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July 23 Information
What are the names of the two strongly blue German districts in the middle of the Russian Empire in 1897?
A quick
Google Search easily confirms that the name comes from a role he played in some very low-budget adult films. "Floyd the Landlord" is a character he played acting in at least one adult film. He was not a landlord, but he played one on TV. --
Jayron3215:17, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
What is the difference between Number of Orders, Number of Receipts and payments and General Ledger?
I wasn't sure if it is best to publish this in RD:Humanities/Math;
Before I start to do bookkeeping maximally myself, I try to learn on some fundamental accounting terminology; I have become confused about the following terms:
If one describes orders made to its accounting entity in a Number of orders and if one describes receipts given from its accounting entity in a Number of receipts and payments than I personally misunderstand why a general ledger is needed.
I would theorize that a general ledger includes documentation of these and other documents (such as invoices) but I might be wrong.
Just going off my experience in retail for a large company and having shopped in a lot of small businesses (and not knowing the meaning or any nuance I'm missing from the Hebrew):
An order is a request for goods or services to be exchanged for currency. A receipt is a note that payment for the order occurred. Ideally, these should have a one-to-one ratio but there will be times where they won't line up. For example, if an order was made, recorded, and then cancelled without payment (perhaps due to lack of payment), the number of orders would exceed the number of receipts. In certain businesses (say, a distributor selling goods directly from unrelated companies in exchange for an overhead), a customer might also make (what is to them) a single order for many goods and the business might process it as multiple orders but still only charge the customer one time for all items (resulting in many orders and one receipt). A customer might even place multiple orders at the same time only for the business to process them as a complex transaction, resulting in one order with many receipts. Even in a business where orders and receipts would have a one-to-one ratio, there could still be a gap in time between the two: for barbershops and some restaurants, asking for payment before receiving the service is generally taken as a sign that the business is scared of (justifiable) refunds due to bad service. (Fast-food gets by on the assumption that they're putting out a mechanized product rather than rendering a culinary service). Computerized point-of-sale systems can make the gap between order and receipt even smaller (sometimes impossible to perceive), perhaps refusing to acknowledge that an order has occurred until it also registers a receipt.
A modern ledger should (at a minimum) keep track of how much money is going in and coming out, which are not the same as orders and receipts (even if they might ideally have a one-to-one ratio and even if more complete ledgers would also track those). A customer buying something for $20 might pay with a $15 gift card and a $10 bill, resulting in a $15 credit from the card, a $10 credit from the bill, and a $5 debit for the customer's change (and let's just ignore the initial cost to the business of whatever it was the customer was buying, paying for store upkeep, employees...). Combine that with the earlier example where a business breaks a customer's single order into multiple orders (say, two $7 orders and two $3 orders just to make the question of what money goes where even messier), and it becomes pretty obvious why almost any businesses that bothers with any accounting beyond "end the day with more cash than we started with" uses computerized point-of-sale and accounting systems.
Ian.thomson (
talk)
08:47, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Your answer was very helpful for me Ian; I found it very didactic and now the differences between these three "accounting books" are much clearer for me. Thank you.
49.230.96.79 (
talk)
09:00, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Incidentally, while I'm sure Ian understood your intentions, "didactic" is not usually complimentary. It has undertones of being patronizing and/or regimented to an excessive degree. A better choice might have been "educational" (and I agree it was a good answer).
Matt Deres (
talk)
19:03, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Ian, I have reread your answer; I was sure I understood it enough, but I misunderstand the critical following:
A customer buying something for $20 might pay with a $15 gift card and a $10 bill, resulting in a $15 credit from the card, a $10 credit from the bill, and a $5 debit for the customer's change (and let's just ignore the initial cost to the business of whatever it was the customer was buying, paying for store upkeep, employees...). Combine that with the earlier example where a business breaks a customer's single order into multiple orders (say, two $7 orders and two $3 orders just to make the question of what money goes where even messier), and it becomes pretty obvious why almost any businesses that bothers with any accounting beyond "end the day with more cash than we started with" uses computerized point-of-sale and accounting systems.
What I mean is put that example together with the other one. In other words, imagine a situation where a customer buys makes one order worth $20, the business breaks it into two $7 orders and two $3 orders (because they have to get the goods from four different companies), and the customer pays with a $15 gift card and a $10 bill. The situation is deliberately a mess that I would never try to solve the math on without a computer.
