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July 17

Why are many major cities

Why are many of the major cities in Europe such as Rome,London, and Paris located inland instead of right at the mouths of their respective rivers? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uncle dan is home (talk • contribs) 23:48, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Actually London is at the mouth of the Thames. It was a major port of the British empire, as "the Docklands" in East London testify. Also it has a strong tide up to the Parliament. Any further East, and you cannot easily bridge the Thames, which makes it difficult to benefit from both banks.

For the others: not sure, maybe arable land matters more for city growth than immediate access to the City?

Cannot easily bridge at the Parliament? The Hudson River at Manhattan's CBD is almost a mile wide. 5 tunnels cross that, some over a century old. New York City has tens of 100-200 foot clearance bridge or tunnel crossings over c. 1/2 mile. The Hampton Roads area has four water crossings >c. 5 miles. It has had a bridge-tunnel c. 20 miles long since 1964 and is a much smaller metropolitan area than London. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:03, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Land was much more fragmented into smaller countries in most stretches of history and thus many countries only had a limited choice what to make their center. How each of them developed was much more dependent on political and diplomatic skill of their rulers and traders, and also luck ofcourse, then dependent on natural resources and alike local advantages. Local advantages and resources can vanish or become meaningless over time. Like a castle on a strategical position was a saveguard for local power until the canons where invented. What seemed a perfect choice 500 years ago may look like an odd one today. --Kharon (talk) 03:08, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Don't confuse "cannot easily bridge" today for "could not easily bridge over 2000 years ago when the city was founded". New York City has many short crossings to the mainland, or indirectly through Staten Island, and the longer ones in midtown and downtown were mostly built in the 19th and 20th centuries. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:13, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Someguy1221. And I was unclear, Sagittarian Milky Way I meant "further East" of the Docklands, not at the parliament. Obviously you can easily bridge in the city centre , there were many bridges very early, including London Bridge probably around 50 AD. --Lgriot (talk) 15:40, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"At this location, the Tiber forms a Z-shaped curve that contains an island where the river can be forded. Because of the river and the ford, Rome was at a crossroads of traffic following the river valley and of traders traveling north and south on the west side of the peninsula." In other words, considerations for city locations 2-3000 years ago were a bit different than considerations 2-300 years ago. --Golbez (talk) 03:40, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sagittarian Milky Way, I'll take your "1964" and raise it. There's evidence of a bridge in London that's 3,500 years old and the point about going further east is well-made. Also bear in mind that London wasn't unambiguously the capital of any sort of 'country' at all until as recently (we're talking about the UK's history here) as the second century CE, and that after the Romans departed, it wasn't unambiguously the capital of a 'country'-type entity again until pretty much yesterday, say the late 10th century. That's only about a thousand years ago, but bridge-building was still fairly tricky then. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:33, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Other 'capitals' you might like to look at in Blighty are Colchester (Romans) and Winchester (Anglo-Saxons, although the role of Winchester is disputed). As well as a host of capitals of small, fragmented early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms before bretwaldas became properly national kings. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:35, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The city of Perth, Western Australia, is some miles upstream from its port of Fremantle. The reason for this is explained in the lead paragraph of Colonial Town Plans of Perth. 2A00:23C0:7F02:C01:9DCF:5631:446B:F686 (talk) 11:09, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That arrangement is fairly common, consider Ostia, Bremerhaven, etc.--Jayron 32 14:07, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm confused as to why the OP would believe that large European cities would be located at the mouths of rivers? Worldwide, cities are rarely located at the mouths of major rivers (rarely being not a synonym for never, mind) and instead have always been located at places where the economics favors population density; i.e. at a nexus of trade, i.e. at a place that has a good natural harbor or at a crossroads or at a place where land and water transport have convenient interchanges (fords or portages etc.) Rivers are important as access to fresh water, but the mouth of major rivers is often not particularly good (the water is often brackish, the land marshy, there aren't often good harbors, etc.) Major European cities were located where major cities always are: transportation hubs. London has a good natural harbor (the Thames Estuary and the London Docklands) and was located where that estuary also had good land transport crossings (read Londinium, which notes in the first sentence why London is where London is). Paris is not a major port, but read the first sentence at Paris#Origins. The Île de