Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2007 December 27

= December 27 =

Re Angels and wings or no wings.
How do I say thank you to all those who have answered my question? Is'nt it wonderful to have a site where questions can be answered by several people with differing views which gives pause for thought,and that they ask for nothing in return.Whoever came up with this site I salute you!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.200.141.39 (talk) 10:58, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Click the "edit" link next to your question and post a thank you (or a follow-up comment). Then, it will be attached to the end of the comments on your question. --  k a i n a w &trade; 13:09, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Names
Are Brazil nuts just called nuts in Brazil, and are Canada geese just called geese in Canada? Hyper Girl (talk) 12:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I know you are just trying to be cute, but it helps if you choose articles that do not have quotes such as: "In Brazil these nuts are called castanhas-do-Pará (literally "chestnuts from Pará"), but Acreans call them castanhas-do-Acre instead." As for the Canada goose, there is no reason for Canadians to not refer to it as the Canada goose. It isn't the only goose in Canada.  Do you expect them to refer to it as "That other goose that isn't like the rest of the geese that everyone else calls the Canada goose"? --  k a i n a w &trade; 13:07, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * As a side note, there is a House M.D. episode which deals with "Brazil nuts" and their name: Whatever_It_Takes_(House_episode).--droptone (talk) 13:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I hadn't realized that only Americans call it Canadian bacon before I asked a Canadian friend about it and he had no idea what I was talking about or why it was called that. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 15:27, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah that's odd, we call that "back bacon". For geese, if I saw some Canada geese walking or flying, I would just refer to them as "geese", and everyone would know what I meant. If I said "there was lots of goose crap at the park today" everyone would know I meant those prolific defecators the Canada geese. We do call them "Canada geese" but it is usually enough just to say "geese". However, if I was referring to geese as food, I would assume it is a white-feathered goose on a farm. (I don't even know if that's true but I assume we don't eat Canada geese!) Adam Bishop (talk) 15:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Surely one or two of you Canucks have tried a honker.&mdash;eric 16:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

French fries aren't called French in France, nor are English Muffins called English in England. And Scotch Tape is called Sellotape in Britain.

By the way, the Holy Roman Empire was, as Voltaire remarked, neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Rhinoracer (talk) 15:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Well scotch-tape and sellotape are both brand names so that more why they have their different names. As for the other stuff - I expect that if the country-name is used to descirbe a national method of something then the national name would be dropped, but if it is describing something 'native' to that country then it may remain...E.g. English-muffins are presumably an english method of making muffins, thus in England we just call them muffins, but would call american-muffins american to note the difference from our 'normal' recipe. That's just my take on matters though! ny156uk (talk) 17:38, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well read the English muffin article for that mess of a name. Rmhermen (talk) 18:27, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Of course, we could take this national naming much further back with the French/Spanish/Italian/Polish/Christian/British disease question. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 19:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Spanish fly...Italian ice...Turkish delight...Welsh Rabbit...Irish coffee...Portuguese parliament (obs.)... my goodness! Rhinoracer (talk) 20:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Don't forget Dutch courage. In Quebec the Canada Goose is called Bernache du Canada. --Lambiam 01:00, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

