Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 September 11

= September 11 =

Anti racism code word for antiwhite
How is anti racism used as a code word for antiwhite? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Socrates10000 (talk • contribs) 06:32, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * No one uses "anti racism" as a code word for "antiwhite," only racists imagine that it is used that way. Ian.thomson (talk) 07:19, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Then why does the ADL label those who talk about white people's rights as being racist? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Socrates10000 (talk • contribs) 07:26, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * They don't. They label as racist groups who think that they have a right to oppress others on the basis of race.  Ian.thomson (talk) 07:45, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

But how is simply talking about the need to preserve the white race oppressive? Kind of hypocritical that the ADL supports a homeland for the Jews, but doesn't support one for white people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Socrates10000 (talk • contribs) 08:06, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Saying that the white race needs to be preserved assumes that white people are in danger, especially compared to everyone else -- a paranoid delusion opposed to reality. The ADL supports a homeland for the Jews because about 70 years ago a third of the Jewish population was wiped out, a situation exacerbated by the Jews not having a homeland at the time.  Racist groups make their paranoid claims because they want to present their bigotry as revenge instead of hateful foolishness that it is. Ian.thomson (talk) 08:15, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

That's false. Only 300 000 Jews were killed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Socrates10000 (talk • contribs) 08:19, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh do go away. --Viennese Waltz 08:38, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Solution to a Problem
When employees with same designation in same department one has no computer and after office hours at the time of end of duty if an employee does this and is humiliated and subjected to verbal humiliation and abuse and asked to leave the room by his senior manager for the following offense and issued a letter of caution on ambiguous nonspecific complaints from several coners inside and outside office.Have some offense or breach of discipline been committed does collecting soft copy of manuals from office computer same department and employee of same designation whn and has  no intention of leaking this data  or any other foul intention and has got job after police verification and data is not marked classified these manuals of different parts manufactured by third party companies government factory for self study and gaining technical factory work procedures to learn and do the work. Is this act knowledge constitute breach of discipline Also it is verbally ordered by department senior manager that he is to for day to day work he has to obey verbal orders from another assistant manager who is has joined five years earlier by virtue of seniority. The senior manager verbally designates him as team leader whereas as per service rule there is no such is verbally post designation knowledge constitute breach of discipline. Is the asst manager wrong as per services  rules in india government owned companies.What can he do to solve this problem. Please don't treat this question as solicitation of legal advice.Ichgab (talk) 07:17, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * What can he do to solve the problem... consult a lawyer. Blueboar (talk) 13:44, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Isole del Triangolo Occidentale
Per File:Islands of Mexico.svg, this is the name of some Mexican islands in the Gulf of Mexico: but the Italian name. Does anyone know what the name is in English or Spanish? They're apparently a tiny spot in the middle of the water (maybe too hard to find with a map search, unless you have tons of time), virtually no Google hits, and while it:Isole del Triangolo Occidentale is linked at Isole del Messico, it's a redlink, so I can't use babel links to find it. Nyttend (talk) 10:32, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Our article contains a link to Western Triangle Keys, which would be the English equivalent, but that's a redlink, and Spanish Wiktionary has es:Arrecife Triángulo del Oeste ("Western Triangular Reef"), but that's also a redlink. Openstreetmap shows a poorly defined triangle of islands in that area at around 20.9319°N, -92.2587°W - bizarrely, these are blacked out in Google Maps, while Bing Maps has a dark and extremely low res image of the largest island. They are however visible on TerraServer, where they appear to be little more than sandbanks. Smurrayinchester 11:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Side note - it looks like "Arrecife Triángulo Oeste" or simply "Triángulo" is the more common name ("Triángulo Oeste" is also the easternmost island in Triángulo). It appears the US formerly claimed these islands (a reef) as well, under the Guano Islands Act - see List of Guano Island claims. You can read a slightly spooky log of a voyage to the Triángulo reef here - the captain of the boat was told to bring coke, books and newspapers for the lighthouse keeper... but on arriving, found the moorings missing, the lighthouse operational but damaged, and no answer on the radio. Smurrayinchester 11:55, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

