The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.
Latest comment: 9 days ago13 comments8 people in discussion
(For clarification, a mouse story is defined as a story with talking animals that is centered on mice.)
We know that cats are often associated with evil in mouse stories. I understand why this is standard. But dogs in mouse stories sometimes represent the need to save mice from cats. Is this logical?? Do dogs often save mice from cats in real life?? If not, then why is it standard in mouse stories for dogs to be used to save mice from cats?? (I want an answer from someone who is a real expert on mouse stories.) Georgia guy (talk) 15:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
If you wait for "a real expert on mouse stories" here you could be waiting a long time. Some examples would help. Recalling Tom and Jerry I would suggest that the dog is more interested in getting at the cat, and the consequent saving of the mouse is incidental to that. Shantavira|feed me15:44, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
True for some episodes, but not all. In âThe bodyguardâ, the motivation of Spike the dog is to help Jerry, and hurting Tom is secondary. â b_jonas09:41, 15 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Surprisingly, this is a good question, it is easier for some breeds of pet dogs to be friends with pet rodents in the home than it is for cats, which appear to naturally want to hunt, torture, and consume them. Obviously, there are some breeds of dogs that will do this too, but there's lot of people who have dogs that don't kill mice, while cats are more prone to just freaking out and getting murder-ish. My guess is that the trope of dogs saving mice from cats arose from this, but is also a way to show that dogs are friendlier and more social with people, and by extension with other animals. Let's also remember the most important thing: in the last 9,000 years, cats were not domesticated like dogs, hence their wild predilection. Viriditas (talk) 21:28, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
From the human point of view (cats were originally tolerated around human settlements because they preyed on rodents who ate stored grain). AnonMoos (talk) 19:37, 13 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Don't Panic! The Magratheans are intradimensional beings who take the physical form of mice. What you call "pests" are responsible for building and maintaining the Earth. Be nice to them, they are working on computuational problems of such complexity your puny human mind can't possibly comprehend.Viriditas (talk) 21:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Charming as the image may be, I question the characterization as being nested. The image is that of a scribe holding a document with a text. The image is accompanied by an image caption, a brief text explaining the image. As was then usual, such a caption was not placed above or below the image frame, but written inside it (like film subtitles today, but with a freer placement). In this case, the whole is a wall painting; classifying it as a document is stretching the concept. Â --Lambiam21:06, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I agree that it can. The Wiktionary entry's definitions 2 and 4 do, I think, cover such wall paintings.
I am also not certain whether the 'caption' to which Lambiam refers actually is the black on white script, or the (more usual) coloured script below it. I would have interpreted the former as part of the illustration: however, not being conversant in heiroglyphics or ancient Egyptian, I cannot tell. Any Egyptologists present? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 06:50, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I meant the larger coloured hieroglyphs. The white object is part of the depicted scene: a scribe holding up a result of his labour. Â --Lambiam14:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
In which case, how is that depicted result, a document written in hieroglyphs, not nested within another document, the painting, also (partly) written in hieroglyphs, as Temerarius originally observed?
Tangentially, do you consider mediaeval illuminated manuscripts to be documents? Some of them also include illustrations of documents, which would also be 'nested'. The substrate of a document, whether parchment or wall, is surely unimportant. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 08:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Consider the document shown here to the right. Is this an example of a document in Oriental characters within a document in Oriental characters? Â --Lambiam13:09, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I can only say that there was no such paragraph extant in the small section of the work I studied in the late '60s, but as it was about the Siege of Massilia, one wouldn't have expected it to.
Certainly Latin school textbooks could be censored in such a way. I recall our Latin master reading us one of Horace's Odes that was, along with a few others, excluded from the copies available to us impressionable lads. It mentioned a slave being forced to bugger his master and "meeting yesterday's dinner coming the other way." Possibly III.6? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 08:54, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
His edition may have said something like "edited for the use of schools" which while it could mean "with any passages that might embarrass the masters removed" but could also mean "with an index and a gloss of the hard bits". DuncanHill (talk) 10:14, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Nothing to do with Caesar, but when I was taking an undergraduate Latin class about reading the poems of Catullus, there were only 3 or 4 students in the class, and we didn't all use the same book, and in the edition used by one of the students some lines of one of Catullus's poems was omitted! This was not a book intended for high school students, and not necessarily a textbook as such (probably more of scholarly edition), and likely published after the 1950s, but it was still censored to some degree... AnonMoos (talk) 12:24, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
There seems to be some important ruling/update from Supreme Court of India about 'Maintenance for dependent' (specially rights of divorcee women) including under section 125 of Indian CRPc code. (Ref)
My primary google search and understanding suggests, "Section 144" under new Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) replaces earlier section 125 of Indian CRPc code since July 1, 2024.
There may have been versions prior to Parliament passed the final bill, my wish is confirm the link WP article is accurate enough. Please help confirm accuracy of above given link as presently applicable BNSS law in India.
2) Please also give links of en WP articles related to 'Maintenance for dependent Law' (incl. Women) to confirm updates to the relevant articles.
