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September 29

South African Hansard from the apartheid era

Does anyone know where I can find (ideally searchable...) online transcripts of the South African parliament, written questions etc. during the apartheid era? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.90.82.176 (talk) 08:35, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

I think you are looking for Hansard replies called National Assembly Question and Replies but there are also National Assembly Executive Replies to Questions and National Council of Provinces Executive Replies to Questions.
Sleigh (talk) 09:11, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Here is the link Sleigh is referring to: Hansard Replies. Click on each category to browse by date. They go back to 1970 and there is a keyword search box at the bottom of the page.184.147.131.85 (talk) 17:50, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Welfare and Insurance

What's the difference between welfare and insurance?

Desklin (talk) 09:01, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Have a look at our article on Social insurance to get you started. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:47, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Insurance of any kind involves a large number of people paying in to a system, with the expectation that only a relatively small percentage of those people will be getting money back at any given time. Figuring out how to optimize the premiums against the statistically expected amount of payouts (i.e. the "risk") is called Actuarial science. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 17:26, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

• Insurance is a device to make risk predictable. You don't know how much you'll lose this year to crime or accidents or acts of god, but an actuary can estimate very accurately how much a large number of people like you will lose, and sell you that certainty (with a markup that you'll happily pay if you're risk-averse). Ideally, the price of insuring you is proportional to the expected value of your losses, so there's no expected transfer from one customer to another; this is not even roughly true of state welfare. (Probably the safety net services of the friendly societies were closer to pure insurance.) —Tamfang (talk) 02:57, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Insurance and Helping the Poor

Is insurance to help poor people? Desklin (talk) 09:05, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

The traditional "mission statement" of insurance is that in the event of an insured loss, "...there followeth not the undoing of any man, but the loss lighteth rather easily upon many than upon a few." (Marine Insurance Act, 1601). In some cases, those with huge resources can do without insurance. An often quoted example was London Transport, who before the privatisation of their bus services, never insured their vehicles, they simply covered any costs from their own funds. To comply with the law, they had to establish a court bond to guarantee that any liability claims could be met. But yes, if an ordinary person's car is stolen, he or she probably won't have the means to go out and buy a similar one; that's what insurance is for. Have a look at our insurance article. Alansplodge (talk) 10:11, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Similarly my father worked for a multinational company with a large vehicle fleet, which had an insurance policy with third-party cover and a £100,000 (probably equivalent of £500,000 today) excess. This evidently worked out very cheap, covering the whole fleet for a nominal fee, but covered legal requirements to be insurance - and I suppose the unlikely event that someone would run over a group of premier division footballers and run up a liability that would show even on a multinational's balance sheet. -- Q Chris (talk) 10:18, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Apart from vehicle insurance, which is normally a legal requirement, "poor people" typically wouldn't choose to spend money on insurance premiums, and wouldn't have goods worth insuring anyway.--Shantavira| 11:32, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I see we have in our midst an acolyte of Australia's recently departed Treasurer Joe Hockey: . -- Jack of Oz 19:43, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

• It depends to some extent what type of insurance you're talking about. In general, you less out of insurance than you put in, which makes it expensive for the poor, but some long term schemes (such as whole life insurance) do gain in value, and for people without savings, being able to cover the very-high costs of an unexpected disaster (death, illness, fire) through smaller regular payments is of great benefit (in decades gone by, where there were few jobs for women that paid enough to support a family, working men were very worried that a workplace accident might mean homelessness or even starvation for their wives and children). Some types of insurance are created by socialist or liberal governments to benefit the poor: the British National Insurance scheme was explicitly created and developed to provide employment benefits to the working class (first as part of Asquith's Liberal reforms, and later developed by Atlee's Labour government). At the other extreme, you have schemes like payment protection insurance which were little more than scams to get more money from vulnerable borrowers (expensive PPI deals were attached to subprime loans, and supposedly covered you if you couldn't pay back the loan, but it was generally very difficult to fulfill the terms of the PPI and get your money back). In these cases, the only people the insurance really helps are the shareholders of the bank. Smurrayinchester 12:30, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

