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

= March 18 =

Meaning of this line of numerals
What's the meaning of these ( marked by OP ) numbers, please ? Which can be often seen on the pages depicting their copyright notice etc. ( though not in all books, why ?)150.129.196.80 (talk) 11:53, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * is it a Printers key? Eddie891 Talk Work 12:04, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Also knows as a number line or a publisher's code . That article includes examples with alternating numbers similar to the OP's example. Wymspen (talk) 12:36, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Abdication in Catholic vs Protestant monarchies
Is it a coincidence that modern Protestant monarchs assume lesser titles following their abdications, while Catholic monarchs retain theirs? For example, the British king Edward VIII became Prince Edward upon his abdication, while the Spanish king Juan Carlos has remained King Juan Carlos. The precedent was set by previous Spanish monarchs who abdicated. Dutch monarchs routinely abdicate and revert to their princely titles (with the exception of William I), but their peers in the neighbouring Catholic monarchies of Belgium and Luxembourg remain kings and grand dukes respectively. Thus the living former monarchs in Europe are Princess Beatrix, King Albert II, King Juan Carlos, and Grand Duke Jean. We might even throw in Pope Benedict XVI. Similarly, when Protestant princes (as has happened in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands) renounce their succession rights, they also lose their titles. Catholic princes (e.g. in Luxembourg, Austria-Hungary and Spain) retain their titles even if they renounce their succession rights. Is there an explanation for this? A remnant of the divine right of kings? Surtsicna (talk) 16:51, 18 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Albert II did have a change of title upon abdication: from The King of the Belgians to King Albert II of Belgium. Admittedly, "King" featured in both titles.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  18:47, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Juan Carlos also went from "The King of Spain" to "King Juan Carlos of Spain". The point is they remained kings and Majesties, unlike Beatrix. What I wonder is why Catholic monarchs retain their rank while the Protestant ones revert to a lesser rank. Surtsicna (talk) 23:10, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This is just a random thing, for some reasons in certain places people thought it would be confusing to have 2 people alive that are Kings, but it is not confusing to have 2 people alive that are Queens. Language evolves randomly that way, I am not sure that protestantism has much to do with it. In the opposite direction, the US introduce their ex-presidents as "President" e.g. "President Obama", whereas the French would not introduce their ex-president as "President Hollande". --Lgriot (talk) 13:42, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I reckon it's only coincidental, as the governments decide on the post-reign titles of former monarchs. GoodDay (talk) 21:39, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Why is Magnus Carlsen's FIDE blitz rating so high?
It's 2965 and has reached 2986. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:08, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I looked him up to see what this post is about. He is the chess champion, for the benefit of anyone else who doesn’t follow the sport/game. Edison (talk) 14:38, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A player's FIDE rating is simply an indication of how good a chess player someone is: the more games someone wins, the higher their rating. Carlsen is the world champion, and very good at playing rapid chess. As to why he is so much better than others at that form of chess - well, that's a mystery. No-one really knows why anyone is particularly good at chess - though it must be something to do with having the right sort of mind. Wymspen (talk) 15:05, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * (ec)The link is, of course, at Magnus Carlsen. The other relevant link is at Elo rating system (which is the system used by FIDE). In short, Carlsen has has such a high rating, because he has won a lot of Blitz games against other strong players. In particular, the FIDE Blitz rating is a relative ranking of ability in this particular category - you cannot reasonably compare the absolute value in the Blitz category with the one in the plain category, and deduce that Carlsen under Blitz constraints would beat Carlsen with more time because the Elo score is better (you can, on the other hand, correctly infer that Carlsen, left-handed, blinded, under Blitz conditions, and with Hellraiser on a set of headphones with an irregular intermittent short circuit, would win all games of a simultaneous chess game against 48 clones of myself ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:16, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Of course Carlsen isn't weaker when he has dozens of times more time to think but since Carlsen has never been above 2882 regular one wonders if that gives any information about whether he's more likely to score higher in a double round robin tournament if its blitz (with the conditions as similar as possible: same players, player order, black/white order, average tournament importance compared to the games that affect his elos, representative distribution of opponent elos compared to the games affecting his elo, same opponent elo percentile distribution as far as possible with the opponents being the same for both blitz and regular (most players good enough to enter the same FIDE tournaments as him probably have both a FIDE blitz and FIDE regular elo so that might not cause much of a too loosely connected Venn diagram problem)..). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:30, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

