Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 June 5

= June 5 =

Carpe diem living and the future
If one just live in the moment, according to the carpe diem motto, and one is coherent with one's views, should we worry about things that have an effect only in the long term? Like getting fat, getting addicted to drugs, neither saving nor carrying about any pension plan and so on? --Hofhof (talk) 18:40, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * This is looks like a request for opinions or debate. That's not what we do here. --69.159.63.238 (talk) 19:32, 5 June 2017 (UTC), emended 10:16, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not asking about personal opinions about how someone should lead his life. I want to know what philosophers had to say about this. There is plenty of opportunity to point to sources here or to philosophical discussions. --Hofhof (talk) 19:41, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * How would you narrow it down? The fairy tale about the grasshopper and the ants could be included, for example. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:49, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Carpe Diem is usually translated as "seize the day", not as "ignore the future". It's an admonishment not to let one day after the other slip by, but to use (and enjoy) it. But that does not imply to ignore the future, but rather to avoid drifting into it randomly. Horace was an Epicurean, not a hedonist or libertine. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:31, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * More exactly: Meaning of carpe diem. "the meaning of "carpe diem" as used by Horace is not to ignore the future, but rather not to trust that everything is going to fall into place for you " Nothing to do with the "fairy tale about the grasshopper and the ants." Clipname (talk) 23:51, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * The grasshopper and the ants relates to the question, but you're saying the question is based on a false premise. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:04, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * If you want classical sources about living today vs worrying about the future, Matthew 6:31-34 comes to mind. Staecker (talk) 11:24, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

How dangerous is it to walk down the street?
How dangerous is it to walk down the street?

It's easy to find stats about violent crime by demographic, but for example, it's not necessarily more dangerous for men to walk down the street just because they're more often attacked.

Benjamin (talk) 19:33, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Define "dangerous". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:47, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * A lot depends on which street... some are dangerous, others are very safe. Blueboar (talk) 20:55, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * But all streets are potentially dangerous. How often have we seen coverage of an incident, where some local people are interviewed and are saying how quiet and safe and friendly the street has always been, but after this I'll be sure to lock up my house and keep my kids indoors etc etc.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:45, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * This could be completely irrelevant, but there is one index that came to mind when you mentioned that. It is called The Popsicle Index. Basically an index designed to see the percentage of people - in a community who believe that a child in their community can safely leave their home, walk down the street to the nearest possible location to buy a Popsicle, and walk back home.Eddie891 (talk) 23:33, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't recommend it on any street. Walking with him or making his teen brother do it is temporary, death is forever. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:43, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * You could use that same argument to never leave your house ever, at any age, for any non-emergency reason. After all, going to a friend's wedding is temporary, death (from car accident) is forever.
 * Absolute statements like that are not helpful. ApLundell (talk) 15:17, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * It's too easy to snatch a kid cause they can't fight back. Some pedophiles must like soft neighborhoods that are as close to Leave It To Beaver as they can find (though most don't abduct strangers). Times Square might be 99.999% safe though. So many people. It depends on if s/he can be tricked to go somewhere without witnesses. That middle aged woman and pedo guy abducted Elizabeth Smart remember? People trust women. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:29, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * If you're not going to put numbers and sources to this wild theorizing and absolute proclamations, it's not remotely useful to anybody. ApLundell (talk) 16:33, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Here are numbers and sources: About 100 US kids are kidnapped by strangers each year, "about half" come home (perhaps after being raped in the butt by someone who deserves to die). This 10-year old boy was abducted off the street by a sex offender at 8:30am and put in his apartment. The neighborhood is not bad at all. Where the sidewalks have fairly high population density and one might think a criminal would think that crime too risky. 32.9% of child abduction murder incidents had unknowing witnesses, page 44.
 * They often think it's a legal guardian dragging an unruly child, last page. It's happened before, that's good enough for me to not let a 10 year old get a popsicle alone if I had kids. Let's say that only a third of child abduction murders occur at the ages the Popsicle Index is mostly about (age statistics, page 16) There were 662 US car crash deaths in the <13 age column in 2015, subtract those being driven by drunk drivers cause that's a separate (stupid) risk than just driving and if car crash deaths are equally distributed within that column (which I can't find information on) then child abduction murder is only about 15 times less likely than car crash death. Except the ratio is as high as 15:1 only because millions of parents prevent billions or at least hundreds of millions of trips down the street alone from happening. Cars are very useful, many times more than not walking with your young kid is a burden (you can't even live in most of America without a car, exercise and bonding time is good for you) so it doesn't seem so disproportionate to not let your prepubescent kid walk to the store alone. Math doesn't say "if you are 9.8% more careful than x or 12.9% less it is irrational", it's a judgement call. Oh, and your chance of death by car is to a large extent determined by your driving skill and whether you do it drunk, texting, sleepy, with your knees while doing makeup, on the phone etc. You don't have as much control about a guy with the balls to snatch a kid off the street when you're not even there. You could drill into their mind to never get in a car with anyone who isn't whitelisted no matter what they say but that's just like a version of the AI box experiment and anyway it's more fun to just walk with them than to keep repeating fear of everyone into their inferior brains or scare them with stories about Glasgow smiles and stuff. (And yes, only 44.4% of child abduction murders are by strangers, page 26) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 07:06, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I also found this: "In the United States, people are much more likely to die while walking on a roadway than from tuberculosis or getting mauled by an animal, the odds show. In the United States, there were about 37,000 deaths from "transport accidents" (including car, train, motorcycle and boat accidents). This number includes 6,200 pedestrians who died in transportation collisions — such as crashes with cars, trucks, bikes and trains — meaning that 2 pedestrians died per 100,000 people." (Live Science)Eddie891 (talk) 23:33, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * but wait, there's more. IN 2009 (the most recent statistics I could get), The National Household Travel Survey estimated that there were around 40.9 billion walking trips each year. of those walking trips, 59,000 ended in an injury. In the 2005 Traveler Opinion and Perception Survey (TOP), conducted by the Federal Highway Administration, about 107.4 million Americans use walking as a regular mode of travel. IN that year, 4,892 pedestrians died. For the first Statistic, you have about a 0.001204081% chance of getting injured. For the second, you have a 0.002870892% percent chance of dying. Every Year, 270,000 deaths are caused, and "The proportion of pedestrians killed in relation to other road users is highest in the African Region (38%) and lowest in the South-East Asia Region (12%). In some countries, the proportion of pedestrian fatalities can reach nearly two thirds of road traffic deaths, such as in El Salvador (62%) and Liberia (66%)." A report in 2014 uses a Pedestrian Danger Index (PDI) described as "the share of local commuters who walk to work—the best available measure of how many people are likely to be out walking each day—and the most recent five years of data on pedestrian fatalities." The Nation's PDI is 52.2, which correlates to 1.56 deaths per 100,000 people. "Metro Orlando tops the list of most dangerous areas to walk this year, followed by the Tampa–St. Petersburg, Jacksonville, Miami and Memphis regions. Across the Orlando region, the calculated PDI for 2003–2012 was 244.28, four times higher than the national PDI. The Birmingham, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix and Charlotte regions round out the list of the ten most dangerous places to walk." If you were wondering, Stockholm is the safest city.

