Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 October 30

= October 30 =

royals meeting other royals
Is there a formal protocol that royals have to follow when meeting another country's royalty? For example, would the Crown Princess of Sweden have to curtsey to the King of Thailand? Are the guidelines for royal etiquette actually written down somewhere, or do royals just tend to do whatever they feel like doing? 128.135.100.102 (talk) 00:35, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is called diplomatic protocol. Please see. Dualus (talk) 02:33, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Dualus, the OP wants to know what the precise protocol is on the occasions they're asking about. That link just talks about protocol in general terms.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  03:05, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There are rules of etiquette for meetings between visiting members of royal families on formal occasions - historians and biographers often mention some details of such things in passing when describing those encounters - but it's hard to find a comprehensive source for the rules, presumably because etiquette books are written for us peons, not for royalty, who probably learn those things at their royal grandmother's knee. I can't find a source, but I have a strong suspicion that a mere princess would curtsy, and her husband would bow, to the reigning sovereign of another country and to his consort.  But who would bow/curtsy to whom if a princess of one country meets a prince/princess of another, who knows?  I think when two sovereigns meet, being equals, neither curtsies to the other, they just shake hands.  There are certain standard forms of formal address, too:  the Queen writes to fellow monarchs beginning, "Sir my Brother," but to presidents of republics as "Great and Good Friend."  (Charles Roetter, The Art of Diplomacy, 1963, p. 157.)  If you really are desperate to know the details, you might write to Debrett's, the prime British etiquette experts, and ask them to refer you to some source books.  Textorus (talk) 06:18, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * # occupyprotocol? Dualus (talk) 23:35, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * "...there are no obligatory codes of behaviour - just courtesy.". Alansplodge (talk) 23:28, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * "We don't have protocol here, just bloody good manners." (p.4) And yet, there are certain niceties to be observed that demonstrate good manners, the most public recent example being when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge bowed/curtsied to the Queen after their wedding.  Textorus (talk) 01:01, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Is this a real quote from John Lennon?
Yesterday, I saw this quote in my Facebook newsfeed attributed to John Lennon of the Beatles: When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life. It's a great quote and Lennon was famous for his wit. But I've been a fan for years and have never run across this quote before. I Binged it and found over 2 million hits on the quote but none of the sites looked like they would be authorities on the matter. Does anyone know if this quote is real or is apocryphal like so many other quotes? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:26, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * My immediate thought is that British children sixty years ago did not have "assignments". But Lennon lived in the US in later life, so if he did tell that story, he might have used the word.--ColinFine (talk) 01:01, 31 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I have no memory of seeing anything like that in any of his published interviews. Of note, he states that it was when he was five. He was terrible at writing when he was a teenager (as shown in his many letters and postcards that have been published). It is very hard to believe that he was writing at age five. Further, his statements about his first school years were not about how he stood up to the system. He was shy and quiet. His "teddy" rebellious side came out as a teenager. -- k a i n a w &trade; 02:00, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Although many sites do give Lennon as an author, at least as many say "Unknown" - which seems more likely. Ghmyrtle (talk) 07:46, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The quote does not states that he said that as he was 5. He just heard it from his mother at this age. Quest09 (talk) 15:47, 31 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It's widely considered false, aka apocryphal. Lennon never said it. Viriditas (talk) 10:26, 31 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Isn't there an easy way to do a Google search but organized chronologically? I don't mean the News Archive search (which only searches the News Archives, not the whole web) or the Wayback Machine (aka archive.org).  I seem to recall when that fake MLK quote was everywhere on Twitter and Facebook, there was an easy way to search to find out when the quote first appeared on the Internet.
 * Anyway, I did figure out how to do a Google search chronologically but in descending order. I clicked through the search results until I got to the end.  The final hit was this which according to Google is dated Jan 31, 2001.  It's a web page run by Christopher R. Johnson, a professor of Computer Science for the University of Utah.  I wonder where he got the quote from. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:06, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I find it extremely unlikely it's from Lennon and even if he said it, it's extremely unlikely it's true. Lennon wouldn't have called "homework" an "assignment" in his Liverpool upbringing. And a 5 year old in the UK wouldn't have had written homework in those days. --Dweller (talk) 14:13, 31 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The quote does not states that he said that as he was 5. He just heard it from his mother at this age. Quest09 (talk) 15:49, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

