Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 November 22

= November 22 =

Individual Investor Share
The Harvard Business Review writes that "In 1950 households owned more than 90% of shares in U.S. corporations. Now they own only 30 to 40%." They also include a graph sourcing the Fed. Where can I find a table of this data?Smallman12q (talk) 01:55, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I searched like crazy for what you were looking for but I unfortunately couldn't find it. Sorry. That said, I did find this--http://www.cairn.info/loadimg.php?FILE=REL/REL_744/REL_744_0583/fullREL_id2804158224_pu2008-04s_sa06_art06_img001.jpg --which might be useful to you. Why do you specifically need exact data, though? The Harvard Business Review chart allows you to do approximations. Futurist110 (talk) 03:22, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I've added the exact original source above. I'd like to include a similar, but more detailed graph on the wiki for several articles and if there's enough info, write an article on the topic. Thanks for trying though.Smallman12q (talk) 22:36, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Laura Secord
How much did Laura Secord's actions influence the outcome of the War of 1812? Thank you. Futurist110 (talk) 04:09, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Her role was limited to a very minor battle between British and American forces, in the middle of nowhere. It's not clear that had the Americans taken over the small fort that was their objective, it would have changed anything in the bigger scheme of things. The only thing that could have changed the outcome of the War of 1812 was if, in Europe, Napoleon had managed to defeat or isolate England, making England incapable of defending its North American possessions. --Xuxl (talk) 14:18, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, her actions did influence Canadian views of the war. She became a symbol that boosted a Canadian sense of patriotism.  That patriotism might not have influenced the outcome of the War in military terms... but it did influence how Canadians felt about the war... and subsequent relations between Canada, the US, and Great Britain. Blueboar (talk) 14:37, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * However, Laura Secord did not become a symbol until much later, when the war had been over for years (the article on her makes that clear). So, her actions were not used for patriotic purposes and had no effect on the further conduct of the War of 1812. --Xuxl (talk) 15:44, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

top incomes
How many americans earn enough money to be either in the 33 or 35% income tax brackets? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.146.124.35 (talk) 05:06, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I found this page, which has assorted tax info up through 2008 or 2009: http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Individual-Income-Tax-Rates-and-Tax-Shares. The one spreadsheet I looked at says 971,510 tax returns in the 35% bracket and 1,669,518 in the 33% bracket for 2008.  You can also see the number of returns in each category (single, married filing seperate, etc).  That's from the IRS, so I'm not sure if later years are available anywhere else.  RudolfRed (talk) 06:08, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Is Sandy Island a mountweazel?
See this - The Age article What do you all think? Is Sandy Island a mountweazel? It's telling, isn't it, that it never appeared on French maps?

Thanks,


 * That would depend on whether Sandy Island (New Caledonia) was deliberately created as a fictitious place on a map, or done in good faith but in error. The people mentioned in the article don't know themselves how it came about, so we await the results of their research.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  05:29, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * True - I was just trying to anticipate their research, probably in vain. Adambrowne666 (talk) 05:48, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * (conspiracy theory) Or perhaps it really does exist but that's where thy're storing stuff that's too secret for Hanger 18. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:11, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Sounds a bit like the village of Quare that existed for more than a century on maps of Wiltshire, UK, when unable to identify a village the map maker, Christopher Saxton put 'quare', possibly 'query', meaning to come back and fix it. He never did and it appeared for 145 years before being discovered to be an abandoned North Burcombe. Richard Avery (talk) 14:33, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * How come it shows up as a black blob on Google satellite view? Shouldn't it be just blue sea if it doesn't exist? Or maybe it moved.--Shantavira|feed me 15:09, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Google Earth views are made from a complicated montage of different sources. For open sea they use wide, undetailed Blue Marble-type images. Where the map says there should be land, they splice in more detailed stuff, first from Landsat and then from more detailed commercial sources.  The black blob looks like an artefact of this process - their workflow says there should be an island there, and so a more detailed (at least Landsat) image of that area should be used.  But there isn't, so the system is stuck.  I expect somewhere in a giant list of queries the system has generated for human attention is a task about this (one that'll surely get human attention now, given the publicity). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:16, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * And indeed if one looks at the "island" with Google Earth, it renders a shoreline vector (from its defective shoreline database) that matches the black blob. So their map says there's an island, one the photo processor can't find. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:23, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * ...which looks like this. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:01, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Maybe it's where Lost was set. :) --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  19:36, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks heaps, all. So does the black blob predate the idea of there being an island there, I wonder? Adambrowne666 (talk) 00:58, 23 November 2012 (UTC) (PS I'd like it if someone went there to discover indeed an island made of black jaggy pixels and illfitting collage-bits...)

