Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2008 May 16

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May 16

Greek Theatre

Hi. I'm looking for some information about Greek Theatre or to be more to the point information about the drama festival and their religious nature. If you could point me towards a website with some useful information or even provide the infomation yourself that would be very helpful. Any other information about Greek Theatre will also be greatfuly accepted

Many thanks POKEMON RULES (talk) 00:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Ancient or modern? If ancient, then Theatre of ancient Greece is the best place to start (well...on Wikipedia anyway). Adam Bishop (talk) 00:41, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Did Carl Stephenson (Leiningen vs the Ants) actually exist?

Did Carl Stephenson (author), the author of Leiningen Versus the Ants actually exist? Our article has no references, only birth and death dates. These are actually different from imdb, which gives in [1] the dates 1886--1954, not 1893--1954. He is called a German here, but was the short story actually written in German? It seems it has only appeared in English, originally in the December 1938 Esquire (magazine), which seems a bit odd for a short story written by a supposed lifelong German during the Nazi era. And surely "Karl" would be the more likely German spelling for his name. But we don't actually have any reference as to him being German, so that could be pure fabrication.

The other suspicious element is that we only have the word of his agent that he would not publish anything else during his lifetime. I remember reading something like that in my school years, in our literature textbook, at the time I thought since he had not published anything else this meant he was still alive! Not so if the 1954 death date holds. I was a fairly observant child and so I suppose that date was not known to the authors of the textbook, suggesting it may be pure fabrication as well.

I find it so weird that this story is so widely read and the only thing known about the author is this strange statement by his agent. All of this makes me strongly suspect that Carl Stephenson was not a real person, but actually just a one-off pen-name. Is there any actual evidence to the contrary? We could perhaps support this by doing some detective work to figure out who the real author may be. The best way to go about that would be to find the original Esquire issue and compare this work to other authors who published there about that time, and particularly authors appearing in that very issue. (Apparently Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Butterfly and the Tank" first appeared in that issue. Wouldn't it be strange if Carl Stephenson was actually Ernest Hemingway?) If the story was not too out of character for its real author, the use of a pen-name may be just a decision to increase the apparent number of contributing authors, and some statistical word count may give hints to actual authorship.

Let me organize these thoughts in the following list of questions:

1. Did Carl Stephenson (author) actually exist?
2. Where did the birth/death dates come from?
3. Why is he called a German?
4. Do we know anything else about him? Any other stories attributed to him?
5. If "Carl Stephenson" is just a pen-name, who might he be?

Thanks, -- Kevin Saff (68.146.220.249 (talk) 01:45, 16 May 2008 (UTC))

P.S. Aha, note too that Stephenson's death is listed as 1954, the same year as the release of the film The Naked Jungle based on his story. That seems like an all too convenient excuse for Stephenson to be unavailable for interviews at the time. Or am I just reading way too much into all this? KS (68.146.220.249 (talk) 01:54, 16 May 2008 (UTC))

de.wiki seems more convinced that he existed. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:11, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

he even wrote a sequel to the story: Sendboten der Hölle. Leiningens Kampf mit der Wildnis--Tresckow (talk) 02:16, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Intriguing. I recall listening to the broadcast on LP in the mid-1970s. I'm starting to feel old. --— Gadget850 (Ed)talk 02:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that's no fun, you guys shot down all my conspiracy theories :) But I think there are still some questions left, like who translated the story? And if I interpret the German page correctly, it seems he did publish some other stuff during his lifetime (although still surprisingly little) despite the agent's statements. KS (68.146.220.249 (talk) 08:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC))

It's possible imdb has a different Carl Stephenson in mind. My library has a few books by Carl Stephenson (1886-1954), but they're all on English medieval history. Algebraist 09:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Image Copyright question

On the internet there's lots of pictures people send around like image macros, lolcats, and the joke motivational posters. Now in theory everything is supposed to by copyrighted. But if the image isn't watermarked, signed by the artist, noted as coming from a website and also the source is unknown, and I make a website full of those things can I still be sued if someone claims to be the original artist? Of course sometimes these images do take bits from copyrighted sources and then mixed them with content the creator of the image makes, but even if that's not the case then? William Ortiz (talk) 03:04, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

