Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 January 12

= January 12 =

Judaism and jesus christ
Why does judaism reject jesus christ?


 * Do you mean why do they not accept that he was the son of God ? Well, no other religion besides Christianity does (although many accept him as a prophet).  And Jesus was "no big deal" at the time, just one of many similar figures.  John the Baptist was another, more important figure.  The fame of Jesus seemed to grow in the centuries after his death, mainly due to good organization by his followers.


 * But to help you understand better, let's assume you aren't a Mormon. In that case, you don't believe that Joseph Smith was visited by an angel named Moroni, who revealed the location of a buried book made of golden plates, as well as other artifacts, including a breastplate and a set of interpreters composed of two seer stones set in a frame, which had been hidden in a hill in Manchester near his home.  So, we could ask why you have rejected Joseph Smith.  StuRat (talk) 05:34, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * A related factor. The standard interpretation of the Jews on the Messiah was (and is) that the coming of the Messiah would cause significant immediate changes to the world. Jesus did *nothing* to remove the Romans from power in Palestine, and his existence was known to no more than 1% of the world's population when alive. So he didn't fit the Jewish definition of what a Messiah would do.Naraht (talk) 06:22, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Rejection of Jesus in Judaism is what happens in any religion which expects a Savior to rise sometime, but when he rises they say no, you are not the same Messiah whom we expected. They arrest him, torture him to confess that he is not the same guy, and then kill him. It has happened many times in Islam too, and a number of people who have pretended to be Mahdi the Ultimate Savior have been killed.Omidinist (talk) 06:27, 12 January 2016 (UTC)


 * At the risk of actually providing references on a reference desk:, , and we have an article, Judaism's view of Jesus, that, according to the tags at the top may not be all that well-written, but at the bottom you will find plenty of other references to read at your leisure.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 06:32, 12 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Of course, not all Jewish people rejected Christianity. There was an early group of Jewish Christian (which included all of the original Christian disciples, including The Twelve Apostles, St. Paul and just about every personage in the Bible).  -- Jayron 32 17:06, 12 January 2016 (UTC)


 * It's open to argument as to whether "St Paul" (aka "Saul") was actually Jewish (see Hyam Maccoby), but in any case his post-Ye'shua, pro-Gentile faction eventually marginalized most of Ye'shua's original followers and family as the "Ebionites", and they eventually disappeared from history. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 18:59, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The reviewers quoted in the article about Maccoby said his work was a perverse misreading and bad history. The article on Paul says "A native of Tarsus, the capital city in the Roman province of Cilicia,[5] Paul wrote that he was "a Hebrew born of Hebrews", a Pharisee,[30] and one who advanced in Judaism beyond many of his peers." Your arguments are not very convincing in the claim that Jesus Jewish followers all became Ebionites.. Edison (talk) 19:54, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The reviewers in question may not have been exercising NPOV; I find Maccoby's arguments compelling if not conclusive.
 * "Paul" is quoted as claiming many things in the New Testament (which was compiled and extensively edited by his followers), some of which are contradictory and some of which run counter to non-biblical (i.e. Jewish) sources from the period. If he was a Pharisee, why did he work as an "enforcer" for the Chief of the Saducees (the High Priest) - this is akin to a senior Sunni cleric employing a Shia to enforce Sunni law. "Paul" employs various standard Pharisaic judicial forms of argument, and gets more of them wrong than right. I said "most of. . . Yeshua's original followers and family", not "all of them."
 * Read Maccoby's The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (1986) and make up your own mind. (Posted by SemanticMantis (talk) 17:54, 13 January 2016 (UTC) on behalf of {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} )

Judaism isn't an easy religion to get to grips with. Its essence is in some respects obfuscated by the exceptional detail of its practical demands on adherents. So, a really useful way into this question is to look at the codification Maimonedes undertook about 1000 years after Jesus' birth, the 13 Principles of Faith. If you look at the list, a good number of the Principles directly clash with Christian beliefs/values (eg, and strikingly, number 2).
 * See Birkat haMinim, and consider that the Jewish Messiah was meant to be a military figure, and that someone who was hung from a tree was accursed. μηδείς (talk) 20:52, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned yet that we actually have an article on this very subject: Judaism's view of Jesus. WP:WHAAOE. Despite the tags at the top of its page, the article has a good deal of useful stuff in it. --Dweller (talk) 10:45, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised that User:WilliamThweatt is no-one ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:04, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Not only is he someone, but he was spot-on, too. My apologies. --Dweller (talk) 09:40, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * For the record, I would like to point out that I am no one. μηδείς (talk) 01:32, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Land purchases in Idaho and Montana by Dan and Farris Wilks
The Wilks are billionaires from Texas. Have they stated their reasons for buying up land in the northern united states? Is it because of climate change?144.35.45.71 (talk) 14:58, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Method of loci
I've heard of this technique, and I was wondering if it is really useful. I know it was used in Ancient Roma and Greece. But do people still use it nowadays? How close is the depiction they give of this method in BBC's Sherlock to reality? Oh, plus, if anyone can give any references to this. Let's say you have created your mind palace, how do you actually store information there, assuming you know the place entirely? Thanks.  Miss Bono  [hello, hello!]  15:20, 12 January 2016 (UTC)


