Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 July 18

= July 18 =

Who was professor Fleide?
I read that an American professor Fleide was mining gold in Cornwall around 1900. But I can not find his full name. Can anyone tell who he was? Please see the OCR text. Horus1927 02:22, 18 July 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Horus1927 (talk • contribs)
 * Makes me wonder if that "professor" was actually Charles Fisher, believed to be the ringleader of the Electrolytic Marine Salts Co. investment scam that was run in New England just a couple years before that, who ran off to Europe with some $200,000. Then again I'm sure there were plenty of other "gold from seawater" scams at the time all over the world. (To be fair, there is indeed gold in seawater, and I'm sure there was legitimate interest in inventing some economical means of extraction at the time, but if anything as efficient as this guy's claim was ever invented, we would be doing it full-force by now) 199.66.69.67 (talk) 03:53, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes it could be Charles Fisher. I think Fleide was an assumed name. I searched the patent databases and Google scholar. But nothing came up with the name. Horus1927 04:59, 18 July 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Horus1927 (talk • contribs)


 * The article refers to an article in "an English periodical of recent date - the Pictorial Magazine". If we were able to track that article down we might know more. We don't appear to have an article on Pictorial Magazine or The Pictorial Magazine. Can't be the Sunday Pictorial as the dates are wrong. DuncanHill (talk) 12:11, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Penny Pictorial Magazine, first page of "Gold From Sea-Water: The Marvellous Triumph of a Clever Scientist" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fiveby (talk • contribs) 15:39, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, given Charles Fisher was presumably a relatively young gentleman in the 1890s (he was the person who would seed the apparatus with gold by diving underwater to place it), I'm guessing the older gentleman in this article was not him. Still stinks to high heaven of a scam. 199.66.69.67 (talk) 17:47, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you Fiveby. So I see Fleide really existed. Fleide worked in Penzance. He may have worked with John Frederick Webb. Webb later became a consultant of 'Sea Gold Syndicate Limited', another gold-from-seawater company in Guernsey in 1908. Horus1927 22:31, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * According to this, Prescott Jernagan, who was associated with Charles Fisher in the EMS con, was later the victim of exactly the same con in Britain. DuncanHill (talk) 12:25, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes Prescott Jernagan invested in The Sauerwald Development and Promotion Syndicate in 1899. I am trying to find information on this syndicate too. Horus1927 22:31, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Blue-eyed actors and models
To be honest, as a "brownie" (as to eyes) I am a bit upset: Why do so many – especially male (?) – actors and models have blue eyes? Of course, I know blue eyes as such are generally considered rare and beautiful, but still, one cannot claim blue-eyed people altogether are more attractive in general, can one? So, wouldn't that, in fact, once again turn out to be another facet of [subliminal] racism conveyed by Western media?--Hildeoc (talk) 18:03, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

PS: On Google, I came across this pertinent thread, where somebody explains blue eyed people often have better self-pacing and non-reactivity, which I think helps in acting. However, I don't really know what exactly this person is referring to by speaking of "self-pacing and non-reactivity".--Hildeoc (talk) 18:10, 18 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Do you have a citation for actors and models having more blue eyes than the general population? Are you sure it's not just you noticing them more? DuncanHill (talk) 18:21, 18 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I do not have actual scientific evidence for my thesis, but just, for instance, search for "[most] handsome actor" or "[most] handsome model" at Google Images, and see what you get … (Leaving out "most", you still get a fairly high ratio of blue-eyed persons regarding their relatively small percentage of the general [white] population.)--Hildeoc (talk) 18:25, 18 July 2020 (UTC)


 * "The importance of looking youthful might explain the fact that some observers claim there is a preponderance of blue eyes in modern Hollywood films. One critic complained that apart from the lead, who was black, everyone in Beverly Hills Cop was blue-eyed. This may be an exaggeration but many top stars do seem to be blue-eyed (e.g. Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Steve McQueen) and according to the manufacturers of contact lenses blue is the colour most often requested. Blue eyes look young because they are associated with babies (in the same way that natural blond hair is more common in children than adults). On the other hand, blue may be preferred by film-makers simply because it is more colourful. Before 1940, dark-eyed heroes and heroines (such as Olivier) may have been preferred because they look more striking in black and white..."
 * Psychology for Performing Artists: Butterflies and Bouquets (p. 87) (sorry it's a snippet view, I had to crunch this out of the search results). Alansplodge (talk) 20:02, 18 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Why would "non-reactivity" be a good quality for an actor? I thought that half of "acting" (i.e., the skill, or the craft) was "reacting" ... no?    Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:11, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Maybe they were thinking about controlling their reactions? "Reacting" as a skill is to react in the way that the scene calls for rather than the way you naturally would. --Khajidha (talk) 21:52, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, reactivity means that your mood or emotions depend primarily from what appens around you, while non reactivity means that you keep some control on your mood and emotions, which is of course an advantage for actors, whose job is just to experience every emotions and to produce on command every mood that is requested by the script (e.g. []). The question is rather whether the quora source can really prove that "blue eyed people often have better self-pacing and non-reactivity". Than who? 2003:F5:6F0F:6500:38C7:928B:9AB4:495F (talk) 22:33, 18 July 2020 (UTC) Marco PB


 * Yes, makes sense. Thanks.   Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:27, 19 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Than non-blue eyed people, obviously.--Khajidha (talk) 14:47, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Obviously. So they mean all Yupiks, Maasai, Himba, Zulu, Khoisan, Kampas, Ndebele, Samburu, Ket, Selkup, Minangkabau, Batak, Bugis, Dayak, Torajan, Yukaghirs, Yanomami, Unangax, Alutiiq, Eyak, Haida, Tsimshian, all people from Anangu, Koori, Murri, Nunga, Palawah and Tiwi, also all Tlingit, Buryats, Han, Uyghurs, Miao, Mazahua, Otomi, Jívaros, Mixtecs, Udege, Ulchs, Evens, and of course the Nanai and all Maoris. And they can cite references for each one.
 * Well, there are no dumb answers, only dumb questions. I beg your pardon. 2003:F5:6F0C:9500:EDA3:F288:99DF:9A6C (talk) 14:21, 25 July 2020 (UTC) Marco PB


 * But then blue eyes can change to brown, but not the other way round. 2A00:23C5:E117:6100:6900:274:458:F067 (talk) 14:54, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * But see "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" 199.66.69.67 (talk) 22:54, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * . 150.143.96.88 (talk) 10:07, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Not true. You can change your eye colour to blue with a laser, though the jury is still out on how safe it is. Matt Deres (talk) 12:44, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Hey, folks, thanks first of all for your comments! Then, I wanted to draw attention to a follow-up insight of mine: It seems as if blue- or light-eyed people in general seem to be less prone to [extreme] obesity. However, I couldn't find any scientific material proving this either. Does anybody have pertinent information on this observation relating to a connection between [extreme] obesity and eye color?--Hildeoc (talk) 11:25, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * @Hildeoc I haven't seen anything relevant; most of the material I found was positioned the other way around - the effects that obesity has on eyes. Just as a blanket caution, though, a study attempting to find a link between eye colour and any health-related topic is going to need to control for some pretty complicated racial and cultural factors since blue eye colour is largely only found in white people, who have statistically significant different levels of access to health care and other supports. A good researcher would do that, but be especially careful with anything anecdotal you may find online. Matt Deres (talk) 19:21, 23 July 2020 (UTC)