Humanities desk
< October 2	<< Sep \| October \| Nov >>	October 4 >

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.

October 3

Identifying a book

A few aeons ago I read a science-fiction novel that may have appeared in the '50s or '60s, whose setting was a future time when everyone on Earth is required by law to regularly attend Catholic masses. The protagonist wonders whether people in power have conspired to conceal the fact that a certain famous writer wrote certain things. At some point he concludes that the reason a short poem or the like by that writer was not found in books might not have been such a conspiracy but merely a result of the fact that (quoting verbatim) "Editors edit." I remember very little about the story and I have no idea what the name of the book or the name of the author was. Does anyone know? Michael Hardy (talk) 02:51, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I see where you asked this same question about 5 years ago here, does that help any? RegistryKey^(RegEdit) 07:03, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I hate to direct people elsewhere, but this is the sort of question that the folks at rec.arts.sf.written can often readily answer. Just click on the "New Topic" box and copy your query above, giving it a subject line like "YASID--Compulsory mass". ("YASID" stands for "Yet another story ID".) Deor (talk) 14:27, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Exemption from Crash testing in the US

Do absolutely all vehicles on the road undergo NHTSA crash testing in the US? Or are there some small exceptions? I'm thinking of things like mail trucks, firetrucks, ambulances. I noticed that some USPS mail trucks are designed without right side doors, to make entry/exit easier; I can't imagine that this would pass the strict auto safety standards nowadays.

One exception I can think of is farm equipment. AFAIK they don't undergo crash testing and yet they're legal on some public roads (depending on state and local laws). 731Butai (talk) 06:23, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There was a problem with "light trucks", which includes pick-up trucks, SUVs, and full-sized vans (but not minivans), that they were classified as industrial vehicles rather than consumer vehicles, and remained so for quite some time after they should have been reclassified based on their popularity as consumer vehicles. This resulted in reduced testing requirements. I'm not sure if that situation has yet been resolved. StuRat (talk) 15:23, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're referring to this: Chicken_tax#Ramifications. 731Butai (talk) 02:58, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

is there any forum which analyzes written materials of any kind and reveals the political flavor of it

akin to politicalcompass, but for articles — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahfuzur rahman shourov (talk • contribs) 14:27, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Computer Desk might be a better place to ask. Software could analyze the frequency of certain words, and draw conclusions from that, but such a method is liable to miss subtleties, like satire. Many humans don't catch on to satire, either, so it's quite a task to expect a program to be able to understand it.

Then there's also the problem that the same political words ("radical", "progressive", "conservative", "democratic", "socialist",...) mean different things in different parts of the world.

Also, much political speech is rather indirect. In response to the recent college shooting in the US, I didn't hear anyone directly say "We need more guns in colleges and schools". What I heard instead was "We need to give these students the means to defend themselves". Asking a program to figure out from that last sentence that they are anti-gun control and hence politically conservative would be tricky. StuRat (talk) 15:11, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@StuRat:it would be a forum, consisting of people, hobbyist analysts. universally accepted standards of wording will be used. as in, "conservative/liberal/progressive" in a global, neutral standard. example, a writing which is perpetrated as "progressive" by the proponent will be analyzed by this forum and checked whether political view is authoritarian or libertarian, and the percentage, whether economical view is capitalist or communist and so on. OP wishes for such a forum, so asks.

Why would people do something like that? It's a weird-a$$ activity (to do for free) Asmrulz (talk) 22:10, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Asmrulz:people make and edit sound, picture, video, write and edit articles, document things, code programs in various language and frameworks and many other work which are too much to type -for free. it is called hobby.

Yes, and I doubt that anyone would do what you suggest as a hobby. Writing software, composing music, generally being creative, is fun and rewarding (plus you can sometimes put it on your resume.) So is helping people. Pouring over political writing to analyze it according to some criteria is not. Also, it's so specific a task it doesn't really help anybody. There's a reason "hobbyist analyst", "hobbyist copyeditor", "hobbyist tax accountant" etc sounds weird, like "hobbyist sewage cleaner", it's because those are weird-a$$ activities people like to be remunerated for. Asmrulz (talk) 20:51, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's a bit excessive. I'm not personally interested in carrying out this task for free, but I could imagine some amateur taking it on as a challenge in natural-language processing and/or machine learning. It's well-enough defined to give focus to the research, but not so well-defined as to be cut and dried. Also, probably all of us have noticed that certain words and phrases correlate with point of view (say, "writings that use the word struggle tend to be old-left"), and people with certain types of interest might enjoy making this more precise. --Trovatore (talk) 22:51, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The OP was specifically asking for people who do it for free. They don't seem to be interested in automation. I don't know, but such requests always strike me as either naive or, conversely, very cynical (think PT Barnum), hence my reaction Asmrulz (talk) 00:05, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I did indeed miss that the request was for people to do it rather than a program. Probably I glanced at Stu's response and thought that was what the question was about. --Trovatore (talk) 01:52, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Asmrulz and Trovatore:years of ongoing debates on forums and sites regarding politics proves the opposite. all those threads and text. OP is seeking an entire dedicated forum just for that kind of analytical work.

Salvationists with articles

Are there any Salvationists who have an article for any reason other than being Salvationists? In pretty much all other denominations there is always an independently famous member. 2A02:582:C4C:1400:616A:FEDF:BEF1:A5AB (talk) 15:25, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Going through Category:English Salvationists gives us Audrey Brettle, Derek Foster, Gordon Lorenz, Wes Maughan, and Frank Smith. I'm sure a similar exercise can be carried out with the other sub-categories of Category:Salvationists. Tevildo (talk) 15:41, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Photo of Brigitte Kuhlmann

Does any photograph of Brigitte Kuhlmann exist? My quick search showed nothing. 93.174.25.12 (talk) 16:12, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's a grainy B&W image at http://www.aivit.org/brigitte-kuhlmann/ Rojomoke (talk) 16:18, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

First French-speaking king

Do we know who was the first king of Francia/France to be a native speaker of French rather than Frankish? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 16:25, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You mean Old French? The original langues d'oïl.
Sleigh (talk) 16:51, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 17:05, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It must surely be Hugh Capet, assuming that all the previous kings of the Carolingian dynasty spoke Frankish natively. This book is rather old but confirms my suspicions - the Dukes of Paris (who succeeded the Carolingians as Kings of France) spoke French while the Carolingians always spoke Frankish. Apparently Louis IV of France and emperor Otto I spoke German together (according to the contemporary chronicler Flodoard). Presumably Louis V then also spoke Frankish. But Hugh Capet and Otto II did not have a common language, so Otto spoke Latin and it was translated into French (according to Richerus). Adam Bishop (talk) 20:40, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! And this confirms my suspicion that Charles the Bald and Gisla on the show Vikings shouldn't be portrayed as French-speakers. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 21:10, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Odo of France was a Robertian too - would he have spoken French? 184.147.131.85 (talk) 22:40, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I suppose he probably did...I can't find anything specific about what he spoke, aside from the book above that says the Robertians all spoke French. So by implication, Odo presumably spoke French, yeah. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:36, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What records are there, if any, of nazi criminals who evaded or tried to evade capture by assuming Jewish surnames after World War II?

Thanks.Rich (talk) 23:06, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]