Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 August 1

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August 1

Tom Sawyer and the Public Domain

The article on Bobby Driscoll states: "Disney... always planned to cast Driscoll as Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer... but because of a story rights ownership dispute with Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, who had previously produced the property in 1938, Disney ultimately had to cancel the entire project." If Selznick owned some kind of "story rights" to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, does this mean that the novel was not in the public domain at that time? In any case, when did Tom Sawyer enter the public domain, and is there any kind of database which lists the historical dates of public domain entry for various well-known properties?--129.97.125.27 (talk) 00:22, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Tom Sawyer was published in 1876. Since copyright lasted for 28 years, with the opportunity to renew it for another 28 years, it fell into the public domain in 1932 if Clemens and his heirs took full advantage of the law's provisions. Any copyright dispute was related to something other than the original storyline. Nyttend (talk) 00:36, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

why don't I hear much about the Byzantines

Why do I hear very little about them in popular culture, high school, or on TV? I know I can easily find out about them easily if I do a Google search, but why do I hear little about them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uncle dan is home (talk • contribs) 02:23, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

It may depend on your location. Different locations have different interests inherited from the generations before them. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 02:42, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Interest in history is mostly connected to achievements. It Seems we are mostly interested in war and spectacle since everyone knows what the word Colosseum describes yet at best some architect can tell you about Byzantine architecture, nomatter it had much more historical influence than the concept of the Colosseum. --Kharon (talk) 03:22, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

The Eastern empire had plenty of "war and spectacle", as evidenced by all the articles here with "Byzantine" and "war" in the title. And there are the legendary chariot races in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, which occasionally turned into riots that leveled half the city. --47.138.161.183 (talk) 11:07, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Part of it is probably all the different names, some of which you've probably heard:

Byzantium = Constantinople = Istanbul.

Byzantine Empire = Eastern Roman Empire.

So, unlike say Athens, Greece, the names have changed, making the original names somewhat obscure now. Also note that "byzantine" has survived as a term, meaning unnecessarily complex: [1]. StuRat (talk) 03:34, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• Because your education is limited by time and resources, and there's only so much time for schools to teach you things. Now that you know it exists, you can spend any amount of your free time learning as much as you like. The first thing you'll learn about it however is that it didn't exist. Rather, the term is a historiographical word invented by historians with a certain perspective they were trying to push. The people we now call the Byzantines would have never heard the term. They would have just called themselves "Romans", because that's what they were. There's a whole lot of Western history built upon the idea that the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, when in reality it merely lost its Western territories. The Wikipedia article titled Byzantine Empire is as good a place as any to start learning more.--Jayron32 03:43, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Uncle_dan_is_home -- The Kingdom of Gondor in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was based on the Byzantine Empire (see Gondor#Influences), and Greek scholars fleeing the Turkish conquests of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries significantly helped the Italian Renaissance take place. However, most Western Europeans and cultural offshoots of Western Europe don't really see the Byzantines as a direct precursor to modern Western civilization (unlike classical Athens etc.), so the Byzantine civilization can get kind of shunted aside when the roots of Western civilization are explored. I'm sure that the Greeks and the Russians don't consider the Byzantines irrelevant to the development of their cultures... AnonMoos (talk) 07:27, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

The issue with the Eastern Roman Empire is a little more complex than that, and is largely based around the historiographical need of most Western powers during the bulk of history to pretend as though it wasn't really the Roman Empire. While it may not make sense today, for much of the Middle Ages, the concept of Translatio imperii (similar to the Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven) was a vital Constitutional concept to establish the legitimacy of their states. Without going into the myriad complexities of the situation, the basic principle is that the constitution of much of Western Europe (and thus legitimacy of their governance) require the Roman Empire to have ended in 476 AD. Such a viewpoint was so pervasive in Western thought that even as late as the late 18th century it formed the central thesis of The greatest work of historical writing in the English language, and even today pervades much of the Western history tradition. That's why the so-called Byzantine Empire gets the shaft. Even 100 years later, the need for translatio imperii was influencing politics in Europe; the reason why the German Empire was proclaimed in Versailles in 1871, is because of what happened in that exact place at that exact time. The Prussian King couldn't just up and declare himself Emperor if another Emperor still existed; which is why he had to defeat the last one in war and then declare his Empire in the other's seat. This very thinking is a direct consequence of the Western thought that Rome ended in 476. --Jayron32 12:35, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Now that is an insightful answer! Wnt (talk) 15:45, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

