Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 October 27

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October 27

Ida Scott's singing teacher

My googling skills have failed me in my quest to complete the final clue of a crossword. The clue is: "In James Baldwin's novel Another Country (1962), who was Ida Scott's singing teacher?" (5, 5).

What I have so far is S _ _ _ E _ L _ I _ .

Anyone know this? Also, how could I have tracked it down myself knowing only the above letters? Or not knowing any of them? Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:41, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

"Steve Ellis". I retrieved it using a Google search of 'Ida Scott's singing teacher "James Baldwin"', which might be slight overkill, but which proved effective. Tevildo (talk) 01:52, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I found the full text of the book with the following search - "Ida Scott" "singing teacher" "another country". Hack (talk) 01:55, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick work, folks. I did try those sorts of searches but obviously must have missed something. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:19, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

When I did that search with the quotation marks, the book was the sole result (YMMV). Hack (talk) 03:21, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

That's weird. I always use quotes when my search subject contains common words and the search would otherwise bring up all sorts of irrelevant hits. We're all definitely on the same page here. One day I'll work out what I did wrong. Or maybe I won't. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:14, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

I know you have it solved now but for future reference, including the word 'crossword' and the name of the paper that you got it out of usually helps in such searches. I used to do the LA Times crossword rather frequently and there are a few sites that provide the answers to the entire puzzle. Dismas|^(talk) 05:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but that's one I won't be taking up, I don't think. Using the web to do my own research is a learning experience, but just being told the answer usually isn't. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:13, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

You said it was the final clue, no? In that case, what's the difference? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:20, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it was the final clue. I only came here when all the searching I had done proved fruitless. Maybe hard to explain, but in my world view the WP Ref desk is a legitimate research tool, while a site that gives me all the answers to a crossword is not. (Not usually, anyway. Certainly not in the context where the crossword itself is what I'm trying to nut out. Maybe where the crossword is just part of a somewhat larger network of clues, and I'm living in a sort of Dan Brownish weirdo universe, and time is of the essence.) To me, it's analagous to trying to work out some algebra problem in a text book, failing to make headway, and succumbing to the temptation to look up the answer in the back. Unless the answer shows the working out, it's of no value to me, because I need to know how to get there, not just what I find when I get there. (I suppose one could say it's all about the journey, not the destination. Or how if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. That sort of thing.) Notice that I didn't just ask for the answer. I also asked how to find it for myself, and discovered I'd already searched pretty much correctly, but must have made some trifling error. Albeit, not so trifling as to have no effect on the result. Relativity applies even to les petits riens, it seems. See what a rich learning experience this has been for all of us. God bless the WP Ref Desk and all its denizens. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:53, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Gambling with other people's money

Scenario A: a van full of bank robbers briefly evades the police. The police are soon able to determine that one of the robbers got out of the van with a bag of stolen money, cashed it in for chips at a local casino, and proceeded to bet it all on #18. The number was 17, so the casino took the money. (The police are obviously suspicious, but cannot prove, that the casino had ties with the organized crime group the robbers were affiliated with; they send the man they find to jail but he won't talk) Assuming a period of time x passes from when the ball drops to when the police approach the casino, can they force the casino to give up the money? (X ranging anywhere from seconds to years)

Scenario B: The manager of the union pension fund was about to go into bankruptcy, so he withdrew a few million from the accounts and flew to Monaco, where he bet it all on black. Happy day, it landed on black! He dutifully returned every penny he "borrowed". A) is he guilty of a crime? B) can the pension fund, knowing that he might well have lost all the money and they'd never have gotten it back, make any claim to his winnings beyond the money he wagered? Wnt (talk) 05:01, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to assume A) good faith that you've read the instructions at the top of the page and B) that these are hypothetical situations. With either scenario, there will be quite a few things that can change any answer that we might provide. For the second scenario though, a crime has still been committed whether the money is returned or not. The courts may be lenient on the perpetrator due to the fact that he returned the money but it could have gone badly and the person would have known that it could. Dismas|^(talk) 05:32, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

In Scenario A, the casino is not a bona fide purchaser and will probably have to give up the money. In Scenario B, a crime has been committed and the manager will not be allowed to retain the proceeds. The casino will argue that the wager was void, while the pension fund will argue that it should have the winning proceeds. It is not clear who will win this argument. John M Baker (talk) 05:42, 27 October 2014 (UTC)>

Interesting answers... but can you list things that would change the answer? And is the casino not a bona fide purchaser because it's gambling, or because you're suggesting they can be proved to have known (or might or should have figured out with some background research on the gambler) that the money is not legitimately obtained? Wnt (talk) 15:05, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

