Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2008 November 17

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November 17

How to implement/awareness Human Rights in different community around world?

Human Rights is Concepts as a standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, so can any one suggest more on this? To aware masses towards human rights concepts in different community? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arvindbagadgeri (talk • contribs) 10:09, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

This does rather sound like a homework question. Start reading something like Human Rights and look and see if there are any Human rights organisations, try to get more infortmation about what they do already - what techniques they employ to raise the profile of human rights. Additionally consider just what is meant by 'rights', because we have few rights that are agreed upon universally. Each culture and society has its own practices and ways of life. Philosophically at least it could be seen as dubious that we decide our vision of human-rights is 'correct' and then those who fail to live up to those standards need 'education' or pushing to live to the standards we define. The United Nations Human Rights Council will also be a useful link. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 10:22, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Some only-slightly-cynical people would say that one step towards improving human rights would be to abolish the United Nations Human Rights Council, which allows countries such as Saudia Arabia(!) and Pakistan(!) as members, while devoting over half its time and agenda to the single country of Israel (which under any even remotely objective tally is not involved in anything even remotely approaching 50% of the world's human rights violations). Of course, Israel is uniquely excluded from United Nations Human Rights Council deliberations in a way that no other country in the world is, since Israel is a member of WEOG only in New York, while the United Nations Human Rights Council[ptui!] is based in Geneva... AnonMoos (talk) 23:46, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Anyone, by virtue of being human, may define "human rights." However, to have an effect on other cultures and value-systems, we need a universally accepted definition. To my knowledge, the only one is the Western-oriented UN version. So, start by defining what you mean, and then move on to defining why you have the right to impose this definition on other people. DOR (HK) (talk) 08:04, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I think that the standard given by the UN in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is probably as close as you'll find to a general consensus on civil rights and human rights. The problem with international law in general is that it tends to be unenforceable except by force: that is a strong nation can ignore with impunity, and a weaker nation may be 'beneath' the notice of the UN. No one did anything about Pol Pot on one end of the scale, and on the other any nation with nukes is probably immune to UN military intervention. As to the right of enforcement, it's easy to justify philosophically once you agree that pure cultural relativism is illogical and leads to unjustifiable conclusions; basically states are members of a global community, and just like any community member a state gives up some rights to absolute autonomy in exchange for protection from the depredation of other states, of course this working model would require a UN that could actually deter attacks on other nations, with more than in-name-only police powers. 69.210.56.62 (talk) 18:55, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Deskovic

Is the surname (e.g. Jeffrey Deskovic) pronounced in a Czech fashion (Deskovits) or in some other way.? 203.188.92.71 (talk) 10:19, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

That would depend on where the name came from. It doesn't sound Czech to me, but if it is, it would be pronounced Deskovits; that is, unless it was originally spelled Deskovič, in which case it would be pronounced Deskovich.

But if, as I suspect, it's from one of the Balkan countries (Serbia or Croatia most likely), it's pronounced Deskovich. On the other hand, in English-speaking countries many -ic names originally from the Balkans have become anglicised and are pronounced -ik.

Hence, one Deskovic might be -ich, another might be -ik, and a third might even be -its. You'd need to ask them to be absolutely sure of how their name is pronounced. -- JackofOz (talk) 19:44, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

No, I think they meant the wrongly convicted Jeffery Deskovic (wrong link there). By the way, I think, unless it's changed since I last saw it, the article needs categorization. Vltava 68 (talk contribs) 08:40, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I've merged the very recent (and wrongly spelt) Jeffery Deskovic article to Jeffrey Mark Deskovic, which dates from 2006. Xn4 (talk) 01:43, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I think my analysis still applies, though. Afaik his name is not well-enough known for anyone here to know how he pronounces it. A journalist who wanted to do a TV or radio piece on him would need to check with him or his family as to how to say his name. An online or newspaper article wouldn't have this problem. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:20, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I see his Serbian WP article calls him Џефри Марк Десковик, which is pronounced Dzhefri Mark Deskovik. That strongly suggests to me that it's "Deskovik", because the Serbs would be unlikely to have changed ч (their letter for -ch) to к, unless they had good reason to believe he says it that way. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Edgar Allen Poe question