 * For anyone who wants a link: Method of loci. I'd never heard that term for this concept before, so I thought it might help others.  Dismas |(talk) 16:00, 12 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The Wikipedia article is loaded with references to other works. I'd start seeking those out to learn more about the system.  -- Jayron 32 17:04, 12 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Moonwalking with Einstein contains a popular account of how the author learnt the method of loci and other techniques and competed in various Memory Championships. Gandalf61 (talk) 17:14, 12 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, I just got the book. But I was wondering if there's anybody around, and if they recommend it. I want to start using a mind palace, since it would be perfect for my current situation. Thanks.   Miss Bono  [hello, hello!]  11:36 am, Today (UTC−5)


 * Method of Loci is quite easy to grasp - and it does work, even for simple stuff like phone numbers.


 * Suppose you want to memorize 200 randomly generated digits. This seems pretty impossible.  The most common method is:
 * First, memorize your own personal set of one hundred wild and crazy objects - each relating to a two-digit number....so, maybe 00 is a beach ball, 01 is superman, 02 is a bright green cardboard-cutout dinosaur, 03 is a hairy goat with a tiny saddle on it's back like a horse...up to...99 which is a pink elephant).  You have to really, really work hard to memorize them - but you only need to do that once in your entire life.  Choose really visually distinct objects.
 * Second, imagine walking through a very familiar place...your home maybe. Memorize a route through that place and memorize maybe 50 stops along your trip.  Actually walk the route, looking at those exact same places - do this over and over until you have it nailed.   Again - this is something you only have to do once in your life.
 * Third - assuming you have those two sets of rote-memorized things - a hundred random objects plus a walk through a familiar place, you can now start memorizing those 200 digits by mentally placing objects along your route - so if 0299 are the first four digits - then imagine a cardboard cutout dinosaur and a pink elephant and associate them with the first stop on your route - which is the coat hooks in the entrance of your home. So imagine those two things hanging next to each other on the hooks - the elephant is playing with the cardboard dinosaur with it's trunk.  It's a crazy image - so it's quite memorable - and it can only happen in that one place where there are coat hooks.  If the next four digits are 0100 then imagine that the doorway from the entrance into the living room is blocked by Superman who is balancing a beachball on his nose but is having a hard time because his cape keeps getting caught in the door.  He's unhappy because as you push past him to get into the living room, you knock the ball off of his nose.  Repeat this for the 50 places in your route (shelves, light fittings, furniture, etc).
 * To recall the 200 digit number, mentally walk through your space - observing the crazy things you mentally placed there and your interactions with them as you passed. Then, using your rote-memorization of what numbers each item stands for - you can recite the digits.


 * People who do this competitively may memorize multiple objects for each pair of digits, so 01 could be EITHER superman - or a small, green porcelain dolphin. This gives you more opportunity for combining things into memorable combinations in the situations you're observing in your mental trip through your home.  They also memorize longer trips with more stops - so a stroll through a city with hundreds of locations.  They may also memorize connections between objects (so A balanced on top of B versus A embedded inside B versus A being broken by B could code for an extra digit placed between the two digits represented by A and the two represented by B).


 * Oddly, you can even use this method to remember the method itself. To learn the list of 100 objects in the first place - mentally place them into the 50 places in your home in numerical order - so on the coat hooks is a punctured beachball, hanging floppily from the hook - with superman's cape hanging from the hook to the right of it - in the doorway is a cardboard dinosaur that's being chewed by the goat...and at the end of the tour, the pink elephant is, wedged up inside the attic.  Now you can progress through your house, seeing the objects in the right order - and if you do forget what one of them stands for, you can mentally place yourself in the room where it's stored and "see" the objects before and after it.  Pretty soon though, you'll have the 100 numerical values etched into your mind and you won't need this additional level of complication...you'll "see" the goat and just think "Oh - that's 03".


 * Seems crazy - but by recruiting the systems of our memory that relate to route finding, finding lost objects, spatial reasoning, etc - we can cram random numbers into places in our brains beyond the sub-systems that are able to memorize numbers.