That is in hindsight how people thought of it centuries later, but translatio imperii was amazingly even more complicated in the Middle Ages. There could certainly be two emperors - and in fact there were, until 476 - so that wasn't the problem. Why couldn't Charlemagne (since the matter is really about Charlemagne being crowned emperor in 800) be the Western Emperor, and the Eastern Emperor stay the Eastern Emperor? Because in 800, the Eastern Emperor was was actually an empress. The empire did not pass to a male emperor, therefore in the eyes of the Pope and Charlemagne, there no longer was an emperor at all. By then the west had a tradition of Germanic law where women were explicitly forbidden from inheriting the throne (Salic law) while Roman law, as i was still used in the east, didn't specifically forbid them. Translatio imperii is sort of an afterthought trying to justify this whole shady affair. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:01, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

That's part of the mess I didn't want to get into, altogether. The complex constitutional relationship between the Holy Roman Empire, the constituent states that made it up, and the myriad and (excuse the term) byzantine political relationships it caused in medieval Western Europe is enough to make one's head explode. Even after the HRE ceased to exist (even on paper) after the early 1800s, it took more than a century to unravel all of the complex political relationships it created, i.e. the Duchy of Limburg (1839–67), the Schleswig-Holstein Question, etc. etc. --Jayron32 19:06, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, see BYZANTIUM AND ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ART and The Byzantine Empire had a lasting legacy in religion, architecture, art, literature, and law.. Alansplodge (talk) 10:37, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

This answer is maybe a little opinion-y, but it's pretty clear to me. "History" in most places usually means "Things that happened here when it was inhabited by people like us, and things that influenced it." I'm assuming you grew up in the Anglosphere? In U.S. K-12 (which I attended), "history" is "What happened to white people in the present-day U.S., and some stuff that happened in Western Europe before/during that, and we'll throw in an occasional mention of other cultures to seem open-minded." If you want to learn about anything else in history, you take classes called something like "World History" or "<country> History", which only exist in the better high schools as electives. Or you wait until college/university and take such classes, assuming you're able to. As AnonMoos said, if you went to school in Greece or Turkey you'd probably know a lot more about the Byzantines, just as if you went to school in Japan you'd probably be able to name the periods of Japanese history from memory. And since "culture" is "stuff shared among a particular group", if my assumption was right, most people where you live know little to nothing about the Byzantines, so no one talks about them. Just as here in the U.S., if you show someone a depiction of people in dour clothing in a ship landing by a rock, they'll almost certainly identify it as the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock (which, if you read the article, you'll know they didn't even do), while if you show it to someone in, say, India, they'll draw a blank. Also, as Jayron32 touched on, there's an additional layer of a long-standing divide in how Western and Eastern Europe have perceived history. To Western Europe, Rome was the big deal. Up until the 20th century rulers and nations were still, to some degree, claiming they were the rightful inheritors of Ancient Rome. See Third Rome, translatio imperii. To Western European thought, the Easterners who spoke a funny language weren't really Romans, plus after the Great Schism they were Orthodox heretics to boot, so they didn't really matter. (Compare and contrast the idea of the Mandate of Heaven in the Sinosphere.) --47.138.161.183 (talk) 11:07, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

+1. Except that I suspect Turks do not care very much about Byzantines, since they were foes they ultimately subdued.

However, scholars DO care about Byzantines: Byzantine studies are quite populated. You may even say that they fell to "Byzantinism", that is, arguing endlessly about very trifles matters [2].

