Humanities desk
< February 5	<< Jan \| February \| Mar >>	February 7 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 6[edit]

HR/communication strategies[edit]

Hello! I am currently doing self-studies of communication, particularly human relations and business communication with the purpose of developing my own business and network of contacts. I would like to know if there are some books or other literature that could provide advice on these topics? Also, I remember having read about a theory/strategy, particularly effective in building trust and relationships that involves trying to adapt to the personality of the person you are communicating with, and over time, as your understanding and acquaintance with the person develops, you begin to subtly use "their" kind of humor, language, and other personality traits. I don't know the name of this kind of strategy, perhaps you could help me out with finding the name? :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.92.248.18 (talk) 12:18, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean Human Resources when you say "human relations"?--Phil Holmes (talk) 12:47, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The "theory/strategy" described here brings to mind How to Win Friends and Influence People. ZMBrak (talk) 13:15, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some oft-recommended books on networking and communication: The Best Books to Boost Your Career in 2013, Top 10 Networking Books for Your Career Success, Top 20 Best Books on Communication and Listening. The strategy sounds like Mirroring (psychology), though that is described as unconscious.184.147.116.102 (talk) 14:19, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Arearea - Paul Gauguin[edit]

Back in the mid-1980s on a trip to Tahiti we bought a reproduction of a Gauguin painting from the Paul Gauguin Museum (Tahiti). It looks exactly like the original (pictured), down to "Arearea" in right lower corner. There is nothing in the way of any marking on the back of the wooded frame it is mounted onto. The painting is on wood, not canvas. The size is about 14 inches high and 18 inches wide. If one were to guess, would there be any significant value to the 30 year old reproduction (that looks exactly like this Commons picture)?--Doug Coldwell (talk)

As a start, these people are selling reproductions (on canvas, I think, not wood) for several hundred US dollars; the smallest (closest to your size) is listed at $225.184.147.116.102 (talk) 14:25, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

By "reproduction" do you mean a painted copy or a printed reproduction from a photograph of the original? Paul B (talk) 16:44, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is NOT a painted copy, but more of a printed reproduction that is on wood.--17:55, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

You seemed to be so keen to point out that it "looks exactly like the original" I thought it may have been a painting, since there's nothing very surprising about a photograph looking exactly like the original! As for what it's worth, that depends on the quality of the reproduction and the durability of the materials. It might just fetch something comparable to the prints linked by the ip. Paul B (talk) 21:49, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Sounds right to me.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 22:01, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bottom picture is my reproduction. It sure does look like a printed reproduction from a photograph of the original done on wood, however they printed the picture on wood. Must be a special printer.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 12:04, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Simplest current method is to print on transfer paper (even on an inkjet) then transfer to a smooth wood surface. Sort of like a t-shirt. Collect (talk) 14:11, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say my questions got answered all the way around. Thanks all.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 14:51, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Since a Gauguin painting sold for record sum of almost $300 Million recently, perhaps I'll ask for a little more than $200 for my reproduction.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 13:25, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The price of the original and reproduction are not necessarily related. Indeed, an extremely valuable original may have many copies, making each copy less valuable. StuRat (talk) 23:32, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Monsters and demons[edit]

