Humanities desk
< February 1	<< Jan \| February \| Mar >>	February 3 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 2

what is the name of this artwork?

I need reference of this artwork and have no idea. Please inform me with its artist, published date and its title

thank you very much. greatly appreciated.

[[1]]

blind clown leading the blind —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.255.43.173 (talk) 01:43, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Blind Leading the Blind by Ed Miracle apparently. meltBanana 09:04, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Egypt's Revolution >>>>Europe

What effects will Egypt's imminent revolution have on Europe, politically, economically, and religiously? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.210.182.8 (talk) 03:31, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"The reference desk does not answer requests for opinions or predictions about future events." Clarityfiend (talk) 03:46, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you google that question, you will probably find hundreds or thousands of opinions. We can't even guess until or if something happens. Egypt could be liberated relatively peacefully, as with East Germany; it could be taken over by Muslim extremists, as with Iran; or any number of other possible scenarios. Which direction it takes will at least start to answer your question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We can at least provide some information on this, see Foreign_relations_of_Egypt#European_Union for some background on the connections between Europe and Egypt which are likely to be affected by the current troubles. --Jayron32 04:04, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A moment's thought will make it clear that the answer is entirely dependent on what occurs in "the imminent revolution", and nobody knows yet what will occur. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:25, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's all the usual things that war and civil uprising can lead to, but the Suez Canal is special part of Egypt that a lot of the world's trading nations and organisations would hate to see disrupted. HiLo48 (talk) 22:39, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we might have to invade again if that happens, and then anything could happen. 148.197.121.205 (talk) 10:22, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Last names

What are some ways to guess things about a person's (patri)lineage from their last name? I don't necessarily mean memorizing the origins of a bunch of common last names, but a few suggestions similar to last names (such as 'Smith') often have to do with an ancestor's occupation. I would also like tips on identifying the linguistic/national origin of a last name please. Thanks. 24.92.70.160 (talk) 05:31, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you kinda have to know the languages themselves. Most of the time, names are built of the same sets of phonemes (sounds) as the languages they come from, so if you know what sounds there are in French, its pretty easy to tell when someone's last name also comes from French. Additionally, many native last names are actual words or place names native to a place. So if you know the Italian language you'll recognize that actress Hayden Panettiere's last name is the Italian word for "Baker", i.e. one who bakes bread. In French the equivalent last name is Boulanger, which is also identical to the occupation itself. It is not always obvious, however. The last name Costello, for example, has sounds and spelling which make it seem either Italian or Spanish (compare to Castillo, an obviously spanish name). The name is clearly Irish, and is attested in various forms in Ireland back to the 12th century. Names can also change as languages change, for example, when "Guilio Mazarini" moved to France to become chief minister to the French King, his name gets "frenchified" to "Jules Mazarin". If you have any specific questions about specific names, perhaps we can help you research them. --Jayron32 05:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's hard to give general rules because it would depend on the country the name/person was from, and groups with non-European heritage would have completely different rules to Europeans. As an example, in Scotland certain surnames are associated with specific clans which in turn are linked to geographical areas. I suspect you would find in many countries that aristocratic names came from different sources than names of people of lower social status, and different regions had different naming customs which will provide a clue to origin, e.g. British names ending in -s are often Welsh. Wikipedia has articles on the naming traditions, customs, and laws of many individual countries, e.g. Spanish naming customs, Italian name, Eastern Slavic naming customs, Chinese name, and more general pages like Family name which together offer a lot of information: when surnames came into common use, what their sources were, etc. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:32, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For Chinese names, there are unlikely to be any general rules for most common surnames - your best bet at finding out about a person's ancestry through their surname is looking it up in a book or on Wikipedia or elsewhere on the web.

There are only a few surnames which are not rare today that derive from occupations - most of these are two syllables instead of the more common one syllable surname - see, for some examples, Chinese compound surname. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:37, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You mean he wasn't called COSTello just because he was the treasurer? :-) Mitch Ames (talk) 12:04, 2 February 2011 (UTC) [reply]

As well as the suggestions above, don't forget religion is often given away by surname, and even caste within religion (eg Cohen), but it can be misleading - someone with, say, a biblical surname in the USA may well be a Christian, rather than Jew, and I've met someone called Cohen who was a Levite - and this World Cup-winning Cohen wasn't even Jewish. --Dweller (talk) 12:49, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thriller writer called Patterson

First name please? Kittybrewster ☎ 12:53, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

James? DuncanHill (talk) 12:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

... or possibly Richard North. ---Sluzzelin talk 13:51, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

...or Harry --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:46, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Has the OP checked our article: Patterson (surname)? Mitch Ames (talk) 03:38, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Belfast's Little Italy