la Cité is a location that at once provides easy defensibility AND an obvious transport nexus. History_of_Rome#City.27s_formation contains a similar story, and branching out to other major European population centers, Moscow, Istanbul, Berlin, Madrid, Kiev, etc. etc. are all located where river crossings (bridges, fords, etc.) or major natural harbors provide logical transport hubs, i.e. the place where lots of goods are going to all have to pass through from multiple locations. Looking beyond Europe, list of largest cities shows that where a city DOES exist at a river mouth (more often than not it ISN'T) it is because that river affords a harbor or otherwise is a good location as a transport hub (i.e. London, or Shanghai, whose location on Suzhou Creek mirrors London's location on the Thames). Karachi, the 4th largest city in the world, is noted as a "transport hub", and there's no river there, but there is a really good natural harbor. The story is the same everywhere: if a city exists, it exists because it is a natural location for commerce, which means a major crossroads, harbor, or ford/bridge site. --Jayron 32 12:00, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There could also have been military reasons. For example, if you were expecting an attack to come from the sea, say from Vikings, then you would want your city inland, so they would need to march inland to attack, giving you time to prepare your defenses (close and bar the city gates, place archers on all the walls, etc.). StuRat (talk) 12:11, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You really needed a river though, since until the railways, transport in bulk overland was far more expensive and slow than by ship or barge. Alansplodge (talk) 13:02, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Or harbor; there are several major cities without a navigable river. Istanbul, Karachi and Lagos are three of the ten largest cities in the world, and while they do not have easily navigable rivers, they are all located on major harbors that allow them to act as hubs of trade. --Jayron 32 19:56, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they definitely need some water supply, and a river could also be used for transportation, but if they are some distance up the river, rather than right at the mouth, that would prevent sneak attacks from the sea. Large ocean-going vessels may not be able to go up the river, and smaller vessels would have to fight the current, and perhaps archers on the shores, making it difficult to attack before defenses could be readied. (Sneak attacks from land may still be possible, but they would also be possible at the mouth of the river.) StuRat (talk) 15:17, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As an aside, I had mentioned, off-hand above, that major cities are located at transportation hubs, and in listing those I'd mentioned a portage as one of those. Since my prior examples had listed both harbors and river crossings, but not portages, I thought I would give at least two example of an important city so located São Paulo, which is located at the portage across the Serra do Mar between the Tietê River and the Atlantic Ocean. Chicago also, as prior to the building of canals, is where it is because it was the best portage site between the Great Lakes (Chicago River) and the Mississippi River (specifically the Des Plaines River). --Jayron 32 20:07, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Related to that, consider a few other US river cities: Louisville sits at the only waterfall site on the Ohio River, and many cities lie on the Atlantic Seaboard fall line. Also, more generally, consider that a city on the ocean is completely vulnerable to sea storms and to relatively unpredictable seaside erosion, and while both can be factors for river cities near the coast, neither one is as big of a deal in such a case. For example, Venice, Louisiana was almost completely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, while upstream in New Orleans, neighborhoods sitting above the river (thus much less vulnerable to levee failures) didn't suffer comparable damage. Nyttend (talk) 23:41, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly Niagara Falls, New York, and the nearby Buffalo, New York are near the falls there, which is a definite portage site. On the Canadian side, we also have Niagara Falls, Ontario. Initially this location was of military importance, as if you could deny the enemy the ability to portage there, that would prevent access to 4 of the 5 Great Lakes. Later, the falls became an important tourist attraction and power source. StuRat (talk) 23:58, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, my comment about seaside erosion — see our article about Dunwich, once the capital of an English petty kingdom and a major seaport, but inhabited by eighty-four people in the 2001 census. It lies atop a bluff on the North Sea coast of East Anglia, and its prosperity was ruined by a series of heavy storms that caused much of the town to collapse into the sea. Nyttend (talk) 04:23, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, placement right on the ocean, or a large sea or lake, can both be a long-term problem due to coastal erosion, and a short term problem due to storms. New Orleans found this out when Hurricane Katrina hit. Some of the lessons learned there, that coastal areas must be kept undeveloped to absorb storm surge, and houses in flood zones should be rebuilt further inland, have the effect of moving NO further upstream. So, this process of adapting building location based on weather and erosion remains ongoing, even today. A new element is global climate change, which may make it necessary to move many coastal communities inland, as sea levels rise. StuRat (talk) 14:41, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

