Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 April 27

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April 27

Fantasy and sci-fi hottest spot

Which nations are arguably best for their Science fiction novels? and which nations are arguably best for their fantasy fiction novels? like Sweden, Denmark and Norway and England are arguably best for their mystery and crime fiction novels. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.106.38 (talk) 14:44, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure any nations have special reputations for excellence in science fiction or fantasy novels. As you recognize, this is a very subjective question. There are many resources that compile "best" science fiction and fantasy works, often in short story form and often for a given year. Here on Wikipedia, see The Best of Science Fiction for an older example of such a work. A quick look at the authors from that work looks like they're mostly American and English. You could refer to resources such as those and make your own judgment based on the nationalities of the authors. Keep in mind that these anthologies will reflect the biases of their editors and compilers, however. Some may explicitly cover the "best of American science fiction" or something, but others may focus on a single country without saying so. The short version? Find fantasy or sci fi works that you like and look for a pattern in authors' nationalities. --BDD (talk) 18:33, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The United States IMO for science fiction. It took widespread root the earliest there and spawned the greatest number of authors, good, bad or otherwise (thank you Hugo Gernsback). Plus the fact that Robert Heinlein was an American would skew the ranking just by itself, and another of the "Big Three" was too. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:04, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

As for fantasy, it's not as clear cut, but I'm inclined to go with England/Great Britain. They've got by far the two biggest names - J. R. R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling - plus Terry Pratchett. Skimming quickly through Category:American fantasy writers, the US has L. Frank Baum, H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:19, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Polygamy in US and Canada

I don't understand. Polygamy in USA and Canada is illegal but still some Canadians and Americans do polygamy without being getting caught by the law. Hollywood actors are the best examples I know for this situation and yet they get caught. What if a Muslim man wants to do polygamy because for health issues or economic issues and same thing other men and other women of other faiths? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.106.38 (talk) 15:05, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I think you might misunderstand what polygamy is. Why not read the article? Dismas|^(talk) 16:18, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It's only illegal if you are legally married to multiple people at once. One way around this is to have, at most, one official marriage, recorded by the state. You can then have as many unofficial marriages as you want, even having names legally changed, if desired.

For those actually committing bigamy (multiple official legal marriages at once), the governments remain reluctant to prosecute, since this results in breaking up families and putting many people "on the dole", who were self-supporting, and this looks very bad according to public opinion, especially with video of crying children being taken away from their parents. StuRat (talk) 17:07, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I think the way to fix this is to completely decouple a civil marriage (the legal, official one) from a religious marriage. Indeed, it seems to me that the separation of church and state requires this. The legal one can be called a "civil partnership" or "civil union", if preferred, and the state can define the rules there. As for a religious marriage, the churches, temples, mosques, etc., can decide the rules there. If your church says you can marry multiple people, or even trees, that's fine, but it will have no legal meaning. StuRat (talk) 17:13, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The one legal argument against polygamy that makes some sense is that it can cause unbalanced numbers of unmarried women and men, leading to social problems. This happens in polygamous communities, and they handle it by having many of the excess single gender leave the community. This wouldn't work on a national level, though, unless you allow massive emigration of the excess gender. However, this problem exists whether marriages are official or unofficial, so it doesn't make sense to only put restrictions on official marriages. On the other hand, policing who everyone is sleeping with is both impossible and repugnant. So, what are we left with ? Perhaps just hope that polygamy doesn't become so widespread and one-way as to cause major disruptions. Based on it's currently lack of popularity in North America, I don't see it as much of a risk. StuRat (talk) 17:22, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

All liberal states allow emigration, heh. North America, by the way, as a migration sink, has a chronic surplus of bachelors (or so I've been told). —Tamfang (talk) 19:22, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm curious as to what "health issues" are ameliorated by polygamy. LANTZY^TALK 19:27, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps the OP is referring to a man who wants to have biological children (or more biological children) but is unable to because his wife has low fertility (allegedly anyway as the assumption often seems to be made the wife is at fault without testing). While fertility treatments may help and using a surrogate mother and perhaps an egg donor is another option in the modern era, tradionally at least marrying another (generally younger) woman was another in some cultures. Nil Einne (talk) 20:14, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Hollywood actors? Clarityfiend (talk) 03:56, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I wonder if "health issues" would largely be STDs. If you want multiple sexual partners and don't want to risk STDs, I suppose that polygamy with people who were previously virgins would prevent STDs as long as neither you nor your spouses are unfaithful. Nyttend (talk) 21:58, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