You could be, but it is most unlikely that you would be. The normal procedure would be that you'd be invited to take down the offending image, and that would be an end to the matter. I think - but we do not give legal advice - that the copyright owner would have to prove an economic loss to make a financial claim on you. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:10, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

You're wrong on two important points: 1. they don't have to have suffered a real economic loss to have a case, and 2. take-down notices are served to ISPs, not to individual users. The safe-harbor clause of the DMCA is meant for sites that allow users to post data, so, for example, Wikipedia is not immediately sued if one of its users posts something infringing. Does that mean that you as an individual could be sued? I'm not sure, but it looks that way to me. And of course here we are only talking about the USA. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 04:19, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you in the USA, or any country which is a party to the Bern convention? If so, then be warned that images do NOT need to contain watermarks, signatures, notes, whatever, to be copyrighted. You should assume any image you find on the internet is copyrighted unless being told explicitly otherwise by the creator. Could you be sued? It's possible that your ISP could be served a takedown notice and shut down your site. It's also possible that you as an individual could be sued. Would you win or lose the case? That depends on a whole lot of particularities relating to whether or not your use of it constitutes the legal definition of "fair use", which is incredibly legally murky. Is it likely to happen? Well, judge for yourself. The internet is full of copyright infringements. Which ones end up getting taken down? The ones that 1. cost people money, and 2. step on the toes of extremely touchy clients (Scientologists, the Muppets, etc.). Does that mean the others are legally safe? No. Does it mean it should keep you up at night? It's your butt. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 04:19, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I do live in the USA. One thing though that makes me wonder is let's say someone takes a funny picture and then puts funny text, sends the picture out of a bit and now it's on 2000 websites so it's hard to actually prove who originally took the picture. Of course my site wouldn't be user-editable so I couldn't hide behind DMCA. William Ortiz (talk) 05:47, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

It's hard for you to prove who took the picture. It wouldn't be hard for the author of the picture to prove it (in court)—they probably have the original negative. --140.247.10.1 (talk) 13:41, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Times have changed. What's a negative? --Anon, 21:56 UTC, May 16, 2008.

It is always better to hotlink to picture on original site to avoid this problem.Good idea to keep a copy of picture in case the site hotlinked to ceases to exist in the future,then at your own risk if you wish to do so place on your own site as owner probably would not pursue the matter.If I find people are using pictures from my site via my logs (yes site owners can see where your hotlinks go..)I email them to acknowledge source, hotlink or remove picture. It is a good idea to embed your site url in all pictures which gives the added free advertisement for your site when viewed. --Anon 20 may 2008

Need to know who painted this

Alright, well, I'm doing a little project on art history about cubism and related styles, and this painting is my example: http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/4126/dsc02166ix4.jpg Here's the dilemma: I can't for the life of me figure out who painted this. Does anyone recognize it? Locke-talk|contribs 03:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

No, but it looks remarkably Russian. Also, you are not faced with a dilemma on this. :) 213.161.190.228 (talk) 07:14, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Is that the work of Francis Bacon - the brushwork looks like something he might have done? Astronaut (talk) 14:46, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