City placement is studied a part of Economic geography. In addition to the points above, a major consideration was how far upstream a seagoing merchant ship could easily get. It is much more economical to take your ship inland than it is to transship the goods into barges or wagons. -Arch dude (talk) 03:59, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

While I have no sources for either view I wouldn't think that the position of the city would have added much to the defences from the water. Any city that is able to handle trading ships is also going to be accessible to attacking ships. The Vikings managed it. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 07:09, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It won't prevent an attack, but it will give the defenders time to prepare, which can be critical. StuRat (talk) 14:39, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is paraphrasing the historian Jürgen Osterhammel in his book "The Transformation of the World." He notes that before the 19th century, most of the largest cities were inland (e.g. Beijing, Baghdad, Cairo, Madrid, Moscow, and the ones mentioned in the OP). North America is an exception in this regard. Like others here, he suggests that other factors are important in the growth of a metropolis: trade, providing services, cultural or political importance, etc. Herbivore (talk) 17:39, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about that; of the 20 largest North American mainland cities, only New York, Los Angeles, and San Diego are strictly coastal; of those only San Diego has it's urban core directly "on the beach" as it were; Manhattan is within a well protected harbor, and the urban core of LA is some miles from the sea, similar to "inland" European cities like Rome. One might also count Chicago in that list, if one considers Lake Michigan coastal. But other than that, most of that list is at least a few miles inland. --Jayron 32 19:51, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

But the problem with that analysis is that it's based on municipal borders, while metro areas are more relevant. For example, Indianapolis (#15 largest) is 30% more populous than Boston (#22 largest), but that's because it's annexed much of what was previously unincorporated suburbs, an approach not possible in Massachusetts, and Columbus, Ohio (#14 largest) likewise is larger than Boston because it's annexed significant portions of its metropolitan area. Greater Boston is the tenth largest metropolitan area in the country, and its metropolitan area is a good deal more populous than the Indianapolis and Columbus metropolitan areas put together. Take away Columbus and Indianapolis, and in place of two cities that are entirely continental, you get one that's directly on the ocean and one on a river big enough for a big naval base. Nyttend (talk) 23:39, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of inland cities have major ports or naval yards, such as Richmond, VA, Philadelphia, PA, or Houston. It doesn't make them coastal. A river is still not an ocean. --Jayron 32 12:04, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also, Boston also annexed many of its suburbs. Roxbury, Brighton, Charlestown, and Dorchester were all once independent municipalities. "Boston proper" is restricted to the Shawmut peninsula and the Back Bay. But even if we change to metro areas, that's now bumped us to 4 out 20 instead of 3. It hardly changes the math that much. --Jayron 32 12:07, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

July 18

Nobody south of the equator

A Christian theologian (Late Antique if I remember rightly) observed that temperatures got warmer as one went south and observed that the Bible commanded Christians to evangelise the whole world. Believing that temperatures would eventually get so hot that you couldn't survive to reach the southern temperate zone, and believing that God wouldn't have created people in a part of the world where the gospel couldn't go (since otherwise we couldn't obey the command to evangelise everyone), he concluded that the Southern Hemisphere was uninhabited. Two questions:

Who was this? It runs in my mind that this was St. Augustine of Hippo, but I'm not sure.
How long did this belief persist? Did it endure until the voyages of Bartolomeu Dias proved that the South was reachable, or was it already gone by then?

Nyttend (talk) 00:17, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

torrid zone

frigid zone

temperate zone

Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:06, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It was Augustine. I can find references to common medieval beliefs in both an uninhabitable southern hemisphere and something approaching reality. This book refers vaguely to a common belief around the time of Dante, and represented in his work, that there was no inhabited land in the southern hemisphere, or perhaps no land at all. Eratosthenes mentions in his work on Alexander that the King considered sailing around the southern shore of Africa, assuming it to end basically as far south as explorers had reached at the time (well before the equator). On the other hand, this book refers to ancient Greek writers Paramenides and Strabo, particularly Strabo's Geography as positing the globular Earth had cold zones in both the far north and far south, warming to a hot zone around the equator. The medieval writer Macrobius specifically rebuts Augustine in Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis.

According to this book, Augustine's proposal was that there were no "people" in the southern hemisphere, but it's not clear to me what he meant by people. The only primary source from Augustine I can find is quite vague on the subject [1]. Another writer states that Augustine at one point argued that there could be no people on the other side of the Earth as there are no stories of disciples of Christ preaching there, and at another point argued that when Christ descends from Heaven for the second coming, people on the other side of Earth would be unable to see him and be saved, and therefore no people can be there. I can find no reference to anything about temperature.

So it sounds like it was a common Church teaching that no one lived in the southern hemisphere, and that scholars knew better the whole time. As to when proof arrived otherwise, some ancient explorers got about as far as the equator but it's not clear they went further, although some Greek works describe lands further south (see European exploration of Africa). By the time of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, centuries prior to Portuguese exploration of the whole coast of Africa, there was robust trade between Northern and Southern Africa. However, much like the silk road across Eurasia, who knows what the merchants at either end of those trade routes really knew about the origin and destination of the goods. The Arab nations may have had knowledge of the southern hemisphere through the Arab slave trade, but I have no idea whether anyone in Europe would have been aware of that information. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:23, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The centre of the world was considered to be Jerusalem - and Dante placed his mountain of Purgatory at the Antipodes of Jerusalem. There wasn't the recognition that the earth spins round its polar axis, and the equator was more about the position of the stars than about a mid-line between the poles. Hemispheres were not necessarily northern and southern. More usually, the known world (Europe, Asia and Africa) formed the land hemisphere, and the rest was sea. Wymspen (talk) 20:10, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The rotation about the polar axis was well documented [2], to the extent that it was predicted that winter days would shorten as people travelled north, to the extent that a point would be reached when day and night lasted six months apiece. 92.8.217.19 (talk) 14:21, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

