Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 August 19

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August 19

Mandarin-only sign outside Louvre

This article claims that "Outside the Louvre in Paris, there’s a sign in Mandarin which tells visitors not to defecate in the surrounding grounds. This sign is only written in Mandarin Chinese." A few other websites repeat this claim, but I can't find a photo of this sign anywhere. Can someone point me to a photo, or failing that, to a reliable source confirming the sign's existence? --Bowlhover (talk) 09:33, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

See this previous thread; Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Humanities/2013_July_3#Reports_of_signs_specially_written_in_Chinese_that_relates_to_impolite_behaviour_of_Chinese.3F. The gist of it is that it seems to be a myth. Alansplodge (talk) 10:05, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

I believe it to be just an anti-Chinese myth. Really odd if you don't show a picture of the sign when referencing it. ☯ Bonkers The Clown \(^_^)/ Nonsensical Babble ☯ 10:11, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

It might be a myth, but it's not anti-Chinese, considering that it was a Chinese person (Zhang, supposedly a tour guide) who claimed to see the sign. --Bowlhover (talk) 10:19, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

It's not as simple as that. Suppose a Chinese tourist (or tour guide) claims the French are bigoted and stereotype the Chinese. He may want to claim he saw this sign depicting the Chinese as a dirty or unhygienic people. I don't see any logical reason for it but there certainly are attention seekers out there. Not to mention that he could get a lot of media attention for something like this. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 13:31, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Video cost

How did the Scream/Childhood end up costing 7 million dollars? As far as i know a video recorder, a venue and hiring a developer shouldn't cost that much. Pass a Method talk 11:30, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Is it possible that the bill includes the cost of Michael buying many of the animals in the video for his zoo?...Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 11:49, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

I confused that with his video in Africa (What about us?)...Maybe Scream was actually filmed in space then? Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 12:01, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Music videos are filmed on broadcast quality video cameras, not on video recorders. Doesn't the record label pay for the music video?
Sleigh (talk) 14:05, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

You might also have to factor in what they paid Jackson to act in the thing. Even if that's accounted for in his record contract, you still have to consider the other Jackson. She's not cheap, either. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:41, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

There were some special effects, including "zero-g" shots, which would have required quite a bit of technical work. Plus, there are several shots where anime is playing on screens, which requires royalty payments to the various rights-holders. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:46, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Looking for a literary reference

In which of Jerome K Jerome's works does he talk about work, or more specifically - and humourously - his collecting of work, and inability to part with the work which has been assigned to him? 114.75.53.118 (talk) 13:14, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

In Three Men in a Boat he famously remarked: 'I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.' I don't know off-hand of anything that answers the question more specifically, but this might give you a start. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:00, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

The "I like work" quote is from Chapter 15 of Three Men in a Boat, and is followed by some text that may be what you want, e.g. 'Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn’t a finger-mark on it.' Full text here. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:06, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! That's what I was looking for, just didn't know where to find it.114.75.48.12 (talk) 15:41, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

reason for having children

I am looking for a source which proves that in the past women were giving birth children for a livelihood84.108.6.126 (talk) 14:43, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Can you clarify at all? What period/s do you mean by "in the past" and by "for a livelihood" do you mean that women were paid to have babies? --Dweller (talk) 15:42, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

We have the articles Child-selling and Surrogacy, which include some information on the payment of women in return for babies they have borne. - Karenjc 16:08, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

I think it was in the Middle ages but I don't find proof. And no I mean that one of reasons for birthchild was a subsistence. thx --84.108.6.126 (talk) 16:11, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Maybe wetnurse? 75.41.109.190 (talk) 17:35, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

No, I meant childbirth84.108.6.126 (talk) 17:58, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

It sounds like you have a specific idea in mind, and are just looking for confirmation of it. If so, could you give more details of what you mean? Things like who is providing this livelihood, what happens to the children and so on? With that kind of information we may be able to see if there is a name for what you're thinking of and articles about it. Jessica Ryan (talk) 18:48, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

My teacher told us that in the past (don't remember when, pretty sure Middle ages) - women birth child for reason - the children help to processing field etc. This was one reason for the q. why were large families in the past. My mother told me it's known so I look for it on the Internet and didn't find anything about it. But I also didn't find about child so I ask here, hope that someone could help me.84.108.6.126 (talk) 20:13, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

There are many things to consider here. Before modern medicine, child birth was very dangerous for women; see chapter 4 of Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece by Nancy Demand for one discussion of this. Unless you are enslaving a child into adulthood, raising a child in a pre-industrial setting is not going to give you a net economic benefit. Karen Kramer discusses the present-day Maya of Xculoc in Maya Children: Helpers at the Farm (Harvard University Press, 2005). On pp. 168-169 she writes conclusively: although, the children do contribute, they are still a net economic cost. And this is in the modern day with better technology and medicine which allow people to be more productive. Neither is this considering the risks of child birth: It's talking about the net cost of a child that is already born and goes on to reach adulthood, not the expected cost of the combined act of conceiving, having and raising a child, which would be higher.

There are many ways of looking at things though. Many women today and in the past are and were disenfranchised. Such a woman does not necessarily have the right to earn money independently, and in some cases may be completely dependent on a husband for her livelihood. If the husband has the only source of external income between the two of them, the woman must convince the husband to supply her with goods or money if she is to have any, and she may not be able to do this unless she gives him what he wants. This may mean unprotected sex which indirectly leads to children, or he may specifically demand that she bears and raises children. For such a woman, having children becomes a necessity in order to maintain an income at all. Some of this is covered in Simmons, Making Marriage Modern: Women's Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II (Oxford University Press, 2009). --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 22:20, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm aware of exactly one such source, and it was written as satire instead of as a serious advocacy. Read our article on A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, which was written by Jonathan Swift, a famous satirist. Nyttend (talk) 01:00, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

That's totally unfair, I was just going to post the same source as Nyttend. μηδείς (talk) 01:24, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I got lost.You say that one of the reason for birth is trade sex for income? thank, 84.108.6.126 (talk)`

That might be just one of the reasons for a woman agreeing to bear many children. The main reason in the past was the lack of contraception, and the social norms that required a woman to fulfill the expectations of her husband. In evolutionary terms, it has usually been an advantage to have many offspring because of the high infant death rate. Within my memory, it was "expected" that children contribute to family income, and parents believed (perhaps wrongly?) that their children would provide for them in their old age. Sorry I haven't references for these thoughts. Perhaps someone else can provide some. Dbfirs 21:05, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I'll try to summarize what I said above. First: In pre-industrial settings, children would generally be a net cost to parents; so it would not make sense in most cases to have children in order to gain productivity. So a farmer would not have a child merely in order for the child to help around the farm, because the child would require more care and food than the child could pay back by working in the field. The child may help around the farm, but the farmer would still need more of a cause than that to justify having a child (e.g., instinct, love, religious belief, and maybe too often: indifference, social pressure).

Second: In some cases however (not all), a woman may face pressure to have sex or to have children in order to maintain her livelihood. This is not because the child itself is productive or makes money, but because there is external pressure (rewards and punishment) on her to meet expectations of sexual behavior and child rearing. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 02:49, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I haven't read Karen Kramer's research on Maya society, so I'm not able to challenge her conclusions, but the OP asked for a reference to support the theory that parents had many children to help them in the fields etc. Here is one such reference [1] and here is a link to another study [2] (I don't know its conclusion). Dbfirs 19:18, 21 August 2013 (UTC)