Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 October 26

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October 26

Viewers?

How can they correctly calculate how many viewers are watching a certain program on TV? Sure, they can know how many TVs watching a certain program, but the number of TV can in no way equal to the number of viewers. Even if they assume each TV on average has 4 viewers (based on a typical household), it wouldn't be accurate neither. There is no guarantee that all 4 views would watch the program at that time. In fact we all we know each TV has at least 1 viewer, so how can they calculate it?146.151.87.229 (talk) 05:11, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

See Nielsen ratings. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:01, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Why do you assume that each TV has at least one viewer. It's not true in my house! Dbfirs 07:28, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

See also Audience measurement and (specific to the UK) Appreciation Index. In the UK, they knock on the door of a sample number of homes and ask what the people in your house were watching yesterday, rather like an opinion poll, or at least they used to - I took part in a ratings survey about 10 years ago, Alansplodge (talk) 08:54, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

They have all sorts of ways of monitoring you electronically from your cable box and other devices wash times and there have been black box data recorders installed in cars without informed consent for years usa today.

MADELINE O'MALLEY

who was madeline o'malley and what happened to her at the YANKEE PEDLAR INN????? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:30A:2EFC:5490:D532:B3C5:7BE3:7BC2 (talk) 06:21, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't see an article on the subject. Where did you run across this? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:57, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

There is a brief comment in the article on The Innkeepers (film). --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 07:21, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Sodom and Gomorrah considered from the obvious, down to Earth, atheist view?

The Sodom and Gomorrah article is written from a religious point of view, which suggests that people have not considered the obvious explanation of what really happened. But perhaps I'm wrong and this view can be found in the literature, if so then I would be interested in that. Clearly, what happened was that at that time there were cities where the people did not live according to religious rules while there were groups of people intent on enforcing such rules. What then typically happens is well known from history, we can even see it in Iraq and Syria today. If you let ISIS enforce its laws on people who are not loyal to them, the outcome will be bleak. If you then let ISIS write up their history then as they evolve into a more moderate group, the original accounts will be modified, the judgement and the actual act of destruction will become divine acts. The victims will be blamed for all the bad things that happened. Count Iblis (talk) 16:13, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

This is soapboxing cum hoaxing in the utmost, Satan. Why do you bring ISIS into the discussion? The article is most certainly not written from a religious perspective, although it is about a story recounted in one religious tradition. And you obviously didn't read or ignored the Historicity section of the article you've linked too, which deals extensively with evidence and theories from a non-religious viewpoint. μηδείς (talk) 18:16, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Another possibility is that there was a natural disaster, could be a fire, a volcano, earthquake, or a meteor, that destroyed the towns, and that people trying to find an explanation afterwards justified it "because they must have been evil". The reality was probably that the people in S&G were no more evil than the surrounding towns, but there were probably a few incidents there, as anywhere, that could be latched onto after to paint the towns as evil. StuRat (talk) 16:20, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

People still practice sodomy from time to time, so there must have been at least a few survivors from Sodom... but when was the last time you heard of someone practicing gamorrahy?  :>) Blueboar (talk) 16:51, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Gomorry is just like sodomy, except the other way round :) Contact Basemetal here 16:58, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I always assume Gomorry meant donning a giant turtle suit to do the nasty. :-) StuRat (talk) 15:41, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)What's more common is the view that Sodom and Gomorrah simply didn't exist, and I'd say that was not merely an atheist view, but a secular one. See Sodom_and_Gomorrah#Historicity. Except for a mention by Strabo millennia after the fact (assuming it was there), S&G are only known from religious stories (which were probably Strabo's source). The idea that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed in a fit of religious extremism requires:

• evidence that S&G existed (none present)
• evidence that they had religious practices different from the rest of the Canaanite population to have lost allies (not likely) or that the Yahwist cult was strong enough to have wiped out the two cities with limited repercussions (not likely until recordable history either)
• explanation for why the later reconciled Yahwist and Elohist cults would not have just cited herem as justification for destroying the cities

Simpler to point out that there's not even reliable evidence that the two cities existed. Overall, the religious destruction hypothesis tends to read more like projection than examination. It requires fewer assumptions to believe either:

