Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 February 10

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February 10

Music Kaetlyn Osmond skated to in the long program today?

Can anyone identify the music Kaetlyn Osmond skated to in the long program today? It sounded like a combination of "Scheherezade" and "Rhapsody in Blue". Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 01:47, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

"Cleopatre (Soundtrack) by Philippe Chany", according to what they showed onscreen. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:56, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

...Though I didn't actually listen to it. This youtube[1] of the recent Canada Nationals is presumably the same, and identifies the pieces.[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:04, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I know they have been identifying the pieces on screen, but I wasn't looking in that direction for the second for which they did so. μηδείς (talk) 03:33, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

It flashes by nearly as quickly as the credits page for a 30-second movie trailer. That's where DVR comes to the rescue. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:36, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I've done away with cable. I get full HD over the air for about 30-40 channels, and pirate access everything else I want on line. μηδείς (talk) 03:41, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Identifying a fairytale/fable

Around 10 years ago I had a collection of fairytale/fable/story books (translated into Chinese) and I've been struggling to find information on the identity of the tales in one of these books.

I believe that the book contained two parts. The first part was about a group of merchants travelling and sharing individual tales. I think one of the tales involved a King or other royal being turned into a crane. I believe the second part involved two castles somehow (I realize this is very vague).

Somewhere in the book there was also a tale about how one man made a deal with a giant that granted him a number of gold pieces in his pocket at any time. One scene in the tale involved him gambling and winning, and putting the money in his pocket (it disappeared as he would only be able to have 10 pieces of gold in his pocket at any time). The same part of the story also involved forests and possibly logging.

I would appreciate any help in identifying the stories.

Thank you ahead of time.

174.138.193.63 (talk) 03:34, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I just remembered that for the part with the merchants, they seemed to have been travelling in an area with lots of bandits, and one day during their journey they were caught up to by a group of bandits. 174.138.193.63 (talk) 03:44, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

That one about the guy gambling rings a bell, but can't put my finger on it. Trying to Google, but coming up frustrated. I'll keep looking. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:43, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Did this happen to be your book? If not, do you have any clues to the author, title, date or anything? InedibleHulk (talk) 08:47, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Hulk, that book does not seem to be it, unfortunately. My books had come in a set of 5 (maybe it was 6?) and were soft covered editions. I remembered thinking that the particular book was way more gruesome than the other books in the collection, and I think the title of the book suggested a European name or origin. I have looked for similar collections of books, but to no avail. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.138.206.87 (talk) 22:22, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Andrew Lang collected fairy tales and edited them into collections.Each book had several tales and formed part of a large series.Could this be one of them? Hotclaws (talk) 14:02, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Probability and Law?

I have stumbled upon a number of open-access journal articles on the utility of “probability” and other mathematical methods in legal proceedings, especially in evidence. I do not wish to include in my question the technical jargons that I myself did not fully understand, but, as I understood it, legal schools of thought favouring the idea of using Bayesian probability and other mathematically rigorous and scientific methods are classified as “new evidence scholarship”. Since I found no articles online written in an accessible manner, on this matter, and since the mentioned school of thought is dominant in the US legal system, I decided to ask my question here. How will this affect the law as a discipline and as a profession? And, if legal proceedings become dependent on formal arguments, because of the belief that it is more objective and more effective in reducing the number innocent people who will be sent to jail, how will those judges and jurors who are not equipped with an excellent mathematical ability be able to carry out their duties?49.144.146.30 (talk) 10:53, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Let me note first that the reference desk is not a crystal ball. So, as far as we are concerned, your questions about the effect on law, judges, etc., are unanswerable. But I will provide a little background.

"New evidence scholarship" can be understood to mean the study of the science of proof, making use of logic, mathematics, and probability theory. Alternatively, it can be taken to mean all that is "new" about evidence scholarship (e.g., feminist approaches to evidence and law and economics). It must be understood that this is an area of scholarship, not of practical law. New evidence scholarship has had little if any effect on the rules of evidence and not a huge impact on case law, although lawyers arguing high-profile cases involving statistical analysis may turn to it. John M Baker (talk) 16:33, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

The article Probability and Legal Proceedings by Charles R. Kingston has been published in 1966. Whilst it seems a bit simplistic (and possibly racist) it implies that the application of probabilistic methods was not unknown in the analysis of evidence some 50 years ago. Some "state of the art" methods of evidence (e.g. forensic genetics) started out as probabilistic methods and still are (the current probability may be practically 1, but not quite). --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:23, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Going in the other direction, the history of probabilistic legal thinking, the book to look at is James Franklin's The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal, it might help with your specific questions too.John Z (talk) 03:18, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

