Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 December 31

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December 31

Repercussions of Huguenot

Would there have been any major repercussions of the French government had allowed the Huguenots in the Americas to migrate to New France?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.229.180.189 (talk • contribs) 00:27, 31 December 2011‎ (UTC)

A larger and frencher Canada? A sexier US with a smaller Bible Belt? It would really be all speculation.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 00:42, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Why would the Huguenots have wanted to go there?--Aspro (talk) 00:44, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Huguenot#Exodus covers it, at least as to why the Huguenot's wanted out of la métropole. The reasons for persecuted religious minorities to want to leave France is likely very similar as to the reasons for persecuted religious minorities to want to leave Britain, to whit Plymouth Colony, Province of Maryland, Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Massachusetts Bay Colony, etc. etc. --Jayron32 01:51, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

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It's been remarked by a number of historians that both the Spanish and French governments insisted on strict Catholic doctrinal orthodoxy in their western-hemisphere dominions, while the English government was only too happy to use colonies as dumping grounds for the religious dissidents and malcontents of England. Given this basic difference in styles of colonization, I find it hard to believe that the French government would have ever allowed Huguenots to settle in French north America, unless a lot of other counterfactual things also changed correspondingly. AnonMoos (talk) 06:30, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

By the late 18th century the French in Louisiana had become very lax regarding their Catholicism which led to the Spanish bishop of New Orleans to write many letters of complaint to the King of Spain. There is an extant document from 1799 which illustrates this. In fact it is an ecclesiastical case against my great-great-great-grandfather's sister who married a lapsed Catholic in a ceremony not performed under the auspices of the Church. Very interesting as it revealed the differences between the Spanish and French regarding Catholic doctrine during that period (shortly after the French Revolution). Indeed, many Franco-Americans are no longer Catholic.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 08:12, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

1799 is over a century after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and 80 years after the death of Louis XIV, and so less reelvant to the Huguenots... AnonMoos (talk) 23:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Plenty of Huguenots made themselves at home in the UK, especially Kent, London and Bedfordshire. See Huguenots#Britain and Ireland. Services for French protestants have been held in Canterbury Cathedral since the 16th century, a tradition that continues to this day. Many Londoners today have Huguenot surnames. Alansplodge (talk) 00:59, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

A number of Huguenots also settled in Belfast where they set up linen mills. In Northern Ireland today, one can see the surnames of Huguenot origin in people such as James Molyneaux, Baron Molyneaux of Killead, William "Frenchie" Marchant.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 09:44, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Old editions of Old Farmer's Almanac

Are old public-domain editions of Old Farmer's Almanac available online? /Yvwv (talk) 02:58, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried Google Books. I did a quick search and found this. --Jayron32 03:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll have a look at that. Yvwv (talk) 23:53, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Did William A. Wallace write his onwn memorial address?

I was actually searching for the William A. Wallace who is quoted in the lead of Nicole Oresme, but instead I found the Memorial addresses on the life and character of William A. Wallace, 1896, by William A. Wallace[1]. Is it just a convention to put the honoree as the author, or did Google books mess up? (It couldn't have been his son, since his name was William E., as stated on p.70.) — Sebastian 08:07, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• No, the book is a collection of eulogies. Contents include the Announcement of Death, Sketch of his life, Proceedings of The Clearfleld Bar Meeting, Proceedings of Town Council of Clearfield, Address of Ex. Gov. R. E. Pattison and 15 others, and "comments of the press" including the Philadelphia Inquirer and 5 other publications. No editor or compiler is listed in the digitized edition of the book. --Martinship (talk) 07:00, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

From any well-known business (offline and on), what can we get for free (or a good discount) on our birthdays?

My birthday is coming up rather soon and so far, I know that Denny's serves a free "Grand Slam" breakfast meal for patrons on their birthdays. What other places (restaurants or otherwise) serve/offer their goods or services for free or a reduced price. (Moreover, anyplace in or near Manhattan, KS would be best. Thanks.) --70.179.174.101 (talk) 09:38, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Sounds rather unlikely. Our article on Denny's says "The promotional ritual ceased in 1993".--Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:58, 31 December 2011 (UTC).

