Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 April 3

= April 3 =

why do Asians like to sleep in libraries? (or why don't other races?)
As an Asian, I am puzzled why a group that makes up 13 percent of the college population at UVA constitutes like 85 percent of the population that can be found sleeping in the libraries between the hours of 2 and 7 am. 71.207.150.146 (talk) 03:33, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * What's UVA? (I'm impressed with your statistical work.) HiLo48 (talk) 03:46, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Probably University of Virginia. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:21, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Malcolm Gladwell discusses this in Outliers, where he essentially argues it's just another consequence of the work ethic found in many East Asian cultures (other consequences, of course, include higher math scores on academic tests compared with students of other races, etc.). He has whole chapters devoted to the purported reasons behind this cultural trait. Evanh2008 (talk&#124;contribs) 07:43, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That's kinda stereotypical. One thing for sure... I don't sleep in libraries. ☯ Bonkers The Clown  \(^_^)/  Nonsensical Babble  ☯ 08:03, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * "Stereotypical" does not mean "false". You certainly can't disprove a statistical rule with a single data point--see outlier.  --140.180.250.241 (talk) 15:00, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't see any statistical rules in the OP. Just a bunch of made-up figures. I think WP:DENY applies here. --Saddhiyama (talk) 15:24, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thinking about this in terms of "race" rather than "culture" is a categorical error. The issue here isn't their biological heritage, it's their cultural makeup. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:56, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Indeed, if it's true that Asians sleep more often in the library, it could have several different explanations. I think that some academic cultures allow for students taking a nap during class, so, it comes naturally to some Asians to take a nap while studying. Another explanation is that poorer students would sleep more often in the library after a full day of study + work. OsmanRF34 (talk) 19:40, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * So university libraries in the USA stay open all night? Ew. --Viennese Waltz 15:21, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Some do, some don't. I think my campus library stayed open till 11 or so.  But that was 15 years ago.  Dismas |(talk) 15:29, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * per Saddhiyama. Feel quite free to add citations from reliable sources outside the hat. μηδείς (talk) 19:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * "Asians sleeping in the library" is quite a famous tumblr. 128.143.185.217 (talk) 06:04, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * WTF. I googled that phrase, sure enough the tumblr exists but it has nothing to do with sleeping Asians, it's something to do with some reality TV show. --Viennese Waltz 06:45, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Paul Revere's warning that "The regulars are out"!
It was told to me by a Mass. State Park Ranger that Revere's actual warning to the colonists regarding the British troops coming was actually, "The regulars are out," as to distinguish them from other troops. Apparently we Americans (or Revere) still may have thought of ourselves technically as "British" and chose specificity so as to avoid any possible confusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.170.16.222 (talk) 04:23, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Did you have a question? --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  07:16, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Here are some accounts from around that time. Apprently, 'regulars' was a more common name for the British troops. It was only many years later that 'British' was used regularly.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  08:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * And here's a humanities-desk thread on the same topic, started by a very similar IP a week and a half ago. Deor (talk) 12:30, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I knew I'd seen it somewhere recently, but was unable to find it on any of the RefDesks.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  14:22, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Sons of Chongzhen Emperor
Why didn't any of the sons (a few survived) of Chongzhen Emperor ascend to the Southern Ming Dynasty either during or after the death of the Prince of Fu.


 * Is it possible they were all too young to make a power play? The Chongzhen Emporer was 33 when he died. At most they could have been teenagers. 184.147.116.201 (talk) 17:25, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

International Trade
When people, politicians talk of "international trade", do ports (such as port of seattle, port of hong kong (do they trade?)) barter, or do they buy and sell at market prices?Curb Chain (talk) 09:18, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Where is the port of hong kong located?

