Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 December 30

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December 30

Giants Ninepin and Thunder

When I was a very young kid someone told me that thunder came from Jesus bowling in the clouds and hitting a strike ever time he threw. I always assumed he made this up to mess with me, but recently someone told me that they thought they remembered a legend somewhere of thunder coming from giants in the sky playing ninepin. If so, then I find it interesting that this story eventually came down to me, with the giants replaced by Jesus.

Does anybody know of any such legend? If so, where does it come from? Thanks. 67.158.4.158 (talk) 05:21, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

You said pool in your first sentence, but you meant bowling, right ? StuRat (talk) 06:33, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Err.. yes. Fixed it now. 67.158.4.158 (talk) 07:23, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Supposedly an old Dutch legend about the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew creating thunder by playing nine-pin bowling was incorporated by Washington Irving into his story "Rip Van Winkle", so the idea goes back a ways. (Don't even think about asking why they picked on Hudson.) Clarityfiend (talk) 06:43, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

When I was a kid the story was "angels bowling". Adam Bishop (talk) 07:20, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

This was referenced in The Simpsons just recently, a show or two ago. A strike every time? Man, that'd be some boring bowling partner. TomorrowTime (talk) 07:27, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

According to my grandparents (relayed humorously by my father), it was God having his coal delivered, a domestic-supply reference that would probably baffle most of the current generation. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 10:30, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Now why would God need coals? The guy bellow I can understand, I mean gotta take care of those fires, they wont keep themselves burning, but I'd imagine God didn't have to take care of heating suplies in heaven... Or does it get chilly in heaven in the winter? TomorrowTime (talk) 14:10, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Evidently. Marnanel (talk) 14:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, my mother always said it was the Almighty rolling his barrels across the floor of his celestial beer cellar. Seems reasonable enough to me. Marnanel (talk) 13:15, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

...and my Dad assured me it was God pushing his wheelbarrow down his garden path. I guess we'll never know for sure.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:16, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I would say I'll ask him when I get there, but it'd only be thrown out for breaking WP:OR. Marnanel (talk) 14:22, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Gosh! They're even writing Wikipedia in Heaven and the other place. Explains a lot about Lucifer, the Original Troll. And this user. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:37, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Haha, I love how three fourths of the guy's user talk is "dude, change your user name or else!" Absolutely love it :) TomorrowTime (talk) 21:21, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

It's especially funny that he hasn't edited in five years, but is still getting the comments. User:Jesus, on the other hand, was indefinitely blocked for his name, despite the fact that it's a not-uncommon name. Buddy431 (talk) 02:13, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

American descendants of English royalty and nobility

How many Americans are descended from English royalty and the old Anglo-Norman nobility? Which of the US colonies was a scion of the nobility most likely to have settled? Thank you.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 08:04, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Your first query is an example of the sort of anthropo-mathematical question still being researched (by Joseph T. Chang of Yale University among others - see this) in connection with topics such as Coalescent theory and Most recent common ancestor, but probably "the large majority of those with any British descent" is not too wide of the mark. (Yes, I know, frantic hedging.)

According to Richard Dawkins in Chapter 0 [sic] of The Ancestor's Tale an initial theoretical model (see Spherical cow), known to be an unrefined first approximation but nonetheless a starting point, suggests that 80% of the population of Britain in 1000AD would be ancestors of everyone in Britain today, if Britain's population had always been isolated. (Dawkins looks in more detail at the numbers for Tasmania, whose population was entirely isolated for about 15,000 13,000 years up to 1800AD.) Adjusting for immigrations over the intervening millennium, the numbers and date-span of Britain->New World emigrations, the proportions of Anglo-Norman nobles and 'English royals' (do you mean pre-Norman Anglo-Saxons?) in the population, and doubtless many other relevent factors, I will gladly leave to others. To provide some perspective, Dawkins also explains that the most recent common (not 'sole', of course) ancestor of everyone in the World today probably lived only about 30,000 years ago (see the above-linked Most recent common ancestor for more details, though that article seems to ignore minor isolated populations such as the Tasmanians; see also Identical ancestors point).

