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June 25
Agent XXX's musical box
In the film The Spy Who Loved Me, as Agent XXX is in bed with her squeeze, a message comes in via a musical box. The box plays a little tune. It's awfully familiar - what is it? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 20:21, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
- Can you find it on YouTube? --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:43, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
- It's Lara's Theme from Dr. Zhivago. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 22:13, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
- That would figure. Otherwise known as "Somewhere, My Love". --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:12, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Jpgordon: Thank you, now you say it of course I know it! @Baseball Bugs: I don't think I've ever heard of that before. DuncanHill (talk) 00:56, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- In the mid-1960s, it was all the rage in elevator music. In fact, I've got the voice of Andy Williams reverberating in my head now. Oy! --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:43, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- I'm not old enough to have used a lift (or anything else) in the mid-60s. DuncanHill (talk) 14:12, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- I don't think music in lifts was a thing in Britain at that time, but it was certainly common in the new-fangled supermarkets, like Fine Fare as I recall. Alansplodge (talk) 13:30, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
- I'm not old enough to have used a lift (or anything else) in the mid-60s. DuncanHill (talk) 14:12, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- In the mid-1960s, it was all the rage in elevator music. In fact, I've got the voice of Andy Williams reverberating in my head now. Oy! --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:43, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Jpgordon: Thank you, now you say it of course I know it! @Baseball Bugs: I don't think I've ever heard of that before. DuncanHill (talk) 00:56, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- That would figure. Otherwise known as "Somewhere, My Love". --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:12, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
- It's Lara's Theme from Dr. Zhivago. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 22:13, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
June 26
Oldest 25%, 20%, 10%, 5% and 1%
I would like to know what age you would have to be to be in the oldest 25%, 20%, 10%, 5%, and 1%. What I mean by that is how old would you have to be so that 75%, 80%, 90%, 95%, and 99% is younger than you? Please cite sources. Interstellarity (talk) 13:06, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- You could start by Googling "population by age group" and zero in on what interests you. For example, the U S Census Bureau. If they don't have percentages but do have counts for each age group, you could easily work it out for yourself. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:15, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Baseball Bugs: Thank you for your answer. I would be interested in the world’s population by age. I’ll look it up. Interstellarity (talk) 13:46, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- There's a graph of it at the top of Demography. The links lead to this population pyramid at the UN site and this PDF with more detail about population figures per age group, in numbers. Though actually the pyramid breaks the population down into 5-year age ranges, while the numbers lump the 40 years from 25-65 together into one figure, which makes me wonder about the methodology (and makes it harder to answer your question about percentages, because I'd have to estimate figures from the graph, if those are even real and not extrapolated). Card Zero (talk) 13:58, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Baseball Bugs: Thank you for your answer. I would be interested in the world’s population by age. I’ll look it up. Interstellarity (talk) 13:46, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Interstellarity: Percentages vary a great deal over time, and by country or region. This doesn't directly answer your question, but see Demographics of Japan#Population for an animated gif showing how the population pyramid in Japan has changed dramatically since the late 19th century. Compare the image at the top of that article, with the vastly different one at the top of Demographics of Morocco. So, your question is very much dependent on time and place. Mathglot (talk) 18:53, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
- Back around 2007, we were taught the world population for 100 and up is 450,000. Of course the world pop has since changed. 67.165.185.178 (talk) 22:50, 27 June 2022 (UTC).
June 27
Requesting help in ascertaining date of an incidence
Human behaviour throws lot many surprises. According to this article Hawkes Bay case, it seems in 1983 some 38 people walked into the sea @ Karachi expecting some miracle. It seems to be largely IP written article and some refs seem to be fiction related. It does not mention date too. Can some one help ascertaining the date and confirming that by chance some fiction is not being added in to the article.
I am just asking here to save my own time, my self being focussed in some other tasks.
On side note I do have Draft:Irrational beliefs may be some one feels interested in expanding that too.
Thanks, Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 11:41, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
- I found this but no precise date. Alansplodge (talk) 13:26, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
- The Journal paper linked in the External links section looks like a reliable source, though I myself cannot access the full text. The reason for some of the references being 'fiction-related' is because Salman Rushdie mentioned the incident in a novel, which generated discussions of it. News reports are most likely to have appeared in the Pakistani press, which might usefully be searched by one conversant in its languages.
- Comparisons might be made with the Heaven's Gate and Jonestown massacre incidents. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.73.76 (talk) 13:39, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
- If you can get a "trial" subscription to Newspapers.com, you can search for ["hawkes bay" miracle], where you'll find several articles from Feb 25, 1983, all repeating the same AP report. The previous day, a family of 38 went to sea in large tin boxes, expecting to sail to Karbala in Iraq. They thought God would protect them from the rough waters. They thought wrong. The boxes foundered on the rocks and bodies started washing ashore. At the time of the report, there were 17 survivors, 13 known dead, and 8 missing. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:03, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Although the source linked to as an external link gives a rather detailed account, it is not explicitly more precise than “late February, 1983". However, I can piece the following together:
- Naseem announced that she had been visited by a revelation on 18 February 1981.
- Exactly to the day two years after the first communication began [which must be 18 February 1983], Naseem asked whether the believers would plunge into the sea as an expression of their faith.
- The believers immediately agreed. There was no debate, no vacillation.
- They hired trucks to take them to Karachi.
- They arrived in Karachi on the third day and made their way to Hawkes Bay.
- The operation had begun in the late hours of the night and was over by the early morning.
- Assuming that the believers managed to hire trucks the same day Naseem asked the fateful question, operation Plunge took place in the night of 20 to 21 February 1983. It cannot have been earlier.
- Apparently, the incident has been reported on at the time in Dawn. There is a print book about the incident, Hawkes Bay incident : a psycho-social case study.[1] --Lambiam 15:56, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
June 28
Are both Meena tribe and Matsya tribe same?
