Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 August 10

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August 10

Illustration/printing technique

I've recently added an article on the illustrator Margery Gill. There's a technique she frequently used on her covers where a pen and ink drawing is overlaid by two or three colours, the overlap between those colours creating further colours. A few examples are here, here and here. I've done a bit of digging and it seems this was a form of lithographic printing where the artist manually separates the colours and draws the overlays in ink on sheets of transparent plastic called "Plastocowell", which are then used as transparencies to burn the image onto lithographic plates. It was popular for the covers of children's books in the 1940s-60s before full colour photographic printing became more affordable. Gill continued using it into the 70s and seems to have been a particularly prominent user of it, and I'd like to add something to the article to that effect, but I can't - it'd be original research as none of the references I've found to the "Plastocowell" lithographic technique mention her specifically. Can anybody direct me to a reference that might be useful? Thanks. --Nicknack009 (talk) 08:04, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Gaza "no-go" zone

I am perplexed and appalled by what I'm reading about the "no-go zone" in the Gaza Strip. That article mentions nothing about it, while 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict mentions, sourced to a very brief comment in the New York Times,^[1] that 44% of the entire area is such a zone. Apparently before it was 300 meters,^[2] enforced by live fire (though I suspect that sometimes, though not always, when people say they were shot at they might have been warning shots). In any case, it was a definite displacement of the population. But I don't have a good image of whether the residents of half of Gaza have in fact been banished from their lands, nor how viciously the Israelis treat those who fail to flee. Sources like [3][4] paint a bleak picture though - that even before the present "war", there were troops shooting civilians up to 1.5 kilometers into Gaza.

How can anyone, even the Israelis, claim that intentionally shooting non-violent civilians simply because they failed to clear out of a "buffer zone" is anything other than a flagrant act of terror, morally ethically and legally no better than flying an airplane into the World Trade Center? Wnt (talk) 13:55, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Haven't you been here long enough to know better than to phrase your question like that (or ask it at all, here, for that matter)? ---Sluzzelin talk 14:20, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I should have had a question mark at the end of the first paragraph, true. So to be clear, I'm asking:

• Is the current "no-go" zone really depopulated of civilians now?

• Will the Israelis fire on civilians in the entire 44% of the country simply for being there?

• How do Israelis try to explain that shooting civilians for non-military activity is not terrorism, let alone consistent with the Geneva Convention? Wnt (talk) 15:20, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

See complex question. You've presupposed conditions that aren't established as valid in your question, and you've also added emotional weight to your questions, leading the answerer to only one possible "right" answer, which you've already decided on. "Isn't it true that if someone does XXXX, why are they not evil?" is the sort of question that isn't really a question; you already know that someone is doing XXXX, and anyone who disagrees with you must be agreeing with evil. This isn't a question for information, it's WP:SOAPBOXing in the form of questions rather than statements. --Jayron32 17:20, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

To the contrary, I was providing the background of what I read, and I would genuinely welcome to hear what the opposing argument is. I literally don't know what the opposing argument can be on this issue. Wnt (talk) 17:25, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

The facts that have become clear from the latest broadcasts are:

• Hamas still has thousands of rockets even after a month of pounding them by the Israelites.
• They have built multiple tunnels to penetrate Israel and Egypt using most likely that no-go zone.
• Gaza residents have what looks like a luxurious life style: great houses that look good, electricity, food, etc. and unlikely even one of them works, I mean they certainly work on building the tunnels and bringing the rockets. It is all at the expense of American taxpayers. Who supports the UN? Us of course.

The OP presupposed (wrongly) that everyone who shows up in that zone is a civilian. I guess it is far from the truth given the latest developments. We can see it all on TV, just turn it on. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 18:00, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand how the no-go zone ties in with the tunnels. The maps I've seen show it covering the north and east borders of Gaza, but not the south (map) -- which is rather odd indeed, since that's where the tunnels and the nominal focus of the military operation is. I should ask if that is really not a no-go zone! Can you give a reference about tunnels going east/northward into Israel?