• In general, the purpose of private insurance is to protect property interests from catastrophic losses, whether the loss be from medical expenses (health insurance), the loss of a wage-earner's income (life insurance), property destruction (fire insurance), or lawsuits (liability insurance), etc. This implies a level of wealth that is great enough to need protection, but not so great that the losses can be easily borne. In contrast, the purpose of social insurance is to protect ordinary people from expenses that they might otherwise be unable to bear, typically retirement (Social Security), inability to work (disability insurance), or medical expenses (state-sponsored health insurance, such as Medicare and Medicaid in the United States). So social insurance could be said to be for poor people, while private insurance really is not. John M Baker (talk) 13:25, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

The purpose of insurance is to help a given policyholder try to recover from a financial loss. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 17:27, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

• One concept which insurance takes advantage of is a Risk pool. The idea is thus: insurance works because more money goes into the system of insurance than gets paid out by the system, but from the point of view of the policy holders, the insurance prevents catastrophic loss on account of whatever is being insured against (health issues, fire, floods, etc.) The system works efficiently when a) the policy holder pays an insurance premium which is low enough to be inconsequential, and b) there are enough payers to make sure the insurer can cover the cost of those insurees who actually make a claim. One of the claimed benefits of Obamacare is that, by making the risk pool larger by forcing more people to buy insurance, there's more available money to cover more people, and also to cover riskier people (those more likely to actually need the insurance they are paying for). In an ideal insurance market, the situation is "win-win": the insured pays a low enough premium as to have minimal financial impact on the rest of their finances, but is covered by the insurer in the event some catastrophic event occurs, and for the insuror, enough money comes in through premiums from people who don't actually use the insurance to cover the costs of those who do. --Jayron32 06:00, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Once you accept that insurance (ideally) protects you from catastrophic loss, the difference between the poor and the wealthy is simply the definition of catastrophic. If you have the resources to simply buy a new car whenever you feel like it, the loss of one would not be catastrophic (though you'll still be required by law to have insurance on it). However, the loss of your $1 billion super yacht might well be catastrophic even for the wealthiest, and they would probably want to insure against that. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:19, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Since it's come up a couple times, I'll point out that the requirement to have car insurance is mostly to make sure that when you crash into someone else's $1bn super yacht (or ferrari, or house), they don't end up out of pocket due to your driving and subsequent inability to pay damages. There's no particular reason for the law to care whether you can replace your own car. This is also one of the reasons why many small cheap cars driven by new drivers cost more than the cost of the car to insure - they aren't saying you're going to write it off in the year, just that you might crash into and write off another car which is worth a lot more. MChesterMC (talk) 08:28, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Right, "car insurance" in many jurisdictions is required to include liability insurance for events involving the insured vehicle(s). It covers much more than just paying to repair or replace a vehicle. It will pay for basically any costs stemming from a covered event, including medical costs, any kind of property damage (say someone crashes their vehicle into a building), legal costs, etc. You have to be really rich for it to not be financially worthwhile to carry vehicle insurance (ignoring legal requirements), because there's always the potential of huge liabilities stemming from driving (especially in countries without universal health care). Not to mention that if you're known to be rich, it makes you an attractive target for lawsuits. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 07:39, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

What is the nationality of Toni Romiti ?

--Hijodetenerife (talk) 16:09, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages does not yet have an article about Toni Romiti, though google has some information. This is not a reliable source, but if it is factual, she was born in Chicago and raised in South Carolina, making her nationality American. --Jayron32 16:15, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

If you're asking about her ancestry, which in this early blog from her teenage basketball days she calls her "ethnicity" - her late father was Italian and mother African-American. -- Deborahjay (talk) 20:14, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Did Canada have witch trails trials like Salem did?

