Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 August 5

A painting of The Victorian Lady has been recently painted by Alex Bonjour and is currently up on the web. However, I know this painting was done originally in the 18c or 19c but I do not know the name of the original artist. The lady in the original painting is an American lady. I have seen a copy of the original painting but cannot make out the Artist name. (87.192.145.145 (talk) 07:24, 5 August 2011 (UTC))[reply]

It's 'Alix'. It seems to be a version of this, which the site says is unsigned. --Frumpo (talk) 08:05, 5 August 2011 (UTC). I've assumed 'Alix Beaujour'. Is that right? --Frumpo (talk) 08:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC) [reply]

But now I'm intrigued. Is the original artwork well-known? That's not the impression I get from the auction website and when I used tin-eye I didn't find it elsewhere on the web, so where did Alix Beaujour come across it? --Frumpo (talk) 09:54, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Book? Magazine? 92.24.188.168 (talk) 13:45, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If he wanted to restart civilization, why did he exclude rural people from his killing program? Those rural people were accustomed with the existing civilization, so how did he vision forming a new civilization with these people? --Reference Desker (talk) 09:56, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe he just hadn't gotten around to killing them yet. Genocide takes time. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:40, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Khmer Rouge did not want to restart civilization completely from scratch. They were obviously willing to make use of existing cultural elements such as language and themselves used various modern technologies. What they objected to was western culture and capitalism, both of which they believed had thoroughly corrupted the economy and culture of Cambodia's cities. So, their goal was to wipe out that urban culture and the people who carried it. They did not target rural people to the same degree, since they valued elements of peasant culture and sought to work with peasants to build an agrarian-based communist society. Marco polo (talk) 14:16, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There was also an anti-intellectual element to the genocide, such as killing teachers and anyone wearing glasses, both of whom were assumed to be more intelligent. StuRat (talk) 14:20, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pol Pot was a two-penny dictator interested in creating a cult of personality whereby he (and his regime) could be secure in their power in ruling Cambodia. He did this by murdering those people who posed the greatest threat to his security: Intellectuals and people with property and means. He left alive those people who could most easily be cowed: rural subsistance farmers who had no means to resist his rule. Like every single authoritarian dictator in history, he overlayed his desire for total power with a sort-of ex-post-facto justification cloaked in Marxist dogma; that is he basically created a rationale to cover the fact that he's just a brutal dictator with a lust for power. Don't ever look too deep into the cover story for why brutal regimes like Pol Pot do what they do; if they were more concerned with creating a better society, then they would be secure with not being the ones in charge of it. Authoritarianism is its own ends. --Jayron32 16:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Would rural people really be less able to resist his rule? Rural people are more likely to have access to guns and other hunting weapons, large knives and tools (e.g. for butchering, farming, building), and food and other means of subsistence, and it's typically easier to hide in the jungle/forest/hills than in a city. I suspect Marco Polo's answer is closer to the truth. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:50, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Rural people have less access to media and education, less access to information about the world around them, and are more likely to accept the world as presented simply for lack of access to possible better worlds. Having guns is not necessarily a major factor in presenting resistance to a brutal regime. The most important factor in a resistance movement is a willingness to resist, Pol Pot had no reason to be concerned about unorganized random farmers with primitive hunting rifles. You don't have to eliminate the people with the guns. Guns are trivial to obtain. You have to eliminate the people who are likely to want to use the guns against you. That was the goal of Pol Pots program. It is the goal of all authoritarian regimes. The touchstone, the true test of a revolutionary program which seeks to improve the lives of the downtrodden and make a better society is whether or not the people implementing the program aren't concerned with their own involvement thereof; whether the idea is more important than the personality. In the case of the Khmer Rouge and other authoritarian regimes of the same ilk, there is no empirical evidence (i.e., nothing based on the actions they took, rather than the things they said) that they intended to do anything except concentrate power in their own hands and eliminate all possible rivals. Actions, not words, are the only thing we should use to understand intent. Nothing in the Khmer Rouge's actions indicate that they gave anything except lip-service to their cover story of making a "better society". --Jayron32 17:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I do not disagree with Jayron. In fact, I agree that the primary motivation of the Khmer Rouge was to exercise and retain