Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 October 17

= October 17 =

Mysterious music file
Hi, looks like it's not titled correctly, but I don't know what the correct title is. Any idea? It does not seem to belong in the Kreutzer Sonata, Violin Sonata No. 9 (Beethoven), but I don't know where it belongs. My friend Graham87 doesn't think it even sounds like Beethoven (it sounds more Spanish than anything); he also says it starts in F minor, modulates to D minor for the main theme, then goes to D major for the final theme, whereas the D minor Wikipedia article says that Beethoven didn't write many chamber works in this key, and those he did write are irrelevant here. What the heck is this mystery music?Anythingyouwant (talk) 07:55, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * It's La Gitana by Fritz Kreisler. ---Sluzzelin talk  08:18, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Most excellent comment, thanks very much. I will fix.Anythingyouwant (talk) 08:59, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Present-day "unpopular" monarchs and monarchies
Are there any current monarchs and monarchies whose disapproval ratings exceed their approval ratings? Meaning, they are "unpopular"? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 08:34, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I've twice now gone poking around looking for an answer to this question. What I've found is that generally, either the monarch has a purely ceremonial role and has a very high approval rating, or the monarch has real power and the government is not very warm to the idea of opinion polls. Our article list of monarchies has all extant monarchies in bold, so you can start from that list to find all currently reigning monarchs. Someguy1221 (talk) 10:51, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * (EC) An obvious problem is that in places with less popular monarchs, there may very well be no approval or disapproval ratings. For example, if you consider the fairly recent case of Gyanendra of Nepal, clearly there was a fair amount of disapproval with a number of things he did, leading up to Nepal becoming a republic, although there was obviously a lot of politics and other things going on too. But I don't know if we will ever know if his disapproval rating ever exceeded his approval rating, because I don't know if either were either surveyed. (Although AFAIK if we go back to famous examples like Louis XVI, it's likewise probably impossible to know whether they were unpopular under your definition. Then again, I'm not sure approval ratings are meaningful if we go that far back. Thain again, we could have similar problems even now. Ignoring whether surveys were even done, it may not always be the case that approving or disapproving of the monarch is a question everyone can even answer since it's just not something that makes sense in their current world view. This will generally be when they somewhat approve of the monarch, but it will make it difficult to actually do a survey.) Similarly the problems in Tonga from 2006 onwards with George Tupou V. (Well the problems started before then, but I believe Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV was fairly popular even during the problems.) It's also a fairly small place and considering that & other factors, I'm not sure if there is much of a history of such polling [//books.google.co.nz/books?id=050Av1806BYC&lpg=PA122&ots=W0myKqknpJ&pg=PA122#v=onepage] Even with somewhere like Thailand, which is a constitutional monarchy (albeit one where the constitution seems to often change) & where Bhumibol Adulyadej appears to still be quite respected (despite the coups and the occasional controversy over his possible blind eye, if not tactic support of them), I'm not sure if approval/disapproval polls (which do seem to be done for the goverments) really fit in to a country where the occasional lèse majesté in Thailand conviction isn't uncommon. To say no more of the situation in an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia, or even Brunei, Qatar, UAE, Oman, Swaziland. (Consider for example how the Arab spring was dealt with in most of the Middle Eastern ones.) The other thing is when you retain sufficient power, it's often not hard to ensure a majority still support you, even if they probably shouldn't. Witness the situation in North Korea which isn't techically a monarchy. The internet is making that more difficult although even then, depending on the level of development and other factors, it may still not reach a majority. That's presuming you aren't willing to go the North Korea route and basically ban it entirely. Still if someone is popular even if they shouldn't be, they are still popular. (Although those tend to also be cases where even those who disapprove, are rarely likely to talk about it.) Nil Einne (talk) 11:19, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * King Juan Carlos of Spain became rather unpopular; the last straw was when at the height of the debt crisis, he was discovered to have gone on an elephant-shooting holiday with a lady that wasn't his wife. The situation was resolved by abdicating in favour of his son, who has regained a good margin of public support.   Alansplodge (talk) 13:12, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * There's usually no problem with a king killing exotic animals or getting some side action. What's unpopular is doing anything extravagant and expensive while your subjects are poor and starving. That attitude didn't work for Marie Antoinette or this Burger King, either. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:24, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Because I like addressing historical myths, did you read the let them eat cake article, which explains Marie Antoinette never said it? She was fairly sympathetic to the plight of the poor in France, actually. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 22:15, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Joseph Goebbels once said "Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story". Or maybe that was Mark Twain. In any case, she's stuck with it now. What she was actually like long stopped mattering to her popular character. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:02, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Speaking of Burger King, the King was deposed in 2011, amidst a popularity slump. Dead chickens have proven to be more approvable. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:36, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oddly enough, the other online encyclopedia leads today with a story from the Animal Kingdom (not to be confused with the animal kingdom, the Magic Kingdom or the "real" Kilimanjaro National Park) about a 1998 preview "attraction" featuring a butchered elephant. Unlike a flying elephant, this proved wildly unpopular (even to sky people) and its reign of terror ended before it even officially began. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:57, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Bahrain's monarchy is rather unpopular with that country's Shi'a Muslim majority. Marco polo (talk) 21:21, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Was thinking that before reading this A. Although Saudi, Kuwait, Jordan, morocco cant be tht far off.Lihaas (talk) 00:25, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * But see Jordan's King Abdullah flying high (for the time being anyway) and Morocco and its king - Popular but prickly. Alansplodge (talk) 10:36, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine
I know most Arabs rejected partition, but were there any Arabs in favor of the principle of partition? If so, what were they going to name the Arab state? Foreach n everyday (talk) 16:16, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I have the impression that there are as many opinions as Arabs in Palestine. As the joke goes: two Arabs imply three irreconcilable opinions.--Denidi (talk) 19:01, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * That's the joke with Indians ;0Lihaas (talk) 00:27, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I've heard it with Irish or Scottish. Don't remember exactly. It seems that's a pretty common joke which gets localized. --Jubilujj 2015 (talk) 00:59, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * And I from a Jew about Jews. —Tamfang (talk) 07:37, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * "Palestine" is the Arab name for the area, so presumably they would retain that name in some form, like the "Palestinian Republic". StuRat (talk) 20:36, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The PLO claimed the State of Palestine, or simply Palestine, as an independent state. It would comprise both the West Bank and Gaza Stripe. Otherwise, you have the Zero-state solution, One-state solution, Two-state solution, Three-state solution, or the Obama’s four-state solution. I have not heard about a Five-state solution, but obviously, Jewish people do not have to stick together, they can also split. Palestinian Republic is a red-link. If someone knows something about it, he should create an article.Denidi (talk) 23:09, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Can stock holders sue the company they have a stake in?
If a company does something pretty stupid that costs billions. Think: VW's dieselgate, or BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill, can the stock holders sue their own company? Would that make sense? Is there any legal doctrine that blocks this sort of behaviour? It could be claimed that the stock holders are the company, and, consequentially, you cannot allow them to sue themselves. That does not exclude suing the directors or former directors, obviously. But these won't be able to pick up the bill. --Denidi (talk) 18:44, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Not only is this allowed, it is fairly commonplace. Such lawsuits are often undertaken by "activist investors" (though that term has a somewhat pejorative connotation).
 * To name a few names: attorneys for Zwerling, Schachter & Zwerling did file suit on behalf of BP shareholders in the case of BP investors who lost value due to BP's alleged corporate misrepresentation of risk prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. This class-action lawsuit on behalf of shareholders was in addition to a lot of other litigation surrounding that disaster.  It was a little bit complicated, because BP is not an American corporation; shareholders in the United States frequently actually own American depositary receipts, rather than actual shares.  See also: the main website of the Federal Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, for lots of related court cases.  In this specific case, the damages were so absolutely massive that the Federal Court of the United States created a "mega"-class superseding many individual classes, so the class-action lawsuit on behalf of shareholders was engulfed by one grand unified court case on behalf of every plaintiff who suffered damages.  This was a special case: see Deepwater Horizon litigation.  (Many of the specific civil and criminal claims relate to activities that took place offshore, so throw in the weirdnesses of maritime law and admiralty law and what you have is a court case that confuses and amazes anyone who has tried to follow it).
 * Most places distinguish between a corporation (as a legal entity) and the shareholders (the individuals who own shares of the corporation). So, if some (or all) shareholders pursue legal action against the corporation (or against the board of directors, or the executive team, ...), that is not the same as litigating against themselves.
 * There are other avenues than litigation. A few years ago, Ralph Nader began seeking public support to pressure Cisco into changing its policies, alleging that the corporation's mismanagement was depriving shareholders of value (e.g. alleging that the executive teams was failing to fulfill their contractual obligations to maximize shareholder value).  You can read the first of several open letters on his blog, Ralph Nader’s Update #1 to Upset Cisco Shareholders (2011).  He has written similar open letters to other corporations, e.g. Letter to the Top 10 Institutional Shareholders of Liberty Media Corporation, and many more cases.
 * Very recently, Mr. Nader created a Tort Museum to explain to the public how litigation against corporations can be an effective way for the public to apply pressure to large corporations. On review of Mr. Nader's long history, he has successfully pressed for change in many industries and government systems (all the while, working outside of the conventional political system), by acting as a shareholder and as a litigant.
