Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 March 27

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.

March 27

NDP in northern Manitoba

According to our articles on them (1, 2, 3, and 4), all four of Manitoba's northernmost provincial ridings are safe seats for the New Democratic Party, with an NDP in Thompson since the early 1980s and in the other three since the 1960s. The articles also note that the four divisions' populations are well above average in percentages of First Nations residents. Is there any connection (i.e. do First Nations people tend to support NDP, like blacks tend to support the Democrats in the USA), or is it just a coincidence? Nyttend (talk) 03:14, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Have a look at the following academic paper, which is precisely about the topic of voting patterns in northern Manitoba: "First Nations Candidacy and On‐Reserve Voting in Manitoba: A Research Note" [1]. This page [2] links to another professor discussing the issue in Manitoba precisely, although I haven't watched the interview. There is no traditional association of First Nations votes with a particular party in Canada, and they have only had the right to vote since 1960. Other papers [3] [4] point out that participation in elections by First Nations members is traditionally quite low. I can't find nationwide estimates of First Nations voting preferences however, although such studies must exist. I'm probably not using the right search terms. --Xuxl (talk) 11:24, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

"Full disclosure: I am {long|short}" on straddle

I sometimes see journalists and bloggers end their articles with "Full disclosure: I am long INTC" or "I am short AMD". What's the proper way to give a "full disclosure" when one has a synthetic position in one of the mentioned stocks, where the payoff isn't monotonic on the price of the underlying (such as a straddle or iron condor)? Should one consider oneself "long" or "short" or "no position" based only on the sign of their delta at the current market price (which would make it easy to make a long position appear short or vice-versa using a narrow collar), or is there some way of disclosing a position that is neither necessarily long nor necessarily short? NeonMerlin 10:19, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

'The author of this article has a financial position on this stock which may respond to price movements in different ways'. Surely it's just choosing an appropriate form of words? 83.49.77.33 (talk) 10:40, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

UK ethnicity

People may say that they are Scottish or Irish or English or Welsh. How come people seldom say they are Celtic or Norman French or Norse Viking or Roman or Jute or Angle or Saxon? Maybe somewhere in UK history, all the old ethnicities pooled together into one melting pot and formed distinct nationalities (Scottish, Irish, English, or Welsh), which got pooled together into "British" as a single ethnic group. Some people may say "Muslim" or "Jewish" or "Zoroastrian" as their ethnicity, but I rarely hear this from "Catholics". Christians seem to be very sensitive in separating ethnicity and religion. 140.254.227.69 (talk) 17:27, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Your first point is correct; all the British "Home Nations" are a melting-pot of ethnicities. In Scotland for instance, there were Picts, Gaels, Britons, Saxons and Vikings in residence before the end of the first millennium. I don't think many people would claim that "Muslim" was an ethnicity; in my part of London we have Muslims from India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Algeria, Iraq, Bosnia, Turkey, Kurdistan and even some English ones (there may be more, but I haven't met any of them). Find a common ethnic thread out of that lot. Similarly, although Catholic congregations in London were traditionally dominated by Irish people and a few English recusants, since WWII there have been significant numbers of Italian, Spanish, West Indian and East European Catholics here. I have been to a service at my friend's Catholic church in Hackney where the services are in Lithuanian and I used to work for a Catholic who came from Goa which is now part of India. So no, there is no such thing as a Catholic ethnicity. Alansplodge (talk) 18:54, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

That's a relative recent development. Christians in Europe have defined their identity for centuries based on being Christian. Until the idea of the national identity started to creep in, and then they were French, German, and so on, first. OsmanRF34 (talk) 19:21, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Well maybe. King Harold II and his army fought off the Christian Danes before he was killed by Christian Normans "et fuga verterunt Angli" (and the English fled). I'm sure Harold and everybody else thought he was English. Alansplodge (talk) 19:30, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

It was clear back then that people came from different regions, but that wasn't such a big deal. They thought in different terms, and one of the most prominents elements of your identity was certainly your religion. They even would accept a foreign born monarch, as long as he were from the right royal house, and even if said foreign monarch couldn't speak the language at all. That's unthinkable today. OsmanRF34 (talk) 19:59, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Are you saying that Great Britain didn't have a national identity when they asked German-speaking George I to take the throne in 1714 or Greece when they appointed the Bavarian Prince Otto king in 1832? King's weren't routinely required to make speeches in those days, so the right pedigree was more important than what language they spoke. Alansplodge (talk) 12:27, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

