Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 January 29

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January 29

Why are most countries that have capital punishment poor?

For some reason, I associate the death penalty with developed countries, such as the United States, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, but it turns out that they are the exception, and not the rule. Why are most (not almost all, there are many wealthy countries with them, especially in Asia) countries with the death penalty rather poor? Most countries in Africa have the death penalty, and those same countries are the ones that are low in GDP. By contrast, most countries in Europe are stable, have good economies, and are high in GDP, and have abolished it (except Belarus, even Russia has practically abolished it, their moratorium is now indefinite). The United States is the only country on the North American mainland that still actively uses it, it is surrounded by Canada and Mexico, which have both abolished it. Why is this the case? Is it a human rights thing? Does a good economy normally come with good human rights? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:24, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't really see a pattern at all there. You just listed many rich and poor nations with capital punishment, so what makes you think wealth and capital punishment are in any way related ? StuRat (talk) 01:40, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

There's one question there I'd be willing to answer - "Does a good economy normally come with good human rights?" The answer is "Yes". But the question concentrates on just one aspect of human rights, capital punishment, which exists where it exists for complex and diverse reasons. As I understand it, the United States doesn't really have the death penalty, but many of its states do. (Anyone know how many at the moment?) I'm not sure if federal legislation can override the states on this matter. So the question should be why those states still use it. Me? I dunno. HiLo48 (talk) 01:47, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

There is a Federal death penalty, too, but it's rarely used. The same is true of the few states which allow it, except Texas, which seems to pride itself on the body count it amasses. StuRat (talk) 01:50, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The United States does have a federal death penalty as well, for things like high treason and a few other crimes, the U.S. federal "death row" is at Terre Haute, Indiana. See Capital punishment by the United States federal government. However, since most capital crimes (usually of the heinous murder type) are violations of state laws, most "death row" prisoners are executed by the states. States handle most normal crime-and-punishment issues within their borders. --Jayron32 01:53, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the detail fellas. I guess Texas just wants to be the biggest, in everything. HiLo48 (talk) 02:04, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

In theory, I would expect capital punishment to be favored by weak or corrupt governments, because they can't be assured that prisons will actually hold their inmates. Given the choice between letting killers run free or killing them in turn, they might opt for the harsh measure.

That said, it doesn't explain the situation in the U.S., where the prisons are exceptionally unlikely to lose inmates. If extra punishment is desired, why not replace the death penalty with the rape penalty? It's more humane - indeed, one supposes prisoners could opt out at any time (or if they catch HIV, or become unattractive to paying customers...) at which point they'd go back to the regular execution queue. The pay-per-view and DVD highlights would make a fortune. And it's what all the yahoos in the crowd cheer and call for every time someone is sent up. Why let the prisoners decide when and how to dole it out? Wnt (talk) 04:48, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

What?! I am trying to read this in a way where you aren't poking fun at rape; the only other possibility that I see is that you are being serious, which is even worse. Falconus^{p t c} 11:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

To be clear, I was shooting for reductio ad absurdum. If you think this is an offensive proposal, I should add that I first phrased this a little differently back when the U.S. was executing children... Wnt (talk) 01:43, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I think it is more a cultural and ideological issue than economic one. For example Saudi Arabia is a rich country, but low in human rights issues due to strong belief in Sharia, while the "poor countries" Kyrgyzstan and Nepal abolished death penalty. European developed countries have a high regard for individuality and civil liberties, which African and Asian countries generally lack (I don't know the exact cause). Another issue is political philosophy or worldview; unlike in Asia and Africa, liberalism is the dominant ideology in the Occident. Religion and nationalism plays a strong role in Asian societies compared to Europe. It has been observed, as HiLo48 pointed above, high HDI comes with high regard for human rights, but there are exception like Saudi Arabia. More religious and nationalistic sentiments generally results in "tough on crime" attitude and support for death penalty, while secular, liberal sentiments general results in concern for human rights, civil liberties and prisoner rights. I think the abolition of death penalty in Europe is associated with this secular, liberal outlook. --SupernovaExplosion (talk) 11:57, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

