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Óla! So Explorer adds (n) to a file with a duplicate name to an existing one. Do you have suggestions how to easily identify and delete them? The search option doesn't recognize parentheses, so a search would merely identify files with that number in the title. The reason for asking is that if a folder has a large number of duplicates that should be deleted, it would be easier to sort/select/delete rather than ctrl+click individually. Thank you! 2.28.124.91 (talk) 16:31, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On the left of the web page you will see a checkbox "Status" with 3 items checked. The problem I have is that the only way I can get multiple items checked is by editing the URL. If I just click on an item in a checkbox on this website the other items get unchecked. In other words: the checkbox works like radio buttons. I tried a different browser; I tried ctrl-click and shift-click and alt-click. Nope. On other websites (here for example) I do not have this problem. Do you experience the same inconvenience? And if so any ideas on how to do this easier than by url editing? 213.126.69.28 (talk) 11:55, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Doing a quick search online I realized that the path to the Windows recycle bin is C:\$Recycle.Bin; however, for some reason I don't understand, it doesn't seem to be the "Recycle Bin" on the desktop, they just seem to be two different paths (explanatory screenshot at the following link: [1]). Are they actually two different paths? If so, why? If not... why aren't the two windows synchronized? 2A01:827:160:D601:2E75:E3BA:BBBF:B55D (talk) 14:35, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
C:\$Recycle.Bin has the recycle bins for all users. Yours will appear with the normal name and icon, the others will appear as the Security Identifier of the respective account. If you click on the one for your account, it should show the same contents (note Windows Explorer shows the files which are in the recycling bin - it does not show the actual files storing the data used by the recycling bin). As for why they are different, it's hard to say without more information. If you delete something, does it appear in both or just one? Thanks 2603:6011:9440:D700:2080:28C1:577E:41B3 (talk) 23:26, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Moved this here as I found this to be a better place for it. As for your question, no, I used text commands. Though I may be able to help. Any specific questions? TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 00:32, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When I installed Arch Linux, I used a live-boot USB. Once booted, it has an "install" icon that can be used to do a basic install. Then, once installed, you can customize it by removing and adding the packages you like. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 15:42, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
68.187.174.155, I think you're confused. Archinstall is a command on Arch Linux, and the Arch Installer boots in text mode. You may be thinking of an Arch derivative like Manjaro or EndeavourOS, which do indeed boot up in graphical environments. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 20:23, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
According to their terms of use, "Access to this panorama is free for a private or public non-commercial use. Any commercial use of this tool is prohibited, as well as the extraction of images from this panorama" (my emphasis). This may or may not bother you. Chuntuk (talk) 18:24, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Tried [2] and of course also the dezoomify tool but got immediately stuck because I was not able to find an URL. Very few programming skills, none regarding HTML, that's why I ask here.--Antemister (talk) 10:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't able to download the file as it was taking forever, but this URL appeared to download the files for 30+ minutes on a fast internet. Let us know if this works. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 03:19, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've successfully taken images off the IWM via their source code and dezoomify, but I'm puzzled as to how to extract images here, as Dezoomify appears to be perpetually stuck on 'preparing tiles load'. The longest I've seen it take for large images in the past is a couple of minutes. Like Antemister, I've little programming knowledge, but I think the following elements in the code are related:
Important note: particle physicists today generally only ever use "mass" to mean "invariant mass" and never anything else: [3]. Like the term says, invariant mass is well, invariant, it never changes ever, no matter what "external forces" may or may not be involved. Being proper particle-icans and following the standard practice in the field, then, the three neutrino masses are constant values. ..."Wait, three?" Yeah sure, turns out neutrinos come in three "flavors" but each flavor is a mixture of the three possible mass "states". As mentioned, due to Quantum Weirdness we aren't able to get these different states "alone by themselves" to measure each by itself, so we only know the differences of the squares of the masses. Yeah welcome to quantum mechanics.
The equation uses invariant mass m0 which is constant if E and p are constant. The traveling neutrino has a varying mass mixture of different flavors with different masses. If a mixture of different masses changes, you would expect the resulting mass to change with it. But somehow this does not happen as the neutrino mass mixture changes. These mixture changes cannot be any changes. The changes must be such that the resulting mass of the traveling neutrino remains constant. My question is whether this is described somewhere. Hevesli (talk) 11:16, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I freely confess I'm uncertain exactly what's being "asked for" or "gotten at" here. Have you looked at the neutrino oscillation article? From it: That is, the three neutrino states that interact with the charged leptons in weak interactions are each a different superposition of the three (propagating) neutrino states of definite mass. Neutrinos are emitted and absorbed in weak processes in flavor eigenstates[a] but travel as mass eigenstates.[18]
What is it that we're "doing" with the energy–momentum relation here? For the neutrino, we don't have a single value of "mass" to plug in for , because we can't "see" the individual mass eigenstates, only some linear combination of them. What you want for describing neutrino interactions is quantum field theory, which is special relativity + QM. (Remember, relativity is a "classical" theory, which presumes everything always has single well-defined values of everything. Which isn't true in quantum-world.) --Slowking Man (talk) 18:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not all potential evolutions of a linear combination of unequal values produce constant results. Constancy can only be guaranteed by a constraint on the evolutions. Does the fact that this constraint is satisfied in the case of neutrino oscillation follow from the mathematical formulation of the Standard Model, or does this formulation allow evolutions of the mass mixture for which the combination is not constant? If the unequal values are unknown, I have no idea of how such a constraint might be formulated. I think the OP is asking whether this constraint is described somewhere. --Lambiam00:51, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to try it just today, but I had to exchange the under-desk elliptical trainer I got for Christmas for a different model with more inclined treadles because with the one I got, my knees would hit the desk at the top of every cycle. Anyway, I was hoping someone else tried it first (preferably as part of a formal scientific study) so I would know if I could control whether I got a runner's high from exercise or not? 2601:646:8082:BA0:9052:E6AF:23C7:7CAF (talk) 03:09, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, sorry for adding to my own question, but here's a related one: is it known whether the length of a person's dopamine receptor D4 (which is inversely correlated with its sensitivity) influences whether said person gets a runner's high from exercise (and especially from low-intensity exercise)? 2601:646:8082:BA0:9052:E6AF:23C7:7CAF (talk) 03:14, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What is the difference between an auxotroph and a fastidious organism? It seems to me the second one would have more requirements than the first one, but the limit between the two definitions is rather unclear to me.
Symbiosis aside, it would seem that most auxotrophs would be fastidious organisms, but there could be many more fastidious organisms that aren't auxotrophs. Auxotrophs specifically can't produce organic compounds on their own. There are a LOT of organisms that rely on the availability of non-organic nutrients, such as specific elements/minerals. For instance, vertebrates require access to calcium. Calcium is an element; our inability to produce it does not make us auxotrophs.
But perhaps symbiosis would allow an organism to be an auxotroph without being a fastidious organism? For instance, mammals tend to have bacteria in our guts that can digest nutrients that our bodies can't on their own. Perhaps some of those bacteria also assemble certain nutrients that our bodies can't? -- Avocado (talk) 14:27, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I saw an ad promoting a device which presumable splits water into
hydrogen and oxygen and infuses water with extra hydrogen, to
a claimed surplus of perhaps 5 ppm, which doesn’t seem like much. I found a review article which looked at several dozen related studies that found benefits:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10816294/ .
I’ve noticed that carbon dioxide or chlorine (chloramine?) dissolved in water work their way out pretty easily, so I wonder if dissolved hydrogen could similarly exit hydrogen enriched water and be burped or farted out, rather than entering the blood stream and having health benefits. is it more than the latest snake oil? Edison (talk) 23:01, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's conceivable it might take out the chloramine, I guess. I don't think there's very much of it, but it tastes awful, which is why I add a tiny bit of vitamin C when I drink tap water. It seems to take very little. Of course it's hard to tell whether it's just being masked by the taste of the vitamin C. --Trovatore (talk) 02:12, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if it is rubbish or not but a quick look on the web indicates to me it is notable enough for Wikipedia. I didn't see anything indicating it definitely did anything useful so such an article should definitely have caveats. I haven't seen any expression of a potential worry either so it isn't like we'd be saying bleach is a good medicine for covid. NadVolum (talk) 23:07, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In a harmonic oscillator, reaching the highest point involves - both a minimal kinetic energy - along with a maximal potential energy, whereas reaching the lowest point involves - both a maximal kinetic energy - along with a minimal potential energy. Thus the mechanical energy becomes the sum of kinetic energy + potential energy, and is a conserved quantity.
So I wonder if it's reasonable to define also "potential velocity" vs. "kinetic velocity", and claim that in a harmonic oscillator, reaching the highest point involves - both a minimal "kinetic velocity" (i.e. involves what we usually call a rest) - along with a maximal "potential velocity", whereas reaching the lowest point involves - both a maximal "kinetic velocity" (i.e. involves what we usually call the actual velocity) - along with a minimal "potential velocity". Thus we can also define "mechanical velocity" as the sum of "kinetic velocity" + "potential velocity", and claim that the mechanical velocity is a conserved quantity - at least as far as a harmonic oscillator is concerned.
Reasonable?
Note that I could also ask an analogous question - as to the concept of "potential momentum", but this term is already used in the theory of hidden momentum for another meaning, so for the time being I'm focusing on velocity.
Per my suggestion, the ratio between distance and time is not called "velocity" but rather "kinetic velocity".
Further, per my suggestion, if you don't indicate whether the "velocity" you're talking about is a "kinetic velocity" or a "potential velocity" or a "mechanical velocity", the very concept of "velocity" alone has no meaning!
On the other hand, "potential velocity" is defined as the difference between the "mechanical velocity" and the "kinetic velocity"! Just as, this is the case if we replace "velocity" by "energy". For more details, see the example above, about the harmonic oscillator. HOTmag (talk) 15:14, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You could define the potential velocity of a body at a particular height as the velocity it would hit the ground at if dropped from that height. But the sum of the potential and kinetic velocities would not be conserved; rather would be constant. catslash (talk) 18:54, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
'Potential velocity' has no meaning. You seem to be arguing that in a system where energy is conserved, but is transforming between kinetic and potential energy, (You might also want to compare this to conservation of momentum.) then you can express that instead through a new conservation law based on velocity. But this doesn't work. There's no relation between velocity and potential energy.
In a harmonic oscillator, the potential energy is typically coming from some central restoring force with a relationship to position, nothing at all to do with velocity. Where some axiomatic external rule (such as Hooke's Law applying, because the system is a mass on a spring) happens to relate the position and velocity through a suitable relation, then the system will then (and only then) behave as a harmonic oscillator. But a different system (swap the spring for a dashpot) doesn't have this, thus won't oscillate. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:00, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Let me quote a sentence from my original post: Thus we can also...claim that the mechanical velocity is a conserved quantity - at least as far as a harmonic oscillator is concerned.
You have defined some arbitrary values for new 'velocities', where their only definition is that they then demonstrate some new conservation law. Which is really the conservation of energy, but you're refusing to use that term for some reason.
As Catslash pointed out, the conserved quantity here is proportional to the square of velocity, so your conservation equation has to include that. It's simply wrong that any linear function of velocity would be conserved here. Not merely we can't prove that, but we can prove (the sum of the squares diverges from the sum) that it's actually contradicted. For any definition of 'another velocity' which is a linear function of velocity.
It is a law of conservation of sanity. Lacking a definition of potential energy, other than by having been informed that kinetic energy + potential energy is a conserved quantity, there is not much better we can do. --Lambiam11:20, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We have a perfectly viable definition of potential energy. For a pendulum it's based on the change in height of the pendulum bob against gravity. For some other oscillators it would involve the work done against a spring. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:33, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, I mistyped. I meant to write:
"Lacking a definition of potential velocity, other than by having been informed that kinetic velocity + potential velocity is a conserved quantity, there is not much better we can do."
Put two equally sized drops, one of each liquid, on a warm surface, wait for them to evaporate, and compare how much salt residue each leaves? Not very precise or measurable, but significant differences should be noticeable. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 10:21, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The principle is sound, but the residue from one drop won't be measurable using kitchen equipment -- better to put equal amounts of each liquid in two warm pans (use enough liquid to cover the bottom of each pan with a thin layer), wait for them to evaporate and then weigh the residue! Or, if you're not afraid of doing some algebra, you could also try an indirect method -- bring both liquids to a boil, measure the temperature of both, and then use the formula for boiling point elevation to calculate the saltiness of each! 2601:646:8082:BA0:BD1B:60D8:96CA:C5B0 (talk) 18:22, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably the liquid preparations are not simple saline solutions, but contain other solutes - or else one could simply use a hydrometer. It is unlikely that Lambian is afraid of doing some algebra. catslash (talk) 18:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Assuming the liquid preparations are water-based and don't contain alcohols and/or detergents one can measure their rates of dispersion. Simply add a drop of food dye to each liquid and then time how rapidly droplets of each liquid disperse in distilled water. Materials needed: food dye, eye dropper, distilled water, small clear containers and a timer.Modocc (talk) 21:09, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The colligative properties of a solution will indicate its molarity, but not identify the solute. Liquid preparations that might be found in a kitchen are likely to contain both salt and sugar. Electrical conductivity is a property that will be greatly affected by the salt but not the sugar (this does not help in distinguishing Na+ from K+ ions though). catslash (talk) 22:23, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Quantitative urine test-strips for sodium seem to be available. They're probably covering the concentration range of tens to hundreds millimolar. DMacks (talk) 00:58, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, test strips seem more practical in the kitchen setting than an ohmmeter (why not call it a "mhometer"?), for which I'd need to devise a way (or so I think) to keep the terminals apart at a steady distance. Test strips require a colour comparison, but I expect that a significant difference in salinity will result in a perceptible colour difference when one strip is placed across the other. Only experiment can tell whether this expectation will come true. Salinity is usually measured in g/L; for kitchen preparations a ballpark figure is 1 g/L. If I'm not mistaken this corresponds to (1 g/L) / (58.443 g/mol) ≈0.017 M = 17 mM. I also see offers for salinity test strips, 0–1000 ppm, for "Science Education". --Lambiam11:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Test strips surely come with a printed color-chart. But if all you are trying to do is determine which is more salty, then that's even easier than quantifying each separately. Caveat for what you might find for sale: some "salinity" tests are based on the chloride not the sodium, so a complex matrix that has components other than NaCl could fool it. DMacks (talk) 18:44, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The (uncommon?) terms "relativistic length", and "relativistic time".
1. In Wikipedia, the page relativistic length contraction is automatically redirected to our article length contraction, which actually doesn't mention the term "relativistic length" at all. I wonder if there is an accepted term for the concept of relativistic length.
2. A similar qusestion arises, at to the concept of relativistic time: The page relativistic time dilation, is automatically redirected to our article time dilation, which prefers the abbreviated term "time dilation" (59 times) to the term "relativistic time dilation" (8 times only), and nowhere mentions the term "relativistic time" alone (i.e. without the third word "dilation") - although it does mention the term "proper time" for the shortest time. Further, this article doesn't even mention the term "dilated time" either. It does mention, though, another term: coordinate time, but regardless of time dilation in Special relativity. To sum up, I wonder what's the accepted term used for the dilated time (mainly is Special relativity): Is it "coordinate time"? "Relativistic time"?
Are you reading these things as "contraction of relativistic length" etc.? It is "relativistic contraction of length" and "relativistic dilation of time". --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:37, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I wrote: The page relativistic time dilation is automatically redirected to our article time dilation which...nowhere mentions the term "relativistic time" alone (i.e. without the third word "dilation"), I had already guessed that the term "dilation of relativistic time" (i.e, with the word "dilation" preceding the words "relativistic time") existed nowhere (at least in Wikipedia), and that this redirected page actually meant "relativistic dilation of time". The same is true for the redirected page "relativistic length contraction": I had already gussed it didn't mean "contraction of relativistic length", because (as I had already written): the article length contraction...doesn't mention the term "relativistic length" at all.
Thank you. The middle source uses the term "comparative length", rather than "relative length". I couldn't open the third source. HOTmag (talk) 08:04, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The text under the graph labelled Comparative length on page 20 of the middle source reads:
Graph of the relative length of a stationary rod on earth, as observed from the reference frame of a traveling rod of 100cm proper length.
Is there any metric unit whose ratio is not power of 10, and is divisible by 3? Is there any common use for things like "2⁄3 km", "5⁄12 kg", "3+1⁄6 m"?
Is a one-tenth of nautical mile (185.2 m) used in English-speaking countries? Is there a name for it?
Has anyone determined whether it is better for a right-hander to have the left hand on the steering wheel and the right hand on the gear shift stick, or the other way round? Are there other tests of whether left-hand drive or right-hand drive is physiologically better (for a right-hander at least)? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:03, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Supplementary question: I've only driven right-hand-drive vehicles (being in the UK) where the light stalk is on the left of the steering column and the wiper & washer controls are (usually) on the right. On a l-h-drive vehicle, is this usually the same, or reversed? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 12:12, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Modern cars are designed for mass production in RH- and LH-drive versions with a minimum difference of parts. Steering columns with attached controls are therefore unchanged between versions. Philvoids (talk) 12:29, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the UK, sales of new automatics have just recently overtaken manuals - so probably still more manuals than automatics on the road. catslash (talk) 14:37, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In Australia, we drive on the left, and the indicator and wiper stalks are the opposite way to the UK. Having moved back from the UK after 30 years, it took me a while to stop indicating with wipers. TrogWoolley (talk) 05:08, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This depends more on where the car came from I think. For European or American cars it tends to be in the UK direction. For Asian cars or I guess those odd Australian made cars which are out there, it tends to be in the other. See e.g. [7]. The UK being a bigger market I think most manufacturers have come to follow the new UK norm for cars they intend to sell there [8][9][10][11] although I suspect to some extent it's still true in the sense that I think most Asian car brands, at least assemble their cars in the EU or maybe the UK if they're destined for the UK (made a lot of sense pre-Brexit) [12]. It sounds like the new UK norm is fairly recent perhaps arising in the 1980s-1990s after European manufacturers stopped bothering changing that part of the production for the reasons mentioned by Philvoids. As mentioned in one of the Reddit threads, the UK direction does make it difficult to adjust indicators while changing gear which seems a disadvantage which is fairly ironic considering the the UK has much more of a preference for manuals than many other RHD places with the other direction. Nil Einne (talk) 04:31, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For further clarity, AFAICT, LHD vehicles generally have their indicators on the left and wipers on the right. As mentioned, assuming the gear stick is in the middle which AFAIK it is for most cars by now, this seems the better positioning especially on manual cars since you're much more likely to want to need to indicate while changing gear than you are going to want to adjust your wipers even in the rainy UK. The UK being LHT/RHD especially with their own manufactured cars tended to have the indicators on the right and wipers on the left in the more distant past so again the positions that made most sense.
