Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 December 17

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December 17

Bengali surnames Muslim only

Is there a website that shows the surnames of Bengali language that are commonly used by Muslims in India and Bangladesh? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Donmust90 (talk • contribs) 00:35, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

This article may have what you want. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:58, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

History of the Freedom of Religion

A teaser for a TV show on PBS said, with the US Constitution, "For the first time in history, freedom of religion became an inalienable right". Is this true ? Sounds fishy to me. Surely some other nation must have had the freedom of religion first. StuRat (talk) 02:00, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh, definitely - see Religion in ancient Rome for starters, and we have a (rather dreadful) article on Religious tolerance which lists many other such states. I think the "first time in history" bit is the "inalienable" (nonsense on stilts), which is equally inaccurate - the First Amendment is as overturnable as the Eighteenth was. Tevildo (talk) 02:12, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

It is true that during the middle ages and the renaissance in Europe, there was an overwhelming consensus of opinion that having adherents of only one religion/denomination among its inhabitants or citizens made a state or nation strong, while having significant religious minorities was a weakening factor. Some who didn't have strong religious opinions themselves, nevertheless supported measures against religious minorities because they believed the "one religion = strong nation; more than one religion = weak nation" theory. This idea wasn't significantly undermined until the 18th century. AnonMoos (talk) 15:20, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

On that note, I found the argument striking that John Bunyan had with his judge when he was arrested for preaching without a licence (link). He basically argued for religious freedom for all, including Catholics, Muslims and atheists, and posited that "the State has no right whatever to interfere in the religious life of its citizens". The judge of course found the very notion absurd. Granted of course that Bunyan had a motive for his position, after all he was the one standing trial. - Lindert (talk) 15:51, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Freedom of religion says "Cyrus the Great established the Achaemenid Empire ca. 550 BC, and initiated a general policy of permitting religious freedom throughout the empire, documenting this on the Cyrus Cylinder", and apparently India has a very long history of religious tolerance. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 19:01, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Positive skull mutation caused the Renaissance and European dominance

Some time ago I read a theory that the Renaissance and the following centuries of European dominance in science, technology, industry, culture, politics etc. was caused by a positive mutation of the skull of Europeans, which resulted in a growth of the frontal lobes of the brain. Can somebody provide me with some details?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 07:48, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like total BS. How about the dominance of the Roman Empire, long before then ? Also, humans don't evolve significantly over a generation or two, it takes tens of thousands of years. StuRat (talk) 07:55, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

StuRat, have you ever heard the word "politeness"?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:30, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it's impolite to give an honest answer. I didn't insult you, after all. Perhaps you object to my language, but I did at least abbreviate it to avoid the obscenity. StuRat (talk) 18:04, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Lüboslóv, but I think StuRat is right. The morphological differences between Europeans and other humans are too slight, and too ancient, for this theory to make sense. I don't know where you would look to find this theory expounded; but I don't think it would be in any reliable source. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:42, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

See scientific racism . Itsmejudith (talk) 09:48, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

These are linked directly or indirectly but the most relevant articles to the OPs specific query are probably Race and intelligence#Brain size, Neuroscience and intelligence, Anthropometry#Race and brain size. Our articles in this area have had continous problems but I don't think they are too bad at the current time. I would note that even most who hold to some connection between race, intelligence and brain size don't generally AFAIK suggest it's something that began during the Renaissance. Nil Einne (talk) 15:01, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