power. Above I was merely stating their rationale. Marco polo (talk) 18:41, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Khmer Rouge was Maoist, and Maoism differs from Marxism in one crucial way that's relevant here: Marxism looks for the revolution to come from the industrial workers, but Maoism sees the farmers as the revolutionaries. You're obviously not going to try to foment a complete revolution by killing off your entire power base. Nyttend (talk) 20:29, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The could have been facist anarchists, but it would have changed the core motivation for their actions, as evidenced by those actions themselves. Assigning labels to abhorrant behavior doesn't excuse it, and the cover story for their murders doesn't make the murders more palatable. They were brutal, power-hungry madmen, and found a convenient philosophy in Maoism that allowed them to excuse their consolidation of power and brutal policies to do so. Calling them Maoists is like calling Jeffery Dahmer an experimental chef. Sure, they used Maoism as the cover to excuse their behavior, but that doesn't necessarily make them ideologues. --Jayron32 20:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There have been many evil dictatorships throughout history, but there's only been one that tried the kind of massive agrarian/communist human experiment the Khmer Rouge tried on that scale. Some of the Khmer Rouge leaders got into communism while studying in Europe. The Khmer Rouge were not your typical Third World caudillos who sought power for power's sake but ideologues who sought to use a whole country as an experiment for their radical theories. The Khmer Rouge are called "Maoist" because Mao was also an agrarian communist. It's not a matter of trying to excuse anyone's behavior buy an attempt to explain the ideology in a simple manner. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I've a question here. We have seen other totalitarian dictators such as Stalin. But for any dictator, to maintain their power, they need a strong military and for that purpose they need an industrial economy. Stalin understood this, and for this purpose he emphasized heavy industry, and USSR made achievement in the field of heavy industry even though the standard of living was low and there was scarcity of consumer goods. But if Pol Pot wanted to establish a long-time authoritarian regime, how did he planned his future regime? He destroyed industrial economy, so how did he plan to keep a military to safeguard his power? --Reference Desker (talk) 06:46, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The author who best explains the beliefs and actions of the Khmer Rouge is Ben Kiernan. My limited understanding is this. Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, (or was it Khieu Samphan or all three?) were students in Paris in the 1950s. They were members of or close to the French Communist Party (PCF). Pol Pot wrote his thesis about the economy of Cambodia. The argument they developed wasn't orthodox in PCF terms; it owed a lot to third-worldism. They said that Cambodia was still in a feudal state, with no industry, that landowners were oppressing the peasantry, and that the peasantry had to free themselves and couldn't expect any help from urban industrial workers (because there weren't any). The mainstream view of Cambodia was that it was a land of happy peasants, without large landholdings. Pol Pot therefore argued that the supposedly happy peasants were oppressed by creditors who imposed massive rates of interest and held people in debt bondage, and that the towns were in essence oppressing the countryside. What happened next is that they ran one of the factions in the Cambodian communist party (Khmer Rouge) and organised a guerrilla struggle in the countryside. Cambodia was massively bombed during the Vietnam War, the Sino-Soviet split happened, their faction was loosely allied with the Chinese. As well as Maoist (called Marxist-Leninist) ideas about peasant guerilla movements, they drew on nationalism, xenophobia and peasants' resentment against townspeople. They were the dominant faction in the Khmer Rouge when the Vietnam War ended and they were in a position to take control of Cambodia. Their command was never very secure, and they were extremely paranoid, they used child soldiers to carry out massacres, and a vicious circle of paranoia-murder-popular opposition set in. There are a lessons for everyone in the story, I think, so long as you are willing to challenge your own preconceptions. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:01, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You may recollect better than I, Itsmejudith, but didn't one of the inner circle do their doctorate in Paris on the liquidation of class enemies as the physical liquidation of the constituent members of that class? Another point to remember is that the Khmer Rouge did systematically attack rural communities as part of their genocide. The Khmer Rouge attempted to disrupt the communities of and physically eliminate ethnically Vietnamese Cambodians. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Which status did Bianca Cappello have? I am not sure I understand her article correctly. The article seem to say that her marriage was not morganatic. She was given the title Duchess of Florence. But if the marriage was not morganatic, then why was she not given the title Grand Duchess of Tuscany? In short; which status did she have? Thank you. --Aciram (talk) 13:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

1) Why cannot economics explain and predict recent slumps and other bad things in the economy(s)? 2) Why does there not seem to be a model of what the best conditions for growth are?

