Humanities desk
< February 14	<< Jan \| February \| Mar >>	February 16 >

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

February 15

Digitised copy of Monde (review) available?

Hi, I was looking for a 1935 issue of Monde (review) that appeared between 1928-35 from Paris. Does anyone know if digital copies are available? I was looking for an article written by Maxim Gorky in an issue a month after the International Writers' Congress for Defense of Culture that took place in June, 1935. This article is alluded to by Timothy J. Reiss in a riposte to a letter to editor by Roger Shattuck in a 1993 issue of the MLA journal. https://www.jstor.org/stable/462995 It looks like that Gorky's article has never been translated into English nor got much attention. I do not know the specific issue of the Monde but I guess it would be one in late July or early August 1935. I don't know French myself but if I could get hold of the article I hope I could get somebody's help to know its contents in English. Thanks for any information. --Narrativist (talk) 03:00, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Gallica has 8 issues from 1933-4 online[1] but nothing 1935.

Could the posthumous Gorʹkij, Maksim (1938). "Deux Cultures". La Culture et le peuple: derniers écrits. be a reprint? If so there's a translation fiveby(zero) 04:41, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for your great help. You gave me the French original and translation at once. That was great, really great.--Narrativist (talk) 07:26, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You are very welcome! fiveby(zero) 15:14, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lügenpresse

Redirects to Lying press which starts:

Lying press (German: Lügenpresse, lit. 'press of lies') is a pejorative political term used largely for the printed press and the mass media at large, as a propaganda tactic to discredit the publications that offered a message counter to their agenda.

I didn't check the edit history but the second-to-last word "their" doesn't seem to have a referent in this sentence. Does it refer to a propagandist? Is there a different term to use in a situation where the currently-incumbent mass media (e.g. the state-controlled Soviet media during that era) really is objectively dishonest, which means calling it that is not propaganda? Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 03:54, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The pronoun is meant to refer to those using the term. Before it was introduced, the sentence ended with "a propaganda tactic to discredit the free press". --Lambiam 09:13, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. If the term was always used that way, I guess it isn't what I'm looking for. I thought it referred to an actual lying press, or at least a dishonest press (one that prints stuff that perhaps passes point by point fact checking, but presents a distorted or false overall picture of what is going on). "Yellow journalism" isn't what I'm looking for either though. Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 20:00, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(Posting by banned user removed. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:51, 15 February 2022 (UTC))[reply]

The article about Camilla says she and Charles married in 2005? But yeah, I'd count that as tabloid or yellow journalism. I'm thinking more of papers like the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, which have a veneer of respectability but (according to some) coincidentally slants the news to further Bezos's agendas, or that type of thing. Access journalism leads another such phenomenon. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 21:39, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Green in the flag alphabet

Why doesn't green ever appear on the flag alphabet?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:20, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Georgia guy: Possibly because it's not well distingushable from blue, so one of them had to be chosen... At least that's what I was told looong ago. --CiaPan (talk) 14:42, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is green. This is blue. Georgia guy (talk) 15:20, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Georgia guy: Nope, that is lime, not green. This is green and this is blue on a green, northern sea. --CiaPan (talk) 08:50, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

User:CiaPan, the RGB system is not called RLB. The color green has to be notated as lime in the color template; if you notate it as green it will reveal a darker green; that is, 008000 rather than 00FF00. Georgia guy (talk) 16:17, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There is no universal definition of 'green'. In the RGB system, the basic color green is #00FF00. In printing, it is CMYK 100,0,52,35 that is called green (pigment green, equivalent with #00A550), supposedly the color that comes closest to what has been regarded as primary green. In the NCS system (Natural Color System), green (psychological primary green) is equivalent to #009F6B. And there are many more to choose from, see Shades of green. None of them are any more official than any other. --T*U (talk) 17:07, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The choice of colors would obviously have to be limited to a selection that gives the least possible chances of misunderstanding, hence colors that make largest possible contrasts. Choosing what traditionally has been supposed to be the three primary colors (for subtractive color mixing, that is) red, blue and yellow plus black and white, seems the obvious solution. Adding any of the "in-between" colors green, orange or violet would make the possibility of misunderstandings greater. --T*U (talk) 15:39, 15 February 2022 (UTC) (My own preference would have been magenta, cyan and yellow (plus black and white), but then I am a book person. --T*U (talk) 15:39, 15 February 2022 (UTC))[reply]

