Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 December 7

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December 7

Mail cover scanning in the US

I read Mail cover and Mail Isolation Control and Tracking but still am confused by the scope of the program. On one hand it sounds like a limited program that only tracks potential suspects ("15,000 to 20,000 criminal activity requests each year") by law enforcement agency requests. On the other hand, "Since 2001, the Postal Service has been effectively conducting mail covers on all American postal mail as part of the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program." makes it sound like it covers everyone. Which one is it? 731Butai (talk) 08:44, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

The articles appears to be poorly worded in parts but if you read them carefully they seem to refer to different things.

Presuming you trust the US government, MICT involves automated the recording on information by the USPS, but it isn't sent to law enforcement unless they request it and is normally deleted within a week to 30 days. It's possible there is some agency which has or does requested all the information is forwarded to them and this is complied with, our article at least doesn't seem to contain any denials or statements which would seem to deny this. But either way it's automated with any targetting normally happening after the fact.

Mail cover involves law enforcement specifically requesting that the information is recorded which is definitely sent to whoever requested it (who probably keep it forever). It's possible that MICT is used to record the information for mail cover, but the information in the NYT source [1] makes me think it's probable that the two programmes are running simultaneously and the information for mail cover is often recorded seperately and partially manually. (Which would make sense, automated systems always have the possibility of missing stuff or otherwise having errors. If there's someone you are targetting you likely want to make sure you get all the information all the time.) It's also possible, perhaps even probable that at least until recently, not all law enforcement agencies in the US were even aware of the MICT or provided access to it. Some who weren't may have been made aware when they made a mail cover request but again, it wouldn't be surprising if some simply weren't told or provided with the MICT information.

Nil Einne (talk) 10:38, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

The confusion between individual "mail covers" and the mass photography goes back to the source [2] which isn't especially clear - my guess is the government's programs themselves are duplicated and fragmented.

There is so much we don't know, that I don't think anyone is going to tell us. For example, "photographed" is a broad term. Researchers have been able to read charred papyri in sealed clay jars that would have crumbled to ashes if opened. What are the odds that the U.S. government, with such interest in drugs hidden in envelopes, does not look deeply into the mail? Also, the NSA famously intercepts communications ... what are the odds that the photos of mail are not transmitted over a link subject (without the Post Office's formal knowledge, perhaps) to such surveillance, and thus permanent archiving in their Utah facility? Wnt (talk) 13:55, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Who is the person in the photo illustrating Franz-Joseph Müller von Reichenstein?

Who is the person in the photograph currently used to illustrate the article on Franz-Joseph Müller von Reichenstein (d. 1825)?

It is obviously not the subject of the article, even though wikipedians in several language versions seem to have thought so. Not only they have thought so, but the Romanian Post and their stamp designers have thought so too. --Hegvald (talk) 10:11, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, he seems to have died about 15 years before the first photographic portrait which was made in October 1839. Alansplodge (talk) 11:09, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

The same image (this time redrawn in what appear to be pastels) was also used on Austrian stamps, and given that the stamps are from 1992, it seems likely that the portrait confusion goes back at least to the pre-internet age. Smurrayinchester 13:57, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

The Austrian version looks a bit chubbier than the photo - too much strudel perhaps? Alansplodge (talk) 15:59, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Is it possible (and I admit I'm speculating here) that the image is not a photograph? Gabbe (talk) 12:45, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

And to follow up with the next question that needs to be asked: is there a more plausible portrait of Müller von Reichenstein somewhere? --Hegvald (talk) 10:14, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Has anyone who can read Hungarian checked the PDF given as the source of the photo? (And I am 99 percent certain it's a photo, not a painting or etching.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:42, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

The PDF certainly has the picture accurately labeled as Müller (to give him his Hungarian name, Müller Ferenc József) and is about the correct topic. Smurrayinchester 13:57, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

