USSR also pledged to donate 25 million doses of vaccine.

Unfortunately, the WHO was not interested in getting rid of smallpox at the time, but was rather caught up in the expensive American plan to wipe out malaria, which was eating up $13 million of the $30 million total budget for the WHO. Essentially throwing the USSR a bone, the WHA agreed in 1959 to finance the Soviet smallpox program with a budget of only $300,000 per annum.

The story is long, complicated, but quite worth reading. The Soviets always made the smallpox program a top priority, forcing the issue when nobody else was too interested. I can't type out all the details (read the book!), but the program was largely their baby; they provided the proposal, the blueprint for vaccination schemes, and continually pushed it onto the front of the agenda. It's a bitter irony that the same country that pushed for smallpox eradication the most also mucked about with such evil uses for it. I'm sure cynics would suggest the two programs were actually wed together, but I don't think that was necessarily the case. Matt Deres (talk) 16:54, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Ooh, and here's something else. The USSR was the chief provider of the vaccine, but it was determined that their vaccines were actually substandard. When Donald Henderson (an American and another key player) went to Moscow to discuss the problem, the USSR completely overhauled their program to surpass expectations. The WHO considered a vaccine of 100 million vaccinia particles per mL to be effective - the Soviet labs began churning out vaccines that were ten times that concentration. That meant they would still be potent even after losing some of the effectiveness due to heat. Just what was needed as the WHO prepared to tackle Ethiopia and India. Matt Deres (talk) 17:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Angela Lansbury - Contact Information

Dear Reference Desk, Thank you for taking my question. Eric Skoglund mentioned you may be able to help me. As a fan, I would very much like to contact Angela Lansbury. Do you have any contact information or could you send me to someone who would know how to contact her? Gratefully Yours, Jimdando (talk) 18:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)Jim Dando Jr.

I'm sorry, but we're not the Yellow Pages. We do not provide such information. Aecis^Brievenbus 18:46, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Try contacting her agent. Good luck finding out who her agent is. Rfwoolf (talk) 19:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, however, for an extremely polite, if somewhat unusual, form of question. Bielle (talk) 19:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

You might try this: http://pro.imdb.com/name/nm0001450/agent. It's imdb's agent contacts program, which is a pay service, but is free for 14 days. I've never used it, so I don't know how useful it is. That link would go to the Angela Lansbury contact information that they might have (there's no guarantee that they have it). Corvus cornix_talk 20:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

A snailmail address, apparently for her agency, is in The Celebrity Black Book. All power to Google! --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 23:43, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I suggest we leave it at this, if just per WP:BLP. Helping the user in finding an answer to his question is fine, but let's respect Angela Lansbury's privacy. Not every reader may have noble intentions. Aecis^Brievenbus 23:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

250 pages book prize winner and finalist

Hi there, I know it's like homework but it is not. It sounds like to much research to answer this but I want to know if there any fiction book prize winner or finalist of Man Booker, Pulitzer, Giller, National Book Award, PEN/Faulkner Award and IMPAC Dublin Award that has only 250 pages only?

Please answer my questions. Thanks. The answer I want is just the books name, so I can search for it in my library. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.64.132.145 (talk) 23:21, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The Ref Desk had this exact question about 10 days ago. If I knew how to check the archives, I'd give you the reference to it. As I recall, I gave you links to articles where you could find all the information except for the number of pages. I am curious as to why the books have to have "only 250 pages only"? Bielle (talk) 23:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Music video I saw

I was watching British music programme/thing e4 music on channel E4, and a music video came on where a band where running/playing about in a gymnasium style room, where gymnasts were genuinely doing gymnastics, and the band were making lacklustre attempts etc. I also note it was quite colourful.

N.B. the band were called someone and the something, and I am sure the someone's name began with T if it helps.. thanks. Christopher —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.67.160.202 (talk) 23:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Tilly and the Wall with Sing songs along? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KirTaMHAUG0 ? Great song - can't say i've seen it on uk tv but seems to fit your description ny156uk (talk) 00:18, 27 December 2007 (UTC)