Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 September 20

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September 20

Wives of Margraves of Tuscany

Who are the wives of Boniface, Count of Bologna and Rainier, Margrave of Tuscany?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 04:09, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

From Italian Wikipedia, according to the Archivio Diplomatico Fiorentino (florentine diplomatic archive), Rainier married a countess named Waldrada, doughter of a certain Guglielmo (William). They had a son, also called Ranieri (Rainier)--151.51.24.225 (talk) 11:58, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

translation new constitution of ecuador

Hey,

I'm doing research on the struggle between indigenous peoples and oil companies in Ecuador, and for this I need a translation of the new constitution of Ecuador, as I do not speak spanish. However, I can not find it anywhere online. I looked in wikisources http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Constitutional_documents, but strangely, Ecuador is absent. Also, I could not find this text on the official Ecuador websites, only the spanish version. Does anybody have an idea?

Thanks, 131.211.211.4 (talk) 13:12, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Part of it seems to be included in our article Constitution of Ecuador. Aside from that:

• (1) do you have a research budget? You could hire a translator.
• (2) Or, if there's one crucial bit, you could use a terrible online translator (such as [1] or [2]) and try to identify the bit you need. Then post that paragraph on the Language Reference Desk here and a friendly volunteer is sure to translate it for you.
• (3) Another place to look for help: Spanish-language Wikipedia, either on the talk page for Constitución de Ecuador de 2008 or on their Reference Desk.
  

Best, WikiJedits (talk) 17:59, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion: contact the Ecuadorian embassy or consulate in your (English-speaking?) country. I recommend against relying on online (machine) translations: these are notoriously inaccurate so you're unlikely to get anything useful that way. Approaching a professional translator with the request that you only need the section relevant to your research topic will keep the outlay manageable and provide a reputable basis for your study. -- Deborahjay (talk) 18:34, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't have a research budget, since this research is within the (rather limited) scope of a master's thesis. The online translators sadly are not accurate enough for my purposes. I am definitely going to contact the embassy tomorrow, that's a great idea. If that does not work out, I'll contact the language desk. Thanks for the ideas! Still, if anybody happens to find a translation somewhere online, I would be greatly helped. [[85.147.237.96 (talk) 19:10, 20 September 2009 (UTC)]]

Australian Immigration law

I have a New Zealand passport and lived in Australia from Jan 2000 - Oct 2004 before returning to the UK. I did not take out Australian citizenship at that time, but would like to know if I would need to apply for a 'permanent residency permit' if I were to return to Australia. I am aware the law changed in 2001 regarding New Zealand passport holders, but am unsure if it would apply as my original stay began prior to 2001. Unsigned question added by User:MrHull

• You should probably contact the Australian High Comission in the UK for advice - [3]. Exxolon (talk) 15:40, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

We don't give legal advice. --Quest09 (talk) 15:46, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

To comment on the law would be inappropriate, as noted above. The following text is for you to review or have an official review on your behalf. If you google “New Zealanders living in Australia”, the first entry is for “Fact Sheet 17” Issued by the Australian government and found here:

In conjunction with the introduction of the new bilateral social security arrangement between Australia and New Zealand on 26 February 2001, the Australian Government also announced that New Zealand citizens who arrive in Australia on or after 27 February 2001 must apply for, and be granted, Australian permanent residence if they wish to access certain social security payments not covered by the bilateral agreement, obtain Australian citizenship or sponsor their family members for permanent residence. Under transitional provisions, these changes do not affect New Zealand citizens who:

♦ were in Australia on 26 February 2001 as SCV holders

♦ were outside Australia on 26 February 2001, but were in Australia as an SCV :holder for a total of 12 months in the 2 years prior to that date, and subsequently returned to Australia, or

♦ have a certificate, issued under the Social Security Act 1991, stating that they were residing in Australia on a particular date. These certificates are no longer issued.