what is the best methodology to a recitation named acritic of the fall of the house of usher by edgar allen poe??please help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.194.86.124 (talk) 11:44, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand your question. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:32, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It appears that the OP is asking how to recite a critique on one of Poe's works. If it has to be word-for-word, memorize it. Nobody wants to watch you read. If it doesn't have to be word for word, memorize small sections to prove your points and then give your recital from memory. Never ever stand and read from a paper or turn your back to the audience and read from powerpoint slides. -- kainaw™ 16:43, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. The whole point of giving "oral examinations" or "dissertations" of this type is that ideally, you should know what you are talking about. It's relatively easy to write a paper about something you really don't understand; anyone can paraphrase the work of others, footnote it, and put a bibliography at the end. Doing so does not mean you know much of anything about what you wrote. The thing is, to speak extemporaneously on a topic you have to display some general knowledge on the subject, and that is quite harder. For example, pick something you love and know really well, like lets say your favorite band, or sports team, or food; and talk about it. You could probably spend twenty minutes talking quite knowledgably about these things because you truely know it. The idea behind these sorts of oral recitations is to demonstrate that you know something about the topic at hand, and aren't just reading from a paper. Anyone can read words on a paper; it means something to be able to understand something well enough to explain it to someone. My recommendation is to read the work over and over, and talk about it with others. Get some practice explaining the work you are supposed to be critiquing with your family and friends. Have THEM ask you questions about it. If you can't answer the questions, write them down and try to figure out what the answers are. The more you practice speaking on a subject in this way, the better you will get at it... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 16:58, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to offer a different opinion here. For me, at least, it simply isn't possible to memorize pages of text verbatim. If this is true for you, as well, I suggest you glance up from the page and look at the audience's eyes, scanning a different part of the audience each time, then look down for the next line. Follow the text with a pencil so you don't lose your place when looking up. Hopefully, a word or two at the start of each sentence will be enough to trigger your memory, and you won't spend much time looking down. With an overhead projector or slide show, you also have the "excuse" of looking at the material in order to position and move the pointer, so it needn't look like you're reading it. For an example of someone who should NEVER attempt extemporaneous speech, we need look no farther than Bush. Amazingly, when he speaks in Spanish, he is quite eloquent, apparently because he follows the written text to the letter. StuRat (talk) 17:25, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Now, as for the specific case of reading a critique, I'd include some dramatic passages from the work itself, as that's likely to be more interesting than the critique. Of course, you need to link them together, by adding comments on the passages you read aloud. As for the Fall of the House of Usher, no critique would be complete without noting how the end corresponds with the end of the movie Carrie. StuRat (talk) 17:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

just so you know, the op probably means: what is the best methodology to a recitation named A Critique of "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allen Poe?? It's possible that the poster means composing his own work, ie that "named" just means he should give it that title and then write it himself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.27.195.51 (talk) 22:29, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

All of his poetry can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose Of Texas"hotclaws 19:47, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

video documentary about original composition of the bible

In the 90s I viewed a documentary about the history of the sources and composition of the Bible. The documentary's host and/or author was a heavyset, bald, biblical scholar who spoke in an English dialect (at least to my American ear). He was obciously a biblical scholar and I vaguely recall that he or his recent ancestors had emigrated from Greece. I do not recall his name nor the name of the series and I hope someone may that information and make it available to me. The documentary aired on PBS in series format over numerous evenings. Any assistance in learning more about this documentary will be appreciatd, especially information on how to obtain a copy. Thank you. 75.163.72.83 (talk) 17:42, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

You may be referring to the series Testament, aired originally on BBC's Channel Four, written by John Romer and produced by Antelope Films in 1988. Photos of Romer can be found [1] at both the top and the bottom of the page. Marmot seems to have all 7 parts of the series [2]. ៛ Bielle (talk) 19:22, 18 November 2008 (UTC) (I don't know what the lock is after my link to Marmot. Perhaps someone more experienced in wiki mark-up can explain. ៛ Bielle (talk) 19:22, 18 November 2008 (UTC))

The lock indicates that it is a secure http connection - see https. Warofdreams talk 10:53, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Why did the proto-indo-european peoples spread so far?

I've been reading about the history of Indo-European peoples and I'm sort of confused. What made these obscure tribes spread so far and what made them so dominant in the new lands they arrived in? Was there some sort of ancient pre-historic empire that existed then later fragmented leaving behind traces of their language like with the Roman Empire and Latin forming the Romance Languages? Or was there just some unexplainable mass migration? 63.245.144.68 (talk) 20:59, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

1) There certainly wasn't any kind of centralized government (much less an "empire").

2) Language spread is not always the same thing as mass migration.

3) For a nice basic introduction to some of the relevant historical questions and hypotheses, see chapter 15 of The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond... AnonMoos (talk) 23:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Language spread has generally reflected population move or conquest. Rarely do people just decide to start speaking some other language that is cooler than theirs or more useful for commerce or some other reason, although it does happen on occasion. Edison (talk) 01:01, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but the conquest could have been accomplished by a relatively small elite, as happened in many historical cases of language change, such as the shift in Ireland from Irish to English. Probably a similar process spread Latin across much of Western Europe. There was not a mass migration from Italy, but a conquest by relatively small numbers of soldiers, some of whom may have settled among the local population. In order to retain their elite status, local elites began speaking Latin, and eventually the less privileged population followed their elites. The spread of English or Latin probably offers the best analogy for the spread of the Indo-European languages, since there is no clear archeological record of large population movements at the appropriate point in prehistory. The early Indo-European languages had probably already differentiated from proto-Indo-European before their speakers spread very far, based on evidence of reciprocal influence among the first generation of Indo-European languages. These peoples probably shared a military technology that gave them a considerable advantage over other European (and Southwest/Central Asian) peoples: a mastery of mounted warfare and perhaps the world's first cavalry. Since they were already fragmented into different peoples and tribes, they did not form a united empire, but they were able to dominate the peoples they conquered long enough for the conquered to adopt (and adapt) their language. Marco polo (talk) 01:35, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

