Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 December 17

= December 17 =

Noncitizen?
It is said that a 'noncitizen' is one who is not a citizen of the country in question, however, what is the term for a person who is not a citizen of anywhere? Plasmic Physics (talk) 05:05, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * A stateless person. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:13, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * That's the correct term as far as I know, but I have also come across displaced person used with that meaning. Specifically, in Robert Heinlein's 1951 novel Between Planets, a character says: "Well, kid, the Old Man has settled your status; you're a 'displaced person'" and then explains it as "You have no citizenship anywhere." Being displaced is, of course, a possible consequence of being stateless, so it's possible that some people have confused the terms. --65.94.50.4 (talk) 05:34, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Generally speaking, can one be a permanent resident and a de jure stateless concurrently? Plasmic Physics (talk) 06:42, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The Statelessness article gives several examples of that case (see the section on Brunei, it's also an inevitable (though likely brief) consequence of the "During Change of Citizenship" section for someone who was PR during the citizenship change). MChesterMC (talk) 09:56, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizens_(Latvia) Akseli9 (talk) 10:13, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Do we have an applicable user-box? Plasmic Physics (talk) 11:45, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Where does a world citizen fall into this?  → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 23:42, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * A world citizen is still a citizen, just of no particular country. Plasmic Physics (talk) 03:21, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Nonsense - there is no legal concept of 'world citizenship'. A person either has citizenship of one or more countries, or none at all. People may describe themselves as 'world citizens', but this in no way affects their status. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:50, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I met a woman in Taiwan back in 1980, a White Russian widow of a Chinese General. She had residency rights, but no passport. DOR (HK) (talk) 02:26, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Fortune telling’s of legendary folks
How many people’s futures were told to them or to their families or to whomever? E.g. Jesus’s future was told to Jesus and his mother. Muhammad’s future was told to Muhammad and his mother or to his grandfather. Moses - ???. Pharoah - ??? Does anyone know anybody else? -- (Russell.mo (talk) 05:07, 17 December 2014 (UTC))
 * Are we restricting this to historically verifiable cases, or are foretold births as a literary/mythic trope in play as well? The first list would be much shorter. One example of the latter is Prince Gautama, whose birth was foretold (after a fashion) by a white elephant his mother saw in a dream the night before giving birth. Evan (talk&#124;contribs) 05:16, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The article says that the dream was on the night he was conceived. Given that it was a relatively normal pregnancy, I feel she may have had an inkling a little bit before the night of the birth! MChesterMC (talk) 09:50, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've heard both versions of the story, actually, but it does look as though the article's version is the more prominent one. Evan (talk&#124;contribs) 16:16, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Oedipus's future was foretold by the Oracle of Delphi. -- Jayron 32 11:24, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Cassandra tried to warn her folks lots of times, but did they listen? Nooo. Clarityfiend (talk) 11:48, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Does predicting your own future count? Because, when John Henry) was a little infant, sitting on his babysitter's lap, he picked up a hammer and a piece of steel and predicted these things would eventually kill him. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:24, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Restricting to Incarnations/Celestial Beings/Prophets/Messangers/Apostles/Holy Spirit/Oracles, kind of cases. Male/Female. Whatever 'list' we have in Wikipedia with 'definitions'. If not you guys might need to help me, with a little definition.

So far I now, Mary was aware of Prophet Jesus and his future; so was Jesus. The granddad/mother of Prophet Muhammad's use to see dreams/visions of his success before/after his birth, in a place (room) based inside Mecca (near Ka'ba) [not enough knowledge I have in this...]. Pharaoh died a horrible death for considering himself the 'God', examples are, a story in the Qur'an, Hebrew Bible, the mummification...

Contemporary ones, I'm not sure, if their myth/story sounds good I'll insert them.

Can anyone help please? ('Name of the Person' and a little 'definition', if there is no list available).

