Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 July 4

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July 4

Rufio ?

Resolved

In Cleopatra (1963 film), one of Mark Antony's commanders was named Rufio. I can't find any mention of him beyond the movie, though. Was he fictional ? (The link above is for some band.) StuRat (talk) 00:37, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology lists four Rufios -- the relevant one is The son of a freedman of Julius Caesar, was left by him in command of three legions at Alex­andria. (Suet. Caes. 76.). Looie496 (talk) 01:00, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks ! StuRat (talk) 06:56, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

can anyone be CFO?

say there's a small startup, 2 people. one's great at marketing, but is a lying scoundrel. so none of the people he has a relationship with believe in a deal with them. but the two people have a legal entity they own, the company itself. so, the question becomes: can they somehow agree for the other one of the two to "be" the CFO and make binding contracts on behalf of the company? Meanwhile, NEITHER of them have any formal account or any other training...they're just two kids. The same question would apply to everything: chief counsel (i.e. lawyer, if none of them are), through everything else. how do "corporate" roles possibly get doled out when it's just two kids owning a registered company? Please note that while I appreciate as detailed answers as possible to my hypothetical quesitons, they are just that: hypothetical. I am not asking for legal advice.--188.28.160.38 (talk) 00:46, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe such a small company has a CFO. I suppose somebody can call themself that, if they wish, but they aren't going to have anywhere near the responsibilities or accounting requirements of a major firm. So, yes, anyone can call themself that, regardless of education. StuRat (talk) 01:07, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Won't matter who they have as CFO, or not. I wouldn't do business with a lying scoundrel, so they probably won't last long anyway. HiLo48 (talk) 03:29, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

That's true. That's why the lying Scoundrel has absolutely no control (this is the idea), being given only job titles that allow them to use their creativity to give the company a direction, while the other party who is more levelheaded makes real commitments. This is, in my opinion, why Steve Jobs does not address shareholders on their conference calls. Doesn't mean that the guy who does should really be CEO of Apple. It just means that Apple is the kind of company whose CEO should not be reading earnings statements -- and I prefer that kind of company to the kind of company whose CEO knows exactly, to the number, how many Vietnamese babies the company is grinding per sausage eaten, how many cents it takes in marketing costs to sell one sausage to an American housewife, fuck, he even knows the number of dollars in profit for the company that ONE pound of fat actually on the consumer's belly created directly by his sausages represents - and can even consider the risks that the consumers who walk around with $200-$300 in lifetime profit for his company represent, should they go on a diet that excludes his sausages. Such are the CEO's who are not "lying scoundrels" but cold, rational calculating machines, and I equate them with Hitler. I would deal only with companies run by lying scoundrels if I could - provided, of course, that they have their company set up so that they are not the ones signing contracts, etc. My question is whether a company of 2 or 3 can be set up in this way. 188.29.88.52 (talk) 04:23, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Hehe, IP I like you Egg Centric 09:08, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

There is a great deal of flexibility in setting things up. In response to a previous statement... there is no such thing as not having a CFO. If there is no officially designated CFO, the CEO is the CFO, and that is true for every function in a corporation. If there is no marketing department, the CEO is the marketing department. In response to your question, you have all kinds of options with some limitations. Every state is different, so you will have to look it up: some states require that the president cannot also be the treasurer, or that the secretary and the treasurer cannot be the same person, etcetera. As a way of dealing with your situation, you may designate certain people as "staff" and certain other people as "officers." The officers such as the president, vp, treasurer, secretary don't really do anything but have meetings and make the decisions. The staff carry out the decisions as formulated by the officers, but are able to decide how to carry out the decisions. Also, you can designate that a person be an assistant to the actual person in authority so that they can act on the corporation's behalf within some limits. There are all kinds of other ways to designate things. If this has help give you some ideas, I would be glad to help you flesh it out. (I'm a corporate CEO myself, and I have served on several boards of directors.) Greg Bard (talk) 16:27, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

"Can anyone recommend any new romance books that are not in any series that have a love_triangle or mysteries?"

"Can anyone recommend any new romance books that are not in any series that have a love_triangle or mysteries?" Neptunekh2 (talk) 01:49, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

You might try The Fountainhead which has a love triangle and some courtroom drama and Atlas Shrugged which has love triangles and a mystery plot. They aren't newly published but they will be new to you if you haven't read them. (PS, Don't watch the movies!) μηδείς (talk) 00:03, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

"Pismo totemami" of Lenin

I found this odd image on the Wikimedia commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pismo_totemami_of_Vladimir_Lenin.jpg Just what sort of document is this? (For instance, is it school work?) Google translates the phrase "pismo totemami" as "letter totems", but I'm not sure what that means in context. 69.111.79.129 (talk) 02:19, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Totemami is plural and is in instrumental case, which we don't have in English. It denotes the agent of an action. So, a better translation would be "letter written in symbols" (rather than the usual words).