I'm interested in it's history. 192.47.255.251 (talk) 20:23, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

No. There were isolated incidents only, see the references provided over here at yahoo answers. 184.147.131.85 (talk) 21:11, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

This unreliable source notes only one known Canadian burned for witchcraft, one Daniel Vuil. However, this biography of Vuil states that he was sentenced to execution for "trafficking in spirits with the Indians", which means that he was selling liquor (distilled spirit) and not that he was conjuring ghosts. I'm not sure if the first, unreliable source is confused by the use of the word "spirit", which is likely, since the second source, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography is scrupulously reliable and makes no mention of witchcraft. However, that path led me to search for the term "witch" at the DCB, which lead me to this, which is probably a really good start for your research. --Jayron32 21:26, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

I've corrected the section title. At least, I assume I'm making a correction. --174.88.134.156 (talk) 22:53, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

When you change a section title you need to add {{Anchor|Did Canada have witch trails like Salem did?}} or whatever the original title was immediately under the new title, or the section may not show up for those tracking it. μηδείς (talk) 00:40, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. --174.88.134.156 (talk) 20:24, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Ghosts in Japan

Can you explain to me why in Japanese cartoons ghosts are often depicted with two or three flames around them? For example https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/308783?tags=murasame_oshizu https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/2124286?tags=ghost

I see it from multiple different unrelated authors so it must have some kind of cultural meaning or reason. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.165.15.4 (talk) 21:01, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Have a look at Yūrei. This article says certain attributes become standardized in art and theatre to make ghost characters instantly recognizable. 184.147.131.85 (talk) 21:16, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

They are hitodama (as is mentioned in the yūrei article). There's some more information in TV Tropes's Ghost Lights article. -- BenRG (talk) 03:29, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

@BenRG:why not add those information in wikipedia?

September 30

Identify the play: Bird at the window means death

I wonder if anyone can identify a play, presented on US network TV in the late 1950's in which a bird flaps at a window wanting in, and when an old man opens the window over the objections of his family, the man dies. On Google I only found references to superstitions about a bird flying against a window being an omen of someone dying. Edison (talk) 04:19, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

You misunderstand, a bird flying inside a house means death.
Sleigh (talk) 05:47, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, Edison might also watch Six Feet Under through S4E5 where at imdb, "a bird some consider to be an omen and others merely to be an annoyance continues to invade the house. When Nate is insulted for allowing its return by not closing the window it originally entered through, he takes out all his frustration on the bird." This is a rather old superstition that I heard of through my grandmother, a Rusyn person. I know it is widespread through Eurasia, and assume that Marija Gimbutas's writings on the Bird Goddess will probably address it. I am not an expert on North American traditions, but someone else might comment. μηδείς (talk) 01:55, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

None of the above addressed "a play, presented on US network TV in the late 1950's" which was the info sought. I looked through all episodes of the TV drama series Playhouse 90 and that was not the venue. It could have been "US Steel Hour" or some series which presented more absurdist dramas. A site which describes all episodes of live TV drama from the 1950's "golden age of TV drama would be useful. I'm thinking 1957 through 1958. Edison (talk) 13:39, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Anglophone/Francophonie

If Anglophone is to English speaking countries, and Francophonie is to French, then what is the German equivalent? --194.66.219.40 (talk) 09:33, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Just "Germanophone" (or "Germanophon" in German). German sometimes uses the Latin-derived "Germano-" for language-related things. If you study German language and literature in school, that's called "Germanistik". Adam Bishop (talk) 09:39, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

See also German Sprachraum. --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:46, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

I like teutonophone. -- Jack of Oz 09:56, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

• Germanophones can be subdivided by dialect, of course, into branches such as the Saxophones. —Tamfang (talk) 22:46, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

History of housing?

In pre-modern times, how did housing work - have there always (since the cave-dweller days) been some people who rented their housing and some who owned? Did renting work similarly in antiquity as today - where the tenant paid some amount every month (or whatever time period) to live in someone else's property? Or did it work differently? 74.96.84.58 (talk) 14:06, 30 September 2015 (UTC)Nightvid

Is there a specific area of the world that you are interested in? Otherwise the question is probably too broad to summarize here. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:48, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Two articles to start on would be domus and insula (building), referring to the Roman era. Ancient Greeks are a bit tricky as they used adobe and it rained a bit in the inventing eons. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:41, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Medieval houses (going back at least as far as the 12th century) could be rented and bought and sold, and contracts and other legal documents about housing are remarkably similar to similar modern documents. They had mortgages and reverse mortgages and all that. I suspect this is because they were borrowing from Roman law although I've never looked into Roman housing law specifically (but any jurisdiction that still uses civil law probably owes a lot to the Roman law of late antiquity). Adam Bishop (talk) 20:15, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