Ian.thomson (
talk)
21:48, 28 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Thank you Ian; I think I understand the combination now: A state of "breaking a purchase into sub purchases" combined with a state of "a mess of payment ways" could be handled much easier with a ledger --- let along a computerized point-of-sale-recording ledger, as the money movements would be most efficiently recorded and traceable if needed.
49.230.3.204 (
talk)
03:07, 29 July 2020 (UTC)reply
All text is the U.S.C. were acts of Congress before their enumeration in the Code. The code is a sort of indexing system (basically a
database) of the general and permanent laws passed by Congress. It is not itself U.S. law, but it is a convenient way to reference laws. When the courts cite a part of the code, it is done to allow others to find the relevant text for reference purposes, but the act of Congress that put that text there is still the actual relevant law. The two ways to refer to a law (by an act name and by a relevant code reference) are not mutually exclusive, and there's nothing wrong with using one, the other, or both. In this case, the Census Act referred to by the Court is NOT the merely
Title 13 of the United States Code dealing with the census, instead The Census Act is a reference to
Public Law 740 which is the law that put the text into that part of the Code. Again, the Title is not being referred to as "an Act". The Title is how one finds the relevant text of the Act, the Act itself was an honest-to-god bill passed by Congress in 1954 called "The Census Act". --
Jayron3215:11, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
"Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the meantime has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers -- but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass?"
If this is accurate, I think it belongs in the Wikiquote article on "Benjamin Franklin". Sadly, I don't have easy access to this book.
I can preview Waldman’s book online
[1]; the footnote for the anecdote says it is from The Casket, or Flowers of Literature, Wit and Sentiment (1828), quoted in Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 3.
(Keyssar refers to Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2009). Here is the quote in its preview:
[2])
Sure! It just worries me that the quote doesn’t seem to be where Keyssar says it is. Took a quick look through google scholar for people using the quote with a non-Keyssar attribution and saw another book mentioning the quote (The Franchise and Politics in British North America 1755-1867 by John Garner)
[4] and this one attributes it to the Colonial Advocate Dec 27, 1827. That brings up
[5] where you indeed find the quote in the middle of the front page. So Garner might be a more reliable source for you. Haven’t had any luck finding the original from Franklin’s lifetime, which would be best of all.
70.67.193.176 (
talk)
17:14, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
The Garner version is shorter than Keyssar's, leaving out the comment that, "The man in the meantime has become more experience ... ."
I'm inclined to put it in
Benjamin Franklin#Attributed, cite
Alexander Keyssar (2000). The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States.
Basic Books.
ISBN0-465-02969-8.
WikidataQ97621556., p. 3, and leave it at that, especially since we've found it in two different places. The shorter is from 1827 but includes "...", while the longer version is from 1828 and plausibly includes the part indicated in the 1827 version by "...". Since Franklin died in 1790, both could have been quoting some earlier source that misattributed the quote to Franklin.
DavidMCEddy (
talk)
18:12, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
None of these attributions identifies when or where Franklin is supposed to have said this. Was it an overheard conversation at the barbershop? It is tempting to provide an anonymous witticism with legitimacy by attributing it to
Franklin/Twain/Shaw/Berra/Einstein/.... --
Lambiam08:34, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Pokrowski University
Hi Folks. Anybody know what Pokrowski University is, or even if that is correct name. Based in the Soviet Union and referenced in the
Leopold Trepper articles. I don't have a scoobie do what it is. I must search for about 8 times over the last three months and every time I come up blunt. Thanks. scope_creepTalk21:23, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
I can't see a mention of "Pokrowski University" from a quick look through the documents used for the reference. They do mention Kums University and "Intelligence training schools".
DuncanHill (
talk)
22:31, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Oftentimes, on Wikipedia -- and elsewhere -- we see "old maps" (countries with borders different than today; countries that no longer exist; new countries; etc.) In fact, there is one (above) on this Reference Help Desk. (This question, above: What are the names of the two strongly blue German districts in the middle of the Russian Empire in 1897?) This got me to thinking. So, the map "changes" all the time. Is there some official body that is "in charge" and keeps a current illustration of the ever-changing map? Who is "in charge" / responsible for this type of thing? Thanks.