The article uses a similar example: Я написал письмо пером - Ya napisal pis'mo perom - "I wrote the letter with/using a pen", where пером is the instrumental case of перо, pen. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:01, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

According to the accompanying text in the journal where it was published, this was a letter "written" on birch bark by 12-year-old Lenin by means of pictograms, inspired by the way North American Indians used them (the pictograms have been mistakenly referred to "totems"). It was made for fun, and addressed to some of Lenin's playmates as a part of some game of theirs, in which they were pretending to be hunters. The exact meaning of the message is apparently not known to anybody. The text suggests that it might be a request by children with the nicknames "Stork", "Crab" etc., where these are asking somebody swimming in a lake to prepare a meal for the hunters or else they'll collapse due to starvation (as depicted in the lower-right corner). The letter is preserved in the Lenin museum (part of the State Historical Museum of Russia).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:58, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you both! I posted this, with the information you gave me, on my [personal blog]. 69.111.79.129 (talk) 15:43, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

It is interesting to know that birchbark pictograms are found in other Siberian cultures than Russian. See this Yukaghir pictogram. http://cheesebikini.com/archives/000264.html μηδείς (talk) 02:05, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

trying to track down an exact quote (postmodern)

I am trying to track down a quote that is something like:

“ Everything is art: all you need is a frame ”

or

“ What are the limits of art? What separates art from non-art, or what is the minimum needed before you can call something art? Really, there is no definition of art, whatever you define, someone can just point to something less than that and say, no, even that, is art. All you need for it to be art is someone pointing: all you need is a frame ”

(Both quotes, as written, are my own impression! They do not quote anything verbatim)

What I am looking for is the actual, original quote. I am almost 100% sure I have the subject, context, and the "frame" word right. Can someone help me out? 188.29.88.52 (talk) 04:17, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I thought at first it was a quote from this text which accompanies Michael Craig-Martin's An Oak Tree, which for me goes some way to answering the question "what is art?" However, despite the similarity in theme, the text is quite different. A search did lead me to this page of quotations which includes "Y'know, all you need is a frame, and you can call it 'art.'" Astronaut (talk) 06:50, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

You are probably looking for this quote, which is attributed to Frank Zappa:

“ The most important thing in art is the frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively - because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a "box" around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall? ”

I can't say if Zappa actually said it and where.--Rallette (talk) 07:02, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

...then again it may not be what you're looking for, now that I reread your question, but at any rate it is from The Real Frank Zappa Book.--Rallette (talk) 07:19, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Amalia of Oldenburg's religion

By any chance does anyone known what were Amalia of Oldenburg religious views throughout life? I'm guessing she was probably born Lutheran, but did she converted to Roman Catholicism after her marriage to the Roman Catholic King Otto of Greece from the Catholic Bavarian Wittelsbach family? Also what was her opinion on Greek Orthodoxy as the first Queen consort of Greece?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 09:24, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

This confirms that she was a Protestant. Apparently, the marriage was conducted by a Catholic bishop, but there is no mention anywhere of a conversion. According to this book, the couple agreed that any children would be brought up Orthodox, and Florinsky describes her as becoming "the guiding spirit of the Orthodox party", implying that she had a positive view of Greek Orthodoxy. Warofdreams talk 11:23, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

A question on Andrew Jackson

I've just been watching The Daily Politics on which the comedienne Ruby Wax was a guest. There was a piece on the unveiling of a statue of Ronald Reagan in London towards the end of the show after which there was a discussion on US Presidents. Wax said that Andrew Jackson is the only President not to have had an affair. Is this true? 86.135.227.245 (talk) 11:39, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind she's a comedian. For one thing, James Buchanan was unmarried, so there was no first lady to have had an affair "on". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:12, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

In fact, as far as I know, Jackson was one of the few, if not only, presidential candidate to have been demonstrably in a bigamous relationship. Read his article for more of the juicy details. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:15, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

No, it's not true. Although we know about a few presidential affairs, or alleged affairs, most presidents didn't have one as far as we know. Presumably, she threw out Jackson's name off the cuff, without knowing the details of his personal life. As Bugs suggests, history geeks would have found it funnier had she said Buchanan, who is thought by some to have been gay. —Kevin Myers 16:26, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the joke was that he didn't need to have an extramarital affair since he already had two wives. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:38, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

