Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 September 9

= September 9 =

Wolves in California
In what year were there no longer any wolf packs in California — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.156.69.190 (talk) 03:54, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * According to the California Wolf Center: "By the middle of the 1920s, wolves in California seem to have disappeared entirely." (there's some more information and links to more resources there ) ---Sluzzelin talk  05:40, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * This seems most bizarre.. I live in northern california and I have personally seen wolves in our forest areas... 199.19.248.107 (talk) 22:59, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * "The Center is home to a pack of Rocky Mountain gray wolves and several packs of Mexican gray wolves, some of whom may be reintroduced into the southwestern United States. These wolves experience very limited human contact to avoid habituation and to preserve their wild behaviors.

The pack of Rocky Mountain gray wolves is an intact pack; this allows thousands of visitors each year to observe the social interactions that occur in a captive wolf pack. It also gives students and researchers opportunities to learn about wolf behavior.

The California Wolf Center participates in the Mexican Wolf Species Survival Plan, a bi-national effort to help Mexican gray wolves recover in the wild. Most of the Center’s Mexican gray wolf packs reside in off-exhibit habitats that help prepare them for potential release into the wild. Retaining their wild nature by keeping them off-exhibit will help them to survive if they are selected for release into the Mexican Wolf Recovery Area in New Mexico and Arizona. The Mexican gray wolves that are least likely to be released are one exhibit during educational programs. This gives visitors the opportunity to view the distinctive physical features of this subspecies of gray wolf". 199.19.248.107 (talk) 23:02, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

What are the reasons for the opposition to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) by non-libertarian conservatives?
My guess:


 * 1) It is a considerable tax hike.
 * 2) It is a job-killer. But why?
 * 3) It is socialized medicine, and anything socialized = communism = bad (my comment: so are Medicare and Medicaid)
 * 4)  People are not entitled to health  and  Why do I have to pay for other people's health problem?  (same reasons as those of libertarians)

70.95.44.93 (talk) 06:29, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Each non-libertarian conservative seems to have their own reasons. Orrin Hatch believes Obamacare is fundamentally unconstitutional as a violation of the interstate commerce clause, Roy Blunt believes it is destined to fail, and Susan Collins wants the economic burden of Obamacare to fall on companies more slowly, as well as get rid of an associated tax hike . Those are just a few examples. The accusation that Obamacare is a job killer is covered in the "Employer mandate and part-time work" section of the Obamacare article you linked. It's basically a supply-and-demand argument - if you increase the cost of something, you decrease the sales. Maybe. In this case the "something" is employees, and the "sales" are job offers. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:06, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Obamacare happened because America couldn't stomach Britain's well-liked system. It's a half-assed half measure. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 09:37, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Do they not simply oppose, on principle, anything proposed by a liberal, black democrat? Wymspen (talk) 09:26, 9 September 2016
 * Nope... They actually have substantive objections. Blueboar (talk) 11:36, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * According to Bill O'Reilly (an American television host, author, historian, journalist, syndicated columnist, and a political commentator): "Obamacare is a pure income redistribution play... income redistribution is a hallmark of socialism and we in America are now moving in that direction." He continues: "...the case is simple. Businesses contract so there are fewer jobs and the massive federal debt rises - diminishing the value of the dollar. That is what an entitlement culture and income redistribution bring."  Alansplodge (talk) 10:16, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, strictly, a conservative would try to conserve the status quo, so he or she might oppose Obabmacare on this general principle. They probably also opposed Medicare and Medicaid, and maybe coming down from the trees, but those have now been grandfathered in. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:37, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It all depends on which conservative you talk to. The hotbed political commentators and shock jocks of the neo-conservative movement such as Sean Hannity will claim that Obamacare is the first step towards the "failed policies" of European socialism. Others claim that the ACA is a first step towards single payer - that the people who put it into effect knew it would collapse overtime due to insurers opting out, so the system would need to be overhauled to mandate government intervention (citation can be provided for this claim if necessary).--WaltCip (talk) 12:58, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Job-killer: as noted above, ACA includes a requirement that most non-tiny companies include health-insurance benefits for employees working 30+ hours per week. It's now quite common that jobs in my field (academic librarianship) be only part-time, with some institutions hiring two 20-hour-per-week positions when before the ACA mandate they would have hired one full-time position, and an individual will not be hired for both positions simultaneously.  I have no idea how widespread this practice is outside academia; I can merely bring in anecdotal evidence, with family members encountering 29-hour-per-week positions being hired by retailers.  Nyttend (talk) 14:31, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

