Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 September 20

= September 20 =

Chronological sequence of chapter numbers in nomenclature for English/British/UK Acts of Parliament
Is the sequence of chapter numbers passed within a given year (e.g. 14 Geo. III) determined chronologically? In other words, is it safe to assume (got a reference?) that the passage of 15 Geo. III c. 10 predates 15 Geo. III c. 18 and both were passed before 15 Geo. III c. 31? Thanx, CasualObserver&#39;48 (talk) 05:27, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * See Citation of United Kingdom legislation:
 * "Acts are today split between three series: Public General Acts, Local Acts, and Personal Acts. Each Act within each series is numbered sequentially with a chapter number. Since 1 January 1963, chapter numbers in each series have been numbered by calendar year.[1] The first Public General Act passed in a year is "c. 1", the second is "c. 2", and so on; the first Local Act of a year is "c. i", the second is "c. ii", and so on; while the first Personal Act of a year is "c. 1", the second is "c. 2", and so on (note the use of italics).
 * "Chapter numbers for Acts passed before 1963 are not by calendar year, but instead by the year(s) of the reign during which the relevant parliamentary session was held; thus the Jamaica Independence Act 1962 is cited as "10 & 11 Eliz. 2 c. 40", meaning the 40th Act passed during the session that started in the 10th year of the reign of Elizabeth II and which finished in the 11th year of that reign. Note that the regnal numeral is in an Arabic rather than a Roman numeral."
 * I found the reference to "chapter numbers" in these paragraphs confusing, but essentially it says that the actual chapter numbers (i.e. the numbers that come after the "c.") are sequential within the series, whether before or after 1963. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 08:47, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, that was fast, and greatly appreciated. I had an inkling it was the case from various similar regal years with available dates, but had searched w/o success for the answer. I will note that the various Lists of Acts of the Parliament... are currently set alphabetically and good for many things, but are not so helpful for researching chronological flow and sequence, esp when news took 6 weeks or more to arrive. Thanks again, regards, CasualObserver&#39;48 (talk) 10:11, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

U.S. Presidential candidates passing the 5% federal funding threshold
My understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong here), is that any U.S. Presidential candidate who gets 5% or more of the popular vote is eligible for federal funding. My first question is, Do we have a Wikipedia article with info on this?

My second question is, in terms of third-party candidates, which candidates, aside from Ross Perot (with his incredible 18.91% of the popular vote), have ever achieved this threshold? And in which elections?

Also, as a third question, is Gary Johnson given any significant chance by the pollsters of passing the threshold this coming election? Eliyohub (talk) 10:39, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This seems to have information federal funding of political candidates. Here is a run down of the most recent poll results from MANY different sources; not every poll contains the option for Johnson, those that do indicate he is polling in the 8%-9% range, though some have as low as 3% and others as high as 14%.  As to your second question, EVERY Wikipedia article on U.S. elections has popular vote numbers for any candidate who polled significant numbers.  -- Jayron 32 10:44, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * List of third party performances in United States presidential elections should answer the second question.--Wikimedes (talk) 19:44, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Do terrorists choose days with transfers of authority?
I remember seeing that during the September 11th attacks, the person who grounded all the air traffic in the country was on his first day on the job. A recent round of attacks in the New York City area occurred on the first day of the NYC Police Commissioner. It isn't the first thing an American would think of, since we assume the rank-and-file does all the important stuff, but I'm wondering if someone from the Middle East might expect a police department to be paralyzed during such a changeover. And of course it does have some effect - if you're going to pick a day, might as well be that one.

Are there other attacks that have fit this model, or any commentary along this line? Wnt (talk) 14:25, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * In the current case, the bomber could not possibly have known when the new Commissioner would take office. --Viennese Waltz 14:41, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Unless he had some inside information. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:54, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Also beware of confirmation bias and anomaly hunting. How many people are new on the job on any given day? The fire chief, I think, was not exchanged. Nor the mayor. If you want to test your theory, you would first need to define all the positions you would consider to be relevant - and do so a-priori, without looking at the data. Then crunch the numbers and see if there is a correlation between un unusual number of job changers and terrorist attacks. And then probably discount it for all the terror act performed by people fired who try to get their successor ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:15, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Anomaly hunting is better known as a form of cherry picking. -- Jayron 32 15:45, 20 September 2016 (UTC)


 * According to a History-Channel like documentary I saw, early September was chosen as having the least cloudy weather in the North East statistically (in fact, I get "triggered" by beautiful fall days like that one to this day). 9/11 was chosen specifically because it was a Tuesday, rather than a Monday which may have people calling out of work for a long weekend, and symbolically because 9-1-1 is the number Americans call for emergency services. Of course that association didn't take hold, since Americans say nine-eleven in the first place and nine-one-one in the second.


 * The response to the attacks was led by firemen, not police officers. Of course a google search of why was september 11 chosen gives a plethora of answers. μηδείς (talk) 00:42, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Japanese Q-ships
In one of the battle scenes in the movie Operation Pacific, the American submarine is decoyed and attacked by a Japanese version of what was called a "Q-ship" during World War I. Did Japan use Q-ships at all during World War II? Our Q-ship article's World War II section says nothing about them being used in the Pacific, aside from some American vessels. Nyttend (talk) 19:28, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Does this help? -- Jayron 32 19:35, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Interesting; not sure why I didn't find that before. Nyttend (talk) 19:39, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I have added a brief paragraph to the Q-ship article, using Jayron's link as a reference. Alansplodge (talk) 19:42, 22 September 2016 (UTC)