Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 April 22

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April 22

Working in a foreign country

Imagine there's a person who lives in Vermont and works for IBM. They work at the facility in Essex Junction, VT. There is also an IBM facility in Bromont, Quebec. If they decide that they want to transfer to the Bromont facility and the company approves of this, would they get paid in US dollars and make the same amount every month? Or would they get paid in Canadian dollars and have their pay vary depending on the whims of the exchange rate?

I'm assuming that they want to keep all their finances within the US and therefore not keep Canadian accounts and American accounts and play some currency juggling game for all their bills and such. Basically, they'd be like most every other American with American finances.

I'm not looking for financial advice. This is entirely for the sake of curiosity. Someone that I work with actually does live closer to the Canadian facility than the US facility and we got to wondering what they would be paid in (US vs. Canuck) if they were to transfer to the Canadian site. Dismas|^(talk) 03:10, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I did once take a transfer from a Canadian company to the U.S. head office. I was paid on the Amercian schedule and in U.S. dollars. Unless one is seconded for a temporary and usually quite specific job, I think it unlikely you will be paid in anything except the currency of the country in which you have the job. It may also take more than the company's approval to effect such a change. // BL \\ (talk) 03:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Certainly the normal expectation is that a person working in Canada will be paid in Canadian dollars at a rate of pay that is specified in Canadian dollars. After all, most people working in Canada also live in Canada, so what would they want foreign currency for? (They will also be paying income taxes in Canadian dollars to the Canadian and provincial governments.)

What you're talking about, though, is a person living in the US and working in Canada: a border commuter, a phrase I'm surprised to see that there's no article on. In that case they would have a reason to want to be paid in foreign currency, i.e. their home currency. The answer must be that it would be at the employer's option to offer that form of pay if they wanted to go to the trouble of doing so. It sounds like the sort of thing that most big companies wouldn't do, but companies that have a better relationship with their employees might. If your friend really wants to know if it would be possible, they should ask the appropriate people at IBM.

A further interesting question is whether they would be able to avoid paying Canadian and Quebec income taxes if they were resident in the US and paid from the US for work done in Canada. A quick look at the CRA's income tax guide for non-residents seems to imply that the answer for federal taxes is "yes", but this is an unusual situation and the guide might be misleading. --Anonymous, 07:29 UTC, April 22, 2009.

We do need an article on that topic! (Or another phrase good for googling: "international commuting".) Many people live in cheaper countries and work in more expensive ones, such as Switzerland. The Canadian/US border must be full of such examples, for reasons more of job availability than vast disparities of living costs.

Thanks for the responses thus far. And again, this is just hypothetical. He doesn't care whether anything is possible. I just thought someone here might know. Dismas|^(talk) 10:48, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there are plenty of such commuters here in the Detroit-Windsor area although the increased border controls after 9/11 made it harder. There is a specific visa for North Americans working in one of the NAFTA countries that they are not a citizen of: TN status Rmhermen (talk) 13:06, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

As someone who has done this I can answer that "everything is negotiable". That's for short term transfers where you are intending to return after a few months or years. You may get paid at your old rate in US$, or the CDN$ equivalent, or some combination (remember you may have expenses back in the US). You may also get paid at your old rate adjusted for some cost-of-living factor. If your company asked you to move, rather than you requesting it, you should also expect some sort of allowance for the extra expenses you will incur for living in a foreign country. And yes, it's theoretically possible to avoid paying tax in one or both countries, but it depends critically on when you move. (It's also possible to be liable for tax in both countries, but international treaties mean you don't end up paying twice).

If you are doing a permanent transfer then you would almost certainly be paid in the currency and on the terms of where you are going to. DJ Clayworth (talk) 13:46, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

But you're talking about moving; the original poster was talking about border commuting. --Anonymous, 06:16 UTC, April 23, 2009.

IIRC, the Toronto Blue Jays are all paid in American dollars - and that's not even a subsidiary company! Matt Deres (talk) 14:14, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Leafs too, and presumably also the Raptors (though not the Argos, I imagine). Adam Bishop (talk) 20:45, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

when did people realize Italy was shaped like a boot?

