Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2007 December 1

= December 1 =

Romanticism: Literature
I know it may sound like homework but it isn't. What are the major works of Heinrich Heine, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelly, SIr Walter Scoot, Honore de Balzac, Stendhal and Mary Shelly. Please, answer them and by the way, I read the articles but you didn't mention some of their work as "major".


 * Well, it's all there; it really just depends what you are looking for. With Mary Shelly only Frankenstein has been of lasting significance; but with the others there is a whole 'oeuvre' to be considered; anything from Balzac's La Comédie Humaine to Scott's Waverley Novels.  Some are better than others, though I'm not sure it's all that meaningful to isolate the good from the bad.  For the poets, the 'pure' poets, or the 'purely' poets, just have a look through their collected works.  Clio the Muse 03:15, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Sir Walter Scoot's major novels include Waverley, Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, and Peveril of the Peak, and his poems include Marmion and The Lay of the Last Minstrel. The C. S. Lewis poem I quoted in a thread above has this accolade to Scott:
 * In England the romantic stream flows not
 * From watery Rousseau, but from manly Scott,
 * A right branch on the old European tree
 * Of valour, truth, freedom, and courtesy,
 * A man (though often slap-dash in his art)
 * Civilized to the centre of his heart,
 * A man who, old and cheated and in pain,
 * Instead of snivelling, got to work again,
 * Work without end and without joy, to save
 * His honour, and go solvent to the grave;
 * Yet even so, wrung from his failing powers,
 * One book of his would furnish ten of ours
 * With characters and scenes.
 * Xn4 03:26, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * As for Heine, it is his poetry that has received most literary attention and recognition. Three grand collections are at your disposition: Book of Songs (including the very famous "Lore-Lei" (in "Die Heimkehr"), "Belsazar", and "Die Grenadiere" ("The Grenadiers") ), Germany. A Winter's Tale, and finally Romanzero (including "Alte Rose" ("Old Rose") among others). Two other famous poems from his legacy are "Nachtgedanken" ("Night Thoughts", opening with the often quoted lines "Should I think of Germany at night/it puts all thought of sleep to flight"), and "Wo wird einst des Wandermüden letzte Ruhestätte sein ...", which is also Heine's epitaph. Heine's astute and acerbic essays, travel reports, and letters are worth reading as well, even if they haven't entered the literary canon to the same degree his poems have. ---Sluzzelin talk  12:31, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Stendhal's "big book" is le Rouge et le Noir, usually translated as Scarlet and Black, or the Red and the Black, but la Chartreuse de Parme, translated as the Charterhouse of Parma, and also as the Green and the Pink, also worth reading. Both are written in the "realist" spirit, so there is no feeling that life should make sense or consist of anything more than random and unjust events. (In view of your heading: Stendhal is profoundly anti-romantic.) SaundersW 14:38, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * In the case of Scott, surely The Heart of Midlothian is now considered his best work. As for Keats, no doubt the Ode to Autumn, the Ode on a Grecian Urn and the Ode to a Nightingale are pre-eminent poems, as is On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.
 * As a footnote to the (very expert) discussion of Heine above, I would mention his Buch der Lieder and Romanzero as very well-known poetry titles; Reisebilder (notably Die Harzreize) for prose, and the famous essay on Die romantische Schule. Bessel Dekker 15:48, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Who is the author of this painting? / Unrecognizable signature
There is a signature on this painting but I am unable to recognize/read it. This painting has been in my attic for the last 20 years. I got it as a gift from an old lady who said it was made by a reknowed Swedish artist. What does the signature say, or who is the painter? Which kind of movement is it? --Funper 00:28, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I was never good at reading handwriting, my knowledge of Swedish painters is less than tiny, and I'm really going out on a thin little twig here, but it's not entirely different from some of Siri Derkert's later work, and she seems to have changed her style and signature throughout the course of her artistic career. Here's the homepage's gallery. Good luck in finding your artist! ---Sluzzelin talk  02:27, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Upsetting the apple-cart slightly, for me the picture (though not of course the signature) has the look of a Georges Rouault! Xn4  03:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks Sluzzelin! I looked a little closer and the signature seems to be "Siri der[kert]". It is an oil on panel. --Funper 14:36, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, if that was my painting, I'd make my signature unrecognizable too. As for what movement it is; I'd suggest a bowel movement? --Seans Potato Business 17:44, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a pretty rude, crude, and unnecessary comment. --24.147.86.187 21:16, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Indeed. Is it, perhaps, Degenerate Art, to be dismissed with the same distasteful forms of language?  Clio the Muse 03:17, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Lovely frame!