In the Czech Republic, many restaurants and snack bars sell fried potato wedges called Americké brambory, or "American potatoes." Czechs are surprised to learn they're not common in America. (For the record, french fries are called hranolky, a word that refers to their shape.) In the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, the fat blueberries we're used to eating in North America are called "Canadian blueberries." The ones you normally get over there are smaller. In Canada, the term "American cheese" is not generally used; Subway calls it "white cheddar." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I thought "American cheese" was processed cheese slices! Adam Bishop (talk) 01:58, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It is. All American cheese is processed, but not all processed cheese is American cheese. Or so Wikipedia says. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Going back to Adam Bishop's comment, I live (not too far) south of the Canadian border, but here, too, if you refer to "geese", people generally understand what are properly known as "Canada geese". The only other kind of geese that are somewhat common around here are domestic geese, but they are unusual enough that they are called "domestic geese" or "white geese".  Marco polo (talk) 16:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Harrods
I know Harrods is an internationally renowned shop where anything is possible, i.e. you can buy an elephant from there, but how do they justify selling simple things, for example a mens cardigan at £1,300, for such exorbitant prices. Moreover, why are people so willing to pay this amount of money, do people really just have more money than sense? I mean I know Harrods does sell the very best but £1,300 for a cardigan is a bit of a joke --Hadseys (talk • contribs) 15:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * If you are paying that much, you know that the other shoppers will be willing to pay that much. Therefore, you won't have to rub shoulders with the WalMart-type of customer.  There are people willing to pay for that luxury.  For example, I found a restaurant in Palm Springs that charged over $20 for a simple hamburger and fries.  The extra cost is so you know that the people at the next table are also willing to pay that much for a hamburger. --  k a i n a w &trade; 15:52, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Of course what that says about you or your eating companions is a another question! Richard Avery (talk) 16:02, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * What we consider 'sense' is pretty much our opinion of what things are worth. I wouldn't pay millions for an original Monet but plenty of people do and consider it to be 'worth' that much. The only real indicator of 'worth' that we have is its value in the marketplace and seeing as (presumably) these sweaters sell, we must conclude that those that buy them believe they are 'worth' the cost. Why? It could be down to quality, luxury, exclusivity, they might just plain ole like it and not have to worry about money at all or it could be any other number of reasons. Also consider proportionality in the prices. If you earn 10,000 and spend £10 on a jumper that is 1/1,000th of your earnings. If you earn 1,000,000 and spend £1,000 that is the same proportionally (I hope my maths is right!). Proportional to income they are spending the same on clothing. Yes they could 'save' and pay the £10 and have much more spare cash, but generally people 'live to their means' so as income increases so does their expenditure. There are plenty of people earning £1m not buying £1,300 jumpers but there are also plenty that won't consider that to be 'too much' because relative to their income it's no more than what most people pay. ny156uk (talk) 17:29, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Two words: "Caveat emptor". -- Saukkomies 12:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * This might not be relevant, but it is common practice in the UK to inflate a price for 14 days (I think it is) then sell the item at an "amazing" 50% off (or with 50% extra), which looks like a bargain when of course it isn't. You can easily observe that some goods have monthly "see-saw" prices.--Shantavira|feed me 18:20, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I've worked at Harrods. At the time, the biggest money-earner was its Kerry butter. The highest markups were for perfume.

Harrods has always stocked low-price, high-volume items.

BTW, although my pay was pitiful, the fact that I worked in Dairy (including the cheese dept) and was able to buy all dairy items at half-price made up for it!

Snobbery? True, I was hired the instant I mentioned my school (Lycée Français de Londres), and everybody-- literally EVERYBODY-- called each other by his/her surname, e.g. Miss Regan, Mr Smith...even when snogging...

Halcyon days, youngsters, halcyon days...

Rhinoracer (talk) 21:07, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Being rich ain't easy. You wouldn't want to be caught dead wearing a £39.50 cardigan from Marks & Spencer – even though you may think it looks nicer on you. Just imagine the enormous loss of prestige. --Lambiam 01:30, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * On the other hand, just buying the cheap sweater might help you to be rich! (though it hasn't worked for me yet).--Johnluckie (talk) 07:46, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Those who spend over £1,000 on a jumper/sweater when they could get one of very similar quality for maybe £150 generally do so to make a point. Often they are newly rich and want others to know that they are rich.  People with inherited money have less to prove and are usually taught not to spend money with unnecessary extravagance.  Marco polo (talk) 16:38, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[Latin] Is the link the work cited? Is it worth linking?
postted on Talk:Terence and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Classical_Greece_and_Rome:


 * The Internet Archive has a book] that looks like Donatus's work cited in the article. I want to make sure it really is, and if so to link to it. Can somebody tell? trespassers william (talk) 00:58, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

trespassers william (talk) 17:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is the same work: the critical edition of the Commentum by Paul Wessner of 1902–1908. For people really interested in this stuff it may of course be worth linking, but make sure to specify it is in Latin. (Also, I can only read the scanned PDF pages, the "text" comes out as garbage.) --Lambiam 21:41, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Joe Keeper
In researching the article on Joe Keeper, I ran across mentions of a modern day Joe Keeper, as being a person who has been interviewed frequently on Cree topics. I imagine this is a son or grandson of the athlete Joe Keeper, but I don't have any proof of that. Any information as to what his relationship is to the original Joe Keeper? There's also a ferry, M.V. Joe Keeper, and I wanted to add that to the Joe Keeper article, but there was nothing to prove whom it was named for. Does anybody have input to that? Corvus cornix talk  18:11, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Marie Antoinette's children
What happend to Marie Antoinette's children after the revolution?. Has the bloodline ended.