I also am surprised by your description of a luxurious lifestyle. I'm reading from the article " Per capita income (PPP) was estimated at US$3,100 in 2009, a position of 164th in the world. Seventy percent of the population is below the poverty line according to a 2009 estimate." Our article doesn't have hard figures for unemployment, nor recent figures, but I don't remember it being over 50%, which means that most people there find it worth working for $3000 a year - this seems to contradict your impression. What am I missing?

I do not deny that military [ish] personnel would show up at the border and cause trouble, but civilians have obvious reasons to be there. I find myself comparing free-fire zone, but even in Vietnam the practice had some clear limitations not described in this coverage. Wnt (talk) 18:50, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Re the US taxpayers footing the bill for the UN: see United States and the United Nations#The U.S. arrears issue:

• The UN has always had problems with members refusing to pay the assessment levied upon them under the United Nations Charter. But the most significant refusal in recent times has been that of the U.S. Since 1985 the U.S. Congress has refused to authorize payment of the U.S. dues, in order to force UN compliance with U.S. wishes …… U.S. arrears to the UN currently total over $1.3 billion. Of this, $612 million is payable under Helms-Biden. The remaining $700 million result from various legislative and policy withholdings; at present, there are no plans to pay these amounts. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:35, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

"but not the south (map) -- which is rather odd indeed, since that's where the tunnels and the nominal focus of the military operation is. I should ask if that is really not a no-go zone! Can you give a reference about tunnels going east/northward into Israel?" Egypt is to the south of Gaza. Hamas has their tunnels there as well. They have been used for smuggling rockets brought from Libya and Sudan during the time of Morsi's government. You are rather confused. Hamas does not attack Egypt. They attack Israel. The direction of their rocket attacks is North and East. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 19:46, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Can you point to some sources on the Palestinian funding by the U.S. via the UN? I looked it up and found that there is apparently a ban on U.S. funding of UN agencies that admit Palestine. However, the U.S. does provide funding to the Palestinian Authority with the quite surprising requested figure of $440 million. [5] With the State of Palestine claiming 4.5 million inhabitants, that is nearly $100 per person, a lot more than I thought but not enough to affect the $3100 figure much. But since the PA has been hostile to Hamas, and the U.S. regards Hamas as a terrorist organization and ???maybe doesn't fund it on that basis, I'm not sure that money would reach Gaza. Do these facts - $100, direct rather than via the UN - seem about right to you, or am I missing something?

Oh, and I understand the rockets are being shot east, but does the extra few km (previously meters) really have anything to do with that? Why does the Israeli army need a "buffer zone" east and north if its army can operate without one while seeking out and destroying tunnels in the south? Wnt (talk) 20:23, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Wnt, when reading the Israeli rhetoric on Palestine you need to realize many of Israel's actions and statements are for media purposes. Stating that civilians killed by Israel were in a no-go zone is just one more excuse Israel will use to excuse itself of its crimes against humanity. The usual excuse put forward by Israel for why it shoots children in the no-go zone is that the children may be collecting rubble that may be used to create bomb shelters like Israelis have. You may be interested in Iman Darweesh Al Hams, a 13-year old girl shot on her way to school (a school were many teachers and students have been shot by IDF on their way to, or even at, school), for going in a "no-go zone". The IDF shot her twice in the legs at a few hundred meters, when she dropped her bag and tried to run away, the IDF chased her down, went up to her laying on the ground, shot her twice point blank in the face, walked away from her body and fired a dozen shots into her corpse. She posed no threat, the militant who shot her said he would have done the same if the girl was 3-years old, the killer was never punished, the killer was promoted to major. Wnt, do terrorist ever call themselves such? 99.224.193.148 (talk) 20:54, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

As per a commentary I saw recently... Every time a Palestinian dies, it's a victory for Hamas. It's in Hamas' own interest for Palestinians to continue to be killed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:34, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

A small tactical victory against Israel, but not a goal for Palestine. The sort of thing that falls into their lap. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:06, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

