Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 March 16

= March 16 =

Why does RationalWiki continue to subscribe to the Christ myth theory despite academic consensus against said theory?
I'm fully aware of the origins of RationalWiki and how it's pretty much a secular/atheist counter to Conservapedia. But I really find it weird that a site which prides itself on fighting bad or fringe science heavily supports the Christ myth theory, itself considered to be a fringe theory by mainstream religion scholars. The site even tens to cite Robert Price and Richard Carrier, two scholars whose work has generally been rejected by mainstream scholars. RationalWiki supports the arguments of these two, even when the arguments of the two researchers are no different from the arguments of proponents of "woo science". Why is this the case? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 07:24, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Why not ask them directly, instead of inviting us to guess? I remember that most issues of the (U.S.) Nation magazine in the 1980s had a small ad in the classifieds offering to sell copies of a "proof" that Jesus had been invented by Jewish historian Josephus... AnonMoos (talk) 10:38, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The New Republic had those ads too. —Tamfang (talk) 02:24, 18 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't know why you say the site "subscribes to" and "heavily supports" the theory. They have an article about it, similar to the Wikipedia article, and it says "It has been accepted by some academics.[3][4][5]". That's not an endorsement. Loraof (talk) 11:03, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * It even has a section called "Academic consensus" which begins with "The increasingly common view of Jesus among New Testament scholars as of 2007 is that "historical research can indeed disclose a core of historical facts about Jesus" but "the Jesus we find at this historical core is significantly different from the legendary view presented in the New Testament".[16] Loraof (talk) 11:14, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I must have misread or something, I'm pretty sure I read an article there which supported the Christ myth theory. Must have been an older/outdated article. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 11:29, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Are you perhaps thinking of http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_for_the_historical_existence_of_Jesus_Christ ? Nil Einne (talk) 02:55, 17 March 2017 (UTC)


 * The Christ-myth theory is a faith based one. The argument is, God does not exist; Jesus is claimed to be God; Jesus the person did not exist.  If you look at the evidence against interest in Christian scripture alone, it is pretty clear there was no professional forger writing well-crafted stories to project a "perfect" being.  Otherwise the Gospels would be very unlikely to report such things as Jesus' violence toward the money changers, and his doubt on the Cross.  Basically, Christ-myth theory is itself religious and faith-based.  I can be an atheist (I am) without being an anti-theist with the need to deny Jesus even existed. μηδείς (talk) 19:32, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * While it appears to be widely accepted that Jesus actually existed, the part of the Christ myth theory that says "if he did [exist], he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity" (quoted from the Christ myth theory article) does not appear to be universally refuted: From the last paragraph of of the introduction to the article "the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate."  Also, Iif I recall correctly, Reza Aslan in "Zealot" writes that Jesus was basically one of several rebels against Roman occupation of Israel, and was chosen decades after his death to be the focus of the new religion of Christianity rather than being the founder of the religion himself.  (I realize this doesn't address why RationalWiki might subscribe to the Christ myth theory, if it does.)--Wikimedes (talk)


 * I'd highly suggest A. N. Wilson's Paul and Jesus, a Life on this topic. They are speculative works by a writer of fiction and history.  The large number of contradictions yet odd verisimilitudes in the stories of Christ make it almost impossible to believe in a conspiracy to make him important at any one stage by one single party.  Why would Jesus, as a "typical" Jewish warlike messiah say that his kingdom was not of this world, or that he who lives by the sword will die by the sword, or, especially; to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's?  Paul, who never was an apostle, seems to have created "Christianity" after the fact, based on a combination of his own Jewish, ascetic, and gnostic peculiarities. μηδείς (talk) 19:59, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Paul the Apostle is considered to be an apostle, though he was not one of the twelve disciples that made up Jesus' entourage. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:55, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Don't take too much notice of RationalWiki. They say at http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Leap_second 'So-called "leap seconds" have nothing to do with any change in the Earth's rotation.' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.4.70.229 (talk) 14:00, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * But that is true, at least in what they were responding to (claiming a constant decrease in rotation)? It could perhaps be stated better but that's really an edge case to disregard an entire wiki. --Golbez (talk) 20:28, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Readability studies
Are there any studies that compare the readability of using things like abbreviations and symbols compared to spelling out the words they refer to in full? A couple of examples:


 * Which is more readable: 10%, 10 per cent, ten per cent?
 * Which is more readable: Prime Minister, prime minister, PM? (assuming that the abbreviation 'PM' has been spelled out earlier)?