• they didn't exist, and story is a myth to explain in one fell swoop a couple of naturally blighted spots of land, why the Hebrews did not consider the Moabites allies despite an apparent relationship, and justification for certain religious laws regarding incest; with a fable about treating guests well (echoed throughout the rest of the Tanakh, when Sodom and Gomorrah are condemned not for homosexuality, but ill-treatment of the poor, immigrants, widows, minorities, and so on).
• they might've existed, were destroyed in a natural disaster, the explanation for the destruction evolved as in the previous theory. There are actually a number of cities in the era that were destroyed by natural disasters relating to leaking deposits of sulfur and natural gas, the issue becomes demonstrating that one of them was the inspiration for Sodom and Gomorrah. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:01, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

What's the meaning of the initials "S&D" that both StuRat and Ian Thomson are using? They seem to be standing for Sodom and Gomorrah but how? Contact Basemetal here 17:13, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure what happened with StuRat, but my caffeine hasn't gotten to work yet, and I must've been thrown off by seeing his post. Amending my post. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Mine was a typo, too, now corrected. StuRat (talk) 15:43, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Maybe he was thinking about B&D and S&M, as I'm sure he often does.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:32, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

StuRat as a Detroiter was thinking about Detroit - although as an analogy because of the dust bowl. But if you see that red paint, in High Plains Drifter and read those links exposed by Medeis above, you will see that indeed in the theme there was one "Paint it black". Not: pain in black. --Askedonty (talk) 20:19, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah, I think, needs to be understood in the context of two other stories. The first is at the end of the book of Judges, in which a Levite and his concubine stay with a man of Benjamin in Gibeah, and a mob demand the host throw the Levite out so they can rape him, exactly as the people of Sodom demand to do to the angels. The Levite gives them his concubine instead, and they rape her to death. The Levite cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends them to the tribes of Israel to summon them to war against the tribe of Benjamin. The war nearly wipes Benjamin out, so to preserve its existence the Israelites massacre the men of Jabesh Gilead, which had not taken part in the war, and give the women of that town to the surviving Benjaminites as wives so they can rebuild their population. The second related story is in 1 Samuel, where Jabesh Gilead is besieged by an Ammonite king. Saul, who is ploughing his fields in Gibeah when he hears, cuts his plough-oxen into pieces and sends the pieces to the tribes to summon them to war. After an Israelite victory, Saul is acclaimed king.

The two books of Samuel tell how Saul, a Benjaminite, is Israel's first king, but he and his house are eclipsed by the Judahite house of David. After the division of the kingdom in 1 Kings, Benjamin is absorbed into Judah. The Hebrew Bible was mostly written in Judah, and from a Judahite point of view. I think the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and its related stories, are there to blacken the name of Benjamin and justify its destruction as an independent entity. --Nicknack009 (talk) 13:02, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Paul the apostle claimed he was from the tribe of Benjamin (Romans 11:1, Philippians 3:5). That would seem to indicate that even in Roman times, as late as the 1st c. AD, the distinction between Judah and Benjamin had not yet been lost. Contact Basemetal here 15:10, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm confused. How does the story of Sodom and Gommorah "blacken the name of Benjamin", which didn't even exist when they were supposedly destroyed. Benjamin himself hadn't even been born. Paul B (talk) 15:20, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Me too. And Sodom and Gomorrah were not even on the territory of the tribe of Benjamin. But maybe (I would guess) Nicknack means that the invention of the Sodom story would make the behavior of the Benjaminites seem even more evil as they would be shown to have behaved like people in that ancient legendary most evil place. To me it's the story of the Levite that seems a bit suspicious. At least the author of the story didn't get his arithmetic right. The concubine should have been cut into eleven pieces: there were thirteen tribes but there's no point sending anything to Benjamin since they would not answer a summons to massacre themselves and you couldn't send anything to the tribe of Levi as the tribe of Levi did not have its own territory but were spread amongst the other tribes. Maybe the author implied that the Levite cut her into twelve pieces, sent out eleven and kept one himself? Contact Basemetal here 15:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

There's also in Esther 2:5 the statement that Mordecai (and thus Esther his niece) were of the tribe of Benjamin. That's under the Persians, during the period of the 2nd temple. True the historicity of the book of Esther is zero but the point is that the late author of the book of Esther thought it was credible to attribute a Benjaminite tribal affiliation to a post-Babylonian exile Jewish character. Contact Basemetal here 15:22, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Benjamin may have still existed in terms of personal ancestry, but it no longer no longer existed as a political entity in Persian or New Testament times - just like the name Cohen still preserves descent from priests, even though there's been no temple for priests to officiate at for nearly 2,000 years. In the divided monarchy period, when the earliest parts of the Bible were probably written, Benjamin was incorporated into Judah, was no longer an independent political entity, and its ruling line had been eclipsed by the ruling line of Judah. All three stories were written after this had happened, mostly by people who served the ruling line of Judah and who wanted to present their rulers as being the good guys. Benjamin had fallen under the sway of Judah, and these stories presented that as being the will of God because of the tribe's wickedness. --Nicknack009 (talk) 16:06, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