Note that according to this article, Byzantinism is generally despised in the western world, this doesn't help making it into the popular culture

Gem fr (talk) 12:36, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Polish złoty in 1974

How can I find the value of the Polish złoty compared to other currencies in the summer of 1974? Thanks. 70.67.222.124 (talk) 14:10, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

This looks promising. --Jayron32 14:34, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Except it only goes back as far as 2007.

The answer is not simple. The Polish government maintained at least six different official fixed exchange rates (for various types of transactions) for złoty versus U.S. dollar, which in 1972 ranged from 3.32 to 60 PLZ/USD. The black market exchange rate in the 1970s ranged between 80 and 120 PLZ/USD. In terms of purchasing parity, the value of the złoty was estimated at about 20 PLZ/USD.[3] — Kpalion^(talk) 15:26, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you very much! This is perfect. The distinction between black market and purchasing power is great to know. 70.67.222.124 (talk) 16:27, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Here is a source from 1974-1975 https://books.google.com/books?id=vI3JDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA1243 , stating that official exchange rate was 1 USD=19.98 PLZ, 'tourist rate' at 1 USD=33.3 PLZ. --Soman (talk) 13:03, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Birth control and poor people

I already know some people don't like Trump, because he has plans to defund Planned Parenthood, and that organization provides contraceptives to poor people. But I wonder why the American poor cares about contraceptives in the first place. I remember watching a documentary about pneumonia in the Phillippines and how poor Filipino families just have a lot of children. And Michael Pollan hosts a food documentary, talking about how a hunter-gatherer society is seemingly very healthy despite the high child mortality rate. That said, I would reason that the poor would want to have as many children as possible because of economic security and necessity. More children = more income. Maybe I'm missing something, but I really don't get why the American poor want contraceptives, when in worldwide, the poor just make do without contraceptives. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 23:34, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Just because some '"make do'" without something is not a reason why everyone should want to make do without that thing. Can't some opt to use contraceptives and others not? Bus stop (talk) 00:12, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

But when you are poor, you can't afford healthcare. If you can't afford healthcare or your employer doesn't pay into a health insurance program, then you can't take care of your children when they are sick. And when they are sick, it's likely that they will die, which means no one will take care you in your old age. Therefore, it's best to have as many children as possible, just in case one gets sick and dies. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 00:48, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

You say that you "wonder why the American poor cares about contraceptives in the first place". Because they are not a monolithic block. They are individuals. Some would like as an option the availability of contraceptives. Bus stop (talk) 01:31, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't want to go into an argument about this, so I am going to assume that you are right. It still seems counterintuitive (to me), though. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 02:07, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

It seems counterintuitive to you that one poor person may have different needs and wants than a different poor person, and that they may therefore need access to services for different reasons? Does that mean your intuition tells you that all poor people are identical can be treated as such? --Jayron32 13:05, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes. Humans are animals. As animals, it makes more sense to me that they will reproduce as much as possible. With scarce resources, it becomes difficult to take care of the offspring's health. They can die at any moment. Because humans can predict the future, one reproductive strategy is to produce as many offspring as possible in case some of them succumb to disease. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 23:24, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Every animal does not try to have as many offspring as possible; either behaviorally or biologically. Many animals have a relatively small number of offspring but still thrive as a species. Your notions about these matters indicate a profound refusal to accept actual evidence which may alter your understanding of the world, which makes it difficult to provide you with satisfactory answers. You have made it clear time and time again that you're seeking affirmation of your set-in-stone beliefs rather than information to expand your understanding of the world. Stop arguing with people who are directing you to information to change your misconceptions. --Jayron32 01:59, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

• What the eff do you have against poor people dude? First you want them to have to eat dog food, and now you're like "fuck'em, what do they need birth control for" Boggles the fucking mind...--Jayron32 01:37, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Eh? Where did I link poor people to dog food? I merely posted a inquiry about making well-portioned food for humans like dog food in general. It was not directed at poor people. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 01:49, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