In common law jurisdictions, even those where gambling itself is legal, a gambling contract is not an enforceable contract and does not provide the kind of consideration required for bona fide purchaser status. The situation you describe was analyzed in Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale Ltd, where a solicitor used stolen funds to gamble at a casino. The casino had to return the funds, although it was allowed to net out the solicitor's (modest) winnings. While that case was in the House of Lords, I expect an American court would have reached the same result. Now, if the solicitor instead had, say, taken an expensive vacation, the money likely would have been irrecoverable; contracts for hotel rooms, dinners, theatre tickets, etc., are fully enforceable. John M Baker (talk) 16:02, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

U.S. law generally gels with this observation. See 38 Am. Jur. 2d Gambling § 162. For case law on recovery of gambling losses where the loser had stolen the funds see "Rights of owner of stolen money as against one who won it in gambling transaction from thief", Annotation, 44 A.L.R.2d 1242. An interesting wrinkle to these fact pattern is to ask what happens when the person trying to make recovery is the gambler's spouse, and the money or property lost was either the spouse's, or was community property. This was a minor plot point in a Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Singing Skirt (and it cites the actual case Novo v. Hotel Del Rio, 295 P.2d 576 (Cal. Ct. App. 1956)); see also 38 Am. Jur. 2d Gambling § 175 (statutory provisions allowing third parties to recover gambling losses). —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 15:35, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

@John M Baker:, @Mendaliv:: these are some seriously good answers! Since you actually understand the law, could you do me one more favor and update Gambling - I started by creating a section "Asset recovery", copying much of the above answer and adapting the others, but I imagine you could do a lot to improve my text. Wnt (talk) 14:10, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Value of French livre in mid-17th century

I would like to know, in modern terms, the value of the French livre in the period 1625 to 1650. Is there some printed or online table, or an online tool, which can tell me approximately how much 1 livre from that time is worth in today's euros or dollars? Or would this simply be a matter of extrapolating from the gold content of the coins? According to our own articles, in 1640 the Louis d'or was 6.75 grams of 22-carat gold and was valued at 10 livres, so 1 livre would correspond to 0.61875 grams of pure gold. At today's gold prices this would be $24.45 or €19.26. Is this a sensical calculation, or is the reality much more complicated? If so, where can I find a list of typical wages or prices, in livres, from that time period, so that I can put the values in better perspective? —Psychonaut (talk) 08:15, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

The WP:Fr article on the Livre tournois gives the variation in gold content, and has a selection of references that might be worth chasing. If you don't do French, machine translation shouldn't be too confusing. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 10:44, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

As underlines the following footnote(fr) , the French Livre loses 60% of its value between 1602 and 1709. However Louis XIII in 1640 orders data collected on each species of foreign money, according to 1800's legal and monetary expert Cashier Auguste Bonnet(fr) , because of the need to adjust minting policies against speculation on gold. Here(fr) also some data regarding wages. Revenues seem to be considered relatively stable by historians, although this may perhaps be meant, on the long term: 1950(fr) --Askedonty (talk) 12:30, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Psychonaut -- Comparing the gold content of an old currency unit to modern gold prices is "objective" in a way, but also problematic, since modern gold prices can strongly fluctuate over the years for speculative reasons, and since the structure of the economy centuries ago was so different from the structure of today's economy. For example, the price of hiring servants would have been relatively much lower in the 17th century (and keeping servants was necessary in order to have anything approaching a middle-class lifestyle), but many things that are now taken for granted couldn't be purchased at any price back then... AnonMoos (talk) 12:13, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

The basic problem with converting prices before the Industrial Revolution into present-day terms is that the price of labor has risen dramatically relative to the price of goods and commodities. So, if you do a conversion in terms of average wages, you will get a higher value for the historic price than if you do it in terms of the price of a basket of goods or a commodity such as gold. Which method you use for converting depends on what is more important to compare: the labor value of the money or the goods that it could purchase. Using the goods-value of a historic currency to convert incomes, even rich aristocrats would have had at best modest middle-class incomes in our terms, whereas they employed large staffs and lived lavishly by the standards of their time. Ordinary laborers, on the other hand, would have made less in a year than many people (in developed countries) make in a week, which makes you realize how much more affluent we have become, in terms of stuff. Marco polo (talk) 14:10, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Are there some general tables of the value of gold and the value of silver in terms of some benchmarks like a day's hard work, an acre of land, a pound of flour etc., per country and year? If not... wish Wikipedia would make one! Wnt (talk) 15:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Purchasing_power_parity is relevant here. MP is talking about the problems you get using just labor equivalents, though there would also be problems with only using e.g. durable goods. I'm not sure what all goes in to a typical "market basket" used to compute a given PPP conversion, but there will be plenty of info out there for the curious. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:19, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

