Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 January 7

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January 7

Copayments in health insurance

Is the practice of making people with health insurance make copayments something that predominantly only happens in the US, or is it also practiced elsewhere (for instance, in Canada)? Morningcrow (talk) 01:05, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

We seem to have separate articles on Copayment and Deductible, but if there's a difference, I'm not sure what it is. In the UK, we normally talk of having to pay an excess. Rojomoke (talk) 06:42, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Ex-health insurance guru here. There's a big difference, technically, between an excess and a co-payment. But no difference as far as the consumer is concerned: they have to pay, is all they know. Both of these things are features of the health insurance landscape in Australia. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 12:37, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I think one reason for copays, especially on prescription meds, is the fear that if people could get unlimited free meds, they would get more than they need, possibly leading to abuse of the system and of the meds. StuRat (talk) 14:09, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

To clarify Morningcrow's question for people where the terminology may be different, he wants to know whether people outside the United States who have some form of health insurance have to pay a fee for every healthcare deliverable (product or service). Typically this fee, or copay or copayment, is a set amount for each type of deliverable, and the amount is a fraction of the amount the healthcare provider charges the insurer. For example, an insured person might face a copayment of $15 for each appointment with an ordinary doctor or nurse (which probably costs the insurer more like $150), $35 for every appointment with a specialist (cost to the insurer maybe $300), and maybe $200 for every admission to a hospital (cost to the insurer probably more than $1,000). In addition, they might face a copay totaling maybe 20% of the cost of any drugs prescribed. This is different from a deductible, which usually stipulates that the insured must pay 100% of the cost of his or her healthcare, up to a threshold (the deductible) beyond which the insurer pays 100% of the cost, less any copays. So, do people face copayments, as described, in Canada or other countries? Marco polo (talk) 19:54, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I was actually interested in both deductibles and copayments, but for some reason only mentioned the latter - more "accurately" I suppose, I was wondering about addition payments for healthcare beyond the cost of insurance. Morningcrow (talk) 03:08, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

In that case, under my workplace+public coverage in Canada, I have a deductible. Some of my coverage for non-essential care has a maximum allowance, anything over which I must pay out of pocket. This isn't the same as a co-pay, I assume, because it only applies if there is overage, and that resets every year or two, depending on the service. Mingmingla (talk) 20:44, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Henning Von Treskow

I was aware of this heroic actions of Henning Von Treskow- he attempted to assassinate Hitler in March 1943 and drafted the Valkyrie plan for a coup against the German government. He was described by the Gestapo as the "prime mover" and the "evil spirit" behind the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler.

But then I just read this....it does not make sense. I thought Treskow was an honorable man. Is it possible that he signed this order: As Chief of Staff of the 2nd Army, Tresckow signed an order on 28 June 1944 to abduct Polish and Ukrainian children in the so-called Heu-Aktion (Hay Action). Between 40,000 to 50,000 Polish and Ukrainian children aged 10 to 14 were kidnapped for Nazi Germany's forced labour program Can this be researched? I cannot believe Treskow did this...he risked his life for a free Germany. (This is from Wikipedia article of Treskow. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.244.68.72 (talk) 04:03, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I take it you mean Henning von Tresckow. Our article on him is sourced, as is Heu-Aktion. It's a book source (War Of Extermination: The German Military In World War II) but at least for me, the page referenced is visible on Google Books [1] and confirms what our article says. I don't see any reason to doubt it. Based on what our articles say and the source used [2] I suspect that the order which includes Tresckow's signature was probably found after the war and part of the Nuremberg trials. So it's likely you can find a copy of it somewhere and confirm his signature was on it.

Note that if his primary motiviation was a 'free Germany' then the effects of his actions on Polish and Ukrainian children may not have been a significant concern, in fact he may have thought it a good thing if it helped Germany. (The source seems to be discussing something similar.) That said, our article does suggestion he cared about more than simply wanting a free Germany.

And obvious thought is that if it was clear this was a desired action in Nazi Germany at the time, for him to openly defy it may have put him and any of his plans at risk so he may have thought it an unfortunate but necessary action (which I think most people nowadays would strongly disagree with). He may have also not know or expected everything about the programme that we now know.

But we also should avoid oversimplfiying people's morality, behavior and character and simply thinking of them as 'good'/'honourable' or 'bad'/'evil'. Such thinking may be convient, but leads to silly things like people being unable to accept that Adolf Hitler may have genuinely cared about animal rights because he's evil (or even sillier, that animal rights must be wrong because Hitler supported it).