It is worth starting another question to get at why the Palestinians shoot off unaimed rockets - I mean, despite being ballistic even V-2's were aimed somehow at cities, weren't they? I don't get the point of a weapon more likely to hurt Palestinians than Israelis. But here I'm not really trying to "pick a side" in the war; rather it is my tendency to approach a complex issue like this as a matter of antigen presentation, chopping an issue into small pieces and picking out small self-contained and defining epitopes that I can develop a fixed reaction to without worrying about how anything else in the world might influence my sentiment. In this case, the alleged act of shooting civilians on their own land would appear to be an epitope worth displaying, unless there is a convincing argument to be made that it doesn't happen. Wnt (talk) 04:46, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Wnt -- The border buffer zone is to discourage Hamas tunnels and Hamas attacks on Israeli soldiers. Attempts to use flamboyant and extravagant rhetoric to stir up anti-Israeli feelings don't accomplish very much with me, because I'm very well aware that the Gazans know exactly what they need to do to lead a more normal life, and they have consistently chosen not to do it. There's a saying about people who do the same thing over and over again, and are surprised when the results are always the same. There were a lot of problems in Gaza in the 1980s and 1990s, but the situation then was far more open and de-militarized than it is today and the difference is almost entirely due to the behavior of the inhabitants of the area over the intervening years (in 1999-2000 they had a working airport, which they chose to flush down the crapper in 2001, apparently because hurting Israelis is far more important to them than gaining and holding on to concrete pragmatic practical benefits for themselves). AnonMoos (talk) 07:19, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

This seems to be an application of the idea of collective punishment; it is like saying that if those of Japanese descent didn't want to be subjected to Japanese-American internment they shouldn't have participated in the Niihau Incident. Or, of course, many actions involving Indian reservations in 1800s U.S. And technically the inhabitants did not destroy the airport; the Israelis did, with some degree of international condemnation.

As I picture the enforcement of the "buffer zone" I don't see tunnels in the picture - arguably those might be a military target, and would certainly be preferable for the IDF to use as justification. I don't see airports or intifidas in the picture. The question is -- does an Israeli soldier shoot at someone who has given no indication of military purpose, i.e. a civilian? There is only him, his target, the rifle, and God. But to be clear though, I do appreciate a description of what the argument is, even if it strikes me as a dangerous one - but is this really how the Israelis are thinking, that collective punishment can justify attacking civilians? Wnt (talk) 13:13, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Well there are some who believe that all those who voted for the current government should be killed, others are calling for all Palestinians women and their homes to be killed and destroyed (using remarkably similar phrasing to when the nazis called for the same action against the Jewish people), while other Israelis are arguing for a complete genocide as an ethnical final solution. You also need to realize that for many Jewish Israelis simply being Arab is justification alone for attacking them, similar to how shooting a Jewish settler who is murdering Arabs goes against IDF policy. [6][7][8][9][10][11]. 99.224.193.148 (talk) 18:24, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Wnt -- Your analogy is extraordinarily inept, because Gazans certainly aren't being punished for things that a completely separate group of people have done thousands of miles and an ocean away, but for what has happened quite locally in their immediate area, often with their vocal support. All indications are that a significant segment of Gazan public opinion supports all Hamas actions, no matter how "immoralist" (i.e. in violation of accepted rules of war, not to mention basic human decency), and a majority of Gazans voted for Hamas in the 2006 elections when everyone was aware that a Hamas victory would be more likely to increase tensions than reduce them. It's quite unfortunate that the situation has degenerated to the point where Israeli soldiers consider not putting the lives of their fellow-soldiers at any unnecessary risk whatsoever to be the highest priority, and so subordinate all other considerations to that one goal when fighting, but the Israeli military was taught that lesson through decades of past bitter experiences, and Hamas can hardly claim to have clean hands. The "collective punishment" thing is usually intended to draw comparisons with Oradour-sur-Glane and Lidice, which is unfortunately complete and total bullshit.

