The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.
I assume that there is no "one correct answer" to this question, but I will ask it nonetheless. When an individual member of Congress (in the USA) votes on bills, is he supposed to cast his vote in order to reflect the will of his constituents? Or is he supposed to cast his vote according to his own personal beliefs? Is there any generally accepted guideline in this regard? Or is it just completely up to that individual congressman? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:252:D13:6D70:CCAD:9B1:8392:7C6B (talk) 03:55, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on the given issue. Members of either party tend to believe in the overall goals of their party, but there's also a fair amount of individuality. Congressmen are likely to be the most interested in supporting or opposing something based on what they think will help them get re-elected. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 04:52, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The best answer is probably "yes". There isn't really any "guideline" other than what those who elected the Congressmember expect. The U.S. has a "weak" party system, in part because most of the framers didn't want political parties in the first place. Contrast with parliamentary systems, where the party a member belongs to has more power over how the member is "supposed" to vote; the general expectation is that party members are expected to vote the "party line" except for conscience votes, although the strength of these expectations and their enforcement inevitably varies between countries and over time. Whip and party discipline have some information. That's not to say political parties in the U.S. have no influence at all over Congress. If a Congressmember defies their party enough, they won't be getting any good committee appointments, which are very important for exercising influence, and the party won't spend money on their campaigns unless they think losing the seat to the other party would be worse. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 08:14, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If a Congressmember defies their party enough, they won't be getting any good committee appointments ... and the party won't spend money on their campaigns unless they think losing the seat to the other party would be worse. True. And they likely would not get re-elected. (At least not by members of their own party. Conceivably, though, by the other party.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:252:D13:6D70:CCAD:9B1:8392:7C6B (talk) 08:34, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would depend on the specific issues. It's not uncommon for the national party to want one thing and a representative's constituents to want something different. To again contrast with parliamentary systems, in the U.S. voters mostly decide through primary elections which candidate runs under a party's banner. Party leadership has little say. This has been highlighted recently by the Tea Party movement challenging "establishment" Republican candidates in Republican primaries. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 19:17, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Given that legislators usually have a clearly known ideology when they are running for office, they don't normally feel like they are betraying the constituents who elected them. Representing their constituency often just comes down to pork; who can get the most federal money for their local districts, avoid having the military base in their state shut down, or get the most money for public works. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia was legendary for the federal money for public works he got directed to his state. But there are other factors, such as this comment from TheHill.Com about Democrats passing a House bill limiting immigration from Iraq and Syria which Obama had threatened to veto: "The 47 Democrats who voted for the bill ranged from centrist Blue Dogs, (to) vulnerable lawmakers in tough reelection races....". In other words, public sentiment becomes more important when your opponent can say you ignored it come election time. μηδείς (talk) 18:47, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've read that Adam and Eve were created. I've also read that children were created at conception, and that God designed everyone individually. What I don't get is whether the use of "creation" means the same thing in both instances. If God is believed to design a baby's features inside the womb, then where's the father's role? And what about genetics and maladaptive genetic traits? 140.254.70.25 (talk) 15:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Since this was posted at the humanities desk rather than science, I'll assume the OP is looking for an "in universe" answer from the perspective of Christian theology (I assume Christian, sorry if you're looking for other religions which include Adam & Eve.) I'd say that the two types of creation are different in character since the first one (Adam & Eve, or at least Adam) did not require any human action. God's "creation" of children in the womb has a component of human action to it, and so you could say that it's different. (Someone who knows more theology than me can probably find classical references discussing this.) You see this clearly in various Biblical divine conceptions, which are regarded as very special and different from ordinary conceptions.
As for maladaptive genetic traits, this is a well-known argument against creationism: Argument from poor design, sometimes called "unintelligent design" or "incompetent design". You can see some creationist responses on that page, typically that human frailty is an important part of God's design (either by God's original intention or a result from Adam's sin, human weakness is a feature, not a bug, in most Christian theology), and so we should not expect our bodies to be perfectly constructed. Staecker (talk) 15:56, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The term ex nihilo explains quite a bit of your confusion. The Genesis story is about ex nihilo "creation", which differs from how theologians would regard the "creation" of children in 2015. --Dweller (talk) 13:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
BVI Legal Profession Act 2015
Please can you clarify which provisions relating to the admission of English qualified lawyers and practice overseas were excluded from the proclamation when bringing it into force? Also is there any indication as to when these severed provisions might be proclaimed as operational? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.151.0.160 (talk) 15:02, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I found Louis Lang (1814-1893), an artist who worked in the US; he was already dead by 1901, not that this entirely rules him out as a suspect, but he seems to have been more of a studio painter than an illustrator. I got lots of results for Andrew Lang who produced illustrated books about fairies, but somebody else did the pictures. Alansplodge (talk) 11:25, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Prints of the mysterious Mr (or Ms?) Lang's illustrations from the Fish and Game Commission report are readily available (here, for instance), but I've not been able to find any more details on the artist. The report itself doesn't have the information, unfortunately. One name that does come up frequently is Hamilton Mack Laing (1883 - 1982) - he's not the Fish and Game artist (he was only 18 in 1901, and still living in Canada), but he seems reasonably article-worthy. Tevildo (talk) 15:45, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. I've created a Commons:Category:Lang (artist) as a place to bring together this person's work as I encounter it in Commons files. For now I can't really do any better. - 04:59, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
I have nothing really to add on why A particularly, but I can't help but be reminded of a Doonesbury strip with Jimmy Thudpucker. His conversation with his guitarist went something like this (from memory; I can't seem to find it online):
Guitarist: What's wrong, Jim? Doesn't feel good in B flat?