Check out this site. ... (Note: All it took was to Google birthday discounts "Manhattan KS"''.) — Michael J 12:46, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Source of a Quotation by Dietrich von Hildebrand

In the article in English about Dietrich von Hildebrand, there is the following quotation:

"Truly, if one of the devils in C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy, he could not have done it better."

An acquaintance of mine has criticized this quotation and questioned its authenticity. Could the author of the article on von Hildebrand cite a source for the quotation, so that I can respond to the criticism?

Robert John Bennett (talk) 10:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles don't have single editors - this one has been edited by (rough estimate) dozens of editors, and it'll take a moment to find out who added that quote. I'm just looking through the history - give me a moment.

It's User:Cairdathyl. I'll leave a note on that editor's talk page, asking him to provide a reference on that article. In the future, incidentally, you can always go to the talk page of the article (click where it says "Discussion" at the top of the page) and ask the question there. --NellieBly (talk) 10:36, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

To add: I noticed while leaving the note that this editor hasn't been around for a while - his last edit was in August. I've also tagged the additions he made to the article as "citation needed". If you think that's not enough and if in your judgment the quotation is dubious enough that it should not stand, it can be removed, as unsourced additions can be removed (and should, if they're dubious). --NellieBly (talk) 10:46, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. A few moments ago, I was able to find the source of the quotation myself. It is contained, in German, in von Hildebrand's book "Der verwüstete Weinberg." The quotation is authentic. In the original, it runs, "Wahrhaft - wenn einer der Teufel in C. S. Lewis' ,Screwtape Letters' mit der Untergrabung der Liturgie betraut worden wäre, er hätte es nicht besser machen können." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robert John Bennett (talk • contribs) 11:20, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I have added that reference to the article Dietrich von Hildebrand. It would be good if you would check the bibliographic information I put in, and add the page number. See Template:Cite book for how to add the page number. (Note that this template is used in the section where the reference occurs, not the "References" section at the end of the page: you'll have to pick the 'Edit' tab at the top of the page). --ColinFine (talk) 10:26, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

India-China border

I've recently been looking at some areas of the India-China border on Google Maps, and noticed some sections covered by two dotted lines - eg, this section between Khab and Shipki La, in Himachal. Am I correct in assuming that this represents a disputed border region?

If so, is there any clear way of telling which of the two lines represents the Line of Actual Control, the de facto border on the ground? The map seems to suggest it's the "eastern" border (ie, the one closer to China), as this is where it's labelled, but I'm not very familiar with how disputed territory is normally marked on Google. Shimgray | talk | 19:00, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the border is disputed. I'm not sure of the LoAC, but another possibility is a DMZ, like between North and South Korea, where nobody has control. This implies it was evacuated, but you could also have an autonomous "tribe" living by their own rules, as in western Pakistan. StuRat (talk) 19:52, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

US Congress (predictor)

What is the best predictor of how a member of Congress will vote on a particular issue? 68.103.77.158 (talk) 19:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I added to the title to make it unique. StuRat (talk) 19:45, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Depending on the issue, I imagine their party is often the best predictor. Of course, there are issues on which everyone will agree, like declaring war on Japan after the Pearl Harbor attack (although, amazingly, one pacifist didn't vote for war). StuRat (talk) 19:47, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