Did America ever get it's 'garden hose" back?
FDR said that LEnd LEase was like giving a garden hose to a neighbor's house on fire. Saying he doesn't want $$ just the hose back when the fires done. Was all the war material given to the Allies returned to the USA when the war was over??? --Gosplan 00:28, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * See Lend-Lease. When the war ended, much of the materiél was sold to the nations rather than sent back - transit was expensive, and the US army would have little use for 15,000,000 pairs of used boots. I'm not sure about other nations, but the UK finally repaid the Lend-Lease loans, which were made to pay for the equipment, last year. There was also the reverse lend lease (where other Allies provided materiél for American soldiers stationed there - worth roughly 20% of the US contributions), which partially offset the US donations. The return of lend-lease items was contested on both sides; the Europeans didn't want to lose all the equipment they had received, while the USA did not want an influx of second-hand war materials, which would harm US defence contractors.   Laïka  00:54, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

The UK finally paid off its World War II debt to the US on 2006-12-29. Gdr 17:32, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Why the black population is still growing in Sub-Saharan Africa?
Sub-Saharan Africa is faced with famine, wars and AIDS. But why the black population is still growing in Sub-Saharan Africa along with all these problems that are happening? 99.245.20.224 06:03, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm no expert, so I might venture only a guess. First off, mild poverty actually ends up creating a larger birth rate than riches because people are less worried about making a career (i.e., the abysmal birth rate of Japan vs. that of India). Also, Africa may be the poorest continent in the world, but it's most certainly enjoyed the explosion of wealth that the rest of the world has seen in the past 100 years, the past few decades especially. Thus, while the poverty in Africa is bad, it's by no means omnipresent (most Africans live in cities, just as in the West, not in rural slums). The Evil Spartan 06:59, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Also not an expert, but with iffy health conditions and few or no social safety nets for old age, you want to have as many children as you can so that at least some live to pass on your genes and take care of you if you manage to survive to become an old geezer. Clarityfiend 09:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Even before that, you would want as many children as possible to help in agriculture or to alleviate your poverty by getting paying jobs. Girls don't count because there are few non-laborious jobs in poor areas.  --Bowlhover 14:47, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * In (South east) Asia, children are regarded as an insurance for old age. Although many now survive, and may in certain cases become a liability rather than an asset, government propaganda and other discouraging influences seem only partly effective in changing traditional views. Bessel Dekker 15:30, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I know Sub-Saharan Africa is poor and people have many children. But Sub-Saharan Africa is affected with wars and AIDS which are supposed to reduce the population. So then wars and AIDS have no impacts, right? 99.245.20.224 16:28, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * You could only draw such a conclusion if you consider in this case, solely, the net effect on the number of living people as meaning "war and AIDS have no impacts". They have huge impacts on social and family systems, on medical care, on indivdual lives, on the quality of life generally, on specific economies, and on and on. The net number of people may rise, but those numbers include children orphaned by either or both, the sick, the wounded and the dying (often over prolonged periods, during which they can do little to help themselves or others) which likely represent a higher percentage of the population than they would be in peaceful times, with no epidemic. I am not sure where you are going with this conclusion, but what you have said equates, on an individual level, as if I were to say that a woman whose 3 children are killed in a fire, where all her worldy possessions are also lost, and her husband is injured so severely as to not be able to work again, has 3 more children, two of whom have serious ailments because of poor nutrition and an inability to access medecine and medical care, had suffered no impact from the fire. But yes, the "population" of her family has not decreased and the fire had "no impact" on that total number. (If this is an inappropriate "rant", please feel free to delete it.) Bielle 19:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Though AIDS is a terrible scourge, health conditions have actually improved overall in Africa over the last century. There are fewer deaths from childhood diseases (and fewer women die in childbirth), which means more people survive to become parents.--Pharos 08:17, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Christmas
When can the celebration of Christmas be said to have emerged in its modern form? Donald Paterson 06:51, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Obviously, it depends on what you mean by "its modern form", but A Christmas Carol had a large part to play in the last major evolution (read up on the article) The Evil Spartan 06:54, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If by modern form, you mean the semi-secular, heavily commercial form, then it largely dates back to the Great Depression; the US economy was weak as people weren't buying luxuries - as this meant that shops took less profit, they couldn't afford to pay staff as much, so they staff got less money and so could not buy luxuries - a vicious circle. To break it, Franklin D. Roosevelt had the American Thanksgiving moved to form one extra-long shopping season which basically lasted all of December, to encourage people to buy more luxuries. However, the concept of buying presents dates back to the great Victorian Christmas literature - as well as A Christmas Carol, there's the classic poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas ("Twas the Night Before Christmas"), which popularised the idea of Father Christmas as a gift-bringer (imported from older traditions such as Sinterklaas), and The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon a (largely made-up) travelogue by Washington Irving which introduced ancient British Christmas traditions such as Yule logs, mistletoe and the great Christmas dinner to America (and reintroduced them to the UK). Indeed, people complained about the commercialisation even back in the 1850s; in "The First Christmas in New England", Harriet Beecher Stowe complains that the "true meaning of Christmas" is being lost in shopping. Laïka  14:27, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * According to Stephen Nissenbaum the poem "The night before Christmas" (pub 1823) was formative in the tradition of Santa Claus entering houses to give gifts to children, replacing an older tradition of buying off drunken wassailers in the streets of New York with gifts. I thought that Hobsbawm's the Invention of Tradition dealt with Christmas customs, but can only find a mention of Carols in the introduction. SaundersW 14:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Godey'streeDec1850.GIF|thumb|100px|The Queen's Christmas tree at Osborne House]]For the Christmas tree in the modern Anglo-Saxon tradition, our article states: "Images of the royal family with their Christmas tree at [[Osborne House]] were illustrated in English magazines, initially as a woodcut in the Illustrated London News of December 1848, and copied in the United States at Christmas 1850. Such patriotic prints of the British royal family at Christmas celebrations helped popularise the Christmas tree in Britain and among the Anglophile American upper class." While there is a large degree of continuity in the traditions as they evolved and continue to (d)evolve, it would appear that a recognizably modern form arose among the upper and middle classes in the second half of the 19th century, with no single event being a water shed. --Lambiam 15:09, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * And this is true for other (sub)cultures. In the Netherlands, we used to think that Christmas trees were a continuous survival from heathen times (celebrating the return of light, of course) until research showed that their common use dates from the twentieth century. Bessel Dekker 15:26, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Can't seem to recognise any of the above as descriptive of modern Christmas. Some nice nostalgic descriptions of fanciful Victorian middle class celebrations. Surely modern Christmas is an (almost) commercial event driven by social competativeness and designed to relieve customers of as much money as possible. Am I a tad cynical or is this really the way we are? Richard Avery 15:49, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, as I say above, the hyper-commercial Christmas was largely a product of the tail-end of the Great Depression. This combined with the development of Christmas advertising (esp. Coca-Cola) and the definition of Christmas and the New Year as official holidays, produced a season which inspired positive feelings in the population, was well established, and allowed people to leave work to spend time (and hence money) with their families - fertile ground for businesses to move into (businesses will always move into gaps in the market, especially if they can markup goods and encourage consumers to pull a Deadweight loss by buying unnecessary tat (Marginal cost > Marginal benefit)). Laïka  16:07, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * well, the Christmas tree is said to be brought from by Prince Albert and thus introduced in Victorian Britain from where it spread to th US.--Tresckow 18:30, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