No, I would place my honour that it isn't Bacon. If it isn't kitsch, it's cubist in style and era, likely to be dated around 1908-1920. The focus on portraiture is one we recognize from Picasso in particular, and quite a few of his works in cubism are not far from this - but the style isn't quite his. One might feel compelled to testify to the impressionistic trend of the brush, but I can't think of any skilled impressionist that wouldn't have included light in a much wider scale. It's evident that the picture can't date before 1900. Anything later than 1950 and we'll end up calling it kitsch. Scaller (talk) 16:59, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Personally I don't recognise it as by any great 20th. century artist or artistic movement; it's a portrait rather than a self-portrait (a self-portrait shows the sitter in a slightly twisted pose because he has to face both a mirror and an easel). You might try User:Tyrenius, but I think that you are going to find that it's nothing particularly important. --Major Bonkers (talk) 07:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I have a question about the assignment. Were you given this painting and told to write about cubism and its associated styles using it as an example, or did you find this painting online and are hoping that it will help illustrate the project on that topic with it? It's neither cubist nor kitsch. I would bet it's more recent—last few decades, or even years (but wouldn't be surprised if it was from earlier in the 20th century). It's also not hung on a gallery or museum wall. The photo was taken at a slight angle and there some printed writing in the upper right, leading me to believe it's a snapshot of a painting leaning against a wall (perhaps at a gallery hanging, or in a coffee shop). It could be a "notable" artist or an MFA student, but it doesn't seem to be from one of the big "names" that we all know. I could be wrong, though. In answer to your question, there are a lot of famous and more applicable paintings out there for an art history project on cubism than this one. If you were given this painting by your instructor then you are probably not supposed to try and figure it out (i.e. write a "formal analysis" or something similar on an almost impossible to track-down work). In that case, use your skills of looking to discuss how it compares and differs from landmarks of cubism by Picasso, Braque, et. al. It'm more different than similar, in my view. --Stomme (talk) 08:26, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

similarites and differences berween ethics morality and law

what are similarities between the three 'law ethics and morality'--213.55.92.82 (talk) 05:54, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

See Ethics#Morals for some discussion between ethics and morals. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:20, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

And in regards to Law, as an Anarchist, I'd argue that it has no similarity whatsoever with either of the two concepts. Ninebucks (talk) 16:58, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

The English Reformation-the Bollocks of Henry VIII

I would hope that at least some of you, those with some degree of knowledge and education, will be familiar with the following lines attributed to Brendan Behan;

"Trust not the alien minister

Nor his creed without reason or faith.

The foundation stone of his temple

Is the bollocks of Henry VIII."

Now my question is this: is this an altogether apt description of the English Reformation? I sincerely hope that this will not be rudely removed by some censorious individual, as it was before.Tim O'Neil (talk) 07:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes yes, most apt. And perfectly sufficient. No further discussion of the English Reformation is required, Brendan Behan having said it all so completely. --Wetman (talk) 08:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Those lines certainly sound like Behan, who once famously described himself as "a drinker with a writing problem". As invective, it's written from an Irish Roman Catholic point of view, the 'alien minister' meaning the Anglican priest. It's not far off being the religious controversy of the school playground. If there's the appearance of a startling grain of truth in it, it isn't one which tells us anything new or startling. Many things conspired to bring down the old religion in England, and if its only problem had been the need of Henry VIII to put away a wife, then no doubt it would have survived him and the tables would have been turned in the time of his successors. Xn4 12:09, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not Behan. An Irish priest wrote that poem several hundred years ago. Behan quotes it in his book Borstal Boy (or perhaps Confessions of an Irish Rebel).

• • • I learned it in the 1940s very slightly different words. Never heard of Behan back then. My grandmother attributed it to Emmet.

Hindu Gods

Moved from Help Desk

Dear Wikipedia, I am a very great reader of your esteemed articles. In one of your articles regarding "THE HINDU GOD Narasimha (MAN-LION) AVATAR OF LORD Vishnu", you have written that after killing "THE DEMON KING Hiranyakashipu", Lord Narasimha is so full of rage that no one dare go near him and try to calm him till "Prahalad" takes the courage to do so. Whereas,in your article regarding another "HINDU GOD Shiva", you have written that when the above event took place (ie:-NARASIMHA GETTING TERRIBLE WITH RAGE) the other HINDU GODS pleaded with LORD SHIVA to calm LORD NARASIMHA, LORD SHIVA took the avatar of A HALF-BEAST, HALF-BIRD HALF-HUMAN creature named Sharaba and fought with NARASIMHA anf ultimately calmed him. You can refer the above event under the topic of Lord Sarabhesvara which itself comes under the topic of SHIVA. Kindly let me know as to which of the above Two Events is correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.177.241.87 (talk) 20:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not trying to send you on a wild-goose chase around Wikipedia but you might get lucky on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hinduism/Mythology. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 21:17, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