Resolved

Does anyone happen to know where Belfast's Little Italy was located? At one time Italians formed a sizeable community, but Little Italy no longer exists. Thank you.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 13:29, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Little Patrick Street. Some info here and here. DuncanHill (talk) 13:37, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's a fleeting mention in our article about Cathedral Quarter, Belfast. DuncanHill (talk) 13:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh thank you. That would be very close to the city centre. I just had a look at a site which shows the street today. Not a sign left to indicate Italian culture once flourished there; it's now a dreary rundown street with garages, warehouses, etc. Would anyone know roughly how many Italians immigrated to Belfast?--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:39, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if it helps at all, but this article from 2003 gives a figure of about 1500 people of Italian descent living there as a result of earlier immigration. Ka renjc 17:27, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you everybody for providing answers and interesting links. My questions have been answered.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 18:13, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Russian Orthodox question: "first" and "second" resurrections

Greetings -- I'm writing an article on a mystic Russian composer who was a bit of a nut -- he wrote parts of his scores in his own blood -- (thanks to Sluzzelin for the lead, and to JackofOz for the Russian translations!) -- but I've stumbled over a question I haven't been able to satisfactorily answer. His magnum opus, La livre de vie, is intended to be performed every year on the "first" and "second" resurrections of Christ. Is this part of a Russian Orthodox Easter service? Here is the line from Jonathan Powell's article in the New Grove: "Described by the composer as ‘l'action sacrée du pasteur tout-puissant regnant’ it was intended to be performed (or ‘accomplished’) uninterruptedly every year on the night of the first and on the day of the second resurrection of Christ." What does this mean? Was Christ resurrected more than once, or is one a resurrection of humanity and the other of Christ? Antandrus (talk) 15:07, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WHAG here, but is the second resurrection a different translation of Ascension Day? --TammyMoet (talk) 15:54, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The only references I found must be copies using the exact same wording. I couldn't find anything mentioning performance on a "second resurrection of Christ" in French or Russian either. I'm wondering whether it's a translation (or editing) error, and the intended meaning is "every year on the night of the first day and on the second day of resurrection of Christ", meaning during the Easter Vigil (the night of Holy Saturday) and then again on Paskha itself, on Easter Sunday. Or something like that. I have asked for assistance at WP's projects on Russia and on Eastern Orthodoxy. ---Sluzzelin talk 10:12, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

According to this, the Book of Life was to be performed every year on xmas day. It says nothing about the "first" or "second" resurrections.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 4, 2011; 15:09 (UTC)

Family Guy

Why a conservative conglomerate like Fox (part of News Corporation) produce anti-religious and anti-family TV series like Family Guy? --GarotBugrer (talk) 16:49, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What makes you think it is anti-religous or anti-family? Fox also produces a similar comedy, The Simpsons, which has been praised as being strongly both, despite its comedy. Grsz 11 16:52, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Fox itself does not have a political standing (either conservative or liberal) anymore than any other conglomerate. Fox News does because that channel fills a niche market. For example, NBCUniversal, the conglomerate that owns the Golf Channel, is not staffed by rabid fans of Golf that hate all other sports. They just found a niche market that allowed them to tap into a revenue stream that other channels were not. Its the same thing with Fox News. Its existance is based on a business decision, not a politicial one, by its parent company. In other words, Fox News exists to monetize the fanbase of the American Conservatism, in exactly the same way that the Golf Channel exists to monetize the fanbase of golf. To answer the original question; the Fox parent company doesn't necessarily have the same political opinions as those espoused on Fox News, indeed it probably doesn't have any opinion beyond "what actions will maximize the value of this company for our shareholders". Insofar as producing a conservative political network does that, it will produce that network. Insofar as Family Guy does that as well, there is no contradiction when you realize the actual motivations of the parent company. --Jayron32 16:59, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For a while the Fox network had a reputation of showing salacious, lowest-common-denominator shows such as Temptation Island, and it's certainly never had a reputation for devout, god-fearing religious programming (in fairness, there's not much devout or god-fearing about Fox News either). Fox and its owners aren't necessarily right-wing in everything they do: Murdoch-owned papers endorsed the British Labour Party [2], and earlier the Australian Labour Party under Gough Whitlam (see Rupert Murdoch). Murdoch is a brilliant populist, good at appealing to the public mood, and in politics prefers to back winners. --Colapeninsula (talk) 18:15, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FOX is an entertainment network: everything they do (including their news and punditry) is geared towards a kind of low-brow entertainment that happens to sell very well. As far as I can tell, Murdoch caught onto the idea that a large number of people enjoy kick-in-the-crotch slapstick humor, and so pretty much everything FOX does (animated shows, reality TV, news programs...) involves someone physically, emotionally, or metaphorically kicking someone else in the crotch. The fact that FOX News is conservative has more to do with the fact left-wingers don't go so much for the low-brow humor thing than with any overt political agenda. --Ludwigs2 18:29, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is an entirely incorrect analysis. The low-brow aspects of Fox predate Murdoch taking it over. There is no real connection between Fox News and the other Fox programming. The idea that left-wingers don't go for lowbrow comedy is itself ridiculous and unsupported. I suspect that there is little correlation in general between politics and how witty you enjoy your comedy to be. In any case, again, you conflate Fox News and the Fox network; they are not the same thing, and they are not a single, coherent entity when it comes to programming. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:20, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Jayron32 is correct. Their mission is to make money. Ludwigs2 would have to cite sources for his fanciful claim that lowbrow humor is less popular among left-wingers. Aside from The Simpsons, as mentioned above, which was famously criticized by President George H.W. Bush, a right-of-center president, for being "anti-family", basically, the Fox network was perhaps first accused by critics of lowering America's moral values with the show Married... with Children. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:23, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say G.H.W. Bush is to the right of right-of-center, though not as far right as G.W. Bush. In the last 40 years, all the right-of-center presidents have been Democrats (Carter, Clinton, Obama). Pais (talk) 22:21, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a better comparison is between NBC and MSNBC. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:35, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Shows like Married with Children are sometimes called "sophomoric". P.J. O'Rourke once said that "sophomoric" is "a liberal's code word that means 'funny'." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:13, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And P.J. O'Rourke knows this because he is neither. Pais (talk) 22:36, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sure he didn't say "soporific"? :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:18, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's an episode of "The Simpsons" where Homer rapidly switches between Fox News and Fox, and is alternately politically enraged against liberals and titillated in rapidly alternating succession... AnonMoos (talk) 01:39, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

