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"Nishibani," LOL! Sorry -- Freudian slip or whatever. :-D
This was very nice of you, by the way. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 21:37, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your kind note. I feel bad that I'm getting to know you just as you're subject to a topic ban. Let me just say that it's been a pleasure working with you, and I only wish I had encountered you sooner. I hope you'll keep on editing in other areas, and perhaps if you do have an Israel-Palestine related insight, you could post it on your talk page. :-) best, SlimVirgin talk| contribs 18:08, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Just wish to round off this sad affair and say thank you for everything. You've been my role model and taught me a lot, and in an immensely entertaining way too. It hurts that the WP system can be so wasteful of resources. Wonder what the knowledge vacuum will suck in when you move to other pastures... if metaphors can be mixed that way.
Myself, I've lost a bit of spirit along with the illusions, so I'm probably not going to contribute that much in the future — unless the permit to take part in the guidelines draft discussion is unexpectedly granted (and I hope you will apply too). However, my girlfriend rightly sees Wikipedia as a dangerous rival for my attention, and if I analyze things objectively, I have in fact neglected her as well as my job and my friends for more than six months now, so, in a few weeks, I'll probably see some merit in the decision. RIght now, I'm just pissed off. MeteorMaker ( talk) 00:00, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Unless I am mistaken, G-Dett and myself are neck to neck in a stiff race to see who will poll the most votes. We've comprehensively beaten the rest of the field, and the judges, though wavering on the stragglers in our wake, are unanimous in acknowledging that honours at the post are to be split between the two of us. One trundles to the stables, in my case, one slouches towards Bethlehem, with head erect, nostrils flairing at the 'stir and keep of pride'! Cheerio Nishidani ( talk) 16:42, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. Canadian Monkey ( talk · contribs), G-Dett ( talk · contribs), MeteorMaker ( talk · contribs), Nickhh ( talk · contribs), Nishidani ( talk · contribs), NoCal100 ( talk · contribs), and Pedrito ( talk · contribs) are prohibited from editing any Arab-Israeli conflict-related article/talk page or discussing on the dispute anywhere else on the project. Jayjg ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is also prohibited from editing in the area of conflict, and he is stripped of his status as a functionary and any and all associated privileged access, including the CheckUser and Oversight tools and the checkuser-l, oversight-l, and functionaries-en mailing lists. Jayjg is also thanked for his years of service.
After six months, these editors may individually ask the Arbitration Committee to lift their editing restrictions after demonstrating commitment to the goals of Wikipedia and ability to work constructively with other editors. However, restrictions may be temporarily suspended for the exclusive purpose of participating in the discussion of draft guidelines for this area.
In the meantime, the community is strongly urged to pursue current discussions to come to a definitive consensus on the preferred current and historical names of the region that is the source of conflict in this case. Note that this must be consistent with current Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources, a neutral point of view, and naming conventions. This decision will be appended onto this case within two months from the close of the case.
For the Arbitration Committee, hmwith τ 17:34, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
'prohibited from editing any Arab-Israeli conflict-related article/talk page or discussing on the dispute anywhere else on the project.'
' Jayjg ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is also prohibited from editing in the area of conflict, and he is stripped of his status'
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The Barnstar of Integrity | |
All the interesting people banned! Things will be pretty dull for a while. Will miss you -- Ravpapa ( talk) 16:15, 13 May 2009 (UTC) |
Nishidani, I'm sorry to see this happen to you as you are an editor who I respect. However, this repsect means that I consider you well able to be of value to Wikipedia in a range of areas and not just the I/P conflict. I hope therefore that you see yourself as able to contribute to the project elsewhere.-- Peter cohen ( talk) 10:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
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The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar | |
For hours of fruitless effort trying to protect Wikipedia from nationalist bias. Although you have been sanctioned unfairly, your thoughtful arguments and dogged research have given the community a strong background of information to draw on when denouncing future attempts to portray ideology as fact. untwirl( talk) 14:54, 14 May 2009 (UTC) |
Hi Nishidani,
Would you mind checking this :
Ceedjee ( talk) 16:28, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
Is your plan really to stop editing altogether? In case you do, please keep in touch -- I am slimvirgin at gmail dot com. Best, SlimVirgin talk| contribs 06:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
But please keep your eyes open, Nishidani. --
ZScarpia (
talk)
10:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
as always. Tiamut talk 09:46, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi, Thanks for your message. A couple of years ago I wrote some text that is here: User_talk:Zero0000/temp#Etymology of the name Jerusalem. You can see it agrees pretty much with yours. I put your text there too, for easy comparison. I think we should work up a combined version and see how long it survives in the article (there are an awful lot of "City of Peace" folks out there as you know). Cheers. Zero talk 09:59, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
Welcome back, I'm hoping your presence means you might resume editing (although your comments at AE suggest otherwise, sadly.) Just wanted to leave a note about this edit - no members of ArbCom have commented in the discussion as yet. Josh Gordon's term expired last go 'round, and FT2 resigned some time ago. Nathan T 20:51, 2 September 2009 (UTC) (formerly Avruch)
If I came across as intimating that you were trying to be underhanded in the Islam and antisemitism article, my deepes apologies; that was in no way shape or form my intention. I am an expert in neither Islam nor antisemitism, and do not claim to come to the article from a position of scholarship. My opinion is, and has always been, that I/P articles need to follow the guidelines up a tree and off of a cliff, so that when decisions/consensus are eventually made/formed, we have a much stronger defense against claims of POV (like Zero has been making about AfD recently, for example).
In this case, Laquer has made statements about I&AS which have been quoted by others (I think). If everything he brings can be sourced to someone else, that is great. If not, we should discuss his appropriateness on the talk page as we are doing now. I respect your opinion as to Laquer's appropriateness, but the best way to address this, I think, would be to find outside sources that make those claims about Laquer, and either put them in the article or use those to support the removal. Our own opinions are often suspect, even when they should not be :( -- Avi ( talk) 16:00, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
If it's from Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, Knight was at a conference about the book and I believe remains unconvinced. Something about it in counterpunch a while ago, could follow the links, but too tired to do so now. Best, John Z ( talk) 10:05, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Hello, and it is good to hear from you and know that you are still around. As I thought I made clear, I haven't read Segev's account, only Shahak's and Jakobovits'. But Segev wasn't contemporary, and was writing after the other narrators had died. He ma6y have spoken to Shahak about this -- if you have the book, maybe you can confirm this. The fact remains that Boteach, writing last year, states explicitly that the potential caller was not a Jew, without giving any source for this; and he is then treated as a reliable source for this (according to you, untrue) assertion.*(see below)
In any case, it is a remarkable indictment of the orthodox rabbinical tradition that the whole issue turns on whether or not this passer-by was a Jew; and to that extent, Shahak's denunciation is valid, whatever the specifics of this case.
I realise how galling it must be for you to sit silently while others less well-informed or more ideologically than you driven make nonsense of articles to which you would have a lot to contribute. And it would indeed be humiliating to have to beg for an indulgence from those who have traduced and convicted you. Nevertheless, I very much hope that in November you will humour your censors, and request the restoration of the editing privileges of which you should never have been stripped, so that we can all once again benefit from your knowledge. RolandR 19:38, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi, We have a problem at Joseph's Tomb in that the best historical sources are in German. Can you read it? If so and you are willing to help, send me wiki-email and I'll send you a nice German journal article. Cheers. Zero talk 11:26, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I've been in a very isolated part of the world and without any connection to the Internet for the last three months, so only just read your message on my user page. Hope you'll forgive the long delay in receiving a response. It's very good to hear from you. -- ZScarpia ( talk) 17:20, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
You know you have another 998 edits to go now right? nableezy - 14:30, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
So Why 23:14, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
With all due respect I think you miss my point. I use the phrase "beliefs and practices" knowing full well that these words can and do describe religion (I am not as Tim implies trying to fool anyone, let alone myself). But "beliefs and practices" - speaking as an anthropologist - refer to other cultural domains besides religion. Capitalism is a set of beliefs and practices. Democracy is a set of beliefs and practices. Nationalism is a set of beliefs and practices. I use the plural "sets of beliefs and practices" because this language will include those beliefs and practices we call religion, but also include those beliefs and practices that are central to Judaism but not, strictly speaking, religion.
I honestly thought this was a simple and clear point. I write several times that I do not deny that Judaism is among other things a religion, just that it is other things also. Why do Tim - and I have to say, you to - ignore the "also" and suggest that I am claiming "instead" when I never say that it is not religion. I even wrote that I agree that the word religion belongs in the first paragraph, and in fact it is in there, so it is not being excluded.
My only concern is that by changing "beliefs and practices" to "religion," other things get excluded.
In all of this, I sincerely and upon reflection (and reading your comment) firmly sure, as an anthropologist and as a Wikipedia editor, sure that this is the best wording. Why? Nishidani, I posted several sources: two notable theologians, a historian of Judaism, a popular writer on Jewish topics, and a coupld of websites. All I ask you to do is to start with the sources, not any pre-conceived notions you have about Judaism. isn't this how we should do research? Just look at the sources ... Perhaps you will revise your comment. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
(ec)Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Just to be clear: I never meant to imply that you might be anti-Jewish let alone anti-Semitic. Also, I thought I had replied to your point about Durkheim as I have stated consistently that among the sets of beliefs and practices that constitute Judaism is religion.
The preconceived notion to which I referred is the notion that there is an objective category, "religion," and that as religions Judaism, Islam and Christianity are comparable. As a scholar, I have two problems with this.
First, I have to tell you more about my experience in anthropology. The way I was trained, the project of defining domains like the political, the social, the economic, the religious, has its origins in 19th century thinkers and persisted in anthropology utnil fifty or sixty years ago. Today - or at least, this is what I was taught - most anthropologists, and generally mediocre ones, believe that there is such a thing as "religion" (I mean, as a universal category) and an anthropologist can go any where in the world and do a study of "the religion of the X." Most anthropologists (again, so I was taught) today see these categories (religion, politics, economics) as Western categories that emerged with modernity and the reorganization of European society with the breakdown of feudalism and the Catholic Church. A good deal of the most cutting edge research in anthropology involves finding "sets of beliefs and practices" that do not neatly fit into any of these Western categories. The best of this research shows how sets of beliefs and practices found in non-Western societies challenge and undermine such Western categories. Durkheim was and remains an important thinker and I would advise any student in the social sciences to read his work, but within anthropology it is at best of historical value. His positivist project, for better or worse, has largely been abandoned by academic anthropology. Anyway, I may be wrong but I wondered if you were not presupposing that "religion" is a category with universal applicability. Because of my training, I start off with the opposite assumption. I do not assume that when I go to my fieldsite that the beliefs and practices I will encounter can or should be classified as "religious," "political" etc. I was taught that doing so usually leads to misunderstanding.
Second, based on my research of Judaism, I have learned that there is a strong argument that most of Judaism developed in Babylonia and Persia. The five books of Moses, according to tradition, were revealed to him in Sinai by God; most historians I have read believe that they derive from a diverse set of oral traditions from many parts of the Near East, from the span of the Fertile Crescent, fron the Nile to the Persian Gulf. But that they were not codified as "the five books of Moses" or "the Torah" until the Jews were in exile in Babylon (and they were brought back to Palestine by Ezra). Similarly, while the Hebrew Bible was canonized in Palestine, much of it was written in Babylonia/Persia. The bulk of classical Jewish literature, the midrash and Talmud, were written in Babylonia/Persia. There is a strong claim that Zoroastrianism had a greater influence over Judaism than Hellenistic culture. My point is that Judaism cannot be viewed as a fundamentally Western religion. Even as much as we can say "religion," it is profoundly non-Western. I think that many Christians - and thus readers of Wikipedia (I am not referring to you as I do not know you background) believe that they understand Judaism because they believe that they are the heris of the covenant between Abraham and God; they are the new Israel. But Christianity is in many ways a Western religion - even "Eastern" Orthodoxy is "Western" i.e. Hellenic (Ethiopian and Syrian Orthodox Christianity having been marginalized a long time ago). But Judaism is an Asian religion. And Judaism, more broadly speaking, emerged long before Islam and Christianity, when a different cultural landscape dominated Asia. When Judaism emerged religions and nations were isomorphic; each nation had its own god. Hellenistc civilization was responsible for many innovations, the claim to universal reason being one of them. And Christianity and Islam emerged in a post-Hellenistic landscape, as religions claiming not to represent a nation but to being universal.
There are two very important differences between Judaism on the one hand, and Christianity and Islam on the other. Judaism is non-credal, and Judaism does not claim this universality. Judaism still refers to a nationality or nationhood as much as a religion. This is something that I know from personal experience many Christians do not understand. They do not understand how one can be Jewish regardless of ones beliefs and practices. It works both ways - I think very few jews understand Christianity.
This is not my argument. My point is not that Jews and Christians do not understand each other, that is a banal point. My point is that Jews and Christians face major obstacles understanding one another because they are so different. And that is what is at stake here. I have read research - including a book by Daniel Boyarin, a professor of jewish studies at university of California Berkeley, who is quoted in the article, who has claimed that Judaism, because it developed before the Western categoriy of religion developed, does not easily fit that category. Boyarin claims that Judaism also challenges Western notions of the nation and ethnicity.
One editor has said that he understand that Jews are also an ethnic group (and of course we have a separate article on jews). I have no problem with one article on Jews and one on Judaism. Bt I think it is bad scholarship to say htat one article is on ethnicity (or culture) and the other on religion. This is like an anthropologist going to Melanesia and saying "This is their religion, that is their politics, here is their economy." Maybe sixty or seventy years ago anthroppologists did that. But even the best ones from back then argued: "here is something that is neither religion nor politics. Or we can say it is both but both in a way that is indivisible, in a way that breaks down Western categories of religion and politics."
I have never said that judaism is not a religion, or that there are no Jews who consider it a religion. Napolean told Jews in france that they could have equal rights only if they abandoned all claims to nationhood and abandoned all civil law, keeping only the religious, and abandoned the prohibition against intermarriage. French jews agreed. It is historically accurate to say that after 1806 French judaism was a religion, period. In the United States reform jews issued a platform declaring that they too would abandon all national claims and consider themselves a religion. it is accurate to say that Reform Judaism (at least, before the seventies, or eighties - things have been changing) was a religion, period. But Conservative Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, and certain branches of Orthodox Judaism refused to abandon those claims, and insisted that Judaism is not a religion in the same way that Christianity and Islam are.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and must use reliable sources in an NPOV way. That is all i ask for. I am sorry, Nishidani, but it really appears to me to be some kind of prejudice to insist a priori that Christianity, Islam and Judaism are similar enough that they can all be named "religions." Such claims disregard the reliable sources. Some elements of the Jewish nation, following the Enlightenment, considered judaism to be a religion just like Christianity and Islam. But other elements have explicitly argued against this position. And before 1806, notable historians have argued that judaism was not a religion like Christianity or Islam. Christians or Muslims may have viewed Judaism that way for the same reason that 19th century Europeans argued over whether shamanism is religion or magic, insisting that it has to fit one of their categories. But anthropologists today do not consider shamanism to fit either Western category. Why should we assume or insist that Judaism has to? As i said, some Jewish authorities DO accept this position. Many others do not. How can any editor who accepts NPOV insist that we accept the first position but reject the second? I truly do not understand. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I see no need to make a larger argument about the way we use the word "religious" or "religion." My larger argument - PelleSmith is correct that there is a lager argumnt at stake - is that our articles should represent significant views from notable sources. That's all! If significant views from notable sources say that several Jewish movements do not consider judaism to be a religion, we have to include that in our articles. it does not matter what my personal point of view is. As to Christianity, I hold the same policy: we should say what significant views in notable sources say. I have not edited the Christianity article because i have not researched Christianity. if i did and I saw that significant views from notable sources argued that Christianity (or Buddhism, or Hinduism) is not a religion, OF COURSE we would be wrong just to call it a religion. Why is this so hard for people to comprehend? I know both of you have been editors in long, good tanding. Don't you know our NPOV, RS, and NOR policies? With all due respect some of you (certainly SkyWriter) seem to have strong feelings about religion, and think I dotoo. But what you or I think about religion is irrelevant.
This all started because Blizzard thought that since Christianity and Islam are defined as religions, so should judaism. Do you guys honestly not see how profoundly wrong this is? Articles should define their subject as a religion because significant views from mainstream sources say so. The second paragraph of the Judaism article calls judaism a religion. i have never, ever, ever, deleted or changed that. Wanna know why? Because it is supported by significant views from reliable sources. But I do insist that Judaism not be identified just as a religion. Wanna know why? Because that view is cntradicted by significant views from reliable sources. Why on earth should anyone think that the Hinduism article has to say something because the Christianity article says something? Whatever the hinduism article says should reflect significant views from reliable sources. Every article should be based on significant views from reliable sources. Where have I ever departed from this view? Slrubenstein | Talk 19:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
p.s. SlR, don't take the analogy with Gobineau badly. The lately lamented C Lévi-Strauss held him in the highest esteem as a writer. Nishidani ( talk) 22:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't take the comment about Gobineau personally. Your point is I am falling back on Orientalist categories. I admit that the way I wrote invited that critique. Actually I would say that we need to be just as cautious about how Europe has constructed Judaism as its Other, as talking about the influence of Western culture on Judiaam. I have provided a few specific examples of where Judaism clearly is a religion. In the examples I provided, this was the result of Western infuence. I do not think that this make Reform Judaism "inauthentic" and I have no problem talking about Judaism as Western as much as it is Eastern. If anything this supports my point that Judaism does not easily fit many categories, that is because judaism takes many different forms. Now I realize you could make the same argument about Christianity (Irish, Polish, Italian) - I'd only say - bravo, now go and improve the Christianity article. My point about Judaism developing in Persia is not to make Judaism inscrutable to Western eyes but to provide a precise historical reason for why people could misunderstand features of Judaism ... it is also to point the way to understanding for example the way Urbach has used knowledge of Zoroastrianism to help explain certain features of Judaism.
