Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 April 23

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April 23

Fishing in the Maldives

I just saw a TV show where fisherman were using a rod and reel to catch fish there. The odd part is, that to get the fish off the line, they just pulled the rod over their heads, and the fish flew off and landed behind them, to be collected by others. The fisherman would then cast directly back into the water. They never had to take the fish off the hooks. So, how exactly does this work ? Does the hook release when the line goes slack ? StuRat (talk) 05:48, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I've seen similar, I think. I assume you're referring to teams of men with individual rods (& sometimes reels) on medium scale commercial fishing boats using large unbaited treble hooks to catch fish schooling/feeding near the surface. The technique is often called 'snagging' (sometimes called 'gaffing' as well, although 'gaffing' more often refers to landing fish with a large fixed hook mounted on a solid pole). Not sure how the fish come off the hook so easily/consistently. Perhaps they use barbless hooks?

note - The footage I've seen showed what appeared to be fairly low budget operations and I doubt any high tech solutions were being applied. I suspect the details lay in basic physics and not pricey gadetry.

Here are a coupla' links: This has a video describing one type of gear. (note: Bunker) bunker snagging. This nest one mentions bending the shaft of the hook which might affect the release. tarpon snagging.

Unfortunately I didn't find any articles specific to the commercial fishing ventures in Asian waters I'd previously seen footage of. Just stuff relating to sport fishing, mostly freshwater at that. --Kevjonesin (talk) 15:00, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

If the answer is not already in the article "Fishing industry in the Maldives", then it can be added to it if and when it has been found. Please see WP:RDAC.)

—Wavelength (talk) 15:55, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I seem to remember seeing a video of fisherman in California using that same hook and line technique so I don't think it is just Asia. Probably on the San Diego episode of "After the Catch". Rmhermen (talk) 00:05, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

benefitting the bombing victims

I've been searching Google for where I can purchase ribbons and lapel pins to benefit the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings. Many people would want just about the same things, as well. One ribbon shown was during a New York Yankees game. The ribbon looked very nice. Another ribbon was shown before a Boston Bruins game. That ribbon also looked very nice. Another ribbon was shown on the Level Renner website. That ribbon also looked nice. Can anyone tell me where I can purchase ribbons like those, please? Thank you.142.255.103.121 (talk) 07:19, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Rather than wanting a pretty trinket from a potentially doubtful, newly created "charity", guaranteed to be creaming off some of the takings, I'd suggest going direct to one of the majors, such as the Red Cross. If they aren't running a campaign explicitly for Boston, they can probably direct you to someone reliable who is. HiLo48 (talk) 08:23, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

The fund set up by the mayor and governor is The One Fund Boston. Alternatively, you could type "Boston bomb victims ribbons" into Google. Alansplodge (talk) 10:16, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree that finding some random site on the net that has pretty ribbons is not the way to go. Go through an established charity or one endorsed by the city like that mentioned above. Dismas|^(talk) 07:47, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I see that the number of injured, which was about 180 in the days immediately after the bombing, has now risen to 282. The news article cited [1] says that some people thought their injury would clear up on its own, but later went to the hospital with minor lacerations from shrapnel or ringing in the ears from the blast. Coincidentally, there are news stories about multimillion dollar funds set to to give to those injured in the bombings, with it up to $21 million so far. Clearly it is good to help the persons with severe injuries, even though the money cannot compensate for lost limbs. But how common is it for people to claim they have tinnitus, or an invisible soft tissue injury to the back, or PTSD so severe they can't work, from a terrorist bombing when it really was preexisting or nonexistent, especially if there is a monetary incentive to make the claim? Is there history of such fakery in countries where terrorist bombings are more common, and which have compensation from the government or private charities for the victims? In the US, fake injury claims after bus accidents, for instance, are common: [2], [3], [4]. Edison (talk) 21:52, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Having been in an auto accident & (really) suffered classic whiplash, I can tell you that soft tissue injuries & even dramatic shifts in the cervical vertebrae like I experienced don't make themselves immediately evident. STIs are one of those *you'll feel it tomorrow* things & they can often worsen over time rather than improve, so I wouldn't say people who came in with those a few days after the fact are fakers. Anyone who was blown off their feet is likely to have a STI in whatever body part they landed on & I'd expect spine injuries to be very common as they were landing on pavement. Tintinnitus is horrible to live with; some people have a constant loud sound droning on & on, making life impossible as it interferes with sleep, hearing, & concentration. PTSD - also a likely issue, could well be exacerbated if preexisting, may or may not resolve itself, tough call on those. I also highly doubt the deliberate shrapnel glued to the pressure cookers was sterile, so even small wounds can get infected. There were probably those who knew they needed stitches but also knew how long they'd be sitting there in the ER & chose to slap a butterfly bandage on it & wait to see if it closed on its own. However, as far as monetary compensation is concerned, I would expect criteria for that to include not just medically verifiable injury but life-altering injury. People who lost limbs are going to be first in line, followed by people who suffered things like severed tendons, nerve damage, shattered bones, burns. Those are all easily proven & considered severe injuries. A guy with a cut finger isn't getting a check, I'm sure. The johnny-come-latelys are going to be far down the list of those who will get compensation of any kind, let alone a lot of compensation. Unfortunate because STIs & spine injuries can also be life-altering because of their tendency to worsen, but they're also hard to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt (hence the common stereotype that anyone in a neck brace or on a cane is faking it) & most people don't have the brains to see a specialist & get the necessary tests done to do so. I'd hazard in countries where terrorist bombings are more common, there's also not the *compensation culture* that the US has, so I wouldn't think there'd be much of a history there. ScarletRibbons (talk) 01:55, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Fox farming - what species?

