Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007 June 14

= June 14 =

Classical music in a bugs bunny commercial.
I remember a Bugs bunny cartoon where bugs bunny was shaving Elmer Fudds head and he ends up trying to kill bugs.In that cartoon I remember some kind of classical music. I would like to know what was the song and who wrote it. Thank u 4 ur timeWookiemaster 02:24, 14 June 2007 (UTC).


 * Sounds like Rabbit of Seville, and the music was probably Rossini's overture from The Barber of Seville (but I'm not 100% certain). Clarityfiend 03:24, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * See the article! It's mostly Rossini (adapted to fit) but not all.  &mdash;Tamfang 22:11, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * BoS is likely, however speaking thematically, it could also be Sweeney Todd:The Demon Barber of Fleet Street!. Anchoress 03:41, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Given that the cartoon was made thirty years before Sweeney Todd (musical), why are you telling us this? &mdash;Tamfang 22:11, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I guess because I'm a f***ing idiot. Anchoress 16:21, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Better a f***ing idiot, some might say, than one who doesn't. &mdash;Tamfang 06:05, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm thinking What's Opera, Doc?, which apparently took its music from several different operas, mainly by Richard Wagner, although many of the shorts created by Chuck Jones featured classical music in some form (mostly as background, though). Confusing Manifestation 02:00, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm reasonably sure that Bugs did no barbering in What's Opera, Doc?. &mdash;Tamfang 03:25, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Good point, for some reason I missed that in the question. Rabbit of Seville would be the correct answer, then. Confusing Manifestation 15:55, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Your confusion was manifest. Clarityfiend 21:20, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Friends and paleontology
A question that I cannot get out of my head and i'm sure one of you will love to help me out.

Did 'Friends' have a consultant paleontologist at any point? Who was it? 213.48.15.234 08:03, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Zain Ebrahim 08:35, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Ross


 * I mean on the crew, in order to ensure the paleontology included was accurate?? Apologies if my question was unclear 213.48.15.234 09:05, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * This rather detailed list of crew members doesn't include anyone of that kind. --Richardrj talkemail 15:07, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm, how dissapointing! 80.229.228.229 19:17, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Did you really expect a sitcom to have a technical expert of this kind? It's not like the show mentioned the details of paleontology anyway.  What they needed for the scripts and storyline could easily be found in an encyclopedia.  Dismas |(talk) 23:41, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Using just the scientific name for humans, they were able to come up with the following dialog:


 * Ross: "I have to go to the museum, some kids crossed out and replaced 'apians' from the 'Homo Sapiens' display with 'exuals', and repositioned them in a most disturbing manner."


 * Joey: "Do you think Homo Sapiens became extinct because they were, you know, homos ?"


 * Ross: "Joey, Homo Sapiens are people."


 * Joey: "I know, I'm just saying if they were homos ..." StuRat 14:53, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

ballon-free comics / graphic novels
I'd be curious to check some examples of comics/graphic novels that are ballon-free (text written out of the image without any ballon) if there are any.


 * You mean completely out of the graphic square, not simply without a bubble (like http://www.dilbert.com). Well, The Far Side rarely included text inside the graphic square. --Kainaw (talk) 13:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

asking in some comics forum they linked me that and many other examples such prince valiant, (example pic - http://www.collectingfool.com/published/murphyjc-princevaliant930403.jpg ) that is more of what I had in mind (text and image are separated) - thanks anyway

Rupert The Bear (described here as Rupert Bear ) was a childrens cartoon that had both a short rhyming narrative and a longer narrative beneath each frame. I remember my grandmother reading it to me. 80.0.132.197 20:46, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

David Steinberg's pinky
I just saw David Steinberg on a recent episode of The Daily Show. During the show, his pinky finger of his left hand looked like it bent the wrong way. I did some searching but wasn't able to come up with a reason why it looked like that. Did he break his finger or something in his youth and it set wrong? Dismas |(talk) 14:57, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Don't know about him. When my grandmother held her hands out flat, the last joint of the pinkies turned visibly toward the ring finger; but they functioned normally.  She shared this trait with at least two other female relatives.  &mdash;Tamfang 22:05, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * His does basically the same thing in the other direction, from what I could tell. The tip of the finger is probably at least a half to three quarters of an inch from where it would normally be.  Dismas |(talk) 23:45, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know, but THIS GOOGLE SEARCH indicates that you're not the first person to notice. Anchoress 15:11, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

no sound guitar string for a stage play
Are there guitar strings, with no actual sound, to use on a prop guitar for a stage play? Been searching for an hour. thanks.


