User talk:Brasswatchman

Welcome!

Hello, Brasswatchman, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thanks for your contributions; I hope you like it here and decide to stay. We're glad to have you in our community! Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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Happy editing!

-- Sango 123 16:29, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page if you need help with anything or simply wish to say hello. :)

No, you're not misusing Wikipedia by asking a few questions. :) Requests for additional information to an article is highly appropriate for an article talk page, but inquiries for personal curiosity or clarification could be directed to Wikipedia:Reference desk. Regards, Sango 123 19:35, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Islam

I don't know if anyone responded to you, but the answer to your question on the Banu Qainuka'a is that they broke the constitution by tipping off the Meccans about Muhammad's plan to raid a Meccan caravan, which led to the Battle of Badr. When Muhammad won the fight, he exiled the entire clan from Medina, though I don't what hadith refer to this. Dev920 15:46, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. That was a while ago, wasn't it? I haven't been paying attention. Thank you. I appreciate the answer. --Brasswatchman 17:01, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have never seen anyone here so long, so constantly, with so few edits to their userspaces. 68.39.174.238 01:58, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Guess I'm special that way. --Brasswatchman 17:01, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Odd Fellows

Another blast from the past!

Should the background for the meaning of ODDFELLOWS be included in the article? 19:14, 1 January 2005 209.179.168.31

I was about to ask the same question. What's the etymology behind the name of Odd Fellows? I'll assume that "odd" isn't meant to refer to "weird" or "strange" in the modern sense. --Brasswatchman 01:52, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

If you're still interested, see Oddfellows#History. Pdfpdf 12:23, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Manson

Hi, Brasswatchman. On the reference desk you asked about Manson-related topics. Did you read Bugliosi's book and the footnote on History of the hippie movement? "Bugliosi (1994) describes the popular view that the Manson case "sounded the death knell for hippies and all they symbolically represented," citing Joan Didion, Diane Sawyer, and Time. Bugliosi admits that although the Manson murders "may have hastened" the end of the hippie era, the era was already in decline." Before the Manson murders, hippies were seen as relatively benign, and the counterculture was embraced by more segments of the U.S. than ever before. The Manson incident gave the media and society in general the rationale to clamp down on the counterculture. From then on, the sixties and everything it represented in terms of peace and love was officially over. Because Manson and his "family" dressed and looked like hippies, normal hippies were considered suspect, tainted in some way. (see Association fallacy) As for The Beatles on Manson's use of their work, Lennon discussed it very briefly in answer to a question by David Sheff in a Playboy Interview from January, 1981 [1] but I would recommend asking the Beatles project for further details. If you have specific questions, ask me on my talk page. —Viriditas | Talk 13:38, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can find you "insider" sources. Is that what you would prefer? —Viriditas | Talk 20:50, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you have some questions about Manson and his "girls," I believe I am qualified to answer same. They were NOT "hippies." Please see below: Apostle12 (talk) 06:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it would be helpful if I were to share what I know about Manson and the decline of the hippie counterculture. What I know is definitely OR, but it may help substantiate the conclusions reached by Bugliosi and others.

I was an original hippie. By that I mean that I grew up in Berkeley and was present from 1964 on--during the beginning, middle and end of the whole scene. Kesey, Owsley, Chandler Laughlin, The Family Dog, Chet Helmes, the Grateful Dead--all these were either friends or close acquaintances. And I participated in nearly every major west coast hippie event--Kesey's La Honda parties, peyote ceremonies at Pyramid Lake, the Acid Tests, the Tribute to Dr. Strange, the Trips Festival, the Human Be-In, early happenings at the Fillmore, the Summer of Love, Renaissance Faires (both north and south) and the building of People's Park. There was a kind of innocence to that era, an individual siezing of the initiative to pursue one's dreams that I believe lies at the root of the true "American Dream." And I believe it was a recognition of that innocence, and its relationship to the American Dream, that accounted for the general receptivity to hippies that prevailed among the general population between 1964 and approximately 1970.

I didn't spend a lot of time with Manson and his followers, and that is my point--none of us did. They lived in Berkeley, and we hippies thought they were very weird; certainly they were not part of the fold. Manson could sing, and he made inroads into the Southern California music scene. But early on he demonstrated a desire to control others; he was, in the parlance of the day, "on a power trip." We avoided him and those neophytes who, mostly out of curiosity, chose to associate with him.