TGBOR vs. TGBOWR

From 1955 to 1998, there was a reference book annually whose cover simply said TGBOR, but which everyone called TGBOWR. Any reason for the slightly different titles?? Was there once a time when TGBOWR was what its cover actually said that people got into the habit of calling such even when its cover began to say just TGBOR with no W?? (Yes, the book still exists today, but now it's just GWR. This is just the question about the book's 20th century title.) Georgia guy (talk) 13:48, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It might help if you could tell us what the GWR stands for. Great Western Railway? Guiness World Records? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:43, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Guinness World Records, "known from its inception in 1955 until 1998 as The Guinness Book of Records and in previous U.S. editions as The Guinness Book of World Records." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:46, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The first US edition (1956) was actually called the Guinness Book of Superlatives. Wymspen (talk) 20:04, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know the history of both titles of the book?? Georgia guy (talk) 20:29, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like it became GWR in 1998. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:59, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Remember, we're only talking about the titles TGBOR and TGBOWR. Georgia guy (talk) 21:23, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Someone else will have to weigh in, because I don't understand what your question really is. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:28, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a picture of the 1973 US cover of the book.[3] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:30, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The question is, how come although the book's cover said TGBOR, everyone called it TGBOWR?? Georgia guy (talk) 21:32, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about the British editions, but the American editions didn't literally say "TGBOWR", they said "[The] Guiness Book of World Records". The name was simplified to "Guiness World Records" in 1998 or so. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:35, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW the UK edition of 1980 was called "Guiness Book of Records". Phil Holmes (talk) 08:48, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not really complicated: The British edition was entitled "The Guinness Book of Records" while the US edition was "The Guinness Book of World Records" - somebody obviously though the Americans needed to be reminded that there were records in other parts of the world as well. There were plenty of other editions, in various languages (and still are) - http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/corporate/history Wymspen (talk) 09:30, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Or just better marketing. If the original US edition said "Superlatives" it's a wonder anyone bought the book here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:35, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Guinness Book of Records 1999 was published in Britain on 1 September 1998. Titled Guinness Book of World Records 1999 it was published in America in 1999. The next edition, Guinness World Records 2000, was published in both countries in 2000. 92.8.217.19 (talk) 13:46, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The autumn publishing date is due to the British tradition of buying a copy for a (usually male) relative as a Christmas present, when you can't think of anything else to buy them. "Almost as obligatory as a Satsuma in your stocking is a copy of the annual Guinness Book of Records". [4] I can't imagine many people actually buying one to read themselves. Alansplodge (talk) 15:44, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I question your premise that "everyone" called it TGBOWR. No we didn't. It has always been colloquially "The Guinness Book of Records" - at least here in the UK. I think we presumed that it automatically included records from everywhere and not just the UK - and certainly not just the USA! --TammyMoet (talk) 18:43, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I'm also in the UK, and I've never heard it called "the Guinness Book of World Records". Always "the Guinness Book of Records" in my experience. Proteus (Talk) 13:24, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think the words get transposed a fair amount; I'm pretty sure I've heard it referred to quite frequently as The Guinness World Book of Records. Possibly an influence from World Book, an encyclopedia for teenagers and older children? --Trovatore (talk) 08:05, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

July 20

I have 3 questions regarding the history of Canada

1. Are any black Canadians today descended from black slaves in Canada? 2. Were any pagan or wiccans ever persecuted such as put on trial or burned at the stake? 3. Were any Inuit in northern Canada slaves? Thank you! 2001:569:766F:BF00:BDF9:DFA5:4B2F:757E (talk) 03:56, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

1. With 30,000 American slaves using the Underground Railroad to reach freedom in Canada,[5] some of their descendants are Canadian.[6]

2. In 1658 Quebec (pre-Canada), Corporal René Besnard was sent to prison and later exiled for sorcery.[7] Also, in 1684, Jean Campagna was charged, but later acquitted, of being a sorcerer.[8]

3. According to the Inuit Heritage Trust, First Nations people "were also known to take Inuit as slaves in raids." Probably before Canada was established, but the article doesn't specify. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:07, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