He didn't have two wives, his wife had two husbands... at least until the divorce from her first husband was finalized, at which time they had another wedding just to make things certain. She died between the election and inauguration day, and being already 61, he never remarried. The article goes on about the various horrific chronic physical problems he had. He died at 78. Just think how long he might have lived had he been healthy. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:20, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. Having read the article I think she probably did just throw out a random name, or maybe she had it in mind about the bigamy thing, and was trying to be ironic. The joke fell flat though, because the presenter Andrew Neil and another guest, Gyles Brandreth, took it at face value. :) 86.135.43.53 (talk) 14:53, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Fascist intellectuals

Please name some fascist and Nazi intellectuals and academics other than Giovanni Gentile, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Ardengo Soffici, Giuseppe Ungaretti, and those listed in Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals. By fascist and Nazi intellectuals and academics I mean intellectuals and academics who have made theoretical contributions to fascist and Nazi ideas, and have written on subjects such as sociology, philosophy, history, political science, ethics, etc. from fascist/Nazi perspective. Fascist/Nazi politicians or state leaders who do not fit the definition of intellectual and academic should be excluded. Thank you. --111Engo (talk) 11:40, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Also please provide the names of some fascist/Nazi economists. --111Engo (talk) 11:55, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

That looks like a homework question.

No it is not homework. I am interested in this topic and I spend considerable time in google. But the google search did not help much, this is why I am asking here. --111Engo (talk) 12:12, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I find it interesting that you will have a hard time finding another question on this or the other reference desks that is phrased as an order ("Please name", follow-up "Please provide"). Don't take my work for it -- you can check. I will not comment on whether this has any correlation with the subject of your question. 188.29.150.129 (talk) 13:39, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Drifting off topic, but as a native English speaker and onetime professional editor, I judge (in the absence of any tone-of-voice cues) the phrasing "Please + verb . . . Thank you." to be a polite request, not an order. There are circumstances (e.g. a boss speaking to a subordinate) in which it might effectively be an order, but I find no hint of that in this instance. The phrasing you did not comment on - " . . . should be excluded" - is perhaps more businesslike and brisk, though not brusque. Are you, 188, perhaps reacting to the OP's doubtless innocent (AGF) interest in the history of Fascism and Nazism and subconsciously seeing meanings that aren't there? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.25 (talk) 02:22, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

"Fascist intellectuals"? Have you looked under "Oxymoron"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:44, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

It may sound like oxymoron, for obvious reason, but still even despots and tyrants need to justify their action using scholarly jargon which is done by some knowledgeable people called intellectuals. And fascist Italy and Nazi Germany definitely had economists appointed by the state. I need to know their names. Please, if anyone knows, name some fascist and Nazi economists. --111Engo (talk) 14:28, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

It's not oxymoronic at all. It just reflects a lack of realization that indeed, very smart people can defend really bad ideas. It would be wonderful if all people who did bad things did so for sheer greed, stupidity, or avarice. But that's just not the case — ergo the classic saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. In the case of the Fascists, it is not so much the case that the regimes commissioned intellectuals to justify their existences. The intellectuals often predated the regimes (esp. in the case of Italian fascism), and after the regimes were put into place, intellectuals often (independently) figured out that if they supported the state (and denounced their colleagues) they could get quite ahead. And there were of course many true believers for all of these ideologies, especially in places where democracy wasn't working out so well (interwar Germany) and the only other option anyone was putting on the table was Communism. The essential claims of intellectual Fascism seem almost tailored made for philosophers — they are about the ability of a limited elite to grasp pure truth, to lead with pure knowledge, and to overcome, with force of will and a fundamental earthiness, the trappings and distractions of "modern life". Fascism seeks a purity and simplicity, at its core, and if you're willing to overlook the cost of that, it can be very appealing. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:38, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Even when the intellectuals predated the specific regimes, the views they expressed already served certain powerful groups in society, so they were, in a sense, commissioned. The description of fascism you gave is at best grossly insufficient, fascism doesn't just boil down to anti-democratism and radicalness ("purity and simplicity"), and it is by no means particularly suitable for philosophers, even apart from "the cost". While intellectuals and philosophers can be opposed to democracy and to the "common sense" of the average, the fundamental "earthiness" and irrationalistic mysticism of fascism would be repulsive to many or most intellectual elitists - ultimately, academia has always been about reaching pure truth and knowledge through some kind of intellectual reasoning, whereas fascism is primitivistic and simplistic, appealing to "the guts" and to raw power. Its radical nationalism and collective egoism is difficult to reconcile with the universalism of most philosophy, and its open embrace of total indoctrination and totalitarianism is antithetical to the conditions under which philosophy and philosophers thrive.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 18:22, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

