Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 October 26

= October 26 =

American Heritage Foundation
This badge (circa 1960s, I'm guessing late 1960s) indicates that it is issued by the American Heritage Foundation. Is/was that related to American Heritage (magazine) or is it something else? No mention if it in our article on the magazine, nor on the disambiguation page American Heritage and I'm not quickly finding anything relevant with a web search. Or, just imaginably, the badge might say something other than "American Heritage Foundation" and I could be misreading. The logo is hard to parse: it could be the torch of liberty, but it could also be a hand holding (of all things) a bottle! Jmabel &#124; Talk 04:44, 26 October 2018 (UTC)


 * John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum: "American Heritage Foundation - This folder contains materials collected by the office of President John F. Kennedy's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, concerning the American Heritage Foundation's 1962 "Register, Vote on an Informed Basis and Contribute to the Party of Your Choice" program".  Alansplodge (talk) 08:32, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * See also Freedom Train. "Thomas D'Archy Brophy (of advertising firm Kenyon & Eckhardt) described the Freedom Train as "a campaign to sell America to Americans". The Advertising Council planned an assortment of other events to accompany the Train, including messages in radio programs, comic books, and films. In each city where the train stopped, they organized a "Rededication Week" for public celebrations of the United States. In February 1947, the group formed the "American Heritage Foundation" and named Brophy its president". 08:34, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I"m not finding too many details about the Foundation itself, but it is mentioned as participating in voter drives as early as 1952 and continuing into the 1960's. (I would estimate the image you have here as from the late 1950s as opposed to your own estimate of late 1960s) And the logo seems fairly unambiguous to me, it is multiple hands holding up the torch of liberty. A few links: https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1960092100 https://www.jstor.org/stable/25549455?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.amazon.com/Good-Citizen-American-Official-Publication/dp/B000VYM9CM --Khajidha (talk) 11:36, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

PS: www.lexisnexis.com%2Fdocuments%2Facademic%2Fupa_cis%2F1520_PapersNAACPPart4Supp195665.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0GtJrU8bBsbsddfYJx7rqW
 * CQ Researcher - Voting in 1960: "A number of private, non-partisan organizations are working to assure a big vote in November. The American Heritage Foundation, in cooperation with the Advertising Council, announced last June 6 [1959] that it would stage an intensive nation-wide advertising drive urging citizens to register and vote, to contribute to the campaign funds of political candidates and parties, and to inform themselves on the issues and work for their chosen candidates". Alansplodge (talk) 15:24, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I've paraphrased most of that at File:Voting badge, circa 1960s (45381557372).jpg. If someone has more to add, please feel free to edit there. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 20:05, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Cannibalism and human sacrifice in ancient Europe
What evidence is there of cannibalism and human sacrifice in ancient Europe, especially in and before Iron Age Europe? FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 09:29, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This evidence. -- Jayron 32 10:53, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * We also have a lot of information on Wikipedia about Human sacrifice, especially for the Celts, but also for Germanic peoples, and the Romans and Greeks. A lot of things that happened in Rome can be interpreted as human sacrifice (gladiator games for example). Adam Bishop (talk) 11:07, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

US Navy mandate
In 2005 I flew in and out of Kandahar International Airport and ordinary security screening at boarding was handled by (very young) US Navy people. As I remember it the airport was run by the US Navy but our Kandahar International Airport article doesn't mention this and I could be wrong.

Afghanistan is landlocked.

My question is: why was America's naval force operating in a landlocked country? Are there basic rules that define the American armed/uniformed services' roles? I think I remember reading that the US Army is not allowed to operate aircraft but again I could be wrong.

I looked at the loooooong United States Navy page and searched for 'role' and 'mandate' but did not find an answer. How does this all work? Hayttom (talk) 15:39, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * 13 years is a long time. Whatever the situation was in 2005 may have changed dramatically.  -- Jayron 32 16:04, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, regarding what "role" any of the military services play is "determined by the orders given by their superiors". Ultimately, the President of the United States is Commander-in-Chief of the entire military, but as he is a civilian, the actual top-level administration of the military is handled by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is a committee consisting of the heads of each of the service branches.  In conjunction with the civilian United States Department of Defense (aka The Pentagon), decisions on how, and where, and for what purpose to deploy U.S. forces are made.  If the U.S. Navy was guarding an airport in Afghanistan, the reason they were is that someone who has the power to decide that they should have been doing that told them to do that.  -- Jayron 32 16:07, 26 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, obviously they were operating under orders, and their commanders had their reasons. The question is, why would it make sense for navy personnel to be involved at airports (or driving tanks, for that matter); why would air force personnel be involved on ships or leading cavalry charges? It's a fair question. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:59, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The US Navy runs lots of airbases: List of United States Naval Air Stations. It may just have been considered most practical for some reason (budgets, available personnel or whatever) to let the navy run this airport at this time. Some flights may have been to and from US carriers. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:53, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, not only are US Army personnel "allowed" to operate aircraft, it is a vital part of the Army's operations. In fact, there is a whole branch of the Army created for just that purpose, the United States Army Aviation Branch, and dozens of MOSs related to aviation (List_of_United_States_Army_careers). Pilots and other aviation personnel are actively recruited by the Army (e.g. ).--William Thweatt TalkContribs 21:30, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Aircraft, yes, but (almost?) exclusively helicopters. I think it is true that the army is "not allowed" to have fixed-wing aircraft, though there may be exceptions I don't know about.  Whether this restriction, on balance, improves America's overall defense capability, I couldn't really say, but intuitively it seems &mdash; suspicious. --Trovatore (talk) 23:10, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The answer may lie in the Seabees - United States Naval Construction Battalions which specialise in building military airfields - who deployed to Kandahar in 2001 according to this. More research tomorrow at a more civilised hour. Alansplodge (talk) 00:07, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This sources [//www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=951] mentioned they were involved in repairing the runway at the Kandahar International Airport although that would have been in 2001 or 2002. BTW, in case people aren't aware, the international airport is also a military base (with 26k I think NATO personnel in 2012) and the Kandahar Airfield generally refers to the same thing (perhaps the military part in particular). In other words, don't let the name fool you, this isn't just a civilian airport. Note that according to our article, the 159th Combat Aviation Brigade did have deployments at the Kandahar Airfield/International Airport at one time. "Since" 2011, army aviation at the Kandahar Airfield/International Airport has included Beechcraft King Air aircraft. On that note, while I believe the army still limits their acquisition of fixed wing aircraft as a legacy of the Johnson-McConnell agreement of 1966, they definitely have them [//www.army.mil/article/137612/army_fixed_wing_aircraft]. Maybe not surprisingly given the significance of the base there, there was still Navy personnel there in 2018 [//www.dvidshub.net/news/296570/us-navy-sierra-rotation-farewells-nato-role-iii-kandahar-airfield]. Nil Einne (talk) 09:44, 27 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Wow, such excellent answers. As far as I am concerned, this is... Hayttom (talk) 18:34, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

