Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 March 1

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March 1

Starvation in US during Great Depression?

Did any people actually starve to death in the US during the Great Depression (1929-38)? Are there any reliable numbers on this? Elinde7994 (talk) 00:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

According to this source, there are no verified deaths from starvation in the United States during the Great Depression, but hunger was widespread. In conditions of hunger and malnutrition, hunger often contributes to death without being its ultimate cause. For example, hunger and malnutrition severely weaken the immune system and make a person more susceptible to disease and less able to recover from it. Marco polo (talk) 02:08, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Of course people starved to death in the U.S during the great depression. People starved to death every year the U.S. or any other country has existed. 1 per 100,000 died from malnutrition in 2005, for ifor instance. [1]Give me a break. Edison (talk) 02:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Malnutrition is not the same as starvation; the figures you give include deaths from vitamin deficiencies and disorders such as kwashiorkor, which is associated with a diet with enough calories but not enough protein (and common in situations such as old people in homes[2] where the cause is more likely to be neglect or other biological disorder than poverty). --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 18:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Starvation, per the article, is extreme Malnutrition. If it is bad enough you die, it is extreme. People also starve who are too poor to buy food, too proud to ask for charity, too much of a hermit to benefit from the mercy of others, or who are denied food as victims of abuse, infants, elderly, prisoners or other captives who are denied adequate nutrition. Edison (talk) 19:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

partnership or no partnership?

Time and again, I pass a Wells Fargo branch. Sharing the same space would be Starbucks Coffee. I know Starbucks shares a partnership with Barnes & Noble. But what about Wells Fargo? What's going on with that? Anyone know?72.229.135.200 (talk) 07:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Starbucks, which doesn't franchise, will enter into licensing agreements with companies who occupy real estate they covet, like airports or colleges. Their company fact sheet lists at least two dozen companies with whom they have 'alliances', although Wells Fargo is not among them. Wolfgangus (talk) 21:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The sheet also does not list Commonwealth Bank of Australia, with which Starbucks has an arrangement. Those listed are probably the most prominent ones only. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 22:58, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I found http://articles.latimes.com/1998/apr/14/business/fi-39045 in a Google search. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Fighting back against hip-hop

How has hip-hop managed to drive punk and heavy metal off Toronto's FM airwaves, posterable vertical surfaces and to a large extent Future Shop shelves, not to mention the YouTube landing pages? What can the latter genres do to reclaim their place, and how long do they have left to do so before white musical culture is reduced to the likes of Green Day and Britney Spears? NeonMerlin 08:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

That is clearly ridiculous, as there is only one mainstream FM station in Toronto that ever plays hip hop. Is this a clumsy attempt at trolling? Adam Bishop (talk) 08:15, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

But there are none that ever play heavy metal, except insofar as you count Korn and Linkin Park, or punk (I was recently disabused of the notion that Green Day and Sum 41 were punk). Even if you adopt the broadest definitions of those genres, no station plays them anywhere near as regularly as Flow plays hip-hop. NeonMerlin 08:22, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You know, the way I prefer to think of it is that only the lowest common denominator is influenced or dependant or radio programming for guidance. From a pure marketing cost-benefit point of view, radio is forced to pander to people without musical guidance. People with better direction will find alternate methods of distribution!NByz (talk) 08:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Radios are forever plagued by playlists. Personally, I wouldn't draw too many conclusions about the state of, uh, white musical culture based on what you hear on the radio, any more than I would draw conclusions about the state of black musical culture based on what you hear on the radio. It's simply not designed to give you a balanced selection of the best and most innovative current music available. Lowest common denominator is exactly right. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 10:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You asked a very similar question last month, see here in case you've forgotten. The answer I would give you now is the same as the one I gave you back then. For those in positions of power in the mainstream media, whose choices dictate what we see and hear on the TV and radio, hip-hop is basically seen as cool whereas heavy metal is not. FWIW, I agree with them. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 10:29, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

That isn't exactly how it works in Canada. The CRTC is responsible for spectrum management in Canada and it is fairly particular in its mandates. Stations can't just play everything they want. There was actually trouble getting a license for an urban station in Toronto which some attributed to racism after the refusal of the Milestone Radio application. There was an order-in-council directing the CRTC to license two stations in TO that reflected the city's diversity. CFXJ-FM was licensed because of that. The other was Aboriginal Voices. Here's the CRTC decision on Flow.[3]

