Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2006 October 18

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October 18

Money Terms

How much is the Canadian Dollar to Dirham in the United Arab Emirates? Can someone please let me know. Thank-You.Jk31213 00:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

1 CAD = 3.22982 AED, and 1 AED = 0.30985 CAD, according to Oanda's converter per Wednesday, October 18, 2006. ---Sluzzelin 00:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

For future reference, you can also Google this: by typing "1 CAD in AED" in the Google search box. Even cooler, when you don't know the abbreviation, you can Google for "1 Canadian money in United Arab Emirates money" and get the result. (You can replace the 1 with any amount you want, including the results of other calculations or conversions). --ByeByeBaby 14:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Evaluating a legal career

where can i look for info on lawyer and how much u make and how many years it takes to become a lawyer

The details of the job and the required training vary from country to country. You can find more information at the Wikipedia article lawyer. If you are in the United States, Salary.com has typical salaries. Note that legal work generally involves a lot of writing. You may need to pay more attention to grammar and punctuation. Marco polo 00:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

See Legal education. In the U.S. you need an undergraduate degree (B.S., or B.A.) and a good score on the LSAT (Law School Admission Test. Then you apply to law schools. If your spelling and grammar improve enough, you get admitted to law school and study hard for 3 years, with lots of classes using the Socratic method. You learn about Contracts, torts, civil and criminal and constitutional law, tax law, legal writing, and many other interesting courses. You may take a job with a law firm as an intern after your second year and get paid to do little legal tasks. In your senior year, you do lots of interviews with law firms. If you get a job, and that is difficult because there are more law graduates than there are good jobs, then you go to work in the area which interests you: business law, patent law, tax law, criminal law, bankruptcy, etc. You are expected to work all the time and have very high billable hours, in a several-year effort to become a partner. If you don't make partner, you might be kept as a hired hand "associate" or you might be asked to leave. If you become a partner, then you may get "points" which are a portion of the money made by the associates. You might go into politics or become a judge. A "rainmaker" is someone like a former Senator or Governor, who brings in high paying clients rather than doing lots of work. They make very big bucks. Sometimes lawyers over age 70 are forced to retire and become "of counsel." The pay can be very high - hundreds of thousands of dollars for senior partners in big firms- or comfortable- $50,000 to $100,000, for prosecutors, lawyers in small firms or private practice or associates. Edison 05:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

"B"

Hi, Just wondering if someone might please be able to help me decipher a legal abbreviation. I can't seem to find it anywhere. I'm reading ancient English cases, and the judges' titles are not annotated "LJ" "J" or "P" like im used to. I've found Martin, B ; Channel, B and Bramwell, B. I think the "B" stands for Baron - but I was hoping somebody could perhaps clarify this? Maybe this could be added to the common meanings of "B" page. Thanks kindly, Suzanne

• How ancient? Are we talking 19th century, so it would be Baron Bramwell? Or older than that? (Reminds me of the adage, "In America, 100 years is a long time. In Britain, 100 miles is a long way.")--jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 01:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, it's "Baron" as in "Baron of the Court of Exchequer". But not Baron as in the peerage. --BluePlatypus 02:02, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

So "snuck" is a word now?

Why, dear god, why!? 71.107.40.149 01:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I suppose it snuck by and has become standard usage now.---Sluzzelin 01:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Per [1] it arose in the USA in the 19th century, and is regarded as uneducated lower class speech. Few other words have such a sound pattern in their conjugation as "I sneak in," "I snuck in yesterday," "I have snuck in many times." Standard English is "I sneak in," "I sneaked in yesterday," "I have sneaked in many times before." Edison 05:30, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

If you read your link all the way through you see it snuck is standard American English - not "uneducated lower class speech". Rmhermen 06:29, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It also says "snuck" is still considered humorous and nonstandard British English. Any comments from the rest of the English speaking world? The only people I would expect to say "He snuck in late" I would also expect to say "He clumb in the window."Edison 21:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Why? sing - sung, sneak - snuck, ran - run. "Sneaked" sounds forced and jarring to me. Like saying "He flied across the ocean, but sneaked across the border." YMMV, though. Matt Deres 01:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you suggesting there is a difference? :) DirkvdM 08:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Why not? --Ptcamn 12:31, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Certainly in contemporary US English "snuck" is very widely accepted as standard and serious, in comparison to "clumb," "drug," etc. (Though we should realize here, we're mixing in some quite archaic forms with modern innovations.) Wareh 02:26, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Zaidis

Where are the Shi'a sect, Zaidi, found?

