Humanities desk
< January 30	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	February 1 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 31

Still don't have Pink heart

I see heart emojis are available in red, blue, green, purple, yellow, orange, and black. I see in Emoji 12.0 coming out in March 2019 will have two new heart emoji colors—brown and white. And still won't have pink heart. I should be surprised that we still don't have pink heart giving that pink is one of the main colors for Valentine's. Question is, why we still don't have pink heart emoji? Planet Star 01:13, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Google-image "pink heart emoji" and you'll see a whole bunch of them. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:54, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Although we have pictures of pink heart emoji, why don't we have that on facebook and other social networking sites? Planet Star 06:06, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Have you asked them? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:28, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. Facebook don't make emojis, it was by the organization or maker and distributes to Facebook, other social networking sites like Instagram, and even Android keyboard. Is there's an email address to emoji company? Planet Star 08:43, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Jesus fucking Christ. No pink heart emojis? Forget Wikipedia, PlanetStar, you need to take this to the streets. Don't even pause to consider a response here, it's time for you to start a grass roots protest. Stop - stop reading these words, they're only slowing you down; now is the time for action. Fight the machine! Burn down the whole fucking world until this grand injustice has been rectified! Go - go at once! Matt Deres (talk) 14:06, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You could request to have pink heart emojis here. Planet Star 08:43, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Or YOU could, since you're the one that wants it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:57, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Someone made a detail proposal back in 2018 which included white and brown and pink.

(And I really mean detailed.) [1] You could ask them if they ever heard anything about their other colour proposals or in particular pink. [2] I somewhat doubt they heard much. [3] [4] Note that per these discussion [5] [6] [7] [8], it seems likely a pink heart would also mean a pink square and pink circle. Note that a read of the proposal should disabuse anyone of the notions this this is something that you can just contact someone and expect any real result. I presume the people behind Emoji Request rely in part on voting data to decide which emoji's to make proper proposals for, but the too will have to obey the same rules as everyone else and can't magically make an emoji happen. Nil Einne (talk)

It seems a little bizarre to those of us who have been keeping track of Unicode since the 1990s, but right now the Unicode Consortium has the final say over cross-platform-compatible emojis... AnonMoos (talk) 12:11, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Clapham omnibuses

The man on the Clapham omnibus quotes an opinion by Robert Reed, Lord Reed in a 2014 case. Here, Lord Reed discusses the different occupants of the hypothetical omnibus, noting that The most venerable is the reasonable man, who was born during the reign of Victoria but remains in vigorous health. Is he quoting something from somewhere else? Anyone born in the reign of Victoria was 113 years old when this case was decided (not likely to be in vigorous health), but the text doesn't make it sound like he's quoting an earlier author, and Google results all appear to be Wikipedia mirrors or sites analysing this decision. Nyttend (talk) 01:15, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lord Reed may have taken a poetic license in reference to a longstanding tool of jurisprudence.Tamanoeconomico (talk) 02:25, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lord Reed is not referring to an individual, who you rightly point out would have been at least 113 years old at the time he made the observation in 2014. What he's saying is that the concept of the reasonable man on the Clapham 'bus entered English jurisprudence in the Victorian age, and the concept remains just as important (or venerable) today. He's using a metaphor. Lord Reed goes on to say that other passengers now include "the right thinking member of society", "the officious bystander", "the reasonable parent", and others, all derivatives of the original concept. Akld guy (talk) 07:53, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, okay; I thought it was saying "We may imagine people of these sorts in our hypothetical omnibus", not saying "This idea is venerable and has been around since Victorian times". Nyttend backup (talk) 13:56, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Movements within Judaism that reject Talmud

Have there been any movements within Judaism that reject the Talmud and only accept the Old Testament? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Charlie8447 (talk • contribs) 02:42, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Karaite Judaism, although of course they don't call it the "Old Testament" but the "Tanakh" or "Hebrew Bible". Nyttend (talk) 02:59, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