While I don't have a source for this going by the history and comments, it sounds to me like what happened is European manufacturers who were primarily making LHD vehicles, with the UK and Ireland their main RHD markets but still small compared to the LHD market stopped bothering changing positions for RHD vehicles as a cost saving measure. So they began to put wipers on the right and indicators on the left even in their RHD vehicles no matter the disadvantage. I'm not so sure what the American manufacturers did or when and likewise the British but I think they were a fairly small part of the market by then and potentially even for them LHD was still a big part of their target market.
Meanwhile Asian manufacturers however still put their indicators on the right and wipers on the left in RHD vehicles, noting that Japan itself is LHT/RHD. I suspect Japanese manufacturers suspected, correctly, that it well worth the cost of making something else once they began to enter the LHD markets like the US, to help gain acceptance. And so they put the indicators on the left and wipers on the right for LHD vehicles even if they did the opposite in their own home market and continued forever more. Noting that the predominance of RHT/LHD means even for Japanese manufacturers it's generally likely to be their main target by now anyway.
Later I assume South Korea manufacturers and even later Chinese felt it worth any added cost to increase acceptance of their vehicles in LHT/RHD markets in Asia and Australia+NZ competing against Japanese vehicles which were like this. And this has largely continued even if it means they need to make two different versions of the steering column or whatever. It sounds like the European and American brands didn't bother but they were primarily luxury vehicles in such markets so it didn't matter so much.
This lead to an interesting case for the UK. For the Asian manufacturer, probably many of them were still making stuff which would allow them to keep putting the indicators on the right and wipers on the left for RHD vehicles as they were doing for other RHD markets mostly Asian. And even if they were assembling them in the EU, I suspect the added cost of needing to ship and keep the different components etc and any difference it made to the assembly line wasn't a big deal.
So some of did what they were doing for the Asian markets for vehicles destined for UK. If they weren't assembling in the EU, it made even more sense since this was likely what their existing RHD assembly line was doing. But overtime the UK basically adopted the opposite direction as the norm no matter the disadvantages to the extent consumers and vehicle enthusiast magazines etc were complaining about the "wrong" positions. So even Asian manufacturers ended up changing to the opposite for vehicles destined to the UK to keep them happy. So the arguably better position was abandoned even in cases where it wasn't much of a cost saving measure or might have been even adding costs.
I've driven different (automatic) left-hand-drive vehicles with the light stalk on each side, but left side has been more common. Perhaps because the right hand is more likely to be busy with the gear shift? (Even in the US, where automatic has been heavily dominant since before I learned to drive.) -- Avocado (talk) 17:32, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's better for a right-hander to have both hands on the steering wheel regardless of where the gear lever is. See Rule 160. I suspect the same goes for a left-hander. Bazza 7 (talk) 14:39, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose that the question is whether right-handers have an easier time operating the gear stick when changing gears in manual-transmission cars designed for left-hand traffic, with the steering wheel on the right (like in the UK) or right-hand traffic, with the steering wheel on the left (like in most of continental Europe). Obviously, drivers will use their hand at the side where the gear stick is, so if it is in the middle and the driver, behind the wheel, sits in the right front seat, they'll use their left hand, regardless of their handedness. But this may be more awkward for a rightie. Or not.
In my personal experience (more than 10 years driving on each side of the road, in all four combinations of car handedness and road handedness) the question which hand to use for shifting gears is fairly insignificant. Switching from one type of car to the other is a bit awkward though. —Kusma (talk) 18:33, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a way (if you don't know which way is west and which way is east in a particular location) to distinguish a picture of a sunset from the picture of a sunrise? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:08, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, no, but there are a few tricks that sometimes work. In dry sunny weather, there's more dust in the air at sunset (due to thermals) than at sunrise, making the sky around the sun redder at sunset. But in moist weather, mist has the same effect at sunrise. If the picture is good enough to see sunspots, comparing the distribution of sunspots to the known distribution of that day (this is routinely monitored) tells you where the North Pole of the sun is. At sunset, the North Pole points somewhat to the right; at sunrise, to the left. If you see any cumulus or cumulonimbus clouds in the picture, it was a sunset, as such clouds form during the day and disappear around sunset, but absence of such clouds doesn't mean the picture was taken at sunrise. A very large cumulonimbus may survive the night. Cirrus aviaticus clouds are often very large, expanding into cirrostratus, in the evening, but are much smaller at dawn as there's more air traffic during the day than at night, making the upper troposphere more moist towards the end of the day. Cirrostratus also contributes to red sunsets and (to lesser extend, as there's only natural cirrostratus) red sunrises. Dew, rime, flowers and flocks of birds may also give an indication. And of course human activity: the beach is busier at sunset than at sunrise. PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:41, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Supposing the photograph has high enough resolution to show Sunspots it can be helpful to know that the pattern of spots at sunrise is reversed left-right at sunset. Philvoids (talk) 13:21, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At the equinox, the disk of the Sun with its pattern of sunspots appears to rotate clockwise from sunrise to sunset by 180 degrees minus twice your latitude (taking north positive). At my place, that's 75 degrees. Other times of the year it's less; at the start and end of polar day and polar night, there's no rotation. Sunset and sunrise merge then.
And I forgot to mention: cirrostratus clouds will turn red just after sunset or just before sunrise. At the exact moment of sunrise or sunset, they appear pretty white. PiusImpavidus (talk) 17:06, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I differ: the same rotation is involved everywhere on Earth. If you stand on tiptoe at a N. or S. pole to take a picture of the Sun it is you who must pirouette 15 degrees per hour to keep facing the Sun. The Earth rotates you at this rate at all non-polar locations. If you stand within the arctic or antarctic circles, for parts of the year the 24-hour night or 24-hour daylight seem to prevent photographs of sunrise or sunset. However the terms "sunrise" and "sunset" can then be interpreted as times that are related to particular timezones which are generally assigned by longitude. In photographing the 24-hour Sun the equatorial rise and set times for your own longitude are significant elevation maxima worth mentioning even though the minimum elevation remains above the horizon. I maintain that the sunspot pattern observed from any location on Earth rotates 360 degrees per 24 hours and that "night", the darkness from sunset to sunrise, is when the Earth's bulk interrupts one's view of the rotation but not the rotation itself which is continuous.
Taking the Earth as reference frame, the Sun rotates around the Earth's spin axis. The observer rotates around his own vertical axis. The better both axes are aligned, the smaller the wobble of the Sun. In the northern hemisphere, it rotates clockwise from about 6 till 18 by 180 degrees minus twice your latitude and counterclockwise at night, in the southern hemisphere it's the opposite. Try a planetarium program if you want to see it. Stellarium shows some sunspots, does things right and is free and open source. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:27, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Relationship between Earth's axial tilt (ε) to the tropical and polar circlesWe deprecate the obselete Geocentric model and suggest Wikipedia references that are free and just one click away (no extra planetarium software needed). The axes of rotation of the Sun and Earth have never in millions of years aligned: the Ecliptic is the orbital plane of Earth around the Sun and Earth currently has an Axial tilt of about 23.44° without "wobbling" enough from this to concern us here. Philvoids (talk) 14:56, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't my field but sunspots aside, if you know the location and date, I assume the appearance of other astronomical objects like the moon or rarely another star probably Venus, in the photograph should be enough to work out if it's a sunset or sunrise. That said, to some extent by taking into account other details gathered from elsewhere's I wonder if we're going beyond the question. I mean even if you don't personally know which is east or west at the time, if you can see other stuff and you know the location or the stuff you can see is distinctive enough it can be worked out, you can also work out if it's sunset or sunrise just by working out if it's east or west that way. Nil Einne (talk) 03:54, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience (Southern England) they tend to be pinker at dawn and oranger(!) at dusk. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 03:23, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pink clouds must result from blending of reddish clouds with the blue sky behind. There's actually more air between the observer and the clouds than behind the clouds, but for that nearby air the sun is below the horizon. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:27, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The questioner asks for interpretation of a single picture. It is beside the point that more would be revealed by a picture sequence such as of changing cloud colours. Philvoids (talk) 12:41, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Which you can only tell if you know which way is east in the image. Maltin, or his writer, appears to have assumed that Vietnam has a seacoast only on the east, which is wrong. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 03:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But as it was filmed in (The US State of) Georgia, it must actually show a sunrise, regardless of what the story line says – how do you know that wasn't what Maltin actually meant? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 10:35, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I assume (not having seen the film) that, in the story line of The Green Berets , the closing scene takes place in the late afternoon, which means it shows a sunset. The plot section of our article on the film places the closing scene at or near Da Nang, which is on the east coast of Vietnam. This means that Maltin did not make an unwarranted assumption; he was just seeking an excuse to bash the film. --Lambiam13:55, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It would be unusual to express the situation in such terms. Since the notion of energy "belonging to" some entity is not itself a physical concept – any practical approach to energy bookkeeping that satisfies the law of conservation of energy will do – this cannot be said to be wrong. It is, however, (IMO) not helpful. Does an apple belong to the space it occupies? Or does that space belong to the apple? --Lambiam23:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First, I let you replace the notion of energy "belonging to" some entity, by the notion of energy "attributed to" some entity, or by the notion of energy "carried by" some entity, and the like. In other words, I'm only asking about the abstract relation (no matter what words we use to express it), between the energy and the space carrying the electromagnetic field, rather than about the specific term "belong to".
Second, I'm only asking about what the common usage is, rather than about whether such a usage is wrong or helpful.
The question is actually as follows: Since it's accepted to attribute energy to an electromagnetic field, is it also accepted to attribute energy to the space carrying that field?
The answer remains the same. It would be a highly unusual use of language to "attribute" electromagnetic energy to a volume of space, in quite the same way as it would be strange to "attribute" the mass of an apple to the space the apple occupies. But as long as an author can define what they mean by this (and that meaning is consistent with the laws of physics), it is not wrong. --Lambiam13:21, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
An electromagnetic field that we may (even tenuously) conceive to have the form of a massless photon has, like the aforementioned apple (a biological mass) its own unique history, that being a finite path in Spacetime. I reject apparent effort to give spacetime any kind of identity capable of owning, or even anticipating owning or remembering having owned anything at all. Concepts of owning12, attributing3 or whatever synonymous wordplay one chooses all assume identification that can never be attached to the spacial location of an em field. The energy of the photon is fully accounted for, usually as heat at its destination, when it is absorbed and no lasting trace remains anywhere. I am less patient than Lambian in my reaction to this OP who under guise of interest in surveying "what is commonly accepted" returns in pursuit of debate by patronisingly "allowing" us to reword his question in abstract "words that don't matter" to make it purportedly clearer and worth responders' time. Philvoids (talk) 14:55, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For a consisting of points in R^2, define the function B such that as the Union of and all points which can be produced in the following way. For each set of points A, B, C, & D from all different so that no three of A, B, C & D are co-linear. E is the point (if it exists) where ABE are colinear and CDE are co-linear.
If = the vertices of a regular Pentagon centered at 0,0 with one vertex at (1,0), does there exist N such that includes any point of the form (0, y)? (extending the question to any N-gon, with N odd)
Naraht (talk) 05:16, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not 100% sure I understand the problem, but try this: Label the vertices of the original pentagon, starting with (1, 0), as A, B, C, D, E. You can construct a second point on the x-axis as the intersection of BD and CE; call this A'. Similarly construct B', C', D', E', to get another, smaller, regular pentagon centered at the origin and with the opposite orientation from the the original pentagon. All the lines AA', BB', CC', DD', EE' intersect at the origin, so you can construct (0, 0) as the intersection of any pair of these lines. The question didn't say y could not be 0, so the answer is yes, with N=2.
There is some theory developed on "straightedge only construction", in particular the Poncelet–Steiner theorem, which states any construction possible with a compass and straightedge can be constructed with a straightedge alone if you are given a single circle with its center. In this case you're given a finite set of points instead of a circle, and I don't know if there is much theory developed for that. --RDBury (talk) 13:12, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here is an easy way to describe the construction of pentagon A'B'C'D'E'. The diagonals of pentagon ABCDE form a pentagram. The smaller pentagon is obtained by removing the five pointy protrusions of this pentagram. --Lambiam16:53, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just to be clear, the black points are the original pentagon K, the green points are in B(K), and the red point is the desired point in B2(K); the origin is not shown. It would be nice to find some algebraic criterion for a point to be constructible in this way, similar to the way points constructible with a compass and straightedge are characterized by their degree over Q. --RDBury (talk) 01:45, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Once you have a second one (such as the reflection of the red point wrt the x-axis), you have all intersections of the y-axis with the non-vertical lines through pairs of distinct points from --Lambiam16:22, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
RDBury *headslap* on (0,0) Any idea on y<>0? (← comment from Naraht)
See (sequence A268068 in the OEIS), the first number not contained in M74207281 is 1000003, but what is What is the first number not contained in M136279841 (the currently largest known prime)? 61.224.131.231 (talk) 03:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The corresponding sequence (11, 3, 8, 7, 6, 10, 4, 9, 1, 5, 25, 31, 39, ...) is not in OEIS. Finding the answer to your question requires an inordinate amount of computing power. The decimal expansion of this Mersenne prime has some 41 million digits, all of which need to be computed. If this is to be done in a reasonable amount of time, the computation will need the random access storage of at least some 22 million digits. --Lambiam10:10, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not seeing that this question requires an inordinate amount of computing power to answer. 41 million characters is not a very large set of data. Almost all modern computers have several gigabytes of memory, so 41 million characters will easily fit in memory. I took the digits of M136279841 from https://www.mersenne.org/primes/digits/M136279841.zip and searched them myself, which took a few minutes on a consumer grade PC. If I have not made a mistake, the first number that does not appear is 1000030. The next few numbers that do not appear are 1000073, 1000107, 1000143, 1000156, 1000219, 1000232, 1000236, 1000329, 1000393, 1000431, 1000458, 1000489, 1000511, 1000514, 1000520, 1000529, etc. CodeTalker (talk) 03:59, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, this depends on being able to find the digits on-line. To compute them from scratch just for this question would be more trouble than it's worth. But I take your point; it probably takes more computing power to stream an episode of NUMB3RS than to answer this question. My problem with the question is that it's basically a dead end; knowing the answer, is anyone going to learn anything useful from it? I'd question the inclusion of A268068 in OEIS in the first place simply because it might lead to this sort of boondoggle. But far be it for me to second guess the OEIS criteria for entry. --RDBury (talk) 01:13, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OEIS includes similar sequences for the positions of the first location of the successive naturals in the decimal expansions of (A088576), (A032445) and (A229192). These have at least a semblance of theoretical interest wafting over from the open question whether these numbers are normal. --Lambiam06:21, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To compute them from scratch just for this question would be more trouble than it's worth. Eh, I agree that the question is of little fundamental interest. However, it's not much work to compute M136279841. It is of course absolutely trivial to compute it as a binary number. The only real work is to convert it to decimal. I wrote a program to do this using the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library. It took about 5 minutes to write the program (since I've never used that library before and had to read the manual) and 29 seconds to run it. CodeTalker (talk) 18:06, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Right, convert from binary, somehow I didn't think of that. Basically just divide by 10 41 million times, which would only be an issue if it was billions instead of millions. --RDBury (talk) 06:21, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Previously, in WPM (Coecke and Moore (2000)) taught me a statement of coherence condition for adjoint functors. This is sometimes called triangle identities or zigzag identities, and I'm looking for some references. I am also trying to find where to find the Wikipedia article that explains coherence conditions (adjoint functors). Also, I'm looking for a Wikipedia article that explains coherence conditions (adjoint functors). (e.g. coherence condition, adjoint functor, or new draft ?)
Ben-Moshe, Shay (2024). "Naturality of the ∞-categorical enriched Yoneda embedding". Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra. 228 (6). arXiv:2301.00601. doi:10.1016/j.jpaa.2024.107625.
Explanations in mathematics can be of different kinds. One kind are explanations of definitions. Definitions are true by definition; an explanation generally means helping build up an intuition of the concept defined by showing familiar structures satisfying the definition. Another kind are explanations of statements. These typically offer a reformulation of a statements as an equivalent statement in terms of simpler concepts. Then there are explanations of proofs. These can include showing the proof "in action" on specific examples, using familiar structures as when explaining definitions. And they can assist in verifying the validity of proof steps, by unfolding definitions until the step becomes obvious. In general, all explanations can involve a combination of these.
For example, in our article Adjoint functors, the ramifications of the definition in the lead section, basically the existence of a bijection that is natural in and are not immediately obvious, but by carefully unfolding the definitions, starting with the required naturality of the two morphisms making up the bijection, leads to the equivalent counit–unit definition.
I am not sure what kind of explanation of "coherence conditions (adjoint functors)" you are seeking. Perhaps studying this article, "Adjunctions", will answer this question. --Lambiam12:18, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply. I will read the article you recommended and study from it. Specifically, I am looking for some references to add the examples given in the WPM to the examples of coherence condition. Also, I think counit–unit addition is itself might be a topic on which to create a standalone article. SilverMatsu (talk) 05:30, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My immediate reaction is that it is better to leave the treatment of the counit–unit definition to the article Adjoint functors. The terms "hom-set adjunction" and "counit–unit adjunction" suggest these are special kinds of adjunction, but this terminology is IMO misleading. What is defined there is each time precisely the same concept of adjunction as in the other definitions. All three definitions are fully equivalent. They are just different ways of looking at the same situation. The parable of the blind men and an elephant could be the story of the mathematicians and the adjoint situation. --Lambiam11:43, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Concatenation of first 10 digits and last 10 digits of a number
The answer to 2 is easily "no". Powers of 3 are not divisible by 5, so their decimal representations cannot end on a 5. Five seconds of considering the question should suffice to figure this out.
The answer to 14ff is also no:
Put and
Then but
Again, I think a beginning recreational mathematician should be able on their own to come up with this easy counterexample.
I do not find these particular questions interesting. Still, let me reflect on how questions 1–8 might be approached.
To start, the formation of a -digit string is a red herring. It is conceptually cleaner to consider pairs of -digit strings, such as (8816943275, 9486871551).
