Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2007 July 25

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Humanities desk
< July 24 << Jun | July | Aug >> July 26 >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.


Contents

[edit] July 25

[edit] Mon (japanese badge/ family crest)

I recently discovered your article on japanese family crests and was wondering if there was someone that could tell me where the origin of the information came from/if there was anyone i could contact about my own crest?--Soltisk 01:52, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

(The article in question is Mon (badge).  --Lambiam 08:04, 25 July 2007 (UTC))
At the bottom of the page you can see the references linked to the article. Lanfear's Bane

[edit] Bangladeshi Parliamentary seats

In the Bangladeshi Parliament, how many seats does it have and what does these seats represents?, like for example, if you look at Canadian gov't, its seats are representing its ridings that MPs are from like for ex. Jack Layton of NDP is from Toronto-Danforth riding.

See Jatiyo Sangshad, and please remember to search first - as it is a relatively simple piece of information which may not have taken long to find, via Politics of Bangladesh then following the links on that page!martianlostinspace 09:11, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] imperialism

multi-national corporations leads to neo imperialism and uneven development

please give some light over this and please help me with examples case studies etc

You'll find "classic" examples by proponents of this idea as being McDonalds, Nike and Coca-Cola. Contrast the latter with Mecca Cola. Issues you'll want to look at include sweat shops and fair trade, comparing Nestle and one of the fair trade chocolate or coffee companies for the last. Oh, and next time, please sign your question by typing four "tildes" after it (like this ~~~~) Cheers! --Dweller 12:48, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Also free trade, World Trade Organization, North American Free Trade Agreement, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, austerity. Neutralitytalk 23:16, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
And neoliberalism, globalization, anti-globalization, alter-globalization, debt forgiveness. Neutralitytalk 23:18, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anglo German Naval Agreement of 1935

Can Clio, or some other knowledgeble person, please have a look at the page on the Anglo-German Naval Agreement? There is something seriously wrong here. Is there anything to back up the claim that the Agreement sacrificed control of the Baltic to the Germans? A major objection to this article has been raised on the talk page, but it has not been answered. S. J. Blair 11:03, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

This text [1] does not appear to mention the Baltic at all. DuncanHill 11:20, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I have added a citation needed to the relevant part of the article, and also an external link to the agreement text as given above. DuncanHill 11:26, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

AS Brown's thesis on the talk page would be a start. He can state, quite categorically, the claim about the Baltic is absolute rubbish. It would be a mistake to ignore someone who studied this at university, and has read the treaty text "a thousand times".martianlostinspace 11:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