(Russell.mo (talk) 14:40, 17 December 2014 (UTC))
 * Biblically speaking, in addition to Jesus' and Moses' births being predicted there are:
 * Isaac, son of Abraham and second in the famous patriarch trilogy
 * Jacob, later eponym of the people of Israel; Isaac's son and arguably the Return of the Jedi of the patriarchs
 * Esau, Jacob's brother, was also the topic of an angel's visit to their mother, the gist being that "the older brother (Esau) shall serve the younger"
 * Samson, Israelite judge and long-haired strongman
 * John the Baptist, as far as I know the only example other than Jesus from the New Testament
 * Outside the Bible, Zoroaster is worth noting. At least according to Aeschylus, Prometheus predicted the birth of his redeemer (Heracles) several generations in advance. I'm sure there are others. I would look particularly at classical and medieval rulers who may have made use of the trope. Caesar's comet, for example, comes close in that Augustus used it as part of his propaganda machinery in establishing the Principate, though (obviously) he didn't believe it had predicted his own birth. Miraculous birth seems to be the most pertinent article we have to cases like this. Julius Caesar, according to Shakespeare, was told to "beware the ides of march," which certainly fits the bill of fortune-telling. Returning to the Bible Saul had the witch of Endor conjure up the ghost of the prophet Samuel in order to predict the future. Other examples are likely to go on for quite a while. Evan (talk&#124;contribs) 16:16, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Oedipus is another example of someone whose fortune was told him, whether he believed it or not. Perseus's future was also foretold, and presumably believed. The number of characters in popular fiction, particularly comic books and similar, who have their future foretold to them is frankly staggering. Of course, considering in comics the nature of the future changes every year or so, sometimes we never actually see the future that is foretold take place, because titanic shifts in the very nature of reality itself cause tremendous, incalculable changes which stagger belief (just like they did last issue and the issue before that, or at least it seems that frequent sometimes). I'm not a real expert on pop culture in general, but I have a feeling the "doomed hero" or "loser destined to be a hero" types are such frequent dreams or fears of people that examples can probably be found in virtually every culture. John Carter (talk) 17:33, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Whatever you guys mentioned (and assured) so far, some of them would do the trick, altogether with my ones... Thank you all -- (Russell.mo (talk) 15:07, 18 December 2014 (UTC))