This site has lots of ways to compare the current and historical values of the US dollar and pound sterling (UK). It doesn't help you directly, but this site gives the gold value of the livre tournois at various dates. You could check the corresponding value of sterling on a date and use the appropriate conversion tables to current pounds sterling, which you could convert to a present-day currency (using present-day exchange rates for the pound). The problem with this method is that the values (in gold) of labor or various goods in France might have been different from those in Britain on your date, so this is not an exact conversion, but the method will give you an approximation, which is all you can claim with so many variables anyway. Marco polo (talk) 16:33, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Wnt -- in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information book, there's a reprint of a semi-famous graph by William Playfair, plotting the "Weekly wages of a good mechanic" and the "price of the quarter of wheat" from 1565 to 1821. That graph must be in the public domain now, and so may be on-line, and I'm sure there must be more up-to-date versions of the same general idea... AnonMoos (talk) 17:18, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Aside from everything else, you need to remember that gold has somewhat inflated in the last 400 years, due to lots of gold rushes in the US, Australia, the Witwatersrand, and other places. Even if all else were equal, prices would have risen since then because there's lots more gold in the market. Nyttend (talk) 22:15, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

All things being equal, if there's more of something on the market then the price of that something tends to go down. So it's certainly not the increase in the total quantity of gold on the market in the past 500 years per se that would cause the value of gold to rise but rather the demand for gold if that increases faster than the quantity of gold available. Contact Basemetal here 04:04, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for the useful information and links. I see there are many ways to interpret or convert the old value, so I'll have a look at all of them and see which one(s) make the most sense for my purposes. —Psychonaut (talk) 11:13, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Lion, Falcon and the Wolf/Jackel

Who knows mythological/religious stories or religions of these animals? Is it possible to provide me short examples of each and links to study if possible.

What I know:

• Lion, assuming the Egyptians – apparently it’s supposed to address a female – the sphinx… Does this Lion arrive in any other religion/mythology?
• Falcon what is suppose to be an owl in the greek mythology but Egyptians apparently turned it into falcon or the americans turned it into falcon, what is praised as a falcon in U.S.A. Does this Falcon/Owl arrive in any other religion/mythology?
• Wolf/Jackel – Who’s this? Apperantely Osirus from Egyptian mythology/religion… Does this wolf/jackel arrive in any other religion/mythology?

(Russell.mo (talk) 15:50, 27 October 2014 (UTC))

If you go to Lion, it has a section called "Cultural depictions of lions" that can answer some of your questions. You may find similar sections in articles on other animals as well. --Jayron32 16:17, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

In terms of ancient Egyptian iconography, the jackal was associated with Anubis, the falcon with Horus, and the lion with Sekhmet... AnonMoos (talk) 17:24, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand some of what Russell.mo says here. The Greek owl, the Egyptian falcon, and the American eagle are unrelated symbols. See Eagle#Eagles in culture and Owl#Symbolism and mythology. The Egyptians saw falcons as a symbol of several deities, such as the sky and sun gods Horus and Ra and the war god Montu, because of falcons' aggression and obvious link with the sky. That symbolism behind the falcon appears in the Predynastic Period of Egypt, long before Greek civilization existed. For the significance of lionesses in Egypt, and some of the meaning behind the sphinx, see Eye of Ra and my replies to a reference desk question at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 January 5#How the Uraeus (Cobra) on the Nemes (headress) does it associate with the sphinx?. The jackal represented several Egyptian gods who were linked with the afterlife, including Anubis, Wepwawet, and Khenti-Amentiu. Jackals were not generally a symbol of Osiris, although there's faint evidence that he was depicted as a jackal very early in Egyptian history, when he wasn't clearly distinguished from those other afterlife gods. A. Parrot (talk) 17:28, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

• Not a jackal or a wolf but close: the coyote is present (mostly as a trickster) in some of the mythologies of Native North American people. See Coyote (mythology) and Coyote (Navajo mythology). Contact Basemetal here 17:43, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Here are a few stories about owls from various North American tribes. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:48, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot guys! Also for giving me a summary! -- (Russell.mo (talk) 07:18, 28 October 2014 (UTC))

Is there a time boundary between a new religious movement and an older religion?