One can pose two related questions for each sequence under consideration:
Ini: does each -digit string appear as an initial segment of the decimal expansion of some sequence element?
Fin: does each -digit string, with the exclusion of some as specified, appear as a final segment of its decimal expansion?
These are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the joint occurrence of all combinations, but easier to study. If either one can be shown not to hold, the answer is no. Otherwise, if no proof of any of the two can be found, the question cannot be settled. Finally, if both can be shown to hold, it is at least plausible that the proofs will provide enough material to settle the original question.
As to the Ini question, it is unlikely that an affirmative answer depends on the particular number . If Ini holds for a given well-known mathematical sequence, Ini will almost certainly hold for any length This is then equivalent to the statement that a given sequence satisfies (For the notation see Little-o notation.)
Similarly, if Fin holds for a given well-known mathematical sequence, Fin will plausibly hold for any length The Fin question can therefore tentatively be generalized to:
Are, for any given modulus the residue classes modulo of sequence all classes not already excluded by the specified exclusions?
Note, though, that the generalization may fail to hold for some modulus while Fin holds. For example, for any So it is no longer a necessary condition and may need further finessing before application. --Lambiam00:28, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, the first 4 questions should be:
Can a(2^n) take all 20-digit values which are multiples of 1024 and not multiples of 5?
Can a(3^n) take all 20-digit values which end with 1, 3, 7, 9?
Can a(n^2) take all 20-digit values which are quadratic residues mod 1010?
Can a(n^3) take all 20-digit values which are neither == 2, 4, 6 mod 8 nor == 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, …, 115, 120 mod 125?
9./10./11. I would wager that finding these would be extremely difficult. Normally if one has a large number , then one can hope to find the first few digits by taking , with the hopes that will be small/amenable to calculation, with a precise fractional part. For example, has log , which is small () and thus has a precise fractional part () which, when fed back into the power of 10, yields us the first few digits without having to calculate the 369 million-digit itself. Unfortunately, is not such a case; the log itself now has 369 million digits, so calculating the fractional part accurately would be a nightmare. For similar reasons, 10. and 11. would also seem to be extraordinarily difficult. GalacticShoe (talk) 00:47, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1./2. All numbers that are multiples of 1024 and not of 5 are the last 10 digits of some power of 2, as for all coprime to 5, there is some such that . Moreover, for the modulos with respect to are periodic with some minimal period, say , so that all applicable modulos appear once in the period of consecutive powers of 2.
Suppose now that we fix two distinct 10-digit strings and , the former to represent the first ten digits we want of our desired power of 2, and the latte - divisible by 1024 and not by 5 - to represent the last ten digits. Let be the minimal power of that has as its last ten digits; all the numbers we are looking for are then of the form where . What it means for our first ten digits to be then, is that there is some such that:
.
This is equivalent to:
.
Notice that is irrational. It is a bit overkill, but we can apply the equidistribution theorem here and note that there will always be some value of with a corresponding value of large enough such that the aforementioned equality holds, and also . Consequently, there must be some values of and that yield a power of 2 starting with A and ending with B. The same logic applies to . GalacticShoe (talk) 00:26, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
3./4. If we look at squares, then we have instead of , and the inequality becomes
.
While logs are not equidistributed modulo 1, this does not present a problem; because tends to 0 as n goes to infinity, there will always be some point where, informally, cannot "jump the gap" between and . When that happens, we get a square that starts and ends with our desired string. The same logic applies to cubes and all functions (yielding the desired ending substring) where or equivalently . GalacticShoe (talk) 01:37, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
7. The approach with exponentials can actually help us with Fibonacci numbers, as
.
All we have to do is use the Pisano period and add a fixed amount of leeway for the minuscule (which tends to 0, so any tiny threshold suffices), at which point the equidistribution theorem again applies. GalacticShoe (talk) 01:51, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
6. If our previous conversation on lucky numbers is anything to go by, it seems unlikely that enough is known to even ascertain whether there are infinitely many lucky numbers satisfying congruence mod 10^10.
8. Like the last question involving partition functions, and like with lucky numbers, without further information on their congruences it seems unlikely that we'll have a satisfactory answer to this.
No, this is excluded by the equidistribution theorem. Precisely because is dense in there will be pseudoperiodicities. For example, is approximated by , so there will be a similarity between the initial digits of and those of The first two digits of go like
while those of go like
Eventually there will be arbitrarily long initial strings repeated arbitrarily often, but each run will eventually end with a discrepancy. --Lambiam12:38, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Biden commuted nearly all of the Federal Death Row sentences a few days ago. Now, what’s the deal with the Military Death Row inmates? Are they considered "federal" and under the purview of Biden? Or, if not, what’s the distinction? Thanks. 32.209.69.24 (talk) 02:29, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This page and the various tabs you can click from there include a lot of information. There hasn't been a military execution since 1961 and there are only four persons on the military death row at this point. The President does have the power to commute a death sentence issued under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is not clear why President Biden did not address those four cases when he commuted the sentences of most federal death row inmates a few days ago, although two of the four cases (see here) are linked to terrorism, so would likely not have been commuted anyway. Xuxl (talk) 14:45, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am trying to work out when Coca Romano's coronation portraits of Ferdinand and Marie of Romania were actually completed and unveiled. This is with an eye to possibly uploading a photo of them to this wiki: they are certainly still in copyright in Romania (Romano lived until 1983), but probably not in the U.S. because of publication date.
The coronation took place in 1922 at Alba Iulia. The portraits show Ferdinand and Marie in their full regalia that they wore at the coronation. They appear to have been based on photographs taken at the coronation, so they must have been completed after the event, not before.
A few pieces of information I have: there is no date on the canvasses. The pieces are in the collection of the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu (inventory numbers 2503 for the picture of Marie and 2504 for Ferdinand) [Reference for undated and for inventory numbers: [ [13], p. 36-37], and were on display this year at Art Safari in Bucharest, which is where I photographed them. If they were published (always a tricky concept for a painting, but I'm sure they were rapidly and widely reproduced) no later than 1928, or in a few days 1929, we can upload my photo in this wiki. - Jmabel | Talk04:58, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The question as topic. I'm pretty rusty on the good book, but I don't recall that it was ever directly specified in Exodus, or anywhere else. But it seems to be something that is commonly assumed. 146.90.140.99 (talk) 23:39, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
According to this video, the story that the pyramids were built with slave labour is a myth; the builders were skilled workers, "engineers, craftsmen, architects, the best of the best". The people of the children of Israel being forced to work for the Pharaoh is mentioned in Exodus1:11: "So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.". The pyramids are not mentioned in the Bible. --Lambiam02:06, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I thought that was the case. It's been 30 years since I read the Bible from cover to cover (I mainly just have certain passages highlighted now that I find helpful). But I do remember Zionist people very recently online Facebook claiming that the Jews built the pyramids and that Egyptian nationalists can go fuck themselves with their historical complaints about Israeli invasions of the Sinai Peninsula. 146.90.140.99 (talk) 02:43, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right. You people can't help yourselves, can you? You didn't have to read the Bible cover to cover to find the answer. It's there in the first paragraphs of the book of Exodus. But you were looking for an excuse to talk about "Zionist people", weren't you? Of course any connection between pyramids and the Sinai is nonsensical (if it was actually made and you didn't just make it up) and there are idiots everywhere including among "Zionist people". Except you're no better, since you decided to post a fake question just to have an excuse to move the "conversation" from Facebook to Wikipedia. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 03:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You are mistaken. I support Israel 100%. I maybe shouldn't have said "Zionist" but I had a few drinks - what is the correct term to use for people who support Israel??. I was legit interested from half the world away about some historical arguments I saw online. 146.90.140.99 (talk) 03:50, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway, Egyptian pyramids (certainly stone pyramids) were mainly an Old Kingdom thing, dating from long before Hyksos rule or Egyptian territorial involvement in the Levant. At most times likely to be relevant to the Exodus narrative, the Valley of the Kings was being used for royal burials... AnonMoos (talk) 03:05, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The chief pyramid-building era was around the 26th century BCE. Exodus, if it happened, would have been around the 13th century BCE, 1300 years later. A long time; we tend to misunderstand how long the ancient Egyptian period was. Acroterion(talk)04:00, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know this is probably speculation, but going by what I've read in a few articles - how would the new president sort this out?
- the war stops
- Russia withdraws all troops from the invaded regions of Ukraine
- Ukraine withdraws all troops from the same regions
- these regions become a DMZ, under control of neither party for the next 25 years, patrolled by the United Nations (or perhaps the USA/Britain and China/North Korea jointly)
- Russia promises to leave Ukraine alone for 25 years
- Ukraine promises not to join NATO or the EU for 25 years
- A peace treaty will be signed
- The can will be kicked down the road for 25 years, at which point more discussions or wars will commence
So maybe the Americans will say "this is the best deal you're going to get, in the future we're going to be spending our money on our own people and no-one else - if you don't take it, we'll let the Russians roll right over you and good luck to you".
Never heard of any such plan. 25 years? This is completely made up. Can't say I'm surprised since this is the same guy who asked the previous "question". My understanding is that Wikipedia and the Reference Desk are not a forum for debate. This is not Facebook. But this guy seems to think otherwise. Anyway, there's no way that the territories Russia has annexed will ever go back to the Ukraine. The only question which remains is what guarantees can be given to Ukraine that Russia will never try something like this ever again and eat it up piecemeal. The best answer (from Ukraine's point of view) would have been that it join NATO but of course Russia won't have it. If not that, then what? This's exactly where the "art of the deal" comes in. Speculating in advance on Wikipedia is pointless. Better to do that on Facebook. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 03:49, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Expect that a concept of a peace plan will be ready soon after day one. Until then we can only speculate whose concept. Will it be Musk's, Trump's, Vance's, Rubio's, Hegseth's, Kellogg's? The latter's plan is believed to involve Ukraine ceding the Donbas and Luhansk regions, as well as Crimea, to Russia,[14] after which the negotiators can proclaim: "Mission accomplished. Peace for our time." --Lambiam10:17, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There may also be peace plans required for a possible US incursion in Canada and Greenland / Denmark. All three are members of the NATO, so this may be tricky. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 18:42, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is not a claim, but a question, "What is being said now about the prospects and form of a Trump-brokered peace treaty?" Should the OP provide a source for this question? If the question is hard to answer, it is not by lack of sources (I gave one above), but because all kinds of folks are saying all kinds of things about it. --Lambiam19:27, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In California you can get a drivers' license (DL) from the DMV, which both serves as an ID card and attests that you are authorized to drive a car. Alternatively, from the same DMV, you can get a state ID card, which is the same as a DL except it doesn't let you drive. The card looks similar and the process for getting it (wait in line, fill in forms, get picture taken) is similar, though of course there is no driving test.
If you need a replacement drivers' license, you can request it online or through one of the DMV's self-service kiosks installed in various locations. That's reasonably convenient.
If you need a replacement ID card, you have to request it in person at a DMV office, involving travel, waiting in line, dealing with crowds, etc. DMV appointment shortens the wait but doesn't get rid of it. Plus the earliest available appointments are several weeks out.
My mom is elderly, doesn't drive, doesn't handle travel or waiting in line well, and needs a replacement ID card. I'm wondering why this discrepancy exists in the replacement process. Not looking for legal advice etc. but am just wondering if I'm overlooking something sane, rather than reflexive system justification. Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:DA2D (talk) 19:39, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
European (Brit) here, so responding with logic rather than knowledge, but . . . . If a replacement ID could be requested remotely and sent, it would probably be easier for some nefarious person to do so and obtain a fake ID; at least if attendance is required, the officials can tell that the 25-y-o illegal immigrant (say) they're seeing in front of them doesn't match the photo they already have of the elderly lady whose 'replacement' ID is being requested.
Drivers' licences have the additional safeguard that drivers are occasionally (often?) stopped by traffic police and asked to produce them, at which point discrepancies may be evident. {The poster formerly known as 87.812.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 00:30, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I guess there is some sense to that, though I haven't been stopped by police in quite a few years. I reached the DMV by phone and they say they won't issue an actual duplicate ID card: rather, they want to take a new picture of my mom and use that on the new card. Of course that's fine given that we have to go there anyway, but it's another way the DL procedure is different. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:DA2D (talk) 00:46, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See Identity documents in the United States. These cards can be used for such purposes as boarding a plane, purchasing alcohol or cigarettes where proof of age is required, cashing a check, etc. Most folks use their driver's license for these purposes, but for the minority that does not drive, some form of official id is required from time to time, hence the delivery of such cards by states. --Xuxl (talk) 13:34, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not OP and not a shut-in, but ID is necessary for registration for some online services (including ID requirements for access to some state and federal websites that administer things like taxes and certain benefits). I've had to provide photos/scans of photo ID digitally for a couple other purposes, too, though I can't remember off the top of my head what those were. I think one might have been to verify an I-9 form for employment. And the ID number from my driver's license for others. At least a couple instances have been with private entities rather than governments. The security implications always make me wary. -- Avocado (talk) 23:05, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Virtually all of the private information of US citizens has been repeatedly compromised in the last decade. Not a single company or government entity has faced consequences, and no US legislation is in the works to protect our private information in the future. For only one small example, the personal info of 73 million AT&T account holders was released on the dark web this year.[16] In the US, if you're a private company, you can do just about anything and get away with it. If you're a private citizen, there's an entirely separate set of laws for you. Viriditas (talk) 21:25, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unless someone affiliated with the CA DMV drops by here, I'm afraid none of us are going to be able to tell you why something is the way it is with them. Essentially it's requesting people to guess or predict at why X might be the case. Have you tried contacting them and asking them for an answer? You and/or her could also contact her CA state elected representatives and let them know your feelings on the matter. Sometimes representatives' offices will assist a constitutent with issues they're having involving government services ("constitutent services"). --Slowking Man (talk) 01:43, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If your mom is old and her medical condition affects her ability to perform daily activities (she couldn't handle the travel or waiting in line well), she can ask her medical doctor to complete a DS 3234 (Medical Certification) form to verify her status. Then you can help her to fill out a DS 3235 application form on the DMV website and submit the required documents accordingly. Stanleykswong (talk) 09:14, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm wondering why this discrepancy exists in the replacement process.
We can't have nice things because those in power regulate the allocation of goods. To distinguish between the deserving and undeserving they need people to have IDs. --Lambiam10:05, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a term (in pretty much any language) for a separate building next to a church, containing candle cabinets where people place votive candles? I've seen this mostly in Romania (and in at least one church in Catalonia), but suspect it is more widespread. (I've also seen just candle cabinets with no separate building, but I'm guessing that there is no term for that.) - Jmabel | Talk01:40, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Card Zero: the things you are posting are, precisely, candle cabinets. What I'm talking about are structures like a proper building, but with just a portal, no doors as such. Here's a rare non-Romanian example I photographed in 2001: File:Montserrat - prayer candles.jpg. Remarkably, I don't see any Romanian examples that really show the structure, they are all too close-in detailed. I'll try to see if I can find an example I may have shot but not yet uploaded. - Jmabel | Talk04:44, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why is the map of India always appears truncated in all of Wikipedia pages, when there is no official annexing of Indian territories in Kashmir, by Pakistan and China nor its confirmation from Indian govt ? With Pakistan and China just claiming the territory, why the world map shows it as annexed by them, separating from India ? TravelLover05 (talk) 15:05, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Each time, the word šꜣ is written over the Seth-animal.[19]
Sometimes the animal is designated as sha (šꜣ) , but we are not certain at all whether this designation was its name.[20]
When referring to the ancient Egyptian terminology, the so-called sha-animal, as depicted and mentioned in the Middle Kingdom tombs of Beni Hasan, together with other fantastic creatures of the desert and including the griffin, closely resembles the Seth animal.[21]
He claims that the domestic pig is called “sha,” the name of the Set-animal.[23]
Wiktionary gives šꜣ as meaning "wild pig", not mentioning use in connection with depictions of the Seth-animal. The hieroglyphs shown for šꜣ do not resemble those in the article Set animal, which instead are listed as ideograms in (or for) stẖ, the proper noun Seth. --Lambiam08:27, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! The reason I brought it up was because the hieroglyph for the set animal didn't have the sound value to match in jsesh.
Budge's original drawing and second version of PharaohCrab's drawing; the original looked very different, and this one is clearly based on Budge's as traced by me in 2009, but without attribution.
The article—originally "Sha (animal)" was one of the first I wrote, or attempted to write, and was based on and built on the identification by E. A. Wallis Budge, in The Gods of the Egyptians, which uses the hieroglyph
for the word "sha", and includes the illustration that I traced from a scan and uploaded to Commons (and which was included in the article from the time of its creation in 2009 until December 21, 2024 when User:PharaohCrab replaced it with his original version of the one shown above; see its history for what it looked like until yesterday). I have had very little to do with the article since User:Sonjaaa made substantial changes and moved it to "Seth animal" in 2010; although it's stayed on my watchlist, I long since stopped trying to interfere with it, as it seemed to me that other editors were determined to change it to the way they thought it should be, and I wasn't sophisticated enough to intervene or advocate effectively for my opinions. In fact the only edit by me I can see after that was fixing a typo.
As for the word sha, that is what Budge called it, based on the hieroglyph associated with it; I was writing about this specific creature, which according to Budge and some of the other sources quoted above has some degree of independence from Set, as it sometimes appears without him and is used as the determinative of one or two other deities, whose totemic animal it might also have been. One of the other scholars quoted above questions whether the word sha is the name of the animal, but still associates the word with the animal: Herman Te Velde's article, "Egyptian Hieroglyphs as Signs Symbols and Gods", quoted above, uses slightly modified versions of Budge's illustrations; his book Seth, God of Confusion is also quoted above, both with the transliteration šꜣ, which in "Egyptian Hieroglyphs" he also renders sha. Percy Newberry is the source cited by the Henry Thompson quotation above, claiming that sha referred to a domestic pig as well as the Set animal, and a different god distinct from Set, though sharing the same attributes (claims of which Thompson seems skeptical). Herman Te Velde also cites Newberry, though he offers a different explanation for the meaning of "sha" as "destiny". All Things Ancient Egypt, also quoted above, calls the animal "the so-called sha-animal", while Classification from Antiquity to Modern Times just uses šꜣ and "Seth-animal".
