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

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January 10

another quote request

sorry, I'm continually asking you guys for quotes I vaguely remember - must write them down when i see them in future - this one is from some artist/writer with French/Spanish name who said something along the lines of: those who when they walk among art don't understand they're walking among wild animals are deluded/blind - does that ring any bells? A google search brings Bukowski up, but it's not him - it's someone I'd not heard of before.

Thanks - and apologies

Adambrowne666 (talk) 02:43, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

A war story

There is an extract given in my English textbook of an unnamed story. In it, the narrator and a character named Natasha Ravenko visit the latter's now destroyed village, where she describes the incidents of 26 april 1986, when a explosion took place in a nearby nuclear reactor. The radiation by the nuclear dust later killed many villagers, including three children in Natasha's family. Most of villagers were dead or forcibly evacuated, so the village was now a ghost town. The extract ends with Natasha and the narrator boarding a bus going to Moscow.

Has anybody read this story? I want to read the full story but as I said I couldn't find the name of the writer, even in the "acknowledgements" section. --Yashowardhani (talk) 08:41, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The explosion of 26 April 1986 was clearly a reference to the Chernobyl disaster. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:08, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

There are exactly zero ghits for "Natasha Ravenko". But when I tried "Natasha Revenko", I got this, which doesn't help matters at all, really, other than to suggest that someone's misspelt her surname. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:18, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

It could be a translation of a story written in any one of the languages used in the region near Chernobyl. That might explain spelling issues since transliteration of Slavic names into the Latin alphabet isn't always uncontroversial (though I suspect that's why you tried Revenko vs. Ravenko). Anyway, I checked the academic databases to which I have access for both possible names in the Latin alphabet, and found exactly nothing. Given the fact that there's nothing in the text to indicate who wrote it, it's always possible it's by one of the editors. And finally, if you don't have an answer from all that... writing the publisher would probably get the answer quickly. Heck, if it's an excerpt of an unpublished work of the editor's, the editor may be so enthused to hear from a student who enjoyed his or her writing that you might just get a copy of the whole story in response. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 11:31, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

And how exactly am I supposed to find that editor? I read the excerpt from a textbook which must have been reprinted about a dozen times, and each time edited by a different team of editors. --Yashowardhani (talk) 15:01, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Editor of the textbook. If it's an excerpt, the publisher will almost certainly have the source information, and the failure to attribute is probably an oversight (as it might be serious from a copyright perspective if done intentionally). And there's usually a chief editor or maybe three editors who oversee a textbook project, with chapter editors. At any rate, all you'd have to do is go to the publisher, give them the information on the book, and ask who wrote the part you're interested in. If you tell us the ISBN of the book (should be either on the back cover or on the copyright page) it might make finding information easier, by the way. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 23:48, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I couldn't find the ISBN in the book. It wasn't written even in the info of the book in a shopping site! [1] --Yashowardhani (talk) 11:19, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Quite possibly Zvezda Chernobyl ("The Star Chernobyl") by Julia Voznesenskaya. Not enough text available online to be totally sure. [2] Thom2002 (talk) 22:46, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

BTW, I assume your title "A war story" is using the figurative meaning. But, just in case, let me point out that there was no war in the area at the time of the Chernobyl accident, unless you count the Cold War. StuRat (talk) 01:30, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for that. This excerpt, along with a few others, is given in my textbook under the unit "Environment", for us to understand the impact of pollution on society. There was no mention of the context of the stories, or the writers. Therefore I assumed from the date given, nuclear and from the Russian-like names, that it must be related somehow to the Cold War. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yashowardhani (talk • contribs) 14:52, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I suppose in a way it was caused by the Cold War. That is, the Soviet Union was trying to keep up with or surpass the NATO nations, while it's communist economy was quite weak. This meant they had to cut corners to get the same results, in this case nuclear power, at a much lower cost. And this may have contributed to the accident. StuRat (talk) 15:51, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I found a copy of the textbook chapter with this story. (It's on a possibly dodgy site and I don't know the copyright status, so I won't link it here.) It looks to me like something written as a reading passage for the textbook rather than an excerpt of a longer story. However, there are novels about Chernobyl that you might enjoy reading. Perhaps the one that Thom2002 pointed you to above? --Amble (talk) 22:11, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I looked that up and I'd love to buy it but it's not available where I live. I wish it was available in the internet. --Yashowardhani (talk) 11:27, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

£sd

So, £sd refers to the former system of dividing pounds (£) into shillings (s), and shillings (s) to pence (d), and also for the symbols you used for those values. There was, for a time, also the farthing and halfpenny. Was there an analogous symbol by which the farthing and halfpenny were represented in writing? The line in the article "Halfpennies and farthings (quarter of a penny) were represented by the appropriate symbol after the whole pence." hints at this but unfortunately doesn't satisfy. Thanks! —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 11:20, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

From vague memories, I think that all it means is that the fraction representations, ¼ and ½, were used, so that, for example, three pence and a farthing would be shown as 3¼d. HiLo48 (talk) 11:27, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes I concur with that and the example above would be read "threepence farthing". --TammyMoet (talk) 12:03, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