The image looks like a photograph. Possibly it is a photograph of a painted portrait. —Psychonaut (talk) 14:03, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Even if it were a painting (and I'm about as certain as Bugs that it isn't one), I'd be extremely surprised if it was any earlier than the 1860s or 1870s, judging by the style of clothing. The Hungarian source is from an article on the discovery of Tellurium, in an e-journal hosted by the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (no idea why they'd publish on topics like that), of unknown reliability, and as far as I can see it offers no further source information on the picture either. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:10, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

I doubt this is even a photo of a painting of the tellurium-discoverer. Compare the portrait of his contemporary Martin Heinrich Klaproth. --Cam (talk) 20:05, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

I suspect that it is a photo of Franz Joseph Müller von Reichenstein, but not the same one who discovered tellurium. Perhaps his non-notable grandson or great-grandson 50 years after the notable ancestor's death. My guess is that some overburdened editor or research assistant found the photo with that name attached to it somewhere, and then published it as the photo of the scientific discoverer. Marco polo (talk) 20:19, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

A possible candidate for the man in the photograph is German politician Franz Joseph Müller (1830-1908). But with this degree of improbable confusion (I can't understand how so many people could have mistaken this for a man who would have been this age around 1800), it may just as well be any other late 19th century person of the same name. --Hegvald (talk) 18:48, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

It does not seem to match indeed, see the second picture in the following link about Ehingen (Donau) --Askedonty (talk) 20:08, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. The shape of nose, eyebrows and cheekbones are quite different. Curiouser and curiouser! --Hegvald (talk) 21:55, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

This might be light rays captured by another form of life in the universe and sent back to Earth. Bus stop (talk) 13:52, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Eugene B. Dinkin

Eugene B. Dinkin is mentioned in our John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories article in a way that is relatively consistent with the theories themselves [3]. Question: are there any verifiable source documents from his FBI file, commitment proceedings, or press conference that predate the assassination, thereby convincing us something really happened? Alternatively, is there a convincing debunk? Wnt (talk) 20:23, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Why is the French football league not as good as Serie A?

France beats Italy and Spain in GDP. Shouldn't Ligue 1 I think it's called (thanks the Economist!) be on par with Serie A at least? Since France has a large pool of Francophone nations with similarities in culture to draw on and Italy not so much? (Argentina and Uruguay maybe but they speak Spanish so maybe they'd rather play for (or at least against) the giants of Barca or Real Madrid) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:18, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

National Football programs in Europe are ranked by the UEFA coefficient. Read more if you want to. Why? questions can only usually be answered by speculation, which I will not do because I follow the rules. Others below me however, will proceed to make up random rationales to answer your question. Unless they link to reliable sources that give an analysis to answer your question, you can ignore them. --Jayron32 02:16, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

The United States beats France, Italy and Spain in GDP (whether per capita or straight) and has an even larger pool of Commonwealth and former Commonwealth countries with similarities in language. Shouldn't...... Nil Einne (talk) 19:47, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

What does "not as good" mean? Do you mean in terms of winning UEFA tournaments? If so, you're self-evidently correct.

One explanation could be the "strength in depth" argument, often put forward for the same issue relating to the English Premier League (here's a typical source deriding the lack of "strength in depth" in the Bundesliga and La Liga). Look at the last 10 years of French champions and you'll see six different names. The Spanish equivalent has just three names, and one of them crops up just once. That's one measure of strength in depth.

But... it's a flawed argument: this article from 2014, pointed out that at that point, there were 8 teams left competing for UEFA titles and 4 of them were Spanish, which implies great strength in depth.

So, that's not helped us much.

If, by "not as good" you meant not attracting the big stars, I equally think you're correct and that comes down to money as much as anything else. The top French league clubs seem to have less money than their Spanish, Italian and English equivalents. Deloitte publish a football money league and in the last edition I can find (Jan 2014) Paris St Germain were the only French team in the top 20, compared to six English, three Spanish, four German and four Italian. Even Turkey had two clubs in the top 20. And this was before that year's Spanish domination, I alluded to earlier.