To be fair, I think the IP is right here. They've suggested at least twice before that poor people shouldn't be allowed to eat much or any meat Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 April 6#Economics of intensive animal farming & Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 March 3#Meat fillers & other weird or at least borderline stuff like that before (e.g. Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 April 27#Portion control, food rationing, and economics) and have asked weird crap about humans and dog or pet food multiple times Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 March 26#Can food be made to be suitable for both dogs and humans? Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 May 18#Homogenous packaged, pre-cooked food Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 July 2#Can dogs control their appetites? Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 July 2#How can dogs eat white rice? (possibly Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Science/2017_February_18#Can dogs and cats eat cooked foods? too although I'm not so sure). But they haven't AFAIK gones so far as to link the two in suggesting poor people should eat dog food while the rest of the meat is reserved for the rich. Nil Einne (talk) 16:54, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Children of poor people are only a net economic asset in a subsistence farming society, where they can work from an early age. A 5 year old could collect eggs, feed the chickens, and milk the cow, but driving a truck or welding is not a good idea. So, in an industrialized society they are a net economic negative. This is one factor that leads to decreased fertility in industrialized societies. StuRat (talk) 04:08, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

• More interesting background reading may possibly be found at the article Income and fertility which was formerly titled Demographic economic paradox, because it is a long studied trend in demographic-economics: In countries with higher standards of living, the birth-rate goes down rather than up at first glance. The standard explanation for this is that societal attitudes towards the role of children and women in society change slower than standard of living; so there's a "lag effect" of a few generations. In societies with extremely high infant mortality and low economic freedom for women, there are more children born, though not necessarily much population growth because poor access to modern healthcare means low life expectancy and high infant mortality. When a society gets access to proper women's health care, infant mortality plummets, but societal attitudes towards numbers of children and a woman's role in society take several generations to change, so there's a "bubble" of extremely high birth rate, but low death rate, that leads to a surge in population growth. After several generations, as economics improves, these countries stabilize to lower birth rate. As noted in the lead of the article "Development is the best contraceptive." The answer to why American poor people want access to contraception is that poor American women have (and should expect) the same rights to control the fates of their own bodies as more privileged women. "You don't get to enjoy sex without fear of pregnancy because you're poor" is a shitty paternalistic thing for rich policy-makers to say. Margaret Sanger fought this battle for American society a hundred years ago, and it boggles the mind that we're still having the debate. It should be settled by now. Access to such basic health care needs as contraception is not a privilege reserved for people with economic or political power. --Jayron32 10:48, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

StuRat mentioned "net economic asset" and "net economic negative", so I looked those terms up with "children". This appears: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c9663.pdf. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 11:20, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Though, who says that society needs to develop? With an undeveloped society, the high infant mortality can really control population growth. And living with parasites and other germs may be better than the situation as posed by the hygiene hypothesis. Parasites can control the population and stimulate one's immune system. Lack of electricity may help humans return to a more natural sleep cycle. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 11:33, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

There's a balance to be made, I'm sure, but outside of small communities of Luddites, it would be hard to argue that controlling the population by allowing preventable suffering and death is less desirable than controlling the population by treating women better. The notion that "Some aspects of modern society need to be tweaked as it's probably unhealthy" is quite distinct from "We were better when most people died horrible deaths of preventable diseases." --Jayron32 12:24, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

But a poor person is poor, because he has little or no resources. Without the necessary resources, he may contract a disease and cannot heal it. And he may not be able to prevent the disease, because he lacks the knowledge (such as germ theory). Therefore, the disease is only preventable at a societal level, but not preventable at a personal level. I guess it's up to society to judge whether that person deserves to live or die. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 23:24, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

A poor person is poor because the people who control the resources don't provide that person the means by which to obtain those resources. That your only considered solution of "do nothing and let them die" is a solution to that problem is troubling when trying to provide reasonable answers to your query. --Jayron32 01:55, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

That's a bit of an oversimplification. Some poor people are that way because they are oppressed, but others choose not to work, or have problems like alcoholism and drug abuse and mental problems that make it impossible to hold a job. Society can help them out a bit, but they really need to do their part, too. StuRat (talk) 03:28, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree, provided that by "hard" you meant "easy" or by "less desirable" you meant "more desirable" (you seem to have said the opposite of what you meant via a double negative). StuRat (talk) 12:59, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I meant we don't want people to die of diseases that can be cured. We should not argue that point, it seems self-evidently better. --Jayron32 13:04, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