I just encountered the Utility monster concept for the first time. What's the difference between this monster and a demon, i.e. why isn't it a "utility demon"? Nyttend (talk) 14:40, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Monster" generally implies unusually large size or other measurement, and/or unnatural appearance and so on, but not necessarily malevolence and not usually exceeding the laws of nature. "Demon" generally implies active evilness stemming from the Devil or similar supernatural concepts, and in the philosophical sense usually indicates something not thought to have the possibility of actually existing, and thus outside of the laws of nature. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 15:21, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Funny, my first thought regarding the good/evil of monster vs. demon was the exact opposite. See links below :) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:34, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't it just at the namer's prerogative? I don't think there's any mathematical,physical, or philosophical baggage here. Schrodinger's cat could have been Schrodinger's ox (or dog, etc). Maxwell's demon could have been an imp or a daeva, no? And the invisible pink unicorn could have been Russel's teapot. These aren't like the Brownian_ratchet, where the noun part helps clarify the thought experiment by means of analogy. This is all interesting and fun stuff, but I'll be surprised if anyone can find a good referenced answer that's anything other than "accident of history and personal choice". If you're interested in this sort of demon/monster, I recommend The_Cyberiad, that features a few different types. Also I'll be adding Darwinian_Demon to that list shortly. Really, I'll probably add "utility monster" too. These thought experiements don't invoke any demonic hierarchy or properties, just some mythical thing with agency. Recall also that demons are classically value neutral, e.g. (Agathodaemon, cacodemon, Eudaimonia, daemon, etc.), so perhaps "monster" was chosen to make it clear that the utility monster is bad (in the eyes of the creator), whereas Maxwell's demon is not really good or evil. (Now I want to start calling the invisible hand the "market demon" :) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:33, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The utility monster is not bad. It just is monstrous. Indeed, from a strictly utilitarian perspective, the monster is good - a society that has it and feeds it has a much greater total utility than one that does not. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:39, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Right. I guess the monster itself is just neutral, but I thought the idea was that the thought experiment makes extreme/pure Utilitarianism look bad, because an extreme Utilitarian would then rationally kill everybody but the monster. That sounds bad to me... SemanticMantis (talk) 16:27, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Per SemanticMantis, there isn't any international governing board which has decided how the nomenclature of thought experiments and which adjudicates violations thereof. Someone gets an idea, and gives it a cute little name, and that's about it. The fact that some people chose "demon" or "monster" or "cat" or whatever for their little critter that does their little thought experiment is an accident of history, and not because there's some set of rules which decides what these things ought to be called. --Jayron 32 15:42, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense. I just wondered if there might be some sort of conventional difference between "monster" and "demon" in this context. Nyttend (talk) 16:25, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I can think of examples of both good monsters and good demons. StuRat (talk) 16:35, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The utility monster was thought up in 1974. Sesame Street debuted in 1969. The utility-monster thought experiment (according to our article) alludes to the pleasure derived from eating a cookie. I'm sure that Nozick had Cookie Monster in mind when naming the U. M. Deor (talk) 23:36, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Utility monster?... Any relation to Utility infielder? Blueboar (talk) 01:24, 7 February 2015 (UTC) [reply]

Wow. This 'utility monster' concept seems awfully specious. I mean, common sense is that any pleasurable activity creates far more pleasure at some times than at others. To eat food when hungry rather than when feeling nauseous, etc. It follows that those in the most desperate need are the 'utility monster' that deserve spare resources, and that beyond this point, the greatest utility is provided by allowing people the right to resources that they can take when they like, thereby making their own utility monster-balancing choices by selecting to use them when they feel the most desire for them. The effect should be largely though not entirely egalitarian, precisely the opposite of the suggestion given. The article makes it sound like it is an insoluble philosophical problem when it seems trivially obvious. What's up with that? Wnt (talk) 22:42, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What's up with that is there's an awesome, rich, and wide open place where discussions like you are trying to start here can happen, and it's called the entire rest of the internet. This board is not an open discussion forum for people to debate, discuss, or defend the merits of anything. There's millions of people in the world who will feed your need to do this, and they hang out in many thousands of other places, just not here. --Jayron 32 23:04, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

My Pet Monster got way more out of eating garbage than anyone else on his block. He'll even eat the can. They say Beastor was a monster, but I thought demon. Always travelling between worlds and stirring things up. That's where I draw the line. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:07, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There sure aren't millions of people here. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:09, 8 February 2015 (UTC) [reply]

Château Gaillard[edit]

Richard the Lionheart, the man responsible for building Château Gaillard, constructed it apparently in 1196, 1197, and 1198. Is there anywhere a constructing starting date and finished date?--Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:24, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The French wikipedia article on Walter de Coutances fr:Gautier de Coutances, who owned Andelys, says construction started shortly after Walter's return to Rouen in July 1196. This is sourced to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. My instutition has a subscription so I looked; the actual sentences are:

In January 1196, as part of the treaty of Louviers, the two kings tried to curb Coutances's freedom of action by making his manor of Les Andelys, strategically located on the Seine above Rouen, neutral ground subject to neither ruler. They made Les Andelys collateral for the archbishop's good conduct, subject to forfeiture if he excommunicated them or their officials or placed interdicts on their territories. Coutances fled to Cambrai, and he did not return to Rouen until July. Another conflict with Richard I soon arose over Les Andelys, once the king began construction of Château Gaillard on the archbishop's manor. The archbishop placed Normandy under an interdict and left for Rome in November 1196. Pope Celestine III (r. 1191–8) issued a ruling on 20 April 1197 that since construction of the castle was essential for Normandy's security, Coutances should accept an exchange of land with the king. On 16 October, Richard and Coutances agreed to an exchange that gave the archbishop the port of Dieppe and other territories, producing an annual income of nearly 2000 angevin pounds.

Contradicting this, this book by Achille Deville suggests construction started before July, saying that it was already underway when Walter returned to Rouen and complained. (page 11) Deville says Walter wrote his friend Ralph de Diceto about it, and this letter is published in Ralph's Ymagines Historiarum. I do not have access to that book, but you could ask at Wikipedia:RX if anyone does (see [1]) and can get a date on the letter.

All I have for the end is that Deville says (page 39) construction took only a year.184.147.116.102 (talk) 23:46, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Ymagines Historiarum is on archive.org and that letter is on pg 148. It's in Latin but it doesn't have any dates pertaining to the castle (only that Walter was going to Rome for November 7, 1196, so obviously the letter was written before that). Adam Bishop (talk) 01:27, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I never thought of archive.org, thanks!184.147.116.102 (talk) 16:07, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment to I.P. 184.147.116.102 ; Our article says; The castle was expensive to build, but the majority of the work was done in an unusually short time. It took just two years,... Our article later on also says, However, the work at Château Gaillard cost an estimated £15,000 to £20,000 between 1196 and 1198. = any more references on this?--Doug Coldwell (talk) 13:44, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

French wikipedia says it cost 45,000 livres, equivalent to the annual salary of 7,000 infantrymen. Unfortunately they don't use inline citations much, but I find the same figure in a French government document [2] and in this book [3].184.147.116.102 (talk) 15:59, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. That same government pdf also gives these dates: "The construction was resolved on in 1196, began in 1197 and completed in 1198."184.147.116.102 (talk) 15:59, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Now I am getting a better picture of the construction period = it looks like it was on and off over a 3 year period.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 18:03, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Additional comment to I.P. 184.147.116.102 ; The more I look into this, it appears from various sources that they do in fact say it was built in 1 year. Apparently as many as 10,000 men were used in the construction, as this source shows.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 14:12, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Adam, you come up with the neatest stuff. Looking at the Flickr pictures of the castle it shows the walls as curved sections, rather than a flat wall. Apparently this was as a defense as the enemy's arrows would just bounce off and be diverted because of the curve. The curved walls then had little eye holes in them to shoot through, correct?--Doug Coldwell (talk) 12:48, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It would probably have arrow loops, yeah. I don't see any in the Flickr pictures, but it is ruins...actually it looks kind of like an early concentric castle, maybe influenced by what Richard saw in the east. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:45, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I see the article says the same thing, heh... Adam Bishop (talk) 19:49, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again Adam = you're a champ!--Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:02, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just one more question: So, would there be a market inside this castle where people bought and sold items, like say our today's farmer's market? Would chickens be one of the items sold?--Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:40, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, but I think if there was a market it would be in the town beside the castle, Les Andelys. There is a legal difference between a plain old town and a market town in the Middle Ages though. Les Andelys seems to have been a market town, but I don't know if it always ways or if it became one later. There should be a town charter out there somewhere that will tell us... Adam Bishop (talk) 12:44, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And in this market town (that I believe you will find as so at the time the castle was constructed) they sold chickens, oui?--Doug Coldwell (talk) 13:10, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Would there have been haggling going on for the various products during all 12 months? Let me know if you stumble onto a source for this - thanks!--Doug Coldwell (talk) 15:31, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess yes both for chickens and haggling, but I don't know if we can ever say for sure! Adam Bishop (talk) 21:47, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like that Matthew Paris would have known all about Château Gaillard according to these sources. Perhaps he knows more on this market town of Les Andelys. I didn't find anything more in Google Books.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 18:27, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I assume that this is where the 10,000 laborers lived that constructed the castle, on and off over a 3 year period. Apparently the main part of the construction of the castle was done in the first year.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 19:35, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am especially interested in which work(s) that Matthew Paris would have talked about Château Gaillard.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:54, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am not a holocaust denialist, nor a believer in conspiracy theory[edit]