 * I've tried using this - and my problem is that having memorized the first 200 digits of Pi, I find it hard to "empty" my house and fill it with some other 200 digit number. I haven't seen any other tricks to help with that.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 17:10, 13 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't use this method, I do remember numbers by clumps, I can remember the phone numbers of celebrities whose accounts I worked on decades ago. I think in terms of taxonomic trees and geographically, and use mnemonics for lists.  But I thought the idea of the palace was to add additions, not to refurbish. μηδείς (talk) 22:53, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd be interested to hear more details on your method - could you expand a bit on what works for you? SteveBaker (talk) 18:13, 14 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I'll assume you're addressing me Steve. What has always worked for me is (1) arranging things taxonomically: birds are related to crocodiles, not bats or bees; (2) arranging things geographically (language families, or nations, or fauna) or (3) by sitting on the commode and reading the relevant source(s).  There is, of course, analogy Ingwë/Ingvæonic and so forth.  For me the big thing has always been to make memorization an easy game--like learning a song-- never a chore.  If it's a chore, you're screwed. For every university class I have ever taken, I have put the book by the commode and read it while I used the commode. μηδείς (talk) 02:01, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I have a question for Steve, I totally understood what you explained about memorising numbers. But what happens when I want to memorise whole lots of information. Like for a test. I study and I don't want to forget some important details like what happened to X, and in what year and so forth.  Miss Bono  [hello, hello!]  15:21, 15 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The idea is to place the event (the death of X, the marriage of Y) into a ludicrous context and at some place in your walk-through. So the Death of Mary, Queen of Scots in 8 February 1587 (02/08/1587) could be memorized as a mental image of the queen being beheaded by while kneeling on a cardboard cutout dinosaur.  Evidently, the execution is by a smurf (my '08' image), wielding the cover of Let It Be (one of my favorite albums: '15') (I'm guessing she dies of a really bad paper-cut!), while being watched by a crowd of giant goldfish (goldfish='87').  Positioning that at some place in my home, she's going to make a really nasty mess of my living room carpet.


 * There...now, just try to get that image out of your head?! The worst problem here is remembering the name of the queen who is being executed.  You could probably fix that by having her lean against a 1963 Mini Cooper (which happens to be my '13' image)...the 13th letter of the alphabet being an 'M' - and there aren't too many British Queens whose name starts with an 'M'.


 * This is great because not only do the details of her dying (beheading) and the year (1587) - but the extra details of the dinosaur and the smurf let you get the date down to the exact month and day. The extra details of this mental image serve to make it more bizarre - and therefore easier to remember - but also allow you to be exceedingly impressive by reciting the exact day on which it happened!


 * I think it would be wise to try to memorize a different route through a different place for dates than for (say) digits of Pi because you can use the temporal nature of your trip through the route to order these events in time. That way, you could maybe enrich your memory of the death of Mary Queen of Scots by mentally 'noticing' other things in the same room that were just before or just after the incident with the smurf, the album cover and the goldfish.  What's perhaps not so good is that the events in that room might get too crowded over time - and because they're all happening around the same date, you'd wind up with a lot of mental images with the same album cover (century) nearby - which might mess up the method.


 * It takes a degree of creativity to use the method - to create the most bizarre, crazy, varied mental images. I'm pretty sure you'd adapt the method in ways that would suit you better than the exact approach that I describe.  So maybe you're better off with less 'cluttered' images - and you need a way to order the information in the mental image.  Does the smurf belong BEFORE the album cover or afterwards?   I try to do this with a narrative ordering - so first is Mary - then the thing she's touching (the cardboard dinosaur) then the next thing that matters (the agent of her death being the smurf) then smaller details (the album cover 'axe') and then less significant agents (the goldfish audience).  But these are things that you'll have to work out for yourself.


 * Getting set up to use a system like this takes much preparation - but if you can manage it, you can very easily use it afterwards.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 15:56, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Gay and lesbian intercourse
Forgive me for asking such an embarrassing and inappropriate question, but how does gay and lesbian sexual intercourse work? 208.91.28.66 20:35, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * See sexual intercourse. As long as at least one of the participants is also normally homosexual, voilà. μηδείς (talk) 20:48, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Human sexual activity is our more general article on the subject. Tevildo (talk) 21:30, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * See also Gay sexual practices and Lesbian sexual practices, both of which could do with input from a more talented artist, but I digress. Tevildo (talk) 21:35, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Hey, due respect to User:Seedfeeder in my book. Lots of dedicated original work went in to illustrating various articles, and the user/work even got a write up on HuffPo, Gawker, and other high profile sites . SemanticMantis (talk) 22:15, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, one does have to admire their selflessness in donating their work; however, selflessness does not always compensate for lack of technical skill. It's better than nothing, and better than photographs, true; for this type of article, we don't want something too obviously erotic; but still. Tevildo (talk) 23:12, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * If you believe that photos of people engaging in same-sex sex are obviously erotic ... come and sit by me. :)  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:59, 13 January 2016 (UTC)


 * How weird is that highly intelligent humans need an instruction manual, while the flies at the bottom of that first article somehow figured it out on their own? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:29, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Flies lack emotions and feelings and social mores, which tend to interfere with humans' ability to fuck. -- Jayron 32 03:20, 14 January 2016 (UTC)