I am not sure that we need to pick which of the two views Pelle acknowledges (and I have to admit based on earlier comments of his it was not clear to me that he acknowledged these points) should come first. I know Pelle says religion comes first. Why not Civilization? Why not nation? I see sources that support those as going first. Pelle seems convinced that religion coming first is the mainstream view. But I think that there may not be a mainstream view - we may just need to distinguish between the range of views among Jewish leaders, and views among historians, and views among scholars of religion. My argument all along has NOT been that an "anti-religious" view has to "come first." As i have explained, I chose the words "sets of beliefs and practices" because that phrase CAN refer to religion and it CAN refer to other things. I was trying not to put religion second, but rather to come up with phrasing that is more inclusive i.e. can sigifiy religion OR nation OR civilization. I was not trying to put any one first. But it seems like Pelle insists on putting one first. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
You keep insisting that the language I use to describe Judaism has something to do whith Christianity. I don't see why it should, or why you should think so. Once you and others conceeded that reliable sources actually were saying what I said they were saying (that some major Jewish leaders either did not view Judaism as a religion, or did not view it as just a eligion, and that historians like Cohen also considered the meaning of Judaism too complex to be reduced to one term), your next tactic was to say that my points about Judaism apply to Christianity as well. Ho hum. If they apply to Christianity, well, why not edit the Christianity article accordingly? What is this need for uniqueness, difference, singularity? This is not my need, itis yours - this all started with Blizzard insisting that Christianity and Judaism be described the same way. My point was not that Judaism is unique, just that the reliable sources about Judaism say that Judaism cannot be described the same way as Blizzard, you, others describe Christianity. Now you tell me that Christianity can be described the same way as I describe Judaism. Well, if that is what the reliable sources on Christianity say about Christianity you have to go and change the Christianity article. Does that mean its lead will become more like the Judaism lead? That won't bother me!
Above, I was only trying to explain to you why historians of Judaism on't reduce it simply to religion which you hld Christianity was, which entailed me suggesting ways in which Judaism was different from Christianity. But if reliable sources on Christianity say it to cannot be reduced to religion, please change the Christianity intro. The point is neither to fetishize difference or sameness, as you seem to wish to do. The point is to follow reliable sources by puting all significant views in our articles. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I have to tell you more about my experience in anthropology. The way I was trained, the project of defining domains like the political, the social, the economic, the religious, has its origins in 19th century thinkers and persisted in anthropology utnil fifty or sixty years ago.
At least, this is what I was taught - most anthropologists, and generally mediocre ones, believe that there is such a thing as "religion" (I mean, as a universal category) and an anthropologist can go any where in the world and do a study of "the religion of the X."
Most anthropologists (again, so I was taught) today see these categories (religion, politics, economics) as Western categories that emerged with modernity and the reorganization of European society with the breakdown of feudalism and the Catholic Church.
'A good deal of the most cutting edge research in anthropology involves finding "sets of beliefs and practices" that do not neatly fit into any of these Western categories. The best of this research shows how sets of beliefs and practices found in non-Western societies challenge and undermine such Western categories.
Durkheim was and remains an important thinker and I would advise any student in the social sciences to read his work, but within anthropology it is at best of historical value. His positivist project, for better or worse, has largely been abandoned by academic anthropology.
I may be wrong but I wondered if you were not presupposing that "religion" is a category with universal applicability.
Because of my training, I start off with the opposite assumption. I do not assume that when I go to my fieldsite that the beliefs and practices I will encounter can or should be classified as "religious," "political" etc. I was taught that doing so usually leads to misunderstanding.
Second, based on my research of Judaism, I have learned that there is a strong argument that most of Judaism developed in Babylonia and Persia. The five books of Moses, according to tradition, were revealed to him in Sinai by God; most historians I have read believe that they derive from a diverse set of oral traditions from many parts of the Near East, from the span of the Fertile Crescent, fron the Nile to the Persian Gulf. But that they were not codified as "the five books of Moses" or "the Torah" until the Jews were in exile in Babylon (and they were brought back to Palestine by Ezra).
The bulk of classical Jewish literature, the midrash and Talmud, were written in Babylonia/Persia. There is a strong claim that Zoroastrianism had a greater influence over Judaism than Hellenistic culture. My point is that Judaism cannot be viewed as a fundamentally Western religion.
Even as much as we can say "religion," it is profoundly non-Western. I think that many Christians - and thus readers of Wikipedia (I am not referring to you as I do not know you background) believe that they understand Judaism because they believe that they are the heris of the covenant between Abraham and God; they are the new Israel. But Christianity is in many ways a Western religion - even "Eastern" Orthodoxy is "Western" i.e. Hellenic (Ethiopian and Syrian Orthodox Christianity having been marginalized a long time ago). But Judaism is an Asian religion.
Judaism, more broadly speaking, emerged long before Islam and Christianity, when a different cultural landscape dominated Asia. When Judaism emerged religions and nations were isomorphic; each nation had its own god.
Hellenistc civilization was responsible for many innovations, the claim to universal reason being one of them. And Christianity and Islam emerged in a post-Hellenistic landscape, as religions claiming not to represent a nation but to being universal.
There are two very important differences between Judaism on the one hand, and Christianity and Islam on the other. Judaism is non-credal, and Judaism does not claim this universality.
Judaism still refers to a nationality or nationhood as much as a religion. This is something that I know from personal experience many Christians do not understand. They do not understand how one can be Jewish regardless of ones beliefs and practices. It works both ways - I think very few jews understand Christianity.
'My point is not that Jews and Christians do not understand each other, that is a banal point. My point is that Jews and Christians face major obstacles understanding one another because they are so different.
Daniel Boyarin, a professor of jewish studies at university of California Berkeley, who is quoted in the article, who has claimed that Judaism, because it developed before the Western categoriy of religion developed, does not easily fit that category. Boyarin claims that Judaism also challenges Western notions of the nation and ethnicity.
'One editor has said that he understand that Jews are also an ethnic group (and of course we have a separate article on jews).
This is like an anthropologist going to Melanesia and saying "This is their religion, that is their politics, here is their economy." Maybe sixty or seventy years ago anthroppologists did that. But even the best ones from back then argued: "here is something that is neither religion nor politics. Or we can say it is both but both in a way that is indivisible, in a way that breaks down Western categories of religion and politics."
Napolean told Jews in france that they could have equal rights only if they abandoned all claims to nationhood and abandoned all civil law, keeping only the religious, and abandoned the prohibition against intermarriage. French jews agreed. It is historically accurate to say that after 1806 French judaism was a religion, period.
Conservative Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, and certain branches of Orthodox Judaism insisted that Judaism is not a religion in the same way that Christianity and Islam are.
I am sorry, Nishidani, but it really appears to me to be some kind of prejudice to insist a priori that Christianity, Islam and Judaism are similar enough that they can all be named "religions."
'the courage required to create some version of a Judaism without religion,’ in his Judaism without religion: a postmodern Jewish possibility, University Press of America, 2001 p.ix
‘In modern usage the terms ‘Judaism’ and ‘ Torah’ (doctrine) are virtually interchangeable, but the former has on the whole a more humanistic nuance while “Torah” calls attention to the divine, revelatory aspects. The term “secular Judaism” – used to describe the philosophy of Jews who accept specific Jewish values but who reject the Jewish religion – is not, therefore, self-contradictory as the term ‘secular Torah” would be. (In modern Hebrew, however, the word torah is also used for “doctrine” or “theory,” e.g., “the Marxist theory”, and in this sense it would also be logically possible to speak of a secular torah.) A further difference in nuance, stemming from the first, is that “Torah” refers to the eternal, static elements in Jewish life and thought while “Judaism” refers to the more creative, dynamic elements as manifested in the varied civilizations and cultures of the Jews at different states of their history, such as Hellenistic Judaism, rabbinic Judaism, medieval Judaism, and, from the nineteenth century, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism. (The term 'Yidishkeyt' is the Yiddish equivalent of “Judaism” but has a less universalistic connotation and refers more specifically to the folk elements of the faith).’ Rabbi Louis Jacobs, ‘Judaism: The Religion, Philosophy, and Way of Life of The Jews’’ (Encyclopaedia Judaica) reprinted in Jacob Neusner, Alan Jeffery Avery-Peck (eds.) The Blackwell reader in Judaism, Wiley-Blackwell, 2001 pp.3f.
was not Jewish. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Nishidani, how can you comment on my criteria for arriving at this conclusion? here as with the other topic on which we have disagreed you seem too easily to jump to conclusions about what I think. What is your source for saying Wittgenstein was Jewish? You never provided any sources for your views about Judaism and religion, is this another case where you have views but no sources? Slrubenstein | Talk 23:57, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
No, I don't think so. About Wittgenstein: I thought Monk's biography showed that his grandparents had converted to Christianity (certainly before he was born) and that Wittgenstein, reared as a Catholic, never identified as a Jew. If I a misremembering I would be thrilled to be corrected, but a page number would help. Dreams are notoriously complicated to interpret and I hope you have more evidence than a dream for your claim. About me: it was you who wrote "Slrubenstein's criteria for arriving at the same conclusion are different, ..." which led me to belived that you thought you know my criteria. Since I did not state my criteria I wondered how you knew. You seem to take it as some sign of insecurity that I ask. But is it possible that you are one of those insecure intellectuals who always will deflect a simple question with obfuscation? Slrubenstein | Talk 12:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
'Since I did not state my criteria I wondered how you knew.'
'Opinions vary as to what degree of concealment there was about his true background. Perhaps the most important fact is that Wittgenstein himself felt that he was hiding something - felt he was allowing people to think of him as an aristocrat when in fact he was a Jew.' (Vintage ed.1991 p.279). Nishidani ( talk) 18:47, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't know if you saw it but just the other day the NY Times had a discussion of the new full translation of Hobbes' Leviathan in Hebrew. [2] Apparently there was already a Hebrew translation but it left out the last two sections and much of the intersection between belief and political organization. I couldn't help but think of that after reading your part of the Judaism debate here. -- JGGardiner ( talk) 09:10, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, fuck it. I suppose, since I complained and tried to strongarm others into doing it, that I'd at least better give some notes. I've used the German article as a template, but it has quite a few errors. I've misplaced, or another visitor has stolen it, my copy of Canetti's memoirs where Steiner is written about, so can't use that source. I can't remember which of Murdoch's early novels portrays him in fictional form, or whether the figure of the intense intellectual in her novels owes more to Canetti than to Steiner. I'll try to look up my notes on the backleaves of her mid 50s work for something on this. I don't like adding anything to WP since I can't edit the only area, a trash-heap of poor POV editing, where I could really be useful. In my book, that's like helping the rich, while the poor go begging. But, you can use the stuff below as a basis for the future article, when time allows. Best wishes JGG and Nab. It was a pleasure to edit with you two guys, pushing useful shit uphill against the runny landslides of loquacious madness and wildcat editing that was the norm at the Gaza war page! You can see here many points of contact with what Slrubenstein asserted. That's why Steiner came to mind. He said it much better. I agree, on this, with neither, but that is not the point, when writing a wiki article.
Franz Baermann Steiner (b 12 October 1909 in the town of Karlín (the later suburb of Karolinethal [1]), just outside Prague, Bohemia d. 27. November 1952 in Oxford) was an ethnologist, polymath [2], essayist, aphorist [3] and poet. He was familiar, apart from German, Yiddish and Czech, with Greek and Latin, classical and modern Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Armenian, Persian, Malay, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, six other Slavonic languages, Scandinavian languages and Dutch. [4]
His paternal family hailed from Tachov in Western Bohemia, his father was a small retail businessman dealing in cloth and leather goods. His mother’s from Prague. Neither side were practitioners of Judaism, his father was an atheist, but he received elements of a religious education at school. He belonged to the last generation of the German, and Jewish, minority in Prague of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire who were to make distinctive contributions to German literature. From his early childhood he was a close friend of Hans Günther Adler. In 1920 he entered the German State Gymnasium in Štepánská Street, where Max Brod and Franz Werfel had studied [5]. He joined the Roter Studentenbund (Red Student Union) in 1926. He was attracted to Marxism early, and his fascination lasted four years, until 1930, and also to political Zionism. With regard to the latter, he may have been influenced, during his year in Jerusalem, by the Brit Shalom circle, which espoused a rapprochement between Jews and Arabs [6]. He enrolled at the German University of Prague in late 1928 for coursework on Semitic languages, with a minor in ethnology, while pursuing as an external student courses in Siberian ethnology and Turkish studies, at the Czech language Charles University of Prague. He studied Arabic abroad for a year, in 1930-1, at the Hebrew University in Palestine [7]. In Jerusalem, after some time staying with an Arab family, he was forced to move out by the British, and took up digs with the Jewish philosopher Hugo Bergman, a key figure in the development of Prague Zionism, a schoolfriend of Franz Kafka's, and an intimate of Martin Buber, Judah Leon Magnes and Gershom Sholem. [8]. It was from this circle during his stay that he developed views akin to those of Brit Shalom on Jewish-Arab cooperation, though he remained suspicious of fundamentalist Islam. [9]
It was from this intense period, that Steiner developed the idea, already represent in the work of the sociologist
Werner Sombart, who had stressed the oriental character of Jews, that he was ‘an oriental born in the West’.
[10]. On this premise was grounded his later critique of the imperial cast of Western anthropological writing, as was his sympathy for
hermeneutic techniques that would recover native terms for the way non-Westerners experienced their world. He obtained his doctorate in
linguistics 1935 with a thesis on
Arabic word formation (Studien zur arabischen Wurzelgeschichte: ‘Studies on the History of Arabic Roots'). He then moved to study at the
University of Vienna to specialize in
Arctic ethnology Cite error: A <ref>
tag is missing the closing </ref>
(see the
help page).. During his
exile in England he was taken under the wing by
Elias Canetti, whom he had already met in Vienna, who was based in London. During the war he studied under
Evans-Pritchard, while in turn deeply influencing him and many lecturers and students of that circle including
Meyer Fortes,
Mary Douglas,
Louis Dumont, M.N.Srinivas, Godfrey Lienhardt,
Ernest Gellner.
Iris Murdoch, though she had met him briefly in 1941, fell in love with him in the summer of 1951.
He was appointed Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Oxford in 1950, a position he held until his premature death two years later. He is mainly known for his posthumous collection Taboo, composed of lectures he delivered on that subject, after being persuaded by Evans-Pritchards to teach this, rather than, as planned, a series of lectures on Marx [11]
His thought is characterized by an intense commitment to the right of self-determination of non-Western peoples. His analytical technique constantly exposed the biases of the anthropological tradition which, down to his day, had endeavoured to describe these peoples. He included his own ethnic group, the
Jews, in this category.
[12]. His influence was informal and vast, within the tradition of post-war British anthropology, but is rarely attested in the literature because he published little.Cite error: A <ref>
tag is missing the closing </ref>
(see the
help page).
Shy, whimsical, and endlessly curious, he was regarded by many of his contemporaries as ‘intellectual’s intellectual’ for the extraordinary multidisciplinary erudition he had at his fingertips. [13]. His family was exterminated during the Holocaust. He died of a heart-attack, Iris Murdoch thought that it was the result of his heart-break over the fact of the Holocaust. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Oxford.
cleaned up
here, but I dont see you citing Steiner (2000) anywhere, and as I cannot read German I wont be able to add anything from it. Anything you wish to add before it goes in the mainspace? And do you have a source for Iris Murdoch thought that it was the result of his heart-break over the fact of the Holocaust? That would be a good dyk hook.
nableezy -
18:54, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Yep. Edit-conflict, which is only to be expected between the two of us. I tried to post a minute ago the following, but I'd advise you to enjoy Saturday afternoon, watch some cricket, play pool, drown in a pool, something like that. No one should work from Saturday to Friday, esp. Saturday.
'Cleaned up'+'my momma taught me to be respectful to the elderly and the infirm.'
