Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 April 9

= April 9 =

Did Mexican revolutionaries ever put forward a claim to Florida?
I know that Mexico acquired its independence from Spain shortly after Spain gave Florida to the US. This made me wonder--did Mexican revolutionaries/independence activists ever put forward a claim to Florida? I mean, I would think that the Mexican independence movement would have begun while Florida was still under Spanish rule. Futurist110 (talk) 03:13, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Florida was under Spanish rule, but was never attached to Mexico, contrary to Texas, southern California and other areas of the southwestern U.S. Its fate was not of significant importance to Mexican revolutionaries. --Xuxl (talk) 12:59, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * So, Florida's distance from Mexico meant that, even before the Adams-Onis Treaty, Mexican revolutionaries were uninterested in it, correct? Futurist110 (talk) 21:50, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * No, Mexico's claims ended in the east at the Red River of the South. Florida was never part of it, and post-independence Mexico never made any claim towards it.  Three treaties defined Mexico's claims: the Adams–Onís Treaty defined its borders with the U.S. (and also was the treated that ceded Florida), the Treaty of Córdoba defined independent Mexico, and the Treaty of Limits (Mexico–United States) which confirmed the Adams-Onis borders previously negotiated with Spain.  None of those agreements have any mention of any Mexican claims to Florida.  -- Jayron 32 13:09, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Do you think that this would have been different had Spain not given up Florida to the US shortly before Mexico acquired its independence? Futurist110 (talk) 21:50, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Unlikely. While both Florida and Mexico/New Spain were part of the broader Spanish empire, they were separate colonies. economically, Florida was more tied to Cuba than Mexico. Blueboar (talk) 12:29, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this information! Futurist110 (talk) 14:04, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Please stop asking people to speculate. That is not what the Reference Desks are for. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 11:56, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Strictly speaking, I am not asking people to purely speculate. Rather, I am trying to figure out if there is any evidence as to the thoughts of Mexican revolutionaries in regards to Florida in the years before Spain gave Florida to the U.S. Futurist110 (talk) 14:04, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Any other US states with something similar to Tennessee's Grand Divisions
Just found this article on the "Grand Divisions" of Tennessee.

Are there any other U.S. states with similar such regions that are larger than counties and that have some constitutional significance? 118.160.99.133 (talk) 07:42, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Many states have such subregions, though may not have separate articles on them the way Tennessee does. Indeed, MOST states have at least two.  For example, even really small states like Delaware does, there's "Upstate Delaware" and what locals call "Slower Lower Delaware", which is everything south of the C&D Canal.  The article List of regions of the United States has a whole section on subregions of states. -- Jayron 32 12:49, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * It's not just that Tennessee has separate articles; it's that the divisions in Tennessee actually matter. For example, I doubt there's anything in the law about various regions of Delaware receiving particular seating on the Supreme Court, but that exists in Tennessee. The OP asked about regions with constitutional significance. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other than Tennessee. --Golbez (talk) 13:51, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah. That makes sense.  I missed that.  Off the top of my head, I can't think of any specific state that has that sort of significance.  -- Jayron 32 15:43, 9 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Not a state but a territory—from United States Virgin Islands:
 * At the territorial level, fifteen senators – seven from the district of St. Croix, seven from the district of St. Thomas and St. John, and one senator at-large who must be a resident of St. John – are elected for two-year terms to the unicameral Virgin Islands Legislature. 
 * Loraof (talk) 17:32, 9 April 2019 (UTC)


 * 18.160.99.133 -- Up through the early 1960's, some states had constitutional provisions that allocated seats in one or both houses of the state legislature by counties, but the Supreme Court struck down such provisions in cases like Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims, due to persistent abuse of such devices to weight rural votes above city votes... AnonMoos (talk) 03:09, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * There could be an argument for the Unorganized Borough, Alaska being treated differently than the other boroughs, Alaska not having any counties. Rmhermen (talk) 17:54, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Unicorn
How did ancient/medieval sources describe a unicorn's anatomy? Was the horn seen as an extension of its spine, part of its skull? Why is a unicorn a symbol of chastity and peace, when the horn would more obviously be seen as a deadly weapon or phallic symbol? Temerarius (talk) 14:38, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * How certain are you they had this level of detail? Many people didn't even have human anatomy down to that level of detail, and they saw at least one of those every day.  -- Jayron 32 15:41, 9 April 2019 (UTC)


