Humanities desk
< April 30	<< Apr \| May \| Jun >>	May 2 >

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.

May 1

Shanty town and slum

What is the difference between Shanty town and slum? --EditorMakingEdits (talk) 09:50, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It should be reasonably clear from the articles, but the key factor is this: a shanty town is necessarily composed of ad-hoc buildings made of junk and readily-available materials. A slum might be a shanty town, but many notorious slums have been, and still are, comprised of purpose-built houses in traditional building materials such as wood, plaster, brick and concrete. I'd go so far as to say that all shanty towns are slums, but not all slums are shanty towns. Rookery (slum) is about a historic form of slum in which the main buildings were mainly purpose-built houses, but where a lack of repair and maintenance, combined with ad-hoc extensions, had started to transform them into something more like a modern shanty town. (My ancestors lived in something like this, round the back of St Martin's church in central London.) AlexTiefling (talk) 10:33, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification. --EditorMakingEdits (talk) 10:50, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you're interested in such things, you might like Kowloon_Walled_City, a fascinating example of a fort that turned into a slum, and then perhaps a shanty town. SemanticMantis (talk) 13:34, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Murder on the Orient Express" question

I just read this book, and there's something that confuses me: in his summation (part 3, ch. 9), Poirot says that as soon as MacQueen was told about the letter fragment (part 2, ch. 2), MacQueen immediately told the others, and they all agreed to deny any connection with the Armstrong family. But in Princess Dragomiroff's subsequent interview (part 2, ch. 6), she freely admits that she was a friend of Linda Arden and godmother of Sonia Armstrong. So does Poirot misspeak here? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 11:00, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No... the Princess may well have agreed to deny any connection with the Armstrongs... but under Poirot's questioning she slips up, and mentions her relationship when she probably should not have. Poirot is good at getting suspects to do things like that. Blueboar (talk) 13:23, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Or Poirot was (gasp!) slightly wrong when he said everyone agreed. Maybe the princess considered that as she and the Armstrongs were both public figures, her connection might be known and it was safer if she, alone, did not conceal it. (That said, I haven't read the book, and it's been quite a while since I saw the movie, so it's possible that there's something I don't know that makes that not sense.) --50.100.193.30 (talk) 06:19, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Popular critics of Internet communities?

I just want to know who are the popular critics of Internet communities and a brief summary and references about their opinions in regards to "disembodied gatherings and worship online that create a false form of community". (Exploring Religious Community Online: We are One in the Network, written by Heidi Campbell 2005) I presume it's a common observation. Hence the lack of citation in the book. Still, I'm interested in the claim and what the popular critics have to say about "disembodied gatherings and worship online". I never even knew that you could worship online. 140.254.227.117 (talk) 14:03, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