Why French football attracts less money is another question. It could be to do with the status of football (versus, say, rugby), could be French socialist leanings, could be to do with the way their TV marketplace works (as TV, especially Champions League success, generates most of the money in football) or could be a chicken-and-egg related to lack of success in the Champions League especially, but this is all POV that Jayron warned you about.

Ultimately, it's hard to answer your question. --Dweller (talk) 11:14, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

This is slightly original research, but I suspect a lot of it is owing to the distribution of the French population. With the exception of Paris, there are no major population centres in France (the next largest cities after Paris are Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with populations of around 800,000, 500,000 and 400,000 respectively), making it far harder for French teams to accumulate the critical mass of fans necessary to negotiate favourable TV licensing deals. With the exception of Borussia Dortmund (which although from a relatively small town, has a catchment area encompassing the whole of the Ruhr), Parma (at the time, bankrolled by the huge resources of Parmalat), and Marseilles (who bribed their way to the title and were banned from European competition as a result), no small-town team has ever won the Champions League or UEFA Cup/Europa League in the Champions League era. ‑ Iridescent 11:33, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

The same population distribution is roughly true in England also. Aside from London, the next three largest cities are in order Birmingham (population 1,000,000), Leeds (population 750,000) and Sheffield (population 550,000) (see Core Cities Group for data). So that can't be the reason, especially since the 5th largest city in the UK (Manchester) supports not one but TWO highly successful teams (Manchester United FC and Manchester City FC. --Jayron32 21:29, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Where are you getting those figures, or Manchester as "fifth largest city", from? Are you sure you're not looking at the historic City of Manchester, which is just a small part of the modern city in the same way that the City of London technically only has a population of about 7500? Manchester has a population of 3.3 million, 2.5 million or 2.7 million depending on which definition you take, while Birmingham is a small part of the West Midlands conurbation with a population of about 3 million. (Manchester City FC isn't really any kind of indicator of anything, FWIW; their recent success is purely owing to the limitless supply of oil money. Prior to their acquisition by Abu Dhabi they were languishing in the lower leagues.) ‑ Iridescent 00:52, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

The strength in depth argument definitely doesn't answer it. 6 different French clubs winning it in the last 10 years is actually fairly diverse. For all the arguments about the English Premier league's "strength in depth" the statistics say the opposite: only 3 clubs have actually won the EPL in 11 years and only 4 in twenty years, while only 6 clubs have finished in the top 4 in the last 10 years. All the other top European leagues score better in these metrics. I suspect the answer to this question lies in economic factors which in turn create a vicious circle. This source mentions wage differentials as a factor, but that takes us back to the chicken egg argument. This source does give some details on the ebbs and flows of Serie A strength. Valenciano (talk) 09:05, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Chinese Exclusion Act

Why was the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in the US, even though no law banning Irish immigration was passed? --Bowlhover (talk) 22:46, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Racism. --Jayron32 02:13, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

That's not the whole answer because the Irish were considered a separate race, and widely hated for it: [4] --Bowlhover (talk) 03:37, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but at least they were a white race. --Jayron32 03:44, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Here in the town of Rock Ridge, some of us wanted to exclude the Irish, but we got overruled. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:48, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

The anti-Irish (and anti-Catholic) Know Nothing movement lost influence during the crisis leading to the civil war where 150,000 Irish Americans would serve on the side of the Union (Irish Americans in the American Civil War). Rmhermen (talk) 18:35, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

