Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 December 22

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December 22

How can a nihilist avoid becoming a Buridan's ass?

The one possible solution is to become existentialist (and create your own subjective set of values ex nihilo). And the other one is hedonism (and calculate what provides more pleasure).

Are there other ways out of nihilism? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noholist (talk • contribs) 00:10, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

We don't do opinion or speculation; is there some sort of reference-directed question you have? μηδείς (talk) 01:24, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I m not asking for a personal opinion, just about how philosophers deal with this problem. Its more a history of philosophy question than a speculation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noholist (talk • contribs) 01:40, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Let's add some links for everyone reading this Q: nihilism, Buridan's ass, existentialism, hedonism. StuRat (talk) 06:04, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Did you read the bit about authenticity in the existentialism article? If that is followed why should there be any difference between existentialism and what one would come up with if one calculated what provided most pleasure as in hedonism? Dmcq (talk) 11:37, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

British refugee policy in World War 2

I know that during World War 2, the British had a policy of not allowing any European Jews into the Palestine Mandate (most likely to avoid pissing off the local Arabs who didn't want any Jews moving in next door), but what about them accepting Jewish refugees into Great Britain proper? Did they do any of that? 24.23.196.85 (talk) 05:53, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I suspect they must have. Deportation was hardly possible in the middle of a war, so I guess anyone who washed up on Albion's shores stayed, the only question being interned or not.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:01, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

They might have accepted some Jews in with the Kindertransport and maybe other similar efforts, but I don't think that they made any extraordinary effort to let as much Jews into Britain as possible, perhaps due to the Great Depression and anti-Semitism in Britain. In regards to what Wehwalt said, I think that what he said might very well be accurate but keep in mind that it's pretty hard to illegally sneak into Great Britain considering that it's an island. Futurist110 (talk) 06:03, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Sure, but I didn't mean sneak. During the war, sneaking would have got you shot anyway. Plenty of people turned up in boats seeking refuge.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:39, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Have you got a reference for that? A few hundreds maybe but not thousands. Getting across the English Channel in 1940 wasn't straightforward. Alansplodge (talk) 14:07, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Note that the Kindertransport was prewar. -- Deborahjay (talk) 10:16, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

You're right. My mistake. Futurist110 (talk) 06:12, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Anecdotally I think that many Jewish people came to Britain, certainly before the war. There are a number of episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? (UK TV series) showing ancestors of celebrities who left Eastern Europe, including (from memory) those of Stephen Fry, Esther Rantzen and Jerry Springer. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 06:36, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, just read the article and Rantzen's forebears arrived 100 years previously, so strike that. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 06:40, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I believe that pre-WWII, Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria were allowed into Britain if they were sponsored by a British citizen. During the war, I'm quite certain that refugees from occupied countries were readily accepted, whatever their religion, however most would have opted for somewhere safer than Britain, which was being bombed and under threat of invasion until 1942. Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria already in Britain were interned for the first few years of the war, because they were citizens of an enemy country and classed as "Enemy aliens". However, men of military age were allowed to serve in special companies of the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps of the British Army after screening. Alansplodge (talk) 13:46, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

If I remember the programme about Stephen Fry, his ancestor came to the UK some time before WW2 to manage a sugar factory in the Fens, the rest of his family didn't make it out of Slovakia.-- Arwel Parry (talk) 17:02, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

See Whitehall and the Jews, 1933-1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust. Nearly all of this looks at pre and post war immigration, and the failure of the British Government to aid Jews in occupied Europe. I don't believe that there was any significant movement of civilians across the Channel after the end of the Battle of France, and a thorough search of Google has failed to find any reference to one. I don't think it would have been possible just to hop on a boat at Calais and sail across. This is only my impression and I stand to be corrected. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee helped refugees from across Europe, usually directing them to ports in Spain and Portugal and thece to America, but this became a whole lot harder once the US was no longer neutral. See also The Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief. Alansplodge (talk) 22:34, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

The big problem was that Hitler's Krieg was so Blitz. There just wasn't time for many civilians to escape ahead of the armies. And then it was a difficult, usually impossible question of escaping from a continent which had become a prison camp. That so much of the allied armed forces, let alone civilians, were extricated successfully was considered miraculous. There was a major program which the British government took part in, with one aim to aid Jews in occupied Europe. It was called World War II. William Rubinstein's The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis is an antidote to a tremendous amount of recent mythology and wishful thinking. The first chapter refers to serious, often older, work addressing the OP's question.John Z (talk) 01:28, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