Meena tribe and Matsya (tribe) -- Karsan Chanda (talk) 00:50, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
- In Meena § History I read, "The historian Pramod Kumar notes that it is likely that the tribes living in the ancient Matsya kingdom were called Meena but it cannot be said with certainty that there is anything common between them and the modern Meenas." His argument that this is likely, is that Sanskrit मीन (mīna) and मत्स्य (mátsya) are synonyms, both meaning "fish". There is a gap of some eighteen centuries between the records of the historical Matsya and those of the later Meena. --Lambiam 09:53, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Lambiam: If it's both the same, why the need to create separate pages? -- Karsan Chanda (talk) 14:39, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
- We don't know if the Matsya of 600 BCE and the Meena of 1300 CE have anything in common other than a name meaning "fish" in Sanskrit and a geographical area. --Lambiam 17:36, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
Help with finding sources on 2000 Taiwanese presidential election
Hello. I've been working on improving the above article and have hit a dead end regarding a few claims: some things that helped Chen to win, Li Ao's comment on "educating" the people, and whether candidates supported the three links. Only source for the second was a PRC government source and I'm not sure if that would be an acceptable source. The rest I have a feeling are behind Chinese or Taiwanese media, and I don't speak Mandarin or Min Nan. If someone who does speak one of these languages would be willing to dig for me it would be a help in probably getting this fully cited. Thanks. Duonaut (talk | contribs) 02:51, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
- Li Ao said in an interview about his participation in the election, "This is a great opportunity to let people hear my ideas and see how I expose Taiwan's dark side."[2] I suppose one could paraphrase that as "an opportunity to 'educate' the people". The first paragraph of the section 2000 Taiwanese presidential election § Aftermath lists several factors in favour of Chen, all referenced; is more needed? --Lambiam 10:31, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- I will probably change the quote in question to a more accurate one then. As for the second part I was referring to the wrong thing: "The Chen-Lu ticket also promised to [...] provide more funding for social services, and to be more environmentally friendly, such as opposition to nuclear power." Didn't have to do with what won him the election. Thanks for the finding that quote. Duonaut (talk | contribs) 05:30, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
June 29
prescription drugs in the US
I looked at the article and it didn't seem to have this info. I'm wondering whether the prescription status of a drug is controlled entirely by the FDA, or whether states can control it too. E.g. can there be a drug that is OTC in one state, but prescription in another? That goes in two directions: 1) FDA says it's OTC, but state wants to restrict it. 2) FDA says it's prescription but state wants to widen access.
I'm aware of a situation something like this with medical pot, but pot is still theoretically illegal at the federal level, so there are some semi-shenanigans going on. Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 00:54, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- The Controlled Substances Act is federal law, and violating it is a federal offense, which may be federally prosecuted, regardless of what any state laws say. I expect that a state could outlaw an FDA-approved drug, such as levonorgestrel, and I speculate (although forbidden) that the US Supreme Court in its current composition would uphold such state law as not being unconstutional. --Lambiam 09:47, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- According to American federalist theory, general regulation for the purpose of the alleged public good is primarily under the jurisdiction of the several states and their police power, which the federal government does not have. The federal laws on controlled substances are something of an aberration. There are substances outlawed by various states but not by the federal government (see for example Salvia divinorum). --Trovatore (talk) 16:25, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- Yeah they are trying to do that with mifepristone. Most prescription drugs (e.g. antibiotics) aren't on the controlled substances list though. I don't know about the ones mentioned here. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 10:55, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- Note, questioner said OTC should mean over-the-counter drugs, to clarify. Obviously once a drug is federally-approved to be prescription, no state can challenge it and make it over the counter. I do wonder about the other-way-around. On a separate note, I did ask this before in the science desk months ago, but I'll give this time a shot: can a over-the-counter and prescription drug be the same drug, only differences are in concentration? 67.165.185.178 (talk) 10:24, 30 June 2022 (UTC).
- Yes, the latter definitely happens, e.g. with ibuprofen (OTC=200mg, prescription=up to 800mg). I think it also happens with cortisone cream which is 1% cortisone OTC but stronger in prescription form. I can believe what you say about states not being allowed to declare FDA-approved prescription drugs to be OTC, but I don't consider it obvious, which is why I asked about it. As for states restricting federally legal stuff, I don't know about OTC drugs, but you can't buy Everclear above 120 proof in some states including California, at least as a beverage. It otherwise goes up to 190 proof. You can still buy it as a "culinary solvent" which is the exact same thing but it costs a lot more. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:FD2B (talk) 15:40, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Alcohol is arguably a special case because of Section 2 of the 21st Amendment, which gives the states a separate grant of authority as regards alcoholic beverages.
- That said, it's odd to argue that the states have less authority than the federal government to regulate these sorts of things, given the police power doctrine I mentioned above. It's the federal authority to regulate drugs that's a severe stretch, based on an extremely generous (to the feds) interpretation of the Commerce Clause, which on its face just says that the federal government can regulate transactions that cross state lines. See Wickard v Filburn and Gonzales v Raich, both of which were in my opinion wrongly decided.
- Merrick Garland said the other day that states cannot ban drugs based on their own view of the drugs' safety and efficacy, in contravention of the expert opinion of the FDA. I do not know whether he is right about that or not. I am not aware that expert opinion has any formal legal status. But he could be making a federal preemption argument; the law around that is extremely murky to my unpracticed eye. The thing he's not mentioning, of course, is that in the current context "safety and efficacy" is not the reason the states might want to ban those drugs. --Trovatore (talk) 16:55, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, the latter definitely happens, e.g. with ibuprofen (OTC=200mg, prescription=up to 800mg). I think it also happens with cortisone cream which is 1% cortisone OTC but stronger in prescription form. I can believe what you say about states not being allowed to declare FDA-approved prescription drugs to be OTC, but I don't consider it obvious, which is why I asked about it. As for states restricting federally legal stuff, I don't know about OTC drugs, but you can't buy Everclear above 120 proof in some states including California, at least as a beverage. It otherwise goes up to 190 proof. You can still buy it as a "culinary solvent" which is the exact same thing but it costs a lot more. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:FD2B (talk) 15:40, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
US-Mexico border Vs Pak-Afghan border terrain difference for migration?
Death of 51 migrants on US-Mexico border is in the news. Assuming, if, there are no human made border constrains and border patrols; 'terrain' point of view is Mexico-US border more difficult to cross (human migration/ escape) than Afghan-Pak border? if so what are the reasons similarities and differences?
- (Just for clarification, I do not have any personal interests in any of the cross border migration)
Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 04:05, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- Hello, Bookku. According to List of Mexico–United States border crossings, there are currently 50 such border crossings, served by good or excellent roads, and in many cases, there are significant cities and towns right along both sides of the border. The Rio Grande River is an obstacle on the Texas part of the border, but there are about 30 international bridges over that river. Durand Line describes the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Much of the border is very mountainous which interferes with easy travel. According to Land border crossings of Pakistan, there are only six official border crossings, the best known of which is the Khyber Pass. Much of that area is dangerous tribal territory with ineffective control by central governments. If there was no border enforcement, it would be pretty easy to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, at 50 or more spots. Cullen328 (talk) 07:17, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- Along several stretches there is no natural border and the only impediment to easy crossing is border control, like at San Diego–Tijuana, Calexico–Mexicali, and San Luis, Arizona–San Luis Río Colorado. --Lambiam 09:31, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
How long (in hours) illegal migrant's those journeys to U.S. might be? It would be difficult to imagine temperatures in a closed non AC trailer but if outside 90s to 100s for couple of hour journey would not have been much and not having even water with them seems surprising. I don't know how those Taliban used to manage in much difficult terrains of Afghan travel first and then participate in a war too that terrain might have needed much more physical energy then ordinary migrants.