Watchful eyes
In a very similar case to Sandy Island, above, we also have Argleton. A few months ago someone added a see-also there to the (non existent) Watchful Eyes, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Google does report some addresses with that location, but again it's not at all clear that it's in any way a "real" place. Is Watchful Eyes another only-exists-in-Google place? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:46, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * There's no match on the GNIS database for "watchful eyes" in Oklahoma, which tends to have most locations. It might not have neighborhood names though. Shadowjams (talk) 19:08, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * http://meggardiner.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/watchful-eyes-oklahoma-update/ Trio The Punch (talk) 04:56, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Is the man on the right of the photo Ignacy Loga-Sowiński ?
Hello Learned Ones ! "Mam opracować pewne zagadnienie" : I had prepared the question in polish, but never could get into their Reference Desk, so I ask you : Is the man on the right of the photo Ignacy Loga-Sowiński ? In 1954, he was (says the Polish article about him) a 40 years old "aparatchik". Thanks a lot beforehands for your answers ! T;y. Arapaima (talk) 16:57, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * According to this picture below yours,Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-26681-0002,_Berlin,_Ludwig_Renn,_Sowinski,_Melem.jpg yes. Philoknow (talk) 17:21, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot Philo ! T.y. Arapaima (talk) 17:30, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Stuffed animals
Is a stuffed animal really considered "cuter" if it has a larger head (or larger eyes) than the normal animal would have? 114.75.58.66 (talk) 19:52, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * In short, "yes". The relevant article is at cuteness, though I would have expected something at the teddy bear article. Matt Deres (talk) 20:32, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The more human-like an anthropomorphic rendition is, the more attractive it's likely to be. One example is that the early renderings of Bugs Bunny are considered "rat-like" and less attractive than the later renderings. And predatory birds and animals tend to be more attractive to us because they have binocular vision like we do, and don't look "beady-eyed" like their prey do. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:55, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Lawyering in Texas
I wonder if any ref desk brainiacs can help me find out when Texas began requiring a law degree to practice law. I know that from early days in Texas, as in other states of the Union, it was originally the case that an aspiring lawyer could simply start working for and studying with an already accepted lawyer, and eventually learn enough to be admitted to practice in the courts of the state - no college degree or law degree required. My research so far via Google Books and other sources suggests that perhaps as late as the 1960's this was still posssible in Texas, but an exact answer seems to be locked away behind paywalls or in subscription journals. I'm not interested in other states, only in Texas - can anyone help with this question? Textorus (talk) 21:27, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I can't give you a date, but maybe this is some clue to help you chase it down. Legal self-help publisher Nolo.com was prosecuted in Texas for unlicenced practice of law - Nolo's own side of that is here. That committee's page is here and the applicable (current) law here. So if you can figure out when the Texas legislature passed that law, that at least gives you an upper bound. Looking at the law briefly, they don't seem to write it in a way saying "this law succeeds section X of law Y", which would have been a useful feature. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:55, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The oldest appellant case that site cites is cortez in 1985. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:58, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * These cases don't really bear on my question - the statutes cited all apparently were last revised by the Legislature in 1987 - but by following some of the links, I ended up at the Texas Board of Law Examiners and this time discovered their online archive of past rulebooks for admission to the State Bar, dating all the way back to 1919. So I suppose I will eventually find the answer somewhere in one of those, unless anyone knows a specific date when legal apprenticeship was no longer an option in TX.  Textorus (talk) 22:27, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Update, for what it's worth: After paging thru the rulebooks, it seems that the rules changed on January 1, 1972, and only candidates who had already begun a legal apprenticeship before that date could be admitted to take the bar exam, except for certain hardship cases.  Rulebooks after 1979 make no mention of such provisions, so that pretty much answers my question.  Thanks for the lead.  Textorus (talk) 23:13, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * No one seems to have linked country lawyer, which is not specifically about Texas but describes a related phenomenon. --Trovatore (talk) 23:57, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Why was Africa the dark continent?
Why is it that nobody bothered to explore Africa until the 19th century? Egypt was one of the world's oldest and richest civilizations. Large parts (sometimes all) of North Africa was occupied by Assyria, Babylon, Rome, Greece, and the Abbasids. I think Arab traders frequently visited the Swahili coast. Yet somehow, there was never an adventurous king who got bored of life and decided to conquer the interior of Africa? --140.180.246.185 (talk) 23:45, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * And once they did, how well has it worked out? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:50, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, Europeans became more ignorant about Africa, and the idea of 'darkest Africa' supplanted the classical idea 'Ex Africa semper aliquid novi' - 'there is always something new coming from Africa'. AlexTiefling (talk) 23:55, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that the impassability of the Sahara Desert cannot be underestimated here. Navagation beyond the Canary Islands is very unfriendly to ships, there wasn't a good place to resupply, and overland routes were heavily guarded by the Subsaharan empires that grew rich by monopolizing the trade.  There was certainly contact and awareness of those empires, but like other distant places (India, China), knowledge of them came third and fourth hand.  Prior to the 16th century or so, there was also very little direct contact between Europe and China.  Even into the 19th century, there was also the problem of disease; many African peoples had become resistant to native diseases (malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, etc.) that decimated any European expeditions into the interior.  -- Jayron  32  00:01, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

