Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 March 10

= March 10 =

When should a resignation take effect: when written or when read?
This is the Michigan Senate Journal for 1841. It links to page 207, where, on February 24, 1841, the resignation of the governor was received by the Senate. However, he wrote it on February 23. A lower office resignation might wait to be approved by a higher office (like, if a cabinet secretary submitted a resignation and it were rejected), but in this case, the governor doesn't require Senate permission to resign, and he's not asking for it. It's mainly an academic thing, whether or not the turnover happened on Feb 23 or 24, but sources tend to disagree, so I'm curious what y'all might think. --Golbez (talk) 16:23, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I would say that, absent prior rules covering the situation, it's undeterminable in each instance unless the resigner performs or refrains from an official action between writing and acceptance. Kind of like Quantum indeterminacy.
 * Morally, I think the resigner should continue to perform their duties (unless physically unable) until acceptance, unless their reason for resignation is such that this would be unacceptable {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.198.55.125 (talk) 16:41, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If he wrote it on February 23, told no one, and then threw it in the fireplace, and then never spoke of it again, then would he have actually resigned? -- Jayron 32 16:44, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No, but in this case he specifically dated it Feb 23, and it wasn't read in the Senate until Feb 24. So I'm not sure if I should take that as "it took effect when the Senate read it" or "it's not his fault the Senate waited a day to read it," or "he dated it the 23rd but waited to submit it," honestly I don't know. As governor is an executive office not beholden to the legislature, I'm not sure how it should go. He doesn't need their permission to resign, and he doesn't appear to be asking for it. This may simply be unanswerable and we just go with the preponderance of sources and a footnote. --Golbez (talk) 17:19, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "we just go with the preponderance of sources" We do that, full stop, no qualifications, and no need to figure anything else out on our own. -- Jayron 32 18:29, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No, it's not what we do, if we can show those sources are wrong. --Golbez (talk) 22:53, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * How do you show "the sources are wrong", unless you have more reliable sources? The way we know that sources are wrong is that other sources exist which show them to be wrong.  And then we cite those sources, QED.  -- Jayron 32 11:46, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * For a bit more nuanced discussion, see . --Lambiam 22:57, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It may be true (I have not checked it) that in 1841 the constitution of Michigan had no formal requirements for the Governor resigning, but nevertheless Woodbridge writes in his letter, "it is proper that I should respectfully tender to you my resignation of that office." Whereupon, according to the Journal of the Senate, "The resignation of the executive, by this message, was accepted by the Senate". I interpret this as the resignation taking effect upon that acceptance, however much of a formality it may have been. And so, apparently, does the State of Michigan. --Lambiam 22:11, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Lenin family
Lenin and all of his siblings were revolutionaires. Their parents were instead devoted zarists? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.233.233.231 (talk) 18:20, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Lenin's father was Ilya Ulyanov and he died decades before the Russian Revolution; the concept of "tsarist" was probably meaningless in the context of the 1880s when he died. There were revolutionary groups of the time, like the Narodniks, but I don't know that he was actively involved with them. He was an employee of the Russian state, FWIW, but his politics are not well known.  Lenin's mother was Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova and she did live to see the Russian Revolution, dying only 6 years before Lenin himself did.  I see no information about her politics; she seems to have been largely apolitical.  From what I can see in both Wikipedia and what little else I can find online, she did care deeply for her children, visiting them in exile and in prison and caring for them as a mother does, but I see nowhere that she actively participated on either side of the conflict. -- Jayron 32 18:39, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * More on his father This makes the case that he "was a devout and practising Greek Orthodox Christian to the end of his life, and an unquestioning support of the tsarist autocracy". -- Jayron 32 18:46, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * This says that his father "maintained a progressive outlook", though also makes the case that he showed no signs of opposition to the Russian monarchy. -- Jayron 32 18:50, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

The pamphleteer Rowse
In [https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxj2f4?urlappend=%3Bseq=721%3Bownerid=27021597767372432-747 4 How. St. Tr. at 1414] is the following text: This doctrine of devils, that it is lawful to submit to any present power that is strongest, is broached in a pamphlet by old Rowse the illiterate Jew of Eton college. This is part of an extract from the second part of Clement Walker's History of Independency; the text above is on p. 182. Is Rowse Francis Rous, and is the pamphlet The Lawfulness of Obeying the Present Government? Shells-shells (talk) 21:05, 10 March 2023 (UTC)


 * The mention of Eton College, of which Rous was provost, as well as the year 1649, make this extremely plausible. The annotator appears to be a bit prejudiced. Rous(e)'s name is spelled "Francis Rowse" here. --Lambiam 22:31, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