// BL \\ (talk) 15:50, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

• We don't give legal advice. Ignore other answers, they are just trolls!!--Quest09 (talk) 15:54, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Quest09, for your concern. I am not a troll. I am providing information, not interpretation. // BL \\ (talk) 15:57, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

No Quest09 we are NOT "just troll"s. If you can't contribute civilly here, please don't bother contributing at all. Exxolon (talk) 15:59, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

• How is giving advice trolling? It may be inappropriate, but it isn't trolling. --Tango (talk) 16:52, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Agree. She may hail from northern climes, but Bielle is the least troll-like user on Wikipedia. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:50, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:DFTT guys... ~ Amory (user • talk • contribs) 20:56, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

What on earth are you talking about? The OP is not a troll, and neither are any of the respondents, so there's no feeding going on here. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:00, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Was referring to the responses to the claims of BL as a troll. ~ Amory (user • talk • contribs) 21:05, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Quest09 was way out of line. DOR (HK) (talk) 07:07, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I was joking about you all being "just trolls" (where is your sense of humour?) and serious about it being legal advice. Quest09 (talk) 15:53, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Calling people trolls is the Wikipedia equivalent of joking about terrorism at an airport. Just don't do it; or, if you really have to make a joke about it, make it very clear that it's a joke. It certainly wasn't clear from your bald accusation above. -- JackofOz (talk) 08:31, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, 'stuff' happens, Jack. Just imagine that someone meets you in a plane and says "Hi, Jack!" Quest09 (talk) 12:20, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Gee, that's the first time I've ever heard that - not. You acted inappropriately. Just accept it and move on, rather than trying lamely to defend it. -- JackofOz (talk) 12:45, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Gods etc

Is the concept of a deity (or indeed any being without a material body) considered consistent with modern philosophy and/or science? --rossb (talk) 15:09, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there is a single "modern philosophy". Some philosophies include deities, some don't. The existence of a deity is usually unfalsifiable, so isn't scientific. It isn't necessarily inconsistent with science, just outside it. (The specific claims of most actual religions are often falsifiable and are inconsistent with science, but the concept of religion in general isn't.) --Tango (talk) 16:51, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Why wouldn't it be?..hotclaws 20:19, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Why wouldn't what be? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 20:30, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

WRT science: "Beings without material body" is vague. I'd personally argue (and I'm a Christian!) that God is a physical concept, in that he interacts with the observable world, albeit subtley. In which case, perhaps not, but there are many different conceptions of God. Something that doesn't interact with the observable world is OUTSIDE of science's domain of applicability, IMHO.

WRT philosophy: depends whose philosophy. I know of no concensus in philosophy.--Leon (talk) 20:36, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

However, in the sense that God's interaction with the world is primarily miraculous, that is his involvement is usually credited to one-off, unrepeatable miracles, that would also be outside of the realm of scienctific study, which requires repeatability. One of the basic principles of a scientific conclusion is that it is independent of person, of time, and of space; that is it should be repeatable by anyone at any time. A single, unrepeatable miracle does not really work that way. So we have two sorts of concepts of God's work. God the creator who set the universe in motion and established the way it works. This view is perfectly consistant with science, which could be viewed as a means of discovering the details of God's creation; however God is unecessary for such laws, so science tends to ignore God, but that does not mean it disproves him or proves He doesn't exist; it just doesn't deal with Him at all. The other view is of God the intervener, who interacts with the world in the form of miracles, which as noted, are also not really the purview of science, since they cannot be made on demand, and cannot therefore be studied as such. --Jayron32 02:10, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I think hotclaws is referring to the "isn't necessarily inconsistent" part of Tango's response - is that right? In that case, it's easy enough to imagine/reconcile/whatever, for example, a deity starting the universe over a dozen billion years ago, and then just letting it roll out. No contradiction per se, but as Tango points out it is unfalsifiable, hence unscientific. Whether that's a yes or a no to your question is up to you. ~ Amory (user • talk • contribs) 21:01, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

As Laplace said, I have no need of that hypothesis. Imagine Reason (talk) 02:53, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Others do have such a need. And no one has a monopoly on the truth. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 03:12, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Others feel that they have such a need. Whether they actually do or not is up for debate (but not here!). --Tango (talk) 03:24, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

