Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2006 July 30

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Is this song about masturbation (Generation X - Dancing With Myself)?

I was listening to this song with my friend tonight and we got into an argument about whether it was about wanking or not. He was like "they'd never get away with recording that and getting it broadcast". Help me to settle this, what do you think? Looks obvious to me. I've heard it on the radio loads of times too, did noone notice or what?

Lyrics:

On the floors of Tokyo

Down in London town's a go-go

With the record selection

And the mirror's reflection

I'm a-dancing with myself

Rest of lyrics removed per fair use; look for them on the net

As with many songs, you can read into it what you like, but it does seem like it was the writer's intention to leave the lyrics with a deliberate double meaning. This certainly isn't as clear-cut as The Who's "Pictures of Lily" or Billy Bragg's "St Swithin's Day", but I'd say it is very easy to read this as being about wanking. Grutness...wha? 01:19, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I'd say St. Swithin's Day is about wanking. Sure, there's a couple lines that clearly mention wanking, but the song itself is about a failed relationship, no? --LarryMac 16:38, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The song must be about masturbation, because it is mentioned in the Wikipedia article List of songs about masturbation. --Mathew5000 02:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The song is originally by Billy Idol, and googling '"Billy idol" "dancing with myself" masturbation' turns up over 1000 hits, notably this one, Odes to Onanism: Best Masturbation Songs.--Anchoress 03:04, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

GenX was Billy Idol's band. I think he re-recorded the song when he went solo (dunno, I liked GenX but Billy sold out, man!). They also wrote a song called 'Kleenex', which could kinda be interpreted as being about flogging the dolphin (why does that article not exist??? ;) ) too. DwM is much more blatant (and poppy sounding) - and was probably a deliberate attempt by a bunch of punk rockers to get a song about jerking off played on the radio. Subversive, huh? --Kurt Shaped Box 11:48, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Oops, my bad. And I should know better, it's my era. Sorry for the misunderstanding.--Anchoress 01:41, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The best place to look for answers to these types of questions is Songmeanings.net It's also sorta wikilike (answers and questions there are all user based). But I think it's pretty obvious from the lyrics that it's about masturbation, and I wouldn't put it above Billy Idol to do a song about it really. Galactor213 01:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

People looking for other songs about beating up on Kojack until the old man cries should also check out "Turning Japanese" by The Vapors, "All By Myself" by Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers and "Orgasm Addict" by the Buzzcocks. ;) --Kurt Shaped Box 16:51, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

This isn't about masturbation per se, but what the hell. It is said that the orchestral introduction to Richard Strauss's opera Der Rosenkavalier is a depiction of a man and a woman having intercourse, with the whooping horns towards the end denoting the spasms of his ejaculation. JackofOz 12:48, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Not about masturbation per se? It's not about masturbation at all! Jack, that post was yet another of your purely gratuitous efforts at sensationalizing the RefDesk with completely unrelated pieces of sexually titilating trivia. But please don't stop! I love it! :-) Loomis 15:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Logic question

What is the term for the concept in logic for a statment that has an opposite so therefore is irrelevant (I know I'm not defining it correctly)?

For example: Time waits for no one and Good things come to those who wait

Thanks in advance! --Teh Janitor 04:12, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't have an answer for you, but I don't think those two examples are opposites.--Anchoress 05:40, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I realize that, but I remember those being the examples cited in my Intro to Logic book(I had hoped that either the shoddy def. or the examples would jog someone's memory). Thanks for the input though. --Teh Janitor 05:44, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

• Time waits for no one.

Its converse is "No one waits for time." Some people do. Here the converse is always false.

• Good things come to those who wait.

"To those who wait, good things come" is the converse. You could wait eternally, and good things may never come. Here, the converse could be true or false.

I don't have time to break the statements into "If...,then" statements.--Patchouli 07:19, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Or, using the example below, if good things come to those who wait, and I have good things, I must have waited.--Anchoress 01:47, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Are you looking for the word tautology? --Mathew5000 07:25, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Might it be affirming the consequent? It's an argument that takes the form (best of my memory): If A then B, therefore if B then A. So, If all humans are mammals (true), therefore all mammals are humans (false).--Fuhghettaboutit 07:43, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Not sure why I didn't check: Affirming the consequent.--Fuhghettaboutit 07:45, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like they're saying that if you have something that says the opposite of your first statement, the first one is irrelevant. As in "Many hands make light work" and "Too many cooks spoil the broth". But that doesn't sound like logic to me. Skittle 11:48, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Could you give us another example? So far it seems you've stumped the reference desk. Galactor213 01:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean a priori? --Dweller 09:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I think a lot of the problem here is that we're trying to interpret proverbs, which, true as they may seem, are much harder to deal with than pure logical premises.