No one in the US or Canada is a "true" polygamist, because it's against the law in every state. A guy with several "wives", still only has one "real" wife in the eyes of the law. The others are just cohabitants. And that's where trouble can arise - because in some states, some period of cohabitation (7 years, in standard lore), qualifies the cohabitant as a "common law wife". Once that happens, the guy is a bigamist and is in violation of the law. Whether the law goes after him or not depends on other circumstances. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:00, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I hope that's not legal advice, and even if it is, I find it extremely hard to believe that someone can separate from their spouse, not divorce for whatever reason, shack up with someone else and down the track find themself at risk of being tarred as a bigamist despite never having gone through any form of marriage ceremony with the new party or even purporting to be married to that party. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 19:44, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Shia Islam in Pakistan and India

Which ethnic groups mostly practice Jafari Shia and Ismaili Shia in Pakistan and which ethnic groups mostly practice Jafari Shia and Ismaili Shia in India? Which part of Pakistan has the most Shia Jafaris and which part of Pakistan has the most Shia Ismailis? Which part of India has the most Shia Jafaris and which part of India has the most Shia Ismailis? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.106.38 (talk) 15:13, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Have you seen the articles Islam in India and Islam in Pakistan? If they don't directly answer your question, they will provide a launching point for you research. --Jayron32 03:51, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

The vast majority of at least the latter are from GujaratLihaas (talk) 11:44, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Messianic Secret

This is a question about the article "Messianic Secret," which I find possibly incomplete in a way that may or may not be deemed significant. From my point of view, as a student of literary theory and criticism, rather than of biblical studies, it is significant; but I refer to the judgment of others. My main object is not to have an answer sent to me (though that would be OK), but to have the question referred to those more knowledgeable on the subject, for possible expansion of the article.

The omission that I notice is this. The article identifies the "Messianic Secret" theory as originating in 1901, commanding considerable attention for the next quarter-century, but then by mid-century or a little later pretty much fallen out of favor among biblical scholars. This surprised me, because it was in "The Genesis of Secrecy" (1979) by Frank Kermode, a highly regarded literary critic, that I first encountered the idea. He speaks as if the theory has by that point become well established as a standard bit of knowledge--no longer a mere theory--and proceeds from there to apply it in the larger field of literary criticism.

My questions: 1) Is any of this worth mentioning in terms of the larger influence of Wrede's 1901 theory? 2) What is the current status of Kermode's book in literary circles? That is, has it too now become largely discredited or ignored?

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.221.212.206 (talk) 15:40, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

If you make a link to the article ("Messianic Secret"), you increase the likelihood that someone will read the article, and you increase the likelihood that someone will try to answer your question. Also, here is a link to the article "Frank Kermode". Instructions on linking are at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking, which you can reach with the shortcut WP:LINK.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:05, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

In debt – in credit?

If you owe money to a creditor, you're in debt. Do we have any analogous term for the state you're in when you're owed money – i.e. "in credit"?

Specifically, we can say that someone who is unlikely to pay off one's debts is "deeply in debt" – what can we say of someone who is unlikely to have their loans repaid?

Alfonse Stompanato (talk) 16:15, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The Language Desk would be a good place to ask this. One term used for something similar is "liquidity". That is, if you have cash on hand, you are "liquid", while if you have it loaned out to many others, you suffer from "illiquidity". StuRat (talk) 17:25, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Haven't heard "in credit", but budgets etc. can be said to be "in surplus", and the phrase "in the black" contrasts to "in the red"... AnonMoos (talk) 18:15, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

'In credit' is used widely here in the Uk to mean you have more a positive amount of money in your bank. If you have credit that is unlikely to be repaid you might call it Bad debt. ny156uk (talk) 19:13, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The next sucker beneficiary of my sure fire "investment opportunity". Clarityfiend (talk) 03:41, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

"Solvent" or "in the money".John Z (talk) 18:36, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

"To those who remain solvent, I say salut !" (I hope this doesn't precipitate a shower of puns.)StuRat (talk) 22:26, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Is the bible a novel?

