Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 November 23

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November 23

UK handicapped symbols

Go to 53°54′13″N 1°11′45″W in Google Maps and start looking through the car park with Street View; you'll see what appears to be a backwards version of File:MUTCD D9-6.svg, although the wording on the adjacent Little Chef restaurant demonstrates that the picture isn't itself backwards. Is this version of the symbol, with the stick figure facing left, the normal usage in the UK (or at least in Yorkshire), or is this different from normal symbols? International Symbol of Access doesn't address variations, aside from a couple of American modifications that have been designed to placate activists. Nyttend (talk) 05:08, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I've never seen it that way before, and I've lived in Britain most of my life. Looks like a cock-up to me. By the way, you could have provided us with a direct link to the image, viz: [1] instead of making us find it for ourselves. --Viennese Waltz 08:26, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, stencils are normally used paint these things, as you see here. It's a simple matter to lay down the stencil the wrong way up (not to mention mixing up the order of a sequence of stencils). As this was a parking lot (presumably not painted with public funds) and the eymbol was comprehensible, we can guess that even if the owners learned about the error they did not think it needed fixing. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 09:00, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The provision of accessible disabled parking spaces is required by the Equality Act 2010 but as far as I can tell, there's no compulsory signage requirement for private car parks. A government "Traffic Advisory Leaflet" of April 1995 says on page 6 that "The white wheelchair symbol in a black square as shown in TSRGD Diagram 2113 should be used..", but shows the "stick man" facing right (Figure 5) and facing left (Figure 6), both on page 7. Alansplodge (talk) 11:40, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

An interesting thing about that 1995 document is it actually has 3 photos of real world locations where the symbol appears to be backwards from what most mention as the normal direction (page 3, 8, 9). All have writing visible so it doesn't look like it's simply that the photo was flipped. It's possible 2 of these are from the same place (although it doesn't look like the exact same parking places and I wonder if that store was big enough to have two groups), but page 9 definitely seems to be different. In fact, I think the number of photos with the backwards direction is more than the number in the right direction (although in many photos the direction is unclear). Nil Einne (talk) 12:39, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The TSRGD themselves, Schedule 16, paragraph 34, state: "The disabled person symbol shown in diagram 2310.1. The symbol shall be shown on a black rectangle when placed on a white or yellow background on that part of the sign. The symbol shall be reversed where appropriate". Tevildo (talk) 13:10, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Need help tracking down a Thomas Jefferson quote

This wikisource link [2] has the quote:

How did Jefferson propose to convert a government of judiciary and police into the strongest government on earth? His answer to this question, omitted from the Inaugural Address, was to be found in his private correspondence and in the speeches of Gallatin and Madison as leaders of the opposition. He meant to prevent war. He was convinced that governments, like human beings, were on the whole controlled by their interests, and that the interests of Europe required peace and free commerce with America. Believing a union of European Powers to be impossible, he was willing to trust their jealousies of each other to secure their good treatment of the United States. Knowing that Congress could by a single act divert a stream of wealth from one European country to another, foreign Governments would hardly challenge the use of such a weapon, or long resist their own overpowering interests. The new President found in the Constitutional power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations" the machinery for doing away with navies, armies, and wars.

Where can I find a source for the quote ending in "...the machinery for doing away with navies, armies, and wars"?

If I'm reading the paragraph correctly, the quote came from either one of Jefferson's private correspondence or "in the speeches of Gallatin and Madison as leaders of the opposition". 731Butai (talk) 10:33, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Nothing in that paragraph implies that it is directly quoting Jefferson. Presumably it is a summary by the author (Henry Adams) of words that Jefferson did write. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 13:03, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I was planning to say the same thing. It's a reference to the Embargo Act of 1807. The quote earlier in the sentence is the first part of the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution. Nyttend (talk) 13:14, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Agree that it's unlikely to be a literal quote. We have quite a lot of Jefferson's correspondence - he kept copies of all his letters. He purposefully destroyed some later on, but those are believed to be mostly private letters. A good, searchable archive is here. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:27, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Opinion pieces as news in The Daily Telegraph