I think it was just a convenient way to attack Obama. If he presented the country with the first roads, settled cities, or making fire he probably would have faced similar opposition. HighInBC Need help? 14:33, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Right, because it's impossible for someone to disagree with our Lord and Savior Barack Obama. Sir Joseph (talk) 14:39, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * No, this was a valid point. Consider Obama's Supreme Court nominee.  The Republicans could hold hearings, and reject anyone they thought was too liberal, but instead they refuse to even consider anyone nominated by Obama.  Also, health care programs similar to Obama's have been proposed by Republicans before, and they were more acceptable to Republicans then.  Many of the other reasons simply seem to be excuses, not real reasons the Republicans believe, which I suspect is #4, that rich and middle-class people should not be forced to pay for the health care of the poor.  Admitting that makes them look bad, though (picture an ad with a rich man arguing that, juxtaposed with a dying child, who could have easily been saved with medical treatment), so they find other arguments.  This is similar to how they want to keep minorities from voting, but can't make that argument, so instead put in a number of laws to prevent minorities from voting, but use other justifications, like "preventing voter fraud", despite no evidence that voter fraud has affected an election outcome.


 * Also note that relative to the old system, where those without health insurance went to emergency rooms and the hospitals then charged everyone who did have insurance more to make up for it, Obamacare isn't any worse for the average taxpayer than that. However, conservatives might have hoped to eventually end any health care for the poor, say by a bill entitled "Saving inner-city hospitals from economic distress", and Obamacare makes that more difficult to accomplish.   StuRat (talk) 14:55, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It's a form of Bulverism - the opposition against Obama is mostly rooted in the fact that hard-line Republicans believe that Obama is attempting to destroy the country, so any form of legislation proposed or candidate favored by him must therefore be voted down, regardless of whether or not the substance of that being proposed would actually be preferred by the Republicans in a vacuum.--WaltCip (talk) 16:43, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That led to the rank-and-file Republicans getting fed up with their party's leadership for doing nothing, which led to Trump. So Obama's responsible for that too (plus they still haven't indicted him for killing Cock Robin). Clarityfiend (talk) 21:57, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * The opponents of Obamacare allege themselves to be Christians. Their brand of Christianity does not extend to helping the disadvantaged. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:22, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * More unreferenced trollish bullshit. The fact that a purported Christian specifically disagrees with this kind of system in no way implies that said Christian does not believe in helping the "disadvantaged". There are countless numbers of ways to help the "disadvantaged".--William Thweatt TalkContribs 02:41, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Trickle-down, for instance. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:43, 10 September 2016 (UTC)


 * As Will Rogers noted, money doesn't trickle down, it trickles up. That type of income redistribution, the O'Reillys of the world are totally in favor of. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:33, 10 September 2016 (UTC)


 * To be more precise, it trickles in all directions, but the net flow of money is from the poor to the rich, at least under most circumstances. We seemed to have had an unusual period in the US where, due to strong unions and lack of foreign competition following WW2 (because other economies had been wrecked), and a high progressive tax rate, we were able to reverse that trend temporarily, but now conditions have changed and we are back to the dominant pattern. StuRat (talk) 22:49, 10 September 2016 (UTC)