Many proverbs contradict each other: "A stitch in time saves nine" vs. "Haste makes waste" or Skittle's good example: "Many hands make light work" vs. "Too many cooks spoil the broth".

Perhaps if we avoided proverbs and stuck to purely logical:

Given: A

Given: B

Therefore: C

type arguments we might get a better handle on what the correct term may be. Hope this helps! Loomis 01:09, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd say the closest logic concept is that these statements are contradictory, that is, taken together they form a contradiction. Except that, of course, as noted by Loomis, the meaning of such proverbs is so vague that they defy logical treatment. After all, "Spoiled broth makes light work", and "Nine stitches a day keep the waste away". --Lambiam^Talk 01:50, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Nephirim (title added)

Who or what is nephirim?--Nunnuya 06:07, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Did you mean Nephilim? In that case, it is (in the Torah) the offsping of Sons of God and daughter's of men. Hope that helps : )

--Teh Janitor 06:44, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The ancient history of billiards

I'd like to know how a billiard table might have been described by someone around in the time when they were first invented. Through google, I've found that the term derives from the old french for 'ball' and 'art', also that the green baize is derived from when the game of bowls was first brought indoors from the grass pitch; but what would someone have called a billiard table a year or so after they were first devised? This may be a weird question, but it's research for a piece I'm writing. Thanks in advance Adambrowne666 08:11, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't trust Google that easily! According to the French Academy, the word billard originally (in the 14^th century) referred to the stick used to propel the billes, or balls. I don't know what the game was called shortly after it was invented, but the term billard seems to have acquired the modern sense only in the 16^th century. If the game was invented around the 16^th century, then it would be safe to assume that that's what it was called. --Siva 16:15, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Siva - but when you write 'billards' without the second 'i', do you mean to spell it that way? Was that how they spelt it? Adambrowne666 07:07, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The French article (note the spelling) says a possible origin of the name is that an English tailor named Bill played around with three balls on his table for measuring (I'm not sure how - my French isn't that good). So it stems from 'Bill's yard'. I wonder if the name 'bille' for the balls then derives from this or that it's an incredible coincidence that it also happened to be the French name for ball. DirkvdM 08:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

That etymology sounds pretty dodgy, but I've heard dodgier ones that turned out to be true, or at least semi-true (such as the word 'barbiturate' deriving from the name of the woman, Barbara, who provided the urine from which the chemical was first made) - but thanks, Dirk, thanks too for pointing out the Fr spelling Adambrowne666 08:48, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Shakespeare either thought billiards was ancient, or, erm, didn't think about it at all. There's a reference to billiards in Antony and Cleopatra that is a famous example of anachronism. --Dweller 08:59, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The French article does acknowledge the less dodgy etymology, that the name derives from bille. In any case, on matters of etymology, the French Academy can be assumed to be more reliable than the French Wikipedia. I can assure you that billard has nothing to do with "ball-art", let alone "Bill's yard". It seems much more likely that the name comes from the original name of the cue, which was later applied to the game itself. --Siva 17:04, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks again - beautiful answers - the Shakespeare reference was a particularly good get Adambrowne666 03:55, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Gosh, thanks! Kind of you to bother. --Dweller 12:09, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Which country does not have any movie theatres?

This was a question asked a while ago (Wikipedia:Reference desk archive/Humanities/July 2006#Which country does not have any movie theaters.). I just came across an answer at The Rake magazine: Saudi Arabia. [1] However, I still think that Vatican City is also unlikely to have any real movie theatres. --Mathew5000 09:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The Pope has a private theatre. I'm sure there are no multiplexes there, if that's what you mean by "real". Adam Bishop 15:06, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

A "private theatre" is really a screening room. --Mathew5000 04:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Is a seagull a 'vulture'?

Moved to Science

I mean it acts like a vulture (circles, eats caracsses and carrion). If the vulture had been discovered before the seagull, do you think that explorers would've named the various breeds of seagull 'sea vultures' or something? New world vultures are not real vultures either but they're called that because they act like vultures and the name stuck over the years. What do you think?

Eh - seagulls do a fair amount of hunting and foraging - they kill and eat crabs and shellfish (see seagull). I don't think they eat enough carrion to qualify them as a vulture-type bird. Whoa - I'm surprised there are any gull species links that don't exist given the number of gull fanatics on the desks! --Bmk 12:53, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Vulture is a whole seperate group. I think I'll move this to Science. We sure get a lot of seagull questions for a science desk! I wonder why? Any ideas?