In Yemen (plus Zaidi Wasitis in Pakistan, India, and Iraq) according to the article on Zaidi.---Sluzzelin 03:36, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Singing Frere Jacques

Does anyone ever sing this as a round with 8 parts?--Filll 05:17, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Anyone ... ever? Well, probably. However, it is difficult enough to distinguish all the voices in 4-part, so 8-part would give a rather muddled effect. It wouldn't be worth doing. B00P 05:36, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The dominant seventh would clash with the tonic chord on the offbeats. It wouldn't just sound muddled, it would sound dissonant. ---Sluzzelin 06:37, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Oops, sorry, that would be a 16-part round. ---Sluzzelin 06:39, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It would take some more coordination, but it would sound exactly the same because every fourth part consists of two identical phrases.

aabbccdd
 aabbccdd
  aabbccdd
   aabbccdd
    aabbccdd
     aabbccdd
      aabbccdd
       aabbccdd

In the middle section, still only four parts are sung at the same time. The people who sing them are just divided differently. DirkvdM 08:26, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Auction Date

Where in a legal document would a lawyer record the date of an auction? PerfectStorm ^{(Hello! Hallo! Bonjour! Holla!)} 09:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a specific type of legal document in mind? What is wrong with recording it right where it applies, such as "This auction, which took place on January 29, 2006, was attended by my client as well as Messrs. CROOK and FRAUD."?  --Lambiam^Talk 10:14, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Shiny Shoes

Some shoes have a greater propensity towards shinyness than others. What kind of shoe materials produce the maximum shine? Is a shinier shoe something employers look for? --Username132 (talk) 13:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

For a job as a coffin bearer: perhaps. For a job as a DJ, farm hand, construction worker, or life guard: probably not. For most white-collar jobs: Make sure your clothes (and you) are clean, whole, well groomed, not extravagant, etcetera, but do not go completely overboard. If your prospective employers are sorry for not bringing their sunglasses for protection against the blinding shine of your shoes, it might not have the desired effect.  --Lambiam^Talk 13:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and a lacquer coating gives a high shine.  --Lambiam^Talk 13:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Patent leather is the usual shiny shoe material. MeltBanana 13:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Chlorofram (sp?) shoes have a mirror-like shine, but you do not polish them. They just come that way. --Kainaw ^(talk) 19:31, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Chloroform shoes would be great so people would be anesthetized while I stomped and kicked them. I had a pair of Corfam shoes decades ago. They never got broken in, so I had to wrap gauze around my toes to prevent blisters from the rubbing any time I wore them. But they did shine! They stopped making them in 1971. Edison 21:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Cordovan leather isn't as shiny as patent leather, but it is significantly shinier than regular leather. (At least that's what Mr. Ed told me.) -THB 02:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Buddhism and War

In many wars in mankind's history, religion was used or abused to justify its cause. Even though most followers of, say, the Christian religion and Islam emphasize the imperative of peace in their faith, one cannot deny that appealing to the religious feelings of the masses have helped many leaders convince people to go for war. What I mean is that one may doubt that e.g. the organizers of the crusades really believed that freeing Jerusalem is their God's wish but the majority of soldiers participating in the crusades certainly did. Now, Buddhists like to praise the fact that the Buddha's teaching on peace is so clear that it is much harder to manipulate Buddhists's religious feelings into supporting a war, and in fact, it is often claimed, that no major war has ever been justified as being necessary to fulfil commands of the Buddhist faith. Is my inclination to believe this due to the fact that there is truth to it or just due to my European lack of knowledge about Asian history? Simon A. 14:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Dunno about "commands of the faith". But take a look at [2] for the relationship between Japanese militarism and Zen. D. T. Suzuki, for example, wrote "religion should, first of all, seek to preserve the existence of the state". --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 15:00, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I would like to add that there were no holy wars among any of the Dharmic religions.--nids(♂) 15:17, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

There's a quote from Bertrand Russell--I'd look it up, but I'm at work--where he says that of all the major religions, Buddhism is his favorite because it has caused the least amount of human suffering through wars. (That's probably not it exactly.) Japan's state religion at the time of the Second World War was Shintoism; that article has a section emphasizing its difference from Buddhism. Antandrus (talk) 15:22, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

