Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 May 15

= May 15 =

Political assassinations in New Zealand
Hi. Has there been assassinations of politicians in New Zealand? Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 01:52, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I would look through List of political scandals in New Zealand. I took a quick glance and couldn't find any.  Heart  (talk) 01:55, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the lead. After reading it I tried List of political scandals in the United Kingdom and didn't find any listed assassination either. But checking the Category:Assassinated British politicians there has been at the very least more than 30 politicians assassinated in the UK. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 02:05, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

This is indirect, but may be of interest to you, depending on whether you count attempts and whether you consider the Queen of New Zealand to be a "politician" The Day the Queen Was Almost Shot By Yonette Joseph and Charlotte Graham-McLay

The New York Times

March 3, 2018

This much is certain: On Oct. 14, 1981, a teenager armed with a .22 rifle went to the fifth floor of a building in Dunedin, New Zealand, during a visit by Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip.

When the royals stepped out of their Rolls-Royce to greet thousands of well-wishers on the street, the gunman, Christopher John Lewis, 17, a self-described terrorist who was hiding in a deserted toilet cubicle, trained his rifle on the queen and fired.

He missed.

The Guardian said “it may be the closest anyone has ever come to assassinating Queen Elizabeth II.” Decades later, questions about whether the New Zealand police and government had covered up the seriousness of the crime still linger.

The New Zealand police announced this past week that they would re-examine the case because of the public interest... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/world/asia/queen-elizabeth-attempted-assassination-new-zealand.html

—— Shakescene (talk) 04:11, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * The teenager in question was Christopher John Lewis. Alansplodge (talk) 09:16, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