US army vs the world

Considering that the US spends more money on its army than the rest of the world put together, could they conquer the world if they wished? Of course, they'd be hugely outnumbered, so that makes that unlikely unless they get a lot of local support. But then, I've wondered the same about Nazi Germany, and they managed to conquer quite a bit, albeit at a huge loss of German lives. But, in reverse, if the rest of the world ganged up on the US, could they defeat the country? I suppose having half the world's arsenal won't help the US much here, unless they are prepared to use it on their own territory - they could only be used for a counter-attack, hoping that will stop the invading forces. Any thoughts? Amrad (talk) 10:40, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

If there were a serious war between the US and the rest of the world, most of humanity would die in a nuclear holocaust. Hard to call it a win for anyone. As for the US conquering the world in a conventional war, the amount of trouble they (with allies) are having holding down two countries suggests it might be tricky. Algebraist 09:30, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, first of all, a lot of the military budgets are not correct (or are not accurate), so we can't say for sure if the US spends more than everyone else combined. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the US spends 75% of the world's budget though. They'd still be outnumbered horribly (don't know the exact figures, but I'd say around 40 or 50 to 1?), albeit with slightly older technology (slightly being a key word; note that Cold War Era technology can still be deadly). Then again, as Algebraist says, we'd probably just end up with nuclear war. · AndonicO ^Engage. 09:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Although it can sometimes be doubted, the US is a rational and self-serving great power. In the words of Pascal, "Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to go off conquering the world. Such larks were all right for Augustus and Alexander, who were young and impetuous, but Caesar should have been more grown up." Xn4 09:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Considering that even handling Iraq is proving pretty difficult for the U.S. military, no, they couldn't. Mobilizing armies is very expensive business, and while the United States certainly has a great technological advantage over many countries, that hardware doesn't come cheap. Germany gained a lot of ground, sure, but not only did they have mandatory military service, their army was also a lot cheaper to run simply because your average German soldier's training and equipment was far, far less expensive than that of a modern soldier. Of course, there were other differences as well. For example, according to the Military of the United States article, "As of May 2007, about 1,426,705 people are on active duty in the military with an additional 1,458,400 people in the seven reserve components." Contrast that with the figure given in the Wehrmacht article: "The total number of soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht during its existence from 1935 until 1945 is believed to approach 18.2 million." Of course, that's over a ten-year period and not really a comparable figure as such, but it explains why they could march all over Europe and elsewhere -- they had the manpower to do that. But, as is pertinent to this discussion, not the manpower to really hold the territory they'd taken.

The problem with conquering the world is inevitably that you also need to keep the world afterwards, and in order to do that, you need to occupy the territory you've taken. That takes tremendous manpower and resources, and considering that the people who actually live in those areas tend to be understandably hostile, it's also dangerous and difficult work -- again, as we can see in Iraq now and as we could see in the German military efforts back in WW2. (Not that I'm equating the Nazi Germany with the United States here, I should stress, I'm just saying that they both faced a similar problem, albeit on a wholly different scale. Of course, the Nazis also had military forces external to the territory they'd taken to contend with, which didn't help things any.)

Conversely, if the rest of the world attempted to conquer the United States, they would have a far easier time of it simply because they would have considerable advantage not only in manpower but in the fact that they would be pouring that manpower into a relatively small area instead of stretching themselves thin, and obviously, working with allies has many advantages, such as shared intelligence, resources, logistics, etc. I'm sure the United States would put up a pretty memorable fight, but really, against every armed forces on the planet, they'd simply be completely outnumbered. Bear in mind that many countries have mandatory military service, so the combined pool of trained soldiers would be considerably greater than that in the United States. Also, simple population differences come into play here; the Chinese People's Liberation Army alone, for example, has a pool of 281,240,272 fit males and almost as many females available for military service, more than the population of the entire United States. The comparable figure in the United States is 54,609,050. (Which is not to say that all these people could be armed and mobilized, naturally -- but it illustrates the scale we're talking about, because this is just one country.) If the United States was attacking, it would be spread far too thin to take on the entire world; if it was defending, it'd get swarmed.