True, but read the article I pointed to. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 19:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I did; thanks. It was disturbing as hell. I suspect that no religion is immune from its followers distorting its scriptures to meanings opposite those originally intended, when their minds are sufficiently contaminated with hatred. Jonathan Swift has some good things to say on this matter. Antandrus (talk) 00:44, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

jpgordon: Thanks for the link, a very interesting read. I would habe said that the problem of the monotheistic relgions is that thay assign absolute authority to their one god and so give a charismatic priest the opportunity to present his wishes as divine command. It seems that one can do the same without even having a god, if only people believe enough in the unquestionable authority of their teachers/priests/leaders. But still, Dharmic regligions seem to be at least way more immune, if Japan's "Black Zen" are the only case. This brings me to a follow-up question: Can anybody tell me whether Buddhism plays a significant role in the current conflicts in Sri Lanka? Simon A. 21:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it does. The Tamil minority isn't Buddhist and there's a strong Sinhalese-Buddhist-nationalist movement. While Buddhism does condemn war, it also condemns caste systems. And both Japan and Sri Lanka have had caste systems. So I wouldn't say buddhists seem any less prone to religious hypocrisy than the rest. Nor would I say that buddhist societies seem any less violent in general; Just look at Cambodia's recent history. But it's true that I don't know any "internal" war in Buddhism, Theravada vs. Mahayana or similar, comparable to the Catholic-Protestant or Sunni-Shia wars. But OTOH, despite the rhetoric, do you think any of the kings involved in the Thirty Years War believed their own rhetoric? I think they all knew quite well it was nothing but a big land-grab under religious pretexts. --BluePlatypus 09:08, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Of course, they didn't believ it. The aim of my question rather aimed at which religions install in the masses' minds a good basis to be used for war propaganda. As I stated initially, I do think that most soldiers in the crusade (appart from their supreme commanders) believed in the divine oriogin of the task. For the 30 years war, I am less sure. Weren't most of these soldiers mercenaries? But that's leaving the track of the discussion. --- Your mentioning of the caste system is interesting, I was not aware that they had one in Sri Lanka. And please elaborate on Cambodia. Weren't the Buddhists just victims of the Khmer Rouge as nearly everybody else? Simon A. 14:33, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

shaka

165.146.65.79 14:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)charlotte what is some intresting early history of the zulu kingdom

See Shaka#Shaka's social and military revolution --Jcw69 15:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Ballad of Three Black Crows and a Slain Horse

When I was a child (60yrs ago), my English grandfather (born in 1878) used to sing a little ballad about 3 black crows and a dead horse. It went something like :

There were 3 crows upon a tree, They were as black as crows can be,

    ( something, something )

Said one crow unto his mate, It's been ( ??? ) since I have ate.

    ( something, something )

I know a horse that has been slain, He lies there still on yonder plain.

    ( something, something )

We'll perch ourselves on his jawbone and pick his eyes out one by one.

Can ANYONE identify a tome where a printed version of this song can be found?

It is probably a variant of The Three Ravens. Here is a list of variants, some of which include crows. MeltBanana 15:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC) This page has lots of different versions take a squiz at "Billy Magee Magar!". MeltBanana 15:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

MeltBanana is absolutely right. It was first printed by Thomas Ravenscroft in the early 17th century. I know one good modern recording by Custer LaRue and the Baltimore Consort (let's see if that link turns blue). It's a very famous tune and ballad with many variants. Oh, and for a printed version, get a copy of the Child Ballads. I also have a version in a 1940s Fireside Folk Song Book that includes music. Antandrus (talk) 15:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The wonders of the Internet. here's an image of a page from the 1631 tome with sheet music and the following lyrics (edited for brevity). You may also find useful a PDF of the same song, reprinted and a MIDI file of the melody:

There were three ravens, sat on a tree
They were as black as they might be
The one of them said to his mate
"Where shall we our breakfast take?"
"Down in yonder green field
There lies a knight under his shield.
His hounds, they lie at his feet
So well they can their master keep.
His hawks, they fly so eagerly
There's no fowl dare him come nie.
Down there comes a fallow doe
As great with yound as she might go.
She lifts up his bloody head
And kissed his wounds that were so red
She got him up upon her back
And carried him to earthen lake.
She buried him before the prime
She was dead herself ere even-song time.
God send every gentleman
Such hawks, such hounds and such a Le-man
(transcript ends)

dpotter 21:46, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Another version, recorded here is even closer to yours:

Three black crows sat on a tree
Ca beelya geelya gaw ye
And they were black as crows could be
Ca beelya geelya gaw ye
One black crow says unto his mate
What shall we do for something to eat?
An old red horse in yonder lane
Who very lately has been slain
We'll pick his eyes out one by one
And pick the meat from off his bones

This version notes that it was collected by Creighton and Senior from William Nelson, Nova Scotia, 1950

dpotter 21:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

What does "Ca beelya geelya gaw ye" mean? Is it a Celtic language? 惑乱 分からん 22:49, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Borat

Bogdangiusca who is an admin wrote that Borat was not filmed in Kazhakstan but rather Romania. Just from having seen the previews, I had a strong feeling it was filmed in Romania, especially because he drives a Dacia. Anyway it just looked like Romania. I was wondering where in Romania it was filmed? Bucuresti? Brasov? Somewhere else?