And let's not forget feudalism and serfdom, where the serf generally owed payment in the form of crops and/or labor to their lord in exchange for their fief. Land tenure might be informative. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 20:26, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

More specifically, Feudal_land_tenure_in_England. As far as I can tell from everything I've read about feudalism and Manorialism, rents and taxes were paid for land, not houses. I've always assumed that people (whether peasants or nobles) just built (or had built) whatever house they could afford with the resources they got from the land they rented minus those given to their lord in tax or rent. However, I realize now that I've never seen this explicitly stated anywhere, so it's possible an erroneous assumption. Here are some non-Misplaced Pages links on the subject: http://www.learner.org/interactives/middleages/morehome.html, http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval-england/the-lifestyle-of-medieval-peasants/, http://westernreservepublicmedia.org/middleages/feud_peasants.htm, http://www.localhistories.org/middle.html. The second link repeats the myth that people in the middle ages never (or almost never) bathed, so I'd be a bit skeptical about the other claims in that one. Iapetus (talk) 10:46, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Remember though that there were more people in the Middle Ages than just peasants and nobles. There were cities too, with merchants and craftsmen and other people who were the original "middle class". Adam Bishop (talk) 11:06, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Just on the question of timing, in Britain and Ireland rents were traditionally due on Quarter days. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:46, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

October 1

Clarington, Ontario

How many Claringtons are there in Ontario? Clarington, Ontario is a redirect to Clarington, because it was at the first title until someone moved it to the second title in 2011. However, the article has two hatnotes, both of which link to the redirect; one of them even mentions "the city in Courtice", and Courtice appears to be a neighborhood of the city that's the subject of the Clarington article, not vice versa. Is there another Clarington somewhere that should be linked? Is this just an artifact of the pagemove? I ended up here expecting that Clarington would be a redirect to Clarington, Ohio, and I'm not sure if I need to remove the currently unhelpful hatnotes and replace with {{this|the Ontario municipality|the Ohio community|Clarington, Ohio}} (because these are the only Claringtons) or create a disambiguation page (because there are three or more Clarington articles). Nyttend (talk) 13:52, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Looks like a bit of vandalism on September 10. older ≠ wiser 14:21, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Most of your post I don't understand, but I can confirm that there is just one Clarington in Ontario. Gov of Ontario list. 184.147.131.85 (talk) 19:38, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the solid source! You probably don't understand it because Bkonrad fixed the article before you looked at it. You'll understand better if you look at the article as it was when I found it. Nyttend (talk) 19:54, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure this was just a botched edit or a vandalous one as Bkronrad said, but I'll just note that the list 184.147.131.85 only shows municipalities, i.e. places that are incorporated and have an official existence. It would theoretically be possible for an unincorporated community named Clarington to exist elsewhere in Ontario. I remember reading at the time when Cambridge, Ontario, was being created and the political battle over its name had just been settled, nobody taken account of the fact that there was already a Cambridge elsewhere in Ontario. (Sorry, I have no source to cite for this.) Obviously that was because the existing community was unincorporated.

Checking the Canadian Geographic Names Data Base, and requesting populated places of all types, I find only the one Clarington, Ontario, but the other (unincorporated) Cambridge, Ontario, is here, east of Ottawa. --174.88.134.156 (talk) 02:04, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

October 2

Personality

There was a test done in the mid 20th century on people where they would administer pain on others. I tested human response to authority figures. I forgot the name of this test. What was it called? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.146.97.233 (talk) 00:42, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Are you perhaps thinking of the Stanford prison experiment? Or would the Milgram experiment be what you want? Nyttend (talk) 00:43, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

I think what the OP had in mind was a study where people were asked to inflict pain on other people and were more willing to do it when the person giving the instruction was an authority figure. This did not happen in a prison environment. 78.146.125.99 (talk) 13:14, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

78.146.125.99 (talk) is one of several London area IP sockpuppets of banned User:Vote (X) for Change. See block log, WP:BMB .