How can a small company have more than two billion shares?
Regarding this official record, how can the fact be explained that such a number of shares is supposed to have been allocated? What exactly is that figure about?--Neufund (talk) 20:08, 26 October 2018 (UTC)


 * There's no mathematical reason it can't but share prices below a certain range have negative perceptions. See penny stock. Also the bid-ask spread would discourage people trading it if it's too high a percent of the price and the spread can't be smaller than a cent or centicent or whatever tick size a stock's exchange uses. But for whatever reason this company decided to issue billions of shares anyway. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:02, 26 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you for commenting! "this company decided to issue billions of shares anyway" – What exact nature are those shares to be conceived of?--Neufund (talk) 15:23, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * They'd be the same as any other shares of a company -- worth a percentage of the value of the company. It doesn't really matter if I have 1 share of 100 allocated shares or 10000 shares of 1000000 allocated, it's 1% of the company. Perhaps Kim Dotcom thought his shareholders would be happier with lots of shares at a tiny value per share rather than a tiny number of shares with a high value per share. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106; &#x1D110;&#x1d107; 16:28, 28 October 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure the massive number of shares only happened after Kim Dotcom fell out with the company. See [//app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/4136598/22155184/entityFilingRequirement] and [//app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/4136598/22155183/entityFilingRequirement] which are dated December 2015, the later includes a date of issue. Then see these [//www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/kim-dotcom-turns-mega-and-ceo-responds-savaging] [//torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-mega-trade-barbs-over-hostile-takeover-claims-150731/] [//www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11496763].You can see more here [//app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/4136598/documents]. E.g. [//app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/4136598/21895800/entityFilingRequirement]. I think the state when Kim Dotcom was still involved would have been [//app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/4136598/20706106/entityFilingRequirement] or earlier. (I'm not certain when he really fell out. I'm assuming that he was being truthful and not making it up for some reason when he said he's fallen out. While it's hard to be sure sometimes with Kim Dotcom, there are various reasons to think it was probably real here.)  Note that Mega has never been a publicly traded company, so the concerns which apply to them don't really apply here. There was a proposal at one stage for a back door listing via another company which was a penny stock which had about 1.1 billion shares trading at NZ$0.001 at the time. The listing proposed a massive consolidation and issuing of ~700 million new shares to Mega share holders. But they were valuing the company at $200-300 million so 700 million final shares was maybe a little high but not extremely so assuming the valuation was reasonable. [//www.sharetrader.co.nz/showthread.php?9689-TRS-s-Mega] [//www.nbr.co.nz/article/trs-shares-soar-900-after-dotcom%E2%80%99s-mega-flags-210m-backdoor-listing-nzx-bd-153729] [//www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11444094] [//www.nzx.com/files/attachments/212474.pdf] . Anyway as mentioned in those sources, the proposal fell through.  It's not the first time TRS was involved in such a back door listing proposal but I don't think any have taken off.  [//www.nzx.com/companies/TRS] While the number of shares in TRS is very high given their size, I'm not sure if it's really odd or just reflective of the a company that failed.   Nil Einne (talk) 11:54, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
 * BTW, it's possible the Stock dilution related entirely to the fund raising although it seems unlikely to me considering they went from 43529712 to 2049273912, and their previous fund raising mentioned in the Herald article only increased share volume by ~7 times for $7.5 million and I can't imagine they raised that much more. Unless for some reason the company was massive devalued in the time, or of course, if there was something questionable going on. And they also had to get to 43529712 from the 951662 given in the Herald article. It's possible you can tell more from the documents, it's not something I know much about. Nil Einne (talk) 12:35, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually it occurred to me I must be missing something obvious since the Herald story said they got their info from the companies office. I realised I missed the director's certificates which explain what happened. Two 50:1 rights issues were carried out [//app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/service/services/documents/27DA6349A83B5D9CC4FE835F0C76B635] [//app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/service/services/documents/EE1C72E69BA9CDB96BBFB5D3171DE9F1], so it was fund raising. The price seems a little low, but maybe not that low compared to the previous one [//app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/service/services/documents/F9A36BE42797CF0FF3F981A57718F0E5] and I assume rights issue are often priced lower than new shares which dilute shareholdings. Of course in this case I think they did, since some shareholders weren't interested or weren't able to put in more cash or at least not all they could have. Nil Einne (talk) 12:53, 29 October 2018 (UTC)