And the airport closure is diagnostic of a quite significant long-term Palestinian tendency -- valuing abstract metaphysical all-or-nothing "maximalism" and ultimate grand expansive aspirations far above securing and preserving lower-level concrete pragmatic and practical benefits. Any of them who thought about the matter must have known that the airport would have been one of the first things to go if there was any large-scale return to terrorism, yet in 2001 apparently the satisfactions of hurting Jews far outweighed any practical considerations such as keeping the airport open. The Arabs would do well to more closely emulate the Israelis, who overall have done rather well for themselves by valuing low-level pragmatic gains above grand political metaphysics... AnonMoos (talk) 21:59, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

You can believe what you will, but I take exception to the "inept" description. Look up Niihau Incident - that took place on U.S. soil when one of the Pearl Harbor planes crashed, and indeed it must have been very disturbing. Do understand though that modern U.S. sentiment would not approve of punishing all Japanese people, even just on Hawaii, for the actions of a few. We have too much of a sick history of race discrimination and race riots (by and against many different races) to want to go there.

I have taken the liberty of Wikilinking your examples of massacres as collective punishment above, and on reading about them I do not deny they were singularly horrendous. I certainly intended to stay clear of the most offensive of all nationalistic analogies, but since you've pressed the point, consider the table from our article List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2014. Now consider our article on Oradour-sur-Glane, which says that "Adolf Diekmann claimed that the episode was a just retaliation for partisan activity in nearby Tulle and the kidnapping of Helmut Kämpfe." If I add together the casualties, therefore, with those described in Tulle and Tulle murders, I get:

Location	Killed by terrorists	Wounded by terrorists	Civilians killed	Civilians injured
Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane	40?	?	855	?
Gaza Strip	6	41	50-80% of 1,123	50-80% of 7,800

The breakdown on the 40 "killed and maimed" German dead isn't clear from the article; looking at a probably unreliable source claiming to be the SS side of the story [12] I do wonder if they were indeed killed and maimed. But what should be apparent is that in terms of the principle of proportionality, the Germans were not actually more out of line with it than the Israelis, so far as I can see from these numbers.

I should also go back and respond to your comment about "rhetoric to stir up anti-Israeli feelings". My rhetoric was admittedly tinged by a desire to stir up anti-"buffer zone" (i.e. shooting civilians) feelings, but I don't see that as anti-Israeli. Yes, if I believed that shooting civilians is so integral to Israel that to oppose it is to oppose Israel, then I might indeed be anti-Israeli; yet in researching this topic I am finding some of the best coverage by B'Tselem, for example. To the contrary, my impression is that the idea of "meme" has some validity; but the problem with memetics is that it imagines that memes are stagnant, mathematical constant markers, like genes in a neo-Darwinian model of heredity; but memes are in fact present in human brains, capable of human consciousness, and as such they have the potential to think and feel and act much as humans do. So I prefer to think of them the ancient and unreliable concept of demons. The way I see it, demons often desire people to fight one another, but they do not side with those divisions, but pass freely over the border. For example, the same demon that inspires one person to brutally beat someone for being gay is the exact same demon that tells a gay man not to care about what happens to him and to take his chances with HIV. In this case, we see a demon that would have passed to the Palestinians via the Grand Mufti and such, and the same demon passing to the Israelis from residual attitudes that might have come from governing under the Judenrat; (such as acceptance of identification on passports by religion, military draft, and this notion of collective punishment) but it is all the same demon. And coming from where it did, making the Nazis Nazis, then making the Germans Nazis, I would say no demon has ever hated a people the way that this particular demon hates the people of Israel; and it is no coincidence that attacking the Palestinians in such a manner, fueling the fires of hatred, is the action that poses the greatest threat to Israel, surely as Israelis say that those stupid rockets are the greatest threat to people in Palestine. Now, like all demons, this demon can be banished, or at least can be resisted, and I certainly don't mean to suggest that it holds a dominion that is either absolute nor equivalent to that it had before; but as surely as all men can commit good or evil, it has the potential to do so. Wnt (talk) 23:04, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

