Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2011 August 14

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August 14

Controversial novel?

I was surfing the web one day when I came up to this article about this novel, but I can't remember for the life of me what it's called. It involved this teenage girl writing a prison inmate about how to seduce a young teen (14?) on her street. Other details I remember are that she does have sex with him several times; the other one was where the inmate was arrested because he had a similar situation himself, seducing a younger girl, having sex, and eventually, neither of them knowing what a period is, the girl gets her first period and thinks it was his fault, he decapitates her. It's a really controversial book, from what I remember. Anyone know what it's called? 64.229.153.236 (talk) 06:12, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

The End of Alice. Nanonic (talk) 23:35, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's it. Thanks. 64.229.153.236 (talk) 01:34, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

Fußball-Bundesliga

Which seasons of the Fußball-Bundesliga have the least clubs in common? --84.61.188.59 (talk) 20:27, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

A few minutes of study at List of final placings in the Fußball-Bundesliga should allow you to work that out. --Jayron32 23:36, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Health and/or medical based shows

Are the scripts for health and/or medical shows fact based? Or at least fact fictional based or what? This isn't the first time that I ever thought of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mybodymyself (talk • contribs) 21:18, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean shows like ER and House? If so then the answer is they may be randomly correct. That is, they will use actual words you may find in a medical setting, and will, and this is the important point, if it advances the plot, actually have true medical information sometimes. If, however, the plot is better served by exagerating, fudging, approximating, or outright making stuff up, then they'll do that to. That is, the purpose of fictional shows is to entertain; insofar as a certain level of realism (or, at least, the appearance of realism) will itself be entertaining, they will do that. But if it comes down to a conflict between truth and entertainment, entertainment will win every day and twice on Sundays. Programs which actually try to be truthful for their own sake are usually documentaries, though sometimes these stray into fancifulness as well. --Jayron32 23:03, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

IIRC, in the first two or three seasons of House, the Patient Of The Week's illness was pretty accurately depicted, and often based on strange cases from the medical literature (stupid patients based on medical urban legends were often sprinkled in for the lighthearted clinic scenes). It got less so - and some of it is outright fictional now. The medical procedures themselves were never presented accurately (e.g. House and his small team of doctors are shown performing all the nursing, lab tests, radiology and often complex surgery too). --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:16, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and they regularly show two of the things that really piss off real doctors when they see them on medical dramas - shocking a flatline and showing an MRI machine as being nonmagnetic when the patient isn't inside (i.e. the writers believe that the electromagnet is turned on and off when needed, not 'on' all the time). --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:23, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

You know, I never noticed that about House before, but you are quite correct: There are absolutely no nurses, radiologists, PAs, orderlies, etc. at ALL on that show. I'm surprised House's team doesn't answer the phones and clean the toilets, given how much of everyone else's job they already do! --Jayron32 23:32, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

It's been vaguely waved away in the show as House not trusting anyone else but his underlings to do these tasks. Basically though it's because the producers didn't want to do a hospital drama with a big cast (compare with something like Holby City, where nurses nurse, surgeons stick to their own specialities, patients are seen by different doctors during the duration of their treatment, etc.) and were aiming for more of a character study. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:49, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

During one of the bonus features on the DVDs for Grey's Anatomy, it's mentioned that they do have a doctor around for the writing of the episodes who does research on strange cases and random medical facts that will help the story. They never say that absolutely everything is medically accurate though. Dismas|^(talk) 00:47, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

This site says that "David Foster wangled a job as writer and medical consultant for the hit Fox network TV show "House" by impressing the show's producers with his Harvard Medical School education and his work in the trenches at Beth Israel Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health...." Alansplodge (talk) 17:16, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Hopefully everyone in this thread is aware of Polite Dissent, where an MD gives grades to each episode of House, M.D. for its medicine, medical mystery, final solution, and soap opera; and gives specific complaints, ranked as "major", "modest", or "nit-picking". A random sample: "Thirteen is way off about hepatitis C. Chronic is defined as 6 months, not 10 years (or even three years). Interferon is given for chronic infections, but is also given more commonly for acute infections as well now." I love it. Comet Tuttle (talk) 09:04, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone for all of your wonderful responses to my question.--Jessica A Bruno 00:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mybodymyself (talk • contribs)