Hanukkah on the 17th?
My 2014 calendar says that Chanukkah commences on the 17th of December, but Wikipedia contradicts this, saying that it commenced on the 16th (yesterday). Is this simply a manufacturer error? --66.190.99.112 (talk) 13:04, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * A "day" begins at sundown, not midnight, on a Jewish calender. Bus stop (talk) 13:10, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Per Bus stop, in the Jewish tradition, a day begins at sundown. This is different than in the Western tradition, which holds that the day begins at midnight.  So the first day of Chanukkah begins at sundown on the 16th of December and runs until sundown on the 17th of December, when the second day begins.  How different non-Jewish sources report the date is inconsistent.  Some will note the date it will start on, others will report the date where most of it is.  -- Jayron 32 13:44, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * As kind of a nod to this tradition, Christmas Eve is often treated as part of Christmas itself. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:09, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd love to see a citation for Christmas Eve being a nod to the Jewish practice. --jpgordon:==( o ) 16:19, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Me too. Given that most of what we now know a Christmas festivities developed well after the split between Christianity and Judaism, I'd be surprised if there was much influence in that direction. Easter, a much older holiday, has far more obvious parallels in Jewish practice. Evan (talk&#124;contribs) 18:21, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If you can find a citation demonstrating that the church invented it independently, I'll stand corrected. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:30, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It isn't so much that Christmas Eve celebrations are a nod to Jewish practice as that in the Christian tradition, the evening before every holy day is treated as part of the day itself. For example, Roman Catholic Canon Law states "A person who assists at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite either on the feast day itself or in the evening of the preceding day satisfies the obligation of participating in the Mass." (Code of Canon Law, Can. 1248 §1.) I had thought this was commonly understood to be a carry over from the Jewish tradition, but finding a citation that explicitly states that is proving to be challenge. - EronTalk 19:44, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm familiar with the practice within Catholicism (if I'm not mistaken, this is why Saturday night mass is a thing). I'm just not quite sure how to trace it; the history gets muddled at a certain distance from the first century, and Christian theologians are likely to jump through all kinds of intellectual hoops rather than say "we got it from the Jews," so I don't expect a decent primary source will turn up. For example, Christians who portray Seventh-day Adventists as "Judaizers" typically cite that sect's celebration of the Sabbath beginning on Friday night as evidence, while Adventists will counter that they're basing the practice on the "evening-morning" sequence of Genesis rather than Jewish legal tradition. At some point that becomes something of a chicken-versus-egg argument.
 * In general, though, I guess I had non-liturgical elements of Christmas celebrations in mind in my initial reply. I think it would be very hard indeed to claim that, e.g., decorating a Christmas tree came about because of some vestigial cultural memory of lighting the menorah on Hanukkah. I'd be interested to see if any Christian apologists have made that claim, though, in attempting to refute notions of the "pagan roots of Christmas." Evan (talk&#124;contribs) 20:24, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Starting celebrations on the eve of a festival is shared by the whole Judeo-Christian tradition. Itsmejudith (talk) 00:58, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I think that's generally true, but is debatable when it comes to many Protestant denominations. I grew up in a Baptist family and other than Christmas Eve (which for most American Protestants often has more to do with Santa than anything liturgical), I can't recall us celebrating anything the night before. Before I started attending a Catholic church the idea of Easter Vigil was a totally foreign one to me. Also, it's not quite a "festival," but I'm not aware of anyone who celebrates the Sabbath (or "the Lord's Day") on either Friday night/Saturday morning or Saturday night/Sunday morning. That's strictly an Adventist (and possibly Seventh-Day Baptist?) thing, and they're very much regarded as "weird" by many other Protestants for doing so. Evan (talk&#124;contribs) 02:27, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Don't forget, the time of sunset will vary from place to place, so even within one country, there will be different times for when Chanukhah started. --Dweller (talk) 14:16, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I assume they use local time, not GMT. Still... I wonder if Jews use the International Date Line to decide the break in which day such events fall, or is there a different religious line?  (Jerusalem is at 35 degrees east)  A web search landing at  actually suggests there is a "halachic Date Line", giving multiple suggestions including that Shabbat in Hawaii is on Thursdays-Fridays, but I think we better get somebody Jewish on here to tell us if they're pulling our leg. :) Wnt (talk) 22:25, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not Jewish, but I'm pretty familiar with basic Orthodox halakha&mdash;Shabbat begins on Friday night and ends on Saturday night, full stop. The methods used to determine when it begins and ends predate time zones and pretty much ignore them altogether. Shabbat begins at or around sunset on Friday and ends on Saturday when at least three stars are visible in the sky (considered "nightfall"). This particular rule is meant as a gezeirah, a "fence around the Torah," a rabbinic injunction erring on the side of caution by beginning Sabbath observance at the earliest reasonable definition of "Friday night" and ending it at the latest possible definition of the threshold between late Saturday afternoon and Saturday night. What this means in practice is two very interesting things: first, Sabbath can (and often does) last longer than 24 hours. Not much longer, but longer. Second, a longitudinal distance of as little as a few miles or so between one community of Jews and another means that one will begin observing the Sabbath a few minutes before the other. Evan (talk&#124;contribs) 22:35, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you missed the point... somewhere on the Pacific it will be Friday and somewhere it will be Saturday on the same night. Leaving the question of whether secular authorities have the last word on where that line is, which the source I mentioned seemed to cast doubt on. Wnt (talk) 00:50, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I got the point, just couldn't find any evidence of the halakhic discussions getting any more complicated than what I summarized. Of course, I was forgetting Rule 613&mdash;"If it exists, rabbis have debated it. No exceptions." It seems that the issue of the international date line has come up in discussions of the Sabbath. Apparently it mostly seems to be an issue regarding Japan, for some reason. Evan (talk&#124;contribs) 01:52, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's well discussed. I've seen a book which deals with the International Date Line, Arctic/Antarctic times and even orbiting spacecraft and the halachik problems caused, not just for Sabbaths and festivals, but mundane daily issues such as times for prayers. --13:07, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * See International Date Line. Since the SDAs are mentioned, you may be interested in International Date Line, most of which discusses their internal debates that have resulted from several Pacific island states switching to the other side of the Date Line a few years ago.  Nyttend (talk) 22:12, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

who came up with the dining philosophers problem?
who came up with the dining philosophers problem? It's disgusting - why would anyone eat with someone else's fork, then put it down for them to eat with again. I can't believe anyone came up with this - who was it?