United Kingdom

Thatcher

Designed in Britain. Looks like Britain. Can someone clever reverse the image, so it faces to the right? --Dweller (talk) 14:32, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

When did people realize Italy was shaped like a boot? Did the Romans know -- ie is it in Latin writings (of which we have tons)? 79.122.2.247 (talk) 13:13, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a good question, but have nothing definite. Pliny's Natural History states that the peninsula is said to be "like an elongated oak leaf, bending to the left at the top and ending in the shape of an amazon's shield." (The History of Cartography: Cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean by John Brian Harley and David Woodward, ISBN 0226316335. One must also consider when boots started to look like Lo Stivale. (As a sidenote, the Soleto Map, allegedly "the oldest map in Western civilization", depicts the boot's heel, but unrecognized probably, even if the map is authentic). ---Sluzzelin talk 13:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

(related but not important) I went to the Soleto Map page thinking "ooh that'll be a nice map" - nope, no picture, and not on the links I clicked either. Anybody? 194.221.133.226 (talk) 14:10, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

google images. ---Sluzzelin talk 14:22, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

<e/c>What an excellent question. I look forward to seeing answers - shame Clio no longer roams these pages; she'd have loved this one. For my 2p, I'd add a question as to whether the Romans had boots that looked like Italy does. --Dweller (talk) 13:43, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

A boot with a high-heel would probably first have been common in the 15th or 16th centuries. Another thing to remember is that it only looks like a boot on maps with a North at the top and South at the bottom. IIRC the Roman maps did not adhere to that orientation. --Saddhiyama (talk) 13:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's better than having a country shaped like Margaret Thatcher. Cf: the UK.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 13:58, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Can't see it myself.Malcolm XIV (talk) 14:23, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I've always thought it looks like a traditional (Staunton chess set) representation of the knight on the chessboard. NB I presume you two are talking about Great Britain, rather than the United Kingdom, which only looks like a mess. --Dweller (talk) 14:32, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I've always seen it as a little old lady with a bonnet and a bustle. And is it possible that Maggie set up that picture so she looked like the country? L'etat c'est moi. DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:36, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Two versions from 1869 and 1870 both see Italy as a complete person but the second one gives you the little-old-lady UK :) 65.92.124.84 (talk) 16:07, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

This Italian website writes that Polybius (2nd century BCE) compared its shape to a triangle, Strabo compared it to a quadrilateral. In the 13th century, when nautical maps became more accurate, the comparison to the shape of a human leg started spreading, and the boot association followed later, in the 16th century (cinquecento). Giuseppe Giusti's poem "Lo Stivale" was written in 1836. ---Sluzzelin talk 14:19, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

In the 1920s the Great Western Railway, which ran west from London to such points as Penzance (Cornwall), produced this poster depicting "a great similarity between Cornwall and Italy". Of course they are exaggerating their points: Cornwall's climate is warm only by English standards, and they've fiddled the shapes of the small peninsulas to make them look more similar. (As to natural beauties, I make no comment.) But more important, the two maps are drawn to different scales: Italy is roughly 10 times the length or 100 times the area of Cornwall! --Anonymous, 23:55 UTC, April 22, 2009.

I wonder to what extent erosion and sea level changes have altered the shape of Italy over the centuries. Perhaps it didn't look like a boot in Roman times. Also, back when Venice, Naples, Rome, and all the other city-states were independent, they were probably more likely to have maps of their own region than of Italy as a whole. StuRat (talk) 20:21, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Not by all that much, in the just about 2000 years that have passed since Roman times- large scale terrain changes usually take a fair bit longer than that. Most Roman port towns are still directly on the shoreline, right where they were in ancient times. In the case of Ostia, the Tiber's silt deposits have pushed the shoreline a couple kilometers beyond the ancient port, but I doubt you could even see the difference of a couple kilometers in a map of Italy. -- Ferkelparade π 20:51, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

It's worth remembering that for much of the Middle Ages scale was little used in maps: most took teh form of pictorial charts. That said, here's a 1320 nautical map of Italy, oriented south, and not very boot-like. Gwinva (talk) 00:21, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

This map shows Italy as an arm... AnonMoos (talk) 10:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Belgium

Why is it that the Romans couldn't conquer the Belgians, but they've been battered by all their other neighbours for the past 2,000 years. What happened there?--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 13:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Read Gallia Belgica. Although described by Julius Cæsar as "the bravest of all the Gauls" they were under Roman rule for 450 years. --Saddhiyama (talk) 14:02, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