It would be an extremely difficult thing to search for if someone didn't already know some details (who theorized it, where, when etc.). And that's because many historians speak of the "evolution" of the renaissance, and many biologists have mentioned a "renaissance" in evolution. And so Google or other search engines will simply throw up hoards of false positives. Do you remember anything more specific about the theory? Someguy1221 (talk) 09:52, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Sturat! Welcome to the "short shrift to nonsense" club. alteripse (talk) 12:42, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• This is bullshit, which is a very rare thing to be able to say in biology based only on theory. But it can still be informative to say why. You'd need to have a mutation that would spread from 1 person to 100 million people in perhaps 1000 years, which is to say, a 10-fold increase in prevalence every 125 years, so a 58% increase (10^0.2) every 25 years. Without anybody noticing that Pod People were coming into their countries, their communities and their wives. (Actually that's the cheat - I'm saying someone has made an observation after all, come to think of it) Evolution just doesn't work that fast unless you're doing it in a cage. Now, you might postulate something like that if you suppose that it were some kind of virus engineered by our alien overlords to make us capable of building a decent sweatshop... even so, it still ignores history. History tells us of the Pantheon, of the Colossus of Rhodes, of the man-made land (chinampas) and grand architecture of Tenochtitlan, of the Chinese traditional medicine and ancient Roman medicine which was quite sophisticated and had much in common of our own --- the bottom line is, our ancestors had the same cleverness and the same feelings as we do. We do better only because they have built up technology, resources, domesticated animals, and political philosophies for us to use. Wnt (talk) 15:48, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• I should also add, of course, that as described (skull mutation) the idea is also disproved based simply on observations. Claims about skulls have been a cornerstone of scientific racism (and overlapping History of the race and intelligence controversy for later claims) since its inception, but it's all a lot of absurd correlation claims. Remember, the biggest difference of all in skull size is between men and women, and in recent years it's the men who have been on the losing side of university examinations. And Caucasian skulls haven't suddenly changed from what they used to be. Of course, the hypothesis could be adapted to something that doesn't show on a skeleton, which is why I went for the theoretical argument. Wnt (talk) 16:02, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh, no, again. If I knew that the Westerners are too nervous about the races, I would not definitely ask this. Thanks, people, but I didn't ask your opinion on the subject, just asked if anybody knew who the author/proponent was. You could simply go by and not express your "I-don't-like-it" opinions. Hopefully I've found the authors or something similar.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:23, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

It's not that Westerners are these overemotional crazies who are "nervous" about hearing the Blunt Truth; it's that the idea is a complete and utter bullshit lie. If there's anything worse than a lie, it's a lie that's spread to prop up the egos of those who feel personally inadequate and therefore want to believe they're a member of a "master race", so they at least have something going for them. --NellieBly (talk) 02:54, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Why most of the men who survived the Titanic sinking were crew members?

While most of the men who died were passengers? My source is Encyclopedia Titanica. Keeeith (talk) 10:52, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Mmm. I'm not sure the statement is entirely correct. Whilst there was certainly a higher number of male crew members saved than male passengers (192 vs 146), there were more male crew on board than travelling as passengers (885 vs 805). The percentages of lives saved for each category are 22% for the crew and 19% for the passengers (numbers taken from our Titanic article). These figures would seem to be 'the same' in statistical terms - that is to say that around 80% of the men onboard died, regardless of their status as crew or passenger. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 11:08, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, each lifeboat had a crew member in charge. This must have increased the number of the crew that survived. Alansplodge (talk) 11:28, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

There was tremendous variability in how the lifeboats were loaded, based mainly on the prejudices and caprice of the crewman in charge of loading that particular boat. In some, particularly the early boats, male passengers were excluded from the boats (on the basis of the adage, 'Women and children first'), even if that meant the boats left half-empty while male passengers who were present were left behind. (There was also some sentiment among the male passengers that to board a lifeboat was dishonorable). And boats leaving with women and children only were given male crew members to help them row. - Nunh-huh 12:00, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Also, crew members would usually be from a pool of working-age people, reasonably fit, and with good knowledge of the ship and the sea. Passengers, on the other hand, would likely include older and infirm men. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:37, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

There were more men saved on Murdoch's side early on. Boats 5, 7, 1, and 3 were launched early on his side and contain many men (1 and 3 were majority male). Murdoch's later boats were much more skewed towards female passengers, but he still let men on if there weren't any women waiting. --NellieBly (talk) 02:46, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Who are some philosophers who prefer to write essays than or not books?