Of course, all this depends on your definition of "conquer". If you're not at all concerned about keeping the infrastructure of the territory you're invading intact or sparing civilian lives, or not interested about the negative consequences, things can change very quickly -- as long as you had the technology at your disposal, you could just bomb everyone into the stone age. Or use nuclear weapons and just wipe everyone out. Of course, there's a little thing called mutual assured destruction to think about if you go that way. For a great part, the defensive strategies of the modern superpowers are based on exactly that.

And yes, of course, this response overlooks a kazillion other factors -- but suffice to say that no, the United States couldn't conquer the world, but the rest of the world could gang up and conquer it, as long as we're talking about conventional weapons. This is not to say that the United States couldn't do serious damage on the attack or that the process of taking it wouldn't be extremely costly to the attackers, but in the end, I don't think there'd every be any real doubt of the outcome. And, of course, if nuclear weapons entered the game (as they inevitably would), that's when everyone loses. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 09:45, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

On the conventional war rest-of-world conquering the US front, I agree that we (RoW) would win if we could get our armies there, but I'm not sure we could do that. Naval warfare (unlike occupying hostile territory) is an area where all that high-tech high-cost stuff is actually useful, and I'm not sure we could ship our troops across thousands of miles of ocean against the US navy and air force. The US, for example, has more aircraft carriers than everyone else put together, and they're massively larger. Algebraist 11:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree. In a world assult the best bet would be to get as much equipment as possible through to our Canadian and South American allies. Of course things would be a lot easier for us if some of the US residents sympathised with us. Our media departments would be talking about re-unification of Texas with Mexico, and our African allies would be talking about liberating African Americans from their oppressors. At the same time we would have insiders talking to Southern far right groups about reversing the injustices of the civil war and re-introducing segregation. I don't need to mention what an asses the Vatican, Mecca, and Jerusalem would be to us if it really was all of us against the USA. Of course, once the war was over we would have a big problem of bitterness over unrealistic promises we couldn't keep, but the WW2 Alliance of Russia and the West shows that this does happen. -- Q Chris (talk) 11:45, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

If I was the US commander defending against an anticipated RoW attack the very first thing I would do would be pre-emptive conquests of Canada and Mexico so that I'm defending just a narrow frontier and a lot of coastline. DJ Clayworth (talk) 19:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

The answer is easy...Not a chance. There is no way that the US could take over the entire world at all. The technological advancement of an army is nothing compared to the tactics/organisational structure. Whilst not on the same tack I would point you to a very interesting chapter of Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Blink' which discusses a military game they played where a guy managed, with minimal resources, to outwit the huge army much to the embarrassment of the armed-forces/people organising the game. Also the US will rely heavily on international-trade to produce/develop its weaponary, with that closed-off then things change. Add in that the rest of the world does have huge amounts of technological advancement too and you've got yourself a ridiculously tough war. It would be nigh on impossible for them to succeed in any meaningful way (save for the whole nuclear-holocaust root). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:46, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, you hint on something that would make more sense. Economic warfare. RoW (which need only be the EU, Japan and China) could start relatively inconspicuously with withdrawing money from the US (the huge debts that the US economy is now based on). Next, they could 'do a Cuba' on the US, stopping all trade. If the first measure didn't bring the US economy to its knees, that would. And certain essential types of technology would have to be re-invented by the US, such as steppers, the machines that make chips. There are only a few companies that make these, with the US playing no major role. So the US would get so far behind in such a crucial technology, while RoW keeps on progressing as usual. Within a decade (or two) RoW would be sotechnologically ahead that that is bound to give a major military edge. Still, the nuclear arsenal would remain a problem, unless information technology could disable those (wouldn't surprise me). But at that point, there would be little reason to invade the US - their role on the world scene would have ended. Sorry, I seem to have asked the wrong question. :) Amrad (talk) 14:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, if RoW blockaded the US for 20 years, I'm sure they'd have plenty of time to develop new technology as well. · AndonicO ^Engage. 18:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The US is big, but not that big. The more people and territory, the better an economy can develop. A large part of our wealth is due to globalisation. RoW would continue to have that advantage, but not the US. The USSR did much better than, say, Cuba, because it's so big that it had all the necessities to 'stay alive'. But it was at a continuous disadvantage to the rest of the world (apart from having started off with a huge disadvantage), and the resulting difference in wealth was getting ever bigger. The US would face the same problem, but bigger, having the same amount of people on a area less than half te size. I don't know what raw materials they would have to do without, though. Don't we have some article where one could look that up? I can't find anything in (or through) Economy of the United States. Amrad (talk) 08:24, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