Note: in the second example, I'm not interested in whether initial capital letters should be used in a job title such as this. That's a separate debate. I'm only interested in readability. Many thanks, --Viennese Waltz 12:46, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Acronyms and readability are discussed in this paper ¸ and it provides some explanations and references. The cognitive processing load is higher for acronyms. I'm finding it harder to search for the numerals. Most style guides recommend using numerals for 10 and greater, so the only numbers that get spelled out (except if beginning a sentence) are one through nine. (for one of innumerable examples, see ). 174.88.10.107 (talk) 15:07, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Hikikomori and the job market
If a Hikikomori in Japan wanted to come back to 'normal' life, would companies there give him a chance? Or, once a Hikikomori, always a Hikikomori.--Llaanngg (talk) 13:17, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * If you want to get a career-track job with a major Japanese company, then most of the time you need to attend a somewhat prestigious college and be hired right after graduating (or at least that was the case until quite recently). Of course there are less prestigious and well-paying jobs with less strict requirements... AnonMoos (talk) 13:28, 17 March 2017 (UTC)


 * See Entry-level job or more likely laborer. The article Labor market of Japan will help your research; it notes that "many unpopular jobs go unfilled" and a footnote notes a shortage of unskilled labor in Japan.  Laborer jobs typically require minimal prior training outside of the ability to come to work on time and follow basic instructions.  -- Jayron 32 19:04, 17 March 2017 (UTC)