According to Talmud, Reform Jews have de-emphasized the Talmud. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:01, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that Ethiopian Jews reject the Talmud as such, but they kind of split off before the Talmud was fully established, and it's not among their traditional authoritative books. The name for Jews who accept the Talmud is basically "Rabbinic Judaism" (sometimes known as "Rabbanites" in the middle ages, a term which was contrasted with "Karaites")... AnonMoos (talk) 03:15, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If Samaritanism is a branch of Judaism then they also reject the Talmud. (Wikipedia treats them as different, but there's also some "a religion is a sect with an army and a navy" stuff going on here). The Samaritan faith is in someways similar to the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) as they split from the main branch of Judaism at around the same time, and thus do not recognize the authority of texts like the Talmud. --Jayron 32 14:29, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The term "Jew" derives from ancient words which could mean any or all of three things: "Member of the Israelite tribe of Judah", "Inhabitant of the kingdom or region of Judea", or "Adherent of the monotheistic religion which underwent significant reforms under the leadership of various kings and priests at Jerusalem in Judea". The Samaritans don't qualify under any of these three definitions -- they claim to be descended from Israelite tribes other than Judah, they traditionally lived significantly to the north of Judea, and they never recognized the Jerusalem temple (at some periods they had their own temple) or the religious authority of Jerusalem leaders. It's a branch of Israelite religion which has interacted with Judaism in various ways down the centuries, but which doesn't really fall under "Judaism" as traditionally understood... AnonMoos (talk) 14:51, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If only it were so simple to draw a big black line and say "everyone on this side of it is a Jew, everyone on the other side is not" I've not seriously heard it argued by Jews that Moses, Joshua, Daniel, Isaiah, etc. were somehow not part of their own religion, which was unrelated to Judaism, and yet they all predate the establishment of the word "Jewish" to describe the members of that religion. There is an evolution between the religion of the ancient Israelite people and modern Judaism, but that evolution did not create a new religion out of whole cloth when the word "Jewish" got first applied to that religion. The perspective that you have works, and is common, but cannot be considered exclusive of other valid definitions of the Jewish faith... --Jayron 32 16:37, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On that note, no one has mentioned Messianic Judaism, whose adherents at least consider themselves Jewish, and which I am fairly confident does not accept the Talmud. --Trovatore (talk) 17:47, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hence the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a modern American equivalent being maybe "a good Communist" or "a good undocumented immigrant". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:24, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Drop by your local used book store and see if they have a copy of The Tragedy of the Moon by Isaac Asimov and read the essay "Lost in Non-Translation". --Khajidha (talk) 16:30, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Can you summarize it in 25 words or less? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:39, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