You could also look at it from the POV of which religion is dominant. Islam can be very hard-core on punishments, and old testament "Christianity" seems to support the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" case, where the punishment should match the crime. Thus, the appropriate penalty for murder is death. The teachings of Christ, on the other hand, seem to be that we should forgive everyone and let them go, no matter what they did. Of course, this hardly seems practical, and any nation which seriously tried this would soon find itself destroyed by crime, so some compromise is commonly taken, with minimal prison sentences to at least remove the criminals from society for a bit. StuRat (talk) 19:04, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Use of capital punishment by country. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 13:42, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

(E/C)The map used in the Capital punishment article certainly suggests to me that this is more about culture than wealth. Another thing to remember is that the death penalty is something that governments frequently lobby each other over. For example, European institutions like the European Union and Council of Europe have long promoted abolition, leading to countries like Turkey banning capital punishment as a step towards membership of the EU. Looking at the map, I wonder if there have been similar efforts in Latin America, the Pacific, or Southern Africa. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 13:58, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

That's a good point about the EU exerting pressures on it's members. If the abolitionist US states were able to do that on the states which retain the death penalty, the abolitionists might prevail in the US, too (hopefully without as much trouble as the last time the abolitionist states tried to exert their will on the rest) StuRat (talk) 18:55, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Developed countries are - as a rule - based on principles of the liberal enlightenment. As such, there is a strong tendency in such countries to place a high priority on the sanctity of individual rights and freedoms, and resistance to inegalitarian legislation. Depriving someone of their right to life runs against the liberal grain. by contrast, impoverished nations tend to be autocratic (socialist dictatorships, banana republics, juntas or other militaristic regimes, etc.), and autocratic nations usually place the interests of the state and its rulers well ahead of the interests of individual citizens. The US is a peculiar case, because over the last 60 years or so it has been eroding liberal rights in favor of authoritarian principles - basically politicians have been arguing that those who might potentially break the law do not merit the full range of rights and liberties that are supposedly guaranteed to US citizens, and have succeeded in weakening a lot of civil protections.--Ludwigs2 21:48, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

There's a truly interesting analysis of the US penal system in this week's New Yorker. It's not specifically about capital punishment, but it seems part of a general obsession with ridiculously high levels of punishment coupled with an obsession with procedural formality that is uncoupled from notions of actual justice. Here's the link. Highly-recommended reading for contemplating the particular system of punishment in the US (where, as the author points out, we currently have more African Americans incarcerated than were kept as slaves, and we currently have more people in general incarcerated than Stalin kept in his Gulag — both of which I found to be rather amazing facts). --Mr.98 (talk) 13:46, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

mostly trolling by LWC. let's not feed.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
We still have the death penalty in most US states because serial child rapist-killers, homocidal psychopaths, mass murderers, and terrorists need to be killed themselves. There is no fixing them or forgiving them ever. Fry em!LuciferWildCat (talk) 00:46, 30 January 2012 (UTC) Then it's a good thing you've never found the wrong person guilty, isn't it? HiLo48 (talk) 02:52, 30 January 2012 (UTC) Many people confuse vengeance and justice, LWC. No one already in jail "needs" to be killed for any pragmatic reason. --Ludwigs2 03:09, 30 January 2012 (UTC) LWC, you do realise that only six states still have the option to electrocute prisoners. In fact if Electric chair is correct then those six are the only places in the world where it can happen. According to Capital punishment in the United States all 34 states with the death penalty have lethal injection as their main means of execution, as does the federal government, Capital punishment by the United States federal government. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 12:58, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

For very poor countries it becomes harder to justify the expense of prison. If the money spend in keeping someone healthy and fed for life in prison could be used to prevent half a dozen people from starving to death then what do you do? -- Q Chris (talk) 13:47, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Against that, I have seen it argued (but cannot immediately offer references) that the costs of the more rigorous procedures (further appeals, etc. – trials are very expensive) typically followed by legal systems to try to ensure that they don't execute innocent persons, as opposed to the less rigorous ones applied when imprisonment is the maximum sentence, actually outweigh the costs of keeping those prisoners incarcerated (when they can release their mistakes, perhaps with compensation) – short version: it may actually cost more to execute someone than to imprison them for life. I don't know that the argument is valid, but it should be considered. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.38 (talk) 15:50, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

