Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 April 25

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.

April 25

Is lust the best vice?

If you were going to assign a bodycount (or years of productive life lost) to each of the vices, would lust have the least? Islam has sin involving instruments of pleasure. If they are pleasant, why are they bad? 174.16.98.178 (talk) 01:21, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I favour a Parkinson's Perfect as the best vice, myself, but Americans will probably go for an Emmert patternmaker's instead. You're welcome. Andy Dingley (talk) 01:27, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

In American those are vises rather than vices. Just so you know. --Trovatore (talk) 02:28, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Is that supposed to be some sort of joke? --69.159.62.113 (talk) 00:23, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Take it as poetry. They are considered bad as their object is deceitful. For images ( their productive lifes ) see:louse, or then, loustic. --Askedonty (talk) 13:33, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

If "best" means "the one that can get you into the most trouble", then lust might be it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:07, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

174.16.98.178 -- Among the best and most realistic moralists, the point of listing vices is not that you should never feel any of those emotions, or flagellate yourself if you do ever briefly feel one of them, but that you should keep them under control, not letting them unduly dominate your life. A certain amount of properly-directed lust towards your wedded spouse may be fine, but if you let it get out of control, then you may become a sex-addict who is likely to have a rather drama-filled and ultimately possibly somewhat pathetic life... AnonMoos (talk) 02:53, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

The dose makes the poison applies to moral illness as well as physical ones. It should be noted that eating is not a deadly sin, but gluttony is. Appreciation is not a deadly sin, but envy is. Sexuality is not a deadly sin but lust is. Rest is not a deadly sin, but sloth is. One very ancient view of morality is known as the Golden mean theory of morality, the idea that for any moral value, the most moral position is the moderate one.--Jayron32 13:58, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Obviously there are some factors like syphilis and HIV (and even birth control or social demand for adopted children) that greatly affect this sort of moral calculus. Recent changes in mores e.g. Sexual Revolution can be viewed largely, if not entirely, as the result of technical factors like penicillin and The Pill. Wnt (talk) 07:10, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

King Idris' sons

So what happened to King Idris I of Libya's two sons? His article & related articles don't explain their fates. GoodDay (talk) 03:03, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

He had four sons and one daughter, all of whom died young. He also adopted a daughter who survived and married. See his biography on the Royal Ark. - Nunh-huh 03:17, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

This needs to be added (via sources) into the aforementioned articles. It merely mentions their birth & then jumps to his nephew being his heir-presumptive. GoodDay (talk) 10:19, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

What's stopping you? --Jayron32 13:40, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Don't have the sources or know how. GoodDay (talk) 23:52, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Impact factors: anyone knowledgeable?

Hello. I haven't really looked into impact factors much. i have a list of 30 or 31 journals. I there a way to mass-request impact factors [a well-respected impact factor provider] via list? And... how do I know how relatively good or bad a score is? Tks Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:29, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Are you talking about Impact factor? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:44, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

@Lingzhi:, I'm not aware of a batch ISSN search function for Web of Science or SCOPUS, the two most widely used (proprietary, alas) databases for citation metrics. Advanced search tools may be accessible to academic librarians (always eager to help) or those with access to an institutional subscription through their academic or employer affiliations. And their APIs may offer programmatic support for batch ISSN search.

All that may be overkill for only 30 ISSNs.

On the free (not open) access end check out SCOPUS' free service at CiteScore Sources. Extensive online help is available, but it is quite simple to use online or off.

Online (may have inconvenient multi-webpage results):

You can first establish, as you ask, "how relatively good or bad a score is" by first clicking 'Browse sources' and then clicking the drop down selector 'All Subject Areas' to filter sources to the most relevant subject area that covers your set of ISSNs.