It's become something of a cliché to say that the modern concept of Christmas-and here I am talking about its essential design, not its later permutations-is a creation of the Victorians; of Prince Albert and Ebenezer Scrooge. Cliché it may be; but it also happens to be true, by and large. Actually, what is closer to the truth is that the Victorians did not so much invent Christmas as repackage and update some fairly well-worn themes. What they did invent, if that is the right word, is nostalgia, a reverence for the past, for a tradition that never existed in the form that they understood. It took its modern shape in the 1840s, a time of great change and transition in English society, when the middle-classes looked to create a cosy ritual of family and togetherness, a defense against the anonimity and rootlessness of modern urban society. The attitude here was perfectly expressed by Thomas K Hervey in his 1836 publication, The Book of Christmas;

If the old festivals and commemorations in which our land was once so abundant-and which obtained for her, many a long day since, the name of 'merrie England'-had no other recommendation than their convivial character, the community of enjoyment which they imply, they would on that account be worthy of all promotion, as an antidote to the cold and selfish spirit which is tainting the life-blood and freezing the pulses of society.

Sentimentality, strong family feeling, goodwill towards others, consumption and expenditure, fun and games, feasting and drinking-it's all there by the 1840s, an odd mixture of old and new. And if anyone wants to know how a real Christamas is celebrated, and by that I mean an English Christmas, you could do no better than refer to Remaining Christmas, an essay by Hilaire Belloc, a little taste of which follows below.

''This is how Christmas eve is spent in this house. On the morning of that Eve, large quantities of holly and laurel are collected from nearby trees and lots of the farm. Every room in the house is decorated with fresh smelling leaves, berries, needles, and boughs. A Christmas tree twice the size of a man is set up, to which little candles are affixed. Presents are there for all the children of the village, household members, and guests''.

''At five o'clock, already dark in England that time of year, the village children come into the house with the candles burning on the tree. There is first a common meal. Next the children come to the tree where each is given a silver coin and a present. Then the children dance and sing game songs. The tradition of Christmas here is what it should be everywhere, knit into the very stuff of the place; so that I fancy the little children, when they think of Bethlehem, see it in their minds as though it were in the winter depths of England, which is as it should be. The coming of Christ to Bethlehem is also His coming to the winter depths of England.''

