Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2012 November 4

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November 4

Deep Space Nine

I used to be an official trekkie back in the day (18 years ago, by my count?) and I watched a fair bit of TNG, but was unimpressed with the first season of DS9. Babylon 5 seemed to do similar things, and I liked it better. I have run into some people who claim that I as an unrepentant geek missed out on some good TV. Obviously, people will disagree on quality, this is the kind of thing that internet fan wars are based on, but I know that TV shows in general have good and bad seasons and I'm not interested in understanding the whole show, just some good TV. What, in popular (and/or fan) estimation, are the "good" seasons of DS9? 24.16.0.80 (talk) 00:53, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

IMO, it got better and better as it went along, especially after Sisko started channeling Yul Brynner. The one episode you absolutely must watch is "Trials and Tribble-ations". Clarityfiend (talk) 01:46, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Since the seasons sort of built on one another and the characters were better and better developed, I'd say it would be hard to pick out one season over another. The war with the Dominion was such an important story arc that I don't know how you would pick it up in the middle or end of it. Dismas|^(talk) 01:51, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

It is all a matter of personal taste, of course. I found the quality of DS9 to be unsteady, wavering up and down within a season. Overall, DS9 had a much darker tone than any of the other Star Trek series, which I did not care for. That is why I preferred episodes with a lighter content ("Trials and Tribble-ations" — which coincidentally I watched yesterday; "Take Me Out to the Holosuite", etc.) I thought ST: Voyager did a lot better with character development.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 02:03, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Unless you're Harry Kim. Dismas|^(talk) 02:31, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

To me, a seemingly endless war is boring, I want to see a resolution. This is why I, and presumably many others, disliked Stargate Universe, leading to it's cancellation. It was also "excessively dark", with even their leader not being somebody trustworthy. StuRat (talk) 17:47, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

• Deep Space Nine was by far the worst of the Star Trek series, but as noted, Trials and Tribble-ations is fun watching, as are some episodes where the sexiest ST heroine, Dax, is featured. I would stick with Voyager after they got rid of the weird pedophile-bait Kes character. Any time you would spend watching DS9 would be much better spent rewatching Farscape. μηδείς (talk) 20:21, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
• I really liked DS9, partly because it was so different from the other Star Trek series. Rather than having a "planet of the week" like the ones set on ships, DS9 had one continuing story, like a soap opera. I found the politics fascinating and was pleased that not all Bajorans were good, nor all Cardassians bad. However, I didn't see the last two seasons, so I can't comment on them. "Trials and Tribble-ations" I found stupid and gimmicky. Angr (talk) 21:04, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

The Ferengi and Kardassian characters were interesting. But the Bay Shore-ans were insufferable, the doctor constantly needed bitch-slapping, and Sisko and Odo were the apotheoses of a pompous ass. Liked Jadzia (sp?) because she was pretty and that taylor/spy guy. μηδείς (talk) 21:24, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