The US has 50 states and the Republic of Ireland has 26 counties
Everybody in those countries knows the fact about their own country. Are there any other countries where it is universal to know how many top level administrative divisions there are? Muzzleflash (talk) 18:19, 18 March 2018 (UTC)


 * In Canada, yes - especially since there are only 13. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:22, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Ulster - even more so than the Republic. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:58, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Though Northern Ireland now has 11 districts, while the six historic counties have no administrative role. Wymspen (talk) 22:15, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Ulster wasn't "six counties" either. But it's still a literal article of faith to talk about it as such. The idea of anyone saying they live in one of "11 districts" is used about as much as people in South Wales thinking they're in some "Torfaen" rather than Gwent or Monmouthshire. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:36, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * US states are not "administrative divisions". --Trovatore (talk) 22:13, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * How about "maladministrative multiplications" then? Wymspen (talk) 22:19, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The United States is based on a form of federalism that considers states as partial sovereigns (divided sovereignty). The states do not owe their existence to the United States.  It's the other way around. --Trovatore (talk) 22:34, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Eh, I'd say that's not 100% accurate. Yes, the states are sovereign individuals that cannot be unilaterally changed, but for the vast majority of them, they were explicitly created by the federal congress. Land was acquired; it divided into civil territories, which were sometimes created, destroyed, or modified; then after a certain threshold of population had been reached, Congress might vote to admit them as a state. To say that the state of Wyoming, for example, doesn't owe its existence to the federal government, despite being admitted as a state after being formed as a federal territory after the land was acquired from various local and foreign powers... is way over-simplifying the matter. --Golbez (talk) 19:10, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, that's a fair point. Still, once Wyoming was admitted to the community of states, it became a sovereign state equal to the others (in the appropriate sense of the word "equal").
 * To me, "administrative subdivision" implies that policy comes from the top, but that for convenience or other reasons the administration of that policy is divided into smaller units. That isn't the way the US works, in spite of repeated efforts to make it work that way from both left and right. --Trovatore (talk) 17:53, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Everyone keeps returning the letters when I affix the Federative Republic of Rhode Island. Official languages English, Spanish, and posh English. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:05, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Try "State of Rhode Island". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:00, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * No such state exists. The official name is "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations", as defined in the local constitution. "We, the people of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, grateful to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to secure and to transmit the same, unimpaired, to succeeding generations, do ordain and establish this Constitution of government."Dimadick (talk) 15:01, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * People do not always hew to strict formal definitions. Referring to U.S. states as "top-level" or "first-level divisions" is commonplace, including on this very wiki. The U.S. is not the only federal state. --47.146.60.177 (talk) 05:11, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Only the ignorant or non-Americans. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:16, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Let's put it this way. The County of Los Angeles and the City of Los Angeles are properly called first- and second-level divisions of the State of California.  If California wished, it could slice and dice the counties.  It could revoke the City's charter.  I think it could do all this without a constitutional amendment, without a vote of the people, without even a supermajority in the legislature.  It would just be the same as any other legislation.  I could be wrong about that (I would be interested to find out), but in any case at most it might require a constitutional amendment.
 * The United States cannot do any such thing to the State of California. Indeed, California's equal representation in the Senate is guaranteed by the Constitution, in a way that cannot even be amended. --Trovatore (talk) 06:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Cannot even be amended without the state's consent. --69.159.62.113 (talk) 08:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, I guess you are right. But why bother make such a pedantic point and sidetrack the question? Muzzleflash (talk) 10:53, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Figure out why it's so irritating to hear states described as "administrative divisions", and you might get insight into why Americans generally know how many there are. --Trovatore (talk) 17:39, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * As a U.S. citizen, I'm sorry, but this sounds to me rather like American exceptionalism of the sort that tends to engender dislike for the U.S. "The U.S.'s political structure is so different from the rest of the world that you can't use the customary political science terminology employed when talking about every other country." The United Arab Emirates is a federation of emirates, which each retain all powers not granted to the federal government. Are you similarly insistent about terminology when discussing them? --47.146.60.177 (talk) 02:41, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Indeed, I'd suggest that the states were agreeing to become administrative subdivisions at the time they ratified the Constitution (the original 13, which were sovereign states under the Treaty of Paris) or applied to join the union. The phrase does not really have the implications that  Trovatore finds annoying. --69.159.62.113 (talk) 08:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, if you think the 13 original states were "agreeing to become administrative subdivisions", you should sue your high school history teacher for a refund, because he obviously failed you.
