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Station identification

Station identification (ident, network ID, channel ID or bumper) is the practice of radio and television stations and networks identifying themselves on-air, typically by means of a call sign or brand name (sometimes known, particularly in the United States, as a "sounder" or "stinger", more generally as a station or network ID). This may be to satisfy requirements of licensing authorities, a form of branding, or a combination of both. As such, it is closely related to production logos, used in television and cinema alike.

Station identification used to be done regularly by an announcer at the halfway point during the presentation of a television program, or in between programs.

Asia
In Southeast Asia, idents are known as a montage in Thailand and the Malay world (except Indonesia, known as station ID, terminology shared with the Philippines), and as an interlude in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Indonesia
Television channels owned by Media Nusantara Citra (RCTI since 2016, both MNCTV and GTV since 2012 as well as iNews since 2018 except by its regional branches), by Trans Media (both Trans TV and Trans7 since 2016), and ANTV (since 2015) no longer air station identifications anymore, although several channels such as NET., BTV, CNN Indonesia, Trans TV, and Trans7 are still airing idents irregularly.

Philippines
Station identifications in the Philippines differ from the vernacular meaning in most of the world. They describe what would be referred to as imaging campaigns elsewhere for their national networks, and vary considerably in length, up to eighteen minutes. These include music video-like presentations representing the season they are meant for, including tag-init (summer season), tag-ulan (rainy season), tagtuyo (dry season) and Christmas Season.

Europe
Broadcast stations in Europe do not identify by a callsign (with the digital age, most networks share one or two metropolitan transmitting facilities within a certain region, making identification of the actual transmitter superfluous), however most networks use a brand based on their common channel number. A form of station identification clip is played between programmes, traditionally incorporating the channel's logo, and accompanied by a continuity announcer that introduces the next programme (and promotes other programmes). These identifiers evolved from mainly being mechanical models (such as the BBC globe), to becoming more advanced through the evolution of CGI during the 1980s. From the 1960s to the 1990s, most broadcasters only used a single identifier, sometimes using special variations for holidays and special events. In the present day, most broadcasters use a set of multiple identifiers built around a particular theme or branding element, often based on the channel's current overall look.

Prior to 1988, the two existing channels in the Netherlands, Nederland 1 and Nederland 2, used only the idents of the broadcasters airing on them. With the creation of Nederland 3, all three channels started using their own idents.

United Kingdom
Prior to 1 January 1988, each programme on ITV would be preceded by the identifier of the regional company that had produced the show (known as a frontcap), and this would be broadcast throughout the network, in other words by all companies showing the programme. The programme frontcap was preceded by station identification and continuity announcements from the viewer's local region. It meant that viewers across the country would see a Yorkshire Television logo and hear the corresponding fanfare before Emmerdale Farm and Scottish Television idents before Take the High Road. In consequence, most ITV-produced series shown abroad would also be preceded by the producing company's logo – for example, PBS presentations of Upstairs, Downstairs featured the London Weekend Television logo and fanfare before the start of the programme. Beginning in 1988, these were largely replaced by endcaps.

Since the consolidation of the ITV network in the early 2000s, regional continuity announcements have generally disappeared, with STV being the only notable exceptions. UTV continued using local continuity announcements even under the ownership of ITV, although in 2020 they were suspended in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, and staff cutbacks were made with the Belfast studio. ITV later eventually made these changes permanent, and the local announcers were let go in November 2020.

Mexico
The Ley Federal de Telecomunicaciones y Radiodifusión enacted in 2014 does not include a requirement for regular on-air station identification. However, many stations continue to air twice an hour their call letters (in Spanish) along with their city of license, as was required previously under Article 76 of the Ley Federal de Radio y Televisión.

United States
The United States' Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enforces specific requirements for identification that must be followed by all terrestrial radio and television stations. Stations must, when they sign on, sign off, and as close to the top of each hour as feasibly possible (such as within a "natural break" in programming, like a commercial break), present a visual (television) or aural (radio) station identification that contains, at minimum, the station's callsign, followed by its designated city of license. As a courtesy, top-of-hour identifications may also contain additional information, such as frequencies and a declaration of the station's ownership. Only the name of the licensee, the station's frequency or channel number as stated on its license, and/or network affiliations, may be inserted between the call letters and station location. An example of declared ownership on KTLA in Los Angeles during the late 1970s were the local announcer invoking then-station owner Golden West Broadcasters ("Golden West Broadcasters-Channel 5, KTLA Los Angeles").

Stations which broadcast on additional full- or low-powered signals must also identify them all every hour. However, stations licensed as translators must be identified in their own right only three times per day: once between 7 and 9 a.m., 12:55 and 1:05 p.m., and 4 and 6 p.m. FCC rules specify that additional communities a station serves may also be listed in a legal ID, but the official city of license must always be listed first. The advent of broadcast automation has made it much easier for broadcasters to ensure compliance with identification rules. Many television stations and radio stations may have their identifications prerecorded or programmed to play automatically at the appropriate times. It may also be monetized into an advertisement, with the station placing the required text into a quick ad spot where an advertiser such as a law firm sponsors a program with their slogan said.

Radio
On radio, the top-of-hour ID must contain the full, legal call sign (including any relevant suffixes, particularly "FM") as assigned by the FCC, followed immediately by the station's community of license. The call letters must be spoken individually; even if the call letters are pronounced as a word for branding purposes (such as WHAM in Rochester, New York, which is spoken as "Wham"), the legal ID must still spell out the individual letters. An example of a proper spoken radio station identification in the United States would be "WMAS-FM Enfield Springfield" or "WLAN-FM Lancaster". Often, these identifications may be artificially pitch shifted to be faster, to fit in more advertising or promotion within the sequence.

The FCC also allows that: "the name of the licensee, the station's frequency, the station's channel number, as stated on the station's license, and/or the station's network affiliation may be inserted between the call letters and station location".

Television
On television, station identification may occur in either a visual format or aural. As no audio announcement of the call sign is necessary if the information appears on screen, often the identification is fulfilled by incorporating it into a short promo for a program the station airs (such as a syndicated or network program, or a preview of an upcoming newscast), the title sequence of the station's newscasts, or automatically cued as a digital on-screen graphic briefly displayed at the required time. The identification can even be monetized as part of a regular commercial, with the text appearing in small type on the bottom of the screen (for instance, a law firm can sponsor a court show and directly lead into the beginning of a program with proper station identification, along with their ad). Translators are required to be identified and listed daily at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. local time.

FCC rules developed for analog television required that translators identify themselves individually. The transition to digital television made this a more challenging rule to implement technically and economically.

In a 2004 order the FCC suspended identification requirements for LPTV and translator stations: Although we recognize the value of the ITU provisions for station identification, we conclude that we cannot at this time establish identification requirements for digital LPTV and TV translator stations, nor do we believe it would be appropriate to attempt to "bootstrap" our current analog identification requirements for digital station operations. The record in this proceeding lacks sufficient technical and cost information from which to develop standards for this purpose. We do not wish to impose requirements that could now be cost prohibitive for licensees of translator and LPTV stations, thereby discouraging their conversion to digital operation.

As of July 2022, the FCC is proposing to reinstate identification requirements for LPTV and translator stations.

The advent of digital television originally made it necessary for stations simulcasting both their analog and digital on the same channel to include both call signs in all identifications. Both stations have the same base callsigns, with the only difference being the analog ending in "-TV" and digital ending in "-DT" (originally "-HD"). Low-power stations identify with the designator "-LD". After the June 2009 digital transition, stations had a one time opportunity offered by the FCC to either retain the -DT designation on their digital signal, or move over the analog calls with either the "-TV" suffix or no suffix if so identified. Additionally, a station could add the "-TV" suffix to their calls for standardization purposes among broadcast groups, even if those calls were not shared by an AM or FM radio station. PSIP also continuously carries the station's ID digitally encoded.

Digital subchannels
Digital subchannels usually identify themselves in one of two ways, with a limit of seven characters in the PSIP tag:
 * By first providing the call letters, followed by the main channel number, and then the subchannel broken up by either a dot or a dash. For example, "WXXX 2.3" or "WXXX 2–3".
 * The station may identify the channel as a certain stream by placing the subchannel number after the "-DT" designation within the callsign, as in "WXXX-DT3" for that station's third subchannel.

In addition, subchannels which carry weather information – such as those carrying a still of their weather radar, AccuWeather, or a weather feed created by the station itself – may identify that channel via their PSIP flag with the non-standard "WX" suffix, as in "WXXX-WX", though they must be identified by their subchannel number in on-air identifications. Some subchannels may also display only the name of the network it is affiliated with in the PSIP flag rather than the station's calls.

The former two standards are voluntary and interchangeable, and the station can choose to identify all the channels by only the base callsign, although they are encouraged to differentiate each channel from the primary channel (or for LP/Class A analog-only stations digitally airing as a subchannel on a sister or LMA partner station). The primary channel usually does not use a .1/-1 or -DT1 suffix to identify itself beyond some PBS member stations such as the stations of Milwaukee PBS, and minor broadcasters which sell subchannel space to other broadcasters for their own brokered programming. More robust electronic program guide data provided by a smart TV manufacturer or system (such as Roku's backend TV firmware) via a broadband connection can be provided outside the PSIP stream to identify the station, but is not considered a legal station identification on its own.

Identification on other types of signals
In the United States, the policy on radio identification depends on the service. Station identification is usually done in the station's standard mode of operation, though the FCC considers Morse code identification to be universally acceptable no matter what mode the station is operating in.

Low-power (Part 15 in the U.S.) stations do not always identify, being unlicensed (this would be essentially impossible for small FM transmitters for consumer use, such as those used to broadcast music from an MP3 player to a car radio), but those that run as community-based radio stations (including college stations using carrier current) usually do. Station identification in that case usually consists of the station's name, frequency, and a slogan; unlicensed stations are not allowed to use formal call signs.