  • "...the British gave up naval mastery in the Baltic to Germany through the Anglo-German naval agreement of June 1935..." Aselius, Gunnar (2004) The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Navy in the Baltic 1921-1940, p. 118 citing "The Royal Navy and the Strategic Origins of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement 1935", Journal of Strategic Studies, 20(2) (June 1997).
  • "Admittedly the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935 showed that the Admiralty had effectively abandoned the idea of intervention in the Baltic by the British fleet." Hiden, John, Patrik Salmon (1994) Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the Twentieth Century, p. 99.
  • "...German domination over the Baltic which the Anglo-German naval agreement tacitly conceded in 1935." Reddaway, W.F. (1940) Problems of the Baltic, p. 58.
  • "The Anglo-German Naval Agreement, he said, went along with Hitler's strategy of rapprochement with England and at the same time "gave Germany domination of the Baltic and de facto recognition" of the breaching of the Treaty of Versailles." Offner, Arnold A. (1969) American Appeasement: United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933-1938, p. 173. Quoting William Edward Dodd.
  • " The British, overburdened by world-wide commitments and multiple threats, were forced to make some hard choices. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935 was one such choice. As mentioned before, the British signed the agreement because German adherence to the global system of qualitative naval limitation would further the Admiralty's programme for defending British sea supremacy. Outwardly, however, the agreement appeared to condone Hitler's blatant violation of the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. It also appeared to signal British indifference to the strategic situation of the small northern states, particularly in the Baltic. As Laurence Collier, the head of the Foreign Office's Northern Department, lamented in July 1935, the bad impression made by the naval agreement in the region 'seems to be deepening and spreading'." Hobson, Rolf, Tom Kristiansen, Frank Cass (2004) Navies in Northern Waters, 1721-2000, p. 195.
—eric 17:46, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
First and foremost I think eric should be commended for the tremendous work he has done in digging out these references.
Now to the main point. I agree completely with S. J. Blair and A. S. Brown that there is, to put it mildly, a serious problem with this page. Inferences are made which cannot be supported in fact, the above sources notwithstanding. The suggestion that Britain agreed to withdraw its navy from the Batlic as part of the 1935 Agreement is both false and misleading. Such an inference might be made, but this does not make it an established fact. According to Grunnar (op cit, 2004) Britain 'gave up naval mastery in the Baltic.' All I can say here is that this is a statement verging on the absurd. How could Britain give up what it did not have; and what it most assuredly did not have in 1935 was 'naval mastery of the Baltic'. Such mastery could only be achieved if Britain somehow knocked out Denmark, as it did in 1801 and 1807 during the Napoleonic Wars. Otherwise any British naval force operating in these waters, far from home and with no bases, risked being cut off and destroyed if the Germans occupied Denmark, and thus attained control of the vital passages of the Skagerrak and the Kattegat, a point made by A. S. Blair.
I also have to ask, as far as the Wikipedia treatment of this subject is concerned, where on earth does the quotation from Hitler in the first paragraph come from? Also, anyone reading the article is led (by the nose) to the conclusion that the Kriegsmarine somehow became a third as strong as the Royal Navy virtually overnight, at a time when it was weaker than the Russian Baltic Fleet, at a time when it possessed no battleships, few submarines and even fewer crusiers and destroyers. Indeed, even after the outbreak of war in 1939 the Germans had only 57 U-boats for every theatre of operation. The Navy envisaged in 1935 existed on paper only; this should not need to be said, but it clearly does.
So, perhaps a few background facts might help to understand where the Agreement fits, in naval strategy, in politics and in international diplomacy.
Politically the seeds of the Naval Agreement are to be found on Mein Kampf, of all places. It was Hitler's belief that the naval and foreign policy of the Kaiserreich had been a mistake; that the quest for overseas colonies had been wrong, as had the naval programme that followed from this, because it caused a clash with Great Britain. It was his belief, moreover, that Britain was one of Germany's 'natural allies', and a limitation of Germany's naval ambitions was one way to achieve a basis for mutual understanding. Supplementray to this, a bilateral arrangement between Britain and Germany had the advantage of undermining both the Stresa Front and the arms provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. The agreement of 1935 was held to be one of Joachim von Ribbentrop's great diplomatic coups; but, as always, Ribbentrop only ever kicked at doors that were already open.