Also, is there a saner version that is more practical and not some disgusting conceit (premise)? 212.96.61.236 (talk) 13:20, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Read the article. The answer to your question is in the second sentence of the article.  -- Jayron 32 13:41, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It is not disgusting when you consider the (unstated) fact that each of the philosophers will very likely have the option of washing/cleaning the utensils before reusing them. After all, they are philosophers. These are people who think.  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  13:58, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It's only "disgusting" if one assumes that the diners are unsanitary. Surely you've shared a utensil with a loved one from time to time? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:07, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It's not a *real* scenario; it's a thought experiment about resource utilization/access and deadlocks. CS Miller (talk) 15:26, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes but the OP's point is why such an unhygienic aesthetically unappealing thought experiment? Why couldn't Dijkstra come up with a "writing philosophers problem" with two pens and a sheet of paper as a metaphor instead of two forks and a plate of spaghetti. What next? A toilet bowl and two rolls of toilet paper? Note that requiring two forks to eat spaghetti is every bit as realistic as requiring two pens to write or two rolls of toilet paper to... Even with thought experiments, some are more aesthetically pleasing than others. What is also bizarre that they have to be philosophers. Why? Let computer scientists learn to come up with sane simple clean examples with no extraneous unnecessary pointless elements ok?Contact Basemetal   here  18:07, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, OP here. Basemetal has my objection exactly right.  You don't eat spaghetti with two forks - and even if you did, the idea of then setting the fork you've just put in your mouth to your neighbour to put in his is disgusting, it's just not done.  Typically not even a husband and wife do that.  I could understand it MAYBE if it were a knife and fork and just the knives were shared, but that doesn't work with the example.   So they really need to come up with a much better example, the example as shown is ridiculous and, " an unhygienic aesthetically unappealing thought experiment" exactly as I objected to.  Basemetal gets me. 91.120.14.30 (talk) 12:38, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You're allowing the details to get in the way of the purpose of the thought experiment. I'm guessing you've never shared a utensil with a loved one. If you find this so repugnant that you can't tolerate it, then substitute it with something mundane, such as replacing the plates by canvasses, the spaghetti by paint, and the utensils by brushes. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:43, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Being a thought experiment - and therefore a philosophical question (even though it actually applies to computer programming), it would only be perfectly appropriate to use 'philosophers', rather than some random immigrants working at WalMart or in some randomly out-sourced Indian call-centre.  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  18:24, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The Schroedinger's cat thought experiment always seemed rather sadistic to me, making me wonder if Erwin Schroedinger enjoyed killing small animals. StuRat (talk) 18:15, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Quote #284 from this page might be an indicator of the response if he were to actually have tried it. John Carter (talk) 18:45, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The dining philosophers problem in its current form has a mnemonic value as an illustration of a real problem in concurrency. As such, if anybody is disgusted or amused by it, it has done at least part of its job (you won't forget it). The cat, on the other hand, always had an element of satire, and is probably taken far too seriously. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 13:23, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The thought experiment makes much more sense if the philosophers use chopsticks rather than forks–who eats with two forks?
 * Focusing too much on the specifics rather than on the point of the experiment. You could just as easily change the story to where the guys at the table are chefs preparing salads for someone else to consume, and they need pairs of forks to do it. But how does that change the point of the experiment? This nitpicking reminds me of the "Two Jews get off a streetcar" joke. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:05, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * "Two Jews get off a streetcar"? How come there's no WP article yet? (And why "Jews" and not "Irishmen" ). But seriously, Bugs, the whole point of an example, of a thought experiment, besides that it "encodes" correctly the logic of the situation you want to discuss, is to be memorable and aesthetically pleasing. The very fact that we are nitpicking, which is admittedly a distraction, proves that it is a poor example, as the way it was set up encourages this nitpicking and detracts from its purpose as a thought experiment. Otherwise you might just as well say "two computer processes step off a street car" I mean "a bunch of computer processes are sitting before a plate of spaghetti" I mean "a bunch of computer processes are competing for some resource (e.g. a printer, etc.)" and you wouldn't need to bother with thought experiments. Contact Basemetal   here  16:17, 20 December 2014 (UTC)