It sounds to me that you may be referring to the groundbreaking work of Turing Award winner Judea Pearl and his book "Causality", which is heavily into Bayesian probability. The math is straightforward enough, but I would not expect judges and jurors to even know of its existence, let alone being able to understand it or its implications. I was surprised when I saw your statement that it was dominant in the US. Could you please help me to some link about how this is dominant? It would be wonderful for me to see.DanielDemaret (talk) 14:07, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Buloburde = Bulo Burto ? (Somalia)

Hi,

I'm looking for a reliable source to know if Buloburde is juste another spelling for Bulo Burto (in Hiraan region, Somalia). Apokrif (talk) 11:47, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Apokrif (talk) 11:47, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

so:Buuloburde claims that the Italian name is Bulo Burti and so does it:Bulo Burti. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 12:55, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Which competitions has Italian classical saxophonist Mario Marzi won?

Which music competitions did Mario Marzi win?

Previously asked at Entertainment desk; since archived. No-one answered.

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 13:18, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

OED definition of "Scientific Method"

The OED definition of the "Scientific Method" is "a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses." I have two questions.

• Why does OED narrow down to the 17th century, when the Scientific Method is known to have evolved throughout the centuries, in many different cultures and civilizations? Even this page seems to agree with me that the scientific method did not come from the 17th century.
• Why does OED narrow down to natural science, excluding the social sciences? Where would neuroscientists (i.e. neurophysicist, neurochemist, neurobiologist, neuropsychologist, neuroanatomist, neurophysiologist, etc.) fit in based on OED's definition? (Please note that the last question is really a sub-question.)

What is going on here? Is OED biased and euro-centric, or did the Scientific Method really stem from Christian Europe during the Enlightenment period? 140.254.227.38 (talk) 20:50, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Where in the world are you getting all these neuro- sciences from, (neurochemistry and neurology seem the only valid ones) and why do you think they are social sciences? μηδείς (talk) 03:32, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

All of them are valid. I am a neurophysiologist, as a matter of fact. Looie496 (talk) 17:11, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Note that the OED said nothing about Europe, you put that in there (and there's good reason for it). To say that the scientific method came into existence out of nothing in 17th century Europe would be far too simplistic, and that's not what I gather from the OED's definition. However, never before that period was the scientific method (i.e. "systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.") the dominant and widely used method it has been since then, and which did indeed start in Europe. Of course there had been precursors and influences in various periods and cultures, but they had never consistently "characterized" natural science, nor was the 'scientific method' as developed as it would be in 17th century Europe.

Regarding the second question, I see no reason that neuroscience would be excluded from the natural sciences. - Lindert (talk) 21:24, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

The majority opinion in history and philosophy of science is that the natural sciences evolved away from "proto-science" between the 17th and 19th centuries, with each discipline of science developing separately towards what could be considered "science." You shouldn't be using dictionary definitions for scholarly concepts, you should be going to scholars. The appropriate scholars here are the historians and philosophers of science, and the science and technology studies scholars. "Social science," has a much more tenuous claim to "science" whether we view science from a Popperian or a Feyerabendian perspective (as a way of making strong falsifiable claims from empirical interaction, or as a social relation defined by the power plays inside its culture). I'd suggest Kuhn _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ or something by Imre Lakatos for how science and non-science contend in history in the study of a field. Given that I don't think it is worth using the OED's definition for the classification of academic disciplines, I won't answer that part of your question. The Australian reporting system for fields of research (ABS) would classify some of your fields under Biological Sciences (060603 Animal Physiology - Systems) and others as Medical and Health Sciences (1109 Neurosciences; eg: 110901 Autonomic Nervous System). Fifelfoo (talk) 21:25, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

When you've read the authors that Fifelfoo recommends, I'd recommend going to Michel Foucault's The Order of Things for an account of how the human sciences emerged. It's useful for understanding the natural sciences too. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:53, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