3) I am just curious if en WP has any non-country specific general articles relating 'Maintenance for dependent'
It's more commonly known as Alimony and/or Child support. In India in the 1980s, there was the infamous Shah Bano case (there doesn't seem to be much about it in Wikipedia), where Muslims held numerous protests and rallies against the idea that Muslim divorced wives were entitled to alimony... AnonMoos (talk) 08:13, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
In the States of America which first cousin with opposite sex cannot merry, can first cousin with same sex merry?
Latest comment: 11 days ago12 comments8 people in discussion
In the States of America which first cousin with opposite sex cannot merry, can first cousin with same sex merry? For first cousin with same sex, genetics isn't even an issue. I only know that for Illinois, the answer is ânoâ, see [1] and [2], but how about the other 30 States of America which first cousin with opposite sex cannot merry? 2402:7500:92C:19CD:A1F0:F846:FD54:2CEF (talk) 09:47, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
As far as I can see that article doesn't mention same-sex marriages at all, which is what they are asking about. Obviously not all the considerations are the same. Johnbod (talk) 13:35, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
It may not be explicitly mentioned in the laws of particular states. If one law states that first cousins cannot marry (without clarifying language on the sexes of the couple) and another law states that same-sex couples can marry (without clarifying language on the degree of relation of the couple), then it follows that same-sex first cousins cannot marry and it would require an explicit declaration in law to say otherwise. -- User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:49, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
True, but unless that was specifically mentioned in the law against cousin marrige it would have no legal weight. To qualify for a legal marriage, the couple must meet all legal requirements and not fall under any prohibitions. One disqualification renders it illegal.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Googling the subject, a sampling of states reveals that the laws about opposite-sex cousins marrying are not necessarily the same as same-sex cousins marrying, so we can't draw any inferences. They would have to be researched state-by-state. âBaseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrotsâ 01:15, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Errol Musk is a former anti-apartheid member of the 1970s and 80s Pretoria city council. In 21st-century English-language sources, he has been covered in-depth for his controversial relationships with famous family members, but to create a BLP on him, we really need fulltext access to an archive of 1970s South Africans daily newspapers like Die Burger or Pretoria News.
Latest comment: 11 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion
> Was Andrew Jackson Senior a U.S. citizen?
> Wikipedia does not mention whether the father, Andrew Jackson Senior, and mother,
> Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, of President Andrew Jackson were U.S. citizens. 47.146.79.188 (talk) 15:13, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Andrew Jackson Senior died in 1767, so he could not have been a US citizen. I'm not aware of a source that goes into it, but Elizabeth could reasonably be considered a US citizen after 1777, since she was a free inhabitant of the states that joined in the Articles of Confederation. She died in 1981. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:39, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Tetradrachm Eukratides.jpg
I see this dotty round-end serif style in bronzes and other things sometimes, does that follow use of a particular tool? To me it looks a bit soldering gun-ish.
Just looking at it, it seems like they may have used a tool which leaves a circular hole to define the ends of some of the strokes, and then carved between these circles... AnonMoos (talk) 19:30, 13 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Alma Rattenbury was a song-writer, adulteress, and accused murderer. She had two sons, Christopher (b. 1921), by her second husband Compton Packenham, and John (b. 1928), by her third and last husband Francis Rattenbury. She and her lover George Percy Stoner (b. 1916) were tried for the murder of Francis. he was found guilty, she was acquitted. Stoner was sentenced to death, but his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, and he was released after seven years. She committed suicide by stabbing herself on the banks of the Hampshire Avon, less than a week after her acquittal. My question is what happened to her sons, who would have been about 14 and 7 at the time of her death. Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 22:28, 13 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
There used to be a British "right-wing populist" party that (1) was active around 2015 (2) was led by an Irish-born woman who happened to be gay (3) had a trident as a symbol. Does anyone remember what that party was called (and what the name of that woman was)? I don't know if they're still active. 178.51.74.75 (talk) 19:12, 14 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Per Left- and right-hand traffic, BC changed from LHT to RHT in stages. Why? The last page of [4], a provincial government publication, notes that the temporary disparity occurred in regions with no road connections to each other (so you wouldn't have awkward border crossings), and [5], from the Vancouver Sun, notes that the switch was delayed in Vancouver etc. due to the need to modify tram tracks. But why did the provincial government choose to switch regional BC before it switched the southwest, instead of waiting until the southwest was ready before switching everything at once? Nyttend (talk) 21:58, 14 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Looking at the facts with his mind set up on priorities, Superman in the forties started his career throwing automobiles around fighting vilains. Back in the twenties, saving the world was still considered urgent matter. So in the mountains backwards most of the traffic would mostly be going on using horses or mules and such - for an unpredictable period of time, and you do not change those sentients manners too easily without having they themselves realize by necessity they do have to. There may even have been requests explicitly expressed to that regard. --Askedonty (talk) 00:03, 15 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
The two sources that are cited give different explanations. The "Did You Know" item in The British Columbia Road Runner of March 1966 states:
"The change of the Rule of the Road for British Columbia from left to right hand driving became effective July 15, 1920, with the exception of the area west of Hope to Vancouver and Vancouver Island as there were no road connections. It was not until December 31, 1921, that the Rule of the Road became uniform throughout the Province."