Joseph A. Spadaro (
talk)
21:39, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Generally speaking there's no official body that says what the correct map is. Virtually everything's ad hoc and by local consensus and, where illustration updates are needed, one of the methods mentioned above are an option. See also
Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps.
199.66.69.67 (
talk)
00:17, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
My question was not at all geared to Wikipedia. I meant, "out in the real world". Who oversees this sort of thing? Does the USA, for example, have some "official" map and/or "official" mapmaker? Of the country? Of the world? Etc. Thanks.
Joseph A. Spadaro (
talk)
02:42, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
I haven't heard of that sort of authority existing in democratic countries. There are authorities like the
United States Geological Survey and the British
Ordnance Survey that generally produce the detailed maps that try to show cover the whole country and provide the best information, but nobody would say that a mapping feature on a
Rand McNally or
A-Z or
Google Maps map must be wrong just because the place appeared differently on a USGS or OS map.
Authoritarian governments might take the point of view that everything they publish is definitively correct and any conflicting information is wrong, though. --
174.89.49.204 (
talk)
04:59, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
There is no official designation of countries' borders. When a body like the UN publishes a map, they are always careful to include a disclaimer stating that "the designations employed and the presentation of the material on this map do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries". --
Viennese Waltz07:54, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
International borders are usually determined by bilateral treaties or mutual consent between the two nations who share the border. The authority in that case is the two nations that share the mutual border. Subnational borders are determined by the internal political processes of the nation in question, and the authority that nation itself. Wikipedia has some articles for you to use as starting points for your research. You can find them at
border and
Boundary delimitation and perhaps even
Territorial dispute for when things break down. --
Jayron3211:04, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
The official map of Portugal included the town of
Olivença, which is still occupied by Spain although it was ordered to hand it back in 1815. (It probably still does). The Estado da Índia was still marked on official maps of Portugal long after it was annexed by the Indian army in 1961. That was the grouse of the people - these places were officially described as ultramar when they were in fact colónias. How to portray disputed/undefined borders is a perennial headache for cartographers.
77.101.226.208 (
talk)
13:24, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Thanks. So, somewhere -- is not there some "official map" of the USA? Detailing all the states, state borders, cities, national borders, etc.? I assume there must be something, somewhere. Who oversees all that? Who is in charge of all that? When there are issues / questions / concerns ... I doubt that the President or the Governors or the Mayors just say "let's open up some random atlas and see what's there". No? Thanks.
Joseph A. Spadaro (
talk)
16:12, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Not any single "map", like behind glass somewhere. There are various legal documents that define state borders, often the acts of Congress that delimits the state when it was admitted to the union. In the cases of disputes, these legal documents are used by the courts to determine things like jurisdictions and the like. The most recent example of such an event is the
North Carolina/South Carolina Border Commission, which made some adjustments to the border in 2013 to make it more accurately align to the enacting legislation that created it originally (i.e. the defined lines in the laws did not match the lines as drawn in the dirt). These sorts of things are generally left up to the states and such to adjudicate themselves, though the courts do get involved when there are disputes that cannot be resolved among the parties. An example of such a dispute which is still ongoing is the
Tennessee-Georgia water dispute. Insofar as there is any sort of Federal Government-level maps in the U.S., they would be maintained by the
United States Geologic Survey, however these are physical maps and not political maps. They do have political boundaries on them, but they are not legal documents, and the purpose is to create accurate and reliable physical maps of U.S. lands. --
Jayron3216:46, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
To add the perspective of a cartographer working for the U.S. government . . . you'd think there is an "official map", but there really isn't. Broadly speaking USGS has mapping authority over the U.S., but if you're looking for a boundary definitions you'll have better luck going to the U.S. Census Bureau which maintains boundaries originally digitized from USGS maps, but updated over the years. But different Federal agencies sometimes use different boundaries, for example both the Census and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have tribal boundaries data, but they do not agree with each other. In the U.S. it's further complicated as the states also maintain their own data, and that's usually at a more detailed level than any of the Federal sources, so if you need an actual property boundary for instance, you generally won't find it at either USGS or the Census, but need to go to the relevant state's mapping agency.
Kmusser (
talk)
12:33, 30 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a
transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the
current reference desk pages.