Thudpucker: No, it's too formulaic. I want this to be archival. It should have a tricentennial sound.
Hey, please, don't kid (assuming you are kidding) because I am posting this for someone else who plays the guitar and sings and who asked me to ask this here, but who doesn't have www access; and I myself am musically illiterate, in the sense that I cannot read music or tell what key something is written in, even if I can sing in harmony with some sort of key, although I might be off by an octave or a third or a liter and a half. I mean really, folks, you are going to make opossums and chipmunks cry if you mock me so. I am not joking, I am off to look for crying mammals to post here. μηδείς (talk) 04:53, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I for one wasn't mocking you, just saying something it reminded me of. I'm gonna go with Jayron's explanation, which sounds reasonable, plus there's a resonance of a grade of A or A-OK and stuff like that. I don't think there's any special emotional quality to the key of A per se, but maybe I'm just ignorant about it. --Trovatore (talk) 05:01, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, well, maybe I can accept that. Although I remember from studying music theory in the 80's that the different keys have different emotional nuances. In any case, the question is not for me, but for an innocent third party.... μηδείς (talk) 05:07, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Even with equal temperament, keys hit the harmonics of an instrument in different ways. D makes a violin just sing, e.g., while E is much more mellow. And if you're not stuck with fixed tuning, you typically take liberties with the notes anyway: pushing that leading tone up a bit, or getting a really perfect fifth. -- Elphion (talk) 07:03, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Scientists might pooh-pooh the idea, but many composers chose particular keys for their works because of their emotional aspects. That is, what those keys meant to the composer, subjectively. You can find a lot about this if you search. This is one person's idea, from Christian Schubart's Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806). Here are some more, and this also gets into linking keys with colours (synaesthesia), but again, there's little agreement. (Oh, I see those links are also @ Key (music)). -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]07:19, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I have been instructed to thank everyone for their answers, and specifically to "ask @Basemetal: why does he think that PS was talking about Am? Is it because of the sadnesses of minor chords? Or something like that?" μηδείς (talk) 21:03, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. Plus when she says "in the key of A" she suddenly hits an Am (coming from a sequence of major chords). It would be really weird if she thought at that moment "key of A major". Incidentally, she does the same thing at several other places in the song to accentuate the darkness and the sadness in what is already a sad song, by contrasting Am with a major chord. Since overall it is a sad song this is the kind of Saturday that would naturally fit it. The mood associated with the key of A major just doesn't. This said, most of the chords in the song are major. Overall it is something like a blues in the key of C major. Contact Basemetalhere23:16, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I should not go here as I know nothing, but the famous allegretto of Symphony No. 7 (Beethoven) comes to mind. According to our article A minor is prone to be a sad key, though the above example seems to me to be more ... pensive. Movies like Zardoz use that song, but it's like curry, where anything you flavor with it will be curry. Wnt (talk) 04:20, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have innate perfect pitch (or at least I don't think I have), but I do have "learnt" perfect pitch, having been listening to and playing music since I was very young: I can generally identify a note or a key when it's played to me. What I can say is this: different keys have different emotions and meanings attached to them in my mind. I absolutely agree with the remarks made above about D minor and A minor. Mahler does D minor particularly well here, turning a happy children's song into a funeral march, partly just by the choice of key. I have a particular fondness for C, Cm, E♭, A♭, and Am myself, which for me always communicate particular emotions, which I've tried to summarise:
C - openness, simplicity, uprightness, honesty, simple happiness, wholesomeness
Cm - sadness, potentially deep sadness, but with the possibility of light at the end of the tunnel
E♭ - happiness, joy, being in the presence of greatness
A♭ - sadness, honour, depth, happiness through sacrifice
Am - neatness, honesty, cleanliness, happiness and sadness mixed together
I suspect I could probably define other keys similarly. Generally, increasing the number of sharps increases the brightness, but also the brittleness, of the emotion, while increasing the number of sharps increases the depth and profundity. As for the original question, I think the answer is this:
A - happiness and optimism, on the verge of becoming excessively so.
