- Are civil wars more often North vs South than East vs West? Put differently, based on the boundaries that have survived until today, are countries, on average, wider than they are tall?
- Which will arrive first: the ability to make a digital “mold” of distinctive celebrity voices or the technology allowing celebrities to map the digital signature of their voice in order to claim property rights?
- The hard `r` in Spanish and other languages creates a natural syncopation because the r usually occupies the downbeat, as in “sagrada” or “cortado”
- Syncopation adds a dimension to music because brain tickles as it tries to make sense of two times at once.
- Among European soccer nations, the closer to Africa the fewer black players on the national team.
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July 8, 2010 at 5:54 pm
bellisaurius
Off the top of my head:
us civil war N/S
spanish civil war NW/SE
100 years war N/S
30 years war N/S
Russian civil war kind of center vs S/W
Chinese civil war NE vs rest
Vietnam and N Korea N/S
Indo/pakistan N-ish vs S
Brazil S-ish vs N
Interesting catch. It actually seems to play out. BTW, wider vs taller may play out because eurasia is wider than taller , and there are quite a few nations therein (most south american countries are the opposite).
July 8, 2010 at 6:17 pm
jeff
the shape thing requires some care with the definitions. mexico is taller than it is wide but there is a binding constraint, namely oceans, on the sides. we want a measure of how much artificial, man-made, boundary is separating north from south versus separating west from east.
July 10, 2010 at 9:54 am
Divya
Arent most EU civil wars E/W? Bosnia/Turkey/Czechoslovakia?
I would assert India/Pakistan is also E/W thing. The South of India had almost no beef with that boundary line.
Yes, I think Jeff is right, the shape determines the division. 3 new states were created in India, and depending on the shape they were either a E/W or N/S divide: http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/indiastateandunion.htm (Chattisgarh/Uttrakhand/Jharkand)
July 8, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Martin
@5
Doesn’t seem to work. It is correct in the case of Greece (no black players), but not in the case of France (lots of black players). Scandinavian countries usually don’t have many black players. In the case of the Netherlands, the black players are actually originating from Surinam, not (directly) from Africa. So the link is more the colonial history, as you would expect, which doesn’t have this north-south divide.
July 8, 2010 at 10:50 pm
jeff
spain and italy. but yes its not monotonic.
July 11, 2010 at 7:58 pm
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December 1, 2012 at 11:30 pm
Robert
I want to get tickets to Richard III , 2 pm mtaenie. It seems like that ought to be possible on July 9, 16,17, 30 & Aug. 6. But some of these dates appear to conflict with As You Like It dates. Please clarify. Thanks, FB
July 15, 2010 at 1:54 pm
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