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[edit] Possible violation of HIPAA or attorney-client privilege

My attorney from last year presented a Power of Attorney to my mother. The name on the POA had another client's name on it and my attorney subsequently crossed out his name and inked in my mother's name.

I can make out the name of the other client quite clearly.

Is this a breach of confidentiality or perhaps a HIPAA violation or is it an Attorney-Client Privilege violation?

Thank you.

Hi, please note the top of the page: "If requesting medical, dental, or legal advice, please consider asking a doctor, dentist, or lawyer instead." Some Wikipedians may be happy to give their opinions, but if you want a proper answer ask someone who is qualified to give you a correct answer. Ziggurat 00:47, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
HIPAA covers privacy of medical records. A power of attorney is not a medical record. As far as attorney-client privilege, all he has inadvertently told you is the name of a person who had a power of attorney drawn up (you don't know if it was every signed). When it comes down to it, if he is so poor that he can't print a blank power of attorney, why are you (or your mother) using him as an attorney? --Kainaw (talk) 01:26, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Any attorney so lazy and sloppy to do that isn't worth much. StuRat 01:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Plus, for all you know, this person is not a real attorney, just a person who found an attorney form and is changing it to try to act like an attorney. User:AlMac|(talk) 12:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Irish Involvement in World War 2

I am wondering if the Irish particularly the Irish Catholics had any involvement in World War 2. Im thinking they would have been on the Axis using the logic the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Thanks!!!

A significant number of Irish, some Irish Catholics too, fought for the United Kingdom as they lived in Northern Ireland. AllanHainey 07:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
That's obviously not the Irish he's asking about. The question makes a lot of sense. Officially, Finland was on the Axis side because they were at war with the Soviet Union. Not quite the same, but related. DirkvdM 08:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
See Participants_in_World_War_II#Ireland. --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 08:52, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Finland was a sort-of-neutral supported by the Allies until mid-1941 - the UK and France were in the process of preparing to send troops there when the Winter War ended.
As for the Irish, the number of citizens of the Republic who came to the UK to sign up was so great that the UK never was forced to resort to a politically-unpopular program of conscription in Ulster. c.40,000 Irish citizens joined the British armed forces, which for context was about the same number as the strength of the Republic's army.
The Republic acted as a "benevolent neutral"; it fulfilled the strict criteria of neutrality while making its broad interests clear and tacitly supporting one side over the other - it sent fire crews to Belfast during bombing raids, turned a blind eye to Allied ships and aircraft passing through, had a habit of accidentally losing track of interned Allied soldiers... you get the idea. Essentially the same as Spain did, for the other side. Shimgray | talk | 09:46, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I forgot to note one other detail - the IRA was heavily cracked down on by the Republic's government, and was essentially dormant until the late 1940s - a few shootings in Ulster, but nothing remarkable by their standards. (Contemporary UK sources often express a rather touching gratitude at this, apparently under the impression that the IRA had voluntarily taken a few years off, which probably says something about news reporting in wartime) Shimgray | talk | 09:54, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
One significant person of Irish dissent (sic) was William Joyce. MeltBanana 13:51, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The old "enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic would have been, and indeed was a hard logic to go by in WWII. Originally, before the outbreak of "full scale war", the UK and the USSR were definitely "enemies", not just politically, but actually on the battlefield, in Finland in particular, where British troops were sent to the front lines to fight Soviet troops in an effort to save Finland from Soviet occupation. However, once Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with the Soviets, Stalin seemed to have finally come to the realization that Hitler was even madder than he was, and that an alliance with the UK, his former bitter enemy, was inevitable. Loomis 22:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe any Allied troops actually ever entered Finland - they were being prepared for action but didn't leave before the ceasefire was signed. But otherwise, yes... Shimgray | talk | 16:44, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Ireland helped the Allied powers by providing weather data to help plan the D-Day attack yet held this information back from the Germans, or so the National Geographic I was reading earlier today claims.--69.171.123.148 03:29, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] capitalisation in medieval texts