 * The answer to the question is Social Darwinism. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:39, 10 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I am inclined to think along those lines, but not precisely. Looking up there are references to the concept .  However, there are some big problems with trying to apply it literally.  To begin with, the Republicans have a poor track record of believing in Darwinism at all!  (creation science, etc. ... though a student of history will note that Social Darwinism predates Darwin's ideas - see Herbert Spencer)  Though America was the birthplace of eugenics, it isn't clear to me that they actually envision this as a eugenic program, but more as a way to intimidate the public into taking any job for any pay and being willing to spend every hour of every day doing what is needed to be worthy of it, whether it is liking their employer on social media or refraining from putting bumper stickers for the wrong political party on their vehicle.  I would suggest it is more a cultural memory of slavery; the Republicans simply think that those at the bottom need to be terrorized, and that part of this is that they are expendable.  They don't see the lower class as a source of wealth from all they do, even though they do most of the hard work; they see them as leeches sucking off land and resources that by right belong entirely to the wealthy.  The country has a very long tradition, dating from before slavery was made a thing, of kicking the poor lower and lower until they are utterly abject, not with the serious intent of exterminating them entirely but as a way of exploiting them maximally.  But maximally on a per-master basis with each owner thinking only for himself, not an overall-throughout-society basis, so this is quite inefficient.  This is reflected in the Obamacare opposition in that there's really very little if any thought being paid to how a "replacement" system would actually lower costs for employers, or how they would deal with the consequences of a sicker labor force.  Each Republican is empathizing only with the notion that they are paying the bill for someone else - they don't even think about how that bill is made, about very non-libertarian practices of market exclusivity that go far beyond even the patent system.  It doesn't bother them that the sick are being taxed for as much as a thousand times the cost of the medicine in order to pay for marketers and lawyers and chiselers and only a tiny fraction of actual research or safety testing.  They simply empathize with the guy getting the bill and everything else is Not Their Problem. Wnt (talk) 20:25, 10 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Concerning how menial laborers seem to be regarded as leeches rather than as a source of wealth by fiscal conservatives, it has always seemed to me based on a huge failure of logic. Specifically, they seem to confuse the cost of a worker for his value. Basically, since supply-and-demand would drive the price of menial labor to almost nothing, many seem to assume that it is therefore worth nothing. And thus you get all the anger over unions demanding higher pay, or workers protesting for higher minimum wage. Of course anyone who thinks about it should know menial labor is not worth nothing, because industries that depend on it cannot, in principle, make any money without it. I guess you could also call it an is ought fallacy. Fiscal conservatives think that minimum wage or less is what these workers ought to earn because that is what they can earn, conveniently ignoring that the price of labor has more to do with bargaining power than economic benefit. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:32, 11 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Two developments have made the cost much lower, recently. One is technology, allowing many manual labor tasks to be performed by machine.  So, the labor only costs whatever amount makes it cheaper than doing the same thing with machines.  The other development is free trade and low transportation costs, which together are the modern equivalent of slavery.  That is, you can find some nation somewhere which allows paying workers a starvation wage, and make your product there. StuRat (talk) 14:36, 13 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I'd say it's as simple as looking at what is in their own, extremely short-term interest. That would be no taxes on the rich and minimal government.  Of course, that leads to the infrastructure falling apart, schools that can't provide competent workers, and a military that can't protect American interests, all of which results in the undermining of the US economy and eventually collapse of the government, but perhaps then they plan to move elsewhere, along with their wealth, and repeat the cycle there. StuRat (talk) 23:00, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Miles and metres together in UK media
