Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 July 2

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July 2

What's the highest ranked team this World Cup that was "seeded to lose"?

By drawing a group with 2 stronger teams? What's the record for all World Cups since they moved to 32 and 8 seeds? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:24, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

You can work it out yourself using 2014 FIFA World Cup seeding. --Jayron32 02:43, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Presuming you're referring to the rankings at the time of seeding, the answer to this years world cup is England (10) who were in a group with Uruguay (6) and Italy (9). I think the fact that England was in a 'tough group' was well noted before the world cup, but in either event, England finished at the bottom of their group with Italy joining them in not going further and Costa Rica (31) finishing top! As for the record, it may be complicated and could potentially be higher than 7 or 8 which is what you may expect to be the maximum (7 for 2002 where there were two hosts and the defending champions were also guaranteed to be top seeds, 8 for other years with only one host but also and the defending champions guaranteed to be top seeds). It seems the seeding did not just rely on ranking on some other years, see e.g. 2002 FIFA World Cup seeding.

Edit: Of course I'm only really thinking of your question as asked. You could also imagine in another cases a team ranked 10 like England may have ended up playing against the 1st, 7th and 11th ranked team. Or even a team ranked 11th against 1, 7 and 12. In the first case you would have a team equally high, and in the second case, a team who's ranking was nominally worse but could probably come down to a single goal (heck maybe even a goal of another team unrelated to both of you); who either way would be, in pure ranking terms be in a much tougher group/'seeded to lose'. On the other hand, as you may know, Costa Rica is in the quarterfinals and Uruguay is not so being 'seeded to lose' only means so much. Perhaps partially because (as mentioned) of them finishing first in their group, meaning they only had to beat 15th Greece 5-3 on penalties to get there whereas Uruguay lost to 4th ranked Colombia.

Nil Einne (talk) 04:42, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Possible scam email

I AM RECEIVING EMAILS FROM TEXAS INVESTIGATION DEPERTMENT FROM ALICIA ROY. IT STATES THAT AN ARREST WARRANT COULD BE ISSUED IN MY NAME FOR FRAUDELENT BANK REGULATIONS. I AM NOT UNDERSTANDING THIS BECAUSE I DONT DEAL WITH ANY BANKS .FRIENDS ARE TELLING ME THIS IS A SCAM .HOW OR WHO DO I TALK TO,HELP?24.31.19.140 (talk) 04:27, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

1) When you type in all caps, it is the written version of SCREAMING AT PEOPLE. You shouldn't do that. 2) Contact a lawyer. No one here can help you with your problem. --Jayron32 04:50, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Umm, every time someone is confused about whether some email is a scam or not, they should pay a lawyer? I'd say, just listen to your friends, and keep a diary of what you read, and why you acted a certain way. Then if it turns out to be real, you have documentation of each step. IBE (talk) 02:55, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

(EC) I've added a subject to your question. Also please don't type your questions in all capitals as it makes it harder to read and frequently comes across as shouting. As for your question, I agree with your friends that this is almost definitely a scam. For starters there doesn't seem to be such a thing as the "Texas Investigation Department", I suggest you do a search yourself. If there were and your message is an accurate transcription of the email contents, I find it unlikely that anyone from said department would not know how to spell "department" or "fraudulent", and also that they would contact you by email without any previous contact via other means. In future, if you receive such emails and are in genuine doubt, try contacting whoever is allegedly contacting you directly. By this, I don't mean you should use any email addresses or phone numbers in the email you received. Instead, look online, in a phone book, ask directory services or ask a citizens advice bureau or similar for their genuine contact info. If you are looking online, make sure you only trust proper .gov websites (in the US) if it is allegedly a government agency. In most cases, you shouldn't even need to do this as it is extremely unlikely any random agency or organisation will be contacting you in this manner if you don't have previous contact, so you should generally already have their contact info. (This doesn't mean you should trust all phone or even in person contact.) Edit: See also [1] another reminder to search for details (in this case "Alicia Roy") on what you've been emailed if you have doubts. To be clear, it is very unlikely the person involved is really named Alicia Roy, that's just a convenient name chosen by the scammer that they haven't yet changed. Nil Einne (talk) 04:51, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

