Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 August 17

= August 17 =

Usefulness of generic statements in 'Reactions' sections in disaster- and terrorism-related articles
Hi,

Is there a Wikipedia policy on inclusion of international reactions in response to tragic incidents? Several articles I am contributing to have this section but several entries in these sections appear to be generic statements that do not require an explicit statement. For example, see the reactions section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Baghdad_market_truck_bombing, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Khan_Bani_Saad_bombing.

In most cases, several entries can be conveyed. For example, "Foriegn Ministries of Country A, B, C, D, E, and F expressed their condolences," when the statements only differ in the words used but not the essence of their meaning.

Separate entries, I fee, are warranted when a community or nation has made material contribution (for example, Indian Air Force's involvement following the recent Nepal earthquake) or expertise (for example, Japan sending over skin specialists after the recent explosion at a park in Taiwan). These are unique responses, unlike standard statements. Of course, unexpected or surprising responses can be included (for example, responses among countries involved in long-standing disputes: North & South Korea, India & Pakistan, China and Taiwan...)

Please let me know if there is value in including trite statements; I am unaware of any but I am new to editing here. I strongly feel against inclusion of such generic statements.

FelixSeba7 (talk) 02:31, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Life Expectancy and Rich Country
Was Australia in 1900 a rich country? If so, then why was life expectancy only 55 years?

Desklin (talk) 04:24, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I think that was pretty typical for developed nations at that time. Including the Aborigines would probably bring it down, though.  Water treatment and sewage treatment made a major change in disease and hence life expectancy, so you might want to check on when Australia got those.


 * As for Australia being rich then, that seems a bit of an overstatement, as high shipping costs to Europe or the Americas denied them access to the most lucrative markets and made tourism rather minuscule. They could ship to Asia more cheaply, but most of Asia was dirt poor then.    StuRat (talk) 04:34, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Aborigines were not even counted in the census until 1967. That's not to say that information about them wasn't collected at all, but I think that demographic projections like life expectancy related only to the non-indigenous population until then.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:44, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * As ever, an important caveat about life expectancy. It's an average across the population according to how long they live on average from birth. Infant mortality was high in Australia (as it was basically everywhere, by modern standards) in 1900 – about in 1 in 10 children died before their first birthday. If you survived childhood and reached the age of 25, you could expect to live to be 65, and if you reached 45, would probably live to be 70 (dangerous work practices meant that the ages 25-45 were also more lethal than they are now). These graphs of British life expectancy and average life span should give you an idea of what was happening: the life expectancy at birth in 1900 for men was about 45. However, 50% of men lived to see their 50th birthday, and the most common age for men to die was about 70. I can't find the equivalents for Australia, but they'll be similar. Smurrayinchester 08:33, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * As our article Economic history of Australia states, Australia had one of the "highest per capita incomes in the world" in the late 19th century. This was a period when industries in Britain, other parts of Europe, and North America generated a growing demand for industrial commodities.  Australia then, as now, was a major producer of commodities, at that time mainly wool, metal ores, and smelted metals.  Partly because of a high level of capital investment and consequent relatively high levels of productivity, it was profitable to ship these commodities from Australia to the distant centers of industry.  Shipping costs were actually not so high because of 1) a fairly extensive railway network within Australia, and 2) the relatively low cost of seaborne shipping.  Shipping costs (and high wages) did mean that Australia could not compete with Britain or other European countries in the export of manufactured goods, but there was a manufacturing sector serving the domestic market, and Australia's terms of trade were favorable because of the high value and volume of its commodity exports.


 * Life expectancy was lower than today in virtually every country, and a life expectancy of 55 was high for the world at that time. Smurray has explained how life expectancies were different then. The main reasons for high infant mortality were a lack of vaccinations and poor hygiene (though hygiene was improving rapidly in rich countries around 1900 as cities installed sewers and clean water supplies). Many infants died of diarrhea because of the use of contaminated water, or they died of diseases such as measles that are largely prevented by vaccines today. As Smurray pointed out, young adults faced a much higher risk of fatal injury at work, and mothers faced a much higher risk of death during or after childbirth.  Prior to modern medical advances, infectious diseases also resulted in a higher death rate for adults. Marco polo (talk) 15:33, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * You can compare life expectancies in different countries using the interactive chart at this page. Australia's life expectancy in 1900 was higher than for Germany, the United Kingdom, or the United States, among other countries.  In fact, the Australian life expectancy then seems to have been at or near the highest in the world.  John M Baker (talk) 16:12, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * (I wrote this earlier on but events intervened before I could post it: apologies for restating points already raised above) By comparison, the average life expectancy in the UK in 1900 was 47 for males and 50 for females. There was much concern at the time about the health of British military recruits who had grown up in industrial slums;  at the start of the First World War, it was widely commented that the Australian troops appeared to be better physically than their British counterparts. "Professor Beaumont says that although official war correspondent Charles Bean described them (the ANZACs) as being considerably fitter and taller than the men from the British working classes..." As I believe that the many of the Australian population were engaged in agriculture at the time, they did at least have better access to fresh food, unpolluted air and exercise than their British contemporaries, regardless of financial income. Alansplodge (talk) 16:58, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * This user is a sock of Bowei Huang 2 who has been indeffed in many incarnations, including that of user Nineguy, who asked this same question last month, and was indeffed by . Please see talk. μηδείς (talk) 16:49, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

free frequency
are there any "free frequency table" for radio communication in the list of international telecommunication union (ITU) for the three regions? i have searched through hundreds of pdf's online but could not find one.. can someone guide me through please..Seekhle (talk) 11:35, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know where there are such lists - but I'd like to point out that just because some frequency has no current allocation doesn't mean that it's OK for you to use it...in most jurisdictions, quite the contrary actually. SteveBaker (talk) 22:55, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * You got the answer already and I posted on your talk page. 59-64GHz may be free to use, but there will be power limits. Also about 300 GHz and below 9Hz is fairly free. ISM bands are available to use for things like microwave ovens, but are not empty, or free of interference! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:12, 17 August 2015 (UTC)