You also have to look at things from the POV of the time, and recognise that no matter how wrong such POVs may seem to people now, they may have been widely held at the time. Hence why people may have talked about and signed a declaration saying All men are created equal yet continued to own slaves and supported slavery, a contradiction which was even evident at the time.

In other words, there are plenty of reasons why he may have signed it, and plenty of reasons why he may not have even been troubled by it no matter whether that may contradict with anyone's view of him.

Nil Einne (talk) 13:55, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

When was Vouziers' town hall built?

I know some French, but not enough to deal with Google's autosuggestion tricks (though their translator is handy). Can anyone find out (or know offhand) when the Vouziers "Hôtel de Ville" sprung up? It's clear that the war monument is post-war, but that could have been added later. Also, was the building ever used for some other purpose? Certainly looks a bit churchish. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:10, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

You can see the Vouziers town hall during the WWW I (occupied by the Germans) here (first photograph) and at the end of the war (1918) here; only the façade was standing. A new town hall was built after 1918 according to this web site. — AldoSyrt (talk) 08:40, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

(ec) :This article [3] states that construction began in August 1923, to replace the previous city hall built in 1808 and destroyed by fire in 1918. The building was inaugurated in 1926 and is listed as a 20th century heritage building. --Xuxl (talk) 08:42, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Good stuff. Thank you both! InedibleHulk (talk) 10:02, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Abolition of capital punishment 30 BC?

Capital_and_corporal_punishment_(Judaism) claims that according to the Talmud, capital punishment was abolished by the Sanhedrin 30 BC. This seems to contradict the stoning of Saint_Stephen. Also Jesus_and_the_woman_taken_in_adultery seems to be in question in the article. Does anyone have more evidence one way or another? DanielDemaret (talk) 11:52, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

The article actually says it was abolished 30 CE (=30 AD), so around the time of Jesus' crucifixion. Therefore, the story of the woman taken in adultery may have taken place before that time, though the oldest manuscripts of John's gospels do not contain this story. A common interpretation of John 18:31 is that the Jews had lost the right to sentence anyone to death, which belonged only to the Roman governor. This is supported by a passage from the Jerusalem Talmud, of which I can only access a French translation (since I don't read Aramaic): "40 ans avant la destruction du Temple de Jérusalem, le droit de prononcer les sentences capitales a été enlevé aux Israélites" (i.e. 40 years before the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, the right to pronounce capital sentences was taken away from the Israelites). The Babylonian talmud has a slightly different version and states that the Sanhedrin was exiled in that year and voluntarily refrained from issuing capital sentences (see Sanhedrin 41a and Abodah Zarah 8b). You might be interested in this article, which has more information and was helpful to me in finding the aforementioned references.

Regarding the stoning of Stephen, it may well be that the Jews had no legal right to do this according to Roman law, but it is clear that they did this out of anger, like they tried to do to Jesus as well (John 11:8 etc.) - Lindert (talk) 14:07, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Silly me, misreading CE with BC :) Thank you! DanielDemaret (talk) 15:12, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

And add to that that the motives of the people who brought the woman caught in adultery to Jesus are commonly supposed to be the same as the motive in asking him whether they should pay tax to the Romans: the religious leaders were trying to trap him into either siding with the Roman authorities against Jewish law, or side with Jewish law against the Romans, and so either lose the favour of the people or be arrestable. So this is entirely consistent with a situation in which they had lost the right of capital punishment. 86.139.158.44 (talk) 16:34, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Double credit for film directors

Most films start out the opening credits with "A Martin Scorsese film" or "A Gus Van Sant film" or whoever. The opening credits always end with the name of the director, and it's always, in my experience, the same name that opened the credits. Then the director will get a third credit in the closing credits. The most anyone else involved can expect is 2 credits, one at the start and one at the end.

Is it always the director 's name in "A <name> film"? What's the purpose of telling the audience the director's name twice, in different ways, before the movie's even really got under way? Would it ever be the producer's name there? What does it really mean to say that a certain film is "a Ron Howard film", say? Why isn't it just as much a Tom Hanks film (if he's the main actor) or a John Williams film (if he's the composer) etc, all the way through the main participants (cinematographer, editor, FX, wardrobe, writing .....)? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 12:57, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

It's the auteur theory - the originally French idea that, despite the inordinate number of people involved in making a film, it has one author, one creative person whose "vision" the film is, and that person is the director. Personally, I think it's absurdly simplistic, undervalues the input of other creative people, especially screenwriters (whose job has been reduced to taking a story from another medium and adapting it to the formulaic three act structure), and doesn't take into account that collaboration can sometimes produce greater work than a single artist could create, and that for a lot of films the director is a hired hand whose job is to realise someone else's ideas. But cinema critics seem to buy into it. --Nicknack009 (talk) 13:27, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

