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

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May 31

Business in North Korea

Does North Korea allow private businesses to operate in their country? Is there any organization through which a private company should approach for setting up business in DPRK? --999Zot (talk) 00:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

• The DPRK has a special section of government dedicated to setting up joint ventures, at this website. And this page gives you an idea of which areas the DPRK is interested in for joint ventures. I am not deeply familiar with Juche's micro-economics, but I would suggest that your "ownership" would be limited, and your capacity to sue for restitution in the case of sovereign policy change would be limited. The DPRK is offering joint capital ventures with information interchange for a capital return (probably in commodity form), leaving you with all the liabilities of marketing and realising the value. (They appear to be very willing to sell their working class; not surprising). Fifelfoo (talk) 01:23, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

North Korea does have an informal sector of small merchants. Supposedly, the government abandoned attempts to shut them down after traders rioted. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:20, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Very interesting, do you have a period, date or source? Are these petits bourgeois style street vendors, or is it more informal more like the working class informal economies of exchange under capitalism? Fifelfoo (talk) 02:23, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

See [1]. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:59, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Fact and opinion question

In matters of libel or slander, is there a significant legal difference between these two cases?

a) someone saying or writing, (for example) "John Smith is a crook"

and b) someone saying or writing, "I think that John Smith is a crook".

I.e., between a statement of something as a fact, and a statement of the same thing as a personal opinion.

I'm not seeking advice on a legal matter here, just wondering about this question which somehow came into my head. Thanks. Wanderer57 (talk) 04:06, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Obligatory pointing out of the articles for libel and slander here. Dismas|^(talk) 09:09, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. The answer I get from this article (libel & slander lead to the same article Defamation) is that generally yes, a difference is recognized in law but in the USA it is not straightforward.

Wanderer57 (talk) 17:13, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

We had this discussion on the RD before. There is no bullet-proof "opinion privilege" against libel. See Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co.. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:58, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

How many brands do The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo operate?

Our Coca-cola Company article says "over 500" whereas I can't find anything conclusive on their website. The PepsiCo article says "hundreds" and their website says "hundreds" as well. Surely someone, somewhere, actually knows how many? I can live with "over 500" but the "hundreds" claim is a bit too vague for my liking. The Masked Booby (talk) 07:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's a Pepsi-co list from their website (http://www.pepsico.com/Brands/Pepsi_Cola-Brands.html). One thing to note - there are other pages for 'Tropicana' Brands and 'Gatorade' etc. (http://www.pepsico.com/Brands.html). ny156uk (talk) 07:56, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Its a bit tricky also, since the two companies operate very differently. Coca-Cola company is a beverage business only, while Pepsico also owns many other snack food ventures, restaurant chains, etc. So, when counting brands you need to know whether you are looking at all of the brands managed by Pepsico, or just their beverage brands. --Jayron32 19:23, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Double pricing at gasoline stations

In recent years I've noticed that more and more gasoline stations have implemented "double pricing" - i.e. charging more for credit card payments than for cash payments. What's the driving force behind this trend? Is it a recent phenomenon (I can't recall seeing this before the late 2000s)? 98.116.65.221 (talk) 07:58, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

There's a cost associated with accepting cards - Merchant fees and such. Gas stations primarily make their money off Other Things, not gas, so they try and minimize their costs for gas sales. Foofish (talk) 08:15, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not a recent phenomenon; you're being influenced by the recency illusion (if I can use that term outside of linguistics). I remember gas stations doing this as long ago as the 1980s. Pais (talk) 08:19, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Amendment: I should say I remember gas stations in the U.S. doing this as long ago as the 1980s. It may be a recent phenomenon elsewhere in the world (though I notice the OP did say "gasoline stations", not "petrol stations"). Pais (talk) 08:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I should also add that businesses look for any opportunity for deceptive advertising, so many will only post the lower cash price, with the word "CASH" in small print, if listed at all, knowing full well that most people will use a credit card and thus pay more than they expected. StuRat (talk) 08:54, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Some friends of mine own a general store (which I used to moonlight at on Sundays). They made very little on gas, as do most gas stations. Profit was somewhere in the neighborhood of a few cents per gallon. Credit card companies charge merchants a fee for every transaction. So, unless the sale is at least a certain dollar figure, the merchant can lose most, if not all, of their profit to those fees. Add to that the fact that, as mentioned earlier, gas stations make more money per sale off of snacks, drinks, etc. than they do gas.