How long have they got? Wasn't that a Kids in the Hall sketch? "According to a computer model, three years." --JGGardiner (talk) 11:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Seriously. Between Internet Radio, MP3 Players, Satelite radio etc. etc. there's lots of ways to get free music in any genre you wish. If you don't want to expose your ears to various kinds of music, then don't. No one forces you to listen to radio stations that don't play what you want them to, and you have plenty of options to find music you do. No heavy metal stations in Toronto? Find heavy metal music via other means then. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 20:14, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The root of your problem is what is concieved of as mainstream music and alternative music. These days hip hop and r&b are mainstream music, running alongside pop music. Metal still sits with indie, punk, post-rock, prog and the like as alternative music that isn't part of what is being pushed by the biggest companies. There's still a big market for alternative stuff, but it's not as big as the market for mainstream, so mainstream gets more airplay, while alternative gets less airplay, or play on smaller stations. Internet radio is a better bet for you. I suggest my favourite Australian station which mixes alternative with indie hip-hop - Triple J. Steewi (talk) 23:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

ART

Is the first edition of a painting print more expensive than the tenth? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.173.177.203 (talk) 16:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Depends on the painting and the size of print runs. --140.247.11.19 (talk) 16:34, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

But, on anything valuable, I would generally expect a first edition to go for more money, yes. StuRat (talk) 16:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Our article "Edition" has some information. It seems not to be as simple as 1-2-3. -Milkbreath (talk) 16:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Poldark

Hello,

Have only seen the fantastic series, not read the books. What happens to George Warleggan? Poldark? Demelza? Dwight and Carolyn?

Many thanks if someone can answer this without typing a novel of their own in length. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sgflikchik (talk • contribs) 18:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

is warren buffet jewish

is warren buffet jewish pls —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.181.144.0 (talk) 14:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

No. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 15:07, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

how can I invest in a "race"

how can I invest in a race, such as Jews, etc. thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.181.144.0 (talk) 18:17, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

sorry I need to elaborate: I just mean in financial terms, same as Vice Fund (google it) invests in vices. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.181.144.0 (talk) 18:19, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I doubt there is such a way that is already established. If you wanted to do something similar to Vice Fund for a race, I imagine you'd invest in companies who would benefit from consumption patterns of your specific "race". For example, investing in, say, a company that produced high-priced menorahs would be a nice "Jewish" investment—on the whole, one might expect that if Jews, on the whole, were having good financial prosperity, they would be spending some of that income on a higher-priced menorah. Or something like that. Of course in engaging in such an approach you are necessarily making a lot of guesses, some of which are likely to end up being somewhat offensive as they will play on various stereotypes.

It's of note that one of the biggest "Jewish" investment schemes as of late went belly up recently and pulled down a scandalous number of Jewish charities and probably companies with it. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Kittybrewster ☎ 19:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Right, but investing in the companies in the state of Israel is not exactly the same thing as investing in the "Jewish race" in the way he means about the Vice Fund. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 19:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

There are State of Israel Bonds, if you want to invest in them, but otherwise your request would not appear to be operationalizable (as a 1950's behaviorist might say...). AnonMoos (talk) 19:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

sorry Im being dense, is there a point youre making about behaviorism - though sometimes a cigar is just a cigar (as a 19th century Freud possibly said) --85.181.144.0 (talk) 20:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

See my past comment at Talk:Operationalization -- some behaviorist and logical-positivist types basically said that if you can't come up with a procedure for concretely measuring somthing, then it's completely meaningless. I'm sure I'm oversimplifying a bit, but that was the gist... AnonMoos (talk) 21:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

What makes "the Jews" a "race" that can be "invested in"? Do you mean "investment" in the sense of making a profit in return for providing funding? This question is for the Original Poster User:85.181.144.0 and all the previous and prospective respondents here who didn't clarify, or question, this basic premise of the initial proposition. -- Deborahjay (talk) 04:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

(clarification continued) What other "race" besides the Jews? Would the "target race" have to have a lot of money and be easy to profit from? By "investing" are you talking about a "get-rich-quick" scheme, so ruling out the effective historical methods of Colonialism, by which your investment requires a lot of hard work to extract wealth out of an impoverished, underdeveloped native population ("race" – like Black Africans) whose property contains valuable resources? I was thinking about maybe the Vatican which is supposed to have a lot of money (though Catholics are a religion, not a race), or Warren Buffet (who has a lot of money though he's not a Jew, according to the reply you got to your earlier query). -- Deborahjay (talk) 07:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

There are Islamic funds, such as the Dow Jones Islamic Fund; these are established because of the difficulty in making conventional investments that comply with a traditional understanding of Islamic law. In addition, there are country funds that are set up to invest in a particular country, and I believe that these include Israel funds. I'm not aware of any other kinds of investment vehicles that target a particular race, ethnicity, or religion. Of course, you can invest in particular securities that are associated with particular ethnicities (menorah makers and Israel bonds already having been mentioned as examples). John M Baker (talk) 20:37, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Funds can be organised according to any investment principle - e.g. "ethical" or "green" funds. There are probably funds which are organised to support Jewish (or other ethnic group) companies by investing in them. The problem is that these would not be widely marketed. Except for the OP, I can't see very much demand outside, say, Jewish circles for a Jewish fund. Perhaps you can start your own? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:19, 5 March 2009 (UTC) kulang po >>>???

talk to me and call me 09286523564

is it possible to do great evil just by writing checks, while remaining 100% legal?

