Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 January 2

= January 2 =

"FDR HIDES PLANE"
I have a family picture of my father circa 1928-1932 reading a newspaper and pointing to the headline "FDR HIDES PLANE" Is there any way to date the photo from historical info?? The picture was taken in the summertime. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.70.44.21 (talk) 02:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Could you narrow it down for us by confirming in what English-speaking nation of the many in the World this photo was taken/the newspaper was published? While the USA would seem to be the most likely possibility, it would be tedious to work on that assumption if it were in fact wrong. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 03:16, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * For that matter, can you tell (either from the picture or by general knowledge) what newspaper it is? If it still exists, the newspaper's offices may be able to locate the date for you easily. At a good public library or a university library, especially in the city where the newspaper is from, it may also be possible to locate the paper by the headline. --Anonymous, 04:20 UTC, January 2, 2010.
 * Can you read any other headlines? Maybe his dramatic flight to the 1932 Democratic National Convention? Don't know why he would be accused of hiding the aircraft, but newspapers sometimes print strange things during an election.&mdash;eric 06:03, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Wild-assed guess here, but is it possible that the headline actually reads "FDR Rides Plane"? 87.81.230.195 (talk) 17:38, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I did a ProQuest search on all multiple terms, multiple newspapers relating to Roosevelt and planes. I found no obvious candidates. I would also inquire as to whether you can be sure that is what the headline says, and if you could perhaps scan the newspaper part of the photograph for us to inspect on our own. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:09, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm with our anonymous contributor's savvy guess, if the flight was dramatic. "Hides" would be odd: in a barn at Campobello?
 * No results at Google News Archive for eithr "Hides" or "Rides." I agree that "rides" is more probable. It is hard to hide an airplane while confined to a wheelchair. A high def scan of the newspaper would be helpful. Edison (talk) 02:37, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * ???? It is hard to hide an airplane while confined to a wheelchair. Those with the full use of their legs go around hiding planes with consummate ease, do they?  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   19:26, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Mebbe push it into the barn, or pile branches and camo netting over it, if the legs are working. Edison (talk) 01:39, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * United States presidential election, 1932 says: "After making a dangerous airplane trip from his Hyde Park estate to the Democratic convention, Roosevelt accepted the nomination in person. ... Roosevelt's trip to Chicago was the first of several successful, precedent-making moves designed to make him appear to be the candidate of change in the election." The 1932 Democratic National Convention started June 27. Could there be a bad pun in Hyde Park and hides? Probably not. Maybe he had hidden that he was going to make the flight? Maybe he didn't give reporters access to the plane? PrimeHunter (talk) 02:27, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with the above ideas and requests, but I will note that, if you're sure of the dates 1928-1932, I think we must be looking at 1932. Roosevelt, while prominent prior to the election of 1932, would (in my opinion) be very unlikely to be referred to casually as "FDR" in a headline prior to the election.  I just don't think he'd be well known enough that the nickname would be instantly recognizable.  I may be wrong, but a little jumping around looking at headlines involving Roosevelt from the late 1920s/early 1930s suggests to me that a headline using the initials FDR would have been almost unheard of.  Jwrosenzweig (talk) 06:39, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * How much the public would have recognized "FDR" before the 1932 presidential campaign, and how often FDR would have appeared in headlines, are semi-objective questions to which I don't have the answer, but there are reasons that the initials might have been relatively familiar before that. (1) Once his name started appearing, "Roosevelt" had to be distinguished from Theodore Roosevelt (President 1901-1909, Presidential candidate 1912, died January 1919), often identified with the initials "TR". (2) In both cases, "Roosevelt" (like "Eisenhower", usually headlined as "Ike", and unlike "Ford", "Bush" or "Obama") was too long a name for many headlines, so editors would have been partial anyway to using "TR" and "FDR". (3) FDR had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Josephus Daniels during World War I (hence his "former naval person" exchanges during the Second World War with Winston Churchill, a former wartime First Lord of the Admiralty), and had been the Democratic Party's unsuccessful candidate for Vice-President in 1920 running with James Cox against Republicans Calvin Coolidge and Warren G. Harding. (4) New York newspapers (then as now read well beyond New York) would have been running many headlines about FDR since 1928, when he was elected Governor, so if the newspaper's a New York one, "FDR" might well have been natural as early as 1928. ¶ But, unlike the previous responder, I haven't yet done any actual sampling, so this is just informed speculation. —— Shakescene (talk) 12:09, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * FDR was the Democratic Party candidate for Vice-President in 1920. That should have drawn quite a bit of national attention, even though he and Cox lost the election.  99.166.95.142 (talk) 16:45, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I was going to ask how recognizable the were the initials for the Republican VP candidate in the 1996 election, but considering that Jack Kemp's initials were JFK, the point would not work well. Googlemeister (talk) 15:06, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * BTW, I tried doing a Google News archive search for "FDR" but unfortunately the old scanning techniques make such searches difficult. "fdr" in the majority of the old cases is a bad scan of "for".  99.166.95.142 (talk) 16:46, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