International shortwave broadcasters usually do not use callsigns, instead giving the name of the service and the location of the home office, and occasionally the frequencies that the current broadcast is being transmitted on. There are a few exceptions, particularly in the United States, the time station WWV being a prime example.

Amateur radio requires the call sign to be stated at the end of a communication and every ten minutes during (some hams use countdown clocks to remind them to identify); modes such as packet radio and fast-scan television often have a provision for automatic identification, either including it as part of a digital data stream or overlaying it over an analog picture. Repeaters are often designed to automatically transmit the repeater's callsign, usually in Morse code. The requirements for the United States are covered in Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations, part 97.119.

Land mobile two-way (including public safety and business mobile) require station identifications by call sign. In the case of the GMRS service, this is to be done by each station in a similar manner to the amateur practice, though the time limit is fifteen minutes. Repeater systems used in both the land mobile and amateur radio services often have provisions for announcing the repeater's call sign, either in voice or Morse code.

Citizen's Band radio no longer maintains a requirement for station or transmission identification, but operators are "encouraged to identify" transmissions using one of the following: a previously assigned callsign, "K" prefix followed by operator initials and residence zip code, operator's name, or "organizational description including name and any applicable operator unit number." The use of a "handle" (nickname) is encouraged by CB rule 17 only in conjunction with these methods, not by itself. Most CB operators prefer to use self-assigned handles reflecting some aspect of their personality; it is generally considered a breach of CB etiquette to use real names, even that of the user.

Family Radio Service and Multi-Use Radio Service have no station identification requirement, though groups of individual users have their own procedures, such as using license plates or informal callsigns (some groups within the Boy Scouts of America, for example, use the troop number followed by the scout's initials as a callsign).

Wi-Fi access points are not required by law to identify (they are unlicensed transmitters) but the Wi-Fi standards include provision for an identifier called an SSID, which is transmitted as a routine part of Wi-Fi network traffic. However, since a number of standard Wi-Fi channels are shared with the amateur radio spectrum, amateur radio-operated High Speed Multimedia (HSMM), or "hinternet", access points usually use the call sign of the control operator as the SSID, this suffices as proper station identification for the access point being operated as an amateur radio transceiver.

Digital broadcasting and FM translators for AM stations
With the advent of digital radio, station identification becomes more complicated, because more than one audio stream can be part of the same station. Stations broadcasting HD Radio feeds identify by their stream channel, and unlike television, the HD1 channel (which in the vast majority of cases, carries the same program as the analog signal) is included in the identification (for example, "WXSS-HD1, Wauwatosa/Milwaukee", "98.3, WZRL-HD1, Plainfield-Indianapolis" or "WCBS-FM-HD1, New York City"). AM stations which simulcast via an FM HD subchannel identify both the main stream and the HD stream, and if broadcasting in HD Radio format in AM, also list that as part of the identification (for example, "WISN HD, Milwaukee, and WRNW-HD2, Milwaukee", or "WINS, WINS-HD, and WNEW-FM-HD3, New York"). The same is done for AM stations airing on an FM translator, though the identification is flexible on whether the AM station or translator is mentioned first; for instance, WCLB in Sheboygan, Wisconsin prefers to brand using the FM translator rather than their maligned AM signal, thus their identification is said as "107.3 FM, W297CK, and 950 AM, WCLB, Sheboygan".

The FCC clarified what is required in these cases: § 73.1201 Station Identification.

(b) Content. (1) Official station identification shall consist of the station's call letters immediately followed by the community or communities specified in its license as the station's location; Provided, That the name of the licensee, the station's frequency, the station's channel number, as stated on the station's license, and/or the station's network affiliation may be inserted between the call letters and station location. DTV stations, or DAB Stations, choosing to include the station's channel number in the station identification must use the station's major channel number and may distinguish multicast program streams. For example, a DTV station with major channel number 26 may use 26.1 to identify an HDTV program service and 26.2 to identify an SDTV program service. A radio station operating in DAB hybrid mode or extended hybrid mode shall identify its digital signal, including any free multicast audio programming streams, in a manner that appropriately alerts its audience to the fact that it is listening to a digital audio broadcast. No other insertion between the station's call letters and the community or communities specified in its license is permissible.

Australia
Station identification in Australia is not limited to the designated common or on-air name of the station or network affiliation, both for radio and television.

A radio station may have call letters related to its town or district name, and the company name; for example, Charters Towers, Queensland station 4CHT and Ceduna Community Radio Inc's 5CCR in Ceduna, South Australia. The station may have a name-callsign completely different from its licensed callsign, such as Wollongong, New South Wales station 2UUL, which is branded on-air as "Wave FM".

A television station usually associates with its network; for example, the Regional Television Queensland station RTQ is known as WIN Television (itself associated with the larger Nine Network), and WIN's original station at Wollongong bears the callsign WIN.

Digital on-screen graphics and teletext
Teletext, an information service provided by many broadcasters, provides station or network identification in many countries worldwide. As almost all modern sets can display this information, it is a simple matter of checking teletext if the identity of the station is not clear. Some broadcasters do not provide a teletext service, and there is no specific requirement or standard for station identification in it. While teletext is widespread in Europe and is closely associated with the PAL television system worldwide, it was non-existent in North America during the analog television era, in which the NTSC standard was used. However, digital television standards generally include station identification.

A common worldwide practice is to use a small overlay graphic known as a Digital on-screen graphic (DOG), "bug" or watermark created by a character generator in the corner of the screen, showing the logo of the channel. While not a substitute for proper station identification, this makes it easy to identify the station at a glance. VH1 originated the practice in the United States around 1993, with most other cable networks following until most started using them in the early 2000s.

Amateur television operators (and also, news channels in other countries) often use a lower third or bug containing their callsign in lieu of voice identification. This is an accepted practice in the United States and United Kingdom.

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Electoral district

An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, electorate, or (election) precinct, is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other polity) created to provide its population with representation in the larger state's constituency. That body, or the state's constitution or a body established for that purpose, determines each district's boundaries and whether each will be represented by a single member or multiple members. Generally, only voters (constituents) who reside within the district are permitted to vote in an election held there. District representatives may be elected by a first-past-the-post system, a proportional representative system, or another voting method. They may be selected by a direct election under universal suffrage, an indirect election, or another form of suffrage.

Terminology

The names for electoral districts vary across countries and, occasionally, for the office being elected. The term constituency is commonly used to refer to an electoral district, especially in British English, but it can also refer to the body of eligible voters or all the residents of the represented area or only those who voted for a certain candidate.

The terms (election) precinct and election district are more common in American English.

In Canadian English, the term is used, especially officially, but is also colloquially and more commonly known as a riding or constituency. In some parts of Canada, constituency is used for provincial districts and riding for federal districts. In colloquial Canadian French, they are called comtés ("counties"), while circonscriptions comtés is the legal term.

In Australia and New Zealand, Electoral districts are called electorates, however elsewhere the term electorate generally refers specifically to the body of voters.

In India, electoral districts are referred to as "Nirvācan Kṣetra" (निर्वाचन क्षेत्र) in Hindi, which can be translated to English as "electoral area" though the official English translation for the term is "constituency". The term "Nirvācan Kṣetra" is used while referring to an electoral district in general irrespective of the legislature. When referring to a particular legislative constituency, it is simply referred to as "Kṣetra" along with the name of the legislature, in Hindi (e.g. 'Lok Sabha Kshetra' for a Lok Sabha constituency). Electoral districts for buli municipal or other local bodies are called "wards".

Local electoral districts are sometimes called wards, a term also used for administrative subdivisions of a municipality. However, in the Republic of Ireland, voting districts are called local electoral areas.

District magnitude
District magnitude is a term invented by the American political scientist Douglas W. Rae in his 1967 dissertation The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws. It refers to the number of seats assigned to each district, and thus helping determine the number of seats to be filled in any election. Staggered terms are sometimes used to reduce the number of seats up for election at any one time, when district magnitude is more than one. The number of seats up for election varies the ease or difficulty to be elected, as the threshold de facto decreases in proportion as the number of seats being filled increases, unless a pro-landslide voting system is used such as general ticket voting.

The concept of magnitude explains Duverger's observation that single-winner contests tend to produce two-party systems, and proportional representation (PR) methods tend to produce multi-party systems.

District magnitude is minimal (exactly 1) in plurality voting in single-member districts (First-past-the-post voting used in most cases). As well, where multi-member districts are used, threshold de facto stays high if seats are filled by general ticket or other pro-landslide party block system (rarely used nationwide nowadays).

In such situations each voter has one vote.

District magnitude is larger than 1 where multiple members are elected - plural districts), and under plurality block voting (where voter may cast as many votes as the number of seats to be filled), proportional representation or single transferable vote elections (where the voter casts just one vote). In STV elections DM normally range from 2 to 10 members in a district. But 21 are elected in a single contest conducted through STV in New South Wales (Australia). In list PR systems DM may exceed 100.

District magnitude is maximized where:
 * jurisdictions with a single electoral district for the whole elected body (at-large voting). This includes the legislatures of: the Netherlands (1 district for 13 million and 150 seats), Mozambique (13 million, 250 seats), Serbia (6.584 million, 250 seats), Israel (9.862 million, 120 seats), Slovakia (4.4 million, 150 seats), and Moldova (3 million, 101 seats). In each of these cases, it takes less than a percentage point of the nation's electorate to capture a seat.
 * systems use a two-tier form of party-list proportional representation, using both local multi-member constituencies (of various district magnitudes and seat-to-vote disproportions), and national leveling seats, when the nationwide results have priority (Mixed-Member Proportional). That is the case in Scandinavia: Sweden (6.53 million, 349 seats, see national apportionment of MP seats in the Riksdag article), Denmark (4.2 million, 179 seats), Norway (3.7 million, 169 seats), and Iceland (0.2 million, 63 seats). Since 2017, Germany's Bundestag is also made up of additional members meant to make up for imbalances in the number of MPs (members of parliament) by state caused by overhang seats. New Zealand also uses MMP.

