Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 November 5

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November 5

Death related questions

I have several related questions, the first is that I have been told that when a person dies, their watch stops. So, my first question is, is this true? Secondly if this is true, does this apply to analogue watches only or does this include digital watches. My next question and the overarching most important piece of information I would like to know is if one is listening to music, such as on an iPod (outdated now I know) or an old Diskman or even an old Walkman, or even the new more modern devices, will these also stop when one expires. Why do these occurrences take place? Does your smart phones stop working? Thanks Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 08:57, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Watches (or other devices) stopping after death is a myth, though a google search shows it's a commonly believed one. For old analogue watches this was sometimes true in the case of violent deaths, such as accidents or fights, where a broken watch could sometimes jam the hands at the current time. Also in the days of wind-up watches, where most had to be would daily, a mechanical watch with a date function could indicate the approximate date of death when remains were found after a a considerable time. -- Q Chris (talk) 09:16, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

It could be a legend started from a past frequent wished-it-was-so. If you were to come upon a person lying on the ground and you would first check their wrist in order to find their pulse, it was much better that this wrist was without a watch ticking, for your later memories if that person could not have been revived. Clocks can be a very obsessive detail in association with something turned into failing. --Askedonty (talk) 09:49, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

There could be many reasons why a wind-up watch would stop around the time of death:

1. The damage caused to the watch, as mentioned above, by a violent death. This would indicate the exact time of death.

2. There could be a cause subsequent to the death, like a fire if they dropped their cigarette, or a car accident if they were driving at the time, which stops the watch. This watch would indicate a time slightly after the death.

3. The watch could just run down, with nobody to wind it. It wouldn't indicate the exact time of death, in this case.

4. If the person died of disease, then they may have been sick before dying, and have not been able to wind their watch. Again, it wouldn't indicate the exact time of death in this case.

So, for all these reasons, finding a dead person with a stopped wind-up watch would have been fairly common, hence the myth. As for digital watches or other electronic devices, these are less likely to stop, because they run much longer before the battery dies, and, if they do stop, they typically don't show the time they stopped, even if a new battery is inserted. SinisterLefty (talk) 14:02, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

I think that the legend/myth goes beyond the physical damage to watches. There are a lot of references to clocks stopping, as exemplified in My Grandfather's Clock. Conversely it was supposed to bring bring bad luck if you didn't stop a clock when someone died. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:53, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Maybe we need a separate Tall Tales ref desk. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:41, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Say, a cheap wind-up watch would often have lasted not much more than one year before the spring became unsuitable. Before the second half of that period you would already have been winding it (up?) more than once a day. --Askedonty (talk) 17:32, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• Anecdote time: My analogue watch stopped at the moment my Dad passed away in 1994. He was 2 hours drive away from me, and my watch did not have a history of stopping at random times. I wasn't told he'd died till about 20 minutes later. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:09, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you Jack! It is exactly to this, as of yet unexplained by science, incident to which I was referring. Some may term this supernatural, a term I disagree with. It is a known phenomena, which has not yet been fully explained by science. Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 08:55, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

See confirmation bias. SinisterLefty (talk) 09:04, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

In line with above link, consider how many people who die wear a watch, or have friends or relatives who wear a watch, or die in proximity to a clock... so basically everyone. Clocks and watches can stop. It is simply inevitable, given the number of people and the number of watches, that out of all the billions of people who have ever died, a not-insignificant number of them will have died around the same time that a nearby time-keeping device stopped working. Demanding an explanation for a coincidence is profoundly unscientific when there is no evidence to suggest it is more than that. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:10, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, and that's just if there is no correlation. But I listed several ways they might correlate, in the form of death causing the watch to stop (such as a fire caused by a cigarette in the dead man's mouth) or an event causing both death and the watch to stop (like illness, preventing winding of the watch prior to death). Rarely does the watch stopping cause death, but I suppose they might forget to take their critical meds if the watch alarm doesn't go off, because the watch had stopped. SinisterLefty (talk) 10:24, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