Funny, I always wondered why there are occasional non-Seagull questions on the Seagull Science reference desk.

It's Kurt Shaped Box. He's the gull-freak. Looks like he forgot to sign this time. Or maybe he did that on purpose to disguise the one-trackedness of his mind. DirkvdM 08:32, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

History question on civilisations....NEed HeLP>>>>

in what ways did the chinese civilisation lay the foundation for the modern world and what led to its decline?? --203.124.2.21 13:07, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Ancient and early medieval Chinese are commonly said to have invented gunpowder, printing, paper, and the magnetic compass among other things. I don't know that China really "declined" absolutely, but in relative terms, it conspicuously failed to keep up with advances elsewhere in the world during the 17th-19th centuries. For a multi-volume discussion of the history of Chinese science and technology, see the works of Joseph Needham. AnonMoos 14:55, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The 'decline' bit surprised me too, but it is true that highly developed civilisations tend to get overconfident, stop developing further and get overtaken by other cultures. In this light it is surprising that Chinese civilisation stayed 'intact' for so long. Or did it? I can imagine that the stagnation of a few centuries ago is not unique. My guess is that must have happened several times over the last few thousand years. If so, why did it bounce back every time. The way it is doing now. Maybe there is some mechanism that absorbs shocks and turns them into something positive, like what they're doing with the result of the communist revolution. Or maybe they manage to absorb the good bits of other cultures, combining them with their own, resulting in something stronger than either culture by its own. Which also seems to be happening now (tradition + state socialism + capitalism = world domination?). DirkvdM 08:39, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Depends on what you mean by "stagnation". "Foreigners" have taken over China several times: the Mongolians did, the Manchurians did, I guess you can sort of count the Opium Wars and stuff, the Japanese did... but they eventually rebel.

Anyways, isn't the OP supposed to do their own homework? --ColourBurst 19:36, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

in some web search i saw that opium was part of the reason for the decline of the chnese civilisation.... but it didnt explain why... u noe why??

See Opium Wars. Note that the Qing dynasty was not formed by the Han Chinese (the ethnic majority) but the by the Manchurians and there were a lot of problems there. So the short answer is no, at least not by itself. (However, the Opium trade with China was just nasty.) --ColourBurst 19:36, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Kingfisher Tower

I can find no listing for the Kingfisher Tower in Cooperstown, NY It is a unique landmark, and apparently somewhat well known You should add a listing

It is Wikipedia, why don't you type a litle blurb and put it on? Anybody can contribute! Just click on Kingfisher Tower and type away! I'll put it on requested articles for you.

Who was this performer at Di's funeral?

Please help us before the little old ladies in our shop go mad!They really like a piece of music-I believe it's called Athena or Athina? that was played at Princess Diana's funeral,but we can't remember who wrote it or who performed it at the funeral?

PS I've searched under Athena and Diana Princess of Wales(funeral section) No joy :( Elton John?

I think you're looking for Song for Athene, written by John Tavener. Hope that helps. -- Vardion 16:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

That's the guy.Thanks a lotLemon martini 01:39, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Horse Cav Combat

How did old timey horse calvarymen learn to fight saber duels with each other and attack people on the ground at the gallop? I do know how to ride a horse and it looks like such things are nigh on impossable to do to some one like like me. Does anybody know anything about such lost skills as these? Thanks a bunch.16:21, 30 July 2006 (UTC)(Hobgoblin)

See polo. Learning to swing a big stick and hit a tiny ball while at a full gallop is not limited to the cavalry. --Kainaw ^(talk) 16:39, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Riding at sacks or melons mounted on posts for sabre practice. Riding at small rings hanging from a branch for lance practice. You can still see these drills at reenactments such as American Civil War reenactments or medieval fairs. Rmhermen 18:09, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Same way the horse archers practiced shooting a bow when on a stirrup - with lots and lots of practice from an early age. --ColourBurst 00:20, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

And the Mongols could do this backwards, so they could fight while in retreat. Which wasn't considered fair play by the baffled Europeans. :) DirkvdM 08:45, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Mongol archers (and their horses) trained to control their horses using knees and not reins, allowing two hands on the bow. A sabre (or polo-mallet) needs only one hand, allowing one hand free for reins. --Dweller 08:55, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Besides you can't compare your (and most of today's) training with the everyday training of ancient times. We today are mere amateurs compared to real professionals. They used to ride as often as we today drive a car. Flamarande 14:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, my understanding is that Europeans considered missile weapons to be downright dishonourable (since "dirty peasants" could fight at a similar level to noble knights) - so much that Pope Innocent II banned missile weapons altogether (see crossbow). The English longbow is an exception... only because they realised how brutally effective it was. --ColourBurst 19:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