The "Week In History" item in the Vancouver Sun of January 1, 2016, has this:
"The provinceâs Automobile Club had been lobbying for eight years to bring B.C. and Vancouver in line with Washington state and the rest of North America. The interior of the province had changed to the new system in 1921. But because of the retrofitting that had to be made to streetcars and tracks, the change in Vancouver was delayed a year."
The latter makes more sense. Vancouver was connected by road to the US State of Washington, where RHT had been the rule for decades. Presumably the pressure of BC's Automobile Club made the province decide not to wait until also tardy Vancouver was ready, a decision made more easy by the lack of EastâWest road connections. Â --Lambiam09:15, 15 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 days ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Hello, I'm looking for a short story, or maybe a part of a novel.
It's about a sacristan/custodian of a church in England. He fulfills duties with joy, but he can't read/write. As the (new?) priest notices it, and after discussions the sacristan gets "sacked". He then opens a cigar shop, has great success, expands and so on, but he still can"t read. The story ends that a customer or someone else asks him surprised: "You created all this, without being able to read? Imagine what you could have been, if you COULD read!"
The former sacristan, now shop owner, replies: "oh, that is easy! I would still be sacristan at St. -Elsewhere-."
Can someone help me? Sadly I don't remember the author, or the title, not even the church name. What I do know, the language was english. (I'm German).
Thank you all! William Somerset Maugham of course! Love his work! Must have read this story in a Public Library book many years ago, then! Now I have to get hold of a German edition of "The Verger", as a gift for a friend of mine, who doesn't speak english!
Latest comment: 6 days ago7 comments3 people in discussion
Hi, I'd like to point those interested to a discussion about the development of the letterforms at Talk:Proto-Sinaitic_script. (Yes, of course we're aware of WP:OR.) And I'd like to ask where's a better place to talk about it. A bit niche. I'm making a video series with novel hypotheses but I don't have anybody to give me feedback. Temerarius (talk) 03:09, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Having linked to the discusssion, and now looked at it, I'm quite certain that it does not belong on the talk page, or, probably, anywhere in Wikipedia. WP:Talk page guidelines says Talk pages are for discussing the article, not for general conversation about the article's subject. ColinFine (talk) 09:41, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
In fact, see particularly WP:TALKOFFTOPIC, which says It is common to simply delete gibberish, test edits, harmful or prohibited material (as described above), and comments or discussion clearly about the article's subject itself (as opposed to comments and discussion about the treatment of the subject in the article). ColinFine (talk) 09:45, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Note that that's strictly speaking not the same character, in terms of text encoding. The character you named is ° U+00B0 DEGREE SYMBOL, while the one used as an ordinal indicator should typically be encoded as š U+00BA MASCULINE ORDINAL INDICATOR. Fut.Perf.âž11:56, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Future Perfect at Sunrise: Uhm, many thanks for that hint. So in languages using the U+00BA MASCULINE ORDINAL INDICATOR, keyboards contain that character, while others probably do not (I on my German keyboard believed it to be a degree symbol)? --KnightMove (talk) 13:22, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Aha. "Masculine ordinal indicator", as in primero, segundo, tercero, etc. Exactly as we use -st, -nd, -rd, -th in English. Only it's easier in Spanish because all the masculine ordinals end in -o. âBaseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrotsâ 16:10, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Error: Thank you very much for that list! Do I see it right that only the numeral ordinators are considered characters in their own right, while all the other superscript letters as in p.za are really just that - superscript letters? --KnightMove (talk) 06:33, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Plus: The ordinal indicators o and a are also parts of abbreviations in that list: camp.š, carr.Š - do I understand it right that this is technically wrong, and normal supercript a's and o's should be used in those cases? --KnightMove (talk) 06:36, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
(edit conflict)Here is the teclado nacional, deprecated since 1971 but still in use when I was there [7]. Job adverts specified either teclado nacional or teclado internacional (the one we use). Monday is segunda-feira, but often written as 2a. The top left key seems to be the one for that. You can see the French AZERTY layout at [8] (note the penultimate key on the top line). On the German and Swiss QWERTZ keyboards again note the top left-hand key [9]. 92.10.146.73 (talk) 16:37, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
@KnightMove:: There are separate Unicode superscripts distinct from HTML superior letters. It also distinguishes the ordinal indicators and these superior letters. The Real Academia EspaÃąola's DPD uses C.Š with the indicator and C.Ãa with HTML sup in the same line. It is not using the Unicode superscripts. RAE is authoritative but our articles say that it is not followed by all language users. Probably professional typographers may differ about it and unprofessional typographers tasked with text formatting tasks will differ further. --Error (talk) 10:31, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 days ago11 comments7 people in discussion
Of the nine Federal states of Austria, six have a traditional English name, at a minimum Tyrol having a varied English spelling. Burgenland, Vorarlberg and Salzburg have not. In the former two cases, this may be explained with the rather young age of the names (1921 and middle of the 18th century, respectively). But Salzburg is really old. Why do e.g. Styria and Carinthia have English names, but Salzburg has not? Where does this difference come from? --KnightMove (talk) 11:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'd say for the same reason that Hamburg is written the same way in English and German, whilst Bavaria/Bayern isn't. The 'English name' of Salzburg is Salzburg, thus the same would apply for the state name. Presumably the name didn't create problems for English writers and they got used to writing it same way as in German. --Soman (talk) 11:57, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