I'm not certain what the question here is; that the hieroglyph transliterated sha is somehow associated with the creature seems to have a clear scholarly consensus; most of the scholars use it as the name of the creature; Herman Te Velde is the only one who suggests that it might not be its name, though he doesn't conclude whether it is or isn't; and one general source says in passing "so-called sha-animal", which accepts that this is what it's typically referred to in scholarship, without endorsing it. Although Newberry made the connection with pigs, none of the sources seems to write the name with pig hieroglyphs as depicted above. Could you be clearer about what it is that's being discussed here? P Aculeius (talk) 16:47, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
things that start with sh
I asked because I couldn't find it in Gardiner (jsesh, no match when searching by sound value) or Budge (dictionary vol II.)
1. What is the ultimate source of this famous 1803 quote by John Jervis (1735 – 1823), 1st Earl of St Vincent, First Lord of the Admiralty at the time. I googled Books and no source is ever given except possibly another collection of quotations. The closest I got was: "At a parley in London while First Lord of the Admiralty 1803". That's just not good enough. Surely there must be someone who put this anecdote in writing for the first time.
2. Wouldn't you say this use of the simple present in English is not longer current in contemporary English, and that the modern equivalent would use present continuous forms "I'm not saying... I'm only saying..." (unless Lord Jervis meant to say he was in the habit of saying this; incidentally I do realize this should go to the Language Desk but I hope it's ok just this once)
The First Lord of the Admiralty wouldn't be the one stopping them if the French came by tunnel (proposed in 1802) or air (the French did have hot air balloons). Any decent military officer would understand that an invasion by tunnel or balloon would have no chance of success, but this fear caused some English opposition against the Channel Tunnel for the next 150 years. Just hinting at the possibility of invasion by tunnel amongst military officers would be considered a joke.
Hmm, Andidora does not in fact say it was in a letter to the Board of Admiralty, nor does he explicitly say 1801. And his source, The Age of Nelson by G J Marcus has it as Jervis telling the House of Lords sometime during the scare of '03-'05. Marcus doesn't give a source. DuncanHill (talk) 13:52, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. Thanks. Some modern accounts (not Southey apparently) claim Lord St Vincent was speaking in the House of Lords. If that was the case, wouldn't it be found in the parliamentary record? How far back does the parliamentary record go for the House of Commons and/or the House of Lords. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 17:18, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You don't say? [An idiom actually meaning "You say that, do you?", although I dare say most of you know that.] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 02:47, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Then I will answer you more directly. You are wrong: while the usage you quote is less common than it once was, it is still current, according to my experience as a native BrE speaker for over 65 years. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 13:32, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Has anyone seen an estimate of what percentage of Ancient Greek literature (broadly understood: literature proper, poetry, mathematics, philosophy, history, science, etc.) was preserved. It doesn't matter how you define "Ancient Greek literature", or if you mean the works available in 100 BC or 1 AD or 100 AD or 200 AD... Works were lost even in antiquity. I'm just trying to get a rough idea and was wondering if anyone ever tried to work out an estimate. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 17:58, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have an answer handy for you at the moment, but I can tell you that people have tried to work out an estimate for this, at least from the perspective of "how many manuscripts containing such literature managed to survive past the early Middle Ages". We've worked this one out, with many caveats, by comparing library catalogues from very early monasteries to known survivals and estimating the loss rate. -- asilvering (talk) 20:38, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These are works known to have existed, because they were mentioned and sometimes even quoted in works that have survived. These known lost works are probably only a small fraction of all that have been lost. --Lambiam23:35, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Few things which might be helpful:
So profuse was Galen's output that the surviving texts represent nearly half of all the extant literature from ancient Greece.[1]
The following quantities are known: the number of preserved works, the (unknown) number of lost works, and the number of lost works of which we know, through mentions in preserved works. In a (very) naive model, let stand for the probability that a given work (lost or preserved) is mentioned in some other preserved work (so ). The expected number of mentions of preserved works in other preserved works is then If we have the numerical value of the latter quantity (which is theoretically obtainable by scanning all preserved works), we can obtain an estimate for and compute
Even without seeing any professional estimate of the kind I'm asking about here, my ballpark figure was that it had to be less than 1 percent, simply from noting how little of even the most celebrated and important authors has been preserved (e.g. about 5 percent for Sophocles) and how there are hundreds of authors and hundreds of works for which we only have the titles and maybe a few quotes, not to mention all those works of which we have not an inkling, the number of which it is, for this very reason, extremely hard to estimate.
But as a corollary to my first question I have another three:
1. Has any modern historian tackled this paradox, namely the enormous influence that the culture of the Ancient World has had on the West while at the same time how little we actually know about that culture, and as a consequence the problem that we seem to believe that we know much more than we actually do? in other words that our image of it that has had this influence on Western culture might be to some extent a modern creation and might be very different of what it actually was?
2. I understand that in this regard there can be the opposite opinion (or we can call it a hypothesis, or an article of faith) which is the one that is commonly held (at least implicitly): that despite all that was lost the main features of our knowledge of the culture of the Ancient World are secure and that no lost work is likely to have modified the fundamentals? Like I said this seems to be the position that is commonly implicitly held, but I'm interested to hear if any historian has discussed this question and defended this position explicitly in a principled way?
3. Finally to what extent is the position mentioned in point 2 simply a result of ignorance (people not being aware of how much was lost)? How widespread is (in the West) the knowledge of how much was lost? How has that awareness developed in the West, both at the level of the experts and that of the culture in general, since say the 15th century? Have you encountered any discussions of these points?
The issues touched upon are major topics in historiography as well as the philosophy of history, not only for the Ancient (Classical) World but for all historical study. Traditionally, historians have concentrated on the culture of the high and mighty. The imprint on the historical record by hoi polloi is much more difficult to detect, except in the rare instances where they rose up, so what we think of as "the" culture of any society is that of a happy few. Note also that "the culture of the Ancient World" covers a period of more than ten centuries, in which kingdoms and empires rose and fell, states and colonies were founded and conquered, in an endless successions of wars and intrigues. On almost any philosophical issue imaginable, including natural philosophy, ancient philosophers have held contrary views. It is not clear how to define "the" culture of the Ancient World, and neither is it clear how to define the degree to which this culture has influenced modern Western society. It may be argued that the influence of say Plato or Sophocles has largely remained confined to an upper crust. I think historians studying this are well aware of the limitations of their source material, including the fact that history is written by the victors. --Lambiam13:42, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
178.51.7.23 -- Think of it this way: What did it mean to "publish" something in the ancient world? You had at least one written manuscript of your work -- rarely more than a handful of such manuscripts. You could show what you had written to your friends, have it delivered to influential people, bequeath it to your heirs, or donate it to an archive or research collection (almost none of which were meaningfully public libraries in the modern sense of that phrase). However you chose to do it, once you were gone, the perpetuation of your work depended on other people having enough interest in it to do the laborious work of copying the manuscript, or being willing to pay to have a copy made. Works of literature which did not interest other people enough to copy manuscripts of it were almost always eventually lost, which ensured that a lot of tedious and worthless stuff was filtered out. Of course, pagan literary connoisseurs, Christian monks, Syriac and Arabic translators seeking Greek knowledge, and Renaissance Humanists all had different ideas of what was worth preserving, but between them, they ensured that a lot of interesting or engaging or informative works ended up surviving from ancient times. I'm sure that a number of worthy books still slipped through the gaps, but some losses were very natural and to be expected; for example, some linguists really wish that Claudius's book on the Etruscan language had survived, but it's not surprising that it didn't, since it would not have generally interested ancient, medieval, or renaissance literate people in the same way it would interest modern scholars struggling with Etruscan inscriptions.
By the way, college bookstores on or near campuses of universities which had a Classics program sometimes used to have a small section devoted to the small green-backed (Greek) and red-backed (Latin) volumes of the Loeb Classical Library, and you could get an idea of what survived from ancient times (and isn't very obscure or fragmentary) by perusing the shelves... AnonMoos (talk) 01:03, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed - at the other end of the scale, the Description of Greece by Pausanias seems to have survived into the Middle Ages in a single MS (now of course lost), and there are no ancient references to either it or him known. Since the Renaissance it has been continuously in print. Johnbod (talk) 03:00, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Talking about the fictional assassin from the books and films. I once read somewhere that the real Carlos The Jackal didn't like being compared to the fictional character, because he said he was a professional Marxist revolutionary, not merely a hitman for hire to the highest bidder (not in the article about him at the moment, so maybe not true). 146.90.140.99 (talk) 02:47, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, the character wasn't based on Carlos. The films are based on the 1971 historical fiction novel The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth, which begins with a fairly accurate account of the actual 1962 assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle by the French Air Force lieutenant colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry, which failed. Subsequently in the fictional plot the terrorists hire an unnamed English professional hitman whom they give the codename 'The Jackal'.
Carlos the Jackal was a Venezuelan terrorist named Ilich Ramírez Sánchez operating in the 1970s and '80s. He was given the cover name 'Carlos' when in 1971 he joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. When authorities found some of his weapons stashed in a friend's house, a copy of Forsyth's novel was noticed on his friend's bookshelf, and a Guardian journalist then invented the nickname, as journalists are wont to do. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 03:15, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This month some news broke about identification of the Battle of the Granicus site, stating in particular: "Professor Reyhan Korpe, a historian from Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (ÇOMÜ) and Scientific Advisor to the “Alexander the Great Cultural Route” project, led the team that uncovered the battlefield". However, per Battle of the Granicus#Location it seems that the exact site has been known since at least Hammond's 1980 article. Am I reading the news correctly that what Korpe's team actually did was mapping Alexander’s journey to the Granicus rather than identifying the battle site per se? Per news, "Starting from Özbek village, Alexander’s army moved through Umurbey and Lapseki before descending into the Biga Plain". Brandmeistertalk23:38, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If Körpe and his team wrote a paper about their discovery, I haven't found it, so I can only go by news articles reporting on their findings. Apparently, Körpe gave a presentation at the Çanakkale Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism for an audience of local mayors and district governors,[25] and I think the news reports reflect what he said there. Obviously, the presentation was in Turkish. Turkish news sources, based on an item provided by DHA, quote him as saying, "Bölgede yaptığımız araştırmalarda antik kaynakları da çok dikkatli okuyarak, yorumlayarak savaşın aşağı yukarı tam olarak nerede olduğunu, hangi köyler arasında olduğunu, ovanın tam olarak neresinde olduğunu bulduk." [My underlining] Google Translate turns this into, "During our research in the region, by reading and interpreting ancient sources very carefully, we found out more or less exactly where the war took place, which villages it took place between, and where exactly on the plain it took place." I cannot reconcile "more or less" with "exactly".
The news reports do not reveal the location identified by Körpe, who is certainly aware of Hammond's theory, since he cited the latter's 1980 article in earlier publications. One possibility is that the claim will turn out to have been able to confirm Hammond's theory definitively. Another possibility is that the location they identified is not "more or less exactly" the same as that of Hammond's theory. --Lambiam02:08, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you're including underworld figures, this happens not infrequently. As an Aussie, a case that springs to mind was Andrew Veniamin murdering Victor Pierce. Both underworld serial murderers. I'm sure there are many similar cases in organised crime. Eliyohub (talk) 08:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Dexter character from the multiple Dexter series is based on Pedro Rodrigues Filho, who killed criminals, including murderers. It is necessary to decide how many merders each of those murders did in order to decide if you would want to classify them as serial killers or just general murderers. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 19:04, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
about 20 years ago, I saw a documentary where it was said that the majority of serial killers kill for sexual gratification, or for some sort of revenge against their upbringing, or because in their head that God (or someone else) told them to kill. But the FBI agent on the documentary said something about how their worst nightmare was an extremely intelligent, methodical killer who was doing what he did to make some sort of grand statement about society/political statement. That this sort of killer was one step ahead of law enforcement and knew all of their methods. Like a Hannibal Lecter type individual. He said that he could count on the fingers of one hand the sort of person who he was talking about, but that these killers were the most difficult of all to catch and by far the most dangerous. Can you tell me any examples of these killers? 146.90.140.99 (talk) 05:49, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
More than a few killed for money; Michael Swango apparently just for joy. The case of Leopold and Loeb comes to mind, who hoped to demonstrate superior intellect; if they had not bungled their first killing despite spending seven months planning everything, more would surely have followed. --Lambiam15:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
British Movietone News covered the burning down of the Crystal Palace in this somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but apparently factual, film. At 00:15 it refers to 'the biggest London blaze since 1892'. What happened in 1892 that could be considered comparable to the Palace's demise, or at least sufficiently well-known to be referred to without further explanation?
I too wonder whether the Movietone newsreader was the victim of a typo. In December 1897Cripplegate suffered "the greatest fire...that has occurred in the City since the Great Fire of 1666". [27]. --Antiquary (talk) 11:46, 2 January 2025 (UTC) That's also mentioned, I now see, in Verbarson's London Fire Journal link. --Antiquary (talk) 12:24, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Verbarson:Fires in London and the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in 1892 is available on JSTOR as part of the Wikipedia Library. It doesn't give details of any individual fires. DuncanHill (talk) 16:51, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The whole OCR transcript of that blurred newspaper column is hilarious. "The fames have obtained a firm bold", indeed! {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 12:07, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Setting aside the unsung history of the passionate ducks of London, what I see in that clipping is:
1892 - Australia is still a colony (18+ years to go)
which is linked to the UK by (i) long-distance shipping, and (ii) telegraph cables
because of (i), the London docks are economically important
because of (ii), they get daily updates from London
Therefore, the state of the London docks (and the possible fate of the Australian ships there) is of greater importance to Australian merchants than it is to most Londoners. So headlines in Portland may not reflect the lesser priority of that news in the UK? -- Verbarson talkedits17:15, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I was highly impressed by the rapidity of the Victorian Victorian telegraph system there. But my money's on Antiquary's theory, above - I think the newsreel announcer's script had 1892 as a typo for 1897. Card Zero (talk)18:31, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
historical in the sense that the story of what happened, happened to a different city but was transferred to Jericho?Rich (talk) 05:37, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To believe that the events in the story are historical, whether for Jericho or another city, amounts to believing in a miracle. Barring miracles, no amount of horn-blowing and shouting can bring defensive walls down.
Jericho was destroyed in the 16th century BCE. The first version of the Book of Joshua was written in the late 7th century BCE, so there are 9 centuries between the destruction and the recording of the story. An orally transmitted account, passed on through some thirty generations, might have undergone considerable changes, turning a conquest with conventional war practices, possibly with sound effects meant to install fear in the besieged, into a miraculous event. --Lambiam10:50, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
[Edit Conflicts] The sack was described in the Book of Joshua, which however was likely compiled around 640–540 BCE, some six or seven centuries after the supposed Hebrew conquest of Canaan. Some scholars now discount the whole Exodus and Conquest narrative as political lobbying written by Jewish exiles in Babylonia (which the Persians later took over) hoping to be given control over the former territory of Israel as well as being restored to their native Judah.