As early as 1933 the British Admiralty had entertained the prospect of an arms agreement with Germany, for the simple reason that ever since the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 it no longer had the same capacity to deal with worldwide problems. In the mid-1930s Japan was seen to be a greater danger than Germany. The cabinet accepted this reasoning, and the idea of a naval limitation agreement was raised by Sir John Simon when he visited Berlin in March 1935. The agreement was thus concluded because it was in Britain's strategic interests to do so, and was pursued despite the temporary rupture it was to cause with the French. It was thus no more than an act of political and strategic realism. It was never implied or suggested that the Germans thereby would obtain control of any of the European waters.
In the end the Naval Agreement was one bargain that Hitler stuck to, if by default only. There was indeed a plan for significant expansion favoured by Erich Raeder and those of the old Admiral Tirpitz school; but it was far from completion in 1939, and the question of naval armaments was not uppermost among Hitler's priorities. He was later to consider scrapping the surface fleet altogether and switching the whole emphasis of German naval warfare on to the U-boat arm.
Please forgive me for going on at such length, guys. All this boils down to one simple fact: the Wikipedia page on the Anglo-German naval agreement verges on the intellectually worthless. The point can be made about possible German domination of the Baltic, but it should be considered under a heading of general implications. She says it as she sees it! Clio the Muse 00:14, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I may have done a disservice to Gunnar by using the quote you took issue with. He is of course looking at the issue from a Soviet perspective, and explaining a shift in their strategic planning in early '35. Prior to this the theoretical war was a Great Power invasion through the border states with a neutral Germany, and where the Royal Navy would be dominate in the Baltic. Events of '35 forced the Soviets to consider war with a rearmed Germany. Still, he does say that the British "gave up naval mastery", and mentions that they ceased all friendly calls to Baltic ports for some time after signing the agreement.
Aren't you and A. S. Brown getting ahead of yourselves a bit? Fleets do not come into being overnight, but neither do armies and air forces which can invade Denmark and close the Baltic in two hours. The agreement was only three months after the beginning of rearmament and two months after Stresa. Your argument is that the Royal Navy could not have fought in the Baltic in 1935 because of the threat of a German invasion of Denmark, but really, could the German army have done any such thing at the time? Why couldn't the British dominate the Baltic when Germany was still limited by Versailles? and wasn't this agreement one of the first real indications that they would not be in the future?
By the way, found a couple more mentions of the British "agreeing" to exit the Baltic due to the agreement: Swedish iron ore during World War II#Background and British submarine flotilla in the Baltic#Aftermath. I hadn't seen that claim when i added the above, and wasn't trying to support it with those citations.—eric 22:05, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I did not assume you were! The fundamental point here is that the article in linking the Anglo-German Naval Agreement with alleged 'withdrawal' from the Baltic is grossly misleading. In operational terms the British could only truly 'dominate' the Baltic if they had both bases and control of the narrow straits; otherwise this bottle-neck could be lethal; and by the summer of 1935 the Luftwaffe, formally reinstated in February, had enough planes to cause serious damage. But the point about naval mastery was meant to be understood as a long-term strategic concept. The article is still atrocious, as you yourself have rightly noted on the talk page. Clio the Muse 02:07, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
If only I were competent I'd knit together the remarks above and work them into an improved article. As it is, I'm going to cut n' paste the above at Talk:Anglo-German Naval Agreement, so that they are laid out where they can be made useful. --Wetman 08:04, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trying to recall the title of a novel about life in the Gulag