Nor did the Stanford prison experiment take place in a prison environment: it took place at Stanford University in which a prison-like situation was simulated {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 13:34, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

more respectable interconnections

I was watching a YouTube video. It was from KITV. The video featured a 9/11 memorial ceremony being held for the first time aboard the USS Missouri (BB-63). Everything gave me ideas. I was going to create some artworks to remember the victims of that fateful morning and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Where can I send the artworks when I finish them?2604:2000:712C:2900:91EC:A95A:18EF:2F46 (talk) 03:58, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Northeastern University maintains a collection of memorials from the marathon bombing. Maybe you could contact them. here is a website about the project. --Jayron32 04:07, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

are the legal codes of the various legal systems in public domain? if answer is in the positive, then the laws and penal codes of my current residential region as well as others can be posted in wikibooks as law books.

OP wants clear and exhaustive reply/ies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahfuzur rahman shourov (talk • contribs) 04:18, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, Mahfuzur rahman shourov, I'd look at the front and back matter of legal codes of the place where you live for a notice saying that the material is donated to the public domain. If you find such a notice, it's in the public domain; if you don't, it isn't. -- Hoary (talk) 05:13, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

User:Hoary is this why there are no wikibook on the laws and legal systems of USA, The British penal codes and so on? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahfuzur rahman shourov (talk • contribs) 05:16, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

It depends on the jurisdiction. In Lithuania, for example, laws, draft laws and decisions regarding laws (e.g., court decisions) are explicitly not subject to copyright. It is the same in many other countries - the law is a lot less useful if it can not be freely reproduced for people to see it. That said, it may not be the same in all countries. On the subject of law books, they are not usually limited to just the text of the laws, they organize the information and often provide analysis - that is subject to copyright.No longer a penguin (talk) 07:24, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

@No longer a penguin and Hoary:my question is about the texts of the laws. example:british penal code ###, texan landowning law### and so on. rquesting for more replies by more users.

For the UK, Acts of Parliament, Bills introduced to parliament, or documents made under the direction or control of either House of Parliament are protected by either Crown Copyright or Parliamentary Copyright, so they are not public domain. I'm not going to dig into the Act to work out whether there are any relevant exceptions to infringement, since that would be legal advice (which we don't do here). The short andwer is, it's going to vary by country, and will probably be much more complicated than looking at the copyright laws of just that country - e.g. the governments of other "qualifying countries" are entitled to copyright under the UK Act, even if they aren't under their own law, and whether this applies to the text of the law of that country is going to be a complex question of fact and law. MChesterMC (talk) 08:23, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

As you can see on the ComLaw website, the official online repositry of Australian federal legislation, "© Commonwealth of Australia. Unless identified otherwise, all ComLaw content is copyright of the Commonwealth of Australia (the Australian Government)".--Shirt58 (talk) 08:29, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

US federal and state laws are not subject to copyright, see Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Federal_and_state_laws_are_not_copyrighted. NawlinWiki (talk) 17:19, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

UK legislation is copyright but available under the Open Government Licence. But it would be difficult to compile the British "legal code" given the very large numbers of statutes that are currently in force or partly in force, to say nothing of common law. rossb (talk) 18:19, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Swedish legislation is explicitly not copyrighted, so you could post it in wikibooks. Not that it's a good idea, since there are several websites that post the updated versions of laws, sometimes even with short analyses and connected precedents. . Making a wikibook means that you lose the update function. Sjö (talk) 18:35, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Born/died out of the 48.