The word "Science" has changed its meaning over time. Today the English word "science" alone is more or less "natural science". Some physicist go even further, and claim that only they do "real" science, since their experiments are so reproducible compared to others. Most of the social sciences rarely have experiments, let alone reproducible experiments. It gets even more complicated internationally, since each language seems to have developed different meanings of the word for each subset of academic disciplines. Science has existed since Aristotle, but today one prefers to rename it "classic science" as opposed to "modern science" using the scientific method. I think the main reason one sets 17th century as a starting point for modern science comes from Descartes book Discourse_on_the_Method. It was a bestseller and it said roughly: Forget what you know. In all fields of knowledge, make systematic observations of what is before you and write them down in tables and charts, which later became diagrams, and use this new mathematics that I invented for this. Shortly after this book, the number of people that followed his advice exploded in all sorts of fields of knowledge. The scientific method has evolved a lot since then, but it was a good place to start, and the word "method" stuck. DanielDemaret (talk) 14:36, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Others have answered well, I'll just add links for Age of Reason, Natural Philosophy, and maybe Karl Popper for good measure (he of course comes much later, but has been very influential in his notion of what "science" means in the 20th century and the current era). SemanticMantis (talk) 16:59, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Links to add to those in the fine answers above are History of scientific method and Continuity thesis, which downplays the idea of a sharp break scientific revolution. Lucio Russo's The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn is on the extreme end of this kind of view. Susan Haack is fond of quoting Percy Bridgman's Reflections Of A Physicist, On Scientific Method on the scientific method. - “There is a good deal of ballyhoo about scientific method, the people who talk most about it are the people who do least about it.” or "The scientific method, as far as it is a method, is nothing more than doing one's damnedest with one's mind, no holds barred." As for the separation between natural and social science, using the word only for natural science and the lack of scientificity of the latter, Hegel characterized such beliefs as nothing but foolish modern prejudices.John Z (talk) 08:47, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Reasons for the one parent requirement minimum in jus sanguinis citizenship?

I previously asked a question about how would the jus solis and jus sanguinis principles affect the possibility of one running for president in the U.S. However, I have another, and also final, question relating to natural born citizenship rules that I've been wondering about. Why do at least most countries have laws that says that if a child is born in one country to at least one parent who is a citizen of a different country, the parent's citizenship can be transferred to the child, making the child a dual natural born citizen? I'm asking in cases where one of the child's parents is a citizen only of the country that the child was born and the other one is a dual citizen of the child's country of birth and the country in which the citizenship was transferred to the child. I can understand why jus sangunis citizenship would be given to a child at birth if both of the parents where born in different countries and were not citizens of the child's country of birth since most countries of the world, excluding the U.S, have laws that says that if both of the parents are illegals in a country and give birth, the child would be illegal and would be of the father's or parents' home countries instead. Why not give jus sanguinis citizenship to a child born in a different country if both of the parents are citizens of another country (because of the child being 100% of the parents' nationality by blood) and are also citizens of the child's country of birth? Why do most countries find it necessary to give jus sanguinis citizenship to a child born overseas if one of the parents is a citizen of a different country (and a citizen of the child's country, a dual citizen, but the parent has expressed no interest in coming back to live in his or her original country, at least in the near future) and the other is not and is only a citizen of the child's country of birth only (the child being only 50% of one nationality, not full-blooded and that parent has expressed no interest in wanting to go to the spouse's home country to live, in which the spouse has not expressed interest to live there either, at least for a long while)? Willminator (talk) 21:37, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm finding it rather difficult to follow your train of thought, given the lack of names. Please name the countries in question; make them Elbonian aliens in Sealand, or make them be refugees from conflict between Freedonia and Sylvania, or something like that. Nyttend (talk) 23:55, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Most countries in the world....Countries such as the U.S, Canada, Germany, Haiti, etc....Willminator (talk) 00:36, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Nyttend isn't asking which countries you mean, but asking you to rephrase using dummy names (drawn perhaps from Category:Fictional countries) so that we can better understand the scenarios you describe. For example, one of your sentences contains both "a different country" and "another country", and it's not clear whether these both mean the same other country. —Tamfang (talk) 01:19, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The thing is, concepts like "jus solis" and "jus sanguinis" are general concepts or trends among national citizenship laws. Countries have specific rules that say "In order to be a citizen of this country, you must meet requirements X, Y, and Z". Citizenship laws don't say "This is a jus solis country" and then say nothing else. Concepts like "jus solis" and "jus sanguinis" are terms invented by political scientists and legal scholars to explain general concepts, not by lawmakers to define citizenship in their own countries. If you want to know what the citizenship law is in a particular country, look up the law. These general terms do you no good when answering questions in the specific here. --Jayron32 00:15, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

If neither country were to grant citizenship in situations where a child was born in Country C (parents being citizens of Countries A & B), than the child could be stateless. That's can be a problem for everyone. Mingmingla (talk) 03:46, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I'll add that statelessness is a significant enough concern that there are a number of international conventions designed to prevent it. See this document from the UNHCR [3] and the articles Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. --Xuxl (talk) 08:59, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