Your second query I cannot address except to say that my gut feeling is that there would be no particular preponderance, and I await enlightenment from others along with you. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 11:13, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I met someone on an unrelated online forum who referred to the upcoming royal wedding as "my cousin's marriage", and then added that her nearest common ancestor with the groom was born in the early 1600s. I don't think she was being intentionally facetious. Marnanel (talk) 13:07, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I can't answer directly, but if you have an Ancestry subscription, you can access The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal and the Tudor Roll of the Blood Royal, either of which should give you leads as to possible answers to your question. --TammyMoet (talk) 11:28, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Jeanne -- Many remote descendants of nobility or royalty can be found in the U.S., but very few people who settled in the British North American colonies were actually aristocrats of any kind at the time that they crossed the Atlantic. In the mid-19th century, some people in the southern U.S. liked to claim that the "cavaliers" who settled Virginia were of higher social standing (and better represented old chivalrous ideals) than the "puritans" or "roundheads" who settled New England, but I don't know how well that would hold up in the study of 17th-century history... AnonMoos (talk) 12:35, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe quite a few younger sons as well as illegitimate offspring of the English gentry settled in Maryland and Virginia. I have a few direct ancestors who were from landed English families and were given land grants in Virginia by Charles II in gratitude for various services rendered not sure if pimping was one of them. I have read in newspaper articles that in most US presidential elections the candidate with the most noble ancestry normally wins, except in the case of Abraham Lincoln.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 13:54, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

According to this book, which many people accept as truth, it is rare that anyone with any ancestor from Europe is not descendent from Charlemagne. -- kainaw™ 13:58, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

"Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700" by Frederick Lewis Weis might be useful, although I have an instinctual urge to remove it from Wikipedia articles when it is listed as a reference... Adam Bishop (talk) 21:42, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Whence the instinct? It's certainly a more reliable book than the Redlich/Langston/Buck/Beard Charlemagne books (mentioned by Kainaw), if only because it doesn't rely on self-reported pedigrees and has been frequently revised and corrected... - Nunh-huh 21:48, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

According to a genealogical book which some have claimed to be a hoax (it was written by Gustav Anjou), I and my paternal line are descended from Harold II of England. And Bryan Fairfax, 8th Lord Fairfax of Cameron was a Virginian. Corvus cornix_talk 23:02, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

poems' unknown authors

I'm trying to figure out who wrote the poem, "The Ship That Sails." I'm also trying to find out who wrote these patriotic poems below;

"I AM THANKFUL TO BE AN AMERICAN"

I am thankful to be an American,

To live in the greatest land of all.

In a nation blessed, it's the very best,

I can stand with my head up tall.

I am thankful to be an American,

To be born in a land that's free.

I am thankful to God for allowing me to be,

An American.

"I LOVE YOU SO"

America, America.

How can I tell you, How I feel?

You have given me many treasures,

I love you so.

America, America.

Land of hope and liberty,

Freedom Rings from every mountain,

From sea to sea.

If more information is out there, please let me know. Thank you.24.90.204.234 (talk) 08:11, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Hm, that second song sure pops up a lot on the Internet, but none of the pages I opened have an author. This one comes closest by saying "unknown". Well, as hackneyed as it is, it could have been written by anyone old enough to hold a pen, really. Heck, it wouldn't even have to be a person - I remember way-back-when I was still growing up in Yugoslavia and I had a piece of software for my shiny new apex of computing hardware, the glorious Commodore 64 - it spoofed Yugoslav politico speeches by browsing through a database of random jingoisms and arranging them in sensible sentence patterns and what you'd get was a lot of noise that seemed to make sense but was really just empty bantering. This song reminds me a bit of what that software would throw out... TomorrowTime (talk) 08:27, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed - if the "American" was replaced by any of a whole range of other country names, I would have said it sounded like it was churned out by a machine at the central propaganda department.--PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:41, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

It reminds me of that bit from Pinafore, except without the irony. Or is it? It's always hard to tell.