On the mechanics of running "worship online," my first guess is a videophone-type thing or a broadcast setup, as if everyone logs on to a webcast that shows a preacher and/or song leader at various points. Also consider websites like www.sermonaudio.com [I can't give the full link, since it's on the spam blacklist], a site that offers downloadable sermon recordings. It definitely wouldn't work with any of the Christian sacraments, since they all involve one-on-one interaction. 2001:18E8:2:28CA:F000:0:0:2B89 (talk) 14:56, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But songs and sermons only play a part in many traditional Christian liturgies. There are the recitations of the various creeds and prayers, and many Christian liturgies are done uniformly and synchronously. 140.254.227.117 (talk) 15:29, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ship of Fools (website) has experimented with worship, though obviously not with sacraments, through at least two different social platforms over the years. AlexTiefling (talk) 15:03, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The website mentions "complete atheists". I wonder if they are Christian atheists or some sort of post-Enlightenment atheist or the Dawkins atheist or a confirmed atheist who personally does not believe in deities but still respect deceased spirits of family ancestors due to family heritage and tradition. 140.254.227.117 (talk) 15:31, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I used to be a regular. We had all of the above, as I recall, as well as a few adherents of non-Christian religions. AlexTiefling (talk) 15:41, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I went to the website and noticed they have purgatory. The only Christian denomination that accepts the doctrine of purgatory is Roman Catholicism and maybe Roman Catholic dissidents (i.e. "traditionalist Catholics" or "Old Catholics") who are not Protestants, Orthodox Christians, or non-Trinitarian Christians. 140.254.227.117 (talk) 16:04, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Without wishing to prolong this tangent too far: those names were not chosen to reflect the theology of the site, or even of the site's organisers - they were just amusing titles for the forums in question. There is no practical connection between the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory and the SoF forum for the discussion of serious topics. You have no need to explain to me which denomination believe in the doctrine of Purgatory. AlexTiefling (talk) 16:06, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry.140.254.227.117 (talk) 16:12, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Among Buddhists the e-sangha concept, meaning an on-line community paralleling traditional sangha monastic communities is relatively uncontroversial. In contrast, the Catholic Holy See has taught for centuries (see Aquinas) that sacramental confession requires three "acts" on the part of the penitent: contrition of the soul, disclosure of the sins (the 'confession'), and doing penance, i.e. amends for the sins, but seems nonplussed in bewilderment about the ecologically progressive fulfilment of these functions via Skype with an on-line Priest. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 16:42, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

'Nonplussed' would imply they say nothing on the matter: in fact, the Catholic Church says a fair amount about Confession over telephone or through other distance media. You also need to bear in mind the concerns about privacy when it comes to the Sacrament of Reconciliation: where exciting new sign-language translators have been installed in Confessionals, it has been strongly emphasised that they have no means of connecting to any networks or other computers, let alone the internet. That they consider it invalid does not mean they say nothing about it. And I fail to see how running a computer at each end, two routers, and all the servers involved, is more eco-friendly than walking into a Confessional. 86.146.28.229 (talk) 06:18, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's presumably more eco-friendly than driving your car to church in order to confess. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 23:15, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Taken to an extreme, that's an argument for all people working from home, electronically connected to their workplaces and the rest of world, never needing to leave the house, and never meeting or interacting with other people. Worldwide institutionalised agoraphobia, the end of sexual activity, and the end of human life. The environment would be fine, though. Except, nobody would ever experience it, not even while there are any people left who could theoretically do so. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 14:01, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Code of Canon Law, Canon 964.1 states: The proper place to hear sacramental confessions is a church or oratory. my underline. The French Catholic Church is not impressed by phone lines. The Conference of French Bishops said in a statement: "For the Catholic faithful, it (the confession) has a sacramental meaning and requires the real presence of a priest," it said, adding that the "Cord to the Lord" line had "no approval from the Catholic Church in France." However, the church has set up a 46-cents-a-minute hotline for worshipers to place a prayer petition at the Grotto of Lourdes. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 19:20, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. I suppose this must have much to do with the concept of the "presence of the Holy Spirit", a phrase well recognized on Google. It is at least hard to think of a concept in Christianity more fundamental than the Holy Spirit, or more mysterious... anything I say is likely to be misinformed. Is the "presence" a physical presence, a presence within a social network of interaction, a presence that is connected with the causality of events, something else? I would expect that some of these models might be distinguished by asking whether the Holy Spirit can be directly perceived in the film of an event - I would use ca. 1:20 on [1] as a best known example to me, but I don't know what others would think. However, to recognize some effects of any possible thing on a group of people may not be actually the same as perceiving the thing itself. Wnt (talk) 05:51, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ancient Egyptian development pace

Why the development pace of Egytian civilization throughout thousands of years was generally slow (as evidenced by slow and sometimes minor changes in dress, technology and science) when compared to, say, AD 100-300, AD 300-900 or AD 1000-1300 timeframes in European realms and countries? --93.174.25.12 (talk) 15:51, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Do we know for sure that it was that slow, or is it just that we have more detailed information for the more recent past? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:57, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder how it is possible to measure quantitatively the pace of a civilization. Science as we know it is a modern invention. In ancient times, people did think differently than people today. 140.254.227.117 (talk) 16:09, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