The director's name does not appear in the closing credits, unless there is a cold open. --Viennese Waltz 13:56, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

An example would be 2001: A Space Odyssey which has a grand total of 3 credits up front.[4] Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Presents / A Stanley Kubrick Production / 2001: A Space Odyssey [plus copyright info in small print]. As I recall, the closing credits start with Kubrick's name, and his name may be in there a few more times as well. An even colder opening would be the Star Wars series, which have a panel for Lucasfilms followed by the standard slogans of the series. But it's important to keep in mind that credits in general are determined by contractual arrangements, along with various rules (e.g. that the director is listed last in the opening credits). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:19, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

You hit the nail on the head with the last line, directors are listed last in the opening credits, a rule that is bypassed by saying it's a "film by..." Hot Stop 01:47, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

That's not really an accurate description of the auteur theory as it was originally propounded. The French Cahiers du Cinéma critics who introduced the concept (though not the term "auteur theory") were aware of the the collaborative nature of film-making but believed that the best films (in their opinion) had an authorial stamp from the director. However, they didn't believe all directors were necessarily auteurs and coined the term metteur en scène for those directors who did not bring such an authorial stamp, but simply competently staged the screenplay and marshalled the performers. This was later developed in English-language criticism to the point where, simplistically put, the director was the auteur and for a period film criticism tended to concentrate on investigations of the oeuvre of individual directors. This was 40 odd years ago, however, and more recently the pendulum has swung back to the original conception, and some critics have identified others in the production chain as the auteurs of particular films. (For example screenwriter Charlie Kaufmann has often been described by some critics as the true auteur of the movies he wrote [5] [6]). Valiantis (talk) 14:50, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• This practice is called a possessory credit, giving primary artistic recognition of a film to a single person. Because movie posters, trailers and the like also repeat part of the credits, this is usually done more to advertise upfront that a prominent or famous director like a Scorsese or a Van Sant worked on the film (you would not normally see it done for a director or a producer who is relatively an unknown). For famous actors like a Hanks, "top billing" is used instead, where the name(s) of the prominent actor(s) appear first before the title of the film and the other names of the main cast. Many movies have both the possessory credit and the top billing listings, where, for example in Superman (1978 film) you have "A Richard Donner film", and the top billings of Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman without any quantifiers or extra phrases (as seen in the fine print of the film's poster if you can read it).Zzyzx11 (talk) 06:19, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

  And a composer like Williams usually never gets a possessory credit when there is better name recognition with a Steven Spielberg or a Hanks to help sell tickets. Zzyzx11 (talk) 06:27, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Usually never, eh?  :)

Thanks to all. There's always more to these things than one had imagined. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:01, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Stranger in distress scams

Many of us have been approached by strangers looking distressed, telling us stories of how they need a small amount of money and that they have no other way of getting it. But how many of these are actually genuine and how many are scams? Clover345 (talk) 16:40, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

It's impossible to give an accurate answer. How would anyone know whether the story is true or not? --Viennese Waltz 16:44, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I always look for a way around giving them cash. Say they need cash to take a taxi home. I offer to call their home on my cell phone, and have somebody pick them up, instead. StuRat (talk) 16:53, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

That's an excellent approach. This scam is as old as money. The archetype is someone asking for money to buy coffee and/or donuts, when they're maybe really wanting to buy booze. This little scam was parodied in the early 30s in the Marx Brothers film Horse Feathers, where a bum approached Harpo and said, "I'd like to get a cup of coffee". Harpo then reached into his trench coat and pulled out a steaming cup of coffee for the guy.[7] In short, determine what the beggar really needs, and offer non-monetary help. His answer will tell you whether he's genuine or whether he's scamming. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:12, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand why the approach is "excellent". Somebody asks me for money, giving a (possibly spurious) reason for needing it. I have a choice as to whether I give them money; they have the choice as to how to spend it. Let's assume I give them some money. End of story as far as I'm concerned. They spend it on booze instead of a bus ticket. So what? I don't have the money any more whether they've spent it on a bus ticket, a bottle of Buckfast, a taxi fare or a wrap of heroin. My employer gives me money (reluctantly) every month; I don't expect them to have any say as to how I spend it. Tonywalton ^Talk 23:25, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