Read this book a while back, very thick, author was relatively well-known, Stalin himself was one of the characters within the novel, there was an artist (I believe?) and there's a wiki article on it. I appreciate that the parameters here are fairly broad, but if anyone could help me find the name of the novel that'd be stupendous.

AlmostCrimes 12:18, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

The First Circle could be what you are looking for. DuncanHill 12:27, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
That or The Gulag Archipelago, although The First Circle is probably it. Utgard Loki 14:58, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
You might find One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich interesting, although I don't see Stalin or an artist, just the people in the camp. Edison 16:14, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

This can not be anything other than The First Circle, which does indeed feature Stalin. Clio the Muse 22:21, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

And so it is. Thank you! AlmostCrimes 23:09, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Are there examples of jokes told by the founder of a religion?

Jesus, Mohammed, the Budha and all the other founders of a religion. Did they crack any jokes, did any of them have a good sense of homour? Which one would have made the best stand-up comedian. Willy turner 14:07, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

According to Infancy Gospel of Thomas makes him sound like a bit of a bad egg at times. Child Jesus indicates he was excellent at killing off his playmates. Some people might consider the exploits and fictional writings of L. Ron Hubbard amusing. Lanfear's Bane
Child Jesus doesn't link to a text. Which one did you intend? Rmhermen 15:02, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
"Whose name is on the coin?" is a joke. Jesus pretends not to know whose name or face is on the Roman coin. Now, this is irony, in its strictest form, but it is also a witty play. The question is, though, why would the authors of the Gospel preserve light hearted comments? They were trying to preserve the teachings and lessons, and they didn't have the desire, space, or paradigm of a biography. As for others, it depends on what you consider a religion. Some koans may be jokes, although whether these are by Siddhartha or not I wouldn't venture a guess. Laughing Buddha is proper enough, but I think that is the laugh of deatchment rather than knee slapping. Utgard Loki 14:57, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Some books on Jesus and humor (I haven't read any of them):
The Humor of Jesus: Sources of Laughter in the Bible by Earl F. Palmer, Regent College Publishing (April 2001), ISBN-13: 978-1573831802
The Humor of Christ by Elton Trueblood, Harper & Row San Francisco; New edition (August 1975), ISBN-13: 978-0060686321
The Humor of Jesus by Henri Cormier, Alba House (December 1977), ISBN-13: 978-0818903564
This site on Mohammed's persona has some quoted examples of his sense of humor. ---Sluzzelin talk 15:21, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Also note that the Laughing Buddha and the regular Buddha are different Buddhim. --TotoBaggins 19:37, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Somewhere, I remember Luis Bunuel mentioning Jesus roaring with laughter - it was a contextless surrealist image he was invoking in an interview, I think ... until then, I'd never consciously realised that Jesus is never depicted that way - he's at most gently amused, never even raising a chuckle, as far as I can recall. Makes me wonder too, about that kind of laughter; why wouldn't Jesus laugh that way? - because it's undignified? - because it's the kind of laughter that happens at others' expense? Just thought I'd mention it - it's something that's always stayed with me, for some reason Adambrowne666 06:28, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Isn't religion in itself a joke?
Note: Buddha didn't found a religion but a philosophy. Others after him corrupted it into a religion. DirkvdM 06:40, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Dirk? Is that OR? It's not what the lead of Buddhism says. And "corrupted" sounds like POV, to boot. --Dweller 07:37, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, religion is rather POV itself, so should we ban discussions about religion altogether on the ref desk? :) It's also OR, if you ask me, but then that is a religious statement, which is POV again. Oh dear. DirkvdM 05:13, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
"Thou art Peter, and on this rock I shall build my church" (Matthew 16:18) is a macaronic pun. Not particularly funny, but it's a joke nonetheless.64.236.80.62 10:58, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Is it really a joke, given that Jesus was supposed to have been the one to rename Simon as Peter? Sounds more like renaming for a purpose. Of course, the whole mote and beam in the eye thing strikes me as, at least, light-hearted. Skittle 22:52, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Joseph Smith, Jr., who founded a religious movement, was known to be very playful. I don't specifically recall having read of him cracking jokes, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are accounts of it. He loved playing with children, and regularly wrestled. The Jade Knight 01:21, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Jokes & religion do not intertwine properly. Laleenatalk to me contributions to Wikipedia 13:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Questions about Germans Bundestag election system (and the article about it)

Hello,

I was reading Bundestag and in particular this part [2]

-I don't really get it, the article seems to contradict itself : "The 598 seats are distributed among the parties that have gained more than 5% of the second votes or at least 3 direct mandates. Each of these parties is allocated seats in the Bundestag in proportion to the number of votes it has received (Largest remainder method).

When the total number of mandates gained by a party has been determined, they are distributed between the Land lists. The distribution of seats between the parties in each Land is proportional to the second vote results: (Largest remainder method)." Does this mean there is a fixed number of seats for each of the sixteen Länder (determined BEFORE the elections?) , and that this number of seats is then distributed between the parties in that Land, according to their results in that land?

I mean, was it determined before the elections that (for instance) Saarland should get 9 seats "nach Zweitstimme" ("after second-votes")

- Suppose people started acting weird on election day, and in all constituencies (or "Wahlkreise") 99.9% of them give their first vote to SPD, but their second vote to CSU. (I know this is unrealistic but you see where I'm going) Would this mean that there are way more people in the Bundestag than expected (like 897 instead of just 598?)

- Can I see a copy of a ballot somewhere? I know there is one in the article (this one : [3]) but the resolution isn't good enough to read all of it.

- Do I understand correctly that for the first vote, parties have exactly one candidate in each constituency, and for the second vote : one list for each Land? How long is that list?