3) Economics has been studied for over a hundred years as far as I aware, but it still dosnt seem to know what its doing. Why not? 92.24.179.252 (talk) 19:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Economic forecasting relies on a whole heap of unknowns. Will a natural disaster disrupt a major center of economic production? Will unprecedented political squabbling turn a routine economic decision into a near-default? Will changes in regulation lead to vast amounts of predatory lending, which in turn will eventually lead to massive loan defaulting? Will a much-lauded, major corporation suddenly turn out to be based entirely on cooked books? The economy is a big, unruly, complicated, interconnected, messy system. There are a lot of unknown factors.

Economics, like most sciences and quasi-sciences, is based on simplified models or aggregate indices. It's not great at all the details.

Beyond that, there are a lot of other, more mundane factors. Many economists are advisors for major corporations. When the economy is going well, they do pretty well. So even when there are people warning that a big crisis is on the horizon, there are a lot of people who tend not to see it. This occurred during the 2008 crisis, where economists who predicted a looming problem were essentially marginalized and called pessimists. Additionally, most economic models are based on past evidence. The problem is that the economic world is constantly changing, and predicting the effects of those changes is a chancy game at best anyway. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:22, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Economies involve people, and people do not always operate in a logical or consistent manner. Thus even if you were to magically know all the variables, you still might not end up with exactly the right prediction for what happens because you could run the exact scenario 10 times and get a different result each time. Googlemeister (talk) 20:33, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

They don't have the maths for predicting complex systems, which have lots of independent variables. Despise that, they still make predictions about everything economics, when asked. They are normally predicting that the 2008 crisis will end in two years. A better question would be, why don't economists admit that they are crappy at making predictions? Quest09 (talk) 21:28, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Meh, Quest. There are so many statistical biases involved in your generalisation that most economic predictions are wrong it's hardly worth addressing. Most predictions an economist will ever make will be right, at least in general term. As for why they make them, well, that's their job. To predict how markets will act and to suggest strategies for improving them. I hope that answers your point. But it's rather off topic and forum-y.

