Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 April 27

= April 27 =

Soviet poster
Does anyone know when was made, and who made it? →Σ σ ς. (Sigma) 03:13, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Looks like it could have been a Chinese poster. The small blurred text at lower left could contain the information you seek, if you can find a scan where it's readable. AnonMoos (talk) 07:10, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Tineye image search turns up, etc... AnonMoos (talk) 07:18, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't know Russian, but the Chinese is 中苏两国人民友谊万岁, meaning "long live the Sino-Soviet friendship". The characters are in traditional Chinese, but the PRC adopted simplified Chinese characters in two rounds--1956 and 1964.  By 1960, the Sino-Soviet split became heated, with each country publicly denouncing the other.  The PRC only came into existence at the end of 1949.  From these facts, we can probably say that the poster was created between 1949 and 1956.  --140.180.240.146 (talk) 09:29, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The Russian of course says the same thing. Those two  seem to have spent a lot of time together:    Sussexonian (talk) 10:07, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * To be pedantic, the Russian version says, "To the health of the CCCP-China friendship". -- Medeis -- 00:27, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, if we're translating everything, it says ""To the health of the USSR-China friendship". --  Jack of Oz  [Talk]  00:48, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * "To the health"??? WTF? Да здравствует means "long live".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 00:21, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Doesn't "Да" mean "Yes"? What does "здравствует" literally mean? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:26, 29 April 2013 (UTC)


 * "Да" can mean many things: yes, indeed, and, but, why, well, may, let, and some untranslateable uses. When it appears alone, it usually means "yes".  But it occurs more often combined in longer expressions, where it means something else. "Здравствует" is the 3rd person singular present indicative of the verb "здравствовать", meaning "to be healthy, to thrive, to prosper".  The expression "да здравствует" can't be analysed word for word.  It's impersonal (it lacks a personal pronoun) and its meaning has to do with wishing someone or something health, prosperity and, by extension, long life, hence its usual translation is "long live ...".  But its core meaning is about health and prosperity, which we hope people enjoy all their lives even if they die young.  Да здравствуют мои википедийные друзья!  --  Jack of Oz  [Talk]  04:59, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * But you cannot translate it "to the health" anyway. Especially in this poster context. It sounds quite ridiculous. I for the first time see such a nonsense. Looks like a bad literal translation.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:09, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It doesn't sound so ridiculous in English. "To good health" is a commonly used line for a "toast", i.e. a shared drink honoring someone or honoring a group. In Spanish on such an occasion, one would say "Salud!" which means "Health!". It's not that far away from "Long live!" in English. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:26, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Here's a Health unto His Majesty! Alansplodge (talk) 17:02, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Though it has nothing to do with health here. Does friendship have health? That person who made the slogan for this poster did not think about health at all, it's just a set phrase. In the same way you don't translate "Здравствуйте!" as "Be healthy!".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * You can certainly have a "healthy relationship"; see, , . A Google search for "healthy friendship" gets 69,200 results. It is even possible to buy a greetings card for "the health of our friendship". Alansplodge (talk) 16:59, 29 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Lüboslóv, there's a difference between people and things. When we wish someone good health and long life, we absolutely know that their life will one day come to an end, sentient life being a fatal condition, but we hope they're healthy in the meantime.  But relations between countries are not necessarily governed by the laws of mortality.  San Marino and what I'll call "Italy" seem to have been getting on famously since the 4th century.  So, yes, with countries it's more of a "long live" thing; while with people it's more of a "good health" thing (with long life being the icing on the cake; because there'd be nothing worse than having a long life full of dreadful health).  So, in that spirit, I accept your correction to the poster translation (just as I accept your correction to my valediction to my wiki-colleagues).  --  Jack of Oz  [Talk]  22:57, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Just little advice: If you want somebody to have good health, say «Будьте здоровы!» (also after someone's sneezing) or «Доброго вам здоровья!» or «Здоровья вам!» or «Желаю вам (доброго) здоровья!». «Здравия желаю!» is a standard formal greeting in the Russian Army, not a wish of good health. «Здравствуйте!» is simply "Hello!". «Здорово!» is colloquial "Hi!". But you cannot say «Да здравствуйте!» for "Be healthy!". But (!) «Ну здравствуйте!» could mean some different things such as "Hello, I've expected you/waited for you!" or (with a surprising tone) "You've just said/done something silly" and so on. Also such phrases as «Да здравствуют мои друзья!» or «Да здравствует моя любимая бабушка!» would sound affected. You certainly can say these but only in special definite contexts (you are saying a toast or you are grateful for your friends'/grandma's some very good deeds for you).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 10:06, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That's very enlightening. Большое спасибо.  --  Jack of Oz  [Talk]  19:53, 1 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I did think it looked more like a civil partnership. ;-) Dmcq (talk) 10:13, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It looks like the same style as some of those Nazi propaganda posters of the 1930s - or for that matter, some American magazine ads of the 1950s. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:25, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Nah, the style is definately socialist realism. But since it is a Chinese poster depicting a Russian in a stereotypical way, it gains certain similarity. --Soman (talk) 22:04, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I was thinking of this kind of thing, but it looks more like art deco. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:24, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. →Σ σ ς. (Sigma) 07:59, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Literary technique for "hoping the reader isn't fully aware"?