If that's your definition of "commissioned," then nearly every philosophy has been "commissioned." It's a silly definition and a silly approach to thinking about the relationship between intellectuals and their context. I wasn't trying to be all-encompassing in my definitions of Fascism, but the aspects that appealed to the philosophers (e.g. idealism, collectivism, statism) were certainly part of them. Your "most and many" is not rooted in historical context. Read some Heidegger sometime, you might learn something about what he actually thought, about what German intellectuals thought. All of Heidegger's philosophy of technology/nature was rooted in the idea that modern civilization had meant humans had lost their link to the "real" world, and that an only a bold "God" could suddenly perceive reality for what it was. It's not a huge stretch to reconcile that with the Nazi volkish ideology, the Fuhrer principle, etc. The books I cite below discuss this in some detail. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:05, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there have been specific philosophers and intellectuals who have tended towards fascist-like ideas. But you are making a claim not about a specific school of philosophy, but about philosophers as such (or even [German?] intellectuals as such), and accusing them of having an inherent penchant towards fascism (you said it was "tailor-made" for them). That's unjustified, as I said; it's irritating that the fascism of the past, which itself tended to espouse anti-intellectualism, should be used as a pretext for even more anti-intellectualism in the present. And BTW, Heidegger personally may have been a Nazi sympathizer, but there is a long stretch - regardless of how many authors argue that it isn't - between the general notion that humans have somehow lost their link with nature and Nazism. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:44, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

"Gottfried Feder, formerly Undersecretary of economy and official interpreter of the party programme, was considered the representative National Socialist economist during the rise of the party and its first year in power.", source --Soman (talk) 14:43, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Alfred Rosenberg was, I believe, the major ideologue and theorist of the Nazi party.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:20, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Milosevic, the former leader of Serbia, might qualify, having been an economic adviser and bank president previously. StuRat (talk) 14:46, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

While Milosevic's actions have indeed been compared to Nazi-style genocide by many, he can't be said to have espoused anything like a fascist or Nazi doctrine officially. He didn't really have anything particularly noticeable in terms of ideology; as far as his words are considered, at most you could say that he was an old-fashioned Serbian nationalist, actually not even a very radical one.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:20, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Alfred Ploetz, his student Fritz Lenz, Eugen Fischer and the director of 'Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics', Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, could be considered intellectuals and academics who contributed heavily to the Nazi idea of racial hygiene; ultimately leading to the deaths of millions, including 6 million Jews in The Holocaust. Astronaut (talk) 15:38, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Have you read our quite good article on fascism, and the much worse one on fascism and ideology? Both name various intellectuals who meet your definition as they made theoretical contributions to fascism, although in some cases this came about despite their opposition to some or all elements of the ideology. Warofdreams talk 15:41, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

There has been considerable debate over whether Martin Heidegger should be considered a Fascist intellectual for parts of his career. (See Heidegger and Nazism.) He was certainly pro-Nazi for some of it, and much of his philosophy is tinged with things which appear pretty compatible with Fascism in particular. Jeffery Herf's Reactionary Modernism (Cambridge UP, 1984) discusses this in some detail, though I can't say I think it's actually a very compelling book. For a great overview of intellectual conditions during the Nazi reign, Mark Walker's Nazi Science is actually quite good at painting a well-rounded picture. But that is a separate thing from fascist intellectuals in particular. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:38, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Regarding bio-medical science, a wonderful book is Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors, which not only covers the academic theories that doctors used to justify their atrocious experiments and "euthanization" of "lesser beings", but also covers how they presented it all to the public. Anyhow, it covers quite a few intellectuals who defended the mass killing and Nazi human experimentation programs. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 16:42, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

The medical profession in Germany under the Nazis is pretty fascinating even if you don't look at the ones who committed atrocities. It was one of the first professions to undergo "Nazification" (quite voluntarily). Robert Proctor's book Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis is a pretty fascinating account of this. (It is, of course, reflective of a fundamental error of assumption on our part that we find such things surprising — the idea that radical ideologies cannot be appealing to the highly educated.)--Mr.98 (talk) 16:48, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