Let's say you have a huge amount of money for some reason but you're evil. Can you do anything really evil with all that money, if you'd like to just write checks and have other people do the evil -- IF you want to remain 100% legal? I mean, how evil could it be if there's no law against it, right?

I'm NOT asking for legal advice, and in case you didnt' guess I don't actually have the funds in question... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.181.144.0 (talk) 21:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

If you are funding a criminal activity, you are an accessory to the crime, or worse! See inchoate crimes, especially solicitation and facilitation. If your definition of "evil" is wider than the criminal, then it's easy. Giving all the money to someone who doesn't deserve it is pretty evil. Donating it to an extremist politician could do a lot of damage while being legal (subject to electoral donation laws in your jurisdiction). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You could probably buy up loads of companies and liquidate them, resulting in massive job losses. I can't think of any law against that and it would probably be deemed pretty evil by most people. In fact, some private equity firms have done very similar things, and have been called evil, although they did it with the intention of making money and the job losses were just a by-product. You could buy up lots of food and destroy it, causing mass starvation. --Tango (talk) 21:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You should also keep criminal conspiracy laws in mind. - Eron^Talk 21:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

In countries without limits (or with big holes in limits) to how political parties and candidates are funded, you can choose to fund only the worst, most extremist and hate-filled parties and candidates. With your backing they're sure to be elected, and they're sure to screw things up and plunge the country, or the world even, into a pit of despair. Don't you get the feeling that people are doing this already? 87.113.100.227 (talk) 21:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Something is only "illegal" if the laws, and the courts, of a country say it is. So just buy yourself a country (if you're only an evil billionaire then just buy a really small country) - say find a small island republic and give each citizen a million dollars, on the understanding that they evacuate one of the country's smaller islands, and agree to a velvet divorce, where you (and your henchmen) remain on the small island and it becomes a new country. Then you write the laws to suit yourself, and so nothing you do can be illegal (bar pesky international laws). Again, doesn't it seem like this has been done a bunch of times already? 87.113.100.227 (talk) 21:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

But how much evil could you do without falling under the jurisdiction of other countries? --Tango (talk) 22:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

There's jurisdiction and there's condemnation that many moves don't seem to fall under, so it beats me. The answers here are already saying it's being done already, "legally" too. If other countries change their laws (like the Swiss bank traps now being set) you'll need a clever international accounting firm to negotiate this terrain. Legitimate governments take turns to fund arms supplies in third world countries, and corporations like the Nestle scandals dump their unwanted products on third world people, or Big Pharma testing people there, creating heaps of problems, so you may find yourself in a queue or club of some kind. A small number of African countries might take the money and run, leaving you to be President, writing all those checks to continue the evil dictatorships as you like. In Australia a corporation just sacked all the workers to send their jobs off shore and wrote themselves millions of dollars in self-payment checks, so y'know, there's a textbook everywhere you look. Julia Rossi (talk) 22:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

So it's probably a question of "how huge is huge". If you only had a million bucks, that wouldn't stretch very far. But if you had $60 billion, you can buy Switzerland. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

no way could anyone buy Switzerland for $60 billion. For $60 trillion, sure -- maybe even $6 trillion (though I doubt it). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.181.145.125 (talk) 23:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Its GDP is about $0.5tn, so if we assume that remains constant (in real terms) and make some completely unrealistic assumptions about how the value of a country works, we can use discounted future cash flows to get a present day value. With a discount rate of 2% (a number picked out of thin air, but its in the right order of magnitude), that gives a present day value of $25tn. (Assuming the online calculator I used works.) --Tango (talk) 23:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Quite. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:58, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Well it should only be the present value of the government's sustained ability to Tax, don't you think? Or are we buying all of the country's private assets? Either way, a neat trick is that if you set the growth rate exactly equal to the discount rate, the price is whatever your starting value is (GDP or Tax Revenues)NByz (talk) 00:13, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