English seems to lack good singular gender-neutral pronouns. There are plural gender-neutral words, like "they" and "their", which can be used as singular, when the context makes it obvious, but when applied to God, that could make it sound like you refer to multiple gods. Then there is "it", but that seems rude when applied to living things. StuRat (talk) 09:39, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Really? Leave aside "they" (used for "he or she") which I doubt has made it yet into a Bible translation, what pronouns do you have in mind? Contact Basemetalhere16:38, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
English has two specific gender neutral pronouns: it and they. Spanish and French have no equivalent of those. Two is more than zero. --Jayron3220:09, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I had mentioned "they" but "it" is not gender neutral. "It" is for things that have no gender. E.g. "someone came while we were out and they carried away the refrigerator" never "someone came while we were out and it carried away the refrigerator". At least I've never heard the latter. Contact Basemetalhere20:32, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
First, remember that many languages use gender even for items like ships, cars or even refrigerators with non gender (under most definitions). Second and perhaps more importantly, while "it" is rarely used for humans, except occasionally recently born infants, foetuses and embryos, it's regularly used for other animals. A few people may do so because they think gender is a concept which doesn't apply to other animals, but for many people when they call a chimpanzee an "it" all they mean is they either don't know or remember the chimp's gender, or it's irrelevant or simply they find it more convient. Nil Einne (talk) 03:55, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"There's someone at the door." "Who is it?" would be a perfectly normal conversation, I would have thought. And I'm sure I've heard people use "He (or She, or It)" when referring to a hypothetical God of indeterminate gender. Iapetus (talk) 16:54, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(Previously added to the completely wrong section, apologies) I think you can accept "Lord", it can be used and is used in a gender neutral manner, for example Lord of Mann --Lgriot (talk) 15:31, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Was there a class or hierarchy system in England that separated the low class, from the middle and upper/nobility? I'm thinking something along the lines of the caste system in India, but not necessarily based on religion, but based upon other factors. And if so, when did this hierarchy/classism end? ScienceApe (talk) 20:29, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There were social classes in all of Western Europe. See Nobility. However the system was not as rigid as in India since a commoner could become a noble. The privileges of the nobility disappeared, little by little in some countries (such as England) or brutally in others (such as France): see Nobility#Noble privileges. Contact Basemetalhere20:51, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Our article Estates of the realm may be of help. It depends of course how far you want to go back – the structure of English society in 800AD wasn't the same as that in, say, 1300. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.11.50.58 (talk) 23:14, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The FBI agent who was Donnie Brasco wrote that his view of the retail industry took a huge knock during his undercover assignment. He saw how stolen goods were desired by even the nicest stores. Is that true? Has it changed? Thanks. 69.22.242.15 (talk) 01:29, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Age of majority vs. voting age
I'm curious about places where the age of majority is higher than the voting age. In Alabama, for instance, the voting age is 18, and the age of majority is 19. Do situations ever pop up where parents try to force their kids to vote a certain way, or punish them because of the candidate they voted for? Do parents even have the authority in these jurisdictions to go so far as to dictate whom their minor kids will vote for? What id your parents tell you you can't vote at all? 2601:644:101:84B2:2CC8:DDB6:6C6B:2AF1 (talk) 07:36, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There are laws for protecting children from different kinds of adult abuses. My guess is the right to vote is protected as well, otherwise a vote which would depend on parents will, we couldn't call it democratic rights and freedom of vote within a democracy? Akseli9 (talk) 10:14, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The whole reason behind the widespread use of the secret ballot is that, since nobody can tell how someone voted, no one can tell whether they've successfully forced/bribed/persuaded/etc. them to vote in a certain way; and therefore it doesn't make sense for them to try to. (If we didn't have secret ballots, various things would be easier, but this one reason is generally considered more important than those.) --70.49.170.168 (talk) 16:23, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Still doesn't help if you are grounded by your parents on the election week (maybe because you disagree with the political view of your parents, or another reason). Anyone heard of case that say that grounding is illegal on election day for an 18 yo? --Lgriot (talk) 15:17, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Getting data on number of U.S. troops stationed at military bases in the Continental U.S.
I am trying to find data on the number of active/reserve troops (and civilian contractors) that are stationed at every military base in the U.S (I'm not interested in overseas installations).
I am trying to import this data into a GIS program, so ideally it would be in a format that can be directly imported into GIS software with minimal editing (spreadsheets, CSV, shape-files, etc). But even if it is not available in one of these formats, I would still be interested in knowing where I could find this kind of information.
The only thing I've been able to find so far is the DOD's annual Base Structure Reports e.g. --> 2015 BSR
This has a lot of the data I'm looking for, but it's not in a format that is going to be helpful for what I'm trying to do. Any ideas where I could just download this data directly, instead of having to try to extract it from a PDF file?
@Mesoderm:: You can wade through the government bureaucracy, or simply pick up the phone. From p. 18 (DoD-17) of the above-linked report:
V. Personnel Assigned by Military Installations
This section is the result of our partnership with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense/Personnel and Readiness (OUSD (P&R)) to provide a section in the BSR identifying assigned military and civilian personnel by installation. ...
The source of the personnel data is the Defense Management Data Center (DMDC), a field activity of the OUSD (P&R). Questions on this section of the BSR should be addressed directly to the providers of the data at DMDC, Mr. Kit Tong or Mr. Tim Powers, at (831)583-2400.
@Mesoderm: - 16 pages of PDF Personnel tables in report (PERS-1 - PERS-16; PDF pp. 188-203) converted to Excel easily enough. A very minor bit of cleanup needed to merge 11 worksheets on US deployments (one worksheet per PDF page; remaining 5 worksheets in workbook for foreign deployment kept to double check final row's calculated Grand Totals), but column breaks for all numbers look perfectly accurate. Most columns need width correction for headers and conversion of data from text to number format for alignment and computation, but looks usable within minutes without DHS background check.
Our article on Ammon (Ammonites of the human variety) says that the word means "people". A variety of Phoenician, so far as I understood, east of Israel they worshipped Moloch, who is identified with Baal Hammon. There is also Amun, said there to be originally a wind deity before being recast as a creator god at Thebes, a.k.a. Amon Ra as an Egyptian, Zeus Ammon as a Greek. There is the Temple of Ammon, a.k.a. Ammonium (one of the 'three great oracles of ancient times', pity we don't have an article; its ruins are at Siwa Oasis).