Thank you very very much (I speak some German, but not enough to ask all of this in German)Evilbu 14:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

After reading through de:Bundestagswahlrecht, I have come up with answers to some, but not all, of your questions. It was not clear to me from that article how seats are divided among the Länder. I will post a question about that on the German Wikipedia, though perhaps someone here will provide the answer first. As for your first bulleted (hypothetical) question, if everyone voted for one party on their first vote and a different party on their second vote, you are correct that the Bundestag would end up with 897 seats. As for your second bulleted question, if you double-click the image [4], you will find that the sample ballot enlarges so that it is quite legible. As for your third bulleted question, yes, you understand correctly. For the first vote, each qualified party can offer one candidate in each constituency. For the second vote, each qualified party can offer a list of candidates in each land whose number is equal to the number of seats allocated to that land (though how those seats are allocated, I'm not sure, but presumably according to a census). With such a list, only if a party received no seats through first votes but received 100% of the second votes would every candidate on the party's second-vote list win a seat in the Bundestag. Marco polo 19:14, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much, if you do post the question on the German wikipedia, can you give me the link( here or on my personal page) so I can lurk around a bit as well?:) About the Land list, I did some inquiries. Watch page 206 (out of 294) here[5], and you will see the names of the seven Greens (Grüne) elected in Bayern. However, on that ballot, there are only five names for each party. So where do number six (Anton Hofreiter) and number seven (Elisabethe Scharfenberg) come from?(By the way, this contradicts your last statement about there being only one case in which all names on the second list would be elected) Maybe this can help, the problem is that it's very subtle, and my German might fail me here :

"Die verbleibenden Proporzmandate (bei der Wahl 2002 596) werden entsprechend den bundesweiten Zweitstimmenergebnisssen nach dem Hare-Niemeyer-Verfahren auf die Parteien verteilt, welche die Sperrklausel überwunden haben (bei der Wahl 2002 SPD, CDU, CSU, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen und FDP). Anschließend werden die errungenen Proporzmandate jeder Partei ebenfalls nach dem Hare-Niemeyer-Verfahren entsprechend der Anzahl ihrer Zweitstimmen in den Bundesländern auf ihre einzelnen Landeslisten unterverteilt.

Nach diesem Verfahren ist festgelegt, wie viele Proporzmandate auf die Parteien in jedem Bundesland entfallen. Danach wird ermittelt, welche Kandidaten tatsächlich in den Bundestag einziehen:" Especially that sentence I marked (in bold) is important (I think), but I cannot translate it properly? Evilbu 20:18, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to help you without causing any more confusion.
  • A Proporzmandat is the opposite of a Direktmandat, representatives that have a Proporzmandat come from the Landeslisten, which can be very long (CSU of Bayern or SPD of NRW have probably more than a dozen Proporzmandat representatives). Only the first five candidates are printed on the ballot (parties have to be trated equal and there's not that much space on the ballot). In many cases, candidates run both in a consituency and on the Landesliste. If they win their constituency, earning a Direktmandat, the next person from the Landesliste gets the Proporzmandat.
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask - I still remember the exam I had to sit on the electoral system in high school (!). Your question will also be answered at [6]. You can ask there in English as well if you want to.
Germans always mock the American electoral system but their own is so difficult that you can hardly understand it. --Gnom 20:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
You are right that there are more Greens in the Bundestag for Bavaria than were listed on that sample ballot. If you look at the ballot, there are only 5 names listed for each party. I recognize several of the names, although I do not follow German politics closely, so I imagine that these each party gets to choose the top 5 ranked names on its list. (Each party ranks the members of its state (Land) list, such that if there is only one seat for that party in that state, it goes to the top-ranked person on the list, if the party gets 7 seats in that state, they go to the top 7 ranked people on the list, and so on.) Certainly a party like the SPD would have more than 5 names on their list for Bavaria, because, while the CSU will win nearly all of the constituency races in Bavaria, the SPD will get at least 20% of the roughly 80 seats for Bavaria based on second votes. Yet only 5 SPD names appear on the ballot, probably because of space limitations. With the second vote, the point is that you are voting for a party, not for individual members.
As for the German passage that you set in boldface, I agree that it is difficult. Here is a translation: "Subsequently [that is, after the second votes are divided among the parties based on their second vote totals nationwide], the proportional mandates won by each party are likewise subdivided following the Hare Niemayer Process among their individual state lists according to the number of their second votes in the states." I interpret this (along with the preceding sentence) to mean that, first, seats are divided among the parties according to their shares of the second votes on a nationwide basis. Then each party's seats are subdivided (following the Hare Niemayer Process) among its state lists based on the proportion of the party's vote that came from each state. The Hare Niemayer Process is a detail that I don't completely understand, but I think that it is a method of proportional rounding. It is the same as the "Hamilton method of apportionment" described in our article Largest remainder method.
Incidentally, in my previous answer, the words "German Wikipedia" are linked directly to my question on the German Wikipedia reference desk. Marco polo 20:58, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I just checked the German Wikipedia Reference Desk again, where someone (Gnom?) has explained that the votes are divided among the parties based on their nationwide share of the vote, then among the parties' state list based on the number of votes they received in each state. This has the result that the number of seats held by each state depends not on the state's share of the national population, but on the state's share of the second votes cast. So there is no predetermined number of seats apportioned to each state. Marco polo 21:05, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