The original question was in part about the compatibility of religion and science. I know people who are scientists, who believe in evolution, and are religious. So there need not be any incompatibility. →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 06:38, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

More accurately they consider it consistent which is what the questioner asked about. Dmcq (talk) 07:05, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

In his 1999 work Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, Stephen Jay Gould promoted the widely respected (though not uncontested) concept of Non-Overlapping Magisteria or NOMA, which accepts that the proper concerns of Religion and of Science (in their modern definitions) do not overlap (although they extensively border each other), that therefore neither can either validate or invalidate the other, and that those who think otherwise are mistaken. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 17:53, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

For philosophy, yes. For science, that's an unequivical no. There's no known mechanism for a life form to exist without a physical form, nor evidence showing one exists. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 14:11, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

The keyword there is no known mechanism. →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 00:27, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

There is a different between being part of known science and being consistent with science. For example, science knows nothing at all about what happened "before" the big bang, so pretty much any claim about what happened before the big bang would be consistent with science. "Consistent" just means "doesn't contradict". --Tango (talk) 01:50, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

"In the Big Inning, God created the heavens and the earth." And He also created baseball.[4] And that's the way it is, don'cha know. So it was written, so it was done. d:) →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 02:01, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

There are big problems with the non-overlapping magisteria concept, in both directions. Almost all religions do make material claims of one sort or another -- either historical claims such as a global flood or the physical ascent of a saint to Heaven; or conditional claims such as that prayer can heal sicknesses or that religious people are less likely to be criminals than irreligious people. Regardless of whether these claims are true or false, they certainly stray outside of the spiritual "magisterium" ascribed to religion in NOMA.

And, at the same time, modern science has uncovered a number of results which pertain to matters that once would have been called spiritual or moral. Virtually any psychiatric disorder would once have been seen as spiritual in nature: demon possession, or divine visions, or the like. Diseases such as leprosy were once attributed to moral wrongdoing (the sins of the afflicted, or the evil work of demons and witches) but modern science shows them to be caused by pathogens. There is even scientific work on the evolution of morality itself.

So just as religion cannot stay off of material matters, neither can science stay off of matters that would traditionally have been called moral and spiritual. NOMA fails to describe the actual, normative behavior of both religion and science. --FOo (talk) 08:17, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

But NOMA isn't claimed to describe the "actual, normative" behaviour of science advocates and religious believers pertaining to either sphere, it describes what (arguably) is the philosophically ideal behaviour, or rather attitude: no-one advocating NOMA would be so foolish as to deny that many less-than-perfect individuals fail to properly comply with it, any more than that a Law (or Commandment) forbidding murder is universally obeyed. For example, many Roman Catholics still appear to assume that the Theory of Evolution must be somewhat in conflict with their religion's teachings, even though more than one recent Pope has stated otherwise; conversely, some current science spokespersons seem to make over-literal and simplistic assumptions about what some religious systems necessarily imply, based on those persons' own shallow knowledge of those systems and how some of the systems' less nuanced followers (mis)interpret them. The examples you cite are indeed (mostly historic) demonstrations of NOMA not being applied (given that both scientific knowledge and religious thought continually develop, we need to beware of making anachronistic comparisons), but are also demonstrations why it should be. Yes, I agree that religions often do stray on to material matters and science on to moral/ethical ones, but disagree that they cannot avoid it. (I fear that this is tending towards a discussion.) 87.81.230.195 (talk) 15:14, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

My point was that for religion to make claims on material matters is not, in fact, "straying", but rather entirely typical. Material claims are part and parcel of religion and always have been; they are as central to it as moral claims. Christianity would not be what it is if it did not claim that a human being named Jesus actually did materially die and materially rise from the dead. If the laws of the Torah or the Qur'an were not actually dictated to Moses or Muhammad by God, then they lose their claimed moral authority. Without the ability to work miracles in the real, physical world for real, physical humans, the active God of theism would diminish to the abstract spirit of deism.