And I take it that after Continental Europe had fallen, the SOE didn't make any great effort to get refugees (Jewish or otherwise) out of there, for the simple reason that they had much more important things to do. Thanks! 24.23.196.85 (talk) 03:32, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

True; also insertion and extraction of SOE agents was extremely hazardous and usually undertaken by Westland Lysander aircraft, which had room for precisely one passenger. Not a viable route for refugees. Alansplodge (talk) 16:54, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Many mid-level British bureaucrats in the Mediterranean area seemed to consider keeping more Jews out of the mandate of Palestine the highest priority above all others, which led to the Struma affair, and much bitterness and resentment in the immediate post-WW2 era... AnonMoos (talk) 22:52, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

That policy needs to be seen through the lens of the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine; an experience that the British administration didn't want to repeat. The policy was laid out in the White Paper of 1939; according to that article, about 31,000 Jewish refugees, mainly from the Balkans, were allowed into Palestine from December 1942 until the end of the war. Alansplodge (talk) 23:32, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

I believe I mentioned this reason in my original post. 24.23.196.85 (talk) 01:17, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Indeed; "avoid pissing off the local Arabs" was the phrase. Actually, they had killed nearly 4,000 "local Arabs" in trying to stop them from killing their Jewish neighbours. The British were in a "no win" situation in Palestine, partly of their own making. No doubt some appallingly bad decisions were made, but even with hindsight, it's difficult to see how the situation could have been resolved satisfactorily. Alansplodge (talk) 02:02, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

The 1939 policy might be justifiable as a response to the immediate situation of 1939, but the refusal to deviate from it in almost any degree, for considerations of common sense or basic human decency, in the changed circumstances after 1939 created bitter frictions and resentments which helped make the UK government's situation even more difficult in 1946-1948. What really drove the Jews into a frenzy was that there seemed to be complete impunity for actions that resulted in the deaths of Jews "beyond the line" (outside the islands of Great Britain): the bureaucrats responsible for the decisions that sealed the fate of the "Struma", Glubb Pasha (who commanded troops that committed the Kfar Etzion massacre), Major Farran etc. etc. all had long and distinguished careers, and didn't seem to suffer any significant inconveniences from the fact that they were responsible for the deaths of mere Jews. AnonMoos (talk) 02:25, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I realise that this is still an emotive issue but two points:-

My understanding of the British position is that they considered it highly likely that the arrival of a refugee ship (and the others that would probably follow) would be a pretext for a further Arab revolt, which could in turn lead to the deaths of thousands of Jews and Arabs and seriously dislocate the Allied war effort in the process. So in their view, it was the lesser of two evils. They did offer to accept the children from the ship, but Turkey refused them overland passage, and sea transport could not be found because of the naval situation in the Eastern Med at the time. In their defence, the British were not to know that the Turks would tow the Sturma out into the Black Sea, and neither party were aware that the Soviets had decided to sink nuetral shipping on sight.

Roy Farren seems to have been court-marshalled, discharged from the army and found work as a labourer in a quarry before emigrating to Canada. If you have sources detailing John Bagot Glubb's involvement in the Kfar Etzion massacre, please could you add them to the respective WP articles, as they aren't mentioned. Alansplodge (talk) 01:11, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Major Farran didn't belong to the cushy upper-class old-boy's networks that more fully insulated some of the others, but he literally got away with murder (was found innocent in the court-martial), and remained unrepentant and defiant about it until the end without seeming to suffer much loss of respect and esteem among many of his fellow Britons. Glubb Pasha may not have been closely involved in the massacre (he certainly wasn't directly on the scene), but it was committed by troops under his command, and there was no form of responsibility or accountability for this, and he never really was able to give a full and satisfactory account of his actions in relation to the massacre (what he said about it in his later life was almost pure fantasy), and in fact he seems to have adopted the basic attitude that it was an impertinence for mere lowly Jews to seek to question the lofty Glubb Pasha. Neither man's medals or honours were revoked. As for Arab revolts, there was a major revolt in Iraq in 1941, but it didn't seem to set back the British war effort much, and I strongly doubt whether Palestine was ripe for an Arab revolt in 1941, since the Arabs there were still dealing with the severe aftermath of 1936-1939. I find it typical of the whole British approach to the matter that immigration was the single most significant issue which lead to a breakdown in British-Yishuv relations (ensuring that the UK government and Jewish leadership in Palestine were no longer able to work together), yet the British navy kept up the blockade against immigrant ships right up until the last moment of the mandate on midnight of May 14 1948, as if to prolong the aggravation and continue to rub salt on the wound until the last possible moment... AnonMoos (talk) 06:34, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