Can someone verify that all these Ammons are of common origin, and lay out a sort of phylogenetic tree of the uses? Was Ammon originally seen as a god, or as the people? Wnt (talk) 13:07, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What makes you think that all those names are etymologically related? Ammon and Amun are spelled in Hebrew as Template:Hebrew and Template:Hebrew respectively, suggesting that they are unrelated, and the lexicons I looked at (Koehler-Baumgartner and Brown–Driver–Briggs) do not make any connection. The former states that Ammon (the people) is of Semitic origin and probably meant "little uncle" originally. The article for Amun on the other hand claims that the meaning is "the hidden one" and is Egyptian in origin. - Lindert (talk) 14:43, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There's some variety in the former at Amman, and the latter in harmoniac, etc... I don't have the linguistic background to know when it matters and when it doesn't. It surprises me that a race of people who in many places called their god Hammon or Amun would, by coincidence, be called "Ammon" as their native word for "people" in one place further east, and call their version of their god as Moloch. But your sources go some way toward convincing me it's at least not a trivial error in Wikipedia. Wnt (talk) 17:19, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note that "Molech" is an edition of a word for "king"; other forms of the M-L-K triliteral root include "Milcom" (alternate name for Molech) and the latter half of Ebed-Melech's name. "Baal" is an edition of a word for "lord" and is often applied to other humans; if I remember rightly, it's the term rendered "lord" in some translations of Genesis 18.12. The Baal Hammon article that you cite says that the latter word's root is H-M-N, not A-M-N or ʿ-M-N, so it's maybe unrelated. Nyttend (talk) 04:58, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Fwiw, the Bible's own version of the etymology of Ammonite, is explained in Genesis chapter 19. See Lot_(biblical_person)#Lot_and_his_daughters. Lot's daughters both had the same idea of flagging up their child's incestuous origins in their names, but younger daughter's choice ("son of my people" ->Ammonite) was rather more subtle version than that of her sister ("from the father" ->Moabite) --Dweller (talk) 13:18, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
How could the price of oil fall more than 50% that fast?
An oil barrel costs around $50 now, although it was prices at more than $100 not long ago.
Even considering that some economies, like the Chinese or Indian, are not growing as much as in the past, they are still growing at a rate of 7% (hence consuming more oil). Europe and the US might only dream about such economic growth, but their economies are not plummeting (hence consuming around the same amount of oil).
I also don't believe that the supply could have doubled in the short amount of time.
What we are seeing here is one of the paradoxes of capitalism. It often happens that when demand for a commodity drops, instead of reducing supply in order to maintain prices, producers actually increase production in a (futile) effort to maintain their income. Everybody understands that production is too high, but everybody wants the burden of reducing production to fall on somebody else. The result can easily be that prices go into a "death spiral". This has happened many times. A notorious case is the collapse in farm commodity prices during the Great Depression. Looie496 (talk) 15:26, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's not necessary to double supply to cause the price to drop by half. A fairly small over or under supply will cause a large price swing because demand is actually fairly constant and predictable. Motorists don't suddenly double or half the distance they travel daily just because the fuel price moved. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:14, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It makes sense that the demand side is more or less stable. So, a swing in the supply must be the problem. Can you provide a source that a small change in supply would produce a large change in price? As far as I imagine it, a x% change would produce a smaller than x% change.--Scicurious (talk) 16:43, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Imagine there is some commodity where everybody needs exactly one, or they will die, but more than one does them no good at all, let's say they expire immediately (maybe an antidote for a fatal disease that quickly spoils). In such a case, if supply falls short of demand, then there will be a bidding war and prices will skyrocket. If supply outstrips demand, then the reverse will happen and suppliers will keep slashing prices to try to sell off their supply before it spoils, and the price will plummet. Even very small changes in supply and demand could thus cause massive changes in the price. Of course, oil can be stored, although it's rather expensive to do so, considering the fire hazard. And demand for oil products does somewhat rise, when prices fall, but it takes quite a bit of time for people to replace their gas-sipping cars with gas-guzzling SUVs (and the reverse is also true). StuRat (talk) 22:48, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
See commodity market and commodity futures. These prices are subject to a huge amount of market speculation and are subject to news-based fluctuations in the way the stock market is. Oil is not like milk, with a sell-by date, so much of the oil that was valued at $100/b a few years ago may be the same oil which is now valued much lower. μηδείς (talk) 19:00, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Running out of storage space would make the problem worse, as then they would need to immediately sell the oil for whatever price they could get, since they can't store it until prices rise. However, there is a price at which it becomes unprofitable to pump oil, in which case they will cap the wells and store it there until prices rise. StuRat (talk) 22:42, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I take it you saw [1]. Yet oil would seem to have plenty of storage space ... underground storage provided naturally whence it came. If people are motivated to pump it up and get it to market, why stop when you have it somewhere that costs money to store it? Wnt (talk) 04:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oil drilling is a big undertaking. A lot of people incorrectly visualize it as drilling into big underground caverns full of oil just sitting there, but really oil is embedded in the rock matrix underground. Getting it out takes effort. If you dump oil back down a well, it flows back into the rock, and now you've got to extract it all over again. And if it will cost more to extract the oil than you can sell it for, no one is going to bother. