Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 December 1

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December 1

Rene Levesque extramarital affairs

Who were the women that Rene Levesque had illegal relationship with, especially the one that he had a child with, according to CBC's tv mini-series on him? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.31.21.68 (talk) 00:34, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Are there any "illegal" relationships apart from those between adults and minors, and incestuous ones? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:48, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, he died in '87, so it's possible there were at the time. I'm not familiar with the history of Canadian law on (say) adultery. --Trovatore (talk) 01:11, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

René Lévesque does not really mention anything but does mention Corinne Côté who he married after his divorce. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography mentions Judith Jasmin but again her article has nothing. You might want to check out these Google hits. Some of them may not be the best of sources and some of the women mentioned may/are still living so I won't mention them here. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 01:43, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

OP, you will want to be careful and take what you saw on the miniseries with a gran of salt. I have not seen the one in question but, if it is like most bios done for TV (or film for that matter,) some of what they showed will be accurate but other parts will have been altered for any number of reasons. These can include dramatic arc and/or trying to avoid being taken to court by those portrayed. MarnetteD | Talk 01:45, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

St Vincent churches in the USA

One can find plenty of American Catholic churches dedicated to St Vincent; see fr:Église Saint-Vincent-de-Paul de Bedford for a substantial article about one of them, written in French. But how many of these are dedicated to St Vincent de Paul: are most of them his, or are there plenty dedicated to other Saint Vincents? Bedford's easy, since they have an inscription over their entrance, but one often doesn't see such a thing, and anyway you often can't learn much about a place that you've not visited. Nyttend (talk) 01:55, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

This is a bit of a guess, but I imagine that plain old "Saint Vincent" is going to refer to Vincent of Saragossa, while later Vincents might well be disambiguated, like your example for Vincent de Paul. Most of the US examples I foundon Google make it clear in their full title which one they mean; for instance St. Vincent Martyr Parish, New Jersey refers to Vincent of Saragossa. Alansplodge (talk) 13:10, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

What can most accurately be said about optimal working hours?

Recently this very convincing relation between hours worked per year and productivity from an article in The Economist came to my attention about the same time that this Science article on how sleep removes neurotoxins from the brain was published. The productivity graph suggests at first glance like 27 hours per week is the optimal number to work for maximum productivity, but what about for maximum total output? Trying to say something accurate is difficult because of confounding factors. For example, workers who know they are more productive at 27 hours are likely to be better informed than other workers, and therefore might charge more than their competition who are also willing to work longer, crowding out the former group in the buyer's labor markets that regulators prefer. I am loath to get into image uploads after seeing how they effect some editors, so I really want to know how to summarize that relationship accurately. EllenCT (talk) 02:51, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

If you ignore outliers and look at the trend alone, it looks like the fewer hours you work the higher your productivity per hour. However, the graph doesn't extend to zero hours, and there are many confounding factors. For example, those who work fewer hours are often part-time workers, who may be lower skilled than those offered full-time employment, and this may affect their productivity as well. In short, productivity may affect the number of hours worked. StuRat (talk) 03:08, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

As far as maximizing total output, you'd want workers to work far more hours to achieve that. However, there are also confounding factors there. For example, if there is a set amount of work to be done by a company, then having one person work longer hours increases their total production, but might decrease other worker's, as the first worker takes over some of their tasks.

Something else you didn't mention is how the type of work matters. For example, I'm a computer programmer, and find I need to be much fresher for coding or debugging than for testing, which is hours of repeating the same test with one condition changed at each step.

Another consideration is whether they include time used to travel to and from work, check in, start up the equipment, etc. If that was included, then short days become far less efficient, as the amount of nonproductive time stays the same, while the productive time goes down. Now, as an employer you might think you could ignore travel time in your productivity calculations, but that could lead you to have people work short days, lose money due to their travel expenses, and therefore quit and go elsewhere.StuRat (talk) 03:12, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Compared to the ~10% correlations I often see in relations that conventionally are thought to be strong, the graph doesn't really have any substantial outliers. And when you multiply the productivity times the hours, 27 per week (1400 per year) still dominates. I agree part time workers may appear to be more productive because they aren't drawing as many benefits, and need to look much more closely there, as well as at the issues for the type of work, travel time, and daily less productive ramp up periods. Thank you, Stu! (I also experience ramp up periods; they are usually shorter when I am well rested, and I suspect that may be true for most workers.) EllenCT (talk) 03:26, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