Having spent 2 years in Bistrita and Baicoi, and having been an American actor in a (small, cut) role, I was curious. Do you know where in Romania it was filmed?

Tony

IMDB he says Moroieni, Romania MeltBanana 16:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Number of entrepreneurs per 100 working people

I want data regarding how many people are entrepreneurs and how many are non-entrepreneurs/workers in percentage (or per 1000 people or per 10 people) for a few countries. And I would like to know especially for USA and Brazil. I think many tables might be there deep under Internet but I am not able to find them by googling through yahoo search.

Please throw me a few good links if possible. Incase you would tell me the numbers for a few countries, thats also fine.

Thanks

• Try the Global Entreprenuership Monitor's reports. Their main report for 2005 can be found here. There are many data charts in this report. In a quick browse through, the most appropriate table I could find is Table 2 ("Prevalence Rates of Entrepreneurial Activity Across Countries 2005") on page 18 of the report (page 19 of the pdf file). This compares a variety of countries, including the US and Brazil, for different kinds of entreprenurial activity. This is expressed as a series of percentages - I strongly recommend that you read the report's notes on the methodology used so that you feel comfortable with what the percentages mean exactly. Other GEM reports, including some on Brazil specifically, can be found found through this page. Hope that helps. Good luck with your project. Bwithh 21:59, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Question about the Holocaust

Hey everybody, my knowledge of the Holocaust is OK, but there are still a few of its concepts that I don't understand, so I thought I thought I'd annoy you with my questions

1) Why didn't the average guy in the street speak out against the Nazi regime, surely the majority of people would have thought that the persecution had to stop and would have spoken out against it?

2) Why was Hitler so prejudiced against anybody who didn't conform to aryan standards? Surely if he wanted to purge the world of all non-aryans he would have ended up in a concentration camp himself?

3) Why did the SS carry out the murders? Why were they also so willing to torture victims? Surely some of the moral fibers would have told them that they shouldn't be doing what they were doing? Because, I mean if enough of them said, excuse my language, "up yours Hitler, we're not killing the Jews" who would have challenged them? Nobody, so I was wondering did they get a kick out of torturing people or something?

4) Lastly, is the question that confuses me the most; Fair enough, the Nazi regime sought to murder people who did not conform to their standards. So, rather than torture prisoners for years, why not just immediately gas them. Did they dehumanize their victims or something so that they would embrace their deaths when they were killed and they would therefore be easier to force into the gas chambers? I apologise that this is such a loaded question. Ahadland 18:00, 18 October 2006 (UTC) 18:00, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a historian, but as far as I have understood it, Nazi ruled a lot by fear. Political critics were persecuted, oppressed and killed. Also, according to Nazi ideology, jews were a sub-human parasite, which it was morally just to remove from earth. I don't know how widespread the torture was, but jews were used as a cheap labor force (only given enough food to sustain themselves) if they would have been gassed directly, the responsible would have wasted a source of economical saving (needing to pay German workers money that was required for the military industry). Nazism and fascism was extremely dehumanizing. Please fill in and correct mistakes. 惑乱 分からん 18:22, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

About speaking out against the nazis, although extremely risky, it was done. Two examples I can think of is loads of Danes starting to wear david stars when the Jews were forced to and the february strike in the Netherlands. But then, what good does that do? Saying "You're being very naughty!" Wow, that will have had the nazis trembling. It was really just for morale. What really helped was hiding Jews and other prosecuted people, which a fair amount of very brave people did and going into hiding to escape the arbeitseinsatz, which even more people did (including my father, who, like a lot of other people, lived in the Biesbosch for some time). DirkvdM 19:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

If you study genocide, you will likely come to some disturbing conclusions:

• A much larger percentage of the population than you would think would like to torture and murder people, including children, for fun, if they could be assured that they would get away with it. Perhaps 1% of the population.

• A much larger percentage of the population than you would think would encourage the torture and murder of people, including children, if they would derive some advantage from it, like power or money. Perhaps 10% of the population.

• A much larger percentage of the population than you would think would go along with the torture and murder of people, including children, if there was some negative consequence to them for speaking out against it. Perhaps 80% of the population.

• The small number of people left who are willing to speak out are insufficient to change things.