And a Happy Christmas to you all! Clio the Muse 04:32, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

One of the primary factors in the creation of the modern version of Christmas was surprisingly the Unitarian Church. Up until the beginning of the 19th Century, Christmas was celebrated in English speaking countries as a baudy drinking holiday where drunken youths would wander from door to door singing drinking songs disguised as carols, and begging for ale or wine from peoples' homes. As this changed to become a holiday focused on gift giving, some people began to feel that the result was an over-commercialization of the holiday that served to spoil children. In this article http://www.uuchelmsford.org/Sermon031214.htm concerning the creation of Christmas the author (who is a Unitarian minister) describes how the Unitarians began making changes to the traditions - first by introducing to New England the tradition of the Christmas Tree, and then by focusing on children giving gifts in addition to receiving them, which was seen as a way of removing the focus on the receiving of gifts only. -- Saukkomies 09:23 2 December 2007 (EST)


 * A Christmas Carol was published in 1843. The "Spirit of Christmas Past" section shows a great deal of nostalgia for the Christmas celebrations of Scrooge's youth, surely the 180s or 1820s, at the latest.  Was Dickens inventing the Christmas celebrations of those periods, or was he reflecting reality?   Corvus cornix  talk  21:13, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah, Fezziwig, alive again! It may just be a case, Corvus, of selective memory, or, rather, giving a single episode from the past a more general character of significance.  Christmas was always there, though in the past-the time before Dickens-it was more marked by degrees of disorder, perhaps, rather than domestic, middle-class cosiness.  Clio the Muse 02:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Marius, or The Fugitive - in English?
A Francois Ceresa wrote "Cosette, or The Time of Illusions" (a sequel to "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo) then he wrote a sequel to his "Cosette, or The Time of Illusions" titled "Marius, or The Fugitive". It looks like Cosette was translated into English (they were written in French) but I can't find Marius in English anywhere. Was it not translated into English; and if not, is there any reason?


 * Amazon carries the French version only and I was unable to locate an English version anywhere. The reviews of Cosette, from professionals and laymen alike, were consistent in denouncing it.  Thus, most of the potential target audience for the sequel already had reason not to want to risk their time or money on another sequel by the same author.  It seems that Marius had an initial printing of 250,000 but disappointing sales.  In other words, it flopped - and in the native language of the author, no less.  I doubt that it was ever translated into English.  152.16.59.190 09:03, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I have seen a version of Cosette in English (although by a different author), but not Marius. Steewi 01:45, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Stalemate in World War One
I've been watching a DVD of the old British TV series The Great War, and am now at the part dealing with the development of trench warfare. It's not quite clear to me from the commentary if this condition of stalemate, which prevailed over the course of most of the war, was the fault of the commanders or not? I would welcome some educated opinion on the matter. Many thanks. General Joffre 13:00, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * See Trench warfare. it's really long. -Arch dude 13:54, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * From a tactical point of view, the main reason that WW1 evovled into the incredible slaughter of the trenches is that the machine gun was already invented while the tank was not invented yet (or rather, that machine guns had already entered mass production while tanks were still in the very infancy of their development and were available only in very small numbers) which gave an immense advantage to the defensive over the offensive. In simple terms, World War 1 had trench warfare because a defensive position with machine guns is almost impossible to attack by infantry alone; World War 2 didn't have trench warfare because tanks are very effective at breaking such defensive positions. From a political point of view, things look a bit different, of course: when you realize that you can hold your defensive position practically indefinitely but have no chance of mounting a decisive attack because your opponent can also hold his defensive position indefinitely, the logical thing to do would be to seek peace negotiations because it should be obvious that nobody can win such a war and it will end in a giant battle of attrition with millions dead, but apparently such was not the mindset of the time -- Ferkelparade &pi; 14:49, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Of course, they didn't just use infantry alone—heavy shelling and aerial attacks were possibilities as well. Keegan has some sort of awful statistic about the amount of shells fired at Verdun versus the amount used in previous wars, but I can't find my copy of History of Warfare just this moment (I fear I lent it out to someone!). But yeah—I think in this case you can put a pretty strong amount of blame on the technologies of warfare themselves creating tactics of this sort. Attempts were made to gain decisive advantages by introducing new technologies (notably gas warfare) but in each case countermeasures were quickly adopted (e.g. gas masks) and the opposing forces adopted similar weapons, the result being a whole lot of slaughter and no ground gained. --24.147.86.187 22:00, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * (edited)There was prolonged static trench warfare in the American Civil War, at such places as Vicksburg and Petersburg (page 208) and in the Atlanta campaign.  Atlanta fell basically because the greater manpower of the Union forces allowed them to extend the opposing trenches to the point that the defending Confederated were spread too thin to mount an effective defense. There were no  machineguns, but rifle fire and grapeshot were effective substitutes. If anyone stuck his head above the earthworks of a rifle trench  a sniper would likely end his life.  A charge across the no mans land would result in great carnage. Similar to WW1. Sharpened sticks set in logs were the precursor to barbed wire. There were desparate charges across the hundreds of yards between the trenches, with axmen to try and chop a way through the abatis under fire. Edison 03:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The Great War is tremendous, is it not? It must surely count as one of the greatest TV documentary series ever made. Anyway, as far as your question is concerned, General Joffre, I do not believe that the generals were responsible for the stalemate. Some, it is true, were more limited in imagination than others, but all were dealing with some unique circumstances. The size of the armies, and the length of the fronts-some 475 miles in the west-meant that the the outflanking manoeuvre, the classic way of defeating an enemy in battle, simply was no longer available. The only way to win was to fight through the opponent's defensive system, and this entailed disastrously high casualties. It would take time, and technical advance, to work a way through this problem. In the meantime stalemate was inevitable. There was already a foretaste of this during the Crimean War and in the American Civil War, both in the examples given above by Edison and in the 1864-5 Siege of Petersburg. Clio the Muse 03:37, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Although I respect Clio's opinion on this, I wanted to offer a second opinion on the subject to help round the discussion out. I actually did not like the documentary The Great War. I thought it was very heavily biased toward the British point of view. It glossed over the many British blunders made during the war, while making the most of those of the Germans, French and Americans. The documentary did not talk very much at all of some of the major battles of the war such as Verdun that did not include the British, and it also downplayed the very important role that the Americans played when they entered the war. Instead, it made them appear to be Johnny-Come-Latelies that happened to show up just as the glorious British Army was wrapping things up neatly. The one thing I did like about the documentary was its coverage of the worldwide aspects of the war, especially in Africa. But this hardly would warrant it being recommended as "one of the greatest TV documentary series ever made".


