Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 May 15

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May 15

Third Geneva Convention -- "scientific equipment"?

The Third Geneva Convention, regarding the treatment of prisoners of war, includes Article 72, which states: "Prisoners of war shall be allowed to receive by post or by any other means individual parcels or collective shipments containing, in particular, foodstuffs, clothing, medical supplies and articles of a religious, educational or recreational character which may meet their needs, including books, devotional articles, scientific equipment, examination papers, musical instruments, sports outfits and materials allowing prisoners of war to pursue their studies or their cultural activities." (Emphasis added.) What did the governments of the world have in mind when they said that prisoners of war should be allowed to be mailed scientific equipment? Did they think, "Hey, if we take any prisoners of war, it won't bother us if they set up a chemistry lab in the barracks. What harm could that do?" I've looked for commentary on this provision, but the most relevant thing I found was then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales saying that the provision about scientific equipment was "quaint". --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:45, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, such equipment, like examination papers, might be considered "articles of a[n] ... educational ... character" that would allow prisoners of war "to pursue their studies". Deor (talk) 12:27, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

What's the reason behind: "Ask for a new cup for refills and dispose of your used cup"

I live in North America, and the Ikea and Costco near me both have this very strange rule. Since they're chain stores, I'm assuming that these rules are common across North America (not sure though, would love to see some references on how widespread these rules are).

Both of these establishments offer free drink re-fills. Both of these establishments have posted signs saying: "Please ask employee for a new cup for refills. Please dispose of your used cup."

If I'm reading and understanding these signs correctly, I'm supposed to:

1. dispose of my used cup in the recycling bin

2. ask employee for a new cup for refills

3. fill the new cup with a fresh drink

Both of these establishments are very environmentally conscious and have eliminated disposable plastic bags in their checkout lines. I'm finding this rule strange because:

A. it's wasteful to throw away a cup that I used less than an hour ago

B. it wastes employee time to give out new cups

C. it wastes the customer's time to line up and ask for new cups

I tried brainstorming to come up with an explanation for this rule. Here's what I have so far (none of these explanations are any good):

E1. they're using the number of cups consumed to track drink consumption

E2. they're purposely wasting the customer's time so that people are less likely to get refills

E3. thieves might pay for one cup and keep using it for 100 re-fills across 100 different visits. This rule might be designed to deter that? (It clearly doesn't though.)

Mũeller (talk) 18:57, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

This says it's a COVID-19 related thing. --Viennese Waltz 19:13, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! Mũeller (talk) 19:27, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not that they don't want you to use a cup twice; they don't want you to use the cup, pass it back to the server, and have them pass it back. It's basic common sense, and certainly the reuse of a few cups is worth preventing even one person bringing COVID back home to their grandmother, pregnant partner, or disabled relative. 24.76.103.169 (talk) 00:49, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Both of these locations only use automatic drink dispensing machines. And the signs are posted on the drink dispensing machines. So this rule only makes COVID spreads more likely, not less.

Old method: finish your drink, refill at the machine

New method: finish your drink, line up for a new cup, ask employee for a new cup, refill at the machine

What you're saying makes sense. I suspect what happened was that some government bureaucrat came up with a sensible way to prevent COVID spread in sit-down restaurants, where a server re-fills your drinks. Then this suggestion this gets turned into a law/guideline in an unsensible way, which applies it to inapplicable situations and actually makes things worst. Mũeller (talk) 13:35, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Old method: finish your drink leaving covidy saliva goo all other the rim of the cup and in the dregs at the bottom, put your covidy cup in the refill machine with it touching parts of the fill equipment, dispense drink causing some of your covidy goo to further infect the machine. Next person comes along and gets some of your covidy goo. Thanks.

New method: throw your covidy goo infected cup away. Don't have it touching the machine and therefore potentially passing your covidy goo to others. Everyone stands up and applauds. Nanonic (talk) 14:17, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

A lot of the rules were established when Covid spread was not fully understood (remember when people would wipe down their deliveries when they brought them into the house? or when library books were quarantined for a week before being processed as returns?). Surface transmission of Covid is unlikely (as is transmission through food or drinks), but policies tend to take a while to get reversed if they ever are. (A nearby library was still quarantining returned book as recently as last summer and may still be—I haven’t been near that one since then).

D A Hosek (talk) 04:11, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Theater size

Per [1], regarding Voodoo Macbeth,

After an audience of 10,000 flocked to Macbeth on its opening night on 14 April 1936, Welles’ production completed a 10-week run at the theatre and then toured America to sold-out, racially mixed audiences.

But the Lafayette Theatre (Harlem) (per the wikipedia article) had only 1500 seats.

Any explanation of the discrepancy? Do indoor theaters with 10k seats (not counting sports arenas) even exist? Did they have amplified sound in theaters in 1936? I guess they had radio broadcasting, so amplification must have also been possible at least in principle. Thanks. Added: per the wiki article there was a large crowd outside the theater, so that might account for the 10k, but the idea of that many people converging to the outside of a sold-out performance seems perplexing. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:738F (talk) 19:52, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not seeing anything in the contemporary local newspapers to corroborate that 10,000 claim. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:43, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps it seems perplexing to us, but note a sentence in our article: "A free preview two days before [the opening night] drew 3,000 more people than could be seated." Perhaps a lot of people, seeing this as a historic event, just wanted to be in the vicinity of it, just as many people sometimes congregate outside churches where an important wedding is taking place, even though they aren't invited and have no hope of getting in. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.208.88.97 (talk) 21:48, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

The 10,000 number is also found in the Time special Franklin D. Roosevelt.^[2] No source is given. This may have been lifted from an old issue, as appears to be the case for some other, similar vignettes. The book Orson Welles on Shakespeare gives half the number, an estimate of 5000, quoting The New York Herald Tribune of 15 April 1936.^[3]  --Lambiam 07:21, 16 May 2022 (UTC)