Humanities desk
< December 11	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	December 13 >

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.

December 12

measuring Mixed Hispanic ancestry

How does the Pew Hispanic Center, the Census Bureau, and other organizations studying Hispanic or Latinos and the trends, beliefs, and life of this group deal with second generation Hispanics or Latinos who has one biological parent who is of one Spanish speaking country and another biological parent who is of another Spanish speaking country when in the results of a study they say that such and such percentage of Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans, Salvadoran Americans, etc. believe in, identify themselves as, or are such and such? Are such respondents included as two separate nationalities by these organizations as in for example a second generation American respondent might be included as part of such and such percentage of Mexican Americans who believe in, identify themselves as, or are such and such, and as part of the percentage of Cuban Americans who believe in, identify themselves as, or are such and such? Willminator (talk) 00:59, 12 December 2013 (UTC) P.S: I tried to think of ways to make the title as brief as possible, but couldn't. Willminator (talk) 02:13, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, if you really want this question answered, you'd be best to ask the question directly to the organizations themselves. They would be able to answer best their methodologies, certainly much better than anyone here would. I found Mark Hugo Lopez with a few clicks at http://www.pewhispanic.org/ and he has ways to contact him listed. If he can't answer your questions, others certainly can. --Jayron32 02:22, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your title was way too long, so I shortened it. StuRat (talk) 03:01, 12 December 2013 (UTC) [reply]

I have relengthened it. μηδείς (talk) 03:22, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That implies that it's back to the original length. It's not. It started out using that huge first sentence as the title. StuRat (talk) 03:29, 12 December 2013 (UTC) [reply]

Is your point that instead of relengthening it, that I unshortened it? Be specific, please. μηδείς (talk) 04:42, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"I added one word to your shortened version" would be clearer. Whenever you say "re-", it implies going back to how something was. StuRat (talk) 04:55, 12 December 2013 (UTC) [reply]

Oh, kind of like if Queen Elizabeth were regal she'd be back to being a gal? μηδείς (talk) 19:45, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You regale us. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:14, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the original would work if you put it in small enough type? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:24, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I emailed Marco Hugo Lopez yesterday night as you suggested, so how long would it normally take him to answer back? Willminator (talk) 03:25, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously? I've never met him. I have no idea how prompt he is in answering his email. I just found his name on a website. --Jayron32 04:48, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Middle name

What is Steven D. Cuozzo's[1] middle name? I've looked high and low for it, but have not come up with anything. -- Jreferee (talk) 02:18, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I found this, though I don't know how reliable it is. Marco polo (talk) 19:12, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

feline sensation plush toys

I saw this cat on YouTube. It is a Turkish Van named Shironeko, who lives in Japan. He's been proclaimed "The World's Relaxed Cat" and "The Zen Cat". When I looked up more information on him, I learned on March 26, 2012, plush toy versions of Shironeko have been made available for purchase. They're only available in Japan at a cost of 13,440¥ (USD$160) each. I think that's too much for a plush toy. Please note I'm not trying to use this site as a crystal ball or anything like that. But I'm interested in buying at least six of the Shironeko plush toys. Will they be available in the USA at a much lower price soon?142.255.103.121 (talk) 05:18, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As it says at the top of the page, we cannot make predictions. But given that eBay hasn't heard of these yet, I would think it extremely unlikely that they would catch on outside of Japan.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:55, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Medieval city density

From the first look the density in European medieval cities must be much lower than in modern ones. On the other hand despite of skyscrapers and multistory buildings modern cities have a lot of empty space which was absent in medieval ones (highways, broad streets, parks, etc.). In a stereotypical medieval city the houses was relatively small, they sat tight to each other, streets was narrow. Even if we imagine a city where a typical house was one-stored and occupied area of 100 sq m (quite a big house even by the modern standards), reserving 20% of the city area for streets, churches, storehouses and other buildings, we'd have 8000 houses per sq km. Bearing in mind that a typical family consisted of 5-6 family members we get 40000-48000 per sq km! It's much bigger than of modern New-York (10000) or Paris (20000). I can't believe that a medieval city was so densely populated and big. Medieval Paris of the 13th century with the area about 6 sq km should have at least 240000! It's unbelievable! But I do not understand if the actual density was lower how a city was built. If we accept quite realistic 1000 people per sq km we get only 200 houses, then each house occupied 5000 sq m. It's also unbelievable! The houses should stood at the distance of 60 m from each other. Even if we multiply the density by 5, we nevertheless get 1000 houses with 1000 sq m per each. It's no less unbelievable. There should be too much empty space. It's more like a big village than a city. Where is the mistake?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 06:51, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Partly you are neglecting the fact that not every building is a house. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:24, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

According to medieval censuses, Paris did indeed have over 200 000 people (although in the 14th century, not the 13th - see fr:Démographie de Paris). I assume this means Paris within the wall of Philip Augustus, but maybe the censuses counted people in the suburbs, I'm not sure. However, a typical house was not one-storied. A typical medieval timber-framed house was 2 or 3 stories. The biggest one I've seen is the fr:Maison d'Adam in Angers, which is six stories. Imagine how many people could have lived in that one house. They were like small apartment buildings, and medieval cities were absolutely packed with them. They also put houses anywhere they could conceivably build a house, no matter how dumb or dangerous. Even bridges were filled with houses. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:28, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