[1], [2] may be useful to those who found OP's link interesting. →Σσς. (Sigma) 04:55, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Correlation / causation / data quality. Union data, and personal industry sampling are indicative of massive over work in Australia. My industry's nominal working year is 1620 hours. The actual is around 3000. Also, optimum total output by what measure? Most industries are at market saturation and total use-value output isn't nearly as important as maximised value output, which requires realisation. Fifelfoo (talk) 21:34, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand. Would you please elaborate each of those clauses? EllenCT (talk) 00:37, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Shorter working hours don't cause higher GDP. Higher GDP empowers labour against capital, labour tends to prefer shorter working hours. The data quality is likely to be poor, for example, Australia has a working year of 38*47 (4 weeks annual leave, 1 weeks worth of week day public holidays) or 1786 hours. My industry, in Australia, has a nominal working year of 1620ish hours. The actual number of hours worked per year in my industry is around 3000. Data sources are incredibly poor for this, in part, because statistical agencies are instructed to construct statistics in certain ways, almost all of which conceal overwork. "Total output" means what? Bananas per hectare? Bananas per hour? US Dollars per hour? Most industries can't sell more bananas, their problem isn't selling bananas but selling bananas profitably. "Maximisation of output" is in our societies, maximisation of dollar value outputs that can be realised as profit, not of volume of bananas produced. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:02, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

For info, the UK has excellent data on actual hours worked. But I don't think it's possible to crunch it to show the working hours that are optimal for productivity, because productivity isn't available for local areas or for industries. GDP is available for local areas but the measure is quite meaningless for a number of reasons. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:18, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Awesome that UK has that data. In Australia I've tended to find that the Bureau of Statistics has a number of nicely crafted essays around the place that amount to, "And that's why this measure is grossly misused, and isn't constructed to measure what people would like it to measure." Fifelfoo (talk) 21:59, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Escorts in London

What is the rate of a London escort? How to get an escort job? How to get more clients? --Hillsgod333 (talk) 04:07, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I doubt escorts are available for rent anymore, as they stopped manufacturing them a decade ago. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:56, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Au contraire... Tevildo (talk) 14:07, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

OP might get some ideas from sites like this. There are plenty of alternatives. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:59, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

How to get more clients? Give better service or more bang for the buck, and then word of mouth will do the trick. This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Clarityfiend (talk) 12:44, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Do they have ratings like restaurants do? Such as, anything less than 100 could involve things like drug usage, crabs, STDs, etc. And those ratings could certainly affect the ability to attract clients. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:01, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

There's presumably a much higher demand for escorts in London, what with the crookedity of its streets, and lack of a rational numbering system, compared with places like Manhattan, with more civilized layout. μηδείς (talk) 16:49, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

See The Knowledge for how this particular problem is resolved. Tevildo (talk) 22:26, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that is quite interesting, I had been aware of that, and it is brought up in the NYC press on occasion when news is slow. I was more thinking of a walking escort though. For example, I had the occasional pleasure of walking Quentin Crisp through various parts of downtown Manhattan towards the end of his life. That was more due to his frailty than the street addresses being confusing, though. μηδείς (talk) 01:18, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Punternet. Nanonic (talk) 21:01, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Funny, Jefferson Hope in A Study in Scarlet says that he learns London by studying a map while driving his cab; Conan Doyle seems to do his best to be detail-accurate, so I never imagined that this would be impossible. Nyttend (talk) 05:29, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Cabs were horse-drawn in those days, so they could proceed at a leisurely pace. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:08, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Of course, but according to the article, The Knowledge started to be required in 1865, some years before the setting of A Study in Scarlet. He says that he simply went up to a cab owner, who gave him equipment and required him to turn in a certain amount of money per week. Perhaps it's implied that the whole operation is illegal? Nyttend (talk) 12:31, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Are American pilots' letters being censored during WW2?

