Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 December 17

= December 17 =

A Personalty's Missing Date of Death?
I was informed by one fairly knowledgeable of many personalities biography that Sally Field has died this year (2018), or last year. If so, that is not indicated here in the Wikipedia. Where else can that be verified. or will it soon be input in her article? HENRY9504 (talk) 08:46, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * That death report was a hoax, apparently . Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:23, 17 December 2018 (UTC)


 * See Fake news and Paul is dead. And as FPAS' link indicates, if Sally had indeed died, it would have been all over the news. Her one-time partner Burt Reynolds died this past year. Maybe that's what put the idea in the hoaxster's head. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:13, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * While Sally Field is alive and well, it should be noted that sometimes famous deaths do slip under the radar. Sondra Locke Died at the beginning of November, 2018 but reports of her death only made the press last week.  However, Locke had all but disappeared from the public for the last several decades, so it's easier to understand how her death could be missed.  Fields is currently working, as she appeared in the now-active Netflix series Maniac (miniseries), and AFAIK, she's never really left the spotlight.  The world would, indeed, notice her death pretty quickly.  -- Jayron 32 16:26, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Another point is that while famous deaths do slip under the radar, I'm not entirely convinced it's particularly likely even someone 'fairly knowledgeable of many personalities biography' will be aware it happened but there's no easily findable news reports. In other words, if a search on news.google.com or even news.bing.com for 'whoever death' or 'whoever died' finds nothing, probably the person is wrong. It's nominally possible it was published in some very obscure news source, or the person noticed in on an official Twitter/Facebook/website or the person obtained the death certificate or whatever independently of any significant news source noticing, in reality probably not. Nil Einne (talk) 07:34, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Are native speakers of UN languages about proportionately represented in top UN positions?
Compared to the percent of humans or countries who speak a UN language natively or some number in between. Or are they overrepresented? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:19, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * How do you define top UN positions? And, the answer is an obvious no.  The most spoken language among UN member nations is Mandarin Chinese, about 1/8 to 1/7 people in the world speak it, and yet 1/8 to 1/7 of "top positions" in the UN are not held by native Mandarin speakers, no matter how you define "top positions".  Of the top 5 languages spoken in the world (natively) only 2 are spoken (natively) by the top 5 positions listed at United Nations: Amina J. Mohammed is a native English speaker and María Fernanda Espinosa is a native Spanish speaker.  The other 3 top languages are not represented among those top 5 positions, though Portuguese (#6), Czech (#83) and Swedish (#91) are.  -- Jayron 32 19:17, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Unless he's talking about the six official languages of the United Nations, which are English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese. --Viennese Waltz 19:59, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * The analysis of the top 5 leadership positions is unaffected by that. Spanish, English, Czech, Swedish, and Portuguese are still the native languages of those people.-- Jayron 32 21:06, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm no statistician but looking through the lists they seem somewhat overrepresented vs. population to me. With other languages like Arabic, English and Spanish more than taking up the slack for Mandarin's low presence of 1 Security Council presidency in 15 and nothing else. The Security Council is where they really rack up the presidencies, with 2 Latin American and/or Caribbean seats and an Arab, Chinese, French, Russian, UK and US seat at all times. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:22, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

US Energy Subsidies Report
I'm confused by this report, Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2016 by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The report says that "In FY 2016, nearly half (45%) of federal energy subsidies were associated with renewable energy". However, according to the numbers in Table 1, renewable energy (Biomass: $4,963,000,000, Hydroelectric: $2,482,000,000, Wind: $2,038,000,000, Solar: $533,000,000 and Geothermal: $209,000,000) totals $10,225,000,000. Meanwhile, non-renewable energy (Natural Gas: $32,652,000,000, Crude Oil: $18,797,000,000, Coal: $14,807,000,000, Nuclear: $8,352,000,000) totals $74,608,000,000. So, renewable energy subsidies ($10,225,000,000 / $84,833,000,000) are actually 12.5%, not 45%. What am I not understanding? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:55, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * That's production in trillions of BTU not $. Subsidies is $14,983,000,000. Sleigh (talk) 18:53, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Marketing majors - common sense?
Does anybody else think marketing majors are a common sense (and therefore useless) major, it seems to be the psychology equivalent for the College of Business/Management. I know marketing jobs pay a lot and a lot of companies are willing to pay to hire marketing majors, but it all seems like a bull major to me. As an example, I used to work for Driscoll's (strawberries) and in the clam shell logo, there used to be a cartoon image of berry fields. Well they removed the image. That was a decision from the marketing department. What does an 8 a.m.-4 p.m. job look like for a marketing major besides that, I dunno.

