Humanities desk
< October 21	<< Sep \| October \| Nov >>	October 23 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 27

Checking edit

hey, i'm working on the following page privacy policy . Can an experienced Wikipedian, take a look at the edits and let me know what they think? Thank you.(Kanesham 16:44, 27 October 2011 (UTC))

NRHP reference number for Des Moines Beach Park (Des Moines, Washington)

I'm trying to find the NRHP reference number for Des Moines Beach Park (Des Moines, Washington). I can find lots of information about the park, and many assertions that it is on the NRHP, but I can't find its reference number anywhere.

http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreghome.do?searchtype=natreghome, where I'd expect to be able to get this, seems useless. I've tried entering the names of several places that are definitely NRHP listed, and none of them turn up anything at all.

Anyone have a way to get the number? - Jmabel | Talk 06:21, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The NHRP reference number is 353480; the name under which the property is listed is actually "Covenant Beach Bible Camp". A PDF of the 2004 nomination form can be seen here. Deor (talk) 11:10, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Although it fits our definition of a reliable source, Focus is quite unreliable from a technical point of view: its search screen is often going down. Umm, that number is not possible — the first two digits are the year in which the property entered the NR system (e.g. when the nomination reached the National Park Service), and the Register didn't exist in 1935. One place you can go is a website maintained by User:Elkman — it always gives the reference number for the property. In the past, http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com (which is somewhat unreliable for smaller things, but can be counted on for the reference number) would also have been a good source, but right now it's not working; I don't know if it's just temporarily down or if the website has ended. Nyttend (talk) 13:55, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The "record number" given on the page one gets to by searching for "Covenant Beach Bible Camp" at the search page linked in Jmabel's original post is indeed 353480. The "Item No." given on that page, on the other hand, is 05000313; perhaps that's the one I should have cited. Deor (talk) 14:12, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've never before observed "record numbers" on Focus; what he's requesting is definitely the reference number, which indeed is what you were trying to find. Hmm, I just realised that I'd failed to give that number, which Elkman also shows as 05000313 — his website is drawn directly from the NPS' main database, and it's online more often than Focus, so I'm sure that this is the right number. Nyttend (talk) 14:28, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. And thanks in particular for those other sites. I knew the official one and nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com, but Elkman's is new to me. - Jmabel | Talk 15:53, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Henry Hoolulu Pitman

Does anybody know who painted the portrait of Henry Hoolulu Pitman (1843–1863) who served in the American Civil War on the Union side and where the portrait is currently located at (I imagine it'll be a musuem)? Shown here and elsewhere on the web.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 07:57, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe try to find out which museum and if they know? Dualus (talk) 14:41, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

US Police Promotion (Dexter Season 6 SPOILERS!!)

In the sixth season of the US TV Show Dexter, Debra Morgan is promoted directly from Detective to Lieutenant. Is this in any way realistic? --Rixxin (talk) 11:17, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Within the Miami police department, detective seems to be a position, not a rank. - Nunh-huh 17:21, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Depends on the department, but see Police ranks of the United States. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 01:57, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Miami is the pertinent department. - Nunh-huh 02:03, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Remote naval orders in the 1700s and before

Our article Scilly naval disaster of 1707 states vaguely that after the unsuccessful naval engagement, the British (et al) fleet "was ordered" to retreat. This got me to wonder: How were orders relayed from the home country to naval fleets in the 1700s? Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:20, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Written instruction conveyed by courier vessels; packet boats.

