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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 October 7

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October 7

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Caesars Entertainment Corporation earnings 2015

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This can't be right. Cgx8253, stated that the Revenue is US$ 4.654 billion, Operating income is US$ 573 million and net income is US$ 5.92 billion. Net income cannot be higher than revenue, can someone please correct this? Their 2016 earnings are here, but I am not sure how to interpret it can someone help? As far as I can tell the casino is losing money not earning 5 billion a year. Valoem talk contrib 01:43, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how gambling establishments do their accounting. For example, if we just consider slots, do they call the total amount of coins (or value of tokens) plunked into slot machines as their revenue, or do they only count that total minus what they paid out as revenue ? (After that, they have all the overhead expenses of any other business to subtract, of course.) StuRat (talk) 02:43, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I listed the balance sheet but I'm not an accountant, I am not sure which one is operating income and which one is net income. Valoem talk contrib 02:53, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Here comes the long and boring accounting response. First of all, you're looking at the wrong report. The 2015 annual report is here and the figures seem correct. Net income can definitely be higher than operating income and even than revenue. Between operating and net income is net financial income. That's negative for a typical company that has more debt than cash, but can be positive. In this case, however, there was a specific item in net financial income that led to a very high net income - deconsolidation of a subsidiary, which I will try to explain.
Basically, the consolidated annual report, such as this one, shows the assets and liabilities of all the consolidated companies. Consolidated companies are those that the parent company has effective control over. In 2015, one of the subsidiaries of Caesar, CEOC, entered restructuring and the parent company considered that it had lost control of the subsidiary to its creditors (details on that are in Note 3 of the report). As such, it removed its assets and liabilities from the consolidated figures. It just so happened that the assets of CEOC were 7bil. USD less than liabilities (it had negative net value), thus removing both created a positive effect on the consolidated balance sheet and, thus, the income statement. Of course, these are "paper" or "accounting" profits and do not represent any actual gain for Caesar, but it's consistent with accounting standards. That is exactly why no analyst just uses stated profit figures for share valuation, without digging into details. No longer a penguin (talk) 08:01, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oh they sold assets for net income. Valoem talk contrib 12:45, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not exactly. They removed a subsidiary from the valuation because it no longer had effective control over that subsidiary. --Jayron32 13:34, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, they basically said "we don't consider this to be part of our company anymore". And since "this" had a massively negative value, it showed up as a profit. No longer a penguin (talk) 18:42, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why are there no Masses in the Roman Catholic Church in the USA for certain October 2016 dates?