'Franz was certainly one of Hitler's victims' Iris Murdoch, cited in Franz Baermann Steiner, Am stürzenden Pfad: gesammelte Gedichte, (hrsg. Jeremy Adler), Wallstein Verlag, 2000 p.433
There is still a red link in that article. Taboo (book) does not have an article. If you were interested, I started with a few sources available on JSTOR (let me know if you want pdfs) here. There are a lot more reviews available, I just got tired of filling out the templates. More than a few of the sources in the Steiner article could also be used, and I promise I will put in my fair share of work on this one (and maybe JGG will feel compelled to do the same). So, if you wanted to give more of your time to this place, a decent article could be made. nableezy - 11:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Well spotted with the complete list of British journalists - I had no idea there were that many pages here. This is an interesting category/list as well. Anyway I'm going to steer clear of it now, for obvious reasons - I think a general comment about journalism and/or general notability is fine, but anything more probably risks someone diving in on either of us. It'll be interesting to see what happens - there's a real risk it'll be wiped I guess, because closing admins just tend to count votes and take as read any negative comments about lack of notability. They often don't actually take an independent look - even spending two seconds to do a "Jonathan Cook" +Nazareth Google search would reveal how widely he is cited and his work reproduced online, as well as his status as one of the few Western journalists - if not the only one - permanently based in any Palestinian areas. Just because he is often published in fairly radical outlets - or, the horror, foreign ones - doesn't negate the notability of his writing. An interesting comparison might be made with this AfD, where a couple of passing mentions in one or two media sources of an organisation whose existence or real nature is doubtful, were deemed enough to save it.-- Nickhh ( talk) 15:39, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I think you know your participation in that discussion is a violation of your topic ban. Please delete your comment there. Mr. Hicks The III ( talk) 17:22, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I've requested clarification here: [7] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Canadian Monkey ( talk • contribs) 20:49, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
an article on Franz Steiner I, Nableezy and JGGardiner wrote up rapidly should read an article that I wrote up rapidly while Nableezy and JGGardiner sat and watched quietly. nableezy - 03:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
that reads 'that Akira Iwasaki was the only film critic arrested by the ideological police in wartime Japan? '
That sounds like something Iwasaki's bio claimed. Ovcer 60,000 people were arrested and convicted for thought crimes from 1925-1945, and the idea that there was only one film critic among them (a large number were from cultural and intellectual groups) is odd. Indeed, for one, Kamei Fumio (亀井文夫) was arrested by the thought cops in wartime Japan, and he was, apart from his film-making, at one time a documentary film critic.It therefore seems a bit odd to say there is a substantial difference between a 'documentary film critic' and a 'film critic', a distinction required if the remark awarded today's DYK is to stand up. Nishidani ( talk) 20:37, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Nishidani, I have been remiss for not having thanked you for putting the Hugo Salus article up. It was fun researching and discovering the confusion between the two Adlers. I got to research Hans Adler and added quite a bit of material to his bio. Also I enjoyed our discussion with respect to assimilation and Jewish nationalism in European thought. I don't think it violates our respective topic bans as long as we are not discussing it with respect to the Israeli-Arab conflict. I hope to expand on it (a bit) later on. That is an interesting time for Jews, and others, in Eastern Europe, pre-WWII. Stellarkid ( talk) 03:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Materialscientist ( talk) 06:09, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
(I have italicized part of the text that follows, to indicate what I find important in these remarks, which a nuisance persists in plunking on my page, despite my protests. I had earlier eliminated remarks, whose faux-amicable tone I prefer not to engage with, since I find this whole campaign distasteful. The editor refuses to take that hint. I hope that with this, the intrusive editor will desist. I will note in fine that in his last reversion he actually elided a gloss I myself made, rather ironical, since he protests at my italicizing, without censorship, of his own unwelcome remarks. I should not be forced, by someone who is formally asking for my ban to be extended, to edit-war on my own page. Could I prevail on any casual reader of this page to undo any further interventions by Mr. Sword Shaft on this page. Thank you. Nishidani ( talk) 16:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC))
Hello. Just a brief note to mention that I filed an arbitration enforcement that relates to you. See here. I regret that it came to this, especially given that we were at the end of the day both on the same side of the issue at the AfD. But as you know from my comments at the AfD, I was troubled by what I viewed as willful flouting of topic bans, and related editing activity. Thanks.-- Epeefleche ( talk) 16:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Nishi, your own time would be better spent not arguing with inanity. nableezy - 17:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Epeefleche has been caught out as is a blatant, multivolume sockuser, for the record, as bad as NoCal. Nishidani ( talk) 13:53, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
nice to see you back good sir. Happy editing!!! hope you're well. -- Steve, Sm8900 ( talk) 17:39, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Aaargh, time and happenstance are cruel, and my large ungainly dictionary-with-microscope have rendered me unable to update a current FAC I am working on --> Cockatoo, and won't be able to look up the origianl malay meaning for a bit (like, 12 hours I think). If you arew around and have a minute I'd be insanely grateful for a doublecheck. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 03:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
![]() |
Added Sauce Award
I award this Added Sauce award to Nishidani for great efforts in hunting down sourcing my lexical queries (and articles are always better with sauces/sources). Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 14:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC) |
Aah, I crack myself up sometimes :) Casliber ( talk · contribs) 14:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Hello, stumbled onto your page from a link in FfD, figured I'd let you know that your user page is teetering on the edge of WP:NOTSOAPBOX territory. Consider moving this into a subpage so that people clicking on your name do not automatically find themselves in your quote box. Generally, the user page itself is about the user, not his or her beliefs. Nuclear Lunch Detected Hungry? 23:21, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
'Generally, the user page itself is about the user, not his or her beliefs.'
(I have italicized part of the text that follows, to indicate what I find important in these remarks, which a nuisance persists in plunking on my page, despite my protests. I had earlier eliminated remarks, whose faux-amicable tone I prefer not to engage with, since I find this whole campaign distasteful. The editor refuses to take that hint. I hope that with this, the intrusive editor will desist. I will note in fine that in his last reversion he actually elided a gloss I myself made, rather ironical, since he protests at my italicizing, without censorship, of his own unwelcome remarks. I should not be forced, by someone who is formally asking for my ban to be extended, to edit-war on my own page. Could I prevail on any casual reader of this page to undo any further interventions by Mr. Sword Shaft on this page. Thank you. Nishidani ( talk) 16:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC))
Hello. Just a brief note to mention that I filed an arbitration enforcement that relates to you. See here. I regret that it came to this, especially given that we were at the end of the day both on the same side of the issue at the AfD. But as you know from my comments at the AfD, I was troubled by what I viewed as willful flouting of topic bans, and related editing activity. Thanks.-- Epeefleche ( talk) 16:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Nishi, your own time would be better spent not arguing with inanity. nableezy - 17:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
I recently obtained Saul B. Cohen and Nurit Kliot's detailed essay, ‘Place-Names in Israel's Ideological Struggle over the Administered Territories,’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 82, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), pp. 653-680, which has far more detail than I managed to use in my essay. While studying it closely, I reviewed that essay as posted above on this page, in order to update my offline, more complete version. With the version here, of course, it happens to touch on the I/P area, and I cannot alter it: it will remain fossilized, given the I/P ban. I hope no harm is seen, or provocation inferred, or intent to wriggle around the ban suspected, in my using the occasion of this private review against a new source, to (a) add to the bibliography, and (b) provide links that I overlooked were available to the original essay. A lot of silliness can be raised by nitpicking. Despite strong temptations to finish the essay, I have refrained from modifying it, in compliance with my understanding of the ban. But links and the odd bibliographical note will not, I hope, be taken as an opportunity for malicious prosecution. Nishidani ( talk) 11:40, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
Heh, funny how one meanders around this place - I did tinker with coffee some time ago and now it appears a flash mob by the name of the FA-Team has descended like a flock of proverbials onto the caffeinated article (just as I am trying to reduce my caffeine intake :))...anyways, there is a brief etymology section, and thought who knows? You might have some interesting eruditeness to add :) Casliber ( talk · contribs) 14:01, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
'The European languages generally appear to have got the name from Turkish kahveh, about 1600, perh. through It(alian). caffè;. . .The English coffee, Dutch koffie, earlier German coffee, koffee, Russian kophe, kopheĭ, have o, apparently representing earlierau from ahw or ahv.
'Some have conjectured that it is a foreign, perh. African, word disguised and have thought it connected with the name of Kaffa in the south Abyssinian highland, where the plant seems to be native. But of this there is no evidence, and the name qahwah is not given to the berry or plant, which is called bunn, the native name in Shoa being būn.'
The first reference to "coffee" in the English language, in the form chaoua, dates to 1598. In English and other European languages, coffee derives from the Ottoman Turkish kahveh, via the Italian caffè. The Turkish word in turn was borrowed from Arabic: قهوة, qahwah. Arab lexicographers maintain that qahwah originally meant a kind of wine, and referred its etymology, in turn, to the verb qahiya, signifying "to have no appetite", [1], since this beverage was thought to dull one's hunger. Several alternative etymologies exist which hold that the Arab form may disguise a loanword from an Ethiopian or African source, suggesting Kaffa, the highland in southwestern Ethiopia, since the plant is indigenous to that area. [2] [3] Best, Nishidani ( talk) 16:13, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I have filed a request to amend the West Bank - Judea and Samaria arbitration case. See here. nableezy - 20:42, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't know what to say. I was only joking when I said I'd have to watch over the Steiner article when you two were gone.
I was looking through my first messages to Nableezy because I remember saying something to him about this back then and I came across one where I agreed with your advice to him. [8] -- JGGardiner ( talk) 20:03, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
I have tried amending the Arb amendment in the hope that it would get through, but it seems that they want individuals to tug their own forelocks. Ah well.-- Peter cohen ( talk) 21:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi Nishidani,
Each time I "pop out", you decide to leave wikipédia. I hope there is no "cause to effect" link. ;-)
Here is a book that may interest you :
fr:Gilber Achcar, Les Arabes et la Shoah. La guerre israélo-arabe des récits, Sinbad, Actes Sud, 2009. The book will soon be published in English.
You can read a description here. It is a complex study for a very difficult topic (and I am mitigated (= 'I have mixed feelings'? Nishidani) by some analysis) but it is definitely worth reading. There are also 3 large sections dedicated to Amin al-Husseini. Amitiés,
Ceedjee (
talk)
09:45, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm sorry if I've somehow offended you Nishidani. Tiamut talk 23:07, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Oh dear, and here I was (after trying not to go near the issue of exclusivity of Ethiopianness of the Oromo with an ethnographic bargepole) coming with some fun etymologies...anything to add to
brumby, and Killer whale Orca Killer Whale
Orca...thought these might be convoluted enough to pique your interest....
Casliber (
talk ·
contribs)
23:16, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
I know you aren't allowed to reply, and I also know it's unseemly to gloat, but you might find the sub-thread ending with this post of mine amusing. http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Ariel_(city)&diff=336461595&oldid=336460838 -- Peter cohen ( talk) 20:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
I almost mentioned Genesis earlier. Because God's penis would be sort of like Adam's navel. He'd have no need for it. Not that he's told us about anyway. And the foreskin even less so. I thought that was one of your better puns though. I was trying to think of a Deluge one to go with it but I'm just too tired. Maybe something will come in my sleep. Cheers. -- JGGardiner ( talk) 11:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism#Shakespeare_Authorship_Question. This is nothing but promotion. Is there any Wikipedia body that has jurisdiction over this? If I jumped in and deleted it I'd get blocked. Tom Reedy ( talk) 02:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Now, here is an interesting debate on and article - Illegal logging in Madagascar - see Talk:Illegal logging in Madagascar/GA1 - there has been a discussion on what the scope of the article should be..but now a conundrum about 'deforestation' vs 'forest management'..... Casliber ( talk · contribs) 23:32, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
That's an easy one. 'Deforestation', as opposed to 'Deafterstation' came from German slang used among immigrants building railway infrastructure through the wooded areas of the Eastern Coast of USA in the 18th century. . . . Nishidani ( talk) 23:42, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I don't know what sin you think you may have committed with regard to my name on EdJohnson's page. I am of course a true-believer in Stratfordian cause, being in the pay of the Warwickshire tourist industry. However I will apologise in advance that I will not be able to contribute much in the next week at least. I will be away in rural France for the next few weeks. My only access to the internet will be the archaic computer in the local Marie, which many "authorship researchers" believe de Vere wrote the ur-Hamlet. Paul B ( talk) 18:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Smatprt ( talk) 07:18, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I only got involved in this business because I noticed your name in a heading at ANI. I hope that you aren't risking a second topic ban for waving that sword of truth around too close to some rather long noses.
Do you have any idea on who is operating the various sockpuppets that have appeared at the dispute pages. Being new to the area, I haven't got a hang of the mannerisms of the various antagonists. However various accounts do look suspect. Sources offline suggest some might be meatpuppets activated through a mailing list, but others do look like single purpose socks to me.
BTW, I'm disappointed that it is no longer suggested in the RFCU summary that Tom is "teeming" with you? I had imagined Nishidaniesque ectoplasm.-- Peter cohen ( talk) 15:03, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I am most disppointed that you abritrarily deleted the additions of Roper's Proving Shakespeare (2008) and Burgstahler's "Encrypted Testimony..." paper from the list of references/readings in the Oxfordian section. I does not seem that you even bothered to click on the links then provided in order to assess their quality at first hand. Roper's shows that Ben Jonson's inscription on the Startford Monument preserves an encrypted message in a Cardano Grille attesting that Oxford wrote "Shakespeare". This cipher conforms to all the Friedmans' criteria for a valid encryption and the solution is UNIQUE. Burgstahler's paper, which explains Roper's and others' recent work on proving Oxford = Shakespeare, has been presented at many scholarly meetings and is hosted on the University of Kansas webpage. I find it curious that the only reference to Roper on the entry contained an invalid URL, which I corrected at ref. 186. The fact that Roper's book has been ignored by the Stratfordians is not a testimony to the merits and quality of Roper's logic and evidence; it is testimony to the intractability of zealots. Phaedrus7 ( talk) 22:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your replies, which I am not prepared to answer in full right now, and, in any event, I realize your breadth of knowledge on this subject is greater than mine; but I have read Roper's book Proving Shakespeare and believe that skeptics ignore its contents at their peril. The Cardano grille cipher in Ben Jonson's text on the Stratford Monument, discovered by David Roper and described in his Proving Shakespeare (2008), meets all the criteria set forth by the Friedmans for what constitutes a valid cipher and, as I mentioned before, the solution is unique: there are no other chance solutions as can be the case with, e.g., equal letter spacing "bible code" solutions; yet so far no cryptologist has deigned to evaluate this discovery, the evident feeling being that there can be no such valid cipher and therefore there is no need to evaluate any--at least that was the sense conveyed by mathematician and arch-skeptic Norman Levitt, and others, in emails to me in early 2009. Since both Stratfordians and Oxfordians are able to "explain away" most, if not all, of the biographical evidence dispositive to their case, it seems to me that the unique solution to Ben Jonson's cipher on the Stratford Monument is due respect, regardless how firmly held prior positions and opinions may be. Phaedrus7 ( talk) 17:05, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Your further comments are most welcome and applicable to my interests in a few select "fringe" theories, some of which are very valid subjects for investigation/research whose validity is rejected almost out-of-hand by the "experts" in the fields being challenged. The prime example for me currently is the rejection by many scientists of the Younger Dryas Boundary Event 12,900 B.P. as the result of a cometary impact over the Laurentian ice sheet then covering the Great Lakes. See Sept. 2009 Sky & Telescope cover story and any number of recent cable TV documentaries on History Channel, Discovery, NGEO, etc. One very accomplished impact researcher declared that an impact of that magnitude would have such a low probability of happening that it cannot have happened so recently! This flies in the face of elementary statistics and the nature of the probability of independent events. In cases such as this the rejection from some scientists is so visceral that erroneous and nonsensical reasons are thrown out almost thoughtlessly. My first exposure to such a phenomenon was the Velikovsky Affair over the controversial publication in 1950 by Immanuel Velikovsky of Worlds in Collision which, to the satisfaction of many, was resolved when the Greenland ice cores in the 1980s showed conclusively that Velikovsky's claimed extra-terrestrial cataclysms did not happen; but the zealots did not accept this conclusion. Many of the early criticisms of Velikovsky were the sort which, as Carl Sagan was later fond of saying "did not survive close scrutiny", such as the notion that if Earth stopped rotating for Joshua when the Sun stood still that everything not tied down would "fly off the Earth"; but Earth does not rotate fast enough for this to happen. Later I was chagrined upon learning that the reaction of Velikovsky's diehard supporters was precisely the same as the flat earthers in the 19th century at the Old Bedford Canal in England whose six mile straight run was ideal for Alfred Russel Wallace to demonstrate the Earth's curvature to settle a flat earther challenge; but the flat earthers would not look through Wallace's surveyor's transit and did not accept the referee's verdict in Wallace's favor. The "peril" I referred to was the peril of Stratfordians being shown wrong. My background in Shakespeare is meager. I memorized a few sonnets in a high school English Lit. class. In my senior year of college I took the sophomore elective "Masterpieces of Literature" under a British grad student who was emphatic in the belief that it was invalid to subject Shakespeare's characters to Freudian analysis; "Antony and Cleopatra" was in the syllabus and I earned an "A" for my term paper inspired by Eric Auerbach's Mimesis, "Figure and Fulfillment in Dante's Paolo and Francesca". My interest in the Authorship Question goes back to the time I was involved with a high school English teacher who was A.B.D. in Chaucer studies at Univ. Georgia and The Atlantic published an article on it. I was surprised at how adamant she became over this question. It simply was not fit for polite discussion. And she would not discuss it. A few years later, Harper's published a forum discussing the Question with pro and con essays and the only thing that sticks in my mind from the letters printed later was the observation that great writers never retire as "Shakespeare" did when he returned to Stratford. Great writers write, regardless their immediate circumstances of fortune and health, with examples of great writers who wrote until the day they died despite all manner of hardship. The letter writer's point was that the man who retired to Stratford cannot have been the same person who wrote Shakespeare's literature. By contrast, it is fairly certain that de Vere wrote until the day he died. One point that sticks out in my mind from reading Roper's book a year ago is that the first version of "Titus Andronicus" can be shown to have been written in 1574 before de Vere went to Italy/France for a year, which is also too early for it to have been written by that Stratford fellow. I shall reply to your closing question to the best of my ability as soon as I can after looking into the matter. Phaedrus7 ( talk) 17:30, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
My comments today will be in two parts: several points that can be provided quickly followed by quotes of passages from Proving Shakespeare to reply to your questions about Drummond and the annotations in the Glasgow First Folio, which will take longer to type out. While not all that important but a notable omission from my earlier depiction of my background is the fact that prior to college I did read three Shakespeare plays: The Tempest, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. Since college I have also attended performances of several plays: The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Twelfth Night. I have also seen movies of several others plays including Henry V and Hamlet. In the course of finding the passages in Roger's book I intend to quote soon, I was reminded of two more quickie "facts" that argue in favor of Oxford: River Avon does not necessarily refer to the Stratford location because a second river Avon flows in Warwickshire, a locale significant in Oxford's life, and the association of Shakespeare with harbours in tribute has nothing to do with the Stratford fellow, but does allude to one of Oxford's official titles/duties in his career. Previously, I mentioned Titus Andronicus having been written in 1574 when the Stratford fellow was only eleven years old. For more on this matter, I invite you to read Roper's "Henry Peacham's Chronogram: The Dating of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus" < http://dlroper.shakespearians.com/henry_peacham.htm>. Finally here, read Roper's comments to me concerning Jonson's conversations with Drummond, which he has granted me permission to post:
conversations with Ben Jonson during the Christmas of 1618. Surely, these conversations are about Jonson and his opinions regarding both his contemporaries and their failings, and which stretch to many classical writers. He also has much to say about his own life. Elsewhere, Jonson's conversation is full of tittle-tattle, the sort of talk that would not have been out of place in the Mermaid.