According to our article on slavery in Canada (which I had not thought to look up before this question; amazing the things you learn on the refdesk), there was black slavery in both New France and British North America, so not all the slave ancestors of modern Canadians were American slaves. To be sure, the American situation was, at least numerically, much worse. --Trovatore (talk) 07:49, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also 2. Marie-Josephte Corriveau was rumored to have practiced witchcraft, but was actually executed for murder. This article also notes a few other trials in Canada during the colonial period. This may or may not be comprehensive. It should be noted that Wicca is a religion that was formalized in the 20th century, only a few scant years before Capital punishment in Canada was ended, so it seems unlikely that any wiccans were ever executed in Canada. As an aside, I did find this article which discusses a rarely-but-still-used law in Canada which even recently has been used to prosecute people for "fake witchcraft". Legitimate witchcraft appears to be legal in Canada, however. --Jayron 32 11:48, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the specific question seems to refer to black slaves in Canada so Trovatore's answer would apply but I don't see that US slaves who fled to Canada would be black slaves in Canada, unless they were also enslaved in Canada. Nil Einne (talk) 14:18, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

1. The majority of Black Canadians today have more recent roots in Africa or the Caribbean, but there is a population that goes back to the Black Loyalists, ie those who sided with the British at the end of the American Revolution, and left the newly United States. There were Africans in (what later became) Canada before this time but, as I understand it, a few individuals, not a settled community. I do not know of a black Canadian parallel to the Daughters of the American Revolution, for instance, but many families stayed in British North America and their descendants are legion; see for example Black_Nova_Scotians#Notable_people. The whole point of the emigration via the Book of Negroes was that these people were no longer enslaved. If you exclude them, it might be hard to find descendants of black slaves in Canada.

2. Wiccans, as pointed out above, are a C20 phenomenon, and pagan is a very broad term. You might be interested in reading about the methods of the Jesuit missionaries. It wasn't the pagans who burned.

3. Slavery among the Inuit is a fascinating question. Previously I had believed not, because the economic base is hunting, and you cannot safely control a captive if, to get economic value from him, you must arm him with deadly weapons. (This leaves aside the question of sexual slavery.) But on reading a bit more, I have come across a challenge to that assumption. These papers refer mostly to the American Arctic, ie Alaska and the Eskimos there. The Handbook of American Indians states "among the Eskimos slavery was unknown" (page 597 and also quoted in "Slavery among the Indians of Northwest America"). But here's a Reddit thread quoting historians and archaeologists, documenting Arctic slavery. That led me to "Raid, Retreat, Defend (Repeat)" - lots of warfare and slavery in the Arctic, though again, not where Canada is now. Still, the things we learn on the RefDesks! And check out the etymology of Slavey - the people, language, and places in the subArctic. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 22:31, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to have missed the points from the slavery in Canada article. Black Loyalists may have come into (what is now) Canada and been free, but white Loyalists imported their slaves, and kept them. Not in large numbers compared to the US, but not mere isolated cases either. --Trovatore (talk) 22:42, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, slavery was not abolished in British North America until 1834 by the UK Slavery Abolition Act. See Black Enslavement in Canada. However, the importation of slaves to Upper Canada (present day Southern Ontario) was prohibited by the 1793 Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada, which was the first anti-slavery legislation in the Empire. Alansplodge (talk) 18:36, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

15 types of Gregorian calendars?

The seven pages like Common year starting on Sunday mention 15 types of Gregorian/Julian calendars (and how often they come up). How is it not 14 (common/leap times 7 starting days)? --Tardis (talk) 04:20, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In case anyone's confused, that's since been changed to "fourteen types of year". The statement that "The up to 15 types of years repeat in a 400-year cycle (20871 weeks) in the Gregorian calendar" was introduced by User:Crissov last year. I also find that puzzling, but perhaps he can explain what he meant. --Antiquary (talk) 10:00, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Could this be perhaps a confusion for the fact that a Perpetual Calendar would consist of 14 possible calendars plus one chart designating which should be used for each year? (=15 pages) - Nunh-huh 10:18, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Or could he just have been thinking of the original year repeating itself as the cycle starts again, though that would mean a 401-year cycle with still only really 14 different types of year. Well, just a thought. --Antiquary (talk) 10:21, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Or the 15th type could be years of adjustment, which historically have been of unusual length in multiple eras :-) Nyttend (talk) 11:25, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, because it talks about the 15 types as part of a repeating cycle. I think it's an error. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 18:02, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As explained in the cited source, The Mathematics of the ISO 8601 Calendar, there are in fact 15 different years in the Gregorian calendar (According to ISO 8601 rules), because a common year starting on Saturday (dominical letter B) can either follow a common year starting on Friday (C) or a leap year starting on Thursday (DC): the former type has the weekend of 1 and 2 January in week 52 of the preceding year, the latter in week 53. — Christoph Päper 11:35, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ah! So there are only 14 types unless you use that week-numbering system. I think that needs explaining somewhere. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 07:09, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we should follow Nachum Dershowitz and Edward Reingold, who, in their book 'Calendrical Calculations, don't even call the ISO week calendar the Gregorian Calendar, and instead have a chapter titled "The ISO Calendar". I'd suggest having the main text say their are 14 types of Gregorian calendars, and relegate the calendars that assign weeks entirely to one year or another to a footnote. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:35, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What year had the most amount of different songs at hot 100 weekly billboard chart?

What year had the most amount of different songs at hot 100 weekly billboard chart?
If we count every-time a single gone to the hot 100 weekly billboard chart at a certain year, what year would have the most amount of different hot 100 singles?177.92.128.26 (talk) 16:37, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Billboard.com maintains an extensive archive of their charts. Here is the 1958 page at their archive. Click the individual issue to get the hot 100 for that week. You can get every hot 100 they've ever published from Aug 9, 1958 (the first) through the current. --Jayron 32 17:12, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There has to be a more efficient way than scrutinizing 3,100 of those. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:33, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Only if someone had already done exactly that. If they haven't yet, then no, there isn't. Someone has to do it. I doubt God is going to spend a miracle making it happen spontaneously. --Jayron 32 04:23, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well it also depends what you mean by "more efficient" and "scrutinising". I imagine a competent programmer could easily script something to automatically parse the data probably in significantly less time than anyone is likely to do it manually. But if SMW could do this they wouldn't be asking the question and I doubt anyone is going to volunteer and it doesn't seem the sort of thing worth paying someone to do unless SMW is very rich with both their history and again the fact they bothered to ask suggests they aren't. So analysing the data manually is probably the best bet. Nil Einne (talk) 06:41, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am not the OP. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 06:47, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, but you did ask a question to indicate that you didn't understand that a real person at some point would have to do real work to get what the OP wanted; both myself and Nil were disabusing you of the misconception that things happen without someone actually doing work. --Jayron 32 11:39, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I did miss that but either way, someone is going to have to do the work, and it's unlikely either you SMW or the IP/OP are capable of scripting something to do this without a lot of learning so the quickest solution would be manual. (Although the IP only left that one comment, it's likely anyone capable of scripting something would have thought to check out the site, and then not bothered to ask when they got their answer however many minutes later when they ran their script. And besides [9].) Nil Einne (talk) 12:00, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I just thought this question might be wondered often enough to be in a trivia section somewhere on the Internet. Possibly the Billboard site itself which has a financial interest in increasing interest in the most famous US song chart by having a trivia section. Maybe some of the hundreds of millions of Americans did it manually doing a tiny amount of the work each week for decades and put it on a website or one of the millions of programmers in America have wondered this before and scraped the site. Someone on Earth probably knows but whether that can be easily found I'm not sure. Especially in a verifiable non-original research source like some guy's claim that he (and his ancestor(s)?) have been keeping track of this in a notebook each week since 1958. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:15, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone is interested, that website can be scraped rather easily. The URL is formatted with dates, not random strings. For example, view-source:http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1958-08-09 is the Hot 100 list for August 9 1958. You can easily cycle through the days. Then, inside the HTML, the listing is broken into articles. You can pull all article elements from the document and the attributes include a style which embeds the listing number (chart-row--1 is song number 1) and the song title as data-song-title. So, if you don't care who did the song, you can get the position and title from the article tag itself. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 12:51, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

July 21

How do apartment tenants group together paychecks?

I recently read that apartment tenants could pay separately or together with the same paycheck, depending on the landlord. I don't understand how checks can be combined into one when there are two bank accounts that belong to two bank account holders. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 02:43, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How are you using the term "paycheck"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:38, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You don't give your paycheck to the landlord. You give a personal check to the landlord. The two years I lived in an apartment, I had two roommates. I collected rent money from each of them, then wrote a check for the full rent to the landlord. It wasn't complicated.--Jayron 32 04:21, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That is one way. Another way is that both tenants sign the lease, and both tenants agree to pay in one check. In that situation, how are checks grouped together instead of billing the members individually or billing members under the first tenant? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 11:10, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The multiple tenants could open a joint bank account... each would contribute to that account, and the check would be drawn from that account. Blueboar (talk) 11:27, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If it were a single-purpose account, that would be an escrow account; I don't know that escrow is typically used for something as simple as roommates sharing rent. I don't see why it couldn't be done, I just don't know that it really ever is. In terms of real estate, escrow is typically used as a means of simplifying the complex payments involved in mortgage servicing; the homeowner makes a single monthly payment into the escrow account, and then automatic withdrawals are made from that account to pay all of the various obligations involved in the mortgage (such as repayment to the bank that holds the note, fees to a service company, fire insurance, flood insurance, property taxes etc.) Rental agreements are rarely so complicated; all such obligations are born by the property owner not the renter, whose only obligation is to pay rent and services (water, electric, entertainment, security). Some rental agreements cover such services, but typically not under an escrow agreement but rather as being "included" in a flat rental fee. --Jayron 32 16:03, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You still use cheques for rent in the States? Not direct debits? How inconvenient! 86.28.195.109 (talk) 07:42, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It would probably be a standing order (initiated by the tenant's bank), not a direct debit (initiated by the landlord's). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:22, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, usually some kind of Electronic funds transfer is set up. As noted above, this can be initiated by the recipient (a debit) or by the payer (called an "autodraft" short for "automatic bank draft", see [10]. The only people who write checks regularly anymore are senior citizens who still use landline telephones and have tube televisions. There are a few times a month when I write a check for an incidental situation when it is more convenient than electronic payment, such as paying fees for a field trip for my kids school, or something like that; but even that gets rarer, many people now have Paypal or Square or some such. --Jayron 32 11:36, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And of course those senior citizens whom you despise also receive cheques (for example dividends on shareholdings). As you observe in the section above the cheques don't write themselves. They also don't lose hundreds of thousands of pounds from their bank accounts to cyber thieves because they don't bank online either. So which group is the smartest? 92.19.168.169 (talk) 16:22, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously not me, I'm an asshole. --Jayron 32 16:31, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

bankruptcy and freedom of movement

In most countries, people have the freedom of movement where they can leave their country if they so chooses. It's considered a basic human right for pretty much everywhere except North Korea.

But how does this right work in cases of bankruptcy? On the one hand, the government can't deny someone from leaving the country; on the other hand, we can't afford to have people declare bankruptcy then immediately leave the country so that their wages won't be garnished. Covfefe beans (talk) 07:18, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There are some strange situations in some countries. The vast majority of the inhabitants of the UAE are foreigners (expats, immigrants). If they are on the verge of bankruptcy (eg a small business they own has cash flow problems), it is a logical impulse to flee the country[11]. A few months ago, the law changed.[12]. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 07:39, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"the government can't deny someone from leaving the country" not really true since even relatively progressive countries limit or deny people the right to leave the country in certain circumstances. The general difference between places like North Korea and more progressive places is not that the progressive places never restrict the right to travel or leave the country but that in the progressive place you have the right unless the government considers they have a good enough reason to deny it. In places like North Korea, you do not generally have automatic right and instead have to have a good enough reason to leave the country. As with all things like this the boundaries can get fussy. Our Freedom of movement#Exit restrictions in certain countries and Illegal emigration cover this slightly but not very well. To give an example, in the specific case of insolvency, NZ requires you to seek permission [13] and Sweden evidentally allows the administrator to ask the court to place a travel prohibition [14]. Other common examples may be unpaid child support, unpaid fines, and being charged with a criminal offence. Nil Einne (talk) 12:11, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, there's the related concept of Debtors' prison which IIRC was discussed recently on the RD (or maybe it was elsewhere). As mentioned there the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says "No one shall be imprisoned merely on the ground of inability to fulfill a contractual obligation" and there are also various local laws which disallow people being sent to jail solely for being unable to paid their debts. UAE mentioned above is one country which still seems to explicitly allow this. But many other countries still imprison people for not paying their debts in certain circumstances, generally this is only supposed to happen when the person is simply refusing to especially when there is a court order, rather than being unable to. But how well this is implemented may vary. Nil Einne (talk) 12:25, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It also depends on the manner of the debt. In many countries, private debts (debts between private citizens) cannot result in imprisonment; however debts to the state may result in imprisonment (for example, debts on unpaid taxes, see tax evasion). --Jayron 32 12:27, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wanted to add: Debtors' prison is one case where our article does seem to do a good job in general (although still very limited in specific examples and also not that well sourced in places). Also some people question the distinction between being unable to and refusing to (or unwilling to) in my second last question Nil Einne (talk) 12:30, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Courts in the UK can require bankrupts to hand over their passport to the court, but this is unusual. The court would need some evidence that the bankrupt is a flight risk.[15] Matt's talk 23:15, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Anti-pornography feminism

This is not a question meant to convince people of my opinion, but more or less a question as to why people think like this. Why are men always blamed for the "consequences" of the existence of women in pornography when it's the women themselves who agree to it, fully support it, and oftentimes produce it, in the adult industry? Doesn't that mean that women against pornography should mostly be blaming other women and much less so the men who are the majority of people watching pornography that features women, since women are essentially the ones who undergo and highly encourage most of the production? Also, in that case, I question whether that viewpoint is even "feminism" anymore, but rather just people getting mad at other people. I feel like people against pornography act as if women are being held captive and forced to do it, even though they don't say that; they must think that if this is how they act about it. Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 17:15, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I see nothing in that section about blaming anyone. It talks mainly about them opposing the whole business as causing harm. Dmcq (talk) 17:39, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For one, some (not all) women are that slutty because men did sexual things to them as a child. I don't know if this is one of the more common arguments but it doesn't help. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:01, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

