Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 November 25

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 25

Photo of Manuel Buendia murder scene?

Reading the article about the Mexican author/journalist Manuel Buendia who was assassinated as a result of his investigations into connections between intelligence agencies (such as the CIA/DFS) and drug cartels, I came across the following: "Photos of Buendía's corpse circulated across Mexico and the rest of the world."

However, searching for these photos with a variety of queries has turned nothing up. Considering that these were purportedly widely circulated, I'd think a copy would exist online somewhere. Does anyone have an idea of where one might look outside of Google/Bing images to find these photos?

- Mesoderm (talk) 03:29, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

"Circulating" in 1984 had a lot more to do with envelopes, film and the post office than it does today. Even now, plenty (but ever less) gets around in journalistic and police circles without Google seeing it.

You could try asking El Universal or another paper if they have copies. They're on Twitter, Facebook, all that jazz. Probably still accepts snail mail, too. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:59, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

I checked on Newspapers.com on the off chance that one of the papers ran an image (lots of smaller newspapers). There wasn't anything. ProQuest Historical Newspapers didn't turn anything either (NY Times, LA Times, Wash. Post, Guardian). While I don't have access to it, you might try finding this article: Rothschild, Matthew (April 1985). "Who Killed Manuel Buendia?". Progressive. 49 (4): 18–23. It is noted as having six black and white photographs. EBSCO's products index a lot of Spanish-language sources as well that might have leads. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 05:16, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Can anyone recommend any mystery books set in Lakewood_Township,_New_Jersey?

Just curious. Venustar84 (talk) 05:10, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

No. "mystery book" "set in lakewood" gets one hit, and refers to a Cleveland neighbourhood. Why the specificity? What's wrong with Old Bridge, Tom's River, or Tuckerton? μηδείς (talk) 18:08, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm only interested because a actor I like is from there. But Tom's River sounds good. Venustar84 (talk) 01:18, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

You may find The Answer there. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:18, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't read mysteries. My mother recommends the works of Janet Evanovich which are set in Trenton-on-the-Delaware, WNW of Lakewood. Who's the actor? μηδείς (talk) 19:49, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

If you're keen on Lakewood specifically, you could try emailing the local library. They tend to know about books set locally if there are any. Andrew Gray (talk) 20:00, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Armin_Shimerman is the actor. Venustar84 (talk) 03:59, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Routine declassifying of British intelligence files

Do the British intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ ever routinely disclose records of their activities? If so, on what schedule? I know the British government in general is moving from a 30 to a 20-year period of secrecy after the rules changed in 2010, but I'm not sure that covers intelligence and surveillance work. This document from 2008 clearly says GCHQ doesn't disclose anything, but it dates from before the 2010 reforms: [1]

For most government information the relevant issue is the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) which creates a general right of access, on request, to information held by public authorities. In the event that information is not already disclosed at the point that records are transferred to the Public Records Office under the Thirty-year rule, they are made public according to the rules set out in the FOIA [2]. There is an absolute exemption for information "required for the purpose of safeguarding national security" [3] in the FOIA, so this would suggest the answer is that such information would only be released if it were considered to have no effect on national security at the point records were transferred to the Public Records Office. Assuming that security service records get transferred in this way in the first place, which I'm not convinced is the case. Valiantis (talk) 14:50, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Looks like a no then. I'm also skeptical that everything even gets considered for adding to the public archive. There was a secret cache of Foreign Office files whose existence was revealed by accident last year which I think is still being sat on. 213.205.251.135 (talk) 15:04, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to your question but http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/intelligence-records.htm is a place to look. Thincat (talk) 20:36, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

From memory, there's a strict policy of never releasing files which name agents, even after their deaths (unless the agents self-identify). Some World War II-era files are still classified for this reason, for instance. Files on codebreaking also are generally not released if doing so would risk current operations (eg, if the same methodologies are still being used, etc). For Wikipedia purposes, it's worth noting that the official historians of the British intelligence services have been able to write about the content of non-public files as long as they didn't name agents or compromise current intelligence collection methods - the various histories have good explanations of these rules (with the authors generally stating that the rules didn't force them to leave much of substance out). Nick-D (talk) 22:49, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Predicting number of seats from opinion polls in 2015 UK general election

I've had a look at Opinion polling for the next United Kingdom general election which gives lots of predictions of vote share, but for me as a layman, how can I interpret that to predict numbers of seats won? Or is that impossible to do with any useful accuracy? The actual question I had in mind was if the Liberal Democrats are now so unpopular as to be a wasted vote.

