Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 July 13

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July 13

Nerds question

I've grown up seeing most of who I and other people would call a "nerd" as people who are fixated with technology and lacking in social skills. However, it seems like in older films and TV series, when they talk about nerds, they seem to refer to the sense of someone who is fixated on any given thing that is not like the norm; particularly something that is academic or otherwise not having to do with social activities.

Is it really true that this transition happened, or is it just my misperception? People who we'd call "nerds" nowadays are people who are hyperfocused on modern technology (and really more and more people are becoming fixated on technology so that's becoming the norm in some places, so it's not really the classic sense of a "nerd" anymore), but why are there no longer "history" nerds? As a generation Z, I don't recall ever seeing any young people of today who seemed so fixated with the distant past in particular that they allow their social skills to slip severely just to study it. Is it just my perception?

PS: Don't taunt me about using stereotypes, because the entire nerd label is a stereotype and the stereotype IS the question. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1009:B155:B6F6:2D02:8CF4:7814:22 (talk) 16:38, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps you haven't been in contact with many nerds who aren't concerned with technology? Do you have friends who are concerned with beetles or the syntax of languages?? Dmcq (talk) 17:03, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I've seen the word "nerd" used since the 60s and the word "geek" used since the 80s. Neither has a true definition. They mean what you want them to mean. So, whatever you want "nerd" to mean is what you want it to mean. Whatever someone else wants it to mean is what they want it to mean. Every couple years, I overhear arguments between students about who is a nerd and who is a geek. I explain to them that those words don't have proper definitions, so stop arguing. (Now, someone will certainly come along and say that they know the true definition and everyone else is wrong.) 209.149.113.5 (talk) 17:20, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I used to like Nerds as a kid, but now they hurt my stomach and my teeth. My kids now like them, though. I don't know that N.E.R.D is making a lot of music anymore, but every once in a while they get together for a performance or to record a few new songs. Pharrell has been busy with lots of other projects you know. --Jayron32 18:52, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

In the news recently, Older dads have 'geekier' sons: "King’s College London research suggests that sons of older fathers are more intelligent, more focused on their interests and less concerned about fitting in, all characteristics typically seen in ‘geeks’". The behaviour patterns identified were: "non-verbal IQ, strong focus on the subject of interest and levels of social aloofness". Alansplodge (talk) 22:19, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I've always seen it as meaning something along the lines of meaning "boringly/obsessively studious or academic, probably with poor social skills" in general, rather than specifically fixated with technology. The dictionary seems to agree. Interestingly, it seems the original meaning was "stupid person". Iapetus (talk) 08:39, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

 

I think the words nerd and cool, though they never really went out of use altogether, were re-energized in the '70s by Happy Days. In that iteration, "nerd" didn't have that much to do with love of technology or science per se. A nerd was just anyone who wasn't cool, for whatever reason. It was more about high-school social hierarchy than any particular set of interests or personality traits, with nerds on the bottom rung of the ladder.

Over time, the word came to mean something more specific, or various things more specific, and at that point it was possible to note that some of those things were not entirely bad, and that just as it can be Hip to be Square, it can also be cool to be a nerd. But as a good hipster nerd, I was a nerd before it was cool. --Trovatore (talk) 08:43, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

I think the film Idiocracy illustrates well how anyone who is a bit more intelligent can be seen as a nerd or geek, "“You talk like a fag, and your shit’s all retarded” is the sort of thing cool people say to them. Any wonder that they might not be totally immersed in society? Dmcq (talk) 09:06, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Anecdote about a famous European intellectual

I've read an anecdote years ago about a famous European writer (or some kind of intellectual at least), I'm looking for his name.

I think he wanted to experience total isolation from human thought but he attempted this in an urban setting, he traveled to another country (don't know which one) where he knew nobody and they spoke a language he didn't understand and he set himself up in a room, never going out. The end of the story is that even there he got entangled with humans, by sleeping with the girl who was bringing his meals into his room.

Setting: Maybe the 18th century or older.

Languagesare (talk) 18:55, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

The story as related sounds like an urban legend, but the bit about falling in love with the girl who brings him his meals is similar to Silvio Pellico's description of how he fell in love with his jailer's daughter while imprisoned in Austria. That would be in the first decades of the 19th century and his prison memoirs were a huge bestseller at the time. --Xuxl (talk) 20:50, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, but it's not him.