You people are really kind, you've helped me a lot. Here are some points/extra question I'd like to add:

- I added a link to a map of all 299 constituencies to Bundestag (check the external links)

- The system is indeed a bit different : there are no fixed seats for each Land. But normally, it should be sort of proportional...or maybe not? Because voting is not compulsory in Germany. Suppose that for some reason practically nobody in Bayern would show up on election day, while the turnout is 95% in other Lands? Wouldn't this create some tensions? Do Germans in some or all of the sixteen Länder care about this? Do they feel the responsability to show up and make sure their region gets a lot of seats?

-I checked [7] one more time, and from page 258 on you can see how the system really works (in a very detailed way actually). It's just like you people explained :). That's a pretty neat document, really.

- Where do German voters check those "second lists"? As was explained here, the real lists consist of way more than just five names? - I was also interested in that turbulent period between the opening of the border and "die Wende". Volkskammer gives me the results of the first (and only) free election in the former country of the DDR (in 1990). Is that Party of Democratic Socialism the successor of the communist party? I was wondering if the results of that election (with percentages) are available somewhere? Because I find it amazing that they still managed to get 66 seats (out of 200 seats).

About Germans mocking the USA system, their system might indeed be a bit more complicated, but it's not a really bad system at all, since it guarantees that every region (of that huge country) gets some representation, while people are also able to vote for high profile politicians from somewhere else as well. Be glad that you learned this in school, my country is a double federation with a much more complicated system, and they never bothered to explain it (leaving many voters very poorly informed, even up to the point that they don't know which parlement they are sending people to) Evilbu 00:30, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the fact that different voter turnouts in different Länder cause any problems at all. German voters don't really check the "second lists" - they vote for the party and that's what it's meant to be: One vote (Direktmandat) for a person and one for a party (Proporzmandat). The fact that you can't vote for Bavarian Landeslisten candidates if you are from Berlin is a fact most voters are ignorant of, but since Germany is a federal state, that's the way it should be. --Gnom 14:26, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] picasso

i would like to know what was picassos style of art commonly known as?

See cubism. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:07, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Cubism was only one phase in Picasso's wide ranging oeuvre. What was Picasso's style of art? Why, from the Blue Period to the late sketches it was only and always Picassoism. Other than that he can not be placed in a single defining category. Clio the Muse 22:14, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
The link to Picassoism lists a number of categories indeed, other categorizations exist as well. "Beyond category" was Duke Ellington's highest form of praise, and it certainly applies to Picasso. If pressured into adding a stylistic attribute to artist, the only one I can think of is modern. ---Sluzzelin talk 06:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
It's a simple quiz/homework question that is probably aiming at "Cubism," but Picasso, as Sluzzelin says, was "Modernism." If we were feeling cruel and wanted the OP to get caught, we could say Fauvism, I suppose. Geogre 12:46, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Misscarriage, corpses and criminality of not buring the dead aborted child

I have a couple of philosophical and legal questions regarding a counterargument, I have been thinking of, against the Pro-life movement and misscarriages. I guess, correct me if I am wrong, pro-lifers are appueled by the handeling of aborted fetuses/children at abortion clincs, given that they are handeled as medical waste. What they want are proper burials. And correct me if I am wrong, it is in most countries illigal not to report a corpse to the proper authorities. What do countries, where abortion is forbidden, do with the corpses of spontaniously aborted children, that for instance can be found in sewers or other waste places? Is there a political movement for DNA tracking for the parents to hold them responsible, or only the mother? Is there a philosophical debate about this issue - pro-right defenders who raises these issues for the defender of pro-life to answer?

