Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 July 6

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July 6

French painter

A French (or at least francophone) painter, usually grouped with surrealists, who painted mainly ancient Greek and Roman figures, either in grotesque ancient settings or interracting with contemporary people, often accompanied by old fashioned dress forms. Can you help with his name?--85.74.121.116 (talk) 01:55, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

He's not French, but the closest I can think of that matches that style is Giorgio de Chirico. --Jayron32 03:36, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

I think that you might've been tricked by the dress forms. What I forgot to mention is the figures are also accompanied bu skeletons, and that, apart from the grotesque imagery that characterizes him as a surrealist, his style is very realistic. I hope this info helps.--85.74.121.116 (talk) 21:34, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Now, this was externally answered. I asked a friend of mine if he recalled such a painter and he did. The name was Paul Delvaux.--85.74.121.116 (talk) 03:25, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Would it be better if all legislators will be required to obtain a law degree before entering into politics?

Are there any empirical researches out there disproving the correlation between legal education and good public policies?

Culturally speaking, most people believe that legislation is mainly for lawyers, so much so that in some countries, most politicians are lawyers or, at least, have a background in law. I think we should break this culture that has prevailed for a long time and let other people who excel in some other fields, like the sciences, share their views. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.95.198.47 (talk) 05:44, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

In a democracy, great importance is placed on the notion that the people are the best ones to determine who will represent them. Apart from legal provisions to exclude convicted felons, bankrupts etc., no further constraints should be applied. If a majority of voters wish to be represented by a person with no legal education, or perhaps no education at all, no action by the legislature should deny those voters their choice of representative. Dolphin (t) 06:10, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Would what be better? An incumbent's chance of reëlection? —Tamfang (talk) 08:56, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Legally trained people know, inter alia, about how to interpret laws and how to use them to guide one's choices about certain things in life. But they are no more or less expert than you or I are when it comes to knowing what laws should or should not exist in the first place. That's the job of legislators to jointly decide. Think of legislators as the car makers and of lawyers as the drivers. There's an overlap, but they're still distinct groups. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:21, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

1) This is a request for opinion, and 2) that makes no sense at all. You need people that actually have experience in the areas they're legislating in, not in law. 82.21.7.184 (talk) 09:50, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Not really a request for opinion. See the line in bold under the heading. HiLo48 (talk) 10:40, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

No, that would be a very dangerous approach. Legislators need to be informed by relevant experts but they also need to act in the interests of the whole community, so they need to consider a wide range of views, opinions, issues, concerns and, yes, expertise. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:18, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

And experts can't? The only reason most legislation is nonsense is that the legislators have no clue about what it is they're legislating. 82.21.7.184 (talk) 10:30, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

"Most legislation" requires numerous examples, please. Or .-- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:36, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

"No, that would be a very dangerous approach." 82.21.7.184 (talk) 11:20, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States begins with the words: "Congress shall make no law...". I often wish that James Madison had put a period after those words, and stopped writing. Blueboar (talk) 13:33, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

That's actually the standard approach being used by the present US Congress. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:24, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

• First, kill all the lawyers. μηδείς (talk) 17:11, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Ahem. The relevant article is Representation (politics). The concept of descriptive representation (which is one of several ideas about representation) means that an elected body as a whole should share the relevant characteristics of the constituency. Sjö (talk) 05:14, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Lawyers make their living by interpreting the law for lay people. Laws that are badly drafted, ambiguous or otherwise difficult to interpret mean more work for lawyers. So requiring all legislators to be lawyers could create a conflict of interest, and, I suspect, the large number of legislators who are lawyers may mean that conflict of interest already exists. --Nicknack009 (talk) 06:54, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

What was in the original Japanese text?

In The Box Man by Kobo Abe, in one of the early sections ("A Safety Device... Just in Case"), we have a cut-off sentence right before the narrator runs out of ink and has to change pens.

In the English translation I'm reading (translated by Saunders), it says:

No matter how much one rejects the world and disappears from it by getting into a box, essentially a box is di...

I'm wondering what the original Japanese text has for this cut-off sentence, but the translation I'm reading is lacking in translator's notes, and as someone with a mostly nonexistent knowledge of Japanese, I'm asking here since it might well be somewhat difficult to find this on the internet. --Morningcrow (talk) 06:57, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Why did the russian stop kissing each other after communism

OsmanRF34 (talk) 19:21, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

They didn't. Why do you think they did? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:30, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

I mean russian leaders kissing each other.OsmanRF34 (talk) 12:46, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, WHAAOE, there is even an article about it.Socialist fraternal kiss, which has all about it. OsmanRF34 (talk) 17:43, 7 July 2014 (UTC)