But if it takes 2 hours to cremate a body, and there were millions and millions of victims to be cremated, how would this be logistically possible? Add to it that energy, in any form, gets scarce in an energy impoverished war zone. --Noopolo (talk) 20:30, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What is the basis for your premises? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:05, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

He's not a holocaust denialist, nor a believer in conspiracy theories, he just plays one on the internet. μηδείς (talk) 00:39, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's a question. How is it technically possible to cremate millions and millions of bodies? The 2 hours bit can be corroborated by many sources like funeral companies and howstuffwork web-site. Noopolo (talk) 21:16, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm certainly not in the mood to go to looking up reference to this, but in-part. The Nazis developed crematoria where the corpses themselves became fuel to combust the corpses that followed, hence they required very little addition fuel. Deutsche technik! Then they built lots of them, which then ran 24/7.--Aspro (talk) 21:10, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a page that addresses the issue. --65.94.50.4 (talk) 21:16, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, that's part 2 of 2. I should have linked to part 1, here, as well. And here's a higher-level page on the same site that addresses various claims by denialists. --65.94.50.4 (talk) 21:20, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If it takes 2 hours to cremate one body, does it take 200 hours to cremate 100? No, it doesn't, unless you are silly and do things one at a time. Our article on the Holocaust is very long, contains over 400 citations, and a separate bibliography. The_Holocaust#New_methods_of_mass_murder might be a place to start. There's lots of information there on the logistics of genocide. Search for "bodies" to find the bits most relevant. Here's what I found at a quick skim: One of the facilities could cremate 10k per day. Not all of the victims were cremated, many were forced to dig their own graves. Sometimes extant mass graves were dug up, so that bodies could be cremated. This was done in an attempt to hide the evidence of the horrible deed.

Part of why the Holocaust is so chilling is that there were lots of very clever people whose will was bent on quickly and efficiently disposing of human beings. They got fairly efficient at it. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:17, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly, an analysis of the gas vans' performance suggest that they would have been more efficient than the concentration camps were. One of the reasons that gas vans were not used more widely is that the drivers were not able to cope with the psychological stresses involved. Some years ago I performed an analysis on the relative efficiency of the Holocaust, and was surprised to discover that it could have been made much more efficient. My personal suspicion (for which I have only indirect, statistical evidence) is that although there certainly were a large number of Germans who fully accepted the tasks they performed there may also have been a great many other Germans who, though they by and large did not speak up against the Holocaust, found ways to impede it or avoid participation. RomanSpa (talk) 21:57, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

On the basic question of logistics raised above, the answer is that although the Holocaust was a large-scale operation it was performed over a period of several years. Consider a highly simplified process involving only tipper truck (dump truck) gas vans: using only 50 gas vans running twice a day for 1,000 days, and with 50 victims per trip, it is possible to kill 5,000,000 people. The logistics of running such a fleet are fairly straightforward: a team of (say) ten fully-armed men per van, to give a total staffing of 500, plus a couple of managers to arrange timetables and a couple of administrators to monitor locations of the mass graves. Each victim makes two trips: in the first, he is in a "work detail", digging a mass grave burial pit; then he is loaded back into the truck and told he is going to his next job; in fact, he is gassed and dumped into the next available grave. The total process has a death rate of 5,000 per day, and largely provides its own resources, since the main ongoing process task is grave-digging, which can be performed by the victims themselves. A competent junior minister could run and complete the entire process in 3 years with a total team of well below 600 full-time staff.