Hi - a question for historians - Medieval texts seem to be sprinkled with capital letters almost at random - it doesn't seem to be just nouns, but also some verbs that the writer seems to feel require an especial emphasis - was there a grammatical rule at play, or did they just do what they feel like? Thanks Adambrowne666 11:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Pretty much, they capitalized important words in later texts. Scribe copied manuscripts in the medieval period were careful with capitals, as they took up valuable vellum. In the early printing era, authors would generally capitalize nouns, but they would also use majiscule as a sort of emphasis, but there was no rule except that sentences had to begin with a capital letter. There was a ruling saying when you must use one, but not that you couldn't also use one. Geogre 12:10, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

thanks for the very prompt and helpful answer Adambrowne666 13:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I read 18th and 17th century texts quite a bit, and, once past the weirdness of it, the unusual capitalization starts to seem like a very good idea. It's nice to have a level of emphasis below italics, as, perhaps, the overuse of quotation marks for emphasis these days shows. Geogre 13:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I STILL use caps for emphasis, but always on the entire word or phrase. Quotation marks are used to show the term is questionable, such as the Bush "plan" in Iraq. StuRat 14:10, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Some medieval scripts don't have minuscule letters, some look like a mix of both, some are entirely minuscule...so if you see a "capital letter" it must just be the way that letter was written at the time, and it happens to be the same shape as a current capital letter. They also had either no punctuation at all or punctuation that was very different to ours, so capitalizing something could be a form of punctuation (where a new sentence or paragraph begins, or where a quote begins, etc). Then as Geogre says, it is different again in the printing press era. Adam Bishop 15:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

thanks ye, Goode Stuffe Adambrowne666 07:33, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Ye is a fun example of the printing press messing things up, by the way. Know what word they were trying to print? Eth-e. You know how that's pronounced? "The." Prior to the printing press, we had letters for thorn and eth, representing the non-aspirated and aspirated /th/ sound. ("Thin" and "then" are pronounced exactly the same way, except that one uses a non-aspirated th and the other an aspirated th, thorn and eth, respectively.) So, when you see "Ye olde printing press," that would have been read by contemporaries as "the old printing press." :-) Geogre 14:04, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Note that Geogre means "non-voiced" rather than "non-aspirated". Aspiration refers to whether there is air blowing through the sound, while voicing refers to whether that air is also going through the vocal cords. A non-aspirated "th" sound, voiced or unvoiced, is impossible. Gflower
Is this really Geogre? You're quite correct in the broad picture, but you've got most of the details slightly off -- the <y> of ye represents thorn not eth (the late thorn becoming visually very similar to a y), you mean voiced not aspirated, there was never any consistent distinction made between thorn and eth in English writing, and the thorn survived a number of decades into the age of printing while the eth had become obsolete long before.
Forgive the nitpicking: Y doe but correct thee of Respect nat Malyce/as I wolde eke a Nodde of Homer's self. — Haeleth Talk 14:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ancient place?

Though the authenticity of the claim was doubted by some for many a year, it has now been proven that on this land a colony was first established approximately ten-centuries-back-in-time.

Searching (it is believed) for much needed supplies, the colonists that first came to this place were from a distant land.

Hmmm, fascinating. And just what is this place you're talking about, and what is your question? JackofOz 13:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know; the question is where is this place?

Well the Norse colonization of the Americas happened about ten-centuries-back-in-time, with the colonization of Iceland happening a century or two before. MeltBanana 13:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
The scavenger hunter is definitely thinking of Vinland, but she or he is also wrong. The Vinlandsagas are pretty clear that the settlers weren't looking for supplies. However, as MeltBanana says, the settlement of Iceland happened a bit earlier, and they were looking for supplies (deforestation being a major issue). The Vinlanders, according to the Vinlandsagas, were just looking for things to get and sell back home. When they hit Vinland, they gathered lumber (the "supplies" of the question) and honey and pelts. Geogre 13:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Vinland is in North America, so it was probably already inhabited. I was thinking about Greenland, which was colonised by Icelandic people around the year 1000. But the article says it was inhabited by eskimo's until the year 200. So, strictly speaking, it is still not correct. Then again, those eskimo's, being eskimo's, may have stuck to the northern part of Greenland. The Icelanders colonised the south. And since it's such a huge island (actually the largest island in the world) one might consider these separate lands. It's cheating a bit, but the best answer so far, so I suppose I deserve a pat on the back anyway. :) DirkvdM 18:46, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Are we all assuming that "on this land" refers to "on the North American continent"? That's not exactly the only place in the world. The question was rather non-specific, which is why I asked for more information. JackofOz 21:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I assume the second unindented non-signed bit is also by the questioneer. So the question would then be "Where is this place?". DirkvdM 07:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Vinland is/was in North America, on the island of Newfoundland in particular, which was indeed already populated. In fact the original European settlers were forced to abandon their settlements after one too many raids by the sparse indigenous population. Yet the questioner said nothing about this land being uninhabited, so I suppose the comment that it was already inhabited and therefore disqualified doesn't seem to be of any relevance, rather a knee-jerk PC reaction. The question clearly speaks of the "first colonists", which, unless you want to go back 10,000 years in time, would be the Vinlanders. Though indigenous Americans indeed inhabited some of the land, I've never heard them referred to as "colonists", Asian or otherwise.

