Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 November 9

= November 9 =

Dirty lyrics in "trololo"
I am trying to make sense of the following remarks by Eduard Khil about the so-called trololo recitative:
 * Originally, we had lyrics written for this song but they were poor. I mean, they were good, but we couldn't publish them at that time. They contained words like these: "I'm riding my stallion on a prairie, so-and-so mustang, and my beloved Mary is thousand miles away knitting a stocking for me". Of course, we failed to publish it at that time, and we, Arkady Ostrovsky and I, decided to make it a vocalisation. But the essence remained in the title. The song is very naughty – it has no lyrics, so we had to make up something for people would listen to it, and so this was an interesting arrangement.

There seem to be two possibilities here: Either I'm too stupid to see the perverted implication here, or my heart is so abandoned as not to be shocked by the obvious depravity. Anyone want to help me figure out which? --Trovatore (talk) 07:45, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Well the original was in Russian, so I would guess it has a double meaning in that language. This may be a question for the Language Desk.--Shantavira|feed me 11:13, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps naughty in the sense that the were cheating the lyricist out of his paycheck by not using the words to the song. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 14:35, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Google's suggested translations for the word in question (озорной) are "mischievous," "naughty," "wicked," "sly," "prankish," "gamine," "waggish," "full of mischief," "devilish," and "pranksome."--Cam (talk) 05:48, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

How to be less racist?
I am a racist. Not in the NeoNazi or KKK sense, but in the sense that I would feel differently standing in an elevator with three black teenagers dressed in hiphop clothing than I would with three white kids in country clothes.

I recognize this sort of "soft racism", the irrationality thereof, and I strive to not let it influence my outward actions ... but the thoughts remain, wrong though I know they be, and this really bothers me.

Can these thoughts ever truly be silenced? can someone truly not be racist at all in deed AND mind? I struggle with this. The Masked Booby (talk) 10:11, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * From what you've told us, I think this is no more than simply noticing the differences between people, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. We notice that one person is a woman and another a man; that one person is older than you and another younger than you; that one is of Asiatic appearance and another seems European; and so on.  If you're saying that you'd give a job to a white person before a black person, or you'd save the life of a white person over that of a black person, or something like that, then you'd have cause to be concerned.  But that's not the case, not from what you've told us.  So, can you say more about these feelings you have?  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  10:37, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It's a natural reaction to generalize, especially when it is an encounter with something not familiar to you. Encounter something and you learn to associate appearances with that something. The problem is when your associations solidify into the first impression and you find it difficult to change the initial impression. It gets even more problematic when you apply it on a far wider scale than appropriate.


 * Would you be more at ease with three black teenagers in country clothes than with three white teenagers in hiphop clothing? If yes then the problem is not with ethnicity but your association of an ethnicity with a certain kind of subculture.