 * On another note, trench warfare did not take place in World War II, but not solely due to the implementation of the tank and other armoured vehicles. After WWI the infantry was re-examined by the major powers, and tactics were developed to help infantry break through entrenched enemy lines. A very good example of these tactics is shown in the movie "Saving Private Ryan", in which the American forces landing on Normandy in D-Day had to go up against some incredibly well-fortified positions with no tank support. The fluidity of the new infantry tactics played heavily on the use of focusing the attack on seizing machine gun nests FIRST, and then removing the heavier artillery positions later, allowing the armoured vehicles to then come forward and push through the lines to do what they did best - to speed up the enemy's retreat. --Saukkomies 11:37, 2 December 2007 (EST)


 * Thanks, Saukkomies. I'm sorry you did not like The Great War.  I stand by by estimation, though, that it is indeed one of the greatest TV documentaries ever made.  Only The World at War and The Civil War, so far as I am concerned, stand any direct comparison.  But The Great War was the first.  Made as long ago as 1964, it covers the whole conflict in 26 forty minute episodes, with hours of original footage, quotations from a large variety of contemporary sources, eye-witness accounts and a wonderful narrative voice-over by Michael Redgrave.  It is, I admit, ever so slightly skewed to a British perspective, at least insofar as most of the eye-witnesses are British, though I believe that an effective balance is maintained in the best traditions of the BBC.


 * I must say I'm perplexed by some of what you have written in the above, which makes me think that you may possibly have misremembered some of the episodes, or, indeed, have been watching a different series altogether? There is absolutely no attempt made to disguise the British 'blunders', as you put it.  The failures of the Gallipoli campaign are fully explored as are other missed opportunities, including Sir John French's failure to have his reserves sufficiently close to the front to exploit the initial advantage gained by Sir Douglas Haig at the Battle of Loos.  I completely fail to detect any attempt to emphasise unfairly the mistakes made by other armies.  As for not 'talking very much' about some of the other major battles, well all of episode eleven-"Hell cannot be so terrible"-is devoted to the Battle of Verdun, whereas only part of episode thirteen-"The Devil is coming"-is devoted to The Battle of the Somme.  All of the other battle fronts are covered, with due emphasis given to the importance of the Brusilov Offensive.  There is also plenty of coverage given to American involvement, with all of episode sixteen-"Right is more precious than peace"-given over to the political build-up to the declaration of war in April 1917, just as episode eighteen-"Fat Rodzyanko has sent me some nonsense"-is given over to the Russian Revolution.  Your final estimation about the 'glorious British army' is-and I am sorry, I have to be blunt-grossly misleading, making the whole thing appear like propaganda, which it is not, by any degree, or by any reasonable measure.  Anyway, I would urge all of you who are interested in the First World War, in good history, in good documentry and, above all, in good film-making to get a hold of the DVD and make up your own minds.  It's worth it; believe me.  Clio the Muse 00:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Clio, I must apologize. It just goes to show that one ought to look at the links before opening one's mouth (or typing on one's keyboard) about something. It turns out that there are MANY different documentaries that have the title "The Great War". I looked just now at the documentary that you had been talking about, and to my chagrine it is NOT the one I had thought it to be when I wrote my previous comment! The documentary I had seen recently that also was called "The Great War" was atrocious! So I do offer you my sincerest apologies, and also my thanks - because now I have a new documentary series to watch! Saukkomies 03:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Wilderness years
Why was Winston Churchill one of the few people to warn against the rise of Germany and the dangers of appeasement? 217.42.101.122 16:58, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * In the words of Tracy Worcester, "Although there are some brave politicians who are prepared to risk something, most of them keep behind the party lines and are bent on the never-ending, short-term task of winning votes." Appeasement was amazingly popular in a country still shaken by the Great War and further weakened by the economic recession of the 1930s, and one would expect democratic politicians to respond to that. In particular, from the point of view of a Conservative British government, Stalin's Soviet Union was undoubtedly seen as the greater enemy, so to appease Hitler served the double purpose of (1) seeking to avoid a war in which British lives and capital would be sacrificed and (2) looking for a proxy to keep Soviet communism at bay. I hesitate to say this, but appeasement (without the benefit of hindsight) was an entirely rational policy, in its day.


