Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 November 22

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November 22

Native American groups

The intro of Seven Nations of Canada actually defines the "Seven Nations of The Iroquois Confederacy". Iroquois Confederacy redirects to Iroquois which talks about the "Five Nations" and "Six Nations", but has different listings. Are these the same Iroquois Confederacies, or are they referring to nations on different sides of what is now the U.S.-Canadian border? The six nations listed are actually the same as Six Nations of the Grand River but this looks like a specific territory shared by six of the federated nations? Can anyone clear up this confusion or point at some helpful sources? Thanks! -- Beland (talk) 01:11, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

There were numerous people groups who spoke Iroquoian languages and lived in the Great Lakes region. Different alliances, treaties, and confederations through out history gave existed, resulting in different groupings of them. That's all. There are different names because there are different groups at different times. --Jayron32 03:57, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Can the law define Pi?

What if the government pass a law to define Pi to be exactly 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587 ? Would the scientific calculators need to update their firmware? 110.22.20.252 (talk) 03:25, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

No.--Jayron32 03:52, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

For the same reason that no government can pass a law to make 2 + 2 make 5. Or even to make it 4, because it's 4 regardless of any such wrong-headed and misguided human posturings. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 04:01, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

If you're working in base 4, then 2 + 2 = 10. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:43, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

(EC) Are you thinking of the Indiana Pi Bill? Anyway it depends what you mean by "define Pi". Ultimately if there are no constitutional blocks, there's nothing stopping a government forcing people to use a certain Pi value in certain contexts or requiring calculators use it. It doesn't mean it will actually be the real mathematical value though, and unless there is a strong penalty attached in most contexts people are just going to ignore the government and use whatever is convient to them. And in fact, except for some very large countries, the government may find it difficult getting people to bother to make such calculators. And for those and many more reasons, it doesn't seem particularly plausible that any government in most of the modern world would attempt that.Nil Einne (talk) 04:06, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

BTW, in case you don't understand "most convient" point, while the value you gave is not Pi, it's an approximation with sufficiently more accuracy than nearly anyone is likely to ever need [1] or that I think nearly any calculator uses. In other words, anyone with a basic understanding mathematics will know the value is no Pi, even if the law says it is, but will also generally use a value with lower accuracy than the one you gave. If attempts are being made to force people to use that value, you're basically forcing a value of greater accuracy (but still not Pi) than generally used. If you just define it in law without actually doing anything else, mostly you'll be mocked and ignored. I guess some lawyer like people make use the value to avoid dispute, and maybe lawyers will actually try to challenge something based on the "wrong" value of Pi being used, but in any decent legal system, even with the weirdness of the government having defined Pi in that way, it's likely to courts will effectively tell said lawyers to bugger off after some wasted time in court, recognising that there is no actual difference to the result between the value of Pi used and the defined value of Pi. This would apply even if the value of Pi used was more accurate than the defined value of Pi. If for some reason the final result was specified with sufficient precision that the value does make a difference, it seems likely any competent court can be made to recognise this is false precision since the accuracy of whatever else is involved in the calculation is unlikely to be that high. Nil Einne (talk) 13:06, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I'd say in that case the lawmakers should define the gravitational constant to be 0 and go to try flying off a tall building.... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:40, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

The British government has done something like this. It's done away with the standard yard and the standard pound. The yard is now exactly 0.9144 metres (exactly divisible by 36 because there are 36 inches in a yard) and the pound is exactly 0.45359237 kilogrammes (exactly divisible by seven because there are 7,000 grains in a pound and it is the only unit which is common to all the Imperial weights). 92.8.223.3 (talk) 19:06, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

That is very much different. In principle, any consistent set of measures is potentially useful, and aligning different sets is not a problem. Pi, on the other hand, is a mathematical constant with exactly one correct value (and that, unfortunately, is irrational). And G is a physical constant. Changing it may be easy for Q, but is beyond most governments. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:12, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

On a side note, I thought it was the US government that did that. Did they do it at the same time, in a coordinated manner? For all intents and purposes, these are American units, not "Imperial". (How much business do you suppose is conducted on the basis of, say, the American gallon, versus the Imperial gallon?) --Trovatore (talk) 20:21, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Apparently yes: International yard and pound. --47.157.122.192 (talk) 22:21, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

