Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2008 October 30

= October 30 =

the lords prayer
What is the difference between the catholoic and protistant version of the lords prayer? The end part before THINE IS THE KINGDOM THE POWER THE GLORY FOR EVER AND EVER AMEN.
 * see the article on the Lord's Prayer Rmhermen (talk) 01:43, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * (ec) Have you seen Lord's Prayer? There you will find a discussion of the various versions in use.  Note that it appears in two gospels: Matthew and Luke.  Luke omits the doxology, a form often used within the Catholic liturgy.  Note that Catholic mass often  uses the Latin version (Pater noster).  Gwinva (talk) 01:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The Latin version has not been in regular use since the 1960s. --Nricardo (talk) 00:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

The article Lord's Prayer actually refers only to Roman Catholic and Anglican/Episcopal versions. Protestant versions ('debts' for 'trespasses', 'for ever' for 'for ever and ever'would need to be found elsewhere. --frjbdc+  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.134.155.174 (talk) 16:56, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Willian McGonagall
Did McGonagall write deliberately in the way he did? I looked up the external links in his article page and they offered different views. Is there any general consensus in the literary community?Leif edling (talk) 03:48, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * If there were different views expressed then probably there isn't a consensus. DJ Clayworth (talk) 14:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I considered it possible that the particular listed external links are varied in their opinions but the literary community sees the matter only in a certain light. That is why I asked the question on the humanities r.d. in the hope that someone aware of McGonagall's work and life may answer my question.Leif edling (talk) 16:10, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It's really hard to be that bad that long, on purpose. --- OtherDave (talk) 19:03, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The key seems to be that he discovered his own greatness and thought, when you're on a good thing, flog it to flitters. I can't think of the name but early Australia had a tuneless female self-designed opera singer with heaps of confidence and personal wealth that made her career possible – people crammed her concerts to laugh themselves silly and there was a play about her a couple of years ago. What was her name? Julia Rossi (talk) 00:38, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Florence Foster Jenkins? She was American, though. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:54, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * That's it! I was out on the country part. Thanks AdamB Julia Rossi (talk) 07:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Asian to White Racial Transformation
Is there a true story of an oriental who was living in a western country, and he or she changed himself or herself into a white-looking person by having a racial surgery transformation?? Is there an asian to a white transformation story? 72.136.111.205 (talk) 03:53, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Removed sentence that was a potential WP:BLP problem. Its absence does not change the question or make it less comprehensible, except to underscore that the OP is interested only in Asian-to-white surgical transformations, and not, for example, in possible black-to-white changes. ៛ Bielle (talk) 05:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Every year hundreds of thousands of oriental people have surgery to 'westernize' their eyes. I don't believe the surgery is referred to as 'racial tranformation surgery', i think they refer to it as Blepharoplasty, which can be cosmetic or required. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 10:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Hundreds of thousands? Hotcheetos (talk) 00:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

What I am asking is has there ever an asian who had transformed himself or herself into a white person by surgery? Please provide with a news article. 72.136.111.205 (talk) 00:39, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Did you STFW? – What would qualify as "into a white person"? Does an eyelid job suffice?  How about a coat of white paint?  —Tamfang (talk) 02:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * A coat of white paint is not surgery. I believe the OP is looking for an instance of an asian who had surgery with the intent of looking like a white person. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 07:45, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Fred Korematsu is a famous example, though his attempt at passing was apparently unsuccessful. —Kevin Myers 13:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Fred Korematsu is not an example. He was a Japanese American who went to the internment camp. 72.136.111.205 (talk) 16:35, 1 November 2008 (UTC)


 * He was that too. And he was an example of an Asian person who had surgery with the intent of looking like a white person, as the article and the linked obituary will reveal to those who read them. —Kevin Myers 23:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Jackie Chan has had surgery on his eyes to make them look more western. ScienceApe (talk) 01:22, 2 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Jackie Chan looks asian. You need to provide a better example. 72.136.111.205 (talk) 02:58, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually I don't need to do anything. But to answer your original question, no there is no story of an asian person who became white. ScienceApe (talk) 06:53, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Abraham killing an Idolator
When I was in jewish school way back in the mid 70's,one of the rabbis related a story about how one day as Abraham was strolling thru a town of like minded folks, maybe relatives, he came upon a a guy worshipping an idol and promptly slew him; i guess this story was to relay just how vigorous a faith must be in order to please the lord, but it caused me to reject the whole enterprise outrite. Because this story has had some impact on my Psyche I am intersted to find out if the incident is actually depicted in the Bible, I have tried to find it but can't,have any of you come across this passage and if you have do you know where it is in Genesis?
 * It's not in there. Sounds apocryphal. Wrad (talk) 17:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It does sound like something being conflated with the story of Abraham smashing Terah's idols. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 18:02, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Seems like a close parallel, but would definitely need to be conflated since Abraham doesn't kill anyone in it. Also, that story is not in Genesis. Wrad (talk) 18:05, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * One of the traditional practices of rabbis is (or at least was) making up stories using biblical and later figures. The stories were not meant to be taken literally but rather to make a point in much the same way as a parable. --Halcatalyst (talk) 21:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Is that what I know as a Midrash? Steewi (talk) 23:24, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It's what I know as a false statement manipulation technique for the purposes of crowd control. But a Rabbi wouldn't do that, would he? Julia Rossi (talk) 00:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It's fanfic! —Tamfang (talk) 03:01, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Somewhat off-topic: a great book about the Trouble With Orthodox Rabbis: Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander. I thought it was hilarious. Apparently threats of instant death from Biblical figures or God himself are quite common in Orthodox pedagogy. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:28, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Lying in polls
What percentage of respondents lie to polling organizations? How many even say the opposite of what they think? How would one be able to answer these questions?