79.148.233.179 (talk) 19:19, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

At a minimum, a novel is a long prose narrative. The Bible fails this test, as it is not a single narrative, and it includes non-narrative components. Marco polo (talk) 19:31, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The bible is a lot of things. Most of the bible is organized topically: Parts of it tell an historical narrative (much of the Pentateuch, as well as the Samuel-Kings-Chronicles section). The next section are books of "wisdom", that is Proverbs-Ecclesiastes. There the Psalter, which is basically a hymnal or song book. There's the books of the prophets, which are exhortations to the Nation of Israel to clean up their act or face God's wrath. In the New Testament, there's the four Gospels, followed by Acts (which is the second volume of Luke's gospel) which cover the narrative aspect. The Epistles are letters from Paul and a few other early church leaders to various churches instructing them on proper Christian life. The last book in the New Testament is Revelation, which is a dense symbolic book, the purpose of which is clouded but which seems to, among many scholars, be a narrative of the end times (see Eschatology). Some books, or sections of books, do have a novel-like quality in that they have a clear narrative. Other parts, however, are poetry, or songs, or letters, or any number of other sorts of writing. --Jayron32 19:54, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

You may also wish to note that it was first recorded on paper long after most events happened, then re-written and edited by many over the centuries. It would be nice if a "Factual Bible" were written. It would be smaller, but at least would contain mostly factual entries.--Canoe1967 (talk) 20:13, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Although there are arguments made that none of it is historical narrative, but rather a work of fiction to be used for educational purposes.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 20:59, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Fiction is a word that is a bit loaded. It may be best to say that parts of it are allegorical. That is, they espouse truth, but the truth comes in the lessons taught, not in the narrative itself, i.e. Jesus' parables. --Jayron32 21:39, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

(after ec) I don't think you'll find any reliable source claiming that the Bible is a single work of fiction for any purpose whatever. Parts of it may well be as you describe - Job, in particular, and probably most if not all of Jonah and Daniel, along with chunks of Genesis. But (for example) when 2 Kings talks about Tiglath-Pileser III, or 1 Maccabees refers to Alexander the Great, it may not be a reliable historical document, but it is clearly intended as an historical account. (Contrast the book of Judith, which depicts an invasion, and a location, which as far as we can tell never existed.) And of course genres such as poetry (Psalms, Song of Songs) and wisdom literature (Proverbs, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiastes) are not susceptible to the distinction of truth and fiction. AlexTiefling (talk) 21:43, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps "inspired by a true story" is the closest to the way a modern author would put it. StuRat (talk) 21:47, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Parts of the Bible which could be called rather "novelistic" include the Book of Esther, and (in the Apocrypha), the Book of Tobit... AnonMoos (talk) 01:34, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

"I believe the entire Bible literally, even the parts that contradict the other parts." - Ned Flanders - StuRat (talk) 21:47, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The Bible has also perhaps the earliest example of detective fiction. Not just one but two tales.85.52.87.200 (talk) 23:21, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The Bible is an anthology, not a novel. It's also not very novel, as all or most of it is at least 19 centuries old. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:05, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, actually, this question is much more interesting than it looks at first glance (to me, at least), and none of the answers given so far really satisfy me that the bible is not a novel. In effect, the question is unanswerable without a clear definition of what exactly we mean by "novel", and such a definition will always be arbitrary and slightly fuzzy around the edges. Let's have a look at some of the criteria mentioned so far and see how they do when looking at books that unquestionably are novels:

• "author's intent" as a concept hasn't been used by literary theory for at least a hundred years now; I may be glossing over some minor outlying theories, but you'd have to go back all the way to Wilhelm Dilthey to find a theory of literature that was based on author's intent and that was widely accepted at the time it was posited. Basically, these days we don't care about author's intent because 1. we will never know for sure what exactly an author intended and 2. we don't care either way - we don't look at what an author wanted to accomplish, we can only look at what he actually did accomplish.
• The first point already takes care of passages that are "clearly intended as an historical account", but historical accounts are generally not a problem - each and every historical novel contains passages that read like history textbooks. The same goes for poems, letters etc - a great many novels incorporate pages upon pages of poetry.
• The above takes care of the bible's "anthology" aspect, but what about multiple authors? This is admittedly unusual, but not unheard of - just look at Luther Blissett (nom de plume).
• No single narrative and a rather long timeframe with various independent stories? Not unusual either - every family saga-type novel does that, plus the bible kind of has God as a recurring character and tells various tangentially related stories which all sort of illustrate God's character (not unllike Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses, come to think of it).