In one of the Marx Brothers movies, Groucho is a horse doctor pretending to be a human doctor. He holds someone's wrist to take a pulse while looking at his watch. A few seconds go by, and then he says, "Either this man is dead, or my watch has stopped." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:33, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I never got that. If the person is dead, there's no pulse. If his watch stopped there's a pulse but the second hand doesn't move. Where's the confusion ? Was he implying he normally confuses the ticking of the watch with the pulse ? SinisterLefty (talk) 14:56, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

@SinisterLefty:, No to your last question: the fact that it's illogical is what makes it funny. Much of Groucho's quick-fire humour involves him saying something that momentarily sounds reasonable, but is actually paradoxical or nonsensical when you stop to think about it, by which time he's already halfway into the next joke. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.217.209.178 (talk) 16:48, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

OK. I was hoping there was something more to it than nonsense. I prefer the reverse, jokes you have to think about, but have a deeper meaning when you do. Multiple levels. SinisterLefty (talk) 17:36, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

You can touch some grandfatherly necks for well over a second without feeling a kick. And if you do, you still need to hang on a while to make sure you didn't just catch the ending and, if you're really patient, estimate a heart rate in beats per minute. If you have no beats or no minutes, you get the same 0 BPM. But the joke still doesn't work in modern comedy, because we're programmed to believe division by zero should result in something tragic, or at least something more absurd than routine medical incompetence. That hasn't been funny since Joan Rivers wound down on that drug-dealing clown's watch. Frequency matters more than volume in our ability to wake up, people! InedibleHulk (talk) 04:20, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Teachers statistics

For an article in the German WP, I am researching facts about teachers' education in the U.S. Unfortunately I seem not to be able to find an absolute number of (undergraduate) college students who either graduate every year to become teachers or who successfully are being licensed or certified to work as teachers. A number for a more recent year would be ideal, but I take anything. Can anybody help and possibly give a link to a website that I must have overlooked? Thanks a lot in advance, --Stilfehler (talk) 13:18, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Are you aware that teacher certification is handled at the State level... and that each State has different criteria for teacher training? There is no uniform system in the US, and so the statistics you are looking for may not exist. Blueboar (talk) 14:12, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

I know. I found that there are some US-wide statistics (overall numbers of teachers, age, etc.) and that there are statistics of new students who enroll for law school, nationwide (law school is a state thing as well), so I was dreaming of somebody counting future resp. new teachers, too... :-) --Stilfehler (talk) 14:45, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

There's a shit-ton of statistics tables here to click through. That website may also have additional pages that have the data you are looking for. I would start there for your research. --Jayron32 17:54, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, I will check that out! --Stilfehler (talk) 20:31, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

defying a subpoena

If I receive a subpoena and ignore it or defy it, I will get arrested and charged. No one is supposed to be above the law. Why do those who blatantly defy the subpoenas to testify re: the impeachment not get arrested and charged? I would think that doing so would be a very powerful statement to the public at large that it is a fact that no one is above the law. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.223.104.13 (talk) 13:57, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

See (US) contempt of Congress. It's rare that it ever gets to the stage of imprisonment, however. Also, as a practical matter, if the person flees Washington DC (or were never there to begin with), they may be difficult to capture. SinisterLefty (talk) 14:03, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Keep in mind Richard Nixon's belief that "If the president does it, it's not a crime" - and, by extension, anyone who is following his orders. As to the various defiances, every time they do that, it's just another item on the "Obstruction of Justice" checklist, which is getting pretty lengthy by now. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:35, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Also, also keep in mind that there is often some time between defying a subpoena and the due process necessary to charge and process someone with contempt. The rule of law still applies to people who ignore subpoenas, and it takes time for them to be charged with and processed for contempt charges (either of court or of Congress). Given that, the OP's presumption that nothing will happen to people who have defied the recent Congressional subpoena is an open question. It's literally things that have happened over the last few days, there are literally court cases right now which have been filed and which are currently deliberating over what to do in these cases. The OP needs to understand that in a civilized society, we don't just drag people behind the shed and take care of them, there is due process and due process takes time. The reason "why has nothing been done" is "because there hasn't been enough time for anyone to do anything yet". Let it work itself out before asking your questions about it. We're still in the midst of it. --Jayron32 17:51, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