As Albert Einstein said: "Mistrust of every kind of information - specially from the Internet: a skeptical attitude toward unsourced material is necessary for everyone" Quest09 (talk) 15:56, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Wasn't John Lennon brought up by his Aunt Mimi instead of his mother? This so-called Lennon quote just doesn't have the ring of truth about it, I'm afraid.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 16:32, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Dick Starkey was the one with the rings, Jeanne. Maybe he stole the Ring of Truth from John.  :)  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  18:38, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * He still lived with his mother when he was 5 though. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:41, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the quote just does not contain the right amount of acid for it to have come from John Lennon's mouth.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 08:44, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Why is pork the most consumed meat in the world?
I would expect it to be chicken because: (i) chicken is cheaper; and (ii) Muslims don't eat pork, and they're around a sixth of the world's population (I am aware that Jews don't either, but they're a tiny share of the global total). I do know that pork is the most eaten meat in China, but for both China and much of the rest of the world, why?

The only explanation I can think of is that it is possible to cure pork products, allowing to keep in areas with weak refrigeration, but I'm not sure if that's really it.--Leon (talk) 18:40, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If you are correct (and I would have thought chicken or fish too, but maybe it's just the two together) then it would be because it tastes the most like human flesh. Happy Halloween. Dualus (talk) 18:47, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Ghoulishness aside - - pigs are easier to maintain that cattle or sheep (they require no grazing land and thrive on all sorts of scraps that humans have no other use for), are meatier and less subject to predation than chickens (foxes, cats, and other small predators can rain hell on a hen house, but it takes an apex predator to pull down a swine), aren't subject to the special tools, locations or seasonal variations that are involved in fishing, have no conflicting value (they can't pull a plow or provide wool), and are generally hardy, maintenance-free and good breeders as domesticated animals go.  -- Ludwigs 2  19:08, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * My Google search for pigs plow reported 2,010,000 results, the second one being Plow With Pigs by Mother Earth News.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 20:47, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Just because there are a lot of pages with those two words on them doesn't mean it's possible. The page you've linked to is using the term plow metaphorically. Pigs are not harness animals — they cannot be hooked up to a plow. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:10, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I realized, when I posted that comment, that the article discusses pigs being used as plows, and not pigs pulling plows. My reason for linking to that article is that it counters the comment above by Ludwigs2, that pigs "have no conflicting value".
 * —Wavelength (talk) 19:36, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This is not a criticism (or at least, it is not meant to be a non-constructive one), but you post a lot of links without giving any information as to what you think is of value in the link, or what you intend people to take away from it. It makes a lot of your links look completely irrelevant to the discussion, if not outright confused. If you had posted the sentence you just did along with your link, it would have increased the value of your contribution mightily, and wouldn't have required two more edits (mine and then yours) to clarify what you had originally meant to clarify in the first place. Just a suggestion. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:13, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Do we have a table of how much farmland area it takes a person to live on? I know it varies by country, but there must be global averages. I've heard it's 0.33 acres for a vegan, 0.5 acres for a vegitarian, and 3 acres for an omnivore, but I know that beef produces about eight times as much CO2 as poultry per pound (Scientific American a few years ago), so I'm sure that must correspond to the amount of farmland area to feed the livestock. Dualus (talk) 19:49, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Dualus's comment does not seem daft to me. Pig protein is so similar to human flesh that the body has less trouble digesting it, without forming immune draining antibodies and getting congested with immune-complexes. It is also very tasty -especially Miss Piggy. Moreover, pigs are very high in fat – a high value energy source. Pound for pound, I don't see any reason why any other domesticated animal should have greater appeal.--Aspro (talk) 19:55, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You realize that "tastes the most like" is strongly correlated to "has the most genes in common with" don't you? Dualus (talk) 23:37, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, and pigs compete for the same resources that early man depended on. So just like the Neanderthal's they constitute a potential threat to survival. Genetic survival in humans is a dominant factor, mostly confined to close blood relatives – as the European history of royal conflicts demonstrates, time and time again. --Aspro (talk) 20:32, 31 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I tracked down the original claim here . Our article on offal says it's also the most consumed meat in China.  I think that on some of the South Pacific islands pigs were brought in earlier than many other livestock.  In the U.S. ... I have no idea why, but the supermarkets do not carry mutton.  If they did, I know I'd want to lower that pork statistic. Wnt (talk) 03:41, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Most do carry lamb however. Maybe if you let it sit around for a while... -- Jayron  32  03:51, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * True, and much appreciated ... but not a very wide selection, and sporadically. I always wondered where sheep in the U.S. go when they grow up. Wnt (talk) 04:09, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * OMG. I never thought about that before, but now I'm gonna be up all night wondering where the little sheeps go to.  The U.S. doesn't produce much "sheep meat":  it's 18th in the world, behind Morocco and Nigeria.  The American Sheep Industry Association doesn't say exactly what they do with them, but I suspect most are raised for their wool.  Not to mention being frightfully decorative, dotted about your fields.  As the other poster above noted, mutton is practically nonexistent in this country; this delightfully witty article explains why.  Lamb, nearly all of which we get frozen from the lands Down Under, is mighty good though, marinated in wine and served with mint jelly.  I highly recommend it.  Textorus (talk) 05:17, 31 October 2011 (UTC)


