Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2008 February 15

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February 15

Clause about prohibition sale on the internet

Hello,

I would like to know if a clause in a distribution contract which prohibites sale of product on the internet is enforceable in Australian law.

-Are there any sections relating to it in the Trade Practices Act 1974? Which ones? -What is the legal basis for prohibiting such a clause in a distribution contract?

Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandra 8 (talk • contribs) 01:31, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

We don't give legal advice. AnonMoos (talk) 12:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Zeal

Did Devon, England, used to be called "Zeal"? Was it pronounced so as to rhyme with "cell"? --Milkbreath (talk) 02:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

No. There are a couple of places in Devon with "Zeal" in their name (Zeal Monachorum and South Zeal), supposedly derived from sele, an Old English word meaning hall or house. FiggyBee (talk) 03:16, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec):The Oxford Dictionary of Place Names identifies Devon as coming from the late 9th Defena, Defenascir from OE tribal name Defnas. It also lists Zeals (in Wiltshire) and, in Devon, South Zeal and Zeal Monachorum, and suggests they all come form OE sele or sealh, 10-12th C, meaning "sallow-tree" or "hall". Your comment about the pronounciation made me think of the Scottish surname Dalziel (De-yell), which the Oxford Dict. Surnames traces to a place of the same name in the Clyde valley. Don't know if that helps? Gwinva (talk) 03:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

By the way, some old Devonshire dialects were famous for changing "f", "s" at the beginning of words to "v", "z". That's how we get vixen as the female of fox, and the "v" in vat [1]... AnonMoos (talk) 12:31, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, all. A possible interpretation of something I saw was that Devon used to be called that. That not being the case, if an old book calls a place in Devonshire simply "Zeal", what place is that? I'm basically trying to get at the whole "zeal" business as regards Devon. I've learned (learnt) of a cottage in Atherington from around 1870 that was called "Little Zeal", and I'd like to understand the reference. Is this "zeal" perhaps an English word in the dialect, or was it in living memory? The OED is mute. From the scant information I've been able to find online the word refers to some monks having to do with King Canute and means "hall" or "cell" or something like that. --Milkbreath (talk) 12:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

That latter reference is undoubtedly Zeal Monachorum, Monachorum being Latin for "of the monks". FiggyBee (talk) 13:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

What exactly is a magnetic field?

[Merged into the duplicate thread at the science desk. -- BenRG (talk) 12:41, 15 February 2008 (UTC)]

Waaaz up! (again)

I'd like to thank those who helped me before but now i got some more fun questions. :P This time its about the Ankylosaurus can anyone point me in another direction other than wikipedia...? i wanna know more :) Thank-you Inutasha De Fallen —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inutasha De Fallen (talk • contribs) 05:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Try looking through the references section of ankylosaurus. You might find some interesting information there. Even better, see what your local library has on the topic, or use inter-library loan to get any other books you might want. --MatthewLiberal (talk) 19:41, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

commemorative pins

I'm trying to look for some commemorative lapel pins. They should commemorate the Texas A&M bonfire log tragedy, in which twelve students died. If anyone out there can help me, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you.72.229.136.18 (talk) 07:07, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The Lotus Sutra

Hi all I have read the article on he lotus sutra but it didn't really provide the information I was looking for. I know that the lotus sutra is an important sutra for Mahayana Buddhists, but I am not sure as to why. I have heard that the sutra teaches that Buddhahood is available to all and I know of parables such as the the parable of the burning house and the parable of the phantom city, but other than that I do not know why it is important. If anyone could help that would be great. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.207.82.15 (talk) 11:23, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

A quick skim of stuff results in what you say. The theological place for the parables the skillful means, is about the Lotus accepting many roads to awareness, and being somewhat global and tolerant, yet it is the superior way, or highest means to attain buddhahood. It also holds that Buddhas are ultimately immortal. This is in the article Lotus Sutra. Then there's this, "it fully crystalizes the Mahayana notion of the salvation of all sentient beings." [2] And[[3]; it stresses the importance of the present moment and that practice itself is mystic [4]. Hope this helps. Julia Rossi (talk) 12:09, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

The influence/importance of the Lotus Sutra, I think, stems at least in part from the fact that it is a "latter-day" sutra, as opposed to the "ancient" ones that date from around the time of the historical Buddha. In a way, it represents a "new" interpretation of Buddha's teachings which perhaps more closely correlates with the spirit of its times. The fact that it was accepted as an authentic original record (and not merely an interpretive text) made it stand out against other later texts. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

architect of New Museum of Contemporary Art

please, somebody can tell to me how is the architect of New Museum of Contemporary Art

thank you

(sorry for my english, I'm french !) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.2.237.234 (talk) 12:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

It's by SANAA, the firm founded by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa [5]. David Šenek 14:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

nation rural emloyment gaurantee scheme by indian govt

knowledge about nation rural emloment gaurantee scheme by indian govt —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.134.216.83 (talk) 13:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Brought over from HelpDesk... not sure if this is the right place. Scarian^{Call me Pat} 13:06, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

See National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) or a Google search on "National Rural Employment Gurantee Act". PrimeHunter (talk) 13:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Eagles-myth and symbol

the eagle has always had a special symbolism appearing on national flags and other symbols of state power. Why should this be? Is there any information on the origins of the eagle myth?86.147.191.220 (talk) 13:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I assume it's partly because eagles are pretty much the apex predator among birds. In traditional European heraldry, the lion is considered the noblest animal, the eagle the noblest bird, and the oak the noblest tree... AnonMoos (talk) 13:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

And then because the Roman use of eagles as military symbols - i.e. symbols of their power - was adopted by many later leaders, notably Charlemagne and his Holy Roman Empire. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The eagle has long had noble associations, in history and in folklore. It can be found as a symbol of power and majesty in the cultures of Babylon and Persia. In Roman legend it was the 'storm-bird' of Jupiter, the carrier of his thunderbolts. Gaius Marius, a leading soldier and politician, made it the symbol of the Senate and People of Rome, ensuring that from this point forward the legions would carry eagle ensigns.