As for the OP, well, most of economics works. You just don't see that bit. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 22:02, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, for one, people don't always listen to what economists say. A lot of economists may say, for example, that the U.S. should eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction, cut business tax levels and put on a value added tax, or raise taxes and cut spending when the economy is good so you'll have more money around for when the economy goes into a recession. Governments don't necessarily do those things. It's also worth remembering that things were a lot worse before economics got to where it is today. Before the emergence of modern monetary and fiscal policies, there would be an economic "panic" every 20 years or so. This culminated in the Great Depression, when the government and Federal Reserve did the exact opposite of what they're expected to do nowadays during a crisis (they tried to restrain spending and contract the money supply). If the government had slashed spending instead of trying stimulus in the recession, and if the Fed had hiked interest rates instead of cutting them, we might be looking at 25% unemployment instead of 9%. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:33, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say "most predictions are wrong" and I don't believe it. Indeed, I believe that they are meaningless, equivalent to a random number generator. Quest09 (talk) 22:21, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say the constantly changing economic system is the problem. In the US, for example, we've only had "minimal regulation and minimal progressive taxes, combined with free markets" for a few decades. So, lessons learned in the centuries before don't really apply. StuRat (talk) 22:18, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What evidence do you have that economics cannot explain and predict "recent slumps and other bad things in the economy(s)" and that there does not seem to be a model of what the best conditions for growth are? Mwalcoff is correct. Numerous economists published numerous articles in the popular press for *years* prior to the crash warning that housing policies would likely create a bubble. When the value of the dollar collapses in a few years time, no doubt people will ask why economists didn't see it coming. They saw it coming and they spoke out about it. The problem is that they are largely ignored until it's too late. Wikiant (talk) 22:42, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Open ended predictions are always right. You could also say: 'a comet will hit the earth.' You'd be right, but it's meaningless. Quest09 (talk) 23:04, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing open ended was the timing. The predictions weren't merely that the housing bubble would burst, but that there were specific policies (mortgage interest deduction, community development act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying up mortgages) that were inflating the bubble. Had anyone paid attention at the time, the crisis would have been diminished by reversing those specific policies. Of course, had politicians taken action, the predicted crisis would have been averted and, again, people would be saying that economists can't predict anything. Can't win for losing. Wikiant (talk) 02:18, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing that can be open ended is the timing. Anyway. However, note that listening to predictions of economists won't make them bogus. An economist could say: by proper action a bubble can be deflated, otherwise it will burst the year 2008, and x million people would suffer it, including some abroad. This will turn to be a mayor world economic crisis. I remember that some people talked about a real estate bubble long before 2008, but I don't remember any one who linked that to a economic downturn. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.153.125.105 (talk) 12:07, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How can economists predict the impact on an economy of leading politicians from a party not in power constantly declaring that we're all doomed? (It's certainly happening in Australia right now.) HiLo48 (talk) 22:48, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone point to a published economical prediction (that already happened, or will happen.)? Something like US growth 3.4 next year or dollar 10-15% cheaper in 2012. 193.153.125.105 (talk) 00:34, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that's really a feasible question. There have literally been millions of economic predictions, and there are always going to be people who were "right" to some degree of accuracy -- 9 draws out of 10 *someone* will win the lottery, for example, and that has nothing to do with skill.

Besides, trying to find one (or, probably a better idea, trying to work out the average economic prediction) would open yourself to a whole long list of biases. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 11:25, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you watch economists talk about predictions (which I have done), you can see how loose the "big" predictions are. So Raghuram Rajan said, in 2005, that "perhaps the most important concern is whether banks will be able to provide liquidity to financial markets so that if the tail risk does materialize, financial positions can be unwound and losses allocated so that the consequences to the real economy are minimized." In other words, what if everybody who has a subprime loan stops being able to pay for them — will banks be able to make up for the slack? In 2005 that was a hard thing to know. Lawrence Summers effectively told Rajan that he was being pessimistic — that the conditions for such mass defaults were really unlikely and that the financial system was robust enough to deal with it. Well, who is to say? It's easy to make predictions when there's no way to really know which one is correct. After the fact we can see Rajan was right, Summers was wrong: the risks did materialize, and the banks could not make up for the slack, hence lots of banks defaulting, economic crisis, etc. But all of this is so loose — they both have the same set of facts in front of them, but their predictions as to what millions of loan holders will do, and what the thousands banks will be able to do, are guesses, because neither loan holder nor banks are entirely predictable. If there's a scientific failure, here, it's as much about group psychology as it is economics.

All that being said, there is a legitimate gripe that economists like to make big claims about their ability to forecast, when they're really probably not any better at prediction than meteorologists. ("Whoa — a big cold front is coming on! Oh, never mind, it missed us.") That doesn't mean that economics is bunk, but it does mean that one should not blindly think that the economists actually know everything about what is going on, or that it as "hard" a science as, say, biology or physics. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:38, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem indeed is not as much about the field of economics. Obviously, it is worth pursuing insight into this field. The grip that I, and I believe many others, have is with this lack of integrity, of not admitting how primitive the tools still are. Although you compared economists with meteorologist, I have to say that the latter are more prone to admit that their predictions are maybe only 85% accurate for not farther than 4 days away.