Add: As for the example with green and blue text, you must be aware that printed green and blue on paper, textile or similar is a completely different matter from shining hues on a computer screen. It is much more difficult to choose hues of printed green and blue with sufficient contrast in all kinds of lighting. Also, colors in real life flags will fade, adding to the possibility of confusing the colors. --T*U (talk) 15:51, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TU-nor, please show me what the green/blue text would look like in a way that's more consistent with your response. Georgia guy (talk) 15:53, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that is exactly the problem I am trying to explain. Colors on the screen cannot successfully emulate printed colors. The colors on the screen are additive, while printed colors are subtractive. If you mix red, blue and yellow paint or ink in certain proportions, you get black (as is done in some color printers). If you mix red, blue and yellow light on a screen, you get white. [In real life the screen uses red, green and blue, RGB, for maximum efficiency, while the printer uses cyan, magenta, yellow (and black), CMYK.] To see how green and blue could make confusion, you can print out a green page and a blue page on a printer and then compare them in different lighting situations (daylight, artificial light with different hues). You may be surprised. --T*U (talk) 16:24, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In the First World War, it was found that the red cross of the British White Ensign could be mistaken for the black cross of the German War Ensign, [2] so a blue/green confusion at sea is perfectly plausible. Alansplodge (talk) 17:57, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

See here. The colors were chosen for maximum contrast so there would not be confusion between similar colors. For this reason, only red, blue, yellow, black, and white are used, and furthermore, only certain color combinations are allowed, so as to further aid in avoiding confusion. --Jayron 32 18:01, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Apart from a desired contrast, one need to take color fading into account. Flags are used at sea, are exposed to sun and sometimes salty water, which cause dyes to decay. As a result colours get pale with time. The bigger difference in dyes, the longer flags stay 'readable' and may be used before replacement is needed. Colors which require dyes composition are prone to drift towards one of their components with time, which makes them unusable sooner. --CiaPan (talk) 09:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Before the early nineteenth century, there was no color-fast green dye. [3] The first green chemical dyes became available in the 1820s, when Marryat's Code of Signals had already been in use for decades. Alansplodge (talk) 09:09, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think you meant to write "the 1870s". Also, these were the first synthetic green dyes, that is, synthesized from petrochemicals and typically containing aromatic rings; earlier green dyes, such as the poisonous Cu(C₂H₃O₂)₂·3Cu(AsO₂), discovered in 1814, were also chemical compounds. --Lambiam 16:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the article that I linked is describing "Paris green", which was a chemical dye and first became available in the 1820s. I did though misread the introduction date of Marryat's Code, but it still predates colourfast green dyes. Alansplodge (talk) 22:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And before that, AsCuHO₃, around 1775. But even that was not really in widespred use in 1817, when the first version of Marryat's Code of Signals was published. Green colors used before that (mainly copper carbonate) were not colorfast. --T*U (talk) 16:48, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subjective and objective economic wealth

I'm trying to find some discussion of this, perhaps a book or a name for the concept. For example: hat-wearing among men in the 1960s was in decline. Prior to this date there was a larger hat industry, and it would have been counted when measuring economic activity, so presumably the extensive hat industry was considered to make countries a little bit more wealthy. I mean, if the industry didn't exist, and if all those hatters were just sitting on their hands the whole time, they'd be contributing nothing. Men stopped wearing hats, however, because hats were merely an encumbering decoration. I think it was around this time that women's habitual hat-wearing also declined. I suppose hats had some function as a kind of crude social signalling apparatus, but the public definitely decided they were more trouble than they were worth. So, really, what did the hatters contribute? It seems that they contributed to what we subsequently decided was a mistake, and actually if they'd refused to make hats we might all be "better off" today - I put the phrase in quotes due to difficulty establishing what it means. Then, looking at Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, I see all kind of things which are also of questionable necessity. People like live music, tourism, church congregations, sports, haircuts (this could be a very long list) but do these things do any actual good? It would be wrong and reductionist to say no, yet almost certainly a lot of those things - who knows which - are destined to be given up in the course of progress, just like wearing hats. The story of Ark Fleet Ship B from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe springs to mind at this point: and of course it turned out that the survival of the Golgafrinchans depended on their telephone sanitizers after all. I extrapolate that "economic activity" is a very crude measure of actual wealth (whatever that means), because it's composed entirely out of things which, for all we know, are purposeless and will look foolish tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm trying to create a toy economy simulation for a computer game, and in order to make it moderately realistic I have to give the simulated individuals preferences for buying things, such as hats (since it should have a historical setting): and much though I would love it to be a kind of beautiful machine like in classical economics, what actually emerges is a big bundle of silly-looking arbitrary desires for things the people don't really need, so that the machine is driven by the arbitrary desires I have put in place - and after all, they're only simulated people and they don't really "need" to exist at all. (Unlike real people, they can't even attempt to solve any problems or feed any creativity through their desires.) I hope that illustrates my confusion. What's the subject that I'm confused about? Card Zero (talk) 18:06, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What you are asking about are different types of Goods, and there are LOTS of ways to divvy up that cake. I'd start looking through that article and following links to find all of the different classes of "goods". --Jayron 32 18:46, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Economic activity is a measure of action, not accumulation. We do not add one year's GDP to the last year, but rather we examine the change (up / down) in the level, year by year. What "we all know" will be purposeless in a few years time might include a 1935 Bugatti Type 57, the Mona Lisa, or penicillin. You may find more about your interest in Progress, Human Development Index, Modernization, or Technological change. In your game model, perhaps you might incorporate a function such that certain items or tasks disappear if they are not selected by subsequent players, as happened with buggy whips. DOR (HK) (talk) 18:52, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Card_Zero -- the more classic example of economic obsolescence is buggy-whip manufacturers. A search for this term turns up some results.... AnonMoos (talk) 04:17, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You may be interested in the concept of "economic welfare" or "economic well-being"; see e.g. this paper and this article. --Lambiam 07:38, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lunar New Year festivities