DM is moderate where districts break up the electorate or where relatively few members overall are elected, even if the election is held at-large.

District magnitude may be set at an equal number of seats in each district. Examples include: all districts of the Northern Ireland Assembly elected 6 members (5 members since 2017); all those of the Parliament of Malta send 5 MPs; Chile, between 1989 and 2013, used a method called binomial voting, which assigned 2 MPs to each district.

In many cases, however, multi-member constituencies correspond to already existing jurisdictions (regions, districts, wards, cities, counties, states or provinces), which creates differences in district magnitude from district to district:
 * Republic of Ireland for the Dáil Éireann: 3-, 4-, and 5-member districts. (STV is used)
 * Hong Kong for half of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong: 5- to 9-member districts.
 * The New Hampshire House of Representatives: 1- to 10-member districts (Plurality block voting is used).
 * South Africa 26.7 million registered people and 400 seats (with 200 filled in nine provincial party lists and 200 elected according to PR. Provincial representation in the National Assembly, elected in province-wide districts, ranges from 5 seats in the Northern Cape to 48 seats in Gauteng.

The concept of district magnitude helps explains why Duverger's speculated correlation between proportional representation and party system fragmentation has many counter-examples, as PR methods combined with small-sized multi-member constituencies may produce a low effective number of parties. Malta with only two major parties is a stark example of divergence from Duverger's rule.

In a system where the intent is to avoid the waste of votes, a set proportion of votes, as a minimum, assures the election of a candidate. This is set as the inverse of the district magnitude plus one, plus one, the Droop quota. Droop is the mathematical threshold that is the mathematical minimum whereby no more will be elected than there are seats to be filled. It ensures election in contests where all votes are used to elect someone. (Probabilistic threshold should include the likely number of votes wasted to minor lists). For instance, a 10%-polling party will not win a seat in a 5-member district (Droop quota of 1/6=16.67%) but will do so in a 10-member district as its 10 percent of the vote exceeds the Droop quota in such a district (1/11=9%). In systems where a noticeable number of votes are wasted, such as Single non-transferable voting or Instant-runoff voting where transferable votes are used but voters are prohibited from ranking all candidates, you will see candidates win with less than Droop.

STV is intended to avoid waste of votes by the use of transferable votes but even in STV, if the rules permit voters not to rank all the candidates or prevent them from ranking all the candidates, some votes are declared exhausted. Thus it is common for one or two members in a district to be elected without attaining Droop.

Larger district magnitudes means larger districts, so annihilate the need and practice of gerrymandering, Gerrymandering is the practice of partisan redistricting by means of creating imbalances in the make-up of the district map, made easier by a multitude of micro-small districts. A higher magnitude means less wasted votes, and less room for such maneuvers. As well, a fair voting system in the district contests also means that gerrymandering is ineffective because each party gets their fair share of seats however districts are drawn, at least theoretically.

Multiple-member contests sometimes use plurality block voting, which allows the single largest group to take all the district seats. Each voter having just one vote in a multi-member district, Single voting, a component of most party-list proportional representation methods as well as single non-transferable vote and single transferable vote, prevents such a landslide.

Minorities
High district magnitude is a major factor in the inclusion of minorities.

Plurality (and other elections with lower district magnitudes) are known to limit the representation of minorities. John Stuart Mill had endorsed proportional representation (PR) and STV in the mid-19th century precisely to respond to this shortcoming.

With lower district magnitudes, the only way to include demographic minorities scattered across the country is to force parties to include them:
 * women: some gender quotas may compel registered parties to a certain sex ratio between the candidates they put forward in single-seat districts. Zippered or gender-balanced party lists can be forced where multiple-member districts are used. Gender quotas can also be an internal policy, as the one used by the Labour Party since 1995 (see all-women shortlist).
 * ethnic groups:
 * such a system is in use in Singapore which requires one team member (at least) to be of a different race from the others. This is the system of the numerically dominant group representation constituencies.
 * in the United States, the Supreme Court ruled that districts should be drawn to create a number of minority-majority districts proportional to the minority population of the area (see majority minority in the United States). This is an implicit, not explicit requirement, based on zoning.
 * in New Zealand, the Māori electorates have been in use for over a century so that voters of Māori extraction can elect their own MPs; contrary to the US' solution, the Māori electorates overlap the generic electorates. And unlike the US, the distinction between ethnicities is explicit.

Large district magnitudes increase the chance for diverse walks of life and minority groups to be elected. However, it is not synonymous with proportional representation. The use of "general ticket voting" prevents the multiple-member representation of the district from being mixed and balanced. Where list PR is used in the district, a closed list PR method gives the party machine, not the voters, the power to arrange the candidates on the party list. In this case, a large district magnitude helps minorities only if the party machine of any party chooses to include them. In a multi-member district where general ticket voting is not used, there is a natural impetus for a party to open itself to minority voters, if they have enough numbers to be significant, due to the competitive environment produced by the electoral system.

Apportionment and redistricting
Apportionment is the process of allocating a number of representatives to different regions, such as states or provinces. Apportionment changes are often accompanied by redistricting, the redrawing of electoral district boundaries to accommodate the new number of representatives. This redrawing is necessary under single-member district systems, as each new representative requires their own district. Multi-member systems, however, vary depending on other rules. Ireland, for example, redraws its electoral districts after every census while Belgium uses its existing administrative boundaries for electoral districts and instead modifies the number of representatives allotted to each. Israel and the Netherlands are among the few countries that avoid the need for apportionment entirely by electing legislators at-large.

Apportionment is generally done on the basis of population. Seats in the United States House of Representatives, for instance, are reapportioned to individual states every 10 years following a census, with some states that have grown in population gaining seats. By contrast, seats in the Cantonal Council of Zürich are reapportioned in every election based on the number of votes cast in each district, which is only made possible by use of multi-member districts, and the House of Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by contrast, is apportioned without regard to population; the three major ethnic groups – Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats – each get exactly five members. Malapportionment occurs when voters are under- or over-represented due to variation in district population.

In some places, geographical area is allowed to affect apportionment, with rural areas with sparse populations allocated more seats per elector: for example in Iceland, the Falkland Islands, Scottish islands, and (partly) in US Senate elections.

Gerrymandering
Gerrymandering is the manipulation of electoral district boundaries for political gain. By creating a few "forfeit" districts where opposing candidates win overwhelmingly, gerrymandering politicians can manufacture more, but narrower, wins for themselves and their party. Gerrymandering relies on the wasted-vote effect, effectively concentrating wasted votes among opponents while minimizing wasted votes among supporters. Consequently, gerrymandering is typically done under voting systems using single-member districts, which have more wasted votes.

While much more difficult, gerrymandering can also be done under proportional-voting systems when districts elect very few seats. By making three-member districts in regions where a particular group has a slight majority, for instance, gerrymandering politicians can obtain 2/3 of that district's seats. Similarly, by making four-member districts in regions where the same group has slightly less than a majority, gerrymandering politicians can still secure exactly half of the seats.

However, any possible gerrymandering that theoretically could occur would be much less effective because minority groups can still elect at least one representative if they make up a significant percentage of the population (e.g. 20–25%), compared to single-member districts where 40–49% of the voters can be essentially shut out from any representation.

Swing seats and safe seats
Sometimes, particularly under non-proportional winner-take-all voting systems, elections can be prone to landslide victories. As the result in each district is not related to votes cast outside the district (suach as overall party popularity), and as often a candidate supported by only a minority of the votes cast in the district are elected, leaving many or most of the votes cast wasted, a moderate plurality of say 34 percent can be enough to take a landslide majority government.

The District-basis of First past the post voting elections means that parties can categorize districts by whether they are likely winnable or should be written off.

A safe seat is one that seems very unlikely to be won by a rival politician based on the constituency's past voting record or polling results.

Conversely, a swing seat is one that could easily swing either way - the party that currently hold it may lose it and a party that wants to win it may be able to take it away from its present holder. In United Kingdom general elections and United States presidential and congressional elections, the voting in a relatively small number of swing seats usually determines the outcome of the entire election. Parties aspire to have as many safe seats as possible, and high-level politicians, such as prime minsters, prefer to run in safe seats.

In large multi-party systems like India, a shift in election results, sometimes caused by swing votes, can lead to no party taking a majority of seats, hence a hung assembly like situation. This may arise from a significant number of seats going to regional parties instead of the larger national parties which are the main competitors at the national or state level, as was the situation in the Lok Sabha (Lower house of the Parliament of India) during the 1990s.

Constituency work
Elected representatives may spend much of the time serving the needs or demands of individual constituents, meaning either voters or residents of their district. This is more common in assemblies with many single-member or small districts than those with fewer, larger districts. In a looser sense, corporations and other such organizations can be referred to as constituents, if they have a significant presence in an area.

Many assemblies allow free postage (through franking privilege or prepaid envelopes) from a representative to a constituent, and often free telecommunications. Caseworkers may be employed by representatives to assist constituents with problems. Members of the U.S. Congress (both Representatives and Senators) working in Washington, D.C., have a governmentally staffed district office to aid in constituent services. Many state legislatures have followed suit. Likewise, British MPs use their Parliamentary staffing allowance to appoint staff for constituency casework. Client politics and pork barrel politics are associated with constituency work.