Every major bank or financial institution has economists who predict things like GDP growth or exchange rates. No one is 100% accurate, but some economists are better at forecasting than others. Usually the average forecast of economists for things like GDP shortly before it comes out is close to the actual number. Exchange rates are harder to predict because currencies are things that are bought and sold on the market. If it was obvious that the $1 should equal 100 yen, that would already be the exchange rate. It's like trying to predict where Apple stock will trade in 12 months. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:02, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that statist "economists" are treated as on equal par with free market economists. Sort of like calling both MD's and witch doctors doctors, and wondering what is wrong with medicine. Statist economists back the idea that a certain intervention will serve some moral good, like the housing bubble caused by the notion that bad credit and insufficient is not a potential home-buyers fault. Free martket economists make no such promises, allowing that contractions will occur as people are irrational, but that government overreaction (TARP) makes such matters worse.

This is a political issue.

Statists wish to use magical means--i.e., words on paper commanding that reality conform to wish--to "improve" the free market. The superiority of the free market has been shown over and over again historically. (Do not equate nominally conservative politics with free markets--the Clinton presidency was much better than that of either tax-and-spend Bush presidencies on that score. Do not make the mistake of assuming America or Europe's systems, where the state consumes 40%+ of the GDP, are more capitalistic than China's, where the state taxes about 20% of the GDP.) Free market economists have long predicted the current collapse.

The problem is not the failure of the science of economics, but that we still pretend that witch economists and the politicians they work for are connected in any rational way to reality. μηδείς (talk) 02:19, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I pass by a few medical arts buildings from time to time and wonder... What are the medical arts? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 19:58, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it's a general term, like Medical studies. Google searches find everything from schools of Nursing to Massage Therapy schools to Acupuncture schools. ^Avic_ennasis @ 20:03, 5 Av 5771 / 5 August 2011 (UTC)

From my experience, they're generally buildings that house multiple medical offices of various sorts; I suppose that such a name is meant to convey that it's medical without restricting it to a specific type of medical. Or, you could go with a silly explanation — the medical arts are paintings of doctors :-) Nyttend (talk) 20:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The term "Arts", in the sense of applied imagination and skill, used to extend into the scientific realm too, unlike most modern day usage (as in visual, performing, literary, ... see our article on the arts). The classical seven liberal arts included arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. One of the seven mechanical arts according to Hugh of Saint Victor was medicine (the others were fabric-making, armament, commerce, agriculture, hunting, and theatrics). ---Sluzzelin talk 03:03, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is it very common for a Catholic diocese (other than one that's really new) not to have its own cathedral for a sustained period of time? According to Roman Catholic Diocese of Madison, Saint Raphael's Cathedral burned in 2005, and the diocese hasn't had its own cathedral since then. Nyttend (talk) 20:41, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think in extenuating circumstances like that, there would be a de facto cathedral which would just be the temporary seat church of the bishops of the diocese, or they would use a cathedral from a neighboring diocese. There are many diocese where the so-called "cathedral" is actually a minor church of its own right, and only is the "cathedral" because it serves as the seat of the bishop. Sacred Heart Cathedral in Raleigh, North Carolina could barely qualify as a Chapel under most definitions, and other churches in the diocese are much, much larger. Since the diocese you cite seems to be still in the process of deciding how to handle the burning of the cathedral, it just hasn't decided what to do; whether to rebuild the old cathedral, redesignate an existing church, build a new cathedral at a new location, etc. etc. Its probably not a decision they want to rush into. --Jayron32 20:49, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a minor note, the spelling is Raleigh, named after Sir Walter Raleigh. Falconus^{p t c} 04:40, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a doubly minor note, the keyboard on which I typed that misspelled word, and by extension my fingers, brain, fat ass, and house surrounding all of the above is located in said city. Whoops. I apologize and have corrected said error. It was, of course, spelled without the E when you made your note. --Jayron32 05:07, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I hate it when I do things like that (ever misspell your own name? I sure have...) Falconus^{p t c} 16:36, 6 August 2011 (UTC) [reply]

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin hasn't had a cathedral since the Reformation. It only has a pro-cathedral. The RC hierarchy is still officially hoping to get Christ Church Cathedral back from the Anglicans someday. Pais (talk) 22:11, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think "officially hoping to get it back" is an accurate presentation of the Catholic position. "Officially thinks it still owns it" might slightly less inaccurate, but only slightly. jnestorius^(talk) 16:29, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]