(addition) I think the story of the siege of Jabesh Gilead was probably the earliest written of the three, as it presents Saul in an unambiguously heroic light, unlike many of the other stories involving him in the books of Samuel. The story of the Levite and his concubine, echoing the cutting up of the oxen and the two places involved, Gibeah and Jabesh Gilead (also, the Levite came from Ephraim, like Samuel, and his concubine came from Bethlehem, like David), was probably written later to tarnish Saul's deeds and tribe, and then the Sodom and Gomorrah story, showing the same sin being punished by God rather than by human intervention, intensified that. That's my interpretation, anyway. --Nicknack009 (talk) 16:17, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Another comment, getting back to Count Iblis's original suggestion that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by religious extremist Israelites, and later rewritten as an act of God when the Israelites' extremism had calmed down a bit. There are plenty of stories in the early books of the Bible, Joshua in particular but continuing into 2 Kings when Elijah massacres the priests of Baal, of Israelites massacring people with different religious practices, presented as being done according to the will of God. These, if they really happened, are acts of religious extremism to rival anything ISIS have done, and were not rewritten as you suggest the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was. --Nicknack009 (talk) 16:48, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

There's a tremdendous amount of WP:OR going on here. This is a reference desk. Can we stick to that please?

Count Iblis, I've read your question three times now without being able to find a question. Is there a question you'd like to ask? Your first and second sentences suggest you may be asking the following: "If it is true that Sodom and Gomorroah were really destroyed, what prosaic explanations could be offered for the phenomena described by the Bible as miraculous?" Is that the question? --Dweller (talk) 10:53, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Dweller, I was approaching this from what Nicknack009 wrote above, my question is about published theories that give this sort of an explanation as they are not mentioned in the Wiki article. There are different possible theories as the other answerers have explained in detail above. But my thinking is that given the way people actually behave, one should favor theories that would blame violence on those entities that attempt to impose law and order especially when this is motivated by religion and to reign in "deviant sexual behavior". The history of man doing this sort of thing is not good. Therefore, it should be the favored theory, yet the literature seems to be silent about this. But then it may be that there are actually publications in journals about this that are not easily found. Count Iblis (talk) 21:14, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

So, in other words, you want material that reflects your personal confusion of extremism for religion rather than what there's evidence for, despite the huge leaps of faith required to reach those conclusions. The Tanakh is full of points where the Hebrews/Israelites brag about breaking even (not even properly winning, just breaking even) in fights with Canaanites or other neighboring tribes just over beign too close or having a slightly rearranged pantheon. They considered it a religious duty to come as close to nuking idolatrous cities as possible. If the Hebrews had wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah, they'd've dedicated a whole book to it, and it'd probably still be the most festive Jewish holiday there is (since a lot of them amount to "we survived" rather than "we won"). And yet, there aren't even records among neighboring tribes saying "Hey, watch out for those Hebrews, they mercilessly wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah and are trying to act like they didn't do it."

There's no reason whatsoever for the Israelites to have covered it up. There's also no evidence that Sodom and Gomorrah existed. There's also plenty of evidence that more than one city in the area was destroyed in a natural disaster involving large and highly flammable deposits of sulfur and natural gas. Occam's razor does not favor your suggestion at all, because it requires almost as much faith as the myth that a couple of angels nuked Sodom. Failing to see that is the sort of bias you'd find in Young Earth Creationists, not level-headed historians. Honestly, it'd be easier to just say "teh bible sux because Sodom and Gomorrah are completely made up and ancient Israel used herem to justify unrelated genocides." Going out of one's way to create a more convoluted accusation that requires ignoring clear evidence to the contrary is not "obvious, down to Earth," it is a Dan Brown-esque conspiracy theory. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:01, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Bear in mind that Count Iblis is on record quite recently as seriously advocating the closure of the WP ref desks, because some external site does it so much better than we do. Any question from anyone with that sort of record, particularly where it has the hallmarks of a soapbox, casts the person's bona fides in a somewhat negative light. Not that he's unwelcome to ask questions here, but his questions really have to be squeaky clean for us not to suspect trollery is on his agenda. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:07, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Bill Gates' philanthropy partly to keep litigation against Microsoft at bay