The "radicalness" part could hardly be surprising to anybody - in fact, the highly educated have always been very much inclined to take positions deemed "radical" and far from the "golden mean". "Radical" doesn't necessarily equal "bad" or "wrong", even under the assumption that both Nazism and Communism are pure evil. I suppose the surprising thing is that a profession that is supposedly empiricist and definitely self-confident to the point of arrogance towards the general public would accept to be imposed any kind of ideology from the outside, that an otherwise internally cohesive profession would accept to be purged of ideological dissidents, that a supposedly humane profession would voluntarily accept an anti-humanist ideology, or that a supposedly intelligent profession would accept an obviously ridiculous ideology.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 17:48, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Interestingly, regarding being an "anti-humanist ideology", many of the doctors that Lifton discusses in fact believed that theirs was a humanistic ideology. For example, they thought that their euthanization of mentally disabled individuals was best for both the people they were killing and for society. Much of the Nazi leadership, of course, was not motivated by humanistic concerns, but many of the people who actually implemented their program were. A modern day example of this type of "humanitarian atrocity" is the war in Iraq, where the U.S. has killed approximately one million civilians, by the most reliable estimates (and hundreds of thousands by almost any measure). Much of the leadership that ordered the invasion was doing it simply for oil money, etc. and simply lied and exploited the public's humanitarian concerns to further their own interests. However, most U.S. soldiers are not motivated by greed as these people are, and are actually over there risking their lives because they believe that they are fighting for "democracy" and "freedom", etc. In both cases - the Nazi case and the Iraq case - horrific actions were committed by people who told themselves that their actions were part of a great humanitarian program. My point is that one can't assume that just because something is horrible in hindsight, that people who committed the atrocity were not motivated by humanistic concerns. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 18:04, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Just because the doctors said that they were motivated by humanistic concerns, that doesn't mean that they really believed in that themselves. Nazism was against humanism as commonly understood, since it didn't believe that the life of an individual human as such has value as such - outside of its belonging to a race and its usefulness for the race, that is (this naturally lead not only to the Holocaust, but also to stuff like Action T4). Nor did humankind as a whole have value (as opposed to specific races).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 18:43, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

The Nazis did believe individual lives had value, but that ultimately the life of the "body politic" took precedence. I don't know why you'd posit that the Nazi doctors were only pretending to be interested in long-term human interests. All of the actions like Action T4, the forced sterilizations (something started by Americans, mind you), and even the sorts of racial theories that led to the Holocaust were in part motivated by the desire to "clean" the human gene pool with the belief that if such "weeding" were not done, humanity would suffer greatly in the short and long term. The eugenicists weren't sitting around saying, "ooh, this is great, to be so evil!", they really believed that their policies would make people healthier, smarter, and lead to a more crime and poverty-free society. Now it turns out there were a few huge flaws in their reasoning, but frankly, you can still see versions of this ideology today all over the place. The Nazis took some pretty humanistic (but flawed) sentiments, mixed them up with anti-Semitism, and ended up implementing one of the great disasters of the 20th century. But there's no reason that one need to doubt that these people thought they were doing the right thing at the time. There are a few very sick individuals mixed in there (Mengele jumps out), but it's not likely that every Nazi doctor (which included virtually the entire medical profession!) was that sick. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:05, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Of course, it all depends on one's definition of humanism. If you define it as "striving for [whatever you define as] the good of humanity", then sure, you can be a Nazi humanist. However, in my book, there is nothing humanistic about worshiping a nation - a nation is not human nor human-like. I will repeat that to Nazism and fascism, individual life had no value in itself; that doesn't mean that it had no value in general, but simply that all of its value was derived from its usefulness for the state or for the race (cf. Mussolini's famous encyclopedia article on fascism, the manifesto etc.). The point of Action T4 was precisely that the existence of the disabled had no value because of their uselessness; there was nothing "humane" about it in any sense of the word. As for the doctors, even the eugenicists - I'm not a mind-reader, but I don't think it's likely that most of them sincerely believed that whatever the Nazi regime commanded them to do at any particular moment just happened to also be the right thing.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:44, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

actually, there is only one Fascist intellectual, ever, and that's Ezra Pound, and he later recanted. 188.29.47.35 (talk) 17:29, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I really don't know how you can overlook Heidegger, unless you consider Nazism not to be fascist (not a totally unreasonable position if you use fascist in the original Italian sense). --Trovatore (talk) 18:06, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Another name I don't see above is Oswald Teichmüller (like Heidegger, a Nazi rather than an italo-fascist). --Trovatore (talk) 18:08, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

On the Italian side, for a while at least, Luigi Pirandello, though he eventually fell out with the Fascist Party, and apparently it's not clear how sincere a Fascist he ever was. --Trovatore (talk) 18:13, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