"Obama’s phony war" in The Washington Post is clearly labeled as an opinion piece, with "Opinions" appearing before the title, the byline reading "By Charles Krauthammer Opinion writer", and the URL even showing that it is in the opinions section, but where the same piece appears in The Daily Telegraph as "France is trying to create a coalition to destroy Isil, but President Obama isn't interested" (subtitled "Will the leader of the free world please stand up?"), "opinion" is mentioned nowhere, the byline is simply "By Charles Krauthammer", and it appears under the section "News / World News / Islamic State".

Is it common for newspapers in the UK leave it up to their readers to identify opinion pieces by content, or is this a peculiarity of The Daily Telegraph? -- ToE 13:12, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

In the actual hard copy Daily Telegraph newspaper, it's usually not difficult to distinguish between opinion and hard news (my mum is a regular reader), although I agree that it's not made clear in the internet article that you linked to. Some of the British tabloid newspapers mingle fact with opinion far more freely; the Daily Mail is notorious in that respect, but the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror are little better. Alansplodge (talk) 13:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

As a rule of thumb, straight news doesn't use questions for headlines. And the answer to any such headline is no. Goes for subheadlines, too. Anytime a writer refers to himself or the reader, that's basically equal to an explicit "Opinion" label. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:20, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

British newspapers are all much less clear on this than US ones. In the physical copy the location of a piece usually makes things clearer, with opinion pieces on their own pages. But in online reading this is less clear. Johnbod (talk) 12:54, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Are Jihad and Islamic State the same thing?

I keep hearing on a radio station (not sure which channel) and reading in the Washington Post about ISIS/Islamic State, sometimes using them together simultaneously. Please explain briefly the difference. Also, explain briefly whether the war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, American war on terror are relevant, and provide links if further explanation is needed. Also, what's up with the Islamic terrorism? How did this terrorism begin in the first place? Since when did Islam start to have a negative image in American or Western society? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 14:10, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Have you read the jihad article? It's a fundamental concept of Islam (meaning "struggle"), although interpretations of the concept range from personal struggle against sin to armed warfare against nonbelievers. And your final question, see Arab–Byzantine wars; after a short period of viewing them as a quirk, the Empire soon realised that the Muslims were a threat, and this got reinforced when they defeated imperial forces, conquered Palestine and Egypt, and destroyed the Persian Empire — all within a few years of the death of Muhammad. There wasn't much of a "Western society" at the time (this being the Early Middle Ages, with very little communication, in most of Europe outside the Empire), but invasions of Spain and France (to use today's names for those regions) caused the various Germanic peoples of Western Europe to become aware of their hostility. Nyttend (talk) 14:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Reading the relevant articles on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and for the various wars might help you out. Also, this video might help as well. Dismas|^(talk) 14:33, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Note that Islam had a quite positive image in the Enlightenment, as more rational than e.g. Christianity with endless debates on the details of the Trinity and the exact role of Jesus. I don't think its historically correct to suggest that there is an unbroken tradition of enmity going back to the original era of Islamic expansion. Relationships have varied a lot, and often been dominated by other topics than religion. The same is true today. While Islam is used as a rallying cry by some fanatics, its not the underlying cause. Muslim Arabs were happily allied with the allies during WW1, fighting the (also Muslim) Ottomans. Afghanistan/Pakistan has been the subject of political machinations during the Great Game in the 19th century, Turkey controls the Dardanelles and hence Russia's access to a warm water port, and "Arabia Felix" is sitting on both the Suez canal and the largest and most convenient reserves of crude oil. All this means that the whole near and middle east has been subject to manipulation by all major powers of the day. That is not a climate that is conductive to peace and stability. As an aside, I listend to the Librivox edition of Indian Frontier Policy by General John Miller Adye a while back, and apart from his comment on the railroad as the modern marvel of the day, it could pretty much be written today. Of course, he died in 1900, but far too little has changed... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:20, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Also relevant is the long-standing Franco-Ottoman alliance which each country entered because each needed an ally against the Habsburg Empire. --Jayron32 18:40, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