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 10:02, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's not what I was suggesting -- all I meant is, if all you're going to do is trade commodities, why not trade them in the ground? Similarly, I don't understand why countries keep gold sitting in vaults rather than just trading claims on well-characterized gold reserves. It is very tragic that such large swaths of wilderness are ravaged just so that some suits can visualize the markers they're trading. Wnt (talk) 14:57, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oil in the ground is difficult to measure precisely, or to determine exactly how much it will cost to extract it. Also, there's the risk somebody on a neighboring property could drain the oil field before you do. All these uncertainties make it difficult to assign a value and thus trade it. As for gold reserves, that's so, in the case of a total economic collapse, where our current fiat currency would lose all value, the government would hopefully be able to pay critical bills with gold, long enough to start a recovery. StuRat (talk) 21:29, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The chief economist at the European Central Bank, a noted dove, says that a quarter of the price decline was due to Saudi war on new supplies (fracking, Russia, etc.) and the rest due to demand. You don't want to see extreme volatility because it does suggest something is wrong. 69.22.242.15 (talk) 16:57, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
French Resistance, Nobel laureates, and cricket
As ne fule kno, Samuel Beckett is the only first-class cricketer to have been awarded a Nobel Prize. He was also a member of the French Resistance during the Second World War. My question is twofold - were any other first-class cricketers members of the Resistance, and have any other Resistance members won a Nobel Prize? DuncanHill (talk) 23:03, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Go to 53°54′13″N1°11′45″W / 53.90361°N 1.19583°W / 53.90361; -1.19583 in Google Maps and start looking through the car park with Street View; you'll see what appears to be a backwards version of File:MUTCD D9-6.svg, although the wording on the adjacent Little Chef restaurant demonstrates that the picture isn't itself backwards. Is this version of the symbol, with the stick figure facing left, the normal usage in the UK (or at least in Yorkshire), or is this different from normal symbols? International Symbol of Access doesn't address variations, aside from a couple of American modifications that have been designed to placate activists. Nyttend (talk) 05:08, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've never seen it that way before, and I've lived in Britain most of my life. Looks like a cock-up to me. By the way, you could have provided us with a direct link to the image, viz: [6] instead of making us find it for ourselves. --Viennese Waltz08:26, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The provision of accessible disabled parking spaces is required by the Equality Act 2010 but as far as I can tell, there's no compulsory signage requirement for private car parks. A government "Traffic Advisory Leaflet" of April 1995 says on page 6 that "The white wheelchair symbol in a black square as shown in TSRGD Diagram 2113 should be used..", but shows the "stick man" facing right (Figure 5) and facing left (Figure 6), both on page 7. Alansplodge (talk) 11:40, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
An interesting thing about that 1995 document is it actually has 3 photos of real world locations where the symbol appears to be backwards from what most mention as the normal direction (page 3, 8, 9). All have writing visible so it doesn't look like it's simply that the photo was flipped. It's possible 2 of these are from the same place (although it doesn't look like the exact same parking places and I wonder if that store was big enough to have two groups), but page 9 definitely seems to be different. In fact, I think the number of photos with the backwards direction is more than the number in the right direction (although in many photos the direction is unclear). Nil Einne (talk) 12:39, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The TSRGD themselves, Schedule 16, paragraph 34, state: "The disabled person symbol shown in diagram 2310.1. The symbol shall be shown on a black rectangle when placed on a white or yellow background on that part of the sign. The symbol shall be reversed where appropriate". Tevildo (talk) 13:10, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
How did Jefferson propose to convert a government of judiciary and police into the strongest government on earth? His answer to this question, omitted from the Inaugural Address, was to be found in his private correspondence and in the speeches of Gallatin and Madison as leaders of the opposition. He meant to prevent war. He was convinced that governments, like human beings, were on the whole controlled by their interests, and that the interests of Europe required peace and free commerce with America. Believing a union of European Powers to be impossible, he was willing to trust their jealousies of each other to secure their good treatment of the United States. Knowing that Congress could by a single act divert a stream of wealth from one European country to another, foreign Governments would hardly challenge the use of such a weapon, or long resist their own overpowering interests. The new President found in the Constitutional power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations" the machinery for doing away with navies, armies, and wars.
Where can I find a source for the quote ending in "...the machinery for doing away with navies, armies, and wars"?
If I'm reading the paragraph correctly, the quote came from either one of Jefferson's private correspondence or "in the speeches of Gallatin and Madison as leaders of the opposition". 731Butai (talk) 10:33, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing in that paragraph implies that it is directly quoting Jefferson. Presumably it is a summary by the author (Henry Adams) of words that Jefferson did write. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 13:03, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agree that it's unlikely to be a literal quote. We have quite a lot of Jefferson's correspondence - he kept copies of all his letters. He purposefully destroyed some later on, but those are believed to be mostly private letters. A good, searchable archive is here. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:27, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is it common for newspapers in the UK leave it up to their readers to identify opinion pieces by content, or is this a peculiarity of The Daily Telegraph? -- ToE13:12, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In the actual hard copy Daily Telegraph newspaper, it's usually not difficult to distinguish between opinion and hard news (my mum is a regular reader), although I agree that it's not made clear in the internet article that you linked to. Some of the British tabloid newspapers mingle fact with opinion far more freely; the Daily Mail is notorious in that respect, but the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror are little better. Alansplodge (talk) 13:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As a rule of thumb, straight news doesn't use questions for headlines. And the answer to any such headline is no. Goes for subheadlines, too. Anytime a writer refers to himself or the reader, that's basically equal to an explicit "Opinion" label. InedibleHulk(talk) 17:20, November 23, 2015 (UTC)
Are Jihad and Islamic State the same thing?