The US is large enough to have raw materials of all kinds within their borders, if I recall my resource geography correctly. But the raw materials would be much more expensive to extract. DanielDemaret (talk) 01:32, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

A lot depends on how the hostilities start. Does the ROW suddenly one day decide to sneak attack the U.S. without warning? The Americans might be toast with several large armies establishing footholds in N. America. If the U.S. strikes first, Canada, Mexico, & the Caribbean (ex. maybe Cuba) could be overwhelmed quickly, thus expanding available natural resources and making an invasion much more difficult. Most countries' militaries are defensive without the capability to project force very far. The U.S. is basically out of reach of all but a few countries. The U.S. naval dominance would make any blockade tough to enforce. Being that the U.S. is over one-fifth of the world economy, a blockade would do serious economic damage to other countries as well.

While the U.S. may be bogged down in Iraq, that's largely because of the attempt at nation building. The American army isn't good at putting down insurgencies, but against other modern armies it is excellent. Any attempt to conquer U.S. territory would be doomed while I believe the U.S. could conquer a good deal of territory and definitely decimate many other armies. Actually ruling other countries would be tough, but neutralizing military threats would be much less so. --D. Monack | talk 21:48, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Philanthropy

I am looking for answers to these questions and sources:

How many people in the US have a documented will? (percentage?)

How many who have a will leave something to charity?

When a person dies in the US, the average "equity" they leave is $ ______ ?

Sources for this information?

146.79.254.10 (talk) 18:50, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

These aren't really questions, but requests that someone do your research. The "answers" will reflect the parameters of the search: without doing the work, the figures won't be meaningful to you. --Wetman (talk) 23:19, 16 May 2008 (UTC)?????

John Paulson and Henry Paulson

Are John Paulson (hedge fund investor) and Henry Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury) related? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.132.179.83 (talk) 19:19, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

No - see this. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 20:56, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Landlocked island nations

Has there ever been a landlocked island nation? The closest I could find was the Kingdom of Powys, which only met the sea at the Dyfi estuary, and some of the lordships and kingdoms in Medieval Ireland, but which date back to before borders were properly established and the idea of being landlocked became meaningful. Laïka 20:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I suppose it would have to be waterlocked and then landlocked. And I guess it depends on that water being a lake, not a sea, otherwise any island nation could be contrived to qualify. For example, Madagascar is surrounded by water, and beyond the water is land, albeit land that forms part of different continents, and Madagascar is in the Indian Ocean, so it wouldn't qualify. You're talking about an island nation in a lake such as Lake Victoria, or a landlocked sea. The Caspian Sea wouldn't qualify because it has 130 rivers flowing into it and presumably there's ultimately river access to the sea. You're looking for a landlocked sea, or lake, that is connected to no navigable waterways, or no waterways that lead to the sea. I know of no such country currently or in recent historical times, but there may have been in the dim past. But the further back you go, the concept of "nation" becomes more and more fuzzy, so it's not as simple a question as it might appear. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