The narrative logically explains why a people once 'Egyptian slaves' (like all subjects of the Pharoah) were later free in Canaan, but by then it was likely forgotten that Egypt once controlled almost the entirety of Canaan, from which it withdrew in the Late Bronze Age Collapse. The Hebrew peoples of the (always separate) states of Israel and Judah emerged from Canaanite culture in situ, though minor folk movements (for example, of the Tribe of Levi, who often had Egyptian names) may have had a role. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 10:52, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I heard the sack of Jericho in book of Joshua was an explanatory myth, not some kind of Exile claim to ownership, which is more logical anyway. If there were a more recent city that was sacked, it would be less than the estimate of 30 geneations of remembrance. I did forget to stress that when I asked if the story could be almost historical that I wasn't suggesting that Jericho's walls were supernaturally destroyed by trumpets. After all, the actual method of conquest in the story could be the connivance of the traitor Rahab.Rich (talk) 02:24, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, certainly the myth likely existed before it was consolidated with others into the written documents, just as stories about the mythical Danel may have been adapted into the fictional Daniel of the supposedly contemporary Book of Daniel describing his exploits in the 6th century BCE court of Nebuchadnezzar II, although scholars generally agree that this was actually written in the period 167–163 BCE. {The poster formerly knwn as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 07:15, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Israelites partly emerged in situ (though there was also a definite nomad/pastoralist component), especially along the West Bank hill-chain (running in an approximate north-south direction) where the Four-room house took hold among the rural inhabitants there. They were not originally city-dwellers, and their culture could not have been consolidated until the power of the Canaanite cities in that area had declined, and it's not too hard to believe that they sometimes moved against what cities remained, so that part of the conquest narrative is not necessarily a pure myth. Jericho was in the valley (not along the hill-chain), so was not part of the core settled rural agricultural four-room house area, but was inhabited more by pastoralists/animal-herders who became affiliated... AnonMoos (talk) 21:19, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We've been asked to increase the accessibility of all documents we produce, esp. syllabi. I use WordPerfect, where I don't seem to be able to have a URL with a descriptive text in the way Word allows. 508 is the operative term. I'm trying this out: "Princeton University has some handy tips on what is called “active reading, on this webpage: https://mcgraw.princeton.edu/active-reading-strategies." In other words, descriptive text followed by a bare URL. Is that good for screen readers? Graham87, how does this look/sound to you? Thanks for your help, Drmies (talk) 18:03, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Drmies: I wouldn't make a general rule about that as it's context-dependent ... depending on how many URL's are in a document, reading them might get annoying. In general I'd prefer to read a link with descriptive text rather than a raw URL, because the latter aren't always very human-readable ... but I don't think this is really an accessibility issue; just do what would make sense for a sighted reader here. Graham87 (talk) 00:34, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Graham87, thanks. There's only one or two in a ten-page document. According to our bosses, this is an accessibility issue--but it seems to me as if someone sounded an alarm and now everyone who doesn't actually know much about the issue is telling us to comply with a set of directives which they haven't given us. Instead, we are directed to some self-help course that involves only Word. It's fun. Drmies (talk) 15:34, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can create a hyperlink to a file using WordPerfect. First, you select text or a graphic you want to create a hyperlink. Then you click “Tools”, select “Hyperlink” and then type a path or document you want to link to. Stanleykswong (talk) 10:18, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do web browsers display WordPerfect documents? I don't think I have a WordPerfect viewing app installed on my platform (macOS). Does anyone have a URL of a WordPerfect document handy? --Lambiam14:56, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have the feeling this answers my question. Would I have to find and install an app that translates .wpd documents to .pdf or .doc documents? Would I then be able to tell my browser to use this app? The question is informative, not meant to bash a product that I have zero familiarity with. --Lambiam17:05, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've opened early WordPerfect (WP 5.1) documents using both Word and Firefox without any need for a third party translator. The only trick was changing the file extension to .WPD so that my computer could create the file association more easily. In the old days, file extensions were not so rigorously restrictive and many files ended up with extensions like .01 or .v4 or whatever. Matt Deres (talk) 17:39, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, finally an answer. When I click on a .wpd link, the file is downloaded. I can then open and view it with LibreOffice. (I can also open it with OpenOffice, but then I get to see garbage like ╖#<m\r╛∞¼_4YÖ¤ⁿVíüd╤?Y.) --Lambiam14:44, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When I google [“wpd online viewer”], I get two hits, one to this page and one to a site where you can upload a WPD document in order to be able to view it online. What happens when you view an html page with something like <a href="file:///my-document.wpd">Looky here!</a> embedded? --Lambiam13:49, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One more thing that just came up--we got rapped on the fingers though the mandatory "training" didn't touch on it. We've been told that hyphens are bad. The internet tells me that screenreaders have trouble with hyphenated words, but does this apply also to date ranges? Graham87, does yours get this right, "Spring Break: 17-21 March"? For now I'm going with "Spring Break, 17 to 21 March", but it just doesn't look good to my traditional eyes. And on top of that I have to use sans serif fonts... Drmies (talk) 17:44, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To give another example, I have to redo this: "Final grades are computed along the following scale: A: 90-100; B+: 87-89; B: 80-86; C+: 77-79; C: 70-76; D+: 67-69; D: 60-66; F: Below 60." Drmies (talk) 17:49, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Drmies: Under its default setting my screen reader does read out the hyphens, but I have my punctuation set lower than normal because I don't like hearing too much information so it doesn't for me. The other major Windows screen reader, NVDA, also reads them out by default. Graham87 (talk) 01:05, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On and off I've been looking for good sources for the concepts of general union and trade union federation so as to improve the articles, but every time I try I only get one or two somewhat helpful results. Many of the results are not of material about the concepts of general union or trade union federations, but often about a specific instance of them, and as a result hard to gleen a lot from about the broader concept. Typcially this is because of issues such as many general unions being named as such (for example Transport & General Workers' Union). I'm aware of the search trick that'd be something like "general union" -Transport & General Workers' Union but I've found it largely cumbersome and ineffective, often seeming to filter out any potential material all together
Thought I'd ask because I'd like to improve those articles, and this is an issue I'm sure would come up again for me otherwise on other articles Bejakyo (talk) 13:22, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I asked about this at the article talk page and WikiProject Palestine, no response. Maybe it's not a question Wikipedia can answer, but I'm curious and it would improve the article. Prezbo (talk) 09:13, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thawabit is short for alThawabit alWataniat alFilastinia, the "Palestinian National Constants". Thawabit is the plural of thabit, "something permanent or invariable; constant". --Lambiam13:36, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm saying is that I'm not sure the article is correct. The sourcing is thin, reference are paywalled, offline, or dead, and Google isn't helpful. Other scholarly and activist sources give different versions of the Thawabet, e.g.This one adds the release of Palestinian prisoners, this one adds that Palestine is indivisible. The article says that these principles were formulated by the PLO in 1977 but doesn't link to a primary source (like the Bill of Rights). I don't know if you're a subject matter expert here, I'm not--actually trying to figure this out. Prezbo (talk) 13:39, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The list in the book I linked to above is not the same as that in our article. The book does not include a "right to resistance", but demands the release by Israel of all Palestinian prisoners. It would be good to have a sourced, authoritative version, in particular the actual 1977 formulation by the PLO. Of course, nothing is so changeable as political principles, so one should expect non-trivial amendments made in the course of time. --Lambiam14:21, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The text does not explicitly say, "among others", but the use of بها بما في ذلك suggests that this list of four principles is not exhaustive. --Lambiam00:27, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Has anyone produced an index of joke types and schemata (schemes?) along the lines of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index for folk tales? More generally what kind of studies of the structure of jokes and humor are available? Has anyone come up with an A.I. that can generate new jokes? 178.51.8.23 (talk) 18:15, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have a copy of The Grocer's Window Book. London: The Nest Magazine. 1922., "arranged by The Editor of The Nest". The address of The Nest Magazine is given as 15 Arthur Street, London, EC4. It contains suggestions for arranging window displays in an attractive manner to attract customers into independent grocer's shops. I would be interested to know more about The Nest. I suspect it may have something to do with Nestles Milk, as 1) the back cover is a full-page advertisement for Nestles and Ideal Milk, and there are several other adverts for Nestles products in the book, and 2) one of the suggested window displays involves spelling out "IDEAL" with tins of Ideal Milk. Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 02:13, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Historical U.S. population data by age (year 1968)
I currently have a draft of a proposed Help:IPA page for the Kannada language, and I was referred here by @Hoary to seek advice on ways I can improve it for potential inclusion in the Help: category. Any advice or criticisms would be much appreciated.
Hello, @Krzapex. I have little knowledge of Dravidian languages, but I do have some comments about your draft.
"suit" is not a good choice for English approximation, because it has variant pronunciations as /sut/ and /sjut/.
I doubt that most English speakers could even tell you what the Korean currency is, and would be unsure how to pronounce it. According to Wiktionary, the currency is pronounced [wʌ̹n] in Korean, and /wɑn/ in AmE, /wɒn/ in BrE - none of them quite the /(w)o/ you want. I think the BrE "want" is probably closest, but I don't know how to convey that to an AmE speaker.
I really don't think that "Irish 'boat'" (whatever that is supposed to mean) is a good match for /aʊ/
'Hungary' has the sequence /ŋg/ in all varieties of English I've ever heard, and certainly in RP/ "Hangar" does not have the /g/ in most varieties of English (except in the Midlands and North West of England).
your use of "th" to key the dentals will not work for most English speakers outside India (and maybe Ireland). To most Anglophone ears, the salient feature of /θ/ and /ð/ is their fricative nature, not their dental articluation, and if you write "th" you will get θ or ð.
Of course, the whole problem with "English approximation" is that you are trying to capture distinctions that are completely imperceptible to most Anglophones. I see that Help:IPA/Hindi and Urdu addresses this problem in notes, and I think this is the better approach. ColinFine (talk) 14:36, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I recently removed this wording from an article because it looked on the face of it like a grammatical error, but reading closer, I see that it is likely correct but still confusing:
"He thus became a permanent ambassador at the at the time itinerant royal court."
I might have minimally amended it as "He thus became a permanent ambassador at the then-itinerant royal court," but Wrongfilter's proposal is probably better. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 21:47, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The wordy option (not always the best idea) is to replace at the time with contemporarily. I wonder if there's an equivalent word without the Latin stuffiness. I considered meanwhile, but that has slightly the wrong connotations, as if being an ambassador and having a royal court were two events happening on one particular afternoon.
Edit: I mean yes, that word is "then". But here we have a situation where if the word chosen is too fancy, the reader isn't sure what it means, but if the word is too unfancy, the reader can't parse the grammar. Hence the use of a hyphen, I guess. Card Zero (talk)11:50, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is a rather common rule/guideline/advice to use hyphens in compound modifiers before nouns,[28][29][30] but when the first part of a compound modifier is an adverb, there is some divergence in the three guidelines linked to (yes but not for adverbs ending on -ly followed by a participle; mostly no; if the compound modifier can be misread). They all agree on happily married couple (no; mostly no; no) and mostly on fast-moving merchandise) (yes; mostly no; yes). They are incomplete, since none give an unequivocally-negative advice for unequivocally-negative advice, which IMO is very-bad use of a hyphen (and so is very-bad use). --Lambiam07:04, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could you just drop the "at the time" section, making it "He thus became a permanent ambassador at the itinerant royal court."? I presume from the wording that the royal court was itinerant but later became not so, but that doesn't seem particularly significant to the statement about this guy becoming an ambassador. Iapetus (talk) 10:56, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any words in German where double consonant is written after ⟨ei⟩, ⟨au⟩,⟨eu⟩ and ⟨ie⟩?
Is there any natural language which uses letter Ŭ in its writing system? It is used in Esperanto, a conlang, in Belarusian Latin alphabet, in McCune-Reichschauer of Korean, and some modern transcriptions of Latin, but none of these uses it in their normal writing system.
Why does Lithuanian not use ogonek under O, unlike all other its vowels?
Why do so few languages use letter Ÿ, unlike other umlauted basic Latin letters? Are there any languages where it occurs in beginning of word?
Are there any languages where letter Ž can occur doubled?
Are there any languages where letter Ð (eth) can start a word?
Can it be said that Spanish has a /v/ sound, at least in some dialects?
Are there any languages where letter Ň can occur doubled?
Are there any languages where form of count noun depends on final digits of a number (like it does in many Slavic languages) and numbers 11-19 are formed exactly same way as numbers 21-99? Hungarian forms numbers like that, but it uses singular after all numbers.
Why English does not have equivalent of German and Dutch common derivational prefix ge-?
The reason that "ge-" got dropped in English was because the "g" become a "y" (IPA [j]) by sound changes, and then the "y" tended to disappear, so all that was left was a reduced schwa vowel prefix. AnonMoos (talk) 00:05, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One can find plenty of references stating that a diphthong is never followed by a double consonant in German, including the German Wikipedia. The two examples given don't contradict this, since ß isn't a regular double consonant (as it does not shorten the preceding vowel), and the two l in 'vielleicht' belong (as already implied by Wrongfilter) to different syllables. People's and place names may have kept historic, non-regular spellings and therefore don't always follow this rule, e.g. "Beitz" or "Gauck" (tz and ck are considered double consonants since they substitute the non-existent zz and kk). -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 20:18, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ad 4.: Statistics? Only few languages written in the Latin alphabet use umlauts in native words, mostly German and languages with an orthography influenced by German. Similarly, only few use Y in native words. Very few use both. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:07, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Swedish has both umlauts/ diaeresis and Y (and occasionally Ü in German names and a miniscule number of loanwords, including müsli). Swedish still didn't see a need for Ÿ (and I can't even type a capital Ÿ on my Swedish keyboard in a regular way). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:56, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding 10: Middle English still had y- which goes back to ge- "Sumer is icumen in" (here it is spelled i-); it is still used in Modern English in archaic or humorous forms like: yclad, yclept, and other cases (see the Wiktionary entry I linked to). 178.51.7.23 (talk) 18:11, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
2 & 6: The Jarai language marks short vowels with breves (while leaving the long ones unmarked) so it uses ⟨ŭ⟩ (and ⟨ư̆⟩), while the now-extinct Osage language has initial ⟨ð⟩s. The Wiktionary entries on individual letters usually provide lists of languages that use them. --Theurgist (talk) 10:55, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Although it seems that Spanish 'x' and 'j' had both taken on the sound of a velar fricative (jota) at least among the majority of the population already in the course of the 16th c. (is this correct?) the French and the Italians pronounce the title of Cervantes's novel "Don Quixote" with an 'sh' sound (which was the old pronunciation of 'x' until the end of the 15th c.; the letter 'j' was pronounced like French j like the 'ge' in 'garage'; Judaeo-Spanish still uses these pronunciations).
So I've been wondering: Why do the French and the Italian use the archaic pronunciation of 'x'? Is it because this was still the official literate (albeit a minority) pronunciation even in Spain or had that pronunciation already completely disappeared in Spain but was still taught to students of the Spanish language in France and Italy?
In French, the protagonist's name is always spelled "Quichotte", never "Quixote" or "Quijote", and is pronounced as if it were a native French word. The article on the book in the French wikipedia [31] explains that this spelling was adopted to approximate the pronunciation used in Spanish at the time. Xuxl (talk) 14:44, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
178.51.7.23 -- The letter "X" standing for a "sh" sound was still alive enough in the 16th century, that the convention was used for writing Native American languages (see Chicxulub etc)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:05, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In my understanding, only jokingly or as shorthand in environments where the meaning would be understood. You probably wouldn't see it in a news broadcast, but I could imagine it being used casually by, say, service workers who occasionally cater to high-end clientele. GalacticShoe (talk) 16:27, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There was a German TV programme called Die V.I.P.-Schaukel, making a wordplay out of the fact that /vɪp/ sounds like Wipp- (from the verb wippen:to rock, to swing; Schaukel is a swing). It was based on interviews with and documentary bits about famous people. But that does not mean that V.I.P. would normally have been pronounced like that. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 16:34, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that is the case for Swedish, as well. Possibly due to the confusion about whether the letters of English abbreviations should be pronounced the English or the Swedish way. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:44, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I was a kid growing up in the UK I used to watch a cartoon called Top Cat (which was renamed Boss Cat in the UK as there was a cat food available called Top Cat). There's a line in the theme song that goes "he's the boss, he's a vip, he's the championship". Or does it say "he's a pip"? Most lyrics sites have it as "pip", but I favour "vip". Decide for yourself here: [32] --Viennese Waltz10:21, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not according to my memory, @Baseball Bugs. It was transparent even to kids that they'd been forced to change the title, but didn't change anything else. (The dialogue wasn't changed: "TC"). ColinFine (talk) 14:43, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Imported American culture rarely see any changes at all. The term "spaz" might have been changed to "ass" or something, occasionally, as "spaz" is considered more harsh in the UK (and "ass" less so)... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:26, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why in Spanish and Portuguese, /s/ sound can never start a word if it is followed by consonant? For example, why is it especial rather than special I think that in Portuguese, it is because of letter S would be pronounced /ʃ/ before a voiceless consonant, but in beginning of word, /ʃ/ would not end a syllable. But why it is forbidden in Spanish too? --40bus (talk) 08:50, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A couple of explanation options can be found in this thread: [33]. I would mention that you can add sc to your list. An sc- at the start of a Latin word was changed into c- (scientia - ciencia), s- (scio -> se) but also into esc (schola -> escuela, scribo -> escribo). -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:13, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One might also note the elimination of the Latin -e in infinitives in Spanish and Portuguese (Example: Habere -> Haber, Haver) while Italian kept them. To avoid consonant clusters like -rst-, -rsp-, -rsc- between words which would be a challenge to the Romance tongue, (e.g. atender [e]scuela, observar [e]strellas), the intermittent e may have been required and therefore may have shifted to the beginning of such words. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:29, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are Italian dialects where final wovels of low functional load regularly are dropped, though. It's common in Sicilian, I believe. Also, I'm not sure on whether the two phonetic shifts would be related. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:40, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's quite normal in standard Italian to leave the final vowel off of the infinitive auxiliary verbs (or other verbs acting in a quasi-auxiliary role, say in saper vivere). But I don't think that's really what 79.91.113.116 was talking about. Anyway if the main verb starts with s+consonant you can always leave the e on the auxiliary to avoid the cluster, similarly to how a squirrel is uno scoiattolo and not *un scoiattolo.
As a side note, I actually think it's the northern dialects that are more known for leaving off final vowels of ordinary words, particularly Lombardian. I have the notion that Cattivik is Milanese. But I'm not sure of that; I wasn't able to find out for sure with a quick search. --Trovatore (talk) 23:40, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An accent isn't generally considered part of the "culture" in the broader sense. It's not really part of the "English language culture" to refer to a certain German statesman as the "Fyoorer of the Third Rike"... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:26, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is kinda proper English, so when I think about it, a better equivalent might be an English speaker talking in German about "Der Fyoorer des dritten Rikeys" or so... (I need to brush up on my German cases...) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 02:08, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The reason why they do not occur in these languages is that the native speakers of these languages cannot pronounce onsets like /sk/. The reason why they cannot pronounce these onsets is that they do not occur in their native languages, so that they have not been exposed to them in the process of speech acquisition. --Lambiam11:49, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's quite common cross-linguistically to insert a prothetic vowel before some initial clusters. Old French did it (though the /s/ has since often been lost): "étoile"; "escalier"; "épée". Turkish does it: "istasyon". Other languages simplify the cluster: English "knife" /n-/; "pterodactyl" /t-/; Finnish "Ranska" ('France') ColinFine (talk) 14:58, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In a novel I'm reading there are characters who are sometimes referred to as "the Borthwick woman" and "the Pomfrey woman". Nothing exceptional there. But then I got to wondering: why do we never see some male literary character called, say, "the Randolph man" or "the McDonald man"? We do sometimes see "the <surname> person", but never "the <surname> man". Yet, "the <surname> woman" seems fair game.
We also hear these things in extra-literary contexts.