 * The Unicorn article indicates that the horn is on the forehead, hence it's on the skull. The article does not state that unicorns are universally considered symbols of chastity and peace. Aside from that, keep in mind that folklore can assign any traits it wants, to mythical beasts. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:52, 9 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Our articles at unicorn and unicorn horn address some of this and are pretty well referenced if you'd care to continue your research. One strange omission I'd direct the OP to is The Natural History of Unicorns by Chris Lavers, which is an excellent investigation of many aspects of unicorns. Matt Deres (talk) 17:43, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * A Google Books preview of that work is here. Alansplodge (talk) 17:07, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

The Thornbirds
In the above mentioned novel, the main part of the book takes place on the fictional farm of Drogheda. Without having to re-read the book, can someone please tell me where in Australia the farm is supposed to have been located. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.131.40.58 (talk) 17:18, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * The Wikipedia article says "the Outback", which isn't much help because that basically means "anywhere that isn't a major urban center" and could be in any of the states or territories of Australia. The article on The Thorn Birds (miniseries), however, says that bulk of the story was set in western New South Wales.  Hope that helps.  -- Jayron 32 17:51, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Are there any sites that attempt to spit out which House of Commons district is most similar to US district X or vice versa?
So look up MO2, FL12 or whatever and it will show the most similar House of Commons district.

Whether their methodology is simple or complex I'd be interested to see it. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:58, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "most similar"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:10, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Well if someone has ranked UK districts from left to right I could find the ones with the same percentile as the Partisan Voting Index, but the positions of the average voter wouldn't be the same of course. But trying to place UK districts on the US scale seems like a pain in the ass. The scales don't line up (i.e. their Republicans seem left of Bernie Sanders on welfare but just like ours on fox hunting). Maybe someone has tried? Or even weighted educational attainment, income, age, percent service job, population growth, religion, white percent etc.? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:28, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * You could certainly do a ranking on the curve according to some simple objective measures (average income, gini coefficient, percentage of graduate degrees, and so on), but that would still leave open the question of alignment of the scales - absolute or relative? And I think that independent of such simple measures, a New England district is probably more similar to most UK constituencies than e.g. a Texas or Alabama one. Also, the "Labour-Conservative" split is very much not analogue to the "Democrat-Republican" split in the US. If you talk about "Republicans" in the UK, most people will probably assume Irish Republicans, not the Conservative Party. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:44, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Are there any Rust Belt-like constituencies? Do they have high UKIP percents which is probably the party most similar to Trump? (the importance of that region of the US to Trump's victory cannot be overstated) And I realize that if you tried to average out all those issues' disparate absolute scales into a single absolute scale many US districts might map to the same most right wing district in the UK without being that similar to them. Yes I meant Tories, we're all republicans (small r) and very few of us are (wanting to rejoin Canada or Mexico), maybe republican constituencies would be most similar to districts with a lot of Catholic Irish-Americans (not Scots-Irish). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:31, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * The BBC has an excellent set of interactive maps to explore the election results here. You can try to check your hypothesis the other way round - see where UKIP got high shares, and see if there is a common theme. I checked Boston and Skegness (UK Parliament constituency), where the UKIP got 34% in 2015, and still 7.7% in 2018, and this seems to be a largely touristy and agricultural community with a lot of Eastern European worker immigration. Buckingham (UK Parliament constituency) seems to be an outlier - it's the constituency of John Bercow, the Speaker of the House, so the other major parties do not field candidates. Thurrock (UK Parliament constituency), on the other hand, somewhat fits the rust belt profile, being a former industrial town. In general, as I understand it, a lot of England (not the UK), and especially northern England, has suffered from a wealth and job drain towards London, so in the wider sense, this is comparable to the rust belt. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:48, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I think Thurrock's support for the radical right is more of a white flight issue, as discussed here. Alansplodge (talk) 17:24, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * The far right is almost always based on bigotry. That's the central tenet of almost any far right political group; it is built upon the fear of the other and on the changing ethnic landscape of the country in question.  Nativism is the sine qua non of any far right political party.  Social conservatives or economic libertarians that lack the bigotry aspect are just "right" or center right.  -- Jayron 32 13:13, 12 April 2019 (UTC)