Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 October 16

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.

October 16

source for 1 dead englishman = 10 dead germans= 100 dead chinese

There's a saying in journalism as far as newsworthiness formulated various ways that amounts to the observation that one death in your homeland is worth 10 deaths in a neighboring country to 100 deaths around the world. Can anyone come up with an actual such formulation in print and its source? I have had no success at google given the terms are not very distinctive. Thanks μηδείς (talk) 00:23, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

This article lists a few variations with sources. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 00:39, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Another variation. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 01:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Excellent! The second source: "One Englishman is a story. Ten Frenchmen is a story. One hundred Germans is a story. One thousand Indians is a story. Nothing ever happens in Chile." Hold the Press -John Maxwell Hamilton. μηδείς (talk) 03:26, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

The boot is sometimes on the other foot. I remember once in the City of London during the 1980s, the London Evening Standard had a headline on the posters that stood next to the paper sellers' stalls (I'm sure there's a proper name for them); "TRAIN CRASH: MANY DEAD". As nearly all of the million or so workers in central London get there by train, this was intensely interesting, as a major crash might mean not being able to get home - before mobile 'phones and the internet there wasn't an easy way of getting news once you were at work. However, on buying a copy of the paper, the article was a tiny one on page 5 about a train crash in Indonesia. Very cunning. Alansplodge (talk) 07:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Buildings in France

From the perspective of French copyright law, what's the difference between a building, a construction site, and a pile of materials? Commons:COM:FOP doesn't address the issue; it notes that images of buildings are protected by copyright (assuming that the building's not so old that its copyright has expired), but nothing is mentioned about the point during construction at which copyright is first granted. In particular, would the attached image count as a "building" for the purposes of French copyright law? Note that it's taken in the USA, where piles of materials and construction sites and buildings are all photographable without copyright-based restraints; I've only added it as an illustration. Nyttend (talk) 03:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Acceptable role of government in society

I'm looking for a political philosophy book that explores different opinions and theories on the proper role of government and state. Any suggestions? 74.15.138.165 (talk) 03:51, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Ideally, it's whatever role its citizens want it to be. Realistically, it doesn't necessarily work out that way. There have been countless thousands of books on this subject, I'm sure. There will several on display at your local bookstore at any given time. Are you looking for a dispassionate, neutral review? That might be a bit rarer. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

"Ideally", the answer would surely be, "none whatsoever". --Trovatore (talk) 05:30, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

That is one view, certainly. --ColinFine (talk) 09:21, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Why surely? It doesn't seem self-evident at all. For my part, "whatever enables the people to gain the economies of scale without sacrificing civil liberty" would be about right. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Surely? Most certainly not! Welcome to Somalia..... 12:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fgf10 (talk • contribs)

Il Trovatore might think the people would prefer anarchy, and maybe some do, but the reality of anarchy (as with Somalia, noted above) is that it tends not to work out very well. It's one of those social paradoxes: If I am the only anarchist, then the impact on society is minimal. If everyone is an anarchist, it's a disaster. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:27, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Government exists to restrain individuals from harming other individuals. "Ideally", individuals would simply refrain from doing that, and then you would not need government to restrain them from it. --Trovatore (talk) 17:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Laws are typically reacting to something. As a simple example, if no one ever texted while driving, there probably wouldn't be laws against it, cropping up across the land. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to join an off-topic digression very far, but anarchism is not really different from statism except as a matter of the rhetorical terms used. Consideration of [1] should provide the reasoning... I think as we've gone into this century we've come to understand that everything - law, war, crime, and politics - is some manifestation of the underlying principle of terrorism. Wnt (talk) 04:36, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

We elect our public officials. Who elected al-Qaeda? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:42, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, as far as I understand states (not very well, I am told, so take everything I say with salt), one of the more famous concepts of the state is the classical liberal social contract. Essentially, it argues that society without a state, in a "state of nature", would result in havoc and destruction for all. But, humans decide to enter a social contract, and create a state, to avoid this condition and secure basic individual rights and liberties.

There are other conceptions of the state, though. For example, the Marxist interpretation views the state as an instrument to enforce a hierarchy of social classes.

Capitalism is a system in which capitalists provide capital and workers provide human labour in order to produce things. The capitalists own the means of production, and are paid in profits. The workers do not, and are paid in wages. Production can only take place with both labour and capital, so the capitalists and workers seem to depend on each other.

Without either capital or labour, nothing would happen. Both are equally necessary to produce. So why are the capitalists not equal with the workers? Why are they the upper class?

Some capitalists answer this question by saying that they come up with ideas and risk their capital investments, and therefore deserve rewards for their gamble. But, the capitalists got their capital in the first place by accumulating previous profits. Which, come from previous investments. Marxists say that if we go back along this cycle far enough, we find the reason why profit exists at all: the state.

Basically, Marxists believe that the state helps one class (the bourgeoisie) oppress another (the proletariat). When we reach communism, there will be no classes, so the state is rendered pointless. It will wither away, and be replaced by a non-coercive form of government. I don't have the time to go into detail about this, so I welcome anyone who wants to correct me or continue from here. →Σσς. (Sigma) 03:42, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I like what Frank Zappa said: "Communism doesn't work, because people like to own stuff." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:07, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm looking for a summary of major philosophies on the subject, rather than a book that advocates a particular position. 184.163.242.189 (talk) 14:52, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

In no particular order - The Republic by Plato, The Prince by Machiavelli, Das Kapital by Karl Marx, Utopia by Thomas More, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Reason of State by Giovanni Botero, Policraticus by John of Salisbury, Defensor pacis by Marsilius of Padua, Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella, De Cive by Thomas Hobbes, De re publica by Cicero - should be enough to get the grey cells going... Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:23, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Those all seem like fine suggestions, but unfortunately I don't have the time to read them all. I was looking for a book that summarizes major positions. Afterwards, I can read books that go into more detail. 184.163.242.189 (talk) 14:52, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