Traditinal gender roles, I believe. Men inherit their father's surname, while women change theirs by marrying into a new family, on some level being treated as possessions, I guess. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:35, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A possible reason is that, particularly in former eras, men generally had a particular occupation or role by which they could be referenced, while women often did not, being 'merely' a member of first their parental and later their spousal families. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 13:26, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Another aspect is that these are usually intended as, and understood as, pejorative or disrespectful ways to refer to someone. There's no need to spell it out as, e.g. "that awful/appalling/dreadful Borthwick woman". Those descriptors are understood. How subtle our language can be. I suppose the nearest equivalent for a male referent would be their surname alone, but that would need a context because it wouldn't automatically be taken as pejorative, whereas "the <surname> woman" would. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]20:25, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That hadn't occurred to me. In the book I referred to above, the Borthwick woman is definitely not attached to a man, and the status of the Pomfrey woman is unknown and irrelevant to the story. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]08:13, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds not perjorative by avoidance or distancing, but like a "non-definite" (novel? term) similar to "A certain Calsonathy," or "If a man comes by, tell them..." (this a nongendered pronoun regardless of gendered referent; feels newish)
They were chosen to refer to specific individuals, but for the second I apparently have copied the link to a non-example. For the other two, they are Floyd Abernathy and Leonard Callahan. A better B example is "the Bailey man". Here we do not learn the given name, but he is definitely a specific individual. And here, although we are afforded only snippet views, "the Bailey man" refers to one Dr. Hal Bailey. --Lambiam19:11, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Further to Jack of Oz's and Lambiam's observations above [in passing, I can't find the relevant usage in Lambiam's third link], for a male equivalence one might also use near synonyms like 'chap' or 'fellow'. "That Borthwick chap . . ." would be a casual and neutral reference to someone not very well known to the speaker or listener; "that Borthwick fellow . . ." might hint at the speaker's disapproval. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 03:46, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The use in the third link is the spoken sentence "He works during the day to [sic] the Callahan man that does the carvings." It occurs just above the blank line halfway down the page. --Lambiam19:19, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are some dialects which have /yː/ and /øː/, such as in South African and NZ English, but are there any dialects that have /ʏ/ and /œ/? --40bus (talk) 14:24, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How do English speakers say fractions of units? For example, is 50 cm "half a metre", and 150 cm "one and half metres"? Does English refer to a period of two days as "48 hours"? Is 12 hours "half a day", 36 hours "one and half days" and 18 months "one and half years"? --40bus (talk) 10:49, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) One does not say "one and half metres" but "one and a half metres". One can also say "one and a half metre" or "one metre and a half". Likewise for "one and half days/years". In "two and a half metres", one only uses the plural form. Note that "48 hours" can also be used for any 48-hour period, like from Saturday 6am to Monday 6am. --Lambiam12:31, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In British English at least, 75 minutes = one and a quarter hours, or an hour and a quarter; 250,000 is a quarter of a million, or two-hundred-and-fifty thousand. Bazza 7 (talk) 15:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also in British English, "eighteen months" would be more usual than "one and a half years". It's common to give the age of babies as a number of months until they reach the age of two. Alansplodge (talk) 16:49, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All those usages are also found in America English. Also "a quarter million" is not uncommon in casual speech whereas "a quarter of a million" sounds formal. However, "three quarters of a million" is the only correct way to refer to 750,000 with this idiom though the 's' in quaters is often not audible. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In Finnish it is common to give age of one-year-old babies as mixed years and months, such as "yksi vuosi ja kuusi kuukautta" ("one year and six month")? Puolitoista vuotta is very commonly used to mean 18 months. Also, puoli vuorokautta is 12 hours and puolitoista vuorokautta 36 hours. Does English use day to refer to thing that Finnish refers as vuorokausi, i.e., a period of exactly 24 hours (1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds), starting at any moment and ending exactly 24 hours later? --40bus (talk) 18:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In English ages between one and two years are more often given in months than mixed months and years. I.e. "18 months" is more common than "a/one year and six months" but both are heard. A one day period is more often called 24 hours because "day" would be ambiguous. "One day later" could mean any time during the next day. But using "one day" or "exactly one day" in that meaning would not be obviously incorrect either. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To my annoyance, "24 hours" and multiples thereof are often used as synonyms of "day(s)", not for precision but because more syllables make more importance. —Tamfang (talk) 23:00, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Hebrew letters Het (ח) and ayin (ע) had two different pronunciations each in Ancient Hebrew: the Het could be pronounced like Arabic Ha (ح) or like Arabic kha (خ) while ayin could be pronounced like Arabic ayin (ع) or like Arabic ghayin (غ).
For ayin the clue that this was the case is the transcription into Greek (e.g. in the Septuagint) of Hebrew words like the names Gaza, Gomora, etc. compared to modern Hebrew Aza, Amora, etc. The Greek gamma is in fact a reflex of the ghayin pronunciation. When the letter was pronounced ayin it was not transcribed, e.g. in Eden.
But how do we know for Het? What are in the Septuagint transcribed Hebrew words that indicate that the letter Het had two pronunciations? In other words what are the two different transcriptions of letter Het in the Septuagint that are a clue to that fact? If I had to adventure a guess I would guess that the pronunciation Het was not transcribed (except possibly for a rough breathing), while the pronunciation khet was transcribed as a khi, but I don't know, and I can't think of any examples, and that's exactly why I am asking here.
No, not phonologically. From the point of view of the phonology you're mixing two meanings of "Biblical Hebrew" here. The pronunciation used when the text were composed and the ritual pronunciation of the text nowadays. That has nothing to do with the ancient pronunciation and in fact has developed differently in different traditions (ashkenazi, sefaradi, yemeni, iraqi, persian, etc. none of which preserves the double pronunciation of Het and/or ayin) which obviously cannot all be different and yet be identical to the ancient pronunciation. In any case I now changed "Biblical" to "Ancient". 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:54, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I did. The Vulgate has Agar. See also Ἄγαρ on Wiktionary. I suspect, though, that when the Septuagint was originally produced, breathings were not yet written. --Lambiam13:41, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Transcription" is perhaps not the right term. We have an article on Latinization of names, but AFAIK nothing similar for Greek. (Hellenization of place names is about a 19th- and 20th-century policy of replacing non-Greek geonyms by Greek ones, such as Βάρφανη → Παραπόταμος.) The Hellenization of Hebrew and Aramaic names in the LXX combines a largely phonetically based transcription of stems with coercing proper nouns into the straightjacket of one of the three Ancient Greek declensions. --Lambiam00:46, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. But except for the front and back covers (first two and last two pages) the PDF file is absolutely illegible. Were you able to get legible PDFs of this article?
Was this 1982 article the first time someone realized that these two letters were "polyphonic" in Ancient Hebrew?
I was once browsing through a Hebrew dictionary (the well-known Even-Shoshan) in its ca. 1960 edition and (looking in a grammatical-historical appendix in the last volume) it didn't seem like the author of the dictionary was at all aware of the "polyphony" of those two letters in Ancient Hebrew.
But when I looked in a ca. 1995 edition of that same dictionary (in a one volume so called "merukaz" edition, incidentally) that "polyphony" was clearly alluded to.
Avraham Even-Shoshan, the author of the dictionary, died in 1984 so I don't know if it was he who changed things there (not impossible, as he had two years to do it), or if it was someone after his death (there were new editions of the dictionary as late as the 2000s).
In any case I imagined that between ca. 1960 and ca. 1995 something had changed in our knowledge of the pronunciation of Ancient Hebrew but I didn't know whose contribution it was.
The built-in PDF-viewers of some browers (Opera, Chrome) indeed display this document atrociously, but after having saved it locally, I could easily open it with all kinds of PDF viewers and get a legible view of it. Blau devotes four and a half pages to the history of research velar transcriptions of ayin. –Austronesier (talk) 20:26, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The PDF worked fine for me. I strongly doubt that 1982 was the first time, because scholars would have been able to compare Septuagint transcriptions to proto-Semitic reconstructions decades before that... AnonMoos (talk) 20:37, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In his play "Rhinoceros" the Romanian-born French playwright Eugène Ionesco uses the word "fauve" to refer to the rhinoceros as if it just meant "wild animal". I would say no native French speaker would do that: am I right or wrong? To me "fauve" would be used mostly for big cats (tigers, lions, leopards). Maybe for bears and wolves? (Not totally sure though). But "fauve" would never refer to just any large dangerous animal like Ionesco (who was not a native speaker of French) does. What do you say? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:42, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looking up French Wiktionnaire and some French dictionaries, it does indeed seem that "fauve" is an acceptable - albeit perhaps dated - way to refer to ochre or wild animals in general, not a non-native misunderstanding. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:50, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The first rulers of Rus' were Swedes (the Varangians), for example Rurik and his descendants. Is there a record of when they stopped to speak Old Norse? What are some Old Norse words in Russian that came with the Swedes (as opposed to later borrowings from Swedish possibly)? (I know of Rus' and the name of Russia itself it seems. Any other?) How about Russian personal names that go back to Swedish ones? (I know of Vladimir which goes back to Valdemar. Any other?) 178.51.7.23 (talk) 13:32, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How about Oleg (from Helgi?), Igor (from Ingvar?), and of course Rurik (from ????) Incidentally, is Rurik a name that is still used in Russia these days? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 19:17, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This whole question is contentious, partly because of the sparsity of sources and partly because of political considerations. Some Soviet historians in Stalin's day appeared to believe that Viking assimilation with Slavic culture had been almost instantaneous because, I suppose, they wanted the foundations of the Russian state and nation to have as little foreign influence as possible. Russian historians still tend to argue for a more rapid assimilation than their Western counterparts do. However, there's a discussion of the language question by Elena A. Melnikova here which concludes that "By the mid-tenth century the Varangians became bilingual; by the end of the eleventh century they used Old Russian as their mother tongue", and my old student copy of E. V. Gordon's Introduction to Old Norse agrees that "the Rus themselves gradually lost their Scandinavian traditions and language; they must have been almost completely merged in the Slavonic people by the beginning of the twelfth century." [34] --Antiquary (talk) 10:02, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Does English ever use perfect instead of imperfect (past) to describe events that happened entirely in the past but still have connections to present time, such as "this house has been built in 1955", "Arsenal has last won Premier League in 2004", "When has Arsenal last won...", "this option has last been used three months ago", "humans have last visited Moon in 1972", "last ice age has ended 10,000 years ago"? And is simple present of verb be born ever used, since birth happen only once? And would sentences like "I am being born", "She is born" and "You are being born" sound odd? --40bus (talk) 18:30, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No to the first (except among the "unedumacated"). As for the second, I'm not sure this counts, but there is the religious "She is born again." The rest sound bizarre. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, that's not right as the question is stated. It's often fine to use use the present perfect (that's the better term than just "perfect") to describe events that happened entirely in the past. Say I have been promoted to colonel; you can use that if you're still a colonel, even though the promotion itself happened in the past.
What makes those sentences sound wrong is the explicit date on the sentence. That makes it very difficult to use the present perfect in idiomatic English. --Trovatore (talk) 22:40, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another question: why in English Wikipedia, events listed in year articles are in present tense, but in Finnish Wikipedia they are in past tense? --40bus (talk) 21:06, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am pretty sure that there are differences between British and American English in the use of the present perfect vs the simple past in such sentences. In American English all your examples sound wrong and should be simple past "this house was built", "Asenal last won", "When did Arsenal last win", "this option was last used", "humans last vistited", "the last ice age ended". When I see imperfect I thin of the past progressive tense: "was being built", "was winning", "was being used", "were visiting", "was ending" which wouldn't work in your example sentences. But I may be incorrect since my knowledge of grammatical categories is based on Classical Latin rather than modern descriptive linguistics. As for "be born", all your examples are perfectly good English. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:59, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While I do think BrE uses the present perfect a bit more than AmE, I don't think that's really the issue here. I'm pretty sure (one of our British friends can correct me) that the first, second, fourth, fifth, and sixth example sentences in the original post would also sound odd (if not outright wrong) in BrE. Again, the problem is not the fact that the action is entirely in the past, but that the sentence contains an explicit marker of time in the past (1955, three months ago, etc). The third sentence, when has Arsenal last won, I'm less sure about; I find it marginally acceptable, though it would be much more idiomatic to say how long has it been since Arsenal last won.
As to "imperfect", this is a little complicated. The imperfect tense in Italian, and presumably in the rest of the Romance languages, indicates a continuous or habitual action, or a background description. In Latin it was much the same, whereas the Latin perfect indicates a completed action in the past. The present perfect (or analogous construction) entered Romance languages later, maybe with medieval Latin or some such, and differs from the perfect by the emphasis on the importance of the event to the present time.
In German and English, there was never an imperfect tense per se; it was conflated with the simple past (preterite), which is the closest to the Latin perfect tense. It's true that you can use the past continuous or "would" or "used to" to emphasize certain aspects of the imperfect, but at the simplest level, the Latin perfect and imperfect are merged in English, with the present perfect being distinct from both.
Modern Romance languages keep all three tenses in theory, but usually pick one of present perfect or preterite to use overwhelmingly in practice (alongside the imperfect, so they simplify to two conversational tenses). Both French and the northern varieties of Italian rarely use the preterite in conversation, and I think Spanish (especially Latin American Spanish) rarely use the present perfect. However as far as I know they all use the imperfect and keep it separate, which was one of the hardest things for me to get right learning Italian. --Trovatore (talk) 05:43, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think one can say, What have the Romans ever done for us, and when have they done it? Similarly, Sure, Arsenal has won the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, but when has Arsenal ever won the UEFA Cup?. --Lambiam12:00, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To my ear there's a difference in acceptability between when has Arsenal ever won?, which is unassailable except by Arsenal fans I suppose, and when has Arsenal last won?, which strikes me as borderline, the kind of thing that sounds weird and you're not sure why. I guess it must have something to do with the word "last" but I don't have a well-developed theory of exactly what it has to do with it. --Trovatore (talk) 22:24, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Does English ever use term 2000s to refer to period from 2000 to 2099? Why is 21st century more common? And is 2000s pronounced as "twenty hundreds"? --40bus (talk) 21:03, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is some ambiguity with 2000s; it could also refer to 2000 to 2009 (vs. 2010s), so that may be why 21st century is more used. It's pronounced "two thousands". Clarityfiend (talk) 22:35, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If 1900s is pronounced as "nineteen hundreds", then why 2000s is pronounced as "two-thousands"? And 2000s is sometimes used to represent the century, and the decade could be disambiguated by saying "2000s decade", "first decade of 2000s", with basic meaning being century. --40bus (talk) 07:24, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
“One thousand nine hundreds” has six syllables, “nineteen hundreds” has four, saving two. “Two thousands” has three syllables, “twenty hundreds” has four, adding one. People just pick the shorter option.
For me, the '00s (decade) are the "noughties". Probably I would call the '10s the "twenty tens" or "new tens". (Dunno why I feel the need to disambiguate from the 1910s.) Double sharp (talk) 11:59, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like "noughties" or "aughties" never really caught on. But it's almost time for the '00s nostalgia craze, so I suppose they'll come up with something. --Trovatore (talk) 00:42, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As a side note, I once read (possibly in an SF fanzine) that when Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick co-wrote the film and novel2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke expected people to pronounce the title "Twenty-oh-one . . ." (as they do for 1901, for example), not "Two thousand and one . . .". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 12:03, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That story sounds familiar. Clark maybe didn't count on the public to keep it simple amid the grandeur, so to speak, of reaching a millennium. There's a late-1940s cartoon called "The Old Gray Hare", in which Elmer is taken into the future. The "voice of God" tells him, "At the sound of the gong, it will be TWO-THOUSAND A.D." That was the predominant media usage by the time it actually arrived. The "Y2K problem" or "Year two thousand problem", for example. By about 2010, the form "twenty-ten" had become more prevalent. As suggested above, one less syllable. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 12:28, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I still say "two thousand and [number from one to nine]", but it might be just me, or a wider 'elderly Brit' thing. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 03:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are 20th century years ever said like "nineteen hundred and twenty-five" for 1925? Does English put "hundred and" between first two and last two number in speech? --40bus (talk) 10:05, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
During the 20th century, I only ever heard the period referred to as "the 20th century". If someone had talked about "the 1900s" I would have assumed they meant the decade 1900-1909. Using "the xx00s" to refer to the whole century is something I've only encountered recently, although I don't know if it actually is a recent usage or just something that has recently been revealed via internet usage. Iapetus (talk) 11:10, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As others have implied, "box" has always had an s-plural in English, and Vikings generally used the word "refr" for foxes. What's most surprising to me is actually that the old declensions "oxen" and "children" have survived. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:33, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Someone wrong -- You can look at Old English grammar#Noun classes to see the declensions of a thousand years ago or more. The regular pattern of modern English inflection comes from the Old English masculine "a-stems". The only nouns with a non-"s" plural ending in modern English (leaving aside Classical borrowings such as "referenda" and unassimilated foreignisms) are oxen, children, brethren, and the rather archaic kine, which have an ending from the OE "weak" declension (though "child" and "brother" were not originally weak declension nouns). There are also the few remaining umlaut nouns, which do not have any plural endings, and a few other forms which don't (or don't always) distinguish between singular and plural. In that context, there's no particular reason why "box" should be expected to be irregular. However, the form "boxen" has been occasionally used in certain types of computer slang: http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/boxen.html -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:18, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How do you pronounce "God b'wi you"? For example in Shakespeare's Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3, Line 6 (Oxford Shakespeare). The pronunciation I hear in one recording is "God by you". Folger's Shakespeare has "God be wi’ you" in writing (you can find that text online at www.folger.edu). Does that indicate a different suggested pronunciation? How would you pronounce "wi'"? Are there other variants? (Either in the text of this play or anywhere else.) There's a "God be with you" entry in Wiktionary but none of these variants are recorded. 178.51.8.23 (talk) 08:32, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. This is the original pronunciation. How is it currently commonly pronounced on the stage? I mentioned one pronunciation I heard where "b'wi" is pronounced "by". Are there other options?
I'd pronounce it "God be with you" but with the "th" sound missed off the end of "with." That might not be how they did it in the sixteenth century, but I'm pretty sure no sixteenth century people are coming to see the show. Incidentally, that's what they did in the Olivier movie (the line didn't appear in the Branagh version). Chuntuk (talk) 11:20, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Correlation of early human migrations with languages
If I understand the question the answer is no. The migrations that you are talking about took place 100,000 to 25,000 years ago and well established language families only go back 10,000-15,000 years, often less. Even at that time depth the correlation between archeology and linguistics is often controversial. See Proto-Indo-European homeland for example. Studies such as A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories show that while there is correlation between human genetic and linguistic history, there are enough exception to make any precise conclusions impossible without other evidence. Eluchil404 (talk) 02:39, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There have been scholarly (and less scholarly) attempts to identify language families and relationships predating those more firmly established: see for example Nostratic and various other such proposals linked from it, but these are inevitably limited, largely because the evolution of languages is sufficiently rapid that all traces of features dating very far back have been erased by subsequent developments. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 07:01, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Although I cannot evaluate the likelihood, I find it conceivable that a future all-out statistical analysis of all available source material will result in a reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic that is widely accepted by scholars and much richer than what we have now. Perhaps this might even establish a connection between Proto-Afroasiatic and Proto-Indo-European beyond the few known striking grammatical similarities. Then we may be speaking about close to 20 kya. But indeed, there can be no hope of reconstructions going substantially farther back, by the dearth of truly ancient sources and the relative scarcity of sources before the Modern Era. --Lambiam21:09, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Reconstructions of Proto-Afroasiatic have been hindered by the fact that the only branches with significant ancient attestations are Semitic and Egyptian, and for most of its history, Egyptian writing almost completely ignored vowels... AnonMoos (talk) 20:46, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I hit "random article" for the first time in a while, and was directed to Adetoun Ogunsheye, the first female professor in Nigeria (still alive at 98). In the infobox it says she's known for "[b]eing the first Nigerian woman to attain professorial cadre", with the last two words piped to professor.