People usually don't realize how much Egypt did change over 3,000 years. New Kingdom Egypt, from roughly 1500 to 1000 BC, had chariots, bronze weapons, and a multicultural empire, which would have been hard for Egyptians in the Old Kingdom, roughly 2700 to 2100 BC, to imagine. Egyptians in Ptolemaic and Roman times prayed to their age-old gods and wrote stories about legendary pharaohs like Ramesses II while they were holding Greek-style athletic games and collecting manuscripts of Homer. Part of the reason for the illusion of changelessness is that the Egyptians themselves constantly reworked their traditions so it would seem that they were doing things as they'd always been done. (Barry Kemp's book Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation gives a lot of examples of that habit.) An inscription from the Roman-era Temple of Dendera that claims its floorplan was laid out in the reign of Khufu, 2,500 years earlier. A temple did exist at that site in the Old Kingdom, if not quite as far back as Khufu's reign, but the specific claim is flatly false. Most Old Kingdom temples were nothing like the size of the Roman temple at Dendera, and their ground plans were very different. A lot of architectural and decorative motifs (columns shaped like plants, hypostyle halls, cavetto cornices) would have been shared, but the ones at Dendera were almost always more elaborate than their New Kingdom counterparts, let alone those from the Old.

It's true that life in ancient Egypt did not change as much as life has changed in the past 2,000 years, but I think that's a product of the increasing pace of change in civilization in general. More sophisticated technology, more cultural exchange, and more people create a snowballing effect. Egypt started at the beginning of recorded history, so it's naturally going to appear more slow-moving than anything in our recent experience. The other factor is Egypt's relative isolation, which allowed it to maintain more of its original traditions than Mesopotamia, where a new people invaded or supplanted the locals every few centuries (Akkadians, Gutians, Amorites, Hittites, Kassites, Medes…). Egypt didn't have frequent invasions like that until after 1000 BC. A. Parrot (talk) 20:11, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One example of how their technology changed is pyramids. The earliest ones were made of mud brick and didn't survive. They figured out later how to build them to last, and those are the ones we still see today.

Also, near the end of the independent Egyptian era (before it was conquered by Rome), it was in decline, something like Europe in the dark ages. So, if you include that period, then that's like saying there was very little progress in Europe from, say, 1000 BC to 1000 AD. StuRat (talk) 03:11, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good point on the survival, and shows how shaky a yardstick archaeology can be. I'm sure North Americans made huge leaps and had great stories, but (possibly) behind Antarctica, it's the least considered "historical" continent. Using renewable resources (wood, wind, words, water, wolves) ensures long-term survival, but also makes the whole concept of linear progression rather meaningless. More important for some to persevere with preservation than realize recycling. Changelessness isn't as illusory as it appears, and the top of the mountain is always closer than it seems. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:55, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Software playlists

I was wondering f there are any other software playlists beyond Real player? the amound of times that thing has frozen up and deleted my lists, I cant deal with it anymore? But im looking for a similar free software to play it. the VLC media player doesn't offer thisl.Lihaas (talk) 21:01, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

QuickTime. 140.254.226.235 (talk) 21:09, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comparison of audio player software will give you an overview. --Jayron32 12:28, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Male Mormon missionaries vs. female Mormon missionaries

Is there a statistically significant discrepancy between the number of male Mormon missionaries and female Mormon missionaries? 140.254.226.235 (talk) 21:21, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Historically there were fewer women Mormon missionaries because the LDS set the minimum age for men missionaries at 19 years old, while setting a minimum age for women missionaries at 21. This rule changed last year, with the minimum age for women missionaries dropping to 19. Since that change, there's been a sharp increase in the number of women missionaries. A third of new missionaries are now women. There are figures in this news article. [2] OttawaAC (talk) 22:27, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]