Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 March 20

= March 20 =

Confused about satire
Hi there. I read an article (link) on a usually serious news website and I'm not sure if it's satire or serious. I can't find anything on Google. Perhaps somebody here is better than me at using Google and can enlighten me. Thanks for your help--Asker of questions (talk) 04:17, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * It's serious. Sleigh (talk) 05:16, 20 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Are you sure it's usually "serious"? I can't see the point, if that article is satirical. Flippant, sure. The one it links to is what I'd call serious, though I reach the page in error. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:19, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Destruction of copyright-infringing works
Let's say I'm an obscure photographer, and I publish some photos that get copied (without permission) and sold by a more famous artist whose works sell for large amounts of money. If I sue him for copyright infringement and win, why would destruction of the unsold copies be ordered by the court? See Cariou v. Prince: I don't understand why the district court would order the destruction of the unsold prints, rather than ordering that all royalties go to the original photographer or something of the sort. It's not like a professional photographer would be likely to request destruction if the alternative was being awarded potentially large amounts of money. Nyttend (talk) 13:58, 20 March 2015 (UTC)


 * They didn't order the prints destroyed. They ordered the defendants to "within ten days of the date of this Order deliver up for impounding, destruction, or other disposition, as Plaintiff determines, all infringing copies of the Photographs, including the Paintings and unsold copies of the Canal Zone exhibition book, in their possession, custody, or control and all transparencies, plates, masters, tapes, film negatives, discs, and other articles for making such infringing copies." (Emphasis added.) It is, of course, within the rights of the copyright holder to decide how many copies of his work will exist. --65.94.50.15 (talk) 14:46, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Swapping sisters
I am attracted to the sister of one of my friends. But my friend is also single and so are two of my sisters. So a thought crossed my mind. He could introduces me to his sister, and I introduce him to either of my sisters. I don't date so I'm only interested in marriage. So is such a thing common, and is there an article about it on wikipedia? Recent questioners12 (talk) 19:19, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

This is a reference desk, we don't give personal advice, please see the guidelines at the top of the page. μηδείς (talk) 19:29, 20 March 2015 (UTC)


 * The question deleted by Medeis said, in part So is such a thing common, and is there an article about it on wikipedia? -- emphasis mine. That is two questions that can in principle be answered with references, and I see nothing in the original question that asks for advice of any sort. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:58, 20 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Discussed at WT:RD. -- ToE 16:33, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Discussion archived at WT:Reference desk/Archive 115. -- ToE 12:21, 9 April 2015 (UTC)


 * The closest article I can find on wikipedia is arranged marriage. Here are two articles about "sister swapping" that explain a little about the practice, who does it, what the problems are, etc . SemanticMantis (talk) 20:58, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Sometimes also known as "parallel marriage" or "parallel weddings", here's an academic paper on the topic, it also discusses cousins marrying cousins, and other types of marriage arrangements done in Baragon. This says that "sister swapping" is also a Kurdish tradition, known as "Berdel." SemanticMantis (talk) 21:07, 20 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Here is the brief stub article on Berdel from the Tr Wikipedia . SemanticMantis (talk) 21:09, 20 March 2015 (UTC)


 * See also double cousin, the term used to describe the relation between the children of such marriages. -- ToE 23:03, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Jonas in the Whale
In Moby-Dick, chapter LV (Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales), Melville wrote:
 * In old Harris's collection of voyages there are some plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A.D. 1671, entitled "A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master." In one of those plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are represented lying among ice-isles, with white bears running over their living backs. In another plate, the prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale with perpendicular flukes.