Special constituencies with additional membership requirements
In some elected assemblies, some or all constituencies may group voters based on some criterion other than, or in addition to, the location they live. Examples include:
 * By ethnic groups: Communal constituencies in Fiji; reserved seats in India for Anglo-Indians and scheduled castes and scheduled tribes; Māori electorates in New Zealand.
 * By qualification: University constituency in Ireland and formerly the United Kingdom, functional constituency in Hong Kong.
 * By residence outside the country: Overseas constituencies in France and Italy.

Voting without constituencies
Not all democratic political systems use separate districts or other electoral subdivisions to conduct elections. Israel, for instance, conducts parliamentary elections as a single district. The 26 electoral districts in Italy and the 20 in the Netherlands have a role in the actual election, but no role whatsoever in the division of the seats. Ukraine elected half of the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament) in this way in the elections in October 2012.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Electoral district


text:
Talk:Fossil Monotremes

Is there any reason not to merge this with Monotreme? -- Jmabel 05:27, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

No, there isn't. --The creator of "Fossil Monotremes"

title: Talk:Fossil Monotremes


text:
Antimatroid

In mathematics, an antimatroid is a formal system that describes processes in which a set is built up by including elements one at a time, and in which an element, once available for inclusion, remains available until it is included. Antimatroids are commonly axiomatized in two equivalent ways, either as a set system modeling the possible states of such a process, or as a formal language modeling the different sequences in which elements may be included. Dilworth (1940) was the first to study antimatroids, using yet another axiomatization based on lattice theory, and they have been frequently rediscovered in other contexts.

The axioms defining antimatroids as set systems are very similar to those of matroids, but whereas matroids are defined by an exchange axiom, antimatroids are defined instead by an anti-exchange axiom, from which their name derives. Antimatroids can be viewed as a special case of greedoids and of semimodular lattices, and as a generalization of partial orders and of distributive lattices. Antimatroids are equivalent, by complementation, to convex geometries, a combinatorial abstraction of convex sets in geometry.

Antimatroids have been applied to model precedence constraints in scheduling problems, potential event sequences in simulations, task planning in artificial intelligence, and the states of knowledge of human learners.

Definitions
An antimatroid can be defined as a finite family $$\mathcal{F}$$ of finite sets, called feasible sets, with the following two properties:
 * The union of any two feasible sets is also feasible. That is, $$\mathcal{F}$$ is closed under unions.
 * If $$S$$ is a nonempty feasible set, then $$S$$ contains an element $$x$$ for which $$S\setminus\{x\}$$ (the set formed by removing $$x$$ from $$S$$) is also feasible. That is, $$\mathcal{F}$$ is an accessible set system.

Antimatroids also have an equivalent definition as a formal language, that is, as a set of strings defined from a finite alphabet of symbols. A string that belongs to this set is called a word of the language. A language $$\mathcal{L}$$ defining an antimatroid must satisfy the following properties:
 * Every symbol of the alphabet occurs in at least one word of $$\mathcal{L}$$.
 * Each word of $$\mathcal{L}$$ contains at most one copy of each symbol. A language with this property is called normal.
 * Every prefix of a word in $$\mathcal{L}$$ is also in $$\mathcal{L}$$. A language with this property is called hereditary.
 * If $$S$$ and $$T$$ are words in $$\mathcal{L}$$, and $$S$$ contains at least one symbol that is not in $$T$$, then there is a symbol $$x$$ in $$S$$ such that the concatenation $$Tx$$ is another word in $$\mathcal{L}$$.

The equivalence of these two forms of definition can be seen as follows. If $$\mathcal{L}$$ is an antimatroid defined as a formal language, then the sets of symbols in words of $$\mathcal{L}$$ form an accessible union-closed set system. It is accessible by the hereditary property of strings, and it can be shown to be union-closed by repeated application of the concatenation property of strings. In the other direction, from an accessible union-closed set system $$\mathcal{F}$$, the language of normal strings whose prefixes all have sets of symbols belonging to $$\mathcal{F}$$ meets the requirements for a formal language to be an antimatroid. These two transformations are the inverses of each other: transforming a formal language into a set family and back, or vice versa, produces the same system. Thus, these two definitions lead to mathematically equivalent classes of objects.

Examples

The following systems provide examples of antimatroids:

 * Chain antimatroids
 * The prefixes of a single string, and the sets of symbols in these prefixes, form an antimatroid. For instance the chain antimatroid defined by the string $$abcd$$ has as its formal language the set of strings $$\{\varepsilon, a, ab, abc, abcd\}$$ (where $$\varepsilon$$ denotes the empty string) and as its family of feasible sets the family $$\bigl\{\emptyset,\{a\},\{a,b\},\{a,b,c\},\{a,b,c,d\}\bigr\}.$$

 * Poset antimatroids
 * The lower sets of a finite partially ordered set form an antimatroid, with the full-length words of the antimatroid forming the linear extensions of the partial order. By Birkhoff's representation theorem for distributive lattices, the feasible sets in a poset antimatroid (ordered by set inclusion) form a distributive lattice, and all distributive lattices can be formed in this way. Thus, antimatroids can be seen as generalizations of distributive lattices. A chain antimatroid is the special case of a poset antimatroid for a total order.

 * Shelling antimatroids
 * A shelling sequence of a finite set $$U$$ of points in the Euclidean plane or a higher-dimensional Euclidean space is formed by repeatedly removing vertices of the convex hull. The feasible sets of the antimatroid formed by these sequences are the intersections of $$U$$ with the complement of a convex set.

 * Perfect elimination
 * A perfect elimination ordering of a chordal graph is an ordering of its vertices such that, for each vertex $$v$$, the neighbors of $$v$$ that occur later than $$v$$ in the ordering form a clique. The prefixes of perfect elimination orderings of a chordal graph form an antimatroid.

 * Chip-firing games
 * Chip-firing games such as the abelian sandpile model are defined by a directed graph together with a system of "chips" placed on its vertices. Whenever the number of chips on a vertex $$v$$ is at least as large as the number of edges out of $$v$$, it is possible to fire $$v$$, moving one chip to each neighboring vertex. The event that $$v$$ fires for the $$i$$th time can only happen if it has already fired $$i-1$$ times and accumulated $$i\cdot\deg(v)$$ total chips. These conditions do not depend on the ordering of previous firings, and remain true until $$v$$ fires, so any given graph and initial placement of chips for which the system terminates defines an antimatroid on the pairs $$(v,i)$$. A consequence of the antimatroid property of these systems is that, for a given initial state, the number of times each vertex fires and the eventual stable state of the system do not depend on the firing order.

Paths and basic words
In the set theoretic axiomatization of an antimatroid there are certain special sets called paths that determine the whole antimatroid, in the sense that the sets of the antimatroid are exactly the unions of paths. If $$S$$ is any feasible set of the antimatroid, an element $$x$$ that can be removed from $$S$$ to form another feasible set is called an endpoint of $$S$$, and a feasible set that has only one endpoint is called a path of the antimatroid. The family of paths can be partially ordered by set inclusion, forming the path poset of the antimatroid.

For every feasible set $$S$$ in the antimatroid, and every element $$x$$ of $$S$$, one may find a path subset of $$S$$ for which $$x$$ is an endpoint: to do so, remove one at a time elements other than $$x$$ until no such removal leaves a feasible subset. Therefore, each feasible set in an antimatroid is the union of its path subsets. If $$S$$ is not a path, each subset in this union is a proper subset of $$S$$. But, if $$S$$ is itself a path with endpoint $$x$$, each proper subset of $$S$$ that belongs to the antimatroid excludes $$x$$. Therefore, the paths of an antimatroid are exactly the feasible sets that do not equal the unions of their proper feasible subsets. Equivalently, a given family of sets $$\mathcal{P}$$ forms the family of paths of an antimatroid if and only if, for each $$S$$ in $$\mathcal{P}$$, the union of subsets of $$S$$ in $$\mathcal{P}$$ has one fewer element than $$S$$ itself. If so, $$\mathcal{F}$$ itself is the family of unions of subsets of $$\mathcal{P}$$.

In the formal language formalization of an antimatroid, the longest strings are called basic words. Each basic word forms a permutation of the whole alphabet. If $$B$$ is the set of basic words, $$\mathcal{L}$$ can be defined from $$B$$ as the set of prefixes of words in $$B$$.

Convex geometries
If $$\mathcal{F}$$ is the set system defining an antimatroid, with $$U$$ equal to the union of the sets in $$\mathcal{F}$$, then the family of sets $$\mathcal{G} = \{U\setminus S\mid S\in \mathcal{F}\}$$ complementary to the sets in $$\mathcal{F}$$ is sometimes called a convex geometry and the sets in $$\mathcal{G}$$ are called convex sets. For instance, in a shelling antimatroid, the convex sets are intersections of the given point set with convex subsets of Euclidean space. The set system defining a convex geometry must be closed under intersections. For any set $$S$$ in $$\mathcal{G}$$ that is not equal to $$U$$ there must be an element $$x$$ not in $$S$$ that can be added to $$S$$ to form another set in $$\mathcal{G}$$.

