Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 August 11

= August 11 =

That thing that makes us react
Is there a name for that phenomenon where something triggers this gross feeling that makes our skin crawl and us go "eeeeeeuuuuaaaaaa"? It is often unique to each person. But, sometimes many share the same one, like nails on a blackboard, or handling a baloon and making it squeek. Do you know what I'm talking about? If there's a name, and it's not covered, I want to write about it. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:44, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Check out Chalkboard scraping and Psychoacoustics. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:02, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Wow. Thank you so much. I am astonished that we have an article on this. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 17:24, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I put "nails on chalkboard", or something similar, into the searchbox and it found it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:11, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I never thought of searching that. I figured it had zero chance of coming up. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually we have both Nails on chalkboard and Fingernails on chalkboard, which redirect to chalkboard scraping. It never hurts to try a given expression in the search box. Even if there's no article, any places it turns up may lead to something useful. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:37, 12 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Two others that might fit the bill: Trypophobia and Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response. Note that neither of those words is well accepted by the scientific community. The latter, especially, just reeks of pseudoscience to me. But, a little googling or perhaps personal WP:OR experience should show that many people experience these phenomena. Fair warning, if you google these things, you may find disturbing results :) SemanticMantis (talk) 20:26, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


 * See "Wisdom of repugnance".—Wavelength (talk) 20:35, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * And also note the 'see also' at the bottom of that page, which seems apt to me: Anti-intellectualism SemanticMantis (talk) 20:50, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Very interesting!! "...Something might be living inside those holes!..." Naturally. Ha ha ha ha! Thank you. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure the word Disgust captures the OP's sense pretty well "an emotional response of revulsion to something considered offensive or unpleasant" -- Jayron  32  03:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * That covers his first sentence ("this gross feeling that makes our skin crawl and us go "eeeeeeuuuuaaaaaa""). But, for me at least, it's very wide of the mark when it comes to nails scratching a blackboard.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  03:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Everyone's different. I've heard Fran Drescher's voice described as being akin to nails on a chalkboard. I like it, though. (Her voice, not the nails on the chalkboard.) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:01, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's a bit bad, but not literally disgusting. If it was, she wouldn't be a nanny or a famous actress. It's like when Moe Syzlak (NSFW) auditioned for a soap opera, and the nauseated casting agent explains they wanted TV ugly! Not ugly ugly. (He'd been called ugly, pug ugly, fugly, pug fugly, but never ugly ugly.)  InedibleHulk (talk) 02:38, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Most things that are described as "disgusting" are not literally disgusting. That means it puts one off one's appetite, or even causes one to vomit. Literally. But I wouldn't even call nails on a chalk board metaphorically disgusting.  Painful is closer.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:52, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's one of those words. Overused and watered down. Our vomiting article has a (deadlinked) bit about it being the most disgusting sound, per a large survey. The retching and splashing is supposedly a clue that nearby food is disgusting, and listeners suddenly aren't hungry anymore. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:57, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
 * As for "makes our skin crawl", the term 'frisson' is close, though not necessarily implying unpleasantness. Emotionally-based dislike of some concept unfamiliar (and therefore not well understood) is sometimes referred to as "the Yuck factor". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 12:56, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Land descriptions
I ran across these three property descriptions, and I don't entirely understand the difference in ownership. Parcel one is owned by Bryan et ux; parcel two is owned by Michael et al; and parcel three is owned by "Michael A. Karshner et ux ½ Int and Elizabeth M. Karshner ½ Int". I'm guessing that #1 is a man and his wife in joint ownership, that #2 is Michael and two or more other people in joint ownership, and that Michael-and-Mrs. and Elizabeth each have half ownership of #3. But first off, why would we say that Bryan-and-Mrs. own #1 completely, rather than Bryan having a ½ interest and Mrs. having a ½ interest? And what's the difference between Michael-et-al owning #2 completely and Michael-and-Mrs. and Elizabeth owning #3 in halves? In other words, why can't we say that Michael-et-al (potentially a different et al, I understand) own #3 completely, instead of mentioning who the et al are? Nyttend (talk) 16:14, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