• To answer the original question, the reason people don't say they are Jute or Norman French or whatever anymore is those ethnicities don't exist anymore. Ethnicity is not an immutable, unmovable concept which never changes. In 600 it may have made sense to draw distinctions between Jutes and Angles, but in 2014, not so much. Those groups don't exist in modern Britain, so how could anyone identify with them. Ethnicity changes and varies over time, it is constantly fluid and shifting and changing. People are mobile, they intermarry, they develop new cultural connections, new cultures develop, old ones fade from memory, etc. etc. --Jayron32 02:13, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Our article Genetic history of the British Isles has more details. Alansplodge (talk) 12:27, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Or not at all. Ethnicity is a cultural thing, not a genetic thing. Certainly, there will be some overlap (for example, people who live in close proximity tend to share common language and music and art and religion; they also tend to have sex with each other) but that overlap doesn't mean that ethnicity is genetically determined. A person's cultural connections are not caused by their genetics in any meaningful way. Patrice de Mac-Mahon and Nicolas Sarkozy are French. They speak, think, act, and have cultural connections with other French people. That Mac-Mahon had Irish ancestors (and thus, shares genes with them) didn't make him think, act, or have cultural connections with the Irish. --Jayron32 12:37, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Jayron is correct. It is a cultural thing. What you are talking about, rather than ancestry, is identity. Identities change over time. I know where some of my ancestors are from, but I am not my ancestors. I have a US passport, I was raised in the US, and I am American. That's who I identify with, and that's what people identify me as. If I had really strong familial ties to my ancestors' homelands, I could identify as an Irish-American, etc but even so, my identity would be a result of how people see me and how I see myself. I absolutely would have ancestors from the Roman Empire, but I am absolutely not Roman or Viking. Not only do I not have any sort of Roman citizenship whatsoever, nor any social ties to any community of Ancient Romans, but the Roman Empire hasn't existed in centuries. Nobody identifies me as Roman, and I don't identify myself as Roman. Ergo, I have no Roman identity. Falconus^{p t c} 16:15, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Karen Stintz

Is Karen Stintz, running for this year's mayoral election in Toronto, a Jew? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.33.80 (talk • contribs) 13:29, 27 March 2014‎

Nothing on the page Karen Stintz suggests that she is Jewish. It does state that she attended a Catholic high school, though that doesn't necessarily say anything about her personal religious beliefs. - Eron^Talk 17:45, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

That would depend on the assumption that her beliefs are separated from her family's beliefs, and that her family's beliefs have nothing to do with sending her to an all-girls Catholic school. 140.254.227.92 (talk) 19:56, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Indeed it would. But not every family who sends their child to a Catholic high school is Catholic, at least not in Ontario where this particular school is located. See the first question here. And not every person whose family is Catholic continues to profess that faith as an adult.- Eron^Talk 20:21, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Her campaign web site contains no mention of religion that I can see, and neither does anything else about her that I could Google up. --50.100.193.30 (talk) 04:11, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Conscription in Israel

I was reading this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Israel_Defense_Forces

which says Israel is the only country in the world with a mandatory military service requirement for women. Yet, I recently read an unrelated news article about Norway. It mentioned it being the first NATO country with mandatory military service for women. I checked this Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Armed_Forces

and it says the same.

Is there something I am misunderstanding about what is considered conscription or does the Israel article need updating?

Yes, the Israel article needs updating, the sources it uses are from before Norway changed its military service policy.

edit: Actually, it seems Eritrea conscripts women as well; I've updated the article. - Lindert (talk) 22:15, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

According to Conscription#Drafting of women, "As of 2013, countries that were drafting women into military service included Bolivia,[35] Chad,[36] Cuba,[37] Eritrea,[38][39][40] Israel,[38][39][41] Libya,[38][42] North Korea,[38][39][43] Sudan,[44] and Tunisia.[39]" --Bowlhover (talk) 22:48, 27 March 2014 (UTC)