One should add A Theory of Justice by John Rawls to the list. I found the OpenYale courses PLSC 118: The Moral Foundations of Politics and PLSC 114: Introduction to Political Philosophy very interesting and sometimes enlightening. They both come with recommended papers and books - and indeed, I think for an overview you probably want a textbook, not a primary monograph. You might try Steven B. Smith's Political Philosophy. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:48, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

If you throw in Rawls, you should also add Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick. --Trovatore (talk) 17:30, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

To add to useful resources provided by Stephan and Roger:

• Political Thought, Michael Rosen (ed), Jonathan Wolff (ed): A compendium of writings by authors mentioned above.
• An Introduction to Political Philosophy, Jonathan Wolff, OUP: A discussion of those, and related, writings

Abecedare (talk) 15:56, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Kapital doesn't deal with "acceptable" but rather material analysis. And it doesn't deal much with the state. Lenin is enough of an idealist that State and Revolution might be useful. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:25, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Looking for critique of Dooyeweerd

Outside of the field of religious debate, where can I find a secular argument against Dooyeweerd's philosophy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.228.228.159 (talk) 09:10, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Had there been any confirmed or suspected cases of "citogenesis" on Wikipedia?

I just read http://xkcd.com/978/--朝鲜的轮子 (talk) 11:37, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I've seen some, but I can't think of any right now. You might try Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:CIRCULAR to find instances where this has come up.

Here is one very specific example discovered by User:Sitush last week: Circular sources for Barun De. Note that, as often is the case, it is very difficult to determine whether the stated facts themselves are incorrect, although in this instance I think the subject's son has questioned some of the details. There are likely to be several thousand such, discovered and undiscovered, instances on wikipedia. Abecedare (talk) 16:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC) (link fixed and answer refined. Thanks Sitush. Abecedare (talk) 16:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC))

Correct link is Circular sources for Barun De. - Sitush (talk) 16:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• See Next by Michael Crichton. μηδείς (talk) 22:21, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
• I ran into a really funny case with "glucojasinogen", a term mentioned in diabetic neuropathy. (See Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia entry) It sounded like nonsense to me, so I looked it up on NCBI. Turned out the claim was sourced. Indeed, the Wikipedia sentence was taken word for word from a journal article indexed in NCBI PubMed. No, wait, two journal articles in PubMed. Both published after the original edit was added... :) Wnt (talk) 21:22, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I run into this every now and then. Usually I check for the date of publication, and anything published after the date of creation of a wiki article that is extremely close to details in the wiki article is suspicious. What is difficult is when an article has been deleted and is then recreated on the basis of a clone article of the deleted original... --Soman (talk) 16:54, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Style of warfare in the Star Wars milieu

Has the Jedi Council ever authorized a drone strike or anything substantially similar to a drone strike? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.240.77.215 (talk) 17:25, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

That would seem rather un-Jedilike, to me, unless they could somehow control the drones, perhaps with their minds. So, no autonomous drones. StuRat (talk) 21:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

A political question about Brunei?

I'm wondering, is the country's Constitution the Supreme law of the country? [Constitution of Brunei Darussalam] Alevero987 (talk) 17:45, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

You need to define what you mean by "supreme law" (i.e. a "supreme" legal charge of murder is covered by the constitution?) Constitutions are typically the framework and last word on what the "law" is for branches of government and what future laws can be but most governments with constitutions have separate "statutes" or the like encoding laws such as those prohibiting homicide, theft etc. which exist in practical matters separate from most "constitutional" concerns. Depending on what you mean by "supreme law" the answer is both yes and no. The U.S. is historically unique in that the Bill of Rights do come up in some criminal proceedings, and thus some amendments of the federal constitution. ^{Market St.⧏} _{⧐ Diamond Way} 19:11, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

However, monarchs in some countries have reserved the right to grant, modify, and suspend constitutions. According to Politics of Brunei, the Sultan is an absolute monarch, so he presumably has the right to do what he wants with the constitution (if that's not the case, he's not quite an absolute monarch), so the answer to your question is apparently "no". Nyttend (talk) 21:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

On the other hand, those powers are (at least nominally) granted to the Sultan by/within the constitution itself (eg, see clause 85(1) on page 41 of this pdf) so one could argue that the constitution is indeed the supreme law. Note that, this is not a substantive contradiction to the point Nyttend made; just a linguistic one. The point being since the particular question admits both a "yes" and a "no" answer, the OP may be better off looking instead at how executive, legislative and judicial power is divided in the country not only by the the text of the constitution and the laws, but also in practice. Abecedare (talk) 03:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to guess that the Politics article describes the de facto power of the Sultan; I expect that past rulers (and perhaps present ones too) in various countries have mollified revolters by agreeing to a constitution, only to ensure that the constitution "grants" the ruler vast powers. For example, if the Constitution grants the sultan the right (or if he acts as if he has it) to do what he wants with the constitution, the current constitutional text isn't the highest law, because it can be overridden by the sultan's words. Also note that the country's technically been in a state of emergency for the last several decades, so perhaps he has more power (whether de jure, de facto, or both) than he would if they weren't in a state of emergency. Most importantly, I agree with Abecedare: if the sultan can do what he wants, the letter of the constitutional law really doesn't matter that much. Nyttend (talk) 05:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

The Constitution of Brunei is the Basic Law of Brunei right? Alevero987 (talk) 15:26, 17 October 2013 (UTC)