A convex geometry can also be defined in terms of a closure operator $$\tau$$ that maps any subset of $$U$$ to its minimal closed superset. To be a closure operator, $$\tau$$ should have the following properties: The family of closed sets resulting from a closure operation of this type is necessarily closed under intersections, but might not be a convex geometry. The closure operators that define convex geometries also satisfy an additional anti-exchange axiom: A closure operation satisfying this axiom is called an anti-exchange closure. If $$S$$ is a closed set in an anti-exchange closure, then the anti-exchange axiom determines a partial order on the elements not belonging to $$S$$, where $$x\le y$$ in the partial order when $$x$$ belongs to $$\tau(S\cup\{y\})$$. If $$x$$ is a minimal element of this partial order, then $$S\cup\{x\}$$ is closed. That is, the family of closed sets of an anti-exchange closure has the property that for any set other than the universal set there is an element $$x$$ that can be added to it to produce another closed set. This property is complementary to the accessibility property of antimatroids, and the fact that intersections of closed sets are closed is complementary to the property that unions of feasible sets in an antimatroid are feasible. Therefore, the complements of the closed sets of any anti-exchange closure form an antimatroid.
 * $$\tau(\emptyset)=\emptyset$$: the closure of the empty set is empty.
 * For every subset $$S$$ of $$U$$, $$S$$ is a subset of $$\tau(S)$$ and $$\tau(S)=\tau\bigl(\tau(S)\bigr)$$.
 * Whenever $$S\subset T\subset U$$, $$\tau(S)$$ is a subset of $$\tau(T)$$.
 * If $$S$$ is a subset of $$U$$, and $$y$$ and $$z$$ are distinct elements of $$U$$ that do not belong to $$\tau(S)$$, but $$z$$ does belong to $$\tau(S\cup\{y\})$$, then $$y$$ does not belong to $$\tau(S\cup\{z\})$$.

The undirected graphs in which the convex sets (subsets of vertices that contain all shortest paths between vertices in the subset) form a convex geometry are exactly the Ptolemaic graphs.

Join-distributive lattices
Every two feasible sets of an antimatroid have a unique least upper bound (their union) and a unique greatest lower bound (the union of the sets in the antimatroid that are contained in both of them). Therefore, the feasible sets of an antimatroid, partially ordered by set inclusion, form a lattice. Various important features of an antimatroid can be interpreted in lattice-theoretic terms; for instance the paths of an antimatroid are the join-irreducible elements of the corresponding lattice, and the basic words of the antimatroid correspond to maximal chains in the lattice. The lattices that arise from antimatroids in this way generalize the finite distributive lattices, and can be characterized in several different ways.

 * The description originally considered by concerns meet-irreducible elements of the lattice. For each element $$x$$ of an antimatroid, there exists a unique maximal feasible set $$S_x$$ that does not contain $$x$$: $$S_x$$ can be constructed as the union of all feasible sets not containing $$x$$. This set $$S_x$$ is automatically meet-irreducible, meaning that it is not the meet of any two larger lattice elements. This is true because every feasible superset of $$S_x$$ contains $$x$$, and the same is therefore also true of every intersection of feasible supersets. Every element of an arbitrary lattice can be decomposed as a meet of meet-irreducible sets, often in multiple ways, but in the lattice corresponding to an antimatroid each element $$T$$ has a unique minimal family of meet-irreducible sets whose meet is $$T$$; this family consists of the sets $$S_x$$ for the elements $$x$$ such that $$T\cup\{x\}$$ is feasible. That is, the lattice has unique meet-irreducible decompositions.
 * A second characterization concerns the intervals in the lattice, the sublattices defined by a pair of lattice elements $$x\le y$$ consisting of all lattice elements $$z$$ with $$x\le z\le y$$. An interval is atomistic if every element in it is the join of atoms (the minimal elements above the bottom element $$x$$), and it is Boolean if it is isomorphic to the lattice of all subsets of a finite set. For an antimatroid, every interval that is atomistic is also boolean.
 * Thirdly, the lattices arising from antimatroids are semimodular lattices, lattices that satisfy the upper semimodular law that for every two elements $$x$$ and $$y$$, if $$y$$ covers $$x\wedge y$$ then $$x\vee y$$ covers $$x$$. Translating this condition into the feasible sets of an antimatroid, if a feasible set $$Y$$ has only one element not belonging to another feasible set $$X$$ then that one element may be added to $$X$$ to form another set in the antimatroid. Additionally, the lattice of an antimatroid has the meet-semidistributive property: for all lattice elements $$x$$, $$y$$, and $$z$$, if $$x\wedge y$$ and $$x\wedge z$$ equal each other then they also both equal $$x\wedge (y\vee z)$$. A semimodular and meet-semidistributive lattice is called a join-distributive lattice.

These three characterizations are equivalent: any lattice with unique meet-irreducible decompositions has boolean atomistic intervals and is join-distributive, any lattice with boolean atomistic intervals has unique meet-irreducible decompositions and is join-distributive, and any join-distributive lattice has unique meet-irreducible decompositions and boolean atomistic intervals. Thus, we may refer to a lattice with any of these three properties as join-distributive. Any antimatroid gives rise to a finite join-distributive lattice, and any finite join-distributive lattice comes from an antimatroid in this way. Another equivalent characterization of finite join-distributive lattices is that they are graded (any two maximal chains have the same length), and the length of a maximal chain equals the number of meet-irreducible elements of the lattice. The antimatroid representing a finite join-distributive lattice can be recovered from the lattice: the elements of the antimatroid can be taken to be the meet-irreducible elements of the lattice, and the feasible set corresponding to any element $$x$$ of the lattice consists of the set of meet-irreducible elements $$y$$ such that $$y$$ is not greater than or equal to $$x$$ in the lattice.

This representation of any finite join-distributive lattice as an accessible family of sets closed under unions (that is, as an antimatroid) may be viewed as an analogue of Birkhoff's representation theorem under which any finite distributive lattice has a representation as a family of sets closed under unions and intersections.

Supersolvable antimatroids
Motivated by a problem of defining partial orders on the elements of a Coxeter group, studied antimatroids which are also supersolvable lattices. A supersolvable antimatroid is defined by a totally ordered collection of elements, and a family of sets of these elements. The family must include the empty set. Additionally, it must have the property that if two sets $$A$$ and $$B$$ belong to the family, if the set-theoretic difference $$B\setminus A$$ is nonempty, and if $$x$$ is the smallest element of $$B\setminus A$$, then $$A\cup\{x\}$$ also belongs to the family. As Armstrong observes, any family of sets of this type forms an antimatroid. Armstrong also provides a lattice-theoretic characterization of the antimatroids that this construction can form.

Join operation and convex dimension
If $$\mathcal{A}$$ and $$\mathcal{B}$$ are two antimatroids, both described as a family of sets over the same universe of elements, then another antimatroid, the join of $$\mathcal{A}$$ and $$\mathcal{B}$$, can be formed as follows: $$\mathcal{A}\vee\mathcal{B} = \{ S\cup T \mid S\in\mathcal{A}\wedge T\in\mathcal{B}\}.$$ This is a different operation than the join considered in the lattice-theoretic characterizations of antimatroids: it combines two antimatroids to form another antimatroid, rather than combining two sets in an antimatroid to form another set. The family of all antimatroids over the same universe forms a semilattice with this join operation.

Joins are closely related to a closure operation that maps formal languages to antimatroids, where the closure of a language $$\mathcal{L}$$ is the intersection of all antimatroids containing $$\mathcal{L}$$ as a sublanguage. This closure has as its feasible sets the unions of prefixes of strings in $$\mathcal{L}$$. In terms of this closure operation, the join is the closure of the union of the languages of $$\mathcal{A}$$ and $$\mathcal{B}$$. Every antimatroid can be represented as a join of a family of chain antimatroids, or equivalently as the closure of a set of basic words; the convex dimension of an antimatroid $$\mathcal{A}$$ is the minimum number of chain antimatroids (or equivalently the minimum number of basic words) in such a representation. If $$\mathfrak{F}$$ is a family of chain antimatroids whose basic words all belong to $$\mathcal{A}$$, then $$\mathfrak{F}$$ generates $$\mathcal{A}$$ if and only if the feasible sets of $$\mathfrak{F}$$ include all paths of $$\mathcal{A}$$. The paths of $$\mathcal{A}$$ belonging to a single chain antimatroid must form a chain in the path poset of $$\mathcal{A}$$, so the convex dimension of an antimatroid equals the minimum number of chains needed to cover the path poset, which by Dilworth's theorem equals the width of the path poset.

If one has a representation of an antimatroid as the closure of a set of $$d$$ basic words, then this representation can be used to map the feasible sets of the antimatroid to points in $$d$$-dimensional Euclidean space: assign one coordinate per basic word $$W$$, and make the coordinate value of a feasible set $$S$$ be the length of the longest prefix of $$W$$ that is a subset of $$S$$. With this embedding, $$S$$ is a subset of another feasible set $$T$$ if and only if the coordinates for $$S$$ are all less than or equal to the corresponding coordinates of $$T$$. Therefore, the order dimension of the inclusion ordering of the feasible sets is at most equal to the convex dimension of the antimatroid. However, in general these two dimensions may be very different: there exist antimatroids with order dimension three but with arbitrarily large convex dimension.

Enumeration
The number of possible antimatroids on a set of elements grows rapidly with the number of elements in the set. For sets of one, two, three, etc. elements, the number of distinct antimatroids is $$1, 3, 22, 485, 59386, 133059751, \dots\, .$$

Applications
Both the precedence and release time constraints in the standard notation for theoretic scheduling problems may be modeled by antimatroids. use antimatroids to generalize a greedy algorithm of Eugene Lawler for optimally solving single-processor scheduling problems with precedence constraints in which the goal is to minimize the maximum penalty incurred by the late scheduling of a task.

use antimatroids to model the ordering of events in discrete event simulation systems.

uses antimatroids to model progress towards a goal in artificial intelligence planning problems.

In Optimality Theory, a mathematical model for the development of natural language based on optimization under constraints, grammars are logically equivalent to antimatroids.