I keep hearing on a radio station (not sure which channel) and reading in the Washington Post about ISIS/Islamic State, sometimes using them together simultaneously. Please explain briefly the difference. Also, explain briefly whether the war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, American war on terror are relevant, and provide links if further explanation is needed. Also, what's up with the Islamic terrorism? How did this terrorism begin in the first place? Since when did Islam start to have a negative image in American or Western society? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 14:10, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Have you read the jihad article? It's a fundamental concept of Islam (meaning "struggle"), although interpretations of the concept range from personal struggle against sin to armed warfare against nonbelievers. And your final question, see Arab–Byzantine wars; after a short period of viewing them as a quirk, the Empire soon realised that the Muslims were a threat, and this got reinforced when they defeated imperial forces, conquered Palestine and Egypt, and destroyed the Persian Empire — all within a few years of the death of Muhammad. There wasn't much of a "Western society" at the time (this being the Early Middle Ages, with very little communication, in most of Europe outside the Empire), but invasions of Spain and France (to use today's names for those regions) caused the various Germanic peoples of Western Europe to become aware of their hostility. Nyttend (talk) 14:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note that Islam had a quite positive image in the Enlightenment, as more rational than e.g. Christianity with endless debates on the details of the Trinity and the exact role of Jesus. I don't think its historically correct to suggest that there is an unbroken tradition of enmity going back to the original era of Islamic expansion. Relationships have varied a lot, and often been dominated by other topics than religion. The same is true today. While Islam is used as a rallying cry by some fanatics, its not the underlying cause. Muslim Arabs were happily allied with the allies during WW1, fighting the (also Muslim) Ottomans. Afghanistan/Pakistan has been the subject of political machinations during the Great Game in the 19th century, Turkey controls the Dardanelles and hence Russia's access to a warm water port, and "Arabia Felix" is sitting on both the Suez canal and the largest and most convenient reserves of crude oil. All this means that the whole near and middle east has been subject to manipulation by all major powers of the day. That is not a climate that is conductive to peace and stability. As an aside, I listend to the Librivox edition of Indian Frontier Policy by General John Miller Adye a while back, and apart from his comment on the railroad as the modern marvel of the day, it could pretty much be written today. Of course, he died in 1900, but far too little has changed... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:20, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Much earlier: see Abbasid–Carolingian alliance. But I doubt these cases had anything to do with religion, let alone with a "positive" or "negative" view of Islam. It was simply not about Islam. They're just cases where Realpolitik trumped anything else and are about of the same order as Britain, etc. siding with the Ottoman Empire against Russia in the Crimean War. Or consider the attempts to build an alliance between (Shia) Safavid Iran and the Habsburg (see Safavid_dynasty#Contacts_with_Europe_during_Abbas'_reign). It was all about weakening the Ottoman Empire on both sides for purely political reasons even though modern day Sunni have a reading of history where the Shia "betrayed" Islam and collaborated with the Europeans against Islam and partly blame the Shia for the Ottoman failure to conquer Europe. Consider also, during the 30 Years War, that France, a Catholic country whose prime minister was at the time a cardinal, was actually siding with the Protestant powers against (again) the Habsburgs. The French 16th and 17th c. obsession with being "encircled" by the Habsburg. There again it had nothing to do with a "positive" view of Protestantism. It was just Realpolitik. Today's Muslims have this theory that European colonization, Western imperialsm were all huge conspiracies against Islam, when they were in fact no different than what the Europeans were doing in Africa, China, India, Asia, or the Americans in South America, etc. Bizarrely many Western leftists are in the process of internalizing that Muslim view that Western colonialism and imperialism was and is especially targeted at Islam, adopting the Islamist view, which is really an anachronism. See Michel Onfray's recent suggestions to negotiate with Isis and with its "caliph". Yes Onfray seems to recognize Al Baghdadi as a legitimate caliph, I heard it in this French language interview on i-Télé that he gave in response to his name being mentioned in an Isis video. This whole story not yet in the WP article about Onfray but see for example this and a French answer to Onfray's suggestions here. Note I am not commenting (either approving or disapproving of) the substance of Onfray's suggestion. I am simply remarking that the language, the framework Onfray uses to describe the situation is mimicked from the Islamist (and in particular Isis's) reading of history. Contact Basemetalhere19:55, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The OP might have meant Islamic Jihad or Islamic Jihad, the organisation, rather than Jihad, the concept from which it takes its name. In which case, while they might share certain aims, they're very different in one crucial respect: broadly speaking, both Islamic Jihads were/are Shia and ISIS is Sunni. --Dweller (talk) 14:50, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, thank you for that question, Dweller; I took the original question as asking whether ISIS' actions were equivalent to the concept envisioned by جهاد, the Arabic term that transliterates to "jihad" in the Latin alphabet. I expect you're right. And a note on Stephan Schultz's first sentence — consider the influence of Muslims such as ibn Rushd (and his philosophy) and ibn Sina on European culture during the Renaissance. Nyttend (talk) 16:14, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Islamic State is cobbled together from various organizations throughout its development, and has split from al-Qaida. Thus it has a line of descent back to Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, even though it is now a rival of al-Qaida. And there's Jaysh al-Jihad in ISIS. And I think there's some other group with the name that turned up in a flap about whether the U.S. was officially giving weapons to al-Qaida recently. Wnt (talk) 14:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Al-Qaeda itself was quite the hodgepodge of less easily memorable names. Still is, but less so, now that the default term for many jihadists in the Western media is "linked to ISIS" rather than "linked to al-Qaeda". Though sometimes the wires lumped those two together, too.InedibleHulk(talk) 16:35, November 23, 2015 (UTC)
As for when, in modern times, Islam started to get a bad reputation in the West, I'd date it to around the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Murdering civilians at such an international forum for peace, regardless of their motivations, was not seen in a positive light by the West. Now, they weren't Muslim fundamentalists, but their religion certainly played a role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and thus the event. As for Muslim fundamentalist attacks, there was the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, then a continuous series of such attacks leading up to September 11 attacks.