On a different side note, sometimes standards bodies do define the values of physical constants, but this is not what it seems to be — it's really defining units by the back door. For example, I believe the body that administers SI, can't remember what it's called, has given an exact value for c, the speed of light, in terms of meters per second. But this is not actually a definition of the speed of light. It's a definition of the meter, in terms of the second and the speed of light. (The second is defined separately, in terms of the hyperfine transition of the cesium atom or some such thing.) --Trovatore (talk) 20:34, 22 November 2017 (UTC

And it's expressed in the standard as a definition of the meter, not a definition of the speed of light; the defined value of the speed of light is explained as a consequence. See section 2.1.1.1 on page 18, 23rd page of the PDF. (Link is to the US edition because I knew where to find that, but other editions will say the same thing.) --69.159.60.147 (talk) 09:27, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

They can define pi to be whatever they like in Australia [2]. :) Dmcq (talk) 19:44, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I can trump that: The following is part of Australian tax law, specifically s.165-55 of the A New Tax System (Goods and Services) Act 1999 [3]:

For the purpose of making a declaration under this Subdivision, the Commissioner may:

a) treat a particular event that actually happened as not having happened; and

b) treat a particular event that did not actually happen as having happened and, if appropriate, treat the event as:

i) having happened at a particular time; and

ii) having involved particular action by a particular entity; and

c) treat a particular event that actually happened as:

i) having happened at a time different from the time it actually happened; or

ii) having involved particular action by a particular entity (whether or not the event actually involved any action by that entity). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:02, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

I thought your 'I can trump that' was going to be another joke about Trump ;-) Those Australian lawmakers certainly seem to inhabit another parallel universe - "This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone". Dmcq (talk) 17:07, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

The present state of the US presidency is too depressingly awful to joke about. As for Australia, let me quote from my user page: Jenny Randles defines the Oz Factor as "the sensation of being isolated, or transported from the real world into a different environmental framework ... where reality is but slightly different, [as in] the fairytale land of Oz" ([4]). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:29, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

The tale of King Canute and the tide may be of relevance. --47.157.122.192 (talk) 22:21, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

• Laws are exactly like prayers, you can say what you want, reality is reality. I don't care how they define pi, as long as it's pecan. μηδείς (talk) 21:18, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Some Sort of Remote Writing Machine

• https://youtube/nRVEOZphmDQ?t=1m45s

A man writes ONTIME on a movable board.

• https://youtube/QaXZ8Nisyjo?t=1m28s

Another man writes down the boarding place remotely.

What is the name of the writing machine? Is there a Wikipedia article for it? -- Toytoy (talk) 04:47, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I am not able to view your YouTube links. Based on your description, perhaps you are talking about a Telautograph machine. Back in the 1970s, I worked as a hospital communications manager. We used Telautograph machines to rapidly transmit prescriptions from nurse's stations around the hospital to the pharmacy. We also used a Pneumatic tube system to rapidly transport medications and lab specimens around the hospital. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:55, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't do YouTube, but I remember when real-time train arrival and departure information at Toronto Union Station was provided by a man who sat behind a counter and got the information via a Telautograph machine. (In fact, the counter was set into the wall at a position seen directly behind the modern information sign in this photo. The ticket booths built out from the wall didn't exist then.) Anyway, here's a photo of a Telautograph machine in railway use: the first two lines would mean something like "time 09:00, train #647 on time, track 5" and I can't guess the last part. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 07:26, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

There's Margaret Atwood's LongPen... AnonMoos (talk) 09:25, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Net neutrality

Net neutrality is on the news lately, so I've been reading articles about it[5]. For countries without net neutrality like Portugal, is there any mechanism that prevents ISPs from shifting certain news outlets to a "upper tier", and thereby de facto censors these outlets? Mũeller (talk) 09:54, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

The customer's choice is a mechanism of course. Especially in a market full of competition any ISP who restricts his service will risk loosing allot of his customers to other ISP's that dont. This has already worked against the attempt of some ISP's to establish "flat rate" contracts that where in fact restricted with a monthly maximal traffic volume. How that will work out with potential restrictions on net neutrality in the future remains to be seen. --Kharon (talk) 16:58, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

See the 1996 Telecommunications Act which specified that so far as possible the internet should remain free from regulation and taxation. This is a free-market argument that realizes that the internet is the same thing as people talking over the phone to conduct business and personal intercourse, just with the added intermediary of computers sending the data at unimaginably faster rates.