I've been categorising a few images on Commons showing fox farming in Prince Edward Island in 1914. Any idea what species of fox is this likely to be? Andrew Gray (talk) 10:51, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

This rather fascinating article suggests that they're almost certainly Silver foxes - actually not a separate species, but a mutation of the Red fox, Vulpes vulpes. There are further contemporary images in the PEI archives, showing the similarities with your images. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 12:17, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Awesome - many thanks! Images now updated, and the article on my reading list. I had vaguely remembered the reports about silver foxes being part-domesticated in the USSR and had for some reason assumed they were a Eurasian-specific species. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:23, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

how good is it to be king?

so.... in those monarchies where kingship was elected, would the royal treasury, the royal lands, etc. come along with the job? could you divide them up among your offspring in the same way as with inherited kingships? or were you stuck with your accumulated wealth as a duke or whatever and of course whatever future earnings you could extort as the king? (note, this is not a request for legal advice) Gzuckier (talk) 19:24, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Are there any monarchies where the king was elected regularly? I know of instances where the monarch was elected and dynasty followed, but I'm not personally aware of any instances where the monarch was regularly elected. The Romanov Dynasty was elected by the Russian assembly of the land, this was an example of the elite choosing one of their own and elections ended there with the Romanov Dynasty continuing until the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917. Ryan Vesey 19:57, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

There were two major elective monarchies in Europe: the Kingdom of Poland (see Royal elections in Poland) and the Holy Roman Empire (see Prince-elector). --Jayron32 20:13, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that. All of the Kings of Poland I knew were named either Alexander or Nicholas. Ryan Vesey 20:24, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

They were the Tsars of Russia. And yes, there are still elective monarchies to this day. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 21:21, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Most European medieval monarchs were formally elected. Absolutism in Europe is far more recent. --Saddhiyama (talk) 21:39, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

The Yang di-Pertuan Agong (King of Malaysia) is elective, chosen for a 5-year period from among the rulers of the states. The current holder is the first person to hold the job twice, having previously held the position between 1970-1975. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 10:06, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Apparently not very good. When Henry Valois, fourth son of Henry II of France, was offered the Kingship of Poland, seeing as he wasn't going to get much more than a minor Duchy in France, he accepted the Sejm's election. The second he showed up, they forced the Henrician Articles upon him (the Polish equivalent of the Magna Carta) and he found his life severely restricted, he was basically to be a figurehead king in a country which was de facto ruled by the aristocracy, and even aspects of his personal life were closely monitored, and though given living expenses commensurate with a King, the office came with no heritable property. Within a short while, however, he himself inherited the throne of France, and he GTFO of Poland fast enough to leave skid marks. The Polish Elective Monarchy from then on was a mess, frequently the source of political fighting, and eventually all of the other great powers began to influence Sejm elections to get their own candidates on the throne; the weak Kingship in Poland is widely cited as the reason why Poland was eventually partitioned and ceased to exist. The Federalist Papers, written at a time when Poland was busy being carved up by its neighbors, specifically cite the elective Monarchy of Poland as an example of how a weak executive beholden to a legislature was a bad way to run a country; it is used as a justification for the U.S. system with its strong, independent President who must be a natural-born citizen of the U.S. The other major elective Monarchy in Europe for most of history was the Holy Roman Emperor, but this became elective in name only: from the 16th century it was essentially a hereditary office of the Habsburg family, and the office itself became an insignificant part of the Habsburg Monarchy; indeed from the time of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, the Imperial Office became completely insignificant, it was offered to Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, husband of Maria Theresa (Archduchess of Austria) with the understanding that she held the real power, which derived from her Austrian titles. From then forward, the office was held by her decedents (the house of Habsburg-Lorraine), but though they lived well enough, that was because of the Austrian posessions. The HRE itself had little power, as the individual constituent states were pretty much independent at this point. --Jayron32 20:13, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