There's a vast literature about the intellectual pre-history that produced Fascist ideology or ideologies (see, e.g. Ernst Nolte's Three Faces of Fascism or its German original, and The European Right: A Historical Profile, ed. Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber [U. California, 1965]), but fascism only lasted as a significant force for about twenty-five years (1918-1945), and once underway was (especially an an anti-intellectual movement) far too preoccupied with achieving its immediate and intermediate goals to allow itself to be trammeled by ideology. In their own way, Hitler and Mussolini were just as much pragmatists with a purpose as Franklin D. Roosevelt. So the intellectuals who contributed most to Fascist thought did so before there was a fascist party to join or champion, and when they could identify themselves explicitly with fascism weren't able to contribute much to shaping the further development of fascist thought. ¶ Though I've only read about them at second or third hand, there are many French intellectuals, such as Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès, and many Spanish intellectuals who did contribute to the fascist ideologies in their countries, although Vichy France and Franco's Spain was much more conservative-authoritarian régimes using extreme measures than truly Fascist. On the other side, the weak fascist movements in Great Britain, Ireland and the U.S. elicited little support from intellectuals, the most notable exception being W. B. Yeats (Ezra Pound identifying more with Italian fascism than American movements). A German political scientist whose critique of democracy is cited frequently in Franz L. Neumann's Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism is Carl Schmitt. ¶ By the way, I posted a very long answer to your question about Haendler vs Helden (a nation of shopkeepers) here. Ironic that we're talking about this on The Fourth of July: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." — sentiments with which few fascist intellectuals would agree, although I think Ezra Pound tried, in a 1936 pamphlet called "Jefferson and/or Mussolini". But anti-Semitic though Pound had been, he got on well with a worshipful Allen Ginsberg who came to visit him in Italy near the end of Pound's life. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:54, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Accountacy of real estate plummeting

If a company buys a building for x and write x on the books, and after some years (pretty realistic) the value falls, how does it have to book it? Only when it sells the building? Right now? (but that would imply always correcting the value) Once in a year? (when it makes a balance of the situation) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quest09 (talk • contribs) 12:07, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Depends on so many things, not least which country this is in. If the company wants to borrow money, the lender may ask for the assets to be valued. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:37, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Our article on depreciation (and the links therein) may help shed some light on this. Matt Deres (talk) 17:53, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

And you might also want to read Write-off#Writedown. There are Generally Accepted Accounting Principles that are pretty universally accepted in the Western world, but the specifics vary according to jurisdiction. I'll give a rough outline here (based on the specifics in Sweden, but I don't think it's very different from the UK or the US).

Basically, there are two ways that the value can fall: one is because the building is getting older and the other is when something unexpected happens, like a fire or that the property market collapses.

Depreciation is a way to gradually decrease the value of the building as it gets older. The reduction shows up in the income statement as a cost every year until the value in the books (the balance sheet) is zero. Writedown is done when there is a substantial reduction in the building's value, so that it's worth less than the value in the books. The company then reduces the value of the building in the balance sheet and the result is an increased cost that year. So, as Itsmejudith said, it depends.Sjö (talk) 19:27, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Average amount of tax paid by UK taxpayers per year

How much is it please? 92.28.244.187 (talk) 16:37, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

That depends on what you mean. There are many different kinds of taxes, income taxes, VAT, etc. Adding them all together to see the total amount of taxes paid by a typical UK taxpayer can be tricky. Our article "List of countries by tax revenue as percentage of GDP" claims that the total tax revenue is between 34.3% and 39% of the UK's GDP. Gabbe (talk) 17:03, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Far too much, due to the majority of the population being spongers. Scotland is even worse with only about 100 000 being net tax contributors. Sincerely, A very angry if he thinks about this Egg Centric 17:16, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

To be more specific, 1) of those people who pay income tax in the UK, what is the a) mean average or b) median amount paid of income tax per person per year? 2) For all UK adults, including non-income tax payers, what is the a) mean average and b) median amount paid of income tax per person per year? 92.28.244.187 (talk) 17:57, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Bear in mind, of course, that most of the highest earners pay almost no income tax, they pay in different forms. Egg Centric 18:03, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

92.28.244.187: I think this page has the data you're asking for. Gabbe (talk) 18:19, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

The highest earners nearly always do pay some income tax, perhaps not as much as you think they ought to. Unlike low and middle earners they may also pay some capital gains tax. And everyone pays VAT. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:03, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

According to the information linked to by Gabbe, for the latest available year the mean tax paid was £5,010 per year, and the median £2,430 per year. If correct then the figures indicate that it requires all the income tax from 6,786 people every year to support the Royal Family; or 13,992 individuals if you use the median figure. The Royal Family are given an income which is 1,838 times greater than the family of someone with a median income. They consume a year's salary every four or five hours. 92.28.244.187 (talk) 20:09, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't get your maths. The civil list is currently at 7.9M£. Dividing that by £5,010 gives me 1576, dividing by 2430 gives 3251. How do you get to 13992? And I really doubt that the mean family income is ~4300£ per year. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:50, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13984364 Another interesting comparison would be comparing the Queen's income with that of an average UK pensioner of the same age. I would guess its probably around 4,000 times higher. 92.28.244.187 (talk) 21:17, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Yet another way of looking at it is by dividing the civil list (7.9 million £) by the size of the population in the UK (about 62 million), implying that the average Briton pays roughly 13 pence per year to the sovereign. Gabbe (talk) 23:33, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

If you read the BBC article, the cost is £34M not £7.9M. Some say that the £34M does not include policing and security costs, and that this brings it up to £200M. Others count the cost to the economy of the recent wedding, said to be billion(s). It is wrong to divide very large amounts of money by 62 million and then say they are nothing. 92.28.251.70 (talk) 15:18, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not a troll. My post was removed, but i believe it is on topic. Here is it again: I am bored about Oh-the-British-Monarchy is sooo expensive kind of posts. Wikiweek (talk) 21:32, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I am bored about Oh-the-British-Monarchy is sooo expensive kind of posts. Wikiweek (talk) 21:32, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

...So how expensive is she? μηδείς (talk) 01:23, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Apparently, just a couple of pence for each Briton. If someone is so offended by that, we could give him these £ 0.23 so he stops bugging us. Wikiweek (talk) 01:28, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

A different perspective - What was the cost in loss of productivity for the UK of the public holiday for the recent royal wedding? HiLo48 (talk) 01:34, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Not as much as Christmas. Let's abolish that, as well. :) Tevildo (talk) 23:37, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Or, for that matter, the annual Queen's Birthday public holiday, which the UK does NOT have, but many other Commonwealth realms do. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:14, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

In 2010, the UK government estimated an additional bank holiday would cost the economy 2.9 billion GBP, although other estimates vary from 6 bn to 1.2 bn (the latter takes into account increased revenues from tourism, etc).[1] One way of measuring this (apparently the method used by the CBI who produce the highest estimate) is to divide the GDP per year by the number of working days (which gives 6 billion GBP), though this doesn't take into account people who work on bank holidays or people who work harder before/after them. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:50, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Do you pay death duties?
Sleigh (talk) 07:29, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I haven't yet. What's the significance of the question? HiLo48 (talk) 21:26, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm disapointed that the British Royal Family has not itself volunteered to cut their extreme consumption and billionaire lifestyle that we have to pay for. Why not, I wonder? I think they ought to have a standard of living which is no higher than the Prime Minister's - same salary, and just one city residence and one country palace. Still fabulously wealthy. 2.101.2.194 (talk) 11:13, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

The answer is that they are not serving the British people, but serving themselves. 2.101.9.166 (talk) 12:20, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

On what basis should they voluntarily give up anything? The problem is not what they own but how they are subsidized and their tax privileges. It is absurd to suggest that they voluntarily give things away without also guaranteeing their absolute private ownership in what they have. Why should they settle for being less well off while they are still, in effect, wards of the state? Disestablishment and privatisation are the fair and rational remedies. End the pretense that someone like Charles can should and ought to be the head of the moribund Church of England. End all tax breaks and subsidies for the royals. Let them own and manage and risk their estates, and let them sell their estates, and perhaps titles, if necessary. Let noble titles pass as any other inheritance, with the sole provisos that they not be divisible or transferable by sale without parliamentary approval, or let them be held as transferable monopolies on good behaviour, and problem solved. No more human sacrifices like that of Diana's, no more cruel farces like the abdication of Edward VIII who would have simply been a very rich private citizen whose Nazi sympathies and objectionability to the C. of E. would not have mattered. This is what republicans should be arguing for, and what monarchists should be happy with. μηδείς (talk) 02:23, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Stop, thief !