StuRat 19:35, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Here are answers to each of your questions:

1. People were afraid. Many were also in denial about the extent of persecution, especially since it did not touch most families directly. People were not well organized, outside of the Nazi Party, because the Nazi Party had outlawed and repressed oppositional organizations. Individuals were afraid to stand up to the Nazis. They feared that they would be dragged off to concentration camps, too, if they spoke up. Finally, there was some degree of support for Nazi policies because some percentage of the German population shared Nazi views.

2. I can't really answer this. It requires getting inside the head of Adolf Hitler. His ideas were not entirely consistent. He and his regime were particularly hostile to certain social categories in varying degrees. Their most intense hatred was directed toward Jews, and this grew out of historical German and European anti-semitism.

3. Some members of the SS probably did have sadistic tendencies and took pleasure in their horrific activities. Also, the fear factor operated in the SS as well. Many of the leadership believed in the principles behind the "final solution," and any rank-and-file who disagreed would have been afraid to speak up for fear that they would be the recipients of SS maltreatment, with which they were themselves all familiar.

4. Wakuran is correct that the Germans faced a labor shortage and wanted to make use of the labor of able-bodied prisoners before dispensing with them. Also the Final Solution, or the genocide policy, was not adopted until 1942. Before that date, Jews were mostly herded into ghettos, though hundreds of thousands had been killed by death squads or in mass pogroms. From the time they came into power, doctrinaire Nazis did view Jews as subhuman and as somehow guilty for Germany's international "humiliation" after World War I. When social norms encourage brutal treatment of a stigmatized class, the class often suffers greatly, and this is what happened to Jews under Nazi rule before 1942.

Marco polo 19:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

(After edit conflict:) I also agree with everything StuRat says, though of course we aren't certain about the percentages in each category. Marco polo

You had an edit conflict with yourself? DirkvdM 09:23, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I get those all the time. I try to save, get an error, then try again. Unknown to me, it did save the first time, so sees the second save as an edit conflict. StuRat 16:20, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

It's hard to answer these questions in a few paragraphs. People have written whole books about it. One book that I found very interesting is Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt. Contrary to what the title may make you think, Arendt talks not only about Adolf Eichmann and his trial, but explains a lot about the circumstances, focusing very much on the questions you ask. If you are interested in the matter you may find the book a most intriguing read. Simon A. 21:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The Jews shipped to the camps were inspected on arrival and those judged unfit for hard labor were often gassed immediately. The fit ones were often sent to labor camps to build things needed for the war or for needs of the public. They were fed a starvation diet so they got thin and weak and eventually died. They were thus effectively forced to live off their own body fat and tissues, and did not consume as much agricultural product as a normal hired laborer would require. In addition there was torture because of...sadism? evil? government policy? to prevent any hope and discourage escape attempts via severe reprisals? to encourage the others to work harder?Edison 22:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I recommend reading Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men, which is a wonderfully clear exposition on how the Germans organized their killing machine which seems to be your #3 question. Most of your questions seem to stem from a lack of consideration of how humans work in groups — human history is nothing if not dominated by the way a few people with weapons can dominate huge groups of those without them. --Fastfission 01:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