In mathematical psychology, antimatroids have been used to describe feasible states of knowledge of a human learner. Each element of the antimatroid represents a concept that is to be understood by the learner, or a class of problems that he or she might be able to solve correctly, and the sets of elements that form the antimatroid represent possible sets of concepts that could be understood by a single person. The axioms defining an antimatroid may be phrased informally as stating that learning one concept can never prevent the learner from learning another concept, and that any feasible state of knowledge can be reached by learning a single concept at a time. The task of a knowledge assessment system is to infer the set of concepts known by a given learner by analyzing his or her responses to a small and well-chosen set of problems. In this context antimatroids have also been called "learning spaces" and "well-graded knowledge spaces".

title: Antimatroid


text:
Navahodads

Navahodads were a roots rock band formed in 1995 by singer-songwriter and guitarist, Brendan Kibble, previously of The Bam Balams with Karl Bergersen on bass, Tim Denny on drums and Michael Maunsell on lead guitar. The Navahodads released two albums, Mumbo Gumbo (1995) and Madame Mojo's (1998). The band's sound was described as Texas R&B, swamp rock, soul, and rock.

Interest generated by their first album saw them tour Spain in 1996. For the tour they released a Spanish only single, "If It's Rockin' (Don't Bother Knockin')", on the Spanish label Louie Records. The band split up in 2003 when Kibble moved to the United States. The band had recorded an album's worth of new material in 2003, which to date remains unreleased. A critic summarised, "Imagine Buddy Guy on a road trip, swinging by Tony Joe White's place, calling on Doug Sahm, and they all go to party in New Orleans...that's the vibe of the Navahodads."

Albums

 * Mumbo Gumbo (1995), Pink Flamingo Records
 * Madame Mojo's (1998), self-released

Single

 * "If It's Rockin'" b/w "Funky She Devil" (1996), Pink Flamingo Records/Louie Records

Compilation tracks

 * "Louie Louie", The First Louie Louie Spanish Compilation (1997), Louie Records
 * "Hot Rod Hearse" and "Single Fin Theory", Surfarama (1997), Pink Flamingo Records
 * "Kahanamokou Kick", Lost in the 60s - Surf Compilation (2003), Tronador

Band members

 * Brendan Kibble: Vocals/Guitar - All releases
 * Tim Denny: Drums - All releases
 * Karl "Dogbox" Bergersen: Bass - Mumbo Gumbo, Spanish Louie Louie Album
 * Michael "Pineapples" Maunsell: Guitar - Mumbo Gumbo, Spanish Louie Louie Album
 * George Bibicos: Keyboards - Madame Mojo's, Spanish Louie Louie Album, Surfarama
 * Brad Fitzpatrick: Guitar - Madame Mojo's, Surfarama, Lost in the 60s
 * Bill Kervin: Bass - Surfarama
 * Mark "Buzz" Busby: Bass - Madame Mojo's, Lost in the 60s

title: Navahodads


text:
Talk:Second Opium War

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 October 2021 and 9 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gdaymate011.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 08:52, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Peabody Essex Museum Edit-a-thon Spring 2014
(1 image added) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cathypem (talk • contribs) 14:47, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

US involvment
Why isnt the US listed in the campaign box? Just after the wars beginning in 1856, the US Navy warships landed 250-300 sailors and marines and destroyed 4 Chinese forts, aswell as defeated an assault by a 3000 man strong Chinese army. --Aj4444 (talk) 02:43, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

you have an emotional nationalism and that can distort things. It's hard for people to accept that the US was insignificant in the 19th century. Putting the treaty on Wangxia on a par with European activities is silly, particularly as the US promised not to sell opium, not to appropriate land and dropped its request to meet with the Emperor. What the US asked for would be called 'Most Favored Nation" status today - that US merchants be treated the same as everyone else. Here's a link to documents relate dto the Treaty: http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob51.html  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gaintes (talk • contribs) 21:38, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * why would we want to be involved?70.90.87.73 (talk) 14:36, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

coolies

 * Permitting Chinese to work overseas is nothing more than the export of Chinese laborers to colonies. Around 1860, a large number of Chinese were recruited as "contractual workers". In reality, these Chinese, labeled as "coolies" were taken to America and Southeastern Asia. Their destiny was as miserable as the black slaves from Africa.

Your point being? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.184.116.38 (talk) 23:21, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * And you hope to achieve _________ by saying "Your point being?" 173.183.79.81 (talk) 08:50, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

USS Levant
I removed "American warships, including Levant, bombed Guangzhou. The people in Guangzhou and soldiers launched a resistance against the invaders and forced them to retreat from Humen." 1) The Levant's article says they were fired on, however doesn't mention the ship taking part on the bombardment of Guanhzhou. 2)The next paragraph indicates that the US and Russia sent no military aid, meaning their militaries didn't take part and contradicting this statement. 3) This statement is completely unsourced. 70.168.32.250 13:01, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Opium Legal or Not?
The article on the Treaty of Nanking apparently says that the treaty legalized the opium trade in China, but this article on the Second Opium War says that the Arrow was boarded partly because it was suspected of opium smuggling. Did the legal status of opium trading change between the first and second war? I'm doing a report on this and the Boxer Rebellion for school. Non-User 02:27, 04 April 2005

some sort of discussion
Oh shut the >.< up you, I grew up in a British Colony and british try to brain-washed us all the time, tell us that we are less worthy and they are like survior to us, blah blah blah. Oh yea, then encourage us to be like Banana and take out mother tounge away. So tell me what exactly the different of brain-washed by Britsh or communist??? Personally I don't appreciate your opinion because before like the last two decade of 1997, Non-British people in Hong Kong are simply nothing. 142.161.94.69 04:29, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

No, I am not having problem with the article, the article is actually pretty good. I just dont like what 142.161.94.69 said above about the BS of like China have no free speech and stuff. To us, the lost of the opium war is very degrading and to make thing even worse is those British goverment of colonies said that the British are one the ones who set the people of the colonies free and then putting them into melting pot and strip, bash those people's original indentites. .....That why I was furious and type word that is innappropiate word I here, I am sorry. I will put that potty word away and put a >.< face instead. 142.161.94.69 23:39, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

--Relax, the fact of the matter is that white people tried to get the Chinese addicted to drugs so they could make money. Don't freak out because you can't handle it that the British were brutal monsters in the past. Right-wingers, god it's not enough that your politics of selfishness dominate our dying world, you want to seem like angels too. Give me a break. (Comment left by 24.193.227.161)

 * Fair Trade??? So why today, isn't Colombia allowed to export all the cocaine it wants, and Afghanistan all the heroin it wants. Again, it's going to take some research to find it, but even the British at the time didn't believe what they were doing was right; there was an impassioned debate in Parliament against the opium trade and an escalation into war. If you really can't face the fact about the brutality of the Western powers, maybe it would be easier on your soul if you saw it as a conflict between capitalists and progressive Liberals in which the capitalists won; though I doubt that that would fit into a right-wing world view either.Cetot 07:30, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

--So why do you think European countries should be allowed to dictate to China what China should allow or disallow to trade? As other articles had stated, Europeans wanted Chinese products but China had little need for European products. How is this unfair trade?

It may seem unfair to the Europeans because they are only eager people wanting more land and resources not avaiable to them. They want people to be converted to christians like them so as to be controlled like the sheeps they are. Today we have a result of all this.

Why do you think you can dictate to a country what their immigration and emigration policies should be? Maybe the United States should allow Mexico to write our immigration policy. And speaking of oppression, look at your own history in the mid 1800s.

Just face it, it was the arrogance of European countries brought about by their superior technology which gave them the license to destroy the native civilizations throughout the Americas, enslave the Africans, colonize India and southeast Asia, and force open doors in East Asia. Whether or not this was good or bad is debateable. Sour pickle 23:14, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

China is a country of tradiotional spirit and nothing and nobody, be it the British, the Japanese the American... can crush that. The more you push us around, the more we rise up against it, because that it the true Chinese spirit. No political parties or ideologies are perfect in the world, becuase perfection doesn't yet exist. But we are striving fornear perfection, and one day we're gonna overtake all of the other countries in the world beca use we are the BEST. We work hard and are ever so determined to right the wrongs all the other countries have done to us. So by next century, Japan, prepare to kiss our backside and America, prepare to beg for forgivness and Britain, you'll regret the Opium War. China is a great nation, the Western countries are just jealous and scared, but let me tell you this, we WILL dominate the world and be the BEST! We will NOT let you push us around any longer, and we will stand for what we believe in!!! Missbrainy.

And what is it you 'believe in' exactly? By the tone of your contribution i would suggest arrogance, xenophobia verging on racism and the pursuit of long-term grudges created by your massive inferiority complex. However, please feel free to enlighten me on these 'beliefs'. I await your response with interest.Samgb 09:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

-For real. Missbrainy, how are you any different than the Europeans in your attitude? You're not. You will dominate the world and be the best? For some reason I feel that the Europeans felt the exact same way. Please leave your racism at home, if you must have it at all.