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Two things recently happened that lead me to ask this question. One: A family friend recently died, a day or two ago. I was told: The family cannot have the funeral anytime before the 12th of October, because the church will not allow that. The church will be "closed" until then. I thought that was a bit odd, but then I forgot all about it. I assumed that the church building had some problems or some renovations or whatever. Then, the second episode occurred. Two: I just looked at my weekly church bulletin and it says "No Masses" for October 10, 11, 12, and 13 (Monday through Thursday). The date for Friday, October 14, 2016, is not listed at all. (Perhaps this is a typo or some error?) So, is there any reason why Catholic churches do not have any masses -- or other functions, such as funerals -- on these particular dates? I have never heard of this in all my years. What's going on? Thanks! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:20, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I am referring to two completely different churches in my above question. The church mentioned in incident "One" (above) is the church of the family of the recently deceased person. The church mentioned in incident "Two" (above) is a totally separate and different church. But, both are Roman Catholic churches. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:27, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Your userpage says you're in Connecticut, so presumably your church is a part of the Diocese of Norwich, the Diocese of Bridgeport, or the Archdiocese of Hartford. For one thing, why don't you check the episcopal website? Perhaps your bishop or archbishop has decreed something throughout the diocese for these specific dates. For another thing, it's your church after all: why don't you contact the parish office? Surely the priest would have an idea what's going on, and if your parish has lay employees or lay volunteers who work a good deal of time for the parish, they'll probably be able to help you as well. Nyttend (talk) 19:50, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The Norwich website doesn't mention anything (I couldn't find an events page there) except for recent events like the Red Mass last week. The Bridgeport website's calendar has lots of events, but most are for individual parishes, e.g. ten days from now, someone from a water company is giving a talk to the women's group at Christ the King Parish in Trumbull. And I didn't see anything on Hartford's calendar. It may still be a good idea to contact the office for your (arch)diocese, but contacting your pastor or a lay official for the parish is probably the best route. Nyttend (talk) 19:57, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This may simply be that the local priest is away on those dates, and there is no-one else able to take services. The Roman Catholic church has an increasing problem of a shortage of ordained priests, and some things can only be done by a priest. Wymspen (talk) 21:38, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I am in the Archdiocese of Hartford. Naturally, I would have telephoned my church to ask "what's up?". But the offices are closed on Fridays. So I posted here. I thought there might be some "national" or "universal" reason of some religious significance. Also, it's possible that the local priest is unavailable. But, typically, they would bring in another priest from somewhere else (as opposed to cancelling masses for the entire week). And, they would probably put some notation in the weekly bulletin (e.g., "Father Jones is very sick and in the hospital. Unfortunately, a substitute priest was unavailable. Thanks for your patience and understanding. Etc. Etc. Etc."). Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 02:49, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Given that the 10th is Columbus Day ... I suspect it's just a question of the church staff taking some well earned vacation time. Blueboar (talk) 12:51, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably the Roman Catholic Church doesn't shut down immediately after Christmas. How effective are these public holidays in America? In England and Wales many businesses observe them but in Scotland and Northern Ireland many businesses don't. Good Friday has become an ordinary shopping day. Also, in this country registrars provide an emergency service for Jewish and Muslim deaths over public holidays (because burials must take place within 24 hours). Do American registrars offer this facility? 2A02:C7F:BE2B:5600:D502:6BDB:165F:5F44 (talk) 17:55, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You can see some random examples of I think all Catholic churches in different places (not all in the US) with no masses sometime in October (not all this year) [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. Most of these do mention the reason but the last 2 don't seem to. Where the reason is mention, it's generally because the priest is away on some professional duty, although in one case it's attending a nephew's wedding and in another cases recovery from minor surgery (actually there are two different periods of cancellation there). As mentioned by others, it's likely attempts will be made for another priest to fill in but particularly with the churches problems attracting sufficient priests, this may not always be possible. Even more so when there's a reason for multiple priests to be away like an event or course. Notably in one of the cases (the wedding one) there apparently is a priest filling in, but there's still no masses on the festival of All Saints and All Souls, I presume because the person filling in isn't able to for that. Nil Einne (talk) 11:54, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
When the Catholics reformed the calendar in 1582 the dates they left out were 5- 14 October, that being the sequence with the least number of holy days. For much the same reason, the Orthodox jumped from 30 September to 14 October in 1923. The exception was the Greeks - they jumped from 9 to 23 March in 1924 because Independence Day (25 March) was already on the New Style and it traditionally coincided with Lady Day (also 25 March, as it is here). 2A02:C7F:BE2B:5600:A89E:AAC0:EA7:6596 (talk) 15:11, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean when you say that they "left out those dates"? What does "left out" mean, exactly? "Left out" from what? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:33, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with the old Julian calendar was that it had too many leap years - it needed refinement. They could have cancelled leap years for a period to get back on track, but instead they just decided to remove the excess days at one fell swoop. So in 1582 the Catholic calendar went

1 October, 2 October, 3 October, Thursday 4 October, Friday 15 October, 16 October, 17 October and so on.

When the Orthodox Church got round to changing the excess days had risen to thirteen. So the calendar went

28 September, 29 September, Sunday 30 September, Monday 14 October, 15 October, 16 October, 17 October and so on.

When the Greek Orthodox Church made the change in 1924 their calendar went

8 March, Sunday 9 March, Monday 23 March, 24 March, 25 March, 26 March, 27 March and so on. 2A02:C7F:BE2B:5600:8133:3A40:7144:75C5 (talk) 16:17, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not to be left out, we Anglicans left out Thursday 2 September to Wednesday 13 September 1752 - see Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. Alansplodge (talk) 19:06, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. OK. So, now I "get" all of the calendar manipulation. But what does that have to do with the original question? Due to these manipulations, Catholics decide (in 2016) to not hold Masses on these dates? Is that the idea? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:42, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Or perhaps the fact that these dates have few holy days makes them a tempting time for a parish priest to take a holiday! MChesterMC (talk) 08:44, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Read the article again. It says

Wednesday 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday 14 September 1752.

That legislation of course encompassed the American colonies and the whole of Ireland. Before its passage, Irish Catholics calculated the date of Easter according to the old style, being nervous about revealing their religion by concelebrating it with Catholics elsewhere. I wonder if they observed Old Christmas Day for the same reason. 2A02:C7F:BE2B:5600:C104:51BD:2846:2A97 (talk) 11:21, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You're all wrong. It's all Roberto Duran's fault. He decreed, "No mass", and it was so. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:55, 12 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 10:29, 12 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]