 * As long as you have the necessary skills and the ability to use them in the workplace, it's unlikely you'd get rejected by a company simply because of a past history of being a hikikomori. Of course, that requires that you have the skills in the first place; and if you don't, there's always less skilled jobs in things like manual labour. Alcherin (talk) 21:49, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Legal obligation to look after a sick child
Please do not give me information of what should or should not be done. I just want to know what is happening right now (by whatever country) or perhaps the formal terminology in law. Anyway, how do different societies deal with a poor family and the inability to provide medical care for a sick child? Is there a line between acute illness (like a parasite infection) and a chronic disease (childhood diabetes) and lifelong, debilitating condition (autism and others that require special needs)? Are the parents legally obligated to provide unaffordable medical services and therapy, or can they just provide emotional support until the child dies naturally? I know this is a very ethically controversial topic, but aside from ethics, what is happening right now? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 13:46, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The "formal terminology in law" is universal health care. --165.225.76.95 (talk) 13:50, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's what the OP is seeking, by the sound of it. Universal health care is a government system, not a "rule of law", to my understanding. And in many places, particularly but by no means exclusively the U.S., it's a seriously inadequate system. I'm interested in the answer as well - where does a parent's obligations end, when it comes for caring for a child? Particularly once the child reaches "legal adulthood", but remains totally unable to provide for themselves due to a disability? Can the parent just drive them to the nearest public hospital and dump them there? Which law, or legal concept, talks of parental obligations vis-a-vis providing for children, particularly children which are legally adults (and any limits to such obligations)?
 * I know that Nebraska's Safe-haven law controversially allowed any child to be surrendered, right up to the age of 18. The State legislature (idiotically, IMHO) changed the law to limit it to babies. From what I read, of the older children surrendered under the old law, the vast majority had either something seriously wrong with the child, or something seriously wrong with the parent(s). So where do parents stand now, if they have a child whose day-to-day needs they cannot provide for? Does the age of the child (as in, are they over 18?) matter here? What sort of laws cover this area? Eliyohub (talk) 16:01, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Children's rights and right to health are also relevant, but don't seem to drill down to the particular question, which only would apply in jurisdictions without universal health care. Here is one reference from the USA, such a jurisdiction: 174.88.10.107 (talk) 16:12, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Eliyohub, the point - left unexplained - was that in all countries with a sufficiently advanced legal system to have clear and consistent apportioment of civil or criminal responsibility for the wellbeing of a child, there is universal health care. Bar one. The OP's question asks what is the answer everywhere. The answer to the OP's question (how do different societies deal with children's health care) is (almost) everywhere universal health care. --165.225.80.99 (talk) 17:32, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The universal health care article shows it is not everywhere. India, China, Mexico, to name a few. There are 58 countries with that type of healthcare system. 196 countries are on the world. That's 30% of all countries. No, it's not everywhere, and I think saying so is misleading. And what do you mean by "sufficiently advanced" legal system? Maybe a country just lets nature to weed out the sick children. They can't survive, so they die. It's like a sea turtle's nest. A sea turtle can lay a hundred or so eggs, but only a lucky few survive and dive into the sea. Animals in the wild have a shortened lifespan, because they can be infected with parasites and die as a result. If the parasite doesn't affect the host too adversely, then the host can survive and reproduce offspring. I suppose that will occur in a case without any kind of healthcare, and as a result, perhaps it gets interpreted as "not sufficiently advanced", because the assumption is that humans should be different from animals and allow every human being to survive despite challenging natural forces. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 19:15, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, bollocks. The (unnamed & evil) US has universal health care, just not a single-payer system and not without means-testing.  No indigent American goes uncared-for barring problems like insane or negligent caregivers; and we don't have two-year waits for urgent surgery.  Most clinics will provide same-day service with emergency medicaid applications getting retroactive to the date-of-application within a month.  When I was diagnosed with diabetes at the same time my unemployment ran out a decade back, I got immediate, top-notch treatment.  I had full coverage until I won a large lawsuit against my employer, at which time I resumed paying for my own care.  At no point did I flee to Scotland for service. μηδείς (talk) 19:24, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Except you were the first to bring up a single payer system and few people disagree that Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland do not have a single payer system but do have universal healthcare. Actually as the article you linked to makes clear most places don't have a true single payer system. Even if you include places like NZ and the UK (including Scotland), you're still far from all places with universal healthcare. Nil Einne (talk) 02:19, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Technically this is just the obligation to provide child support, although discussions of child support, both in our article and in legal materials, are primarily addressed to family dissolutions and absent parents. For intact families, general principles of common law indicate an obligation to support children, including disabled children, through the age of majority.  In practice, securing care for children whose parents are unwilling or unable to provide it tends to fall to government agencies, and they typically do not find it a good use of their resources to sue parents for child support; the more usual consequence of parental nonsupport is a loss of parental rights.  The exact contours are a matter of local law, which varies from place to place.  John M Baker (talk) 21:04, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I think this is most useful and pertinent to the question. You have provided legal terms and described how they are related to providing healthcare, which is, on legal grounds, a form of child support. Your answer makes me appreciate humanity over other creatures. While other creatures have to rely on biological evolution, humans have a lot of cultural evolution, and part of that cultural practice is to revoke "parental rights" and transfer the child to another family or orphanage, believing that the second home would be better than the last. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 21:39, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Christian_Science has relevant information.--Wikimedes (talk) 07:53, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks John Baker once again. Yes, one has an obligation to financially support one's child. What remains unanswered in my mind, is that child support is a financial obligation, and it has clear limits. Limits which often seriously fail to suffice in the cost of raising a disabled child, and their often expensive needs. Let alone the emotional impact on the parent(s). What about the obligation to provide actual day to day care? Is there any mechanism whereby parents can surrender their obligations in this regard, and say "I'm willing to pay the usual rate of child support no problem, but I am totally unable to practically care for my son/daughter, I demand they be taken off my hands"? Particularly if the child is above the age of majority? I've heard of parents being charged for "dumping" their child at a hospital or whatever, so what is a parent in that situation expected to do, as far as the law is concerned? Eliyohub (talk) 07:58, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Proportional representation how many votes to earn one seat
Is there a proper website that shows how proportional representation works and how votes does a party need in order to earn one seat in the parliament based on the threshold they have? like for example in Israel, their threshold is 3.25% so how many votes do a party need in order to win a seat in the parliament? How about in Netherlands with threshold at 0.67%? Donmust90 (talk) 15:42, 16 March 2017 (UTC)Donmust90Donmust90 (talk) 15:42, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * It really varies. The exact number of votes will be affected by how many parties pass the threshold. The Dutch have one of the lowest thresholds. In other countries they're usually around the 3-5% mark. You can get descriptions of various countries systems at this website (use the drop down menu at the top.) Valenciano (talk) 16:00, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Note that there is inevitably a limit, by virtue of the number of seats in parliament. Even imagining if Israel had no threshold as such, they would inevitably be left with a threshold of at least 0.83%. Israel's parliament has 120 seats, so you would need at least 0.83% of the vote to reach the "threshold" for a single seat. The obvious reason for thresholds is that otherwise parliaments would be very messy. Israel being a classical example, where coalition negotiations, and maintaining coalitions, can get awfully messy, leading to many elections being held (whenever a coalition breaks down).
 * As you are no doubt aware Israel has raised the threshold, largely for this very reason - it once used to be 1.5% . Doing the figures, by the time Israel reached its' 66th year, it had been through nineteen Knessets. I was surprised to discover the average term was just under three and a half years. Not as far from the four year maximum as I had anticipated.
 * Regarding Israel specifically, in the most recent election, there were 4,210,884 valid votes cast. So given the 3.25% threshold, some simple math shows that one would need at least 136,854 votes to get the minimum (5 seats). Meretz were the smallest party to cross the threshold, with 165,529 votes (3.93%). Only two parties missed out due to the existence of the threshold. One being Yachad, which came pretty close to making the cut (and would have done so under the old threshold). The other being Ale Yarok, which would have missed the cut even back when it was 1.5%, but would have got in if thresholds didn't exist. All the rest of unsuccessful parties didn't get (anywhere near) enough votes to get even a single seat, so the threshold was not what thwarted them. Even if they had all banded together, they would only have equalled 0.42% of the vote. Obviously, if more of the electorate had turned out to vote, the absolute number of votes required to gain a seat would be higher. Likewise, had turnout been lower, it would be smaller.
 * Note, also, that the threshold has an effect, by forcing parties who would otherwise run seperately to band together, for fear of failing to make the cut. The Israeli example would probably be the arab parties, who joined together in the Joint List. So if the threshold didn't exist, it's likely that the Knesset would have more than two additional parties. Hope this helps, and isn't TL;DR. Eliyohub (talk) 16:15, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe also relevant is the D'Hondt method that describes (the most frequent example of) how seats are allocated, given that the fraction of votes for a party rarely is expressible as an integer fraction of whole representatives (and even the most dedicated politicians are not usually eager to be divided into parts). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:50, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The 0.67% in the Netherlands does in fact correspond to exactly one seat in a 150 member parliament.Wymspen (talk) 18:33, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Careful with words like "exactly" in the presence of numbers. That word does have a meaning there ;-). The difference is 0.003333...%, or, for a properly fed representative, about 3g. I guess it depends on which part that represents... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:51, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * See also (if you haven't already): Elections in the Netherlands, Open list (which seems to be the variant of the D'Hont system used in NL) and Dutch general election, 2017. Alansplodge (talk) 18:34, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Looking for a particular book about 19th century crime in NYC
I'm looking for information on an old book I read once online. (I assume that means it was out of copyright, but it might have been illegally posted somewhere.) I do not remember the title or the author, but it was a series of allegedly real accounts of the methods of actual criminals in NYC in the late 1800s. (I may be wrong about the time period. It may be turn of the century.)