The traditional English names actually come from (or via) Latin or Italian, so why not have another traditional name derived from German? The Latin version would be Salisburg or something like that, with a pronunciation that is not far off "Salzburg" anyway. --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:07, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
"Salzburg" works in English, "Steiermark" and "KÃĪrnten" don't. I mean Salzburg looks and sounds pretty much like an English word or placeneme might. "Steiermark" and "KÃĪrnten" look and sound like nothing any Englishman might ever say or hear. But as Alan says, these kind of "why" or "why not" questions really can't be answered. DuncanHill (talk) 22:58, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Also, English exonyms tend to follow French ones, Cologne for example. French "bourg" endings are Anglicised as "burg", such as Strasburg and Luxemburg. Alansplodge (talk) 08:59, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Without looking up the meaning of the word "exonym", Portuguese names for overseas cities follow the German - Luxemburgo, Estrasburgo. English names, on the other hand, follow the French: "Luxembourg" (I've been there), "Strasbourg". There are places named Strasburg in America. 2A02:C7B:232:7100:5830:3E14:CB16:6F14 (talk) 14:09, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 days ago8 comments5 people in discussion
What do they call it when a court argues it lacks the authority/competence to hear a case and directs it to a higher court? If there's an opposite of a writ Procedendo, that might be it. But is there such a mechanism? Cheers! ââSerial Number 5412916:17, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
That would actually seem to be the opposite! A high court sending a case back to a lower court? I mean a lower court that claims it does not have the legal authority so upstairs must deal with it. ââSerial Number 5412916:56, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think that's called a "referral" in England, but I'm having trouble pinning it down as the same word is used in a number of other legal contexts. Alansplodge (talk) 08:55, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
It depends on the context. If a magistrates' court decides at the outset that it doesn't have sufficient powers to deal with a charge, the act of referring it up to the Crown Court is a "sending", but if it's already convicted someone (or they've pleaded guilty) and it decides at that point to refer it up, that act is called a "committal". I'm not sure there is a general term that applies in all contexts. Proteus(Talk)09:50, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 days ago13 comments9 people in discussion
Do you know any monogram or cypher (royal or otherwise) that use the same initial twice and facing in opposite directions (for example a capital letter and its mirror image) either back to back (the inverted letter first, when using a left-to-right script) or facing each other (first the usual letter). I'm specifically interested in the Latin alphabet but if you've got examples in other scripts, do include them. I know there's a cursive double L that Louis XIV used. I'd thought there was a double E that some Elizabeth (Elizabeth I?) or other used but I can't find it. Anyway, any example is good and gratefully accepted. 178.51.74.75 (talk) 01:58, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
There are a couple of examples in the gallery at royal cypher that seem to fit the bill, most obviously that of King Carol II of Romania (not very clear in our photo, but described as "two opposed Cs"). That of King George I of Greece appears to be two crossed Îs (the Greek letter gamma). There are also a couple that don't quite fit your criteria because the letters themselves are symmetrical and so you can't tell what direction they're facing: Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai (seems to include two Ms) and King Michael I of Romania (four Ms with both reflectional and rotational symmetry). Proteus(Talk)09:42, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thanks guys. Is there any theory out there as to how this originated. Would this have originated as an abbreviation of a name being written in two different directions (the right-to-left form being a mirror image of the name)? Problem is I've never ever seen anything like that? Have you? Another possibility: it symbolizes the name (represented by its initials) being "broadcast" in two directions? Speculation. Any actual theory put forward in a reliable source? Also: any idea who first originated this sort of design? How old it is? 178.51.74.75 (talk) 02:42, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
"the development of the more stylised royal cypher seems to date from the reign of William and Mary. To emphasise their joint rule, their initials were interlaced and â apparently simply to add symmetry â the first R was reversed."[11] Â --Lambiam10:46, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
In GoodReads, the book was saud to be originally published in London and Tokyo in 1991.
I tried checking, and the Internet Archive copy of the book states:
The original publication was in 1989, in Nihonggo. It was in 1991 when Kodansha International Ltd. published the book. I originally wanted to ask the question here, but I might let other people know of this concern.
Also, I still can't identify whether the book is fictional or not (i.e. biographical, or a fictional character in nonfictional world). RFNirmala (talk) 13:52, 18 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
The original Japanese version was published in 1989. The translation was originally published in 1991, but under the title The Gambler's Tale (see here). The 1995 version (the "first paperback edition" from Kodansha) corroborates both of these dates, giving the publication date as 1989 and the copyright date for the translation as 1991. Dekimasuã!14:09, 18 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago7 comments6 people in discussion
Apparently the story of Abraham and Isaac occurs twice in the book. Do these stories agree, and do they belong to the category of traditions in which Isaac was sacrificed?