It's unfortunate for you that you seem to be preoccupied with complete and utter irrelevance. The Niihau incident didn't lead to the internment of Japanese-Americans in Hawaii (which didn't happen on any mass level), but may have influenced the internment of Japanese-Americans on the U.S. mainland -- 2,500 miles and an ocean away. And Japanese-Americans did not have any control over territory, and were not launching continual attacks on non-Japanese Americans, so the whole attempted analogy with Gaza falls apart into nothingness before you can even try to put it together. And in Gaza the Israelis can at most be accused of careless or reckless negligence or indifference (which to be sure can be criminal in some cases), but not the deliberate and intentional indiscriminate massacres of Oradour-sur-Glane and Lidice. When I see casualties in Gaza, I feel sad because things have come to that point, but I'm aware that the people in Gaza are in their current situation because of a whole long line of stupid decisions or vicious decisions (not to mention a few stupid-and-vicious decisions) made by them and/or their leaders and/or those who claim to be acting on their behalf. So when people like you try to get my blood boiling by using ultra-emotionalistic histrionic rhetoric and selective statistics, my blood remains noticeably unboiled. The first prerequisite to helping Gazans is that they have to be ready to help themselves by valuing concrete practical pragmatic benefits above killing Jews, because otherwise foreign aid will go towards food subsistence rather than productive economic investments, and whatever rebuilding is achieved over the next few years will be blown away by the next round of conflict... AnonMoos (talk) 01:54, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

So you would argue that for the Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants, the satisfaction of hurting Germans far outweighed any practical considerations when they took up what you would call terrorism. I don't agree with you that the Ghetto inhabitants should have accepted what the nazis were doing to them. 99.224.193.148 (talk) 22:37, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Hotel with a view of The Liffey in Dublin?

A friend without internet access asked me to ask at the RefDesk if there's (or there was in 2002) any hotel in dublin that has full view to the Liffey River (Not The Clarence Hotel). Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 16:51, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

From a map from a google search, it looks like the Morrison Hotel would have a view. The website says they just did a major renovation, so that makes me fairly confident the hotel was there in 2002 with the same name. It is very near the Clarence but on the other (north) side of the river. The Arlington Hotel O'Connell Bridge is a little further east on the north side of the river and also has views, but I can't tell how long it has been there.Dreamahighway (talk) 01:21, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there are plenty, including the Morrison Hotel, the Jury's Inn Custom House Hotel, the Clifton Court Hotel and the Maldron Hotel Cardiff Lane. I believe all but the Jury's Inn were around in 2002. One other that was definitely around was the Ormond Hotel. If you want to search for more, the key phrase is the Quays, which denotes both the North and South banks of the Liffey between Sean Heuston Bridge and the East Link. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 07:12, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

THanks, very helpful. μηδείς (talk) 17:21, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Since I worked on the article, I was disappointed your friend ruled out the Clarence Hotel, μηδείς. Too expensive? Too rock star oriented? Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:45, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Turns out it was something about preferring a south facing or nicer facade. (My personal impression is it looks like a sunless old brick Ministry of Truth headquarters, splated in pigeon dust.) Communication is limited to a few short text messages a day at this point and jpegs of view from X are usuauly not reliable, which is why I was hoping for answers by people with local expertise here. μηδείς (talk) 17:27, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Are there two Lefts?

Hello, it just seems to me there's a huge difference between what I think of as Leftist and what is called Leftist generally.

The way I see it is - the one Left is pro-worker's rights, equity feminist, pro-nation state (internationalist, but the basic unit is still the nation state), anti-Nato, positivist (there's an objective knowable reality out there), pro-nuclear family ("democracy begins at home") etc.

The other is more or less indifferent to workers, gender feminist, globalist (anti-nation state, are ok with states ceding authority to supranational bodies and outsourcing public works to private firms), culture relativist (medical science is a western artifact and as such not more legitimate than say shamanism (Dawkins has a bit on that in his book)), subjectivist (if I say I'm a cat, then I am and who the hell are you to tell me otherwise), anti-nuclear family etc.

Their assesment of historical events and figures is different, too, for example how they view Pinochet (evil incarnate/indifferent), Soviet Russia and Lenin (modernizer/mass killer), modern Russia (proto-Capitalist banana republic/Communist hell), etc.