• 1) Speaking out would quickly land you in prison, at best. What are you going to do? A) "Take arms against a sea of troubles" so to speak, and risk being killed or ending up in a camp yourself. or B) Decide to believe what the regime is telling you, that the camps aren't so bad after all, and everyone is better off this way? Sorry, but people are always better at self-deception than moral integrity. 2) Emotions aren't rational. There's no use discussing it, really. (But there's no reason to make Hitler out to be more extreme than he was.) 3) With the exception of the psychopaths, the SS needed to be trained to murder people. It's not only possible to condition people to do that, by dehumanizing their victims. Indeed, it's entirely necessary to do so and it's happened in every genocide before and since. The Holocaust was not a singular event perpetrated by a singular kind of people. As much as we'd like otherwise, it's human behaviour. That does not mean it can't be stopped. But it means we need to recognize the fact that it could happen to us, too. And that if we fail to do so, we've taken the first step towards repeating that mistake, and missed the valuable lesson history has for us here. I suggest reading about the Milgram experiment, for instance. 4) Most victims of the Holocaust were killed immediately (gas or bullet), a large proportion of them were not killed in the camps. As for the rest, they were used for labour, with many being worked to death. Relatively few were subject to the infamous torture and experiments. I think part of this confusion is due to Auschwitz - that was where the torture went on, and it was also a combined labor and death camp. The rest were either extermination camps (where people were executed immediagely) or labor camps. A large number of victims - maybe up to half, even - were not killed in the camps at all. --BluePlatypus 08:34, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with just about everything that has been said so far, which is rather striking given the subject. But if there is such good insight in that part of history, then why do so few people realise that we've started to repeat that history? Then, it was the Jews, now it's the terrorists, an ideal target. You can't pinpoint them, yet they are still very tangible through occasional bombings that get blown up by the media (excuse the pun). And, oh horror, you can't pinpoint them, but still they are all around. So people are all too willing to give up the rights of terrorists, unawares that, given the fact that terrorists are such a vaguely defined group, anyone can be branded a terrorist, including themselves. DirkvdM 09:23, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you fairly miss the point of a distinction between "Jews" and "terrorists". The former is a category of people based on nothing other than their culture and their birth. The latter is a category relating to decisions made by people in respect to their conduct towards others — in a strict sense a terrorist is someone who would use threats of violence or violence itself to achieve political or cultural ends. It is not a "vaguely defined group" at all, in principle. Obviously in practice the term gets thrown around fairly liberally by scaremongers, and the question of who is a terrorist becomes a major legal issue, but whereas people who are legitimately Jews have no actual strikes against them, the people who are legitimately terrorists have made conscious decisions to do harm to others. That's a big difference. And there was really no great difficulty for Hitler and the Nazis to find and eliminate and even define what "Jews" were, not in the same way that "terrorism" can be hard to pinpoint. The Nazis knew who they wanted to kill and this is why they were so efficient at it in comparison to the "war on terror". I think the comparisons are bad and actually fairly offensive, and I say this as someone who does not support the "war on terror" as it is outlined by Republican ideologues in the slightest. --Fastfission 20:03, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Whether these people are/were a real threat is irrelevant to my point. (And that the alledged terrorists are hard to catch even makes them scarier, justifying even stronger measures.) What matters is that people were willing to believe it and all it takes is some excuse. I nazi Germany it was the Jews' wealth despite the poverty. In our time it was the planes flying into the WTC and Pentagon. Other than that the threat is mostly imaginary. What percentage of people get killed by terrorists? In the Netherlands human rights are being given up, despite that over the last few decades only a handful of people were killed, the last ones over a decade ago. Yet we are told they are a threat, and most believe it. Just like the Germans believed it in the thirties. DirkvdM 19:01, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

• By torture I was referring to the events prior to the Final Solution. Events such as forcing Jews to scrub the streets with acid, or forcing women into brothels, or making the Jews go into a park and force them to eat grass and climb trees behaving like birds. The question was referring to why these acts of cruelty were carried out. I was not referring explicitly to the cruelty in the concentration camps. Thanks

Another point is that people back then were often indoctrinated from infancy to believe that the absolutely positively worst thing you could ever do was to question authority, even a tiny bit. Worse than murder, worse than baby rape, worse than torture. If an authority told you that something was so, you believed it and you'd die for it. (This isn't just in Germany; even in democracies people were very often indoctrinated into the idea that the government, the church, or whatever other authority was around Knew Better Than They Did. Basic to this principle is that you didn't speak up, you didn't make a fuss (horrors - making a fuss!) and you never, ever expressed an opinion that wasn't in line with what everyone else believed. That was "calling them liars", "contradicting them", etc. and was again worse than being a child molester. I'm not talking Nazi laws here; I'm talking about the mentality of people back then. --Charlene.fic 18:20, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

You overestimate the effects of "indoctrination" as well as the history of Germany. It is far more complicated than saying people were taught "not to question authority" or to "disagree" — the Weimar period was full of political and social disagreement, people were not scared to death of disagreeing until the people who had power started prosecuting disagreement with violence. --Fastfission 20:03, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

People often don't realise how pervasive and widespread the ideas Naziism was built from were in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the turn of the 20th century the world was ruled by empires, so imperialism was perfectly normal. Racial theories of nationhood were perfectly normal - read any book on, for example, the Celts, published before WWII and it's full of stuff about "stock" and skull-shapes defining ethnic groups. Democracy was not yet the dominant ideology, there were still absolute monarchies (like Russia), and radical political theories like communism and fascism were fashionable - remember, people hadn't yet seen what damage they would do. Anti-semitism was normal and had been for centuries - prominent Victorians like Richard Francis Burton believed Jews sacrificed Christian children in their religious rituals - and, perhaps most difficult for us to get our heads round, so was genocide. North America and Australia were settled by genocide within the memory of people living at that time. Mainstream intellectuals like H. G. Wells envisioned utopias where "lesser races" had been disposed of. In the 20s Winston Churchill could see nothing wrong with using poison gas against "uncivilised tribes".