But I'm asking in cases were the parents who are citizens Countries A and B are also citizens of Country C were the child was born. Countries A and B would still give the child born in Country C, citizenship at birth anyway. Also, I can understand if the parents were from Country A and the child was born in Country B how Country A can give the child born in Country B citizenship automatic by jus sanguinis even if the parents were citizens of Country B because the child would be by blood 100% of Country A. Why give the child citizenship at birth of Country A if the child was born 50% of Country A and if by Country A not giving citizenship to the child of Country B, the child will not end up stateless anyway? In the first case, why would the child born in Country C end up getting the citizenship of Countries A and B if the parents of Countries A and B were also citizens of Country C? Willminator (talk) 13:54, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Somewhat glibly, it is because the decision to grant citizenship is the product of national and international laws, not the effect of a heritable recessive gene. If one starts from the premise that the purpose of citizenship is principally to keep those (damned funny-speaking, funny-thinking) foreigners – sorry, furriners – and their half-blood offspring from getting in, then I can see how confusion might arise. It turns out, though, that there are any number of compassionate and economic reasons why a more liberal policy may make sense. I leave it as an exercise for you, Willminator, to consider what benefits might accrue to country A when it extends dual citizenship to the child born in country C. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:47, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

As a natural born American citizen myself, it seems totally obvious why we wouldn't want to offshore our most powerful government job. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:58, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Assuming you mean the presidency, that's fine as far as dual nationals go. When it comes to people who had the poor taste to be born overseas but moved to the US early in life and have been US citizens, and only US citizens, for as long as they can ever remember - still denying them the top job in this day and age seems overly cautious, and creates second class citizens. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:10, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

It's worth keeping in mind that eligibility for the presidency is not a matter of equal opportunity in employment. No one gets to argue unfair treatment because he was just as qualified as some other guy who was elected president. Since almost nobody actually gets to be president (and lots of almost nobodies get to be president), the practical impact on naturalized citizens is limited.

Just the same, I agree, the symbolism is bad. It's a blot on the constitution and I'd get rid of it if I could, but the bar for that is deliberately set very high. I'm glad of that, in general; otherwise a lot of the Bill of Rights would have been repealed at one time or another. Just look at England. --Trovatore (talk) 20:22, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

For someone who is a U.S. citizen – even a dual citizen – it's not offshoring. Unless, of course, you want to pursue the argument that immigrants aren't really 'real' Americans. And if you're going to troll that way, I'll point out that people who deliberately go through the years of time and effort to immigrate and obtain citizenship have put a lot more work into becoming Americans than those who are citizens by accident of birth and who just couldn't be bothered to go anywhere else—and in many cases wouldn't quality as immigrants elsewhere anyway. I'll leave off with the words of Shaw, "Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it." TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:55, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

The founding fathers had their reasons for wording it the way they did. As far as changing it to allow naturalized citizens to run, no serious effort has been made to do so. The last time I recall this coming up was when Arnold was kind of a rising star among Republicans. His star faded, and that was that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:51, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Those statements are all reasonably true, but none of them actually respond to my comment, or justify your remark about 'offshoring'. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:21, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Speaking of citizenship and the presidency....Since Obama's father was born in Kenya and since jus sanguinis requires at least one citizen parent to transfer the parent's citizenship to the child, as you've been explaining to me in this section about why that is the case, why then wasn't he born a natural-born citizen of Kenya as well, but by means of jus sanguinis being that Kenya is a jus sanguinis country regardless of where the child was born? Did he have to give up his Kenyan citizenship at one point of his life? I don't understand. What about Bill Richardson with Mexico and Marco Rubio with Cuba, being possible future presidential candidates? Willminator (talk) 06:27, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The constitution does not say that you cannot be president if you are a citizen of another country, it says that you must be a natural-born citizen of the United States. As explained many times by others, what this provision actually means is uncertain, because there have not been any court cases to define its precise meaning. A large segment of the U.S. population is potentially entitled to hold citizenship in another country (a number of countries will extend citizenship to grand-children or even great-grand-children of citizens, which comes in handy when they need to add a top-notch athlete to their national team, but is otherwise of little significance). That does not mean these persons have ever put into effect that potential citizenship. For example, Obama has never had a Kenyan passport, as far as I know, and has only been to the country on a few occasions, so the fact that he could potentially be entitled to Kenyan citizenship is not really relevant. Same for Rubio or Richardson. --Xuxl (talk) 09:58, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Willminator -- My understanding is that he had Kenyan citizenship (or potential Kenyan citizenship), as a child, but it lapsed if he didn't take measures to secure it by his 23rd birthday (which he didn't)... AnonMoos (talk) 10:22, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense, AnonMoos. Willminator (talk) 17:32, 12 February 2014 (UTC)