While it's true that Fox News has found a market niche, I think it's true that it to some degree reflects Rupert Murdoch's ideology. It's not a coincidence that News Corp. newspapers tend to have conservative editorial lines. I don't think the Fox broadcast network would air Michael Moore documentaries, even if it somehow made business sense. If Murdoch were more of a social conservative and less of a fiscal conservative, I don't think you would have seen Married With Children and The Simpsons appear on the lineup in the '80s. You can compare Murdoch's Fox to Bud Paxson's Pax network, which specialized in so-called family-friendly programming. Paxson is an evangelical Christian. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:28, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it that Sub Saharan Africa is so primitive?

A little while ago I asked a question on the science desk about how to design an experiment to determine if certain races are smarter than others, and it seemed that the consensus was that no test could be performed. I've encountered racists who claim that Black Africans are so primitive because they are genetically dumber than other races. I don't buy this, I've attempted to posit an explanation to why their civilizations are not as technologically advanced as European's. The following is my explanation,

I think Sub Saharan Africa is not as technologically advanced as Europe because it was not exposed to Old World innovations and technology. Gunpowder was invented in China, mathematics was invented in the middle east, etc, etc. All of these innovations spread throughout Asia, North Africa, and Europe, but the Americas, Australia, and Sub Saharan Africa was isolated, and thus was not exposed to these innovations. The Americas and Australia were of course isolated because of the great oceans that separated them from the Old World. Even though Sub Saharan Africa is connected to North Africa, it is separated by a large desert that was nearly impossible to cross at the time, so these great innovations in science, military tactics, medicine, technology, etc were not able to reach them until Europeans became sufficiently advanced to cross these physical barriers and then by that time, the gap in technological progress was significant.

Is my explanation true? If it isn't, why is it that Sub Saharan Africa is technologically inferior to Europe?ScienceApe (talk) 20:25, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See Guns, Germs, and Steel for a plausible hypothesis about why world history has played out the way it has. Plus a great deal of chance, I'd bet... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:36, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) The answer to this question is complicated and not well understood. Your explanation is a reasonable hypothesis and isolation is possibly a contributing factor. This lecture (and great animation) by Phil Zimbardo (not the animator) [3]has another interesting hypothesis. I was going to mention GGS as well. --Daniel 20:40, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree that you can't test it. I think rather that the consensus is that it's so politically poisonous that no one will touch it. Personally I've seen 2 points of view: There is a difference in intelligence. Or: There is no such thing as race and this is untestable. (Or alternatively, Intelligence is unmeasurable/undefinable, and can't be tested.) I have not however seen anyone say that: There is race and measurable intelligence, and the intelligence is equal. As a practical matter few dare study this, and especially few dare talk about intelligence, so you will not find much to go on. BTW Your explanation does not explain why they didn't come up with those things themself (perhaps with a delay). Also historically the Chinese invented tons of things, and then abandoned them. So it's not just intelligence but also a culture of using new things - perhaps due to competition. Ariel. (talk) 21:04, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, sub-Saharan Africa isn't primitive; it's different from Europe, sure, but that's hardly the same as "primitive". What is "primitive" anyway? Adam Bishop (talk) 21:58, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Primitive" means they have lower-tech weaponry. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:10, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's precisely it. Or even more accurately, HAD lower-tech weaponry. Now they just have less wealth because the colonial powers who became that way because of their better weaponry took all the good stuff out of the countries and left them in a mess. HiLo48 (talk) 22:27, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the "advanced" civilizations tend to rape and pillage the "primitive" ones. Hence the Irony Age. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:42, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a little over-simplistic. It's not that these countries lack natural resources — in fact, natural resources are in many cases responsible for their problems. See Resource curse. When you have an economy that is disproportionately devoted to oil, or diamond, or uranium, or whatever, you don't develop the diverse political, economic, and social institutions that you need if you have fewer resources. One of the reasons why Europe became so successful in the 17th century is because it was politically heterogenous, with everyone fighting over the same resources. Countries that found easy resources (such as Spain, with its influx of New World silver) stagnated; countries that were constantly out of money (Netherlands, England) figured out how to be clever at trade and financing — economic instruments which ultimately allowed them to use a lot more capital than the countries that were actually dependent on things mined out of the ground. Anyway, one other aside, the Africans have plenty of pretty-good weapons tech — they buy it from the US and other countries. What they lack is not technology, but political stability and reliable economic institutions. How they got to this position is the kind of Guns, Germs, and Steel question, and entails a lot of discussion of colonialism. But the relationship to colonialism is not one of the colonial powers robbing them of their resources and now they are poor — they still have the resources, but all of the profits are going to corrupt institutions.