He himself hath said it

And it's greatly to his credit

That he is an Englishman

He iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis an EngLISHman --W. S. Gilbert

--Trovatore (talk) 22:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Is "The Ship that Sails" the verse that begins "I'd rather be the ship that sails/ and rides the billows wild and free; / Than to be the ship that always fails/ to leave its port and go to sea"? The earliest citation I can find (from 1969) is credited to "Anonymous", so I suspect it may not be easy or even possible to find the author. (That "to" in the third line really grates, and there's one in the third line of every damn stanza.) Marnanel (talk) 13:13, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's the one. I just found, "The Set of the Sails," another nautical-related poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. When was that one written?24.90.204.234 (talk) 23:42, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

It's proper English, ain't it? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:26, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Price of infinite goods

How does a seller of infinite goods (that means, software, audio-books) put a price tag on its product? Theoretically, the offer is infinite and could meet any demand of it. Quest09 (talk) 13:21, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't most software say that it's "licensed, not sold"? Also, as a practical matter, it will become obsolete well short of infinity, more like a decade or less. As for the actual price, presumably it's market-driven: they find the price that will optimize their revenue. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:27, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

(ec) You've defined "infinite goods" as "software, audio-books", but I'm afraid I'm none the wiser. In what sense are these goods "infinite", and what is this infinite offer to which you refer? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 13:28, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs: licenses are still infinite (for all practical purposes).

Jack: Well, you can serve as many clients as you want. If you were selling something with a physical dimension (like cake or beer) you have n units and try to sell them to the higher bidders. But, in the case of software you could sell infinite licenses if you had to, there is no upper limit. You could sell to the higher bidders, to the middle tier and to the lower tier of the market. You could sell license to anyone how would pay you $0.01 or more. Quest09 (talk) 13:34, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

There is usually a different license agreement/price for multiple-user or server-level-user licenses than for individuals. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:37, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Bugs: I meant you can produce as much licenses as you want. There is no physical limit to it. Quest09 (talk) 13:53, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Again, the price is market-driven, i.e. they charge whatever they can get away with to optimize their revenue. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

OR, but when I have sold e-books, this is indeed how I've done it. It's all relative to the prices everyone else is charging. If you price it too low, you'll make less, but more importantly nobody will take you seriously (perception of value is an odd thing). If you price it too high, nobody buys. It's quite a juggling act. Marnanel (talk) 14:19, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

The market mechanism will work here too, as in the case of other products or services. Even if licenses are not limited, I wouldn't say they are infinite, since the seller of them has an absolute monopole over them. He can start offering n license at the x price, if things don't work out he offer them at a lower price. Your source of confusion is that licenses are indeed not really infinite, they are limited by the producer, who makes the price go up or down as he pleases. That makes it impossible to get a license for $0.01. You end up paying what they can charge you. Mr.K. (talk) 14:21, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I'm sure Microsoft would love to charge a million dollars for every Windows 7 license. But no one would buy it, and users would flock to Linux or something (which illustrates the importance of competition in a free market). However, if they charge 99 cents for it... very few, if any, would buy it, out of suspicion. Hence they try to "optimize" their revenue by finding out "what the market will bear". I don't know how else to explain it to the OP, beyond Econ 101. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:23, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Calculating the right price (=where the producer earns more) follows the logic above, but might be trickier to calculate, going beyond the Econ 101 knowledge of Bugs. But this optimized price exists, depends on both demand and psychological factors). Mr.K. (talk)

You can start by estimating how many you realistically expect to sell, not how many it's technically possible to sell. That should give you an idea of your cost (to develop the software or write the book) divided by how many you've sold. Add to that all your transaction costs, and the cut the various dealers will take (Amazon doesn't sell books for free!) and you've got your cost per unit.