 * As for the UAE, I can't say; I don't know enough about them. I'm not claiming there are no other similar structures in the world.  I am saying that "administrative subdivisions" is inaccurate (and offensive) when applied to US states. -Trovatore (talk) 19:15, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Here's an analogy: Try going to Scotland and telling them they're an "administrative subdivision" of the UK.  See how that goes over.  American states have more political autonomy than Scotland does (though admittedly they're not as culturally distinct). --Trovatore (talk) 21:07, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes? The states of Germany or Mexico, the prefectures of Japan, the regions of France. You seem to be implying that people in other countries don't know civic facts about their own countries. Is this based on something specific? --47.146.60.177 (talk) 05:06, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Are you sure in those countries you've listed it's as universally known as the 50 states? As in every school kid knows. In some countries not too many people know how many provinces there are. I suspect only in a few countries is this knowledge absolutely universal. Muzzleflash (talk) 10:51, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm in the UK. I know how many states the US has. I don't know how many counties Wales or the UK has. On a good day I might be able to list most of them, but I've certainly never counted them, or talked about "the glorious 23 counties of England" as any sort of cultural touchstone. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:20, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * France is another case for which I have serious doubts. French regions are a relatively recent creation, and they have been reorganized under François Hollande not five years ago. I doubt most French citizens today know how many there are or their current official names, given how fluid they have been and how little relative power they hold. --Xuxl (talk) 12:48, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * In the UK, there are four Home Nations which is quite simple. At school in the 1960s, we had to learn the whereabouts of the Historic counties of England and be able to write them in an outline map; I had in mind that there were 32 of them, but looking at our article (which doesn't mention a number in the text), it seems there were 39. Several counties were subdivided into the Administrative counties of England in the 19th century to make about 50, but I'm pretty sure we learned the traditional ones. The whole system was changed by the Local Government Act 1972 to produce the Metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties of England which has been tinkered about with since; Rutland has made a reappearance for example. Therefore, I'd be astonished if anybody in England could tell you exactly how many counties there are today, especially as the traditional counties are still being used by cricket teams and in some postal addresses. We also have Regions of England, a recent invention to keep the EU happy. The Met Office uses these for weather forcasts. Alansplodge (talk) 13:59, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * While the existence of 50 states is widely regarded as common knowledge in the U.S., it would not in the least be surprising if a past Jay Leno's Jaywalking segment or any similar man in the street type of interview sketch revealed considerable ignorance of the details. older ≠ wiser 14:11, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * But you could make the same argument for the Earth being flat, or the dinosaurs all having drowned overnight within the last 6,000 years. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:39, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * "the dinosaurs all having drowned". The Dinosaurs are no longer considered extinct to begin with. "The fossil record indicates that birds are modern feathered dinosaurs, having evolved from earlier theropods during the late Jurassic Period. As such, birds were the only dinosaur lineage to survive the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. Dinosaurs can therefore be divided into avian dinosaurs, or birds; and non-avian dinosaurs, which are all dinosaurs other than birds." Dimadick (talk) 17:34, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Good for people to know, but the reference to "6,000 years" indicates Andy was referencing young Earth creationists, who tend to believe fossils were put there by Satan to lead us astray from God, or that they were all deposited there overnight when God flooded the world and killed everything except Noah and friends. I doubt they care what a bunch of "evilutionists" say about birds. --47.146.60.177 (talk) 02:32, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Do YEC believe that mythological characters like Yahweh and Satan are real? And people question why I have no faith in humanity's capacity for reason. Dimadick (talk) 09:27, 20 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Australians probably all know there are six states and three territories. It's easier when the numbers are low. Jack, can you confirm?  Rojomoke (talk)
 * No, I am unaware of 3 territories. I know of 2. Sleigh (talk) 14:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Apparently Jervis Bay Territory is the third in mainland Australia, no longer being considered part of the ACT. Of course, there are then another half a dozen island or overseas territories which should be counted to get the full picture. Wymspen (talk) 15:13, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, smaller number = more likely to be widely known. It's a subnational entity of course, but the issue is similar...if you asked people from Delaware and Texas how many counties their states had, the percentage of Delawarians (sp.?) correctly answering "three" would likely be higher than the percentage of Texans correctly answering "two hundred fifty-four".  And bear in mind that a few tiny countries have no subnational divisions; see Subdivisions of Kiribati for example.  Nyttend backup (talk) 16:25, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * States and territories of Australia has the full details: 6 states, 3 internal territories, 7 external territories. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:49, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Why isn't Northern Territory a state? It's got similar population (211,945 vs. 224,000) and percent of the average state population as Alaska Territory when it was made a state, would cause the difference between the biggest and smallest state populations to be half what it was when Alaska joined, would have almost 1% of its country's population when Alaska had only 0.1% and it's 106 years after the US stopped having internal territories (Canada's current territories by comparison have never exceeded 64,402 people besides the 1891 Census (98,967)) I also wonder why the Australian Capital Territory's an internal territory just like past and current "pre-states" instead of a different entity like a federal/national/capital/national capital district. Interestingly, the US capital "territory" only has 1.75 times the residents of Australia's despite 13.5 times the national population and I was growled at by a stray dog near the DC Naval Base. It's unexpectedly rundown within walking distance of the famous places. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:04, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * See Proposed Northern Territory statehood. (What's with the random irrelevant tourism reminiscences?) --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:16, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

