Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 June 4

Humanities desk
< June 3	<< May | June | Jul >>	June 5 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

June 4

More on unusual time signatures

Inspired by the earlier question about unusual time signatures, I'd like to find at least the name of a piece that I read about once some years ago on the internet, but have never been able to find again. It's distinctive, but I've never had the right keywords to find it. It was a short French piece for three voices, quite old, maybe 14th-17th century. The distinctive thing was that each of the three voices was singing in a different time signature. One was in 6/8, one in 3/4 and another in 2/4, I think. Any of you into early music recognise these features? Steewi (talk) 01:53, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

As you mentioned French and old, Guillaume de Machaut comes to mind. He often used polyrhythm in his music, but I wasn't able to locate the exact piece you asked for. ---Sluzzelin talk 07:07, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

This kind of thing was common in the 15th century and thereabouts. While I don't know which piece specifically you are looking for -- there may be more than one, and it is also rather dependent on how you render them in modern music notation, since the concept of meter is more recent than that -- I can give you a great example of a huge piece from that time in four meters, Ockeghem's Missa prolationum. Not only are the voices singing in different "meters" but they sing the same music -- at different speeds (therefore most parts of the piece are mensuration canons). Like the Goldberg Variations of three hundred years later, the successive canons are also at different intervals. Ockeghem would have been somewhere in modern France when he wrote the Missa prolationum; Tours, Moulins, Paris, or somewhere else. Anyhow lots of stuff from that time would qualify. Antandrus (talk) 13:30, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Qiu Jin book

Does anyone know of a book that has the most detailed informationon on the life of Qiu Jin? The specific article doesn't have very many sources. I'm not looking to expand the page, I would just like to know more about her. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 05:08, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Prejudice and discrimination against Aspies

1. What is the official term for prejudice and discrimination against Aspies?

• I'd suggest aspergophobia, but it gets 0 ghits. (Me, I just have ergophobia.) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 13:22, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

2. What have studies found about prejudice and discrimination against Aspies?

Doing research to do volunteer work. --Friends of Aspies (talk) 13:01, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

This site has a list of online resources covering discrimination against autistic persons (to use the site's own terminology). The article on Sociological and cultural aspects of autism may also be of interest. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:37, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Do you think there is significant prejudice against Aspies? I don't expect most people know enough about the condition to recognise it, so they couldn't be prejudiced against it. (They can still discriminate against them, but it wouldn't be knowingly - they would just think this offensive, unsympathetic person deserves it, not knowing that they can't help it.) If it doesn't happen much, then there won't be an official term for it. As Ghmyrtle's links show, there is quite a bit of discussion about discrimination against autistics in general, but I would assume they are more severe autistics. --Tango (talk) 15:36, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Not always - here, for example. (I don't think describing people as "offensive" or "unsympathetic", even just to make a point, is very helpful, by the way.) Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:25, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Aspies do come across as offensive and unsympathetic to those that don't know better - that's simple fact. --Tango (talk) 16:31, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes perhaps, but not always. Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:33, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

My immediate reaction was "what is an aspie?" but my second thought was that they can shout and appear alarmingly aggressive. Kittybrewster ☎ 16:57, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

So can other people. Before this degenerates into a discussion about "prejudice and discrimination against Aspies" by WP editors, I suggest that we get back to the OP's two points. Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:04, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not as 'up' on the clinical literature as on the research lit, but I am not aware of any significant specific prejudice against people with Asperger's. The condition is difficult to recognize from a lay perspective, and is likely not sufficiently common or dramatic to warrant a specific class of its own. most likely people who encounter asperger's categorize the person somewhere between 'odd duck' and 'jerk' without ever recognizing there is a clinical diagnosis involved. there may be an informal (conditional) sort of prejudice - neither odd duck nor jerk is particularly complimentary - but its very difficult to assess the effects of a conditional prejudice as opposed to a categorical prejudice. --Ludwigs2 19:25, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't call that prejudice - prejudice mean "pre-judging". You judge someone before you get to know them based on some irrelevant characteristic. If you considering someone a jerk because they are behaving like a jerk, that isn't prejudice. --Tango (talk) 19:43, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

@ Tango - true, but it could be experienced as prejudice. If someone with asperger's is (say) fired from 5 jobs in a row it might not matter to him that the 5 people who fired him just didn't like him; he might come to see it as an ingrained prejudice. --Ludwigs2 22:49, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, all that proves is that people can get things wrong. People with Asperger's can certainly be disadvantaged by their condition. That doesn't mean there is prejudice against them. --Tango (talk) 23:39, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

wow, careful there Tango. There's a significant debate in the sociological and psychological literatures on implicit prejudice: e.g., people who use the 'N' word or think women make bad bosses, not because they have anything particular against blacks or women but just because those are prevalent usages in the society around them. prejudice does not always need to be overt and intentional to be considered prejudice. --Ludwigs2 01:34, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Thinking someone is a jerk because they act like one is not pre-judging them, it is just regularly judging them. For it to be prejudice, it has to be a pre-formed opinion based on a generalisation from a certain characteristic. If people don't know how to spot Asperger's syndrome (and most don't), then they can't be prejudiced against them (unless the person with Asperger's is wearing a badge, I suppose...). --Tango (talk) 02:07, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

On a slightly different tack, the word "official" doesn't make much sense in this context. Who is it that might be granting words "official" status? I think you mean "in wide use", or "widely accepted". --ColinFine (talk) 21:52, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

"Officially" is a very widely misused word, Colin. "The filmstars Marcella Turbayne and Norman Carstairs have now officially announced their separation, something that has been the subject of much tabloid speculation of recent weeks" - rubbish! They've confirmed the rumours, perhaps, but they have no official positions so they can't act or speak in any official capacity. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 23:08, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

In that sense, I guess they mean "formally". --Tango (talk) 23:40, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Maybe "official" is not the right word. I mean that "Aspie" is the term universally used and accepted by the community, as well as parents, researchers, etc. which may be different from the term "Asperger syndrome" which may be made official by the scientists and researchers. What would be the correct word? And people can be prejudiced and discriminate against Aspies even if they know nothing about the condition. Just like if someone of another race is doing something that is part of their culture and you make a nasty remark to them about it, without knowing about their culture, that is racist. --Friends of Aspies (talk) 15:35, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Race is defined along visual lines, so people know when someone is of a particular race. There is no easy way to tell that someone has Asperger's syndrome. --Tango (talk) 17:03, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

"Race" is most definitely not always defined "along visual lines". Racism can be apparent on the basis of something as "non-visual" as an accent, or even a surname, in exactly the same way as discrimination on the basis of a person's neurology. Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:44, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Not all bigotry is race-related. Bias for or against accents and surnames can have to do with other perceived or real factors such as education level and economic status. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:33, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

And following up on Tango's comment, race is very often visually-based. I wouldn't know how to recognize an "Aspie" or a gay person or someone's education level or economic status unless they clued me in somehow. Race, you can usually tell. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:36, 7 June 2010 (UTC)