It is not an intelligence issue at all — even if the Africans were, on average, some percentage point less intelligent than Europeans or Asians on the aggregate (which is entirely possible; there's no reason to think that all human populations have exactly equal average innate intelligence), there would still be abundant geniuses to fill the upper ranks. The average intelligence of your population group should have very little effect on what kinds of political and economic institutions you have — you aren't letting the "average" people run those institutions, generally speaking. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:17, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

They didn't have a tradition of capitalism. No capitalism means no industrial revolution and no factories and all the resulting mass produced goods. According to History of capitalism which I just started to read a few seconds ago, capitalism required people who were earning their living by seeking a wage who could be employed by capitalists. In Africa I speculate that people never needed to be wage earners because they could just wander off into the bush and hunt and grow crops and build a hut. So the ultimate cause may be that land was not so tightly owned as in Europe, allowing people to have a smallholding rather than seeking a wage. 92.24.190.211 (talk) 23:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In general, the lands exposed to the Mediterranean had a sometimes contiguous shipping routes, or alternate land routes, to the east through Asia Minor, India, Khymer, and China. So Egypt, Crete, Carthage, Greece, and Rome were centers of learning, while for millennia the dark hearts of Europe and Africa remained mysterious realms of isolated tribesmen. Even so, Timbuktu for example was the site of one of the first great universities, and techniques such as basic steelmaking were long known. I think that if you had compared Europe and Africa in the days when Carthage and Rome faced off, you would not have found one more advanced than another, even in their more remote regions - perhaps not even much later when the Ottomans seemed invincible. It was only very late in Europe's history that it advanced beyond other regions, and to me this is the clearest argument against any racist genetic nonsense. Where religion is concerned, this is a different matter - there are fair arguments that fundamental principles of Christianity ended cruel institutions in Europe, perhaps allowing people to rise to greater heights. Wnt (talk) 08:09, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Did europe and africa have similar technology up to just before the Industrial Revolution? 92.24.180.229 (talk) 10:19, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a Christian, but I am afraid I am going to have to call bullshit on Wnt's statement "there are fair arguements that fundemental principles of Christianity ended cruel institutions in Europe". The Reconquista ended years of rather tolerant and enlightened Muslim rule in Al-Andalus and replaced it with the repressive regime of the Spanish Inquisition. While I agree that the fundemental teachings of Christ do not endorse something like the Inquisition (so maybe that is what he is going for here), clearly Christians (or those claiming to be Christians, though I should be wary of envoking the No true Scotsman fallacy here) ended up being far more cruel than the people they replaced in Iberia during and after the Reconquista. It isn't the religion that makes people cruel or tolerant; Christianity is open to being used as a tool of repression and opression just as much as any religion, and it just isn't accurate to say that Christianity, in-and-of itself "saved" Europe from anything. It is true that eventually Christian Europe made technological and social leaps during the period of the Renaissance, but it also helps to remember that Christian Europe was, for centuries, behind the Muslim and Chinese world in scientific, technological, and social advancement. As a Christian, I believe in personal salvation through following Christ, but that has little bearing on the actual path that historical entities which claim to be Christian may have followed. People are as capable of using Christianity to justify their atrocities as any other Religion, and the personal salvation and place in heaven one gets by being a Christian does not magically make history change... --Jayron32 15:15, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Admittedly this is a difficult idea to test - there is no ready way to repeat the experiment. I was thinking e.g. of Gregory I's campaign against slavery in Rome, or the abolition of gladiatorial games, or the role of religious disputes in creating a demand for distribution of Gutenberg Bibles and other early printed works. I fully recognize the viciousness of the Reconquista, but I would interpret this to be a politically motivated effort to sever social ties with Africa, rather than something truly initiated from religious principles.

I also tend to think that (until its rise) Europe was always behind Asia Minor and Egypt, with the exception that for a few centuries Roman rule brought some Greek philosophers and scientists to Rome - and bear in mind that this in turn resulted from the Hellenistic period where Greece dominated Turkey and Persia, and that many leading figures like Dioscorides were coming to Rome all the way from the vicinity of Tarsus. I am tending to think that the various Rises and Falls of civilization in the Old World mostly had to do with which side controlled central regions with the widest range of literature, and brought leading intellectuals from the widest area to their courts. Wnt (talk) 20:06, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Any democratic royalty?