World record for being under continuous observation for the longest time

Is there a world record for being under continuous observation for the longest time? To keep the discussion from going macabre, let's restrict it to consensual participants only. Dncsky (talk) 12:33, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I imagine there were some royals who had servants in attendance at all times, for their entire life. (You might not think they would want attendants as they relieve themselves, but, apparently, at one time, they did.) StuRat (talk) 18:11, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Indeed: see Groom of the Stool. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:37, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Even on their wedding night and honey-moon? Or were the servants objectified to the degree that they were seen as walls? Dncsky (talk) 20:35, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, in that case they would be "under observation" by their sex partner, assuming they hadn't gotten around to decapitating them yet. StuRat (talk) 20:44, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

What about in their sleep? Even if they posted guards it would make sense for the guards to stand outside. I would be too creeped out to fall asleep knowing that someone is watching me the whole time.Dncsky (talk) 22:43, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I rather doubt that royals were watched 24/7. In any case, there'd be nobody keeping track, so that's unverifiable anyway. Let's get the ball rolling with something concrete: 66 hours for an Israeli magician-cicle.[1] Clarityfiend (talk) 02:04, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

This site quotes a book of 1478 that says that the Esquires of the Royal Household were there "to array him, and unarray him; watch day and night". In medieval times there would indeed be servants actually sleeping in the same room as the King. Note that royal four-poster beds at this time had curtains which would be drawn, to keep the draughts out but also for privacy. As for consummation of marriage, this was a semi-public event for centuries. --TammyMoet (talk) 11:06, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Randy_Gardner_(record_holder) stayed awake for 264 hours. That's probably the longest Guinness World Records in terms of duration for a single participant, unless there's a record out there for "the longest nap". Coma patients living in hospital rooms with security cameras (do these even exist?) can probably top that, but I guess we'll never know since medical records are confidential. Dncsky (talk) 02:25, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike Ritof and Edith Boudreaux set the world record for dancing at 5154 hours, 48 minutes from August 29, 1930 to April 1, 1931 (what an appropriate day to end it).[2][3][4] Clarityfiend (talk) 03:58, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Wow! We have a winner. I'll mark this as resolved. Anyone with more datapoints is welcome to contribute. Dncsky (talk) 04:26, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Errr, cancel that. They had 20 minute breaks every hour (until the sponsors got tired of the whole thing), and I doubt that they were supervised when they went to the bathroom. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:32, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Female national anthem writer

I was just reading about national anthems of other countries when it struck me that there aren't any female writers of most of them. I don't like it, is it some kind of rule that only men write national anthems? I wanted to know if there are any female writers of national anthems.Yashowardhani (talk) 12:47, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Paula von Preradović and Margaret Hendrie qualify. There are certainly no rules about such things as there is no body with the authority to make such an absurd rule.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 15:11, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Many anthems have been around for a long time, predating the time when it was generally acceptable for women to be writers, composers, painters, doctors, lawyers etc (yes, I know there were exceptions, but I'm talking generally). So there was a kind of social "rule" that excluded women by default. This may account for the preponderance of male anthem writers. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 19:12, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

We have a List of female composers by birth year and I'm embarrassed to say that I've only heard of three of them. So unless I'm being particularly ignorant, it seems that women are rather under-represented in the "well-known composers" area, even today. Alansplodge (talk) 22:12, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it's a case of ignorance, except in the sense that whenever we take 2 people at random, one will know more than the other about any topic chosen at random. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the latter would be generally considered ignorant of the topic. Also, "well-known" is a very subjective criterion. A person who's little-known may still qualify for Wiki-notability; and a person who's well-known may fail for various reasons. One further point is that the composers of national anthems tend not to be "well-known composers" (many would be red links). I checked out Category:National anthem writers and there are only 2 people there who'd be considered well-known composers (Charles Gounod and Joseph Haydn), as measured by people generally being able to name something else they wrote. John Stafford Smith (The Star-Spangled Banner) and Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (La Marseillaise) would fail this test, as they're "one-hit wonders", compositionally speaking. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 01:40, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

JackofOz -- In the 19th century, writing, painting, and composing were actually some of the few non-family outlets for middle-class and upper-class women. Women were usually banned from formal professions (though things were beginning to slightly change towards the end of the century), and most forms of working for a salary would cause them to lose their "respectability" or class status, so forms of the creative arts (especially those that did not involve performing in public for money) were one of the few paths open... AnonMoos (talk) 22:42, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

In the USA, at least, it seemed acceptable for women to write poetry and songs. Several patriotic songs were authored by women, including Katharine Lee Bates providing the words for "America the Beautiful". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:16, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Ted Bundy's execution celebrations

Has there ever been any other recorded execution where crowds gathered outside the prison to celebrate the execution of an inmate or not? Keeeith (talk) 17:15, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Happens all the time. --Viennese Waltz 17:52, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Recall that executions used to be major public events. The image I have in my mind is that of the executions by guillotine around the time of the French Revolution. Large public gatherings, just like watching sport. What could be asked here is why, in many of those countries that still perform executions, they're hidden away so much now? — Preceding unsigned comment added by HiLo48 (talk • contribs) 21:30, 22 December 2012‎

I believe at some point it came to be seen as undignified. The idea that the premeditated state killing of a helpless person can be dignified has — let's say, its own issues, but nevertheless there are a lot of people who seem to think it can. --Trovatore (talk) 04:51, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

It certainly happened with John Wayne Gacey. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:56, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

To learn more about our attitudes towards executing criminals in the past in the UK, read about the execution of King Charles I. Also, reading about the crowds surrounding La Guillotine during the French Revolution (including Madame Tussaud) is enlightening. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:53, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

You can look at the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment [5] to see why the United Kingdom discontinued public executions. In short, they became more theatre than solemn occasion. James Boswell (an inveterate attendee at public executions) noted a hundred years earlier how unruly crowds at an execution could become. Some cheered the convict, some cheered the executioner, some were just there to see the convict die, some were there to pick pockets or commit more serious crimes (often much more serious than the crime the convict was being hanged for!). Public executions were more circus than justice. --NellieBly (talk) 22:15, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Not an execution, but there were near-riots in any community that Lawrence Singleton was threatened to be released to (in the California politics of the 1980's, Lawrence Singleton was one thing that Christian rightists and radical feminists agreed about)... AnonMoos (talk) 22:31, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

And it looks like they were right, too. AlexTiefling (talk) 08:29, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Simpson's "paradox"

For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox#Kidney_stone_treatment

I'd like to know why this is considered to be a paradox when, as seen in the example above, Group 2 and Group 3 are obviously going to have a much higher impact on the ratio of the total sum than Group 1 and Group 4.

The Psychology section attempts to address this question, but it's very short. --Immerhin (talk) 17:54, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, presented the way that it is, it's clear what the cause is (while treatment B is less effective, it tends to be used on smaller kidney stones, which are easier to cure, so it appears to be more effective). However, if we only had data on the total cure rates for each treatment, not broken down by stone size, it would incorrectly appear that treatment B is better. If we also had separate studies comparing treatments A and B for small stones, and large stones, those would both show treatment A to be better for both. This is the paradoxical conclusion. StuRat (talk) 18:06, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

In simpler terms, the paradox is A1 > B2, A3 > B4, but (A1 + A3) < (B2 + B4). We can see why that is by looking at the raw data, but if we just look at the percentages it seems paradoxical. Tevildo (talk) 18:13, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

dudley m. lynch

Dudley M. Lynch is the author of The Duke of Duval, a very interesting story about politics in South Texas. It focuses on the Parr family, Spanish-speaking Anglos in mostly Spanish-speaking Duval County. Mr. Lynch's Wikipedia page appears to have been deleted. This was a screw-up, in my opinion.

If it is possible to see the contents of the deleted page, I would be grateful to be able to see them. My own introduction to Mr. Lynch, the above-mentioned book, is fairly recent. I'm no authority, but I think perhaps the decision to delete was made with insufficient data/justification.Chester quibble (talk) 22:25, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

The deletion discussion seems to have been Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dudley Lynch. Feel free to read it (and related links). Other than that, if you think that the decision was wrong, look for sources yourself (take a look at Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources and Wikipedia:Notability if you would like to know what kind of sources "counts"). --Martynas Patasius (talk) 23:14, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

The discussion was very short and superficial; there seems to have been no effort to present the sort of keep argument that has a chance with BLPs (biographies of living persons), and so it was rather routinely deleted. I expect almost any administrator would be willing to provide you with a copy, perhaps in your userspace, so you can evaluate what might be needed to establish notability and verifiabiliity. You might ask User:CBM, for example. --Trovatore (talk) 04:37, 23 December 2012 (UTC)