 * Let me briefly put the argument for the appeasers, perhaps as devil's advocate. Pre-war Germany treated several of its minorities very badly (especially Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally ill), but its worst excesses, including what we call the Holocaust, were made possible by the War. Even on the point on which the British Empire and the French Republic went to war in September 1939, the freedom of Poland, the war was unsuccessful. After it, Poland remained partitioned, with huge parts of its territory being gained by the Soviet republics (whose successors still hold them today) and with what remained Polish, together with other great swathes of central and eastern Europe, being under Soviet domination for two generations. The deaths of fighting men and women were of the order of twenty million, and civilian deaths something like fifty million more (see World War II casualties). No doubt the alternative to all this, without the second world war being fought, was a central and eastern Europe dominated for perhaps as long by aggressive extremism of another kind. Those who promoted appeasement, weak, short-sighted and foolish though they seem to us now, had a strong case at the time which perhaps was not entirely destroyed by the out-turn of events. Xn4  01:32, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

To be quite frank, 217.42, there is an awful lot of retrospective justification in Churchill's political career. From the hindsight of history we know that appeasement was a doomed policy; but there was simply no way of knowing this at the time. I personally am far less hesitant on this issue than Xn4, and will go so far as to say that appeasement was a rational and understandable policy taking all of the political, diplomatic and strategic factors into account. It was unheroic, yes, but it was necessarily unheroic. Neither Britain nor France were ready for war in 1936, or 1937, or 1938. They were only just ready in 1939, largely thanks to the time that Neville Chamberlain had bought at Munich. For along with seemingly spineless concessions to Hitler-and the unprincipled sacrifice of a central European ally-went a steady process of rearmament, particularly important for the RAF, which was to be the decisive defensive wing in 1940. Rearmament was not, of course, Chamberlain' chief aim; for that was simply to secure the peace. He failed, but it was not a failure without consequence.

Anyway, turning to your specific question, it is important to see Churchill's 'prescience' in a far wider political and personal context, which might help you to understand why he stood alone on this issue, as on so many others. You see, Churchill was not just opposed to the appeasement of Germany; he was opposed to all forms of appeasement. Put this another way, he was opposed to political compromise on issues of fundamental importance to the interests of the British Empire, as he conceived those interests. The emphasis here is important, for it entailed a refusal to entertain any kind of compromise, even in forms that most people, including the bulk of his own Party, considered perfectly reasonable. For example, he refused to entertain the proposal, again accepted by his own party, that India should aim for Dominion status within the Empire. For Churchill any understanding with Ghandi and Congress was, almost by definition, 'betrayal', attacked in the same way he was later to attack attempts to reach an undersatnding with Germany. Here was the arch-reactionary, the voice of the Tory ultras, whom no less a figure than Sir Samuel Hoare believed was aiming to smash the government and introduce some sort of undemorcatic and Fascist rule in Britain and the Empire. Ridiculous, of course; but it remains true that Churchill's 'warnings' over India and Europe began to seem more and more out of touch, more and more unreasonable and reactionary, the voice of the past. Hardly surprising when one considers that in the preface to My Early Life, written in the summer of 1930, he bemoaned all of the political and economic changes in British society since the Victorian era, including universal suffrage.

Even before Hitler, true to his unique style, he was warning against disarmament, a principle universally strived for, describing the 1932 Geneva talks on the subject as 'mush, slush and gush.' In the Commons his speeches came close to war-mongering, and were generally perceived as such. His seeming lack of judgement was confirmed in 1936 during the Abdication crisis, when he threatened to form a 'King's party', even though there were great constitutional issues at stake, even though almost all opinion in Parliament was against Edward. It was at this point that his political stock sank to its lowest. He subsequently sought to recover by pronouncements on foreign policy. But he now had the reputation of being 'unsound' on almost all issues. In the Commons his denunciation of the Munich Agreement was seem merely as more of the same old stuff; the same old uncompromising Winston, full of hot air and bellicose intentions, unrealistic in every degree. It was fortunate for him, and his future reputation that history, at least in this one instance, proved him to be in the right. Clio the Muse 03:07, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I clearly missed the 'playing for time' point, which is very important. Some of the appeasers (and I think it's fair to include Chamberlain among them) went along with the 'playing for time' notion but in their bones were against any new war with Germany. Even when it came to the crunch in September 1939, Chamberlain's cabinet had to make him declare war. I was hesitant above because it isn't self-evident that even that position can be defended. Xn4  04:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Anjirō
When exactly did he join Fernão Mendes Pinto. Ive read 1546 and 1549. Does anybody know which year is correct?--Tresckow 17:22, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Tresckow, there seems to be some confusion here. If you look at the page on Pinto you will note that it says that he introduced Anjiro to St. Francis Xavier in 1549, yet if you turn to that on Xavier it says that he first met the Japanese nobleman in Malacca in December 1547. They had already been in touch with one another as far back as 1545.  St Francis's ship, with Anjiro on board, entered Japanese waters on 15 August 1549, at the port of Kagoshima.  I think the reasonable deduction is that Ajiro first met Pinto at this time.  Clio the Muse 01:42, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * That´s the reason I asked for infos. The articles are contradicting. OK so Ill go with 1549. I think its funny how the Shogun series are always associated with William Adams but never with Pinto despite its big similarities.--Tresckow 14:56, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