Thanks to both of you for informative replies Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 11:32, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
Ease of doing business index
Hi,
Considering the fact that the ease of doing business index by the World Bank Group has been discontinued and established as having data irregularities over the course of 2020-2022, is it still necessary for it to be on the Economics of *insert country* pages (it's at the bottom of most, if not all, statistics overview columns)?
I'd consider that this information has been established as unreliable and therefore not a valuable statistic to display and would therefore only be functional on the ease of business index page.
I'd love to hear some thoughts on this.
Kind regards Ensorin (talk) 08:56, 29 June 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ensorin (talk • contribs) 08:52, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- Great find – you're absolutely correct. I posted a notice at WikiProject Countries. Also any editor who runs scripts should be able to take care of it pretty efficiently. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:27, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
Looking for a paper about the Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum
Hello
I translated the Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum into French and I am trying to improve the article.
I'm having trouble finding the source of an article on a site that isn't trustworthy enough to be used as a reference on Wikipedia, but the quoted article probably is (its author is the architect of the monument).
I am looking for the quoted source of this: [3], i.e.
.GIYASI Gayisi*, Prof. Dr. Cafer A., The Igdir Genocide Monument and Museum, Atatürk Research Centre Publication, Ankara 2000, pp.5-9.
[EDIT] in Turkish : Gayisi* Prof. Dr. Cafer A.-; Iğdır Soykırım Anıt ve Müzesi, Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi Yayını, Ankara 2000, s. 5-9.
Please notify me if someone is able to find a link to this paper. Regards, Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 11:13, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- The text is found in Turkish on many pages, e.g. here, and I bet the booklet by Prof. Dr. Cafer A. GİYASİ (these are dotted i's) is written in Turkish; the Turkish title is found in the line below "KAYNAK". Outside Turkey only specialized libraries would hold this. --Lambiam 15:12, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks Lambiam. Actually, the name is "Gayisi", not "Giyasi" (see [4]).
- I just noticed that the article in English I cite above is the translation of this one (or a similar one) : [5], and I am using this as a source on wp.fr -_-'
- I would like to find it on a reliable site or get the source article to be able to work on sane bases... Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 15:57, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- It's available from storage at Harvard Fine Arts library. Affiliates of Boston-area (or any?) universities can sometimes ask for temporary guest researcher access to Harvard's libraries without much hassle. Not sure if anyone will respond to an irl library dive, but The Resource Exchange might be able to help you further since it's one specific source, and seems to be only a few pages to scan. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:18, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- @SamuelRiv: thank you very much, at least now I have the exact name of the source.
- But it adds to the confusion, because now I have reliable sources with different names for the guy... Harvard and WorldCat say "Giyasi" and I just found the a PDF from the Turkish government tht says "Gayisi" [6], and other books say the same [7][8]...
- I think I found a photo of the book cover : [9] so it should be "Giyasi" (?)
- This is very strange... Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 19:43, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- Not that strange; Gayisi is the result op a simple transposition error, a very common type of spelling error. This is a link to a paper authored by Giyasi, and here is a newspaper article on the inauguration of the monument. --Lambiam 20:32, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- His Azerbaijani name is actually Giyasi, Jafar Ali oglu (Jafar Giyasi, son of Ali).[10] It is common practice in Turkey to Turkify names; Cafer is a common Turkish name, cognate with Azeri Jafar. Compare the name of the late Jamal Kashoggi, known in Turkey as Cemal Kaşıkçı. --Lambiam 21:02, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Lambiam Thanks for the input and the newspaper article (but the figures can't be true: this monument certainly didn't cost 400 billion liras) Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 06:34, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- This is the old Turkish lira, ranked at the time by the Guinness Book of Records as the world's least valuable currency. On 6 October 1999, 400,000,000,000 Turkish lira had a value of less than a million US dollars.[11] --Lambiam 07:08, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- Oh, thanks Lambiam... I made some reaserch myself and found different figures... Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 12:25, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- This is the old Turkish lira, ranked at the time by the Guinness Book of Records as the world's least valuable currency. On 6 October 1999, 400,000,000,000 Turkish lira had a value of less than a million US dollars.[11] --Lambiam 07:08, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Lambiam Thanks for the input and the newspaper article (but the figures can't be true: this monument certainly didn't cost 400 billion liras) Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 06:34, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- His Azerbaijani name is actually Giyasi, Jafar Ali oglu (Jafar Giyasi, son of Ali).[10] It is common practice in Turkey to Turkify names; Cafer is a common Turkish name, cognate with Azeri Jafar. Compare the name of the late Jamal Kashoggi, known in Turkey as Cemal Kaşıkçı. --Lambiam 21:02, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- Not that strange; Gayisi is the result op a simple transposition error, a very common type of spelling error. This is a link to a paper authored by Giyasi, and here is a newspaper article on the inauguration of the monument. --Lambiam 20:32, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- It's available from storage at Harvard Fine Arts library. Affiliates of Boston-area (or any?) universities can sometimes ask for temporary guest researcher access to Harvard's libraries without much hassle. Not sure if anyone will respond to an irl library dive, but The Resource Exchange might be able to help you further since it's one specific source, and seems to be only a few pages to scan. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:18, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
Irish Republic vs Northern Ireland UK
Since 1922, Southern Ireland was known as the Irish Free State, which was a Irish independent state but also a dominion of the British Empire, with Northern Ireland being part of the United Kingdom. Then in 1937, the Free State became the Republic of Ireland. But the North still remained within the UK. Why is that? Because if the Anti-Treaty IRA won the Civil War, then maybe the entire country would be fully independent. And during The Troubles, Irish nationalists and republicans, who were mostly Irish Catholics, wanted Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and join a united Ireland. 86.131.222.121 (talk) 18:44, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- You do know that in the inter-war period, the UK was in the top tier of international powers, while Ireland was most definitely not a major power? In the later 1920s and the 1930s, few people were eager to resume the violent fighting of earlier years... AnonMoos (talk) 18:53, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- While the population of the Free State was 99.99% Roman Catholic, the population of Northern Ireland had a substantial Protestant community, mostly descendants of Scots imported during the Plantation of Ulster. They were militantly opposed to unification with the papists, which would have meant their becoming an insignificant minority on the whole island. --Lambiam 20:45, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- Point of information: the proportion of the Free State population that was Catholic in 1926 was in fact 92.57%, per our article. Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:11, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- And note that when Lambiam describes them as "militantly" opposed, that's literally militantly, not metaphorically. As in, there were multiple paramilitary groups (i.e. terrorists) who would attack anyone who thought threatened their supremacy. Iapetus (talk) 08:52, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) No simple answer but some reading for you:
- If the Anti-Treaty party had won the Irish Civil War, it's difficult to imagine how they could have forced the British Government to abandon Northern Ireland, or even if it could, how they would have forced the Protestant majority in Ulster to accept rule from Dublin - the Unionists had previously been ready to go to war over the issue in 1914. A majority in Northern Ireland still wish to remain part of the Union, although the time may not be far off that this changes due to demographics; see The inevitability of a united Ireland.