So one can construe NOMA as embracing a sort of moralistic deism in which God is an abstract source of morality. But this is not the assertion that Gould and other NOMA advocates make: they assert that NOMA means compatibility between science and theistic religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. They mean NOMA to be a rebuttal to the views of those such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris who assert that science can show religion to be false by disproving its material claims. And it is this position which is untenable. --FOo (talk) 18:12, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Italian view on WW2 today?

What are the Italians' views and attitudes on World War 2 today? You hear about the German and Japanese views, but I haven't really heard the Italians come up as often. 24.6.46.106 (talk) 19:42, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

This is a very difficult question! Being Italian myself, I think I can say that, generally, Italians feel much less guilty than Germans. In Italy there a are currently strong political parties ispired to the basical ideals of Fascism (but the ones really fascist are few and very little!). It's a common thinking to absolve Italian actions during WWII blaming Nazism instead (believing that was Hitler to trick Italy into entering WWII and to deport jews to Germany, and that Italy was just an unaware puppet of Nazism). Surely a lot of people have a strong hatred against our fascist past (it's common for leftist people to accuse their rivals to be fascist), but there are also people openly praising Mussolini's policies and that's something I would't expect from Germans. For exaple, it's a common saying that during Fascism the trains were always on time! Even Berlusconi claimed that Mussolini "had been a benign dictator who did not murder opponents but sent them "on holiday". But at same time Fini, a member of centre-right party People of Freedom, said that fascism was an absolute evil. Generally right-wing politicians tend to blame Nazi-Fascism for their crimes during WWII and for the killing of jews but at the same time absolving Mussolini as a good statist who made a lot of improvements like draining swamps and creating roads. At the same time, they are gratefull that U.S.A. invaded Italy, but this is mostly because at the time Italy was already invaded by Germany. --151.51.24.225 (talk) 10:43, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I think there are some interesting details here; 1) In Italy, there is a continuity in Fascist political organizing after WWII. Whilst Nazism was clamped down on quite harshly in West & East Germany, the neo-Fascist movements had a (albeit marginal) presence in Italian post-war politics. 2) There has definately been a shift in government views on the fascist past since the mid-1990s. The entry of Alleanza Nazionale in the first coalition government marked a historic shift. The fact that AN is now merged into Berlusconi's party means that there are ppl that represent a continuity from the fascist movement inside the government. 3) An important element in Italian histiography on the war is the Italian resistance. Italians could, unlike Germans, boast of having had 10,000s of antifascist resistance fighters during the war. Songs and imagery of the partisan struggle are important historical motifs, at least for a section of the Italian population. 4) Highlighting the role of the resistance was important in shaping an Italian identity that would be conciliatory with the Allied victors. The movie Rome, Open City was notable that it enabled an alternative viewpoint to an international audience, and I recall that it was released just before an important international conference (can't remember which though). In contrast, in Germany a notion collective guilt was institutionalized through the building of memorials, etc.. --Soman (talk) 15:43, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Italy soothed their guilt in a rather more direct way, by shooting Mussolini and his pals and putting them on display for the amusement of the public. →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots

Which unfortunately led to complete externalisation of fascist crimes. TomorrowTime (talk) 07:08, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Hard telling what that means, but there will always be evil people, and they get dealt with when they can be. →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 07:21, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry if I was being vague. What I meant was that hanging Mussolini somehow acted as absolvance to the entire populace - they could just point at the hanging corpse and go: "he did it, it was all his fault" thereby conveniently ignoring the fact that some of the people pointing were involved first hand. Italy managed to get around the standard set up by the nazi trials, namely that "I was just taking orders" does not make the crime any lesser, and it also never went through a thorough denazification. Saddly, this is reflected in the present day political situation as described by others above. TomorrowTime (talk) 11:59, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

No doubt it's scapegoating, but that's how things go sometimes when you're a dictator. Somewhat like that man-and-wife who ran Rumania, and were dispatched in Mussolini-like fashion, and presumably with comparable high-fives going on throughout the populace. →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 23:29, 23 September 2009 (UTC)