What kind of dough to use?
I want to make this http://www.recipelink.com/cookbooks/2000/0609602845_1.html without buying some rip-off ready-made dough. What kinda dough do I need to find a recipe for? Thanks.


 * The principal reason that almost all the recipes on the Net call for ready-made dough is that it is, by far, the hardest part to get right. A friend used to say that cooking was an art, but pastry is chemistry. The slightest difference, even in the temperature of the ingredients as you add them, can change delight to disaster. That being said, the doughs usually associated with this dish are puff pastry and phyllo dough. Both should result in the thin, multi-layered, delicate pastry that I think the French call "mille-feuille" (thousand leaves). Good puff pastry can take hours to make, and I have never had a result that was worth the effort. I have never tried to make phyllo, but I am sure someone reading this will be able to comment. I'd buy the ready-made puff pastry (though not the crescent-roll dough recommended in your recipe); my time is worth more than the difference in the cost, especially after I calculate the cost of the pastry ingredients. Bielle 18:25, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The only person I know who makes their own puff pastry was trained as a pastry chef—everyone else just buys the ready-made stuff. Just buy the ready-made stuff, unless you really undervalue what your time is worth and don't care whether the end-product is any good. (I've made a variation of this recipe that just used regular puff-pastry dough, which is easy to find and not all that expensive. It's a very easy recipe and a great hit at parties and big dinners. Google 'baked brie' for a dozen or so recipes.) --24.147.86.187 18:36, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Croissant pastry is different from puff pastry (or mille-feuille), phyllo (or filo), as it uses yeast as a raising agent. Here's a recipe for croissant (or crescent) dough. SaundersW 21:15, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Frederick the soldier
Thanks to those who responded to my previous question on Fredrick the Great. Now I would like to know how he compares with Napoleon as a soldier? Hugo McGoogle 19:55, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * There was one important difference between the two men in the conduct of war. Frederick was very much a man of the eighteenth century, a soldier in the old tradition of limited warfare for limited aims.  He would not have sympathised with, or understood, the Napoleonic style of struggle, based on national mobilisation, aiming at total victory.  In the field the great Prussian king fought skilled campaigns of manouevre and counter-manouevre, wearing down his enemies by a series of widely separated attacks.  He did not look for absolute victory in one big battle in the fashion of Napoleon.  Still, he used deception, like Napoleon; he concentrated all of his artillery at decisive points in the battlefield, like Napoleon; he deployed all of his striking power at a single point of decision, again like Napoleon.  Above all things, both men were acutely aware of the importance of terrain, and used it to full advantage.  Frederick thought quickly and moved rapidly, another quality he shares with the French general.  How would they have fared, one against the other?  It's difficult to say, though I think it safe to conclude that Napoleon would have found the Prussian king difficult to pin down, and may have found himself under attack where he least expected.  I think there is no better verdict than that he passed himself, after his victory at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, when he visited Frederick's tomb at Potsdam.  Turning to his marshals he said "Hats off, gentlemen!  If he were alive we would not be here."  Clio the Muse 01:19, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

painting as a response to flowers
Sorry to be vague: I think it might have been in an old documentary by Robert Hughes that he quoted someone who said something about painting being humanity's vain attempt to answer the beauty of flowers. Can anyone find the actual quote?