Drummond. On one occasion Jonson says "Shakspear wanted Arte". Assuming Drummond reported this correctly (the original manuscripts are missing and present information is based upon copies) then it must be countered by Jonson's couplet in the First Folio, "Yet must I not give Nature all: Thy Art, / My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part." Jonson presumably wrote these lines soon after 1618, for they were published in 1623.
that Jonson mocked Shakespeare for bringing some men to shore from a shipwreck off the coast of Bohemia, which is landlocked and some 100 miles from the sea. I have been given to understand that older maps of Europe, which Oxford may have seen since cartography was Burghley's favourite subject, showed Bohemia when it once stretched to the coast. If your correspondent is wondering why Jonson referred to Shakespeare and not Oxford, it is necessary to understand the reason for Oxford's disgrace, and the fact that Jonson was in the employ of Oxford's son-in-law. Oxford's disgrace was a taboo subject, Burghley would have likely considered it as a serious threat to national security, which is why Jonson was compelled to conceal Oxford's authorship in Cardano's recently invented method for encrypting secrets.
Shakespeare: (1) Ben Jonson's Cardano grille encrypted into the inscription on the Stratford monument. (2) The identity of the rival poet and his poetry and to whom both rivals were addressing their verse, indicated by the 16th century usage of the second person singular, you, reserved for the nobility when addressing each other, (3) The date, 1574 on Henry Peacham's chronogram at the foot of the Titus document. (4) Thomas Thorpe's asyntactic dedication to Shake-speares Sonnets. Combined, they amount to proof likely to be acceptable in a court of law.
Did not explain the discovery space, whereas Tib. Nom De Vere' explains it quite nicely." Phaedrus7 ( talk) 20:16, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Roper's text concerning Drummond in Proving Shakespeare, pp. 426-7: "It has been said that if one gives a lie sufficient start, it will never be caught. The chase is on. It is time those who are concerned to see the truth prevail engage themselves to the fact that when a repressed people are struck dumb by autority, honest men will speak in the language of secrecy. "Ben Jonson was one of those to whom this refers. In his conversations to William Drummond (Conv., 1, 658), the Laird of hawthornden remarked: "of all styles he loved most to be named honest." "Jonson's passion for literature and admiration for Shake-speare rebelled against the censorship made necessary to avoid a scandal involving three of the noblest families in England (the houses of Burghley, Oxford, and Southampton). Playwrights and actors had not then the elevated status they now enjoy, and suppression by the ruling class against the acting fraternity was commonplace. Jonson's response was to employ the latest method of secrecy invented by Girolamo Cardano, and use it to secrete the truth about Shakespeare within the inscription on the monument at Stratford-upon-Avon. "Added to this, he took virtual control of the dedications to Shakespeare that were to appear in the First Folio, and saw to it that Droeshout's engraving complemented his own encrypted avowal of de Vere's authorship. At the same time, with one eye on the censors, he praised Shakespeare's work in glowing but ambiguous terminology. The facts are there; they all fit neatly together, acknowledgement of them is all that is required for thruth to prevail."
Here is Roper's discussion of the Glasgow First Folio, pp. 433-4: "Peacham appears not have been alone in believing that William Shakespeare's name in the First Folio did not automatically signify Shaxpere was the person who had written the plays. A copy of the First Folio, owned by Glasgow University, was originally the property of a person fairly close to many of the actors named at the front of the book. To signify this, the owner had annotated the list of names with a short pithy comment. For example, against John Lowine the word "eyewitness" is written; against Richard Burbage are the words "by report"; this, presumably refers to the fact that Burbage died in 1619, four years before the First Folio went on sale. William Kemp had left the company in 1599 and so there is nothing against his name; William Ostler's name is adjoined by the word "hearsay", and the words "so to" appear for Nathan Field who is next on the list. The real surprise is to read the annotation against the name William Shakespeare: it says, "lease for making". "According to the OED, and The Concise Etymology of the English Language (W. W. Skeat, Oxford, 1882 and 1936), "Leasing", means falsehood, "from leas, false". The word "making" is conventionally defined as: "to fashion, frame, construct, compose or form: to create, to bring into being..." (Chambers English Dictionary, Cambrdige, 1989). "William Shakespeare was therefore 'false for bringing into being', or whatever synonym one prefers to replace 'making' by; that is, according to the original owner of Glasgow University's volume of the First Folio: a person, who may be judged from his other comments, to have been contemporaneous with that era. "In view of what has preceded this last disclosure about Shakespeare, the statement should not come as a great surprise. Jonson said the same thing when he encrypted his avowal into the inscription on the Stratford monument, reinforcing it with ambiguous phrases in his testimony to Shakespeare at the front of the First Folio. "Thorpe made a similar disclosure when he encrypted Vere's name into the Sonnets' dedication. Peacham's Minerva Britanna, Nashe's 'Will Monox', Barnfield's, play on the word 'ever', Marston's silent name bounded by a single letter, Chettle's cunning dig at Shakespeare by referring to him as t he 'god of harbours', and Droeshout's clever engraving of a cartoon figure filled with symbolism, indicating Oxford to be Shakespeare all point to two momentous facts. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare, and the connection between the two names was such a taboo subject that it could never openly be referred to in public. "The original owner of Glasgow University's edition of the First Folio was very clearly aware of this, and decided to signal the same information in how own provate way. He made a note against William Shakespeare's name, denouncing him as a playwright inside the very volume that suggested otherwise."
Enjoy your company and endure the anticipated hangovers; but when you get back to business here, after considering the true nature of Jonson's Cardano grille encryption and reading Roper's reasons why Titus Andronicus was written ca. 1574 (see URL above) when the Stratford fellow was only a lad, I should hope you would be in a position to reconsider your earlier remarks "no first rate mind . . . has ever appeared in print with a kind of methodologically sound argument" and the "elegant geometry of one or two 'ciphers'" alluding to Ben Jonson's deployment of the then-new Cardano grille to encrypt his message on the Stratford Monument, whose solution is unique and meets all the criteria set forth by the Friedmans who categorically declared that if, and I quote: "independent investigation shows the answer to be unique, and to have been reached by valid means, we shall accept it, however much we shock the learned world by doing so." While we may end up having a "failure to communicate", it will also be, in my opinion, another instance, to paraphrase Thomas Huxley, of "the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." Also in the seventeenth century, the Church marshalled various textual evidences against Galileo's science concerning the mechanics of the Solar System, but science prevailed. Surely the science of cryptography today would trump the vagaries of dialectical composition, an art well practiced by many gifted playwrights--then and now. Phaedrus7 ( talk) 18:24, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Funny how life runs to parodic archetype. Three days of drinking, and I caught, with one other of the crew, a 24 hour virus, which ran through me like a dose of salts. I protested over the ceramic bowl that I was neither Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton nor WS of Stratford in 1616. The break gave me time to reread Roper's essay. But today, after this short note, I will be rejoining the ongoing wassail. I have several remarks to make. For the moment this. Fixing the date at 1575 means that Roper has to argue that Henry Peacham must be the father, the minor bellelettrist cleric, and not, as orthodox scholarship maintains, his homonymous son, the Henry Peacham of 1578ca-1644. Well yes, the father did write minor books. But only the son is known for his distinguished career as a graphic artist and painter, with the kind of interest that lies behind the painted draft of the scene from Titus Andronicus. Where is the evidence that the father had this gift, or pictoral interest? Nishidani ( talk) 11:59, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
At the risk of giving the appearance of "piling on", see here Roper's reply to your concern over the the elder Peacham's instrumentality: "The answer is that 1575 rules out the younger Peacham. If Nishidani abides by proof, it is for him to disprove that the date on the Titus manuscript is 1574. If he cannot, and all alternative suggestions have been shown to be deficient, then the report made by Joseph Quincy Adams should settle the matter for good. “The elaborate and detailed drawing at the top of the Titus document seems to be not in the style of, and very distinctly superior in technique to, the numerous drawings we have from Peacham’s pen.” And again: “in the Folger manuscript of Emblemata Varia we have twenty pen drawings by Peacham, carefully executed for presentation to Sir Julius Caesar, which are, I think, quite obviously different in style and inferior in craftsmanship to the Titus drawing. . . . The faces in Peacham’s work are entirely without character, the details often clumsy in execution, and the whole drawing lacking in vitality.” Nishidani should also note that the handwriting on the Titus manuscript is totally different from the handwriting on the younger Peacham’s Basilicon Doron." Phaedrus7 ( talk) 17:57, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
'Censorship in England was controlled by a spy network that was every bit as efficient as in Stalin's USSR. The penalty for writing material considered injurious to the State ranged from a whipping to amputation.'
Inter hos judices tamen vivendum, moriendum, et, quod durius est, tacendum ((1955)Mercury Books 1961 p.323)
It was not until 1592 that Oxford schemed to have 'Venus and Adonis' published as a work by Shakespeare under the patronage of Southampton. Oxford needed someone unknown to the literary world, any familiar writer would have been ridiculed for the hoax once he was discovered, as he very quickly would have been. The name Shakespeare was derived from Shaxpere or Shakspere: a former horse attendant outside the Curtain who had begun work as a 'Jack-of-all-trades' inside the playhouse.
I fear your replies are getting far ahead of my ability to keep up. But I'll do my best, hopefully with a little help from my friends. I'll be brief here. Interesting that you also have read Hamlet's Mill, one of the few books I have read more than once, namely thrice since 1974. Interestingly enough, while many scholars, such as Philip Morrison, Thomas Worthen, William Sullivan and Harald A. T. Reiche, accept the book's heretical claim that our ancestors knew the effects of precession, which knowledge was coded in myth, the archons of the History of Astronomy Academy most emphatically do not. Surely there are parallels here between H. Mill and the S.A.Q. with respect to the resistance of academic authorities to change. You might be interested to learn, if not already, that The Economist on-line has a review of James Shapiro's new book Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? followed by comments, most of which reject Shapiro's defense of the Stratford fellow, with no. 28 recommending Jonathan Bond's THE DE VERE CODE: Proof of the true author of SHAKE-SPEARE'S SONNETS (2009): "A 400-year-old cypher unlocked, An epic Elizabethan love story uncovered". In the wake of your many recent criticisms, I think I am in a position similar to that Velikovsky found himself in March 1965 after his encounter with Abraham Sachs at Brown University; but I shall not be as brazen as Velikovsky was when in the moment he boasted: "Dr. Sachs threw so many accusations in that Phillipic of his that I am at a difficulty to answer; but I invite Dr. Sachs to spend the hour and a half tomorrow at the meeting, and everyone of you too, and point by point each of his statements will be proven wrong." Unfortunately, the next day Sachs did not show up for the Q&A at Diman House where Velikovsky volunteered nothing and never did complete any "point by point" rebuttal as he did for the other faculty panelists who confronted him at Brown. However, on one point above I would venture that you are wrong: you contend that in 1574 Oxford could not have read any English translation of Seneca in blank verse; but this assertion is undermined by Wikipedia's entry for blank verse: "The first known use of blank verse in the English language was by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his interpretation of the Æneid (c. 1554)." Phaedrus7 ( talk) 20:52, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
followed by comments, most of which reject Shapiro's defense of the Stratford fellow, with no. 28 recommending Jonathan Bond's THE DE VERE CODE: Proof of the true author of SHAKE-SPEARE'S SONNETS (2009):
Given your apparent aversion to accepting inferences in the absence of explicit documentary evidence, I wonder whether or not you'd agree Dante was justified in consigning Paolo and Francesca to Hell since all we know is that "they read no more that day"; shucks, we do not know they made the beast with two backs. At least Dante does not tell us what they did when they stopped reading. They could have switched to parchesi or some other innocent pastime. I also recoil at your referring to the documented biography of Shakespeare as the standard against which to judge the case for Oxford's authorship when the biography of Shakespeare is nothing but a concatenation of conjecture fabricated to link a few isolated biographical events that has assumed the status of unchallengeable dogma over the centuries. Since you are so thorough a critic, you should really read Roper's book Proving Shakespeare so that you are privy to all the details which you assume he does not command since they are missing from the excerpts you have read. A justification for this suggestion resides in Roper's reply to your recent commentary:
I am grateful for the observations made by Nishidani; it helps refine future references. It is however clear that he has fastened upon one part of an argument that stems from another, but without acquainting himself with the details of the other. He mentions Greene's Groatsworth, but he is apparently unaware that Nashe has identified Oxford as the host of the banquet attended by himself, Marlowe, and Greene. He is therefore unaware of the motive behind this unusual gathering, which was for Oxford to prepare these wits for the arrival of Shakespeare. This new arrival on the literary scene, akin to Athene plucked from the head of Zeus, was about to publish Venus and Adonis. Enquiries would soon reveal he was an impostor: a
stratagem for Oxford to get his work into print without identifying himself. Nashe, Marlowe, and Greene were being buttered-up to pre-empt their interference and with a request to remain silent. Chettle misunderstood the meaning of Greene's scribble, as he admitted later, he was unable to read part of it. The author of Willobie His Avisa tumbled the ruse and hinted at
it, along with other matters, in his booklet that came out soon after Lucrece. Once the ruse was uncovered, the connection between Southampton and Shakespeare was redundant, and no more was heard of Shakespeare until Meres published Wits Treasury, fortuitously after Oxford's father-in-law, the head of censorship, had died. Like a jigsaw puzzle all the pieces fit together.
If you try to fit the same pieces together with a genuine Shakespeare, the pieces do not fit; there are unanswered questions. Nishidani throws doubt upon the story told to Davenant. But it rings true. It does no favour to the reputation of Shakespeare to repeat it, and for a new arrival from the country, with no education, horse minding was an obvious choice. One also has to understand the levels of superiority attached to the Elizabethan class system. The aloof manner in which Oxford treats Dogberry or Bottom is indicative of the way he would have thought of Shakspere. It is essential to understand the aristocratic mind, especially Oxford's, and that can only be improved upon by reading the different accounts of his life, as seen by different authors.
In short, there are no gaps in logic. Everything flows from one link in the chain to the next, based upon the evidence available and with deductive reasoning joining them together. If Nishidani believes I should have presented the case more efficiently, I bow to his wisdom and will look again at where improvements can be made.
Phaedrus7 ( talk) 19:19, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
He mentions Greene's Groatsworth, but he is apparently unaware that Nashe has identified Oxford as the host of the banquet attended by himself, Marlowe, and Greene. He is therefore unaware of the motive behind this unusual gathering, which was for Oxford to prepare these wits for the arrival of Shakespeare. This
Given your apparent aversion to accepting inferences in the absence of explicit documentary evidence, I wonder whether or not you'd agree Dante was justified in consigning Paolo and Francesca to Hell since all we know is that "they read no more that day"; shucks, we do not know they made the beast with two backs
but without acquainting himself with the details of the other. He mentions Greene's Groatsworth, but he is apparently unaware that (a) Nashe has identified Oxford as the host of the banquet attended by himself, Marlowe, and Greene. He is therefore unaware of (b) the motive behind this unusual gathering, which was for Oxford to prepare these wits for the arrival of Shakespeare. This new arrival on the literary scene, akin to Athene plucked from the head of Zeus, was about to publish Venus and Adonis. (c) Enquiries would soon reveal he was an impostor: a stratagem for Oxford to get his work into print without identifying himself. Nashe, Marlowe, and Greene were being (d) buttered-up to pre-empt their interference and with a request to remain silent.
If you try to fit the same pieces together with a genuine Shakespeare, the pieces do not fit; there are unanswered questions.
Nishidani, there has been a very long dispute on this article and it ended up in arbitration. If you or Peter would like to edit Asmahan again on behalf of SD, then let's open this whole issue for public debate again... or it will be another round of meatpuppetry. Nefer Tweety ( talk) 22:12, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Nishidani, thank you for taking a look at the corrections as a neutral part. I have made a reply to nr 1, and there is still also five points left, will you go through them or? -- Supreme Deliciousness ( talk) 00:29, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I am free at last! I am reminded of those immortal words of the practicing academic, “Thanks for keeping track of this, Stephen. Its important to keep careful records. Tom, unfortunately, has no idea where this whole thing is going, so he keeps fighting battles that he cannot win.” --BenJonson (talk) 02:17, 1 March 2010 (UTC) Tom Reedy ( talk) 22:41, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
I'd join you for a drink but I might be afraid of the Chalice from the Palace! Anyhow, I thought you might be interested in this link:[ [10]]. Check the opening line of graph 1, as well as all of Graph 2.
The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approach'd, unlock'd her silent throat;
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more.
Farewell, all joys; O Death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.
Nishidani ( talk) 13:07, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
annex from the authorship page.
Nishidani, it is clear that you and Tom are teaming up to edit war as you carry out your agenda to delete all mentions of the SAQ and in particular, any mentions of De Vere, anywhere on Wikipedia. Your "Reverting to enforce certain overriding policies is not considered edit warring" is the latest policy advice that you are abusing. The example of an "overriding policy" cited has to do with BLP issues, which Wikipedia is very sensitive to. To claim that the ONE-WAY rule is an "overriding policy" is just plain wrong. It's an abuse of policy. Smatprt ( talk) 23:18, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Hello, Nishidani. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Smatprt ( talk) 17:33, 19 May 2010 (UTC) ( here, for the record)
Nishi, if I might make a suggestion. Try not to respond to Smatprt at the WQA board; if some uninvolved party says something then respond. Dont let this distract you or be a waste of time. Also, try and keep that other hand on the keyboard. Cheers, nableezy - 20:22, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, you fucking fuck, your profanity is well-known, and duly noted! Personally, I'm so sick of this tired shit I'm ready to ignore his campaign to insert his obsession into every nook and cranny of Wikipedia while we finish the sandbox 2 article. Apparently most editors don't care anymore that he does so; they just don't want to deal with him. The reader looking for reliable information takes a back seat for editors and admins when they are inundated with unending bellyaching from a well-known and supernaturally persistent POV warrior, as the lack of responses to his noticeboard requests testifies. We can clean it all up after we're done with the article and a jury has rendered a verdict. Meanwhile, it's all a massive waste of time that sucks our energy down to nothing, which I'm sure is his purpose. Cheers! Tom Reedy ( talk) 02:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | → | Archive 15 |
"Nishibani," LOL! Sorry -- Freudian slip or whatever. :-D
This was very nice of you, by the way. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 21:37, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your kind note. I feel bad that I'm getting to know you just as you're subject to a topic ban. Let me just say that it's been a pleasure working with you, and I only wish I had encountered you sooner. I hope you'll keep on editing in other areas, and perhaps if you do have an Israel-Palestine related insight, you could post it on your talk page. :-) best, SlimVirgin talk| contribs 18:08, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Just wish to round off this sad affair and say thank you for everything. You've been my role model and taught me a lot, and in an immensely entertaining way too. It hurts that the WP system can be so wasteful of resources. Wonder what the knowledge vacuum will suck in when you move to other pastures... if metaphors can be mixed that way.