In Germany it would be considered part of general knowledge to know that there are 16 states and to name them (which is not to claim that everyone would be able to do so). I think Xuxl is right about the regions of France, but I wouldn't be surprised if many French people know that there are 96 Departments of France, and perhaps even know the name of quite a few of them (in part because they are on the car plates). Another one would be the 26 Cantons of Switzerland, which I think most Swiss can probably name. --Terfili (talk) 15:06, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The US has more than 50 "top-level administrative divisions", however defined. There are also territories (e.g., Puerto Rico) and other oddities such as the District of Columbia. These must be considered "top-level" since they are not part of any other "administrative division." Therefore, your premise that the top-level administrative divisions are universally known in the US is not correct. This is not a picky detail, since the reason people in other countries are less aware of their country's divisions is that those divisions are historically complicated and not easily stated in a single sentence, and this is the same for the US. -Arch dude (talk) 16:01, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * "and they have been reorganized under François Hollande not five years ago." Per article Regions of France, the 2016 reforms reduced the regions from 27 to 18, mostly through a series of mergers.:


 * Burgundy and Franche-Comté were merged into Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. As a curiosity, this reunites the areas of the Duchy of Burgundy and the County of Burgundy, which had separate administrations since 1477.
 * Aquitaine, Limousin, and Poitou-Charentes were merged into Nouvelle-Aquitaine. As a curiosity, this reunites most of the former Duchy of Aquitaine, which had lost its autonomy in 1453.
 * Lower Normandy and Upper Normandy were merged into Normandy. This reunited two regions that had separate administrations since 1956, and as a curiosity reunites most of the areas controlled by the former Duchy of Normandy, which de facto lost its autonomy in 1259 and de jure in 1469.
 * Alsace, Champagne-Ardenne, and Lorraine were merged into Grand Est. Much of this area consists of remnants from the defunct states of Austrasia, Lotharingia, the Duchy of Lorraine, the Holy Roman Empire, the German Empire, and Nazi Germany.
 * Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées were merged into Occitanie. This reunited most areas of old Occitania which are currently under French control, and curiously reunites most of the areas of the former County of Toulouse, which had lost its autonomy in 1271.
 * Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy were merged into Hauts-de-France. Most of this region consists of the former Burgundian Netherlands, a personal union of states which went defunct in 1482.
 * Auvergne and Rhône-Alpes were merged into Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. This mostly consists of the area formerly controlled by the Arverni, a Celtic tribal state that was annexed into the Roman Republic in 52 BC. Dimadick (talk) 16:14, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * "Therefore, I'd be astonished if anybody in England could tell you exactly how many counties there are today"

Based on the 2009 reforms, England currently has 83 counties (or unitary authorities):