Does anyone recognize this locution of "attaining professorial cadre", or for that matter using cadre as a mass noun in any context? Is it maybe a Nigerian regionalism? Should we be using it in Wikipedia? --Trovatore (talk) 20:46, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Lambiam, I can almost twist my brain into following that. So far it does appear to be a Nigerianism. My reaction till proved otherwise is that we probably shouldn't use it in English Wikipedia, given that (unlike Americanisms and Briticisms) it's not going to be recognizable in most of the Anglosphere. But it's reminiscent of the lakh / crore thing, on which I don't have a completely firm opinion and which still seems a bit unsettled en.wiki-wide. --Trovatore (talk) 21:39, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any historical explanation of why the name of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia uses Latin. Is it an oddity with no explanation? Do you know of any other European colony (especially of the form "new something") that uses a Latin name instead of an equivalent in a modern European language? 178.51.8.23 (talk) 13:57, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The semi-Latin name Nova Zembla was until fairly recently[48] the most commonly used English exonym of Новая Земля. (It is still the preferred exonym in Dutch and Portuguese.) --Lambiam14:30, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In this borrowing, Zembla is clearly a phonetic adaptation, but (although this would be hard to prove), I find the most plausible explanation for the component Nova that it arose by alignment with the then many Latin geonyms found on maps and atlases starting with Nova. In any case, the evidence is that Nova Zembla used to be seen as a Latin name, as from the use of the accusative caseNovam Zemblamhere, in 1570, and the genitive caseNovæ Zemblæhere, in 1660. --Lambiam20:26, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Guys, I am grateful for all your answers. I just want to point out that my question was not about names in Latin (there are other exmples btw: Virginia, Georgia, Columbia/Colombia, Argentina, maybe Guinea, etc.) but specifically names in Latin where an equivalent in a modern European language seems to be more natural. I was simply curious as to why "Nova Scotia" instead of "New Scotland". All your examples are great but for very few of them (if any) an equivalent into a modern European language comes readily to mind. For example "New Caledonia" would have no "equivalent into a modern European language". Caledonia is itself a Latinism. So is "Batavia" say. There are many places in Europe with classical equivalents. Using one of those is not exactly the same thing as using a Latin translation of a modern name. Clearly it is not always clear cut. "Hispania" and "Austria" would be considered Latin translations of "Spain" and "Austria", but "Lusitania" and "Helvetia" would not be considered Latin translations of "Portugal" and "Switzerland". Does it depend on whether the Latin and the modern language equivalent are related etymologically? Of if that relation is commonly perceived? If the city of New York had been named instead "Novum Eboracum" would we be in one case or the other? I'll let you decide. The two names are linked but it is pretty involved. 178.51.8.23 (talk) 18:11, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
'Caledonia' is no more of a Latinism than 'Scotia', and is sometimes used as a near synonym for 'Scotland' in modern British English (including Scots English, not to be confused with Scots, or Scottish Gaelic in which it's called Alba). It would be rather confusing if we called two different places "New Scotland" – I suppose Cook could have named his discovery "New Pictland", but I'm not sure if that would have gone down well.
You refer to 'modern European language[s]', but these (particularly English) have long since absorbed a great deal of Latin, both in assimilated and 'classical' form, so to me your attempted distinctions appears meaningless. Others may differ. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 10:18, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Austria" is a Latin coinage to begin with. Otherwise, there are a few languages which have calqued the native "Österreich" (Eastern Kingdom). Navajo has apparently the descriptive moniker "Homeland of the leather pants". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:47, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just came across on Harper's Bazaar's website a lowercase L that looks the like capital I with an extra serif sticking to the left in the middle (kind of like ⟨I⟩ superimposed with text-figure⟨1⟩). See e.g. "looks", "Viola", "Winslet", etc. here.
Beats me why they're calling those all one typeface instead of five. Anyway, in the "OG serif" incarnation, they got the weird arm on the lowercase L from Romain du Roi. The long s also has one. This incunable (from incunable) also has the nub (arm? Bar? Flag?) on lowercase L in many instances, but for some reason not all of them.
There's a Swedish publisher, Modernista, that uses an st ligature in their logotype. I believe they also use it constantly and consistently within the books themselves, as a brand identity, which of course could come across as pretty strained. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:26, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In that Caslon specimen the ⟨b⟩ and ⟨h⟩ also have nubs. The letter ⟨k⟩ does not occur in the specimen's text, but here we also find the Caslon black ⟨k⟩ nubbed. --Lambiam14:11, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unsatisfied, I dug up this brief discussion of Romain du Roi's lowercase L. The lowercase letter /l shows the most distinctive feature of the letters. It has a small serif on the left side at x-height, called ergot or sécante in French. The serif is a remnant of the calligraphic style which had not appeared in any previous typefaces. This serif makes the Romain du Roi unique. The reason why the Romain du Roi /l possessed the serif is not clearly documented. One theory says that this serif was used to distinguish it more clearly from the capital letter /l, which has the same height. The other theory claims that Louis XIV wanted to have an unmistakable feature in the /l, because his name began with this letter. Yeah. Thing is, Romain du Roi put the bars on the top and bottom of the glyph gratuitously, so if it then needed disambiguating from capital i, that doesn't seem like a very rational thing to have done. Card Zero (talk)17:28, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The past form of "may", "might", is mostly used as a conditional: "He might have said that, then again might not have". Uses of "might" as a past tense meaning "was/were allowed to" seem to be much rarer: "He might not say that" is most often intended to mean (and understood to mean) "it is possible that he will not say that", not as "he was not allowed to say that".
But that usage is not completely unknown: for example Edna St Vincent Millay writes in her sonnet "Bluebeard": "This door you might not open and you did / So enter now, and see for what slight thing / You are betrayed".
Do you have other examples of "might" being used as a past tense of "may"? I mean examples from the literature, jounalism, etc. not examples made up by Wiktionary editors, or other dictionaries, not because I don't trust Wiktionary editors or dictionary editors, but because I'd trust more examples that were not produced specifically for the purpose of illustrating a dictionary definition.
I'm especially interested in examples where "might" is used as a past tense in affirmative constructions! The examples above are all with "might not". I have the feeling the use of "might" in a negative sentence would sound more natural than in an affirmative sentence (if there's any example of it at all). Do you agree?
Great. Thanks. Please keep all kinds of examples coming, but watch out especially for examples where "might" is used in a main (or independent) clause (rather than a subordinate clause such as "(in order) that they might..."). 178.51.8.23 (talk) 17:32, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here's another one, not directly subordinate in a that clause, though still notionally subordinate to a verb of speaking within a multi-sentence passage of reported speech, in a 19th-century summary of a parliamentary debate [49]"Mr BUCKNILL (Surry, Epsom) said, […] Member after Member had spoken of a particular company […] and, if he might use the expression, it had really in this Debate been ridden to death […]". Fut.Perf.☼19:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just went to Google News and searched on the phrase "he might have done". Here was one of the hits, in the New York Times: "A former Marine who trained Daniel Penny to apply a chokehold said Thursday that images and video suggest that he might have done so improperly when he killed a homeless man last year." And this headline from Vanity Fair: "Trump's Missing Phone Logs Mean We Don't Even Know Half the Illegal Shit He Might Have Done on 1/6". And this from the Seattle Times: "Although there is an area he might have done better." And from the BBC: "But Peter persisted, and now he can reflect on the earlier disappointments and what he might have done differently". My native-speaker instinct insists that "might" is the only correct form in these cases and "may" is an error, although I know others use it. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 19:56, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To me "may have done" is usable if it is currently possible (that is, the speaker does not currently know it to be false) that it happened, whereas "might have done" is usable in that case and also in the counterfactual case (if this had happened, then that might have happened). Prescription alert: Saying "if this had happened, then that may have happened" is in my opinion an error.
But that isn't what the OP is asking about. The OP is asking about using "might" as a past tense of "may", in the sense that "A might do B" means "A was morally allowed, or otherwise had the permission or authority, to do B". This sense does exist but has become somewhat rare. --Trovatore (talk) 20:02, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also: "Then Titul took a knife from his belt and asked the Gaul if he could kill himself; and the Gaul tried, but he might not."[51] --Lambiam00:29, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely. Both are past tenses. The first example is a relative clause. The second example is an independent clause. And both are affirmative constructions. Thanks. 178.51.8.23 (talk) 01:01, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I read that although there were so called beating reed instruments in Europe since at least the 14th c. (e.g. the regal) the first free reed instruments only appeared in Europe at the end of the 18th c. (e.g. the harmonium, the accordion, etc.) but I've just realized that I don't even know the difference. Could someone explain? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:33, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not all authors use the same definitions, but in this contrast I suppose "beating reed" corresponds mainly to the Hornbostel–Sachs categories 422.1 and 422.2 (the single and double reed instruments, such as the clarinet and the oboe), in which the vibrating single reed beats one edge of the mouthpiece and the vibrating double reeds beat against each other. The "free reeds" are then presumably a combination of category 412.13 (the free-reed instruments, mainly the accordions and harmonicas) and category 422.3, a very small group of Chinese instruments, in which the vibrating reed vibrates freely, not striking anything else. --Lambiam14:29, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are you certain? Aren't the beating reeds Hornbostel-Sachs 412.12 (so called "percussion" reeds defined as "a single lamella strikes against a frame"). In any case where on earth are the reed pipes of church organs and reeds of the regal (a kind of medieval organ with only beating reeds and no pipes)? Couldn't find them either in the file mentioned above or in List of aerophones by Hornbostel-Sachs number. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 15:35, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I wrote, different sources have different definitions. The Encyclopædia Brittanica identifies "single reed" with "beating reed".[52] Other authors distinguish between "single beating reed" and "double beating reed".[53][54] I can't be certain without seeing the context in which these terms are used, but as far as I'm aware no common current instruments fit Hornbostel-Sachs 412.12. The confusing conceptual duplication of sections 412 and 422 has encountered some criticism, as in the book Reed Instruments: The Montagu Collection: an Annotated Catalogue: "I have taken the liberty of of dividing those instruments which should come together under 412 into their types, taking the concussion reeds (412.11) with the double-reed instruments (422.1), the percussion reeds (412.12) with the single-reed instruments (422.2), the free reeds (412.13) with the free-reed instruments (422.3), and placing the ribbon reeds (412.14) at the end, followed by the category, unrecognised by Hornbostel & Sachs but established by Henry Balfour, of retreating reeds, giving these the new number of 412.15."[55] Reed organs (and reed pipes of multi-register organs) tend to be free-reed instruments; see the mentions of organs in Free reed aerophone. --Lambiam00:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually List of aerophones by Hornbostel-Sachs number lists under 412.122 "earlier organs", so not empty. Most of the reed pipes (the earlier ones) in normal organs (leaving aside reed organs) are not free reeds. See Reed pipe. Some of them are (cf. their paragraph in that article) but they are a new thing. If we are to believe Pump organ the free reed was introduced in Europe only at the end of the 18th century, yet there have been reed pipes in organs and there have been regals in Europe since as early as the 14th century. That there are terminology and classification issues in organology I can well believe. There are such problems in biology and linguistics so why wouldn't there be in organology. Jeremy Montagu's critique of the usual Hornbostel-Sachs may well be valid. Maybe it does make sense to put percussion reeds with single-reed instruments and get rid of that category. I couldn't say say, since 24 hours ago I had no idea even what a beating reed was. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 06:46, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm about to experiment with my oboe: I'm planning to insert a little piece of reed between the two reeds of the (European) mouthpiece of my oboe, and then blow and see what happens. (A great December 31st activity!) But before I ruin a good oboe (European) mouthpiece I'd like to know if anyone has tried that already and what happened? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 15:43, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No idea, but if you're going to fiddle with making/adding a handmade reed, make sure on your inhale you put your tongue forward incase anything comes loose causing you to choke. You could of course, buy a triple reed.
Excellent point. Thanks a lot. Gotta make sure I don't swallow that little piece of reed and choke on my experiment. Surely, that would be a bad joke on a December 31st! Are there triple reeds for oboes? Really? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 16:25, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Joe Bonamassa's "Mind's Eye" (both live and studio) starts really really like some other song by some other artist I can't quite put my finger on. Very annoying. If you get a chance to give "Mind's Eye" a listen see if it rings a bell? Joe Bonamassa seems to like to "borrow" at times: The live version of "This Train" (for example at the Sydney Opera House or at the Red Rocks Amphitheater, in Morrison, Colorado) uses the intro to Jethro Tull's "Locomotive Breath" totally unashamedly. He's not even trying to hide it. Does one pay royalties for this kind of use? The studio version of "This Train" doesn't do that. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 10:47, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Don't recognise it myself, but others might.
Overt 'borrowings' or 'quotations' like this, a variety of tribute, have long been used by classical (in the broadest sense), folk, blues, jazz and rock musicians, and of course Bonamassa works in the blues tradition.
It's usually (in my understanding) considered a compliment to the original composer, and would not usually attract a royalties claim unless the quotation is extensive (in which case the user might well proactively arrange to pay royalties, as they would for a Cover version), or the original's copyright is now owned by heirs or lawyers who might ignore musical tradition and hope to to make easy money. This is distinct from covert and unacknowledged Music plagiarism such as that which was alleged (and ruled to be a 'subconscious copy') for George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord', for example.
The use of Sampling is another development of this phenomenon, and its legitimacy and legality have been contentous issues.
You've prompted me to think about buying a ticket for Bonamassa's upcoming tour – thanks! {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 11:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone know of a piece of software that can convert a pitch contour (a continuous pitch trace: speech, or laughter, or whatever) into a discrete sequence of (written or MIDI) notes. That involves "quantizing" the continuous pitch trace to (say) the frequencies of the chromatic equally tempered scale or any scale of your choice and the durations to some note value of your choice. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 11:19, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think so. First there's this possibly minor difference that an autotuner doesn't produce a score (I didn't make it clear I'm looking for a piece of software that produces a score, written notes). Then again you might consider this to be a minor difference: score, MIDI file, sound file, who cares. More important is that I have the feeling though I can't be sure (since I have not examined either the algorithm of an autotuner or of that hypothetical piece of software) that there must be a difference between adjusting/correcting the off pitches of someone who's trying to sing a song and not succeeding in singing the intended pitches quite in tune, and quantizing the much wilder trace of something that was not intended to be singing in the first place. If you compare the trace of a song and that of usual speech or laughter, they look very different. There are intermediate things half-way between speech and song (rapping, whooping, Sprechgesang, etc.) Maybe laughter is also such a half-way thing. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 09:28, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In general, no. Intelligence has nothing to do with this. Most spontaneous abortions happen very early in pregnancy, often before a woman even knows she was pregnant,[56] in fact, many have no symptoms at all.[57][58] If a female has clearly not yet reached puberty, or is clearly post-menopausal, one can be certain – barring miracles – that she has not recently been pregnant. No medical examination is required for this conclusion. --Lambiam19:49, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it was posted on the Entertainment page. Maybe the OP is using sarcasm in a desperate attempt at some kind of cheap humour. But then, I don't know which is being stretched beyond its elastic limit: their sense of what constitutes humour; or my adherence to assumption of good faith. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]20:46, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One of the standard instruments in a rock band is the keyboard, even if only some bands use it. Kind of like an electric piano but less bulky than an actual piano. Still, it is bulky enough that it has to be on a fixed location of the stage and the keyboardist has to be right behind it all the time.
A pair of days ago I saw the video "Fairy of white" by the band The Big Deal (only one album in an indie label, not notable for wikipedia, but that's not the question here). The band has two singers, one of them, Nevena Branković, is also the keyboardist... and she has a strange keyboard in that video. Clearly a keyboard, but small and portable enough that she can hold it in her hands, and that seems to grant her the freedom of movement in the scenario that we would usually expect only from the singers, guitar and bass players. Is this a new type of keyboards? Cambalachero (talk) 19:42, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Portative organ was also a thing, re-popularised from the 12th century onwards, but used by the Ancient Romans – one was found in Pompeii (Reverb ad: 'some restoration required'). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 06:52, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's a scene in an episode of a 1990s American Black sitcom, maybe The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (then again maybe not) where a pianist enters a classroom together with the teacher (the actor playing the pianist was in all likelihood a real professional jazz pianist making a guest appearance in that episode) and asks a student to say something (the student does it in a kind of rap-like rhythmic sing song) and the pianist immediately proceeds to play the pitch contour of what the student had just said (there's a piano in the classroom) and all the students are amazed. Does anyone recall such a scene and where it is from? 178.51.94.220 (talk) 20:32, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I believe you're referring to "A Touch of Wonder", the 18th episode of the 2nd season of The Cosby Show. Stevie Wonder guests and samples the voices of the Huxtables (or possibly just Theo; it's been decades since I saw the show). No classroom as I recall; just the living room and (I think) a studio. Matt Deres (talk) 17:38, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. Before 'sampling' was a thing, real musicians used actually to perform, or pay colleagues to perform, all the music they wanted on their recordings. [/grump] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 06:48, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Though it's unlikely the Beatles hired a man with a tape recorder up his nose. Actually, according to Lewisohn's book on Beatles recording sessions, p.120, they brought in 13 musicians to play that segment. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 07:36, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We have an article Music supervisor, but not one for Music consultant, which however does return results from websearching, for example, [60], so perhaps we should.
From these, broadly, a Music Supervisor advises on and/or controls the use of music (and perhaps more) in an Audiovisual project (such as a TV show, film, etc.), including the licencing and other legal aspects, while a Music Consultant advises musicians about how to proceed in and develop their careers. Others may have more informed insights.
So, not interchangeable terms, but there's no reason why the same person could not perform both roles. Hope this helps. {The poster formerly known as 897.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 06:49, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Somewhat generally, I'd say that the term "music supervisor" identifies a role within a project team, whereas "music consultant" identifies a profession. A music supervisor is more likely to be on the payroll of a film studio or game developer, while a music consultant is generally a self-employed professional who bills their clients, typically aspiring musicians, for services rendered. --Lambiam15:11, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've noted zarzuelas exist in at least one other language than Spanish (namely Catalan). In what other languages have zarzuelas been written in: Portuguese (Portugal or Brasil)? Galician? Valencian? Basque? Article Zarzuela only mentions Catalan (besides Spanish). 178.51.8.23 (talk) 13:50, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose you mean the opera genre, not the fish stew. I am less sure what you mean by zarzuelas existing "in a language". Do you mean zarzuelas whose libretto is written in that language?
The first sarsuala with Catalan text premiered in 1858. Catalan sarsuales had their heyday at the turn of the century, but then fizzled out, with Spanish becoming more popular.
Playboy#Former says Russian edition was closed in 2022, but for some reason I can't find any reliable source, neither in Russian nor in English, about the Russian closure. I was only able to find a marketplace source saying that the spring 2022 issue was the last one. PlayboyRussia.com doesn't work anymore and their Facebook page hasn't been updated since 13 March 2022, implying that's indeed the case. Could someone help with an RS about Russian closure? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 21:13, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The last cover captured by the Wayback Machine is that of the Winter 2021–2022 issue.[61] (Curiously, here is another cover of the Winter 2021–2022 issue, with the same model and the same cover text.) But we know the Spring 2022 issue was still published, from the cover image at your marketplace source. I found nothing for Summer 2022.