A couple of days ago, reading about the assassination of McKinley, I was struck by how quickly those wheels of justice turned. McKinley was killed in September, and the assassin was fried by Halloween. Nowadays, you go onto death row and sit around for 10, 15, 20 years. You could die of old age before the slip you the Big Mickey. And while there's no guarantee an innocent party will escape being executed, at least the opportunity is theoretically there for righting a wrong conviction. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:50, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

How to indicate a book title w/out italics or underlining

I am writing a book review for a website that doesn't have advanced editing tools. How does one indicate the name of a book without the use of italics or underlining? Perhaps [example] or <example>? Quotation marks are only for the names of journals. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 00:26, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Traditionally you use underscores when indicating italicized or underlined text without the ability to italicize or underline. Herman Melville, _Moby Dick_, etc. You definitely ought not use brackets, which have a separate bibliographical use. You might of course check what others on the website have done previously. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:55, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

And there's also single quotes ('), double quotes ("), and grave accents (`), so you can use something different for books and journals. StuRat (talk) 01:37, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Try /italics/ (a hint that some email clients use; it seems more reminiscent of actual italics than [italics] or #italics#, say). 90.202.164.239 (talk) 03:23, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

The first / pushes the letters over, but the second / stops them from falling over entirely.--80.99.254.208 (talk) 09:30, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Since some of the above replies seemed to focus on how to hint at italic text, and not how to present book titles, I checked with the Chicago Manual of Style. Here they indicate that using _underscores_ is preferred, although you will see that ALL CAPS can also be acceptable. *Asterisks* can be used if emphasis is needed. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 12:37, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Israel

"Do you still beat your wife" question

Content which starts hidden Why does the US support Israel's genocide against Palestine? --108.225.115.211 (talk) 01:19, 29 January 2012 (UTC) Your question cannot be answered because it contains what is known as the "fallacy of the complex question". The classic example of this is "When did you stop beating your wife?" I.E. the question presupposes that you were beating your wife, which has not been established as true; and even moreso, the whole question isn't really a question, its an accusation phrased in the form of a question. The asker is accusing the askee of beating his wife, though such a fact has not been established. With your question, you have done exactly the same thing, you've presupposed the existance of a fact (genocide against Palestine) which has not been established. So we cannot answer your question one way or another. If you have another question you'd like to ask about Israel–United States relations which does not contain such a loaded question, we'll try to answer it. --Jayron32 01:24, 29 January 2012 (UTC) Genocide means systematically killing off a group of people. If there was genocide, then the Palestinian population would be going down, not up, as it is. StuRat (talk) 01:26, 29 January 2012 (UTC) Israeli policy includes maximizing civilian deaths in all attacks against Palestine. --108.225.115.211 (talk) 01:35, 29 January 2012 (UTC) Again, you've made a statement which you have not established as true. Please provide evidence of these statements you are making, or stop making them. If you are looking for information, please ask a question. If you are looking for affirmation, find it somewhere else. --Jayron32 01:38, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

loan calculation

I'm stuck in a third-world country but am actually a qualified profesional (in a field I can't use here, but only western cities where I speak the language) with great demand in an expensive western city I worked in recently and have positive feedback from tentative explorations. I don't have a place to live there or any means, and this country is on the brink of civil war and would make it possible for me to scronge together less than a dollar a day.

I've recently been thinking of the fact that the past six months of being here have cost me at least twelve thousand dollars, proably more like fifteen to twenty. (in direct lost wages) not to mention the opportunity costs of growing professionally (I'm just around 30). I've always been somewhat of a loner and don't have much family, but I do see that this situatin is untenable. What sealed the deal is meeting another american here at the embassy, who had a really nice background but was pretty well destroyed by being here too long. this place is the pitts.