Is it just me who sees it or is the other Left not the real Left or was there perhaps a schism and if so, when and has someone perhaps written about it that I could read? Asmrulz (talk) 17:02, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

See centre-left and far-left. The former you talk about generally fall into the centre-left camp, while the latter is usually described as far-left. In general, leftist politics leans towards improving social equality, while rightist politics tends to favor preserving the existing social order and hierarchy. Within each of those camps are shades of difference, and there's a continuum of "lets make small changes and not upset the apple-cart too much" to "tear it all down and bring about the perfect society by any means necessary", which describes the general trend between centrism and radicalism. Furthermore, the SPECIFIC issues which are adopted as key issues by leftists or rightists in any one country will differ based on the existing culture of that country. Some things which are major political fighting points in country X may not even exist in country Y; some issues that are leftist in one country are rightist in another, and so on. There is no universal political model that fits every society in the world. --Jayron32 17:15, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

er... by this classification the Democratic Party, as well as the various Social Democrat (e.g.) and Green parties of Europe (who are everything I say in the 2nd paragraph, and who also (forgot to mention) affirm their respect for private property at every opportunity given) are far-Left whereas the CPSU and the various small parties labelled far-Left (1st paragpraph and anti-private property) are/were centre .... Asmrulz (talk) 18:01, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't see how abolition of private property can be anything but an extremist position. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:16, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

But they are sane on other social issues (my 1st paragpraph and the centre-left article.)Asmrulz (talk) 18:31, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's why it is a political spectrum or continuum. There are VERY broad strokes to be painted (BROADLY) leftist or rightist, however every country has its own political situation, and when you get too granular, there aren't two "camps" to fit in, there are a minimum of n+1 camps to fit in, where "n" is the total number of political parties in the world right now. Parties are classified as centre-left or far-left based on the preponderance of their political positions, not on any one or small subset of them. There are parties which are generally centrist which hold one or two extremist positions, there are parties which are generally extremist which hold one or two centrist positions; it doesn't make them not one or the other on the balance. No party is purely one thing or another, and party positions change over time as well. It matters when one looks at a party, as well. Furthermore, I don't know how you can classify the U.S. Democratic party as "far left", it doesn't seek to dismantle society, it doesn't seek income redistribution by using the force of violence, it doesn't advocate violent overthrow of the current order, it has never even advocated against social hierarchy as a concept. There are literally zero political positions which match ANYTHING mentioned at the far-left article that apply to the U.S. Democratic party, or really any of the others you mention (the SPD, the Greens, etc.) If you're trying to claim that parties like the SPD and the U.S. Democratic party ought to be labeled "far left", I'm not sure what to do about that, as you are so out of touch with reality as to defy the ability to learn... --Jayron32 18:39, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's so much about centre-left and far left. Since the fall of communism most of the left has moved away from socialism - the idea of restructuring the economy to deliver equality - and fallen back on identity politics. Unfortunately identity politics has a tendency to become an "I'm more oppressed than you" contest, and devolve into a sectarian mess with activists denouncing each other on the internet for being insufficiently anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, or just being a straight cis white male, instead of trying to solve any problems in the real world. The left in America is lucky that the right is also a shambles. Not so much elsewhere. --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:06, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I didn't classify them as far-Left. I thought you did. You identified the stuff from my 2nd paragraph as far-Left ("The former you talk about generally fall into the centre-left camp, while the latter is usually described as far-left."). Those are the positions which incidentally the mainstream democratic parties share (gender as opposed to equity? check. culture-relativist? check. etc) I personally think these parties are not Left at all, or, if they are, they are everything that's wrong with it Asmrulz (talk) 19:09, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, what Nicknack009 said. I couldn't have put it better myself Asmrulz (talk) 19:12, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

See Left-wing politics for our "overview" article. I would characterize your first description as Socialism and your second as Cultural liberalism, but, as mentioned above, political views aren't easy to compartmentalize at this level. Tevildo (talk) 18:43, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Tevildo. However, if you look at the article on cultural liberalism, the first sentence is clearly defining the concept in terms of its parent idea, that of liberalism. It might be different from how you would talk about the people. Sometimes, that is because the terminology has a history, and the people themselves have a different history. If you google, not so much "cultural liberalism" as "the cultural left", you will find much that is of interest about these people. You might also be interested in the book What's Left? by Nick Cohen, which may address some of these issues (I haven't read it, I just saw it in Borders once and it looked relevant). IBE (talk) 06:12, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Neither of the groups you talk about seem to be left from my perspective, as both accept, tolerate, or cultivate capitalist social relations. From my definitional perspective, which comes out of Marxist and anarchist class struggle traditions, the minimal criteria for left-wing politics is to hold a position for the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with a classless society, either immediately, gradually or eventually, and to act politically upon this position. I think you're more interested in the difference between labourism progressivism and post 1970 social democracy and contemporary social liberalism and identity politics. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:45, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

