Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 September 18

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September 18

Please help me, Wanna print really exotic looking thing

I'm planning of printing some really exotic and great looking Playing Cards. Can someone here be kind enough to please point to some site where they have (preferably) a variety of really exotic looking fronts and backs of such deck(s) in high resolution - that's a necessity. And yes, I am bothering ye good-guys at RD only after spending quite a lot of time on Google, while there of course got nothing that could suit my purpose. I'm hoping surely one of you may know of any site(s), or at least a couple of digital images of (necessarily high resolution - especially meant for do-it-yourselfers to copy).

P.S.: BTW, recently some wiki-user remarked that my wiki signature (the "Jon Ascton" appearing in dark green colour ) is causing problems (according to that chap it is the fonts within.) Now, he even gave me new wikicode to make adjustments. Please let me know if it's really so ? Please look if the browser you're using is showing any error message etc. when my signature is displayed. Thanks  Jon Ascton  (talk) 10:36, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

After all that time and effort spent on Google you must certainly be aware of the complexity of playing card design. There is a rather non-intuitive phenomenon associated with perception of scale distanciating distantiating the design phase from the end product. --Askedonty (talk) 05:38, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article Playing card with many interesting links, and this search gives a plethora of card images. There is also a List of playing card manufacturers. In the UK the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards can be contacted via their website. The OP's signature displays in white text on a dark green block inside a box. DroneB (talk) 12:05, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Askedonty, thanks for the new word "distanciation/ing". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:57, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

In truth, it may be a bit puffy a notion [1]. Notions of "thinness" and "thickness" like in there may have helped my keyboard slipping to it ( imagining those scales, out of bounds, I mean, seemingly lost without their boundaries, is frightening me much in my nightmares ) . --Askedonty (talk) 10:05, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

You should consider using vector files rather than rasterized files. See this category on commons. - Nunh-huh 23:09, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

The earliest population projections

This 1930 article titled "A Nation of Elders in the Making" made population projections for the United States of America up to the year 2000:

https://books.google.com/books?id=JTIOCWUCpc8C&pg=PA235&lpg=PA235&dq=%22A+Nation+of+Elders+in+the+Making%22&source=bl&ots=xhs7FJQsCO&sig=qmOqlVLt42kPmYcIFGypRZbvx0M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjfqIvvrMXdAhXplFQKHRuVAnoQ6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22A%20Nation%20of%20Elders%20in%20the%20Making%22&f=false

However, what I'm curious about is when the earliest population projections were made. For instance, have there been any population projections made during the 19th century? What about the 18th century? Also, what about before the 18th century? Futurist110 (talk) 20:06, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Malthus, 1798, An Essay on the Principle of Population. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 20:19, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Edit: Even better, check out Demography#History, which says people have thought about this since the Ancient World, and links to lots of names. John Graunt's 1662 book looks interesting; [2] Chapter XII predicts an increase in the number of burials in London due to both populationa growth and immigration, for example. But several much earlier writers are also listed. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 22:35, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Look up Washington DC in a paper Encyclopedia Britannica. The introduction says L'Enfant designed it in 1791 to be good enough for a population of x hundred thousand and country of y (200? 500?) million even though America had only a 4 million people at the time. I forgot the numbers but one of those won't be reached for centuries or at least decades after 2018. They haven't made paper Britannicas in like 11 years, look now before they take them out of your local library. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:16, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

• Benjamin Franklin wrote a notable essay in 1751 titled "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc." which was cited by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and several others in their later works. --Jayron32 14:13, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

There was somewhat of a lack of precise information about existing populations (much less future ones) until the first censuses were held -- 1790 in the U.S., 1801 in the U.K... AnonMoos (talk) 22:00, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Census#Historical censuses indicate that you're only off by a few thousand years. --Jayron32 15:11, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

The United Kingdom with Ireland came into existence on 1 January 1801 and the first census followed a few months later. Did they have censuses in Ireland and Scotland before then? People only became interested in census-taking in the eighteenth century when governments feared that the rapid increase in population would mean it might not be able to feed itself. There was a disastrous famine in Ireland early in the nineteenth century. The Domesday Book was not about numbering people but heads of livestock in the context of listing the value of land holdings. 92.31.140.53 (talk) 18:50, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Jayron32 -- Obviously I was referring to the English-speaking world. However, the majority of pre-1790 censuses (including the Domesday Book) were conducted for purposes of taxation, and did not arrive at a single number representing the total population of a jurisdiction, since such wasn't necessary or useful to the taxation system which then existed...

92.31.140.53 -- as you can see at Census Act 1800 there had been some earlier limited-purpose efforts. 1801 was the first "census of the general population" (i.e. systematic overall headcount) in England, Wales, and Scotland (see Census in the United Kingdom). AnonMoos (talk) 23:53, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

By the way, when I find such a long URL, I like to strip it to the essentials: https://books.google.com/books?id=JTIOCWUCpc8C&pg=PA235 —Tamfang (talk) 07:23, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your responses here, everyone! Futurist110 (talk) 06:35, 26 September 2018 (UTC)