Gas stations aren't the only ones to do this though. My local hardware store and my local coffee shop each have a $10 minimum on credit/debit card purchases. Dismas|^(talk) 09:07, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

That's not the same thing, though. Not permitting a payment by credit card at all unless the price is over a certain minimum, is not the same as charging differential prices for different modes of payment. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:13, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sorry. I mixed my words. I should have said, that gas stations aren't the only ones who implement rules to make up for the lost profits. Dismas|^(talk) 21:13, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

In some cases, and in some jurisdictions, a surcharge or minimum violates the merchant agreement that the store has with the card acquirer (imposed in turn on the acquiring bank by the payment system) - this post details some of the limits. Visa Inc.#Operating regulations has more, mentioning jurisdictions in which surcharges are prohibited (or conversely the prohibition of surcharges is itself forbidden) by law. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 11:44, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I seem to recall, and yes I am old enough to remember, that in the very early days of Credit Cards, the companies used to insist that the purchase price of any item should NOT be increased if their credit card was used. When did this injunction cease to have any effect, and should it not be reinstated?85.211.237.222 (talk) 10:31, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Merchants can always give a discount for using cash. Visa and Mastercard prohibit extra fees (or at least they did, last time I checked), but that doesn't necessarily mean much. I usually encounter surcharges for using cards at mom-n-pop shops, often in the form of cash sales being free of tax. Pretty sneaky, sis.Foofish (talk) 02:58, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Consistent college rankings?

Jayron's comment above ( "I wouldn't call schools that aren't "Harvard and Yale" lower colleges. There are many other colleges (some of them public schools) which outrank Harvard and Yale in many, many rankings. --Jayron32 23:05, 26 May 2011 (UTC) ") let me thinking: can we assess impartially the quality of the education that we get? And what college rankings are those, that Jayron alludes to? And, are there rankings out there that concentrate on education alone (not prestige, publications, research). Quest09 (talk) 12:49, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

• THE a widely respected but predominantly anglophone measure lists eight Universities greater than Yale. QS another measure lists Cambridge as currently better than Yale or Harvard either. To be honest, University Metrics are a marketing tool, and part of an invidious audit culture which attempts to reduce social interactions to commodified value. YMMV. Fifelfoo (talk) 13:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

College and university rankings, and the articles on the specific measures Times Higher Education World University Rankings, QS World University Rankings, and Academic Ranking of World Universities may help with the rest of the question. It should be noted that the THE and QS ratings are based on several factors, mainly research, and I'm not aware of an international metric based purely on teaching (teaching is harder to assess than research impact, which is often done by counting citations, though teaching is sometimes assessed based on faculty/student ratios or surveys). --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:57, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Education alone is not always useflu in getting a job, compared to low grades at a "prestige" school that you got into by family connections. See also the Annapolis Group of colleges who protest against some of the culture of college rankings. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 16:35, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