People don’t understand these parables because “Samaritan” and “Moabite” mean nothing to them, instead of meaning “hated outsider” --Khajidha (talk) 16:59, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense, considering that Asimov wrote an annotated version of the Bible. And, as I said, it's like saying "a good Communist", to put it in a more modern context. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:21, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's more nuanced than that. The 1st Century AD Jewish person would have understood the Samaritans to be not just a bad person, or a foreigner, but something akin to an apostate. The Samaritans are an Israelite faith that practiced a different form of the same religious tradition that the mainline Jewish people of the day would have considered a corruption of the faith. It wouldn't have been like a foreigner or an unknown boogie man, it was a people who should have known better but decided to be unfaithful from their point of view. There's a nuance in the exact kind of distaste the 1st century Jewish person would have had towards a Samaritan that is entirely unlike anything a modern, secularist American (even a religious one) would entirely understand. Hence the "lost in non-translation". There almost is no modern equivalent for a westerner. --Jayron 32 18:11, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My church minister used to use the "good Communist" analogy. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:28, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, I've seen that same attitude from various Protestant groups towards Catholics (and vice versa). And from both Protestants and Catholics towards Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. --Khajidha (talk) 19:34, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Jehovah's Witnesses have an intense and probably irrational disdain for all other Christian denominations. Akld guy (talk) 20:20, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not limited to JW's, though. And I'm reminded of this line from a Tom Lehrer song: "Oh, the Catholics hate the Protestants / and the Protestants hate the Catholics / and the Hindus hate the Moslems / and everybody hates the Jews!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:27, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) True, except the level of distaste Jewish people felt towards non-Jews is compounded by the sort of Rutual purity laws not present in Christianity, such people were not just foreign and apostate, they were also unclean. That's why Asimov says there is no equivalent feeling a modern American would have. The nuance is something particular to that cultural relationship. It has only poor analogues in American life. So maybe "How a protestant person would feel towards a communist, catholic person with the flu" or something like that. But probably not even. In the Bible, the Good Samaritan story presumes knowledge of these sorts of attitudes in a visceral way. Jesus was telling the story to a Pharisee and so doesn't need to explain who a Samaritan is; the Pharisee will have the visceral response that Jesus intends, which is why he chose that specific ethnic group. Furthermore, the intended audience of the Gospel of Luke would have been his own first-century contemporaries. The context would have been evident to the original audience, and need no exposition. Compare as well to stories like the Samaritan woman at the well, which makes the context more evident in the exposition. The obvious shock and surprise of the Woman herself, as well as the disciples present, lets you know how out-of-place it would have been for a Jew, like Jesus, to be casually asking for a drink of water from a Samaritan woman. The fact that the author of the Gospel of John spends more time on exposition is probably because some of the context would have been lost on the audience; the Gospel of John was written probably around 100AD, so well after the Destruction of the Temple and the great Jewish diaspora would have disrupted normal Jewish life; as well it was probably written outside of Israel and written thus for an audience which may have not had the cultural knowledge of that region. --Jayron 32 20:35, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, no exact equivalent to what a Samaritan was, but the term has totally lost its context, and has come to mean someone who's good. For a modern corollary, we have to consider anyone that a narrow-minded subset of Christians would consider something akin to "unclean" - something that would evoke repulsion, as the Samaritans did in Jesus' time. That could be a Communist, a Jihadist, a non-heterosexual, or any number of other categories - whatever would mean the most to the target audience. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:47, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Partial quotation of Asimov's words: " “The trouble is that the one word that is NOT translated in the Book of Ruth is the key word “Moabite,” and as long as it is not translated, the point is lost, it is lost in non-translation. The word Moabite [from Ruth’s tale – it also applies for the word Samaritan – ed.] really means “someone of a group that receives from us and deserves from us nothing but hatred and contempt.” How should this word be translated into a single word that means the same thing to, say, many modern Greeks? Why, “Turk.” And to many modern Turks? Why, “Greek.”…[Snip – ed.] … We forget the point of the parable is entirely vitiated by the common phrase “good” Samaritan for that has cast a false light on who the Samaritans were. . . To the Jews [of Jesus’ time – ed.] the Samaritans were not good. They were hated, despised, contemptible heretics with whom no good Jew would have anything to do. Again, the whole point is lost through non-translation. … [Snip – ed.] … The Parable of the Good Samaritan clearly teaches that there is nothing parochial in the concept “neighbor,” that you cannot confine your decency to your own group and your own kind. All mankind, right down to those those you most despise are your neighbors.”Source : Pages 266-270, Isaac Asimov, “Lost in Non-translation” in ‘Magic’ anthology Harper-Collins, 1996.--Khajidha (talk) 22:13, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. --Jayron 32 12:05, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Druze and the Yazidis are apostates in Muslim eyes, but not being an apostate does not guarantee freedom from persecution - see Asia Bibi blasphemy case. The clue for a three-letter prophet's name in the December issue of Al Jame'ah, produced by Jame'ah Riyadul 'Uloom, is "He propagated Islam for nine-hundred and fifty years". From Genesis 5 vv 3-4 I surmise this is a reference to Adam. 2A00:23C1:3182:5700:9B4:670C:8CCF:DAC (talk) 14:19, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]