- Alansplodge (talk) 20:51, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
So the simple answer is...? The North is a Protestant state and thus stayed remained within the UK. And it would impossible for the Catholics and IRA to force the British Government to abandon Northern Ireland and force the Protestant majority to accept Union rule if they had won the Civil War. 86.147.64.43 (talk) 19:28, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
June 30
NATO withdrawal timeline and terminology
The current version of Withdrawal from NATO somehow suggests that the 20 year waiting period is to be counted from 1949, not from the time of accession of a particular Party (no mention of 20 years in the lead and the unsourced interpretation in the procedure paragraph: "This means that after 20 years since the signing of the treaty which was in 1949, thus 1969"). At least the last source for Montenegro suggests otherwise and mentions the date 2037, not the best source for law interpretation. I have also a more terminological doubt about the "France withdrawal" in 1966. This article uses "downgraded France's membership in NATO and withdrew France from the U.S.-led military command", NATO uses "withdrawal of France from NATO's military structure", and History of NATO has the title "Partial withdrawal of France", the treaty uses the more technical and less ambiguos "cease to be a Party" and "denunciation", not applicable in this case. Because of my poor familiarity with English and Legalese, I'm wondering if these expressions are all fine. 176.247.205.159 (talk) 00:02, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- "
Under the customary rule of interpretation, Article 13 of the North Atlantic Treaty is generally interpreted in such a way that, because the Treaty has already been in force for more than 20 years, new Parties may cease to be Parties to the Treaty at any time with a one-year notice period.
"[12] --Lambiam 07:41, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
What is money laundering in context to Bradford community?
This BBC news report about an alleged money laundering case includes following statement. (Also published by few Pakistan media).
I did not get it's context properly for following sentence
".. Andy Lewis, head of civil recovery at the NCA, said: "Taking the proceeds of crime off individuals such as these brothers is particularly significant for the Bradford community. .."
a) I am not used to phrase 'crime off', what does that mean ?
b) ".. particularly significant for the Bradford community ..", significant in what sense? The officer likely means here is it is usual or unusual or something else?
c) Any other likely context to above generalized comment ?
Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 07:32, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- The sentence should be parsed as "Taking the-proceeds-of-crime off individuals ...", in which "off" means "away from". The proceeds of their crime are taken away from the Akhtar brothers. --Lambiam 07:59, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Oh it was so! many thanks Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 08:19, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- I think the phrase "significant for the Bradford community" just means that defeating criminal activity benefits the whole town. A possible subtext is that he is heading off any allegation that the police are unfairly targetting the large Asian community in Bradford. See One city, two cultures: Bradford's communities lead parallel lives for context. Alansplodge (talk) 10:36, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Did Romans remember
Did Latins / Romans remember that they were not autochthonous to Italy and that their forefathers had come from another land? Ghirla-трёп- 21:54, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- That could depend on how many of them knew what autochthonous means. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:54, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- They knew that the Etruscans spoke a very different language than Latin... AnonMoos (talk) 23:01, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- They didn't regard themselves as autochthonous.
- DuncanHill (talk) 00:31, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Romulus and Remus came from Old Latium, the Romans believed, and then something about a Golden Bough which meant they were descended from Trojans (in what's now Turkey) and a bunch of Greek metaphysical beings. Card Zero (talk) 00:33, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- The original Romans were Latins, an Italic tribe. Just like the other Italic tribes, they had moved into Italy from across the Alps, settling in Latium about 1000 BCE, give or take a century. There is no indication that the ancient Romans were aware of the fact that their forebears arrived in Latium after trekking south. --Lambiam 07:23, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- That's my impression too. So the Latins were more oblivious than the Greeks (who seem to have retained some dim recollection of the migration) and much more oblivious than the Indians (with their awareness of the Aryan invasion)... --Ghirla-трёп- 12:08, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Ghirlandajo -- I think that the ancient Greeks mainly remembered the Dorian invasion, though they also knew about the earlier presence of Pelasgians. And the earliest Hindu religious texts (such as the Rig-Veda) are about chariot-fighting animal-herders in the Punjab, but I don't think there's any memory of them having arrived there by migrating south from Central Asia (something which is vocally denied by some modern Hindu nationalists). AnonMoos (talk) 22:11, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- We Britons are, of course, descended from Brutus of Troy, who arrived on the shores of Albion, defeated the giant Gogmagog and founded the city of Trinovantum, now known as London. History is a lot more fun when you can just make it up. Alansplodge (talk) 13:43, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- The Brutus family tree includes such characters as Locrine, Gorboduc, Gwendolene and Greenshield from The Faerie Queene, and King Lear and his three daughters. There's also Hudibras, and Bladud is in a couple of novels and one Nintendo game. It's good source material. Card Zero (talk) 14:11, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- That's my impression too. So the Latins were more oblivious than the Greeks (who seem to have retained some dim recollection of the migration) and much more oblivious than the Indians (with their awareness of the Aryan invasion)... --Ghirla-трёп- 12:08, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Looking at Corded_Ware_culture#Genetic studies, there's only
a 20–32% contribution in modern Southern Europeans
of so-called "steppe ancestry" in the DNA. So your mention of Romans having come from the Proto-Indo-European homeland relates more to the Roman minds than to their bodies. (Though, of course, moderns aren't Romans, but close enough?) Card Zero (talk) 14:30, 1 July 2022 (UTC) - On a long enough timescale, the autochthonous peoples are immigrants, too.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 07:43, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
July 1
Measure for Measure
In Act 4 Scene 2, Duke tells Provost to "shave the head and tie the beard" of Barnardine so Barnardine he will look like Claudio.
