Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 October 24

= October 24 =

Engraver identity
Can someone help me find out who is the engraver listed on these three images? It looks like Harlly but searching that doesn't come up with anything. It could also be Harley but that is a pretty common name. Thanks.

By zooming in on the three images it seems clear to me that the first and third ones are signed "HARLEY NY" (in one case with the N reversed: presumably the engraver momentarily forgot that the process requires mirror-image lettering) while the second one is "HARLEY SC NY". I take the meaning to be that this is an S.C. Harley who worked in New York. However, I tried a catalog search at the Library of Congress and couldn't find anything relating to engravings by such a person. --69.159.61.230 (talk) 18:32, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * This image "probably by Joseph S. Harley" has a weird monogram in the bottom-left corner, bearing a resemblance to a Chi-Rho but could conceivably be a "JH". Alansplodge (talk) 19:22, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Which academy(ies) was Welser elected to?
As the result of a recent exchange on the Language refdesk I became interested in the story of Mark Welser, who at the time had no en.wiki article. There was one in Italian WP, and it turned out there were some others in other languages. I translated the Italian version into English.

I have a question about Welser's elevation to Accademia dei Lincei, or Accademia della Crusca, in 1612 or 1613. The article currently claims that he became a member of Accademia dei Lincei in 1612, which is what it says in the Italian article, and also in this source page: http://www.stadtarchiv.augsburg.de/index.php?id=17273. However the German article says that he became a member of Accademia della Crusca in 1613, which is supported by this page: http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/itineraries/biography/MarkWelser.html.

These two things may of course both be true. But no source I've seen mentions them both, and I'm a little bit worried that one or the other may be a confusion for the other one. Does anyone have access to high-quality print sources, and could check? --Trovatore (talk) 07:46, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I can provide one other reference for his membership at Lincei: Ubrizsy Savoia, A., (2012). Federico Cesi (1585–1630) and the correspondence network of his Accademia dei Lincei. Studium. 4(4-2011), pp.195–209. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/studium.1555  However it doesn't confirm your date. Perhaps if you go straight to the academies themselves they can point you to online documentation for Wikipedia purposes? Lincei can be contacted here and Crusca here. (The name "Welser" does not appear on the website for Crusca .) 184.147.116.156 (talk) 16:52, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much. The article now asserts that he was elected to both academies, with a reference to an actual print book for the Crusca, a book that looks serious to my naive eye.  But it does concern me that he's not mentioned on their website &mdash; perhaps I will go ahead and ask them. --Trovatore (talk) 23:38, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Story behind censored Michael Vance videos
There's currently a story in the news about Michael Vance, who had been accused of a sexual assault on a child, posting videos Sunday night to Facebook Live explaining his position. The "videos" are now all over the international news, e.g.  But they all are censored to the point of complete unusability - words are censored, the man's entire bright pink T-shirt which has some kind of message written on it is censored, and above all, the first part of the video where he explains himself is censored. Many different news outlets serve this as if they had their own versions, but I think they were all censored by the same person. Given that the location is Oklahoma the chances of some major injustice in a court case seem pretty high. Without getting overly involved in his particular case, this has some relevance for understand the free ? press.

It is possible they all got the video from the same 3:54 am Twitter posting by news 9: - I don't know. And Facebook is renowned for cheerfully taking down anything police don't like in any country. A hypothesis is that news9 might have spotted the video and acted quickly, then police (whether or not tipped off by those seeking the "exclusive") had the video shut down. Actually I don't know because I don't know Facebook well and, not being good with faces, I'm not even sure which Michael Vance on there to start looking at (there are dozens).

Can anyone shed some light on this? How was this arranged? Does *anyone* know what the man's shirt said, or have a copy of the video that explains his motivations? Wnt (talk) 16:05, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Why was Bill Clinton so successful in red states?
Why'd Bill Clinton win Arizona? (United States presidential election in Arizona, 1996) And get close in '92? No other Democrat has won Arizona since Harry Truman. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:35, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Clinton was a Southern Democrat. He also was elected before the Contract with America, Dick Armey's political strategy which repainted the American political map by polarizing each party and moving them both away from the center.  Prior to the mid 1990s, southern White Democrats still had wide appeal in what later became "Red" states.  There's some considerable credit given to the bi-partisan Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 as to Clinton's re-election; it kept him a LOT of support among the more conservative Democrats and probably forestalled their complete bailing of the party that eventually came during the GW Bush era.  During the 1990s, the Blue Dog Coalition was still a major political force  (see also Conservative coalition and Democratic Leadership Council).  As noted at Presidency of Bill Clinton, he was a "centrist" (which basically means "conservative Democrat") and one of the New Democrats.  As also noted in that article, in 1996 he was presiding over the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history.  Incumbents tend to do well during good economic times, regardless of what their politics are.  Clinton won in 1992 based on the economic crash of the early 1990s (see It's the economy, stupid); and likewise the economic boom helped him in 1996.  -- Jayron 32 20:06, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Also, Arizona is trending more Democratic lately, due to immigration. They may vote for Hillary this time, according to: . StuRat (talk) 21:53, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Hence his moniker, 'Dixiecrat Clinton,' of course. Muffled Pocketed  10:04, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Entführung libretti
Are there multiple "standard" libretti for Die Entführung aus dem Serail? Listening to it today, I've pulled up the libretto I downloaded from somewhere (it's in plaintext, so I copied it from a website, not a PDF), but I'm consistently unable to find the current text in the libretto. Confused, I searched for some of the text, and on this page I'm easily finding the text I was expecting to find in the "other" libretto. For example, one character clearly says "mein Vater", and while the word "Vater" isn't in my text, it shows up several times in the one I found online. And my favorite line from this opera, Blonde's contemptful ''Deine Sklavin? Ich deine Sklavin? Ha, ein Mädchen eine Sklavin!'' isn't in the text I downloaded at all; even the word "Sklavin" is absent. Nyttend (talk) 21:21, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Are your two versions the same two that the Wikipedia article links to? This one might be your confusing version, but note it is is billed "singing parts only" and cuts off Aria 8 after the line "So Lieb' als Treu' entweicht", so it doesn't include your favourite line or the word "Vater". The other link is the same link you provide and has the full exchanges. 184.147.116.156 (talk) 17:07, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I have no clue what the source is for the "other" libretto (it's in a Notepad file, and according to the metadata, I created it 2+ years ago), but even without checking to see whether it's the same as your "this one" link, that's entirely a reasonable explanation, especially because I'd be inclined to take the libretto from an academic source that I'd find linked from our article. Thanks for the help!  Nyttend (talk) 18:23, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * There are multiple versions. For example, Edda Moser (with Leopold Hager and the Orchester der Bayerischen Staatoper München) in Martern aller Arten sings Doch dich rührt kein Flehen... instead of the standard text Doch du bist entschlossen... It should be noted that the libretto's genesis (from its reworking from plagiarism) is fairly complicated: most egregiously in Traurigkeit just before the word "trannte" (instead of "trennte") seems to have been invented from whole cloth just to save the rhyme with "kannte". So I would not be surprised if both texts can ultimately be traced back to Mozart and Stephanie. Double sharp (talk) 08:58, 29 October 2016 (UTC)