side discussion about matters irrelevent to answering the question
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
That a pacifist didn't vote for war is not amazing to me, Stu. A war-voting pacifist is a kind of contradiction in terms. In a democracy, not everyone thinks the same way about all issues, or any issue. I suppose you could say his her No vote was like an extreme example of "turning the other cheek". This kind of thinking, while it may work at the personal level, does not work at the national level, where a country's very survival and sovereignty are at stake - but I can still see where he she was coming from. Who knows what he she used to guide him her in making such a stance: maybe the same Bible on which he she was sworn into office. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 22:36, 31 December 2011 (UTC) Don't leave her anonymous -- Jeannette Rankin is very famous in some circles for voting against both the WW1 and WW2 declarations of war, and for having been elected as a congresswoman even before the U.S. suffrage constitutional amendment was passed... AnonMoos (talk) 23:11, 31 December 2011 (UTC) The amazing part is that somebody that pacifistic was ever elected to office. I would guess that her constituents didn't know what they were getting before that vote. There are, of course, different degrees of pacifism. "We never fight unless attacked first" might be a more common variant. The "We won't fight even if attacked and even if we will soon all be killed" brand of pacifism is quite rare. StuRat (talk) 01:16, 1 January 2012 (UTC) Historical circumstances make her vote more understandable back then than it would be today. At the time, the entire world was reeling from the cruelty and mass slaughter of WWI. Trench warfare definitely isn't pleasant, and chemical weapons are even less so, which explains Chamberlain's appeasement policy and United States non-interventionism of the interwar years. The U.S., as well as other Western countries, tried to do everything they could to avoid being dragged into another war. On the specific issue of Pearl Harbor, I can easily see why someone would rather give up tiny islands in the Pacific that the U.S. had brutally colonized, than sit in a trench in knee-deep mud, with fleas all over their bodies, breathing mustard gas and hoping that enemy shells don't hit. If I were alive at the time, I couldn't have cared less about which imperial overlord (the U.S. or Japan) controlled Hawaii; I'd care only about not getting into trench warfare at all costs. --99.237.252.228 (talk) 02:33, 1 January 2012 (UTC) I wouldn't have put it quite like that. Maybe it was simply a question of principle for her: the principle that war is never an option, no matter what the circumstances. No matter what. Only 12 years earlier, in 1929, the US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg shared the Nobel Peace Prize for co-authoring the Kellogg–Briand Pact in 1928, which was an international agreement to never use war as an instrument of government policy. ALL war was to be spurned, no exceptions. The pact's signatories included the USA and Japan. So, Rankin was simply honouring that agreement that her government entered into. Surely the government that signed the pact knew that countries have been known to be attacked by other countries, and that this might happen again, and the victim might be the USA. Did they have no intention of honouring the pact in the event this occurred? Or was it a case of "They (Japan) started it, and since they've broken their solemn pledge, it's OK for us to break ours too". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 03:10, 1 January 2012 (UTC) Actually, the Pact says it's ok: "and that any signatory Power which shall hereafter seek to promote its national interests by resort to war should be denied the benefits furnished by this Treaty" [2]. Our article on her quotes her as saying she didn't want to vote to send anyone to war when she, as a woman, was unable to go to war herself. --Tango (talk) 03:25, 1 January 2012 (UTC) Maybe everything I said was OR, then. Not a bad start for the year. :) But I can see people taking the line I described. What ever happened to the K-B pact anyway? Why did all the signatories just ignore it when it came to the crunch? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 03:39, 1 January 2012 (UTC) It's a general problem with international law that it is unenforceable. Sovereign nations are, as the name suggests, sovereign, which means they can do whatever they like. Countries obey treaties because they want other countries to trust them, but if you are planning to invade them then you really don't need them to trust you. A bunch of world leaders doing Miss World impersonations and saying how they think everyone should be nice and stop fighting each other was never going to actually achieve anything. --Tango (talk) 04:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC) That's very clear in hindsight. But presumably the various signatory governments of 1928 didn't think so. And neither did the 1929 Nobel Committee, who aren't exactly known for giving prizes to people for nice warm ideas that sound good in theory but everyone knows they'll never work in practice. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 04:35, 1 January 2012 (UTC) A Nobel peace prize was given to Yasser Arafat, head of the PLO. So, apparently their logic must be that all the people he had killed are now "at peace". StuRat (talk) 04:56, 2 January 2012 (UTC) Rankin doesn't seem to use the Kellogg-Briand Pact to justify her pacifism. According to [3] (whose reliability I can't vouch for), "Rankin, however, believed that Roosevelt deliberately provoked the Japanese to attack because he wanted to bring the U.S. into the European war against Germany; she was determined not to cooperate with the president's plan." The McCollum memo supports her claims, but whether the President or any senior military officials even saw the memo, much less followed its strategy, is highly questionable. --99.237.252.228 (talk) 08:55, 1 January 2012 (UTC) StuRat -- her previous vote against the declaration of war for WW1 was very public and well-known, so voters electing her in 1940 couldn't reasonably claim to have been deceived... AnonMoos (talk) 07:28, 1 January 2012 (UTC) Yes, but many voted against entry into "that European war" (which lacked a casus belli as significant as Pearl Harbor), and not all of them were pacifists. StuRat (talk) 00:37, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