It therefore seems to me that the questioner's cryptic question is indeed a reference to Vinland. I think I'll give myself a pat on the back for the best answer so far. Not only did I not cheat, but I refrained from referring to the Inuit people of Greenland as "Eskimos", an exonym that they would find highly insulting. :)) Loomis 11:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

As there is much mutual backslapping going on (which I though was mainly to make babies burp) I would like to retract my initial suggestion. In order to make the ref desk less americo-centric I would like to offer the Magyars colonization of Hungary and the settlement of the Takrur in West Africa. MeltBanana 15:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

More good examples, Banana. TWO pats on the back for you! (Although I had no idea that the Magyars' colonization of Hungary was ever doubted by anyone). I'm sure we can all come up with at least a dozen more. If only the original questioner would be a bit more specific...Loomis 22:07, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Loomis, Of course 'first colony' implies there were no people there because they would then have been earlier colonisers. (For clarification, the term 'colonisation' also refers to the spread of mankind over the globe.) As for 'Eskimo' being an insult, in English the Dutch are called 'Dutch' in stead of 'Nederlanders'. Should I now feel insulted? DirkvdM 08:40, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know, Dirk, is there anything particularly pejorative or ignorant about the term "Dutch"? If so, please tell us so we'll correct ourselves. Calling the Inuit "Eskimos" is rather pejorative, as, meaning "raw meat eaters" in the Cree language, it was the term the Cree used to demean the Inuit as being particularly primitive and savage. Does the word "Dutch" meaning anything insulting in any other language? Loomis 11:24, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

'Deutsch', or 'German' in German. At least, they're etymologically related. Don't tell a Dutchman to his face he's German. Anyway, that wasn't my point. Who knows to this day what that means? It's just a name. Most English speakers won't know what 'Dutch' means and the Dutch Netherlanders don't really mind because they don't either. For a different example, who still knows what 'Indian' means? I suppose 'from India' and there were loads of India's so calling Indians Indians is also rather insulting then. Or calling India India, for that matter. Calling a jerry can a jerry can would be pretty insulting to the jerries if they knew what it meant. And there must be loads of other examples. But when it's about a minority, all of a sudden we have to tread lightly. Bollocks. DirkvdM 18:41, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Strong central government? what the hell is it really good for anyway?

just trying to police you with PC bullshit, what's the point, haven;'t you ever heard "teach a man to fish... etc"? What's wrong with taking a little personal responsibilty?--Crbbydemds 14:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Most simply, because my personal responsibility is your unwarrented intrusion. The problem of managing issues which are momentus to a society yet trivial today to an individual member of it is as ancient as we have records. The Code of Hammurabi (brutal and short though it was) is an example, as is much of the conflict between the ideals of Athens and those of Sparta (though transmogrified into local terms in many cases) for a long period in ancient Greece. These people were not more stupid or thoughtless than we, they just confronted a slightly different shaped group of problems in a pre-industrial age, some of which we no longer worry about much. See Thucydides for a partial account. The Crawley translation has a passage which should raise the hackles of most anyone aspiring to something other than a dictatorship of the powerful. It begins, And words were forced to change their meaning..., at 3.82 in the discussion of how the Revolution began at Corcyra. Or consider the purpose for which Machiavelli wrote The Prince; it was not merely a manual for mendaccious duplicity. Or, if you like fiction, consider that Animal Farm is not solely concerned with making some aspects of communism evident, it was also concerned with the problems of running a farm. Which the pigs got rather wrong. But what would be the proper way to run a farm? Any answer to this actual question from the real world recognizes that personal responsiblity (by horses, cows, or whatever) is insufficient as an answer to many questions, even finessing as it does the question of what standard by which to evaluate one's exercise of personal responsibility.
Unlike many modern observers, Thucydides at least recognized that neither side had a monopoly of virtue in not perverting the public discourse. See the discussion at Talk:Digital rights management regarding what phrase DRM should abbreviate. Or see the articles on Goebbels, his propaganda machine, and the most recent 2-vol biography of Hitler (Kershaw, I think). Kershaw's answer for what it was in that man which allowed him to mesmerize an entire country into first, diplomatic bullying of most all of its neighbors, and then into war and genocide (of <pick your class of inferior types to be exterminated>, Hitler chose them all). Kershaw claims that it was his ability to control the terms of discussion, his rhetoric, his oratory. Plus some luck, and a certain amount of shrewdness. If so, the Socratic and Platonic objection to the sophists, was prescient, for it would appear that a concern for truth is important, if only as something of an antibody, to such as Goebbels, the pigs, and Hitler. Or the many think_for_us_all wannabes on (loud) offer today. ww 18:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jogging or biking in Central Park or on Brooklyn Bridge (NY) : not an African-American thing?