He says "you know the course is common" that implies it was a common custom in that era. What is the significance of shaving the head and tying the beard before death? 151.192.123.58 (talk) 07:01, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Providers of critical commentaries appear to be a bit stumped. One suggestion for the beard thing is that it may have to do with the poor bloke's imminent decapitation: "
Perhaps it was usual to tie up the beard before decollation.
"[13] For the shaving, suggestions range from a custom in some regions to burn the hairs of executed felons,[14] to a supposed desire of Roman Catholic to look like a monk when shuffling of this mortal coil.[15] --Lambiam 07:45, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- The preceding line: "...say it was the desire of the penitent to be so bared before his death" suggests that it was an outward display of penance, but I haven't found anything much to support that. Earlier in the passage, there is a discussion about the hangman, so perhaps decapitation was to be post-mortem? Alansplodge (talk) 09:47, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- An example from medieval Germany:
- When he summoned a person before his court , he peremptorily demanded that the accused confess his guilt , reveal his fellow heretics , and have his head shaved as a form of penance [16] Alansplodge (talk) 09:47, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Also: Cutting or shaving off the hair of the head could also be a penance imposed on both men and women guilty of crimes or sins. A Cultural History of Hair in the Middle Ages Alansplodge (talk) 09:52, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- The preceding line: "...say it was the desire of the penitent to be so bared before his death" suggests that it was an outward display of penance, but I haven't found anything much to support that. Earlier in the passage, there is a discussion about the hangman, so perhaps decapitation was to be post-mortem? Alansplodge (talk) 09:47, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
Bight of Benin Protectorate
Various sources, including Bight of Benin and Territorial evolution of the British Empire, note a "Bight of Benin Protectorate". I'm not questioning it existed, everyone seems to agree that it did, but I'm not able to find any actual primary sources for it. No orders from the British government proclaiming it as such, no details about borders or anything beyond that it happened on February 1, 1852, and was merged with the Bight of Biafra Protectorate (similarly hard to find info on) on August 6, 1861, as the Bights of Benin and Biafra Protectorate. Does anyone know where I might find primary information on these? And if we can't, does that have any implications for our articles that we're apparently only ever linking to second-hand sources and none of them seem to have any primary information? --Golbez (talk) 15:54, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- These Protectorates were created by Order in Council. There's a reference to the creation of a successor Protectorate at [17]. 86.162.182.188 (talk) 12:58, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- What I understand from sources is that there was originally (since 1849) a single British protectorate for the Bights of Benin and Biafra, with a single consul, John Beecroft, which was divided into two parts in 1852, with a vice-consul (Louis Fraser) specifically assigned to the Benin part, taking office in Lagos.[18] Some sources say the split occurred in 1853, when Benjamin Campbell was assigned as full-fledged consul for the Bight of Benin.[19] The split appears to have been first an internal redistribution of duties and next more a pragmatic administrative move by the Foreign Office than an act of government. --Lambiam 14:27, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- Thank you both for this, but I still would like to see a primary reference to this Order in Council. We have plenty of sources saying something like it existed, but I've not been able to find any specific citation or text from it. I've glanced at the London Gazettes from just before and after 1 Feb 1852 and have found no mention of the Bight of Benin. I feel uncomfortable with the fact that the only sources we seem to be able to find have no specific details on it, except recording (generally vaguely) that it happened. --Golbez (talk) 20:29, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
Do these names make sense as "euphemistic"?
I was reading about Britomartis, a goddess of mountains and hunting, whose name meaning "sweet" (possibly "sweet maiden") may be a euphemism. I investigated the source for that, a book called The world of classical myth, which has a lot of similar examples:
“ | Like Tritogeneia-Athena, Apollo could tack his African identity onto his name. He was called Aristaeus (or Aristaios, the ‘Best’): commonly in Greek, things that are too sinister to name can be called by their opposite: like aristera for the ‘left hand,’ which Latin more honestly calls sinister. | ” |
“ | The story is variously told, but there was a maiden named Kallisto, the ‘Best, Most Beautiful,’ similar in meaning to what we have said about Aristaios. | ” |
“ | the island of Kalliste (the ‘Most Beautiful,’ an overly optimistic name for the Death Goddess) | ” |
“ | the nymph Britomartis, one of the sisterhood that hunted with the hounds of Artemis. Her name is supposed to mean the ‘Good Maiden’—which like Aristaios and Kalliste, is probably a euphemism for its opposite, the Maiden of Death. | ” |
“ | One of the Danaid sisters was named Amymone (the ‘Flawless,’ but perhaps she was called that to fend off the more obvious truth of her chthonic identity, like the names of Artemis as Kalliste, Britomartis, and the other ‘good ladies’). | ” |
What I'm unclear on is, are any of these characters actually sinister? Apollo is the god of sunlight, and healing, and protection from evil, and music and poetry and a lot of other nice things. Callisto (mythology) just seems to be another Artemis-like hunting goddess (or nymph). Was Artemis scary? Amymone seems to be a human, and a specifically blameless one compared to her 49 sisters who killed their husbands. I was considering adding one or more of these to noa-name, but are these theories even plausible? Wiktionary does mention "euphemism" at wikt:ἀριστερός (aristerós, left), which I might gloss as "counter-right", but I don't know what it would be a euphemism for: is the implication that there was an actual name for "left" which was rarely used? Card Zero (talk) 17:02, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- No expertise about this but:
- About the Greek word for "left", consider that, except Italian, several Romance languages avoided the sinister connotations of Latin sinister. See izquierda, stânga, gauche. I don't know about lesser languages and dialects (I just remember quer). So it may well be that aristeros substituted one of the synonyms Wiktionary provides or a word so sinister that is not written in Wiktionary.