The Belgae were not at all the same people as the modern Belgians, although Belgae (along with Romans, Franks, and others) are among the ancestors of most Belgians. That said, the Belgae controlled a larger area than present-day Belgium, and still the Belgae were conquered by Rome. (There are also parts of modern Belgium that were not inhabited by Belgae.) For a time, the name of the Belgae lived on in the name of the Roman province Gallia Belgica, but its people gradually adopted Roman speech and ceased to identify as Belgae. In the 5th century, the area of modern Belgium, along with most of modern France, was overrun by the Germanic Franks. In the northern parts of modern Belgium, the Franks predominated, and the language spoken there today, Flemish Dutch, is largely a descendant of Frankish. In the southern parts of modern Belgium, the Franks mixed with the Vulgar Latin-speaking Gauls and gradually adopted their language, which evolved into French. The entire region was then known as Francia, or the land of the Franks, and few had any knowledge that their ancestors were called Belgae. This remained the case for another thousand years, until the revival of classical learning in the 16th century led to an awareness of the ancient Belgian past of the inhabitants of the region then known as "the Low Countries" (Pays Bas or Nederlanden), and particularly of the southern part of that region. Among learned and elite circles, inhabitants of the region affected an identity as belgique. When the elites of the region rebelled against Dutch rule in 1830, they adopted an identity as Belgian because it provided a link between the different peoples of the Dutch (Flemish) speaking north and the Walloon (French) speaking south. So the connection between the Belgae and the Belgians is very tenuous and ignores a thousand-year gap during which the region and its people had no Belgic or Belgian identity. It isn't true to say that the people of this region were battered for 2,000 years. During the 5th and 6th centuries, this region was part of the heartland of the Frankish rulers of all of Francia, and so what we now know as Belgium can be said to have dominated all of France. During subsequent centuries it was no more battered than any other part of Europe. During the 13th and 14th centuries, the counts of Flanders, based in this region, gained control of neighboring parts of France. While the region subsequently passed through a series of dynastic hands, it was no different in this than any other part of the Holy Roman Empire. The reason why independent Belgium was overrun in 1914 and 1940 is that Belgium was a tiny state sandwiched between two hostile giants—France and Germany—not because of any special weakness of the Belgians. Marco polo (talk) 01:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Dystopian Fiction

Dystopian fiction

In this list , which novel has more realistic technology (present socialism, present everything) and closer to our present time?--Reticuli88 (talk) 13:48, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You can find out quite a lot about the novels by following the links on the list. I've barely read any of them, but you can see (for example), a substantial portion of Cloud Atlas is set in the past or present, as is much of The Book of Dave. The Bar Code Tattoo is set in the near future, and from its description, it doesn't appear to imagine any technology greatly different to what is available today. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "present socialism" (a novel which imagines a socialist present? a novel set in a nation which describes itself as socialist?), but none of these novels appear to deal with socialism. Warofdreams talk 14:33, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant present social environment... What's the correct term? Also, I guess I'm looking for a novel with more scientific usage. --Reticuli88 (talk) 14:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World has been classified as straight-forward dystopia, but also, with more subtlety, as a dark utopia. He was writing in the early 1930s, but had great prescience: many of the concepts he described have become commonplace. From our article on the book:"An early trip to the United States gave Brave New World much of its character. [...] Huxley [was] outraged by the culture of youth, commercial cheeriness, sexual promiscuity and the inward-looking nature of many Americans." See also Brave_New_World#Comparisons_with_George_Orwell.27s__Nineteen_Eighty-Four. There is a fair amount of science, most notably assisted reproduction. Many of his predictions seem like descriptions of life today. BrainyBabe (talk) 17:25, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Here's a recommendation: check out Francis Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future. He basically looks at the ways in which Brave New World and 1984 get crossed up in our modern world (biological modification + information society).

Other than that, it's hard at the moment for me to think of something more topically relevant than parts of 1984. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

"What If" Book

Is there a book out there that speculates what would happen if certain events did/not take place, such as whatif JFK survived the assassination or the USA was not the first to land on the moon, or something like that?--Reticuli88 (talk) 15:09, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

There are many thousands. This site [1] is very informative on the subject. Malcolm XIV (talk) 15:11, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

My favourite is probably Fatherland (novel). It is based on 'What if the Axis nations won World War Two?' --Dweller (talk) 15:13, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Harry Turtledove, who writes a lot of these alternative-history books, is currently publishing one on the internet about JFK not being assassinated [2]. Malcolm XIV (talk) 15:21, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