It might be fun to see battles between the Bay Shore-ans and the Kardashians.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 04:45, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Deep Space Nine is far, far, far, far better than Enterprise and Voyager; maybe not better than TNG, but TNG on average was also pretty stupid except for those awesome few years in the middle. But it's all a matter of taste, as you can see :) Adam Bishop (talk) 22:44, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I found TNG insufferably sanctimonious, and let's not get started on Wesley Crusher. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:59, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra! μηδείς (talk) 23:08, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I would not think there are better or worse seasons, just episodes. Some of them actually offer something to talk about, outside of fandom I mean, e.g. Statistical Probabilities. I agree about the Ferengi and the Cardassians being the more interesting characters, but as Star Trek sometimes does, all of a sudden they trash all the previously established differentiated views and discussions on good/evil etc. and smash an episode of "No! Life is simple, black or white! There is pure evil, and he is evil, basta!" (Gul Dukat, however that's spelled) in your face. pity. Pardon my German (Fiiiisch!) (talk) 15:13, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Wow, talk about a difference of opinion in the trekkie community. I got into star trek back in the days of voyager. Loved it so much that when it ended I went back and saw all of the original star trek, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and even Babylon 5 and all of the movies too. When Enterprise started, I saw the first episode and hated it so much I never saw another minute of it to this day. My favorite to his day is still Voyager. DS9 is second favorite because it had a global background plot and yes it does get better as you get closer to the end. The season finales are pretty good but DS9 should be seen in order because episodes do depend on previous episodes. Trials and tribbelations is a good episode (very nicely done I think) but there are others too. TNG was okay. The original one was okay too (yes, I do think it was corny but just to be fair, I am not taking the 50-year old corniness into consideration) but it is amazing if you look at the reflection of society it presents back then. Kirk was just such a chauvinistic pig, making out with a woman in almost every episode. Why was it always Kirk and no other men? All the (hot) alien women always just melted in his arms. The only woman on the bridge was black woman who of course had a very sexy uniform. Funny that there weren't any black men but only a single black woman who was obviously there for sex appeal. The bridge crew did include other races but it was just funny what they thought back then the future would look like. Only blacks, asians, russians...and scottish with a white guy in charge of course. It is interesting to also notice the evolution of star trek with the times. Does art reflect society or does society reflect art? Started with the white guy in charge with no blacks in the picture, then things changed so much that it was okay to have a black guy in charge, and then even a woman as a captain was acceptable.

Anyway, to answer OP's question, if you really can't watch the whole thing then I think the last three seasons are good from DS9. And from those if you want to pick then the end/start of seasons are pretty good like the end of five/start of six and then end of six/start of seven and then the end of season seven.

Who thinks "Year of Hell" is the best episode from voyager?184.96.226.214 (talk) 08:58, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

"Random article" chances of landing on a football-related page.

What are the chances of clicking Wikipedia "Random article" and receiving an article related to football? Nicholasprado (talk) 06:20, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

This is a question for the Mathematics reference desk. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 06:21, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I'll go there then, it had football so I'd thought maybe I'd come here. Nicholasprado (talk) 06:23, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I see where you were coming from, but it's only incidentally about football. A question that asks how many apples you get if you add 2 apples to 3 apples is not about fruit, but about mathematics. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 07:42, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

It's not really even a maths question, more one about Wikipedia itself, namely 'how many Wikipedia articles are there?' (which is easy to find out, though see User:R. fiend/How many articles does Wikipedia really have? for some caveats) and 'how many Wikipedia articles about football are there?', which is probably a lot harder to answer, and even to define exactly. OK, that's two questions, and there's a third: 'are all articles equally likely to be delivered by the "random article" link?' If the answer to that is 'yes' then the probability is (answer 2) divided by (answer 1). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:40, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

The answer to the third is actually no. I don't know where to find the reference but I recall there is something a bit odd about how numbers are unevenly assigned to articles that makes the random button a bit less random. Rmhermen (talk) 19:53, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I noticed a few years back that about 1 in 20 articles was a stub about a municipality in Poland. Articles for soccer players came in at about the same rate, with articles about French and Nigerian municipalities being almost as common. If those stats still hold, it means about 5% of wikipedia is about soccer, and maybe 10% about towns in poland, France, and Nigeria. I suggest clicking random article 100 or 200 times and seeing what you get. μηδείς (talk) 20:16, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Andrew, you're confusing (a) where to get the source data with (b) how to use said data to arrive at the answer. (a) is a Miscellaneous question, or would be if that's as far as the question went, which it wasn't. (b) is a Mathematics question. You yourself have just used a mathematical technique to come up with an answer. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 20:19, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:TFAQ#random. Nanonic (talk) 20:20, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

There are currently just less than 200,000 articles tagged by the football WikiProject. There are 4,000,000+ articles on Wikipedia. This means that officially it's about 5% and if the tagging effort is supremely inefficient, a maximum 10% of Wikipedia. Bear in mind, a lot of those tags will be for tenuous connections, eg people who became very famous for something other than football, but played football as a youngster, like Gordon Ramsay. The figure also includes a staggering 20,000 templates and 16,000 Categories. --Dweller (talk) 13:33, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Jazz saxophone players

Do jazz saxophone players often play key combinations that aren't valid notes? A lot of them sound more-or-less like random playing, but are they also playing random key combinations? I was listening to Cannonball Adderley and I thought "his notes make sense to me", in contrast to many jazz sax players. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 06:20, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

It's actually fairly difficult to play random non-notes on a sax. Take a look at a fingering chart and you will see that most of the possible combinations of finger positions will sound a valid note. Also, once you have played sax for a few years, those finger positions are kind of 'hard-wired' in - trying to play other combinations feels very odd. I've just tried out a few 'weird' positions, like 1st finger left hand with 2nd & 3rd finger right hand and I can confirm it feels incredibly unlikely that I'd hit on that spontaneously whilst improvising. Also note that playing a non-standard finger position will still make a sound, it just won't necessarily be one that you'd find on a piano. But experienced players can change the tone with the shape of their mouths (called 'lipping it') to bring the note back into tune. I played with someone who was a much better player than me, and there was a difficult passage in the music we were playing, all full of tricky transitions that made it difficult to get your fingers in the right place. He showed me how you could use a different fingering along with lipping it to make the fingerings easier. I couldn't manage it, though, since you need very strong face muscles. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 09:40, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, there's nothing random about applying extended technique to your horn. Do all players, at any given moment, consciously know exactly what they're doing and how they got there? Of course not, but that doesn't make it random. Do you have any examples of saxophone players who sound random to you? ---Sluzzelin talk 11:42, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I can't name any that sound random right now. I listen to jazz sometimes on satellite radio. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 14:39, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Hurricane Sandy relief benefits

Recently, I typed up two articles about different benefits for Hurricane Sandy relief. One was about Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together, which aired on NBC on November 2, 2012. The other was about Day of Giving, which is bound to air on ABC on November 5, 2012. I used my own words and gave as much references as possible. I don't know if I've done good. But I'm interested in finding out if they might be approved.142.255.103.121 (talk) 07:28, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I imagine each could be adequately covered in a paragraph within Hurricane Sandy; they're too ephemeral for their own articles, in my humble opinion. —Tamfang (talk) 07:44, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia copying from website

my name is dan brisebois, the author of www.canadianbands.com. i have a couple of concerns. on a few occasions i've come across articles on canadian bands that were swiped by someone word for word from my website, the headpins most recently. i removed the offending portion of the article, only to find it back up a few moments later, so i removed it again. i'm hoping it remains removed this time.

on a seperate note, i find a lot of the material added by readers comes from my website, which is natural. but my site isn't credited as the source of that information, which i don't really have a problem with per se. but i'm finding links to my site on the bottom of those pages are being removed, even though there are other websites that have links.

what exactly is the policy on this? as it seems to be contradictory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brizboy3 (talk • contribs) 11:49, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Dan. Firstly, I would like to apologise for any frustration you have been caused over this. Whilst Wikipedia volunteers do endeavour to make sure that text is not lifted wholesale from other websites, and that the providers of information are properly credited, this is an ongoing task and we don't always get it right.

Secondly, I would like to direct you to a better source of help. We have a team of volunteers dedicated to copyright violations (which is what this is - a wholesale copying of your site without your permission). I have posted your question at the Copyright problems desk - please see there for any responses. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 12:09, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Confusing Morgan Freeman for Nelson Mandela

Twice in the last week I've encountered people seeing images of Nelson Mandela and believing they're seeing Morgan Freeman. I know Freeman did play Mandela in Invictus (film) and he was a presenter at Mandela's birthday concert in 2009. But most people would not have seen the latter (I'd never even heard of it till I looked Freeman up), and not that many more saw Invictus. Freeman was made up to resemble Mandela in the film, but without makeup, apart from the obvious Africanness, they’re really very dissimilar. Mandela is a hugely famous world figure, or so I thought, and he has very distinctive features.

