Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 September 3

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September 3

Eat the Rich

I was attempting to verify the quote from Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Eat the Rich. Though Histoire de la Révolution française is freely available online (e.g. [1]), I couldn't find this passage. Am I just messing up the search or is it actually not there such that we can say that in the article? (That would mean [2] is making a false claim about what Thiers wrote, but we could contact GQ so they can correct the article again.) -- Beland (talk) 00:33, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

According the the talk page of the Rousseauy article on Wikiquote "Attributed to Rousseau as being from a "Speech at the commune on the 14th of October" in The history of the French revolution. By M. A. Thiers. Translated, with notes and illustrations from the most authentic sources, by Frederick Shoberl., Thiers, Adolphe, 1797-1877., page 359 [3]". DuncanHill (talk) 00:40, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

@Beland: and here it is in French, «Nous sentons les maux du peuple, parce que nous sommes peuple nous-mêmes. Le conseil tout entier est composé de sans-culottes, il est le législateur-peuple. Peu nous importe que nos têtes tombent, pourvu que la postérité daigne ramasser nos crânes.... Ce n'est pas l'Évangile que j'invoquerai, c'est Platon. Celui qui frappera du glaive, dit ce philosophe, périra par le glaive; celui qui frappera du poison, périra par le poison; la famine étouffera celui qui voudrait affamer le peuple.... Si les subsistances et les marchandises viennent à manquer, à qui s'en prendra le peuple? aux autorités constituées? non.... A la convention? non.... Il s'en prendra aux fournisseurs et aux approvisionneurs. Rousseau était peuple aussi, et il disait: Quand le peuple n'aura plus rien à manger, il mangera le riche.» (Commune du 14 octobre.) See Volume 4 on the Gutenberg site. DuncanHill (talk) 01:02, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Excellent, merci beaucoup! Beland (talk) 01:20, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Ravi d'être utile. DuncanHill (talk) 01:24, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

First Native Hawaiian scientists

Isabella Abbott is known as the first Native Hawaiian woman to earn a science degree in the 1940s. So who was the first Native Hawaiian male to earn a science degree or to work professionally as a scientist/researcher? KAVEBEAR (talk) 04:16, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

• I tried and failed to answer your question, but I did come across the interesting fact that U Hawaii appears to have given a Master's degree in science to a Black woman before it ever awarded any degree to someone with a recognizably Native name. That woman, Alice Ball, was incredibly brilliant -- at a time when most colleges refused to admit any Blacks *or* women, she had multiple schools competing for her. But considering how thorough anti-Native discrimination was in that era, it's quite possible you'll have to wait until the 1920s or maybe later to finally find a Native Hawaiian get a science degree from an accredited institution. --M@rēino 16:57, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
  • While researching this question, I did find This paper which discusses contemporary issues with Native Hawaiian males in Higher Education, but may be a starting point towards researching historic issues. --Jayron32 14:20, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
  • This also may help as a starting point: [4] --Jayron32 14:21, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Are UNDP country codes still in use?

The List of UNDP country codes uses an archived table from 2006 as reference. But more current sources for these codes are hard to find. This UNDP document from 2016, p. 53/54 obviously uses ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, and certainly it makes sense to unify the country codes. So... are UNDP country codes obsolete? But then, the UNDP uses codes for regions and organisations not having assigned an ISO code (e.g. BAL - Baltic States). I haven't found sources explicitely answering that question. --KnightMove (talk) 08:32, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

I believe they may still be used in document codes (similarly to how United Nations Document Codes work), such as procurement notices. In fact, you can still find a list of these codes here in a list of RSS feeds for UNDP procurement notices. That said, I think there's a good amount of breaches from standard. For instance, this 2017 procurement notice dealing with Zimbabwe has the code "ZWE" in the document code, which is the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code for Zimbabwe, whereas the UNDP code for Zimbabwe is "ZIM". 199.66.69.67 (talk) 18:41, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

