Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2010 July 12

= July 12 =

internet radio
how can i get gaydar radio, an internet radio station, in my car? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.210.217.122 (talk) 09:18, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Get an internet-capable device like a Droid phone. Tune into the internet station you like.  Get a walkman/ipod-to-radio converter.  If your car has a tape player, you can use the real cheap one that has a cassette tape on one end and a headphone jack on the other.  Otherwise, you may have to get the radio converter that broadcasts a very weak FM radio signal and tune into the signal.  Then, you just turned your car speakers into very expensive headphones and you can listen to any internet station you like. --  k a i n a w &trade; 11:59, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * This might not be a good idea. You might hit your bandwidth cap very fast. APL (talk) 16:35, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Gaydar is also available on DAB radio so you could get one of those in your car. --Half Price (talk) 10:01, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Cloning in films
I graduated high school in 1995 and so wasn't in a state to judge, but it seems to be that the ridiculous premise of the film Multiplicity would make it so bad that not only would it generate extremely poor box office returns (which it did) but it shouldn't have even made it past the drawing board. I mean, come on -- cloning someone by taking some blood and having them lie on a bed and a fully grown clone with complete memory just pops up from some plastic mold -- I think it'd be hard to conjure up a less scientifically-based, more ridiculously prepared concept for a movie. Dolly was apparently cloned in 1996, but what was public knowledge of this back then that allowed this project to even get off the ground? It just seems like such a dumb idea.  DRosenbach  ( Talk 13:45, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Entertainment is not required to be scientifically accurate, and the scientific premise is rarely the selling point. George Lucas did pretty well with his hokey religions and slower-than-light exploding laser guns, after all. &mdash; Lomn 14:02, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Many movies depend on suspension of disbelief. Astronaut (talk) 14:55, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Why has the Entertainment desk turned into the "DRosenbach complains about things he doesn't like" desk? Adam Bishop (talk) 15:45, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Why does Adam Bishop think that his comment is any more appropriate than my questions just because he used small letters?  DRosenbach  ( Talk 16:04, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I can say it in big letters if you'd like. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:24, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Accelerated growth clones and memory-copy tropes are commonly accepted premises in science fiction. In fact, it's very common in science fiction to start a story with an impossible or very improbable premise and follow it logically to its conclusion. (Warp Drive, Time Travel, The Force, etc)
 * Audiences rebel when the plot is ended with a previously unmentioned impossible technology, but including impossible technologies in a story's premise is pretty much the whole point of the genre. APL (talk) 16:34, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * In one of Bill Cosby's 1960s records, he mocks the radio show Lights Out with the story of a chicken heart in a lab, which escapes somehow, grows to enormous size on its own somehow, and eats up the state of New Jersey. There aren't all that many "new" ideas out there. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:17, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd be interested, though, in a Wikipedia article about cases where audiences rejected storylines for this, or at least cases where 99% of critics did. Independence Day when Jeff Goldblum uploaded the virus to the alien ship was a notably awful abuse of the audience's ability to suspend their disbelief.  Of course, this didn't prevent the film from becoming the #2 grossing movie of all time, at the time.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:06, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * With that many big laser explosions, how could it not be? Googlemeister (talk) 20:01, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course, it would have to omit comedies in which the lack of disbelief is part of the joke. -- k a i n a w &trade; 17:33, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * That wasn't as unbelievable as people make it out to be. People joke about beaming a virus from a mac to an alien computer. Really he was just using the laptop as a user interface for the recovered craft they were in. The virus was being transmitted from their stolen alien ship to the alien mother-ship through normal alien telecommunication channels. All this had probably been worked out by human scientists previous to the alien invasion. (The recovered craft had been recovered in 1947.)
 * (Presumably the alien culture includes no criminals or practical jokers that would prompt them to invent virus protection.)
 * This isn't some kind of fan justification because 1) I'm not at all a fan of that film, and 2) If I recall, it was presented pretty clearly in the actual film. APL (talk) 18:06, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Talking of unbelievable technology, I used to watch "The Time Tunnel", and I was always bemused, not so much by the primary premise of the show (if you didn't suspend disbelief about that, you wouldn't be watching it to begin with), but by the control panel, and the earnest-looking white lab-coated Lee Meriwether who operated it. At the right moment, she would slide levers, turn dials, press buttons and flick switches in some complex order, and hey presto, Tony and Doug would disappear into the past/future.  I'm sure if we analysed old footage, we'd find her sequence of operations was different every time; in other words, made up as she went along every time.  I used to watch for those parts of the show, and laugh uproariously at the utter stupidity of it.  That, and a look at eye-candy James Darren, made the show well worth watching.  The rest was complete rubbish.  Having just now checked the article, I can't believe it was only on for 1 year; it seemed to go for years on Australian TV and I was never aware of watching repeats.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   20:13, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * One of my favorites was when they landed in ancient Greece and everyone was speaking perfect English. Unless they were using a Babelfish and just didn't bother to bring that up. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:09, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * And with American accents to boot. Somehow, absurdities such as this are more acceptable to non-American ears when they're speaking in British, specifically British, accents.  Not Cockney or Yorkshire or Lancashire or Scots, though.  That would be completely off the planet.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   21:11, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably upper-class British for the rulers, and Cockney or Irish for the peons. That would figure. Hey, it worked in Ben-Hur. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:23, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Doctor Who has taught me that aside from the very occasional American, everyone in history, both future and past, speaks in some sort of British accent. APL (talk) 03:18, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * And we all sleep better knowing that. It really is very reassuring, isn't it, APL.  :)  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   12:29, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * To be fair, that's handwaved with the Tardis translating everything. It could either be a sign of the Doctor's soft spot for modern Britain that he has the Tardis translate into those accents, or we could be hearing what the companions hear, which would be translated into accents they were familiar with. I recommend watching the season 4 episode (of nuwho) where they go to Pompei for more on the way the translation manifests. For example, when Donna speaks Latin to Romans. 86.164.57.20 (talk) 14:07, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The machine wouldn't even power on. Even then, to expect we could have had a virus that would work on the alien mother ship is completely ludicrous. Ludicrous. There is no scifi explanation for it. You can say oh yeah we invented the warp core 50 years ago. But there is absolutely no circumstance where this is possible. --mboverload @ 01:40, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * It was actually a Beta version of Windows Vista, not a virus per se. Googlemeister (talk) 19:58, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Name of movie?
What is the name of this film? A well-to-do older gentleman who is an expert in, and a collector of, a certain type of porcelain object d'art, has his entire collection destroyed because he realizes that it won't be long before the Nazis confiscate his collection. He actually instructs a young female employee of his household to throw the objects one by one to the ground, breaking them. The movie I would guess was made about 20 years ago. My guess would be that the collector (I don't know if he is fictitious or based on a real character) lived in Germany or Austria. He is a collector and connoisseur of these particular objects so it is a particularly poignant moment when he begins to instruct his very reluctant employee to take the first object, then the second object, one by one, off the shelf and destroy it. As the scene develops there is a great sense of relief evident on both their faces as they joyously proceed to destroy precious objects. Bus stop (talk) 17:06, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Utz (1992), based on a novel by Bruce Chatwin. See here. --Xuxl (talk) 17:52, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, Utz! Thank you! Bus stop (talk) 18:45, 12 July 2010 (UTC)