Net Neutrality was a power grab by the regulatory state pretending that this communication was something different in kind from free speech, and that it should be subject to additional, and in effect, arbitrary regulation by an unelected and unaccountable committee. If you want to know what Net Neutrality does, think back to the bad old pre-2015 internet, back before the Obama regime made lobbyists and activists able to protect us from such evils as Twitbook, Snatchpat, Trinder, Widdlyleaks, The Darth Web, and GoFondleMe. Pray those days of congressmen and media moguls being brought down by the Alt-Shift-Right never return! MWAHahaHAHahaHAHahaHAHahaHAHahaHAHahaμηδείς (talk) 01:35, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

"Flags from foreign battlefields"?

Why exactly does Obama call the Star-Spangled Banner that way here with respect to it having been put up in the course of the moon landing? Foreign battlefields to whom? And why that plural form?--Herfrid (talk) 12:43, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

He doesn't. He is talking about the people who have planted the flag in various places, on a spectrum that ranges from "foreign battlefields" to the moon. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:31, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

@Stephan Schulz: Thank you very much for your explanation! Now the intention of that statement has indeed become clear to me – must have been really stuck there… So thanks once more and best wishes--Herfrid (talk) 18:53, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

You're very welcome! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:36, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

It saddens me that we still cannot acknowledge those brave Americans who struggled in utmost secrecy to defend this land from all her enemies—on Earth and in Space. Surely the veil can be lifted after all these years. See Project Hush, by William Tenn. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:00, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Did any delegates of the US Constitutional Convention consider specifying a number of Supreme Court justices?

It seems like an oversight if the court can be packed. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:37, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Rather the contrary. They will have preferred ambiguities and potential conflicts, unsatisfactory solutions etc, to surface and become visible earlier, vs. surfacing later. --Askedonty (talk) 20:56, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

They also probably did not foresee how important the court would become. Before John Marshall's tenure, judicial review was not really a thing, and without judicial review, the influence of the court is much reduced. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:00, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Judicial review was anticipated in #78 of the Federalist Papers. "The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex-post-facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing. ... There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid." As to Sagittarian's question, I don't know. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 01:05, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm sure the question of "how many" came up considering how concerned other parts of the Constitution (particularly Article I) are with numbers of people, but I get the feeling the intent was to leave such details to Congress, particularly given the broad authorization in Article III to legislate inferior federal courts into existence. Consider the Judiciary Act of 1789 set the number of justices with fairly little problem, and many of the founders were at that time still members of the federal government. Echoing the above, I agree that the concept of judicial review was still not so much in the mainstream, even if it was considered in Federalist 78. Consider Jefferson's reaction to Marbury v. Madison. But as to whether individual delegates to the convention specifically considered it? I would honestly question whether it even matters. I'm getting a little afield, but distilling legislative intent by looking at the intent of individuals involved in drafting a piece of legislation, or the Constitution itself, is typically not terribly helpful in solving a legal question. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 02:10, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Relevant, but not directly addressing the question is Chapter 3: Judicial Appointment and Tenure in The Majesty of the Law by Sandra Day O'Connor. In the early days of the Court, the Justices were expected to ride circuit as well as sit on the Supreme Court, that is, they would also sit at circuit courts throughout the country. The primary concern in determining the number of Supreme Court Justices was to have enough to be able to cover the circuit courts and still have enough time left over to sit on the Supreme Court. Now for OR: not constitutionally mandating the number of Supreme Court Justices allows the Supreme Court to expand with the country.--Wikimedes (talk) 21:18, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

• The first book Constitutional Chaff by Jane Butzner, 1941, (better known to us today as the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities under her married name, Jane Jacobs) is an excellent source for this sort of question. It culls the notes of Madison and others at the Constitutional Convention and lists rejected suggestions. Madison, for example, argued that the Senate should chose judges.

Benjamin Franklin suggested the Scottish practice of having the lawyers choose the best among them to serve on the high court, reasoning that they would naturally from self-interest choose the best lawyer to remove him as a competitor in clients and litigation. An anonymous delegate said that the make-up of the court need not be specified by the Constitution or by law. James Wilson argued that the law doesn't matter if the executive lacks character. The matter of number of justices is not mentioned so far as I could find after some reading at length.

In any case the history of the court is clear, the legislature determines its number and specifies its jurisdiction. JBJ's book also has an appendix showing the notion of judicial review was already on the mind o the conventioneers. μηδείς (talk) 01:13, 25 November 2017 (UTC)