English governance
I am trying to learn more about governance in England. I know the broad outlines of what a parliamentary system is, but I want to learn more nitty gritty things like what causes an election to happen and what are all these different types of elections, who picks the prime minister, how are the districts determined, etc. The general articles like "Parliament of England" are all too broad. Any advice on where I can get some more specific information? 24.20.200.67 (talk) 04:22, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The general articles, such as House of Commons of the United Kingdom and Elections in the United Kingdom, really are the best place to start. Not only do they answer some of your questions ("The actual election may be held at any time before the end of the five-year term (...) The timing of an election is at the discretion of the incumbent Prime Minister"), they also have links to articles that may treat the nitty gritty things, for example the article on the Boundary Commissions that determine the constituencies (electoral districts). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.171.56.13 (talk) 11:21, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The first thing to point out is that there is very little governance in England, specifically. There is UK governance and there is local governance in regions of England of various size, but there is very little that covers all of England without covering more than just England. There have been calls for a devolved parliament of England, but there are no signs of there being one any time soon. --Tango (talk) 14:47, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no "Prime Minister of England". The Prime Minister of the UK is the person who forms the UK government (covering Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as England) at the request of the monarch, and is usually the leader of whichever political party wins the majority of seats in the House of Commons after a general election. Where the leadership of the party changes between elections, as when Brown took over from Blair, the monarch invites that person to form the government and become PM. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:24, 3 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Broadly speaking, a UK citizen who is on the electoral register of a polling district in England is eligible to participate in three types of elections:
 * European Parliament elections to elect their Member of the European Parliament.
 * UK elections to elect their Member of Parliament.
 * Regional and local elections to elect local councillors at various levels, and, in London, to elect the London Assembly and the Mayor of London.
 * The European and UK elections may be part of a general election, or may be a by-election triggered by the resignation or death of the sitting MEP or MP. In addition, UK citizens in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland are also eligible to vote in elections for the National Assembly for Wales, the Scottish Parliament or the Northern Ireland Assembly, as appropriate. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:12, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, you don't have by-elections for the European Parliament. MEPs are elected by regional party lists. When a vacancy arises, it is filled by the next person on the party's list. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 00:42, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Ku Klux Klan and the Decendent Line of Cain
I recently watched an episode of John Safran vs. God where John tried to "join" the Ku Klux Klan. In the segment, the Grand Wizard showed John a chart and stated that Able came fro the union of Adam and Eve but that Cain came from a union of Satan and Eve. I read the artical on the KKK but I didn't see any reference to this. Can anyone help me to understand where this idea came from and what "evidence" there is to "support" it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.250.117.26 (talk) 06:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * see: Christian Identity, Serpent seed.&mdash;eric 06:31, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * A little bit about the possible origin of the idea can be found in the second paragraph of the article Cain and Abel. Deor (talk) 21:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Weird. Do these - ahem - fringe theologians have any position on Seth? 87.81.230.195 (talk) 23:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * They regard Seth as the first - er - legitimate son of Adam and Eve (after Abel), and hence his descendents to be of pure blood. The _main_ problem with the theory is the position of Noah - either they have to reject the Flood (or, at least, claim that it wasn't a worldwide flood and/or the "sons of Cain" survived elsewhere - on floating mats of vegetation?), or try and come up with a theory that only _Ham_ had tainted blood, and the other two sons of Noah were pure - difficult on any theory of inheritance, even the most irrational.  But, coherent thought and extreme racism tend not to be found together very frequently. Tevildo (talk) 01:42, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The Midrash has a story about Og surviving the flood, by hanging on to the outside of the Ark. I don't recall Og's genealogy, or if it's given, but it's possible he's a descendant of Cain. --Dweller (talk) 13:05, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Utilitarian value of existence
Why does utilitarian ethics assign positive value to Earth's continued existence and to the average person's life, when most people seem to suffer from material existence more than they enjoy it, and to have more to fear than to hope for in this world? Neon Merlin  07:48, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps utilitarians do not share your premises ("most people seem to suffer from material existence more than they enjoy it" and "most people seem to have more to fear than to hope for in this world"). Life can be fun too you know. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.171.56.13 (talk) 11:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I also require some citations on your two premises, but Kurt Vonnegut wrote that it was a pretty common combination for a human to be miserable yet have an iron determination to continue living. Possibly the assigning of a positive value to the survival of Earth and humanity is an extension of the survival drive.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:43, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * From a hedonist point of view, both egoism and utilitarianism (though not always interwoven in harmony) share positive values to human existence. At the sometime, I agree that utilitarianism is the subset of positive political theory that can only move things in a democratic society. It does not mean that individual egoism cannot be hidden in a positive political theory; minimum in a highly developed democracy. I think OP is saying that most people do not see (or enjoy) what they have but suffer from material existence and have more to fear than to hope for. Couchworthy (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:17, 2 January 2010 (UTC).