I thought I was looking for "The Right Way to Do Wrong", but having read that book, that's not it.

One particular con I remember appearing in the book, is workmen deliver an ugly couch to an address, the lady of the house reluctantly accepts delivery assuming her husband ordered it, later the workmen show up and admit that it was delivered to the wrong address, and take the couch away. Numerous valuables are later found to be missing, stolen by a small child hidden in the stuffing of the couch.

The book also featured details of more traditional crimes like pickpocketing, or swiping luggage at train stations.

Any idea what book I read? I would very much like to get my hands on another copy. Thanks!

ApLundell (talk) 17:40, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * At a guess: New York by sunlight and gaslight. A work descriptive of the great American metropolis by James Dabney McCabe (1882). Alansplodge (talk) 18:29, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Or How the other half lives : studies among the tenements of New York by Jacob August Riis (1890, reprinted 1932). Even if they're not the book that you wanted, they're rather wonderful documents. Alansplodge (talk) 18:46, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * He probably did not write the book you are looking for, but the late prolific writer Colin Wilson who went from "the next big thing" with his work The Outsider to an enfant terrible with a rather mixed and sordid reputation wrote copious non-fiction books on true-crime, mysteries, and crime on certain topics and periods (e.g., an encyclopedia, and a work solely on Jack the Ripper). I have only read The Outsider and the Lovecraft-inspired sci-fi work The Mind Parasites, but recommend them.  μηδείς (talk) 19:10, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