What are the symbols in the left most column of "Wind Forcast:"?Curb Chain (talk) 09:30, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The port is in the middle of Hong Kong, fairly obviously - the SAR is not that big a place. The symbols are wind feathers which give a graphical indication of the direction and strength of the wind. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 11:43, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Why is this fairly obvious? Seattle is not big compared with Los Angelas, and the port of seattle is not in the middle of Seattle.Curb Chain (talk) 12:12, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Ports don't buy and sell anything. Ports charge fees or dues or tolls to unload cargo.  If you have a ship full of stuff, and you need to unload the stuff, you pay the port for the right to unload your stuff.  The port itself doesn't buy or sell what you unload; the stuff you unload has been arranged for already (you don't ship a boatload of goods with nowhere to go!).  We don't have any Wikipedia articles on the subject, but if you search for "port dues" or "port fees" you can find information about the concept from other articles.  International trade is important because governments can generate revenue directly or indirectly from international trade.  Direct revenue comes in the form of tariffs or customs, though tariffs are more often used to keep imports out to protect domestic industries, such "protectionist tariffs" are frowned upon in modern economic theory and organizations like the World Trade Organization are based on keeping the free flow of goods by campaigning against protectionist tariffs.  International trade also makes money indirectly as a company which is selling more goods overseas creates higher employment at home, which in turn generates government revenue in the form of things like income taxes, both corporate and personal, as well as excise taxes.  -- Jayron  32  13:53, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * In this picture, what is a custom, toll and a duty?Curb Chain (talk) 07:41, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure there are bright lines between any of those terms (and you could throw into the mix words like "dues", "taxes", "fees", "tariffs" etc.) Roughly speaking, "customs" and duties are near synonyms anyways, in modern usages customs is the government agency charged with collecting certain kinds of duties, specifically on collecting duties due on imports.  A toll again doesn't have a precise definition which makes it different from other forms of taxation, but in general it usually means a usage fee: that is, money collected to use something like a toll road or even a water way (the Sound Dues were an historically important toll charged by Denmark for the use of its territorial waters to access the Baltic).  But on that sign, I don't know that you could assign each item as specifically one of those terms.  The general sense is "This is all the stuff you owe us money for" and I'm not sure you can parse it more specifically than that.  -- Jayron  32  16:41, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

system for depiction of color in black and white printing
I'm old enough to remember this, hope someone else is too. I thought there might be a system for depiction of color in black and white printing-like old maps in books, they couldn't show red, so it was vertical lines, green was checks, orange was polkadots and so on. Does anyone here know about stuff like this or am I crazy? Not mutually exclusive, I know...--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 12:22, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I remember it too, but I can't immediately find an example on the net. Alansplodge (talk) 12:27, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Not maps, but there's a standardised system for showing colours (tinctures) in Heraldry Rojomoke (talk) 12:32, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I remember something similar to this as well. I'd definitely like to know if anyone can find out what it was and when/how it came about. Evanh2008 (talk&#124;contribs) 12:34, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * For the heraldry standard(s), see Hatching system. Rojomoke (talk) 12:37, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * London Underground used to (in fact, still do) print B/W maps using patterns to distinguish the lines. See http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/bw-large-print-map.pdf and http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/standard-tube-map.pdf for the coloured version. I don't think there is any particular 'standard' to the patterns used, though, and I reckon the patterns used have changed since the versions I remember from the early '90s. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 13:03, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * (EC) I remember it. It was not just used for colours - it was also used for distinguishing things such as the distribution of agricultural products (wheat, rice, corn, etc.) and wealth, languages/dialetcs, empires, etc., on maps when I was at school.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  13:11, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I found a rather nice paper from the American Planning Association on 'Traditional Color Coding for Land Uses', which has two tables (at the end) that show parallel usage of colours and hatchings as used by the Denver Classification manual (I think it's used for some sort of census information). For instance, 'Lemon Yellow' becomes a 10% grey, and 'Orange' becomes a left-to-right diagonal hatching. The table refers to standard 'Zip-a-tone' patterns; see our article on Screentone. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 15:53, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you everyone, that's a relief to know I'm not the only one to remember such things!--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 12:48, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Philosophy of science - justification of evidence based belief system
Hi,