I know that some philosophers like writing essays more useful than writing a book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joshua Atienza (talk • contribs) 12:22, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Start with Michel de Montaigne, who invented the modern essay form. AlexTiefling (talk) 12:34, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Many books are simply collections of essays. They are written initially for inclusion in academic journals and only later, when the author has enough essays saved up, are they published together in book form. --Viennese Waltz 12:42, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• Possibly because writing a book is approximately 100 times the effort of writing an essay? (Not just the greater mass of material, but also the effort of coordinating it.) Looie496 (talk) 15:11, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

An essay can be a book, it can even be a lengthy monograph. Or a collection of essays. One does not preclude the other, and I would think this is especially true in philosophy, where the literary style is much less bound by conventions than in most other subjects in the humanities. --Saddhiyama (talk) 15:19, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Guys, he's no asking for explanations, he's asking for some names. Bertrand Russell certainly wrote books, but many of his more popular works were very short essay-style pieces he wrote for magazines, newspapers, and so forth. These were then sometimes published in book form, as with Unpopular Essays. Matt Deres (talk) 13:51, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

• Louis Althusser, Jacque Lacan (not pure philosophy, but...) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:56, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

bihari camps in Bangladesh

Which places of Bangladesh have bihari camps? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Donmust90 (talk • contribs) 16:25, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

We have an article Stranded Pakistanis... -- AnonMoos (talk) 16:30, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Prevention of murder-suicide

This isn't related to the recent atrocity in Connecticut - it's been on my mind for a while.

How can domestic murder-suicides be prevented? By definition, murder–suicide is immune to punishment of the perpetrator as a deterrent, since he does not expect to survive the act.

To give a practical example: A man whose partner left him calls a crisis hotline. He admits strong fantasies and practical preparations for planning a murder–suicide of his ex or their kids. He sounds very serious, so the counsellor calls the police.

My question: How can / should / will the police react?

If the man has a gun (even a legal one), the police can probably legally seize it. They can apply to the courts for a Restraining order. However, both of these steps would appear to offer limited protection for the potential victim. Plenty of women have been murdered with restraining orders in their handbags. (As I said above, fear of post-crime arrest is no deterrent to the suicidal). They can help a potential victim improve her home security, or move to a battered women's' shelter. (The last of these would be a somewhat drastic step). So, my question is, can someone tell me what police practice would be? Would they go so far as to arrest and charge the man for "making threats to kill" (i.e. to the counsellor)? This would seem counter-intuitive - people will stop seeking help, if talking frankly to a counsellor involves a risk of arrest. Is there anyone here able to enlighten me on what the practical approach(es) from the police would likely be?

Also, can anyone point me to research which addresses the challenge of dealing with those at risk of committing a murder-suicide (but who have, as of yet, not followed through)? 58.111.175.170 (talk) 18:40, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

A practical solution for those with a credible threat against their lives would be something akin to a witness relocation program, where their name is changed, they move to a distant city, and break all contacts with those in their former lives. This is rather drastic, though, and expensive, so could only be done in the most blatant cases. StuRat (talk) 19:09, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

To prevent mass shootings, gun control would do the trick. It's possible to attack people with other weapons, such as knives, but not nearly as deadly: Chenpeng_Village_Primary_School_stabbing. StuRat (talk) 19:12, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Improve the way of access to mental health care. And that doesn't mean just making it affordable. It’s ironic that people who are irrational are expected under the law to get help on their own. There needs to be something in the law that compels a troubled person to be diagnosed by a psychiatrist. In the 1950s, we were institutionalizing people who weren’t mentally ill. You could institutionalize someone who was just unruly. We’ve gone from one extreme to the other. We need now a legal change to treat people more thoroughly, even if they don't agree to.

Remember, however, that even then you won't prevent all the cases.

BTW, deterrence also doesn't work very well for common murders, since criminals mostly believe they are way to smart to be caught. OsmanRF34 (talk) 19:51, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

* Re police reaction, this is just one jurisdiction, obviously, but in the San Francisco Department of Public Health Manual you can read a police department procedure (page 37ff) on dealing with a person who expresses homicidal ideation to a therapist, who then reports it to the police. Essentially, the police have to go interview the suspect and make sure the potential victim is notified, then pass the case on to a police psychiatric unit. They might be able to remove firearms, since in this jurisdiction people who have expressed a homidical threat to a therapist aren’t allowed to possess firearms for six months. Reading further in the document, other options include committing the person for 72 hours as an immediate risk.

