Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 March 2

= March 2 =

Apprendi and prior convictions
Our article on Apprendi v. New Jersey spends a considerable amount of time on a "prior conviction exception". The court found that any fact used to enhance a criminal sentence beyond what would otherwise be the statutory maximum must be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, with the exception of prior convictions.

Then there's this remarkable bit:
 * Before the death of William Rehnquist and the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, this view commanded a majority of the Court. Many are hopeful that if the Roberts Court is directly faced with the question, it might extend Apprendi's jury-trial requirement to the fact of a prior conviction as well.

So what I'm wondering is, practically speaking, how does this question make a difference? Surely it's a trivial matter to prove this fact to a jury? I suppose it gives the jury another chance to nullify if it feels the enhanced sentence would be too harsh, but it doesn't seem likely that this would happen very often.

Or maybe it's just about previous cases, where the "hopeful" observers represent already-sentenced persons and the fact was not presented to a jury? Thinking about it now, I suppose that makes the most sense. --Trovatore (talk) 03:27, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

politically calming effect
When I was a baby, I'd cry and fuss, like other babies. My father would sing Where Have All the Flowers Gone? to calm me down. How could a political song calm a fussy baby?142.255.103.121 (talk) 05:27, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Presumably because it's softly melodic. Babies don't understand the words. AnonMoos (talk) 06:40, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I think the baby understands the words although not on the sophisticated level of the adult. Also the song begins innocently enough. Even to sophisticated ears, the beginning is not particularly political. The song has a singsong quality that I think is similar to that heard in some children's songs. And the song has some plaintive lyrics at the beginning that I think can be understood as commiserating with the crying child. Bus stop (talk) 13:31, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Even lullabies are not known for their happy endings; Rock-a-bye Baby does not end well.--Shantavira|feed me 14:27, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * If you think English lullabies are scary, listen to some German ones. μηδείς (talk) 16:55, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Shame we'll never hear Type O Negative lullabize "The Death of the Little Hen" (though Everything Dies got the gist of it, with a soothing groove.) InedibleHulk (talk) 23:11, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Didn't know they were defunct. Saw them at L'Amour in Brooklyn. μηδείς (talk) 00:38, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Fittingly, Peter Steele has become like they are. The band (rightfully) agreed it wouldn't be the same without him in 2010. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:50, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Brahmins
Why is that only brahmins are allowed to do puja in most of the ancient temples. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.94.191 (talk) 07:00, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Because that's the way Hinduism works. The brahmins are the priestly caste. See Varna and Caste system in India.--Shantavira|feed me 09:19, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

1877: US Supreme Court justices, political party affiliations
With regard to the five Supreme Court justices that were selected to serve on the 1877 Electoral Commission to resolve the disputed 1876 Presidential election, party affiliation (Republican vs Democrat) clearly played the one and only deciding factor, in particular the party affiliations of the five justices themselves. During my lifetime, any sort of political party affiliation of Supreme Court justices (whether before or after appointment) seemed to be de facto irrelevant (with the sole exception to reference of the party affiliation of the Presidents who nominated them in the first place). Obviously, modern Justices (late 20th & 21st century anyway) have been typically selected and categorized on the basis of ideology (eg., liberal or centrist or conservative) as opposed to the political parties (Republican or Democrat) which judicial nominees may or may not have previously been associated with themselves. So, the question is, would this have been also true of the 1877 Supreme Court, of which the five selected justices simply decided to put on their "party armbands" (so to speak) solely for the purposes of the Electoral Commission? Or did specific party affiliations happen to play a much more prominent role in the Supreme Court of the 19th century, and when (and how) did this change from then to now? DWIII (talk) 13:26, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * In the 19th century, it was less common to have a mostly judicial career during which one rose through the ranks of judgeships. It was quite common to go back and forth between judge positions and private law practice, and most bright and ambitious lawyers were involved in politics in some way, which meant they left a political paper trail.  Salmon Chase, the chief justice from 1864-1873, wasn't a judge until he was appointed to the Supreme Court, and had a number of party affiliations over his career (Democrat, Liberty, Free Soil, Republican, "Liberal Republican")... AnonMoos (talk) 17:32, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * There's also the difference between "officially irrelevant" and "yeah, we all know..." The affiliations for judges and justices are supposed to be irrelevant because the law is blind, judges are supposed to be impartial, yada yada yada.  But judges are appointed by people who have definite party affiliations, and appointees tend to get appointed because they know somebody or have done something which aligns itself with the political philosophy of the appointor.  Such is the nature of the beast.  Interestingly, the "party affiliation" here doesn't exactly match the affiliation of the Presidents who nominated them.  Stephen Johnson Field, for example, was a Democrat based on his affiliation, but he was nominated to the Court by Lincoln, a Republican.  -- Jayron  32  15:14, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Question about bible code
It is important please. I NEED a answer to this please.

Where is the first taw in genesis and exodus and what does it mean? Can you show me where it is? Or is this false?

Found in Bible code‎.