There's a distinction to be drawn here between alternate history (which is a genre of fiction) and counterfactual history (a [much smaller and more recent] genre of nonfictional historical study). Algebraist 15:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Algebraist, I would prefer books that are of the Counterfactual Historical genre. --Reticuli88 (talk) 15:30, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

This is more AU than CFH, but Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card is an excellent book about what would have happened if just a few changes happened with Columbus's voyages to the Americas- specifically, what if he wasn't so racist, and what if the mainland tribes had managed to unite under a strong leader? --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 17:23, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Guns, Germs and Steel analyses why this did not happen, why Atahualpa did not take Charles V prisoner. You might find it's more like meatloaf with the meat.--Wetman (talk) 07:11, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

See Category:Alternate history novels and related categories. BrainyBabe (talk) 17:28, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

This book:[3] details the events of "what if" we all just disappeared. cheers, 10draftsdeep (talk) 19:49, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

[4] This one is about military battles going the other way, and their results, by strategists. It's quite interesting. Steewi (talk) 00:47, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

The 1632 (novel) novels by Eric Flint and others are a recent series in alternate history: What if a small West Virginia town from the present day were transported to Germany in 1631, along with its few thousand inhabitants? An alternate history line intrudes on the Thirty Years war. A number of novels and short story collections trace out the ripple effect of modern technology and the the effect of the people then being able to read from encyclopedias what would have happened absent the intrusion from the future. The small number of people and limited "up-time " gadgets mean that they must make alliances, rather than just running roughshod, and that they must re-create 19th and 18th century technology which is easier to make without modern factories than 21st century gadgets, but still way ahead of 17th century technology. Edison (talk) 19:26, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

There's also the What If? series of books, which include many short entries from mainstream historians. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:04, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Hamlet and the Oath of the Horatii

Is there a deliberate connection between a. Horatio and his buddies (in Hamlet) swearing upon Hamlet's sword and b. David's Oath of the Horatii? What I'm asking is, did Shakespeare name the character Horatio after the Roman Horatii family... or is there some other reason for the "coincidence"? And finally, can the connection be backed up with reliable sources? 168.9.120.8 (talk) 18:40, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

The French interest in Shakespeare was still in the future when David painted the Oath of the Horatii, which he took instead directly from the familiar Roman sources. Does Shakespeare's Horatio say anything that might have been spoken by one of the Horatii? Your essay will build from that.--Wetman (talk) 07:07, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not trying to write an essay... this is personal curiosity, not homework. :) I just wondered if anyone more learned than I had commented on this "coincidence" before, and if someone here could point me in the direction of their thoughts on the topic. Thanks for your thoughts. 168.9.120.8 (talk) 12:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

All i can find concerning the name Horatio is that it may be from a character in The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd, a proposed author of the hypothetical Ur-Hamlet. The Horatii and Curiatii appeared on stage in Corneille's Horace and The Roman Father (1750) by William Whitehead.—eric 04:39, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Interestingly, the battle between the Horatii and the Curatii was reinacted in 1578, the Duel of the Mignons...that's pretty early in Shakespeare's life but I wonder if that had any influence (it certainly did in France). Adam Bishop (talk) 02:26, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Size of historical battles

In most of the articles about battles (mostly classical or medieval ones), there are two numbers for the troops involved: one based on contemporary historians, and one based on modern research. The second one is almost always 2 or 3 times less. Whys is it like this? How can we know now, after so many hundreds or maybe thousands of years later what happened, better than those who were witnesses to it? Were those numbers always inflated for propaganda purposes? Then why inflate the numbers of both sides?

I'm thinking now, that maybe the bigger numbers were for all the participants, and the smaller ones for just those who actually took part in the fight. It's reasonable, because there was a need for servants or slaves carrying equipment, tending to horses, guarding the camp, repairing weapons, foraging for food, deliver messages, entertainment, etc.

If this were correct, why not present all the infoboxes like: troop strength: 150000 to 200000, out of which fighting 80000

instead of: according to a contemporary historian 150000 to 200000, current estimates 80000

An army of such size certainly needed at least the same number of helping personnel. And it's unlikely that each and every historian inflated the numbers of both sides always in nearly the same percentage.

