Who benefited more from the “mash-up” between LP and JZ? My friends and I are trying to figure out why the “mash-up” happened.
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Why it happened?! There’s a lot of publicity and money flowing, enough so that everyone’s happy and it’s a moot point who benefited more. MTV certainly didn’t walk away empty handed, and neither did Jay-Z or Linkin Park. They found something that’ll sell to fans of both.
dear answer person – I stumbled upon this link the other day while surfing. Thought you might want to modernize your style and maybe incorporate with interesting “ask” responses. See the following… http://www.gapersblock.com/airbags/ask_the_librarian/
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: I’ll pass the suggestion along to the Answerperson technical support unit. It looks spiffy and perhaps the AP online interface is a little bland. It’s been suggested by others that we move to more of a blog type of interface. When you say “‘ask’ responses,” I assume you’re talking about the comments that readers can leave, such as under the topic “Where Are Chicago’s Poets?”
This website seems to be a little different than what we’re doing in that there’s only one featured topic per week and they often emanate from the librarian, not as a reply to a query. Then, the answers are very long, often with bibliographies. It’s very much more like a weekly newspaper column. We recommend that if you have a genuine reference or research question, you contact a reference desk at one of the Duke libraries. This personal contact approach will get you a speedier reply and better allow both you and the librarian to understand exactly what you need and how you need to find it.
Do the Jewish faith believe in hell?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: See preceding answer.
Is homosexuality prohibited by Judaism?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: See preceding answer.
Besides homosexuality, what are some other things prohibited by the Christian Bible? Certainly the 10 Commandments come to mind, but my friend said that cutting one’s hair is not allowed. Is he right and are there other obscure things that the Bible forbids?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Answer Person, like other librarians, must defer from answering questions that involve medical and legal (including tax) advice. AP extends this same principle to questions involving religious interpretation.
I can help point you in the right direction, and can perhaps say a little more regarding more cut-and-dry questions (like the recent one about the Jewish calendar), but will, in general, have to point you in the direction of religious experts, reference works, or catalog searches. Also, a question involving judgment is a major research project, not something that can be answered in a few sentences. Religious experts certainly don’t agree on issues like this–prohibitions may be subtly stated, who is being prohibited from doing something can be debated, etc.
The bottom line is that I recommend you visit the fine folks at the Divinity School Library to direct you to sources that will help you answer your questions. Since you’ll no doubt find conflicting opinions or incomplete answers, you might just want to closely read all of the Bible yourself. The more translations the better, and perhaps in the original Hebrew and Greek. I would avoid a Google search for such topics; you’ll find that there are a lot of crackpots out there.
Is there an “Internet 2”?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Yes, really an outgrowth of the current Internet, referring to technologies intended to expand bandwidth on the current Internet. See for instance http://www.internet2.edu/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet2 .
How does the internet work? This is really a two-part question. First, is there some sort of central computer from which all other computers connect? Second, who manages the internet? I heard in class that the US government has ultimate regulative control over the internet, (possibly in conjunction with an organization called icann (www.icann.org)). This seems plausible in the same way that the US government regulates the airwaves.
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: There have been many large books and millions of technical papers written about how the Internet works, so I invite you to come to the library, and we’ll help you do a literature search. I’ll bet some of the folks in Duke’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering are pretty knowledgeable on the subject, too. A good background might be the classic book *The Whole Internet* from O’Reilly. I don’t think it’s been updated in a few years, and is probably out of print, but it provides a good overview of the history. O’Reilly also had one entitled *Internet in a Nutshell*. Redundency is important in the Internet’s success, to keep it from being dependent on a single computer or single routing between computers. There are a number of boards, agencies, councils, authorities, and the like that deal with technical standards and protocols.
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is responsible for the domain names and IP addresses. Their website says they handle these responsibilities under contract from the US Commerce Dept., and there’s all sorts of stuff about it on the web. A critical view can be found from http://en.wikipedia.com (search ICANN) – a critical view as expected, since this online encyclopedia has been developed by open sourcy people who are wary of organizational control. Here’s a page on Internet management, whatever that is, courtesy of BellSouth: http://bellsouthpwp.net/c/c/ccpdlover/internet%20management.htm . Anyway, it’s a major research project (for those of us not intimately involved in the process) to determine the technical, administrative, and legal story behind the Internet.
I am having trouble with breakfast, as the prospect of cereal, toast, a bagel, eggs, fruit, yogurt, etc. do nothing to make me want to get out of bed. Do you have any fresh ideas? Is there any other country I should look to for great breakfast ideas?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: If you were waiting on me for an answer, you’re probably so hungry by now that stale cereal and rancid yogurt would be appealing. Breakfast is the best meal! Warmth is good, so oatmeal is nice. If you eat fish, smoked herring is good. Try a bigger variety of fruit (papaya, etc.). If you really don’t like traditional breakfast foods, have a bowl of soup or a taco. Actually, tacos are good breakfast foods; they even have a name for them: breakfast tacos. Mexican breakfasts, with spicy sauces and beans and stews, are great. Huevos rancheros, caldo, etc.
Why does Chanukah fall on different calender days every year, but still occur towards the end of the Western calender? If Chanukah is based on the Jewish calender, shouldn’t it occur in July or February sometimes, as the calenders circle through each other?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: This involves complex astronomy and religious history, so I’ll only attempt a crude uneducated simplification here.
The issue revolves around the fact that the Jewish calendar has aspects that are lunar (months) as well as solar (year). The Gregorian calendar is purely solar (the months don’t always start with the same phase of the moon). There are 12 lunar months, but these add up to less than a full solar year, so every few years an extra month needs to be added during a leap year. This is apparently specifically to keep each month in the same season each year; otherwise, each month would start 11 days earlier each year and the holidays would end up in different seasons after a while, which I think is what you’re asking about.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say “the calenders circle through each other.” Because of the extra month during the Jewish calendar leap years, it and the Gregorian calendar will approximately get back in synch every few years. Chanukah always falls on the 25th day of the month of Kislev, which will always put it at about the same time of the year (I believe late fall, before the winter solstice). As you know, from year to year the calendars aren’t at all in synch, so Chanukah of course won’t be on the same Gregorian calendar day each year.
For details and more information you should consult one of the reference sources in the Divinity School Library or Perkins Library, such as Encyclopaedia Judaica. Look under entries relating to the calendar. There are also some online sources good for quick reference, such as the entry under “Hebrew Calendar” at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar
Were any relatives of Hitler Jewish?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Although I’ve heard the common story that one of his grandparents was Jewish, this is apparently just a legend. See the following article: “Hitler’s Family Secret: A file recovered from the Nazi Archives tells of a Gestapo investigation into the Fuehrer’s murky family history” by Ben S. Swearingen, in *Civilization: The Magazine of the Library of Congress* Vol. 2, No. 2, Mar/Apr 1995, pp. 54-55. Online through Academic Search Elite or in bound periodicals at C582x. Also the book *Hitler: legend, myth & reality* by Werner Maser, at 923.243 H675MSC. Also the book *Explaining Hitler : the search for the origins of his evil* by Ron Rosenbaum, here in the library at 943.086092 H675, R813, 1998.