Has there ever been any royalty anywhere in the world who have been democratically elected? 2.97.220.121 (talk) 21:27, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Don't they all start that way? Someone popular gets the will of the people and establishes himself as king. Afterward it's self perpetuating, but I think most of them start by the will of the people being ruled. Otherwise where would the new king get an army or resources? Ariel. (talk) 21:30, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Popular? You mean the most feared and the most deadly tyrants. They got into and maintained positions of power by killing people, often lots of them. 92.15.14.91 (talk) 16:16, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article elective monarchy is informative here. You have to decide how large the franchise is in order to "count" as democratic. For example, the voting franchise that elected the Holy Roman Emperor consisted of Only seven men, while the voting franchise that elected the King of Poland consisted of up to 40-50,000 voters, which may be comparable to some highly-restricted franchises in nominaly republican states. --Jayron32 21:43, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Papal elections are democratic, according to a certain definition of democratic... Adam Bishop (talk) 22:00, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Elective is not the same as democratic. The papacy is elective, but utterly undemocratic. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 22:19, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No-one's mentioned the Witenagemot. They had the power to "choose the king" of England, for example choosing Harold Godwinson, rather than any of the other claimants, to succeed Edward the Confessor - with dramatic consequences. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:28, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

William the Conqueror, the ancestor of every British monarch since 1066, would not qualify as being democratically elected. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:09, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't count since he didn't start the monarchy. Tracing him back stops at Rollo, but there doesn't seem to be much information on how he started. Ariel. (talk) 22:22, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Alexiad and history, Rollo was a horrible murderous thug. So that's who the Brit-royals are descended from. The fearful-respect has over generations become habituated into just respect. 92.15.14.91 (talk) 16:43, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure you have your history sorted correctly? The Alexiad was written around 1148 by Anna Comnena, and where it deals with Normans, it deals with the Italian branch of the Hauteville family. Robert Guiscard is a different Robert from Rollo (sometimes called Robert I), and Robert I, Duke of Normandy (also known as Robert the Devil) is yet a different character. It's not impossible that Anna Comnena wrote about Rollo, but I'd be fairly surprised, and her sources about events 7 generations ago and on the other side of an (admittedly small) continent would be highly dubious. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:38, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There was a Norman Rollo who attacked the Byzantine empire when Anna Comnena's father was emporer; or perhaps it was the son of Rollo, I don't really remember. You meant somebody else? The Alexiad offers an interesting account of how her father grabbed power in a kind of revolution rather than inherating the role. 92.15.7.74 (talk) 20:02, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Rollo is just a version of Robert, so any of the three Roberts are potentially also knows as Rollos. Robert Guiscard aka Robert d'Hauteville was a Norman adventurer who conquered much of southern Italy, became Duke of Apulia and Calabria and, in the 1080s, attacked the mainland of the Byzantine Empire. As far as I know, he is not related to his contemporary, William the Bastard/Conquerer. The "original" Rollo, and the one best known under this name, is the founder of the Duchy of Normandy. He lived from around 870 to 932, and after a lot of pirating and plundering, in 911 got Normandy as a fiefdom from Charles the Simple. He became the first Duke of Normandy. Rollo is the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Robert I, Duke of Normandy, also known as Robert the Magnificent, or, sometimes, Robert the Devil. Robert the Magnificent is the father of William the Conqueror. But no matter how much Anna Comnena badmouthed Robert Guiscard, this does not reflect on any of the two Roberts who are ancestors of (one strand of) the British monarchy. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:09, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nevertheless, British Kings were still murderers. For example Henry the Eighth, and Richard III to name just two. Be interesting to know when the last British royal murder was (that we know about). 92.24.190.211 (talk) 23:51, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Biggest badass around is a good bet for Viking nobility. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:24, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have sword, will conquer (pun not intended!)--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:13, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What pun do you mean please? 92.15.7.74 (talk) 20:04, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Think we'll be here a while if we start on not democratic royalty though Bugs. The British monarchy may not be directly elected, but the line of succession which decides the monarchy was decided by Parliament (see Succession to the Crown Act 1707) and while the parliament at that time might not be considered very democratic, it was most recently legislated on in His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936, when everyone could vote. There is certainly precedent for Parliament to settle the succession, which is probably indirectly democratic. Interestingly this goes back, in some form, to the middle ages. The removals of Edward II, Richard II, the line of succession after Henry VIII, right up to the Civil War, Restoration and Glorious Revolution all involved parliament at the very least giving an air of legality to the decision.90.217.64.202 (talk) 22:27, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The British royal line as we know it did not arrive democratically. However, I think it's fair to say that over time, the situation with the royals has become that they do indeed rule by the consent of the governed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:40, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We have an article on Elective monarchy, however as noted above, elected does not necessarily mean democratically elected. Vespine (talk) 23:14, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The British royals do not "rule" at all. They reign. Big difference. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:27, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they reign by consent of the people. They could be abolished tomorrow if the people wanted it. But that tourism money is important. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:54, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think we've had this discussion before, but it's really not down to the "tourism money". It's down to the deep-rooted conservatism (small "c") of most British people, a feeling in recent decades that the monarchy is usually fairly benevolent, and (looking around the rest of the world) an absence of any examples of a manifestly better system. Unfortunately. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:35, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it can be said that any monarch reigning in a country where the people have a democratic means of changing their constitution can be said to be reigning democratically - that is by the consent of the governed. If the people can change the constitution and abolish the monarchy if they so desired, then their refraining from doing so means they acquiesce to the reign of the monarch. Most of the western European royals probably fall within this category. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:06, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Simeon Sakskoburggotski was democratically elected, though of course that was long after he stopped being Tsar of Bulgaria. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 23:18, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