 * Consider another example: an American stays for a night in Paris. He gets robbed. He then forms the impression that all Frenchmen are thieves. When he returns home he gets mugged again. That's probably the point when he realizes that nationality had little to do with it. He should have been avoiding dark alleys instead. In your case, you are reacting to the hiphop clothing rather than the ethnicity; and the hiphop subculture's association with another subculture, the "gangsta" subculture. And that trepidation is reasonable enough.--  Obsidi ♠ n   Soul   11:01, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The concept of racist is fundamentally contested in social science and public policy. Concepts of racialism can be broken down into a number of categories: fundamentally racialist ideologies like German race-as-blood fascism from 1914–1946; this is fairly unlikely given that you treated "the other" as a human being (see The Stranger).  Let's assume your racism is not fascistic?  Conservative racisms tend to be bound up with cultural conceptions, casting the racial other as a cultural other, and thus (by proof by common culture) considering the cultural other as the racial other.  In this case, to reduce your racism, join the society of "racial others" who are your cultural peers.  Liberal racism is bound up with the concept of access to equality of opportunity, there's little capacity here—anyone of the "racial other" who you consider your peer has made it, everyone else didn't make it because the system was corrupt...  For revolutionaries, get to know more of the people you consider as a "racial other" in general, you ought to find (if your theory is correct) that the boundaries break down.  Fifelfoo (talk) 12:14, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I grew up in a part of the USA where there weren't very many African Americans around (there were other minorities, but not so many of that specific group), and I never felt totally comfortable in close situations with large groups of them that I didn't know. (I didn't hate them, but I felt uncomfortable. Maybe a little afraid, somewhere inside?) Since then I've moved to a part of the country where when I get on the subway each morning, I'm often the only non-African American in the crowded car. For the first couple of days it made me uncomfortable; it doesn't anymore. It's plainly clear that I'm as safe there as anywhere else, and the more time I spend on the subway, the more I realize that there's a whole range of ethnic, social, and economic representations on there — skin color alone just doesn't cut it. I see a lot of people who are essentially my own mother or father, but of a different color. It's just empathy, in the end, mixed with experience. (That doesn't mean I'm going to go charging happily into bad parts of town, obviously, and if my gut sense tells me not to trust someone, I'm probably going to listen to it more often than not. This isn't a racially specific thing, though — the part of the USA I grew up in taught me that thugs come in all colors.) --Mr.98 (talk) 13:46, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I spent a month teaching computer science at UWI in Kingston, Jamaica. While I thought I held no prejudices before, living for a month in a society where essentially every person on every level of the social hierarchy was black (or "overwhelmingly of recent African heritage" ;-) hammered home how much our expectations are formed by our daily experiences (which, in Europe, means I meet blacks overwhelmingly as recent immigrants and refugees, and in the US overwhelmingly as part of the lower echelons of society). Spending some time in an environment where there is no such differentiation by race is a very instructive experience that I highly recommend. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:49, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I appreciate the answers so far, but they all presuppose I am able to increase my exposure to those ethnicities towards which I feel irrational prejudices and bias, when in fact I am not. I am tucked away in a far corner of an Asian country for the foreseeable future. There are so few of us foreigners of any sort that we haven't time to bother with race or nationality. This, however, has not quelled those unwanted thoughts as efficiently as some of your immersive experiences seem to have done... The Masked Booby (talk) 15:19, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * How often do you encounter black teenagers dressed in hiphop clothing where you live? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:33, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If it is your thoughts that bother you - take control of them. However, if it is the appearance of racism that bothers you, it isn't worth the effort to try and change. If someone wants to claim you are racist, you are racist. -- k a i n a w &trade; 15:41, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I was trotting along in Africa when a bicyclist rode past. He called out "white bastard" and I was happy because he had got it half right. --Kittybrewster  &#9742;  16:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Which begs the question. No! I'm not even going to ask that question! :) Carson101 (talk) 16:20, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * As a Neanderthalian I do support the above sentiments.
 * We, a smallish group of emigrants of uncertain origin, had no racist xenophoby when it came to the new fangled bunch of homo sapiens. You small brained shits will be extinct in but a few generations.  The above postings imply that you are already.  --Incognito.ergo.possum (talk) 20:20, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I got cut up by a young asian lad...I missed my chance for a bit of road rage and I drove down the street...I hated him for his skin colour and for what he had done to me. Two minutes later I got cut up by a middle aged white man....It made me realise that I hate everyone irrespective of the colour of their skin. Uriah Creep (talk) 23:17, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * You say that "the thoughts remain" but you don't seem to describe "the thoughts". What are they? Bus stop (talk) 23:29, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if what the OP described is necessarily racism. He knows that there are tensions between two communities - mainly hiphop wearing blacks and people like him. It's normal to feel uncomfortable in a closed environment to him. 88.14.195.138 (talk) 00:51, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Is your prejudice against black or white, against teenagers or kids, or against hiphop clothing? Ask yourself this question: How would I feel if it was three white teenagers dressed in hiphop clothing, or how about 3 black kids in country clothes?  Astronaut (talk) 13:26, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

First off, there is a difference between racism and categorical attribution. Racism is an ideological position: someone has negative opinions about other groups that are clearly developed within an intellectual worldview. Attribution is a normal and unavoidable aspect of human perception: unfamiliar groups or situations (and particularly unfamiliar groups or situations that are designed to be 'counter-culture'), naturally have high salience and will naturally produce a fight/flight response.

The way to overcome your own internal attributions is to draw them into your conscious mind and focus on them. You've already done the first part - you recognize that you have this reaction, and you recognize that you don't like it - now you simply have to think about it. What is it that is promoting that fight/flight response? Their clothes? Their attitudes? Their hair? Just keep drawing it out and you will eventually find a core preconception that's driving the attribution; like most core preconceptions it will likely be irrational (e.g., you've seen TV shows where the appearance of people like that led to violence), and once you see the irrationality of it then you can start to dismiss and dismantle it. The more conscious you make it, the less power it will have over you. -- Ludwigs 2 15:50, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It's really quite straightforward: how not to be racist. (By the way, this highlights the complication that worrying about it too much, dwelling on the possibility of racism and making an issue out of it, is itself somewhat akin to racism.) Card Zero  (talk) 23:26, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, not worrying about it and treating everyone the same is considered by many people to be racist because they feel that some races should receive different treatment, not the same treatment. But, if you treat one race different from another, you are being racist. So, it is impossible to behave in a way that is not racist. -- k a i n a w &trade; 14:17, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