I love the Literary technique article, it's well done. But I was wondering if there is such thing as a technique where the author employs the fact that the reader is most likely not thinking of every detail at every moment and possibly forgetting details in hopes that certain advantages can be made for plot or suspense reasons. I don't think this would be a case of forgetfulness on the author's part. For example, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, after two characters arrive from foreign lands to the Hogwarts Castle, Karkaroff and Madame Maxime, everyone goes into the Great Hall for dinner. The staff always eat at the head table, and Karkaroff is noted as immediately talking to Dumbledore. At the end of dinner, Karkaroff is trying to leave but notices Harry Potter... when suddenly Professor Moody appears, and Karkaroff says, "You!" While it's not explicitly stated that Moody was at the head table, he is staff, and he's always at the table eating. He also happens to be in the Great Hall when they're all leaving. So apologies for the lengthy description, but my question is, JK Rowling is probably hoping the reader misses the fact that Moody would have been at the table and there's no way Karkaroff wouldn't have noticed him immediately. Is there a technique name for this? Aside from "plot hole" or something silly? The closest I could come up with was Distancing effect, which I'm not sure is the case here. – Kerαu noςco pia ◁ gala xies 07:57, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Similar to continuity error in film and television but intentional. I call these literary techniques devices. tvtropes.org has a lot of devices. Sleigh (talk) 14:27, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * My term for it is "fudging". Most fiction writers, as they go along, have some sort of plan for how a scene is going to develop, but being human, they sometimes write things without realizing that they are inconsistent with the intended developments.  When the inconsistency finally manifests itself, the writer has three choices:  to go back and rewrite the earlier material (which may be a lot of work and may introduce other problems anyhow), or to introduce a deus ex machina to solve the problem, or to fudge.  All fiction writers fudge to some degree, but good plotters like J. K. Rowling don't do much of it. Looie496 (talk) 14:52, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * But then you get the authors who obsess about this kind of thing, at least part of the time. Tolkien was delayed by weeks (months?) while writing the middle of The Lord of the Rings because he realised that one side of the story was a day apart from the other side: he observed that some characters saw the full moon X days after they separated from other characters, while the other characters saw the full moon X-1 days after the separation.  He eventually made the characters on one side sit around for an extra day (by lengthening the Entmoot) in order to resolve the issue.  Of course, this was lots easier than resolving the contradiction with The Hobbit, in which the already-published story was substantially different; he had to do like Looie said and produce a new edition.  Nyttend (talk) 20:02, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * The inverted detective story comes to my mind, although it may not be strictly a "literary technique" per se. In this type of story, the commission of the crime and the identity of the perpetrator is described first. Then, the story describes the detective trying to solve the case. As the inverted detective story article states, R. Austin Freeman claimed to have invented the format. Even though the reader is told the details of the crime and the identity of the criminal in the first part of the story, Freeman "calculated that the reader would be so occupied with the crime that he would overlook the evidence. And so it turned out. The second part, which described the investigation of the crime, had to most readers the effect of new matter". Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:05, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I remember reading an article about Great Expectations concerning what the author called the "Magwitch paradox". Either Dickens didn't know that it was well nigh impossible for anybody to swim hundreds of yards in leg irons and manacles, or he hoped that his readership didn't know. The author surmised that swimming was an activity for the educated elite in the mid-19th century, and ordinary people wouldn't know what was possible and what wasn't. I can't now find any reference to this plot flaw on the internet. Alansplodge (talk) 19:28, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Could be a type of suspended disbelief. Subconscious suspension of disbelief?165.212.189.187 (talk) 13:05, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Guru Nanak