And the Crimean War when France and the UK went to war with Russia in defence of Turkey (but soon wished they hadn't). Alansplodge (talk) 23:08, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Much earlier: see Abbasid–Carolingian alliance. But I doubt these cases had anything to do with religion, let alone with a "positive" or "negative" view of Islam. It was simply not about Islam. They're just cases where Realpolitik trumped anything else and are about of the same order as Britain, etc. siding with the Ottoman Empire against Russia in the Crimean War. Or consider the attempts to build an alliance between (Shia) Safavid Iran and the Habsburg (see Safavid_dynasty#Contacts_with_Europe_during_Abbas'_reign and more specifically the Habsburg–Persian alliance). It was all about weakening the Ottoman Empire on both sides for purely political reasons even though modern day Sunni have a reading of history where the Shia "betrayed" Islam and collaborated with the Europeans against Islam and partly blame the Shia for the Ottoman failure to conquer Europe. Consider also, during the 30 Years War, that France, a Catholic country whose prime minister was at the time a cardinal, was actually siding with the Protestant powers against (again) the Habsburgs. The French 16th and 17th c. obsession with being "encircled" by the Habsburg. There again it had nothing to do with a "positive" view of Protestantism. It was just Realpolitik. Today's Muslims have this theory that European colonization, Western imperialsm were all huge conspiracies against Islam, when they were in fact no different than what the Europeans were doing in Africa, China, India, Asia, or the Americans in South America, etc. Bizarrely many Western leftists are in the process of internalizing that Muslim view that Western colonialism and imperialism was and is especially targeted at Islam, adopting the Islamist view, which is really an anachronism. See Michel Onfray's recent suggestions to negotiate with Isis and with its "caliph". Yes Onfray seems to recognize Al Baghdadi as a legitimate caliph, I heard it in this French language interview on i-Télé that he gave in response to his name being mentioned in an Isis video. This whole story not yet in the WP article about Onfray but see for example this and a French answer to Onfray's suggestions here. Note I am not commenting (either approving or disapproving of) the substance of Onfray's suggestion. I am simply remarking that the language, the framework Onfray uses to describe the situation is mimicked from the Islamist (and in particular Isis's) reading of history. Contact Basemetal here 19:55, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Since we're talking early modern Europe, see "Liever Turks dan Paaps", a slogan of Dutch Protestant rebels against the Spanish Catholic government then ruling most of today's Netherlands. Nyttend (talk) 06:46, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

The OP might have meant Islamic Jihad or Islamic Jihad, the organisation, rather than Jihad, the concept from which it takes its name. In which case, while they might share certain aims, they're very different in one crucial respect: broadly speaking, both Islamic Jihads were/are Shia and ISIS is Sunni. --Dweller (talk) 14:50, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Ah, thank you for that question, Dweller; I took the original question as asking whether ISIS' actions were equivalent to the concept envisioned by جهاد‎, the Arabic term that transliterates to "jihad" in the Latin alphabet. I expect you're right. And a note on Stephan Schultz's first sentence — consider the influence of Muslims such as ibn Rushd (and his philosophy) and ibn Sina on European culture during the Renaissance. Nyttend (talk) 16:14, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The Islamic State is cobbled together from various organizations throughout its development, and has split from al-Qaida. Thus it has a line of descent back to Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, even though it is now a rival of al-Qaida. And there's Jaysh al-Jihad in ISIS. And I think there's some other group with the name that turned up in a flap about whether the U.S. was officially giving weapons to al-Qaida recently. Wnt (talk) 14:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Al-Qaeda itself was quite the hodgepodge of less easily memorable names. Still is, but less so, now that the default term for many jihadists in the Western media is "linked to ISIS" rather than "linked to al-Qaeda". Though sometimes the wires lumped those two together, too. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:35, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Here are diagrams of sorts attempting to clarify who's who and whatnot. Plenty of plain text, too, if those diagrams do nothing. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:40, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