English History - timeline of periods and eras in English History
I don't really have a question - just want to point out you skipped an entire era: the Regency period: 1685 to 1714, the time of Jane Austen, Napoleon's rise in France which ended in the Battle of Waterloo, etc. I'm not really a historian, just pointing out a large chunk of time missing from that timeline. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.19.138.133 (talk) 20:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * You seem to be confusing two periods. We do have an article on the Regency, about the dates of which, however, there seems to be some disagreement.  In any case, those dates begin no earlier than 1795 and no later than 1837, so about a century later than the dates you have given. Were you looking at our list of periods in English history?  If so, you are right that we are missing a period covering 1685 and 1714, but this period was not the Regency.  There does not seem to be a universally accepted name for this period, though this site reasonably calls the period "The Glorious Revolution and Its Aftermath".  Since Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, you should feel free to add a well-sourced article on this period. Marco polo (talk) 20:59, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I've made comment at the template, lest an historian lurks there. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:12, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It would be hard to fit the reigns of James II, William and Mary, and Anne under one rubric. The character of the monarchy and the state of politics changed dramatically under each of them. Looie496 (talk) 22:12, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, the OP does confuse time frames. I don't think the period from 1688-1714 really has a standard "name" accepted by historians.  I have seen some historians break the larger "Stuart Period" up into: "Early Stuart" (the reigns of James I and Charles I), Protectorate/Interregnum (Cromwell), "Restoration" (Charles II and James II) and "Late Stuart" (reigns of Williamandmary and Ann) Blueboar (talk) 22:46, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * "Queen Anne" is used as a period when referring to furniture. --ColinFine (talk) 23:51, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the answer is that it doesn't really have a defined identity, as Marco Polo says above. In schools, children are taught about the "Tudors and Stuarts" which covers a huge slice of history - from the Battle of Bosworth Field right up till the death of Queen Anne and the transfer of the monarchy to the Hanoverians. I'd also like to point out that the events quoted by the OP are a century later than the dates given. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:14, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The timeline in Template:Periods in English History is confusing because it's actually hierarchical although it is laid out as if it was in sequence: there is "Stuart period (1603–1714)" but also "Jacobean era (1603–1625)" "Caroline era (1625–1649)", etc, but even though the Stuart period goes on until 1714, there's no subcategory after "Restoration era (1660–1685)". --Colapeninsula (talk) 13:41, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The template needs to be filled in, but the names we give past periods often overlap. Restoration drama lists 1660-1710 as the period covered for that topic.  Might be different for painting, architecture, literature, politics, etc.  I'd vote for "Late Stuart" myself, as the most general category based on the rulers.  Textorus (talk) 16:40, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Not sure if anyone has pointed it out so far, but neither did Jane Austen live nor did Napoleon rise between 1685-1714. I think the OP was simply looking a century too early on the chart and if they had looked at the right period and clicked into the Georgian era they would have found the Regency prominently mentioned in the first paragraph. I don't think it was *really* a request to find a name for 1685 to 1714. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:48, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

land confiscation/ landgrab/
which is the best way to seek assistance/get help in a matter of an illegal land acquisition. I am in the middle east where little help is available. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Morris Leslie (talk • contribs) 21:37, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Get the US military on your side? I'm sorry, but this sounds like a request for legal advice, with totally insufficient detail provided anyway. I doubt if we can help. HiLo48 (talk) 22:04, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * We don't have an article about land and Sharia. I would be interested to know how Sharia handles real property. 24.38.31.81 (talk) 16:37, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Who took your land - the Israelis? Some other government? Or a non-government party? Generally, seizure of land by a government (be it for civilian or military purposes) can be extremely difficult to contest - See Eminent domain. One is generally entitled to proper financial compensation (and can fight for it in court), but that's about it. If your problem is with the Israelis, you might be able to get a referral from B'Tselem to a lawyer who can advise you on putting in a claim. If you're in some other middle eastern country without an independent legal system (as is the case in much of the middle east), I don't know how much one can do.58.111.181.220 (talk) 17:33, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Cuban healthcare
Why does Cuba have such a good healthcare system? --70.250.212.95 (talk) 22:34, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Check out Healthcare in Cuba, especially the "Analysis" section. Basically they've thrown a lot of their resources at it and made it a high priority, and done some intelligent things. On the other hand, it's also possible that some aspects of it have been exaggerated. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:00, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * There are strong historical reasons. I learnt a lot about it from The Motorcycle Diaries (film), the story about a trip around South America by a final year medical student, Ernesto Guevera (later known as Che), and his biochemist friend, Alberto Granado. Their professional backgrounds influenced the kind of society they aimed to create. That the medical success has continued to this day is surprising, but maybe if you take the profit motive away from an essential human need..... HiLo48 (talk) 23:14, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * But as our article points out, Cuba had good healthcare before the Revolution, too, and undertook very specific structural reforms of the medical system afterwards. I don't think it can all be attributed to the fact that Che was a medical student. Additionally, not all socialized medicine is equal. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:24, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * What do you mean by "a good healthcare system"? That phrase could refer to one that is equally available to all, or that is free at the point of use, or that offers the most cutting-edge medicine possible. Cuba has measurably good health outcomes (e.g. infant mortality), but these are not solely dependent on the healthcare system. Maternal literacy rates and a clean water supply will contribute as well. BrainyBabe (talk) 00:51, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The basic reason, in my opinion, is that the Cuban system focuses on cost-effectiveness. The US system is designed and run by physicians and various corporations, with the primary aim of maximizing their income. Looie496 (talk) 14:41, 10 November 2011 (UTC)