Imperialism, racial nationalism, fascism, antisemitism and genocide were all mainstream. Germany, after its defeat in the first world war, its humiliation under the Versailles Treaty and the removal of its old political order, was paranoid enough to produce a movement like Naziism that put them all together, and had enough of a power vaccuum for that movement to gain real power. People generally go along with what's going on, even without the fear factor that's been discussed above, and Hitler had shown he was prepared to massacre even his own supporters (the SA) for the sake of power. It would take someone exceptional to put his head over the parapet in such a situation. The best you get is someone like Oskar Schindler, saving as many people as he could by playing the system.--Nicknack009 15:45, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I dispute that the New World was colonized through genocide in the proper sense of the term. What happened to the natives was, of course, inexcusable, but it was more like ethnic cleansing, using force as a means simply to remove them from an area; the ultimate long term goal was not complete extermination. Eran of Arcadia 13:54, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

to what extent did Weimar Germany experience a golden age c1924 -29?

it is often said that the weimar republic experienced a golden age, how was this the case?

If you read Weimar Republic, you will see that this was the (only) portion of the republic's history when the German economy was strong. It was also a time of artistic creativity and achievement. Check out Bauhaus, Bertolt Brecht, and German Expressionism. Marco polo 19:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

c.1924-1929 seems to be pretty much the Weimar Republic's only age. If that age was its "Golden Age", what else was left? 1918-1924?

This is obviously another homework question, but let me just say. The Weimar Republic experienced NO golden age. Loomis 23:19, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Isn't that uncanny, I had the exact same question when I was doing my A Levels. And I got an A+ for my answer. You know why? Because I did my own homework. Rusty2005 21:28, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

It is difficult to talk about a 'golden age' with reference to the Weimar Republic because it always suffered from a fairly high degree of political uncertainty, arising from its creation out of defeat and national humiliation. However, the period from 1924 to 1929 was certainly more stable than what came before and after. The first period was marked by political crisis and hyper-inflation. The political crisis peaked with the failure of Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923; and by 1924 Hjalmar Schacht helped bring inflation under control with the introduction of the Reichmark. German economic recovery was also helped by the implementation of the Dawes Plan, which regularized reparation payments due under the Versailles Treaty, and provided the economy with much-needed American investment. The period was also marked by a growing stability in Germany's international relations, under the guidance of Gustav Stresemann, foreign minister until his death in 1929. On the political front the parties most opposed to the Republic-at least those on the right-saw a decline in support, with the Nazis polling under a million votes and gaining only 12 seats in the Reichstag elections of 1928. In that same election the Social Democrat Hermann Müller formed the so-called Grand Coalition, which commanded majority support in the Reichstag. If things had gone on like this the Republic might very well have 'bedded down'; but in October 1929 Wall Street crashed, the Dawes Plan loans dried up and unemployment in Germany rose into the millions. The 'golden age' was over. But you should also bear in mind that even during the Republic's high noon there were still worrying political undercurrents. The Communist party, for instance, just as opposed to the Republic as the Nazis, continued to grow in strength, and the middle class vote was becoming dangerously fragmented, ready to be swept up by new forms of right-wing radicalism when the time was opportune. Hope this helps. Clio the Muse 23:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Hazard management strategies

I'm writing an essay on hazard management strategies. What recent hazard (ie. hurricane katrina? ) would be a good example to argue for or against that 'management should focus on reducing the effects rather than managing the causes'?

Basically most hazards will show that there is little you can do to manage the causes (ie. seeding hurricanes does little) but wondering if there any other examples that illustrate this point or argue against it.

Hazard or risk management is a very broad subject. The strategies very much depend on the situation at hand. Within my own field (I work with financial risk and modelling such risk) the typical approach is to limit the effect by being able to spot the signs of future problems. With regard to Katrina there was little to do when it came to preventing the actual hurricane but through forecasting and preemptive efforts on the ground the effects could be adressed. basically I think you need to read up on risk management and then find a good commonly known example. katrina seems to be a good candidate for such an example although people are probably going to have a lot of opinions on this exact hurricane and the efforts made to reduce the effects so think about that as well. MartinDK 21:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Disasters that can't be completely avoided:

• Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, meteor strikes (although we are fairly close to being able to prevent those).

Disasters that can sometimes be completely avoided (although the price may be too high, in many cases):

• Fires, floods, war, avalanches, landslides.

StuRat 21:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

A certain Jewish ritual, not static at all, all men

The academic year has started again, so less evilbu on the reference desk, but still some:).

Seriously : I had a question about a certain Jewish ritual. (Questions about Jews in particular seem to be quite popular right now?) I saw it very briefly on television. It involved a group of Jewish (young) men (like between 20 and 30 years old). I wouldn't exactly call it a dance, but it wasn't static either. It's possible one of the men plays a different role, as if he is the central character (maybe this person is celebrated) and the others move around him.

