Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 June 9

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June 9

Maimonides quote

I am looking for the source of this quote: "Those who keep the law on coastlines far away." I know it comes from a work of Maimonides. I was thinking that it came from either the introduction of the Mishneh Torah, his Epistle to Yemen, or maybe something else. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 06:31, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Indian Constitution

What are schedules of the Indian Constitution? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Camusrajmohan (talk • contribs) 12:25, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Presumably you are referring to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes listed in India's constitution. Here is the schedule of castes, and here is the schedule of tribes. Marco polo (talk) 14:01, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The Constitution has 12 schedules. See here.--^Nilotpal42 09:35, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

What is this?

╭━━━━━━━━╮┏━━━━┓ 
┃┊┊┊┊┊┊┊┊┃╰━┓┏━╯ 
┃┊┊┊┊┊┊┊┊┃◯◯┃┃◯◯ 
┃┊┊┊┊╰━╯┊╰━━╯┃◯◯ 
┗━━━━━━━╯┊┊┊┊┃◯◯ ◯◯╰━━━━━━━━━━╯◯  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.159.8.180 (talk) 21:01, 9 June 2010 (UTC) 

Sperm whale?

Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

It's a diagram of a shotgun office being played near a cornfield and with a very wide receiver. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Rabbitduck, served with a creambiguity sauce. Tofu rabbit duck available for vegetarians.

hunh, and here I thought it was a a floor plan or someone's wedding - altar to center, dancing space to left, outdoor luncheon tables to right I believe they were going to serve rabbitduck for the main course. --Ludwigs2 04:59, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

If you put the last line onto the bottom of it, it does look like a happy whale. Like so:

 ╭━━━━━━━━╮┏━━━━┓ 
 ┃┊┊┊┊┊┊┊┊┃╰━┓┏━╯ 
 ┃┊┊┊┊┊┊┊┊┃◯◯┃┃◯◯ 
 ┃┊┊┊┊╰━╯┊╰━━╯┃◯◯ 
 ┗━━━━━━━╯┊┊┊┊┃◯◯ 
 ◯◯╰━━━━━━━━━━╯◯  

I'm not sure what the circles are supposed to be. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Bubbles? My first association was that of playing Rogue on a monochrome screen in the early 1980s, with a cluster of Orcs lurking nearby. (Or did "O" represent Ogres? I forgot). ---Sluzzelin talk 07:08, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Thomas the Tank Engine with very small wheels? Dmcq (talk) 15:34, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Looks to me like one of the various ASCII art Fail Whales that have been doing the rounds in the past week or so since Twitter's last outage. Nanonic (talk) 21:50, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Why can't I see the image? On my browser (IE7) I just see a few rows of squares, like this. --Viennese Waltz ^talk 09:36, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

It is in some kind of international (Unicode) font. If you can't see it, it probably means the browser isn't correctly able to handle the font in question. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:06, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks 98. Blimey, I would have expected things like cross-browser compatibility over a few basic characters to have been sorted out by now... --Viennese Waltz ^talk 13:13, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I think IE8 is better at this sort of thing than IE7, but yeah, I agree that this seems like a fairly basic thing at this point... --Mr.98 (talk) 17:03, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Dutch monarchy - regent?

While trying to find sources for Wedding of Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, and Daniel Westling article (even though I am not sure it should exist), I read that the Queen of the Netherlands, all her sons and daughters-in-law and the eldest daughter of the eldest son will all attend the wedding. Logically, it wouldn't be smart for the monarch, the first-in-line and the second-in-line to travel by the same airplane. If they do and something happens, leaving the 4-year-old Alexia as head of state, who would be qualified to serve as regent? The line of succession would be severely trimmed down due to the 3-degrees-of-kinship rule and would only include her 3-year-old sister. Surtsicna (talk) 21:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about the Netherlands, but in the UK, the Royal Family get together the whole time. There are a number of – IMO fascinating! – Regency Acts enabling underage monarchs to be represented by a Regent, to allow the current monarch to be removed from office if they are missing or incapacitated, and to allow the current monarch to temporarily delegate their powers to five "Counsellors of State" (which they usually do when out of the country). Hope that helps in some way? ╟─TreasuryTag►Captain-Regent─╢ 22:36, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

(ec) In Britain, royal protocol requires the Prince of Wales and his sons not to travel by the same plane for exactly that reason (although that protocol was violated on one occasion so they could all attend a funeral at short notice... I don't remember whose). I wouldn't be surprised in the Netherlands has a similar protocol. Monarchy_of_the_Netherlands#Succession describes the issue a bit, although it isn't entirely clear (it says the regent can be determined by law, but presumably that would need to happen before the reigning monarch died otherwise because they would have some problems passing the law). It does say that the States-General can appoint a monarch should there be no heir, so that resolves that problem. --Tango (talk) 22:43, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not certain, but in this situation the Prime Minister probably handles things. GoodDay (talk) 22:48, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Not sure what "things" you're talking about, GoodDay. The UK PM can certainly not sign bills into law, for example. A monarch or a regent is the minimum requirement there. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Wasn't there a furore when Diana and Charles took the infant Prince William to Australia on a State visit? I seem to recall that the Queen had strongly objected to Diana's insistance that William accompany them.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 12:34, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, article 37 of the Dutch constitution says that Parliament would appoint a regent in this situation. It doesn't say that this regent would have to be a member of the royal family him- or herself, but my money would be on Alexia's uncle Prince Constantijn. His older brother Johan-Friso would arguably be more entitled to it, but statements he has made in the past strongly suggest that he would hate the job. (Not to mention the Mabel Wisse Smit controversy.) 83.81.60.11 (talk) 06:53, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunatly, in the situation I mentioned, both her uncles and aunts would've been in the plane. That would leave a grandaunt, right? Even though she wouldn't be in the line of succession anymore. Surtsicna (talk) 15:09, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed that. Yes, I guess one of the grandaunts could do it, although most of them are too controversial as well. Also, they would have to serve for fourteen years (until Alexia is eightteen -- and even after that she would need some mentoring; you can't expect an 18-year-old to be a perfect head of state yet in this age), which may be too long given their age. Someone like Prince Maurits comes to mind (assuming he doesn't also attend), but there are no rules for this; even a commoner could do it. (We're descending into pure speculation here, but then you'd be looking at people like former PMs Wim Kok and Ruud Lubbers, "viceroy" Herman Tjeenk Willink and Alexander Rinnooy Kan. They'd have the experience, but of course they are all affiliated with a political party, which makes it a no-go.) 83.81.60.11 (talk) 09:14, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

friendships among one another

I understand Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are good friends. Clinton was also good friends with Willie Morris. By any chance was Morris good friends with Obama?24.90.204.234 (talk) 22:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I had never heard of Morris but considering that Obama was just an Illinois state senator at the time of Morris's death, I find their acquaintance to be extremely unlikely. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

You might find our article six degrees of separation interesting on this kind of question, if you're not already familiar with the idea. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 04:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC)