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August 31

World Cup allocation vote

Hello. Regarding the assignment of a World Cup (soccer) to a country, how does the above vote take place? Thanks a lot. Andreoto (talk) 15:35, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See FIFA World Cup#Hosts. 2A00:23A8:4015:F501:6D20:FFB9:EB08:D5A2 (talk) 15:58, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

More detail than you probably want is at Voting Procedure for the Designation of the Host Country of the 2026 FIFA World Cup™ Final Competition

Does it cover bribes? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:15, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

September 1

Sir Alf Ramsey

Hello. Can someone please add on his page the source, regarding FourFourTwo's list of the 100 best managers ever? Sorry I'm not very familiar with it; I'm a bit rusty. :-) Thank you very much. https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/ranked-the-100-best-football-managers-of-all-time/8 Andreoto (talk) 13:37, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Done Not by me, but it looks like some other editors took care of this already. Thanks for the heads up. --Jayron 32 17:25, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

September 2

Name these two types of clouds

Please help me narrow the general meteorological terms for these kinds of clouds in art:

Thank you for your help in this urgent matter. Viriditas (talk) 01:53, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article List of cloud types may be a jumping-off point, but I'd imagine you've already seen that.

For A I would tentatively suggest Altostratus or perhaps Cirrostratus.

For B, perhaps Cirrocumulus.

However, clouds come in many variations of types and species, some quite rare, so someone with expert knowledge is needed here, such as a meteorologist or an airline pilot. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.194.81.165 (talk) 03:21, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with B, but still uncertain about A. Viriditas (talk) 03:27, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's a piece of art and not realistic enough to identify the type of clouds. A has a completely featureless top. That indicates it's some kind of stratus, but it's impossible to say which. B has small blobs, indicating it's some kind of cumulus, but again impossible to say which. PiusImpavidus (talk) 20:25, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

B is answered here. They are called horizontal convective rolls, or "cloud streets". We get them here in Hawaii. Update: it turns out that Theodore von Kármán, one of the engineers who studied the fluid dynamics involved in a type of cloud street (Kármán vortex street), re-discovered it (it had been studied by others in the past) when he saw it in a 14th century painting that depicts vortices in the water. Perhaps you will think of that the next time you dismiss a "piece of art". Viriditas (talk) 10:47, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Some pieces of art are realistic. These are not (they don't have to). Look at the distribution of the vertical extend of the clouds in B (as projected on the plane of the painting) and of the blue gaps inbetween. No way this could happen in reality. Successive rolls of clouds don't obscure each other in the distance, so they must be completely flat, all in a flat horizontal plane. This plane curves down closer to the observer. Closer to the observer, the clouds also get shorter, if you properly read the perspective. This artist has abstracted the clouds to the point that they only keep the essence of cumulus clouds (in B) or stratus clouds (in A), but lost the properties that could narrow it down to a specific subtype. PiusImpavidus (talk) 18:13, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You're free to believe that as much as you like, but the history of art and science says otherwise, and is at odds with your assessment. Researchers have examined abstract cliff paintings, only to determine that they may represent specific astronomical phenomena such as Halley's Comet and supernova SN 1054. In California, abstract rock art of the Chumash people is thought to represent a solar eclipse from November 24, 1677. The field of archaeoastronomy is full of hundreds of these examples. We know that O'Keeffe was painting about specific types of clouds because she wrote about it, and many of her abstract depictions of clouds have representational connections with specific, known meteorological phenomena. I myself have spent time photographing cloud formations, and many of the final, untouched images that I have captured do not look real, and could easily be confused as CGI, drawings, or abstract paintings. This was also one of the points O'Keeffe's husband made when he did the same thing with cloud photography in the 1930s. I think you are a bit too hasty in your Platonic dismissal of the knowledge contained with the arts. O'Keeffe saw what appeared as otherworldly and entirely unrealistic from her airplane window. Her abstraction of this image was not lost on people as much as you say it was. I have also seen for myself what this painting depicts from an airplane, and I am able to fully integrate the abstract qualities and to recognize it as something that actually exists ("cloud streets"). I think your answer says something about your own perceptual view of the world that prevents you from doing this, rather than something objective and true about the relationship between art and reality. Viriditas (talk) 00:47, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Also remember that while humans love to categorize things into separate 'types' and give them labels, Nature often works in continua, so sometimes a thing (such as a cloud formation) may be two things, or neither, or a hybrid, or a thing we haven't labelled yet. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.194.81.165 (talk) 09:13, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Doing a Ratner

A Jewish fruiterer in Stamford Hill trades under the name "Rottenberg fruit shop" (which appears on till receipts although there is no name over the door). Many years ago in Oxford there was a luxury car hire firm named "Crappers". Are there any other similarly unfortunately named businesses? 2A02:C7B:124:3D00:2B8D:308D:B18C:5BD8 (talk) 11:24, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

'Doing a Ratner'. Hey, I forgot about that bloke. Classic! :D SN54129 11:44, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For the puzzled, Gerald Ratner ran a nationwide chain of high street jewellers, which almost went to the wall after he told a conference of company directors that his success was due to selling items that were "total crap". In the aftermath he was sacked; the company had to close 300 shops and rebrand itself. His name is now a byword in the UK for destroying your own business with bad publicity. Alansplodge (talk) 11:59, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I found 50 Unfortunate Business Names That Are Also Brilliant. Alansplodge (talk) 12:00, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Motorcycle license, yellow, character 玉

Hi,

What country could this be located in? I was thinking mainland China as the vehicles drive on the right in the footage and store signs looked like simplified Chinese, but I was unsure. 50.101.173.184 (talk) 11:32, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have the title of the film? 2A02:C7B:124:3D00:2B8D:308D:B18C:5BD8 (talk) 11:48, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Which film? --Lambiam 14:42, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably the film in which the OP saw "the footage". -- 136.54.106.120 (talk) 17:04, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

None of the provinces of mainland China use the graph 玉 as an identifier on license plates. Folly Mox (talk) 18:25, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If it's relevant, that character appears (though not alone) in the article Vehicle registration plates of Japan, in the table in section Vehicle registration plates of Japan#Transportation offices and markings, in the 'Former markings' column of the entry for 'Saitama, Saitama, Ōmiya'. Of course, traffic in Japan drives on the ~~right~~ left – could it be a Japanese-registered vehicle driving in China? Is the OP certain that the footage was not flipped l-r? [Edited to add: Probably, because – as Lambiam points out below – then the character would also be flipped.] How old is the footage? What colour were the other characters and the background of the plate? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.194.81.165 (talk) 04:36, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think you meant to write that traffic in Japan drives on the left. If the footage is flipped, the character will appear as 玉. --Lambiam 09:20, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You are quite right, Lambiam. I've corrected the former and annotated the latter of my goofs. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.194.81.165 (talk) 18:45, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, I didn't know you could do that. Something to remember next time I mention ABBA. —Tamfang (talk) 20:08, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Could it be Taiwan? --Lambiam 09:36, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

According to Vehicle registration plates of Taiwan, a few special types include Chinese characters, but the one in question does not appear in the article. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.194.81.165 (talk) 18:45, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

September 3

National identities by ethnicity in England (the last)

Hello. A new census was taken in 2021 (the last one at the moment), and the numbers have changed with the majority of people in England alone now tending to describe themselves as more British than English. However, there is no data on ethnic groups (whites etc.) with their national preferences. Has this 'ethnic' census ever been published along with the general census? If yes, where can I find it? I'll send you a link, and in this link are all the ethnic groups with their percentages on national identity, and it's from 2016 in conjunction with the Brexit referendum, maybe it was the last one I think. Again, I'm only referring to ethnic groups, I'm only interested in those. Thank you very much. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/brexit-national-identity-and-ethnicity-in-the-referendum/ Andreoto (talk) 21:25, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know of any publications, but you can get the data at this link. You'll need to know how to work a spreadsheet. It seems to me that no ethnic group describes themselves as more English than British. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:28, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, the vast majority of whites tend to identify themselves as English, as this paper also points out, like the link above, but this pdf is from 2013. https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/code/briefingsupdated/who-feels-british.pdf

According to the data I just looked at and referenced above, that's not currently the case. Looking at only the 'UK'-whites group, which is the most English of the lot, I see 55% British only, and 20% English only. But that's back-of-the-envelope and approximate and I may well be wrong. With changing methodologies and this type of research question, making comparisons over time is always going to be problematic. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 23:14, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See also this recent RefDesk thread which suggested that there is some connection between English nationalism and right wing and/or racist opions - see:

Nationalism, racism, and identity: what connects Englishness to a preference for hard Brexit?

Alansplodge (talk) 10:55, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And to more directly answer the OP's question:

....for ethnic minority participants, Englishness was clearly associated with race or colour (white). Surprisingly, this was not true of either Welsh or Scottish identity, both of which were seen as potentially inclusive and open to diversity.

Citizenship and Belonging: what is Britishness?, The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), 2005.

Alansplodge (talk) 11:06, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

September 4

Is a conlang usefull as a cypher?