 * It might make a difference which jurisdiction these were in (from the URL's I guess it's Ohio). But if it were in England and Wales, I would point you to joint tenancy and tenancy in common. --ColinFine (talk) 20:25, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, yes, it's in Ohio; I omitted the jurisdiction because the parcels are listed as being in "BELLE CENTER OH 43310 USA". Nyttend (talk) 00:13, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * As for why the man and his wife are not listed as equal half owners, a married couple is often considered a single economic actor. For example, I own a piece of property jointly with my spouse, and the title does not specify which of us owns which percentage. Marco polo (talk) 20:36, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


 * My guess: In the parcel 1 case, the spouses don't each own half of the parcel, they co-own the whole parcel. In the parcel 2 case the joint ownership is of the whole parcel. For instance, if the parcel was sold it would have to be sold as a whole parcel with everyone's signature on the sale document (the spouses both would have to sign for parcel 1 and the 'et al' group would all have to sign for parcel 2). In the parcel 3 case, Michael and spouse could sell their half interest in the parcel to someone, and Elizabeth could retain her half interest.Dreamahighway (talk) 22:31, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Truth and Significance
Sidgwick in The Methods of Ethics writes of some maxims (which ones are not immediately relevant), "the maxims just given may be understood in two senses: in one sense they are certainly self-evident, but they are also insignificant: in another sense they include more or less distinctly a direction to an important practical duty, but as so understood they lose their self-evidence."

This is a point which I've frequently come across in terms of truth (rather than self-evidence) versus significance; frequently enough that I would think there should be a name for it. Is there? HenryFlower 18:21, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Sidgwick is referring to the analytic–synthetic distinction, made famous by Kant (and famously contested by Quine). -- Paulscrawl (talk) 19:07, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Married women's dress code in oppose to unmarried women
In the book Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Scarlett O'Hara reflects over the difference in social expectations between married and unmarried females in the upper class southern high society, and regret the fact that once married, a woman was not allowed by etiquette to dress in bright colors but was expected to restrict herself to dark and discreet colors such as grey, and that she was further more not expected to dance with other men than her husband. Is this correct? If have not found this anywhere else. Thank you. --Aciram (talk) 18:59, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't know about that, but in Queen Elizabeth's time (late 16th century) it was notorious that the formal clothes of unmarried women in England had a lower neckline (exposing more cleavage) than the formal clothes of married women. There's also a semi-famous 1938 Hollywood movie about how an antebellum unmarried woman pretty much ruins her life by wearing a bright red dress (of course the movie is black-and-white, so viewers have to just imagine the redness of her dress!). AnonMoos (talk) 20:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I wonder how many BW movies there are in which color is important to the plot. Green for Danger is another. —Tamfang (talk) 04:52, 15 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Lots. But it never bothered people, generally speaking, not even after colour became the norm.  Monotone movies are still being made, including by major studios (The Elephant Man, Schindler's List (except for one scene; well, one and a half, really), Good Night, and Good Luck and The Artist come to mind immediately). See also List of black-and-white films produced since 1970. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:58, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
 * It wasn't until the 1910s that Western society stopped expecting women to choose their clothing based on marital status, social class, and age. That they would do so in the antebellum South is unremarkable, even expected. However, I think her ideas on balls are wrong unless the US South was out of step with the rest of the English-speaking world, as in most areas it was considered quite horrible manners for a husband to monopolize his wife at a dance. He could dance with her once or twice, but more than that would be considered thoughtless (not just to her but to the rest of the party) on his part. Married women were considered "safe" and actually had greater freedom to choose dance partners than unmarried women, who could not accept more than one dance from a man she was not betrothed to. --NellieBly (talk) 21:16, 17 August 2014 (UTC)