". . . as if women are being held captive and forced to do it. . ." I'm fairly sure that this is considered by some anti-pornographers to be sometimes if not often true, and in some instances it may be. For example, Linda Lovelace has claimed that she was coerced by an abusive boyfrend into acting in Deep Throat, and forced to perform fellatio (and other acts in other movies) literally at gunpoint. (I take no position on the truth or falsity of these claims, given the contexts of their being made.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.9.82.177 (talk) 18:19, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well I'm not gay but $20 is $20...maybe they blame men for using money to lure women into the industry. 72.38.213.159 (talk) 18:28, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well I'm straight too but I wouldn't have sex with a male for $200 billion. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:41, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why do some feminists oppose all pornography, and why do many have reservations about at least some part of the industry? The article you link to provides a wide range of answers:

Harm to women during production

Social harm from exposure to pornography

Women reduced to sex objects

Enticement to sexual violence against females

Rape of children

Distorted view of the human body and sexuality

Hatred of women

There are plenty of references in the article. I'm not saying that these arguments go unchallenged, but if you want to know why some activists take issue with pornography, this is a good place to start. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 20:35, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I read through that article and a couple of the main sources are not mainstream feminists but are heavily criticized by their peers and make arguments that all sex is violence against women or that BDSM is illegal as it is torture. Of 19 (talk) 23:37, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to know what the arguments are, you should peruse some of the writings of Andrea Dworkin... AnonMoos (talk) 03:12, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

July 22

How do modern-day people in East Asia approach Protestant and Catholic Christianity?

Do they approach it in the same way that modern-day Westerners approach Buddhism? -- 03:04, 22 July 2017 Uncle dan is home

Your question is almost meaningless in that form. Different Asian individuals from different cultures at different historical periods have reacted to different forms of Christianity encountered in different ways.... AnonMoos (talk) 03:10, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever -- you retroactively added additional words to your question, which only helps with the non-specificity problems to a limited degree, and which could be seen as a rather rude maneuver in terms of on-line conversational etiquette... AnonMoos (talk) 03:30, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OP, I and probably anyone who reads this cannot read minds. You should define "approach". 50.4.236.254 (talk) 04:17, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Many people in the West that turn towards Buddhism have negative attitudes about Christianity. Another reason is that Buddhism seems exotic. They also tend to be more socially liberal. Do people in East Asia turn towards Christianity because it seems exotic to them and because of negative attitudes towards their traditional religions? Also, are Asian Christians more socially liberal in the Asian sense than followers of the traditional religions?

In other words, do Christian converts in East Asia feel the same negative attitudes towards the traditional religions that Buddhist converts in the west feel towards Christianity? -- 06:18, 22 July 2017 Uncle dan is home

Thank you for beginning to clarify your questions. Christianity in Asia is a big area, even when it is whittled down to East Asia. You might want to start with Christianity in China, Christianity in Vietnam, Christianity in South Korea, etc. Oddities abound: my experience^{[citation needed]} of non-Christian Chinese people, worldly enough to be travelling in Europe, is that many have understood Catholicism and Protestantism to be completely different religions, as conceptually separate as Islam and Buddhism. Some were even surprised to hear that both C and P count as Christians. The early missionaries had a lot to answer for!

It is also useful to consider the role of the Communist Party in China and Vietnam; arguably the Party serves as a form of state religion, and so in turning towards Christianity, some individuals may be expressing (covert) dissatisfaction with the Party, rather than with e.g. Buddhism. The Party is officially atheist, and bans its officials, even retired ones, from joining (other) religions.[16] Another point to bear in mind is that not all Christians in East Asia are converts; some grew up in Christian households, and any negative attitudes towards traditional religions would not be because of having to participate. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 11:44, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

whether or not something is a state religion is subjective. some could say the belief in the "American way of life" was a religion, or, more broadly, the set of beliefs and values (sometimes clashing - what Dawkins recently learned the hard way) that characterize one as "progressive." Some have actually described SJWs as the "new church ladies." Asmrulz (talk) 17:08, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

calling something religion is a silly meme the purpose of which is to dismiss something as not rational enough. doesn't mean it is, doesn't mean the things that are not called thus aren't, and doesn't add one bit to the understanding. Asmrulz (talk) 17:12, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

there are, of course, actual civic religions such as that in Revolutinary France or the USSR. Asmrulz (talk) 17:15, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]