I remember reading, quite a long time ago, that Microsoft/Bill Gates only started donating money to philanthropic causes as means to [unsourced speculation about motivations removed --Dweller (talk) 10:46, 28 October 2014 (UTC)]. Is there any credence to this claim? Matt714 (talk) 16:56, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Have you looked for this in Google? And beware of BLP violations. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:42, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Well if you look at the history mentioned in Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the roots of the foundation were stated in 1997. One of the sources is the foundation themselves, [1] it's probably impossible to verify the foundations claims that this article [2] started it all. But his first trip to India obviously can be, and can undoutedly be and also dated (I think it's probably [3] but I wasn't able to confirm that). Similarly the formation of the Gates Library Foundation in 23 June 1997 [4] [5]. I also noticed from [6] (while trying to verify the date of the India trip) also mentioned here [7] that they gave money to John Hopkins University in 1997, evidentally 20? May 1997 [8]. These dates are interesting because they were before the start of the DOJ Internet Explorer case which was later in 1997 [9] which lead to the court considering breaking up Microsoft in 2000 United States v. Microsoft Corp. I'm pretty sure at least partially due to the DOJ's prompting throughout the case. (The case itself related to the earlier 1994 settlement, but clearly that didn't force the government to consider stuff in 1997.) The point being, if that was his intention, it seemingly didn't work, at least initially, yet he seemed to expand his efforts. It's true the DOJ did eventually abandon their desire to break up Microsoft and settled the case, to the chargain I believe of at least some of the states involved, but a lot of sources suggest this had much more to do with the new administration's views, e.g. [10] [11] [12]. Note the last source suggests politicial lobbying as having much more of an influence. Nil Einne (talk) 18:16, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

One, they've got more money than they know what to do with. Two, they're not bequeathing it to their kids. Three, they can't take it with them when they go.Itsmejudith (talk) 18:22, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I modified my reply slightly after you reply, but since your reply doesn't seem to relate to much of what I said, hopefully that's not a problem. Nil Einne (talk) 18:24, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

BTW our article on the foundation includes quite a lot of criticism. Some of it relates to Microsoft and of course Bill Gates. It's also not uncommon to hear other criticism relating to IP, Microsoft, Bill Gates views and the foundation e.g. [13]. That also mentions some stuff from 1993, also mentioned here [14]. Yet none of this suggests it was initially at least, only done to ward off govermental involvement. Again, you may not trust Bill Gates view on his involvement, but it's possible some stuff came from even before the foundations being set up, you obviously don't need a foundation for philantrophy. Also, I'm only looking at Bill Gates philantrophy. I expected Microsoft had some involvement too, probably before Bill Gates and as with probably most companies, PR was likely a factor, and as a public company, such philantrophy couldn't just happen according to Bill Gates whims, the fact remains all this was happening before what was probably their most major case with the US government. (And frankly, for all the critism of Bill Gates, few would suggest he's stupid. So even if he were a little naïve, it's difficult to imagine he wouldn't recognise there would be far better ways to try and discourage governmental action in the US, such as the lobbying Microsoft did eventually undertake that I mentioned above. Likely he'd also realise that a lot of money on his part may not be the best solution to try and ward of governmental involvement, regardless of whether as the largest I believe shareholder he did have a lot to benefit.) Nil Einne (talk) 12:34, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Somehow I don't think it's cheaper to donate $28 billion than go to court. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:58, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:BLP mandates that unsourced negativity about living people must be removed on sight, including on project pages such as this. I've done so. --Dweller (talk) 10:46, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

• This was a question: "I remember reading, quite a long time ago, that Microsoft/Bill Gates only started donating money to philanthropic causes as means to deter future litigation, particularly from the FTC and other government agencies. Is there any credence to this claim?" for which he asked for reliable sources. He was not stating anything or making any claims. One should be able at the Reference Desk to ask questions and to request sources regarding living people. Or you might as well say that the Reference Desk should never accept questions about living people. That wasn't a BLP violation. Contact Basemetal here 12:10, 28 October 2014 (UTC)