Myself, I've lost a bit of spirit along with the illusions, so I'm probably not going to contribute that much in the future — unless the permit to take part in the guidelines draft discussion is unexpectedly granted (and I hope you will apply too). However, my girlfriend rightly sees Wikipedia as a dangerous rival for my attention, and if I analyze things objectively, I have in fact neglected her as well as my job and my friends for more than six months now, so, in a few weeks, I'll probably see some merit in the decision. RIght now, I'm just pissed off. MeteorMaker ( talk) 00:00, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Unless I am mistaken, G-Dett and myself are neck to neck in a stiff race to see who will poll the most votes. We've comprehensively beaten the rest of the field, and the judges, though wavering on the stragglers in our wake, are unanimous in acknowledging that honours at the post are to be split between the two of us. One trundles to the stables, in my case, one slouches towards Bethlehem, with head erect, nostrils flairing at the 'stir and keep of pride'! Cheerio Nishidani ( talk) 16:42, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. Canadian Monkey ( talk · contribs), G-Dett ( talk · contribs), MeteorMaker ( talk · contribs), Nickhh ( talk · contribs), Nishidani ( talk · contribs), NoCal100 ( talk · contribs), and Pedrito ( talk · contribs) are prohibited from editing any Arab-Israeli conflict-related article/talk page or discussing on the dispute anywhere else on the project. Jayjg ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is also prohibited from editing in the area of conflict, and he is stripped of his status as a functionary and any and all associated privileged access, including the CheckUser and Oversight tools and the checkuser-l, oversight-l, and functionaries-en mailing lists. Jayjg is also thanked for his years of service.
After six months, these editors may individually ask the Arbitration Committee to lift their editing restrictions after demonstrating commitment to the goals of Wikipedia and ability to work constructively with other editors. However, restrictions may be temporarily suspended for the exclusive purpose of participating in the discussion of draft guidelines for this area.
In the meantime, the community is strongly urged to pursue current discussions to come to a definitive consensus on the preferred current and historical names of the region that is the source of conflict in this case. Note that this must be consistent with current Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources, a neutral point of view, and naming conventions. This decision will be appended onto this case within two months from the close of the case.
For the Arbitration Committee, hmwith τ 17:34, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
'prohibited from editing any Arab-Israeli conflict-related article/talk page or discussing on the dispute anywhere else on the project.'
' Jayjg ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is also prohibited from editing in the area of conflict, and he is stripped of his status'
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The Barnstar of Integrity | |
All the interesting people banned! Things will be pretty dull for a while. Will miss you -- Ravpapa ( talk) 16:15, 13 May 2009 (UTC) |
Nishidani, I'm sorry to see this happen to you as you are an editor who I respect. However, this repsect means that I consider you well able to be of value to Wikipedia in a range of areas and not just the I/P conflict. I hope therefore that you see yourself as able to contribute to the project elsewhere.-- Peter cohen ( talk) 10:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
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The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar | |
For hours of fruitless effort trying to protect Wikipedia from nationalist bias. Although you have been sanctioned unfairly, your thoughtful arguments and dogged research have given the community a strong background of information to draw on when denouncing future attempts to portray ideology as fact. untwirl( talk) 14:54, 14 May 2009 (UTC) |
Hi Nishidani,
Would you mind checking this :
Ceedjee ( talk) 16:28, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
Is your plan really to stop editing altogether? In case you do, please keep in touch -- I am slimvirgin at gmail dot com. Best, SlimVirgin talk| contribs 06:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
But please keep your eyes open, Nishidani. --
ZScarpia (
talk)
10:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
as always. Tiamut talk 09:46, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi, Thanks for your message. A couple of years ago I wrote some text that is here: User_talk:Zero0000/temp#Etymology of the name Jerusalem. You can see it agrees pretty much with yours. I put your text there too, for easy comparison. I think we should work up a combined version and see how long it survives in the article (there are an awful lot of "City of Peace" folks out there as you know). Cheers. Zero talk 09:59, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
Welcome back, I'm hoping your presence means you might resume editing (although your comments at AE suggest otherwise, sadly.) Just wanted to leave a note about this edit - no members of ArbCom have commented in the discussion as yet. Josh Gordon's term expired last go 'round, and FT2 resigned some time ago. Nathan T 20:51, 2 September 2009 (UTC) (formerly Avruch)
If I came across as intimating that you were trying to be underhanded in the Islam and antisemitism article, my deepes apologies; that was in no way shape or form my intention. I am an expert in neither Islam nor antisemitism, and do not claim to come to the article from a position of scholarship. My opinion is, and has always been, that I/P articles need to follow the guidelines up a tree and off of a cliff, so that when decisions/consensus are eventually made/formed, we have a much stronger defense against claims of POV (like Zero has been making about AfD recently, for example).
In this case, Laquer has made statements about I&AS which have been quoted by others (I think). If everything he brings can be sourced to someone else, that is great. If not, we should discuss his appropriateness on the talk page as we are doing now. I respect your opinion as to Laquer's appropriateness, but the best way to address this, I think, would be to find outside sources that make those claims about Laquer, and either put them in the article or use those to support the removal. Our own opinions are often suspect, even when they should not be :( -- Avi ( talk) 16:00, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
If it's from Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, Knight was at a conference about the book and I believe remains unconvinced. Something about it in counterpunch a while ago, could follow the links, but too tired to do so now. Best, John Z ( talk) 10:05, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Hello, and it is good to hear from you and know that you are still around. As I thought I made clear, I haven't read Segev's account, only Shahak's and Jakobovits'. But Segev wasn't contemporary, and was writing after the other narrators had died. He ma6y have spoken to Shahak about this -- if you have the book, maybe you can confirm this. The fact remains that Boteach, writing last year, states explicitly that the potential caller was not a Jew, without giving any source for this; and he is then treated as a reliable source for this (according to you, untrue) assertion.*(see below)
In any case, it is a remarkable indictment of the orthodox rabbinical tradition that the whole issue turns on whether or not this passer-by was a Jew; and to that extent, Shahak's denunciation is valid, whatever the specifics of this case.
I realise how galling it must be for you to sit silently while others less well-informed or more ideologically than you driven make nonsense of articles to which you would have a lot to contribute. And it would indeed be humiliating to have to beg for an indulgence from those who have traduced and convicted you. Nevertheless, I very much hope that in November you will humour your censors, and request the restoration of the editing privileges of which you should never have been stripped, so that we can all once again benefit from your knowledge. RolandR 19:38, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi, We have a problem at Joseph's Tomb in that the best historical sources are in German. Can you read it? If so and you are willing to help, send me wiki-email and I'll send you a nice German journal article. Cheers. Zero talk 11:26, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I've been in a very isolated part of the world and without any connection to the Internet for the last three months, so only just read your message on my user page. Hope you'll forgive the long delay in receiving a response. It's very good to hear from you. -- ZScarpia ( talk) 17:20, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
You know you have another 998 edits to go now right? nableezy - 14:30, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
So Why 23:14, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
With all due respect I think you miss my point. I use the phrase "beliefs and practices" knowing full well that these words can and do describe religion (I am not as Tim implies trying to fool anyone, let alone myself). But "beliefs and practices" - speaking as an anthropologist - refer to other cultural domains besides religion. Capitalism is a set of beliefs and practices. Democracy is a set of beliefs and practices. Nationalism is a set of beliefs and practices. I use the plural "sets of beliefs and practices" because this language will include those beliefs and practices we call religion, but also include those beliefs and practices that are central to Judaism but not, strictly speaking, religion.
I honestly thought this was a simple and clear point. I write several times that I do not deny that Judaism is among other things a religion, just that it is other things also. Why do Tim - and I have to say, you to - ignore the "also" and suggest that I am claiming "instead" when I never say that it is not religion. I even wrote that I agree that the word religion belongs in the first paragraph, and in fact it is in there, so it is not being excluded.
My only concern is that by changing "beliefs and practices" to "religion," other things get excluded.
In all of this, I sincerely and upon reflection (and reading your comment) firmly sure, as an anthropologist and as a Wikipedia editor, sure that this is the best wording. Why? Nishidani, I posted several sources: two notable theologians, a historian of Judaism, a popular writer on Jewish topics, and a coupld of websites. All I ask you to do is to start with the sources, not any pre-conceived notions you have about Judaism. isn't this how we should do research? Just look at the sources ... Perhaps you will revise your comment. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
(ec)Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Just to be clear: I never meant to imply that you might be anti-Jewish let alone anti-Semitic. Also, I thought I had replied to your point about Durkheim as I have stated consistently that among the sets of beliefs and practices that constitute Judaism is religion.
The preconceived notion to which I referred is the notion that there is an objective category, "religion," and that as religions Judaism, Islam and Christianity are comparable. As a scholar, I have two problems with this.
First, I have to tell you more about my experience in anthropology. The way I was trained, the project of defining domains like the political, the social, the economic, the religious, has its origins in 19th century thinkers and persisted in anthropology utnil fifty or sixty years ago. Today - or at least, this is what I was taught - most anthropologists, and generally mediocre ones, believe that there is such a thing as "religion" (I mean, as a universal category) and an anthropologist can go any where in the world and do a study of "the religion of the X." Most anthropologists (again, so I was taught) today see these categories (religion, politics, economics) as Western categories that emerged with modernity and the reorganization of European society with the breakdown of feudalism and the Catholic Church. A good deal of the most cutting edge research in anthropology involves finding "sets of beliefs and practices" that do not neatly fit into any of these Western categories. The best of this research shows how sets of beliefs and practices found in non-Western societies challenge and undermine such Western categories. Durkheim was and remains an important thinker and I would advise any student in the social sciences to read his work, but within anthropology it is at best of historical value. His positivist project, for better or worse, has largely been abandoned by academic anthropology. Anyway, I may be wrong but I wondered if you were not presupposing that "religion" is a category with universal applicability. Because of my training, I start off with the opposite assumption. I do not assume that when I go to my fieldsite that the beliefs and practices I will encounter can or should be classified as "religious," "political" etc. I was taught that doing so usually leads to misunderstanding.
Second, based on my research of Judaism, I have learned that there is a strong argument that most of Judaism developed in Babylonia and Persia. The five books of Moses, according to tradition, were revealed to him in Sinai by God; most historians I have read believe that they derive from a diverse set of oral traditions from many parts of the Near East, from the span of the Fertile Crescent, fron the Nile to the Persian Gulf. But that they were not codified as "the five books of Moses" or "the Torah" until the Jews were in exile in Babylon (and they were brought back to Palestine by Ezra). Similarly, while the Hebrew Bible was canonized in Palestine, much of it was written in Babylonia/Persia. The bulk of classical Jewish literature, the midrash and Talmud, were written in Babylonia/Persia. There is a strong claim that Zoroastrianism had a greater influence over Judaism than Hellenistic culture. My point is that Judaism cannot be viewed as a fundamentally Western religion. Even as much as we can say "religion," it is profoundly non-Western. I think that many Christians - and thus readers of Wikipedia (I am not referring to you as I do not know you background) believe that they understand Judaism because they believe that they are the heris of the covenant between Abraham and God; they are the new Israel. But Christianity is in many ways a Western religion - even "Eastern" Orthodoxy is "Western" i.e. Hellenic (Ethiopian and Syrian Orthodox Christianity having been marginalized a long time ago). But Judaism is an Asian religion. And Judaism, more broadly speaking, emerged long before Islam and Christianity, when a different cultural landscape dominated Asia. When Judaism emerged religions and nations were isomorphic; each nation had its own god. Hellenistc civilization was responsible for many innovations, the claim to universal reason being one of them. And Christianity and Islam emerged in a post-Hellenistic landscape, as religions claiming not to represent a nation but to being universal.
There are two very important differences between Judaism on the one hand, and Christianity and Islam on the other. Judaism is non-credal, and Judaism does not claim this universality. Judaism still refers to a nationality or nationhood as much as a religion. This is something that I know from personal experience many Christians do not understand. They do not understand how one can be Jewish regardless of ones beliefs and practices. It works both ways - I think very few jews understand Christianity.
This is not my argument. My point is not that Jews and Christians do not understand each other, that is a banal point. My point is that Jews and Christians face major obstacles understanding one another because they are so different. And that is what is at stake here. I have read research - including a book by Daniel Boyarin, a professor of jewish studies at university of California Berkeley, who is quoted in the article, who has claimed that Judaism, because it developed before the Western categoriy of religion developed, does not easily fit that category. Boyarin claims that Judaism also challenges Western notions of the nation and ethnicity.
One editor has said that he understand that Jews are also an ethnic group (and of course we have a separate article on jews). I have no problem with one article on Jews and one on Judaism. Bt I think it is bad scholarship to say htat one article is on ethnicity (or culture) and the other on religion. This is like an anthropologist going to Melanesia and saying "This is their religion, that is their politics, here is their economy." Maybe sixty or seventy years ago anthroppologists did that. But even the best ones from back then argued: "here is something that is neither religion nor politics. Or we can say it is both but both in a way that is indivisible, in a way that breaks down Western categories of religion and politics."
I have never said that judaism is not a religion, or that there are no Jews who consider it a religion. Napolean told Jews in france that they could have equal rights only if they abandoned all claims to nationhood and abandoned all civil law, keeping only the religious, and abandoned the prohibition against intermarriage. French jews agreed. It is historically accurate to say that after 1806 French judaism was a religion, period. In the United States reform jews issued a platform declaring that they too would abandon all national claims and consider themselves a religion. it is accurate to say that Reform Judaism (at least, before the seventies, or eighties - things have been changing) was a religion, period. But Conservative Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, and certain branches of Orthodox Judaism refused to abandon those claims, and insisted that Judaism is not a religion in the same way that Christianity and Islam are.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and must use reliable sources in an NPOV way. That is all i ask for. I am sorry, Nishidani, but it really appears to me to be some kind of prejudice to insist a priori that Christianity, Islam and Judaism are similar enough that they can all be named "religions." Such claims disregard the reliable sources. Some elements of the Jewish nation, following the Enlightenment, considered judaism to be a religion just like Christianity and Islam. But other elements have explicitly argued against this position. And before 1806, notable historians have argued that judaism was not a religion like Christianity or Islam. Christians or Muslims may have viewed Judaism that way for the same reason that 19th century Europeans argued over whether shamanism is religion or magic, insisting that it has to fit one of their categories. But anthropologists today do not consider shamanism to fit either Western category. Why should we assume or insist that Judaism has to? As i said, some Jewish authorities DO accept this position. Many others do not. How can any editor who accepts NPOV insist that we accept the first position but reject the second? I truly do not understand. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I see no need to make a larger argument about the way we use the word "religious" or "religion." My larger argument - PelleSmith is correct that there is a lager argumnt at stake - is that our articles should represent significant views from notable sources. That's all! If significant views from notable sources say that several Jewish movements do not consider judaism to be a religion, we have to include that in our articles. it does not matter what my personal point of view is. As to Christianity, I hold the same policy: we should say what significant views in notable sources say. I have not edited the Christianity article because i have not researched Christianity. if i did and I saw that significant views from notable sources argued that Christianity (or Buddhism, or Hinduism) is not a religion, OF COURSE we would be wrong just to call it a religion. Why is this so hard for people to comprehend? I know both of you have been editors in long, good tanding. Don't you know our NPOV, RS, and NOR policies? With all due respect some of you (certainly SkyWriter) seem to have strong feelings about religion, and think I dotoo. But what you or I think about religion is irrelevant.
This all started because Blizzard thought that since Christianity and Islam are defined as religions, so should judaism. Do you guys honestly not see how profoundly wrong this is? Articles should define their subject as a religion because significant views from mainstream sources say so. The second paragraph of the Judaism article calls judaism a religion. i have never, ever, ever, deleted or changed that. Wanna know why? Because it is supported by significant views from reliable sources. But I do insist that Judaism not be identified just as a religion. Wanna know why? Because that view is cntradicted by significant views from reliable sources. Why on earth should anyone think that the Hinduism article has to say something because the Christianity article says something? Whatever the hinduism article says should reflect significant views from reliable sources. Every article should be based on significant views from reliable sources. Where have I ever departed from this view? Slrubenstein | Talk 19:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
p.s. SlR, don't take the analogy with Gobineau badly. The lately lamented C Lévi-Strauss held him in the highest esteem as a writer. Nishidani ( talk) 22:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't take the comment about Gobineau personally. Your point is I am falling back on Orientalist categories. I admit that the way I wrote invited that critique. Actually I would say that we need to be just as cautious about how Europe has constructed Judaism as its Other, as talking about the influence of Western culture on Judiaam. I have provided a few specific examples of where Judaism clearly is a religion. In the examples I provided, this was the result of Western infuence. I do not think that this make Reform Judaism "inauthentic" and I have no problem talking about Judaism as Western as much as it is Eastern. If anything this supports my point that Judaism does not easily fit many categories, that is because judaism takes many different forms. Now I realize you could make the same argument about Christianity (Irish, Polish, Italian) - I'd only say - bravo, now go and improve the Christianity article. My point about Judaism developing in Persia is not to make Judaism inscrutable to Western eyes but to provide a precise historical reason for why people could misunderstand features of Judaism ... it is also to point the way to understanding for example the way Urbach has used knowledge of Zoroastrianism to help explain certain features of Judaism.