* Re your last question about research on dealing with those at risk: Patterns of intimate partner homicide suicide in later life: Strategies for prevention. 184.147.123.169 (talk) 20:13, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, wrong question. Wnt (talk) 16:06, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

This can be argued all sorts of ways. One can retort that if most people were armed, any murder suicide sprees would be pretty short. As for involuntary psychiatric commitment, nobody knew enough about the kid to do it, so why pretend? The real thing to note is that the father was "tax director and vice president of taxes for GE Energy Financial Services in the New York City area" [1] paying the mother $289,000 in alimony every year to 2023.[2] The father of James Holmes was Robert Holmes, a senior scientist at FICO.[3] Some people have been spamming "conspiracy" and "refutation" stuff about these people all over the web, but it misses the point: We cannot touch these people. Saying we'll disarm them, put them in psychiatric holding and so forth, is like the mice conspiring to bell the cat. They come from among the Gods themselves (to be sure, fallen from the high station); all we can do is make laws to lock each others' hands behind our backs so we're easier to knock down and shoot in the back of the head. Wnt (talk) 20:27, 17 December 2012 (UTC) The question was about domestic murder-suicide, and not about Newtown. Please pay attention. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:38, 18 December 2012 (UTC) Crap, I didn't even notice we'd moved on. And admittedly I've been annoyed by the political exploitation of this issue to put a lot of harmless people in jail. Wnt (talk) 16:06, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The ethnicity of the modren Turks and the Byzantines

Hi, I would look to know what is the origin of the Byzantine? From which land they have come to Turkey?
and which peoples are related to them?
About the modern Turkies, have they come from Centeral Asia?
And if so, what had happend to the Byzantines?
Exx8 (talk) 21:32, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

It's complicated.

Firstly, there's a tendency for indigenous populations not to be completely displaced by even quite aggressive invaders. (Industrial-era colonialists have worked quite hard to change that, tragically.) So in each case, the partial answer is going to be 'the people there now are the descendants of the people who were there before'.

Secondly, everyone is 'originally' from Africa, so when we say a population was 'originally' somewhere else, we just mean they'd been there a long time.

Thirdly, in terms of the population movements that there were, which drove the cultural changes which characterise them:

1) The Byzantines were not really an ethnicity as such; they were Greeks who called themselves Romans. As such, they were largely the descendants of the Ancient Greeks, the Ancient Romans, the Phoenicians, and pagan tribes such as the Pechenegs who were assimilated into Byzantine culture. They were probably also the descendants of the Hittites, who had lived in Anatolia much earlier.

2) The Turks who invaded Turkey were the Osmanli Turks, who'd been gradually working their way westward. They were originally from roughly modern Turkmenistan; see Turkic people for more details.

3) Some Byzantine subjects were assimilated by the Turkish and Arab cultures which supplanted them; others remained as a number of distinct ethnic groups, sometimes collectively called Levantines. Still others decamped to the West. And some just continued roughly as before, but with new overlords. This has changed quite a lot recently: BBC article covers the effect of the current war in Syria; William Dalrymple's book From the Holy Mountain covers a wider range of situations around the eastern Mediterranean, from Greece, through Turkey and the Levant to Egypt.