This cost per unit will change a lot depending on your estimates of how many you'll sell (Which will be tied to what you're proposing to charge, etc.), but that's not as different as you might think to physical goods. Physical goods still have set-up and design costs that must be spread over every item you sell, and physical goods will cost different amounts to manufacture depending on whether you need a hundred of them(Expensive western hand labor) or a hundred million (Highly mechanized factory in china).

I'm not saying it's easy for them to find the right price, but it's not as crazy as you might think compared to, say, the price of an iPod. APL (talk) 15:42, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

See also Obsolescence. You may have an infinite supply of copies of what you're selling, but you do not have infinite demand. Who would want to buy a copy of Windows 3.0 any more? Also: market saturation. You basically have an infinite supply of air, but no one is selling it because everyone's already got it. WikiDao ☯ (talk) 17:12, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

The technical phrase for what the OP is calling "infinite goods" are "goods exhibiting zero marginal cost" -- that is, the cost of producing one more unit of the good is zero. Market price is determined jointly by the marginal cost of production *and* the demand. So, WikiDao is quite right, if demand is finite at a price of zero the fact that the goods exhibit zero marginal cost does not imply that the market price will fall to zero. Wikiant (talk) 17:21, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

You've left out the fact that Microsoft (and many others) also actively participate in market segmentation. That's why there are fifty flavors of Windows to choose from every time around. The goal is to say, "how much are you willing to pay for my product?" and adding a few bells and whistles to the expensive ones. It's not a "single" price for Windows 7; there are lots of different prices for Windows 7, with more or less arbitrary differences in the product between them. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

You are describing price discrimination, which is a separate phenomenon from zero marginal cost. For example, you see market segmentation in car pricing where marginal cost is not zero. Having said that, it tends to be the case that firms that produce zero marginal cost products also engage in market segmentation, but that is due to a third factor -- lack of competition. Zero marginal cost firms tend to be monopolistic. Monopolistic firms, because of reduced competition, find it possible to engage in price discrimination. Wikiant (talk) 23:00, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

See also natural monopoly. Jørgen (talk) 21:11, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

interesting geography/GK question

Which (endangered??) animal is not eaten by the locals since they consider it as emblem or guardian. Still populations of the animal have declined here in the last 15 years due to farmland expansion, illegal logging, poaching and mining.

would appreciate any help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 183.83.211.172 (talk) 17:40, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Aaand it's another of the World Atlas inane geography quiz questions... [1] TomorrowTime (talk) 18:13, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

If you know the answer, please don't post it here. Go to the worldatlas.com website and post the answer there. Then please donate the prize money to Wikipedia. Marco polo (talk) 18:38, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Elephant, Rhino? 92.24.183.19 (talk) 19:35, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

"Elephino!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:38, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Turns out the answer was chimpanzee. TomorrowTime (talk) 10:46, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I guess they don't know about bushmeat. Googlemeister (talk) 16:05, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

AIDS may have jumped from apes to humans via the ingestion of infected chimp meat. Corvus cornix_talk 23:10, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

economy versus society

what is society? what is economy? Are they two things? Are they two ways of talking about one thing?193.135.2.129 (talk) 17:53, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

They aren't the same thing. Society refers to the sum total of interactions among humans. Economy refers to the interactions among humans that involve buying and selling things. Society is a superset that includes (among other things) economy, polity, and religion. Wikiant (talk) 18:04, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

These terms are used somewhat differently in different academic disciplines, but in general you can say that a society is a group of people who share a common political structure, an economy is the collective set of economic interactions of a defined group of people (and a culture is a group of people who share a common set of traditions, understandings, languages, etc). The are often overlapping terms - a society can me mono- or multi-cultural, and usually has its own economy, but is often part of a larger global or regional economy or culture. The best way to think about this is to note that each term focuses on a different aspect of normal human social behavior, and every group of people can be looked at through the lens of each term .--Ludwigs2 18:11, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