The rankings all depend on what methodology makes the rankings. They all have issues with them that make them hard to predict what a "good education" will mean in any individual case. Many schools know how to, and do, juke the stats through various means. It also really depends what you want the rankings to tell you, as well. I would not put much faith in rankings except as indications for what their rankings are. (Which is necessarily tautological.) That doesn't mean they are useless — if everyone thinks that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are good schools, that does tell you something about what a degree from there will mean in the wider world, even if it doesn't tell you much about what your actual educational experiences at schools like that will be. (Harvard gets consistently great rankings, for example, even though in my personal experience its approach towards undergraduate teaching is pretty mediocre compared to a lot of other schools which rank considerably lower.) --Mr.98 (talk) 21:54, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I have always been of the opinion that how good any particular school, college or university is supposed to be makes rather less difference than how much effort the students themselves make, as individuals. Those institutions that do consistantly better in rankings are those that only allow people they think will do well to attend. I had trouble with this at my old school, they didn't much like letting people study any subject they enjoyed, would find useful in their future careers, but yet were believed (correctly or not) to have a chance of not doing wonderfully well in. Whilst the school just down the road was infamously terrible, and because of that had some of the best equipment and highest levels of government funding in the country, and legend has it hardly anyone ever bothered to attend to make use of this. It seems the only way of comparing your education is to chose somewhere even with little idea what it might be like on getting there, wait a few years then look back and see whether you enjoyed it and whether it got you what you wanted. And if not, all you can do is invent a time machine and tell yourself to try somewhere else. 148.197.121.205 (talk) 07:42, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

From my experience, my advice to any prospective student would be to attend the best university that will let you in. I've attended universities at both ends of the scale, and the best university had staff who were very helpful and seemed very generous with their grading. The one I went to previously was the opposite of that, with rude surly staff who knew little about their subject. 2.97.220.135 (talk) 15:09, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

But the entire question is how to property determine which is "best". So "go to the best" doesn't really solve anything, does it? --Mr.98 (talk) 22:06, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Good point. You could average the position of each university in whatever published rankings you can find. In Britain, a rule of thumb is that the older universities are the best universities. So find out when the university became a university and choose the oldest one. 2.97.223.90 (talk) 20:56, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Science is wrong, so I'm going to use science to prove it!

Why do anti-evolutionists try to use science to disprove it? I realize it's probably because only that portion of science conflicts with their religious beliefs, but it just seems counterintuitive. The very science they wield against evolutionary theory is the very science that has confirmed it time and time again since the 19th century. What really gets me is the fact that these people honestly think getting their information from a propaganda film or a cursory Google search trumps the research of individuals with decades of experience. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 14:20, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm reminded of the old saying, "Figures don't lie, but liars do figure." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Plenty of anti-evolutionists use religion, not science, to try and disprove evolution, e.g. "God says so! It's in the Bible!"[2] However, scientists tend to ignore this style of argument. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:01, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Anti-evolutionists aren't interested in what scientists think, they're interested in what the gullible general public thinks. Much of the public believes in science in very general terms. So if they can use scientific-sounding arguments to bolster their religious beliefs, then "all the better". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:16, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the usual creationist argument of "I've found one tiny thing that scientists can't explain therefore all of scientific knowledge must be faulty" qualifies as "science". It uses facts and observations about the natural world, but with no hint of anything resembling the scientific method. That's vital. Science is fundamentally a systematic, logical way of approaching problems and learning about the universe. While I'm sure there have been legitimate scientifically minded arguments against evolution, especially back before the fossil record was well discovered, the usual anti-evolution arguments are really more science-like than actual science. Only a small step up from a new-age crystal salesman putting on a lab-coat and invoking "quantum physics". APL (talk) 15:57, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a form of scientism, and the irony remains, since evolution is both attacked with scientism and attacked as being scientism.  Card Zero  (talk) 19:03, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

See also Edwards v. Aguillard. According to the Supreme Court's ruling in that case, it's legitimate to teach "a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind", so creationists have to present their beliefs as a scientific theory to allow them to be taught in schools. Tevildo (talk) 16:16, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

See more importantly Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a later case which established that legally, intelligent design and creationism do not qualify as valid scientific theories for teaching in a science class in a public school. --Jayron32 19:20, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, Kitzmiller, important though it is, wasn't a Supreme Court case, and only established that Intelligent Design isn't scientific. Edwards leaves the door open for some (hypothetical) scientific theory that's consistent with a literal reading of the Bible (I make no comment on whether such a theory can exist, and whether teaching such a theory would survive the "clear secular intent" element of Edwards, but it can't and it wouldn't), which is why creationism has to _try_ and make a scientific case. Tevildo (talk) 20:20, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Note that the use of fake science isn't limited to creationists. Pharmaceutical companies are an interesting case, since they use real science to make their discoveries, but then switch to fake science for marketing purposes, naming every little thing a "syndrome" and implying that you need expensive meds to protect you from those dread diseases. "Why suffer from the humiliating effects of PSS (Pale Skin Syndrome) when our product will give your skin a healthy orange glow ? May cause anal leakage." :-) StuRat (talk) 17:25, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