 * Those who don't fear, don't survive. That was true of the dodo bird, anyway. The business world equivalent of that is, "If you snooze, you lose." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:30, 3 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Note that it is possible to value the survival of oneself as an individual, and the Earth, but not humanity. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:54, 3 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Just because a person gripes constantly to themselves or to others that life stinks, it doesn't mean they really feel that way deep down. If they truly did they would commit suicide. "Death is the only sincerity." Vranak (talk) 21:36, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Antarctica and the freedom of panorama
Has Antarctica the freedom of panorama? --84.62.205.233 (talk) 09:24, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "freedom of panorama"? Shadowjams (talk) 09:47, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Presumably he or she means Panoramafreiheit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.171.56.13 (talk) 10:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no government in Antarctica as such; its occupants co-exist under treaty arrangements. I don't see anything in the article about the subject of picture-taking. Freedom of panorama seems to figure mostly in the area of paintings and statues, and I doubt there are many paintings and statues in Antarctica (probably not even a brass monkey). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:59, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Would this be covered by the Antarctic Treaty? Adam Bishop (talk) 15:13, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see any specific mention of it, and it's probably way down the priority list in such a hostile environment. But it does say that the criminal laws of the individual nations apply to their citizens who are stationed there. So, theoretically, if an American citizen violated the American rules restricting freedom of panorama, they could be held accountable for it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Copyright violation isn't usually criminal, it's civil. --Tango (talk) 17:55, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Presumably the copyright laws of the various nations of people who are in Antarctica still apply to them. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I would be guessing that people are allowed to take pictures of places in Antarctica, since there are very few people living there, and there are plenty of photos on Wikimedia Commons of the place (including research stations of different countries). ~ A H  1 (TCU) 19:29, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Freedom of panorama only usually comes up in very limited circumstances anyway. National monuments, giant art exhibits, buildings done by great architects, etc.—and only in situations where there's the possibility of somebody making some money. It seems rather unlikely that the types of man-made structures in Antarctica would run afoul of that. It's possible, of course. The South Pole is not devoid of artistic flourish. The station certainly is distinctive looking. But yeah, I doubt anyone really cares about the copyright of the structures themselves, at least not enough to make a nuisance about it in such situations. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:02, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Mercury-vapor lamp usage
I understand that streetlights many times use mercury-vapor lamps. What type of areas or towns or cities favor these type of lights, verses say sodium-vapor lamps or other gas-discharge lamps that use an arcing mechanism? Put on Science Desk instead. --Doug Coldwell talk 18:08, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This might not be entirely relavent, but mercury-vapor lamps contribute to more light pollution than sodium-vapor lamps do, so I'm guessing it's the areas that do not have legislation to mitigate light pollution. ~ A H  1 (TCU) 19:25, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the answer and noticing the question on the Science Desk.--Doug Coldwell talk 00:37, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * What type would you guess are these in Street light interference?--Doug Coldwell talk 20:44, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

long live king who?
In January 1901 did the world welcome the new King Albert until he said "Naw, let's make it Edward," or had he made his preference known (at least to Downing Street) during his mother's lifetime? —Tamfang (talk) 18:41, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * (Edward VII of the United Kingdom, for those who don't get the reference). Edward announced his desire to be known as "Edward" during the sitting of the Accession Council on 23 January 1901, before the official proclamation was made. See  for the London Gazette entries.  It was a matter of public knowledge that he didn't like the name "Albert", but I don't think there was any official announcement before the actual accession.  If he had died _before_ the proclamation (and after Victoria's death), it's quite possible that he'd be down in the lists as "Albert I", as well as holding the record for the shortest reign.  Tevildo (talk) 19:02, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Victoria was first proclaimed as "Alexandrina Victoria"... AnonMoos (talk) 01:07, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Prince Charles has apparently alreadey decided to be George VII Alansplodge (talk) 18:30, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I wouldn't say that. What I would say is that, according to that article, unnamed "family friends" have said that Charles has considered using George VII rather than Charles III.  That's a BIG difference between THAT and saying that Charles has decided to be George VII... -- Jayron  32  03:25, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Pedantically, he'd be down in the lists as "Albert", as Kings and Queens don't acquire a numeric suffix until there's a second instance of the same name. Hence, Queen Victoria has no "I" after her name. --Dweller (talk) 13:02, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Can't remember who it was, but someone (perhaps his parents) wanted him to be known as "Albert Edward". And there are actually examples of monarchs who were the first of their name who went by "I" — look at this image, which depicts "Umberto I Re D'Italia".  Nyttend (talk) 01:09, 8 January 2010 (UTC)