I can find many sources for when the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, died. But how did he die? The troubling thing is that most sources don't mention his death cause and when they do, they say something along the lines of "Guru Nanak Dev Ji the Father merged with the eternal light of the Creator". No direspect intended, but I can't take that lore for an answer. Did anyone document how he actually died, like, scientifically? Tell me Jesus of Nazareth was crucified to death, I would believe. Tell me Siddhartha Gautama Buddha died of food poisoning, I would believe. But tell me Guru Nanak turned into complete nothingness, I really can't believe. Does any Sikhism expert here know anything about Nanak's death? ☯ Bonkers The Clown  \(^_^)/  Nonsensical Babble  ☯ 12:21, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * And why is this troubling you? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:35, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I like my burning questions to get answered, that's why. But that's not quite the point. ☯ Bonkers The Clown  \(^_^)/  Nonsensical Babble  ☯ 12:43, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * The cause of death may not be known exactly. You might ask User:Sikh-history. But the phrase you give I can explain; it is a problem of understanding the religious terminology. "Merged with the eternal light" = mahasamadhi, which our article does not explain very well either. A short definition is available here ("the conscious departure from the physical body of a realized soul") but that is also in the religious terminology. Essentially, a person can practice methods of deliberately going into a trance state where the heart rate slows and the body is a state of suspended animation (cf the yogis who were buried alive for months without ill effect). While in that state, the person can also conciously stop life processes in the body - in other words, he would have had the physical control to will himself to death - or more accurately, to stop willing to live. I regret I could not find a reference in English. 184.147.121.2 (talk) 13:19, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Then how do you explain the disappearance of Nanak's body? According to most sources, in the morning, only the flowers left by the Muslims and the Hindus were left. His body was nowhere to be found. ☯ Bonkers The Clown  \(^_^)/  Nonsensical Babble  ☯ 13:26, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Googling "Guru Nanak died from" returns one hit: "At age sixty-nine, Guru Nanak died from self-imposed starvation".--Shantavira|feed me 13:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * LOL you ask me to explain a miracle? I doubt that part of the question is answerable other than by speculations. 184.147.121.2 (talk) 19:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * He died of old age although it doesn't say it in as many words. Sikhs and the Sikh Guru's do not and did not believe in miracles, as that would be seen as interfering with the natural order of things. Thanks <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue;font-size:16px">S <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:goldenrod;font-size:16px">H 12:42, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that the Sikh faith is indeed based on the miracles that happened to the early Gurus. I could be wrong because I'm not a Sikh but have taken instruction on Sikhism from Sikh friends, and studied it for a course on spirituality. --TammyMoet (talk) 13:18, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * SH:Yes, so if Sikhs don't believe in miracles, how do they explain the disappearance of Nanak's body the morning after his death? ☯ Bonkers The Clown  \(^_^)/  Nonsensical Babble  ☯ 13:40, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Depends on your exact definition of "miracle", I think. Like, talking to God can be considered a "miracle" simply because its a "divine happening". Which is what Nanak experienced. ☯ Bonkers The Clown  \(^_^)/  Nonsensical Babble  ☯ 13:40, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

French quotation about balls
Looking for nice quotations in French, preferably from some well-known literary/cultural figure, that is about or mentions balls (as in dances, not footballs or anything else you might be thinking of). It's proving a difficult thing to Google, so I wondered if anything sprung to anyone's minds.