Due to the peculiarities of first-past-the-post voting, it's pretty much impossible to predict number of seats won from vote share alone. You would need a more detailed poll of voting intentions broken down by region. --Viennese Waltz 15:04, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia collect local poll data anywhere? I'm in Oxfordshire if it helps. 213.205.251.135 (talk) 15:09, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

If opinion polls were a reliable indicator of the actual number of seats likely to be won I would be a very wealthy man. But then again, the bookies wouldn't take my bets would they? I am no psephologist but I recently voted in the Scottish Referendum in which some 86% of the electorate turned out to vote. That in itself was an outstanding statistic where ordinary parliamentary elections run at about or below 50%. And from that 86%, some 45% voted YES whilst 55% voted NO. But in fact, those who voted YES represented only 37% of the Registered Electorate, outnumbered by the 63% who didn't vote YES. And yet, only one week before the polling date of 18th September, the popular polls were predicting a majority YES vote. Imagine all that Celebratory Champagne that had to be returned to the suppliers on a Sale or Return basis by the disappointed Independence Supporters and Voters. The only reliable poll and one that the bookies will accept as part of a wager is the vote outcome itself. Anything else is a gut feeling or a gamble. 82.43.221.178 (talk) 21:34, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

The Scottish referendum was special because of the huge turnout, I thought. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't 37% of the total electorate win you most elections held in the UK? Which would mean if those 37% were pretty vocal and the other side just wanted the issue to go away, compared to a normal campaign it would feel like everyone supported independence. But I wasn't there myself so it's just my guess. 213.205.251.135 (talk) 10:42, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Also many voting intention polls like those relating to the Scottish referendum, only report on those who say they are likely to vote. So the 37% is more or less irrelevant when it comes to assessing the polls, only the 45%/55% percents. If I understand Opinion polling for the Scottish independence referendum, 2014 correctly, this includes ICM, one of the ones who found a lead for "yes" (but not Yougov the other one).

And note my wording here. No poll predicted a 50%+1 majority for the "yes" vote. Two gave a lead, but even in the ICM case which had the largest lead, it was still under 50% because there were many undecided. (Yougov had a much smaller lead and still of course undecided so it was even further from 50%+1.) Particularly in a case like this were there was only one thing to vote on, mostly people who actually go to vote are actually going to vote for one of the options rather than returning a blank or informal ballot. (Some of them may choose not to go and vote, in which case they shouldn't have been counted and you will push up the numbers.) But anyway "undecided" is likely to come down on one side and it could easily be heavily in favour of one side (in a case like this, there's good reason to suggest it will be mostly no).

It's also impossible to tell how the poll results, and peoples reactions to them, are going to change outcomes, one of the reasons some countries ban voting intention polls in the lead up to elections. There was definitely a much focus when it seemed that there was actually a chance of "yes" winning. And the "yes" lead polls were before the last debate anyway.

Also as was widely reported, particularly when the lead narrowed and with the "yes" lead polls, polling for the referendum was particularly difficult [4] [5], as there was no historic data and the poll cut across normal voting patterns (like party lines). I believe this was particularly a problem for YouGov and I guess other online polling companies since their methodology depends significantly on getting the weight right. (This also has me wondering about my earlier comment and I wonder if whether YouGov, while nominally reporting on all possible voters regardless of intention to vote, gives those who aren't likely to vote a much lower weighting.)

