Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 January 19

= January 19 =

I'm in a Predicament
OK here's my situation: I currently attend a high school offering the International Baccalaureate program. 4 years are required in the core academic subjects, obviously including math. However I was able to test out of Calculus (quite easily), but if I decide not to take calculus I will have completed the highest maths class available at my school (IB Math Topics) by junior year, so I might not meet this requirement to graduate with the IB Diploma. I'm gonna talke to my counselor about it tomorrow, but I'd like some outside advice: What should I do? 24.92.70.160 (talk) 00:48, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Many High Schools will grant credit for classes taken at a local university or community college. If you tested out of Calculus, you may be able to take a more advanced math class at a local community college or university, and count that as high school credit as well.  You should definitely talk to your guidance counselor, as they will know best how to navigate these issues, but you could perhaps come to him with this idea.  -- Jayron  32  00:55, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

sorry, I was not clear enough. I do not actually need the credit for my high school diploma (only 3 years of math are required), but I do need it for the IB programme, and the class I take for this programme must be an IB class, not a non-IB class. The IB diploma is extra that looks really good on college apps, so I'd like to get it. 24.92.70.160 (talk) 01:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You know what looks really good on college apps? Already having college credit.  Seriously, try the approach I have laid out for you.  Ask your counselor about options.  If you are so advanced that you have qualified out of calculus without having taken the course yet, then colleges will be seeking you out.  The extra little bit of having the IB diploma isn't going to help you much beyond that, and if colleges ask "why didn't you get it", you can say "because I was already taking differential equations at the local university, and didn't think I needed to go back and take calculus just to get some silly tag on my diploma."  Colleges love that much more than they will IB.  If you are worried contact an admissions officer of your first choice college.  Ask THEM what their opinion would be. -- Jayron  32  03:21, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You might not need to take night or summer classes either. Some high-schools will actually let you leave school during the day to drive to the local community college for a class. I knew some friends that did that. APL (talk) 23:20, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

A specific kind of very important city...
is called what? I vaguely remember reading a Wikipedia article about certain cities that were dominant in their entities, but I can't remember the title of the article. Such cities are the leaders of their entities (e.g. countries, provinces/states) in every way: the article gave all of the Australian state capitals as leading examples of this phenomenon. I've tried searching for "primary city", but that's definitely not it. Nyttend (talk) 04:40, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Primate city? Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 04:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Or perhaps it is Global city? Astronaut (talk) 06:03, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Seems too obvious, but Capital city? --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  07:56, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's the primate city; the article history shows that all of the Australian state capitals were included as primates of their states, so this is definitely what I was looking for. Thanks!  Nyttend (talk) 13:16, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Primate city makes me think of Planet of the Apes. Blueboar (talk) 14:47, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Whenever I hear a reference to the "Primate of Australia", I picture a gorilla in a bishop's costume, carrying a staff and wearing a mitre. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Metropolis?--Wetman (talk) 18:25, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Nyttend has his answer: primate city. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:51, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Discrepancy in The King's Speech?
In the recent movie The King's Speech, Lionel Logue is shown in a car heading for Buckingham Palace when air raid sirens are sounding and people are entering shelters. He arrives when only 40 minutes remain before the king is to address the whole empire on the radio. Then we see people listening to the radio, some of them clearly in London, and after the speech the king steps out onto a balcony and waves to the immense crowd below. Those people were not in air raid shelters.
 * Was there in fact a German air raid on September 3rd, 1939?
 * Did such a crowd in fact gather outside the palace on that day?
 * How long were people in shelters on that day?
 * What proportion of the population heeded warnings and went to shelters?

Michael Hardy (talk) 05:37, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * There was no German air raid on 3 September 1939 - that was the day Britain and France declared war on Germany. Details of early air raids on Britain are in the Phoney War article; the first was on 16 October. Warofdreams talk 10:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * But apparently air raid sirens were tested on 3 September. According to this article, they were (quite sensibly) tested just after the King's speech, rather than before. Warofdreams talk 10:22, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * But that article says the air raid siren test was after the prime minister's brief radio address, not after the king's longer speech. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's called dramatization, which IMO is particularly heavy-handed in this otherwise excellent film.--Shantavira|feed me 11:21, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

So it appears that:
 * The prime minister made a brief speech on the radio at 11:15 AM that day, announcing the declaration of war.
 * Air raid sirens were then tested at 11:27 AM.
 * The king gave a longer speech by radio later in the day.