Is there a time boundary between a new religious movement and an older religion? Where do people generally draw the line? Is time the only factor, and if so, does this mean the so-called NRMs today may become traditional religions centuries from now? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 19:52, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I think if it's around when you're growing up, it counts as being around forever. If it's something you discover after your preconceived notions harden into a foundation, it's new. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:07, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Here's a published opinion that doesn't exactly answer your question, but may give some hints. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:12, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes there is a boundary, until a massive group of people start performing satanic activities. Satanic activities as in from petty stuff to big stuff, with one or many others. Then someone comes in the name of God almighty and establishes; a new movement is done either by themself's or by/together with the disciples... -- (Russell.mo (talk) 07:15, 28 October 2014 (UTC))

Are you claiming that "a massive group of people .... performing satanic activities" somehow makes a religion "old"? Perhaps you have heard Satanism described as "the old religion", but I don't think this is what the OP was asking. It seems to be a modern Western trait to reject the religion of one's parents and to look for something new. Dbfirs 14:27, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

The OP was in effect asking two questions: (1) Is how long it's been around the only thing that distinguishes a NRM from an ORM? And (2a) If "Yes", how long does it take for a NRM to become an ORM? (2b) If "No", how are they different? The way I interpret Russell's comment that the answer to (1) is "No" and to (2b) that "old" religions appeared out of necessity in reaction to a massive rise in evil in the world. He doesn't really explain what triggers the appearance of NRMs but by contrast maybe he thinks it is based on more superficial reasons. Contact Basemetal here 22:40, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I meant when they scale begans to imbalance over a period of time. Beside Satanism is just like Abrahamic and other religions, since Satan is the cause, why not give him an opportunity? Its God's creation we are discussing about UDbfirs. I don't know whether I answered the question correctly or not, I was quite eager to help, since I received a lot of help from you guys... Sorry! -- (Russell.mo (talk) 17:07, 28 October 2014 (UTC))

There are plenty of Japanese new religions, Vietnam (see Cao Đài and it's see also section), and elsewhere. Many of the west's NRMs are eastern religions that just didn't become as large back east. C.f. ISKCON, which, despite being founded in New York, is pretty much a (not the only) form of traditional Hinduism repackaged for the west.

This work classifies the difference as a matter of how much the religious organization accommodates the host culture (although in some cases, at least from my biased secular Western perspective, it's as much a matter of how much the host culture accommodates the religion). This work mentions off hand "three or four decades," but it could be listing as examples, as elsewhere it discusses what are now mainstream or even traditional religions as being NRMs originally (e.g. the Quakers).

The issue appears to not be time so much as broader acceptance and in broad or narrow a societal context you're studying. The LDS church would definitely qualify as an NRM if studying religion in China, and Taoism a traditional religion for China, but the LDS church is (now) the traditional religion of Utah, and a Taoist movement would be an NRM in Utah. Ian.thomson (talk) 14:58, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Have there been attempts to secularize Christianity?

Far Eastern religio-philosophical traditions, such as Taoism and Confucianism, can be seen as religion, as philosophy, and as political ideology. Likewise, I am wondering if people have ever made an attempt to secularize Christianity or a branch of it, so that people would just listen to Christian teachings on how to live a decent life for oneself in this world instead of caring or worrying so much about everlasting salvation or eternal damnation. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 20:58, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Well... in some ways the entire point of the "Christian teachings on how to live a decent life" is to achieve salvation. Salvation is the goal of Christianity. Blueboar (talk) 21:08, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes. Deists in the 18th century often argued that one could separate Jesus' moral teachings from supernatural claims about him. Thomas Jefferson attempted to produce a rational version of the NT. 19th century writers such as Ernest Renan (who described Jesus as an "incomparable human being") adopted versions of the same approach. Max Muller engaged in debates with Hindu thinkers, notably Protap Chunder Mozoomdar as part of an attempt to rethink Christian theology in the light of Indian Vedantic philosophy. A somewhat different approach was Arthur Drews, who argued that Christianity must accept that it is a form of myth, that the "Christ cult" was sucessful because it was more emotionally and morally satisfying than its rivals. For Drews getting back to Jesus as a man with some good ideas was pointless, rather the mythology of "the idea of a god-man" needed to be expanded. Paul B (talk) 21:17, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Link is Jefferson Bible... -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:53, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