There was the Kingdom of Kandy, which ruled a part of the island of Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon). During much of its history, European powers controlled the entire coastline of the island, leaving Kandy landlocked. Marco polo (talk) 01:35, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if Kandy qualifies. It was situated on an island, but it itself was not an island, so maybe it depends on one's definition of "island nation". -- JackofOz (talk) 01:59, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Saint Martin is a future contender if the Saint Martinese (population 33,000) ever outnumber and surround the Sint Maartenese (pop 30,000) - or vice versa Mhicaoidh (talk) 01:49, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, I just noticed that the population figures in our three articles don't square up. I'll be back after more research, in the meantime I wish I knew how to do that nifty scoring a line through your errorful edit trick. Mhicaoidh (talk) 01:56, 17 May 2008 (UTC) (Answered question on scoring out on Mhicaoidh's talk page. ៛ Bielle (talk) 04:03, 17 May 2008 (UTC))

For those as fascinated as I am by the wildly fluctuating population figures of St Martin, see that articles talk page Mhicaoidh (talk) 03:38, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Island Superlatives may be of interest to you as well Mhicaoidh (talk) 04:09, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

What are Energy Trusts?

There is an investment catagory called Energy Trusts. Each Trust can be purchased on the stock exchange in the form of shares. I own one entitled Tel Offshore Trust and from what little I understand of how it operates, it purchases the rights to sell oil and gas from producing properties (Gulf oil rigs, etc.). That's about all I know!!

How are these Trusts structured? What exactly are they doing? Why are their yields so high? I will await enlightenment. Thanks.--Plizik (talk) 21:04, 16 May 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Plizik (talk • contribs) 20:53, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

See Royalty trust. Here's another explanation and here's one's website. The yields are higher than those of ordinary oil companies because nearly all the profits are passed to unitholders as distributions while the companies would usually keep some profits for growth. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 21:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

There are two main flavors of energy trusts (most of this is covered in the royalty trust article, as Zain points out) -- the U.S. and the Canadian. The "Canroys", the Canadian trusts, can be run more like businesses than the ones in the U.S., but there are certain tax disadvantages to them, and they're going to change structure completely in a couple years. The U.S. trusts, unlike the Canadian, cannot add assets once they are formed. The two highest-volume US trusts, last time I looked, were Permian Basin Royalty Trust and BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust (hm, looks like I wrote those). Both U.S. and Canroys tend to pay distributions in the 10-15% annual range. Note that those are "distributions", not "dividends" -- since it's a depleting resource, some of that is return on capital, not a "dividend" per se. Real Estate Investment Trusts are another similar entity. Antandrus (talk) 23:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

A trust is a legal mechanism where one person (the trustee) legally holds the property, but must hold it for the benefit of another (the beneficiary). When you buy units in the trust, you are the beneficiary. So when the property generates income (e.g. royalty), the trustee has to give that income to you, subject to some deductions for expenses or fees which they would have told you about before you bought it.

The value of the trust comes from the value of the property that the trustee holds, which comes from the income generated by the property. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:09, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

newspaper Canada natural resources

Is there any newspaper that deals with Canadian natural resources issues? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.64.129.226 (talk) 23:12, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Alternatives Journal is published by the Environmental Studies Association of Canada. Checkerspot is a Canadian magazine which focusses on climate change matters, with all the religiosity one would expect. I've never seen a copy of North American Wind Power, but from its title I imagine that it deals with wind power in Canada (and, conceivably, Mexico) as well as the US. And I believe I've seen issues of The Green Guide (US) and The Ecologist (UK) which have taken an interest in Canadian environmental issues. Xn4 19:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Proof