Temerarius (talk) 02:37, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
The story of the sacrifice of Isaac is only told in Genesis A. In lines 2908â2922, a messenger from God commands Abraham not to slay his remaining son. Â --Lambiam10:12, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Stout of heart he mounted the high downs, and his son with him, according as Eternal God commanded, until he stood upon the ridge of the high land in the place which the Firm and Faithful Lord had showed him. And there he built a pyre and kindled a flame and bound his son, hand and foot, and laid Isaac, the lad, on the altar, and seized his sword by the hilt. With his own hand he would have slain him, and quenched the flame with the blood of his son. Then a thane of God, an angel from on high, called unto Abraham with a loud voice. In stillness he abode the herald's message and answered the angel. Swiftly the glorious minister of God addressed him from the heavens: "Slay not thy son, dear Abraham, but take the lad from the altar alive. The God of glory is gracious unto him! Great shall thy reward be, Hebrew prince, true meed of victory and ample gifts, at the holy hands of the Heavenly King. The Lord of spirits will bless thee with His blessing because His love and favour were dearer unto thee than thine own son."[12]
There are indeed two passages in that translation Alansplodge linked to, one in section XLI (around lines 2897-2908), and one in section XLVII (starting with lines 397-416). The second seems to be part of a summary of the genealogy of the patriarchs injected within a narrative of the Exodus. Both passages contain the sacrifice story including the divine command to spare Isaac in the end. Fut.Perf.âž10:56, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Many narratives now in the 'Old Testament' are amalgams of oral tales that originally had different variations in different communities, and even after initial redaction may have been further modified later to suit a changing religious and/or political agenda. There is no doubt that the early Canaanites, who included those who later differentiated themselves as Israelites and Judahites, practiced human sacrifice, probably including of firstborns, so extra- (and pre-) biblical variants of the Binding of Isaac story where Jacob was sacrificed probably existed: the eventual biblical version likely reflects a 'policy change' of child sacrifice being abandoned as part of a general distancing from other Caananites, and identity assertion as a separate people (see Canaanite religion#Practices).{The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 (talk) 10:50, 20 July 2024 (UTC).Reply
We're talking here, though, about poems in Old English written in the late 10th century CE. The only knowledge its authors would have of ancient Caananite practices would be through the medium of the Old Testament. Â --Lambiam13:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
In RSV Judges 11:30-39, the Israelite warlord Jephthah swore that in exchange for a victory against the Ammonites, the first person who "comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lordâs, and I will offer him up for a burnt offering." Sadly, that person was the daughter, whom he loved. She agreed to be sacrificed because of his pledge. "And at the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had made. She had never known a man. And it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year." Note: these Ammonites were the Middle Easterners, not the Mesozoic Cephalopods. Edison (talk) 22:05, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 days ago6 comments5 people in discussion
I just bought a Treasury bill maturing on 12/31 with one of those brokerages that pay out only the day after. As that will be New Year's Day, my money basically doesn't earn interest for two days, compared with a brokerage that pays out on the day of. Suppose it were a long holiday. That would be money out of reach for even longer. Hardly seems fair. Imagine Reason (talk) 14:03, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Not sure if this is what you are asking about, but in banking there is often a delay between when you deposit funds in a checking account, and when those funds become available for withdrawal. This can be several days if you deposit over a long weekend. Blueboar (talk) 14:21, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
And during that interval, even if merely overnight, the bank can invest the funds in the Money market and collect the interest paid on it. For an individual deposit this will only yield a small amount, but when the yields of all such funds held by the bank are aggregated, the total is significant.
The same applies to funds paid to a solicitor for imminent property purchases and so on. In the UK, for some transactions the solicitor is legally obliged to do so, and pay the interest gained to their client; in others they can keep the money themselves. [Disclosure: my father was a solicitors' chief accountant, and made such investments daily.] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 (talk) 10:14, 21 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Define conflict. There was certainly some competition regarding delimitations of decision-making, that always happens. But what is important in this case is that there was no republican-level RSFSR Communist Party until the very end of the Soviet Union, unlike all other SSRs. Generally speaking power-struggles happened not between governments of administrative units of the USSR but between party organs (state organs implemented party policy, not the other way around). So the management of the RSFSR state government was directly under the Central Committee of the CPSU, the same party body controlling the USSR government. Towards the end stage of the USSR Russian nationalism was increasing in importance, in the sense of wanting more self-rule of RSFSR. The foundation of the Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was the key step in this direction. --Soman (talk) 13:25, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