There's some overlap of the Ten Commandments and various laws. Googling "this is your God" turns up a lot of dollar bills. Most of them have aliens on them, but they are based on the actual words "In God We Trust". InedibleHulk (talk) 21:52, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand what the far Eastern religio-philosophical traditions, such as Taoism and Confucianism, have to do with the question; could you explain a little more, 71.79.234.132? Nyttend (talk) 22:11, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, Taoism and Confucianism are sometimes viewed as "religion" and "philosophy". Confucianism has been labelled as a "religion", probably because the seemingly devotional practices of revering and respecting one's ancestors as an expression of filial piety really don't appear to be merely philosophy, so it gets labelled under "religion", even though Chinese ancestral veneration actually predates Confucianism. Yet, Taoism and Confucianism both are well-developed philosophies that have influenced China and the Far East for centuries. I am just wondering if there is a parallel in Christianity, where people embrace Christian philosophy and theology but may or may not engage in devotional practices, but may kiss the statues of saints as a way to give respect or offer prayers to saints, as they were once human beings. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 23:50, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Christianity is about love, so you could say those in the Crusades who just wanted to travel and fight weren't exactly devoted to the religious part, but would still say the words to indulge themselves before indulging themselves. That reminds me, Vatican City exists. That's about as secular as any religion gets. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:00, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

One could argue that this secularisation has already happened for lots of people, especially in countries with a Christian background but with very low active participation these days in religious practices, such as the Scandinavian countries, and my own country, Australia. The social rules on "how to live a decent life" are drawn from Christianity, but hardly anybody goes to church any more. HiLo48 (talk) 22:25, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

A Charlie Brown Christmas is a strange and popular mix of Jesus' message and Santa's appeal. It's also about that sort of thing. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:33, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

See Jefferson Bible, Deism, arguably Unitarian Universalism, etc. --Jayron32 23:05, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I can't seem to find a WP article on it, but there's a current of modern Christianity sometimes derided as "Christmas and Easter Christianity" or "Wedding and Funeral Christianity" where the participants are basically secular but take part in religious events out of tradition or convenience rather than theological belief. Christian humanism and/or Christian atheism are maybe too formal for what I'm thinking, but may be worth perusing. Matt Deres (talk) 01:22, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Cultural Christian is what I was thinking of, though that article is basically a placeholder. Having spent a few minutes searching related articles, I must say that there are many different forms of being "not Christian" and/or "not Christian enough". Matt Deres (talk) 01:27, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Quite a few of those also only give God a shout when they're fornicating, coveting or vomiting. Sort of like butt-dialing the cops during a robbery, I imagine. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:10, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Christianity covers such a broad spectrum of cultures and political views that I don't think it'd really be possible to arrive at a consistent ideology without really just applying a quasi-Christian sheen to an existing cultural and political worldview. Christianity has believers ranging from communists (China even has state-sponsored churches) to a (twice-ironically) named opposite number. Christianity includes the Amish and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The only consistent element among them is the belief that Jesus was (or from the Christian's perspective, is) God and that that's important in some way.

Seeing how the state churches of Denmark and Norway claim at least half of the population as members, while between a third to three-quarters of their populations are degrees of nontheistic, Søren Kierkegaard was prophetic in his claim that mixing church and state only benefits the latter (at best). I suppose the results could be worse.

Still, within Christianity, there are existentialist and humanist currents that place less emphasis on the afterlife or treat it entirely as a moot point (see Karl Barth on Election and Salvation for one particular view), and some theologians (e.g. Paul Tillich, Simone Weil) who (except in the case of Jesus) present God as a non-personal ground-of-being along the lines of the Logos or the Tao (such that Tillich is sometimes confused with an atheist for affirming a God that is beyond existence). There are also a number of Christian individuals who have advocated secularism as a means of carrying out "love thy neighbor," including Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, John Dee, Roger Williams (and a fair amount of historical Baptists), and William Penn (and Quakers in general). Indeed, much of Renaissance interest in Hermeticism was tied to an attempt to synthesize Greco-Roman philosophy, Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism into a common ground to end wars of religion (at least in Europe). Ian.thomson (talk) 16:26, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Domesday Survey Map

Hi, I'm currently completing a university project on the Domesday survey commissioned by William the Conqueror and was wondering if there were maps, which highlight the lands which were defined as 'waste', just to illustrate the Harrying of the North? Thanks in advance --Andrew 22:49, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Have you tried Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (PASE) Domesday website? [Here]. I can't find an obvious way to create a map of Domesday 'waste' land, but there might be a way. You might consider visiting the 'Contact' and/or 'Help' pages for that site.  —I hope this helps, 71.20.250.51 (talk) 01:11, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks very much, I've sent the director of the project an email, and I've also submitted a freedom of information request to the National archive to see if they have statistics about how much of the land was defined as waste, and in which regions of the country. Thanks again --Andrew 00:43, 30 October 2014 (UTC)