Much of the trouble in the Middle East is due to Persia's fear of being "encircled" by Sunnis (i.e. cut off from the Mediterranean). Turkey claims to be a part of "the West" and they were responsible for the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Armenian and Nestorian Christians in 1915. 78.146.229.66 (talk) 12:37, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, and a female member of the would-be groom's family will presumably get to see the bride's face and body, to ensure there is no deformity, disease, etc., before the marriage is agreed to. StuRat (talk) 21:16, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a word to describe when, say, character A pretends that character B has said something? Despite B not saying anything or even existing or even being able to communicate. Outside of fiction, you'd call it talking to yourself or simply imagining how a conversation would go. Is there a technical term? Thanks!! 213.106.130.210 (talk) 18:02, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what you're getting at. When a character talks to no one in particular (i.e. they speak their thoughts aloud to the audience rather than another character), that's called a soliloquy. When a character describes a scene to the audience directly, that's called narration. When an actor invents dialogue that is not on the script, that's called an ad lib. If none of those applies in this case, can you clarify or provide an example? --Jayron3218:38, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
My fault. I am sorry. This is in a novel. The character A is narrating with an internal monologue. Within this monologue, Character B speaks several lines. But it is entirely in the imagination of Character A. B does not actually speak at all. Is there a name for this? Thank you! 213.106.130.210 (talk) 18:51, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Specifically, the imaginary friend is common in childhood, less so in adults. Note that that link includes their inclusion in works of fiction, such as The Tempest. Adults having imaginary friends is often considered, in literature, to be an indication of mental instability. I have no idea whether this is actually the case in real life. StuRat (talk) 21:19, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, yes, but no contemporary political philosopher (Rawls, Nozick, Marcuse) get above 0.00005 with the "full name" restriction. Even "Ayn Rand" (who takes the OP's "broadly" to its ultimate limit) only gets 0.00002, an order of magnitude away from the target. I think the bar may be set rather too high. Tevildo (talk) 16:25, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. A better proxy for current public interest might be number of mentions per year in e.g. New York Times or Washington Post or other prominent newspapers. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:44, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've run through the list in Political philosophy (not, I emphasise, List of political philosophers). Excluding the classical philosophers who are only known by one name, and excluding Voltaire ("Arouet", let alone "François-Marie Arouet", is out of contention), the winner is Thomas Jefferson (0.000253, 2001). If we're allowed surname-only searches, we have three twentieth-century candidates - "Dewey" (0.000692, 1991 - although I think this is a case where the surname-only search is likely to be a bit too generous), "Habermas" (0.000525, 2000), and "Rawls" (0.000307, 1998). Top of the list with no restrictions is "Marx" (0.00289, 1982). Tevildo (talk) 21:32, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The full table! Political philosophers rated above 0.00025.
What sort of hammer and chisel (or other tools) were used to create stone inscriptions of Roman square capitals? Did the tools more or less resemble the more modern ones in the photo shown here? If not, where can a find a freely licensed or public domain photo of the sort of tools the Ancient Romans used for inscriptions? —Psychonaut (talk) 13:37, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What's the point of "bringing back" extinct species?
You may have heard that the northern white rhino is basically history. Now people are talking of "bringing it back" using IVF and southern white rhino females as surrogates. But what exactly is the point? Note I do understand trying to prevent a species from going extinct by preserving their habitat, by preventing animals from being killed, poached, etc. I can understand trying to bring a species back if it is vital to some ecosystem and that ecosystem is likely to suffer in the absence of that species. But some ecologists are talking as if bringing a species back somehow "undoes" the destruction, the suffering and the fear inflicted on the extinct animals, as if it was a moral duty somehow to bring species back just for the sake of it. Now that is entirely unintelligible to me. So does anyone know of any sources that discuss the rationales of bringing species back and specifically the ethical aspects of the question? (I'm posting this here rather than at the science desk because I'm asking here about the ethical aspect, not the technical one). Contact Basemetalhere15:52, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
When you mention "[undoing] the suffering and the fear inflicted on the extinct animal", I think you might be misinterpreting the point of the moral duty (if any is implied) which the ecologists are referring to. That is, it seems like you're interpreting the moral duty as being restitution or compensationto the extinct species itself. Generally, that's not the case. Instead, think of a car that someone has destroyed or damaged. The moral obligation to restore the car is not toward the car itself, but rather to the owner of the car. You might not be able to "undo" the destruction, and there is no suffering or fear inflicted on the car, but you can "make whole" the car owner by repairing or replacing the car - and most people would argue that the party which destroyed the car would have the moral (if not legal) duty to do so. It's likely this context in which you should be viewing these arguments. The complication is that instead of a clearly identified car owner, it's a more nebulous "humanity" which has suffered the loss. A world without northern white rhinos is less of a world than one with them, and by not having them humanity is deprived of something. This may be argued to cause a moral obligation on the part of the causative agent ("humanity") to do something to fix it. Which means that "humanity" is responsible in paying back "humanity" for the loss - which can certainly add to the confusion. -- 160.129.138.186 (talk) 16:36, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(EC)We have an article on De-extinction that touches on some of these issues. The proponents would probably say that they are attempting to fill an ecological niche that had gone empty due to human activity. This is similar in spirit (though of course not technique) to Reintroduction. Consider the wolf - for a long time it was absent (or nearly so) from Yellowstone park due to human hunting. After reintroduction, some tree populations became much healthier [10], because the wolves pressure the elk, and the elk damage on willows goes down. This is an example of top-down control in the ecosystem (surprising redlink top-down and bottom-up design is relevant but doesn't mention trophic cascades, so see e.g. here [11] for the concept in ecology). Similarly, putting Wooly Mammoths (which may be successfully cloned this decade) back on the taigas and tundras may well reduce the shrubification going on there (see e.g. here [12] and here [13]), and in other ways return the landscape to a more productive state, which helps humans via ecosystem services. The shrubification of the arctic is a positive feedback to global warming via albedo effects, so conceivably (WP:OR, complete speculation for the sake of illustrating a point) mammoth de-extinction could help mitigate effects of climate change! So one way to frame the ethics of de-exitinction is to help restore function to ecosystems that humans depend upon. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:39, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Fascinating topic, thanks for extincting my morning free time!