As we've seen with Trump's many executive orders (or Obama's, for that matter), legal challenges put up roadblocks, and with the various legal arguing on both sides, his term might be over before a lot of things are decided. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:57, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, at some point "justice delayed = justice denied". SinisterLefty (talk) 05:43, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

As is justice rushed. --Jayron32 12:58, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Depends on what you mean by rushed. There is the right to a speedy trial. There needs to be a reasonable amount of time to prepare a defense, of course. SinisterLefty (talk) 14:53, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

In the U.S. at least, you can challenge a judicial subpoena in court, though it is true that if you lose all your challenges you will eventually face penalties if you don't comply. As the Contempt of Congress article discusses, Congressional subpoenas are a rather different beast, and also I think the Trump Administration is claiming executive privilege, which itself is fairly nebulous. The best way to think about this is as a conflict between the executive and legislature. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 06:17, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

The US constitution envisions a system of checks and balances, and checking the powers of other branches requires knowledge of what they are doing, hence the use of subpoenas by the legislative branch against the executive branch. The reverse, investigations by the executive branch of the legislative branch, say for taking bribes, would be performed by the FBI or other executive departments, which could use the normal courts to obtain subpoenas. SinisterLefty (talk) 06:44, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

One of G. Gordon Liddy's applause lines in his post-prison speaking career was that he was convicted of contempt of congress, but that it was ok since he was actually guilty of that: "I really do have contempt for Congress" (audience applauds). 173.228.123.207 (talk) 10:22, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Contempt for the rule of law, actually. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:29, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Wow, Jayron. It was just a simple question. As I don't fully understand the intricacies of politics, it seems lengthy so I asked a question. 142.46.150.122 (talk) 17:59, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

The answer to your question is simple: one of the main reasons why they have not been arrested and charged with contempt, as yet, is that the legal proceedings which would generate a charge of contempt have not happened yet. When you asked your question, not enough time had passed for such proceedings to occur. The implication that there would be no consequences is an impossible conclusion to reach in such a short period of time. There very well may be consequences; but to conclude that the consequences have not happened within a few hours or a day or so after the event is a a bit unreasonable. I also noted, as a side note, that the matter is already before a court of law, see here. You're asking for answer to questions where the matters are still active and have not yet been resolved. Give it a little time. --Jayron32 18:43, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

USS John C. Stennis

How did such a prestigious ship (commissioned on 9 December 1995) come to be named after "an ardent segregationist and opponent of most civil rights legislation in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s", given the multicultural nature of the modern USA? Ericoides (talk) 20:24, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

So what!? Maybe in 10 years they name one after Trump. In the US political correctness is not as important as sticking to some "tradition" or worldview, for a big part of society. Remember, nearly 40% of the US population still believes in Creationism. --Kharon (talk) 21:00, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Because there were a lot of other aspects to Stennis. And because he'd died the year it was commissioned. And because Stennis was known the "Father of America's modern navy." --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 21:24, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

(ec) Congress passed a law urging the navy to do so, and Ronald Reagan and Secretary William L. Ball[1] made the decision. Google for "The father of America's modern Navy."—eric 21:30, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

There was even a nuclear submarine named USS Robert E. Lee--do the math. 173.228.123.207 (talk) 10:30, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

The maths doesn't look great, thanks. Ericoides (talk) 11:20, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

A wise person once said "America is so racist, that any criticism of racism is automatically taken as a criticism of America itself". --Jayron32 13:00, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Groucho Marx? Gem fr (talk) 22:58, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

In the UK, the Royal Navy generally avoids naming ships after politicians, the only exceptions I can think of are HMS Churchill and HMS Iron Duke (named after the Duke of Wellington, a brilliant general but a terrible prime minister). Alansplodge (talk) 17:15, 7 November 2019 (UTC)