Apart from Obama and McCain, was there any other major party presidential or vice-presidential nominee who was born or died out of the 48 contiguous states? 176.92.246.100 (talk) 20:46, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Al Gore was born in Washington, D.C. so was born on the Contiguous United States, but not in one of 48 contiguous states per your statement and header. Natural-born-citizen clause#Eligibility challenges also has some people who were nominees who were born in one of the states, before it became a state (Barry Goldwater and Charles Curtis). Nil Einne (talk) 22:30, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

nevermind. Misread the question. RudolfRed (talk) 23:10, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

The early presidents were born before there were US states. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:38, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

There was a rumour that Chester A. Arthur was born outside of the US. It is untrue (per our article), but it does get mentioned sometimes when you research topics along these lines. 99.235.223.170 (talk) 13:02, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Alexander Hamilton, while not a President or VP, was a founding father, and was born and raised in the West Indies. StuRat (talk) 15:36, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Ted Cruz, who is running so theoretically could get nominated, was born in Canada. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 23:27, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

October 3

Identifying a book

A few aeons ago I read a science-fiction novel that may have appeared in the '50s or '60s, whose setting was a future time when everyone on Earth is required by law to regularly attend Catholic masses. The protagonist wonders whether people in power have conspired to conceal the fact that a certain famous writer wrote certain things. At some point he concludes that the reason a short poem or the like by that writer was not found in books might not have been such a conspiracy but merely a result of the fact that (quoting verbatim) "Editors edit." I remember very little about the story and I have no idea what the name of the book or the name of the author was. Does anyone know? Michael Hardy (talk) 02:51, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I see where you asked this same question about 5 years ago here, does that help any? RegistryKey 07:03, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I hate to direct people elsewhere, but this is the sort of question that the folks at rec.arts.sf.written can often readily answer. Just click on the "New Topic" box and copy your query above, giving it a subject line like "YASID--Compulsory mass". ("YASID" stands for "Yet another story ID".) Deor (talk) 14:27, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Exemption from Crash testing in the US

Do absolutely all vehicles on the road undergo NHTSA crash testing in the US? Or are there some small exceptions? I'm thinking of things like mail trucks, firetrucks, ambulances. I noticed that some USPS mail trucks are designed without right side doors, to make entry/exit easier; I can't imagine that this would pass the strict auto safety standards nowadays.

One exception I can think of is farm equipment. AFAIK they don't undergo crash testing and yet they're legal on some public roads (depending on state and local laws). 731Butai (talk) 06:23, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

There was a problem with "light trucks", which includes pick-up trucks, SUVs, and full-sized vans (but not minivans), that they were classified as industrial vehicles rather than consumer vehicles, and remained so for quite some time after they should have been reclassified based on their popularity as consumer vehicles. This resulted in reduced testing requirements. I'm not sure if that situation has yet been resolved. StuRat (talk) 15:23, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I think you're referring to this: Chicken_tax#Ramifications. 731Butai (talk) 02:58, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

is there any forum which analyzes written materials of any kind and reveals the political flavor of it

akin to politicalcompass, but for articles — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahfuzur rahman shourov (talk • contribs) 14:27, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

The Computer Desk might be a better place to ask. Software could analyze the frequency of certain words, and draw conclusions from that, but such a method is liable to miss subtleties, like satire. Many humans don't catch on to satire, either, so it's quite a task to expect a program to be able to understand it.

Then there's also the problem that the same political words ("radical", "progressive", "conservative", "democratic", "socialist",...) mean different things in different parts of the world.

Also, much political speech is rather indirect. In response to the recent college shooting in the US, I didn't hear anyone directly say "We need more guns in colleges and schools". What I heard instead was "We need to give these students the means to defend themselves". Asking a program to figure out from that last sentence that they are anti-gun control and hence politically conservative would be tricky. StuRat (talk) 15:11, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

@StuRat:it would be a forum, consisting of people, hobbyist analysts. universally accepted standards of wording will be used. as in, "conservative/liberal/progressive" in a global, neutral standard. example, a writing which is perpetrated as "progressive" by the proponent will be analyzed by this forum and checked whether political view is authoritarian or libertarian, and the percentage, whether economical view is capitalist or communist and so on. OP wishes for such a forum, so asks.

Why would people do something like that? It's a weird-a$$ activity (to do for free) Asmrulz (talk) 22:10, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

@Asmrulz:people make and edit sound, picture, video, write and edit articles, document things, code programs in various language and frameworks and many other work which are too much to type -for free. it is called hobby.