Quote from what I need "One cited example is that by taking every 50th letter of the Book of Genesis starting with the first taw, the Hebrew word "torah" is spelled out. The same happens in the Book of Exodus." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 07scott (talk • contribs) 14:06, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Seeing as how the wikipeida article has citations, it's easy to learn more if you read the cited material... in this case, the citation comes from this maybe-not-reliable-source which claims that "the first occurrence of the letter Tav" in Genesis is "at the end of the first word bereshit". WegianWarrior (talk) 14:14, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * That last sentence is certainly true; the first word of Genesis (also its Hebrew name) is "bereshit" (ברשׁית) ending in a taw. Exodus starts with the words "we'eleh shemot" (ואלה שׁמות), the second word ending in taw. If you know the Hebrew Alphabet, you can see this yourself at this website.
 * I've counted the 50th letter beginning from the first taw in Genesis and Exodus using the text of the Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia, (based on the Leningrad Codex) and they do indeed spell out the word תורה ("torah") if you consider only the consonants. Not saying there's any significance to this by the way, it's merely that according to my counting, the claim checks out. (DISCLAIMER: I am not a reliable source; according to Wikipedia's standards this is original research) - Lindert (talk) 14:34, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The section Menorah in the Torah has an annotated image (on the right hand side). --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 15:37, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Asker; 07scott, Can you please tell me where bereshit means in english. Can you show me the fifty letters skipped in picture/ text, thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 07scott (talk • contribs) 16:43, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * This seems like a difficult mathematical question. The problem is, getting a four letter sequence, given your choice of what letter to start with, is very roughly 20*20*20 (I'm afraid I don't know enough Hebrew even to know how many letters to count as equivalent).  But you have a choice of more than 50 spacings, more than 50 words, and also apparently some variations of the text.  But getting the same word in the same way twice?  Now the authors can be criticized for using a very large database of words and getting this one example, but surely "torah" would be on someone's shortlist.  How short?  Well, it's hard to ask them now - either they include it or they don't.  There's some real statistical philosophy here.
 * But I'd keep an open mind. It doesn't seem hard to believe that ancient scribes, wary of transcription errors and deliberate alterations, might have coded a few tests directly into the text to make it easy to tell if it is right - especially when at the very beginning it was not well known.  Such tests would need to be at the bare edge of statistical significance so that they wouldn't have to distort the text's meaning in any impermissible way to have them.  Anyone who's ever looked at a set of BLAST results knows that there can be a fine line between finding genuine and deeply significant historical meaning and finding meaningless gabble, so we shouldn't have to take an all or nothing view of this.  In any case, if you want a decisive answer you'll have to go to the Math desk and give them a lot of background, unless there are some professionals slumming here. Wnt (talk) 16:50, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The professional discussion ended in 1997, when all this was proven to be a myth without mathematical, statistical or theological signifance. The codes are shown explicitly here for Genesis in File:Bible code in Genesis 1,1-4.jpg and for Exodus in File:Bible code in Exodus 1,1-6.jpg. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 17:24, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) As for bereshit, it means "in (the) beginning". The first letter ב (bet) means "in" and רשׁית (reshit) means beginning. In Hebrew, prepositions like 'in', 'from' 'to' etc. are often prefixed to a noun instead of being seperate words. As for the spacing of the letters, here is Genesis 1:1-5, where I've put in bold every 50th letter starting with the first taw (ת). I've left out all vowel pointings and verse numbers. Obviously it should be read from right to left. "בראשׁית ברא אלהים את השׁמים ואת הארץ והארץ  היתה תהו ובהו וחשׁך על פני תהום ורוח אלהים מרחפת על פּני המים ויאמר אלהים יהי אור ויהי אור וירא אלהים את האור כי טוב ויבדל אלהים בין האור ובין  החשׁך ויקרא אלהים לאור יום ולחשׁך קרא לילה ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום אחד"
 * As you can see, they form the word תורה (torah). The same can be seen in the picture that Pp.paul.4 posted. - Lindert (talk) 17:42, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

If you've lost your bereshit, you might try looking in the woods. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:48, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The first word in Genesis is, with an aleph
 * The first 'E' of Bereshit in Hebrew is unstressed, the second is long, and the 'I' is stressed:, roughly.
 * הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 20:29, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Of course, I was a bit too hasty there. Thanks for the correction. - Lindert (talk) 23:03, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

By the way, ת, ו, ר, ה are four of the most frequent letters in Biblical Hebrew. If the pattern involved צ, ז, ק that would be a little more impressive... AnonMoos (talk) 17:37, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't know a single orthodox Jew who regards the so-called Bible Codes as anything more than potentially interesting. Most are fairly uninterested in them. With the forthcoming festival of Purim in mind, anyone interested in a fairly well-known and digestible "Bible Code" with a nice story attached that predates Drosnin's book, can see (for example) this account. Again, no-one would regard this as anything more than a curiosity. --Dweller (talk) 11:19, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Finding sources for potential Wikipedia articles on ethnic groups in Paris (north African/Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa)
I've attempted "Paris" "Algerian" and "Paris" "Algerian" "banlieue" as well as "Paris" "African" "banlieue" but I'm having trouble finding information for a potential article on African and/or Middle Eastern ethnic groups in Paris.

I have started:
 * Chinese community in Paris
 * Japanese community in Paris

I would like to start those on the following: Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Sub-Saharan African, Russian, Turkish, Haitian, Guianan, Reunion, and/or Caribbean populations in Paris. I also have some information on Vietnamese, Lao, and Cambodians at Demographics of Paris

Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 17:21, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Humanities
I am new to this Wikipedia, this is my first time asking a question. My question is: How can I attach or insert a picture or photo image to my question for the Reference desk? Thank youPolkateer (talk) 19:00, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Mantis_relilgiosa.JPG(Note, this question would be more at place on the help desk, because you are asking for help about how to use Wikipedia, not asking a reference question about the humanities. But since it's an easy answer I'll do so here.) One easy way is to use a disposable image hosting site, like imgur (benefits include no need for user accounts or logins to post or view images, anonymity/privaty, etc.). Then just link like you would anything else, by enclosing the URL to the imgur link in single square brackets, like this . If you want it to display here, then it has to be part of Wikimedia Commons. Then you can post it here with this kind of syntax .  But, if the only purpose is to relate to a question here, I think Imgur is preferable, because commons is for media that are generally useful for Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:15, 2 March 2014 (UTC)