People's Action Party
Why does the Singaporean People's Action Party use the Flash and Circle – a fascist symbol? PAP was founded by British-educated Singaporeans who took their policies from British Labour, so surely they knew what it meant. The article on Flash and Circle gives the uncited claim that the PAP mean it in the same way that the fascists did, but that seems like a dodgy claim given that it was (originally) an anti-colonial centre-to-left wing party. Smurrayinchester 10:51, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not exactly the same symbol, and is fairly simple. Possibly just a meaningless coincidence? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 13:50, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The PAP symbol is explained in the article you linked. It states "The PAP symbol (which is red and blue on white) stands for action inside "interracial unity." Furthermore, PAP members at party rallies have sometimes worn a "uniform" of white shirts and white trousers. The "white-on-white" symbolises the party's ideals of clean governance, it reminds party members that the white uniform, once sullied, is difficult to make clean again."  -- Jayron 32 14:44, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The more relevant part of that article may be "PAP MP Baey Yam Keng called for legal action against those who had vandalised its Wikipedia page, which had been the subject of an edit war between vandals and editors of Wikipedia on 12 and 13 June". This unsourced stuff in the two articles may all be part of some kind of POV pushing, though I certainly haven't looked into it.  Definitely we should get better sourcing for making such comparisons or it's WP:SYNTH and should be out of here.  I'm absolutely no fan of censorship but in order to be useful statements must be well founded. Wnt (talk) 15:11, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Why is Atlantic city a failure
Why is Las Vegas so successful, while Atlantic City is failing so badly? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.207.79.50 (talk) 17:02, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * A few things 1) It is only failing recently. It wasn't a failure for many many decades.  2) To answer why AC is having trouble, the reason is competition.  Prior to about 30 years ago, there were basically only two places in the U.S. one could go to gamble: Las Vegas or Atlantic City.  Vegas was always bigger; it has gained a status as an entertainment hub as well (it's quite possible to stay busy in Vegas without gambling a penny), Vegas is also much farther from any other source of entertainment, or indeed any other major city.  Atlantic City provided a decent place for people on the East Coast to go to gamble, especially in the heavily populated Northeast megalopolis, for something like 50 million people, AC is an easy day trip.  So why did AC start to fail?  Competition.  In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which basically legalized gaming on Native American lands within the U.S.   Within a few years, Mega gambling resorts sprung up all over the U.S.  In direct competition with Atlantic City are two of the largest casinos in the world, both in Connecticut: Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, along with plenty of other smaller venues for gambling.  There's only so much gambling to go around, so whereas Vegas, which as a bigger venue with more prestige, has been able to weather the additional competition, AC, which has always been smaller and less prestigious, has not.  But it wasn't a "failure" in the sense that it was never successful.  For many decades AC was quite successful as a casino resort.  -- Jayron 32 19:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * No offense meant, just a mild critique: legalized gambling only was approved for Atlantic City in 1976, well after it was established as a resort destination, so I don't think gambling alone is the explanation. But I think your broader point about increased competition is accurate. Our article actually gives a decent overview, and it looks like the main factors are the advent of suburbanization and cheap air travel. Before the 1950s at the earliest, Atlantic City was pretty much the resort town for the Northeast U.S. The average person simply couldn't hop on a plane and wind up on the other side of the country in the same day. Today, middle-class Americans will hop on a plane to, say, Orlando with hardly a thought. Looking at Las Vegas, often positioned as Atlantic City's rival, from this perspective is instructive. There's no way Las Vegas would be as huge as it is without cheap air travel. You need only get a good view of McCarran Airport and the constant stream of aircraft taking off and landing to understand that. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 20:57, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Broadly, the Jersey Shore as a beach resort destination is more widespread than Atlantic City. Atlantic City specifically only stood out among the numerous other Jersey Shore resorts (like Wildwood, Asbury Park, Long Beach Island, etc.) once it became a gambling destination.  Of course, the OP is not speaking to Atlantic City's status as a beach resort, but as a gambling destination, given his juxtaposition against Las Vegas, which is only one of those two things.  -- Jayron 32 03:44, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * If you look at the constant stream of aircraft from the Nevada Test and Training Range instead, you may start to understand that the desert has "friends in high places". Or that may just be the desert heat, drugs or a tendency to want to look at whatever it is they don't want you to see. Real or imagined, Vegas definitely has the more intriguing brand image. I had to Google Atlantic City's slogan, and I don't even care to repeat it. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:12, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Gary Loveman also ascribes the imbalance to Atlantic City's comparatively low establishment of "convention and meeting business" and available infrastructure thereof (see e.g. Las Vegas Convention Center, Cashman Center, ...) ("This is why Atlantic City won't catch Las Vegas") ---Sluzzelin  talk  22:28, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Another factor could be that Las Vegas seldom experiences hurricanes. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Or important fights. At least Trump's wager a generation ago led to The Mega Powers both rising and exploding. It may have been crooked, but it's still real to me, dammit! InedibleHulk (talk) 13:15, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Atlantic City was failing quite some time ago, that is why it got gambling (after voters turned down statewide gambling) as, really, a means of saving it. It was failing for the same reasons that shore resorts were failing, people no longer spent their summers down the Shore (as much); my late mother told me of her childhood summers at Bradley Beach. [note: I've been looking for years for a way to stick "down the Shore" in an article and have it survive review].  Air conditioning and amusements such as T.V. made such ventures less urgent. Plus Atlantic City had gotten urban and somewhat mean, so it wasn't attracting the shore traffic it formerly did.  Gambling brought some success, but it didn't transform the city.  Two blocks away from the boardwalk, things were as bad as ever.  And Atlantic City is inconveniently located, so when casino competition opened up, it was going to suffer by comparison in several ways. And now New Jersey has online gambling so you don't have to take the Parkway and all that traffic and the ACE and the tolls and stop at the Cheesequake rest area for fast food and gas and the streets of the city and park in a parking deck and walk from there to the casino in order to gamble. And we're seeing the result.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:30, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Not to mention spoil-funs running the diving horse off of Steel Pier... Wnt (talk) 15:12, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually though I think this is the real culprit. In the 1980s Atlantic City and nearby beaches became famous because hospital waste was being dumped close offshore and used syringes were being found on the beach.  Remember, that was the height of AIDS hysteria!  That whole little armpit in the East Coast became a place where people didn't think of swimming and nature, but of garbage in the water (and foul air above it).  It's hard for people to think of environmental costs -- even after they've come due! Wnt (talk) 15:18, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I was a student at Penn from 1981 to 1985 and it was common to take the casino bus to Atlantic City (you could then get in at age 18), and between a meal voucher and a roll of quarters, you could make money on the deal which mattered then, but you had to stay in AC for four hours even if you didn't gamble. And the beach was there but not many swimmers even before they isolated HIV. When I walked around, I didn't walk far.  I assure you, Atlantic City was already screwed.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:44, 12 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Atlantic City is out of the way, and was pretty run down as a resort even before gambling. The earliest big attraction was the boardwalk, which is why we went there on occasion when I was a kid.  When gambling was first brought in, the only real casino competition was Las Vegas, although there were the options of horse racing and then state-run lotteries.  Even until the late nineties there was a lot of traffic from NYC and Philly, each about an hour away, and I had friends that went their, and one who worked as a dealer.
 * The advent of internet gambling and Indian and then state casinos in the surrounding areas pretty much put the nail in the coffin. My friend who was a dealer quit his AC job, and was making $1,000/wk from home until the feds put an end to most on-line gambling.  But during the good times, NJ never reinvested anything into Atlantic City.  The place was basically a slum with a few giant shiny legalized crack houses for those who find gambling attractive.  At this point there is no reason to make the trip.  Casinos in NY, CT and PA are much nicer, safer, and closer to major population centers.  In-state gambling is available on line, depending on state law.  The temporary boom was created by the legal monopoly, and when the monopoly ended, the attraction disappeared. μηδείς (talk) 00:31, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * And you get the same ocean and many more boardwalk attractions elsewhere, certainly at Wildwood. There's just no reason to go to Atlantic City.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:24, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * An American dollar goes further at Casino Rama. In an exchange rate sense, anyway. The house will eat it just as quickly as anywhere. But losing money in an exotic location is always thrilling. Ever had your picture taken with a Couchiching terrier? Well, you're too late, they're extinct. But there's still fun for the whole family in Rama! InedibleHulk (talk) 16:41, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Law: Meaning of 'docket' in administrative agencies of the executive branch
The Wiktionary entry 'docket' explains meaning of 'docket' in law, more precisely as used by courts in the judicial branch. This is covered even by the Wikipedia article Docket_(court). However, it appears that the meaning of 'docket' in administrative agencies (e.g. NTSB or FAA) of the executive branch is different. This meaning is not covered by the Wiktionary entry, nor by the Wikipedia article(s) and I haven't been able to find an explanation. I raised the issue in the Wikipedia talk page Talk:Docket_(court) but was advised that the Wikipedia article is only about 'docket' as used by courts in the judicial branch. So, I'm here! :) It might be useful to read the replies to "Docket" as used by NTSB in Talk:Docket_(court) discussion, it might give some insight into the issue. Note, I'm European and not familiar with US law or constitution, apologies if the question appears trivial on the other side of the Atlantic --Sivullinen (talk) 22:06, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * This give a good list of meanings. Your right too. Wiktionary needs expanding for this word, as it is part of my common administration vocabulary and dockets often come in triplicate or quadruplicate forms with  colours  of white (usually as the ''top copy' sheet), pink, yellow, pastel blue and pastel green paper.. --Aspro (talk) 22:27, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, a good list but neither it seems to include the meaning in the example I took from a typical NTSB press release: "As part of its continuing investigation into the crash of a Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation G-IV that occurred in Bedford, Massachusetts, the National Transportation Safety Board has opened the accident docket, releasing about 800 pages of documents.". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sivullinen (talk • contribs) 13:08, 13 September 2015 (UTC)