Is a conlang usefull as a cypher or able to work as one?177.207.102.151 (talk) 00:21, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That depends on context, I suppose. Although not a constructed language, Navajo was used in WW2 for example. See Navajo code talkers. In today's world of electronic wizardry, it's unlikely that you'd fool a modern intelligence entity for long, however. -- 136.54.106.120 (talk) 03:51, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My family have occasionally used Esperanto to avoid being understood by others – an ironic inversion of its creator's purpose. —Tamfang (talk) 20:09, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Trivia about the 1960 presidential election

Hello. It is often said that the 1960 presidential elections between Kennedy and Nixon were decided in Illinois and Texas, both of which were won narrowly by the Democratic senator. If they had been won by Nixon it would have been the latter who won the election, and many people claim that fraud was committed in these two states; there was never any clear evidence but I am not interested in delving into that. I am interested in another aspect; with Illinois and Texas Nixon would have won the presidency with 270 Electoral College votes, and since the "quorum" was 269 votes, it would have been a very narrow victory and probably the members of the Electoral College until the actual vote in December I presume, would have felt a bit pressured. I'll throw it out there, since one Oklahoma voter was unfaithful to Nixon anyway, in the event of Nixon's victory, would the 24 Texas voters and 27 Illinois voters have remained loyal by confirming Nixon's victory? Thank you. Andreoto (talk) 13:36, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are too many hypotheticals in this question (If Nixon had won... Would the electors (not voters) have remained loyal...) for this to be answerable in a meaningful way – any answer would be pure and futile speculation. --Wrongfilter (talk) 15:37, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note also that the slates of electors in each State are selected for each presidential/vice presidential ticket by the corresponding party, who will attempt to select trusted party members. I think this was also the procedure in 1960. There have been faithless electors through the centuries, but it has remained a somewhat rare phenomenon. --Lambiam 16:09, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

see unpledged elector#1960. fiveby(zero) 19:41, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

September 5

Venetian island

In the Venetian lagoon, directly above Castello at around 45°26′28″N 12°21′23″E / 45.441039°N 12.356454°E / 45.441039; 12.356454, there is an "island", or at least a couple islands in a patch of wetland that probably gets submerged at high tide.

This island is not given a name in any maps of Venice I have seen, official or unofficial, other than in a Navionics chart (found here) where it is labelled as "B Marani H", although I suspect this has more to do with its proximity to the Canale dei Marani.

Moreover, this island appears to be artificial; no maps prior to 2007 have the island existing, and Google Earth has no traces of the island in and prior to September 2007, until its (very defined) outline appears in the April 2010 satellite imagery. Note that although the outline has not changed, the features of the island appear to be constantly shifting, probably thanks to natural lagoon movements.

I have pursued the possibility that it has to do with MOSE, headquartered directly south near the Venetian Arsenal, but as I am unable to read Italian, I have made little headway. As such, I was wondering two primary questions:

1. Does this island have a name?

2. Why was it constructed?

151.198.1.205 (talk) 01:46, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It ought to be be in the intersection of Category:Islands of the Venetian Lagoon and Category:Artificial islands of Italy, but the only member of that intersection is Tronchetto, located at the other end of Venice, to the west. The new island is remarkably close to the current location of the MOSE control centre (see MOSE § Venice Arsenal), from which it is separated by only a 170 m-wide channel, and has a comparable size, so perhaps (speculation alert) the idea is to relocate the control centre to the new island once MOSE is fully operational. --Lambiam 12:49, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Google Maps[1] has the island tagged with "Unione Sportiva Carmini Venezia", the name of a local Basketball Team: [2]. I find it hard to believe they have any kind of facility on said island. --Jayron 32 16:29, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In Google Street View it seems to be nothing more than a sand bank [3]. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:36, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That might explain why it doesn't have a name. As a low-lying, likely ephemeral sandbank, it may not have a formal name. --Jayron 32 16:50, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it seems likely that the island doesn't have a formal name; a large portion of the islands in the Venetian lagoon have no name, and even when islands do have names, there is no consistent scheme for naming (for example, plenty of "islands", like Burano, are actually multiple islands grouped together.) The main reason why I'm interested in this island, however, is that judging by the solid, static outline, it seems that the island was explicitly constructed and not merely ephemeral. Without an explicit reason given for its construction, and with very little development after its initial appearance between 2007 and 2010, however, I'm still baffled as to what it could be, although I am pursuing Lambiam's speculatory angle further. 151.198.1.205 (talk) 17:06, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If it were constructed, it could be a Breakwater of some sort, perhaps as a form of erosion control. After all, Venice is particularly susceptible to such problems, given its unique geography. --Jayron 32 17:17, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's a fairly protected area of the lagoon, though, and an unlikely place for a breakwater. I just noticed that the street view images are from 2013, whereas the satellite images are from 2023 and show quite a bit of vegetation on the northeastern portion. Anyway, I have a few vacation days left, so if you pay for a trip to Venice I'll ask around. No? Okay... --Wrongfilter (talk) 17:25, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at arial views of Venice circa 1990, you will see that the island was barely visible. At that time, they were experimenting with dredging. In 1995, they went into a large-scale multi-year dredging project. You can look at arial views in 1995, 1996, 1997, etc... and see the island grow dramatically. Therefore, I feel that it is likely the result of dredge dumping. This is not abnormal. When a waterway is dredged, the material has to be dumped somewhere. In Charleston, SC, there is an island often called "Drum Island" that is not actually an island at all. It is a dredge dumping location that was built up over time. It has the same appearance which is created by going over the island with bulldozers to evenly distribute new dredge that is dumped. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 17:26, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]