July 23 Information
What are the names of the two strongly blue German districts in the middle of the Russian Empire in 1897?
A quick
Google Search easily confirms that the name comes from a role he played in some very low-budget adult films. "Floyd the Landlord" is a character he played acting in at least one adult film. He was not a landlord, but he played one on TV. --
Jayron3215:17, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
What is the difference between Number of Orders, Number of Receipts and payments and General Ledger?
I wasn't sure if it is best to publish this in RD:Humanities/Math;
Before I start to do bookkeeping maximally myself, I try to learn on some fundamental accounting terminology; I have become confused about the following terms:
If one describes orders made to its accounting entity in a Number of orders and if one describes receipts given from its accounting entity in a Number of receipts and payments than I personally misunderstand why a general ledger is needed.
I would theorize that a general ledger includes documentation of these and other documents (such as invoices) but I might be wrong.
Just going off my experience in retail for a large company and having shopped in a lot of small businesses (and not knowing the meaning or any nuance I'm missing from the Hebrew):
An order is a request for goods or services to be exchanged for currency. A receipt is a note that payment for the order occurred. Ideally, these should have a one-to-one ratio but there will be times where they won't line up. For example, if an order was made, recorded, and then cancelled without payment (perhaps due to lack of payment), the number of orders would exceed the number of receipts. In certain businesses (say, a distributor selling goods directly from unrelated companies in exchange for an overhead), a customer might also make (what is to them) a single order for many goods and the business might process it as multiple orders but still only charge the customer one time for all items (resulting in many orders and one receipt). A customer might even place multiple orders at the same time only for the business to process them as a complex transaction, resulting in one order with many receipts. Even in a business where orders and receipts would have a one-to-one ratio, there could still be a gap in time between the two: for barbershops and some restaurants, asking for payment before receiving the service is generally taken as a sign that the business is scared of (justifiable) refunds due to bad service. (Fast-food gets by on the assumption that they're putting out a mechanized product rather than rendering a culinary service). Computerized point-of-sale systems can make the gap between order and receipt even smaller (sometimes impossible to perceive), perhaps refusing to acknowledge that an order has occurred until it also registers a receipt.
A modern ledger should (at a minimum) keep track of how much money is going in and coming out, which are not the same as orders and receipts (even if they might ideally have a one-to-one ratio and even if more complete ledgers would also track those). A customer buying something for $20 might pay with a $15 gift card and a $10 bill, resulting in a $15 credit from the card, a $10 credit from the bill, and a $5 debit for the customer's change (and let's just ignore the initial cost to the business of whatever it was the customer was buying, paying for store upkeep, employees...). Combine that with the earlier example where a business breaks a customer's single order into multiple orders (say, two $7 orders and two $3 orders just to make the question of what money goes where even messier), and it becomes pretty obvious why almost any businesses that bothers with any accounting beyond "end the day with more cash than we started with" uses computerized point-of-sale and accounting systems.
Ian.thomson (
talk)
08:47, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Your answer was very helpful for me Ian; I found it very didactic and now the differences between these three "accounting books" are much clearer for me. Thank you.
49.230.96.79 (
talk)
09:00, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Incidentally, while I'm sure Ian understood your intentions, "didactic" is not usually complimentary. It has undertones of being patronizing and/or regimented to an excessive degree. A better choice might have been "educational" (and I agree it was a good answer).
Matt Deres (
talk)
19:03, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Ian, I have reread your answer; I was sure I understood it enough, but I misunderstand the critical following:
A customer buying something for $20 might pay with a $15 gift card and a $10 bill, resulting in a $15 credit from the card, a $10 credit from the bill, and a $5 debit for the customer's change (and let's just ignore the initial cost to the business of whatever it was the customer was buying, paying for store upkeep, employees...). Combine that with the earlier example where a business breaks a customer's single order into multiple orders (say, two $7 orders and two $3 orders just to make the question of what money goes where even messier), and it becomes pretty obvious why almost any businesses that bothers with any accounting beyond "end the day with more cash than we started with" uses computerized point-of-sale and accounting systems.
What I mean is put that example together with the other one. In other words, imagine a situation where a customer buys makes one order worth $20, the business breaks it into two $7 orders and two $3 orders (because they have to get the goods from four different companies), and the customer pays with a $15 gift card and a $10 bill. The situation is deliberately a mess that I would never try to solve the math on without a computer.