Thanks, D  aniel  (‽) 15:28, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, are you looking for quotations originally written in French, or quotations from other languages translated into French? If you speak French and want an answer from other French speakers, you might like to try L'Oracle, French Wikipedia's own reference desk. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:08, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * "Les bals les plus réussis sont ceux dont on parle le plus sans y être allé." Salvador Dali, Journal d'un génie adolescent.
 * "Les bals de l'Opéra sont l'endroit où l'on s'ennuie le plus et où l'on retourne avec le plus de plaisir." Alexandre Dumas père, Herminie.
 * Try www.citations.com for more. - Ka renjc 17:24, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Looking for quotations originally in French; I don't speak it but can muddle through enough words with the help of Google Translate to get a sense of what they say. And thanks for those two posted. :) D  aniel  (‽) 14:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Sources as to common age of marriage at the time of Muhammad?
There are many sources on the internet claiming that marriage of adult men to 9 year old girls was common practice at the time of Muhammad. Does anyone know where I can find sources to this fact? Primary sources, or valid studies, with proof that it was common practice to marry girls of 9 or there abouts? 217.210.200.246 (talk) 19:21, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Surely it would vary from place to place worldwide. Are you asking just about Arabia, or worldwide?  Nyttend (talk) 19:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about Arabia. And consummated marriage. Thank you for asking m to clarify. 217.210.200.246 (talk) 20:20, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * There is some information - albeit on current practices - in our article Child marriage (see the section on the Middle east).  The references may also be useful.  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Throughout the Middle Ages in the Muslim world and in Christian Europe the official minimum age of marriage was 12 for girls and 14 for boys. Children could be promised in marriage from any age and there was not the gap between the statuses of betrothal and marriage that there is today. Consummation of unions was expected in the early teens. In the specific case of Muhammad, the texts that relate to his marriage to Aisha are considered by Western scholars to be late additions, while Muslims, for doctrinal reasons, believe they are contemporary with the events. As a non-Muslim interested in the history, I would answer the question "Was the marriage between Muhammad and Aisha consummated at an early age?" as "Only two people ever knew, and they are both long dead." In response to the broader question of whether children were forced into early marriages and early sex that was essentially rape, the answer is definitely yes. Prince Lionel of England married Violante Visconti when she was 13, we have no reason to doubt that the marriage was consummated, she died soon afterwards. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:35, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Can't let that one slip by. It was Lionel who died a few months after the wedding.  Violante had 2 more husbands & died 20 yrs later.  If Violante had menstruated (she would be considered a woman grown at that point) & their marriage was consummated (why do have we no reason to doubt that? would love to know), it would be considered normal, not child rape; that's stamping it with modern values & implying a paedophile/victim relationship because Lionel was 28 & a widower at the time.  His first wife, Elizabeth de Burgh, was 5 yrs older & they were married as children, at the ages of 5 & 10, & had a child 12 yrs later.  Would that be child rape of Lionel, as the younger party in his first marriage?  Age gaps were not unusual.  A wife with a child husband had to wait until the boy reached maturity.  A husband with a young bride who had reached maturity often waited until she was older as even then they knew pregnancy was not always a healthy thing for a 13 yo.  26 yo Richard II certainly did not consummate his second marriage to 6 yo Isabella of France.  Then there's the horny teenager factor, as in the marriage of Henry of Bolingbroke (Lionel's nephew) to Mary de Bohun.  The marriage was not supposed to be consummated immediately, as Mary was 12 & Henry was 14, but kids don't always listen & Mary became pregnant a lot sooner than anticipated.  Children were married all the time in the Middle Ages; there was no minimum age.  The marriage of 4 yo Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York (younger son of Edward IV of England) to the 7 yo great heiress Anne Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk in 1479 is another example of a child marriage in addition to Lionel's.  Amongst the upper classes, at least, a marriage involving children would not be consummated until both parties were old enough.  It's just modern sensibilities that conclude teens weren't old enough.  As far as the OPs question, I'd think what applied in medieval Europe would likely apply in medieval Asia - menstruation=womanhood, no matter what the girl's age. ScarletRibbons (talk) 01:03, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, this is what's called evidence against interest, which is usually considered weighty in a court of law. People who claim Jesus never existed, for example, would have a hard time explaining why his last word's on the cross would be reported by one witness as "Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me?"  (Forgers would be unlikely to create such a quote describing the Messiah as losing faith as he died.)  Likewise, Qur'anic evidence that Mohammed consummated a marriage with a nine-year-old should be taken as highly reliable, given the fact that later forgers are so unlikely to portray him in such an unfavorable light, even on his own barbarous terms. μηδείς (talk) 00:20, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually the quote from Jesus is believed by many to be based on a psalm - see and not a true cry of despair.  I'm loath to give the Islamic text similar consideration, but that is admittedly out of prejudice. Wnt (talk) 04:11, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah, yes, the good ol' criterion of embarrassment. I suppose such an analysis of the Aisha issue would be dependent upon when the text recording the event was composed, and whether or not the incident recorded would have constituted an embarrassment in that societal context. Evanh2008 (talk&#124;contribs) 00:30, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Pbuh, as they say. Edison (talk) 00:32, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * You're assuming that marrying a 9-year-old would be seen in an "unfavorable light" by the authors of the Quran. But we don't know if that's true, which is what the OP's question is about.  --140.180.240.146 (talk) 01:03, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * So, if we're assuming a historicocritical framework (i.e., that the records were not composed within Muhammad's lifetime), the two essential questions become: 1) When and where was the text recording the prophet's marriage to Aisha written? AND 2) Would marriage to a nine-year-old girl have been considered deviant or otherwise undesirable in that time and at that place? Only once you've answered those two questions can you begin to apply the test for historicity that Medeis proposes. Sorry if I was unclear before. Evanh2008 (talk&#124;contribs) 11:47, 28 April 2013 (UTC) And just BTW, I am not very knowledgable in Islam or Arab culture, so I can't answer either of those questions. I'm assuming there's someone here who can at least nail down the answer to the first one. Evanh2008 (talk&#124;contribs) 11:48, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, thank you. That is what I'm looking to resolve. I am trying to find out: Had Muhammad married and consummated marriage with a 9 year old, would that have been common practice in his own time and culture, and are there primary sources, or valid studies, with proof to this being the case? 217.210.200.246 (talk) 07:00, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

First off, the marriage between Muhammad and `Aisha took place when she was 6, the consummation when she was 9. Second, this is not recorded in the Qur'an at all, but in Hadith. Third, such hadiths (Sahih Bukhari, volume 5, book 58, number 234, etc) were not significantly disputed among Muslims, or commonly considered to cast Muhammad in a negative light, until it became a sensitive issue due to being raised by Christians studying Islam in the modern period. In fact, it's been used to set the minimum age of marriage for girls at 9 lunar years (more like 8 years, 9 months in solar calendar terms) at some places and times. So "The age of majority for boys is fifteen lunar years and for girls nine lunar years" according to article 1210 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In any case, the youngest age of marriage according to ca. 600 A.D. Arab tribal customs (something which I doubt whether there's too much available information about) is only relevant when examining the claim that Muhammad was no worse than typical Arab tribal chieftains of the time. However, the more typical Muslim claim is that Muhammad is an ideal model and pattern for all humanity for all time... AnonMoos (talk) 07:03, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, and that claim is like most other claims based on religion: "wrong". Nevertheless, in the world of reason, it is useful to examine what moral status Muhammad would have had in his own society.  If he was substantially more brutal and barbaric than the typical Arab chieftain, that's just one more strike against the arrogant claims of religion.  If he was substantially better, he could rightly be considered an inspirational figure, even though his actions are undoubtedly barbaric by today's enlightened standards.
 * Anyhow, back to the OP's question. I agree that finding reliable sources about marriage in 6th century Arabia would be difficult, if not impossible.  Arabia was an impoverished, sparsely populated, and nearly illiterate region.  You might like to check out this article section on marriageable ages around the world, which shows that as late as the 13th century in some regions of Europe, marriage of girls below 12 was considered normal.  --Bowlhover (talk) 07:43, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. As far as I can tell this adds credibility to the claim, that claims that marriage between adult males and children, girls of 6-9, was common practice, are unsubstantiated. 217.210.200.246 (talk) 07:55, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * From the excellent Nikki R. Keddie's Women in the Middle East: Past and Present (Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 172: "The most thorough documentary study and analysis of questions regarding marriage in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times is Stern, Marriage in Early Islam. Similar views are summarized in Wiebke Walther, Women in Islam, trans. C.S.V. Salt (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1981), 57." So I would seek out those sources.