This is a scam, and the same name, "Alicia Roy," has been reported as used for this scam on other web pages. You can report this scam online to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center. Although there is no Texas Investigation Department, it seems likely that the Criminal Investigations Division of the Texas Office of the Attorney General might be interested as well, although investigators from that division have access to IC3 reports. If you decide to contact the Office of the Attorney General, there is contact information here. John M Baker (talk) 16:40, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Racially mixed couples / female partner preferences

I understand this might be a contentious issue. In the West (certainly where I hail from) it seems like there is an overwhelming number of Caucasian females choose black male partners. Whereas, rarely do I see Caucasian males with black female partners.

Many of these females I have observed appear to associate with disadvantages or broken backgrounds. I can't be too specific on that as these sorts of observations may be commented as subjective in nature.

But any way, simply put why is the ratio of mixed race relationships so skewed in favor of Caucasian female / black male? Is there a biological explanation for this (different genes for healthy offspring) or is there some sort of psychological aspect that can offer an explanation. Perhaps an act of rebellion, feeling of insecurity remedied by black 'macho-ism' or simply a manifestation of social rejection. Perhaps even compensation for a lack of father figure during development? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.6.96.72 (talk) 09:32, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

'The West' is a big place; you may want to be more specific, although given that you seem to think 'Caucasian' means 'White', I think I can guess.

That said, there are two problems with this question: Firstly, confirmation bias - you've not provided any evidence that your premise is true. Do you have any figures to show if there's a significant gender bias in mixed-race relationships?

Secondly, you're asking us to explain your observation in terms of a whole bunch of armchair psychology cliches which aren't valid in the first place. You've basically strung together a load of lazy racial and gender-based stereotypes and asked us to join them up for you. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:36, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I am a Caucasian male who dated a black female as a young man. Where do you get your information? Because it does not align with my personal experience. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 09:41, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm a caucasian female who dated a black female as a young man... not really sure how that situation would show up in the statistics though. :-P Katie R (talk) 12:09, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I might as well take the gloves off. Firstly my IP gives away my location, so you can feel great knowing that I'm not that white KKK loving racist hillbilly from Gatorsville that you want to imply. Secondly, walk the streets. Implying that I'm imagining this situation or making it up is just fantasy. Wake up. I'm asking for pointers in the right direction. It is of demographic / anthropological interest. Is that too much to ask? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.6.96.72 (talk) 10:18, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I asked you your location because I thought that would be politer than assuming based on an IP lookup. And don't tell me to walk the streets, because my streets are not your streets. I'm in London, UK, one of the most multicultural cities in the world, and I haven't seen any evidence to support your claim. I didn't suggest you were making the idea up deliberately - I'm suggesting that you've drawn a sweeping conclusion from very limited data. If you want general answers, you should provide enough data to show that the trend extends beyond your own casual observation. And again - the possible explanations you provided are hardly current in psychology, demography and anthropology. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:26, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

OK, so your IP geolocates to London! (Mine doesn't; it thinks I'm in Milton Keynes, so I'm not going to assume you're in London too.) You do realise that almost no-one here uses Caucasian to mean, 'white', right? AlexTiefling (talk) 10:28, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

• First, definitions of "race" are fluid from place to place, so there is no way to make any "world-wide" (or really, even "western", statements) based on the racial definitions from one specific culture to another. Secondly, partly because of this, statistics are not available in every country, and even if they are available, they are not necessarily comparable from country to country. Remember that the United States has a history of defining races a certain way, and then treating people shittly based on those definitions. Because the entire society didn't wake up one day in 1969 and say, to a person "We should stop doing that", then there is some interest in taking statistics to see if things are getting better or not, and if they are not, to do something about it. Now, having said all of that, on Wikipedia, all I can find is Interracial marriage in the United States, which only covers the U.S., but it says "Gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely. Some 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds." Without saying which U.S. defined race black males and females are marrying, and also knowing that marriage is not identical to "being a couple", we still get some indication that, in the U.S. at least, the OP's initial assumptions do bear out as probable. I can't find any similar stats for the U.K. based on gender, but there is this BBC article, which has links to some of the studies it uses. Perhaps your research may lead you somewhere there for the UK. --Jayron32 12:34, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Actually the OP said "an overwhelming number of Caucasian females choose black male partners". I don't see anything which supports this claim, if anything the data you presented suggests it isn't true. In fact, if you look at the article, there is this table Interracial marriage in the United States#Census Bureau statistics. According to that 50,410,000 married couples were a white wife and white husband. 390,000 were a white wife and black husband. I don't see any way 390,000 vs 50,410,000 (actually you should add the total of white wives, but the numbers are small enough it doesn't really matter) could be "an onerwhelming number".