 * My guess is that, except for the few which end up at ethnic butcher shops (if you go to most major cities, somewhere deep in the neighborhood known as "Little Ethiopia"/"Kazaktown"/"The South Asian District"/etc. will be little hole-in-the-wall shops where you can procure all manner of exotic meats), the rest end up as pet food. That's historically where meat/animals that aren't sold to humans end up. Case in point, I recall seeing a package of mutton jerky for dogs in the pet food aisle. -- 174.24.217.108 (talk) 15:40, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

As Ludwigs2 says, pigs will eat almost ANYTHING. A friend who had travelled in Asia once told me of a village (in India perhaps) where the communal latrine emptied into the pig sty. Still looking for a reference to confirm this practice, but it makes the religious ban on on pork seem very sensible. Alansplodge (talk) 11:13, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Me again: a model of a Han Dynasty Pig Sty-Latrine in the Minneapolis Institute of Art. "Combination pig sty-latrines similar to this replica can be seen in many parts of rural China today." Also, Wikipedia has an article about everything: see Pig toilet. I should add that British pigs have their diet very closely controlled by a whole regiment of bureaucrats emplyed by DEFRA and the EU. I hope I haven't put anyone off their bacon sandwich. Alansplodge (talk) 11:31, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * More research: apparently a single Chinese ideogram signifies both "pigsty" and "privy". Alansplodge (talk) 16:34, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Goats are low-maintenance as well, but goat meat is hard to find in Europe (and I guess North America too)... ElMa-sa (talk) 12:20, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It depends on what part of North America or Europe. I have had goat with a Greek family in New Hampshire, so its availible, if not common.  It is common enough in Greece, where whole roasted goat is a standard Easter dish (akin to Turkey on Thanksgiving in the U.S.) and that was the context when I enjoyed it.  I have seen roasted goat availible in greek restaurants in Chicago as well.  It is also quite common in Mexico, which is North America, of course, and among Mexican communities in the U.S. as well; you can get it as street food from some taco trucks in many places.  -- Jayron  32  19:24, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