It's ironic that the southern slaveholders thought their slaves to be of greater value than their own sons. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:16, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) And just to verify that there were acts passed which were tacitly anti-Irish, though the Wikipedia articles doesn't mention it (and the original act didn't specific specifically) the Alien and Sedition Acts were enforced disproportionately against recent Irish immigrants; the article on the Naturalization Act of 1798 specifies both the Irish and the French as targets, and if you search for "Alien and Sedition Acts Irish" in Google, you'll get lots of good articles about how the acts were used specifically against the Irish. However, the time period when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed was an entirely different era. The target of American racism had shifted by then. The problem people are making above is the assumption that the entire past happened simultaneously, in this case we're looking at a gap of almost 90 years. By the 1880s, the Irish had begun moving into positions of political power, especially in the Northeastern U.S, and the Scots Irish had similarly become politically powerful in the southeastern U.S. Irish wasn't considered a people to hate by then. --Jayron32 19:24, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I get the impression that opposition to Irish immigration, the "no Irish need apply" stuff, etc. was often related to their religion, in part because my frequent reading in Scots-Irish Presbyterian documents never seems to mention facing opposition that's at all comparable. American Presbyterianism was heavily Scots-Irish well into the nineteenth century, and while they got plenty of opposition on other grounds (lots of them settled in Southern Appalachia and opposed slavery, which caused problems, and their active advocacy for temperance and sabbatarianism of course got lots of opposition), it generally wasn't on ethnic grounds, at least among the people whose works I've been reading. Opposing Scots-Irish Presbyterians as a group on nativist or Know-Nothingist bases would have been rather odd, due in large part to their heavy representation in politics as early as the Revolution; James Caldwell (clergyman) and Joseph Montgomery would have been rather well known among the well educated, and according to this page (never seen the site before, so I don't know how solid they are on historical matters), 8 of the 55 delegates to the Philadelphia Convention were Presbyterians. Final note: remember that the Scots-Irish were the result of the Plantation of Ulster, whereby Protestant (mostly Presbyterian) Scots were settled in Ireland; the religious differences restricted intermarriage with the preëxisting Irish Catholics, so for the anti-Irish partisan who was talking about matters of race and ethnicity, making a distinction on these grounds wouldn't have been too far-fetched. Nyttend (talk) 04:58, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Why are some bishops called a "Primate"?

I learned today that some bishops and archbishops are given the rank "Primate". Is this related in anyway to our furry cousins, or is it tied to the word "Prime"? The related wiki pages don't appear to explain this. Thanks. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 23:30, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

The do share a etymological root. The Online Etymology Dictionary explains:

primate (n.)

"high bishop," c. 1200, from Old French primat and directly from Medieval Latin primatem (nominative primas) "church primate," noun use of Late Latin adjective primas "of the first rank, chief, principal," from primus "first" (see prime (adj.)).

Meaning "animal of the biological order including monkeys and humans" is attested from 1876, from Modern Latin Primates (Linnæus), from plural of Latin primas; so called from supposedly being the "highest" order of mammals (originally also including bats).

Neutrality^talk 23:45, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Any idea what bats did to deserve the demotion? Echolocation and flight are certainly grounds for differentiation, but if anything, it should've bumped the others down instead. Are Secundates a thing? I'd wager it had something to with pride (superbia), but I can't quite put my greatly elongated metacarpal on it. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:27, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

A-ha! Flying primate hypothesis and superior colliculus. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:32, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Not just Bishops and Archbishops, the Pope is a Primate. A Cardinal becomes the Primate of Italy the instant he becomes Pope. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:00, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

A pope is a bishop too - the bishop of Rome. Neutrality^talk 00:30, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

But he outranks the other bishops. Isn't the Pope still a priest, too? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:43, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

The pope is not required to be a priest at the time of election. If he is not a priest, then presumably he is also not a bishop, so he would be immediately ordained as a bishop as soon as he accepts his election. I am not entirely clear on whether that also makes him a priest. --Trovatore (talk) 02:53, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I've read that they'd do the ordination ceremony for a priest immediately followed by the ordination ceremony for a bishop and then the one for a Pope. I think there might be one more step in there, either Cardinal or Deacon. It is unlikely they'd vote a layperson the Pope in real life, though. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:09, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Leo X (1513) was the last pope not to be a priest (although he was a lay cardinal). He was ordained priest six days after his coronation, and bishop two days later. Tevildo (talk) 21:34, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

• I read somewhere – possibly in Frederick Rolfe's petulant fantasy Hadrian the Seventh – that the ordination ceremonies step quickly through several vestigial ranks, none of which are now separately occupied. —Tamfang (talk) 12:52, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the informative responses. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 00:14, 8 December 2015 (UTC)