Sorry for a lot of unstructured questions I would like to investigate this issues more. RickardV 21:02, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

(I have start added some comments, I don´t know if it is a faux pas in this forum. My intention is only to probe the issue a bit further. I skip commenting what I find irrelevant (I will not erase it, again.--RickardV 10:16, 26 July 2007 (UTC))

I believe the main objection pro-lifers have to abortion is that they consider it to be murder, not the manner in which the bodies are disposed. StuRat 23:06, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree that is probably pro-lifers main objection to abortion. But a lot of spontanious abortions are occuring and given that dead bodies should be disposed in a morally manner - how is it regulated in countries where abortion is illegal? --RickardV 10:16, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

As a pro-lifer myself, the prospect of an aborted foetus being the subject of a funeral doesn't sound particularly unlikely as you would make it out to be, though I am aware even many pro-lifers would consider the lack of an abortion for a fetus aborted in the earliest stages of a pregnancy to be quite acceptable. My answer to "do they want proper burials" would be "No, I want every human being to have the right to live the life that they where given, and it never be taken away."

This comment seems to me to miss the point. Any part of a body or corpse have to be handeled by the proper authorities, it seems moraly right to me. --RickardV 10:16, 26 July 2007 (UTC)


As for countries where abortion is illegal, lets take Intact dilation and extraction (warning: graphic contents in that link) in the US as a simple example. In 2003, Congress imposed ban on it Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and in April, the Supreme Court declared it was constitutional to do so Gonzales v. Carhart. Now suppose an abortion of that procedure was carried out, illegally by an unliscensed "midwife". Common sense dictates to me that that "midwife" would dispose of the foetus themselves. Reporting it to the authorities would be asking for prosecution, and federal authorities should presumably not find it if a "good enough job" (please excuse my language, I can't find an appropriate way describe a practice which I find morally pathetic) of disposing of it. Hence, not likely to be the state's problem.martianlostinspace 23:38, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Again then did the midwife and her/his assistent do both something wrong, given pro-life? Lets say that the midwife did the abortion but the assistent disposed of the remains. Did the assistent do anyting morally wrong or illegal? --RickardV 10:16, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
The only potentially distressing graphic content I could find at Intact dilation and extraction was George W. Bush signing the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. In other words, apart from Dubya, there are no images that might offend, just some frank language describing abortion procedures from those who oppose the practice. Rockpocket 00:29, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Correct though you may be, I can't imagine that that comment should do other than invite soapboxing or other unproductive discussion, the continuation of which has (not entirely rightly, IMHO) been long since disfavored on the reference desks (one may surely adduce the archives of WT:RD toward that proposition). Joe 05:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
The point of the comment was to illustrate that a warning of graphic content usually refers to images. I was surprised to note that martianlostinspace used it to refer to text. I wished to inform readers of this, since one may be interested to read about intact dilation and extraction using a public computer, for example, but not click on the link because of a fear seeing graphic images. The counter-balancing of this point with the idea that one might find a image of the US president offensive was an attempt at humour, at the expense of his unpopularity. I'm sorry you inferred I was soapboxing, but I was not, especially as I never expressed a personal opinion on the issue, unlike the previous respondent (who I don't think was soapboxing either). Rockpocket 07:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
My apologies; I appear to have apprehended sarcasm where there was none. If only there were some policy that would have encouraged me to assume, I don't know, good faith... :) Joe 19:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought I could remember some rather gory pictures in that article! (Should have followed it! Not a hint at GW Bush, though.)martianlostinspace 10:34, 26 July 2007 (UTC)