What time was that later speech? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:56, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * These extracts from Logue's diary:
 * "At 10 o’clock came the announcement on the wireless that Germany had until 11 o’clock to withdraw her troops from Poland and at 11.15 the Prime Minister in sorrowful and heartfelt tones announced that we were at war with Germany. A marvellous relief after all our tension; the universal desire is to kill the Austrian house painter [Hitler]. At 11.30 out of the blue came the [air raid] siren – no good to even think it is a rehearsal. I call [Logue’s youngest son] Tony who is in the garage mending his bike and we shut up the house. A wonderful sight from our windows – to see the barrage balloon go up. The charwoman turned a tense situation into one of great comedy. Her boy Ernie was taken to the country yesterday, and as she went downstairs, she said 'Thank God my Ernie has been excavated'. At 12, [the King’s assistant private secretary, Sir] Eric Mieville rang to say that the King would Broadcast at 6 o’clock. Laurie drove me in to the Palace and I got there at 5.20."
 * He doesn't mention the crowd, but this page describes a large crowd at Downing Street after Chamberlain's speech. The palace is only 15 mins stroll away, so it seems probable. Whether the king waved to them, I don't know, but Logue doesn't seem to have been there if he did. Alansplodge (talk) 01:06, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you. (As for Logue being there when the king waved to the crowd, isn't it possible that Logue was still inside the building at the time?) Michael Hardy (talk) 06:28, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Possible but you'd have thought he would have mentioned it. If you follow the link above, he describes after the speech a conversation in the passage with the King & Queen and then going downstairs and "out in the sunshine". Probably seeing the King wave to a huge crowd would have been more notable than seeing a barrage balloon. Also, the Royals waving from the balcony has an air of jubilation about it - coronations, jubilees, the Trooping of the Colour, VE Day etc but going to war was a more sombre affair especially for a generation who had lived through "the last lot". Just an impression; Mr Google and his elves have been unable to find me any references at all for the "huge crowd" on 3 September. Alansplodge (talk) 15:40, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

speakers and connections
After the shooting rampage at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Ft. Worth, Texas, how many Columbine High School massacre survivors speak at the memorial service? Plus, what are the church's colors?24.90.204.234 (talk) 07:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Colors? Churches don't generally have colors (especially non-liturgical churches like Baptists), unless you're meaning something different from the church itself.  Nyttend (talk) 13:10, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The church has a web page that talks about the shootings in general, which occurred a few months after the Columbine shootings, both in 1999. I don't see anything offhand about speakers other than the minister, but you might be able to contact someone there and find out. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:15, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know about "colors", but if you google [baptist church flag] and [baptist church colors] you might find something useful. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:18, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia doesn't have an article on the incident per se, but it does have an article on Larry Gene Ashbrook, the person who did it. Pais (talk) 14:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Non-coalition democratic governments
The above question about the largest democratic country with a coalition government got me thinking. Isn't it fair to say that coalition governments are pretty much the de-facto norm in democratic countries? I went searching through wikipedia and found this list of countries with coalition governments, which seems to include just about every democratic government other than the US. Besides the US, is there any other democratic countries in the world that don't have a coalition government? TomorrowTime (talk) 12:37, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That list only has three countries from the americas. Algebraist 12:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Australia currently has a Labor government, with the Coalition in opposition. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:46, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The UK currently has a coalition government, but that's unusual there, and caused much discussion and hand-wringing at the time. France currently does not have a coalition government, but I don't know if that's unusual there or not. Pais (talk) 12:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, how could I have forgotten the UK... France, as far as I remember, usually does have coalition governments. Australia, from what I can see in the links is also a country with a two party system, or am I misreading something? TomorrowTime (talk) 13:24, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Offhand, Spain and Canada are examples of other democratic countries which rarely or never have coalition governments. Warofdreams talk 14:17, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Regarding Australia, it's pretty much a two-party system very similar to the UK, from my understanding. Under most normal understandings, a "coalition government" is a political expedient; a temporary arangement to form a parliamentary majority and to prevent deadlock and stalemate.  In Australia, the "Coalition" is an essentially permanent arangement between the two rightist parties, and at least on the national level, almost always operates as a single "party" for all intents and purposes.  Because of this there have been several attempts at a formal merger between the two parties.  The state-level parties have already merged in Queensland.  As already noted, the coalition in the UK is extremely rare, indeed the unusual result of the United Kingdom general election, 2010 led to the classic strange bedfellows-type coalition whereby the centre-left Liberal Democrats are in coalition with the rightist Conservatives.  Normally, the UK operates on a non-coalition type system.  In U.S. history, there have been a few "coalition"-type moments, one may possibly argue that the Era of Good Feelings represents a sort of national coalition of sorts, where the Democrat-Republican and Federalist parties operated on a more-or-less coalition mentality, without opposition.  The other coalition would have occured at the United States presidential election, 1864, whereby the Republican Party and (most of) the Democratic party merged under the National Union Party (United States).  As back to the original question, the article Two-party system gives some additional non-coalition countries which have only two parties, being Jamaica and Malta.  Other than those two, and the ones already mentioned, most countries have so many parties that coalitions are common enough.  -- Jayron  32  14:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Much of the answers hinge on the type of voting system deployed in country X. In the US,  UK and most Anglo-Saxon countries (where there exists a plurality voting system), coalitions are quite unlikely.  In countries which employ proportional representation (like most of mainland Europe) it is much more common.  A single party in Europe may easily gain a plurality but not have a majority.  In such a circumstance the only options are a) a coalition, grand or small; b) a minority government where the ruling party seeks the temporary support of another group.  Option b) is generally considered to be unstable and thus undesirable.