- --Error (talk) 19:43, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, I was conscious of not mentioning the archery. Artemis (sometimes aka Artemis Kalliste) is the twin sister of Apollo, and they're both liable to shoot other beings, such as people maybe, so ... but I don't quite buy that this makes them gods of death whose terrible names shall not be spoken, because they're all sorts of other things as well, often benign and fluffy things. Card Zero (talk) 21:17, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- I understand that our post-Renaissance view of Classical mythological is more clear-cut than the one the ancients had. Compare Artemis the huntress with the Ephesian Artemis. The ancients did their interpretatio graeca of their Hellenized neighbors with quite freedom, and later Hellenists, Byzantines, Renaissancers and Neo-Classical erudites had to hammer the old material into a neat picture that you could put into statues for gardens, banks and libraries. --Error (talk) 23:07, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, I was conscious of not mentioning the archery. Artemis (sometimes aka Artemis Kalliste) is the twin sister of Apollo, and they're both liable to shoot other beings, such as people maybe, so ... but I don't quite buy that this makes them gods of death whose terrible names shall not be spoken, because they're all sorts of other things as well, often benign and fluffy things. Card Zero (talk) 21:17, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- About aristeios, if you can access https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.12124, it says:
- The last case is the two Greek languages, ancient and modern. The same basic switch must have happened there at some time from negative,which shaded the original term λαιoς [laios] (a bit surprisingly, because in ancient Greek it was the poetic term for left), to positive. The new word for the left and the left hand became αριστερoς [aristeros]. This is grammatically incorrect, as the elative αριστoς [aristos] (the best) from αγαθoς [agathos] (good) cannot be put in the comparative.
- --Error (talk) 23:07, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Ha! "Bestest". Good stuff, thank you. Wiktionary just gives two senses for the suffix (1. some notion of contrast with an antonym, 2. comparative). I guess it's a reasonable theory that the new word arose because they didn't want to say laios, or skaios. (Both from PIE roots, both found in Latin too, as laevus and scaevus. Why do we have two Proto-Indo-European root words for left?) Card Zero (talk) 00:16, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- Was Artemis scary? Yes. Go read the section on divine retribution in her article.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 07:53, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks. I also found Hecate, sometimes-sort-of an aspect of Artemis, and definitely involved with death. I'm picking up the impression that Greek gods took no particular responsibility for looking after the Greeks. They could be pleased, or offended, cure a disease or cause a disease, and they could be touchy and bad-tempered, and this wasn't about an ancient Greek's morality in general but about their infractions on a given god's domain or reputation. A stand-offish relationship. So invoking them by name risks slander (blasphemy?), followed by unpleasant incidents. I wish I had a second source for the names being euphemistic.
- Oh, Erinyes#Euripides says the Furies had an alternate name meaning something like "the kindly ones", and cites The Greek Myths (Robert Graves). That'll do. Also it's in the Suda. Card Zero (talk) 12:17, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
"Star" names in American sci-fi and tech
One may notice that there are many names referencing star in American sci-fi and tech, from astronaut, Boeing Starliner and Stardust to Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Starship Troopers, etc. Is it sort of romantic affection to stars made more prominent by the US, a homage to The Star-Spangled Banner or something else? Brandmeistertalk 19:37, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- A possible cause is also the Apollo Project and the immense effort that the US made to convince its citizens that their Manifest Destiny is to reach the Final Frontier: the stars. NASA is still big at self-promotion. --Error (talk) 19:52, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Starting in the early 1950s (before NASA), Isaac Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series, six juvenile science fiction novels set in the far future. Cullen328 (talk) 20:04, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Is there any evidence that this is any different in non-American science fiction? Interstellar travel is one of the main tropes of the genre, so mentioning stars seems pretty natural. --Trovatore (talk) 20:14, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- After a little search I think the earliest reference to the idea of travel to/from another star (at least in the Western canon) is Voltaire's Le Micromégas (1752). Obviously this significantly predated the rise of proto-scifi of Mary Shelly and her gang in the mid-19th century, and I don't know if their group or later with Jules Verne or HG Wells ever did anything with interstellar travel. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:26, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- I think they were cluey enough to know that it's impossible to travel to a star, at least without a strong possibility of you and your craft being burned to a crisp well before you ever get there. It's planets that provide more exploratory interest. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:37, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- It is certainly not only a US thing. The phrase Ad astra ("To the stars") has a long pedigree. Compare also the title of Stanislaw Lem's story collection The Star Diaries (1957). While cosmonaut is a more accurate name for a space traveller remaining in the solar system, the planets used to be called "wandering stars", and the term astronaut has been used in speculative fiction long before NASA was founded. Astronautics was the title of a journal that appeared since about 1927 to 1944.[21] Some early (pre-NASA) uses of star in American SF literature are Asimov's pre-Galactic Empire novel The Stars, Like Dust (1951), Heinlein's Starman Jones (1953), The Star Beast (1954) and Double Star (1956), and James Blish's They Shall have Stars (also 1956). --Lambiam 22:38, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Stars are also important to Italy, and Turks, and were significant symbols for Soviets and their allies, and feature on many flags such as the flag of Liberia. Sci-fi with a word for "star" in the title includes Powrót z gwiazd, Dzienniki gwiazdowe, Tähtivaeltaja magazine, and Tähtien tarhoissa ("Among the Stars", Arvid Lydecken, 1912). Five stars meaning "excellent" is internationally understood symbology. If wikt:star/translations is correct then (local word for) star, meaning "talented or famous person", exists in many languages including Swahili and Malay. (I'm amused to see that the equivalent Japanese word for a celebrity, however, means "flower-shaped".) So there's a widespread international idea that stars are romantic, exciting, excellent, symbolize importance, or (naturally enough) are keywords in sci-fi, and I can't accept your premise.
Starship Troopers (film)Stargate (film) was directed and co-written by a German, who was admittedly living in the US but had been there for less than four years. Apstar 6 is a Chinese satellite. Star One (satellite operator) is Brazillian. Respectfully, I think the consensus on your theory is "nah". Card Zero (talk) 22:39, 1 July 2022 (UTC)- While there was, confusingly, also a German director named Paul Verhoeven (1901–1975), the director of the SF flick Starship Troopers is a Dutchman. The title was anyway that of the novel it is based on. --Lambiam 22:47, 1 July 2022 (UTC)}
US two-party system
Two-party_system#United_States describes various periods of two-party dominance in US political history, where the two parties on top changed between periods. And I seem to remember reading that when Abraham Lincoln was first elected president, there were four viable parties, presumably a necessarily temporary situation if we believe Duverger's law. I imagine something like a game of musical chairs, where there are two "major party" chairs and a bunch of minor party chairs, and once in a while, some situation in the country makes everyone get up, circle the chairs, and sit back down, possibly resulting in the "major party" chairs getting new occupants. During Lincoln's election things were in flux so nobody had those chairs.