But Paris has always been being the biggest city or least one of the biggest cities of Europe. But what about many other ordinary cities? Did they have really 50000 per sq km? Or 20000 as modern Paris (the most densely populated city of Europe)? I don't believe that so many people could live then at all.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:05, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What I wanted to say. If we acccept stereotypical medieval tight and dense city planning, we should accept very big numbers for density, bigger than for modern super-megapolises and much bigger for the absolute majority of modern smaller cities and towns. Then any medieval relatively not too big in territory city (1-3 sq km) should have very big population, bigger than modern cities of the same area. So we then must accept that modern cities in spite of urbanization are quite spacious. But if we accept relatively small numbers for density in medieval cities, we should somehow explain how a city was planned.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:27, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

They weren't planned, is the first answer ;-)

Remember that while cities had very dense housing (think modern slums and you get the idea) they also would have had a lot of other things in them. Right now, dense urban housing does not usually contain stables, sewage pits, light industry, street markets, graveyards, fortifications, etc etc - but a medieval city would have done, in addition to the housing. This would have taken up a lot of space. Andrew Gray (talk) 10:46, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There would also be lots of churches and monasteries. That would take up a lot of room where there might otherwise be houses, but going back to Paris, imagine the area around Notre Dame today. There's a huge square in front and a big park behind it. In medieval Paris, that space would have been filled with stuff - houses, shops, etc. People and animals might live even inside the big churches. Houses were built right up against the defensive walls and even in top of them. There's no public parks, greenspace, anything like that.

There might be a bit of planning, especially if the city had been founded as a Roman colony. But even then, there would likely be only one north-south road and one east-west road, and the rest of the city would grow rather anarchically. In a place like Paris this isn't really visible anymore. The city where I lived in France, Nantes, still has a very visible anarchic medieval street pattern, so you can tell exactly where the medieval boundaries were. And there were people packed in everywhere, which is why medieval cities were notoriously unclean and prone to fires and outbreaks of disease. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:32, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In many medieval cities, even bridges had housing on it. Consider the original Pont Notre-Dame, which was lined with 5 storey houses, or the original London Bridge which was similarly built upon. From the look of the 1616 engraving in our article, it's difficult to see where people would even walk across the bridge given the density of housing. It appears people walked through tunnels under the house on the bridge it was so densely packed with houses. --Jayron32 13:39, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Contrary to popular belief there was actually a lot of green spaces in most medieval cities, even in places like Paris or London. These consisted mainly of garden patches, but some times even fields or pastures could be found, as there was a lot of livestock inside medieval cities as well (link, link). It should should also be taken into account that the average medieval household consisted of a lot more persons that the average modern household. --Saddhiyama (talk) 11:51, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England C.1200 to 1580 by Christopher Dyer (p. 189) says that in 1400, within the walls of Winchester, a middle-sized English city, population density varied between 29 and 81 persons per acre. I'll leave you to do the metrication. Alansplodge (talk) 18:18, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly medieval European cities were much denser (though also much smaller in area) than modern European cities. The buildings were packed together, streets were narrow, transportation infrastructure occupied much less space, and people lived several to a room in small rooms. While few buildings had more than 4 to 5 storeys, the same is actually true of a majority of buildings in modern European cities. High-rise residential buildings are outliers in modern Europe and are more than compensated by the areas of parks, parking structures, multi-lane roads, airports, seaports, and so on. Marco polo (talk) 19:19, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, if there are 247 acres in 1 sq km, then the density was between roughly 7000 and 20000.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 05:07, 14 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In one of his books (probably The City in History I would guess), Lewis Mumford emphasizes that many medieval cities, when their walls were first built, included open spaces of various kinds between the walls, and it was only later (if their populations increased, but their walls were not expanded to match) that they would have become overall dense... AnonMoos (talk) 08:51, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Finally, I found the good estimates with many examples. Looks like our cities are really empty by the medieval standards. Even Moscow of the 16-17th centuries had the same density as the modern city! --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 05:15, 14 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure where you're currently living, but if you have a chance to visit somewhere like Prague or York, the old city centres still retain a lot of the dense late-medieval building patterns. (The buildings themselves are often post-medieval, but the street pattens and sizes are older). It's very striking the difference to more modern, open, areas. Andrew Gray (talk) 14:19, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Axis partition of Asia

According to our article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_power_negotiations_on_the_division_of_Asia_during_World_War_II the Wehrmacht proposed the following border for the division of Asia among Axis powers:
"along the eastern border of Iran, the northern border of Afghanistan, the western border of China up to Tannu Tuva, and then northwards along the Yenisei river to the Arctic Ocean."
Germany & Italy were to get Europe, Africa and Asia west of it while Japan would get Oceania and Asia east of it. I wanted to make a calculation of the areas of the two spheres of influence (Germany+Italy and Japan), excluding North and South America (Germany gets Iceland but not Greenland and Japan gets Hawaii but not Alaska). My main problem is about the partition of Russia along the Yenisei river. Is there a way to quantify the area or Russia or of the Krasnoyarsk Krai east and west of it? --151.41.165.155 (talk) 16:24, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You could do so with mapping software. Marco polo (talk) 19:06, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]