U.S. Government Licence Tags
Are vehicles with U.S. government license tags exempt from being pulled over for traffic infractions or receiving fines for tripping those red light cameras? 166.137.8.73 (talk) 19:01, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Nobody is exempt from being cited for safety infractions. Can you imagine what the feds would do if they didn't get pulled over for leaking gas, for example? Dualus (talk) 19:45, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, I know someone with the NYPD, and I've heard that the foreign diplomats with the UN up there drive like crazy and don't feed the parking meters and there's nothing they can do about it. Don't know about the Feds though. 166.137.8.73 (talk) 23:14, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That's because of diplomatic immunity, not because they are federal. (See Diplomatic_immunity.) --Mr.98 (talk) 23:38, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * They can definitely get tickets. Apparently they often are poor about paying them because the consequences are low for some reason (the report doesn't specify why this is different than for individuals, but it must go through the agency in some way that is different). In Washington, DC, they do not tow or boot federal vehicles, though, as a matter of policy. Separately, a bus driver (in DC) told me not very long ago that if they get a ticket, they get some kind of automatic suspension, and if they get two, they get fired. But obviously that's a little bit different, given that their job is in shuttling around other people... --Mr.98 (talk) 01:54, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * "The Feds" in London never pay their Congestion Charge; they owe us more than USD 10 million. Alansplodge (talk) 16:15, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I would write a check but you're just going to have to start detaining officials and citizens for shakedowns at Customs just like any other creditor nation. Dualus (talk) 09:50, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Mutual funds
Are there any companies allowing people to invest in wind power in developing countries, or credit unions and other investments compatible with the Occupy Wall Street "99 Percent Declaration"? (This question was copied from Talk:Mutual fund and I will summarize there.) Dualus (talk) 19:43, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See Socially responsible investing. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:26, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Why did the Democratic Unionist Party oppose the Belfast Agreement?
Why? --Belchman (talk) 21:55, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, there's a section in DUP's article about their opposition to the Belfast Agreement, but it's quite short. --Belchman (talk) 22:01, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Primarily, because it was because they objected to power sharing. Historically, unionists' peculiar view of democracy has been that, because the protestant community are the majority, decisions should be made by protestants. In the referendum on the agreement, the overwhelming majority of the nationalist/catholic community and about half of the unionist/protestant community voted yes, and the DUP tried to claim that wasn't valid because there wasn't a clear majority of protestants in favour, never mind that there was a 75% majority overall and a broad consensus of both communities. --Nicknack009 (talk) 22:15, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That's a bit simplistic. The DUP refer to "Sein Fein/IRA"; to them, allowing Sein Fein into the government was only permissible if SF distanced itself from the IRA. Take this article, for example. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:29, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It is pretty amazing either side agreed. The IRA was taunted with 'I ran away' at the start of the troubles because they had given up arms and were trying for a solution by peaceful means. Dmcq (talk) 07:25, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I thought they were allegedly called that by other Catholics because their "army" failed to defend Catholics areas during the 1969 Northern Ireland riots. --Belchman (talk) 11:29, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes that's right, they had given up their arms and the community was attacked and thousands were driven out of their homes. They had little reason to think that giving up arms again was a good first step to peace. Dmcq (talk) 14:32, 31 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The failed Sunningdale Agreement in the 1970s offers a historical parallel. Many unionists objected to any form of power sharing or any formal arrangements with the Republic of Ireland, which they saw as steps on the road to a united Ireland (or an attempt by the Antichrist to capture good Christian hearts, if you believed some of Ian Paisley's rhetoric). --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:03, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The Ulster Workers' Council Strike which was carried out in protest against Sunningdale and the power-sharing executive united all unionist parties and the rival UDA and UVF; it was so successful that it brought Northern Ireland to its knees. On the third day into the strike, the UVF executed a devastating bombing attack in both Dublin and Monaghan resulting in the deaths of 33 people, plus an unborn baby.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 16:11, 31 October 2011 (UTC)