Offline (more fun to play with or automate; equally current as online):

Download Scopus Source List. Use Libre Office or Excel and play with auto-filters on top row. First by subject (scroll far right, columns AE-BI) to select one that covers your set of 30 and answer relative quality question; then by Print-ISSN (most commonly used in studies as it levels playing field; column C), to narrow in on your 30. Deselect ALL checkbox and select your 30, which should be sorted nicely. Or write a spreadsheet macro to give yourself a challenge! Export to text file and write a script to accept another file with any number of ISSNs as input and ranked scores as output! Have fun with it; I did. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 16:08, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Addendum: Had a few more minutes at lunch to play. To compare apples to apples, assuming your journals are in the same field. Works best offline.

Searching for a far more specific subject to rank your journals is enabled online and offline. Online you can search for a specific code at complete list of Scopus Subject Areas and All Science Journal Classification Codes (ASJC; offline by first checking the spreadsheet tab "ASJC Classification Codes' and browsing to look for a narrow term that covers all. For example, code 3309 is "Library and Information Sciences". That is the code to select in column AD (All Science Classification Codes (ASJC)), not the "Supergroup" subject filters offered online and in spreadsheet columns AE-BI. I couldn't see how to do that online.

Also, once your specific subject code is selected, and you've established range of scores (2016 CiteScore; column N) as a relative quality proxy, it may be more convenient for checking your small set of journals to simply select by their titles, column B. Auto-filter as in above post: deselect ALL and check titles of interest. Both print-ISSN and e-ISSN are on same row for each journal title, so no worries.

Back to work! -- Paulscrawl (talk) 18:10, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Unprotected sex

Are there any sources that promote "unprotected sex"? If your goal is to avoid pregnancy and STIs, then you should definitely use a condom. But if your goal is to get a pregnancy (you or your partner), then using a condom will not be effective, because the condom is designed to decrease your chances of becoming a parent or getting infected. Are there any sources that put unprotected sex in a positive light, promote unprotected sex, and discourage protected sex? SSS (talk)

The condom article has many sources that are pro-unprotected sex. Of 19 (talk) 22:23, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Nay, the condom is designed not just to decrease your chance of getting pregnant, but to eliminate it. But sometimes it happens despite the best prophylactic measures. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:27, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

If someone uses a condom and still hopes to impregnate, their educational system has failed them. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:07, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

The Catholic church discourages condom use, so one might say that they promote unprotected sex, though only in certain contexts (marriage between a man and a woman). Staecker (talk) 11:28, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

While one of the most notable by far, they aren't the only ones. Some other conservative Christian groups are also generally opposed to condoms see e.g. [1] and Christian views on birth control. Likewise some Muslims groups [2]. They don't of course promote unprotected sex outside of accepted cultural contexts (generally marriage) but condoms themselves are seen as 'promoting sin' or similar and discouraged. (They may not necessarily go as far as the Catholic church who until recently were reluctant to even say something suggesting condom usage in certain situations are a lesser sin then unprotected sex. And likewise condoms when used in marriage may or may not be acceptable.) A lot of porn targetting heterosexuals (especially heterosexual males) also tends to put unprotected sex in a positive light. Nil Einne (talk) 11:03, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

There certainly are groups that permit sex only between a husband and wife, and encourage them to have as many babies as possible: e.g. Quiverfull Christians. From a completely different perspective, there is a celebration of condomless recreational sex known as barebacking. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 02:01, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Chinese Revolution of 1949

What aspects of Chinese society and government did the Mao's society and government maintain?— Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎HarryOtter (talk • contribs)

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to Wikipedia. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. If you are seeking answers to such a broad question for any reason, including homework OR personal interest, I would start at the Wikipedia articles titled Chinese Civil War and History of the People's Republic of China (1949–1976) and follow links from there that lead to topics that address your question. Certain key articles that would be most productive for you to read would be Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and the Korean War, which were the first major domestic and international moves made by the new Communist regime. Later events, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution would also lead you interesting places. --Jayron32 23:27, 25 April 2018 (UTC)