Hello,

please don't ban me for racism! This is just something I noticed.

When I visited New York City, I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge (at sunset on a Monday evening) and through Central Park (at about half past 11 AM on Wednesday).

On the Brooklyn Bridge I saw a lot of people jogging or biking (with the required gear) from one side to the other (I don 't really understand why actually, the cars are beneath you and you smell their fumes), possibly with a headset on their heads.... But all those people were caucasian. I did see a lot of African Americans crossing the bridge though, but they didn't run or bike, they were just walking , possibly back to Brooklyn from work.

In Central Park I saw again lots of people biking, running, skating, sitting in the grass reading a book or listening to music, but again, they were almost all caucasian. I did see some African American ladies (not always that young anymore) taking a kid out for a walk in the park... but the kid was usually caucasian (so possibly not her child, although I understand this is not 100% certain, and that also makes me wonder were that lady's own child is in the mean time if she has one). I did see caucasian ladies taking kids out for a walk in the park, but they were walking in a group (they probably make arrangements do this together) and while the kids play, they talk. Unlike the African American ladies they didn't seem to being it that much against their wishes.

I noticed something similar here: from nearby Madison Square Garden I walked through Broadway, and most people I saw there were African Americans, however (near the Flatiron) when I ended up in Madison Square Park, practically all the people relaxing there were again caucasian.

So what is going on here? It's like there's some sort of voluntary segregation going on. I never saw a sign (of course!) saying "whites only!', but it's like the people in one ethnic group simply don't wanna do certain things.

Evilbu 14:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

  • because Manhattan is filled with tourists? and tourists tend to swarm all over very specific locations, but never seem to go past certian points, almost like fault lines of gentrification, beyond which no tourist dares pass--152.163.100.72 14:26, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know, it still can't explain everything, tourists usually stay for a very short time. You would have to go rent a bike for instance. And jogging would exhaust an already tired tourist. And he probably wouldn't waste time just lying in the grass in Central Park, he would walk through it. Evilbu 14:34, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

  • You seem to be suggesting that you personally stayed for at least 3 days, so it seems like a reasonable enough time frame--152.163.100.72 15:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I live in Charleston, SC and the same thing happens here. On our bike trails and over our new bridge, the people jogging and biking are primarily white, but not just white - upper-middle-class and rich whites. You don't see poor whites doing that. They are busy trying to make ends meet. Since most of the blacks are poor, they are in the same situation. So, it isn't necessarily a racial thing. It may be an economic one. --Kainaw (talk) 16:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Surely it's simply a cultural thing. People from different cultures and subcultures do different things and have different values, by definition, just as with people of different racial or religious groups.--Shantavira 16:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I think we're looking at insufficient inductive reasoning. I lived in NYC for two years, and I saw plenty of African-Americans in both locations. You walk the bridge if you live near the water in Brooklyn. You ride the train if you live farther away. The prices of apartments in Jumbo and other locations is very high. Class and race are far less equivalent in NYC than other American cities, but they're still nearly aligned enough that the numbers would skew. The Park is another place where the properties beside it on the east side are very expensive. On the west side and at the northern end, you see plenty of diversity, as there is greater diversity in economics there. As for people travelling out of their way to go to the park to jog or the bridge to walk...that's a tourist thing. Geogre 17:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Saying it's a cultural thing is begging the question. Why then is there a cultural difference between blacks and whites? The US had centuries of slavery and apartheid was only abolished in the sixties. This history creates a chasm that isn't overcome in half a century. And as long as the 'races' (which aren't really races, but that's a different issue) don't mix the difference will remain visible and the segregation will probably remain intact for centuries. And this hold true pretty much anywhere in the world. It's like the kids at school teasing the kid with the red hair beause he's different. We learn to overcome that, but when it comes to skin colour it's different it seems. In the Netherlands there's something similar going on with people from Moroccan descent. They tend to group together, little mixing. Even some 'ghetto's'. And there is talk of so-called 'black schools'. Once a school has this name, white parents don't send their kids there, which makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wonder if this will ever end without racial mixing. Hoping for that feels a bit like the communist dream - nice, but it will never happen. DirkvdM 19:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Geogre, wrong elephant. The neighborhood is DUMBO. --Nelson Ricardo 01:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Dang! I should have remembered that it was named for the cute elephant, not the tortured real one. Geogre 12:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