ALR (talk) 16:44, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As Admiral of the Fleet Sir Cloudesley Shovell accompanied the fleet, I think it's safe to assume that he did the ordering, since he would have been the highest ranking officer in the Navy, apart from the First Sea Lord in London. Communication between their Lordships at the Admiralty and ships at sea was by written dispatches. They would be carried by Post riders to a port where they would be taken aboard a small, fast sloop-of-war and sailed out to the desired ship. In 1805, HMS Pickle brought the first reports of the Battle of Trafalgar off southern Spain to Falmouth on 4 November - ie 14 days after the event, but there had been a severe storm in the interim. At the turn of the 19th century, a chain of semaphore telegraph stations were constructed to hasten the landward side of the process; the first line could pass a simple message from London to Deal in sixty seconds. Alansplodge (talk) 16:54, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One other option is giving the commander conditional orders - "engage the French fleet, then X, unless Y, in which case Z". This might involve sealed orders, to be opened in case of some particular critical event - this is still done today with some missile submarines. Shimgray | talk | 16:56, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The Admiralty would issue written orders to the senior officer at the start of a deployment; how they were achieved would be down that officer. He would keep their Lordships appraised of important developments by written dispatches, as outlined above. Any amending orders could be sent by return. Alansplodge (talk) 17:08, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, also this case has it easy: the British had soldiers in North America, where it took about a month for a message to get there and another month to get back. – b_jonas 18:31, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Probably quicker than India though. Alansplodge (talk) 19:12, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's interesting to note that when the first transatlantic telegraph cable was constructed, one of the few messages sent before it broke was an order from London for two regiments to remain in Canada rather than sailing for home - they'd earlier been ordered back due to the rebellion in India. It was estimated at the time that this saved about £50,000 in shipping costs, etc - about a sixth of the entire cost of laying the cable. Communication delays were a remarkably wasteful thing... Shimgray | talk | 19:27, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

... by our modern-day standards. Some of the early Governors of New South Wales were recalled to Britain, and that would have taken many weeks for the news of recent antipodean goings on to reach London, many more weeks for the recall notice to be shipped out down under, and many further weeks for the disgraced former governor to get back home. But that was the best technology they had, so they didn't expect any better and probably didn't see it in terms of waste. They weren't sitting around going "If only someone could hurry up and invent email!". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 23:36, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all! Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:22, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Digital vigilantism

A few days ago, apparently, the hacker group Anonymous released a bunch of hacked records relating to a child pedophile ring.

My questions (which are not legal advice, thank god!) spring from a US legal context:

Would being on said released list likely be considered probable cause for a search warrant?
Would any evidence related to vigilantism of this sort be admissible into a court of law?
Can evidence obtained from vigilantes taint a prosecution?
If it is admissible/probable cause, are there any checks in place to avoid having law enforcement use hacker rings of this sort as a way around the protections of the Fourth Amendment?

I'm curious, obviously, if this sort of digital vigilantism is actually capable of doing good, rather than just causing a lot of pedophiles to wipe their hard drives in the best case, or bungle actual prosecution in the worst case. I'm asking about this from a pure policy standpoint — not a request for legal advice, obviously, and the connection to pedophilia is not super important to me as a specific thing (I don't like pedophilia, obviously, but I wonder what precedent we set when we allow the "worst case" bad guys to dictate policy that inevitably starts to be applied to lesser offenses). --Mr.98 (talk) 16:52, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As to your 2nd bullet, you would think that links in the chain of evidence being untestable (because the leakers aren't made available for examination) would make the evidence fruit of the poisonous tree; the defence could legitimately question whether the leakers had invented the evidence or misidentified their clients. But it seems German tax authorities are intending to go ahead with prosecutions based on stolen Swiss banking information. To be sure, authorities can intimidate the hell out of suspects incriminated in this manner, hoping the suspects will plea-bargain rather than risk their future on esoteric questions regarding whether that evidence is really admissable. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:04, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's no poisonous tree involved, unless Anonymous was acting as an agent of the government—though the defense could still use your proposed argument that leakers had invented the evidence or misidentified their clients, or that the list was in some other way unreliable. I suspect that would keep this from being introduced as evidence. - Nunh-huh 17:28, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose the question in this case is really whether evidence obtained illegally by a third party and then delivered to the police is admissible. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:01, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In the US, I believe evidence taken by "private persons" and handed to the police is admissible; but not if the police set it up so that effectively it was a police search. See this link. Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:26, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'll answer each in turn.