While Russia had its own Supreme Soviet, as Soman notes it didn't have as many independent institutions as the other Union Republics, making it institutionally less powerful than the rest, even while its demographic dominance made Russians dominant throughout the Union. In my mind, this situation was somewhat comparable that of to England and the UK; e.g. Scotland, Wales, and NI have their own devolved parliaments, but there's no devolved English parliament, even while England is rather dominant demographically. Of course, the typical dominance of the Party leadership over both Party and government, at all levels, meant that there weren't frequent conflicts or disputes between the USSR and the RSFSR; there was nothing comparable to the West Lothian question, as far as I'm aware. Both scenarios have grown out of the same basic situation: a powerful core state of several centuries ago was able to conquer and annex adjoining territories, which in the 20th century were given additional autonomy, but there was no history of the core state being separate from the whole polity (because the core state functionally was the whole polity), and thus the top-level politicians didn't give comparable autonomy to the core. See asymmetric federalism for a discussion of the underlying concept. Nyttend (talk) 22:14, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Look, these geographic units are completely arbitrary. You can consider Afghanistan as part of all of these regions, and these regional identities are not necessarily mutually exclusive. If you define 'West Asia' as Greater Middle East, then Afghanistan can be part of it, but let's be clear that the notion of a 'West Asian' region is a construct that only exist in the mind of people outside the supposed region. In terms of Central Asia vs South Asia, Afghanistan doesn't match perfectly in neither, Afghanistan was not directly part of Soviet Union as the rest of Central Asia and was not directly part of British empire as the rest of South Asia. Then the UN georegions is a different story, but UN region allocation is not a particularly important categorization except for UN employees. --Soman (talk) 13:36, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
And it's confusing for UN employees too. WHO places Afghanistan in the ludicrous 'Eastern Mediterranean Region'. OCHA where I work, at least places Afghanistan in the somewhat more sensible 'Asia Pacific' region. (There is a concept called the "One UN" that nobody in the UN believes in.) Hayttom (talk) 00:40, 21 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
And other entities don't put it in Asia Pacific; Australia Post has five international pricing zones (New Zealand, Asia Pacific, US and Canada, UK and Europe, and Rest of the World), and per their zones page, Afghanistan is "Rest of the World", like Iran, but unlike India or Pakistan. I suppose the situation is like that of Germany and Austria: are they Central or Western Europe? See plenty of discussions of this subject at Talk:Germany. Nyttend (talk) 22:19, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Hi @Duckmather:. Ping template won't work if you place nowiki tags around it. I don't know, to be frank. Depends a bit on what criteria of 'culture' you are looking at. Afghanistan is majority Pashtu, in the border areas of Pakistan you'd find a lot of commonalities in terms of food, clothing, language, religion, etc. But what would be the 'cultural' link between Herat and Jaffna? I'm tempted to say that Central Asia is somehow closer, at least in terms of cuisine, but Central Asian socieities are generally much more secularized. Whilst Afghanistan has large Tajik and Uzbek populations my personal understanding is that there isn't the same level of cross-border cultural linkages as with the Pakistan border areas. But I could be wrong here. --Soman (talk) 12:23, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Lottery tickets are sold by "lottery retailers", which are typically not specialized offices but, for example, tobacco shops, gas stations and convenience stores. For example, tickets for Landbrugslotteriet in Denmark are sold by many, diverse retailers.[13] In some countries they are also sold by street hawkers.[14] Â --Lambiam10:05, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
This is true now, but historically there have been many offices/stores in Denmark whose sole purpose has been to sell lottery tickets. The Danish word for such lottery sales outlets is âlotterikollektionâ. My question is whether there is an equivalent word in English for a shop that only sells lottery tickets. Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 10:20, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Tickets for the National Lottery (United Kingdom) can be bought from newsagents, supermarkets and local grocer's shops, although at the outset in the 1990s, post offices were the main outlets.
As far as I know, none of the English speaking countries ever had shops dedicated to just selling lottery tickets, so they wouldnât need a word for such shops. Blueboar (talk) 12:53, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
When I was in Portugal the streets were full of people selling lottery tickets. I assumed this was normal for countries operating a lottery (basically all of them except Britain). There was also the Totobola, a kind of national football pool which I believed to be widespread in Europe, although I don't know who sold the tickets - the results were announced on the radio at 7 PM on a Sunday night. When the British lottery came in it was controlled almost as much as the football pools, the emphasis being on tickets not being available on the street, and the pools seem to have largely died out. Similar coupons which were not pools were not so restricted - fixed odds football coupons are available in betting shops.[Edit] Totobola is apparently run by the Roman Catholic Church. 2A00:23A8:1:D801:A94B:5D04:D466:F650 (talk) 15:17, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes, but that refers to any store selling lottery tickets - which might also (primarily) be a gas/petrol station, a grocery store, a tobacconist, etc. Blueboar (talk) 21:36, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
The lottery distribution network is based on that of the football pools. Nobody is allowed to visit National Lottery headquarters - agents come to winners. Bookmakers were formerly "turf accountants". It was illegal to visit their offices (the only place a bookmaker was allowed to operate was on the racecourse or at a dog track). Off-course credit betting was allowed, but punters had to phone their bets in (or post them). Notwithstanding, punters did visit their local "turf accountant". Every so often offices were raided - advance notice was given by the police of who would be targeted. Bookmakers employed "runners" who would illegally visit factories, hand out betting slips and results and collect cash bets. Pools companies termed these people "collectors" - clients could not visit the pools companies' offices but had to post coupons with the stake for the previous week's losing coupons. Later they were allowed to enclose the current week's stake. This system enabled those who wanted to cut ties with the pools company to stop receiving supplies of coupons through the post - they would send in coupons without money. The companies would then write back to say that because of the clients' "bad debts" they were being removed from the mailing list for coupons. Some collectors visited clients to collect coupons and stakes and they may have had an office clients could visit - Kelly's Post Office London Directory 1976 has an entry for "Vernons Pools: area office (7), 556 Garratt la SW 17". Otherwise, collectors operated much like lottery outlets - they did not advertise, but if you went into their shop you might well see coupons on the counter. One place you would not see football pool coupons was in the betting shops after legalisation. Television was not allowed, so commentary and results came over a telephone line from the Exchange Telegraph Ltd, otherwise known for relaying share prices. Casino bets were settled by cheque. In the nineteenth century the Prince of Wales was involved in the "Royal Baccarat Scandal", when it was alleged the gambling was conducted in a house where gambling was a business (and hence illegal) rather than socially in a private home. 92.29.246.121 (talk) 14:09, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I do not see a response discussing how it was done in England. It used to be that a broker (the predecessor to stock brokers) purchased the right to sell lottery tickets from the crown. The broker then ran a brokerage, where lottery tickets could be purchased. But, successful brokers didn't require customers to come to them. They hired runners to go to the customers and sell the tickets. Also, specific to your question, there was no requirement that a brokerage could only sell lottery tickets. They certainly ran a successful business to have the income to purchase rights to broker the lottery tickets. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 15:35, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Such shops appear to exist in at least one US state, in connection with the Ohio Lottery. Growing up, I remember seeing shops with names such as "So-and-so's Lotto", which suggested to me that they were primarily or exclusively retailers of lottery tickets. (My bank account is too small, and my awareness of probability too large, to allow me to patronise such businesses, so I don't know if they sell anything else.) But I've never heard a term that includes them while excluding convenience shops, groceries, etc. Nyttend (talk) 22:00, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 hours ago17 comments8 people in discussion
I'm reading this news article
[16] about 2 men who allegedly spray painted âFREE GAZAâ on an Israeli flag at a grocery store. The police are charging them with damage to property, disorderly conduct and hate crimes. I get why they're being charged with damage to property and disorderly conduct, but I'm not sure what part of this is a hate crime. If they had spray painted "kill all the k***s", that would be hate crime. I don't know if a serious political opinion like "free Gaza" is being treated as a hate crime. Or maybe there's more to what happened then was explained in the news article? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:40, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
The example with the slur is gratuitous (I'd suggest refactoring your question) and we are not going to be able to solve all of the real or philosophical problems involved in the war here, but to answer the question it would make sense to go to the applicable criminal code, which is here. The two are accused of "misdemeanor criminal damage to property", and the applicable law defines this as a hate crime when it involves "the actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, citizenship, immigration status, or national origin of another individual or group of individuals, regardless of the existence of any other motivating factor or factors." Presumably the prosecutors will argue that this applies, but the accused have not been convicted of any crimes yet, so some jury will be tasked with answering the question you pose, or perhaps the accused will plead guilty to lesser charges. Dekimasuã!03:33, 21 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Somewhat obviously, the lawyers for the defendant may argue that the request to end the war was not directed to an individual or group of individuals (who would not be able to end the war anyway, whether they want it to end or not), but towards the State of Israel, represented by its flag. The flag was presumably put up to express support of Israel in view of the current conflict, and the spray-painting was clearly intended as a protest against such support, but AFAIK there is no reason to assume that the store employees who put up the flag were Jewish, and even less so that the alleged protesters knew their religion, ancestry, or national origin, which would be a mens rea requirement for this being a hate crime. While it is generally unpredictable how a jury will respond, this specific charge (not by the police, but by prosecutors), unless they know something not revealed in the news article, gives a bit the feeling of throwing things against the wall to see what will stick. Â --Lambiam08:48, 21 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
(a) You wrote, "any country's flag". Last time I heard, the US was still a country. (b) I have a hard time imagining the hypothetical perp being charged with a hate crime. This may, of course, be due to a weakness of my power of imagination. Â --Lambiam13:56, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
There is no "flag of Gaza" (there are the Palestinian and Hamas flags). Anyway, in U.S. law, a precedent was set in the Bremen flag incident of 1935, when a Nazi flag was destroyed, but at the time it had a somewhat ambiguous legal status in Germany (it certainly wasn't the official main national flag), so a U.S. court ruled that no diplomatic insult had occurred... AnonMoos (talk) 17:07, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Nothing to do with flags, but though Gaza around 1980 was no paradise, Gazans had a large degree of freedom of movement then, and there were no heavily-fortified borders. The difference between then and now is almost entirely due to the effects of decades of attacks on Jews emanating from Gaza... AnonMoos (talk) 21:38, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Why do you choose 1980? Hamas was founded in 1987, Israeli blockade began in 2005, Hamas Gaza takeover was 2007. But you know that already. There have been decades of attacks on Palestinians emanating from Israel... But you know that too. DuncanHill (talk) 09:35, 24 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I presume that part of the issue here is that it isn't just "free Gaza" but that "free Gaza" has specifically been spraypainted onto an Israeli flag, which directs it "at" someone much more obviously than spraypainting "free Gaza" onto a local bridge or abandoned building or what-have-you. But to answer your question in general, you may be interested to read this article, which outlines how this sort of thing has gone recently in Canada. -- asilvering (talk) 04:16, 21 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I've been under the impression that the goddess Ishtar is not much attested after the bronze collapse. Not necessarily that the goddess disappeared, but that the name went out of vogue. What late inscriptions are there?
Latest comment: 1 day ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Is there such a thing as a list of authors of the Atlas Van der Hagen? In case this is an easier question: What I really want to know is whether John Ogilby was one of them. Elinruby (talk) 02:31, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
As it's you, I'm presuming the Portway is the one in Rowley Regis, West Midlands. Which would put it here, on 11 Portway Rd (there's a matching hill behind too).