Of course were are talking marriages, and it's possible that they choose them, but don't marry them or whatever. In addition your statistics suggest the numbers may be increasing. But even taking that in to account, considering their demographic majority, it's difficult to see an overwhelming number being involved.

To avoid confusion, I am aware the demographics vary question considerably so in some locations such as urban areas perhaps there is an overwhelming number partially due to a much higher black population. But as the OP lives in the US, I would assume they understand better than me that this is unlikely to hold through the whole country, let alone "the West".

Even for the OPs other statement, I would say it's at best only partially true. While the OP did suggest there was a discrepency which seems to be true, they also suggested it was a case of "an overwhelming number" (let's ignore whether this is true) and "very rare". Yet according to the statistics in the article, it's 390,000 vs 168,000. Your statistic of 24% vs 9% is similar. This is a fairly big difference (~2.5x depending on which figure), but it's definitely hard to call it a case of "an overwhelming number" vs "rarely". If the OP is seeing an overwhelming number in their specific locale, they should be seeing quite a few white male with black female couples too. So while I can't rule out the OPs experience applying to their specific locale which for some reason doesn't follow the general patterns, it does seem unlikely.

Nil Einne (talk) 15:48, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Just a guess here, since you couldn't be too specific, but if most of the interracial couples you observe are in porn, it might explain why you think of them as girls with daddy issues from broken homes looking for macho men. General porn attracts them, not black guys, and it's generally easier for women than men to shoot it. If I guessed wrong, nevermind. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:32, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

The truth is, you're not wrong in terms of white female/black males couplings dominating interracial pairings. They are the most common. I'm not sure there's been a ton of quality research as to the reasons behind this, but I did see a study awhile back where they identified black women as the reason why black female/white male relationships weren't more popular. They apparently did some questionnaires and found black women to be very traditional in terms of views of family and they see black husbands as a big part of that. Now, I have no idea how valid this study was and I don't remember enough about it to find it again for you to view, so take that with a grain of salt. Certainly the historical sterotype of black women seems to bear this out, whether it's fair or not. I remember holding this viewpoint in high school and college that if I dated a black man, black women would be pissed at me. Also, there's that line in Kanye's Gold digger where he talks about "leaving your ass for a white girl". There's a definite understanding that it's a situation that would be an irritation.

However, I personally think that whatever factor was stopping things before is falling away. I see an awful lot of black females paired with men of other races. I recently "liked" an interracial relationship facebook page (I'm not in one, but it looked interesting) and there are an awful lot of caucasian men looking for relationships with black women. Same with black women. Bali88 (talk) 14:28, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

• The premise is silly, provocative, and should have been closed from the beginning, but in the US there are about 5 times as many white women to date black men as there are black women to date white men. It's called math. μηδείς (talk) 21:14, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Your logic is a mystery to me. If you are saying there are 5 times as many white people as there are black people, then one can equally argue that there are about 5 times as many white men to date black women as there are black men to date white women. It's not math. Paul B (talk) 21:30, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes there's no intrinsic reason why the OP wouldn't see just as many black male with white female couples as they would black female with white male couples since the minor population differences between black males and black females, or white males and white females, are small enough to be irrelevant.

The fact that there's a lot more whites than there is blacks is relevant in the manner I highlighted namely that it basically impossible for there to be an overwhelming number of white females choosing black males, well unless we're talking about polygynous type relationships or the OP has a very weird definition of overwhelming, but clearly not in the manner μηδείς specified.