1) The evidence would most likely be sufficient for a search warrant. Probable cause is a low threshold. Anonymous tips can be the source for evidence supporting the warrant, but the affiant law enforcement officer must use reasonable judgment to determine the reliability of the source. The warrant could be attacked if the circumstances known to the officer at the time of affidavit were such that no reasonable person could have concluded that the source was reliable. The police need not identify the source of its information.
2) The question of admissibility is a difficult one because of the number of ways evidence can be excluded. The record which led to the search warrant would likely not be admissible at trial unless a foundation was made by the members of anonymous who brought it forth. Documentary evidence must be authenticated. If the record was assembled by someone, it most likely constitutes hearsay. If it is a computer print out, it isn't hearsay because computers don't speak. To invoke the hearsay rule, the declarant must be a human being either writing or speaking, the statement must be offered for the truth of the matter it asserts and not for some other purpose, and the statement must be made out of court without the possibility of cross examination. Should members of anonymous testify in court under oath, they can testify to what they observed. Theoretically, the prosecution could grant them immunity in exchange for their testimony. Otherwise, someone would need to testify to lay a foundation for the record: how it was produced, what it says, and that it ties the defendant to an illegal act.
3) It is possible that vigilante evidence could taint a prosecution if it were actually used at trial. Most likely it would not be used at trial but only as support for securing a search warrant to obtain independent evidence of a crime. Illegally obtained evidence by private persons is admissible in most states (see, United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109), but there are a few where it would be illegal: PA, VA, possibly NJ, and WI. Pennsylvania, for instance, has heightened privacy rights than the rest of the country as identified in the rather ridiculous case of Commonwealth v. Matos, 672 A.2d 769 (Pa 1996). Privacy rights are so great in a few states that police will not use any evidence from illegal sources that infringe on that right, but will conduct their own independent investigation through legal channels.
4) This isn't a significant policy issue at the moment because we don't have many hacker rings reporting crimes to police. We might see development of the jurisprudence to protect privacy interests should it become a problem, but police regularly use informants and grant immunity to confessed criminals. If a hacker ring is working on behalf of law enforcement, that evidence might be suppressed as the fruit of an illegal search. As soon as the flow of information becomes organized, defense attorneys will have stronger arguments for suppression. Law enforcement is conscious of this and will do what it can to distance itself from illicit evidence as much as possible. Fewer defenses mean a stronger case and less costly prosecutions. Gx872op (talk) 15:20, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think that a juror should have great skepticism about such evidence, because the site was hacked into. Though I doubt, in this particular case, that hackers had 100 GB of child porn waiting to plant, the records of who was a member of the site might also have been compromised. If "Anonymous" had a beef with someone, maybe there were 1499 members on the list before he accessed the file! Of course, you don't have to really be an ueberhacker to do this - if you have the necessary will, you could pose as an anonymous pedo, join a site, using your enemy's credit card number you've copied while he was at a restaurant; provided you use a proper proxy there's no easy way to prove he wasn't the one who accessed it. Which is one of many reasons why I think that censorship is always wrong, even when practiced by Anonymous. Wnt (talk) 18:07, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Original rail tracks or ties, etc.