Yes, and I don't see why anyone would do what you suggest as a hobby. Writing software, composing music, generally being creative, is fun and rewarding. So is helping people. Pouring over political writing to analyze it according to some criteria is not. Plus it's so specific a task it doesn't really help anybody. There's a reason "hobbyist analyst", "hobbyist copyeditor", "hobbyist tax accountant" etc sounds weird, like "hobbyist sewage cleaner." Asking for such things betrays cheapness and psychological naivity as to how people function. Asmrulz (talk) 20:51, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Salvationists with articles

Are there any Salvationists who have an article for any reason other than being Salvationists? In pretty much all other denominations there is always an independently famous member. 2A02:582:C4C:1400:616A:FEDF:BEF1:A5AB (talk) 15:25, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Going through Category:English Salvationists gives us Audrey Brettle, Derek Foster, Gordon Lorenz, Wes Maughan, and Frank Smith. I'm sure a similar exercise can be carried out with the other sub-categories of Category:Salvationists. Tevildo (talk) 15:41, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Photo of Brigitte Kuhlmann

Does any photograph of Brigitte Kuhlmann exist? My quick search showed nothing. 93.174.25.12 (talk) 16:12, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

There's a grainy B&W image at http://www.aivit.org/brigitte-kuhlmann/ Rojomoke (talk) 16:18, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

First French-speaking king

Do we know who was the first king of Francia/France to be a native speaker of French rather than Frankish? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 16:25, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

You mean Old French? The original langues d'oïl.
Sleigh (talk) 16:51, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 17:05, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

It must surely be Hugh Capet, assuming that all the previous kings of the Carolingian dynasty spoke Frankish natively. This book is rather old but confirms my suspicions - the Dukes of Paris (who succeeded the Carolingians as Kings of France) spoke French while the Carolingians always spoke Frankish. Apparently Louis IV of France and emperor Otto I spoke German together (according to the contemporary chronicler Flodoard). Presumably Louis V then also spoke Frankish. But Hugh Capet and Otto II did not have a common language, so Otto spoke Latin and it was translated into French (according to Richerus). Adam Bishop (talk) 20:40, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! And this confirms my suspicion that Charles the Bald and Gisla on the show Vikings shouldn't be portrayed as French-speakers. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 21:10, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Odo of France was a Robertian too - would he have spoken French? 184.147.131.85 (talk) 22:40, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I suppose he probably did...I can't find anything specific about what he spoke, aside from the book above that says the Robertians all spoke French. So by implication, Odo presumably spoke French, yeah. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:36, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

What records are there, if any, of nazi criminals who evaded or tried to evade capture by assuming Jewish surnames after World War II?

Thanks.Rich (talk) 23:06, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

October 4

Type of fallacy

Here's a type of fallacy I sometimes notice in public debate:

Person A: Studies show that people with green hair are statistically more violent than other people.

Person B: That's wrong. Bob from accounting has green hair, and he's not violent at all.

Is there a name for this kind of fallacy, when someone thinks they've disproved a generalization by pointing out an exception? Thanks! 2607:FCC8:87C5:100:78FA:8B26:2B8C:66C1 (talk) 00:54, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Fallacy of Division. Omidinist (talk) 05:10, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Isn't it more of an anecdotal fallacy? Sjö (talk) 06:50, 4 October 2015 (UTC) Added: That link redirects to Misleading vividness which is kind of strange, anecdotal evidence might be a better link, or . Sjö (talk) 06:58, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Accident (fallacy) seems to be appropriate. Tevildo (talk) 08:13, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

There's also a certain smack of affirming the consequent Asmrulz (talk) 12:01, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, if anything, it's denying the consequent (modus tollens), which is a logically valid way of reasoning. The mistake is in going from "people with green hair are more likely to be violent" to "all people with green hair are violent". Tevildo (talk) 13:13, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Person B's argument is "Bob has green hair; Bob is not violent at all; therefore people with green hair are not statistically more violent than other people." That doesn't fit most of the patterns linked above. I think it's just a hasty generalization. -- BenRG (talk) 16:58, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Sun Style Tai Chi for Arthritis

An acquaintance unfamiliar with the internet has asked me to find a helpful DVD course based on Sun-style Tai Chi for people with arthritis. She studied it years ago at the gym under the aegis of the "Arthritis Foundation" in the US. She did such moves as:

Commencment

Waving Hands in the Clouds

Pushing the Mountain, aka Spreading the Sheets

Parry and Punch

Spanking the Monkey

She would like to find a similar program with videos on line, or the description of a program she can buy satisfaction guaranteed (many such disks are quite expensive) on line. I am as ignorant of tai chi as she is of the internet, so together we are like a leaky boat with one paddle.... Basically a somewhat familiar but somewhat challenging routine that can be done in front of the TV would be ideal. Thanks for any suggestions. PS, she has ordered Paul Lam's original 1997 24 positions. But he gives very few examples on line, while other people give much more complex programs. She is most interested in the sun (same vowel as book) style. Again, thanks, μηδείς (talk) 03:57, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Been meaning to look into Tai Chi for my mom. Youtube seems to have a fair amount of stuff, though some of it is short, and some of them are just samples for videos you can order. If you find any she could use, you can use Keepvid to download the videos. Ian.thomson (talk) 04:19, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, my mom (the she of my example) simply has no clue. She buys 4.7GB DVD's and has my dad print 25kb of info one one at a time to take to the photo developer. I have told her that if she gets the disks I can record the videos, and that I should be the one to buy the proper disks for images and videos, since they usually burn about 8MB or far less per 4.7GB disk they buy.

That being said, searches under sun, paul lam, arthritis, and tai chi all seem to give promotional videos for lam, which cover one move she is familiar with, such as commencement--they are videomercials. So the question is not really how to download, since I can handle the tech, The question for her is, what are the best sun-Style videos available, the ones that have some of the moves she knows, and introduces sun-style ones she doesn't. μηδείς (talk) 04:49, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Eleanor Roosevelt's preference in the 1948 election

Who was endorsed by Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1948 presidential election? Did she favor incumbent Democratic President Harry S. Truman or Progressive candidate, former VP Henry Wallace? --89.13.120.11 (talk) 09:16, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Truman, unambiguously. "Dear Mr. President: I understand that there is some comment in the newspapers in the United States that I have not come out for you as the Democratic candidate and prefer the election of the Republican candidate. I am unqualifiedly for you as the Democratic candidate for the presidency." - October 4, 1948. --jpgordon 14:49, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

The question referred not to Republican candidate Thomas Dewey but to a third-party candidate, Henry Wallace of the Progressive Party, who it was thought might draw votes away from the Democrats. However, on the same page of letters cited by jpgordon, there is an earlier one where Eleanor Roosevelt writes: "The great trouble is that Mr. Wallace will cut in on us". In other words, she stood with the Democratic Party and did not support Wallace either. --174.88.134.156 (talk) 19:42, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Receiving funds in France from the US… What forms to fill ?

Hello, I’ll won a security bounty from a big company (the account has been confirmed by the company).

According to http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-trty/france.pdf and http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/treaties/Documents/Treaty-Protocol-France-1-13-2009.pdf. It see seems there are many exception where a W8_BEN should not be filled.
However, I’m having problem understanding legal English, so I’ve been unable to find my case inside the treaty (the case of a one time payment from a US company to a French citizen).

The Company is telling it’s up to their bounty hunters to do the necessary work for staying fine with US IRIS and their equivalent in their local country. 2A02:8420:508D:CC00:56E6:FCFF:FEDB:2BBA (talk) 10:31, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid we can't give legal or financial advice on the Reference Desk. You should contact an accountant or lawyer (independent of the company that's offering you the money). Tevildo (talk) 11:41, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

whar are the formal terminologies describing the sliding scale between hard serious attitude and apathetic jocular attitude

want to know the names of the various related philosophical views. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahfuzur rahman shourov (talk • contribs) 15:32, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

I suppose, using the humoural theory, this could be regarded as the choleric/sanguine axis. According to this paper, "the most frequently used measure for aggression is Buss Durkee Hostility inventory." We don't have an article on this, but it's mentioned in a footnote to the Bobo doll experiment. Tevildo (talk) 18:04, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Are we sure that there's a sliding scale? In Internet forum discussions we quickly become aware that a statement is either meant literally or sarcastically. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:11, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

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