See the article on Carousel, 1 August 2006 (UTC)Protogeek

• Find a local re-enactment group,they will probably be glad to help and if you can ride,hey you might get into it and do it for real.hotclaws**==(82.138.214.1 09:28, 1 August 2006 (UTC))

Wars Timeline

I am taking a history class, and need a timeline marking the major wars throughout history. (The timeline is to document how the presence of wars affected music throughout history.) My professor said that Wikipedia has a great war timeline, but I can't seem to find it anywhere on the website.

Can you please help?

Thanks, KN

We seem to have some good war timelines, but I can't find anything completely comprehensive, maybe because there have been just too many wars. Until somebody comes up with a better answer, have a look at list of wars, list of battles, list of timelines, and Category: War timelines. Apologies if you've done that already.--Shantavira 19:05, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem, as mentioned in answers to a question a few days ago, is that there are 3 general types of "war" that need to be documented. There are declared wars with combat - which most people call a war. There are declared wars without combat - such as the ongoing war between North and South Korea. Then, there is combat without a declared war - basically every combat situation the U.S. has been in since Korea. The list of wars article is good at listing every combat situation with start/stop dates and links to the main articles. --Kainaw ^(talk) 12:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

My bet is that given the very Euro-centric view of music most people take, if you focus on large European (and later United States) wars you'll have an easier time. --Fastfission 12:40, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Probably, but it's also the easy way out. Just because people tend to be Eurocentric doesn't mean that everybody should then contribute to it. --ColourBurst 19:06, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

6th Generation iPod

There have been rampant rumors on the Internet that the 6th generation iPod will be released at the Apple WWDC sometimes in early August. These are just rumors, but what is the probability that Apple will release the product at this time? Or are the rumors completely baseless and Apple will definitely not release another iPod in 2006?

It might happen. I have information that they will release new nanos that come in different colors. During Hon Hai, Taiwonese iPod manufacturer's annual meeting, Chairman Terry Gou made a startling, comment about plans for the new iPod. "Apple is about to unveil the next generation of iPod, the best-selling music player in the U.S., using a "none-touch" concept" [2]. It is unclear whether his "next generation iPod" comments were in reference to a 6G iPod (a supposed incremental upgrade of the 5G) or to the rumored 'true' video iPod, or to another iPod model. More interestingly, contrary to all reports, Engadget published an article that said Apple's rumored "iPhone" (or the like) may appear as early as mid- to late-August. Tips have been given off that one anonymous coworker's tech-unsavvy friend, who is regularly hired by Apple to do marketing photo shoots, was recently brought on to take some shots of "the sleekest, sexiest damn phone he's ever seen." It has been well-established that Apple has been working on an Apple-branded phone for some time, however the release date has been difficult to pinpoint. Recently, various patents have been uncovered regarding Apple's cell phone technology, and Peter Oppenheimer stated that Apple is working seriously on it less than a month ago I believe. I can keep you posted on Apple news if you like.

Kataeb in governing alliance??

this article, Rafik Hariri Martyr List, has the Kataeb party listed

   * Current for the Future (Tayyar Al Mustaqbal), 36
   * Progressive Socialist Party (Hizb al-Taqadummi al-Ishtiraki), 16
   * Lebanese Forces, 6 (Hizb al-Ouwat al-Loubnaniya)
   * Qornet Shehwan Gathering, 6
         o Phalangist or Kataeb Party (Hizb al-Kataeb)
         o National Liberal Party (Hizb al-Watanyoun al-Ahrar)
         o independents
   * Tripoli Bloc, 3
   * Democratic Renewal, 1
   * Democratic Left, 1
   * Independents, 3

This is strange since the PSP opposed the Kataeb during the Lebanese Civil War. Are these parties all allied with each other ideologically or is this just to prevent more tension??? I don't understand. --Revolución hablar ver 21:06, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Six days war : When was the picture of Yossi Ben Hanan taken?

Hello,

The Yossi_Ben_Hanan article does not say when the famous picture of him in the Suez Canal was taken. I was interested in the progress of the Israelis in the Six Day war, and found it a bit weird that the Six-Day_War at best gives 'june 1967' as a date for the pictures.

Can anyone help? Thanks, Evilbu 21:39, 30 July 2006 (UTC)