I work for United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (sorry - original research) and we are firmly ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 but I heard that UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (which is actually part of OCHA) uses International Olympic Committee codes which is CRAZY. Hayttom (talk) 15:55, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Navarone

I am retired now and watch a movie a day. There have been two movies with the word “Navarone,” one is “The guns of Navarone” with Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn and the other: “Force 10 of Navarone” With Robert Shaw and young Harrison Ford. The first movie’s background was Greece, the second Yugoslavia in WWII. Winston Churchill was obsessed with Yugoslavia, tried to cultivate relations with various factions which were at each other’s throats. In this movie, the Brits send a group of trained commandos parachuting in the country, their goal was to blow a major dam thus preventing German Army to cross a major river, actually a gorge in high mountains to attack partisans. After some unnecessary mishaps, tribulations and betrayals, Harrison Ford and Robert Shaw get into the dam, blow it up which is a slow process, escape and watch the consequences from the outside.

The dam crumbles in the most spectacular way, first small creeks begin to appear, then large chunks come off and eventually the whole structure comes down. Downriver there is a huge, tall, steel, strategic bridge. The goal of the operation is in fact to finish off this bridge. While it is going on, the river begins to swell because of the crumbling dam; on the bridge a battalion of German tanks is crossing the river with some foot soldiers in support. Here they notice that the bridge begins to tremble, get scared, tank crews abandon their tanks and run to the river banks, foot soldiers do the same and eventually the bridge collapses.

I wonder how did they make that episode? It seems to be the answer is that they used replicas, cardboard boxes, some glues, etc. Talented artists contributed their expertise, etc. But what about this?

There was a story at www.bbc.com about Tom Cruise and his tribulations in Easter Europe. He is up to making another installment of his popular “Mission Impossible.” The script says that he rides a train, crosses a bridge and something happens, the locomotive plunges into the river and Tom escapes. What Hollywood did – they sent scouts around the world looking for a suitable bridge. They found one in Poland. It is an old bridge which has been out of service for a century or more. All the rails are like sinusoids. The company said to the local mayor: Give us this bridge, we repair it, destroy it for filming, restore the bridge, pull the locomotive out of the gorge and you will be left with a new railroad and new bridge.

The local council agreed until the news leaked out. The locals collected 30,000 signatures protesting the project which is stalled now. My point is: how come Hollywood did not find a better way, just creating a replica instead of dealing with the stubborn East Europeans? And perhaps even in the Force 10 from Navarone, they used a real bridge to shoot the movie? And a real dam? Is it possible? AboutFace 22 (talk) 22:56, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

I haven't seen it, but there's a 20 min. "making of" Force 10 from Navarone video: "Making Force 10 from Navarone - 1978". www.youtube.com.. 107.15.157.44 (talk) 23:36, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

According to the Force 10 from Navarone (1978) ImDb page, the location for the bridge is the Đurđevića Tara Bridge in Montenegro, while according to our article, the dam is the Jablanica Dam in Bosnia and Herzegovina (although both would have been in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at the time of filming). Alansplodge (talk) 13:39, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

This article says that models for both the dam and the bridge were made by Malta Film Facilities in Malta under the direction of Mario Cassar.

This image shows that the model only stood about 2 metres above the water: "The Malta FX boys of foreman Mario Cassar next to large-scale miniature bridge Set. Nice landscape with several 3-D hills and painted cut-outs. Yugoslavian landscapes painted on wooden panels".

This shows the collapse: "An extensive preparation was necessary for the relatively short bridge collapse scene, to make the sequence as credible as possible. And this has paid off, a splendid scene. It's great to see that the fallen bridge parts immediately sink in the rushing river (its a concrete Bridge!!!). Only a small thing, but often overlooked. I remember a collapsing bridge in 'Battle of the Bulge'. Huge granite blocks floating on the river like toy ships".

Alansplodge (talk) 13:49, 4 September 2020 (UTC)