How many people die annually from lack of exposure to microbes ? Perhaps thousands. How many people die annually of infectious diseases caused by exposure to microbes ? Millions. The two risks aren't anywhere near equivalent. StuRat (talk) 12:53, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Of note, based on the question, the claim that Planned Parenthood provides contraception is not entirely true. In South Carolina, Planned Parenthood performs abortions. Contraceptive services (as well as everything else) is referred to a nearby FQHC under the guise that the FQHC is part of Planned Parenthood. They are two completely different services. I assume, but have not checked, that other states function similarly. Therefore, in South Carolina, cutting funding for Planned Parenthood will not directly affect contraceptive services for the poor (and it is important to note that the poor are not the only people who use Planned Parenthood). They just need to learn that they can go directly to the FQHC without a Planned Parenthood referral. That is not the problem though. I work in a large hospital network that covers half the state. The poor primarily go to the Emergency Room for everything from getting free condoms to getting a pregnancy test. A lot of money is spent every year to try to educate the public that the Emergency Room is not for those services, but they keep coming because they strongly believe that the ER is absolutely free. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 12:43, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm assuming you have references for all of that. Because just asserting things is not the same as establishing them as true. --Jayron32 12:49, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I think you've been listening to too much right-wing extremist talk radio. None of what you've just said is true, but it's common extremist propaganda. ApLundell (talk) 15:53, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

[4] from the Guttmacher Institute so obviously not a neutral source and not specifically considering the situation in South Carolina explicitly rejects the idea that FQHCs could replace Planned Parenthood for contraceptive services.

The closest counter I came across is from the Charlotte Lozier Institute but I'd note [5] it simply looks at individuals served (served for what?) rather than explicitly considering contraceptive services and doesn't seem to have considered the actual consequence of closure of Planned Parenthood centres. I'd note that either way it seems to actual reject the notion Planned Parenthood centres only performs abortions although again it doesn't explicitly have data for South Carolina [6] since the number of individuals served is significantly higher than those receiving abortions. As stated earlier, what services these inviduals are receiving doesn't seem to be in the data they've presented so it can't be said explicitly that it's contraceptive services. Since there are supposedly only 2 Planned Parenthood centres in South Carolina, it's possible the effect of the closure for services besides abortions will not be so significant as in other places, but I don't know.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:12, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

South Carolina has 2 Planned Parenthood offices and 14 FQHCs. Both Planned Parenthood offices are less than 1 mile from an FQHC. The Charleston office is very tiny - so tiny that they don't even do abortions there[7]. They refer those to a different clinic. They are only open 3 days (and not a full schedule during those days). They hand out condoms, morning after pills and pregnancy tests in office. They perform some urine tests and pin-prick blood tests. They also do counseling, including LGBT counseling. Just look at the building on Google Maps and you can see that there is no room for radiology. They do not do mammograms in office (or any other radiology services). However, their website [8] clearly states that do radiology. It simply doesn't specifically state that it is performed by them in their office. It is referred to Fetter FQHC, as are most services. The photo on their website is stock. I've been in their office and they don't look like that at all. Further, notice that no doctor is listed on their website. What doctor (actual MD) works there? None is required because medical examinations and procedures are not performed in office. They are referred to the FQHC. Yes, this is one example of one clinic. It is not representative of every Planned Parenthood office in the country. But, it does point out that the women in Charleston may still get the same service (including abortions) if the Planned Parenthood office was closed. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 17:51, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Given that poverty/wealth is relative (the stranded island refugee with the most coconuts is the richest in his group), perhaps a slight aside to correct a common misconception might be in order. By convention, 20% of the people in any society are poor, 20% are rich and 60% are middle class. The definition of each category can easily be adjusted to arrive at this breakdown. As the saying goes, the poor will always be with us … DOR (HK) (talk) 11:04, 3 August 2017 (UTC)