Or maybe this was just a group of Jewish men having fun not doing anything specifically Jewish. But I'd doubt that.

Please don't think I'm trying to take a cheap shot at Jewish ways, it's really not the point of my question, I've just been wondering about this for quite some time.

Thank you very much, Evilbu 23:28, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It sounds a bit like a hora dance at a wedding. Among very Orthodox Jews, men and women celebrate separately. -- Mwalcoff 00:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

The "ritual" you seem to be speaking of seems to be something called a "wedding". Even in non-Orthodox weddings, there are traditional Jewish dances done by men and women. It's just DANCING man! It's no special "ritual", just DANCING! :-) Loomis 23:15, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

University California Berkeley and Affirmative Action

Hello all!

According to UC Berkeley's website, they have specific plans for the implementation of Affirmative Action. To my knowledge, AA was banned from use in hiring and admissions in the UC system in the mid-90s, and Prop. 209 baned it statewide in 1996. So my question is: Is UCB using "affirmative action" to mean the active search for/recrutment of minorities, or did they find some loophole in 209, OR has 209 been overturned/altered but affirmative action remains unpopular? I am utterly confused. (This is the link that started the confusion: [3])

Thanks in advance! ~Russia Moore 23:47, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Russia, I was at UC Berkeley during most of the 1990s. Affirmative action, in the sense of preferences for underrepresented groups, did not end until Proposition 209 went into effect in 1997. UC was strongly opposed to Proposition 209 and did not end any affirmative action programs until absolutely required to do so.

However, affirmative action survives (in a very limited way) in the area of hiring, because UC also has to comply with Federal guidelines requiring affirmative action plans. Because of Proposition 209, those plans cannot involve preferences for any ethnic or racial group. As you suspect, "affirmative action" here means no more than recruiting from pools of underrepresented groups. Here is a document from UC Santa Cruz explaining how this works: [4]

Marco polo 00:37, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou! I was looking through the document I linked to a bit more carefully and that's what it appeared to be, but there was nothing directly talking about the changes or anything of that sort. Russia Moore 01:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Chinese monarchism?

Considering that the Chinese monarchy was abolished relatively recently, it's surprising that there never seemed to be any movement to restore it. I suppose the existence of two distinct, antagonistic republican ideologies might have left little room for monarchism, but it's odd that some sort of vague "Imperial sentiment" never played a major role in post-1911 Chinese politics. Did such views perhaps become associated with the Japanese and thus universally fall out of favor? Is there any political organization currently advocating the restoration of the Chinese Empire in some form? Thanks! Bhumiya (said/done) 23:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that the last imperial dynasty, the Qing dynasty, left a bad taste with most Chinese. Not least, this was because the Qing royalty emphasized that they were not ethnically Chinese and implemented policies that disadvantaged the vast ethnic Chinese (Han) majority, who were barred from the highest military and government positions. The Qing also looked down on the Han. At the same time, the Qing presided over the weakening and stagnation of China militarily, economically, and technologically, and allowed China to fall under the domination of Western powers. By the time of their fall in 1912, the dynasty had little or no popular support. So there would not have been a movement for their restoration. Rather, there was a desire among Chinese to modernize, at least so as to be able to stand up to Western or Japanese aggressors. This was a goal espoused, in different ways, by the Nationalists and the Communists. Monarchy, I think, was associated in the minds of many Chinese with backwardness and stagnation, the last thing that most Chinese wanted for their nation. That said, I think that analogies can be made between Chinese Communist political practice and imperial rule. So that, in some ways, the imperial tradition carries on. Marco polo 01:00, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

At least in 1917, a warlord named Zhang Xun (zh:張勳) tried to reestablish the monarchy but failed. In 1932, the Japanese Empire restored Emperor Puyi in Manchuria. -- Toytoy 02:31, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

They already have the equivalent. The Communist party works just like an aristocracy. Clarityfiend 02:39, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

The last monarchy in China had a rather dismal record of submission to foreign powers, so left a very poor opinion of monarchies with the Chinese. StuRat 03:23, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

See Mandate of heaven -- the Chinese traditionally didn't have a lasting attachment to one dynastic line, the way that Japanese did... AnonMoos 10:10, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Marco polo is right; the reason that there hasn't been much imperial restorationist feeling is because of a, how pitiful the last three Qing leaders were and b, they weren't Han, they were Manchu. The most recent dynasty with a Han imperial line was the Ming Dynasty, (it was finally eliminated in 1662,) and that was so long ago I expect scholars would have trouble finding a verifiable descendant of the Ming imperial line. Picaroon9288 23:49, 21 October 2006 (UTC)