According to [6], while the turnout was high, it was actually lower than many predictions. Whether this undecides who didn't decide (or did decide on one of the options probably yes but felt it would never win) or just people not bothering to vote, who knows, but it does again add to the problems with the polling.

BTW, if you look at the polls since September, I think the eventually yes vote was often close to, if not within the prediction's margin of error and seems to average around where it ended up. The no is more questionable and doesn't seem to average where it ended up. So it may be the polls resonably predicited the yes vote. It didn't properly predict the no vote, perhaps for the reason I mentioned earlier namely undecideds mostly voting no in the end.

Nil Einne (talk) 15:05, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I think I take your point. But please know that whilst I was among the 55% that voted NO, and the 63% who didn't vote YES, my response above was not intended to be politically motivated. I merely wished to point out to the OP that recent history clearly demonstrates the unpredictability of opinion polls in determining the outcome. You are correct of course in classifying the recent Scottish Independence Referendum as being "special" in respect of the huge turnout, and I suspect you may also be correct in your analogy that in normal UK elections, 37% of the ENTIRE registered electorate would win the day. But the Referendum was additionally special in that a single vote one way or the other would have given a legally binding majority to the winning side. I personally think that the real winner was Democracy (Power of the People) and hope trust and pray that that level of voter interest and action will be replicated at every future UK election. As a not entirely unrelated aside, and this being more pertinent to the OP, if Oxfordshire were in Cuba or China, I could unflinchingly guarantee that every seat won would belong to the respective Communist Party, irrespective of any opinion poll's attempt to forecast the outcome.82.43.221.178 (talk) 11:50, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

The next general election will be very difficult to predict from opinion polls. This is because the interpretation of opinion polls is done by analysing previous election results to predict the future. This time around, for the first time in a very long time (in a general election) four parties (not three) are likely to pick up the lion's share of votes in England and Scotland's voting may well be massively affected by the fallout from the recent independence vote there. That's a large chunk of significant difference from the past, making the pollster's projections fairly unreliable, especially when you take into account the British tradition of lying to pollsters and the increasing trend in this country for tactical voting, particularly in close-run constituencies. --Dweller (talk) 14:05, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Do American children still believe in cooties?

Do American prepubescent children still believe in cooties in the form of opposite-sex transmission? 140.254.136.182 (talk) 17:04, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

It's a game, no one "believes" in cooties, unless they are literally using that word for lice, which is dated and is not something I have ever witnessed in the NE. See Cootie Catcher. μηδείς (talk) 18:01, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

What does 'NE' stand for? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 15:48, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

A wild guess: North East. It could also be New England but then there would be no 'the' plus Medeis said he was from NYC. Contact Basemetal here 16:14, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

That wasn't all that wild a guess. I'll have to ask my nephews if they know what cooties are, as they live in NE. μηδείς (talk) 18:34, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

In the NNE, my '80s class was split between those who genuinely thought cooties were an invisible bug that made you stupid and stinky, those who thought there was a better reason, and those whose opinions weren't counted because we avoided their stupid stink. There was actually a pretty huge schism (by second-grade standards) for a while among the elite. If you wanted to hang around with Elaine (the supreme kid), it was best to not even question it.

The next year, Elaine got lice, we learned that's what cooties really were, that they only made your head itch and that if they're good enough for her, there's no shame in itching. We still made the stinky, stupid kids feel like there was when they got it for a few more years, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:52, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

It exists regardless of whether you believe in it. --Jayron32 03:05, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I asked my parents, who remember WWII, the non-leading question whether they had cooties when they were children, and both replied that they hadn't, but that lice inspectors did come to their schools. They were both unaware of the fact that when I was a child in the 70's cooties were an imaginary infection one got as a prepubescent from consorting with the opposite sex. μηδείς (talk) 23:33, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately, once such consorting gets a little more up close and personal, some post-pubescents might graduate, so to speak, from imaginary cooties to real crabs. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:46, 28 November 2014 (UTC)