As for when, in modern times, Islam started to get a bad reputation in the West, I'd date it to around the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Murdering civilians at such an international forum for peace, regardless of their motivations, was not seen in a positive light by the West. Now, they weren't Muslim fundamentalists, but their religion certainly played a role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and thus the event. As for Muslim fundamentalist attacks, there was the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, then a continuous series of such attacks leading up to September 11 attacks.

If you include the Soviet Union and it's successor states in "the West", then they have suffered their own attacks from Muslims, including the Beslan school siege. StuRat (talk) 21:10, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Also see Indonesian killings of 1965–66, Barbary pirates... Wnt (talk) 11:42, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Much of the trouble in the Middle East is due to Persia's fear of being "encircled" by Sunnis (i.e. cut off from the Mediterranean). Turkey claims to be a part of "the West" and they were responsible for the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Armenian and Nestorian Christians in 1915. 78.146.229.66 (talk) 12:37, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Getting to know women in niqab

In Islamic countries where women wear niqab how does an unmarried single man choose a woman to approach her for dating and eventual marriage? Thanks--93.174.25.12 (talk) 16:48, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but I expect that arranged marriage is the relevant Wikipedia article. Alansplodge (talk) 16:58, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Agreed, and a female member of the would-be groom's family will presumably get to see the bride's face and body, to ensure there is no deformity, disease, etc., before the marriage is agreed to. StuRat (talk) 21:16, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, it looks like it doesn't always work. (Same story was mentioned here too). Contact Basemetal here 21:55, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Yea, arranging a marriage based on a picture alone, not a good idea. Aside from the obvious potential to be shown somebody else's pic, there's also airbrushing, etc., which could hide some major flaws. And I also thought a female member of the groom's family was supposed to examine the bride to ensure virginity (technically, an intact hymen is all they can actually verify). I hope they don't take a pic of that. StuRat (talk) 07:48, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

MuslimMarriageAdvice.com has a thing or two to read. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:03, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Term for when characters invent dialogue

Is there a word to describe when, say, character A pretends that character B has said something? Despite B not saying anything or even existing or even being able to communicate. Outside of fiction, you'd call it talking to yourself or simply imagining how a conversation would go. Is there a technical term? Thanks!! 213.106.130.210 (talk) 18:02, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're getting at. When a character talks to no one in particular (i.e. they speak their thoughts aloud to the audience rather than another character), that's called a soliloquy. When a character describes a scene to the audience directly, that's called narration. When an actor invents dialogue that is not on the script, that's called an ad lib. If none of those applies in this case, can you clarify or provide an example? --Jayron32 18:38, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

My fault. I am sorry. This is in a novel. The character A is narrating with an internal monologue. Within this monologue, Character B speaks several lines. But it is entirely in the imagination of Character A. B does not actually speak at all. Is there a name for this? Thank you! 213.106.130.210 (talk) 18:51, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Imagination is as good a word as any. If I invent talk in my head, I call it imagining. I don't see why the character is doing anything different. --Jayron32 19:12, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that's as far as I think I'm going to get. Thanks for your help. :) 213.106.130.210 (talk) 19:21, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Specifically, the imaginary friend is common in childhood, less so in adults. Note that that link includes their inclusion in works of fiction, such as The Tempest. Adults having imaginary friends is often considered, in literature, to be an indication of mental instability. I have no idea whether this is actually the case in real life. StuRat (talk) 21:19, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Stream of consciousness (narrative mode) may be useful. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:28, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

By implication Molly Bloom's Soliloquy. Not a pretended dialogue, but an response to an entire novel. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:35, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd call this an Unreliable narrator. --Denidi (talk) 20:58, 23 November 2015 (UTC)