In broad terms, economics can be thought of as the study of value, whatever that means. While traditionally, this means money, it doesn't have to, and some economists (like Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt) study non-monetary value. Basically, what economists do is to study how value affects behavior; that is how people will behave when making decisions based on value of "things", even if "things" are abstract concepts. --Jayron32 18:24, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I think one could argue that it is really pretty impossible to talk about economy without some notion of society, and vice versa. They are thoroughly entangled. I am not sure they can be considered one and the same, though. But they do have aspects which are very, very intermeshed. Both are also very broad definitions that encompass extremely fundamental aspects of human interaction. I don't think one could argue that they could be considered independent in any way, or that one could talk about something which was wholly social without having an economic component, or vice versa. A simple example: we might think that I could go spend some time with a friend, without exchanging any currency or anything like that, and it would be something that might fall purely in the social realm. But as even our metaphors allude to, time itself is a resource with value, and the choice to spend it one place versus another gives it a deeply economic aspect. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:27, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

In 1987 British PM Margaret Thatcher, who paid an awful lot of attention to the economy, declared "There is no such thing as society". Make of that what you will. HiLo48 (talk) 23:50, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

... well what she actually said in that interview was ...

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people, and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation and it is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate—" It is all right. We joined together and we have these insurance schemes to look after it" . That was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system and so some of those help and benefits that were meant to say to people:"All right, if you cannot get a job, you shall have a basic standard of living!" but when people come and say:"But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!" You say:"Look" It is not from the dole. It is your neighbour who is supplying it and if you can earn your own living then really you have a duty to do it and you will feel very much better!"

She later added "My meaning, clear at the time but subsequently distorted beyond recognition, was that society was not an abstraction, separate from the men and women who composed it, but a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations." Dbfirs 09:51, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

cap tossing at graduation

I'm looking for information on the tossing of the mortarboard during or after graduation ceremonies. I read the mortarboard and academic dress articles, and the graduation article mentions it once, in the caption of a photo.

thanks, WhiteDragon (talk) 18:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed a similar phenomenon at military academies, where graduates toss their hats into the air. StuRat (talk) 19:55, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Hm, never happened at my graduation. This page said it was happening there in 1912. Marnanel (talk) 22:29, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

As a foreigner (i.e. not American) it's always looked to me like one of those silly American customs. I'm suggesting that it's maybe exclusively American. It's not an Australian custom. HiLo48 (talk) 23:45, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

You may be correct, because it happens at my high school's graduation...not every student participates, but around 50% do...our school also provides confetti-shooting things for each student to shoot at the conclusion of the ceremony, at the same time as the caps are thrown. --Ks1stm (talk) ^{[alternative account of Ks0stm]} 23:58, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

A little speculation as I don't have access to the drill handbook, but it may be derived from the tradition doffing ones hat whilst cheering, from the period when gentlemen wore hats as a matter of course. In the military environment that has become a formalised drill movement when the uniform cap is removed in advance and then raised in the right hand.

As mentioned above it's something that happens at Passing Out parades for officers of all three services, although given that ones uniform cap is worth about £200 (c $350-400) then it pays to keep hold of it or not throw it too vigorously.

I've not seen it happen in the UK at university graduation.

ALR (talk) 09:49, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I remember being told a story about a gathering of Cub Scouts in London in the 1950s (well before my time), where the organizers thought it would be a great idea to finish the event with three cheers and everyone to throw their caps in the air. Right on cue, 2,000 small boys threw their green snd gold caps skyward which looked impressive but it took an hour to unite the right cap with the right child. Alansplodge (talk) 01:20, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The thing is, though, that Cub Scouts generally own their own caps, whereas academic dress these days unfortunately tends to be hired once-off for the occasion as though it was a clown costume. There's no particular problem if you throw a cap that isn't yours in the air and return with one that was previously worn by someone else, as long as the gown hire company get all their caps back by nightfall. Marnanel (talk) 02:34, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Throwing headgear in the air as a public display of enthusiasm was not uncommon in Britain during the first few decades of the 20th century (when most men usually wore hats or caps in public). It can be seen in old newsreels of crowds cheering Royal processions, goals and final whistles at football matches, and the like. (See also the opening sequence of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, not to mention that of Rhoda.) I believe that one usually attempted to throw one's hat/cap in a frisbee-like manner so that one could catch it again, but I too, have wondered how often headgear was thus lost or damaged. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 10:43, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Which English queen consort had the noblest pedigree?