The common position between both major (US) political parties is pro-NATO, pro-nation state and pro-nuclear family. Supporting cooperation among nations (e.g., UN, WTO, etc.) is also a common trait, although enough people in Congress think we shouldn't pay our fair share of the bill. Only on the wildest extremes are the anti-science, anti-nuclear family (huh?) or anti-NATOists likely to be found. DOR (HK) (talk) 06:32, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I really don't know what's so great about "positivism" -- in my field, the word positivism is synonymous with the behaviorism and operationalism and "proceduralism" (i.e. the view that if you can't specify an exact sequence of steps to measure something, then it's completely worthless to science, and should not be included in any scientific hypothesis or discussion) which had a stranglehold in the mid-20th century and impeded progress then. Anyway, the parameters of the original questioner's left-left split don't seem too valid to me, and in the United States today, it sure seems like it's the right -- not the left -- which rejects the idea of objective truth when it comes to big policy issues, taking refuge in subjective ultra-relativism. In other words, while lefties or quasi-lefties may be on the leading edge of vaccination-and-autism or pseudo-scientific diet fads, it's the right which rejects evolution and climate change. AnonMoos (talk) 07:01, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

It's worse than diet fads. Also, I can't say what's great about positivism, but I think that in the cause of fighting vestiges of pre-modernity, if that's one's purpose, culture relativism and subjectivism frankly don't help. I always thought antivax people were right-wing, evil government violating my precious autonomy and all Asmrulz (talk) 15:03, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if it's really true that vaccine denial is predominantly right-wing. The studies I've found indicate that it is essentially bipartisan. See [13], [14], and [15]. --2001:4898:80E0:ED43:0:0:0:3 (talk) 16:55, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Neither left nor right has a monopoly on ignorance of science. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:24, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Asmrulz, 2001:4898:80E0:ED43:0:0:0:3 -- Those in the U.S. who are publicly vocal about refusing to have their children vaccinated probably aren't too likely to be hard-core leftists, but I have the impression that they're quite often upper-middle-class well-educated quasi-"hipster" urbanites who vote Democratic, so in that sense it seems reasonable to label anti-vaccinationism as overall more of a leftish thing than a rightish thing. But when it comes to the really big and broad issues (as opposed to personal eccentricities), then it sure seems to me that nowadays it's conservatives who are the ones who most often take refuge in obscurantist "truthiness"... AnonMoos (talk) 21:00, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I have to regard this discussion with some bemusement. It should be apparent that if you divide all human political sentiment into "left" and "right", each will include at least half of all possible political beliefs (more than half if your criteria for division are blurred or contradictory). So there can be little agreement between the members of each "side" on anything, and substantial agreement between them. This is only lost when in fact one is not considering left versus right, but far narrower ideologies that have replicated themselves without critical examination to groups of people. In other words, it's easier to tell an insect from a sea cucumber than a protostome from a deuterostome. Wnt (talk) 22:06, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

That's why it is always local. Left tends towards "progressive" or "more equality", while right tends towards "conservative" or "preserve social order", but the specifics are highly dependent on WHERE you live. That is, the line that defines the "center" between left and right will vary WILDLY from place to place, and the issues that "right" and "left" polarize themselves over would like completely different in different locales. I know it was said in a totally different context, but All politics is local certainly applies to definitions of "left" and "right". --Jayron32 22:45, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

In the dance of politics, it's sometimes helpful to have two left feet. You may quote me. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:55, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Fate of the German royal family