Following from the copyright image question above, with digital imagery, how does a person prove ultimately that they have or shot the original? Besides big business image libraries with their provenance logs, that is. Julia Rossi (talk) 23:19, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a good question. In some cases, it's pretty obvious -- if you have a shot from your own living room, for example, it's a safe assumption that people are going to believe that you indeed took the picture. Likewise, if you have taken a picture of a person you know, presumably that person can testify, if need be, that you took a picture of them. Still, in many instances, this doesn't apply. There are other situations: if you can prove that you were at a site when a picture was taken, that'll help. ("I went to New York with my friends last summer, and that's when I took this one. Just ask them.") In practice, perhaps the best proof is that particularly with digital cameras, most people don't go somewhere and take just one picture. They take several, so the image in question is one in a series, and recognizably so. Chances are that the person who stole the image only has that single image, not a bunch of them. And, of course, if the image is posted to an online service like Flickr, that's a pretty solid record right there -- if you're the one with the account password, that's pretty much an open and shut case. Provided, of course, that it's the picture's first public appearance. Still, in the end, it can turn into a situation where it's your word against someone else's -- but I don't think it's that hard to create a solid history for the shots you take. Even if you just kept a log of when and where you've been shooting in a notebook, that would already help a lot -- it's not like that couldn't be forged, of course, but that kind of thing is used as evidence in courts all the time. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 08:50, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

This type of question comes up all the time at the deletion discussions at WikiCommons. There was a discussion last week about a photo of Sarah Jessica Parker in New York. Although there is no undisputable evidence that the original uploader is also the photographer, the uploader also had several photos of other celebrities at the same location as well as photos of herself with celebrities. See commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Sarah Jessica Parker 2.jpg. Thuresson (talk) 11:15, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

If you downsized or cropped the image before uploading it then possession of the original would be pretty convincing evidence. I don't want fear of unauthorized use to drive people to deliberately mangle their images, but a lot of images are improved by cropping anyway, and you can frame with cropping in mind (especially with high-megapixel cameras). Programs like JPEGcrop can crop JPEG images without introducing compression artifacts.

The Exif data could also serve as proof in some cases. If A and B both claim authorship, and B's copy of the image contains the serial number of a camera belonging to A, that would be pretty convincing. But there's nothing to stop B from stripping/forging the Exif data and then claiming that the data in A's copy is forged. -- BenRG (talk) 12:48, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Additionally there are things like witnesses. If I shot a picture of a model and was taking it to court, it would be trivial to figure out which model it was (if I was the one who contracted with the modeling agency in the first place, for example) even if I hadn't kept good records at the time, and to get them to submit an affidavit, if it was an issue. There could also be circumstantial evidence—I could prove I had gone to Yosemite on this-and-that a day, you could probably figure out that weather conditions in Yosemite matched what I shot, etc. Even though this is imprecise, in the case of person X saying they shot the photo and person Y claiming they shot the photo, in many cases it would be easy to eliminate one person from the possible ownership of the photo, which would probably be enough for a jury. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:25, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help -- it looks like context, third party and exit data is the go unless you're a good records keeper, Julia Rossi (talk) 00:12, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Stocks

What is a good company too buy cheap stock in? I would prefer an American company, and would really be glad if people know of any in Michigan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.119.61.7 (talk) 23:43, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Stock investing is tricky and risky. What you risk is that the price of a stock, cheap or not, could fall sharply. There are millions of experienced investors trying to pick winning stocks, with the consequence that those that are likely to go up are not cheap. There are few bargains, and professionals who know how to find them can earn millions from rich investors. It is better not to try to outsmart experienced and professional investors, because you are likely to lose. A wiser choice for a new investor would be an index fund, a type of mutual fund that rises and falls with a stock market index (that is, with the market as a whole or with a representative sample of the market). Few professional investors manage to do better than a stock market index, so this is a good bet for the nonprofessional. Unlike other kinds of mutual funds, there are no fund managers taking a big cut of your investment to pay for their multimillion-dollar salaries and bonuses. You can still lose money with an index fund, because the stock market as a whole can fall. But usually some stocks rise when others fall, so investing in the market as a whole is much less risky than investing in an individual stock, because nothing counterbalances that stock when it falls. Here is an article on index funds. It mentions a few that you might consider. Many of them have a low minimum investment of $1,000 or less. Marco polo (talk) 01:28, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

If we were to get a lot of these questions, it would behoove us to add "financial advice" to "medical and legal advice" in the "what we don't do here" list. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 20:51, 17 May 2008 (UTC)