140.180.246.185 -- The Arabs knew of the Kenya-Tanzania coastal area as "Zanj" and it was prime slaving territory for harvesting unskilled hard-labor slaves to be sent to the Middle East; also, there was some sporadic influence from northwest Africa across the Sahara to the Sahel. However, it's unclear what motive ancient Romans or medieval Arabs would have had for mounting systematic long-range exploring efforts in Africa, when they had no expectation of finding anything there too much different from what existed in closer and more familiar regions. 15th-century Europeans had the highly-specific goal of finding a direct route (not controlled by Muslims) to India and the spice Islands, and they had ships built to stand North Atlantic waves and weather. So Europeans started sailing around Africa, but only the Cape region was at all promising for European settlement, and for most of the rest of the sub-Saharan coast there seemed to be little evidence of things to be found in the interior that would justify expensive or dangerous exploring efforts... AnonMoos (talk) 00:12, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Didn't any of the European Christians ask hey, why not go there and convert these lost souls to our faith? OsmanRF34 (talk) 11:13, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * For one, they had plenty of souls to convert nearby - from pagan Saxons to Muslim Moors to heretic Hussites, Lutherans and Anglicans to corrupted Catholics. For another, Prester John would take care of them. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:21, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * User:OsmanRF34 -- In some cases they did some proselytizing along the coasts (see Roman Catholic Church in Kongo), but I'm not sure that the results were such as to encourage long land voyages into unknown regions. However, Portuguese intervention may have saved Christian Ethiopia from being permanently conquered by Muslims... -- AnonMoos (talk) 15:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * (1) Unlike Europe, Africa has a simple coastline, not allowing easy access by boat to any large area the way European coasts do. (For example, all of Britain is within 50 miles of the coast.)  (2) Along the river banks in forested tropical areas, the vegetation is extremely dense, which discouraged explorers who did not necessarily realize that the forest floor was rather open away from banks where the sunlight penetrated allowing such thick growth. μηδείς (talk) 18:18, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment on All of Britain is within 50 miles from the coast: This nominates Coton in the Elms as the precise British location that is most distant from the sea. It's either 75 miles or 45 miles from the sea, depending on your definition.  This agrees with Coton, and says it's about 73 miles from the sea.  These details are corroborated in our article Coton in the Elms, which distinguishes between coast and tidal water.  The distances there are given as 75 miles and 45 miles respectively.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  19:44, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Confession: I knew someone would do the work for me if I just made the bald assertion, rather than a qualified one. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 07:14, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * For your penance, my daughter, say a sincere act of contrition and 17 Hail Marys (not Maries). Go and sin no more.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  19:58, 25 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I believe people may have explored Africa a bit earlier than the 19th century, if only to find their way out. Mitch Ames (talk) 06:49, 24 November 2012 (UTC)