Small Armies?
OKay, I'm not Chinese but I'm really interested in the size of the Chinese Imperial Army. I mean, why only 10k-20k troops? From what I learned, the Chinese used to field armies by the hundreds of thousands. SO why the very few numbers? & for God's sake, hadn't any of Qing generals read The Art of War? Sorry, this just baffles me for sometime. The approaches to the capital & the capital only guarded by 10k troops....Rad vsovereign 11:31, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

 * well, the qing army at the time was extremely depleted. after fighting the first opium wars, the taiping rebellion, and corruption. there was not much that the army could do. sometimes, the non-banner troops were not counted, only Manchus could become banner, regular Han (the vast majority of people in china)could not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.228.120 (talk) 19:52, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * That claim from the article is still wrong, it was obviously more than 7,000 troops (the number written in the first page) in total since for the second battle of Canton alone China fielded 30,000, as shown by the very article about this battle that is linked in this page. Have you ever seen a war where a country involves less troops in total than for a single battle of that war ? Mathematically.
 * Also, it's so different from the First Opium War (200k chinese troops in total), that it wouldn't make sense anyway. The British alone rolled on China with less than 1/10th of the Chinese numbers. Yet for the second war, it would mean that China was able somehow to offer some resistance with even less soldiers than the very small Western expedition ? Let's be serious. 2A01:E0A:912:B310:5089:B0B2:15E8:6EDD (talk) 01:36, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

China was never able to field an army larger than 50k. Logistically speaking it was impossible to feed 50k men with food transported by horse/men drawn wagons. A single 100k+ army as listed in the chinese classics is an exaggeration no doubt. More likely, there were several 30K armies operating separately. One should also note that Chinese mobilization was a snail crwawl. There were no railraods and the roads were not well maintained, the troops lacked any discipline whatsoever and by western standards were nothing more than a sick man. By modern standards the chinese imperial army is in fact a corrupt and expensive circus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.40.202.126 (talk) 12:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

 * And maybe you can keep your European bigotry right where you come from. If you ever bothered to research the entire history of China, you would have noticed they fielded armies amounting into the millions, but I presume you'll dismiss it all as false and Chinese Communist propaganda with your bullshit American imperialist fallacies. By modern standards, the US army (that's right, your country), is a joke. They fail against random militants armed with AK-47 and take 10 years, trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of casualties and many more civilian casualties to kill one single militant: Osama Bin Laden. Keep your biased views right where you come from. The world has had enough of the Western lies already. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.213.42.184 (talk) 05:29, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:MILHIST Assessment
A nice, informative article. Nice section breaks, and I like that it includes pictures, and that fancy HongKong banner. Overall, it is still a bit short, particularly in the introduction. The introduction, to my mind, needs to summarize the entire article. LordAmeth 12:34, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

treaty of Nanjing (Nanking)

opium was specifically never mentioned in the treaty, certainly not legalised it was in the treaty of tianjin.....would delve into my history books to give you the details, but.....

regards

Elgin and looting
Here is a passage I removed from the article:

 * Elgin was acutely sensitive to the charge of looting, as it was his own father, Thomas Bruce (1776–1841), who, from 1799 to 1803, removed from the Acropolis in Greece what are now known as the Elgin Marbles to Britain, where they remain to this day, a subject of rancor between the Greek and British governments.

This paragraph is unsourced, misleading and (in its present state) irrelevant. The subject of looting at the Summer Palaces is interesting and has been studied. James Hevia's book, English Lessons, for instance, gives detailed descriptions of how armies of the British Empire (including that involved in the Second Opium War) conducted looting operations in a systematic, institutionalised manner. It makes no sense to talk of Lord Elgin being acutely sensitive to the charge of looting since it was his responsibility to oversee such operations. It is quite unlikely that he felt any sort of remorse for his father's actions in Greece. Pinkville (talk) 19:49, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Background
In the Background section, it says "The Qing Dynasty court rejected the demands from Britain, France, and the US." However, only British demands were mentioned. What were the French and American demands? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.244.13.112 (talk) 23:37, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Amur
Amur Annexation is listed as a territorial change but Russia wasn't part of this war. Maybe the war revealed China's weakness to Russia, but this seems to be an independent issue from the war and was conducted separately from it. So I've removed it as a territorial change in the infobox. Spellcast (talk) 09:21, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Victor Hugo letter regarding looting of Summer Palace?
An anonymous editor wrote in the article (I reverted the change since content questions don't belong in the article itself):

>>> I don't see any comment about Victor Hugo's public letter on the topic of Robbery and Plunder of Summer Palace? Is it too hard to admit yet today? <<<

If anyone knows of this or has time to research it, that may prove useful. Facts707 (talk) 14:02, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Article Name
Given the discussion at Talk:First Opium War, worth linking on this page's talk space that "Second Opium War" is actually (and increasingly) the preferred term used to discuss this conflict, despite the *Arrow* War having been preferred in the 19th century. — Llywelyn II   13:49, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

... allegedly murdered ...
"Half were allegedly murdered by the Chinese in a fashion ..." This implies that the murder is uncertain (which it is not - see entries for Parkes and Loch (and probably several original sources)).

I suggest to rephrase: "Half were murdered by the Chinese, allegedly in a fashion ..."

A user — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.170.196.53 (talk) 16:12, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

"Background"
I've just deleted this part as it was exactly repeating the "outbreak" part that just follow. I thought it was better to keep the text included in a broader structure. Regards, KaptainIgloo (talk) 08:46, 22 April 2014 (UTC) KaptainIgloo

Should the US be played up as a participant in the infobox?
There's a section on the US involvement, and it sounds puny. Battle of the Pearl River Forts arguably wasn't even part of the Opium War and was a self-contained skirmish (i.e. a separate mini-hostilities between the US & China, but with no coordination between the US and the British/French), and the shelling of the Dagu Forts sounds more like a ship gone rogue (apparently under orders to maintain neutrality due to the earlier treaty which were ignored). To be sure talking about these incidents is important, but they're important because of the *period* of history, not because there was a UK/France/US alliance. Or perhaps the article is being misleading and there was more coordination going on? Open to be convinced here, I'm not an expert, just going by what's currently in the article... SnowFire (talk) 16:08, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * US involvement in the Second Opium War was incidental and it would be untrue to say that they were a participant. Bear in mind that the War of 1812 was still relatively fresh in people's minds, making cooperation at best unlikely. Philg88 ♦talk 17:13, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

 * Hm, I guess it's a matter of definition. Is the definition of this war limited to the Anglo-French goals? Or does it include any other countries that China was in conflict with at the same time? If a country was involved in battles that happened concurrently with others, it doesn't necessarily make them a belligerent to the overall conflict. The British and French obviously cooperated, but it seems the U.S. battles were their own self-contained affairs with separate goals. The Americans were there to protect their interests in Canton and the U.S. commander Andrew Foote tried stressing their "neutrality" between the British and Chinese. Now that is a primary source and things like this are going to need elaboration from scholars or historians in determining whether to include the U.S. as part of the war. I'm not too familiar with this war yet, so I'm not really arguing for or against inclusion at this stage. Just saying we need to establish a definition from what secondary sources generally say. Spellcast (talk) 12:13, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

 * After researching this a bit, the U.S. was officially neutral but later aided Britain (kind of like the First World War). Commodore Josiah Tattnall III couldn't resist intervening after learning of the British wounded (including Admiral Grant) in the Taku Forts and of the stranded British ship. When confronted with this violation of neutrality, he replied with (and helped popularise the phrase) "blood is thicker than water". He also got the approval of American envoy to China John E. Ward to do so. Before this, the only direct U.S. military action was the Barrier Forts as you linked. The ref I added says they were "officially neutral" but the navy "occasionally aided" the British and French. So we have a case of official vs. de facto positions, and I guess whether to include the U.S. in the infobox is a stylistic choice. We don't want to give the misleading impression the U.S. goals were totally aligned with the others, but at the same time we don't want to totally erase/downplay their actual actions. So perhaps adding the U.S. with a supplementary note is good compromise. Spellcast (talk) 19:10, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

 * Tattnall not only acted against US government policy in this instance, but less than 2 years later was already rebelling against the US government as a commander in the Confederate Navy. He should not be listed uncritically as representing the US government's policy. I propose to change the infobox note to reflect this. --JWB (talk) 16:49, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
 * According to Taku Forts, Tattnall only sent a boat to take off British wounded, and on its return found that some sailors had also helped the British operate ship's guns. --JWB (talk) 05:00, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Battle of Taku Forts (1859) describes it this way: "The United States government, as a neutral power, did not order any American vessels to proceed in this attack. Tattnall offered to send in his steam launch to help evacuate the dead and wounded from danger, an offer which was gratefully accepted by the Britons. When Tattnall left Rear Admiral Hope for Powhatan in his launch, he was forced to wait a moment at Plover's port side for his men who had come aboard with the Commodore. A moment later a few men returned, covered in black powder marks and sweaty from excitement. The American Commodore asked, "What have you been doing, you rascals?" "Don’t you know we're neutrals" "Beg pardon, sir," said one of the men, "but they were a bit short-handed with the bow-gun, and we thought it no harm to give them a hand while we were waiting." --JWB (talk) 05:05, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

"The United States and Russia sent envoys to Hong Kong to offer help to the British and French, though in the end Russia sent no military aid.[citation needed]"
No citation has been added and it seems contrary to other information. It should be removed. --JWB (talk) 04:45, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Hsu p. 207 seems to contradict it. --JWB (talk) 05:12, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Gladstone in 1840-1
The article currently says that because of (the then Whig Foreign Secretary) Palmerston's First Opium War in 1840, Gladstone was reluctant to accept office in Peel's Conservative government in 1841. Why should this have been the case? Clarification needed, please.Paulturtle (talk) 00:13, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

The editor even did not provide any info about Casualties and losses.
The editor even did not provide any info about Casualties and losses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Temp8900 (talk • contribs) 10:20, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I guess we should sack "the editor". Temp8900 is invited to grasp the nettle, find the sources and provide what's missing.  Don't be shy!  sirlanz 10:51, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

"In China, the First Opium War is considered to be the beginning of modern Chinese history."
needs a strong citation. It's certainly the dividing point for the Shanghai History Museum but that's because of Shanghai's quasi-international status after the Treaty of Nanjing. For the most part, history classes in China seem to make their divisions among the different dynasties with "modern" or "new" China following the Xinhai Revolution and the fall of the Qing in 1911/2. — Llywelyn II   13:11, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Merge duplicative British Delays and British Attacks sections?
These two sections seem to cover the same events in differing levels of detail. Suggest taking the material from the British Attacks section and putting it where British Delays currently is, which seems to make more sense chronologically. Any objections? Ruatcaelum 19:28, 14 March 2021 (GMT)

Current Wikipedia article is too different from britiannica in the causes of war
I read the britiannica version of Opium wars and the current Wikipedia version and they are so different.