Signed Michael Fitzpatrick —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fitzpatrick1795 (talk • contribs) 19:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * She had four children. Please see these articles. Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France, Louis-Joseph, Dauphin of France, Louis XVII of France, and Princess Sophie Hélène Béatrix of France. Oda Mari (talk) 19:29, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Marie Antoinette was pregnant seven times. Three of these pregnancies resulted in a stillborn child (1779, 1780, 1783). Of the remaining four, there were two daughters and two sons. Princess Marie Therese Charlotte de France (Madame Royale), b. 1778 married her cousin Louis Antoine Dauphin of France, Duc d’Angoulême, the son of King Charles X of France, but they had no children. She died in 1851. Her brother, Louis Joseph of France, b. 1781, died at age 7. Another son, Louis, born 1785, died in 1795 in prison of tuberculosis. (Some impostors, notably Naundorff, have claimed to be him). The final daughter, Sophie, died at age 1. So Marie Antoinette had only one child who lived to adulthood, and had no grandchildren. - Nunh-huh 19:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Civil war in Pakistan
I read today where a Pakistani politician (even party leader, I think) talked of a serious danger of civil war in Pakistan: Is this exaggerated or how likely is a civil war in Pakistan following Benazir Bhutto´s assassination?--AlexSuricata (talk) 20:39, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * There is no organised military or paramilitary force in Pakistan that could make much of a dent in the Pakistani Army; major political parties aren't backed by militias. Although radical (and sometimes militant) islamists are present in some strength in the northwest, they're not organised and don't share a much of a political vision, and their current military capacity runs mostly to bomb attacks and a bit of hit-and-run; they don't have much resources and the only worthwhile foreign support they enjoy is the occasional infusion of cash and nutjobs from Saudi - they're not the VC and they're not going to be sweeping into Karachi any time soon (caveat: see below). That leaves two possibilities.  Firstly a general civil uprising - but the ordinary Pakistani folks on the street aren't of one mind; while many are unhappy with Musharraf it's not clear that, even now, they agree on much, and it seems (right now) that the attack on Ms. Bhutto is believed to have been conducted by islamists.   So there's a lot of turmoil and discontent, but it's not really polarised enough for a downright X vs Y civil war. The army is capable of keeping control in all these circumstances, albeit with an increased level of repression.


 * The second possibility is division in the army itself; you hear rumours of cadres of officers having sympathetic views of the islamic militants; it seems unlikely a full-scale civil war could break out unless the army itself split. If some section of the army tried to overthrow Musharraf, or declared itself allied with the islamists, then all bets are off - but who knows how likely that really is.  I think the US are concerned that it is a possibility -  you may remember that odd business a month or two ago about the US expressing concerns regarding the disposition of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, and Musharraf tetchily responding that he was entirely sure they were in safe hands and would remain so - the subtext seemed to be that the US, concerned that the nukes would get loose in the event of some general breakdown of Pakistan, had issued Musharraf with some indication that they (the US) would do whatever was necessary to prevent that from happening. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I would guess that the most likely scenario would be one of military coup (something not exactly unknown in Pakistan) from officers wanting to take advantage of a feeling of insecurity and popular unhappiness with Musharraf. But who knows—it's a pretty turbulent time, things could go a lot of ways. (If I were Musharraf, what I would do at the moment is to disarm Pakistan's nuclear weapons, get rid of the nuclear program altogether, and join the NPT. He'd be forever an enemy in the eyes of his people, but it'd make him an international darling, even in the wake of all this, and it'd significantly reduce the current nuclear threat that Pakistan poses due to its instabilities. But I'm not Musharraf and I don't pretend to have much understanding of the dynamics of domestic politics in Pakistan.) --24.147.86.187 (talk) 17:47, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Eating the Salad with his Fingers -- famous person who defies etiquette and the sheep who follow... (SOLVED)
I remember reading about this in the 80s so it is not Ben Affleck (who is the only person who shows up in the Google search) -- The story is as follows: there was a famous person (back in the 1910s-1950s) who might have been a famous writer and person of culture. One day he is in a very nice restaurant in New York and he notices that everyone is staring at him. At this point he begins to eat his salad with his fingers. The person in question is such an arbiter of taste and refinement that people immediately question everything they know of etiquette and take up eating their salads with their fingers as well.