So what does that leave us with? In general, we define a novel as one of a set of narrative works that are part of a certain literary tradition and that share a certain ill-defined set of characteristics, but as long as the work in question is undeniably part of the same literary tradition it can generally get away with breaking any of the established conventions that seem to define a novel. The problem with the bible is that it is not part of that tradition because it was written several hundred years earlier - we might call it a proto-postmodernist novel, but that would be stretching the definition quite a bit. On the other hand, if the bible didn't already exist and was written today (I'm thinking of Borges' Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote here), we would almost certainly classify it as a postmodernist novel. We don't usually do that, but that is strictly a question of established tradition - there's really nothing inherent in the text itself that makes the bible unquestionably not a novel. Ferkelparade π 13:15, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Were the Neanderthal human?

79.148.233.179 (talk) 19:25, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean by human. They were much farther genetically from modern humans than any group of modern humans is from any other group. Scientists disagree over whether Neanderthals were part of the same species as modern humans. However, they were certainly in the same genus, and they would probably seem to us more human than "animal." Marco polo (talk) 19:37, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

See the "Classification" section of our Neanderthal article for further discussion. Neanderthals could reproduce with Homo sapiens, which suggests they could be considered fundamentally human. However, this isn't set in stone; horses and donkeys can reproduce (creating a mule or, rarely, a hinny), despite being of different species. If you're looking for a yes or no answer, I'd say yes, but I'd add that many people much more informed than me would say no. Taxonomy isn't an exact science. --BDD (talk) 20:43, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Neanderthals and modern humans did sometimes mate, but it seems exceedingly likely that Neanderthals lacked the final biological refinements of human language capacity into its fully modern form which apparently took place about 50,000-75,000 years ago (what is known archaeologically as the "Great leap forward" or behavioral modernity). AnonMoos (talk) 01:30, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

According to professor David Christian in his lecture course Big History, Neanderthals and homo sapiens were distinct species but linked to a common ancestor. Our ancestors (homo sapien sapiens is the technical term I think) competed with Neanderthals and won; that is the most accepted theory at this time. What humans had (which Neanderthals may have lacked) was what Christian described as learning which accumulates. Humans, by speech, could pass on what was learned, which accelerated the pace of knowledge. Humans were forever learning new tricks which enabled us to exploit our environment better, to live in new places; Neanderthals, even though they constructed tools, could not keep up.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:54, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

It's pretty meaningless to say that "Neanderthals and homo sapiens were distinct species but linked to a common ancestor"; the same can be said of butterflies and dinosaurs or any two species. The crucial point is how distant the common ancestor is, and in the case of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens, the answer is "quite recent". Since neanderthals were in the genus Homo, they were human, unless one makes the question tautological by capriciously asserting that only Homo sapiens were human. - Nunh-huh 11:31, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Except by merging with "humans". They interbred, and it's very likely that most people alive today have a Neanderthal ancestor. It's merely arbitrary that we call ourselves humans and not the continuation of the Neanderthal line. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 05:27, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

JackofOz -- The latest results are that Africans generally have no Neanderthal DNA, while non-Africans have 4% or less Neanderthal DNA, so under those circumstances it's really not "arbitrary" to state that present-day humanity is a continuation of non-Neanderthal modern humans (traditionally called "Cro-Magnons" in a European context), and not a continuation of Neanderthals. Also, Neanderthals had some specialized anatomical features which are not found in modern people. And on the cognitive side, Neanderthals probably had a communicative capacity which was far in advance of chimpanzees, but which fell significantly short of the complexities and capabilities of human languages as we know them today. AnonMoos (talk) 11:14, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Leave Africans out of the picture and the remaining population of Earth is still "most people", as I said. People are usually more than happy to announce they've discovered they have a Comanche or Basque or Egyptian great-great-great-great-grandmother or some other unexpected ancestor. Well, pretty much all non-Africans can be proud to proclaim their Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon heritage, too. If they had names, and we knew the names of those ancestors, there'd be no holding back. Let not their anonymity become their graves. Grok-Snig, you live on in me, and the Ref Desk answers that come from this pen are those of a Neanderthal. I would have thought that should be pretty obvious by now. :) -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 20:53, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

That's nice, in a retro-hypothetico-sentimentalesque way, but it doesn't change the scientific numbers, or the fact that skeletons of current-day people differ in a number of ways from those of Neanderthals, etc. When the 1-4% number was revealed, one of the news stories had a quote from a scientist who said that it seemed that the modern humans had interbred with Neanderthals just about enough to incorporate genes incorporating resistance to northern or non-African diseases and parasites, and not too much more... AnonMoos (talk) 01:38, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

"retro-hypothetico-sentimentalesque" - why, how sweet, AnonMoos, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about me. A perfect word for a melancholy autumn Sunday afternoon.