(after ec)I understand that the king of Anglo-Saxon (i.e. pre-Conquest) England was elected but I'm not sure how it worked in practice. My source for this isn't particularly well remembered by me, I think it was a series on monarchs of England which was on Channel 4 a few years ago. The anecdote I remember was that, at the coronation of William I, those attending, having been used to shouting to acclaim their assent to the new ruler, duly shouted their assent to the new ruler. However, William and his troops thought this was a pre-arranged signal to storm the cathedral and fight, and so started fighting. --TammyMoet (talk) 20:18, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I love how the original question included a not-legal-advice disclaimer :-) Do you mean the kings before or after the end of the Heptarchy? It seems to have been a strongly Germanic thing in early mediæval times to elect kings (whether practically, comparable to Poland, or simply formally, comparable to the HRE, I don't know) and to acclaim them by having them sit on shields and then raise them up into the air; the latter portion made it into the Roman Empire, and this passage mentions it being done by Gothic kings in early mediæval Spain. Nyttend (talk) 21:04, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Sort of. For a time, Anglo-Saxon England wasn't a single state, but a collection of petty kingdoms. From time to time, the kings on the island would elect from their own number a Bretwalda who would be recognized as an "Overking" or "First among firsts" or something like that. By the time of Æthelstan, the title of Bretwalda became semi-automatically bestowed on the Kings of Wessex, and modern historians thus date the Kingdom of England to that point. Near as I can tell, the title passed according to primogeniture from then forward, though I believe that the nobles of the Kingdom did formally "assent" to the King at each passing. Of course, England in the 10th century is quite a different place from Poland in the 16th. --Jayron32 21:13, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

No, the King of England had to be appointed by the Witenagemot who had the power to appoint any member of the extended royal family to the throne. Although primogeniture was the norm, after the death of Edward the Confessor, the Witan elected Godwin's second son Harold to the throne in preference to his older brother Sweyn Godwinson or William of Normandy. This caused no end of bother for "Haroldus infelix". The acclamation at the coronation was to confirm the loyalty of the nobles and commoners, and was last done in 1953. Alansplodge (talk) 22:01, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

And the Wikipedia article itself notes that it is unclear whether or not the election by the Witenagemot represented a genuine free election, or was merely a formality to confirm the kings formal heir as the next king. I'd say it is far from settled whether or not it was truly freely elected (as Poland had been from the 16th century) or whether the "election" was a forgone formality. You'll note that when they did deviate from primogeniture, things went to hell rather quickly... --Jayron32 22:15, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

FYI, that's what I meant about "practically, comparable to Poland, or simply formally, comparable to the HRE"; I wish I could say something specific. Nyttend (talk) 00:52, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to divert the discussion down a dead-end, but what Anglo-Saxon kings had was fraternal succession. Primogeniture would have meant Eadwig became king on his father's death, whereas it was instead his uncle Eadred, last surviving son of Edward the Elder. What they would have done had two of Edward the Elder's sons left surviving children, particularly surviving adult children, will always be an open question. I believe the earliest written documents on the principles of hypothetical future succession in Britain date from 1280x1282 in the form of treaties drawn up before the marriage of Alexander III of Scotland's daughter Margaret to King Eirik Magnusson in 1281 and before the marriage of his son Alexander to Margaret, daughter of Guy de Dampierre, in 1282. But those represent a wholly different world view, one in which female succession is considered acceptable. Angus McLellan (Talk) 00:15, 26 April 2013 (UTC)