It really does vary a lot by issue. If the parties are split over an issue, then party is a great predictor. However, that's not always true--for instance, Congresspeople from Texas and Florida will tend to support the space program due to parochial concerns. Moreover, campaign donations can play a role, although this is still disputed in the political science literature--there's not much evidence of straight-up vote buying, but more subtle effects can exist like agenda setting etc (see campaign finance). Meelar (talk) 22:34, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

What a beautiful illustration above of how the Reference Desk tends to answer the question it wants to talk about, rather than the question that's asked.... as usual...

There are commercial services I think that do this kind of political prediction, for a price. I don't know the names of those services offhand, but I guarantee you they exist. Shadowjams (talk) 08:49, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

This is one of the reasons that people subscribe to National Journal and Politico, as well as more specialized publications that focus on a specific sector. Meelar (talk) 08:33, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Although party is definitely a good predictor in most circumstances, and campaign donations are another place to look, I think we should point out that many organizations maintain "scorecards" or indices of past voting decisions that are designed to assign more specific ratings to representatives and senators. These ratings would help distinguish, for example, between Republicans likely to support free trade policies and Republicans likely to support more protectionist approaches. All of these ratings are only as good as the people assigning them, of course--they decide, among other things, what bills "count" for any given issue, and how the final number is calculated. One I remember seeing used recently is run by Progressive Punch: the name obviously implies that the organization has a political point of view, but it might be a starting point if you're looking for predictors associated with any given member of Congress. There is also something called the Partisan Voting Index (PVI) that calculates how partisan the voting patterns are for each congressional district: this doesn't necessarily tell you about the member of Congress from that district, but it stands to reason that representatives from districts that are 30 points more Republican than the national average might have more aggressively partisan tendencies than those from districts that are much closer to the average.

And I agree with Shadowjams--the responses to this question in general seem unusually lengthy bird-walks from the actual issue. Jwrosenzweig (talk) 04:40, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Parliamentary informatics lists some projects that might be interesting. In the UK, there is Public Whip, a project which categorises MPs' stances on issues based on their votes; I don't know if there is something similar in the US. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 16:53, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Accessible Translations

I've recently been taken by the notion to read the ancient (e.g. pre 1000 CE/AD) classics. However, in addition to the straightforward language issue that is handled by translation, I've also found there tends to be stylistic issues. Most translations tend to come off as stilted, ponderous, and academic. (Completely understandable, as the writing style then is not the style now and such translations are typically made by/for academics who wish to stay as close to the original as possible. However, it makes for very heavy reading for the layman.) Are there series/publishers who do a good job of translating ancient works into English, but with a style that reads more like modern New York Times bestsellers and less like 5th century epic poems? -- 71.35.113.131 (talk) 21:05, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

By "classics", do you specifically mean ancient Greek and Roman works? If not, here's a translation of Beowulf by David Breeden that's very accessible: http://www.lone-star.net/literature/beowulf/. If you want to read the Bible, I've found that the Common English Bible and the New International Version are both relatively accessible, unlike, for example, the King James Version. --99.237.252.228 (talk) 21:40, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

As for ancient Greek and Roman works, many of the best-known translations are not by academics at all but by poets and writers such as Robert Graves. In my opinion the problem modern readers have with these texts isn't that they're too academic but that they're rooted in the translator's own time period, and understandably so: how could a man working in 1935 England have the slightest clue of how people would speak and write 77 years later in another country? (For that matter, how could he know that his translation would survive as the gold standard for 77 years?)
There's also the problem that translators expect the reader to step out of his or her comfort zone when reading something written so long ago: they don't want to render the work as "relatively accessible" when the changes necessary to make it accessible would deceive readers in some way. Julius Caesar's Latin, for example, is very blunt. English isn't; we like to scootle around in circles, inventing words and phrases, meandering out in digressions, peppering our works with clauses and asides. But translating Caesar into accessible language by curbing his bluntless disguises the reason for Caesar's bluntness: his brilliant Commentaries are actually self-serving propaganda, and Caesar had found through experience that clear wording, short sentences, and absolute declarations are more likely to be taken as statements of fact and not carefully scrutinized. --NellieBly (talk) 22:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

One of the most inaccessible translations was the somewhat ridiculous 20th-century translation of De Dea Syria into archaic-anachronistic pseudo-Elizabethan English (but which was still able to get published by the Harvard University Press)... AnonMoos (talk) 23:05, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

A translation which reads as if it were modern writing can be disturbing, because it makes the writer seem as if he were a present day commentator rather than an ancient source. I recently read a translation of the Confessions of St. Augustine, from 398 AD, and portions read as if he had lived a few years ago, when he wrote of his memories of childhood, of how he hated to study, and memorized things only under threat of punishment, or how he'd rather go to the theater or play ball than study. I could relate to his recollections, but it was a jolt to realize how different his "theater" and "ball playing" were from my own experience. He spoke of probability, and it was jolting to realize that he predated discussion of modern probability theory by 1500 years. Reading Suetonius' "Lives of the Caesars", translated by Graves, when Suetonius wrote that Augustus was born in a humble cottage, which you could visit today, I thought to myself that I would be sure to go see that cottage if I ever visited Italy, until I was jolted to remember that Suetonius was writing in AD 121 and the cottage was long since gone. It is not all bad for a translation to have some taint of antiquity. Edison (talk) 00:19, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

One particular issue that contributes to the difficulties you're facing is English pronouns. If your primary concern is accuracy, you're going to distinguish between "you" and "thou" — any singular second-person pronouns in an original text require outdated pronoun forms and verb forms in a precise and accurate translation. Another issue with the translations you're finding is that (as far as I can see) the production of modern-style translations is a relatively new thing. Most translations from a century or more ago are in the public domain and thus significantly cheaper for booksellers to produce; you're far less likely to find a recent translation among the Penguin Classics than you are an older translation. Nyttend (talk) 16:30, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not totally sure I agree with Nyttend's comments about the Penguin Classics in particular--though Nyttend's certainly right that older, public domain translations are generally popular with publishers. In my experience, many Penguin Classics are relatively recent translations....for instance, the PC versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey are both by Robert Fagles, who translated them in the 1990s (if the original poster is interested in modern readable versions of these epic poems, I think Fagles is the way to go). I don't know if all Penguin Classics are as up-to-date, but they'd be the first place I looked, based on my (admittedly limited) personal experience. Jwrosenzweig (talk) 04:30, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I can think of a few medieval works that have been published as Penguin Classics in the past few years (Usama ibn Munqidh, John of Joinville/Geoffroy de Villehardouin). The older Joinville/Villehardouin translation was also published by Penguin Classics. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:15, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Basically it depends on how fussy you are about the actual writing style, but most newer translations seem to be modern and simple, so long as you avoid any attempts at rhyme. Thankfully, I haven't come across this much, but I have seen ludicrous attempts at rhyming Virgil, even though the original wasn't affected by this malaise. From my experience, Penguin Classics and Oxford World's Classics editions which use recent translations are quite easy reading, but check out the individual book before you buy - some translators aren't the best, and what is intended as New York Times prose may just come out like a bad, boring textbook. My own favourite is the Michael J. Alexander version of Beowulf (not the book, just the translation), but the author spent about an hour per line trying to recreate (in some subdued form) the alliterative feel, without losing the flow. Such effort is rare. On the ancient epics, I agree with the Fagles translations, although I've only read the Odyssey (I've looked at the others, and been impressed). If you want more than just epics, and something like Plato, the comprehensive edition edited by Cooper and Hutchinson is pretty good. There are different translators, and obviously quality varies, so again, check it out first. All are modern enough, and none sound stilted to me. In short, I haven't found a single series that is perfect - it depends more on the individual translator. IBE (talk) 05:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)