AlexTiefling (talk) 21:50, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Exx8 -- The "Greeks" or Greek-language speakers of Byzantine Anatolia had an origin that was partly old Greek (e.g. the Ionians of the western coast) and partly an amalgam of peoples affected by cultural Hellenization after Alexander the Great. As for where they went, many who were disaffected from centralized Byzantine orthodoxy in the first place (i.e. were monophysites or Arians or neo-Manicheans) stayed in place and were assimilated to the newcomers. The common "Sufi bait-and-switch" tactics were used -- i.e. often the first waves of Islamic missionaries preached a positive message, and only demanded the adoption of a few simple practices and the renunciation of a few symbolic sins, while the whole panoply of strict legalisms governing all areas of life only crept in later. Those who were highly attached to Byzantine rule and/or Greek culture presumably tried to migrate to areas where the Turks hadn't yet reached. AnonMoos (talk) 22:06, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) The Greeks had been living in the north western part of Anatolia (now Asian Turkey) since the 20th century BC. This area eventually fell under the Roman Empire and they established Constantinople as their eastern capital in 330 AD. However as most of the inhabitants were Greeks, they quickly adopted the Greek language. When the Roman Empire in western Europe failed in the 5th century, the eastern part carried on as the Byzantine Empire. The Turks arrived in the 11th century AD, and slowly conquered Anatolia, establishing the Sultanate of Rum. Constantinople was captured in 1453. A substantial number of Byzantines kept their identity as Anatolian Greeks and remained in Turkey until the 20th century. During World War I, they were subjected to deportations, forced marches and massacres, known as the Greek Genocide; the number of victims is thought to run into hundreds of thousands. In 1923 an estimated 1,500,000 of them moved out of Turkey and into modern Greece, as part of the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey following the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). Alansplodge (talk) 22:51, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Question: How many percentage of the people identified as Turks are actually Islamized Greeks or Byzantine subjects who converted early on?--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 23:28, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I've read Genetic history of the Turkish people and I still don't know. Time for bed. Alansplodge (talk) 01:53, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

How would one even identify that? Once people assimilate, they assimilate meaning that, as a group, they lose their distinct identity that makes them a different group. How many great-great-great-great-great-great-great-&c. grandparents does a modern Turk need to have that were, at that time, Byzantine Greeks? I would suspect that most modern Turks have at least one ancestor who was a Byzantine Greek. But they all also have at least one ancestor who is from the Turks that migrated there in the 11-12th century. So what does that mean? You basically are what you think you are; in the sense that ethnicity is defined by how one relates to other people. If someone today considers themselves a Turk, insofar as they relate to others as if they were a Turk, does it matter that a millennium ago they had an an ancestor who related to others as a Byzantine Greek? --Jayron32 16:57, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

There are the Cretan Turks and other Muslims removed from Greece in the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, basically by from the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the creation of the Greek State and to the population exchange the term Turks and Greeks have been equated to who are Muslims and who are Christians in the region formerly occupied by the Ancient Greeks and the Byzantine afterward. Are the Turkish people as homogenous as you say? My question was if there a region in Turkey with a large concentration of people descended from Greek converts?--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 06:16, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

They're certainly not homogeneous, but the ancestral connection to any particular Greek speaking resident of the Byzantine Empire isn't particularly relevant for modern Turkish-speaking resident of Modern Turkey. Greeks in Turkey indicates that there are less than 3000 Greek people in Turkey today. --Jayron32 06:20, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

"According to a 2012 study on ethnic Turks of Turkey, Hodoğlugil revealed that there is a significant overlap between Turks and Middle Easterners and a relationship with Europeans and South and Central Asians when Kyrgyz samples are genotyped and analysed. It displays a genetic ancestry for the Turks of 45% Middle Eastern, 40% European and 15% Central Asian." Alansplodge (talk) 15:53, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, but so what? --Jayron32 19:24, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, it is rather pointless in a way, but I was trying to answer The Emperor's question above (which is, I believe, the point of the Refdesk). It does show that not many modern Turks are descended from Turkic warriors from the Steppes of central Asia, just as not many English folk are purely descended from Angles or Saxons, no matter how much they might wish it were so. Alansplodge (talk) 22:22, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Birth in Vatican/Antarctica

Were there any birth ever registered in the Vatican City or in Antarctica? — Preceding unsigned comment added by KobiNew (talk • contribs) 21:36, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

A dozen or more in Antarctica proper. Emilio Palma was the first, in 1978. Solveig Gunbjørg Jacobsen, born 1913 in South Georgia, also has a claim. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 21:37, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

And First Child Born in Vatican City on June 17, 1929, just four months after the country became independent. The baby was the son of one of the Pope's servants and was named Pius (presumably after the then-reigning Pope. 184.147.123.169 (talk) 22:03, 17 December 2012 (UTC)