Do Japanese and Korean citizens, especially younger generations, bother celebrating the Lunar New Year nowadays? I know that the Korean term for the lunar new year is Seollal, and the Japanese people stopped using the Chinese lunisolar calendar as part of the Meiji-era reformations, but I have been told that almost nobody in Korea and Japan really bothers with any festivities that would be associated with the lunar new year or coming-of-spring in recent times, even if they are of partly Chinese descent. Meanwhile, in Vietnam and the Philippines, it is a very big deal. Is it the result of prevailing cultural rivalries, or have people just stopped caring over time as it is no longer seen as relevant to their time or cultural identity (for example, the majority of the Korean populace is devoutly Catholic, so celebrating something commonly associated with traditional Chinese culture has little meaning to them, but this reasoning doesn't hold much ground as the Phillipines populace is also crazy Catholic)? --72.234.12.37 (talk) 23:55, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In North-East Asia, and among ethnic Chinese in other parts of the world (e.g., the Philippines, Malaysia), it is the most important family holiday of the year, and in many places, the most important, period. Only about 40% of Koreans are Christian, and of that, a quarter (10%) are Catholic. DOR (HK) (talk) 00:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

72.234.12.37 -- We have an article Korean New Year, including an "Abolition and restoration" section... AnonMoos (talk) 04:12, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I get that, I fully understand that many parts of East and Southeast Asia consider the lunar new year to be an extremely important event socially and as part of their cultural identity, regardless of whether it be because of their own native cultures or lingering influence of Chinese traditions that mixed with said cultures over the centuries (I have some doubts regarding Northeast Asia considering most of the general area is part of Russia now, unless my viewpoint of "northeast Asia" is more narrow than I think; Primorsky I can believe as that used to be part of Manchuria, but Kamchatka, Magadan, and Khabarovsk not so much).

I also get that the actions of the Imperial Japanese had an impact on what was once a normal part of life for Koreans at the time, and it took until 1989 for Korean officials to think of revitalising that part of their culture, to be celebrated alongside the Gregorian calendar's new year. Meanwhile, the (post-Meiji era) Japanese new year remained the same as the Gregorian calendar, with most traces of the Chinese-descended lunisolar calendar pretty much thrown away. I am also aware that unlike the rest of Japan, the Japanese subject of Okinawa widely celebrates the lunar new year (primarily because Okinawan culture had more Chinese influence), and that traditional Korean culture also has individual celebrations to denote specific times of the lunar new year, though of course none are as widely followed as Seollal.

To reiterate my question, I am wondering if there are any reports of younger generation Japanese and/or Korean citizens (say, millennials and after) who continue to partake in lunar new year traditions and practices seriously and of their own volition instead of just defaulting to 1st January. To me, it is quite easy to think that what a modern Korean youth/young adult thinks of as "tradition" compared to his elders, he would more likely have Starcraft, League of Legends, BTS or whatever boy bands, musical groups, or television series are dominating the social media headers on his mind, instead of actively thinking of Seollal or Chuseok and only participating in them when the time comes because his parents tell him to. In comparison to say, a young adult from Vietnam; Vietnamese youth may love gorging in popular culture and spouting internet memes all over the place with whatever English they may learn, but Tết Nguyên Đán is still held with high importance to them. Though in hindsight, since that kind of attitude can easily arise from anyone of any upbringing or tradition, and the fact that the Korean language manages to retain a native word for the lunar new year celebration while the Japanese language does not, I guess I should re-evaluate the focus of my question more towards the Japanese side, since almost no one there seems to care for the lunar new year at all, regardless if someone's heritage is partly Chinese or not, or perhaps it is seen as a remnant of something "not Japanese" even though if anything, rigorously following the Gregorian calendar could've been thought of as "even less Japanese". --72.234.12.37 (talk) 10:19, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

North-East Asia is commonly thought of as Greater China, the two Koreas, Japan and perhaps Mongolia. Siberia has 33.5 million people, and the two largest cities are further west than 98% of China's population. Since the topic is culture (and not geography), and particularly lunar new year, there is no reason to consider Siberia at all. It just muddies the intellectual waters. DOR (HK) (talk) 15:24, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see, so I just have an extremely narrow (and too literal) viewpoint of the term "Northeast Asia". I always presumed that Mongolia, greater China, Korea, and Japan are simply "East Asia". Got it now, thank you for the clarification. --72.234.12.37 (talk) 17:05, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Our Wikipedia article is East Asian cultural sphere... AnonMoos (talk) 18:01, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]