Sure, our body shapes have changed (it's been a very long time, after all, since all this happened), but that doesn't deny the genetic relationships between them and us. We all have countless lines of descent; for most of us, one of those lines leads back to Neanderthals (call them what you like). You can't accept the 1-4% DNA evidence on the one hand, and then deny any familial connection on the other hand. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 02:09, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

You're still kind of missing the point -- the rise of Anatomically modern humans occurred many thousands of years before a few of them mated with Neanderthals, so the anatomy of current-day humans is simply not due to evolution from a Neanderthal base.... AnonMoos (talk) 21:11, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Missing the point - pfehr! (or however one spells an expression of mock disdain) I make my own points, thank you very much. None of these second-hand points for me, no sirree. You never know where they've been.  :) -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 22:17, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

List of countries by life expectancy

Why does Spain have the highest life expectancy in the EU?79.148.233.179 (talk) 19:29, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Because people who live in Spain tend to live the longest of all EU nations. --Jayron32 19:46, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It's tied with Sweden, and only 2.4 months ahead of metro France. I wouldn't have guessed Spain was at the top myself, but most of those countries are so close statistically that it's just an exercise in opinion, at least from what we can offer here, to guess why one is better than the other. All the usual stuff... health care, obesity, endemic disease, smoking, accident rates, those are the big killers. I'm not so sure Spain's very different from many other EU countries in those regards. (ec) Jayron's response is gonna be the most accurate in this entire thread too. Shadowjams (talk) 19:50, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

In addition to what Jayron and SJ have said, I would note according to the article it's actually only Spanish females who live the longest of all EU nations. They are also the tied (with Switzerland) third in the world. Spanish males only live the third longest of all EU nations and 13th in the world. In addition those are UN estimates for 2005-2010. Right below them is the CIA World Factbook estimates for 2011 where Spain is below Italy and metropolitan France (in overall terms). Nil Einne (talk) 20:07, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Spanish males live the second longest of all EU nations according to the article. Apparently you counted Norway as an EU country, which it is not. 88.9.107.228 (talk) 21:17, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

If they are accurate, those statistics are interesting, because Spain has a relatively high (for Europe) percentage of daily smokers. Thinking about how the Spanish lifestyle differs from that of other European countries, I wonder whether moderate daily alcohol consumption and regular consumption of oily fish might have something to do with it. But that's just speculation. Marco polo (talk) 20:14, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

List of countries by cigarette consumption per capita confirms half of your point. Different food is a commonly cited argument. 88.9.107.228 (talk) 21:19, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Statistics are curious things. Not to be humourous, but some stats like that are similar to "Why was the number 12 drawn on the lottery more than others in March?" type thing. More research can explain why, but stats usually just state results of events.--Canoe1967 (talk) 20:22, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Noting that both Spain and Switzerland were neutral in WW2, perhaps avoiding all the stresses of that war helped them live a bit longer. (The Spanish Civil War was also brutal, but most people old enough then to be stressed by it would be dead now, in any case.) If so, you could expect this advantage to soon disappear, as those old enough to be stressed by WW2 also die off. StuRat (talk) 21:16, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Additional reasons: the weather is better, sun is good for you, at least less people commit suicide here in Spain. Spain is less radioactive than, for example, Germany. Less population density is good for your health. 88.9.107.228 (talk) 21:21, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think sunlight is actually good for you, other than helping you get vitamin D₃, which you can get from food and vitamin pills anyway. The downside is skin cancer and skin aging. However, if the weather encourages people to exercise more and be less stressed out, then it might help that way, provided they wear sunblock. StuRat (talk) 22:35, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe you get vitamine D from the sun. You always get it from the food, the sun just makes you process it, even if you only get a little of it. However, my point here is that it makes you less depressed, mental health is a huge help when it comes to keeping physically healthy too. 88.9.107.228 (talk) 22:48, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