NorwegianBlue already mentioned it above, but it seems to have gone unnoticed, so let me cite this part of an article from TIME Magazine in 1930 (the article is perhaps a bit inaccurate, but close enough):

The authentic Norwegian Royal House had been extinct for some 27 generations, for more than half a millennium. The Norwegian people had learned to speak Danish under Danish kings for several hundred years before their "union" with Sweden. In 1905, although they might not exactly want to pick a king from Denmark, could the Norwegian people, all things considered, do better than to choose the husband of Tomboy Princess Maud, daughter of Mighty Britain, niece of Colossal Russia? In a second plebiscite 259,563 Norwegians voted for the young man who used to darn socks, sew on buttons; 69,264 voted against him. He was proclaimed King of Norway just 25 years ago last week, changing his name from Carl to Haakon.

In short, Haakon VII of Norway was elected. Jørgen (talk) 08:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't I read somewhere that the monarchist party of Cambodia won an election recently and reinstated their former king? Would that count? I shall have to go and read a bit more about it, though. Alfred the Great was sort of democratically elected too. Well, maybe not democratically, but elected still. 148.197.121.205 (talk) 10:14, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Spain has democratically decided to have a king (even if he was not elected). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quest09 (talk • contribs) 12:37, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wish British monarchy could be elected, then we could elect ones that wouldnt spend many times what other european monarchies cost, and prefereably have none at all. Secretly, they must be laughing up their sleeves at British people for being such gullible suckers. I don't think that in pre-democratic times their cronies choosing their distant ancestors makes the current bunch democratically elected. Elect me and I will sell up everything and give the money back to the government, keeping a mere £1M annual salary for myself. I'd cost you less than 2p per person. 92.15.14.91 (talk) 16:35, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You know, Britain has a democratic system of government, and if the majority of Britons wanted to get rid of the monarchy or the current monarch it really would be no more difficult than getting rid of a prime minister. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:49, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that they are regarded as being outside democracy - it is impossible to vote them out. That's not democracy. 92.15.14.91 (talk) 16:54, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not really: Organize a political party with a platform of abolishing the monarchy. Get a majority of seats in parliament. Enact said legislation. Done and done. The fact that it hasn't been done yet even though there is no legal or practical barrier to doing so is that there is not a majority of Britons who wish to do so. --Jayron32 17:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not impossible at all... the Americans did it back in 1776. On the other hand, without the Royals, England would get a lot less tourist revenue from visiting Americans. Go figure. Blueboar (talk) 17:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that's necessarily true. Did Ireland lose a lot of tourist revenue when (most of) it became a republic? Pais (talk) 17:37, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a real issue. All republics have their own varieties of pomp and ceremony, so a republican Britain would keep many of those - and the old buildings, castles and so forth would still be there for Americans to admire. Ghmyrtle (talk) 20:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

France has a bigger tourism industry than Britain, yet they've been royal-less for centuries. 92.24.180.229 (talk) 14:25, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Of course, this belies the fact that Britain did abolish its Monarchy and then decided that they liked it better with a King. --Jayron32 17:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Quite so. Also, we get to have useful historical and architectural terms like Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian. Kings and queens are just more romantic (and indeed wromantic) and memorable than presidents. Our parliament once gave the Crown to an orange, which was both democratic and memorable. DuncanHill (talk) 17:41, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(shouldn't that article be entitled "Williamandmary of England"?) :>) Blueboar (talk) 20:07, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why 92.15.14.91 thinks the monarchy is outside of the democratic system of government (or indeed, thinks that most people think that). If there are other untapped resources like him or her in the UK, then the Republican movement in the UK really isn't doing a very good job of recruiting. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 19:36, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