The answers above are not the book I was thinking of, but they're close enough that I'm happy I asked my question. I'm starting to suspect that my memory is faulty so far as that book I barely remember. Thanks all! ApLundell (talk) 13:39, 17 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I can't find my copy of it right now, but a more recent book that might guide you to the older one is "Low Life," by Luc Sante. Herbivore (talk) 22:36, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Update: For the benefit of anyone who sees this question in the archive, I think I've identified the book I was thinking of, even though my memory of it was pretty faulty. I believe book I was thinking of was "Our rival, the rascal; a faithful portrayal of the conflict between the criminals of this age and the defenders of society, the police ". (The 1800s were an era of really long book titles.), but I had conflated it in my mind a bit with "The Right Way to Do Wrong", which is an easy mistake to make, because "Our Rival..etc" was apparently used as a source for "The Right Way to Do Wrong". ApLundell (talk) 20:01, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Pilot mortality rate, Second World War
What was the mortality rate among Britain-based pilots (anyone flying from British aerodromes, regardless of nationality) who were shot down in combat with the enemy, as calculated from 1 September 1939 through VE-Day? If they landed alive and were captured, or landed alive and were killed afterward (whether in combat, or the poor Pole who got lynched by confused British civilians who thought he was German), I want to count them with those who landed safely, since I'm looking for those who died (or went missing and were never found) as a direct result of being shot down. Also, I'm ignoring training accidents and cases of friendly fire where no enemies were around, those being outright errors, not the hazards of active combat where enemies are shooting and you run the risk of mis-aimed fire by your friends. Air_warfare_of_World_War_II gives aircraft losses, but only aircraft, and only over the Netherlands; I'd like to put in some stats about pilots as well. Nyttend (talk) 23:09, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * The Dresden Firebombing: Memory and the Politics of Commemorating Destruction by Tony Joel (p. 183) quotes a Bomber Command mortality for aircrew of 43%. Not having much luck with other commands. Alansplodge (talk) 23:43, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * BTW, I've never heard of a Polish airman being killed by British civilians. I have read The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in World War II but I don't recall such a thing being included. The claim in our article is referenced to The Guinness Book of Military Anecdotes, so I'm suspicious to say the least. Alansplodge (talk) 23:43, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * To accept that story one would have to believe (a) that the pilot knew so little English that he was unable even to say "I'm an RAF pilot", "I'm Polish" or "I'm not German", which seems unlikely, and (b) that no one in the crowd recognised his RAF uniform or insignia, which seems even more unlikely. (Were there even any cases of German pilots being killed by civilians after crashing or bailing out?) Proteus (Talk) 15:43, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I have added a Template:Dubious and a note on the talk page; any help appreciated. Alansplodge (talk) 18:33, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Why are you excluding bomber crew who are not pilots? Bombers usually have two pilots and fighters have one pilot. You're excluding ship launched planes and planes flying from France (during the Phoney War) and North Africa? Sleigh (talk) 03:39, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Excluding them because I didn't think of them. I'd been reading about fighter pilots' deaths, and when I decided to ask the question, I didn't think of the fact that larger aircraft would have non-pilots.  The geographic restriction was to ensure (1) that all pilots were the same side, ensuring some compatibility of record-keeping, and (2) to provide a well-defined example that could be studied, since "all pilots" surely is a good deal harder to quantify than this large subset of them.  Nyttend (talk) 11:28, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * If you're looking for the whole pilot mortality rate, don't forget test pilots. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:47, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * No, not that. I'm specifically wondering about death in combat, regardless of death in other circumstances.  Nyttend (talk) 00:30, 18 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Nerve: Poise Under Pressure ... states "Consider fighter pilots. According to the 1945 report 'Men Under Stress,' the mortality rate for dogfighters was among the highest in the military; the pilots knew that half of them would be killed in action." Clarityfiend (talk) 01:01, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Interesting find, thank you. A pity that book doesn't cite its source; I have access to Men Under Stress and am looking through it right now, but I'm not yet finding any sections that address that issue.  Nyttend (talk) 03:30, 18 March 2017 (UTC)