Languagesare (talk) 20:04, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Oblomov? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblomov — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.7.166.71 (talk) 12:38, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to help, but I'm not looking for a book, but a famous intellectual whom I've :read this anecdote about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Languagesare (talk • contribs) 18:58, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Literary reference to renters improving their property - perverse incentives

I started by searching for one particular reference, half-remembering a George Bernard Shaw play, but anything apposite would be welcome.

A privileged young man, wishing to immerse himself in "the life of the people", rents a meagre hut from an avaricious and uncaring landlord. The young man applies the sweat of his brow to clearing the garden of weeds, repairing the leaks on the roof, painting the exterior, etc. At the end of the year, when he assumes his hard work will win him a more secure lease, he finds the rent doubled. He queries this. "What!" the landlord says. "I am a businessman. A tumble-down shack may be worth ten shillings a week, but how could I charge less than twice that for such a beautiful tidy cottage?"

Can anyone find a direct quotation? Carbon Caryatid (talk) 21:07, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't know that quote, but "improvements" were a perpetual controversial issue between Irish peasants and British landlords during the 19th century; see Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870 etc... AnonMoos (talk) 01:26, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

To clarify: the italics above are my paraphrase. I'm seeking the real thing, from a play or novel. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 08:27, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

There is a common French saying about this: Qui construit chez l'autrui, construit pour lui." Wymspen (talk) 14:22, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

George Bernard Shaw's first play, Widowers' Houses is about slum lords. That would be a good first place to start looking for the exact quote. --Xuxl (talk) 16:56, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

• This is still a modern day issue. I moved into a rather cheap one-bedroom apartment in the South Bronx for $400/mo. I had a roommate, briefly, who decided to defrost the freezer with a knife, and punctured the cooling unit. When I asked the superintendent to replace the fridge with one standing in the basement of the building un-used, he warned me that the landlord would raise the rent by at least $75/mo. After confirming this was possible, I had the roommate buy me a new fridge for $200. Otherwise I'd have ended up paying an extra $2700 over the next three years I stayed there. μηδείς (talk) 23:02, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Impact factor requirement to obtain a PhD in the sciences?

I have heard that a PhD student in the sciences has to write a journal article with a specific impact factor in order to graduate. If one paper is submitted to a journal with a low impact factor, then the PhD student may not graduate and has to write another one. But then, I've also heard that some PhD students just have to write one research paper to graduate. Does this requirement vary from university to university? Or is there an international standard? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 23:21, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

The requirements are likely to vary from place to place. You could try reading Doctor of Philosophy and see if it leads you to an answer. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:34, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

No, the sentence of interest has "citation needed", which means it's uncited. It did not answer my question. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 23:56, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

• The sentence "The requirements to earn a Ph.D. degree vary considerably according to the country, institution, and time period, from entry-level research degrees to higher doctorates." should be sufficient to answer your question, but if your looking outside of Wikipedia, this may be a good start. Simply put, your question is far too vague to provide a definitive answer. PhD standards vary by course of study, nation, and individual institution. "I heard once that..." is a poor basis by which to hold a supposition, and especially a shitty way to extrapolate general principles. Any concept that starts with "I have heard that a" should instantly be assumed to be bullshit unless scrupulously proven otherwise, and even more to the point, even if true, such statements should NEVER be taken as a starting point to understand general trends or concepts, but should always be considered entirely unique events which hold no learning value whatsoever. --Jayron32 01:35, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Some things may be exceptional. If one person says something at one point in time, he has no proof that he has said it. And he can easily deny it. It is impossible to prove something that has happened in the past if there are no historical records! Of course, written records and digital records can be used as evidence that one person has said something. But if there are no records, other people can easily reject it. Also, people assume that there is some kind of constant in the past and present. If something only happens in the past but cannot repeat itself, then that past event probably did not happen. Some things may seem random, but are really completely predictable. Anyway, I think people should just say, "I don't believe you." Saying "I don't believe you" makes more sense to me than saying "You have no evidence." 50.4.236.254 (talk) 02:43, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

You can't believe, to perfect 100% reliability, anything except your own existence, all other things you "know" are merely taken on faith to varying degrees of reliability. See solipsism. --Jayron32 03:39, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

In universities that I'm aware of you don't have to publish any articles as an institutional requirement to get a PhD -- you just write a dissertation and defend it. On the other hand, there's fairly wide latitude for major professors to set expectations for their students. It wouldn't be unreasonable for a professor to say "I won't pass you until you publish an article in a good journal." Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:47, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