 * Google Books has a small snippet from page 32 of Stern: "...the fact remains that a girl was frequently betrothed at such an early age that she could scarcely have realized the importance of the question, in the event of the offer being repeated to her. If the cases of Aisha and Umm Kulthum bint Ali are to be taken as criteria for the age of betrothal, there is no doubt that the girl would not have realized the..."  But I have no way of knowing whether this is talking about pre-Islamic or early Islamic society.  It seems like it might be talking about the saying of Muhammad that silence is consent when asking a virgin to marry. -- Atethnekos <font face="georgia" size="1">(Discussion, Contributions) 00:27, 29 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think Itsmejudith is correct to say that western scholars think the Hadiths concerning Aisha's marraige are considered to be "late additions" by Western scholars. They are as early and reliable as one is likely to get. The crucial point, as I understand it, is not so much Aisha's age, but the fact that she had started to menstruate. Aisha's story has a curious passage saying that the marriage was consummated after "I got ill and my hair fell down", which is often interpreted as a reference to the onset of puberty. Paul B (talk) 12:37, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, dating hadith is difficult, but none are reliably dated to even Muhammad's century, let alone his lifetime. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:14, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * They didn't start to be written down in significant quantities until at least the 8th century, but there are traditional Islamic criteria for evaluating the Islamic soundness of hadiths (mainly the "chain" of alleged transmitters) and modern scholarly criteria for evaluating the historicity of hadiths (so that those which address issues which didn't arise until after Muhammad's death are automatically suspect, etc.), and I don't know that the `Aisha marriage hadiths are flagged as particularly problematic by either set of criteria. AnonMoos (talk) 23:43, 29 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Another thing to keep in mind as well is that there are other Hadith collections than the main Sunni ones. The Shia have a different group of collections, and I think that in the Shia Hadith, Aisha is depicted as being in her teens when she is married. Bakmoon (talk) 14:58, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Opposite of hasty generalization
What's the opposite of hasty generalization? Here's the situation I'm imagining: imagine that study after study around the world for many years always shows that 95% of sufferers from a disease will heal rapidly, while 5% will die. Another person gets the illness, and the doctor says "Don't worry; 95% of sufferers heal rapidly, so of course you'll get better." Of course he should have said "You have really good chances of recovering, because 95% of sufferers heal rapidly". In other words, the doctor is forgetting that although we can predict with certainty what will happen for any group of people with the disease, we can never predict whether a specific person will be in the 95% or the 5%. What fallacy is this? I've searched through Informal fallacy and Relevance fallacies without finding anything, and Google simply sent me back to the articles I'd just checked without success. Nyttend (talk) 20:10, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Ecological fallacy? Fallacy of division?   Ludic fallacy?  Gambler's fallacy?  Prosecutor's fallacy? 24.23.196.85 (talk) 21:24, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Positively fallacious! ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:57, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Not exactly any of those, although somewhat related to the ecological fallacy. Take that page's discussion of voting patterns and income levels; the person committing my fallacy would read "62% of voters with annual incomes over $200,000 voted for Bush, but only 36% of voters with annual incomes of $15,000 or less voted for Bush" and imagine that he could thereby determine how a specific person with $10,000 income had voted.  Nyttend (talk) 23:02, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * In The Book of the Fallacy, Madsen Pirie calls this "half-concealed quantification". The example he gives is "Palm trees don't normally grow in England, so this must be something else."  Adapting it to your example, we'd get "Virtually all patients recover from this disease, so you're going to recover." Tevildo (talk) 10:54, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Rio pact
Which four members of the Rio pact (see Collective security) have actively joined our country in the Great War on Terror? I know that El Salvador was one -- what were the other three? 24.23.196.85 (talk) 21:17, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Judging by the article "Multi-National Force – Iraq": Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Honduras. Gabbe (talk) 11:21, 28 April 2013 (UTC)