In fact, my assumptions above are conservative. In particular, vans with a capacity of 70-100 people were built and delivered, and it would have been relatively straightforward to build and run even larger capacity vehicles.

Further, note that this approach leaves few traces, is resource-efficient, and requires no diversion of infrastructure away from the war effort. The Holocaust, as performed, was inefficient in its use of resources and time.

For the Holocaust as implemented, the logistics were necessarily more complicated, but not intolerably so. The principal challenges are three-fold: the fuelling of the cremation operation, the construction of the sites, and the logistics of moving large numbers of people by train. The references above clearly show that the fuelling issue was solved. Site construction was of approximately the same level of complexity as the construction of an army camp, and thus would be only a small fraction of GDP compared to the total war effort, and the management of transport would be straightforward in a train system that was already handling large numbers of troop trains and was on a war footing. Because of the relative inefficiency of the system adopted, staffing requirements were larger than in the theoretical case I outlined above, but the total staffing requirement would still be low compared to that of the military. A central problem, which is documented in several places, is morale; I'm unable to comment on this. However, my general answer to the original question is this: Although it's legitimate to ask how the Holocaust was managed, is is certain that it did happen, and there is certainly no managerial or logistical reason to suppose that it didn't. RomanSpa (talk) 22:35, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, for whom or what were you performing an optimization analysis of the holocaust? Noopolo (talk) 22:23, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm wondering if Noopolo could come back on this. I'm thinking that he (in peace-time) finds difficult to get one's head around a war economy where 50% of the GNP is diverted to war. Resources for these atrocities are not a big segment of such pie-chart (compared to producing armaments and munition, uniforms, weapon R&D etc.) and so are easily accomplished, with a slave labor force – unfortunately.--Aspro (talk) 21:39, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's not only the resource fuel to fire up an oven, but the time it takes. Anyway, this seems debunked as holocaust denial theory. Noopolo (talk) 22:23, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I remember reading that the Nazis were also big fans of quicklime, disposing of many corpses in trenches. Indeed, gas van suggests that these were usually used on the way to the grave site. But I don't see a top-level resource for identifying Holocaust mass graves on Wikipedia. An article like Popricani gives an impression there were just two, holding hundreds, in all of Romania. I'd really like to see someone fill in the gaps here. Wnt (talk) 23:46, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that Lord Russell of Liverpool reported this in his book "Scourge of the Swastika". RomanSpa (talk) 00:48, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In fact when the Germans revisited their early mass graves from 1943 onwards, and using Jewish forced labour, excavated the buried corpses and incinerated them in large pyres. [4] However, modern techniques have recently (2012) located mass graves at the Treblinka camp. [5] Alansplodge (talk) 17:58, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

About energy usage and cremation: It takes a lot of energy to cremate a single body quickly. This is because this energy is needed at the start, to boil the water out. After that, the body actually burns from it's own energy, by burning fat. However, a single body can be burned slowly, using very little energy. This is the cause of the so-called "spontaneous human combustion", which actually does require an ignition source, such as a lit cigarette. That, combined with the clothing, gets the fat burning in a small area, which provides just enough energy to slowly evaporate (not boil) off the water. After many hours most of the body is gone, except for the low fat areas (feet and maybe hands).

Now for burning many bodies efficiently. Here the large amount of energy released from burning the earlier bodies goes into driving off the water in the new bodies. In this way, much like the "spontaneous human combustion" example, very little energy is needed, just a bit to get the process started. StuRat (talk) 14:03, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]