But in any event, I have some questions. Can marketing be used to market... 1. atheism, 2. reduce crime, and 3. reduce drug use. Atheism, but for example not generic atheism, atheism from an Islamic point of view. Using appealing arguments for Muslims on atheism. Who would hire such a PhD marketing? How bout the White House, I'm sure the Trump administration can want to hire PhD marketing on make atheism arguments appealing to Muslims... How bout drug use? Can't be use big billboards to use rhetorics against drug use, like cocaine? I.e., "All I do, is profit. All you do, is lose money to cocaine!"

So my last point is, if marketing can't do that, then marketing to me is pretty useless. I mean what is marketing useful for? If I started my own company, and someone comes to my door saying "Pay me $30/hour and I'll work as an employee for your company" what would I gain from that... I believe McDonald's pays a marketing team, probably spending millions, just for a simple rhetoric, no? 67.175.224.138 (talk) 20:47, 17 December 2018 (UTC).
 * There have certainly been marketing campaigns attempting to promote all three of your items... whether they were successful campaigns is a different question. Blueboar (talk) 20:57, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Muslims believe Apostasy in Islam is a crime that deserves the death penalty. Sleigh (talk) 21:11, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Not really. Muslims believe up to the death penalty, but they don't have to carry the maximum. Other verses in that page don't imply death, even though most of them do. By the way, here's a real rhetoric that is indirectly offensive to Muslims. It's "Life begins in the uterus." I believe there's a verse in the Qur'an somewhere about human life beginning in the ribcage, like the same adaptation of God taking a rib from Adam or so. So what's suppose to offend Muslims, on the belief "Life begins in the uterus." But to the average person, that doesn't seem to offend anyone. Just image if you can find like 4 more quotes like that, which seem to have nothing to do with Islam, and later connect them that "they all contradict the Qur'an." Yikes! But like psychology, this is pure philosophy too, something you don't need to take marketing course in. 67.175.224.138 (talk) 22:40, 17 December 2018 (UTC).
 * I recommend you read Marketing before jumping to conclusions about its value. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:39, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I always thought the elective courses in a marketing major (finance, accounting) are more useful than the major itself. Now, I looked through a marketing textbook before, and it all looked like common sense to me. 1 such page was an example of making a webpage. It said things like font size, font color, and a contact us button, are all appealing stuff to users viewing the website. Yeah, all common sense, huh? Can we take out all the non-common sense in a marketing course and put them in a 5-minute essay? If all the common sense is taken out, what's left? So we seem to have several majors that sprung off-of existing majors. Another example is Data Science (formerly called Predictive Analytics) and so a lot of companies like corporate hotel chains hire data scientists to predict which customers will be reoccurring. 67.175.224.138 (talk) 21:52, 17 December 2018 (UTC).
 * A well-designed website may be common sense, but there's a lot more to marketing than that. And you'd be amazed at how many poorly-designed websites are out there. Have you read the Marketing article yet? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:00, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah. And you know how Econ and Finance majors are roughly the same - the difference being political - 1 is for the College of Arts/Sciences and the other is in College of Business/Management. Well I feel Marketing is roughly the COBM equivalent of Psychology majors, and so I wonder if some marketing jobs could be offered to Psychology PhDs who have some experience in business management even (like an undergrad double major). 67.175.224.138 (talk) 22:05, 17 December 2018 (UTC).

Buzz Aldrin's medal
What medal is Buzz Aldrin wearing in this photograph? Surtsicna (talk) 23:40, 17 December 2018 (UTC)


 * That's a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:52, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Surtsicna (talk) 00:37, 19 December 2018 (UTC)