Good evening. Firstly, please excuse my English, it is not my native language (it's French, but since this is the English Wikipedia and to prevent miscommunication, I ask all respondants to please respond in English). And now onto my question: My own beloved Paris is known for the Eiffel Tower, fine dining, high culture, and... pickpockets. When one realizes that one's pocket has been picked, or an unsuccessful attempt to pick said one's pocket has been made, and in both cases one has identified to reasonable surety the offending party, what is the correct response? Suppose that this is in an hypothetical crowded area and the pickpocket can not easily escape. Is it to shout « Pickpocket ! » or « Il a volé mon portefeuille ! » loudly I ask because I was recently on the Métro and I felt a hand reach in my coat pocket, but while I was lucky enough to prevent my pocket being picked, I was not so lucky as to see the hopeful miscreant. Profuse thanks. PS: Please do not allow any consideration of courtesy to restrain you from correcting my language errors. In France we actually consider it more polite to correct an error once and forever, than to let it pass and be repeated again. --Camille — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.166.114.74 (talk) 21:19, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, in English "Stop, thief!" would be the socially acceptable thing to cry out. I seem to remember from O level French that "Au secours!" was the equivalent for use in France. DuncanHill (talk) 21:30, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

May I just say that your English is excellent? The only correction I'd make is "with reasonable certitude" for "to reasonable surety". I don't think there's a _correct_ response in the situation you describe; if there were a policeman in the immediate area, then raising the alarm would be a sensible option - however, there's always the risk that the thief might become violent if confronted, so it may be safer to let him go if your property is secure. Tevildo (talk) 21:41, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Seconded on your excellent English, Camille. I can only add that (writing from a BrE perspective):

• strict grammarians might insist on "on to" rather than "onto" (though use of the latter is rapidly burgeoning);
• punctuationally, one best spaces ellipses as "word#.#.#.#word" rather than "word...#word" (at least if following the widely utilized Oxford University Press conventions);
• "one's pocket" may be followed by either "said pocket" or "one's pocket" but not "one's said pocket" as both words are performing the same defining function here;
• "can not", though correct, seems old fashioned and stilted (more so than your overall and presumably deliberate old-fashioned and educated style) unless used for deliberate contrast - "You can [do x], you can not [do y]." - so "cannot" might be preferable here.

These observations, however, are mere nit-picking (as opposed to pocket-picking :-) ). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.25 (talk) 02:51, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Wiktionary also has Au voleur! (but it doesn't comment on when shouting it would be appropriate). ---Sluzzelin talk 21:50, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

When a crowd has gathered, and pickpockets would like to know where gentlemen have their money, a pickpocket might yell"There are pickpockets !" and watch which pocket the gentlemen immediately check. To yell "Stop, thief!" is to raise the Hue and cry, which at one time in England (13th century) legally required all parties to take up the chase, theoretically through the town and from village to village, and from county to county, until the thief is caught, with all citizens forming a posse comitatus. Those failing to pursue might have to pay the damages on behalf of the thief. Edison (talk) 22:20, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Surprised no one suggested a clenched fist planted on the thief's nose, followed up by a swift boot to the thief's genitals? Astronaut (talk) 10:59, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I have heard someone shout "Stop thief!"; it was in Leytonstone High Road about 15 years ago. What is more, it had the desired effect as the suspect was pinned-down by several passers-by. Alansplodge (talk) 12:20, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I just wanted to comment that I lost everything in my pockets on the Paris metro in the ten minutes I spent on it, and I had no idea until I got off. It was my own fault of course (I was obviously a tourist, and my son was running around and I wasn't paying attention), but it was still annoying that the stereotypical depiction of the Metro was absolutely true, and that it happened to me immediately. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:18, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

In London, most of our pickpockets don't appear to be home grown; I suspect it's a lot easier for them to get to Paris. Alansplodge (talk) 12:42, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Protecting one's self from Stock Dilution

I was thinking about the movie The Social Network, particularly in regards to the stock dilution of one of Zuckerburg's friends in the movie. My question is this: What should Zuckerburg's friend have done to protect himself from stock dilution? I think facebook was founded as a partnership so I don't see what he could have done about it with a contract ahead of time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rabuve (talk • contribs) 22:41, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

As stock dilution says, a common anti-dilution provision is to give existing shareholders the right to buy new stock in order to maintain their percentage shareholding when any new stock is issued to new investors. (Alternatively, non-voting stock might be issued to new investors.) Such provisions could have been set up at the time of incorporation, or possibly later depending on local law[2]; presumably the investor in Facebook could have ensured he had an anti-dilution provision at the time he invested/at the time the business was incorporated, but I don't know the exact details of this case. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:06, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what the rules are, but I do know this kind of thing leads to lawsuits often. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:18, 5 July 2011 (UTC)