I am not sure that we need to pick which of the two views Pelle acknowledges (and I have to admit based on earlier comments of his it was not clear to me that he acknowledged these points) should come first. I know Pelle says religion comes first. Why not Civilization? Why not nation? I see sources that support those as going first. Pelle seems convinced that religion coming first is the mainstream view. But I think that there may not be a mainstream view - we may just need to distinguish between the range of views among Jewish leaders, and views among historians, and views among scholars of religion. My argument all along has NOT been that an "anti-religious" view has to "come first." As i have explained, I chose the words "sets of beliefs and practices" because that phrase CAN refer to religion and it CAN refer to other things. I was trying not to put religion second, but rather to come up with phrasing that is more inclusive i.e. can sigifiy religion OR nation OR civilization. I was not trying to put any one first. But it seems like Pelle insists on putting one first. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
You keep insisting that the language I use to describe Judaism has something to do whith Christianity. I don't see why it should, or why you should think so. Once you and others conceeded that reliable sources actually were saying what I said they were saying (that some major Jewish leaders either did not view Judaism as a religion, or did not view it as just a eligion, and that historians like Cohen also considered the meaning of Judaism too complex to be reduced to one term), your next tactic was to say that my points about Judaism apply to Christianity as well. Ho hum. If they apply to Christianity, well, why not edit the Christianity article accordingly? What is this need for uniqueness, difference, singularity? This is not my need, itis yours - this all started with Blizzard insisting that Christianity and Judaism be described the same way. My point was not that Judaism is unique, just that the reliable sources about Judaism say that Judaism cannot be described the same way as Blizzard, you, others describe Christianity. Now you tell me that Christianity can be described the same way as I describe Judaism. Well, if that is what the reliable sources on Christianity say about Christianity you have to go and change the Christianity article. Does that mean its lead will become more like the Judaism lead? That won't bother me!
Above, I was only trying to explain to you why historians of Judaism on't reduce it simply to religion which you hld Christianity was, which entailed me suggesting ways in which Judaism was different from Christianity. But if reliable sources on Christianity say it to cannot be reduced to religion, please change the Christianity intro. The point is neither to fetishize difference or sameness, as you seem to wish to do. The point is to follow reliable sources by puting all significant views in our articles. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I have to tell you more about my experience in anthropology. The way I was trained, the project of defining domains like the political, the social, the economic, the religious, has its origins in 19th century thinkers and persisted in anthropology utnil fifty or sixty years ago.
At least, this is what I was taught - most anthropologists, and generally mediocre ones, believe that there is such a thing as "religion" (I mean, as a universal category) and an anthropologist can go any where in the world and do a study of "the religion of the X."
Most anthropologists (again, so I was taught) today see these categories (religion, politics, economics) as Western categories that emerged with modernity and the reorganization of European society with the breakdown of feudalism and the Catholic Church.
'A good deal of the most cutting edge research in anthropology involves finding "sets of beliefs and practices" that do not neatly fit into any of these Western categories. The best of this research shows how sets of beliefs and practices found in non-Western societies challenge and undermine such Western categories.
Durkheim was and remains an important thinker and I would advise any student in the social sciences to read his work, but within anthropology it is at best of historical value. His positivist project, for better or worse, has largely been abandoned by academic anthropology.
I may be wrong but I wondered if you were not presupposing that "religion" is a category with universal applicability.
Because of my training, I start off with the opposite assumption. I do not assume that when I go to my fieldsite that the beliefs and practices I will encounter can or should be classified as "religious," "political" etc. I was taught that doing so usually leads to misunderstanding.
Second, based on my research of Judaism, I have learned that there is a strong argument that most of Judaism developed in Babylonia and Persia. The five books of Moses, according to tradition, were revealed to him in Sinai by God; most historians I have read believe that they derive from a diverse set of oral traditions from many parts of the Near East, from the span of the Fertile Crescent, fron the Nile to the Persian Gulf. But that they were not codified as "the five books of Moses" or "the Torah" until the Jews were in exile in Babylon (and they were brought back to Palestine by Ezra).
The bulk of classical Jewish literature, the midrash and Talmud, were written in Babylonia/Persia. There is a strong claim that Zoroastrianism had a greater influence over Judaism than Hellenistic culture. My point is that Judaism cannot be viewed as a fundamentally Western religion.
Even as much as we can say "religion," it is profoundly non-Western. I think that many Christians - and thus readers of Wikipedia (I am not referring to you as I do not know you background) believe that they understand Judaism because they believe that they are the heris of the covenant between Abraham and God; they are the new Israel. But Christianity is in many ways a Western religion - even "Eastern" Orthodoxy is "Western" i.e. Hellenic (Ethiopian and Syrian Orthodox Christianity having been marginalized a long time ago). But Judaism is an Asian religion.
Judaism, more broadly speaking, emerged long before Islam and Christianity, when a different cultural landscape dominated Asia. When Judaism emerged religions and nations were isomorphic; each nation had its own god.
Hellenistc civilization was responsible for many innovations, the claim to universal reason being one of them. And Christianity and Islam emerged in a post-Hellenistic landscape, as religions claiming not to represent a nation but to being universal.
There are two very important differences between Judaism on the one hand, and Christianity and Islam on the other. Judaism is non-credal, and Judaism does not claim this universality.
Judaism still refers to a nationality or nationhood as much as a religion. This is something that I know from personal experience many Christians do not understand. They do not understand how one can be Jewish regardless of ones beliefs and practices. It works both ways - I think very few jews understand Christianity.
'My point is not that Jews and Christians do not understand each other, that is a banal point. My point is that Jews and Christians face major obstacles understanding one another because they are so different.
Daniel Boyarin, a professor of jewish studies at university of California Berkeley, who is quoted in the article, who has claimed that Judaism, because it developed before the Western categoriy of religion developed, does not easily fit that category. Boyarin claims that Judaism also challenges Western notions of the nation and ethnicity.
'One editor has said that he understand that Jews are also an ethnic group (and of course we have a separate article on jews).
This is like an anthropologist going to Melanesia and saying "This is their religion, that is their politics, here is their economy." Maybe sixty or seventy years ago anthroppologists did that. But even the best ones from back then argued: "here is something that is neither religion nor politics. Or we can say it is both but both in a way that is indivisible, in a way that breaks down Western categories of religion and politics."
Napolean told Jews in france that they could have equal rights only if they abandoned all claims to nationhood and abandoned all civil law, keeping only the religious, and abandoned the prohibition against intermarriage. French jews agreed. It is historically accurate to say that after 1806 French judaism was a religion, period.
Conservative Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, and certain branches of Orthodox Judaism insisted that Judaism is not a religion in the same way that Christianity and Islam are.
I am sorry, Nishidani, but it really appears to me to be some kind of prejudice to insist a priori that Christianity, Islam and Judaism are similar enough that they can all be named "religions."
'the courage required to create some version of a Judaism without religion,’ in his Judaism without religion: a postmodern Jewish possibility, University Press of America, 2001 p.ix
‘In modern usage the terms ‘Judaism’ and ‘ Torah’ (doctrine) are virtually interchangeable, but the former has on the whole a more humanistic nuance while “Torah” calls attention to the divine, revelatory aspects. The term “secular Judaism” – used to describe the philosophy of Jews who accept specific Jewish values but who reject the Jewish religion – is not, therefore, self-contradictory as the term ‘secular Torah” would be. (In modern Hebrew, however, the word torah is also used for “doctrine” or “theory,” e.g., “the Marxist theory”, and in this sense it would also be logically possible to speak of a secular torah.) A further difference in nuance, stemming from the first, is that “Torah” refers to the eternal, static elements in Jewish life and thought while “Judaism” refers to the more creative, dynamic elements as manifested in the varied civilizations and cultures of the Jews at different states of their history, such as Hellenistic Judaism, rabbinic Judaism, medieval Judaism, and, from the nineteenth century, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism. (The term 'Yidishkeyt' is the Yiddish equivalent of “Judaism” but has a less universalistic connotation and refers more specifically to the folk elements of the faith).’ Rabbi Louis Jacobs, ‘Judaism: The Religion, Philosophy, and Way of Life of The Jews’’ (Encyclopaedia Judaica) reprinted in Jacob Neusner, Alan Jeffery Avery-Peck (eds.) The Blackwell reader in Judaism, Wiley-Blackwell, 2001 pp.3f.
was not Jewish. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Nishidani, how can you comment on my criteria for arriving at this conclusion? here as with the other topic on which we have disagreed you seem too easily to jump to conclusions about what I think. What is your source for saying Wittgenstein was Jewish? You never provided any sources for your views about Judaism and religion, is this another case where you have views but no sources? Slrubenstein | Talk 23:57, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
No, I don't think so. About Wittgenstein: I thought Monk's biography showed that his grandparents had converted to Christianity (certainly before he was born) and that Wittgenstein, reared as a Catholic, never identified as a Jew. If I a misremembering I would be thrilled to be corrected, but a page number would help. Dreams are notoriously complicated to interpret and I hope you have more evidence than a dream for your claim. About me: it was you who wrote "Slrubenstein's criteria for arriving at the same conclusion are different, ..." which led me to belived that you thought you know my criteria. Since I did not state my criteria I wondered how you knew. You seem to take it as some sign of insecurity that I ask. But is it possible that you are one of those insecure intellectuals who always will deflect a simple question with obfuscation? Slrubenstein | Talk 12:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
'Since I did not state my criteria I wondered how you knew.'
'Opinions vary as to what degree of concealment there was about his true background. Perhaps the most important fact is that Wittgenstein himself felt that he was hiding something - felt he was allowing people to think of him as an aristocrat when in fact he was a Jew.' (Vintage ed.1991 p.279). Nishidani ( talk) 18:47, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't know if you saw it but just the other day the NY Times had a discussion of the new full translation of Hobbes' Leviathan in Hebrew. [2] Apparently there was already a Hebrew translation but it left out the last two sections and much of the intersection between belief and political organization. I couldn't help but think of that after reading your part of the Judaism debate here. -- JGGardiner ( talk) 09:10, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, fuck it. I suppose, since I complained and tried to strongarm others into doing it, that I'd at least better give some notes. I've used the German article as a template, but it has quite a few errors. I've misplaced, or another visitor has stolen it, my copy of Canetti's memoirs where Steiner is written about, so can't use that source. I can't remember which of Murdoch's early novels portrays him in fictional form, or whether the figure of the intense intellectual in her novels owes more to Canetti than to Steiner. I'll try to look up my notes on the backleaves of her mid 50s work for something on this. I don't like adding anything to WP since I can't edit the only area, a trash-heap of poor POV editing, where I could really be useful. In my book, that's like helping the rich, while the poor go begging. But, you can use the stuff below as a basis for the future article, when time allows. Best wishes JGG and Nab. It was a pleasure to edit with you two guys, pushing useful shit uphill against the runny landslides of loquacious madness and wildcat editing that was the norm at the Gaza war page! You can see here many points of contact with what Slrubenstein asserted. That's why Steiner came to mind. He said it much better. I agree, on this, with neither, but that is not the point, when writing a wiki article.
Franz Baermann Steiner (b 12 October 1909 in the town of Karlín (the later suburb of Karolinethal [1]), just outside Prague, Bohemia d. 27. November 1952 in Oxford) was an ethnologist, polymath [2], essayist, aphorist [3] and poet. He was familiar, apart from German, Yiddish and Czech, with Greek and Latin, classical and modern Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Armenian, Persian, Malay, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, six other Slavonic languages, Scandinavian languages and Dutch. [4]
His paternal family hailed from Tachov in Western Bohemia, his father was a small retail businessman dealing in cloth and leather goods. His mother’s from Prague. Neither side were practitioners of Judaism, his father was an atheist, but he received elements of a religious education at school. He belonged to the last generation of the German, and Jewish, minority in Prague of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire who were to make distinctive contributions to German literature. From his early childhood he was a close friend of Hans Günther Adler. In 1920 he entered the German State Gymnasium in Štepánská Street, where Max Brod and Franz Werfel had studied [5]. He joined the Roter Studentenbund (Red Student Union) in 1926. He was attracted to Marxism early, and his fascination lasted four years, until 1930, and also to political Zionism. With regard to the latter, he may have been influenced, during his year in Jerusalem, by the Brit Shalom circle, which espoused a rapprochement between Jews and Arabs [6]. He enrolled at the German University of Prague in late 1928 for coursework on Semitic languages, with a minor in ethnology, while pursuing as an external student courses in Siberian ethnology and Turkish studies, at the Czech language Charles University of Prague. He studied Arabic abroad for a year, in 1930-1, at the Hebrew University in Palestine [7]. In Jerusalem, after some time staying with an Arab family, he was forced to move out by the British, and took up digs with the Jewish philosopher Hugo Bergman, a key figure in the development of Prague Zionism, a schoolfriend of Franz Kafka's, and an intimate of Martin Buber, Judah Leon Magnes and Gershom Sholem. [8]. It was from this circle during his stay that he developed views akin to those of Brit Shalom on Jewish-Arab cooperation, though he remained suspicious of fundamentalist Islam. [9]
It was from this intense period, that Steiner developed the idea, already represent in the work of the sociologist
Werner Sombart, who had stressed the oriental character of Jews, that he was ‘an oriental born in the West’.
[10]. On this premise was grounded his later critique of the imperial cast of Western anthropological writing, as was his sympathy for
hermeneutic techniques that would recover native terms for the way non-Westerners experienced their world. He obtained his doctorate in
linguistics 1935 with a thesis on
Arabic word formation (Studien zur arabischen Wurzelgeschichte: ‘Studies on the History of Arabic Roots'). He then moved to study at the
University of Vienna to specialize in
Arctic ethnology Cite error: A <ref>
tag is missing the closing </ref>
(see the
help page).. During his
exile in England he was taken under the wing by
Elias Canetti, whom he had already met in Vienna, who was based in London. During the war he studied under
Evans-Pritchard, while in turn deeply influencing him and many lecturers and students of that circle including
Meyer Fortes,
Mary Douglas,
Louis Dumont, M.N.Srinivas, Godfrey Lienhardt,
Ernest Gellner.
Iris Murdoch, though she had met him briefly in 1941, fell in love with him in the summer of 1951.
He was appointed Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Oxford in 1950, a position he held until his premature death two years later. He is mainly known for his posthumous collection Taboo, composed of lectures he delivered on that subject, after being persuaded by Evans-Pritchards to teach this, rather than, as planned, a series of lectures on Marx [11]
His thought is characterized by an intense commitment to the right of self-determination of non-Western peoples. His analytical technique constantly exposed the biases of the anthropological tradition which, down to his day, had endeavoured to describe these peoples. He included his own ethnic group, the
Jews, in this category.
[12]. His influence was informal and vast, within the tradition of post-war British anthropology, but is rarely attested in the literature because he published little.Cite error: A <ref>
tag is missing the closing </ref>
(see the
help page).
Shy, whimsical, and endlessly curious, he was regarded by many of his contemporaries as ‘intellectual’s intellectual’ for the extraordinary multidisciplinary erudition he had at his fingertips. [13]. His family was exterminated during the Holocaust. He died of a heart-attack, Iris Murdoch thought that it was the result of his heart-break over the fact of the Holocaust. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Oxford.
cleaned up
here, but I dont see you citing Steiner (2000) anywhere, and as I cannot read German I wont be able to add anything from it. Anything you wish to add before it goes in the mainspace? And do you have a source for Iris Murdoch thought that it was the result of his heart-break over the fact of the Holocaust? That would be a good dyk hook.
nableezy -
18:54, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Yep. Edit-conflict, which is only to be expected between the two of us. I tried to post a minute ago the following, but I'd advise you to enjoy Saturday afternoon, watch some cricket, play pool, drown in a pool, something like that. No one should work from Saturday to Friday, esp. Saturday.
'Cleaned up'+'my momma taught me to be respectful to the elderly and the infirm.'