It probably has to do with economics like Kainaw said. Poor people tend to be too busy working to have the money or time to bike around. On the other hand, races have mixed a lot in South America and there's still a racial problem. Racial mixing doesn't eliminate skin tone differences like a lot of people think it does. --ColourBurst 02:00, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that was a flaw in my reasoning. There has been a lot of mixing in the US too, but segregation is pretty fierce there. the only contry I can think of where the 'races' have mixed to a large extent and where there appears to be spontaneous intermixing, with people not being aware of the other person's skin colour is Cuba. But even there the blacker you are the harder it is said to get a higher position. (And Jamaicans are supposedly considered lazy, but that's not specifically a skin colour thing.)
Ehm, sufficient 'racial mixing' would create sort of an average skin colour, wouldn't it? I'm not sure what you mean there. DirkvdM 08:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Even with a lot of mixing there is always some variation. It is amazing how little difference it takes for one group to decide that another group is somehow lesser. You can see it in Mexico where a there is a gradual variation of skin tone. As you get toward the darker side of the spectrum you may experience more racism. From my Mexican relatives I have heard them say of a new baby "He is very dark" (indicating a slight derogatory) or "she is sooo light!" in a happy way. Nowimnthing 13:35, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Is that Mexicans in Mexico or in the US?
I deliberately brought up Cuba, because there, the mixing is so well developed that there it is almost impossible to draw a line between 'races'. An interresting thing is that I saw one girl who was almost completely white, and my first reaction was that there was something wrong there. Then it slowly dawned on me that I expected such a white girl not to mix with the 'ordinary' darker skinned people. That was one of my revelations in Cuba. Apparently, through my travels, I've grown so used to this link between skin colour and position that it looks 'wrong' to me when that link isn't there. DirkvdM 08:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I heard that skin colour didn't matter as much in Cuba. Here it matters because of social conditioning. Unlearning that process is not easy (and very easy to avoid), but necessary. --ColourBurst 17:30, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kundalini variants in a tantric perspective

In normal Tantric techniques, the Kundalini is raised through the central Nidis, throught the seven major Chakras. In a Tantric perspective, what would be the effect of channeling the Kundalini through minor nidis, to mino Chakras? For example, channeling it through the nidi in the arm to the hand Chakra? This is purely hypothetical. Any opinions will be much apriciated --AmateurThinker 16:03, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misrepresentation

I am wondering if one can be held libel for what one preceives as misrespresenation in an classified type advertisement. Say, for example, I post an ad on craigslist. A potential buyer travels to see my object for sale, but feels that it is not in the condition that I stated in my ad. Can I be held responsible for that? Is that illegal? Assuming the potential customer does not buy it, just looks.

Thanks!!!

  • I doubt that the staff at the Federal Trade Commission would time waste pursuing a person for false advertisement on Craigslist. I believe they pursue false advertisement by a business which would affect more consumers. However, I defer to a more expert opinion.--Patchouli 17:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Whether it is false advertising or not, it is not libel, which is essentially publishing derogatory and wrong accusations about someone. DJ Clayworth 17:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
What if the ad was for a person and he advertised that person using derogatory and wrong statements? --Kainaw (talk) 18:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
That pesky ol' Thirteenth Amendment might rear its ugly head. In any event, I think he meant liable rather than libel... Joe 16:44, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I could see a small claims court suit over this. If a person agreed to travel to the seller to look at the Mercedes he has advertised, but it turns out to be a Yugo, I could imagine the court awarding travel costs to the disenchanted buyer. StuRat 20:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

In Stu's scenario he's probably right. However in the questioner's scenario, there's just a basic degree of leeway given to advertisers. We've all heard ads stating that, for example, a certain restaurant is "the best in town" or that a certain automobile company produces "the finest piece of automotive machinery ever built". This type of hyperbole and exaggeration is almost always tolerated, and if you should state, for example that your car is in "mint" condition when it in fact has some rust, you may be faced with an angry customer, but it's very hard to see it as actually "illegal". Just as caveat emptor is an active legal notion protecting the vendor after having sold an object that the purchaser realizes is not quite what he had bargained for, I'm strongly inclined to believe that the law would take the same approach to this situation (though I can't think of a latin legal term for it!) Loomis 11:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
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