Ian.thomson (
talk)
21:48, 28 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Thank you Ian; I think I understand the combination now: A state of "breaking a purchase into sub purchases" combined with a state of "a mess of payment ways" could be handled much easier with a ledger --- let along a computerized point-of-sale-recording ledger, as the money movements would be most efficiently recorded and traceable if needed.
49.230.3.204 (
talk)
03:07, 29 July 2020 (UTC)reply
All text is the U.S.C. were acts of Congress before their enumeration in the Code. The code is a sort of indexing system (basically a
database) of the general and permanent laws passed by Congress. It is not itself U.S. law, but it is a convenient way to reference laws. When the courts cite a part of the code, it is done to allow others to find the relevant text for reference purposes, but the act of Congress that put that text there is still the actual relevant law. The two ways to refer to a law (by an act name and by a relevant code reference) are not mutually exclusive, and there's nothing wrong with using one, the other, or both. In this case, the Census Act referred to by the Court is NOT the merely
Title 13 of the United States Code dealing with the census, instead The Census Act is a reference to
Public Law 740 which is the law that put the text into that part of the Code. Again, the Title is not being referred to as "an Act". The Title is how one finds the relevant text of the Act, the Act itself was an honest-to-god bill passed by Congress in 1954 called "The Census Act". --
Jayron3215:11, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
"Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the meantime has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers -- but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass?"
If this is accurate, I think it belongs in the Wikiquote article on "Benjamin Franklin". Sadly, I don't have easy access to this book.
I can preview Waldman’s book online
[1]; the footnote for the anecdote says it is from The Casket, or Flowers of Literature, Wit and Sentiment (1828), quoted in Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 3.
(Keyssar refers to Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2009). Here is the quote in its preview:
[2])
Sure! It just worries me that the quote doesn’t seem to be where Keyssar says it is. Took a quick look through google scholar for people using the quote with a non-Keyssar attribution and saw another book mentioning the quote (The Franchise and Politics in British North America 1755-1867 by John Garner)
[4] and this one attributes it to the Colonial Advocate Dec 27, 1827. That brings up
[5] where you indeed find the quote in the middle of the front page. So Garner might be a more reliable source for you. Haven’t had any luck finding the original from Franklin’s lifetime, which would be best of all.
70.67.193.176 (
talk)
17:14, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
The Garner version is shorter than Keyssar's, leaving out the comment that, "The man in the meantime has become more experience ... ."
I'm inclined to put it in
Benjamin Franklin#Attributed, cite
Alexander Keyssar (2000). The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States.
Basic Books.
ISBN0-465-02969-8.
WikidataQ97621556., p. 3, and leave it at that, especially since we've found it in two different places. The shorter is from 1827 but includes "...", while the longer version is from 1828 and plausibly includes the part indicated in the 1827 version by "...". Since Franklin died in 1790, both could have been quoting some earlier source that misattributed the quote to Franklin.
DavidMCEddy (
talk)
18:12, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
None of these attributions identifies when or where Franklin is supposed to have said this. Was it an overheard conversation at the barbershop? It is tempting to provide an anonymous witticism with legitimacy by attributing it to
Franklin/Twain/Shaw/Berra/Einstein/.... --
Lambiam08:34, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Pokrowski University
Hi Folks. Anybody know what Pokrowski University is, or even if that is correct name. Based in the Soviet Union and referenced in the
Leopold Trepper articles. I don't have a scoobie do what it is. I must search for about 8 times over the last three months and every time I come up blunt. Thanks. scope_creepTalk21:23, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
I can't see a mention of "Pokrowski University" from a quick look through the documents used for the reference. They do mention Kums University and "Intelligence training schools".
DuncanHill (
talk)
22:31, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Oftentimes, on Wikipedia -- and elsewhere -- we see "old maps" (countries with borders different than today; countries that no longer exist; new countries; etc.) In fact, there is one (above) on this Reference Help Desk. (This question, above: What are the names of the two strongly blue German districts in the middle of the Russian Empire in 1897?) This got me to thinking. So, the map "changes" all the time. Is there some official body that is "in charge" and keeps a current illustration of the ever-changing map? Who is "in charge" / responsible for this type of thing? Thanks.