In Christian tradition the eagle is associated with St John the Evangelist, and appears on the lecterns of churches holding the Bible on its wings, thus repelling the serpent of falsehood. According to St Jerome, it was the emblem of the Ascension of Jesus.

In European royalty, the eagle was most often adopted as a badge by those claiming a universal authority over other kings and princes. Charlemagne wore an eagle-embossed cloak. Canute the Great was buried in one. This imperial pretence was later adopted by the Napoleons. In the Byzantine Empire the Palaeologue dynasty adopted a black double-headed eagle with spread wings, representing the Roman succession in both the east and the west. In this form it was later taken up by the Tsars of Moscovy, the Third Rome, and by the Holy Roman Emperors in general and the Habsburgs in particular. Clio the Muse (talk) 23:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Some Arabic countries also use the eagle, like Egypt...this apparently derives from Saladin, who, I suppose, got it from the Byzantines. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:03, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

From Glory Road by Robert Heinlein (paraphrasing because I don't have a copy handy):

"This is the eagle, the symbol of our country", I said. "It stands for courage, stength and freedom.". I neglected to tell him that the Bald Eagle feeds mostly on carrion and never fights anything bigger than half it's size.

DJ Clayworth (talk) 18:05, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

naďve vs nad've vs naïve

I came across the word "naďve" in the Katherine Wood's translation of the The Little Prince (probably as it appeared in 1943). I have never seen such a strange English word before, but based on the context I guessed that it meant "naïve". Then I confirmed it in the French original version of the book. I was at first unable to find a dictionary entry for "nad've" but google turned up some 6,510 results. Stranger still is when I type "nad've" it comes up with 4,360 results. When did "nad've" fallen into disuse? Was it a native English word before "naïve" prevailed? --Kvasir (talk) 20:55, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

This webpage dedicated to translation errors of The Little Prince may be worth checking into. I'd review, but I have to run to work now. :) Zidel333 (talk) 21:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

That site doesn't seem to cover it, but it's fascinating reading nonetheless. At first glance, nad've looks like an attempt to capture the way some people pronounce "native". The typesetter may have misread "naïve" in the manuscript as nad've, or simply made a typo. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I have requested a copy of the book from the public library to verify the type set as oppose to the full text available on wikipedia. Btw, "nad've" or "nad'vely" appeared three times in the first ten chapters alone. I doubt it's an innocent wikipedian typo, a substitution for "ï" maybe. --Kvasir (talk) 22:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, you didn't mention you were looking at an online copy instead of, you know, a book. In that case it's very likely that this is an OCR error. OCR software that's tuned for English isn't going to expect characters like "ï" to appear, so it "guesses" and gets it wrong. Although, having said that, it's interesting that it comes up with "ď", which is not an English letter either. (It's apparently a small letter d with a hacek (caron), Unicode 010E (hex), which is often renderered like "d'"; in my browser it shows up in a different form in the editing area where I'm composing this posting than outside it!) --Anonymous, 01:05 UTC, February 16, 2008.

Yes, an OCR artefact. Read naïve. The twist is that both native and naïve come from the same Latin source: nativus.

– Noetica^♬♩ Talk 02:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou! I thought some fan has faithfully typed up the entire text for the greater benefit of mankind. Turned out (s)he had just scanned it. --Kvasir (talk) 20:28, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

There is a plausible explanation why "naďve" keeps on appearing in English texts on the Web instead of "naïve". There are many different text encoding conventions, and all of them coincide on the genuine English words, since such words contain symbols only from the 7-bit ASCII range. People writing English texts may not care about the encoding they use except for the cases when some word like "naïve" has to be written. To write this word, one has to use either Unicode, or some 8-bit encoding providing a code for the character 'ï'. The encoding iso-8859-1 and the closely related windows-1252 are 8-bit encodings appropriate for this (the character in question has the code number 239 in them), and probably they are used rather often in such cases. However, some other 8-bit encodings used in Europe provide no code for 'ï'. At least two of them, namely iso-8859-2 and windows-1250, assign the code number 239 to the character 'ď'. This can be the reason of the discussed word replacement. For instance, if the word "naïve" occurs in a text written under iso-8859-1 then this word will be displayed as "naďve" when the text encoding is wrongly assumed to be iso-8859-2. --Sarimsak, 18 January 2011, 14:50 (UTC)

Nazi sphinx

Please, which leading member of the Nazi party was known as the sphinx? Wulver (talk) 23:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

This was Rudolf Hess, so known because of his sphinx-like appearance and because he was born in Alexandria in Egypt. Clio the Muse (talk) 23:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The following pair of images shows the family resemblance.  --Lambiam 10:05, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Hess has a more prominent nose, though. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 12:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Only because Obelix never got a chance to climb Hess's face. [6] ---Sluzzelin talk 12:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Ha! Ha! Perhaps the said nose is to be found somewhere in Russia! Clio the Muse (talk) 23:46, 16 February 2008 (UTC)