None of the political parties currently have it on their agenda, so it is impossible to cast an anti-royal vote. 92.15.7.74 (talk) 19:53, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) I think it's the usual thing: to most people, there's assumed to be a 1-to-1 correspondence between "elected" and "democratic", but that is simply not so. My example above of the papacy being elective (because the cardinals elect the next pope at a conclave) but utterly undemocratic (because the millions of Catholics who are the "subjects", religiously speaking, of the pope, and even the citizens of Vatican City, who are the legal subjects of the pope, have no say whatsoever about it) is at one end of the spectrum. The British monarchy is at the other end - it's hereditary, which is as far away from elective as you can get, but it's highly democratic because the people through the parliament are able to have a say about the laws that keep the monarchy in place, and by common consent they want it. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:02, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I do not believe that to be true. Its inertia, the feeling that there is no realistic way of getting rid off them. A major part of the annoyence with them is that they are such greedy so and so.s, who have incomes of tens of millions of pounds and fabulous lifestyles. 92.15.7.74 (talk) 20:11, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Most British people, currently, are fairly content with the old dear who's looked down on them for the last (nearly) sixty years - she's seen, at worst, as harmless, and even benevolent. The cost question is a minor irritant, but little more. But, if and when we get someone in the post who is unpopular and arrogant, I think that things could change quite substantially. The problem is that there are very few obvious good examples in countries elsewhere of elected heads of state who are seen as being "above politics" in some sense, and representative of the whole country. Electing a career politician to the position of head of state - or, worse, electing a "celebrity" - could be even worse than what we have now, and I say that as a staunch republican as a matter of principle. Ghmyrtle (talk) 20:21, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

92.15.7.74, the major political parties are to a significant extent poll driven, meaning that their policies reflect the demands of their constituency. There is simply no demand for the abolition of the monarchy in the UK. According to oft-cited polls, if you asked Britons to put their hands up as either anti- or pro-monarchy, 70% would be on the pro side and less than 30% would be on the anti side. You seem to be part of the 30%, but until your ranks swell to more than 50%, it is quite unlikely that your views would be implemented within Britain's democratic system of government. As you may know, bills have been introduced into parliament in fairly recent years aiming to abolish the monarchy, but there has not been enough support for them to proceed.

Imagine if the opposite was true - that 30% of the population could impose their will on the other 70%. That would hardly be a sign of a democracy, would it?

I agree with what Ghmyrtle says above about the difficulties of choosing a head of state - and I speak too as a republican as a matter of principle. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk)

And another thing is, why do the royals get paid tens of millions, but Tory Boy the prime-minister gets comparative peanuts as a salary? What is the extra money needed for? 92.24.190.211 (talk) 00:54, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Queen doesn't get a salary as such, but there is the Civil List. "Civil List is the name given to the annual grant that covers some expenses associated with the Sovereign performing of his or her state duties, including those for staffing, state visits, public engagements, ceremonial functions and the upkeep of the Royal Households." Alansplodge (talk) 09:39, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever you name it as, its still tens of millions of income every year. So why does the Prime Minister, who carries out similar duties, only need £200000 while the royals need tens of millions to do the same thing? 92.24.180.229 (talk) 10:22, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Because the PM doesn't have to drive the President of Russia or whereever around in a coach-and-four, lay on a state banquet for him and put him up in palatial splendour. The PM's £200,000 is his take-home pay, the Civil List is the Queen's expenses for doing her job. And if you didn't have a Queen, you'd still have to pay for a President to do those things and pay him a salary on top. Alansplodge (talk) 10:49, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not "income". That is money you earn, which you are free to spend any way you like, or save. What the Queen gets is an "annual grant that covers some expenses associated with the Sovereign performing of his or her state duties". Were it not for this grant, she'd have to pay these expenses out of her own pocket. The Prime Minister also has a lot of official entertainment etc to perform, but those costs are all covered separately and he is never out of pocket personally. So why should the Queen be? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 10:47, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If that is the case then its well overdue for the royal monies to be publically accounted for properly, with seperate figures for salary and so forth. Currently its hidden behind a smokescreen - why? Suggests they've got something to hide. And a justification as to why the money is many times more than the hereditary rulers of other European countries or so far in excess of the Prime Minister. The publics sentiment is controlled by the spin the mass media puts on it, and they are constrained by trying to avoid seeming to damage their boss's boss's....boss's hopes of being given a royal gong. This breakthrough article, however, has 306 comments most of which are not in favour http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/17/royal-wedding-monarchy-microscope 92.24.180.229 (talk) 13:50, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, readers of The Guardian are not representative of the entire British people. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:55, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Life would be unutterably boring if they were. Anyway, hasn't everyone had enough of feeding this troll yet? DuncanHill (talk) 14:01, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please keep to the issue being discussed. Without being informed of the facts, a democracy cannot make an informed decision, as this http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/22/right-royal-insult article says. Only 202 comments this time, but they are as far as I am aware remarkably high numbers for that kind of thing, which suggests a lot of submerged discontent. 92.24.180.229 (talk) 14:25, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is anyone else beginning to see a pattern of somewhat ill-informed republican soapboxing by an IP editor here? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:39, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, a very well-fed troll. And discontent is rarely "submerged" with Guardian readers - just like Telegraph readers and Mail readers they need their dose of half-informed bile each morning to help them get through the day. DuncanHill (talk) 14:49, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You've lost the arguement, so now you attack the arguer. Charming. As you know The Gaurdian is one of the major quality British newspapers, and does not of course deal with "half-informed bile". 306 and 202 are huge numbers for those things. 92.24.185.155 (talk) 13:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Top secret"