Is that picture anything like accurate? Is there some good history or explanation of how relations between parties evolve? Like right now, there is something of an ideological split within the GOP (religious vs business), while the Democrats in trying to please everyone make so many compromises that they can't seem to implement their policy goals (I'll stay out of the question of whether those goals are good or bad). Could we be heading towards a collapse of one or both major parties, with existing or new minor parties becoming the new majors? Are those sorts of transitions necessarily turbulent, or is it just sort of a natural succession process, like when everyone moved from AOL to Facebook (or however that worked) pretty much peacefully? Thanks. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:FD2B (talk) 21:27, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- In the presidential election of 1860, there were four major candidates, but not really four major parties. There were a northern/anti-Buchanan faction of Democrats, a southern/pro-Buchanan faction of Democrats, and Republicans. The "Constitutional Union" party was a vehicle of the Bell candidacy, and fell apart after he lost. Anyway, there have only been a few shifts -- from Federalists, to Whigs, to Republicans. Not much has remained consistent across 230 years, but some historians speak of a basic persisting "Hamiltonian" vs. "Jeffersonian" opposition. AnonMoos (talk) 22:18, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- Modern Pubs must be Jeffersonian. Thought almost all jobs would be "farm without tractors" forever. Almost declined to double the land and good land of the country for 4¢/acre cause Constitution didn't explicitly allow border treaties. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 07:21, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- That's not really the case -- Hamiltonian means favoring "big business" (though there were very few big businesses in the U.S. in the late 18th century), high finance, and infrastructure projects to promote economic development. Jeffersonian means favoring the interests of ordinary people (originally mainly farmers -- but after the 1870s, homesteading a farm was no longer a very good way for a family to lift itself out of poverty). Of course there have been some switches over the centuries -- the Democratic party was originally in favor of small government, but FDR changed that. For a long time, the Democratic party relied on the support of white immigrants in eastern cities, and rejected anti-immigrant sentiment, but was very racist towards Black people. but that's changed too... P.S. You should probably stick to words found in dictionaries. AnonMoos (talk) 07:43, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- The new reply system fucked up again. It likes to eat bytes. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 09:46, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- Okay that makes sense. It seems both left and right could pick either man to spin as their side if they wanted to. A bit like astrology. At least Hamilton isn't too minarchist to build the tiniest internal improvement. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 09:58, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- That's not really the case -- Hamiltonian means favoring "big business" (though there were very few big businesses in the U.S. in the late 18th century), high finance, and infrastructure projects to promote economic development. Jeffersonian means favoring the interests of ordinary people (originally mainly farmers -- but after the 1870s, homesteading a farm was no longer a very good way for a family to lift itself out of poverty). Of course there have been some switches over the centuries -- the Democratic party was originally in favor of small government, but FDR changed that. For a long time, the Democratic party relied on the support of white immigrants in eastern cities, and rejected anti-immigrant sentiment, but was very racist towards Black people. but that's changed too... P.S. You should probably stick to words found in dictionaries. AnonMoos (talk) 07:43, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- Modern Pubs must be Jeffersonian. Thought almost all jobs would be "farm without tractors" forever. Almost declined to double the land and good land of the country for 4¢/acre cause Constitution didn't explicitly allow border treaties. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 07:21, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- From Minor party:
Third parties usually have little chance of forming a government or winning the position of head of government. Nevertheless, there are many reasons for third parties to compete. The opportunity of a national election means that attention will be paid to the positions of third parties. The larger parties might be forced to respond and adapt to their challenges, and often the larger parties copy ideas from them. Most third parties try to build their support to become one of the dominant parties, as the Labour Party in Britain and New Democratic Party in Canada did.
Of course it's not every century that the main two parties cease to bogart their musical chairs. In the meantime, though, the effect of minor parties on major party policy is observable (Borg-like absorption is how they prevent minor parties gaining ground). I'm not sure whether Trump counted as an example of this effect, still less what the next evolution of either party might be, but a likely future event (wait a minute, this isn't a request for a prediction is it?) is a slight gain in popularity for some minor party followed by a major party attempting to embrace, extend, and extinguish it, by evolving. Card Zero (talk) 23:57, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- If you read Spanish, La democracia como mercado político tries to explain why center parties won't last long in Spain. It mentions Joseph Alois Schumpeter and provides as references:
- Andrés de Blas Guerrero, Jaime Pastor Verdú: Fundamentos de Ciencia Política, UNED, Madrid 1997
- Ernst U. Von Weizsäcker: Política de la tierra, 3ª edición, Madrid 1992
- Irene Delgado Sotillos, Lourdes López Nieto: Comportamiento Político, Partidos y Grupos de Presión, Sociología Electoral, UNED, Madrid 2004
- Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas: Bárometro de abril de 2022, Madrid 2022
- There's no shortage of Civil War autodidacts online (and I'm not one), so if you don't get your answer here you should definitely try the appropriate board on SlackX or Reddit. I think from your conception the idea of having only two chairs is kind of a consequence of living in this country over the past century and a half. But the "early" history (first 100 years?) of the U.S. is interesting because while some founders envisioned the inevitable forces of a two-party system, we had the total annihilation of two major parties (Federalists and Whigs), one or two extended periods of single-party rule (Era of Good Feelings and the Reconstruction era), and as you point out, the unpredictable political force of so-called minor parties. I was going to go speculate on post-Civil War strengthening of two-party dominance (which has some empirical support in modern civil wars from my brief literature search), but it looks like how actual historians conceptualize it is different as explained in our articles Political parties in the United States and the Third Party System. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:45, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
Thanks all, yeah, I wasn't specifically looking into Abraham Lincoln but am interested in the more general question of how major parties lose their status and minor ones step into their place. Thanks AnonMoos for clarification about what happened with Lincoln. Basically I don't like either of the two current US major parties so am wondering what hope there is of somehow demoting one or both of them. I'm assuming that the two party system per se is an inevitable consequence of the US voting system, but conceivably that's wrong too. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:FD2B (talk) 05:35, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- The Federalists were always strongest in New England, and lost popularity by their opposition to the War of 1812, leading to a period when national political struggles were between political factions and/or personal ambitions within what today would be called the Democratic Party. The Whigs started falling apart when many Whigs in the north, even if they didn't care all that much about slavery, grew disgusted with Southern domination of the U.S. government in the 1850s, while many Whigs in the south felt that they had to loudly declare themselves ultra-pro-slavery in order to compete with Democrats in the South. That's pretty much it for the decline and fall of "big two" political parties in the U.S. AnonMoos (talk) 07:22, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
July 2
Democracy, grass and donkey; to verify quote
Yesterday an Indian Supreme Court judge Surya Kant during a case hearing while making oral observation (is reported to have) said:
- ".. In a democracy, grass has the right to grow and donkey have the right to eat .."
This is in relation to free speech.
Whether this is first use of such quote / quip or it has been used earlier by any one else?
Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 07:43, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- As quoted in news sources, he is reported to have said, "donkeys have the right to eat", although one source has "donkey has the right to eat".[22] I do not see other uses of this metaphor other than in this case. When it comes to freedom of speech and donkey rights, a witty expression is, "even a donkey has the right to bray".[23][24] Applied to non-metaphorical donkeys, they may even have the right to eat whatever they find to eat;[25] or in the view of some even to do as they please.[26] --Lambiam 12:13, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- I couldn't find anything either, the only possible connection is a story in the Panchatantra about a donkey who is lured to his death by a lion and a jackal with the promise of greener grass, [27] but that's probably just a coincidence. Alansplodge (talk) 13:34, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
Are there any Portland, OR or NY-style downtown street systems where locals say "the x-hundred block of [foo Street]"?
I'm wondering if any downtown with BOTH ≥20 blocks per mile on 1+ axes AND mostly numbered streets says stuff like the 24-hundred block of 4th Street. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 09:26, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I understand the constraints. To me, "1+" means "> 1"; since there is no such thing as 1.5 axes and current street systems use at most 2 axes, this appears to mean at least twenty blocks per mile on both axes, so blocks cannot be longer than 264 feet (80.5 m) in any direction. That seems to be a reasonable length for a block, neither too long nor too short, so you may need a measuring tape to see on which side of the fence they fall. Some uses of "N00 block of 4th Street": [28]; [29]; [30]; [31]; [32]; [33]; [34]; [35]; [36]. --Lambiam 11:40, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- 1 or more integer axes. Manhattan is 20 per mile on the more important axis with the wider roads and usually more like 10 to 5 on the other axis but for a number of reasons including the byzantine Manhattan address algorithm no one says N00 block of foo Street. Portland, Oregon is 20 per mile on both axes which may be a 50th percentile block acreage in your country but is very small in America (only one axis is numbered too! Why is this so popular?). Downtown Salt Lake City blocks are 0.15*0.15 miles! Of the links Aurora names their streets so not that (names can encourage the N00 block nomenclature to save people from having to learn or look up so many names to know where anything is), Braddock only numbers one axis, Richmond has too many named streets, National City addresses are less than 20 hundreds per mile, Bandon only numbers one axis, Washington DC has too many unnumbered streets, Rochester Minnesota axes are both numbered (holy crap!) but aren't small or thin enough and Santa Monica blocks are thin enough (which presumably makes individual blocks seem less significant and would make it easier for N00 block-style nomenclature systems to sprawl to high syllable counts) but the avenues are named. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:10, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- I'm not sure on the spacing between roads, but my home of Hickory, NC, has numbered north-south streets and numbered east-west avenues (with a few named roads here and there). Constructions like "the 400 block of 8th Street NW" are reasonably common, but you're much more likely to just give the exact address of a place. I guess the blocks aren't thought of as entities themselves, just as conglomerations of the individual locations. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:53, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- I don't watch the show Cops often but they seem to say that a lot for some reason. Like "📻male going crazy on the 500 block of Oak Street" Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:38, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- Reports may be coming in from multiple locations on the street. Also, officrs responding to a particular house number might be so focused on tgat address as to miss the fact that the suspect is now several houses down.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:37, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- The large number of numbers must reduce the incentive to say Xth block of Yth Street. Compared to some other towns where you'd need to memorize the map to not need a map. Hickory's hundreds seem to have very inconsistent and often large spacings. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:11, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- Yeah, we have lots of fragmentary streets with gaps between segments of the same road.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 19:10, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- I don't watch the show Cops often but they seem to say that a lot for some reason. Like "📻male going crazy on the 500 block of Oak Street" Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:38, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
"War between the states"
Various people supporting the Lost Cause of the Confederacy narrative of the American Civil War insist that it be referred to as the "War between the states" (WBTS). Why is WBTS preferable in their view?
We have Names of the American Civil War, but I don't believe it says why those people prefer WBTS. Is there some hidden connotation of the term "civil war" that lost causers don't like? To me both terms seem pretty neutral, though I would never say WBTS just to avoid association with the lost cause. (Is it somehow inaccurate to describe this as a war between states?) Staecker (talk) 13:36, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- Civil war implies a war within a single country. War between the states frames the conflict as between two naturally-separate national entities. From our article on the CSA: "Secessionists argued that the United States Constitution was a contract among sovereign states that could be abandoned at any time without consultation and that each state had a right to secede." WBTS privileges that legally-questionable viewpoint. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:08, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- Are you suggesting that the phrase was intended as intending a war between the CSA and the USA as two sovereign "states" in the broader sense of the term "state"? I seriously doubt that. I'm fairly sure the Confederate usage of "state" meant the individual states that had seceded (or "declared secession" if you prefer). As I understand it the CSA was always meant to be a fairly loose union, perhaps with ambitions to be a "state" in the world community, but not really a nation-state. --Trovatore (talk) 18:40, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- The section of Civil War Names that Staecker cites implies a connection from CSA/allies official communications during the war, including
hostilities... between the Government of the United States of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America
, to ex-CSA memoirs after the war using "War Between the States" explicitly. Citations are in-line for the former but not the latter, so you might have to ask at the article's talk page what reference/book those memoirs are cited in. You could go through Alexander Stephens's memoirs yourself, but that might be a proverbial haystick of 19th-century scrawl. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:56, 2 July 2022 (UTC)- Back then, people (especially Southerners) did indeed see the United States as a federation of multiple sovereign nations (the states). Sort of like the EU (although the details of union were quite different). People tended to think of themselves more as a citizen of Massachusetts or Virginia than they did as a citizen of the US. The war changed that. Blueboar (talk) 19:01, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- The section of Civil War Names that Staecker cites implies a connection from CSA/allies official communications during the war, including
- Are you suggesting that the phrase was intended as intending a war between the CSA and the USA as two sovereign "states" in the broader sense of the term "state"? I seriously doubt that. I'm fairly sure the Confederate usage of "state" meant the individual states that had seceded (or "declared secession" if you prefer). As I understand it the CSA was always meant to be a fairly loose union, perhaps with ambitions to be a "state" in the world community, but not really a nation-state. --Trovatore (talk) 18:40, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- I guess I failed their dogwhistle cause the meaning clearly was "the war between the provinces" no double entendre till I saw this. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:32, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- The American states are not provinces. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:11, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- I know that. Normal people hear war between the states but Confederacy mourners hear war between the states. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:57, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- I thought the Confederacy preferred term was War of Northern Aggression. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:FD2B (talk) 19:41, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- The American states are not provinces. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:11, 2 July 2022 (UTC)