How about getting a job as CEO of a large financial corporation, tell your minions to go only for short term gains, when the bubble bursts "retire" on a fat pension and watch the world's economy collapse. Oops, it's all been done before, so maybe it won't stay legal for much longer. Astronaut (talk) 23:54, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You could move to Australia where you might get all the time you need: "There is no overnight solution to this, but we think it's a serious issue and we're dealing with it."—Federal Treasurer on executive salary issue[4]

But at least it's being looked at. Is there any country that actually legally limits the salaries of CEOs of private companies? -- JackofOz (talk) 20:36, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

If you're really dead set on evil-doing, why bother buying out a small country's populace? Just hire some mercenaries, stage a coup, and kill anyone who disagrees with you. It's bound to work eventually. The legality issue can be conveniently solved when you rewrite the laws after the fact. --Fullobeans (talk) 02:56, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Have you considered investing in sin stocks, like alcohol, tobacco, firearms, porn, legal prostitution, gambling, and defense contractors ? [5] StuRat (talk) 04:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Buy _ALL_ produced items of the next Apple product, iPhone 2 or what it might be, film yourself destroying them all and put it on youtube... some might not think it's evil... but the Apple fans' delicious tears will surely feed you for years to come. — CHANDLER#10 — 05:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

According to the Simpsons, you can just write out your check to the Springfield Republican Party... -- AnonMoos (talk) 06:55, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Just make a whole bunch of donations to an organization like Westboro Baptist Church. You can bet they'll put it to some pretty evil use. There's no shortage of Fred Phelps types in the world. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 08:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

how could I go about calculating EVIL return on investment?

This is related to my question above. Let's say someone wants to spend a lot of money on doing evil while remaining 100% legal. Well, I got a lot of suggestions above, but it is really hard to think of a way to quantify what would get that person the most evil for their money. So now I'm wondering how such a person could calculate the returns, in terms of evil, of the activities they are pondering? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.181.145.125 (talk) 23:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You would probably want to aim for what would probably be called a strong pareto minimum (see Pareto efficiency), where no further harm could be done without providing anyone a benefit. SDY (talk) 23:31, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

That's a great answer! It would be useful in determining "optimal evilness." To determine Evil ROI, however, the hardest part is finding a unit of measurement for the numerator. Staying on the quantitative side of the "What is evil?" argument, I'd suggest a weighted "index" type figure. You'd need to create a category for all evil acts (assuming acts are discrete and measurable). If you want to have a multiple degrees of an act (intentional murder vs. negligent murder), they'd need their own categories. You could then weight each act on a percentage basis. Then you need to somehow scale the "actual acts committed"/"strong pareto minimum number of acts" ratio. I'd suggest logarithmically, because, you'd assume, the "easiest" acts would be done first, and each successive act would require marginally more effort. This is a very rough way to do it, of course. Multiply the scaled ratio by it's weight, and add it up with all the other "scale*weights" for the "evilness index". Adding some discounting to account for time considerations would make it more of a "return on investment" measure. Otherwise, you could just divide it by dollars invested (for a time period) to get an efficiency measure: Evil/$. This would only be comparable from, say, year to year, or between evil operating groups, but would still be useful as a performance metric for a global evil enterprise.NByz (talk) 00:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I guess evilness is about all causing suffering, so you want to maximise the net suffering you cause. I don't see how you can really quantify suffering. You could just try and cause as many deaths as possible, that makes the maths easy, but it's not a good definition of evilness.. --Tango (talk) 23:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You don't need money to be evil, you can use other peoples money. For instance go into government and get contaminated blood factor distributed on grounds of cost. That'll cause lots of people to die slowly and horribly. There's lots of opportunities. Pass laws entitling people to money but have lots of bureaucrats stopping them getting it. That'll waste lots of lives. Health and safety regulations offer loads of ways to case misery in the interest of safety. Or keep people alive as long as possible despite their wish to die because of their suffering - you don't want to encourage murder. I could go on and on ... use your imagination and you can be a pillar of society and respected by all while you do your great work. Dmcq (talk) 01:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Hire lobbyists to advocate military conscription. —Tamfang (talk) 00:55, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you could buy all the world's oil companies, and then fire all the employees. The ensuing chaos of all oil pumping stopping at once would do some really nasty things. 65.167.146.130 (talk) 17:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Easy. Final evil less initial evil divide by initial evil. All you need to do is to answer the rather metaphysical question "what is evil" and then quantify it, possibly using a basket of moral indicators. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Create a malecific calculus and do what that tells you. My guess is it's be something like buy water companies and shut down service. Or pollute the water. It is historically very difficult to quantify good and evil but my personal take on it would be that doing evil just to do evil is probably as bad as it gets, regardless of what the evil actually is; most evil acts were likely committed in mistaken attempts to do good. 86.8.176.85 (talk) 12:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)