Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 June 25

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June 25

Wycliffe Bible transcription

For off-wiki purposes, I just transcribed the biblical portion of the image at right (everything bigȳnyng with the dropped capital "I"; above it isn't part of the biblical text), and I ended up with:

In þe bigȳnẏng was þe word ⁊ þe word was at god/⁊ god was þe word/þis was in þi bigȳnȳge at god/All þīgis weren maad bi hī: ⁊ wiþ

Three questions: (1) What's the purpose of the dot over the "y" in the first bigynyng? Is it just a malformed version of the overbar (indicating following "n") that's properly present in the second bigynyng? If so, why is it present on "y"s near the top of the page (it's an easily corrected mistake; would it really be repeated several times on one page); and if not, what does the difference indicate? (2) What's above the first and third was? Is it a character indicating a missing "a", and if so, what's the character? (3) What are the slashes? Some sort of punctuation? Nyttend (talk) 03:25, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

You're correct about the overbar, but the other Y has a dot, and the other Ys on the page have a dot, because they were considered to be the same as an I or a J, at least in English and French. (I'm sure we can find more on Commons...I have't checked there, but I have some images of a 14th century French manuscript on my computer with lots of dotted Ys, for one random example.) For the first and third "was", that's a squiggle indicating a missing A - it looks like the bottom half of an uncial A although I don't know if that's intentional. That's a very old abbreviation, used for centuries (dots over I, J, and Y were relatively recent inventions). The slashes, and the colon-shaped sign near the end, are punctuation, although medieval and modern punctuation doesn't really match very well...Middle English is a bit far from my comfort zone so I'm not sure if anyone has worked out exactly what the punctuation would be here. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:03, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Maybe the dot on y is to help distinguish it from þ? —Tamfang (talk) 06:30, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Why do companies want to make profits?

I mean they'd have to pay taxes on them, and any dividends paid out to shareholders would be taxed as income, plus they don't get to use the money to finance further conquest. Amazon on the other hand has never made a profit: it carefully tunes its operations to stay near zero or slightly in the red. The investors don't care about not getting dividends since the share price keeps going up, and profits from selling the shares are taxed as capital gains, at a lower rate than income taxes. Most of us were told that success meant income exceeding outgo, but should that be considered a punctured myth? Why don't more companies do what Amazon does? Just wondering. Thanks. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 04:16, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Why would someone start an oak farm with a species that takes 100 years to develop? Who would invest in it? Almost everyone alive to see the trees planted will die before they're cut down. But, they still have value. They have value because at some point in the future, they will be cut down, and they will be sold for profit. A century is a long way from now, but in 20 years, you can sell your shares to someone who only has to wait 80. He is willing to buy them, because in 20 years, he can sell them to someone who only has to wait 60, etc., etc. The point is, as long as there is confidence that something will turn a profit in the future, it can be sold now. People invest in Amazon because the stock does well, and the stock does well because people think it will have more value in the future. If everyone genuinely believed that Amazon would literally never turn a profit, people would rush to unload their shares. A stock (or other financial object) whose value is only going up because it's going up is an economic bubble, which is unstable. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:31, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

I can see that Amazon has value because Bezos could turn on the profit spigot anytime he wanted to, but not that there's any expectation of him ever doing so. It's just like your house has value because you could sell it for $X, but there's no reason for you to ever want to do so. You could live it in the rest of your life, your kids could live in it, etc. The house gets more valuable because of general economic and population growth in your town, and because of improvements you make to it. So if you sell someone a 5% interest in it, they know their 5% will appreciate even though you've told them that you're never going to sell the house and they believe you. When they want to cash in, they sell their 5% to someone else, who buys it for the same reason. The key is that you could sell it, not that anyone thinks you ever will.

I doubt companies like Amazon are valuing anything more than 20-30 years out if that (they plug the numbers into a spreadsheet and see they're discounted to near zero by then). The oak farm thing might be real, but it's exceptional. So Amazon seems like less of an economic bubble and more of a tax dodge. I'm wondering why the scheme isn't more popular. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 07:06, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

I feel it is important to note that large companies now keep a pile of "cash" on hand. It isn't technically cash. It is liquid securities. But, it operates as cash that can be tapped at any time. In 2017, Amazon reported $22 billion in cash. Moving profits into the cash is an expense. So, if the company turns a profit of $1 billion, they just move it to cash and the profit becomes zero. They can move more into cash and report a loss if it works better. Apple was doing that at a faster rate and reported $256 billion cash on hand in 2017. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 13:58, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Where are you getting your information from? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:27, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Multiple sources. You can pick a sensationalist news article like this or a boring stock investment article like this or anything in between. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 14:42, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Where does that link say that cash on hand somehow cuts into profits? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:17, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

It looks like war chest is woefully sparse. I will look for resources to update it on my next rotation break. It needs to include information on how war chests are treated when it comes to taxes, which gets into domestic vs foreign war chests. Essentially, a war chest is an expenditure in a double-entry accounting system. Money is erased from "profit" and added to "war chest." Then, when it comes time to pay dividends, the stock holders can't ask for the war chest to be handed out. There is risk though. Assume Apple, with one of the largest (if not the largest) war chest right now had a hostile takeover, the major stockholder could sack the board and pay himself a huge bonus straight out of the war chest. Having a large war chest marks a company as a hostile takeover target. That is happening right now to my brother's company, Sempra Energy. They built a sizable war chest to invest in infrastructure, showing almost no profit, and now they are being taken over and will likely be broken into pieces and sold off. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 17:18, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Countries with former woman driving ban