Details such as the shape of the house and roof, the brickwork and placement of the chimney and doors and windows agree, so there can be little doubt it is the same building, unless a very similar building did not survive. (The building at 9 Portway Rd is its mirror image, and 20 Portway Rd is very similar, so more of the same type may have been built.) Â --Lambiam13:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Here is a specimen of the same type of post card, estimated to be from "circa 1910s".[18] Image searches did not turn up ads or packaging for Fairy Soap, Lyons Tea or Lyons' Extract with matching text and lettering. Â --Lambiam13:25, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I was amused to notice that the front door advertised Lyons' tea and coffee while the adjacent window advertised that "People who know drink Lyons' Extract" instead. Either Lyons was hoping for a presence in all markets or else they seem to have been undercutting themselves! --142.112.148.225 (talk) 02:39, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Tea, coffee, and (coffee & chicory) extract were three different products from J. Lyons and Co.'s extensive range of food products. Tea and coffee are beverages, Lyon's extract was mainly a cooking ingredient. Hardly surprising that a grocery would carry all three. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 (talk) 11:34, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 23 hours ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Any clue who the people in this video are (other than Kimberly Cheatle obviously). I assume they must be high ranking officials and not just random SS agents Trade (talk) 00:19, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
At the Oldknow academy, children were asked whether they believed in Christmas and encouraged to chant "no we don't" in response. The pupils were told at an assembly not to send Christmas cards and that Mary was not the mother of Jesus.
The original source is the "Kershaw Report", I believe (see opening paragraph of the article lede for context):
We are told that in or around December 2013, a Christmas assembly was held during which statements were made that children should not be sending Christmas cards, that Jesus was not born of Mary and that it was unbelievable that Christians believe in the Christmas story; children were encouraged to chant `No, we don't' when asked questions such as `Do we celebrate or believe in Christmas?' and whether they believed that Jesus was born on Christmas day.
The basic idea is that this is portraying "Islamists" disparaging Christianity by disparaging Christmas, I take it. Claiming that Mary was not the mother of Jesus seems a strange way to go about that, though. Going by Mary in Islam and Jesus in Islam, they're both somewhat major figures in the Koran (dozens to hundreds of mentions), and their relationship is clear and no different than in the Christian version. The modern Christmas tradition is such a hodgepodge that it takes practically no effort to pick any number of holes in it, so why come up with something so outlandish?
Maybe this is just a straightforward mistake? Like, someone at the assembly in question did say that, but that someone was a giant ignoramus, or someone else downstream misunderstood or misremembered what was said? Or maybe I'm missing something... which is why I'm posting this.
Double quotation marks are for quotations in general. Single quotation marks are for quotations within quotations. (I believe that in some old forms of English it might have been the other way around, but I'm sure it is this way in most forms of English today.) Georgia guy (talk) 16:22, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
wp:deny
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The source for the claim that children were told that Jesus was not born of Mary is behind a paywall. Can you quote the relevant passage? 92.29.249.130 (talk) 16:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
At the Oldknow academy, children were told at an assembly that they should not send Christmas cards and that Mary was not the mother of Jesus. Children were asked whether they believed in Christmas and encouraged to chant "no we don't".
I'm assuming their source is the report I quoted in the OP, so I skipped straight to that.
Generally speaking, the usual strategy is to flip between single and double at each level, AFAIK. So quotations within quotations use whatever the outer quotation didn't use, and quotations within quotations within quotations go back to whatever the outer quotation did use, and so forth. Using singles for the outer quotation is a bit, but not a lot, unusual in modern writing, I'd say.
In American English, the double quotation marks are on the outside, the singles on the inside. In British English, the opposite is common, but not universal; a habit originating in the late 19th century. There are more languages where single outside â double inside is common (for example Dutch, which has copied British habits). PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:41, 24 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
The Mary and Jesus of Islam differ in a number of ways from the Mary and Jesus of the Bible or Christianity: In the Qur'an, Mary is identified with Miriam of the Old Testament (the daughter of Amram and the sister of Aaron), while Jesus did not die on the cross, but only appeared to do so (reviving the old Docetic heresy). However, there's nothing about Jesus not being the son of Mary, and I don't think that such a belief is mainstream among Muslims, according to any information I have. However, disrespecting non-Muslim holidays is more widespread (some varieties of Sunnism in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. disrespect those Shi`i holidays which are not also practiced by Sunnis). AnonMoos (talk) 21:35, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
One possible explanation is that the author of the report made up the story that the children were told that Mary was not the mother of Jesus, ignorant of their significance and relationship in Islam. Â --Lambiam22:35, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Possible, yes, but again, it doesn't make much sense to me that someone simply making stuff up would come up with this, when there's such a wealth of more pertinent and plausible ways to criticize Christmas. The explanation that seems least unlikely to me at this point is that this is a case of Chinese whispers, basically: Something was said at the assembly, and something ended up in the report as a result, but there was so much distortion in between that the sense was largely lost. Especially if the report relied on a single account for this, and if the person giving the account was a child.
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