Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 September 27

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September 27

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

I do not agree with what is going on here. Not only do I disagree, many people do not agree with. We would like to see a change in this topic. There is a picture of it made ​​and puts out what is needs to be changed. Because this is a fact, and we like to see the change. You still want a perfect Wikipedia? You would just have to adapt this topic. Sincerely, C.R U., from The Netherlands.

]http://i47.tinypic.com/i53h3l.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.194.231.122 (talk) 00:10, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Discuss this at Talk:Shahada. You might want to be clear about what exactly you think the problem with the article is. Assuming the problem is with the article. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:12, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Classic content dispute. It has been BRD'ed with no resolution. Disputed translation, and the real problem isn't in the article but in: MOS:ISLAM#Translation which judging from Talk:Shahada and archives, is a contentious choice. C.R.U. - the best place to request changes would be in the talk page for the Manual of style for Islam-related articles. If there is a consensus for leaving that term untranslated (as some editors think that it should) then perhaps the MOS can change to reflect this, and then the Shahada article can be updated, too.--Robert Keiden (talk) 00:46, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Possible to buy New York Times in Seattle in 1910?

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.

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I don't really know how newspapers work. I've noticed various newspapers in 1910 (on Google's news archives) will sometimes have stories printed verbatim, which I guess is how the mysterious AP "wire" works (like I said, I'm 100% ignorant on all this)—and something that's made fun of in modern times by Conan O'Brien and perhaps others. So maybe my question is irrelevant. I would like to know if someone in Seattle would could pick up a New York Times before boarding a train to read on his voyage. I'm asking because I cannot find the Seattle Times archived on Google, but I can find other papers (and the NYT isn't necessarily the best, but I'm picking it because it's well known), and I need to reference newspapers available in Seattle in 1910, but obviously not ones that I can't, literally, reference! I hope all this makes sense. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 06:48, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

You can get The Seattle Times, provided you don't mind forking over a few bucks[1] or have a valid Seattle library card[2]. If it's free you want, how about the Seattle Star? Clarityfiend (talk) 07:56, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Reuters, AP and UPI are common news agencies. At that time, they would have used the telegraph to send stories around the world (earlier methods included carrier pigeons !). So, Seattle papers might have had stories identical to the New York Times. However, getting the New York Times itself in Seattle would be more difficult. You could have it mailed to you, in which case it would be delivered most of the way by train, and would be maybe a week old when it arrived. You might not think anyone would do this, but quite a few people who were homesick or wanted to keep up with local events back home seemed to have distant newspapers delivered just like this, at least until the Internet allowed for a better way. StuRat (talk) 08:20, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

The New York Times#History says: "In 1910, the first air delivery of The New York Times to Philadelphia began." I don't know how widely such deliveries took place or how quickly other cities were included, but it looks like it was possible to get the NYT some distance from NY by at least the end of 1910. It might have taken a little longer before it got all the way to Seattle. --Tango (talk) 11:28, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Those of us who remember the pre-Internet era will remember newstands that sold out of town newspapers. However, of course, they would be several days old. Research in the Seattle city directory might reveal if there were such establishments. Yes, the idea would be to cater to the homesick or those who sought local political news. There was, after all, no other way to do it.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:19, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Wonderful! Thanks for all the replies! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 21:01, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. StuRat (talk) 05:15, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

European Defence Agency - estimated savings

Hi all, as you may or may not know, there is a European Defence Agency (EDA), which is an agency of the European_Union. The EDA does work on joint procurement, coordinated research & development etc. It is, I think, an uncontroversial claim that the EDA has allowed savings on military spending to be made amongst EU Member States and indeed such savings are an explicit part of EDA's aims. However, it is very difficult to find any kind of ballpark figures of how large these savings have been or are estimated to be. Marsh and Rees provide a figure of €6bn per year, but don't really explain that calculation (The European Union in the Security of Europe, 2011, p. 44). I seam unable to find much else...does anyone have any other clues? Thanks --European Snowleopard (talk) 13:17, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, Google Scholar finally started providing me with at least useful percentages... But if anyone finds backup or opposition to the 6 billion figure above, I'm still grateful! --European Snowleopard (talk) 13:27, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

@ recipient

(Unsure if that belongs here, or Linguistics, or Computing, or even Entertainment. It's touching four topic areas.) Does anybody know where the shortcut "@ recipient" evolved from? The usage like if there are several answers, and, say, the 4th user is replying not only to me but to one of the other users participating. They could then write something like "@Ouch:" before replying to me and "@StuRat:" before replying to StuRat. I found an example here, in Marketdiamond's reply to two replies.

For one part, I'd guess that it's the electronic equivalent of "To recipient". Is it connected to the stupid trend in the media to introduce @ as a symbol of the internet, even if someone is referring to the WWW rather than mail? - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 14:58, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

I hadn't come across it before Twitter. Your Twitter user name is preceded by an @ symbol. From there it's easy to see how people use it to indicate they're answering someone directly. --TammyMoet (talk) 15:04, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

How about this: Origin of the @reply – Digging through twitter's history. That's a description of how it came about on Twitter, and mentions that ""@[name]" is a common referencing protocol on Teh Internets, and has nothing to do with Twitter." There's a follow-up post from Garrett Murray, one of the pioneers: The Real History of the @reply on Twitter. He says "I got the idea from seeing people do it over at Flickr, where it had been happening for more than a year."