 * Nimur (talk) 19:39, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Denidi - see Derivative suit. Neutralitytalk 23:59, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Portraits of ancient Greeks and Roman Emperors
There are some graphic portraits of ancient Greeks and Roman emperors. I want to know that are they, in general, a true and actual copy of the person in question? or they are just a fictional work? Thank you. 46.225.203.54 (talk) 20:51, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * There's no reason to believe that such busts are unskilled or deliberately inaccurate depictions of the individuals portrayed. Obviously the sculptors were skilled enough to create lifelike images.  That being said, there might, of course, be some "airbrushing", although busts of Socrates, for example, are not very flattering.  I once went to the Princeton University Art Museum to see their bust of Caracalla, an image of which I had seen in an art book.  The curator admitted to me that the bust had been determined to be a renaissance copy, not an original, but he assured me there was no reason to doubt its accuracy as a copy. μηδείς (talk) 22:00, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * In terms of strict photographic accuracy, both busts (Antoninus in particular) suffer from "cut-off skull" - see attached. This sort of technical error is common in Roman (as against Greek) art - the works of Praxiteles, for example, don't have this problem. Tevildo (talk) 22:55, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The one labeled Trajan looks kinda like Freddie Morgan of "Spike Jones and His City Slickers". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:57, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * BTW, I don't believe there were ancient Greek emperors. (Alexander the Great briefly had an empire, but he was Macedonian, not Greek.) StuRat (talk) 01:21, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * At no point has anyone except you suggested there were. Do you actually read the questions, since looking through this page every single post from you looks like you shooting your mouth off about with uninformed opinions while everyone else is actually trying to be helpful? 71.40.1.98 (talk) 02:33, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Be civil or stay off the Ref Desk. I was responding to "portraits of ancient Greeks and Roman emperors".  That could be read as "ancient Greek emperors or ancient Roman emperors".  It could also be read the other way.  So I clarified in case it was meant the first way. StuRat (talk) 03:01, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The IP is right about one thing. "ancient Greek and Roman Emperors" is not the same as "ancient Greeks and Roman Emperors". Clarityfiend (talk) 09:35, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Exactly. The OP deliberately wrote "Greeks", so Sturat's intervention was pointless. --Viennese Waltz 08:23, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, I did miss the S (I have poor vision), but that's no excuse for the vitriol aimed at me from the OP. I gave a referenced reply to what I thought I read, and if it wasn't relevant, it should have just been ignored.  StuRat (talk) 22:11, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Isn't Vitriol a brand of mouthwash? KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 10:33, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The drive-by that issued that snippy comment was a different drive-by from the one that asked the original question. Or at least it was a different IP range. The OP geolocates to Iran, while the snippy one geolocates to Texas, a state which is long on firearms and short on brains. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:04, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Back to the topic: We have an article about Roman portraiture, which should answer many of the OP's questions. In general, compared with depictions of humans in other ancient cultures, Roman art was characterized by an exceptionally high degree of individuality and naturalism, though there were considerable differences between different time periods, some of which tended more towards idealization than others. Specifically as regards emperors, it is also important to keep in mind that their portrait busts were produced in large numbers, each obviously being copied from some other, so it would be unreasonable to expect that each copy could have maintained the same degree of fidelity. Greek portraiture, as far as I know, generally tended to be more on the schematic, idealizing side. For example, even though there are numerous extant "portraits" of Sokrates, none was probably produced during his lifetime, and what they reflect is probably a schematic, indirect memory of his general type of physiognomy more than an authentic "true-to-life" portrayal. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:23, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Might go without saying, but they weren't as white as their eyeballs. Most had irises and pupils. The original artists probably noted those, but this way's caught on for centuries, for some dumb reason or another. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:30, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I've read before that emperors liked to be modelled with bull necks, in a visual reference to a hero of generations past. In my head that was Enobarbus, but I can't find anything about it with Google to support or deny this memory. The Romans were keenly aware of the power of propaganda in images (plenty of books and papers on this in Google), and emperors were styled with imagery that would resonate with the populace, to be reminiscent of a particular god or character trait. Aside from that, I would think that if a sculptor didn't ensure an at least flattering image of someone like Caligula then a) they would not survive for long and b) their work would not have survived, either. How true this would be of more benevolent emperors is an interesting point to ponder, but not really Ref Desk material. --Dweller (talk) 15:04, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Update: Fairly sure it wasn't Enobarbus, but can't remember who it was. And this section of our article on Augustus, who was a brilliant politician, is very interesting reading: Augustus --Dweller (talk) 15:16, 22 October 2015 (UTC)