Or am I wrong, and missing the point somewhere? --131.188.3.20 (talk) 20:58, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Usually, or so it is suspected by modern historians, the people who recorded the numbers did not bother to count the real number, and they were more interested in showing how superior or inferior an army was by giving it an inflated or deflated number of soldiers; if your army defeated an enemy ten times bigger, then the victory was much more glorious. In some cases the less-organized nature of warfare means it would be difficult to know how many people were there, although certainly ancient and medieval cultures often kept very good records. There is less dispute about the number of fighting men in a Roman army, since the Romans organized their armies in very particular ways, than there is about, say, the Persian army that invaded Greece; is it really believable that there were 3 million Persians, or, as I said, was the number inflated to enhance the victory of the underdog Greeks? I know this happened in medieval battles too; I can think of many impossible numbers during the crusades, for example, although we can often see how big an army should have been if they also kept good records (crusader Jerusalem, the military orders, Anglo-Saxon England). In some cases it might be possible that a bizarre number is simply a copying error, especially for a number written in Latin - it's not hard to write too many Ms, or to mistake a hundred for a thousand when the number is written out (or because the number word is itself abbreviated in a text), but that is a different problem. Sometimes modern historians have attempted to estimate the number of men an army could supply with food or armour or whatever else, given the resources known to be available, and, as I said, sometimes the official records mean we know that a number given in a chronicle must be too large. It is certainly possible that non-combatants were being counted, but often it is specifically stated that the number refers to fighting men. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:32, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

<edit conflict>It's fairly standard historiography to dismiss ancient accounts as exaggerated. This is for a variety of reasons. Many ancient battles became standard fare for oral traditions, and what storyteller worth his salt doesn't exaggerate? Furthermore, exaggeration can make you look better and as history is written by the winners, the winners will exaggerate especially the numbers defeated. Etc. I first encountered this with Josephus and it drove me insane. Then I read Herodotus. --Dweller (talk) 21:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

<ec2> Contemporary histories are mostly first reported by the victor - proclamations, announcements and so on, if not directly via official histories. Participants in the fighting have a tendency to exaggerate their numbers. Before the battle - by both sides - as a means of boosting the morale on their own side and reducing it on the other side. After the battle, it is a way of aggrandising the victory. ("We won an epic battle" sounds better than "We won a moderately sized skirmish".) There are some well document cases of a belligerent intentionally and wildly exaggerating their numbers. In those times before journalism, it would be difficult in most cases to find a neutral observer in a battle. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:36, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this is limited to pre-modern times by the way. Do you remember the original estimates for the number of deaths on September 11? Or after Hurricane Katrina? Both were wildly inflated. And do you really believe the numbers of "insurgents" that are said to be killed in Iraq of Aghanistan? Likewise the Taliban always claim they have killed many more NATO troops than NATO claims. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:44, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

And people who died in concentration camps.. but it's highly illegal to even think about it.--131.188.3.21 (talk) 23:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Err, modern historians have worked pretty hard to peg those down. Estimates vary of course but only crackpots generally accept less 5 million. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:50, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

So...this was a roundabout way to troll us? Adam Bishop (talk) 06:10, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Just to point out, both sides would have a tendency to exaggerate the other side. The guys who come home victorious would love to talk about how badly they were outnumbered, because it makes the victory sound more heroic. The guys who come home defeated, on the other hand, would much rather say they were beaten by a huge force than by a tiny (but lucky or well-trained) squad. It makes them look less wimpy. 168.9.120.8 (talk) 13:07, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

It's like reports of big protest marches: "The organisers said 50,000 people were on the march; the police estimated 20,000". AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:25, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

In that case, the police may be pressured by the mayor or governor to come up with a low estimate, so it makes it look like fewer people in their districts are unhappy. StuRat (talk) 19:59, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm reminded of a scene in Astérix where a Roman patrol (four or five men) report to base, "We were attacked by two Gauls who outnumbered us" (deux Gaulois supérieurs en nombre). —Tamfang (talk) 04:47, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I can think of another couple of factors leading to historic anomalies:

1) Many people who weren't "official support personnel" also commonly followed armies. This could be families of soldiers or other camp followers. These may have been included in the ancient estimates.

2) Many ancient stories seemed to compare "apples and oranges". For example, at the Battle of Thermopylae, you may hear about the 300 Spartans who fought millions of Persians. The 300 doesn't include the thousands of non-Spartans who also fought the Persians, and the number of Persians likely includes support personnel, camp followers, etc. So, while the numbers were definitely lopsided, they weren't quite as bad as is popularly portrayed. StuRat (talk) 19:59, 23 April 2009 (UTC)