The OP asked how to tell if it's a scam. StuRat and I propose a way to do that. If you don't care whether you're being scammed or not, obviously you won't use that approach. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:38, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Well obviously you can't tell whether a scam is a scam – that's diagnostic of a scam (very few scammers will prefix their spiel with "this is a scam", though I did once see a guy begging here with a sign saying "please give me money for beer"). Your post however seems to editorialise as to whether a response is appropriate or not. Happy New Year, by the way. Tonywalton ^Talk 00:12, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, my editorial responded to your editorial. The point being that if you want to, there are ways to get at least some indication of whether someone's scamming you vs. being sincere. Trying to determine what percentage of panhandlers are sincere would be a pretty tall order. But you are always free to give your money away. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:48, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Tony, I don't think you understand the motivation of people who give money. Almost universally, they are only willing to do so if they think it will improve the lives of others. So, giving money to somebody who will use it to feed his kids is something they might be willing to do, while giving money to somebody so he can get drunk and go home and beat his kids is definitely not something they would be willing to do. So, then, the problem is to distinguish between these two cases. StuRat (talk) 19:02, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Speaking from personal experience, these people are mostly semi-genuine. They don't have a car that has run out of petrol, they don't need to get a train, they haven't lost their Oyster card. But they _do_ need a drink. As one who is occasionally in that situation, I'm generally happy to oblige them. ;) Tevildo (talk) 22:40, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Generally people will assume the worst. Having been in the situation of needing to legitimately ask for money, it's good to know that not everyone is a cynic (a drink would have been nice, though). Hack (talk) 16:23, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

When I was working in Manchester, UK, an old guy came up to me at the station and asked for money to get the bus home. I gave him the exact amount for the bus ticket. The following day, the same guy targeted me again, and he stunk of beer, saying he didn't have the money for his bus home. I told him, "You shouldn't have spent all your money on beer, then, should you?" at which point he got aggressive (not a good idea when you are begging). I calmly pointed at two police officers standing nearby and said, "Do you want to ask them for help, or shall I?" He got the message. Never saw him again. My usual approach is to say, "Sorry, I only carry plastic." (which is true - I hardly ever carry cash) KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 10:30, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

There used to be guy who stood at the corner of Christopher Street and Greenwich Avenue, saying he needed money for pot. I gave him a $5 the first time, and nothing any time thereafter. μηδείς (talk) 01:23, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The scam here is that they ask you for money, wait for you to open your purse, then do a snatch-and-run on your wallet, phone, or anything else valuable they can get their hands on. --NellieBly (talk) 12:13, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

name of the book and author

The author of this book is a Canadian of Yemenite Jewry background. I am trying to find her book which has the word "world". Also, the book is about Mizrahi characters like one is a police officer and the other is a military officer. The author surname starts Tza or Tsa. I forgot her name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.53.231.174 (talk) 16:49, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Ayelet Tsabari. It's "earth" not "world". --Viennese Waltz 16:53, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

looking for a book on "thought friends" from around 1970

One of my friends remembers reading a book thirty or forty years ago, that we'd both like to recover. Neither of us has been able to find any trace of it online though. He remembers the title as something like "Learning to Love Yourself; A Guide to Personal Development". I'm almost positive that title is wrong though -- perhaps it was a chapter title. He says the book was written by a man -- a psychologist -- and that it was published by "UCLA Press". Since there is no UCLA Press, I think he actually means University of California Press or University College London Press. I've already contacted the California press, and they told me that they don't have any books resembling it.

The book was apparently about "thought friends" something like imaginary friends for adults, presumably from a psychological perspective. The author's own thought friend was named "Jenney". And my friend is pretty sure that's correct, because he remembers the unusual spelling.

His copy was apparently a paperback, published around 1970.

Does anyone know it, or know how I might find it without the author's name or the title? 67.142.167.25 (talk) 21:30, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I tracked a reference down, but the site is blacklisted for Wikipedia (try community dot tulpa dot info). According to the forum, the book is indeed called Learning to Love Yourself : A Guide to Personal Development, and is indeed published by UCLA Press. Jenney is mentioned twice.

We have an article on tulpa.

Cheers to you and all your friends, imaginary and otherwise. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:23, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Roald Dahl

This (fascinating) biography of Roald Dahl refers to stories that were "viciously pornographic" and some that were:

"filled with caricatures of greedy Jews. One suggests " a little pawnbroker in Housditch called Meatbein who, when the wailing started, would rush downstairs to the large safe in which he kept his money, open it and wriggle inside on to the lowest shelf where he lay like a hibernating hedgehog until the all-clear had gone."

Could someone link to or identify one of these stories?

Also, I am interested in reading his "vicious attack on his peers in the field of children's literature requested by the New York Times" if possible.

Many thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.160.26 (talk) 23:36, 7 January 2014 (UTC)