We have an article, Mention (blogging), which gives the Twitter history, but doesn't elaborate on anything previous. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:51, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Aha! Here we go. From a comment on the first article I posted: "Both the @ and the : came from conventions already established on IRC, where you would direct a public response to a specific person using @username:. In IRC clients like Colloquy, you can type the first few letters of a username, then hit Tab and the software fills in the rest of the name for you, appending a colon automatically.

This convention migrated to Twitter, but without the autocomplete and the automatic addition of the colon, that bit of punctuation got dropped as it didn’t really help and sometimes you needed every character you could get." - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:55, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Since nobody has yet mentioned it, let me give a pointer to our at sign article, which contains most of the information here and more. Looie496 (talk) 17:31, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks all. I'm still puzzled how I could miss it at the At page. It was in there, linked as @, and that's a redirect to At sign, the page mentioned by Looie. Oops.

The emythology of "@ recipient" is given as "Attention" shortened to "At" (I've read the same about the AT commands of the Hayes standard - long ago) and written as "@" to make it stand out like a capital letter. I always thought it was an acronym, maybe "Applies To"... - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 07:59, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Not sure how relevant this is in terms of historical accuracy, but I found it fun nevertheless, and now I see this topic, so I thought I'd throw it out there. While re-reading the 1995 novel (so let's say it was written throughout 1994), Relic, there are a few intranet communiqués between museum staff, et al., which are basically emails addressed to personnel with (examples) "margo green@biotech@stf" and "roger thrumcap@admin@systems" and "george moriarty@exhib@stf". I was wondering if this was accurate for the time for inter-department computer messages. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 08:10, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually the article doesn't give the entymology as attention. It just says '@ is used for "attention" in email messages originally sent to someone else' which is a rather different thing. It may be the entymology is simply the same as the name of the symbol, i.e. at. This is the way I've always thought of it as. I.E. This message is directed at person X. No need for any shortening, acronyms whatever. But I doubt any theory can be demonstrated in any way, there's a very good chance there's no real historical record and it could easily have been 'invented' multiple times. Nil Einne (talk)

Entymology: The study of the origins of the names of insects. Lovely word; thanks for coining it. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 22:14, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

What exactly does pragmatism states of logic?

In a more intricate explanation, what does pragmatism or "practical philosophy" states about logic? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.205.88.247 (talk) 15:24, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Have you read through Pragmatism#Logic? --Jayron32 15:25, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Infanta Mariana Francisca of Portugal and Infanta Maria Doroteia of Portugal

In Joseph I of Portugal it mentions the potential suitors of his daughters Infanta Mariana Francisca of Portugal and Infanta Maria Doroteia of Portugal, but Mariana Francisca's article mentions nothing about her betrothal or marriage proposal to Louis, Dauphin of France. While her sister Maria Doroteia's article mentions that she was potential bride for [[Louis, Dauphin of France (1729–1765) |Louis, Dauphin of France]] and nothing about Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, which contradicts what is said in Joseph's article. My question is who are the actual matches and marriage proposals for these two sisters?--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 16:46, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

What do the sources say? --Jayron32 17:10, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

That would be what I want to know.--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 01:54, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Is the Wikipedia article unreferenced on these facts? --Jayron32 03:04, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

No references at all (in Joseph I anyway). Zoonoses (talk) 04:48, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Most of the articles on Portuguese royals lack any citations or references.--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 08:53, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

I added some references to the articles on Joseph and also Maria I but can’t seem to find any sources on Maria’s younger sisters that aren’t in Portuguese or Spanish (so says Google translate). Is there a Portugal project or ref desk where you could ask, maybe? Taknaran (talk) 15:46, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Peace, man

Why does the dove represent peace in some cultures? All I can think of is it (supposedly) brought back an olive branch to Noah in the Ark - but what does that have to do with it? Rcsprinter (babble) @ 17:13, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Have you ever seen a dove killing anyone? --Jayron32 17:18, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Our article on doves as symbols ascribes the origin of this to the Noah story. Looie496 (talk) 17:23, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) See Peace dove and Doves as symbols. My favourite explanation is from the peace dove article, that the Olive branch is a Pagan symbol of peace, and became associated with the dove through the story of Noah. This makes sense, since when doves are used to denote peace, they are often depicted with an olive branch. Another explanation apparently comes from equation of doves with the Holy Spirit. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 17:26, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Book about bees

Hi, I recently stumbled upon a (I think) early 20th century book by a French author about bees, but stupidly forgot to bookmark it. It looked interesting though, and was written from a non-technical and possibly slightly romantic perspective. The author just really liked bees. What could it have been? --Iae (talk) 19:32, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

A quote from a book about bees was posted on an RD in the last few months, talking about how one set of bees (drones?) were, to their great surprise, killed by other bees at the end of the foraging season. Does that ring a bell as the source? --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:38, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Could it have been one of the works of Jean-Henri Fabre by any chance? --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 20:13, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Some of which can be seen on Google Books. Alansplodge (talk) 20:24, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

That does ring a bell Tagishsimon, thanks, it's quite possible I got it from here. I'll have a search of the desks. It's not Fabre sadly. I think the author began with 'M', thinking about it. --Iae (talk) 20:31, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

If it was on these desks, then I know for sure it would have been some time in the weeks leading up to the 25th July (as that's when I went on holiday and lost it as a 'saved tab' in my browser). Searching brings up nothing, but how do I look at the archives for a specific date, rather than by keyword? --Iae (talk) 20:33, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I worked it out eventually: [3]. The author was Maurice Maeterlinck. Thanks all. --Iae (talk) 20:36, 27 September 2012 (UTC)