You had to be careful to use actual ¼ ½ rather than the slash 1/2 as this was used to separate pounds, shillings, and pence, for exaple "£3/2/6" would be three pounds two shillings and six pence. "£3/2/-" would be three pounds and two shillings, and "£3/0/6" would be three pounds and six pence. you would add a fraction to these "£3/2/6½", "£3/0/6½" but "£3/2/-½" was often written as "£3/2/½". I remember our teacher insisted that fractions should be written with a horizontal rather than a sloping line too as that made it clearer, but I don't remember if this was standard practice or a teacher's pet foible. -- Q Chris (talk) 12:15, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't recall directly, but we always used a horizontal line for fractions and I'm sure it was always used in printed text too - like this. Alansplodge (talk) 12:31, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I must have been in about the last generation to learn 'old money' in primary school and I was also taught the horizontal fraction line for exactly this reason, so it was probably more than a foible. The Fraction_(mathematics)#Typographical_variations article touches on this too.Blakk and ekka 15:39, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Interestingly that site has "£3/2/0½" where I remembered "£3/2/½" where there are no (whole) pennies. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:26, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

As far as I remember, slashes were never (well, hardly ever) used to separate the pounds from the rest: it would be £3 2s ½d, as per the link, not £3/2/½ (possibly with the extra zero for the pence). The slash was only used for amounts under a pound, e.g. 2/6 for half a crown. I can't remember how we would have expressed two shillings and a halfpenny in that format: 2/0½ and 2/½ both look wrong to me now, though it's been a while since the question could have arisen. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:09, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I have to say my memory is from the price per lb of various sweets on a chalkboard in a confectioner's shop - which was the main recipient of my pocket money pre-decimalisation ;-) -- Q Chris (talk) 15:49, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I think 2/0½ would be right. I couldn't find an example in that format but I did find this notice which shows, as you say, amounts greater than one pound separated by hyphens (although full stops, colons or just a space could be used instead), and amounts less than one pound with a slash. On printed signs, the slash was often a sort of cuneiform or wedge-shape and the shilling amount was often in larger type than the pence, with the fractions being smaller again. Just to confuse things further, amounts less than about three pounds were sometimes expressed as shillings rather than pounds and shillings, so 37/6 was £1 17s 6d. Alansplodge (talk) 16:36, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

And then there were guineas... HiLo48 (talk) 17:53, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

And the fact that 1½ d was "three ha'pence", not "one and a half pence"... Tevildo (talk) 18:45, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Or you could say "a penny ha'penny" for the same thing. The fact that the system was centuries old meant that there were several parallel conventions. Like many Brits, I love a good old illogical muddle and I was quite sad when when the whole thing was swept away, despite being only 12. What foreign visitors made of it, I can't imagine. Alansplodge (talk) 19:00, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I think the system was not so difficult to understand. As denominators, 12 and 20 are easy to handle arithmetically. Although I am American, I taught myself the system as a child so that I would have an easier time understanding sums of money mentioned in Dickens (who actually mentions sums of money quite often). The closest I got to using the system was seeing shillings still circulating with the value of 5p (and 2 shilling coins with the value of 10p) in the early 80s on my first visit to England. Of course I collected those coins and still have them. Marco polo (talk) 20:16, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm Australian and we gave up £sd "on the 14th of February 1966". (Click that link to see and hear the jingle that means I'll never forget the date.) Our new notes and coins haven't gained any popular, catchy nicknames that I'm aware of. It's all very boring now. HiLo48 (talk) 22:51, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

This seems to be in concordance with Rationalization (economics), as well as with Rationalization (sociology). In this last even though obviously cheeseburgers are made available using rationalization at the same time not one will care that selling them is in appealing to fantasies. --Askedonty (talk) 17:25, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Marco polo: It gets better the further you go back. I was reading 13th and 14th century English court decisions quite a lot recently and had to figure out just what the hell a "mark" was and why they'd suddenly go from pounds and shillings to that unit. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 23:41, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Anybody know in what part of the country was "half a nicker" called "half a bar"? @Q Chris:, where were you buying sweets that sold for over a quid per lb? CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 00:44, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

The OED has a few quotations using "half a bar," though it doesn't get into where the phrase was common. F. D. Sharpe used it in Sharpe of Flying Squad (1938), J. B. Priestley in Let People Sing (1939), and M. Pugh in Wilderness of Monkeys (1958). The second quotation is interesting "Knocker brought out some money and examined it. ‘..A nicker, half a bar, a caser an' a hole.’" At the very least that suggests wherever Priestley was from (edit: He was from Bradford), "half a nicker" wasn't the term. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 09:29, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Here's some more fun slang: "A penny is a ‘clod’, and ‘sprasy’ means sixpence. A shilling is also a ‘hole’, and a two-shilling piece is a ‘two-ender’." P. Allingham (1934), Cheapjack. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 09:32, 11 January 2014 (UTC)