There is a great country song I heard only once and I've been trying to find its title ever since: the lyrics are about a woman who is forced to kill a beautiful mountain lion that is attacking her colt and how bad she feels about it afterwards even though she had to do it. I remember the singer (I believe she also wrote the song) was female and from Canada. The song must have been recorded between 1980 and 2010. Does this ring a bell, anyone? 178.51.8.23 (talk) 18:28, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Black Cube has a wikipedia article, Melissa Nathan is mentioned in the article It Ends with Us. Both are googleable. My question is if either Black Cube or Melissa Nathan were ever hired to discredit John Kerry or Hillary Clinton? I realize that in Melissa Nathan's case, if she had been hired for that, it would probably have been before she formed The Agency Group PR.Rich (talk) 06:52, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Robert Fiske (actor) article claims (without a source) that he was born in Griggsville, Missouri. I can find no evidence whatever that such a place has ever existed. There is a Griggsville, Illinois, which is about 20 miles northeast of the IL/MO border (which I think is the river, and presumably was in 1889). Was there really a Griggsville in Missouri, or is this a simple mistake? The only substantive author (to the biographical part of the article) is long departed Wikipedia. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk20:12, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[Edit Conflict] I wondered if it might be something to do with the Mississippi changing its course, but it seems not. However, if Griggsville, Illinois is correct, he could be added to that article's Notable person [sic] section, doubling its complement!
The 'Missouri' inclusion was (as you may have noted) in the article as created in 2005, so at least we know it's not the result of vandalism.
I notice that the Unreliable sources IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and the Internet Broadway Database also state Griggsville, Missouri, which may of course have been taken from Wikipedia, and Find a Grave gives merely Missouri. However, The Movie Database does give Griggsville, Illinois. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 21:42, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indications in Ancestry.com are that he was merely born "in Missouri", not a specific city that I've found. Even though the original article writer has been offline for over 9 years, maybe his email still works? ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 21:54, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds ominous. Also, the more of my Google and Google Books hits I follow up, the fewer check out. The evidence that this place ever existed outside of Fiske's say-so looks rather slight. Here is one cite from 1907, and there are one or two more from the 19th century, but confusion with Griggsville, IL can't be ruled out. --Antiquary (talk) 10:46, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks everyone. I'll flag the birthplace in the article is questionable (and the whole article as poorly sourced), but I think there's enough uncertainty for me to not "fix" it. And I'll refer to this discussion on the talk page, for the (probably very unlikely event) that some future person cares enough about this rather minor actor to do more thorough research. Thank you. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk08:04, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Finlay McWalter, I just ran a GNIS search, and all three results were Illinois-related. GNIS sometimes misidentifies locations, e.g. many historic plantations in Tidewater Virginia are misidentified as unincorporated communities, but the concept of them outright omitting something as obvious as a settlement — which certainly would show up on USGS quads — is extremely unlikely. Nyttend (talk) 01:07, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You have linked to a BBC TV program where at 0:40 the presenter introduces "Our science correspondent Pallab Ghosh" who signs off his report "Pallab Ghosh, BBC News". His report includes statements by two experts each identified by name and affiliation. The video typifies the high standard of journalism where BBC emphasize distinction between source and editorial content. Incidentally, a good BBC TV reporter tends to become a "household name" (the likes of Clive Myrie, Fiona Bruce, Sophie Raworth, Reeta Chakrabarti, Steve Rosenberg, Michael Buchanan and more). Edit: I apologise to Pallab Ghosh for initially misspelling his name and thank Antiquary for correcting me. Philvoids (talk) 11:19, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand the question, it is not why reporters identify themselves, but why for instance Ghosh does not sign off by simply saying "Pallab Ghosh", full stop. --Lambiam10:29, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Does the fact that aeroplane/ship navigation lights are green and red cause problems for pilots who are red-green colour blind? How do they deal with that? Can they even become pilots? ―Panamitsu(talk)22:49, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't be a pilot because of my red-green colour blindness, but people with a mild version can apparently - this is a link to the UK's Civil Aviation Authority's guidance on colour vision requirements. Mikenorton (talk) 23:25, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Similarly, red-green colourblind people may not be able to become helmsmen.
You might think it would have been more convenient to make those lights red and cyan, as far fewer people are red-blue colourblind, but when navigation lights on ships were introduced, bright blueish lights couldn't be made. That only became possible with gas discharge lamps. Traffic lights and railway signals these days (often using LEDs) use a slightly blueish green, so that most colourblind people can see the difference between red and green. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:55, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Flashing patterns would be a very poor method for aircraft and probably ships also. Navigation lights are meant to give a quick indication of the relative position and heading of another aircraft/vessel. When seeing navigation lights a pilot instantly has an indication of the relative flight direction of the other aircraft based on which red/green/white lights are visible. Also there are already the anti-collision lights, red flashing beacon on the tail at least and white flashing strobes on the wingtips and tail. How could a pilot possibly decode flashing lights reliably enough and quickly enough to determine relative heading? fiveby(zero) 18:06, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't that be a problem because the sky/ocean is blue? I understand that the lights are used at night so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. ―Panamitsu(talk)22:39, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It would involve more complex lighting circuits/equipment and massive world-wide retrofitting, which (I suggest) would be prohibitively expensive, to solve a relatively minor 'problem' more easily answered by simply not employing colour-blind people in the relevant positions. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 13:12, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Flashing lights have been used on lighthouses for a long time. They use an assembly of lenses and shutters rotating around a fixed light, using a low-friction bearing. This works fine for stationary lighthouses, but is more problematic on moving ships. There's more wear and the lens assembly could jam or rotate at variable speed. Better to use an electric light, switched repeatedly by a rotating switch powered by an electric motor (all available late 19th century), but both switch and lamp have to switch reliably at least a million times. No problem today, but there's still the issue of recognising a flashing pattern if it's intermittently obscured. It's considered acceptable for lighthouses and buoys, which are usually more or less where you expect them to be, but a moving ship may be a different matter. PiusImpavidus (talk) 14:45, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Depending on the signalling system, train drivers may also have to discriminate red from yellow/amber. This is less important for road users. And states of tracks and signals are colour-coded on the computer monitors of signalmen, but it should only take a simple software update to accommodate colourblind signalmen. (Yes, there're still some old-fashioned signal boxes in some countries; I've passed the one at Severn Bridge Junction on my way to Wales.) I don't see the objection against colourblind ticket sellers. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:58, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are Eritrea's .er and Belarus's .by ever used in domain hacks? .er could be used in shortcut to Blogger, blogg.er, like goo.gl and youtu.be, and .by could be used in domains such as drive.by and in Nordic place namesmas by means "village" in Swedish and "city" in Norwegian and Danish. And can South Africa's .za and India's .in be used directly after the main part, such as in piz.za and drive.in? Also, can .pl, .cz, .sk and .hu addresses contain diacritics, such as gdańsk.pl, česko.cz, košice.sk and magyarország.hu? --40bus (talk) 10:10, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Plusimpavidus has only answered the last sentencee.
The answer to the first part is entirely dependent on the policy of the controller of the ccTLD in question, and that controller may or may not publish a policy. Technically, of course they could be used: the government of Tonga sells .to domains to any interested party, as I presume you know.
According to our article .byThe Operations and Analysis Centre under the President of the Republic of Belarus allows for anyone (not only for those who reside in Belarus) to register a second level domain such as something.by, and it also says he .by code is used for domain hack by institutions from the German state of Bavaria (German: Bayern), such as bayern.by, the Bavarian Tourism Agency. Since "by" means "town" or "city" in Norwegian, it's also used by some Norwegian newspapers, such as osl.by for an Oslo newspaper, and trd.by for a Trondheim newspaper, however, neither of these statements appear to be sourced. When I just tried it, trd.by seems to redirect to a Norwegian casino site.
Our articles .er and .za say nothing about whether the ccTLDs are available to anybody outside Eritrea and South Africa respectively. .in doesn't explicitly address the question, but in talking about the use of subdomains it repeats "in India" several times. ColinFine (talk) 20:38, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What's the purpose of such blue, green, pink marks on street grounds? I've seen them in multiple places in Warsaw (typically in non-traffic places, such as sidewalks) where they've stayed for several months or even years without being erased. From what I've read, those marks can be made for some roadworks, but I'm not sure. Brandmeistertalk20:06, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen them used for several purposes, mostly for marking the course of some underground pipe or cable, but also for marking a distance such as 500m from a given spot. In the first case, there is a sequence of similar markings, not too far apart from each other. In the second case the marking is usually accompanied by a number or some code. --Lambiam20:55, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience (UK) they appear in preparation for invasive ground works, most recently in our road prior to the installation of the third set of broadband cables under our pavement. Apparently, existing suppliers and their customers get sniffy if new upstart suppliers not only add their own cables, but put a shovel through the existing cables in the process! Different colours may denote gas, water and telecommunication lines.
There is also an occasional rash of markings that outline potholes; whether this is done to guide the repairers of potholes, or as a placebo to pacify local road users, is not always clear. It is possible that the process accompanies the calculation of a cost for the work; the expenditure may not be forthcoming.[citation needed]-- Verbarson talkedits21:24, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Did Peugeot have any rivalry with other auto manufacturer that became famous or was famous but forgotten, like Lancia and Audi in 1983 and Ford and Ferrari in the 1960s? --Donmust90-- Donmust90 (talk) 19:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Peugeot, Citroën, Renault and Simca were the big four French automakers post World War II - and therefore rivals. The first two have merged, Renault is still around, but Simca has disappeared. Xuxl (talk) 11:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While the Simca brand, after having been acquired first by Chrysler and then PSA Peugeot Citroën, has disappeared, the factory in Poissy that Simca acquired from Ford France in 1954 is still in full operation.
Is there any British weather website which has daily data for stations in the United Kingdom? The starlingroot.ddns.net is not working anymore, it worked a few months ago. The "Historic station data" page on MetOffice's website has only monthly data, and the MetOffice WOW - Weather Observations Website has only hourly data. And is there any English-language website having weather observations for different cities and countries in Europe, similar to e.g. Infoclimat? --40bus (talk) 13:16, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You might find windfinder.com useful. Although primarily aimed at coastal leisure activities, it also covers inland areas. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 03:07, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(OR, in that I have no published sources for this, though I was taught it by others): Forgiving does not necessarily mean forgetting - it also doesn't necessarily mean condoning. It means not carrying ill will. In my experience, once I see the cost (to me) of bearing the resentment, and how illusory are the apparent benefits of doing so, it is easy to choose to let it go. ColinFine (talk) 14:25, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm trying to research a sudden death that occurred in the London Borough of Merton. Please help me find information about Westminster Coroner's Court, also known as "Inner West London Coroner's Court". They appear to have no website, and publish no court listings. They claim that coroners records are closed to public access for 75 years.
But other coroners courts in the UK, for example "London Inner South Coroner’s Court", publish their court listings and say that inquests are public and anyone can attend.
Why is there are difference? Why is "London Inner South Coroner’s Court" open to the public, but "Inner West London Coroner's Court" is not? Surely all coroners courts operate under the same laws?
So, you've come here to ask people how to remove from a list that doesn't exist, some names that would probably belong only the list if it existed, because you have some private meaning of "unmarried"? ColinFine (talk) 12:56, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If some men don't (appear to) have sexual relationships with women, they're not necessarily demonstrating celibacy - they might be otherwise inclined. Chuntuk (talk) 11:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I had an unopened bottle of cheap champagne (Barefoot Rosé if that matters) left over from NYE, and about 10 minutes ago the thing spontaneously exploded. It had been just sitting there at room temperature. No serious damage but there is champange and broken glass all over the place now, and I'm in the process of cleaning it up. Are these explosions a usual occasional occurrence? I'm used to champagne bottles being thicker than regular wine bottles for obvious reasons, but this one seems on the thin side in retrospect, maybe as an economy measure. Could that be? I'm surprised it doesn't happen on store shelves if it happens at home. Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:DA2D (talk) 18:39, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I does happen.[70][71] Sometimes a cause can be identified. When a bottle of champagne is stored in a freezer, or a fridge whose temperature setting is too low, the contents may freeze, causing it to expand. This can lead to minute cracks in the glass, weakening its strength. Thawed in a relatively warm environment, the pressure of the gas can then result in fracture. Another potential cause is premature bottling, when fermentation has not run its fill course ands the wine still contains yeast and sugar. (Almost all wine sold as "champagne" in the US, also when labelled "Brut", contains residual sugar to accommodate the local taste.) When warmed up, fermentation resumes and pressure increases. Finally, a small fraction of bottles is damaged in handling or comes with production defects, not detectable through visual inspection. --Lambiam22:42, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. No idea about refrigeration before I bought it, but I got it off the shelf at a big supermarket, carried it home, and it sat in the exact same place in the room for several days before going kablooie. All I can think of is that carrying it home might have bumped it around or something. Oh well, no big deal in the scheme of things. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:DA2D (talk) 01:20, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The traditional method of making Champagne requires freezing it in the bottle, so I suppose most bottles are designed to handle that – although freezing from the bottom up is safer than top-down, as it creates no plug of ice between the liquid and the gas. If not using the traditional method, or if the wine doesn't come from the Champagne region, many countries (including all of the EU) forbid selling it under the name Champagne. The US however hasn't got that restriction.
Once upon a time soda pop used to come in reusable glass bottles, and I read somewhere that this would happen from time to time with the larger sizes. And indeed, sometime around 1980 a large bottle of Coca-Cola, probably 1.5 liters, exploded while sitting in my cupboard. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 02:51, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any international organizations headquartered in Australia, similar to UN and World Bank are headquartered in the US? --40bus (talk) 22:04, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
yes but both questions are easily answered with even the most cursory research and 40bus here seems to have a habit of asking research questions. 208.121.35.65 (talk) 17:37, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure this is the correct venue, but here goes.
Yahoo have shut down all personal My Yahoo pages. For those who don't use Yahoo, your My Yahoo page was sort of your own personal webpage, where you could have various modules that interested you displayed (e.g. cartoons, horoscopes, travel, finance etc). Yahoo have closed My Yahoo down. A big feature of my personal My Yahoo page was that it had loads of links to my favourite websites. This loss is the one that is hurting most.
Perhaps one of the content curation tools listed here, some of which are free, will serve your purposes. I have no knowledge of any of these tools beyond what you find there. --Lambiam12:34, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For those answering, while it appears to be a question asking how to make a basic list of links, it is not. Yahoo's links page was created by selecting modules through a GUI and then customizing the settings. For example, I could select the comics GUI and then select which comics I want to show up in my links. I don't need to know any of the URLs. I just place a check next to the comics I like. For finance, I add the module with a click and then type in the ticket symbols for the stocks I care about. It automatically creates a daily stock thumbnail with links to news articles about those stocks. So, it is true that there are many available options to create a list of links, there are not as many options to create a custom content page for multiple areas of personal interest. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 15:35, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The IP is correct, but as I said above, I can live without horoscopes, comics etc. The ability of easily store links to favourite websites is the biggest loss. @Card Zero: - it doesn't have to be for me only. I think that using a subpage of my user space will fall foul of WP:NOTWEBHOST #5, even though many (but not all) of the websites are used in Wikipedia research. Mjroots (talk) 15:39, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Does it have to be a website in that case? Why not browser bookmarks? In fact, I believe these days some browsers will let you select bookmarks for a "start page" or "start screen" that is displayed when you open a new window/tab. And if they don't, you can probably find a browser extension that will do that. -- Avocado (talk) 17:20, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In 2019, Denmark had a minor spike in traffic fatalities. I feel that the spike is most likely the result of a single accident with multiple fatalities. However, I cannot find any news about multiple-fatality accidents in Denmark in 2019. Everything that I find is related to train accidents, which I do not think Denmark includes in "traffic fatality" counts. Can anyone find a list of accidents or news about a single large-scale accident that might skew the yearly count for 2019? 68.187.174.155 (talk) 15:25, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And is it even statistically significant? With unrelated events happening by chance, there will always be fluctuations in number of events by time period. Spikes will occur every now and then, entirely by chance. --Lambiam13:05, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I found this document (pdf) which seems to go into this matter in great detail. I don't read Danish, but I ran it though Google Translate. The table on page 28 shows that there were 199 traffic-related fatalities in Denmark in 2019, which is more than the two previous years but less than some earlier years. So I agree with the above posters that there is not enough here to constitute a spike. The document doesn't list individual accidents, btw. --Viennese Waltz14:24, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The mean number of fatalities of the 10-year sample given in this Danish report is 194.9, while its estimated standard deviation is 27.3. This means that the 2019 value deviates from the mean by 0.15 sigma, which is more remarkable by how little the deviation is. --Lambiam23:54, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I saw this before and perhaps you are trying to recreate it. In 2019, traffic fatalities in Denmark increased 20%. But, they were so low that it was a small bump to make that 20% jump. The reason it matters is because the increase was used as the basis to use government funding for more bicycle lanes and improving intersections. But, the increase was not statistically significant and didn't mean anything, so it should not have been used as justification for any changes. Now, from memory, it was a multi-car, weather-related accident in January that added more than 10 fatalities to the yearly count. That was overshadowed by a train accident due to the same snowstorm which killed 8 (I remember it was 8 because most new articles listed 6, but some stated that a few days later, two more bodies were found). So, my gut feeling is that you are intending to show that this "20% spike" in traffic fatalities is really a data artifact created by a single large-scale accident and not representative of general driver behavior in Denmark. Unfortunately, I do not know how to search Danish news. But, if my memory is correct, you can use the date of the well documented train accident in Denmark in 2019 to get the date of the multi-car accident and then, hopefully, find that as well. I doubt you will find it in any English-based news repository. You will have to search Danish repositories. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 16:17, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is there website that shows with neurodiverse person goes well with which other neurodiverse, e.g. ADHD with Autism, Autism with HPI, HPI with dylexsia etc? --Donmust90-- Donmust90 (talk) 15:55, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For any combination of forms of neurodiversity, some persons will go well with each other, while others will not. This depends mainly on other factors, in particular the personality and personal value system of each. --Lambiam12:57, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Moved from User talk:TheTechie § Aaaaarrrrchh brrr!
Resolved
Agree Slowking Man (talk) 00:37, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
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