I put an exercise to myself: how much money would I borrow if I had to repay it at 2x, 3x, 5x, 10x, or 20x APR payback that I would want to service within working there for one and a half years?

The answer is that counting 4 months to get a job (very conservative, as I normally can get one within 2-4 weeks looking full time, when I am actually there on site) will cost me roughly 1500 dollars to move there and into the cheapest accomodation in the city (this includes flight and deposit on a room), another $600 per month while looking for a job (room, food, misc), meaning betwee $2100 and $3900 depending on 1-4 months of looking for work.

My income then becomes roughly $2000/month (rock bottom, could be 25% - 50% better easily), meaning that continuing to live at the austerity level of $600 per month, I can service $1400 of debt per month (call it 1200 to be a bit more reasonable, build a safety cushion), meaning after 18 months I could service at most $21,600 of debt (which, by the way, something like the amount I lost in the past year due to being stuck in this third world rut while missing job opportunities).

I'm not exactly sure I'm using the right formulas, but given the above set of assumptions (or, indeed, even extending the search for work to 5 or 6 months) it seems to me it would be profitable to take on debt even at 20x APR. (20000%). My question is: how do I do this? I'm an Ameircan citizen and have no problems finding work in any major western city. What are your suggestions for me given this situation. Fundamentally it seems to me a loan shark is a bad idea, but could you explain why? What is the best solution to a situation like this.

Note: I'm also open to any other possibilities that would include me not paying for an airline ticket or initial rent, for example of cruise ship service workers were flown out by the company and put up. I htink this is unlikely, however. Better to work in my own profession. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.99.254.208 (talk) 08:23, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

You are an indigent American citizen living in Hungary (didn't know that was part of the third world or on the brink of war) who visits the embassy. I would have thought the embassy would have been able to help you return to the US or does it have something to do with you being on the terrorists lists? CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 13:30, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

lol, nice sleuthing (same IP here). I thought it was obvious I was just being lazy with that terrorist watch list remark - I wanted you guys to trawl through ebay instead of doing it myself. I'm not indigent, just too low on cash to move to a city I can work in. I would like you to address the question above at face value, without finding out more about me. Not asking for money or anything like that, just creative solutions which do NOT involve befriending people or being a con artist or anything like that. I will add that the US probably would ship me back if I really required it, but I don't. I'm not that down on my luck, just have an empty bank account and willingness and capability to work in a larger city west of me, where I can get by bus or train and have very high confidence of being able to work immediately, without having housing arranged. I'd like your creative solutions on this front. (Also anything else you could think of e.g.: apply to hostels, asking for accomodation as well; apply to an ocean liner; etc etc. I speak a bunch of languages that aren't useful here and can present OK. I can do anything, just in the wrong location right now and have always been somewhat of a loner. thanks. 188.6.80.222 (talk) 14:44, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd also add that I'm very open-minded and above all would just like to work again, anything that satisfies the latter condition is ok by me (that's legal and ethical). My only large probelm is location ATM (i.e. I can't do a personal interview elsewhere). 188.6.80.222 (talk) 14:48, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

If you are in Hungary and don't have enough money for the train fare to Vienna, I think that counts as indigent. Who is going to lend you money in your current state, anyway? Time to go to the U.S. embassy for help if you can't make enough money to pay for air fare where you are and no one else can help you out. As for what to do about lodging when you get to the States, if there is really no one to help you, I hate to say it, but you might need to start out in a homeless shelter. If you feel you need an address to get the middle-class job you want, spend a few days doing day labor first to get the money to rent a mailbox somewhere. You might want to get a job, maybe part-time, someplace like a supermarket or coffee shop that will hire anyone who seems sober and literate, as a source of cash while you are looking for your middle-class job (and sleeping at the homeless shelter). Once you get the middle-class job, you might be able to borrow money somewhere, but then you won't really need it. Start out modest by renting a cheap room in a shared apartment while you save up the 3 months of upfront rent you'd need to rent your own place. Marco polo (talk) 02:24, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I want to thank you again for this advice (as below). I have no problems with housing at the moment and have never lived in a homeless shelter. I woudl not like to. I have a bank account and Internet and telephone access, and ability to work. Can you think of anything that would provide shelter other than a homeless shelter? (i.e. more along the same lines I mentioned: working on a cruise ship, maybe some hoste would let me live there, etc). I have the right to work anywhere in Europe. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 09:14, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Marco Polo: Vienna is a great idea! It's very close, I can definitely get there, and not very expensive. I speak German as well as most Americans who live in a German-speking country do, and some useful languages even better. This is a good idea. Let me get back to you on the rest of your comment. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 06:47, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Ethnic Cleansing.