List of members of the New Zealand Parliament who died in office shows two MPs who were shot and killed in the New Zealand Wars while serving in volunteer units and four who were killed in action or died from wounds in the Second World War. However, no assasinations are listed. Alansplodge (talk) 09:23, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * The Last “Political Murder” describes the case of William Moffat, not a politician but a white entrepreneur who was killed in 1880 by Māoris under suspicion of land speculation. Alansplodge (talk) 09:38, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Stretching assassination maybe William Cutfield King ambushed during the First Taranaki War. fiveby(zero) 15:46, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Terrorism_in_New_Zealand? Latest seems to be confidence that Ernie Abbott was not the target. I would call The murder of Joe Kum Yung political assassination per the header, tho not assassination of a politician per the question. fiveby(zero) 16:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Some people also consider the killing of Fernando Pereira an assassination e.g. [//www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/06/french-spy-who-sunk-greenpeace-ship-apologises-for-lethal-bombing] [//natlib.govt.nz/records/22754325?search%5Bi%5D%5Bsubject_authority_id%5D=-3788&search%5Bpath%5D=items] [//www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/matt-mccarten-targeting-vulnerable-has-no-place-here/IOCROZMVIFT7BXB5RLERF7HAGE/] although it's general accepted he wasn't intentionally killed and he also wasn't a politician. Matt McCarten (a trade unionist) also includes Fred Evans (union worker) and the earlier mentioned Ernie Abbott. Note that the place Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne and part of his crew was killed is sometimes called Assassination Cove [//places.nz/places/far-north/manawaora-taumarere/assassination-cove-10601] (see also our article) I think the main reason it shows up a lot here [//natlib.govt.nz/records/22620917] but it seems even more of a stretch to call it an assassination especially since the motives for the attack are unclear. 21:23, 15 May 2023 (UTC) Nil Einne (talk) 21:23, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I am starting to think that New Zealand shows a track record of surreptitious assassinations that were not proven as such. Thinker78  (talk) 21:29, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Or maybe it's just hard to believe that there are some countries where political assassinations (not to mention frequent mass shootings) just don't happen. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:02, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The surviving crew of Le Mascarin named Orokawa bay baie des assassins, didn't 'assassination' mean just any surprise killing until about 1914? fiveby(zero) 22:41, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but the 11th century Order of Assassins certainly had political motives for their modus operandi. Alansplodge (talk) 11:28, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Handley Page Hampden
Was the Handley Page Hampden named after John Hampden (as the article claims unsourcedly), and if not then after who or where or why or what? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 18:38, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * There are two sources for the claim, so it is not "unsourced". They are source numbers 4 and 5, one a book source with a page number, and the other a video source.  -- Jayron 32 18:55, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Neither of those sources support it being named after John Hampden, or anything else. They support the christening by Lady Hampden and first flight of L4032. DuncanHill (talk) 19:11, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, but a different page in the leaflet does support it. DuncanHill (talk) 19:24, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I happen to have a copy of Barnes, C.H. (1976) Handley Page Aircraft since 1907. London: Putnam & Company, ISBN 0-370-00030-7, p. 359, where the mystery is fully explained (NB our article cites the second edition of 1987). Many names had been proposed, some of which were used for other aircraft: 'Huntley' by the Air Ministry, which HP rejected because of associations with the un-warlike biscuit makers; internal HP departments suggested 'Hotspur', 'Harrier', 'Hastings', 'Havoc' and 'Halifax'. The Air Ministry had an established rule that twin-engined bombers should be named after towns with historical associations in the British Empire, although they dismissed 'Hastings' and 'Halifax' for undisclosed reasons. "Honour was finally satisified by bending the rule to admit the small Buckinghamshire village of Hampden, because of its association with the outstanding 17th-century defender of civil liberties of the same name." (p. 359) Barnes notes that the Hampden's predecessors, the Boulton Paul Sidestrand and Overstrand were "named after two totally peaceful and historically obscure villages in Norfolk, thus making the rule ridiculous." (p. 359) MinorProphet (talk) 06:01, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Fairness in publishing crime rates
Wikipedia shows an obvious bias toward states that are republican led or considered conservative. The way that crime rates are published for a democratic city or state are vastly different versus a republican one. Democratic pages have a per 100,000 residents block that show two- or three-digit numbers that look almost harmless to most compared to how you will list the actual number of crimes and or begin with paragraphs that say how a state had the highest number of blank crimes in 19?? or other wording to give readers the idea the city/state is full of violent crime or worse than it actually is. It is an obvious black and white attempt to shame and defame based on political affiliations and not based on factual fairness. To be fair, a template should be used with all the data listed in the same exact manner. Objecting to something that would even the playing field would be an obvious admittance of being biased.Gunpowder75 (talk) 19:20, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Any question? It is customary on the reference desk to ask questions. --Soman (talk) 20:54, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * "Wikipedia" has no particular bias, and strives to be a neutral summary of what all the relevant reliable sources say about a subject. Of course this is not always attainable, and furthermore particular editors may of course have bias - I'm slightly surprised that you find an apparent conservative bias, because I suspect that on average editors lean to the liberal. But I may be wrong.
 * If you think that an article is not reporting its sources adequately or fairly, please open a discussion on the article's talk page.
 * There is nobody whose job it is to maintain consistency across Wikipedia, but some individual editors choose to work on this in general or in particular areas. Sometimes these editors choose to group themselves into a WikiProject. I suggest you find an appropriaite WikiProject - perhaps WikiProject Crime or WikiProject Statistics - and see if you can find other editors who share your concerns. ColinFine (talk) 21:41, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * See Neutral point of view and the links just under its title for more information, and how to comment. But as ColinFine suggests above, the place to start a discussion of a particular article's treatement of issues is on that article's Talk Page. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:23, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * That does not work if there is a non-neutral tendency across a swath of articles. The OP's complaint fails to provide any concrete examples or evidence of the alleged "obvious" bias, so we have nothing to go on. --Lambiam 06:40, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Then (if visiting many articles' individual talk pages would not be useful), the complaint — with some specific references or comparisons — should be made at the general NPOV (neutral point of view) pages. —— Shakescene (talk) 06:48, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * . You haven't shown any evidence of such a bias, or even any examples of a "Republican" city or state being described differently from a "Democratic" one.  And while you claim that the "crime rate" is being reported differently, what you've actually described is one reporting the crime rate, and the other not actually reporting the crime rate.  And it's the crime rate (crimes per x thousand people) that is usually the most useful stat, because it shows the risk of being a victim of crime, and because it isn't skewed by population size.  (If total number of crimes per city was the most important thing, then a city could halve its crime count by splitting the into two new cities, but that wouldn't change either the actual amount of crime occurring or the risk of being a victim).Iapetus (talk) 09:09, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The OP is pushing the right-wing mantra that cities with Democrat mayors (i.e. cities with significant non-white populations) are inherently more crime-ridden. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:27, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Because of course there cannot possibly be any correlations between discriminatory lower pay for non-whites and poverty, and between poverty and higher crime rates. It can only be because "libs" are inherently criminal. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.210.77 (talk) 16:53, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Here is an article that presents data showing that murder rates per 100,000 people have been consistently higher in red states than in blue states during the 21st century, and that the gap is increasing. Cullen328 (talk) 17:09, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a forum to debate the politics of crime; it would be helpful to focus on ways to improve Wikipedia articles. -- Beland (talk) 18:01, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Do you have any examples of differences between Democrat and Republican-led cities? I do see differences between state subarticles like Crime in Texas, Crime in Massachusetts, Crime in California, Crime in Florida, and Crime in Oregon. Whether tables of crime rate, overall number, both, or neither are included seems rather random; it probably just has to do with whether or not any editor has taken an interest in importing that data for a specific state. It would certainly be more informative if Wikipedia reported both rate and absolute numbers. (This data is available from https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/ and https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm if you or anyone else is able to help.) Are these the state articles you were talking about, or are there others that should be looked into? -- Beland (talk) 18:01, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Guinevere and Iseult
In the introduction to Keith Baines's rendition of Le Morte d'Arthur, Robert Graves wrote that, "Extramarital unions abound [in Camelot]... Guinevere comforts Iseult when she complains that sir Tristram has married the king of Brittany’s daughter, remarking that noble knights are often tricked into marriage but after a while weary of their wives and come back to their first loves."