What could explain this confusion in the minds of some people? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 12:19, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't know the people who confused the two, but the confusion could have something to do with the cross-race effect. ---Sluzzelin talk

Seems a likely candidate. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 20:10, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Freeman also gets confused with Kofi Annan. Matt Deres (talk) 15:15, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Who's Precious?

In the last couple of episodes of Shane Dawson TV, he's mentioned someone named Precious. In the last one, the woman he's talking to even asks "Who's Precious?", but he just answers "How can you not know who Precious is?" Well, I don't know either. No one mentioned at Precious (disambiguation) seems to be likely; does anyone know who he's talking about? Angr (talk) 18:36, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Presumably Precious_(film)#Plot. I think this movie was more significant to black audiences than whites, so, if you're white, that might explain why you never heard of it. StuRat (talk) 18:42, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

That and the fact that I now live in Germany and have very little contact with American popular culture anymore (except through Shane Dawson and South Park!) Angr (talk) 19:11, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Part of the significance comes from its official name "Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire", which had to be said in full whenever it was nominated for something. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:13, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Dunno about you but that information does not enhance my understanding. —Tamfang (talk) 20:02, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Haha, well it's just such a ridiculously long title, and for awhile it was up for a bunch of awards and every single time it was mentioned, they had to say the whole thing. Otherwise it just has the unremarkable title "Precious". Adam Bishop (talk) 22:41, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

It's obvious the studio had to acquiesce to the long title because the rights to make a film adaptation included a stipulation about the book title. Wonder if it helped the author's sales? μηδείς (talk) 17:13, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Elvis

What happened to the last part of the beginning section under Elvis Presley where it says he is known world wide as the King of Rock n Roll, or simply the King? It's no longer there! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.14.243.3 (talk) 19:55, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Why aren't you asking this question at the talk page for Elvis's article - Talk:Elvis Presley? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 20:12, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

It was missing for four hours and one minute, before it was restored. Both the removal and the restoration were good-faith edits, just a disagreement over how the article should read. Such things are commonplace on Wikipedia, but we recommend discussion on article talk pages over edit-warring. Nonetheless, a plurality of opinions makes us stronger. We'd welcome your input, too. You might like to consider creating an account, to aid communication. It costs nothing and takes about two minutes. --Dweller (talk) 15:36, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Star Wars Lego on the PS2, Hoth Battle

I realise I'm a few years behind with this but I've been playing Star Wars Lego II (original trilogy) on the Playstation 2 and I've got stuck. I've been through the whole game and then been through again in 'free play' mode. I've been collecting red bricks and gold bricks, and mini-kits. Now I have just one last peice of mini-kit to collect. I have the 'mini-kit detecter' swithed on so it shows me where they are, but with this one the green arrow just points to a space on the floor/snow. It's during the 'Hoth Battle' sequence. You get past the first bit, through the tunnel, into an area where you meet your first AT-ATs. Past the first AT-AT, destroy the second AT-AT, which enables you to destroy the large wall, then before the next large wall, there's a green arrow pointing here, suggesting there's apparently a peice of mini-kit in the floor. But I can't work out how to get it. In other levels a green arrow appears to point to an empty space, but then when you complete some certain part of that level, a peice of mini-kit appears below the arrow.

I've tried looking at walkthroughs on YouTube, but they all seem to be for different versions of the game, ie: The Complete Saga version, for the Wii or whatever. They seem to have a slightly different gameplay where you have to knock down a certain amount of AT-STs and there is no minikit peice here. Anyone remember this?87.112.119.126 (talk) 20:00, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Going on my memory here, but aren't there some doors which only open for a TIE Fighter? The minikit might be underground behind those doors, you have to change to a TIE Fighter in free play obviously. If it's not that, I think you have to tow-cable ten AT-STs or something before the minikit appears. --Canley (talk) 05:02, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

The walkthroughs (written out in prose) on Gamefaqs.com are usually pretty good. They are volunteers, though, just like here, so your results may vary.  : ) Kingsfold (Quack quack!) 19:35, 9 November 2012 (UTC)