This would be considered unreasonable in the UK. If you've done your three or four years, and you have finished a defendable thesis, you're going to pass. Publications or not. A PI that would set additional requirements like this would find themselves overruled by the head of school or similar in a second. Can't delay the student more than a year after finishing the PhD or they can't pass at all, after all. Fgf10 (talk) 07:06, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

• And even if the professor does not require a publication to graduate, the new graduate is going to want to get a job in his discipline, and the better the publication record the better are the chances to get a good job, or any job. Loraof (talk) 04:43, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

There also has been significant change over time. Now, early publication of results is expected, but at least here in Germany, it used to be the case that a PhD thesis had to be all fresh and new results. In my time, I still had to apply for a special permission to publish some results early - although being granted permission was already routine, and the whole process was in practice largely ignored. Also note that there is some ambiguity in the original question. If there is such a rule, it's not the article that has to have a particular impact factor, but the journal. This is to avoid candidates publishing in the Shitty Journal of You Pay We Publish or something similar. The impact of an article can usually only be decided quite a bit after publication. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:35, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

I meant journal, not the paper. Papers themselves don't have impact factors. But the journals are ranked. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 11:25, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

In the US, the "staple thesis" is becoming increasingly common. Though the details probably differ by location and discipline, the basic idea is that if you already have a sufficient number of peer-reviewed articles, then you can just staple them together (perhaps with an added introduction) and call that your PhD thesis. In my experience, the typical number of publications requested is at least 3. Dragons flight (talk) 07:49, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Same here - it's sometimes called "cumulative dissertation". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:14, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

It is worth noting that, in my experience, no one except journal publishers takes impact factors as having a high degree of precision. We can all tell the general difference between Science or Nature and a crap journal, but the idea that X is a well-defined amount better than Y is not very defensible. I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if an advisor wanted their students to have some number of articles published in vaguely-defined "good" journals before completing their PhD, but I would be very surprised if anyone was writing rules for PhD acceptance that relied on specific impact factor values. Dragons flight (talk) 08:03, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Anybody know what this documentary on Cambodia war is?

Can anybody tell what this documentary's name is, who made it and when? It has James Gerrand in it (a journalist who dedicated his life to documenting the Cambodian and Vietnamese wars).

It's not listed in the category:Documentary films about Cambodia or in category:Documentary films about the Cambodian genocide. It is clearly one sided, not showing the attrocities by the north and time and again hammering the US and its allies attrocities. But still it has the following important sections in it:

[22:44] James Gerrand [Journalist and film maker]: When we had film of Cambodians cutting open bodies and ripping out the litter and eating them, western opinion was pretty shocked by the Lon Nol forces doing that. But this is what Cambodians are doing, were doing by tradition. It is said that its getting in the spirit, the strength of your enemy. It's a ritual. Quite frequently in the early years of the war, as a mark of friendship they would ask you to come and join them in the eating of the liver of the dead.

[24:20] Nixon: This is NOT an invasion of Cambodia.

[24:26] Cambodian man from border village: You might not know the guns and artillery you are sending, you know, they don't know you are innocent people or you are the Viet Cong. You know, they kill everyone. Into my village my neighbor house were burning and kill the people injured the people... but uh you can do nothing.

[24:52] Southia Chan, Cambodian woman from border village: I ran with my grandmother and aunt. My grandmother was too slow. I let go of her hand and ran with the Viet Cong. The planes shot: chong chong chong chong! And the tanks behind them. We kept running. I was safe when we reached the next village. I returned to my village, and my uncle and aunt, and two cousins were dead. South Saigon soldiers came and slaghtered them.

[28:38] Chhay Yiheang: Advisor of the Royal Government of Cambodia: Saigon troups came pillaging and killing people. Raping women. Raping young girls. Some fathers couldn't stand it and tried to stop it. They were shot on the spot.

[28:57] Southia Chan (then Cambodian village girl): The Saigon troups were more vicious than the Viet Cong. They terrorized the people and the Viet Cong never did that. Girls made themselves ugly so the Saigon troups wouldn't like them. Putting charcoal on their face and in their hair, ching ching ching like that. My aunt had one child and was still pretty. They tied her husband in the middle of the house, and raped her in front of him. No one dared do anything.

Thanks in advance, and @Nihonjoe: thanks for pointing me to the ref desk! פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 23:44, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Screen Australia lists three documentaries associated with James G. Gerrand. The first two roughly match the length of yours. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:36, 14 July 2017 (UTC)