And a few months later the same molecule will be re-formulated with different dosages and appearance, given a different proprietary name, and be marketed as "The great new constipation cure! May cause temporary complexion alterations" :-) . More seriously, many desirable drug effects started off as side effects of a different treatment. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.240 (talk) 21:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I've noticed that anti-evolutionists tend to repeat the same arguments like parrots. The first that comes to mind is "Evolution isn't possible according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics." The second law only applies to a closed system, which Earth is not. Another is "Can you point to a case where evolution increased the information in the genome?" The answer is of course any random mutation is an increase in the information, Nylon-eating bacteria being a modern example. The source of the popularity of this question comes from Richard Dawkins failing to answer it in a taped interview. He didn't answer it because he was pissed to discover the film crew were undercover creationists who had duped him into an interview (something he normally doesn't do). These people speak of genes and DNA, but they have no real working knowledge of the subject. A prime example of someone speaking out against evolution without such knowledge is Ray Comfort. He mentioned in an interview that "Micro-ecolution has nothing to do with Darwinian Evolution." By this he means that, for example, all dogs sprang from the "original" dog created by god in the Garden of Eden. He doesn't accept Macro-evolution because he doesn't believe in speciation. Micro and macro are just two sides of the same coin. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 21:21, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Although, micro-evolution was what Darwin had originally been working on and proposed, speciation and such like was always Wallace's big idea. 148.197.121.205 (talk) 07:46, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

That's a funny thing to say about a book that was titled Origin of Species. Looie496 (talk) 16:52, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

The ones who emphasize their scientific credentials the most — e.g. the IDers — generally don't think that "science is wrong." They say, rather, than mainstream scientific opinion is wrong (e.g. they think the evidence supports one theory over another), and sometimes that scientists make methodological assumptions that are not warranted (e.g. methodological naturalism). That's not the same thing as saying science is wrong as a whole. Why you would pursue such an avenue is, I think, somewhat obvious: science and technology in the late 20th and early 21st century has a pretty amazing track record, and most Western people today are raised with the idea that the scientific method is a pretty powerful means at getting at the truth. If you can say, "the scientific method is great — but look, it shows that I'm right, not those guys," you've got a more compelling case for a lot of people than "the book says it is right, no matter what the evidence says." The truth is, you'll get the latter group no matter what, so aiming at the former group is the more expansive approach. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:50, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

It's also useful in debates - see Gish gallop. If one can bombard one's audience with lots of "scientific" facts, each of which require detailed refutation, one has a good chance of winning the debate, compared with the mere assertion "The Bible says so, therefore it's true". Tevildo (talk) 23:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Sir Thomas Gates portrait

Where is the actual portrait of sir thomas gates, 17th century Virginia governor, located? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.241.57.55 (talk) 15:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

According to this site, the Royal Naval Dockyard Museum, Bermuda. We don't have an article on the museum, but see Bermuda#Main sights. Tevildo (talk) 16:11, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Borderline personality disorder

What is the payback for a non-BPD to continue the symbiotic relationship with a BPD person? Kittybrewster ☎ 19:37, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

It would depend on the specific individuals involved, surely? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 21:21, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

One is tempted to say Love and leave it at that. Never the most rational of emotions. Tevildo (talk) 21:24, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Soviet Trade Fair in Los Angeles, 1980s?

From my understanding there was some sort of Soviet (or perhaps Eastern European) commercial showcase in Los Angeles (the convention center perhaps?) in the early to mid 1980s. Can anyone confirm and possibly offer details on the event? --128.54.74.123 (talk) 21:43, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

There was a Soviet trade fair in LA in November 1977.[3] 75.41.110.200 (talk) 12:50, 1 June 2011 (UTC)