'Franz was certainly one of Hitler's victims' Iris Murdoch, cited in Franz Baermann Steiner, Am stürzenden Pfad: gesammelte Gedichte, (hrsg. Jeremy Adler), Wallstein Verlag, 2000 p.433
There is still a red link in that article. Taboo (book) does not have an article. If you were interested, I started with a few sources available on JSTOR (let me know if you want pdfs) here. There are a lot more reviews available, I just got tired of filling out the templates. More than a few of the sources in the Steiner article could also be used, and I promise I will put in my fair share of work on this one (and maybe JGG will feel compelled to do the same). So, if you wanted to give more of your time to this place, a decent article could be made. nableezy - 11:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Well spotted with the complete list of British journalists - I had no idea there were that many pages here. This is an interesting category/list as well. Anyway I'm going to steer clear of it now, for obvious reasons - I think a general comment about journalism and/or general notability is fine, but anything more probably risks someone diving in on either of us. It'll be interesting to see what happens - there's a real risk it'll be wiped I guess, because closing admins just tend to count votes and take as read any negative comments about lack of notability. They often don't actually take an independent look - even spending two seconds to do a "Jonathan Cook" +Nazareth Google search would reveal how widely he is cited and his work reproduced online, as well as his status as one of the few Western journalists - if not the only one - permanently based in any Palestinian areas. Just because he is often published in fairly radical outlets - or, the horror, foreign ones - doesn't negate the notability of his writing. An interesting comparison might be made with this AfD, where a couple of passing mentions in one or two media sources of an organisation whose existence or real nature is doubtful, were deemed enough to save it.-- Nickhh ( talk) 15:39, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I think you know your participation in that discussion is a violation of your topic ban. Please delete your comment there. Mr. Hicks The III ( talk) 17:22, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I've requested clarification here: [7] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Canadian Monkey ( talk • contribs) 20:49, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
an article on Franz Steiner I, Nableezy and JGGardiner wrote up rapidly should read an article that I wrote up rapidly while Nableezy and JGGardiner sat and watched quietly. nableezy - 03:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
that reads 'that Akira Iwasaki was the only film critic arrested by the ideological police in wartime Japan? '
That sounds like something Iwasaki's bio claimed. Ovcer 60,000 people were arrested and convicted for thought crimes from 1925-1945, and the idea that there was only one film critic among them (a large number were from cultural and intellectual groups) is odd. Indeed, for one, Kamei Fumio (亀井文夫) was arrested by the thought cops in wartime Japan, and he was, apart from his film-making, at one time a documentary film critic.It therefore seems a bit odd to say there is a substantial difference between a 'documentary film critic' and a 'film critic', a distinction required if the remark awarded today's DYK is to stand up. Nishidani ( talk) 20:37, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Nishidani, I have been remiss for not having thanked you for putting the Hugo Salus article up. It was fun researching and discovering the confusion between the two Adlers. I got to research Hans Adler and added quite a bit of material to his bio. Also I enjoyed our discussion with respect to assimilation and Jewish nationalism in European thought. I don't think it violates our respective topic bans as long as we are not discussing it with respect to the Israeli-Arab conflict. I hope to expand on it (a bit) later on. That is an interesting time for Jews, and others, in Eastern Europe, pre-WWII. Stellarkid ( talk) 03:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Materialscientist ( talk) 06:09, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
(I have italicized part of the text that follows, to indicate what I find important in these remarks, which a nuisance persists in plunking on my page, despite my protests. I had earlier eliminated remarks, whose faux-amicable tone I prefer not to engage with, since I find this whole campaign distasteful. The editor refuses to take that hint. I hope that with this, the intrusive editor will desist. I will note in fine that in his last reversion he actually elided a gloss I myself made, rather ironical, since he protests at my italicizing, without censorship, of his own unwelcome remarks. I should not be forced, by someone who is formally asking for my ban to be extended, to edit-war on my own page. Could I prevail on any casual reader of this page to undo any further interventions by Mr. Sword Shaft on this page. Thank you. Nishidani ( talk) 16:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC))
Hello. Just a brief note to mention that I filed an arbitration enforcement that relates to you. See here. I regret that it came to this, especially given that we were at the end of the day both on the same side of the issue at the AfD. But as you know from my comments at the AfD, I was troubled by what I viewed as willful flouting of topic bans, and related editing activity. Thanks.-- Epeefleche ( talk) 16:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Nishi, your own time would be better spent not arguing with inanity. nableezy - 17:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Epeefleche has been caught out as is a blatant, multivolume sockuser, for the record, as bad as NoCal. Nishidani ( talk) 13:53, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
nice to see you back good sir. Happy editing!!! hope you're well. -- Steve, Sm8900 ( talk) 17:39, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Aaargh, time and happenstance are cruel, and my large ungainly dictionary-with-microscope have rendered me unable to update a current FAC I am working on --> Cockatoo, and won't be able to look up the origianl malay meaning for a bit (like, 12 hours I think). If you arew around and have a minute I'd be insanely grateful for a doublecheck. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 03:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
![]() |
Added Sauce Award
I award this Added Sauce award to Nishidani for great efforts in hunting down sourcing my lexical queries (and articles are always better with sauces/sources). Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 14:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC) |
Aah, I crack myself up sometimes :) Casliber ( talk · contribs) 14:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Hello, stumbled onto your page from a link in FfD, figured I'd let you know that your user page is teetering on the edge of WP:NOTSOAPBOX territory. Consider moving this into a subpage so that people clicking on your name do not automatically find themselves in your quote box. Generally, the user page itself is about the user, not his or her beliefs. Nuclear Lunch Detected Hungry? 23:21, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
'Generally, the user page itself is about the user, not his or her beliefs.'
(I have italicized part of the text that follows, to indicate what I find important in these remarks, which a nuisance persists in plunking on my page, despite my protests. I had earlier eliminated remarks, whose faux-amicable tone I prefer not to engage with, since I find this whole campaign distasteful. The editor refuses to take that hint. I hope that with this, the intrusive editor will desist. I will note in fine that in his last reversion he actually elided a gloss I myself made, rather ironical, since he protests at my italicizing, without censorship, of his own unwelcome remarks. I should not be forced, by someone who is formally asking for my ban to be extended, to edit-war on my own page. Could I prevail on any casual reader of this page to undo any further interventions by Mr. Sword Shaft on this page. Thank you. Nishidani ( talk) 16:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC))
Hello. Just a brief note to mention that I filed an arbitration enforcement that relates to you. See here. I regret that it came to this, especially given that we were at the end of the day both on the same side of the issue at the AfD. But as you know from my comments at the AfD, I was troubled by what I viewed as willful flouting of topic bans, and related editing activity. Thanks.-- Epeefleche ( talk) 16:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Nishi, your own time would be better spent not arguing with inanity. nableezy - 17:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
I recently obtained Saul B. Cohen and Nurit Kliot's detailed essay, ‘Place-Names in Israel's Ideological Struggle over the Administered Territories,’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 82, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), pp. 653-680, which has far more detail than I managed to use in my essay. While studying it closely, I reviewed that essay as posted above on this page, in order to update my offline, more complete version. With the version here, of course, it happens to touch on the I/P area, and I cannot alter it: it will remain fossilized, given the I/P ban. I hope no harm is seen, or provocation inferred, or intent to wriggle around the ban suspected, in my using the occasion of this private review against a new source, to (a) add to the bibliography, and (b) provide links that I overlooked were available to the original essay. A lot of silliness can be raised by nitpicking. Despite strong temptations to finish the essay, I have refrained from modifying it, in compliance with my understanding of the ban. But links and the odd bibliographical note will not, I hope, be taken as an opportunity for malicious prosecution. Nishidani ( talk) 11:40, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
Heh, funny how one meanders around this place - I did tinker with coffee some time ago and now it appears a flash mob by the name of the FA-Team has descended like a flock of proverbials onto the caffeinated article (just as I am trying to reduce my caffeine intake :))...anyways, there is a brief etymology section, and thought who knows? You might have some interesting eruditeness to add :) Casliber ( talk · contribs) 14:01, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
'The European languages generally appear to have got the name from Turkish kahveh, about 1600, perh. through It(alian). caffè;. . .The English coffee, Dutch koffie, earlier German coffee, koffee, Russian kophe, kopheĭ, have o, apparently representing earlierau from ahw or ahv.
'Some have conjectured that it is a foreign, perh. African, word disguised and have thought it connected with the name of Kaffa in the south Abyssinian highland, where the plant seems to be native. But of this there is no evidence, and the name qahwah is not given to the berry or plant, which is called bunn, the native name in Shoa being būn.'
The first reference to "coffee" in the English language, in the form chaoua, dates to 1598. In English and other European languages, coffee derives from the Ottoman Turkish kahveh, via the Italian caffè. The Turkish word in turn was borrowed from Arabic: قهوة, qahwah. Arab lexicographers maintain that qahwah originally meant a kind of wine, and referred its etymology, in turn, to the verb qahiya, signifying "to have no appetite", [1], since this beverage was thought to dull one's hunger. Several alternative etymologies exist which hold that the Arab form may disguise a loanword from an Ethiopian or African source, suggesting Kaffa, the highland in southwestern Ethiopia, since the plant is indigenous to that area. [2] [3] Best, Nishidani ( talk) 16:13, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I have filed a request to amend the West Bank - Judea and Samaria arbitration case. See here. nableezy - 20:42, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't know what to say. I was only joking when I said I'd have to watch over the Steiner article when you two were gone.
I was looking through my first messages to Nableezy because I remember saying something to him about this back then and I came across one where I agreed with your advice to him. [8] -- JGGardiner ( talk) 20:03, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
I have tried amending the Arb amendment in the hope that it would get through, but it seems that they want individuals to tug their own forelocks. Ah well.-- Peter cohen ( talk) 21:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi Nishidani,
Each time I "pop out", you decide to leave wikipédia. I hope there is no "cause to effect" link. ;-)
Here is a book that may interest you :
fr:Gilber Achcar, Les Arabes et la Shoah. La guerre israélo-arabe des récits, Sinbad, Actes Sud, 2009. The book will soon be published in English.
You can read a description here. It is a complex study for a very difficult topic (and I am mitigated (= 'I have mixed feelings'? Nishidani) by some analysis) but it is definitely worth reading. There are also 3 large sections dedicated to Amin al-Husseini. Amitiés,
Ceedjee (
talk)
09:45, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm sorry if I've somehow offended you Nishidani. Tiamut talk 23:07, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Oh dear, and here I was (after trying not to go near the issue of exclusivity of Ethiopianness of the Oromo with an ethnographic bargepole) coming with some fun etymologies...anything to add to
brumby, and Killer whale Orca Killer Whale
Orca...thought these might be convoluted enough to pique your interest....
Casliber (
talk ·
contribs)
23:16, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
I know you aren't allowed to reply, and I also know it's unseemly to gloat, but you might find the sub-thread ending with this post of mine amusing. http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Ariel_(city)&diff=336461595&oldid=336460838 -- Peter cohen ( talk) 20:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
I almost mentioned Genesis earlier. Because God's penis would be sort of like Adam's navel. He'd have no need for it. Not that he's told us about anyway. And the foreskin even less so. I thought that was one of your better puns though. I was trying to think of a Deluge one to go with it but I'm just too tired. Maybe something will come in my sleep. Cheers. -- JGGardiner ( talk) 11:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism#Shakespeare_Authorship_Question. This is nothing but promotion. Is there any Wikipedia body that has jurisdiction over this? If I jumped in and deleted it I'd get blocked. Tom Reedy ( talk) 02:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Now, here is an interesting debate on and article - Illegal logging in Madagascar - see Talk:Illegal logging in Madagascar/GA1 - there has been a discussion on what the scope of the article should be..but now a conundrum about 'deforestation' vs 'forest management'..... Casliber ( talk · contribs) 23:32, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
That's an easy one. 'Deforestation', as opposed to 'Deafterstation' came from German slang used among immigrants building railway infrastructure through the wooded areas of the Eastern Coast of USA in the 18th century. . . . Nishidani ( talk) 23:42, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I don't know what sin you think you may have committed with regard to my name on EdJohnson's page. I am of course a true-believer in Stratfordian cause, being in the pay of the Warwickshire tourist industry. However I will apologise in advance that I will not be able to contribute much in the next week at least. I will be away in rural France for the next few weeks. My only access to the internet will be the archaic computer in the local Marie, which many "authorship researchers" believe de Vere wrote the ur-Hamlet. Paul B ( talk) 18:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Smatprt ( talk) 07:18, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I only got involved in this business because I noticed your name in a heading at ANI. I hope that you aren't risking a second topic ban for waving that sword of truth around too close to some rather long noses.
Do you have any idea on who is operating the various sockpuppets that have appeared at the dispute pages. Being new to the area, I haven't got a hang of the mannerisms of the various antagonists. However various accounts do look suspect. Sources offline suggest some might be meatpuppets activated through a mailing list, but others do look like single purpose socks to me.
BTW, I'm disappointed that it is no longer suggested in the RFCU summary that Tom is "teeming" with you? I had imagined Nishidaniesque ectoplasm.-- Peter cohen ( talk) 15:03, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I am most disppointed that you abritrarily deleted the additions of Roper's Proving Shakespeare (2008) and Burgstahler's "Encrypted Testimony..." paper from the list of references/readings in the Oxfordian section. I does not seem that you even bothered to click on the links then provided in order to assess their quality at first hand. Roper's shows that Ben Jonson's inscription on the Startford Monument preserves an encrypted message in a Cardano Grille attesting that Oxford wrote "Shakespeare". This cipher conforms to all the Friedmans' criteria for a valid encryption and the solution is UNIQUE. Burgstahler's paper, which explains Roper's and others' recent work on proving Oxford = Shakespeare, has been presented at many scholarly meetings and is hosted on the University of Kansas webpage. I find it curious that the only reference to Roper on the entry contained an invalid URL, which I corrected at ref. 186. The fact that Roper's book has been ignored by the Stratfordians is not a testimony to the merits and quality of Roper's logic and evidence; it is testimony to the intractability of zealots. Phaedrus7 ( talk) 22:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your replies, which I am not prepared to answer in full right now, and, in any event, I realize your breadth of knowledge on this subject is greater than mine; but I have read Roper's book Proving Shakespeare and believe that skeptics ignore its contents at their peril. The Cardano grille cipher in Ben Jonson's text on the Stratford Monument, discovered by David Roper and described in his Proving Shakespeare (2008), meets all the criteria set forth by the Friedmans for what constitutes a valid cipher and, as I mentioned before, the solution is unique: there are no other chance solutions as can be the case with, e.g., equal letter spacing "bible code" solutions; yet so far no cryptologist has deigned to evaluate this discovery, the evident feeling being that there can be no such valid cipher and therefore there is no need to evaluate any--at least that was the sense conveyed by mathematician and arch-skeptic Norman Levitt, and others, in emails to me in early 2009. Since both Stratfordians and Oxfordians are able to "explain away" most, if not all, of the biographical evidence dispositive to their case, it seems to me that the unique solution to Ben Jonson's cipher on the Stratford Monument is due respect, regardless how firmly held prior positions and opinions may be. Phaedrus7 ( talk) 17:05, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Your further comments are most welcome and applicable to my interests in a few select "fringe" theories, some of which are very valid subjects for investigation/research whose validity is rejected almost out-of-hand by the "experts" in the fields being challenged. The prime example for me currently is the rejection by many scientists of the Younger Dryas Boundary Event 12,900 B.P. as the result of a cometary impact over the Laurentian ice sheet then covering the Great Lakes. See Sept. 2009 Sky & Telescope cover story and any number of recent cable TV documentaries on History Channel, Discovery, NGEO, etc. One very accomplished impact researcher declared that an impact of that magnitude would have such a low probability of happening that it cannot have happened so recently! This flies in the face of elementary statistics and the nature of the probability of independent events. In cases such as this the rejection from some scientists is so visceral that erroneous and nonsensical reasons are thrown out almost thoughtlessly. My first exposure to such a phenomenon was the Velikovsky Affair over the controversial publication in 1950 by Immanuel Velikovsky of Worlds in Collision which, to the satisfaction of many, was resolved when the Greenland ice cores in the 1980s showed conclusively that Velikovsky's claimed extra-terrestrial cataclysms did not happen; but the zealots did not accept this conclusion. Many of the early criticisms of Velikovsky were the sort which, as Carl Sagan was later fond of saying "did not survive close scrutiny", such as the notion that if Earth stopped rotating for Joshua when the Sun stood still that everything not tied down would "fly off the Earth"; but Earth does not rotate fast enough for this to happen. Later I was chagrined upon learning that the reaction of Velikovsky's diehard supporters was precisely the same as the flat earthers in the 19th century at the Old Bedford Canal in England whose six mile straight run was ideal for Alfred Russel Wallace to demonstrate the Earth's curvature to settle a flat earther challenge; but the flat earthers would not look through Wallace's surveyor's transit and did not accept the referee's verdict in Wallace's favor. The "peril" I referred to was the peril of Stratfordians being shown wrong. My background in Shakespeare is meager. I memorized a few sonnets in a high school English Lit. class. In my senior year of college I took the sophomore elective "Masterpieces of Literature" under a British grad student who was emphatic in the belief that it was invalid to subject Shakespeare's characters to Freudian analysis; "Antony and Cleopatra" was in the syllabus and I earned an "A" for my term paper inspired by Eric Auerbach's Mimesis, "Figure and Fulfillment in Dante's Paolo and Francesca". My interest in the Authorship Question goes back to the time I was involved with a high school English teacher who was A.B.D. in Chaucer studies at Univ. Georgia and The Atlantic published an article on it. I was surprised at how adamant she became over this question. It simply was not fit for polite discussion. And she would not discuss it. A few years later, Harper's published a forum discussing the Question with pro and con essays and the only thing that sticks in my mind from the letters printed later was the observation that great writers never retire as "Shakespeare" did when he returned to Stratford. Great writers write, regardless their immediate circumstances of fortune and health, with examples of great writers who wrote until the day they died despite all manner of hardship. The letter writer's point was that the man who retired to Stratford cannot have been the same person who wrote Shakespeare's literature. By contrast, it is fairly certain that de Vere wrote until the day he died. One point that sticks out in my mind from reading Roper's book a year ago is that the first version of "Titus Andronicus" can be shown to have been written in 1574 before de Vere went to Italy/France for a year, which is also too early for it to have been written by that Stratford fellow. I shall reply to your closing question to the best of my ability as soon as I can after looking into the matter. Phaedrus7 ( talk) 17:30, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
My comments today will be in two parts: several points that can be provided quickly followed by quotes of passages from Proving Shakespeare to reply to your questions about Drummond and the annotations in the Glasgow First Folio, which will take longer to type out. While not all that important but a notable omission from my earlier depiction of my background is the fact that prior to college I did read three Shakespeare plays: The Tempest, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. Since college I have also attended performances of several plays: The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Twelfth Night. I have also seen movies of several others plays including Henry V and Hamlet. In the course of finding the passages in Roger's book I intend to quote soon, I was reminded of two more quickie "facts" that argue in favor of Oxford: River Avon does not necessarily refer to the Stratford location because a second river Avon flows in Warwickshire, a locale significant in Oxford's life, and the association of Shakespeare with harbours in tribute has nothing to do with the Stratford fellow, but does allude to one of Oxford's official titles/duties in his career. Previously, I mentioned Titus Andronicus having been written in 1574 when the Stratford fellow was only eleven years old. For more on this matter, I invite you to read Roper's "Henry Peacham's Chronogram: The Dating of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus" < http://dlroper.shakespearians.com/henry_peacham.htm>. Finally here, read Roper's comments to me concerning Jonson's conversations with Drummond, which he has granted me permission to post:
conversations with Ben Jonson during the Christmas of 1618. Surely, these conversations are about Jonson and his opinions regarding both his contemporaries and their failings, and which stretch to many classical writers. He also has much to say about his own life. Elsewhere, Jonson's conversation is full of tittle-tattle, the sort of talk that would not have been out of place in the Mermaid.