Some sources state that Saudia Arabia was the last country banning woman driving. However at first glance I couldn't find another country that historically banned it in the past. Were there any before Saudia Arabia? Thanks. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 08:13, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Our article phrases it differently: "Up until September 2017, Saudi Arabia was unique in being the only country in the world where women were forbidden to drive motor vehicles." Matt Deres (talk) 12:25, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Countries Where Women Can't Drive says; "...another country where the prohibition against driving by women is more of a cultural and religious edict rather than legal ban is Afghanistan". Alansplodge (talk) 12:52, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Mount Athos, in theory an area where EU legislation applies, may be a a current example. Needless to state, EU countries, including Greece, do not prohibit specific genders from driving automobiles. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:58, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Mount Athos does not ban women from driving - it just bans them from Mount Athos. Wymspen (talk) 20:19, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

According to the Daily Telegraph, women were banned from driving in Afghanistan under the Taliban. That 2003 article claimed that there was then a ban in other Islamic countries, but doesn't name any, and I suspect the claim is incorrect. Warofdreams talk 21:55, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

And in Oman, women were banned from driving until 1970: [1]. Warofdreams talk 21:59, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

After 1970, did the country become known as "Owoman", or at least "Operson"?  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:51, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

They might consider it it they change to Womanly Beach, Sydney and Womanhattan. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:28, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

U. S. Supreme Court cases: trends in number of cases decided over the years

Does Wikipedia have any sort of article that historically details the number of cases that the U. S. Supreme Court has decided in each term? I can't find anything. I'd like to see statistics about how many cases are presented, accepted, etc., over time. I assume that the Court used to decide a lot of cases each year and, over time, it has whittled down to essentially just a "handful" of cases. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 13:49, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Does this help: Lists of United States Supreme Court cases 209.149.113.5 (talk) 13:51, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

You can follow the work of the Court in detail here:[2]. 92.8.181.22 (talk) 14:57, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

There has been a downward trend of number of cases decided over the past few decades with most of that drop occuring from the early 1980s to the early 1990s [3] [4] [5] [6] . The number of cases filed however has been increasing in a similar time frame [7]. I have no idea how things varied further back. Nil Einne (talk) 17:29, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

You can get statistics further back to 1880 here [8] which also has statistics on cases disposed. However the statistics on how the case was disposed is much more limited term, limited info back to about 1923. Notably from 1970 in significantly more detail, albeit less easy to visualise, than the simply 'decided' of the earlier sources which I think is referring to a full written opinion after oral arguments. There is some info further back in the 19th century here [9]. As per that source [10], the federal government did not collate regular statistics prior to 1878 so it will need to have been done by some other source. See also these two comments [11] [12]. Note that from what I can tell, your assumption isn't really true unless you're referring to the recent drop in cases with full opinions. Albeit bearing in mind we still don't have info on the very early days. Nil Einne (talk) 18:14, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:49, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

World War 1

--Peggylost2 (talk) 17:09, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

See World War I. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:04, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

"German forces under direct order from Adolf Hitler set up six extermination camps"

Our article on Poland says that "German forces under direct order from Adolf Hitler set up six extermination camps". My understanding is that historians have never uncovered any written evidence of Hitler directly ordering the Holocaust (the death camps). Presumably, if the order was given by Hitler himself (as opposed to his underlings), it was given verbally or the written order was destroyed or lost in the war. At least, that's my understanding. The sentence is unsourced. So, I guess my question is whether this statement is actually correct and what evidence exists to support it? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:31, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

The German Wehrmacht was under the direct order of Adolf Hitler, but the SS only tactically, that means when in field operation as they were then subordinated to the Wehrmacht, otherwise they had other various duties and they were the ones who were responsible for building Treblinka for example, which was specifically an extermination camp ( while not all concentration camps were "specifically" extermination camps, all of them are to be counted with death all around nonetheless). The insistence by Hitler that the SS would be subordinated to the armed forces was made void when the armed forces were not concerned with directing the camps. Himmler who was at the origin of the camps system is often designed as the one who really controlled the SS independently from Hitler (SS#Concentration camps founded). The establishment of the Treblinka camp and the other extermination camps in Poland was a consequence of the so-called Wannsee conference, in 1942, in which Adolf Hitler was not an attendee, making the sentence apparently inaccurate. In our SS article we read that Hitler had "entrusted" the SS with Operation Tannenberg, an action of extermination in Poland consequent to the military campaign, which culminated into 20,000 executions. We could imagine that's were ended the scope of his intended delegation of murders to the Schutzstaffel. It's at the Nuremberg trials that Hitler's Obersalzberg Speech are possibly demonstrating Hitler's own direct and sufficient initiative regarding the Holocaust. --Askedonty (talk) 14:02, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

@Askedonty: Thanks! A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 12:10, 29 June 2018 (UTC)