Thanks Adambrowne666 23:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Marc Chagall said something like this - "Art is the constant effort to compete with the beauty of flowers, never succeeding." Xn4  00:50, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, here's the original of that - "L'art, c'est l'effort inlassable d'égaler la beauté des fleurs sans jamais y arriver." (Literally, "Art is the unflagging effort to equal the beauty of the flowers, without ever getting there".) Xn4  00:57, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, wonderful, thank you - such a beautiful quote! Adambrowne666 04:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Socio ethnocentric
What does this mean? I've hear Lou Dobbs say this many times... but I have no idea what it means. Cfbaf 23:36, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * No doubt this expression is weighty and profound, full of precise meaning. To me-unenlightened and untutored-it looks rather like socio-babble!  Clio the Muse 01:46, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Like Bill O'Reilly and his "war" on the "secular progressives", its just a buzzword Dobbs uses to pejoratively label groups that that lobby and campaign for immigration reform (a societal issue that is central to ethnic minorities). These so-called political commentators realized that if they adopt a fancy, but vague term, they can use it to describe anyone that they disagree with. Thus, they only have to say the codewords "secular progressive special interests" or "socio ethnocentric special interests" and their audience knowns when to boo and hiss. Its no more than a argumentum ad hominem, but it seems to go down pretty well with the American public. There is a more academic meaning of the term, see ethnocentrism, but ironically enough, Dobbs' own political views would be better described as ethnocentric than those he uses the term to criticize. Rockpock  e  t  08:06, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that information, Rockpocket. There is clearly a whole dimension of American cultural experience and exchange that has yet to penetrate the quiter corners of rural Cambridgeshire!  Thinking specifically of Mr Dobbs, though, I'm reminded of one of the quips of Grucho Marx-"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."  Clio the Muse 23:26, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, Clio, the cable political discussion genre is a uniquely American experience, which never fails to amuse me. There are numerous pundits who host such programs, each trying to out-populist the others. When I first saw The O'Reilly Factor I wasn't sure whether it was an Alan Partridge style parody or not. Turns out they are for real (the excellent The Colbert Report is a parody, but its sometimes difficult to tell the difference). Some of the pundits are beyond satire though, for example consider Sean Hannity's website, "Hannidate": a "place where people of like conservative minds can come together to meet. The American equivalent of a Young Conservatives social, except everyone has better teeth.  Rockpock  e  t  07:23, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The answer coaxed me into reading the article on Lou Dobbs as well. I was surprised at the use of "populism" as a self-declared position in present day politics. I didn't know there was a Populist Party of America and of Maryland. In most European countries, or so I believe, populism is usually used in a crritical, sometimes even derogatory way, to characterize other politicians who play to the crowd. ---Sluzzelin talk  23:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I think, Sluzzelin, that populism in the United States has a better pedigree than it does in Europe, represented in political terms by such figures as William Jennings Bryant, the 'Great Commoner', and in cultural terms by movies like Mr Smith Goes to Washington. The little man against the machine; all part of the American dream!  Clio the Muse 01:04, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

"Populism" in the United States is a particular set of beliefs, not necessarily demogoguery. Its most identifiable characteristic is isolationism and opposition to free trade. Right-wing populism, such as that of Pat Buchanan, also takes a hard line on immigration, opposes affirmative action and is wary of the power of the federal government. Left-wing populism like that of Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader adds opposition to big corporations and is amenable to the welfare state. Lou Dobbs reflects a bit of both -- you can call him a centrist populist who, to a degree, reflects kind of the pre-1972 New Deal coalition, before the Democratic Party and progressive organizations adopted identity politics. -- Mwalcoff 02:02, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

An Allegory
I've been reading articles all week about Jean-Dominique Bauby. I have not read the book, nor watched the movie, but from everything I can surmise he was an exquisite human being. I tear up just thinking about his story. And so I ask, very humbly, if someone could please decipher the allegory behind the title: "The diving bell and the butterfly." Sappysap 23:54, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * "My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly." The diving bell is a metaphor for the body in which the author is trapped following his stroke; the butterfly an image of his unfettered mind. - Nunh-huh 00:00, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Seasonal quiz help
Could one of you bright sparks help me with the answers to the following. 1) Which English possession was taken by the French on 7 January 1558? 2) Which English statesman died on 3 September 1658? 3) Which English king was crowned on Christmas Day? 4) Which British colony surrendered on Christmas Day? 5) Which stone disappeared on Christmas Day? 5) How is Rembrant's 1642 Masterpiece The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch better known? 6) What epithet was given to Harold Macmillan's abrupt dismissal of seven members of his cabinet in July 1962? 6) Which English king was said to have died from a surfeit of lampreys? 7) In February 1429 Sir John Fastolf drove off a Franco-Scottish attack on an English supply convoy near Orleans. How is this action better known? 8) What did Henry VII do with the Yorkist imposter Lambert Simnel after capturing him in 1487? Thanks, y'all. Pope Hilarious 23:57, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it's best to add the answers in the following list:
 * 1. Calais
 * 2. Oliver Cromwell
 * 3. William the Conqueror
 * 4. Hong Kong
 * 5. Stone of Destiny (or Stone of Scone), kidnapped and broken in two on 25 December 1950.
 * another 5. Night Watch
 * 6. Night of the Long Knives
 * another 6. Henry I of England. For bonus points, how many lampreys are there in a surfeit?
 * 7. Battle of the Herrings
 * 8. (from our article Lambert Simnel): "He pardoned young Simnel (probably because he had mostly been a puppet in the hands of adults) and gave him a job in the royal kitchen as a spit-turner"


 * It's possible to answer these questions using Wikipedia or Google, if you know how to search. For example, typing in the year or the month-and-day combination will give you a list of events that occured in that year or on that month and day.  Wikipedia also has an enormous number of articles, and searching using the textbox on the left (press "Search" if "Go" doesn't work) will usually give you useful results.  --Bowlhover 04:03, 2 December 2007 (UTC)