For some reason the name that sticks in my head is George Bernard Shaw but I cannot see this behavior or prestige meshing with what I know of Shaw. Maybe it was just a character in a story *by* Shaw. Or maybe I read this story the same week I also read something by or about Shaw. All I really know for sure is that it wasn't Ben Affleck. Any help is great!  S a u d a d e 7  22:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The only person I can think of who might fit this is Eartha Kitt, who came to grief for eating something with her fingers at a White House reception - this was in the 70s, from memory. She countered with something like "If you're not supposed to eat anything with your fingers, what are the finger bowls doing on the table?".  --  JackofOz (talk) 22:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Well JackofOz, that's a great story! I don't think it is the story I am looking for, but good for Eartha Kitt! Really, what *are* finger bowls for? Me, I prefer Oshibori! Thanks for your help!  S a u d a d e 7  23:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I remember hearing a variation of this one with some president who poured his coffee into the saucer and drank it, with his guests following suit. Don't remember who though.  bibliomaniac 1  5  00:32, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * In the version I remember hearing the president in question was hosting a dinner, believe it was Calvin Coolidge, and being afraid to commit any faux pas in such distinguished company all the guests were determined to follow the president's lead in regard to table ettiquette. As coffee was being served at the end of the meal Coolidge somewhat inexplicably began pouring cream directly into his saucer; somewhat confused all the guests nonetheless followed his example, upon which the president proceeded to lean down and place the saucer for his cat. Always figured it to be apocryphal, but a good story anyways. Azi Like a Fox (talk) 09:31, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I heard a similar story (must be false then, lol): someone (I think it was a French king) was hosting a dinner, and one of the poorer guests started drinking water from a saucer. Everyone found it funny, but then the king did the same; soon everyone drank from saucers. More on topic, I've never heard about the fingers in the salad, unfortunately. :( · AndonicO Talk 15:12, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Dear  bibliomaniac 1  5 , Azi Like a Fox, and AndonicO, Thank you so much for your responses. It is starting to sound like some archetypical story. I have been wondering about the salad story for years but the saucer stories are new to me. hmm. Thanks and Happy New Year!  S a u d a d e 7   21:14, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It sounds like the OP may have been thinking of The Bell Jar, where a famous poet eats his salad with his fingers. SWAdair | Talk 10:28, 29 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh SWAdair! It really could be The Bell Jar! which I actually did read at approximately the same time that I was reading GBS!! I have not thought of that book in forever! (Although it was very good!). The funny thing is that I usually remember the atmosphere in which I was immersed when I learned about something and I felt like I received the fingers/salad information while reading in the bathtub, yet I read The Bell Jar in a noisy garrishly-lit smelly Miami mall food-court and the only thing I remember reading in that kind of environment was Hesse's Demian! hmm. But your suggestion is so exactly concurrent with my personal timeline and trajectory that that must be it!!! Thanks so very much!!!  S a u d a d e 7  12:15, 29 December 2007 (UTC)


 * You're welcome. Somehow a "noisy garrishly-lit smelly Miami mall food-court" seems very à propos for reading The Bell Jar.  :-)  SWAdair | Talk 00:30, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Louis XIV at war
A good bit of Louis XIV's reign was spent in military campaigns. What I would like to know is how effective he was as a strategist? Bel Carres (talk) 23:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Clio must be on vacation. This may not answer your question, but for now, you can check out Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, War of the Spanish Succession, War of Devolution, War of the Reunions, which Louis was involved in. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)