Having just watched the movie 'Escape from Sobibor' that dramatised the largest ever escape by imprisoned death-camp Jews under the NAZI controlled occupation of Europe, it had been my intention to ask here how many generations must pass before such genocidal attacks on other ethnic groups might fade into history. But as a frequent reader of Wikipedia, I chose first to consult the excellent article therein entitled Ethnic Cleansing. And now, having done so, I have arrived at the point whereby I think the Human Race is doomed, not because every ethnic group throughout history has attacked every other group in its midst that did not exactly conform or comply, and not because the attacker wanted to eat the other group to satisfy real hunger, but merely for purposes of domination and control. Maybe mine is a childish philosophy for which I make no apology, but to change the direction of my original question, what would the human race ever have to do to live in a tolerant and harmonic society. Speculation I know, but does education and history and morality and logic and experience hold out no hope for us as a species?62.30.176.76 (talk) 16:06, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

This is a reference desk, not a discussion forum. Please stick to questions that can be answered by supplying facts rather than opinions. Looie496 (talk) 18:38, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Warfare and ethnic cleansing seem to result from a scarcity of resources relative to population, so keeping world population low, via birth control and, where necessary, sterilization, is the key. Note that the same effects are also seen where animal populations grow beyond the available resources, and they start to attack each other. I envision a world where nobody is able to have children until they can prove they have everything needed to care for them (to be accomplished by some form of reversible sterilization). StuRat (talk) 18:45, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Who or what would impose such a rule? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:41, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, scarcity is not always behind genocide. I'd even dare to say that almost never it is the case. Ideologies are behind it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.26.74.157 (talk) 23:43, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Ideologies provide a justification for war. They are rarely the reason for it. --Tango (talk) 00:39, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. In the case of Nazi Germany, they argued that they needed more space, meaning they needed to kill off whoever was using that resource already. StuRat (talk) 05:04, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Genocide and war aren't quite the same thing... and I'm not sure where the justification/reason bit separate out. The Nazi hatred of the Jews was certainly deeper than ideology. But the ideology did matter, especially with regards to convincing others to at least be ambivalent about the fate of the Jews. It's a complicated dichotomy. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:53, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

There are many excuses and real reasons for war. But that is a different ballpark. Anyway, I still maintain that you need an ideology, that justifies your hatred, for a genocide. Ideology alone won't work, but hatred + ideology can be deadly. In the case of Nazi Germany there was indeed no real reason to murder the Jewish population. Letting them emigrate or even deporting them would have been a more humane alternative, if living together was a problem. 88.26.74.157 (talk) 15:23, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Nobody was willing to take 6 million Jews, including the British, who controlled Palestine, at the time. StuRat (talk) 01:45, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems to me I read a comment from one of the longer-lived Nazis, Albert Speer perhaps, who said that the Jews had ample opportunity to leave, early on, but they wouldn't leave. Therefore, in his mind, it was their own fault that they were killed off. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:40, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

For a contrary opinion, you might check out Steven Pinker's new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature (or many of the reviews of it which are linked to from the article), which argues that actually in the short and long term, violence has declined quite a bit since WWII. It's an interesting idea and statistically works in many cases. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:53, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

62, you may be interested in the influential ideas of Peter Kropotkin, who held an optimistic view of human nature. Also, since you are asking what steps might be required to secure a lasting peace, you might like to look up World government. A lot of arguments boil in some way down to land, and who should own it, and who should have access to it. A global state is one suggestion for how to solve these problems. Just for your interest, since of course we can't give an exact answer to a question of this sort. IBE (talk) 05:01, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

If you study any social animals, pretty much all of them do this to a degree. If a new male lion takes over a pride, he'll kill any cubs sired by the previous dominant male. Chimpanzees who get into a territorial fight with another group of chimps will slaughter (and sometimes cannibalize) any they catch. It's a way of controlling the gene pool, so that only that dominant animal or group gets to breed, further enforcing their own strength.