Sources Hope this helped. Eddie891 (talk) 23:32, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * 1) https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811394
 * 2) http://nhts.ornl.gov/2009/pub/stt.pdf
 * 3) http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2013/make_walking_safe_20130502/en/
 * 4) https://smartgrowthamerica.org/app/uploads/2016/08/dangerous-by-design-2014.pdf
 * 5) http://www.nytimes.com/images/2014/05/13/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf
 * 6) http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2013/en/
 * But... what if we compare these statistics to those for injuries that take place within the home? Could it be that the streets are actually safer? Blueboar (talk) 23:43, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * See the first section of Reference desk/Archives/Science/2013 December 3 for something that discusses this subject, although with a focus on optics and pedestrian visibility. Nyttend (talk) 23:55, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * On the other hand walking is one of the best exercises, being sedentary is a good way of shortening one's life, see Sedentary lifestyle. So yous got to just take your chances :) Dmcq (talk) 08:56, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Remember Sherlock Holmes- "It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside." ... &mdash;  O Fortuna   semper crescis, aut decrescis  16:35, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Bathing and privacy in 18th C
In the opera Der Rosenkavalier, one character (male) talks about paying a social call on a woman while she's in the bathtub. They are only separated by a small screen. The period is the 1740s.

Are there other mentions, fictional or historical, of receiving guests in this way, from that period? (My question is specifically about bathing, not other activities where we would now expect privacy.) Thanks! Herbivore (talk) 19:57, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Benjamin Franklin seems to have been quite a horndog, and visited one of the French women he was pursuing while she was in her bath:, . There was a wooden cover over the tub. Edison (talk) 20:12, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * The Palace of Versailles famously had no corridors, so courtiers, servants and even tourists were continually passing through the royal apartments. See The grandeur — and squalor — of old Versailles]. Alansplodge (talk) 22:15, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Versailles also famously had no commodes, leading to people just peeing and pooping in a convenient corner behind the drapes. .  This is likely an inspiration to the "piss boy" sketch from History of the World Part I.  -- Jayron 32 03:09, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Not a very reliable source! The French aristocracy did know of the ceramic pot and had servants to empty their pots and middens to empty them on. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:07, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Okay, try Daily Life During the French Revolution by James Maxwell Anderson (p. 51): "Servants and aristocratic visitors often relieved themselves on back stairs, along the darkened corridors, or in any out-of-the-way place...". The reference for this seems to be the letters of Horace Walpole, but I haven't been able to pin it down exactly. More here. Alansplodge (talk) 11:27, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Note that this is not James Maxwell Anderson but someone a bit more recent who happens to have the same name. Nyttend (talk) 13:50, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * It still sounds like an urban legend to me. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:44, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * The book's from Greenwood, a component of ABC-CLIO. Academic publishers can make errors, of course, but this book is vastly more trustworthy than lifeoftheroyals.wordpress.com.  Nyttend (talk) 15:56, 6 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Snippet view suggests Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity might help. Virginia Smith, OUP, 2008. Learned review and journalistic review. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 17:37, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

OE Panther
Do we have an article about "The Panther", an Old English poem? Both Old English literature and The Panther helpfully have a link to The Panther (poem), but unfortunately that's a twentieth-century composition with no references to an æþele stenc. Nyttend (talk) 23:48, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Apparently not; as the links in the "Contents" section of Exeter Book show, we appear to lack articles about a number of poems in the E. B. Deor (talk) 13:54, 6 June 2017 (UTC)