After reading several books on the subject, like Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins from Colin Renfrew or On the Origin of Languages by Merritt Ruhlen, or books from Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Jared Diamond, I am strongly tending to think that Indo-Europeans discovered agriculture in the fertile crescent and expanded from there. I don't believe they came from north of the Black Sea / Caucasus, nor that horses were better from where they came from. Agriculture gave them a major advantage over hunter-gatherers, and so they were able to take over the land with barely any resistance. --Lgriot (talk) 05:05, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, most linguists do not tend to be convinced by Cavalli-Sforza's theories, and Ruhlen's "Mega-comparative" work is quite controversial... AnonMoos (talk) 09:33, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry I take everyone's opinion with a pinch of salt, including these authors' opinions (they actually disagree, btw). But after reading a number of theories, though, I still think that I-E. expansion was from the crescent and thanks to agriculture. --00:57, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Why isn't this at the Language desk? AnonMoos (talk) 09:38, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe because it is about archeology too. --Lgriot (talk) 00:57, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

My take on the shift to English from Irish in Ireland is that it had much more to do with the famine than anything to do with elites or conquest. Communities spent some of their money in the middle of the famine bringing in teachers so they could learn English and get a job quicker when they or their children emigrated, and they actively spoke English at home to help with this. Dmcq (talk) 09:27, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, what I'm trying to ask, I guess is: Why did so many people adopt the Indo-European language and culture? If it was conquest, what made these people spread so far and conquer so many people? I read somewhere that it was because the Indo-Europeans were the first people to invent the chariot. Was it just a technological thing then? 63.245.144.68 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 22:53, 18 November 2008 (UTC).

Some people claim that Indo-Europeans mastered horses better than others, and so their tribes were able to beat the nearby tribe, settle on their land, and then the year after that, beat the next nearby tribe again, take their land or submit them to I-E rule, etc. for centuries and this resulted in a huge territory spread. As I said above, I (and some others) think they mastered agriculture among the first, which gave them an advantage in terms of population (food production can sustain 10 times more people than food gathering). With a much larger population, they were able to push away the other tribes, and send colonists to farm the land next door, which then would result in this colony to have many children, which when they are big enough, would want to farm their own leand, and would go colonise the next area of flat land, etc. for generations. But this is not agreed among all scientists that are involved (archeologist, linguists, geneticists, etc.) , so you would have to make your own opinion from reading studies written by other people, or better, start a carrer in one of these domains and start your own scientific study (which would be an extremely interesting domian to work on, I would recommend it if you have the scientific vibe). --Lgriot (talk) 00:57, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

The genetic evidence certainly seems to indicate a movement from Asia Minor and the Balkans into western Europe at the dawn of the Neolithic, some 7,000 years ago. The question is whether the bearers of Indo-European languages were the people who took part in this migration, or perhaps more accurately, population drift (since the new arrivals seem to have intermarried with the indigenous inhabitants). What makes this unlikely, in my view, is that geographically distant Indo-European languages, such as Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, were far too close when first attested in writing 2,000 to 3,000 years ago to have diverged 4,000 to 5,000 years earlier. The linguistic evidence points rather strongly, I think, to an Indo-European origin among horsemen on the plains north of the Black Sea, probably around 5,000 years ago. There is some archeological evidence that would support a cultural shift, very plausibly carried by Indo-European speakers (without large-scale population movements), radiating from present-day Ukraine beginning about 4,000 years ago. (Though speakers of the language ancestral to Hittite probably migrated south earlier, before the other Indo-European peoples moved apart.) If that is right, then the existing agricultural population would have adopted Indo-European languages from a conquering elite. But, as others have pointed out, this is all disputed among scholars and virtually impossible to prove conclusively one way or the other. Marco polo (talk) 02:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

That's disappointing. I didn't know it was so controversial. I hope they can figure it out someday, though. 63.245.144.68 (talk) 13:39, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

There's actually not all that much controversy among linguists -- a fairly strong majority of those linguists who deal with the detailed specific facts of ancient languages (as opposed to broad-brush mega-comparison theorizers) think that a South Russian Urheimat is more probable than an Anatolian Urheimat. AnonMoos (talk) 14:16, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

It has been suggested that the IE expansion was triggered by the rise of the Black Sea after the Ice Age. That idea appeals to me but I gather it is not generally taken seriously. (Hm, the deluge itself is more controversial than television had led me to think.) —Tamfang (talk) 07:24, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The Black Sea Deluge theory is certainly interesting, but very improbable. Still, it's extremely confusing to me why these people would suddenly begin migrating like that. 63.245.144.68 (talk) 15:01, 21 November 2008 (UTC)