Is there any place (North America is what I'm most curious about, but anywhere will do) where the original tracks, ties or whatever is still in use? I don't mean the line, but the actual physical pieces. I'm thinking of the cross-continental mid-1800s tracks. I imagine they must have been gradually replaced over the years. Mingmingla (talk) 17:11, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Northeast Corridor south of New York from what Amtrak employees tell me. :p Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 24 Tishrei 5772 17:14, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just about all the track in the UK has been replaced since WWII by Continuous welded rail. This article suggests that some older track may be in use on Preserved railways. Alansplodge (talk) 19:10, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In a rural Minnesota town I know, the train line was installed circa 1900 and the original equipment (ties and rails) was used until about 1955 to pick up farm products from the grain elevator, without improvement or replacement. It is still there, but no longer has trains going over it. With old poor condition track, the freight trains would go extremely slowly (15 mph) so that a derailment was not a disaster. Edison (talk) 20:52, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think this would only be possible for tracks first installed fairly recently, say, within the past 20 years. Tracks and ties (especially old wooden ties) just don't have a safe use-life much greater than 20 years. Marco polo (talk) 19:21, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Crossties are treated and do not rot as fast as untreated lumber. In original construction of the transcontinental US railroad, because there was haste to satisfy contracts etc, I expect that plain untreated wood was commonly used, then the road was upgraded to better engineering practice in a few years. Also trains got heavier over the years, so upgrades were needed. Granted, ties rot over time. But why would a 20 year old rail which has seen little traffic not be usable? Rails fail from a combination of manufacturing defects and heavy usage. Rail life is given as a function of "millions of gross tons" which pass over the rail, with higher wear on curves and grades.Rails are inspected and tested to replace them before the break or before there is excess wear. Page 533 has a sample calculation showing a 25 year or so life for rails in the textbook example, based 30 million gross tons per year and 132 pound (modern) rail. This is not stated in any way as a "max life" for lightly used rails. A British book describes a rail serving 15 years on a heavy use route, then being ground to restore the profile of the top, and serving another 25 years on a lighter duty route. Then it could be reprofiled and used another 25 years, or 65 tears total. Of course in the example it has been moved to lighter use. The rails of a little-used siding or spur would thus not deteriorate as much as a heavily used mainline rail. Many industrial building also have sidings which may see little use but still be usable with minimal maintenance. Maintenance would include "tucking" gravel under the ties, replacing loosened spikes, and maintaining the alignment of the rails (not swooping up and down, and keeping them the right distance apart.) I once did this type of work on a short run of railroad track. It was common practice for railroads to have the date of production and other information (rail rating) stamped into the ends of ties, or to have "dating nails" driven into the ties. I found one book which says the "optimistic average tie life" would be 30 years. (Their actual data imply a slightly longer replacement interval in practice). But I remember reading an article from the small town which was losing its rail spur line bemoaning that the deteriorated line was still usable after 50 years without having had maintenance, for moving grain cars at low speed at harvest time. Maybe ties had been replaced without the newspaper folks having notices. It is a common practice to remove and replace deteriorated ties, while keeping the rails. The ties and rails are not generally installed and left to deteriorate, with annual depreciation, until they are useless. Rather they get periodic maintenance as needed to maintain the quality of ride and safety. The spur to a closed factory or abandoned mine would be the most likely case for railroad mileage still usable for light loads at low speeds after many years of little or no maintenance. Even so the British book cited above from 1992 says of Queensland Rail, a narrow gauge line "Many of these original lines are still in service, still with the original rails.." It is not clear what year those rails were placed in service, but he says the line began operations "125 years ago" Edison (talk) 20:30, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The last pieces of track from the place where the Golden Spike was driven to complete the first U.S. transcontinental railroad were removed in 1942, the article says. But even those pieces may not have been truly original. As Edison makes clear above, it's doubtful that any truly original pieces of track remain anywhere in the U.S. because from the beginning, railroad companies have always had to replace rails and ties periodically: as engines got bigger and heavier, rails likewise had to increase in weight. Also, ordinary wear and occasional breakage required track to be replaced, as did the general conversion from iron to steel rails after the Civil War. Railroads were not sentimental about preserving original rails. My guess is that if there is any original track left, it's a few bits in museums, or perhaps buried at the site of some long-abandoned branch line. Also - journalists and authors not conversant with these facts often make misleading statements about "original tracks" when all that's original is the location, not the rails and ties themselves. Textorus (talk) 06:01, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Prisons in Elizabethan Era

I realize back in the day, since the Middle Ages, prisons were used as holding facilities until trials could be made. But in the Elizabethan Era, were prisons also used as punishments or were they still used as holding facilities? Thanks. 174.93.67.107 (talk) 19:53, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This says they were just starting to be used as a form of punishment. It's been emotional (talk) 20:04, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean just in England, or in other countries as well? Michel Foucault argues in Discipline and Punish (page 115 in the paperback version of the Second Vintage Books Edition) that in France, prisons were only established as a solid means of punishment (as opposed to facilities for the arbitrary detention of people the kings disliked) in 1810. Nyttend (talk) 00:08, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Foucault was a philosopher who loved playing with words and ideas, not a factual historian, and he was aware, even proud, that he sometimes screwed things up and even contradicted his own writings: "he preferred not to claim that he was presenting a coherent and timeless block of knowledge." So I wouldn't take anything he said as the definitive pronouncement on any subject. You'd be much better off reading some reliable histories of the Elizabethan era to get the truth of the matter. Textorus (talk) 06:12, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Qing Consorts of Han Descent

How many wives and consorts of Qing Dynasty emperors were of full or part Chinese Han descent?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 21:31, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unspecifyable, because genetic drift makes such ethnic division meaningless. Can you rephrase the question referring to specific genes instead of their expressions? Dualus (talk) 14:37, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How? It's not a question about genetics. I think you can just tell by surnames. Manchu and Mongol have more than one syllable surnames while Han Chinese only have one or at the most two syllable surname.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 19:40, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a worldwide perspective of archived news, specifically, German and British

What is a website that can give me a worldwide perspective of archived news for Paul Robeson like http://news.google.com/newspapers does for primarily the USA, specifically looking for German and British papers66.234.33.8 (talk) 21:48, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Google does have a UK edition (and probably a German edition too) for News, so maybe selecting google.co.uk will give you the UK perspective. --TammyMoet (talk) 11:17, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]