For some reason I don't remember, I just now went looking for coverage of the Kelston toll road. Many news articles about this subject, e.g., refer to the toll road's length in metres and to the detour's length in miles, and the alternate lengths are provided only in parentheses. Is this common in UK media, using both metres and miles in the same article? I can't understand why they'd not describe it as a  or describe it as a <400-m (quarter mile) toll road for a 16-km (10 mi) detour>, because switching from one to the other seems confusing. Nyttend (talk) 14:35, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * If you're talking in miles the distance in miles will come first because we don't use kilometres in common speech or on road signs.  Because of EU regulation shorter distances may appear on some road signs (e.g. bridge heights) in metres.   With Brexit, some people are looking forward to the day when market traders can once again weigh their fruit and vegetables out in pounds and ounces without going to jail. 80.44.167.123 (talk) 15:34, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, we do use a mish-mash of metric and imperial units, more or less at random, logic be damned. Snooker commentator Ted Lowe once famously said "that was inches away from being millimetre-perfect". --Nicknack009 (talk) 15:55, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * But this doesn't really explain why metres were used for the length (not height) distance of the bypass road considering it's fairly unlikely EU regulations would affect a road built by a private party without even getting planning permission and possibly causing damage to archaeological remains and who wasn't even able to pay the full VAT or reinstatement costs. Nil Einne (talk) 12:49, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * At a guess and looking at that specific article, the new road was only a short distance and the planners, surveyors and road builders would all have used metres during the construction (as an example, see this road planning document which says on page 32: "Phase 1B, consists of approximately 1,800m of new dual carriageway construction"). However, as stated above, road distance signage is in miles in the UK, so anybody advertising the distance saved by the new road would have given the distance in miles, because kilometres aren't used for road distances. Sorry if it's confusing but there you are. Basically, we are almost fully metricated except for road distances and speeds, also beer and milk which continue to be sold in pints. These are cultural shibboleths that no sane politician would attempt to change. Conversationally, many older people still know their height in feet and inches and their weight in stones and pounds, but these units haven't been taught in schools since the 1960s, so younger folk are less familiar with them. Alansplodge (talk) 23:19, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Was almost everything measured in stones or just people? Would the hospital give a very overweight newborn's weight as 1 stone and x pounds? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:10, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Currently just people, but I'm old enough to remember potatoes being sold in bulk by the stone, but that stopped in the 1960s as far as I know. Everything else was pounds and hundredweight (cwt) for coal. Babies used to be pounds but the official weight is now given in kilograms and you have to work out the Imperial equivalent yourself if you feel the need. I'm not sure how big you have to be to be counting in stones, having thirty-something pound children doesn't sound wrong to me. Alansplodge (talk) 13:53, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The results of partial and aborted metrication in the United Kingdom. The IP above is grossly exaggerating when they say people go to jail for not using metric units. (This does not happen. See 'Metric Martyrs', the Daily Fail name for those refusing to use metric units) Fgf10 (talk) 17:40, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * The Europeans must have thought anyone refusing to use metric must be stoned. I have to give them a hand for risking it, as I am amazed they could maintain their resistance furlong. StuRat (talk) 14:35, 10 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Live weight is in stones and pounds (1 stone = 14 lb).  A baby weighs in at eight pounds, not four kilos.   That one - stone baby must have been a baby elephant.   Deadweight was in pounds, hundredweight (1 cwt = 112 lb) and long tons (1 ton = 20 cwt). 78.146.221.227 (talk) 14:25, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Getting a bit mired here, but this WHO chart says that the top birth-weight for a full-term boy is 5.3 kg, although 99.6% of babies will weigh less. Note that this chart is intended for use in the UK and is entirely metric. Alansplodge (talk) 15:11, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It's simple - we use millimeters for anything up to about half an inch, inches for anything up to a foot, feet for anything up to a couple meters, and meters for anything up to half a mile, then miles until it's big enough for light years to be meaningful. MChesterMC (talk) 08:38, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Sarajevo
This is bothering me but I seem to be grasping at straws what to type in an internet search? Does anyone know the famous statue on Sarajevo hill that's been in movies like Behind Enemy Lines? Can one visit it today?Lihaas (talk) 17:05, 9 September 2016 (UTC)


 * The winged statue? Apparently it's in Háj, Slovakia. See This website on Rožňava and its surroundings, for example. ---Sluzzelin talk  17:30, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * According to Haj: A Road To Magical Waterfalls, it was made for the film and then donated to the town by the film company, complete with bullet holes. It's in the cemetery at the Catholic church. There's a map here. Alansplodge (talk) 01:16, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * it's not real?! Damn Hollywood! I guess it's the shot heard around the world to see then and Olympics stadiaLihaas (talk) 07:11, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Not real and not even in the same country - it's 800 km (500 miles) away from Sarajevo. Alansplodge (talk) 09:27, 10 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Not real ! That's enough to make you want to go out and shoot a random archduke. StuRat (talk) 22:44, 10 September 2016 (UTC)