Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 November 27

= November 27 =

Government policy
Are government policies the same thing as organisation policies (I.e. Policies which defines the way an organisation functions - I suppose a bit like Wikipedia policies)? 2A02:C7D:B946:A000:F9F8:FC21:38F4:D028 (talk) 00:50, 27 November 2016 (UTC)


 * See Policy and Government policy. Government policy generally refers to decisions on how to influence conditions or entities outside of government, rather than how the government itself functions. Loraof (talk) 01:09, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * But they're still basically the same thing right? Policy, organisational policy, public policy, Wikipedia policy. 2A02:C7D:B946:A000:F9F8:FC21:38F4:D028 (talk) 01:38, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * In the same way that cows are the "same thing" as animals. Some policies are government policies, some policies are not government policies.  Wikipedia policies are not the same as government policies.  United States government policies are not the same as Saudi Arabian government policies, and I'm pretty sure that both of those are rather distinct from North Korean government policies.  None of them are like the policies for the Church of Scientology, Alcoholics Anonymous, or Toys for Tots, which are organizations that have organizational policies, but not governments (and so do not have governmental policies, even if they may be affected by them to varying degrees). Ian.thomson (talk) 01:47, 27 November 2016 (UTC)


 * (EC. Lord, I hate ECs.) Well, they're all policies of one sort or another. Loraof's answer seems to point to the nub of the difference between the two classes of policy. It's difficult to understand what you're wanting by way of an answer to the question. If you want a trite policy=policy, then we're done. If you want to start digging in a little more, there's lots that might be said. I suspect a central problem is that this is an ill-posed quesiton :( --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:49, 27 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, I do think there is a real dilemma here, in that while it has been government policy to regard policy as the responsibility of Ministers, and administration as the responsibility of officials, questions of administrative policy can cause confusion between the administration of policy and the policy of administration, especially when responsibility for the administration of the policy of administration conflicts or overlaps with responsibility for the policy of the administration of policy (Sir Antony Jay, Yes Minister). --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  18:12, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * A good comparison is that a foreign office (like the US State Department) might have a "sex discrimination policy", a "whistleblower policy", and a "policy towards Russia". All of those are government policy (in that the government sets them), but the first two are policies for how the office does its job, whereas the "policy towards Russia" is a political agenda based on what the government wants to do. Blythwood (talk) 14:18, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

"Arrangement" as a painting
The article Whistler's Mother, referring to the painting officially titled Arrangement in Gray and Black No.1, says that "The sensibilities of a Victorian era viewing audience would not accept what was apparently a portrait being exhibited as an 'arrangement'; thus the explanatory title Portrait of the Artist's Mother was appended."

What did Victorian viewing audiences expect an "arrangement" to be? Arrangement (disambiguation) doesn't appear to link to any articles which cover "arrangements" as paintings. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:21, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Whistler frequently used musical terms to describe his pictures - see, for example, Nocturne in Black and Gold and Symphony in White, No. 2 - so our appropriate article on the term is Arrangement (music). This was to emphasise their status as "Art for art's sake", and to escape the constraints of the traditional Academic genres of painting.  Tevildo (talk) 10:07, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

How much is Newton's 1696 salary (£500-600) worth in today's US$?
In terms of how much of a CPI-type basket that'd buy. This says £62,570-£75,084 but the pound just dropped by a ton after Brexit and I assume any value added by British residents should not expensivize quite as much as how much the pound dropped relative to the dollar (since whatever Brit added the value must buy non-imports at times, too). What should I multiply the pounds by?

2. How many grams of each metal did he get? Was it 400 gold crowns and 3,000 silver shillings or 300 sovereigns and 4,000 half shillings and 5 bronze pennies and a copper farthing or what? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:00, 27 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Note that inflation in the UK has not really been affected by the devaluation of Sterling yet (I'm not sure what "expensivize" means) - see UK inflation at 1% as price of clothes and fuel rises, so I think you could safely use a pre-Brexit rate of exchange from a few months ago. These historical equivalences are guesswork at best; "over long time spans, changes in prices give only the very roughest and most approximate idea of changes in the value of money." Exeter University - Current Value of Old Money. According to this, the pre-Brexit rate was $1.48 to £1. Thus a conversion of £62,570 - £75,084 would be $92,604 - $111,124.


 * The status of the English currency at that time was a bit complicated, as there was no fixed value for the standard high-value coin, the Guinea. Nominally worth one pound Sterling (20 silver shillings), because of the fluctuation in price between silver and gold, it could be exchanged for between 22 and 25 shillings in the 1660s. However, it eventually settled at 21 shillings, which it remained until 1971. So at a nominal rate of 21 shillings, £600 would be 12,000 shillings, or 571½ guineas, (each guinea being about a quarter of an ounce of gold) which gives 143 ounces or 8lbs 15 oz of gold or thereabouts, always provided that I've done the maths right. Our Cheque article says: "By the 17th century, bills of exchange were being used for domestic payments in England", so he probably wouldn't have been handed a big sack full of gold coins, just a piece of paper. Alansplodge (talk) 22:51, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I've just noticed that you asked for grams (I thought you American chaps weren't metricated). That would be at 8.385 grams per guinea, equal to 4.772 kg (Hmm... that converts to 10 lbs 8 oz so maybe the "approximately one quarter ounce of gold" quoted in our article was only very approximate). Alansplodge (talk) 23:06, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Americans aren't metricated but since the troy pound has 12 ounces that are c.10% heavier than the avoirdupois ounce but there's 16 of 'em so the avoirdupois pound's c.22% heavier but it's used for regular things like pennies while troy ounces are used for gold and silver I thought it'd be better to just ask for grams and convert back to pounds (not the apothecary pound – that's only for drugs). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:35, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I thought about troy pounds but thought I'd better stick with the bog-standard 16 oz kind. I'd forgotten that the troy ounce was bigger, so perhaps that accounts for the error. Alansplodge (talk) 12:15, 28 November 2016 (UTC)