 * Not that I know of. How about just removing the strings?  Or, an electric guitar even with strings will be quiet enough that the little sound it makes likely does not matter.  If it must be acoustic and you need the appearance of strings, try loosening them a lot and filling the sound hole with something soft, and it won't be very loud.  Friday (talk) 16:20, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The act of having a piece of material and stretching it will make it produce sound by plucking or striking it. It's just the physics of it.  What Friday suggests will probably be the best you can do.  Dismas |(talk) 16:36, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * If the strings can't vibrate freely, that will also greatly damp the sound. See if you can wedge something soft (like, say, cotton balls) between the strings and the neck.  Naturally, you'll want something less visible than cotton balls, but there should be something sitting around the props department. &mdash; Lomn 18:05, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * That's good. It's possible the same effect could be achieved by having the guitar-wielder mute the strings with his hand, too.  If he practiced a bit maybe he could have a (pretty much) silent technique that still looked realistic.  Friday (talk) 00:03, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Doctor Who numbers
Okay, am I completely making this up, or does the future portrayed in Doctor Who include additional numbers?

Like, as a running joke throughout the series, whenever in the future is visited, and a number is recited it will include various common nouns recited as if they were numbers, (like, a code being recited as "4-2-9-hat-6").

Is that actually so? Because a google search for '"Doctor Who" numbers" is thoroughly unhelpful. 194.80.32.9 23:49, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you sure it isn't just a code name. Governments and military are full of letter-number codes.  Also, it isn't abnormal to pad the base-10 system with extra numbers.  Look at hex.  What is the big difference between 429(hat)6 and 429E6?  It was just arbitrary that they decided to use ABCDEF for hex. Youth in Asia 01:05, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It's a running gag. If you wanted to get really philosophical about it, you could assume that once mankind started getting into regular official contact with alien races, they'd need to reach some kind agreement as to what numeric base to work in - we use decimal just because we learnt to count on our ten fingers, and it's fairly likely that other alien species would work in other bases. If you then assume that whatever the common base is has more than 10 digits, you need names for the new ones. Here on Earth, when we have such a base (like, for example, hexadecimal), we use letters, but there's no pressing argument as to why you couldn't use other random nouns, and indeed if you're working in some arbitrarily large base then you'd find you'd run out of letters (even if you borrowed from a few other alphabets), whereas the number of nouns is ridiculously large. For example, in The End of the World, a year five billion years in the future is numbered 5.5/Apple/26, suggesting that the base is chosen to be so large that a number of the order of 10^9 or 10^10 (no idea when they start counting the years, either) can be expressed in what seems to be about 5 or 6 "digits". As to whether the nouns chosen mean anything, I'd suggest not. Either they picked random nouns when they developed the new system, or they're the closest English translation available to whatever the original alien version was. Confusing Manifestation 01:55, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you sure they don't mean "hash" (#), also known as the pound sign in the US? Neil   ╦  09:28, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Or that they have been smoking hash when they thought up the numbering system :) Perry-mankster 10:28, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Our article on "Gridlock" used to say "Continuing the theme from The End of the World which included the number "apple", the episode features several numbers which are not arabic numerals, including diamond (⃟), currency sign (¤), yen sign (¥), omega (Ω), circle( ⃝), square (⃞), alpha (α), gamma (γ), Eszett (ß) and thorn (þ). Apart from diamond, none of these are spoken." Laïka  10:42, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

hat is often used in statistics to mean ^. As in, â would be 'A hat'. Gzuckier 19:33, 20 June 2007 (UTC)