See TEDx DeExtinction for a series of conference videos that are all freely available or, better yet, choose viewing options by perusing brief textual meeting notes. That widely cited 2013 National Geographic-sponsored conference apparently first popularized the term "de-extinction". To cut through popular press FUD distortions, see the balanced and select references in Notes to chapter 11, "Should We?", in recent (April 2015) book by one of the participants/organizers:
Besides conference, she cites as "excellent" the coverage by Carl Zimmer in National Geographic (April 2013 Bringing Them Back to Life) and Nathaniel Rich's article of March 2, 2014 in The New York Times Magazine (first published online Feb. 27 as The Mammoth Cometh). I thought her final chapter note was especially noteworthy — the exchange between Paul Erlich and his former student (and an organizer of the 2013 conference) Stewart Brand:
On October 13, 1845, a large majority of voters in the republic approved both the American offer and the proposed constitution that specifically endorsed slavery and emigrants bringing slaves to Texas.[15] This constitution was later accepted by the US Congress, making Texas a US state on the same day annexation took effect, December 29, 1845.
That's fine, except the lede says:
The Republic of Texas (Spanish: República de Texas) was an independent sovereign country in North America that existed from March 2, 1836, to February 19, 1846.
The bill was signed by United States President Polk on December 29, 1845, accepting Texas as the 28th state of the Union. Texas formally relinquished its sovereignty to the United States on February 19, 1846.
And again:
President James K. Polk signed the legislation making the former Lone Star Republic a state of the Union on December 29, 1845. Texas formally relinquished its sovereignty to the United States on February 14, 1846.
Presumably in 1845 the nascent Morse telegraph system had not yet connected Washington DC to Texas, so it could not have been expected that the Texas legislature would even know when Congress had passed the bill and President Polk had signed it; they only might have known when they were planning to do so. So if they wanted to formally shut down their own legislature once Texas was accepted as a state, it would have to be done afterwards. What this meant in practice in terms of whose laws were considered in effect in Texas on what date, or (for example) whether the declaration by Texas was retroactive, I don't know. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 01:04, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
According to this document from the Texas State Historical Organization (endorsed by the State authorities, here), the State of Texas came into being on the 19th February 1846, when the first legislature of the State was sworn in, and Anson Jones officially handed over power to J. Pinckney Henderson. Between December and February, Texas was still "The Republic of Texas", but part of the USA. Tevildo (talk) 01:21, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The commonwealths were and are states. Texas aka Republic of Texas was a state. Iowa could rename itself The Empire of Iowa, but unless it tried to secede it would still be just a state, constitutionally speaking. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 11:47, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Details handling software
Hello, I'm looking for an open source 'Customer Details' handling software which can be synchronised with smart phone to PC and PC to smart phone. A customer detail handling software which holds name, address, telephone, and so on; the more options the better... Can someone help me with this please? Regards. --Space Ghost (talk) 05:55, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
CRM is the generic term for customer relationship management applications and sales force automation is another term often used for CRM-specific software. Use each (separately) in search combined with "open source" and your main PC platform (Linux|Mac|Windows) and your smartphone (Android|iPhone) and you should find a solution your company can use for investment of time, not money.
These will most likely be client-server applications that can be self-hosted (if you have the time, know how, and server space), with some mechanism to access from phone, - sync contacts, CSV for spreadsheet, data dump in DropBox or Google Drive, or even a phone app. Might well be overkill, but we can't assess your business needs on this Humanities Reference Desk.
If you are not interested in such multi-user, enterprise-class self-hosted open source server-based solutions, but only need a personal, but business capable, contact manager to use on phone and laptop, you'll find lots of freemium cloud-based smartphone CRM solutions in Google Play Store and Apple's counterpart. CRM in search box. See if you can export from phone or cloud to CVS before expending too much time in data entry and check what you don't get with free accounts, e.g., Compare Zoho CRM editions -- Paulscrawl (talk) 08:54, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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