It also means that a black female is much more likely to be with a white male than a white male is likely to be with a black female. And there's a fair chance that a black female is much more likely to be with a white male than a white female will be with a black male. Or that a black male is similarly probably much more likely to be with a white female than a white male is likely to be with a black female. But the OP premise didn't raise such issues and there are already enough apparent flaws in the OPs premise that I don't think it's helpful to bring up that sort of stuff.

Nil Einne (talk) 22:25, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

While researching something unrelated, I discovered that the Office for National Statistics has today released statistics on this topic: [2]. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the OP's premise is false: according to Figure 1 and its accompanying table, 25% of Black African men and 19% of Black African women are in inter-ethnic relationships; for Black Caribbean people the figures are 48%:37%, and for other Black people 64%:59%. For mixed-race people who are themselves White/Afro-Caribbean it's 88% for both sexes, and for White/Black-African people it's 80%/79%. Among White British people in inter-ethnic relationships, the majority are in relationships with people in the White Other category. White/Asian relationships are commoner than White/African, White/Afro-Caribbean and White/Black-mixed. The largest sex disparity is that Chinese women are twice as likely as Chinese men to be in an inter-ethnic relationship; the next largest disparities are among Arabs (more men than women) and 'Other Asians' (more women than men). In short, the data do not support the claim, so the proposed explanations are unnecessary. AlexTiefling (talk) 12:39, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

One definitely good thing about all these allegedly mixed pairings is that their descendants will make it more and more difficult for bigots to make racial judgments based on skin colour alone. HiLo48 (talk) 23:04, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Some will always conceive a One-drop rule. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 02:06, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Or cling to blood quantum laws, for the differently different. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:34, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Absolute timing?

In the film Hudson Hawk, Hawk and his partner carry out synchronised robberies by singing the same song, even though they're in different places and can't hear each other. For this to work, they'd need to sing in exactly the same rhythm and tempo, and I know from experience it can be hard to get people to sing in time with each other when they're right next to each other. I know, I know, fiction, willing suspension of disbelief, particularly silly film. But there are people who have absolute pitch, who can reproduce the pitch of a note exactly without having to hear a reference note. Ask them to sing a song they know and they'll always sing it in the right key. I wonder is there such a thing as absolute timing? Are there people who can exactly reproduce the tempo and rhythm of a piece of music they've learned? Could something in Hudson Hawk actually be plausible? --Nicknack009 (talk) 16:37, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Somehow i doubt it. I believe our neurons fire faster in times of stress, and the timing comes from those, so I'd expect people to speed up their singing as the stress hormones get released into their brains. An MP3 player hooked to headphones is the obvious solution. Actually recording what actions to take on the MP3 would be easier to use, but the song would have the benefit of seeming innocuous, if they are caught with it. StuRat (talk) 16:51, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Those who are musically inclined tend to have a good sense of timing and tempo, especially if classically trained using a metronome. If one were ambitious, there could be found sources relating to tempo of syncopated spell-casting, alchemy, songs and chemical reaction timing, but a cursory search mainly turns up references to Final Fantasy XI.  —71.20.250.51 (talk) 18:44, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

The duo-piano team of Rawicz and Landauer "were legendary for the precision of their ensemble playing. They could start a piece together while seated in adjacent rooms; the door between them was then closed until near the end of the piece, when it was opened to find them still in time with one another".

I've just finished reading Paul Kildea's biography of Benjamin Britten (subtitled "A Life in the Twentieth Century"), where the point was made several times that Britten felt that every piece of music had one and only one correct or natural tempo, and even a slight deviation would sound very weird to his ears, as weird as the wrong key to a person with absolute pitch (which he also had; except that as he aged his pitch dropped, so that "I hear the overture to Meistersinger in "my" C-sharp major rather than C major - reasoning that it was simple enough to convert it" (p. 464). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:39, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Aficionados of BBC Radio 4's panel game, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue will know the Pick up Song game, in which the contestants have to sing along to a recording of a well known song. The recording is then turned off while the contestants continue singing and it is then turned back on to see if they have kept in time. Our article highlights Monday 26 June 2006 as one of the few times when this was done successfully. It also notes that: "On a few rare occasions it was found that when the song was faded back in, that the record had in fact moved onto the next track". Alansplodge (talk) 21:50, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm surprised by that. I said recently to my wife that I could keep good time by having some dance music in my head so she tried me out. I got too close to tell and probably within a second of a minute. I find people can usually tell if dance music is 5% slow or fast. Dmcq (talk) 20:35, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Citing a book without page numbers