In britiannica, it explicitly states in the intro that the British had wanted any excuse to wage war and extend their trading rights. When China seized a former pirate ship registered to British and arrested several Chinese crew members. The British used that incident as a pretext to wage war. China was also in no position to fight as they were in the middle of Taiping rebellion. Generally it blames the British for using the arrow incident as an excuse to attain political benefits.

In current Wikipedia version however, that narrative is missing. Instead it makes it seem like the reason for the war was because China broken the treaty and also stresses on how Chinese acted horribly to the British by Arresting the 12 Chinese crew members. Refused to apologize or completely release all Chinese sailors and so Deserved to have a war that conveniently expanded British trading rights. ... basically implying only China was the one who created the war and had pushed Britian too far.

Ie. Current article writes

The remaining crew of the Arrow were then released, with no apology from Viceroy Ye Mingchen who also refused to honour the treaty terms. Seymour, Major General van Straubenzee and Admiral de Genouilly agreed the plan to attack Canton as ordered.[6]:503 This event came to be known as the Arrow Incident and provided the alternative name of the ensuing conflict.[15][page needed]

Same exact deal with the French. In britiannica, It says "the French decided to join the British military expedition, using as their EXCUSE the murder of a French missionary in the interior of China in early 1856."

But current Wikipedia says the death of a Frenchman had inspired the French.

Is the britiannica version wrong or is current Wikipedia article a deeply flawed revisionist version? Because they are too different from each other. I do think britiannica is correct in that it's ridiculous to think the British felt justified to invade a country and expand their trading priveleges just because one chinese officer arrested a former pirate ship of mostly Chinese sailors. Even britiannica could not lie to themselves of what is obviously a British pretext for war. Even in British parliament, they had another argument on the morality of the war as they clearly knew it wasn't right to force Chinese to buy what they refused to buy.

The current Wikipedia article is a flawed revisionist version that needs to be fixed and match the britiannica encyclopedia version which is relatively a more honest version that admits the real causes of opium war as obviously British greed and opium profits. Casualfoodie (talk) 16:23, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposal for updating the total of casualties with a new source
Hi! I found this rather recent and credible source (from 2016) in the form of a book titled "Battle for Beijing, 1858-1860: Franco-British Conflict in China" by author Harry Gelber; this book mentions that the total casualties for the allies was of at least 1,200 while the article in its current form with its current sources claims their casualties were of 981 at worst; on the other hand, the article in its current form with its current articles mentions that the Chinese sustained 4,901 casualties at worst while the book by Gelber mentions at least 20,000 and as much as 25,000 casualties in total. The data presented by Gelber seems credible in my opinion, although the differences are way too high in the case of the Chinese side, but we can quote it to mention in the infobox that the total casualties for the allies (which aren't mentioned as of now) was of anywhere between 981 to 1,200 and for the Chinese we could either use Gelber's statistics or leave the current ones with a footnote stating that some authors (Gelber obviously) claim that the Chinese casualties might number as many as 25,000. What do you think? I already prepared the sources for Gelber's book from its two relevant chapters so if we decide to use them we can just copy and paste this:

So what do you think? Thanks in advance and have a nice day. 177.227.43.209 (talk) 00:38, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

 * It seems reasonable to add these figures, particularly if you can explain why Gelber's numbers are greater. Does he explain? That is, did he find new sources, perhaps Chinese ones that had been passed over? Chinese scholars would have found them, so I'm curious. Did he use sources that earlier scholars examined and found unreliable? I checked my local university library web catalogue, which finds books reviews, but there were none for this book.
 * In any case, thank you for finding this new material.ch (talk) 18:17, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

 * PS Why are there so many editors' names? The publisher's webpage [here lists Gelber as the sole author. In any case, a single editor and "and others" would be fine.[[User:CWH|ch]] (talk) 18:26, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Misplaced paragraph. In need of editing for English
"In August 1860, the Anglo-French army reorganized 18,000 men and captured Tianjin first.."

This paragraph, set amid actions of 1858, is misplaced, and the English in places is barely coherent. JF42 (talk)

title: Talk:Second Opium War


text:
Agave maculata

Agave maculata (synonym Manfreda maculosa), commonly known as the Texas tuberose or spice lily, is a species of Agave that is endemic to southern Texas and northeastern Mexico.

Description
The Texas tuberose is acaulescent, meaning the stem is extremely short. The fleshy silvery-green leaves are covered with purple spots and in low light situations may lay flat on the ground. In a drought, the leaves may wither, leaving little or nothing visible above ground. Sufficient precipitation yields an inflorescence 60 cm tall in the period April–September. The new flower stalks (inflorescences) are fed on by small mammals, javelina, deer, and feral pigs, which can end the flowering effort for that season. The leaves are fed on by these as well, especially during droughts, weakening and killing the plants.

The flowers open and change colors over 3–4 days of life, from white to pink to dark red. The inferior ovaries turn from green to purple to black as they mature as seedpods.

Taxonomy
Agave maculata was first described by Eduard von Regel in 1856. Later, in 1859, William Hooker described the same species as Agave maculosa. It was under this synonym that it was transferred to the genus Manfreda and then the genus Polianthes (both now included in Agave), but Regel's epithet is the oldest and so has priority.

Ecology
Texas tuberose is the primary host plant for the caterpillars of the rare manfreda giant-skipper or aloe skipper (Stallingsia maculosus (= Stallingsia smithi)). A reduction in the A. maculata population could threaten the existence of the butterflies.

title: Agave maculata


text:
Dimboola

Dimboola is a town in the Shire of Hindmarsh in the Wimmera region of western Victoria, Australia, 334 kilometres north-west of Melbourne.

History
Situated on the Wimmera River, Dimboola was previously known as 'Nine Creeks'. Following a survey conducted in late 1862 by contractor Frederick Smith of Ararat, a plan for a township in the County of Dimboola was proposed. It was first recognised as being a township when mentioned in the April 1863 edition of the Government Gazette.

Before the arrival of white people into the district, the Aboriginal people called the area Watchegatcheca which had the meaning 'Wattle Tree and White Cockatoos'. The name 'Dimboola' has generally been accepted to have come from the Sinhalese word "dimbula" meaning 'Land of Figs'. The name came from the District Surveyor of the time John George Winchester Wilmot, who had previously lived in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The relationship of the name to this area is suggested to have come from 'Upper Regions Station' where an abundance of fruit trees grew in the garden, many of which were figs.

The Post Office opened on 3 April 1863, but was known as Nine Creeks until 1869.

The Dimboola Magistrates' Court closed on 1 January 1983.

Dimboola's economy is predominantly rural, with wheat, sheep and timber being traditionally important. There have been recent forays into emu and alpaca rearing and olive plantations.

Paintings of Dimboola landscapes by noted Australian painter Sidney Nolan, who was stationed in the area while on army duty in World War II, can be found in the National Gallery of Victoria. Dimboola is also the setting of the play (and subsequent film) Dimboola by Jack Hibberd.

Distinguished Australian-British physicist Richard Dalitz was born in Dimboola, as was World War II nursing matron Olive Dorothy Paschke.

The Dimboola Show is held on the third Thursday in October and coincides with Caulfield Cup Day.

Traditional Ownership
The formally recognised traditional owners for the area in which Dimboola sits are the Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jadawadjali, Wergaia and Jupagik Nations. These Nations are represented by the Barengi Gadjin Land Council Aboriginal Corporation. The local language is Wergaia.

Demographics
As of the 2016 census, 1,424 people resided in Dimboola. The median age of persons in Dimboola was 52 years. Children aged 0–14 years made up 14.3% of the population. People over the age of 65 years made up 29% of the population There were more females than males with 53% of the population female and 47% male. The average household size is 2.1 persons per household. The average number of children per family for families with children is 1.8.

82.0% of people were born in Australia. Of all persons living in Dimboola, 3.4% (48 persons) were Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people. This is higher than for both the state of Victoria (0.8%) and the national average (2.8%). The most common ancestries in Dimboola were Australian 31.7%, English 29.5%, German 9.2%, Scottish 8.3%, and Irish 6.7%.

Education
There is a range of education options available in Dimboola. There is one kindergarten, two primary schools and one secondary college.

St Peter's Primary School and Dimboola Primary School are the two primary education providers.

The town's secondary college is the only purpose-built memorial secondary college in Victoria, hence its name, Dimboola Memorial Secondary College. It offers VCE and VCAL courses for senior year levels and currently has an enrolment of around 160 students.

As of the 2016 census, of the people aged 15 and over in Dimboola, 8.4% completed year 12, and 16.4% completed year 10 as their highest level of educational attainment.

Transport
V/Line coach services depart from the rear of the Old Shire Hall in Lloyd Street. These travel to both Melbourne and Adelaide.

Dimboola railway station is served by The Overland passenger rail services between Melbourne and Adelaide, twice weekly in each direction.

Sport
Dimboola has an Australian rules football team competing in the Wimmera Football League.

Other sports clubs include hockey, tennis, netball, rowing and badminton.

Golfers play at the Dimboola Golf Club on Riverside.

Dimboola is home to a state-of-the-art synthetic hockey pitch lined for both hockey and tennis.

Tourist attractions

 * Pink Lake, a picturesque salt lake north of Dimboola, also known as the Pink lake of Victoria.
 * Little Desert National Park
 * Wimmera River

title: Dimboola