After the First World War the German monarchy was abolished and the country became a republic. What became of the Kaiser and his family? Is there anyone alive today who would be Kaiser had Germany still been a monarchy? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:00, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Check Wilhelm II, German Emperor#Abdication and flight and all his children's' articles. Nearly all of them have articles. And Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia --The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 19:04, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Technically the German imperial family or the Prussian royal family (or the Brandenburg Hohenzollerns -- some things might have turned out a lot better if they had remained mere margraves of Brandenburg)... AnonMoos (talk) 06:42, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

If Monaco can have a "royal family" (at least in the popular press), I guess Germany can have one too. —Tamfang (talk) 04:46, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Monaco doesn't have an "inverted commas" royal family. It is an independent state and its head of state is the Prince of Monaco. Although a much smaller state, its royal family are a royal family in the same way that the British royal family are a royal family. The popular press has nothing to do with it. The German "royal family" on the other hand probably do deserve ironic inverted commas as they have no recognised position in the polity of the Federal Republic of Germany. Valiantis (talk) 18:39, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Assassins' executioners

Is there any record of who the executioners were of Charles J. Guiteau and Leon Czolgosz—i.e. the people who 'flipped the switch', so-to-speak? matt (talk) 21:41, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

According to this contemporary account, Guiteau was executed by a "Mr Strong", on whom we don't seem to have an article. I'll see what I can find out about Czologosz. Tevildo (talk) 22:28, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Another Wiki has an article on another(?) somewhat anonymous Mr. Strong (SPOILER) who didn't mind a little blood on his hands. Having the ruling class' blessing was just a bonus. In a previous position, he'd killed a man just as a means to sentencing another to die for regicide. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:22, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

According to this site (which cites a contemporary newspaper article), Czologosz was executed by "Electrician Davis" under the instructions of "Warden Mead" (presumably J. Warren Mead - see Auburn Correctional Facility#Wardens). Tevildo (talk) 22:34, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

List of epidemics

List of epidemics seems a bit lopsided toward the West. Aren't there any serious epidemics which affected Eastern Asia before the 17th century?--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 22:22, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

It's a horribly incomplete list and likely always will be; it doesn't even include epidemics we have articles for, such as Plague of Emmaus and Plague of Cyprian. Yes, there were many epidemics in Asia and pretty much almost anywhere people have ever lived (though the pre-contact New World seems not to have had many, or at least we have no record of it). Unfortunately, WP still suffers from biases in favour of recentism and English sources. Off the top of my head, there was a plague in Yuan dynasty China, but our article on the period doesn't mention it and we have no standalone article. Second plague pandemic only alludes to it. Google yuan dynasty plague for more. Matt Deres (talk) 23:11, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Before we get too down on ourselves about how lopsided our coverage is... take a look at the other language versions of WP. We actually do comparatively well. That isn't to say we couldn't do better. Don't just complain... try to fix the problem. Blueboar (talk) 01:10, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Just as far as New World plagues, it's quite possible that they had significant ones. Many Mississippian cities, all the way up to the cultural center of Cahokia, were abandoned long before European contact, and epidemics are considered one possible reason for their demise. Nyttend (talk) 16:03, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

They're certainly possible, but we're missing a key ingredient - the disease. It's to be expected that large groups of people living together without the benefits of modern sanitation and medicine will be susceptible to epidemics, but, so far as I know, we don't have any evidence of any that firmly date to pre-contact times. As I guess most people are aware, after 1492, a veritable host of horrible diseases swept over the Americas, while the only disease that seemed to go the other way is syphilis and even that is disputed. If the people at Cahokia were wiped out by a nasty bug, it should probably have been involved with the disease transfer and showed up in Europe - or at least cropped up again somewhere. Matt Deres (talk) 16:37, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not complaining, just pointing out the situation to someone who was apparently puzzled by the omission. In this particular case we also have the problem that an epidemic isn't rigidly defined; when, say, the 100th person gets sick, we can't go "Oh look it's now officially an epidemic; let's edit the article!" Lists like this have educational value and should be fixed/kept... but they're frankly often terrible articles. Matt Deres (talk) 16:42, 12 August 2014 (UTC)