Drummond. On one occasion Jonson says "Shakspear wanted Arte". Assuming Drummond reported this correctly (the original manuscripts are missing and present information is based upon copies) then it must be countered by Jonson's couplet in the First Folio, "Yet must I not give Nature all: Thy Art, / My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part." Jonson presumably wrote these lines soon after 1618, for they were published in 1623.
that Jonson mocked Shakespeare for bringing some men to shore from a shipwreck off the coast of Bohemia, which is landlocked and some 100 miles from the sea. I have been given to understand that older maps of Europe, which Oxford may have seen since cartography was Burghley's favourite subject, showed Bohemia when it once stretched to the coast. If your correspondent is wondering why Jonson referred to Shakespeare and not Oxford, it is necessary to understand the reason for Oxford's disgrace, and the fact that Jonson was in the employ of Oxford's son-in-law. Oxford's disgrace was a taboo subject, Burghley would have likely considered it as a serious threat to national security, which is why Jonson was compelled to conceal Oxford's authorship in Cardano's recently invented method for encrypting secrets.
Shakespeare: (1) Ben Jonson's Cardano grille encrypted into the inscription on the Stratford monument. (2) The identity of the rival poet and his poetry and to whom both rivals were addressing their verse, indicated by the 16th century usage of the second person singular, you, reserved for the nobility when addressing each other, (3) The date, 1574 on Henry Peacham's chronogram at the foot of the Titus document. (4) Thomas Thorpe's asyntactic dedication to Shake-speares Sonnets. Combined, they amount to proof likely to be acceptable in a court of law.
Did not explain the discovery space, whereas Tib. Nom De Vere' explains it quite nicely." Phaedrus7 ( talk) 20:16, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Roper's text concerning Drummond in Proving Shakespeare, pp. 426-7: "It has been said that if one gives a lie sufficient start, it will never be caught. The chase is on. It is time those who are concerned to see the truth prevail engage themselves to the fact that when a repressed people are struck dumb by autority, honest men will speak in the language of secrecy. "Ben Jonson was one of those to whom this refers. In his conversations to William Drummond (Conv., 1, 658), the Laird of hawthornden remarked: "of all styles he loved most to be named honest." "Jonson's passion for literature and admiration for Shake-speare rebelled against the censorship made necessary to avoid a scandal involving three of the noblest families in England (the houses of Burghley, Oxford, and Southampton). Playwrights and actors had not then the elevated status they now enjoy, and suppression by the ruling class against the acting fraternity was commonplace. Jonson's response was to employ the latest method of secrecy invented by Girolamo Cardano, and use it to secrete the truth about Shakespeare within the inscription on the monument at Stratford-upon-Avon. "Added to this, he took virtual control of the dedications to Shakespeare that were to appear in the First Folio, and saw to it that Droeshout's engraving complemented his own encrypted avowal of de Vere's authorship. At the same time, with one eye on the censors, he praised Shakespeare's work in glowing but ambiguous terminology. The facts are there; they all fit neatly together, acknowledgement of them is all that is required for thruth to prevail."
Here is Roper's discussion of the Glasgow First Folio, pp. 433-4: "Peacham appears not have been alone in believing that William Shakespeare's name in the First Folio did not automatically signify Shaxpere was the person who had written the plays. A copy of the First Folio, owned by Glasgow University, was originally the property of a person fairly close to many of the actors named at the front of the book. To signify this, the owner had annotated the list of names with a short pithy comment. For example, against John Lowine the word "eyewitness" is written; against Richard Burbage are the words "by report"; this, presumably refers to the fact that Burbage died in 1619, four years before the First Folio went on sale. William Kemp had left the company in 1599 and so there is nothing against his name; William Ostler's name is adjoined by the word "hearsay", and the words "so to" appear for Nathan Field who is next on the list. The real surprise is to read the annotation against the name William Shakespeare: it says, "lease for making". "According to the OED, and The Concise Etymology of the English Language (W. W. Skeat, Oxford, 1882 and 1936), "Leasing", means falsehood, "from leas, false". The word "making" is conventionally defined as: "to fashion, frame, construct, compose or form: to create, to bring into being..." (Chambers English Dictionary, Cambrdige, 1989). "William Shakespeare was therefore 'false for bringing into being', or whatever synonym one prefers to replace 'making' by; that is, according to the original owner of Glasgow University's volume of the First Folio: a person, who may be judged from his other comments, to have been contemporaneous with that era. "In view of what has preceded this last disclosure about Shakespeare, the statement should not come as a great surprise. Jonson said the same thing when he encrypted his avowal into the inscription on the Stratford monument, reinforcing it with ambiguous phrases in his testimony to Shakespeare at the front of the First Folio. "Thorpe made a similar disclosure when he encrypted Vere's name into the Sonnets' dedication. Peacham's Minerva Britanna, Nashe's 'Will Monox', Barnfield's, play on the word 'ever', Marston's silent name bounded by a single letter, Chettle's cunning dig at Shakespeare by referring to him as t he 'god of harbours', and Droeshout's clever engraving of a cartoon figure filled with symbolism, indicating Oxford to be Shakespeare all point to two momentous facts. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare, and the connection between the two names was such a taboo subject that it could never openly be referred to in public. "The original owner of Glasgow University's edition of the First Folio was very clearly aware of this, and decided to signal the same information in how own provate way. He made a note against William Shakespeare's name, denouncing him as a playwright inside the very volume that suggested otherwise."
Enjoy your company and endure the anticipated hangovers; but when you get back to business here, after considering the true nature of Jonson's Cardano grille encryption and reading Roper's reasons why Titus Andronicus was written ca. 1574 (see URL above) when the Stratford fellow was only a lad, I should hope you would be in a position to reconsider your earlier remarks "no first rate mind . . . has ever appeared in print with a kind of methodologically sound argument" and the "elegant geometry of one or two 'ciphers'" alluding to Ben Jonson's deployment of the then-new Cardano grille to encrypt his message on the Stratford Monument, whose solution is unique and meets all the criteria set forth by the Friedmans who categorically declared that if, and I quote: "independent investigation shows the answer to be unique, and to have been reached by valid means, we shall accept it, however much we shock the learned world by doing so." While we may end up having a "failure to communicate", it will also be, in my opinion, another instance, to paraphrase Thomas Huxley, of "the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." Also in the seventeenth century, the Church marshalled various textual evidences against Galileo's science concerning the mechanics of the Solar System, but science prevailed. Surely the science of cryptography today would trump the vagaries of dialectical composition, an art well practiced by many gifted playwrights--then and now. Phaedrus7 ( talk) 18:24, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Funny how life runs to parodic archetype. Three days of drinking, and I caught, with one other of the crew, a 24 hour virus, which ran through me like a dose of salts. I protested over the ceramic bowl that I was neither Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton nor WS of Stratford in 1616. The break gave me time to reread Roper's essay. But today, after this short note, I will be rejoining the ongoing wassail. I have several remarks to make. For the moment this. Fixing the date at 1575 means that Roper has to argue that Henry Peacham must be the father, the minor bellelettrist cleric, and not, as orthodox scholarship maintains, his homonymous son, the Henry Peacham of 1578ca-1644. Well yes, the father did write minor books. But only the son is known for his distinguished career as a graphic artist and painter, with the kind of interest that lies behind the painted draft of the scene from Titus Andronicus. Where is the evidence that the father had this gift, or pictoral interest? Nishidani ( talk) 11:59, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
At the risk of giving the appearance of "piling on", see here Roper's reply to your concern over the the elder Peacham's instrumentality: "The answer is that 1575 rules out the younger Peacham. If Nishidani abides by proof, it is for him to disprove that the date on the Titus manuscript is 1574. If he cannot, and all alternative suggestions have been shown to be deficient, then the report made by Joseph Quincy Adams should settle the matter for good. “The elaborate and detailed drawing at the top of the Titus document seems to be not in the style of, and very distinctly superior in technique to, the numerous drawings we have from Peacham’s pen.” And again: “in the Folger manuscript of Emblemata Varia we have twenty pen drawings by Peacham, carefully executed for presentation to Sir Julius Caesar, which are, I think, quite obviously different in style and inferior in craftsmanship to the Titus drawing. . . . The faces in Peacham’s work are entirely without character, the details often clumsy in execution, and the whole drawing lacking in vitality.” Nishidani should also note that the handwriting on the Titus manuscript is totally different from the handwriting on the younger Peacham’s Basilicon Doron." Phaedrus7 ( talk) 17:57, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
'Censorship in England was controlled by a spy network that was every bit as efficient as in Stalin's USSR. The penalty for writing material considered injurious to the State ranged from a whipping to amputation.'
Inter hos judices tamen vivendum, moriendum, et, quod durius est, tacendum ((1955)Mercury Books 1961 p.323)
It was not until 1592 that Oxford schemed to have 'Venus and Adonis' published as a work by Shakespeare under the patronage of Southampton. Oxford needed someone unknown to the literary world, any familiar writer would have been ridiculed for the hoax once he was discovered, as he very quickly would have been. The name Shakespeare was derived from Shaxpere or Shakspere: a former horse attendant outside the Curtain who had begun work as a 'Jack-of-all-trades' inside the playhouse.
I fear your replies are getting far ahead of my ability to keep up. But I'll do my best, hopefully with a little help from my friends. I'll be brief here. Interesting that you also have read Hamlet's Mill, one of the few books I have read more than once, namely thrice since 1974. Interestingly enough, while many scholars, such as Philip Morrison, Thomas Worthen, William Sullivan and Harald A. T. Reiche, accept the book's heretical claim that our ancestors knew the effects of precession, which knowledge was coded in myth, the archons of the History of Astronomy Academy most emphatically do not. Surely there are parallels here between H. Mill and the S.A.Q. with respect to the resistance of academic authorities to change. You might be interested to learn, if not already, that The Economist on-line has a review of James Shapiro's new book Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? followed by comments, most of which reject Shapiro's defense of the Stratford fellow, with no. 28 recommending Jonathan Bond's THE DE VERE CODE: Proof of the true author of SHAKE-SPEARE'S SONNETS (2009): "A 400-year-old cypher unlocked, An epic Elizabethan love story uncovered". In the wake of your many recent criticisms, I think I am in a position similar to that Velikovsky found himself in March 1965 after his encounter with Abraham Sachs at Brown University; but I shall not be as brazen as Velikovsky was when in the moment he boasted: "Dr. Sachs threw so many accusations in that Phillipic of his that I am at a difficulty to answer; but I invite Dr. Sachs to spend the hour and a half tomorrow at the meeting, and everyone of you too, and point by point each of his statements will be proven wrong." Unfortunately, the next day Sachs did not show up for the Q&A at Diman House where Velikovsky volunteered nothing and never did complete any "point by point" rebuttal as he did for the other faculty panelists who confronted him at Brown. However, on one point above I would venture that you are wrong: you contend that in 1574 Oxford could not have read any English translation of Seneca in blank verse; but this assertion is undermined by Wikipedia's entry for blank verse: "The first known use of blank verse in the English language was by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his interpretation of the Æneid (c. 1554)." Phaedrus7 ( talk) 20:52, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
followed by comments, most of which reject Shapiro's defense of the Stratford fellow, with no. 28 recommending Jonathan Bond's THE DE VERE CODE: Proof of the true author of SHAKE-SPEARE'S SONNETS (2009):
Given your apparent aversion to accepting inferences in the absence of explicit documentary evidence, I wonder whether or not you'd agree Dante was justified in consigning Paolo and Francesca to Hell since all we know is that "they read no more that day"; shucks, we do not know they made the beast with two backs. At least Dante does not tell us what they did when they stopped reading. They could have switched to parchesi or some other innocent pastime. I also recoil at your referring to the documented biography of Shakespeare as the standard against which to judge the case for Oxford's authorship when the biography of Shakespeare is nothing but a concatenation of conjecture fabricated to link a few isolated biographical events that has assumed the status of unchallengeable dogma over the centuries. Since you are so thorough a critic, you should really read Roper's book Proving Shakespeare so that you are privy to all the details which you assume he does not command since they are missing from the excerpts you have read. A justification for this suggestion resides in Roper's reply to your recent commentary:
I am grateful for the observations made by Nishidani; it helps refine future references. It is however clear that he has fastened upon one part of an argument that stems from another, but without acquainting himself with the details of the other. He mentions Greene's Groatsworth, but he is apparently unaware that Nashe has identified Oxford as the host of the banquet attended by himself, Marlowe, and Greene. He is therefore unaware of the motive behind this unusual gathering, which was for Oxford to prepare these wits for the arrival of Shakespeare. This new arrival on the literary scene, akin to Athene plucked from the head of Zeus, was about to publish Venus and Adonis. Enquiries would soon reveal he was an impostor: a
stratagem for Oxford to get his work into print without identifying himself. Nashe, Marlowe, and Greene were being buttered-up to pre-empt their interference and with a request to remain silent. Chettle misunderstood the meaning of Greene's scribble, as he admitted later, he was unable to read part of it. The author of Willobie His Avisa tumbled the ruse and hinted at
it, along with other matters, in his booklet that came out soon after Lucrece. Once the ruse was uncovered, the connection between Southampton and Shakespeare was redundant, and no more was heard of Shakespeare until Meres published Wits Treasury, fortuitously after Oxford's father-in-law, the head of censorship, had died. Like a jigsaw puzzle all the pieces fit together.
If you try to fit the same pieces together with a genuine Shakespeare, the pieces do not fit; there are unanswered questions. Nishidani throws doubt upon the story told to Davenant. But it rings true. It does no favour to the reputation of Shakespeare to repeat it, and for a new arrival from the country, with no education, horse minding was an obvious choice. One also has to understand the levels of superiority attached to the Elizabethan class system. The aloof manner in which Oxford treats Dogberry or Bottom is indicative of the way he would have thought of Shakspere. It is essential to understand the aristocratic mind, especially Oxford's, and that can only be improved upon by reading the different accounts of his life, as seen by different authors.
In short, there are no gaps in logic. Everything flows from one link in the chain to the next, based upon the evidence available and with deductive reasoning joining them together. If Nishidani believes I should have presented the case more efficiently, I bow to his wisdom and will look again at where improvements can be made.
Phaedrus7 ( talk) 19:19, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
He mentions Greene's Groatsworth, but he is apparently unaware that Nashe has identified Oxford as the host of the banquet attended by himself, Marlowe, and Greene. He is therefore unaware of the motive behind this unusual gathering, which was for Oxford to prepare these wits for the arrival of Shakespeare. This
Given your apparent aversion to accepting inferences in the absence of explicit documentary evidence, I wonder whether or not you'd agree Dante was justified in consigning Paolo and Francesca to Hell since all we know is that "they read no more that day"; shucks, we do not know they made the beast with two backs
but without acquainting himself with the details of the other. He mentions Greene's Groatsworth, but he is apparently unaware that (a) Nashe has identified Oxford as the host of the banquet attended by himself, Marlowe, and Greene. He is therefore unaware of (b) the motive behind this unusual gathering, which was for Oxford to prepare these wits for the arrival of Shakespeare. This new arrival on the literary scene, akin to Athene plucked from the head of Zeus, was about to publish Venus and Adonis. (c) Enquiries would soon reveal he was an impostor: a stratagem for Oxford to get his work into print without identifying himself. Nashe, Marlowe, and Greene were being (d) buttered-up to pre-empt their interference and with a request to remain silent.
If you try to fit the same pieces together with a genuine Shakespeare, the pieces do not fit; there are unanswered questions.
Nishidani, there has been a very long dispute on this article and it ended up in arbitration. If you or Peter would like to edit Asmahan again on behalf of SD, then let's open this whole issue for public debate again... or it will be another round of meatpuppetry. Nefer Tweety ( talk) 22:12, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Nishidani, thank you for taking a look at the corrections as a neutral part. I have made a reply to nr 1, and there is still also five points left, will you go through them or? -- Supreme Deliciousness ( talk) 00:29, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I am free at last! I am reminded of those immortal words of the practicing academic, “Thanks for keeping track of this, Stephen. Its important to keep careful records. Tom, unfortunately, has no idea where this whole thing is going, so he keeps fighting battles that he cannot win.” --BenJonson (talk) 02:17, 1 March 2010 (UTC) Tom Reedy ( talk) 22:41, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
I'd join you for a drink but I might be afraid of the Chalice from the Palace! Anyhow, I thought you might be interested in this link:[ [10]]. Check the opening line of graph 1, as well as all of Graph 2.
The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approach'd, unlock'd her silent throat;
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more.
Farewell, all joys; O Death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.
Nishidani ( talk) 13:07, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
annex from the authorship page.
Nishidani, it is clear that you and Tom are teaming up to edit war as you carry out your agenda to delete all mentions of the SAQ and in particular, any mentions of De Vere, anywhere on Wikipedia. Your "Reverting to enforce certain overriding policies is not considered edit warring" is the latest policy advice that you are abusing. The example of an "overriding policy" cited has to do with BLP issues, which Wikipedia is very sensitive to. To claim that the ONE-WAY rule is an "overriding policy" is just plain wrong. It's an abuse of policy. Smatprt ( talk) 23:18, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Hello, Nishidani. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Smatprt ( talk) 17:33, 19 May 2010 (UTC) ( here, for the record)
Nishi, if I might make a suggestion. Try not to respond to Smatprt at the WQA board; if some uninvolved party says something then respond. Dont let this distract you or be a waste of time. Also, try and keep that other hand on the keyboard. Cheers, nableezy - 20:22, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, you fucking fuck, your profanity is well-known, and duly noted! Personally, I'm so sick of this tired shit I'm ready to ignore his campaign to insert his obsession into every nook and cranny of Wikipedia while we finish the sandbox 2 article. Apparently most editors don't care anymore that he does so; they just don't want to deal with him. The reader looking for reliable information takes a back seat for editors and admins when they are inundated with unending bellyaching from a well-known and supernaturally persistent POV warrior, as the lack of responses to his noticeboard requests testifies. We can clean it all up after we're done with the article and a jury has rendered a verdict. Meanwhile, it's all a massive waste of time that sucks our energy down to nothing, which I'm sure is his purpose. Cheers! Tom Reedy ( talk) 02:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)