That would be why I said "helping you get" as opposed to "magically delivers vitamin D that materializes directly from photons". :-) StuRat (talk) 23:22, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Yeah? And why did you say "you can get from food and vitamin pills"? There is no "can get" here. You get them from the food, the sun just makes you process it. Just ask Jayron if you don't believe me, he seems to know such kind of thing, and it's kind of idle regarding the present question. XPPaul (talk) 00:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Historically, food only contained the precursor, 7-dehydrocholesterol, which then required exposure to UV light to form vitamin D₃. However, both vitamin pills and foods supplemented with D₃ bypass the need for sunlight. StuRat (talk) 00:46, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe you are right on this one. Vitamin D supplements do not improve the vitamin D level absorption by your body, it only improves the level of vitamin D in your blood, and it can be even detrimental. So, children: do not go with StuRat's suggestion and keep a healthy diet + healthy amount of exposure to sunlight. XPPaul (talk) 12:26, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Where is ths famed contribution from Jayron? -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 21:53, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It was removed here: [1]. I put it back. --Jayron32 23:18, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It begs the question: why do they live longer? (even if it's just a little bit more than the French). XPPaul (talk) 00:25, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedea Has An Article About Everything: the Mediterranean diet has been associated with increased longevity for a while now. See also the French paradox, much of which could also apply to Spain. The article emphasises diet but also mentions "a study by Scarabin et al. (2003) comparing activity and health statistics in men from Toulouse and Belfast that shows although the total levels of physical activity are similar for both cities, French men performed more physical activity in their leisure time, possibly accounting for decreased incidence of CHD compared to Northern Ireland." which is thought to be because "the effects of good weather will encourage outdoor leisure pursuits". Finally see Wine and health. Alansplodge (talk) 14:42, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Right, but as our article says, that usually includes parts of Italy, and Greece. If we go by the UN table we're using, Italy isn't too bad in terms of the EU. Greece however is barely better then fish and chips with mushy peas or boiled to bits food (yes I know that an extreme exaggeration) UK. I agree with Shadowjams and Canoe, you can come up with random stuff, but given the small difference, proving anyone is the 'reason' is impossible and pointless anyway. We could just as well say it's the Siesta (which according to our article those have some suggested health benefits). Or you could even come with random other wacky stuff like maybe the females benefit somewhat from the lower average age of death of the males or watching bullfighting has health benefits. Nil Einne (talk) 16:05, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

When comparing measurements, it is difficult to overstate how important it is to think about their uncertainty. A life expectancy is a forecast of how long people are expected to live - this clearly isn't something we can know very precisely. According to Life expectancy#Calculating life expectancies, they are estimated using a number of different pieces of information via a non-trivial process, and the information and methods used depend on what is available, and what the estimates are intended to be used for. The availability and reliability of information will obviously vary from one country to another, and you can see on the list you linked to, that the UN and CIA estimates frequently differ by several years (OK, we are talking about slightly different time periods, but that shouldn't make too much difference) and the countries are in a completely different order. In fact, from a quick glance at the sources, they don't appear to make any attempt to quantify the uncertainty of the results. To my (physics-trained) mind, this suggests that you should treat them with extreme scepticism. I mean, nobody is going to dispute that people in Japan live longer than those in Mozambique, but trying to conclude anything from the tiny differences between Western European countries is probably fruitless. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 17:45, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

It is also important to keep in mind that these are "period life expectancies". That means they assume no changes in mortality in the future, which is obviously not a realistic assumption. To determine whether someone born today in Spain can be expected to longer than someone born today in the UK, say, you need to make some assumptions about future mortality improvements. If you make different assumptions about those, then you could end up getting completely different results to the ones suggested by the period life expectancies. You should also remember that the life expectancy for a country doesn't apply to the individuals in that country - if you want to know the life expectancy of a particular individual, you need to take into account things like wealth, education, lifestyle, medical history, family medical history, etc. (there are some bizarre factors that have been shown to have a measurable impact on life expectancy - the month of your birth, for instance). --Tango (talk) 00:39, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Corporate lawsuit/criminal records

I was wondering where I could look for the records of corporate crimes and lawsuits. For example say business X is found guilty of Y, where is this recorded and how can I access it? I am seeking the records for all large businesses at least in the developed world. Thank you, 65.95.23.172 (talk) 22:24, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Lexis nexis. XPPaul (talk) 22:56, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Which jurisdiction are you interested in? Shadowjams (talk) 05:29, 28 April 2012 (UTC)