Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 July 16

= July 16 =

Peace
Why cant humans just live in peces?--213.205.242.206 (talk) 00:17, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Because that gets boring after a while. Blueboar (talk) 01:09, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * "Peace" comes from the Latin pacem by way of French. "Pece" is the source of "piece". As with the old story of the tombstone for a guy who was dismembered through some horrific accident: "Rest In Pieces". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:49, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Hm, my handiest dictionary derives medieval Latin pecia / petia from unattested Gaulish pettia. I can only conjecture why such a Gaulish word is inferred: because Latin petia is found only in Gaul and Italy, I guess. —Tamfang (talk) 05:20, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Because rulers, who decide on whether or not to go to war, do not bear its costs. —Tamfang (talk) 05:20, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * There are occasional fun exceptions, such as Mussolini, the Ceaușescus, Gaddafi, etc. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:30, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * On a semi-serious note, war has been a primary motivator for technological advancement and civilization development -- you gotta stick together with others of "your own kind" and put forth a collaborative effort and get creative -- or die trying ("in battle, second-best isn't good enough"). —2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 07:00, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Humans have never lived in peace. Never once in human history has there been a time where no humans were fighting. The question should be: "Why do humans fight?" Humans fight over sex, money (including luxuries), and power, just to start. There are many more abstract excuses to fight, such as fear of anything different. If you are interested in human behavior, it has been a well-researched field of study for over 3,000 years. Some study it to try and bring peace. Some study it to try and bring war. Some try to make others happy. Some try to suppress everyone else. In the end, it is all about studying how humans naturally behave, which is not consistently peaceful. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 17:37, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Always be careful to never say "always" or "never". The violent nature of humans is one of the things that religion has sought to deal with, with moral laws and the like. But it doesn't seem to sink in. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:40, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * To answer the question literally, “peces” means “fish.” Fish are generally too small to enclose an intact human, and even if a very small human were placed in the stomach of a very large fish, survival would be very difficult due to the low oxygen level and the presence of acidic digestive fluid. Of course the counterexample is Noah, who according to the Bible survived for three days and three nights in the belly of a large fish. Revisionists have tried to make it a whale, but that would be no improvement in survivability. A sealed diving suit and an air supply would greatly extent survival time. Edison (talk) 14:15, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Jonah, actually. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:25, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Reminds me of the old joke: "In total, how many animals did Moses put in the ark?". 2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 23:30, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * No animals, just a couple of tablets. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:08, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * See Pacifism for some of the issues with non-violence. Alansplodge (talk) 11:23, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * At any one time, there will be some humans in violent conflict with other humans. But the VAST majority of humans are not in any such situation.  Violence is newsworthy, which is why we hear about it all the time.  But it is so misleadingly unrepresentative as to beggar belief.  So, the big picture is that humans always have lived and always will live in peace.  Do the few exceptions change this?  Not in my opinion.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  03:11, 20 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The way I heard it, Moses comes back down the mountain and the Israelites ask him "What was G-d's advice?"
 * "Keep taking the tablets". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.26.146 (talk) 13:09, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Podgis homicides, 1982
I'm drafting an article on the 1982 Podgis homicide case, which I believe is WP:NOTABLE. I found a copy-and-paste in Google Groups of an important 2002 news update from "The Daily News" (a Canadian newspaper, presumably), but unfortunately the original news link is dead, and I can't find an archived copy online. Also, it appears that one of the perpetrators, Scott Robert Franz, died in 1997 after being paroled, but I can't find a secondary source for that. Any advice would be welcome. --Muzilon (talk) 05:15, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't think there is any Canadian newspaper, or not one of any size, called the Daily News. Maybe you could contact the New York Daily News or find a public library that archives it, and see if the article is theirs&mdash;if the crime was in New Jersey, that would make sense.  If you can confirm the original publication date and page, you can cite the article for Wikipedia that way, using  ; you don't need to have an online copy. --76.69.47.228 (talk) 09:39, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * On digging further, I think the paper in question may have been the Halifax Daily News, a Canadian paper that is now defunct.--Muzilon (talk) 10:10, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I failed to notice the link to canada.com in the posting you linked. Since the URL also has "/halifax" in it, I agree that it must be the Halifax Daily News (which I hadn't heard of before). --76.69.47.228 (talk) 19:47, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Frank T. Green
What was the birthdate and deathdate of Frank T. Green mentioned here.KAVEBEAR (talk) 07:34, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * To save everyone else having to look at your source... it seems Mr Green was the photographer who accompanied Katherine Routledge on her expedition to Easter Island in 1914. Your source specifies he was from Glasgow, and was 25 years old at the time, so he must have been born around 1889. I've had a quick look at the genealogy sites like FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com, but unfortunately there were many Frank Greens born in the UK around 1889, so it may be difficult to identify him without more information.--Muzilon (talk) 03:15, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * This source mentions that "ship's engineer Frank T. Green got drunk", so photography may have been just a hobby. Alansplodge (talk) 11:05, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Apologies, I see that is explained in KAVEBEAR's link above. Alansplodge (talk) 11:19, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Which of the 100 richest communities in America lean Republican?
[List https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-hundred-richest-places/]

I am wondering how many of these rich communities lean Republican. (Also want to exclude consideration of support or opposition to Trump from this question as the last presidential election likely turned voting behavior upside down especially in places in Northern VA.) By my count, the communities in Texas and Virginia and one community each from Kansas and Orange County. Any others? Muzzleflash (talk) 11:41, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * This is somewhat difficult to answer. Due to gerrymandering, communities (towns) are often split between more than one election district.  This means that you can get a scenario where every single member of a community (as a community) leans towards party X,  but because they are split up into two (or more) districts that lean towards party Y their community sentiment is not reflected in the election results. This messes with the statistics.
 * That said, there have been studies which indicate that wealth has little to do with party affiliation. Rich people in the predominantly Democrat leaning "coastal" states tend to vote for Democrats, while rich people from the predominantly Republican leaning "fly over" states tend to vote for Republicans... and in roughly the same proportion as working class voters.  Blueboar (talk) 14:03, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Most of our articles on US counties have tables providing presidential election results for the last several decades. Obviously these won't provide town-by-town data, but at least you know that they'll have identical boundaries in virtually all cases in living memory: no chance of gerrymandering the boundaries to compensate for undesired demographic changes.  See Arlington_County,_Virginia and Greeley_County,_Kansas for a couple of examples from radically different localities.  Nyttend (talk) 02:22, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I disagree somewhat with Blueboar, who seems to imply that the granularity of election result data is limited to "districts" larger than towns, and that somehow complicates such analysis. In California (and in most or all other states), detailed election results are available at the precinct level, which is far more detailed than the town level. In California, these results are posted on the website of the country registrar of voters. Even before the internet, they were available as computer printouts. In my town of 20,000 people, I can compare the election results in a neighborhood consisting entirely of mobile homes with the results in a neighborhood with less expensive homes built 50 or 60 years ago, and with other neighborhoods with larger modern homes built in the last 10 to 20 years. I have done this type of analysis many times over the years as a volunteer for several political campaigns. The data is available, and there are tools that political activists can use to do this type of analysis. It just takes some work. Cullen328   Let's discuss it  02:17, 19 July 2018 (UTC)