 * In many EU states you have two largish parties (equivalent to Conservative and Labour) and two smallish parties (essentially Liberals and Greens). Given the method of a proportional representation it is rather exceptional for any of these parties to get a vote of > 50%.  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:33, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Jayron's right about Australia usually having either Labor or a Coalition in power at any one time. In 1975 the Liberal Party could have governed in its own right but it had gone into the election with the Country Party as partner, so they chose (wisely imo) to maintain the Coalition in government. The last time there actually was a non-Labor non-Coalition government was in 1939-40, when Robert Menzies headed a United Australia Party government.  Earlier cases were: 1932-34, Joseph Lyons - UAP; 1917-23, Billy Hughes - Nationalist; 1913-14, Joseph Cook - Commonwealth Liberal; 1903-04, 1905-08, Alfred Deakin, 1901-03, Edmund Barton - Protectionist.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:16, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Portugal has a majority government; the party of the government has absolute majority. Flamarande (talk) 20:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the question is whether that arrangement is standard, or a short-term coincidence of the latest election cycle. As in, does one or another party normally always have a majority, or does the government usually rule via coalition most of the time.  -- Jayron  32  21:25, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, the OR asks if "Besides the US, is there any other democratic countries in the world that don't have a coalition government?". Portugal has had a couple of single-party-elected-majority governments but there have been more coalitions.
 * It has to be pointed out that (IMHO) most democratic countries have more than 2 parties in the parlament/congress/whatever. The USA only has two main parties. In such a situation the winner is bound to have simple majority. In countries where more than parties enter parlament it's quite hard to a have a simple majority; leading to coalitions. Flamarande (talk) 22:11, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The UK has many parties in Commons, but other than a rare hiccup, it very rarely has coalition governments. -- Jayron  32  02:42, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Canada had a sort-of coalition government once, during World War I (the Unionist Party). Otherwise there is always either a majority government, or a minority government which tends to fall quickly. The current minority government has survived for five years, and occasionally one of the smaller parties choses to vote with them to avoid having to call yet another election, but it's certainly not a coalition government. There are more than two parties here, but only the Conservatives and Liberals have ever been in charge; the New Democratic Party is sort of the major third party, but it isn't really a nationally-popular party. The other major party is the Bloc Quebecois, which doesn't even run candidates outside of Quebec (and was originally dedicated to separating Quebec from the rest of Canada). I think the problem here is that it never occurs to anyone that a coalition is possible. Everyone acts like Canada is a US-style republic, with the Prime Minister as head of state. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:39, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I thought someone would mention this who could explain it better but since there's been none... It seems we also need to consider those countries where there is a dominant party. The article is a bit crap without any citations and democratic credentials of quite a number of countries there may seem questionable, with at least some of the countries there, e.g. post apartheid South Africa, Japan a few years ago it's difficult to argue they aren't democratic despite the existance of a dominant party. While in some of those the dominant party is in coalition (whether or not it's needed) this isn't always the case.
 * Getting at the complexity of course, you have a case like Japan where as I understand it even though the LDP is one party it is made up of factions vying for control. Japan is also perhaps notable for the short their prime ministers tend to last. In a similar vein to both that and the comment about Australia we get examples like Malaysia where if we ignore the flaws in democracy there, you have a formal coalition who's members may occasionally change but compete basically as one party in elections and realisticly despite the occasional noise it's difficult to imagine any of the main parts of the coalition breaking apart any time in the future. The coalition itself is dominated by one party. (And that is all mired in the race and religion issues in Malaysia.) As others have said, this is quite different from what people think of whey they discuss coalition goverments in say NZ, (the recent example in the) UK or even I think places like Germany, Israel and India.
 * To put it a different way, you need to consider what's a democracy, what's a party and what's a coalition if you want to answer this question.
 * Nil Einne (talk) 12:03, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Lists of dates books published on
Where can I find a list of books published on certain dates, eg February 1970? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.41.24.88 (talk) 13:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * In which country? Your national ISBN agency distributes this information by subscription to libraries and book retailers. The monthly list is also available in public libraries. No doubt it's available on line but it depends on your country. This is one website for book data, and I see they offer a free trial.--Shantavira|feed me 14:31, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Allusions in Prose Literature
Hey all! I love the allusiveness of The Waste Land and Joyce's Ulysses. I'm wondering if there are any other novels that so richly and consistently reference the works of past authors. (Lolita comes to mind, but as far as I can tell, there are few others). Thanks! 75.92.250.14 (talk) 18:08, 19 January 2011 (UTC)MelancholyDanish
 * Our page on intertextuality will give you a few hints towards a reading list. --Antiquary (talk) 18:31, 19 January 2011 (UTC)