I'm thinking about the Bradley effect. --Halcatalyst (talk) 21:44, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Methodologically it may not be possible when it comes to actual political voting, assuming that by law the voting is allowed to be done without observation. Thus the two interpretations of the alleged Bradley effect: one that those who responded lied, and another that those who responded self-selected. I don't see any way to even determine which of those is the cause without being able to actually compare to the original ballots, which by law you can't do. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * It is not possible to know what percentage of respondents lie. As the anon stated, you can only compare the respondents to the polls.  But, it is not possible to know exactly who the respondents are (since they could lie when responding) or what the respondent's vote was.  As an anecdote, I always attempt to figure out if it is a Democrat or Republican running the poll (usually very easy since they start out by asking things like "Can we depend on your support of our next President, Obama, in the upcoming critical election?").  Then, I strongly and emphatically support the opposing party with as many ridiculous or offensive comments as possible. --  k a i n a w &trade; 01:37, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't get the Bradley effect - couldn't it be negated by doing the polls as a secret ballot? --Tango (talk) 15:59, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It's not even clear the Bradley effect exists. If it does exist, a secret ballot for polls wouldn't necessarily fix it. If it exists because of self-selection, there's still that to contend with. If it exists because of deception, it's potentially the case that secret ballots would fix that, but not necessarily. From a methodological point of view I don't see any clear way around it. If it even exists—even in the canonical "Bradley" case, the numbers were so close anyway that it might just have been within the error margins anyway. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The obvious approach to answering a query like this would be ask respondents about other people they know - to get people who will probably given honest answers to tell the truth about the people who lie - but it's going to be difficult to phrase the questions, as many people will have little idea of whether their friends or family might lie to polling organisations. Warofdreams talk 16:10, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The "1 twin always lies and 1 twin always tells the truth" problem (which I'm assuming is where you got the idea) only works because the twins are assumed to have complete knowledge. A lot of people choose not to discuss politics with friends and family, so people would just guessing how they would vote and could well be wrong. --Tango (talk) 18:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * And you're probably more likely to have people lying to their own family members about this sort of thing than to a polling organization. If I was voting Republican, I'd probably not tell my mother—who would probably disown me ;-) —though I might tell a pollster, for example. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
 * My idea has nothing to do with the "1 twin always lies" approach. This approach is quite common in surveys of behaviour which people are unlikely to admit to, but which is apparent to those around them.  The difficulty here, of course, is that this behaviour is probably not obvious to those around them. Warofdreams talk 19:10, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

The legal importance of a comma
A friend and myself were having a discussion / argument over the following hypothetical; If someone is notified by a team of solicitors that 'We will be claiming the principal sum interest and court costs.' Would that be taken as legally different to 'We will be claiming the principal sum, interest and court costs', I have argued that the 'principal sum interest' is merely the plaintiff claiming the amount of interest on the principal sum, whereas my partner argued that the ommission of the comma would be overlooked and disregarded. I have heard of 'the million dollar comma' case in the US but have no idea what the legal situation is in the uk.
 * Someone more learned in the law can answer this properly, but I too have often noticed the absence of commas in legal documents, actual laws, etc, in sentences where, in any other context, the comma(s) would naturally be found and, indeed, not only would it be considered ungrammatical not to have them, but also, without them the meaning can become unnecessarily ambiguous, as in the very case you're asking about. There was the Roger Casement case in which he was said to have been "hanged by a comma" (see Roger Casement), so it can sometimes be a matter of life and death.  --  JackofOz (talk) 22:45, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Sometimes it's not even just the comma. There was an American case in which a woman was on trial for murdering her baby. It was said that she had confessed in the 911 call. A linguist was called in and it was found that her words "I killed my baby," did not constitute a confession, as it was ambiguous given the context. In fact, the woman had fallen asleep while breastfeeding and smothered it. In her emotion, she called 911 and made the statement. Wrad (talk) 23:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

See also this. (Although the writer there thinks it's not really about the comma, but still.)--Rallette (talk) 07:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * There's a fascinating bit about commas in legal documents in Mark Alder's "Clarity for Lawyers". In the unlikely event that I remember(!!!) I'll post some of his comments back here in the next few days. AndyJones (talk) 09:05, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, I'm back, with that book in front of me. There's far too much to post here in full. However the drift of it is that in the early days of printing, legislation would be punctuated in the printers' house style (which was often just the idiosyncracy of the compositor who happened to be typesetting it) rather than having the punctuation it had when Parliament enacted it. As a result, a rule of law developed that punctuation had no legal effect. In turn, that led lawyers to develop a style of drafting documents without any punctuation at all, and that style continues to be used in the 21st century, even though many lawyers (especially members of the Clarity movement) have noticed how stupid this is, and have made partly-successful efforts to introduce a culture where legal documents are written in plain English, with normal punctuation. In light of this history, I think the answer to the OP's question is that a Judge would treat the comma as implied, and the claim as including principal. (Also I don't necessarily agree that "principal sum interest" without a comma unambiguously means just the interest, but that's another question.) Above isn't legal advice, just a history lesson. AndyJones (talk) 15:14, 1 November 2008 (UTC)