Are Harris's collection and the Dutch book authentic historical works, and do they survive today? -- ToE 22:17, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't seem to find any information about the supposed Dutch book, but Friderich Martens published a German book in 1675 that does describe that voyage, which is definitely historical. It can be found on google books, but I don't see the described plates in that book. - Lindert (talk) 22:38, 20 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Side question, is Jonas a normal variant or a misprint? I always thought, and google seems to confirm it's normally Jonah. μηδείς (talk) 00:06, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * According to Jonah, some say "Jonas". InedibleHulk (talk) 00:15, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * (ec)Apparently a misprint/variant of the Dutch rendition. The Statenvertaling, or "States Translation", from 1637 used "Jona", as does a modern translation. So, not "Jonah", but not "Jonas", either. &mdash; Lomn 00:17, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The King James Bible apparently uses "Jonas". That's the Bible I use, and I hadn't noticed. Maybe because they use "Jonah" in their Book of Jonah. Same guy, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:22, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Probably Greek influence. One can find "Zecharias", "Elias", and other hellenised forms of Hebrew names in its edition of the New Testament, because (not surprisingly) the original Greek text uses hellenised forms. That's also why Silas appears under a Latin name sometimes, "Silvanus": the KJV translators sought to produce a word-for-word translation, rather than producing something with English usages such as consistent names. Newer translations seem more often to present the names consistently; after all, the NT text includes a translation of the original Hebrew names, rather than its names being original. Nyttend (talk) 03:37, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * In the same place Jesus' sentence is translated as "Jonas", He also calls it a "whale", whereas the usual translation in the story of Jonah itself is a "great fish". Does Greek vs. Hebrew also account for that discrepancy? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:45, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The Hebrew and Greek are different, but neither is very specific. The Hebrew just used the normal word for "fish" (דָּג) in combination with the adjective "great/large" (גָּדוֹל). The Greek κῆτος means "any sea-monster or huge fish" . It doesn't appear that people in ancient times made a clear distinction between fish and fish-like mammals; even in English, "whale fish" used to be a common term, and Dutch still uses the cognate "walvis". - Lindert (talk) 11:43, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, the Hebrew text switches between the fish being male and female, leading to Midrashic exegesis that Jonah actually went through swallowing/regurgitation twice. --Dweller (talk) 10:51, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Melville himself in Moby-Dick considers the arguments for a whale being a mammal, but finally decides that whales are actually fish. Alansplodge (talk) 15:49, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Hah, now you're discussing my name! And yes, some call the biblical prophet “Jonas” and some call him “Jonah”. &#x2013; b_jonas 13:08, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

What a wonderful undertaking is Archive.org - see Spitzbergische oder groenlandische Reise Beschreibung gethan im Jahr 1671 in nice blackletter font; I wish I could read German. Here is the picture of the polar bears having a walk on the whales' backs, and this must be the representation of "the whale with perpendicular flukes". I'm not so sure that this is entirely fair, the artist has possibly shown them twisted into the vertical plane so that their size can be illustrated; what appears to be a little sketch of the view from the nose (marked "e") shows the flukes in their correct position. I also like the previous page, which shows a very jolly walrus. Alansplodge (talk) 00:19, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you all, particularly Alansplodge. I've long been intrigued by Jonas in the Whale being named not just after a person, but after a person at a particular place and time. (Might they have named its tender Jonas Lying Fainted Next to a Worm-Smitten Gourd?) I don't know of any other ships named similarly. -- ToE 16:59, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Germans in the US was often called "Dutch", I am wondering whether Melvilles usage of "Dutch" couldn't be similar here? It seems especially likely since Moby Dick is written in that peculiar blend of archaic and "folkish" American-English. --Saddhiyama (talk) 16:08, 23 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Dutch occasionally refers to Germans, mostly the Plattdeutsch, which the Mennonites/Amish largely are, but in most cases it refers to the Netherlands, and the Dutch were far mare noted for their sailing than the Bavarians. μηδείς (talk) 17:19, 23 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Agree with Saddhiyama; "...it is a fact that in the English of the 18th and 19th centuries, the word "Dutch" referred to anyone from a wide range of Germanic regions, places that we now distinguish as the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. At that time "Dutch" was a broader term that meant what we today call Flemish, Dutch or German. The terms "High Dutch" (German) and "Low Dutch" (Dutch, "nether" means "low") were used to make a clearer distinction between what we now call German (from Latin) or Dutch (from Old High German)." Further to User:Thinking of England's point about the peculiarity of Jonas in the Whale as a ship's name, the only comparable phrase I can think of is "Daniel in the lion's den", however I have been unable to find an actual ship of that name. Alansplodge (talk) 18:14, 23 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Finally, I have found an English translation published as part of John Narborough's An Account of Several Late Voyages and Discoveries, London 1711, rather badly digitised by the Internet Archive. Alansplodge (talk) 18:53, 23 March 2015 (UTC)