In what story does this scene occur? I have searched The Project Gutenberg eBook of Le Morte D’Arthur, Volumes I and II, by Thomas Malory, but I cannot find where Guinevere comforts Iseult.

I searched for chapters that included Isoud (Iseult) and Guenever (Guinevere), but as far as I can tell, the only time these two characters are in the same chapter is Chapter LXXXI of Book X, but there is no comforting in that chapter. Schyler ( exquirito veritatem bonumque ) 19:35, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I think he's talking about Book 8, chapter 37, where the comforting is done by mail:
 * Isoud made a letter unto Queen Guenever, complaining her of the untruth of Sir Tristram, and how he had wedded the king's daughter of Brittany. Queen Guenever sent her another letter, and bade her be of good cheer, for she should have joy after sorrow, for Sir Tristram was so noble a knight called, that by crafts of sorcery ladies would make such noble men to wed them.  But in the end, Queen Guenever said, it shall be thus, that he shall hate her, and love you better than ever he did to-fore.
 * The corresponding passage in the Vinaver edition is in Book 8, chapter 2. --Antiquary (talk) 20:59, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * p. 200 in Baines. fiveby(zero) 21:13, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

What % of cars bought in USA bought as whole, and what % using loans?
Doing a Google search shows the total credit card or loan debt on car loans, but doesn't seem to show what % of cars bought are paid in full so without having an auto-loan. Who could have that statistic? I realize now there is a 3rd possible category: could someone say, pay a car in 2 payments, that are a month apart? Say 1st payment is 50-80%. Would a car company allow that? And if they somehow did, would they charge a big interest in the 2nd payment? But since no loan is borrowed, I would still categorize this as a non-loan car bought. Thanks. 67.173.182.93 (talk) 22:51, 15 May 2023 (UTC).
 * According to this article, in the US, about 16% percent of new cars were purchased for cash in 2022, and about 60% of used cars. If a loan lacks a prepayment penalty, it can be paid off a month later with negligible interest expense. Cullen328 (talk) 23:04, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Unless borrowing is strictly limited to dealer financing, it is going to require mixing bank lending data with dealer financing. Add loans from Grandma, for good measure. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 12:36, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The credit companies will compile that information. For example, Experian estimates that 55% of used cars are purchases using a loan while 80% of new cars are financed if purchased. There are two possibilities not covered in your question. Many cars are leased. So, there is an ongoing monthly payment, but no purchase. Also, people who purchase cars and own them can take out a loan against the vehicle. They are essentially selling the car back to themselves with a loan, but it doesn't count as a car purchase. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 18:11, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I have bought two used cars with such short term loans as you mentioned, one was even the minimal case of 2 months. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:46, 21 May 2023 (UTC)