I was watching this classic clip of Richard Dawkins answering a question about why we believe in science ("it works, b******s"). Don't get me wrong, I'm on Dawkin's side through and through, but I do think that the questioner has a valid question. I'm sure philosophers have dissected this problem already, and probably came to a similar conclusion and Dawkins, but I'd be interested in learning about this problem, but it's hard to google his rambling question - can you give me some pointers on where to read? Cheers,

Aaadddaaammm (talk) 20:13, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * To clarify the question is basically: "You only believe things that you have evidence to support. What evidence do you have to make you believe that?" Aaadddaaammm (talk) 20:16, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Start at Brain in a vat and follow links from there. You experience all reality through the filter of your brain, so you first must ask the question of yourself as to how much you trust what your brain is telling you.  -- Jayron  32  20:18, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * (ec) You can give that answer for every question ever asked. Can we start a bit downstream of the Matrix? :P Aaadddaaammm (talk) 20:25, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, you see, that's the problem, known in philosophy as the problem of solipsism. When you ask a question like "what evidence is necessary to believe something", in an unqualified way, you need to keep working backwards.  Do we trust what we read that scientists have done?  After all, scientists sometimes can't be trusted.  So, do we only trust our own experiences?  Must we experience everything before we can believe it to be true?  Well sometimes our experiences can't be trusted either.  So what evidence do we need to trust anything?  What are you willing to accept on blind faith?  The issue of solipsism is, the only thing that you can accept is your own existence, and really only the existence of your mind, not even your own physical form.  All other experiences must be accepted on some level of faith: you need to believe those experiences to be trustworthy without any way to prove that they are.  What the individual needs to decide for themselves is what level of faith they are willing to accept for any given bit of information or knowledge.  And for every bit of information, individuals may set different criteria for acceptance.  -- Jayron  32  12:11, 4 April 2013 (UTC)


 * (ec) This is still a question that causes great difficulties to philosophers. The problem was explained very cogently by Hume: there is no logical reason to believe that patterns that have held in the past will continue to hold in the future. Philosophers have disagreed widely about how to resolve that problem. My own view is that the only workable solution is to assume that our brains are constructed to learn inductively. Looie496 (talk) 20:21, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, right, so we're talking about the "Problem of Induction". Thanks, got it in its box now! Aaadddaaammm (talk) 20:30, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Note that the preference for inductive as opposed to deductive evidence is itself a historical development. (One way to phrase it is, "why we trust scientists more than philosophers and theologians.") Such, anyway, is the thesis of the classic history of science/sociology of knowledge book, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, which traces the key moment where inductive evidence (championed by Boyle) edged out deductive evidence (championed by Hobbes). It's an interesting read if you're interested in this topic, because it does a great job of making clear how difficult it is to argue with inductive evidence if you've got a lot of very smart people who aren't used to thinking about knowledge in that way. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:22, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * In a more general sense the area of thought you're looking for is Epistemology. Roughly : The study of Knowledge. APL (talk) 22:02, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Recent textual finds
What are some recent textual finds-- by "textual find" I mean such as nag hammadi, oxyrrhynchus, etc? I'm wondering if there are any recent finds which are of interest, but haven't yet become widely known so that most people don't know about them yet. 64.179.181.61 (talk) 21:07, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * You can try find it yourself:  Rmhermen (talk) 01:41, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Steam locomotive ID
Which steam locomotive is this type? Thnx. 93.174.25.12 (talk) 22:46, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks like a Tank engine of the 2-10-2 configuration. Edison (talk) 00:14, 4 April 2013 (UTC)


 * If you wanted a more precise identification, you might try the clever chaps over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Locomotives task force who specialise in this kind of thing. Alansplodge (talk) 11:08, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The livery - black above the running plate and red below - suggest Germany to me. File:Steam locomotive 99 782 a.jpg looks very similar, which is a Class 99.77-79 locomotive of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, although I can't be certain that it's definitely that class. More photos of that class at commons:Category:DR Class 99.77-79. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:04, 4 April 2013 (UTC)