What kinds of secrets are classed "topic secret" by the US government (obviously if you knew specifically what secrets you couldn't tell me, so I just want to know what kind of secrets)? What might happen if they were all released or leaked on a large scale at once? I'm not looking for random speculation, but I am looking for reasonably likely responses by the government and by the public and other countries. Again I understand since you don't know the actual content of the secrets you might have trouble saying for sure, so again I just want a geenral idea. 24.92.70.160 (talk) 21:59, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Radar and the atomic bomb come to mind as past examples. Any kind of military thing that we have that we don't want the enemy to know about, much less have. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:07, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We also keep secret from our "enemies" things we know about them that we hope they don't know that we know. Is that clear? HiLo48 (talk) 22:24, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On the Reference Desk, we supply references. Classified information in the United States is one article, though it doesn't have many examples beyond atomic bomb secrets and submarine propulsion secrets. For examples of Top Secret CIA documents, visit www.foia.cia.gov and type top secret in the search box, and click the arrow. This returned 2059 search results for me, many of them formerly Top Secret documents, available as GIFs or PDFs. Some documents still have some text redacted. This is not going to be a completely representative sample of all the documents that are Top Secret — this is from the CIA, and not the Army, for example — but it may serve. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:53, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is a misconception (given a voice here by Bugs) that "Top Secret" is applied to just anything that is secret. That is not true. There are a variety of secrecy definitions in the United States, and they carry with them different handling requirements. Ideally classification authorities would keep classifications at the minimum necessary. So "Top Secret" is often overkill, when "Secret" might be enough. (Why the minimum? Because it costs money, manpower, and a lot of red tape to deal with "Top Secret" information, much more so than "Secret", and much much more so than "Confidential." "Top Secret" papers must be guarded by a guy with a gun 24 hours a day, for example — that don't come for free! Presuming the secret is something that might actually be useful to someone on your OWN side, you don't want it to be totally unusable. One of the big criticisms in the 9/11 Commission Report was that different agencies, like FBI and CIA, were too concerned with keeping secrets, and not concerned enough with using them. As a result, they never realized what the other agency had — and missed vital clues that could have prevented the attack.)

The "Top Secret" classification rating was created during 1944 in order to "information the security aspect of which is paramount and whose unauthorized disclosure would cause exceptionally grave danger to the nation".[4] This was in contrast to just "Secret", which was "information the disclosure of which might endanger national security, or cause serious injury to the Nation or any governmental activity thereof". It was initially meant to be things that were HUGE military secrets, like the exact time and place of D-Day, where if the information got out, it would really be awful. It was also applied to the atomic bomb, at least the parts of the program where you could tell they were for an atomic bomb (some parts of the program would have only been considered "Secret" or "Restricted" because you couldn't really figure out what the end goal was.)

In other realms, say the diplomatic cables, "Secret" seems to be used for any communication from the field that might be dangerous or embarrassing or troublesome, but not world-shakingly dangerous. It is also used for all communications that originate with Washington, rather than with a field office, and can thus be considered "orders from on high." Hence it is interesting what is in the Wikileaks cables — the guy who leaked them only had access to "Secret" cables, not "Top Secret," so you never see Washington's responses, and you never see things that we expect they must be talking about (like the death of Pat Tillman).[5]

Of course, in practice, many more things are classified "Top Secret" than really should be, and the many of the things which we now know used to be classified "Top Secret" seem to fail any reasonable interpretation of posing "exceptionally grave danger" to the nation. The Pentagon Papers, for example, were classified "Top Secret," and the sky did not fall in when they were released. I don't have a count of documents classified "Top Secret" at my fingertips, but I'll try to look it up later; these kinds of things are kept track of by the Information Security Oversight Office and their website has a lot of useful information on it. Don't get sucked in by the allure of "Top Secret" — it's another form of bureaucracy, and most secrets are deadly dull. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:26, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Side note for the easily amused: NATO countries have a designator for something that is clearly beyond the mere "Top Secret": Cosmic Top Secret. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:01, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statistics: this report by the ISOO is pretty interesting in terms of numbers. Note that in 2009, only 2% of all NEW classification decisions (e.g. the stamping of the document) were "Top Secret", whereas 77% were just "Secret". Considerably less (21%) were "Confidential." (page 2) This is what I would expect — you want to restrict how many things are under "Top Secret," so you put things into "Secret" if you can. If something is just "Confidential," though, it's not a huge step from not classifying it at all. But now look at the number of DERIVATIVE classification decisions — e.g., things that are secret because they contain things that have been previously referenced as secret (page 8). Top Secret makes up 34% of those; Secret makes up 55%, Confidential makes up 9%. Why? Because we have a huge base of Top Secret things that still get discussed (like atomic bombs, for example), and so Top Secret, even though it probably consistently makes up the least of the "new" secrets, becomes a very persistent category. (It also doesn't necessarily downgrade: the exact atomic bomb designs were Top Secret in 1945, and they are Top Secret today.) Unfortunately there are no estimates as to the TOTAL volume of Top Secret documents, but it must be quite large, since millions of new such documents are generated each year, far more than are decreased through declassification. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:07, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An intersting article here from the UK National Archives on the origin of the use of "Top Secret" and why it's not as ungrammatical as it appears. Alansplodge (talk) 01:14, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 February 2

Contents