Joseph A. Spadaro (
talk)
21:39, 23 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Generally speaking there's no official body that says what the correct map is. Virtually everything's ad hoc and by local consensus and, where illustration updates are needed, one of the methods mentioned above are an option. See also
Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps.
199.66.69.67 (
talk)
00:17, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
My question was not at all geared to Wikipedia. I meant, "out in the real world". Who oversees this sort of thing? Does the USA, for example, have some "official" map and/or "official" mapmaker? Of the country? Of the world? Etc. Thanks.
Joseph A. Spadaro (
talk)
02:42, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
I haven't heard of that sort of authority existing in democratic countries. There are authorities like the
United States Geological Survey and the British
Ordnance Survey that generally produce the detailed maps that try to show cover the whole country and provide the best information, but nobody would say that a mapping feature on a
Rand McNally or
A-Z or
Google Maps map must be wrong just because the place appeared differently on a USGS or OS map.
Authoritarian governments might take the point of view that everything they publish is definitively correct and any conflicting information is wrong, though. --
174.89.49.204 (
talk)
04:59, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
There is no official designation of countries' borders. When a body like the UN publishes a map, they are always careful to include a disclaimer stating that "the designations employed and the presentation of the material on this map do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries". --
Viennese Waltz07:54, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
International borders are usually determined by bilateral treaties or mutual consent between the two nations who share the border. The authority in that case is the two nations that share the mutual border. Subnational borders are determined by the internal political processes of the nation in question, and the authority that nation itself. Wikipedia has some articles for you to use as starting points for your research. You can find them at
border and
Boundary delimitation and perhaps even
Territorial dispute for when things break down. --
Jayron3211:04, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
The official map of Portugal included the town of
Olivença, which is still occupied by Spain although it was ordered to hand it back in 1815. (It probably still does). The Estado da Índia was still marked on official maps of Portugal long after it was annexed by the Indian army in 1961. That was the grouse of the people - these places were officially described as ultramar when they were in fact colónias. How to portray disputed/undefined borders is a perennial headache for cartographers.
77.101.226.208 (
talk)
13:24, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Thanks. So, somewhere -- is not there some "official map" of the USA? Detailing all the states, state borders, cities, national borders, etc.? I assume there must be something, somewhere. Who oversees all that? Who is in charge of all that? When there are issues / questions / concerns ... I doubt that the President or the Governors or the Mayors just say "let's open up some random atlas and see what's there". No? Thanks.
Joseph A. Spadaro (
talk)
16:12, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
Not any single "map", like behind glass somewhere. There are various legal documents that define state borders, often the acts of Congress that delimits the state when it was admitted to the union. In the cases of disputes, these legal documents are used by the courts to determine things like jurisdictions and the like. The most recent example of such an event is the
North Carolina/South Carolina Border Commission, which made some adjustments to the border in 2013 to make it more accurately align to the enacting legislation that created it originally (i.e. the defined lines in the laws did not match the lines as drawn in the dirt). These sorts of things are generally left up to the states and such to adjudicate themselves, though the courts do get involved when there are disputes that cannot be resolved among the parties. An example of such a dispute which is still ongoing is the
Tennessee-Georgia water dispute. Insofar as there is any sort of Federal Government-level maps in the U.S., they would be maintained by the
United States Geologic Survey, however these are physical maps and not political maps. They do have political boundaries on them, but they are not legal documents, and the purpose is to create accurate and reliable physical maps of U.S. lands. --
Jayron3216:46, 24 July 2020 (UTC)reply
To add the perspective of a cartographer working for the U.S. government . . . you'd think there is an "official map", but there really isn't. Broadly speaking USGS has mapping authority over the U.S., but if you're looking for a boundary definitions you'll have better luck going to the U.S. Census Bureau which maintains boundaries originally digitized from USGS maps, but updated over the years. But different Federal agencies sometimes use different boundaries, for example both the Census and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have tribal boundaries data, but they do not agree with each other. In the U.S. it's further complicated as the states also maintain their own data, and that's usually at a more detailed level than any of the Federal sources, so if you need an actual property boundary for instance, you generally won't find it at either USGS or the Census, but need to go to the relevant state's mapping agency.
Kmusser (
talk)
12:33, 30 July 2020 (UTC)reply