It's not totally determinative, but naming Romans, not a book of the Hebrew Bible, does tend to lean that way.

It's true that black can be thought of as the absence of color (and that the tone of fineoakstructure's counterobjection was bizarrely aggressive), but it's not obvious why we require people to use the "scientific" sense of "color." The first OED definition of black starts off "Of the darkest colour possible, that of…

What do you think about "osteomalacia" for the deficiency? Obviously, there are causes of that not reflecting a poor or insufficient diet, but then malnutrition more generally can result from inability to absorb nutrients rather than their not being in the diet.

Why should "Boer" be pronounced "boar"? In Afrikaans (or Dutch), it's closer to "boor," and if you believe the OED, "bow-er" is basically the first-listed American-English pronunciation (with "boar" as the other provided American orthoepy).

I'd read it as just the opposite: they request a play that took place before any of the history plays, so the answer could not have been a history play. The question thus wants one of the non-histories (which works, since Troilus and Cressida is usually deemed a tragedy) that happens to have "History" in its full…

"Tee-ko" is closer than "tie-ko," but neither is the Danish pronunciation (closer to "too-ko": the y is essentially like a German ü). English speakers aren't obligated to pronounce it like Danes do, of course, but repeatedly defending "tee-ko" seems like a strange hill to be willing to die on.

To be fair, the Reichstag is, or was, an organization: it was the parliament of various German-language imperiums, just as the parliament of Sweden is the cognate Riksdag (and Denmark's used to be the Rigsdag). The building got its name from the organization that met there.

Your "Atomic No. 60" typo made me excited for a neodymium clue (everybody's favourite lanthanide!), but alas.

Erm, the "obverse" of a bill or coin is the front (technically, the more prominent side with the primary design). Jackson is being moved from the obverse to the reverse.

In the 2000 US Census, (approximately) 2,300 people with the surname "Buck" identified as Black. Another (approximately) 586 identified as biracial, which could, but obviously need not, incorporate African-American identity.

Once I was at a party where someone knew I studied Dutch in college. There was also a Dutchman there, and the person who knew me told him of my studies. With no introduction or warning, he came over and started yelling at me, seemingly legitimately angry that I had studied the language when everyone there spoke…

That's fair. Franz Schmidt and Johann Schmelzer do still pop up in the repertoire, but anyone who has heard of them probably knows who composed the Tragic Overture and doesn't have to try to work backwards from "names containing 'hm.'"

"Amazing" is a little strong. There's a lot to admire about the movie, especially the performances, but it seemed more than a little heavy-handed. To pick a random example, going to the slow-motion-in-moments-of-violence well twice in one film felt rather cliché. It all to her credit that DuVernay was ambitious…

Since a lot of composers were German and the Teutons love their "Schm" openings, most commonly in "Schmidt," several. And that's to say nothing of the various compound names that end in -man ("Lehman," "Bachman," "Fleischmann") or other suffixes ("Richmond," "Ashmore"), or the German names that end in "-hm" ("Boehm,"…

Rachmaninoff seems like he's not all that obscure (or have we already, mercifully, forgotten Shine?).