 * 1) Northumberland.
 * 2) Tyne and Wear.
 * 3) County Durham.
 * 4) Cumbria.
 * 5) Lancashire.
 * 6) Blackpool.
 * 7) Blackburn with Darwen.
 * 8) West Yorkshire.
 * 9) North Yorkshire.
 * 10) Borough of Darlington.
 * 11) Borough of Stockton-on-Tees
 * 12) Middlesbrough
 * 13) Borough of Hartlepool
 * 14) Redcar and Cleveland
 * 15) York
 * 16) East Riding of Yorkshire
 * 17) Kingston upon Hull
 * 18) North Lincolnshire
 * 19) North East Lincolnshire
 * 20) Lincolnshire
 * 21) Nottinghamshire
 * 22) Nottingham
 * 23) South Yorkshire
 * 24) Derbyshire
 * 25) Derby
 * 26) Greater Manchester
 * 27) Merseyside
 * 28) Borough of Halton
 * 29) Warrington
 * 30) Cheshire West and Chester
 * 31) Cheshire East
 * 32) Shropshire.
 * 33) Telford and Wrekin
 * 34) Staffordshire
 * 35) Stoke-on-Trent
 * 36) West Midlands (county)
 * 37) Warwickshire
 * 38) Leicestershire
 * 39) Leicester
 * 40) Rutland
 * 41) Northamptonshire
 * 42) Peterborough
 * 43) Cambridgeshire
 * 44) Norfolk
 * 45) Suffolk
 * 46) Essex
 * 47) Southend-on-Sea
 * 48) Thurrock
 * 49) Hertfordshire
 * 50) Borough of Bedford
 * 51) Central Bedfordshire
 * 52) Luton
 * 53) Borough of Milton Keynes
 * 54) Buckinghamshire
 * 55) Oxfordshire
 * 56) Gloucestershire
 * 57) Worcestershire
 * 58) Herefordshire
 * 59) South Gloucestershire
 * 60) Bristol
 * 61) North Somerset
 * 62) Bath and North East Somerset
 * 63) Wiltshire
 * 64) Borough of Swindon
 * 65) Berkshire
 * 66) Medway.
 * 67) Kent
 * 68) East Sussex
 * 69) Brighton and Hove
 * 70) West Sussex
 * 71) Surrey.
 * 72) Hampshire
 * 73) Southampton.
 * 74) Portsmouth.
 * 75) Isle of Wight
 * 76) Dorset.
 * 77) Poole.
 * 78) Bournemouth.
 * 79) Somerset.
 * 80) Devon.
 * 81) Torbay.
 * 82) Plymouth.
 * 83) Cornwall.


 * Excluded as a special case is Greater London, as it considered an administrative region in its own right since 1965. Also excluded are the Isles of Scilly, which have a county council, but are not formally a county. Dimadick (talk) 17:24, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Formatted as columns, to save scrolling; hope you don't mind. —Tamfang (talk) 05:39, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I had to learn the 12 provinces of the Netherlands at school when I was 8 or so. So that's pretty universal knowledge around here. The next year I also had to learn the provinces/states of Belgium and Germany. This kind of knowledge must be pretty standard in Europe, at least in the countries where the number of provinces is in the low tens. It should be noted that the provinces in Belgium are no longer the top-level subdivision, as the régions were inserted between the country and the provinces in 1995, similar to how the régions were inserted between the country and the départements in France. As the provinces/départements are older and more stable than the régions (and in some countries may be more relevant to the people, because of other authorities), they, as second level subdivisions, are not necessarily less known than the first level subdivisions. Unless one considers the provinces/départements first level and the régions halfth level. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:50, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Sagittarian Milky Way, there may not be long to wait: 92.19.172.90 (talk) 13:33, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Considering that's from 2015 and it's now 2018 and there's been almost no talk about it since then, can't say I would agree. This from last month also supports that view . See also and  and especially  Of course Tony Abbott isn't even the prime minister anymore, even if the same political party is in power. (Not that I'm suggesting Labor is less likely to support NT statehood.) Nil Einne (talk) 09:56, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I think we have answered the question that was asked. How many States/Provinces/administrative divisions are in “our” country is the sort of thing taught in school, So most people will be familiar with their own nation. A trickier question is how universal this knowledge will be with non-natives.  I suspect that a lot of non-Americans know that the US has 50 states... but few non-French would be able to say how many departments France has. Blueboar (talk) 13:53, 20 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I've seen occasional accounts of encounters with Americans who insist that there were fifty States before the addition of Alaska and Hawaii, so the knowledge isn't universal. —Tamfang (talk) 05:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I once heard a fellow exchange student telling someone there were 52 states, but my guess is he was mixing it up with the number of cards in a standard deck. Obama once claimed he had visited 57 states on his campaign tour, though this seems to have been the verbal equivalent of a typo. --Trovatore (talk) 19:58, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, there is debate about which one is the 51st state. "It can also be used in a pejorative sense, meaning an area or region is perceived to be under excessive American cultural or military influence or control. In various countries around the world, people who believe their local or national culture has become too Americanized sometimes use the term "51st state" in reference to their own countries." Dimadick (talk) 06:17, 23 March 2018 (UTC)