I want to cite, in a Wikipedia article, a book that has about 60 pages, but none of them numbered. What should I do to indicate the page where the cited information comes from? Should I just count the pages myself? Should I indicate somehow that the pages are unnumbered in the book (say, by putting the page number in square brackets)? Should I not bother about page numbers at all? What would be the standard practice? — Kpalion^(talk) 23:56, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I'd try to find a numbered edition first. If all editions lacked a number, I'd either count for the cited page number(s) or cite the paragraph number (whichever was easier), and probably include a quote or keyword to indicate what the text is in case someone has access to it in a different edition. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:00, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Your first step is to see if the book's signatures (groups of consecutive pages bound together) bear signature marks (which could be a letter, a number, or some other symbol). If so, you cite a page by giving its signature mark followed by the number of the leaf within the signature, followed by "r" (for "recto") for the front of the leaf, or "v" (for "verso") for the back of the leaf. ( So the back of the 6th page in the third signature might be cited as "C6v"). If the work has no signature marks and is truly unpaginated, standard bibliographic practice is to include, if possible, some sort of locator in the reference, such as a numbered paragraph or a nearby heading or chapter title. For sixty pages, if there is no other locator handy, you could indeed count the pages, but I would definitely indicate that the work is unpaginated and that the page number is, say, "about page 40". But this is bibliographic practice; the style on Wikipedia is certain to be more arcane. - Nunh-huh 00:21, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

The word "unpaginated" occurs once on the page Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works (version of 21:28, 13 January 2014).

—Wavelength (talk) 00:45, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia has 287 pages with the word "unpaginated".

—Wavelength (talk) 00:48, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I have started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, with the same heading, "Citing a book without page numbers".

—Wavelength (talk) 00:59, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

The goal is to allow the reader to find the correct passage in the book, and be confident that she has found the right spot. Counting yourself is one method, but I'd add a note to the citation explaining where you started counting. Also, include a quote of a heading or a sentence from the book so the reader can be certain she found the passage you are citing. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:55, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, the first line at the top of the page could also be useful for someone skimming. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:00, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Don't count the pages. If there are no page numbers, you cannot invent any. If there is some other numbering system, such as numbered sections, you can use that, and it may even be preferable to do so. If not, you may be able to use a chapter number or name or other heading. John M Baker (talk) 16:15, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, that link is specifically about MLA style and it primarily talks about works like web "pages" that are not naturally divided into pages at all. If you're talking about a book, the pages are there even if they don't have numbers. Something like "20th page from the start of the body text" is clear and helps the reader find it. Of course if you're citing many pages from the same book, you'll want to use a shorter wording and an explanatory note somewhere. Something like "20th page^[note]" with the footnote "^[note]Pages are unnumbered; counting the start of Chapter 1 as the 1st page", say. --50.100.189.160 (talk) 19:43, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

My copy of the MLA Handbook (don't remember the edition number; I bought it in 2005) addresses this situation, saying simply "City: Publisher, Year. N.p." if I remember rightly. Nyttend (talk) 13:51, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Sometimes you just have to format a citation in a non-standard way. As long as the citation will reasonably help readers find the passage being cited, it is acceptable. Be creative. Blueboar (talk) 14:26, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Good point. I remember encountering a weird pagination issue in grad school that baffled my university library's reference desk; they ended up saying "Discuss this with the professor, and if you send this in for publication, you can simply work out the details with the journal's editorial staff". I agree that counting the pages yourself, and relying on that count, is a bad idea, due to the link that John Baker gave; however, it would probably be helpful if you included a <!-- hidden HTML comment --> saying something "In my copy, it's the sixty-eighth page from the start", since that might hinder people from tagging it with {{Page needed}}. Nyttend (talk) 17:37, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

I wouldn't bet on it. If you do a non-standard practice by accident or out of laziness, it will probably avoid a tag, but a tagger never misses a chance to put one up when there's no better way to do something... that way, his contribution can last forever. :) Wnt (talk) 19:37, 7 July 2014 (UTC)