I had just read Arthur Miller's All My Sons, and one detail of the plot seems questionable to me: Larry wrote to Ann in a letter that he planned to commit suicide because he is ashamed of his father shipping out defective plane parts--which is not known to the characters until Ann revealed Larry's letter. I think there should be some kind of censorship of letters during war time, or it is easy to leak intelligence.--Wwtt1133 (talk) 11:17, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Letters sent by US servicemen in WWII were censored, but not completely, and surely the extent different from censor to censor. I'm speaking here not from a published source, but from my own family's knowledge. When my grandfather wrote back to his mother while he served in North Africa, any mention of where he was at the time was removed (they also removed his mention of seeing Casablanca, and we always wondered if they were just mindlessly blacking out place-names). But otherwise the letters got through fine. I'm not sure what they would have done with information such as about engine parts. I'm not familiar with the play, but then again, it is fiction after all. Someguy1221 (talk) 11:32, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I think if the censorers do look at the letter, the mentioning of trying to suicide should get immediate attention.--Wwtt1133 (talk) 11:38, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I recall Walter Cronkite talking about reporting on the War. He said the news services were only allowed to publish information that could be reasonably expected to be already known to the enemy. Possibly the same principle with soldiers' letters to their homes? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:57, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

When I was a child, my parents owned this book (and presumably still do), which consists of anecdotes from soldiers/sailors/airmen/etc during the war, together with some from noncombatants and family members who were at home throughout the war. There's a decent chunk on censorship, including an old lady who shows up to her husband's unit's reunion to show the former censor a letter that he'd cut to pieces, as well as an airman who told his parents his location by changing his father's middle initial in the address (e.g. if he were sent to Casablanca, his first letter would be addressed to Mr. Firstname C. Lastname, his second to Mr. Firstname A. Lastname, etc), and maybe some comments by censors about the difficulty of their work. Censorship was definitely important, since the goal was to ensure that the enemy couldn't gain new war-related information by capturing mail; this is basically another method of enforcing the slogan of "loose lips sink ships". Nyttend (talk) 05:28, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Regarding All My Sons, is this letter an unintended flaw of the plot, or did Arthur Miller imply something(for example, the letter was known to Larry's forces and news agencies, but it was not put on papers because it will damage morale or affect Joe Keller's case)?--Wwtt1133 (talk) 06:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Going slightly off-topic (perish the thought), I was amused by one British Tommy's ruse to foil the WWI censors. Wanting to let his family know that he was at the British depot at Poperinghe in Belgium, he sent a letter to "Mr. P. O. Peringhe" at his home address. It worked. Alansplodge (talk) 13:43, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Sacred sword (preah khan) of Khmer king Suryavarman_II (Paramavishnuloka)

I cannot find as much as the name of this legendary weapon which seems to be as culturally important as King Arthur's Excalibur. So far the best source for any informration on it seems to be towards the end of episode 9, season 3 of ancient aliens, "Aliens and Deadly Weapons" where it is hypothesized it is a light saber or plasma sword. I would like to know what ancient text actually mentions this sword, and what texts mention other legends involving Suryavarman II's, like the construction of Angkhor Wat by magic water. Currently wikipedia makes no mention of any of these legends. CensoredScribe (talk) 18:05, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

If you got that info from the Ancient Aliens TV series, it might well be fictional. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:11, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Fictional fiction? That would be a bit low even for Ancient Aliens.  Card Zero  (talk) 02:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

While Suryavarman II is historical figure; who dedicated Angkhor Wat to Vishnu, another source relates a legend that states is was built on the orders of Indra for his son Precha Ket Mealea. Paramavishnuloka, Precha Ket Mealea. and Preah Pisnouka are all very sounding similar names makes the matter extra confusing to determine if they are different people or the same; however that the temple would be dedicated to two clearly different gods is more notable. Still no reference to the magic sword or water. I agree that ancient aliens would at least use a real legend, like how they use real medieval paintings.

A sword is definitely part of the royal regalia of Cambodia (although today it’s a replica, the original having gone missing in the civil war). Here is a picture of it. It’s kept at the Hor Samritvimean, or Royal Treasury, along with the crown and “the Victory Spear” and was used at King Norodom Sihamoni’s coronation in 2004. I can only find one reference to it having legendary powers: Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia which says “the royal sword of Cambodia which, it is believed, if drawn from its scabbard without the prescribed ritual, would bring disaster upon the country”. However, I couldn’t find any link with Suryavarman II in particular as opposed to other kings or the royal line generally, or any reference to an ancient text. Taknaran (talk) 15:39, 2 December 2013 (UTC)