With humans, it becomes more complicated for several reasons. First, we're no longer pressured by natural selection, as we influence the environment more than it influences us. Second, we've developed complex social structures that often transcend simple family groups. But, the instinct to protect Our Own from The Other is still there. A person's social group now can encompass political affiliations or philosophical/religious beliefs, and people who are different are a threat. Taken to an extreme, retaliating against that threat means wiping out anyone who disagrees with your stance, aka genocide.

There's no set answer for how to deal with this. Getting all of humanity to adopt a "live and let live" mentality is an utopian ideal, not a practical vision. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:26, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

• My experience in this area is spending a considerable portion of my undergraduate degree on the "Eastern" issues in WWII, reading the Nuremberg evidence, and from editing around analysis of mass mortality in Soviet-style societies on wikipedia. The current theory of mass mortality focuses on the "massacre" as a single unit of analysis. While there have been typologies deployed to sort the "reasons" behind mass killing; these are not fundamentally persuasive. I'd suggest reading some Hannah Arendt. Also, going around and murdering your neighbours is atypical behaviour and becoming rarer (on a historical scale). Enslavement is far more common than murder (see the workcamps in Germany, the slave labour factories, rural enslavement during the second war; also, obviously GuLag, and the American South). There is some evidence that slave labour is generally less productive than free labour, so enslavement is reducing historically. Similarly, forcing your neighbours or people in distant lands into conditions of alienated wage labour is pretty common at the moment, and this is broadly considered to be far less physical brutal than being a peasant or slave in antiquity. Things improve, despite the periodic massacres of males in large European towns. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:03, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Aldous Huxley available online

The Gutenberg.org site has released a book by Aldous Huxley. How is the copyright in this case? Could it be that it's out of copyright? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.26.74.157 (talk) 21:17, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

The Gutenberg project only uses public domain texts (as defined by US law), with a few copyrighted books that have explicit release by the copyright owners. They are very careful about this, so if they have provided a Huxley book then it has most likely entered into the public domain.

Huxley died in 1963, meaning that all of his books will be over 50 years old in 2013 (the standard for public domain, I think). --Ludwigs2 21:32, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

There is no one single standard for public domain in the US — this chart is probably the best attempt out there to sum it up — but 50 years after death of the author, or 50 years after publication, are not standards for works entering into the public domain. 50 years after death is the minimum specified by the Berne Convention but is not the maximum, and there are lots of other loopholes. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:08, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

They seem to have two works of Huxley. One is Crome Yellow, his first book (published 1921), and the other is The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems, which appears to have been published in 1918. Both of those are sufficiently old enough to be in the public domain according to the chart I've linked to above. Generally speaking works published before 1923 are considered public domain in the United States, but there are exceptions and complications like everything in copyright law, and you should not take this as legal advice of any sort. (Note that Huxley was, of course, a British citizen. That complicates things a bit as well. Project Gutenberg is located in the US, which is why US public domain matters the most for what it posts.) --Mr.98 (talk) 22:12, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

There's no such a thing as a British citizen, there are British subjects. S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 16:43, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia disagree with you: British_citizen#British_Citizenship_by_descent. 80.58.205.34 (talk) 16:46, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

While SpeakFree is completely wrong on this point (and should have known this if they were linking the article British subject), Huxley would have been a subject rather than a citizen until 1949. After that, he was both a citizen and a subject. If he'd lived until 1983, he would have ceased to be a subject completely, and been both a British citizen and a Commonwealth citizen. 86.166.41.126 (talk) 00:00, 3 February 2012 (UTC)