After Berkeley, Manson and his girls lived for a time in a small house near Booneville, on the road from Cloverdale to Mendocino. Mendocino was a popular hippie destination, and during the summer of 1968 some of us found ourselves on the beach in Mendocino. There we ran into a number of "Charlie's girls," who were traveling in a burned out bus--the interior of the bus had caught fire and was all black inside. The girls bragged about picking up hippie hitchhikers in their bus, guys. They related with great amusement how they restrained the guys, aroused them sexually, then forced them--against their will--to have sex with them.

Those of us who stayed to listen to this story were understandably repulsed, and that is the point of this part of my story--ANY hippie listening to this story would have been repulsed, because there was nothing more antithetical to hippie culture than forced sex--RAPE in other words. Hippies universally viewed sex as a kind of sacrament, or at the very least an expression of joy and pleasure.

Shortly after this encounter with "Charlie's girls" I heard about how they had wrecked the house they were staying in near Booneville, nearly burning it down like their bus. And then the murders happened down south. The media began to refer to "the hippie murderers" or "Charles Manson and his hippie murderers." And no one would rent to hippies any more. The receptivity that had greeted hippies at the beginning evaporated during 1970. Many of the hippies I knew decided to cut their hair right around that time.

Hippies were not careful folk. They had many faults. But Manson was never, not at any time, welcomed and accepted by anyone who called himself or herself a "hippie." We avoided him, we were repulsed by his actions and his attitudes, and we were especially apalled by the murders he inspired and the racist thinking that was behind those murders. (The murders were, after all, committed in order to spark a Black uprising in accord with Manson's twisted logic, whereas a constant in hippie culture was love for all, regardless of race.)

Then there were the disturbing events at Altamont, especially the unfair association the public made between Hells Angel violence and hippies. (Okay, Hells Angels had long hair too, and early on Kesey had entertained them at La Honda, but that was the sum total of any connection between hippies and the Angels.)

The "hippie era" drew to a close on the heels of Altamont and the Manson Family convictions. The movement had probably run its course anyway, so it was time. But these two events definitely moved things along. Apostle12 (talk) 09:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Child labor laws in Ohio - the flip side

Further to your Humanities Ref Desk query on this matter - besides relating to the length of a sixteen-year-old's work week, you might consider noting the age to which compulsory education extends at the time your story takes place. This isn't necessarily universal (e.g. sixteenth birthday), and would have relevance to your readers' understanding the significance of a teen balancing a high school education vs. employment. -- Deborahjay (talk) 20:04, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Naming among the (contemporary) Semites

Further to the Language RD discussion, a brief mention here of some considerations that might be relevant as you assign names to characters: I suspect that in Arabic as in Hebrew—my main acquired language—a name's meaning reflects the parents' mentality and allegiances at the time of an individual's birth. (This is, of course, if the individual/character doesn't adopt another moniker as time goes by.) There are traditional names that may be recycled from generations to generation (with strictures: for example, Oriental Jews will name a child after a living relative, while Ashkenazic Jews will thus honor only a deceased forebear). Some first names are also words (though as names are often accented on a different syllable): adjectives for personal qualities (e.g. my daughters' in Hebrew are literally "enlightened" and "lovely" but also have the root forms of deceased ancestors' names, Meir and Bella), place names and animal names (in Arabic as well as Hebrew, as far as I know). Jihad as a first name is popular enough within today's Israel that we've heard it for an elegant female newscaster on the IBA's main Arabic news show, as well as a male coworker of my husband's, a cause of mild consternation to the uninitiated when heard over the factory P.A. system. ("Jihad! Jihad to the main floor!") Professional translators such as myself, translating local material for a global readership, deal with these sort of decisions quite regularly and consult among ourselves on translation e-forums such as LANTRA-L (Language and Translation List). I warmly suggest you do likewise to get the input of polyglot professionals, and also recommend CE-L (Copyediting List) where you'll find English-language writing experts. Both are high-volume listservs worth their bandwidth in gold (and you'll meet LOTS of nice, knowledgeable people there, onlist and off). Good luck! -- Deborahjay (talk) 14:50, 22 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Five-dimensional maths

Hi there,

You've had a few different responses on the Maths RD. They're quite divergent - some about Euclidean 5D geometry, some about usable models of real spacetime that employ five dimensions. It might be useful if you could drop back by and clarify what sorts of responses are going to be most useful, so that we can concentrate on those.

Thanks,

AlexTiefling (talk) 09:34, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

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Grapesoda22 (talk) 20:52, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]