I am curious as to which English queen consort had the most royal blood?--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 19:30, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Define "Most royal blood". Several queen consorts were daughters of monarchs, notably Catherine of Aragon, who was a daughter of TWO ruling monarchs (Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile). --Jayron32 19:43, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

There was also Isabella of France, whose parents were both monarchs. I was thinking of consorts who were the daughters of monarchs rather than dukes, counts, etc.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 20:31, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

After looking over List of English consorts, it seems that the daughter of a Holy Roman Emperor Judith of Flanders might have fit that role. Her article mentions that the custom of how the wife of the king was addressed changed with her because she was a "high ranking princess," the daughter of an emperor among kings. 24.38.31.81 (talk) 20:45, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Tangentially, what kind of transformation did the blood of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte undergo between 20 and 22 August 1810? 87.81.230.195 (talk) 10:50, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

What does Bernadotte have to do with English queen consorts? BTW, he was not the only non-noble monarch. Look at the 19th century Serbian rulers for example.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 12:14, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I was using him merely as an example to question (though not explicitly to deny) the validity of the concept "royal blood" and what it means to have more or less of it. Incidentally, I now see that the article section Royal descent#United States partially addresses one of your other recent questions. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 17:41, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

House names

Resolved

All the schools I've ever encountered which use the house system have named the houses after objects, famous people, or in the case of primary schools, easily-recognisable concepts such as colours (so that the younger kids can easily remember that Blue house's house colour is blue, rather than having to remember some more abstract mapping). Most of this is also mentioned in our article. However, I'm currently reading the first of the Psmith books, a school story, to my daughter, and I noticed that the two houses primarily mentioned are named after their current housemasters: Outwood's and Downing's. Was this ever a common practice? Marnanel (talk) 20:01, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

According to our article on Eton, "Each House has a formal name, mainly used for post and people outside the Eton community. It is generally known by the boys by the initials or surname of the House Master, the teacher who lives in the house and manages the pupils in it." AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:06, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I should add that these houses, and presumably those in the Psmith stories, are actual houses, usually within the precincts of the school, where the pupils live in term-time, rather than the system of 'put pupils into some arbitrarily-named divisions called "houses" so that we can run sports competitions between them' that applied at my (grammar) school (ours were British imperial heroes). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:21, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed so— and thank you for finding that. (Ours were kingdoms of the Heptarchy, but I believe they have been changed since.) The article House system notes its origin in, and its abstraction from, physical houses, but doesn't mention any habit of naming or nicknaming houses after their housemasters: perhaps we should add this? Marnanel (talk) 20:52, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Charterhouse School names its houses (which are separate houses) after former masters who were the first housemasters (with '-ites' added to the name). Sam Blacketer (talk) 23:11, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

E F Benson's novel David Blaize, which our artcle says was published in 1916, certainly exhibits the system you are asking about. --ColinFine (talk) 00:53, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