If the identification is correct, he was neither Jewish nor illiterate... AnonMoos (talk) 00:30, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That could be mocking an alliterative coincidence. I remember matching "Rose" with "Rowse", the thorns from the former leading back to a Crown of the same, which was reputationally held at Eton. --Askedonty (talk) 01:47, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, now that is interesting. In my mind I had thought Rowse to be pronounced as rouse, or perhaps to rhyme with Gauss; I see now how it could be pronounced as rose. I wonder how it was pronounced in the 17th century. Shells-shells (talk) 07:42, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Here on this side of the Channel indeed some classes of the pupils keep wondering late about the value alloted on the British side to those "ious" or "uous" sounds: glorious record rack. I personaly preferred to let the matter drop after coming upon the probability of some 14th century trading with Africa: (Henry VIII’s ransacking of the monasteries) --Askedonty (talk) 13:05, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * One would expect the name Rowse to rhyme with the nouns House, Mouse, and Louse. That is what the Rowses of my childhood rhymed with. DuncanHill (talk) 14:27, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Which made you literate even soon at enfancy. Being not that much I started by spelling "row" separately, so I could have felt targeted as those devils if my ambitions had included the relevant college education. Fortunately my children books included tales of mouses too. --Askedonty (talk) 16:02, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I grew up in Cornwall, whence most Rowses come. A famous one lived a couple of miles down the road. DuncanHill (talk) 20:20, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I think "illiterate" and "Jew" should be interpreted in the time-honoured tradition of using invectives instead of arguments to disqualify someone with whom one disagrees. --Lambiam 14:22, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * How could he write a pamphlet if he was illiterate ? Fishing Publication (talk) 12:44, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I had been wondering once whether "Ostrich feather" could have been used as an euphemism for ghostwriting, in the 17th century ( so the link to Henry VIII ransacking above ). Our article Ostrich feather badge is mentioning an "heraldic pun" indeed, although, that one would be absolutely unrelated. Consequently, I suppose, there might exist different levels of literacy which can be alledgedly associated relatively to any given current object of targeted criticism. --Askedonty (talk) 15:14, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Islands northwest of Midway Atoll


If you view this map at full resolution and look at the Hawaii region, you'll see several islands west and northwest of Midway: Ocean (Cure), Patrocinio, Morell, and Mellish Bank. Ocean (Cure) is obviously Kure Atoll, but what are the others, and do they have Wikipedia articles? Patrocinio is a redirect to Patrocínio, a municipality in Brazil; Morell is a disambiguation page that doesn't link anything related to the Pacific; and Mellish Bank is a redlink. Anyone have any significant information about these places? Google Maps shows Kure prominently but doesn't depict the others at all. Most of what I'm finding on Google is false positives (e.g. LinkedIn profiles for Hawaii residents named Patrocinio), and the sparse actual positives are things like Mellish appearing in a list of Hawaiian place names and Morell and Mellish being the only places where seabirds can land between Hawaii and Alaska, and one of few places between Hawaii and Japan. Nyttend (talk) 22:37, 10 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia article is presumably Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. "Morrell's" is mentioned on that article as a non-existent phantom island. AnonMoos (talk) 00:26, 11 March 2023 (UTC)


 * This article talks about three men cast adrift after a mutiny; they considered making for Patrocinio Island "distant about 120 miles, due south". They decided against it, which was a very good choice, as the book Reported Dangers to Navigation in the Pacific Ocean states of Patrocinio Island that "No island is shown in this position on the charts. The U.S. ship Lackawanna, in 1807, ran over it, but no indication of an island or of a shoal was seen. ... Patrocinio Island, said to be discovered 1799 by Captain Don Zipiano, is described as 3 miles long N. N. E. and S. S. W., but could not be found by the Peacock, of the U.S. Expl. Exp., in the position assigned to it." Clarityfiend (talk) 05:27, 11 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Benjamin Morrell and This site reports of Mellish Seamount: "1997-06-05. Bathymetry no longer indicates that there is a feature at the reported coordinate position." tho listed as an approved name on GNS. "...reported to have a depth of 64 fathoms over it" fiveby(zero) 05:51, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I've added the non-island to Morrell (disambiguation). --174.89.12.187 (talk) 09:30, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * See you found Byers's Island. fiveby(zero) 06:36, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I think 's map is one of those mentioned in the chapter linked by . DuncanHill (talk) 20:22, 11 March 2023 (UTC)