English universities: teaching in cosy private rooms

I've seen a number of movies set in English universities of days gone by, where a typical scene is of a group of maybe half a dozen students gathered in what looks like the teacher/professor's private room. There'll be books on shelves, and a small fire going. They might be having tea and cakes, while they're discussing some philosophical/language/history issue. It looks terribly cosy and intimate. I've often wondered whether these scenes accurately reflect how teaching actually occurred in those places, or whether it's just a Hollywood/Pinewood invention. I mean, for only 6 people to be taking that particular subject, out of the thousands at the university at any one time, seems a little odd. Were these the teacher's "special students", the cream of the crop so to speak, or were they the entire class? Was there really a ratio of one teacher to every 6-odd students? Or was this just one of a number of tutorial groups into which the entire class was split? In other movies they'll show an entire lecture hall full of students, with one teacher in charge, which is much more like my experience at university. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:04, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Oxbridge prides itself on the tutorial system. In the past, it wasn't half a dozen students, but one student and one tutor. The student would read their essay aloud and the tutor would comment on it. There were also lectures, treated as less important. But even at Oxbridge it has slipped, and tutorials are more likely to be for two or more students. In other UK universities, students have classes of different sizes depending on the subject, with a definite trend towards ever larger classes. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:12, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

It happens sometimes at the better universities, if not necessarily in quite such comfort. Oxford and Cambridge get much higher funding per student, so can do the sort of thing that Itsmejudith describes. In some other universities, in some subjects, tutorials with maybe 10 students in attendance, together with a lecturer are common enough (or were 10 years or so ago), though it is more likely to be a cramped office than a posh study, and if you want tea and cakes, you'd best bring your own. I'm sure this will vary greatly with the subject though, and is probably getting rarer. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:18, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Itsmejudith has hit the nail on the head. To expand a little: supervisions (at Cambridge, called tutorials at Oxford) are part of the reason for the survival of the collegiate system at Oxbridge. All the students are (generally) members of the same college as the fellow who is teaching. (The exception is that the combination of small colleges and small subjects can make this impossible, but it's generally true.) This means that you're taught within a very small community (even the largest college only has a thousand-odd undergrads) and that your supervisor/tutor has an incentive to teach you well, because your exam results affect his college's academic standing and therefore to some extent his own. Supervisions/tutorials are mandatory; exams are mandatory; lectures, which are organised by the university and not the colleges, are optional. I have studied both at Cambridge and at a more modern establishment, and I can confirm that nothing like this goes on at the latter. Marnanel (talk) 23:33, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Durham has tutorials very similar to the ones described here, except they are organised by departments, not colleges (colleges in Durham handle residential, social, pastoral stuff, not academic stuff). Their usefulness depends on the tutor. --Tango (talk) 23:38, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd just like to note that even in gigantic American universities — like UC Berkeley, for example — there are often tutorials or seminars that are a couple of students and a professor. It's not incompatible with the "giant lecture hall" model. When I was an undergraduate, I had classes as small as three students, and classes as large as 500, all in the same department. (They were, of course, at different ends of the curriculum. The big ones were the "feeder" classes that everyone had to take; the small ones were "honors" classes or on more specific topics.) There were never any tea and cakes or fireplaces, however. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:58, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

In my own experience at Cambridge, tutorials (we usually called them "supervisions") had between two and six students. I would like to see a reference for itsmejudith's claim that they were originally one student at a time: I can certainly see advantages in having a small group rather than just one, and I have always supposed that that was the norm. --ColinFine (talk) 00:59, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I will vouch for Mr. 98's observation that this sort of thing happens in the advanced courses at the more prestigious U.S. universities. I experienced it at UC Berkeley and Brown. There were even cookies (biscuits for non-Americans) on occasion, but people brought their own (non-alcoholic) drinks. Typically, though these classes were in austere classrooms. Though at Brown, some departments occupy former private houses and have seminar rooms that are comfortably furnished. Marco polo (talk) 01:47, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

So, they weren't making it up after all. Thanks to everyone for their responses. And Happy New Year to one and all. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 06:15, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

No, and there are a number of literary references to cosy tutorials. Seminars were also originally supposed to be quite small groups - when they came into the UK plate glass university in the 1960s they were regarded as an American innovation. I was asked for a reference for one-to-one tutorials: here is an academic discussion of the changing pattern (at Oxford). Itsmejudith (talk) 22:09, 31 December 2010 (UTC)